Linda Fairstein - Death Dance

"If Kehoe walked around that entire dark chamber we came through, he'd reach the area behind those eight stars. When the Shriners built the place, that was an organ loft. Another anachronism, another empty space. But from behind those stars you can pretty well see the entire auditorium. And you can do it without being seen from below."

Everything seemed to be working to Kehoe's advantage.

Mona got up from the bar stool and moved to the bed, stretching out on top of it. Kehoe walked over to us.

"You might as well rest. You need to save some energy to make your way out of here when we're ready to go."

His back was to Mona, who had rolled over on her side. As he squatted to look behind me to check that the ties were still secure, he laid his hand on my knee, then ran his forefinger up the length of the inside of my thigh. I suppressed a gag as my eyes followed his dirty fingernail along the seam of my gray slacks.

"Go where? How?" I asked as he pushed up to his feet. Had he lost it entirely that he thought he could walk us out of this dome?

"Chet will tell you. This theater has more trapdoors and underground passages than the Vatican. Two, three in the morning, maybe we'll get moving. Might even have to wait until tomorrow night."

Kehoe lifted the revolver and stroked his cheek with the barrel. "Unless you get on my nerves too much."

"And then what?" I asked. "Cops will be looking for you everywhere. Your home, the airports, the train stations, the car rental-"

"You know, Alex, that's the nice thing about owning your own planes. BerkAir. Not that we intend to take you and Chet quite that far with us. Maybe a little insurance to get us to the right private field."

"BerkAir to the Bahamas, no doubt."

"Follow the money," Kehoe said, sitting up against the headboard of the bed, next to Mona, to keep an eye on us. He rested the gun on his chest.

"Mona's money," I said, wondering whether Joe Berk had fixed things in his will after Briggs dropped the lawsuit.

"I hate fucking rich people," he said, rubbing his hand over Mona's backside and laughing to himself. "It's just their money I like."

If she had appeared to have been reclining calmly before he made that remark, Mona was on her feet and obviously restless again, looking for something, or someone, to be the target for her hostility. She paced back and forth beside the bed before walking to the swing that was suspended from the ceiling high above us. With one hand she grabbed the brass chain while she steadied the seat with her other one.

"Stay off that," Kehoe said.

"Why?" she asked. I didn't think that Mona Berk was used to taking orders. She ignored him and pulled herself up on the swing, pumping her legs to get it moving,

"You want me to pull you off that or what?" Kehoe's mildest threat would have done the trick for me.

"I want you to get us out of here, Ross. That's what the fuck I want." She was going higher and higher, disappearing for seconds against the backdrop of the dark walls as she flew by. I could see only the shiny brass chain making a dizzying arc as I tried to follow its motion.

Kehoe walked toward the swing and Mona kicked harder, nearly grazing the top of his head as he came closer.

When she flew back past him, Kehoe reached out and grabbed Mona's leg, pulling on it as he twisted the chain around and around with his well-muscled arm. Her head snapped forward and she wrapped her elbows tightly against the metal links to keep herself from falling off.

"Are you crazy?" she yelled at Kehoe. "What's wrong with you?"

"Stop the damn thing!" he said, stepping away as the seat of the swing jerked up and down while Mona tried to unravel herself.

She came to a stop, threw her head back, and started laughing. "You're nervous, aren't you? You're as goddamn nervous as I am, aren't you?"

I watched as she jumped off and walked over to Kehoe. I couldn't hear what they were saying to each other but I could see that they were arguing, which couldn't be good for any of us.

I was too wired to close my eyes, even though I was aching with exhaustion and fear. I looked over at Chet Dobbis, who had hung his head, slumped in his seat, and started crying-turning his face away from me when he caught me watching him. With every ounce of whatever strength I had reserved, I twisted and turned my wrists, pulling the silken strips as far apart as I could.

Kehoe and Mona had gone back to sitting against the headboard of the bed, fidgeting and whispering to each other, until it must have been after two o'clock in the morning. I looked over when I saw her stand up and start to approach, probably on a command from Kehoe to check on Dobbis and me. I stopped wriggling and held my hands in place behind me.

My heart began racing faster as I saw that Mona was holding the revolver.

"You don't need that with me," I said. "I'm too scared to make trouble."

"You've caused more than enough for me and Ross already. Look what you've started," she said, waving her hand with the revolver over her head. "It's your fault we're trapped in here."

I needed to calm her down as badly as I wanted to calm myself. I had no idea whether Mona Berk had ever held a gun before and I was even more frightened to think we were in the hands of an amateur.

"Ross seems to know what he wants to do," I said, hoping she was annoyed enough to tell me what was in store.

"Maybe he did before he started drinking," Mona said, looking over at him to see whether he was paying attention to her. He had gotten up to stretch and splash water on his face from the wet bar across the room. "I should never have waited here for him. I should have left all this dirty work up to him to get done."

"So how come you trusted Ross when you first met him?" I asked tentatively. Maybe I could talk her down. Maybe I could convince her that she had so much more to live for than he did. "I mean, wasn't he working for your uncle?"

"Like that would have mattered to me? Like I thought anybody in the world would have had an allegiance to Joe Berk for longer than the first paycheck?" Mona asked me. "You know what Joe did to me? You people who think he didn't deserve to die a miserable death, you ought to know this. He paid Ross to break into my old apartment-even my office-to hook up some of his surveillance cameras so the mean old prick could know what I was up to. Not naked, not in the bedroom. Joe just needed to know who I was hanging out with, who I was seeing and what I was doing. So he'd have a reason to fuck me out of my inheritance. Any reason. That's how I met Ross."

She was seething now at the thought of the old family history and I continued to try to shake off the chill as I shivered in the face of her rage.

"What do you mean?" My wrists ached and I could feel the blood accumulating above them as I stopped moving my fingers.

"Ross felt bad for me. Listened to Uncle Joe talk all the time about how he was going to screw me out of my share of the money. Came to me and told me what was going on, that he felt guilty about being the one to set up the works-you know, the electrical stuff. Told me what Joe was doing to me and to Briggs, too."

So Ross Kehoe double-crossed Joe Berk. And did it with the perfect enemy to make it a win-win situation for himself. Could Mona really think Ross was in love with her, and could she possibly believe he wouldn't cross her, too, when the right time came? His contempt for the Berks was palpable.

"I could have killed the old bastard myself. This was all I needed," she said, patting the gun barrel with her left hand.

I hated guns. I'd been around them a lot in all the time I'd worked in the office and had friends in the NYPD, but I'd never wanted to use them. I watched Mona's hands carefully, hoping to figure out if she was familiar with this one. I tried to tell if she knew it was loaded or not, whether it had a safety, and how to use it. If she was into guns, then I'd still be at a great disadvantage, even if I could finish loosening my bonds to try to take her on.