Devil's Bridge (6 page)

“That’s almost the right question,” Trebek said, “but we were looking for his actual name. And that’s Jack McCall. Who was Jack McCall? I’m sorry, gentlemen. Let’s see what you wagered.”

Mike slapped Mercer’s hand in a high-five as he clicked off the TV. “Broken Nose Jack, they called him. Shot Wild Bill in the back of the head during a poker game. A pair of aces and a pair of eights. That’s why they call it the dead man’s hand when you draw those cards. McCall was acquitted by the first jury and then retried . . .”

“Now, that’s double jeopardy,” I said. “You can’t have a second trial after an acquittal.”

“First trial was in Deadwood,” Mercer said. “When the feds heard about the acquittal, they said the trial hadn’t been a formal legal procedure because Deadwood was an illegal town in Indian Territory, so double jeopardy didn’t apply. No constitutional violation.”

“Yeah, they nailed McCall in Yankton, tried him again, and strung him up from the tallest tree,” Mike said. “You gotta love a place where the prosecution gets two bites of the apple. It would have helped your batting average a whole lot, Coop.”

I smiled and took another sip of my drink. “We don’t keep scorecards, Detective. One and done works fine for me.”

Mike led us back to the tables where everyone in the group had seated him- or herself, counting the twenty-dollar bills to split with Mercer. Vickee motioned me to an empty chair beside her. One of my favorite SVU detectives, Alan Vandomir, was on my other side.

Mercer stayed on his feet to make the first toast. “I’ve got a candidate for rookie of the year,” he said, naming the young officer who had collared Raymond Tanner. “Puts all you gold-badged first and second graders to shame. You’ve been running around town for two months without a scintilla of perp progress and—”

“We were looking for love in all the wrong places,” one of the guys shouted out.

“And now some kid gets the job done in your stead. The commissioner asked me to send you his best and to announce that the Raymond Tanner Task Force is officially disbanded.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Vandomir said.

“I just want to add,” I said, leaning on Vickee’s shoulder as I got to my feet, “that I am especially grateful to each one of you, personally, for making this work a priority.”

“We weren’t worried much, Alex,” Pug McBride said, displaying his empty glass over his head to the waiter. “Chapman had your back.”

“He’s had her back for years,” the sergeant said, reaching for one of the bottles of wine on the table. “Now he’s got a hand on better body parts than that.”

Most of the guys laughed, so there was no point in protesting.

“It’s all about Tanner tonight,” Mercer said, knowing the banter, the focus on my vulnerability, would make me uncomfortable.

“The kid cop sounds like a star,” Pug said. “If that stunt don’t buy him his gold shield, nothing will.”

“Goes to the head of the class for deceiving the devil,” Mike said. “I told the lieutenant he ought to ask for an interview with him. Grab him now before any bad habits set in. He’s my kind of cop, building the devil’s bridge.”

“I’ll bite,” Vickee said. “What is it?”

“The bridge?” Mike asked.

“There’s a Devil’s Bridge off the tip of the Vineyard,” I said. I remembered it from the days when I fished with Adam Nyman at the crack of dawn. “It’s a treacherous archipelago of boulders that strings out below the Gay Head Cliffs toward Cuttyhunk Island, under the water where the ocean meets the sound.”

The deadliest marine accident in New England’s history occurred in 1884, when a passenger steamer—the
City of Columbus
—ran aground on the shoals of Devil’s Bridge, killing more than one hundred people. I had heard the story from descendants of the dead still on the island, haunted by the tragedy that had occurred within sight of the Gay Head Lighthouse.

“Brush up on your folklore, ladies.”

“We’re about to get a touch of Brian Chapman, are we?” Pug McBride said, laying on his thickest brogue. “I miss your father every day, Mikey.”

Mike’s father, Brian, had a legendary career in the NYPD, much decorated for his heroism and his brilliant investigative work. It was his great pride that Mike pursued a college degree instead of following him onto the job, but when Brian dropped dead within forty-eight hours of turning in his gun and shield for retirement, Mike went directly from his Fordham commencement to sign up for entry in the Police Academy.

“There are devil’s bridges all over Europe,” Mike said. “Masonry arches from medieval times—in France and Spain and Italy, and of course throughout England and Ireland—each of which comes with its own version of a folktale.”

“What does it have to do with being a cop?” Vickee asked.

Mike was sitting directly across the table from Vickee. He placed his glass of vodka on the table and pointed at her with his forefinger, picking up the dialect of his County Cork roots. “So my great-aunt Bronwen—she was from Wales, as you can tell by the name—she came from a town near the great Mynach Gorge.”

“You giving us blarney, Chapman?” Pug asked. “I heard this one from your old man more times than I can count.”

“Roll with it, Pug. The ladies seem to be ignorant.”

“Welsh fairy tales?” I said. “Guilty as charged.”

“Mynach’s one of the most scenic places in the countryside, with dramatic waterfalls that drop nearly three hundred feet down the gorge. And the problem was, back in the day, there was no way to cross that gorge to get to the other side—to town, to the fields where the cows were grazing, to church—”

“We get your point.”

Mike took another slug of vodka. “So Bronwen’s great-great-great-granny made a pact with the devil. She got Satan himself to agree to build a bridge for her,” Mike said, snapping his finger with a loud click, “and to do it overnight. But he wanted something in return.”

“He always does,” Vickee said.

“Well, that time he wanted a promise that he could have the first living soul who crossed his bridge the next morning,” Mike said. “Stayed up all night getting the bridge made—you can still see it spanning the gorge today—and then he hid himself right at the end of the rock pile. Just like a rapist hiding amid the boulders in Riverside Park. Waiting for the first living soul.”

Vickee waved the back of her hand at Mike. “You forget, Detective, that the kids growing up in the projects don’t exactly know the folktales you were brought up on. Might not be the same risk/reward ratio.”

“Don’t distract me, Vickee. I’m on a high here. I’ve got everybody but Pug spellbound.”

“Heard it before, Chapman. The little old lady—aye, your auntie Bronwen herself—she deceives the devil. He builds her a beautiful bridge in the most unlikely of places—”

“And instead of giving him a living soul to ravish, the clever woman sends her dog on ahead of the beautiful young maiden,” Mike said, lifting his glass in the air. “The first living thing, only it happens to have four legs.”

“So this smart cop used the dog to roust Raymond Tanner from his hiding place,” I said.

“And like the devil, who was so enraged by the old lady’s trick that he leaped into the falls and was never seen in those parts again, the rookie has rid us of the evil Tanner.”

“Yeah, he built his own bridge to Rikers Island for the night,” Pug said as the waiter tried to get everyone’s attention to announce the dinner specials. “The devil played right into the kid’s hands.”

For the next two hours, we did what cops and prosecutors do when thrown together with good food and an excess of alcohol. We told war stories. Pug on the homicidal maniac who had paralyzed the subway for half the summer; Alan on the child molester who dressed in his mother’s clothes to lure kids into the apartment; Catherine on the guy who jumped bail fifteen years earlier only to be nabbed in Georgia by her cold case unit and charged with a dozen more rapes along I-95.

When Vickee finished her chicken piccata, she left the table to go outside to call the public information office to see whether there was any word on the Tanner arraignment.

I was still working on my orecchiette con broccoli rabe, enjoying a cool glass of pinot grigio, when Mike walked around the table and took Vickee’s seat next to me.

“You okay, Coop?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling back at Mike. “This time I think it’s just mind games, not physical threats. You’ve heard what Antonio Estevez pulled off?”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, Drew called me about it. Really slick. And sticking stuff into your document files by uploading it from another DA’s office computer? The dude’s got game.”

“Next time I see him, I’ll tell him you’re a fan.”

“At least you get a reprieve from the trial. Maybe we can figure something to do with the weekend.”

“A last Vineyard trip for the season? Give me something to look forward to.”

Mike and I were still trying to feel our way through the rhythms of a relationship. We each had apartments of our own and had spent few nights together since we’d starting dating. The irregular assignments of a homicide detective rarely synched with my litigation schedule.

“Sounds like you’ve got a full plate till then,” Mike said.

“Tomorrow I get to put my head on the block for Battaglia to chop away at.”

“Estevez?”

“You probably haven’t heard the whole story about Reverend Hal yet. I may have lots of time on my hands once the DA finishes with me.”

“The reverend don’t scare me. I got scores of snitches who’d drop a dime on him in a heartbeat. Federal tax fraud, which means city and state are bound to follow; kids out of wedlock that he supports with money from his phony church; ruining the life of an innocent prosecutor in the Twainey Bowler case ten years back, and still not paying his dues on that. Bring him on, babe, ’cause I’d like nothing better than to spit in his face.”

“Thanks. I hope whatever you spit is even half as toxic as Hal’s own venom.”

“Keep drinking, kid. It’s good for your attitude,” Mike said. “I’ve got three more midnights to work and then off for two days. You want me to drop you at home when I leave?”

“I’ll hang for a while.” I looked at my watch again. “I’m good. It’s nice to see everybody again.”

“I have to stop at the morgue to pick up the autopsy photos of yesterday’s stabbing. Lieutenant Peterson and the ME don’t see eye to eye on the nature of the wounds. I’m going to take off in a few minutes,” he said, patting my thigh under the table.

Mike was working a week of midnights. The lieutenant’s to-do list usually added a few hours to the grueling tour of duty he and his colleagues liked so much.

While he was leaning in, talking to me, Mike’s cell went off. He checked the phone number. “Let me step out and talk to the office.”

“I’ll get some fresh air with you,” I said.

Catherine looked up at me from her end of the table when she saw me stand. “I’m coming right back in,” I said to her. “Just walking Mike out to make a call.”

Vickee was a couple of feet away, coming back in our direction, hands raised over her head with double victory signs. “Spoke to my boss, gentlemen and ladies. Raymond Tanner, aka Raimondo Santini, aka Ronald Tanney, has appeared before the court and has been remanded without the possibility of bail. He’ll spend the night in leg irons and cuffs in the Men’s House of Detention before being transported tomorrow to Rikers Island.”

“That calls for another round,” Pug said. “I’m off for the next two days. Nothing would make me happier than a Tanner hangover.”

“I haven’t felt this good since the beginning of the summer,” I said, shaking off the courtroom drama of the day. “This arrest kind of puts Josie Aponte in perspective.”

“Good to hear. C’mon, Coop. I’m going out to use Vickee’s phone booth,” Mike said, referring to the patch of sidewalk in front of Primola that was a quieter spot from which to make and receive calls.

It was close to ten
P.M.
, and although Mike’s tour didn’t start till eleven thirty, he and his team were often called in early if a case was breaking.

He dialed the number and waited for Peterson to answer the phone. “Hey, Loo. What’s happening?”

Mike listened, and I just leaned against the door of the restaurant. “Where?” he asked.

Murder investigations in Manhattan were split between two elite squads. Mike worked in North Homicide, which covered the island from the tip of Spuyten Duyvil, facing the Bronx, to 59th Street, the lower border of Central Park. The South squad handled everything down to the farthest end at Battery Park.

“Deep-six the morgue photos for now, right?” Mike asked, then waited again. “Got that.”

“What is it?” I asked after he ended the call.

“Eight million stories in the naked city and none of them are pretty,” Mike said, holding the door open for me. “Got a domestic in the two-eight.”

“The victim’s dead?” I asked, turning sideways to get through the bar crowd.

“That’s why they called the homicide squad and not auto theft, Coop.”

“How’d he kill her?”

“You keep making these sexist assumptions,” Mike said. “
She
offed her main man. Her boyfriend of two years. Shot him in the back of the head when he was sleeping. Wiped out the savings under his mattress, according to his daughter, who found the body.”

The Twenty-Eighth Precinct was a largely residential area of Harlem. The current policing tactics of the commissioner and a crime-prevention strategy by the DA had brought rates of violent attacks way down, and homicides in particular had plummeted.

“So she’s waiting there to be cuffed?”

“Now, you know my job isn’t that simple, Ms. Cooper,” Mike said, grabbing his glass from the table and taking a last swig of vodka. “The vic’s body was just found an hour ago, but this seemed to have happened late last night. No telling where the perp-lady is by now.”

“The girlfriend’s your prime suspect?”

“Like I say, she’s my perp till I learn otherwise.”

“Call me later, will you?”

“No, ma’am. You get a good night’s sleep tonight. I’ll give you a wake-up call instead. Get you ready to take on the district attorney. Feed you some breakfast of champions and all that.”

“Be caref—”

“I’ve already got a mother, Coop.”

Mike said his good nights around the table, kissed Vickee good-bye, and parted from me as though he was still just a professional colleague.

He was ten feet away before he turned and doubled back. “If it helps you count sheep tonight, I’ve got a crumb for you to feed Battaglia when you see him.”

“Always useful,” I said.

Paul Battaglia kept ahead of the game by trading on inside information. Those most loyal to him dropped nuggets of facts—literally as valuable as pieces of gold—which gave him the power to strategize on policy and politics before leaks hit the tabloids or the street.

“The lieutenant says the deceased was a worshipper at the church of the Reverend Hal. Might even have been his bagman, which would account for the mattress money. Use the info with Battaglia if it helps distract him, keep you out of his sights. I’ll be going into Holy Hal’s sanctuary with a search warrant before too long.”