Linda Fairstein - Entombed

Two hundred and fifty acres of pristine land in the middle of the Bronx-absolutely deserted-and I couldn't find a street sign for one of the city's largest thoroughfares.

I stepped on the pedal and chugged along until the next intersection, where Azalea Way crossed Snuff Mill Road. The latter led, I knew, to the building we had visited with Zeldin, and near the carriage house in which Sinclair Phelps lived.

I flipped open the phone again. "Now I got it. I'm on the bridge crossing the river. Get back in your car-you must be freezing. I'll get Phelps to help me. He can call someone from security if he hasn't got keys himself."

"I got the heat on. Make it snappy, kid."

"I'm flooring this buggy, Mike. Mercer and I have been worried about you." Then I said quietly, "I've missed you."

I could hear the river running over the rocks below me, and the roar it made as it dropped from the gorge just beyond me drowned out whatever Mike whispered to me in response.

I steered on past the snuff mill, which was as completely dark within as it was getting to be outside. I remembered that Sinclair Phelps's carriage house was not much farther along, so I kept driving around the curving path until I made out its outline, pulled up behind it, and turned off the cart's motor.

The stone building standing alone on the wooded grounds looked like a small English manor house in the Cotswolds. I knocked on the back door several times and called Phelps's name, but no one answered.

I tried the handle, which was not locked, so I let myself into the kitchen. A phone was mounted on the wall next to the refrigerator, and there was a list of the organization's telephone extensions beside it, so I assumed it to be a direct connection to the gardens' employees.

I dialed zero and waited several rings before someone on the switchboard picked up.

"Yes, Mr. Phelps?"

"I'm, uh-I'm sorry-I'm not Mr. Phelps, obviously. But I am calling from his house. Can you connect me to security, please?"

"Is there a problem at the carriage house, ma'am? I'll get someone right-"

"No, no. There's a New York City detective trying to get into the gate on-"

"The police are already inside, ma'am. We're aware of the commotion at the conservatory. Can you hold? That's another line ringing."

She was back to me in thirty seconds.

"I'm talking about the Fordham Road gate."

"Yeah, we just heard about that other guy. You stay where you're at. Security will bring him to you there, okay?"

I hung up and called Mike again on my cell phone. "I gave up on you, Coop, and called Mercer," he said. "He's got a couple of guards on their way to get me. You inside? Stay warm-see you in ten."

"Did he tell you what happened?"

"Yeah, I know you've been looking to smack Ellen in her long, sour puss for years, but dumping her into the briar patch? I hope you saved a little of your strength for the next guy."

"What do you mean?"

"Mercer said Gino Guidi's on his way over here. You amateurs must have pissed him off this morning. He's all fired up-without his lawyer this time-no holds barred."

"Remind me, Mike. Is there anyone I haven't annoyed lately?"

"I'll be right there, kid. Just relax."

I replaced the receiver on the wall hook. I didn't want to rub up against anything in the house with my bloody ski jacket, so I took it off and put it on the back of a kitchen chair.

After three or four minutes of dead silence, I pushed open the swinging door and entered the living room. It looked like Phelps had been called away suddenly. There was a tall floor lamp that was on, next to a worn leather chair, and resting on a table between them was a book, turned upside down with its spine splayed. A half-filled coffee cup rested on a coaster.

I walked over and picked up the book. It was an academic treatise on the London plane tree. I flipped through the pages and as I did, a small stack of green bills fluttered onto the carpet. I bent over to pick them up-they were all hundred-dollar denominations- and stuck them back between two pages, replacing the book on the tabletop.

I was too restless to sit.

The room was rather impersonal. There were very few signs of homeyness for someone who had been in residence here for so long.

I walked to the mantel over the fireplace to look at the photographs displayed there. All of them were studies of gardens and trees, presumably favorites of Sinclair Phelps.

I was pacing now, walking from the front window, where I looked in vain for signs of the groundskeeper or Mike and Mercer, back to the bookcases on the far wall.

I returned to the window, parting the thin lace curtains again to search for headlights, then crossed the room again.

There were more photographs on one of the shelves. A rugged-looking young Phelps on skis, and another of a child in a young woman's arms-his mother's, perhaps. I smiled at her outfit, which so clearly dated the picture to the sixties-bell-bottom jeans, a peasant-style blouse, long stringy hair parted in the middle, and a peace symbol patched onto the arm of the child's jacket.

A car door slammed in front of the house, but before I could get to the entrance, Phelps had opened it and found me in the middle of his living room.

"Miss Cooper? Is there something wrong?"

"I apologize, Mr. Phelps. I-uh, we had a problem over at the conservatory-"

"Yes, I've just come from there. Everything's going to be fine. What are you doing here?" he asked, his eyes scanning the room to see if anything had been disturbed.

"Well, I was trying to tell you that one of the detectives got sort of stuck outside-"

"Chapman? He's on his way in. Zeldin wants you all to meet over at the office in the snuff mill and-"

"But Zeldin's gone," I said.

"I just saw him, Miss Cooper," Phelps said. His tone seemed to get more stern as we talked. "He's asked me to bring the detectives to meet with him. You might as well join them there."

I started to back up toward the kitchen door as he made a move toward me.

The sudden knocking on the front door startled both of us.

"I'll just step out a minute to take care of this. One of the staff must have a problem." Phelps walked toward the door, but before reaching it he turned back to the table and chair. He picked up the open book, stopped to make sure the money was still in place, and continued on his way to the door. I noticed his large hands, covered with calluses, dried and cracked from years of physical labor.

I was frozen in place-uncertain about what to do-one hand on the bookshelf and the other poised against the kitchen entrance.

I glanced beside me at the floor-to-ceiling array of books. The bottom shelves were all to do with plants and landscape gardening. The ones above my head were a neatly lined-up collection of volumes of poetry.

I tried to listen to the voices outside as I read the familiar names: Yeats, Eliot, Spender, Auden, Owen, Roethke, Thomas, Heaney. Edgar Allan Poe.

The man Gino Guidi knew as Monty-Aurora Tait's killer- was never without a book of poetry in his back pocket. Even in his teens and twenties, the jobs he had taken to support himself had imprinted their physical hardship on his hands.

The voice of the man that Phelps was talking to was raised a pitch. They were arguing about something. The visitor cursed, and the words were spoken in Spanish. The visitor stepped back away from the door, and through the gauzelike curtains I could make out a dark-hooded sweatshirt covering his head.

Packs of marauding teenagers. Aaron Kittredge had encountered a similar group outside the back gate a decade ago when he tried to visit Zeldin to talk to him. Others had attacked me at Poe Cottage while the rest of their gang caused a distraction at the bandshell. Today, a threesome assaulted Ellen when Zeldin ordered them to go and get Sinclair Phelps. Maybe Phelps was running them the way a spymaster would send his agents out on missions. Maybe the money stashed inside the book was a payoff for a job well done at the conservatory today. Maybe.