Why the boat basin? I asked myself. If not just a traffic stop for the perps to change cars and move their passenger, then there had to be a boat involved. And if a boat was involved, then where was it headed?
I squatted on the broken boards and drew imaginary letters with my finger. What had Coop heard the men in the car say to make her write Bar and Bed?
I looked up again and scanned the Hudson River one more time, as though searching out its source in the little town of Lake Tear in the Cloud and sailing away past its mouth at the head of Upper New York Bay.
What I needed now was an epiphany, a lightning strike to my brain that would make things as clear to me as Coop thought she had done.
I played with proper names like Barton and Barstow and Barbara. I thought of crazy things like bedlam and bedbugs and bargains. I conjured objects that would be on this river, like barges and barrels and bedrock.
I must have spent ten or fifteen minutes fighting with the alphabet, pacing the dock and then squatting down to focus myself.
Coop had meant to send these words to me because she trusted that I would be able to make sense of them. But I was trying to force the six letters to talk to me, and they wouldn’t comply.
I thought it through again. She must have heard the men say they were taking her to an exact location. She must have known by the time she wrote the two words, before they drove through Central Park to the West Side, that their next stop was the boat basin. And then someplace jumping off from right here, maybe someplace we had both been together.
Bar and Bed. I started over again. I babbled all the words that came to me from a mental scan of dictionary and encyclopedia Bs.
I looked upriver and downriver and tried to recover factoids about every landmark on this vast waterfront.
Slowly, I pushed up from the dock. I stretched my legs and nodded.
Bar was short for the name of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor who conceived and designed the Statue of Liberty. My wordsmith had given me the help I needed with the shorthand text she never got to send. Bed must have meant Bedloe Island, where the great statue had originally been sited.
I fist-pumped the air over and over again.
“What is it, Mike?” Mercer called out to me.
“I have it, man!” I shouted back at him. “Go get Jimmy North. It’s time for a sea cruise.”
THIRTY-THREE
“Slow it down, Mike,” Mercer said. “Talk me through it.”
We stood on the end of the dock and looked downriver.
“It makes sense from every angle. Who knows how many clues Coop would have tried to give me if she’d had time. The words she wrote were never going to be obvious as place names,” I said. “These clues wouldn’t have been clear to her kidnappers unless they knew as much about New York City history as she does.”
“And you do,” Mercer says. “So what makes those two ordinary words so highly charged, in your view?”
“First of all, it’s a place Coop and I have been to together-with you, too-so of course she knows the names.”
“Of course. The night she wound up on Shooter’s Island. The Kills. You took her inside Fort Wood till the chopper came to get us.”
“One of the shorter visits, but she knows everything about Lady Liberty that I do.”
“Go on, Mike.”
“We’re looking for a location, right, where kidnappers might keep a prize prisoner. Liberty Island could be the place, don’t you think? I mean, I’m not saying the worst is over or that’s where Coop is now, but it’s worth a look.”
“Give me more.”
“Start with the fact that it’s an island,” I said. “That makes it hard to reach, hard for people to get to. Nobody’s just going to drop in on the group, are they?”
“You’d be wrong about that, man. You know it’s a draw for tourists.”
“Pay attention to your local news, Mercer. The island was closed to visitors as of Labor Day, for the next six months. They’re replacing all the rivets in the statue-like, twelve thousand of them, repairing the Lady’s nostril and some of her missing hair curls, and pressure washing the whole damn thing to get rid of ten years of bird droppings.”
“And you think they’d be hiding, like, what, inside the torch?”
“Don’t blow me off, okay? When’s the last time you were out there?”
“Like most New Yorkers, never, except that night on business.”
“Then hear me out, Mercer. She’s massive, the statue. Yeah, you could get lost inside her. Hitchcock did it. Robert Cummings. Saboteur,” I said. I was jumpy and agitated, talking at a staccato clip, like a hyperactive kid. “But she stands on top of an old army fort.”
I had just pointed out the eleven-point star-shaped structure to Jimmy North an hour earlier.
“Fort Wood was built for the War of 1812 and eventually used as a garrison after the Civil War. It actually forms the foundation of the statue, the base of it.”
“So there are still military structures on the island?” Mercer asked.
“I don’t know what’s inside the pedestal of the statue or the remains of the fort itself, but it’s one of the great restored ruins of the city. The island is twelve acres, so there’s also a small park and a bunch of outbuildings, even a caretaker’s home,” I said. “And it’s one of the few places around Manhattan that you can only reach by boat. Only by boat.”
“And the trail of bread crumbs brought us right here to a boat basin. That’s useful.”
“Coop likes all things French, and I’m into military history. That’s why the clues work.”
“Tell me that again,” Mercer said.
“All right. The sculptor who had the idea to build this great statue is a Frenchman. His name is Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.”
“How are you even sure that Alex knows his name?”
“Coop’s been there plenty of times, by ferry. It’s one of the first places she takes out-of-town guests. She thinks the Lady is a glorious creature.”
“Why does she figure you know the Frenchman’s name, well enough for her to have you catch on to the word Bar in her text?”
“The whole point of the statue, Mercer, is to commemorate the Declaration of Independence and French aid to the Revolutionary War,” I said. “It was a gift from the French Republic because of the longtime alliance of the two nations in achieving America’s freedom. That’s why Liberty is holding a tablet inscribed with the year 1776.”
“Of course. There’s a military aspect to the island.”
“Who do you think picked the site for the statue? Who took Bartholdi to the little island in the bay?”
“I’ve got no idea.”
“Ever hear of a dude named William Tecumseh Sherman, the Civil War general?”
“Sure. Scorched earth,” Mercer said. “Man refused to employ black troops in his army.”
“One and the same. He was considered to be the first modern general-well, except for his views on race. I’ve read his memoirs, so that’s how come I know about Bartholdi,” I said. “When Bartholdi came to this country for the second time, President Rutherford Hayes assigned General Sherman to meet him in order to choose the location for the statue.”
Mercer pursed his lips. He was thinking about it all.
“So you want any more on Bartholdi? That he fought in the Franco-Prussian War? That he first wanted to build this statue for Ismail the Magnificent, the pasha of Egypt, to mark the opening of the Suez Canal? Give me a war zone and I’ll give you the answers.”
“I’m just trying to be your devil’s advocate, Mike.”
“I got Captain Abruzzi, Dr. Friedman, and half the Major Case squad playing that role. Save your energy.” I was walking along the dock, inspecting the small motor launches that were tucked into their moorings.