Death Dance

by Linda Fairstein

  "And Mona found out?"

  "Joe's kid-Briggs-told her. Two years ago he was still estranged from his old man. That's when he told Mona what had been going on. I imagine it's why Joe made such an effort to bring his son back under his wing. To keep him close and get him to drop the lawsuit."

  "What amount did she sue him for?"

  "About five billion dollars, Alex, for the invasion of her trust fund. She claims that Uncle Joe bled her accounts dry. The irony is that the deal Joe Berk made with the feds to pay up the tax claim put such a tight clamp on his settlement agreement that even in the discovery process of her civil suit, the judge hasn't allowed Mona's lawyers to get disclosure of the terms and amounts of the trusts. Nobody really knows how much money is at the base of the Berk empire."

  "Hard to believe she could want that much more money than what she's got."

  Battaglia smiled at me. "Her lawyers whine to me that it isn't about the money. She just wants to be on the same footing as the other children-it's all about being treated like family, is what they tell me it's about."

  "I'll let you know when I find the chink in Joe's armor. And I'll give you the latest on the Met before the weekend."

  Two other bureau chiefs were lined up to see the district attorney as I said good night to Rose. It was almost six and the corridors were empty now, most workers on their way home, and many young trial lawyers hunkered down over their desks, assiduously starting a long evening of legal research or trial preparation.

  Laura had left a note on my desk, clipped to three telephone messages and a crisp white envelope, hand-delivered from the hospital's general counsel, who'd been monitoring Selim Sengor's suspension since last weekend.

  The three calls were personal, so I sat down to deal with the letter before I dialed to gab and make social plans with my friends.

  As I tore an opening across the top of the sealed envelope, I could hear the noise of a sharp scratch against a piece of flint within it. The paper was immediately engulfed in a burst of flames, which licked at my face, setting fire to my hair and the collar of my silk blouse.

  24

  I grabbed the sweater from the back of my chair and buried my head in it, trying to smother the flames. I didn't know whether it was my cries of distress or the acrid smell of smoke, but something brought two rookie cops running from the main hallway on their way to the elevator into my office. One of them grabbed my head and cradled it against his shoulder, then pushed me back to make certain the shirt was no longer smoldering.

  "You okay?"

  I nodded, trying to calm myself before speaking.

  "Sit down till you stop shaking," he said to me.

  His partner had picked up the envelope to examine it.

  "Be careful," I said. "They'll try to get prints off that."

  "You mean it's not yours? I thought maybe you dropped a cigarette and set fire to something on your desk."

  "No. The letter was jerry-rigged with matches. I could hear it scratching as soon as I ripped it open, but I didn't realize what was happening fast enough."

  The taller of the two cops squatted so that he was eye level with the desk, examining the envelope with the tip of his pen. "Look at this, Pavone. This mutt glued a bunch of matchheads on one side of the flap, then stuck a piece of flint on top of the self-sealer. The minute you start to pull back on it, it's gotta erupt in flames."

  Pavone studied what was left of the parched envelope. "You know who sent it? We'll call a unit and get you a sixty-one on this."

  "I-uh-I know whose stationery it is, but I'm sure he's not the person who sent it. It's a case I've been working on-I'll have the detectives draw it up, thanks." The uniformed force #61 was the department's name for a criminal complaint form. "I'd have to guess my perp stole some writing paper from his employer's office. Sort of a parting shot at me before he left town."

  "Can we get a bus for you?"

  "I don't need an ambulance. It didn't get my body, I don't think. It just singed some hair." I could feel the blister developing on the skin beneath my blouse, but fortunately the cops couldn't see that.

  "Can we at least get you out of here? Give you a lift home?"

  I could see the brass insignias on their collars. They'd have to pass my street on the way north to the 23rd Precinct station house. "Sure. That'd be great."

  I locked the door behind me-it was a crime scene now-and waited until I was resting in the rear seat of their patrol car to call the captain of the DA's Squad. I told him what had happened and asked him to get Crime Scene downstairs to photograph the homemade device and send it to the lab for a workup. The janitor would let them in my office with a passkey. I also asked him to break the news to Paul Battaglia and spare me that encounter for the moment, and to explain to the district attorney that I was just fine.

  By the time Mike and Mercer arrived at my apartment in response to my calls, I had already showered and washed my hair. I opened the door in an old shirt and leggings, with a pair of scissors in my hand, and went back to the bathroom to snip at the hair that framed the left side of my face, and then even out the uncharred pieces that hung on the right. I felt like I was thirteen again, cutting bangs for myself and hoping my mother wouldn't notice the hatchet job.

  Mike stood behind me in the doorway. "Smells like an incinerator in here. Take some more off the top, kid," he said, lifting some strands from behind that I couldn't see for myself. "Where's the blouse?"

  "On my bed."

  "Mercer, you better voucher it. Jeez, lucky you don't wear polyester," he called out from the other room. "There's a hole the size of my fist in this. You'd have been instantly deep-fried. Let me see your chest."

  He had walked back into the bathroom. I opened a couple of buttons and showed Mike the burn in the hollow below my shoulder.

  He whistled at the ugly melange of colors that had already developed there. "For once it's a good thing you're so flat-uh, so small. Another inch of decolletage and we'd have had roasted marshmal-lows. Little ones. Tasty little ones. I mean, probably tasty."

  "Your empathy is heartwarming."

  "Want me to rub on the butter?"

  "That remedy went out with the dark ages. Cool water. I stood in the shower for ten minutes, cold enough to form icicles, I think. It'll be fine." I glanced at the burn in the mirror-a mild second degree, I figured, and went back to cutting my hair.

  "My way is a helluva lot more soothing than a frigid shower, but you're the boss."

  I joined the guys in the den five minutes later, where Mike pronounced my self-administered hairstyling a complete failure. "She's got that whackier-than-Sharon-Stone-looking, finger-in-an-electrical-socket-just-for-kicks expression, don't you think, Mercer? Too punk to prosecute."

  "Not to worry. The first person I called was Elsa. She'll open the salon for me at seven thirty in the morning." My beloved friend and hairdresser would repair the charcoal-fringed blond coloring and Nana would clip me into better shape.

  "You got some kind of screwed-up priorities, kid. First the hairdresser, then the police? Where's your camera? If you're not going to see a doctor, we better get a few shots of the injury."

  I went back to the bedroom to get my digital camera and handed it to Mercer when I returned. "This is a big mystery to you, Detective Chapman? Sengor probably put the flare together while he was sitting at home and stewing about his arrest. Then he left it with Alkit to be delivered through the hospital messenger system. Nobody would blink at an envelope with the counsel's return address coming to my office by hand. There'll be a sign-in from a legit deliveryman at our security desk, all on the up-and-up, and Laura was probably still there to receive it. I'm just glad she didn't open it."

  "Show him some skin, Coop," Mike said, as Mercer positioned me against the linen-white wall in my hallway to take some photos. "I brought you a get-well present."

  When Mercer was finished, we returned to the den together. Mike had fixed each of them a drink, and handed me an elegantly shaped
bottle of amber liquid with a bright red ribbon around its throat.

  "What's this?"

  "Time for an upgrade. A hyperpremium scotch for a hyper-premium broad. No need to get freaky. It's still from Scotland. Isle of Islay."

  I tried to pronounce the long name on the unfamiliar label before Mike took the bottle back from me and opened it, pouring an inch-neat-into my glass. "Guy in my liquor store said it's got a lot of finesse. No kidding, that's how he described it. Said it's richer and older than the stuff you've been drinking. Damn, you're richer and older than when I met you, too."

  Mercer studied the bottle while I tasted the smoky single malt. He let out a low whistle. "Slow down on that stuff, Alex. The man bought you a twenty-seven-year-old scotch."

  "Are you crazy?" I asked Mike. "That must have cost you-"

  "Hey, is it any good? That's all that counts tonight."

  "It's divine," I said, sinking back against a pillow, letting the rich flavor work on my frazzled nerves. I knew the expensive gift was one of Mike's ways of thanking me for trying to get him back on course. I savored it twice as much.

  The television was on and Mike reclicked the mute button to return the sound as Alex Trebek announced the Final Jeopardy category, Famous Military Leaders.

  I stretched out on the sofa with two pillows behind my head. "Must be your lucky day. You can recoup your loss on this delicious extravagance."

  "Double or nothing," Mike said, tossing two twenty-dollar bills on the floor. "Winner buys dinner. What do you say, blondie? Anywhere you want to go-we can walk around the corner to Swifty's for some twinburgers, or I'll drive you down to Patroon, buy you the biggest steak in the house."

  I sniffed at the ends of my hair. "Can you just see me in Swifty's? The best-dressed, most perfectly coiffed ladies in Manhattan, and I walk in like this? No, thanks. I'm too achy to go anywhere."

  Mike walked to the phone to order a pizza as Trebek unveiled the answer. "Editor of the autobiography of the great American general Ulysses S. Grant."

  Two of the three contestants seemed to be too puzzled to even venture a guess, while the third one scribbled an answer on his screen.

  "I hate when they sucker me in like that," Mike said. "This answer doesn't have anything to do with military history. It's right up your English-major alley once again."

  "Not even a guess?" Trebek asked the second contestant, who held up a blank slate.

  "Maybe it's a trick question. Why would you need someone else to edit your life story? I'm going with Grant himself," Mike said, talking to Trebek.

  "Mercer, do you care to jump in here, or is this for me, to ease my pain?" I said, reaching out my arm for the forty dollars on the carpet near my feet.

  "Go for it."

  "I'm so sorry," Trebek said. "That's not the correct answer. Who-"

  "Who was Mark Twain?" I asked.

  "… was Mark Twain? Can you imagine that?" Trebek said. "The author of one of our finest American novels actually edited and published the memoirs of one of the greatest generals who ever lived. Quite something, isn't it?"

  "They were really an odd couple," I said, "but they were last friends."

  "You're one to talk about odd couples."

  The phone rang and I screwed up my nose as Mike tried to hand me the portable receiver. "I don't want to speak to anyone. Let it ring."

  He looked at the caller ID and pressed the talk button. "Alexander Cooper's residence."

  I rested my glass on the floor beside me and waved at Mike with both hands, mouthing the word no as emphatically as I could.

  "No, sir. I'm just the butler. Yeah, Mr. B, it's Mike Chapman. She's-uh-she's actually across the hall at her neighbor's apartment Can you imagine? She ran out of scotch. Yeah, she's fine. She'll tell you about it in the morning." Mike proceeded to give the district attorney a replay of my description of the fiery letter, as well asto talk about the likely suspects-Sengor or Alkit-who might have sent it.

  "Whatever you say, Mr. B. Sure, I can spend the night here, no problem. I don't think anybody's gonna show up later on Ms. Cooper's doorstep with exploding anchovies on a large pie, but if it makes you feel better, I'll keep an eye on her," Mike said. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes she's more trouble than she's worth. I gotta agree with you there."

  I pushed up from the sofa to protest. "There are two doormen downstairs, twenty-four hours a day. I really don't think-"

  "Don't roll your eyes at me, blondie. Till we see if they lift any prints from what's left of that envelope in the morning, the district attorney wants to play it safe."

  By the time the pizza was delivered, I was hungry enough to chew on a slice while Mercer and Mike devoured the rest of it.

  A little before nine, Mercer had a call on his cell from one of his Special Victims Squad colleagues, who was a few blocks from my apartment. He was returning from the DA's video unit with duplicate copies of Sengor's collection and asked if we wanted to review any of them before arraigning his pal, Dr. Alkit, in the morning. Mercer went down to the lobby and returned with six tapes.

  "You want to see what we've got?"

  "Guess we'd better look at the one from last Friday. Are they marked?"

  "Yes. These are all labeled," Mercer said, picking out the right tape and loading it in my VCR.

  Sengor must have activated the video camera at some point in the evening after his victims had been rendered unconscious. The first few seconds of film showed the empty beds in his room, the covers folded down to reveal the sheets. Mercer had been in the apartment the night of the arrest, so he described to us the bookcase opposite the bed in which the device had been hidden, wedged among a series of pharmacological textbooks.

  In the background, I could hear the CD player changing discs, and then Kris Kristofferson's plaintive voice asking someone to help him make it through the night. Sengor walked into the room carrying Jean Eaken's limp body in his arms. He was naked, and she was dressed in the casual clothes she had worn when I met her late on Friday night.

  The doctor lowered his victim onto the nearest bed, adjusted the dimmer on the light switch to darken the room, turned to the camera-almost preening for it as he ran his hand down his chest and paused to admire his erection.

  Jean Eaken never moved. Sengor slowly and deliberately raised her by lifting beneath her shoulders and removed her sweater over her head. He unhooked her bra and took her arms out of its straps, one at a time. He was mumbling now, talking to her as he undressed her, but the words were inaudible to me. He let her fall back in place and stood up, taking a drag from a joint-presumably marijuana- that was on his nightstand, before going back to the business of removing her pants.

  Mike had seen enough. "Necrophilia. I've never seen anything so disgusting. How can you watch him do this? The only thing different than having sex with a corpse is that this kid's body is still warm. I'm telling you, you people who do sex crimes, you're all out of your minds. At least the people I deal with are dead. Over and out. They don't see anything, they don't feel anything. The perp doesn't get to say, 'It ain't a crime where I live, buddy.' It's frigging murder, no matter where it happens. This stuff? How can you look at it? No wonder your love life's in the can, Coop."

  Mercer stopped the tape. "Here's a guy gives us the whole crime, gift-wrapped. We have to watch it-make sure there's nothing exculpatory on it. You know that."

  Mike was in the kitchen, his vodka in one hand, the other one rifling through the freezer for ice cream, the most likely food group to be found in my home. "Yeah, but there's something about the two of you sitting in the den with this-this disgusting stuff-and the fact that you're watching it together like you're at the movies is really-"

  "Those nuns in parochial school did a great job on you, Mikey."

  I said. "I'm surprised you can even say the words sexual intercourse, no less do the deed."

  "What makes you think I've done it, kid? You'd be the last to know. I'm telling you, watching that shit roused you up, see? Y
ou shouldn't even be talking like this."

  "Mercer and I have to watch this, and all the other tapes they seized, just the way you go to autopsies."

  "Yeah, well, I'll take homicide any day of the week. Let me know when you think you've seen enough to prove your case, will you? I know you like to give the jury a rock-crusher, but this one's out of the park."

  I walked into the living room to meet him. He dropped into an armchair and scooped out spoonfuls of chocolate chocolate chip from the container, his feet on my glass-topped coffee table.

  "Now all I need is a perp to prosecute," I said, easing myself onto another chair.

  Mercer followed me out of the den, but stood behind Mike. "I'll head for home. You want to bring these duplicate tapes down to Max? I suppose she and your interns can sort through them all and see if we've got more victims to search out."

  "Will do." I got up to walk him to the door and kiss him good night. "Thanks for keeping me company. It really was frightening when that little fireball flew up at my face. Have you seen anything like that before?"

  "Who got the call to the governor's office on Third Avenue two years back? Iggy, wasn't it?" Mercer asked Mike. "Remember that prisoner in New Mexico who set up fifty letters like that and sent one to the governor of every state?"

  Mike shrugged.

  "Yeah," Mercer went on. "Five secretaries all over the map got lit up just like you. The other intended bombs sat in stacks of correspondence and they all got tracked to the same inmate. It's not hard to do, Alex."

  "You'll let me know about the fingerprints in the morning?"

  Mercer pointed at my hair. "You take care of the 'do'-the rest is up to me."

  "You ready for a refill?" I asked Mike after I closed the door and locked the deadbolt.

  "Sure. We'll watch the ten o'clock news and then it's lights out for you."

  "That's fine with me, Dr. Chapman. I'm really whipped. You can sleep in the guest room, you know."

  "This sofa's worked for me before. I'm cool with it."

  "I'll get a quilt to put over you. And how about a robe?"