The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein (37 page)

"Tell you what. I need some, too. Could be a long night. I'll buy a dozen containers and some food to take back to the crew at the scene if you guys don't mind waiting ten minutes."

"Sounds like a good deal."

I filled the cardboard cups while the counterman sliced and wrapped an assortment of sandwiches, which I carried out to the car. "Help yourselves and spread the rest around. Thanks for the lift." "You okay?"

I pointed to the driveway exit that led away from my building entrance, two-thirds of the way up the block. "That's home. I've been cooped up inside all day. The night air feels good for a change."

I went back in the deli to pour myself a cup of coffee and pay the tab. As I sipped on the hot brew, my friend Renee walked in to use the small ATM in the back of the store.

"What a nice surprise," she said, kissing me on the cheek. "I asked David if he'd seen you lately. He can tell by how early you take in your newspaper that you've been keeping terrible hours. I'm just getting some cash for the morning. Got a minute?"

Renee and her fianc�, David Mitchell, lived in an apartment on the same hallway as mine.

"Sure. Zac outside?"

"Yeah. Have any strength left for a short walk with me? I got stuck with the late shift."

David, a psychiatrist, and Renee, a therapist, had a handsome weimaraner named Prozac. I liked to think I was her surrogate mother. She had often comforted me when I needed some affection and a cold nose in the middle of a difficult night.

I went out to the sidewalk and knelt to greet the friendly dog, unlooping her leash from the top of the parking meter where Renee had tied her.

When Renee came out, I hooked my arm in hers and we set off to square the block, up to Seventy-second Street and around to Third Avenue.

"What are you doing with coffee at this hour of the night?"

"I'm so wired, I'll never sleep." I gave her an abbreviated version of the hostage situation, as she tried to offer reassurance and get my mind off the subject.

"How's Jake?"

I laughed. "I think it would be less stressful to talk about Felix and Angel at this point. Jake's traveling."

"Again? I was hoping to make a date for you to have dinner with us next week."

I shrugged my shoulders.

Zac stopped and sniffed at a wrought-iron gate in front of a brownstone. "You can have me, if that works. I'm not certain what day he's coming back."

I started forward but Zac stood her ground. "C'mon, baby. Time to go to sleep." The smart, lean animal lowered her head and growled softly. Renee and I turned to look behind us and saw nothing unusual.

"Let's go, Zac. Nobody there." I took two steps but the dog strained against her leash. Renee took control of the leather strap and we walked on to Third Avenue. After we turned the corner and got halfway down the block, I glanced back over my shoulder. No one was there, but I thought I saw the shadow of a figure tucked back in the opening of a storefront.

Zac found a fire hydrant to her liking and did what she was supposed to do. While she did, the light from the streetlamp found the shadow lurking behind us and stretched its length out into the asphalt street. It seemed to be ten feet tall.

"Okay, girl, home we go." I tried to speed up the process but the dog was stubborn.

"She's really unhappy about something," Renee said.

I broke into a jog and the hot coffee slurped over the side of the cup, stinging my hand as it dripped onto my skin. I threw the container to the ground as I saw the figure step out of the dark recess and onto the sidewalk behind us.

"Run, Renee. Just pull Zac and run, will you?"

The dog growled again and resisted Renee's urging. She must have seen the frightened look on my face and sternly commanded the animal to move. Despite Zac's vocalizing, I knew she was far too gentle a dog to attack, and Renee would have hurt herself before ever putting the sweet-natured weimaraner in harm's way. I blocked Renee's back with my body to give her a chance to get going, and tried to make out the face of the person on the sidewalk as I backed up.

Renee ran as the dog began to bark loudly, heading around the last corner to the short downhill slope of Seventy-first Street. "The garage. Go into the garage," I shouted at her. "Tell Jorge to call 911."

I moved sideways, like a crab racing across hot sand, looking back and forth between Renee and our pursuer.

Several cars streamed by on the avenue, oblivious to my fear. By the time I stopped to flag one down, the stalker would have gained on me.

Stalker. Stalker. Shirley Denzig? The dark night and fluorescent streetlights were playing their usual tricks with each other. Was the tall figure wearing a long- billed baseball cap a man, a stranger out for a late- night walk? Or was it the short, squat body of Denzig, elongated by an optical illusion in the dim glare of a city night?

Now he or she was running with us, slower than we were, but steadily in our direction. And now, as I stood at the mouth of the sloping ramp that led down to our building's garage entrance, I was shaded by the overhang, and the approaching figure came clearly into view under the bright streetlight. Shirley Denzig. No question about it. The psychotic young woman had focused her attention on me again and waited for me outside my building tonight, just as the detectives were trying to close in on her after news of her latest scam at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Renee was inside the garage. She had disappeared from my range of vision, and Zac's barks echoed in the hollow space of the enormous underground parking facility beneath my apartment.

I speeded my pace. Denzig's short legs and extra weight kept her well behind me. I looked back again, anxious to know whether she was still carrying the gun she had stolen from her father's home.

When I ran down the garage ramp I could see the attendant standing to the side, his hand on the control button that would lower the heavy metal grating behind me once I was inside.

"Hit it now, Jorge," I yelled to him. "Close the door!"

I sprinted the last six yards and ducked beneath the electrically controlled jaws of the security device as it ground to a close, and rolled onto the oil-stained floor of the garage.

Shirley Denzig landed against the structure with all her weight. Dull thuds resounded on our side as she kicked against the metal.

Jorge helped me to my feet and I ran to his office, grabbing the phone from Renee's hand to explain to the 911 operator what to tell the cops.

Within minutes, we could hear the sound of the approaching sirens. Denzig's frenzied banging had stopped. She had disappeared into the night.

32

Jorge was adamant. And scared. He refused to open the garage door when the police started banging on it because he could not see who they were and had no idea who or what I had been running from. The cops finally gave up and came downstairs through the entrance that led from within the building's lobby.

"Would one of you guys mind taking my friend up to her apartment?"

"Are you kidding? You think we're leaving you now?" Renee said. "Besides, I'd like to know what all the excitement was about."

It took me ten minutes to explain the Shirley Denzig story to the police, who called in a description of her for transmission to other patrol cars in the area. They escorted us upstairs to our apartments, and arranged to meet me in the lobby at 7:45 in the morning, to make sure I got out of the garage without incident, so I could pick up Clem and get down to my office.

I ignored the blinking light on my answering machine and went in the den with Katrina Grooten's file, holding the portable phone on my lap while I tried to calm myself and concentrate on the investigation. If my adrenaline had not already been fueled by Angel's predicament, my episode with Shirley ensured that I would be unable to sleep.

I turned on the television to NY1, muting the sound, waiting to see whether they cut to live coverage of the unfolding drama in East Harlem.

Another hour passed, and then two. An out-of-control blaze in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx had spectacular flames that kept the local news crew engaged. My notes to myself were no longer making sense, the to-do lists I created for Mike were growing unreasonably long, and the relaxing weekend on the Vineyard seemed like it had ended a month ago.

At three-ten the phone rang.

"She's fine. Go to sleep now, girl." Mercer's deep voice allayed my worst fears.

I exhaled into the mouthpiece, too upset to speak.

"Hey, we got a pretty good track record for saves. I sure as hell wasn't gonna let that little punk break it for me. I'll be in late tomorrow. Catch up with you guys in the afternoon."

"Whatever you need. Thanks a million, personally, on this one. I've got to ask you, Mercer, did she go there because--?"

"She went there for exactly the reasons you think. And she liked it there fine, gettin' it on with Ralphie. Turns out he's dealing crack from the apartment. Kept her pretty well tuned up since she arrived. Angel decides to pocket some vials before she's ready to leave, to make a few bucks on the visit."

"I see it coming."

"He catches her, smacks her around. Now she wants to scoot, but she's got a black eye and he doesn't want to let her out. Angel threatens to snitch, and he's got a reason to go ballistic, 'cause he knows she's called the police before, to have Felix locked up. She picks up the gun and points it at Ralphie, but he grabs it back and can't think of any place to stick it except right up against that underutilized bundle of brains the child has. Neighbor hears screams, dials 911."

Maybe this is the wake-up call Angel needed. Why couldn't she come out of this like Dorothy in Oz and realize that at her age there's no place like home?

"Look, Alex, I'm whipped. I'll give you chapter and verse tomorrow. Angel's being treated at Mount Sinai, Ralphie's spending the night courtesy of my brothers in blue down at central booking. We recovered two guns, a load of ammo, and forty-two crack vials from his apartment. Everybody's safe and sound. Tell Mr. Chapman to let go of your hand and go home. See you tomorrow."

There was no point in telling Mercer that Mike hadn't waited out the siege with me. I turned off the tube, rolled over on the sofa, and fell asleep. In the morning, I showered and dressed, met the cops in my lobby, who took me to the garage so that one of them could ride with me over to Park Avenue. No sign of my nocturnal stalker, so I let him out, continuing on to pick up Clem from the hotel at eight. We found a space on Mulberry Street and I tossed the laminated NYPD parking plate on the dashboard.

We walked through the small asphalt-paved park that only twenty-five years ago had been the heart of Little Italy but was now the center of a greatly expanded Chinatown. Mike called it Tiananmen Square. Men and women dressed in black mandarin-style jackets bustled back and forth, carrying plastic bags from the Canal Street fish markets and the Division Street vegetable trucks. Kids from the local elementary school played kickball. Nobody was speaking English.

As we emerged from the gates on the Baxter Street side of the park, the sound of the screeching children was replaced by the chants of about twenty adults who were marching in two rows, up and down the length of Hogan Place. Some of them were carrying posters and placards, hand-lettered with an assortment of slogans. All of them were shouting in unison.

"It's safe and sane! End Battaglia's reign!"

I could read the signs now as we approached the corner. It was a group from the American Alliance for Sexual Freedom, protesting my arrest of their sadomasochistic spelling whiz, Peter Kalder. A few had their organization logo labeled on large cardboard signs while others had printed more original thoughts:WHIP SOME SENSE INTO ALEX COOPER ! andCOOPER--SHOW SOME RESTRAINT--STAY OUT OF OUR BEDROOMS ! Stick drawings of me, cat-o'-nine-tails in one hand and cuffs dangling from the other, would have pleased Mike Chapman immensely.

Prosecutors and cops were weaving their way among the demonstrators, visibly annoyed at having to maneuver around the rowdy cluster to get to the office entrance.

"Shit." I stopped in my tracks when I saw aPost cameraman waiting opposite the building. This was a good morning to avoid a photo opportunity, obviously arranged by the alliance. "Do you mind if we go in through the back door of the Tombs?"

"Whatever's easiest for you," Clem said, standing on tiptoe to try to read all the comments. "I never realized there was a unit like yours, just specializing in sexual assault cases. You must walk a tight line, trying to keep everybody happy."

"I gave that idea up a long time ago. Most people have no reason to know we exist until the unimaginable happens to them or a loved one."

"Doesn't this make the district attorney angry with you? He's elected, isn't he?"

"Battaglia's the best. He's got one rule, Clem, when we make decisions about prosecuting. `Do the right thing.' Don't play politics with people's lives, don't try to think how something will spin in the next day's op- ed pieces, just try to do justice. He hates all the tabloid titillation with sex crimes, but he'll stand behind any decision his top people make."

"Lucky for you."

I pounded on the heavy door behind the building, where the grim green trucks of the Department of Correction were depositing the day's defendants who were being bused in from Rikers Island.

"Hey, Jumbo, can you let us in? There's a lynch mob at my front door."

The eight-to-four guard on the rear door of the Tombs was the size of a Mack truck. He pressed the button to open the wide mouth of the garage, and Clem and I walked inside. The pens were still empty but the crew was getting ready to receive its allotment of felons-in- waiting.

"G'morning, Ms. Cooper. You need any help with that little commotion outside? I could round up some of my guys and show them what black and blue looks like, in living color."

"Save your strength, buddy. Nothing out there I can't handle with a tough hide and a decent sense of humor."

He took us through a lock-and-block system of corridors. The one behind us had to be secured before he could open the next door in front. There were five from the point at which he admitted us, until we emerged from the cells into the arraignment part, which would be called to order in less than fifteen minutes, at nine o'clock.