Entombed (42 page)

"It's an odd set of
circumstances," I said to Guidi. "Aurora's body found in the basement
of the house on Third Street, and now the possibility that someone you
knew bricked her up there to pay back a betrayal. Nobody in literature
served up revenge better than Poe, and here we have a real-life
copycat. On top of that, you're one of the most generous supporters of
Poe Cottage. I don't think I've even thanked you for getting us in for
a private tour last week."

"Did I do that?" he
said, apparently surprised to hear it.

"Perhaps it was your
secretary. Zeldin set it up for us, after we left the Botanical
Gardens. I noticed your name on the plaque in the cottage."

"No coincidence there
at all, Ms. Cooper. My name is on a lot of Bronx institutions. Zeldin
himself can tell you that. I've donated a new magnolia garden in my
mother's memory, which will open in the spring. And the two of us
traipsed all over the conservatory just before the holidays. He's
shameless about looking for naming opportunities, and some of us are
vain enough to oblige him."

"Traipsed? What did
you do with Zeldin?" The man couldn't traipse, from what I'd seen of
him.

"Have you been to the
conservatory since it reopened? It's spectacular. He walked me through
the whole thing after hours one night."

"I didn't think he
could walk," I said. "I've only seen him in a wheelchair."

Zeldin's immobility
had kept him out of my main focus as a suspect.

"He only resorts to
his iron buggy when his gout kicks in. That makes it too painful for
him to get about very much, with the muscle deterioration condition he
suffers from. But most of the time he can walk just as well as he can
talk."

41

The meeting had broken
up by noon. I called Mercer at his home in Queens and suggested we meet
at Zeldin's office at the Botanical Gardens up in the Bronx at two
o'clock, for another go at him.

When I dialed Mike's
cell phone it dumped me into voice mail. Sympathy and concern hadn't
worked to get him to respond to me, so I tried another route. "Look
what you've reduced me to, Detective Chapman. Now I'm getting
information from you through Ellen Gunsher. I'm insane with jealousy.
You knew it would have that effect, didn't you?

"Well, she's playing
so nicely with me in the sandbox that I'm going to take her along this
afternoon. See how she does in the gardens. Scotty will drive us up to
the Bronx and Mercer will meet us there. I'm not trying to tempt you to
come back to work, but I thought maybe you and Ellen were beginning to
bond and you'd want to show her all your old Fordham haunts." I paused,
thinking my tone had been too flip. "Take care. I'm not very good at
getting the bad guys without you."

Scotty Taren's bulky
outline blocked my doorway. "Zeldin's there. I gave him some crap about
wanting to discuss Mr. Guidi's connections and contributions. We gotta
enter through the back gate on Mosholu 'cause the front entrance is
closed today."

"I thought they only
shut down on Monday."

"Usually. But they're
setting up a giant tent behind the conservatory this week. Most of the
staff is off 'cause they'll be doin' overtime for the benefit. Friday
night's their big fund-raiser- Winter Wonderland, he called it. He's
gonna leave our names with security. I'll give Mercer a shout and let
him know."

Shortly before 2
P.M.
the three of us-Ellen, Scotty, and I-
drove through the tall wrought-iron fencing off Kazimiroff Boulevard
and stopped at the gatehouse. The guard pulled back the plastic window
to tell us that Zeldin was expecting us in the Haupt Conservatory, the
stunning crystal palace that was the jewel of the gardens' exhibition
space.

There was no sign of
Mercer as we parked in the designated space-the only car in the
deserted row-and climbed the walkway against the fierce February wind.
The pathways were empty but for the golf carts that employees used to
get around the miles of roads and sidewalks inside the gardens. There
was no one to inquire of at the ticket desk inside the front door of
the enormous building-one full acre under seventeen thousand panes of
glass. It was very still inside, and eerily quiet.

We must have been
there almost ten minutes before a custodial worker trudged from a
hallway into the circular lobby area, where we waited under the Palm
Dome. It was a thicket of New World palms that reached over ninety feet
up into the building's cupola, circling a reflecting pool that mirrored
their elegant limbs as they stretched toward the sunlight.

"Excuse me-have you
seen Mr. Zeldin?"

The man didn't speak
but pointed behind him, in the direction of a sign that announced the
entrance to a tropical lowland rain forest.

Scotty started walking
and Ellen and I fell in behind him. "Outside, I'm freezing my ass off,"
he said. "In here, it's like hangin' out at my mother-in-law's trailer
park in Lauderdale. I think I'm gettin' a hot flash."

He unbuttoned his
overcoat and loosened the tie around his neck.

The newly refurbished
cement path wound through thousands of densely planted trees and
shrubs. I would have thought we had entered the heart of a Brazilian
jungle had the ground beneath us not been paved. Large leaves and
fronds hung over our heads, brushing against my hair as I ducked to
avoid them. The only sound was the whisper of the misting device that
sprayed water from behind the trees.

Scotty was impatient.
"Zeldin? Anybody home?"

His voice echoed and I
heard a shuffling noise in a small thatched hut that bordered the path
ahead of us. "What's that?" I asked.

Ellen read from the
large illustrated signage that showed a photograph of a dark-skinned
woman crushing leaves between her hands. "It's a healer's house."

"I'll give the bastard
something to heal. This place is too hot for me," Scotty said, wiping
the sweat that was rolling down his forehead with the back of his hand.
"They got monkeys in here, too?"

There was noise above
us, now, and we each looked up to find its source. A mesh metal
staircase, painted dark green to camouflage it against the foliage,
wound up more than fifty steps around a huge empty tree trunk, leading
to a skywalk that trailed along the length of the rain forest. A worker
in khaki overalls got up from his knees and leaned over the railing,
picking brown tips off the ends of thick growth.

"Yo, pal. You seen
Zeldin?" Scotty asked.

The man cocked his
head and squinted.
"No comprende, señor. No lo sé."

"I'm telling you, I
feel like we're in frigging Santo Domingo. You think that guy's an
exhibit or he's really working here?"

A sharp right turn led
us out of the rain forest and into a room that looked like it was built
for a Victorian estate. The humidity level lowered immediately, while
hanging vines hovered over a long rectangular pool, full of aquatic
ferns and plants that surrounded a statue of naked goddesses spouting
jets of water over tiered fountains.

Scotty bent over and
dipped his handkerchief in the murky green liquid, mopping his brow
before I could urge him not to put the slimy stuff against his skin.

The room ended at a
ramp that curved down between a wall of lichen-covered boulders. At the
foot of it, we seemed to have left the natural habitat for the
intrusion of a twenty-first-century convenience-a dark, narrow tunnel
several hundred feet long, connecting the arms of the conservatory to
each other via an underground passage that was made out of an ugly form
of corrugated siding. I wondered if it was just my own recent brush
with a dank enclosed space that made this space seem uncomfortably
creepy, or whether my companions were bothered as well.

When we emerged at the
far end, we not only found Zeldin, but had transported ourselves into
the middle of a simulated African desert as arid as the rain forest had
been damp.

Scotty had to pause to
catch his breath after mastering the uphill section of the ramp. Ellen
and I approached Zeldin, who was seated in his wheelchair but turned
his head at the sound of our footsteps.

"I hope you didn't
have any difficulty finding me."

Ellen and I answered
politely before Scotty could complain, and I introduced them to each
other.

"The detective told me
you've got more questions for me," Zeldin said with his distinctive
drawl. "Why not fire away?"

There was the sound of
laughter coming from the next corridor, and I looked up to see its
source. Two teenagers, each dressed in baggy jeans and hooded
sweatshirts, were being chased by a third who wielded a watering can in
his hand.

"I assumed we could do
this in your office," Ellen said.

"There's no one here
to bother you, young lady."

"Those kids-is it a
school tour or something?"

"Heavens, no. Just a
few of the local boys who do chores around here. I was showing them the
carnivorous plants in the next room-they were fascinated," Zeldin said,
smiling.

"Who's carnivorous?"
Scotty asked, catching up with us and shaking Zeldin's hands.

"The Venus flytrap,
the pitcher plant," Zeldin said, starting to wheel in the direction of
the rowdy teens. "They're not dangerous to humans, Detective. They
don't really eat flesh. The leaves respond to the pressure of insects
that land on them and they spring closed. It's the secretions that kill
the bugs, who rot inside or starve in a pool of fluid until they
dissolve. Not a pretty death."

"I haven't seen many
that are."

"If you don't mind,
sir," Ellen said, "I'm not here for the plant tour. We have some
questions that will probably require you to consult your records."

I couldn't read Ellen
as well as I could my usual partners-Mike and Mercer-but what had
seemed from the outside like such a benign setting now enveloped us in
an oppressive atmosphere that was stifling and unpleasant.

"Records? From the
Raven Society? I've already shown them to Ms. Cooper."

"Not those," she went
on. "We'd like to talk about Gino Guidi and his involvement here, at
the Botanical Gardens. Perhaps his financial contributions."

"Ah, he told you,
then, about the Bronx River cleanup?"

I listened to Ellen
while she led the questioning. I was exhausted, both physically and
emotionally, and distracted while I waited for a call about results on
Maswana's DNA from the chief serologist.

Ellen had been drawn
into today's outing because of Guidi's self-proclaimed marksmanship and
its possible connection to the Tormey shooting. Now Guidi's name was
dragging her in the direction of Dr. Ichiko's death site.

I let her run this, in
part because of my fatigue, and in part because I thought it would lead
nowhere. Guidi's admission about his shooting ability probably had
little significance.

"No, sir, he didn't,"
Ellen answered.

"I'm sure you've seen
signs alongside the highways from time to time, where individuals or
businesses have paid for the maintenance of a particular area."

We all nodded.

"Mr. Guidi likes his
name on things. I hadn't paid any attention to it the day I heard how
Dr. Ichiko died, but I was reminded of it more recently, after your
visit to Poe Cottage. Con Edison does the environmental upkeep farther
downstream of the gardens, and several local corporations have adopted
parts of the river that flow through their neighborhoods. But Gino
Guidi chose that strip of rapids himself-the part with the
waterfall-because he used to play there when he was a child. Knows the
area quite well, Ms. Gunsher. I'd forgotten about that, because the
sign bears the name of his company rather than himself."

"Providence Partners,"
I said.

"Yes, yes. I'd
forgotten that connection when I first heard of Ichiko's death," Zeldin
said, wheeling his chair around.

"That's why I'd like
to conduct this meeting in your office." Ellen was attempting to be
more aggressive now.

Scotty Taren's face
was drained of all color. Again he was sweating profusely and I thought
he was beginning to look ill.

He coughed a few times
and then spoke to Zeldin. "Why don't you get up out of that buggy and
walk over with us?"

Zeldin's answer was
sharp and loud. "Don't be absurd, Detective. I can't do that."

The three boys stopped
horsing around when they heard the tone of Zeldin's voice. The tallest
one started to walk toward us.

I was sweating, too.
Maybe it was the intense heat inside the conservatory, or maybe it was
the proximity of rough-looking teens coming toward me.

"Get me Sinclair," he
yelled out to the hooded boys. "Get Mr. Phelps for me
now.
"

The three looked at
one another and spoke in Spanish, but they were too far away for me to
understand.

Ellen reached for the
handles of Zeldin's wheelchair. "I'm sorry, sir. Let's all just calm
down and go back to-"

"Get your hands off
there, young lady," he said, raising the volume another few notches.

Scotty started
wheezing and clutching his chest.

"Scotty? Scotty?" I
put my arm around him and tried to find a bench to seat him on, but as
I leaned in close to talk to him, the teens came running toward us. One
broke for a side door that led out to a large sculpture garden, turning
to lock it behind him and remove the key before rejoining the others.

The three raced in our
direction. They shouted something to Zeldin as they came by him, while
one of them grabbed Ellen and lifted her off her feet, tossing her onto
a large shrub with branches that stretched out five feet in each
direction. They kept on running past us, back to the long tunnel and
toward the front entrance.