VC01 - Privileged Lives (14 page)

“A taxi?” Cardozo frowned. “Why didn’t he want to tell you?”

“Because he’s ashamed. He says he’s type A, driven, heart-attack material, can’t take frustration. He went crazy and phoned the cab company. Said he was Jewish Defense League and he was going to blow them up.”

“What was the name of this cab company?”

“Ting-a-ling Taxi, something cutesy like that. He’d just as soon not remember.”

Cardozo was thoughtful. “Bronski’s company is Ding-Dong Transport. That’s awfully close to Ting-a-ling Taxi. Bronski could have had his cab parked in the Beaux Arts garage from noon to two. That would explain the low meter and why all the rides are near Sixth Avenue and Fifty-fourth. Carl, check that out.”

Malloy nodded.

“Any luck finding the handyman?” Cardozo asked.

“I’ve got a phone call in to the super,” Richards said. “He’ll let me know when Loring shows.”

“Maybe the handyman went to Rio,” Monteleone said. “Do we have extradition with Rio?”

“If we need it,” Cardozo said, “we’ll get it. Sam, how’d you do with the other residents?”

Richards had been able to question Billi von Kleist, the fashion designer; Phil Bailey, the TV network president, and his wife Jennifer; Johnny Stefano, the Broadway composer. None of them could shed any light on events in the building Saturday, and none of them recognized the face on the flyer.

Cardozo sighed. “That still leaves three residents unaccounted for.”

Sam Richards smiled. “Doyle’s in the Betty Ford clinic, coming off cocaine. It’s his third try. The smart money says he’s not going to make it. Notre Dame is at the Aga Khan’s resort in Sardinia, shacked up with Senator Behrend of Nebraska’s wife. The duke and duchess are in Issy-les-Moulineaux with Countess Rothschild, who is terminally ill with bone marrow cancer.”

“How’d you get all that?” Cardozo asked.

“I found a very good source. Maybe you’d like to meet him.”

“Frankly, they’re the reason we have cockroaches in the building.” Gordon Dobbs was discussing Saveurs de Paris, the bakery on the fourth floor of Beaux Arts Tower. “Their croissants aren’t even fresh. Don’t worry, I never buy from them.” He chuckled, “They didn’t make any of these.”

Cardozo’s glance went down to the colorful assortment of tiny glazed cakes laid out on the silver platter. He bit into another one, the third he’d taken, despite his worries about softening up his gut. They were superb pastries, the sort of pastries that must exist in children’s dreams. Through a mouthful of hazelnut, he asked about the super.

“Bill Connell’s divine—you need a drip fixed, he has the handyman here in three seconds. His wife’s an invalid, you know, and that’s why he plays around.”

There it was again: the superficially pleasant remark, the sting in its tail. Cardozo asked what Dobbs knew about the dental clinic on four.

“Let’s call a spade a spade. They’re a welfare mill. Some very peculiar people walk in and out of that office. It’s common knowledge that the good doctors are, shall we say, liberal with their prescriptions for painkillers.”

Cardozo sensed Dobbs had no evidence, no information, not even a reasonable suspicion: he was doing this because he wanted two cops in his livingroom, because he wanted to turn that evening at dinner to the jeweled blonde beside him and say, “Guess who came to tea at my place today … the fuzz.”

Cardozo asked about the psychotherapists on five.

The boom of Gordon Dobbs’s laughter filled the room. He rocked back and forth in his chair. “Poor souls—they’re having a very hard time of it. Competition’s tough. New York is licensing far too many psychiatric social workers. I mean, make up your mind! Are they doctors or mother’s helpers? I spoke to one of them in the elevator, mentioned Jung and drew a complete blank. Obviously they do a lot of work for the state. Someone’s paying for that space, and believe me, it’s not those shabby clients of theirs.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be acquainted with any of them?”

“The patients? God, no.” Dobbs’s smile was ingratiating and seemed to say,
We understand one another, it’s just you and I against the riffraff in the world.

Cardozo mentioned Lily Lobkowitz.

“Princess Lil? Her ex-husband’s Polish, she’s a Copa girl from Enjay.”

“Enjay?”

“Joisey. Her sister is Senator Galucci’s wife. The princess has a slight drinking problem. One glass of sherry and she’s off to the races. My heart goes out to the poor thing. She’s never invited anywhere anymore. Her brother-in-law gave her the apartment—the poop is, she had to go to a priest and swear by the Virgin Mary to stop shoplifting from Bendel’s.”

Dobbs did not look at all the way Cardozo would have imagined a professional society gossip. With his dark eyes and lithe build, his curly hair beginning to gray, he looked the sort of a man who made his living as a mercenary on battlefields, not in drawing rooms. What he sounded like was something else.

“The Duke and Duchess de Chesney?” Cardozo asked.

“They’re British, of course; the best sort of British. Never pull rank. Marvelous conversationalists—always in demand. They’re in Paris because Countess Rothschild is dying and wanted to have someone entertaining around while she’s fading. Now, to me that says a great deal.”

“Debbi Hightower?” Cardozo said.

“She claims to be an actress-hyphen-model, but I doubt she could act her way out of a birthday cake at a stag party. Poor child; some people should
not
do cocaine. Off the record, I’ve heard that she’s a call girl.”

“Do you know any of her johns?”

“Well, I’ve seen some very sheepish-looking gents stopping on her floor.”

“Recognize any of them?”

A suggestion of color crept up Gordon Dobbs’s cheeks. He lifted a porcelain teacup and sipped. “I wouldn’t feel right naming—No, you have to ask her. I’m sorry I brought it up; it’s not my business.”

Cardozo moved right along. “Will Madsen?”

“The rector of the church on the corner? He’s done wonders bringing in people for lunchtime services, and their concerts are a joy. He’s an absolute gentleman, never talks religion. I respect that in a man of the cloth, don’t you?”

This man’s asking me what I respect?
Cardozo thought. “Fred Lawrence?”

“Does income tax returns for some very glam people. I must say he’s worked magic for me—IRS hasn’t audited me in seven years, and that’s a world’s record.”

Dobbs’s livingroom had a cool, cavelike comfort. One wall was shelved, with discreet track lights pinpointing terra-cotta idols and figurines, beaten gold masks, carved bronze and ivory, painted fragments of pottery. Dobbs was obviously a collector. The fireplace was carved marble, and curtains of silk and peach velvet made the windows here seem taller than in six.

“Baron Billi von Kleist?” Cardozo asked.

He wondered if there wasn’t an instant’s hesitation before the reply came.

“Billi’s a marketing genius, and quite close to the White House. The first lady—I kid you not—the president’s wife was at his apartment for dinner two months ago. And of course the designs he markets are truly imaginative—though I must say this latest line of his takes a little getting used to.”

“Notre Dame?”

“I don’t have to tell
you,
Lieutenant, that any young man in a torn Saint Laurent with punk green hair singing songs like “We Are Going to Kill You’ is utterly harmless. That whole punk drag thing is strictly for Middle America. He’s Scientology, never goes near drugs or alcohol. He’s always on tour—you never see him in the building. At the moment he’s having an affair with the wife of Senator Behrend of Nebraska. They’re at the Aga Khan’s resort in Sardinia.”

There were taps. Detective Sam Richards’s feet clicked on marble as he moved from the foyer with its black-and-white checkerboard floor back into the light pooling by the terrace. He stood holding a teacup, staring out at the view.

“Phil Bailey?” Cardozo asked.

“Phil’s president of NBS-TV—utterly unpretentious—more a businessman than an artistic type, but just as much at ease talking to David Bowie as to King Juan Carlos. His wife’s a charmer. She could have been a concert harpist, but she gave it up to marry him. She’s Israeli, but very polished. I love Israelis like that. And I hear the son’s a gifted architect.”

Cardozo caught just an edge, like a blade winking under a sleeve: Dobbs didn’t like Jews, made exceptions, had no idea that Cardozo was a Portuguese Jewish name: probably feeling damned liberal about it, Dobbs was giving him the condescension he reserved for Catholics.

“Hank Doyle?”

Dobbs lifted his hands. A gold wedding band flashed. No other finger jewelry. “What a horrific tragedy. Hank’s wife and I used to have long talks in the elevator. She told him he had to choose, it was snort or Charlayne, and he chose snort. Now he’s at the Betty Ford Clinic—but seriously, do you know anyone who’s recovered from coke? It’s just too cheap and too available. And now all this crack nonsense. Dreadful.”

A bell rang. Cardozo’s eyes went toward the foyer.

The front door opened and a thickset six-foot-tall blond man in overalls walked in, pocketing a key. He had a slight limp, the sort that shrapnel-wounded veterans had brought back from Vietnam. His nose had a bump as though it had once been broken.

Dobbs turned. “In the master bathroom, Claude, the porcelain faucet.”

The man vanished down the hallway.

“Who was that?” Cardozo asked.

“Claude? He’s the handyman. I have a leak.”

Cardozo’s and Richards’s glances met.

Sam Richards rapped on the open bathroom door. The handyman glanced up from his work, his forehead wrinkling when he saw the open wallet and shield.

“Detective Sam Richards, twenty-second precinct. Where were you Saturday, Claude?”

Loring crouched there, frowning, then pulled himself very slowly to his feet. He laid a wrench across the sink.

There was a silence while the two men stared into each other’s eyes, appraising each other.

Richards was looking at a broad-faced man in his early thirties, thick-bodied, with blond hair, sideburns, a moustache—a man who moved with all the ease of a stone wall learning how to walk.

Loring ran a soiled finger beneath his blond moustache. “Saturday I was crashing at a friend’s.”

“All day?”

Loring’s chest pushed against his T-shirt, showing ridges of gymnasium muscle. He nodded.

“Where were you Sunday? And yesterday?”

“Same place.”

“Can anyone vouch for that?”

Loring opened his mouth … and then clamped it shut. His eyes were red-rimmed, as though they hadn’t seen sleep in a long time.

“Claude, you’d better tell us—for your own sake.”

“What’s my sake got to do with it?”

“There was a killing here Saturday.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“You have a key to the apartment where the body was found.”

“Me and a few other people.”

“We’re talking to them.”

Loring shook a Camel from the crunched pack in his hip pocket.

“Who was this friend whose place you were at, Claude?”

“You going to pester her? Look, I just had a fight with my roommate, the turd threw me out. It’s hard enough finding a place to sleep in this crappy town without you guys barreling in and scaring the shit out of her. What’s she going to think, you bust down her door asking if I killed some poor bastard?”

Richards folded his arms across his vest, and the sleeve of his brown suit rode up, exposing a new Seiko on his wrist. “We’re just asking her were you there, Claude.”

Loring picked up his wrench and stood slapping it into his palm. “Does she need to know about the killing?”

“Damn,” Richards said, slamming down the brakes, “look at that.” A dark green van, sporting a huge logo of a blue jay, had parked by a fire hydrant. Richards regarded fire hydrants as a police parking preserve.

“Tennessee license,” Cardozo said. “Wouldn’t you know.”

Richards found a hydrant on the corner of Sixth and Thirty-third and parked with three expert twists of the wheel. They threaded their way through sidewalk jungles of potted palms and corn plants; the jungle was for sale at ridiculous prices—two hundred dollars a tree and up—and the green foliage was thick enough to give sanctuary to an entire Vietcong brigade. The pavement was steaming in the freak summer warmth. This was the wholesale flower district, and the real estate industry, ready to boom the walkups in the area, had christened these blocks FloHo.

Loring’s friend and alibi lived in a Civil War loft building with World War I paint peeling off the limestone-arched doorway. Cardozo found the button with part of a business card wedged into the name slot:
FAYE DI STASIO ASSOCIATES
. He pushed, and after a second push a buzzer screeched back and the glass door released with a click.

They began the climb up the rickety steps. The air in the stairwell pressed like a blanket soaked in hot water. A dark-haired young woman waited on the fourth-floor landing. It seemed to Cardozo there was something hurt and bitter in the way she was standing there, defending her door.

“Faye di Stasio?” he asked.

She smoked her cigarette and she just stared and let ashes drift down toward the floor. “Who’s looking for her?”

“Police.” Cardozo showed his shield, introduced Richards.

“The place is a mess.” She let them pass.

A television was going. The room was steeped in the aroma of negligence, and the air smelled like an old sofa.

“You had a guest over the weekend?” Cardozo put the question in a carefully natural voice, as though it would be the most normal thing in the world for this woman to tell Vince Cardozo all about the men who shared her sleeping space.

Her gaze came up level to his. “Who’s in trouble—him or me?”

“Not you. Maybe not him either.”

“I’m having some coffee—could I offer you some?”

Cardozo glanced at Richards. Richards nodded.

“Won’t you have a seat?” Her words were strangely ladylike coming from a woman with dirty bare feet.

Cardozo couldn’t believe the poverty of the space: stained, crumbling walls, laths poking through plaster like exposed bone; window curtains decaying in the city’s acid air; chairs with fractured legs bound in mover’s tape.