Hell Gate

TWENTY-NINE

The guard in the small booth at the East Eighty-eighth Street walkway that led to the Gracie Mansion grounds was expecting us when we arrived at one o’clock. I had gotten to William’s studio in time to do my stretches for the eleven A.M. class, while Mike ran errands and came back for me after I showered and dressed in my professional clothes.

“Front or back?” Mike asked.

The elegant formal entrance was the original front of the house, facing the river, since most guests arrived by water those hundreds of years ago. A newer access had been designed for the rear of the building, closest to the street, the way most people came to the residence now.

“Right here,” the man said, pointing to the back steps.

Mike led me up and the door was opened by the detective from the mayor’s detail-the same one who had been with him and Rowdy Kitts when Statler stormed into the mansion on Thursday afternoon, after Salma’s body had been recovered from the well.

Mike shook his hand and said hello. “You know Coop?”

“Only by sight,” he said. “I’m Dan Hardin. Pleased to meet you.”

If he was pleased about anything, it wasn’t reflected in his expression.

“Alex Cooper. Thanks.”

“The mayor’s waiting for you in the dining room. He’s just finishing lunch.”

We followed Hardin up a short interior staircase, lined with a rich bright-blue-and-gold runner, which spilled into an enormous ballroom.

“This is the Wagner Wing, isn’t it, Dan?” Mike asked.

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s named for Susan Wagner, the wife of Robert Wagner Jr.,” Mike said, “who was elected in 1953. She hated everybody tromping through the mansion, putting out cigarettes on her carpet and parking cocktails on her furniture. All this big reception space was built for public functions in the 1960s. It’s not original to the mansion.”

Dan took us down a hallway that opened on the dining room.

The mayor was alone at the head of the antique mahogany table, surrounded by several piles of paper. He had a thick report of some kind in his left hand.

I had been there with Jake for dinner and knew that the room could accommodate dozens of people. The furnishings were exactly as I remembered them-exquisite period pieces like the paw-footed sidebar, a dazzling brass chandelier, green moiré curtains, and the exquisite panorama of Paris on wallpaper that covered the four sides of the room.

“Here they are, Mr. Mayor.”

“Oh,” he said looking up from his work. “Come in, Alex. Mike. I’m just finishing up here. Would you like the chef to fix something for you?”

“No, thanks, sir,” I answered.

“Don’t be shy. We keep these going all day.” Vin Statler was pointing at a stack of tea sandwiches. “English cucumbers, Mike. Give them a try. Chef Estevez makes the world’s best chocolate chip cookies. Even Mother Teresa thought so. Four thousand a week we make for guests and tours. You know in the summer we grow a lot of things in our own garden-right down past the well. Romaine lettuce, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, chives.”

“I didn’t think you called us here for an Iron Chef throw-down, Mr. Mayor,” Mike said.

“I understand you’re interested in the mansion, Mike.” Statler’s plastic smile changed to a momentary scowl. “I’ve got all the information you might want to know, and you may have something for me.”

“No free rides, sir. I’m aware of that. I was hoping we could look around.” Mike was still determined to find a reason that Salma’s body had wound up on the grounds of this unusual home.

“We’ll show you the place. I expect that will put your mind at ease, convince you the mansion has nothing to do with anything so sordid,” Mayor Statler said. “Roland tells me you’re quite the history buff, Detective. And you, Alex, you’ve been spending time in France I understand. You know Zuber?”

Mike’s brow furrowed at the mention of a name he didn’t know. He hated to be left out of the loop.

“Yes, sir. I’ve seen this room before, but never without a crowd in it,” I said.

“Take a good look. It’s remarkable, isn’t it.”

“I’ll bite,” Mike said. “What’s a Zuber?”

“Jean Zuber ran a company in Alsace, Detective, that was set up in the early nineteenth century. The crème de la crème of French artistry.”

Mike was running his hand over the smooth surface of an antique pier table. “What’d he make?”

“Wallpaper.”

“You could get rich from wallpaper?”

“This is the grandest quality in the world, Mike,” I said. “These panoramic scenes were printed on hand-carved pear-wood blocks. Les Jardins Français, isn’t it?

“Yes, Alex. Made in 1830.” The stunning painting of French gardens covered the room, like a colorful montage of trees and flowers and fountains. “That was the height of the craze for French wallpaper of this quality. It was before photography, so people would pay to have these foreign scenes created in their homes.”

“Flocking. My mother was more partial to flocking,” Mike said.

“This would have cost a fortune to re-create today. Beyond our means,” Statler said, ignoring Mike completely. “But the decorators just happened upon it in the attic of a grand Hudson Valley house, unused and in its original wrapping. Did you know Jackie Kennedy found two Zuber panoramas to place in the White House?”

The mayor was finishing his coffee. Mike poured us each a cup and helped himself to the cookies.

“No,” I said, “I didn’t.”

“We got very lucky. We’d never have afforded this one.”

“Ninety percent of police work is getting lucky,” Mike said. “Glad it happens under your roof too.”

“But there was a fortune spent on restoring this house, wasn’t there?” I asked.

“Indeed,” the mayor said to me, then turned to Dan Harkin. “Want to ask someone in the kitchen for hot coffee?”

Statler pushed back from the table and stood up. “Parts of the house were falling down by the time Ed Koch moved in. Almost uninhabitable. By 1983, he’d raised private money-millions-to establish a conservancy for Gracie Mansion, to get down to the foundation and rebuild the entire structure.”

“That must have been quite a process,” I said. Statler clearly wanted to be stroked, to show us he was in charge of the “people’s house,” before he turned it over to us for examination.

“You can’t imagine what they did. Everything from infrared scanning to determine the posts and beams of the original wooden framing, biopsies-really, biopsies-of old paint chips to try to match the original colors.”

“It was renovated again in 2000, wasn’t it?” Mike said.

“It’s very hard to maintain something as old as this building. Despite the earlier work, the deck on the front porch almost collapsed. At the time, there was an anonymous gift to the conservancy here for five million dollars.”

Mike whistled. “That could buy a lot of Zuber.”

“There was a great effort that went into finding some of the original pieces the Gracie family owned, furniture made for the house when the Gracies lived here.”

“Nice job. Bloomberg, huh?”

Statler bristled at the sound of his predecessor’s name. “Anonymous, I said.”

“We all know what that guy did for the city,” Mike said. “Every decent charity and every great cause got an anonymous handful from his deep pocket. The guy is aces.”

Statler clearly didn’t like Mike’s admiration of the popular politician who had preceded him in the post.

“When did Gracie Mansion become the official mayoral residence?” I asked.

“The country’s first official mayoral residence, Alex,” Statler said. “At the insistence of Robert Moses, who was the very powerful parks commissioner, Fiorello LaGuardia reluctantly gave up his own comfortable apartment and moved in here, to the farm, as he liked to call it. Nineteen forty-two was the year.”

Mike was getting antsy. “How come so many of you guys don’t want to live here?”

“Each mayor, each family, has its own reaction to the house. You know we had a district attorney who became mayor, Alex, do you?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Nineteen forty-six, Bill O’Dwyer,” Statler said. “He’d been the Brooklyn DA.”

“Prosecuted the Murder, Inc., guys,” Mike said. The media had given the thriving organized crime group known as Brownsville Boys, who’d been responsible for scores of murders from the 1920s to the 1940s, their more vibrant name.

“Yes, he did. But his wife hated it here. She thought the proximity to the river made it a lonely place-foghorns, the noise of the buoy bells keeping her awake,” Statler said. “Ed Koch used it more than he ever thought he would, though he still escaped downtown most weekends to his own apartment after too much pomp and ceremony.”

“Then Rudy ditched the place when he walked out on his bride,” Mike said.

The moment that Giuliani held a press conference to announce he was leaving his wife-before telling her himself-had deservedly been one of his lowest points of popularity in the months before September 11, 2001.

“And Mayor Bloomberg?” I asked.

“When he was elected in 2002, he made the decision to live in his own home, all the time,” Vin Statler said. “Bloomberg has a magnificent town house. He preferred to use Gracie Mansion for daytime functions and to house the most eminent overnight guests. Quite frankly, I made the same choice. The mansion is a public place, and I’m a rather private man.”

“How public is it?” Mike asked.

“Walk with me, please,” the mayor said. “Once the Wagner Wing opened, they had to construct this little hallway to connect the two pieces of the house. See? Brilliant, isn’t it? We call it ‘the hyphen.’ ”

That’s exactly what it was-a narrow, hyphen-shaped passageway between the original parts of the Gracie home and the rooms that had been added hundreds of years later for much larger, public events.

Statler was walking us through, showing us everything from the enormous ballroom, painted the same mediagenic color as the Blue Room in City Hall, to the dainty parlor, to a smaller dining room, and another reception area with huge glass-fronted bookcases and tall shelves that housed a collection of Chinese export porcelain. In each, the dark mahogany furniture gleamed against the deep true colors that had been reclaimed and restored.

As we moved along, Statler described the range of events held weekly in the mansion. “It’s not like this glorious place sits empty, Mike. There are seminars of all kinds held here, retreats and meetings of different city agencies. I’m divorced so there isn’t a first lady, but Mrs. Dinkins used to read to schoolchildren right in this ballroom every Tuesday afternoon,” he said, steering us back to the rear entrance of the house. “What haven’t you seen?”

“What haven’t you shown us?” Mike said.

The mayor was exasperated. “What the hell is it with you? Do you understand who you’re talking to?”

“Yes, sir. Despite my vote, you’re the mayor of my favorite city,” Mike said. “I’m trying to make an intelligent connection between the young lady who’s dead and why she was found in your very own backyard. Is that so hard to understand?”

“If your implication is that I had anything to do with this woman, you might want to start measuring yourself for a new uniform. I’ll wave if I see you along a parade route, while you’re doing crowd control,” Statler said, thrusting his hands in his pockets and stomping on the floor. “You want to see the basement? You think I have skeletons in the closet?”

“Last closet I saw this week was a veritable gold mine,” Mike said. “Sure, I’ll take the basement. I was here on a detail ages ago. It was built as a bomb shelter in the 1950s when this wing was added.”

“That’s right, Detective. And now it’s a police command center if there are problems in the city or on the river. Dan”-the mayor gestured to his bodyguard-“take Chapman down if he wants to see it.”

Statler turned and started charging back to the dining room. “Where’s Roland?”

“Upstairs,” Dan said, leading Mike to the staircase.

“Fine. Follow me, Alex. We’ll show you the private quarters. When you’ve satisfied your curiosity in the basement, Mike, come right along.”

I was trying to elevate the spirit of the conversation with Mayor Statler. “This house has such wonderful bones.”

“Indeed. A great classic center-hall layout, wonderful symmetry, and it’s completely flooded with light.”

“I can see that, even on a gray day.”

When we reached the foyer, I could hear the staircase creaking. Rowdy Kitts was descending from the rooms above. He greeted both of us and removed the burgundy rope that normally blocked access as the mayor and I approached.

“All in order, Roland?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did we have any guests this week?” The mayor was climbing ahead of me.

“Not since before Christmas, Your Honor. It’s been very quiet.”

“Let’s show Alex what we’ve got up here,” the mayor said to Kitts. “Living history, young lady.”

He led me to the northwest corner of the house, an enormous room with sweeping views of rivers and bridges. “The mayor’s bedroom. I suppose this intrigues you.”

There was a wood-framed canopy bed that anchored the space, a pair of inlaid chests under the windows, a large bathroom with modern fixtures to provide the most up-to-date comforts.

“It does, actually. It’s quite beautiful.”

“Remind me, Roland. Whose portrait is that?”

Rowdy Kitts rubbed the scar under his left eye, as though that would help him think of the answer.

The mayor was growing more impatient. “The artist is Thomas Sully. The woman is-well, some nice Quaker girl with rich folks is who she was.”

I stepped in the sun-filled room to look around and paused at the painting.

“Nelson Mandela slept here, can you imagine? All the Gracies and their fancy Federalist friends, and still we’re adding historical importance to this home,” Statler said. “It’s great that we can let the city use this for special occasions.”

I was thinking of the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House, and the bundles of cash that swirled around the players in this investigation. “Since you’re not here at night, do you rent it out to contributors?”

“Nonsense. The fact that neither Bloomberg nor I lived here makes it easy to simply offer it to dignitaries and important guests.”

Statler never set foot in the room. He watched me explore it and then guided me across the wide hallway. I stopped to admire a graceful sofa, upholstered in a bright red fabric. “Someone found that at City Hall, just crying out to be here.”

Mike was coming up the stairs.

“Satisfied, Detective?” the mayor asked. “We call this the mayor’s study. A little office that guests can use. That’s its primary purpose, isn’t it, Roland?”

“What are you, Rowdy?” Mike asked. “The concierge?”

“I’m whatever the mayor tells me to be.”

Dan Harkin, who had come up behind Mike, nodded in agreement.

“Then we have the State Sitting Room,” Statler said, leading us down the hallway. “It used to be the family room, when some of the mayors lived here with their children. We’ve changed all that.”

Mike was opening closets and pulling on desk and dresser drawers.

“You looking for some official stationery?” Rowdy joked. “Or Gideon’s Bible?”

“Your staff has lists of people who’ve stayed here, do they?” Mike ignored him.

“Pretty impressive DNA the mansion’s guests have, Detective,” the mayor said. “How far back would you like to go? Washington Irving spent the better part of a summer here one year. And of course if you’re keen on history, then you would have enjoyed sitting at that grand dinner table when Mr. Gracie was entertaining some of the regulars. History-that’s your territory, Mike, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“You know the name Gouverneur Morris?” Statler asked.

“Widely credited for writing the Preamble to the Constitution,” Mike said. “He’s the ‘We the people’ guy.”

“I should have learned my lesson Thursday not to trifle with you,” he said, taking us down the stairs and back to the foyer. “Morris, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton. They were all part of Archibald Gracie’s circle of friends.”

I reached the bottom step and could tell from the mayor’s body language-a slight grimace, his feet planted firmly in place, and his arms crossed on his chest-that he was ready for us to be out of his hair.

“So Hamilton Grange,” I said, “was that designed with this mansion in mind?”

“Exactly, Alex. Hamilton was quite close to Archibald Gracie. He admired this house tremendously. He even hired the same architect to design his. You should visit the Grange sometime. There aren’t many of these original Federal masterpieces still standing in Manhattan. How many would you say, Roland?”

Rowdy Kitts shrugged and held up his hands. “Not my thing, sir. I don’t have any idea.”

“Why don’t you and Dan show them out?” Statler said. “We’ve got to be on our way. There’s an event at Madison Square Garden before we get to City Hall.”

“Mind if we leave by the front door?” Mike asked. “I never get tired of looking. It’s got to be one of the most spectacular views in Manhattan.”

“Help yourself,” Statler said, stepping aside so one of his aides could open the door.

“Gracie didn’t have the same political prominence as his friends, did he?” Mike asked, backing away from the mayor.

“He never held office like the others. Gracie was a merchant, first and foremost,” Statler said. “Built up his great shipping enterprise but then everything collapsed-first his businesses, then giving up this home he loved so dearly-as a result of the War of 1812. Many of his fleet were captured or burned or lost at sea.”

“Interesting that he was so involved with all the great political figures of the day,” Mike said, turning to walk with me.

“By virtue of a gentlemen’s social group, Detective, Gracie dined with Hamilton and the others regularly. Turtle soup and oysters and pomegranates, all from his own lush property, right here.”

“What is it you want to know from us, Mr. Mayor?” Mike asked.

“How fast are you moving on this case?”

“Do you mean Salma’s murder, or the Golden Voyage investigation? They’re all part of one big picture, and even as pieces fall into place, none of it will be so quick to resolve,” Mike said. “Why?”

“The rumors flying around are outrageous,” Statler said. It was obvious he was trying to keep his temper from flaring. He was used to being the man in control and seemed helpless without his hand on the helm.

“Which ones are you referring to exactly, sir?”

“If they’ve reached City Hall I’m sure they’ve filtered down to the homicide squad. Scandal smells, Detective. It’s got a disgusting, rancid odor that compromises everything around it.”

“Especially when you’ve got your sniffer aimed on higher office, I guess.”

“It’s not just rumors about me. Those are hogwash.”

“Rumors about you?”

“I understand that Commissioner Scully let it leak that I refused to let your team work up here on Thursday, like he asked me to.”

“Right in the same breath when you assured us that Salma was bound to turn up,” Mike said. “My crystal ball wasn’t so optimistic about that as you were.”

Rowdy Kitts took a step in Mike’s direction. “C’mon, Chapman. Take it outside.”

“What would you like to know, Your Honor?” I asked, as Rowdy guided Mike onto the porch.

“These cases-the shipwreck and the mess with Leighton’s girlfriend-exactly how are they related?”

“I don’t mean to be difficult, Your Honor, but we don’t know the answer to that yet. It’s possible that Salma Zunega was originally trafficked into this country from Mexico, like the women on the boat from the Ukraine.”

Vin Statler lowered his head and paced across the patterned floorboards. “Scully and your boss are both treating me like I’ve got leprosy. I’m the goddamn mayor of this city. The whole place seems to be up for sale and I can’t get the attention of the police commissioner or the district attorney.”

“What is it you want to tell them?”

“Nothing you can help with.” The noise Statler made sounded like a snicker. “I didn’t see you getting too far with them the other day.”

“I can usually tweak Battaglia’s ear.” If case law didn’t open that passageway, dicey gossip from high-placed sources often did.

“It’s the rumors about pay-for-play that are so pernicious,” the mayor said. “Ethan Leighton’s father-Moses-and the lieutenant governor-Rod Ralevic-are determined to have an influence on the congressional candidate who’ll run to replace Ethan.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. “But Ethan hasn’t stepped down yet.”

“He may try to ride this one out a few days like Eliot Spitzer did, but it won’t fly. Even that congressman from Staten Island tried to do that a few years back-you know who I mean?”

“Vito Fossella.” Fossella had shattered a promising political career when his late-night drunk-driving arrest led to his admission about a second family he had sired in D.C.

“Yeah. Fossella. Well, Ethan’s affair, the accident, the drinking, maybe his strong streak of ambition has him believing it will blow over in a week. I don’t think he realizes that Moses Leighton himself has somebody lined up to keep the congressional seat warm. A dead girlfriend? Murdered? People won’t let Ethan Leighton get away with that.”

“Get away with it?” I asked. “You have the facts to convince me that it’s Ethan who killed her?”

Vin Statler squared off and faced me. “What I’m suggesting, Alexandra, is that you focus on why somebody is dragging this crap to my doorstep. I don’t know how deep Ethan’s problems run. He set the girl up, he knocked her up-”

The mayor paused for a breath. I didn’t want to tell him yet that Salma, in all likelihood, had not actually given birth to a child. “What else, sir?”

“Moses Leighton was his son’s power broker. He’s been living to see that kid fulfill all his own unrealized dreams. Heaven help the person who threatened to undermine that, and if it was the girlfriend, don’t put anything beyond what Moses would be willing to do to get rid of her.”

“You’re just speculating.”

“You don’t know the man. He’s hired thugs to break voting machines on Election Day, he’s paid off the opposition with millions of dollars when they’ve been hungry enough to take it, and he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to have one of his goons slit this girl’s throat.”

“So that’s what you’d like me to tell the district attorney?”

“Your boss isn’t known for doing stupid things, Alex,” Statler said. “But Thursday night was an exception. Charged in on me with-what’s that guy’s name?”

“Spindlis. Tim Spindlis.”

“Charged in to tell me they absolutely had to announce the City Council indictments then. That moment, that night. The damn grand jury’s been sitting on the case for four months. Why’d he do that?”

“Again, sir, I don’t know.” This wasn’t the time to reveal my own suspicions about Spindlis.

“I’ll tell you why. Kendall Reid is nose-deep in whatever the Leightons are cooking up. He’s dirty, Alex, and for some reason, Battaglia didn’t want to wait to see where that road led him. If there are more bodies, Kendall Reid knows where they’re buried.”

Statler was flailing about. “Your colleague-Mr. Spindlis. You trust him?”

“I do. Of course I do. I’ve worked with him for years.”

“Tell Battaglia to watch his back,” Statler said, getting to his point. “Rod Ralevic is going down, you know. People won’t stand for that pay-to-play approach. He’s out on a limb and I think it’s about to get cut off by the feds. And the story I hear is that your man Spindlis goes down with him.”