Death Angel

EIGHTEEN

“Of course she can find out where you live,” Mike said. “All the judges get that handbook with the bureau chiefs’ contact information in it.”

“And I suppose it’s obvious she knows where you live, too. Why the hell can’t she just be your stalker and leave me out of this?”

“We can’t go to my place either. If she gives up waiting for you, she’s likely to show up ringing my bell.”

I sat up straight and swiveled to look at Mike. “Don’t tell me. Pell’s actually been to the coffin?”

Mike’s studio apartment, just ten blocks from mine in a walk-up building that had fallen into disrepair ages ago, was so small and dark that he had given it a grim nickname. It was rare for him to let anyone into this little bit of personal space that he called home.

He blushed and took one hand off the wheel to comb it through his hair. “Did I tell you how pushy she is?”

“That’s it. I’m going to call her tomorrow. Or go up to her courtroom and blow this thing open. It’s insane.”

“Don’t go off the reservation, Coop.”

“According to her threats, you’ve got two days left before she uncorks it. Pell doesn’t get to call the shots, as far as I’m concerned.”

Mike made another turn and was heading west again.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “We’re a little overdressed, but I didn’t eat any dinner. We could split a sandwich at PJ Bernstein’s.”

The classic New York deli-a dying breed-was one of my favorite neighborhood retreats.

“Better than that. I’ve got a room with a view,” Mike said. “Trust me.”

“I’m actually thinking you didn’t just say those last two words.”

Mike looked over to make sure I was smiling. “This is business.”

He parked on East 63rd Street, in front of a consulate near the corner of Fifth.

“The Park?” I asked.

“The Arsenal.”

I was more than puzzled but followed Mike down the steps from the sidewalk and up another flight to the front door of the old building. He dialed a number on his cell and someone answered.

“It’s Mike Chapman. Yeah, Detective Chapman. I’m at the front door with my partner.”

Six minutes later-while we talked about everything except Mike’s purpose in bringing me here-a night watchman opened the three locks and let us in the lobby.

“Thanks a lot. This is my partner, Alex Cooper.”

The startled guard was surveying my outfit but not looking me in the eye.

“I’ve got all my stuff upstairs. Okay if we go on?”

“No problem if you know the way. But-but her shoes…?”

“Undercover. Coop works undercover. Vice squad. Like a hooker, you know? She’ll take them off. Not to worry.”

The sleepy-eyed man just shrugged and pointed to the elevator.

There were five stories in the building, but the elevator only went as high as the fourth. When we exited, Mike led me into a stairwell. “I’m taking you to the best-kept secret in the city.”

“Should I be flattered,” I said, hiking up my skirt so that I could follow Mike up to the landing on the fifth floor, “or is this just totally weird? And why do you have things here?”

“’Cause I spent most of last night in the same place.”

“Up on the roof?”

“Just like the Drifters. Hearing that song is what made me think of bringing you here.”

Mike pushed against the door, which led to a terrace that was landscaped like a patio on a Fifth Avenue penthouse. There were flowers and plants surrounding the entire space, and a small greenhouse on the far corner.

I stepped out into the middle and slowly made a 360-degree turn. The entire skyline of the city was around and above me, landmark buildings easy to distinguish with twinkling lights that set off structures against the dark sky. When I looked down, it was across the green treetops of the Park that stretched all the way uptown.

“This is amazing,” I said. “How did you know it was here?”

“Commissioner Davis told the lieutenant that on the north and south ends of the Arsenal the rooftops had just been restored, and that this one provides a great vantage point to look over the southern end of the Park. They rent it out for cocktail parties, if you’re interested. Peterson sent me up here yesterday for a few hours with night vision goggles, just to see if anyone was running around in the woods,” Mike said. “I pretty much stayed till morning.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Wish I could have seen as far as the Huddlestone Arch.”

“Impossible, obviously. Did you find anything interesting?”

“I had really good equipment. Best I could do was about a couple of hundred feet away. Lots of warm bodies, though, all through the night. Some couples, some alone, some walking around, and some just curled up sleeping, even though the Park’s officially ‘closed’ from one to six A.M.,” Mike said. “Another flight, Coop. C’mon.”

“Flight to what?”

“The part that’s a secret.”

We went back into the hallway and out another door, which left us in a four-by-four space with a metal ladder made of thin round rungs heading straight above us about twenty feet.

I looked up but wasn’t anxious to make the climb.

“Can you do it, Coop?”

“Some other time.” I had mild vertigo and was wary of anything that involved heights.

“Take off those ridiculous shoes and be daring. I’ll stay below you in case you panic.”

“I’m not the panicky type.” I unstrapped my sandals and left them on the cold stone surface beside the ladder. I put my foot on the first rung and steadied myself as I moved slowly, hand over hand. When I got to the top, I looked over onto the small area that was perched, like a giant birds’ nest, above the terrace we’d just been on. “Maybe I am panicky. There’s nothing to hold on to.”

“The brick wall. Just hold on to that.”

I looked down and Mike was right behind me. I grabbed on to the old bricks that formed the top of the wall, and swung my leg-grateful for the slit in my skirt-over the side, planting my bare feet on the paved surface.

“There’s a purpose to this, right?” I asked. I was playing with the strands of hair that had come loose from the carefully styled twist on top of my head. “Something worth the cleaning bills?”

“A piece of history.”

“I prefer my history in a book. I’m less likely to kill myself that way.”

Mike came right up behind me. He pulled off his bow tie and removed the jacket of his tux.

“Look at this. Only a few hundred people have ever been up on this turret since the building was constructed.” He went to a small metal box tucked in a corner of the roof and opened it, removing a logbook with a pen attached to it by a long chain. “Check out these names, and then sign yours and date it.”

The names of the last five mayors of the city were there, along with Gordon Davis and his predecessors. Members of the Conservancy, a handful of Park devotees, a few politicians, one NYPD detective from the night before, and now I would join that short list. I picked up the pen and wrote my name.

Then Mike took me by the hand and led me to the western side of the roof. “Look down. Look over there.”

I could see the zoo and the whimsical Delacorte Clock, which chimed on the half hour throughout the day, playing familiar nursery rhymes to the delight of young visitors.

There was a large storage bin along the side of the brick wall. Mike lifted the lid, propping it open while he removed his night vision binoculars, and then came back to my side.

I held them up and looked out into the Park, but it was all a blur.

“I must be doing something wrong. How do I adjust these?”

Mike stood behind me, practically touching his chest to my back, while he reached both arms around me and showed me how to focus the lenses and turn on the night vision feature. I was tempted to lean back against him and close my eyes, but he seemed intent on getting me to see.

“Better?”

He stepped away from me and rested his hands on the edge of the brick wall.

“Better than what?”

“What can you see?”

“Penguins. I can see dozens of penguins,” I said with a laugh.

“Don’t bullshit me, Coop. They’re inside for the night. Those must be all the dudes from the Conservancy in their tuxes.”

“Monkeys? I do see them, like they were ten feet away.”

“Yeah. Japanese snow monkeys. They have their own hot tub down there.”

I moved the glasses slowly across the treetops and then down among the branches. I could clearly make out people walking through the Park while many others were sitting on benches or rocks, enjoying the very mild night.

“Too bad you can’t see the Lake from here,” I said.

“That’s exactly what I thought last night. Another season, before the leaves blossomed or after they fell, it would be a clean shot.”

I spent several minutes scanning the Park. I could see the skating rink and the Dairy, the long, wide stretch of the Mall between the leafy green borders, and the top of an occasional statue that peeked through.

“What are you doing?” I asked Mike. I had turned my attention to the buildings that made a perimeter around the Park, starting with the Plaza Hotel on the southeast corner. 59th Street was a mix of residences and fancy hotels, and I was looking up and into windows from my unique perch on this isolated tower.

“Checking my messages.”

“Any news?”

“My mother says hello.”

I was crazy about Mike’s mother, a devoutly religious woman who doted on her son, the youngest of four and the only male child. She was born in Ireland and still had a healthy trace of a brogue from County Cork.

“I’ve got to get one of the photos that was taken at the party and send her a picture of you in your dress clothes,” I said. “Wait-put your tie and jacket back on and let me take one up here.”

“Send her a snap of a penguin, Coop. Anyway, she said the Final Jeopardy category was baseball.”

I had moved along to the magnificent all-glass façade of the Time Warner Center, which was catty-corner across Columbus Circle from the Maine Monument. The shops and restaurants on the lower floors had closed, but lights still sparkled all the way up to the top.

“I’m in.” I had grown up in a household with four men who loved baseball-both my brothers, my father, and my grandfather-and I knew almost as much about it as Mike and Mercer did.

“Here’s the answer,” Mike said. On the rare occasions when he knew he wouldn’t be anywhere near a television set, Mike asked his mother to leave three messages for him. One with the category, second with the answer, and third with the winning question. “‘First president to throw out the ball on opening day.’”

I had just rounded the corner to Central Park West, looking up at apartments that had sweeping vistas over the Park and toward the east.

“Are you peeping or what?” he asked.

“Trying to. It’s amazing how many people are up and active at this hour. And I don’t know which president threw out the first pitch.”

“1910. It was the fat man,” Mike said. “Who was William Howard Taft? Washington Nationals beat the Philly Athletics three-nothing.”

“Interesting. Take twenty bucks off what you owe me.”

“What’s got your attention, Coop?”

My gaze was arrested when I reached the frame of the Dakota, made to be the city’s first luxury apartment building, on the corner of West 72nd Street and Central Park West. Designed by the same firm that created the Plaza Hotel, now over my left shoulder, it had a completely distinctive slhouette. There were high gables and roofs with a profusion of dormers and niches, referred to in architectural terms as German Renaissance style, although the interior was decidedly French in character.

“The Dakota,” I said. “Can you imagine what it must have been like to have lived there in the 1880s? I mean, civilized New Yorkers didn’t live north of 59th Street then. I think the building got its name because the Upper West Side of Manhattan seemed as remote as the Dakota Territory.”

“Is it petty of me to be happy when you’re wrong, Coop?”

“Not petty. Just mean. I know you delight in it.”

“My dad was one of the guys on John Lennon’s homicide. 1980.”

Brian Chapman had been a legend in the department, and had worked so many major jobs that some guys joked that his investigative skill and wisdom in homicide cases had been passed through his DNA to Mike.

“He spent a lot of time at the Dakota after the shooting. Told me the architect who created the place had a real attachment to the names of the new western territories and states. Can you see the Indian?”

“What Indian?”

Mike moved behind me again, encircling me with his arms and guiding the binoculars. “Can you find the entrance to the building? That big wide space on 72nd Street.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, go up higher, right under the tip of the roof.”

His body was against my own now. As I lifted my head back with the glasses, my ear brushed against Mike’s cheek. My heart was racing, and I knew it wasn’t because of the architecture of the grand old building.

“See it?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“It’s a Dakota Indian. Bet you never knew that.”

“I didn’t,” I said softly. I wasn’t thinking about the unusual façade.

“You’re looking for Lavinia Dalton,” Mike said. “That’s why you’re so quiet. Long past her bedtime, Coop.”

I nodded my head.

“Let me see,” he said, taking the binoculars from me and standing next to me to study the behemoth structure. “You know what’s really interesting?”

“What?” The night was warm, a precursor to summer just days away, but I had goose bumps on my bare arms and neck.

“Did you see the great big windows in all the apartments?”

“Um,” I mumbled.

“Then look up at the row of tiny ones-the windows hidden just under the ledge of the roof.”

“Eyelids.”

“What do you mean?” Mike asked.

“Turn around and look at the buildings that line the Fifth Avenue side,” I said. If I thought I had briefly engaged Mike’s attention, I had lost it for the moment. “See? Small windows on the highest floors, like slits of eyelids rather than eyes wide open.”

“Yeah.”

“Everywhere you can see, those top-floor apartments were used by the servants of the rich tenants down below.”

“But why would they take the best views-the most prime real estate on the highest floors-and use it on servants’ quarters?”

“It wouldn’t happen again today,” I said. “But before penthouses became fashionable, back one hundred years ago when these buildings were put up, rich people were reluctant to live closest to the chimneys that puffed out black soot and rooftops where maids hung laundry. That’s where they housed their workers.”

“Wait a minute,” Mike said. He had scoped the prestigious addresses of Fifth Avenue and gone back to the Dakota. “So think about Lavinia Dalton’s apartment. Her building looks out directly over the Lake, over the Angel of the Waters, right?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, they’re both a bit north of 72nd Street,” he said. “If you were in the Dalton apartment, or even a flight up in the dormers, you’d be at a perfect height and ideal vantage point to see what was going on at the Lake.”

“And at a lot of other places in the Park.”

“You’re shivering, Coop.” Mike put the glasses down and reached for his jacket, wrapping it around my shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me you were cold?”

“I’m not cold, really,” I said. “Something just-I don’t know-just chilled me.”

“It makes no sense that the Dalton apartment and the pieces of silver have anything to do with the dead girl, does it?”

“Don’t know.” I was beginning to fade, a combination of exhaustion and feeling emotionally spent. My back was to the stone wall, while Mike faced out at Central Park West.

“When we get into the Dakota, we should ask to check out the servants’ quarters.”

“Sure. But you’re getting ahead of yourself,” I said, pulling the jacket tighter around me. “Have you studied the Panoscan photographs yet?”

He put the binoculars down on top of the wall and looked at me.

“No, but I get where you’re going.”

The Crime Scene team had used the new equipment to do a 360-degree shot from the point at Bow Bridge where Angel’s body had been found. “I imagine, in addition to everything else it shows, that it will point you directly back to the Dakota.”

“Course it will. Good thinking, Coop.”

“Am I off duty now?”

“Is that what you want to be?”

“Totally. And I think you can take me home, too. If Jessica Pell hasn’t given up on confronting me by now, the doormen will have to run interference. I’m really tired, Mike.”

“Let’s not go yet. It’s kind of-I don’t know-kind of magical up here.”

“But it’s so late, and we have a lot to do tomorrow.”

“You’re right, Coop. It’s so late, and I still haven’t apologized to you properly. And you’re cold.”

“I told you I’m not cold. I’m-I’m nervous, I think. That’s why I’m trembling.”

I was looking around everywhere, at everything, except into Mike’s eyes. He touched my face with his right hand and aligned it with his own. We had flirted with this moment more times than I could remember clearly.

“There’s something I want to do, Coop. And I’m nervous about it, too.”

“Then we’re even.”

Mike smiled again, and I closed my eyes for a second.

“YOLO,” I said, smiling as I channeled Vickee’s heart-to-heart with me.

You only live once.

Mike Chapman grinned with all his dazzle and brought his lips to meet mine. He kissed me. His touch was tender and warm as he lifted my chin and pressed his lips against mine, holding us in that position for several seconds, although it seemed like an hour.

Then he took his hand away and stepped back, running his fingers through his hair. “Are you okay with this?” he asked.

I let the tuxedo jacket fall to the ground. “Very okay.”

He came toward me again. “Do you mind?”

“Mind what?”

“The pins. The ones holding your-style?-whatever it is-in place. I have no idea what they’re called, but could you take them out of your hair?”

I was breathing fast, fumbling a bit as I reached up and started pulling out the pins that held my formally arranged twist in place.

“It’s just not you,” Mike said, taking them from my hand and putting them in his pants pocket. Then he tousled my hair so that it fell to my shoulders, loose and long, curling softly around my face.

“Now is it me?” I asked, smiling back at him.

“I’ll tell you in a minute.”

We kissed again, and this time we embraced and caressed each other till I needed to stop for air. “This is crazy, isn’t it?” I said. “Good crazy, but crazy.”

“You still want to go home, Coop?”

“I’m not sure about anything. But if we’re going to-if you’re going to-well, can you stop calling me ‘Coop’? It’s not the most-well, feminine name for me.”

“I can’t do Alexandra or Alex. Those names are for everyone else to use. ‘Coop’ is my own. I’m not the least bit confused about your gender identity.”

I wanted the night to last forever. We were alone together in our own aerie, apart from everyone in the world, in the middle of the most beautiful park in the most exciting city-visible to any of the ritzy neighbors who wanted to look out their windows from high above but unidentifiable to all.

We kissed several more times, laughing and whispering to each other, as comfortable as I would expect to be in the arms of my best friend.

“Taking it slow, right?” Mike said when I pushed away and turned around, inhaling the fresh night air, trying to comprehend what was happening to us.

“Slow would be good. It would be smart.”

“You don’t always have to be smart, you know?”

“Yes, I know. But don’t you think we have to talk about some-?”

“Shh shh shh shh shh. Plenty of time for talk, Coop. Will you stay here with me for a few hours? Watch the sun break through?” He was behind me, kissing the top of my head and stroking my arms. “I’ve got a blanket in with my supplies. We can just sit down and lean back, use my jacket for a pillow. Just sit and hold on to each other.”

“I’d like to do that. Fall asleep with your arms around me.”

There was no street noise, no sirens or garbage trucks, no one to burst into this night’s fantasy. We spread the blanket and stretched out. It was as though we were all alone on the island of Manhattan.