Entombed (25 page)

"But the wound," I
asked, "wouldn't the antemortem injury look different than the
postmortem?"

"The doc says no. The
water causes more profuse bleeding, Alex, and it prevents clotting. So
the blood leaches out and makes it impossible to differentiate."

"Anything on time of
death?" Mike asked.

"Ichiko had
washerwoman skin," Peterson said, referring to the profound wrinkling
that occurs after long immersion. "But the doc tells me that can set in
earlier than I thought-maybe within half an hour-when the water
temperature is as frigid as the river is right now. This one's dicey.
On the good-news front, we may be able to lay Aurora Tait to rest."

"What happened?"

"Missing Persons found
an FBI report that's about twenty-five years old with that name on it.
They're sending the dental records out today."

"Is there any family?"
I asked. "Where's she from?"

"Parents are dead.
There's a brother back home. Outside of Minneapolis."

That hometown location
wouldn't surprise any old-timers in law enforcement. Before the 1990s'
cleanup and Disneyfication of midtown Manhattan at Forty-second Street
and Eighth Avenue, the area was known as the Minnesota Strip. Unhappy
teens from all over the Midwest would make their way to the big city,
most often by buses that disgorged them at the Port Authority building,
where seasoned pimps-acting as Good Samaritans-would embrace them,
offering to feed and shelter them until they found jobs and lodging.
Within weeks, those too weak to escape the grasp of these men would be
addicted to some form of drug and selling their bodies to pay the
price. Aurora Tait may well have been one of those girls.

"Look, Coop and I have
some things to take care-"

"First stop is a
change of clothes, and then you're taking her down there to see the
district attorney. He hates to be last to know about capers like these."

"You've spoken with
him?" I asked.

"Let's just say he
prefers it when he thinks you're sitting safely behind your desk. I
told him this shooter wasn't aiming for you," Peterson said.
"Nobody-not even Tormey-knew you were going to be at the college today,
did they?"

"That's right."

"Okay, Chapman. Take
her downtown before you do anything else."

"We need a lift back
to the Bronx so I can pick up my car."

Peterson sent us off
in an RMP-radio motor patrol car-and by two-thirty we were standing at
Rose Malone's desk, waiting for Battaglia to call us in.

"Hey, Mr. B," Mike
said, "how come you always miss the fireworks? You think all the
action's in the white-collar crap, while Coop and me are busy cleaning
up the mean streets. Well, howdy, Miss Gunsher. How'd you find your way
in here without holding on to McKinney's hand? I didn't know your sense
of direction was that sharp."

Of course Ellen would
be here for this. McKinney had to dump her somewhere once her lack of
courtroom ability had been memorialized in some lousy trial results a
few years back. He had created GRIP-the Gun Recovery Information
Project-a useless little unit that tried to imitate the feds'
successful efforts to track the illegal handguns that flooded the city
and were used to commit violent felonies.

"Good afternoon, Mike.
Alex," Ellen said, with undisguised gloating. She had undoubtedly told
Battaglia that we had ejected her from last evening's proceedings. He
continued to tolerate her as a staff member rather than acknowledge
that she had been one of his rare hiring errors-a "celebrity scion," as
we called them, whose mother had been a prominent reporter useful to
Battaglia in Ellen's early days, but of doubtful worth now since she'd
been fired from the network.

"I guess it would have
been stupid of me to think you might have been in court this morning,
Alex," Battaglia said. "Who's this professor you went to see?"

"His name is Noah
Tormey." Ellen was taking notes as I spoke. "I think Mike and I have
begun to make some serious progress on the investigation, Paul. My next
trial isn't scheduled until the first week of March. I'd like to stay
on this, if you don't mind."

"What kind of gun was
it, do you know?" Ellen asked Mike.

"It wasn't a handgun."

"Well, we're not
limited to tracing just those. My people can still be helpful."

"Can't you cooperate
with GRIP on this?" Battaglia asked. "I'm trying to get them on the map
so we can grab some federal funding for the program. Put the damn
personalities aside, stop sniping at each other and work together for
once. Alex, you're in charge."

"Sure. Let's go over
to my office."

Mike grabbed a Cohiba
from Battaglia's humidor. "Wish you'd been with us this morning, Ellen.
You'd probably have known whose rifle it was just by the sound of the
whoosh as it went by your ear. Thanks, Mr. B."

I knew McKinney was
determined to stay inside our operation and had engineered Ellen's
involvement as a backdoor move. He must have appealed to the district
attorney's tireless desire to get government money for prosecutorial
projects.

Mercer was waiting for
us inside my office. He lifted an eyebrow when Ellen trailed in behind
me. "So rumor has it the morning held some surprises. You guys okay?"

"Still standing, m'
man," Mike said.

"What's all the
paper?" I asked.

"Property records for
Third Street, and some university housing listings. It's going to be
tedious, but-"

"Ellen can start going
through those," I said, turning to her. "Pat and Scotty Taren know what
we're looking for. That's the part of the investigation Pat is so
keenly interested in, so he can fill you in. And your other assignment
is to work on Gino Guidi's lawyer. Pat made that stupid deal with him
last night and we need to undo it."

She started to protest.

"People are dying,
Ellen. D'you get it? You and Pat need to make it clear to Roy Kirby
that we can only protect his client if he helps us. Do it the easy way
or I hand him a subpoena and let him go to court to quash it."

"I'll talk to Pat,"
she said, picking up the stacks of files that Mercer had brought and
walking out of my office.

"What else?" Mike
asked Mercer.

"According to the
computer squad, if that was Teddy Kroon at the keyboard deleting
information from Emily Upshaw's machine before he called nine-one-one,
he managed to get a few files cleaned out. Whether he printed them out
for himself or just tried to erase any record of them is what we'll
have to ask," Mercer said.

He handed me a sheaf
of papers. Several seemed to be articles that Emily had been working on
at the time of her death. Mike and I could read those later.

The last page was a
draft of a letter to Sally Brandon-still incomplete-dated just days
before Upshaw's murder. Emily's daughter, given up at birth and raised
by Sally, had recently sent for her original birth certificate in order
to apply for a passport. From that, the girl learned the truth-that
Emily was her mother. She had called to ask if she could come to New
York, on her own, so they could meet.

In the letter, Emily
Upshaw revealed this startling new development to her sister, and also
said that she had called Noah Tormey a week earlier, to tell him that
she needed to see him.

25

The man who opened the
door at the East Fifty-fifth Street brown-stone to Mike, Mercer, and me
later that afternoon was seated in a wheelchair. Mercer identified
himself and asked if we could step inside.

"And who might you be
looking for, Detective?"

"I'm not certain of
that, but we'd like to start with you."

The man pushed back
from the door and admitted us. "I'm Zeldin. Does that help the three of
you?"

"Actually," Mike said,
"we're interested in something called the Raven Society. Do you know
it?"

Zeldin smiled broadly.
"Please come in and sit down. I'm always happy to talk about that."

I recognized the
Southern accent that I had heard on the answering machine message when
I pressed the recall button on Dr. Ichiko's phone the night of his
death.

He swiveled the chair
and led us into a room that had been rebuilt in the old town house
space to accommodate an enormous library. Hundreds of leather-bound
books and modern first editions in plastic-covered dust jackets lined
the walls. We drew three of the chairs together so that we were close
to our host.

"Mr. Zeldin," Mike
started, "is that a surname or-"

"It's just what it is.
Zeldin. No 'mister,' no other name."

There was no question
this man would be quirky. He was dressed in a dark burgundy smoking
jacket over a pair of nicely tailored gray slacks. The expensive
hairpiece had been purchased long enough ago that it didn't match the
new patch of gray growth coming in around its owner's ears. Zeldin was
probably close to sixty, but had fine skin that gave him a more
youthful appearance. The Beatles'
Sgt. Pepper
album was playing
on
his sound system and there was a strong scent of burning incense
overlaying what I guessed were the remains of a sweet-smelling
marijuana cigarette.

"We have some
questions about the society. In fact, we don't know anything at all
about it."

"I should hope not.
We're not known for our inclusivity, Detective." He looked at each of
our faces. "Am I allowed to ask what brings you here?"

"A phone call from a
dead man," Mike said.

Zeldin was no longer
smiling. "Who do you mean?"

"What's your telephone
number?"

Zeldin's answer was
the number Mike had taken off the cell phone.

"Who is it that called
you yesterday? Probably late afternoon, maybe a bit earlier."

"I wasn't at home,
Detective. I spent the day in my office. I've taken an early
retirement, but I've kept an office and I go in to it from time to
time."

"Do you have an
answering machine here?"

"Indeed. You can check
it yourself. The only messages yesterday were from my rare book dealer
and one hang-up call. Perhaps it's the latter you're referring to.
Perhaps it was a wrong number."

We could check the
length of the call from telephone records to determine whether it was
true that the call was a hang-up, by its short duration.

"What's the name of
the dead man?"

"He was a doctor,"
Mike said. "Wo-Jin Ichiko."

Zeldin scratched his
head, gently enough not to shift the position of the rug. "I don't know
that name."

"The news story
today-the one about the man who died in the Bronx River?"

"Yes, I heard about
that, but I didn't know the fellow. My office, in fact, is in the
Bronx."

I hesitated asking
what condition confined Zeldin to a wheelchair and wondered whether he
was remotely capable of sending someone to his death at a rugged crime
scene. But there would be time for Mike and Mercer to come back to that.

"Why don't we start at
the beginning. What is the Raven Society?" I asked.

Zeldin wheeled himself
to a cabinet and opened the door to reveal a wet bar, constructed at
the height of his chair. "A glass of wine, anyone?"

We all declined and
waited while he poured himself some Burgundy.

"The society was
formed a century ago to honor Edgar Allan Poe on the fiftieth
anniversary of his death. It was conceived as a secret society,
membership by invitation only-just a scholarly tribute to the great
poet. It was limited to five members."

"Five? That's a pretty
minuscule society," Mike said.

"Unlike many writers
of that period, who never achieved fame until long after their deaths,
Poe was recognized for his genius during his lifetime, here and abroad.
But he suffered so many tragedies during his short time on this
earth-so many personal indignities- that when he died, there were only
five men to take him to his grave. Five-including the minister who
presided over the burial. It seemed, at the time, a fitting number to
honor him."

"And now?" I asked.

"Still by invitation
only, Miss Cooper. Now there are twenty-five."

"All in New York?"

"Oh, no. But about
two-thirds of them are here."

"What are the criteria
for membership?"

"We look for scholars,
Detective. Not necessarily academics, but people who have immersed
themselves in Poe and know his body of work. The poems, the stories,
the literary criticism. Aficionados of the master."

"And do you meet?"

"From time to time,
certainly. Dinners for the most part. Lectures and other events marking
significant dates or new research."

"Would you be willing
to give us a list of your members' names?" I asked.

Zeldin hesitated.
"That would not be my decision to make. I'm merely the secretary of the
society at the moment. I would have to ask-"

Mike interrupted him.
"You're right that it's not your decision to make. We're in the middle
of a murder investigation. I think it's gonna be Ms. Cooper who
decides. Along with the grand jury."

Zeldin sipped his
wine. "I don't mean to be obstreperous, Mr. Chapman. We shy away from
publicity. Of course we'd be only too keen to help with your work, but
I'd like some assurance that all this won't be material for the
headlines."

"It's not likely that
any of it will be made public," I said.

"I don't suppose
you're going to tell me what you know about the skeleton at Poe House,"
Zeldin said, smiling as he drew a reaction from each of us, "and
whether this man's death-Ichiko, is that his name?-is connected to the
finding of those bones?"

"How about you go
first?" Mike said. "What do you know about the skeleton?"

"I told you,
Detective. Poe is our life's work. The society was part of-how do you
say it in the law, Ms. Cooper?-part of the amicus brief to oppose the
destruction of the old building by the university. I was naturally very
interested to read that someone's remains had been discovered there."