VC01 - Privileged Lives (66 page)

“I’m hardly reveling. I’m deeply concerned when I see someone I love suffering the way that child is suffering.”

Babe stared at this woman, her mother, and a wound so deeply buried in her, so silted over that it was almost mute, came gradually to the surface, taking on words. “Do you really love Cordelia? Or is loving her just another way of not loving me?”

“Not loving you! I cared for you for seven interminable years! I kept you alive when half the specialists in the country were saying, ‘Pull the plug, let her die.’ How many mothers would have done that?”

“A million! What no mother would have done is hold back information affecting my daughter’s health and happiness!”

“How could we have told you? You’d let too much go wrong for too long. There were limits to the strain we could put you under.”

“That excuse seems to cover your every deception. You kept me in the hospital when there was no need for it. You lied about how I got there. And it was always to save me from strain. Well, give me your strain and spare me your saving!”

“Someone had to defend you.”

“From what?”

“The consequences of the life you led before your illness.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the life I’ve led.”

“Your exalted opinion of yourself is obviously not shared by the person who tried to murder you.”

Babe felt amazement wash the colors from her face. “You think I
deserved
an attempt on my life?”

“You lived in such a way as to make misfortune inevitable. You ignored your husband, and he turned against you. You ignored your daughter, and she developed severe emotional problems.”

“Her problems are my doing?”

“Your lack of doing.”

Tears stung Babe’s eyes, tears she hadn’t even known were pooling there, ready to betray her. “All right. Maybe I didn’t do enough. I’m sorry.”

“As if that was any help.”

“Mama, I’m not the person I was then.”

“How so?”

“I’ve changed. There
are
experiences in life that change a person.”

Lucia sighed. “Beatrice, you have a habit that truly tests my patience. It’s when you turn righteous and saccharine like that. You spout a blend of Sigmund Freud and Norman Vincent Peale that is quite your own. They were both fine men in their day, but this
is
almost the end of the century, even if you have managed to sleep through most of the decade. In my opinion your seven-year nap has in no way transformed you. You are the person you always were. As is Cordelia. She’s had to be in arduous psychotherapy for many, many years. They call her a borderline personality. It’s a technical term. She’s struggling against terrific emotional odds and you have never helped. You are not helping now, and quite frankly I don’t believe you ever will be able to help.”

“How do you expect me to help something I’m not even told about?”

“What do you need to be
told!
If a car breaks down you don’t wait to be taught the principles of internal combustion. You see the trouble and you take the car to a good garage and you get it repaired.”

“Cordelia is not a car. She’s my daughter.”

“And she is my granddaughter. And I want you to give your father and me custody.”

A wave of rage swept over Babe, tightening her throat. “I can’t
believe
you said that.”

“Do speak in a normal voice,” Lucia said.

Determination came to Babe like an electric bolt. She rose and walked to the door.

Lucia reached out and with one braceleted arm blocked Babe’s way. “We haven’t finished.”

“But we have finished, Mama. The answer is no, never.” Babe thrust her mother’s arm away.

There was a phone in the coatcheck room. Babe lifted the receiver and punched out the digits of Cordelia’s number. She waited while the call clicked through.

She could hear Cordelia’s phone buzzing. She counted seven rings. The machine answered.

“Cordelia,” she said, “if you’re there please pick up.”

No one picked up. She broke the connection and dialed Vince Cardozo’s direct line.

His voice answered. “Cardozo.”

“Vince—it’s not a police matter, but—”

“You’re not talking to the police, you’re talking to me. Tell me about it.”

She told him and he listened.

“Babe,” he said in a calm voice, “this isn’t your fault. Cordelia’s a statistic waiting to happen. If we’re lucky she’s on her way to her place. What’s her address?”

Babe gave it to him.

“Go there. If she’s not home, wait for me. I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes. I’m leaving right now.”

51

C
ARDOZO DISCOVERED IT WAS
a mistake to have driven west on Prince.

Traffic was barely moving; double-parkers clogged the lanes, and partying yuppies sat on fenders with plastic wineglasses from somebody’s art opening. In three minutes he covered half a block, and then the congestion brought him to a standstill at the intersection. A sign was hanging from one of the corner buildings:
FOOD
. He’d read about the restaurant; it served nonsteroid chicken and all-organic tofu fruit pies.

Through the plate glass window he saw Cordelia Koenig, in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, sitting alone at a table with a plate of pie.

He pulled in behind a double-parked, empty Mercedes whose horn and front lights were blasting and flashing in sync. He put his police card in the window.

Cordelia brushed her hair off her forehead and looked up as he approached.

“What’s your phone number?” he said.

She told him and he went to the payphone and dialed and got a busy signal. He waited a minute and tried again. Still busy. He came back and sat at the table and looked at her.

“You didn’t know he was taping you, did you,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Why do you think he made those films?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

“He made them to show to other people. He’s not protecting your secret, Cordelia, so why are you protecting him?”

“I don’t have a secret.”

“But you think you have. You really believe no one besides you and that lunatic knows what you did seven years ago.”

Babe saw from the street that there was no light in Cordelia’s apartment. Either Cordelia was on her way home, or already asleep.

Babe used her key to get into the apartment.

She turned on the light.

She looked in the bedroom. Empty.

She went into the kitchen and searched cabinets and made herself coffee. She saw from the cup in the sink that Cordelia had already made coffee that evening.

She sat in the livingroom, waiting for her coffee to cool.

A mirror hung on the wall opposite her. Something in its glow, some movement, caught her eye.

She saw the reflection of a man.

He was walking slowly and deliberately out of the motionless darkness. He stopped beneath a flood of overhead light, letting the light and shadow play over his close-cropped hair and staring eyes, his strong bare arms hanging from the sleeveless Levi’s jacket.

There was something proud and brutal and dangerous in the way he stood there, the cords of his neck drawn taut, his eyes taking hold of her.

She recognized the face gradually: Claude Loring, the man she had wanted to draw, the man charged with murder who had shouted at her.

His pupils were huge, blue dazzles of light whirling around on themselves.

She stood slowly. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry.” His voice was pleasant. “It’s nothing personal, but I have to kill you.”

He was standing between her and the front door.

She was absolutely unmoving for a moment. She gauged his strength and his madness and realized she had at best a little courage, a little cleverness to muster against him.

She whirled before he could react and she sped through the hallway into the bedroom, flinging the door shut and twisting the key in the lock. She ran to the phone.

Her lungs were pulling in ragged breaths.

There was no dial tone. She jiggled the cradle. The line was dead. She stared at the receiver disbelievingly. She realized Loring had yanked the cord from the wall.

“Jesus,” she gasped.

She ran to the bedroom window and snapped the Levolors open. The windows were dark across the airshaft. There were lights on two floors below, but rock music was screeching into the night and there was no chance anyone would hear her if she yelled for help.

A crash whirled her around. The bedroom door shot open, smashing into the wall.

Babe froze.

Loring stood panting, silhouetted in the doorframe. His right hand held a sledge hammer.

Lifted on a jolt of panic, Babe dashed into the bathroom, flinging the door shut and jamming the bolt into place. She stepped back, her eyes fixed on the door, realizing it offered at the outside no more than thirty seconds’ protection.

A crash filled the brightly tiled space around her. Jars and bottles chattered on the bathtub shelf. The panels of the door buckled and parted and the gray head of the sledgehammer jutted through, swung back, forced deeper entry.

The realization shot through Babe that her one chance was to go outside.

The window lock had been painted shut and she had to jab the paint loose with a nail file from the cabinet.

Behind her, with each deafening smash, the hammer widened the breach.

She shoved the window up and crouched on the ledge. Holding to the window with one hand, she swept through the dark with the other. Another wall of the building ran at right angles to the bathroom and her fingers contacted wood. It was a cutting board propped on its edge, holding the livingroom window open.

She reached one foot for the other ledge, found it, shifted her center of gravity out over the airshaft. She grabbed the livingroom window and pulled herself through. She could feel brick scrape through her gown.

At that instant she heard the door panel give in the bathroom.

Loring had switched off the lights in the livingroom. She fell down from the window into darkness. Her foot caught on a table leg and the table went crashing to the floor.

She raced across the livingroom and pulled at the front door. She remembered putting her purse on the chair by the door. She felt for it, found it, wrestled again with the knob.

The door flew open with the third yank.

She darted into the corridor, slammed the door. She rummaged in her purse, found the key, locked the deadbolt.

That would give her another ten seconds. If he didn’t have a key, maybe another sixty tops.

She ran down the corridor and pushed the elevator button. She could see from the floor indicator that the elevator was climbing up from the ground floor.

She heard Loring pulling at the front door of the apartment, and then she heard the hammer crashing.

She pulled at the door of the fire stairs next to the elevator. It was unlocked. She shot into the stairway. The only light bulb was on the landing below, and she slipped in the dark. Her high-heeled shoe twisted beneath her, sending a sickening wrench up through her calf.

Her balance was gone. She lunged forward, fell three concrete steps, managed to catch the steel railing.

She pulled herself upright. Burning pain was shooting through her ankle. She took off her shoes. Clutching purse and high heels, she scrambled down the stairs to the next landing.

She dashed into the corridor. The indicator showed that the elevator was still rising, just passing the second floor.

She stood jabbing a finger at the call button. She heard Loring break through the door upstairs, and then the thudding of his workboots across the floor.

She sped back to the fire stairs. She ran down another flight to four and into the corridor.

The indicator showed the elevator still climbing, passing three now. She pushed the call button.

The elevator came to a stop.

Making as little sound as possible, Babe drew the elevator door open. She reached for the grill and attempted to pull it aside. It refused to yield.

She hammered at the grill with the heel of her shoe.

Finally, taking its time, the grill opened.

She slipped into the elevator. There was no light and the walls were covered in heavy industrial bunting.

She tried to yank the grill shut. Again, it was automatically timed and there was no way she could speed it. She began jamming buttons—
down
and
close
and
emergency call
and
floor one.
The grill slowly closed and the elevator cable shuddered.

She could hear Loring two floors above, hear the staticky clicks of his finger on the call button.

The elevator hesitated between the up and down calls—and then with a thin screaming sound it began lumbering downward at a maddeningly unhurried speed.

Babe heard footsteps crashing down the stairs, doors slamming.

The elevator crawled to three, and she glimpsed Loring’s face as he peered through the elevator door and then dove into the stairwell. His workboots thunked down the concrete steps. The elevator dropped past three.

And suddenly he was there, swinging his hammer, shattering an opening in the elevator door. The sledgehammer crashed through the breach. The gate began buckling.

The elevator continued its downward crawl past two. The hammering suddenly stopped.

As the elevator reached the first floor, Loring darted into view. The sledgehammer struck two battering blows at the door.

Babe pressed her weight on the up button, trying desperately to reverse the elevator’s direction.

She searched frenziedly through her purse for some object of defense. She had nothing.

Babe dropped her purse.

Loring yanked the door open and slammed the grill aside.

His face was inhumanly twisted.

Babe held her shoes in front of her, toes out.

He lifted the sledgehammer, and twenty pounds of raw iron arced through space.

Babe ducked.

The hammer smashed into the wall behind her, ripping down bunting, then lifted again.

With the toes of both shoes angled directly at his eyes, Babe thrust.