VC01 - Privileged Lives (52 page)

Babe’s blood was beating a drum in her head. The image of a steel-mouthed mask flashed before her.

“The bride wore boots!” Countess Vicki yelped. “Billi, I want that gown—the count and I are going to confirm our vows this spring, and
that
is going to be the look!”

The next few moments passed like caterpillars crawling over Babe’s skin.

Applause exploded and a spotlight swept the bleachers, searching for Billi and finally, when he rose, escorting him down to the runway through a congratulating roar of high-fashion color and gemstone.

Bowing, Billi exuded pride and satisfaction. Letting his eyes drop half closed, he spread his arms wide, embracing the crowd.

The dinner afterward was at Lutèce, and Babe did her best.

The buzz at the tables was that Billi’s line was glitzy, sexy, funny, compelling, expertly paced, slick, ironic, full of Hollywood decadence and offbeat charm, sure to be a winner.

Everyone said Babe must be so pleased for her company, and she made a pleased face.

Champagne was served with the meal. The guests toasted Billi and Babe, and somewhere down the line of toasts someone made a speech about Cordelia’s wacky charm.

Cordelia remained imperturbably there, a perfectly coiffed presence with a cigarette dangling from her lips.

Babe had two espressos, hoping one of them would persuade her she still had the capacity to think. As dessert soufflés were being served, she excused herself.

Billi’s dark eyes questioned her.

She promised him she could get home safely. “It’s just a little headache from all the fun and excitement.”

As Babe lifted the phone in her bedroom, her mind was finally made up. She felt energized, as though all her synapses were at last firing.

It took twelve seconds for the call to click through.

“Allo?”

“Mathilde, it’s Babe. I’m sorry to call you at this hour, but—”

“Bonjour, chérie! Ça va?”

“Mathilde, I’m going to start my own atelier again, and I want you to come back and oversee the first season.”

“But I explained, it’s not possible.”

“How much did you say that farmhouse is going to cost you? I’ll pay you three times the amount. Your bank will have the money tomorrow.”

There was a hesitation in Mathilde’s voice, a missed beat.

Babe doubled the offer.

Babe and Cardozo followed a nurse down an ornate marble hall, their footsteps echoing like drum taps. Since the showing it had taken Babe another week of practice to walk without her cane, and there was still a slight limp in her left leg.

The nurse led them past a landing with a door opening onto what must once have been a ballroom. Patients in pajamas and robes formed hushed groups, shuffling in paper slippers beneath a blazing crystal chandelier.

“How is she doing?” Babe asked.

“She’s still hanging on to a lot of denial,” the nurse said. “At meetings patients are supposed to use their first name—you know, ‘Hi, I’m Joe, I’m an alcoholic:’ She says, ‘Good evening, I’m Lady Canfield, delighted to be here with you.’ Like she’s dropped in from the Rockefeller Foundation.”

The nurse took them as far as Ash’s door.

Ash was sitting in a chair wearing a simple black silk dress and long strands of pearls. Her right arm was in motion, braceleted and white, moving through lamplight that glinted off the plastic fork in her hand.

She was working her way through a raw vegetable salad topped with nuts and seeds, with a glass of Perrier on the side. She ate with an elegant weariness, looking frail and very tired. The white of her skin contrasted starkly with the blue veins in her temples, and she was wearing her hair pulled straight back, with the earphones of a Walkman fitted over it.

As Babe bent to kiss Ash she noticed with strangely pained surprise how old and tired her friend looked.

Ash reacted slowly, recognizing Babe, smiling, pulling off the earphones. She got to her feet, and it saddened Babe to see how she had to make the effort in stages.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Ash said. “I was listening to Bobby Short singing some beautiful old Vernon Duke songs.”

Babe and Ash held each other.

“My first nonfamily visitor in over a month,” Ash said. “Oh sweetie, I’ve missed you.”

“Ash,” Babe said, “you remember Vince Cardozo.”

Ash glanced sidelong at Cardozo, studied him, then cast him a disarming smile. “Do I?”

“You and Vince met at the party on Holcombe’s yacht.”

Ash looked at Babe. There was something speculative in her gaze. “Should I remember a party on a yacht?”

“Well, you were there,” Babe said, “and it was memorable.”

Ash’s eyes took on a wary expression. “I’m sorry. I suppose I misbehaved.” She coughed a deep, dry cough. “What do you think of my temporary headquarters? It’s
très
glam,
n’est-ce pas
?”

There was a tiroir of pale ash with ebony handles. The four-poster bed had a cream-colored cover. A Raggedy Ann doll that was at least as old as Ash lolled against the enormous fluffy pillows in lace cases.

“This is a place for drunks, you know,” Ash said. “But my problem’s not drink. I only drink because of other problems.”

“How are you feeling?” Babe asked.

“I’m fine—cured. Back to normal and bored. I’ll probably check myself out tomorrow.”

“Can you do that?”

“I’d better be able to do it. It’s my money that got me in, my money can damned well get me out.”

Beneath the bravado, Babe heard the voice of a frightened child.

“Where’s Dunk?” Ash said.

“I saw Dunk at the showing,” Babe said. “He was fine. Don’t worry yourself. Get your rest, and you’ll pick up the threads of your life in no time.”

“What in the world are you saying? I never dropped the threads of my life.”

There was a strained silence. Ash’s eyes traveling from Babe to Cardozo. Babe could feel they were entering a dangerous emotional zone.

“Well?” Ash said.

“Well what?” Babe said.

“The purpose of this visit.”

“Must it have a purpose? We came to see you.”

“No, no, no, no.” Ash pointed at Cardozo.
“He
didn’t come to see me. He doesn’t even know me.”

“Lady Canfield,” Cardozo said, “last month we showed you these pictures.”

He handed them to her. Her gaze was flat, empty of reaction.

“We asked you if you recognized any of them.” He handed her the last photo: the girl with the confident stride, with the strong nose and jaw, the blond hair and brown eyes, the girl with the package who had gone into Beaux Arts Tower at 11:07
A.M.
, Tuesday, May 27, and never came out again. “You said you recognized this one.”

For a moment Ash appeared to be lost in a mist between worlds. She shook her head. “Never saw her blond before. I can see I’m going to need to refresh my memory.”

She went to the tiroir where she had arranged her Countess Lura Esterhasz skin care bottles. She brought three tumblers and a bottle of moisturizer to the bedside table. She tipped Babe a crafty glance.

“Remember when we used to do this at Farmington?”

She uncapped the moisturizer and tilted it over one of the tumblers. A clear amber liquid poured out.

She poured two fingers in each tumbler. “They don’t give you ice here. But this is Jack Daniel’s, it tastes terrific neat.” She raised her glass.
“Santé,
everyone.”

She stopped, conscious of Babe’s cool disbelieving stare.

“Ash,” Babe cried, “for God’s sake don’t drink that!”

“I most certainly shall.” Ash emptied the glass in a single swallow.

She sat on the edge of the bed, staring vaguely in front of her. After a moment she reached to the table for a second tumbler.

Babe made a move to stop her.

Cardozo put out a hand. “Let her do it. It’s what she wants.”

Ash nodded. “Babe, your friend’s a wise man.”

Ash downed the second glass.

“On the house.” Cardozo pushed the third tumbler toward her.

She stared at him, then at it, then at Babe.

The lids sank over her eyes. Her face began crumpling. She put a hand to her mouth and burped softly, and then she was vomiting through her fingers, vomiting over her pearls, down her dress.

Ash studied her vomit-stained hand as though it were an object that had materialized from another universe. She blinked back tears. A spasm racked her and she made a gagging sound.

This isn’t my friend,
Babe thought.
Ash Canfield is not puking on the detox floor.

Ash was sliding off the bed to her knees, bending forward, dragging herself slowly through the fouled pile of the carpet.

Babe stared at her childhood friend, crawling across the carpet like a squashed slug.

“Get out,” Ash whimpered. “Please just get the fuck out.”

41

I
N THE TAXI CARDOZO
could feel the pain in Babe and he knew she was trying to hold back tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a damned shame.”

Babe nodded, teeth pressed down on her lower lip. He put his arm around her and drew her against his shoulder.

They rode on in silence.

After a while he looked at the photo again, thinking of what Ash had said:
Never saw her blond before.

And suddenly the mystery woman wasn’t a mystery anymore.

The butler led Cardozo into the big, pricey pad and threw open the huge cypress doors of the livingroom.

“Your Ladyship, Mr. Vince Cardozo.”

Countess Vicki sat curled on the enormous velvet sofa, one leg beneath her and the other swinging shoeless. The shoes lying on the Persian carpet matched her brown silk dress.

She was talking on the telephone and trying to clasp an emerald bracelet. Sapphires and diamonds blazed at her throat and wrists and ears. Her slender, oval face turned in Cardozo’s direction, full-lipped and hinting, and she shot him a smiling, brown-eyed glance of welcome.

Like the countess’s dress, the enormous livingroom with its three marbled pillars and two crystal chandeliers seemed to have been designed to set off the owner’s dark coloring. Bookcases were filled with gold-tooled leather bindings and glittering figurines and intricately ornamented porcelain plates. Tables wore bright shawls and were dotted with china bowls and silver-framed pictures of current celebrities, most of them autographed.

Cardozo took a leisurely stroll to the fireplace. Engraved invitations were stuck in the mirror over the mantel. They were also, more surprisingly, stuck in the frame of a Renoir.

“Too divine,” Vicki said. “Call you later—love you much.” She set the phone receiver back in the cradle and rose from the sofa.

“How angelic of you to remember my phone number.” She came across the room and took Cardozo’s hand. “I honestly thought you’d forgotten me.”

Cardozo smiled. “Never.”

The countess bent down and pulled the phone cord out of the wall jack. “We don’t need that anymore. Would you like something to drink? I have some leftover cappuccino—or would you rather get drunk?”

“I could live without cappuccino.”

The countess, a dark silhouette against the glow of the pantry doorway, spent three minutes trying to press extra ice cubes into the blender. “I hope you like slush margaritas,” she called. “And if you don’t, please pretend.”

The blender screeched and she came out of the pantry carrying two champagne glasses filled with what looked like chopped icicles. “Maid’s day off—forgive.”

He sipped. “Tastes great.”

She sipped. “It’s usually hard for me to meet new people. But with you it’s different, I felt that right away. I can be myself with you—and you can be yourself with me—and neither of us is going to judge the other. I think that’s the way a man and a woman should be, don’t you?”

“It’s not a bad idea.”

“Why don’t we find a more private locale?”

Dark hair billowing, skirt swaying, she led him down a seemingly endless corridor, the walls tiled with Utrillos and Jasper Johnses.

Drink in hand, she stood by the door, her bright mouth smiling now, her large eyes inviting him into the still, cool, dim interior of the bedroom.

He accepted, moving past her.

The walls had been done in a dizzying variety of
faux
marble and
faux
wood and trompe-l’oeil. There were cut begonias in a Chinese porcelain vase on the dresser and a telephone console with eight buttons on the bedside table. On a chest of drawers were three wigs on stands—a red, a gray, and a blond.

Clothes had been laid out on the bed: a mauve evening gown, silk stockings, a sequined purse, a short fur jacket.

“Are you going out?” he asked.

“I was planning to.” She swung out one of the mirror wall panels and took a cushioned hanger from the closet. “But why go to a dull party when I can stay home and have an exciting one?”

“I guess you’re pretty good at state-of-the-art partying.”

“I guess that’s a compliment.” She finished her drink and slipped a CD into the player. Tinkly music filled the room. “I love the naive magic of Mozart—don’t you?”

She switched off the lamp, leaving the room half lit by streetlights slanting through the Roman shades. She drew the thick damask curtains, and a moment later she lit a scented candle and placed it beside the phone.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said.

He sat down on the bed.

She sat beside him, solemnly reading his face. She put her arm around him and drew him against her breasts.

He felt the involuntary response of his body, the deep-down beat of his heart speeding up.

“It’s a beautiful thing, don’t you think, our being so intimate—complete strangers?” She unbuttoned his shirt. Her tongue touched him softly. “Why do you have the gun? What kind of crime are you in?”

“I’m a cop.”

She smiled, accepting the answer without believing it. “And I’m the Ayatollah.”

“Don’t joke—he’s a holy man.”

“Are you a Moslem cop?”

“The force recruits minorities.”

She bent down and laid her head lightly on his lap. She had a troubled moment with his zipper.