“Save the Aqueduct Bridge,” Spindlis said into the bank of microphones. “The Alexander Hamilton Memorial Restoration Fund is a nonexistent organization that was supposed to provide money to aid the city’s Historic House Trust in preserving the Grange Mansion, which was Hamilton’s home. There simply are no such funds.”
I looked at Mike when I heard the word mansion. There weren’t that many of them on the island of Manhattan.
“And instead,” Spindlis said, “that fund primarily served as a conduit to provide cash and other personal benefits to the aide involved. Stolen city funds walked out of here by council employees.”
“What’s the timing on this?” Mercer asked. “What’s the rush to judgment, do you think, that made the district attorney unseal this thing today?”
Paul Battaglia took control of the microphone from Spindlis. “Kendall Reid is charged with skimming almost two hundred thousand dollars cash, so that you’re clear on this, designated for an agency he selected that doesn’t even exist. So far as we can tell, this is a practice that has been going on for more than twenty years, a result of the charter revision of 1989.”
“There’s part of your answer, Mercer,” I said, as Battaglia identified the other City Council aide involved. “Kendall Reid was Ethan Leighton’s aide before he gave up his council seat to run for Congress. The DA’s decided to turn the screws on Leighton as well as on the City Council members.”
“Depends on which way Battaglia spins it,” Nan said, aware of how well the boss liked to control leaks to the press. “That’s the way we’ll know whether he’s trying to tie this to Leighton, or take the heat off the congressman.”
“The tabloids will have a field day. That’s what I’m going to do in my next life. Write headlines for the Post. The bad guys make it so easy. CITY HAUL, that’s what I’d dub this scandal. SLUSH PUPPIES,” Mike said, boxing the banner headlines with his hands. “Meanwhile, someone walks out the door with all that slush.”
“Or it’s cash stashed away in shoe boxes in someone’s closet,” Mercer said. He was thinking of the find at Salma Zunega’s apartment today.
“Sounds like Battaglia’s firing a salvo over the bow of Leighton’s ship,” Mike said. “Wipes out all his political enemies in one fell swoop.”
There was a knock on the door and Donovan Baynes let himself in before I could get over to open it. “Sorry to be late. I got held up on another matter,” Baynes said. “What’s the matter, Alex? You all look shell-shocked.”
“If all politics is local like they say, it just never occurred to me how filthy it is right around here, in government offices.” Mike was chewing on his second chocolate chip cookie.
Donny Baynes looked up at the television screen and recognized the press conference participants. “What’s got your boss all fired up tonight?”
“Phantom funds, Donny,” I said. “Just a few million city dollars missing from these phantom funds.”
TWENTY-ONE
Catherine was at the blackboard again, adding Kendall Reid’s name and linking it to Ethan Leighton’s, with a series of dollar signs beside it. She drew a question mark above Salma Zunega’s apartment, and enclosed it in a chalk-outlined shoe box with more dollar signs propping open the lid.
“This political corruption graph is just for starters,” Catherine said. “We’re missing a few sleazeballs, but you can help me fill in the blanks. Sort of feel we should have a guy in the men’s room at City Hall, taking a wide stance.”
“Don’t go trolling in those bathrooms, Catherine,” Mike said. “I’d hate to lose you.”
“There are some days that private practice seems so appealing,” Nan said.
Mike narrated the day’s events to Donny Baynes, who was taking copious note in a small book. “Autopsy on Zunega?”
“I’ll be there,” Mike said. “Tomorrow at eight A.M.”
“Any word on tattoos on the other women who’ve been examined?”
“I made the calls on that today,” Nan said. “A lot of them have tattoos, but none in that same spot on the thigh that Alex has told you about. And no roses.”
“Anybody else view the bodies-the two Jane Does?”
“Three more young men were taken to the morgue today. Can’t get a make on our Jane Does either. It’s like they spent their time in the hold being sick,” Mike said, “or they were just smart enough to keep their distance from the men for the entire ride.”
“We’ve got hundreds more people to talk to,” Baynes said. “We’ll find out who they are. I’m sure of it.”
“Spoken with all the confidence of your first big trafficking case,” Mercer said. “You’ll be fortunate if even half your population on that boat wind up with real identities. There’s nothing in it for them to help you while they’re in detention. They’ll just be looking to bust out of whatever facility you send them to and start life over.”
“No backpedaling on women you’re giving us tomorrow?” Nan asked.
“They’ll be delivered here by ten,” Baynes said. “You have my word.”
Each of us took up a position around the long table. Nan, with Laura’s assistance, had stacked several piles of DD5s that had been prepared since the grounding of the Golden Voyager and the events following Ethan Leighton’s drunken crash on the highway.
“Let’s skim through what we’ve got here,” I said, “to see if we’ve missed anything obvious.”
There had been so many cops who responded to both scenes that it would be impossible to talk with all of them in the days to come. This was a way of marshaling the evidence for clues or connections we might have overlooked.
I opened another can of soda and read accounts of the highway patrol officers who had come upon Ethan Leighton’s accident. That was less familiar to me than the awful image of the foundering ship and its weeping passengers that was embedded in my mind’s eye.
“Anybody know what kind of mansion the Grange is?” I asked.
“What page are you looking at?” Nan asked.
“No, I’m thinking of what Spindlis said at the press conference. All that slush fund cash, and some of it going to restore a mansion. That’s two mansion mentions in the same day. It’s unusual for Manhattan.”
“Now, you ladies need to spend some time in Harlem,” Mercer said. “I can help you with this one.”
“Please.”
“You probably know as much about Alexander Hamilton’s career as I do.”
“Revolutionary War hero, a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, wrote the Federalist Papers with James Madison and John Jay, became the first secretary of the treasury,” Nan said, ticking off the major accomplishments, “and then had a lucrative law practice here in the city.”
“So he built himself a country estate too,” Mercer said. “A bit farther uptown, in Harlem.”
“Before the Jeffersons moved on up, right?” Mike said. “The television Jeffersons?”
“Yessir, my paragon of political correctness. Hamilton built the Grange around the same time Mr. Gracie was staking out his mansion. Named it for the old family property in Scotland.”
“Then he didn’t get to live in it very long,” Mike said. “ ’ Cause Aaron Burr killed him in a duel in 1804.”
“Well, the house still stands, Mr. Chapman. In fact, in 2008 the whole thing was moved from Convent Avenue down the street to St. Nicholas Park.”
“They moved an entire mansion?” Nan asked.
“They sure did. I went up there with my cousin to watch, ’cause I knew the Grange. It’s a beautiful old building, and it used to abut Cousin Eugene’s church.”
“St. Luke’s up on Convent by a Hundred and forty-first Street?” Mike said. “Now I get the picture. That place was huge. How’d they move it?”
“Lord, it was quite a fantastic operation. They put steel beams between the foundation and the first floor, to support the weight of the place. Held those up by cribbings, and then hydraulic jacks inside the cribbings lifted the house eight inches a shot,” Mercer said. “Then they installed roller beams to create rails along Convent Avenue, with rams pushing the steel beams horizontally.”