“Then let’s party,” I said, closing the door behind us. We went downstairs, through the lobby, and onto the street to Mike’s car.
It was 6:30 when we walked through the ornate wrought-iron Vanderbilt Gate on Fifth Avenue near 105th Street. I took Mike’s arm to descend the wide staircase into the Conservatory Garden, one of the most magnificent sanctuaries within the Park.
It was the perfect evening for a lawn party. It was warm with a slight breeze, and the sky would be light for another two hours. Volunteers lined the path at the bottom of the steps to greet guests and give them their table assignments. The stunning green lawn that was the centerpiece of the Italian garden was covered by one enormous tent-large enough to hold tables for the five hundred guests who were pouring into the Park. It was bordered on both sides by an allée of pink and white crabapple trees.
“Let’s find our host,” I said, looking for Commissioner Davis among the crowd of well-dressed, prosperous-looking New Yorkers.
“Follow me,” Mike said. He had spotted several waiters winding through the crowd with bottles of champagne.
He lifted a glass for each of us from one of the trays and extended them so that they were filled. I took one from him, and he clinked it against mine.
“To our truce,” I said.
“For as long as it lasts. And to Angel.”
We walked the length of the tent, seeing no one either of us knew, and then Mike kept walking around the path, past the twelve-foot-high jet fountain that pumped water into the air.
“Where are you going?”
“That spot where Tanner attacked the girl last night? It’s right out back this way.”
The rear of the Conservatory Garden wasn’t far from the Huddlestone Arch. “Let it be, Mike. You’re not here to walk a crime scene.”
“Just nerves. Just want to check out the landscape. See how Tanner likes to work.”
“I can tell you almost everything about that.”
“Then talk to me.”
Mike doubled back and we started to stroll around the side of the tent, watching the Park’s loyal supporters fawn over the colorful display of tulips that lined the walk.
“There’s Gordon Davis,” Mike said.
We could see his head above the crowd and made our way toward him. He was encircled by a troupe of admirers who were listening to him describe the efforts that had gone into creating the perfect floral display for this evening.
“Ah, my new friends!” he said as we approached. “Meet Alex Cooper and Mike Chapman. You two clean up nicely.”
Davis started introducing us around. “Hello, Professor,” I said to his wife, a petite, attractive woman whose silver-streaked Afro matched the strands of glitter in her dress.
“Please call me Peggy.” I let Mike do the meet-and-greet while the professor and I talked about the class she taught at NYU Law School.
Shortly before seven o’clock we were all asked to find our tables and be seated. I was between Commissioner Davis and Mike, who had a stocky matron on his other side. She appeared to be already in her cups and happy to be placed next to such a good-looking dinner companion.
Fifteen minutes later, Mia Schneider was at the podium to welcome the guests. She looked to be in her early fifties, a very handsome woman with a fine sense of style-a look that stood out in a tent full of well-heeled people. She had a good sense of humor and a quick intelligence and seemed to savor her role as doyenne of an organization that does so much for the Park and the city.
Gordon Davis leaned over to tell Mike and me that he had asked Ms. Schneider to stop at the table to meet us before she settled in for dinner. While we waited for her, we tried to answer all his questions about last night’s assault. The timing of two major crimes wasn’t a gift to the organizers of tonight’s event.
I watched Mia make her rounds-stopping for handshakes and kisses from her admirers, working her way to us. She greeted Mike and me enthusiastically and we stepped away from the table, with Gordon Davis, to talk about our investigation.
“You don’t have to tell me anything that’s not in the newspapers,” Mia said. “But I love this Park and I need to know you’re going to restore our sense of well-being here.”
“We’re working hard to do that,” I said. “The case last night, the victim told me that there’s some kind of ledge behind the waterfall in the Ravine. That you can actually sit on, behind the fall. It made me wonder, with all the boulders in the Park, if there are actual places that one could hide in.”
“You mean caves or grottoes?” Mia asked.
“Yes, anything like that. I assume we’re talking with two people who know the Park better than anyone in town.”
She and Davis looked at each other. “Pretty much so,” she said.
“More places than you can count,” Davis said. “But most of what once were caves have been covered over.”
“How many were there?” Mike asked.
“Olmsted and Vaux created dozens of them. It was part of their master plan to design something entirely unlike the city, unlike the enormous swamps they were replacing.”
“Some of them were natural, Gordon,” Mia said. “Don’t you remember that story about the cave near the lower end of the Reservoir that workmen found when they were clearing the dense underbrush?”
“Recently?”
“In 1857, Mike,” Mia said, laughing. “We’ve got a load of clippings from the papers and magazines going back to the origins of the Park. That one was natural, but many more were landscaped in.”
“Do you have the original plans?” I asked. “Would they show these caves?”
Davis shook his head. “There were years and years of original plans, some rejected by the City Council, many others modified over time.”
“Modified why?”
Davis crossed one arm over his chest and held the other up, his forefinger to his mouth, as he thought about an answer. “In some instances the changes were made because of expense. Occasionally, there were accidents that made the designers reboot.”
“What kinds of accidents?” I asked again.
“Remember the Park was constructed before Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. So it was gunpowder that was used to break up the bedrock under the surface, shape some of the boulders that were brought in, and manage the glacial rock that needed to be moved,” Davis said. “More gunpowder was used to create the illusion that this Park was a natural woodland-more gunpowder than was used at the Battle of Gettysburg.”
Like everything else about military history, that fact got Mike’s attention. “So men working with it-with vast quantities of black powder-were killed.”
“Exactly. That changed plans and designs, too.”
“Some of the grottoes or caves that were first left open to the public were closed over after time,” Davis said. “Animals-I’m talking about sheep and goats-wandered into them. People, bums mostly, camped out in them. They’ve all been closed over.”
“But can you get us the site information of where they are, open or closed?” I said.
“Between our two offices, I’m sure we can give you a good idea of where they were,” Mia said, patting me on the arm. “You’re not thinking of Beauty and the Beast, are you?”
“No offense,” Mike said, “but we’re beyond fairy tales.”
“I was referring to the TV show.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.
“Me neither.”
“Very cult in the ’80s, when you two were still kids.”
“Don’t go there, Mia,” Davis said, wagging a friendly finger at her.
But it was clear that she was irrepressible and spirited. “I can’t believe you don’t know this show. You can get it On Demand. It was about a relationship between this man-beast guy who lives underground in Central Park, with a sort of Utopian society of outcasts. He falls in love with a prosecutor-”