Bad blood

32

“Teddy O’Malley thinks his subterranean empire is a necropolis,” Mike said. “But this is what I call a city of death.”

We had parked in front of the tall wrought-iron gates of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, four hundred acres of elegantly landscaped grounds that had been a burial place for New Yorkers since the time of the Civil War. Evan Silbey, the funeral coordinator who would escort us to Rebecca Hassett’s grave site, met us there.

Silbey settled into the backseat of the car. “The word cemetery means ‘place of sleep,’ Mr. Chapman. It’s more calming than the word death.”

“The big sleep, buddy. No disrespect to Raymond Chandler.”

“My point is that cemeteries are a very recent concept, historically speaking,” Silbey said. “The necropolis style was mainly driven by architecture-funerary monuments just stacked upon each other with no sense of nature. The ancients buried their dead along the roadsides leading out of the cities. Via Appia, if you will.”

Mike walked around to the driver’s side and got into the car.

“In medieval times, it became the custom to bury people in churchyards, right inside the cities,” Silbey went on. He was slightly built and quite pale, with horn-rimmed glasses and the flattest monotone of a voice. “But most urban areas eventually ran out of room. By 1800, many city dwellers wanted more rural retreats that would offer places for meditation and contemplation while visiting the departed, so people could use these grounds as public parks, too.”

Silbey handed Mike a map of Woodlawn.

“You got miles of interior roadway here, haven’t you?” Mike asked, unfolding and studying the vast property plan.

“Indeed. And more than three hundred thousand residents. It’s quite a large sanctuary in the middle of the city, although this was all farmland when the design was plotted. You know Mount Auburn?”

“In Massachusetts?” I asked. “Cambridge?”

“Yes. That was the first rural cemetery planned in America. The idea was that the arboretum around the graves-the air being cleaned by circulating through the trees-would be a much healthier burial setting. Greenwood, in Brooklyn, was the next park set up on this model. It actually became one of the first tourist attractions in New York.”

“Where to?” Mike asked.

Silbey leaned forward and pointed to our location on the map, at the northeast corner of the vast memorial park. “We’re right here, at the corner of East 233rd Street. The cemetery runs the entire way down to Gun Hill Road.”

“George Washington territory.”

“What is?” I asked.

“Seventeen seventy-six. Washington was retreating from the city to Westchester, to make a stand at what became the battle of White Plains. He constructed a redoubt to delay the British troops that were coming after him. That’s why it’s called Gun Hill-the redoubt commanded the Bronx River valley and the Boston Road.”

“I’m impressed, Mr. Chapman,” Silbey said. “We’re bounded on the west by Jerome Avenue. You know that one, too?”

“Nope.”

“A capitalist, not a general. Leonard Jerome. Had a grandson named Winston Churchill.” Silbey leaned his small head over the seat back, looking between Mike and me. “You know, Miss Cooper, that even long after we opened these gates here at Woodlawn, women weren’t allowed to accompany their loved ones to their graves at most other places like it.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“Greenwood Cemetery was built before the Brooklyn Bridge was. Between the street congestion in Manhattan and the instability of the little ferries to Brooklyn, it was considered too indelicate for ladies to make the trip. Our resting ground was much more accessible, so women were always welcome. Primrose, Detective Chapman. That’s where we’re going.”

Silbey tried to stretch his fingers to point at a section of the map.

“Primrose? Like the tree?”

“Yes, that’s it. Stay to the center-we’ll take that main drive.”

Mike started off slowly. Ahead and to the right was the sloping hillside that led west from our starting point. From the street off to our left, the usual city sounds of car traffic and honking horns were almost drowned out as a Metro North train rattled by on the adjacent tracks.

A minute later, we had lost the noise as we climbed the gentle rise within the cemetery and were surrounded by the sylvan atmosphere of the plantings and sculptures.

“We want Walnut or Magnolia?” Mike asked at the first fork in the road.

“Follow Walnut. You see, Miss Cooper, the landscape architects used trees not only to be decorative, but for their symbolic meaning as well. Almost all of our plots are named for a variety of tree,” Silbey said. “Oaks, you may know, are the symbol of steadfast fidelity. In First Kings of the Bible, Elijah tells us he wants to lie down and die under a juniper. Watch that arrow, Detective Chapman. Don’t take Clover.”

We were driving deeper and deeper into the cemetery, the narrow roadways bordered by blossoming plants and shrubs, stone bridges arching over ponds, giant family mausoleums in the style of Doric temples standing on hilltops-the most expensive real estate with the best views in this peaceful enclave.

“You know your Greek mythology?” Silbey went on. “Apollo transformed the dead body of his dearest friend into a cypress tree. They’re often used to stand guard at gravesides. It’s all part of that nineteenth-century Romantic style of philosophy and design.”

“Romantic? In a cemetery?” Mike said. “That’s looking for love in all the wrong places.”

“Turn right here.”

We hadn’t passed more than ten people on our way. Some individual mourners were walking on pathways, and several gardeners had been tending to stone markers and the flower beds around them. Thick gray clouds moved quickly overhead, casting shadows on the tall monuments. An eerie calm seemed to settle in over this pastoral setting the farther away from the city streets we traveled.

Mike had slowed the car. He was staring at one of the larger granite monuments, a Tuscan canopy supported by a dozen columns, covering a swag-draped sarcophagus, surrounded by a stand of tall pine trees. “How rich do you have to be to get a place here? Some of these things look palatial.”

“Oh, Detective Chapman, you’re not wrong. We’ve got our Whitneys and our Woolworths and our Vanderbilts.” Silbey poked his head between us again with a new spurt of energy. “This was such an elite place in its heyday. We’ve got Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington, Herman Melville and Joseph Pulitzer. Mayor La Guardia, of course. And our ladies-like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Nellie Bly.”

“No matter how much money they spent on these shrines to themselves, they’re still dead, aren’t they?” Mike said.

“Obviously so. These memorials just tell their stories, sir.” Silbey sat back in his seat. “That’s Primrose, just after the stop sign. You can pull over and park.”

“What’s this? The low-rent district?”

The headstones in the section we were approaching were on a flat piece of land, far less dramatic than the rolling topography of so much of the park. There were no grandiose monuments here, but rather crowded rows of small markers, set close together.

The strips were bare of the elegant plantings we had passed along the way, shaded simply by tall, old trees that dotted the dirt pathways.

“Some of the more modest graves are in this area. The girl’s family,” Silbey said, stepping out of the car, checking his notes for the name, “the Hassetts, is it? Looks like they bought the plot about fifty years ago. Not quite the placement some of our rich and famous have, but we’ve got many local folks like them.”

I joined Mike on the side of the road. “The diggers will meet us here?” he asked.

Silbey checked his watch. “It’s almost nine. They should be along shortly. Anyone else coming?”

“There’ll be a van from the medical examiner’s office to take the body away,” Mike said. “And maybe a couple of detectives from the Bronx District Attorney’s Office. Where is she?”

Silbey crossed the road. “Four rows back in there. G112. It’s just a small marker in the ground.”

Mike made his way through the narrow footpaths-stopping to kneel in front of the flat stone that said REBECCA HASSETT on it. I watched as he ran his finger over the letters that formed her name and studied the numbers chiseled in it, which noted the few years between her birth and death.

Several generations of Hassetts were here, resting head to foot, fast running out of room in their final resting place. Mike glanced around at the names, then continued walking downhill toward what looked to be another pond, which was bordered in part by an enormous weeping beech.

I walked behind him and stopped when he did, for a second time, at a larger headstone. “Whaddaya know? William Barclay Masterson.”

“Who?”

“Gold-topped cane, derby hat, fastest gun in the West. I’d have expected him to be buried on Boot Hill.”

“Bat? Bat Masterson?” I remembered the reruns of the popular fifties TV western starring Gene Barry, but knew nothing about the life of the real deputy marshal appointed by Teddy Roosevelt.

Neither of us heard Evan Silbey come down the dirt path. “He left Dodge City to come back to New York. Bat was a sportswriter for the Morning Telegraph when he-”

“Did you see that?” Mike asked, turning to look toward a tall obelisk marker.

“What? The van?” I noticed the morgue car-with its OCME markings on the side panel-coasting to a stop behind our Crown Vic.

Mike shook his head. “Someone was crouching behind the marker opposite the Hassett plot. Somebody waiting for us who wasn’t invited to this unpleasant little disinterment.” He started to trot down the incline.

“Where’s he going?” Silbey asked, his voice rising almost an octave.

I saw a figure in a dark coat dart out from behind the obelisk and cross the road to go down toward the tranquil pond. Mike called out for the person to stop as he began to give chase.

“Mike,” I said, in almost a whisper. It seemed so inappropriate to be shattering the quiet of this sanctuary.

He ignored me but had reached the roadway just as the truck carrying four gravediggers pulled up to the intersection.

The person picked up speed as he ran downhill, and Mike lost seconds waiting for the truck to make the turn. Whoever it was did not want to stop to see why Mike was after him.

The branches of the weeping beech hung over the landscape, like hundreds of arms reaching almost to the ground. I lost sight of the black-coated figure when he headed directly for the great tree and slipped under its limbs, disappearing behind it. A garish mausoleum with a green copper roof sat beside the beech and provided cover for him as well.

Ten seconds later, Mike was swallowed up by the foliage, too. Anxiety had overtaken me again. I didn’t need any more excitement after yesterday’s trauma. I was too late to try to chase Mike and uncertain about what had set him off after the elusive figure.

I cut through the grass between several markers to get to the curb. I pleaded with Mr. Silbey to send the gravediggers to back Mike up. All four of them-and Silbey himself-looked at me as though I had lost my mind.

“What do you need, Miss Cooper?” one of the morgue drivers asked.

“Mike Chapman-he’s gone off after someone. Would you check down there”-I pointed-“and see if he needs any help?”

“Sure. Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“But,” the driver said tentatively, “what if it’s trouble?”

“It’s probably paparazzi,” I said. “Mike was worried that someone at the squad might have leaked this to a reporter. We wanted to get the exhumation done without any press around. Please hurry.”

We had talked about that possibility on the ride to the cemetery. I hadn’t seen a camera in the runner’s hand, but now I was actually hoping that the interloper was no more dangerous than a press photographer.

Reluctantly, the driver started walking toward the pond.

Another car pulled up behind our growing caravan. A husky, thick-necked man in a T-shirt, jeans, and clean work boots-a baseball cap barely fitting the circumference of his wide head-got out and came slowly toward Evan Silbey and me with his head down.

“I thought you weren’t expecting anyone else,” Silbey said. “Get Chapman back here. Who is this?”

“I don’t have any idea,” I said.

Then the well-muscled figure lifted his head and kept walking toward the stone that bore Rebecca Hassett’s name. All his features were exaggerated-a bulbous nose, strong chin, piercing blue eyes, and sulking expression. It was her brother Bobby.

He wagged a finger in my direction. “Don’t think you’ll be touching my sister, Miss District Attorney. Not you, not that wiseass cop who’s sticking his nose in our personal business every place I go. Let her rest in peace, for God’s sake, or I’ll be sure you live to regret it.” Hassett stepped closer to me and backed me against another headstone. “You leave the poor girl alone.”