Death Dance

by Linda Fairstein

  "So what did you say to him?"

  "That we have a full house this weekend. I promised I'd pass his number along to you and maybe you'd call him next time you're here. It's against my better instincts, Alex. I'd much rather check him out."

  "You don't know who he is or what he does or whether-"

  "You said yourself he had a nice face-intelligent and sensitive."

  "So did Ted Bundy have a nice face. You'd better take your night-cap and go upstairs to bed before you come up with any other clever ideas."

  Joan slept late on Saturday morning while I took my coffee out on the deck and started reading the draft of her new novel, a brilliantly perceptive tale of obsession and revenge among Southamp-ton's toniest social set. It was fun to try to identify the people she skewered in the book with her witty dialogue and clever observations. By the time I showered and dressed, Joan had come down, ready to plan the day.

  "It's fabulous. You just nail the whole scene so perfectly."

  "Did you finish?"

  "Not yet. Why?"

  "The legal stuff, the part about the husband changing his will? I want you to tell me if it's accurate."

  "I hope you had some help, Joanie. I haven't touched trusts and estates since my law school class. It's a really arcane specialty."

  "One of the T-and-E partners at Milbank, Tweed talked me through it. I just wanted to be sure it makes sense to you. Looks like a glorious day. How about a walk on the beach?"

  "I'm game. Grab a sweatshirt from the closet in your room and take a scarf. The sun feels great but the wind is really kicking up."

  The ride to Black Point Beach took half an hour, the slowest part of the drive on the winding dirt road-full of ruts from the winter storms-that cut off into the woods and led out to the private stretch of pristine white sand that bordered the Atlantic Ocean. There were several cars parked near the walkway across the wetlands, so we took off our shoes and trekked across the dunes to the east, our footprints the only trace of activity in that magnificent meeting place of land and water.

  This was the spot I came to whenever I needed my spirit and strength restored. It had been the favorite place on earth for my fiance, Adam Nyman. We came here days after his accident to scatter his ashes, so that he seemed forever a part of this landscape, a vista that took my breath away each time I visited again.

  Joan knew that, and she knew from my stories that the last time I sat high above the shoreline on this very dune, I had brought Mike Chapman here to comfort him, to try to console him, after Valerie's accident. I tried to stop thinking about the cases and personalities that had occupied all my waking hours during the week-Talya Galinova, Joe Berk, Ralph Harney, Hubert Alden-but it was hard to do even in this setting.

  I warned Joan to stay on the path, pointing out the poison ivy to the right and left. We were making small talk, I supposed, as she tried to distract me from the more serious connections this beach conjured up in my heart and mind.

  "You know who we had dinner with in D.C. last week? Cynthia Lufkin."

  "She's amazing, isn't she."

  "Smart."

  "Very smart."

  "Gorgeous," Joan said, wrapping the scarf around her neck against the fifteen-mile-an-hour winds whipping off the water.

  "Beyond gorgeous. And extremely generous. I'm a huge fan."

  "It kills me that on top of all that she's really nice, too. Don't you hate that?"

  "It's a rare combination," I said, laughing at Joan's comment as I reached the crest of the tallest dune, watching the blue surf pound against the packed sand.

  Joan passed by me and backed down halfway to the beach, putting up her hands as though to stop me. "Enough about Cynthia. Time to talk about me. Will you sit?"

  "What's going on?" I zipped my sweatshirt and parked myself on the ground.

  "Look, I know what this-this beach-means to you, and I've got something terribly important to ask you. And it's the only place in the world I can even raise this question to you, because it's only here that you can give me an answer and know whether, emotionally, it's an honest one."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "How long have Jim and I been engaged? It seems like I've waited longer than anyone besides Sleeping Beauty to get married, right? Well, we'd like to do it this summer. And we'd like to do it on the Vineyard."

  "Nothing could make me happier. Are you crazy? What's to ask? I'll put up some tents just in case of weather, the gardens will be at their peak, I've got the best caterer. Joanie, I can't think of anything that would please me more than throwing a wedding for you." I started to get up to embrace her and she pushed me back down onto the sand.

  "It's not that, Alex. I mean it's not just that. Jim and I would like you to marry us."

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Prosecutors aren't judges. What are you thinking?"

  "I know you're not a judge. Leave it to Jim to come up with this. He's done all the research. Did you know that in Massachusetts all we have to do is make an application to the governor, with a letter of recommendation and twenty-five bucks, and whoever it is we choose can be the celebrant of the wedding?"

  "I had no idea. I've never heard of such a thing."

  "You get a one-day pass, that's all. A cousin of Jim's did it on Nantucket last year and it was the most divine wedding I've ever seen. Please tell me you'll do it, Alex? What could be more perfect than being married by my very best friend? You'll write a personal little ceremony-"

  "You're the writer," I said, searching for excuses.

  "Hell, you're the English Lit major. You've written more summations-longer ones-than half of my stories. It's not about the writing. It's the intimacy of it, that's what Jim and I want. We've each been divorced, so religion doesn't seem to be a big piece of this. We'd just both love to have my best friend celebrate our vows."

  My eyes welled up with tears.

  "My dear, dear Alex. I'm not trying to make you cry. We want you to be part of our joy, of our marriage."

  I stood up and this time she let me embrace her. "Don't worry about the tears, Joanie. I can't think of any greater compliment than this."

  She grasped my elbows and pushed me back. "But you've got to look at me, Alex. The hardest part of asking you to do this is knowing what a flood of memories this will open up for you and bring back. It's inviting you to look in the face of everything that you and Adam were about to embark on when he was killed. It's your magical hilltop and your home and-"

  "And this time it's your turn, Joanie. I couldn't have faced this ten years ago, I'm certain, so you're right to be concerned. For a long time after Adam's death, I didn't go to weddings, not anybody's. Hell, I couldn't even bear to look at ads for gowns or jewelry or china in all the magazines. I used to bawl when the Tiffany catalog showed up in the mail with endless pages of wedding and engagement rings."

  She followed me down the dune and to the edge of the sand, where the bubbles in the surf sat like froth as the waves rolled back out to sea.

  "You never forget, Joan, that's for sure. But all of that pain is in a different place now," I said, turning to face her. "I never come home to this island without imagining what it would be like if Adam was here with me, and I never will. But the memories of being here with him are wonderful ones, the best ones of my life. And celebrating your marriage ceremony would be just about the happiest assignment I've ever had."

  "So it's a yes?" she said, walking east toward Quansoo, the adjacent beach, where we could see people gathered around what looked to be a giant excavator.

  "If you really want to put this event in the hands of an amateur I guess I'm it."

  "Excellent. We've got to figure out what we're wearing. We can go shopping together for dresses next time I'm in the city."

  "What else can I help with?"

  Joan's mind was racing now. She'd clearly been holding back until she raised the issue of the ceremony with me. "We've got to tie up some rooms at the island inns."

  "How many people?"
<
br />   "You know if it were up to me, it'd be a cast of thousands. Jim wants it small and cozy. We're somewhere between his forty and my closest five hundred. Think you can get Mike to come?"

  "Joanie. I know what you're thinking."

  "You always do."

  "He hasn't even started to grapple with Val's death. Mercer and I are just beginning to draw him back into work again, so give him time to adjust."

  "Give him too much time and some lucky girl will be in there offering just the right kind of solace."

  "I work with him, Joan. I've never had a better partner, someone I could trust as much as I do Mike. He and Mercer cover my back, they think with me, they're the very best in the business. If we take this in a different direction, that entire professional relationship goes by the boards. You're hopelessly romantic."

  "Somebody has to be, don't you think?" she said. "What's going on up ahead?"

  "They must be opening Tisbury Great Pond."

  "What do you mean?"

  The southern shore of the Vineyard, almost twenty miles of barrier beach, was dotted by a series of ponds, large and small. "Those oysters you like so much? They come from that body of water," I said, running up the nearest dune and pointing out the Great Pond. "A century ago, the Wampanoags figured out the importance of the moon and the tidal changes in getting saline water from the ocean into the clam and oyster beds in here."

  "What'd they do?"

  "They used to come down here with oxen and dredge an opening out to the sea. Now the local shellfish constable oversees things. They use heavy earth-moving equipment to make an artificial channel into the pond every spring, and a couple of other times a year."

  "That's a huge gap they've created."

  "Probably sixty, seventy feet across."

  "What's everyone looking at?"

  "The local newspaper said the opening was supposed to be yesterday. But it doesn't always take the first time they try. The Native Americans were so damn smart about the tides." We were side by side on the dune, staring out at the ocean. "Mesmerizing, isn't it, the ebb and flow? If it's high tide and you've got a four-foot sea, but the pond is only three feet high, the water rushes right back in and fills the trench. The beach tends to heal itself, so it usually takes twenty-four hours-and a bit more shoveling-to make sure the gap stays open."

  "Wouldn't you like to watch?"

  Joan and I walked the last quarter of a mile. The giant black excavator had blocked from view the rescue vehicle that had lumbered over the sand to park beside it.

  We jogged the last few yards and joined the huddle of men standing around the small truck, its open back revealing a vinyl body bag.

  "What happened?" I said, recognizing one of the volunteer firemen from the Chilmark station.

  "Some smartass decided to test the waters last night. Inaugurate the opening of the cut by putting on his wet suit and bringing his surfboard down to the beach. Got caught in a pretty fierce rip and disappeared. Rescue crews searched half the night with no luck, till just about daybreak. He-his body-just got thrown back up here an hour ago. Nothing to see, Alex," he said, trying to steer me out of the way. "Nothing left to do but say a prayer."

  I nodded to Joan and we started back over to Black Point.

  "Talk about putting a damper on a lovely afternoon. Don't you ever feel spooked by this?" she asked me.

  "By what?"

  "By death, Alex. How death seems to follow you wherever you go."

  31

  An early April thunderstorm ripped through the Boston suburbs south of Logan Airport and kept the plane on the tarmac for close to three hours on Sunday evening. It gave me even more time to reflect on Joan's remark, as I had done throughout the lazy weekend we spent together after leaving the beach. Police, prosecutors, pathol-ogists, and serologists-all of us whose professional lives were absorbed with understanding the secrets of the dead-seemed to be surrounded with more than our share of violent happenings.

  Instead of reaching LaGuardia in time for the dinner I had planned to enjoy with a couple of my law school friends, I watched Joan race off to catch the last shuttle to Washington and waited on line at the taxi stand to get a cab back into the city.

  "Welcome home, Ms. Cooper," Benito said, stepping out to the curb to open the car door for me. "I have your mail and some dry cleaning in back."

  I followed the doorman inside, waiting while he went into the storage area to get the bundle of magazines and plastic-wrapped dresses that had been delivered over the weekend.

  It was ten thirty by the time I sorted through the bills, a postcard from Nina Baum, and the flood of invitations to charity luncheons that heralded the spring season. I started a tub running with steaming-hot water and sprinkled some bath salts in it, watching them foam up as the tub began to fill.

  I was standing at the bar, pouring myself a shot of my new single-malt scotch and smiling at the remembrance of Mike's gesture, when the apartment suddenly went black.

  Feeling my way back to the bathroom, I turned off the faucet and then slowly guided myself around familiar pieces of furniture, into the kitchen to find a flashlight and the fuse box.

  I yanked at the heavy metal door of the box, standing on tiptoe to see what had blown so that I could flip it back on. All of the switches were aligned, and I played with a few of them to see whether anything made a difference, but no lights came on around me.

  With the same baby steps that got me from room to room, I went to the foyer of the large apartment and pressed against the peephole in the front door. I was reassured to see that the overhead hall fixtures were still working, which meant that the entire building didn't have the problem that I did.

  I grabbed my pocketbook and dug out my cell phone, taking it into the living room, where the great expanse of windows caught whatever light reflected from the street lamps many floors below. I dialed the concierge desk to ask whether the two doormen could find the superintendent or a handyman, but the number was busy.

  On the fourth try, I connected with Benito. "No problem, Ms. Cooper. Don't worry about anything."

  "What do you mean, no problem? I've lost all my power. No lights, the refrigerator is off, the clock radio. What is it, Benito? Do you know?"

  "It's all the apartments in the A line. You and everybody else in A."

  "Up and down the whole building?"

  "First floor to the penthouse. They're all yelling at me, like I had something to do with it."

  "Are they working to restore it?"

  "You could call me back in half an hour. The super says he's gonna have somebody here to check it out very soon. A crew from Con Ed is coming. Maybe we'll know something by then. Maybe you'll already have it back on. Or you could just go to sleep, Ms. Cooper. He gonna have it back on before the morning."

  My hallway neighbors, David and Renee Mitchell, usually didn't come back to the city from their country house until Monday morning. I had a spare key for their apartment, for the times I occasionally walked their dog, Prozac. But I decided it was foolish to try to get inside in case they were home and already asleep.

  I stretched out on my sofa in the den, nursing my drink, ready to nap against the background of routine city noises twenty floors below-cars honking at one another, the distant sound of an ambulance siren, and the rumblings of the private carting services that lurched through the streets at odd hours of the night. There was no point undressing in case I had to leave the apartment or let a workman in to check the system.

  I dozed for half an hour, awakened-I thought-by scuffling sounds outside my door.

  I walked to the foyer again and looked out through the peephole, but saw no one.

  "Benito?" I asked, calling the desk again.

  "Yeah, Ms. Cooper?"

  "Any progress?"

  "They got a guy working on it in the basement now, Ms. Cooper. You wanna come down to the lobby and wait here?"

  "Why?"

  "I dunno. You know Mrs. Melsher? The old lady with the walker? She
got scared alone in the dark. She's down here keeping us company."

  "Thanks, Benito. I'm fine."

  "I'm going off at midnight. Want me to leave a wake-up call with Willie for you?" he said with a laugh. "It's not enough we gotta be the weathermen for you guys, deliver messages to each other, sign for your deliveries. Now I gotta play hearts with Mrs. Melsher and leave wake-up calls for the guy on sixteen who has to catch an early flight and the lady on twelve who's having root canal at eight a.m."

  "See you tomorrow."

  I went into the bedroom and laid down on top of the covers, pulling the throw over me. The lights flickered and the illuminated dial of the clock radio glowed for several seconds, but the room went black again and I closed my eyes to try to sleep.

  It was one o'clock when the phone rang.

  "Hello?"

  "Sorry to disturb you, Ms. Cooper. It's me, Benito. The super aksed me could you come downstairs, please?"

  "Why?"

  "Look, I'm only doing what he told me. I'm calling all the A apartments. He has me working a double shift here," Benito said, pausing before he brought up the deadly reference. "He don't want me to be saying this to everyone, Ms. Cooper, 'cause we don't want no kind of panic. But-like-think of nine-eleven. We don't want people stuck upstairs if there's some kind of electrical fire."

  I was bolt upright. "Fire? He thinks it's a fire?"

  Benito clucked his tongue in annoyance. "I'm not saying there's no fire. It's a just-in-case kind of thing. Nobody told us what it is yet. The first guy that got here, he's started at the bottom. They're gonna check every hallway, go inside and check your electrical panels."

  "I really don't want to leave the apartment. I'd rather be here," I said, thinking of the valuables I had around the place.

  "Don't worry, Ms. Cooper. The super's coming with him. The guy won't be in there alone. It just could be a really dangerous thing."

  The thought of getting zapped like Joe Berk or asphyxiated in a fire smoldering behind the apartment walls was enough to move me. I didn't need the reference to the unspeakable tragedies of 9/11.

  "And you can't be using the elevator, Ms. Cooper. They had to shut that down."