Hell Gate

FORTY-FOUR

Mercer was in the beat-up Toyota he used to drive to work. Mike was adjusting the seat and the steering wheel in the steel gray Jaguar that he had commandeered from Ethan Leighton.

We left Leighton in the station house. He would not have need of the car for hours. By the time the children’s service agency workers finished talking to him, he’d be wishing that Mike were conducting the interrogation.

We pulled out of the parking space on West 169th Street. There was a Yankees baseball cap on the dashboard. “Put it on, kid. That ponytail I ragged you about the other day? Do it again. I need you to look like a nineteen-year-old aching for coke, in case we run into any locals.”

I took a rubber band from my jeans pocket and followed Mike’s orders. “What took you so long to remember the mansion?”

“ ’ Cause that’s not how I think of the place. It’s got a military significance to me, not a social one.”

“Why? What is it?”

We were moving at a snail’s pace down Amsterdam, each of us looking into doorways and alleys, on fire escapes and in parked cars. The cold spell and the early morning hour had most people off the streets. In the rearview mirror, I could see that Mercer was giving us plenty of lead time.

“The house was built by a British colonel in the 1760s-Roger Morris. About one hundred acres, on this hilltop, just east of here. An amazing setting, when you think about it.”

“Like Gracie.”

“No, no. Even more spectacular. You just see east and south from Gracie Mansion. This gave you all that, plus the Jersey Palisades and up the Hudson River. So in the fall of 1776, George Washington seized the place and made his headquarters here. That’s when he forced the British retreat at the battle of Harlem Heights.”

“You’ve been here before? Is it restored?”

“The general’s digs? Sure, I have.”

“Slow down. See that woman walking?” I asked.

Mike braked gently as someone came out of the shadows between two brownstones.

“Nope. Sorry. Ratty fur jacket,” I said. “But it’s a man. Who’s Jumel, then?”

“Your kind of guy, Coop. Stephen Jumel was French. A wine merchant. One of the wealthiest men in New York when he moved here. He married an American woman named Eliza,” Mike said, snapping his fingers. “And you know what? Rumor had it she’d been a prostitute before she married him.”

“Must have sounded like the right place for a tryst to Anita.”

“The more I think about it, the more it has to be connected to the boys who ran the old tontine. When Jumel died, Eliza actually married Aaron Burr. Didn’t last long, but she married him just the same.”

“Aaron Burr? Who killed Hamilton in a duel.”

“But before that was co-counsel in the murder of the woman in the well.”

“Gracie Mansion, Hamilton Grange, and this place,” I said. “The only three Federal houses that still exist in Manhattan. What’s the hook between them and our case?”

Mike made a left turn onto West 160th Street, and then a second quick left. “Jumel Terrace, Madam Prosecutor.”

The street was only two short blocks, and as Mike glided to a stop at the curb, I looked up the hill at the most unusual sight.

In the heart of this struggling neighborhood, full of tenements and bodegas, brownstones and crumbling old churches, stood a Palladian mansion. Its elegant white lines contrasted against the starless black sky. It was framed by a monumental portico supported by four enormous white columns.

“Nice place for a gentleman to take a girl to dinner, huh?” Mike asked.

“It looks like a movie set.”

Mercer parked across the street and came over to the car.

“You bring a flashlight?”

Mercer patted his back pocket.

“Why don’t you call the sarge and see if they’ve got a spare key for the joint? Ask him to send a patrol car over.”

“Why would they have a key?”

“The house is open part of the week as a museum. Military buffs like me and house-and-garden babes like you come to visit. The precinct has security responsibility the rest of the time.” Mike said as he got out of the car. “Let me have your flashlight, okay? You wait with her.”

“Where are you going to do?” I asked.

“I wasn’t kidding. I’m going to check the well.”

“There are lights on in the house, Mike. In the center hall, on both floors.”

“My peepers are working fine, Coop. I can see that. I imagine they’re kept on all night,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Follow him, Mercer. It’s awfully dark out there.”

“I’m with you, Alex. He’ll be fine.”

Mike focused the light on the approach to the old mansion. He climbed the staircase to the front door, and tried unsuccessfully to open it. He retraced his steps and went off the pavement, disappearing between two sturdy evergreen bushes that were to the left side of the house.

It was quiet on the narrow street around us, and I could no longer track the beam of Mike’s light.

“You see him?” I asked Mercer, getting out of the car.

“Not yet, Alex. Just give him a minute.”

Then came a sudden noise that echoed off the hilltop, like the sound of a door slamming.

“There, Mercer. Look there!” I said, pointing off the right rear of the mansion. A tall, slim figure, silhouetted against the sky, was running down the slope, away from the house, as fast as his legs would carry him.