Terminal City

SIX

Mike and Mercer walked me to my SUV, which I’d parked between Patroon and the Waldorf. The drive home took only six minutes. I used the interior staircase to get into the lobby from the garage, picked up my mail, and said good night to the two doormen on duty.

It was late enough, almost midnight, to forget topping off the night with a cocktail, since I’d left most of mine behind on the bar. But my empty stomach was growling and the liquor was likely to knock me out and prevent nightmarish flashbacks to the image of the young woman in the hotel suite.

A hot shower, no matter the weather, always helped to wash away the detritus of the day. I scrubbed myself, then toweled off and carried my drink into the bedroom.

I often had trouble sleeping, but never more so than after witnessing the kind of brutality I’d seen today. Soft music, relaxing scents, an excess of alcohol, and even the knowledge that I would be working around the clock until this case was solved rarely calmed me enough to do the job. I was fearful of dreaming, fearful of where my subconscious would take me. Eventually, though, I stopped tossing and nodded off.

I was out of bed before six, showered again-cool water this time-to get a fresh start on the day.

It was early enough for me to have a car service take me to Bay Ridge, wait for me while I ran in to say hello to Mike’s mother in the Lutheran Medical Center, and then deposit me downtown at the DA’s office well before Battaglia would be in for his briefing. I dialed the service and asked for a pickup in twenty minutes.

I dressed, made a cup of coffee, and toasted the last remaining piece of food in my refrigerator-an English muffin. There would be no flowers allowed in the intensive care unit, so I sketched a bouquet on a note card with an IOU for a dozen roses to be delivered when Mrs. Chapman got home.

The newspapers were on my doorstep and I picked them up on my way out to read in the black car on the way to Brooklyn. The Post, never known for its good taste, had a banner headline: ASTORIA HYSTERIA-WALDORF TOWERS TRAGEDY. No surprise that I had to dig inside the Metro pages of the Times’ first section to find a story, below the fold, about the body on the forty-fifth floor of the landmark hotel.

Someone had managed to leak a few details to the Daily News reporter-either a hotel staffer or one of the first responders: SLASHER SOUGHT IN SOCIETY HOTEL. The article had a grisly account of the victim as I saw her-deep wide slit in her throat, bathed in blood, and completely naked. I dropped the papers to the floor of the car.

I e-mailed Mike and Mercer, without telling them about my surprise detour. I asked what they had learned about the abandoned trunk, in preparation for my meeting with Battaglia.

Shortly before the car pulled up in front of the medical center, Mercer replied. Trunk is at least sixty years old. Sort of a burgundy leather exterior, with brass fittings. Must have been pretty snazzy once. Interior has that name brand you mentioned in a few scattered places, but the bleach wiped out most of the design. It’s at the lab now. By the way, reported stolen a week ago, with all its contents. From the Yale Club, on Vanderbilt Avenue, just a few blocks from the Northwest Passage.

Those facts saved me the exercise of finding out when and by whom the trunk was bought. It would be easier for the cops to interview the Yale alum to learn how it went missing.

I told the driver that I didn’t expect to be in the hospital more than fifteen minutes. There weren’t many visitors in the rotunda when I entered, so I stopped at the desk and asked for the ICU. The only people in the elevator with me were medical personnel who appeared to be changing shifts.

I pushed through the two heavy doors to the unit. There was an administrator at the nurses’ station, sitting amid the beeping and flashing monitors.

“Good morning. I’d just like to say hello to Mrs. Chapman, if she’s awake.”

“Mrs. Who?”

“Chapman. Margaret Chapman. I’ll be really quick. I just want to give her a hug and leave this note.”

The woman lowered her reading glasses and scanned the patient names on her clipboard.

“Honey, I hate to ruin your morning, but we don’t have any Mrs. Chapman.”

“But she was here last evening. Admitted a couple of days ago. She didn’t-?” The word stuck in my throat. What if something had happened to her during the night?

“This is my fourth midnight shift in a row. There’s been no Mrs. Chapman in ICU. She didn’t die. She didn’t disappear,” the woman said, shaking her head at me as she scrolled down the computerized list of names on her desk. “Hon, she just never was in this hospital.”