The DeadHouse

20

Startled commuters awaiting the short ride home gasped at the spectacle of the four of us, crawling on the bottom of the cable car, and a gun in the hand of Mike Chapman, who had been unable to reach into his pocket to display his badge.

"I'm a cop. It's okay," he said. He stood up and went to check on the older couple who had been sitting on the bench in the rear of the tram before they had dropped to the floor. "You two all right? I'm a police officer."

The elderly woman was clutching her chest and began to cry as Mike helped her to her feet. "He's got a heart condition," she said, pointing at her husband. "Is he-?"

Mike was assisting her husband onto the bench and restoring the cane to his hand. "You wanna call for an ambulance?" he shouted to no one in particular, as the trembling man assured Mike that he was fine.

A bystander said that someone had already called 911 after the first shots were heard.

"How's your wife?" the old gent asked, pointing to me. I was standing up, brushing the slivers of glass off my knees and trying to maintain my composure.

"Nothing a six-pack of Dewar's won't fix in a minute. She takes a flop like that every couple of days, just to keep me on my toes." Mike was doing his best to defuse the situation, to keep everyone calm until he could sort out what fears were appropriate.

Within minutes, six cops bounded up the steps to the departure platform. Two of them recognized me and one of them had known Mike for years. They helped the older couple make their way down the staircase to an ambulance, and put me in the back of one of the patrol cars. One cop stayed with me to take the details for a police report, while Mike and the others examined the inside of the cab.

By the time Mike got back to the car, the uniformed sergeant had arrived and introduced himself to me. "They're doing stops at both ends of the bridge, Mike. What do you think it was?"

"I left 'em up there for Crime Scene to photo, but it's pellets of some kind. Meant to kill somebody? I doubt it. But you could send a loud message that way. Could be somebody just goofing around with a shotgun, could be somebody looking to break windows and scare the shit out of people, could be somebody thinks you're running a shooting gallery in the Nineteenth. I'll leave it to you to figure out."

"There's been a dingbat on the loose after Miss Cooper, hasn't there? Saw a scratch on it back at the house."

"Yeah, but this was definitely not a handgun. Besides, nobody knew it was going to be us on that tram. Maybe it's just some loose cannon, warming up for New Year's Eve."

I thought of Lola Dakota. Was I getting to be as paranoid as she had been? "Remember the kid who hanged himself last weekend? Lola wasn't so crazy. He was selling information to Kralovic about where she was and what she was doing. Maybe someone snitched that I was out on the island today, and this attack really was aimed at you and me."

"She's just out on a day pass, Sarge. I'm taking her back to Bellevue right now." Mike stepped out of the car to talk with the sergeant before he left, then slid back onto the seat beside me, closing the door behind him. "You want people to think you're nuts? That was just some earful of kids from Long Island being frisky on the ride home after an outing in the Big Apple. Don't start seeing your cases in every odd thing that happens."

He was running his fingers through his thick black hair, a sure sign that he was more upset than he was willing to acknowledge. Mike didn't believe this was random mischief any more than I did. "They'll beep me if their search turns up any goofballs with shotguns. My guess is that whoever did it was off the bridge before the nine-one-one call went through."

A couple of the cops returned to the patrol car and asked where we wanted to be dropped off.

"Let's go to my place to meet Mercer." This unexpected event had chewed up more than an hour of our time. "I'd like to put on some sliver-free, clean clothes for dinner, okay? Wash my face and hands."

"Dab some perfume on, too, Coop. You didn't smell so sweet when I was breathing down your neck."

Mercer was already waiting in the lobby of my building. The doorman stopped me as I crossed to the seating area to greet him. "Miss Cooper? The super asked me to tell you, if I saw you, that your window still hasn't been replaced. The glazier they use is on vacation, so it can't be fixed until January second. Is that okay?"

I didn't have much of an alternative. "As soon as they can get it done, I'd appreciate it."

On the way upstairs in the elevator, we told the story of our harrowing tram ride. Perhaps it was a result of his own recent attack, but when I left them in the living room to go change, Mercer was insisting to Mike that we make the cops work to identify the shooters.

Despite the tarp on the empty window frame, the apartment was as cold as the inside of a refrigerator. I changed into a casual outfit, packed some more clothes to take to Jake's place for the weekend, and returned to find Mercer and Mike pouring drinks in the den, the pocket doors closed in an effort to keep out the cold.

"Here's to our own little Christmas. Looks like it'll be the last one for this trio without significant others, spouses, offspring. Chokes me all up inside." Mike lifted his glass and we clinked together. "Too bad you didn't have your hardware on your chest today. This thing Jake gave her, Mercer? It must be like kryptonite. Probably could have melted that buckshot on the spot. We can't top it, blondie, but we have some trinkets-"

Mike interrupted himself and hit the television remote to eliminate the mute function. Alex Trebek announced that the Final Jeopardy! category was an audio question, and the topic was the Oscars. "How much, guys?"

Mercer and I smiled at each other. There were categories in which we didn't stand a chance against Mike, but we could both hold our own at the movies. "Fifty bucks."

"I'm in," I said to Mercer.

Mike was reluctant. "Probably some dumbass song from a Disney flick. Make it twenty."

Mercer held his ground and Mike yielded.

"Here's the music," Trebek said. The introduction to the song played, and the Main Ingredient did the opening lines of "Everybody Plays the Fool." Mercer took my hand and started to dance with me as Trebek gave the clue.

"Tonight's answer is, the Oscar-winning actor whose father was the lead singer in this group."

Mike protested as Mercer and I danced around him. "That's a really misleading category. What did the guy win the award for?" Mercer and I answered at the same time. "Supporting actor." "We'll split the pot on this one, Ms. Cooper, okay?" Mike, like the three contestants, did not know the right question. "That's not cricket. You two know more about Motown than I know about the Civil War."

Mercer told Trebek that the question was "'Who is Cuba Gooding Junior?' Now," he continued, turning to Mike, "Mr. Chapman, show us the money." We each took twenty-five from Chapman and began to open our presents.

"For you, Detective Wallace," I said, passing a wrapped package to him. He ripped at the paper and smiled when he lifted the cover off the box to reveal a photograph in an antique sterling-silver frame. I had asked the mayor to inscribe the picture of himself with Mercer and his father taken at City Hall, when Mercer had received an award for his work on a prominent art dealer's murder. It had been taken the week he had gotten out of a wheelchair and was walking without assistance, and the expression on Spencer's face told the whole story.

I gave Mike his gifts. First was a complete set of Alfred Hitchcock videos accompanied by gift certificates for two tickets to his local movie theater good every month of the coming year.

For each, I had sketched an IOU for a plane ticket to the Vineyard, with dinners at the Outermost and the Beach Plum Inns, so we could all go up for a long weekend in the spring.

They had a bag full of surprises for me, including a little red voodoo doll, with a set of pins, labeled with Pat McKinney's name. They had wrapped a complete collection of Smokey Robinson CDs and had somehow managed to get Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte to sign a note inviting me to the dugout after the opening game at Yankee Stadium in the spring, for which we all had tickets.

The last box was a tiny one, wrapped in shiny gold foil with white ribbon, with a card that read, For our favorite partner.

Inside was a pair of cuff links. Each was a miniature blue and gold NYPD detective shield, one bearing Mike's number and the other Mercer's. I took the navy silk knots out of the French-cuffed shirt I was wearing with my blazer and jeans and replaced them with their gift.

Mercer drove us across town to West Forty-ninth Street, where I had reserved an eight-thirty table at Baldoria's. The bouncer held open the door and we were greeted inside by Frank. Since the chic downtown offshoot of Rao's had opened last year, it was one of the hottest tables in town. The great buzz, the classy brown and white decor, the same superb jukebox selections, and the outstanding food combined to make the place an instant success.

Bo Dietl was at the bar. He had retired from the police department after solving the Palm Sunday Massacre in Brooklyn several years back, but he was a dogged private investigator who seemed to keep tabs on every crime that went down in Manhattan.

"Buy them a round," he told the bartender. He had Mike corralled in a bear hug as he got off his stool to offer it to me. "What are you drinking?"

"Make it doubles all around. We had a rocky ride this afternoon." The story of the tram shooting became more embellished with each telling. Bo was chewing on his cigar as Mike described how he knocked me to the ground and had to cover my mouth because I was screaming so frantically.

"I didn't scream. I was so terrified, I think the words froze in my throat."

Bo asked what we were working on and Mike explained where we were in the Dakota case. "Did you remember to call Professor Lockhart this afternoon?" he was reminded to ask, turning to me.

"Yes, from the hospital, when the hearing was over. He lives just north of the city, in White Plains. If we drive up there tomorrow morning, he'll be happy to talk with us."

Bo kept looking over my shoulder, at the table closest to the end of the bar. "Guess the case they had in Jersey is falling apart."

"Not that I'm aware of-"

"Hey, Alex. The Bo reads the newspapers, y'know." He had a Bob Doleish way of talking about himself in the third person. "That guy, sitting with the broad with all the hair poofed up on top of her head? That's Ivan Kralovic, isn't it?"

My head snapped in the direction Bo's cigar was pointing. The face of the man in the booth was obscured by an upswept bouffant hairdo, but the retired detective kept talking. "Heard it in the car on the radio when I was on my way over here. Sinnelesi's number two man was putting the wood to the dead professor. Sleeping with her in the middle of the investigation. I'm telling you, it would take a prosecutor to be that friggin' stupid. Sorry, Alex. Kralovic's lawyer made a bail application this afternoon. Seems the defense team had known about the affair for weeks. The judge was ripped about it, and granted the application today. Looks like old Ivan knew where to get his first good meal."

I could see Kralovic clearly now as he leaned in to cut the thick veal chop on the plate in front of him. Ivan's mourning period for Lola had ended.