The three of us stood together at the walled-off entrance to the crumbling span and looked across at the stone masonry piers and arches. “It really does look like a Roman aqueduct,” I said.
“That’s the ancient principle they used to bring water here from the mountains, Coop.”
I had learned the hard way, through a murder case, that Manhattan had no natural water supply of its own.
“Wait a minute, Mike,” Mercer said. “High Bridge, right?”
“Yeah. A low one would have been cheaper to build, but they needed the height so that boats going through to the Hudson could get under it.”
“But it was built as an aqueduct, you said.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s one of Kendall Reid’s fake funds,” Mercer said, warming his ears with his gloved hands. “That’s one of the phantom charities Tim Spindlis named at the press conference. Save the Aqueduct Bridge.”
“Dead on, Mr. Wallace,” Mike said, processing Mercer’s logic. “Reid should have patched some holes in this bridge instead of stuffing his cash in shoe boxes and cargo ships full of immigrants.”
“Time for a wake-up call to your pal Spindlis, Alex.”
“All Battaglia’s horses and all his men may not be able to put Anita’s cracked head back together, Coop. Get on the phone and tell him to give us everything he’s got.”
FORTY-EIGHT
It was only six thirty on Sunday morning. I didn’t have Tim’s home number programmed on my cell, so I called the cop on duty in the lobby of the DA’s office and asked him to reach out and have Spindlis return my call.
“Maybe somebody gave Anita a boost up to get over this,” Mercer was saying to Mike as they examined the stone wall blocking off the old walkway, fronted by an iron gate. “Makes it a lot more likely she wasn’t out there planning to jump if she didn’t go onto the bridge alone. If she was pushed, then whoever did it found the perfect place to mimic a suicide.”
“Coop? You off the phone? See if you can get a toehold on that wall. Put your Pavlovas to good use.”
I stuck the phone in my pocket and walked to the imposing gate. Weeds had broken through the brickwork on the path and cracks were everywhere. I put one foot on the guardrail and hoisted myself up.
“It’s not hard to do. The question is why she would have agreed to go out on the bridge with anyone,” I said.
“Well, she either trusted the guy enough to follow him, or he had a gun to her head.”
“Follow him where, Mike?” I asked.
“Leighton said Anita told her cousin that it was an old friend who had set her up for the night. It must have been someone she could count on to lead her around up here.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Well, she trusted him more than Leighton, ’cause she wouldn’t even get in his car, baby and all.”
“So maybe the guy-this friend of hers-tells her that he’s parked in the Bronx,” Mercer said. “It’s just a short walk across this old bridge. That’s the Bronx, right at the end of the footpath.”
“I get it. So if anything illegal was going on at the mansion-prostitution, at least-then the police wouldn’t even see this guy’s car anywhere near the Jumel House. The car wouldn’t actually be in Manhattan. Could be a useful escape route, especially if this friend was already in trouble-say, a guy like Kendall Reid.”
I peered over the top of the wall at the surface of the bridge. Just below me, stored on the other side, were four large wooden barrels.
“Take a look for yourselves,” I said, as I jumped down.
Mercer lifted one of his long legs onto the railing iron and looked over the wall. “Easy enough, Alex. You’re right. Up over the top. Climb down onto the barrels. And assuming there are more like those on the other end, you’d be home free.”
“Interesting idea,” Mike said, positioning himself beside Mercer to look for himself.
“Are we going to stand out here in the cold and debate this, or do something about it?” I asked.
“Your lips are turning blue, kid. Why don’t you wait in Leighton’s Jag? Get comfy,” Mike said to me, then turned back to Mercer. “Let me call the lieutenant and see if he can get Bronx Homicide to do a plate check on the cars parked around on the other side. See if anybody was ticketed during the night. Someone could have led Anita out on the bridge to her death, and there’d be no trace that he’d even been in Manhattan.”
“That’s true,” Mercer said. “If your perp was smart enough to have planned all this-worried about getting caught-then he’d know that even a check of EZ pass plates would show he left Manhattan by bridge or tunnel the night before, and never came back.”
“See what I mean? And all the time, he’s just a hop, skip, and walk across the bridge away from the action in the Jumel Mansion.”
The two uniformed cops were approaching us. They must have taken all the information and sent the dog walkers on their way.
“We’re just going back to the street to get some tape to block off the scene,” one cop said to Mike. “You guys need anything?”
“Take Ms. Cooper with you, okay? My little hothouse flower looks like she’s about to freeze her ass off.”
“I’m not going to the car, Mike. I’m with you two until you figure out what’s next.”
“The park rangers opened up the tower for us this morning,” the cop said.
“They around to give us a hand?” Mercer asked.
“Are you kidding? Rangers on a frigid Sunday morning in January? We had to call to get them over here. They said they’d check back in before too long. Want me to tell them to be available if you need them?”
“Please.”
“It’s warm in there. Go on in and make your calls.”
The graceful granite water tower, almost two hundred feet high, was just a few yards away from the end of the bridge, much closer than the street where Mike and Mercer had left their cars. It was octagonal in shape, like the unusual room in the Jumel Mansion. It looked like a Renaissance church tower that had been lifted from the Tuscan countryside and planted on a Manhattan hilltop.
“Good idea,” Mike said to the more talkative cop. “You got enough tape with you so we can rope off the gate at the entrance to the bridge?”
“No problem. I’ll be back with it in a few minutes.”
The two cops led us toward the tower. Mercer walked on ahead. “Yeah, it’s open. Thanks.”
Mike was explaining that when water was originally pumped across the Harlem River over the High Bridge, it coursed through two iron pipes that still ran up the interior of the handsome structure, to equalize the pressure in the nearby holding reservoir.
“And now?” I asked.
“Just decorative. The tower’s got views from the top that you wouldn’t believe. You can practically see Paris.”
We went inside and even though the building wasn’t heated, it was a welcome shelter from the morning’s fierce winds.
“Hey, Loo?” Mike said, talking into his phone. “Time to rise and shine, Boss. Let me explain what’s happened since last night.”
Mercer and I listened while Mike tried to tell Peterson what had developed, and enlist his help in getting detectives from Bronx County on board to help.
“Yeah, and the congressman went AWOL. Don’t know. Maybe he’s getting the picture that the kid isn’t his. Maybe he had something to do with the scene on the bridge. He’s off the charts.”
“I’ve never been in here,” Mercer said. “But at least somebody spent a few nickels restoring this beauty, which I’m glad to see.”
“I didn’t even know about it.”
The redbrick walls in this small lobby were punctuated by twenty-foot-high windows on each of the eight sides. Running up from the basement below were the two iron pipes that had once carried all of Manhattan’s drinking water from upstate-painted a shiny black-and surrounding them was a wrought-iron staircase that twisted in a narrow spiral to the top of the tower.
; Mike was still arguing with Peterson. “I appreciate how hard it is to get anyone to help at this hour of the morning, Loo, but we can’t cover the territory ourselves. There’s a lot going on, okay?”
“Want to check it out with me?” Mercer asked, as he craned his neck to point above us.
My shoulders shook with chills. “You know how much I hate heights. I trust you’ll tell me about it.”
“Even if it is Kendall Reid, he didn’t run this operation himself, Boss. Mercer and I need reinforcements, that’s what you’ve got to tell Commissioner Scully,” Mike said. “No, no. Battaglia doesn’t know she’s here with us. We’ll dump her at home on the way downtown.”
Mike flipped his phone shut
“Dump me?”
“Your teeth are chattering so loud, Coop, I can’t hear myself think.”
“I’m warming up in here,” I said. “This helps a lot.”
“What did Peterson say?” Mercer asked.
“He gave me a firm no to letting us go to Mayor Statler’s home to knock on the door and question him again. We can’t touch Kendall Reid until we bring Battaglia and Spindlis in on what we’ve got.” Mike paused to smile. “Peterson doesn’t miss a trick. Asked me whether I’d heard the rumors about Spindlis. Says if this whole thing has to do with hookers and escorts, maybe there’s fire behind that smoke. Maybe that’s why the DA jumped so fast on the Reid indictment, to clamp everybody down so Spindlis’s name didn’t come up.”
“Leave me out of that brainstorm,” I said. “Tell the lieutenant he can raise that errant thought with Battaglia because I sure as hell won’t.”
“Peterson also doesn’t want us to do anything about Donny Baynes unless the feds are part of it. He doesn’t have the manpower to have guys tracking down Ethan Leighton as well as sitting on Moses twenty-four/seven. Everything’s a friggin’ manpower issue in the department.”
“I’ll take the weight for bringing Alex out in the middle of the night,” Mercer said. “That was my idea.”
“Nice. You’re both making it sound like I’m a liability to you guys. Thanks a million. I’m looking forward to being dumped. I’m sure I can get somebody to drive me home.”
“The lieutenant’s bent out of shape ’cause your car got tagged Friday night,” Mike said. “He’s just soft for you.”
“I’m delighted to know I still have one fan.”
“Does he have anybody for us?” Mercer asked.
“The day tour starts in an hour. He says he’ll round up whoever comes in and send three or four guys over here to give us a hand.”
“Excellent.”
“Yeah. Might as well get going on the bridge. And I’d like to get the guys into the mansion to see what’s been going on there.”
The uniformed cop who had gone to the car to get yellow crime-scene tape returned. “Why don’t you start with this roll?” he asked. “If you need more, I’ll call the house and they’ll bring it over.”
“Thanks,” Mike said. “You going down by the riverbed where the body was found?”
“Yeah.”
“Mercer and I will work up on top, at the entrance to the bridge. We’ll tape it off first. And then, we’ll go over the wall and try to position ourselves directly above your spot, where you found the body. See if we can figure out where she dropped from. You mind spotting that with us?”
“Glad to do it,” the cop said.
“Okay if I wait here?” I asked.
“I told you it was comfortable, right?” the cop said.
“That’s the best advice I’ve had in days.”
I watched through the tall paned glass window as the teams separated to stake out the scene. The two cops dropped out of sight as they maneuvered down the steep incline, while Mike and Mercer were visible off in the distance, headed for the gated entrance to the rotting old bridge.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I reached in to remove it but the thick material of my gloves got in the way. As I withdrew it, my fingers fumbled and the cell dropped on the floor and skidded across the room.
When I picked it up, I saw that I had missed the return call from Spindlis. His number had been captured, though, so I flipped the cell open to reply.
“Tim? It’s Alex. I apologize for the hour, but I think we really need to sit down together. It’s rather urgent.”
I could barely make out his answer.
“You’re breaking up,” I said. “Give me a minute.”
I walked a few feet to the north side of the lobby, around the spiraling black staircase, and planted myself against one of the windows. I held the phone to one ear and plugged my finger in the other so I could hear him.
“Of course I’ll tell you everything that’s happened,” I said. My skin crawled just talking to him, as though I didn’t really know him at all, despite ten years as colleagues working for Battaglia. The cheap rumors rattled around my head as I thought about how much to tell him.
“Yes, this is much clearer. We didn’t mean to set you off about Kendall Reid. Mike only wanted to talk to him about our case, not yours. The murder and the-well-possible prostitution ring.”
My normally laid-back and spineless colleague was agitated about our drop-by interview yesterday of his perp. He wanted to unload his annoyance on me and the least I could do was listen.
I stared out the window at the breathtaking view of the Hudson River that stretched for miles to the north.
“We got a lot of good stuff in the last twenty-four hours, Tim. Lieutenant Peterson thinks we should all meet and put our heads together. That we might be able to solve some of this.”
I was so absorbed in the tongue-lashing that Spindlis felt it necessary to deliver that I was oblivious to my surroundings.
“If you don’t want to come up here to the station house today, I understand. We can be in your office first thing tomorrow,” I said. “Yes, Tim. I promise we won’t question Kendall Reid again unless you’re there.”
I flipped the phone closed and smiled to myself. We won’t question Reid unless we find him clearing the dirty linens in the Jumel Mansion. Or sitting in his car alongside the Harlem River, in the Bronx, watching how the cops handle Anita’s tragic fall.
I didn’t know there was anyone else in the water tower until I felt the icy metal rim of a gun bore against the skin behind my right ear.
My body seized with fear as I tried to turn my head to see my attacker, but he gripped the back of my neck firmly with his left hand.
“Stay calm, Alexandra. Stay calm and don’t move a muscle. Don’t even shiver.”
I tried to place the familiar voice but too many terrifying thoughts were racing through my brain.
“Now you’re going to listen to me carefully, ’cause you know what they say, don’t you?”
It was Rowdy Kitts, the detective assigned to bodyguard the mayor. The detective whose perjured testimony had cost my victim her case several years ago. The detective who’d been among the first people on the beach the morning the Golden Voyage hit the rocks.
“Panic kills, Alexandra. First thing they teach you at the academy. Stay really still,” Kitts said to me, whispering in my ear. “Don’t you forget that panic kills.”
FORTY-NINE
“The first thing we’re going to do is lock this door,” Kitts said, pushing me to the entrance of the great tower so that he could secure the bolt from the inside.
“Chapman and Wallace are-”
“Right down at the bridge. I heard that. I was in the basement, just hanging out with the water rats, when you so rudely decided to make yourself at home here. But they’ve got their hands full at the moment, what with the blood, the bits and pieces of brain matter they’re going to find.”
My stomach churned at the thought of what Kitts had done to Anita Paz.
“All we need is a few minutes to get you taken care of so I can be on my way.”
“What do you mean-?”
“Just have to get you up these stairs,” he said, nud
ging me toward the twisting staircase with his gun. “We’ll create a little diversion. If you’re half as smart as Chapman thinks you are, you won’t get hurt.”
I was replaying the words that Mike had used to explain the deaths of the victims who’d washed ashore. He and Stu Carella were the ones who said that panic kills.
“I’ll walk out of here with you, Rowdy. We’ll walk out together and you can just leave me in Mercer’s car and take off.”
“Damn, I wish it were that easy, Alex. Get you outside and if I put a gag over your mouth, it won’t look quite right to folks we pass along the way in the park. And if I don’t gag you, you might just scream. Then Chapman would jump for you like he always does, like his pants are on fire.”
“I won’t scream. I promise you.”
“Just climb, Alex.”
His strong, lean body pressed against mine as he tried to move me forward. He was dressed in ski clothes, his slicked-back hair revealing his sharp features-steely gray eyes, a pointed nose with a few ridges that made it appear it had been broken once or twice, and thin lips that drew tight into a menacing grimace when I didn’t comply with his orders. He was likely the figure I’d seen running from the Jumel Mansion half an hour ago.
“The guys will come back and find the door locked and call emergency services to break it open.”
“It’ll take an awfully long time to get a response from ESU just to come to the water tower. There won’t be any reason to think you’re here.”
The sight of the gun in the hands of someone as vicious as Rowdy Kitts, someone who despised me so intensely, terrified me. He was just as liable to shoot if Mike or Mercer interrupted his plans to get away. He was only likely to keep me alive as long as I might be viable to him as a hostage or a bargaining chip.
“That reminds me, Alex. Take off those gloves.” When I did, he grabbed them and tossed them across the room. “Sounded to me like Chapman was anxious to get rid of you. Open your phone for me.”
I did exactly as he said.
“Show me the screen. Good. Now bring up Mike’s number and text him. I’m watching. Just text like I say. ‘Rangers here. Taking me to the Three-three to get warm.’ ”
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