Deadly Rich (66 page)

She was trying to seem easy and hard-boiled about this, but it was giving her trouble. Cardozo sensed something unresolved in this woman’s feelings about her dead author.

“But,” she said, “with all his denial and all his limitations, he was one hell of a writer. Nothing escaped him. He could spot the gonnabee alumni of Betty Ford at a glance, and he knew who’d changed what place card at whose dinner—because to Dick Braidy everything in New York society happened during prime time and he was thrilled, just thrilled, to be a part of it. He adored the old rich and famous and he was fascinated by the
nouveaux
rich and famous. He believed they walked, talked, dreamed, and excuse me, farted Technicolor. And he communicated his excitement to his readers.”

Cardozo understood what Kristi Blackwell was telling him: Guys like Dick Braidy were about power worship. Over at the precinct they would have called it ass-kissing.

He understood too that guys like Kristi Blackwell—for all their airs of being above mere money-grubbing—were about keeping their own breadbaskets full, which in this case meant turning Dick Braidy’s worship of the wealthy into a commercial cult and peddling it to all the other Dick Braidy think-alikes in the world.

What he didn’t understand was how deep her dislike for the man really ran. Was this just mean-spirited kidding, or was it something more?

“It’s a sad fact,” Kristi Blackwell said, “that today most Americans are outside the economy looking in. Dick grasped that, because he was an outsider himself. He may have gone to Bobo Vanderbilt’s in twelve-hundred-dollar patent-leather pumps, but he was still that hungry little mick from the ghetto, scared that he was going to be the only kid at the table eating scrambled eggs.”

Her eyes were on Cardozo now. One eyebrow lifted, sly and more than a little manipulative. It was a distinctly italicized moment. That eyebrow was saying,
We understand
,
these things—you and I.
“Society sensed that outsider thing about him and—frankly society laughed. But readers sensed it about him too and they loved it, because it made Dick Braidy exactly the same as them. Our readers are going to miss him. The magazine is truly going to miss him. And God knows, so am I.”

“If he was that great for the magazine,” Cardozo said, “why did you make so many cuts in his articles?”

“I never cut Dick’s articles. Not without his consent.”

“He says you did.”

“He
says
?” This time both of Kristi Blackwell’s eyebrows lifted. The upper sockets of her eyes had been painted deep blue, like a ballet dancer’s. She leaned forward on her elbows. Two dozen bracelets clanked. “I doubt that at this moment Dick Braidy is saying anything on that or any other subject.”

Cardozo handed her the proof of the unpublished column.

Kristi Blackwell brought her eyeglasses down out of her curls and balanced them on the tip of her nose. As she read the column her lips narrowed into a thin pink gash.

“Dick Braidy was a child.” She snapped the proof onto the desk. “Like a child he had great pride in his work—often justified—and very little understanding of how the real world works. It never occurred to him that there were valid reasons for toning down his articles—oh, no, only a conspiracy could explain why a single comma was moved.”

“Would you happen to remember any of these valid reasons?”

Kristi Blackwell shrugged. “Sometimes he was puncturing somebody’s aura, and the somebody owned a store that advertised. Or he violated a taboo.
Nobody
discusses Mrs. Astor’s first marriage.
Nobody.
Sometimes his eye was a little too sharp. I mean, we
all
agree that Gayfryd’s party for Saul’s fiftieth was
tawdry
, it was a stewardess’s idea of chic, but that’s no reason to come out and say it. You have to leave the reader
something
to believe in.”

“Why did you cut ‘Socialites in Emergency’?”

“I honestly don’t remember what cuts I made or why. We
are
a monthly, and if I do say so, a very thick one.”

“I realize that.” Cardozo had brought Dick Braidy’s first-draft pages in an NYPD manila envelope. He reached across the desk and handed them to her. “I’ve marked your cuts in red.”

“Is that what all these pretty lines are.” It took her a little under a minute to scan Dick Braidy’s twelve pages. She tapped the sheets neatly together and pushed her glasses back up into her hair. She gazed across the desk. “What’s your point, Lieutenant?”

“All of Society Sam’s victims, except one, play starring roles in that article.”

Kristi Blackwell’s chin rose. “You find that a meaningful coincidence?”

“Possibly. But in Dick Braidy’s draft the socialites are
inside
the Emergency Room. Dizey is chatting up the nurses and Gloria is flirting with the doctors and Avalon is posing Oona for photographs—and Dick Braidy is busily getting it all down on paper. But your cuts move them back into the Admitting Room.”

“You think that was the purpose of my cuts?”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Why would I or anyone care whether they’re in this room or that room?”

“Somebody cared enough to sue.”

“Who?”

“Richard a.k.a. Rick Martinez. His wife Isolda died in Emergency. Braidy mentions the suit. You’ve cut every reference to it.”

“It wasn’t germane.”

“Then you remember it.”

“Not at all.”

“
Fanfare Magazine
was named in the suit.”

“I’ve never heard of the lawsuit or him or her.”

“How do you answer Dick Braidy’s charges about the Nita Kohler diary?”

“Lieutenant, it was my understanding that you wished to discuss the Society Sam killings. And within reasonable limits I’m willing to help. But isn’t Nita Kohler a little far afield?”

“Possibly not. How do you answer the allegations?”

“Why should I answer them? Why should I even draw attention to them? They’re paranoid and he’s dead.”

“What did you do with the material you cut from ‘Pavane’?”

“Do?” Kristi Blackwell bent sideways and swung a wastebasket up from beneath the desk. For an instant Cardozo thought she intended to hurl it at him. Instead she thumped it down onto the desktop. “Whatever was cut from that article went right there, Lieutenant. Where it belonged.”

“And where did it go from there? How did it wind up where it
didn’t
belong?”

“It didn’t wind up anywhere, Lieutenant. Dick Braidy’s chronology is way off. He didn’t even
write
the article till after Delancey’s lawyer discovered that diary. If anyone plagiarized, it was Dick lifting from the diary and not vice versa.”

Cardozo raised a doubting eyebrow.

“He was a highly unoriginal writer,” Kristi Blackwell said. “He lifted half his stuff from Marietta Tree’s butler and he never credited
anyone
.” She consulted the thin gold lozenge of her wristwatch.

“Ms. Blackwell, are you aware that in the United States we have a penalty for falsifying evidence?”

Kristi Blackwell pushed the proof sheet toward Cardozo’s side of the desk. “And for libel too, which is all this ridiculous column of his is. I intend to have a talk with my lawyer.”

“Make that a long talk. And make it within the next forty-eight hours.”

“And what happens after forty-eight hours?”

“You tell me who you gave that material to—or I tell the District Attorney we have a problem.”

“
WE RECOVERED SEMEN
and pubic hairs from Braidy’s mouth,” Lou Stein said.

“What’s the blood type?” Cardozo said.

“Type O—same as the others.”

“Do the hairs match?”

“Same donor.”

“Any surprises?” Cardozo said.

“One. At least it’s a surprise to me. Sam’s still dousing his pubes in kerosene.”

“Maybe his lice reinfested.”

“Then why aren’t there nits on these latest hairs?”

“I’m not the man to ask about pubic lice, Lou. It’s outside my competence.”

“After five weeks of this home remedy Sam’s got to have a very raw groin. I’d frankly expect him to be too sensitive to allow himself to be fellated.”

“Who knows. Maybe he’s got nerves of steel.”

“I’m surprised whole blood isn’t showing up in the victims’ saliva. But what the hell, tomorrow is always another day.”

Cardozo’s stomach felt hollow at the thought. “Please, Lou, don’t remind me.”

“Oh, Vince. He started on a new box of Saffire
Shabbes
candles.”

Cardozo broke the connection and dialed Dan Hippolito’s number.

“Make it official for me, Dan—did Sam kill Braidy?”

“Same knife, same pattern of cuts. It’s Sam, all right.”

CARDOZO WENT TO THE LITTLE PANTRY
off the squad room to get himself some coffee. The pot was almost empty, which meant someone in the squad had been shirking: it was the responsibility of the detective who took the last cup to start another pot.

There were no fresh filters in the cabinet, so Cardozo opened the Mr. Coffee and lifted out the used filter and emptied the wet grounds into the wastepaper basket.

He reinserted the filter, careful not to rip it, and searched the cabinet till he found the can of ground coffee. He tapped a flow into the used filter and then took the pot to the men’s room to get water.

The air smelled of overkill levels of camphor and ammonia. A uniformed black cop had planted himself beside the urinals. He was staring hard at the ceiling, whistling atonally, and his right hand was swinging a nightstick from its leather thong. His left hand was cuffed to a small, Middle Eastern-looking man in a sweat-stained khaki nylon shirt who was taking a leak.

Carl Malloy was sitting on the ledge by the raised window, smoking a cigarette and staring moodily at the cinderblock wall across the alley. “Heard you were doing computer work over at Dick Braidy’s apartment,” he said.

Cardozo crossed to the sink and turned on the hot water so it ran hard into the pot. “Laurie Bonasera did the work. I did the watching.”

Malloy slid down from the ledge and came over to the sink. He stared at himself in the mirror and adjusted a graying forelock. “So how is she with a computer?”

Cardozo managed to blast the inside of the pot free of most of this year’s cooked-on residue, but he wasn’t sure about last year’s. “Bonasera’s a miracle worker with a computer.”

“Yeah. She’s great.” Malloy gave a laugh and froze a smile. “So what did you two talk about for two hours?”

Cardozo decided the pot was as clean as it was going to get. He filled it with water from the cold faucet. “Files and directories and default commands.” He sensed that something alien and odd was passing through the space between him and Malloy. “How’s Delia?”

Delia, for the last twenty-one years, had been Mrs. Carl Malloy. In that time she had borne him a son and a daughter.

The answer came in a manic blast. “Great, great. Delia’s just great.”

“Glad to hear it.” Cardozo snapped a paper towel down from the holder and carefully wiped the bottom of the coffeepot dry. “Be sure to tell her and the kids hello for me, will you?”

IT WAS A SETTING
Leigh had expected to live the rest of her life in, to die in.

She saw the tall glass in her right hand; she saw her arms, with their gold-and-diamond bracelets, lying on the armrests of the overstuffed chair in Waldo’s library. She saw the skirt of her silk dress, and she saw that it exactly matched her gray suede pumps, resting on the cozy little needlepoint footrest.

She saw Waldo on the sofa facing her.
After tonight,
she thought,
I’ll never be part of this picture again.

“There’s something we’ve got to discuss,” she said.

“Oh, yes?” he said in his best interested voice. He turned a page of
The New Yorker.

“I don’t know how to say this.”

Waldo sat there like a tree, earnest. Wanting to make it clear he was willing to listen for the next thirty seconds to whatever she had to say.

“I don’t know how to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway.” She smiled.
This smile for hire
, she thought. “And I hope you’ll understand I’m saying it with love and friendship and respect.”

Waldo laid down his magazine. He struck that attitude of listening that passed for caring.

“I have to leave you, Waldo.”

The silence in the room was suddenly flat and harsh. He stared at her, and he had an honestly bewildered look on his face.

“Could I ask you one question?” His voice sounded drawn back and clogged, as though he had to clear his throat. “Just tell me why.”

“Because I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep going through the motions.”

He sat with an expression of wanting intensely to understand. “Is that all it is to you?”

“That’s all it is to either of us.”

“No. What we’ve got is worth something to me. It’s worth a great deal to me.”

“I’m grateful you feel that way, Waldo. And I’m sorry that I don’t. And I’m still leaving you.”

“Is it because you feel I’ve neglected you?”

“Neglect isn’t the problem. We’ve neglected each other from the beginning.”

“Is it because I’ve had affairs? You know those women have never meant anything to me.”

She thought of all the time she and Waldo had been together, and all the waste they’d made of it, all the memories they would never have—the evening walks they’d never taken, the meals they’d never cooked for each other, the confidences they’d never shared. “I’m not jealous, Waldo. I’ve been annoyed but never jealous.”

“Is it because you’re in love with your detective?”

“I’m not in love with anyone. Not yet.”

“Then you don’t need to leave.”

“But I do and I’m going to.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t permit it.”

There was that half tick of an instant where she realized intellectually what she’d heard, but her mind refused to believe it. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not going to leave me.”

He said it with an offhand sort of coolness that enraged her. “And just how do you propose to prevent me?”

“You don’t seem to realize how very much I care for you. How very much concern I feel for you. I’ve had you guarded since the first Society Sam note.”