“Melissa, I want you to do something for me. Keep those photographs. Keep looking at them. Keep putting that face into every elevator you walk into. In one of those elevators you’re going to remember. And as soon as you do …” He reached into his wallet, thick with a wad of VISA carbons, and fished out one of his cards. “Those are my numbers. Work phone on top, home phone on the bottom. Call me. Day or night.” He smiled. “But not too late at night.”
An eye of light gleamed in the dark. Cardozo adjusted the lens of the projector. The image cleared, showing late afternoon New York sky, pale and cloudless. Hard bright sun splashed down onto the Fifty-third Street pavement, across the deco facade of the Museum of Contemporary Arts and the marble-faced lobby of the high rise next to it.
Cardozo was going over yesterday’s hidden-camera photos of Beaux Arts Tower.
On the wall of his cubicle, men and women hurried toward destinations he could not see. Examining their images, Cardozo was fascinated: reading the truth and the falsehood in the human face—that was the most challenging puzzle of all.
He pushed a control button and the carousel turned, dropping a new slide into the projector.
It was a photo of a fortyish man with thin sandy hair and a lightweight tan suit. The man was entering Beaux Arts Tower, but he was looking behind him.
The man’s skin was tinged with shadows: the bones in his face showed bluishly and gray speckled his hair. In his hand he held a briefcase. It looked expensive, genuine pigskin.
The man gave Cardozo a long steady gaze.
It was unmistakable: the gaze was coming straight at him.
Cardozo switched off the projector.
The feet of his chair let out a spine-jangling shriek as he slid back on the linoleum floor.
He stood in darkness. He swung open the door, walked into the light of the squad room, poured himself a cup of Mr. Coffee coffee. There was no Sweet ’n Low.
He went back into his cubicle. He closed the door. He switched on the desk light and looked down at the log that Tommy Daniels’s photographic team had kept.
Each person going in or out of the building was recorded in the notebook and given a number. Some of the entries had names, where names were known. The license plate of every car pulling up at the door was recorded, as was the license of every vehicle entering or leaving the garage. Each entry was accompanied by a time, and each number cross-indexed to a photograph of a person or automobile.
Cardozo reviewed the list.
The number of the man in tan was 79. No name. Cardozo wondered. Tommy Daniels had sworn that no one would make the truck, but Cardozo knew how men sitting on a plant could get bored, how they could get careless.
Cardozo snapped off his lamp, turned the projector on, looked at 79 again.
Something in 79’s eyes met Cardozo’s almost like an act of defiance. Shit, Cardozo thought. He made the truck.
It was much later.
Girders whipped past as Cardozo drove over the Brooklyn Bridge: the tires of his Honda went from asphalt to exposed steel infrastructure and the humming in his ears jumped up an octave.
He took the first exit, swinging down into Brooklyn Heights. A rough warm wind was bending the leaf-heavy trees as he parked.
The rain had made up its mind to stop. There was moonlight in the sky. The street was dark, but it was a warm darkness, not the dread-inspiring night of Manhattan. Streetlamps cast islands of illumination. Noble nineteenth-century town houses, merchants’ homes, framed the tree-lined street. The scene had the order and unreality of a stage set.
A church bell chimed the late hour. In the distance, a group of well-dressed young Jehovah’s Witnesses was returning to their dormitory.
Cardozo lifted the lock of the hip-high wrought-iron gate at number 42, noting that it was purely decorative, nothing protective about it. It swung back smoothly. Trees overhung the flagstone walk.
Judge Tom Levin, in pajamas and a bathrobe, opened the door.
“Hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” Cardozo said.
“Hell no. Come on in.”
Slippers slapping on carpet, Levin led Cardozo into the sitting room. Cardozo sat in a corduroy-covered chair.
Levin’s fifty years had given a firm set to ascetic features that in youth had probably seemed soft. “Scotch?” he offered.
“Why not.”
The judge rose, got glasses from the sideboard, tonged ice into them, added Johnnie Walker. Cardozo watched him.
The glow of a streetlight fell in leafy patterns through the tall window.
The judge brought Cardozo’s glass back to him. The judge sat and smiled and raised his glass in an unspoken toast.
“What brings you here, Vince? You sounded angry on the phone.”
“I’m on the Beaux Arts Tower killing.”
Levin arched an eyebrow. “Lucky you.”
Cardozo explained that he needed a court order to get Monserat’s list of purchasers of the Kushima bondage masks.
“Who’s Monserat’s attorney?” Levin asked.
“Ted Morgenstern.”
Levin rose and stood by a window staring down into the small garden behind the house, where ferns grew under the oak trees.
“That prick,” he muttered.
Judge Levin was a Harvard grad, an ex-liberal. He kept a licensed thirty-eight revolver, and he kept writs, subpoenas, and court orders in blank at home, so he could execute them at any hour of day or night.
He crossed swiftly to his writing desk. The forms were there, in the second drawer, awaiting only the specifics, which he now bashed in on an old Olivetti portable.
Judge Levin handed Cardozo the order. “This should add a little misery to his life.”
15
“I TOLD BRONSKI WE have a witness placing his cab in the garage of Beaux Arts Tower—so who was his fare and why did he falsify his sheet and put Fifty-fourth and Sixth?” Detective Carl Malloy was wearing a Kelly green vest today. “Bronski swears the sheet is correct: he says he had to take a pee, so he went to the building to use the men’s room. He didn’t want to mention it to us because it’s against building regulations to, you know, use the place as a facility. He would never have parked his cab in the garage except it was a holiday and he expected most of the residents to be away for the weekend.” Malloy hesitated.
“I still get the feeling he’s holding back. I went back over his taxi sheets. On the day of the killing and for three days before, he had the same fare—a pick-up at Broadway just before noon and a drop-off at Fifty-fourth and Sixth at twelve-thirty. Even allowing for midday traffic, that’s a hell of a long time.”
Something clicked in Cardozo’s mind. “Where on Broadway?”
“Sometimes the sheet says two twenty-five, sometimes two fifty.”
“The Federal Building’s down there,” Ellie Siegel said.
“So’s the World Trade Center,” Cardozo said. “And Sam, you said those are the same days Debbi Hightower was in the Toyota show?”
“But the show was from eight at night till ten thirty.” Siegel frowned. “What are you saying, she slept over?”
Richards looked at the others. “Didn’t Gordon Dobbs say she’s a hooker?”
“What’s the mystery?” Greg Monteleone gave a little grin. “Debbi’s been getting free cab service after she turns her hotel tricks, and Bronski’s been ripping off Ding-Dong to get a little daytime nooky.”
“Maybe he’s her pimp,” Carl Malloy said.
“Do pimps have intercourse with their hookers?” Ellie Siegel asked.
“If they’re good girls, once a month,” Sam Richards said.
“A white pimp?” Monteleone said. “Give me a break.”
Irritation began to gather in Ellie Siegel’s eyes. “Greg, white pimps exist.”
“In this town?”
For an instant Ellie Siegel just stared at the ceiling.
“On the other hand,” Monteleone conceded, “I don’t think it proves Bronski and Debbi are chop
ping up naked guys.”
“You don’t know that, Monte,” Malloy said. “You don’t know these two.”
“I know they’re dingbats.”
“Dingbats don’t murder?” Siegel challenged. “Greg, how the hell did you ever make detective?”
“They promoted me before affirmative hiring let you in.”
“Carl,” Cardozo cut in, “will you keep after Bronski, see about those fares?” Heaving his body up out of his chair, he signaled Monteleone and Richards to come with him.
In the corridor a detective was interviewing a hysterical female complainant who had received a ransom note for a missing dog. In the squad room Detective O’Shea was doing day duty, and Detective Moriarty stood at a cabinet looking for a case folder.
“Hey Vince,” O’Shea called, “Lou Stein sent over a lab report. It’s on your desk.”
There was a lot else on Cardozo’s desk: a two-inch stack of new departmental orders and a blue paperbound book that looked like an addendum to the state telephone listings, in fact a revision of the penal law pursuant to last trimester’s state supreme court decisions.
Greg Monteleone picked up the penal code and shoved his mouth into a lopsided grin. “What did their honors decide about that guy getting a blow job in the van at the Holland Tunnel?” He flipped through pages. “What’s sodomy, seven seven oh nine?”
“Consensual heterosexual sodomy’s legal,” Sam Richards said.
“Not in public.”
“A van on a public thoroughfare is private property with a reasonable expectation of safety from search and seizure—State of New York versus Offernaty, 1985.”
“Not if the door’s open,” Cardozo said. “State of New York versus Moony, 1986.”
“Who gets a blow job with the door open?” Richards asked.
“This guy does.” Monteleone’s large Mediterranean nose came out of the booklet. “Marvin van Peters, do you believe that for a name?”
“It’s a gag for Screw magazine,” Sam Richards said.
“Give me that book,” Cardozo growled.
Monteleone was hooting and jumping. “Innocent, he’s innocent! Hey, fellas, hit the tunnel!”
Cardozo grabbed the penal-code update. “If you gentleman would be kind enough to give me a little undivided attention?”
He patted the slide projector.
“Know how to work this thing? Today, instead of watching Policewoman reruns, you, Greg, and you, Sam, are going to look at these.” He held up a box of slides. “Each time you come to a face you recognize, you enter the name here in the logbook, okay?”
He showed them the logbook from the surveillance truck at Beaux Arts Tower. Turning to yesterday’s loose-leaf pages, he explained the logging system.
“And when you’ve finished, you’re going to take the license numbers and names from the log and run them through the National Crime Bureau.”
He tossed the penal-code update back to Monteleone.
“Enjoy.”
Cardozo took the lab report with him and hurried down the marble staircase. Nodding to the duty officer at the portals, he left the station house, turning into the alley at the side of the precinct. He walked around his Honda and crawled in behind the wheel. He slammed the door and took a moment to read the lab report.
Lou Stein had found no match between Loring’s, Stinson’s, Gomez’s, or Revuelta’s prints and any found at the murder scene.
The Lewis Monserat Gallery was deserted except for the well-groomed receptionist, who looked up at Cardozo from the Gabriel García Márquez paperback she was reading at her desk. Today he noticed that she was in her late forties.
“Mr. Monserat will not be in this morning,” she said.
“All I need is the list of buyers of the Kushima mask.”
“Only Mr. Monserat can give you that.”
“Miss,” Cardozo said, “this is a court order.” He handed her the document.
“I’m not a lawyer, I don’t understand this.”
“You read English.”
“There’s nothing I can do without Mr. Monserat’s permission.”
“You can hand that list over right now, or you can phone your lawyer and tell him to meet you in twenty minutes at the Tombs.”
She flinched and went to a mahogany filing cabinet. After a moment’s lip-biting she pulled out a sheet and handed it to him.
The list of buyers of Nuku Kushima’s artwork Bondage IX showed three institutions: the Franklyn Collection in Washington, D.C.; the Walter Kizer Museum in Los Angeles; and the Museum of Contemporary Arts in New York; and one private collector, Doria Forbes-Steinman, with a Manhattan address.
“Miss Kushima told me there were five masks,” Cardozo said.
“There were four made and four sold.”
“I’d like to look in that file.”
“You have no right to—”
Cardozo moved around her and searched the K’s. He flipped through invoices for woodcuts, oils, conceptual pieces, and lithos. He slowed down at Leather Sculptures.
The gallery had placed Kushima Body Halters with three institutions; Blade-Tipped Black Leather Boots with two institutions and two private collections; Executioner’s Gloves with one institution and four private collections. Razor-Studded Vest had been a slow-moving item, one private collection; AC-Powered Nipple Clamps With Leather Thong had gone to two museums and two private collections.
Bondage IX (mask) had four purchasers. The sheet was freshly typed.
“How many masks did you make?” Cardozo asked.
Nuku Kushima’s slender little body blocked the doorway of her loft. “Four.”
“Yesterday you told me five.”
“I could not have said five because I made only four. Four is my artistic limit.”
He stared at her inscrutable lying little face and wished to hell he’d carried a hidden tape recorder when he’d questioned her. Not that the tape would have had any legal value, but at least he’d have had something to confront her with. As matters stood, he had nothing, and she knew it.
“Would you be willing to repeat that in court, under oath?”
There was nothing in her eyes: no truth, no falsehood. Only a Zen emptiness. “Naturally.”
Cardozo made a detour to the Mr. Coffees and poured himself a cup that his stomach didn’t need but that his nerves craved.
Ellie Siegel sat at a battered desk trying to negotiate over the phone with a computer in Washington, D.C. She raised her eyes to Cardozo’s and they were curiously and wonderfully green.
“Hey, Vince,” the desk lieutenant called. “Two slashings last night. One in the one eight, the other in the two one.”
Cardozo treated himself to two envelopes of Sweet ’n Low. “What’s it got to do with us?”
“Looks like a serial killer. O’Malley thinks the perp might have chopped a hooker in the two two.”
“Not in the last six months—but tell O’Malley he’s welcome to look through our files.”
Cardozo shut the door of his cubicle and began dialing the phone numbers on the Monserat sales sheet.
The curator of the Franklyn Collection in D.C. told him the Kushima mask was on exhibit in the basement, in the New Trends show. An assistant curator at the Walter Kizer Museum in L.A. said the mask was presently on view with recent acquisitions.
The New York Museum of Contemporary Arts had a recorded message announcing the screening times of D. W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm, part of a retrospective honoring Lillian Gish.
Cardozo took his coffee into the squad room and sat on the edge of Siegel’s desk. The computer at the other end of the phone line had put her on hold, and she gave him a weary smile.
“Ellie, you used to teach art.”
“That’s why I’m a cop.”
“How can a bondage mask be art?”
“Because critics and dealers say it is.”
“Then why isn’t a toothbrush art?”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief and i
ntelligence. “Vince, you’re a beautiful Philistine. A toothbrush is art, has been since the MOMA exhibit in seventy-six.”
“An artist can do anything and call it art?”
“Some artists would call the murder in Beaux Arts Tower conceptual art.”
Cardozo was thoughtful. “You think an artist did it?”
“He or she would have to be a very dedicated artist, a rebel against the commercial establishment.”
“Why do you say that?”
“No signature. No commission for the dealer. Dealers get up to sixty percent.”
Cardozo took a long swallow of coffee. “Doria Forbes-Steinman seems to have gone into art collecting in a big way.”
“Sure, she’s what art critics call a major force.”
“I haven’t kept up with her since the Scottie Devens trial. Have you?”
Detective Siegel flicked hair out of her face, casually. “A little. I’m the same as any other supermarket shopper stuck in the checkout line. I grab a National Enquirer from the rack.”
“I don’t read the Enquirer, so fill me in.”
Siegel lowered her long, dark, curling lashes. “She and her husband aired their differences in civil court, so Doria’s past is now part of the public record. Turns out she’s a charming colleen, Vince, a breath of Killarney from deepest Transylvania. Her full name is Doria Bravnik Forbes-Steinman. Bravnik is Yugoslavian, like her. Forbes is the name of the British foreign service schnook she claims was her first husband.”
“He wasn’t her husband?”
“A gal like Doria stirs up vicious rumors. The issue’s moot, because once her British passport got her to New York, she divorced Forbes and married Steinman.”
“What does the Enquirer say about Steinman?”
Ellie looked embarrassed, as though it was an admission of depravity that she knew so much rumor. There was something about Siegel that seemed unsoiled: her face was sophisticated, cynical even, without being malicious. It was that quality that had drawn Cardozo to her.
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