Hell Gate

THIRTY-SIX

“The mayor isn’t back yet,” Mike said. “I just left him a message. Told him he could call me anytime he remembered the story about Levi Weeks and the girl in the well.”

I had waited for Mike in the lobby of City Hall, trying to figure out whether Donny Baynes really knew more than he had offered us. It was troubling to think that he was sitting on valuable information that might compromise his own position.

Kendall Reid wasn’t able to reach Ethan Leighton, nor was he willing to go forward with our conversation.

“Statler’s as likely to call you back as Judge Crater is,” I said. “What do we do about Donny Baynes?”

“We take him head-on. Could be just this guy Reid’s nonsense. He’s not into prosecutorial love at the moment.”

“I can tell.”

We walked out the door and Mike pointed at the late afternoon sky. There was a gorgeous streak of pink that cut through the gray backdrop, lightening the dull winter landscape.

“See that dame?” He was shoulder-to-shoulder with me, pointing to something in the distance.

“Who?”

“That golden girl, on top of the Municipal Building.”

Directly to the southeast of City Hall was the enormous structure, straddling an entire street, that housed scores of government offices. It was capped by the dazzling figure of a woman-several times larger than life size-cast in gilded copper. The famous statue, known as Civic Fame, held the city’s coat of arms in one hand and a crown with five crenellations-the boroughs of New York-in the other.

“She’s really gleaming against that pink sky.”

“She reminds me of you, Coop. Not just the tiara and the veneer.”

“What, then?” I asked, stepping down as Mike talked.

“See how she’s standing? She’s on top of a ball, spending her entire life trying to keep a delicate balance.”

“That’s me?”

“To a T. You’re probably feeling sorry for Donny Baynes right now. Why? That’s not your problem. If he didn’t tell us something he should have, then screw him. That golden girl? She fell once.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. The pose was too much for her. Toppled right over. Her arm broke off. I don’t know how many stories down it was, but she crashed right through the skylight in the cafeteria. Nearly killed a couple of locals. Get my point? You’re always trying to balance too much. Know who she was?”

“The statue?”

“The statue was a person. I mean a model. Back in the nineteen twenties.” Mike stopped again and looked off at the great golden symbol of the city. “Audrey Munson. I’m telling you her name because it’ll never be on Jeopardy! Otherwise, I’d try to score the dough off you.”

“So how come you know it?”

“ ’ Cause she fascinates me, ever since I was a kid. Artists used her for half the famous monuments around town. She’s that strong-looking woman, you know, at the foot of the archway of the Manhattan Bridge. She’s in marble at the Firemen’s Memorial on Riverside Drive. I used to go there with my pop all the time. Fifteen statues in this city, and that one woman inspired them all.”

“She must have been magnificent.”

“That’s not the part that reminded me of you, kid. It didn’t stop her from going mad. Couldn’t live with it when her career ended. Spent more than sixty years in an insane asylum, till she died at the age of a hundred and five.”

“This is my object lesson for the day, Detective?”

“I’ve been thinking about it since you got tagged last night. Then I looked up and saw my girl Audrey just now. It’s a delicate balance you’re living, Coop. You need to step down off that ball every now and then. I’d hate for you to take a fall.”

I hesitated before moving on, staring up at the gilded figure. “Okay, so I forget all my personal feelings about Donny Baynes.”

“He’s made his own bed. Let him sleep in it.”

“Got it. When do I get to do my lifestyle lessons for the Chapman retort?”

“I’m hopeless. Get that through your thick skull,” he said, trotting down the steps. “You’ll never change me.”

As I descended behind Mike, I heard a voice calling my name. Ahead of us, at the southern end of the park, was the grounds supervisor Alton Brady, who had responded when I fell in the ditch on Thursday morning.

“Ms. Cooper? I thought that was you standing up there,” he said, reminding me of his name and introducing the two workers who were trailing behind him.

“We found some things when we cleaned up the site,” Brady said. “I’ve had the men out here all day, after that news story the other night made us look like we couldn’t take care of our own place. Thought you might have dropped stuff when you fell.”

“I don’t think so. But nice of you to ask. What did you find?”

“The police took all the weapons and metal things from us. But we went back to clean everything out and picked up a boxful of odds and ends. It’s in a cardboard carton, right by security. You lose any makeup?”

“You gotta ask that question?” Mike said. “Just look at her. She lost it ages ago.”

“I don’t know, everything dropped out of my bag. I guess I could have left something behind. I definitely had my wallet and keys, but I haven’t looked for anything else. Besides, makeup would be too dirty to use after this.”

“No femurs or clavicles?”

“Say what?” Brady answered.

“Take a look, Coop. Not every day you get a graveyard lost and found.”

Brady trudged up the steps and we went along with him. The cop on duty handed him the box when he asked for it. He untied the string that latched it and opened it up.

“I threw out all the garbage, of course. Food and soda cans and such.”

He scrambled around and came out with a small plastic freezer bag. I could see that it held three black plastic pieces-a compact, lipstick, and a mascara applicator.

“It’s actually the brand I use,” I said, studying the damp baggie. “Do you mind?”

I reached for the corner of the bag. “You found this around the side of the building, where I fell?”

Brady turned to his men. “That where it was?”

“No, not the makeup,” the taller man answered. “I got some other things out of that hole. This was right here in the trench at the bottom of the steps.”

Mike pulled back the lid of the box and poked around inside.

“Not my shades, but it’s all Chanel,” I said. “What are you looking for in there?”

“A smoking gun. A straw, so I can grab at it.”

“I may have the straw after all,” I said. “Look at this, Mike.” I held up the bag between my fingertips.

“What?”

“These three makeup cases. It’s the same brand Salma used. We can check the colors against others in her bathroom. It’s too expensive for most of the women who work in City Hall.”

“Long shot but I’m with you.”

“It gets better. See those nubby little things that are caught in the zipper of the baggie? Sort of off-white wooly threads.”

“Yeah?”

“They look like the same color wool as the blanket that was covering Salma’s body when she was thrown in the well.”

“I suppose the lab could give us an answer on that for certain,” Mike said. “Now just find me the perp. I’ve always wanted to put lipstick on a pig.”