Linda Fairstein - Entombed

We each ordered New York strip sirloins-the sixteen-ouncers for the guys and the twelve-ounce for me. Mike piled on onion rings and cottage fries, and Ken spoiled us by sending over a superb Bordeaux from his fabulous cellar.

"Who's going to call Sally Brandon and break the news to her that Emily's kid knows that Sally's not her birth mother?" Mercer asked.

"Sounds like woman's work to me."

"I'll do it tomorrow afternoon. When Tormey is cleared medically, we've got to see if Emily really called him, like her letter says," I said, then shifted gears. "What's with Val?"

"She's over-the-top. The family's all up in Canada, doing that heli-skiing stuff."

I laughed. "Guess that's why you got left behind. Do they know her super-macho RoboCop is afraid of flying in choppers?"

"Hey, I did it for you once, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but that's because I didn't ask you to jump out."

"Last year, Val was so sick from the chemo that she couldn't make the trip with the rest of them. That's why her father thought it was such a special gift for her this time. She and her brother are like cowboys-you oughta see their videos."

The fancy dinner was a nice end to a day that had taken such an odd twist. We walked out of the restaurant, the guys agreed to pick me up at eight-thirty as Mercer got in his car, and Mike drove me up Third Avenue to drop me in front of my door shortly before ten o'clock.

I hadn't been asleep long when the telephone rang.

"I know you wouldn't be happy if you heard this on the morning news," Mercer said.

I cocked an eye and looked at the dial on the clock radio. One thirty-fiveA.M.

"I guess you're not calling to tell me you didn't enjoy dinner."

"I'm back in your 'hood. Our Silk Stocking Rapist tried again. East Eighty-first Street, just off York. The girl Maced him, though, and he ran off."

"Good for her. She's okay?"

"Hanging tough. I'm doing the interview now. When he reached up to cover his eyes, he dropped the knife. She picked it up and tried to slash at him."

"Well, so much for fingerprints."

"Everything's a trade-off. She slit open his jacket pocket and a few things fell out."

"Driver's license?" I asked, shifting beneath the warm blanket.

"You wouldn't like it if it came that easy. Nope, no ID. Just a MetroCard."

I smiled, thinking of the interview I did yesterday with the witness whose card had broken her story. "That's a fine place to start, Mr. Wallace. We know what part of the silk stocking district he frequents. Let's see where else he likes to travel."

Zeldin's fifth-story office window in the magnificent Beaux Arts building known as the Mertz Library looked out over a snowcovered expanse that stretched as far as I could see.

"Would you imagine it, Miss Cooper? Two-hundred-fifty spectacular acres of gardens and greenery in the middle of New York City. It's extraordinary, isn't it, and so magical in the middle of winter with this lovely dusting of snow?"

"I'm ashamed to say I'd forgotten quite how beautiful it is, and how grand."

"It was the vision of an American couple named Britton, you know. They were philanthropists who had a great interest in botany. She was just overwhelmed by a visit to the Royal Gardens at Kew, back in the 1880s and returned home insisting that her husband try to replicate it in America. Re-creating Eden, that's what these gardens are all about."

"The Garden of Eden-set the backstory for the first homicide, too, if I remember correctly," Mike said. "How we doing on that list of Raven Society members I asked about?"

"You shall have them, of course," Zeldin said, surprising me as well as Mike. He gestured around the room, packed full of botanical prints and books on plants and trees. "I have someone picking us up in an hour to take us over to the building where I keep the society records. I've never mixed my hobby with the garden's business."

"How long did you work here in the library?" I asked.

"Nearly thirty-five years."

"And which came first, your interest in plants or in Poe?"

"It's sort of a chicken-and-egg thing, if you know what I mean. I've always loved both," he said, wheeling himself to a shelf near his desk and handing me a book from it. "My first published work, and it's still a classic in the field."

I examined the well-worn volume and opened it to its title page. "'Flora and Fauna in the Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe-An Illustrated Guide.'"

"So, if I say 'buttercup,' you can tell me if Poe used it in his work?" Mike asked.

"Precisely, Detective. Buttercup, better known by its Latin name Ranunculus, is used only once, in the story 'Eleonora'-'so besprinkled through with the yellow buttercup.'"

"Must be a huge audience for this stuff I just don't know about."

"Or shall we try something like 'jackass,' Mr. Chapman? Both in 'Marginalia' and in 'Politian.' You'd be surprised at how many scholars rely on this kind of thing. The book is in its twelfth printing."

Like every other author I'd ever met, Zeldin neglected to mention the size of each printing. I didn't expect they were large.

"As much as I've admired Poe's work," I said, "I certainly know very little about his life. Perhaps it would be useful if you would spend some time telling us about him."

"It's Edgar Allan Poe who brought me here, to this very place," Zeldin said, spinning his chair around to face the three of us.

"To New York?" Mercer asked.

"To the Bronx. To these Botanical Gardens."

"We knew he lived in Manhattan," I said. Recently acquired knowledge, for me, but the skeleton had made an indelible impression.

"But his last home, Miss Cooper-in fact, the longest residence of his adult life-was here in the Bronx."

I looked to Mike, my outer-borough expert, for confirmation. He shook his head.

"Poe Cottage. You don't know it? You'll enjoy seeing it," he said, explaining to Mike that it still stood on Kingsbridge Road, in a small park dedicated to the poet. "It was not only his last real residence, poor soul, but the only one still standing. They'd best not tear that one down or every writer in America will be up in arms."

"And these gardens?" I asked.

"Well, they hadn't been created as a formal botanical sanctuary then. In fact, this whole area wasn't even considered to be the Bronx in those days. It was a very rural village, part of Westchester County, known as Fordham. The building in which the skeleton was found in Greenwich Village? Poe had to leave that house because his wife was suffering from tuberculosis. The doctors insisted that she could only survive with the help of fresh country air."

"So they moved out here?"

"Yes, ma'am. To the little farmhouse on Kingsbridge Road, near One Hundred Ninety-second Street and the Grand Concourse. He loved to walk, Poe did. He spent long days traversing the farmlands in this Fordham area, much of it here in these very woods that make up part of our Botanical Gardens property. Even to the gorge at the river, where that accident occurred this week. The waterfalls fascinated him."

"You sure he walked right here?" Mike asked.

"Would you like to read his letters, Mr. Chapman? He describes the area in exquisite detail, from the cottage to this forest to the High Bridge that carried water from the Croton Aqueduct over the Harlem River to Manhattan."

"His story called 'Landor's Cottage'?" I asked tentatively.

"Now you're onto it, Miss Cooper. That describes the little house he rented for his family, the one that still stands in Poe Park. One hundred dollars a year. He used to find great tranquillity in walking the heights, looking out over Long Island Sound. You could see it then from his doorstep, before all the high-rise buildings went up and got in the way of the view. There was a group of Jesuits at something called St. John's, not too far away-"