Hell Gate

by Linda A. Fairstein

  “Good thinking, Rowdy,” Mike said.

  “Is that Mercer up ahead? Let me see if they need help at the morgue. Later, Mike. Nice to see you again, Ms. Cooper,” Kitts said. The sarcasm was thick in his voice. “You really oughtta lose that attitude.”

  Kitts took off and I could read the words on the back of his jacket, printed under the logo of a small dead bird: PIPING PLOVERS TASTE LIKE CHICKEN—the recreational boaters’ rebuke to the local beach environmentalists.

  I was trying to coax Emilia to get to her feet, but whatever direction I gave her was being overridden by Cyril.

  “C’mon, pal,” Mike said to him. “High and dry. Do it the nice way, okay?”

  Cyril shrugged and pretended he didn’t understand Mike.

  “What’s your beef with Rowdy? You see any prosecutors out here volunteering to help? Not like cops and firemen. Suck it up, blondie. The guy hit on you once, is that why you’re all pink up to your eyeballs?”

  “It’s a professional blush, not a personal one,” I said, trying to think of a better approach to Emilia. “Remember Jeannie Parcher?”

  “The name sounds familiar.”

  “You know who I mean. That very attractive paralegal who worked for Ryan Blackmer.”

  “Oh, yeah. She was a sweetheart. Left the office last summer.” Mike called to a pair of detectives to move Cyril and Emilia along, then started walking with me across the wide stretch of beach.

  “Exactly. A few months earlier than that, when the feds were trying to make their case against Rowdy, Jeannie phoned late one night and asked to see me at my apartment. She’d been working with the assistant DA who had an indictment in the push-in rape that got tossed because Rowdy’s testimony was so compromised. He’d made the collar, recovered the knife, and taken a statement from the perp. The guy had a rap sheet a mile long, and his admissions to Rowdy put him close enough to the crime scene to be useful.”

  “Bet that dismissal ticked you off.”

  “Of course it did. We had no DNA and a victim who was unable to make an ID ’cause she was yoked from behind, so there was no way to go forward,” I said.

  “Hey, that perp’ll be back.”

  “Most likely at the expense of another woman.”

  “What brought Jeannie to your doorstep?” Mike asked. “She confuse your living room with a confessional?”

  “I guess so. She had a fling with Rowdy, and the feds found out about it while they were digging into his life. They called her in to question her and she went down to their offices without telling me or anybody else on the staff first. No supervisor, no lawyer.”

  “Both of them were single,” Mike said. “What did she have to give the feds?”

  “Hard to reconstruct after the fact. Jeannie was so vague and emotional. I’m sure she gave them more than anyone would want to know about her sexual encounters with Rowdy, and probably way too much about the other internal affairs—and, yes, I do mean affairs—of the DA’s office to suit the boss.”

  “So why the meltdown?”

  “Jeannie didn’t know who would be more unhappy—Battaglia or Kitts. I couldn’t offer any advice about Rowdy, but I calmed her down about the front office. No need to shove it under Battaglia’s nose unless the feds made something stick against Kitts.”

  “You didn’t rat her out to the DA? That’s my girl, Coop. She must have been grateful.”

  I stopped to tighten my scarf around my neck and brushed a branch of seaweed out of Mike’s hair. “If she was, she forgot to tell me,” I said, smiling. “Jeannie quit the next week.”

  “Over that?”

  “I don’t know the reason. She seemed spooked about Rowdy. Worried that he’d do something to get back at her.”

  “Why?” Mike asked. “Did he get rough?”

  “Jeannie never said anything like that. I think she was concerned that if he was dirty—if the feds made any charges stick—she’d be toast in our office anyway.” I wiped the grit off my mouth with the back of my glove. “Ten days later, I called to buy her lunch to check on her, but she was gone. Gave notice and told her friends she got a great job offer in the fashion biz.”

  “Sounds like a good career move. Can’t expect everyone to be a lifer like you.”

  “Lifer? I’m thirty-seven years old. I’ve got endless possibilities for my next—”

  “Face it,” Mike said, gesturing at the forlorn castaways. “You’re beginning to think the world’s flotsam and jetsam have been heaven-sent to the Criminal Court Building so you have a purpose on this earth. You gotta move on, Coop. Trying to restore all these broken souls is going to tear the guts out of you before too long.”

  “Hey, Chapman.” Mercer’s voice boomed across the open space from the flapped tent door of the morgue. “The medical examiner wants you over here.”

  “They’re human beings, Mike,” I called after him as he walked away through the narrow path that led to the parking lot. “It’s a sad fact that you have more interest in dead ones than the living.”

  “I got no problem with the dead.” He faced me so that I could hear him speak but continued walking backward toward Mercer. “They can’t talk back, they don’t bullshit me all day like half your witnesses do, they rarely disappoint me, and they never, ever, ever tell lies.”

  “Are you looking for victims or a date, Mr. Chapman? You want something with a pulse or no pulse?”

  “Chill out, Coop,” Mike said, laughing at me as he started to turn. “When I need your help finding a live one, I’ll let you know.”

  Cyril began to speak to Emilia. He was excited about something, quite suddenly, and pulled her to her feet. He seemed to have recognized someone in a small boat that was bobbing close to shore, amid the whitecaps.

  There was no point trying to stop the couple as he grabbed her hand and ran to the water’s edge, part of the crowd that was growing more difficult for the cops to control.

  I watched Stu Carella plunge back into the surf, followed by a scuba team. This time they seemed to be after items they could see floating on the surface, being drawn away from land. I knew there would not be a great concern for personal effects of the travelers at this point, but investigators wanted evidence that linked this human cargo to conspirators in New York, perhaps things jettisoned by a nervous crew.

  A uniformed sergeant began barking orders at the victims, and I skirted the restless groups of men to join the officers in the makeshift morgue past the path that bordered the bird sanctuary.

  I saw Donovan Baynes exit the tent and headed over to talk to him.

  “Can we strike a deal, Donny?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Alex. It’s not the time.” He was dialing a number on his cell phone as he tried to blow me off.

  “The women. That’s all I want you to give me. No detention centers, no custodial settings after all they’ve been through. Let me work with Safe Horizon,” I said, talking about the city’s leading victim advocacy organization. “They’ve got shelters we can put these young girls in to protect them. If we make them feel safe, they’ll cooperate with us. If we don’t, we’ll never gain their trust. I realize to you feds they’re not legal, but I just can’t see treating them like prisoners.”

  Baynes spoke into the phone, asking to be patched through to Commissioner Scully. He answered me while he waited.

  “We’ve got a new set of circumstances, Alex. You don’t even know what you’re dealing with. Want to give me a minute?”

  I ducked my head and stepped into the morgue. There were ten gurneys lined up in a row, with just inches between them. Seven had bodies on them, and six of those were covered with sheets.

  Willis Pomeroy, the deputy chief medical examiner, was standing at the head of the fifth body, explaining something to Mercer, Rowdy, and Mike, who were closer to me, at the feet of the deceased.

  The sheet was only partially draping the young woman, whose lifeless eyes were fixed on a point above her head. Her auburn hair was s
narled and tangled, and the skin of her malnourished body was almost gray in hue. Everything about her looked so youthful, even the nails that had been bitten to the quick. All except the rough surfaces of her hands.

  “In water this cold,” Pomeroy said, “that wrinkled appearance—that washerwoman look on her fingers—sets in pretty quickly.”

  “Does it matter whether she was dead or alive when she went in the water?” Mike asked.

  Pomeroy shook his head. “No difference. Her palms, the soles of her feet. They get that way no matter whether she went overboard breathing or not.”

  Was this the changed circumstance Donovan Baynes had mentioned? “What am I missing, Doc? Didn’t these people all drown?”

  “It looked like that at first, Alex. Only the full autopsy will tell,” Pomeroy said, pulling the sheet back a few inches to show me a wound on the left side of her chest. “But this girl was probably dead when she hit the waves. See that bruise?”

  Mercer stepped aside and let me edge in near the gurney.

  “I see lots of marks.”

  “All the bodies got tossed around on the ocean floor, Coop,” Mike said. “Scrapes from rocks and shells. Bloodless, postmortem wounds.”

  Pomeroy’s gloved hand pointed to the middle of the girl’s rib cage.

  “That’s bloodless too,” I said.

  “Yes, but that’s because immersion in the water probably leached out the blood. The ocean does that to antemortem wounds. I’m pretty sure that’s a hole in her chest. It wouldn’t surprise me if this girl was stabbed to death—maybe even shot—before someone threw her in the drink.”

  “C’mon outside, Alex,” Rowdy Kitts said to me. “You look like you need some air.”

  I focused on the young woman’s face but I was reeling as I tried to think of the implications of this medical finding.

  “I’m okay, thanks, Rowdy. I’m just stunned,” I said, turning around to Mercer. “I’ve been trying to persuade Donovan to let us keep the women in shelters. That’s beginning to look unlikely.”

  “Always a master of understatement, blondie,” Mike said. “This whole operation is illegal, and we have no clue who the players are or who’s pulling the puppet strings from Stateside. Dead bodies are still washing up, the captain is nowhere to be found, and this broad was probably murdered before she took her swan dive.”

  “Rowdy’s right, Alex,” Mercer said. “Let’s get some air.”

  Mike pushed ahead of me to exit the tent. “It’s not air Coop needs. It’s a tourniquet for her great big bleeding heart. That and a set of directions back to Manhattan.”

  “I intend to do something about these displaced girls to make their lives a bit easier over the next few weeks,” I said. “Then I’m happy to leave you to your lifeguard duties.”

  “Look them over good, kid, before you go. I always forget you’ve got magic powers so you can just eyeball people and figure out who the bad guys are. You separate the snakeheads from the snakes for me, ’cause there are likely to be perps standing here in the sand up to their kneecaps, while you’re feeling sorry for them,” Mike said, gesturing with both hands. “And the murderer, Coop—got any ideas about that? ’Cause till you finger the perp who stabbed that kid lying on this slab, every one of them’s a suspect in my book.”

  THREE

  “What have we got here, Alexandra? Dress-down Wednesday?”

  “I’m sorry, Lem,” I said, glancing down at my inappropriate attire. “I apologize for keeping you waiting. I asked Laura to call you to postpone our meeting.”

  It was two fifteen and I had come straight from the beach in the Rockaways to my office on the eighth floor of the Criminal Courthouse at 100 Centre Street.

  “She did indeed, but I had to be down here anyway,” he said, helping me off with my jacket and hanging it on the hook behind my closed door. “You had a shipwreck on your hands and I’ve been tied up with a new client matter.”

  “And that wreck is exactly why I’m going to be rude and send you on your way, as much as I’d love to chat with you. Laura’s got my appointment book. She’ll give you a new date.”

  “Windblown, breathless, and with the slightest bit of sunburn on the tip of your nose,” Lem said, smoothing his pale blue silk tie against his chest. “You’ve already brightened this dreary midwinter’s day considerably. I’d say the case of the People of the State of New York against Karim Griffin can kick back a few weeks. You haven’t seemed inclined to give him much of a break anyway, despite my most eloquent pleadings. Just one thing, my dear Ms. Cooper, before I—”

  “Hold that silver tongue, Lem,” I said, motioning him to leave, with a smile. “Save it till Karim can hear you purr for his benefit. What is it, five rapes we’ve got him linked to so far?”

  “Tentative, speculative, gossamer-thin shreds of matter that you’re trying to spin into some form of evidence. Latents and patents, whorls and swirls, ridges and—help me here, will you?”

  “Talk to Laura. You’ll have plenty of time to work on that lost image before your opening statement.”

  Lemuel Howell the Third was one of the finest litigators in the country—and one of my first supervisors in the district attorney’s office before he went into private practice—known to the bar as Mr. Triplicate for his habit of using three phrases, often when one would do, to emphasize every point he made. His sleek elegance and smooth moves likened him, in Mike’s eyes, to a panther. He had the fine-featured looks and wavy pomaded hair of a 1940s film star, and the eloquence of a Southern black preacher.

  “I need your attention, Alex,” Lem said, taking hold of my wrist as I pointed at the door.

  Lem had always been tactile, using his hands to establish a rapport and intimacy when he spoke to friends and colleagues. With criminals he represented, his touch implied a sense of safety or measure of trust that he expected would transfer to the jurors who watched the pair interact throughout a trial.

  “I haven’t got time for this. Put together some numbers for Karim if he’s talking plea and I promise to think about it. Just don’t lowball me.”

  Lem squared off in front of me. “You and I have a bigger headache on our hands than Karim Griffin.”

  “Give me two Tylenol and tell me what that might be.”

  Howell dusted some sand off my eyebrow, touching my face to remind me of the closeness of our friendship. “I’m in the Leighton case, Alexandra. I’m sure you’ve heard about it by now.”

  “So, that’s the new client matter that got you down here to your old ’hood today? Well, nobody ever accused the congressman of being stupid. You’re the perfect choice for him, Lem. One of the best lawyers in town, and—”

  “And half his constituency is African American. I may even be able to work it so he keeps his seat.” Lem looked at his watch. “He’ll be arraigned as soon as I get downstairs.”

  “I’ve got nothing to do with Ethan Leighton’s case. It’s a vehicular.”

  “And you’re specializing in shipwrecks now, my dear, is that right? Well, you and I are going to be working closely for a few weeks, Alexandra. On damage control.”

  He was whispering now, staring me straight in the eye.

  “What kind of damage?”

  “There’ll be some rumors in the press. They may even go viral before your head hits the pillow tonight.”

  “More about Ethan?” I asked, pulling my hand away and turning to leave. “Let me guess, Lem. Don’t tell me he beats his wife?”

  Claire Leighton seemed to be the perfect political partner for Ethan. She’d given up a promising job as an investment banker to support his career and raise their children. There was no other angle for which Howell could need my help in this case.

  “It’s not Claire, Alexandra. Claire won’t do anything to make matters worse.”

  “Then if there’s no domestic violence angle to Leighton’s bad behavior, you know I won’t be involved.”

  “Trust me. This will wind up in your unit.”

&
nbsp; “Think of the magnitude of my trafficking case, Lem. I won’t come up for air for months.”

  “Wasn’t I the man who taught you kids how to juggle when you got your feet wet in criminal court? Don’t know a time since the Lord created felons and miscreants that the bad guys slowed down for a minute, even though you’re sitting on center stage with the biggest, fattest, most hopeless case of your young career. This isn’t the movies. Take off your blinders, girl. The crimes just keep on happening.”

  That was one of the many lessons I’d learned from Lem Howell years ago. My desk was already piled sky-high with detectives’ reports when my first high-profile rape investigation was handed to me. And that hot summer season had seen a spike in sexual assaults that threatened to choke me and my colleagues as arrests skyrocketed because of the latest forensic breakthroughs. Keep all the balls in the air but focus on the case at hand.

  “So if it’s not about Claire Leighton, what is it?”

  “Ethan’s girlfriend, a woman named Salma. She’s unstable, volatile . . . ,” Howell said, searching for the third phrase to complete his trilogy.

  “I get it, Lem. The girlfriend—Salma, is it? She’s a loose cannon. Or you’re going to paint her as one. Salma’s going to try to make herself the victim in this scheme.”

  “It’s worse than that, Alexandra. She claims that Ethan Leighton tried to kill her.”

  FOUR

  “Too much foie gras?” Nan Toth asked. “Those jeans look like they’re glued on.”

  I rubbed my hand over my stomach. “New Year’s Eve at L’Ami Louis. You know it, in the third arrondissement? It’s been there forever on this dark little side street, and Luc adores it. I was afraid to get out of the car ’cause it looked like an absolute dive, but it’s the most sinfully delicious place in the world. I gained three pounds on this trip.”

  Marisa Bourgis, Catherine Dashfer, and Kelli Ollsen came into my office right behind Nan. The five of us had been great friends since they started as young prosecutors several years after I did.