Hell Gate

by Linda Fairstein

  Spindlis’s opening line was inaudible-delivered with his usual lack of enthusiasm-and one of the reporters yelled to him to speak up.

  “Last year, in addition to all of the city’s carefully budgeted monies, each council member received almost half a million dollars in discretionary funds-some allocated to youth programs, some for senior initiatives, some to be used as chosen by the individual council member.”

  “Pork barrel spending, Coop. Isn’t that what it’s called?” Mike asked. “Which little piggy is it?”

  “Much of the funding reached legitimate groups-neighborhood sports programs for kids and soup kitchens for the homeless-but it turns out that a good number of the designated charities were fake. They simply didn’t exist. For example, Informed Citizens for a Clean Water Supply is a bogus operation,” Spindlis droned on, naming several other phony setups.

  “How would anybody know?” Mercer asked. “Sounds like a decent cause.”

  “Save the Aqueduct Bridge,” Spindlis said into the bank of microphones. “The Alexander Hamilton Memorial Restoration Fund is a nonexistent organization that was supposed to provide money to aid the city’s Historic House Trust in preserving the Grange Mansion, which was Hamilton’s home. There simply are no such funds.”

  I looked at Mike when I heard the word mansion. There weren’t that many of them on the island of Manhattan.

  “And instead,” Spindlis said, “that fund primarily served as a conduit to provide cash and other personal benefits to the aide involved. Stolen city funds walked out of here by council employees.”

  “What’s the timing on this?” Mercer asked. “What’s the rush to judgment, do you think, that made the district attorney unseal this thing today?”

  Paul Battaglia took control of the microphone from Spindlis. “Kendall Reid is charged with skimming almost two hundred thousand dollars cash, so that you’re clear on this, designated for an agency he selected that doesn’t even exist. So far as we can tell, this is a practice that has been going on for more than twenty years, a result of the charter revision of 1989.”

  “There’s part of your answer, Mercer,” I said, as Battaglia identified the other City Council aide involved. “Kendall Reid was Ethan Leighton’s aide before he gave up his council seat to run for Congress. The DA’s decided to turn the screws on Leighton as well as on the City Council members.”

  “Depends on which way Battaglia spins it,” Nan said, aware of how well the boss liked to control leaks to the press. “That’s the way we’ll know whether he’s trying to tie this to Leighton, or take the heat off the congressman.”

  “The tabloids will have a field day. That’s what I’m going to do in my next life. Write headlines for the Post. The bad guys make it so easy. CITY HAUL, that’s what I’d dub this scandal. SLUSH PUPPIES,” Mike said, boxing the banner headlines with his hands. “Meanwhile, someone walks out the door with all that slush.”

  “Or it’s cash stashed away in shoe boxes in someone’s closet,” Mercer said. He was thinking of the find at Salma Zunega’s apartment today.

  “Sounds like Battaglia’s firing a salvo over the bow of Leighton’s ship,” Mike said. “Wipes out all his political enemies in one fell swoop.”

  There was a knock on the door and Donovan Baynes let himself in before I could get over to open it. “Sorry to be late. I got held up on another matter,” Baynes said. “What’s the matter, Alex? You all look shell-shocked.”

  “If all politics is local like they say, it just never occurred to me how filthy it is right around here, in government offices.” Mike was chewing on his second chocolate chip cookie.

  Donny Baynes looked up at the television screen and recognized the press conference participants. “What’s got your boss all fired up tonight?”

  “Phantom funds, Donny,” I said. “Just a few million city dollars missing from these phantom funds.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Catherine was at the blackboard again, adding Kendall Reid’s name and linking it to Ethan Leighton’s, with a series of dollar signs beside it. She drew a question mark above Salma Zunega’s apartment, and enclosed it in a chalk-outlined shoe box with more dollar signs propping open the lid.

  “This political corruption graph is just for starters,” Catherine said. “We’re missing a few sleazeballs, but you can help me fill in the blanks. Sort of feel we should have a guy in the men’s room at City Hall, taking a wide stance.”

  “Don’t go trolling in those bathrooms, Catherine,” Mike said. “I’d hate to lose you.”

  “There are some days that private practice seems so appealing,” Nan said.

  Mike narrated the day’s events to Donny Baynes, who was taking copious note in a small book. “Autopsy on Zunega?”

  “I’ll be there,” Mike said. “Tomorrow at eight A.M.”

  “Any word on tattoos on the other women who’ve been examined?”

  “I made the calls on that today,” Nan said. “A lot of them have tattoos, but none in that same spot on the thigh that Alex has told you about. And no roses.”

  “Anybody else view the bodies-the two Jane Does?”

  “Three more young men were taken to the morgue today. Can’t get a make on our Jane Does either. It’s like they spent their time in the hold being sick,” Mike said, “or they were just smart enough to keep their distance from the men for the entire ride.”

  “We’ve got hundreds more people to talk to,” Baynes said. “We’ll find out who they are. I’m sure of it.”

  “Spoken with all the confidence of your first big trafficking case,” Mercer said. “You’ll be fortunate if even half your population on that boat wind up with real identities. There’s nothing in it for them to help you while they’re in detention. They’ll just be looking to bust out of whatever facility you send them to and start life over.”

  “No backpedaling on women you’re giving us tomorrow?” Nan asked.

  “They’ll be delivered here by ten,” Baynes said. “You have my word.”

  Each of us took up a position around the long table. Nan, with Laura’s assistance, had stacked several piles of DD5s that had been prepared since the grounding of the Golden Voyager and the events following Ethan Leighton’s drunken crash on the highway.

  “Let’s skim through what we’ve got here,” I said, “to see if we’ve missed anything obvious.”

  There had been so many cops who responded to both scenes that it would be impossible to talk with all of them in the days to come. This was a way of marshaling the evidence for clues or connections we might have overlooked.

  I opened another can of soda and read accounts of the highway patrol officers who had come upon Ethan Leighton’s accident. That was less familiar to me than the awful image of the foundering ship and its weeping passengers that was embedded in my mind’s eye.

  “Anybody know what kind of mansion the Grange is?” I asked.

  “What page are you looking at?” Nan asked.

  “No, I’m thinking of what Spindlis said at the press conference. All that slush fund cash, and some of it going to restore a mansion. That’s two mansion mentions in the same day. It’s unusual for Manhattan.”

  “Now, you ladies need to spend some time in Harlem,” Mercer said. “I can help you with this one.”

  “Please.”

  “You probably know as much about Alexander Hamilton’s career as I do.”

  “Revolutionary War hero, a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, wrote the Federalist Papers with James Madison and John Jay, became the first secretary of the treasury,” Nan said, ticking off the major accomplishments, “and then had a lucrative law practice here in the city.”

  “So he built himself a country estate too,” Mercer said. “A bit farther uptown, in Harlem.”

  “Before the Jeffersons moved on up, right?” Mike said. “The television Jeffersons?”

  “Yessir, my paragon of political correctness. Hamilton built the Grange around the same time Mr
. Gracie was staking out his mansion. Named it for the old family property in Scotland.”

  “Then he didn’t get to live in it very long,” Mike said. “ ’ Cause Aaron Burr killed him in a duel in 1804.”

  “Well, the house still stands, Mr. Chapman. In fact, in 2008 the whole thing was moved from Convent Avenue down the street to St. Nicholas Park.”

  “They moved an entire mansion?” Nan asked.

  “They sure did. I went up there with my cousin to watch, ’cause I knew the Grange. It’s a beautiful old building, and it used to abut Cousin Eugene’s church.”

  “St. Luke’s up on Convent by a Hundred and forty-first Street?” Mike said. “Now I get the picture. That place was huge. How’d they move it?”

  “Lord, it was quite a fantastic operation. They put steel beams between the foundation and the first floor, to support the weight of the place. Held those up by cribbings, and then hydraulic jacks inside the cribbings lifted the house eight inches a shot,” Mercer said. “Then they installed roller beams to create rails along Convent Avenue, with rams pushing the steel beams horizontally.”

  Mercer was telling the story with his hands, taking the Grange along the avenue with its nine dollies and its own braking system bolted to the steel beams. Both Mike and Donovan Baynes were riveted by the description.

  “Must be a guy thing,” Nan said.

  “Sorry I started it,” I said. “I just wondered if there could be any connection between Gracie Mansion and the Grange. You know, two Federal Period houses-both mansions, both country estates. Both renovated at great cost, apparently, and both connected to historical figures. That’s all I was getting at.”

  “Not very likely, Alex. Gracie’s a New York City landmark, patrolled by the NYPD and used for whatever functions the mayor wants,” Mercer said. “The Grange is a national memorial. It’s a cultural resource in Harlem, I guess, for the handful of people who even know it’s there.”

  “It wasn’t likely that a Ukrainian refugee and a Mexican-well, I don’t know what to call Salma anymore-would have the same tattoo. It wasn’t likely that half the legislators in this city would have phantom funds or that our congressman would have a phantom family,” I said. “This case is all about things that aren’t likely.”

  “Amen,” Mercer said.

  “A rose is a rose is a rose,” Mike said. “What’s so unlikely about that? It’s a very common flower.”

  “There are probably twenty thousand varieties of roses in the world. Those two images are identical-in their shape, in their size, in their design, in their coloration, and in the exact same spot on each woman’s body. You saw them, Mike. Do we have Polaroids for everyone to look at?”

  “Yeah, in the middle of the table.”

  Catherine reached for the small pile of photographs, studied them, and then passed them on. “I’m with Alex on this.”

  First Nan and then Donny Baynes agreed with me.

  “Okay, okay. The Hogan Place Horticultural Club rules with the princess. Okay, I’m reading,” Mike said. “I’m concentrating on the reports.”

  “Who tried to take the weight for Ethan Leighton at the scene of the accident?” Nan asked. “That’s somebody to look at.”

  “It’s in the first fistful of DD-fives,” Mercer said. “I wasn’t there myself. It was his wife, Claire, who told me it was one of his aides. I didn’t work the accident. I was just brought in because of the possible domestic.”

  We were all shuffling papers, literally trying to get on the same page.

  “Now, this has a familiar ring to it, guys. DD-five, number eight,” Mike said. “How about that it was his former aide who tried to intercede with the highway patrol after Ethan fleet-footed himself away? How about that it was Mr. Moneybags himself, who was Ethan’s best bud before he got the congressional seat?”

  Donovan Baynes read the name aloud. “Kendall Reid. So tell me why Battaglia-and the spineless wonder at his side-chose today of all days to unseal Reid’s indictment? Why’d they choose this moment to charge him, and make it impossible for you to interrogate him?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  The two young women from Ukraine were brought to the waiting room outside my office by federal marshals shortly before ten o’clock Friday morning. Laura tried to make them comfortable until the interpreters arrived, but their fear was palpable.

  “You take the conference room, Nan. I’ll work in here.”

  “Did you get any sleep last night?”

  We had broken up around eleven P.M., and Mercer dropped me off at my apartment. I soaked all the day’s tension out of me with a steaming hot bath, and a double shot of Dewar’s as my nightcap.

  “Actually, I slept pretty well.”

  “No nightmares about Salma?” Nan asked.

  “She was crowded out by my visions of the bodies from the ship, if you know what I mean.” It was only my friends in the office and the NYPD who themselves experienced and could understand the emotional toll the job took many days.

  “Did Luc call?”

  “The time zones don’t help this relationship,” I said. “He left three messages, but it was crazy for me to wake him up in the middle of the night.”

  “Have you seen Battaglia?”

  “I haven’t talked to anyone this morning. If he didn’t come looking for me, I figure I’m already ahead of the game. Mike’s at the autopsy, Mercer’s leading the canvass of Salma’s apartment, and I’m with you. No McKinney, no Spindlis, no bad karma, no new bodies on land or sea. So far, so good.”

  “I’m cooking dinner at home tonight. We have a few neighbors coming in. Want to join us?” Nan asked.

  “I’ve had a better offer. I’m going to babysit for Logan while Mercer and Vickee go to a family party. I’ll skip out early if everything stays calm.”

  “Good for you. The little guy has to eat something, you know? That’s pretty hard when the sitter can’t cook.”

  “All planned,” I said, standing to greet the pair of interpreters who were presenting themselves at Laura’s desk.

  The Simchuk sisters appeared to be in their midthirties. They introduced themselves in lightly accented English, detailed their academic backgrounds and experience, and listened carefully as I explained why it was necessary for Nan and me to separate each of the witnesses-victims, despite whatever Donny Baynes and Mike Chapman thought of their possible involvement in criminal affairs-as we started the process of questioning them.

  “I’ll take the younger girl,” I said to Nan. “Let’s see how we do.”

  Ms. Simchuk invited the teenager to come into my office. The two girls looked at each other but neither one moved. Simchuk tried to coax them gently but they refused to stand up.

  I knelt beside her and put my hand on her arm, but she recoiled as though I’d been about to slap her. “Tell them they’ll be safe with us,” I said. “Tell them that’s our job-to help women who’ve been hurt.”

  The older one spoke softly, in Ukrainian. “If she goes with you, do I see her again?”

  They had been separated from all of the others on the ship. How could they possibly know what would come next in this strange new land?

  “They will be together in a very nice house tonight,” I said. “A safe house. Nan and I will take them there ourselves. They’ll be very well taken care of by the staff.”

  The third time the pair of interpreters worked on their subjects, the girls released each other’s hands, embraced, and followed us as we took them in different directions. I brought the tall, slender woman into my office and drew three chairs into a small circle. The desk would impose too much formality between us.

  I asked the marshal to sit behind the girl-a slip of paper told me her name was Olena-out of her range of sight, simply to be an observer, as Donny Baynes had insisted.

  “My name is Alexandra. Alex to my friends. What’s your name?”

  Everything took twice as long to do through an interpreter. It would take half an hour before the two of them b
ecame more or less comfortable with each other-if at all-and as long as that for me to get a sense of whether Ms. Simchuk was editing the translation, intentionally or not. Sometimes a feeling of empathy for what the subject had undergone seeped into what I hoped would be a word-for-word retelling of the facts.

  “She is Olena,” Simchuk said, trying to warm the girl up with a smile. “In our language it means the light of the sun.”

  I was getting the edit already. Olena had answered with only one word. The interpreter gave me more. There was no need to correct her yet, until the substance of the responses became more critical.

  “Are you warm enough?”

  The girl nodded but didn’t speak.

  “Are you hungry?”

  She looked at Simchuk out of the corner of her eye.

  “Would you like a good breakfast, Olena? Some eggs and some fresh juice?”

  Again she shook her head up and down. She didn’t look any happier for the suggestion that we feed her, but she clearly wanted to eat.

  I stepped to the door and asked Laura to order in from the coffee shop for both of the girls. Neither one looked like she’d been fed well in a long time.

  “How old are you, Olena?”

  The answer was too long to have been her age.

  “What will become of her, she wants to know,” Simchuk said. “She says she won’t answer questions until you tell her that.”

  I had no idea what would become of her. She seemed to sense that in my hesitation.

  “What would you like to do, Olena? Of all the things you could choose, what would you like to happen to you now that you’re here?”

  Simchuk translated and the girl shrugged her shoulders.

  “Do you want to go home? Do you want to go back to Ukraine?”

  Her eyes widened and the vehemence with which she responded was a universal no.