Death Dance

5

Murder at the Met. If it could happen a quarter of a century ago, it could happen again today. No matter how elegant the setting, no matter how benign the business going on inside, no matter how familiar the great urban institution, there was nothing that made any place in the city safe from violence. No wonder Mike was urging the police brass to get inside and moving on this case.

"Who killed the musician?" I asked.

"A twenty-one-year-old stage carpenter. Must have intercepted her when she got lost in a hallway, trying to get backstage to meet one of the dancers. He was a baby-faced kid with a bad alcohol problem. Pretended to show her the way, tried to rape her, and she fought him off. Got him the old-fashioned way, before DNA. Fingerprints on the pipe near where she went off the roof, and then a confession. That judge you're always flirting with?"

I laughed. "Roger Hayes?"

"He tried the case for your office. Brilliant job. My dad kept a scrapbook with all the clippings. I've got it at home-and the killer, he's still rotting away upstate."

Mike opened the auditorium door and asked Dobbis and Vicci to come out.

"Where would you like to start, Mr. Chapman?" Chet Dobbis asked.

"Crime scene is processing the site where the objects were found," Mike said to Mercer and me. "There's another area near that where a nail's sticking out of the wall. Looks like Talya's hair got caught on it. Pulled out a clump from her scalp."

He turned back to Dobbis. "Where's a good place to talk?"

"There's a rehearsal in the auditorium. I don't think that's a good idea. Perhaps Natalya's dressing room, Rinaldo?"

"Sure. That'll be fine."

Dobbis pointed to a doorway. "Behind stage right."

It was to the left of the great auditorium, and Mike reversed his course as he must have realized that stage directions were sited from the perspective of the artist facing the audience.

"Why don't you tell us what the security is like here?" Mike asked.

I was walking alongside Dobbis, with Mike and Mercer behind us and Rinaldo Vicci waddling in the rear.

"Until today I would have answered that it's been quite good."

"Talk about during the performances."

"Front of the house, of course, you can't get in without tickets. Thirty-eight hundred seats-center orchestra starts at ninety dollars, on up through six tiers, balcony at the top."

"The nose-bleed section," Mike said, poking me in the back. "Bet you've never been up there, Coop. You'd get vertigo just thinking about it."

"Two hundred seventy-five people pay for standing room at the back of the orchestra. That's your four thousand tally."

"Employees?"

"Several hundred. Stagehands, electricians, makeup artists, costume and set designers. Every piece of scenery, every item of clothing or headdress, every prop for more than twenty-five operas that are mounted here throughout the season is made in-house. And then we have guests who rent the space, if you will, ballet companies like the Royal, who bring their own people in."

"So every day…?" I asked.

"You've got hundreds of employees, and hundreds more transients passing through. Tours are conducted daily-schoolchildren, tourists of all ages and nationalities, visiting performers and dignitaries, materials are delivered from morning until night. Artists have visitors-family, friends, other producers they're auditioning for. We've got coaches and prompters and conductors. A cast of thousands, you might say."

"Screened by security?"

"They come in through the stage-door entrance. They've got to show identification, of course. Do they sign in or have we lists of their names? For the employees, certainly. For everyone else, I think not."

The gray cement corridor was cheerless and cold. Its walls were lined on one side with enormous trunks stamped with the Royal Ballet name in white stencils. A few were open, revealing peasant dresses and pirate shirts, all part of the repertoire that would be danced during the week.

Mike rapped his knuckles on a trunk and called to a uniformed cop at the far end of the long hall. "Get more guys in here. Open every one of these. I don't care if you have to break the locks to get inside, just check each of them."

We were single file going through now, Dobbis leading us as he talked. "That's the doctor's office," he said. "Nurses are on duty all throughout the day, and there's a physician in the house for every performance. Talya knew that as well."

Past another door. He turned the knob, but it didn't give. "Animal handlers. SPCA requirements. Whenever we've got an opera with a horse or a donkey or a camel, we've got to have someone who meets humane society regulations. In Giselle, there are a couple of borzois-Russian wolfhounds-so even this room was occupied last night."

Mike yelled again to the cop. "Yo. You doing anything? Get a custodian with keys or a sledgehammer to get through these doors."

Chet Dobbis showed his annoyance for the first time. "We're going as fast as we can manage, detective. I've given orders to have everything unlocked for you."

"After the show, Mr. Dobbis," I said, "suppose Talya had gone somewhere on another floor in the building, for a legitimate reason. How soon would the backstage area be emptied out of all the workers?"

"It never is. The Met stage is alive for the better part of twenty-four hours. The show will go on tonight, and when it's over, the stage crew will strike the sets that were used. The night gang will take over and they'll start working to put up the scenery for whatever the next day's dress rehearsal will be. When the rehearsal is finished, they strike that set and get things in place for the following night. The work is endless and the place is always bustling."

"Even Sundays?"

"Often. There are usually practice sessions, even if the house is dark. And then you've got charity benefits and special events that we put on quite frequently."

Another left turn and we were at a door marked dressing rooms. Dobbis entered and the string of us followed him in. A small wall unit held a series of locked boxes. "This is where the principals keep their valuables while they're dancing. Talya's wallet and hotel key are still there," Vicci said. "I've got her spare."

Mike took the key from the agent, unlocked the box, and removed the items. "Hold on to these," he said to me. "I'll voucher them if she doesn't show up for dinner tonight."

Straight ahead was a T-shaped intersection. "The corps has lockers in another part of the building. This area is just for the stars," Dobbis said. "There's even a pecking order in here. In opera season, the soprano and the tenor have the center rooms. The baritone, the mezzo, and the bass are off to the side. So Natalya had this room, of course."

He ushered us into a private suite, bare of any personal items except an index card tacked to the door with Natalya's name in black marker, and her clothes hanging on a rack inside. I checked the bath-room and stall shower, but saw nothing. Dobbis offered me the chair in front of the mirrored dressing table.

There was a piano against the opposite wall, where Vicci seated himself. Dobbis perched on the edge of a sofa, while Mike and Mercer remained standing.

"There aren't many windows in this joint," Mike said. "What are we looking out at?"

Except for the five glass arches that faced the plaza, the Met seemed completely encased in its marble skin.

"That's Amsterdam Avenue behind me," Dobbis said. "It's actually the only window that opens in the entire building. Rudolf Bing was the general manager when the company moved to Lincoln Center back in 1966. His favorite diva was Renata Tebaldi, and she wanted fresh air whenever she sang. So, voila, a window."

Dobbis thought Mike was interested in the history of the house, but I knew he was only studying means of entering or exiting the building.

"You mind getting up off that sofa?" Mike said, motioning to the director and then speaking to Mercer. "Let's get this sill dusted and see if there are any footprints on the couch."

Mike picked up the phone on the wall next to the piano.

"That's just an intercom, detective. You can't ring out," Dobbis said. "The stage manager calls in to give the artist her cue. It's a three-minute walk to the wings from this room, almost six to get to stage left for an entrance."

Mercer turned to the door and called back to Mike. "You want the guys from the Crime Scene Unit to come down and process this next?"

"Yeah."

"Easier for me to see what they're up to."

"So what's the story with this guy Joe Berk?" Mike asked as Mercer walked out. "How'd you know he was in here with her last night?"

"The Wizard? He'd be hard to miss."

"Wizard of what?"

"That's what he likes to call himself. The Wizard of the Great White Way."

"More like a lizard," Rinaldo Vicci said. "The venomous kind."

"What does Berk do?" Mike asked. "He's a producer?"

Chet Dobbis laughed. "Joe Berk owns Broadway. That's what he really does. Everything else flows from that."

"You gotta explain that to me. How does somebody own Broadway?"

"The theaters themselves, detective. There are four families in New York that control every single one of the legitimate theaters."

"You mean, like the Shuberts?" I asked.

"Exactly. The Shuberts, the Nederlanders, the Jujamcyns, and the Berks. There are thirty-five Broadway theaters. You want to bring a show to town? You got the next Cats or Phantom in your back pocket? Nothing happens unless you get through to the head hon-cho of one of these families. There are nice guys and smart guys and decent guys in this business, and then there's Joe Berk."

"What's his relationship with Ms. Galinova?" Mike asked.

Vicci wanted to do the spin on this. "Joe has been courting my client, but strictly in the professional sense," he said, rolling his r's for what he must have thought was dramatic effect. "He's got an idea for a project that she might be able to star in."

Dobbis interrupted him. "Rinaldo, you're talking to the police. Try telling the truth, for a change."

"Why don't you give him a hand?"

"The fact is that it's Talya who's been chasing after Joe Berk, Mr. Chapman. She's gotten to the age when most dancers have to give some thought to the next phase of their careers. By the time these ladies reach forty, it becomes harder and harder to convince an audience they're a fourteen-year-old Juliet or an adolescent sleeping beauty. And the injuries-the injuries really take their toll on their feet and knees and hips."

"Broadway?"

"That's what she's been exploring," Dobbis said. "Talya is as stunning an actress as she is a ballerina. The Russian accent's a bit thick for a lot of roles, but that hasn't stopped her from trying to develop ideas. She's ready for a star turn that would introduce her to millions more people who don't have the first clue about ballet. Popular culture for the masses, rather than an elite crowd."

"And Berk?" Mike asked.

"The way I see it," Dobbis said, "she thought seduction was the best way to audition."

Vicci was unhappy. "You've got no business saying that, Chet. I know everything that goes on in Talya's life and there's nothing at all to that gossip."

"How old is Berk?" Mike asked.

"Seventy-four."

"Vigorous?"

"Overweight, but as strong as he is tough. He's got a stranglehold on Broadway real estate," said Dobbis. "No reason he couldn't have one on a human being."

"And you say he was here last night?"

"Not in the house. Not in the audience, I mean."

"Wasn't he coming to see Talya?"

"He was late for the second act," Rinaldo Vicci said. "The Met's policy-maybe you know it-is you can't be seated once the performance has started. They've got-how you call it?-a little auditorium offstage right where you can watch it on a big screen. Berk had a fit."

"Why?" I asked.

"He doesn't like crowds. It's not in his nature to sit there with the tardy bridge-and-tunnel folk, looking at the action on a monitor," Dobbis said. "That's how I found out he was in the dressing room. Bullied his way in past the ushers-made a scene doing it-and waited for Talya to get offstage."

"The fight?"

"She was peeved that he hadn't bothered to get there in time to watch her dance."

"He likes ballet?" Mike asked.

"Berk doesn't like anything until it makes the cash jingle in his pocket. I think he's used to something with catchy lyrics to keep him awake during the show."

"His antics with the ushers," I said to Dobbis, "and then the argument with a diva, didn't they get everyone's attention?"

"The staff expects a few nasty latecomers most evenings, Ms. Cooper. Once they realized he wasn't an autograph hound, Berk's tiff with them blew over. And any arguments between Talya and Berk-or anyone else who crossed her-well, the acoustics in this building are extraordinary, maybe the best in the world. There's not a corner, not a ninety-degree angle inside the Opera House. The ceiling and wall panels are rounded so that sound bounces off and back into the theater."

"But I'm talking about outside the auditorium."

"The rest of the building is made up of scores of soundproofed compartments. It has to be, if you think about it. Stagehands are moving around enormous pieces of scenery and equipment-even in the middle of a performance-while singers and musicians are rehearsing in studios throughout the building, and other artists are practicing," he said, tapping the top of the piano, "often until the moment they walk to the stage. You aren't supposed to be able to hear anything else from anywhere else behind the scenes."

"So Talya could have been-"

"Having a tantrum? No way for me to know."

"Then how come you told me that?" Mike asked. "That was part of the first information from the scratch that came in last night."

"The masseur called it to my attention. I was already aware of the brouhaha about Berk storming back to the dressing area to wait for the end of the act. Talya got there and threw the poor man out of the room, then began her tirade at Berk."

"A masseur in her dressing room in the middle of a ballet?" Mike asked. "Coop, you're in the wrong line of work. What's his name and when can we talk to him?"

"You'll have it. You'll have whatever you need."

"Did anyone see Berk leave the theater?"

Vicci and Dobbis looked at each other. "No one's mentioned it to me," the agent said. "But we haven't exactly been concerned about him, to tell you the truth."

Mercer opened the door and signaled to Mike and me to come out into the hallway. I had seen him at crime scenes and hospital bedsides, in courtrooms and prison holding pens. There was no facial expression of Mercer's that I couldn't read. This one broadcast bad news.

"It's Natalya," I said.

"Let's get up there before the whole area is compromised," he said, shaking his head.

"If you hadn't ramped up this search like you did, Mike? They wouldn't have found her till summer."

"Where?"

"You'd have to know this place as well as the guys who built it."

Mike started walking to the bank of elevators behind stage right. "What floor?"

"They're up on six. Like a roof-"

"The roof's on ten," Mike said, a fact seared in the memory of a ten-year-old boy.

"It's an enclosure then, with a walkway that leads outside, over a great square pit. It's where the air-conditioning units are-with fans bigger than I am."

What better to mute the sounds of a final struggle.

We were there in less than four minutes, precinct detectives and uniformed rookies stepping aside and pressing their backs against the dirty gray walls as they saw Mike Chapman approach, everything about him signifying the arrival of a homicide cop who had come to take over control of the grim corridor.

The closer we got to the rampart that led outside, the bellow from the giant rotors made it more impossible to hear conversation. The pipes seemed to be vibrating as the monstrous blades circulated air and blew it up at us.

"What's the drop?" Mike asked a janitor who had apparently made the discovery and was standing closest to the opening.

"Thirty feet, easy."

Mike stepped down onto the rim of the fan pit-a platform a couple of feet wide-and was followed by Mercer, who held out a hand for me. I wanted to clutch one of the black pipes to steady myself, but knew they might hold trace evidence of value.

I glanced over the edge and at first saw only the blackness below. It took seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dark as my body braced against the roaring blasts from the giant fan blades.

Even as the soot whirled around me, I could see the flash of a white tulle costume lifting with the current, revealing the motionless, broken body of Natalya Galinova, wedged into the remote corner of the filthy air shaft.