Hell Gate

EIGHT

It was almost nine P.M. when Mercer walked into Dr. Pomeroy’s office, where Mike and I were waiting for two of the shipmates who’d been treated and released from the hospital to be brought into the viewing room to try to identify the deceased.

“Got anything for a headache, Alex?” he asked.

“My tote’s on the floor in the corner. Open the cosmetics bag.”

“Don’t take the ones that make Coop hallucinate that she’s going to solve this mother anytime soon,” Mike said. “You know any bad guys use the nickname ‘The Rose’?”

I handed Mercer my bottle of water and he downed the tablets, shaking his head.

“I hate to ask what took you so long,” Mike said, “but what took you so long? I thought you were coming through the tunnel when you called.”

“Detour to East End Avenue,” Mercer said, turning to me. “Salma’s goin’ all crazy on us. Or on Leighton.”

“What now?” I asked.

“Another nine-one-one call. Screaming for help.”

I leaned back in Pomeroy’s desk chair and rested my head. “About what? That Leighton was threatening her, while he was sitting in the courthouse with Lem?”

“Worse than that. She said that the congressman was actually in the apartment, trying to take the baby away from her.”

“You’re sure that’s what she said? There goes her credibility.”

“Wait a minute. Exactly what time?” Mike asked. “Tell Mercer about tonight.”

“I’m too embarrassed. You tell him.”

Mike and Mercer tried to construct a time line, based on my estimate of when I left the office. “Entirely possible,” Mike said.

“The nine-one-one operator who got the call speaks Spanish. That’s what Salma said.”

“They responded, right?”

“And so did I.”

“Well?”

“No sign of Leighton. The doorman said nobody except Salma’s sister showed up for her today. Left with the baby around six o’clock.”

“You talk to her yourself?”

“Salma wouldn’t let the uniformed guys in at first. She thought they were just harassing her again. “

“How’s her English?” Mike asked.

“Good. Perfectly good. The doorman confirmed that when she gets excited or upset, she’s pretty shrill in both languages, but Spanish first.”

“So she understood why you were there?”

“You bet she did. Denies making the calls, denies having heard anything from Leighton since he left the apartment early this morning. Says one of his aides called her several times to tell her what happened to him and that she should avoid the reporters. Lem phoned too.”

I grimaced. “Thank goodness he hasn’t had time to meet with her yet.”

“First thing tomorrow morning,” Mercer said. “I’ll tell you, Salma makes no effort to keep her temper in check. She started chewing out the cops for disturbing her. Told them they better not come back ’cause she’d been up all night and wanted to get some sleep. She doesn’t care how many nine-one-one calls they claim to get, she’s not the one making them.”

“You checked to see if there’s anyone else in the apartment? A nanny, another relative with a screw loose who could be calling nine-one-one while Salma doesn’t even know?”

“All clear, Mike.”

“And the basement? No one tinkering with the phone lines there?”

“I went down myself to double-check the techs who came over. Nothing touched.”

“The baby was well enough to send to her sister?” I asked. “When you checked the place out, did anything look amiss?”

“Now, you know how I am about kids, Alex. I got the sister’s info and called over to her. She confirmed that Salma told her she needed to get herself some sleep and the baby is fine. Has two of her own, so she seems to know what she’s doing.”

“And the apartment?”

“Leighton set her up nice. Neat and clean, everything in place. Great river view, by the way. It overlooks Gracie Mansion-maybe Leighton has her keeping an eye on the mayor,” Mercer said with a smile. “You can practically see out to the Montauk lighthouse.”

“Did she let you poke around?” I asked.

“Salma got into such a spitting match with the cops, I just helped myself into her bedroom and the nursery. No signs of a struggle, nothing out of place anywhere.”

“Tell me about her,” Mike said. “What makes a guy with such promise throw it all out the window? Salma must be really hot-some kind of fox. What does she look like?”

“Could we stay on point here? Why was she fighting with the cops?”

“I told you, Alex. She was yelling at the rookie in Spanish, telling him-like he told me-that if they came back and bothered her again, she’d get Leighton to have them fired. That kind of thing. Seems pretty clear she’s used to throwing his name around.”

“Might have had some value until a few hours ago. Ethan Leighton’s name will get her squat now,” Mike said.

“Officer Guerrero tried to make that clear,” Mercer said, chuck-ling about the encounter. “I didn’t get the exact translation, but she blasted him after that. He told her she could call nine-one-one as often as she wanted, but nobody was going to show up again. Told her they’d had enough craziness for one day.”

“The fox who cried wolf,” Mike said. “Not to worry. I’m assuming the congressman’s wife will have him securely tied to the mattress tonight. By his balls. And in their spare bedroom, I’m sure.”

“I’d really like to talk to Salma before Lem sits her down,” I said. “We’ll never get the true story once he starts spinning her.”

“And I’m gonna pass out if I don’t put some dinner in my stomach soon.”

“I’m right behind you,” Mercer said.

Pomeroy’s assistant reappeared in the doorway. “Dr. P is ready for you, Mike. The men are here.”

I followed Mike and Mercer down the corridor to the family reception room. I wasn’t usually involved in this painful stage of the process, but I had been to the morgue often enough to observe the anxious loved ones of homicide victims waiting among strangers to confirm the news that no one wanted to get.

“I’ll stay outside the viewing room. Let’s not overwhelm them,” I said.

“Neither one of these guys is missing a relative or close friend, Coop. They’re just shipmates. They volunteered to try to give us names, if they recognize these first three victims.”

Mercer and I listened as Mike introduced himself, explained the process to the Ukrainian interpreter the cops had found during the day, and then separated the two men so that neither could hear what the other one told us.

He led the first guy-Pavlo-who appeared to be in his twenties, into the cubicle adjacent to the reception area with the interpreter. When Mike had positioned him in front of the glass partition, he pulled back the short blue curtains that covered the space. In the old days, when I first came on the job, the viewers were in the same room as the deceased. Now there was the small extra comfort of being on the far side of a piece of glass-unable to smell death, not tempted to touch the corpse one last time.

I could see the side of Pavlo’s face when he looked at the body of the young man the city had named John Doe #1. His expression didn’t change, but he swallowed hard and the lump of his Adam’s apple protruded farther before resting back in his neck as he pursed his lips and gulped in a breath of air.

He spoke in a whisper to the interpreter. “The boy is from his hometown,” the interpreter said. “Doesn’t know his name, but he has a brother on the ship, who made it off safely. Is maybe seventeen, eighteen years old, this one. Brother is Viktor. You will find him, please?”

Pavlo put his head down and stepped back.

“How do you say ‘I’m sorry’?” Mike asked the interpreter, who repeated the sentiment to the young man. “Tell him we’ve got to do it again, understand?”

The young man nodded his head.

“Jane Doe Number One,” Mike turned and said to me, since I couldn’t see the body that had been placed on the elevated lift for display.

Pavlo looked at the murdered girl on the gurney and seemed to be studying her face.

The interpreter gave us the English version of the phrases he had heard. “Says the girl looks familiar to him, but he doesn’t know anything about her. Doesn’t remember seeing her, speaking to her, on the crossing. But most of the girls kept to themselves, unless they were married or they had brothers and cousins on board.”

“Would you ask him,” I said, speaking softly, “if there is even a single thing about her that he remembers?”

The interpreter put his head closer to Pavlo, then turned back to us.

“Is pretty girl, no?”

“That’s what he said?”

“No, no. Is what I am saying. Pavlo says nothing. Tells me there were three hundred people on this ship, maybe more. Can’t remember meeting this girl. Me, I think you wouldn’t forget her. Is very pretty.”

“If I wanted to solicit the opinions of the Little Odessa Senior Citizens Lonely Hearts Club, I wouldn’t have started with an evening outing at the morgue,” Mike said to me under his breath as he closed the curtains.

When they opened again three minutes later, Jane Doe #2, one of the drowning victims, was displayed to Pavlo. I couldn’t see her, but knew that she had been cleaned up-her skin washed, all the grit from the beach gone, and her gnarled hair untangled by Pomeroy’s assistants after he had finished his meticulous dissection of her body.

The young man picked his head up and again, there was very little reaction. He talked to the interpreter, who turned to Mike to fill him in.

“This one he doesn’t know either. He and a friend tried to talk to her once, because she was very sick-how you say stomach sick?”

“Nauseous?” Mike said. “Seasick?”

“Yes, is that. Was very sick one day when sea is rough and being thrown up. But she seemed very shy and didn’t want their help.”

“But does he know even her first name? What city she’s from?”

The interpreter asked but drew a blank. “Pavlo says the young women slept in different part of boat, ate apart from guys, hardly no mix at all. Doesn’t know.”

Pavlo was sent back to reception and Mike guided in a second youth named Taras. Like Pavlo, he had been dressed in ill-fitting clothes that the NYPD must have picked up at the nearest thrift shop in Queens. This one was nervous and appeared to be frightened.

“What’s going to happen to him?” the interpreter asked Mike. “Is all he wants to know. What you going to do with him?”

“Coop, how do we tell the kid it’s going to get worse before it gets better?” Mike scratched his head.

“You tell him,” Mercer said, “that the first thing he has to do is help with this. Then I’ll take Pavlo and him inside and explain where they’re going tonight. There’s a facility in Nassau County that’s got beds. It’s actually not too bad.”

“C’mon, Taras,” Mike said. “Pick up your head.”

At the sound of the curtains rustling, Taras looked up at his shipmate. Immediately, startled and shaken, he stepped back, bumping into the interpreter and crying as he blurted out what he knew.

“The boy’s name is Gregor, he is telling me. They went to school together. Yes, he is Viktor’s brother and, yes, is he seventeen. They were very good friends.”

Mercer stepped over and encircled the young man’s slim shoulders in his strong embrace. “Thank him for us. Thank him for doing this. We know how hard it is.”

The interpreter conveyed the message, which was merely Mercer’s introduction to a further probe.

“Were they together last night? Did he see Gregor jump? Does he know why?” Mercer asked the questions slowly, hoping to get answers that would lead us firmly in a particular direction.

“No, is telling me. No. They got separated when the excitement-how you call it? When the hysteria started. Viktor, the older brother, was one of the guys who got upset when they saw the government boats, like a police boat, coming at them. Viktor is one of the ones who attacked the captain.”

The interpreter paused and raised his finger, getting more information from Taras while we waited. “Gregor followed Viktor, he is telling. Of course he followed his brother. That’s the last I seen of him, he says. He wants to stop now, okay, Mr. Mike? He’s had enough.”

“We’re almost done. Tell him,” Mike said, closing the curtain and signaling for the body of Jane Doe #1 to be raised again, “we just need him a few more minutes.”

When Mike was ready for Taras, Mercer had to nudge his body a few steps forward.

“Why are you crying?” Mike asked. “You know this girl?”

The interpreter said something to Taras, then turned back to Mike. “Is crying for himself. Doesn’t know girl. Me, I think he isn’t even looking. Is very upset, Mr. Mike.”

“And she’s very dead, okay? Pick up your head, Taras,” Mike said in as stern a voice as he could muster in the quiet of the morgue. “Look at her.”

Taras grudgingly raised his chin and spoke a few words.

“Doesn’t know her. Never saw before.”

Minutes later, his response to Jane Doe #2 was exactly the same.

“I can’t tell if he’s just shutting us down,” Mike said, “or he doesn’t recognize either of the women.”

“Let him get some sleep,” Mercer said. “We’ll have fresher recruits by morning. There have got to be people who were on that ship who’ll have something to give us, who’ll want something in exchange for information and help. He’s a kid, Mike. It’s not going to help us tonight to keep Taras here.”

It was like Mike to get on a case and set a relentless schedule for himself and everyone working with him. He lived alone in a tiny walk-up apartment not far from my high-rise, so small that he had nicknamed it “the coffin.” Since the death of his fiancée more than a year ago, he had driven himself even harder, trying to bury his grief by seeking those who had taken human lives without reason.

“Mercer’s right. Think long range. Let’s grab a bite,” I said, “and make a plan so that we can pick the aspects of this investigation that we want to concentrate on. We can’t do it all, Mike. There are scores of potential witnesses, and Donovan will welcome our suggestions. We’ve really got to pace ourselves. This could take weeks to sort out.”

Mike walked away from us, telling the interpreter that he would be free to leave as soon as the officers who were going to escort Pavlo and Taras to the Nassau County detention center arrived.

He came back, rubbing his stomach, and obviously too wired to call it a night. “Feed me, blondie. Nothing like a day at the beach to work up my appetite.”

“Want to shoot up to Primola?” I asked. The three of us spent a lot of time at my favorite Italian restaurant on Second Avenue and Sixty-fifth Street. The staff knew us and treated us like family, no matter when we dropped in, nor how casually we were dressed.

“Sounds good,” Mercer said. “Then I can drop Alex at her place and slip onto the drive. Vickee might even be talking to me if I get home before midnight.”

Mercer’s wife was also a police officer and the daughter of a well-respected detective. She had a little more tolerance for the terrible hours he kept, even with the addition to the family of their young son, Logan.

I gathered my things, said good-night to Willis Pomeroy, and walked out onto First Avenue with Mercer and Mike, refreshed by the blast of cold air.

Mercer’s cell phone rang and he lifted it to his ear. “I’m sorry, sir. Who is this?”

“Can’t be too important if he doesn’t even know the guy,” Mike said as he kept walking while Mercer stopped to take the call. “You riding with him or me, kid?”

“Whoever is parked closer,” I said, pulling up the collar of my jacket.

“Did you get his name?” I heard Mercer ask.

“Call Fenton,” Mike said, referring to the bartender at Primola. “I want a vodka martini straight up. An olive and three onions. And I want it waiting on the table when we walk in.”

“You did the right thing, Fitz,” Mercer told his caller. “Just call the precinct if he shows up again.”

“I’m thinking maybe that lasagnetta with a veal ragù,” Mike said.

The morgue always depressed my appetite, but never seemed to have an effect on Mike at all. I’d be happy with a shot of Dewar’s and a bowl of soup.

Mercer seemed in no hurry to catch up with us. I turned to wave him on. “Something wrong?”

“That was the doorman at Salma’s apartment. Harry Fitzpatrick. I gave him my card when we left there tonight and told him to call me if anything unusual happened.”

“So what happened? The congressman tried to convene a special session?” Mike asked.

Mercer walked toward us slowly. “A guy just showed up fifteen minutes ago. Not Leighton, Alex. Don’t worry about that. Made Fitz call upstairs to Salma, but she’d already told him not to bother her under any circumstances. And not to let the police in either. Fitz knew she wasn’t going to answer, but he says he rang her anyway.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Says he didn’t want to create another scene in the lobby,” Mercer said. “It might also have something to do with the hundred-dollar bill he says the guy slipped him.”

“Who’s the visitor?”

“Fitz says the guy wouldn’t give a name. He said he was there to pick up his baby.”

“His baby?”

“Yeah, Fitz claims the man said that he was the father of Salma’s child.”