“Would people care?” Mike asked.
“Of course they would. And it’s necessary for us to keep the interest in the collection heightened, for its eventual placement or sale when that time comes. Its uniqueness, its rarity, will be a significant factor,” Sorenson said. “Several years ago, though, the insurance for keeping these two sets in the apartment became prohibitive, so we replaced them with the maquettes-at the insistence of our insurance brokers. In truth, the models are so well done it would be hard for anyone to know.”
“And you arranged that?” Mike asked.
“She certainly did,” Bernice said. “We all helped, but Miss Jillian did it without disturbing Miss Lavinia for a minute.”
“Lavinia wouldn’t have heard of the exchange,” Sorenson said, with a hangdog expression on her face. “Damn the insurance, she would have told me.”
“And where are the originals?” I asked.
“In storage, Ms. Cooper. With a lot of other items that form the Dalton heritage.”
“I think there’s been a breach of security, either here,” I said, “or at the storage facility.”
Jillian Sorenson bristled at the suggestion, and Bernice Wicks took a cue from her colleague. Neither wanted to hear another accusation.
I took my phone from my pocket and brought up the photographs of the Obelisk and Belvedere Castle. I let her hold the phone and look at the close-ups of them.
“They’ve got the Gorham and Frost markings on the bottom. They must be the real thing.”
“I don’t know what to say, Ms. Cooper. It’s a most unlikely scenario.”
“And more unlikely that there is a third set of Park statues commissioned by Archer Dalton.”
As Jillian Sorenson passed the phone back to me, it vibrated in her hand. She was shaking her head in denial that anything she had supervised could have gone wrong.
I answered the call and heard Mercer’s voice.
“You and Mike need to meet me,” he said. “The Park anticrime unit has found Verge.”
TWENTY-TWO
The black man with a scowl on his face was sitting in a child-sized chair in the front of the marionette theater of the Swedish Cottage inside Central Park, just above the 79th Street Transverse.
He sported a pure white Afro, very few teeth, and a T-shirt with the unpleasant statement I LOOK MUCH SEXIER ONLINE.
We were in the rear of the room. Mercer had his back to the man and was talking to Mike and me. “Vergil Humphrey. Sixty-three years old. From Queens originally. Hasn’t been in trouble for a while but has a history of sexual battery in Florida, including a felony conviction there, for which he did serious jail time.”
“Jo thinks he’s harmless,” I said. “What do you have on the victims?”
“From the statutory charge, looks like he had a thing for thirteen-, fourteen-year-olds.”
I put my head in my hands. “And living in the Park with hordes of teens who are struggling to find a safe haven.”
“Verge tells me he volunteered for chemical castration before his release, six years ago,” Mercer said. “I have a call in to the Glades County prosecutor to check it out.”
“Is that a real fix, Coop?” Mike asked.
“It’s usually a ploy for an early parole. An antiandrogen drug that’s supposed to interrupt any inappropriate thoughts by shutting down the ability to maintain an erection.”
“What I meant is, does it work?”
“I’m not a believer. I suppose it can, but there isn’t enough evidence. Very few states have legislation that allows it. I don’t think it stops the urge to molest; it just may change the outcome.”
“How?”
Mercer answered him. “Say the perp is still attracted to teenagers. Finds a target but he can’t perform, so maybe he gets frustrated and takes out his anger on his victim.”
“I see. Can’t rape her, so he beats her up,” Mike said.
“Or he sexually abuses her in some other way.”
“No seminal fluid. No DNA.”
“You’re thinking of Angel,” Mercer said.
“She’s too old for him,” I said. “Guys into thirteen, fourteen don’t usually do nineteen, twenty. Pervs get fixated on an age that works for them. If they prey on six-year-olds, they’re not usually drawn to twelve-year-olds.”
“The professional world you have chosen to inhabit is totally demented, Coop. Besides, what if our girl looked younger than she does now in a refrigerated box?”
“Jo says Verge was her friend, her protector,” I said.
“Still could be the way he gains the trust of his vics.”
“How’d you find him?” I asked Mercer.
“Like Jo told us, all the cops know him. Came up here to live with his sister when he got out of jail in Florida. Wasn’t too friendly a place to be a convicted child molester, so he moved back up north. When his sister kicked him out of the house, he started living in parks, working his way to this one.”
“What do the cops say about him?”
“That he’s no trouble at all. Friendly guy, sort of simple. He’s good to the homeless kids, and the troublemakers seem to leave him alone.”
“Good to the kids,” I said. “That’s the part I don’t like.”
“You’d have had cases against him already if he’d been assaulting them,” Mike said.
“Really? In your experience, Detective, is law enforcement the first place kids on the run from their families who stay alive by petty theft and sleeping in public bathrooms and using false identities turn to? You know better than that. We hardly ever get complaints from the homeless. That’s why they’re such easy targets.”
“That’s why a disproportionate number of them wind up dead,” Mercer said.
“What’s all this talking behind my back?” Verge called out to Mercer.
The three of us walked to the front of the room, and Mercer gave him our names. The scowl vanished, and Verge started speaking with us.
Mercer had shown him an eight-by-ten color photograph of Angel after the autopsy, and we gave it to him again. “I told the man I met this girl. I’m not good on time, but I’d say maybe a month or two ago. The girls like me,” he said with a practically toothless smile.
“What do you know about her?” Mercer asked.
“I know she’s dead. Least she looks dead in that photograph, and your cops have been turning this Park upside down looking for the man who hurt her.”
“Have you given them any help, Verge?”
“Haven’t asked me for any.”
He spoke clearly and directly, though there was a childlike affect to him.
“Well, that’s why the three of us are here. To see what you know,” Mercer said. “Can you tell me her name?”
“Haven’t got the slightest idea of that. I’m not good on names anyway, and there are too many kids out here to be remembering all of them.”
“But this girl was special. Someone told us today that you were protecting her. That you helped her leave the Ravine and move down to this end of the Park.”
“I’ve done that for lots of people.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t like the Ravine, the north end of the Park. It’s too quiet up there. Besides, I grew up down here.”
“You grew up in Queens, didn’t you?” Mercer said. “Not the Park.”
“I did. But my people are from the Park.”
“What do you mean, Verge?”
“We had a house here, right here in Central Park. Right about 84th Street.”
“That you lived in?”
“No, Detective. Long before you and I were born.” Verge leaned forward toward Mercer and tapped on his forehead with his finger. “People think I’m touched when I say that, but it’s true. I can prove it to you.”
“I get it, sir,” Mercer said. “Seneca Village.”
Verge leaned back and roared with delight. “Now, how do you know about that?”