Hell Gate

TWENTY-ONE

Catherine was at the blackboard again, adding Kendall Reid’s name and linking it to Ethan Leighton’s, with a series of dollar signs beside it. She drew a question mark above Salma Zunega’s apartment, and enclosed it in a chalk-outlined shoe box with more dollar signs propping open the lid.

“This political corruption graph is just for starters,” Catherine said. “We’re missing a few sleazeballs, but you can help me fill in the blanks. Sort of feel we should have a guy in the men’s room at City Hall, taking a wide stance.”

“Don’t go trolling in those bathrooms, Catherine,” Mike said. “I’d hate to lose you.”

“There are some days that private practice seems so appealing,” Nan said.

Mike narrated the day’s events to Donny Baynes, who was taking copious note in a small book. “Autopsy on Zunega?”

“I’ll be there,” Mike said. “Tomorrow at eight A.M.”

“Any word on tattoos on the other women who’ve been examined?”

“I made the calls on that today,” Nan said. “A lot of them have tattoos, but none in that same spot on the thigh that Alex has told you about. And no roses.”

“Anybody else view the bodies-the two Jane Does?”

“Three more young men were taken to the morgue today. Can’t get a make on our Jane Does either. It’s like they spent their time in the hold being sick,” Mike said, “or they were just smart enough to keep their distance from the men for the entire ride.”

“We’ve got hundreds more people to talk to,” Baynes said. “We’ll find out who they are. I’m sure of it.”

“Spoken with all the confidence of your first big trafficking case,” Mercer said. “You’ll be fortunate if even half your population on that boat wind up with real identities. There’s nothing in it for them to help you while they’re in detention. They’ll just be looking to bust out of whatever facility you send them to and start life over.”

“No backpedaling on women you’re giving us tomorrow?” Nan asked.

“They’ll be delivered here by ten,” Baynes said. “You have my word.”

Each of us took up a position around the long table. Nan, with Laura’s assistance, had stacked several piles of DD5s that had been prepared since the grounding of the Golden Voyager and the events following Ethan Leighton’s drunken crash on the highway.

“Let’s skim through what we’ve got here,” I said, “to see if we’ve missed anything obvious.”

There had been so many cops who responded to both scenes that it would be impossible to talk with all of them in the days to come. This was a way of marshaling the evidence for clues or connections we might have overlooked.

I opened another can of soda and read accounts of the highway patrol officers who had come upon Ethan Leighton’s accident. That was less familiar to me than the awful image of the foundering ship and its weeping passengers that was embedded in my mind’s eye.

“Anybody know what kind of mansion the Grange is?” I asked.

“What page are you looking at?” Nan asked.

“No, I’m thinking of what Spindlis said at the press conference. All that slush fund cash, and some of it going to restore a mansion. That’s two mansion mentions in the same day. It’s unusual for Manhattan.”

“Now, you ladies need to spend some time in Harlem,” Mercer said. “I can help you with this one.”

“Please.”

“You probably know as much about Alexander Hamilton’s career as I do.”

“Revolutionary War hero, a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, wrote the Federalist Papers with James Madison and John Jay, became the first secretary of the treasury,” Nan said, ticking off the major accomplishments, “and then had a lucrative law practice here in the city.”

“So he built himself a country estate too,” Mercer said. “A bit farther uptown, in Harlem.”

“Before the Jeffersons moved on up, right?” Mike said. “The television Jeffersons?”

“Yessir, my paragon of political correctness. Hamilton built the Grange around the same time Mr. Gracie was staking out his mansion. Named it for the old family property in Scotland.”

“Then he didn’t get to live in it very long,” Mike said. “ ’ Cause Aaron Burr killed him in a duel in 1804.”

“Well, the house still stands, Mr. Chapman. In fact, in 2008 the whole thing was moved from Convent Avenue down the street to St. Nicholas Park.”

“They moved an entire mansion?” Nan asked.

“They sure did. I went up there with my cousin to watch, ’cause I knew the Grange. It’s a beautiful old building, and it used to abut Cousin Eugene’s church.”

“St. Luke’s up on Convent by a Hundred and forty-first Street?” Mike said. “Now I get the picture. That place was huge. How’d they move it?”

“Lord, it was quite a fantastic operation. They put steel beams between the foundation and the first floor, to support the weight of the place. Held those up by cribbings, and then hydraulic jacks inside the cribbings lifted the house eight inches a shot,” Mercer said. “Then they installed roller beams to create rails along Convent Avenue, with rams pushing the steel beams horizontally.”

Mercer was telling the story with his hands, taking the Grange along the avenue with its nine dollies and its own braking system bolted to the steel beams. Both Mike and Donovan Baynes were riveted by the description.

“Must be a guy thing,” Nan said.

“Sorry I started it,” I said. “I just wondered if there could be any connection between Gracie Mansion and the Grange. You know, two Federal Period houses-both mansions, both country estates. Both renovated at great cost, apparently, and both connected to historical figures. That’s all I was getting at.”

“Not very likely, Alex. Gracie’s a New York City landmark, patrolled by the NYPD and used for whatever functions the mayor wants,” Mercer said. “The Grange is a national memorial. It’s a cultural resource in Harlem, I guess, for the handful of people who even know it’s there.”

“It wasn’t likely that a Ukrainian refugee and a Mexican-well, I don’t know what to call Salma anymore-would have the same tattoo. It wasn’t likely that half the legislators in this city would have phantom funds or that our congressman would have a phantom family,” I said. “This case is all about things that aren’t likely.”

“Amen,” Mercer said.

“A rose is a rose is a rose,” Mike said. “What’s so unlikely about that? It’s a very common flower.”

“There are probably twenty thousand varieties of roses in the world. Those two images are identical-in their shape, in their size, in their design, in their coloration, and in the exact same spot on each woman’s body. You saw them, Mike. Do we have Polaroids for everyone to look at?”

“Yeah, in the middle of the table.”

Catherine reached for the small pile of photographs, studied them, and then passed them on. “I’m with Alex on this.”

First Nan and then Donny Baynes agreed with me.

“Okay, okay. The Hogan Place Horticultural Club rules with the princess. Okay, I’m reading,” Mike said. “I’m concentrating on the reports.”

“Who tried to take the weight for Ethan Leighton at the scene of the accident?” Nan asked. “That’s somebody to look at.”

“It’s in the first fistful of DD-fives,” Mercer said. “I wasn’t there myself. It was his wife, Claire, who told me it was one of his aides. I didn’t work the accident. I was just brought in because of the possible domestic.”

We were all shuffling papers, literally trying to get on the same page.

“Now, this has a familiar ring to it, guys. DD-five, number eight,” Mike said. “How about that it was his former aide who tried to intercede with the highway patrol after Ethan fleet-footed himself away? How about that it was Mr. Moneybags himself, who was Ethan’s best bud before he got the congressional seat?”

Donovan Baynes read the name aloud. “Kendall Reid. So tell me why Battaglia-and the spineless wonder at his side-chose today of all days to unseal Reid’s indictment? Why’d they choose this moment to charge him, and make it impossible for you to interrogate him?”