Lethal Legacy

NINE

I was surprised to hear voices when I approached the door to Battaglia’s suite. I had assumed that I would beat him to his office, even though he told me to be there at eight a.m. Rose Malone wasn’t at her desk yet, so I turned the corner to present myself.

The district attorney stopped midsentence, a cigar gripped between the knuckles of two fingers. “C’mon in, Alexandra. Figure out how to get that damn coffeepot working and then we’ll get started. Jill, I’d like you to meet Alex Cooper.”

“Hello, Alex. I’m Jill Gibson.”

I walked behind the conference table at which the pair were seated, measured the coffee, and started the machine, reminded of how much Rose had spoiled Battaglia.

“Good to meet you,” Jill said.

The tabloids were spread out in front of Battaglia. I had picked up copies on my way downtown and seen that the item about Karla Vastasi’s murder was buried in a single paragraph near the end of the news section. The difference in status between the housekeeper and the heiress had put this story on the back burner and given us breathing room to work on the case without a media frenzy.

“Jill’s an old friend, Alex. Came here two years ago from Yale, where she ran the Beinecke Rare Books Library,” he said. “She’s the deputy chief executive at our NYPL now-the number three job-and the first woman in that position.”

“That’s impressive.”

There was a quiet elegance about Jill Gibson. She was probably in her mid-fifties, with frosted hair and an easy smile.

“I want you to describe what happened last night,” Battaglia said, planting the unlit cigar in his mouth. “It’s okay, Alex. I’ve already told Jill the little I know.”

The DA had caught my momentary hesitation. It was unlike him to debrief me about a pending case in the presence of an outsider. It was clear that Jill Gibson had his confidence and might even be the person who alerted him to the situation earlier in the week about Tina Barr.

I described the events from the time Mercer, Mike, and I had arrived uptown to wait for Barr to get home. Battaglia double-tasked, making notes in the margin of a wiretap application that one of my colleagues from the Frauds Bureau had submitted for his signature. He didn’t look up until I mentioned Minerva Hunt’s name.

Then he asked Jill, “Do you know Minerva?”

“No, I don’t. I’ve seen her around from time to time, but we’ve never been introduced.”

“She’s not involved with the library?”

“Not in any major way. Her father’s still on the board, and she’s called in occasionally on matters that concern him. He was chair at one time, as you probably know. Jasper Hunt the Third. A hugely powerful force there for quite a while, in the 1980s and ’90s. And Tally, her brother, is also on the board. From what I understand, Minerva has other interests.”

The super rich have plenty of avenues for charitable giving, whether for causes about which they are passionate or for structuring the tax benefits of their estates. Art, ancient or avant-garde; dance, classical or modern; museums, paintings or extinct animals, cultures or ethnic heritage; and poverty, local or global, are among the competing enterprises that attract major donors.

“I think she’s disease,” Battaglia said, pointing at the coffeepot. “Used to be ballet, but I’m pretty sure Minerva Hunt is running the capital campaign for one of the hospitals.”

Naming opportunities at medical centers for pavilions and wings and research facilities were fast becoming ways for baby boomers to insure a jump to the head of the line when a family member needed a heart transplant or an experimental drug for an aggressive illness.

“Ms. Hunt told me her father was very ill,” I said. “Do you know what’s wrong?”

“He’s a recluse,” Gibson said. “Old and frail. That’s what I’ve been told.”

“I haven’t seen Jasper Hunt out and about for the better part of two years now,” Battaglia said, putting down the sheaf of papers. “Go back to the murder scene. Tell me exactly what went on. How did Minerva react when she arrived?”

I took Battaglia through the details of the entire evening, including the way Karla Vastasi and Minerva Hunt were dressed. I described the conversation at the squad with Mike and Mercer as I got up to pour coffee for the three of us.

There was only one thing I left out of the conversation. I didn’t mention the Bay Psalm Book. I didn’t know Jill Gibson or the reason the district attorney trusted her enough to include her in this meeting. The little jeweled treasure was a crucial piece of evidence, and I needed to figure out its connection to the institution where Gibson worked before I leaked its existence.

“Does Chapman have a hunch?” Mike had made arrests in some of the most high-profile murder cases in Manhattan, and Battaglia respected his unerring street sense.

“Nothing he was ready to let me in on, Paul. There was some discussion with Minerva about things that might have been in the apartment. I know Mike vouchered some property to be analyzed at the lab. At least one book, I’m pretty sure.”

Jill Gibson seemed more interested in that fact than did Battaglia.

“But no sign of the young woman who lived there?” he asked.

“Nothing. She’s a librarian, Jill. Her name is Tina Barr. I thought perhaps you might know her,” I said.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” she said, seemingly uninterested in the missing girl. “What kind of books did the detectives find?”

This was a no-win situation for me. If I withheld information that Battaglia wanted Jill Gibson to know, he would be furious with me. But if I disclosed something that was not going to be made public at this point in time, who knew what Gibson would do with the information?

“Is there an actual Hunt collection at the library?” I asked. “I heard Mike say it had something to do with that.”

Jill Gibson pulled her chair up to the table. “Their family helped establish the library, Alex, more than a century ago. The collection they’ve amassed is enormously valuable. We make it a practice not to do anything to disturb the Hunts,” she said, making her point to Battaglia.

“Well, I’m certainly going to have to meet with each of them,” I said.

“We’ll talk about that after Jill leaves, Alex. She and I have had a couple of meetings in the last two weeks about some problems they’ve been experiencing at the library. It may be that this case isn’t an isolated event.”

Now Battaglia had my complete attention. “What kind of problems?”

“Do you know the library?” Jill asked.

“I think it’s the most magnificent building in New York City,” I said, refilling our mugs. The Carrère and Hastings Beaux Art masterpiece, with its massive triple-arched portico, dominated Fifth Avenue at the corner of Forty-second Street.

“You’ve spent time there?”

“I majored in English literature when I was at college. I was fortunate enough to be admitted for a month between semesters to do research for my senior thesis.”

“You might want to know why the Hunts are so important to us, Alex. Why we try to tiptoe around them, keep them out of the headlines,” Jill Gibson said. “I’d also be happy to give you private access to their collection. It’s got some extraordinary pieces.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“ New York City came late to the idea of establishing a great library,” Jill said. “The French had the Bibliothèque nationale and in London the fabulous domed Reading Room was built at the British Museum.

“These institutions were symbols of civilized societies and cultures, founded in ancient seats of national government, with documents and books descended from kings and noblemen over the centuries. Americans, on the other hand, were struggling to emerge from the shadows of colonialism, with no comparable government funding for these purposes. By the 1890s, our domestic rivals for intellectual prestige- Boston and Chicago -had already built central libraries, and in Washington, the Library of Congress moved out of its home in the Capitol to the first of its own buildings.”

“We had no libraries here before that time?” Battaglia asked.

“There are two very different kinds of facilities, Paul. One is what’s called a circulating system.”

“Elevate the masses by giving the people books,” I said, recalling my nineteenth-century history. “Advancement through self-improvement. Weren’t they usually the work of well-to-do ladies in their communities, making sure that poor little girls had wholesome stories to read?”

“Exactly. They’re what led to the branch libraries, here and all over the country. The other type is the well-endowed reference library. That’s how the NYPL developed-as a research facility, in which the books are never allowed to leave the building. We were a gift to the city from some of the richest men in America.”

“Who founded it?” I asked.

“It began with private collections. The largest was put together by the first American millionaire, John Jacob Astor,” Jill said.

“Jasper Hunt’s business partner.”

“In some ventures, Alex, that’s correct. Astor loved literature and had many literary friends. In fact, Washington Irving was the first president of the Astor Library. By the 1890s, the collection John Jacob had bequeathed to his younger son, William Black-house Astor, had more than a quarter of a million books.”

“Where could they possibly have been housed?” Battaglia asked.

“ Lafayette Street, Paul. That wonderful redbrick brownstone where the Public Theater is today. That was the Astor Library,” Jill said. “And the city’s other devoted bibliophile was James Lenox, who was also a real estate mogul and a merchant. He built himself a palatial marble library on the Upper East Side -today it’s the Frick. From Lenox we got the first Gutenberg Bible brought to America, the original autographed manuscript of George Washington’s Farewell Address, and the most complete first editions of Bunyan and Milton.”

Jill Gibson was animated now, her eyes sparkling as she expressed her obvious joy for these treasures.

“What brought the Astors and Lenoxes together?” I asked.

“Samuel Tilden, actually, at the end of his life. A bachelor with an immense fortune that he wanted to leave for the public good.”

“Nothing like a politician,” Battaglia said. “Tilden lost the presidential election to Rutherford Hayes, but he was one of the finest governors of this state.”

“Tilden was also a leader of the civic movement bemoaning New York ’s lack of a great free public library and reading room. He formed a trust to establish one as his legacy to the city, consolidating the unique private collections already in existence and infusing them with fresh funding. The Tilden Trust and Astor and Lenox libraries joined in 1895 to form this new cultural entity-the New York Public Library.”

“Public?” Battaglia asked.

Jill Gibson smiled. “Open to the public, but a private, nonprofit corporation governed by a self-perpetuating board of trustees.”

“Tight-lipped and tough-minded, that group is.”

“Exactly, Paul. The power rests entirely in that board, to this day.”

“And the building itself?” I asked.

“The board asked the city to supply a site and maintain the building and grounds-the beginning of this public-private partnership. The city chose Reservoir Square -the huge, gloomy, and obsolete home of the Croton Reservoir, a central crossroads of Manhattan at the time, between Fifth Avenue and Bryant Park.”

“Of course. The reservoir was demolished in order to create the library,” I said, remembering the process that led to the construction of the vast underground system of tunnels to bring water to the city so long ago.

“You can still see the foundation of the reservoir in our basement,” Gibson said. “Sixteen years after the trust was set up-in 1911-at the cost of nine million dollars, close to two hundred million in today’s terms, the building was hailed as the greatest modern temple of education.”

“What about the Hunts?” I asked. “Was their collection part of the original gift?”

“Jasper Hunt the Second wasn’t so quick to get on board. He was skeptical about relinquishing his father’s precious books-and those he’d continued to acquire. That reluctance kept the original trustees from inviting him to join the board.”

“Who were they?” Battaglia asked.

“Best described, Paul, as twenty-one rich white men past their prime. Social status, gender, and economic standing were intentionally homogeneous, to encourage a harmony of action and purpose,” Gibson said. “Schuylers and Cadwaladers, Bigelows and Butlers. Jasper Hunt had the money, but not the class.”

“Was it his eccentricity?” I asked.

Jill Gibson laughed. “The library papers suggest that eccentricity was part of his charm. To this group of trustees the Hunts were practically outlaws.”

“Even with the Astor business connection?”

“Jasper Hunt the First started life shoeing horses for John Jacob Astor. You know the Astor quote about real estate?”

“No, I don’t.”

“‘If I could live all over again, I would buy every square inch of Manhattan,’” Jill said. “And Astor came pretty close to doing just that. He took a liking to young Hunt. Brought him into the real estate company before Hunt was twenty years old, funded his first acquisitions, and introduced him to extravagances like the rare books that gave Astor such pleasure. Hunt was smart enough to follow in his master’s footsteps.”

“Sounds brilliant for a kid who started by shoeing horses,” I said.

“Then Astor withdrew from the fur trade and most of his other ventures to concentrate on purchasing land in Manhattan, investing all the proceeds in pushing north of the city limits. His genius was in never selling anything he bought, insisting that others could pay rent to use the properties. Jasper Hunt went along with him, but the younger man’s greed tempted him to go a bit too far.”

“In what way?” Battaglia asked.

Gibson sat back in her chair. “John Jacob Astor’s fur business took him all over the Pacific Northwest, and then to China, where he and his partners traded skins, as well as teas and exotic woods. Then he began to purchase tons of Turkish opium, shipping the contraband to China to smuggle into this country.”

“I didn’t know Astor dealt in opium,” I said.

“Wisely, on his part, he didn’t do it for very long. But there was such a fortune to be made that Jasper Hunt couldn’t bring himself to cut those ties, as Astor had. Even Junior kept his hand in smuggling for a time.”

“And the book collection?” I asked.

“The New York Public Library was a stunning success from the moment its doors opened. People like the Hunts who’d been uncertain about participating began to change their minds.”

“Want to top off my coffee, Alex? It’s cold,” Battaglia said.

I got up and waved a hand at Gibson, who’d raised her eyebrows at the command. “It’s not personal. He’d make any of the guys on the legal staff do the same thing.”

“You’re good at this, Jill,” Battaglia said. “You probably know the first book a reader asked for opening day.”

“A young émigré came in to request a Russian-language study of Tolstoy. Not what anyone expected, but a sign of the changing culture of the community. This library is really the soul of the city,” Gibson said. “I just love it there.”

“I take it that Jasper Hunt Jr. rose to the occasion,” I said.

“Two things happened. Within a decade, the library had risen to the front ranks of research institutions, here and abroad. The collections grew in size to more than a million volumes.

“Then, in 1917, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie retired to embark on a massive philanthropic distribution-his ‘gospel of wealth.’ He wanted to give his money away in his lifetime, saw libraries as the best gift to any community, and in 1917 promised to build sixty-five branch libraries in New York, provided that the city would maintain them. Can you imagine?” Gibson asked. “Carnegie’s plan established more than twenty-five hundred libraries in the English-speaking world.”

“So then Junior kicked in,” Battaglia said.

“Yes, he did. With his father’s rare book collection as well as his own, which he continued to add to for the rest of his life. They’ve got good genes for longevity, those Hunts,” Jill said. “Junior died in 1958, well into his eighties. He hoped that his possessions would buy him a place on the board along the way. But that never happened.”

“Jasper the Third finally made it,” Battaglia said. “The old boy is still kicking around.”

“The family had divested themselves of the smuggling operation, contributed a few million dollars to the library, and become model citizens by the 1920s,” Jill said.

“And Tally?” Battaglia asked. “Do he and his father get along?”

“In the boardroom,” Jill said, “everyone’s on his best behavior. The real intrigue doesn’t happen inside the library walls.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the small color photograph on a document to the right of Battaglia’s hand as I refilled his mug. It was a copy of an employee identification tag from the New York Public Library, dated earlier in the year. The woman who’d posed for the camera to get her security clearance was the elusive Tina Barr.