Death Dance (48 page)

"Yeah. We'll stay in touch."

Stan tried to free himself when he saw us walk away. "If
you're leaving, you'll have to go out the Fifty-sixth Street side. The
theater's dark tonight. The entrance you came in is closed after five."

We left Mercer in the hallway. Stan was surrounded by three
agitated dancers, as we waited for the elevator that returned us to the
first floor. A small arrow pointed in the direction of the 56th Street
exit and we followed the snaking corridors to make our way out.

The narrow, dark passages of the ground floor of the old
building were lined with posters that re-created the theater history of
the past few generations. I hurried to keep pace with Mike's long
strides, past the life-size and youthful Lenny
Bernstein—"vital music performed under a stimulating young
conductor"; Mike Todd presenting Maurice Evans in
Hamlet
with the top ticket price of $2.40; and the 1948 image of George
Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, whom City Center had invited to
establish a resident ballet company— which later became the
New York City Ballet.

It was after five o'clock and workers were beginning to emerge
from office buildings up and down the street. Mike cut a path through
the crowds and I followed in his wake, down 56th and south on Sixth
Avenue, then around the corner until we found the car.

The ride to the Belasco was slow, rush-how traffic blocking
each intersection as we crawled down Seventh Avenue behind commuter
buses and an army of Yellow Cabs.

I called the DA's Squad office to ask the captain how soon he
could make Vito available to us, so I could urge Battaglia to back me
up if he was in the middle of another case.

"He did an eight-to-four today, Alex. I can beep him but he
was going off to his kid's Little League game. He may not call in for a
couple of hoars."

"Can we have him tomorrow?"

"No problem. He's doing another day tour. He'll be in the tech
room when he comes on. Just call him and tell him what you need."

"Thanks a lot."

"You got a green light?" Mike asked.

"You and Mercer can figure out where you want him to start."

"Depends what we get out of Joe Berk now."

"He's just going to deny it again," I said.

"Then you're gonna have to get a search warrant. He can deny
all he wants but you and I saw those tulips on the screen in his
bed—room the first time we were there. If I have to choke the
old bastard, I'm gonna get answers this time."

"You've got to keep it calm. He tunes you out when you go wild
on him."

"Wild? He hasn't seen me even halfway to vicious yet. I've
been saving up for this kind of encounter."

Mike got out of the car and slammed the door. We walked up the
street to the Belasco and headed for the entrance to Berk's apartment
just west of the theater.

Mike stepped aside to let me enter and I was startled to come
face-to-face with a man in a dark suit and sunglasses who was standing
at the elevator controls.

Before I could say my name he had pressed the button and told
us to go right up.

I was surprised to have such easy access, and I smiled at Mike
as we rode up to Berk's office. As I pushed open the door, which was
ajar, I could hear loud voices—a lot of them—and it
was clear that the man downstairs who let us in assumed we were on the
list for whatever party was in progress.

Mike followed me inside, and I scanned the dozen faces but saw
no one familiar in the grand office, ringed with its bizarre collection
of Napoleonic memorabilia.

My eye was drawn to the top of the staircase, outside Joe's
bedroom, where Mona Berk and Ross Kehoe were engaged in a lively
conversation with a man, clinking their cocktail glasses together and
laughing at whatever story Kehoe was telling.

The young man seated in Berk's desk chair had just uncorked a
bottle of champagne when he spotted the two of us entering the room.

"Come on in," he said, getting to his feet and walking over to
greet us. "I'm Briggs. Briggs Berk. Joe's son. Have we met?"

"Chapman, Mike Chapman. This is Alexandra Cooper," Mike said,
choosing not to further identify us as police and prosecutor in case
the kid didn't know about our involvement with his father. "We're here
for Joe."

Briggs put a hand on Mike's shoulder and laughed. "We're all
here for Joe. What are you drinking?"

"No thanks. We'd like to see him, if we can. I need to talk to
him for a few minutes. I don't want to break this up but it's kind of
urgent."

"Talk to him? Can't help you with that, Mike. If you want to
see him, the viewing doesn't start till tomorrow afternoon. Frank
Campbell's, three o'clock."

Campbell's was the most famous funeral parlor in Manhattan,
known for its tasteful wakes and services for well-to-do New Yorkers.

"Right now," Briggs said, "the only place you can see Joe Berk
is the morgue."

"I didn't know you guys were cops," Briggs said, blanching as
he planted the champagne bottle on his late father's desk and led us
into a small study off the main room."I'm—uh—I'm
sorry for— uh— "

He didn't seem to know for which offense he was apologizing,
but the display of Mike's shield had sobered his disposition.

"We've got to make a couple of calls. You mind leaving us
alone in here?"

Briggs closed the door behind him and must have signaled the
reveling mourners to quiet down. Mike called the ME's office and
reached the attendant on duty.

"Get me Dr. Kestenbaum," he said to the clerk who answered the
phone.

"Talk about dancing on the grave," I said. "What a disgusting
display."

"You expected better from the Berks? I just want to know who
pulled the plug on him. Too many happy people in there. And pretty
ironic that he and Galinova are sleeping together again, side by side."

"No wonder Mona was in such a rush to get here for the
celebration."

"Hello, doc? Chapman here. You got the Wizard of the Great
White Way ready for his surgical debut?" Mike winked at me. "What do
you mean, who? Joe Berk. I'm talking about Joe Berk."

Chapman listened for several minutes and then repeated the
conversation to me after he hung up. "They're going to do the autopsy
tonight, but his death has all the signs of a stroke. Damn, I would
have bet the odds he didn't die of natural causes. Especially before I
got to rattle him."

"I wonder what Joe's medical condition was. I mean, I hope
that we didn't—"

"Don't go feeling all guilty on me, Coop, like we brought it
on by aggravating him this morning. Kestenbaum says it's a logical
after—effect of the electrical event."

"Electrical event? He makes it sound like a Broadway
production. Meaning what?"

"Berk survived the jolt from stepping on the manhole cover.
But apparently people who live through that experience can develop
clotting in the blood vessels along the path that carried the current
through the body. So it's not unusual to have a—what'd he
call it?— an arterial thrombosis in the first few weeks after
the accident. A stroke is what killed him."

"And I was just beginning to feel we were so close to
connecting Berk to Galinova's murder, to figuring out what was going on
between them."

"Let's keep at it. Suppose he did it, suppose he's still the
main suspect? There's stuff to tie up here," Mike said, opening the
door to the office.

It looked as though several people had left while we were in
the study, but Mona Berk and Ross Kehoe had come downstairs to talk to
Briggs. Before I could get any farther, the elevator doors opened and
the squat figure of Rinaldo Vicci burst into the room.

"Briggsley, my boy," Vicci said, rolling his
r
in dramatic fashion, ignoring both of us and embracing the young man.
"I came as soon as I heard the news. It's impossible to believe. Such a
force, such a great life force."

Mona let them talk and walked over to us, glass in hand. "Some
things are just meant to be, Mike, aren't they?"

"Seems to me you could have waited another few days before
starting the celebration."

"You know, in my head I had it figured he was dead a week ago,
the first time I got the call. Sort of like a dress rehearsal," Mona
said, smiling. "Made it so much easier to take when I got the news
today. It wouldn't become me to fake my grief, would it?"

Briggs turned back to us. "Mona told me why you were here last
week. This really isn't the right time to be bringing a criminal
investigation into my father's—"

"Oh, yeah? And you're giving death etiquette lessons while you
got a party going on here? Let me start by extending my sympathy to
you. Sincerely. You can't imagine quite
bow
sincerely because of how unfortunate the timing of your father's
passing is for me. I had bigger plans for him."

"Why don't you tell us what happened today? " I said.

A semicircle had been formed now. Briggs in the middle, facing
us, with Mona next to him and Ross Kehoe stroking her back as he
watched the scene. Vicci was on the other side of Briggs, his hands
clenched and poised against his lips, as though in prayer. There were
four men and one woman gathering across the room.

Mike told them to be sure not to leave before giving us their
names.

"I'm so tired I can't even think straight," Briggs said.

"When did you get back to New York?"

"From the coast? I took the red-eye Saturday night. I've been
up since then."

"Did you see your father yesterday?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I was here. Look, do I have to answer your
questions right now? I mean, I'm sure my lawyer would like to be here."

"Your lawyer? You in some kind of trouble?" Mike asked
facetiously.

Ross Kehoe answered for Briggs. "Not a criminal lawyer, Mr.
Chapman. Obviously, Briggs had to get Joe's attorney over here right
away. There's a lot to attend to, a lot of financial matters to work
out."

Kehoe had left Mona's side and was trying to create some
physical distance between Briggs and the two of us.

"We don't mean to upset any of you any further. We'd just like
to know—well, how Joe died and who was with him," I said.

"He was alone," Briggs said. "I mean, the nurse was here.
She's the one who found him. She said he'd had a bad night."

That didn't make me feel any better about having dropped by to
stir things up in the morning.

"Your visit with him on Sunday—was it just a
regular—well… ?" I didn't even know how to phrase
the question. I couldn't imagine anything normal about the Berk family,
but I didn't want to put the word
confrontational
on the table.

Mona started to speak. "My uncle loved Briggs. Why don't you
sit down?" she said, turning to her cousin, who seemed to be wilting
before our eyes.

Kehoe picked up the conversation. "Detective, the kid's been
through a lot. None of his siblings give a damn about him. He and his
father were getting along really well these past few months. How about
a couple of days to let him absorb this?"