Death Dance

46

"You certainly took your time coming to get me."

We were sitting in the squad room of the Midtown North station house, a couple of blocks away from the City Center of Music and Drama. It was five o'clock in the morning and about the only time in Manhattan you couldn't find an open joint that was still serving liquor.

"It was a toss-up for Mercer. His SVU pals came up with Ramon Carido in a homeless shelter in Queens, and they wanted him to go out there for the collar. We thought we'd have good news for you on that score, if we ever found you again. Battaglia was so damn afraid to lose you-or to get bad press over losing you-that he got on the phone with Interpol himself. The local Turkish constables know where Dr. Sengor's parents live, and any day now we'll have that pervert cuffed. Ralph Harney? Bronx Homicide's got him back in for questioning. It'll be a trifecta, Coop. Not a bad night for the good guys."

"How come you won't answer my questions?"

"You know the drill, Coop. Major Case has to debrief you first."

"Tell me something, will you? What were you really doing all those hours?"

"Classified. Top secret. No can do."

"Were you there at the dome with Emergency Services?"

"I wanted to be at the door, right behind the ESU guys when they were opening it up. First time I saw a space, I was gonna yell it into you, Coop. Final Jeopardy answer. That's what I was gonna say. Only there was no room for me up there. Hey, loo, you got a bottle of scotch stashed in one of your drawers here? Give the blonde a break."

"So what was the answer?" I asked. "What kind of clue were you planning on giving me?"

"Phoebe Moses. That was the answer."

"You win, Mike. It wouldn't have helped me." I rubbed my eyes and tried to control my anxiety so that I would be useful when the detectives began questioning me.

"You don't know Phoebe Moses? That's twenty bucks from you," he said, pouring the golden liquid into a coffee mug that depicted a homicide cop standing over a body, and the familiar slogan: Our Day Begins When Your Day Ends.

"Mercer?"

"You got my money."

"Who was Annie Oakley? I figured if I told you that, you'd be ready for me to toss my gun in to you. I thought if you were still alive, you'd put it together with my hint and do something to help yourself. Shoot one of those bloodsuckers."

I lifted the mug and sipped the scotch. I knew Mike was just trying to humor me, trying to take my mind off the dreadful events of the night. "That's quite a stretch, Detective Chapman."

"You gotta get over your phobia of guns. Kaiser Wilhelm, he even let Oakley shoot the ashes off a cigar he had in his mouth. I'm telling you, Coop, Oakley was so good that she outshot the greatest sharpshooter alive, Frank Butler. And you know what? Even though she humiliated him in public-like you're always doing to me-he married her. He got over it."

"You willing to take that chance if you teach me how to shoot?"

"I'll just settle for my twenty bucks."

"Were there any rounds left in the gun?" I asked.

Mike shook his head. "You can't shoot yet, but your math was okay."

"Kehoe was sure you'd never find us in the dome."

"He came close to being right," Mercer said. "We had a team scouring that upstairs area-but they just didn't go deep enough. Couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything. Didn't look like people had been up in back there in ages. We couldn't even find anybody from the crew in the middle of the night who knew how to get to it, once we knew you were there. We finally had to wake the director up, but that was only after we got lucky."

"Where did you think we'd gone?"

Mercer stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders. "Most of us figured Kehoe had taken you out on the street. You know, kidnapped you and had you in the trunk of a car on your way out of town."

"So when are you going to tell me how it went down? Who's my hero?"

"Have mercy," Mercer said, looking over at Mike. "Don't make her read about it in tomorrow's papers. It doesn't have anything to do with her debriefing."

Mike started to explain. "Once we got out of our trap on that stage, I told Peterson to send in the detectives who were sitting on Mona Berk's SoHo apartment. See if there was anything inside there-notes, tickets, maps, phone messages on the machine-anything at all that would give us some direction to look for Kehoe. Don't act so surprised, don't be giving me any of your gotta-get-a-warrant bullshit. We're talking exigent circumstances here, life and death. Your life. I wasn't looking for evidence to use in court, Coop. I was looking for you."

"I'm the last one to criticize your techniques at the moment." I lifted my mug to toast him.

"Turns out Kehoe had his own set of monitors in their apartment, so he could keep tabs on what old Joe Berk was up to. See whether Joe was still peeping at the dancers. Kehoe was hoist on his own leotard."

"Petard."

"Don't correct me just about now, okay? One of the monitors was rigged up to a camera inside the dome. The two detectives described to us what they saw-the unusual size and rounded shape of the room-and that Mona Berk was inside it at that very moment, lying down on a bed. Motion-activated sensor in the camera, apparently. But they didn't have a clue where it was."

Of course the bed-and the red velvet swing-would have been in camera range, even if Dobbis and I were not.

"And we wouldn't have known either," Mercer said, "if Mike and I hadn't just been introduced to Mecca Temple. I mean there aren't a hell of a lot of large domed ceilings in town, but I'd never even have thought to start looking there without knowing about the video."

"Was Kehoe conscious when they put him in the ambulance?"

Mike shook his head. "He'll pull through, though. Scumbags always do."

"So he has no idea that Serology matched the DNA on the glove near Talya's body to his profile in the linkage database?"

"We're gonna save that tidbit for his hospital arraignment, maybe tomorrow."

I told them what Mona Berk had told me. It sounded as though Talya, in her attempt to blackmail Joe Berk, had figured out-or been told by Joe-that it was Ross Kehoe who had actually installed the surveillance equipment. The day Rinaldo Vicci saw them together, in Talya's dressing room and let Mona think that he had told me about it, was the moment of her confrontation with Kehoe-a tantrum that probably sealed her fate.

"Lucy DeVore," I said, remembering the shattered body of the young woman who'd also crossed paths with the Berks. "This means we don't get a chance to interrogate him about Lucy DeVore."

"Mercer and I were talking about her a little while ago."

"While I was at death's door?"

"Couldn't move those jaws any faster than they were going, kid. Remember what Hubert Alden said, that it was Talya who was supposed to be up there on the swing at that audition?"

"Yeah."

"Kehoe must have rigged the swing to kill Talya. A backup plan for Tuesday, in case he didn't have the opportunity to get the job done at the Met on Friday night."

"But Lucy. How could he just let her go up there knowing the seat was going to break?"

Mercer spoke. "'Cause Briggs Berk was infatuated with her. Or thought he was for the last couple of weeks. So Mona and Ross Kehoe figured it was one less distraction to deal with, one less piece of the pie to share with anyone else. And at an open audition-a perfect place for an accident, in front of a dozen or more witnesses. With Lucy dead, it would have given them greater control-for the moment-over Briggs. He'd be less likely to squeal on them than when he was coked up with her. Although they'd have that fear to gnaw at them for a long time to come."

"That's the problem with blood money. It's gotta haunt you forever. You're asking too many questions, Coop. Finish that drink so we can take you home," Mike said. "I can just heal Joe Berk now."

"What do you mean?"

"You know, that obsession he had with people who change their names. Moses, a girl named Phoebe Moses. Why would she have changed her name to Annie Oakley? It's good to be Moses. That's what Joe would have said. I gotta find out why she switched to Oakley."

"Forget about the Berks," Mercer said. "You put down that mug, Alexandra, and before we take you home, we're going to find the first greasy spoon in town that opens and get us all some food that doesn't come off a sidewalk coffee cart."

"I got the place," Mike said. "As long as she's treating."

"We're making progress."

"What do you mean, Coop?"

"Ten days ago, when we started working on this case, you turned me down flat when Mercer and I offered to take you for breakfast."

"Don't push your luck, kid. They'll be no ballet, no-"

"I only offered bacon and eggs."

"No opera, no-"

Mercer held out his hand and pulled me up. "We're hungry," he said to Mike. "Let's go."

"No theater tickets. No Shakespeare, no musicals, no revivals, no-"

"You love Broadway. You've always liked going to shows with me."

"That was before I knew about the ghosts, Coop. Too many ghosts in those theaters-way too many. And I still haven't even learned how to deal with my own."