VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  “Mama, do you think I don’t know what Scottie was accused of?

  Lucia floated Babe a worried look. “Who told you?”

  “A detective was here.”

  Lucia was silent a moment. “There was more to it than mere accusation. Scottie was guilty.”

  “Of trying to murder me? That’s absolutely asinine.”

  “He admitted it.”

  Silence wrapped itself around the room.

  “He hasn’t admitted it to me,” Babe said.

  Lucia sighed tolerantly. “The first order of the day is for you to get well.”

  “How do you expect me to get well if you treat me like a baby? Mama, I want my life back. And I want to start by having visits from the people who matter to me.”

  Lucia gloved her voice in gentleness. “But you have started. What do you call your father and me, and Cordelia and Billi? Don’t we matter? Aren’t we enough for a beginning?”

  “I want to see my husband. I want to see friends.”

  Lucia leaned forward to pat Babe’s arm. Her hand was cool and soft, with the touch Babe remembered from childhood, the touch that said Trust Mama, it will all be all right. “I know, dear heart.”

  “I want to see Ash Canfield.”

  Lucia took a moment to arrange herself in her chair, a moment of breathing deep, of recomposing the careful neutrality of her expression. “Ash is dying to visit. Of course you’ll see her.”

  “I’ve known Ash since childhood and she’s my best friend and I’ve a right to see her now.”

  “Yes, yes, dear heart.” Lucia kissed her fingers and pressed them over Babe’s lips. “Papa and I will take care of all that.”

  “Why can’t Babe be permitted at least to see Ash?” Hadley asked.

  “Beatrice’s condition is far too delicate to allow that,” Lucia said sharply.

  They had returned to the Bentley. The chauffeur was driving them home.

  “I couldn’t disagree more,” Hadley said. “Babe is damned sturdy. She could use a little laughter, though. Bet your life Ash would pep her up.”

  “Ash Canfield is the world’s sloppiest gossip. She’ll wear Beatrice out. Frankly, I’m opposed to her even knowing our daughter has recovered.”

  “You expect to keep the news secret?”

  “For a week or two. Till we decide.”

  Hadley looked at his wife, interested now in what she was thinking. “Till we decide what?”

  Lucia turned and stared at Hadley as if it took all her strength and all her will not to upbraid him for imbecility. “Till we decide our child’s future. And I hope we shall be able to do that calmly.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Babe’s future isn’t ours to decide.”

  Something hard was creeping into Lucia’s eyes. “It is till the court decrees otherwise.”

  Hadley frowned. “A five-minute visit from Ash Canfield, a woman she’s known since kindergarten—how on earth is that going to blight Babe’s future?”

  “Ash has always had an enormous talent for stirring up mischief and she has always encouraged the, same talent in Beatrice.”

  The driver began to turn. Lucia leaned forward and rapped irritably on the half-lowered glass partition.

  “Kingsley, must I keep telling you not to take Roosevelt Drive till they’ve finished that construction?”

  Hadley Vanderwalk waited till the television went on upstairs in Lucia’s morning room. Lucia denied following the afternoon soaps, and she never watched them on the TV in the drawing room. But he knew she was secretly hooked on them. She kept a VCR programmed to record them when she was out, and he knew for a fact she exchanged tapes with fellow addicts in her bridge-and-charity-ball set.

  As soon as Hadley heard the familiar voices on the TV, their emotion muted through the ceiling, he lifted the telephone in the library and quickly punched out a number.

  “Ash?” He spoke in a lowered voice. “Good to hear your voice, my dear. It’s Hadley Vanderwalk… Yes, of course we’re coming to the party, wouldn’t miss it. Now prepare yourself. I’ve a message for you from a friend in the hospital.”

  “Sweetie,” a voice cried. “It’s really true—you’re back!”

  Babe looked toward the door. A figure had stopped motionless on the threshold, a big-eyed, pale-haired woman in pink.

  “I haven’t changed that much. Come on, it’s me—Ash!”

  Recognition came flooding in. “Ash—my God!”

  Arms spread, Ash Canfield took four running steps into the room. And stopped again.

  The two women gazed at one another, silent and hardly breathing and not quite believing what they saw.

  “Don’t I at least deserve a hug?” Babe said.

  “You deserve ten million hugs.”

  Ash leaned over the bed and hugged Babe and Babe hugged back, gratitude welling up and filling every inch of her.

  “Sweetie, I’ve missed you. You don’t know how much.” Ash blinked hard. Tears were giving her contact lenses trouble and a smile made tiny brackets around her mouth. “You’re looking terrific. Not a pound overweight. And not a week older, damn you. Coma must have agreed with you.”

  “Coma is rotten. I can hardly sit up or feed myself. My stomach has shrunk. I’m on a diet of liquid and something they call semisolids. Two male nurses have to walk me an hour a day. My memory has gaps, I’m tired half the time, I’ve been out of touch so long I can’t carry on a conversation, don’t know half the names people are dropping. And to top it off, I have to get around in that monstrosity.” Babe threw a nod toward the wheelchair.

  “Eventually you graduate to crutches, I suppose?”

  “So the doctor promises. And then a cane.”

  “That will be very distinguished.”

  “To hell with distinguished. I want to play squash again, and dance, and ride horseback.”

  “You will, sweetie, you will.” Ash took unsteady possession of a chair, crossing her legs.

  Babe studied her childhood friend. Ash Canfield looked very different from the image in her memory: older, more made up, more flamboyant in her choice of colors and jewels.

  And there was something else, harder to pin down—a nervous energy that had taken over the room instantly.

  “Care to fill me in on the mystery?” Ash asked.

  “Mystery?”

  “Your father made me promise not to tell a soul you’ve recovered. I gather it’s a big, big secret. I love secrets and I especially love being in on them. So spill. Who are we hiding you from?”

  There was a silence.

  “I don’t know,” Babe said quietly.

  Gradually Ash’s smile froze and something in her eyes shifted. She was looking at Babe as if they were both far from home and lonely and if they cared to admit it both a little afraid.

  “You’ll never guess who I’ve become.” Ash’s voice and everything about her had undergone a slight adjustment

  “You’ve married again?” Babe said.

  “No, I’m still married to Dunk, but he made the Queen’s Honors List three years ago. He’s Sir Duncan and I’m Lady Canfield, if you please. We’re mentioned in all the columns and we get asked everywhere.”

  “But you always got asked everywhere.”

  “And now we’re able to turn down twice as many invitations.” Ash turned in her chair. “Haven’t you got palatial digs here!”

  “I’d rather be home.”

  “Of course you would, but still …” Ash rose from her chair and inspected the hospital room, prowling like a cat stalking out territory. She peeked into the bathroom and came back carrying two water tumblers.

  “In the meantime, in between time, look what I smuggled past the warden.” She reached into a Bergdorf’s bag and pulled out a bottle of Moët, cool and glistening. “How’s about it?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Babe said.

  “But sweetie, it’s liquid.”

  “It will only put me to sleep.”

  “Ah, well.” Ash
twisted the wire loose, jimmied the cork with her thumbs until it popped, and quickly aimed the overflowing foam into the nearest tumbler. She took a little pillbox from her purse. The lid was mirrored, and the pills inside were pink ovals.

  “What are those?” Babe asked.

  “Mood elevators. I’m depressed. I have to lose twelve pounds, and Duncan’s leaving me.”

  Babe and Ash had known one another since kindergarten. They’d roomed together at Miss Porter’s in Farmington and had almost been expelled for putting a bedpan of Campbell’s cream of tomato soup in the bed of a detested house mistress. They’d come out together at the New York Infirmary Ball and then roomed together at Vassar. For years they’d worn their hair the same way, worn the same dress size, shared clothes and secrets and booze and drugs, dated and loved and hated the same boys. They had both wanted to marry the same man—but Duncan Canfield had finally proposed to Ash, and Babe had instantly married the internationally famed pianist Ernst Koenig, thirty-eight years her senior. She’d done it to make Ash jealous. The marriage had lasted seven disastrous years and Ash, embroiled in her own disaster of a marriage, had never expressed the slightest jealousy. Babe had long ago forgiven her.

  “Duncan’s always leaving you,” Babe said, “and he’s always coming back.”

  “It feels permanent this time. And it’s happening at the worst possible moment. We’re giving a party for Gordon Dobbs.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Of course you don’t know—poor sweetie. Dobbsie is the top society writer in town. Charming and sweet and funny and I adore him. It’s the two hundred other people I’m not up to. Ah, well, those are the risks of planning a party.” Ash poured herself another glass of champagne. “But let’s talk about you. Did you have any out-of-body experiences? Did you see God, or angels, or pillars of light?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What a waste.” Ash gulped pills from her palm and downed her champagne and poured another splash into her tumbler. She became even more talkative on her third glass.

  She had acres of scandal about the latest world leaders and living legends and newly famous: she told Babe who was rich this month, who was beautiful, who was robbing whom, who was screwing whom. The names had changed, but otherwise it was very much the same dirt Ash had always dished.

  Suddenly she broke off. “Good jumping Jehoshaphat!” she cried. “Will you look at the time? I’m going to be late for the caterers. Do you mind?” She lifted the receiver from the bedside phone and jiggled the cradle. “Your phone’s on the fritz.”

  “I have a suspicion Mama arranged it so it only takes incoming calls. Her incoming calls. I can’t call out.”

  “You’re not turning paranoid, are you?”

  “She doesn’t want me phoning Scottie. He hasn’t been to see me, you know.”

  “Hasn’t he.” Ash looked at her oddly, and Babe could feel something close itself off in her friend.

  “My parents won’t talk about him. Cordelia says he’s divorced me.”

  “Cordelia told you that?”

  There was a beat’s silence.

  “A police detective told me Scottie tried to kill me.”

  Ash squared her shoulders and looked at Babe. “Then you know.”

  “Ash, I don’t know anything. When I went to bed I had a husband and a daughter and a career. I wake up and seven years are missing. I’m groping around a room blindfolded and someone’s moved all the furniture.”

  “Poor sweetie. It must be god-awful.” Ash took Babe’s hand.

  “Has he remarried?”

  “Do the doctors really want you discussing this?” Ash said.

  “What do doctors have to do with it? It’s my life.”

  A sad smile appeared on Ash’s face. “He hasn’t remarried.”

  Babe studied Ash, with her skittering glazed eyes and nervous hands.

  “But he has someone,” Babe said.

  “Doria Forbes-Steinman.”

  “That redhead with all that pop art?”

  “Her hair’s ash blond now and she sold off a lot of the pop art. She’s gone into magic realism.”

  Babe fought to keep pain from edging into her voice. “Do they live together?”

  “They have a huge co-op—a lot of English country antiques mixed in with deco and modern. You can see the Empire State Building from the bathtub.”

  “You’ve taken a bath there?”

  “Of course not. It was written up in Architectural Digest.”

  “Does he love her?”

  “Who knows if he loves anyone.”

  Babe was silent a moment, remembering. “I know he loved me.”

  9

  TRAFFIC WAS SNAGGED BEHIND a Con Ed repair truck when Cardozo finished his lunch and came out of the deli. He crossed the street against the light, threading his way through honking cabs and delivery vans. On the opposite sidewalk he turned.

  His eye lingered a moment on the delicatessen. It occupied the ground floor of a pre-World War I red brick six-story walkup tenement. The building was the lone survivor in a block that manifested all three stages of New York real estate frenzy: demolition, parking lot, and construction.

  Cardozo took a moment to study the building under construction. Already looming up twenty-seven stories on Lexington Avenue, it was of a type unseen twenty years ago, a scaffoldless high rise where each floor served as a foundation for the next and the owner could build as far into the sky as his lawyer could persuade the city authorities to write the variance.

  He stared at the block, adding it up like an equation. There was a balance to it. At the corners, one building coming down, one going up; in the middle, one parking lot, one tenement.

  And then his eye saw something else. Up on Lexington, on the second-floor level of the uncompleted high rise, the owner had erected a large sign above the heads of the churning crowd. The lettering, in generously legible wedding-invitation script, spelled LE XANADU, LUXURY CO-OP, SPRING OCCUPANCY, OFFERING BY PROSPECTUS ONLY, ADDRESS INQUIRIES TO BALTHAZAR PROPERTIES, 555-8875.

  Cardozo frowned. He slipped his notebook out of his breast pocket. He flipped through yesterday’s notes and he found a business card with the same number, 555-8875.

  An NYPD seal with the warning NO ENTRY CRIME SCENE had been pasted over the crack between the front door and the jamb. He sliced through it with his VISA charge card and then he took two keys from the evidence bag—a Medeco and a four-sided Fichet with teeth that looked as though they could cut flesh.

  He unlocked the door and entered apartment 6.

  Someone had left the air conditioner running. The air was comfortably cool. A gentle afternoon light slatted through the silver-gray Levolor blinds and glowed on the dark polyurethaned floors.

  A coat of fingerprint powder lay on the tops of the doorknobs. It lay in the same fine black snow in the kitchen by the refrigerator and sink and cabinets.

  Cardozo wriggled his fingers into a pair of skin-thin plastic gloves. They were a medical item. The department bought them by the gross.

  He went into the bedroom.

  The one-legged chalk man on the floor looked crazily wrong, a figure of bends and angles in a space where nothing else was bent or angled. The straight line where the leg had been cut off seemed inconsistent, as though the artist had abruptly lost interest in his job.

  He walked around it to the window and riffled his finger along the edge of the blinds. They made a soft clacking sound like marsh reeds in a breeze. He turned the Lucite pole, changing the slant of the blinds, letting the outside come gradually in.

  Five stories below he could see the museum garden, the twenty-foot reflecting pool, the bronzes of huge-boned naked women. There were tables with blue-and-white umbrellas. Museum members, clean and relaxed in their summer clothes, were strolling or sitting alone or in twos and threes with books, cups of coffee, decanters of wine.

  What kind of a city was it nowadays, he asked himself. How did the pieces fit together?
It was getting a lot crazier, a lot tougher than when he had been a rookie patrolman and the biggest danger he’d faced was stepping into a mom and pop fight on Saturday night in the South Bronx.

  South Bronx—his first beat—five miles and twenty-two years away.

  In those days in all of New York City there were maybe 300 murders a year. In about 60 percent of the cases perpetrators were found within 24 hours. The conviction rate was close to 80 percent and it took at most three months to bring a case to trial. Heroin had been the hobby of 20,000 losers north of 96th Street and Coke meant the stuff that wasn’t Pepsi. The NYPD had yet to come up with the 911 emergency number or mix with computers, Knapp commissions, or civilian review boards. It had taken an average of 22 minutes for a squad car to respond to a call.

  Now the murder rate was shading 2,000 a year, you were lucky to identify the corpse, let alone the killer; you found perpetrators in 40 percent of the cases, the chances of getting a conviction were one in twenty, and the chances of getting that conviction reversed or sent back on appeal were 50-50. Everything was computerized—fingerprints, rap sheets, 911 calls—and the computers were down 40 percent of the time. It took a squad car an average of 70 minutes to respond to a 911 emergency. New York had become the junkie capital of the world, with one resident in ten an addict. And coke with a small c was so popular that even rookie cops were stealing the seizures from busts and substituting Johnson’s baby powder, a fact discovered when an overworked prosecutor looking for a second wind had snorted one tenth of a gram of evidence.

  New York had turned into the city of more—more confusion, more corpses, more wealth, more poverty, more drugs than ever before or anywhere else, and still climbing.

  Why do I love this town, Cardozo wondered.

  Maybe because someone has to.

  His eye traveled to the ivied marble wall and wrought-iron fences that the museum had erected to separate its garden from the rest of the city.

  And then his gaze came back inside.

  He had no clear idea what he was looking for. He browsed, open to any suggestion the rooms might throw to him. He went through empty closets. He pulled open the mirrored door of the bathroom medicine cabinet. Black powder floated down and dappled the white of the sink.