VC01 - Privileged Lives (46 page)

“This is a pretrial hearing, not a trial, Counselor, so please resist the temptation to prove your client innocent of murder. Mr. Loring is pleading guilty to a lesser but still serious felony, and it is my duty to be sure he understands the meaning of the charge and of his plea.”

“My client admits he performed the acts, Your Honor, without realizing or intending that they would contribute to Mr. Downs’s death.”

“Counselor, I’m not questioning intent to contribute to death, only intent to perform acts which reasonably constitute reckless endangerment of human life. That is after all the issue which we are here to determine. Mr. Loring, you admit that you freely consented to perform the acts?”

Morgenstern nodded yes.

Loring took the cue. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“You admit to these acts and you do not dispute the state’s claim that Mr. Downs’s death resulted?”

Loring glanced again at Morgenstern, who nodded no.

“I don’t dispute anything, Your Honor.”

“Do you understand that in entering a plea of guilty you forgo jury trial and may be sentenced at the discretion of this court to the maximum term allowable by law?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Give this a moment’s reflection, Mr. Loring. Do you wish to change your plea to not guilty and to be tried by a jury?”

Morgenstern shook his head absolutely no.

“I plead guilty, Your Honor.”

Judge Davenport settled back in his chair, face set in a slumber of judicial indifference. “Let the record show that Claude Loring, Junior, pleads guilty to the negligent manslaughter of Jodie Downs. Do the people accept his plea?”

The D.A. rose. “The people accept.”

“Let the record so show. Prisoner is remanded for sentencing three weeks hence in this courtroom at ten thirty in the morning.” Court adjourned with a thump of Judge Davenport’s gavel.

Lockwood Downs rose. His hands were visibly shaking. Up till this moment everything might have seemed a nightmare, but Cardozo could see that this was real to him now: the courtroom, the prisoner in handcuffs and a neatly fitted new suit being led out between two guards, the judge retiring to his chambers, the defending attorney in his snappy dark suit and French cuffs crossing the room to confer with the D.A. in his snappy dark suit and French cuffs, two power brokers thrashing out a merger.

Lockwood Downs helped Meridee to her feet. They stood in the aisle, pulverized, afraid to take even a step in a world where there was suddenly no support for anything or anyone.

Cardozo went to them.

“It takes three weeks to decide on a sentence?” Deep new lines had etched themselves into Lockwood Downs’s face.

“Judges like to take their time,” Cardozo said. “They have a theory it avoids reversible error.” He didn’t bother saying what he thought of the majestic crud of the law, pulsating with crimes against common sense.

“And then what happens to Loring?” Downs asked.

“State penitentiary.”

As Meridee Downs looked up at Cardozo he saw her face flood with hatred.

“That’s worse than a city jail?” she asked.

He nodded. “If you can believe it.”

“We won’t be coming back for the sentencing,” Lockwood Downs said.

Cardozo could feel the man’s pride, the instinct not to cause a scene, not even now when all the promises the universe had ever made him were being taken back.

“I’ll be here,” Cardozo said. “I’ll phone you.”

37

“S
CARED OF NEEDLES?”

Jerry Brandon snapped the cartridge into the syringe. He regarded Babe with a hint of mischief, as though they were about to embark together on a lighthearted adventure, a trip through the funhouse of her mind.

“I can’t say I love them,” Babe said.

“Get ready to love. There are people in this town that kill for twenty cc’s of this stuff.” Brandon had gone gray and a little haggard since Cardozo had last seen him, but he still had his smart-talking police-doctor mask, cocky and charming. “Why don’t you have a seat before we boost you to outer space?”

Babe sat down in the black Barcalounger. Her movements were tentative and gingerly. She was a very scared porcelain doll.

Brandon took her arm and placed the tip of the needle at the little blue vein pulsing in the crook. His thumb pressed slowly on the syringe.

Cardozo waited by the wall, out of the light. Babe shot him one scared look. “Babe,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”

Brandon withdrew the needle. “Count backwards from a hundred.”

Babe’s eyes fixed as if they had lost their sight. “One hundred … ninety-nine …”

The outer layers of her brain began shutting down. At 93 she closed her eyes.

Brandon gave the go-ahead nod, and Cardozo pressed the start button on the tape recorder.

Brandon ejected the empty cartridge from the syringe and loaded another. “Showtime.” He took her arm, feeding the point of the needle into the vein. “It’s yesterday, Babe,” he said.

At first there was no reaction. Her breathing was slow and deep, almost hoarse. And then there was a tiny movement on her face, and Cardozo could sense something taking shape. Her lips moved. A puff of voice came out. “Yesterday.”

“You’re waking up. Where are you?”

For a while she lay there, hammocked on the Barcalounger, limp and passive and still. And then she opened her eyes. Her glance circled the room. It passed over Cardozo as though he were a table. “I’m in our bedroom.”

“Tell me about the bedroom, Babe. What do you see?”

“It’s sunny through the windows.”

“What color are the window curtains?”

“Pale green. They have orange flowers.”

“What do you do, Babe? You wake up and then—?”

“Slippers. On the floor by the bed.”

“What kind of slippers?”

“Blue silk.”

Brandon pursed his lips at Cardozo, and the nod of his head said,
My my, aren’t we snazzy.
“Fine. Now let’s go further back, Babe. You’re in the hospital.”

There was a silence as though she were processing the command and trying to locate the mental file. She frowned, and finally something clicked and she said the word
hospital.

“You’re waking up in the hospital. It’s the first time you’ve ever woken up in that hospital. What do you see?”

“It’s dark.” A strange childish sort of sobbing began coming out of her. “Scottie isn’t here.” She shook her head from side to side, and her eyes were tearing over. “No one but me.” Her wrists and fingers knotted over the armrests. Her face twisted with effort. “I can’t move.”

“Babe, can you see anything?”

“A window.” She squinted, trying to see something. “The window’s in the wrong place.”

“What else?”

“No clock.”

She stiffened. “A door just opened. Now there’s light.” She narrowed her eyes, tracking some moving object. “A woman came in. She’s wearing a nurse’s cap. She’s leaning over me, very close.” Babe’s posture suddenly altered: her head came up and forward, her shoulders tensed. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my bedroom?”

“You’re doing fine, Babe, just fine. Everything’s okay. Stay there in the hospital. Just hold it there.”

Brandon came across the room to Cardozo and spoke in a lowered tone. “Where was she before the attempt was made?”

“A big blowout—it was the anniversary of her company. Press reception kind of thing. Celebrities, booze, fancy food.”

“Okay, I’ll walk her through the party and get her back to the town house.”

Brandon returned to the Barcalounger and reloaded the syringe. “Babe—last night you were at a party. Tell me about that party.”

“Party,” she repeated. Her eyes were still shut and there was something held back in her voice, something half thinking and half dreaming.

“You’re at a party, Babe. Now. You’re at the party.”

Her head drooped for a moment. “I’m not supposed to be here. They don’t know.”

“Who doesn’t know?”

“Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh and the Mad Hatter.”

Brandon gave Cardozo a look. “You said celebrities?”

“Is that normal?” Cardozo said. “I thought this stuff was like truth serum.”

Brandon shrugged. “One man’s truth is another man’s Disneyland.”

Disconnected sighs were coming out of her.

“What do you see, Babe? What are you seeing?”

“Watch out for the trucks.”

Brandon turned his eyes back to Cardozo, his glance asking whether or not to go on.

Cardozo frowned, puzzled: it was as though Babe had set out walking down a perfectly familiar street and suddenly for no reason had swerved into an alley. He nodded, keep going.

“Babe, what kind of trucks?” Brandon asked.

She opened her eyes, looking at the huge trucks. “Meat trucks.”

At those two words,
meat trucks,
a sick nervousness began humming inside Cardozo. It was as though Babe had stepped off the map into pitch black space.

“Where are these meat trucks, Babe?”

“In the street outside the building.”

Cardozo was signaling with his hands, stretch it out.

“Tell me about the building.”

“The building is on the corner. The cobbled street meets the asphalt. The building is falling apart. The sign is in English and Spanish. Body parts of cows. The doorway is on the left. That’s where I go in. Only they don’t know.”

Brandon turned to Cardozo. “I don’t know about you, but I’m lost. You want to get her back to the party?”

Cardozo felt the premonition of something larger. “No—follow this.”

“You go in the doorway, Babe. Then what?”

“Up the stairs in the dark. One flight. Another flight. I can hear voices.”

“Whose voices?”

“Mickey Mouse. Richard Nixon.”

Cardozo narrowed his eyes in speculation. The two men stared at each other.

“I open the door.”

She had the face of a little girl peeking into a forbidden room. The peeking turned into a shy half-smile. The shy half-smile became a big grin.

“They don’t hear me. John Wayne is passing champagne.” The grin wiped off her face. She sat up in the Barcalounger, alert now. “The man is naked.”

“What man, Babe?”

“The young man. He has blond hair. He’s lying in the corner. They’ve drugged him. Winnie the Pooh and the Mad Hatter pick him up and tie him to the H.”

Something began coming to Cardozo, some inexplicable sense that the nightmare at the end of Babe’s alley fitted into someone else’s nightmare.

“What’s the H?”

“Wood. Black wood. White wall. Alice in Wonderland and Donald Duck help with the mask.”

Cardozo felt evil imploding.
This isn’t happening,
he thought.
I’m not hearing this. She didn’t see this.

“What kind of mask, Babe?”

“Black leather. There are two slits for the eyes and no ears and there’s a zipper over the mouth. The young man can’t move and he can’t make any sound.”

Cardozo felt blood rush along his scalp.

“Minnie Mouse has a beautiful red silk gown on. Hundreds of sequins, hand-stitched. She takes the cigarette from her mouth and—” Babe gasped. “And she puts it out in the young man’s hand.”

Cardozo’s neck muscles tightened and his throat was suddenly dry. “Ask her which hand.”

“Which hand, Babe? Which hand does Minnie Mouse put the cigarette out in?”

“His left hand.”

There was dread at the pit of Cardozo’s stomach. Common sense said there was no way she could know, no way she could be saying what she was saying.

“She closes his fingers around the cigarette. He makes a sound. A moan.”

Disbelief was thudding so hard through Cardozo’s veins that the image of Babe in the chair and Jerry Brandon bending over her seemed to come apart before his eyes.

“Richard Nixon takes the knife from the table. It’s a curved knife. It’s a melon knife, I think.” Sweat needled her forehead. “Richard Nixon walks up to the naked man and he takes the knife and he …”

Waves of trembling broke over her. Cardozo could feel the terror in her, the kind that comes from knowing you have to turn your eyes away or your mind will snap.

Brandon looked at Cardozo, asking, and Cardozo nodded. “Ask her what Nixon does with the knife.”

“What does Nixon do with the knife, Babe?”

A spasm ripped the muscles of her face. “No—I don’t want to see it!” She covered her eyes.

“You do see it, Babe. You do see it.”

She brought her hands down a little, far enough to peek over them. “He cuts the young man. The poor young man can’t defend himself and Richard Nixon …”

Cardozo’s heart turned over in his chest. “Ask her what the cut looks like. Ask her does it have a design.”

“What does the cut look like, Babe? Does it have a design?”

She stiffened. “He cuts a circle.”

“What’s in the circle?” Cardozo said.

“What’s in the circle, Babe?”

“There’s a Y, dripping blood.” She doubled over, her arms clamped across her stomach, and made retching sounds.

Brandon touched her forehead. “Babe, go back to sleep.”

A blankness flowed into Babe’s eyes. She slumped back against the Barcalounger.

“Wow,” Brandon said. “What was that all about?”

Cardozo bent over her. He took her hand in his. It was cool, limp. He massaged her knuckles. It was five minutes before her eyes opened slowly. He spoke in a low voice, tinged with sympathy. “Come on. You’ve earned a little fresh air.”

He helped her up and he helped her onto her crutches. He kept a firm guiding hand on her arm.

They walked out to where the daylight was dark gold, barred with gray. The streets were alive, bustling and active with people hurrying home from work. A Spanish vendor was selling authentic Italian ices. A small Chinese girl ran past, pigtails flying. They let the thickly peopled sidewalk carry them along.

Babe lifted her eyes to where the skyline stopped sharp against the sky. “What did I remember?” she said.

“You didn’t.”

With a pained blinking of her eyes she turned to him. “It wasn’t Cordelia?”

“You didn’t remember. Brandon tried to get you back to that night but he couldn’t.”

Cardozo turned off the cassette player.