Death Angel (19 page)

This was not the reception I’d been counting on based on Mia Schneider’s story last evening.

“Is the collection here?” Mike asked.

Jillian Sorenson paused before she answered. “Yes. May I assume this has something to do with last week’s murder and not Lucy’s kidnapping?”

“I can promise you it’s not about Lucy,” Mike said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

“May we see the pieces?” I asked.

“I told Mia I’d show them to you,” Sorenson said. “You’ll have to come this way.”

Instead of retracing our steps through the parlors and dining room, Jillian Sorenson led us out into the hallway that seemed to run half the length of Central Park West. Doors lined both sides of the wide corridor.

“These doors,” Mike said, “what do they lead to?”

Sorenson wasn’t happy to have more questions, but she did her best to answer them as we walked along.

“As you might know, when the Dakota was built, it was meant to have sixty-five apartments, places in which rich people could live as comfortably as in their private mansions, but with far more services available. They were all rentals at that original time, not offered for ownership until decades later.”

The dark corridor was lined with photographs, large nineteenth-century prints commemorating the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, interspersed with superb portraits of Lavinia’s forebears posed with presidents and potentates.

“No two apartments,” she said, “were alike, so there is no single floor plan that matches another one. Archer Dalton rented six of the large apartments on this floor and broke through to combine them.”

“Six?” I said. “He could have housed an army.”

“That was his plan. He hoped his family would grow in generation after generation—which never happened—and he counted on a large staff being one of life’s necessities. The rooms that face the Park are all the major ones, as you’ve seen, including three master bedrooms.”

“Lavinia’s?” I didn’t dare say the names of Lucy and her parents.

“Then a sitting room, then young Archer’s, and then the nursery for Baby Lucy.” Jillian Sorenson did it for me.

“So the nursery was the last room in the south corner,” Mike said. He was back to the kidnapping, seeing how easy it would have been to sneak the child away without calling attention to yourself, if you were familiar with the extraordinary maze of doors and hallways.

“On the other side,” Jillian said, gesturing to the rooms on the right, “are the kitchen, the laundry rooms, my old bedroom and office, some of the quarters where the more important senior staff could sleep.”

“And the rest of the staff?”

“Some were day workers who slept downtown in their own homes, like the laundress and the kitchen workers—except for the cook. Others had quarters upstairs, which was quite common in those days.”

Mike winked at me—a nod to the eyelid windows under the eaves of the building.

“So no view on that side,” Mike said, “where your room is?”

“No view of the Park,” Sorenson said, “but the Dakota is a real novelty. Since it’s built around a courtyard, it has fresh air and brightness from both sides. It’s quite cheerful from these rooms really, with large windows and lots of western light all afternoon.”

Halfway down the hallway was a wall that split the block-long corridor in half. We had to zigzag around it to get to the bedroom wing. It provided a natural barrier between the more public rooms and the intimate spaces, which might also have proved of good use to the kidnappers of Baby Lucy.

“Mia Schneider told us that Lavinia refused to allow any change in Lucy’s room,” Mike said. “That she expected the child to come home, and wanted things to be exactly as they were when she was taken.”

“That’s true, Mr. Chapman. And I’m not permitted to show it to you, if that’s where you’re going with your statement.”

Jillian Sorenson was either rigidly professional, or the events of forty years ago had filled her veins with ice.

“Why is that?” Mike asked.

“That’s as Lavinia wishes it to be.”

“In case you didn’t notice, Lavinia’s not too sure what day it is.”

“There are some things, despite your rudeness, Mr. Chapman, that she still feels very strongly about. I don’t intend to satisfy your curiosity with a peek at the nursery.”

There were only three doors left on each side before we would reach the south end of the floor. Jill Sorenson stopped in front of the second, on the courtyard side, and opened the door.

“These are the police officers Mia told me about,” she said to a woman standing inside the room, back against the window and hands clasped in front of her, who had clearly been waiting for us. “Bernice, this is Ms. Cooper and Mr. Chapman.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, with the vaguest hint of a Scottish brogue in her voice. “Bernice Wicks, at your service.”

The woman, dressed in the same formal maid’s outfit as her junior counterpart who had admitted us to the apartment, seemed to be just a few years younger than Lavinia Dalton. I wanted to tell her to sit down and relax, not stand ready to cater to us.

Jillian turned on the overhead lights and the Dalton silver shined like it was reflecting off a room of mirrors.

“May I help you to something to eat or drink?” Bernice asked.

“No, thank you,” I said.

The room was practically the size of the living room, and although there was not much sun streaming through the western-facing windows today, there was so much silver, one needed almost to blink from the glare.

Directly beneath our feet, for half the length of the room, was the fabulous reproduction of Dalton’s Northern Atlantic railroad cars. The tracks were laid out in a complicated array of figure eights and long straightaways. There was a handsome model of Grand Central Station, which anchored the set, and then every kind of train car, from a fancy locomotive to passenger cars, coal car, tankers, milk trains, and finally a caboose.

Around the room, in display cases and mounted on shelves, were other pieces—undoubtedly designed for Archer Dalton by Gorham and Frost. There were wine buckets and punch bowls, trophies and loving cups, and in one enormous glass-fronted cabinet a silver dinner service for twenty-four people.

“I asked Bernice to meet us in here because she has looked over this collection since she started with Lavinia. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, Miss Jillian.” The woman exuded a warmth entirely lacking in Sorenson.

“No need to stand here on our account,” Mike said as I looked beyond the train set to the extraordinary copy of Central Park that was laid out on the far side of the room.

“I’m happy to do my bit.”

“Don’t you want to get off your feet?” Mike asked, pointing to a fine old leather couch against the wall.

“Thank you, sir. But I’m heartier than I look.”

“How long have you worked for Miss Dalton?”

Jillian Sorenson knew exactly what direction Mike was headed. “Bernice came to work for Lavinia, as one of two housemaids, in 1968. She’s been extremely dedicated to us and refuses to accept retirement. Isn’t that right, Bernice?”

“Retire to what, Miss Jillian?” she said with a hearty laugh.

“So you were here in ’71?” Mike asked.

“We’re the only two from that time still in the household,” Jill said. “Lavinia respected each of us and took our part while we were being investigated and our reputations cut to shreds. We’ll always be here for her, Mr. Chapman.”

“Did you live here at the time of the kidnapping, Bernice?”

“Not full-time,” Bernice said. “I had to take a job because my husband had just passed—not even forty years old. My daughter was nineteen at the time and able to look after my son, who was only fourteen when I started here.”

“Bernice stayed in one of the little rooms upstairs when we required her to sleep over, once or twice a week, if there were big dinners or affairs.”

“And my Eddie was allowed to sleep over, too, if need be. How he loved Mr. Archer’s train set, and it certainly made Miss Lavinia happy to have a boy to play with them.”

Bernice was as determined as Jillian to keep our attention on what we had come to see.

I guided myself around the train tracks, toward the mock-up of the Park. Jillian walked along the wall and turned on the lights overhead.

The entire layout was a dazzling re-creation of the landmark park, every prominent feature instantly recognizable as I knelt down to study the Maine Monument at the southeast entrance.

“We’ve only seen two of the pieces before today, Ms. Sorenson,” I said. “They’re quite impressive, but this really takes your breath away.”

Her grim expression gave way, at last, to a smile. “They do exactly that, Ms. Cooper. Archer Dalton paid a king’s ransom for these back in the day. The value now is so many millions of dollars that it’s rather shocking.”

“This collection belongs in a museum,” Mike said, pinching the nape of my neck as he walked around me.

“And someday it will be in one,” Jillian said. “But for now, they’re exactly where Lavinia wants them to be. Is there something particular you’re interested in?”

Mike squatted on the east side of the Park setting and was looking methodically at each of the pieces.

“We thought you might be missing a few pieces,” I said, “and that you might help us figure when and how they became separated.”

“That’s ridiculous. Another kidnapping is what you think? Silver treasures this time? Bernice is in and out of this room every day, Ms. Cooper. She dusts and polishes all the pieces. Bernice?”

“All accounted for, Miss Jillian. No mystery here.”

“Are you pointing fingers again, Mr. Chapman?”

At that very moment, my eyes stopped on the statue of the Obelisk. It was standing behind the miniature of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exactly where it was supposed to be.

“Mike,” I said, “the Obelisk—”

“Check. And the castle is here, too,” he said to me. “So how many of these sets were created, Miss Sorenson?”

“Only one. The trains for Archer, and the Park for Lavinia,” Jill said. “One of each.”

“Do you mind if I pick this up?”

“Not at all, Detective.”

He turned the obelisk over to examine its base. “No markings here, Coop. No Gorham and Frost hallmark. Nothing engraved.”

“I don’t understand how this can be,” I said.

“Miss Jillian, don’t you want to tell them about the originals?” Bernice Wicks asked.

Jillian Sorenson looked at her as though she was shooting daggers with her glance.

“What do you mean, Bernice?” Mike asked. “I thought there’s only one set.”

“What she means, Detective—and I hope you don’t need to repeat this to anyone—is that these collections—the train and the Park—are the maquettes for the originals.”

“Maquettes?” Mike asked.

“Scale models,” I said. “Prototypes. Artists use them all the time when they’re creating sculptures and things.”

“Damn,” he said. “I really do need to work on my French, Coop.”

“What’s the big deal?” I asked Jillian Sorenson.

She seemed rather chagrined by Bernice’s revelation. “When the collection is photographed for antique journals, we’ve not had to tell them about the originals. It’s only when museums or galleries—or an appraiser—sends a scholar to study the pieces. It’s not public knowledge that they’re just models.”

“Would people care?” Mike asked.

“Of course they would. And it’s necessary for us to keep the interest in the collection heightened, for its eventual placement or sale when that time comes. Its uniqueness, its rarity, will be a significant factor,” Sorenson said. “Several years ago, though, the insurance for keeping these two sets in the apartment became prohibitive, so we replaced them with the maquettes
—
at the insistence of our insurance brokers. In truth, the models are so well done it would be hard for anyone to know.”

“And you arranged that?” Mike asked.

“She certainly did,” Bernice said. “We all helped, but Miss Jillian did it without disturbing Miss Lavinia for a minute.”

“Lavinia wouldn’t have heard of the exchange,” Sorenson said, with a hangdog expression on her face. “Damn the insurance, she would have told me.”

“And where are the originals?” I asked.

“In storage, Ms. Cooper. With a lot of other items that form the Dalton heritage.”

“I think there’s been a breach of security, either here,” I said, “or at the storage facility.”

Jillian Sorenson bristled at the suggestion, and Bernice Wicks took a cue from her colleague. Neither wanted to hear another accusation.

I took my phone from my pocket and brought up the photographs of the Obelisk and Belvedere Castle. I let her hold the phone and look at the close-ups of them.

“They’ve got the Gorham and Frost markings on the bottom. They must be the real thing.”

“I don’t know what to say, Ms. Cooper. It’s a most unlikely scenario.”

“And more unlikely that there is a third set of Park statues commissioned by Archer Dalton.”

As Jillian Sorenson passed the phone back to me, it vibrated in her hand. She was shaking her head in denial that anything she had supervised could have gone wrong.

I answered the call and heard Mercer’s voice.

“You and Mike need to meet me,” he said. “The Park anticrime unit has found Verge.”

The black man with a scowl on his face was sitting in a child-sized chair in the front of the marionette theater of the Swedish Cottage inside Central Park, just above the 79th Street Transverse.

He sported a pure white Afro, very few teeth, and a T-shirt with the unpleasant statement
I LOOK MUCH SEXIER ONLINE
.

We were in the rear of the room. Mercer had his back to the man and was talking to Mike and me. “Vergil Humphrey. Sixty-three years old. From Queens originally. Hasn’t been in trouble for a while but has a history of sexual battery in Florida, including a felony conviction there, for which he did serious jail time.”

“Jo thinks he’s harmless,” I said. “What do you have on the victims?”

“From the statutory charge, looks like he had a thing for thirteen-, fourteen-year-olds.”

I put my head in my hands. “And living in the Park with hordes of teens who are struggling to find a safe haven.”

“Verge tells me he volunteered for chemical castration before his release, six years ago,” Mercer said. “I have a call in to the Glades County prosecutor to check it out.”

“Is that a real fix, Coop?” Mike asked.

“It’s usually a ploy for an early parole. An antiandrogen drug that’s supposed to interrupt any inappropriate thoughts by shutting down the ability to maintain an erection.”

“What I meant is, does it work?”

“I’m not a believer. I suppose it can, but there isn’t enough evidence. Very few states have legislation that allows it. I don’t think it stops the urge to molest; it just may change the outcome.”

“How?”

Mercer answered him. “Say the perp is still attracted to teenagers. Finds a target but he can’t perform, so maybe he gets frustrated and takes out his anger on his victim.”

“I see. Can’t rape her, so he beats her up,” Mike said.

“Or he sexually abuses her in some other way.”

“No seminal fluid. No DNA.”

“You’re thinking of Angel,” Mercer said.

“She’s too old for him,” I said. “Guys into thirteen, fourteen don’t usually do nineteen, twenty. Pervs get fixated on an age that works for them. If they prey on six-year-olds, they’re not usually drawn to twelve-year-olds.”

“The professional world you have chosen to inhabit is totally demented, Coop. Besides, what if our girl looked younger than she does now in a refrigerated box?”

“Jo says Verge was her friend, her protector,” I said.

“Still could be the way he gains the trust of his vics.”

“How’d you find him?” I asked Mercer.

“Like Jo told us, all the cops know him. Came up here to live with his sister when he got out of jail in Florida. Wasn’t too friendly a place to be a convicted child molester, so he moved back up north. When his sister kicked him out of the house, he started living in parks, working his way to this one.”

“What do the cops say about him?”

“That he’s no trouble at all. Friendly guy, sort of simple. He’s good to the homeless kids, and the troublemakers seem to leave him alone.”

“Good to the kids,” I said. “That’s the part I don’t like.”

“You’d have had cases against him already if he’d been assaulting them,” Mike said.

“Really? In your experience, Detective, is law enforcement the first place kids on the run from their families who stay alive by petty theft and sleeping in public bathrooms and using false identities turn to? You know better than that. We hardly ever get complaints from the homeless. That’s why they’re such easy targets.”

“That’s why a disproportionate number of them wind up dead,” Mercer said.

“What’s all this talking behind my back?” Verge called out to Mercer.

The three of us walked to the front of the room, and Mercer gave him our names. The scowl vanished, and Verge started speaking with us.

Mercer had shown him an eight-by-ten color photograph of Angel after the autopsy, and we gave it to him again. “I told the man I met this girl. I’m not good on time, but I’d say maybe a month or two ago. The girls like me,” he said with a practically toothless smile.

“What do you know about her?” Mercer asked.

“I know she’s dead. Least she looks dead in that photograph, and your cops have been turning this Park upside down looking for the man who hurt her.”

“Have you given them any help, Verge?”

“Haven’t asked me for any.”

He spoke clearly and directly, though there was a childlike affect to him.

“Well, that’s why the three of us are here. To see what you know,” Mercer said. “Can you tell me her name?”

“Haven’t got the slightest idea of that. I’m not good on names anyway, and there are too many kids out here to be remembering all of them.”

“But this girl was special. Someone told us today that you were protecting her. That you helped her leave the Ravine and move down to this end of the Park.”

“I’ve done that for lots of people.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t like the Ravine, the north end of the Park. It’s too quiet up there. Besides, I grew up down here.”

“You grew up in Queens, didn’t you?” Mercer said. “Not the Park.”

“I did. But my people are from the Park.”

“What do you mean, Verge?”

“We had a house here, right here in Central Park. Right about 84th Street.”

“That you lived in?”

“No, Detective. Long before you and I were born.” Verge leaned forward toward Mercer and tapped on his forehead with his finger. “People think I’m touched when I say that, but it’s true. I can prove it to you.”

“I get it, sir,” Mercer said. “Seneca Village.”

Verge leaned back and roared with delight. “Now, how do you know about that?”

“My wife’s family came out of Seneca. She’ll be so happy to talk to you.”

“Maybe we’re kin, your wife and me. Maybe we’re related.”

They talked about the history of the former African American community for several minutes. Verge had no idea what had become of other residents, but the tales had come down through his family, and he relished speaking of them to someone who didn’t think he was making it all up.

“How well do you know the Ramble?” Mike asked.

“Better than almost anybody. I can show you places you’ve never seen,” Verge said, turning his head to me. “You’re so quiet, young lady. Can I take you for a walk?”

I knew I didn’t look like a teenager, but I thought of his criminal background and got goose bumps from the idea of letting a sexual predator like Verge Humphrey walk me through the wilderness.

“Sometime I would like that,” I said.

Mercer had established a relationship with Verge that got the older man talking. Mike was interested in getting information without any more stroking.

“When did you move back up from Florida?” Mike asked.

“Who said anything about the Sunshine State?”

“I heard you lived there for a while,” Mike said.

“For too long,” Verge said. “Got myself in trouble there, but you probably know that already.”

“What’d you do?”

“I’d like the young lady to step out, if you don’t mind. It’s nasty, what they say about me.”

I started to walk back to the far end of the room. Verge’s voice carried throughout the space, though I busied myself with e-mails on my BlackBerry to look as though I had no interest.

Mercer eased Verge into a conversation about his criminal conduct. He admitted exposing himself to young women, starting back in his teens. He had several juvenile arrests in New York, but nothing that showed on his adult record.

“I stayed out of trouble for a good long time after that.”

“Did you go to school in Queens?”

“I dropped out of high school,” Verge said. “Got a job nearby here, in the same parking garage where my daddy worked. Worked there for nearly fifteen years. Right over on Amsterdam Avenue.”

Right under his father’s nose every day, just a couple of blocks west of the Park.

“What happened after that?”

“When he died, I started having problems again.”

Verge took Mercer through the typical progression of a sex offender. Exposing himself to potential victims before he worked up the wherewithal to attack, climbing fire escapes to look in windows for women undressed or undressing, and then actually grabbing victims from the street to sexually abuse them.

Although their voices were subdued, I could hear the conversation, and all the excuses that Verge offered for his behavior.

After a couple of close calls with police in Queens, his mother shipped him off to Florida in 1980, to live with his oldest sister. His behavior escalated there until he was finally caught and convicted, and incarcerated for nine years. When he was released, that sister sent him back home to live with the youngest sibling and her family. It was she who threw him out of the house because she had grandchildren and didn’t want Verge to be around them.

“How’s that medicine working for you?” Mike asked.

“Which one is that?”

“The one that’s supposed to make you behave.”

Verge rubbed his hands together. “I’m a good man, Mr. Detective. Mind my own business and don’t ever have bad thoughts anymore.”

“Even I have a few of ’em,” Mike said.

Verge glanced over at Mike. “What do you do when you get them?”

“What do
you
do?”

“I’m telling you I don’t get them. If I did, I’d hate myself.” Verge sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that fact.

“So how can you hang around all those kids—those teenagers in the Park?” Mike waved the photograph of Angel in front of him. “Isn’t it a great temptation to have them around you?”

Verge looked away from the picture, down at the floor, and shook his head.

“I don’t mean to hurt anybody,” he said. “I was on my own a lot as a kid, and even when I got older. Folks threw me out and wasn’t nobody that would take me in. I know what it’s like to be abused.”

Don’t start with the abuse excuse
. I really didn’t want to hear Verge say he was prompted to commit his crimes because of his own victimization.

“Do you remember spending time with this girl?” Mike asked.

“Yeah. She was in a group. She was with a bunch of other kids.”

“Did you know the name of any of them?”

“No, Mr. Detective. I’m so bad at names, like I said.”

Mike had one foot up on a chair, his arm on his knee, so he could get face-to-face with Verge Humphrey. “No offense, Verge, but you’re three times the age of these kids. Why would you be spending time with them?”

“I never growed up right is what my sister says. I’ve always been around younger people.”

“And these people in particular, what was your interest in them?”

“No interest at all. They were tomboys, weren’t they?”

“What do you mean by tomboys?” Mike asked.

I thought of the foursome in the Ravine rescued by Verge, as Jo had described them. She and her partner were gay, the male runaway was transgendered, and the dead girl was an incest victim who may have concealed her sexual identity in the uniform of a homeless kid. Maybe Verge tried to keep a lid on his attraction to pubescent girls by surrounding himself with strays who wouldn’t tempt him.

I put my BlackBerry in my pocket and walked toward the three men.

“You know what I mean. They were all kind of off, weren’t they?”

“Gay?” Mike asked.

“You’re making me uncomfortable with this talk.”

“I want to show you some photographs,” I said, approaching Verge.

I pulled up the pictures, one at a time, of the two statues from the Dalton collection. He looked at them with a blank stare and said he had no idea what they were.

Then I showed him the shot of the small ebony figure that had been found with the two others near the Lake.

“My angel!” he exclaimed, nearly tipping over his little chair. “Where’d you find her? Where’d you find my angel?”

“She was in the Park, Verge,” I said. “The police found her last week.”

“I was missing her for a while.”

“How long?”

He was having a hard time containing his childlike enthusiasm. “I’m no better at dates than at names, lady. I don’t keep a calendar.”

“Do your best, Verge.”

“Three weeks, maybe four.”

“Did you give your angel to anyone, Verge?”

He shook his head vigorously from side to side.

“Think about it really hard,” I said, grabbing the photograph of the dead girl and putting it in front of his face. “To her?”

He pushed my arm away and refused to look at the picture again.

“That would have been nice of you, Verge. Maybe you did it to protect her?”

He was too cautious to buy my suggestion. He looked at me like I had asked a trick question, and he knew enough not to volunteer an answer.

“I never gave it to anyone. It comes from my church.”

“Your church?”

“Where my family worshipped, in Seneca Village.”

“They’ve had it all that time?” I asked. “More than one hundred years?”

“No,” he said. “No, no. I took her out of the church myself. Me and another guy.”

Mercer raised his eyebrows as he looked over Verge’s head at me.

“When was that?” I asked. “And who was the other man?”

“Two, maybe three years ago. Some people were all digging up the village. I used to go there most nights. Lots of folk did.”

“What for, Verge?”

“They were digging holes in the ground. I was just curious. Then I saw them bringing stuff out sometimes. Broken dishes and things like that. Animal bones and tin cups. One night I went down into one of the ditches they dug. Saw all these tombstones and things.”

“Tombstones?” I asked.

“From the churches in the village. There are still tombstones there, all covered over by the Park,” Verge said. “That isn’t right, is it? To bury over where people were laid to rest.”

“Doesn’t sound right to me. And the angel?”

“She was just there on the ground, near the foundation of the church. The man—the other man—he was picking up things from the ditch, at night while nobody else was around. He asked me if I wanted the angel. I told him yes, and he gave it to me.”

There was always another man, someone to be blamed for a theft or a bad act. I was getting frustrated by Verge’s selective memory.