Текст книги "Privileged Lives"

Автор книги: Edward Stewart

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

“How do you expect me to help something I’m not even told about?”

“What do you need to be told! If a car breaks down you don’t wait to be taught the principles of internal combustion. You see the trouble and you take the car to a good garage and you get it repaired.”

“Cordelia is not a car. She’s my daughter.”

“And she is my granddaughter. And I want you to give your father and me custody.”

A wave of rage swept over Babe, tightening her throat. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“Do speak in a normal voice,” Lucia said.

Determination came to Babe like an electric bolt. She rose and walked to the door.

Lucia reached out and with one braceleted arm blocked Babe’s way. “We haven’t finished.”

“But we have finished, Mama. The answer is no, never.” Babe thrust her mother’s arm away.

There was a phone in the coatcheck room. Babe lifted the receiver and punched out the digits of Cordelia’s number. She waited while the call clicked through.

She could hear Cordelia’s phone buzzing. She counted seven rings. The machine answered.

“Cordelia,” she said, “if you’re there please pick up.”

No one picked up. She broke the connection and dialed Vince Cardozo’s direct line.

His voice answered. “Cardozo.”

“Vince—it’s not a police matter, but—”

“You’re not talking to the police, you’re talking to me. Tell me about it.”

She told him and he listened.

“Babe,” he said in a calm voice, “this isn’t your fault. Cordelia’s a statistic waiting to happen. If we’re lucky she’s on her way to her place. What’s her address?”

Babe gave it to him.

“Go there. If she’s not home, wait for me. I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes. I’m leaving right now.”

51

CARDOZO DISCOVERED IT WAS a mistake to have driven west on Prince.

Traffic was barely moving; double-parkers clogged the lanes, and partying yuppies sat on fenders with plastic wineglasses from somebody’s art opening. In three minutes he covered half a block, and then the congestion brought him to a standstill at the intersection. A sign was hanging from one of the corner buildings: FOOD. He’d read about the restaurant; it served nonsteroid chicken and all-organic tofu fruit pies.

Through the plate glass window he saw Cordelia Koenig, in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, sitting alone at a table with a plate of pie.

He pulled in behind a double-parked, empty Mercedes whose horn and front lights were blasting and flashing in sync. He put his police card in the window.

Cordelia brushed her hair off her forehead and looked up as he approached.

“What’s your phone number?” he said.

She told him and he went to the payphone and dialed and got a busy signal. He waited a minute and tried again. Still busy. He came back and sat at the table and looked at her.

“You didn’t know he was taping you, did you,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Why do you think he made those films?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

“He made them to show to other people. He’s not protecting your secret, Cordelia, so why are you protecting him?”

“I don’t have a secret.”

“But you think you have. You really believe no one besides you and that lunatic knows what you did seven years ago.”

Babe saw from the street that there was no light in Cordelia’s apartment. Either Cordelia was on her way home, or already asleep.

Babe used her key to get into the apartment.

She turned on the light.

She looked in the bedroom. Empty.

She went into the kitchen and searched cabinets and made herself coffee. She saw from the cup in the sink that Cordelia had already made coffee that evening.

She sat in the livingroom, waiting for her coffee to cool.

A mirror hung on the wall opposite her. Something in its glow, some movement, caught her eye.

She saw the reflection of a man.

He was walking slowly and deliberately out of the motionless darkness. He stopped beneath a flood of overhead light, letting the light and shadow play over his close-cropped hair and staring eyes, his strong bare arms hanging from the sleeveless Levi’s jacket.

There was something proud and brutal and dangerous in the way he stood there, the cords of his neck drawn taut, his eyes taking hold of her.

She recognized the face gradually: Claude Loring, the man she had wanted to draw, the man charged with murder who had shouted at her.

His pupils were huge, blue dazzles of light whirling around on themselves.

She stood slowly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry.” His voice was pleasant. “It’s nothing personal, but I have to kill you.”

He was standing between her and the front door.

She was absolutely unmoving for a moment. She gauged his strength and his madness and realized she had at best a little courage, a little cleverness to muster against him.

She whirled before he could react and she sped through the hallway into the bedroom, flinging the door shut and twisting the key in the lock. She ran to the phone.

Her lungs were pulling in ragged breaths.

There was no dial tone. She jiggled the cradle. The line was dead. She stared at the receiver disbelievingly. She realized Loring had yanked the cord from the wall.

“Jesus,” she gasped.

She ran to the bedroom window and snapped the Levolors open. The windows were dark across the airshaft. There were lights on two floors below, but rock music was screeching into the night and there was no chance anyone would hear her if she yelled for help.

A crash whirled her around. The bedroom door shot open, smashing into the wall.

Babe froze.

Loring stood panting, silhouetted in the doorframe. His right hand held a sledge hammer.

Lifted on a jolt of panic, Babe dashed into the bathroom, flinging the door shut and jamming the bolt into place. She stepped back, her eyes fixed on the door, realizing it offered at the outside no more than thirty seconds’ protection.

A crash filled the brightly tiled space around her. Jars and bottles chattered on the bathtub shelf. The panels of the door buckled and parted and the gray head of the sledgehammer jutted through, swung back, forced deeper entry.

The realization shot through Babe that her one chance was to go outside.

The window lock had been painted shut and she had to jab the paint loose with a nail file from the cabinet.

Behind her, with each deafening smash, the hammer widened the breach.

She shoved the window up and crouched on the ledge. Holding to the window with one hand, she swept through the dark with the other. Another wall of the building ran at right angles to the bathroom and her fingers contacted wood. It was a cutting board propped on its edge, holding the livingroom window open.

She reached one foot for the other ledge, found it, shifted her center of gravity out over the airshaft. She grabbed the livingroom window and pulled herself through. She could feel brick scrape through her gown.

At that instant she heard the door panel give in the bathroom.

Loring had switched off the lights in the livingroom. She fell down from the window into darkness. Her foot caught on a table leg and the table went crashing to the floor.

She raced across the livingroom and pulled at the front door. She remembered putting her purse on the chair by the door. She felt for it, found it, wrestled again with the knob.

The door flew open with the third yank.

She darted into the corridor, slammed the door. She rummaged in her purse, found the key, locked the deadbolt.

That would give her another ten seconds. If he didn’t have a key, maybe another sixty tops.

She ran down the corridor and pushed the elevator button. She could see from the floor indicator that the elevator was climbing up from the ground floor.

She heard Loring pulling at the front door of the apartment, and then she heard the hammer crashing.

She pulled at the door of the fire stairs next to the elevator. It was unlocked. She shot into the stairway. The only light bulb was on the landing below, and she slipped in the dark. Her high-heeled shoe twisted beneath her, sending a sickening wrench up through her calf.

Her balance was gone. She lunged forward, fell three concrete steps, managed to catch the steel railing.

She pulled herself upright. Burning pain was shooting through her ankle. She took off her shoes. Clutching purse and high heels, she scrambled down the stairs to the next landing.

She dashed into the corridor. The indicator showed that the elevator was still rising, just passing the second floor.

She stood jabbing a finger at the call button. She heard Loring break through the door upstairs, and then the thudding of his workboots across the floor.

She sped back to the fire stairs. She ran down another flight to four and into the corridor.

The indicator showed the elevator still climbing, passing three now. She pushed the call button.

The elevator came to a stop.

Making as little sound as possible, Babe drew the elevator door open. She reached for the grill and attempted to pull it aside. It refused to yield.

She hammered at the grill with the heel of her shoe.

Finally, taking its time, the grill opened.

She slipped into the elevator. There was no light and the walls were covered in heavy industrial bunting.

She tried to yank the grill shut. Again, it was automatically timed and there was no way she could speed it. She began jamming buttons—down and close and emergency call and floor one. The grill slowly closed and the elevator cable shuddered.

She could hear Loring two floors above, hear the staticky clicks of his finger on the call button.

The elevator hesitated between the up and down calls—and then with a thin screaming sound it began lumbering downward at a maddeningly unhurried speed.

Babe heard footsteps crashing down the stairs, doors slamming.

The elevator crawled to three, and she glimpsed Loring’s face as he peered through the elevator door and then dove into the stairwell. His workboots thunked down the concrete steps. The elevator dropped past three.

And suddenly he was there, swinging his hammer, shattering an opening in the elevator door. The sledgehammer crashed through the breach. The gate began buckling.

The elevator continued its downward crawl past two. The hammering suddenly stopped.

As the elevator reached the first floor, Loring darted into view. The sledgehammer struck two battering blows at the door.

Babe pressed her weight on the up button, trying desperately to reverse the elevator’s direction.

She searched frenziedly through her purse for some object of defense. She had nothing.

Babe dropped her purse.

Loring yanked the door open and slammed the grill aside.

His face was inhumanly twisted.

Babe held her shoes in front of her, toes out.

He lifted the sledgehammer, and twenty pounds of raw iron arced through space.

Babe ducked.

The hammer smashed into the wall behind her, ripping down bunting, then lifted again.

With the toes of both shoes angled directly at his eyes, Babe thrust.

As Cardozo and Cordelia entered the building there was a buzzing sound of voices. A small crowd stood in the hallway. At first they seemed to be the overflow of some party, chatting, and Cardozo half expected to see that they were holding glasses of wine.

But one of the men was holding up Babe Devens.

Her hair was tangled across her face and her evening dress was ripped. She stretched out a hand to Cardozo. The hand held a shoe, held it tightly, like a weapon. There was blood on the toe.

Cardozo opened his arms and she stepped in against him and he hugged her. Then Babe put both hands on Cordelia’s head and kissed her.

“What happened?” Cardozo said.

A professorial man in his late forties stepped forward. “I saw it.” He was gray-haired with a world-battered, intellectual sort of look, wearing an open-necked shirt and blazer. “A madman was going at her with a sledgehammer. If we hadn’t walked in when we did, he would have smashed her head open.”

“It was Loring.” Babe’s breathing steadied. “He was waiting upstairs.”

“Are you okay?” Cardozo asked.

“Okay now,” she said, but there was a look in her eyes and it was light-years away from okay.

Cardozo took Cordelia and Babe up in the elevator to the sixth floor. A hole had been hammered in the apartment door and splintered wood littered the hallway. He pushed the door open.

The structural columns in the apartment glowed in the light coming through the windows. He flicked the light switch. Half the furniture in the room had been shattered.

“My God,” Cordelia whispered, and put her hands to her face.

“He was waiting here to kill you, Cordelia,” Cardozo said. “You, not your mother. And you know who sent him.”

52

LUCINDA MACGILL, TALL AND slim, carried herself from the car to the doorway with a purposeful stride. “Do you have any idea what this is all about?”

“Vince told me to find you.” Monteleone leaned his thumb on the buzzer. “That’s all I know.” His pale, heavy-jawed face stared impatiently between the bars of the wrought-iron grill.

A moment later Cardozo opened the town house door. He looked agitated. “Glad you’re both here. I appreciate it.”

He took MacGill and Monteleone upstairs to a room with cherry-wood paneling. Lucinda MacGill glanced at the French impressionists on the wall.

“Your surroundings have improved, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks. Have a seat.”

MacGill sat down in a silk upholstered bentwood chair and surveyed Cardozo with a steady eye.

“Let me just give you some idea what’s coming down,” Cardozo said. “I have two very nervous ladies in the next room. Tonight an attempt was made on the life of one of them, but it was meant for the other. You know the mother, Babe Devens. She’s the one who almost got taken out. I don’t think you know the daughter, Cordelia Koenig. Cordelia has been through a lot. A lot. She’s at the breaking point, and she’s ready to tell us just about everything we need to make an indictment. Is your tape recorder loaded, Counselor?”

Lucinda MacGill slid her Panasonic out of her purse. “With a ninety-minute tape.”

“We’re going to need every inch of it. Let’s go.” Cardozo showed the way to the room next door.

Cordelia was sitting on the deep plush sofa, not moving, tensed, her eyes fixed on the green marble fireplace with its brass griffin and irons. Babe was sitting in the chair beside her daughter, and she shifted nervously while Cardozo made introductions.

Lucinda MacGill adjusted herself in a comfortable chair. Her eyes took in the dark oak paneling, the oyster-colored silk curtains, the Boesendorfer concert grand piano. Bowls of cut roses and gardenias lightly scented the air.

“Anytime you’re ready, Cordelia,” Cardozo said.

Lucinda MacGill started her tape recorder.

Cordelia seemed to lose herself for a moment, blinking and gazing around the room as though she had gone to sleep somewhere else and just woken up in a place she’d never seen before. When she finally spoke, her words had a once-removed, hearsay quality, as if everything she was describing had happened way offstage to someone else.

“We started making love when I was eleven. I didn’t really know about sex and I didn’t know what we were doing and I didn’t know he was filming it. He gave me drugs. He said he loved me. He said we’d get married when I was sixteen.”

Her uninflected tone told of a life of anguish and solitude, a life so screwed up that there had never been any point not screwing it up further.

“He said Mother would be drunk that night and so would Scottie. All I’d have to do would be to go into the bedroom and put the needle into her arm and empty the syringe. My mother and stepfather came home drunk and they passed out. I went into their bedroom and I put the needle into my mother’s arm.”

Babe was sitting there, erect and slender against the back of her chair, looking at her daughter with eyes that were wide and pained.

“I only gave her half the dose,” Cordelia said.

“Just a minute,” Lucinda MacGill said. “You did what?”

“I gave her half.” Cordelia blinked hard and a confused frown made tiny lines in her face. “I don’t know why. I guess I couldn’t kill her all the way.”

Lucinda MacGill rose. “Miss Koenig, don’t say another word to me or to Lieutenant Cardozo or to Detective Monteleone or to any member of the police force or district attorney’s office.”

Cardozo’s head snapped back into a disbelieving stare. “What the hell are you pulling?”

“Lieutenant,” Lucinda MacGill said, “we need to have a word.”

He followed her into the hallway.

“It’s tainted.” Lucinda MacGill spoke with flat finality, sliding the glass-paneled door shut behind them. “Nothing that girl says is admissible.”

“You got to be crazy.”

“Cordelia is confessing to the attempted murder of her mother. Her evidence is self-incriminating. She should be represented by counsel when she talks to the police.” Lucinda MacGill’s manner was precise, unexcited, unemotional. The perfect justice machine. “No counsel on earth would permit her to make those statements.”

“She chooses to waive her goddamn rights.”

Lucinda MacGill’s eyes said Vince Cardozo was an idiot. “You can read her her Miranda twelve times and she can waive her rights thirteen times, she’s still got to have a lawyer because otherwise this is not going to be allowed as evidence in any court of law.”

“We’re not indicting her for Christ’s sake! We’re going after the man who seduced her and gave her that syringe.”

“Has she told you his name?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Don’t let her tell you.”

“I want to know his name. I want to nail him. That’s why I got you here.”

“You got me here and I’m spelling it out to you. Do this the right way, Vince.”

“What the hell is this, a minuet?”

“You’re dealing with an emotionally unstable girl—I know she’s young, I assume she’s unstable. Legally, she’s doubly incompetent. If all you’ve got is her testimony, and her testimony involves one word of what I just heard, get her a lawyer right now. Otherwise the D.A. won’t touch this megillah and your criminal’s going to walk.” She continued to fix Cardozo with a burning gaze. “I’m sorry. Whoever he is, he sounds like a real louse, but even if he doesn’t live under the law, we do.”

“Lucinda,” Cardozo said wearily, “what you’re not grasping is the human cost—the contamination this guy is leaving in his path.”

“Believe me, Vince, I do get the picture.”

There was no point going straight home. Cardozo knew he was too furious to sleep. He stopped off at the precinct.

He poured himself a coffee. It must have been sitting in the pot since 3 A.M. of the day before. His first sip added to his sense that his life was not only unreal but disgusting.

He went to his cubicle. There were four new directives from the PC’s office. He sailed them over to the open file cabinet drawer. They plopped on top of last week’s.

Now he was staring at a flyer that someone had put on his desk:

MADAME ROBERTA—FORTUNES TOLD—ASTRAL READINGS

He was about to crumple it when he saw handwriting on the back: Vince C, call Faye. He went to the door.

“Who the hell is Faye?”

“She said you know her,” Sergeant Goldberg answered.

“You took this message, Goldberg? There’s no date, there’s no time, there’s no last name, there’s no number.”

“Hire a secretary,” Sergeant Goldberg grumbled.

Cardozo could think of only one Faye—Loring’s friend Faye di Stasio. He got the number from Information and dialed. On the seventh ring a clouded voice said hello.

“Faye? This is Lieutenant Vince Cardozo. You phoned me?”

“You asked me to keep an eye out for Claude. He’s set up a coke buy—tonight, two A.M., outside the Inferno.”

“Who’s he selling to?”

“Me.”

Claude Loring held his arms and rubbed them: the weather was growing too cool for a sleeveless Levi’s jacket. Faye di Stasio followed him to the van parked across Ninth Avenue from the entrance to the Inferno.

Claude reached into the glove compartment and took out the little black paper bag. Faye dug into her pocket and pulled out a roll of twenties.

There was a pinging sound like a pebble striking a hub cap. Claude spun around.

“Freeze.” A man stood there, holding out a gold shield. “Lieutenant MacFinney, narcotics.”

Claude whirled and ran. Another cop stepped out from behind a parked Chevy, gun drawn. “You heard the man, Claude.”

Claude stopped in his tracks. A cinderblock was forming in his stomach. The cop knew Claude’s name. It was a setup—had to be.

“It’s not my coke, it’s hers.” Claude pointed. “Faye di Stasio, she’s a dealer, I was holding for her.”

The cop who’d said his name was MacFinney turned around. “Faye—go and sin no more.”

Faye stumbled into the darkness.

“Open the bag,” MacFinney said.

Claude opened the bag.

The other cop came forward, dangling a pair of handcuffs. “Up against the wall, fella.”

Claude turned himself toward the wall. There were two clicks and he felt the icy burn of metal against his wrists. The cops steered him to an unmarked car. Another cop was sitting inside in plainclothes. Recognition hit Claude like a slap.

Vince Cardozo slid over to make room. “We have to discuss a few matters with you, Claude. Possession with intent to sell and a homicide you attempted two nights ago.”

“I want to see my lawyer.”

“You don’t need a lawyer. It’s not you we’re after. Tell us who sent you to kill Cordelia Koenig.”

“I was at the Inferno talking to a guy with a green mohawk.” Claude Loring had a chain smoker’s rasp to his voice. “Then Jodie Downs came up and started butting in and being real obnoxious and I thought okay, punk, you just won the lottery, you’re it. I took him up to the van to smoke some crack and after that first hit he was mine. I told him I knew where we could get some more crack, and I took him up to Monserat’s party pad. I was the scout for Lew’s parties—I dug up the entertainment.”

“What kind of entertainment?” Cardozo said.

“People. Kids, guys, girls. Dead bodies.”

Lucinda MacGill was usually a bright, self-possessed young woman, but her upturned face stared at Loring in horror. “Where’d you get the dead bodies?” she asked.

“Monserat had a deal with a funeral home.”

“What funeral home?”

Claude Loring named a well-known funeral home. “They’d loan him the stiffs overnight. He paid two, three hundred dollars per body. He paid more for the dead bodies than for the living. I got a hundred for every guest I delivered. And all the drugs I wanted.”

“Were people tortured at these parties?” Cardozo said.

“The dead bodies we had to be careful with, because they had to look good from the neck up, you never knew who was open casket. But the people who weren’t dead, sometimes they got roughed up. Monserat says the way you get to the soul of another person is when you produce panic in them. You have someone there at your mercy and they’re panicked, think they could die any moment and it’s completely up to you, how you flip a coin.”

“Sounds like it excited you too,” Cardozo said.

“Yeah, it excited me. Everyone was getting off on everyone else getting off. Like a circle jerk.”

A blank, almost disgusted incredulity showed in Lucinda MacGill’s face.

“Anyone ever get killed at these parties?” Cardozo asked.

Loring had to think for a moment. “Not that I recall.”

“Where did the black bondage hood come from?”

“It was Monserat’s. It was a work of art, he used to say. Anyone who wore it became a masterpiece. He said masks were the real reality. He had lots of masks—different types—Halloween masks, joke store masks. But the bondage mask was special.”

“Special how?”

“That mask was reserved for the victims. If Jodie Downs hadn’t been wearing that mask I could never have hurt him. I’m a gentle guy, I don’t hurt people. But once Jodie had the mask on, for me he wasn’t human anymore. He turned into something else. When I looked at him in that mask five percent of me said he was a man and ninety-five percent of me said he was a monster. That mask had a nightmare look. Like anyone wearing it would cut your head off if you gave them the chance. They had to be killed. It was self-defense—you or them.”

Claude Loring flexed his hands nervously. Sitting in his jeans and I LOVE NEW YORK T-shirt, he looked taller than his six feet two, huge and rawboned, and those hands looked as though they could snap a human neck as easily as a celery stalk.

“Tell us who was at the party that night,” Cardozo said.

Claude Loring named names. Lucinda MacGill took notes.

“Who was wearing drag?” Cardozo asked.

“Two, three of them. That Duncan creep, Sir Dunk—he was wearing one of his wife’s red dresses—real glitzy number, shimmer and shimmy.”

“Was he wearing lipstick?”

“The works, rouge from his eyeballs down to his jowls. Believe me, some guys should not do drag. It’s beyond grotesque.”

“Was Duncan Canfield smoking?”

“Yeah, he smoked.”

“Cigarettes?”

“Cigarettes, pot, crack.”

“Did he put out a cigarette in Jodie Downs’s hand?”

“Yeah, and it was weird, Jodie hated it but liked it, Jodie held on to that cigarette, he was moaning like he was coming.”

“Was Jodie killed at the party?”

“No—he was cut, but not killed.”

“Describe how he got killed.”

“It was my job to dump the merchandise after the parties. If it was a dead body, I’d truck it back to the funeral home. If it was a kid, I’d take them back to where they were staying, pay them off. I was supposed to take the mask off Jodie and take him back home. But he was calling me a dumb fag and a lot of things—so I decided Jodie, you’re a two-time winner, and I took him to Beaux Arts Tower to have a scene alone with him. We smoked some more crack and Jodie kept saying ‘Do it, do it.’”

“What did he mean, ‘Do it’?”

“Kill him. You have to understand—I was on crack. And he was asking for it, begging for it. So I choked him.”

Claude Loring mopped his face with a red-checked handkerchief.

“After Jodie was dead I guess I panicked.”

“Because you’d killed him,” Lucinda MacGill said.

“Because I’d killed him and I was out of crack and I needed to keep going. There I was with this body in this evil mask and what the shit was I going to do? Talk about drawing a complete blank—I knew I had to get a second wind, get it together, I couldn’t just sit there with this body scaring the bejeezus out of me. And then I remembered my coke dealer was on duty at the front door.”

“Hector,” Cardozo said.

Loring nodded. “Son of a bitch didn’t want to let me have any. But I pushed his buttons and he let me have a lid. I snorted it and then it was like no problems. I saw what I had to do—cut the body up and drop the pieces in different garbage chutes. There was a saw up on seventeen, they were remodeling up there. So I started to cut him up and I got one leg off and it was really hard work, and I was beat, so I thought, okay, time off. I was planning to come back in a few hours, but I passed out.”

He began sobbing.

“I hate myself and I hate what I did. But it’s like it wasn’t me. Monserat gave me drugs and once I was high I was like a dog on a chain. Wherever Monserat wanted me to go I would go. I tried to fight, but I guess I was really weak.”

Now he was playing the cocker spaniel, all soft and appealing, with great big blue eyes, begging for understanding.

The spring in the swivel chair groaned as Cardozo leaned forward. “Okay, Claude, that will be it for now.”

Greg Monteleone took Loring back to the lockup.

Lucinda MacGill was shaking, a survivor who had barely made it across the border of the damned. She had to plant the soles of her shoes on the floor until she was steady, and then she stood.

“How are you?” Cardozo asked.

“Older,” she said. “You think you know all about the unbelievable. And then you hear a story like that and your brain wants to shut down.”

“Loring is willing to repeat all that in exchange for immunity.”

“From what? He’s already been convicted of killing Downs.”

“He can still be tried for dealing crack. For assaulting Babe Devens with intent to kill.”

Cardozo felt the cool, deliberate touch of Lucinda MacGill’s attention.

“Loring’s claim that Lewis Monserat sent him to kill Cordelia Koenig—that bothers me,” she said. “Do you believe him?”

“Damned right I do. You don’t?”

Her expression was concerned, serious. “Loring could be saving his own skin.”

“He’s got no reason to go after Cordelia or her mother. It’s got to be Monserat.”

“Why? You say Monserat wanted Babe dead and Scott Devens convicted so Cordelia would inherit and he’d marry her and get control. … I don’t know, Vince. He’s forty years older.”

“And money’s money. And Monserat loves money. And Cordelia loved Monserat. He gave her drugs. He gave her strokes when no one else was giving her anything. You heard her last night. She wanted to marry him.”

MacGill’s eyes were a cool, boiling green. “Legally, Loring is just as useless as Cordelia. What you’ve got is two attempts to murder Babe Devens and the unsupported testimony of two confessed would-be murderers. Loring claims Monserat put him up to it, and you claim Monserat put Cordelia up to it, and what Cordelia claims we’re not going to know till she gets a lawyer. But she’s a drug addict and barely legal age, and Loring is a drug addict and a convicted killer. You can’t even bring Monserat in for questioning on evidence like that. Morgenstern will crucify you.”

“What if we just take portions of Cordelia’s statement?” Cardozo said. “The sexual acts with Monserat while she was underage and the drugs he provided her?”

“Vince,” Lucinda MacGill said, “I spent last night saving you from that. It’s not going to hold up.”

“What about the kiddie porn?”

“He’s masked in all the films you showed me. Unless you’re holding some footage back, you haven’t got an ID.”

“Cordelia will come around,” Cardozo said. “She’ll ID him.”

“And all you’ll have then is the same, uncorroborated, totally inadmissible statement you began with.” Lucinda MacGill sighed.

“She was there, for God’s sake,” Cardozo said, belligerent now.

Lucinda MacGill’s eyes reached out patiently. “She was a child, she was drugged, it was seven years ago. She absolutely has to be corroborated.”

“The videotapes are corroboration,” Cardozo said.

“I wouldn’t be in such a rush to use those tapes. They show drug use, which impeaches Cordelia’s judgment and memory, and they show sodomy, which impeaches her character and credibility. The tapes might not even be allowed into evidence if the court rules that she can’t waive self-incrimination. And if it can be proved the tapes are seven years old, they get Monserat off, because the statute of limitations on the offenses has run.”