Deadly Rich (8 page)

She was quiet, which was a very different thing from being silent. “He’s a friend from school.”

“You’ve never mentioned him.”

“Dad,” she said.

The tone of voice was a statement. It said he was being stuffy, unreasonable, and a little bit of a pain. Worse, the word
Dad
was a signal that she was growing up, that he was no longer Daddy. Which meant he was no longer anyone’s Daddy. He felt sad at the idea: it was like being laid off, like having to say good-bye to a job he loved.

“How could I have mentioned him? We haven’t had a talk in three weeks.”

“Is there anything that needs to be talked about?”

She shook her head. “I’m doing fine, we don’t need to worry about me.”

“Because if you’re seeing somebody,” he said, “I’d like to know. I’d like to meet him.”

“Dad—I see Josh two times a week. We’re in computer-science class together. Big deal.” Her tone was playful but with something really there beneath the playfulness. “He was returning my call. I phoned him because I had a question about iterative programs.”

“
What
programs?”

“Yeah. That’s why I needed help.”

Cardozo went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to find something to drink.

“Your dinner’s behind the lemonade,” Terri called.

He moved the pitcher of fresh lemonade and found dinner for one, cold chicken and potato salad, neatly covered in Saran Wrap. “How much does he help you?” he called.

“You don’t need to shout, I’m here.” She was standing in the doorway. “Josh helps me a lot.”

“Sounds like you’re going with him.”

“I’m not going with anyone.”

“That wouldn’t be a white lie to keep your old man from worrying?”

“Why should I worry about you worrying? You never worry.”

“I’m just good at fooling you.”

“Besides, there’s nothing to worry about.” She watched as he poured a glass of lemonade and slid the pitcher back into the refrigerator. “Aren’t you going to eat your dinner?”

“Maybe later. Right now I’m just thirsty.”

“You should eat. Otherwise you’ll wake up in the middle of the night.”

“You’re not changing the subject, are you?”

“Why would I change the subject?”

“Because you might be going with someone and not telling me.”

She gave him a long glance, and from across the room Cardozo opened the windowshades of all five senses, trying to catch the vibration that was suddenly coming off her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “It happens, you know. Sometimes kids don’t tell their parents.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

“No, Dad, you’re asking because you think I’m
still
a kid.”

The glass of lemonade stopped halfway to his mouth. “Okay, you’re not still a kid, that means I can’t ask about your life anymore? Because I’ll tell you something. You could be a grown woman, you could be an old woman—as long as I’m around I’m going to be interested in what’s happening to you.”

“I want you to be interested. I’m glad you ask.”

He drained the glass in two gulps. “I’d be glad if you’d answer.”

“I’m trying to answer.”

“Try harder. Tell me how much you’re seeing of this guy.”

“Not a lot.”

“Maybe I will have that chicken.” He took the platter from the refrigerator to the kitchen table. He went back for a jar of mayonnaise and a jar of pickles. “Then you are seeing him. A little.”

“Right.” She shrugged. “A little.”

“Not a lot.”

“No, Dad, not a lot.” She brought a place setting to the table. “We haven’t reached that stage.”

“I don’t need the fork. I’m going to eat with my fingers.”

“You’re not going to eat potato salad with your fingers.”

“I’m not going to eat potato salad. Then tell me, you’re planning to reach that stage?”

“Planning doesn’t come into it. I’m not planning, I’m not not planning.”

He pulled out the chair and sat. He spread a knife-load of mayonnaise on the chicken breast. “Sounds like you wouldn’t mind if you reached that stage.”

“How do I know?”

“Come on, you’re, an intelligent kid.” He ground a generous layer of pepper over the mayonnaise. “How can you not know?”

“I’m sorry, Dad. There, are things I don’t know till they happen. I may think about them, I may think I want them to happen, but till they do I don’t know.”

Are we talking about sex
? he wondered. “Then you want it to happen with this kid, this Josh.”

“Do I want what to happen?”

He picked up the breast in both hands and took a bite. “You want to reach that stage, is what I’m saying.”

“What stage?”

He felt he was trying to ride a tricycle on a tightrope. “Have you reached that stage with anyone?”

“What stage?”

“This chicken is delicious, but why do I have the feeling this discussion is going in circles?”

“You’re the one going in circles.” She brought him another glass of lemonade. “I’m just trying to keep up with you.”

“Sorry, kid, I’m trying to keep up with you and I guess I’ve had a long day, because I’m doing a lousy job of it.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“Something’s the matter.” She pulled out the other chair and sat across the table from him. “What happened at work?”

“What usually happens at work? Someone got killed.”

“Who?”

“A woman.”

“Why does that upset you?”

“Why shouldn’t it upset me? Anyway, it doesn’t upset me.”

“You’re very upset.”

“I’m very upset because you’re very upsetting tonight. This is very unlike you. Maybe I will have some potato salad.”

“I told you you’d need the fork. Who was she?”

“I don’t know her. I didn’t know her. I’m not sure I’d want to know her.”

“Then why does she upset you?”

He realized Terri was interrogating him. Something in their relationship, some last remnant of control, was slipping from his hands. His daughter was beginning to manage things. “She’s not the one that upsets me.”

“Then there is someone who does upset you.”

“It’s a long story.”

“I like long stories.”

“No, you don’t. Not this one.”

“Why are you in such a mood? I just want to hear about your day.”

What they were doing now had started three or four years ago, he couldn’t remember exactly when. It had started as a game, the little girl playing big momma to the gruff old man who played bad little boy. The game had produced tangible benefits. She ran the house for him. She cooked for him. Laundry got sent out on time, dishes got washed, beds got made. There was always soap and toothpaste and toilet paper and fresh towels. But sometime during the last year the game had become more than a game, and he realized he’d come to rely on her.

Sometimes he found himself resenting her power just a little, withholding himself just a little. Like now. “I said it’s a long story.”

“You said a woman got killed. Does it bother you because that’s what happened to Mom?”

Suddenly he didn’t want any more potato salad. “It’s nothing like what happened to Mom. Stop being a psychiatrist.”

“I’m just trying to understand.”

“I don’t think about her.” He got up from the table. “That’s past.”

“Is it? Seven years, and you’re still alone.”

“Alone? Seems to me there’s two people in this house.”

She followed him back into the living room. “There should be three. At least.”

“For a kid who says she’s grown up maybe you don’t know as much as you think. That was a dumb remark. About three.” He flopped down on the sofa and stared at the dark TV screen. “If I wanted three people in this family, there’d be three people. I’m not an idiot.”

“If you had someone, you could talk to them.”

“Why should I talk to someone?” He picked up the
TV Guide
from the coffee table.

“So you wouldn’t be in a mood when work gets to you.”

“I can talk to you if I don’t want to be in a mood.” He turned to the Wednesday-night listings to see if anything was on at eleven-thirty.

“But you don’t talk to me.”

“This is why, because we talk like this.” He didn’t want
Nightline
, he’d seen enough trouble for one day. And he wasn’t in the mood for
The Honeymooners
; Channel Eleven had been rerunning it for so many years that he’d seen most of the episodes two or three times.

“This is the longest we’ve talked in months.” Terri sat on the sofa beside him. She drew her legs up under her. “We’re having a good talk.”

And he didn’t think he could take Arsenio Hall. Not tonight. “What’s good about it?”

“I like it when you tell me how you’re feeling.”

He glanced at her. With her serious dark eyes and her assured movements, she reminded him exactly of her dead mother.

“You know, you’re just like your mother. I ask how you feel, and I wind up telling you how I feel. You’re a mystery to me. I never get to find out anything about you.”

“Why’s it so important how I feel?”

“Because I want to know about this Josh person.”

“Why?”

He closed the
TV Guide
and slapped it back on the table. “Because sometimes people get hurt. And I don’t mean your mother—I’m talking about now. Sometimes young people get hurt. Sometimes they hurt one another.”

“Are you talking about sex?”

He sat there, chest tight and heaving. “Okay. If you have to know, I’m talking about a girl who got thrown off a sixth-story terrace.”

“Wait a minute. Something just went by me. Where did that come from?”

“It happened. And she wasn’t much older than you.” He realized he sounded angry, and he sounded angry because he didn’t know how else to get through to her. “And she probably thought she had all the answers. Just like you do sometimes.”

“When do I think I have all the answers?”

He tried to concentrate on his reflection and hers in the dark TV screen, tried to bring his reflection under control, tried to will himself into a sort of calm. “Tonight.”

“Wait a minute. Are we arguing?”

Cardozo had reached that state of brain overload where all he craved was to sit still in one half of an absolute silence and know that another person was sitting still in the other half of the same silence. “I think we’re arguing,” he said. “No, I’m arguing.”

“What about?”

“I guess what I’m arguing about is, people are losing one another all over this world, and I don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t want to lose you either.”

He sighed. “Then why am I arguing?”

“I don’t know.” A smile came up on her face. “You started it.”

“Josh started it. He’s a troublemaker. Why do you want to run around with troublemakers?”

“Dad.” She kissed, him and slid off the sofa.

“Can’t you tell when I’m joking?”

“No, not tonight. Are you joking?”

“Now I’m joking. I wasn’t before, but I am now. See the smile?”

Something lovely and caring shaped itself in her eyes. “I’m sorry about the woman who got killed and the girl who got thrown off the terrace.”

“I know you are. Don’t worry. Nothing like that is going to happen to us.”
It happened to your mother, but, so help me God, it will never happen to you. Not as long as Vince Cardozo is around.

“I love you, Dad.”

“And I love you too. And I’m sorry we argued.”

“I’m not.”

“And I want to meet Josh.”

“You will.” She gave him a tight, quick clasp. “Good night.” He picked up the
TV Guide
again. He heard her slippers pad into the hallway. A moment later her bedroom door shut. “Hey,” he called. “Go to bed. I’ll take care of the dishes.”

Thursday, May 9

“O
ONA ALDRICH WASN’T IMAGINING
a thing,” Cardozo said. “Jim Delancey was working in the kitchen, exactly where she saw him.”

Sitting in the bird-print chair in a slant of lamplight, Leigh Baker looked pale, tired. “That’s typical,” she said. “Even drunk, Oona had better eyesight than all the rest of us put together.”

They were talking, just the two of them, in the living room—a soft, generous green-walled space hung with French Impressionists. The town house belonged to Waldo Carnegie, the TV magazine publisher she was living with. Brightness billowed in through gauzy window curtains.

“When was Jim Delancey released?” she said.

“Two weeks ago.”

Her hand kept going to her hair. Her fingers made a combing motion as though she were unconsciously checking the alignment of phantom loose strands. Cardozo found the movement and what it said about her present state of mind curiously touching. It was clearly unconscious, an insecure grooming movement—the female equivalent of what a cop did when he straightened his tie in front of a pretty woman.

“And who the hell wrangled a parole for him?” she said.

“Parole proceedings are secret, but we’re looking into it.” Cardozo laid the arraignment photo on the table between them.

She glanced at the pouting baby face and winced and pushed it away like a bad memory.

“Did you see him anywhere in the boutique? Anywhere in Marsh and Bonner’s?”

“No, not that I noticed, and I would certainly have noticed.”

“Did you see him in the street when you left the restaurant?”

“To me, he was a figment of Oona’s second split of champagne. My mind was absolutely closed to the idea that he could be anywhere but in that prison cell where he belongs.”

Cardozo took a moment to inventory the space around him. Antique secretary, silk-upholstered chairs and sofas. A concert-grand piano banked with flowers and silver-framed photographs. It was an elegant room, not at all quiet about its elegance, and it seemed to him that her surroundings suited her. “Who did you tell that you were going to Marsh and Bonner’s?”

“Besides Oona and Tori, no one in particular.”

“Did you mention it at the table while the waiter was there?”

“Possibly. Probably.”

“When you told the cab driver where you were going, were you standing on the street? Could someone have heard you?”

“You’re wondering how Delancey knew.” She sat in the chair a moment, thoughtful. “I usually get into a cab first, then give directions.”