Death Dance (24 page)

I had learned the story of the creation of the first
Metropolitan Opera on my earliest trips to Lincoln Center. After the
Civil War, the old guard who ran the academy, which had been the
premier showcase for European and American opera performers in America
until that time, had rejected the attempts at membership—and
the petroleum money—of the nouveau riche: the Vanderbilts,
Goulds, Astors, and Belmonts. The wealthy upstarts organized their own
guild uptown, sending the Academy of Music into financial ruin and
leaving on its site the Con Edison plant that still operates on 14th
Street today. And opening night at the Met was so sparkling an
event— women brilliantly gowned and jeweled—that
the parterre boxes that held the rich patrons werethereafter called the
Diamond Horseshoe. Undoubtedly, an Alden ancestor had been in that
crowd.

"So in your particular case, what did the half a million get
you?"

"Talya's attention, certainly. She was great company, Mr.
Chapman. Remarkably smart and uniquely talented, beautiful to look at,
great to be with."

"And her husband, he didn't get in the way?"

"Talya's husband hasn't been relevant for more than a decade.
Lovely chap, as they say across the pond. He'sbeen in a wheelchair
since he suffered a stroke—he must be close to eighty years
old—and I have to say he's getting a bit gaga. He's got an
attendant around the clock and wants for nothing."

"So what was the attraction there?" Mike asked.

"Money, when the old boy had it. But those days are long gone."

"Friday evening, the night Talya was killed, were you at the
performance?"

"No, actually. I wasn't even in town, I've got a place outside
Vail, and I flew out for the weekend. I didn't even know she'd been
killed until Sunday evening."

Mike gestured toward the stage of the Imperial. "What's your
interest here?"

Hubert Alden sighed. "You may know that Talya was pressing to
play this role—the Evelyn Nesbit part—if the show
got to Broadway. Joe Berk had been calling me to try to talk her out of
it. Gave me the script to read. Have you seen it?"

"No."

"There's another role we all thought would have been perfect
for Talya. She just didn't take it very well when Joe Berk and Rinaldo
Vicci told her about it."

"Why?" I asked.

"It's the part of Evelyn Nesbit's mother, Ms. Cooper. The next
act of the show is really all about how Evelyn's mother took control of
things after the murder. She was a very young woman, in fact—
younger even than Talya was now. Thirty-something—quite
glamorous herself and extremely manipulative. The Thaws bought her
off—lots of mink, lots of jewelry. The second act is all
about Evelyn and her mother, and what was known at the time as the
murder trial of the century. Borrows heavily from that razzle-dazzle
number in
Chicago
, but you don't often get an
original thought on Broadway anymore, do you? And how can you lose an
audience with a media circus, an insanity defense, and an attorney
named—um…" Alden said, snapping his finger.

"Delphin Delmas."

"Very good, detective. I guess murder really is your beat."

"I take it Talya didn't like that idea."

"The talons came out. She was furious with all of us."

"But she's dead, Mr. Alden," Mike said. "Why are you still in
this game? You got another horse in the race?"

"I've backed a lot of shows for many different producers. I've
watched the Berk family splinter itself into factions for years. Any
time two of them are fighting over the same property, there's always a
chance to step into that wedge and pick up a bargain. I've listened to
Joe's tirades for as long as I've known him, so I thought I'd come see
if Mona had anything going for herself."

"She invited you?"

"Mr. Vicci is the one who called. Rinaldo Vicci. Talya's
agent."

"Depends on which way the wind was blowing, didn't it, whether
or not he represented her?"

"Talya? She'd come back to him. She always did."

"Were you here today to see Lucy DeVore?"

"I didn't know anything about the kid. Didn't Rinaldo tell you
that Talya had begged him for one chance to let Mona Berk see what she
looked like in the leading role? Didn't he tell you that it was
supposed to be Talya Galinova up there on that broken swing this
afternoon?"

"Can we stop for a hot dog? I'm starving."

"Sure. But I've got no appetite. I'd like to go by Lucy's
apartment and see whether there's any contact information for her
relatives there."

"I'll be quick," Mike said, watching as the street-cart vendor
fished two boiled franks out of the murky water in his stand. "So how
do you figure the swing?"

"I don't. Did you notice anything when you looked at it?" I
said, taking the Diet Coke that Mike bought me.

"Yeah, but I can't tell whether it's just old rope or somebody
intentionally hacked away at it. It gave out on one side and the wooden
board—the seat holding Lucy—flapped back, dropping
her on the stage like a rock. That analysis of the rope is a job for
the lab."

"And if it was a setup, the question is whether it was meant
for Talya. Might even have been a safety valve—to make sure
she was dead by today—in case the killer missed her at the
Met Friday night."

"Not a bad thought," Mike said, drowning the second dog in a
mound of sauerkraut.

"No thanks," I said to a toothless man passing out cards
advertising an Eighth Avenue strip club. While Mike enjoyed his late
lunch, I gave directions to a group of high school kids looking for
video arcades and waved away a Jehovah's Witness who was hoping to
convert me in rapid fashion beneath an overhead neon sign that
advertised girls! live! nude! girls!

"We stay here long enough, you could get lucky."

"And you could get ptomaine poisoning."

He wiped his mouth and we were ready to move on. "You got an
address on Ninth?"

I looked at Lucy's identification again and read him the
number. "That's close by. Should be in the forties."

We cruised west on 45 th Street, turning south when we came to
Ninth Avenue, as we noted the descending numbers on the buildings. At
the corner of 42nd Street, in front of the drab doorway of the
four-story structure, bracketed by the graffiti on adjacent
storefronts, Mike braked the car and pulled over to park in a loading
zone.

"Jesus. I can't believe it. The Elk? That kid must be
desperate."

The flashing red neon sign above the grim entrance just said
the word hotel. Both Mike and I had handled scores of cases there in
our careers, and knew the more appropriate label for the shabby little
place was
flophouse
.

"This is about as far from the Broadway stage as you can get
in three blocks," I said. "You want to check? Maybe it's a mistake."

Before the Disneyfication of 42nd Street, the area around
Times Square had been full of joints like this. The Elk was the last
one standing after a period of rapid development. It had a few
permanent residents, and a dozen or so guestrooms in which a tourist
might mistakenly show up in appreciation of the forty-dollar-a-night
price for a mid-Manhattan accommodation.

But most of the rooms were rented by the hour to professionals
of another sort who didn't mind that the only furniture in the cubicle
was a bed and nightstand—no phone, no TV, no air
conditioner— and that the communal bathrooms were down the
hall, shared by the usual assortment of hustlers, hookers, pimps, and
junkies.

We got out of the car and walked up the staircase that led to
a locked glass door. I stepped around a couple of winos and a methadone
addict nodding out, following as Mike forged a trail for me around
discarded liquor bottles and empty crack vials.

The man on the desk buzzed us in and Mike flashed his badge.

"Somebody call about trouble? I got no trouble," the clerk
said in his clipped Pakistani accent. "Somebody call you?"

"No, no. We're trying to help a young woman who's been hurt.
She may be staying here."

"Hurt here? No, no," he said, shaking his head with great
conviction.

"No, m'man. Hurt somewhere else. An accident. We need to find
her family. Her name is Lucy DeVore."

"Ah. Miss Lucy. She get hurt? She going to be all right,
detective?"

"I hope so. You want to tell me how long she's been here?"

"Of course. We don't want any trouble with police," the clerk
said, looking through his box of index cards for the handwritten notes
on his long-term residents.

Stabbings, shootings, rapes, homicides—the denizens
of places like the Elk brought those crimes along with them the way
ordinary travelers carried luggage. Generally speaking, the law-abiding
clerks who manned the desk were cooperative with law enforcement,
knowing they relied on the quick response of the local precinct when
the bullets started flying and bodies fell.

Mike looked at the notes scribbled on the card. "Looks like
she's been here about three weeks. Is that right?"

"Three weeks, sir. Very right. Very nice girl. No trouble."

The spaces for previous address were all blank. There was
nothing except the date in March that Lucy had arrived and the room
number assigned to her—noting that it had the extra feature
of a hot plate. The rate was two hundred fifty dollars for the month,
far less than most people in this part of town paid to park their cars.

"She paid in advance?"

"Yes, sir. Cash. That's the red check mark on the card.
Everybody does," the clerk said, pressing the buzzer to admit a hooker
as she waved her room key against the glass. She blew a kiss at him and
took the hand of the raggedy-looking man who accompanied her inside,
wagging her spandex-covered ass at him as he stopped behind her to
catch his breath on the next flight of stairs. They were on their way,
no doubt, to the two-hours-for-twenty-five-dollars "short stay" rooms,
from which so many of my cases had developed.

"Nobody bothered her here?" I asked.

"Oh, miss. Many people would like to bother her," he said
,
laughing. "She ignores everyone. Very nice to me. Very nice."

"Anyone visit her?"

He shook his finger in my face. "Not that way. No visitors.
None at all."

"We need to go up to her room."

The clerk looked from Mike's face to mine. "For sure it's
okay? Miss Lucy coming back soon?"

"Not too soon," Mike said, giving his card to the man.
"Anybody looks for her, you call me. And don't let anyone touch
anything in her room."

"But soon the next money she will owe."

Mike reached into his pocket and handed the clerk a bunch of
twenties. "Nobody takes anything from Miss Lucy's room. That money goes
toward the next month."

"Yes, sir," he said, putting the money in a locked drawer and
handing Mike a key. "Room three seventeen. You would like me to take
you?"

"We're okay." We walked up two flights of sagging wooden
stairs and halfway down the long corridor. Mike unlocked the door and
stepped inside. He flipped the switch and the bare overhead light-bulb
turned on.