Devil's Bridge

by Linda Fairstein

  “I’m walking down.”

  “It’s like nine hundred steps, twenty flights of stairs or more.”

  “C’mon, Jimmy. Let the old dude with the football player’s knees ride to the bottom,” I said. “I’m taking the scenic route. What do you know about Fort Washington?”

  “This neighborhood? Washington Heights? I hear it’s coming back.”

  “The hood was lost to Dominican drug gangs in the 1980s. The Red Top Gang, the Wild Cowboys—real urban marauders,” I said, slowly starting down the staircase, which was enclosed in steel mesh, offering the same great views as the walkway above. “It’s back all right. But I’m talking about the fort itself.”

  “I’m not as good on my military history as you, Mike.”

  I stopped on the first landing and looked to the north, pointing out the spot to Jimmy. “Not even fifty yards from here is where the remains of the walls of the fort are, inside Bennett Park. I used to come here to play as a kid.”

  “I’ve never even heard of Bennett Park.”

  We wound down to the next level. I kept taking deep breaths of the morning air, happy for the brief distraction. “Well, the fort was built in 1776 so that George Washington could defend New York during the Revolution.”

  I pressed against the steel caging and looked across the Hudson. “Fort Lee was built on the other side, to prevent the British from going upriver and to provide the troops with an escape route to the west—to Jersey and Pennsylvania—in case they did.”

  “So Fort Lee is named for an actual fort?” Jimmy laughed. “I thought it was just a bunch of condo livers hanging off the Palisades, waiting for Governor Christie to screw up the traffic patterns in some kind of political vendetta.”

  “You wouldn’t be entirely wrong,” I said, grabbing the banister for the next flight down and allowing myself to laugh at the Bridgegate memory. “Nope. Not only was Fort Lee the birthplace of the motion picture industry—”

  “For real?”

  “Yup. Thomas Edison’s film studio, Black Maria, was built here, and dozens of others followed. Long before there was a Hollywood. And more than a century earlier than that, General Charles Lee of the Continental army held down this escarpment for old GW himself.”

  “Was there a battle here?” Jimmy asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking down. “This point is the highest piece of land in all of Manhattan. Pure schist. Washington decided that twin forts here could stop the British warships.”

  I had never brought Coop to this point. She would have loved it for the spectacle of the river view, if I kept her away from the edge and the open heights, and she would have listened to my history with her usual keen interest. I leaned on the banister for fear my own knees would go weak on me each time I envisioned her with captors.

  “I guess they didn’t,” Jimmy said.

  I shook my head. “Did you ever hear of chevaux-de-frise, kid?”

  “Never took French.”

  “I wish the same were true of Coop.”

  Jimmy grabbed both my shoulders from behind me, a step above, and rocked me a bit. “She’s going to be okay, Mike. With the info going out to the entire patrol force this morning, we’re going to get lucky today. I’m sure of it.”

  I was babbling to keep my mind from wandering back to visions of Coop’s condition. I was staying in my comfort zone, in the history that was my escape from death and darkness.

  “Chevaux-de-frise were a medieval form of battle defense,” I said. “I clearly have a lot of educating to do with you. They were portable frames, Jimmy, usually made from logs. Anyway, Washington had them constructed to be sunk here into the river—right at the bottom of this staircase and all the way across to the Jersey side. They were loaded with boulders from the heights, where the fort was, sunk to the bottom, and chained into place with giant hooks on both sides of the river in order to paralyze ship movement on the Hudson.”

  I put my hands in my pockets and kept spiraling down. “Can you see all the way to the ground?” I asked. “Washington had batteries directly beneath us—where this bridge foundation stands today. It’s called Jeffrey’s Hook, a piece of land that juts out into the water. And batteries on Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and on the King’s Bridge, crossing the Harlem River. The fort itself was shaped like a five-pointed star. Five bastions that—”

  “Like Fort Jay?” Jimmy asked. “That’s a coastal star-shaped fort on Governors Island.”

  He had probably been reminded of the fort by Vickee’s comments this morning—a scene that was apparently the genesis of Coop’s unhappiness with me.

  “Fort Jay is four points. Fort Wood—that’s the one on Liberty Island, at the base of the statue—that one’s an eleven-point star. Fort Washington here was built like a pentagon, with five bastions.”

  A sharp whistle screeched from below. It was Mercer trying to get my attention. Jimmy and I were about halfway down the tower.

  “Yo!”

  “Let’s move it, Mike,” Mercer yelled.

  I picked up the pace and started trotting down the stairs. “You ought to read about the battle of Fort Washington,” I said. “Great story, bad ending. Three thousand troops in this very fort, with General Washington himself watching from across the river. The British had four thousand Hessian troops backing them up. Wiped this place out at the end of ’76, and Washington retreated to the west.”

  “Will do,” Jimmy said. “Maybe I’ll come back with you and get the whole picture. Tour all the forts, okay?”

  “You’re likely sucking up to me or you’re a good man,” I said, calling out over my shoulder. “Either way works fine for me.”

  Mercer was waiting for us in the small enclosure at the foot of the giant tower.

  “You got my girl?” I asked. “Or are you just whistling ’cause you’re lonely down here?”

  “We got places to go, Mike,” Mercer said. “Peterson just called me. There’s some junk starting to float in from all over the city because of the alert that went out to every cop on the job when we left Scully’s office. Blondes in Brighton Beach, trench coats abandoned on the subway, an unidentified young woman who overdosed on Metro-North last night. But—”

  “So he’s going to send me out on some wild-goose chase so I don’t—?”

  “Suit yourself, Mike,” Mercer said, turning his back on me. “Just suit yourself.”

  “What’s the ‘but’ about, man?”

  “I was about to say to you that Major Case may have something to look at, is all. You’re either with me or—”

  “I’m with you.”

  “The cop in Central Park who saw something on his way into work?” Mercer said, reminding me of one of the items on this morning’s checklist. “Seems there’s a second piece to his encounter. Worth a shot, if you’ll come with me to see if it takes us anywhere. To see if it gives you any ideas.”

  “Of course I will,” I said, tailing behind Mercer with Jimmy North. “Where to?”

  “The boat basin. The 79th Street Boat Basin.”

  The Upper West Side marina was in the Hudson River, about five miles in a straight shot downriver from the GW Bridge.

  “A sighting?” I asked, closing my eyes to squeeze out a thought of any possible connection between Coop and a boat parked in a marina.

  “Not that,” Mercer said. “But at two o’clock in the morning, in the off-season, it’s a weird time and place for a guy to be swapping out license plates on his SUV.”

  THIRTY

  I stood under the vaulted Guastavino tile ceiling of the giant rotunda, marked by the same classic arches and design as the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal, and sipped another cup of black coffee from the Boat Basin Café.

  The vista was unique. Right off 79th Street, built in 1937 as part of a project to cover the New York Central’s West Side railroad tracks, the marina was still the only place in Manhattan that offered year-round residency on boats. The rotunda was below street level, underneath the circular road that
held the heavily trafficked entrance and exit to the West Side Highway.

  “Low rent, river view,” Mercer said, joining me to look out at the Hudson. The tidal currents were so strong in this riverway that very few boats dared make it a permanent home.

  “This place is in bad need of repair,” I said. The slats in the wooden dock were broken and splintered. “I think I’ll keep my coffin, even without the scenery. How many slips are there?”

  “One hundred sixteen. Peterson’s ordered the names of all the owners.”

  “And the guy who’s working in the office?”

  “He came on at eight this morning,” Mercer said. “The office is closed overnight this time of year. Just a security guy who swings by—when he’s not asleep at the switch. Peterson’s waiting on him now, but on the phone he claims he didn’t see anybody around.”

  “Nothing missing? No boats?”

  “Not even an oar, Mike.”

  “Stealth operation, then, if it happened here.”

  “Or they greased the hand of the security guard.”

  We stepped out into the sunlight and headed toward one of the wooden docks, to the right of the café exit. We were waiting for the lieutenant to appear with the two witnesses we needed to download.

  Mercer followed me onto the dock. The first few vessels were houseboats that looked like they’d been berthed at the marina since it opened. They didn’t appear to be seaworthy or comfortable but seemed attached to the wooden piers like barnacles to the bottom of a skiff.

  “That’s a pretty nice sport fish,” Mercer said, pointing at the fourth boat in front of me. It was a forty-three-foot Egg Harbor Express, with a large fighting chair positioned in its stern.

  I kept on walking, out to the end of the dock.

  “Anything speaking to you here, Mike?” Mercer asked.

  “No. Nothing at all.” I glanced around at the different boats—small Grady-Whites and Boston Whalers to a few larger, classier numbers tied up at the end of the largest dock. “Not like the days when Aristotle Onassis and Malcolm Forbes parked their yachts here, I’m afraid.”

  “I mean, about Alex. I know how much she loves the water,” he said. “I know you were boating together on the Vineyard last month.”

  Coop had been a competitive swimmer in high school and college. She loved the ocean, she enjoyed doing endless laps of crawl in a warm pool, and she treasured day sails and cruises with friends who kept their boats in Menemsha. I didn’t picture her diving into the swirling current of the polluted Hudson River.

  “See that beauty?” I said, pointing at a sleek blue-hulled motor sail called the Leda, docked behind the last small powerboat. “That fifty-foot Schulte Mariner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “One of Coop’s friends has that same model. We spent an afternoon sailing with him over to Cuttyhunk and back. He even let me drive it for a while. Pretty special toys, these things.”

  The sunlight was stronger that day in September than it was now. It had danced off Coop’s hair, and she had snuggled down on the backseat, her head on my lap, to get out of the wind.

  “Has Alex ever mentioned this boat basin to you? Ever mentioned coming here to visit friends?”

  “Never. She knows some folks who pass through town on large boats, but they stop at the Chelsea Piers or across the river in the fancier marinas.”

  “I never had a case with her here,” Mercer said. I knew he was going through his mental lists of perps who might have come back for revenge of some sort. “Plenty of crimes in Riverside Park—nothing special about Tanner going to that spot—but never at this place. Did you?”

  “Nope. We scooped a DOA out of the water three years ago. Pug and me. A drunk who fell in about twenty blocks north of here but got hooked on the tip of a kayak over there, which kept him from getting washed out to sea. Nothing else.”

  I looked to my left, at the mighty torch of Lady Liberty, raised high over her head, above the seven points of her crown, and then to my right, back up at the GW Bridge, where the world’s largest free-flying American flag was catching the wind.

  “No reason to link this place to Alex, then, is there?” Mercer turned and headed back toward the café.

  He knew the answer. I followed him. It was unseasonably warm. I felt clammy and in need of a shower. Every part of me was beginning to ache.

  Peterson had the first cop waiting for us at one of the large round tables, inside the café—out of the bright daylight. “This is Officer Stern,” the lieutenant said. “Central Park.”

  We greeted each other and sat down. A few preliminaries and he cut to the chase.

  “I was coming in for a midnight on Wednesday, running a little late, heading for the station house to sign in.”

  Built in the nineteenth century as a row of horse stables and gardening sheds, the rambling series of Gothic cottages on the 86th Street Transverse had been restored and reopened as a high-tech police operation in 2013.

  “I was on my Harley, heading uptown on Third Avenue. There was some Con Ed construction jamming up the flow, so I cut over, aiming to go uptown on Park or Madison. I was on East 73rd, just off Lexington.”

  “What time was it?” I asked.

  “It was after eleven fifteen, I know. I was gunning it so I wouldn’t be late for roll call,” Stern said. “Turned out I was. Especially because I stopped.”

  “Stopped for what?”

  “There was a vehicle—a black SUV, actually—parked on the right side of 73rd Street. The driver opened the door kind of suddenly and I had to swerve to avoid hitting him when he got out of the car.”

  So far the time of night was right and the location was between the spot on East 65th Street where Sadiq saw a woman get into a black SUV and the place in the park where Coop’s phone was picked up by the search team.

  “I pulled the bike over and looked back to make sure I hadn’t rattled the guy or knocked him over,” Stern said, his tone measured and calm. “That’s when I saw there was no plate on the front of the car.”

  “No license plate?”

  “Nope. So I parked the Harley and took out my shield, since I didn’t look much like a cop, and started to approach him.”

  Laconic worked well as a delivery style for Gary Cooper, but Stern was making me crazy.

  “The guy was already on his knees in front of the SUV, screwing on the plate.”

  “Did you talk to him?” I said. “What about the rear plate?”

  “Yeah. I asked if he was all right. I asked if he needed any help.”

  “You didn’t get his ID or the tag number?”

  “I got everything I was supposed to, man.”

  “Was he alone?”

  Ray Peterson held up his hand and signaled me to back down.

  “So he stood up. I could see the second plate on the ground next to him. I asked for his driver’s license and—”

  Ray Peterson cut in. “This is Officer Stern’s memo book, okay? The driver was Harold Harrison. DOB makes him forty-four. Ran him. No criminal history.”

  “Harrison told me he’d just bought the car from a friend in the city. They all had dinner together and he should have put the plates on outside the man’s apartment as soon as he left, but he forgot to do it till he started on his way across town,” Stern said. “But he knew he couldn’t chance driving home to New Jersey without the plates, so he stopped to put them on. That’s right where I came along.”

  “Anything else?” Mercer asked.

  “Well, not at the time,” Stern said. “I called the info in to the desk sergeant ’cause I obviously didn’t have access to a police computer on my personal bike, like I told the lieutenant.”

  “You got a call back?”

  The officer nodded at Mercer. “All clean. The driver as well as his plates,” Stern said. “But it bothered me. Three guys, the woman asleep in the—”

  “What woman?” I broke in. “Tell me about the woman.”

  “Just weird how she slept through th
e whole thing, me talking to the men in the car and all.”

  “She was sleeping? I mean, you’re sure she was alive?”

  “Don’t go jumping to conclusions that it’s Alex,” Mercer said. “Let’s get the whole story.”

  “That or she was drunk,” Stern said. “Passed out, maybe. I didn’t stop to take her pulse.”

  He seemed bothered when I pressed him. I had to hold my tongue.

  “So at the end of my tour Thursday morning I ran the plate again, ’cause I just didn’t like the way the whole thing went down, you know? This time it came up stolen, reported about an hour after I first called it in. There I was, standing in the street, worrying about the guy because I thought I clipped him with my bike, and he’s a total scumbag after all,” Stern said. “Stolen driver’s license that he picked right out of the vic’s pocket and stolen tags from the schmuck’s car.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Start with the girl,” I said.

  I was on my feet. Peterson had turned the questioning over to me while he lit up another cigarette, leaning against the edge of one of the vaulted arches open to the river.

  “She was the least of it, man,” Stern said. “She never opened her mouth.”

  The officer was regretting the collar for larceny that he had missed. I was hell-bent on finding Coop.

  “What did she look like?”

  He twisted his mouth to the side. “Caucasian,” he said. “They were all white guys. I’d say she was my age. Early thirties. Light-colored hair. That’s all I could see.”

  “Did you ever make an arrest for a sex crime?” I asked. “Take a perp down to the DA’s office?”

  “Lots of felonies, but never rape.”

  “Ever meet an assistant district attorney named Alex Cooper?”

  Officer Stern shook his head in the negative.

  “Were you talking to the men in the car? Is that what you said?”

  “Yeah. The one in the passenger seat got out to help his buddy when I walked back to my bike to call the sergeant. By hindsight, he may have been getting ready to take me out if I’d come back with bad news,” Stern said. “I told him to get in the car.”