Death Dance

28

The lieutenant was angrier than I had ever seen him. "I got twenty detectives sitting on their asses up here, like they're Mrs. Vanderbilt's invited guests for opening night. We got one squirrelly guy in this whole cast of characters-with a gimp, no less-and he's out the door before anybody's the wiser for it? It's more like a night at the opera with the Marx Brothers."

He started shouting names as his men got to their feet, putting on suit jackets and remaking the knots in the ties that hung suspended from their shirt collars. "Go pull Harney's cousin off his job and bring him up to the squad. Give him a feel for what a real interrogation is like," he said to the first pair he spotted. "Alex, can I lock him up for anything?"

"I'll try to be creative. Not for lying to the cops, if that's what you mean."

"Yeah. What the hell? Everybody can bullshit us. We're just the dumb friggin' police department. You two-Roman and Bliss-over to Hoboken. Somebody want to get information on Harney's family and run with it? Relatives, friends, hangouts, watering holes, known pros locations. Move it."

"Better have somebody call around to local emergency rooms," I said. "There's always a chance that ankle really was broken and he's gone in to get it X-rayed. No reason to assume he's skipped town."

"Ever the optimist, blondie. I know you prefer to be ignorant about military history, but I thought the theater arts were right up your alley," Mike said.

"And?"

"John Wilkes Booth. Shot the president in the Ford Theater, leaped onto the stage, managed to evade capture and get out of town despite the fact that he snapped the fibula in his left leg. Where there's a will there's a way. I don't think Ralph Harney is planning to stick around and make himself useful. You want me in on this, boss?"

"Nah. We screwed this one up on our own. You had something else planned, didn't you?"

"Joe Berk. See if he's missing one of his fancy gloves."

"Keep running with your end. We'll carry this disaster as far as we can."

The drive down Ninth Avenue to the theater district was familiar now. I called Mercer to see whether there were any prints on the letter and envelope that had been delivered to me. I knew he would get the lab director to jump the analysis to the top of this morning's pile of cases.

"Halfway there," Mercer said. "What was left of the stationery inside your flaming missive had Selim Sengor's fingerprints-three of them. On the envelope, we've got a partial of his gopher, Dr. Alkit."

Those would have been easy enough to compare quickly because both men had been arrested, so their print comparisons were available to the expert. "Any other partials?"

"A few on the envelope. I got somebody tracking down the messenger so we can roll his fingers, and then we'll check Laura, too."

"Don't forget the DA's Squad has hers on file," I said, reminding Mercer that all of the office employees had to submit to be printed during the security clearance process.

"Well, you can get this off your mind. Sengor's an ocean away and we've got Alkit under arrest. Whoever handles his case can up the ante with these new charges."

"Thanks, Mercer. Speak to you later."

We parked down the block from the Belasco and made our way to the entrance shortly before noon.

Two workmen were on ladders, spread in front of the marquee. They were putting up letters that would announce the next show to move into the house. The front doors were wide open and we walked into the theater to make our way to Berk's elevator through the side corridor.

The auditorium was dark, but the curtain was open and the stage was dimly lit. I could make out the shape of a large box, and Mike walked down the center aisle to see what it was.

"Must be a cheerful production moving in. That looks like a coffin."

I walked closer and could see that Mike was right. As I got halfway down toward the front row, several floorboards on the stage parted to reveal an opening-though one smaller than that at the Met. The thick white hair of Joe Berk was the first thing I saw rising out of the hole, as he-still in his robe and satin pajamas-was lifted up to the stage from a pit below it on some kind of hydraulic system.

"Ha! Hope you two sleuths didn't think you were coming to my funeral," he said, stepping off the square platform as it locked in place. "One-man shows-personally, I hate 'em. Short of Olivier and Gielgud-and that gal whose got all those talking vaginas-there aren't many stars with the talent to keep an audience in their seats."

Berk walked over to the coffin and lifted its lid. "Got one of these young magicians coming in. Big sensation in London. He does all the great Houdini escape tricks-the iron box, the packing case in a tank of water, the ring and the dove. There's a nut for you, Chapman."

"Who?"

"Houdini. That's who. Harry Houdini. He was a rabbi's son. Hungarian," Berk said, laughing at something he remembered. "My mother had a thing for Hungarians. Prust-you know the word? Yiddish for 'common.' You talk about changing names? So this kid is born Ehrich Weiss. He wants to change it? Fine with me. I'm the last guy to fault him for that. But how'd he pick Harry Houdini? You're ashamed of being Jewish, so instead you want the world to think you're a wop? Nuts if you ask me."

Mike's political incorrectness was in the amateur ranking compared with Berk's.

"Why the coffin?" Mike asked.

"It's an original, from Houdini himself. This is where he performed his act for years. The stage of the Belasco. We got all his hokey cabinets and props for more than half a century. There's eighteen trapdoors in the floor of this place. I can disappear into the pit and come back up laid out in that casket in thirty seconds. Wanna see?"

"No, thanks. I'll take your word for it," I said. My own brush with premature burial had given me a strong aversion to such games.

"Chapman, you think Houdini didn't have tricks?"

"I'm sure he did, Joe. I don't much believe in magic."

"Smart boy. Right on this very stage he used to do the coffin-escape gimmick. He'd let people from the audience come up and inspect the box, examine the screws that held the lid down, and then secure them with sealing wax. Did it hundreds of time and nobody ever called him a fake. What do you think, detective?"

"You got me, Joe."

"Come look at the fittings in the bottom here. It's ingenious. You'd never spot it unless someone showed it to you. The screws on the lower part look like they're holding the bottom edge in place. But see? They're just fitted into dowels that slide off the edge. He'd stay in the coffin as long as he thought the audience was enjoying the drama, escape from the bottom, through the trapdoor on which the coffin had been placed, then stroll out onstage whenever he was good and ready."

Berk let the lid slam down on the empty coffin. "Illusions, Mr. Chapman, that's what my world is all about."

"And suckers still being born every day. That's why we're back to see you. I'm sick of illusions."

"You're running hot and cold on me, sonny. I got to get back up to bed. I'm not quite myself yet," Berk said, shuffling in his slippers toward the elevator.

"We'll follow you up."

"Never mind, never you mind. What is it now?"

"Gloves, Joe. One of the guys on my team found a man's glove at the Met-in the hallway where Natalya Galinova struggled with her killer."

"She liked gloves. Long silk ones, like the ladies used to wear in my day."

"Not hers. Your glove."

"Mine?" he said, hyperventilating as he rested himself against a packing crate in the wings off stage right. He blew his nose with a tissue and tossed it in a garbage can in the far corner. "What are you, another Houdini? A mentalist? Who told you they're mine?"

Mike wasn't ready to admit he'd taken something of Berk's -improperly-that had yielded a DNA profile. A pack of high-powered lawyers would probably settle on our shoulders before we could leave the building.

"I could take the shirt from your pajamas, your skin cells would be all over it, just from the way your body rubs against it."

"You'll take nothing of mine, Chapman." Berk was ready to walk again.

"I could pick up that Kleenex you just threw away and the lab could use it to match to the gloves we-"

"My snot? That's what you're gonna resort to in order to find out what Joe Berk is made of? Go ahead, detective. That's your element, maybe, like dirt from the street. You're welcome to it."

"Suppose I can prove-maybe not today, but next week or the week after-suppose I could prove it was one of your gloves?"

"Then what? Then you're gonna say I used the gloves to kill Talya and left one of them behind for you to find, right? I'm not that stupid. And I wouldn't waste a pair of my good gloves on a hysterical broad who'd seen her best days on the far side of a stage curtain. Too expensive. Too hard to replace a well-made pair of gloves."

Berk looked back to see if Mike appreciated his humor.

"Friday night. You remember Friday, Chapman, don't you? I didn't need no gloves on Friday. It was a beautiful spring night, my driver puts me right in front of the plaza at Lincoln Center and I walk fifty yards to the theater. What gloves? Who says they're mine?"

Mike didn't answer.

"Maybe I oughta go through my closet, detective. See if anybody stole a pair from me. You'll show me the glove, won't you? I can probably tell you where and when I bought them, how much I paid. Then we can figure out who took the damn thing from me and see if you're capable of solving that kind of crime. Larceny," Berk said, dragging out the first syllable of the word to mock Mike.

"Depends who has access to your clothes, I guess. Maybe one of your relatives-someone close enough to get into your drawers. It might be the time to ask about, say, your family."

"Don't forget half the coat-check girls in town. They could have lifted my gloves, too. Every time I went to lunch this winter, every time I went to dinner. You gotta do better than this, Chapman."

"I'd rather talk about folks closer to home."

"Talk fast. I'm not feeling good."

"Your son. The young one."

"Briggsley? What about him? You think he's a glove-snatcher, detective? He's got an allowance, he can buy the whole goddamn glove department of any store you can name. Bergdorf, Saks, Har-rod's, Dunhill."

"There's one other-uh-illusion, I guess you'd call it, that I'd like to clear up. It's about Lucy DeVore."

"The swinger?" Berk said, taking deep breaths again. "The girl on the swing. Don't bullshit me that she's talking, detective. You contribute as much money as I do every year to that hospital, they'll tell you the status quo of anyone you want to know about. They get her out of that coma, I'll be the first to know."

"There are a few people around town who saw your son with Lucy. People who'll say that they were hooked up with each other until you got in the way. I thought maybe that would remind you about exactly where it was you saw Lucy dancing the first time. About how it was she came to your attention."

The hyperventilation had turned to disgust. "You got no reason to bring my boy into this. He's a good kid, detective. He doesn't have the eye for women that I do, but he'll grow up. You leave him alone."

I knew Mike didn't need Joe Berk's help to get an address for Briggs. He was just pushing the old man's buttons to see whether he could find a hot one. "I only want to ask him a few questions. I know from the night of your accident he had the key to your place."

"Yeah? That makes him a crook? So my niece was in here, too, that night."

"That was after the murder, Joe. Mona was here after the glove was found at the Met. You're telling me I can't talk to Briggs?"

"I don't want to see his name in the papers, okay? He's out in Los Angeles for a week or two. He's helping his brother close a big deal for BerkAir. He comes back, be my guest."

Berk shuffled over to the elevator and pressed the button, waiting for it to open.

"You send him out of town to get over the girl?" Mike asked.

"He's like his old man, detective. The girls love him. Two weeks out in Malibu he'll find someone more his type. More my type, too. You need somebody to pick up the pieces of what's-her-name's broken bones? Lucy? Talk to Alden."

"What?"

"Hubert Alden. That's his kind of trash."

"You were pretty sure of that when you suggested to Mr. Vicci that he dangle Lucy in front of Alden at the audition."

Berk stepped in the elevator and turned to face us. "That wasn't the first time Alden saw the girl. I know my players, detective. You look surprised. Did he tell you something different?"

Mike's expression must have given him away. "You're certain of that?"

"I'm not a mentalist, sonny. I'm no Houdini. The girl was two-timing my kid with Alden. I saw it with my very own eyes."

The doors closed and Joe Berk vanished without telling us when or where.