Hell Gate

by Linda A. Fairstein

  It took a lot to get under Lem Howell’s skin, but the long fuse had been lit.

  “Where? Where did you and Reid meet?” Mike asked.

  “At City Hall. I didn’t go in. I was dressed like this—with the hood up, nobody makes me,” Leighton said. He didn’t even seem to be aware of the distinctive twitch. “Kendall just came out, down the steps—we talked for a few minutes out in front. Sorry, Lem. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  I knew the lecture Ethan Leighton would get from Lem the moment they were away from Mike and me. He wouldn’t tolerate any stray actions from his client. The congressman didn’t need to be lockstepped with another allegedly corrupt politician.

  “You and Kendall Reid,” Mike asked, “what did you guys talk about?”

  This encounter between the two scandal-ridden politicians opened a new vista of issues for us. Had they met to discuss the murder of Salma Zunega, the attempts at a cover-up of Leighton’s accident, the untimely indictment of the councilman, or the whereabouts of bundles of the city’s cash?

  “Just commiserating. I needed to see a friend, and he felt the same way.”

  “It appears I was premature in my anticipation that this could be a useful meeting, Alexandra,” Lem said, signaling Ethan Leighton to get up off his seat on the stone wall.

  “Don’t gag him now,” Mike said. “It’s just beginning to get interesting.”

  “We’ll talk during the week. I thank you both for extending yourselves in these unorthodox circumstances,” Lem said, as he started to climb the staircase, up from the stark winter garden toward the park walkway. “You know the nature of this work, Alexandra. Often the unexpected interrupts a perfectly lovely day. Keeps me on my toes. Constantly changing, challenging—”

  “—and chilling, Mr. Howell. Literally and figuratively,” I said, “this case is chilling.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  “Oh, Alexandra,” Lem called to me from the top of the steps. “There is one more thing. I assume you know about the bad blood between Ethan’s father and the mayor?”

  He had left his client at the top and was walking down to join up with Mike and me.

  “That’s part of the buzz we’ve heard,” I said. “Going back to what?”

  “Vin Statler has it in his head that a man with his business experience is what’s needed to run the country.”

  “Vin tested the water at the beginning of the last presidential campaign, didn’t he?”

  “Well, he was getting ready to, but when he saw what happened to Bloomberg’s effort, he gave up. I think he’s hoping he’ll still be viable when Obama’s eight are done.”

  “He’ll be in his late sixties then,” Mike said.

  “And Ethan Leighton won’t even be fifty.”

  “Ethan’s dead in the water, Lem.”

  “Mr. Chapman, I’m not giving you my point of view. Who do you think makes my hourly rate possible?”

  “Moses Leighton.”

  “And if that man believes he can resurrect his son’s image in the public eye, let me tell you, he’ll move heaven and earth to do that,” Lem said. “Mayor Statler would love to bury my client in the middle of this scandal. Don’t ever lose sight of that dynamic, okay?”

  “You didn’t know anything about Ethan’s meeting with Kendall Reid yesterday?” I asked Lem.

  “I don’t want my man anywhere near someone as toxic as Reid is right now.”

  “Who’s representing him?”

  “I’ll leave you a message. So far, I haven’t heard.”

  Ethan Leighton came jogging down the staircase, calling Lem’s name. “I thought of something else Ms. Cooper and Mr. Chapman should know,” he said. “Did you tell them about the well?”

  Lem tried to restrain Leighton but he was like an eager puppy. “That’s a story for another day.”

  “Actually, I’d like to hear it,” I said.

  “It simply can’t be a coincidence that Salma’s body wound up in this well,” Leighton said.

  “And why is that?”

  “Do you know the story of Levi Weeks?” he asked.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “It’s quite a famous case. We studied it in law school—at Columbia—because it was the first American murder trial that was ever transcribed.”

  “Maybe it was a New York thing. Coop was studying too many mint juleps down in Virginia and too few landmark cases,” Mike said.

  Leighton was sincerely animated for the first time today. “Perhaps you know who Ezra Weeks was? Levi’s older sibling?”

  Neither Mike nor I had heard of the Weeks brothers.

  “John McComb was the architect who designed City Hall. A fellow named Ezra Weeks was the actual builder,” Leighton said. “When he saw the plans for that beautiful structure, Archibald Gracie hired Ezra Weeks, who’d become very popular with the mercantile elite in Manhattan, to build this house.”

  “Gracie Mansion?” Mike asked.

  “Yes, the mansion. And inspired by the beauty of this home, Alexander Hamilton hired McComb and Weeks to create a country place for him.”

  “Hamilton Grange.”

  “Exactly. Well, Levi Weeks was a carpenter who did most of the work in both of these homes that his brother was building. While Ezra had become quite wealthy, Levi still lived in a boardinghouse downtown on Greenwich Street. A bit edgier than Ezra. He met a young woman who was also boarding there—Gulielma Sands—and had an affair with her. He probably impregnated her, then refused to marry her.”

  “Why?” Mike was biting his tongue, ready to make some crack, I was sure, about the circumstances so similar to Leighton’s.

  “She was too far below his social station. Or at least what he aspired to be. One winter night, Levi and Ms. Sands went out together, but she never returned home. Witnesses reported later that they heard a woman’s voice call out ‘Murder!’ and ‘Lord help me!’ but no one did. The only thing witnesses saw was a fancy one-horse sleigh, just like the one Ezra Weeks owned, carrying two men and a woman, near the site where Gulielma’s body was found.”

  “Where was that?” I asked.

  “Near the intersection of Spring Street and Greene,” Ethan Leighton said. I could visualize the location, not far from the DA’s office, in the heart of what was now the very fashionable SoHo district. “In a well, Ms. Cooper. The girl’s body had been dumped in the Manhattan Well.”

  “But nothing to do with this mansion, right?”

  “Everything to do with it,” Leighton said, doing his best to filibuster. “The foreman of the grand jury that brought the indictment against Levi Weeks in 1800 was Archibald Gracie.”

  “Interesting.”

  “The mayor of the city at the time—Richard Varick—presided at the trial. A future mayor—Cadwallader Colden—was the prosecutor. And Levi Weeks was represented by his own dream team—the defense attorneys were Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.”

  “Working as partners?” I asked, surprised by their alliance.

  “Absolutely so. Four years later, Burr killed Hamilton in their duel. But at Levi’s trial, with his famous brother, Ezra, and John McComb testifying on his behalf, the jury took five minutes to acquit Weeks, despite the evidence pointing to his guilt.”

  “So all politics is indeed local,” Lem said.

  “Not to mention dirty and occasionally deadly.” The story of an old Manhattan murder case caught Mike’s attention. “What became of Levi Weeks?”

  “He left town. His brother’s business was thriving, but his own reputation didn’t rebound here. The public wasn’t happy with the verdict,” Leighton said, thrusting his hands in his pants pockets, perhaps reminded of his own dilemma. “Levi became the toast of Natchez, Mississippi. He married well, and went on to design and build some of the most beautiful antebellum houses in the city.”

  “You got a point here, Mr. Leighton?” Mike asked.

  The congressman’s smile vanished. “Well, Lem seems to think you’re convinced I had something to d
o with Salma’s disappearance.”

  “You think you’re doing yourself a favor with the dead-lady-in-the-well story?” Mike asked. “Puts you right in the driver’s seat, sir. Takes you directly from Salma’s apartment to the only well in town. Not a bad place to dispose of a body if you were a longtime fan of Levi Weeks.”

  “I didn’t even know the mansion had a well on the property. It’s not my house, Detective.”

  “So you didn’t know about the well at Gracie Mansion,” I said, “but there’s nothing to say the mayor knows the story of the Weeks murder case.”

  “Lem says you don’t like people telling you you’re wrong, Ms. Cooper,” Leighton said, wagging a finger in my face. “But you are.”

  “Go for it, pal,” Mike said. “She hasn’t had her tail kicked in almost twenty-four hours. I’m all ears.”

  “The mayor’s Christmas party was held here at the mansion on December twenty-second—just three weeks ago,” Leighton said. “That’s the anniversary of the icy night that Gulielma Sands disappeared. One of the historians working on the mansion conservancy told the story during the cocktail hour.”

  “You were here?” I asked.

  “Yes, I was invited. It was quite a gathering, Ms. Cooper. Ralevic, the lieutenant governor, was here, half the City Council members, at least.”

  “Kendall Reid?”

  “Of course. And your boss, the district attorney, with his trained chimp Tim Spindlis in tow.”

  Mike looked over at me as he spoke to Leighton. “Donny Baynes?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Donny was here. He remembered the story from law school too. He hasn’t mentioned that coincidence?”

  I remembered how incredulous Baynes had been on Wednesday morning, on the beach, when Mercer Wallace showed up with news of Leighton’s accident and affair. Maybe he was just subconsciously protecting his old friend.

  “And, of course, Mayor Vincent Statler. He loves regaling folks with all the history of the city fathers and their antics,” Leighton said sarcastically. “That’s why I’m so surprised he didn’t take the opportunity to tell you himself.”

  “Tell us what?” I asked.

  “That it was old news to find a woman’s body in a well.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “What’s your impression of Ethan Leighton?” I asked.

  We let Lem and his client walk out ahead of us before we started to make our way to Mike’s car on East End Avenue. The mayor’s sedan was no longer parked at the rear gate of Gracie Mansion, and the pedestrian traffic was still light.

  “That’s a hinky guy,” Mike said. “He’s all buttoned up and stiff, but keeps flashing that ridiculous smile, hoping you’ll like him. Not the first one I’d think of to be jumping in bed with a hot Latin lover.”

  “His emotional disconnect between his affair and Salma’s death is unbelievable. It kills me that I voted for him.”

  “You’ll get over it with a cup of hot chocolate. C’mon.”

  We wound our way back along the path, past the guardhouse where the security officer was dozing, out to the quiet street. We turned right and walked north a couple of blocks, across from the entrance to Salma’s building.

  Just as I opened the car door and got in, I saw a young man who appeared to be in his late teens. He was emerging from the alley behind Salma’s condo, wheeling a grocery-store shopping cart, only half filled with its cargo of white plastic bags.

  “That’s it, Mike,” I said, standing again and pointing at the cart.

  “That’s what?”

  “Remember when we went into Salma’s building through the back door on Wednesday night? The large wooden garbage pails that were lined up and the row of empty shopping carts left behind by deliverymen?”

  “Yeah. There are always a few of them around.”

  “That’s how the killer got her body out of the building and over here to the well at Gracie Mansion.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “See the metal grid on the cart?” I asked. “I’ll bet it’s what formed the marks on Salma.”

  “What?”

  “The parts of her body that weren’t covered by the blanket—underneath her back—or when it shifted with the movement of the cart over the curb and potholes,” I said. “Get one of those shopping carts down to the ME’s office for measurements. I’ll bet that’s what formed the pattern we saw on her skin.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I waited in the car with the heat on high while Mike called the CSU. He wanted the guys to come up, to photograph and measure the metal structure of one of the shopping carts so Dr. Kirschner could compare the markings.

  The sleepy cop in the guardhouse at the mansion confirmed that the carts were a frequent sight, both at the house and on the park grounds. Food deliveries arrived in them throughout the day and evening, and as in other parts of the city, teenagers often made off with them for sport, rolling them through the streets and playgrounds.

  I called the shelter to make sure that Olena and Lydia had an uneventful evening. I learned they’d eaten dinner in their apartment, come down to the lounge, and stayed up past midnight—mesmerized by the shows on the large cable television screen—and overslept their morning call. They still managed to go off with the federal marshals at ten.

  Mike got back in the car and started the engine. “Where to?”

  “Hot chocolate?”

  “Sure. You called Battaglia yet? Tell him about last night?”

  “Don’t be a nag. I’ve got to have something good to give him before I call him to say I was tagged and we don’t know who did it yet. He’s liable to ground me.”

  “They sell those GPS gadgets in every electronic store and on-line site. We’ll be lucky to trace yours in a month. By then, someone may have shot you in the ass with a dart and tagged you for real. Make life easier for all of us.”

  “P. J. Bernstein’s Deli makes really good hot chocolate. Drop me at home and I’ll order up.”

  “Tell you what. Take a ride with me. Let’s stir the pot a bit.”

  “I guess I’m in your hands. Where to?”

  “City Hall.”

  “It’s Saturday afternoon. Who do you expect to find?”

  “The city never sleeps. And Statler said he was going there after a stop at Madison Square Garden.”

  “Waste of time.”

  “Look, Coop,” Mike said. “Battaglia rattled their cages Thursday night with that sudden indictment of Kendall Reid and the other councilman, and the story of phantom funds. You don’t think you got people cleaning out desks and computer files and all their other garbage? I’m dying to see my tax dollars at work.”

  We made a slight detour to pick up a sandwich and hot drink, then Mike got on the drive for the quick ride downtown.

  The Civic Center, hub of all the government offices, municipal building, city, state, and federal courthouses, was usually pretty empty on weekends. We parked on Chambers Street and walked in from the west, past the yellow tape that bordered the hole that the reporter had described at the start of the press conference.

  “Is that the crater you made?” Mike asked.

  “No, mine’s around back on the far side. Just more of the same sad relics, though. They blocked this one off, too, when I broke through the other tarp.”

  We climbed the steps and stopped at the metal detector in the lobby. Mike and I both showed our IDs and the cop on duty let us through the gate.

  “Which way to Kendall Reid’s office?” Mike asked.

  The cop gave us a room number on the second floor. “You have an appointment with Mr. Reid? Want me to call up?”

  “No, thanks. Just dropping by to talk about an old friend.”

  “You don’t value my life at all, do you?” I asked, laughing at Mike’s apparent plan. “That’s Tim Spindlis’s case. I can’t walk in on Kendall Reid. He’s just been indicted.”

  “Hey, did old Spineless stab you in the back once last year? Or was it twice? I have no interest in Kend
all Reid stealing cash from widows and children and the great unwashed. In our case, he’s just an ordinary witness. I need to talk to him about Ethan Leighton. And about Salma. Educate me, blondie, how many councilmen we got?”

  Mike was charging up the staircase ahead of me.

  “There are fifty-one members of the council. The speaker’s a woman, so mind your manners. Fifty-one council districts throughout the city. Reid stepped into the seat that Leighton had before he ran for congress.”

  “What do they do here? I mean the council.”

  I was trying to catch up to Mike, but he was taking the great worn marble steps two at a time. “It’s the lawmaking body of the city of New York. It governs, along with the mayor. The City Council has the sole responsibility for approving the budget.”

  “What does that run a year?”

  “About sixty billion.”

  “So a few hundred thou in a shoe box would hardly be missed?” Mike asked.

  “I guess that’s the theory.”

  He stopped at the top of the landing. “What do you know about Kendall Reid?”

  “What was in the Times yesterday morning. Your age.”

  “Our age?”

  “I’m not thirty-eight till spring.”

  “Yeah, well, you better be lights out a little earlier tonight. You got so many circles under your eyes, they’d match the ones that ring a two-hundred-year-old redwood.”

  “There isn’t enough concealer in the world to cover these,” I said. “Reid grew up in Harlem. Black mother, white father who abandoned them when Kendall was four or five. Very smart kid. Stuyvesant High School. Full scholarship to NYU. Law school there after that. Worked for Bloomberg, then for Moses Leighton, until he became Ethan Leighton’s aide.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “One of those renovated brownstones. Sugar Hill,” I said, referring to an area with some of the finest buildings uptown, part of the Harlem Renaissance.

  “Sweet. He must have been sucking up to Moses to get enough money for that.”