Death Dance (50 page)

"Why'd you tell her?" I asked.

"We were just getting to that when you came in. Seems Briggs
here wanted to talk to his father about his will. Get the old boy while
he's down."

The young man's head snapped up as he looked at Mike. "He
almost died last week. I wanted to—um—to make sure
things were straight between us, let him know he didn't have to worry
about me screwing up the fortune he'd made."

"Make sure you were still in the will? So tell Miss Cooper why
you called Mona."

"'Cause my siblings and I don't get along. They hated my
mother and they hate me. Mona's the only one in the family who's been
decent to me, even when my father had no use for me."

"She wasn't mad at you when you dropped the lawsuit the two of
you had started against Joe?"

Briggs looked over at me. "Who told you about the lawsuit?"

"Give the DA some credit for doing her homework, kid. Ms.
Cooper's not as dumb as she looks," Mike said.

"Did you and your father argue yesterday?"

He didn't answer.

"Were you fighting about your inheritance?"

"I didn't want to do anything to upset him. He—he
looked bad," Briggs said. "I felt really sorry for him. Right up
through the night of the accident he was really strong. He was in good
shape. All of a sudden, I see him this way. He looked so weak and
unhappy. I didn't mean to start a fight."

"But you did?" I said softly.

"I don't want to talk about it. And I don't want you looking
around in here anymore until my dad's lawyer comes over."

"We've got some detectives on the way who are going to spend
the night here, Briggs. They're going to make sure no one touches
anything of your father's," I said.

"So you'd better come downstairs with us, okay?"

He stood up and followed us out of the room. Vicci and Kehoe
were waiting for Mike in Berk's office. It was after seven o'clock and
each was ready to get on his way.

Mike asked a few questions before letting them go. Both
embraced Briggs and told him they'd see him the next day.

Within minutes after their departure, the doorbell rang.
Briggs opened it and two men, both detectives who'd been called in from
their respective squads to work on the Met task force, introduced
themselves to Briggs and came inside.

"Hey, Michael," Frank Merriam said, slapping Chapman on the
back. "Counselor, top of the evening to you, too. Heard you had a rough
night over at your place, Alexandra."

"You know me—any excitement to keep Chapman on his
toes."

"You pull this detail, Frankie? Sorry about that," Mike said.
"Till we find out who the executor of the estate is, Coop's afraid
someone's gonna run off with whatever Joe Berk has here."

"No need for apologies. Overtime, my good man. Back-to-back
tours in the big city? Doesn't happen often enough for a guy in the
123rd. Just tell me where I can get the best steak and a couple of
brews when I stroll out for my dinner."

The portly, red-faced Merriam worked in one of the three
precincts that covered Staten Island. The city's fifth borough was part
of the same police department, but it seemed like a different planet.
To cops who spent a career working the streets of Manhattan, the 123 rd
might as well have been in the Cotswolds.

"Those men we saw going out a few minutes ago. You happen to
get the name of the tall guy? The younger one?"

Mike answered. "You mean Kehoe? Ross Kehoe."

"That's the moniker. I thought he looked familiar."

"You know him?"

"Not a drinking buddy, if that's what you mean. Remember the
Kills?"

The expression
kills
derived irons an
old Dutch word meaning "channels," dating from the period when New York
was once New Amsterdam. The Kills was the body of water separating
Staten Island from the New Jersey shoreline, and Mike and I had come to
know it well.

"Sure."

"We had a homicide—body washed up near the
Outerbridge Crossing. Probably a hit, somebody who got whacked, but was
dressed up real nice to look like a suicide."

"How long ago?"

"Two, maybe two and a half years."

"Who died?" Mike asked.

"Construction worker. Had something to do with one of the
unions and some mob heavies. You've met my partner, Vinny, right? He
thought Kehoe looked good for it. Four or five guys who grew up with
the union boss. Seemed like they'd do anything for him, and Kehoe was
one of the slickest in that pack."

"Grew up where?"

"Staten Island."

Mike and I looked at each other before he spoke. "Where's Clay
Pit Ponds park?"

"You oughta come hang out with me sometime. I'll give you a
tour. None of this blackboard jungle you live with in Manhattan. We got
beaches and golf courses and lakes. We even got us a wildlife refuge
now."

"Clay Pit Ponds park, Frank? C'mon." Mike was serious now, and
I thought of the Staten Island site of the rare Torrey Mountain mint
plant that had been found on Talya's pointe shoe.

"Southwestern part of the island."

"Near the Kills? Kehoe have any family there?"

"He did then. His mother lived off Woodrow Avenue. I think he
had a sister who may have gotten the family house when she kicked the
bucket, but I didn't follow it close like Vinny." Frank was exploring
the niches that ringed Joe Berk's office, looking at the bizarre
assortment of Napoleonic objects.

"The homicide Vinny was working—he ever clear Kehoe?"

"Nah. The ME gave us an inconclusive. Body was in the water
too long for a cause of death so we never got no murder charge to go
with."

"Listen to me, Frank. You guys out on Staten Island, news
reach you yet about this stuff they call DNA?"

"Only lately. Don't Nab his Ass—DNA—Don't
Nab his Ass until you get his spit or his sperm. That's what the
captain always tells me. Right, Michael?"

"Did Vinny get a DNA sample from Ross Kehoe?"

Frank put down the Empress Josephine's tortoiseshell hair comb
to turn around and face Mike. "What do you think, buddy? You cross the
Verrazano and it's all amateur hour to you? We get a few homicides
every year, a handful of rapes. Sure, Vinny got DNA. That's how come I
saw Kehoe. He had to come into the station house to be swabbed one
night. Cool as an ice cube. Never gave us a bit of trouble."

"And the deceased?"

"Nothing left of what was once his body to compare to anything
or anybody. Waterlogged bones inside of a zoot suit. Fishes and frogs
got to him first."

I walked to Joe Berk's desk and picked up the phone to call
Serology.

A technician answered and I identified myself. "I've got an
urgent request. I need you to drop whatever you're doing to examine two
samples tonight. I need you to make a comparison to some evidence in
the Metropolitan Opera murder case."

The tech rambled an objection while Mike smiled at me, the
biggest grin I'd seen on his face in months. "That's the Coop I know. I
can hear those steel balls clanging against each other even while
you're standing still."

"Well, either you call Dr. Thaler at home or I will, but we're
going to get this done before your shift is over tonight."

The tech continued his protest.

"I know there's a court order forbidding comparisons of crime
scene evidence to suspects in the linkage database, and you have my
word that I'll deal with the judge first thing tomorrow morning. In
person. If anybody's held in contempt of court, you won't be the first
one behind bars. That'll be me. I'm going to give you the names and
case information and you tell me how fast you can get this done, okay?"

I told him what he needed to know, then hung up the phone and
grabbed Frank Merriam in a bear hug.

"Some globally endangered mint and a few skin cells on the
outside of a man's glove," Mike said. "Didn't look like much at first,
but it's beginning to smell a little bit like probable cause."

"No one in or out upstairs," Mike said to Frank, putting the
key to the bedroom door back in the desk. "Lawyers should be crawling
all over this place by tomorrow morning. They'll be more of them
carving up Berk's empire than there are maggots on a dead rat."

Briggs had agreed to go back to his own apartment to spend the
night.

Frank had taken off his trench coat and settled in behind
Berk's desk.

"Watch out for the ghosts, Frank."

"And exactly which ones would they be, counselor?"

"Belasco's ghost. The theater downstairs is supposed to be
haunted. Now that Berk's dead, there might be two spirits floating
around. Could be a traffic jam, with the size of those egos."

"Well, Alex, you know me and floating spirits. Sounds more
like a cocktail than a fright."

I drove the Crown Vic back uptown to City Center while Mike
made some calls. He found out that there were two detectives on a fixed
post in front of the loft where Mona Berk and Ross Kehoe lived, but the
guys had no idea whether they'd arrived there before or after Berk went
inside. They had no sightings of either resident.

"Beep me the minute you see anything," Mike said before he
hung up. "They're right, though, Coop. It's dinnertime. Eight o'clock.
If Berk and Kehoe are out eating somewhere, they may not show up for
hours. I gotta assume Peterson has her office covered, too."

He dialed the lieutenant's number, but someone else in the
squad answered. Peterson was out on his meal, so Mike passed the
message along to the colleague who had answered the phone.

I took Eighth Avenue uptown. We needed to go east on 56th
Street, since only the entrance to the office tower—not the
theater— would be open at this hour of the night.

I was parking the car when someone entering the building
caught my attention. "Did you see that?"

"What?"

"Going into City Center. Wasn't that Chet Dobbis?"

"Can't tell. I just caught the back of his head."

I locked the door and threw the keys over the hood to Mike.
"I'd swear it was Dobbis."

"He used to work here, according to Hubert Alden, before he
went to the Met."

"But no longer," I said, crossing the street to follow him
inside.

The guard sitting behind the desk smiled at Mike and me as we
walked in. We had no idea where we were going but he didn't seem to
care.

"Excuse me," I said as Mike flashed his badge.

"Go right on ahead," he said, not looking up from his
solitaire hand.

"You give new meaning to the word
security
.
We're looking for my partner, Detective Wallace. You know where he is?"

The guard picked up a piece of paper and pushed the phone to
Mike. "He said for you to call him when you got back. The director is
letting him use her secretary's desk. Just dial extension
two-nine-nine."

"And that man who just came in before we did?" I asked. "Was
that Mr. Dobbis?"

"Was it who?"

"How long have you worked here? Was it the former director,
Chet Dobbis?"