Hell Gate

TWO

Shouts went up from the beach as a small speedboat nosed into the sand, the driver lifting and tilting the engine as he came to a stop. Five guys stepped out of it into the shallow surf to the roaring cheers of their friends, and one of the rescuers hoisted a young woman over his shoulder and carried her in. When he reached a dry spot at the foot of a low dune, he lowered her onto her feet, steadying her while she caught her breath.

A man broke loose from the group and ran to embrace her. Before any cops could reach them, both dropped to their knees and began praying together, the girl’s body wracked by sobs.

“Cooper! Give me a hand,” one of the homicide detectives yelled to me as he tried to break them up.

I took off running and Mike jogged beside me until we reached the terrified pair. The girl picked up her head and noted the dozens of people staring at her. She dissolved in tears again as I knelt beside her.

I stroked her back and tried to calm her. “The interpreters, Mike, get me one stat.”

“Is okay, lady,” the male said to me. “I speak little English.”

The girl looked back and forth between our faces, fearing that I was the enemy.

“My name is Alexandra. I’m a lawyer for the government,” I said, “and I’m going to help you.”

He repeated my words to her, but the idea of government and help in the same sentence didn’t seem encouraging to either of them.

“Are you related to her?”

“Is girlfriend. Is my girlfriend.”

This was not the time to break investigative rules. One victim, one friend or relative, should not be translating for another. There was nothing I could ask her about her ordeal in his presence that she wouldn’t try to filter as she answered questions through him.

“What are your names?”

“Cyril,” he said. “Am Cyril. Her is Emilia.”

I looked back over the beach to see whether any other shelter had been put up, but the only covered area was the morgue.

“Let’s get Emilia warm first. Let’s make her more comfortable,” I said. Then I whispered to Mike. “Find a place where I can talk to her without the boyfriend.”

“We’re waiting on buses to take all of them to the hospital to be examined.”

“Good. I’ll ride with her. Get her alone. See what she knows, where she thought she was going.”

“I don’t mean ambulances.” They were known in police parlance as buses. “I mean big yellow school buses that can take groups of them at a time.”

“What’s that building behind the cabanas?” I asked, pointing past the morgue. “What does that sign say, Sun and Surf?”

“Yeah, it’s a private beach club, all closed up for the winter. They’ll be calling it Surf and Turf if any more dead meat washes up in front,” Mike said. “Wait till she’s been examined and treated. Then you’ll have her by herself with all the support you need.”

Cyril had wrapped his own blanket around Emilia’s shoulders. A strong gust of wind blew the woolen cover off and revealed a large, raw patch of skin on her forearm.

“What happened to her, Cyril?” I shouldn’t have asked him the question but I worried about particles of sand becoming embedded in the open wound.

“Was so crowded below docks-decks? What you call it in the boat? Decks. She was burned against one of the engines in boiler room.” He raised Emilia’s arm so that I could see the injury.

“Please tell her she’ll be examined by a doctor in a few hours.” I could only imagine the inhumane conditions during the ocean passage.

I wanted the travelers to be made safe and I wanted the criminals behind this operation to be identified as quickly as possible.

Plainclothes officers were setting up folding tables at the foot of the dunes as a food station. Others were carting coffee urns and passing snacks out to the bewildered victims.

“Yo, Chapman,” one of the new arrivals called out, his gold shield case hanging out of his jacket pocket. “You want a shot of vodka with your coffee? A little hair of the dog?”

“The dog didn’t bite last night, Rowdy. Didn’t even lick me. Why, I look hung over to you?”

“Nah. I thought maybe you stopped for a few pops with the congressman.”

“You heard about Leighton already?” Mike asked. “I never drink with guys I can’t stand. Irritates my throat and my mood. Didn’t know word was out.”

“The parking lot’s buzzing,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “The reporter from the Post wants to clone himself so he can get exclusives on that story without missing any of this one. You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Alex.”

“Sorry, Rowdy,” I said, feeling the blush running up the side of my neck and coloring my cheeks. We had a professional history together, history I didn’t relish reliving. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“Never left. Just hit a bump in the road that had me sidelined for a while. The department kept me rubber-gunned for eighteen months but restored me full blast in the fall,” Rowdy Kitts said, the right side of his mouth drawing back into a grin. “And that paragon of congressional virtue-Ethan Leighton-was one of the people who made my life stink.”

“Am I interrupting a personal reunion here? What’s your problem, Coop?”

“No problem at all.”

“I think she’s still peeved at me ’cause the jury tossed one of her unit’s cases when I got jammed up. The judge threw out my testimony. Didn’t find me credible. Can you imagine that?”

“Coop doesn’t hold grudges, Rowdy. She takes body parts,” Mike said.

The last time Rowdy and I had worked together it hadn’t ended well. He was a smart cop who had chosen the wrong professional allies and paid a price for it. I could never tell if the chip on his shoulder was permanent or a result of his political troubles on the job.

Roland Kitts had been an active rookie in a rough neighborhood in Washington Heights, with a great record for getting guns off the street that earned him the nickname Rowdy and led to his promotion to detective after only four years on the job. While working on a special antiterrorist project after 9/11, he caught the attention of Bernie Kerik, who was commissioner at the time.

Kitts was glib and self-promoting-like Kerik-and it was no surprise to most cops who knew him that the brash, freewheeling commissioner chose him to serve on his personal detail. A few years later, when Kerik was charged with accepting tens of thousands of dollars in illegal gifts while serving in office, the feds cast a wide net, which landed the young hotshot back in uniform during the lengthy investigation. He’d only recently been able to work his way up again.

“You remember that case, Alex?” Kitts asked.

“Let’s not go there now,” I said. “We’ve got enough real grief right here.”

“We start moving these folks off the beach before we bring everyone in safe or there’ll be a riot,” Mike said. “Where you working these days, Rowdy?”

Kitts was a bit taller than I, with straight blond hair slightly darker than mine, slicked back without a part, and sharp features that matched his lean physique. “I’m on the mayor’s security detail. Same stuff I was doing for Kerik.”

“Talk about landing on your feet, man. Sweet deal,” Mike said.

I leaned over to talk to Cyril, biting my tongue so as not to swipe at Kitts’s uncanny ability to work his way back into such a plum assignment. I asked the young man if he would tell some of the other passengers we were going to move them to the buses.

“No, no, lady. Nobody gonna leave till ship is empty.”

“Who’s looking out for you?” Mike asked Kitts.

“I got a good lawyer. Once they cleared me, he fought to get me reinstated to the same kind of position I had when I was dumped,” Kitts said. “Scully’s not my biggest fan, but I used to get along fine with the mayor, back in the days before he got elected. Still got my street cred, Chapman.”

“You here with him?” Mike asked. I looked around to see if Vin Statler-the popular businessman who had succeeded Bloomberg to the mayoralty-had arrived.

“Nope. I’m on my own dime. For years I’ve had a piece of a small marina just over the border in Nassau County. Sent a couple of my guys around with their boats to assist.” Kitts shaded his eyes and tried to make out his craft among the growing flotilla surrounding the old freighter. “They’re out there somewhere.”

“Good thinking, Rowdy,” Mike said.

“Is that Mercer up ahead? Let me see if they need help at the morgue. Later, Mike. Nice to see you again, Ms. Cooper,” Kitts said. The sarcasm was thick in his voice. “You really oughtta lose that attitude.”

Kitts took off and I could read the words on the back of his jacket, printed under the logo of a small dead bird: PIPING PLOVERS TASTE LIKE CHICKEN-the recreational boaters’ rebuke to the local beach environmentalists.

I was trying to coax Emilia to get to her feet, but whatever direction I gave her was being overridden by Cyril.

“C’mon, pal,” Mike said to him. “High and dry. Do it the nice way, okay?”

Cyril shrugged and pretended he didn’t understand Mike.

“What’s your beef with Rowdy? You see any prosecutors out here volunteering to help? Not like cops and firemen. Suck it up, blondie. The guy hit on you once, is that why you’re all pink up to your eyeballs?”

“It’s a professional blush, not a personal one,” I said, trying to think of a better approach to Emilia. “Remember Jeannie Parcher?”

“The name sounds familiar.”

“You know who I mean. That very attractive paralegal who worked for Ryan Blackmer.”

“Oh, yeah. She was a sweetheart. Left the office last summer.” Mike called to a pair of detectives to move Cyril and Emilia along, then started walking with me across the wide stretch of beach.

“Exactly. A few months earlier than that, when the feds were trying to make their case against Rowdy, Jeannie phoned late one night and asked to see me at my apartment. She’d been working with the assistant DA who had an indictment in the push-in rape that got tossed because Rowdy’s testimony was so compromised. He’d made the collar, recovered the knife, and taken a statement from the perp. The guy had a rap sheet a mile long, and his admissions to Rowdy put him close enough to the crime scene to be useful.”

“Bet that dismissal ticked you off.”

“Of course it did. We had no DNA and a victim who was unable to make an ID ’cause she was yoked from behind, so there was no way to go forward,” I said.

“Hey, that perp’ll be back.”

“Most likely at the expense of another woman.”

“What brought Jeannie to your doorstep?” Mike asked. “She confuse your living room with a confessional?”

“I guess so. She had a fling with Rowdy, and the feds found out about it while they were digging into his life. They called her in to question her and she went down to their offices without telling me or anybody else on the staff first. No supervisor, no lawyer.”

“Both of them were single,” Mike said. “What did she have to give the feds?”

“Hard to reconstruct after the fact. Jeannie was so vague and emotional. I’m sure she gave them more than anyone would want to know about her sexual encounters with Rowdy, and probably way too much about the other internal affairs-and, yes, I do mean affairs-of the DA’s office to suit the boss.”

“So why the meltdown?”

“Jeannie didn’t know who would be more unhappy-Battaglia or Kitts. I couldn’t offer any advice about Rowdy, but I calmed her down about the front office. No need to shove it under Battaglia’s nose unless the feds made something stick against Kitts.”

“You didn’t rat her out to the DA? That’s my girl, Coop. She must have been grateful.”

I stopped to tighten my scarf around my neck and brushed a branch of seaweed out of Mike’s hair. “If she was, she forgot to tell me,” I said, smiling. “Jeannie quit the next week.”

“Over that?”

“I don’t know the reason. She seemed spooked about Rowdy. Worried that he’d do something to get back at her.”

“Why?” Mike asked. “Did he get rough?”

“Jeannie never said anything like that. I think she was concerned that if he was dirty-if the feds made any charges stick-she’d be toast in our office anyway.” I wiped the grit off my mouth with the back of my glove. “Ten days later, I called to buy her lunch to check on her, but she was gone. Gave notice and told her friends she got a great job offer in the fashion biz.”

“Sounds like a good career move. Can’t expect everyone to be a lifer like you.”

“Lifer? I’m thirty-seven years old. I’ve got endless possibilities for my next-”

“Face it,” Mike said, gesturing at the forlorn castaways. “You’re beginning to think the world’s flotsam and jetsam have been heaven-sent to the Criminal Court Building so you have a purpose on this earth. You gotta move on, Coop. Trying to restore all these broken souls is going to tear the guts out of you before too long.”

“Hey, Chapman.” Mercer’s voice boomed across the open space from the flapped tent door of the morgue. “The medical examiner wants you over here.”

“They’re human beings, Mike,” I called after him as he walked away through the narrow path that led to the parking lot. “It’s a sad fact that you have more interest in dead ones than the living.”

“I got no problem with the dead.” He faced me so that I could hear him speak but continued walking backward toward Mercer. “They can’t talk back, they don’t bullshit me all day like half your witnesses do, they rarely disappoint me, and they never, ever, ever tell lies.”

“Are you looking for victims or a date, Mr. Chapman? You want something with a pulse or no pulse?”

“Chill out, Coop,” Mike said, laughing at me as he started to turn. “When I need your help finding a live one, I’ll let you know.”

Cyril began to speak to Emilia. He was excited about something, quite suddenly, and pulled her to her feet. He seemed to have recognized someone in a small boat that was bobbing close to shore, amid the whitecaps.

There was no point trying to stop the couple as he grabbed her hand and ran to the water’s edge, part of the crowd that was growing more difficult for the cops to control.

I watched Stu Carella plunge back into the surf, followed by a scuba team. This time they seemed to be after items they could see floating on the surface, being drawn away from land. I knew there would not be a great concern for personal effects of the travelers at this point, but investigators wanted evidence that linked this human cargo to conspirators in New York, perhaps things jettisoned by a nervous crew.

A uniformed sergeant began barking orders at the victims, and I skirted the restless groups of men to join the officers in the makeshift morgue past the path that bordered the bird sanctuary.

I saw Donovan Baynes exit the tent and headed over to talk to him.

“Can we strike a deal, Donny?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, Alex. It’s not the time.” He was dialing a number on his cell phone as he tried to blow me off.

“The women. That’s all I want you to give me. No detention centers, no custodial settings after all they’ve been through. Let me work with Safe Horizon,” I said, talking about the city’s leading victim advocacy organization. “They’ve got shelters we can put these young girls in to protect them. If we make them feel safe, they’ll cooperate with us. If we don’t, we’ll never gain their trust. I realize to you feds they’re not legal, but I just can’t see treating them like prisoners.”

Baynes spoke into the phone, asking to be patched through to Commissioner Scully. He answered me while he waited.

“We’ve got a new set of circumstances, Alex. You don’t even know what you’re dealing with. Want to give me a minute?”

I ducked my head and stepped into the morgue. There were ten gurneys lined up in a row, with just inches between them. Seven had bodies on them, and six of those were covered with sheets.

Willis Pomeroy, the deputy chief medical examiner, was standing at the head of the fifth body, explaining something to Mercer, Rowdy, and Mike, who were closer to me, at the feet of the deceased.

The sheet was only partially draping the young woman, whose lifeless eyes were fixed on a point above her head. Her auburn hair was snarled and tangled, and the skin of her malnourished body was almost gray in hue. Everything about her looked so youthful, even the nails that had been bitten to the quick. All except the rough surfaces of her hands.

“In water this cold,” Pomeroy said, “that wrinkled appearance-that washerwoman look on her fingers-sets in pretty quickly.”

“Does it matter whether she was dead or alive when she went in the water?” Mike asked.

Pomeroy shook his head. “No difference. Her palms, the soles of her feet. They get that way no matter whether she went overboard breathing or not.”

Was this the changed circumstance Donovan Baynes had mentioned? “What am I missing, Doc? Didn’t these people all drown?”

“It looked like that at first, Alex. Only the full autopsy will tell,” Pomeroy said, pulling the sheet back a few inches to show me a wound on the left side of her chest. “But this girl was probably dead when she hit the waves. See that bruise?”

Mercer stepped aside and let me edge in near the gurney.

“I see lots of marks.”

“All the bodies got tossed around on the ocean floor, Coop,” Mike said. “Scrapes from rocks and shells. Bloodless, postmortem wounds.”

Pomeroy’s gloved hand pointed to the middle of the girl’s rib cage.

“That’s bloodless too,” I said.

“Yes, but that’s because immersion in the water probably leached out the blood. The ocean does that to antemortem wounds. I’m pretty sure that’s a hole in her chest. It wouldn’t surprise me if this girl was stabbed to death-maybe even shot-before someone threw her in the drink.”

“C’mon outside, Alex,” Rowdy Kitts said to me. “You look like you need some air.”

I focused on the young woman’s face but I was reeling as I tried to think of the implications of this medical finding.

“I’m okay, thanks, Rowdy. I’m just stunned,” I said, turning around to Mercer. “I’ve been trying to persuade Donovan to let us keep the women in shelters. That’s beginning to look unlikely.”

“Always a master of understatement, blondie,” Mike said. “This whole operation is illegal, and we have no clue who the players are or who’s pulling the puppet strings from Stateside. Dead bodies are still washing up, the captain is nowhere to be found, and this broad was probably murdered before she took her swan dive.”

“Rowdy’s right, Alex,” Mercer said. “Let’s get some air.”

Mike pushed ahead of me to exit the tent. “It’s not air Coop needs. It’s a tourniquet for her great big bleeding heart. That and a set of directions back to Manhattan.”

“I intend to do something about these displaced girls to make their lives a bit easier over the next few weeks,” I said. “Then I’m happy to leave you to your lifeguard duties.”

“Look them over good, kid, before you go. I always forget you’ve got magic powers so you can just eyeball people and figure out who the bad guys are. You separate the snakeheads from the snakes for me, ’cause there are likely to be perps standing here in the sand up to their kneecaps, while you’re feeling sorry for them,” Mike said, gesturing with both hands. “And the murderer, Coop-got any ideas about that? ’Cause till you finger the perp who stabbed that kid lying on this slab, every one of them’s a suspect in my book.”