Cardozo brought his eyes up slowly. There was a beat where he could have answered, and he let it go by.
Nancy Guardella’s teeth came down on her lower lip. “Nan Shane had infiltrated the Salvador drug cartel. For three years she was handing us terrific intelligence.”
Cardozo said nothing. He just sat, counting the karats on the fingers and arms and ears and neck of the junior senator from New York.
After a moment Nancy Guardella’s gaze flicked away from his. She sighed. “Last March twenty-seventh, we had a screw-up. A New York City undercover drug cop busted Nan Shane for possession with intent to sell. Robert Q. O’Rourke. A sweet kid, but not the brightest man ever born.”
Cardozo’s mind played with two dates: On March twenty-sixth, the magazines went on sale from which Society Sam clipped his words and partial words and single letters. They stayed on sale seven days. On March twenty-seventh, Nan Shane was busted and became a liability to her masters in the drug trade.
“He was new to the job,” Nancy Guardella said. “He was new to the Upper East Side beat. And someone forgot to clue him in that Nan was one of ours.” Her voice took on an edge like a chisel digging into blackboard. “And I wish I knew who that someone was so I could gut his pension.”
Nancy Guardella leaned toward the bar and tonged ice into two highball glasses.
“From what our intelligence arm has been able to put together, an order came down from the directorate of the Salvador cartel: Nan Shane is a liability, she’s been busted, eliminate her.”
Nancy Guardella filled the glasses with mineral water.
“The cartel sent a hit man to take out Shane. His name was Rick Martinez, and he turned out to be a psycho.” She added a wedge of lime to each glass. “That part of the story you already know. Not only did Rick Martinez kill Nan Shane, on his own he took the lives of five innocent men and women.” She handed Cardozo a glass. The glass had a United States Senate shield etched into it.
“Why did you want a wire in my task force?” he said.
“We couldn’t risk your investigation blowing the Achilles Foot sting. I’m sorry, Vince. What it comes down to, is federal versus local. We had to protect ourselves. You may not be in agreement, but that’s the way it is.”
“When did you know Society Sam was the cartel’s hit man?”
“When he killed our operative.”
“But Nan Shane was killed three weeks after you sent the wire in.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you meant when did I have personal knowledge. Our intelligence arm knew earlier.”
“May I see the intelligence reports?”
She smiled at Cardozo, shaking her head. “Vince, if I showed you those reports, I could be sent to a federal penitentiary for revealing government secrets. You’re going to have to take my word for it, and take my word that we have the situation under control.”
“Would you mind telling me why you backed Jim Delancey for early parole? Or is that a classified federal secret too?”
Her eyes flicked up. She pulled in a deep breath. “Complicated problem, Vince. Xenia Delancey commands a lot of sympathy—and press. She’s the biological mother of a son gone bad and she’s pleading for a second chance for her boy—and she’s one of my constituents. I studied the record and I was struck by the strides Jim Delancey had made. I felt it was in the interests of justice, and rehabilitation, and freeing up valuable jail space to parole him. Does that answer your question?”
“You tell me.”
Nancy Guardella smiled as though he’d said, Yes, thank you.
“You can stop the car,” Cardozo said. “I’ll get out here.”
THE JEU DE PAUME AT LE CERCLE sparkled with the movement of cocktail dresses and Italian suits. Two hundred of the most important mouths in Manhattan feasted on a buffet that included grilled gulf shrimp with pumpkin-ginger chutney, roast partridge mousse with onion marmalade, and Roederer Cristal champagne.
In the southwest corner of the room Zack Morrow kissed Gabrielle MacAdam Morrow, and then Gabrielle kissed Zack. They were the worst-matched couple Kristi Blackwell had ever seen.
“Is the angle okay?” Zack shouted.
The photographer kept snapping away, darting lithely around them, stooping and dipping down on one knee and crouching and stretching with his Minolta pressed to one eye. “You’re perfect!” he called. “Keep going, don’t worry about me!”
He had a light Austrian accent. His name was Wolfgang Neuhaus and he had a dueling scar and in America he photographed exclusively for Fanfare.
“You heard the gentleman,” Kristi heard Gabrielle whisper. A sickeningly arch, faux-baby whisper. “Keep going.”
Zack stood there smiling at his fat bride, looking very much the man in love, impeccably groomed in his tailored summer-weight Armani. The subtle pinstripes in the deep charcoal harmonized perfectly with the gray beginning to glint in his dark, softly waved hair.
Gabrielle, on the other hand, was wearing wide-wale burgundy corduroy trousers and a tie-dyed linen jacket and big, hippie-looking flea-market jewelry. She’d made no attempt to hide her weight or her age, no attempt to pass as glamorous.
Kristi wondered if that look and that attitude was the wave of the future. She shuddered to think of the impact on advertising revenue.
“Gabrielle,” she sang out, “what a great idea to have your reception in the midafternoon—just when working people really need a lift.”
“It’s exactly what the working world needs,” Zack said. “Some good food, some good chitchat, some good drink—and we’ll all be ourselves again.”
“I don’t want to be myself again ever!” Kristi said. “I want to live like this for the rest of my life!”
At that instant the part of Kristi Blackwell that always stood guard registered something. In all the bustle and movement she was aware of someone standing motionless against one of the decorative columns just to her right.
She turned her head, just a little. She recognized Lieutenant Vincent Cardozo, wearing chinos and a sport jacket, watching her.
She made a quick gesture of suddenly remembering something. “Would you guys excuse me for just a minute? A certain friend of mine will murder me if I don’t tell her you’re serving wild-mushroom-and-baby-leek millefeuille. Who’s got a quarter?”
“You do, honeychile.” Zack dropped a coin into her hand.
Kristi pried her way through socialites throwing attitude and rich would-be’s posing big. She smiled at a few, frowned at more than a few, and for the most part affected her trademark tunnel vision.
Tunnel vision got her as far as the door. Arriving guests formed a glittering traffic jam. She pushed through them.
The door of the Jeu de Paume at Le Cercle did not lead to Le Cercle itself. It led to the lobby of an old remodeled hotel. Le Cercle stood on the far side of the lobby, and the Jeu de Paume was attached to it in no way except by name and by Kristi’s publicizing. Her magazine had plugged the windowless, renovated utility room so relentlessly that it was now the spot for private parties away from home.
The lobby housed three phone booths, and they were the old-fashioned wooden kind with accordion-fold doors.
Kristi attempted to make her phone call.
The phone in the first booth had no dial tone.
The second had no dial.
The third took her quarter, and her call went through with more crackles and squeaks than a shortwave radio in peak sun-spot season.
“Maslow and Maslow,” a woman’s harried voice answered.
“Langford Jennings, please.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jennings is in conference.”
“Put me through. This is Kristi Blackwell and it’s an emergency.”
Kristi’s lawyer picked up with a clatter. “This had better be important. And brief.”
“The police want to know who I gave the ‘Pavane’ outtakes to.”
“Why do they want to know?”
“Because the outtakes were used to
forge the Nita Kohler diary.”
Whoever had last used the phone booth had doused himself in nose-boggling quantities of Chanel’s Pour Monsieur. Kristi eased the door open a generous crack, hoping to get a little ventilation going.
“Did you give evidence in the trial of Kohler’s murderer?” her lawyer said.
“No.”
“Did you depose as to the authenticity of the diary?”
“I never—” Kristi’s voice suddenly broke off. She could see the revolving street door from the booth, and three people had just walked into the lobby.
Kristi had nothing against blacks and Hispanics, but these blacks and Hispanics were clearly street people. The woman was carrying at least five rag-stuffed D’Agostino bags under each arm. The man was carrying a television set. The leopard-skirted drag queen was stuffing coke rocks into a crack pipe.
“Then you’re in the clear,” her lawyer said.
“But what do I tell the police?”
“The truth.”
“The truth?”
“Forging of evidence is a felony. Dissociate yourself from the forger.”
“Dissociate?” Kristi tried to focus her mind on the conversation, but she could not believe what she was seeing.
The lone guard in the lobby, a gray, crunched husk of a man, sat in a folding chair, eyes half shut beneath a chauffeur-style cap with Le Cercle stitched in gold script across its brim. He held a styrofoam cup of coffee in his lap, and he gazed at it, never once lifting it to his lips. His manner was one of jittery resignation, and he was scrupulously not noticing anything going on around him.
The bag woman had pulled a brand-new-looking ghetto-blaster from one of her bags. The drag queen passed her the crack pipe.
“Kristi, what the hell is that noise?”
The bag woman had found a rap station.
“I don’t believe what’s happening,” Kristi said, “I don’t believe it!” She didn’t believe it either when the man with the TV stepped into the booth next to hers and began urinating. “Excuse me,” she cried, “I’ve got to get out of here.”
She slammed down the receiver and practically jumped from the booth. She hit the lobby floor skidding, barely managed to regain her balance. When she saw the squish of dog shit coating her right Ferragamo green lizard half heel, she heard her own voice break into a sob. “I don’t believe this!”
And then she remembered that dogs don’t shit in phone booths.
She found a statueless niche in the wall where she could rest her derriere. She took a small packet of Kleenex from her purse, took off her shoe, and began cleaning the sole.
Lieutenant Cardozo sauntered into the lobby. “Well, well, a lady in distress.”
“I see you’re as good as your word, Lieutenant. You said forty-eight hours, and here you are.” She smiled as if she had been looking for him all over the party, as though they had been friends for years and it was delightful having this chance to chat with him privately. “I take it you’ve spoken with the district attorney about me?”
Cardozo smiled. “I take it you’ve spoken with your lawyer about the ‘Pavane’ outtakes?”
“My lawyer says I’ve committed no crime.”
“Dick Braidy’s computer dated his backup files. The date on ‘Pavane’ is June eleventh—five months before the Kohler diary was introduced as evidence. Which means Braidy couldn’t have stolen from the diary. The diary writer stole Braidy’s outtakes. So the question is—who gave the diary writer the outtakes, and who wrote the diary?”
Kristi wished that the woman with the boom box would turn that rap music down. “Lieutenant, when I arrived in this country from England, I had no working papers. The government gave me a green card with the understanding that from time to time I’d help them. They asked me to cut ‘Pavane’ and give them the outtakes. There was nothing more to it than that, so please don’t treat me as though I’d sold atom bomb plans to the Soviet Union.”
“Who built the diary out of those outtakes?”
Kristi slipped her foot back into the shoe and took two testing steps. “I had nothing to do with reshaping the outtakes.”
Cardozo just stood there. In a casually understated manner he was blocking her way.
“I honestly don’t know who wrote the diary,” she said. “Not for sure.”
His lack of expression, his lack of movement made it clear he was willing to wait there, blocking her, for the next ten seconds or the next ten days, however long it took.
And meanwhile that rap music was rapping.
Kristi opened her hand and let the soiled Kleenex drop into a standing bronze ashtray. “I messengered the pages to Nancy Guardella’s office in U.N. Tower. If you want to know who forged the diary, ask her.”
“One last question.” Cardozo was still blocking her way. “Did you rewrite ‘Socialites in Emergency’ at Nancy Guardella’s request?”
“She asked me to drop any mention of the lawsuit.”
“Why was that?”
“Because the lawsuit was brought by one of her operatives and it could have exposed an on-going sting.”
Cardozo frowned as though something was not computing. “You’re sure she said one of her operatives?”
“Lieutenant, my lawyer told me to tell you the truth. His advice is much too expensive to disregard. And yes, I’m sure.”
SIXTY-NINE
Saturday, June 22
“THERE ARE TWO LETTERS IN THE BOX.” The background noise behind Greg Monteleone’s voice on the phone was a mix of indoor-outdoor: screeching salsa and screeching traffic. “But no one’s come for them. Know what? I think Martinez’s mailbox is as dead as he is.”
“Blue Cross sends checks to that box,” Cardozo said. “The checks are negotiable. Somebody’s going to pick them up.”
“Vince, this work is very boring. And I hate this music. And it never stops.”
“Buy some earplugs. Watch the box till Mailsafe closes shop. If no one comes today, go back Monday.”
Without waiting for Monteleone’s protest, Cardozo broke the connection and hung up the phone. He picked up Lou Stein’s report on Society Sam’s fifth letter. He speed-read the inventory of letter sources. This doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know, he thought.
The phone rang. Cardozo braced himself for an angry Monteleone. “Cardozo.”
“You are fucking not going to believe this,” a male voice rasped.
“Who is this?”
“What’s the matter, are we strangers today? This is Rad, Rad Rheinhardt, who do you think?”
Cardozo drew a deep, ragged breath. “Hello, Rad, what’s happening?”
“What do you think’s happening? We got another Society Son of Sam letter. It just came in the mail. Postmarked yesterday.”
“Yesterday.” Cardozo’s chest felt hollow. “Messenger it to me right away, will you?”
THERE WAS A KNOCK ON THE DOOR. “Come in,” Cardozo called.
A gray-haired man well past old age stood in the doorway breathing heavily. He wore a New York Trib T-shirt and what had begun as half-moons of sweat under his arms had become full moons that collided over his ribs.
“What have you got for me?”
The old man handed Cardozo a chit of paper to sign and then handed over a reinforced bubble envelope.
“Just a minute.” Cardozo gave him five dollars, and the old man thanked him with a crooked smile.
Cardozo began carefully tearing the outer envelope open along the line marked tear here. Ellie came and watched over his shoulder.
He studied the envelope inside the cellophane. The address was typed and the capital R’s in the Rad and the Rheinhardt looked out of whack in the same way as the R’s on the others. There was no return address, and the zip code in the postmark was a brand-new one.
“Oh-oh-five.” Ellie Siegel was frowning at the postmark. “Wall Street.”
Cardozo pulled open a desk drawer, took out a pair of throwaway evidence gloves, and slipped th
em on. He reached inside the cellophane and inside the envelope and drew out Society Sam’s latest.
Breathing slowly, he laid the letter flat on the desk, centered in the milky gray light of the failing fluorescent desklamp. As before, single letters and parts of words and sometimes entire words had been clipped from an astonishing variety of print sources, producing a dismaying babel of fonts and typefaces.
HOW CAN SAM SINK WITHOUT SEX
SET WITHOUT TWEET
SHE SPENT HER LAST
SHES THRIFTY NOW
FINDER KEEPER WEEPER
KISSES SOCIETY SAM
“Ellie, I hate to ask—but could you get down to oh-oh-five? Check the mailboxes? Check the pickup times?”
Ellie gave him a long gaze, just seeming to weigh the proposal. “Vince, how important is this?”
“It’ll be pretty damned important if it turns out he killed someone else before he died.”
The touch of her attention was skeptical. “Isn’t it standard operating procedure in these days of manpower shortage to wait for the corpse to come to us?” She glanced down at the files and diagrams spread across his desk. A look crossed her face. “Vince, what is this workaholic’s compulsion you have to torture yourself about something that’s just been officially declared a nothing?”
“It’s not nothing,” Cardozo said, “and I’m not torturing myself.”
“I’ll rephrase that. Why are you torturing me with a closed case?”
The phone rang. “Cardozo.”
“Vince, it’s Marty Wilkes.” He sounded in a panic.
“Yes, Marty.”
“I’ve got to talk to you right away.”
“LET’S START WITH THE LINE from the third letter,” Marty Wilkes said. “Sex to end all sex, is there anything else in your perverted world view.”
Wilkes sat at his computer terminal and tapped an instruction into the keyboard. A line split the display screen. The quote from Society Sam appeared in the space above it. A moment later, below the line, a longer document unscrolled.
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