“Slip me in for what? What are we talking about?”
“Lemon microlites in your hair. The dresses would look made for you.” Gloria clapped her hands. “Vinnie! Bring the Rothschild crepe de chine. And the Madariaga silk.”
Gloria had named two of the top European countesses of the season. It was an open secret in the fashion and magazine worlds that Gloria Spahn ran a sideline: she leased premieres of her dresses to various clients to wear at various parties far distant from one another. That way, the same dress could be seen in Paris one evening, New York the next, San Francisco the third, and be considered a fashion first in each city.
An employee wheeled a dress rack into the room. He was a slim young man in tight-fitting raw-linen trousers and floppy madras shirt. Two dresses hung from the rack, cocooned in pink tissue paper.
Gloria pulled a dark raspberry crepe-de-chine dress free of its wrapping.
Her employee frowned at a small stain above the hem. “Look at this,” he said. “Rothschild is a pig.”
“Not now, Vinnie,” Gloria said. “It doesn’t matter.”
She faced Tori toward the mirror and held the dress up in front of her.
At the sight of her reflection Tori felt herself lifted by a spurt of edgy, childlike rapture. “It’s perfect.”
“No, it’s not,” Gloria said. “Cybilla deClairville’s going to that dinner, and she’s wearing the same damned color.”
Vinnie helped Gloria tear the tissue off the other dress, a soft apricot moiré. Vinnie inspected for stains. Gloria held the dress up to Tori. “Perfect,” she announced.
Tori didn’t like it nearly as well as the raspberry, but Gloria was already helping her step out of her skirt. “Let’s get you pinned up.”
Twelve minutes later Tori was facing the mirror again.
“Ron can see her tomorrow at five!” Vinnie called from the inner office.
Gloria circled Tori, inspecting. “We’ll take in the tucks and hem it up for you this afternoon. Come back in for the final fitting Friday morning, okay?”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
“No trouble. Now, how do you want to pay?”
Tori inhaled sharply and felt a pin pop. “Pay? I’d honestly prefer to borrow the dress.”
“We’d all prefer to borrow, darling, but I’m a couturiere, not an S and L.”
Tori hesitated. “I thought possibly we could work out an arrangement, like two years ago.”
“But you wore that dress to the Emmys, not Annie MacAdam’s.”
Tori sighed. “We could do an article on you in the magazine.”
Gloria shook her head. “Publicity in Matrix Magazine isn’t that valuable—my accountant says liberated women don’t buy my clothes.”
Tori realized she was in too deep now to back out gracefully. “All right. How much?”
“I adore Zack, so I’m going to give you a break. Twelve thousand, because this dress is going to make his evening.”
Tori couldn’t believe that the cost of decadence had gone that far through the roof. She did her best to fake a cool nonreaction. “Of course, it is used.”
“And if it weren’t, it would cost you twenty-four.”
“Will you take a check?”
“A personal check.”
Tori wondered if there’d been trouble with the magazine’s checks. Gloria handed her a pen, and Tori wrote out the check at Gloria’s Biedermeier desk. She ripped the check out of the book and handed it to Gloria facedown. “If I bring the dress back right away, do you think you could let me have six thousand back?”
“Come in after the party and we’ll talk.”
“LAST WEDNESDAY,” Cardozo said, “you had lunch at Archibald’s?”
“Did I?” Gloria Spahn’s heavily plucked, heavily penciled eyebrows assumed a thoughtful downward pucker. “Oh, yes, I tried to. It’s not easy when you have Oona Aldrich getting delusional at the next table.”
“And I understand you had a problem of your own?”
“I did?”
They were alone in the showroom. The light was soft and glowing, and it gave the mirrors a friendly shimmer. The clothes on display looked to Cardozo as if they’d been designed for a cocktail party in a distant and overpriced galaxy.
“A problem with your salad,” he said.
Gloria Spahn adjusted the hang of a skirt on a headless, armless mannikin. “Oh, you heard about that.” She looked at him, interested now. “Archibald’s serves rotten salads, don’t you think?”
“I couldn’t say. I’ve never gone there to eat.”
“Then you’re wiser than me.”
Cardozo referred to his notebook. “You ordered a Caesar salad. The waiter brought you a salad made with shredded Boston instead of romaine. You sent the salad back.”
“Did I break a law?” She had an extremely thin body, but she moved as if she had absolute confidence in it. She obviously had confidence too in the clothes she was wearing. They had an edgy quality, as if they were thinking about falling off her, but Cardozo suspected she’d designed them and knew they wouldn’t.
“You didn’t break any law I know of.”
“Good. I try not to.” She seated herself on the sofa and leaned back against the cushion. “Now, why are you interested in what I ate for lunch seven days ago?”
“Not what you ate but when you ate it.”
“Sorry.” She smiled. She had an enormous mouth, enormously pink. “I don’t punch a time clock at lunch.”
“But could you estimate—from the time you sent your salad back, to the time you got the salad you wanted—how long did that take?”
“How long did it take? Could I estimate?” Gloria Spahn’s gray eyes narrowed. They seemed to flash with remembered anger. “I don’t need to estimate—I know. I was there an hour before I finally got fed up and left. Those idiots never brought me the damned salad.”
CARDOZO STOOD ON THE STOOP. He rapped on the kitchen screen door. “Hey, Jim.”
Jim Delancey stood at the butcher-block counter, decapitating radishes four at a chop. He turned.
“Need to talk to you,” Cardozo said. “Only take a minute.”
Delancey sighed. He laid down his knife. “I’ll be right back,” he told the Korean. He came out onto the stoop. “Look, are you coming around here to bug me? Is it to get the manager pissed off at me?”
“I’m sorry, Jim. If it’s inconvenient here, you can come down to the precinct.”
Delancey shook his head.
“We have a chronology problem,” Cardozo said. “Your chef tells me last Wednesday, during lunch hour, he sent you out for six head of romaine?”
“I forgot. Look, I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”
“No problem. When did you leave and when did you get back?”
“Oh, I left around quarter of one. I was back maybe fifteen minutes later.”
“Gristede’s has a record of that romaine going out for delivery at one-thirty.”
“Gristede’s is screwed up. Ask anyone in the kitchen—they’re always screwing up.”
“The delivery boy knows you. And he says he made the delivery.”
Delancey shuffled. “Someone’s screwed up.”
“Maybe you?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you are mistaken—and it’s a natural mistake—where did you go?”
Delancey’s eyes flicked up. “I didn’t go. I just told you.”
“No, no, Jim. You told me you didn’t pick up the romaine. But we know you left here at quarter of one. Your chef says so. You just said so.”
“Look, you’re confusing me. Maybe I should …” Delancey took a moment to wipe his hands on his apron. “Maybe I, shouldn’t talk to you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t. That’s up to you.”
“Am I under suspicion? Should I get a lawyer?”
“Jim, I honestly am not the best person to advise you on that. Asking you where you went didn’t st
rike me as asking you to incriminate yourself. But maybe it is.”
“No. It’s not.” Delancey’s eyes were evasive. “I was just ashamed of myself.”
“Why? What did you do?”
Delancey took a pack of Camels from his apron pocket. He knocked one loose and put it between his lips and lit it one-handed from an Archibald’s matchbook. “I was spooked after Oona Aldrich had that fit. I went and had a few drinks. It’s a bad habit of mine. Just to keep calm.”
“I empathize, Jim. Do you happen to remember where you had these drinks?”
THE PLACE WAS CALLED TUNE’S. It was a basement on Seventy-sixth that featured poor air-conditioning and a ten ninety-nine prix fixe, and it was crowded.
Cardozo showed the waitress his shield, and then he showed her the photo of Jim Delancey. He had to shout above the roar of voices and the din of silverware attacking china. “Did you see this man here around one o’clock last Wednesday?”
She stared at him, balancing a tray of the day’s special, sea scallops—four on a plate with plenty of rice. Sweat gleamed on her cheekbones. “This is a joke.”
“Sorry, it’s not.”
“See how crowded we are right now? This is two o’clock. Postpeak. One o’clock is peak. Twice as crowded. Unless he tipped me a twenty I wouldn’t remember him, and I doubt anyone else would either.” She looked again at the photo. “And he didn’t tip me a twenty.”
CARDOZO STARED AT LOU Stein’s report on the note sent by the man who signed himself Society Sam.
The lab had discovered no prints but Rad Rheinhardt’s on the page. No prints on the clipped-out letters. No prints on the tape. The lab had discovered prints galore on the envelope, all useless.
Cardozo took another bite of his late-late-lunch sandwich, liverwurst and mayo on toasted rye. He chewed a moment and he could feel his appetite giving out. He’d had a craving for a carbohydrate rush, but now he was thinking it had been more of a compulsion than a craving.
He wiped the mayo off his fingertips and picked up the report again.
Most of the letters making up the message had been clipped from the April second issue of New York magazine, the April second issue of Time magazine, the April second issue of Newsweek magazine, the April second issue of People, and the April second issue of The New Yorker.
Sam sure likes April second, Cardozo reflected.
Sources for the letter groups TH and ET and CRU had yet to be established.
FIFTEEN
Thursday, May 16
XENIA DELANCEY, WEARING HER Sunday white hat and gloves and walking with small, hesitant steps, pushed through a glass door on the fifth floor of United Nations Tower.
The man sitting behind the kidney-shaped desk smiled without friendliness at her. “May I help you?”
Xenia told him her name. “Senator Guardella said she might be able to see me.”
“Please have a seat.”
Xenia took a seat on a leather sofa beside a row of potted cactuses. Through a glass wall she could see pigeons wheeling aimlessly over the East River. For thirty minutes she leafed through old magazines and senatorial newsletters. During that half hour a dozen people passed through the reception area. None of them was challenged, none of them was asked to wait.
Xenia went again to the kidney-shaped desk. “I hate to trouble the senator, but my lunch hour will be up in twelve minutes.”
“Would you care to reschedule for a week from next Thursday? The senator is heavily booked today.”
“No. But could you tell her I’m waiting?”
“She knows.”
Forty minutes later one of the senator’s aides led Xenia Delancey along a carpeted hallway. Warm yellow lights glowed. The aide knocked on a half-open door. “Senator—Xenia Delancey to see you.”
The senator, tall and crisp and smiling in a gray cotton suit that matched her hair, came across the office with a hand extended. “Hello, hello, Xenia Delancey.”
“I’m very sorry to be an annoyance,” Xenia said.
“Not at all. Let’s sit over here.” The senator steered Xenia toward the sofa. She shifted Bergdorf’s and Saks shopping bags to the floor.
“That’s my store.” Xenia pointed at the Marsh and Bonner’s parcel in the senator’s hand. “I work there—in the Ingrid Hansen Boutique.”
“Really.”
“Ask for me next time—I can get you a discount.”
“How very kind. Sit, Xenia. Tell me what brings you here?”
Xenia sat. She began crying.
The senator came and sat beside her. “Could you use a hot cup of tea, Xenia?”
“No, thank you. I’m sorry.” Xenia took a hankie from her pocketbook and dried her eyes. “We had a murder in the store last week.”
“I heard about it. What a shame.”
“My boy didn’t do it. But he’s on parole and the police are treating him like a murderer. They’ve questioned him at work, in front of customers. They’ve questioned his co-workers, they’ve questioned his employer. People see the police coming back again and again and they start thinking, There must be something to it, maybe Jim Delancey did kill Mrs. Aldrich.”
The senator looked at Xenia Delancey for a long, considering moment. “Now, Xenia, let me play devil’s advocate. The police have to follow every possible lead—even the remote ones.”
Xenia Delancey opened her pocketbook again. She took out a plastic envelope of neatly trimmed newspaper clippings. “Have you seen the headlines and the gossip columns? They’re lynching my boy.”
Senator Guardella accepted the clippings. “We’re dealing with human nature, which, as you know, is not always a beautiful thing. A case like the Aldrich killing is going to be played out in the media. And rightly or wrongly Jim Delancey is identified in the public mind with the death of that young girl—”
“Nita Kohler. But that was an accident. My boy didn’t kill her. He didn’t kill anyone.”
A quick, almost startled movement brought Senator Guardella’s eyes around again to Xenia Delancey. The senator seemed about to say something. And then she seemed to reconsider.
“I’m frightened,” Xenia said. “Don’t let them take my boy away again.”
Nancy Guardella saw that Xenia Delancey was hurting. She ached for this little gray-haired lady with her dignified posture and her spotless white gloves. She wished she could help, but she didn’t have the power to twist reality around.
Or do I? she asked herself. It was as though a bell in her head was suddenly humming a high, pure note. She rose and crossed to a handsome teakwood desk covered in paperwork. She found a scratch pad, scribbled, and ripped the top sheet off.
“Here’s my home phone. And here’s what I’d like you to do. Keep a log. Make a note every time the police talk to your son. Note who questions him, where they question him, how long the questioning goes on. Names, dates, times, places. If it emerges that there’s a pattern of harassment, maybe there’s something I can do under the federal discrimination statutes.”
Xenia Delancey slipped the number into her purse. Steadying herself on the arm of the sofa, she brought herself to standing. “God bless you, Senator.”
Nancy Guardella watched the old woman leave, and then she poured herself a cup of herbal tea and stirred in three packets of Sweet’n Low. She emptied the cup in three gulps. She opened the door to her secretary’s office. “Who do we know in the New York Police Department who owes us?”
“Would you settle for the commissioner?”
“Absolutely not. All this is, is a middle-management mix-up.” Nancy Guardella was thoughtful a moment. “Who’s that guy in Internal Affairs who’s a real ass-kicker? The macho with the mustache that doesn’t hide his harelip?”
“Lawrence Zawac.”
“Captain, right? Get him on the phone for me.”
The secretary spent a moment spinning through her Rolodex. She dialed a number and after a moment signaled Nancy Guardella to pick up. The senator hurried back to the blink
ing phone on her desk.
“Larry—it’s Nancy, Nancy Guardella. How’ve you been?” She stared out the window at light Ping-Ponging between forty-story glass facades. She let him go on a little bit about golf and his left wrist.
“Larry, I hate to bother you, but I can’t think of anyone else who has the balls, frankly, to cut through the red tape.
What’s happening is, the police are harassing one of my constituents.”
IT WAS A COMPLICATED SHOT: The camera had to swoop down on a crane and catch Leigh as she came out of the lamp shop, then follow her to the corner. Three dozen technicians and crew and makeup and costume people had to stay out of camera range while two dozen pedestrians had to do all those things New York extras do in New York movies.
The traffic light had to change at the exact moment that Leigh stepped into Bleecker Street, which was actually no trouble since the electrician had rewired it. And the taxi had to be approaching at just the right speed to almost run Leigh down.
The director shot and reshot all afternoon, and by the time the taxi was getting it right, Leigh was getting it wrong.
“Leigh, honey”—her director sighed—“we want to see under the surface. We want to see where the struggling, doubting, self-accusatory child lives.”
“You want to see that in my walk?”
“You had it on the third take, where did it go?”
“I’m a little tired. I could use a cup of coffee.”
“Okay. Take five, everyone.”
Leigh went in search of the caterer’s truck.
Normal life on the block had been totally disrupted. Traffic had been rerouted. Company men turned pedestrians away, asking them to please take another street. Lighting men angled reflectors and aimed ten-thousand-watt kliegs. Uniformed police officers stood at the edges of the crowd, looking embarrassed.
Leigh found a coffee-and-snack smorgasbord set up outside the Winnebago with the logo of the catering company, Splendiferous Eats. She joined the line waiting at the twenty-gallon samovar.
The woman ahead of her, one of the extras, was wearing a dress that clung to her body like a damp see-through Victorian curtain. For some reason that lace coffee-colored chemise struck Leigh as familiar.
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