Death Dance (15 page)

"I'm Mike Chapman. NYPD. This is Alexandra Cooper. Are you
a— um—related to Joe Berk?"

"Was I? Yes. Mona Berk. Joe was my uncle."

"I'm sorry about your loss, about his death—"

"I'll pass along your condolences to the rest of the family.
You waiting for the cartoons to come on or what?"

She positioned herself next to Mike, in front of the bank of
monitors.

"Maybe you can help tell us what we're looking at. Could it be
he's got cameras concealed in bathrooms or a dressing room in one of
the theaters your family owns?"

"That wouldn't surprise me. Joe Berk was a pig."

She took the remote from Mike's hand and clicked off the sets.
"I have no idea where those cameras are installed, and I still don't
understand why you two are here," Mona said, turning away from the
screen and batting her long black eyelashes at Mike.

"Routine. We were talking to your uncle yesterday about an
investigation. He apparently had my business card in his pocket so the
cops on the scene called me after they put him in the ambulance and the
EMTs took him away. Ms. Cooper and I came up here to see if we could
find any next-of-kin information so we could make the proper
notifications."

"Consider me notified."

"I was wondering, actually, how you got the news so quickly."

"My cousin was with his father when it happened. He called
some of us. Briggs and I are very close."

"Briggs?"

"Briggs Berk. Joe's son."

"Where is he now?"

"At the hospital, I guess, dealing with Joe's
affairs—the funeral home and all that. I didn't really expect
to hear from him after the first call. Anything else I can help you
with tonight?" Mona asked, walking in the direction of the staircase as
though hoping we would follow.

"I'm afraid we can't leave until we have some more
information," Mike said. "I'll have to complete all the paperwork for
the medical examiner's office."

She smiled at him. "Routine?"

"That's why they sent me here, Ms. Berk. Would you give me
your cousin's address and phone number, date of birth if you know it? I
take it he was a witness to the accident."

"Briggs is two years younger than I am. I guess that made him
twenty-six last November," she said, telling him the rest of the
information he asked for.

Mike held up the apartment key that the rookie had handed him
on our way in. "How'd you get in, Ms. Berk? We've got your cousin's
key, and we used it to come in through the front elevator. What's your
secret?"

Mike obviously didn't think the young woman had any more
authority to be in her uncle's apartment than we did and was holding
his ground rather than leave the place to some other family interloper.

Mona Berk leaned against the stair railing, "What do you know
about David Belasco?"

"Never heard of him," Mike said.

She held up her arms and waved around the open space. "This is
his home, detective. Belasco lived in it till he died. My uncle and his
oversized ego moved right in. Room to spare for his Napeolonic complex,
as you can see."

"Who's Belasco?"

"One of the great figures in the history of the American
theater, but I guess you didn't know that. He acted a bit and wrote
some plays, rode bareback in the circus, peddled patent medicine that
his mother cooked up in her own kitchen. He was entirely self-made, and
he went on to become one of the most prolific producers of his day.
Flamboyant? Belasco was outrageous. He's been dead since 1931. Uncle
Joe kind of saw himself as the second corning."

"How do you mean?"

"Belasco built this theater in 1907—the
second-oldest one in mid-town Manhattan. It's a jewel of an auditorium,
meant to be very intimate. Only four hundred and fifty seats in the
orchestra, another five fifty upstairs. Designed by the same architect
who built the Apollo."

The 125th Street theater that had a white-only admissions
policy when it opened as a burlesque house in 1914 was renamed the
Apollo twenty years later. A great showplace for black entertainers, it
had headlined Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and
Thelonius Monk, Aretha Franklin, and Gladys Knight. The two houses
could not have looked more dissimilar.

"And this apartment?"

"A few years after the theater opened, Belasco built this
ten-room duplex on top for himself to live in. That dome?" Mona said,
pointing above us to the rich tones of the stained glass. "It's by
Tiffany. That chair in Joe's office? It's a pew from the church where
Shakespeare worshiped in Stratford. Belasco was over the top. He
collected all this, but it was mostly broken up after he died. A lot of
the antique furniture was bought by Sardi's, to make a private dining
room."

"Berk bought it back?" Mike asked.

"First Uncle Joe bought the theater itself from the Shubert
Organization. You don't even want to know what he paid them for it.
Then he hunted down all the trophies—the artwork, the
furniture, the library."

"But why this theater? There's bigger ones in town. Aren't
they more profitable?"

"Joe fancied himself a great showman, just like Belasco. And a
ladies' man, too," Mona said, looking at me, maybe for the first time.
"The baby pink spotlight? Belasco invented it. Made all his girls look
good onstage. The first dimmers on a theatrical stage? Again, David's
idea to flatter the babes. Meanwhile, he paraded around town in a
bishop's robe and white collar. That's all he ever wore."

"Because he was religious?"

Mona dismissed me with a sneer. "Please. His father was Jewish
and his mother was a Gypsy from Spain. You can't see Joe's inspiration?
Here's Belasco—a guy who came from nothing, yet he was the
man who discovered Mary Pickford, Jeanne Eagels and Lillian Gish,
Lionel Barrymore and Katharine Cornell. He starred Humphrey Bog-art in
a Broadway play in 1929. You wanted to know how I came in without using
the front elevator that brought you upstairs?"

"Yeah."

"Belasco had that small lift installed after he moved in.
While the performances were going on in the theater, he'd send for his
favorite showgirl of the moment—sneak her up by this private
elevator—so he could ply her with oysters and champagne in
his bedroom and make love to her during the evening. Uncle Joe? Loved
that contraption. He's been doing the same thing right up until he
croaked, only he was too damn cheap to pay to oil the cables. Everybody
backstage knew exactly when he was getting serviced. The code on the
keypad never changed. Hit
J-O-E
and you wind up
right in Joe Berk's bed. Impresario and lecher. Lovely legacy for the
family, don't you think, Mr. Chapman?"

Mona Berk continued to descend the staircase. "Why don't you
throw on some lights?"

"If I knew where they were," Mike answered, following her down
the steps, "I'd be happy to."

"That makes two of us," she said, turning to face Mike and
putting her hands on her hips. "Now you can probably think like Joe
Berk. It's kind of a guy thing. Some sort of gadget, some flashy device
that would do the trick more dramatically than an ordinary switch."

"When was the last time you were here?" Mike asked, sensing
that Mona's visit was as exploratory as our own.

"It's been years. Since my father died, more than five years
ago," she said, pushing aside the folders on the desktop that we had
been looking through. "Ah, the Empress Josephine."

She held up a small statuette of Napoleon's consort that was
in a cradle next to the telephone. "I'm betting it's her breasts,
detective, what do you think?"

Mona Berk pressed on Josephine's chest and the lights went on
in wall sconces all around the room. She swiveled the nipples and they
dimmed. "At least Uncle Joe was consistent. He never let propriety
stand in the way of a quick feel."

"If you're so close to your relatives, why haven't you been
here in that long?"

"Close to my cousin, Mr. Chapman. As you can cell from my
profound lack of sympathy for the dearly departed, I' didn't have a lot
to do with my uncle."

"The business Joe Berk ran, isn't it a family enterprise?" I
asked.

"I'm sorry. Did you say your name was Alice?"

"Alexandra Cooper. Alex."

Mona Berk was saving all her charm for Mike. A few months ago
it would have worked well for her, but now he wasn't in the mood to
respond.

"Family? Don't make me laugh. We're not exactly cut out of the
pages of a Louisa May Alcott story," she said, parking herself in her
uncle's desk chair. "But that's probably more than you need to know.
You want to leave one of your cards for me, Mike? I'll call you if
there's any way you can be helpful. Maybe some security for the
funeral. That's going to be a mob scene."

"I don't do funerals, Ms. Berk. I'm a homicide cop."

He had Mona's attention now. "Homicide? Briggs told me this
was an accident. You said you were here for a routine notification.
What are you?"

"The investigation your uncle was helping us with is actually
a murder case. Maybe you heard about it on the news today."

"I don't listen to the news. It's too depressing. Who died?"

I looked at Mona Berk, slumped back in the oversize chair, a
ribbed turtleneck clinging to the outline of her well-toned body. The
bottom of the sweater didn't meet the top of her jeans, and she rubbed
the exposed crescent of her flat abdomen with her left hand. The only
thing that distracted me from the petulant expression on her face was
the large sapphire she sported on her ring finger.

"A dancer. Galinova. She was killed at the Metropolitan Opera
House."

"And what does that have to do with Uncle Joe?"

Mike sat on the edge of the desk. "First of all, Ms. Berk,
have you ever heard of Galinova?"

"You don't need to be all 'Ms. Berk.' I'm Mona, you're Mike,
she's Alice."

"Okay, Mona. Did you ever—"

"Talya? Is that the one they call Talya?"

"Have you ever met her?"

"Nope." Berk was pulling open desk drawers and flipping
through piles of paper, fidgeting mostly, rather than examining them
like Mike and I wanted to do.

"Did you know anything about her relationship with your uncle?"

"Professional? I didn't think he was into dance."

"How about personal?"

She grimaced. "Spare me the details. A classical ballerina
falling for his shtick? So how did she die?"

"She was accosted by someone backstage who got her to a remote
hallway upstairs. Tied her hands behind her back and threw her
headfirst down an air shaft."

"Awful," she said, covering her mouth with her hand. "That's
really awful. Joe had something to do with her?"

"I think she wanted to be in one of his shows," Mike said.

"Which one?"

"See, Mona? We ask you a few simple questions about the family
business and you're ready to show me to the door, but now you want
answers from us." Mike stood up and motioned me toward the elevator
door.

"Okay. The Berk Organization. The most dysfunctional family to
hit the boards since the Sopranos. What interests you about us?"

"I'm looking for links between your uncle and Galinova. He was
with her at the Met just a short time before she died, and witnesses
tell us they were arguing. It might have had something to do with a
plan she had to work with Joe," Mike said. "Maybe it's my own ignorance
about the theater. I always thought that producers were responsible for
the creative oversight of a show, and that the rich backers were like
silent partners. They didn't really have any influence on the creative
side."

"Angels, Mike. You're thinking about angels."

"Well, what was your uncle's role?"

Mona played with the dimmers on Josephine's chest and laughed.
"The last thing I'd call Joe is an angel. Not even a dead angel.
Anyway, Broadway has changed a lot. The angels
are
the producers. It's all economics, Mike. It's become so prohibitively
expensive to stage a show—millions of dollars in most
cases—that raising the money has become a huge burden."

She stood up and started to walk toward the elevator. "You
know what you need now to become a great producer? A checkbook. Find
material that's worked well before, package some popular talent with
familiar names that people will pay big ticket prices to come see. Why
do you think revivals dominate the Broadway theater? You don't need
ideas to produce them. You just need a deep pocket."

"And Joe Berk had that."

"So now you're going to tell me what show he was talking with
Talya about, aren't you?" Mona said to Mike.

"When I find out what it is, I'll let you know."

"If it's anything to do with a story about Evelyn Nesbit and
Stanford White, be sure and give me a call," she said, testing Mike now
but getting his best poker face. "That project is my idea and nobody's
going to steal it from me."

Mona pressed the button and the doors opened. "I take it we're
all leaving? I've got to be ready to help my cousin in the morning.
That nice young cop at the door won't let anybody in, if that's what
you're worried about."

I knew Mike wanted to stay but couldn't come up with a reason
to offer Mona Berk. We stepped into the elevator with her.

"Exactly how are you related?" Mike asked.

"My dad was Joe's older brother. Isidore Berk. Izzy."

"He worked with Joe?"

"Yeah, but my dad was the class of the business."

"And you, you're part of the organization?"

"I've got my own office. Around the corner—1501
Broadway. The Paramount Theatre building. Do you know it?"

"Yeah," Mike said. "That great-looking tower with the docks
and the globe? Sinatra's old hangout."

We were on the ground floor, in the narrow corridor that led
to the street. "Have you seen the house?" Mona asked. "I mean inside
the Belasco Theatre?"