So what.
She dropped an ice cube into the glass, stared at the bubbles rising to the top of the Johnnie Walker and diet Pepsi.
She raised the glass.
Suddenly her hand felt very weary.
She tried to remember how many times she’d told herself just this one drink, and wound up plastered. Because she’d been drunk she’d let one person die and she’d probably killed another.
She had a dispiriting sense that she’d worn out all her roles—the seductress, the innocent, the playgirl, the celebrity, the mistress, the drunk. She just couldn’t play them anymore.
She set the glass back down on the bar.
IN THE PROPERTY ROOM Cardozo opened the plastic bag marked Dizey M. Duke and held it upside down. A splash of black cloth spilled to the steel-topped table, muffling the clatter of the pumps and the purse that followed.
Carefully, methodically, his eyes scanned, taking in dark mesh stockings with a silhouette motif of various bugs that had gotten caught in the mesh, a black cotton pants suit, a black silk blouse that looked pretty low cut on the table and must have looked even lower cut on a full-bodied woman, a silk scarf with an official-looking portrait of Lenin silk-screened onto it.
It all struck him as the kind of outfit that would have gone well with too much lipstick.
From the solvent odor still clinging to the clothes, it was clear that the lab had had to drench them. The rumpled cotton panties bore the heaviest smell of benzene. Cardozo took that as a sign that Dizey’s sphincter, not surprisingly, had loosened during the fall.
He opened the purse, inverted it, and shook. Cosmetics, hankies, a plastic cigarette case, a plastic cigarette lighter, a small stapler, a pair of cheap-chic mirrored sunglasses tumbled out.
He studied these objects, one by one, wondering about the pack rat who had hoarded them.
What struck him about the table full of junk was that there was not a single object of beauty or value on it.
Certainly no platinum brooch shaped like a hummingbird.
He checked the inventory. No brooch had been listed.
No watch either.
No ring. No money. No credit card.
It was obvious that somebody had cleaned Dizey out, and it struck Cardozo that mugging a dead woman was a pretty foul thing to do.
AFTER THREE MINUTES the young woman returned to the window. She was short, soft-looking, with pale blond hair and a harried face. “Our records indicate that Ms. Duke’s property was turned over to the police.”
“That property should have been turned over to me,” Cardozo said. “It wasn’t. So I’d like to see who signed that receipt.”
She showed him the receipt.
It was a single-page printed form headed with the shield of Lexington Hospital and the words property of decedent. The first thing Cardozo noticed was that the empty spaces had been filled in with loopy, barely legible red ballpoint.
The second thing he noticed was that the decedent’s name had been entered as Doe, female.
“Ms. Duke’s name wasn’t Doe,” he said.
“It was when she arrived.”
“You’re sure this is her form?”
The young woman pointed to the number printed in the upper left-hand corner. At first glance it looked like a social-security number combined with a nightmare zip code, but Cardozo stared at it and gradually it resolved itself into a date, the hour of day in the twenty-four-hour system, and oh-oh-eight, which Cardozo took to mean that Dizey had been the eighth arrival that particular hour.
The third thing he noticed was the familiar illegibility of Greg Monteleone’s signature at the bottom of the page.
What he didn’t notice, in five slow scannings of the page, was any ballpoint scratching in the space headed jewelry. He gave it a think. “Do you keep a record of the ambulance crews?”
“I can tell you the number of the ambulance.”
She swiveled to face her computer terminal, and her two forefingers searched over the keyboard. Something finally came up on her screen. “Five,” she said.
“On May eighth a woman by the name of Oona Aldrich was brought here to Emergency. What was that ambulance number?”
“Do you have her social-security number?”
“Sorry.”
“What time?”
“Between two and three in the afternoon.”
“Spell that name, please?”
Cardozo spelled it.
The young woman tapped more instructions into the computer. “That was ambulance one.”
“Now, how do I find out who was the crew on those two ambulances?”
CARDOZO NOTICED that the thumping bass beat coming from the state-of-the-art four-speaker Sony boom box was actually making waves in the ten-gallon water-cooler tank.
The boom box was balanced on top of the cooler, and the young man in charge of the employment office was tapping his ballpoint pen in rhythm to the female rap number. Seated at his desk, turning pages in the ambulance log, he wore a vivid green sport shirt with a purple collar.
His eyes stopped for a moment halfway down one of the pages. He jotted something on a pad. Then he flipped forward through the log. His eyes darted another moment, and he made another notation. He tore the piece of paper off the pad. “Greenburg, Resch, and delMajor were staffing ambulance one. Kozloff, delMajor, and Blanco were staffing ambulance five.”
Cardozo folded the paper into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Where can I find delMajor?”
“He went off duty at noon. The easiest thing would be to come back Monday and check with Dispatching. DelMajor’s working the two P.M. shift.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Saturday, June 1
THE SUN WAS SLANTING toward midafternoon when the taxi let Leigh off. There wasn’t a breath of air in the street. She climbed the three marble steps of Waldo’s Greek Revival redbrick town house. Her key wasn’t where she expected it to be in her purse, and she had to forage through coins and receipts.
Behind her, brakes squealed like a skinned cat and a car horn blasted. Her eyes jerked toward the sound. Out where the street met Fifth Avenue a white superstretch limo had swerved, almost sideswiping a south-bound Checker cab.
A young man came zigzagging on foot through the traffic, setting off an orchestra of slammed brakes and blaring horns. At first she thought he was being chased by muggers, but then she realized he was calling her name. He was carrying a flopping suitbag over one shoulder, and she wondered if he might be from one of the shops with an order for her.
“Miss Baker!” He stopped, red-faced and panting, at the foot of the stoop. “I was waiting here two hours. I’d just about given up.” Beneath an I-love-lithium T-shirt his chest was heaving like a sprinter’s, and sweat had stickered his light brown hair to his unlined forehead.
“You almost got killed.”
“I told the driver to stop, but stop was not an English word he understood.” Still catching his breath, he shifted the suitbag from one shoulder to the other.
“Is that bag for me?” Leigh said.
His face broke into a startlingly perfect smile. She realized there was only one reason for a man that young to have his teeth capped: He had to be an actor.
He held out the bag. “It’s yours,” he said, “if you’re looking for a three-year-old Brooks Brothers tux. But I hope you’re not, because I don’t have anything else to wear at the party tonight.”
He stood there grinning at her, grinning for her, and she remembered what it was like being young and having no safety net but guts and charm and sometimes not even enough of those.
“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry—and I’d be sorrier if you’d hurt yourself—but I don’t give autographs.”
“I know you don’t. I know everything about you. I memorize your interviews.” He pulled a wallet from his right hip pocket and flipped it open. A ladder of credit cards and plastic ID tumbled toward the sidewalk. “Just to prove I’m really me—senior server with Guy Powe
r.”
He held out an ID to her, and she saw that it said just that: Jan Bachman, Senior Server, Guy Power.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“No,” she admitted, wary now of stepping into a con. She scanned the street to see if her police guard’s black Plymouth was there. It was double-parked halfway down the block, with a man sitting behind the wheel. “Mr. Bachman, I’m very busy.”
“I bartended the Oona Aldrich memorial.”
Leigh stared at him, but there was a blank in her memory. She couldn’t place the beaming blue-eyed face. “Look, let’s talk inside.”
“You’re on. I’d love to see the inside of this place.”
They went into the living room and he whistled in admiration and she asked if he’d like something to drink.
“Let me.” He headed straight for the bar. “I might as well get familiar with the lay of the land, right? Maybe someday I’ll be working a job here.” He opened drawers and doors and seemed to find everything he needed. “Yours is Johnnie Walker and diet Pepsi, right?”
The question told her everything. “Just diet Pepsi today.”
She watched him mixing drinks and it suddenly occurred to her, Wait a minute, I don’t know if this man is who he says he is.
He brought her glass across the room to where she was sitting on the sofa. He dropped easily into the chair facing her. “Saludos.” He lifted his glass.
Leigh lifted hers and sipped.
“Are you on the wagon again?” he said.
“Trying.” If he doesn’t know me, she thought, he’s doing an awfully good job of pushing my buttons. “Dizey’s death gave me an incentive to sober up.”
He nodded. “Horrible accident. On the other hand, there wasn’t a day of the year she wasn’t looped by five P.M., and she was really looped at the memorial.”
“How bad was I?” Leigh asked.
“If I hadn’t been mixing your drinks, I’d have thought the strongest thing you were on was straight Pepsi.” He laughed. “You asked me to mix Scotch in one of the diet Pepsi bottles and save that bottle for you and let it be our little secret.”
She didn’t remember doing that at the memorial, but she remembered doing it other evenings. It was one of her patented naughty tricks. “I seem to spend a lot of my life relying on the discretion of bartenders.”
“Why not? We’re reliable guys.”
“You must be. No one’s caught me yet. Or have they?”
The young man leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. “A detective came by to question me. He asked if anyone at the party had been drinking diet cola and Scotch.”
“Do you have any idea why he was asking?”
“At first he seemed to be checking out Dizey Duke. He asked me, What was she drinking? Stoli and soda, I told him, same as always. Then he said, Any chance she was drinking Scotch and diet cola? I said, No chance. Then he asked, Did I serve anyone at the party Scotch and diet cola. And I thought of you, naturally, but I said, No one who wants to survive socially drinks Scotch and diet cola in public. No offense intended, by the way.”
She nodded. “So Scotch and Pepsi was what interests him. And his first thought was you’d served it to Dizey.”
“I guess I wasn’t as sharp as I could have been, but the way he asked, the order he put the questions, I couldn’t tell where he was heading till he was there. And I didn’t want to get you into trouble.”
She looked at him. “Why not?”
He glanced almost shyly down toward the rug, where rightangled shadows laid a grid over smooth Chinese curves. “I couldn’t do that. My mom loves you.”
Cardozo’s wife and this boy’s mom, she thought.
“I do too.”
“I’m grateful. Is there … any way I can help you in return?”
The smile dropped off his face. “There is—if it’s not an imposition. A good friend of mine is sick. In fact, he’s my best friend and the truth is he’s dying.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What you could do, if you didn’t mind …” The young man reached around him to open his suitbag.
The zipper squeaked like a stuck mouse, and her nerves jumped. I’m hung over, she realized. So hung over that she half expected to see a knife in his hand when he turned around.
He took an envelope from the inside pocket of the tux jacket. He reached across the space between them and placed the envelope in her hand. “Could you answer my friend’s letter?”
She looked down at the envelope and she saw that it was addressed, simply, Leigh Baker. “Of course. Is that all?”
“Is that all?” He smiled. “Hell, you don’t know how much it’ll mean to him. He’s a bigger fan than my mom.” The young man rose. “You’re a good woman, Miss Baker. I won’t take any more of your time.”
She rose quickly, holding the letter. “Mr. Bachman …”
“Jan.”
“Jan, do you recall the detective’s name?”
“Cardozo.”
THIRTY-NINE
Sunday, June 2
AT QUARTER TO NINE SUNDAY EVENING Carl Malloy observed Jim Delancey come out of Twenty-nine Beekman. He observed that Jim Delancey was not alone. The young dark-haired woman who had gone into the building just five minutes before was now holding his arm.
The sound of their laughter carried clearly across the street to where Malloy was waiting. They turned north on Beekman.
Malloy gave them a half-block lead.
On Fifty-second they turned west and at Second Avenue north again. Halfway up the block they went into a deli.
Malloy got himself a sightline and watched through the window. They were standing at the cash register. The girl was trying to pay for something, and Delancey wouldn’t let her.
They came out eating ice-cream sandwiches. At the corner they had to wait for the light.
A man and a little boy were standing at the bus stop nearby. They seemed to interest Delancey, and he turned to watch them.
The man had a square, blocklike build, a pockmarked face, and black hair pulled back in a ponytail. The boy had the same coloring as the man, but he couldn’t have been more than eight years old.
The man was shouting in Spanish. The boy was doing his best to maintain a sort of dignity in a difficult situation. He accepted the man’s shouts and instead of shouting back addressed him quietly and respectfully. The respectful treatment only goaded the man to louder shouts.
The light changed. Delancey’s girlfriend tugged at his sleeve. He brushed her hand away.
The boy stepped away from the man and peered up the avenue to see if the bus was coming. The man seemed to interpret the boy’s movement as a lack of proper attention. He raised his hand and slapped the boy across the face. It was a hard slap, and it made a sound that carried in the street like a firecracker.
The boy looked at the man with large, hurt eyes. He turned and began walking away.
Except it wasn’t a walk.
The little boy hobbled, dragging one foot behind him like a dead animal. He was a cripple.
The man strode after the boy, seized him by one arm, and spun him around. He began slapping the boy forehand, backhand.
Malloy saw that Delancey and his girlfriend were having their own troubles now. The girl was trying to hold Delancey back, but he broke loose.
He went for the man in a low, crouching run. His shoulder connected with the man’s hip. The impact sheared the man away from the boy and carried him down onto the pavement.
Delancey flipped him onto his back and straddled him. His fists buffeted the man’s head. The man screamed, thrashing his head left and right in a useless attempt to avoid the blows.
The little boy was staring, his mouth wide open.
Malloy realized this was going to get very bad. He stepped into the phone booth in the deli and dialed the precinct.
Through the window he could see Delancey’s girlfriend trying to pull him off the man. He pushed her away. She swung her pocketbook
at him.
The pocketbook didn’t stop Delancey. He lifted the man’s head by the ears. He spat in the man’s face. He slammed the man’s head down against the pavement.
At the exact moment that the man stopped screaming, the girl began.
And at the exact moment that the precinct answered, a squad car squealed to a stop at the curb. Two uniformed cops hopped out.
“Twenty-second Precinct,” the voice was saying in Malloy’s ear.
“Thanks anyway,” he said. “It’s under control.”
FORTY
Monday, June 3
CARDOZO’S EYE DID A QUICK SCAN of the court papers. “The charges are assault and battery and resisting arrest. The judge set bail of two thousand.”
Ellie Siegel, crisp and efficient-looking in her starched blouse, allowed her jaw to drop for just an instant. “Don’t they know who Jim Delancey is?”
“The judges in night court,” Greg Monteleone said, “know nothing.” He snapped a red suspender to punctuate the remark.
“I don’t get it,” Sam Richards said. “Delancey’s on parole. He can’t afford a conviction for littering, let alone assault. Why did he get himself into a brawl?”
Cardozo shrugged. “He claims he was defending the kid.”
“Why defend a kid he doesn’t even know?”
Greg Monteleone flashed a saucer-eyed leer. “Because my name is Jim Delancey and I have a big thing for little kids. Happy Halloween!”
“Bullshit,” Sam Richards said. “He has a thing for his girlfriend.”
“I’ll bet she paid the bail,” Greg Monteleone said. “Delancey’s no dickhead—he likes them rich.”
“Maybe deep down he’s a little bit of a good guy,” Carl Malloy said.
“Maybe deep down he’s a little bit violent,” Ellie said, “and maybe it’s not so far deep down.”
“THIRD LETTER JUST CAME IN.” Rad Rheinhardt’s voice had the faintest hint of a slur. “Want to hear it?”
“Not in the least.” Cardozo switched the receiver to his left hand and picked up a ballpoint. “Read it to me slowly.”
“‘Simple Simon meet the die man, climbing up the stair. Jack be’—he spells that with a single capital B—‘nimble, Dick be’—single capital B—‘quick. Your idiot quest for sex.’ Am I going too fast?”
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