Death Dance

43

One more long wooden staircase, its steps embedded with a row of tiny lights like the pathways that illuminate on airplanes to show the way to the exits in case of emergency.

At the top of the flight, awaiting our arrival, stood Mona Berk.

"Shit," she said to Kehoe. "What are you doing with her, too?"

"I didn't expect the cops to show up in the middle of this. I had to think fast."

"Not your strong suit. Let's figure this out."

Dobbis went first, and despite the danger to both of us, seemed to stand in place and look all around the room, taking in everything he could see.

Ross ordered him to move and when I reached the top of the landing, I understood what had stopped Dobbis in his tracks.

Overhead, in the center of the massive circular structure, was a large skylight. Through it streaked moonbeams from the cloudless April night. Adjacent buildings-large hotels, offices, and high-priced apartments that overlooked the vast space of the mosque dome- also cast down an eerie neon night-light.

And high above me, suspended from the rounded ceiling on lengths of shiny brass chain links, was a red velvet swing-the kind that sixteen-year-old Evelyn Nesbit swung on naked to amuse her paramour, the great Stanford White, and the kind of swing from which Lucy DeVore dropped, likely to die, the day Ross Kehoe walked her backstage for her audition.

"Over there, Chet," Kehoe said, directing him to a sofa in a corner of the great dome that had been furnished to look like a hidden bordello.

When Dobbis took his seat, Ross passed the gun to Mona and told her to keep it on me while he tied Dobbis's hands behind his back with some strips of cloth that looked ready-made for the occasion.

I studied him now, out from behind me for the first time since he'd accosted me. He was edgier still, pushing Dobbis's limbs when the captive director didn't comply fast enough, licking his lips constantly and sucking in more air.

I tried to scope the rest of the room, not wanting to take my eyes off the handgun for many seconds. There was a bed, to the side of the swing, that was dressed in the lavish style of the linens in Joe Berk's room and had the same crest and monogrammed initials; an antique brass clothing stand from which hung a variety of lingerie and robes; a well-stocked bar with liquors, wines, and crystal glasses of every shape and size.

I started to walk back the cat. "Where's the camera?"

"What?" Mona asked.

"That's what you did for Joe, isn't it?" I said to Kehoe, ignoring Mona Berk. "You wired up places for Joe Berk. You're the electrical specialist-that's what you did in theaters, isn't it? You built him an entertainment system that let him watch anybody he wanted-women in dressing rooms, bedrooms, showers-and whatever the hell was going on here, in this… this playground you created for him."

"Whatever turned him on, Alex. That's what he paid me for. Got to the age where Joe wasn't always able to do an evening performance after his matinee. Sometimes he just liked to watch."

Kehoe walked toward me and motioned me back to an area with chairs and a sofa. "You're next, Ms. DA. Pick a seat. Make yourself comfortable."

I didn't move.

"The bitch is so used to telling people what they're supposed to do, I don't think she takes orders well," Mona said. "Ross told you to get over there."

I didn't know whether fear or exhaustion had the tighter hold on me. I was sweating and breathing heavily, but chilled as well and shivering from that. My head throbbed and my neck ached from Kehoe's angry grip.

As I sat on a straight-backed chair, Kehoe looked around the room for something with which to restrain me. Near the seat of the swing was a length of thick rope, wrapped in a coil, like a cobra waiting to strike. It reminded me of the cables used to hold weights attached to the fly gallery that dropped the scenery onto the stage.

For some reason, Kehoe stepped around that rope and walked instead to the clothing rack. He removed a silk wrap from one of the robes and came back to us, this time taking my hands and tying them tightly behind me. He must have had another plan for the big rope.

There were no windows in the giant circular dome, no way to communicate with the world outside. I guessed there was a hole in the skylight overhead, because a draft of cold, fresh air blew down occasionally, rippling through me with another chill.

Kehoe had taken the gun back from Mona and they had walked a distance away from us to have a conversation.

"Don't you think someone will look up here?" I asked Chet Dobbis. "What did you mean that nobody's ever been in this place? Why?"

"There was never anything up here when the mosque was built but an antiquated ventilation system. All the smoke, all the stale air-it was sucked up here by a behemoth of a fan and dispersed. By the 1940s the whole process had changed and that form of exhaust was replaced with more modern ducts that were installed downstairs. The dome? This has never been used for anything. It's- it's just ornamental."

"Can we get out of here, Chet? Isn't there any way out?"

He had seemed resigned from the beginning to some kind of dreadful fate, timidly following Kehoe's directions, while now I could focus on nothing but finding a way to escape.

Dobbis shook his head and stared down at the floor. "After I left my job here, Kehoe must have done this."

"Done what?"

"There was a renovation of this cupola-first time ever-in 2003. Opened it up so they could get to the outside skin of the dome and replace the old Spanish tiles that had been part of the original installation. Arlette, the woman who replaced me as the center's director, told me they basically swept the place clean and shut it up again."

"So Kehoe knew this whole space was vestigial, was of no use to anyone, and he engineered a way in for himself. With Joe Berk's money, and with access to all the nubile bodies Joe was willing to pay to perform for him." And access, I thought, to the top of the dome, to install an antenna to transmit video images.

"Looks like he managed to do that. Who the hell would even find a way back here? And how? There's no way to open that door except electronically, Alex. He's got some kind of control, some electrical device that he pressed to let us in."

"No other exits?"

"Nothing up here. One way in, one way out. I'm sure of that."

"How about the firewall on the stage? Doesn't that set off an alarm to nine-one-one?"

"It was meant to, but not if Ross disabled it when he pulled the plug on the power and lights down there. He seems to have a separate system of his own in here."

If an escape tactic wouldn't work, I needed to know why Ross Kehoe had called Dobbis to the theater tonight. I needed to know if there was any deal we could try to make with him and with Mona Berk to let us out alive.

"What does Kehoe want with you?"

He looked over at Ross and Mona, who seemed to be arguing with each other.

"I was stupid enough to believe him when he called me to come over tonight. Told me that Mona had an offer for me, wanted to give me a piece of a new production if I'd give them some advice in exchange."

Dobbis picked up his head and I could see tears in his eyes. "I should have known he'd be setting me up for something."

I leaned toward him. "But for what? Do you know what that is?"

"He's going to kill me if we don't do something. He'll kill both of us."

I didn't need a road map to figure that out. Every theater had its ghosts, and we were on our way to joining the cast of this one.

"I understand you. Why, though? I'm just a product of bad timing tonight. Why you?"

"He was setting me up to take the weight for Talya's murder when you and your team walked in," Dobbis said, pulling in his breath to regain his composure.

"Did you?"

"No, dammit. Nothing to do with it."

"Joe Berk? Or was it Ross Kehoe?"

"Talya knew about Joe's game. She knew he had a fetish for young girls, for taping them while they were undressing or makinglove or showering. Watching them is what aroused him, especially when they didn't know-they couldn't know-that anyone could see what they were doing. Mostly he liked to look at them when he was home alone. Sometimes when the company he was keeping wasn't enough to do the trick for him."

"She knew because he did it to her?"

"Talya? She was too old for Joe. But she caught him at home with tapes of the young dancers. Videos of the girls in the showers and in the rehearsal studios who didn't know they were being filmed, and other kids who liked to perform for him, maybe right here in this room-happy to be photographed from a distance, happy that he couldn't touch them."

"How do you know?" I asked, thinking how right Battaglia had been to ask me whether Joe Berk was a paraphile.

"Because Talya told me. She didn't like me a lot, ever since we'd stopped being lovers years ago. But she trusted me-she always trusted me."

"What did she tell you?"

"Talya wasn't very good at it, but she was trying to blackmail Joe. Trying to use that information to get herself a boatload of money- or a starring role in Joe's next big hit. I guess she wanted me to know in case Joe did something to threaten her. She wasn't thinking of murder or anything like that, I can assure you. But Talya was aware that if her plan backfired, Joe would have the power to make her life miserable."

"Do you think Joe paid Ross to kill Talya that night at the Met?"

"I'm tired of thinking. It's not going to help us any to think at this point," Dobbis said, raising his bound hands to his face and rubbing across his eyes as best he could. "I should have been using my brain for the last week, while you and your detectives had me in your sights instead of Kehoe and Berk."

"You were all in our sights, Chet. Every one of you. That's how it works till we're able to break down the information we've got. Maybe if you'd told us how much you knew about Talya, back then. Maybe if you let us know about Talya and what was going on in her relationship with Berk. There's a lot you've said just now that could have helped us last week."

I despised his self-pitying whining. If he hadn't lied to Mercer and Mike, if he hadn't withheld what he knew about Talya and about Joe Berk, we wouldn't be together in this bizarre crypt that was unlikely to be opened until the next renovation, maybe fifty years from now.

"I didn't know enough to tell you anything. It was only tonight, only a minute or two before you walked into the theater, that Ross bragged to me about killing Joe Berk."

"Today? He told you that he killed Joe today?"

Chet Dobbis threw back his head and looked up at the sliver of sky above us. "No, no, no. You still don't get it, do you? Ross Kehoe killed Joe Berk last Sunday night, right in front of the Belasco Theatre."