Death Dance (10 page)

"Miss Galinova didn't work for you, did she?" Mike asked.

Berk dragged on the cigarette. "Footlights and fantasy, Mr.
Chapman. That's what I'm about. Anybody who ever walked the boards
wants to work for me."

The intercom buzzed again. Berk gave Mike a full palm now.
"Yeah, babe?"

He listened while the secretary told him who was on the line.
"Gotta take this call, guys."

Berk rested the cigarette holder in an ashtray and pressed his
fingers against his temple. "Bottom line, that's all I wanna know.
Yesterday you told me thirty-five. We going over that yet?" He waited
for an answer. "You kidding me? It's grossed over three billion
worldwide. Soup it up, Joey. Hands down, it's the most popular
entertainment property ever. Don't screw with me—I got a lady
here, Joey, or I'd tell you how I really feel."

"Can you hold these calls till we're done?" Mike asked.

"Hey, for thirty-five million, I'd suggest you hold your
questions till
I'm
done, buddy," Berk said,
turning his attention to me. "We're taking
Phantom of the
Opera
to Vegas. Custom-made theater at the Venetian, a
flying chandelier bigger than a boat, and very few people with Joe
Berk-size pockets who can make it happen. Broadway goes Vegas. Get a
hundred bucks a seat without even blinking."

"We were talking about Ms. Galinova," Mike said. "Look, Mr.
Berk, we understand you were at the Met last night."

"Absolutely."

"But missed the show."

"Not my thing, ballet. The music puts me to sleep, the broads
are too skinny for my taste, the boys run around with pairs of socks
wadded in their crotches to make themselves look like they're well
hung. Give me Shakespeare or give me schmaltz and I can pack you a full
house. Not the ballet."

"But you were going there specifically to see Ms. Galinova,
weren't you?" Mike asked.

"Talya invited me to the gala. Look, I tried very hard to make
it. She's a classy dame, but I got a schedule of my own. We had an
understudy going on in one of our shows last night and I had to see the
first act for myself to figure out whether she's got the stuff to take
over the lead. I was late for Talya's scene. So sue me."

"What happened when you arrived at the Met?"

"Nothing happened. Meaning what?"

"Meaning what did you do when you found out they wouldn't seat
you?"

"I thanked my lucky stars for my brilliant timing and went
back to the dressing room to wait for her."

"The ushers just let you inside? No problem?"

"Why? Some jerk didn't know me, I had to spend a few minutes
educating him? Next time he will."

"You knew where the dressing room was?"

"Yeah, sure I did. I've been there before."

"Recently?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talya wanted to talk to me, I went. She tad
time off during the rehearsals, I went."

"To talk about ballet?"

"Don't be funny, detective. I told you that doesn't interest
me. Talya needed Joe Berk, Mr. Chapman, not the other way around," he
said, poking his forefinger into his broad chest. "She wants to
be—wanted to be—in a production of mine. She wanted
me to make her a Broadway baby."

"Any show in particular?"

"That would make a difference to you? You want to put up ten
percent, be a backer?"

Mike was as annoyed as if Berk were scratching a fingernail
along a blackboard. "The only difference it would make is whether I
believe you."

"Like I have to worry if you do or you don't." Berk laughed.
"You know the story of the girl on the red velvet swing? Evelyn Nesbit."

I recognized the Nesbit name and knew she'd been involved in
some kind of scandal, but couldn't bring it to mind. Mike answered.
"Harry Thaw. Stanford White. The old Madison Square Garden. Sex,
infidelity, money, murder—the story's got it all."

"Bravo, detective. Opening-night seats for you, sir, on the
aisle. Murder, Miss Cooper. A good old-fashioned Manhattan murder. Your
detective friend clearly knows his true-crime stories. He'll tell you
later. Otherwise you'll have to buy tickets. You," Berk said, winking
at me, "I might invite you myself. Leave the coppers home."

Mike had majored in history at Fordham College. There was
nothing he didn't know about military history—foreign and
American—and his congenital fascination with the world of
policing made him an expert on New York's darkest deeds.

"It's a Broadway show?" Mike asked. "A homicide case that's a
hundred years old?"

"Eighteen, twenty months down the road I expect it will be. A
blockbuster musical. You're too young to remember
Sweeney
Todd
. Hey, look at
Chicago
. The
Weisslers, now they're fucking geniuses. Came to me with the idea to do
a show for Broadway about a dame who shoots her lover and I turned them
down flat. How many years running and nine touring companies abroad?
Forget about what the movie did to keep the show alive and kicking. The
Shuberts had more goddamn sense than I did, for once. What the hell was
I thinking? Murder set to music sells great."

Berk flicked his ashes. "I've got Elton John doing the score,
Santo Loquasto on the costumes—gowns, furs, that famous
bearskin rug— and the swing will be gaudier than the bullshit
chandelier they're building for
Phantom
in Vegas,
How does that song go? All I need now is the girl."

"Talya Galinova?" I asked.

"Ask Mr. Chapman to fill you in on the story, Miss Cooper.
Evelyn Nesbit was one of the most gorgeous dames of her day. But she
was only sixteen years old when all of this happened. Great role for an
ingenue. Talya? She would have been a bit too long in the tooth by the
time we launch this production. Give me nubile."

"Did she know that?" Or could it have been what they fought
about in the dressing room?

"It doesn't matter if she knew it. I certainly did."

"And Miss Galinova, she was glad to see you last night?" Mike
asked.

"They really sweat, you aware of that? You think it's all
floating around on your toes and flapping your wings out there onstage,
but those girls do some kind of workout. She came in all sweaty and
hot, dripping with perspiration. And very pissed off that I'd missed
the show. What a temper," Berk said, walking away from us and untying
the belt on his robe as he opened a door and turned on a light.

He had entered a bathroom, leaving the door ajar behind him
and continuing to talk to us as he urinated. "You can hear me, right?"

"A little too well. The city doesn't pay me enough for this,"
I whispered to Mike. "Remind me to tell Battaglia he owes me." I was
scoping the top of Berk's desk and the area of floor around my chair,
hoping to see a stray piece of his hair.

"Talya let me have it, unloaded on me like a shrew. Jeez, she
should have saved some of her strength for the guy who attacked her."

He was washing his hands now and I stood up to walk behind his
lounge chair to look at some photographs on the wall, thinking there
might be a few white hairs on the headrest that I could pocket for a
comparison to the ones Kestenbaum found with Talya's body.

When Berk emerged from the bathroom, he was still knotting the
robe around his thick waist. "You like that picture? It's me. You'd
never guess from that one, would you?"

The faded black-and-white image was of a toddler in knee
pants, holding his mother's hand, her dreary housedress blending into
the backdrop of their small, dreary house,

"Little Yussel Berkowitz. Taken more than seventy years ago,
back in Russia," he said, patting his hands against his bloated
abdomen. "It's been quite a ride, folks."

I could never have imagined that the child whose family
escaped some impoverished upbringing in what looked like a foreign
village would be sitting in his duplex apartment above one of the
theaters he owned, wearing a smoking jacket and matching green velvet
slippers with gold crests on the throat that looked like something the
Duke of Windsor might have worn at The Fort.

"We were talking about the argument you had with Ms.
Galinova," Mike said.

"Argument? Who told you anything like that?"

"Well, you said she was mad at you, that her temper flared.
I'm wondering whether it had to do with any of these professional
matters you've been discussing with her or if it was something more
personal."

"Personal what?" Berk plunged the tip of his cigarette into
the ashtray and ground it down until what remained fell out of the
holder.

Mike was getting short with him. "Were you and Miss Galinova
having a sexual relationship? Did this start as some kind of tiff that
got out of hand?"

"You got no business coming in here and insinuating I had
anything to do with whatever happened to Talya. You got no business
asking anything about my personal life," Berk said, looping one finger
over the belt of his robe and jabbing the other through the air in
Mike's direction. "Do you know who you're talking to? Do you know who I
am?"

Mike stared back at the red-faced impresario.

"Do you know who I am?" Berk's voice rose louder and louder,
each time he asked a question. "Do you know who I am? Do you?"

None of us spoke.

"Do you know… who I
am?"
Each
word spit out at us, spaced to reverberate in the room, underscoring
Berk's power and control.

"Yo, Mercer," Mike said, turning to look at us. "Do you know
who he is?"

Mercer shrugged and stared at Berk with the same implacable
expression Mike had.

Berk seemed ready to explode at my partners. I thought it was
time to intervene.

"Look, Mr. Berk," I said. "All we know is that you may have
been the last person to see Talya Galinova alive. Why don't you tell us
when you left her? The time, the place, who else was around."

Berk started walking back to the bathroom. "Argument? You
people are nuts. Like I have to take any kind of crap from an
over-the-hill ballerina? Like Joe Berk had the least bit of interest in
letting that bitch tell me how to run my operation? I walked out on her
screaming just like I'll walk out on you if you don't watch your place."

He was mumbling now as he again made no effort to close the
door that separated us. "Talk to my driver. He knows what time I got
into the car. Damn, I knew that rotten
corva
was
trouble."

Mike looked at me, puzzled by the word. "Italian?"

"Yiddish. It means 'whore.'" It had been my grandmother's
ultimate insult for any woman whose conduct she disdained.

Berk called out to us. "You want to know why Talya couldn't
keep her tights on, detective? Talk to Chet Dobbis. He spent way too
much time poking around where he shouldn't have been, all in the name
of art. Ha! Ask Mr. Dobbis where he was when it came time for last
night's curtain call."

We were standing on West 44th Street, under the marquee of the
Belasco Theatre, where Joe Berk's duplex apartment sat atop the 1907
neo-Georgian landmark. Diners looking for preshow bargains were jamming
the sidewalks as they studied menus in restaurant windows, and scalpers
trying to make a score were hawking tickets for tonight's return
engagement of Ralph Fiennes's
Hamlet
at three
times the going price.