“Your hand’s going to atrophy hanging out there like that,” Mercer said. “Right now, it’s evidence in a murder case.”
“What is it?” Mike asked.
“The Bay Psalm Book,” Hunt said, looking at all of us with disdain for our obvious ignorance. “This was the first book printed in North America, in 1640. Open it carefully, Detective. It will have my grandfather’s name inside. ‘Ex Libris, Jasper Hunt Jr.’”
Mercer didn’t move.
“There weren’t a dozen copies that have survived over the centuries, gentlemen. Jasper’s wife had one bound this way when their first son was born. My grandfather treasured it,” she said. “Kept it by his bedside every night until shortly before he died. It’s part of the Hunt Collection at the New York Public Library now.”
Mike crossed his arms and whistled. “Guess I ought to renew my library card. Never saw anything close in my bookmobile.”
“It hasn’t been out of that building in almost forty years. Look at it, will you?”
Mercer placed his pinky on the lower corner of the book and gently lifted the cover.
Minerva Hunt stared at the bookplate and sneered.
EX LIBRIS TALBOT HUNT was written on the cream-colored label, decorated with a heraldic coat-of-arms poised above a globe.
“From the library of Talbot Hunt, my ass,” Minerva said, shaking a finger at Mercer.
“Is Talbot related to you?”
“He’s my brother, Mike. He’s the kind of man who would kill for a book like this.”
EIGHT
“You believe Carmine Rizzali’s got a gig like that?” Mike asked. “His own PI firm, doing security details for the rich and famous. Driving Miss Minerva, maybe even stopping in for dessert. Twenty years on the job, the guy couldn’t find a Jamaican on Jamaica Boulevard.”
Mike, Mercer, and I had walked Minerva Hunt out of the squad building and turned her over to the ex-cop who guarded her. We drove down Second Avenue for a midnight supper at Primola, one of our favorite restaurants in the East Sixties, not far from my home.
Giuliano, the owner of the upscale eatery, bought us a round of drinks as we waited for Adolfo, the maître d’, to take our order before the kitchen closed.
“Carmine looks like he’s enjoying the ride as much as Ms. Hunt,” Mercer said. “What did you get out of Battaglia, Alex?”
“Don’t you remember, Mercer? I give, Battaglia gets. I called to tell him what happened, so he wants me in his office first thing in the morning.”
“Was he surprised?”
“Seemed to be when I told him about the murder. Asked for all the details.”
“Did he react when he heard Minerva Hunt’s name?”
“Didn’t skip a beat.” I swirled the ice cubes around in the golden brown scotch before taking a long sip.
“Signorina,” Adolfo said, “the chef will do anything you’d like.”
“Just some soup.”
Murder had never been known to have an impact on Mike Chapman’s appetite. “Let me start with pasta. Rigatoni-then throw whatever’s left in the kitchen on top of it. Chicken parmigiana after that. And back up my vodka before Fenton falls asleep,” Mike said, pointing at the bartender. “Mercer?”
“Soup and a salad. That’s it for me.” He tasted his favorite red wine. “You think it’s a coincidence that Karla Vastasi was dressed just like her boss?”
“It’s possible,” Mike said, gnawing on a breadstick.
“Minerva Hunt sucked you in completely,” I said. “The way you were playing with her, I felt like a third wheel.”
“Sometimes you are, Coop. I was just trying to keep her loose till we sort out the facts.”
“Any looser and she’d have been on your lap. I’m with you, Mercer. The bit with the clothes is too much of a fluke to be unplanned.”
“Karla was dressed for success,” Mike said. “Just happened to be Minerva’s hand-me-downs.”
“The same exact shoes-flat grosgrain bow and brass hardware on the front. It’s a classic style, and the ones Karla was wearing weren’t even scuffed,” I said. “That black suit isn’t the least bit outdated. I’ll bet it’s exactly the same one that Minerva had on.”
“So we need to find out whether she bought that monogrammed tote herself,” Mercer said. “If it wasn’t a gift like she claimed, I’m thinking Karla was the canary in the coal mine, sent there to see if it was safe before Minvera went in herself.”
Mercer and I were on the same page. Maybe Hunt was supposed to meet someone in Tina Barr’s apartment earlier in the day. Maybe there was a dangerous purpose to the rendezvous, and she had sent her unwitting servant inside to keep the appointment.
“Very hot plate, Alessandra,” Adolfo said, setting the soup bowl in front of me.
“I suppose we’ll find out if that little bejeweled book is very hot, too,” Mike said. “Maybe it’s stolen and someone was trying to scam Minerva, tempt her to buy it back. I think I see a date with a librarian in my future.”
“Battaglia will be our matchmaker for that,” I said. There would be no overture to a major New York institution before he greased the wheels at the very highest levels. No point any of us going in through the back door when he could command the attention of the top dogs.
“Well, whoever committed the murder didn’t exactly come to the scene armed. Someone can make a good case that it wasn’t premeditated,” Mike said. “Never seen a garden ornament as a murder weapon before.”
“An armillary sphere.”
“It wasn’t a spear, Coop. Didn’t you see it? Her head was cratered by that big brass-and-iron thing, weighs a ton.”
“Sphere. I didn’t say spear. Probably a Hunt antique,” I said. “They were used centuries ago by astronomers, before telescopes.”
Mike’s cell phone vibrated on the table. He looked at the caller ID on the display and answered with a mouthful of pasta. “Excuse me, Mom. We’re just having our supper. No, no, no. I can’t talk about it now, ’cause I don’t want you to have any bad dreams. I’ll call you tomorrow. Yeah, I’ll say hello for you. Just tell me the question, okay?”
His widowed mother lived in a small condo in Bay Ridge, next door to one of his three sisters. Mike’s father, Brian, had been a legend in the NYPD-honored for his bravery on countless occasions, and enormously proud that his only son had shown such academic promise. He retired from the department while Mike was at Fordham, but died of a massive coronary two days after handing in his gun and shield. No one who knew Brian and how much his son admired him was surprised when Mike enrolled in the academy the day he got his college diploma.
“’Night, Ma. Talk to you tomorrow,” Mike said, putting down the phone. “The Final Jeopardy category is ‘Steel Wheels,’ got it?”
“Now, when did you have time to set this up?” Mercer said, laughing.
“I called her when we were in front of Barr’s house. I figured we might be outside there for hours. Didn’t want to miss my chance to make a score off Blondie. Pony up the money.”
Mike’s fondness for trivia was the other habit that rarely took a back seat to homicide. He liked to bet on the last Jeopardy! question of the night and found a way to be in front of the television whether in the squad room, the morgue, or a neighborhood pub.
“I’m glad you showed a little respect for Karla Vastasi tonight,” I said, smiling at him. “I was touched by your restraint when we were in the kitchen, even though it was showtime.”
“I like it when I please you, kid, but in all honesty, I didn’t see a TV there, did you?”
“Twenty bucks for the winning question,” Mercer said.
“I’m in,” I said.
“Double or nothing.”
“Well, damn, man. Seems to me you’ve heard the answer. And your enthusiasm suggests you’ve already got a good guess tucked away. So I’m holding at twenty,” Mercer said.
“Picture your boyfriend Trebek reading the answer, Coop. ‘Steel Wheels’ it is. Fastest speed a
t which New York City subway trains are designed to run.”
I held up my empty glass to signal to Fenton that I wanted a refill while I stalled. “What is…?”
“It helps if you ride underground every now and then, even though you act like you’re allergic to public transportation.” Mike hummed the Jeopardy! music to time me out. “Hurry it up.”
“What is forty-five miles an hour?” Mercer asked.
“Not a bad guess, Mr. Wallace, but not the right one. Don’t be thinking of that City Hall station, Coop. You got big curves like that and grade, the steel wheels go much slower.”
“Thanks for the reminder. An afternoon with you two on that platform was enough to keep me in taxis for a lifetime. I’m going with thirty-five.”
“And once again, you would be wrong, ma’am. What is fifty-five miles per hour, folks? I’ll trust you to pay up after we eat. It’s a speed rarely reached because it requires long, uninterrupted acceleration, but that’s what they’re made to do. My pop used to ride me up front on the trains when I was a kid. Loved all that stuff. No subways in the suburbs, kid. That’s one of your problems.”
My privileged upbringing in Westchester County, along with my education at Wellesley College and the University of Virginia School of Law, had been made possible by the loving encouragement of my mother and father, Maude and Benjamin Cooper. In addition to her long legs and green eyes, I’d inherited a fraction of the extraordinary compassion Maude exhibited as a nurse. My father and his partner’s great contribution to cardiac surgery-a small plastic invention called the Cooper-Hoffman valve-had endowed me with more tangible assets. Despite the enormous differences in our backgrounds, I had never made better friends than Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace.
“Fortunately,” I said, “it’s way too late tonight to ask what you think my other problems are.”
I pushed the soup bowl away and concentrated on my scotch. The image of Karla Vastasi’s crushed head would be with me all through the night.
“There’ll be no more picking on you for now,” Mercer said. “Soon as Mike finishes his dinner, I’ll drop you at home.”
My feelings about Mike had grown more complicated over time. His teasing and humor got me through the worst situations imaginable-some devastatingly traumatic to witness, like the one this evening, and others actually life-threatening moments in which he and I had faced off against deranged killers. Occasionally I questioned whether my concern for maintaining our productive professional relationship stopped me from exploring the attraction I felt for him.
“I’ve got the autopsy in the morning,” Mike said. It was part of his duties to attend the medical examiner’s procedure. “You’ll call me when you finish up with Battaglia?”
“Will do,” I said, getting up from the table.
“I hope they’ve got good insurance at the morgue,” Mike said, taking a last slug of his drink. “Between that murder weapon and the little psalm book, there’s enough burglary bait there to tempt the dead.”
NINE
I was surprised to hear voices when I approached the door to Battaglia’s suite. I had assumed that I would beat him to his office, even though he told me to be there at eight a.m. Rose Malone wasn’t at her desk yet, so I turned the corner to present myself.
The district attorney stopped midsentence, a cigar gripped between the knuckles of two fingers. “C’mon in, Alexandra. Figure out how to get that damn coffeepot working and then we’ll get started. Jill, I’d like you to meet Alex Cooper.”
“Hello, Alex. I’m Jill Gibson.”
I walked behind the conference table at which the pair were seated, measured the coffee, and started the machine, reminded of how much Rose had spoiled Battaglia.
“Good to meet you,” Jill said.
The tabloids were spread out in front of Battaglia. I had picked up copies on my way downtown and seen that the item about Karla Vastasi’s murder was buried in a single paragraph near the end of the news section. The difference in status between the housekeeper and the heiress had put this story on the back burner and given us breathing room to work on the case without a media frenzy.
“Jill’s an old friend, Alex. Came here two years ago from Yale, where she ran the Beinecke Rare Books Library,” he said. “She’s the deputy chief executive at our NYPL now-the number three job-and the first woman in that position.”
“That’s impressive.”
There was a quiet elegance about Jill Gibson. She was probably in her mid-fifties, with frosted hair and an easy smile.
“I want you to describe what happened last night,” Battaglia said, planting the unlit cigar in his mouth. “It’s okay, Alex. I’ve already told Jill the little I know.”
The DA had caught my momentary hesitation. It was unlike him to debrief me about a pending case in the presence of an outsider. It was clear that Jill Gibson had his confidence and might even be the person who alerted him to the situation earlier in the week about Tina Barr.
I described the events from the time Mercer, Mike, and I had arrived uptown to wait for Barr to get home. Battaglia double-tasked, making notes in the margin of a wiretap application that one of my colleagues from the Frauds Bureau had submitted for his signature. He didn’t look up until I mentioned Minerva Hunt’s name.
Then he asked Jill, “Do you know Minerva?”
“No, I don’t. I’ve seen her around from time to time, but we’ve never been introduced.”
“She’s not involved with the library?”
“Not in any major way. Her father’s still on the board, and she’s called in occasionally on matters that concern him. He was chair at one time, as you probably know. Jasper Hunt the Third. A hugely powerful force there for quite a while, in the 1980s and ’90s. And Tally, her brother, is also on the board. From what I understand, Minerva has other interests.”
The super rich have plenty of avenues for charitable giving, whether for causes about which they are passionate or for structuring the tax benefits of their estates. Art, ancient or avant-garde; dance, classical or modern; museums, paintings or extinct animals, cultures or ethnic heritage; and poverty, local or global, are among the competing enterprises that attract major donors.
“I think she’s disease,” Battaglia said, pointing at the coffeepot. “Used to be ballet, but I’m pretty sure Minerva Hunt is running the capital campaign for one of the hospitals.”
Naming opportunities at medical centers for pavilions and wings and research facilities were fast becoming ways for baby boomers to insure a jump to the head of the line when a family member needed a heart transplant or an experimental drug for an aggressive illness.
“Ms. Hunt told me her father was very ill,” I said. “Do you know what’s wrong?”
“He’s a recluse,” Gibson said. “Old and frail. That’s what I’ve been told.”
“I haven’t seen Jasper Hunt out and about for the better part of two years now,” Battaglia said, putting down the sheaf of papers. “Go back to the murder scene. Tell me exactly what went on. How did Minerva react when she arrived?”
I took Battaglia through the details of the entire evening, including the way Karla Vastasi and Minerva Hunt were dressed. I described the conversation at the squad with Mike and Mercer as I got up to pour coffee for the three of us.
There was only one thing I left out of the conversation. I didn’t mention the Bay Psalm Book. I didn’t know Jill Gibson or the reason the district attorney trusted her enough to include her in this meeting. The little jeweled treasure was a crucial piece of evidence, and I needed to figure out its connection to the institution where Gibson worked before I leaked its existence.
“Does Chapman have a hunch?” Mike had made arrests in some of the most high-profile murder cases in Manhattan, and Battaglia respected his unerring street sense.
“Nothing he was ready to let me in on, Paul. There was some discussion with Minerva about things that might have been in the apartment. I know Mike vouchered some property to be analyze
d at the lab. At least one book, I’m pretty sure.”
Jill Gibson seemed more interested in that fact than did Battaglia.
“But no sign of the young woman who lived there?” he asked.
“Nothing. She’s a librarian, Jill. Her name is Tina Barr. I thought perhaps you might know her,” I said.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” she said, seemingly uninterested in the missing girl. “What kind of books did the detectives find?”
This was a no-win situation for me. If I withheld information that Battaglia wanted Jill Gibson to know, he would be furious with me. But if I disclosed something that was not going to be made public at this point in time, who knew what Gibson would do with the information?
“Is there an actual Hunt collection at the library?” I asked. “I heard Mike say it had something to do with that.”
Jill Gibson pulled her chair up to the table. “Their family helped establish the library, Alex, more than a century ago. The collection they’ve amassed is enormously valuable. We make it a practice not to do anything to disturb the Hunts,” she said, making her point to Battaglia.
“Well, I’m certainly going to have to meet with each of them,” I said.
“We’ll talk about that after Jill leaves, Alex. She and I have had a couple of meetings in the last two weeks about some problems they’ve been experiencing at the library. It may be that this case isn’t an isolated event.”
Now Battaglia had my complete attention. “What kind of problems?”
“Do you know the library?” Jill asked.
“I think it’s the most magnificent building in New York City,” I said, refilling our mugs. The Carrère and Hastings Beaux Art masterpiece, with its massive triple-arched portico, dominated Fifth Avenue at the corner of Forty-second Street.
“You’ve spent time there?”
“I majored in English literature when I was at college. I was fortunate enough to be admitted for a month between semesters to do research for my senior thesis.”
“You might want to know why the Hunts are so important to us, Alex. Why we try to tiptoe around them, keep them out of the headlines,” Jill Gibson said. “I’d also be happy to give you private access to their collection. It’s got some extraordinary pieces.”
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