Death Dance

33

When we left my building in the morning, detectives were still canvassing neighbors, crime-scene technicians were going over the exits and basement for trace evidence, and the lobby was abuzz with curious tenants who wanted to know about all the police activity that they paid so dearly not to experience.

"Speed it up, blondie. You're getting the fish eye from the super," Mike said, pushing me through the revolving door and pointing to his department car, parked at the curb at the end of the driveway.

"Are we calling to say we're on the way? Seven thirty's a pretty unsociable hour for a drop-in."

"We'll get Berk's pump working early. Might be good for him."

We stopped in front of the Belasco, right opposite the manhole that had jolted Berk's heart just a week ago. Mike rang the buzzer of the apartment's front door and several minutes later, a woman's voice asked us to identify ourselves. It was a different private-duty nurse who admitted us to the office at the bottom of the winding staircase.

"Mr. Berk's having a bad morning. I can't allow you in without permission from his physician."

"I've got some medicine that might help him breathe a little better," Mike said, ignoring the white-capped sentry and climbing the wide steps two at a time.

I shrugged at the nurse and followed.

The patient's nile green satin pajamas had been replaced by a pair of magenta ones, but all else looked the same. Berk came shuffling out of the bathroom, wrapping the tie of the robe around his waist. He was obviously startled to see us in his bedroom.

"You're pariahs, both of you. What's left of me that you want this time? Here," he said, holding his arm straight out ahead of him, pushing up the sleeve. "My blood? Take it. C'mon, drain it out of me. Maybe I'll get a deduction for a charitable contribution."

Berk walked to his bed and settled himself back into it.

"You read the papers, Joe? Anything besides Variety and the stock ticker?"

"Why? You gonna give me a current-events quiz?"

"Ms. Cooper here indicted a doctor last week. That sicko was drugging women to knock them out in order to have sex with them."

Berk pulled the sheet up under his chin and looked over at me. "That your case? Quite a headline you got yourself. Your boss probably would have liked it better if you caught the guy."

There wasn't much Berk missed.

"But her boss did make an interesting point, Joe. The doctor liked to go to the movies. Foreign flicks and local ones, too. Apparently he preferred that to the stage, no offense to you. So he made his own. Filmed himself raping women who didn't have a clue what was happening to them. And that fact got District Attorney Battaglia kind of wondering about you, Joe-about-"

"That prick didn't like me from the old country, Chapman. He's looking to get me any which way he can."

"Battaglia asked Ms. Cooper whether it was possible you had the same kind of perversion the doctor has?"

Berk raised himself up and guffawed in Mike's face. "Perversion? What does he know from perversion? Let me tell you, young man, Joe Berk never had to put anybody out to get laid, detective. I like 'em talking to me and smiling at me and telling me they never had it so good before. I give a shit if they're lying? Makes us both feel good. Tell Battaglia to stick that in his cigar and smoke it. I told you before, Chapman, the girls can't get enough of old Joe."

"No, no, no. Not that part, Joe. The movies. Coop and me," Mike said, looking over at me and pointing a finger. "Don't correct my grammar now, kid, okay? Coop and me, the first night we were here, mourning for you a little prematurely, we saw the video screen setup you had right in this room. Four monitors, and three of them weren't tuned in to the evening news. They were-well-where were those cameras shooting, Joe? What were you watching, and did whoever it was on the other end of the lens know she was being watched?"

Berk was squirming under the covers now, gulping for air like a fish out of water.

"We gave you a pass the first time we met you here, Joe. We felt bad that you'd taken such a hit from stepping on the sewer cover. Coop and me, we didn't figure these televisions," Mike said, sweeping his arm in the space behind him, where only the ordinary set remained today, "we didn't figure they had anything to do with the murder of Natalya Galinova. But now I don't know. I just don't know."

Berk seemed to be struggling to speak.

"Mike, go easy. Let me get the nurse," I said, turning and walking to the top of the staircase to call her to come up.

"Coop's a softie, Joe. Every now and then, something cracks through that armor she wears over her heart and gets inside and shoots directly to her brain, dulling its action for a few minutes. Me? I don't buy your bullshit. You're gasping for air 'cause you're grasping for straws. Too much time in the theater is what you've had. You're all about artifice and make-believe."

I stood in the doorway, watching Joe as he stretched his hand out to get Mike's attention. "Listen to me. Those monitors, they were so I could see my shows, check the productions without leaving home. That's all-"

"I'm sick of your lies. Those cameras weren't focused on any stages. They were in bathrooms or dressing rooms. They were in places nobody expected to be spied on. You don't have to help me, Joe. I'm good at legwork. I'll walk the soles off these shoes but I'll find your goddamn secrets before too long," Mike said, walking to the far side of the room and pulling open a cabinet drawer as he passed by a bureau. "And with any luck, I'll find your videotapes, too. 'Cause I gotta figure you were filming your showgirls, your dancers, your hookers-whoever it was-just the way that perverted doc was recording himself with every victim. You had somebody set up a camera system connected to your bedroom so you could play with yourself whenever the mood struck you. I gotta think you sat here alone in your slimy pajamas and made believe you had one of these girls right here in the room with you, keeping alive the myth of Joe Berk."

Berk tossed back the covers and tried to swing his legs over the side of the bed. "Don't touch another thing in this room. Get out of here, both of you."

"The tapes, Joe. I know there are tapes somewhere around here. Am I getting warm?" Mike asked, walking toward one of the many closet doors. "Am I getting closer?"

The nurse came in the room just as Berk lifted a small figurine- a statuette of Napoleon-from the bedside table and threw it at Mike's head. It didn't come close to hitting him, but it shattered the mirror on the wall behind the bureau.

"Bad arm you got. And seven years of bad luck to go with it."

The nurse was trying to calm her patient and get him back in bed. The slight exertion of throwing the brass piece seemed to have exhausted Berk.

"You're a fool, Chapman. I've had guys thrown off the force for less than this. You're way out of line."

"I hate being lied to, Joe. I hate murder most of all-"

"I never killed anybody. You're being stupid about that."

Mike stood on the other side of the bed, while the nurse took Berk's pulse and adjusted the pillows behind him.

"Then why do you keep lying to me? You aren't honest about the little things, so now I got to worry about what you're hiding, I got to focus on what's your connection to the big things. Like why did Galinova have to die?"

Berk closed his eyes and tried to take a few breaths.

"Why did you keep lying about Lucy DeVore?"

Berk didn't speak.

"There's no point lying. That coma she's in was medically induced. She'll be out of it later this week. Paralyzed, maybe, but I expect she'll have good reason to want to tell us the truth. This photograph, Joe. Look at it."

Berk didn't move.

"Open your eyes. It's your hat, isn't it? Lucy's wearing your hat?"

Berk cocked an eye and examined the photograph. "The fez? C'mon, detective. You're gonna bait me, I expect you to do better than that."

"I've seen pictures of you with a hat just like that."

Joe Berk was smiling. He had the upper hand again, or so it seemed. "Once. I had one of those on my head once. Sardi's. A Jewish boy with a fez on his keppel for four hours? It seemed like a lifetime to have to wear it that long. Forty, maybe fifty years ago. Gave a million dollars to a hospital for crippled children that year, trying to buy my way into the theatrical community. In return, for one night I was an honorary member of the Ancient Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. That's what your fez is, Mr. Chapman."

"What? Shriners?"

"Of course, Shriners. The industry used to be full of them. The theaters were their playground. Yul Brynner, you kids remember him? Maybe not a real king, but what a prince. He told me that night I reminded him of Jackie Gleason and his pals at the Raccoon Lodge. Ridiculous looking. I couldn't wait to get the damn thing off my head."

Berk closed his eyes again and his voice faded. "You want a fez? You want to know who put that hat on Lucy's head? Check with Hubert Alden. He's got a thing for those red tasseled caps."