"I have this tendency, you see, to sit here at my writing table, absorbed in my work no matter what kind of commotion is going on around me or outside on the street. It's a trait that has served me quite well in my career. And when I'm here at home, I've always got music playing. Sometimes a bit too loud, but then these old buildings were really built solid. They absorb the noise pretty well. Every now and then," Lavery said with a slight grin "after a particularly booming crescendo, my friend Lola would bang on the pipes that ran up through her living room into mine.
"But the day she died," he said, somber again, "I can't say I heard anything at all."
"How well did you know Ms. Dakota?"
"Quite well, both professionally and socially. We were in different disciplines, of course, but she was a bit of a maverick, as I am and she was interested in my approach to the urban drug problem Away from the school, we spent some time together, too."
"Did you ever date?"
"Nothing like that. But we could sit up till the middle of the night, arguing about solutions for the homeless or the mentally ill. There was no off switch to Lola. She was always thinking and working and doing."
"Had you seen much of her in the days before her death?"
He took a long time to answer. "I have become so engulfed in my own legal entanglements, unfortunately, that I've tended to push most of my friends out of the way. I'm trying to recall the last time Lola and I had a good, long go-at-it together."
"How about a short one? How about a sighting?"
"I know I saw her the week of Thanksgiving. I remember coming in with a lot of groceries and stopping by to talk with her for a while on my way upstairs. Have a drink. Then she was off to her sister's home, and-I simply can't summon up any other time that I saw her."
Was he lying to us, or had Bart Frankel been mistaken when he told us he had left Lola at the door because she saw Lavery going into the building?
Chapman had nothing to lose at this point. "The day she died, like half an hour before she was killed, did you happen to run into her, right at the front door of the building?"
Lavery was biting the inside of his cheek, looking perplexed. "I may have gone down to the lobby once in the afternoon to get the mail, but after I came back from my errand that morning I'm absolutely certain I never went back outside. Where would you have heard something like that?"
"How do you know Bart Frankel?"
"He was in charge of her case, Ms. Cooper. He had come to the apartment once or twice to bring Lola papers to sign. I think that's what she told me. And to help prepare her for their plan to build the case against her husband, Mr. Kerlovic."
"Kralovic."
"I didn't know the man. I'm not really sure what his name was. One time, I ran into Lola with Bart Frankel at a restaurant in the neighborhood. I guess she had come to rely on him in these last difficult weeks."
"How come you called Bart last night and asked him to meet with you?"
Now he was growing more wary. "Well, Detective, either Bart told you the answer to that question when he asked you to come here, or you've pulled one over on me." He walked to his desk and picked up the receiver, looking at a number on the piece of paper next to the phone. "Shall I just call him and clear this up?"
Mike stood up, too. "No, but Bart did tell us he saw you walk into this building, holding the door open for Lola, about half an hour before she was killed."
"And I'm telling you that statement is not true, Mr. Chapman." Lavery started to dial.
"We'll have to resolve this some other way, Mr. Lavery. All you're gonna get is a machine. Or maybe one of Bart's kids. He's in the hospital. His car ran off the road this morning on his way here to see you."
Lavery replaced the receiver. "Was he hurt badly?"
"Probably won't make it."
The professor winced and sat down at his desk.
"You wanna explain to us why you called him to come talk to you? Tell us what you were planning on telling him?"
He looked up at Chapman to answer. "I didn't have anything to say to him."
"But you called him. Even his daughter can confirm that."
"I got back from my trip last night and among the messages on my answering machine was one to call Bart Frankel. He reminded me what his connection to Lola had been, and he left his home phone number in New Jersey."
By the end of next week, telephone records might again resolve the issue for us, but at the moment I did not know whether to believe him.
"Did he say what he wanted?"
I sensed that Lavery thought he had regained the upper hand His tone was cool once more, and almost arrogant as he talked to us. "Not at all. Just that he needed to see me. I assumed it was about Lola's case."
"He was taken off that investigation. He's-"
"And I've been out of the country, Detective. Staying at a beach house in the islands with no television and with newspapers that arrived about three days after they hit the stands in Miami. So I don't have the faintest idea what's been going on up here. Why was he taken off the case? Would you like to bring me up-to-date?"
Mike ignored his question. "Did Lola talk to you about the Blackwells project?"
"Of course she did. It had consumed her these past few months. We're a relatively small faculty, Detective, compared to those at large universities like Harvard and Yale. I'd had my enemies when I first came over to King's, but we've generally tried to work it out among ourselves. When I was hired, the head of the anthropology department didn't want me working under his watch."
"Winston Shreve?"
"Precisely. But then Lola went to work on Shreve, on my behalf. I wouldn't say he's my close friend, but he accepted me within his division and has been rather kind to me lately, with all the troubles I've had. And Grenier, he's in charge of the biology division. He was a bit more anxious to have me.
"Now, if you're spending any time with those three-Dakota, Shreve, and Grenier-you can be sure the subject of Blackwells will come up," he said. "That's what they've spent most of their time working on for the better part of the year. And Lockhart. I'd say he's their fourth Musketeer."
"Have you had anything to do with the project yourself?"
"I live in the present, Ms. Cooper. Oh, they talk to me about what they're doing, and they ask me plenty of questions about it."
"Like what?"
"I think when Lola first found out about the drug trade in the old penitentiary, three-quarters of a century ago, she was amazed at the scale of the problem. But it was quite a famous scandal, and of course, I'm familiar with the history of the drug culture in this city. So I was able to explain to her what the drugs of choice were in those days and how widespread the narcotics business was- even inside American penal institutions."
"And Grenier, what was his relationship with Lola?"
"I bet you've had a hard time getting him to come to the table, haven't you?" Lavery wasn't wrong. I was hoping that by Monday We would have word from Sylvia Foote that the biology professor was back and available to us.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because Thomas Grenier is a selfish son of a bitch and it would be quite out of character if he was any use in a matter like this."
"We've been told that Grenier was actually willing to bring you into his department, when Shreve and the others weren't all that interested in having you in anthropology."
"That's true, Detective. But not because he had any belief in what I was doing. He saw it as a business proposition. It put dollar signs in front of his eyes, not mortarboards."
Both Mike and I were lost. "I never knew that money was so much of an issue in academia," I said.
"Then I would guess that you've never met Thomas Grenier. And you have no idea what the Internet has done to the college campus. Not in the classroom alone, but as universities have tried to cash in on the commercial market."
"Would you mind telling us what you mean?"
"It used to be, Ms. Cooper, that the idea of an academic
making money from his research was not acceptable at any university. I'm not talking about my situation, if that's what you're thinking. There has always been a perception that we scholars are outside the marketplace, and we've long benefited from that. We've been giving away our knowledge for generations. Now many of the large institutions are looking to get a fair return on their intellectual capital. Turn it into financial capital, like the rest of the world."
"And the Internet?"
"It's a gold mine. It provides a much larger payback, and a much faster one, too. There's a lot of competition in the dot-com community, and administrators everywhere are trying to foster various opportunities to let faculty members increase their income-through the expanded use of their research-and let the universities themselves share in the bounty. That's the big score. I'm surprised you haven't read about this. Front page of The Times a short while ago. Grenier was a key player."
"I just do the sports page, comics, horoscope, and 'Dear Abby.' Tell me about it."
"Columbia University has sort of led the field in this business. The vice provost there has promoted the efforts of some of his professors to joint-venture with Internet start-ups. They've partnered with an on-line company to do a human nutrition study. And made money by mating with that junk-bond character, Michael Milken, in a curriculum of serious college courses. They've already made millions from that."
"What's the flap?"
"Well, under the old rules, Mr. Chapman, we professors owned the rights to any books and articles that were published. The institution itself owned the patents from our research, and we were lucky to get a quarter of the revenue. Columbia started a new policy last year. It allows the university to retain rights to Internet projects that are supported by Columbia's funds or make substantial use of its labor, but professors can get a greater share in the revenue."
"And Grenier's role?"
"A lot of these Internet companies with a significant amount of venture capital have been sniffing around the campuses. Biology is one of the fields in which they figure they can buy a lot of research rather cheaply. And turn it into gold. Grenier was sort of pushed out of the department at Columbia. Couldn't get along with some of the favorites there. A bit too heavy-handed. He came here and is trying to get the same kind of interest revved up on the King's College campus.
"These biotech companies are all looking for major drug studies. Think of the return on an investment when you have some brilliant graduate student, not costing you a dime in salary, toiling over his laboratory test tubes all day. Guided by a professor whose income is just a fraction of what the corporate executives make."
"What's the problem?"
"A major conflict with the new president here, Paolo Recantati. He'd like to have firmer control over decisions on what type of research the college should support. He's a purist. He thinks there can be terrible fallout when the faculty or the college has a stake in the financial result of its work."
"Did Lola and Thomas Grenier get along?"
"Until she found out that he was trying to use me. That he had not been very candid about why he was interested in me. It turned out not to be for the reasons he expressed to the administration."
Long-term studies of health problems connected to substance abuse, if I remembered what Sylvia Foote had told us. Lavery chuckled. "Lola turned on Grenier like a rattlesnake on its prey. Ready to strike in a flash. If he said something was black, Lola said it was white. You know what I mean, I'm sure."
"When was that?"
"Early this fall, a few months back."
"What is it he really wanted from you?"
Lavery laughed more heartily. "What do you know about Viagra, Detective?"
"Not enough."
"Viagra's main ingredient comes from the poppy. The same seedpod that brings you opium and heroin. It works by increasing the blood flow directly to the penis. But it's had some disastrous side effects, as you're probably aware. It doesn't mix well with other medications.
"So a lot of pharmaceutical companies have been searching for a better fix, a healthier solution to an age-old problem. And nobody on the faculty knows the poppy as well as I do, in the professional sense. Grenier had made a deal with one of the large drug companies to lead the research team. He simply neglected to cut me in on any of the potential profit."
"Did you two have a falling-out?"
"We didn't come to blows with each other, but it hasn't been pretty. I don't like being taken advantage of."
"Where did Lola stand in this?"
"With me, Detective. I can't say she has any personal regard for Grenier."
"But they still worked together on the Blackwells business?"
"I'm not sure the sandbox was big enough for both of them, but she tried to make do."
"Did you know about the legend of Freeland Jennings's diamonds?"
Lavery pushed away from the desk and laughed again. "Of course I did. That's one of the things Lola and I used to argue about late into the night. Do this dig for whatever historical purposes interest you, I used to tell her. There's a lot of sorry history of this city on that island-a storehouse of human misery. But don't be wasting your energy on some far-fetched tale that may not even have been true."
"Is that what kept Thomas Grenier and Lola Dakota together?"
"Don't be ridiculous. The man is a scientist. He thought that Lola was foolish to have believed the diamonds were still in the ground. His interest in the island is strictly scientific."
"What's in it for him?"
"Grenier again expects to profit from the work the students will be doing when they study the Smallpox Hospital. There's enormous debate in the field of medical ethics about whether or not the smallpox virus should be completely eradicated when the disease is conquered worldwide. Since you need the actual virus to make the vaccine, does one save a small amount of it against the day that some form of the pox reappears in the world? And who is the keeper of the deadly virus? Whom do we trust not to engage in germ warfare?"
"And obviously, some biotech company would support this project, hoping that a study of all the plagues treated on Black-wells Island a century ago would be useful to scientists making determinations about the future," I reasoned.
"Exactly. It's hard to think of any other finite stretch of land, isolated from the population, which institutionalized, treated, and buried so many of society's untouchables. That's why Grenier loves it there."
"Does this venture of his have a name?"
Lavery paused for a few moments and then shook his head. "I should know it, but it's not coming to me right now. You'll have to ask him yourself. Some fairly gruesome pox-related thing. Lola used to joke and call it deadhouse dot com."
"Deadhouse?"
"That's how Lola referred to the island."
"Do you know why?" It appeared that the phrase was not as mysterious as it had seemed when we first encountered the word on a piece of paper in her apartment.
"You know that a lot of the interns who worked on the project refused to be involved with the plans at that old smallpox hospital? They're enthralled with the insane asylum and the penitentiary, but that abandoned hospital spooks the best of them. Many of those who aren't science majors believe that they might dig up things that are still germ infested, that contagion lurks even now in some of the objects that were buried a century ago. They simply don't want anything to do with all that deadly history."
"Did you ever go with her to Blackwells-I mean, to Roosevelt Island?"
"Only three or four times. She walked me through the area they call the Octagon, with that magnificent staircase. And of course we had to see the remains of the hospital. I'd always wondered what it was, from this side of the water."
"Would you mind, Professor, if I asked you about the accusations concerning the misappropriation of the grant money?" It seemed unusual that Lola would be such an advocate for Lavery, under the circumstances that Sylvia Foote had described.
His mood changed again
and he stiffened. "I have an attorney, Ms. Cooper, and I've been instructed not to discuss this matter with anyone out of his presence."
Chapman veered off in another direction. "You know anything about this kid Julian Gariano? The one who hanged himself last weekend?"
It was hard to discern whether Lavery had a good poker face or truly had never crossed paths with the campus drug dealer. "Gariano? The name doesn't sound familiar to me. Was he a King's student? It must have happened after I left for the Caribbean."
"One more thing, Professor. There's a young woman who was a junior at the college last year. I don't believe she was in any of your classes, but I understand she had a problem with drugs, and I thought perhaps you might have heard something about her disappearance. Her name is Voight. Charlotte Voight."
"I had heard that she had dropped out, although I didn't know her either. The administration always circulates a notice to the faculty if something unusual happens or if a student withdraws from classes without an official leave. These kids are often going through a tough time, and one of us might be a lifeline to them. Dropping out is nothing new for college students, is it?"
Lavery stopped speaking for a moment, then looked up at me. "But Charlotte Voight is back around, isn't she?"
Perhaps Lavery had information we didn't. "That's news to us. Any clue where she is?"
"No, I have no idea. But the last time I talked to Lola, that's what she told me. That she knew where the Voight girl was, and that she was going to see her."
25
Each time I thought we were about to take a step or two forward, we were thrown back five or six. Mike had pushed Lavery hard on when it was that Lola Dakota had told him she was going to see the missing girl. If the professor was being truthful, he had not seen his neighbor for almost one month. But if Bart had been honest, then Lavery might have heard that news from Lola within an hour of her death.
Either way, the effort before us grew larger rather than focused. Had Charlotte Voight returned to the King's College campus a few days before Christmas, ready to attempt to reenter school for the new semester? Did her reappearance have anything to do with the suicide of her former lover, Julian Gariano, who had supplied her with drugs? And who else other than Lola knew where the girl was?
The DeadHouse Page 26