VC03 - Mortal Grace (50 page)

“I appreciate your help, Mrs. Huffington.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Cardozo hung up.

Ellie was staring at him. “I didn’t think of it. Delphillea Huffington is black, Eff’s white.”

“She adopted him.”

“But she’s a decent human being. He’s a monster.”

“She got him too late. He was already formed. All he learned from Delphillea Huffington was how to sucker sweet old ladies.”

Cardozo tapped the tip of a ballpoint pen against the desk top. “When I said I’d sent Eff a letter, right away Mrs. Huffington called me Father.”

“Then Father someone has been sending Eff letters there.” Ellie was staring out the window. “And photos of the communion killer’s victims were sent to the same address.”

“Father’s sending the photos.” Cardozo was on his feet. Suddenly he had no ability to sit still. “They’re order forms. He’s telling Eff,
I want this one, I want that one. Bring them to me.
Eff’s leading those kids to the slaughter.”

The basement apartment was tidy but dark. Delphillea Huffington had brightened the space with Caribbean paintings. A small art deco Tiffany clock gleamed on the coffee table, and across the room, on top of a spinet piano, a stone-studded chalice caught the glow of the music lamp.

“I hope Eff’s not in any kind of trouble,” Mrs. Huffington said.

“Not at all.” Cardozo had shown a fake ID. He had claimed to be from the review board of the city foster care department. “If anyone’s in trouble it’s going to be one of our caseworkers.”

Delphillea Huffington tilted her gray head back against the needlepoint cushion of her rocking chair. She stared at the ceiling.

“We’re reviewing the way Eff’s case was handled,” Cardozo said. “The record’s been lost.”

“I’m not surprised they’d want to lose that record.”

“Do you remember the name of Eff’s caseworker?”

“I’m never going to forget that woman. Her name was Ivy Melrose.”

Cardozo made a note for the sake of realism. “What reason did she give you for removing Eff from your care?”

“She said it was regulations. You ask me, it was racism—they don’t think a black can raise a white. That’s B-U-double-L. I may not be rich. I may not be an educated person. But I have the common sense I was born with, and I know how to love a child. Plenty of whites adopt black kids, and some of them don’t know how to love anyone. But you never see a black allowed to adopt a white.”

“And had you tried to adopt Eff?”

“I
did
adopt him and I can show you papers to prove it. Of course, Ms. Melrose said the papers were no good—wrong date, wrong signature, wrong staples, wrong everything. They want to make you wrong, they’ll find a way. So they took my little angel from me and put him in a white home.”

It was mid-afternoon, but the trickle of light that came through the window grille was like the last vestiges of day.

“I hear the people they gave him to are working every city program for every dollar they can. I hear they go to Bermuda every year on vacation—own property down there. Some people wouldn’t open their home to a kid without getting paid. They make their living off the problem, not the solution. No one ever paid me a cent. I loved that child. Still do.”

“How long ago did the department take Eff from you?”

Her face tightened as though she still had trouble believing it had happened. “It’ll be six years this July eighteenth. He was crying like a five-year-old when they pulled him out that door.”

“And you stayed in touch with him?”

“Ms. Melrose tried to tell me I couldn’t, but I got a lawyer to set her straight on that. I see my Eff once, twice a month at least. And every holiday. And he always remembers my birthday.”

“How do you contact him?”

For just an instant, her brow seemed to pinch. “He wants to see me, he gets in touch.”

“Do you have an address for him?”

The subject seemed to make her uncomfortable. She turned her cup 180 degrees in the saucer. “He’s never in one place long enough. Matter of fact, he comes here to pick up his mail. He won’t trust that foster home.”

“I bet he gets a lot of mail.”

There was wariness in her glance. “I wouldn’t say so. Eff’s had trouble making friends. But he has one pen pal. A priest sends him snapshots and letters.”

“It’s good that Eff has a friend like that. You wouldn’t have this priest’s name?”

“Eff never told me.”

“You never noticed the return address?”

“There isn’t any.”

Cardozo broke the silence by picking up the Tiffany clock from the table. “I’ll bet Eff gave you this.”

“How did you guess?” She seemed pleasantly amazed. “He picked it up in a flea market. Most of my knick-knacks are gifts from Eff. He has a real eye for quality.”

“Very pretty.” Cardozo wondered about the chalice on the piano, but he wasn’t going to comment.

“Eff wants me to have pretty things.” Mrs. Huffington rocked and smiled. “He says I’m his best girl. He says one day he’s going to move me into an apartment in Peter Cooper Village. Maybe he’s dreaming, but it’s a beautiful dream. And what else have we poor folk got nowadays? You turn on the TV and look at the commercials and you feel like an exile from your own nation.”

Cardozo stepped onto Highland Road. Two men in shabby clothes stumbled past, blinking as though daylight was physical agony to their eyes. They appeared to be addicts or beggars or out-of-work muggers.

Down the block, a neatly dressed little black boy was standing by the open fire hydrant where Cardozo had parked, just standing there and watching Cardozo approach. Cardozo was twenty feet away when the boy turned and ran into an abandoned building.

Ellie threw open the door of the Honda. “Will you look at the speed on that kid?”

Cardozo slid into the front seat beside her. “He keeps lookout and runs into that crack house when he sees cops. How much do you suppose he gets paid?”

“Eight hundred dollars a week.” Ellie started the motor and pulled smoothly into the street. “How did you make out with Mrs. Huffington?”

“I don’t think I fooled her, but I found out what I wanted. All we need to know now is when the next letter arrives.”

The traffic light at the corner was red and Ellie slowed to a stop. “Do you realize that money’s untaxed? By the time he’s sixteen he’ll have half a million dollars.”

Cardozo’s eyes came around. “Are you going to report me to Pierre Strauss if I order a tap on the line?”

“Vince, have I ever reported you to anyone for anything?” The light changed. “Where are we going?”

“Back to the dock. That’s where Tod Lomax stayed and that’s got to be where Father is getting his runaways. And he just got himself another one.”

SIXTY-THREE

I
T WAS TWO-THIRTY IN
the afternoon and somewhere in America a bird must have been singing, but not on the Twelfth Street pier. The humidity was charged with chemicals floating downstream on the Hudson. Bumper-to-bumper traffic on the West Side Highway added its fumes to the mix.

A white kid was standing in the sun behind a rip in the chain-link fence. He was about fourteen, built like a sparrow, shirtless, and an easy, drugged goofiness played across his features.

Cardozo approached, smiling. In one hand he held a five-dollar bill; in the other, Eff’s photo from the computerized rap sheet. “Wonder if you could help me.”

The kid adjusted his flat blue gaze. His left ear was pierced and he had a small ring in it that looked like something from a hardware store keychain.

“Have you seen this guy? He hangs out around here.”

The kid took the photo in a grimy hand. Luckily, the photo was encased in protective plastic. He examined it with uncaring eyes and handed it back. He reached for the five dollars. “Nell can tell you. Inside.”

Sunlight fell through torn planking and shattered windows, dappling the dusty air. Cardozo threaded a path across the warehouse, through grave-size plots staked out by half-dressed children, through bedrolls and ripped-open garbage bags.

Nell sat by the northwest wall on a stained patchwork quilt, dealing herself a hand of solitaire.

“Nell. It’s me again. Vince Cardozo.”

Her eyelids came up and her eyes flicked to Cardozo and then back to her cards. She crossed her arms over the tank top that barely covered her adolescent breasts.

Cardozo hunkered down in a crouch. He laid Eff’s photo on top of her queen of hearts. “They tell me you know Eff. I need to find him.”

“Can’t help you. Eff contacts the dock; the dock doesn’t contact Eff.” She laid a jack on top of the photo. “That’s the way he does business.”

“What kind of business?”

She lifted the back of a hand to wipe a ribbon of moisture from her upper lip. “Odd jobs.”

“Has he ever done business with you?”

She didn’t answer.

He took another five from his wallet and laid it on top of her jack of hearts.

She stared at the money. “I’ve worked with Eff.”

“What kind of work?”

“What kind do you think? He’s a pimp.”

Cardozo laid down another five.

She picked up the money and tucked it into her tank top. “He gave me fifty dollars to do an Omaha chicken scene. Every now and then there’s more money for a more specialized scene.”

“Are there ever scenes involving a priest?”

She hesitated. Her eyelids dropped. “There’s a priest that gets off giving confession and communion to sinners. But you have to pretend to be gay. I’ve never done one.”

“When was Eff here last?”

“Yesterday. My friend Sandy did a scene for him.”

“A scene with the priest?”

“I don’t know. Sandy hasn’t come back.”

“When did Sandy leave?”

“Yesterday, around six—went to the Sea Shell to meet Eff.”

The jukebox was crooning “I’ll Be Seeing You” when Cardozo pushed through the door. There were only three customers in the softly lit bar: two men at a table by the window and a young man in a green sport shirt nursing a beer in the corner.

The bartender was arranging beer bottles on a mirrored shelf—one of each brand the bar carried. Cardozo had an impression of an old man trying to keep things human and tidy in a time and place that weren’t either.

Cardozo ordered a diet Pepsi.

“Want that in a mug?” The old man wore a plaid work shirt, sleeves rolled up over powerful biceps. Beneath snow-white eyebrows he had astonishingly blue eyes.

“In the can will be fine.”

The bartender brought a chilled can and popped it open.

Cardozo laid Eff’s photo on the bar. “Did you notice this kid in here yesterday, around six o’clock? He might have been with a friend.” Cardozo began to take out his shield case.

The bartender gestured him not to bother. “I remember you.” He put on reading glasses and frowned. After a moment he nodded. “Cocky kid…had a crucifix earring in his left ear…Nike high-tops, baggy black jeans…strutted around like he had five hundred dollars in his pocket. Called me ‘my man.’ He drank diet soda, but he bought tequila sunrises for his friend. Big spender.”

“Tell me about the friend.”

“A little older…dark-haired… scrawny…hopped-up. Looked like he came from the dock over there.” The bartender nodded toward the plate-glass window with its front-row-center view of traffic clogging the West Side Highway. “Needed a shave, needed a shower, needed a lot.”

“Any idea where they went?”

“They left together—around seven, seven-thirty.” The bartender slipped his glasses back into his shirt pocket. “I heard the blond kid say something about catching a ferry.”

The jukebox was blaring “Que Será, Será” when Ellie Siegel stepped into the bar.

“God bless air-conditioning.” She daubed at her forehead with a fresh tissue. “That Gansevoort Street pier was a dead end. A very hot dead end. Vince, are you going to report me if I have a beer?”

“I’m not getting involved. It’s between you and your conscience.”

“My conscience can handle it.” Ellie smiled at the bartender. “Rolling Rock.”

He gave her a glass and a frosted bottle. “On the house.”

“Thanks, but not allowed.” Ellie put three dollars on the bar. She took her beer to a table near the jukebox.

Cardozo followed.

Ellie sat sipping at her foam. “If you didn’t do any better than me, we wasted half a day.”

“Eff was here last night. He had a kid called Sandy with him. Sandy hasn’t been seen since.”

Ellie set down her glass. A shaft of sunlight laid a weightless vibration across the Formica-topped table. “Any idea where they went from here?”

“The bartender heard them talking about a ferry.”

“For once, I’m glad that New York no longer has a decent transportation system. There are two main ferry connections from the West Side—Staten Island and Hoboken.” She took a long swallow of Rolling Rock and sighed. “Which do you want?”

Cardozo reached into his pocket for a quarter. “I’ll flip you for Staten Island.” Cardozo calculated that Eff and Sandy couldn’t have reached the Staten Island ferry before eight.

He made two assumptions. One: City transit employees tended to work the same shifts five days a week. Two: One of them might just possibly recall a kid with a blond ponytail and a crucifix in his ear and an attitude that stuck out like porcupine quills.

Cardozo made himself unpopular in two different token lines. Asked the clerk to look at the photo, received groans—“You gotta be kidding!” Flashed his shield to show he wasn’t. Thanked the clerks for their stares of nonrecognition.

He rode the eight o’clock ferry from Battery Park and questioned the ferry personnel and scored marginally better: a man with a broom couldn’t be sure, but he thought he’d had words with the little bastard on the subject of littering.

As the ferry pulled in to the Staten Island slip, the sky was darkening and pink-edged clouds were changing shape like a slow-motion kaleidoscope.

Cardozo joined the late commuters eddying down the gangplank. They were rushing to line up at the bus stop. No bus in sight. Two taxis waited at a cabstand, no customers in sight.

He surveyed the scene, putting himself in Eff’s head, weighing options.
I have a date somewhere on this island with a priest. I have a stoned drunk in tow, so walking is out. What do I do?