“Most conservators have a specialty, Alex. The work has increasingly become so technical that they usually develop an expertise in one area. For Tina, it’s been rare maps,” Jill said. “And Alger is much younger than Jasper Hunt. He’s in his mid-fifties-a very vibrant personality.”
“You’ve talked to him about Tina?” I asked, glancing from Jill Gibson to Pat McKinney.
“He’s as puzzled by her disappearance as the rest of us,” Jill said.
McKinney seated himself next to Battaglia. “I’m on it, Alex.”
“Did Tina tell you why she was terrified?” I asked.
“Well, given what had happened to her the night before, there wasn’t much reason to ask,” Jill said. “The attack made her even more anxious to get out of the apartment, too. Minerva Hunt was furious with her.”
“Did she tell you why?”
“Minerva hates Alger Herrick. They’ve crossed swords in some business deals, is all I know,” Jill said. “Tina couldn’t move out fast enough once Minerva knew she was working with Alger.”
“It’s crazy to double-team this, boss,” McKinney said to Battaglia. “Karla Vastasi’s death wasn’t a sex crime. Alex and I can sort this all out ourselves.”
I could almost feel the point of his elbow digging into my side from across the wide oak table. “I’d like to find Tina Barr before anyone causes her more distress, Pat. The woman is still my victim.”
“Tina Barr isn’t anyone’s victim, Alex. She’s a thief,” Pat McKinney said. “Don’t wrap your bleeding heart around her. She’s a forger-and a common thief.”
ELEVEN
“I disagree with Battaglia,” Mike said.
It was two-thirty on Thursday afternoon, and he was eating his second hot dog, leaning against the blue brick wall of the building that housed the morgue on First Avenue at Thirtieth Street.
“I was hoping you would.”
“Not about taking you off the murder case. About how you look when you pout.”
“Maybe you’ll ask the lieutenant to go to bat for me. Keep me on the team.”
“You should get your feelings hurt more often, Coop. Kind of cute. You look almost vulnerable.”
“All these years together and I thought you liked edgy and cool. You want to see vulnerable, watch McKinney try to undermine me.”
“Nah, that’s when you go all pit bull on me. Did Battaglia set ground rules?”
“For the time being, I can work with you and Mercer on Tina Barr. I guess setting up this interview with Alger Herrick, the man she’s been working for lately, is my consolation prize. Pat’s sitting on the larger matter of the library, and the DA may force him to let me in on it.”
“What’s McKinney ’s reason for bumping you off Vastasi’s murder?”
“I may be needed as a witness if there’s an arrest and trial, so I can’t be the prosecutor. What did we see during the surveillance?
Did I touch the body or the evidence? What did Billy Schultz and Minerva Hunt say to me? That’s why I thought we could get back to work on Barr. The two crimes can’t be unrelated.”
“Why did McKinney call Tina Barr a thief?” Mike asked.
“He interviewed Jill Gibson last week, before any of this happened. She was talking about some of the things that have disappeared from the library in the last couple of years. In order to get your hands on the most valuable items you’d really need to have special access to the best collections. That’s why the executives think most of the thefts had involved insiders.”
“This Gibson woman fingered Tina Barr?”
“No, she actually likes Barr. But it’s clear that the conservators work on materials from different parts of the library. Her name was one of the common denominators that kept coming up as the individual curators were interviewed. It’s McKinney who’s drawn a bead on her.”
“Stealing these priceless objects for herself,” Mike said, “and the best she could do was live in a basement in one of the Hunts’ buildings?”
“Thefts to order, Mike. That’s apparently the big scam. Rich collectors are all scrambling for the same limited goods. They know that thousands of these artifacts are shelved in stacks that nobody ever sees, or warehoused for decades, like the little book Karla Vastasi hid inside her jacket. And Barr was courted by many of these collectors because she’s so extraordinarily talented and had such unique access inside the building.”
“You have time to Google this Alger Herrick after Battaglia booted you from the inner sanctum?”
“Yes,” I said. “ McKinney only interviewed him by phone, last week when Herrick was still in England. That was about the problems at the library, so Barr’s name came up in the conversation, but I thought we should go deeper.”
“He was here in New York when Barr was attacked?”
“Yes, and for Vastasi’s murder, too,” I said. “He arrived last weekend.”
“You want a bite?” Mike asked, holding his hot dog out to me.
“Thanks, I had lunch at my desk.” I took a napkin from his hand and wiped the mustard from the corner of his mouth.
Mike grinned at me. “The guy must be a real gent if you’re cleaning me up for him.”
“Very upper-crust, this Mr. Herrick. He’s English, he’s rich, and he’s very proper. I thought it would be refreshing for him to meet you.”
“Four fifty-five Central Park West. If he’s so rich, how come he’s living in the DMZ?” The area that bordered the park on the Upper West Side, north of Ninety-sixth Street, has seen more than its share of violent crime.
“According to the search I did today, when that landmark building was renovated and apartments went on the market three years ago,” I said, “Alger Herrick paid eight million dollars for the most coveted space in the joint.”
“And just seven years ago,” Mike said, shaking his head, “it was like a big old haunted house. The deadbeat hotel next door was a crack den and it was worth your life to walk down the block without being robbed by junkies or hit up by prostitutes.”
“So you know the building?”
“Had a nightmare of a case in four fifty-five back then. Three teenage boys from the ’hood killed up on the third floor, execution style, ’cause they were playing in there and witnessed a buy. The place had such a spooky history, most of the neighbors would cross the street rather than pass by too close to it. Only things inside were stray cats, dead pigeons, and half-dead crackheads.”
“I’d never heard of it until I just read the story about Herrick.”
“It was the New York Cancer Hospital in the 1880s,” Mike said. “The first one of its kind in the country to devote itself to the care of cancer patients.”
“The photo of it online looks more like a French chateau. The article said it was built with money from the Astor family. I guess they really did round up a load of real estate.”
“Wait till you see it. It’s got turrets on each side, round towers like in a castle,” Mike said. “The architect actually designed them on the theory that germs and dirt wouldn’t collect in corners. I can’t exactly say we had a guided tour, but Peterson and I got to know every nook and cranny in the place. It was the predecessor to today’s Memorial Hospital on the East Side.”
Mike’s late fiancee, Valerie Jacobsen, had been treated at Memorial a couple of years before-successfully-for breast cancer, only to be killed in a skiing accident. During those months, he had applied himself to learning as much about the disease as he knew about military history.
“And now it’s been transformed into elegant co-op apartments,” I said. “Maybe it’ll bring the rest of the neighborhood along with it.”
“Everything in New York used to be something else,” Mike said, tossing his trash into a pail on the corner as we waited for the light to change. “These old buildings have stories, Coop. They’re here to tell us who we were, who we used to be.”
“Herrick’s home seems to have mostly sad stories.”
