Текст книги "Privileged Lives"

Автор книги: Edward Stewart

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

She threw her arms around her husband and just cried.

Cardozo drove the Downses to the Helmsley Midtown, where the airline had reserved them a two-hundred-dollar-a-day room for the night. Downs took off his jacket and ordered drinks from room service and asked Cardozo to join them.

They sat down in big comfortable upholstered chairs and chatted—that aimless surrealistic chatter that people always make in the face of death. For the Downses, it was the beginning of a release. For Cardozo, it was his job.

Cardozo had the impression the Downses had been a hopeful upward-bound kind of family. He handled real estate and contracting, she had a nurse’s certificate. They lived in the west end of town, the good end. They spoke with open pride about their white-shingled house on Lincoln Street. It had two baths and a full cellar, and it was theirs, mortgage paid in full.

Downs said, “I don’t believe in debt. I guess that’s un-American of me.”

“Jodie grew up in that house,” Mrs. Downs said quietly. She shook her head. “It seems unbelievable. There was a time only a little while ago when Jodie was still here, in this world, and now he’s not.”

“His whole life, wiped out,” Downs said. “You look back, you see a street paved with might-have-been’s and if-only’s. The phone rings, and you expect it’ll be him saying, Hey, Dad, send a hundred bucks.”

“He was always short of money,” Mrs. Downs said.

Cardozo began to learn a little about their son. He didn’t push into it—just let it come.

“He played French horn in the marching band,” Mrs. Downs said. “He was too slender to make the high school football team.”

“But he worked out with weights,” Downs said, “until he made the basketball team.”

“He was popular with girls too,” Mrs. Downs said, wistfully. “The gay thing—that came later.”

Cardozo ran his mind over Jodie’s life. “How did Jodie lose his testicle?”

Downs was silent. Cardozo sensed in him a puritanism that had lost confidence in itself. It was his wife who finally broke the silence.

“Jodie came to New York three years ago to be an actor. He met a man in a bar. He took the man home. The man drugged him and slashed him.”

“Did the police ever find this man?” Cardozo asked.

Mrs. Downs pushed the hem of her dress down past her knee. She shook her head.

“After that Jodie enrolled in fashion school,” Downs said.

Cardozo understood the dark in which the Downses were adrift. He rotated his glass, making the ice in his Scotch shudder, knowing he was about to hurt them more.

“Something else happened to Jodie,” he said. “You didn’t see it. But you should know.” He could hear someone’s wristwatch ticking. “His right leg was amputated.”

Mrs. Downs’s lower lip trembled. She blinked hard. Downs stared at Cardozo in silence.

“It was done after death,” Cardozo said, as though this was some sort of pitiful comfort.

Downs sat stone still, a sad broken mountain of a man, not a tremor in his face, not a movement except the narrow glazing over of his eyes.

“Was there anything on that leg—any distinguishing mark, a tattoo?”

“Nothing I know of,” Downs said.

Mrs. Downs lifted her drink from the end table. She sipped slowly until it was drained halfway down to the ice cubes. “They tied Jodie up and terrorized him and he was completely at their mercy and they didn’t care. And then they got their thrills. No one should have to die that way—for nothing, for no reason except some drugged-out lunatic wants to know what it’s like to be God.”

She moved to the window. She stood with her back to the men.

“Who killed our son?” she asked in a voice so calm and matter-of-fact that Cardozo was chilled.

“I intend to find that out,” he said.

She turned. She looked at him. “Do you promise?”

“Now Meridee,” Downs cut in, “all the lieutenant can do is his best—”

She pushed off her husband’s hand. “Lieutenant, do you have a child?”

“I do,” he said. “A girl.”

“An only child?”

“That’s right.”

She took Cardozo’s hands in hers. “Then you’ll find Jodie’s killer? You’ll see—he gets what he deserves?”

Cardozo knew exactly what she was going through. His eyes promised. “I’ll find him. He’ll get what he deserves.”

Cardozo returned to the precinct and felt an unaccountable craving for sweets. He ordered in blueberry pie and milk.

He sat reviewing the task force’s fives and then he phoned the one nine and asked for Detective Barry MacPherson. The mumble that came over the line was either a bad connection or a mouthful of cheese blintz.

“Barry, you had an attempted homicide over there, first week in June, three years back.”

“We had nine attempts and six successes, I remember the week well. So does my wife. June third’s our wedding anniversary. That was the year we didn’t get to go to Colorado. This year we didn’t get to go to the Bahamas.”

“Keep plugging. Maybe next year you won’t get to go to Paris.” A delivery boy brought the pie, sticky and sugary, a purple disaster. Cardozo made a face. “The victim’s name was Jodie Downs, twenty years old, ex-aspiring actor, fashion design student, gay. He picked up a slasher in a bar, lost one of his balls.”

“Ouch.”

“You weren’t by any chance on the case, were you, Barry?”

“It’s hard enough remembering the ones who die. The survivors I have a very short retention for.”

“He’s dead now.”

“Can’t say I recall him.”

“Jodie Downs.”

“A lot of stiffs under the bridge in three years.”

“Could you messenger me whatever paper you’ve got?”

“You got it.”

Ellie Siegel came into the cubicle. She stood there a moment just staring at Cardozo. “Ever heard of the Rawhide bar?”

“Tell me what I’m missing out on.”

“Eighth Avenue and West Twentieth.” She sailed an interoffice memo down onto the desk. “The bartender recognized the flyer. His name is Hal. He’s tending bar till eight. So you got time to enjoy your pie.”

Cardozo shoved the paper plate at her. “You enjoy it.”

She looked at the purple stain sinking through the crust into the cardboard. “Vince, you know your problem? No self-respect, putting junk like that into your gut. Some night I’m going to cook you a decent meal. You’re too young to be going to pot.”

“I’m not going to pot.”

“Mr. America you’re not.”

“Who’s talking, Miss Universe? I get my share of propositions.”

“You’d get better propositions if you ate right. Knock off ten pounds and maybe you’d even get a shiksa to marry you.”

“You’re a pushy Jewish broad, you know that?”

“I’m as Irish as you.”

“I’m not one percent Irish.”

“So we match.”

“You think you’re going to get me with insults, you really think insults are going to give me a hard-on?”

“Who needs you, Vince? You’re a macho bitch.”

Cardozo pushed through the door. He took a deep breath, tasting the air, disliking the smell of spilled beer that seemed to have gone a stage beyond rot.

The bartender hefted himself up into a standing position. A black-moustached giant, steel studs sprayed across his leather like diamonds, he came down the bar, passing a damp cloth along the wood. The rag stopped two swipes away from Cardozo. “What’ll it be?”

“Diet Pepsi.”

The bartender gave Cardozo the can of soda.

The shadows in the bar were deep—almost night. Tatters of street light played through the synthetic buckskin that had been rigged across the windows.

“You’re Hal?” Cardozo asked.

“That’s right.”

“You know this guy?” Cardozo laid a flyer on the bar.

The bartender put on granny glasses and they gave him a look totally at odds with the piratical black beard. A tiny loop of steel glimmered in his right ear. He studied the flyer a moment, then folded his glasses back into his vest pocket. “Yeah. I know him.”

“Tell me about him.” Cardozo showed the bartender his shield.

“Jodie and I dated.”

“And?”

“Are you a narc?”

“Homicide.”

Shock hit the bartender’s face. He leaned down against the bar. “He’s dead? How?”

“We want to find out.”

The bartender began to wipe a glass. From the pool table, clear and clean as the tap of a woodpecker, came the contact of a cue on an ivory ball, then the rumble of dead weight dropping down a felt-lined pocket.

“He never mentioned any threats?” Cardozo asked.

“He didn’t get threats. He got propositions.”

“Who’d want to kill him?”

“I don’t know. Me, sometimes.”

“Where were you the twenty-fourth?”

“Week ago Saturday? Same place I am now. Right here.”

“Where was he?”

“The Inferno.”

“What’s the Inferno?”

“Sex club on Ninth. He practically lived there. It’s where we met.”

Wind-whipped rain spattered down, making soapsuds in the gutter outside the precinct house as Cardozo hurried from the alley into the lobby. His cubicle was hot and still. He stood with his finger on the light switch, trying to guess from the mound on his desk how much departmental garbage had come in. He pressed the button. The light flung his shadow across the wall and filing cabinet.

The Jodie Downs file was on his desk, along with a note from Detective Barry MacPherson of the nineteenth please to take care of the hospital report.

There were four pages of NYPD letterhead covered with amateurish, misaligned, misspelled typing—clearly a departmental job—and there was a sheaf of public health reports, slightly better typed, with photographs attached.

The police report was grim, sad reading.

Jodie Downs had reviewed mug shots and sat at twenty-one lineups and had not been able to recognize his attacker. The assailant had never been found. The Identi-Kit picture, based on Jodie’s description, showed a stocky, well-built man in his late twenties, with strong jaw, dark curly hair, a high smooth forehead, a moustache covering a sensual full upper lip. Possibly Hispanic or Italian. There was nothing real about the perpetrator: he was a dream, a stud who swaggered through a million male fashion drawings and probably ten million gay jack-off magazines.

Police and Lenox Hill Hospital psychiatrists profiled Downs as a bewildered and guilt-ridden young man, unable to reconcile the contradictions in his own personality, compulsively drawn to the temporary self-obliteration of drugs and sexual acting out.

Cardozo looked at the photographs and felt sick. They’d been taken, he supposed, for insurance purposes—in case Jodie Downs had sued for loss of his testicle.

Cardozo went to the door and hollered for Monteleone.

A moment later the light from the squad room outlined Greg’s solid frame.

“Greg, you used to work Vice Squad. What do you know about a place called the Inferno?”

“You got six hours, Vince. It doesn’t open till midnight. Doesn’t get swinging till two.”

“What goes on there?”

“What doesn’t go on. It’s a sex club. Sex and drugs.”

“Gay?”

“Vince—it’s got everything. Maybe no animals, maybe no liquor license, but believe me there are categories of behavior there that even the Supreme Court couldn’t put a name to.”

“What kind of dress?”

“Dress? You kidding? Leather bra or booties is optional—but your basic party wear at Inferno is skin.”

“You don’t have to look any special way to get in?”

“You could look like Godzilla and get in. In fact that’s the kind of membership they want.”

“Were you a member?”

“Sure. The whole vice squad of New York’s a member.”

“Are you still a member?”

“I haven’t received an expulsion notice.”

“Good. You’re taking two guests tonight.”

“Vince. I’m a married man.”

“You don’t have to break your marriage vows.”

“That place is what Cardinal O’Connor calls an occasion of sin.”

Cardozo shot Monteleone a look. “His Eminence is a member too?”

Monteleone leveled a smoke-colored gaze at him. “I want overtime and a half. Hardship pay.”

“Screw you. And find Ellie. Tell her she’s invited. One A.M. sharp.”

20

“WE’RE PUBLIC NOW.” THERE was pride in Billi’s voice. “Our stock is traded on the New York Exchange. And doing very handsomely.”

“How much of ourselves do we own?” Babe asked.

“We control, naturally. We’ve kept the lion’s share. Twelve percent.”

“That’s a lion’s share?”

“Nowadays. And I’ll tell you something else. We hold a hell of a lot of IBM, and the crash didn’t touch it.”

“But we’re designers,” Babe said. “Not a brokerage house.”

“Indeed we are designers. Designers plus.” He plunged into a whirlwind description of the plusses: the new products and services, the plans to expand and diversify, something about Canadian lumber.

Babe rested her forehead against the palm of her hand. Her eyes were so heavy that they were weighing down her entire head. “Billi, I’m sorry, it’s too much coming at me at once.”

Billi was silent a moment. Long black lashes half-veiled his gaze.

She saw she’d wounded him. “Don’t misunderstand. I love what you’ve done—no, that sounds phony and frivolous. I can’t even follow what you’ve done, but I trust you. I always have.”

She’d almost married Billi. He’d proposed marriage after her divorce from Ernst Koenig, before her romance with Scottie. She’d never said yes, never said no—except by marrying Scottie, which was as decisive a no as a woman could give—yet he’d remained her friend and business associate.

“I just feel helpless, Billi. So completely cut off and out of things.”

“But you’re not.” He rose and turned off the air conditioner and opened the window, letting in a rush of city air that seemed noisy and vital compared to the lifeless cool purity of the stillness in that room.

She could smell the world out there, the streets alive and bustling and active, the people living and real and seven years older than she remembered. She yearned to catch up, to be part of it again.

“You’re going to get yourself out of here,” he said. “And you’re not going to yield an inch to those parents of yours. It’s not that they’re against you. They’re just frightened for you.”

“Why?”

“Because a lot’s changed in seven years. A lot of people are thrown by the new society, the new behavior, the new money.”

“There’s never anything new about money.”

“Nowadays there’s a great deal.” A shadow crossed Billi’s face, and there was a curl of disdain to his tone. “The new nouveaux aren’t the type you remember. They entertain on Park Avenue and they invite gossip columnists and press agents. They deal on Wall Street and bank in Geneva, shoot in South Africa, shop in Hong Kong, eat in Paris. And flaunt it everywhere. Ostentation is the rage—and it’s the biggest reversal to rock society since drugs. Some people can’t cope—they’re clinging to the old ways for dear life. Lucia and Hadley pretend we’re still living in the time of The Forsyte Saga and Gaslight. And they’re not the only people fooling themselves.”

Billi stood a long moment beside the window, his eyes squinting against the rays of the sun. His arms were locked around his chest. There was something held back in his voice and it didn’t go with his words.

“Take our friend Ash Canfield,” he said. “She looks quite the lady with her Chanel suits and her little hats and she has that eager, childlike quality. She thinks life should be a coming-out party—but she’s flustered and bored when the band’s not playing, so she turns to drink and drugs. She’s living a nightmare—destroying her body, her mind.”

Babe was silent, thinking of the Ash she had known years ago and the Ash she had seen last week.

Billi turned. He looked at her. “But you’re not frightened, Babe, and you’re not helpless. You never have been. You’re going to be fine. Cordelia’s got the same stuff as you. She’s going to be fine too.”

“Cordelia’s changed.”

“She’s grown up.”

“I know. I’ll have to get to know her all over again.”

“You’re going to enjoy that.”

“I hope so.”

“Dis donc, do I detect just a little note of self-pity?”

Babe’s hands played with a loose strand of her hair, and then she attempted a little smile and couldn’t manage it and she settled for a little shrug. “You detect a symphony of self-pity. Billi—what happened to my life?”

There was a play of small muscles of Billi’s forehead; in his eyes was a mingled expression of deep grief and indignation. Babe had always felt that his sarcasm was a cover, that he was a gentler, kinder man than he gave himself credit for or wanted others to see.

“It didn’t just happen to you, Babe. It happened to all of us. What it is, or was, is a matter of opinion. You’re going to have to find out for yourself. And it’s going to hurt. No one can make it any easier for you.”

“Least of all Billi von Kleist, who’s going to be the perfect tight-lipped gent and not tell me a word.”

“Scottie was my friend too.”

“Was?”

Billi crossed back to the bed and took her hand. A wave of his vetiver cologne went past her, and she drew the first easy breath she’d taken in three days. No matter how many worlds came crashing down like dropped trays, she could always count on Billi von Kleist and his cool common sense.

“Let it go, Babe. Start letting go of it right here and now. It’s over, gone. Get on with the present. Get back to work.”

His eyes were probing into hers: they were a fiery blue that seemed to scan her and read her like sonar.

“No matter what else happens,” he said, “no matter what else you discover has happened, hold on to work. Work is the last, the most important, the only frontier. Everything else comes and goes—but work stays. The one friend, the one parent, the one child, the one lover. It’s the only thread we’ve got to guide us through this labyrinth we call a life.”

21

THEY WERE STANDING IN the meat-packing area of Manhattan, a neighborhood of industrial buildings and warehouses just south of 14th street. The air had the smell of badly refrigerated death.

Derelict-looking buildings lined the block. A phonebooth was the major source of light.

It was a sweltering night, sidewalks still steaming from the rain. The worst of the storm had blown over, but a trickle still fell, glittering through the headlights of passing cars, triple-parked meat vans and idling limousines.

A steady stream of figures scurried under umbrellas from taxis and limos to a darkened building at the end of the block.

“What’ll the jet set think of next,” Siegel said.

The entrance to the Inferno was through a wooden shed that had been built out over the sidewalk. Monteleone led Cardozo and Siegel past a mean-looking bouncer and down a flight of cement steps that curved not into the cellar of the building but in the opposite direction, into a catacomb under the avenue itself. The steps were narrow, but not as narrow as what came next, a dank space lit by flashlights barbed-wired to the cement walls. Members were backed up in a line, waiting to show their ID’s to the director of admissions. He sat behind a four-foot raw wood carton that bore the stencils COFFEE, CAFE, PRODUITO DO BRASIL, and he wore a leather patch over one eye.

He lit one neatly rolled joint from another. He glanced at the line of customers. This was his moment, his island of power. Nothing was going to hurry him.

The people behind Cardozo were talking about how much Fifth Avenue office space was going for per square foot. They looked like stockbrokers, lawyers, small-time civil service grafters who had snorted a line, kicked the traces, and bolted off the ten-to-six Monday-to-Friday path.

Monteleone showed his membership card. “Two guests.”

The admission man’s olive, broadly ugly face took on a look of calculation. “Twenty bucks.”

Monteleone pulled twenty from his wallet and signed the register. Cardozo noticed that he signed the mayor’s name.

They moved on into a dim area where members were taking off their clothes and handing them over to the clothescheck.

“Check your clothes.” Monteleone was already out of his trousers, wearing ridiculous plaid boxer shorts. “Keep some money in your socks. Drinks are three bucks each.”

A brave smile deepened the lines of Siegel’s face. She pulled off her blouse.

Cardozo stripped down to his Jockeys.

They moved into the next room. It was cavernous. The low ceiling rested on wooden beams that came from the dirt floor at crazy angles. The acid rock thundering from a dozen speakers gave the cavernous space the feel of a coalmine that might collapse at any moment. Definitely a space for people who liked to live near the edge.

The bar was a bunch of crates arranged in a circle. Naked figures were sitting and standing and posing.

Beyond the bar was an area packed with waterbeds and hemmed in by sections of steel fence, suitable for padlocking your playmates to; there was a six-foot wading pool of the sort you see on suburban back lawns; there were deck chairs scattered around, card tables where members could take conversation and drug breaks.

“So you think this is where Jodie Downs met Mr. Right,” Monteleone said.

They stood there, three uncomfortable cops in their underwear, without guns, without shields, keeping their eyes open.

Gradually details began standing out.

A man with an IV in one arm and a glucose bag hanging from a head-high walker was talking with a woman sitting on the bar. She lazily stroked his shoulders with a whip.

“Pig city,” Siegel muttered. “Absolutely new dimensions in chazerei.”

Across the room, a woman was walking over a naked man with football cleats. A few solo acts prowled the dark corners, sniffing for action.

Cardozo felt like a fifth wheel on a spaceship. “Anyone want a drink?”

Nobody objected.

On his way to the bar he passed a man in a sling getting fist-fucked by a fat, bare-breasted woman in an executioner’s hood. At a nearby card table women naked under their black raincoats were discussing how their husbands got off on this fister, how much better she was than the fister at Plato’s.

Cardozo stood at the bar.

It took a few moments before the bartender asked what Cardozo wanted.

“Three Scotches.”

“Dream on, little boy.” The bartender ripped the flip tops off three Schlitzes and didn’t bother wiping the spatter off his nose or off the bar.

Cardozo put down twelve dollar bills.

The bartender crumpled them up in his fist like a wipe-up towel. “You’re new?”

Suddenly Cardozo was looking at the bartender, seeing him. He was a heavyset man in his late twenties or early thirties, with dark curly hair, a jaw that needed shaving, a moustache covering a full upper lip. Jodie’s Identi-Kit.

“Yeah,” Cardozo said. “I’m new.”

“Stan,” the bartender said.

Cardozo accepted a tough handshake. “Vince.” His real name was easier than trying to keep false names straight.

“You’re with them?” The bartender threw a nod toward Monteleone and Siegel.

“Yeah.”

“Enjoy yourselves.”

Cardozo took the drinks back to his coworkers. Now that his eyes and nerves were adjusted he noticed a half-dozen other men who looked like Jodie’s Identi-Kit. Clones.

“It’s not a funny thing, make believe, is it,” he said.

“It’s a Petrie dish,” Siegel said.

“I’m going to mingle,” Monteleone said, and he was gone.

“No one’s enjoying themselves,” Cardozo said. “I thought orgies were supposed to be fun.”

Siegel looked at him. “Vince, you’re so touchingly square.”

“Yeah.” He had a feeling of being outside everything, of not belonging to the same race as these people. “Why did Jodie Downs do it? Why do any of them do it?”

“The sex? It’s an excuse to do drugs.”

“Why do they do drugs?”

“So they can enjoy the sex.”

“Ellie, the exasperating thing about you is you sincerely believe you got it all figured out.”

“I haven’t got anything figured out. But I don’t freak as easy as you and I got my eyes open. You said we’re looking for a killer?”

“Inferno is the last place we know Jodie was seen alive. We want to know who he talked to, who he left with. Our witness is there. It could be our killer is there.”

Friday, June 6. Thirteen days since the murder. It was already a long hot morning in the task force room. Cardozo turned slowly in his chair and rose to his feet.

“I’m moving the photography van from Beaux Arts Tower to the Inferno. We’re going to photograph every person going in or out of that club. We’re going to compare those photos with the Beaux Arts photos. We’re looking for faces we can connect to the murder scene. We’re also going to stake out the Inferno.”

“You might as well dust for fingerprints in a toilet bowl,” Monteleone said.

Cardozo shot him a look. “That toilet bowl holds evidence. We’ll dust.”

Cardozo outlined the rotating schedule he had worked out: the members of the task force would appear singly and in groups at the Inferno, night after night, till they became familiar faces.

“Tonight Siegel will apply for membership, they’ll remember her from last night, and she’ll take Malloy as a guest.”

“Thanks,” Siegel said.

“Tomorrow night Malloy takes Richards.”

“Aren’t they going to connect us?” Malloy asked. “A bunch of squares hanging around not doing coke, not partying?”

“So? We’re voyeurs, that’s how we get our kicks.”

Cardozo passed out Xeroxes of Jodie’s Identi-Kit attacker.

“This is the type of man he was attracted to. So we look for Inferno patrons of this type. We win their confidence. We ask if any of them knew Jodie, noticed who he was with that last night.”

The detectives filed wearily out of the room, holding copies of the fantasy face.

Lucinda MacGill, assistant district attorney, was waiting for Cardozo in his cubicle.

“It’s improper and it’s dangerous.” Her tone was objective, noncommittal.

“So’s life,” Cardozo said.

“We’re not talking life. We’re talking criminal code. You don’t have probable cause to put an observation truck outside that club or to send plainclothesmen in.”

“I didn’t ask for your permission. I asked how can I do it without blowing the case.”

“Any first-year public defender will make a civil liberties issue that the NYPD hasn’t got the right to photograph consenting adults going to and from their private revels.”

Cardozo’s eyes snapped to the ceiling and scanned wearily back and forth.

“And, Lieutenant, if you’re going up against that sleazebag Ted Morgenstern on this, you can expect to get the Bill of Rights thrown at you.”

“Why do you say I’m going up against Morgenstern?”

“The State Liquor Authority records are public and they’re computerized. According to the records, Morgenstern’s firm represented the Inferno in their application for a liquor license.”

“The patrons of the Inferno are snorting coke.”

“Name ten members of the United States Senate who aren’t.”

“Right out in the open?”

“The Inferno is not out in the open. It’s a chartered fraternal organization under the laws of New York State, and like your home or mine it’s private.”

“Private for ten bucks.”

“A trespass case could be made if any MOF goes in there with a false ID.”

“All the members are using false ID’s.”

“They’re not all trying to make a bust.”

“It’s an orgy pit.”

“So are a lot of Park Avenue bedrooms.”

“I’ve spent my life working in the sewer. Till the Inferno I thought I’d seen all sizes and shapes of shit. I’d like to know how much Morgenstern paid who to get that liquor license.”

She studied him, looking to see if she’d made any dent at all in his cop’s head. Not a hopeful look. “I’m talking to a brick wall.”

“The brick wall has ears.”

She lifted her half-tinted fashion glasses, revealing the flash of two intelligent watchful eyes. “Your photography van is illegal. If you find evidence, destroy the photograph and find the evidence another way. Anything you or your plainclothesmen discover inside the club is entrapment. It can’t be used. Any recordings you make are for your reference only and they’ve got to be destroyed. Ditto for any notes or memos. The key word, Lieutenant, is destroy. I’m telling you now, because after you send that van in, I’d be an accessory to obstruction. As for any memos, recordings, or photographs already in your possession, you’re on your own there. You have to read any suspect or potential witness his rights. And remember, the potential witness enjoys the same expectation of noninvasion as the suspect.”

“You’re asking the impossible.”

“I’m not asking, Lieutenant. You can’t take a step without probable cause, and Miranda is a minefield. I’ve seen valid cases destroyed because cops used their common sense instead of listening to their lawyers. Play it my way, or your killer walks, and you’re the man who walked him.”

Cardozo watched her leave the cubicle: a nice, easy walk. She’s going to go places, he thought. Definitely.

On a long, lined yellow legal pad in a tight tiny scrawl Cardozo recorded every question he could think of. He was curious about the wide-open sex scene at the Inferno—especially in the light of AIDS. Who owned the club, why hadn’t it been shut down?

He took Melissa Hatfield’s business card from his wallet and punched her work number into his phone. He asked if she’d care to join him that evening for another drink.

“What’s the occasion?”

“You thought you maybe knew the victim or had seen him.”

A silence.

“I’d like to show you some new photographs. They might jog your memory.”

When Melissa finally spoke her voice was unexpectedly bright. “Could I possibly persuade you to come up to dinner at my place tonight?”

Melissa Hatfield’s address was a high rise on East Sixty-sixth, with a uniformed doorman and a sign saying all visitors must be announced. Cardozo waited while the doorman announced him, eyeing him as though he were a mugger.

He rode to the twenty-ninth floor, rang her buzzer once, and waited.

When she opened the door, there was something different about her hair; it seemed to float around her face. “Come in,” she smiled.

Her apartment bore the small graces of civilization: it was clean, cozy, softly lighted, with a pale Oriental rug and a spinet piano and bookcases and framed posters that looked like French and German art shows.

Not a million dollars, but in a way better: intelligence, taste, knowledge of what made her comfortable and what didn’t.

A great lump of tabby cat was moving on the sofa.

“That’s Zero,” she said.

Even with one leg missing, the animal was huge and very much a presence. “Hi, Zero.” Cardozo patted it on the scruff of the neck.

“Please,” Melissa said. “Sit.”

He sat down in a leather chair that was a little cracked and cat-clawed. A knitted gray shawl had been thrown over the area where the damage was concentrated. Given the perfection of the rest of the room the chair was almost out of place, like an old relative at a birthday party of children. It had the look of a favorite chair.