VC03 - Mortal Grace (45 page)

“Oh?”

“Not her, Vince. Another woman. Deborah Fairchild at the D.A.’s office. Would you call her.”

Cardozo tapped Fairchild’s extension into the phone.

“You’re right.” There was a revved-up note in Fairchild’s voice. Not enough sleep and too much coffee. Or maybe she had a source of legal prescription speed. “A special D.A.’s task force was working on the Vegas, Wills, and Ms. Basket Case homicides. But the files are long gone—deleted.”

“Then what do you have?”

“City and state accounting rules require financial records to be kept for seven years. I found the one thing they couldn’t delete—the expense vouchers.”

FIFTY-SIX

M
OON SONG CAFÉ WAS
a restored fifties diner north of Canal, decorated with posters of Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck and other great faces of the black-and-white screen. A bouncy hostess escorted Cardozo to a back table where Deborah Fairchild sat nursing an iced cappuccino. Cardozo ordered the same and sat.

Deborah Fairchild pushed a two-inch-thick wad of Xeroxes across the Formica-topped table. Beneath carefully styled blond hair, her face was drawn and grim. “They called it Task Force Babar.”

“Like the elephant in the children’s books?”

“God knows how they pick the nicknames. They probably pay someone’s brother-in-law’s public relations firm a quarter million.”

Cardozo glanced at the expense vouchers. $32.50 for a cab ride; $42 for a camera; $98.60 for lunch with “lawyer”; $57.60 for flowers; $104.72 for miscellaneous. And those were only the first five. Cardozo smelled scam like a streak of fat running through pork.

“Funds were transferred to the task force from the D.A.’s discretionary budget.” Deborah showed him a Xerox of a bank transfer order. The white numbers were just barely legible against the streaked black background. “They rented an office just after the second body was discovered. They shut it down after Eff changed his testimony. Four thousand thirty-six dollars rent per month. They were putting aside an additional nine percent of that for commercial rent tax. Of course, they didn’t owe rent tax. It went straight into someone’s pocket. If an outside accountant went over these figures, he’d find indictable fraud.”

A waitress brought Cardozo’s iced cappuccino. Deborah Fairchild waited till she was gone before continuing.

“Babar exercised fiscal restraint in only one area that I can see. Task force members already on salary with the D.A.’s office drew their regular pay. They weren’t accounted to Babar. They could have double-dipped, and with an arrangement this crooked I’d have expected them to. I’ve been wondering about it, and I think they needed deniability. They wanted as few names as possible on Task Force Babar records.”

She laid another bank transfer on the pile.

“But here’s the giveaway. One of the top forensic psychiatric consultants in the city was being paid from Babar funds—Vergil Muller.”

A tremor of bemused recognition went through Cardozo. “I know him.”

“Then you know he’s a specialist in pedophiliac priests.”

Cardozo’s eyes met Deborah Fairchild’s. Her courtroom training showed. She was like a mirror, giving him exactly what he gave her, taking nothing, adding nothing.

“I hadn’t realized that,” Cardozo said.

“He was hired after Eff changed his testimony.”

Cardozo considered the implications of the time frame. “The D.A. set up Babar after the discovery of the second communion killing. Babar got first look at forensics and the M.E.’s reports. They altered them just enough to hide the similarities, then passed them on. So the police never put together a single, coordinated investigation. Babar ran their own. What they discovered, we don’t know. But when Eff accused Father Chuck, Babar brought Muller in to evaluate Eff’s information. Muller felt it was authentic. So Babar put together a deal.”

Weariness seemed to silt down on Deborah Fairchild. “Frankly, I don’t see any other explanation for the timing.” She laid down Xeroxes of bank drafts. “This check for a quarter million dollars was issued to Pierre Strauss for ‘legal fees.’” Her voice put quotes around the words. “These three checks totaling $475,000 were issued to ‘confidential informant’ on May twelfth, May fifteenth, and May nineteenth.”

“And if those were the dates that Barth made his three confessions, we know who the informant is.”

“I tried to check that out.” Deborah Fairchild lit another cigarette. “Since the cases were closed unsolved, there are no confessions or depositions on record.”

“A New York State first.” Cardozo lined up the three confidential informant checks side by side. They had been drawn payable to account 21-47-531-2468 and there was no endorsement—only a rubber bank stamp. “What have you found out about this account?”

“Twenty-one is Chase Manhattan; forty-seven is money market. The rest is a personal account that was opened just long enough to cash those checks.”

“Who opened it?”

“A woman by the name of Eloise Forbes. I can’t locate the name anywhere. It could be an alias.”

Cardozo’s eyes followed the paper trail of canceled checks. “A thirty-foot billboard couldn’t spell it out more clearly: The D.A. doesn’t want to indict a priest for murder, not even a dead one. He goes to Strauss with a deal: Persuade one of your convicted clients to confess to murdering three runaways. I won’t prosecute; I’ll lose the confessions; I’ll lighten whatever sentence he’s serving.”

Deborah Fairchild’s hand shook as she flipped hair out of her eyes. “The finagling on this is clever. You have to admire the way they exploited the built-in incompetencies of the criminal justice bureaucracy.”

“But it’s blown up in their faces with the Lomax killing. Father Chuck can’t be the killer.”

Deborah nodded. “They’ve got a problem.”

“And if Eff’s information came from the real killer, then he’s still out there and Eff knows who he is.”

“Under the circumstances, that knowledge is worth bucks.”

“And Eff’s life isn’t worth a nickel.”

“Was it ever?”

“I thought you people believed in redeeming young sinners.”

“That was fine when the city had money. This is the nineties, Lieutenant.”

Cardozo was thoughtful. “I wonder who’s getting those bucks. I have a feeling it’s not Eff.”

There were antiques in Vergil Muller’s office that Cardozo had not seen there a year and a half ago—inlaid tables and seventeenth-century maps—and the place had a new-car smell.

“Eff Huffington’s trial for murder centered on one question.” Vergil Muller was peddling his exercise bicycle. He was dressed in gray sweat clothes. “Was Father Romero a pedophile or not? The D.A. called me in to evaluate Eff’s testimony and to look over the evidence.”

“I’d have thought that would be a job for the defense,” Cardozo said.

“Forewarned is forearmed. The D.A. had to know how solid the defense’s case was. Even with a weak case, Strauss can be a formidable opponent. When he has a strong case—a prosecutor’s best strategy might be to slit his own throat.”

“But you didn’t tell the D.A. to slit his throat.”

“Oh, didn’t I? I told him to fold the case.”

“Why?”

“Off the record, there was evidence that Romero was a practicing pedophile. A presumptive case could be made that Eff killed him in self-defense.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“Overwhelming. Father Romero’s diaries and date books and personal letters were a treasure trove. I’d love to have quoted them in my own work, but the D.A. refused. I had to give them all back.”

“You found admissions of wrongdoing in those diaries?”

“Not in your sense. But they were a stream of obsessive paraphiliac mentation—” Muller broke off. “I really shouldn’t be discussing this with you.”

“I appreciate your giving me this time.” Cardozo flipped back through his notebook, dissatisfied. “While you were on the case, did you ever run into a woman by the name of Eloise Forbes?”

“Not in connection with the Huffington case. Eloise Forbes figured in the homicide that brought you and me together.” Vergil Muller grinned as though he and Cardozo were in on the same joke. “The girl in the meatpacking basket. How time flies. Remember her?”

Cardozo looked up. “I do indeed.”

Vergil Muller passed a hand across his forehead, sweeping sandy hair back over his bald spot. “Forbes was the maiden name of Martin Barth’s wife. She gave me invaluable background on her husband.”

“April before last,” Cardozo said, “your husband confessed to murdering three runaway teenagers. The following May you received close to a half million dollars from the district attorney’s task force investigating those murders.”

Eloise Barth opened her mouth, but before she could make any denial, he handed her copies of the bank records of her money-market account.

The weight of the documents seemed to crush her. She sank back into the sofa. She looked them over slowly. Finally her eyes went to Cardozo, defeated. “It’s not the way it seems.”

“Nothing ever is.”

“I didn’t know what they were paying me for.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Barth, but if you cashed those checks, you knew.”

“Not everything. Not the details.”

“If Pierre Strauss was representing your husband, he made sure you knew the details.”

An impatient hand pushed dark hair away from her face. “What was the harm? Martin was serving a life sentence anyway, and the real killer—” She broke off.

The only sound was the deep, reassuring ticktock of the grandfather clock. They were sitting in her living room. The baby grand piano had come back, and the curtains looked new.

“The real killer?” Cardozo prodded.

Eloise Barth sighed. “He was dead.”

“And who was he?”

“He was a black man. After years of injustice and humiliation, he gave into his rage and went on a rampage. It could have happened to anyone in his position.”

“What was his name?”

“I never knew his name.”

“Who gave you this information?”

“He’d been a client of Pierre Strauss’s. He died in a police shoot-out.”

Cardozo played with pieces in his mind, trying different ways of fitting them together. “When did Pierre Strauss take your husband’s case?”

Eloise Barth hesitated. “He came into the case six months after Martin’s conviction.”

“And he offered a deal with the D.A.? Three confessions in exchange for…various considerations?”

She was silent. Finally she said, “I have two children to raise and no husband to help support me or them. I barely make thirty-five thousand as a paralegal; that hardly covers our maintenance and mortgage and the boys’ school. Pierre was offering money.”

“I’m not criticizing you,” Cardozo said. “I’m just trying to get at some truth.”

“I wouldn’t have gone along with it, except…” She rose and paced to the window. She stood staring down at Park Avenue. “It could have started a race riot if the truth had gotten out—a black man killing those white runaways. The blacks have been through enough in this country.”

“How did Strauss explain the communion wafers?”

She threw him a startled glance. “I beg your pardon?”

“Communion wafers were found in the victims’ mouths. Was this black man a priest?”

“He was an unemployed laborer.”

“Pierre Strauss gave you a line. He wasn’t asking your husband to cover for a black man. The man he was protecting was a white priest.”

She stared at him, stunned. “That’s impossible.”

Cardozo had kept the original autopsy on Ms. Basket Case in his own files. Unlike the autopsy in the data base, it had not been doctored by omission. He rose and handed her a copy of it.

She sat down in an armchair. At first she didn’t seem to understand what she was seeing. Then, as she silently read, her face became a grave mask. Cardozo sensed that her capacity for rationalization was about to snap.

“It wasn’t a race riot you were helping avert, Mrs. Barth. It was a church scandal.”

For a long moment Eloise Barth sat there with her eyes closed. She finally opened them. “I have something for you.”

She left the room and returned with a large gray envelope. She handed it to Cardozo. “Those are the receipts for the things in Martin’s knapsack.”

Cardozo opened the envelope and took out two receipts, one for Bombay Girl incense and one for a Happy Hostess number three dinner candle. Each was unambiguously itemized and dated. He looked over at her, surprised. “You bought those things?”

She nodded. “Pierre told me to. He told me to keep the receipts, just in case. He says you never know.”

“There’s no receipt for the nipple ring.”

“I didn’t buy that. Pierre gave it to me.”

“May I keep these?”

“I want you to keep them—and use them.”

Cardozo rose. “Mrs. Barth, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. In the long run, truth is the best disinfectant.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

B
EYOND THE WINDOW OF
Bonnie Ruskay’s office, an early summer shower was falling. Raindrops struck the air conditioner with light pinging sounds. Ribbons of wetness gleamed on the brick walls of the courtyard.

Sitting safe and dry in the soft light of the office, Cardozo took a gamble. For twenty minutes he told Bonnie Ruskay all he had been able to piece together about the murdered teenaged runaways.

As she listened, her forehead became lined and her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “That’s impossible. I knew Father Chuck. He could never have done such a thing.”

“How well did you know him?”

“We weren’t close friends, but we adored one another. It was a case of instant sympathy. He traded musical sets and props with Father Joe and we celebrated Christmases together. He was a kind, sweet man—absolutely dedicated to giving joy to others.”

“And you gave him a golf cap for Christmas.”

“The same golf cap I gave a lot of people.” She had a remembering smile. “I gave one to Father Joe. They were golf partners. Joe was heartbroken when Chuck died.”

“Father Chuck was murdered.”

“I know. A boy he’d tried to help turned on him.”

“Eff Huffington killed Father Chuck.”

She stared at him. The color bled from her face.