Deadly Rich (9 page)

She took a cigarette from an engraved crystal box. Before Cardozo could offer a light she had picked up a little silver bird from the table. She pushed its tail, the bird breathed flame, and she lit the cigarette.

“When Oona and I were young, she was one of my two best friends. We swore we’d stay best friends all our lives. And we tried to be, we really did try.”

“I understand. I lost a friend like that.”

Smoke floated on the still, jonquil-scented air.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“And I’m sorry you lost yours.”

“I just wish—” She broke off.

Cardozo waited, giving her his cop’s ear if she needed it.

“I wish I could remember her the way she used to be—fresh and funny and beautiful and brilliant. And sober. Instead of the way she died.”

“Look, I know it doesn’t seem to make sense—”

“No. That’s the trouble. It makes too much sense. Oona lived wastefully, she died wastefully.”

“Maybe her life wasn’t as wasteful as you think.”

She turned to look at him and her eyes were suddenly fierce. “Then, please, just tell me what the hell was she doing all her life!”

“She was living her life the best she knew how. It’s not her fault that some sleaze decided to kill her.”

“No, it’s not her fault.” Leigh Baker’s eyes stayed on him, and then her pale, veined eyelids flicked down.

He could feel her mind going around, chewing on itself. “And it’s not your fault either,” he said.

She sighed. “But if only I’d believed her …”

“Believing her wouldn’t have kept her out of that changing room. There was no way of predicting. These things happen. Unfortunately they happen more and more, and they happen to decent people.”

“There’s too much murder in this city,” Leigh Baker said.

“I agree.”

“And it’s no good calling it random violence, as though killing were like taxes or the weather. This isn’t random, this is
my life—
my family and my friends are getting killed.”

He spoke gently. “It’s understandable you’d feel angry. You’re not alone. A lot of people are angry.”

“Tell me, Lieutenant. Are you angry?”

“Yes—I’m angry.”

“
I’M SO UPSET FOR YOU
, truly I am. I’m so sorry.” Though the voice on the phone was a man’s, it had the too soothing, almost fawning tone of an insecure mother. “I know exactly what you’re going through—and I just want you to know, I’m here whenever you need me, day or night.
And
I make housecalls.”

“Look,” Leigh said, “I haven’t got the strength right now to be tactful.”

“Of course not, you poor thing.”

“Let’s be honest. You detested Oona, you fought like a dog with her, and so far as I know you never reconciled, so please, let’s not make this any harder by pretending you can comfort me. I’m sorry if that sounds awful.”

“It sounds tremendously human, hon, just like you. Believe me I do understand. But I wasn’t phoning about Oona. Good God, I’m the first to admit I couldn’t stand that broad’s guts. And if you think I’m going to even
try
to pretend with you—”

She felt that old familiar rush of certainty beneath her skin. When Dick Braidy took this tone, he wanted something.

“You and I just haven’t got the kind of relationship where pretending plays any role at all,” he said, “and that’s what I think is so great about you and me.”

“Dick, if you didn’t phone me about Oona, what have you been talking about for ten minutes?”

“Dizey, of course.”

Hiding in her heart was a sick little fascination that Dick Braidy knew so well how to arouse. She realized that if she gave in to it, she would end up furious at herself. “What about Dizey?”

He let a moment crawl by. “Her column.”

“Today?”

“You bet your sweet tush today—would I be phoning you about
yesterday’s
column?”

She understood that for Dick Braidy and his hundreds of think-alikes, nothing was real or mattered till it was on TV or in the gossip columns or whispered at Park Avenue dinner parties—if you could call the level of communication at those dinners whispering. Volcanos could be blowing up in Honduras and killing three hundred people at a spurt, but for Dick Braidy the true hot poop of the hour was apt to be that a ved
dee
famous pop singer’s toupee had been found in the Jacuzzi of a junk-bond mogul’s mistress.

Leigh knew she should pull back, end this conversation now. But she couldn’t. He’d hooked her—just as he had so many times before. “What has Dizey got in today’s column?”

“You don’t know? You honestly haven’t seen it?”

“Of course I haven’t seen it.” She had to fight to control her voice now. “Would we be having this conversation if I had?”

“Then do me a favor—do us both a favor—above all do yourself a favor. Please,
please
, I’m sincerely begging you—don’t, do
not
look at Dizey’s column today. Promise.”

“Will you please just tell me straight out what Dizey has put in her column?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“If you’re not going to tell me,” she burst out, “if all you’re doing is playing one of your goddamned games with me, then … go to hell!”

“Now, hon, just take it easy.”

“I will not take it easy.”

“Now listen to me—”

“I will not listen to you. You’re not helping, not one bit. You’ve never helped. You’ve always made things worse.”

“Now, hon, you’re understandably excited. I know you don’t mean that.”

“You know
shit
! I
do
mean it! Why the hell do you think I divorced you?” Leigh threw the phone receiver into the cradle.

For the next minute and a half she sat perfectly still on the edge of the bed, listening to the weightless sigh of the air conditioner as it stirred the point-lace curtains at the bedroom windows.

Then she rose and went into the hallway.

The button beside the elevator door was glowing like a ruby caught in a sunbeam, which meant the maid was still cleaning.

Leigh stared over the carved banister down into the stairwell.

Nothing moved.

As she hurried down the two flights of carpeted stairs, she had a sense of perfumed airlessness, like the ventilation on the Concorde. Around her the town house had the quiet of a secret wrapped in cotton.

On the first floor morning sun streamed into the living room, turning beveled shelves of rare-book bindings gold. She moved quickly through the dining room, where sun touched mahogany chairs and table with streaks of rose.

Just inside the swinging pantry door, on the counter beneath the cabinets of Wedgwood and Lowestoft dinner settings, the maid had left her copy of that day’s
New York Tribune.

Leigh snatched it up.

There was an article on the killing, and Leigh was surprised to see her own photograph, captioned,
FRIEND OF VICTIM
. It was a publicity shot, and it struck her as glossy and false. Next to it was a photograph of Vincent Cardozo, captioned
IN CHARGE
. He had a dark face, made darker by serious eyes and heavy eyebrows and a mustache.

There was no photograph of Oona.

“Dizey’s Dish” was located, as always, on page ten.

The loathsome preppie Jim Delancey who less than four short years ago treated the innocent body of a young girl with a brutality you would hesitate to show a wad of pizza dough, is back on the streets, and the morbidly curious and strong of stomach can catch his act—as a salad chef at Archibald’s.

And how did this sickening turn of events come about?

Because under pressure from a certain highly placed and usually more responsible citizen, the parole board voted early freedom to this killer.

And to what secure facility did they entrust this menace?

Why, to his family. Which is to say, to the Marsh and Bonner’s saleswoman who somehow, with or without the help of her ex-husband the railway switchman, managed to come up with the fees to pay for the defense that so slandered the memory of an angel and destroyed the marriage of Leigh Baker, one of the finest and most beloved actresses this world knows.

The paper slid from Leigh’s hand to the counter. The image of her dead daughter rose up in her brain. For a moment she could not master her thoughts. They were like a knife turning in a raw wound.

Back in her bedroom she lifted the phone receiver and punched out Dizey. Duke’s number.

“Yeah?” Dizey’s voice came on the line—bright and brash as a Texas fanfare.

“Dizey, it’s Leigh.”

“Just let me get rid of this jerk on the other line.” There was a silence and then a click and then Dizey was back. “Did you like the plug I gave you in the column?”

“Dizey, who got Delancey out of prison?”

Dizey didn’t answer.

“Come on, Dizey, the parole board didn’t rise up in one body and say the Holy Ghost has commanded us to free Jim Delancey.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m not on the parole board.”

“Please don’t give me that.”

“Would you rather I say that as a journalist I don’t reveal sources? Okay—I’m a journalist and I don’t reveal sources.”

“If that barbarian had been in prison where he belonged, I hope you realize Oona would be alive today.”

“If you know that for a fact, you’ve got a better Ouija board than I do.”

“I know it for a fact and so do you.”

“Listen, Leigh, I did you a favor today, and why don’t you do me one and say good-bye right now, and we’ll forget this conversation ever happened.”

“
DIZEY DUKE IS THE
prima donna assoluta
of foul temper.” Dick Braidy was all forgiveness and smiles. “All you can do when she gets that way is run for cover.”

Leigh knew he didn’t mean a word of it, any more than she’d really meant it when she’d blown up at him on the phone. He was only saying what he thought she needed to hear. She appreciated the kindness, but he was missing her point. “It’s not the argument that upsets me.”

“Of course it upsets you,” Dick Braidy said. “You never hang up on me and you
never
tell me to go to hell if you’re not
deeply
upset.”

They were sitting in the chintz-filled living room of Dick Braidy’s midtown penthouse. A milky light spilled through the glass wall that separated them from the trellised terrace.

“So please,” Dick Braidy said, “please clarify for me. How did one little phone call with Dizey manage to work you into such a state? Honey, under all that glamour, you look
dreadful
.”

Sometimes her ex-husband amazed her. It was as though he had no conception of what she’d been through yesterday. She lifted her glass to the light and frowned through the ripples of club soda and lime. “Looks like someone melted down an old Coke bottle.”

“Someone did. His name is Jorge Sintera of Now Design, and these very tumblers are featured in the upcoming
New York Times Magazine
cover interview with Prince Frederick of Denmark.”

She found herself staring at Dick Braidy with his thinning, neatly combed-back gray-blond hair. His alert, humorous eyes, blinking behind Paris-designed bifocals, reminded her of two gray-green marbles. “How do you always manage to keep up with everything?”

“It’s not that hard if you’re willing to devote twenty-five hours a day to it. But I believe the subject was Dizey and you.”

Leigh twisted the glass between both hands and studied the miniature whirlpool she had created. “Dizey knows who got Jim Delancey out of prison, and she won’t tell me.”

There was a play of small muscles in Dick Braidy’s forehead. “Now, just come
off
it. This is
me
you’re talking to, toots. That was a half-blind item in the column today. She does it all the time—pure bluff. And besides, what good would it do you to know? What happens then? You sue the penal system?”

“This is going to sound crazy.” Leigh set down her glass and wrapped her arms around herself, hugged herself close. “I could never tell anyone else—they’d think I was paranoid.”

Dick Braidy guffawed. “But it’s okay to tell me, because I was married to you for three years, and I
know
you’re paranoid. Okay. Let the craziness commence. I’m all ears.”

“Jim Delancey killed Oona.”

The silence in the room changed. The muffled sound of traffic twelve stories below seemed to fade.

Dick Braidy sank into his armchair as though he’d been pushed. “And how do you know that? Did you just happen to stroll past the open door of the changing room and see it?”

“Of course not. Please don’t do that to me, Dick.” It hurt her to let anyone, even the closest of her ex-husbands, see what a frightened, needy, vulnerable little child she was, how aching and desperate to be reassured and, yes, believed. “I don’t know it, I just feel it.”

He sat with an expression of wanting intensely to understand. “Look, toots, I can state from personal experience, you’re second to none in the intuition department. Now, if you’re trying to put that killer back in prison where he belongs,
brava.
You can count on me to stand right beside you. But feelings are not going to do the trick in a court of law.”

“I’m not the only one who feels it. The police feel it too.”

He watched her with those quietly aware eyes. “And what makes you think that?”

“A long talk with the lieutenant who’s heading the task force.”

“So they’ve given poor old Oona a task force, have they? Well, it’s the least she deserves.”

“The
police
don’t even know who got Delancey out and Dizey does and she’s treating it like a gossipy little exclusive.”

“After today’s column don’t think for a minute the police won’t ask Dizey a question or two.”

“She’ll say freedom of the press and take her case to TV.”

“Granted, Dizey has been known to possess a streak of opportunism …” Dick Braidy ran the tip of his finger around the rim of his glass.

“You could find out,” Leigh said. “You know how to handle her.”

“That I do. Dizey and I are dish buddies from way back.” He sat there nodding at her. His gaze seemed laden with concern. “Do you know what you should do, hon? You should really consider joining my gym. The workouts are absolute psychotherapy, and they cost a third of what a shrink charges.”