Hell Gate

by Linda A. Fairstein

  “You start going into clubs in this neck of the woods, we’d better ask for a detail to hang out in case there’s trouble,” Mercer said.

  “I got a different idea. Let’s take a gander at Jumel Terrace.”

  Mercer’s scowl disappeared. He slapped Mike on the back and reached for his jacket. “Just a ways up from a Hundred and fifty-sixth, and a block in from Edgecombe. I like it.”

  “What’s Jumel Terrace?” I asked. “What’s there?”

  “The oldest Federal house still standing in Manhattan. The Morris-Jumel House. It’s a mansion, Coop. It’s a fine-looking old mansion, with a well.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Mercer was in the beat-up Toyota he used to drive to work. Mike was adjusting the seat and the steering wheel in the steel gray Jaguar that he had commandeered from Ethan Leighton.

  We left Leighton in the station house. He would not have need of the car for hours. By the time the children’s service agency workers finished talking to him, he’d be wishing that Mike were conducting the interrogation.

  We pulled out of the parking space on West 169th Street. There was a Yankees baseball cap on the dashboard. “Put it on, kid. That ponytail I ragged you about the other day? Do it again. I need you to look like a nineteen-year-old aching for coke, in case we run into any locals.”

  I took a rubber band from my jeans pocket and followed Mike’s orders. “What took you so long to remember the mansion?”

  “ ’ Cause that’s not how I think of the place. It’s got a military significance to me, not a social one.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  We were moving at a snail’s pace down Amsterdam, each of us looking into doorways and alleys, on fire escapes and in parked cars. The cold spell and the early morning hour had most people off the streets. In the rearview mirror, I could see that Mercer was giving us plenty of lead time.

  “The house was built by a British colonel in the 1760s—Roger Morris. About one hundred acres, on this hilltop, just east of here. An amazing setting, when you think about it.”

  “Like Gracie.”

  “No, no. Even more spectacular. You just see east and south from Gracie Mansion. This gave you all that, plus the Jersey Palisades and up the Hudson River. So in the fall of 1776, George Washington seized the place and made his headquarters here. That’s when he forced the British retreat at the battle of Harlem Heights.”

  “You’ve been here before? Is it restored?”

  “The general’s digs? Sure, I have.”

  “Slow down. See that woman walking?” I asked.

  Mike braked gently as someone came out of the shadows between two brownstones.

  “Nope. Sorry. Ratty fur jacket,” I said. “But it’s a man. Who’s Jumel, then?”

  “Your kind of guy, Coop. Stephen Jumel was French. A wine merchant. One of the wealthiest men in New York when he moved here. He married an American woman named Eliza,” Mike said, snapping his fingers. “And you know what? Rumor had it she’d been a prostitute before she married him.”

  “Must have sounded like the right place for a tryst to Anita.”

  “The more I think about it, the more it has to be connected to the boys who ran the old tontine. When Jumel died, Eliza actually married Aaron Burr. Didn’t last long, but she married him just the same.”

  “Aaron Burr? Who killed Hamilton in a duel.”

  “But before that was co-counsel in the murder of the woman in the well.”

  “Gracie Mansion, Hamilton Grange, and this place,” I said. “The only three Federal houses that still exist in Manhattan. What’s the hook between them and our case?”

  Mike made a left turn onto West 160th Street, and then a second quick left. “Jumel Terrace, Madam Prosecutor.”

  The street was only two short blocks, and as Mike glided to a stop at the curb, I looked up the hill at the most unusual sight.

  In the heart of this struggling neighborhood, full of tenements and bodegas, brownstones and crumbling old churches, stood a Palladian mansion. Its elegant white lines contrasted against the starless black sky. It was framed by a monumental portico supported by four enormous white columns.

  “Nice place for a gentleman to take a girl to dinner, huh?” Mike asked.

  “It looks like a movie set.”

  Mercer parked across the street and came over to the car.

  “You bring a flashlight?”

  Mercer patted his back pocket.

  “Why don’t you call the sarge and see if they’ve got a spare key for the joint? Ask him to send a patrol car over.”

  “Why would they have a key?”

  “The house is open part of the week as a museum. Military buffs like me and house-and-garden babes like you come to visit. The precinct has security responsibility the rest of the time.” Mike said as he got out of the car. “Let me have your flashlight, okay? You wait with her.”

  “Where are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t kidding. I’m going to check the well.”

  “There are lights on in the house, Mike. In the center hall, on both floors.”

  “My peepers are working fine, Coop. I can see that. I imagine they’re kept on all night,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Follow him, Mercer. It’s awfully dark out there.”

  “I’m with you, Alex. He’ll be fine.”

  Mike focused the light on the approach to the old mansion. He climbed the staircase to the front door, and tried unsuccessfully to open it. He retraced his steps and went off the pavement, disappearing between two sturdy evergreen bushes that were to the left side of the house.

  It was quiet on the narrow street around us, and I could no longer track the beam of Mike’s light.

  “You see him?” I asked Mercer, getting out of the car.

  “Not yet, Alex. Just give him a minute.”

  Then came a sudden noise that echoed off the hilltop, like the sound of a door slamming.

  “There, Mercer. Look there!” I said, pointing off the right rear of the mansion. A tall, slim figure, silhouetted against the sky, was running down the slope, away from the house, as fast as his legs would carry him.

  FORTY-FIVE

  “Get in the car and lock the doors,” Mercer said.

  We could both see Mike jogging back to us.

  “I got Coop,” he said. “You want me to try to run that guy down?”

  “Nobody needs to ‘get’ me. Do what you’ve got to do.” I was in the front seat of the Jaguar, shaking ever so slightly. It was not the most vigorous protest I’d been known to make.

  “What about the well?”

  “There’s a solid cap on it. Doesn’t look like it’s been touched in years. Take off, Mr. Wallace.”

  Mercer got into the Toyota and sped off out of sight, turning right at the end of Jumel Terrace in the direction of High Bridge Park.

  Just as he made the turn, the RMP pulled in behind us and two uniformed officers got out.

  “Sorry to pull you here, guys,” Mike said.

  “That’s okay,” one answered. “You got a problem?”

  “I’m not sure. We’d like to go in and have a look.”

  “The lieutenant said to tell you that your man left the precinct.”

  “Whaddaya mean?” Mike asked. “Not the congressman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn it. Nobody watching him?”

  “Curb your annoyance,” I said. “As long as he didn’t take the baby, we had nothing to hold him on.”

  “The baby’s safe, ma’am. She’s doing fine.”

  Mike slammed the flashlight against his fist. “So Ethan Leighton is roaming the streets like a loose cannon, and we’ve got his old man’s car.”

  “C’mon, Mike. He wasn’t any help. He’ll catch hell on the other end when he gets home.”

  The second cop leaned against the window to say hello. “Hey, Counselor. Remember me? I had that domestic with the baseball bat last spring.”

  �
�Yeah. Sure, I do.”

  “You know this place is haunted,” he said, opening the door for me.

  “Actually, I had no idea it existed.”

  “The ghost of Eliza Jumel,” he said, laughing at me. “That was one unhappy hooker. The folks say she stands up on the balcony and bays at the moon. At least it keeps all the neighborhood kids away. Regular ghostbusters, they are.”

  “When you guys aren’t doing comedy, you have time to help me with this?” Mike asked.

  “We’ve only got three cars on patrol this tour for the whole precinct. We’ll stay as long as we can.”

  “I’d like one of you to come in with me,” Mike said. “The other waits here. Coop? You in or out?”

  “I’m with you.”

  Three of us made the approach to the elegant old house. “This place get a lot of use?” Mike asked.

  “Just functions. It’s open two afternoons this time of year. More in the summer. But there’s people in and out some. Doesn’t give us any trouble.”

  “Not a fixer?”

  “No need,” the cop said. He meant that the mansion was never made a “fixed post” patrolled by the department, like many sensitive security sites had been. “It’s got some kind of fancy trust that runs it. They come and go on their own.”

  We were at the front door, and the cop was working the set of keys that opened the two locks.

  “So you drive by at night and see lights on inside, it’s not unusual?”

  “Nah. They got dinners, they got parties. They got ladies’ lunches and garden tours. Like I said, they got functions. That’s what my boss tells me. That’s the word he uses, supposed to cover everything that goes on in the place,” the cop said. “Here we go. Let me just disarm the alarm code.”

  The door swung open and Mike pushed it wide, stepping inside. The officer followed him and pressed the keypad. “Whoever was here last didn’t reset it. The alarm’s not on.”

  Mike glanced at me. “Figures. Could be our guy, Coop.”

  “Or ghosts,” I said.

  It was like stepping back into another century to come in the house. The light I’d seen from outside was a wall sconce that illuminated the entrance and hallway. The Federal Period furniture—an ornate crystal chandelier, an elegant grandfather clock, settees, and sofas—had been carefully restored and beautifully maintained, just as in Gracie Mansion.

  The officer led us off to the left, into the dining room. The polished surface of the table gleamed in the dim light, but gave no sign of a recent dinner party. To the rear of the first floor was a large room, shaped like an octagon.

  The back door of the house, probably the one that we’d heard slam, was in the octagonal room. Mike turned the knob and the door gave easily. He pushed it closed and locked it.

  Then he doubled around and came to the staircase. I stayed behind him, with the cop trailing me. The floorboards creaked but that was the only sound beside our voices.

  “Well, hold on,” Mike said, waving me into the master bedroom.

  An elaborate antique sleigh bed was centered beneath reams of powder blue silk drapery and lace trim that almost shrouded it from view. But I could clearly see that the spread had been removed, the linens had been disturbed, and it appeared someone had left the room in disarray.

  “I can’t say if it’s Eliza Jumel, or Mama and Papa Bear,” Mike said. “But I can tell you one thing, Ms. Goldilocks—someone’s been sleeping in this bed.”

  FORTY-SIX

  “Lock it up and set the alarm, will you?” Mike asked the cop as he let us out.

  We walked down the front steps as Mercer pulled in and parked behind the Jaguar.

  “You want Crime Scene to take the sheets for DNA?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll send somebody over to voucher them tomorrow,” Mike said. “Process the room for prints.”

  Mercer rolled down his window. “Hope you did better than I did. Came up empty.”

  “Any sign of the guy who ran out of here?”

  “I don’t think so. Everything’s shadows and branches blowing in the wind. My eyes were playing tricks on me. How about the house?”

  “Well, if this is where Anita spent her evening with a gentleman, there was a very light dinner served. But the bed saw some action.”

  “Guess she’s up to her old tricks,” Mercer said.

  “You didn’t happen to see the congressman on the prowl?”

  “Leighton?”

  “Yeah. The uniformed guys tell us he got bored waiting on his wheels. Walked off into the night. Keep an eye out for him. I think he’s getting desperate.”

  “He probably knows more about where Anita might be than he told us. And stupid enough to be trying to find her.”

  “I think Coop’s right. It kills me to go through Tim Spindlis on this,” Mike said, “but we need to understand those phantom funds Kendall Reid set up.”

  The sky was beginning to lighten as dawn eased into the city.

  “What are you thinking?” Mercer asked.

  “There are only three Federal Period mansions still standing in Manhattan—this one, Gracie, and the Hamilton Grange. Reid’s phony operation was snagging cash for the Grange, right?”

  “And they’re the places that were used when Moses Leighton staged his private dinners,” Mercer said. “The Tontine Association.”

  The uniformed cop nearing the end of his night shift loped down the front steps of the old house.

  “But that association was retired,” Mercer said. “Too many boys with bad behavior.”

  “Let’s talk it out over bacon and eggs,” Mike said. “I’m thinking, what if Kendall Reid took a page out of Leighton’s book. I mean, the old guy was his mentor. Taught him everything.”

  “Like he re-created the gentlemen’s club?” I asked.

  “Maybe they look like gents but they’re scoundrels instead. Sub rosa—the secrecy symbol of medieval councils.”

  “And Reid’s in the council,” Mercer said. “It’s got possibilities.”

  “Every one of these fabulous houses stands empty. Even Gracie Mansion,” Mike said. “The mayor doesn’t sleep there. No mayor has been in residence there since long before Bloomberg took office.”

  “So you’re saying forget the dinner, and rent out the bedroom to the highest bidder. Pay for play.”

  “Like a tontine, with scads of cash being raised from its members, going to import these young women from wherever the cargo is most readily available. Mexico, Asia, Eastern Europe.”

  “History, politics, sexual intrigue,” Mercer said. “It’s a heady mix.”

  The cop in the RMP was calling out to his partner. He started the engine and turned on the red emergency light.

  The second officer picked up speed and hurried to get into the car.

  “Where’s the fire?” Mike asked. “What’s your hurry?”

  “High Bridge Park. Sector Charlie just called in. There’s a woman down.”

  “What happened? Have they ID’d her?”

  “Not yet. A couple of dog walkers found her beneath the bridge. Looks like she screwed up a suicide attempt. The bus is on the way to take her to the hospital.”

  “She’s alive?” Mike asked.

  “Barely. She’s still breathing,” the cop said. “Likely to die.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  It took less than three minutes for Mike to race up Amsterdam Avenue to West 174th Street once he floored the Jaguar.

  The bridge was at one of the widest points in the park. It was difficult to navigate the rocky terrain and scramble down to the area where EMTs and cops were trying to put the woman’s body on a stretcher.

  Mercer had followed us. He and Mike were the first detectives to arrive on the scene.

  There was little doubt in my mind that the woman, who appeared to have fractured her skull and both legs, was Anita Paz. She fit the vague physical description Leighton had given us, and she was wrapped in a cheap synthetic fur jacket.

  “She don�
��t have time for you, Detective,” the head EMT said as Mike put his hand in her jacket pocket to look for identification. “We don’t get her to Columbia Pres in minutes, she’s goin’ out of the picture.”

  There were four men on the team. Two lifted the stretcher with Anita Paz strapped into it while the other two tried to clear the brush for the steep climb back up to the roadway. The great hospital was mercifully close to our location.

  Two men, each holding a leashed retriever, were talking to the pair of cops.

  Mike and I approached them, while Mercer scoured the ground for things that might be related to the woman’s fall.

  “You see any of this?” Mike asked, after displaying his badge to the men.

  “No, sir. We meet every day, same time, to walk our dogs down here by the river. I never saw nothing like this. I thought for sure the girl was dead.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “Me,” the same guy answered. His walking buddy looked like he was going to be sick.

  “A suicide?”

  “I said it could be that. Could be just an accident. You know that bridge is very dangerous, Detective.”

  “I know. It’s the oldest bridge in the city. It’s been closed for fifty years.”

  “Bad way to go,” the cop said.

  “Find a note?” Mike asked. “Anything to suggest a suicide?”

  “You kidding? Not here. Paper would have been blown away by this arctic air.”

  I guessed the temperature was in the teens, but the wind chill made it feel like single digits.

  “There’s a guy who was up in the squad for a couple of hours, might be able to ID her. He ran out of there a little while ago. You know the congressman who got collared for DWI last week?”

  “Seen that scumbag’s pictures in the papers,” the cop said. “Think he was messing with this broad too?”

  Mike didn’t answer.

  “You know who the jumper is? That would solve half my problems, if she don’t wake up too soon.”

  “Run the name Anita Paz. Leighton knows her. She’s been missing for a couple of hours.”