“Flight to what?”
“The part that’s a secret.”
We went back into the hallway and out another door, which left us in a four-by-four space with a metal ladder made of thin round rungs heading straight above us about twenty feet.
I looked up but wasn’t anxious to make the climb.
“Can you do it, Coop?”
“Some other time.” I had mild vertigo and was wary of anything that involved heights.
“Take off those ridiculous shoes and be daring. I’ll stay below you in case you panic.”
“I’m not the panicky type.” I unstrapped my sandals and left them on the cold stone surface beside the ladder. I put my foot on the first rung and steadied myself as I moved slowly, hand over hand. When I got to the top, I looked over onto the small area that was perched, like a giant birds’ nest, above the terrace we’d just been on. “Maybe I am panicky. There’s nothing to hold on to.”
“The brick wall. Just hold on to that.”
I looked down and Mike was right behind me. I grabbed on to the old bricks that formed the top of the wall, and swung my leg-grateful for the slit in my skirt-over the side, planting my bare feet on the paved surface.
“There’s a purpose to this, right?” I asked. I was playing with the strands of hair that had come loose from the carefully styled twist on top of my head. “Something worth the cleaning bills?”
“A piece of history.”
“I prefer my history in a book. I’m less likely to kill myself that way.”
Mike came right up behind me. He pulled off his bow tie and removed the jacket of his tux.
“Look at this. Only a few hundred people have ever been up on this turret since the building was constructed.” He went to a small metal box tucked in a corner of the roof and opened it, removing a logbook with a pen attached to it by a long chain. “Check out these names, and then sign yours and date it.”
The names of the last five mayors of the city were there, along with Gordon Davis and his predecessors. Members of the Conservancy, a handful of Park devotees, a few politicians, one NYPD detective from the night before, and now I would join that short list. I picked up the pen and wrote my name.
Then Mike took me by the hand and led me to the western side of the roof. “Look down. Look over there.”
I could see the zoo and the whimsical Delacorte Clock, which chimed on the half hour throughout the day, playing familiar nursery rhymes to the delight of young visitors.
There was a large storage bin along the side of the brick wall. Mike lifted the lid, propping it open while he removed his night vision binoculars, and then came back to my side.
I held them up and looked out into the Park, but it was all a blur.
“I must be doing something wrong. How do I adjust these?”
Mike stood behind me, practically touching his chest to my back, while he reached both arms around me and showed me how to focus the lenses and turn on the night vision feature. I was tempted to lean back against him and close my eyes, but he seemed intent on getting me to see.
“Better?”
He stepped away from me and rested his hands on the edge of the brick wall.
“Better than what?”
“What can you see?”
“Penguins. I can see dozens of penguins,” I said with a laugh.
“Don’t bullshit me, Coop. They’re inside for the night. Those must be all the dudes from the Conservancy in their tuxes.”
“Monkeys? I do see them, like they were ten feet away.”
“Yeah. Japanese snow monkeys. They have their own hot tub down there.”
I moved the glasses slowly across the treetops and then down among the branches. I could clearly make out people walking through the Park while many others were sitting on benches or rocks, enjoying the very mild night.
“Too bad you can’t see the Lake from here,” I said.
“That’s exactly what I thought last night. Another season, before the leaves blossomed or after they fell, it would be a clean shot.”
I spent several minutes scanning the Park. I could see the skating rink and the Dairy, the long, wide stretch of the Mall between the leafy green borders, and the top of an occasional statue that peeked through.
“What are you doing?” I asked Mike. I had turned my attention to the buildings that made a perimeter around the Park, starting with the Plaza Hotel on the southeast corner. 59th Street was a mix of residences and fancy hotels, and I was looking up and into windows from my unique perch on this isolated tower.
“Checking my messages.”
“Any news?”
“My mother says hello.”
I was crazy about Mike’s mother, a devoutly religious woman who doted on her son, the youngest of four and the only male child. She was born in Ireland and still had a healthy trace of a brogue from County Cork.
“I’ve got to get one of the photos that was taken at the party and send her a picture of you in your dress clothes,” I said. “Wait-put your tie and jacket back on and let me take one up here.”
“Send her a snap of a penguin, Coop. Anyway, she said the Final Jeopardy category was baseball.”
I had moved along to the magnificent all-glass façade of the Time Warner Center, which was catty-corner across Columbus Circle from the Maine Monument. The shops and restaurants on the lower floors had closed, but lights still sparkled all the way up to the top.
“I’m in.” I had grown up in a household with four men who loved baseball-both my brothers, my father, and my grandfather-and I knew almost as much about it as Mike and Mercer did.
“Here’s the answer,” Mike said. On the rare occasions when he knew he wouldn’t be anywhere near a television set, Mike asked his mother to leave three messages for him. One with the category, second with the answer, and third with the winning question. “‘First president to throw out the ball on opening day.’”
I had just rounded the corner to Central Park West, looking up at apartments that had sweeping vistas over the Park and toward the east.
“Are you peeping or what?” he asked.
“Trying to. It’s amazing how many people are up and active at this hour. And I don’t know which president threw out the first pitch.”
“1910. It was the fat man,” Mike said. “Who was William Howard Taft? Washington Nationals beat the Philly Athletics three-nothing.”
“Interesting. Take twenty bucks off what you owe me.”
“What’s got your attention, Coop?”
My gaze was arrested when I reached the frame of the Dakota, made to be the city’s first luxury apartment building, on the corner of West 72nd Street and Central Park West. Designed by the same firm that created the Plaza Hotel, now over my left shoulder, it had a completely distinctive slhouette. There were high gables and roofs with a profusion of dormers and niches, referred to in architectural terms as German Renaissance style, although the interior was decidedly French in character.
“The Dakota,” I said. “Can you imagine what it must have been like to have lived there in the 1880s? I mean, civilized New Yorkers didn’t live north of 59th Street then. I think the building got its name because the Upper West Side of Manhattan seemed as remote as the Dakota Territory.”
“Is it petty of me to be happy when you’re wrong, Coop?”
“Not petty. Just mean. I know you delight in it.”
“My dad was one of the guys on John Lennon’s homicide. 1980.”
Brian Chapman had been a legend in the department, and had worked so many major jobs that some guys joked that his investigative skill and wisdom in homicide cases had been passed through his DNA to Mike.
“He spent a lot of time at the Dakota after the shooting. Told me the architect who created the place had a real attachment to the names of the new western territories and states. Can you see the Indian?”