Текст книги "Privileged Lives"

Автор книги: Edward Stewart

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

Cardozo shook a business card loose from his wallet. It turned out to be Melissa Hatfield’s.

Countess Victoria took out a small lipstick brush and wrote her phone number across the back of the card. “Call me. I give divine head.”

40

EVERY DAY BEFORE WORK, Babe practiced two hours. She lined up chairs at three-foot distances and struggled from one to the next without support. When she could manage three feet, she respaced the chairs four feet from one another, and then five and then six, evaluating her every step in the mirror. Eventually she dared to risk a turn to the left, a turn to the right, and finally she pushed the chairs to the wall and at long, long last—after fall-downs and stumbles and uncounted hesitations and swayings—she walked with no help or hesitation whatsoever from one end of the room all the way to the other.

Babethings was showing its new line of cruisewear the first week in September at the Park Avenue Armory; Babe had made it her goal to appear at the event without her cane.

She chose her ensemble for the event carefully—a black crepe suit that she had designed herself and a single piece of jewelry, a large emerald brooch that her grandmother had left her. The brooch had brought her good luck years ago, all the times she had showed her line at the Pierre, and tonight she kissed it before pinning it on.

Billi arrived for her at quarter to eight. She met him in the ground floor hallway. Luckily—because she might just need a little help with the steps at the armory—Billi did not intend to spend any of the show backstage. Instead he would sit in front, getting the pulse of the audience.

“Don’t you look ravishing, Babe.” Billi, whose eye rarely missed a detail, didn’t notice the absence of the cane. That fact gave Babe confidence—it meant she was moving naturally, not showing her nervousness.

Billi kissed her on the cheek and held the front door. The black Mercedes limousine stood idling at the curb, eight feet away.

A pulse of uneasiness beat in Babe’s throat as she took her first unsupported step on concrete.

The driver touched a gloved hand to the brim of his cap and swung the passenger door open. “Good evening, Mrs. Devens.”

She turned to smile at him. In that instant of inattention one leg shot out from under her. She slammed painfully against the door. Momentum propelled her forward, and a split second later she had landed on the floor of the limousine.

The driver quickly helped her up. She stood blinking, angry and humiliated and not quite believing what had happened.

“My God, Babe, are you all right?” Billi possessed an aristocracy of face that usually hid whatever was going on in his mind, but at this moment, concerned and solicitous, he was watching her with undisguised pity.

Babe shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Billi bent to help her brush off her skirt. “No rips, no tears on you or the suit?”

“I’m fine.”

“No wonder,” he exclaimed. “You forgot your cane!”

“How foolish of me.” Babe’s vision was filming and she did her best to hold tears at bay.

Billi snapped his fingers. “Carlos, be good enough to get Mrs. Devens’s cane? It’s in the house.”

On the approach to the armory, the car had to maneuver around clots of stopped limousines. Gawking crowds pushed against police sawhorses. Police patrolled on foot and on horseback, struggling to keep order.

Searchlights mounted on wheeled platforms strafed low-hanging clouds, and as Billi took Babe’s hand to help her to the curb, dozens of flashbulbs popped. “God save us from New York’s brigade of professional event watchers,” Billi shouted.

With his help and the help of her cane, Babe climbed the red-carpeted steps.

Inside, extraordinary-looking women milled about with their escorts. They had obviously dressed to make a statement, but the clothes Babe saw struck her as loud and careless, probably overpriced as well, and they made her feel like a limping refugee from a time capsule.

People swarmed to Billi in flurries of adulation. “You remember Babe Devens,” he kept saying, “my partner.”

Yes, they remembered Babe. Hi, Babe. But they loved Billi. Billi, phone me and let’s set up that lunch… Billi, when are we going to have dinner? … Billi, you owe me a Michael Feinstein after that hideous Lohengrin!

Kiss kiss.

Darling’s and chéri’s and caro’s peppered the cooing and shoving. Babe kept smiling and nodding, fighting to keep her balance and fighting to keep the fight from showing. To reach their seats Billi had to pull her through wall after wall of fashion hangers-on.

By the time they found their places in the center bleachers, Babe’s breath was harsh and hurting in her chest.

She had reserved the seats next to them for Ash, but Dunk arrived with Countess Vicki instead.

“Ash is still in detox,” Dunk shouted. “She can’t even have visitors yet.”

“So you’ll just have to put up with me.” Countess Vicki planted a kiss on Babe’s cheek. “You look glorious, Babe, as always, and so sweet and sentimental in that frock.” She leaned across to scream at Billi, “Also liebe Billi, der Tag ist jezt, nicht wahr?”

Billi smiled. “Ja, ja.”

When the building lights dipped, a wild wind of applause gusted through the armory. There was a moment of darkness and stiff silence and then, with a thirty-speaker blare of recorded music, banks of stagelights came up, flooding the runway.

The first mannequin came strutting out, hands on hips.

“Billi!” Countess Vicki screamed. “Su-blime!”

Babe frowned. The mannequin was wearing an outfit of skintight blue satin pants with passimetrie swirling around the buttocks. She had pump heels, a low-cut lavender silk blouse with four oversized loops of oversized fake pearls and a big scoop-brim blue fedora squared over her eyes. She was wearing craters of black eye shadow and too much lipstick, and her hips moved with a hard, angular syncopation to the fender-beat music.

A creamy-voiced British actor delivered the amplified voice-over.

Applause mounted as the mannequin strutted to the end of the runway.

Before she had even turned, the second mannequin bounded out onto the runway. On her pencil-thin red-stockinged legs, swathed in yards of fuschia boa from her neck down to her ripped-off gray sweatcloth exercise tights, she looked like a pair of burning stilts holding up a cloud of acid rain.

Once the fifth mannequin strode onto the runway, Babe found that the dresses and ensembles overlapped in a discordant blur. Though tradition had it that you viewed only one mannequin at a time, Billi put as many as twelve on the runway at once. For Babe the effect was bewilderingly like a Broadway show—too much movement, too many lights, too much music.

She squirmed as Billi’s eighty-five mannequins filed on and off the runway, their outfits progressively more hostile and aggressive, and it all began leaving her with a taste of mega-hyped insincerity.

The big outfit of the line—the one that got the greatest applause and that seemed to be the clearest statement of the house’s esthetic—was a chartreuse blazer of crumpled silk linen. The jacket had been loaded with beading and more passimetrie than a Turkish dress uniform, and it was falling off the mannequin’s shoulders, too big even to be called oversized. The dress underneath, shocking pink, was much too tight and almost pornographically short, and the heels on the black pumps were four inches—far too high.

By some miracle of luck or coordination, the mannequin was managing to keep her balance. Incredibly, she was chewing gum, and her face was set in a theatrical sneer.

“Well. Babe,” Billi cried over the mounting applause, “what do you think of our little girl?”

It took Babe a moment’s shock to recognize that the mannequin was her own daughter. “Well, Billi, you certainly have turned things inside out.”

“What the hell else is tradition for?” he laughed.

The one tradition he had stuck with was to close the show with a wedding gown.

The lights dimmed suspensefully and came up again on a runway that was, for the first time since the evening had begun, empty. The speakers blared an eerily electronic Bridal Chorus.

Billi’s tallest, skinniest mannequin slithered into the light, glistening as though she were oiled.

Babe sat rigid, not moving. What she saw went through her brain like a knife.

A sheath of black leather—cut tight down to the pelvis, flaring into a skirt below the knees—covered the mannequin from neck to ankles. Around her throat she wore a diamond-encrusted ankh, fastened upside down to a platinum-link chain. Billi’s designers had studded the gown with steel zippers and outcroppings of black crow’s feathers. For the veil they had used miles of black illusion, for the boots, black-dyed baby lamb.

Babe’s blood was beating a drum in her head. The image of a steel-mouthed mask flashed before her.

“The bride wore boots!” Countess Vicki yelped. “Billi, I want that gown—the count and I are going to confirm our vows this spring, and that is going to be the look!”

The next few moments passed like caterpillars crawling over Babe’s skin.

Applause exploded and a spotlight swept the bleachers, searching for Billi and finally, when he rose, escorting him down to the runway through a congratulating roar of high-fashion color and gemstone.

Bowing, Billi exuded pride and satisfaction. Letting his eyes drop half closed, he spread his arms wide, embracing the crowd.

The dinner afterward was at Lutèce, and Babe did her best.

The buzz at the tables was that Billi’s line was glitzy, sexy, funny, compelling, expertly paced, slick, ironic, full of Hollywood decadence and offbeat charm, sure to be a winner.

Everyone said Babe must be so pleased for her company, and she made a pleased face.

Champagne was served with the meal. The guests toasted Billi and Babe, and somewhere down the line of toasts someone made a speech about Cordelia’s wacky charm.

Cordelia remained imperturbably there, a perfectly coiffed presence with a cigarette dangling from her lips.

Babe had two espressos, hoping one of them would persuade her she still had the capacity to think. As dessert soufflés were being served, she excused herself.

Billi’s dark eyes questioned her.

She promised him she could get home safely. “It’s just a little headache from all the fun and excitement.”

As Babe lifted the phone in her bedroom, her mind was finally made up. She felt energized, as though all her synapses were at last firing.

It took twelve seconds for the call to click through.

“Allo?”

“Mathilde, it’s Babe. I’m sorry to call you at this hour, but—”

“Bonjour, chérie! Ça va?”

“Mathilde, I’m going to start my own atelier again, and I want you to come back and oversee the first season.”

“But I explained, it’s not possible.”

“How much did you say that farmhouse is going to cost you? I’ll pay you three times the amount. Your bank will have the money tomorrow.”

There was a hesitation in Mathilde’s voice, a missed beat.

Babe doubled the offer.

Babe and Cardozo followed a nurse down an ornate marble hall, their footsteps echoing like drum taps. Since the showing it had taken Babe another week of practice to walk without her cane, and there was still a slight limp in her left leg.

The nurse led them past a landing with a door opening onto what must once have been a ballroom. Patients in pajamas and robes formed hushed groups, shuffling in paper slippers beneath a blazing crystal chandelier.

“How is she doing?” Babe asked.

“She’s still hanging on to a lot of denial,” the nurse said. “At meetings patients are supposed to use their first name—you know, ‘Hi, I’m Joe, I’m an alcoholic:’ She says, ‘Good evening, I’m Lady Canfield, delighted to be here with you.’ Like she’s dropped in from the Rockefeller Foundation.”

The nurse took them as far as Ash’s door.

Ash was sitting in a chair wearing a simple black silk dress and long strands of pearls. Her right arm was in motion, braceleted and white, moving through lamplight that glinted off the plastic fork in her hand.

She was working her way through a raw vegetable salad topped with nuts and seeds, with a glass of Perrier on the side. She ate with an elegant weariness, looking frail and very tired. The white of her skin contrasted starkly with the blue veins in her temples, and she was wearing her hair pulled straight back, with the earphones of a Walkman fitted over it.

As Babe bent to kiss Ash she noticed with strangely pained surprise how old and tired her friend looked.

Ash reacted slowly, recognizing Babe, smiling, pulling off the earphones. She got to her feet, and it saddened Babe to see how she had to make the effort in stages.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Ash said. “I was listening to Bobby Short singing some beautiful old Vernon Duke songs.”

Babe and Ash held each other.

“My first nonfamily visitor in over a month,” Ash said. “Oh sweetie, I’ve missed you.”

“Ash,” Babe said, “you remember Vince Cardozo.”

Ash glanced sidelong at Cardozo, studied him, then cast him a disarming smile. “Do I?”

“You and Vince met at the party on Holcombe’s yacht.”

Ash looked at Babe. There was something speculative in her gaze. “Should I remember a party on a yacht?”

“Well, you were there,” Babe said, “and it was memorable.”

Ash’s eyes took on a wary expression. “I’m sorry. I suppose I misbehaved.” She coughed a deep, dry cough. “What do you think of my temporary headquarters? It’s très glam, n’est-ce pas?”

There was a tiroir of pale ash with ebony handles. The four-poster bed had a cream-colored cover. A Raggedy Ann doll that was at least as old as Ash lolled against the enormous fluffy pillows in lace cases.

“This is a place for drunks, you know,” Ash said. “But my problem’s not drink. I only drink because of other problems.”

“How are you feeling?” Babe asked.

“I’m fine—cured. Back to normal and bored. I’ll probably check myself out tomorrow.”

“Can you do that?”

“I’d better be able to do it. It’s my money that got me in, my money can damned well get me out.”

Beneath the bravado, Babe heard the voice of a frightened child.

“Where’s Dunk?” Ash said.

“I saw Dunk at the showing,” Babe said. “He was fine. Don’t worry yourself. Get your rest, and you’ll pick up the threads of your life in no time.”

“What in the world are you saying? I never dropped the threads of my life.”

There was a strained silence. Ash’s eyes traveling from Babe to Cardozo. Babe could feel they were entering a dangerous emotional zone.

“Well?” Ash said.

“Well what?” Babe said.

“The purpose of this visit.”

“Must it have a purpose? We came to see you.”

“No, no, no, no.” Ash pointed at Cardozo. “He didn’t come to see me. He doesn’t even know me.”

“Lady Canfield,” Cardozo said, “last month we showed you these pictures.”

He handed them to her. Her gaze was flat, empty of reaction.

“We asked you if you recognized any of them.” He handed her the last photo: the girl with the confident stride, with the strong nose and jaw, the blond hair and brown eyes, the girl with the package who had gone into Beaux Arts Tower at 11:07 A.M., Tuesday, May 27, and never came out again. “You said you recognized this one.”

For a moment Ash appeared to be lost in a mist between worlds. She shook her head. “Never saw her blond before. I can see I’m going to need to refresh my memory.”

She went to the tiroir where she had arranged her Countess Lura Esterhasz skin care bottles. She brought three tumblers and a bottle of moisturizer to the bedside table. She tipped Babe a crafty glance.

“Remember when we used to do this at Farmington?”

She uncapped the moisturizer and tilted it over one of the tumblers. A clear amber liquid poured out.

She poured two fingers in each tumbler. “They don’t give you ice here. But this is Jack Daniel’s, it tastes terrific neat.” She raised her glass. “Santé, everyone.”

She stopped, conscious of Babe’s cool disbelieving stare.

“Ash,” Babe cried, “for God’s sake don’t drink that!”

“I most certainly shall.” Ash emptied the glass in a single swallow.

She sat on the edge of the bed, staring vaguely in front of her. After a moment she reached to the table for a second tumbler.

Babe made a move to stop her.

Cardozo put out a hand. “Let her do it. It’s what she wants.”

Ash nodded. “Babe, your friend’s a wise man.”

Ash downed the second glass.

“On the house.” Cardozo pushed the third tumbler toward her.

She stared at him, then at it, then at Babe.

The lids sank over her eyes. Her face began crumpling. She put a hand to her mouth and burped softly, and then she was vomiting through her fingers, vomiting over her pearls, down her dress.

Ash studied her vomit-stained hand as though it were an object that had materialized from another universe. She blinked back tears. A spasm racked her and she made a gagging sound.

This isn’t my friend, Babe thought. Ash Canfield is not puking on the detox floor.

Ash was sliding off the bed to her knees, bending forward, dragging herself slowly through the fouled pile of the carpet.

Babe stared at her childhood friend, crawling across the carpet like a squashed slug.

“Get out,” Ash whimpered. “Please just get the fuck out.”

41

IN THE TAXI CARDOZO could feel the pain in Babe and he knew she was trying to hold back tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a damned shame.”

Babe nodded, teeth pressed down on her lower lip. He put his arm around her and drew her against his shoulder.

They rode on in silence.

After a while he looked at the photo again, thinking of what Ash had said: Never saw her blond before.

And suddenly the mystery woman wasn’t a mystery anymore.

The butler led Cardozo into the big, pricey pad and threw open the huge cypress doors of the livingroom.

“Your Ladyship, Mr. Vince Cardozo.”

Countess Vicki sat curled on the enormous velvet sofa, one leg beneath her and the other swinging shoeless. The shoes lying on the Persian carpet matched her brown silk dress.

She was talking on the telephone and trying to clasp an emerald bracelet. Sapphires and diamonds blazed at her throat and wrists and ears. Her slender, oval face turned in Cardozo’s direction, full-lipped and hinting, and she shot him a smiling, brown-eyed glance of welcome.

Like the countess’s dress, the enormous livingroom with its three marbled pillars and two crystal chandeliers seemed to have been designed to set off the owner’s dark coloring. Bookcases were filled with gold-tooled leather bindings and glittering figurines and intricately ornamented porcelain plates. Tables wore bright shawls and were dotted with china bowls and silver-framed pictures of current celebrities, most of them autographed.

Cardozo took a leisurely stroll to the fireplace. Engraved invitations were stuck in the mirror over the mantel. They were also, more surprisingly, stuck in the frame of a Renoir.

“Too divine,” Vicki said. “Call you later—love you much.” She set the phone receiver back in the cradle and rose from the sofa.

“How angelic of you to remember my phone number.” She came across the room and took Cardozo’s hand. “I honestly thought you’d forgotten me.”

Cardozo smiled. “Never.”

The countess bent down and pulled the phone cord out of the wall jack. “We don’t need that anymore. Would you like something to drink? I have some leftover cappuccino—or would you rather get drunk?”

“I could live without cappuccino.”

The countess, a dark silhouette against the glow of the pantry doorway, spent three minutes trying to press extra ice cubes into the blender. “I hope you like slush margaritas,” she called. “And if you don’t, please pretend.”

The blender screeched and she came out of the pantry carrying two champagne glasses filled with what looked like chopped icicles. “Maid’s day off—forgive.”

He sipped. “Tastes great.”

She sipped. “It’s usually hard for me to meet new people. But with you it’s different, I felt that right away. I can be myself with you—and you can be yourself with me—and neither of us is going to judge the other. I think that’s the way a man and a woman should be, don’t you?”

“It’s not a bad idea.”

“Why don’t we find a more private locale?”

Dark hair billowing, skirt swaying, she led him down a seemingly endless corridor, the walls tiled with Utrillos and Jasper Johnses.

Drink in hand, she stood by the door, her bright mouth smiling now, her large eyes inviting him into the still, cool, dim interior of the bedroom.

He accepted, moving past her.

The walls had been done in a dizzying variety of faux marble and faux wood and trompe-l’oeil. There were cut begonias in a Chinese porcelain vase on the dresser and a telephone console with eight buttons on the bedside table. On a chest of drawers were three wigs on stands—a red, a gray, and a blond.

Clothes had been laid out on the bed: a mauve evening gown, silk stockings, a sequined purse, a short fur jacket.

“Are you going out?” he asked.

“I was planning to.” She swung out one of the mirror wall panels and took a cushioned hanger from the closet. “But why go to a dull party when I can stay home and have an exciting one?”

“I guess you’re pretty good at state-of-the-art partying.”

“I guess that’s a compliment.” She finished her drink and slipped a CD into the player. Tinkly music filled the room. “I love the naive magic of Mozart—don’t you?”

She switched off the lamp, leaving the room half lit by streetlights slanting through the Roman shades. She drew the thick damask curtains, and a moment later she lit a scented candle and placed it beside the phone.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said.

He sat down on the bed.

She sat beside him, solemnly reading his face. She put her arm around him and drew him against her breasts.

He felt the involuntary response of his body, the deep-down beat of his heart speeding up.

“It’s a beautiful thing, don’t you think, our being so intimate—complete strangers?” She unbuttoned his shirt. Her tongue touched him softly. “Why do you have the gun? What kind of crime are you in?”

“I’m a cop.”

She smiled, accepting the answer without believing it. “And I’m the Ayatollah.”

“Don’t joke—he’s a holy man.”

“Are you a Moslem cop?”

“The force recruits minorities.”

She bent down and laid her head lightly on his lap. She had a troubled moment with his zipper.

He was only halfway hard.

She pulled up and kissed him on the mouth, giving him a tiny grin, and then she went to the mirrored closet and got a little Tiffany salt cellar of cocaine. She took a tiny spoonful of coke up her nostril and then offered him one.

“Pass,” he said.

She stared with hungry dark eyes at him and then she dove.

He could feel an acute attack of integrity coming on. “Look, this is a little sleazoid for me.” He freed himself and stood.

She pushed her hair out of her face. Her eyes were bright with sudden noncomprehension. “Then why did you come here?”

“I told you. I’m a cop.”

He showed her his shield. The silence hung there, blazing.

“I resent this invasion. I’ve never broken the law.”

“Cocaine’s not breaking the law?”

She was sitting with sudden, furious erectness. “Half a gram. Personal use.”

“Aiding and abetting isn’t breaking the law?”

“Aiding whom? Abetting what?”

He reached into his jacket and brought out the photograph of Countess Victoria de Savoie-Sancerre in her blond wig striding into Beaux Arts Tower with the little package. “You bought a leather mask from the Pleasure Trove in Greenwich Village the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Who did you take it to?”

A twisted look came into her mouth and a network of fine lines suddenly crisscrossed her face. “You’ve got fucking nerve spying on me!”

“You and your friends have been running between raindrops a long, long while. But this time you’re all going to get soaking wet.”

“Fucker!” she screamed. “Motherfucking copfucking sucker!”

She dove for the door and wrenched it open.

Count Leopold de Savoie-Sancerre, his flushed face looking very much surprised, was crouching at keyhole level on the other side.

Cardozo and Sam Richards were discussing a fifty-nine-year-old Hispanic by the name of Avery Rodriguez who had taken two .38 slugs in the head that morning in the men’s room at Bloomingdale’s. They were reviewing Avery’s rapsheet, a thesaurus of petty felonies, when Sergeant Goldberg shouted from the squad room that Cardozo had a call on three.

Cardozo pushed the blinking button and lifted the receiver. “Cardozo.”

A woman’s voice said, “Would you hold for District Attorney Spalding, please.”

A moment later Al Spalding’s voice came on the line. “Vince, the Downs case is closed. Why are you hassling people?”

Cardozo signaled Richards to hold on a moment. “Who says I’m hassling them?”

“Countess Victoria de Savoie-Sancerre.”

“I didn’t realize you were a friend of hers.”

“Let’s say I’m an acquaintance of an acquaintance. This isn’t an official call, Vince, but if you don’t lay off, the next call’s going to be official and it won’t come from me.”

“I don’t have any idea what Countess Vicki de S. and S. is talking about.”

“Vince, don’t play dumb with me, please. I’d appreciate it if we could clear up this matter with this phone call.”

“Just tell me who said Downs case? Who used those two words, Downs case?”

“She said you did.”

Cardozo knew he hadn’t mentioned the Downs case to Countess Vicki. She’d made the connection herself. Big slip. “Okay, Al. It’s cleared up.” He hung up the phone. “Be right with you, Sam.”

Cardozo opened his desk drawer and found Melissa Hatfield’s business card. On one side there was printed black lettering; on the other, the countess’s unlisted phone—seven smudged red digits punctuated by a dash.

Something not very pleasant had happened to Lou Stein’s face. Cardozo’s glance slid incredulously along the bruise running from the right eye down to the mouth, the barely healed multiple abrasions on the cheekbone. “Kissing a meat grinder?” he asked.

“Disagreement with a stranger on Fifty-eighth Street,” Lou muttered through swollen lips. “He thought he had a right to my wallet, I disagreed.”

“Who won?”

Lou Stein, who came to work each day to do his little bit in the age-old combat between dark and light, sat there for a second just looking balding, stocky, discouraged. “I kept the wallet. Did I win? Is losing a tooth winning? I had fifty bucks in the wallet. I had five hundred invested in that root canal.”

“So you’ll get a false tooth. You’re insured.”

Lou’s left hand waved Cardozo to a chair. The air conditioning inside Forensic wasn’t working. It was one of those hot New York fall days when the atmosphere has stagnant weight.

“Did you file a complaint?” Cardozo asked.

Lou fixed him with an incredulous gaze. “You kidding? I got enough aggravation. So tell me what sorrow you’re bringing to brighten my day?”

Cardozo plopped the sandwich-sized evidence bag down in the middle of the papers on Lou’s desk. “Is there enough lipstick on that cigarette butt to do a chemical analysis?”

Lou Stein picked up the evidence bag tagged with the number of the Jodie Downs homicide. He frowned at the inch and a half of crushed cigarette inside the plastic. “Maybe.”

Cardozo held up the evidence bag that he had tagged VINCE C. SPECIAL. “Tell me if the lipstick on that cigarette and the lipstick on this business card are the same.”

Lou Stein phoned Cardozo four days later. “Both lipstick samples contain glycerine, beeswax, yeast protein, red dye six, orange dye two, purple dye two, rose oil, and trace amounts of hydrocortisone acetate—which in simple English is cortisone.”

“Cortisone—is that usual in a lipstick?”

“No. And it ought to be illegal. In the old days, you’d have needed a prescription. But now cortisone’s sold over the counter in mild concentrations—point four, five percent. It’s an anti-inflammatory agent. Masks minor irritations such as you’d get from applying this mishmash to a chapped lip.”

“You’re telling me it’s not your usual mass-produced commercial cosmetic.”

“No way. The cortisone requires FDA registration. This so-called blend, or formula, is concocted exclusively by a coven of warlocks calling themselves Countess Lura Esterhasz Products, and it’s available only at the Esterhasz Eternelle Boutique on Fifth Avenue, do you need me to spell that.”

“I can manage. Thanks, Lou.”

“Oh, Vince, you’ll get a kick out of this. The sample on the cigarette butt has one trace ingredient I couldn’t find on the calling card. Guess. You’ll never guess. I’ll tell you. Honey.”

“Honey?”

“Yep. I have a hunch that’s the evening flavor.”

Cardozo strode down Fifth Avenue, dodging chestnut vendors and messengers on skates with Walkmans and junior execs in jogging shoes.

It was the kind of day he loved. The air was extraordinarily clear. The show windows of Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffany and Harry Winston glinted in the sunlight and the sky was the deeply saturated blue of autumn. The lengthening shadows of late afternoon reverberated like echoes and fitful gusts of wind blew along Fifty-seventh Street.

In front of the Esterhasz Eternelle Boutique women were climbing out of limousines. It was a gentle perpetual twilight inside the boutique, the air cool and blue, sweet with soft light and music and elusive perfumes and the aroma of money.

The salon had been decorated in muted tones of blue and beige and rust, with clean, shining surfaces. Each square glass counter had two or three salesgirls waiting on one or two customers. The salesgirls were as well dressed as the clientele, and twenty to thirty years younger.

But the customers had the slightly unreal beauty that only wealth could bestow. They seemed golden, like a memory of the past, their jewels sparkling with points of light. They moved like ripples in water. The murmur of upper class, ever so slightly back-in-the-throat voices, perfected during Newport summers and private-school winters, sounded like a record slowed down to a seductively wrong speed.

Tea and sherry and Madeira and British water biscuits were being served at small tables in an alcove. Cardozo felt he’d walked by mistake into the ladies’ room. He approached the lipstick counter and coughed discreetly.

The salesgirl’s hair was long, straight, and pale—the color of champagne. “May I help you, sir?”

“I need some information. Are your products ready-made?”