Hell Gate

by Linda A. Fairstein

  Patroon was anything but a take-out place, yet Ken had frequently arranged deliveries to my apartment when he heard I was under the weather or hunkered down in preparation for a trial.

  “You get the fire going, find the red wine, and I’ll set out the dinner. I know how much you go for guys who can cook,” Mike said.

  I walked into the den. There were logs in the fireplace and matches on the mantel, so I poked around until the sparks seemed to take on the dry wood.

  I went into the powder room and freshened up. I hadn’t put on lipstick or blush the entire day, and now I found myself borrowing Vickee’s things to apply a bit of makeup, brush my hair, and dab on perfume. I stared at myself in the mirror, barely recognizing the tense and exhausted face that stared back at me.

  Then I checked the fire, which was going full force. The wine rack and bar were across the room, and I selected a nice California red to avoid any more conversation about France. When I picked up the corkscrew bottle opener, my stomach churned at the thought of Salma Zunega’s neck.

  “You want to get the silverware and some napkins?” Mike asked. He had come into the room carrying a platter with a black-and-blue porterhouse for two that he had sliced for us. “Give me the wine opener. Bad territory for you to revisit.”

  I passed it off to him and went into the kitchen. When I returned with the place settings, Mike had uncorked the bottle and set out the glasses on the table in front of the sofa. We both made another trip back to bring in the little plates with the veggies and potatoes that Ken had included, knowing my favorites.

  “Sit down and help yourself,” Mike said.

  “Let me just run up and make sure Logan’s out.”

  I climbed to the top of the stairs and peeked into his room. He had curled up under his quilt, surrounded by his favorite stuffed animals, and was sound asleep.

  I came back down as Mike was pouring the wine. He lifted his glass and clinked it against mine. “Cheers—here’s to everything you want in the New Year.”

  “You make a resolution to be nice to me? That’s top of my list.”

  “How could I be nicer than this? The best grub in town, a really fine house, a cute kid. You look great with him, Coop. You look like a natural with that little guy snuggled up tight against you.”

  “Here we go again.”

  “You have a good time in Paris?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “No, really. I’m being sincere now. Can’t you tell me if you had a good time?”

  “I had a very nice time, Mike. Luc’s an easy guy,” I said, putting down my fork and reaching for the wineglass. Luc adored me and seemed to understand my commitment to the erratic lifestyle of a big-city prosecutor. “His life is so different from ours. There’s no urgency to anything he does, people’s lives don’t hang in the balance. A crisis is whether someone in the biz gets two stars or three.”

  “I hear the great chefs kill themselves over that, Coop. I wouldn’t make fun.”

  “I’m not. It’s just like living in a fairy tale to fly away from home, leave all my cases for a week, and suspend time in a kind of fantasy life in the middle of the most beautiful village in the world.” I stopped for a minute and put my head back on the thick chenille pillow. “I just don’t know where this is all going.”

  “Mind if I take this other end piece?” Mike asked without waiting for the answer. He was eating through all the conversation, as he always did. He handed me one of the enormous onion rings and I munched on it while I watched the flames dance in the fireplace.

  “What about you?” I said.

  “I’m chewing. You know how you always tell me not to talk with my mouth full?”

  I leaned forward and cut a few more bites of steak for myself. Mike had been in love with an architect named Valerie who had survived a bout with breast cancer, only to die in a freak skiing accident more than a year ago.

  “I know what Val’s death did to you,” I said. I thought I knew its impact as well as anyone, because of my own immeasurable loss. “She wouldn’t want you—”

  “Here’s what’s stupid, Coop. Number two on my list of stupid things people say, okay?”

  Mike’s number-one peeve was the word closure. He hated that families of murder victims thought the arrest or conviction of a killer would bring closure to their painful journeys. Instead, while it offered some sort of resolution, he knew that nothing could ever provide what people really wanted—to see their loved ones again, to undo the crimes themselves and the irreplaceable loss of a human life.

  “Sorry, Mike. I didn’t mean—”

  “Number two, Coop. How does anyone know what Val would want? She’s dead. Why are folks always so sure what the dead would want? People use that expression all the time and I happen to think it’s stupid. Maybe she’d want me to go to a monastery and meditate. Maybe she’d want me to try out at first base for the Yankees. I didn’t know she was gonna die so I really never asked her what she’d want.”

  I could see that I’d touched a raw nerve.

  “Objection sustained,” I said, and Mike smiled at the legalese. “Let me rephrase that, Detective Chapman. Does what I want count for anything?”

  “Depends on what it is,” he said, stabbing another piece of steak and holding it out like an exhibit before putting it in his mouth. “If it was this particular piece of meat, I’d have to say it doesn’t matter what you want.”

  “I take it you’re dating again.”

  “Spinach is good for you, blondie. Put some on your plate,” Mike said. “I’m trying to get myself out there.”

  “That’s great. I really think it is. It’s time, Mike.”

  “You know me. Most of the broads I meet are too high maintenance.”

  “Rumor has it you met a judge at Roger’s Christmas party.”

  “I—I met a lot of people at the party. Saw a lot of old friends.”

  “And left with a very attractive judge. Want to tell me about her?” I pushed my plate away, kicked off my shoes, and curled up on the sofa.

  “You crack me up, Coop. You got me tailed? Which of your girls has the big mouth?” Mike said, reaching over and taking the steak from my plate.

  “What’s to say the judge isn’t talking?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? Not with her.”

  “Judge Levit,” I said. “Fanny Levit. Just appointed, Civil Supreme. Age?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Hmmmm. An older woman.” Mike had turned thirty-eight in the fall, six months ahead of me.

  “By a year.”

  “Lighten up, Detective,” I said, sticking my toe in his side. “How many times have you seen her?”

  “I met her at Roger’s. Took her to dinner the other night,” he said, getting to his feet and carrying our dinner dishes into the kitchen.

  “So why are you here?” I called after him. It wasn’t the few sips of wine I’d had that was making me feel frisky.

  Maybe Mike was stuck with the same dilemma I was, wondering how our superb professional partnership would be affected by a change in personal direction. At the same time it both interested and frightened me. Once we crossed the line of intimacy, we’d never be able to work cases together again.

  He returned from the kitchen carrying a bowl stacked high with profiteroles—Patroon’s best dessert and one of my sweet-tooth weaknesses—covered with chocolate sauce.

  “I’m here ’cause of you,” he said, handing me a spoon and offering first dibs on dessert.

  “Sometimes you come out of nowhere at me, Michael Patrick Chapman, and I am so pleasantly surprised,” I said, reaching over to brush the crumbs off his sweater.

  “I’m here because you never even bothered to call me today about the autopsy on Salma, and you got to help me figure something out.”

  We’d had mixed messages before, but this one caught me totally off guard.

  “You drove out to talk to me about the case?” I asked. I sat up and folded my legs beneath me, feel
ing like a fool for having put any kind of personal spin on his Friday-night drop-in. “You could have just called, you know?”

  “Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have seen Logan, and I didn’t want to bother Mercer before the big family prom.”

  I was embarrassed by my ridiculous assumption that Mike had driven out to see me for some reason other than the case. Of course this hadn’t been a social visit, or at least it was no more personal than two friends and colleagues catching up before inevitably turning the conversation back to our work.

  “What’s the news on the autopsy?” I asked. I tried to focus again.

  Mike stood up with his glass in one hand and leaned against the mantel. “Cause of death was obvious. The wine opener pierced Salma’s trachea. Asphyxia due to blood inhalation.”

  I’d had cases like that before. Death was usually quite rapid, the victim often convulsing as blood obstructed the air passages. It was as ugly a picture as I had imagined.

  “You expected that.”

  “Yeah, well, what do you know about pregnancy?”

  “Precious little.”

  “Dr. Kirschner says he’s willing to bet that Salma never gave birth.”

  I put my glass down to try to clear my head and rethink things. Claire Leighton had told Mercer that Ethan admitted fathering Salma’s little girl. The baby had been in the apartment shortly before Mercer’s visit. The doorman described the woman who had taken her.

  “What do you mean, Mike?”

  “You know MEs, Coop. They’ll never say never. But it’s something about the cervix that has Dr. Kirschner convinced.”

  “Like my Riverside Park homicide victim two years ago. When a woman has given birth to a full-term baby,” I said, “there are changes in the cervix. The opening gapes a bit—the medical term is patulous.”

  “That’s the word. He said she wasn’t patulous. There’s nothing in Salma’s body to reflect any signs she gave birth. No scars on the abdomen to suggest a C-section. He took one look at the uterus and said there was no way anything that small had ever held a baby.”

  Now, there was an entirely new set of concerns to deal with. Whose baby was it and what had become of the child? Who was the man who had shown up on Wednesday night, claiming to be the baby’s actual father?

  “So Ethan Leighton probably bit the bullet on a phony DNA test,” I said. It wouldn’t take much for a forger to fake a genetic test result to convince the congressman that he had indeed impregnated his lover.

  “And you can add a touch of extortion to the list of motives that’s growing deadlier by the hour.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I got up from the sofa a bit later to check on Logan, who had barely shifted positions since I tucked him in and turned out the light. When I returned to the den, I put another log on the fire and settled into a comfortable armchair.

  Mike found a college football game on ESPN and stretched out on the sofa. I pretended to watch while I wondered whether he would always be as much of an enigma to me as he had proved to be tonight.

  Vickee and Mercer got home shortly after one o’clock in the morning. They had seen Mike’s car down the street and figured we had planned to spend the evening together. They were as mistaken as I.

  “How was the party?” I asked.

  “We had a good time,” Vickee said. “The relatives behaved and the bride-to-be is happy as anything. All fine with Logan?”

  “If he wakes up fighting with people-eating dinosaurs, I’m not the perp,” I said, pointing a finger at Mike. “He’s good as gold and I loved the chance to be with him for a few hours.”

  Vickee stepped out of her shoes while Mercer took off his jacket and undid his tie.

  When she went upstairs to look in on the baby, Mike told Mercer about Salma’s autopsy and I started to relate the details of my interview with Olena.

  “What can I fix for you, Alex?”

  “I’m good. I’m going to drive back into the city.”

  “Why don’t you stay? Guest room’s all made up.”

  “I need a decent night’s sleep, Mercer. It won’t even take half an hour for me to get home.”

  Mercer poured himself a drink from the bar and Mike helped himself to another glass of wine. “This is taking the courthouse rent-a-baby scheme to a new low.”

  It was commonplace for felons—especially those facing a sentence date—to show up with a woman who’d been nowhere in sight throughout the trial. The plea for sympathy worked best if she carried an infant in her arms, not likely to be any relation to the defendant, but something to tug at the heartstrings of judge or jury.

  “It also explains how sterile it was in Salma’s apartment,” I said. “Sure, she had a crib and a high chair and enough toys in the bedroom when she needed to convince the congressman that she’d had his kid. But no photographs, none of the out-of-place disorder you’d expect with a nineteen-month-old—well, it was a setup, in all likelihood.”

  “Probably worked for as little time as he had to spend with her,” Mike said, “between being in Washington and his own home here in the city.”

  “I would so love to corner Ethan Leighton and just confront him with all this,” I said, picking up my jacket and tote. “Too bad Lem’s in the way of that.”

  “You blew the chance.”

  “I’ll walk you out to your car,” Mercer said.

  “G’night, Mike. Thanks for bringing dinner.”

  “I put it on your tab, Coop. The least I could do was make the delivery.”

  “Watch it on the steps,” Mercer said, opening the door and steering my elbow. “There are a few icy patches.”

  I didn’t say anything as we walked to my SUV. I was thinking that Mike was staying on behind to drink with Mercer because he didn’t want to deal with following me back into Manhattan—his usual style if we were in separate cars—and saying good-bye at my door.

  “You okay, Alex?” Mercer asked. “You’re so quiet.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m just tired,” I said, reaching up to kiss him. “Tell Vickee I’ll call her tomorrow. What an absolute joy to get to spend time with Logan.”

  He opened the car door and I got in, letting the engine warm up before I pulled away from the curb.

  The CD picked up where Smokey had left off when I arrived. “Ooh, baby, baby . . .” I wasn’t up for brokenhearted love songs at that moment, so I shut off the music for a quiet ride home.

  I turned left at the end of the long street, retracing my route to the expressway through the dark, quiet neighborhood. I was driving slowly, concerned about the ice on the streets of the outer borough, always among the last to be plowed.

  There was a right turn after a stop sign, and as I eased the heavy SUV around the corner I noticed a car approaching behind me.

  I tried to pull over so that the driver, who seemed to be in more of a hurry than I was, could pass me, but there wasn’t room for anyone to get by on the one-way residential street, lined on both sides with parked cars.

  I sped up and my car fishtailed on the icy road. I glanced in the rearview mirror and was grateful that the driver in back got the point. He—or she—had slowed considerably and seemed to have accepted my pace.

  Another three or four blocks and I knew I would see the large green sign that marked the entrance to the highway. I took my time, looking in the mirror at every turn to see if the car was still there. I wasn’t really concerned because the route I was taking was the one to the main artery leading both into the city and out to Long Island. I’d expect other drivers to use it.

  I crossed a large intersection and the driver stayed on the same path. The car was a larger SUV than mine, a light silver color—nothing like the minivan that had alarmed me at the shelter in the afternoon. But its windshield had the same kind of dark tint.

  The street I was on narrowed and doglegged to the left, so I braked again going into the curve, careful to avoid the piles of slush bordering the pavement.

  Suddenly, the driver behind
stepped on the gas and plowed into me, ramming my SUV and aiming it at the large utility pole straight ahead.

  I swung the steering wheel as hard as I could, sharply left, and the powerful machine responded like a small sports car. I veered into the driveway of the last large house on the block and leaned on the horn for a full minute as I came to a stop inches from the garage door.

  The SUV that hit me sped off as my horn blared and lights went on in all the houses on the street.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The two uniformed cops who answered to the flurry of 911 calls in the still Douglaston neighborhood asked for my license and registration.

  I apologized to the man whose driveway I’d entered in such a wild fashion, before I backed out and waited for the police. I’m not sure he believed my story about being followed and forced off the road, but he seemed to want me out of his hair so that he could go back to bed.

  “Where were you coming from, Miss Cooper?”

  I decided not to pull out my badge and tell them I was an assistant district attorney. I didn’t need to wind up in a tabloid gossip column or be the butt of any more of Mike’s jokes. Maybe I really was seeing too much of the bogeyman.

  “A friend’s house,” I said. I gave them Mercer’s name and address.

  “You have anything to drink?”

  Officer Tarranta was talking to me as he eyeballed the damage to my car. His partner was sitting in the RMP, using the laptop now in each radio motor patrol car to see whether I had a criminal record or vehicular violations.

  “Half a glass of wine about four hours ago. I’ll blow for you.”

  “I tell you,” Tarranta said, “these TV shows are too much. They even got the lingo down. All of youse learn your cop talk on Law and Order, I guess. Most of the people I stop aren’t so willing to blow for me.”

  “This was ice, I think. Not on the rocks, but on the street.”

  “I seen you walk fine, your breath don’t smell, and you’re totally coherent, ma’am. I just have to ask about the liquor. It’s routine.” He squatted by my rear fender and jiggled it. The right side was badly dented and hanging off the end of the vehicle. “You may not be hammered, but your car took a hit. How’s your head?”