Hell Gate

by Linda Fairstein

  I covered my eyes with my hand and tried to make myself breathe.

  FIFTY-ONE

  “I’ll tell you what it’s going to take, Loo.” Mike was talking to Peterson on his cell, standing at one of the windows. It was more than an hour after I had pushed Rowdy Kitts to his death. “Go to the Bronx Zoo, get yourself the kind of tranquilizer gun they use on elephants. She’s not coming down that staircase unless you pump her full of that stuff.”

  Mercer had untied me and was massaging my wrist, trying to stop the tremor in my hands. The two of us were sitting on the floor of the tower’s platform, leaning against the wall while we waited for backup.

  “Coop’s not going anywhere unless you put a bag over her head and have somebody carry her down. She can barely open her eyes up here. Vertigo, smertigo-I’m not cleaning up after her if anything happens. I draw the line at my assignments.”

  “I can’t move. I don’t feel steady enough to stand.”

  “Did you hear that, Loo? Tell you what. I’ll lower down a bucket. Maybe you can fill it with a few Bloody Marys to loosen her up. No, I’m not kidding. Hurry along.”

  “I just killed a man.”

  “Correction. The murdering son of a bitch got a faster exit than he deserved. Me? I would have plucked out all his finger- and toe-nails, then I would have gouged-”

  “Enough, Mike,” Mercer said.

  “I would have tortured him. I would have taken pleasure in it. What does that say about me? He bought his own ticket out of here, Coop. You know how many lives he ruined, how many girls are dead because of Rowdy Kitts? Think forward-think of the women you’ve saved. Those can’t be teardrops, are they? You’ll lose me if you start to cry. I’ll abandon you right here.”

  Mercer wouldn’t let go of me. “You do anything that makes you feel better.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek and checked my emotions. There would be plenty of time for all this to settle over me when I was safely at home.

  Mike was circling the small platform, checking every crevice and jiggling the bricks, as though to see if they were loose.

  “Can you please be still? You’re making me dizzy again.”

  “Rowdy didn’t say what he was coming up here for?”

  “I didn’t ask. I just assumed it was to get rid of me.”

  “No offense, kid, but it’s not always about you. He took a real gamble on this climb. Turned out to be his death gamble.”

  Another chill went through me. “He couldn’t get out of the basement as long as I was keeping warm, waiting for you in the lobby.”

  “Yeah, but why was he in here in the first place? Why did he waste all that time forcing you to climb to the tower? He could have just cold-cocked you and kept heading for the highway. There must be something up here he wanted.”

  Mercer looked away from me for the first time and got to his feet. I closed my eyes. Mike’s idea had piqued his interest.

  “Rowdy thought we’d have caught him because of the first Jane Doe on the beach. Did I tell you that?” I was rambling, but I couldn’t remember which parts of the story I had repeated to Mike and Mercer when they found me.

  “Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, Alex. My mother used to say she could tell when I was being bad ’cause she had eyes in the back of her head. Would have saved me a lot of lives if I could have stopped perps before they got started.” Mercer extended a hand. “You want to try standing?”

  I shook my head. “What’s happening downstairs?” I could see flashes of light that reflected off the shiny black paint of the stair rail.

  “Crime Scene’s finishing up with photographs. There’s a bus ready to take the body out. We’ll head down after that.”

  “Seriously, I don’t know how I’m going to move.”

  “We’ll get you down.”

  Mike was on his tiptoes, running his fingers around the rim of the fancy trim that topped the brickwork. “You’ve got a few inches on me, Mercer. Help me out.”

  “Will do.” He tossed his head in my direction, expecting I wouldn’t catch the body language-his request that Mike do some hand-holding for a while.

  “What’d we miss, blondie?” Mike hovered over me while he talked. “This Eugenia was also from Ukraine?”

  “Yes, but more than six months ago. She was living with Rowdy, but threatening to blow the whistle.”

  “So I should have noticed nails bitten to the quick? Half the girls on the boat were like that, their nerves shot to hell. The jogging bra? Is that so very American?”

  “The rose tattoo. I should have figured that wouldn’t have happened to the girl until she was firmly the property of her trafficker.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. Could just have easily have been done before she set sail. Did he admit to tagging your car with the GPS?”

  The flashes of light had stopped, but now from below I could hear voices. Someone was talking about a body bag. Another guy warned his companions not to step in the blood.

  “I’m talking to you, Coop. Did Rowdy say he tagged you? Don’t listen to what’s going on.”

  “He talked about guys who did the dirty work for him and for Reid. Guys he’d locked up, street thugs.”

  “Who better to have access to a GPS than Rowdy? Probably walked into headquarters and told them the mayor’s detail needed a few. Queered the numbers off them so they’d be impossible to trace.”

  “This what you think Rowdy was after?” Mercer said.

  At the point where the crown molding touched the edge of the ceiling, almost seven feet above the landing, Mercer had dislodged and removed a loose brick. He reached in, retrieving a small plastic folder, not much bigger than a wallet, with a zippered top.

  “What have you got?” Mike asked, walking away from me.

  “Your idea, Detective. Take a gander.” Mercer stepped around him and reached out for me. “On the count of three, you’re on your feet. There’s still some life in those eyes of yours, isn’t there? You’ve got to be a little bit curious.”

  I clutched the stair rail with one hand and grabbed on to Mercer with the other.

  Mike had unzipped the pouch and was scanning the documents inside. “This is why Rowdy was risking so much to climb up here, and why Anita was willing to come with him.”

  “What are they?” I was standing, surprising even myself, sandwiched between my two friends.

  “These two are American passports. One for Salma Zunega and one for Anita Paz. The letter enclosed with them says they were obtained from the office of Congressman Ethan Leighton.”

  “That means they might even be legit. Passports and potholes-that’s what most congressmen do half the day. No wonder there were no papers kept in Salma’s apartment. That’s one of the holds, one of the controls, Rowdy kept on his girls. He hung on to the only proof they had that made them legal,” Mercer said. “What’s that other one?”

  Mike unfolded the cream-colored paper. I could see that it was headed in fancy calligraphy, bore a seal of some kind, and had the print of a tiny foot inked on it.

  “It’s the birth certificate for Ana.”

  “Oh God. What will become of the child?”

  “Don’t buckle now, Alex,” Mercer said, resting his hands on my shoulders.

  “Says she was born to Anita Paz in Brownsville, Texas. Gives the name of the hospital and date of birth.”

  “Paternity?” I asked. “Did she-?”

  “Yeah. According to this, Ana’s father is Kendall Reid.”

  Mercer’s low whistle blew into my ear. “No wonder Rowdy was so bound and determined to get up here. Fine piece of blackmail that is. Any question between them of who gets whatever cash is still hidden away, Rowdy Kitts would have been holding the golden key to unlock the moneybags.”

  “Reid’s baby. Ethan Leighton’s beloved protégé duped him into thinking the kid was his own.”

  “You’re assuming Reid knows the truth,” I said.

  “There’s a gift to put right in the lap of Tim Sp
indlis. That’ll let him tighten the screws on Reid.”

  “So now this baby has no mother, and her real father’s about to be a convicted felon, once my office finishes with him.”

  “You can’t do all the world’s worrying, Coop. Maybe Anita’s aunt really is a decent, hardworking woman. ACS will look into that. I’ll make you a promise here and now. We’ll sit on that one, with you, to be certain Ana’s taken in-eventually adopted-by the kind of family she deserves. Hell, anything’s better than the way she’s been treated till now.”

  I looked at Mike quizzically. He didn’t make pledges lightly.

  “You have my word.”

  “Chapman?” a deep voice called from below.

  “Yeah?”

  “All clear here. You can start on down.”

  “Thanks. We’re on the way.”

  “Where’s my Bloody Mary? I think I need it.”

  “I’ll spring for a six-pack when we get you home.”

  “How am I going to do this?”

  “You’re going to trust us, Alex, like you always do,” Mercer said. “I’ll go first, just one step ahead of you. Mike will be right behind. You need to hold on to me? You do that.”

  “But if I trip, you’re the one who’ll get hurt. What if I knock you over?”

  “You’re more surefooted than that. I’m not the least bit worried.”

  Mercer put his foot down one step and I forced myself to the edge of the landing. I picked my chin up and looked out the window for the first time from the top of the stately tower.

  The sky was a crisp, clear blue. The clouds that shrouded the skyline in a wintry mist the last few days had passed through the city. I thought of all the victims of the shipwreck, and how the turn of events of the last few hours could speed their clearance through the system and let them get on with their lives.

  My gaze caught on the promontory where the mayor’s elegant mansion jutted out into the East River. I had met the deadly fury that is Hell Gate head-on.

  Mike put his hand on my shoulder gently, to reassure me that he was right there with me. “Enough with your sightseeing, Ms. Cooper. It’s not every day I offer to buy the first round of cocktails.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  “Good morning, Alex. I’m Elizabeth Arrington. How do you feel?”

  Two days had passed since my terrifying confrontation with Rowdy Kitts. Mike, Mercer, and I were in a conference room at the federal courthouse on Pearl Street where Arrington, an assistant United States attorney, was about to appear before a magistrate judge for the arraignment of Kendall Reid on trafficking charges.

  “I’m okay, thanks.”

  “Don’t worry, Liz,” Mike said. “She cleans up a hell of a lot better than this. Give her a month or two.”

  I was sitting at the end of a long wooden table. Mercer had planted himself as close to me as physically possible, his chair catty-corner to mine, staring like a family member watching a critically ill patient in an intensive care unit. Mike was leaning against the windowsill, impatiently waiting for the magistrate.

  “You understand that I’ll be handling Reid’s case?” Arrington asked. “I’m sure you know that Donny Baynes has recused himself.”

  The feds had taken jurisdiction of the trafficking investigation that stretched halfway around the world at this point, and it would doubtless grow as more victims were uncovered by cooperating witnesses. For once, Battaglia didn’t battle to keep the case, in large measure because my involvement would have made his efforts futile.

  “I’m very glad it’s in your hands,” I said, hoping my smile looked as sincere as it was meant to be. Liz Arrington, a short feisty brunette, had done a brilliant job as second seat to the lead prosecutor in the trial of one of the most notorious terrorists-a blind sheikh who had masterminded the planning of bombings at several land-marked buildings but was caught before the acts were completed. “You’ve got a great reputation.”

  “You’ll get your cred back, Coop,” Mike said. “People find out you can drop-kick a killer like Rowdy Kitts, they’ll forget you needed a team of Saint Bernards to get you down from the tower.”

  “Mike,” Mercer said, pointing a finger at his good friend. “Save it for another day.”

  “Why? She didn’t lose her sense of humor, too, along with her cell phone and her sanity?”

  “What do you need from me, Liz?” I ignored Mike, even though I knew that teasing was his way of trying to nudge me from the morose state that I’d found myself in since my Sunday-morning encounter with death.

  “I’ve tried to get myself up to speed with the facts. Donny sat me down and gave me a crash course, but I’ve still got questions.”

  “Is he-?” I wondered whether his close relationship with Ethan Leighton and his membership in the Tontine Association had derailed Baynes professionally.

  “He’s good, Alex. Donny will help with anything he can. He’s asked for a transfer to the appeals bureau till we see how this all shakes down.”

  “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to puzzle this out, Liz,” Mercer said, taking the lead in his calm, mannered style. “Let me help. You trying to keep Reid in jail?”

  Kendall Reid had surrendered to the feds on Monday evening, just a little over twelve hours before. His lawyer would use that voluntary move as a basis for requesting release on his own recognizance, so that he wouldn’t have to come up with money for bail. The cash he’d been stealing from the council’s phantom funds was no longer at his disposal for personal use.

  “Absolutely,” Liz answered without a moment’s pause. “The magistrate will want to know exactly which crimes he played a role in. I’m hoping you can guide me the rest of the way. Donny admits he had blinders on to much of what the Leightons were doing, and to Kendall Reid too.”

  I had been in Liz Arrington’s shoes. I knew she had to immerse herself in a complicated series of facts-criminal conduct that stretched back over years, from one continent to another, with laundered money from illegal human slave trading stashed in shoe boxes and other places not yet imagined. I needed to shake off my own dark thoughts and concentrate on helping her get the job done.

  “The dead girl,” Liz said, looking down at a sheaf of notes she had put together. “I’m looking for her name. Sorry-give me a minute.”

  “Salma Zunega?” Mercer asked.

  “No, no. Eugenia, the girl who washed up on the beach. It was Rowdy Kitts who killed her?”

  I lifted my head to look at Liz. “That’s what he told me.”

  “He actually admitted that?” She seemed somewhat skeptical, or else I was too sensitive to the way everyone was looking at me. “I mean, Kitts talked to you about Eugenia?”

  “Rowdy wasn’t going to let me live, Liz. He was making that climb up the tower to get his insurance, his blackmail material-the baby’s birth certificate. And once done, I had no doubt he was going to get rid of me too,” I said. The coffee was cold and tasteless, but I took another sip. “He delighted in seeing the terror in my eyes when he told me that Eugenia was worthless to him. That she’d been trafficked in long before the Golden Voyage grounded here, lived with him for a while, and was ready to blow the whistle so the new girls wouldn’t be subjected to his personal form of torture.”

  “Did he talk to you about Salma?” Liz asked. She was looking for another murder confession and I couldn’t give it to her.

  I shook my head.

  “Coop gave him the boot before he got that far,” Mike said, turning his back to lean on the sill and stare out the window. “The lab handed us the rest. Twist Kendall Reid’s testicles and he’ll paint the whole picture for you.”

  Liz looked to Mercer for help. “Touch DNA? Someone can explain it to me this week, I’m sure. I’ve never handled a case with that kind of evidence.”

  “Alex will make it crystal-clear for you. She’s done the forensics before juries more times than you can count, and the team at the lab is the best in the business. They’ve got Kitts on the murder weapon i
n Salma’s apartment, and from the satin trim on the blanket she was wrapped in.”

  “Yeah, and that nubby white wool is even stuck in the threads of a sweater we recovered from his apartment yesterday,” Mike said.

  “Can you help me with why Kitts killed her?” Liz wanted answers from all of us. “I mean, why the spoofed phone calls before the murder?”

  “Think big picture, Liz,” Mercer said. “Let me get you there. This trafficking scheme has tentacles that are going to take you deep and wide, so back up to that. Rowdy Kitts and Kendall Reid are just two of the snakeheads at the top of the pit. An operation as big as this, as well-funded? It takes a village.”

  “So was everyone in the Tontine Association involved with the trafficking business?”

  “None of us believe that,” I said. “I think the perps counted on the reputations of guys like Donny Baynes to give them cover. They built the social club around that. And then the bottom feeders got to work.”

  “The judge is going to ask me about Ethan Leighton, Alex. I don’t want to go on the record and make him a target if we don’t believe he’s mixed up in anything worse than last week’s accident.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Tell Liz about the house call you had,” Mike said, crossing his arms after he passed me a bottle of water. “That coffee’ll rot your gut.”

  “The district attorney dropped by my apartment on his way home last night. To check on me, make sure I was okay.”

  “Nice.” Liz smiled at me.

  “Bullshit. Battaglia did the drop-in to make sure she wasn’t holding back anything,” Mike said. “And toadying along beside him was Tim Spindlis.”

  There was a knock on the door and Liz Arrington’s assistant started to come in. She held up her hand and told him to step back. “Tell the judge I need some more time.”

  “Will do. Sorry. And some of Ms. Cooper’s friends are here.”

  My prosecutorial posse, no doubt. I almost let myself relax.