Terminal City (6 page)

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Scully said, beginning with the routine assurances about the safety of the Waldorf Astoria and the full cooperation of management and staff.

He might have been talking about another body than the one I saw. The unidentified victim had been stabbed in the neck. No need to alarm the public by disclosing that her throat was slit from ear to ear. Uncertain about how she came to be in the Waldorf. Uncertain about which day and what time she died. Uncertain about whether she had anything to do with the hotel itself, either as a former employee or regular guest.

“How about a photo of the lady, Commish?” a tabloid reporter yelled out. “What’d she look like? How old is she?”

“You’ll have that tomorrow afternoon.”

“How long was she registered at the hotel?” another voice called from the back of the pack.

“There is no evidence that she was a registered guest this week.”

“A hooker, maybe?” That was the
New York Post
’s
veteran crime reporter, Mickey Diamond.

The NBC correspondent’s jaw dropped when he heard the question. The city’s crime beat set the low bar for gentility.

Keith Scully gave Diamond his best “drop dead” expression and pointed to one of the women who’d been sent by MSNBC.

“What do you intend to tell White House officials in preparation for the president’s upcoming stay here?”

“That the Waldorf Astoria is the safest place in town. I’d be more worried about the grizzlies in Yellowstone than the likelihood of running into anything dangerous in New York. That we hope to have this matter solved within days. We’re asking for everyone’s help, in calling the TIPS hotline and remaining anonymous if you choose to do that. The hotel is offering a”—Scully looked off to the right at the management representative to confirm the amount—“a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest.”

“Is that all?” Mickey Diamond shouted. “Mr. Hilton can do better. And would you tell us, Commissioner Scully, if the lady was sexually assaulted? We got a serial rapist on the loose?”

“This is a homicide, Diamond. That’s all you need for now. OCME will conduct an autopsy tomorrow.”

I knew Scully’s thinking. This news would be shocking enough. Let the medical examiner deal with the more sordid crime elements before making the panic message public. He was about to step down from the podium.

“But you’ve got Ms. Cooper warming up in the wings, Scully,” Diamond continued. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”

Keith Scully stopped himself in time to grab my elbow, rather than leave me alone and stupefied in the spotlights, and escort me off the platform, signaling to the corps that this was his last statement for the evening. “Battaglia sent us his on-call bureau chief. Just happens to be Ms. Cooper. We’re ready for anything.”

Uniformed cops led the commissioner, Pug, Mercer, and me through the hastily assembled group of reporters, past a few dozen startled hotel guests who were being questioned by detectives as they emerged from elevators, and took us back into Peacock Alley. At this hour, the stately room would normally be full of thirsty New Yorkers, throwing back late-night martinis or dining on the signature Waldorf salad. But the NYPD had closed down the chic bar early, depriving the hotel of a significant amount of revenue—as this entire tragedy would doubtlessly do. I looked wistfully at the bottles of Scotch lined up behind the empty bar.

“Anything else to do tonight, Alexandra?” Scully asked. His next meeting would be with his top commanders and the mayor.

“Just a late supper and a good night’s sleep. Rocco gave us all our marching orders.”

“I’m taking off. See you tomorrow.”

Scully’s security detail guided him out through the lobby, past the windows of the expensive jewelry store within the hotel—the scene of an armed robbery a few years back—and down the escalator toward Lexington Avenue.

As soon as he was out of the way, Sergeant Tatum began to usher in those of his men who were interviewing guests, turning Peacock Alley into a makeshift squad room. Several gents in black tie were separated and taken to tables in the rear, while two young couples dressed for a casual summer city night were squawking about being inconvenienced by the police stop.

I waited till Pug busied himself with some of his colleagues before taking Mercer aside.

“Where does a girl go to get a drink around here?”

“I hear you.”

“I’m not sure I could put down any food after that scene upstairs, but I’m having a nightcap here or at home.”

“This place isn’t an option. Start walking.”

We took the same route as the commissioner. The reporters had all scattered to the sidewalk on Park—a far more scenic shot—to do their stand-ups beneath the glittering gold lettering of the hotel name carved into the stone facade, flanked by two giant American flags.

Mercer got on the down escalator backward, looking up at me as he rode to the ground floor. “Mike’s waiting for us at Patroon. At the rooftop bar.”

I tossed my head back to avoid locking eyes with Mercer.

“It’s his mother, Alex. He flew home early because she’s in the hospital.”

Mercer was Mike’s best friend. They had worked together in homicide for years, until Mercer asked for a transfer to Special Victims. Like me, he enjoyed trying to put the pieces back together, restore dignity to those witnesses least likely to expect it from the system, and see them triumph in a court of law.

Mike, on the other hand, held his emotions close. It was more natural for him to unravel the mysteries surrounding a dead man’s dilemma than to try to comfort someone alive but traumatized by an assailant.

I bit my lip and nodded that I understood.

“You think he dissed you? Is that it?”

Still on the long descent to street level, I could look straight ahead and not make eye contact because Mercer was below me on the moving staircase. “It’s been almost two months.”

“Then think how Mike feels. Gets a very public whooping from the department,” he said, glancing over his shoulder to step off the moving staircase, “just when he’s breaking a major case that seemed impossible to crack.”

The hot air blasted my face like the exhaust from an oven when we walked onto Lexington Avenue. Patroon, my favorite restaurant, was a short walk—only three blocks from the Waldorf—with the most fantastic rooftop bar that was truly an oasis on a steamy Manhattan evening.

“For some reason, Mercer, he turned a three-week rip into a two-month odyssey abroad.”

“Feeling sorry for yourself, Ms. Cooper? Sounds like a slight whine dripping into that sultry, rarely-on-the-losing-side-of-an-argument, jury-box delivery.”

“But—”

“When’s he ever going to get a chance—or the time—for a trip like that?”

“Not till he retires, I guess.”

“And that’s a word you can’t say to him.” Brian Chapman had been determined to see that his son had a college education and didn’t wind up in uniform. Within twenty-four hours of retiring, he died of a massive coronary. Mike got his degree but immediately applied to the NYPD and started at the academy. Police work was as much a part of his DNA as the physical traits he inherited.

“Ten years of carefully balancing our relationship, I go out on a limb and all I wound up doing with Romeo was having a go at footsie in a rowboat, chaperoned by half of Manhattan North and a flotilla of EMTs.”

“The man is all nervous about you. You get that, don’t you?”

“About
me
?” I reached out and grabbed Mercer’s handkerchief, dabbing my own forehead after he wiped his brow.

“Other-side-of-the-tracks thing going on. Upstairs, downstairs. Mike’s blue-collar as far back as the family tree roots grow in county Cork, and you’ve got a trust fund that so far as I can tell could have helped with the Louisiana Purchase.”

“
Et tu,
Mercer? That really stings.”

He pulled me back to the curb as a taxi swerved toward us when I tried to cross Lex against the light.

Mercer knew my family well. My maternal grandfather had been a fireman, and my mother—descended from Finnish immigrants who were farmers—had been a nursing student with a great head for medicine, green eyes that caught everyone’s attention, and long legs that she passed on to me. My father, Benjamin—whose ancestors had fled Russia a century ago—was a brilliant physician who, with his partner, had invented a plastic tubing device that was used worldwide in a certain type of cardiac surgery. The Cooper-Hoffman valve had been a godsend to patients and had provided my family with a financial cushion that not only paid for my college education, as well as that of my brothers’, but also allowed me the privilege of dedicating a legal career to public service.

“Just sayin’, Mike’s finding it all a bit intimidating.”

“It’s not like he doesn’t know me better than I know myself.”

“Hey, girl. Vickee and I assumed you’d road tested and rejected all the warm and fuzzy types, the Latin lovers like Luc who
darling
’ed you to death. You have deliberately chosen new territory. Going Wolverine on us. Brooding, moody, and pound for pound the toughest creature out in the wild. You ought to realize you’ve settled on the most solitary animal I know. Anybody else in your world live in a black box?”

Mike’s studio apartment, not very far from the high-rise co-op in which I lived, was such a tiny walk-up—dark and short on décor—that he had long ago dubbed it “the coffin.”

We were approaching the front of Patroon. The owners, Ken and Di Aretsky, were dear friends of mine who made us comfortable whenever we arrived, and I had a mad crush on Stephane, the maître d’ who saw to it that my glass was never empty.

“Why is it we women always think we can change guys?”

Mercer pulled open the heavy red door. “I know you like a challenge, Alex, but there’ll be no turning this dude into something he isn’t.”

The super-efficient hostess, Annie, kissed me on both cheeks before turning me over to Stephane, whose French accent charmed all comers. “Very late for you two, no?” he asked. “Monsieur Chapman is waiting for you on the roof.
Ça va?”

“
Très bien,
Stephane
,
” I said, as he led us to the small elevator.

On the fourth-floor rooftop, a smartly designed space featuring an enormous wraparound bar cooled by a canopy holding large overhead fans, Mike was in an animated conversation with Ken Aretsky. The gaggle of thirtysomethings that made this site such a popular attraction was still three deep, many of them sipping pastel-colored confections while hatching hookup plans.

“This looks too serious for me,” Ken said, holding up both hands and yielding his stool to me as Mercer and I approached. “Mike was just telling me about the murder. You three have your work cut out for you.”

Ken caught the bartender’s attention and circled his finger in our direction before tapping his chest. The first round was his treat. He moved on to greet other customers as we started to talk.

“Dewar’s on the rocks for me,” I said.

“Double down on Blondie’s drink, will you?” Mike said, ordering another Ketel One martini for himself and one for Mercer.

I had an elbow on the tall mahogany bar, and Mike stood a foot away, his back against the brick wall of the building.

“I want to explain—”

“Not necessary,” I said to him, watching the bartender pour.

“Peace between you two before I get back from the men’s room, okay?” Mercer said, walking away.

Mike reached for my hand and turned me toward him. He crooked his forefinger and wiggled it, summoning me to come closer to him.

I laughed. “You actually think I’ll respond to your silent commands?”

“It used to work for me. Have I lost my touch?” Mike put his hands on my arms and drew me toward him, picking my head up to kiss me on the mouth.

I broke away and smiled, licking my lips. “They make a good martini here. Do I only get that little taste?”

He pulled me close again and we kissed. Then I rested my head against his chest.

“I’ve missed you, Mike. Seven weeks is a long time.”

“For me, too. I didn’t mean to put you in the middle of things tonight. In the hotel suite with Rocco and the guys, to just show up like that. Scully sniffed me out, heard I’d come back to town and—”

“I get it. I didn’t think you were flying in until Friday, so I was just totally off guard. We still on for Saturday?” As much as I didn’t want to be the one asking that question about our long-awaited romantic dinner, I was too anxious about the time gone by not to know.

“Sure we are. Sure,” he said, stroking my hair, which had curled into ringlets around my neck. “It may be sandwiches in the squad room till Pug collars the bastard who did this, but—”

“Your mother,” I said, pushing back. “Tell me about your mother. That’s the most important thing.”

“She’s going to be okay. Bad scare, and my sisters called me to come home.”

“What is it? Her heart again?”

“Yeah, it’s the ticker. Aortic fibrillation.”

“You should have let me know. I would have been happy to take a shift by her bedside.” Growing up as a cardiac surgeon’s daughter, I probably knew as much about A-fib as any amateur. And I adored Mike’s mother, to whom he was devoted.

Mike smiled his best grin at me. “She’d have liked that, Coop. I just didn’t think to do it. No surgery, though. They just changed her meds. Another forty-eight hours in ICU to monitor her and she goes home. You can call her next week.”

Mercer was making his way back to our side of the bar. We picked up our glasses to clink against his.

“That’s a happier sight,” Mercer said as I stepped out of Mike’s embrace. “I almost hate to break it up.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said, savoring the cold shot of Scotch and thinking of a warm night on top of the Arsenal in the park. “I just needed a little TLC from Detective Chapman. Rooftops are a good place for us, don’t you think?”

“I wasn’t afraid of intruding on your intimacy, Alex. I just had a call from Pug. A couple of transit cops found some derelicts hauling around a beat-up piece of luggage, a couple of blocks from the hotel, on Madison Avenue. It’s big and it’s empty—”