"Sorry," she said, kissing Dobbis on both cheeks before stepping in front of me to perch on the second stool. "I just couldn't shake whatever was bothering me yesterday. Some kind of twenty-four-hour thing. I didn't mean to leave you alone last night, and then- oh, then with this dreadful thing about Talya."
"In or out, Ms. Cooper. I can't let you open that door once the performance begins. The light draws the dancers' attention from the stage."
There really wasn't room for the three of us to stand in the booth behind both of them, and I nodded to Mercer to open the door. The three thousand lightbulbs in the theater started to dim and the crystal chandeliers circling the parterre boxes began to lift up out of sight.
Dobbis thanked us and said he'd see us later. He stopped playing with the small object in his fingers and placed it on the ledge in front of him.
The booth was almost dark but the light that glowed from the monitors settled on the thing that Chet Dobbis had carried in his hand. It was a two-inch-long black nail-the kind the stagehands called a bent twenty.
9
"Dewar's on the rocks for the blonde. No fruit. You have Grey Goose?"
The bartender set up the glasses and took Mike's drink orders. We three were alone in the lobby of the Met, at the foot of the grand staircase, while all the balletomanes were in their seats for the performance.
The added police presence at entrances and doorways leading behind the stage hadn't seemed off-putting to most spectators, who would not know about Natalya Galinova's death until they heard the late news or read the morning paper.
We sipped our drinks and talked through the forty-minute first act of Coppelia, Mercer and I both trying unsuccessfully to draw out Mike. It was clear to me that he wasn't ready to expose the emotional upheaval he had suffered after Val's death, and he didn't even bother to feign interest in Mercer's stories about Vickee and their baby boy.
When the doors from the auditorium swung open and the crowd emptied the rows for the intermission, Mike stepped around the corner and fought his way to the director's booth. As I followed behind him, I could see that his instinct had been right. Chet Dobbis was walking briskly toward the front of the house, against the flow of the people, as though he was trying to distance himself from us.
Mike called out to him, but Dobbis didn't turn his head. I was zigzagging through the lines of annoyed patrons, as I slowed their efforts to get their plastic glasses of champagne or stand on the endless lines for the restrooms.
Mercer was more direct. He scooted across a row of seats that was empty but for one elderly couple, and then he vaulted over the chairs in front, beating Dobbis to the exit that was closest to the backstage door.
"You know how this one ends or you just trying to catch an early train?" Mike asked.
The angled nail was again twisting between the director's thumb and forefinger. "I've got to talk to the stage manager, detective. Our lead dancer has missed half of his cues and his performance is entirely off."
"Why don't you let the ballet mistress take care of that?" Mike said, backing out the door with his hand on Dobbis's elbow. "This will only cost you a few minutes."
The usher saw Dobbis coming toward him and opened the door to the backstage area that said no entrance. Once inside, the three of us stopped, surrounding the director before he could go any farther.
"Am I making you nervous, buddy?" Mike asked.
"Not at all. I'm sure you don't like being interrupted when you're doing something important at a crime scene, and I'm asking the same respect for the business at hand tonight. I'm in the middle of a major production."
"What a coincidence. This is the middle of my crime scene, Mr. Dobbis. You wanna watch out for that nail you got? I'd hate to lose you to a bad case of tetanus before we even get to talk."
Dobbis opened his palm and looked down, as though he'd surprised even himself by the discovery that he was holding something. "This? Not nerves at all, detective. Just for good luck," he said, pocketing the black nail.
"How so?"
"Something I picked up in the days Pavarotti sang here. Luciano Pavarotti?"
"Yeah. The fat man."
"Hardly a distinction among tenors, detective. Pavarotti was wildly superstitious, did you know that, Ms. Cooper?"
"Why does everybody ask her the culture questions? She didn't know it-trust me on that-and neither did Mercer. What about it?"
"It got so Luciano wouldn't go onstage until he picked up a bent twenty. He found one, just by chance, the very first time he did Tosca here. A tremendous ovation and sixty Toscas later it remained his personal good luck charm. They actually had to have a pocket sewn into every one of his costumes to conceal a nail. He'd spend the last few seconds before his entrance scouring the floor for these," Dobbis said, showing it off to us again. "I got in the habit of carrying one around just so that I could hand it to him if he couldn't find any."
"Some habits die hard," Mike said. "Didn't he retire a few years back?"
"His superstition must have rubbed off on me. I still think it's a charm."
"Not so lucky last night, was it? Or maybe you dropped it?"
"They're all over the place, Mr. Chapman, as I'm sure you've seen. Are you here to talk hardware or something more serious? There's a second act to stage."
Mercer had walked a few feet away and turned his back to us, making it seem as though Dobbis could reveal any secrets he had only to Mike and me.
"Ms. Cooper and I are easily confused, Mr. Dobbis, so maybe you could straighten this out for us. You were quick to point the finger at Joe Berk and his relationship with Talya, and in the meantime, Berk says that you've been scoring with her, too."
"Such a way with words, detective. But Joe Berk is wrong."
"I'm gonna let you be the guy to tell him that. Do you know who he is, Mr. Dobbis?"
Dobbis didn't appreciate Mike's effort at humor. "Who he is, or who he thinks he is?"
He adjusted his tie and the collar of his shirt before speaking again. "Talya and I had an affair ten years ago, maybe more. Long before either one of us was married. Neither she nor I had any reason to hide it. It drained me of a fortune in yellow roses every time she curtsied to the crowd and caused an ulcer I'm still nursing today. When Talya decided to end the whole thing, it was actually a blessing."
"Never got the urge to revisit the territory?"
"Not even to look at the map, detective."
"Artistic differences? Anything to squabble about?"
"Of course we had those. She wanted things to be all Talya all the time. She liked a good fight, and the older she got, the more unwelcoming she was to the young dancers who were getting the starred reviews. I spend an inordinate amount of time juggling personalities instead of directing talent."
Dobbis tried to walk around me, but Mike didn't give up. "Last night, did you see Talya after Joe Berk left the dressing room?"
"I had a third act to worry about, Mr. Chapman. The scene with the golden idol from Bayadere. Major set changes with the destruction of the temple, two primas and two male leads onstage as well. It wouldn't have mattered to me if Talya had decided to dance naked in the fountain on the plaza. I had to be in my booth making every second of that performance look seamless. May I?"
I stepped back to let Dobbis pass through and walk away.
"I'm beginning to agree with Mike," I said to Mercer. "Let's knock it off for the night. Maybe we'll have some preliminary findings from the autopsy tomorrow that will jumpstart the conversation."
"You up to going?" Mercer asked Mike. It was part of his duty as the homicide detective who caught the case to attend the autopsy. This would be the first time he'd have to view one since Val's accident.
"You two are spending way too much time psychoanalyzing me. I didn't know this Talya broad. Sorry she's dead but I'm not about to throw myself on top of her grave. The way you look at me, you act like I should be in a transfer to the Auto Theft Squad. C'mon. I haven't had a decent meal in week
s."
"Now that's what I like to hear. Any cravings?"
"Nothing that you could satisfy, Coop. I'm thinking pasta."
"I can't tell you how lonely it's been without your insults. Here you go, putting me down, and I'm smiling about it like you just asked me to the prom," I said, looping my arm in Mike's. "I'll call Primola."
We had to make our way to the front of the opera house and walk around the entire complex to get to where we'd left the car. We drove through the transverse in Central Park and across 65 th Street to one of our favorite watering holes on Second Avenue.
Giuliano hadn't seen Mike in two months. He embraced him enthusiastically and led us to the first table in the corner, ignoring all the couples with nine o'clock reservations who were piled deep at the bar.
Adolfo took the drink order and uncorked a bottle of Tignanello that Giuliano sent over with his compliments. Each of us was familiar with the sophisticated menu that was the restaurant's famous fare but opted for the delicious comfort food that was Primola's Saturday-night special-an appetizer portion of fried zucchini along with three orders of spaghetti and meatballs.
No matter how tired I was from the work of the last twenty-four hours, I could feel myself come alive again in the reuniting of our trio. Family and close friends have provided my emotional sanctuary during years of prosecuting intimate violence for which no formal education could have prepared me. The women I had lived with at Wellesley, my study group from law school at the University of Virginia, and the colleagues with whom I stood shoulder to shoulder in the trenches of the criminal courthouse at 100 Centre Street all played a role in maintaining my faith in the goodness of humankind.
But no professional relationship had been forged that compared to my friendship with Mike and Mercer. They had seen the darkest side of man's nature, regularly witnessing the taking of lives by killers motivated by greed, lust, and every other deadly sin. They had helped nourish victims back to stability after the trauma of the most personally invasive violence imaginable. And they understood the meaning of loyalty in ways I had trouble expressing to people who couldn't fathom why each one of us derived such satisfaction in restoring dignity to those who'd been attacked or to their survivors.
Mercer's beeper went off while we were gnawing on thin strips of zucchini and enjoying our wine. He stepped out on the sidewalk to return the call.
"If you're gonna try to ruin my dinner with new business," Mike said when he sat down again, "get yourselves another table for two."
Mercer smiled at me and lifted his glass. "We're one step closer to nailing the Riverside rapist."
"Another attack?"
Joggers who ran the pathway in the slice of parkland along Riverside Drive had been battling an assailant who hid himself in the thick bushes that had started to bloom in March, lying in wait for women who exercised alone. Police expected that the man had some kind of sexual dysfunction, since he had not ejaculated in any of the cases. Lacking a ANA profile of the attacker, we had been unable to search databanks for convicted offenders or links to other unsolved crimes.
"Not quite," Mercer said. "This one was running with her dog, a small mixed-breed special she rescued from the pound. The perp tackled her to the ground and started to tear off her shorts but the mutt wrapped his mouth around the guy's wrist till he pulled free. I've got to go over to the hospital to interview her."
"You want me to come with you?"
"Stay here with Mike. This one will be easy."
"Your man get away again?"
Mercer smiled. "For the moment. But they've got the dog down at the ME's office. Docs are swabbing his teeth. There's still enough of the perp's blood on his canines for a DNA profile this time."
10
Mike and I both lived on the Upper East Side in circumstances as different as our backgrounds. He referred to his tiny, dark fifth-floor walkup on York Avenue as "the coffin," while I lived on the twentieth floor of a high-rise, in a large sunlit apartment with twenty-four-hour doormen who enabled me to separate myself from the day's demons when I settled in at home.
There was a comfortable chill in the early-spring night when we left Primola, and Mike offered to walk me the few short blocks north to my building.
When I tried to bring the conversation back to the subject of Valerie, he countered by asking questions about my personal life.
"So what are you going home to, Coop? Grind your teeth over the Saturday Times crossword puzzle and sink into a steaming-hot bath to avoid your empty bed? Anything new in your life?"
"Ouch! You're beginning to sound like my mother. I think you and Mercer are going to be stuck with me for a while."
"How much longer you gonna do this?" he said, steering me across to the west side of the avenue, dodging couples arm in arm on their way home from local eateries and bars. "Running around to crime scenes, getting mouthed off at by scumbags, giving up your nights and weekends-"
"Like you do."
"Shit. I get paid for overtime."
"You know anybody who has a better job than I do? Every day I wake up and want to go to work. I like how my gut feels, I like knowing we make things a little bit easier for people who don't expect the system to get it right."
"But you've got to vent somewhere, other than to Mercer and me."
Mike had come to depend on Valerie's love and support after years of trusting no one outside the job. She had fought to get him to open up to her, and now he was struggling to regain the tight grip he'd always held on his emotions.
"That's why my friendships have been so important to me. You know that."
"I'm talking about something else, Coop. Not pals, not girl-friends, not drinking buddies. Don't you ever worry it's all gonna pass you by because you're in over your head with this blood-and-guts stuff? You've taken yourself out of circulation."
More than a decade ago, before I started the work that had so absorbed my interest, the man I had been hours away from marrying had been killed in a car accident. I had experienced a loss as great as Mike's and could give him no assurances that a love as important as this last one-like my love for Adam-would ever sustain him again.
"Don't be ridiculous. I thought the reason I had no takers was because you've been spreading the word about me for so long."
"Nobody listens to me," Mike said, veering away from me as our elbows inadvertently rubbed together, looping his thumb over the top of his belt. "You're your own worst enemy. You might as well be wearing a sign that warns guys to keep their distance."
There was no moving Mike from his morose mood. "What are you doing next weekend?" I asked. I took a few steps ahead of him and walked backward, forcing him to look me in the eye.
"I'm catching."
"You could switch with someone, couldn't you?" I was trying to get him to lighten up, but when he ignored me and kept walking, I planted both hands on his chest to stop him.
"I think I've used up all my favors lately, don't you?" Mike brushed me aside and pretended to laugh.
"I'm supposed to fly up to the Vineyard after work on Friday. Open the house for the spring. Jim's away," I said, referring to the fiance of my friend Joan Stafford, "so Joan will probably come with me. Sit me in front of the fireplace and both of you can pile in on me with pointers about turning around my love life."
We had reached my building's driveway, which cut through between two streets. Opposite the entrance was a pocket park for the residents, planted with daffodils and crocuses, the quarter moon reflecting in the shallow flagstone pool surrounded by granite benches.
The doorman held the door open for me. I gave it another try. "Want to come up for a while?" I cocked my head and smiled at Mike, who was staring down at the pavement-oblivious to the moonlight and flowers-but he wouldn't even meet me halfway.
Mike shook his head and told me he'd call me after the Galinova autopsy. I walked to the elevator and pressed the button. As I waited for it, I looked out the lobby windows and saw Mike leaning back on one of the
benches, staring at the heavens as though the brilliant constellations weren't obscured by the bright city lights. I wasn't used to being pushed so far away by him and wondered whether someone else was helping him deal with his grief.
I didn't have the strength for the Saturday Times crossword- the toughest puzzle of the week-but I drew a hot bath and counted on its soporific qualities to help me stop reviewing the last hours of Talya Galinova's life. I was too tired to fight sleep and too resigned to the current state of my social life to mind that there hadn't been a crease on the other half of my sheet for several months.
The dancer's death was headlined below the fold on the front page of the Times when I reached for it on my doorstep at eight thirty Sunday morning. A triumphant photograph of her as Odile, in arabesque, ran behind the news of the rising unemployment rate and the latest political skirmish in North Korea.
The Post never disappointed when it came to bad taste. The front-page banner, murder at the met-again, was featured in bold caps over the shot of the body bag being loaded into the ambulance in the docking bay of the opera house. The subtitle beneath Talya's name identified her latest role: corpse de ballet.
A gentle April rain drizzled down the windowpanes and gave me license to spend a lazy day at home. I caught up on paying bills, answered dozens of accumulated e-mails, napped in the late afternoon, phoned family and friends, and put on my hooded rain slicker to cross the street for a late-afternoon pedicure and manicure. Dinner was a salad and turkey sandwich delivered from PJ Bernstein, and I hibernated in my den for the evening with a slightly foxed copy of a collection of Raymond Chandler stories that I had picked up for a dollar at the Chilmark flea market.
I had expected Mike's call after the autopsy, but with the morgue understaffed on weekends and a recent upsurge of violent deaths, there was no predicting when he would report in to me.
I had just turned on the ten o'clock nightly news when the phone rang.
Death Dance Page 8
