Hell Gate

by Linda A. Fairstein

  “I’m fine.”

  “You want to go to the ER? Be checked out?” Tarranta asked.

  “No. Nothing’s wrong with me.”

  “You got to sign this for me, then,” he said.

  If I told him I knew it was an RMA form—that I had refused medical attention—he might have figured I had something to do with law enforcement. “Sure. What is it?”

  He explained the procedure and then told me to get in the car to stay warm. I watched as he walked down the street, in the direction from which I’d come.

  When he got back to me, he was shaking his head. “I don’t understand it, ma’am. This roadway is clean as a whistle. Nothing to skid on, unless you were wide to the side of the main lane.”

  “Maybe I was.” I smiled lamely at him.

  “I put a call out for a speeding silver SUV. See if anything comes from that. You think it was intentional? Some guy follow you from the party?”

  “No, Officer. It wasn’t a party. It was just four of us at the house, and no one followed me when I left the street,” I said. One of the city’s best detectives had packed me into my car and waited as I drove away.

  “Did you see him in the rearview mirror?” Tarranta asked. His partner approached and gave a thumbs-up, confirming that I had no record.

  “I saw the car about a block after I pulled out from my friend’s house. I think I was just going too slow for the guy.”

  I could tell Mercer about it tomorrow, but no need making a big deal out of it with these officers.

  “Anything come back on the radio about the silver SUV?” Tarranta asked his partner.

  “Nothing yet.”

  “I’ll give you this number, Miss Cooper. You can call in for the police report tomorrow, for your insurance company.”

  “But it’s okay for me to drive it, don’t you think?”

  The two cops looked at each other. Tarranta got down on his knees and tugged on the fender, then stuck his head beneath the rear of the SUV, probably to see how firmly it was still attached.

  He stood up and talked to the younger, thinner cop. “Give it a feel, will you? I don’t want to send this lady out on the highway and have the damn thing dragging behind her.”

  Officer Richards didn’t seem too happy to have to get down on the pavement to examine the underside of my car. He knelt and then flattened out on his back. His head disappeared from sight as he tried to jam the loose fender back up in place.

  “I’m so sorry to have caused all this trouble. Please get up. I’ll be fine.”

  “Hey, Anthony,” Richards called up to his partner. “It’s not the bent metal that I’m worried about.”

  He was sliding out and sitting up, holding a black object in his hand. “The problem is, she’s been tagged.”

  I didn’t have to rely on television cop shows to learn the latest lingo. I knew exactly what that little object was. The young cop was telling Officer Tarranta that a Global Positioning System monitor had been concealed in the undercarriage of my SUV.

  “I know what that means too,” I said to the startled cops. “This wasn’t an accident, guys. Someone’s been using a GPS to chase me around all day and night.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Why didn’t you just tell us you were a district attorney when we got to the scene?” Tarranta said, as we pulled into the garage at my apartment.

  His boss had given the pair permission to drive me home, and Richards had followed in the RMP.

  “It seemed easier not to make the connection at the time,” I said, as Tarranta trailed me through the locked door that led up the back stairwell into the lobby. “I had no reason to think anyone was targeting me for trouble.”

  “You gonna talk to Mr. Battaglia in the morning?” he asked, as Vinny—one of my favorite doormen—greeted us and handed me a bundle of the day’s mail.

  “Yes, Anthony. I’ll do that first thing.”

  “’Cause, you know, my CO has to fill out an ‘unusual’ on this.”

  We were standing near the elevators as Tarranta reminded me that the commanding officer of his precinct would indeed have to file a formal department report about something as potentially threatening as the stalking of a prosecutor.

  “I understand, of course.”

  Tarranta lowered his voice. “I mean, if this is a domestic or anything—if this is a boyfriend out of control—Richards and I will help you out on it.”

  “You’re really kind, Anthony. I promise you it’s not that.”

  “You want us to sit on your place?”

  “No, thanks. You’ve done enough already. Vinny’s got my back tonight,” I said, winking at the doorman who had seen me through several worse situations. “Then Oscar comes on at eight. I just need some rest. I’m working on a tough case and I’ll be talking with the detectives in the morning.”

  “Okay, then. Stay safe,” Tarranta said, as the elevator opened. We shook hands before the doors closed to take me up to the twentieth floor.

  I came inside and double-locked myself in, putting the chain across too. I turned on lights—more than I needed at this late hour—and went to the bar to pour myself a Dewar’s to carry into the bedroom.

  I played back my messages as I undressed to go to sleep.

  The first one was from Nina, who was at home in Los Angeles. “Gabe’s going to New York in two weeks for business. I’ll come along if you can solve that horrible case and clear your calendar. Call me.”

  She and I had been roommates at Wellesley and best friends ever since. Nina knew as much about me as any human being could know about another. She and Joan Stanton had been through every romance, celebration, and crisis of my adult life, and I communicated with both of them almost every day.

  “Darling, it’s almost midnight in New York.” It was Luc’s voice, strong yet sexy—and comforting at a bleak three o’clock in the morning. “Thank goodness I don’t have a jealous streak. I would be sad if it’s business you’re doing still at this hour, and hope you’re out with friends. I’ll call tomorrow. Bonne nuit, mon amour.”

  I stripped off my clothes and slipped on a cashmere nightshirt.

  The third recording started to play. It had come in only half an hour ago, at two thirty.

  There was no spoken message. It was the noise of a car crashing against something—maybe a recording of my own incident—and then the sound of tires screeching as a vehicle sped away.

  I took a deep hit of scotch and checked the caller ID on the last message, but the number was blocked.

  I relied on the fact that I lived in a very secure building with two doormen on duty for every shift—24/7—and after I washed up and got into bed, I kept my cell in my hand as I settled in to try to sleep. I turned out the light but sat upright for almost an hour, using the alcohol like medicine to steady my nerves and allow me a few hours’ sleep.

  I remember looking at the clock every fifteen minutes until five A.M. I must have drifted off around then, and slept fairly well.

  The phone rang and awakened me at nine thirty on Saturday morning.

  “I’m at your door again.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sure you’ve got the dead bolt turned and eight chairs stacked against it, but I’m right outside your apartment door,” Mike said. “I thought it would be more polite if I called first this time instead of just banging.”

  The doormen liked Mike and Mercer. It would never have occurred to them to stop him from coming up to see me.

  “I’m not in the mood this morning. I’m barely awake.”

  “You were in the mood last night, blondie. I can bet you that.”

  “Look, why don’t you give me a break and call me this afternoon?”

  “ ’ Cause you’re late.”

  “Late? For what?” I knew we hadn’t made any appointments for interviews today.

  “Class. Ballet class.”

  “Can you get the fact that I am totally out of sorts, Mike?”

  I had studied b
allet since earliest childhood. It was my favorite form of exercise, and I spent an hour at a studio on the West Side almost every Saturday morning.

  “You’ve missed class for two weeks in a row ’cause of the holidays and your trip. You’re going to lose that fine shape, Ms. Cooper. Then I’ll have a wallflower on my hands for the rest of my life.”

  “I’m going to hang up on you, Mike.”

  “Just open up, Coop. There’s something important I have to tell you.”

  The timbre of his voice had changed. He was dead serious.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know. Just open the door.”

  I threw the phone on the bed and got up, wrapping a robe around me. I ran to the door and slid off the chain, unlatched the dead bolt, and pulled the handle.

  Mike was on his knees in the hallway, his head bent over so that I couldn’t see his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, putting both my hands on his shoulders.

  “I’m such a jerk, Coop.” He looked up and smiled at me. “There are some things a guy just has to say face-to-face and this apology is one of them.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Sure I do. There was a bogeyman after all, and I let you walk out into the night without a second thought. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry I made fun of you for being so yellow-bellied. I was wrong. Now, can I come in, Coop? I got to put these in water.”

  Mike bent over to pick up the newspapers and to the side of the door was a pile of lilies, huge white ones—maybe six dozen in all. He scooped them up in his arms and brought them inside.

  “How’s the whiplash, kid?”

  “Who told you about the accident?”

  “The CO was a lot smarter than the two cops who took the report. He knew exactly who they were dealing with and called Lieutenant Peterson,” Mike said, referring to his boss at the homicide squad. “The loo woke me up this morning, and I was just worried about you going out before I got here. Move along. Point me to the vases, jump in the shower, and let’s get this beautiful day up and running.”

  “Vases are in the cabinet below the window in the dining room. Don’t tell me I’m on the hook for all the flowers?”

  “Nope. Bodega lilies. They might be dead by tomorrow, but they make quite a statement, don’t they? You can tell I’m sincere.”

  It was hard to pass many street corners in commercial areas of Manhattan that didn’t have small grocery stores with outdoor flower markets. You could buy an extraordinary array of flowers for very low prices, even if they didn’t live too long.

  “I’m going to skip class. William will understand.”

  “You’ll skip nothing. You’re always telling me how your ballet lessons relax you, help you focus, take you to another zone.”

  That was true. It was hard to think about anything else while I stood at the barre engaged in the disciplined physicality of the dance, concentrating on positions for the pliés and relevés that warmed us up at the beginning of each class.

  “Let me get ready,” I said. “I’ll be quick.”

  I ran a steaming hot shower, toweled myself dry, pulled my hair up into a ponytail, and dressed in a black leotard and tights. I threw an oversize sweater and leg warmers on top of the outfit, and grabbed the bag with my ballet slippers.

  When I got to the living room, I could smell something cooking. I kept little in my refrigerator except English muffins and an assortment of strong cheeses to serve with cocktails, the only serious entertaining I did in the city.

  “What did you possibly find to cook?” I asked.

  “Brought my own eggs. Knew it would be slim pickings.”

  Mike whipped up scrambled eggs with onions and fried some bacon while I showered. He had poured us each a glass of orange juice and was ready to serve the food and coffee.

  “Talk about a full-on apology—on your knees, armloads of flowers, and a hot meal. Keep this up and I can think of a whole lot of things you should be sorry about,” I said.

  “Start with last night.”

  “After you made light of the car taking pictures in front of Parrish House, I didn’t want to get myself all jacked up again. I never thought GPS.”

  “Why would you?” Mike asked.

  “I’ve had enough cases now to know it’s a problem.”

  The brilliant navigational system formed by twenty-four satellites orbiting the earth, transmitting time and location to receivers on the ground, was one of the most dangerous tools in the hands of offenders. It had become especially popular in domestic violence cases, in which estranged spouses and stalkers could know the whereabouts of their victims as soon as they got into the family car, often with deadly results.

  “You think it’s connected to what we’re working on?” Mike asked, chewing on a strip of bacon.

  “How could I know when the device was stuck in there? Wednesday, when I drove out to the shipwreck, was the first time I used my car since the holidays. And then I took it to work with me yesterday.”

  “Where were you parked?”

  “On the street near the office.”

  “And the garage in this building is public, too, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It wouldn’t take two minutes for someone to slip a GPS under the fender. Pretend he was checking out a tire. Anybody could do it.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  “Coop, they’ve tagged snow leopards in the mountains of Pakistan and Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys in China. Maybe they can’t get a GPS on Bin Laden, but your car would be an easy target at home or at work.”

  “But why do it?”

  “That’s what Mercer and I gotta figure out. You think you were followed to the shelter with Olena and Lydia, right?” Mike asked.

  “No one doing that would need a photograph of you. They could pull one off the Internet. So it’s more likely that the snapshots were something to do with the Ukrainian girls.”

  “I’ll buy that. But last night, following me from Mercer’s?”

  “Put a good scare into you like it was supposed to.”

  “You had to see the curve, Mike. It could have put me into a coma, not just a scare, if I’d taken a header with the SUV into the utility pole.”

  “So somebody owes you an even bigger apology than I do.”

  I carried the dishes and put them in the sink, pouring us each a second cup of coffee.

  “When you find out who, I expect more than bacon and eggs.”

  “Get a move on, kid. You need a good workout,” Mike said.

  I picked up my bag and reached into the closet for my ski jacket.

  “Better bring a suit.”

  “A suit? I’ll shower and change when you drop me off after class. I promise I’ll stay here all day. I’ve got bills to pay and calls to make. I need some down time.”

  “Get it another day, Coop. I suggest you clean up at William’s studio. That nice gray flannel pinstriped suit with one of your fancy scarves will do fine, and take your blow-dryer so you get your hair out of that ridiculous topknot.”

  “You have plans for me?” I asked.

  “The mayor wants to see us this afternoon. He wants us to meet him at Gracie Mansion.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  The guard in the small booth at the East Eighty-eighth Street walkway that led to the Gracie Mansion grounds was expecting us when we arrived at one o’clock. I had gotten to William’s studio in time to do my stretches for the eleven A.M. class, while Mike ran errands and came back for me after I showered and dressed in my professional clothes.

  “Front or back?” Mike asked.

  The elegant formal entrance was the original front of the house, facing the river, since most guests arrived by water those hundreds of years ago. A newer access had been designed for the rear of the building, closest to the street, the way most people came to the residence now.

  “Right here,” the man said, pointing to the back steps.

  Mike led me up and the do
or was opened by the detective from the mayor’s detail—the same one who had been with him and Rowdy Kitts when Statler stormed into the mansion on Thursday afternoon, after Salma’s body had been recovered from the well.

  Mike shook his hand and said hello. “You know Coop?”

  “Only by sight,” he said. “I’m Dan Hardin. Pleased to meet you.”

  If he was pleased about anything, it wasn’t reflected in his expression.

  “Alex Cooper. Thanks.”

  “The mayor’s waiting for you in the dining room. He’s just finishing lunch.”

  We followed Hardin up a short interior staircase, lined with a rich bright-blue-and-gold runner, which spilled into an enormous ballroom.

  “This is the Wagner Wing, isn’t it, Dan?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It’s named for Susan Wagner, the wife of Robert Wagner Jr.,” Mike said, “who was elected in 1953. She hated everybody tromping through the mansion, putting out cigarettes on her carpet and parking cocktails on her furniture. All this big reception space was built for public functions in the 1960s. It’s not original to the mansion.”

  Dan took us down a hallway that opened on the dining room.

  The mayor was alone at the head of the antique mahogany table, surrounded by several piles of paper. He had a thick report of some kind in his left hand.

  I had been there with Jake for dinner and knew that the room could accommodate dozens of people. The furnishings were exactly as I remembered them—exquisite period pieces like the paw-footed sidebar, a dazzling brass chandelier, green moiré curtains, and the exquisite panorama of Paris on wallpaper that covered the four sides of the room.

  “Here they are, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Oh,” he said looking up from his work. “Come in, Alex. Mike. I’m just finishing up here. Would you like the chef to fix something for you?”

  “No, thanks, sir,” I answered.

  “Don’t be shy. We keep these going all day.” Vin Statler was pointing at a stack of tea sandwiches. “English cucumbers, Mike. Give them a try. Chef Estevez makes the world’s best chocolate chip cookies. Even Mother Teresa thought so. Four thousand a week we make for guests and tours. You know in the summer we grow a lot of things in our own garden—right down past the well. Romaine lettuce, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, chives.”