Death Angel

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t give us the boot,” Mike said to Jillian Sorenson as she ushered us toward the door. “We’d like to see the apartments that Miss Dalton owns on the flight above this one.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It’s not only possible, it’s necessary. You’ve got keys?”

“I neither have keys nor the lawyers’ permission to give you access, Detective. We haven’t used most of that space for years. In fact, Miss Lavinia sold several units off to other residents.”

“Most of that space?” Mike asked. “What about the rest of it?”

“I misspoke. We’ve used none of that space recently. It’s not like it was in the old days, Mr. Chapman. We have a very small staff now, and there’s room for all of us here in the apartment. Bernice and I spend a lot of time here, along with the nurses and the other housekeeper. The men-the butler and the chauffeur-are only part-time now, so they go to their own homes.”

“Where on the ninth floor are the units that were sold off?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Well, facing the Park? On the north end of the building or the south? Facing the courtyard?”

Bernice Wicks was at the far end of the room. She was standing in the archway, hands folded across her apron. She looked like she was about to burst with information. I remembered that she told us yesterday that she used to spend time in the quarters upstairs, even bringing her son to stay with her when she wasn’t able to be at home.

“Miss Jillian,” she said, “would you like me to answer the questions?”

“That won’t be necessary, Bernice. You might help the nurse with Miss Lavinia’s lunch.”

“What do you prefer, Ms. Sorenson?” Mike asked. “A search warrant or a battering ram?”

“What’s the evidence you’re talking about?” she said without flinching.

“You answer a question with a question. Seem like the battering-ram type to me. Make a note of that, Mercer, will you?”

“And publicity?” Sorenson asked.

“I don’t believe in it. No reason to alert the press.”

“If you had enough evidence for a search warrant, you would have arrived here with it.”

“I thought I’d try a courtesy visit first before letting everyone in the courthouse know we’re doing a drop-in.”

She licked her lips and adjusted her headband. “Which apartment are you interested in?”

“Maybe you didn’t get my point. First I want to know which apartments are still owned by Lavinia Dalton and the family trusts. Then I’d like to know the lay of the land before I-”

Mercer was making his way to the front door.

“Where are you going, my man?” Mike asked.

“There’s a management office downstairs,” he said. “It’s a much smoother way to get where we want to go. Floor plans, records, nobody with something to hide. Time is precious, my good Mr. Chapman.”

“I’d prefer you don’t go to the office,” Jillian Sorenson said. “We don’t need them meddling in our business. Bernice and I can try to figure this out for you.”

“Better attitude,” Mike said.

“Bernice, would you see if there are keys in the kitchen cabinet for any of the ninth-floor rooms?”

The housekeeper scurried off as though she’d been invited to a ball and needed to ready herself to go.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been upstairs,” Sorenson said, seemingly flustered by the thought that we were getting into the rooms one way or another. She began to describe the complex arrangement of rooms, and the sell-off of several in the last few years, with the soaring value of real estate property in Manhattan, and especially after the onset of Lavinia Dalton’s dementia.

“Is there anything in the rooms that belongs to Miss Dalton?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t think much. I believe we left the beds and dressers, that sort of thing. But when we put the silver collection in storage, Bernice and the butler cleaned out much of the property left behind in those rooms.”

Bernice Wicks returned in several minutes bearing an assortment of metal chains with keys extended from them.

“Keys to the kingdom, Mrs. Wicks,” Mike said.

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Your kingdom?”

She laughed at him. “Once upon a time, Mr. Chapman. It would never happen today that a servant had the best view in the city, but we did.”

“Stairs or elevator?” he asked as we closed the apartment door behind us.

Wicks pointed. “There are service elevators around the corner on each end of the hallway-north and south. We’re not allowed to use the ones for residents, at least not while in uniform.”

“Let’s take the stairs,” he said. “Are you able?”

“It’s good for me to do, the doctor says.”

“Where are they?”

“See the wide door, the last one on the corridor on each end? That would be the staircase.”

The southernmost door was directly opposite the room that once had belonged to Baby Lucy. Mike caught that, too. “Let’s go to the one down there.”

The heavy oak door opened easily. The steps were broad and deep, and we mounted them slowly so that Bernice-grasping the banister tightly, stopping to catch her breath-was able to lead us.

The ninth-floor corridor had an entirely different look than the residential hallway below. The ceiling was much lower than the fourteen-foot apartment height, the walls were a dark-paneled wood, and there was an endless lineup of doors on each side, much closer together than in the grand suites that comprised the eighth floor. There was a claustrophobic, almost sinister feel to the long, silent space.

Bernice stopped still as soon as she reached the first doorway. Jillian Sorenson walked past her, taking the sets of keys from her hand.

“So this line of rooms to your right,” she said, “from this first one all the way to the farthest end-the ones which face Central Park-they were all the property of the Dalton family from the time the building opened.”

“Every one of them?” I asked.

“As I’ve told you, the staff was rather large in those days, and until quite recently,” Sorenson said. “The rooms on the left-well, that’s a bit deceptive. A couple of them are apartments, am I right, Bernice?”

“You are, Miss Jillian. May I?”

“Certainly.”

“The staff quarters, you see, are quite small. Just a few feet across, with a bed and a tiny cabinet for your things. A little sink in the corner. That’s why there are so many more doors up here,” Wicks said, taking a few steps. “Three common baths. All of us on the hallway had to share them, no matter who you worked for. I’ll show you them as we go along.”

“How many altogether?”

“Staff rooms? Probably twenty-and eight of them were Miss Lavinia’s. The Park side, of course. Then keep in mind we had laundry rooms up here, over the courtyard. There were dumbwaiters down to the apartment.”

“Dumbwaiters?” Mike asked.

“Oh, yes, and didn’t the children love those?” she said. “Put in when the place was built so the help didn’t have to carry all the cleaning supplies and heavy linens and such up and down the stairs. Ran all the way to the ground floor. My Eddie hid in one overnight, when he got bored with himself waiting for me to get off work. Scared the wits out of me till Cook found him sleeping there in the morning.”

“Miss Dalton was telling me how she thought it was ‘wondrous’ up here,” I said, looking directly at Sorenson to let her know the direction of our conversation, and that I had not been trying to upset the gracious woman. “Just like Mrs. Wicks just said, that it was a happy place for kids to play.”

Jillian Sorenson almost smiled. “It has always been popular for that.”

“A little too dark and gloomy for my taste,” Mike said.

“We’ll open a few doors and you’ll see how magical it is.”

“Thanks.”

“The first three units on the right were sold to another building resident three years ago. This is a cooperative, of course, so the only buyers allowed are residents, who have already passed the scrutiny of the board. This owner is a well-known screenwriter-thrillers and that sort of thing. Miss Lavinia was very fond of him, although she didn’t much enjoy crime stories, as you might imagine-and so when he inquired about purchasing some of the rooms to create a writing studio, Justin Feldman arranged the sale of these spaces to him.”

“So some of this floor has been remodeled?” I asked.

“Most definitely. A number of the rooms have been gutted by their owners and repurposed. Several on the courtyard side and the back of the building remain big storage closets for their owners, which will all change someday. No one today would use this valuable property-you’ll forgive me, Bernice-for their staff. The rooms may be small, but the Park views will take your breath away.”

“It’s not configured as it was in Lavinia’s day?” Mercer asked.

“Not even the same as when Lucy disappeared, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Sorenson said. “It was a maze of cubbyholes and passageways, staircases to everywhere and to nowhere in particular, hallways restricted to staff and other parts to residents. It was a place to stay when one didn’t want, or need, to be seen, and it was a delightful escape when children wanted to play hide-and-seek with one another-or just be rambunctious.”

The fourth door, Wicks showed us, was unlocked. It was a bathroom, recently renovated, that had the necessary toilet facilities and several shower stalls.

“Four more, is it, Bernice?”

“Six, Miss Jillian.”

“Six more rooms still belong to Miss Lavinia.”

She searched the bale of keys until she found one with a tag that corresponded to the brass number above the doorknob. The door opened, and she and Wicks waited in the hallway while Mercer, Mike, and I went in.

The room was tiny, spare, and almost monastic in appearance. Mercer’s head nearly reached the ceiling. There was a single bed-a very old metal headboard painted white supporting a bare mattress with sagging springs. There was a plain bedside table and a primitive bureau, with two photographs of Dalton railroad cars hanging slightly ajar on the wall. The room had been stripped of all else, and a layer of dust covered all the surfaces.

But when I stepped to the window, it was as though the shabby room might have been within a palace. Spread out beneath me was most of Central Park, from a vantage point low enough to make out people on the ground, but high enough to see the great expanse of the magnificent green playground of the island of Manhattan.

The three of us took turns practically pressing our noses against the window, spellbound by the views it offered. Behind us, Bernice was apologizing to Sorenson for allowing so much dust to gather.

“So sorry, Miss Jillian. I haven’t gotten up here in months. I didn’t see the need, really.”

“I didn’t either. You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

They waited until we’d had our fill of gawking and locked the door behind us. Sorenson found the key to the second room, and we peered inside, with identical results.

“Have you ever spent much time at the Dakota stables?” Mike asked her as she matched the third key to the lock.

“I’ve been there, Detective. And for a while I garaged my own car there, but the chauffeurs have always had the responsibility for dealing with that part of our life.”

“Ever heard of an African American community called Seneca Village?”

“No, Mr. Chapman. Where is it? Why do you ask?”

The third and fourth rooms had stacks of cardboard boxes labeled BANK RECORDS and FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE-all dated from the 1940s and 1950s.

“Something else we found in the Park is all. A small object that might have come out of an old church,” Mike said. “A guy who worked at the garage when he was a teenager claims it was his.”

“Does it have any significance to what you’re investigating?” Sorenson asked.

“Not likely.”

The fifth room, which was much farther down the hallway, separated from the others by several units that had been sold and by another common bath area, was crammed with Dalton family sports equipment. There were a few sleds, half a dozen pairs of very old cross-country skis, snowshoes, tennis racquets, and croquet sets. It looked like the athletic division of a more modern King Tut’s tomb.

“You mean the fellow who runs the garage?”

“No, no. Actually a homeless man who lives in the Park,” Mike said.

“You don’t mean Vergil Humphrey, now, do you?” Bernice Wicks asked.

I couldn’t have swiveled around any faster to face her.

“In fact, I do,” Mike said. “But you’ve always worked in the house, haven’t you?”

“Bernice,” Sorenson said, “there’s no need to-”

But the words were already out of the older woman’s mouth. “Verge worked in the Dakota when he was a boy,” she said. “Helped the handymen with the trash and all that.”

“The guy at the garage told us yesterday that Verge had nothing to do with the Dalton staff.”

“He didn’t really,” Bernice Wicks said. “But he couldn’t keep his hands to himself, that boy. He didn’t last very long here. His father had them hire him over at the garage before he got fired from this job, so maybe that’s why they didn’t know he worked here first. It’s not like they were ever going to get a good reference for him from the staff here.”

“Is there anything you don’t know about this building, Bernice?” Mike said. “I might put you on retainer.”

“You’re a flatterer, Mr. Chapman,” Wicks said, exchanging her warm smile for a look of profound unhappiness. “I know most of the Dakota’s secrets. The one I’d have given everything to figure out, though, that’s never come to pass.”

Jillian Sorenson wiggled the key in the lock of the sixth door.

I could see from the length of remaining hallway-one door left on this side-that the room we were about to enter was the one in which the outline of a figure appeared in the Panoscan photograph. Mike winked at Mercer and me, nodding as he did. The fingers of his right hand were already running through his hair.

“Bernice,” Sorenson said, “did anyone change the lock? I can’t seem to get this one to open.”

“No, Miss Jillian. No one’s been up here at all, to my knowledge.”

She held the key up again and put on her reading glasses to check the number. “It’s the right one, but it won’t seem to turn.”

“You mind if I try?” Mike asked.

“If you think you can get it to work, be my guest.”

He twisted and turned his hand, but the lock wouldn’t give. “This won’t open it,” he said. “Don’t you have a master?”

“I don’t think so,” Sorenson said. “Haven’t you seen enough? Or will you let me call one of the custodians tomorrow and see if we can get you in?”

“I’d really like to have a look,” Mike said, turning his side to the door and throwing his weight against it.

Jillian Sorenson let out a yelp when she saw Mike’s movement. “Don’t!”

But he had already launched his assault. The dry wood cracked and split as the two women gasped. The lock didn’t give, but Mike reached in through the hole he’d created in the splintered panel and opened the door.

The room was very much like the first three-a single bed, a nightstand, a bureau, and a window with a glorious view of Central Park.

But there were also signs of life.

There were footsteps-large ones-imprinted on the dusty surface of the floor. There were two cardboard coffee containers, both empty, resting on the windowsill, along with a wax paper wrap that looked like it had once held a sandwich lying open on the floor below the sill. It looked as though someone had nested here for a while, leaving a few pieces of yellowed newspaper and other fragments of a transient life resting on a paper bag in the far corner.

Mike held out his arm so that neither woman could enter the room. “Get a team up here,” he said to Mercer. “Maybe there’s something unique in the shoe prints. And there’s certain to be DNA on the coffee cups.”

Someone had stood in this very window, watching Angel’s body being removed from the Lake, exactly one week ago this morning.

“I’m going to ask you again, Ms. Sorenson,” Mike said. “Who’s got access to this room?”

She held out both hands, dangling the chains. “I’ve got no idea. Someone’s obviously changed the keys.”

Bernice Wicks looked frantic. “I’m so sorry to make trouble, Miss Jillian. Last time this happened it was my fault.”

“Let’s not discuss that, Bernice.”

“It was my Eddie, that time. I gave the key to him-”

“Bernice!” Jillian Sorenson’s single-word reprimand echoed in the gloomy corridor.

“Who’s Eddie?” Mike said.

“My son. Eddie’s my boy.”

The frightened housekeeper had talked about the fact that he used to stay here during his childhood when she had to work late nights or weekends. Perhaps he’d been back here more recently.

“He’s not a boy, Bernice. Eddie’s fifty-nine years old. Stop babbling, will you?”

“Can’t be him who was here anyway,” she said, trying to force a smile. “Poor Eddie’s been away almost a year now.”

“Away?” I asked, trying to calm her. “Where is he?”

“We had him committed, ma’am. Rather, I had him committed,” Bernice Wicks said, looking over to Jillian Sorenson. “Civilly, that is. He didn’t do anything to anybody but himself. He’s in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital.”