She stood up and started to walk toward the elevator. "You know what you need now to become a great producer? A checkbook. Find material that's worked well before, package some popular talent with familiar names that people will pay big ticket prices to come see. Why do you think revivals dominate the Broadway theater? You don't need ideas to produce them. You just need a deep pocket."

"And Joe Berk had that."

"So now you're going to tell me what show he was talking with Talya about, aren't you?" Mona said to Mike.

"When I find out what it is, I'll let you know."

"If it's anything to do with a story about Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White, be sure and give me a call," she said, testing Mike now but getting his best poker face. "That project is my idea and nobody's going to steal it from me."

Mona pressed the button and the doors opened. "I take it we're all leaving? I've got to be ready to help my cousin in the morning. That nice young cop at the door won't let anybody in, if that's what you're worried about."

I knew Mike wanted to stay but couldn't come up with a reason to offer Mona Berk. We stepped into the elevator with her.

"Exactly how are you related?" Mike asked.

"My dad was Joe's older brother. Isidore Berk. Izzy."

"He worked with Joe?"

"Yeah, but my dad was the class of the business."

"And you, you're part of the organization?"

"I've got my own office. Around the corner-1501 Broadway. The Paramount Theatre building. Do you know it?"

"Yeah," Mike said. "That great-looking tower with the docks and the globe? Sinatra's old hangout."

We were on the ground floor, in the narrow corridor that led to the street. "Have you seen the house?" Mona asked. "I mean inside the Belasco Theatre?"

She turned the knob and a door marked exit opened. This time, the light switch panel was on the wall and she illuminated the front orchestra of the fan-shaped auditorium. We followed her in and she lowered herself into one of the plush gray seats in the first row.

"Pretty spectacular, isn't it?" Berk said, looking up at the brilliantly painted murals that lined the proscenium and arched over the boxes on stage right and left. "Can you see?"

Mike and I leaned our heads back and studied the ceiling.

"Each portrait is a tribute to one of the great dramatists-Goethe, Moliere, Shakespeare. Those figures over the stage? They're all allegorical. Everett Shinn, the Ash Can School-he was the painter," she said, pointing at the nudes represented against the lush green-and-gold background. "That's Mother Love, sheltering Innocence, and the other? It's Devotion dispelling Grief with a kiss."

That was her only reference to grief since we'd encountered her.

"You know this place well," I said.

"You can't imagine how many hours I spent in Broadway theaters, waiting for my father while he made deals with other producers or tried to sweet-talk actors into coming to work for him. Going to rehearsals and openings, going back again whenever there was a cast change to see if the understudy could handle the part. Going a third or fourth time if a new song was added or a dance number cut. I could probably draw the interior of every one of them from memory."

"Would you mind giving me your number, in case we need to talk with you again?"

"Sure. My cell's the best." She smiled at Mike as she gave it to him.

"Can we see you out?" Mike asked.

"I'm just going to sit here for a while. I think it's my favorite place to be-an empty theater at night. All the artifice is gone, all the things that directors impose on our imaginations. Now it's just a stage that's full of possibilities. We'll hang out-just me and Belasco's ghost."

Mike started for the door ahead of me.

"Hey, Mike," Mona said, "I'll give you something to tell those dancers over at the Met. They know about ghosts?"

Mike wasn't amused.

Mona got up from the seat and walked to the edge of the stage, boosting herself up to sit on it. "Every theater has a ghost. Ask anyone who's ever worked on Broadway. There's a ghost in every house. And now that someone's been murdered there-at the Met-they'll never get rid of it."

It's not the first time, I started to say, but she wasn't playing to me in any event.

"Maybe Joe threatened Galinova. Maybe it's another Belasco trait he tried to imitate."

"What are you talking about, Mona?" Mike asked.

"The theater world thrives on superstition and legend. You won't get anywhere if you don't understand that. Belasco fell in love with one of his actresses. Carter-I think her name was Leslie Carter. He was a total control freak, just like Uncle Joe. Starred her in a lot of plays but wanted complete control of her life, even though he continued to have other mistresses."

Mona went on. "She surprised Belasco by getting married to another man, and he went completely berserk. He forbid her to ever enter this theater again. There was a big row, and she ended it by placing a curse on him-a curse against his vindictiveness."

"Yeah?"

"You ought to find out if Galinova had another lover, Mike. Jealousy-there's something to enrage my uncle, I can promise you that."

"What about the ghost?"

"I'll let you know tomorrow, detective. Rumor has it that all throughout the night you can hear the bloodcurdling screams of Belasco's ghost echoing in this theater," she said, winking at Mike. "I'm just praying I don't have to listen to Joe Berk screaming, too. I spent enough of my life doing that."

"Aha! What's the matter with you two? You look like you've seen a ghost," Joe Berk said, propped up against the pillows in his private room at Roosevelt Hospital. "Cats was the longest-running show on Broadway. Fifty million people around the world saw it and what? You jerks didn't make it? Couldn't buy a ticket? Nine lives, baby- just like a cat-and Joe Berk still has five or six to go."

Mike had called me at five in the morning to tell me that the paramedics had revived the self-proclaimed wizard in the ambulance on the way to the emergency room. The cops who had originally notified Mike of Berk's collapse on the street had gone off duty an hour later and never learned that the EMTs had saved the man's life minutes after picking him up. It was only after we'd been home a couple of hours that Mike-struggling with insomnia since Val's death- heard the news story about Joe Berk's rescue on the radio.

Dr. Lin-So Wong, who admitted Berk to the hospital, was standing with us at his bedside at seven a.m. on Monday, explaining to us the effects of electrocution as his patient listened intently. Wong patted the older man's hand and checked the readings of his pulse and blood pressure.

"Mr. Berk is quite fortunate not to have suffered very severe burns. It's the vital organs that are so susceptible to disruption by the flow of the electric current."

"So how come he's alive?" Mike asked.

"Because the EMTs had just finished their pizza in one of those joints on Broadway," Dr. Wong said, pursing his lips into a smile. "Because they were there within ninety seconds after he went down, and they had a defibrillator on board. A minute more without oxygen to the brain and we'd have a different result."

"I'm walking across the street with my kid, going up to Baldoria for something to eat," Berk said, giving his own version of the events. "You know that scene in the Frankenstein movie where they juice up the monster? You see those lightning bolts flashing when they bring him to life? Lemme tell you, I saw stars when I landed on that manhole cover. I take a few steps, I think to myself, No way Joe Berk is gonna die by frying on top of a goddamn sewer. I deserve better than that."

Mike asked the doctor, "He really kept walking? I thought they'd declared him dead at the scene."