Fifteen minutes later, I was in a taxi, cruising through Chinatown, past the shabby walk-ups and restaurants, dirty signs advertising BACK FOOT RUB and THE PEOPLE’S PHARMACY, awnings jumbled with English and Chinese. Men in dark jackets hurried past storefronts lit up in lethal colors — cough-syrup crimson, absinthe green, jaundiced yellow, all of it bleeding together in the crooked streets. The neighborhood felt thriving yet empty, as if the area had just been quarantined.
We passed a brick church — TRANSFIGURATION CHURCH, read the sign.
“Right here,” I told the driver.
I paid him and climbed out, gazing up at the building. It was a seven-story derelict mess with peeling white paint, construction scaffolding, every window boarded up. It was the warehouse where Ashley Cordova had been found dead. Flowers and handmade cards were piled around the front entrance.
There were bouquets of roses and carnations, lilies and candles, pictures of the Virgin Mary. Rest in peace, Ashley. God bless you. YOUR MUSIC WILL LIVE ON FOREVER. Now you’re in a better place. It was always surprising to me how ferociously the public mourned a beautiful stranger — especially one from a famous family. Into that empty form they could unload the grief and regret of their own lives, be rid of it, feel lucky and light for a few days, comforted by the thought, At least that wasn’t me.
I gently moved aside some of the flowers to reach the steel door. It was secured with two padlocks, CAUTION and DANGER signs. The POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape remained intact.
Behind me, a maroon sedan with a loud muffler cruised past, the dark silhouette of the driver hunched low. I stepped back, staying hidden in the shadows of the scaffolding as it coasted to the end of Mott, made a left, and the street went silent again.
Yet I had the unmistakable feeling that someone else was present — or had just been here.
I zipped up my jacket, and after surveying the sidewalk — deserted, except for an Asian kid darting into a store called Chinatown Fair — I turned and walked to the end of Mott where it intersected Worth. I rounded the sharp right, passing a red awning reading COSMETIC DENTISTRY, a dented chain-link fence spanning an empty dark lot. When I reached the next building, a mangy walk-up, and the one after that, 197 Worth, I knew I’d gone too far.
I backtracked, noticing that by the dentist’s office there was a hole cut in the wire fence. I made my way over, crouching down. A tiny black rag had been tied there — clearly to mark some kind of entrance. I could make out a narrow dirt path that twisted deep into the lot, leading toward an abandoned building.
That had to be it. The Hanging Gardens, Falcone had called it—a known squatters’ residence and crack den, according to the incident summary in Ashley’s file. Police had concluded Ashley entered 9 Mott from here, a building at 203 Worth, then climbed up a flight of stairs all the way to the roof, entering the adjacent Mott Street building from a skylight. Though the police’s canvass of the area turned up no witnesses and none of her personal belongings, this meant nothing. Detectives were notoriously lazy when they concluded early in a case that the death had been a suicide — often overlooking crucial details that told an entirely different story.
That was the reason why I was here.
I ducked through the opening, the rancid smell of garbage overpowering, unseen animals scurrying away as I made my way along the path. It was probably just New York’s mascot: the cat-sized rat. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see the crumbling brick exterior of the building, a door to my left. I stepped toward it, tripping on an old bicycle, some plastic bottles, and pulled it open.
It was a large warehouse, dim light trickling in from somewhere illuminating walls covered with indecipherable graffiti. The place was putrid and filled with junk, newspapers and cans, Sheetrock and insulation, sweatshirts and boxes, pots and pans. Squatters had clearly been living here — though they appeared to have vacated, probably from the recent police presence. I stepped inside, letting the heavy door screech closed behind me.
Now that Beckman’s deadly vodka had worn off, I realized how unwise this was, coming here without so much as the switchblade I used on my Central Park jogs. I hadn’t even thought to bring a flashlight. I took a deep breath — ignoring the voice in my head reminding me, Didn’t we just establish you were off your game? — and headed to the back in search of some stairs.
They were corroded. I grabbed the railing to see if I could pry the structure off the wall, but the bolts were surprisingly sturdy.
I started up, the metallic echoes of my footsteps jarring. I paused every now and then to look around, make sure I was alone, taking a few snapshots with my BlackBerry. With my every step, the old building seemed to growl and cough, protesting my scaling its rusted spine. This was where Ashley had climbed. If her intention had been to commit suicide — a conclusion I didn’t accept as gospel, no matter what Falcone said—why had she come here, to this derelict place?
I passed the sixth floor and then climbed the final, steepest flight into a claustrophobic attic space, a stained futon slung across the floor. Where the sloping ceiling met the wall, there was a square hatch. I heaved my shoulder against it, the door gave way with a gasp, and I hoisted myself outside.
It was a deserted rooftop, a mangled sofa in the far corner. Landscaping the view was lower Manhattan’s bristled bed of skyscrapers: blunt stumps of low-income housing, fat municipal building boulders, water towers sprouting like buds of black thistle — all of it fighting for a piece of the night sky.
The back of 9 Mott Street abutted this building, the space between them only a foot wide but cutting straight down to the street. I stepped onto the low wall ringing the roof’s perimeter, and after making the mistake of looking down—if I fell, I’d die lodged like human parsley between brick teeth — I jumped onto the adjacent roof.
I made my way around a massive water tower — and there was the skylight. It was a rectangular pyramid, most of the glass missing. I walked over to it and, crouching down, looked through one of the shattered casements.
About twelve feet below me was a dark floor. Farther to my left, I could see directly into the empty shaft of a freight elevator, which extended seven stories below, the concrete brightly lit at the very bottom. It was like gazing down a throat, a corridor between two dimensions. The fall looked to be about a hundred feet. Even from this high angle, I could make out patches of rusty stains on the floor. Ashley’s blood.
She’d allegedly climbed in through this skylight, removed her boots and socks, and stepped to the elevator’s ledge. It must have been so fast, wind in her ears, her dark hair protesting in her face — and then nothing.
Falcone was absolutely right. The skylight’s blown-out metal casements were so narrow, it would’ve been hard to force Ashley down there against her will. Hard, but not impossible.
I stood up, inspecting the ground. There was no evidence, no cigarette butts or scraps, no debris of any kind. I was about to leave, heading back to the Hanging Gardens, when suddenly something moved, far below at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
A shadow had just swept across the floor.
I waited, wondering if I’d imagined it, staring at that empty, lit-up space.
But then, again, a silhouette slowly slid into view.
Someone was standing in the mouth of the elevator, his shadow tossed in front of him. He remained there for a minute, immobile, and then stepped all the way inside.
I spotted dirty-blond hair, a gray overcoat. He had to be a detective, back to inspect the scene. He ducked down, ostensibly to study the blood patterns on the concrete. Then, to my surprise, he actually sat down in the corner, propping his elbows on his knees.
He didn’t move for some time.
I leaned forward to get a better view, dislodging a shard of glass. It fell, smashing to the landing just below.
Startled, he looked up, then scrambled out of sight.
I lurched to my feet and took off across the roof.
He couldn’t be a detective. No detective I knew — with the exception of Sharon Falcone — moved that quickly.