Deadly Rich (45 page)

He fixed her with a disbelieving stare. “You’re going to spend three days and nights alone?”

“I’m not alone. You’re here.”

“I’m here now, but—”

“But what?”

He shrugged. “Now’s now.”

“Luckily.” She tossed the pillow onto the sofa beside her. “How are you coming with your killer?” she asked.

He shrugged. “All you can do is do everything you can do.”

A soft flow of lacquered light spilled across Oriental rugs and carved mahogany tables. Ornately framed French Impressionists glowed from pale walls, and alabaster busts of fellows who could have been Roman emperors stood guard at either end of the mantel of the hooded marble fireplace.

“It was luck that broke Son of Sam,” he said. “A parking ticket. They had a three-hundred-man task force, but without that parking ticket three hundred pairs of hands would have been as useful as three hundred pairs of tweezers.”

Her head with its beautifully messy hair rested back on satin cushions. “But Son of Sam was crazy. Isn’t it always harder when you’re looking for a madman?”

“Society Sam’s probably crazy too. At least that’s what the psychological profile says.”

“Do you believe it?”

He rippled the water in his glass studiously. “Not as much as the psychologists do, but some of it rings true. For example, I buy very much that it’s a class thing.”

“Class?” she said.

Without gawking too openly, Cardozo glanced around him, at Chinese vases of fresh-cut chrysanthemums, crystal bookends enclosing single silk-bound volumes, gold table clocks and porcelain figurines and marble goose eggs upended on intricate ebony stands. They were objects that spoke of wealth in the most straightforward voice imaginable. There was nothing coded about them.

“Look at the locations Society Sam chooses,” he said. “Marsh and Bonner’s, Park Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street, an Upper East Side town house—he’s hitting in the Golden Ghetto. It’s an envy thing, a rage thing. And the victims: they’re wearing jewelry, fine clothes—emblems of money. And they’re fashionable … they have long hair … they’re tall—”

“Avalon wasn’t tall.”

“For a woman he was tall.”

“The killer mistook Avalon for a woman?”

“We’re guessing.”

“So if I pin my hair up and wear a cotton coat and low heels and slouch and stay away from expensive shops and this area—”

“Then you’ll be a lot safer. Unless … you see, here’s where my expert and I disagree.”

“Your expert?”

“You really want to hear me grouse about work?” he said.

“Absolutely.”

“I have a friend who’s a clinical psychologist. He thinks the victims are chosen at random—the killer’s psycho-biological clock alarm goes off, the killer goes into his gotta-kill cycle, prowls till he sees a candidate. He stalks that candidate and when the opportunity presents itself, he hits. The only connection between the killer and the victim is that the victim is the first candidate to cross the killer’s path after the cycle starts. In a technical sense the killer and victim are strangers.”

“Why only in a technical sense? It seems to me they
are
strangers.”

“My friend calls it ‘an unsymmetrical relationship.’ The victim doesn’t know who the killer is—but the killer knows who the victim is.”

He was aware of a change in her, in the quality of her attention.

“You don’t mean the killer personally knows who he’s killing,” she said.

“He doesn’t know in your sense and mine. He knows in the sense that, from his point of view, the victim is wearing a flag or a label. The killer can read that flag. The killer knows the most likely place to find a victim with that label, the most likely time to find one. But when the victim looks at the killer, there’s no flag, no label—no warning—until that last instant when the knife comes out.”

“Do you agree with any of this?”

“Not completely. I don’t think the killings are random.”

She shifted slightly. “That’s interesting. Why not?”

“Look at the original Son of Sam killings. None of those victims knew one another. There wasn’t a single link. They didn’t eat at the same restaurants, they didn’t share employers, they didn’t ride the same busses or live on the same streets. That’s random. But Society Sam’s victims know each other.”

She gave a half nod of assent. “Are the police sure the victims were all killed by one person?”

“It’s the simplest theory.”

“But is the simplest always right? What if those Society Sam letters are fakes?”

“We’re sure the first two are the same killer.”

“But you’re not sure who killed Dizey?”

“Completely different MO. No cuts.”

“If it isn’t the same killer, is there anyone you suspect?”

“A lot of people had access to Dizey that night. A lot of them had been stung at one time or another by that column of hers.”

“You think it was someone she’d blasted in the column?”

“It’s the sort of possibility we have to consider. But don’t forget the ones who never got mentioned—because they might have had a grudge against her too.”

“In other words, you’re considering practically everyone at that memorial.”

“We have to.”

“Tell me, just for example, would you consider me?”

Cardozo found himself enjoying this woman. She had something unpredictable about her. He liked not knowing exactly how she would react, because he didn’t know exactly how he’d respond, and that made him interesting to himself again. “Would I consider you as Society Sam? No, you’re a woman.”

“What about just killing Dizey?”

“I’d consider it.”

“How could you prove it?”

“You have to understand—most homicide investigations are closed one way: a witness talks.”

“What if there’s no witness?”

“There’s always one witness, and that’s the one that usually talks.”

Her hands rested on her lap, locked. “The killer confesses?”

“Or gives himself away.”

“How?”

“Surprisingly dumb ways. A lot of killers can’t resist cozying up to the cops.”

“Why’s that?”

“I have a theory it’s fear. Some part of them is afraid that punishment is inevitable. They want to speed things up a little, end the waiting. A lot of killers actually try to help the cops. For example, if you were the killer, you’d be making a big mistake now—asking me about the investigation.”

“Then let’s change the subject before I get myself sentenced to life. Are you hungry?”

“Cops are always hungry.”

“Let’s eat in. Do you mind?”

“Who, me?”

He followed her into the kitchen. She opened an armoire-sized refrigerator and stood rattling the ice cubes in her empty glass. The freezer compartment exhaled white mist around her face.

“How would you feel about tomato and fennel soup, rack of lamb, vanilla ice cream with lingonberries that were fresh once upon a time?”

“What-berries?”

“They grow in Sweden. They’re supposed to be a delicacy.”

“How are you going to make all that?”

“Waldo’s chef froze some leftovers. I’ll just heat them up.” She pulled three quart-sized plastic bags from the freezer and thunked them down on the counter. They looked like petrified swamp. She slit knife holes in the bags and arranged them on plates and slid them into the microwave. She set dials with a matter-of-factness that made him think she’d mastered basic microwave cookery.

She went and pulled another bag from the freezer. This one looked like a red woolen cap that had frozen in a snow drift. She set it in a mixing bowl.

She arranged two place settings on a butcher-block table in a corner of the kitchen. Two dozen gleaming copper pans hung from a rack directly overhead.

“Could I ask a rude question?” Cardozo pointed a thumb upward. “Does anyone ever cook in those things?”

She smiled. “I don’t pry into the servants’ lives, and they don’t tattle on me to the magazines.”

She went down to the cellar and returned with a bottle of wine. A heavy coat of whitish dust lay on the neck of the bottle, and he could see a 1969 on the label.

“Mouton-Rothschild.” She spoke the French syllables as though they were the name of a never-to-be-forgotten lover. “It was the only wine that ever did all those things to my mouth that connoisseurs say a great wine should.”

The name rang a distant, five-hundred-dollar-a-bottle bell in his mind. He remembered reading about it in
The New York Times.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m not that much of a wine drinker.”

“You are tonight.” She got the cork out with three twists of something that looked like obstetrics forceps for midgets. “To hell with letting it breathe. It can breathe in the glass.” She poured two glasses.

“Are you drinking?” he said.

“One glass looks lonely. I like two on the table, don’t you? When you finish yours, we’ll switch.”

When the bell on the microwave went off, she got up and took out their thawed dinners and brought the soup bowls and plates back to the table.

During dinner she turned giddy, talkative, as though she were the one who was drinking the wine. She told him about having a French mademoiselle and an English nanny when she was a child and going to the Brearley school over on East End Avenue when she was twelve, and sitting next to Rockefellers and Vanderbilts in class.

“That’s where I met Oona and Tori. We were instant chums for life. When we were seventeen we all made our debut together at the Infirmary Ball at the Plaza. Lester Lanin conducted the orchestra, and do you know who I danced my first dance with? Truman Capote.”

“Why not your father?”

“Dad had died.”

“What about your mother?”

“Mom didn’t.”

The silence told him that Leigh Baker’s mother was not her favorite person.

“By the time Tori and Oona and I were twenty-one, we were all engaged. And by twenty-two Oona and I were married.”

“How many times have you been married?”

“Four. But Charley was the one I loved. Charley Kohler.”

“The producer? Tell me about him.”

She drew in a breath and sat with her hands flat on the table, thinking. “I’ve always thought happiness is not even knowing you’re happy till you look back and you say, Wow, that was it. After he died I looked back at those years and I realized that was it.”

“What did you like most about him?”

There was something in her eyes that was deeper than loss. They were deep-set eyes and of such a dark green that they appeared almost brown around the pupils. “I loved his laughter. I loved the way he laughed. I loved the times he chose to laugh. I loved the reasons he laughed.”

“No one since?”

“Not like him. It would be what researchers call a statistical fluke.”

“Flukes happen.”

“All the time. But I’ve had mine. Mustn’t be greedy.”

He was feeling a glow throughout his body, a flush over every inch of his skin, and he felt free to ask her questions he might not have if he hadn’t had that second glass of Mouton-Rothschild.

“What about Dick Braidy? I have trouble seeing you married to him.”

“He was Charley’s personal assistant and after Charley died he was there when I needed him, and most of the time he was sweet. It counts for something, when a person’s sweet to you.”

“Doesn’t sound like many people have been sweet to you.”

“Maybe I have exaggerated expectations.”

“What about you and Waldo?”

Her fork stopped halfway to her mouth and went back to her plate. “It’s not the same at all. We’re not married.”

“I know, but …” He shrugged. “You live here.”

“He’s lonely.” She said it as though it was the reason they were together.

“And are you lonely?”

“I thought I was.”

“Why don’t you marry him?”

“We’re not in love. He wants a friend, he wants a hostess, he wants some glitz—I’m it.”

“And what do you want?”

“I’m not sure.”

He sat there in the stillness of that moment.
What am I doing
? he wondered.
Hoping for a twenty-ton truck to run my life over
?

She got up from the table. She went to the counter where she’d left the ice cream to thaw.

Cardozo watched the way she walked. It was fluid, easy, with no wasted movement.

She squeezed the ice-cream bag and made a pouting face. “It’s going to be another hour before it’s soft.”

It occurred to Cardozo that she could have thawed it in two minutes in the microwave. Obviously she was in no hurry. That suited him.

“Let’s watch a movie,” he said. “Let’s watch one of yours.”

“You’re either a sadist or a masochist. Which one?”

“How about the last one you made for TV? I missed that one.”

“I hate my TV movies.” Her eyes came around to his, thoughtfully. “Which of my movies did your wife like best?”

“The one she loved was where you were the plain Jane married to the actor with the drinking problem.”

“
Cassandra
—that was fifteen years ago.”

“So we’ve all added a little mileage.”

“Did you like it too?”

“Well, at the time …”

“You didn’t.”

“I thought it was good, but …” He sighed. “I’ve worked with people like the husband you had in that movie. I still do. For me it was like two hours overtime.”

“Without pay?”

He smiled.

“I was a mess in that movie. Glasses and floppy sweaters.”

“My wife loved it that you weren’t glamorous. She thought you
were
that woman.”

“A lot of people did. Funny, I was a roaring drunk. And my costar, who was playing a drunk, wasn’t. In fact, he was the one who persuaded me to go to AA. The first time.”

“Could we see it?” Cardozo said. “I think I’ll like it better this time.”

They went to the library on the second floor. He sat on the sofa. She loaded the tape into the VCR. She turned off all the lights except for one dim little lamp above the TV, and she came to the sofa and kicked off her shoes and sat beside him.

“Lights, camera, oops!” She aimed the remote and pushed a button, and there was a fanfare and the studio logo came up on the TV screen.

Now and then during the movie he had the feeling she was watching him, and he turned several times to check, but she was sitting forward with her chin resting on one fist, watching the screen. And then she seemed to know he was going to turn, and her eyes met his with a look that hovered between amused and uneasy, as though she hoped they were sharing something, but she wasn’t a hundred percent sure.