VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  Dobbsie’s account of Scottie’s defense was little more than a summary of unrelated and unsavory cases that Scottie’s lawyer, Ted Morgenstern, had defended. Dobbsie detailed Morgenstern’s ongoing skirmish with the IRS and the New York Bar Association’s repeated attempts to disbar him. There were two pages quoting Morgenstern’s denial of rumors that he was a homosexual and had had four face-lifts.

  Dobbsie described the six days of jury deliberation that led to the guilty verdict. He cited rumors that Charles (“Chassie”) Rockefeller, a drinking and polo buddy, had not only posted Scottie’s bail but had ponied up a million dollars to retain the dean of Columbia Law for advice in masterminding Scottie’s appeal. He quoted Scottie’s statement that he still loved Babe more than any other woman on earth, and were she to regain consciousness tomorrow, he would be back in Sutton Place, with Doria’s blessing, at the side of his lawful wife.

  Dobbsie next quoted from a magazine article by the well-known hostess and social commentator, Dina Alstetter:

  Two days ago, when I was visiting the stately Sutton Place town house where Babe Devens sank into her final sleep, Babe’s thirteen-year-old daughter, the remarkably poised Cordelia Koenig, asked me if I’d like to accompany her and her grandmother to see “Mommy’s room.” I followed them into a bedchamber done in marvelous Billy Baldwin earth tones, with a Renoir flower painting (Les Trois Roses) supplying contrasting accents of green and yellow.

  There on the dresser were Babe’s silver-backed brush, comb, and handmirror—heirlooms that belonged to her maternal great-grandmother, the beloved philanthropist and cofounder of Saint Vincent’s Hospital, Yvelise Wilmerding of New York’s original Four Hundred.

  On Scottie’s side of the double bed was a silver-framed photograph of a teenaged Babe Vanderwalk at a Waldorf Democratic Party fund-raiser, dancing an uninhibited Charleston with then-President of the United States Lyndon Baines Johnson. Beside the photo was a small, strikingly handsome lacquer box, designed by Erté, intended to hold shirt studs and cufflinks. I opened the box. Inside was a matchbook from the Colony, with the phone number of “Jeanne” scrawled within the cover, and an unused bottle of injectable insulin—manufacturer S. Merck, lot number R-4756-18.

  Dobbsie pointed to the poetic justice in the fact that these ill-matched twain—the “shucks-ma’am” boy from Kentucky and the bejeweled, dumpy siren from Marshal Tito’s workers’ paradise—are bound together, forever, by the secret which was no secret at all—except to that stone lady wearing the blindfold.

  For that bond, say many who know both these upwardly driven social overachievers, has already turned into a hard-drinking, hard-cursing, fist-fighting shackle. “I wouldn’t invite them anywhere,” says one prominent Manhattan hostess. “Not because of the murder—I couldn’t care less—but because of the filth they scream at one another in public.”

  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., won’t sit down at the same table with them.

  Neither will Brooke Astor.

  And don’t mention their names to actresses Celeste Holm or Dina Merrill.

  Dobbsie found some consolation in the fact that, whether or not justice will ultimately be done in the courts of man-made law, justice has been achieved in a more poetic sense: Scottie and Doria have been sentenced to lifelong doses of one another. “It’s a far more horrible punishment than the crime,” says a Coty-award winning designer, “especially for him.”

  On the final page of the book, in a somber concluding note, Dobbsie said he had begun his research convinced of Devens’s innocence, but an exhaustive analysis of the record and thirty thousand pages of interviews had forced him to change his mind.

  The real mystery, he said, was not who had injected Babe Devens, but how any sane man or woman could question the considered verdict of twelve impartial jurors. How much longer, he concluded, will society ignore the drumbeat of reason and step to the danse macabre of money?

  Babe closed the book.

  Dobbsie’s cunning interweaving of fact and conjecture astonished her. The man was a shrewd and ruthless master of implication. If the book had been commissioned by the prosecution, it could not have been more effectively calculated to damn Scottie Devens.

  Babe telephoned Ash. The machine answered and beeped.

  “Ash, it’s Babe. Are you sleeping?”

  “Not now I’m not.” Ash’s voice sounded as though she had just crawled out from under a half-dozen Nembutals. “Hi, doll. What time is it?”

  “It’s early, I’m sorry. I’ve just read Dobbsie’s book.”

  “Don’t you love it? Champagne truffles all the way.”

  “I think it’s horrible.”

  “Then you must still be in love with that bastard Scottie.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. I didn’t know your sister wrote magazine articles.”

  “And books. Dina’s been an oral journalist for four years. She tape-records people and her secretary types up the tapes. She interviewed Pope John Paul for Sewanee Review; it’s been anthologized to hell and back. And she did a great book on Sid Vicious for S and S. She had help on that, Dobbsie edited it a little.”

  “She certainly did a job on Scottie. I suppose she had help on that too.”

  “She was just trying to be obliging.”

  “Who was she obliging?”

  “Your family. They wanted the insulin in the lacquer stud box brought out and none of the papers were touching it.”

  “But Ash, there was no insulin in the lacquer stud box.”

  “How do you know? You weren’t exactly there.”

  “Because there wasn’t any lacquer stud box. Scottie used a little ceramic bowl to hold his cufflinks and studs.”

  30

  CARDOZO NUDGED RICHARDS AND nodded over the heads of the crowd. “Here he comes. Old Faithful.”

  The tall, thickset blond man moved down the stairs with a drunken cockiness, an almost falling-down swagger. He had an enormous smile on.

  It was close to three in the morning and Cardozo and Richards had been waiting for him almost two hours.

  Loring stood a moment in the confusion of the vestibule, rocking back and forth as though physically colliding with the amplified waves of music.

  “Tripping on the moon,” Richards observed.

  Loring stumbled out of his clothes. Pushing an armload of denim in front of him, he jostled into the clothescheck line.

  The clothescheck man flipped Loring’s jeans and T-shirt and jacket over a hanger and slid Loring a numbered chit. Loring stuffed the chit into his right tube sock and slid a dollar back across the counter. Cardozo made careful note which end of which rack the hanger went onto.

  The clothescheck man cheated a look at Cardozo.

  Unencumbered now, Loring narrowed his eyes and scoped the scene. The main room was mucky, rutted, steaming like a basin in a public pissoir. Shadowy figures grouped and regrouped with the urgency of viruses stalking vulnerable cells. Loring zigzagged into the party area, helping himself to every available wall and pillar.

  “Stick with him,” Cardozo told Richards. “Don’t let him leave.”

  Richards went after Loring.

  The clothescheck man watched Cardozo with a bemused look, studying him. Cardozo let his face open into a warm, wide grin. He crossed to the counter.

  “Hi.” The clothescheck man’s eyes were cheerful and his mouth had a tough, defiant twist. “You alone?”

  “Not now,” Cardozo said. “My name’s Vince.”

  The clothescheck man leaned against the counter and looked at him. “Arnold.”

  Cardozo accepted a bone-crushing macho handshake.

  A smile slopped down Arnold’s face. “You’re new?”

  “Just heard about the place.”

  “Who told you about it?”

  “You just checked his clothes.”

  “Claude?”

  “You know him?”

  “Everyone knows Claude. He’s wild.”

  “You ever partied with him?”
>
  “Hell no. He likes kids.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I’m into grown-ups.” Arnold’s eyes were probing. “You?”

  Cardozo shrugged. “A little of everything.”

  “I got some nose whiskey, premium blow.”

  Cardozo grinned. “Why not?”

  Arnold called, “Hey Herb, cover for me!” He opened a door, and a bright wedge of light fell across the clothes racks. He motioned Cardozo into the rear room.

  A naked overhead bulb spotlighted a clutter of mops and crates and empty bottles. The brick walls were covered with decomposing movie posters. The air smelled of mildew.

  Arnold placed a pocket mirror on a ledge. He took a vial out of his hip pocket and tapped a spill of white powder onto the mirror.

  He offered Cardozo a tiny pink-striped cocktail straw.

  “You’d better put that coke away before you make some cockroach very happy.” Cardozo pulled his shield out of his sock. “I’m a cop.”

  The word caught Arnold like a shot. “Shit.”

  “Relax, I’m not busting you.” Cardozo reached into his wallet between charge cards and lifted out a scissored-down photo of Jodie Downs. “Know him?”

  Arnold’s forehead wrinkled. He took the photo and held it nearer the light bulb. “I remember him. Snooty kid. Used to come here every night. Haven’t seen him in a few weeks.”

  “Did you ever see him with Claude?”

  “Maybe once. Yeah, once. Sure. The last time he was here they left together.”

  “What night?”

  “The night the sound system blew. That makes it—Friday. Memorial Day weekend.”

  Cardozo hurried up into the light drizzle. In his pocket he had the key ring from Claude Loring’s jeans. The asphalt had the gleam of sweating skin, and the lights of slow-moving limousines reflected in it like dropped torches.

  The glow of a streetlight caught the tail of the Ford van parked across the avenue.

  Cardozo threaded his way through traffic. Tommy Daniels was waiting for him in a niche in the wall.

  There were seven keys on Loring’s key ring. The first four didn’t fit the van door and the fifth did.

  Cardozo swung the door open. Daniels clambered up behind him into the van.

  Cardozo held the flashlight and Daniels took the pictures, snapping the dashboard, the glove compartment, the seat, the floor of the cab.

  “Get a good shot of these.” Cardozo played the flashlight beam across two dark baseball-sized stains on the carpeting on the passenger side.

  After Daniels had photographed the stains Cardozo took a penknife and began cutting the carpet away from the floor.

  “Hey, Vince. Paydirt.” Daniels was holding a piece of rag. “This was under the seat.” He shook his head, turning the cloth in his hands. “Underpants.”

  Cardozo grabbed the shorts. He felt something jump in his gut. They were stained with grease and with something else that had caked and was beginning to flake, and the India ink initials on the waistband were J.D.

  “The bloodstains are all type O, same as Downs,” Lou Stein said two mornings later. “I recovered residual skin and urine from the fabric, chromosomes match. Downs used a lousy Laundromat. Sad for him, nice for us.”

  “Thanks, Lou. Sorry to be throwing all this overtime at you.”

  “I can use the extra income. The county reassessed my house.”

  Cardozo broke the phone connection and punched another number. Judge Levin answered on the third ring.

  “Tom, I need two arrest warrants.”

  The hacksaw mimicked the screams of a skewered hamster. Claude Loring was lying on his back in the kitchen of apartment 11, cutting through a drainpipe. He was wearing a Levi’s shirt with the arms scissored off, and sinew tensed darkly under the tanned skin of his forearms.

  “Claude.” Richards nudged a foot against Claude’s workboot.

  Loring’s head came out from the cabinet under the sink. Wariness flickered over his features as he lifted off his Walkman earphones.

  “Want to talk to you,” Richards said. “Down at the precinct.”

  “I’m working,” Loring said.

  “So am I. We have a warrant, Claude.” Richards turned slightly, nodding toward Ellie Siegel. “Claude, Detective Siegel; Ellie, Claude.”

  The flat of Loring’s thumb ran back and forth over the edge of the saw. He heaved himself to his feet. He gathered up his Walkman and pushed a button, extinguishing the tiny voice of the soprano chirping from the earphones. “Let me wash.”

  “Better help him wash,” Siegel suggested to Richards.

  A woman came into the kitchen and shot the officers a look that was outraged and ice-cold. “Hey, the duke and duchess of Argyll and Diana Vreeland are coming to dinner—what about my sink?”

  Cardozo borrowed a chair from the squad room and placed it against the cubicle wall, facing the desk. He fooled with the angle of the drafting lamp, swinging it up and down till it cast a glow that struck him as right.

  “Close the window,” he told Richards. “We don’t want the air to smell too good.”

  “Believe me, Vince, you got no worries.”

  Cardozo took the evidence bag containing the black leather mask and placed it in the top desk drawer.

  He surveyed the cubicle and nodded.

  Richards went out and brought Loring in.

  Loring looked uneasily around the cluttered little space of the cubicle.

  “Have a seat, Claude.” Cardozo indicated the straight-backed wood chair against the wall.

  Loring sat. There was a tightening of muscle in his face.

  “Have a smoke.” Cardozo pushed the ashtray across the desk.

  Loring fumbled a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket. He hung a cigarette inside his upper lip. Before he could light it Richards held out a flaming Bic. Loring bent into the light, inhaled, pulled back.

  Cardozo started quietly. “How well did you know Jodie Downs?”

  There was a blank on Loring’s face. Cardozo had seen a lot of blank faces in the line of questioning, and this was a very familiar sort of blank. It was a holding where a reaction should have been.

  “I didn’t know him.” Loring’s eyes locked with Cardozo’s.

  “Ever hear the name?” Cardozo asked.

  “No.”

  “You sure?” Richards asked gently.

  Loring threw him a nervous little smile that wasn’t a smile, but it was a chance to get his eyes away from Cardozo’s. “Yeah, pretty sure.”

  At that moment Richards became the good guy.

  There was a good cop and a bad cop in every interrogation; the suspect always did the casting. These first few moments of sitting, looking around, always showed who he felt less threatened by. In a long interrogation cops might flip roles as a strategy to confuse the suspect and wear him down, but they always started by taking the parts he assigned.

  “Ever see this face?” Cardozo handed Loring a photograph.

  Loring looked at it. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “That’s Jodie Downs,” Cardozo said. “He was gay. You’re gay, aren’t you, Claude?”

  Loring’s eyes were scooting around in a nest of unsmiling smile lines. “Doesn’t mean I knew him.”

  “What kind of sex do you like to have?”

  “Same as a lot of people.”

  “Rough sex?” Cardozo asked.

  There was a blaze of silence.

  “You go to some pretty rough places,” Cardozo said.

  “What’s rough?”

  “The Inferno.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been to the Inferno.”

  “Jodie Downs was in the Inferno the night before he showed up dead in apartment six. So were you.”

  Loring swallowed.

  Richards stood before Loring and smiled at him. “Coffee?”

  Loring nodded.

  “Milk and sugar?”

  “Thanks.”

  Richards brought back coffees for
everyone.

  Cardozo stirred his coffee. “Claude, where were you Memorial Day weekend?”

  “It’s in the report,” Richards said. “Claude was crashing at a friend’s.”

  “Who was this friend, Claude?”

  “It’s in the report, Vince. Her name’s Faye di Stasio.”

  “You were there all weekend, Claude?”

  “Yeah.” Loring’s voice had shrunk.

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Read the report, Vince. She backs Claude up.”

  Cardozo shifted folders. “Jerzy Bronski’s interrogation says something else. It says that at two P.M. on Saturday, May twenty-fourth, Claude’s van was in the garage of Beaux Arts Tower.”

  “I don’t have a van.”

  “You have Faye di Stasio’s van.” Cardozo leaned back in his chair and looked at him. “Claude, why did you lie to us and say you spent the weekend at Faye’s?”

  “It wasn’t a lie.”

  “Then it was your ghost that bought a gram of coke from Hector Dominguez?”

  Loring’s shoulders stiffened.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Loring!” Cardozo shouted. “I didn’t bring you here to get jerked off!”

  “Vince,” Richards said, “take it easy. Please.”

  “I am taking it easy!” Cardozo opened the desk drawer and slammed the evidence bag down onto the blotter. “Where’d you get this, Loring?”

  Loring stared blinking at the black leather mask. His voice was tight. “I gotta crap.”

  “First you gotta give me some answers.”

  “You let me go crap or you’re going to have one smelly office, Officer.”

  “The name’s Lieutenant and you can shit in your yarmulke for all I care.”

  “Vince, let him crap. He’s going in his pants already.”

  “All right, crap. Go with him, Sam.”

  Richards and Loring were back in six minutes.

  Cardozo pretended not to notice Loring’s uneven breathing, the first sign of panic. “You might as well tell us about Hector, Claude. He’s told us all about you.”

  Claude’s eyes went to the mask on the desk and then scooted away. “Okay, I buy coke from Hector.”