"Same as I think about anybody who throws a curve like that one. You and I had such tunnel vision about the Met as the geographic center of this investigation. There's something way too slick about Alden, and I worry that maybe he's just steering us away from the progress we were making," I said, as Mike started to tell Mercer about the rehearsal studios at City Center.
"Progress? You still got a ballerina in a refrigerator down at the morgue and me itching to put cuffs on Joe-do-you-know-who-I-am-Berk. Progress is when I ratchet those little metal bracelets on some-body's wrists."
"When do we check the place out?" Mercer asked.
Mike looked at his watch. "It's almost three o'clock. Let's get up there while there's still someone to show us around. Where are your wheels?"
" Bayard Street. Near the sleazebag bail bondsman's office."
"I'm in front of the building. Let's use mine. Chow down, blondie."
The ride up Avenue of the Americas was slowed by traffic. I tried to nap in a corner of the cluttered rear seat of Mike's department car. I didn't have to count sheep-I had an even longer list, it seemed, of suspects who had eluded the long arm of the law this past week: the Turkish doctor who drugged his victims; Ramon Carido, the rapist who'd been bitten by a dog; and Ralph Harney, the stagehand who'd gotten a stand-in rather than provide us with a sample of his DNA.
"Ralph Harney," I said aloud. "You think he knows enough about electrical stuff to have been the guy who blackened the apartments and waited for me last night?"
Mike cocked his head and looked at me in the rearview mirror. "He's a stagehand, not an electrician."
"But he's worked around all that elaborate stage wiring for years. Had to pick something up, the jobs are so intertwined," Mercer said. "Worth looking at. The guys he works with could tell us how much he knows."
There was a hotel loading zone half a block east of City Center. Mike pulled in and parked the car.
As we approached the theater-the great expanse of sandstone capped by its monumental dome-a huddle of young women walked out of the building, stopping on the sidewalk to talk among themselves. Their long legs resting in the turned-out position of dancers, towels around their necks, suggested they had just finished the day's warm-up or class.
Behind them, another woman rushed out of the door, seemingly agitated that her path was blocked. She shifted from one side to the other, nudging the girl closest to her in order to pass by and run out into the street to flag down a Yellow Cab. She tossed her large black tote into the rear seat and climbed in after it.
It was impossible to tell whether she ignored the three of us or simply didn't hear Mike Chapman call for her by name to get her to stop. Mona Berk slammed the door of the taxi and took off down the one-way street.
37
The two security guards inside the lobby were less than impressed with Mike's gold shield. They kept no sign-in book at this entrance, although there was one on the 56th Street side, where the center's offices were located. And no, they had no idea who any of the women were who had left a short while ago.
One of the men called upstairs to have someone from management escort us inside. While we waited, I stepped back out on the sidewalk to look at the front of the theater. The words Mecca Temple were too many stories above for me to see-as Alden had suggested-but the other Islamic architectural motifs were impossible to mistake.
I noted as if for the first time the arcade of horseshoe arches in the tawny sandstone, the attached columns and capitals framed by the traditional Arabic alfiz, and the colorful glazed tiles that set the building apart from the low brick structures on either side. The massive facade was dotted with lancet windows, again in the Moorish style, which must have provided the only natural light to the areas behind the auditorium seats in the upper balconies.
Inside the foyer, Mike and Mercer's impatience was clear as they paced between the advance ticket sales window and a wall on the far end, postered with coming events.
"Detective Chapman? Ms. Schiller sent me down to answer your questions. My name is Stan," the young man said, extending his hand to each of us. "How can we help?"
"We're investigating the homicide that occurred at the Met ten days ago."
"Miss Galinova, of course."
"We understand that she rented studio space here for class and rehearsal."
"Yes, she did. We were privileged to have her."
"We're going to have to look around. We need to see where she worked, whether she kept a locker here, any record of her comings and goings or who might have visited her. People she mixed with, dancers who might have noticed her guests, men who-"
"Perhaps we can schedule an appropriate time to do this. I hadn't realized how much ground you need to cover." Stan tried to reach an arm out to stop Mike from entering the lobby, but he was too late.
"We might as well get started," Mercer said.
Mike had climbed the six steps that led to the rear of the auditorium, so completely different in style from the Met and other theaters we had seen. Mercer and I stepped up behind him for a look.
I had never seen the old house empty. Tier after tier of red velvet seats spread outward like a great fan, with shiny brass railings that ran along the aisles. The stage with its arched proscenium looked enormous; above and around the ceiling was the lacy grillwork typical of Moorish design-large perforated stars arrayed as cutouts above the orchestra and over the balcony seats-and gleaming ivory paint accented with rich gold metallic trim.
"Coop, take a look at the seats."
Below the armrest of each seat on the aisle was an intricately engraved panel, and in the middle of each one was the letter M.
"Miss Galinova had nothing to do with the auditorium, detective," Stan said, pushing up the sleeve of his shirt to check the time. "I'm leaving for the day at five, but if you'd like me to take you up to the office tower, I can give you an idea of where she worked."
He led us out through the lobby. "If you don't mind walking up a flight, we can actually connect through to the other space from within the theater without going outside to the Fifty-sixth Street entrance."
"We saw a woman leaving as we pulled up," Mike said. "Mona Berk. D'you know her? She have an office here?"
"I have no idea who she is. The name means nothing to me."
I walked beside Stan on the broad staircase as Mike and Mercer hurried ahead. "Very grand looking, isn't it?" I said as we reached the mezzanine.
The wide expanse was unlike the cramped spaces in Broadway theater lobbies, with beautifully stenciled coffered ceilings and thick carpeting.
"When the Shriners built Mecca Temple, this was one of the gentlemen's lounges. It was their smoking lodge, actually. Lots of sofas and sitting chairs, spittoons beside them. Marble floors with Moroccan carpets. The old boys were very interested in their comfort and elegance. Watch your heads, please."
We all stooped to exit the auditorium area and emerged into a dingy hallway that led to the office tower.
"Careful where you walk. This is the only way through to the studios, and it has to be kept unlocked. It's the only fire exit on this side of the building. But it's worth your life to get through here at the moment," Stan said, guiding me around piles of gels and high-top sleeves that once covered the spots from recesses overhead. "We're replacing a lot of the lighting equipment, modernizing to a digital system."
The path was cluttered with all the backstage theatrical magic that brought the stage alive, and Mike was annoyed at me for tiptoeing around the mess and slowing him down.
"Sorry, Mr. Chapman. Mecca was entirely gaslit when it was built in the twenties. Between that and the smoking habits of a lot of the performers and workmen, we've always had to take extraordinary precautions against fire."
A few corridors away we reached a bank of elevators.
"I'll take you up to seven. That's where Ms. Galinova liked to work."
The age of the old theater showed itself far less gracefully in the areas out of publi
c view. Walls were in bad need of a paint job, occasional corners graffitied in bright colored markers by members of visiting dance companies whose signatures provided a riotous splash of color against the drab beige paint.
"Did she have a dressing room?" Mike asked. "A place where she could be alone?"
" City Center isn't like the Met. We don't have a star system here. There are changing rooms, certainly, but nothing with Galinova's name on it. Is it possible she found an empty office to park herself in? Well, just try a few of the doors-there's always something available. Dusty but available."
Dancers-women and men-brushed by us as they passed out of a class. They all looked like teenagers-perfectly toned bodies, unlined skin covered with sweat, most of them in black leotards and tights topped by colorful woolen leg warmers.
"This is Julio Bocca's Argentine company. Fabulously talented young people. I think the oldest member of the corps is seventeen."
Stan said, waiting until they cleared through. The accompanist was still working on the timing of a tango and the music drifted into the corridor and followed the dancers down the hall.
We walked into the studio they had just vacated and I was aghast at its dimensions and decor. "This is fabulous," I said to Stan. "I've never seen rehearsal space like this in the city."
"Do you dance?"
"No, no. But I've studied ballet for years, taken lots of classes."
The room was unusually large, in length and depth. The painted ceilings and even the door frame were rich in architectural detail and color. What was most unique for a Manhattan rehearsal studio was that there were no columns at all, a completely open space in which the dancers could stage numbers as they would be performed in a theater.
Mike wasn't listening. He headed directly to the far end of the room and climbed a few steps, seating himself in an oversize wooden chair, carved with elaborate stars and crescents that I recognized now as symbols of the Middle Eastern influence.
"What about this?"
"The potentate's throne, detective. It was in these old lodge rooms that many of the secret rituals of the Shriners were conducted. In almost every one of these studios, there's an altar or shrine that played some part in the daily life of the members. I don't have a clue what went on in here, but most of us are just grateful that all this rich detail survived what the city did to the rest of the common space," Stan said, gesturing back to the hallway.
Mike was down the steps and back to the door. "Where else did Ms. Galinova spend time?"
Stan passed him and retraced his steps in the hallway. "This dressing room is for the women. I suppose that's the one she had to use." He looked over his shoulder at me. "Although I can't imagine for a minute that a prima like Galinova enjoyed sharing it with anyone else."
From within we could hear the voices of the dancers, speaking in Spanish, and the sound of the running water from the shower.
Mike nodded at me. "Your territory, Coop. Check front."
I pushed open the door and entered the room.
The first area had been converted into a small lounge. Several sofas and chairs were against the wall, and three of the dancers-barefoot and robed, waiting their turn for the shower-were curled up and chatting with one another.
I passed by them to another section of the room. Instead of lockers, there were only open cubbies for their belongings and a coatrack on which their clothing hung.
The last chamber was the bathroom area: several toilet stalls, a row of sinks, and one entire wall that was mirrored. There were backpacks on the floor, magazines and iPods stacked beside them, and makeup on every flat surface.
One of the girls emerged from the shower, wrapped in a bath sheet with her head turbaned in a towel. She excused herself as she slid in front of me, and I pressed my back to the wall to let her pass.
My hands were flat against the surface, a smooth, glazed tile that was cold to the touch. I looked around and noticed the same old ceramic squares-undoubtedly the original 1920s design-covering the wall opposite the showers and creating a border along the ceiling edge and floor.
I walked to the empty shower stall, which was also elaborately tiled, then turned to study the dark blue and pale green of the mosaics worked into a white ground. What had Hubert Alden called the typically Islamic motifs? A foliate design, he had said.
I ran my fingers over the beautiful image. The flowers looked familiar to me-their shape and colors-and I tried to recall where I had seen something like them.
Foliate, of course. Beautiful flowers. They were tulips, Arabic style, created specially for the Mecca Temple. And the other time I had seen them was on the monitor in Joe Berk's bedroom.
The images we suspected Berk of watching-of stealing for some personal perversion by means of a hidden surveillance system-must have come to him from a camera that had been surreptitiously installed here in the dressing room used by many of the dancers who rehearsed at City Center, including Lucy DeVore and the late Natalya Galinova.
38
The eight dancers looked at me as though I were crazy when I asked them to get dressed so that I could bring a man into the lounge. "For favor-vistase! Avance! Tengo que traer un hombre aqui."
I raised my voice, urging them to step out into the hallway, and even though I added a few "por favors," they didn't move.
I walked briskly past the cubbyholes to the door, again calling to them to dress themselves because a man was entering.
The three who had been changing wrapped towels around their slim bodies and stood speechless as I called to Mike to come into the bathroom.
He was too embarrassed to even make a joke, so he marched behind me to the area near the showers that the girls had been smart enough to clear.
"Look familiar?"
"Twenty dollars, Coop. The question is, What was Joe Berk looking at when the monitor in his bedroom caught these tulips?"
"I'll take your twenty. Who was he looking at? That's the answer I want."
Mike ripped back the opaque shower curtain and stepped into the wet stall. He was trying to find signs of a concealed device, and repeated his search in each of the three cubicles.
I watched him run his hands around the tops of the metal frames, and in the last booth he came up with what he wanted.
"You got it?"
"Not a camera. But there's a recess drilled in the wall there. Can't see into it-we need a ladder. But it feels like there's a mounting that could have held a small camera, and it's slanted so that focus would be on the tiled wall in the background. C'mon, let's move. Be sure and thank the young ladies on your way out. We're going back to Berk."
Mercer and Stan were waiting for us in the hallway, and Mike took Mercer aside to explain what we had seen.
"Are you done now?" Stan asked.
"Haven't even started yet," Mike called back to him. "Who's the best tech guy you know?"
Mercer answered. "Vito. Vito Taurino. Right, Alex?"
"The guy's a genius," I said. "Does all Battaglia's wiretaps and video surveillance. The kind the courts allow."
"We gotta find him now. Yesterday. Get him up here."
"I'll call Battaglia. But could someone really transmit video images from inside that shower stall?" I asked.
"It's all wireless now, Coop. It's called microwave technology- and I don't mean the kind you cook with. We used it in that murder investigation at the social club on Mulberry Street. You just need a board camera the size of a computer chip-the lens sits flat up on it-and mount it almost any place with brackets, like in that recess. Wire it through the back of the wall. Or maybe there's a dropped ceiling in the bathroom. Vito can check."
Mercer took over the explanation. "Run that up to an antenna."
"But where?" I asked.
"Just stick one on top of the building. Any building."
"Better yet," Mike said, talking to Mercer. "How about this dome? Stick a Yagi right on top of this mother, point if at a repeater, get the popcorn ready and-"
Mercer snapped his finger. "You're at the movies."
"Slow down. What's a Yagi?"
"It's a kind of antenna," Mercer explained. "You can direct them, orient them so they're facing repeaters, and the repeaters carry them the distance, to wherever the monitors are waiting."
"There are repeaters all over town," Mike said. "On top of the Empire State Building, Thirty Rock Center, the George Washington Bridge."
"Think nine-eleven," Mercer said. "When the towers collapsed, even your cell phones went dead downtown 'cause all that relay equipment was on top of the Trade Center."
I was beginning to understand. "And the camera just rolls all the time?"
"Probably motion activated," Mike said. "Someone steps in range of the lens and it's showtime."
The bathroom door opened and one of the enraged Argentines called Stan over for an explanation. He tried to mollify her but clearly wasn't successful.
"You two try to get some answers from Berk. I'll take Stan back up to the main office and see what other information they've got that might help. If Galinova was tenting rehearsal space, there have to be records of the dates. Somebody most have information about when she was here and who else hung out around her. You'll be back to me?" Mercer asked.
"Yeah. We'll stay in touch."
Stan tried to free himself when he saw us walk away. "If you're leaving, you'll have to go out the Fifty-sixth Street side. The theater's dark tonight. The entrance you came in is closed after five."
We left Mercer in the hallway. Stan was surrounded by three agitated dancers, as we waited for the elevator that returned us to the first floor. A small arrow pointed in the direction of the 56th Street exit and we followed the snaking corridors to make our way out.
The narrow, dark passages of the ground floor of the old building were lined with posters that re-created the theater history of the past few generations. I hurried to keep pace with Mike's long strides, past the life-size and youthful Lenny Bernstein-"vital music performed under a stimulating young conductor"; Mike Todd presenting Maurice Evans in Hamlet with the top ticket price of $2.40; and the 1948 image of George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, whom City Center had invited to establish a resident ballet company- which later became the New York City Ballet.
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