VC01 - Privileged Lives (5 page)

“We don’t want bad luck in this building, Lieutenant.”

“Fourteen—Billi von Kleist.”

“He’s president of Babethings—the clothing company Babe Vanderwalk founded. He’s jet-setty. Maybe some of his friends are a little druggy.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Oh, most people are doing coke nowadays, aren’t they?”

Cardozo looked at her. “I’m not.”

“Neither am I. But you know what I mean.”

A silence passed.

“Fifteen—Notre Dame. I take it that’s not the football team,” Cardozo said.

“The rock singer. You haven’t heard of him?”

Cardozo scowled. “My daughter’s heard of him.”

“He’s on tour. He’s never here.”

Sixteen and seventeen were marked
unsold.
“What about eighteen, Estelle Manfrey?”

“Very rich, very old, very frail—never here either. She lives in Palm Beach.”

Nineteen was another
unsold.
“Twenty—Tillie Turnbull?”

“You and I know her as Jessica Lambert.”

Cardozo’s pencil stopped tapping. “The movie star?”

Melissa nodded. “She’s a very nervous woman—always skittering around in dark glasses and babushkas. She puts her kerchief on before she puts on her makeup, so usually there’s a ring of Max Factor around the kerchief. I don’t really think men in black masks are her type.”

“Twenty-one—Gordon Dobbs?”

“He writes books about society with a capital S. Who’s sleeping with who, who got blackballed from what. He’s very fastidious, very organized, has a reputation for malice that he doesn’t quite live up to.” She glanced up. “Are you asking if I think these people could be killers?”

“Just asking what you know about them. Twenty-two. Phil Bailey.”

“President of NBS-TV and a lot else too. I drew up all the papers but I called him Philip. Phil equals Philip, right? Wrong. I had to redraw everything. His legal name’s Phil. He had it changed. I checked the court records. It’s that understated power trip that the really big people are on. They don’t care if you know their name or their face or their income. In fact they’d rather you didn’t. They don’t want to be on the cover of
Time
and they don’t go around blocking traffic with limousines. They’re not out to impress anyone.”

“But he managed to impress you.”

She made a circling motion with her glass. “He and his wife are decent people. He’s a powerful man. He’s a polite man. A very attractive man. Men like that don’t need to do the sort of thing we saw in six.”

“Maybe his wife does.”

“Why? She has Phil.”

Her thought processes intrigued him. “You see it as a sex crime.”

“Don’t you?”

“Maybe.” His eyes went back to the list. Twenty-three was marked
unsold.
“Twenty-four—Hank Doyle. The pro football player?”

“The same.”

Cardozo was surprised. “He doesn’t seem the type.”

“Which way do you mean, Lieutenant? He’s not the type who’d want Beaux Arts, or Beaux Arts wouldn’t want his type?”

“Both.”

“We gave him thirty percent off. We needed a black in the building.”

“Why?”

“We had to be integrated to get federal funds.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean a city tax abatement?”

“No, Lieutenant. Beaux Arts Properties is smarter than that. In addition to the city tax abatement, we got federal funds for integrated, middle-income housing.”

“This is middle-income?”

“According to some people.”

Cardozo shook his head. “Twenty-five. Joan Adler.”

“She writes about politics. She’s a crusader in print, but in person she’s a mouse. Always cringing in the corner of the elevator She has a tremor in her arm. I think she may have m.s.”

“I see twenty-six and twenty-seven have been made into a duplex for Johnny Stefano. Is that the composer?”

Melissa nodded. “He had a string of hit shows up through the mid-seventies. He’ was late with his last two maintenance payments. He may be having some kind of money trouble. I get the impression he’s sexually kinky. He wears leather in the elevator. Of course a lot of people do nowadays. It may not mean much.”

“Twenty-eight—William Benson.”

Melissa Hatfield lit up. “He’s an adorable old man. Completely unassuming. You’d never know he’s built half the buildings that make New York New York. Including this building and the museum below it. Of course he’s old now and has to walk with a cane, but he puts in a twelve-hour day.”

Cardozo found it intriguing: Melissa Hatfield had a sharp word for practically everybody in the building—yet the president of the TV network and the old architect seemed to have won her heart. He wondered how.

He checked off floor 29, the apartment they were sitting in. Which brought them to floors 30 and 31.

“Esmée Burns,” Cardozo said. “I see that’s another duplex.”

“Burns makes cosmetics,” Melissa Hatfield said. “Very successfully.”

Cardozo had a memory of dozens of small pink bottles on the bathroom shelf. “My wife used to use her stuff.”

“Why’d she stop?”

“She died.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I got used to it a long time ago.”

“You’re still wearing your wedding ring.”

“In my work you wear a wedding ring whether you’re married or not. It keeps things simple.”

“Not a bad idea. Maybe I should try it.”

Cardozo frowned at the list of occupants. “There’s a lot of empty space in the building.”

“We’re one seventh vacant, Lieutenant. With the new tax laws, Manhattan real estate’s soft.”

Cardozo folded the list and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. “What did you do Saturday?” he asked.

“Me? Nothing special. Why? Am I a suspect?”

“You have access to the key.”

She rose from the sofa. She had a good figure. He could see she worked at keeping in shape. “I lead a quiet life, Lieutenant. Saturday is one of my truly dull days. I slept late. I fed Zero.”

“Who’s Zero?”

“Zero’s my cat. How’s that for an alibi? He’s a domestic short hair, marmalade, neutered, three legs—he had cancer last year. He’s twelve years old.”

“I was asking about you, not Zero. Your cat’s in the clear.”

“Sorry. I’m a cat person. Do you have a cat, Lieutenant?”

“Street Abyssinian.”

“I never heard of that breed.”

“It’s more an accident than a breed. My daughter adopted him from the animal shelter.”

“I hope he’s had his shots.”

“He has, thanks for asking. Tell me, did you happen to go out at all yesterday?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help loving cats. I guess I go on about them. Yes, I went for a walk in Central Park.”

“What did you do for lunch?”

“I skipped lunch. Had an early dinner.”

“Where?”

“Where I have all my dinners—in my kitchen. Then I saw a movie.”

“What movie?”

“Dark Victory—
Bette Davis.”

“Where’s that playing?”

“I rented it from the video shop. When I got home there was a message on my answering machine. My boss wanted me to show six to some buyers today.”

“You were in and out all afternoon?”

“New York’s a great city for wandering when the weather’s nice.”

“Where did you wander?”

She walked to the window. She tossed a nod. “Way over there by the river. I love the boats, and the boys diving into the East River, and I love the seagulls, even though they’re scavengers, and those islands, even though they have prisons on them.”

“Are you on call every weekend for your boss?”

“I get a commission above my salary, Lieutenant. I don’t feel my employer imposes on me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She came back to the sofa with a swaying walk, hands held behind her, out of sight.

“It wasn’t exactly what I was asking. By the way, what did I say just now that upset you?”

Her gaze came round to his. “It wasn’t anything you said. I know this sounds naive, but I’ve never seen a dead body before.”

“That’s not naive, that’s lucky.”

“I think it’s beginning to hit me. Do you ever get used to it?”

“No, I’m not used to it.” He finished his drink.

She took the glasses back to the kitchen.

“Which leg?” he asked.

She turned and gave him a blank look.

“Which leg did Zero lose?”

“The rear right.”

“Same as the man downstairs.”

“I was trying not to think that.”

“It’s okay to think things.”

She rinsed the glasses and put them into the dishwasher. “We gave him chemotherapy, we gave him radiation. Nothing could save the leg.” She closed the dishwasher. “Silly to think of a cat when a man’s dead.”

“Zero’s okay now?”

“He’s fine. Hops around, doesn’t even know the leg’s gone.”

“That’s great. A survivor. We should all be survivors.”

They stood saying good-bye in the lobby, and Cardozo asked for her phone numbers at work and at home.

Melissa Hatfield took out her business card, added her home address and phone, handed it to him.

He watched her leave the building. The young woman who had come close to tears over her three-legged cat strode like a lioness past the afternoon doorman, recognizing him with the barest of nods, hair streaming behind her in a long chestnut mane. Her hand went up, swift and sure of its power. Magically, a taxi materialized at the curb to whisk her away.

In his work Cardozo had seen hundreds of New York women neurotically attached to their pets—fat women, middle-aged women, rich women who turned to their Pekinese or Persian for the warmth and meaning that no lover or job would ever give their lives.

But Melissa Hatfield didn’t fit the profile. She was intelligent, attractive; she didn’t need to spend an entire Saturday alone. What’s more, Cardozo didn’t believe she had. She didn’t give off the scent of the manless New York woman; nor did she give off that sadder scent of the friendless New Yorker. He didn’t think she was gay and he didn’t believe her story about wandering around all day and renting an old Bette Davis movie for her evening entertainment.

He’d been a cop long enough to know that ninety-five percent of humanity lied. Even nuns gave the truth a little twist now and then. Lying didn’t make a person a killer.

Still, he felt Melissa Hatfield had tried to con him and he was curious why she’d tried. He jotted a memo in his pocket notebook:
HATFIELD—ALONE SATURDAY
?

4

T
HEY DIDN’T SEE BABE
watching.

She stood outside the open door, in darkness, staring in.

They moved in slow motion through a soft sea of candlelight, holding champagne glasses. They wore tuxedos and gowns and rubber headpieces like children’s Halloween masks. Babe recognized Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Richard Nixon, the Mad Hatter.

A butler in a John Wayne mask glided through the crowd, refilling glasses from a green jeroboam with a Moët label.

Babe could see the masks bobbing up and down, chitchatting animatedly with one another.

“Bonjour,”
Porky Pig said.
“Ça va?”

That didn’t seem right. Porky Pig couldn’t have said
bonjour.

For an instant Babe was lost, hovering between two worlds. Then her eyes blinked open. The dream figures faded and the hospital room came slowly into focus.

“Bonjour, ma petite.”
That voice again, familiar now.

Babe’s gaze went to the doorway. She saw a rangy, wide-shouldered, fit-looking man in his late fifties. He came forward into the light, wearing a beautifully cut blazer and slacks and a silk tie with the insignia of the New York Racquet and Tennis Club. He bent down at her bedside to kiss her. He had gray hair and strong, handsome features, and he smelled of vetiver cologne. At that instant she recognized her old friend Baron Billi von Kleist.

“It’s been quite a while.” He spoke with the comfortable Oxford accent of a European aristocrat. “You look splendid. As usual.”

He took a chair and sat gazing at her. He had a deep tan, and she sensed something very like compassion in his eyes.

“Stop being charming,” she said, smiling as she always did when he played with her.
“You
look splendid.
I
look like an exhumed corpse.”

He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. He crossed one knee over the other. The press in his gray trousers was razor sharp.

“Chacun à son goût,”
he said. “Actually, I’m here on a mission, not a visit. I’ve brought you an old friend—she’s been seeing you faithfully twice a week while you were in the land of Winken and Blinken and Nod but now that you’re awake, she’s turned a little shy about picking up with you again. She asked me to bring her. Or rather, your mother told me you were back and when I said I was coming to see you, she delegated me to bring Cordelia.”

“Cordelia!” Babe cried.

“Hello, Mother.”

It was a woman’s voice, not a girl’s, and when Babe looked toward the doorway of the hospital room it was a woman, not a girl, who stood there.

Babe squinted. “Cordelia?”

Instead of an answer, her daughter shot Babe a questioning look, swaying with a moment’s unsteadiness as though she had the legs of a newborn deer. Then she gathered up her poise and glided into the room.

Babe had to catch her breath. When she’d last seen Cordelia the child had been a gangly, unhappy twelve-year-old, but the young woman who walked into the hospital room was a stunning young blonde: startlingly made up and colorfully dressed in jeans and a yellow silk blouse, with jangling chains and baubles and a wide gold cuff bracelet on her left wrist.

The young beauty bent over the bed and kissed Babe. It was not a daughter’s kiss, warm and giving, but reserved, precise—a kiss between countesses.

“Welcome back,” Cordelia said. Her eyes were the deep, almost cobalt blue that Babe remembered.

“It’s good to be back,” Babe said. “Let me look at you.”

Cordelia’s hand slipped free of her mother’s. She backed away from the bed and turned 360 degrees, like a mannequin in a fashion salon showing off a new dress.

“Don’t say it. I’ve grown. I’m two inches too tall to be a dancer and it just killed me when I had to drop out of ballet school.”