VC01 - Privileged Lives (41 page)

A sense of utter futility filled her.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to go on a crying jag in this office,
she told herself.

As she pushed the draftsman’s lamp away from the worktable, the picture postcard that she had attached to the extendable arm fell to the drawing board.

Her eye went to the photograph of the old farmhouse in Brittany. At that moment one of those little messengers Dr. Corey had warned her about blipped something from her unconscious.

She picked up the card and frowned at the partial postmark, piecing together the name of the town.

Fingers trembling, she opened the phone book and looked up the directions for international dialing. She called information in Brittany and in her best school French asked if there was a listing for Mademoiselle Mathilde Lheureux.

A moment later the phone was making the French two-buzzes-in-a-row signal.

A voice answered.
“Allo?”

A band of surprise tightened around Babe’s throat. “Mathilde—you’re alive!”

“Bien sûr
I’m alive. Who is this?”

“It’s Babe, Mathilde. I’m alive too.”

An instant’s astonishment blipped from Brittany up to a satellite over the Atlantic and down to Manhattan. “But they told me you were dead!”

“They told me
you
were dead!”

“Well, what do they know.
Chérie,
you must take the very next plane and come visit.”

“I can’t. I’m working. You come visit me.”

“I can’t. I’m rebuilding the farmhouse. The timbers are beautiful but old. Like me. Three hundred thousand francs to put in steel supports. What can I do? It’s my home.”

They chatted for almost three quarters of an hour, and when Babe hung up, she felt cheerfulness bubbling in her blood.

She bounced into Billi’s office. “Billi, guess what—Mathilde’s alive!”

Billi looked up from his desk. He seemed quite unexcited. “How in the world did you find that out?”

“I phoned her.”

“Well, well, imagine that. Is she going to come visit us?”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t persuade her.”

“Too bad. Would have been fun to see the old grouch again.” Billi steepled his fingers together. “Say, Babe, would you care to give me the benefit of your expertise on something?”

He showed her a sketch of a pink silk cocktail dress with an extraordinarily long and very high waist, worn with a matching quilted satin bolero. Granted, fashion sketches tended to a sort of impressionistic exaggeration, but the thought came to Babe that this was an attractive sketch of an extremely impractical outfit.

“One of my designers put a 1954 Chanel on the computer and reworked it,” Billi said.

“The bolero looks like something Valentino would do,” Babe said.

Billi smiled. “He did. Two seasons back. We changed the color and shaped the collar a little.”

Babe felt her lips draw together. “Are we using it?”

“Well, we have a few gaps in the cruise line, and it wouldn’t be too hard to crash. What do you think? A fond
hommage
to past elegance?”

Babe had been trying her best to keep an open mind, to get a feel for what was happening in today’s fashion. But more and more she had a frustrating sense of inability to judge the direction that design had taken, or at least that Babethings had chosen to take. The company designers were making brilliant statements, but the fact that the statement had to be worn by a living woman was simply an obstacle to be ingeniously and expensively conquered.

“It’s rather … witty,” Babe said. And if Billi included it in the line, she would have to wonder if she understood anything about today’s fashions.

“Witty,” Billi said. “What an apt observation. What ever did we do without you for seven long years,
ma petite?
Yes, we’ll use it. A little blandness to spice the line.”

34

C
ARDOZO WAS OVERSEEING THE
case of an Upper East Side slasher victim that Monteleone was handling, and it took him to Dr. Flora Vogelsang’s neighborhood, a bright half mile of antique shops and art galleries. The air was thick with the smell of money burning, the jostle of women who spent a thousand dollars on a wristwatch, men who paid five hundred for a wallet.

In the lobby of 1220 Madison a doorman sat with hunched shoulders on a stool by the buzzers. Cardozo approached.

“Help you?” the doorman challenged.

Cardozo opened his wallet, flashing the shield and a twenty-dollar bill. Bribes were not tax-deductible, and they couldn’t be recovered from petty cash. They were an inescapable expense of the Job.

“Does a child psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Flora Vogelsang live here?”

Cardozo moved through a corridor thronged with delivery boys, derelicts, off-duty cops, neighborhood office workers. It was the standard showing for the noon lineup, an easy way to make five bucks if you resembled the precinct’s suspect of the day.

He stepped into the viewing room. This was the see-through side of the one-way mirror. A white-faced young woman was sitting there shredding a Kleenex.

“Thanks for coming, Miss Yannovitch.” Cardozo put on his most sympathetic voice and face. “I know this isn’t easy for you.”

Tammy Yannovitch was the next-door-neighbor of a woman whose murder was being investigated. Yannovitch had reported seeing a male Hispanic entering the elevator just before she’d heard her neighbor’s dog barking; she’d gone into the unlocked apartment and found the body. A patrolman had caught a male Hispanic trying to break into an apartment three buildings away, roughly the same description, carrying an upholsterer’s knife.

Cardozo spoke into the mike. “Okay, bring ’em on.”

On the other side of the mirror seven Hispanics filed into the room and stood blinking into the light.

Tammy Yannovitch opened her purse and put on her glasses, and right away Cardozo knew her ID was going to be worthless.

“You wear those glasses often, Miss Yannovitch?”

“Only when I go to the movies.” She stared at each of the seven, squinting through her pink-tinted Coke-bottle lenses. “It’s hard to be sure—I only saw him that split second.”

“That’s okay. Take your time.”

She took her time, said she thought maybe it was number two, maybe it was number four. The men stepped forward and faced right and left and she still wasn’t sure.

Cardozo was looking at number six. The man was wearing a Miss Liberty T-shirt, and black hair curled from his enormous head. His features were thick, as though a sculptor had laid them on with a trowel. The lobe of his right ear was missing and with his heavy, rounded shoulders he was brutish in appearance.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Yannovitch said. “I can’t be sure. I’d hate to get an innocent man arrested.”

Cardozo laid a consoling hand on her shoulder. “That’s okay, Miss Yannovitch. Thanks for your trouble.” He turned to Sam Richards. “Take number six up to the squad room.”

Cardozo went to the computer room and asked the sergeant to call up the sheet on Waldo Flores.

Two attempted rape. One conviction.

Multiple possession and use of stolen credit cards.

Multiple possession of stolen goods.

Multiple possession of controlled substances. One conviction.

Multiple possession of controlled substances with intent to sell.

Multiple living off immoral earnings of female.

It was an interesting sheet for a man of Waldo Flores’s range. There was not a single breaking and entering. So, obviously, Waldo was an expert B and E man.

Cardozo went to the evidence room and checked out two vials of crack.

Flores was waiting upstairs in the squad room.

“Hey, Waldo.” Cardozo slapped a hand on his back. “Been a while. You’re looking good. Come on in here. Let’s talk.”

Waldo’s eyes were serious, questioning. “Lieutenant, I just came by to earn five bucks. Anyone fingered me, they’re crazy.”

“I forget how you like your coffee. Milk and sugar? Make yourself comfortable, amigo.”

Waldo sat in a chair. “This place is a Turkish bath. How do you stand it?”

“A cheerful attitude is the secret, Waldo. God gives me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept the things I can’t. And why don’t you give me your jacket if you’re too hot. Nice denim. Is it a Calvin?”

“It comes from the Army Navy.”

“You’ve been boosting at the Army Navy again?”

“I charged it.”

“Whose charge card?”

“I want to see a lawyer. Get me a nice lady lawyer with a big soft ass.”

“Let’s put your pretty jacket right here on the back of the chair. How’s your coffee?”

“You drink this shit or you save it to brutalize minorities?”

Cardozo had to smile. There was something likable about the guy, a kind of engaging street sass.

“That’s top-of-the-line precinct coffee. I’m doing my best for you. I’m even going to help you out of the jam you’re in.”

Waldo frowned. “Who says I’m in a jam?”

“Your rap sheet says you’re an expert B and E man.”

“That sheet’s a horse’s ass. I been booked for fencing goods I didn’t know was stolen; but breaking and entering, no way.”

“I know, amigo. You got a way of finding twenty-two-inch TV’s on the street that’s uncanny. I have a serious offer to make you. How’d you like to do a job for me?”

Waldo flashed two surly dark eyes. “You think I’m going to go for some crazy entrapment? Man, you been smoking.”

“Do this for me, and we drop the crack charge.”

“What crack charge?”

“You’re holding, Waldo.”

“Bull
shit.”

Cardozo heaved himself up from the chair and went to the door. “Sam, would you come in here a minute?”

Sam Richards sauntered into the cubicle.

“Does Mr. Flores look like he’s holding two vials of crack in the right pocket of that jacket?”

“One way to find out.” Richards reached into the denim jacket and pulled out two vials.

“You planted those,” Waldo screamed.

“Take them and label them, would you, Sam?”

Cardozo brought two more cups of coffee, and this time he shut the door.

“Here’s the deal, Waldo. There’s a little old lady that has her home and office in a building on Madison and Eighty-seventh.”

Cardozo explained exactly what he wanted from Flora Vogelsang’s files. “Thursday would be a good night to hit her.”

Waldo looked into space. He’d served time on two felonies. Nothing mattered to him now except staying out of jail.

“Any dogs? Any cats?” His voice was low and wispy, like his balls had been cut. “I don’t go in where there are any pets.”

“No dogs, no cats. This lady’s a loner.”

The kid at the pizza counter had dyed his hair magenta and he had a safety pin in his ear and he was spending too long arguing on the payphone. When he finally slammed the receiver down and came over to Waldo it was like he was doing someone a favor.

“What’ll you have?”

“Pizza—ever hear of it?”

“What do you want on it?”

“Nothin’.”

Twelve minutes later Waldo stood on the corner of Eighty-seventh Street. His eye scanned glitzy shop windows, lit for the night and tucked away behind antiburglar grills. There was a phonebooth halfway down the block. Balancing the pizza box on top of the phone, he dropped a quarter into the slot and dialed.

Among all the windows shimmering with light there was a four-window row of darkness on the twelfth floor of number 1220. The four windows stayed dark and the ringing went on and finally a machine answered and a woman’s recorded voice said, “Hello, you have reached the office of Doctor Flora Z. Vogelsang.”

He hung up. In his mind he was rehearsing the moves.

Traffic sped by. Headlights lashed the street. In the lobby of 1220 the doorman was sitting on a stool, reading
The Enquirer.
A cab stopped in front of the building and a man wearing an army jacket and designer sunglasses got out. Waldo saw his chance.

He ran, dodging horn blasts and headlights. The doorman was on the intercom, clearing the man in the army jacket. “Pizza for ten-D,” Waldo called out.

He got into the elevator and pushed twelve.

At the door of 12G he untaped a narrow flexible copper rod from his chest.

Ninety seconds later the door swung inward and Waldo scooped up the pizza box and stepped into the dark apartment.

He set the pizza on the floor and crept along the corridor, nudging doors open. Behind the fourth door he found the office.

A rug stretched before the file cabinets, muffling his feet. The drawers made liquid hisses as one by one he pulled them out. He took the penlight from his hip pocket. He crouched down. The pin of light slid along the rows of manila files and stopped at the divider marked K.

A moment later Waldo had the
KOENIG, CORDELIA
folder in his hand. He tipped the pages out, folded them, tucked them under his shirt.

A button on the desk telephone winked lit.

Waldo raised himself from his crouch and quietly lifted the receiver. The machine had already answered and the recorded voice was saying, “Hello, you have reached …”

After the beep a live voice said, “Doctor, it’s Hildy, I’ve got to talk to you, please pick up.”

There was a click. “Yes Hildy? Is this an emergency?”

Waldo’s heart lurched.

“He phoned.” Hildy was sobbing. “Robert phoned.”

“Hildy, sooner or later you’re going to have to break with Robert. This might be an excellent opportunity.”

Dr. Flora Vogelsang finally got Hildy off the line and hung up the phone. “Meshuggener,” she muttered.

She lit a Pall Mall, smoked half of it, and realized she wasn’t going to get back to sleep by natural means.

She slid her feet into her slippers.

Waldo crept to the doorway. A shaft of light spilling into the hallway caught the pizza box on the floor.

An old woman stumbled into the corridor. She didn’t see the pizza. She turned on the bathroom light. There was a rush of water and Waldo saw her through the open door gulping tablets, then downing a tumbler of water.

The bathroom light clicked off and the old woman stumbled back. Her slipper pushed the pizza but she didn’t look down. She leaned on the doorframe, one hand to her abdomen, and burped. A moment later the bedroom light went out.