VC01 - Privileged Lives (42 page)

Waldo waited five minutes. Sweat was pouring off him. He inched down the hallway and picked up the pizza box.

The bedroom door was half open. He peeked in.

Light came through the filmy window curtain. The old lady’s hair was a frazzled spill of gray on the pillow. She lay on her back, hands folded across her as if she had died in her sleep.

Waldo couldn’t believe there was any sleeping pill in the world that worked that fast.

He went down the hall to the bathroom. The bottle was on the ledge above the sink. He shoved it into his pants pocket.

“Whoever gave you your information, you should shoot them.” Waldo Flores’s dark eyes stared at Cardozo above the rim of his cup. “Vogelsang was home.”

“Did she see you?”

They were sitting in a booth at Danny’s. The ripped blue Naugahyde benches had been bandaged together with electrician’s tape.

“No way. She was too zonked on downs to see the walls.” Waldo reached into his
I LOVE NEW YORK
T-shirt and pulled out three sheets of paper.

Cardozo flattened out the pages on the Formica tabletop. Creased down the middle and smeared with red grease, they bore the letterhead
FLORA Z. VOGELSANG, M.D., PH.D.

“These are a fucking mess, Waldo. What did you do, slaughter a canary on them?”

The air conditioning was blasting. Waldo had to cup his hands around the match to light his Winston. “Excuse
me.
I musta forgot to wear my kid gloves.”

Cardozo flipped pages.

“Hey, Lieutenant, I gotta get back to the garage.”

“So? There’s the door.”

“I could use a hundred.”

For an instant Cardozo’s eyes hardened. “Here’s twenty.”

PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL

Re: Cordelia Koenig

psychiatric
evaluation

age: 13-2

occupation: student

tests administered

Wechsler intelligence test

human figure drawings

Rorschach

thematic apperception test

EKG

blood analysis

urine analysis

vaginal smear

Cordelia Koenig was agreeable, attentive and polite, with something of a precociously socialized manner. Indeed, in the “grand” manner of a far older woman, she attempted to put the examiner at ease, complimenting the examiner on “your lovely office,” recognizing a flower vase as Meissen, suggesting that the examiner “take your time” and inquiring if she was answering questions too quickly.

Based on observation alone, the examiner had the impression of an obsessive albeit well-contained preadolescent person, whose hostilities are quite unconscious, and at variance with her social intent.

Miss Koenig’s work on the Wechsler reflects superior intelligence. Her full-scale score is 131, very superior, consisting of a verbal score of 130, superior, and a nonverbal score of 129, superior. The similarity between scores tends to obscure fluctuations in functioning, indicative of an emerging disturbance.

The projective tests reveal a shrewd, manipulative, resentful, and confused preadolescent whose modes of adaptation are unstable and tenuous. Her efforts at accommodation are forced and, at times, inappropriate—a fact of which she is obliquely aware. Impelled by aspirations for prestige and approval, she attempts to integrate both her accurate and her bizarrely inaccurate perceptions by linking objectively unrelated aspects of reality and at times grossly distorting these to fit her preconceived matrix of meaning.

Miss Koenig is very much concerned with the problem of self-importance, unconsciously intermixed with furtive rebellious impulses and an urge for extraordinary, godlike powers: in this regard, she equates female fertility with the power to bestow life and/or death. Consciously, in reaction-formation, she is unable to accept all but the most benign, loving, “good daughter” aspects of herself, despite an awakening realization that the aggression against which she so defends herself originates not in a hostile environment, but
in herself.

Adroit at deceiving both others and herself, Miss Koenig relies on intellect to rationalize away the darker side of her own nature. Given her age and history, and the marked narcissistic infantilism of her parents and parent substitutes, it is not unusual that her identities and identifications are many and unstable, but overall they point to profound sexual bewilderment, morbid preoccupation with biological processes, and a denied longing for exotic, spectacularly attractive female roles.

Miss Koenig exhibits marked erotic inclination toward her father and toward any man who can be seen as a father surrogate. This, of course, clashes with her image of herself as a model of dignity, self-containment, and aristocracy. She is impelled to irresponsible, hedonistic activity, associating spontaneity (doubtless through observation of her elders) with liquor and psychoactive drugs.

Unconsciously, as revealed in her human figure drawings, Miss Koenig feels herself to be at the command of a cold, absent paternal figure and of a cruel, watchful maternal figure, both of whose nurturing is fiercely desired and seductively withheld. She saves her deepest conscious resentment for her father, but on an unconscious level she sees her mother as a dreaded rival upon whom she must humiliatingly depend for survival. Her strongest conscious need is to be noticed; her strongest unconscious need is for the infantile gratifications of affection, specifically to be fed (primary orality).

Miss Koenig is fending off feelings of despondency, helplessness, aggression, and guilt, despite her persistently positive denial. She wants to take flight from the unbearable contradictions of consciousness and to find respite in unconsciousness, without, however, any loss of prestige and importance. Sudden perceptions of consciously disdained but unconsciously coveted forms of sexual exhibitionism indicate a dangerous rift in her distinction between the imaginary and the real.

Diagnostically, Miss Koenig reveals an obsessive-compulsive character disturbance, with marked decompensation in intellectual and emotional functioning.

The physical examination reveals Miss Koenig to be in exceptionally good health except for a transient infection (gonorrhea). For this I have put her on a series of antibiotic injections, the standard remedy in young adults. The physical prognosis is excellent.

The psychiatric prognosis is less happy. While Miss Koenig shows a degree of resiliency and rational recoverability, her primary orality, obsessive distortive tendencies, and feelings of worthlessness indicate an inadequately substructured personality. Adolescence will almost certainly see the onset of major depressive episodes, with or without concomitant acting-out. Long-term psycho- and psychopharmacological therapy, as well as close monitoring, are absolutely indicated.

Flora Z. Vogelsang, M.D., Ph.D.

“Mrs. Devens please. Lieutenant Cardozo calling.” He took a stinging hot swallow of coffee.

There was a click and then her voice was on the line, that wonderfully warm voice, coming alive at the sound of his.

“Nice to hear your voice, Vince.”

“Just a quick question. Who was your husband’s doctor seven years ago?”

He could feel her wondering why he was asking.

“We both used the same doctor—Fred Hallowell on Park.”

The manager pointed Cardozo into the depth of the garage.

Cardozo’s steps echoed. It was a dimly lit space, badly ventilated, smelling of gasoline. Light reflected on the floor, pulling murky rainbows out of the oil spills.

He watched the lower half of a man wriggling under a blue ’86 Pontiac. He nudged the man’s foot with his own.

The rest of Waldo Flores wriggled out.

“Pontiac’s looking good, Waldo. Maybe I’ll bring my Honda here for a tune-up.”

Waldo looked as though he wanted to give Cardozo a mouthful of the greasy wrench he was holding. “We don’t do Hondas.”

“That’s a shame. What I’m here about, Waldo, I have another job for you.” Cardozo handed him the piece of paper with Dr. Frederick Hallowell’s Park Avenue address and office hours. He explained that there would be a number of cards in Scott Devens’s file and all he needed was the card for September of seven years ago. “Go in over the July Fourth weekend, okay?”

35

A
T 12:35 CARDOZO WAS
sitting in Danny’s Bar and Grill working through a Reuben sandwich with a Diet Pepsi, lemon on the side. He’d already decided dessert was going to be strawberry cheesecake when Ellie Siegel came through the door.

She sat at the table and plunked her Crazy Eddie shopping bag on the empty chair next to her. She looked at the menu. “Think I have time for crabcakes?”

Danny, the owner and waiter, said sure, crabcakes took five minutes. Siegel ordered crabcakes and potato skins and asked Cardozo if she could have a glass of Chablis on duty.

“Think you can handle it?” he said.

“Make that a double,” she told Danny. She then got comfortable in her chair and said, “Okay, Vince, why have you invited me out for a fancy lunch? What’s bothering you?”

“This.” He handed her Vogelsang’s report.

As Siegel read, her features creased into a frown. When she had finished she leaned back in her chair. “That was then, Vince. This is now.”

He felt a naked flash of anger. “It doesn’t stop mattering just because a D.A. bought a plea.”

“But is it any business of yours? Vince, you got a job.”

“Babe Devens was my case. I blew it.”

“You didn’t blow anything. You’re only a cop. You don’t control the D.A.”

“I’m a detective and I didn’t even
sniff
this.”

“You’re homicide. This is child abuse, morals, narcotics—and it’s a hell of a long time ago.”

“The creep that fucked her should go free just because he’s been on the loose seven years fucking other thirteen-year-olds? If that’s the law, the law’s nuts. I have a girl who’s going to be thirteen and I’d murder the guy that touched her.”

“First of all, there’s no way you’re going to find out who molested Cordelia Koenig six years ago, and second of all the girl in this report is not your daughter.”

“The guy in this report is the guy that tried to kill Babe Devens.”

“Mrs. Devens didn’t die.”

“He took seven years from her, he should be allowed to do that? Fuck the kid, take seven years from the mother?”

“Okay, life’s not fair.”

“You scream about porno hurts women and sexism on the job hurts women but when it comes to something in real life that hurts two real women all you can say is life’s not fair. You take my breath away, Ms. Siegel. You really do.”

Siegel raised her eyebrows at him. Her gaze was interested and curious and cool. “Vince, there’s no homicide here, this doesn’t connect to any ongoing investigation. She’s one of two million people in this town who was battered when she was a kid and she’s been using it ever since as an excuse for getting high and getting by. Why are you fixating on her?”

Cardozo handed Siegel the pages that Waldo Flores had brought him that morning: Dr. Frederick Hallowell’s record on Scott Devens’s September checkup seven years ago.

She took the document with an expression of mild expectation, and she read it with a look of mild surprise. What impressed Cardozo was how very mild the surprise was.

“Looks like Scott Devens gave his stepdaughter the clap when she was thirteen,” she said.

“Looks it.” A terrible sense of loss possessed him.

Siegel stared at him, her face registering concern. “Vince, are you all right?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know what was happening within him. He didn’t want to think about it. “Yeah. I’m fine. Am I acting weird or something?”

“Or something.”

“I don’t know why this hits me the way it does. I feel I’ve been sandbagged. How many corpses have I seen, how many raped kids, why does my mind say no to this?”

Her eyes hooked his. “Vince, we both know that where Cordelia is headed will be a hell of a lot worse than where she is now. The road she’s taking, there’s only one direction—down. I think you should talk to her mother.”

He thought about telling Babe. The whole thing was taking on a numbing sadness.

Siegel touched his hand. She had a firm, clear gaze, no agitation, no uncertainty. “It’s not as though you had to tell her her kid’s dead—yet.”

She was on crutches and she seemed happy to see him. “Iced tea on the terrace?”

“No—no iced tea. Let’s talk inside.”

She looked at him with an expression of curiosity, then led him into the large den beyond the dining room.

“You’re doing well on those crutches,” he said.

“I add a half hour a day. It takes a human being two years to learn to walk—I’m hoping to do it in two months.”

He admired her: she accepted that the game was tough, but she had a quiet determination to keep playing.

“Drink?” she offered.

“You sit, I’ll fix them,” he said. “What’ll you have?”

“Scotch and a little water. There’s ice in the bucket.”

It was a handsome bucket, silver, engraved with the emblem of the New York Racquet and Tennis Club and beneath that the words Scott Devens, Squash Championship, 1978.

He fixed two stiff Scotches and handed her one. She was sitting in an armchair, crutches resting against her and forming a little barricade.

Outside the windows, sun splashed the private park.

“How much pain can you take?” he asked.

“How much are you offering?”

“The psychiatrist’s report on your daughter.”

Her whole expression changed. She was looking him straight in the eye, the way people do when they’re scared of showing they’re scared.