The elegant building with its custard yellow frame and green trim was one of the only Federal Period wooden houses still standing in Manhattan.
Several years ago when I was dating a reporter who worked at NBC, we were frequently included in cocktail parties and dinners hosted by the former administration. I knew a few things about America’s first official mayoral residence and its careful restoration a decade ago, but I couldn’t figure how it would play as a site in this widening investigation.
“Give him a minute. He must have seen something going on outside,” I said.
The housekeeper appeared in the doorway. “Excuse me, miss. We’re expecting fifty people for tea at four o’clock. Will that be fine?”
“No, no, no,” Mike said. “Tea?”
“Yes, sir. We have tea tours several times a week.”
“Well, there’ll be no tea today. You call out to the guardhouse and tell them no one comes in this afternoon until Mayor Statler gets here.”
She appeared to be thinking about talking back to Mike, but changed her mind and withdrew.
“Want to look upstairs?” Mike asked me. “That’s the private quarters. The master suite and guest bedrooms.”
I stepped to the doorway and saw the velvet rope that blocked the staircase off from public access. “I’d rather not be snooping around without Statler’s permission.”
“Coop, it’s ‘the people’s house.’ That’s what the mayor always says.”
“Wait.”
Mercer came back inside, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “I’m not sure I agree with you, Mike. I mean about this whole mess being connected to Gracie Mansion. Look out the window.”
We both followed Mercer there.
“See the well? And the fence right behind it? I’ll bet whoever did this was on his way to the river with the body. You dump the girl in there, just over the fence, let the currents of Hell Gate do their job, and nobody sees her again till it’s spring and she floats to the surface.”
“Maybe so,” Mike said. “Maybe the river was the final destination. That makes sense. But what, you think the killer just got lucky and found a well? Nope, it’s not that coincidental. Too convenient.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re looking to jam up the mayor,” I said.
“Course not. I just think we need to spend a little more time getting him to answer questions, before you have to wind up inviting him to the grand jury to do that.”
“Battaglia would probably pay admission to see him testify.”
Mike was pacing impatiently, rolling the heavy cannon shot in his hands like Captain Queeg nervously playing with steel balls while his crew planned their mutiny. “The city gives you a house like this to live in, with all its history, and most of these guys would rather crib somewhere else. Can’t figure it. I’ll give him another fifteen minutes and we’re out of here. We got work to do.”
“You’ve never been assigned to the mansion, have you?” I asked. Every detail of the house was a perfect reflection of the Federal Period. The antique convex mirror facing the windows was topped with a gilded eagle. Each sofa and chair had been upholstered in fabric copied from old designs and paintings. A block away from Salma Zunega’s modern high-rise was this graceful step back in time that looked like it belonged on a movie set.
“Dignitaries and protocol, Coop? Not exactly my bailiwick. But when I was in the Academy and the British prime minister stayed here for a week, they needed extra men for the detail.”
“Let me guess. Mr. Gracie was a warrior, right? That’s how come you know so much.”
“Nope. It really started long before Gracie,” Mike said, replacing the cannonball on the mantel and leading me back to the window. “You’re standing on one of the most historic sites in the entire city, which has owned the mansion and this point of land since 1896. Back in the 1640s, when New Amsterdam was a little village on the southern tip of Manhattan, this was a farm owned by a Dutchman and called Horn’s Hook. An English family took it over a century later, since it was one of the choicest properties in the city.”
“Why so?”
“Can’t you see for yourself?” Mike said, pulling back the curtain. “Think like a general once in a while, not like a lit major.”
“I’ll try,” I said, shrugging while Mercer tugged at a strand of my hair.
“First you’ve got this high promontory of land, looking out on the turbulent body of water. From the roof of this building, you can actually see all the other boroughs in the city. It was rich soil for farming and there were oysters and fish of all kinds teeming right down on the shore. Sort of like your place on the Vineyard, kid.”
“I get that.”
“The family that owned the land was named Walton, and they picked the wrong side during the Revolution.”
“Loyalists?” Mercer asked.
“Exactly. When Washington sent his men to New York in 1776 to prepare the defense against the British, American troops seized this home and built two forts-one here at Horn’s Hook and one across the way at Hallett’s Point in Queens-to block the passage by boat through Hell Gate.”
“So the front lawn right out here was a major battleground in the Revolutionary War?” Mercer asked.
“Yeah. The king’s army attacked from Long Island, and from all these little islands in the river, bombing the life out of our rebels. The Walton house, tucked inside the fort right here, was set on fire by a shell and burned to the ground. Cannonballs just like this one brought the place down. This point remained occupied by the British until 1783.”
I never tired of learning of the city’s past through Mike’s boundless enthusiasm for history.
“Gracie didn’t come along until later?” I said.
“Archibald Gracie. Born in Scotland, but sailed to New York right after the British evacuated to start a commercial enterprise. He recognized the importance of the tobacco industry, so he moved to Virginia for a few years to make contacts there, until he married and returned here. Took a big house in the heart of the city-lower Broadway-where he both lived and conducted all his business.”
“What was the business?” Mercer asked.
“Importing European goods in exchange for tobacco. The man got rich, Mercer. Very, very rich. Began buying his own ships. Came time for him to own a country house. Just like Coop.”
Mike and I had come to our strong friendship from such different backgrounds that he was always poking fun at my privileged roots. My father, Benjamin Cooper, was a cardiologist whose invention of a half-inch piece of plastic tubing when I was twelve years old had changed the way heart surgery was performed all over the world. The Cooper-Hoffman valve had afforded me a great education and a financial cushion-even in the difficult days of our recent recession-that made public service a far easier lifestyle for me than for most of my colleagues.
“I thought you’d forgotten about the Vineyard. You haven’t been there in way too long.”
“My French isn’t good enough, I guess.”