Death Dance

by Linda Fairstein

  Lucy turned her head to the audience far below her and started to sing the opening lines of the number. Her legs bent back beneath her and then carried her up out of sight again, sacrificing the words she was singing to the striking visual image she created.

  As she drifted down and across to stage left, there was the sound of a loud crack. The seat of the swing broke away, and Lucy's scream pierced the back row of the balcony as she clung in vain to the hanging ropes that had supported her before she slammed onto the floor of the stage.

  18

  Mike ran down the narrow flights of stairs from the balcony and vaulted over the railing into the first of the two side boxes that hung above the orchestra. He climbed into the second one, closest to the curtain, and reached for the metal ladder that was exposed to the side of the proscenium arch to climb down it. He was on the stage only seconds after Mona Berk, Ross Kehoe, and everyone else in range had come up to surround the still body of the teenager.

  I had flipped open my phone to call 911 for an ambulance and police backup as I took the more traditional route down the staircase and into the front of the orchestra.

  However surprised people were to see Mike Chapman, they responded well to his control of the situation. "Get back. Everybody get back," I could hear him shouting to the group that had crowded in around Lucy DeVore. "Give her air."

  "Call for help," I heard Mona Berk say.

  "There's an ambulance on the way."

  Mike saw me from the stage. "Coop, get up here. The rest of you, stand off. She's alive. She's breathing. Coop, don't let anybody touch her. Keep ' em away. She needs air. You-any one of you," Mike said, gesturing to the small band of actors. "Go out to the lobby and wait for the medics. Bring 'em right in here."

  I kneeled in beside Mike. "Can you tell what's fractured?"

  "The legs, obviously," he said, pointing to where the bone had broken through the skin. "I don't know about the neck or spine. I don't want to touch anything until there's an EMT here to check it. She hasn't opened her eyes yet. Just stay with her while I look around."

  Mike called to Mona Berk, "Who's operating the swing up above?"

  She, in turn, pointed at Ross Kehoe to give the answer. "The fly crew. We've just got two guys up there today."

  "Don't let anybody leave. Make a list of everyone working here today," Mike said, trotting into the wings to find his way up to the fly gallery.

  I sat on the stage next to the shattered body of Lucy DeVore. I placed my hand over one of her outstretched arms and found her pulse-a very weak one-and I kept her hand covered in my own, stroking it and telling her she was going to be okay. She had not fallen in the same way that Talya had been thrown to her death- headfirst-so I tried to be optimistic that the injuries would not be fatal.

  Mike seemed to have disappeared backstage. I could no longer see his navy blazer and shock of black hair against the dark metal grillwork of the theater walls and scaffolding. The people who had made up the cast and audience were split off into small circles now-Mona huddled with Ross Kehoe and Rinaldo Vicci, on her cell phone, explaining the situation to someone she had called; the actors obviously distressed about the injured teenager.

  I looked to the flat ladders against the backstage wall for any sign of Mike, and saw only shadows from above. I turned my head to the theater entrance, hoping a crew of EMTs would be nearby again this time. And I checked Lucy's face, to see whether she had opened her eyes yet, but that had not happened.

  Mike was back at my side by the time the paramedics arrived. I stepped away and made room for them as they began to check Lucy's vital signs and got to work.

  I followed Mike to Mona Berk's little group. "There's no one up there. Where the hell are those guys?"

  "Look," Kehoe said, "it's just a skeleton crew we brought in for the afternoon. The Imperial's stagehands and techs don't come in till later in the day."

  "Bad choice of words, 'skeleton crew.' Who are they and where'd they go? Was this just a way to do it on the cheap? Avoid union labor?"

  "It was supposed to be a simple walk-through, Mike. You think I wanted the kid to get hurt? The last thing I need is a goddamn law-suit before I even close on the property. Look at them," Mona said, pointing at the actors. "All these morons need to do is start the story that this show is jinxed. The whole industry rides on superstition. I'll end up spending a fortune and never get this show off the ground."

  She wasn't much concerned about Lucy DeVore's life, especially if these events got in the way of ticket sales.

  Vicci whispered something to Kehoe and they started to walk toward the ladder that went up to the fly platform.

  "Hold it," Mike said.

  "I only asked to see what happened to the swing, detective. To see how the ropes holding it look like," said Vicci, his accent thickening as he pleaded for Mike's understanding.

  "I got Crime Scene guys coming to do that. Just stay off, got it?"

  "But, crime…? Who said anything about a crime?"

  "Nobody yet. But this setup is going to be examined before any one of you touches anything. The swing, where'd it come from?"

  Kehoe called over to Mona, "Sweetheart, Mr. Chapman wants to know about the swing. Where'd we get it?"

  "The Brooks Atkinson Theater, Ross. Revival of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, remember? The girl on the swing that was decorated with the crescent moon. Christ, isn't this one moving yet? Why don't they get her out of here and over to the hospital? This is such fucking bad karma for me."

  Mike was standing over the shoulder of one of the medics when he gave me a thumbs-up. They had secured Lucy's neck in a cervical collar and were getting ready to move her, which meant that it was unlikely she had sustained any spinal cord injury. With Mike's help they lifted her onto a gurney, which in turn fit on a collapsible set of wheels, carrying the young woman out of the theater and to the ambulance.

  Once the most critical matter was dealt with, Mike turned his attention back to the producers. "The crew, where are they?"

  "On the street in the back. Grabbing a smoke. They're pretty scared," Kehoe said, walking upstage to call out the back door.

  Two kids in their twenties, dressed in jeans and filthy T-shirts, came back into the theater. Mike wrote their names and pedigree information in his pad and directed them to take him back up on the catwalk to see the pipes in the fly from which the swing had been suspended.

  "You're not going to the hospital with Lucy?" I asked Rinaldo Vicci.

  "I-I don't know what to do about the poor child. Perhaps you could tell me where they've taken her." He rubbed his extended abdomen with one hand, again wiping sweat from his forehead with the other. "I'm not really responsible for her."

  "Someone should be with her. The doctors will need an adult to sign a consent form for the surgery. Don't any of you care what happens to her?"

  Mona held up her hands, as though telling me to stop talking. "Wait a minute. I've got to speak to my lawyer before I even think of getting involved. Rinaldo, this is really in your lap. Isn't she eighteen? You told me she was eighteen, that we were just going to say sixteen for the publicity. You know her family?"

  "Nobody. I don't know anything at all. She told me she's from West Virginia. She told me she's here alone."

  "Mr. Vicci, I expect you can do better than that. Surely you must have some better information, something back in your office, perhaps?"

  He was playing with the fringe of the lavender cashmere scarf he had tossed around his neck, on this mild spring afternoon. "I'm thinking very hard, Miss Cooper. I'm thinking I don't know very much at all. This was all to be so informal today, you understand me?"

  I was thinking that if I could pull the two ends of the scarf a bit tighter around the neck he might cough up whatever it was he didn't want to tell me. "Who brought her to you, Mr. Vicci? How did she come to your attention? I want some explanation, some-"

  "Scusi, signora. There would be notes in my office. I'm pleased to get that information for yo
u and give you a call later on, but for now, she's just one of the many young ladies who knock on the door or someone refers to me."

  "Where are her clothes? There must be a bag with some beatification. Someone to get in touch with?" I turned to the small group of actors and asked them to take me to the dressing room.

  We walked behind the curtain on stage left, up a ramp to a cheerless communal room. One side of it was lined with mirrors, below which stood a ledge wide enough to hold makeup and hair supplies, with stools scattered beneath that. On the opposite wall were hooks and hangers. One of the girls from the dance number pointed at the black sweater and Capri pants that belonged to Lucy, and the tote bag that hung with them.

  I dug around in the tote-pushing aside sunglasses, birth control pills, a strip of nicotine gum, and a container of mace-until I found a plastic wallet. There was thirty-four dollars in cash, an ATM card, and a New York State driver's license. The date of birth would have made Lucy twenty-one years old, a much more convenient age to do just about anything a beautiful young woman might choose to do in the big city. The residential address listed was on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan-no mention of any connection to West Virginia-and I guessed that whoever she really was, she had purchased the identification in some illegal joint, not too long ago and not very far from Times Square.

  When I got back to the stage, Mike was standing in front of the orchestra pit, writing down names and numbers of the impatient angels who were waiting to get out of the theater. He turned his back and put his arm around me to explain what he had seen.

  "Those kids don't know anything. One of them is doped up to the gills-it's amazing with all the marijuana in him he could balance on the fly without taking a header himself."

  "Who hired them?"

  "The older one of them got a call last week from his cousin, who's on the crew at the Belasco. That guy didn't want to get in dutch with Joe Berk, so he passed the job along to these two, who are buddies. The script just tells them which pipe to move and when to move it. They have no idea who set the swing or when it was hung here."

  "You got the names of everyone in the peanut gallery?"

  "Yeah, these mopes can go. Hubert Alden's agreed to stay to talk to us."

  "Which one is he?" I asked, taking a casual glance at the dozen people still milling about in the side aisles.

  "The tall guy in the gray suit, trench coat over his shoulders. Looks like an ad for Brylcreem."

  Mike let the others go, still waiting for the Crime Scene Unit to show up. This kind of event-seemingly accidental-would not trump the day's other mayhem. I called my paralegal, Maxine, and dispatched her to the hospital to wait outside the recovery room for Lucy DeVore-no matter how long, no matter how late. Whoever Lucy really was and whatever her story, this was not a time for her to be without someone to help care for her, and Max had tended more victims through trauma than almost anyone I knew outside of an emergency room.

  We walked Hubert Alden to the back of the theater and introduced ourselves. He braced his back against the corner where the walls met and folded his arms, taking us each in as we studied him.

  "The medical examiner told us you called this morning. About Natalya Galinova. I'm the detective handling her case."

  "I'm grateful to you for that. Is there going to be any problem having her-well, her body-released to meto take home?"

  "I've got some questions, naturally. And we're waiting for her husband to sign the appropriate paperwork. Under the circumstances it's a bit unusual for someone who's not related to be making the claim."

  "We've had a professional relationship, detective. I've supported Talya, as an artist, and I've been very generous to the dance company, too."

  "This is what I'm a little confused about," Mike said, furrowing his brow and making circles in the air with his right hand, in his best Columbo imitation. "Exactly how does that partnership work?"

  Alden's description of his patronage was cut-and-dried. He denied there was any sexual involvement with Talya Galinova.

  "So what are you in this for?" Mike asked.

  "I've made a lot of money, detective. I'm fifty-two years old-an investment banker. Married briefly but no children. My grandmother was one of the most important opera singers of the last century. It's in her honor that I support great artists."

  "Who was your grandmother?" Mike asked.

  "Giulietta Capretta, before she became an Alden. Do you recognize the name?"

  Mike shook his head in the negative.

  "And you, Ms. Cooper?" Alden said, pushing away from the wall and walking down the aisle toward the exit door.

  "I've heard recordings of her that my father had. Singing with Caruso at the old Met, if I'm not mistaken."

  Alden flashed a smile at me, imitating his grandmother for us, as he wagged a finger, and proceeded to roll all his r's in a perfect trill, much like Rinaldo Vicci did. " 'Alas, young lady, you can have no idea how big my voice is if all you've listened to are the records. When I made recordings, they had to turn my back to the horn,'" Alden said, gesticulating grandly with his long arm, " 'or I would have ruptured the mechanism.' That was Giulietta's rebuke to the poor folk who never actually saw her perform in person."

  Alden was playing to me and I could see that Mike was annoyed. He got a few steps ahead of Alden and me and waited impatiently for us to catch up.

  "So that's what makes you so generous? Granny's memory?"

  "That's not enough for you, Mr. Chapman? The Aldens have been patrons of the arts for a very long time," Alden said, continuing to walk with a swagger, tugging at the lapel of his coat to keep it in place on his shoulder. "They were part of the cabal responsible for the building of the old Met. Broadway and Fortieth Street, 1883. Back when they were considered too gauche to be admitted to the Academy of Music."

  I had learned the story of the creation of the first Metropolitan Opera on my earliest trips to Lincoln Center. After the Civil War, the old guard who ran the academy, which had been the premier showcase for European and American opera performers in America until that time, had rejected the attempts at membership-and the petroleum money-of the nouveau riche: the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Astors, and Belmonts. The wealthy upstarts organized their own guild uptown, sending the Academy of Music into financial ruin and leaving on its site the Con Edison plant that still operates on 14th Street today. And opening night at the Met was so sparkling an event- women brilliantly gowned and jeweled-that the parterre boxes that held the rich patrons werethereafter called the Diamond Horseshoe. Undoubtedly, an Alden ancestor had been in that crowd.

  "So in your particular case, what did the half a million get you?"

  "Talya's attention, certainly. She was great company, Mr. Chapman. Remarkably smart and uniquely talented, beautiful to look at, great to be with."

  "And her husband, he didn't get in the way?"

  "Talya's husband hasn't been relevant for more than a decade. Lovely chap, as they say across the pond. He'sbeen in a wheelchair since he suffered a stroke-he must be close to eighty years old-and I have to say he's getting a bit gaga. He's got an attendant around the clock and wants for nothing."

  "So what was the attraction there?" Mike asked.

  "Money, when the old boy had it. But those days are long gone."

  "Friday evening, the night Talya was killed, were you at the performance?"

  "No, actually. I wasn't even in town, I've got a place outside Vail, and I flew out for the weekend. I didn't even know she'd been killed until Sunday evening."

  Mike gestured toward the stage of the Imperial. "What's your interest here?"

  Hubert Alden sighed. "You may know that Talya was pressing to play this role-the Evelyn Nesbit part-if the show got to Broadway. Joe Berk had been calling me to try to talk her out of it. Gave me the script to read. Have you seen it?"

  "No."

  "There's another role we all thought would have been perfect for Talya. She just didn't take it very well when Joe Berk and Rinaldo Vicci to
ld her about it."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "It's the part of Evelyn Nesbit's mother, Ms. Cooper. The next act of the show is really all about how Evelyn's mother took control of things after the murder. She was a very young woman, in fact- younger even than Talya was now. Thirty-something-quite glamorous herself and extremely manipulative. The Thaws bought her off-lots of mink, lots of jewelry. The second act is all about Evelyn and her mother, and what was known at the time as the murder trial of the century. Borrows heavily from that razzle-dazzle number in Chicago, but you don't often get an original thought on Broadway anymore, do you? And how can you lose an audience with a media circus, an insanity defense, and an attorney named-um…" Alden said, snapping his finger.

  "Delphin Delmas."

  "Very good, detective. I guess murder really is your beat."

  "I take it Talya didn't like that idea."

  "The talons came out. She was furious with all of us."

  "But she's dead, Mr. Alden," Mike said. "Why are you still in this game? You got another horse in the race?"

  "I've backed a lot of shows for many different producers. I've watched the Berk family splinter itself into factions for years. Any time two of them are fighting over the same property, there's always a chance to step into that wedge and pick up a bargain. I've listened to Joe's tirades for as long as I've known him, so I thought I'd come see if Mona had anything going for herself."

  "She invited you?"

  "Mr. Vicci is the one who called. Rinaldo Vicci. Talya's agent."

  "Depends on which way the wind was blowing, didn't it, whether or not he represented her?"

  "Talya? She'd come back to him. She always did."

  "Were you here today to see Lucy DeVore?"

  "I didn't know anything about the kid. Didn't Rinaldo tell you that Talya had begged him for one chance to let Mona Berk see what she looked like in the leading role? Didn't he tell you that it was supposed to be Talya Galinova up there on that broken swing this afternoon?"