VC01 - Privileged Lives (2 page)

Tea was laid out on the hospital table. Lucia served.

“You can drink liquids, can’t you, Beatrice?”

“Of course I can drink liquids.”

“Do you still like lemon?”

“Lemon’s fine.”

They sat sipping. Teaspoons clinked. Babe had a sense that the scene was being acted rather than simply being allowed to happen. She suspected that the only improvisations were hers.

“You haven’t told me what kind of accident,” she said.

“Things change, dear heart,” Lucia said.

Thoughts somersaulted through Babe’s mind. She knew her mother well enough to know she was hiding something. “Where’s Scottie? Where’s Cordelia?”

“Cordelia is thriving. She’s just fine.”

Lucia crossed to the dresser and took a moment staring at Cordelia’s photograph on the bureau. Babe realized that her mother was limping slightly.

“Mama, did you hurt your foot?”

“My hip. It’s been this way for quite some time.”

“But last night you were dancing.”

Lucia sat on the edge of the bed and took her daughter’s hand. “Tell me, dear heart, what was last night’s date?”

“September fourth.”

Her mother looked at her in silence and a mildness came into her eyes. “And what happened last night?”

“We celebrated the anniversary of my company. We had a huge party at the Casino in the Park.”

“And how did East Eighty-ninth Street look when you last saw it?”

“When I visited Lisa Berensen in maternity—it was a lot of quaint old rowhouses.”

Lucia walked to the window and pulled open the curtain. “Nurse, would you put my daughter in the chair? I want her to see those quaint old rowhouses for herself.”

E.J. helped Babe into the wheelchair and wheeled her to the window. Babe sat staring.

Late afternoon shadows were beginning to flood the street. Here and there spots of sunlight filtered through the moving leaves of a tree. The pale new leaves had a glowing translucence, like bone china.

Suddenly the street seemed infinite under the fading sun. Everything stopped and time seemed to hold its breath. Babe sensed an extraordinary catastrophe about to occur.

“It’s … spring,” she said.

There was a flicker of agreement in Lucia’s eyes. “Yes, dear heart—it’s spring, and a lovely time to wake up.”

Understanding came like a chop to the throat. Babe couldn’t speak. Contradictions reconciled like pieces of jigsaw puzzle slipping together: the changes in her parents, the length of her hair, her surprising muscular weakness.

“I’ve been here seven months.”

“And then some.” The firm features of Lucia’s face were frozen in careful neutrality. “Take another look out the window. Don’t you notice anything else?”

The sky was high blue with white cumulus clouds. Beneath it the sidewalks were thronged with men and women and the streets were blocked with cars and taxis. But the cars in the street had a strange look and so did the people’s clothes. There was a different skyline, rippling with changes like a flower that had bloomed overnight.

Of all the buildings on the street Babe could recognize only one old mass of masonry on the corner.

Her hands gripped the armrests of the wheelchair and she was invaded by a sense of her whole being slipping away from her.

“Do you think all that was done in seven months?” Lucia handed her daughter the copy of
Town and Country.
“You’ve been in coma for seven months … and seven years.”

Babe read the date on the cover of the magazine. Her breath stopped and pain caught her ribs.

“The doctors said you wouldn’t believe it right away.” Lucia’s eyes and voice were shot through with gentleness. “But you’ve come through dreadful circumstances before—your first marriage, the automobile accident. You’ll come through this.”

“It’s not true! It can’t be!” Babe’s fist struck the arms of the wheelchair. “How did seven years go by in one night? It can’t have happened! Where’s Scottie? Why isn’t he here?”

Babe felt the soothing insinuation of her mother’s hand on her shoulder, as soft as milk. Lucia said, “Go ahead and cry, dear heart.”

“Cry? I want to scream, I want to break something!”

“You’d be better off crying.”

“Please—someone just help me understand what’s happened.” Babe began sobbing.

Her mother hugged her. “You’ve understood enough for one day.”

As Lucia and Hadley Vanderwalk were leaving the hospital, an administrator by the name of Thelma T. Blauberg stopped them, introduced herself, and asked if they’d had a nice visit with their daughter.

Lucia stared for a moment at the woman’s inquiring blue eyes—a little too inquiring—and curly gray hair. “An excellent visit, thank you.”

“I’m so glad. Naturally, the hospital will say nothing about Mrs. Devens’s recovery to anyone. But there
is
a C-3 on her file. Police notification required if victim dies or recovers consciousness. Normally we try to comply within eight hours.”

2

“I
LIKE IT VERY
much,” the man said.

Melissa Hatfield caught something in the voice. There was a “but” there. Her eyes fixed on the short man, with a full head of gray hair. He was wearing designer slacks, a striped polo shirt.

The room was a thirty-by-fifty-foot cave of white light, shimmering like an image on a TV screen with the brightness set too high. Sun bounced off naked walls and inlaid floor.

“You can remodel,” Melissa Hatfield suggested.

Nothing about selling apartments in the more than ten years Melissa Hatfield had been selling them had ever been easy. Real estate in Manhattan was a buyer’s market and this man knew it.

“What does the maintenance run?” he asked.

“Seventeen fifty.”

He coughed—a hacking sound that came from his chest. “Cold in here,” he said.

Noon sun beat against the French doors, but an icy current was flowing through the air.

The man’s wife called him to the terrace. “We can put a garden there.”

She was pointing. Short and dark-haired, she was wearing battered blue clogs, a pullover, and a red sweater tied around her neck by its sleeves. The I’m-rich-and-I-don’t-need-to-impress-you look.

Melissa Hatfield wondered if this was their idea of how to spend Memorial Day weekend:
Let’s go tour some upmarket co-ops and pretend we’re interested in buying.
“We can arrange terms,” she said. “Ten percent down will hold it.”

The man was staring into her eyes so determinedly she felt an impulse to laugh. He was trying to do it all at once: come on to her, turn down the apartment, maintain his image as a high roller.

“You’re very kind,” he said.

His wife crossed toward the hall, looking over the cherrywood cabinets in the kitchen, swinging them open, flicking them shut with careless slams. “Could we see the rest of the apartment?” she said.

Oh well,
Melissa Hatfield thought.
It’s only a beautiful Sunday on Memorial Day weekend and they got me here for nothing.

She led them down the hallway. The bedroom door was shut.

Melissa Hatfield stopped. The door shouldn’t have been shut. She opened it. The room was in darkness, needles of sunlight jabbing in through the Levolor blinds. The blinds shouldn’t have been down.

She stood motionless, senses suddenly alert.

There was a faint pumping sound, like an animal catching its breath. The air smelled of something foreign, something vaguely sweet and unpleasant. Cold sweat came out on her body.

She crossed to the window. Shadows hovered like nets. The air conditioner was on full blast. She changed the setting and turned the plastic rod controlling the blinds.

In the brilliance of daylight Melissa Hatfield saw him.

He was lying on the floor, naked, hooded in black leather. A Vietnam peace symbol had been gashed into his chest. One of his legs had been taken off and the fresh stump of thigh looked like a cross section of beef carcass in a butcher shop showcase.

Melissa Hatfield’s throat froze up solid and then a cry tore itself out of her, rocketing through the silence.

Seven miles away, a man lay on the beach.

He was one of four thousand souls who had journeyed from city homes down to the Brooklyn shore that day, schlepping brave little pieces of portable comfort with them. He had stretched out on an orange beach blanket, and his head was resting on a rolled blue bath towel. His eyes were shut. A yellow umbrella shaded him. A Sony transistor radio was piping whispers of Little Richard into his ear. Little Richard was his twelve-year-old daughter’s choice, not his. He would have chosen Sinatra or Tony Bennett. But it was meant to be his daughter’s day, not his, one of those rare days that father and daughter actually got to share, so he’d let her choose the music.

His wallet was stuffed inside his shoe, rolled into the blue towel under his head. There was a shield in his wallet. A gold shield, New York City detective.

An off-duty cop was required to carry his gun with him at all times, but Vince Cardozo was in violation of regulations. He’d decided he wasn’t going to wear three pounds of nickel stuffed into his bathing trunks like an extra dick or wrap the gun in a towel and leave it on the beach when he got around to trying the water. He’d left his .38 Smith & Wesson at home.

He’d closed his eyes, telling himself it was just for two minutes. Three minutes tops. Almost immediately he’d sunk down into peacefulness, letting go of the world. Where he was, he wasn’t hearing Little Richard. Wasn’t hearing the waves. Wasn’t smelling ocean salt or beached kelp or wind-borne suntan oil or sand that had been broiled to a sparkle.

At that moment Lieutenant Vince Cardozo was happy. He didn’t know anything. Not who he was, not where he was. Didn’t know that the sun was glowing, didn’t know that the wind had a shine on it like twelve trumpets. Didn’t know that his daughter, Terri, who had been sitting beside him twiddling the dial of the radio, had got bored and wandered off along the beach.

Lieutenant Cardozo’s breathing became softer and softer. There was almost no movement in his chest. The coiled strength relaxed. The breeze stirred his hair, medium brown, beginning to gray at the temples.

White clouds sailed across the blue sky. Long swells tilted the sea up and down, sending out pinpoints of light. Out by the horizon the wind-driven whitecaps were edged in glinting gold. With a squawking cry gulls swooped in a great flock down toward the great bursts of leaves of the beachfront trees.

Something buzzed. It was a patterned buzz, a nagging seed of nightmare, two shorts and a long, pitched like a dentist’s drill.

Vince Cardozo’s hand awakened, located the page boy on the blanket beside him, swatted it dead.

He opened his eyes, pushed himself up on one elbow, forcing back his shoulders, opening wide. A stocky man, he prided himself on being well-built for someone of forty-odd summers. If his forehead was a bit high and smooth, he had thoughtfully balanced it with a devil-may-care moustache, giving himself, he hoped, a face sleek enough to detract from the blocky torso.

He squinted and saw Terri coming over the sand. She had dark hair and brown eyes like his and a turned-up nose, not like his. He waved at her. With the hand not holding a Diet Pepsi, she waved back.

God,
he thought,
she’s so damned beautiful in that yellow swimsuit.
Only twelve, tall for her age, of course; she carried herself with a grace that was impossible not to watch.

She settled down onto the blanket, looking at him with a serene humorous interest.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Not so far away as you.” She had faintly freckled skin and there was a challenging tilt to her chin. In back of her the sky looked like no sky he had ever seen.

The pager buzzed again.

Behind her eyes was a sudden flare-up of disappointment.

“Dad,” she said. “Answer it.” Like her mother. Same tone, same look of good-humored annoyance.

She poked through her little plastic change purse and a minute later he felt the soft pressure of her fingers pushing a quarter into his hand. She looked up at him for a moment out of those bottomless brown eyes.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

She kissed him.

At the refreshment stand he dropped the quarter in the phone and dialed Manhattan. He recognized the voice that answered. “Flo, it’s Vince.”

“Hiya, Vince, we got something for you.”

Cardozo had no trouble finding the address. Beaux Arts Tower stood on a street of boutiques and French bakeries and antique dealers and $200-an-hour psychoanalysts, a narrow skyscraper thrusting sharply above the neighboring landmarked six-story brownstones.

The building had a glassy, upscale look. He remembered the ads: Beaux Arts Tower. The luxury of the 21st century now. Built in the air space over a midtown museum, it was prime Manhattan real estate, occupied by many of the city’s movers and shakers.

A large pale blue Plymouth was double-parked in front of the building. Light vibrated on the car. As Cardozo approached, the passenger door swung open and Mel O’Brien, chief of detectives, stepped out.

In his gray gabardine suit, conservative necktie, and dark brown cordovan shoes, the chief looked like a fund-raiser for a prep school.

“Very handsome,” Cardozo said.

“What’s that?” The chief’s face was set in hard, impatient lines.

“You, Chief. Handsome.”

Chief O’Brien was a man of fine bearing, age fifty-seven, tall, blue-eyed, with silver hair and a pink face. An angry pink face. “What kept you?”

“Traffic.”

“I’ll be right back,” O’Brien told his chauffeur, a detective sitting at the wheel. If you were the chief of detectives, even your driver had a gold shield.

Cardozo and Mel O’Brien approached the building.

The chief moved with a swing to his shoulders. “Hope I didn’t pull you away from anything important.”

Cardozo answered, “You did.”

The chief was solemnly reading his face. “What are you working on?”

“The usual. A couple dozen homicides.”

“Farm them out. There’s something upstairs I need you to take over right away. Murdered man in a mask.”