Death Dance

by Linda Fairstein

  "So Kehoe knew this whole space was vestigial, was of no use to anyone, and he engineered a way in for himself. With Joe Berk's money, and with access to all the nubile bodies Joe was willing to pay to perform for him." And access, I thought, to the top of the dome, to install an antenna to transmit video images.

  "Looks like he managed to do that. Who the hell would even find a way back here? And how? There's no way to open that door except electronically, Alex. He's got some kind of control, some electrical device that he pressed to let us in."

  "No other exits?"

  "Nothing up here. One way in, one way out. I'm sure of that."

  "How about the firewall on the stage? Doesn't that set off an alarm to nine-one-one?"

  "It was meant to, but not if Ross disabled it when he pulled the plug on the power and lights down there. He seems to have a separate system of his own in here."

  If an escape tactic wouldn't work, I needed to know why Ross Kehoe had called Dobbis to the theater tonight. I needed to know if there was any deal we could try to make with him and with Mona Berk to let us out alive.

  "What does Kehoe want with you?"

  He looked over at Ross and Mona, who seemed to be arguing with each other.

  "I was stupid enough to believe him when he called me to come over tonight. Told me that Mona had an offer for me, wanted to give me a piece of a new production if I'd give them some advice in exchange."

  Dobbis picked up his head and I could see tears in his eyes. "I should have known he'd be setting me up for something."

  I leaned toward him. "But for what? Do you know what that is?"

  "He's going to kill me if we don't do something. He'll kill both of us."

  I didn't need a road map to figure that out. Every theater had its ghosts, and we were on our way to joining the cast of this one.

  "I understand you. Why, though? I'm just a product of bad timing tonight. Why you?"

  "He was setting me up to take the weight for Talya's murder when you and your team walked in," Dobbis said, pulling in his breath to regain his composure.

  "Did you?"

  "No, dammit. Nothing to do with it."

  "Joe Berk? Or was it Ross Kehoe?"

  "Talya knew about Joe's game. She knew he had a fetish for young girls, for taping them while they were undressing or makinglove or showering. Watching them is what aroused him, especially when they didn't know-they couldn't know-that anyone could see what they were doing. Mostly he liked to look at them when he was home alone. Sometimes when the company he was keeping wasn't enough to do the trick for him."

  "She knew because he did it to her?"

  "Talya? She was too old for Joe. But she caught him at home with tapes of the young dancers. Videos of the girls in the showers and in the rehearsal studios who didn't know they were being filmed, and other kids who liked to perform for him, maybe right here in this room-happy to be photographed from a distance, happy that he couldn't touch them."

  "How do you know?" I asked, thinking how right Battaglia had been to ask me whether Joe Berk was a paraphile.

  "Because Talya told me. She didn't like me a lot, ever since we'd stopped being lovers years ago. But she trusted me-she always trusted me."

  "What did she tell you?"

  "Talya wasn't very good at it, but she was trying to blackmail Joe. Trying to use that information to get herself a boatload of money- or a starring role in Joe's next big hit. I guess she wanted me to know in case Joe did something to threaten her. She wasn't thinking of murder or anything like that, I can assure you. But Talya was aware that if her plan backfired, Joe would have the power to make her life miserable."

  "Do you think Joe paid Ross to kill Talya that night at the Met?"

  "I'm tired of thinking. It's not going to help us any to think at this point," Dobbis said, raising his bound hands to his face and rubbing across his eyes as best he could. "I should have been using my brain for the last week, while you and your detectives had me in your sights instead of Kehoe and Berk."

  "You were all in our sights, Chet. Every one of you. That's how it works till we're able to break down the information we've got. Maybe if you'd told us how much you knew about Talya, back then. Maybe if you let us know about Talya and what was going on in her relationship with Berk. There's a lot you've said just now that could have helped us last week."

  I despised his self-pitying whining. If he hadn't lied to Mercer and Mike, if he hadn't withheld what he knew about Talya and about Joe Berk, we wouldn't be together in this bizarre crypt that was unlikely to be opened until the next renovation, maybe fifty years from now.

  "I didn't know enough to tell you anything. It was only tonight, only a minute or two before you walked into the theater, that Ross bragged to me about killing Joe Berk."

  "Today? He told you that he killed Joe today?"

  Chet Dobbis threw back his head and looked up at the sliver of sky above us. "No, no, no. You still don't get it, do you? Ross Kehoe killed Joe Berk last Sunday night, right in front of the Belasco Theatre."

  44

  I wasn't walking back the cat anymore, I was running with him.

  Ross Kehoe-Joe's trusted employee, his driver, the genius with every kind of electrical equipment. That day at the Imperial Theatre, moments before he walked Lucy behind the curtain to put her up on the swing, it was Ross Kehoe who stood on the stage, directing the guy in charge of the lighting to give him something cooler, to bring down the brightness. Why didn't Mike or I realize then that Kehoe had a specialty, an area of expertise that had all to do with electricity?

  Last night, when the lights went out in my home, when someone broke into or scammed his way into the building and shut down the power in the A line of apartments, why didn't I think of Kehoe's electrical prowess when I racked my brain for possible suspects connected to the investigation?

  And when Joe Berk stepped on a manhole that was wired to jolt him into the great beyond, why didn't any of us figure that the man who used to chauffeur him would know exactly where to park the car, know exactly what sewer cover Joe would step on when he came out of his apartment to get across the street to go to dinner with his wayward son? How easy for someone with Kehoe's ability to cut the wrapping on the insulation in the power box-just minutes before Berk and his son left the Belasco to go to dinner-in order to mimic the tragic accidents that had electrocuted unsuspecting pedestrians in Manhattan in years past.

  Of course Briggs had told Mona about the dinner plans. Of course Kehoe had the opportunity to stage-what had the ME called it?-an "electrical event" and wait in the wings, on the dark street, to make sure Joe Berk was his only victim.

  So Joe Berk had been meant to die last Sunday, just two nights after Natalya Galinova's murder. And shortly after his beloved Briggs had dropped the lawsuit against him, hoping for reconciliation. It was Briggs who had been escorting Joe out to the car on their way to dinner that evening, and undoubtedly Briggs and Mona who had been partners with Ross in Joe Berk's skillful execution.

  None of them had counted on Joe's ninth life, short as it was.

  Chet Dobbis was also sweating profusely. "Joe Berk's accidental death was supposed to put an end to your investigation."

  "How? Why would-"

  "Ross made that much clear to me tonight. Talya was killed on Friday. She and Joe were in the middle of a tempest-had been for days-fighting and feuding quite publicly. He missed her performance that night but showed up in her dressing room."

  Everything Dobbis said so far made sense.

  "She disappeared at the Met that very evening. The best Joe could do was say his driver would vouch for him. Even an idiot knows that one of Joe's employees would swear to anything to keep his job. That's worthless in a court of law."

  Dobbis was right. The chauffeur was always a lousy alibi.

  "Joe's glove was found near Talya's body. That's what Ross told me. He said he heard it from Joe. Is it true?"

  I nodded my head. A glove with Joe Berk's DNA on it
-and a good chance now that the other skin cells on the surface would soon be matched to Ross Kehoe, whose profile was in the linkage database from the earlier homicide investigation on Staten Island. All the information in that database that had been rendered useless-paralyzed for the time being-after I appeared in court last week on the Ramon Carido case before Judge McFarland.

  "You think Ross couldn't have gotten his hands on a pair of Joe's gloves and planted one at the scene? You think Joe would ever have missed them?"

  "Not likely. He probably had-"

  "Dozens of pairs. That was his style, Alex. More of everything. Whoever got through the winter without losing a glove somewhere?"

  "But Talya's murder? Did Joe really know his way around the Met?"

  "He'd been back there scores of times. He was an impresario, courting talent, courting stars. Of course he'd been behind the scenes. They could have been going to any one of the offices," Dobbis said, pausing for several seconds. "Like Ross said to me downstairs, they could have been coming up to my office."

  "And they were fighting on the way there," I said.

  "Two terrible-tempered people, both volatile and very physical. They argued and Joe became enraged. Struck her, maybe hit her too hard. She passed out and he panicked. Threw her down the shaft."

  "He was strong enough?"

  "You only saw Joe after he was hurt. He was as strong as he was tough. It gave him the menace to back up his mouth."

  I was following Dobbis's story line until he reminded me that it was just the version that Ross Kehoe had expected the police to believe. It was Ross who had actually worked at the Met-worked at almost every theater in Manhattan at one point in time or another. And Ross who knew the place well enough to steal a white-haired wig that would help incriminate Joe Berk, too, having no idea the Met used animal hair to make the wigs.

  "So then Ross set up Joe Berk's electrocution. Which would have been a neat way for the police to close the case, had it worked. The killer gets his just deserts. And that's why Mona Berk came to the Belasco the night Joe was supposed to die. She was going to leave enough evidence-videotapes, maybe-something connecting Joe to the threats that Talya had been making. Something that would have given him a motive to murder his diva. Case closed."

  Chet Dobbis raised his hands again to wipe away the sweat. "You know he's going to kill us. You understand Ross has that rope here so that he can-"

  He stopped abruptly, unable to speak the words.

  "But why?"

  "Because Joe Berk lived too long. One week too long. Joe spent a lot of time with you, with the detectives last week. Ross doesn't think any of you believe Joe killed Talya. He wants to take the heat off himself. He wants to make it look like I-"

  Dobbis choked on his own words.

  "See that rope?" he asked me.

  I looked at the thick pile on the floor near his feet. "He wants to make it look like you committed suicide?"

  He nodded his head, and now the rivulets of sweat merged with the teardrops.

  "I guess he figures that it's easy to make a case that Talya was on her way to my office when she was killed. Old lovers, everyone knew that. Make the case that I was jealous of Berk, jealous of Hubert Alden."

  "But why would he do it here, in the dome, if no one would find you?"

  "That wasn't the plan. At least not until you showed up. He had the gun. He was trying to force me to go up to the fly gallery-backstage-just before you got there. He must have more rope. Think how easy it would be to hang me from the fly," Dobbis said. "Make it look like I killed myself."

  No wonder Chet Dobbis had said he was glad to see us when Mercer and I surprised him in the auditorium.

  Ross Kehoe walked over to the bar, turned his back, and leaned against it.

  "Make me a drink," he said to Mona.

  "Don't give me orders," she said, looking petulant and unhappy.

  "I'm doing all the work. Make me a drink."

  She walked toward the counter and poured from one of the decanters. They had been quarreling with each other, from the look on her face. Kehoe must have felt as trapped as Dobbis and I did. There was no need to fuel that mix of desperation and nerves with alcohol.

  "Your arrival tonight makes things much harder for us," Kehoe said to me. "And that's why you're making it so much harder for yourself."

  "You don't know my partners very well. They're out of that steel trap by now and they won't leave this building until they've found me."

  Kehoe looked at his watch, took a sip of his drink, and smiled at me.

  "The front entrance to the theater was completely barred," I said. "They know none of us went out that way, and if they go back the way we came in through the office tower, the security guard will tell them we never passed by there again."

  "You're giving that dumb bastard a lot more credit than I would. And I guess you don't know there's a series of exits right behind the stage. Three doors and a truck bay wide enough to fit a container shipment. That would be the logical way to take anybody out of here quickly," Kehoe said, running his tongue round and around his lips. "Those doors are the first things your buddies would have seen when the release went up on the firewall."

  I looked at Dobbis and he nodded in agreement.

  "I guarantee you they'll look everywhere else before they even figure out there's an entrance to this dome," Kehoe said, as Mona Berk took the glass from his hand and sipped at it. "It sits in the middle of this city like a gigantic ball, and it's never had any use at all."

  "The noise-"

  "You got a lot of degrees, maybe, but you don't know anything important, do you? Like everything else in a theater, that door is soundproofed. Scream, Miss Prosecutor, and maybe a passing pigeon'll hear you up above, but nobody else will."

  He reached into his pants pocket and withdrew something. They were small objects that I couldn't see, but I could hear the metallic sound as he jiggled them together in his fingers.

  Kehoe opened the chamber of his revolver. He lifted his hand to his mouth and I watched in horror as he kissed the tip of a bullet and placed it in the gun. He grinned at me and sucked in air again, kissing a second bullet and loading it in the chamber.

  "I wasn't counting on two of you," he said. "I hate to waste the lead."

  I raised my head and tried to scoff at his arrogance, which frightened me every bit as much as it did Chet Dobbis. I knew there was no way out, but Ross Kehoe must have known that, too. We were all trapped here together. "They're not stupid enough to think a woman disappeared from within a theater and simply couldn't be found anywhere."

  "Don't be so sure of yourself, Alex," Kehoe said, pointing the gun at me and cocking his head, as though he was practicing taking aim. "That theory didn't do anything to help Natalya Galinova get out of the Met alive, did it?"

  45

  Two hours must have passed before Ross Kehoe and Mona Berk left the area where Chet Dobbis and I had been restrained. They had forbidden us to talk to each other as they whispered between themselves, reformulating their plans.

  The only other noise I could hear came through the broken skylight above-the honking of car horns and the occasional scream of sirens, too far away to be useful to me.

  Kehoe walked away from us and down the staircase. I was even more tired now and terribly frightened as I had watched Kehoe deteriorate throughout the night, fighting with Mona and then pouring himself a second drink.

  My arms ached from trying to stretch at and work the binds behind me, but I sat up at attention when I heard what sounded like the door-our only connection to freedom-slide on its tracks. It seemed like Kehoe had left.

  Ten minutes later the door reopened and Kehoe walked up the steps and back to us.

  He spoke to Mona. "Nobody down there. They've got the lights on now, but I couldn't see anyone."

  I whispered to Dobbis, "How can he tell? What could he see?"

  "Do you remember those perforated stars, the enormous ones over the proscenium with cuto
uts in the grillwork?"

  They were the most beautiful part of the auditorium's design. "Yes, of course."

  "If Kehoe walked around that entire dark chamber we came through, he'd reach the area behind those eight stars. When the Shriners built the place, that was an organ loft. Another anachronism, another empty space. But from behind those stars you can pretty well see the entire auditorium. And you can do it without being seen from below."

  Everything seemed to be working to Kehoe's advantage.

  Mona got up from the bar stool and moved to the bed, stretching out on top of it. Kehoe walked over to us.

  "You might as well rest. You need to save some energy to make your way out of here when we're ready to go."

  His back was to Mona, who had rolled over on her side. As he squatted to look behind me to check that the ties were still secure, he laid his hand on my knee, then ran his forefinger up the length of the inside of my thigh. I suppressed a gag as my eyes followed his dirty fingernail along the seam of my gray slacks.

  "Go where? How?" I asked as he pushed up to his feet. Had he lost it entirely that he thought he could walk us out of this dome?

  "Chet will tell you. This theater has more trapdoors and underground passages than the Vatican. Two, three in the morning, maybe we'll get moving. Might even have to wait until tomorrow night."

  Kehoe lifted the revolver and stroked his cheek with the barrel. "Unless you get on my nerves too much."

  "And then what?" I asked. "Cops will be looking for you everywhere. Your home, the airports, the train stations, the car rental-"

  "You know, Alex, that's the nice thing about owning your own planes. BerkAir. Not that we intend to take you and Chet quite that far with us. Maybe a little insurance to get us to the right private field."

  "BerkAir to the Bahamas, no doubt."

  "Follow the money," Kehoe said, sitting up against the headboard of the bed, next to Mona, to keep an eye on us. He rested the gun on his chest.