Текст книги "Privileged Lives"

Автор книги: Edward Stewart

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Текущая страница: 31 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

47

IT WAS QUIET EXCEPT for the hissing on the soundtrack, and in a way that hissing made the room even more silent. Babe’s wide green-blue eyes followed the movement on the screen.

A man in evening clothes crossed the screen. Behind him four black beams attached to the wall formed the letter H, with two crosspieces, almost as tall as he was.

“That’s Lew Monserat,” Babe said.

Another man in evening clothes entered the frame.

Babe leaned forward. “That’s Binny Harbison.” She sounded astonished. “This must be an old tape.”

“Who’s Binny Harbison?”

“A designer. I heard he died three years ago.”

Now the woman in the gown appeared. She put a cigarette to her mouth. Both Binny Harbison and Lew Monserat offered lights. The woman took a light from Binny. She crossed to one of the Queen Anne chairs and sat.

Babe’s face was suddenly an oval of concentration. Her gaze played over the hard jaw, the high forehead, the widely spaced dark eyes, the aquiline nose. “There’s something …”

The woman leaned back against the chair, watching the column of smoke from her cigarette drift up into the unstirring air.

“There’s something wrong with her hair,” Babe said. “It’s fake. She’s wearing a wig. Could you stop the film?”

Babe peered at the TV screen.

“The picture’s so bad. Even the nose could be false. But still there’s something …”

Babe got up and went to the door. “Mathilde, could you come here a moment?”

A white-haired Frenchwoman with a swatch of blue cloth in one hand and a pair of pinking shears in the other stepped into the room. Babe introduced Mathilde Lheureux, her assistant, and Cardozo said how do you do.

“Do you recognize that dress?” Babe asked.

Mathilde approached the TV screen. “You designed that dress. It is red, with hand-stitched sequins.”

“Of course.” Babe took Cardozo through a workroom where eight women were working sewing machines and into an office. She shut the door. “Excuse the confusion,” she said, “we’ve hardly moved in.”

She went to the deep bookcase that held art folders. Tall, moving lightly, she was showing more and more of the grace that had been locked up in her for seven years. She studied labels, found the folder she wanted. She unlaced the strings and laid it open on the drafting table. She turned sheets of paper with a little snap.

“This one,” she said.

Cardozo looked down at a delicate sketch of a faceless woman in a gown that was warm, ripe red, the color of a perfect strawberry.

“I designed it for Ash Canfield,” Babe said. “She wore it to my party the night I went into coma.”

Babe felt silence, motionlessness in the house. Every piece of furniture seemed to say Ash is gone. She looked about the room, seeing the moody Corot woodscape over the fireplace, all the small doodads and objects that had been Ash’s enthusiasms and now, without her, seemed pitiful and meaningless, like abandoned pups.

“First stop, a drink, yes?” Dunk said.

“Isn’t it a little early for that?”

“You know what the Countess Rothschild used to say—‘Oh, well, what the hell’”

He mixed martinis, strained them carefully into two glasses, and garnished them with garlic olives. He came across the livingroom and handed Babe one. They settled onto facing couches.

She studied his face, the squarely set eyes, the bobsled nose and dimpled chin, the long curling lashes, all the physical details that had been Ash’s obsession. And Dina Alstetter’s. And, once upon a time, hers too. It seemed peculiar: Ash gone, the obsession surviving.

“It’s sweet of you to come by,” he said. “You look more and more terrific every day.”

There were dark lines under Dunk Canfield’s eyes, accentuated by his deep tan, and they seemed to speak of weeks of sleeplessness. A yachting cap sat rakishly atilt his hair, bleached from the Corfu sun.

“How are you, Dunk?”

“It’s been one of those days. It’s been one of those lives.” His posture sagged and his head hung forward. “I loved her. I was a rotten bastard to her, but I loved her. We weren’t always the best lovers or the best friends—as you well know—but damn it, we knew how to have fun. She was my best playmate ever. And we were just getting back together. And this time it would have worked. I know it would have.”

Babe was silent.

“I walk through these rooms—they feel so lonely, so empty.”

“What are you doing with yourself? Aren’t you getting out at all?”

“I was out with Vicki the other night—she took me to some of the discos—it’s not a lot, but it’s a toe in the water. I really don’t feel up to dinners, meeting people, making chitchat. There’s always that obligatory I’m-so-sorry and I’m so tired of it. And every damned little thing reminds me of her. I order Château-Margaux and I remember when she and I last drank it. I play a record and it’s her favorite. I try to read and the words on the page start a chain of associations and I wind up thinking of her. Look what I found, going through her things.”

Dunk pulled a pack of glossy photographs out of a manila envelope and handed them to Babe.

She looked at them—candids of Ash, appearing rather tipsy in some airport or other. One showed Ash dancing on a VIP lounge couch, a gaggle of nuns staring in open shock.

“Our trip to Bavaria, remember?” Dunk said. “When we all went to Caroline’s schloss and at Shannon they announced ‘Boarding all passengers on Aeroflot to Moscow and all passengers on Mr. Getty’s jet to Bad Nemetz.’ It’s one of those silly moments you never forget.”

“I remember.” Babe remembered being embarrassed, but it was obviously one of Dunk’s golden moments and she wasn’t going to say anything to tarnish it.

“Speaking of mementos …” Babe opened her own envelope and handed Dunk her sketch of the red gown. “Do you remember the dress I designed for Ash?”

He shook his head. “I got rid of all her clothes. The day after she died I phoned the Junior League thrift shop and told them to send a truck.”

Cardozo held the door for Babe.

The air inside the Junior League thrift shop smelled of floor wax, camphor, and the perfumes of forty different millionaires’ wives. The women floating up and down the aisles did not seem to be shopping so much as strolling, enjoying a break in lives that were all intermission to begin with, pausing to examine a froth of petticoat or an onyx bookend. They had a bored air, but there was a seriousness in their boredom, as though they were pursuing highly competitive careers.

“How do you tell who’s selling and who’s buying?” Cardozo whispered.

“The saleswomen are wearing originals,” Babe said.

Cardozo glanced along the racks of dresses and evening gowns, seemingly crushed together helter-skelter, all exuding an aroma of last decade’s chic; shelves of figurines and glasses and vases; stacks of books coming apart at the bindings.

“Garth, look!” a woman cried. “Depression glass candlesticks!”

Babe examined the sleeve of an oxydized mink that had gone the color of an old toupee.

A young woman approached. She wore slacks and a silk blouse with a patterned scarf, her reddish-brown hair pinned behind one ear with an emerald clip. “May I help you?”

“Who takes deliveries?” Babe asked.

“Cybilla handles those. I’ll see if she’s free.”

Everyone in the store looked free to Cardozo.

By the window, he observed two women discussing a flared rust-and-black patterned dress.

The younger woman was thin and blond, bright-eyed, agitated, a princess with a small p, doing coke or possibly prescription speed, worried about her age, her body, her left contact lens.

Her opponent was a tall, slender woman with steel-gray hair softly waved over an intelligent face.

They were disagreeing. It was clearly a collision of life-styles.

Cardozo understood what the young blond woman did not: the Junior League boutique was not Crazy Eddie’s; you didn’t hondle with the help, who in any case were not help but Park Avenue volunteers.

The woman in slacks spoke to the gray-haired lady, who came smiling across the shop.

“Great to see you, Babe. You’re looking just terrific.”

“So are you, Cybilla.”

“We’re going crazy. Three cartons of tip-top junk just came in from Truman Capote’s old garage and we’re understaffed.”

“Cybilla,” Babe said, “this is Vincent Cardozo. Vince, Cybilla deClairville—a good friend of my mother’s and mine.”

Cybilla raised her left eyebrow. She held out a perfectly and unobtrusively manicured hand. One gold band and nothing else. “You look familiar to me, Mr. Cardozo. Have we met?”

“Your home was robbed eleven years ago,” he said. “They almost killed the butler. How’s he doing?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“The Bonnard is all stitched up?”

“As good as new, Mr. Cardozo.”

Babe showed Cybilla her sketch of the red dress. “Do you have this dress?”

Cybilla studied the sketch. “I’m afraid we don’t. It’s a bit out of our league.”

“But it came in with Ash Canfield’s things.”

Noncomprehension lines knotted Cybilla’s brow.

“I designed it for her,” Babe said. “I’d like it for sentimental reasons. I’ll buy it, of course.”

“We don’t have any of Ash’s things,” Cybilla said.

“But Dunk gave you everything.”

“No he didn’t. Dunk hasn’t said boo to me in three years.”

Countess Vicki de Savoie-Sancerre joined the conversation, tall and leggy in an orange jumpsuit. “Hello, Babe, you’re looking glorious, as always.”

“I didn’t know you worked here,” Babe said.

“Every Thursday this month, taking over for Betsy.”

Cybilla handed Countess Vicki the sketch. “Have we had a dress like this?”

Countess Vicki stared at the sketch. “Oh, Dunk Canfield brought it in and it was purchased the same day.”

“Do you happen to have the receipt?” Cardozo asked.

Countess Vicki smiled and held out her wrists. “Lieutenant, handcuff me. I didn’t make out a receipt. I just put the money in the register.”

For an instant Duncan Canfield’s face glowed from the entire screen, patterned pinpoints of vibrating light and dark.

Charley Brackner pushed a button that split the screen.

From the bottom half Canfield’s image sent out sharp glints like sparks from a flint. In the upper half appeared the message:

WELCOME TO IDENTI-KIT COPYRIGHT 1985

HERE IS YOUR MENU OF CHOICES:

[1] MALE

[2] FEMALE

“Female,” Cardozo said.

Charley Brackner’s brown eyes glanced up at him. “Female?”

“Read my lips. Female.”

Charley pushed another button. A new message appeared:

HERE IS YOUR MENU OF CHOICES.

FACE SHAPE

HAIR

EYEBROWS

EYES

NOSE

CHEEKS

LIPS

JAW

CHIN

“How would he disguise himself,” Cardozo said, “if he wanted to be a woman for the night. For Halloween. For a joke.”

“Okay. A wig, eyeshadow, lashes …”

The cursor began snatching options from the top half of the screen and moving them down onto the face. Feature by feature a drifting current of superimpositions redrew reality.

“How good is our man at this stuff?” Charley said.

Cardozo studied what was coming up on the screen. “Better than you are.”

“Sorry about that. Lipstick?”

“Definitely lipstick. I could even give you the shade.”

“Color we don’t have.”

Fleetingly the smile left Canfield’s face, then returned with Cupid’s bow lips.

“Less like a hooker,” Cardozo said.

New lips, more lady-like, fell into place. Gradually a change passed over the face. The likeness to Canfield began to die and the likeness to someone else, to something else, began to spread. There was a precise moment when the balance tipped, when the human being faded away, when all gentleness in the face had gone, and suddenly the image seethed with almost theatrical violence and anger.

“Try adding more hair, earrings—you know, women’s things.”

The hair dropped from her ears—for she was now definitely some kind of she—to her neck to her shoulders.

Cardozo stood there, staring. There was still a faint stain of doubt, a sensation that something was missing.

“Give her a dress.”

Suddenly she was wearing a severe dark dress.

“Make it lighter, flouncier.”

“Vince, we only have a limited line of dresses in this program. Saks Fifth Avenue we are not.”

“I can draw you the type I want.” Cardozo drew it on a piece of scratch paper.

“Vince, never go into fashion.”

The dress toppled into place.

Charley Brackner pressed a button and now the face occupied the entire screen, casting a hard glow, like sunlight on snow.

“That’s good,” Cardozo said. “Can you print that face?”

Charley pushed a button.

Seven minutes later Cardozo was sitting in his cubicle staring at Dunk Canfield transformed.

He angled the picture under his desk lamp. Specks of dust floated in the grayish flicker. Light vibrated on the face. The face was trapped in fluorescence. The eyes stared back at him, cheerless and vacant.

Unless Canfield had an identical twin of the opposite sex, there could be very little doubt: Sir Dunk was the same person as the ugly woman in the videotape wearing Ash Canfield’s dress.

Cardozo heaved himself up from the desk. He went into the squad room and studied the bulletin board. “Who took down the flyer for the Gay Cops’ Dance?”

Monteleone whooped. “You going, Vince? Take me along?”

“The CP ruled that that flyer stays up.”

The CP had issued an edict affirming the right of any and all organizations on the force to post notice of peaceful assemblies.

“Look under the Uniformed Sons of Erin novena. Under, Vince. Underneath.”

Cardozo undid the bottom thumbtacks on the novena announcement and found the gay cops’ flyer.

Technically, hiding the gay cops’ flyer under the Uniformed Sons of Erin’s was not a violation. Nevertheless, after he had made a note of the name and precinct of the organizer, Cardozo tacked the flyer over the latest communiqué from the CD’s office.

Sergeant John Henning, president of the Gay Policemen’s Caucus and organizer of the Gay Cops’ Dance, shook a Marlboro loose from the packet. He looked across the coffee shop booth at Cardozo. “Do you mind?”

“You’re going to die that way.”

Sergeant Henning lit his cigarette and signaled the waitress for another round of coffees. “You always draw morals?”

“Never. Am I going to insult you if I ask you about drag queens?”

For just a flash, Sergeant Henning’s eyes narrowed. Then they crinkled into a blandly diplomatic smile. “The only insult is asking if it’s an insult. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know if I’m getting too far from reality.”

Cardozo showed Henning the photograph of Sir Duncan that Ellie Siegel had clipped from Town and Country. “This is what this guy looks like in—let’s call it real life.” He laid down the computer-modified portrait beside it. “I’m almost a hundred and two percent convinced that this is the same guy.”

Sergeant Henning was a powerfully built young man, serious-looking and clean shaven, with keen blue eyes and a full head of black hair curling back from a face that was prematurely lined and drawn. His eyes wrinkled and there was a flicker of something—not exactly surprise, more like distaste caught off guard and not wanting to show itself.

“Strike you as reasonable that a man who looked like that would want to look like a woman who looked like that?”

“Reason doesn’t come into it,” Sergeant Henning said. “I have no trouble with it.”

“Say this guy is doing drag acts in his wife’s old clothes. The wife doesn’t know. Didn’t know. Thought her old clothes were going to charity.”

“A lot of TV’s keep it secret for a whole marriage.”

“TV?”

“Transvestite.”

“The guy may not be a transvestite exactly. The real point may be something else—a sort of s.m. that involves play-acting and gender switching.”

“All possible. Not frequent, but possible. Usually TV’s and s.m. are two very different worlds. Psychologically and socially.”

“But it could happen?”

“Sure.”

“The guy may dress up and act out these scenes in front of a video camera. Possible?”

“Very frequent.”

“But he doesn’t keep the camera at his home. There’s a special place where he gets together with like-minded friends. They do drugs and dress up and party and make these videotapes.”

“It’s very common for TV’s or s.m.’s to have a special apartment for their celebrations. Trick pads. The way some married guys have apartments to meet their girlfriends.”

“Okay. Where does he keep his clothes, the drag clothes?”

“Most guys would keep them at home. If they’re married and the wife doesn’t know, they’d keep them someplace where she wouldn’t be apt to look—the toolchest, the workshop, maybe even a safe.”

“But if he lives in a Manhattan apartment, how does he get across town without being noticed?”

“Is he rich?”

“Very.”

“Hire a limo.”

“Then the elevator man knows. The doorman knows.”

“He changes into drag in the limo. The driver’s in on it. That happens a lot. There are special limo services. He could even stash the drag with the limo company.”

“But it’s fancy drag, he wants it to look good. A real woman wouldn’t dress in a limo, make herself up in the back seat—would this guy?”

“Either you don’t know the things some women do in limos, or you don’t know what state-of-the-art limos are like. They have Jacuzzis. Beds. Mirrors.”

“But say these games and videotapes—say the s.m. in them is really rough. Maybe someone’s even been killed.”

Henning’s eye flicked up and fixed on Cardozo. “We both know that happens.”

“This guy doesn’t want anyone to know he does drag—not anyone on the outside, certainly not a limo driver. He doesn’t want anything showing that connects to that side of his life.”

“Then if he’s smart he changes in the place where they make the films. But there are no rules. A lot of guys aren’t realistic in this one area. They don’t want to be found out, but they take asshole risks. Maybe that’s part of the unconscious thrill. You see Manhattan publishers, bankers, lawyers, guys with two-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year salaries, walking past the doorman in leather. Leather, for Christ’s sake. They gotta be crazy if they think they’re leading a double life, but they do it.”

“But drag?”

“Drag—no. They don’t go past the doorman in drag. Not the older generation. Not if it’s secret. If it weren’t for the wife, I’d say your friend takes the drag with him in a suitcase. But married, I don’t know what he tells her—he’s going to Chicago on business for six hours? Unless the wife isn’t around much, or they lead separate lives, like she has a lover or she’s always out Thursdays at the opera.”

“What about keeping the drag in the secret apartment?”

“Frankly, Lieutenant, I know more about leather than drag. But if we’re talking high drag, the gear is very expensive—it runs a few thousand dollars. And the people that do these things, the drugs, the games—they’re not the kind you’d trust with something you valued. So unless this secret apartment was his own place, no one else coming and going, I don’t think he’d keep the drag there. Also, how does it get cleaned and repaired, who takes care of all that? There’s a lot of logistics to drag, a lot more than to leather.”

“You don’t know any guys who have this kind of profile?”

“Making snuff films in drag?”

“You might have heard something.”

“Sure, you hear things, but take it with a grain of salt.”

Henning started to speak, hesitated, worked his lip.

“Okay, I’ve heard of somebody, he does drag, and he’s in a situation where it would wreck his life, his friendships, his career, everything, if it ever came out.”

Cardozo flashed that Henning was talking about a cop. Not himself, but another cop. A member of the Gay Caucus.

“It’s a compulsion, a need. And he needs a place where he can act out and it can’t be at home, because at home he drinks Bud with the boys, watches ballgames. A coworker could open a closet and see Scarlett O’Hara’s ballgown and blow the whole thing. So what’s he going to do? We know what rents are, who can afford one apartment, let alone a secret pad? So he shares with some other TV’s, who are not exactly reliable people. I don’t mean in general, but these particular TV’s are dips. So he keeps a locker in the pad. It’s a secure locker, you could put jewels in it. Dynamite couldn’t get into it.”

Cardozo flashed that Henning was talking about his lover. “Kind of like keeping your own bottle of liquor at an after-hours club?”

Henning nodded. “Right.”

48

“I NEED TO GET INTO Lewis Monserat’s Franklin Street loft,” Cardozo said.

“But he lives on Madison,” Babe said.

“His playpen is on Franklin.”

A hesitation came over the phone line. “Has he done anything wrong?”

“I’ll know after I search. Can you keep him busy two hours?”

“He’s showing a new artist at his gallery this Wednesday evening, he’ll have to be there at least three hours.”

“Are you going?”

“I can.”

“Is Duncan Canfield going?”

“Do you want him to go?”

“Him and Count Leopold and Countess Vicki.”

“The count and countess never miss an opening of Lew’s. And I can ask Dunk to take me.”

“Be your most—what’s the word they use in gossip columns?—captivating. Make sure they all stay.”

At 8 P.M. three men in the brown uniforms of the United Parcel Service approached the doorway of number 432 Franklin Street. Two were empty-handed and the third carried a large carton marked SONY TRINITRON.

The tallest of the delivery men glanced both ways along the street. The thin crowds of early evening had begun milling up the block on Hudson Street, but except for the three UPS men, Franklin was deserted.

The shortest of the delivery men removed a plastic card from his wallet and worked it into the crack between the inner door and the metal jamb. A moment later the door swung free.

Babe’s eye played across the crowd.

The Monserat Gallery was full of guests, and more were arriving by the minute. Handsome women in smart gowns, men in tuxes who were obviously going on to other events mingled with young and not-so-young people in jeans and T-shirts and flouncy gypsy skirts with peasant tops.

For those who couldn’t brave the crush to the elaborate buffet tables, waiters circulated with drinks and food. Deftly placed speakers pumped discreet post-punk energized trance music into the party.

“Lew!” Babe waved.

Lew Monserat had a little slow smile for her as they drew toward one another, and he kissed her on each cheek.

He was elegantly dressed in a blue blazer, vellum-colored shirt, ecru flannels, but his face was gaunt, his eyes exhausted, and he moved with a sort of stoop.

“It’s been so long,” Babe said.

“We haven’t talked in eight years—can you believe it?”

“Well, I know how to fix that.” Babe took his arm. “Tell me about your new artist and introduce me to everyone.”

Waldo Flores’s assbones ached from sitting on the hard wooden chair, and he had a crimp in his neck from leaning forward to listen for a click that never came.

But this time there was a click. It was so faint he couldn’t tell at first whether he had heard it or just wished it.

He slid a steel piece between the rods and pressured it slowly clockwise.

The lock made a friendly sound as the bolt slid back.

An hour of pain dropped off his shoulders and he swung the door open.

Cardozo found the light switch and flicked it. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

It startled Waldo to see Richard Nixon wearing a Frederick’s of Hollywood black lace panty-bra with the crotch cut out. The mask was that realistic.

Mickey and Minnie Mouse and the other cartoon character masks looked real in their own way, but it was a different way, not shocking, just ugly with the black lingerie and black leather dangling on hangers beneath them.

But Nixon and John Wayne, those were shocks.

Cardozo bent down at the bottom shelf in the closet, pulled out a videocassette, and studied it. The neatly hand-lettered label read FUN ‘N’ GAMES HALLOWEEN 7.

He carefully peeled off the label and stuck it onto the spine of one of his own blank cassettes. He put the labeled blank on the shelf in place of Monserat’s cassette.

He wrote FUN ‘N’ GAMES HALLOWEEN 7 on a fresh label and attached it to Monserat’s cassette. He dropped the cassette into the Sony Trinitron carton.

Tony Bandolero stepped around Cardozo and took a gown down from the clothesbar. There was the powdery crackle of a plastic bag opening.

The gown was deep red, with sequins. Because flashes would be visible through the blinds, Tony was using room light. He scanned the gown with his digital light meter and adjusted his camera aperture.

There was a click as the shutter opened and shut and then a faint whir as the film advanced.

Cardozo’s felt-tip pen carefully wrote FUN ‘N’ GAMES HALLOWEEN 8.

Cardozo stared through the filtered darkness, registering the slow, silent passage of the camera’s gaze across a white wall.

Weird figures took shape on the TV screen, ghostly inhabitants of a world of electronic phantoms and dreams, moving and swaying in the flickering light, acting out their secret rituals.

A sensation of unformed dread grew in his belly.

And then, in front of his eyes, it was real.

His gaze slashed for one disbelieving instant at the image on the screen. The blood drained sickeningly from his head.

He reached a shaking hand for the phone and dialed.

“Hippolito.”

“Dan, it’s Vince. I need your opinion on something. It’s urgent.”

Cardozo’s livingroom was dim with the rapid shifting of lights and darks. Dan Hippolito, mild and grave, watched the TV screen with a look of disdain.

“Morgenstern’s gay?” he said in a tone of amazement.

“A guy sucking a guy’s cock, I’d call that gay,” Cardozo said.

“Why the hell did he let it be filmed?”

“He didn’t know. There are two types of movies in this collection: one where the camera’s moving around in the party and everyone knows they’re stars or hired help. Then there’s another type, like this, where the camera doesn’t move. Which means it’s hidden, operated remote or automatic. The people wearing masks know what’s happening. The object is to get the goods on the people who don’t know.”

“Jesus, he gives deep throat. Vince, if you don’t mind, I find Ted Morgenstern kind of revolting under the best of circumstances. Chowing down on a nine-foot Watusi in a Wehrmacht uniform I think he’s to puke.”

Cardozo pressed the fast-forward. The actors plunged into a comic, sped-up dance.

Naked on a stepladder, the dark-haired girl free-based while a chivalrous gentleman in a Popeye mask held the flame of an acetylene torch beneath her bulbed glass pipe. A ponytailed young man wearing see-through black lace panties flung himself into doggie position on the floor, sniffing through a silver straw at a hand mirror zebra’d with lines of white powder.

A man wearing a Richard Nixon mask snapped flash pictures of an industrious young woman who was blowing a man in a Lone Ranger mask and simultaneously fondling the genitals of two other men in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck masks. Seated on two Queen Anne chairs sipping drinks, two extraordinarily ugly drags ignored the couplings and thrashings. One of them was moustached and the other was not. They both wore elaborate gowns.

“Charlie Chaplin goes porno.” Dan Hippolito lit a cigarette. “So help me, Vince, you better not have dragged me down here to watch home movie orgies. I have real trouble empathizing with driven behavior.”

“You may have more than a little trouble empathizing with what comes next.”

What came next was a startlingly beautiful Latin woman with the face of a Madonna, lying naked and absolutely still on a thick quilt that had been spread on the floor between the two Queen Anne chairs.

Something had happened to Dan Hippolito’s expression. “Stop the frame.” His voice had the even, dead strain of on-guardedness.

He moved forward, sitting in the hard glow of the frozen TV picture. He seemed to be searching the actors’ faces for some explanation. But the Madonna’s face was absolutely serene and her abusers’ faces had only a drugged, wow-I’m-not-here look.

“Take it backward.”

Cardozo ran the tape backward.

“Forward again. Real time. I’ll tell you when to stop-frame. There.”

For an unending moment stillness submerged everything.

Finally a sigh came out of Dan. “She’s a young female Hispanic, I’d say twenty to twenty-two years old, good physical condition, five foot one inch tall, scale weight probably one hundred ten pounds.”

“And?” Cardozo prodded.

Dan walked over and gently put an arm around Cardozo’s shoulders. It was a spontaneous, unthinking gesture, compassionate, as though he were preparing his friend for some very bad news.

“Don’t get hispanical.”

“What do you mean, hispanical?”

“I mean the way you are now—hispanical. Just relax.”

Dan began talking about lividity and rigor. The words came at Cardozo like a slow bucket of swamp water.

“Dan, just tell me yes or no—is she dead?”

“She’s dead.”

“From start to finish, she’s dead?”

“Do you mean are they killing her on camera? No. She’s been dead two, three days before this even began. And I don’t think she was murdered.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Suspicious death there would have been an autopsy. Nothing has cut this girl, except the drainage catheters in the forearms. And that’s professional. Which means there was a death certificate. She’s embalmed. You don’t have amateur embalmers. Certainly not loons like these. The girl’s from a funeral home.”

“They took a body from a funeral home?”

“It’s called necrophilia. It happens.”

“I hate these guys.”

“It’s not a homicide, Vince. There’s no trauma to the body. It was a quick easy death. Most likely an OD. To tell you more than that, I can’t. Not the way she looks. Not what you’re showing me. All I can give you is an educated guess.”

“Give me your educated guess on this.” Cardozo sprang the videocassette out of the VCR and inserted another. “It’s going to be a little more than you want to see.”

“Every day I see more than I want to.”

The image this time was a thin young man stumbling across the screen in faded blue jeans and white sneakers, goofily grinning, blissed out.

The young man stripped clumsily to the buff and lay belly down on a banquet table.

Porky Pig and the Lone Ranger, nattily dressed in white tie and tails, moved into the frame. They lashed the young man’s hands to the legs of the table.

The kid was grinning. Fun and games.

Porky and the Ranger passed lengths of bicycle chain around the young man’s ankles, made the chains fast to the other two table legs. Now came a ceremonial padlocking of the chains.

The kid turned and smiled at the camera.