The Deadhouse (15 page)

"Remember that Shirley's not wrong about herself. She doesn't look
that good anymore. Tell them to add seventy or eighty pounds to that
image, okay?"

"You're doing something wrong, Alex. It's supposed to be the bad
guys who are after us, not the victims," Joe said, shaking his finger
at me as he walked out of the room.

"Wanna fill me in?" Mike asked.

"I'll tell you later. Just an old complainant resurfacing when I
need her least."

I dialed Ryan Blackmer's number. I needed more information about the
assault near Washington Square Park. "Hey, I wanted to catch you before
I go up to the college. Did your NYU graduate student show up for her
interview?"

"Not only did she come in, but she recanted the entire story. Hope
it's okay with you, but I locked her up. Filing a false report."
"What's the deal?"

"The girl was frantic when she got here. She had made the whole
thing up. Her last exam was supposed to be this morning, and she had
two major papers due before the winter recess. She just couldn't cope,
so she figured if she told the dean she'd been accosted on the street
and was too traumatized to finish the semester, she wouldn't flunk the
courses. They'd let her make up the work in January."

"And for
that
she identified somebody out of the blue and
actually had him locked in jail overnight?" The fabricated reports of
assault were the most pernicious actions I could imagine women taking.

"Yeah. Claims she never expected the police to take her seriously,
and by the time they had driven around for almost an hour, she felt
like she owed it to them to pick out somebody." "How's the poor guy
doing?"

"I released him without bail the other night. The cops thought she
was flaky from the get-go, and they called his employer, who backed him
one hundred percent. Did I do the right thing by having her arrested?"

"You always do the right thing. See you later." Laura buzzed me on
the intercom. "There's someone named Gloria Reitman on the phone. Says
to tell you she knew Professor Dakota, and she's supposed to meet with
you at school." "This is Alexandra Cooper. Ms. Reitman?" "Thanks for
taking my call. Ms. Foote asked me to talk to you. I was just wondering
if you'd mind meeting with me at the law school building, over at
Columbia? I'm a first-year there. But I knew Professor Dakota. I'd just
be more comfortable alone, not being asked questions in front of all
the administrative types at King's. Can you do that?"

"No problem. We were supposed to be in Ms. Foote's office at two."

"If you come a little earlier, I can meet you at one-thirty. I'll be
in the Drapkin Lounge. We can talk privately there."

The scene on College Walk was a lot calmer now than it had been last
week. The campus seemed almost deserted, emptied of the students who
had moved so briskly down the library steps and between buildings the
last time we were here. Mike and I entered the law school and asked the
guard for the meeting room that had been named, undoubtedly, in honor
of some fat-cat generous alumnus.

Gloria walked toward us and introduced herself. "We've actually met
before. Not that I expect you to remember, but I heard you speak at the
public service lecture you did here last year." She smiled at Mike as
she shook his hand, then looked back at me, blushing slightly with
embarrassment. Brunette ringlets framed her narrow face. "The reason I
came to law school is because I've always wanted to be a prosecutor. In
your office."

She had arranged some chairs in a corner of the room, and we sat
together to talk. "The dean went through the lists of Professor
Dakota's classes from the last two years and picked a few of us to talk
to you. Of course, lots of the students have already gone home. I don't
know how many are still here."

Gloria took a deep breath, apparently having difficulty saying what
came next.

"The easiest way for me to start off is to tell you straight out
that I hated Professor Dakota. Despised her. Shall I go on, or are
there specific questions you want to ask me?"

I tried not to show my surprise. I didn't want to stifle what might
be a candid portrait from an intelligent source. "Why don't you just
tell us everything you think we should know, and we'll take it from
there."

"Professor Dakota joined the faculty at King's during my junior
year, from Columbia. All my friends who'd studied with her there
thought the world of her. Brilliant scholar, great instructor. Told me
not to miss the chance to get to know her. I even sat in the back of
her classroom once or twice the first semester 'cause everyone raved
about how she brought the past to life. I had a double major at
King's—history and poli sci—so it was a natural for me to sign up for
her courses. It almost cost me admission to law school."

That was about the same time that I, too, had first met Lola Dakota.
Maybe her domestic problems had created a change in her nature. I knew
that kind of stress could alter a victim's entire personality.

"Second semester, junior year. 'Gotham Government—New York City,
1850 to 1950.' Sounded good to me, and I needed it for my major
credits. I worked like a dog on my research paper. It may seem
immodest, Miss Cooper, but I hadn't had a grade below A-minus since I
started college. I was terrified about getting into a good law school,
coming from King's, since it's so experimental, without any record of
achievement by its students. All I could do was try to get as close to
a four-point-oh grade average as possible, and study hard for my law
boards.

"Dakota gave me a D. Only one I'd ever had in my life."

"Shit. I used to go home with one of those every semester. Stood
for Damn Good, I told my old man." Chapman was giving her the full
press now, putting her at ease, so he could ferret out whatever she had
to tell us.

How could I measure her complaint? Every disgruntled student who'd
ever fallen short wanted to blame the teacher for the grade. "Did you
appeal it?"

"The dean of students almost drowned in appeals from Dakota's
classes. She'd pick one or two pets for the semester— usually guys—and
the rest of us would struggle to stay on board. We used to joke that
she had a twenty-four-character alphabet, which began with the letter
C."

Mike leaned forward, one elbow on his knee, supporting his chin in
his hand. "Did you know she was in the middle of a pretty ugly marital
situation at the time? That her husband had—"

"I didn't know she was still married till I read the story in the
obituary. We thought she was having an affair with another faculty
member."

Mike stayed focused on Gloria's face. "Who was that?" "Oh, no one in
particular. You know how college students are. Anytime we saw two of
them together in the faculty lounge, or she showed up five minutes late
for class, rumors would spread. Goofy stuff, and we knew it."

"Like what kind of rumors? What names do you remember?" "One week it
might have been Professor Lockhart—he teaches American history. Then it
was one of the science guys—biochem, I think. I can picture his nerdy
little face—wire-rimmed glasses with urine-colored lenses. When
Recantati showed up this fall to take the temporary presidency, some of
my friends thought she was slobbering all over him. Every now and then
someone tossed a student's name into the mix."

"But did you hate her as much before you got the lousy grade?"
"There was something very mean-spirited about her. In the classroom,
actually. She loved performing, so we'd be mesmerized during lectures.
All the detail she had and her willingness to give it to us so openly.
But then she'd snap into a rage for no reason at all, especially on the
days that we had to make presentations. Maybe some of the kids weren't
as smart as her students used to be at Columbia. Maybe she took out on
us the fact that she'd been asked to leave that faculty and start up a
program at King's.

"But there was no excuse for the way Professor Dakota made fools out
of us. Made students stand up for ten or fifteen minutes at a clip,
firing questions at us about obscure political events of 1893.
Questions nobody could answer unless you'd gone beyond the course
materials and guessed correctly which year she might focus on that
particular day. She reduced a couple of my classmates to tears, and she
seemed to enjoy doing that. That sign on Dakota's door—
badlands?
She relished that
reputation."

"Was Charlotte Voight one of those students? Was she in your class?"

"Who?"

"A junior, the one who disappeared from school last April."

"Never heard of her."

"What do you know about the drug scene there?"

"Like every other college campus, it was huge. Just happens not to
be my thing, but you can find plenty of people to talk to about that."

"D'you have anything to do with the dig that Professor Dakota was
working on, on Roosevelt Island?"

"No, but Skip knows about that. Professor Lockhart." Gloria blushed
again, this time as though she had slipped in a too familiar reference.

"The one you said Dakota was rumored to be involved with?"

She twisted the ringlets behind her right ear. "Well, that's one
rumor I know wasn't true. I mean,
I
was involved with Skip,
junior year. We were sort of having an affair."

That helped account for the A in American history, I guessed. "Mind
telling us about him?"

"I mean, he was single. There wasn't anything wrong with it." Gloria
was looking at Mike for approval now. She seemed proud of herself, in
that foolish way that girls sometimes are when they take a lover under
inappropriate circumstances. "But I'd been seeing him since the summer
after my sophomore year. That's why I confronted him about the stories
that he and Professor Dakota were involved." She looked so earnest. "I
guess I was jealous." "What did he tell you?"

"Not to be ridiculous. Skip told me that he used to spend a lot of
time with her, because their intellectual interests were the same. But
he said she was a real gold digger. Not his type at all."

"What did he mean, gold digger? Was that his word for her, or
yours?" From what I had learned during my initial investigation of
Lola's marital situation, she seemed to have a very comfortable nest
egg of her own. She had invested her money intelligently, with Ivan's
professional assistance at first, through all the years of their
marriage. She didn't seem to have a penchant for jewelry or fancy
clothes, as I had observed in our many meetings, and it was obvious
that she hadn't spent big dollars on decorating her new apartment.

"It was something like that. Treasure hunter. Gold digger. That's
all I could get out of him, really. You can ask Skip yourself. I'm sure
you'll be speaking with him. He's part of that multidisciplinary
project they were working on at some old loony bin. Just don't tell him
I told you about our relationship, okay? The administration wouldn't
approve."

"So what was the buzz on campus before everyone left town? Who
killed Lola Dakota?"

"I went to the service on Friday night. Not 'cause I was heartbroken
about the professor. But a lot of my old friends were going to be
there, so we figured we'd go out together before everybody split town.

"By midnight, after a few drinks, we all began to look guilty to
each other." Gloria laughed. "A few of my friends—the ones who'd done
well in class—defended her. The rest of us had gripes to air and
stories to tell. A lot of guys figure it's just some bum from the
neighborhood who knocked her off. Everybody worries about getting
mugged up here. It's a constant problem, on campus and off. One guy was
a suitemate of that kid who hanged himself the next night. Julian? You
know who he is? That's how I heard about Lola and her crazy husband."
"Heard what?"

"Apparently Julian used to brag about being on Ivan Kralovic's
payroll. That the husband paid him for information about Professor
Dakota—what her hours were, when she was at her office, where she had
moved, when she was out in the field on her new project. In fact,
that's the reason some of the guys think Julian hanged himself. That he
didn't realize Kralovic wanted the information so he could kill his
wife. Julian just thought he was harassing her. And believe me, there
were plenty of people on campus who wanted her harassed."

I was thinking out loud, directing my question to Mike. "Where in
the world do you think Julian Gariano would have crossed the path of
Ivan Kralovic?"

"Not hard to figure," Gloria responded. "My friend was there the day
they met. Julian's dad had just hired a lawyer to handle his drug case.
Turned out to be Ivan Kralovic's defense attorney, too. They met in the
waiting room at the lawyer's office. Julian was wearing a King's
College sweatshirt. Said Kralovic started asking him a million
questions. That same night, back in the dorm room, Professor Dakota's
husband called to talk to Julian again. Offered him a ton of money to
rat on his wife. There was nothing Julian wouldn't do for money. He
didn't think anyone would get hurt." Mike gave Gloria his card. "Call
me if you hear anything else." We thanked her and walked back across
Amsterdam Avenue, passing the car and continuing on to keep our
appointment with Sylvia Foote at the King's building on Claremont
Avenue.

This time, she was expecting us. I suspected it gave her a good deal
of pleasure to tell us that she had been unable to comply with our
request to have students lined up ready to talk with us. "You know what
this season means to so many families. Despite my best efforts, most of
the young people from out of town wanted to keep to their plans and get
home to their folks. I've got a few local students here, and you're
welcome to use my deputy counsel's office now."

She smiled wanly and I guessed she had sanitized their stories
pretty well.