Death Angel (13 page)

The hoodie and cargo pants were traditional gear for young people living on the streets. Their styles allowed kids and young adults to be gender neutral, and the hoods made it easy to conceal most of the face if they didn’t want to be recognized. Trash bags were the homeless equivalent of sleeping bags—a bit of protection from the wind and weather when one settled into the sack for the night.

“Where did this stuff come from?” Mercer asked.

“The crew started dredging yesterday, from the western side of the pond.”

“Did a lot of things surface?”

“Not so much as you’d think because of how fierce they are about making sure there’s no garbage in or around anyplace. When they picked up again this morning, these things were all clumped together, about fifty yards from the far side of Bow Bridge, snagged on some rocks on the little island in the middle of the Lake.”

Mercer was doing his own check of the pockets of the pants and sweatshirt.

“I thought you’d want some photos now,” Mike said. “Then I’ll take them to the lab to have them dry out. Then to the morgue to see if they look like they’d fit Angel.”

Mike and I both had our backs to the door when Pat McKinney came in. I was leaning on the table, making notes on a legal pad, while Mike was giving me the names and contact information for the men who had found the items.

“Hey, everybody,” McKinney said. “Big score last night, Alex. And good call, Mercer, for bringing her up to the precinct. Maybe this won’t be a lost cause after all.”

I was glad that McKinney had eased up on me lately. The office was such a tremendously collegial place that it had always been jarring to have someone who ranked between the DA and me ready to backstab me for no apparent reason.

I turned my head to talk to him. “You want the details on the attempted rape? And Mike just came in with these clothes that were found pretty close to the body in the Lake.”

McKinney walked toward us and looked over my shoulder. I straightened up to tell him the story about Raymond Tanner, along with the news from Fishkill. Mike filled in the blanks about the search in the Park.

When McKinney stepped back toward the door, Mike and I returned to our conversation and my note-taking.

“If you ever get that three’s-a-crowd feeling, Mercer, my door’s always open to you,” McKinney said.

Neither Mike nor I moved a muscle. I wrote across the bottom of my pad in big letters, all caps:
IGNORE HIM
.

Mercer shook his head. “There is so much spite in your soul, Pat, I sometimes wonder how you don’t choke on it.”

McKinney gave one of his fake chortles. “It’s not spite, man. Who zings me more than Detective Chapman?”

“Mike’s funny, Pat. You’re just small-minded.”

“Willy Shakespeare, was he petty?” McKinney asked. “Isn’t he the wordsmith who said, ‘Pell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?”

I scribbled again and pushed the pad to Mike as soon as McKinney was halfway into his quote.

Mike never picked his head up but repeated the play and playwright’s name I had written down as though they had just come off the top of his head. “That would be Willy Congreve, Pat.
The Mourning Bride.
Lots of people think it’s Shakespeare, but then lots of people are ignorant, like you.”

“See, Mercer? He gives as good as he gets,” McKinney said on his way out the door. “Now Chapman’s mastered seventeenth-century literature? Just goes to prove, like Battaglia says, that he’s spending way too much time with Alexandra.”

“Get me out of here for a while,” I said to Mercer after Mike left for the lab. “Anywhere.”

“I’ll drop you at home. Nan Rothschild, the head of the Seneca Village anthropology team, wasn’t in yesterday. I’m going back to talk to her about the black angel.”

“Home actually sounds good.”

“I had you out awfully late, and you’ve got to meet all those bigwigs at the Conservancy tonight. Get a nap,” Mercer said. “And a hairdo.”

“Do I look as bad as all that?”

“You look tired, Alex. And anxious.”

“I’m both.”

I told Laura to make excuses for me and walked out with Mercer. He drove me home, letting me off in front of my hair salon. I took his advice and tried to relax while my head was massaged and my shoulder-length hair was swept up into a fancy knot that would complement the style of the outfit I was going to wear.

I napped for an hour, awakened by Mercer’s call.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Almost human, thanks to your suggestion. Did you meet with Rothschild?” The world-renowned urban archaeologist had helped the police before with a site near City Hall that dated back to the period of the Revolution.

“Yes. And she’s as fascinated with that little figure as you are.”

“Has she ever seen it? Or one like it?”

“She’s never seen this one, but there are a few carved antique angels that have been excavated from the site around the churches. And her team will compare ours, trying to date it and see if it’s made of similar materials.”

“Any reason to find an artifact like that near Bow Bridge?”

“She’s as baffled as we are.”

“The site she excavated, at Seneca Village, could anyone else have had access to it besides her team?” I asked.

“That’s one of her concerns. The holes that were made were very carefully figured by ground radar, and there were multiple entrances, well guarded at the time. But there are always scavengers around a dig site, and Rothschild can’t swear someone didn’t get in. Unless it’s a completely random object, which is why she’s interested in having an expert study it.”

“And that will take—?”

“Longer than you’re likely to want to know. But she gave me another lead.”

“What’s that?” I asked, looking at my watch. Mike was going to pick me up at 5:45, and I still needed to dress.

“So Vickee gave you her family history of All Angels’ Church, right?”

“She did. One of three in Seneca Village.”

“I had no idea—and I bet Vickee doesn’t either—that All Angels’ was founded by another church. By a church that’s still standing on West 99th Street and Amsterdam today.”

“What do you mean?”

Mercer went on to explain. “There’s an Episcopal church called St. Michael’s that was built on the Upper West Side in 1807—one of the very few of Manhattan’s houses of worship that’s been located on the same site for more than two centuries.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I said, thinking back to a bizarre series of murders we’d investigated at old religious institutions. “But it’s been there even longer than St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral.”

“Exactly. I’m standing inside the place right now, looking at a whole bunch of antique Tiffany stained glass windows.”

“What was a fancy church doing way uptown when that part of New York wasn’t even populated then?”

“The deacon’s filling me in. He says in the old days these parishioners were all rich members of Trinity,” Mercer said, referring to the historic Episcopal church—one of the first in the city—that opened in 1698 on lower Broadway, a world away from St. Michael’s by the primitive street conditions and means of travel of that period. “When those folk started building summer homes along the Hudson River, this church was created to be like an annex to Trinity.”

“And then?”

“St. Michael’s is known for its social ministries. So the deacon tells me that when an African American community was growing in Seneca Village in the 1820s, it’s this very church—still standing—that helped to create All Angels’ Church. This is like the mother church to the one in Central Park. So when two hundred fifty people were thrown out of their homes so the Park could be built, a few of them came back to St. Michael’s.”

I was growing excited by the possibility that there might be a living link, a way to connect the artifacts found in the Park.

“Is there someone who can look at our statue? Our black angel?”

“There is, although the deacon hasn’t ever seen anything like it here. But I’m sticking it out till all of his flock finds a way back to the soup kitchen for dinner tonight.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s that going to do for us?”

“Seems they do a lot of ministering to homeless youth at St. Michael’s. The deacon thinks the dead girl looks familiar to him. Wants me to talk to some of the young people who might have crossed paths with her. Maybe we can get an ID out of this.”

I opened the door when the bell rang and burst into the broadest smile I’d managed in a week.

Mike had one hand braced against the door frame, the other in the pocket of his pants. He looked smashingly handsome in the rented tux. “Bond,” he said, in his best imitation of Sean Connery. “James Bond.”

“And I’m shaken—as well as stirred. You look so good, Detective Chapman. Come on in.”

“Don’t want to be late, blondie. Is my tie right?”

“It’s crooked.”

“Well, why didn’t you say that?”

“The new me, Mike. I’m not going to be critical of anything you do.”

“Jeez, kid. How will I know it’s you?” he said. “D’you know how to do a bow tie?”

“Sure,” I said. He pulled the knot out of his tie and I stood nose to nose with him. “You have to start with one side a little longer than the other.”

I crossed the longer tab over the short one and looped it through, telling him about Mercer’s call as I did. He stared at me while I spoke, taking in the makeup and how the hair was swept off my face without uttering a word. My thumbs and forefingers formed a bow and then wrapped the longer end around again. When I finished making the knot, I pulled both ends to make sure it sat right against the pleats of Mike’s shirt.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much. It’s straight now.” I stepped back to get my evening purse, shawl, and keys.

“You look—” Mike started to say something to me but interrupted himself.

“What?”

“You don’t look like a hard-ass prosecutor is all.”

I was wearing a white satin top—sleeveless—with sequins and flower-shaped beads that covered the bodice. The floor-length white silk crepe skirt was narrow, with a slit on one side that reached practically to midthigh. The strappy high-heeled sandals made me almost as tall as Mike.

I had expected a compliment, but that would have been out of character, too. “I can change into black leather and chain mail, if you prefer.”

“That’s how I think of you, Coop, but this will do fine for tonight.”

“Then let’s party,” I said, closing the door behind us. We went downstairs, through the lobby, and onto the street to Mike’s car.

It was 6:30 when we walked through the ornate wrought-iron Vanderbilt Gate on Fifth Avenue near 105th Street. I took Mike’s arm to descend the wide staircase into the Conservatory Garden, one of the most magnificent sanctuaries within the Park.

It was the perfect evening for a lawn party. It was warm with a slight breeze, and the sky would be light for another two hours. Volunteers lined the path at the bottom of the steps to greet guests and give them their table assignments. The stunning green lawn that was the centerpiece of the Italian garden was covered by one enormous tent—large enough to hold tables for the five hundred guests who were pouring into the Park. It was bordered on both sides by an
allée
of pink and white crabapple trees.

“Let’s find our host,” I said, looking for Commissioner Davis among the crowd of well-dressed, prosperous-looking New Yorkers.

“Follow me,” Mike said. He had spotted several waiters winding through the crowd with bottles of champagne.

He lifted a glass for each of us from one of the trays and extended them so that they were filled. I took one from him, and he clinked it against mine.

“To our truce,” I said.

“For as long as it lasts. And to Angel.”

We walked the length of the tent, seeing no one either of us knew, and then Mike kept walking around the path, past the twelve-foot-high jet fountain that pumped water into the air.

“Where are you going?”

“That spot where Tanner attacked the girl last night? It’s right out back this way.”

The rear of the Conservatory Garden wasn’t far from the Huddlestone Arch. “Let it be, Mike. You’re not here to walk a crime scene.”

“Just nerves. Just want to check out the landscape. See how Tanner likes to work.”

“I can tell you almost everything about that.”

“Then talk to me.”

Mike doubled back and we started to stroll around the side of the tent, watching the Park’s loyal supporters fawn over the colorful display of tulips that lined the walk.

“There’s Gordon Davis,” Mike said.

We could see his head above the crowd and made our way toward him. He was encircled by a troupe of admirers who were listening to him describe the efforts that had gone into creating the perfect floral display for this evening.

“Ah, my new friends!” he said as we approached. “Meet Alex Cooper and Mike Chapman. You two clean up nicely.”

Davis started introducing us around. “Hello, Professor,” I said to his wife, a petite, attractive woman whose silver-streaked Afro matched the strands of glitter in her dress.

“Please call me Peggy.” I let Mike do the meet-and-greet while the professor and I talked about the class she taught at NYU Law School.

Shortly before seven o’clock we were all asked to find our tables and be seated. I was between Commissioner Davis and Mike, who had a stocky matron on his other side. She appeared to be already in her cups and happy to be placed next to such a good-looking dinner companion.

Fifteen minutes later, Mia Schneider was at the podium to welcome the guests. She looked to be in her early fifties, a very handsome woman with a fine sense of style—a look that stood out in a tent full of well-heeled people. She had a good sense of humor and a quick intelligence and seemed to savor her role as doyenne of an organization that does so much for the Park and the city.

Gordon Davis leaned over to tell Mike and me that he had asked Ms. Schneider to stop at the table to meet us before she settled in for dinner. While we waited for her, we tried to answer all his questions about last night’s assault. The timing of two major crimes wasn’t a gift to the organizers of tonight’s event.

I watched Mia make her rounds—stopping for handshakes and kisses from her admirers, working her way to us. She greeted Mike and me enthusiastically and we stepped away from the table, with Gordon Davis, to talk about our investigation.

“You don’t have to tell me anything that’s not in the newspapers,” Mia said. “But I love this Park and I need to know you’re going to restore our sense of well-being here.”

“We’re working hard to do that,” I said. “The case last night, the victim told me that there’s some kind of ledge behind the waterfall in the Ravine. That you can actually sit on, behind the fall. It made me wonder, with all the boulders in the Park, if there are actual places that one could hide in.”

“You mean caves or grottoes?” Mia asked.

“Yes, anything like that. I assume we’re talking with two people who know the Park better than anyone in town.”

She and Davis looked at each other. “Pretty much so,” she said.

“More places than you can count,” Davis said. “But most of what once were caves have been covered over.”

“How many were there?” Mike asked.

“Olmsted and Vaux created dozens of them. It was part of their master plan to design something entirely unlike the city, unlike the enormous swamps they were replacing.”

“Some of them were natural, Gordon,” Mia said. “Don’t you remember that story about the cave near the lower end of the Reservoir that workmen found when they were clearing the dense underbrush?”

“Recently?”

“In 1857, Mike,” Mia said, laughing. “We’ve got a load of clippings from the papers and magazines going back to the origins of the Park. That one was natural, but many more were landscaped in.”

“Do you have the original plans?” I asked. “Would they show these caves?”

Davis shook his head. “There were years and years of original plans, some rejected by the City Council, many others modified over time.”

“Modified why?”

Davis crossed one arm over his chest and held the other up, his forefinger to his mouth, as he thought about an answer. “In some instances the changes were made because of expense. Occasionally, there were accidents that made the designers reboot.”

“What kinds of accidents?” I asked again.

“Remember the Park was constructed before Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. So it was gunpowder that was used to break up the bedrock under the surface, shape some of the boulders that were brought in, and manage the glacial rock that needed to be moved,” Davis said. “More gunpowder was used to create the illusion that this Park was a natural woodland—more gunpowder than was used at the Battle of Gettysburg.”

Like everything else about military history, that fact got Mike’s attention. “So men working with it—with vast quantities of black powder—were killed.”

“Exactly. That changed plans and designs, too.”

“Some of the grottoes or caves that were first left open to the public were closed over after time,” Davis said. “Animals—I’m talking about sheep and goats—wandered into them. People, bums mostly, camped out in them. They’ve all been closed over.”

“But can you get us the site information of where they are, open or closed?” I said.

“Between our two offices, I’m sure we can give you a good idea of where they were,” Mia said, patting me on the arm. “You’re not thinking of
Beauty and the Beast,
are you?”

“No offense,” Mike said, “but we’re beyond fairy tales.”

“I was referring to the TV show.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.

“Me neither.”

“Very cult in the ’80s, when you two were still kids.”

“Don’t go there, Mia,” Davis said, wagging a friendly finger at her.

But it was clear that she was irrepressible and spirited. “I can’t believe you don’t know this show. You can get it On Demand. It was about a relationship between this man-beast guy who lives underground in Central Park, with a sort of Utopian society of outcasts. He falls in love with a prosecutor—”

Mike reached back to the table for a wineglass that had been filled as we sat. “Hold your tongue, Mia.”

“Wait. So she’s this spunky assistant district attorney—”

“I don’t do ‘spunky,’” I said, laughing along with her.

“Well, you can get it on DVD. It’s funny, really. And the Beast—”

“No, thanks,” Mike said.

“He’s very noble, I promise you, and a heartthrob. Played by Ron Perlman. He lives in this world with mystical waterfalls and labyrinth tunnels.”

“In the Park?”

“Yes. In the Park. I think,” Mia said, “that’s where so many people get the idea that there are underground caves here. Urban myth, Mike. We’ll make sure you know about anything that might have resembled a cave.”

I still wasn’t convinced that there weren’t more places to conceal oneself in the Park, and that the psychos like Tanner didn’t know them intimately.

“The police found some interesting objects near the Lake, Mia,” Davis said to her as his wife signaled him to return to his seat. “Can you describe them to her, Mike?”

“I can bring them to your office tomorrow,” he said.

“Fine.”

“I’ve got photos of them on my cell phone,” I said. “It’s in my purse, on the chair.”

I reached for the phone and pulled up the images. The statuette of the angel meant nothing to Mia Schneider, but she practically gasped when she saw the silver-plated reproductions of Belvedere Castle and the Obelisk.

“Where did you get these?”

“I’m not the one who found them,” Mike said. “But a couple of the detectives spotted them underneath some bushes, on the far side of the Bow Bridge. You’ve seen them before?”

“Yes. Yes, I have,” Mia said. She was even more animated, pressing the zoom command to enlarge the images. “The Conservancy mounted an exhibition of the Dalton collection about ten years ago. I’m sure these must be part of that set. I can’t imagine anything else like them.”

“I can show you the pieces tomorrow,” Mike said. “But where’s the Dalton collection and what is it?”

“Do you know who Archer Dalton was?”

“One of the robber barons,” I said. “Made millions. Was it railroads?”

“Exactly.”

“Coop knows the millionaires,” Mike said. “I’m better on perps.”

“Sometimes there’s an overlap, Mike. They weren’t called robber barons for nothing,” Mia said. “Shortly after the Civil War, when he was a very young man, he got into the train business. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Archer Dalton all made their fortunes that way. Dalton’s Northern Atlantic Line built a piece of the first transcontinental railroad. He and Vanderbilt were great rivals. The gate you walked through tonight is from Vanderbilt’s mansion on Fifth Avenue at 58th Street, where it stood when the Park was opened.”

“And Dalton?” Mike asked.

“He was an outlier in that crowd. Didn’t want to be part of what became known as the Four Hundred.”

“Four Hundred what?”

“The social elite of New York. The number supposedly referred to the people who could fit inside Mrs. William Astor’s ballroom. That didn’t interest Dalton at all. So when the Dakota opened its doors in 1884, Archer Dalton left his Fifth Avenue digs and all the swells behind him, and was the first tenant to rent apartments there, on Central Park West. He took the entire top residential floor—the eighth—at the time, and when it eventually became a co-op, his granddaughter bought all the apartments on eight that faced the Park.”

Mike whistled. “Pretty piece of change that must have been. What happened to her?”

“She’s still alive, and still in the Dakota,” Mia said.

There was no more famous residence in Manhattan than the Dakota, then or now. It had been home to the rich and prominent from the start, and was the fictional setting for the movie
Rosemary’s Baby,
the classic novel
Time and Again,
and a Jack Reacher caper, as well as the tragic backdrop for the murder of John Lennon.

“It was she—Lavinia Dalton—who loaned us the collection for our exhibit.”

Mike looked at me. “Then we can go see her tomorrow.”

“She’s not well, I’m afraid. Lavinia’s close to ninety, and she suffers from dementia. I can call her nurses, and if she’s having one of her better days, I’m sure they’ll allow you to go by. But I wouldn’t expect to get much from the visit.”

“I want to know about these silver pieces,” Mike said. “How they got out of her house or wherever she kept them, and when.”