VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  “You admit you know,” he said.

  “I admit I know him.”

  “The killer.”

  “Claude. I don’t know anything about a killing.”

  “If you haven’t figured out about the killing by now your brain’s running slow. If he was innocent, why did he ask you to lie?”

  She was having difficulty swallowing.

  “Lying about where Claude was and where the truck was is aiding and abetting. That’s a felony. Why do you want to help that schmuck?”

  “He’s a friend. I help my friends.”

  Cardozo had a feeling she meant there was nothing she wouldn’t do not to be lonely.

  “Maybe I should call a lawyer,” she said.

  “You can call a lawyer from jail or you can talk to me here, now, just the two of us.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “I could bust you for coke. I’m carrying a warrant to search.” He tapped the bulge of the .38 under his jacket.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Because of what he did to a guy.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know. Your van was seen at Beaux Arts Tower Saturday May twenty-fourth. It was seen in the garage and it was seen on the security monitor and twenty people have identified that photo. That same day seven people saw Claude Loring in the building and one of them sold him a gram of coke and you snorted that coke. So don’t tell me Claude Loring was sleeping his buzz off from Friday night till Tuesday morning. It’s you against twenty-seven eyewitnesses.”

  “You have your witnesses, you don’t need me.”

  “But you need me. If the D.A. brings charges on your first statement, you’ll be buying coke in prison and not on the street.”

  She brought her head down slowly between her hands. She huddled as if she didn’t want to exist.

  He let her hurt for a long moment. “Tell the truth now,” he said, “and we’ll forget that first statement.”

  Her head came up and she gave him a pathetic, vacant stare. “I can only tell you what I know.”

  “That’s good for a start.”

  Her fingers became still. Her face sagged, white as a flag of surrender. The silence was broken by the sound of the cat scratching violently in its litter box.

  “Claude wasn’t here till Saturday afternoon. He showed up around four.”

  Her eyes closed. She looked drained, waxen. She squeezed her lids shut to hold back tears.

  Cardozo took down a brief statement longhand and had her sign it. The statement wasn’t worth a fart legally, but psychologically it would be a powerful weapon in breaking down Loring.

  “Do I have your permission to search the van?” he asked.

  “Looks to me like he panicked,” Cardozo said. “Hitting on Hector for coke so hard that Hector let him have the gram and screwed up Debbi’s delivery. Hector wouldn’t have done that unless Loring had been in a very bad way.”

  A shadow rippled across Lucinda MacGill’s face. “So we’re talking murder two.”

  “No, stick with murder one for a minute. Loring planned the killing. Afterward he tooted a few lines to pull himself together, started taking the body apart with an electric saw, freaked, went to his girlfriend’s to crash.”

  Her look seemed to wonder at him. “Leaving the body half dismembered?”

  “It was a holiday weekend, no one was going to be around, he turned the air conditioning on so the body wouldn’t cook, what was the rush.”

  “You’re conjecturing that he reasons this way.”

  “Coke can lead to some pretty off-the-wall thinking. And we don’t know what other drugs he was doing.”

  “What other drugs do you think he was doing?”

  “Does it matter? Drugs aren’t a defense.”

  “Unfortunately, some judges and juries have accepted them as an absolute defense in gay murders.”

  Cardozo let out a long, slow exhalation. “I think he was using downside stuff. Smack, ludes, something that put him out for two days. So instead of getting the rest of the body into the garbage over the weekend, he was passed out for two days, and by then the body had been found. So he asked Di Stasio to alibi for him.”

  Lucinda MacGill studied the handwritten statement. A silence fell on the cubicle. There was only the sound of phones ringing outside in the squad room.

  “Di Stasio’s statement is enough to bring Loring in for questioning.”

  “I want to go into Di Stasio’s van. Loring transported the victim to Beaux Arts Tower in it and it could hold evidence.”

  Lines of disapproval ran downward from the corners of Lucinda MacGill’s mouth. “You can’t get into it. Di Stasio was unrepresented by counsel when you questioned her.”

  “I’m not accusing her of murder.”

  “Anything she does to incriminate Loring incriminates her of shielding him. She’s entitled to counsel and she didn’t waive her Miranda rights. If Loring is in possession of the van when you search, and if he borrowed it in good faith, he has an expectation of privacy. Violating it makes the state’s case tref.”

  There was a pause. She kept staring at him.

  “You make my life tougher than it needs to be, Counselor.”

  “That’s my job. Get a warrant, Lieutenant.”

  Cardozo lifted the phone receiver and pushed the digits of Judge Tom Levin’s number. The call clicked through.

  “Judge’s chambers.”

  “Amy, it’s Vince Cardozo. Where is he?”

  “Right here.”

  A sudden jovial baritone came on the line. “Make it fast, Vince, I have a jury coming back in.”

  “I need a warrant to search a van.”

  “What do you expect to find?”

  “If I’m lucky, evidence in a murder. Lucky or not, drugs.”

  “You got it. Tell Amy the details.”

  Cardozo told Amy the color, year, and make of the van, the number on the Tennessee plates, the name and address of the owner.

  “I’ll messenger the warrant to you right away.”

  “Amy, I want to marry you.”

  “That won’t be necessary, sweetie.”

  28

  THE BAR AT ARCHIBALD’S was four-deep in people. Babe was aware of heads turning as the maître d’ wheeled her through the crowd to the corner table.

  Ash, in a froth of pale raspberry chiffon, was sitting with a half-finished Manhattan. She was wearing pendant diamond earrings that glowed like soft little lights beside her head.

  “Hi, doll.” She leaned to kiss Babe on the cheek. “How about some champers?”

  “What’s the celebration?”

  “I’ve reconciled with Dunk.” Ash signaled the waiter. “André, we’ll have some Moët.”

  Babe opened her napkin—it was peach linen, matching the tablecloth and the walls—and looked around her. The atmosphere was one of frenzied chatter, with women wearing gold at noon and people waving and shouting from one table to another and everyone squirming in their bentwood chairs to get a look at whoever was coming in.

  At a corner table, in an ugly web of cables laid across the floor, two men in blue jeans and workshirts were aiming a portable searchlight and a shoulder-carried minicam at a fat man and a garishly overmadeup woman. The man and woman wore full evening dress; a heavy diamond-and-gold necklace lay across the woman’s half-exposed bosom, and heavy emeralds dangled from her ears. A third man in jeans was holding a microphone over the vichyssoise, catching their conversation.

  “What in the world is that?” Babe asked.

  “They’re probably filming a segment of Life-Styles of the Rich and Famous,” Ash said.

  “During lunch? Don’t the customers object?”

  “Object?” A bubble of laughter broke from Ash’s throat. “Half the people here would kill to get on that show.”

  Babe was puzzled, and Ash seemed amused by the look on her face.

  “This is what’s in,” Ash said,
“so get used to it: Shrill Is Beautiful.”

  Ash explained that the maître d’ seated all the right people in the front room; climbers and nonentities were put in the rear dining room, affectionately dubbed Managua by those who didn’t have to sit there.

  “Some have offered bribes of a thousand dollars to be seated in front. Over there by the pillar is the royal box. That’s where Nancy sits when she’s in town. And Jackie, and Liz.”

  The waiter brought champagne. A moment later he brought another Manhattan that Babe had not seen Ash order. Ash didn’t seem to notice it wasn’t the same drink she had just put down.

  “To us.”

  Ash lifted her champagne glass to Babe’s. They clinked.

  They began laughing and talking about things, remembering things, wandering down familiar paths.

  “Lasagna of shrimp, scallops, and spinach in saffron sauce?” Ash peeped at Babe over the top of her menu.

  “I think cold poached salmon for me,” Babe said.

  Fifty-five minutes later a tall handsome woman stopped at their table. “Is everything satisfactory?” She had deep-set eyes and black curly hair that came to her shoulders.

  Ash, poking dubiously at her shrimp, raised a glance at the newcomer and smiled. “Faith—look who I’ve brought you.”

  The woman stood there in her dove gray crepe de chine dress looking at Babe. Expression left her eyes and was replaced with guardedness.

  “Babe,” Ash said, “it’s dear old Mrs. Banks.”

  For a moment Babe’s breath stuck in her throat. She told herself it couldn’t be: the woman was too poised, authority emanated from her like a perfume, Mrs. Banks would be in her sixties by now. But then she saw the faint erasures on the face, the surgical blankness around the eyes and chin and forehead. She realized this ice statue was her old friend and servant.

  “Sit with us,” Ash pleaded. “Do have a glass of champagne. This is auld lang syne.”

  Mrs. Banks gave just a nod of her head. The deep red ruby on her brooch was the size of an acorn. She pulled out a chair and sat and Ash poured an inch of champagne into a water glass and pushed it toward her.

  “You’re looking well, Mrs. Devens.” The tone of Mrs. Banks’s words fell in an emotional dead center, without a trace of remembering or affection.

  “You have a lovely restaurant,” Babe said.

  “God’s been good to me. So have the columnists. But then, that’s what I pay a press agent for.”

  “Could we meet sometime?” Babe said. “Have tea and talk?”

  Mrs. Banks fixed her with a stare. “I don’t talk about the past.”

  “It’s true,” Ash said. “A publisher offered Faith a fortune to do the book on you and she turned him down.”

  “Enjoy your meals,” Mrs. Banks said.

  And without touching her champagne she had gone on to another table.

  “Isn’t it too divinely much?” Ash said. “Mousy old Mrs. Banks! Everyone calls her Faith now and she gets interviewed and invited everywhere.”

  Babe watched her former servant greeting patrons, moving through the tables in a pattern that was planned and intricate and swift. She was so caught up in the transformation of Mrs. Banks that she didn’t pay attention to the relaxed, good-looking, vaguely aristocratic man who had approached the table. He tapped Ash on the shoulder.

  Ash turned, saw him, and whooped. “Dobbsie, you devil, where have you been?”

  She offered her face and he kissed her.

  “I’ve been holding poor dear Jeannie Astor’s hand. Her poodle died.”

  “Well, tell her not to overeat. She always stuffs when she’s depressed. Dobbsie, this is Babe Vanderwalk. Whoops, Babe Devens. She knows all my secrets, so you can be as dreadful as you normally are.”

  Dobbsie’s dark eyes met Babe’s. “How do you do?”

  Babe held out her hand. “How do you do?”

  He took the hand lightly. “Gordon Dobbs. Better known as Dobbsie.”

  “Dobbsie and I go way back,” Ash said. “It was love at first sight.” She tapped an empty chair. “Sit,” she commanded.

  Dobbsie drew out the chair and sat, taking a moment to adjust the crease in his gray cotton slacks. He looked at Babe, his gaze interested and curious, and he smiled a half smile. She saw that his receding brown hair was going gray at the temples.

  “Babe is my absolutely oldest chum in the world,” Ash said.

  “And the two of you were hellraisers at Miss Spence’s,” Dobbsie said, “smoking cigarettes in the back of study hall.”

  “You only know that because I told you,” Ash said. “Tell him about the school uniforms we had to wear, Babe. Tell him.”

  “They were gray flannel skirts,” Babe said. “With green woolen blazers.”

  “Not the skirts,” Ash said, “tell Dobbsie about the socks.”

  “They were gray too,” Babe said.

  “Scottish wool from Abercrombie’s,” Ash said. “Our family chauffeurs took turns driving us to school together—and in the back seat of the limo we’d scrunch down—”

  “And undress,” Dobbsie said.

  “And exchange left socks,” Ash said. “And on laundry day my fraulein and Babe’s mademoiselle went out of their respective skulls trying to solve the mystery of the socks that wouldn’t pair off!”

  “You two were quite the lost generation,” Dobbsie said.

  “Well, we were almost not confirmed,” Ash said. “Really. We used my father’s CBS passes to get into Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show and we passed Elvis’s autograph around confirmation class.”

  “And Reverend Endicott Lewes phoned our mothers,” Babe said.

  Ash imitated Lucia. “‘Where did you get hold of such a terrible thing?’”

  “I don’t see that Elvis was so terrible,” Dobbsie said.

  “At the time he was considered a threat to the morals of the republic.” Ash giggled. “He was certainly a threat to mine.”

  “Come on, you were only twelve,” Dobbsie said.

  “I’d already had the curse.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Mr. Lewes didn’t think we were ready to be confirmed into the Episcopal Church,” Babe said.

  “Our mothers were terrified we’d have to become Methodists,” Ash said.

  “You jest,” Dobbsie said.

  “Our fathers had a talk with the bishop,” Ash said. “It cost an entire stained glass window in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine to smooth the whole thing over.”

  “And for six months,” Dobbsie said, “you both were punished by not being allowed to have dessert at Sunday supper at the Cosmopolitan Club.”

  “How did you know?” Ash cried.

  “I have sources,” Dobbsie said.

  “Oh, I told you, I know I told you, you wrote it all down the way you’re writing it all down now.”

  Babe observed Dobbsie’s hand, half-hidden by the tablecloth, writing on a small notepad on his lap.

  “Babe, tell Dobbsie about sneaking off to Arthur Murray’s to learn the twist.”

  “We sneaked off to Arthur Murray’s to—”

  “And at my big sister Dina’s coming-out, Lancelot and Doonie Farquharson were so impressed with our wild dancing that they took us to the penthouse suite and ordered up martinis from the King Cole Room. And when we got back to the party Lester Lanin was playing “Good Night, Ladies” and everyone was convinced we’d gone all the way with the Farquharson boys right there in the Saint Regis!”

  “I should hope to hell you had,” Dobbsie said.

  Suddenly Ash seemed almost shy. “Oh, no one did that in those days. It was the fifties, after all.”

  “Come on, Dina’s coming-out must have been in the sixties. Didn’t you two flower children at least star in a few freakouts or one or two love-ins?”

  “It was the early sixties,” Babe said.

  Ash, pink-faced and sparkling-eyed, was deep into her fourth glass of bubbly. “I was a virgin till I met Dun
k, and Babe knew it.”

  “And you knew I was a virgin,” Babe said.

  Ash giggled again. “Till you met Dunk. No, we are not going into that, that is too sordid. And Dobbsie you will not publish it!” Ash reached under the table and grabbed Dobbsie’s pad. She frowned at it. “Shorthand—how did you learn that?”

  Dobbsie gracefully lifted his pad out of Ash’s hand. “By studying.”

  “Why do you know shorthand?” Babe asked.

  “It makes my work a little easier.”

  “Dobbsie writes books.” Ash cupped her hands around her mouth and pretended to whisper. “He wrote the book that Mrs. Banks wouldn’t. The book about your murder.”

  The silence was dense and extraordinary until Dobbsie burst into a comfortable basso rumble of laughter. “Ash didn’t mean that the way it sounds.”

  “Oh yes I did. Dobbsie is the only man in town who doesn’t call a spade a gardening implement. Murder it was and murder he called it. And Scottie didn’t have the guts to sue.”

  Ash rose teeteringly from her seat.

  “You two get to know one another. I have to go to the little girls’.”

  Dobbsie watched her weave through the tables. “What a sensational woman. I’m absolutely in love with Ash. Pity she’s drinking so much.”

  “Ash has always liked to get tiddly at lunch.”

  “Tell me when she’s not tiddly. The only gal who comes back for seconds at Communion. Poor kid, the reconciliation’s just not going to work.”

  Babe had a premonition she was about to hear something that was going to make her feel disloyal to Ash.

  “Ash ran away from Silver Hill three times.” Dobbsie had lowered his voice. “She won’t admit she has a problem. Dunk’s really just enabling her. She’s got to hit her own bottom and admit the booze has got her licked. But she’s so chock-full of denial. Refuses to join the Fellowship.”

  Fellowship, Babe sensed, had a capital F.

  “I’m a member.” Dobbsie lifted his glass of Perrier and lime. “Not ashamed to admit it. Most sensible thing I ever did in my life. Haven’t touched a drop in eleven years, grace of God.”

  “That’s admirable,” Babe said, feeling a compliment was desired. The minute she said it she had an odd sense that she had just turned a corner.