Death Angel

SEVENTEEN

I opened the door when the bell rang and burst into the broadest smile I’d managed in a week.

Mike had one hand braced against the door frame, the other in the pocket of his pants. He looked smashingly handsome in the rented tux. “Bond,” he said, in his best imitation of Sean Connery. “James Bond.”

“And I’m shaken-as well as stirred. You look so good, Detective Chapman. Come on in.”

“Don’t want to be late, blondie. Is my tie right?”

“It’s crooked.”

“Well, why didn’t you say that?”

“The new me, Mike. I’m not going to be critical of anything you do.”

“Jeez, kid. How will I know it’s you?” he said. “D’you know how to do a bow tie?”

“Sure,” I said. He pulled the knot out of his tie and I stood nose to nose with him. “You have to start with one side a little longer than the other.”

I crossed the longer tab over the short one and looped it through, telling him about Mercer’s call as I did. He stared at me while I spoke, taking in the makeup and how the hair was swept off my face without uttering a word. My thumbs and forefingers formed a bow and then wrapped the longer end around again. When I finished making the knot, I pulled both ends to make sure it sat right against the pleats of Mike’s shirt.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much. It’s straight now.” I stepped back to get my evening purse, shawl, and keys.

“You look-” Mike started to say something to me but interrupted himself.

“What?”

“You don’t look like a hard-ass prosecutor is all.”

I was wearing a white satin top-sleeveless-with sequins and flower-shaped beads that covered the bodice. The floor-length white silk crepe skirt was narrow, with a slit on one side that reached practically to midthigh. The strappy high-heeled sandals made me almost as tall as Mike.

I had expected a compliment, but that would have been out of character, too. “I can change into black leather and chain mail, if you prefer.”

“That’s how I think of you, Coop, but this will do fine for tonight.”

“Then let’s party,” I said, closing the door behind us. We went downstairs, through the lobby, and onto the street to Mike’s car.

It was 6:30 when we walked through the ornate wrought-iron Vanderbilt Gate on Fifth Avenue near 105th Street. I took Mike’s arm to descend the wide staircase into the Conservatory Garden, one of the most magnificent sanctuaries within the Park.

It was the perfect evening for a lawn party. It was warm with a slight breeze, and the sky would be light for another two hours. Volunteers lined the path at the bottom of the steps to greet guests and give them their table assignments. The stunning green lawn that was the centerpiece of the Italian garden was covered by one enormous tent-large enough to hold tables for the five hundred guests who were pouring into the Park. It was bordered on both sides by an allée of pink and white crabapple trees.

“Let’s find our host,” I said, looking for Commissioner Davis among the crowd of well-dressed, prosperous-looking New Yorkers.

“Follow me,” Mike said. He had spotted several waiters winding through the crowd with bottles of champagne.

He lifted a glass for each of us from one of the trays and extended them so that they were filled. I took one from him, and he clinked it against mine.

“To our truce,” I said.

“For as long as it lasts. And to Angel.”

We walked the length of the tent, seeing no one either of us knew, and then Mike kept walking around the path, past the twelve-foot-high jet fountain that pumped water into the air.

“Where are you going?”

“That spot where Tanner attacked the girl last night? It’s right out back this way.”

The rear of the Conservatory Garden wasn’t far from the Huddlestone Arch. “Let it be, Mike. You’re not here to walk a crime scene.”

“Just nerves. Just want to check out the landscape. See how Tanner likes to work.”

“I can tell you almost everything about that.”

“Then talk to me.”

Mike doubled back and we started to stroll around the side of the tent, watching the Park’s loyal supporters fawn over the colorful display of tulips that lined the walk.

“There’s Gordon Davis,” Mike said.

We could see his head above the crowd and made our way toward him. He was encircled by a troupe of admirers who were listening to him describe the efforts that had gone into creating the perfect floral display for this evening.

“Ah, my new friends!” he said as we approached. “Meet Alex Cooper and Mike Chapman. You two clean up nicely.”

Davis started introducing us around. “Hello, Professor,” I said to his wife, a petite, attractive woman whose silver-streaked Afro matched the strands of glitter in her dress.

“Please call me Peggy.” I let Mike do the meet-and-greet while the professor and I talked about the class she taught at NYU Law School.

Shortly before seven o’clock we were all asked to find our tables and be seated. I was between Commissioner Davis and Mike, who had a stocky matron on his other side. She appeared to be already in her cups and happy to be placed next to such a good-looking dinner companion.

Fifteen minutes later, Mia Schneider was at the podium to welcome the guests. She looked to be in her early fifties, a very handsome woman with a fine sense of style-a look that stood out in a tent full of well-heeled people. She had a good sense of humor and a quick intelligence and seemed to savor her role as doyenne of an organization that does so much for the Park and the city.

Gordon Davis leaned over to tell Mike and me that he had asked Ms. Schneider to stop at the table to meet us before she settled in for dinner. While we waited for her, we tried to answer all his questions about last night’s assault. The timing of two major crimes wasn’t a gift to the organizers of tonight’s event.

I watched Mia make her rounds-stopping for handshakes and kisses from her admirers, working her way to us. She greeted Mike and me enthusiastically and we stepped away from the table, with Gordon Davis, to talk about our investigation.

“You don’t have to tell me anything that’s not in the newspapers,” Mia said. “But I love this Park and I need to know you’re going to restore our sense of well-being here.”

“We’re working hard to do that,” I said. “The case last night, the victim told me that there’s some kind of ledge behind the waterfall in the Ravine. That you can actually sit on, behind the fall. It made me wonder, with all the boulders in the Park, if there are actual places that one could hide in.”

“You mean caves or grottoes?” Mia asked.

“Yes, anything like that. I assume we’re talking with two people who know the Park better than anyone in town.”

She and Davis looked at each other. “Pretty much so,” she said.

“More places than you can count,” Davis said. “But most of what once were caves have been covered over.”

“How many were there?” Mike asked.

“Olmsted and Vaux created dozens of them. It was part of their master plan to design something entirely unlike the city, unlike the enormous swamps they were replacing.”

“Some of them were natural, Gordon,” Mia said. “Don’t you remember that story about the cave near the lower end of the Reservoir that workmen found when they were clearing the dense underbrush?”

“Recently?”

“In 1857, Mike,” Mia said, laughing. “We’ve got a load of clippings from the papers and magazines going back to the origins of the Park. That one was natural, but many more were landscaped in.”

“Do you have the original plans?” I asked. “Would they show these caves?”

Davis shook his head. “There were years and years of original plans, some rejected by the City Council, many others modified over time.”

“Modified why?”

Davis crossed one arm over his chest and held the other up, his forefinger to his mouth, as he thought about an answer. “In some instances the changes were made because of expense. Occasionally, there were accidents that made the designers reboot.”

“What kinds of accidents?” I asked again.

“Remember the Park was constructed before Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. So it was gunpowder that was used to break up the bedrock under the surface, shape some of the boulders that were brought in, and manage the glacial rock that needed to be moved,” Davis said. “More gunpowder was used to create the illusion that this Park was a natural woodland-more gunpowder than was used at the Battle of Gettysburg.”

Like everything else about military history, that fact got Mike’s attention. “So men working with it-with vast quantities of black powder-were killed.”

“Exactly. That changed plans and designs, too.”

“Some of the grottoes or caves that were first left open to the public were closed over after time,” Davis said. “Animals-I’m talking about sheep and goats-wandered into them. People, bums mostly, camped out in them. They’ve all been closed over.”

“But can you get us the site information of where they are, open or closed?” I said.

“Between our two offices, I’m sure we can give you a good idea of where they were,” Mia said, patting me on the arm. “You’re not thinking of Beauty and the Beast, are you?”

“No offense,” Mike said, “but we’re beyond fairy tales.”

“I was referring to the TV show.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.

“Me neither.”

“Very cult in the ’80s, when you two were still kids.”

“Don’t go there, Mia,” Davis said, wagging a friendly finger at her.

But it was clear that she was irrepressible and spirited. “I can’t believe you don’t know this show. You can get it On Demand. It was about a relationship between this man-beast guy who lives underground in Central Park, with a sort of Utopian society of outcasts. He falls in love with a prosecutor-”

Mike reached back to the table for a wineglass that had been filled as we sat. “Hold your tongue, Mia.”

“Wait. So she’s this spunky assistant district attorney-”

“I don’t do ‘spunky,’” I said, laughing along with her.

“Well, you can get it on DVD. It’s funny, really. And the Beast-”

“No, thanks,” Mike said.

“He’s very noble, I promise you, and a heartthrob. Played by Ron Perlman. He lives in this world with mystical waterfalls and labyrinth tunnels.”

“In the Park?”

“Yes. In the Park. I think,” Mia said, “that’s where so many people get the idea that there are underground caves here. Urban myth, Mike. We’ll make sure you know about anything that might have resembled a cave.”

I still wasn’t convinced that there weren’t more places to conceal oneself in the Park, and that the psychos like Tanner didn’t know them intimately.

“The police found some interesting objects near the Lake, Mia,” Davis said to her as his wife signaled him to return to his seat. “Can you describe them to her, Mike?”

“I can bring them to your office tomorrow,” he said.

“Fine.”

“I’ve got photos of them on my cell phone,” I said. “It’s in my purse, on the chair.”

I reached for the phone and pulled up the images. The statuette of the angel meant nothing to Mia Schneider, but she practically gasped when she saw the silver-plated reproductions of Belvedere Castle and the Obelisk.

“Where did you get these?”

“I’m not the one who found them,” Mike said. “But a couple of the detectives spotted them underneath some bushes, on the far side of the Bow Bridge. You’ve seen them before?”

“Yes. Yes, I have,” Mia said. She was even more animated, pressing the zoom command to enlarge the images. “The Conservancy mounted an exhibition of the Dalton collection about ten years ago. I’m sure these must be part of that set. I can’t imagine anything else like them.”

“I can show you the pieces tomorrow,” Mike said. “But where’s the Dalton collection and what is it?”

“Do you know who Archer Dalton was?”

“One of the robber barons,” I said. “Made millions. Was it railroads?”

“Exactly.”

“Coop knows the millionaires,” Mike said. “I’m better on perps.”

“Sometimes there’s an overlap, Mike. They weren’t called robber barons for nothing,” Mia said. “Shortly after the Civil War, when he was a very young man, he got into the train business. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Archer Dalton all made their fortunes that way. Dalton’s Northern Atlantic Line built a piece of the first transcontinental railroad. He and Vanderbilt were great rivals. The gate you walked through tonight is from Vanderbilt’s mansion on Fifth Avenue at 58th Street, where it stood when the Park was opened.”

“And Dalton?” Mike asked.

“He was an outlier in that crowd. Didn’t want to be part of what became known as the Four Hundred.”

“Four Hundred what?”

“The social elite of New York. The number supposedly referred to the people who could fit inside Mrs. William Astor’s ballroom. That didn’t interest Dalton at all. So when the Dakota opened its doors in 1884, Archer Dalton left his Fifth Avenue digs and all the swells behind him, and was the first tenant to rent apartments there, on Central Park West. He took the entire top residential floor-the eighth-at the time, and when it eventually became a co-op, his granddaughter bought all the apartments on eight that faced the Park.”

Mike whistled. “Pretty piece of change that must have been. What happened to her?”

“She’s still alive, and still in the Dakota,” Mia said.

There was no more famous residence in Manhattan than the Dakota, then or now. It had been home to the rich and prominent from the start, and was the fictional setting for the movie Rosemary’s Baby, the classic novel Time and Again, and a Jack Reacher caper, as well as the tragic backdrop for the murder of John Lennon.

“It was she-Lavinia Dalton-who loaned us the collection for our exhibit.”

Mike looked at me. “Then we can go see her tomorrow.”

“She’s not well, I’m afraid. Lavinia’s close to ninety, and she suffers from dementia. I can call her nurses, and if she’s having one of her better days, I’m sure they’ll allow you to go by. But I wouldn’t expect to get much from the visit.”

“I want to know about these silver pieces,” Mike said. “How they got out of her house or wherever she kept them, and when.”

“Why don’t we sit down?” Mia said. She asked Gordon Davis to go over and join her guests-undoubtedly high rollers all-while she took his seat to give us some of the background. “I can get you started on the story of the silver.

“Lavinia was an only child, and to say that Archer Dalton doted on his granddaughter would be a gross understatement. She was raised in the Dakota, too, of course, which meant that Central Park was her front yard. She adored everything about the Park.”

“Who wouldn’t?” I said.

“As a gift to his son-Lavinia’s father-on his tenth birthday, Archer Dalton had commissioned a set of railroad trains. A train set like any other little boy might receive,” Mia said, holding out her hands, palms up, while she grinned impishly, “except they were all of Papa’s Northern Atlantic models, and they happened to be crafted in silver.”

“By Gorham and Frost,” Mike said.

“You’re good,” Mia said, pointing at him. “So in honor of Lavinia’s birthday-her tenth, too-Dalton commissioned another unique gift from the most celebrated silversmiths of the time. He had them build miniatures-in silver-of all the important landmarks in the Park that existed by then and had an architecture firm reproduce the landscape, to scale, to place them on.”

“That must have cost a fortune,” I said.

“Archer Dalton had a fortune. Several of them. Fortunes, I mean.”

“And where was there space to house this?” Judging from the size of the two pieces I’d seen, the layout must have been enormous.

“There was an entire room in the family apartment devoted to the train set and the Park,” Mia said. “Lavinia has always been one of our most generous donors, so I saw the set the first time I went to court her. You think there are treasures at Versailles or Blenheim Palace? This collection is staggering.”

“So why would anyone have broken it up?” Mike asked.

“I’m shocked to think that happened,” Mia said. “It took me a decade of begging, from the time I first came on the Conservancy board, to convince Lavinia to let us mount the exhibit. You’ve got to go to the apartment and talk to the staff. I’ll have to get her attorneys in, too.”

“Who represents her?” I said.

“The only person she trusted with her affairs was a wonderful lawyer named Justin Feldman. But he died last year.”

“I knew him well.” I thought of my beloved mentor and friend, biting down on my lip to stem the wave of emotion that swept through me. “Lavinia must have been very wise to have had such good counsel.”

“I’ll find out who’s looking out for her now and let you know.”

“How many pieces made up the collection?” Mike was attacking the mixed green salad while he talked.

“If I remember correctly, there were something like fifty-three or so. These two, and of course the Carousel, the Arsenal, the buildings that later became Tavern on the Green.”

“That was a restaurant,” I said, remembering the sprawling banquet space. “What had it been before?”

“It was a series of barns where the sheep were housed,” Mia said. “There was a miniature of the Blockhouse and the original horse stables. Then there were copies of the statues that had been erected up to that time-Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster-”

“Alice in Wonderland?” I asked.

“She came way later. But Beethoven and the Indian Hunter-I remember those. And the monument to the Maine was one of the most spectacular, as it is in real life.”

Mike added his historical military details. “The tribute to the two hundred sixty sailors who perished in Havana when the Maine exploded in the harbor, sparking the Spanish-American War?”

“That’s more than I knew about it,” Mia said.

The oversized memorial dominated the southwest entrance to the Park and was a striking landmark for New Yorkers. High atop the two-story base was a gilded figure of a triumphant Columbia-the quasi-mythical name given to female figures representing America-leading her chariot of horses and sea creatures.

“Was Dalton’s copy of the memorial gilded, too?” I asked.

“Twenty-four-carat gold leaf.”

“That must have been a standout.”

“In the case of Archer Dalton,” Mia said, “all that glittered was indeed gold.”

“And Lavinia,” Mike asked. “Did she have a favorite?”

“She adored the Carousel, of course. Each of the horses was decorated in vibrant colors, like the ones in the Park, with enamel. And they actually moved up and down as the piece spun around.

“But Lavinia loved the Bethesda angel best, she told me when we were spending time together planning the exhibit.”

I didn’t know whether to be surprised by the coincidence of a body found near the angel or to accept that the magnificent figure was a natural to be anyone’s favorite.

“She liked to play near the Lake and the fountain when she was a child. And that early stubborn feminist streak in her enjoyed the fact that the statue, designed by Emma Stebbins, represented the first time a woman was commissioned to create a major piece for New York City in the nineteenth century.”

“I so want to meet Lavinia,” I said. “I hope there’s a spark of her spirit left.”

“You must ask to see the angel when you go to visit,” Mia said. “Archer insisted on placing jewels in the figure’s eyes. He stopped short at sapphires, but there are blue topaz or some semiprecious stones that bring the sculpture to life. Almost haunting, in fact.”

“You mentioned calling her nurses and lawyer. What about her family? Isn’t there family?” I asked.

“It’s a terribly sad story, Alex. But there is no family.”

“She never had children?”

“When Lavinia was nineteen, she eloped with an Englishman-a viscount, in fact-who had all the charm in the world, and his title, but absolutely no money. Within a year, Lavinia had become pregnant, and the viscount had managed to have her move a fair amount of money into his name. But he had also fallen in love with a stage actress, very scandalous in those days. He abandoned Lavinia, and she came home to her father. She also took back the Dalton name and raised her son as Archer Dalton the third.”

“What became of him?”

“Lavinia raised Archer by herself till he went off to Groton and Yale. He actually married and divorced twice, then lived the bachelor life for while, before settling down for the third time with a young woman Lavinia was very fond of-a terrifically bright Vassar grad-and they had a baby girl together a couple of years later. They went off on a ski trip to Chamonix, leaving the child at home with Lavinia and the nanny. The small plane they’d chartered to fly in from Paris crashed in the Alps. Archer and his wife were killed instantly.”

“That’s tragic,” I said. “I’m almost afraid to ask about the baby.”

“I know it happened before you were born,” Mia said, “but surely you’ve heard of the Dalton kidnapping case? 1971?”

“Baby Lucy?” Mike said. “That’s this Dalton family?”

“That story was as big in its day as the Lindbergh kidnapping was in 1932,” I said. “Was it ever solved?”

One round of waiters was removing the salad plates while a second group behind them placed the dinners in front of each of us.

Mia shook her head. “I was a teenager when Lucy disappeared, and I don’t think there were parents in New York who didn’t clamp down on their kids, no matter their age or how rich or poor they were. The child was snatched right out of her home, so it seemed.”

“Out of the Dakota?” I asked. “The place looks like a fortress.”

“Charlie Lindbergh was taken out of a second-story window in a country house with no other homes around for miles. How the hell do you get someone out of the Dakota?” Mike asked. “Did Lavinia ever talk to you about it?”

Mia Schneider reached for her wineglass. “Once, Mike. Only once. Before I went to meet with her I had my office pull up all the clippings about the case. I got to know the story pretty well, although I had no intention of bringing it up. One day we were having lunch at the apartment, in the dining room overlooking the Park, and Lavinia asked me if I knew-if I remembered-the story of Baby Lucy.”

We were both riveted on Mia as she recounted the crime.

“The child had just celebrated her third birthday at the end of May, and this happened a week or two later. Lavinia had gone out for the day, but when she came home and went into the nursery to see Lucy, the room was empty.”

“Weren’t there servants?” Mike asked.

“Too many of them. The driver had been with Lavinia, of course. There was a cook, a laundress, two housemaids, a butler, a secretary, and two nannies. One of them had put Lucy down for her nap, and when she went in to check on her an hour later, the child wasn’t in her bed.”

“What did she do?”

“Nothing. For three hours she did nothing, which gave someone a pretty good head start.”

“Why?” I asked. “How could that be?”

“Because it had become fairly common, when Lucy woke up, for her to go into the kitchen to get a snack from the cook, or follow the laundress around, or put a little apron on and help the housemaid dust the big empty rooms day after day. There were staff quarters one flight above, and I’m told children used to love playing there on rainy days. Lavinia loved all the attic spaces as a child, she used to say. I’m sure Lucy was no stranger there either.”

“Poor little rich girl. It sounds like the staff thought she was just in some other part of the apartment,” I said.

“The entire eighth floor of the Dakota, Alex,” Mia said, stretching her arms out to either side. “More than twenty rooms, with more ways in and out than in an amusement park funhouse. Staircases and elevators for the residents, and other sets just for the servants. Staff quarters, as I said, mostly all above the apartment, on the ninth floor of the building. A gym and a playroom under the roof, and croquet lawns and tennis courts behind the building.”

“And then there’s Central Park out in front. You’d hardly have to force a child to want to go into the Park,” Mike said. “Most of the servants must have been suspects.”

“All of them were. Their families, their boyfriends and girlfriends, too. Even the staff in the rest of the building-doormen, handymen, janitors. But Lavinia refused to fire any of them unless they were charged with the crime, which never happened. I think one of the housemaids and the social secretary are still with her today.”

“Charlie Lindbergh’s body was found a couple of months after the kidnapping,” Mike said. “Dumped in the woods not very far from where he was taken, if I’m right.”

“Yes,” I said. “A blow to his skull, possibly from being dropped when the guys were trying to carry him down the ladder.”

“But Lucy was never found, was she?” he asked Mia.

“Never. Not a trace.”

“Ransom notes, like Lindbergh?”

“Lavinia told me that was one of the most painful parts of the case. Because she was so wealthy, all kinds of lowlifes jumped in and began to demand money for Lucy’s return. Vultures of every sort.”

“Did the police deal with them?” I asked.

“She had great respect for the way the NYPD handled the case. They ran down every lead, although the detectives and the FBI agents involved never believed it was the work of strangers. It would have been too hard to penetrate the Dakota, and too unlikely not to encounter one of the staff inside the apartment, as vast as it is.”

“Did anyone hold out hope that Lucy was alive?” I had seen those stories countless times in the newspapers-of children taken from a parent by an angry former spouse, from a hospital crib by a psychotic visitor, from a deserted bus stop by a child molester who raised his victim in the basement of a home, sometimes in chains for years.

“Only Lavinia,” Mia said. “She has never allowed anything in the nursery or playrooms to be touched. It’s quite disturbing to see, actually, but the staff continues to honor her wishes. She told me she would wait the rest of her life for that child to return home, although the police made it clear to her that they believed Lucy had been killed. None of the attempts to demand ransom for Lucy led to any plan to bring her back to Lavinia. All hoaxes, she suspects.”

The story had killed my appetite. Mia told us she was going back to her guests and would send Gordon Davis to join us. “I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow,” she said. “I’m curious to know how those two silver pieces got out of Lavinia’s home, and if the rest of the collection is intact.”

“So am I,” Mike said.

“Thanks for coming tonight. Please enjoy the rest of the evening.”

“That’s all we need,” Mike said. “A connection between the Baby Lucy case and our Angel. It’ll give the press the feeding frenzy they thrive on.”

“Last week you told me there were other cold cases from the Park, Mike.”

“No three-year-olds. Nothing like that.”

I leaned back with my wineglass and tried to make small talk with the commissioner. He, too, knew the Dalton kidnapping case well, but had not been in charge when the silver exhibition was on display so had not known about the fabulous Park pieces.

We spent the rest of the evening being introduced to Conservancy members, reassuring them about the quality of the investigation, as we listened to clever speeches and appeals for support.

At eleven o’clock, as the gala appeared to be breaking up, we said our good nights and followed the crowd through the tent and up the staircase to Fifth Avenue. Mike had parked nearby, and we walked to the car.

We cruised down Fifth and Mike made the turn onto my street in the low 70s. The Drifters were singing “Up on the Roof” and my eyes were closed as I sang along. As we approached the driveway, I was jolted forward when Mike suddenly applied the brakes, then sped up and drove straight ahead past my entrance toward the traffic light to turn downtown.

I reached up to rub my neck. “I think they call that whiplash. What’s your problem, Mike?”

“It looks like your problem tonight. The black Lexus parked in your driveway?”

“I didn’t see it. Wasn’t paying attention, I guess.”

“The license plate read ‘JSC 421,’” he said.

“Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.”

“Looks like Jessica Pell is on your doorstep.”