VC01 - Privileged Lives (32 page)

Cardozo let that one sail right by. “Saturday, May twenty-fourth, the day the man was murdered in six and Debbi didn’t get her coke. Why did you park in Fred Lawrence’s space?”

“All right, maybe I parked in someone’s place. It’s a crime?”

“Why didn’t you use the truck bay?”

“Must have been someone already parked in the bay.”

“You remember who?”

Jerzy had to think a moment. “A van.”

“Can you describe it?”

“A van’s a van.”

“Some are big. Some aren’t. Some are red, some are green. Some are blue.”

Something made Jerzy’s eyelids twitch and he raised them. “It had a bird on it, a blue bird. I remember that bird.”

“Was it a blue jay?”

“It was a bird that was blue, you tell me if that’s a blue jay.”

Cardozo showed Jerzy the print. “Is that the van?”

Tommy Daniels had done a good job enlarging the van, cropping the foreground.

Jerzy’s lips shaped a thoughtful pout. “It’s the same bird. Maybe it’s the same van. How do you tell one beatup ’78 Ford from another?”

“Did you notice anything about the license plates? Like were they out of state?”

Jerzy gave him a look. “Give me a break. Do I look like a traffic cop?”

“You said Claude Loring was crashing here the whole weekend and you missed your deliveries because your van broke down.”

“That’s right.” Faye di Stasio was wearing an old T-shirt and a faded pair of jeans and Cardozo had a feeling she had thrown the clothes on two minutes ago when his buzz at the downstairs door had woken her.

Cardozo handed her the photograph. “Is this your van?”

She looked at the photograph, then stared with confused eyes back at him. “It could be.”

“That blue jay is your company logo, isn’t it?”

Her eyes were dark and nervous. She nodded.

“So what would it be doing on someone else’s van? Aren’t logos registered, like trademarks?”

“That’s right, but—”

“So it’s your van.”

“I suppose.”

“You recognize the street in that photo?”

“No.”

“Did someone else park your van there?”

“I guess.”

“Who do you loan your van to?”

“Claude.”

“What does Claude borrow the van for?”

“To get around.”

“Was he the one who wrecked it?”

“No one wrecked it.”

“But you missed your deliveries Memorial Day weekend.”

“The van broke down but it works now.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“It wouldn’t start. The brakes were slipping. You know, the usual van shit.”

“Who repaired the van?”

“Some shop repaired it.”

“What shop?”

“I don’t know. Some shop Claude took it to.”

“When did he do that?”

“The week before Memorial Day.”

“And when did he bring the van back?”

“The week after.”

“Can you show me the bill?”

“I don’t know where the bill is.”

“You do a lot of coke, don’t you.”

She blinked her eyes, held herself still. “Did I miss some kind of connecting link?”

“I said you do a lot of coke. Claude does a lot of coke too.”

She leaned forward. Her smile took a long time to stretch out to him. “You’re kidding,” she said, and then, studying him, “Okay, you’re not.”

The silence was heavy. Light spilled across the floor: a cat strolled into it. She gave the animal a look as gray as driftwood. She went into a small room beyond the kitchen. She came back with a cigarette.

“You ever met Claude’s dealer?” Cardozo asked.

She found an ashtray. “Claude has a private life, I don’t butt in.”

“He never told you about the doorman at Beaux Arts Tower—the guy that wears the rug?”

“I’m not feeling well and this conversation isn’t helping.”

“The doorman with the really bad rug sells Claude his coke. You never been to Beaux Arts Tower?”

“Why would I have been to Beaux Arts Tower?”

“I think you’ve been there.” Cardozo crossed to the bathroom door and nudged it open. The odor of three-day-old cat litter drifted out. He flicked on the light and pointed to the tub. “I think you stole that shower curtain from them.”

“I don’t know where that shower curtain came from.”

“It came from Beaux Arts Tower.”

“I didn’t steal it.”

“Then how come it’s here and not in apartment six where it belongs?”

“Claude gave it to me.”

“You’re saying Claude stole it.”

“I didn’t say that. I mean I don’t know where it came from. So don’t try to tie me in with someone else’s petty larceny.”

“Screw petty larceny. I’m talking homicide.”

“I’m really not following this.”

“You helped Claude. You loaned him your van and you let him crash here. And he gave you coke and that shower curtain and a little wine and booze and frozen dinners from the show suite, right?”

She just stood there looking at him. “That’s not murder.”

“No, it’s not. But killing a guy is.”

Suddenly her fingers weren’t behaving. She dropped the cigarette. She bent and picked it up, leaving a fresh burn among a million old marks on the floor. She sank into a chair.

“You’re an accomplice,” Cardozo said.

“Knowing someone is not being an accomplice.” She looked distant, isolated, sitting there, her skin pale, her face locked in gold-framed glasses with a faint raspberry tint to the lenses.

“You admit you know,” he said.

“I admit I know him.”

“The killer.”

“Claude. I don’t know anything about a killing.”

“If you haven’t figured out about the killing by now your brain’s running slow. If he was innocent, why did he ask you to lie?”

She was having difficulty swallowing.

“Lying about where Claude was and where the truck was is aiding and abetting. That’s a felony. Why do you want to help that schmuck?”

“He’s a friend. I help my friends.”

Cardozo had a feeling she meant there was nothing she wouldn’t do not to be lonely.

“Maybe I should call a lawyer,” she said.

“You can call a lawyer from jail or you can talk to me here, now, just the two of us.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“I could bust you for coke. I’m carrying a warrant to search.” He tapped the bulge of the .38 under his jacket.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because of what he did to a guy.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ll tell you what I know. Your van was seen at Beaux Arts Tower Saturday May twenty-fourth. It was seen in the garage and it was seen on the security monitor and twenty people have identified that photo. That same day seven people saw Claude Loring in the building and one of them sold him a gram of coke and you snorted that coke. So don’t tell me Claude Loring was sleeping his buzz off from Friday night till Tuesday morning. It’s you against twenty-seven eyewitnesses.”

“You have your witnesses, you don’t need me.”

“But you need me. If the D.A. brings charges on your first statement, you’ll be buying coke in prison and not on the street.”

She brought her head down slowly between her hands. She huddled as if she didn’t want to exist.

He let her hurt for a long moment. “Tell the truth now,” he said, “and we’ll forget that first statement.”

Her head came up and she gave him a pathetic, vacant stare. “I can only tell you what I know.”

“That’s good for a start.”

Her fingers became still. Her face sagged, white as a flag of surrender. The silence was broken by the sound of the cat scratching violently in its litter box.

“Claude wasn’t here till Saturday afternoon. He showed up around four.”

Her eyes closed. She looked drained, waxen. She squeezed her lids shut to hold back tears.

Cardozo took down a brief statement longhand and had her sign it. The statement wasn’t worth a fart legally, but psychologically it would be a powerful weapon in breaking down Loring.

“Do I have your permission to search the van?” he asked.

“Looks to me like he panicked,” Cardozo said. “Hitting on Hector for coke so hard that Hector let him have the gram and screwed up Debbi’s delivery. Hector wouldn’t have done that unless Loring had been in a very bad way.”

A shadow rippled across Lucinda MacGill’s face. “So we’re talking murder two.”

“No, stick with murder one for a minute. Loring planned the killing. Afterward he tooted a few lines to pull himself together, started taking the body apart with an electric saw, freaked, went to his girlfriend’s to crash.”

Her look seemed to wonder at him. “Leaving the body half dismembered?”

“It was a holiday weekend, no one was going to be around, he turned the air conditioning on so the body wouldn’t cook, what was the rush.”

“You’re conjecturing that he reasons this way.”

“Coke can lead to some pretty off-the-wall thinking. And we don’t know what other drugs he was doing.”

“What other drugs do you think he was doing?”

“Does it matter? Drugs aren’t a defense.”

“Unfortunately, some judges and juries have accepted them as an absolute defense in gay murders.”

Cardozo let out a long, slow exhalation. “I think he was using downside stuff. Smack, ludes, something that put him out for two days. So instead of getting the rest of the body into the garbage over the weekend, he was passed out for two days, and by then the body had been found. So he asked Di Stasio to alibi for him.”

Lucinda MacGill studied the handwritten statement. A silence fell on the cubicle. There was only the sound of phones ringing outside in the squad room.

“Di Stasio’s statement is enough to bring Loring in for questioning.”

“I want to go into Di Stasio’s van. Loring transported the victim to Beaux Arts Tower in it and it could hold evidence.”

Lines of disapproval ran downward from the corners of Lucinda MacGill’s mouth. “You can’t get into it. Di Stasio was unrepresented by counsel when you questioned her.”

“I’m not accusing her of murder.”

“Anything she does to incriminate Loring incriminates her of shielding him. She’s entitled to counsel and she didn’t waive her Miranda rights. If Loring is in possession of the van when you search, and if he borrowed it in good faith, he has an expectation of privacy. Violating it makes the state’s case tref.”

There was a pause. She kept staring at him.

“You make my life tougher than it needs to be, Counselor.”

“That’s my job. Get a warrant, Lieutenant.”

Cardozo lifted the phone receiver and pushed the digits of Judge Tom Levin’s number. The call clicked through.

“Judge’s chambers.”

“Amy, it’s Vince Cardozo. Where is he?”

“Right here.”

A sudden jovial baritone came on the line. “Make it fast, Vince, I have a jury coming back in.”

“I need a warrant to search a van.”

“What do you expect to find?”

“If I’m lucky, evidence in a murder. Lucky or not, drugs.”

“You got it. Tell Amy the details.”

Cardozo told Amy the color, year, and make of the van, the number on the Tennessee plates, the name and address of the owner.

“I’ll messenger the warrant to you right away.”

“Amy, I want to marry you.”

“That won’t be necessary, sweetie.”

28

T
HE BAR AT ARCHIBALD’S
was four-deep in people. Babe was aware of heads turning as the maître d’ wheeled her through the crowd to the corner table.

Ash, in a froth of pale raspberry chiffon, was sitting with a half-finished Manhattan. She was wearing pendant diamond earrings that glowed like soft little lights beside her head.

“Hi, doll.” She leaned to kiss Babe on the cheek. “How about some champers?”

“What’s the celebration?”

“I’ve reconciled with Dunk.” Ash signaled the waiter. “André, we’ll have some Moët.”

Babe opened her napkin—it was peach linen, matching the tablecloth and the walls—and looked around her. The atmosphere was one of frenzied chatter, with women wearing gold at noon and people waving and shouting from one table to another and everyone squirming in their bentwood chairs to get a look at whoever was coming in.

At a corner table, in an ugly web of cables laid across the floor, two men in blue jeans and workshirts were aiming a portable searchlight and a shoulder-carried minicam at a fat man and a garishly overmadeup woman. The man and woman wore full evening dress; a heavy diamond-and-gold necklace lay across the woman’s half-exposed bosom, and heavy emeralds dangled from her ears. A third man in jeans was holding a microphone over the vichyssoise, catching their conversation.

“What in the world is that?” Babe asked.

“They’re probably filming a segment of
Life-Styles of the Rich and Famous,”
Ash said.

“During lunch? Don’t the customers object?”

“Object?” A bubble of laughter broke from Ash’s throat. “Half the people here would kill to get on that show.”

Babe was puzzled, and Ash seemed amused by the look on her face.

“This is what’s in,” Ash said, “so get used to it: Shrill Is Beautiful.”

Ash explained that the maître d’ seated all the right people in the front room; climbers and nonentities were put in the rear dining room, affectionately dubbed Managua by those who didn’t have to sit there.

“Some have offered bribes of a thousand dollars to be seated in front. Over there by the pillar is the royal box. That’s where Nancy sits when she’s in town. And Jackie, and Liz.”

The waiter brought champagne. A moment later he brought another Manhattan that Babe had not seen Ash order. Ash didn’t seem to notice it wasn’t the same drink she had just put down.

“To us.”

Ash lifted her champagne glass to Babe’s. They clinked.

They began laughing and talking about things, remembering things, wandering down familiar paths.

“Lasagna of shrimp, scallops, and spinach in saffron sauce?” Ash peeped at Babe over the top of her menu.

“I think cold poached salmon for me,” Babe said.

Fifty-five minutes later a tall handsome woman stopped at their table. “Is everything satisfactory?” She had deep-set eyes and black curly hair that came to her shoulders.