Zeldin stopped himself with that thought. "Sorry, I shouldn't use language like that around the three of you. You might take me seriously. They just didn't want Tormey in their mix. He knew the poetry, but he didn't love the poet quite as unequivocally as the rest of us do."
"Talk about holding a grudge," Mike said. "You guys are tough. You hear anything lately from Mr. Tormey?"
The morning papers had lowballed yesterday's shooting at the Hall of Fame. It took place in the Bronx, after all, and to crime reporters, that might as well have been Siberia. An outer-borough triple homicide might earn a paragraph in the Times and space within the first ten pages of the tabloids. But there was no reason Zeldin would have heard about this assault.
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
"So the people on this last page-the ones you've blackballed- are they all here for reasons like this?" Mercer asked.
"More or less, Detective. Some aren't really committed to serious scholarship, some can't afford the dues. Why? What did you think?"
Mercer hesitated.
"Ah, were they dangerous? Is that what you mean? You're thinking that whoever killed the woman in Greenwich Village might be one of us?" Zeldin said. "Not very likely. The closest we've ever come to an actual crime was-Phelps, are you there? When was that shooting?"
The groundskeeper reappeared and leaned on the doorframe. "Outside the main gate? It must be almost ten years now."
"What did it have to do with the society?" Mike asked.
"There was a detective with whom I'd spoken on the phone several times. I don't recall his name. He was quite interested in meeting with me."
"About the Raven Society?"
"Oh, no. I doubt he knew of its existence. Ratiocination it was. He was quite intrigued with ratiocination."
"What?" Mike asked.
"The process of deductive reasoning. Old hat to you and Mr. Wallace, perhaps, but when Poe wrote his first tale of ratiocination- 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'-the word 'detective' had not yet been used in the English language. The first professional police department in the world had only been set up in London twelve years earlier."
"What did this cop want?"
"He wanted to talk to me about Poe's detective stories, he told me. Use the archives for some research, I assumed. And I thought, in return, that it might be interesting to have him address the society, with these tales as background to the work that police detectives do today. After all, Poe's works are the first time in literature that you see some of these techniques used-postmortem examinations, ballistics discussions, locked-room mysteries."
"And there was a shooting near the gardens, you say?"
"Yes. Really dreadful. The officer claimed some kids tried to rob him right outside the main gate, on his way in to meet with me. Turned out one of them was a young fellow who had done some part-time work here on the grounds. Phelps, you remember any of the details?"
"Just like you said, sir. The boy who was killed was a pretty decent kid, according to everyone who knew him. Shot in the back, from quite a fair distance away. That's the main thing I remember."
"That's why we screen everyone who approaches the society so carefully now. The last thing we need is to attract any attention to ourselves-certainly not any scandal. I never returned the officer's calls after that. He was a damn good shot, I'll tell you that."
"Well," Mike said, standing and reaching for Zeldin's hand, "thanks for your time. We'll let you know if we need to speak with you again."
"Wouldn't you like me to arrange for you to see Poe's cottage, as long as you're so close?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," I said, at the exact moment Mike answered with a "No thanks."
"We really got some ground to cover, Coop," Mike said to me. "Another time."
Zeldin wheeled himself out to the main room. "Phelps will drive you back to your car. You just let me know when it would be convenient for you to stop by. The cottage is open five days a week, or if you'd prefer a private tour, I'll just call Mr. Guidi's office and they'll accommodate you."
Mike was as startled as I. "Guidi? Gino Guidi?"
"You know him?"
"I've heard the name," Mike said. "Investment banker-is that the one?"
"Bronx boy makes good, Mr. Chapman. That's our Gino Guidi."
30
"I didn't see his name on the list," Mike said, unfolding the copy of the Raven Society membership for a second look.
"No. You won't find it there," Zeldin said. "You probably know him from the business pages of the newspapers. He's made a fortune on Wall Street, but luckily for us he chairs the board of the Bronx Historical Society. They oversee the management of the cottage."
"He's into Poe, too?"
"Not that I'm aware of, Detective. I've met him at a few fund-raising events here at the conservatory, but we've never talked about literature."
Mike winked at me. "On second thought, what's half an hour? You wanna see the place?"
If a visit to Poe's home hadn't whetted his appetite, the Guidi connection had.
"Why don't you stop for some coffee in our cafeteria? Your car is parked right near there. The cottage isn't normally open for tours until one o'clock on weekdays. I'll make sure they send someone over to show you around. Mind you, Mr. Chapman, it's a tiny, little place-I don't imagine it would take you five minutes to walk through, even if you tried to stretch it."
Phelps dropped us in front of the Garden Café and the three of us went in to nurse a cup of coffee, chart the next few days' work, and await Zeldin's call. Fifty minutes later he rang me on my cell to say that we were expected.
At eleven-thirty, we drove away from the Botanical Gardens and headed to the intersection of the Grand Concourse and Kings-bridge Road. The eighteenth-century farms that once graced the area had given way to elegant apartment buildings in the early twentieth century, and were now replaced by grim-looking tenements whose doors and windows were covered with the roll-down metal gratings so omnipresent in Third World countries. Waves of immigrants had peopled this neighborhood on their way to more successful, suburban lives. Now all the printed signs were written in Spanish, from pepito's payayas to miguel's fritas, and watched over by a giant billboard with the beaming smile of J. Lo in her latest, tightest jeans.
Just off the Concourse, completely surrounded by wrought-iron fencing, was a small oasis about the length of two city blocks. At the far end was a round gazebo and an attractive open bandshell with eight tall columns supporting a green copper roof. Next to that was a playground, with slides and structures for kids to climb on, painted a bright scarlet, cheerful against the dull gray facade of the buildings across the way.
We left the car at a meter, next to an opening in the gate. A square city plaque labeled the landmark, with the familiar maple leaf logo of the Parks Department below the words: poe park. Beside it hung a frame with the enlarged script signature of the writer.
I walked ahead of Mike and stood on the blacktop path. I was face-to-face with a building that was a complete anachronism in the middle of this urban jungle. It was a tiny white cottage that had once stood here alone as a farmhouse. Now its simple wooden frame, slim porch, dark green shutters, and the little shed that was attached to its side looked lost in time among the asphalt and brick of the surrounding streets.
The door opened and a young woman waved to us from the top of the steps. "Welcome to Poe Cottage," she said, introducing herself as Kathleen Bailey as we approached and greeted her. "C'mon inside."
I entered directly into the first room, which was the kitchen, no bigger than ten feet square. Restored to appear as it did at the time Poe lived here, the cramped space held a cupboard and wood-burning stove, an antique wall clock, and chairs with a table set for a meal-as though we might be joined by the poet any minute.
"Make yourselves comfortable," she said, as I unzipped my jacket and unwrapped the heavy scarf that was around my neck.
Bailey began her story. "This is the house that Edgar Poe
rented in 1846, so that he could bring his wife, Virginia, here, in hopes the fresh country air would improve her health. It's actually thirteen miles north of what was considered New York City then, in the village of Fordham, and all the surrounding land was an apple orchard."
"The house was built on this spot?" Mike asked.
"At the time the house was across the street, down near the bandshell, on the far side of the avenue. It was the former police commissioner of New York-Teddy Roosevelt-who decided to preserve Poe's home and move it to this site in 1913. It was the place Poe lived in for three years, and when he died later on, in Baltimore, he was on his way back here to this cottage."
I ducked my head and followed Kathleen Bailey to the next room, slightly larger and a bit more formal. It had a great hearth, bordered in a colonial blue paint, with a gilded mirror hanging beside the window and a rocking chair in front of the fireplace. Against the wall was a small desk with two candles on top of it along with an open book.
"This is obviously the parlor, and the room in which Poe worked."
"Do you know what he wrote while he lived here?" I asked.
"Many of the things, yes," she said. "I suppose you know that Virginia died here, quite tragically, within the first year after they arrived."
Mike whispered in my ear, "She would have been better off in a pediatric hospital."
Mercer asked Bailey, "How old was she?"
"Only twenty-five. Pulmonary consumption is what they called it then. Tuberculosis. Some of Poe's most famous poems were crafted at that very desk in front of you-'Annabel Lee,' 'Ulalume,' 'The Bells.'"
I thought of these familiar rhymes, each portraying themes of a man's enduring love for a woman who had died.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea…
The wind came out of a cloud, chilling and
Killing my Annabel Lee.
"And this," she said, stepping back so I could look over the half-door that opened into a tiny room that held only a single bed, with a small round table and chair beside it, "this is actually the bedroom in which Virginia died."
Stark and almost bare, the room was smaller than any jail cell I had ever seen. It was depressing to contemplate the last days of Virginia's young life, and far easier to understand the great melancholy that enveloped the poet while she lay dying.
"There's not even a fireplace," I said. "How could she have possibly made it through the winter in here?"
"There are letters from friends who visited the Poes during those months. Edgar used to wrap her in his coat under the thin coverlet and sheets. The bitter cold certainly must have hastened her death."
Behind me, in a corner, was a duplicate of the bronze bust of Poe that stood in the Hall of Fame. Mike pointed to a scroll on the wall next to the statue that listed the names of the Bronx natives who supported the preservation of the cottage. Gino Guidi's was at the top in bold letters. There were only several others I recognized who had achieved prominence beyond the neighborhood: from fashionistas like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein to leaders of the bench and bar, like Justin Feldman, Roger Hayes, and the Roberts brothers-George and Burton.
Opposite the half-door was a very narrow staircase that wound up to the second floor.
"You'll have to go up one at a time," Bailey said. "Three of you won't fit there."
I ascended first, to see two more little rooms-one in which Poe slept when he wasn't keeping vigil by his bride's bed, and the other in which Virginia's mother lived, first with the couple, and then after both had died. These quarters had low, sloping ceilings and only the light from an eyebrow window that looked out to the park. I held on to the railing and backed down the stairs. Mike and Mercer were waiting at the front door, and I walked toward them behind our knowledgeable guide.
"So despite his success," I asked Bailey, "they were still quite poor, weren't they?"
"Desperately poor," she said. "There's a letter he wrote to a friend in which he complained of living in such dreadful poverty here that he had no money for shoes or-"
Her words were cut short by a bloodcurdling scream that seemed to come from the far end of the park.
"Help me! Help!" I heard. The voice sounded like that of a child or adolescent.
Mike and Mercer stepped outside and Kathleen Bailey was down the steps immediately behind them, running toward the playground, where four or five people were gathering at the scene of the commotion. I stopped on the porch for a few seconds, debating whether or not to leave the cottage open and unguarded.
Passersby clustered on the sidewalk, some moving in the same direction as Mike and Mercer, while others withdrew with their children, disappearing down the side streets.
I walked several more steps down the path and fixed myself at the gate, so that I could keep one eye on the house while watching the melee, still available if the guys wanted my help.
Suddenly, before Mercer got to the playground, I saw an older kid dash from behind the swings, race around the bandshell, and cut out across Kingsbridge Road into the traffic.
"Get him!" the voice screamed again.
I stood on my tiptoes to see whether Mike and Mercer had reached the small crowd at the far end of the park. It was too late for me to turn and look when I finally heard the noise behind me. Everything went black as I felt a crushing blow against the back of my head.
31
The pain was so intense that when I regained consciousness, I couldn't bear to open my eyes. I tried to inhale and give air to my aching brain, but there was something in my mouth that I gagged on as soon as I drew breath.
My pain was dwarfed by fear. I was in a box, smaller than a coffin. I didn't need to look. I could feel the wooden boards beneath my back, close to my arms on each side, and knew there was not enough space above me to allow me to pick up my head.
Panic prevented me from doing what I needed to do most- regulate my breathing and conserve whatever oxygen there was available.
Slowly, I opened one eye. A sharp pang sliced across my forehead, forging little lightning streaks in my line of sight. There was a board above me-several boards-and between them were slats through which the gray daylight filtered in.
I wasn't underground. I wasn't buried in the earth. I tried to eliminate those two horrors that had frightened me the most.
I sniffed the air as I breathed in. The odor was dank and moist and the wood beneath me was wet and cold.
I closed my eyes again and watched as the lightning streaks dissolved into yellowish blobs that floated back and forth across my eyelids.
Ordinary street noises seemed close by. Automobile traffic and honking horns, then police sirens too far away to be useful to me. I could hear voices of women-a group of women-speaking in Spanish but walking away from whatever sidewalk was near my temporary coffin.
Voices again. This time it sounded like men, coming from the opposite direction. It was Mercer Wallace, calling my name, opening and closing doors as he did. I must still be somewhere within Poe Cottage.
Surely he and Mike would think of the poet's bizarre tales of premature burial, one of which had launched us on this hunt for a killer. The "dull, quick sound" of my own heart beating-like that of the telltale one-seemed deafening to me. Surely they would figure to look everywhere for me before leaving and locking up the sad little house. How did Poe describe that telltale noise that haunted the murderer? Like the "sound a watch makes when enveloped in cotton."
Voices came closer, and footsteps on pavement, too. I was on my back; my arms had been folded behind me and loosely restrained-probably with my woolen scarf-my hands beneath my thighs. The walls of my confinement restricted me, and I couldn't free my hands, which were tingling from the lack of circulation. I moved my right leg to try to bring my knee up to knock against the floorboard above me. But the space was tight and I could only lift it an inch or two. It rubbed against the wood but made no noise.
The pounding on the back of my brain was intens
e. My neck strained as I raised my head, knocking the crown of it against the boards. My hair cushioned the contact and it seemed to me even less audible than my heartbeat.
"What's in here?"
It was Mike's voice, and I almost laughed with relief at how ridiculous I had been to panic with my two friends only yards away.
"Just the root cellar," Kathleen Bailey answered. "Nothing."
Of course I had noticed the slanted roof of the small addition that was off to the right of the cottage entrance. It had a door that faced the rear street, where we had circled around before parking the car. It seemed no larger than a dollhouse. No wonder there were boards on either side of me, too. They supported the uneven flooring as the ground beneath sloped down the short incline.
I saw more light as a door opened above me and to the side. I grunted and groaned against my gag but the sound was too muffled and the voices of Mike and Kathleen masked my own weak effort to be heard. Whoever had opened the door and looked in for a brief moment had closed it again and turned the latch.
"She's just dumb enough to have taken off after that kid if she saw him running out of the park," Mike said. "Let me talk to the guy in the RMP and see if they have her at the station house."
The sets of footsteps walked away, with Mike going to ask the cops in the radio motor patrol car if they could phone in to locate me.
"I thought she was coming out of the cottage right behind me," Bailey said. "She might have just dashed out the gate. I-I just didn't see."
Mercer's deep voice was still in range, calling after Mike, "Alex may swim fast, but I wouldn't bet on her in a sprint through the side streets. It's not like her to take off on a footrace like that."
Don't leave me, Mercer, I prayed silently. How ironic that this was like Poe's classic, the officers standing right over the buried body, chatting pleasantly, making a mockery of my horror but hearing nothing.
I writhed and wriggled in my box. The noise of my clothes rustling against the old boards as I moved sounded as loud as thunder to me. Why couldn't anyone outside hear it? I gnawed on the gag, but quickly grew dizzy from the shortness of breath. I urged myself to lie still until someone returned to the cellar door. I urged myself to believe that someone would.
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