The DeadHouse

7

"Just once, I'd like to read an obituary of a murdered woman who hasn't been canonized overnight." It was Chapman, my Saturday morning 6:45 wake-up call. "Doesn't anybody wicked and ugly ever get blown away? I picked up the tabs on my way home."

Home from where? Patti's apartment? I wondered.

"'King's and Columbia Mourn Death of Beloved Professor.' Who beloved her? Mercer says she was a real ball breaker. 'Raven-haired Prof Slain After Spousal Sting.' The Post, of course. The broad is dead-what frigging difference does her hair color matter? D'you ever read a man's obit that says he was balding or blond? Someday I'm going to write the death notices for all of my victims. Truthfully. 'The despicable SOB, whose face could stop a clock, finally got what she deserved after years of being miserable to everyone who crossed her path.' That kind of thing. So what's the plan for the day? "What time is Lola's sister expecting us?"

"When I spoke with her yesterday, she suggested one o'clock. Is that okay with you?"

"Rise and shine, twinkle toes. I'll pick you up at Fifty-seventh and Madison at noon."

Mike knew that my Saturday routine began with an eight o'clock ballet class, the one constant in an exercise schedule that had long ago been abandoned to the unforeseeable nature of the prosecutorial job. I had been studying with William for years, and relied on the stretches, plies, and barre work of the studio to distract me from the tension of my daily dose of violent crime. From there, I was due at Elsa's, my hairdresser at the Stella salon, for a touch-up on my blonde highlights, for what I had expected to be a cheerful holiday season.

I picked up the paper from my doorstep, took the elevator down, and waited in the lobby until someone pulled up in a Yellow Cab, not anxious to stand on the corner trying to hail one in the frigid early morning air. On the ride across town, I read the Times coverage of the Dakota story. The reclassification of her death as a homicide bumped the news from the second section to the front page, above the fold: "Academic Community Stunned by Scholar's Death."

The piece led with the achievements, publications, and awards that the professor had garnered in her relatively short career. A second feature described the reaction of college officials. "Morn-ingside Heights Mourns Neighbor," it began, explaining the decision of both Columbia University and King's College to suspend classes on the eve of the holiday week, while police tried to determine whether the killing was the work of someone stalking Dakota, or a threat to the schools' population at large.

Another sidebar item traced the course of the case against Ivan Kralovic, questioning the wisdom of the Jersey prosecutor's choice of techniques to cement the evidence against Lola's estranged husband. Each of the articles wove in quotes from a variety of sources close to the deceased, and referenced the eloquent words of King's chaplain, Willetta Heising, Sr., who spoke of the loss of her friend and also urged the students to remain calm in the face of this menace to their general sense of security. A photograph of the throngs pouring out of Riverside Church after the service, slim ecru tapers in every hand and a tissue dabbing the occasional eye, filled the rest of the page on which the stories concluded.

I folded the paper inside my tote, hoping to find time later to do the crossword puzzle, and paid the driver. I raced in the door and down the steps to William's studio, leaving my coat in the dressing room and joining a few other friends who were limbering up in the center of the floor. The warm smiles and routine complaints about stiff joints and unnoticeable weight gains signaled to me that none of the dancers had connected me to the bad news in today's headlines. It was a relief to be spared the questions and concerns that accompanied my involvement in the tragedies of others' lives, and I continued my stretches in silence.

Each time I picked my head up, I looked around the room to see whether Nan Rothschild had arrived. I knew that she was on the faculty at Barnard College and remembered that we had talked about Lola Dakota on several occasions a year earlier. I thought I could pick Nan's brain for some insights about how to handle her colleagues during this sensitive investigation, but there was no sign of her this morning.

I finished my knee bends as William entered the room, clapped the class to attention, and moved us to the barre to begin the session.

He started with a series of deep, measured plies, counting for us to set a tempo. The recording, he explained, was Tchaikovsky's symphonic fantasy "The Tempest." I let my mind wander with the music, enjoying the fact that if I concentrated hard enough on holding my position correctly, I stopped thinking about the things I needed to do for the Dakota investigation.

"Head higher, Alexandra. Pull straight up when you do the releves." He ran his pointer down the legs of the woman in front of me, showing me the perfect lines of her elevated pose. By the time we were ready for floor exercises, I had worked up a good sweat and loosened my limbs completely. I sat on the hardwood and extended my legs into a wide V-shaped wedge, my ballet shoes coming toe to toe with the elegantly arched foot of Julie Kent.

"What are you doing for Christmas? Going to the Vineyard?" she whispered.

I nodded. "A really quick trip. You and Victor?"

William put his finger to his lips and "ssshed" us to silence, tapping me on the shoulder with his wooden stick. Julie beamed at me and mouthed the word "later."

At the end of the class, we chatted about the holidays as we showered and dressed against the wintry day. I slogged for several blocks through slush made gray by traffic and filthy car exhaust without sighting a taxi, and finally reached the crosstown bus to take me to the hairdresser. My friend Elsa had read the morning paper, and we talked quietly about the bizarre events of the preceding day while she painted streaks in my pale blonde hair.

When I went down to the lobby of the building shortly before noon, Mike was parked directly in front, on Fifty-seventh Street, with his flashers blinking. We drove to the West Side and down to the Lincoln Tunnel for the ride to New Jersey. Typical for this time of year, most of the traffic was heading into Manhattan, not in our outbound direction. Suburbanites were coming to shop for Christmas, view the elaborate window displays at the Fifth Avenue department stores, skate, and enjoy the mammoth tree at the Rockefeller Center rink. We had much more sobering business before us.

Mike had called Lola's brother-in-law while I was at class in the morning to tell him and Lily that the medical examiner had officially declared Lola's death a homicide, something the morning papers had broadcast to the entire metropolitan area. Now the family seemed quite anxious to meet with us.

We pulled up in front of the house at one-thirty, and it was instantly recognizable from Thursday night's broadcast of the footage of Kralovic's hired hit. The wreath was gone now, and signs of seasonal joy were overshadowed by the gloom of the postvideo events.

As Mike lifted the brass knocker, the door swung open. A portly man in his fifties greeted us and introduced himself as Lily's husband, Neil Pompian. "My wife's in the kitchen. Why don't you come inside."

We wiped our feet on the bristled mat and followed Pompian through the entry hall and past the great room, which was dominated by a large tree surrounded by dozens of wrapped packages. Three women, who identified themselves to us as neighbors, rose from their seats around the table, took turns hugging Lily, made sure platters of pastry were fully packed for our choosing, and offered us food and drink as they let themselves out the back door.

I poured two cups of coffee and we joined Lily at the kitchen table, in a bright corner of the room, facing a large backyard with a swimming pool all covered up for winter. Lily was sitting on a window seat, her legs tucked up beneath her, and a glass of white wine in front of her.

"That bastard was determined to get Lola one way or another, wasn't he?" She lifted the drink and sipped at it as we each introduced ourselves. "I know you didn't think we were right to do what Vinny Sinnelesi suggested, Ms. Cooper. My sister told me about her conversations with you. But she was really at her wit's end, and she liked the idea of an undercover sting to get Ivan once and for all. She thought it was a much more aggressive way to keep him behind bars, once she decided that's where he belonged."

"Here's what we'd like to do, Mrs. Pompian. I'm a detective with the Homicide Squad. I know how you feel about Ivan Kralovic, but he was in custody when Lola was mur-"

"This whole case is about control, Mr. Chapman. Ivan liked to control everything. Everybody. All the time. He needed to control Lola the way most people need to eat and sleep. That's what his fights with my sister were about. It would be an understatement to call Lola independent. Once she got it in her head to disagree with you, or to disapprove of something Ivan was doing, there was no bringing her back into the fold."

"I understand that, but I don't want to jump to-"

"I'm not jumping to any conclusions. These are facts, Detective. Ivan wanted my sister dead. He put the word out. Unfortunately for him, the cops are the ones who got the word. He paid handsomely to have these cops pretend to kill Lola."

"That's my point. That's why he's in jail."

"Yeah? Well, suppose he was smarter than they are? Suppose he didn't trust them? Let's say he caught on to their scam and just wanted to lull us all into thinking Lola would be safe the moment that Sinnelesi's cop team pretended to shoot her? Then he one-ups all of you, and sends the real killer to her apartment." She shook her head back and forth and reached for her wineglass again.

"That's one of the possibilities we're looking at, Mrs. Pompian."

"One of them? I suggest you look a little harder, Mr. Chapman. And faster, this time." She glanced in my direction. "Where's Ivan now? He's not loose is he, just because Lola can't testify against him?"

"He's locked up over here on the attempted murder charge. He's being held without bail." Mike had gotten through to the sheriff's office before he picked me up. "Who's the prosecutor you've been working with? We'd like to talk to him, too."

"Her name is Anne Reininger. She was very good to Lola. You think Ivan isn't capable of controlling this thing from inside the Jailhouse? He's got money, he's got connections to every scumbag on both sides of the river, and he wanted Lola dead."

"Do you know why?" I asked. It was one thing to attack her himself, in the middle of a fight when they were alone together. But a hired killing, after they were separated and living out of each other's way, suggested another kind of problem. Avoidance of alimony payments? Something that Lola knew about Ivan that she threatened to expose, personally or professionally? A matter, perhaps, that was connected to the cash she kept hidden in a shoe box? I was willing to consider that it might be an issue less obvious than marital discord.

Lily Pompian thought my question was a stupid one. She had already explained why. It was becoming obvious to me that this was going to be Chapman's interview. I was being dismissed without an answer, and the repeated hits of Chablis, as Lily refilled her glass, were making Mike look like the warm and fuzzy one on our team. She shifted her weight on the bench and leaned in on her elbow to talk directly to Mike.

He took advantage of that dynamic and, armed with his most sensitive gaze, responded to her approach. "Let's start with Ivan. I think Alex knows a lot about him, from the earlier incidents, but why don't you tell me what kind of business he's involved in?"

"Yesterday or today?" Lily laughed at what she thought was her own joke. "Ivan started out with an MBA from Columbia. Worked on Wall Street for twenty years. Left his company after a merger and went out, quite comfortably, on his own. Then he got involved in all kinds of penny-stock deals. Stuff I didn't understand at all."

"Did you and your husband invest with him?"

"Not for a minute. He was always trying to get us to pour money into his deals, but we've got two kids in college and my husband wasn't falling for any of Ivan's tricks. You'll have to talk with Ms. Reininger. Maybe she can tell you who he was scamming lately."

Lily got up from her bench to open another bottle of wine. "You comfortable there?" she asked, gesturing toward the table. "Either of you want to join me in something stronger?"

We both thanked her for the offer and Mike stood to refill our coffee cups.

"Tell us about Lola. I mean, from your perspective, as family. Before Ivan. And after him."

She closed the refrigerator door and leaned her back against it, pausing before she motioned to us to follow her into the adjoining room, a wood-paneled library. Two walls were stacked with bookshelves and the one behind the sofa was lined from floor to ceiling with family photographs.

"To understand any of us, you'd probably have to start with my mother, Ceci Dakota. Ever hear of her?" Before we could answer, she went on. "That's your problem, Detective. You're too damn young." One of her hands clutched the glass firmly, while the other rested on Mike's broad shoulder. "Mother was a Broadway showgirl, a hoofer, really. Better dancer than she was a vocalist, but in the days of the great American musicals, those girls had to be able to do it all."

I moved behind Lily to examine the early black-and-white pictures. "Cecile-she hated that name-made her debut in South Pacific, playing one of the nurses in the chorus. April seventh, 1949, Majestic Theatre on Broadway. Ask me anything about those days, and I can tell you more than you'll ever want to know, just from listening to Ceci. That show played one thousand nine hundred twenty-five performances-five years-and she stayed with it for two full seasons. How many times do you think anybody can wash a man right out of her hair and never get beyond the chorus line? She actually understudied Mary Martin for a few weeks, but the woman was never sick a single day, so Ceci moved on.

"Bottom line was that each of us kids was named for a character from one of the shows. For some reason she got hooked on the £'s. I got Lily, from Kiss Me, Kate, which isn't at all bad. My middle sister wound up with Liat, from South Pacific. Bloody Mary's daughter, y'know? It's not easy to grow up Tonkinese in Totowa, New Jersey." She took another drink. "And then came Lola."

The memories had made her smile, but her own mention of Lola's name brought Lily up short. "Ceci was still dancing." She aimed her glass toward a still of her mother, dressed in a pinstriped shirt over black fishnet tights, hands on her hips and mouth wide open. "Closest she ever got to a lead. Three performances subbing for Gwen Verdon in Damn Yankees. Stayed with it most of the run, from opening night on May 5, 1955, through another one thousand and nineteen shows. Even got a part in the movie, in fifty-eight. Then took some time off to have another kid. That gave us my baby sister, Lola."

Mike was staring at a photo of three long-legged little girls in tutus standing around a basinet draped with blue ribbon. "A younger brother?"

"Yeah, he'll be over later, if you want to talk to him." "Lemme guess, Guys and Dolls}"

"He should have been so lucky. Might have had a tough guy's name. Louie or Lefty or Lucky. Maybe missed out on a few school yard fights. But it was the sixties, and Ceci was madly in love with Robert Goulet. Try Camelot. Lance, she named him. Lancelot Dakota." Lily sunk down into a tapestry-covered sofa and put her feet up on the glass-topped table that faced it.

"So your mother was a Broadway gypsy, and your father?" "Taught history at the local high school. Let Mother go her own way, take us to dance classes and sneak us into town to go to Saturday matinees if she knew some of the girls in the chorus line. Dad thoroughly immersed himself in local politics when he wasn't reading history books. Liat and I wanted to go the show biz route. Endless auditions and the deafening sound of tap shoes all over the house, day and night. Lance was my dad's clone. Very serious, very studious. His favorite place was the public library, in part to escape the constant screeching sound of Ceci making us sing 'Let Me Entertain You' to the milkman, the mailman, and anyone else who made the mistake of knocking on our door, and in part because he loved all the things he could learn from books."

"And Lola?"

"Like a perfect combination of their genes. She was smart as a whip. Couldn't keep her nose out of my father's history texts. Adored going with him to listen to the wheeling and dealing at the political clubhouses in town. But give her a sequined costume and a stage to dance on and she'd drop her schoolbooks, as long as there was an audience for her. No chorus line for Lola, and no understudy roles. She was the star or she didn't play. Being second banana to anyone wasn't acceptable to her.

"By high school, when she realized she didn't have the talent to make it to the big time, she threw herself into her studies. Got a full scholarship to Barnard. Majored in political science, with a minor in history. Got her master's and her Ph.D. at Penn. Never looked back. Liked every minute of what she was doing with her life. Her professional life, not her marriage."

Mike's wheels were turning. "Was there another woman in Ivan's life? Competition for Lola?"

"We didn't know about it if there was one. I believed my sister when she said she was rid of him for good. At this point, I think she would have welcomed the fact that he could focus his attention-and his rage-on someone else."

"How about her love life? Did she confide in you about that?"

"There was nothing to tell. Lola didn't have the time or the interest to get involved in a relationship at this point. She was all tied up in a new project at the college, and she had no desire to pique Ivan's anger by letting him find her with another man, until the divorce was final."

I sat in a chair opposite Lily and tried to ease my way into the conversation. "Perhaps you can take a look at some of the shirts and sweaters we found at Lola's apartment. It would help us to know how she was dressed when she left here on Thursday afternoon. And then, well, some of the things in the new place were men's clothing. You might recognize them, too."

"They must have been Ivan's. Or maybe one of her faculty friends. Sure, you can show them to me, but it's not very likely they'll be familiar to me. I signed a power of attorney yesterday, giving Vinny's office the right to go in and take any of her property they needed to help their investigation."

I grimaced at Chapman, sorry that Lily was still in the hands of the Jersey prosecutors, and thankful that the NYPD had declared apartment 15A a crime scene. Cops guarding the door, still blocked off with bright yellow tape, would be unlikely to let anyone step into it without the express permission of the chief of detectives.

"Do you know what kind of special project Lola was working on up at King's?"

"You know, it's a bit embarrassing for me. For the last few weeks, we used to sit here most nights after dinner, long after my husband went to sleep. We'd open more wine, talk to each other about everything from our childhood to our marriages to the Broadway theater. Revivals. Ever notice that's all it is these days, revivals? We talked about how we both loved Christmas. I used to be a Rockette, did I tell you that? Did the Christmas show for six seasons, till my first kid was born. Ceci loved it, seeing her own Lily Dakota on that big stage.

"Anyhow, I just lost it when Lola started talking about her job. I couldn't tell you the first thing about New York City, its history or its politics. North, south, or east of the Great White Way just doesn't exist for me. She said something about a multidisciplinary program that she was terribly excited about-digs and dead people-"

I interrupted her. "A deadhouse? Did she talk about that?" "I said dead people," she responded with a pout. "That's all that comes to mind. Maybe it's the alcohol."

Maybe it was, but she showed no signs of slowing down. I kept my fingers crossed that she wasn't going to stand up and show Mike her best kick and her great extension. Wooden soldier number forty-four. Rockette Lily Dakota.

"Lily, do you know what Lola was wearing the last time you saw her?"

"My clothes. That's mostly what she wore the whole time she was with me. Black is all I remember. She wanted to wear black, for her phony funeral. She laughed about it, too."

Mike's nose was six inches from Lily's at this point, side by side on the sofa. "On Thursday, when the cops faked the scene with Lola's shooting, were any of them here with you in the house?"

"Are you kidding? We had a basement full of them. Anne Reininger was back in this room with us, explaining things to me step by step and trying to keep me calm. There were detectives and DAs all over the place, basement to attic, making sure everything went according to plan."

"And when it was over, did any of them stay behind with you?"

She stopped to think for a minute. "I know I asked for a sedative, to take a nap. I'd been extremely worried about this, and not being able to tell the neighbors it was all a fake. Lola and I sat up practically the entire night before, just trying to reassure ourselves that if the whole thing worked, she'd be rid of Ivan forever. I remember Lola and Anne giving me something to help me sleep that afternoon, once Lola was done with the shooting, but that's about all. I don't know when any of them left here."

"And Lola," Mike asked. "Did you know she was going back to her apartment?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure. She made me promise not to tell Anne. Anne left the room, then Lola kissed me, thanked me, and put the throw over my bedspread 'cause I was cold."

"She just told you she was going to walk out the door?"

Lily nodded.

"Did she ask to borrow your car?"

Lily's brow creased. She was working against the wine to remember what had happened. "No, of course not. She told me a car service was picking her up. At least, that's who I assumed she Was talking to. She used the phone next to my bed to make a call. Told whoever it was not to come to the front door. Lola said she'd slip out the back, cross over Tess Bolton's yard-that's one of the neighbors you met-and wait next to their garage, on Arlington Street. She told me she'd be fine. Someone was taking her home, she said, where she'd be safe."