Linda Fairstein - Hell Gate

“Where was that?” I asked.

“Near the intersection of Spring Street and Greene,” Ethan Leighton said. I could visualize the location, not far from the DA’s office, in the heart of what was now the very fashionable SoHo district. “In a well, Ms. Cooper. The girl’s body had been dumped in the Manhattan Well.”

“But nothing to do with this mansion, right?”

“Everything to do with it,” Leighton said, doing his best to filibuster. “The foreman of the grand jury that brought the indictment against Levi Weeks in 1800 was Archibald Gracie.”

“Interesting.”

“The mayor of the city at the time-Richard Varick-presided at the trial. A future mayor-Cadwallader Colden-was the prosecutor. And Levi Weeks was represented by his own dream team-the defense attorneys were Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.”

“Working as partners?” I asked, surprised by their alliance.

“Absolutely so. Four years later, Burr killed Hamilton in their duel. But at Levi’s trial, with his famous brother, Ezra, and John McComb testifying on his behalf, the jury took five minutes to acquit Weeks, despite the evidence pointing to his guilt.”

“So all politics is indeed local,” Lem said.

“Not to mention dirty and occasionally deadly.” The story of an old Manhattan murder case caught Mike’s attention. “What became of Levi Weeks?”

“He left town. His brother’s business was thriving, but his own reputation didn’t rebound here. The public wasn’t happy with the verdict,” Leighton said, thrusting his hands in his pants pockets, perhaps reminded of his own dilemma. “Levi became the toast of Natchez, Mississippi. He married well, and went on to design and build some of the most beautiful antebellum houses in the city.”

“You got a point here, Mr. Leighton?” Mike asked.

The congressman’s smile vanished. “Well, Lem seems to think you’re convinced I had something to do with Salma’s disappearance.”

“You think you’re doing yourself a favor with the dead-lady-in-the-well story?” Mike asked. “Puts you right in the driver’s seat, sir. Takes you directly from Salma’s apartment to the only well in town. Not a bad place to dispose of a body if you were a longtime fan of Levi Weeks.”

“I didn’t even know the mansion had a well on the property. It’s not my house, Detective.”

“So you didn’t know about the well at Gracie Mansion,” I said, “but there’s nothing to say the mayor knows the story of the Weeks murder case.”

“Lem says you don’t like people telling you you’re wrong, Ms. Cooper,” Leighton said, wagging a finger in my face. “But you are.”

“Go for it, pal,” Mike said. “She hasn’t had her tail kicked in almost twenty-four hours. I’m all ears.”

“The mayor’s Christmas party was held here at the mansion on December twenty-second-just three weeks ago,” Leighton said. “That’s the anniversary of the icy night that Gulielma Sands disappeared. One of the historians working on the mansion conservancy told the story during the cocktail hour.”

“You were here?” I asked.

“Yes, I was invited. It was quite a gathering, Ms. Cooper. Ralevic, the lieutenant governor, was here, half the City Council members, at least.”

“Kendall Reid?”

“Of course. And your boss, the district attorney, with his trained chimp Tim Spindlis in tow.”

Mike looked over at me as he spoke to Leighton. “Donny Baynes?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Donny was here. He remembered the story from law school too. He hasn’t mentioned that coincidence?”

I remembered how incredulous Baynes had been on Wednesday morning, on the beach, when Mercer Wallace showed up with news of Leighton’s accident and affair. Maybe he was just subconsciously protecting his old friend.

“And, of course, Mayor Vincent Statler. He loves regaling folks with all the history of the city fathers and their antics,” Leighton said sarcastically. “That’s why I’m so surprised he didn’t take the opportunity to tell you himself.”

“Tell us what?” I asked.

“That it was old news to find a woman’s body in a well.”

“What’s your impression of Ethan Leighton?” I asked.

We let Lem and his client walk out ahead of us before we started to make our way to Mike’s car on East End Avenue. The mayor’s sedan was no longer parked at the rear gate of Gracie Mansion, and the pedestrian traffic was still light.

“That’s a hinky guy,” Mike said. “He’s all buttoned up and stiff, but keeps flashing that ridiculous smile, hoping you’ll like him. Not the first one I’d think of to be jumping in bed with a hot Latin lover.”

“His emotional disconnect between his affair and Salma’s death is unbelievable. It kills me that I voted for him.”

“You’ll get over it with a cup of hot chocolate. C’mon.”

We wound our way back along the path, past the guardhouse where the security officer was dozing, out to the quiet street. We turned right and walked north a couple of blocks, across from the entrance to Salma’s building.

Just as I opened the car door and got in, I saw a young man who appeared to be in his late teens. He was emerging from the alley behind Salma’s condo, wheeling a grocery-store shopping cart, only half filled with its cargo of white plastic bags.

“That’s it, Mike,” I said, standing again and pointing at the cart.

“That’s what?”

“Remember when we went into Salma’s building through the back door on Wednesday night? The large wooden garbage pails that were lined up and the row of empty shopping carts left behind by deliverymen?”

“Yeah. There are always a few of them around.”

“That’s how the killer got her body out of the building and over here to the well at Gracie Mansion.”

“Maybe so.”

“See the metal grid on the cart?” I asked. “I’ll bet it’s what formed the marks on Salma.”

“What?”

“The parts of her body that weren’t covered by the blanket-underneath her back-or when it shifted with the movement of the cart over the curb and potholes,” I said. “Get one of those shopping carts down to the ME’s office for measurements. I’ll bet that’s what formed the pattern we saw on her skin.”

I waited in the car with the heat on high while Mike called the CSU. He wanted the guys to come up, to photograph and measure the metal structure of one of the shopping carts so Dr. Kirschner could compare the markings.

The sleepy cop in the guardhouse at the mansion confirmed that the carts were a frequent sight, both at the house and on the park grounds. Food deliveries arrived in them throughout the day and evening, and as in other parts of the city, teenagers often made off with them for sport, rolling them through the streets and playgrounds.

I called the shelter to make sure that Olena and Lydia had an uneventful evening. I learned they’d eaten dinner in their apartment, come down to the lounge, and stayed up past midnight-mesmerized by the shows on the large cable television screen-and overslept their morning call. They still managed to go off with the federal marshals at ten.

Mike got back in the car and started the engine. “Where to?”

“Hot chocolate?”

“Sure. You called Battaglia yet? Tell him about last night?”

“Don’t be a nag. I’ve got to have something good to give him before I call him to say I was tagged and we don’t know who did it yet. He’s liable to ground me.”

“They sell those GPS gadgets in every electronic store and on-line site. We’ll be lucky to trace yours in a month. By then, someone may have shot you in the ass with a dart and tagged you for real. Make life easier for all of us.”