Deadly Rich (79 page)

She unpinned the brooch. She fixed her eyes on an imaginary point on the stairway above Luddie. She let her hand drop back. She pulled in a deep breath and swung the hand up. At the top of the swing she opened it. The hummingbird flew up into the vibrating blackness.

Time dilated. From the far side of a long silence the hummingbird clattered brightly on one of the steps near Luddie.

She sensed him shift position in the darkness. She heard him exhale, and the exhalation was directed away from her, toward the hummingbird. There was a metallic ricochet as the brooch bounced down a step, then another bright, clattering drop to the step below, then another and another.

And then absolute stillness, absolute blackness.

She heard the rustling movement of cloth against cloth.

Luddie yanked the door open. Light exploded, dousing her and the child in a bright silver spill.

For one instant Luddie’s eyes were searching the empty stairwell above him. The next instant he whirled and saw Leigh and the boy.

He took three steps down the stairway. He gestured with the gun. “Let the boy go.”

Leigh lifted her hand from Happy’s shoulder.

“Happy,” Luddie said. “Come here.”

The child did not move.

“Come here!” Luddie barked.

A figure stepped onto the landing behind him. “Luddie. Drop the gun.” The voice was Vince Cardozo’s.

Luddie’s gun hand came down slowly and hung at his side.

“Drop it,” Cardozo repeated.

Luddie’s arms whipped up into firing position, and in one seamless movement, he turned toward Cardozo and dropped into a crouch.

As his knee struck the step he howled in sudden pain. He lurched up and backward. The gun fired. It was a wild, uncontrolled shot. There was a white flash and the bullet pinged into the wall.

Luddie was half standing now, both hands waving, trying to grab some balance from the empty air. He took a stumbling step backward. He was kicking crazily, as though an animal had sunk teeth into his left leg and wouldn’t let go.

He fired again. The recoil slammed him against the steel banister. His weight was centered high. The banister held him like a fulcrum. Momentum levered him over and flipped him out into the well.

He seemed to fall in slow motion, as though he were an image on a prerecorded tape dropping down the stairwell toward some final moment that had already, ineradicably happened.

When the police found Luddie’s body ten stories below, the pin of Leigh’s hummingbird brooch was stuck two inches deep into the flesh of his leg.

Monday, July 1

“D
ELANCEY DOESN’T WANT TO REOPEN
the case,” Cardozo said.

Leigh lifted her gaze. “Neither does my agent.”

“Does that mean you’re working on another movie?”

A smile crept into her voice. “There’s nothing like a headline or two to stir up studio interest.”

They were sitting at the corner table at Archibald’s. Needle-hipped waiters barely managed to slide between crowded, jammed-together tables.

“Why did you pick this place for lunch?” Cardozo said. “I thought you were boycotting the salads here.”

“I’m not angry at Jim Delancey anymore. He’s the one who should be angry at me. So … here’s his chance.”

Cardozo caught something in her voice, in her eyes, that had not been there a month ago. “Sounds like you’ve decided to take some risks.”

“Let’s just say I’m shaking the lead out of my ass. I’m getting my own place.” She spent a moment aligning a little spoon with a big spoon. “I’m leaving Waldo.”

Cardozo was aware of the faint, sweet perfume that rippled out from her.

“Care to comment?” she said.

“Definitely a right decision.”

“And I’m adopting Happy.”

He looked at her. He couldn’t believe he’d heard her right.

“Luddie’s child,” she said.

“I know who Happy is.”

“Then why do you have that baffled look?”

“Not baffled. Just impressed. I’m seeing a new side of you.”

“I love Happy. I want a child. I want a home. And a career. And a tan.” She said it with a tone of lighthearted adventure, and then there was a split-second hesitation. “And I want the right man.”

Cardozo noted things about her: the dark pupils; the smooth, faintly glowing texture of her skin; the deep shining brown of her hair.

“I’d like the right man to be you.” She tipped her head a little to the side, studying him for a reaction. “But I know that’s not going to happen.”

“Who says?”

“Stop being gallant.”

“It’s not gallantry. The truth is, I had a crush on you.”

“Did you?” For a single unguarded moment she looked eager and almost childishly happy.

“Actually, that’s not the truth. I was in love with you.”

“Were you? Honestly?” She smiled as though he’d paid her the most captivating compliment she’d ever had. “And what went wrong? Reality reared its ugly head and you got to know me?”

“Not quite.” He shook his head. “I got to know myself.”

There was a lemon wedge perched on the rim of her tulip glass. She studied it, then lifted it and gave it a careful squeeze directly into her diet Pepsi.

“Vince, something’s been bothering me. I keep thinking of Luddie’s wife—alone, in labor, dying in a New York City Emergency Room. Why wasn’t he with her?”

“From the information I’ve been able to dig up, he was in El Salvador on assignment machine-gunning nuns.”

She gave the lemon another squeeze. And another. The movement seemed like a stalling action in a play. “I loved Luddie. I trusted him. He saved my life. How could he have been a killer? Explain him to me, Vince. I want to understand.”

“He never stopped resenting the five people he held responsible for his wife’s death.”

“But he always warned me that resentment was a killer.”

“Because he knew. He was the expert resenter. I’ll bet he never threw away a resentment in his life. And when the order came to hit Shane, he padded the hit list with his five pet hates. Plus one random hit to confuse the scent.”

“What kind of a man could do that?”

“A methodical man. Someone who likes to live in separate compartments. One hand does the dirty work that pays the bills, the other hand saves souls to make up for the dirty work.”

Leigh was somber, disbelieving. “How could his superiors have let him do it?”

“The war against drugs is a legal twilight zone. There’s no centralized supervision. Too much money can be made by looking the other way. Some of the drug warriors bend the law pretty far. The others don’t want to know, because if they knew, they’d be indictable.”

Leigh’s hand went to the platinum hummingbird that glinted on her dove gray lapel. Her finger rested a moment, touching the jeweled wing as though drawing assurance from it. “Who ordered Nan Shane killed?”

“I have a feeling Senator Guardella has classified that information secret. And for a very good reason.”

“And what’s going to happen to the little girl?”

“Shane’s mother is taking her in.”

“I’d like to contribute something. Could you help me arrange it anonymously?”

“To hell with anonymity. Take credit when you do a good deed. I’ll give you the address.”

Her hand went again to the hummingbird and made that same gesture of grounding herself.

“Why are you wearing your brooch?” he said. “I thought it came out only for class reunions.”

“Tori’s joining us. I know this was supposed to be our goodbye lunch, but I’m not leaving for two weeks. And didn’t you say you had something for me to give her?”

“I left it with the coat check.”

“Well, as long as we’re exchanging parcels …” Leigh opened her purse and took out a small package. “I know cops can’t accept gifts—so I’d like Terri to have this.”

Cardozo stared at the red velvet jeweler’s box tied with a thin gold-colored chain. “What is it?”

She moved the package across the table toward him. “It’s Oona’s hummingbird.”

He didn’t take it. “I can’t let you do that.”

“Come on, Vince—it’s worthless in a vault and it’s meaningless on the wrong person. I want Terri to have it.”

Tori Sandberg picked that moment to come at a brisk, swivel-hipped walk through the narrow aisle.

“Hi, all. Sorry to be late.” She exchanged cheek-to-cheeks with Leigh and held out a hand to Cardozo. He stood and pulled back a chair for her.

“Tori, have champagne,” Leigh said. “They’ll never make any money off us if someone doesn’t.”

Tori Sandberg settled herself in her chair. She took off her silk scarf. She had pinned her hummingbird to the bodice of her ecru blouse. She smiled at Cardozo. Her eyes were luminous and her face had the glow of a girl’s. “Something tells me I’m butting in.”

“Not at all,” Cardozo said. “Good to see you.”

“It is good to see you,” Leigh said. “You’re looking terrific. Like you’ve just had a Swiss rest cure. What have you done to yourself?”

“I owe it all to my changed living situation.”

“Is there someone new?”

Tori Sandberg laughed. “Don’t I wish. No, there’s no one new. But I haven’t had a knock-down drag-out domestic brawl-in two weeks.”

Leigh placed a hand on Tori’s. “Enjoy it while it lasts. And how’s the magazine?”

“Problems.” Tori shrugged. “
Fanfare’s
beating us in ad pages for the fifth straight month.”

Cardozo took his coat-check tag from his breast pocket. “This is for you.” He laid the tag on the pink tablecloth. “I think it might help.”

Tori Sandberg stared at the number, thirty-two, on the plastic tag and then at him. “This is the way Nelson Rockefeller used to give his secretaries minks, but it’s the wrong season for mink.”

“Don’t worry, it’s just some reading matter. Unpublished drafts of magazine articles, an unpublished ‘Dick Sez’ column, a list of subscribers to the SACBA employee health plan.”

“SACBA?” Tori looked perplexed.

“If you’ve ever heard of them, they’re not doing their job. The health-plan subscribers are quite a collection. A magazine publisher, a newspaper columnist, New York state’s junior senator, a bartender with a drug-dealing record who happens to be her son, a Society Sam victim who happens to have been a coke mule, a captain in the NYPD Internal Affairs Division … and a few hundred others.”

“Sounds yummy,” Tori Sandberg said.

“You might be interested in the size of the medical reimbursements. Your friend Kristi Blackwell’s heart surgery brought her close to eighty thousand. Untaxed.”

Something puzzled was creeping into Tori’s eyes. “But Kristi has never had—”

Cardozo nodded. “Call it cash transfers in consideration of services Ms. Blackwell rendered on the QT. And Blackwell’s a relatively small fry as this list goes. I think there’s the making of a magazine article.”

“Why, Vince,” Leigh said, “are you going into the literary business?”

“Frankly, Senator Guardella burns me up. I want to stick it to her and as many of her hirelings as I can.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Tori Sandberg said. “How about some champagne, Lieutenant? On the magazine. You’ve just given us a cover story.”

“I’m on the job,” Cardozo said.

“Quit your job for an hour,” Leigh said.

“Waiter!” Tori Sandberg signaled. “We’ll have some
Moët brut
—and another diet Pepsi.” Her pinkie came down on the coat-check tag. She drew it toward her across the tablecloth, detouring around the red velvet jewel box. “And whose pretty little package is that?”

“Ask Vince,” Leigh said.

Tori Sandberg was looking at him curiously. “Lieutenant?”

Leigh was watching him too, and he realized he was smiling. He realized he felt happy and just a little irresponsible.

“It belongs to my daughter.” He reached out and took the box. “It’s Terri’s.”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Vince Cardozo Mysteries

I
T WAS DARK IN
the confessional. Cold. Staying awake was an agony.
If only I could sleep
, Wanda Gilmartin thought. It seemed she had never closed her eyes in all her sixteen years.

“Is there anything else, my child?” The priest was an ash-colored stirring on the other side of the grille. “Make a full confession.”

Her head slammed groggily into a wood panel. “I stole some stay-awake pills from a friend.”

“Have you taken them all?”

She sneaked one into her mouth. “I have two left.”

“You must give them back and admit what you did.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Anything else?”

“No, Father.”

The priest pronounced the formula of absolution. “Ten Hail Marys. Ten Our Fathers.”

Wanda groped in the dark for her crutches. She found a wobbling balance and stumbled out of the confessional. Her ankle ached as though a spike of ice had been driven through it.

The priest led her to the altar rail. The crutches clacked to the marble floor. She knelt. White and gold vestments slid through light and shadow. A voice intoned.

Wanda turned her head. The church was a vaulted, echoing emptiness behind her.
Why aren’t there other people here? Why is it so dark? So cold?

“The body of Christ.” The priest laid the wafer into her cupped hands.