VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

Cardozo understood the dark in which the Downses were adrift. He rotated his glass, making the ice in his Scotch shudder, knowing he was about to hurt them more.

  “Something else happened to Jodie,” he said. “You didn’t see it. But you should know.” He could hear someone’s wristwatch ticking. “His right leg was amputated.”

  Mrs. Downs’s lower lip trembled. She blinked hard. Downs stared at Cardozo in silence.

  “It was done after death,” Cardozo said, as though this was some sort of pitiful comfort.

  Downs sat stone still, a sad broken mountain of a man, not a tremor in his face, not a movement except the narrow glazing over of his eyes.

  “Was there anything on that leg—any distinguishing mark, a tattoo?”

  “Nothing I know of,” Downs said.

  Mrs. Downs lifted her drink from the end table. She sipped slowly until it was drained halfway down to the ice cubes. “They tied Jodie up and terrorized him and he was completely at their mercy and they didn’t care. And then they got their thrills. No one should have to die that way—for nothing, for no reason except some drugged-out lunatic wants to know what it’s like to be God.”

  She moved to the window. She stood with her back to the men.

  “Who killed our son?” she asked in a voice so calm and matter-of-fact that Cardozo was chilled.

  “I intend to find that out,” he said.

  She turned. She looked at him. “Do you promise?”

  “Now Meridee,” Downs cut in, “all the lieutenant can do is his best—”

  She pushed off her husband’s hand. “Lieutenant, do you have a child?”

  “I do,” he said. “A girl.”

  “An only child?”

  “That’s right.”

  She took Cardozo’s hands in hers. “Then you’ll find Jodie’s killer? You’ll see—he gets what he deserves?”

  Cardozo knew exactly what she was going through. His eyes promised. “I’ll find him. He’ll get what he deserves.”

  Cardozo returned to the precinct and felt an unaccountable craving for sweets. He ordered in blueberry pie and milk.

  He sat reviewing the task force’s fives and then he phoned the one nine and asked for Detective Barry MacPherson. The mumble that came over the line was either a bad connection or a mouthful of cheese blintz.

  “Barry, you had an attempted homicide over there, first week in June, three years back.”

  “We had nine attempts and six successes, I remember the week well. So does my wife. June third’s our wedding anniversary. That was the year we didn’t get to go to Colorado. This year we didn’t get to go to the Bahamas.”

  “Keep plugging. Maybe next year you won’t get to go to Paris.” A delivery boy brought the pie, sticky and sugary, a purple disaster. Cardozo made a face. “The victim’s name was Jodie Downs, twenty years old, ex-aspiring actor, fashion design student, gay. He picked up a slasher in a bar, lost one of his balls.”

  “Ouch.”

  “You weren’t by any chance on the case, were you, Barry?”

  “It’s hard enough remembering the ones who die. The survivors I have a very short retention for.”

  “He’s dead now.”

  “Can’t say I recall him.”

  “Jodie Downs.”

  “A lot of stiffs under the bridge in three years.”

  “Could you messenger me whatever paper you’ve got?”

  “You got it.”

  Ellie Siegel came into the cubicle. She stood there a moment just staring at Cardozo. “Ever heard of the Rawhide bar?”

  “Tell me what I’m missing out on.”

  “Eighth Avenue and West Twentieth.” She sailed an interoffice memo down onto the desk. “The bartender recognized the flyer. His name is Hal. He’s tending bar till eight. So you got time to enjoy your pie.”

  Cardozo shoved the paper plate at her. “You enjoy it.”

  She looked at the purple stain sinking through the crust into the cardboard. “Vince, you know your problem? No self-respect, putting junk like that into your gut. Some night I’m going to cook you a decent meal. You’re too young to be going to pot.”

  “I’m not going to pot.”

  “Mr. America you’re not.”

  “Who’s talking, Miss Universe? I get my share of propositions.”

  “You’d get better propositions if you ate right. Knock off ten pounds and maybe you’d even get a shiksa to marry you.”

  “You’re a pushy Jewish broad, you know that?”

  “I’m as Irish as you.”

  “I’m not one percent Irish.”

  “So we match.”

  “You think you’re going to get me with insults, you really think insults are going to give me a hard-on?”

  “Who needs you, Vince? You’re a macho bitch.”

  Cardozo pushed through the door. He took a deep breath, tasting the air, disliking the smell of spilled beer that seemed to have gone a stage beyond rot.

  The bartender hefted himself up into a standing position. A black-moustached giant, steel studs sprayed across his leather like diamonds, he came down the bar, passing a damp cloth along the wood. The rag stopped two swipes away from Cardozo. “What’ll it be?”

  “Diet Pepsi.”

  The bartender gave Cardozo the can of soda.

  The shadows in the bar were deep—almost night. Tatters of street light played through the synthetic buckskin that had been rigged across the windows.

  “You’re Hal?” Cardozo asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “You know this guy?” Cardozo laid a flyer on the bar.

  The bartender put on granny glasses and they gave him a look totally at odds with the piratical black beard. A tiny loop of steel glimmered in his right ear. He studied the flyer a moment, then folded his glasses back into his vest pocket. “Yeah. I know him.”

  “Tell me about him.” Cardozo showed the bartender his shield.

  “Jodie and I dated.”

  “And?”

  “Are you a narc?”

  “Homicide.”

  Shock hit the bartender’s face. He leaned down against the bar. “He’s dead? How?”

  “We want to find out.”

  The bartender began to wipe a glass. From the pool table, clear and clean as the tap of a woodpecker, came the contact of a cue on an ivory ball, then the rumble of dead weight dropping down a felt-lined pocket.

  “He never mentioned any threats?” Cardozo asked.

  “He didn’t get threats. He got propositions.”

  “Who’d want to kill him?”

  “I don’t know. Me, sometimes.”

  “Where were you the twenty-fourth?”

  “Week ago Saturday? Same place I am now. Right here.”

  “Where was he?”

  “The Inferno.”

  “What’s the Inferno?”

  “Sex club on Ninth. He practically lived there. It’s where we met.”

  Wind-whipped rain spattered down, making soapsuds in the gutter outside the precinct house as Cardozo hurried from the alley into the lobby. His cubicle was hot and still. He stood with his finger on the light switch, trying to guess from the mound on his desk how much departmental garbage had come in. He pressed the button. The light flung his shadow across the wall and filing cabinet.

  The Jodie Downs file was on his desk, along with a note from Detective Barry MacPherson of the nineteenth please to take care of the hospital report.

  There were four pages of NYPD letterhead covered with amateurish, misaligned, misspelled typing—clearly a departmental job—and there was a sheaf of public health reports, slightly better typed, with photographs attached.

  The police report was grim, sad reading.

  Jodie Downs had reviewed mug shots and sat at twenty-one lineups and had not been able to recognize his attacker. The assailant had never been found. The Identi-Kit picture, based on Jodie’s description, showed a stocky, well-built man in his late twenties, with strong jaw, dark cu
rly hair, a high smooth forehead, a moustache covering a sensual full upper lip. Possibly Hispanic or Italian. There was nothing real about the perpetrator: he was a dream, a stud who swaggered through a million male fashion drawings and probably ten million gay jack-off magazines.

  Police and Lenox Hill Hospital psychiatrists profiled Downs as a bewildered and guilt-ridden young man, unable to reconcile the contradictions in his own personality, compulsively drawn to the temporary self-obliteration of drugs and sexual acting out.

  Cardozo looked at the photographs and felt sick. They’d been taken, he supposed, for insurance purposes—in case Jodie Downs had sued for loss of his testicle.

  Cardozo went to the door and hollered for Monteleone.

  A moment later the light from the squad room outlined Greg’s solid frame.

  “Greg, you used to work Vice Squad. What do you know about a place called the Inferno?”

  “You got six hours, Vince. It doesn’t open till midnight. Doesn’t get swinging till two.”

  “What goes on there?”

  “What doesn’t go on. It’s a sex club. Sex and drugs.”

  “Gay?”

  “Vince—it’s got everything. Maybe no animals, maybe no liquor license, but believe me there are categories of behavior there that even the Supreme Court couldn’t put a name to.”

  “What kind of dress?”

  “Dress? You kidding? Leather bra or booties is optional—but your basic party wear at Inferno is skin.”

  “You don’t have to look any special way to get in?”

  “You could look like Godzilla and get in. In fact that’s the kind of membership they want.”

  “Were you a member?”

  “Sure. The whole vice squad of New York’s a member.”

  “Are you still a member?”

  “I haven’t received an expulsion notice.”

  “Good. You’re taking two guests tonight.”

  “Vince. I’m a married man.”

  “You don’t have to break your marriage vows.”

  “That place is what Cardinal O’Connor calls an occasion of sin.”

  Cardozo shot Monteleone a look. “His Eminence is a member too?”

  Monteleone leveled a smoke-colored gaze at him. “I want overtime and a half. Hardship pay.”

  “Screw you. And find Ellie. Tell her she’s invited. One A.M. sharp.”

  20

  “WE’RE PUBLIC NOW.” THERE was pride in Billi’s voice. “Our stock is traded on the New York Exchange. And doing very handsomely.”

  “How much of ourselves do we own?” Babe asked.

  “We control, naturally. We’ve kept the lion’s share. Twelve percent.”

  “That’s a lion’s share?”

  “Nowadays. And I’ll tell you something else. We hold a hell of a lot of IBM, and the crash didn’t touch it.”

  “But we’re designers,” Babe said. “Not a brokerage house.”

  “Indeed we are designers. Designers plus.” He plunged into a whirlwind description of the plusses: the new products and services, the plans to expand and diversify, something about Canadian lumber.

  Babe rested her forehead against the palm of her hand. Her eyes were so heavy that they were weighing down her entire head. “Billi, I’m sorry, it’s too much coming at me at once.”

  Billi was silent a moment. Long black lashes half-veiled his gaze.

  She saw she’d wounded him. “Don’t misunderstand. I love what you’ve done—no, that sounds phony and frivolous. I can’t even follow what you’ve done, but I trust you. I always have.”

  She’d almost married Billi. He’d proposed marriage after her divorce from Ernst Koenig, before her romance with Scottie. She’d never said yes, never said no—except by marrying Scottie, which was as decisive a no as a woman could give—yet he’d remained her friend and business associate.

  “I just feel helpless, Billi. So completely cut off and out of things.”

  “But you’re not.” He rose and turned off the air conditioner and opened the window, letting in a rush of city air that seemed noisy and vital compared to the lifeless cool purity of the stillness in that room.

  She could smell the world out there, the streets alive and bustling and active, the people living and real and seven years older than she remembered. She yearned to catch up, to be part of it again.

  “You’re going to get yourself out of here,” he said. “And you’re not going to yield an inch to those parents of yours. It’s not that they’re against you. They’re just frightened for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a lot’s changed in seven years. A lot of people are thrown by the new society, the new behavior, the new money.”

  “There’s never anything new about money.”

  “Nowadays there’s a great deal.” A shadow crossed Billi’s face, and there was a curl of disdain to his tone. “The new nouveaux aren’t the type you remember. They entertain on Park Avenue and they invite gossip columnists and press agents. They deal on Wall Street and bank in Geneva, shoot in South Africa, shop in Hong Kong, eat in Paris. And flaunt it everywhere. Ostentation is the rage—and it’s the biggest reversal to rock society since drugs. Some people can’t cope—they’re clinging to the old ways for dear life. Lucia and Hadley pretend we’re still living in the time of The Forsyte Saga and Gaslight. And they’re not the only people fooling themselves.”

  Billi stood a long moment beside the window, his eyes squinting against the rays of the sun. His arms were locked around his chest. There was something held back in his voice and it didn’t go with his words.

  “Take our friend Ash Canfield,” he said. “She looks quite the lady with her Chanel suits and her little hats and she has that eager, childlike quality. She thinks life should be a coming-out party—but she’s flustered and bored when the band’s not playing, so she turns to drink and drugs. She’s living a nightmare—destroying her body, her mind.”

  Babe was silent, thinking of the Ash she had known years ago and the Ash she had seen last week.

  Billi turned. He looked at her. “But you’re not frightened, Babe, and you’re not helpless. You never have been. You’re going to be fine. Cordelia’s got the same stuff as you. She’s going to be fine too.”

  “Cordelia’s changed.”

  “She’s grown up.”

  “I know. I’ll have to get to know her all over again.”

  “You’re going to enjoy that.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Dis donc, do I detect just a little note of self-pity?”

  Babe’s hands played with a loose strand of her hair, and then she attempted a little smile and couldn’t manage it and she settled for a little shrug. “You detect a symphony of self-pity. Billi—what happened to my life?”

  There was a play of small muscles of Billi’s forehead; in his eyes was a mingled expression of deep grief and indignation. Babe had always felt that his sarcasm was a cover, that he was a gentler, kinder man than he gave himself credit for or wanted others to see.

  “It didn’t just happen to you, Babe. It happened to all of us. What it is, or was, is a matter of opinion. You’re going to have to find out for yourself. And it’s going to hurt. No one can make it any easier for you.”

  “Least of all Billi von Kleist, who’s going to be the perfect tight-lipped gent and not tell me a word.”

  “Scottie was my friend too.”

  “Was?”

  Billi crossed back to the bed and took her hand. A wave of his vetiver cologne went past her, and she drew the first easy breath she’d taken in three days. No matter how many worlds came crashing down like dropped trays, she could always count on Billi von Kleist and his cool common sense.

  “Let it go, Babe. Start letting go of it right here and now. It’s over, gone. Get on with the present. Get back to work.”

  His eyes were probing into hers: they were a fiery blue that seemed to scan her and read her like sonar.

  “No matter what el
se happens,” he said, “no matter what else you discover has happened, hold on to work. Work is the last, the most important, the only frontier. Everything else comes and goes—but work stays. The one friend, the one parent, the one child, the one lover. It’s the only thread we’ve got to guide us through this labyrinth we call a life.”

  21

  THEY WERE STANDING IN the meat-packing area of Manhattan, a neighborhood of industrial buildings and warehouses just south of 14th street. The air had the smell of badly refrigerated death.

  Derelict-looking buildings lined the block. A phonebooth was the major source of light.

  It was a sweltering night, sidewalks still steaming from the rain. The worst of the storm had blown over, but a trickle still fell, glittering through the headlights of passing cars, triple-parked meat vans and idling limousines.

  A steady stream of figures scurried under umbrellas from taxis and limos to a darkened building at the end of the block.

  “What’ll the jet set think of next,” Siegel said.

  The entrance to the Inferno was through a wooden shed that had been built out over the sidewalk. Monteleone led Cardozo and Siegel past a mean-looking bouncer and down a flight of cement steps that curved not into the cellar of the building but in the opposite direction, into a catacomb under the avenue itself. The steps were narrow, but not as narrow as what came next, a dank space lit by flashlights barbed-wired to the cement walls. Members were backed up in a line, waiting to show their ID’s to the director of admissions. He sat behind a four-foot raw wood carton that bore the stencils COFFEE, CAFE, PRODUITO DO BRASIL, and he wore a leather patch over one eye.

  He lit one neatly rolled joint from another. He glanced at the line of customers. This was his moment, his island of power. Nothing was going to hurry him.

  The people behind Cardozo were talking about how much Fifth Avenue office space was going for per square foot. They looked like stockbrokers, lawyers, small-time civil service grafters who had snorted a line, kicked the traces, and bolted off the ten-to-six Monday-to-Friday path.

  Monteleone showed his membership card. “Two guests.”

  The admission man’s olive, broadly ugly face took on a look of calculation. “Twenty bucks.”

  Monteleone pulled twenty from his wallet and signed the register. Cardozo noticed that he signed the mayor’s name.