Death Dance

by Linda Fairstein

  "It's a Broadway show?" Mike asked. "A homicide case that's a hundred years old?"

  "Eighteen, twenty months down the road I expect it will be. A blockbuster musical. You're too young to remember Sweeney Todd. Hey, look at Chicago. The Weisslers, now they're fucking geniuses. Came to me with the idea to do a show for Broadway about a dame who shoots her lover and I turned them down flat. How many years running and nine touring companies abroad? Forget about what the movie did to keep the show alive and kicking. The Shuberts had more goddamn sense than I did, for once. What the hell was I thinking? Murder set to music sells great."

  Berk flicked his ashes. "I've got Elton John doing the score, Santo Loquasto on the costumes-gowns, furs, that famous bearskin rug- and the swing will be gaudier than the bullshit chandelier they're building for Phantom in Vegas, How does that song go? All I need now is the girl."

  "Talya Galinova?" I asked.

  "Ask Mr. Chapman to fill you in on the story, Miss Cooper. Evelyn Nesbit was one of the most gorgeous dames of her day. But she was only sixteen years old when all of this happened. Great role for an ingenue. Talya? She would have been a bit too long in the tooth by the time we launch this production. Give me nubile."

  "Did she know that?" Or could it have been what they fought about in the dressing room?

  "It doesn't matter if she knew it. I certainly did."

  "And Miss Galinova, she was glad to see you last night?" Mike asked.

  "They really sweat, you aware of that? You think it's all floating around on your toes and flapping your wings out there onstage, but those girls do some kind of workout. She came in all sweaty and hot, dripping with perspiration. And very pissed off that I'd missed the show. What a temper," Berk said, walking away from us and untying the belt on his robe as he opened a door and turned on a light.

  He had entered a bathroom, leaving the door ajar behind him and continuing to talk to us as he urinated. "You can hear me, right?"

  "A little too well. The city doesn't pay me enough for this," I whispered to Mike. "Remind me to tell Battaglia he owes me." I was scoping the top of Berk's desk and the area of floor around my chair, hoping to see a stray piece of his hair.

  "Talya let me have it, unloaded on me like a shrew. Jeez, she should have saved some of her strength for the guy who attacked her."

  He was washing his hands now and I stood up to walk behind his lounge chair to look at some photographs on the wall, thinking there might be a few white hairs on the headrest that I could pocket for a comparison to the ones Kestenbaum found with Talya's body.

  When Berk emerged from the bathroom, he was still knotting the robe around his thick waist. "You like that picture? It's me. You'd never guess from that one, would you?"

  The faded black-and-white image was of a toddler in knee pants, holding his mother's hand, her dreary housedress blending into the backdrop of their small, dreary house,

  "Little Yussel Berkowitz. Taken more than seventy years ago, back in Russia," he said, patting his hands against his bloated abdomen. "It's been quite a ride, folks."

  I could never have imagined that the child whose family escaped some impoverished upbringing in what looked like a foreign village would be sitting in his duplex apartment above one of the theaters he owned, wearing a smoking jacket and matching green velvet slippers with gold crests on the throat that looked like something the Duke of Windsor might have worn at The Fort.

  "We were talking about the argument you had with Ms. Galinova," Mike said.

  "Argument? Who told you anything like that?"

  "Well, you said she was mad at you, that her temper flared. I'm wondering whether it had to do with any of these professional matters you've been discussing with her or if it was something more personal."

  "Personal what?" Berk plunged the tip of his cigarette into the ashtray and ground it down until what remained fell out of the holder.

  Mike was getting short with him. "Were you and Miss Galinova having a sexual relationship? Did this start as some kind of tiff that got out of hand?"

  "You got no business coming in here and insinuating I had anything to do with whatever happened to Talya. You got no business asking anything about my personal life," Berk said, looping one finger over the belt of his robe and jabbing the other through the air in Mike's direction. "Do you know who you're talking to? Do you know who I am?"

  Mike stared back at the red-faced impresario.

  "Do you know who I am?" Berk's voice rose louder and louder, each time he asked a question. "Do you know who I am? Do you?"

  None of us spoke.

  "Do you know… who I am?" Each word spit out at us, spaced to reverberate in the room, underscoring Berk's power and control.

  "Yo, Mercer," Mike said, turning to look at us. "Do you know who he is?"

  Mercer shrugged and stared at Berk with the same implacable expression Mike had.

  Berk seemed ready to explode at my partners. I thought it was time to intervene.

  "Look, Mr. Berk," I said. "All we know is that you may have been the last person to see Talya Galinova alive. Why don't you tell us when you left her? The time, the place, who else was around."

  Berk started walking back to the bathroom. "Argument? You people are nuts. Like I have to take any kind of crap from an over-the-hill ballerina? Like Joe Berk had the least bit of interest in letting that bitch tell me how to run my operation? I walked out on her screaming just like I'll walk out on you if you don't watch your place."

  He was mumbling now as he again made no effort to close the door that separated us. "Talk to my driver. He knows what time I got into the car. Damn, I knew that rotten corva was trouble."

  Mike looked at me, puzzled by the word. "Italian?"

  "Yiddish. It means 'whore.'" It had been my grandmother's ultimate insult for any woman whose conduct she disdained.

  Berk called out to us. "You want to know why Talya couldn't keep her tights on, detective? Talk to Chet Dobbis. He spent way too much time poking around where he shouldn't have been, all in the name of art. Ha! Ask Mr. Dobbis where he was when it came time for last night's curtain call."

  8

  We were standing on West 44th Street, under the marquee of the Belasco Theatre, where Joe Berk's duplex apartment sat atop the 1907 neo-Georgian landmark. Diners looking for preshow bargains were jamming the sidewalks as they studied menus in restaurant windows, and scalpers trying to make a score were hawking tickets for tonight's return engagement of Ralph Fiennes's Hamlet at three times the going price.

  "You want to try and hit Dobbis with this right now?" Mercer asked.

  I looked at my watch. "If we can get to him before the performance starts."

  Mike was less than enthusiastic. "Odds are we got a repeat of the first murder at the Met. Somebody who works backstage, maybe even with a rap sheet. Probably intercepted Galinova in a corridor or elevator. She was steaming mad from whatever Joe Berk did to blow her off. Blue-collar guy comes on to her, she freaks out, and so on. The lieutenant will flood the Met with guys from every squad in Manhattan North and he'll have a suspect by the middle of the week."

  "You're willing to wait that out, it's okay with me," Mercer said.

  "Yeah, we may have latents. Maybe some DNA by then."

  "Hey, I understand. You're tired and not ready for the whole routine yet. You go on home. Alex and I'll put in a few more hours."

  Mike combed his fingers through his dark hair. He knew Mercer was goading him to get back in the game. "You two'll feed me when we're done?"

  "Wine and dine."

  Mike had left the car in a "no standing" zone half a block down from the theater. We circled around the one-way streets, passing through the swelling crowds in Times Square, and drove up Tenth Avenue to park behind the Met at 65th Street.

  This time we entered the building through the stage door in the rear of the parking garage. Carloads of patrons were beginning to stream in, some to keep their dinner reservations at the Grand Tier restaurant, below on
e of the colorful Chagalls, others to enjoy the mild spring evening on the plaza with a glass of wine.

  The security guard now had the company of two uniformed cops, one of whom recognized Mercer and waved us in.

  At a second checkpoint, Mike asked the man inspecting identifications to call Chet Dobbis for us. We were told he wasn't in his office.

  "Page him, will you? It's urgent we see him before the show starts."

  When the call had not been returned in ten minutes, we became impatient and decided to try to find him in the area around the stage.

  Now the hallways were teeming with people. Musicians dressed completely in black so nothing in the orchestra pit distracted from the stage action, carrying instruments of every shape and size, squeezed between the costume trunks and workmen pressing ahead in the opposite direction.

  Dancers in the obligatory leg warmers and turned-out foot positions, most carrying bottles of water, practiced their variations or sat along the wall stretching their legs and backs. Carpenters and electricians carried pieces of scenery and props, dangling drills and hammers as they maneuvered the turns of the endless gray walkways.

  Mike approached a man who seemed to be a supervisor, calling out instructions to other workmen. "Dobbis. I'm looking for Chet Dobbis."

  "Last I saw him he was at the rear wagon." The man pointed in the direction we were headed. "Keep going that way."

  "Did you see any wagons this afternoon?" I asked. "Where do you think he means?"

  "Must be some part of tonight's show. Let's just get over to the stage and someone will show us."

  We rounded the last corner and found ourselves in the cavernous opening of the Metropolitan's stage. The curtain separating us from the six tiers of seats was closed, and at least a dozen men were readying sets for the performance that was due to start in about an hour. One woman was dabbing paint on the scratched surface of a fake boulder, making details perfect for the evening event. If anyone had concerns about the murder of one of last night's artists in an air shaft several hundred feet away, nobody showed it.

  "Hold it up right there," a voice shouted at us, although I couldn't see the speaker.

  "We're looking for-" Mike said.

  "I don't care what you're doing. It'll have to wait until after the show." A lanky man with wire-rimmed glasses stepped out from behind a control panel on stage right. "You mind stepping back? We've got a big move to make."

  "Look, I'm a detective. Mike-"

  "Nice to know. And I'm Biff Owens. Stage manager. I got an audience to please tonight, you three want to step out of the way?"

  "Sure. I'm looking for Chet Dobbis. Where's the wagon?"

  We stepped around the wires on the floor and he motioned us into what seemed to be his workspace, an area with four television monitors and more switches than the controls of a space shuttle.

  "I got four wagons, and if you stay perfectly still, you won't wind up underneath one of them while we check this out. Harry?" Owens called out to someone farther upstage. "Let's roll out the main and bring in the turntable."

  With the sound of a low rumble, the entire main stage of the Met began to sink out of sight, dropping almost ten feet. From the rear of the building, another enormous platform, sixty by sixty feet, rolled forward into place.

  Biff Owens clapped his hands in approval and then studied the second hand of his watch to time the movement as the entire surface rotated in a giant sweep of a circle, making a full rotation in two minutes.

  "Okay, Harry. Swing it back," Owens said, turning to Mike. "Those are my wagons. Why'd you ask?"

  "I'm looking for Chet Dobbis. Somebody told us he was near the wagon."

  "This is one of the things that makes the Met unique, detective. We have four separate stages here, each one full size. That area off stage right is one, off stage left is the second, the rear stage with the turntable is the third, and this here's the main," Owens said, as the solid floor crept back up into place. "Stagehands call them wagons."

  "Hydraulic?"

  "Nope. They're on an electrical system. When the main one lowers, the others are attached by cables that supply the electricity and pulleys that move them into place. They move 'em like wagons."

  "Must be noisy, no?"

  "During performances, you mean? There's soundproofed doors between each of the stages. Nobody can hear a peep."

  Owens confirmed the acoustical needs that made the musical experience so pleasurable for the audience and treacherous for a woman in peril behind the scene.

  "None of you ever saw Boheme here?" he asked, walking back to his monitors. "You got the Bohemian house on stage left, dragged right in on top of the main stage for the opening. Takes a minute to slip it off-bingo-you got the Parisian street scene. Over on stage right the cafe is all set up, and on the back wagon you got the whole thing gradually elevated so when Mimi's dying, back in her garret, you'd think you were up on the heights of Montmartre."

  "During last night's performance, what kept you busy?"

  "Me? Think of it like I'm the air traffic controller, detective. If I leave my post for even a minute during the performance, there's likely to be a disaster. I'm responsible for giving all the cues to the principals, making sure the scenery gets moved when it has to, and knowing when every scrim and curtain needs to be lowered or raised. That's several hundred commands per hour. The show don't go on without me."

  "These monitors," Mike said, sweeping a finger across the small television screens, "what do they tell you?"

  "This one lets me see the conductor, down below stage center. The second one-that's dark during the ballet. Don't use it when nobody needs lyrics. Usually it's my window on the prompter, who is giving all the lines to the opera singers. Third is the lighting controls, and the fourth one shows me the full stage, so I can follow how the production is going."

  "And Mr. Dobbis, where was he during last night's performance?"

  "In the director's booth."

  "Where's that?"

  "Very back of the orchestra. He'll be there again when the show starts tonight."

  "Hey, Biff," a man called from high above the stage. "You ready for me to drop the trees?"

  "Who's that?" Mercer asked.

  "One of the flymen," Owens said, before clearing the stage with a loud bark. "Everybody out of the way. Let 'er rip, Jimmy."

  I craned my neck and looked up to the blackened interior, almost ten floors above. With lightning speed and incredible precision, an enormous painted forest fell from the heights and stopped a quarter of an inch above the floorboards. If someone had been beneath it, he would have been sliced in half.

  "What's up there?"

  "The fly system. Ninety-seven pipes, each one the width of the stage, and each one capable of holding half a ton of scenery. We can fit an entire show up there, dropping the pieces in a flash."

  The network above me was ringed with catwalks and galleries, painted black pipes against a painted black background. Three or four figures in dark clothing moved on opposite sides of the grating.

  "Looks like an accident waiting to happen," said Mike.

  "Dangerous stuff. That's why we're so meticulous about rehearsing the timing of it."

  "Who calls the shots?"

  "I do," said Owens. "I need a scrim down, the hands have the number that corresponds to what pipe it's hanging from in their script. I yell out 'Go' to the head flyman, and he calls out to the others to move. Takes eight, ten guys to man the bigger shows."

  "So, if a man took a hike before the act ended-"

  "Couldn't happen with my crew. They work in pairs, both sides coordinating with each other. Anybody slipped off, there wouldn't have been a close to the second act or a scene change to start the third. One guy can't manage it alone."

  "And Dobbis," Mike said, "you could see him in that booth last night?"

  "You got that backwards, mister. His equipment can see me, and he can talk to me by phone. But I can't see him. He gave me the signal to raise t
he curtain at eight fifteen, and when we were striking the sets at the end, he came by to say good night. Everything in between, that's his business."

  "Can we get out into the theater from here?" I asked.

  Owens led us away from his post and pointed to another series of doors. The three of us continued on our way, practically pinning ourselves against the wall from time to time as we went against the flow of ticket holders trying to claim their seats.

  I asked the usher for the director's booth, and he led us to a narrow doorway, midway between the elongated bar and the rear entrance to the orchestra. I turned the handle but it was locked, so I knocked.

  Chet Dobbis opened the door, seeming rather startled to see us. "Let me call you back later. I've got company," he said into the phone receiver before hanging up.

  "May we come in?"

  Dobbis had changed into a business suit and his mien had become as formal as his dress. "This isn't a particularly good time. We're ready to get the program started here," he said, stepping back as he reluctantly let us into his small room.

  The glass-fronted booth was about ten feet wide, furnished with two stools and several monitors. "The ballet mistress will be along any minute. We watch the performances together."

  On one monitor I could see the conductor's baton waving from the orchestra pit as he seemed to be rehearsing the tempo of a piece. Another had a frozen shot of the great curtain while the third displayed the lighting devices high above the back of the auditorium.

  "Would you prefer to step out for a few minutes? There are some questions we need to ask you before the story of Natalya's death hits the morning papers."

  He parked himself on one of the stools, fidgeting with something in his left hand that made me think of Captain Queeg and his marbles. "If you don't mind holding off until the end of the performance, we can certainly talk again."

  Three hours was longer than I was willing to wait. If Dobbis and Galinova had been involved in a relationship, both my boss and Chapman's needed to know. "I'd rather get the answers-"

  I was interrupted by the opening of the door. "Sandra, come in, of course," Dobbis said, rising to make room for the woman he introduced to us as the ballet mistress.