The Deadhouse by Linda Fairstein Read Free Book Online

very jumpy about that. They use some of the same facilities, and
students enrolled in either school can take courses at the other, but
they are entirely separate institutions."
    I had spent a lot of time in Manhattan during my undergraduate
years. My best friend and roommate at Wellesley, Nina Baum, met her
husband, Gabe, when we were sophomores. He was a junior at Columbia,
and I had often accompanied Nina when she came to the city to spend a
weekend with Gabe.
    As we drove uptown, I tried to fill Mike in on the bits of college
history that I remembered. Columbia was founded in 1754, by royal
charter of King George II of England, and its original name was King's
College—the name recently adopted by the experimental school that
carved out a piece of the neighborhood for itself at the start of the
new millennium. The university's first building was situated adjacent
to Trinity Church on lower Broadway, and some of its earliest students
included the first chief justice of the United States, John Jay, and
the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. The
institution closed down during the American Revolution, and when it
reopened eight years later, it had shed its imperial name in favor of
"Columbia," the personification of the American determination for
independence.
    By 1850, the college had moved to Madison Avenue at Forty-ninth
Street, shaping itself into a modern university by the addition of a
law school to its undergraduate and medical faculties. In 1897, the
campus was moved to its current site in Morningside Heights at Broadway
and 116th Street; this academic village— modeled on the idea of an
Athenian agora—represented the largest single collection of buildings
designed by the great architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White.
    "What's with this experimental school thing?"
    "I only know what I've read in the news. King's is an effort to set
up an alternative educational model, drawing from a few of the stars of
the Columbia teaching staff, but trying to structure a fresh view of
the process. It borrows some of the stature of the Ivy League
reputation, but it's been spun off on its own, free and clear of the
mother university."
    "Who's in charge?"
    "We're about to find out. Foote said she'd have the acting president
at the meeting."
    "Wanna take Third Avenue uptown? Stop for a minute at the corner of
Seventieth Street."
    I pulled up in front of P. J. Bernstein's.
    "Hungry?"
    "No, thanks. Had a salad at my desk."
    Chapman got out of the car while I double-parked and waited for him.
In a slight nod to Christmas, Bernstein's window displayed a few large
smiling Santa faces. But there was also a huge menorah with electric
candles on the countertop, while blue, gold, and white-fringed
streamers declared a Happy Hanukkah to the deli's customers.
    Mike returned in a few minutes with two hot dogs wrapped in a
napkin, overflowing with sauerkraut and relish, and a can of root beer.
"I know the rules. No droppings on the floor mat. No sucking the
sauerkraut out of my teeth in public." He chewed on his lunch as I
continued driving and cut through Central Park at Ninety-seventh
Street, taking Amsterdam Avenue the rest of the way north to the campus.
    "Had any cases out of King's College yet?" Mike asked, licking the
mustard off his fingers and swigging from the can of root beer.
    "Not one."
    "Must be the only school in the country with no reported crimes.
Wait till these kids find Cannon's and the West End." Those two bars
were magnets for the collegiate community and havens for the
binge-drinking students who found their way to our offices with every
kind of problem that alcohol abuse created.
    Mike displayed his badge to the expressionless, square-tinned
security guard who sat inside the small gatehouse at the entrance to
College Walk on 116th Street, barely looking up from the skin magazine
he was holding in his bony hand. "Okay if we park this inside for a
couple of hours? I'm taking my niece here for an