Death Dance

14

"Want to grab some coffee before I go downtown to my office?" I said to Mike.

"Nah. I'll go up to the squad and put in a few hours."

"So how come you didn't ask him about the monitors in his apartment?"

"He was holding your hand, not mine. I thought you'd get to it. That's not homicide work, that's some kind of Peeping Tom stuff, right up your alley."

Mike was a detail guy. It was rare for him to let a single fact slip from his grasp. It was even more unusual for him to turn down my offer of a free breakfast.

"Are you going to talk to Mona?" I asked.

"About what? Right now all I'm interested in is who else saw Natalya Galinova before she disappeared and why her personal life seemed to be in such turmoil."

"I'll be in my office if you want anything," I said, hailing a Yellow Cab on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 59th Street.

It was only eight fifteen when I bought two cups of black coffee from the cart on the corner of the Hogan Place entrance to the court-house. I scanned my I.D. card and pushed through the turnstile, greeting the cop whose fixed post was security in the cramped lobby of the District Attorney's Office.

The eighth-floor corridor was still empty when I pushed open the anteroom door, passing my secretary's desk and turning on the lights in my office. I had left hurriedly on Friday evening to get to work with Mercer on the Jean Eakens case up at the Special Victims Squad. The case memos and screening sheets from the forty senior assistants who worked in my unit were still scattered on my desktop for review and response, so I spent time making comments on them until the phones started ringing at nine.

Half of the morning was occupied with phone calls to press for special attention to the new cases. I needed the toxicologist to do the routine drug screening in the Eakens case, but also to be aware that Xanax had been recovered from the doctor's kitchen counter. I begged the chief serologist to rush the DNA profile from the blood on the teeth of the dog who saved his owner from a rape in Riverside Park. A match to a known felon would launch a search that might prevent other women from being victimized.

I had no official role in the death investigation of Natalya Galinova, but knew that Mike could navigate the most professional medical examiner's office in the country with a skill that would produce the best results possible in a timely fashion.

At eleven, after I had set my secretary, Laura, to work on some correspondence, I walked across the hall to the executive wing, to see whether Rose Malone, the district attorney's assistant, could fit me into his schedule. I waited through a series of phone calls from the governor and several lesser public officials before I was summoned into the large office from which Paul Battaglia supervised the work of the six hundred lawyers on his staff.

There wasn't an hour of the day or night that Battaglia was without a cigar stub in his mouth. He could talk straight for thirty minutes without hobbling the unlit Cohiba that was stuck to his lips, and when he was actually smoking, as he was now, he would remove it occasionally to waft a ribbon of smoke in my direction.

"Good morning, Paul. Thanks for giving me some time. There are a couple of new cases that are likely to get some ink, that I thought you'd want to know about."

"Like what?" he asked, drawing back one side of his lip and speaking out of the corner of his mouth.

"Like a physician who drugged two women in order to rape them. Canadian tourists."

The press always played up the foreign element in crime stories. Politicians hated any mentions that might scare people away from the city's most profitable industry. "And the good news is that we finally have DNA from the Riverside rapist, so we're likely to have a profile to put in the databank by midweek."

I expected his usual barrage of precise questions about the pedigree of the doctor who'd been arrested or the breed of the heroic dog. "You think I think that's why you're in here to see me?"

I blushed and that drew a wide smile around the cigar clenched in his teeth.

"The commissioner called me about the Galinova woman. He seems to know that you were up at the crime scene."

And didn't call to tell Battaglia about it, which was the unspoken part of the district attorney's "gotcha."

"We were working on my rape case up at the squad when Homicide got the news she'd gone missing. Chapman thought I might be useful because of my familiarity with the ballet world, and the possibility that Galinova had been assaulted before she was killed."

"Chapman always finds a way to make you useful, doesn't he?"

I ignored the shot. There wasn't a rumor that circulated anywhere within the office that escaped Battaglia's radar. "Paul, I'd really like to ask you to assign me to the investigation."

Homicide cases were controlled in the Trial Division by Pat McKinney, a rat-faced prosecutor whose legal ability was obscured by the pettiness of his personality and the longtime affair he'd conducted with an incompetent young lawyer for whom he'd carved out a protected place in the bureau. I had challenged McKinney too many times to be favored with investigations that fell on the outer borders of my own unit. Battaglia's reliance on my sex crimes prosecutors for the resolution of so many high-profile cases-our ability to exonerate falsely accused suspects before charging them and to nail those guilty of such heinous crimes-had given me direct access to him whenever I wanted it.

"Nobody's got the case for us?"

"No suspects yet. The squad's just getting on all the employees today. Nobody's been tapped to work on it."

"It's not a rape, according to the commissioner. Any reason to think the perp was trying?"

I had gone online to find the old news stories about the first murder at the Met. I reminded Battaglia of the facts, since the case had occurred before he was in office.

"That wasn't a completed rape either, Paul, but it was certainly an attempt at one. The best those detectives could reconstruct, the violinist ran into the stagehand when she was lost. He got her in an elevator and tried to assault her. He probably killed her when she resisted, when she was struggling."

"So you want to keep that option open?"

"Yes. We've got four hundred guys who were somewhere backstage that afternoon and evening, so detectives have got to talk to every one of them, in case this was random-or to see whether one of them had been stalking Galinova since she'd arrived here. And we're developing a very complex personal life. A lover's quarrel-a domestic-isn't so far out of the question."

"How so?"

"Galinova recently put her husband on notice that she wanted a legal separation. She had something going on with this guy called Joe Berk, and a former lover is the artistic-"

"Slow down, Alex. Don't just throw Joe Berk's name in here and slide by it."

"Is he a friend?"

"He's everybody's friend. And he'd be your worst enemy."

There were no powerful businessmen or -women who had somehow not been in Battaglia's orbit throughout his several terms in office as one of the most influential law-enforcement figures in the country. Every prominent New Yorker had been solicited for campaign contributions over the years, and most had benefited from the services of the great lawyers mentored in their careers by Paul Battaglia. Among his prosecutorial alumni were partners in every major firm, litigators sought to battle in the most controversial trials, judges on the state and federal bench, commissioners leading government agencies of every type, and one protege who had been a contender for the position of attorney general of the United States- the country's premier legal post.

"Anything I need to know?"

"Don't turn your back to him, Alex. He's vicious."

"I assume the commissioner told you he was with Galinova- arguing with her-just before she disappeared?"

"Take it wherever it goes. You don't need a pass from me." Battaglia's mantra had been consistent, no matter where the tentacles of an investigation led. I'd been given green light to do the right thing, which is all he asked of each one of us.

"So year answer is yes? I can stay on die case? And you tell

McKinney, please. I don't even want to see him."

"I want to know everything you develop before I read it in the Post with a Mickey Diamond byline. Got that?"

Diamond was the veteran courthouse reporter who snagged the best leaks from the NYPD brass, and when facts failed to fall in his lap, he fashioned the most creative sidebars in journalism.

"And when you know where you're going with Berk, I'll give you some background about his other run-ins with the law."

Battaglia always delivered one of his throwaway lines while I was on the threshold of the door. I turned back. "Crimes?"

"Nothing violent. Tax fraud. Some pretty sophisticated planning that's made him and everyone around him worth billions. Not millions. The B word. I've been trying to get the bastard for years. The feds took the investigation away from me when I couldn't put together a case that'd stick, but then in the end, neither could they," he said, smiling broadly again. "I may have some leverage for you when you come to need it."

"You want to tell me now?"

"I don't want to muddy the waters."

Maybe another tidbit would help. "The commissioner fill you in on the fact that Berk got hotfooted on a manhole cover late last night? And survived it?"

"Yeah. I wanted to make sure the PC thought it was accidental. You agree?"

"Had all the right signs. His favorite son was taking him out for a lobster dinner, and his driver was parked next to the manhole. Con Ed said they'd had more than-"

"I know, I know. Forty reports this year. We're going to do a grand jury investigation on the one from downtown. Throw last night's matter into it, too. See if it rises to criminally negligent homicide on that poor dogwalker who got hit last month."

I left out the fact of the television monitors in Berk's bedroom.

There would be time for that story when we figured out where the cameras were concealed. Otherwise, it would be one more question for which I couldn't provide an answer-a very bad way to start a Monday morning with Paul Battaglia.

Rose interrupted on the intercom. The mayor wanted Battaglia immediately, which suggested there was friction between him and the governor on an issue in which the district attorney figured centrally. He wanted me out of the room before he talked and made it clear by dismissing me before he picked up the phone from its cradle.

I called the squad to tell Lieutenant Peterson that I was officially attached to the case. From this point on, anylegal decisions-whether applications for warrants or sufficiency of probable cause for a suspect's arrest-would be made in consultation wartime. Peterson mentioned that he had seen Mike earlier in the day but didn't know whether he had gone down to the Met to work or was sitting out this shift.

The rest of my day was filled with the routine of my prosecutorial duties in the sex crimes unit. Lawyers on trial took precedence with often urgent issues that had arisen during the current courtroom proceedings. Detectives dropped in regularly for guidance about how to handle new complaints for which our pioneeringunit bad developed protocols. Advocates and victims themselves called to ask questions about the process they faced if they chose to report their crimes to the police. And friends came by every day to hangout with one another, tell war stories, and vent about the array of characters who presented themselves to us with endless stories of bad and bizarre human behavior.

Mercer Wallace phoned in shortly after six. "Heard your weekend took an interesting twist."

"Mike called you?"

"Let's say I hunted him down."

"Does he know Battaglia's put me on Talya's case?"

"Good going. No, he didn't say. He's at Lincoln Center. He's going to meet me for something to eat at Shun Lee West at seven o'clock. Want to join us?"

"Is it okay with him?"

"Hey, who's making the ask here? You're my date."

"I'll be there."

"You're not passing off Dr. Sengor's case, are you?"

"Not a chance. I'm getting antsy about the tox results. You think Jean and Cara are willing to hang around this week?"

"Another day or two. What are you going to do about the grand jury?"

"I'm ready to go as soon as we get confirmation on the drug testing."

"You talk to anyone in administration at Sengor's hospital?"

"Yes," I said. "Our perp has been suspended. Risk management didn't want to take the chance he'd be exposed to any other patients."

Liability in medical centers had become such an expensive prospect that most legal offices had been renamed "risk management units," responsible for the oversight of all problems that might lead to litigation.

"Double-edged sword. I hated to think he'd still be with patients, but this way we have no idea of his daily whereabouts."

"They wanted him to keep his beeper so they can stay on top of him, too. They've required him to respond to them twice a day. Suspended with pay is the way they handled that one. He's already called in twice, so the doctor in charge of the psychiatric department says he's cooperating."

"I'll see you at the restaurant?"

"Absolutely." I called my friend Lesley Latham to break my dinner date, apologizing for the last-minute cancellation. I took the cab to West 65 th Street and found Mercer and Mike seated at the bar.

I walked past his stool and patted Mike's shoulder.

"Of all the gin joints in all the Chinese restaurants in the world, you had to walk into mine?" he asked. "Who invited you?"

"Maybe I'm in the wrong place. I was supposed to meet a couple of my friends here. I guess that really is a gun in your pocket and you're not so happy to see me."

"I'll take the weight," Mercer said, embracing me. "I needed some Peking duck and the service is so much better when we cut Alex in. Figured it was time to get back in the Jeopardy! habit, don't you think?"

For as long as I could remember, since we'd started working on cases as a team more than a decade ago, the three of us stopped whatever we were doing when we were together to bet one another on the Final Jeopardy question at the end of the show. Mike had kept witnesses waiting at the morgue, interrupted cocktail partiesin full swing, and put the police commissioner on hold more than once to test his trivia knowledge against ours for twenty bucks a shot.

By the time the bartender served my drink, Mercer had coaxed him into turning the wall-mounted television set to the quiz show. We made small talk until Alex Trebek revealed the category the final question: Sports.

Mike and Mercer were both jocks who followed college and professional sports with great enthusiasm. Mercerhad turned down a football scholarship at the University of Michigan to join die NYPD. I put my twenty-dollar bill on the bar and brightened only slightly when Trebek's final answer involved a Yankee legend.

"Field named for Native American tribe where Babe Ruth hit his longest home run."

I could think of rival teams in the long history of my pinstriped favorites, but nothing about the names of any of their fields that qualified in this category. Fenway and the Jake wouldn't do it. Mike wanted to double the stakes, but Mercer was as puzzled as I and we held our ground.

The music ticked away the time as all three of the contestants seemed to be stumped.

"I'm so sorry," Trebek said, ready to reveal the question.

"What is Sing Sing prison?" Mike asked, sweeping the three bills off the bar. "Home of the Sint Sinck Indians as well as the aforementioned Old Sparky. Yankees played an exhibition game against the inmates every year and the Bambino slammed the longest ball of his career there one time. Something like six hundred and twenty feet or more. You know why the state built the prison on the Sint Sinck land? 'Cause there was enough marble for the thugs to be put to work quarrying it-it was murderers and rapists who dug the stone that built Grace Church and New York University."

Mercer led us to our table, a corner in the sunken pit beneath the giant mouth of the long black dragon that was suspended from the ceiling.

"You know that I'm officially catching Talya's case, don't you?" I asked Mike.

"The lieutenant just gave me the news."

"I figure you could bring me up to speed over dinner and then I'll go back to the Met with you."

The West Side branch of our favorite Chinese restaurant was just across Broadway from the Lincoln Center complex, a popular dining spot for theatergoers.

Mike was crunching on a handful of crispy noodles as we waited for our order of hot-and-sour soup. Not only did the task force have to deal with the several hundred employees who were in the opera house on the day and evening of the murder, but they learned that more than two thousand other workers had been on the payroll within the last year.

"Each time we start to question somebody, seems he adds three names nobody gave us before. It's a union shop, and most guys who work there have had a father or uncle or cousin who got their foot in the door earlier. If someone's covering for a relative, we'll never get to first base."

It was rare to hear Mike sound so discouraged in the initial stage of an investigation.

"We've still got forensics to shed some light."

"The droplets of blood near the place she went down?" Mike said. "Preliminary run of the DNA looks like it's Natalya's. Autopsy findings included dried blood in her nasal cavity, probably from the same blow that knocked the contact lens out of her eye. Hair seems to be torn out of her scalp. That figures, too. Those don't connect to anyone else."

He slugged his vodka and gritted his teeth. "Serology lifted two different profiles from that white kid glove that was found near the bloodstains in the corridor. Remember, that man's glove I told you about? One profile from skin cells on the inside, another from the outer surface. For whatever it's worthy they don't match eachother. He might have something more to work with by late tomorrow."

"And the white hairs? Did you ask him to submit them to the FBI for comparison to the samples we got from Berk's office?" The more difficult processing of mitochondrial DNA still had to be outsourced to the FBI lab.

"Forget you ever saw Joe Berk's hair, Coop. The strands that were found with Galinova's body? They weren't human. The guys at the M.E.'s office didn't need the feds to tell them these came from some kind of animal."