Linda Fairstein: Hell Gate

“Talk about landing on your feet, man. Sweet deal,” Mike said.

I leaned over to talk to Cyril, biting my tongue so as not to swipe at Kitts’s uncanny ability to work his way back into such a plum assignment. I asked the young man if he would tell some of the other passengers we were going to move them to the buses.

“No, no, lady. Nobody gonna leave till ship is empty.”

“Who’s looking out for you?” Mike asked Kitts.

“I got a good lawyer. Once they cleared me, he fought to get me reinstated to the same kind of position I had when I was dumped,” Kitts said. “Scully’s not my biggest fan, but I used to get along fine with the mayor, back in the days before he got elected. Still got my street cred, Chapman.”

“You here with him?” Mike asked. I looked around to see if Vin Statler-the popular businessman who had succeeded Bloomberg to the mayoralty-had arrived.

“Nope. I’m on my own dime. For years I’ve had a piece of a small marina just over the border in Nassau County. Sent a couple of my guys around with their boats to assist.” Kitts shaded his eyes and tried to make out his craft among the growing flotilla surrounding the old freighter. “They’re out there somewhere.”

“Good thinking, Rowdy,” Mike said.

“Is that Mercer up ahead? Let me see if they need help at the morgue. Later, Mike. Nice to see you again, Ms. Cooper,” Kitts said. The sarcasm was thick in his voice. “You really oughtta lose that attitude.”

Kitts took off and I could read the words on the back of his jacket, printed under the logo of a small dead bird: PIPING PLOVERS TASTE LIKE CHICKEN-the recreational boaters’ rebuke to the local beach environmentalists.

I was trying to coax Emilia to get to her feet, but whatever direction I gave her was being overridden by Cyril.

“C’mon, pal,” Mike said to him. “High and dry. Do it the nice way, okay?”

Cyril shrugged and pretended he didn’t understand Mike.

“What’s your beef with Rowdy? You see any prosecutors out here volunteering to help? Not like cops and firemen. Suck it up, blondie. The guy hit on you once, is that why you’re all pink up to your eyeballs?”

“It’s a professional blush, not a personal one,” I said, trying to think of a better approach to Emilia. “Remember Jeannie Parcher?”

“The name sounds familiar.”

“You know who I mean. That very attractive paralegal who worked for Ryan Blackmer.”

“Oh, yeah. She was a sweetheart. Left the office last summer.” Mike called to a pair of detectives to move Cyril and Emilia along, then started walking with me across the wide stretch of beach.

“Exactly. A few months earlier than that, when the feds were trying to make their case against Rowdy, Jeannie phoned late one night and asked to see me at my apartment. She’d been working with the assistant DA who had an indictment in the push-in rape that got tossed because Rowdy’s testimony was so compromised. He’d made the collar, recovered the knife, and taken a statement from the perp. The guy had a rap sheet a mile long, and his admissions to Rowdy put him close enough to the crime scene to be useful.”

“Bet that dismissal ticked you off.”

“Of course it did. We had no DNA and a victim who was unable to make an ID ’cause she was yoked from behind, so there was no way to go forward,” I said.

“Hey, that perp’ll be back.”

“Most likely at the expense of another woman.”

“What brought Jeannie to your doorstep?” Mike asked. “She confuse your living room with a confessional?”

“I guess so. She had a fling with Rowdy, and the feds found out about it while they were digging into his life. They called her in to question her and she went down to their offices without telling me or anybody else on the staff first. No supervisor, no lawyer.”

“Both of them were single,” Mike said. “What did she have to give the feds?”

“Hard to reconstruct after the fact. Jeannie was so vague and emotional. I’m sure she gave them more than anyone would want to know about her sexual encounters with Rowdy, and probably way too much about the other internal affairs-and, yes, I do mean affairs-of the DA’s office to suit the boss.”

“So why the meltdown?”

“Jeannie didn’t know who would be more unhappy-Battaglia or Kitts. I couldn’t offer any advice about Rowdy, but I calmed her down about the front office. No need to shove it under Battaglia’s nose unless the feds made something stick against Kitts.”

“You didn’t rat her out to the DA? That’s my girl, Coop. She must have been grateful.”

I stopped to tighten my scarf around my neck and brushed a branch of seaweed out of Mike’s hair. “If she was, she forgot to tell me,” I said, smiling. “Jeannie quit the next week.”

“Over that?”

“I don’t know the reason. She seemed spooked about Rowdy. Worried that he’d do something to get back at her.”

“Why?” Mike asked. “Did he get rough?”

“Jeannie never said anything like that. I think she was concerned that if he was dirty-if the feds made any charges stick-she’d be toast in our office anyway.” I wiped the grit off my mouth with the back of my glove. “Ten days later, I called to buy her lunch to check on her, but she was gone. Gave notice and told her friends she got a great job offer in the fashion biz.”

“Sounds like a good career move. Can’t expect everyone to be a lifer like you.”

“Lifer? I’m thirty-seven years old. I’ve got endless possibilities for my next-”

“Face it,” Mike said, gesturing at the forlorn castaways. “You’re beginning to think the world’s flotsam and jetsam have been heaven-sent to the Criminal Court Building so you have a purpose on this earth. You gotta move on, Coop. Trying to restore all these broken souls is going to tear the guts out of you before too long.”

“Hey, Chapman.” Mercer’s voice boomed across the open space from the flapped tent door of the morgue. “The medical examiner wants you over here.”

“They’re human beings, Mike,” I called after him as he walked away through the narrow path that led to the parking lot. “It’s a sad fact that you have more interest in dead ones than the living.”

“I got no problem with the dead.” He faced me so that I could hear him speak but continued walking backward toward Mercer. “They can’t talk back, they don’t bullshit me all day like half your witnesses do, they rarely disappoint me, and they never, ever, ever tell lies.”

“Are you looking for victims or a date, Mr. Chapman? You want something with a pulse or no pulse?”

“Chill out, Coop,” Mike said, laughing at me as he started to turn. “When I need your help finding a live one, I’ll let you know.”

Cyril began to speak to Emilia. He was excited about something, quite suddenly, and pulled her to her feet. He seemed to have recognized someone in a small boat that was bobbing close to shore, amid the whitecaps.

There was no point trying to stop the couple as he grabbed her hand and ran to the water’s edge, part of the crowd that was growing more difficult for the cops to control.

I watched Stu Carella plunge back into the surf, followed by a scuba team. This time they seemed to be after items they could see floating on the surface, being drawn away from land. I knew there would not be a great concern for personal effects of the travelers at this point, but investigators wanted evidence that linked this human cargo to conspirators in New York, perhaps things jettisoned by a nervous crew.

A uniformed sergeant began barking orders at the victims, and I skirted the restless groups of men to join the officers in the makeshift morgue past the path that bordered the bird sanctuary.