Текст книги "Privileged Lives"

Автор книги: Edward Stewart

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

34

CARDOZO WAS OVERSEEING THE case of an Upper East Side slasher victim that Monteleone was handling, and it took him to Dr. Flora Vogelsang’s neighborhood, a bright half mile of antique shops and art galleries. The air was thick with the smell of money burning, the jostle of women who spent a thousand dollars on a wristwatch, men who paid five hundred for a wallet.

In the lobby of 1220 Madison a doorman sat with hunched shoulders on a stool by the buzzers. Cardozo approached.

“Help you?” the doorman challenged.

Cardozo opened his wallet, flashing the shield and a twenty-dollar bill. Bribes were not tax-deductible, and they couldn’t be recovered from petty cash. They were an inescapable expense of the Job.

“Does a child psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Flora Vogelsang live here?”

Cardozo moved through a corridor thronged with delivery boys, derelicts, off-duty cops, neighborhood office workers. It was the standard showing for the noon lineup, an easy way to make five bucks if you resembled the precinct’s suspect of the day.

He stepped into the viewing room. This was the see-through side of the one-way mirror. A white-faced young woman was sitting there shredding a Kleenex.

“Thanks for coming, Miss Yannovitch.” Cardozo put on his most sympathetic voice and face. “I know this isn’t easy for you.”

Tammy Yannovitch was the next-door-neighbor of a woman whose murder was being investigated. Yannovitch had reported seeing a male Hispanic entering the elevator just before she’d heard her neighbor’s dog barking; she’d gone into the unlocked apartment and found the body. A patrolman had caught a male Hispanic trying to break into an apartment three buildings away, roughly the same description, carrying an upholsterer’s knife.

Cardozo spoke into the mike. “Okay, bring ’em on.”

On the other side of the mirror seven Hispanics filed into the room and stood blinking into the light.

Tammy Yannovitch opened her purse and put on her glasses, and right away Cardozo knew her ID was going to be worthless.

“You wear those glasses often, Miss Yannovitch?”

“Only when I go to the movies.” She stared at each of the seven, squinting through her pink-tinted Coke-bottle lenses. “It’s hard to be sure—I only saw him that split second.”

“That’s okay. Take your time.”

She took her time, said she thought maybe it was number two, maybe it was number four. The men stepped forward and faced right and left and she still wasn’t sure.

Cardozo was looking at number six. The man was wearing a Miss Liberty T-shirt, and black hair curled from his enormous head. His features were thick, as though a sculptor had laid them on with a trowel. The lobe of his right ear was missing and with his heavy, rounded shoulders he was brutish in appearance.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Yannovitch said. “I can’t be sure. I’d hate to get an innocent man arrested.”

Cardozo laid a consoling hand on her shoulder. “That’s okay, Miss Yannovitch. Thanks for your trouble.” He turned to Sam Richards. “Take number six up to the squad room.”

Cardozo went to the computer room and asked the sergeant to call up the sheet on Waldo Flores.

Two attempted rape. One conviction.

Multiple possession and use of stolen credit cards.

Multiple possession of stolen goods.

Multiple possession of controlled substances. One conviction.

Multiple possession of controlled substances with intent to sell.

Multiple living off immoral earnings of female.

It was an interesting sheet for a man of Waldo Flores’s range. There was not a single breaking and entering. So, obviously, Waldo was an expert B and E man.

Cardozo went to the evidence room and checked out two vials of crack.

Flores was waiting upstairs in the squad room.

“Hey, Waldo.” Cardozo slapped a hand on his back. “Been a while. You’re looking good. Come on in here. Let’s talk.”

Waldo’s eyes were serious, questioning. “Lieutenant, I just came by to earn five bucks. Anyone fingered me, they’re crazy.”

“I forget how you like your coffee. Milk and sugar? Make yourself comfortable, amigo.”

Waldo sat in a chair. “This place is a Turkish bath. How do you stand it?”

“A cheerful attitude is the secret, Waldo. God gives me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept the things I can’t. And why don’t you give me your jacket if you’re too hot. Nice denim. Is it a Calvin?”

“It comes from the Army Navy.”

“You’ve been boosting at the Army Navy again?”

“I charged it.”

“Whose charge card?”

“I want to see a lawyer. Get me a nice lady lawyer with a big soft ass.”

“Let’s put your pretty jacket right here on the back of the chair. How’s your coffee?”

“You drink this shit or you save it to brutalize minorities?”

Cardozo had to smile. There was something likable about the guy, a kind of engaging street sass.

“That’s top-of-the-line precinct coffee. I’m doing my best for you. I’m even going to help you out of the jam you’re in.”

Waldo frowned. “Who says I’m in a jam?”

“Your rap sheet says you’re an expert B and E man.”

“That sheet’s a horse’s ass. I been booked for fencing goods I didn’t know was stolen; but breaking and entering, no way.”

“I know, amigo. You got a way of finding twenty-two-inch TV’s on the street that’s uncanny. I have a serious offer to make you. How’d you like to do a job for me?”

Waldo flashed two surly dark eyes. “You think I’m going to go for some crazy entrapment? Man, you been smoking.”

“Do this for me, and we drop the crack charge.”

“What crack charge?”

“You’re holding, Waldo.”

“Bullshit.”

Cardozo heaved himself up from the chair and went to the door. “Sam, would you come in here a minute?”

Sam Richards sauntered into the cubicle.

“Does Mr. Flores look like he’s holding two vials of crack in the right pocket of that jacket?”

“One way to find out.” Richards reached into the denim jacket and pulled out two vials.

“You planted those,” Waldo screamed.

“Take them and label them, would you, Sam?”

Cardozo brought two more cups of coffee, and this time he shut the door.

“Here’s the deal, Waldo. There’s a little old lady that has her home and office in a building on Madison and Eighty-seventh.”

Cardozo explained exactly what he wanted from Flora Vogelsang’s files. “Thursday would be a good night to hit her.”

Waldo looked into space. He’d served time on two felonies. Nothing mattered to him now except staying out of jail.

“Any dogs? Any cats?” His voice was low and wispy, like his balls had been cut. “I don’t go in where there are any pets.”

“No dogs, no cats. This lady’s a loner.”

The kid at the pizza counter had dyed his hair magenta and he had a safety pin in his ear and he was spending too long arguing on the payphone. When he finally slammed the receiver down and came over to Waldo it was like he was doing someone a favor.

“What’ll you have?”

“Pizza—ever hear of it?”

“What do you want on it?”

“Nothin’.”

Twelve minutes later Waldo stood on the corner of Eighty-seventh Street. His eye scanned glitzy shop windows, lit for the night and tucked away behind antiburglar grills. There was a phonebooth halfway down the block. Balancing the pizza box on top of the phone, he dropped a quarter into the slot and dialed.

Among all the windows shimmering with light there was a four-window row of darkness on the twelfth floor of number 1220. The four windows stayed dark and the ringing went on and finally a machine answered and a woman’s recorded voice said, “Hello, you have reached the office of Doctor Flora Z. Vogelsang.”

He hung up. In his mind he was rehearsing the moves.

Traffic sped by. Headlights lashed the street. In the lobby of 1220 the doorman was sitting on a stool, reading The Enquirer. A cab stopped in front of the building and a man wearing an army jacket and designer sunglasses got out. Waldo saw his chance.

He ran, dodging horn blasts and headlights. The doorman was on the intercom, clearing the man in the army jacket. “Pizza for ten-D,” Waldo called out.

He got into the elevator and pushed twelve.

At the door of 12G he untaped a narrow flexible copper rod from his chest.

Ninety seconds later the door swung inward and Waldo scooped up the pizza box and stepped into the dark apartment.

He set the pizza on the floor and crept along the corridor, nudging doors open. Behind the fourth door he found the office.

A rug stretched before the file cabinets, muffling his feet. The drawers made liquid hisses as one by one he pulled them out. He took the penlight from his hip pocket. He crouched down. The pin of light slid along the rows of manila files and stopped at the divider marked K.

A moment later Waldo had the KOENIG, CORDELIA folder in his hand. He tipped the pages out, folded them, tucked them under his shirt.

A button on the desk telephone winked lit.

Waldo raised himself from his crouch and quietly lifted the receiver. The machine had already answered and the recorded voice was saying, “Hello, you have reached …”

After the beep a live voice said, “Doctor, it’s Hildy, I’ve got to talk to you, please pick up.”

There was a click. “Yes Hildy? Is this an emergency?”

Waldo’s heart lurched.

“He phoned.” Hildy was sobbing. “Robert phoned.”

“Hildy, sooner or later you’re going to have to break with Robert. This might be an excellent opportunity.”

Dr. Flora Vogelsang finally got Hildy off the line and hung up the phone. “Meshuggener,” she muttered.

She lit a Pall Mall, smoked half of it, and realized she wasn’t going to get back to sleep by natural means.

She slid her feet into her slippers.

Waldo crept to the doorway. A shaft of light spilling into the hallway caught the pizza box on the floor.

An old woman stumbled into the corridor. She didn’t see the pizza. She turned on the bathroom light. There was a rush of water and Waldo saw her through the open door gulping tablets, then downing a tumbler of water.

The bathroom light clicked off and the old woman stumbled back. Her slipper pushed the pizza but she didn’t look down. She leaned on the doorframe, one hand to her abdomen, and burped. A moment later the bedroom light went out.

Waldo waited five minutes. Sweat was pouring off him. He inched down the hallway and picked up the pizza box.

The bedroom door was half open. He peeked in.

Light came through the filmy window curtain. The old lady’s hair was a frazzled spill of gray on the pillow. She lay on her back, hands folded across her as if she had died in her sleep.

Waldo couldn’t believe there was any sleeping pill in the world that worked that fast.

He went down the hall to the bathroom. The bottle was on the ledge above the sink. He shoved it into his pants pocket.

“Whoever gave you your information, you should shoot them.” Waldo Flores’s dark eyes stared at Cardozo above the rim of his cup. “Vogelsang was home.”

“Did she see you?”

They were sitting in a booth at Danny’s. The ripped blue Naugahyde benches had been bandaged together with electrician’s tape.

“No way. She was too zonked on downs to see the walls.” Waldo reached into his I LOVE NEW YORK T-shirt and pulled out three sheets of paper.

Cardozo flattened out the pages on the Formica tabletop. Creased down the middle and smeared with red grease, they bore the letterhead FLORA Z. VOGELSANG, M.D., PH.D.

“These are a fucking mess, Waldo. What did you do, slaughter a canary on them?”

The air conditioning was blasting. Waldo had to cup his hands around the match to light his Winston. “Excuse me. I musta forgot to wear my kid gloves.”

Cardozo flipped pages.

“Hey, Lieutenant, I gotta get back to the garage.”

“So? There’s the door.”

“I could use a hundred.”

For an instant Cardozo’s eyes hardened. “Here’s twenty.”

PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL

Re: Cordelia Koenig

psychiatric

evaluation

age: 13-2

occupation: student

tests administered

Wechsler intelligence test

human figure drawings

Rorschach

thematic apperception test

EKG

blood analysis

urine analysis

vaginal smear

Cordelia Koenig was agreeable, attentive and polite, with something of a precociously socialized manner. Indeed, in the “grand” manner of a far older woman, she attempted to put the examiner at ease, complimenting the examiner on “your lovely office,” recognizing a flower vase as Meissen, suggesting that the examiner “take your time” and inquiring if she was answering questions too quickly.

Based on observation alone, the examiner had the impression of an obsessive albeit well-contained preadolescent person, whose hostilities are quite unconscious, and at variance with her social intent.

Miss Koenig’s work on the Wechsler reflects superior intelligence. Her full-scale score is 131, very superior, consisting of a verbal score of 130, superior, and a nonverbal score of 129, superior. The similarity between scores tends to obscure fluctuations in functioning, indicative of an emerging disturbance.

The projective tests reveal a shrewd, manipulative, resentful, and confused preadolescent whose modes of adaptation are unstable and tenuous. Her efforts at accommodation are forced and, at times, inappropriate—a fact of which she is obliquely aware. Impelled by aspirations for prestige and approval, she attempts to integrate both her accurate and her bizarrely inaccurate perceptions by linking objectively unrelated aspects of reality and at times grossly distorting these to fit her preconceived matrix of meaning.

Miss Koenig is very much concerned with the problem of self-importance, unconsciously intermixed with furtive rebellious impulses and an urge for extraordinary, godlike powers: in this regard, she equates female fertility with the power to bestow life and/or death. Consciously, in reaction-formation, she is unable to accept all but the most benign, loving, “good daughter” aspects of herself, despite an awakening realization that the aggression against which she so defends herself originates not in a hostile environment, but

in herself.

Adroit at deceiving both others and herself, Miss Koenig relies on intellect to rationalize away the darker side of her own nature. Given her age and history, and the marked narcissistic infantilism of her parents and parent substitutes, it is not unusual that her identities and identifications are many and unstable, but overall they point to profound sexual bewilderment, morbid preoccupation with biological processes, and a denied longing for exotic, spectacularly attractive female roles.

Miss Koenig exhibits marked erotic inclination toward her father and toward any man who can be seen as a father surrogate. This, of course, clashes with her image of herself as a model of dignity, self-containment, and aristocracy. She is impelled to irresponsible, hedonistic activity, associating spontaneity (doubtless through observation of her elders) with liquor and psychoactive drugs.

Unconsciously, as revealed in her human figure drawings, Miss Koenig feels herself to be at the command of a cold, absent paternal figure and of a cruel, watchful maternal figure, both of whose nurturing is fiercely desired and seductively withheld. She saves her deepest conscious resentment for her father, but on an unconscious level she sees her mother as a dreaded rival upon whom she must humiliatingly depend for survival. Her strongest conscious need is to be noticed; her strongest unconscious need is for the infantile gratifications of affection, specifically to be fed (primary orality).

Miss Koenig is fending off feelings of despondency, helplessness, aggression, and guilt, despite her persistently positive denial. She wants to take flight from the unbearable contradictions of consciousness and to find respite in unconsciousness, without, however, any loss of prestige and importance. Sudden perceptions of consciously disdained but unconsciously coveted forms of sexual exhibitionism indicate a dangerous rift in her distinction between the imaginary and the real.

Diagnostically, Miss Koenig reveals an obsessive-compulsive character disturbance, with marked decompensation in intellectual and emotional functioning.

The physical examination reveals Miss Koenig to be in exceptionally good health except for a transient infection (gonorrhea). For this I have put her on a series of antibiotic injections, the standard remedy in young adults. The physical prognosis is excellent.

The psychiatric prognosis is less happy. While Miss Koenig shows a degree of resiliency and rational recoverability, her primary orality, obsessive distortive tendencies, and feelings of worthlessness indicate an inadequately substructured personality. Adolescence will almost certainly see the onset of major depressive episodes, with or without concomitant acting-out. Long-term psycho– and psychopharmacological therapy, as well as close monitoring, are absolutely indicated.

Flora Z. Vogelsang, M.D., Ph.D.

“Mrs. Devens please. Lieutenant Cardozo calling.” He took a stinging hot swallow of coffee.

There was a click and then her voice was on the line, that wonderfully warm voice, coming alive at the sound of his.

“Nice to hear your voice, Vince.”

“Just a quick question. Who was your husband’s doctor seven years ago?”

He could feel her wondering why he was asking.

“We both used the same doctor—Fred Hallowell on Park.”

The manager pointed Cardozo into the depth of the garage.

Cardozo’s steps echoed. It was a dimly lit space, badly ventilated, smelling of gasoline. Light reflected on the floor, pulling murky rainbows out of the oil spills.

He watched the lower half of a man wriggling under a blue ’86 Pontiac. He nudged the man’s foot with his own.

The rest of Waldo Flores wriggled out.

“Pontiac’s looking good, Waldo. Maybe I’ll bring my Honda here for a tune-up.”

Waldo looked as though he wanted to give Cardozo a mouthful of the greasy wrench he was holding. “We don’t do Hondas.”

“That’s a shame. What I’m here about, Waldo, I have another job for you.” Cardozo handed him the piece of paper with Dr. Frederick Hallowell’s Park Avenue address and office hours. He explained that there would be a number of cards in Scott Devens’s file and all he needed was the card for September of seven years ago. “Go in over the July Fourth weekend, okay?”

35

AT 12:35 CARDOZO WAS sitting in Danny’s Bar and Grill working through a Reuben sandwich with a Diet Pepsi, lemon on the side. He’d already decided dessert was going to be strawberry cheesecake when Ellie Siegel came through the door.

She sat at the table and plunked her Crazy Eddie shopping bag on the empty chair next to her. She looked at the menu. “Think I have time for crabcakes?”

Danny, the owner and waiter, said sure, crabcakes took five minutes. Siegel ordered crabcakes and potato skins and asked Cardozo if she could have a glass of Chablis on duty.

“Think you can handle it?” he said.

“Make that a double,” she told Danny. She then got comfortable in her chair and said, “Okay, Vince, why have you invited me out for a fancy lunch? What’s bothering you?”

“This.” He handed her Vogelsang’s report.

As Siegel read, her features creased into a frown. When she had finished she leaned back in her chair. “That was then, Vince. This is now.”

He felt a naked flash of anger. “It doesn’t stop mattering just because a D.A. bought a plea.”

“But is it any business of yours? Vince, you got a job.”

“Babe Devens was my case. I blew it.”

“You didn’t blow anything. You’re only a cop. You don’t control the D.A.”

“I’m a detective and I didn’t even sniff this.”

“You’re homicide. This is child abuse, morals, narcotics—and it’s a hell of a long time ago.”

“The creep that fucked her should go free just because he’s been on the loose seven years fucking other thirteen-year-olds? If that’s the law, the law’s nuts. I have a girl who’s going to be thirteen and I’d murder the guy that touched her.”

“First of all, there’s no way you’re going to find out who molested Cordelia Koenig six years ago, and second of all the girl in this report is not your daughter.”

“The guy in this report is the guy that tried to kill Babe Devens.”

“Mrs. Devens didn’t die.”

“He took seven years from her, he should be allowed to do that? Fuck the kid, take seven years from the mother?”

“Okay, life’s not fair.”

“You scream about porno hurts women and sexism on the job hurts women but when it comes to something in real life that hurts two real women all you can say is life’s not fair. You take my breath away, Ms. Siegel. You really do.”

Siegel raised her eyebrows at him. Her gaze was interested and curious and cool. “Vince, there’s no homicide here, this doesn’t connect to any ongoing investigation. She’s one of two million people in this town who was battered when she was a kid and she’s been using it ever since as an excuse for getting high and getting by. Why are you fixating on her?”

Cardozo handed Siegel the pages that Waldo Flores had brought him that morning: Dr. Frederick Hallowell’s record on Scott Devens’s September checkup seven years ago.

She took the document with an expression of mild expectation, and she read it with a look of mild surprise. What impressed Cardozo was how very mild the surprise was.

“Looks like Scott Devens gave his stepdaughter the clap when she was thirteen,” she said.

“Looks it.” A terrible sense of loss possessed him.

Siegel stared at him, her face registering concern. “Vince, are you all right?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know what was happening within him. He didn’t want to think about it. “Yeah. I’m fine. Am I acting weird or something?”

“Or something.”

“I don’t know why this hits me the way it does. I feel I’ve been sandbagged. How many corpses have I seen, how many raped kids, why does my mind say no to this?”

Her eyes hooked his. “Vince, we both know that where Cordelia is headed will be a hell of a lot worse than where she is now. The road she’s taking, there’s only one direction—down. I think you should talk to her mother.”

He thought about telling Babe. The whole thing was taking on a numbing sadness.

Siegel touched his hand. She had a firm, clear gaze, no agitation, no uncertainty. “It’s not as though you had to tell her her kid’s dead—yet.”

She was on crutches and she seemed happy to see him. “Iced tea on the terrace?”

“No—no iced tea. Let’s talk inside.”

She looked at him with an expression of curiosity, then led him into the large den beyond the dining room.

“You’re doing well on those crutches,” he said.

“I add a half hour a day. It takes a human being two years to learn to walk—I’m hoping to do it in two months.”

He admired her: she accepted that the game was tough, but she had a quiet determination to keep playing.

“Drink?” she offered.

“You sit, I’ll fix them,” he said. “What’ll you have?”

“Scotch and a little water. There’s ice in the bucket.”

It was a handsome bucket, silver, engraved with the emblem of the New York Racquet and Tennis Club and beneath that the words Scott Devens, Squash Championship, 1978.

He fixed two stiff Scotches and handed her one. She was sitting in an armchair, crutches resting against her and forming a little barricade.

Outside the windows, sun splashed the private park.

“How much pain can you take?” he asked.

“How much are you offering?”

“The psychiatrist’s report on your daughter.”

Her whole expression changed. She was looking him straight in the eye, the way people do when they’re scared of showing they’re scared.

He opened the manila envelope. It was a calculated risk: it meant showing her that people she’d trusted had taken her life apart.

He handed her Flora Vogelsang’s pages.

Her blue gaze went slowly across the sheets, and there was an ache for her in his chest.

She didn’t move except to turn the pages. She didn’t say anything or even show she was reacting. But he could feel her taking it in, and he could feel her world turning dark.

When she’d finished she looked more numb than anything else. The shock didn’t seem to have happened yet. She just sat swaying a little against the chair.

“Strange how it catches you unawares. A minute ago I was happily making lists of guests for my first party, and now …”

She sat looking across the room at him.

“There’s more,” he said.

She looked up, hands hanging a little way from her body, breathing shallowly, lips parted, braced for the second blow.

He gave her the other document.

After the first paragraph she stiffened. Behind her eyes came the sudden flare-up of understanding.

At that moment Cardozo felt a tightness in the back of his throat, an overpoweringly tender melancholy for her.

“We know why your parents accepted the plea bargain. They weren’t going to let this come out.”

Her face held like a struck mirror determined not to break apart.

“It takes money to keep a secret. A lot of people knew this one. Dr. Vogelsang. Ted Morgenstern. Your ex-husband. Your daughter. Maybe the D.A. Maybe even the judge.”

She mused on that. He watched her pulling in.

“You’re thinking something,” he said.

“I wonder if Mrs. Banks knew. It might explain …”

“It might explain what?”

She told him about Mrs. Banks’s restaurant, her clothes, her new face and manners and social set.

Suddenly Cardozo’s mind was making connections. He asked questions: where did Babe’s parents bank, did she know where Scott Devens and Mrs. Banks had accounts, where did Cordelia get her money and where did she keep it, how close were the Vanderwalks to Judge Davenport?

“I’ve always called him Uncle Frank. My mother was angry that he didn’t give Scottie a harsher sentence, but they were certainly close till the trial.

Cardozo’s face darkened. “They’re your parents,” he said, “but they’re sons of bitches. I think we should take them.”

“Take them?”

“Confront them. Get this cleared up for once and all.”

The taxi stopped before a five-story German schloss in the middle of a block of French châteaus. A Mercedes limousine was parked at the curb, in front of iron gates bearing the sign, NO PARKING ACTIVE DRIVEWAY 24 HOURS A DAY. Cardozo calculated it was the kind of house that went nowadays for six million and change.

He paid the cabby and helped Babe and her crutches onto the sidewalk.

Babe turned. “All I told Mama was that I was bringing a friend for tea. She’ll be dreadful with you. She says I only introduce her to men I’ve decided to marry. I never allow her any input, she claims.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Babe gave him a nervous smile and the smile he gave back was not nervous at all. She pressed the brass doorbell. Murky clouds scudded across the sky and thunder rumbled overhead.

After a moment a butler opened the door: there was the merest of stiff-backed bows. “Good day, Mrs. Devens.”

“How are you today, Auchincloss? Please tell my parents that Lieutenant Cardozo and I are here.”

“Certainly. Would you care to wait in the drawing room?”

The butler vanished, and a panting chow chow came running up, barking, darting its black tongue over Babe and her crutches, then sniffing at Cardozo’s trousers. The dog preferred the trousers.

“If Jill annoys you just push her away,” Babe said.

Cardozo let the dog play with his cuff. His gaze took in the marble staircase, the paintings, the narrow blue Oriental carpet that seemed designed precisely to fit the hallway and leave a six-inch border of gleaming dark parquetry.

He followed Babe into the drawing room. The walls were vivid orange—an unusual color for a room, bright and haunting. The sofas and chairs were ivory-colored satin. The teacups and service were waiting on the coffee table.

“Well, we’re the first here,” Babe said.

Cardozo could see she was fidgety. For distraction, he asked about a Japanese urn under the Steinway. Babe said the urn had belonged to the last mistress of the last king of Rumania.

Cardozo began to get a sense of the house. Everything was rich, fantastic, beautiful. The tchotchkes of the world’s rulers had fallen to the Vanderwalks in astonishing quantity. Not just the urn, but Queen Victoria’s fan, in a glass case above the door; Winston Churchill’s watercolor of Somerset Maugham’s villa, in a gold frame that must have cost a patrolman’s annual salary. Babe said the tea service had been designed by Paul Revere for the empress Josephine.

A woman in a navy blue dress came through the doorway, fixing Cardozo with pale blue eyes. “How do you do—I’m Beatrice’s mother, Lucia.”

Her face was like an artist’s painting, the white of her skin contrasting delicately with her gray hair and pale crimson lips. She wore a single strand of pearls. A tiny circle of diamonds pinned to the silk dress caught the light and threw out flashes of color.

“How do you do, ma’am,” Cardozo said. “Vince Cardozo.”

A man in a navy blue blazer sauntered into the room. Babe introduced her father.

Hadley Vanderwalk had the look of a gray-haired American aristocrat, tall and lean and sharp-featured, his skin tanned by years spent on yacht decks and golf courses. There was something pleasant and intelligent in the set of his mouth.

Lucia Vanderwalk moved to a sofa and took a seat by the tea service. It was a signal for the men to sit. Her hands moved powerfully, gracefully, over the silver, seeming to communicate with it.

“Tell me about yourself, Leftenant.” She pronounced his rank that way, British. Lef, not lou.

“I was born in New York, I grew up in New York, I became a cop in New York.”

“Homicide or vice?”

“Homicide.”

“You look familiar.” She stared at him, something more than ordinary interest in her eyes. “Ceylon or China?”

He realized she was talking tea and he figured what could he lose. “China.”

She poured from the teapot on the left. “Lemon or milk?”

“Lemon, please.”

“Sugar”—she glanced at him—“or NutraSweet?”

“A little NutraSweet, thanks.”

“Yes, I use it too.”

She handed him a cup. It was almost weightless. The china was as delicate and fine as the skull of a newborn baby.

“Please help yourself to sandwiches. The dark bread’s petit-suisse, the light’s watercress. No one’s allergic to watercress, I hope?”

Petit-suisse, Cardozo discovered, was cream cheese with a pleasantly tart accent.

Lucia Vanderwalk distributed tea and directed conversation.

Cardozo gradually got a feel for the Vanderwalks. They were wealthy liberals. They’d hung a sign on their lives—Do Not Disturb. They knew social inequity existed and they dealt with it by electing Lena Horne and Paul Newman to the country club.