Hell Gate

by Linda A. Fairstein

  “Yeah?”

  “They look like the same color wool as the blanket that was covering Salma’s body when she was thrown in the well.”

  “I suppose the lab could give us an answer on that for certain,” Mike said. “Now just find me the perp. I’ve always wanted to put lipstick on a pig.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “What do you mean who’s been here lately?” I said, tossing a glance back at the burial ground as we walked out of City Hall Park.

  “Like Donny Baynes,” Mike asked. We were crossing Chambers Street at five o’clock for the short walk to the entrance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, practically on the doorstep of One Police Plaza. “I wonder if he’s done any business at City Hall this week.”

  “We’re about to find that out,” I said. “Think of it. The mayor goes up those steps every day, along with his bodyguards. Kendall Reid’s office is here. Ethan Leighton came by to see him—against Lem’s orders yesterday—which is really interesting.”

  “And you know what, Coop? After the news story about the burial-ground ditches the other night, it would be the perfect place for someone out to nail Statler—like old man Moses—to have evidence planted, if that’s what your little baggie actually is. But don’t get too bent out of shape yet. Maybe the Avon lady dropped her stash.”

  We passed through another security post and took the elevators to the task force quarters on the sixth floor. Most of the doors were closed and the corridor was quiet. The federal prosecutors’ offices were much newer and cleaner than our distressed old surroundings. We reached Baynes’s room and I knocked before trying the knob, but it was locked.

  “Go around the corner,” I said to Mike. “He’s got a small conference room.”

  As we made the turn I could hear voices. One man was shouting at another who kept talking over him—it sounded like Ukrainian to me—and again I knocked.

  The shouting ceased. Someone called out, “Yeah?”

  I waited for the door to be opened. Seconds later, I was rewarded by the sight of one of the federal agents, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, who begrudgingly cracked it a hair.

  “Who you looking for?” he asked as he eyed us.

  “Donovan Baynes,” I said.

  Chairs scraped the surface of the floor and I heard Donny’s voice calling my name. “Alex? I’ll be out.”

  The agent stepped away and Donny emerged from the room. He, too, had removed his suit jacket and tie, and appeared to be as exhausted as I felt.

  “Sorry to interrupt you.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. We’ve had an interesting day.”

  “What are you up to?” Mike asked.

  “The agents started with some of the boat crew yesterday, trying to reconstruct all the events. Find out what they know.”

  “Who you got in there?”

  “A couple of my guys, one of the young task-force prosecutors, an interpreter—and that’s one of the engineers from the boat.”

  “He doesn’t sound happy.”

  “If his happiness were my goal, Mike, I would have gone to clown school, you know?”

  The shouting had begun again in earnest, voices overlaying each other, punctuated by the sound of a fist banging on the table.

  “You waterboarding in there or just surfing?”

  Donny smiled. “This is either the dumbest bunch of seamen who ever crossed the Atlantic, or the crew’s been paid a king’s ransom to take one for the team.”

  “Can we talk to you for a couple of minutes?” I asked.

  “What’s up?”

  “In your office.” I gestured at the sterile corridor.

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  He took us back, unlocked the door, and invited us in. It was already beginning to look like the war room of a major investigation. New file cabinets were standing catty-corner to old ones, drawers open, and boxes of documents—just the tip of the iceberg of those that would be collected in the coming months—sat waiting to be organized and filed.

  “You look so serious, Alex. Everything okay with the two young women you spirited out of my custody?” He was adjusting the blinds as we lost the day’s light.

  “We made some progress with the first interview. Nan and I are both optimistic that we’ll get these girls to open up. And from what we hear they had a great first night in the shelter. Nothing wrong on that front.”

  “What, then?” Donny asked, checking his answering machine for messages.

  “I think we need to spend some time talking about your relationship with Ethan Leighton,” I said.

  “He’s been a friend since law school. A good one. I don’t have to tell you how shocked I am by all this.” Now he was sorting the markers in the front of his desk drawer.

  “You do, actually,” Mike said. “That’s just what you have to tell me. How shocked are you? I recall sitting with you Thursday night while Coop charted all the connections between people in this case on her blackboard. I just can’t remember seeing a line that stretched from Salma Zunega directly over to you.”

  We had Donny Baynes’s complete attention now. He slammed the drawer shut.

  “I did not know Salma. That’s a fact.”

  “Never met her?”

  “No,” Donny said. He wanted no part of being questioned by Mike Chapman. “Alex, I don’t know what gives you the idea—you couldn’t possibly think I held out on you about something.”

  “I’m not sure what to think.”

  “Why? Where did this come from?”

  “Did you ever meet Salma Zunega? Not ‘know’ her, Donny. Just meet her is all I’m asking,” I said.

  “Look, can we talk one-on-one?”

  “I’ve got no secrets from Mike.”

  Donny Baynes hesitated before answering. “What do you have, a photo of me on a rope line at a fund-raiser with Ethan’s girlfriend?”

  “I don’t have anything at the moment except a hunch that you are so close to Ethan you must have been in Salma’s orbit every now and then. What am I going to find if I dig a little deeper? Are there photographs? You tell me.”

  Mike was letting me take the lead, seeing that Donny was more comfortable trying to angle his way through this with me.

  “I didn’t know her, Alex. Can I swear I was never in the same room with the girl? No, I can’t do that,” Donny said. “Because I didn’t have any clue that my good friend Ethan Leighton had gone off the deep end without a life vest. He’s been in one political race after another. There are always attractive young women around in campaigns. It never seemed to get to him, and why would it? He had Claire at home. He had a relationship with his wife that we all envied.”

  “You and I stood on the beach together Wednesday morning, with bodies washing up on shore and hundreds of victims whose lives had just been turned upside down. You were furious when Mercer Wallace arrived to tell us that Ethan had crashed his car—and by the way, had a lover, and a child he’d fathered with her. Did you fake that?”

  “I didn’t fake anything,” Donny said, pulling on the cord of the venetian blinds. “Ethan kept that side of his life so compartmentalized, I would have given everything I had to believe that Mercer was mistaken. Ethan’s got a public persona that’s different than his private one—sure—but this crazy-ass part of him? I didn’t know it existed.”

  “I’ll ask you again, Donny. When you heard about Salma’s death on Thursday—when you sat at my conference table and saw Polaroid photos of the young woman who was hoisted out of the well—did you recognize her?”

  “Now you’re asking a different question. Recognize her? Did she look like someone I’d ever seen before? You’re asking that?”

  “Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear, Donny. I’m asking that.”

  “She looked familiar. She’s a pretty girl.”

  “You should have seen her before she went bottoms up in the well, man. She looked a hell of lot better.” Mike had focused his attention on a photo on the
wall of Baynes shaking hands with Mayor Statler. “You keeping Hizzoner up to speed on the boat people? He knows what you’re doing over here?”

  “Yeah, he does,” Donny said, happy to field a question on another issue.

  “Today. You see him today?”

  “Last night, when I knocked off,” he said, laughing a bit as he straightened out his blotter. “Jeez, Chapman, I’ve got to answer to you now? Something’s wrong with that picture.”

  “City Hall?” I asked. “Did you go to City Hall last night?”

  Donny was trying to read my expression. “You don’t mean to imply I should have told you I was going there, do you? Statler called. I walked over and gave him a quick update, Alex. You’ve got nothing to do with the pieces of the case that my guys are working on.”

  I was determined to get back on course and stop Mike’s interference.

  “I’m glad you went,” I said, thinking of the plastic bag in Mike’s jacket pocket. “Go back to Salma, Donny. I wasn’t done with that.”

  “Not much more to say.”

  “She looked familiar to you, have I got that right?”

  There had been no photographs of the elusive Salma in the newspapers, and it was impossible to believe the battered face of the woman in the well, represented in crime-scene photos, would be recognized by anyone who had only met her in a crowd.

  “Yes. Vaguely familiar.”

  “Did you ever talk with her?”

  “I wish we could sit down with Ethan,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I’m sure he’d confirm I didn’t know her.”

  “Next time you have dinner with Ethan,” Mike said, stepping all over my words, “maybe he can refresh your recollection.”

  “I’d say that’s a few months down the road, Chapman. I’ll be arm’s distance from him, just like everyone else in law enforcement. He’ll straighten this out. This situation makes him look awfully screwed up, but he’s a good man at heart.”

  “Damn. I was counting on you to nab me an invitation to that fancy private cabal.”

  “Just what would that be?” Donny asked, bracing his arms on the edge of the desk.

  “That gentlemen’s social club you boys got going. By invitation only. Seems totally unfair that Coop can’t buy herself a seat, but I had high hopes of joining you. Don’t you want to tell us a little something about it?”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “I haven’t had anything to do with that group in years,” Donny Baynes said as he sat down in his high-backed leather desk chair. “So far as I know, it doesn’t exist. Who’s been feeding you that crap?”

  “Kendall Reid,” I said.

  Donny cradled his forehead in his hands, elbows on his desk. He took a few seconds to collect himself. “Reid’s a thief and a liar. I don’t know what the hell he’s trying to do by dragging me into this.”

  “He says you know—maybe you were even there—the night Ethan met Salma.”

  “Look, if she’s the girl I think, I never put her together with Ethan. She was probably at fund-raisers. But I always figured she was Kendall Reid’s girl. Maybe he was just the beard for Ethan. Maybe that’s how stupid and naive I am.”

  “What about this men’s club?” I asked.

  “I just told you it’s defunct. Can’t have anything to do with this.”

  “You also told her you didn’t know who Salma was, when it turns out you might,” Mike said. “It’s a good time to spill your guts and let us decide.”

  The task force prosecutor was silent.

  “Don’t try to filter the facts, Donny,” I said. “You’re too tight with Ethan to make the judgment calls. Let us help you decide.”

  “This is harmless, Alex. I promise you it was harmless,” Donny said. “The Tontine Association. That’s what it was called.”

  “Tontine. Haven’t heard that word in ages. Michael Caine—The Wrong Box. Which brother lived longer.” Mike was trying to loosen Baynes up by making light of things. “Which one got all the money. Is that the right movie, Coop?”

  “Yup. Robert Louis Stevenson story.” Mike knew the movies, I knew the books.

  “What’s a tontine anyway, Donny?”

  “They’re schemes for raising capital—like a combination of a group annuity and a lottery. A Neapolitan banker named Lorenzo de Tonti invented them in the seventeenth century.”

  “They legal?” Mike asked.

  “Not anymore, ’cause they’re basically swindles. But—but—it was just a name we used. There was no tontine involved.”

  “Financial geniuses, the Italians. They got Tonti, Ponzi—Gotti—all came up with clever ways for guys to make a buck. I’d think as a prosecutor you’d know enough to stay away from that kind of stuff.”

  “It was Moses Leighton who formed the club. I was in private practice at the time. It was just a well-intentioned way of raising money for the restoration of some old properties in the city.”

  “Like how?”

  “It’s a simple concept. In a real tontine, each member invited in pays a sum—say five hundred dollars from twenty members each. The money’s invested, and every year—every good year—you get a dividend. When an investor dies, the money is reallocated among the survivors. Last man standing gets the whole pot—a gamble that in the old days could leave someone with a fortune.”

  “Your tontine wasn’t real?” Mike asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  Mike was baiting Donny and it was working. Asking simple, general questions about the concept to get his subject to open up. And Donny Baynes was talking.

  “They’ve been banned in this country for decades. Moses Leighton had this idea to start an organization for private funding to help the city raise money for neglected projects, things that just wouldn’t get repaired or restored because of budget restraints.”

  “And Ethan was a new city councilman at the time,” I said.

  “Exactly. It was a lot about paving a future for his son, of course.”

  “With a swindle?” Mike asked.

  “Listen to me, will you?” Donny liked being in the superior position to Mike again. “This is why the first tontines were created—for governments to use to raise capital. They were good things. Louis XIV created a tontine in 1689 to fund military operations when he was broke. It was honest. It worked. The last surviving investor lived to the age of ninety-six with that fortune. The British government copied the idea to go to war against France a few years later.”

  “So why’d they stop working?”

  Donny was gesturing with both hands. “Investors caught on. They bought shares for infants and children, instead of for themselves. If the kids lived till old age, they often made pots of money. The governments weren’t able to keep up with the costs. That’s why you’ve got a pension today, instead of a tontine—instead of a death gamble.”

  Mike nodded his head. “Okay, so what did old Moses have in mind?”

  “The city owns a good number of properties in the five boroughs that have historic significance. They’re run by a nonprofit trust that raises private funds for them, in tandem with the city parks department, since several of them sit in local parks.”

  “Is Gracie Mansion part of that trust?” I asked.

  “It is. And these are great old houses that date back centuries, so they’re enormously expensive to maintain. Moses Leighton had a creative idea to help the city do just that.”

  “With an eye to restoring Gracie in case his son needed a mayoral roof over his head,” Mike said.

  “Bloomberg was a little more popular than Moses expected. That’s why Ethan took the congressional seat.”

  “So the club?” I asked.

  “Moses invited thirty or forty guys to participate as members. I think he wound up with a little more than half that at every dinner. Some of them were politicians, and others were wealthy businessmen, but all approved of his plan.”

  “What was it?

  “A dinner club. A perfectly respectable dinner club,” Donny s
aid, looking Mike in the eye. “Every second month Mr. Leighton arranged to have dinner catered for us at one of these different properties. Most of them are restored, to one degree or another, and run as museums.”

  “You rented them?”

  “Even you can do it, Chapman. It’s one of the ways they make money. Most people don’t even know these places exist, especially in the other four boroughs.”

  “Leighton paid for the dinners?” Mike asked.

  “He did. He underwrote them. But we each had to make a contribution to his enterprise. Five hundred, a thousand, each according to his means, I guess. If you were in public service, you paid less, and he had some very high rollers from the investment banking world. You gave him your check, which went to the trust to restore the houses, of course.”

  “Not the tontine?”

  “A pretty harmless tontine, Chapman, like I said. At each dinner, every member had to bring a bottle of wine—a really fine wine. The money went to its designated purpose, and the wine got stored in Moses Leighton’s cellar. Last man standing gets a damn good selection of wines, to toast those gone before him.”

  “Who’s in the club?”

  “I told you, it’s been disbanded.”

  “Why’d that happen?”

  “A few of our original members—uh—had some problems.”

  “Hit the skids?” Mike asked. “Who were they?”

  “Moses and Ethan Leighton, of course, were the founders of it. Ethan invited me to join, along with a couple of our other law school friends who were also at big firms. I’ll give you their names if you think it matters. One of them was convicted of insider trading, so he was the first to go.”

  “A classmate of yours?”

  “Yes. And a year later, one of the men was a suicide—jumped out the window of a hotel room where he’d been holed up doing drugs. Had a problem with crystal meth and male prostitutes.”

  “Guess the screening for club standards was a little loose,” Mike said. “Was Kendall Reid in the club?”

  Donny rubbed his hands together as he answered. “No. But Reid was around the Leightons all the time back then. Working for Moses, I think, before he became Ethan’s aide. He wasn’t in on these dinners. Probably because he was just considered staff by the Leightons. That may be why he’s so resentful about all this, telling you about me, like I’d done something wrong.”