Death Angel

SEVEN

All week, in anticipation of our Vineyard trip, I had counted on the fresh evening breeze to help knock me out for a good night’s sleep. Now I was practically frantic, thrashing around in bed as Mike’s conversation trumped even my thoughts of the dead girl lying in the morgue without a name on her toe tag.

I’d made some stupid decisions in my love life, but how could Mike have let himself get involved with a head case like Jessica Pell? Street-smart, flamboyant, always keen to be the center of attention, and crazy enough that some people thought she had written the threatening letters to herself to remain in the spotlight.

And if she was looking to ruin Mike’s career, perhaps Jessica had already made the same run at Paul Battaglia in order to derail my prospects, too. I replayed this morning’s scene in my mind-McKinney and Battaglia rolling over and giving me the case in the Park without argument, whether or not it proved to be a sexual assault or intimate partner violence.

Now Mike’s comments at dinner were really stinging. If Jessica Pell was behind the DA’s decision to undermine me, then he was right that this case was the dog that could be my downfall. That was the way Battaglia liked to move mountains-without leaving fingerprints, if it were possible to do so.

I rolled over onto my stomach to try to relax myself, but my attention came back to Jessica Pell herself. What the hell had I ever done to cross her? She’d been a prosecutor in the Bronx DA’s office for four or five years before flaming out there by mishandling three child abuse cases. Then she’d gone to a firm that did nickel-and-dime defense work, mostly DWIs and low-level drug possession. It was her affair with one of the mayoral deputies that launched her career on the bench. Jessica never played well in the sandbox with other women, but I hadn’t ever exchanged more than ten words with her outside the courtroom.

I crunched the pillow under my head and turned onto my side. Whatever sleep I managed was in between thoughts about how I could help Mike navigate his way through this difficult morass that threatened his career and both our reputations. I struggled to remember who in my office had approved my assignments of Mike during our last few cases. They couldn’t go through to the NYPD without a supervisor’s signature.

By seven A.M., my restlessness having barely abated all night, I saw no point in remaining in bed any longer. It was a glorious morning, and I slipped into the outdoor shower, looking out across Menemsha to the sailboats on the Vineyard Sound in the distance.

I dressed in jeans and a shirt, put the top down on my red Miata, and drove three miles to the Chilmark Store to pick up The New York Times and fresh muffins for Vickee and me. I took my first cup of coffee onto the porch of the store, sat in one of the rockers, unfolded the Times to read the story of the Park murder, pleasantly distracted by the parade of islanders, many of whom I was seeing for the first time this season-fishermen, lobstermen, waitresses, construction workers, house painters, schoolteachers, and landscapers-for whom this small general store was the same lifeline it served as for me.

I knew Vickee wouldn’t be awake for another couple of hours. Back at the house, I walked the perimeter of the property, enjoying the spring plantings that had started to bloom and added such color after the long, bleak island winter.

I tried to distance myself from the train wreck that had become Mike Chapman’s life, but nothing in my spectacular view contributed to calming me. I went inside to organize my dresser drawers and closets. There were shirts and sweaters of Luc’s that he had kept here-an array of sherbet-like colors in cashmere and cotton that reminded me of his warmth and affection as soon as I held them in my hands. I would need to wrap them and mail them back to him in France.

At around ten o’clock I had ground a bag of coffee beans, certain that the noise would awaken Vickee.

She stumbled downstairs half an hour later, expressing her delight in a morning without a wake-up visit from Logan.

We took our coffee on the deck, read the papers, then walked down and dangled our feet in the pool, deciding on a plan for the day.

“You seem fidgety, Alexandra. Did I upset you last night?”

“Nope.” As much as I didn’t want to withhold anything about Mike from Vickee, I assumed that what he had unloaded to me was in confidence. I expected that Mercer would be one of the first friends he would tell. “What do you want to do today?”

“Eat. Best option on the island.”

We had a lunchtime regime that was both obscenely fattening and wonderfully delicious. It started at the Bite-a tiny shack off to the side of the road in Menemsha where the Quinn sisters served up the best fried clams I’ve ever eaten. Then we walked farther down the road, bought a dozen of the freshest oysters the local ponds produced every day in season from Larsen’s Fish Market, and ate them on the dock, and ended our feast with an ice cream cone at the Galley, waiting for the line to go down at the hugely popular takeout place.

I kept Mike’s secret all day, checking my voice mail too often for messages that never appeared and texts that weren’t sent. I kept it through our bike ride to the Aquinnah Cliffs and back, enjoying the bright sunshine as we cycled home into the wind. And I kept it through dinner at the always crowded State Road-amazing seafood hauled in by island fishermen and salad from the chef’s own gardens-when we were finally ready for another meal at nine P.M.

It was my turn to be the designated driver, so I didn’t open a bottle of wine until we got home at eleven. “I’m going to the hot tub, Vickee. Put on your bathing suit and come along.”

“No wine in the hot tub.”

“You know what? I have taken enough advice from you in the last twenty-four hours to do me for the foreseeable future. You be the lifeguard. I want the water temp to be a hundred degrees, and I want my wine. Feel free to stay behind.”

“Well, maybe a little wine. I’ll join you in five.”

I changed into my suit, grabbed a towel along with the wine bottle and glasses, and walked down through the dewy night grass to the corner of the pool with the Jacuzzi, dialing it up to a very warm temperature. Vickee wasn’t far behind.

“Did you talk to Mercer?”

“Phone tag all day and evening.”

“He didn’t tell you anything about Mike?”

“I’m saying we didn’t talk.”

I tested the water with my toe, turned on the bubbles, and sat down inside with my glass.

“Then bury this till you hear it from Mercer, okay?”

“What?”

“Mike’s getting jammed up. Big time.”

“Mike who?”

“Last night you had me engaged to the guy. Now it’s ‘Mike who?’”

“Our Mike?”

The warm water and cold wine were taking the edge off. So was confiding in Vickee.

“You must have known-you and Mercer-that he was involved with a woman a few months ago?”

“I’m not all up in his business, Alex. What woman?”

“Jessica Pell.”

“You’re talking hot,” Vickee said. “Good for Mikey.”

“Turns out it’s not so good for him at all.”

“Why? ’Cause you were expecting him to have saved himself for you all these years? You’re twisted. So I’m not handing you a virgin. Is that your issue?” Vickee tipped her drink in my direction. “You’ve been some places I wouldn’t exactly suggest you claim on your résumé, babe.”

“I have no quarrel with you there.” I steadied my wineglass on one of the granite pieces of the pool’s coping and refilled it. “What I mean is that Pell went all bunny-in-the-boiling-pot on Mike when he ended their brief romance. Puts me smack in the middle of it by saying I pulled him off her bodyguard duty ’cause I was jealous.”

“Always knew those green eyes would get you in trouble, Alex.”

“Be serious, Vickee,” I said, lifting myself up onto the side of the hot tub and wrapping a towel around me. “She’s made a beef to Sergeant Chirico, and probably to Battaglia, too. Pell wants Mike transferred out of homicide. Out. Gone. Stripped of his shield if she has her way. Back in uniform. Maybe the rubber gun squad.”

Vickee’s mood changed immediately. She got to her feet and wrapped the towel around her like a sarong. “I’ve got to call Mercer. This can’t be happening.”

I turned off the Jacuzzi settings and lights, and we practically ran back to the house. Vickee grabbed her phone from the counter. “I’m going upstairs. I promise you I’ll get Mercer on this. Maybe he can spend tomorrow with Mike. Try to find a solution.”

“Why don’t you call him from here?” I said, longing to hear Mercer’s response, but Vickee was halfway up the stairs.

“Doing it my way, Alex. I need some privacy.”

I went to my room to shower and get ready for bed. I felt shut out of everything. I was so disconnected from what had been going on in Mike’s life, and excluded from the intimacy that was a hallmark of Mercer and Vickee’s marriage.

It was another night of tossing and turning for me, an early trip to the store for newspapers, and what seemed like an eternity until Vickee came down the stairs at eleven o’clock and carried her coffee mug out onto the deck.

“Good morning,” she greeted me. “I hope you feel better than you look.”

“Not so much. Any luck?”

“Mission accomplished. Mercer is going to make an intercept at church. Figured he could corner Mike when he comes out of Mass with his mother,” Vickee said. Mike tried to take his widowed mother, who was devoutly religious, to Sunday Mass every week. “Take her home first and then find some quiet time together to talk, while Mike’s in the mood to atone.”

“Nice. Thanks.”

“What are you doing, working out here when we’re supposed to be thinking no further ahead than our next meal?” she asked, seeing several sheets of paper spread out over the table, held down by rocks so they didn’t blow away.

“Just trying to keep my overwrought little brain occupied,” I said, lowering my sunglasses to avoid the glare. “Did you see these things at Primola, or were you on the phone when Mike showed them to us?”

“I didn’t see anything Friday night,” Vickee said, lowering herself into a chair and pulling the closest page toward her.

“It’s a printout of the shot I took with my cell. Looks like an antique model of Belvedere Castle, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not so familiar with Belvedere. Does it have something to do with the dead girl?”

“Who knows? Mike says cops were just picking up everything in sight.”

“Well, Logan would have a swell time with this, wouldn’t he?” she said. “Just throw a few of his little knights on the parapet up here. And this one? Ah, it’s the Obelisk.”

I pushed the third printout over to her, and she picked it up to study the image.

“An angel,” Vickee said, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head to look more closely. “A dark little figure, isn’t she?”

I nodded.

“Mike didn’t say this was part of this other stuff, did he?”

“No,” I said, pointing out the differences in scale and substance to her. “Just somewhere northwest of the Lake. She’s unusual, isn’t she?”

Vickee sighed. “Not if you grew up in my neighborhood, Ms. Alex. We’ve got our own angels, just like we’ve got our own devils.”

“Well, it’s an odd find in Central Park in the West 70s. Forget the murder case, this precious little object just makes me wonder about the child she belonged to.”

“Exactly where did the cops pick it up?” Vickee wasn’t joking around now. “Where does the bridle path cross near the Lake?”

I pulled the large map Mike had given me closer to us. “There, right below the transverse.”

“So 78th Street? 79th? Not far from Central Park West?”

“About there. What are you thinking?”

“That maybe this angel’s a relic from Seneca Village. Maybe that has something to do with the girl-or the man who killed her.”

“What’s Seneca Village?” I asked. “Where’s that?”

Vickee sat back to tell me. “It used to be right close to that area, say 80th Street up to 89th Street.”

“Near Central Park?”

“Not just near it. It’s inside what became the Park-a stone’s throw from where this figurine was found. There was no Park when the village existed, in the mid-1800s. Seneca was the first significant community of African American property owners to be created in Manhattan.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“And it wasn’t a ghetto, Alex, but a stable settlement of working-class people.”

“Houses-and…?”

“Houses and schools, all seized by the government in 1857. An entire thriving village simply destroyed to create the great Park.”

No doubt the state had authorized the legal doctrine of eminent domain to take the private property for public purposes.

“Your landscapers-those Olmsted and Vaux guys-they just displaced two hundred fifty people and knocked down their houses.”

“I had no idea.”

“Not many people do,” Vickee said, holding up the picture of the ebony statuette. “They even destroyed three churches that served the little village. And one of them was called All Angels’.”