Chapter One
I spent a long afternoon at the morgue. I had left my desk
at the Manhattan district attorney's office shortly after
lunch to review autopsy results on a new case with the
deputy chief medical examiner. A nineteen-year-old,
dressed in an outfit she had bought just hours earlier,
was killed outside a social club as she waited on a street
corner for her friends.
Now I walked a quiet corridor, again surrounded by death.
I did not want to be here. I paused at the entrance of an
ancient tomb, its painted limestone facade concealing the
false doorway to an underground burial chamber. The faded
reliefs that decorated its walls showed offerings of food
and drink that would nourish the spirit of the dead. I
didn't harbor any hope that the young woman whose body I
had seen today would ever be in need of the kind of good
meal displayed before me.
I made my way past a granite lion and nodded at the
uniformed guard, who slouched on a folding chair beside
the elegantly carved beast, once the protector of a royal
grave. Both were sleeping soundly. The outstretched arms
of the neighboring alabaster monkeys held empty vessels
that had no doubt been receptacles of the body parts of
some mummified dignitary of the Old Kingdom.
Voices echoing from behind me suggested that I was not
going to be the last arrival at this evening's festive
dinner. I quickened my pace and swept by cases filled with
goddesses' stone heads, perched on shelves holding jeweled
sandals and golden collars that had been buried with them
for centuries. A sharp left turn brought me face-to-face
with the enormous black sarcophagus of a Thirtieth Dynasty
Egyptian queen, held open by two iron posts, so that
passersby could see the image of her soul portrayed on the
inside of the upper lid. The dark, heavy casket with a
faint outline of the slender body it once housed chilled
me, despite the unseasonal warmth of the late-spring
night.
Then I turned the last corner, where the darkness of the
funereal rooms gave way to the glorious open space that
housed the Temple of Dendur. The northernmost end of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art was a sloping, glass-paned wall
soaring above the sandstone monuments, opening the vista
into Central Park. It was almost nine o'clock, and the
streetlamps beyond the windows lightened the night sky,
giving definition to the leafy green trees bordering the
great institution.
I stood at the edge of the moat that surrounded the two
raised buildings in this stunning wing, searching the
crowd for my friends. Waiters in sleek black suits
zigzagged back and forth among the guests, stopping to
dispense smoked salmon on black bread and caviar blinis.
They were trailed by others who carried silver trays
filled with glasses of white wine, champagne, and
sparkling water, dodging the elbows and arms of the
assembled museum members and supporters.
Nina Baum saw me before I spotted her. "You came just late
enough to miss most of the speeches. Smart move."
She signaled to one of the servers, and handed me a flute
of champagne. "Hungry?"
I shook my head.
"The morgue?"
"Not a very pleasant afternoon."
"Was she -- ?"
"I'll tell you about it later. Chapman thought he had a
lead on a case he's been handling that's reached a dead
end, so I wanted to get a clear understanding about the
pattern of injuries and how they'd been inflicted. That
way, if he picked up a suspect and I got a chance to
question the guy tonight, I'd be ready for him. Turned out
to be a bad tip, so there's no interrogation, no arrest.
It's on the back burner for a while."
Nina looped her arm through mine and started to walk me
toward the steps. "Why didn't you bring Mike with you?"
"I tried. Once I told him it was black tie he sent me home
to shower and change. No penguin suit for him, not even to
see you. He'll catch you later in the week."
Mike Chapman was a homicide detective. Best one on the
job, in my view. Nina Baum was my closest friend, and had
been for exactly half my life. We were eighteen when we
met, assigned to be roommates at Wellesley College when we
arrived freshman year. She was married now, living in
California with her husband and young son. She had met
Mike many times during the decade that he and I had worked
together on cases, and she looked forward to spending time
with him whenever she was in town.
"First we'll find Jake." She led me up the steps, past the
lone palm tree that stood on the platform below the great
temple. "Then I'll introduce you to my boss and all the
museum heavyweights."
"How's Jake behaving? You still have a job after tonight
or is he hounding everybody here, looking for scoops?"
"Let's say we've raised a lot of eyebrows around town. I
keep telling people that I've only borrowed him for the
evening, but when you read tomorrow's gossip columns, you
might begin to wonder. You must have a lot of friends
here, 'cause they can't figure out why I'm hanging on to
him and why you're nowhere to be seen."
"'Who is that auburn-haired beauty who whisked in from the
coast and stole NBC correspondent Jake Tyler right out
from under the long arm of the law? Prosecutor Alexandra
Cooper has a warrant out for her arrest. And also for the
return of the terrifically sexy -- and backless -- navy
blue sequined dress that this interloper slipped out of
Alexandra's closet when she wasn't looking.' That's what
I'm likely to see in the tabs?"
"I figured you loaned me the guy for the evening, how sore
could you be about the sexy, backless gown?"
Nina had arrived in New York a day earlier. She was a
partner in a major L.A. law firm, where she had developed
an expertise in packaging large entertainment projects for
big-screen and television movies. Tonight's event was
staged to announce an historic occasion for two great New
York institutions. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the
American Museum of Natural History, with some help from
Hollywood, would hold the first cooperative exhibition in
their histories.
The controversial mix of scholarship and show business had
had a difficult birth, struggling to overcome resistance
from trustees and curators, administrators and city
officials. But blockbuster shows like the Met's "Treasures
of Tutankhamen" and the Costume Institute's collection of
Jacqueline Kennedy's White House clothing filled the
museum coffers and argued for the drama of a spectacular
twenty-first-century display of the two museums'
collective greatest hits.
Nina's California client, UniQuest Productions, had
successfully bid on all the media marketing rights to the
new project. "A Modern Bestiary," as the show had been
titled, would feature all the fantastic animals of the
world, as represented in both collections, from
hieroglyphs, tapestries, and paintings to mounted
specimens and stuffed mammals. There would be dazzling,
high-tech creations and virtual dioramas, IMAX time trips
to examine artists and artifacts in their natural
habitats, and commercial tie-ins for souvenir sales in
museum shops and on the web. There would be Rembrandt
refrigerator magnets, triceratops lapel pins, plastic
human-genome Slinkys to bounce down staircases across
America, and snow globes with endangered species of the
Amazon being doused by acid rain.
Nina steered me toward a short, dark-haired man with too
much facial hair and a collarless tux shirt. "Quentin
Vallejo, I'd like you to meet Alexandra Cooper. She's -- "
"I know, I know. The best friend." Quentin did the up-and-
down thing. My five-ten frame towered over him, so his
eyes just focused at the level of my breasts and worked
their way south to my knees before lifting back up to meet
my glance. "The sex crimes prosecutor. Nina talked about
you for the entire flight yesterday. That's an interesting
job you've got. We ought to have a chat sometime, just the
two of us. Like to hear more about what you do."
Quentin turned to exchange his empty wineglass for a full
one, and I gave him a nod as I walked away. Nina blew him
a kiss and followed me.
"That's the guy who's running this show?"
"Worked with Spielberg for twelve years. He's absolutely
ingenious at designing interactive materials and
futuristic movie images. Makes inanimate objects look like
flesh and blood. He sees things in ways that nobody else
does."
"That much was obvious to me." I stood on tiptoes, looking
over heads and shoulders for any sign of Jake. "Did the
big guns at the Met and Natural History ever meet Quentin
before today?"
"You think we wouldn't have done a deal if they had?"
"Have you lost your mind? This museum was founded by old
men. Very rich, very white, very Presbyterian. Natural
History was pretty much the same. The good old boys may be
dead and buried, but this place isn't exactly run by the
most diverse crowd in town."
"Somebody on the project did his homework. Our advance
group managed all the hands-on work to get this event up
and running. Probably the preppiest-looking film team I've
ever seen west of the Mississippi. Hired a white-shoe law
firm here to handle the contract work. Saved the outing of
Quentin for tonight's gala, the big announcement."
"How'd that go?"
"Listen to the buzz. The trustees, the press, the upper
crust -- whoever these people are, they seemed thrilled
about the news." Nina steered me to the small recess at
the center of the taller building, the gateway to the
Temple of Dendur. She was looking for a quieter place to
tell me about the presentation that I had missed.
"Do you know Pierre Thibodaux?" She pointed to the podium,
where a tall, dark-haired man was being led away from a
small group of museum officials. He motioned to his
colleagues with a raised finger and stepped into the
adjacent corridor.
"Only by reputation. New guy in town." Thibodaux had
replaced Philippe de Montebello as director of the Met
less than three years ago.
"He's taken all the meetings with our advance crew
himself. This show is his baby. Brilliant, mercurial,
handsome. You've got to meet him -- "
"Ladies, you can't be leaning against the building, y'all
hear me?" a security guard said.
We walked out of the narrow opening and searched for
another quiet nook.
"Let's get out of this wing so we can have a normal
conversation. There are as many living, breathing jackals
in here tonight as there are limestone ones standing
sentry over all the Egyptian galleries. I somehow think
poor Augustus didn't foresee when he built these monuments
that they would become the most prized cocktail space in
Manhattan."
I could tell that Nina was annoyed with me, as she tried
to follow me back down the steps.
"Who's Augustus? What the hell are you talking about? The
temple is Egyptian, right?"
I had been coming to the Met since my earliest childhood,
and knew most of the permanent exhibits pretty well. "Half
right. It was built near Aswan, but by a Roman emperor who
ruled that region at the time. Augustus had it erected in
honor of two young sons of a Nubian chieftain who drowned
in the Nile. I hate to dampen your enthusiasm, Nina. I've
just been around too much death today not to wonder why we
find it appropriate to organize our festivities in and
around the tombs of all these ancient cultures. Wouldn't
people find it offensive to have the next cocktail party
at Arlington Cemetery?"
"Sorry they're not serving scotch tonight, Alex. Take it
easy, will you? We can leave any time you'd like. Who's
the old dame hanging on to Jake?"
He had spotted the two of us and was making his way to the
foot of the platform on which we stood. A silver-haired
woman with lots of dangling sapphires -- from earlobes,
wrists, fingers -- had grasped Jake by the arm and was
bending his ear about something. I stopped on the bottom
step and fished in my purse for some coins to toss in the
moat.
"Look out for that crocodile, darling. The most dangerous
creature in Egypt, the embodiment of the essence of evil."
Jake held out his hand to lower me down as I tossed a few
quarters in the water, for good luck. The ebony croc
mocked the gesture, his gaping mouth posed for eternity,
seeking something meatier than the quiche that was being
circulated around the room.
I kissed Jake's cheek, which was already covered with the
shapes of pursed lips in a variety of colors. "I don't
mind that you're in loco husband for Nina, but who's the
rest of my competition?"
"That last woman? Just one of the trustees. Didn't catch
her name. Gushing about how exciting the joint show is
going to be and asking whether the networks are covering
the fireworks tonight."
"Fireworks?"
"There's supposed to be a preview, a five-minute sound-and-
light show to kick off the news about the bestiary
exhibition. Here comes Thibodaux. He'll do the honors."
Instead, the director walked straight toward us, smoothing
his jacket with one hand and his hair with the
other. "Nina, may I have a word with you? Do you know
where Quentin is?"
"I'll find him for you. Pierre, I'd like you to meet my --
"
"Enchanté." He greeted us tersely but his eyes searched
the room over my shoulder. He and Nina broke away,
retracing our steps to look for the producer.
I glanced at my watch. "Soon as we tear her loose, think
you'd treat your two dates to burgers at '21'?"
"My chariot awaits you, madam."
Nina, Quentin, and Pierre had their heads together at the
top of the stairs. The director did a double take over his
shoulder as Quentin pointed down at me. Nina was shaking
her head in the negative and trying to block me from
Quentin's line of sight. You're right, pal. Whatever it
is, keep me out of it.
Pierre Thibodaux didn't wait for the others to descend the
two tiers of steps.
"Miss Cooper? Mr. Vallejo just told me that you're a
prosecutor. May I have a moment with you, alone, for some
advice? Do you mind, Mr. Tyler?" This time, no guard
admonished us as Thibodaux led me back up to the platform,
removed the rope between the two pillars at the entrance
of the Temple of Dendur, and stepped into the quiet
archway.
"You're a bureau chief in the Manhattan district
attorney's office? I need your help in dealing with the
police tonight."
"Here, at the museum?"
"No, actually, in a freight yard. I'm going to make a few
remarks to close the evening and send all these people on
their way. We'll forgo the drama of the UniQuest
Productions pyrotechnics. The last thing we need tomorrow
is any bad publicity linked to our splendid new show."
"Perhaps I can make a call to the proper -- "
"There's a shipment of exhibits going abroad, stored in
containers for transit. It's a very routine occurrence for
us. Crates go in and out of the country all the time.
Exchanges with other museums, items we've deaccessioned or
loaned to foreign institutions. Happens regularly."
"I doubt there's anything that I can help you with. If
you've got a problem with Customs -- " I said, as
Thibodaux continued to speak over my objection.
"What doesn't usually happen is that one of the ancient
sarcophagi was opened for inspection a few hours ago.
There was supposed to be a mummified princess in the
coffin, Miss Cooper. Twelfth Dynasty, Middle Kingdom. A
couple of thousand years old and quite valuable. Instead,
there's a corpse inside. Someone has substituted a body,
I'm afraid. A few centuries younger than my princess, no
doubt, but just as dead."
Copyright © 2003 by Linda Fairstein