Entombed (26 page)

"Why is that site so
important to you?" Mercer asked.

Zeldin sighed. "From a
historical point of view, and a cultural one, the places any great man
lived should be preserved. In January of 1845, 'The Raven' was
published. It brought Poe enormous acclaim, of course, and the fame
he'd been longing for. It was that very same year he moved into the
building on Third Street from uptown-from Brennan's farm in the West
Eighties.

"You've seen that
place? Can you imagine what works, what brilliant writings were created
in those tiny, inhospitable rooms he rented?" Zeldin paused. "But then
I suppose you care nothing about that. It's what keeps you in business."

"What do you mean?" I
asked.

"If the lawsuit had
not been lost, if the building had not been demolished, well-you'd
never have come upon that skeleton. It would have been interred behind
the brick wall forever, as its killer intended."

"And what do you know
about the bones? About those intentions?"

"Nothing more than
what I've read in the newspaper and discussed with some of the
society's members. We're interested, obviously," Zeldin said, gesturing
at Mike with his glass.

"Poe only lived there
for one year. What's your interest in that particular place?"

"Yes, Mr. Chapman,
just a year. But do you know what he wrote in that house on Third
Street?"

We each shook our
heads.

"The most exquisite
meditation on passion and revenge ever created. A tale called 'The Cask
of Amontillado.'"

"Of course," I said.
It was one of the most famous of Poe's tales, and I had studied it in a
literature course at college. "The narrator entombs someone who has
betrayed him behind a brick wall. Buries him alive, laughing while the
man screams to be freed. Why is it he did that to his victim?"

Now my mind flashed to
images of the young Aurora Tait, left to die inside the very same place
where that story was created.

Zeldin's Latin was
perfect. "The family motto, Miss Cooper.
Nemo me impune lacessit.
'No one insults me
with impunity.'"

"Maybe we're on the
same page," Mike said. "Is there anyone associated with the society
whose name or nickname is Monty? Maybe going back twenty or thirty
years?"

"Why do you ask?"

"One of the victims
involved may have had a boyfriend named Monty."

"I would guess he was
pulling her leg, Detective. It would be a wonderful joke for the killer
to take that name, for either of two reasons. There's amontillado
itself."

"Sherry?" I asked.

"Exactly. A blend of
pale, dry sherry from the Montilla region of Spain. It was casks of
this wonderful rare drink that the storyteller invited his prey down
into the catacombs to sample. He wanted to get his victim intoxicated
enough to pass out, but then have him come around in time to see that
the last bricks were about to seal him in forever."

I could imagine Aurora
Tait, being lured into the basement on Third Street by someone she had
betrayed, with the promise of some pure smack or a stash of high-grade
cocaine.

"And then there's the
name of the killer himself," Zeldin said. "Don't you remember, Ms.
Cooper? Montresor. Poe called him Montresor."

"Monty," Mike
whispered. "All the time I'm looking for a guy called Monty, like that
was really his given name. If he was Emily's boyfriend, and if he did
kill Aurora Tait, he was probably just playing with people's heads,
counting on the fact that the junkies in his little self-help group
wouldn't have a clue about the stories of Edgar Allan Poe."

"I'm just commenting
on the irony of finding the poor woman in that particular location,"
Zeldin said, backing off a bit, "and here you people are trying to
connect it with someone named Monty."

"I got to catch up on
my reading," Mike said. "Meantime, if you come across any tales by Poe
where someone is killed going over a gorge and pummeled to death in a
vortex, be sure and let me know. Once might be a coincidence, twice
could be a plan."

"Sounds more
Sherlockian than Poe, doesn't it? Professor Moriarity and the great
Holmes, struggling with each other at the Reichenbach Falls," Zeldin
said. "But then you'll want to move my crutches out of the corner, take
down that slim lavender volume of Poeiana on the end of the third shelf
and read a bit of it, Mr. Chapman. The story you're looking for is in
that collection."

26

I had never read "A
Descent into the Maelstrom," but a scan of the ten pages in one of
Zeldin's leather-bound first editions revealed a scene eerily similar
to Dr. Ichiko's last minutes on earth. It seemed characteristically Poe
to describe "how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner,"
and then have the narrator watch his own brother disappear into the
vast funnel and gyrations of the whirling water below.

At exactly 6
P.M.
, a housekeeper in a gray uniform
knocked on the library door. She announced to Zeldin that his physical
therapist had arrived and was awaiting him in the exercise room. He
looked at us and asked what we wanted him to do.

"Most people I know
start their drinking after they work out," Mike said, with his usual
skepticism.

"I've got a
degenerative nerve condition, Detective. It actually relaxes me to sip
on some wine before we go do the therapy."

"May we continue this
conversation tomorrow?" I asked.

"Of course, Ms.
Cooper. In the meantime I shall inquire about the release of the list
of society members' names. And you three should brush up on your Poe."

"Here, at nine
o'clock?"

"Actually, I had
planned to spend the day at my office tomorrow," he said, as the
attendant wheeled him to the door of the spacious room. "You'll find
that quite interesting, in light of the death of Dr. Ichiko."

"Why's that?" Mike
asked.

"For years until I
retired I was the head librarian in the rare books department at the
Botanical Gardens," Zeldin said.

Mike was on his way to
the door to put the brakes on the wheelchair. "You were at the gardens
and yet you didn't know anything about Ichiko's death until you read it
in the newspaper?"

"Mr. Chapman, I was in
the Mertz Library at an acquisitions meeting all afternoon. By the time
my driver came to take me home at four o'clock in the afternoon,
according to the published accounts, the poor man's body hadn't even
been discovered. The first I knew of it was the morning papers. Julia,
please-let's show these people out and get on with my session."

"And this morning," I
asked, thinking of our near-miss at the Hall of Fame, "were you in the
Bronx again today?"

"Alone here with my
books all day. Julia will be only too happy to confirm that."

The housekeeper nodded
as she held the door open for us.

"Nine o'clock?" I
repeated.

"At the library,
inside the Mosholu Parkway gate and turn left."

Once again we were out
on a stoop in the cold. "I'm hungry," Mike said, "and everything aches.
My tailbone, my pride, my stomach. I need a good steak."

We split up in two
cars and met a few blocks away, on Forty-sixth Street, to have dinner
at Patroon. This mecca for power business diners and elegant parties
had long been a favorite. The waiting area was packed and the hostess
was alarmed that we had no reservation.

"Hey, Mike, c'mon
upstairs for a drink." The owner, Ken Aretsky, was waving to us from
the staircase. We squeezed in through the crowd and walked one flight
up to the lounge, past the stunning collection of elegant
black-and-white photographs of Manhattan from the forties and fifties.

No matter how packed
with tycoons and traders the restaurant was, Ken always made us feel
welcome. Within minutes, we each had a drink and a quiet corner in
which to catch up on our thoughts.

"Salut," Mike said,
clicking our glasses together. "To a peaceful end of a busy day."

"Now how are we going
to figure out how to put all these pieces together?" I asked.

"You're the literature
major. What do you know about Poe? There's too strong a connection here
among Aurora Tait, Emily Upshaw, and Dr. Ichiko to ignore it."

"I know the obvious-a
lot of the poetry, some of the stories. I know he was born in Boston,
and that his father's family was from Baltimore-which is where he died
and was buried. There's a Poe museum in Richmond, where he was raised,
before he went to school in Charlottesville."

"Did you ever know
about the New York City connection?" Mercer asked.

Mike answered,
"There's the place he once lived on West Eighty-fourth Street that
Zeldin mentioned. I handled a burglary on the block. Back in the 1840s
it was all a farm belonging to the Brennan family, like he said. I
think it's even called Poe Alley."

"It seems to me it's
worth letting Zeldin give us as much detail about the man as he can,"
Mercer said. "Maybe something, some little fact he suggests, will pull
things together for us. If it turns out Zeldin himself is in the mix,
all it does is give him more time to sink himself. I say we take
advantage of the fact that he likes to talk."

"You believe his
bullshit?" Mike asked.

"D'you see those
crutches in the library? They wouldn't be there if he wasn't capable of
getting out of the wheelchair. I want to know if he really can walk and
just how well, and what route his driver took home from the Botanical
Gardens office yesterday afternoon. The gorge isn't very far from where
he worked."

"Man, I'm looking for
the exercise routine that starts with marijuana and red wine."

"There are too many
links here to ignore," I said. "I agree-let him explain what he can
about Poe's life. Keep in mind that lots of great artists have their
clubs and cabals-the Baker Street Irregulars, the Wolfe Pack, Poirot's
Peers. I'm sure Tolstoy and Trollope, Mozart and Mahler, all have
followings."

"They don't
necessarily kill each other," Mike said.

"You guys need the
television?" Ken asked, coming through to check on us.

"Hey, we skipped it
last night. Check
Jeopardy!
and then we can order," Mike said.

By the time the final
category was announced, we had downed our first drinks and paused in
front of the large screen in the lounge.

"Scientific Theories,"
Alex Trebek announced.

Two of the three
contestants groaned along with each of us.

"I'll pass," I said.
"My weakest link."

"Nothing worse than a
coward," Mike said. "Ten each. That won't get us a bottle of water in
this joint."

The answer displayed
read that the Big Bang theory, accepted in the 1960s, was first
described in this prophetic work a century earlier.

"I'll take another
Grey Goose," Mike said. "Let's order some grub."

None of us even took a
guess as we watched all three players lose their bundles.

"No," Trebek told the
anthropology graduate student, who was the only one to venture a guess.
"Hubble came along a little later."

"This one surprised
me, too, gentlemen. What is 'Eureka'? 'Eureka,' remember that? In a
work called 'Eureka,' Edgar Allan Poe insisted that the universe
exploded into existence in 'one instantaneous flash' from a single
primordial particle." Trebek went on reading from his note cards.
"Amazing, folks, that this amateur stargazer-back in 1848-came up with
the version of the Big Bang that is still the best guess of
contemporary scientists."

"Ever get the feeling
that something was meant to be?" Mike asked. "It's frigging creepy to
be surrounded by this guy Poe-he's everywhere."

We had a table in the
back of the room on the first floor, near the kitchen. I sat by myself
while Mercer went to call Vickee to tell her he'd be home late, and
Mike tried to find Valerie on the Western ski slopes.

We each ordered New
York strip sirloins-the sixteen-ouncers for the guys and the
twelve-ounce for me. Mike piled on onion rings and cottage fries, and
Ken spoiled us by sending over a superb Bordeaux from his fabulous
cellar.

"Who's going to call
Sally Brandon and break the news to her that Emily's kid knows that
Sally's not her birth mother?" Mercer asked.

"Sounds like woman's
work to me."

"I'll do it tomorrow
afternoon. When Tormey is cleared medically, we've got to see if Emily
really called him, like her letter says," I said, then shifted gears.
"What's with Val?"

"She's over-the-top.
The family's all up in Canada, doing that heli-skiing stuff."

I laughed. "Guess
that's why you got left behind. Do they know her super-macho RoboCop is
afraid of flying in choppers?"

"Hey, I did it for you
once, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but that's
because I didn't ask you to jump out."

"Last year, Val was so
sick from the chemo that she couldn't make the trip with the rest of
them. That's why her father thought it was such a special gift for her
this time. She and her brother are like cowboys-you oughta see their
videos."

The fancy dinner was a
nice end to a day that had taken such an odd twist. We walked out of
the restaurant, the guys agreed to pick me up at eight-thirty as Mercer
got in his car, and Mike drove me up Third Avenue to drop me in front
of my door shortly before ten o'clock.

I hadn't been asleep
long when the telephone rang.

"I know you wouldn't
be happy if you heard this on the morning news," Mercer said.

I cocked an eye and
looked at the dial on the clock radio. One thirty-five
A.M.

"I guess you're not
calling to tell me you didn't enjoy dinner."

"I'm back in your
'hood. Our Silk Stocking Rapist tried again. East Eighty-first Street,
just off York. The girl Maced him, though, and he ran off."