VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  “You bought coke that Saturday.”

  “I was strung out, I needed some.”

  “When were you in the building?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “I need the exact time, Claude. When did you drive your van into the garage and when did you drive it out?”

  “I got there at quarter of two and I left at quarter after.”

  Cardozo sat forward and gripped Loring’s face in his hands with barely contained fury. “Jerzy saw your van in the garage before noon.”

  Loring threw Cardozo’s hand off. “Don’t you fuckin’ touch me, cop!”

  “Then don’t you keep me hanging by my dick! Tell me the truth!”

  Loring began to break. “Look, I was freaked, maybe I wasn’t certain of the time …”

  Richards took over, his voice gentle. “What freaked you?”

  Claude’s teeth left dents in his lower lip. “I had a fight with my roommate. He threw me out, threw my records and tapes on the street.”

  “Why’d he do a shitty thing like that?”

  “The bastard met someone else.”

  Cardozo cut in. “How’d you feel about that, Claude—angry? Angry enough to get coked up and kill the first kid you could drag out of the Inferno?”

  “I wasn’t anywhere near the Inferno that weekend, I was crashing at Faye’s! I was out for half an hour scoring coke!”

  “Claude,” Richards said, “we know it was more than half an hour.”

  “Okay, maybe a couple of hours.”

  “That’s not what your friend Faye says.” Cardozo handed Loring the handwritten statement he had taken from Faye di Stasio.

  For a long, long moment Loring stared at the page, not breathing, nothing moving but his bloodshot eyes.

  “I have to sit here and take this shit?” he screamed. The sheet was fluttering wildly in his hand.

  Cardozo lifted the phone. “Send her in.”

  A moment later Faye di Stasio stood in the doorway. Behind her dark glasses and the disheveled jeans and T-shirt she wore like camouflage, she seemed scared and vulnerable.

  “I told them the truth, Claude.” There was a desperate apologetic plea in her face. “They know.”

  Claude dropped his head into his hands.

  “Claude,” Cardozo said, “the clothescheck saw you leave the Inferno with Jodie Downs the night before the murder.”

  Claude hugged his arms across his chest.

  Richards crouched down, facing Loring knee to knee. He put a gentle hand on Loring’s shoulder. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Claude.” Richards gently lifted Loring’s head up from his crossed arms. “Whatever’s bothering you, you can tell us. Let go of it, Claude. We’re here to help you.”

  Something was happening to the play of moods across Loring’s face. The fear and hostility had left his eyes and were replaced by a dreamy wondering. Suddenly his face fogged in and he slumped violently forward.

  Cardozo shot to his feet. “What happened in the john?”

  “He crapped is what happened,” Richards said.

  Cardozo grabbed Loring’s left arm. His eye ran along the road map of veins. “You let him shoot up!”

  “He didn’t shoot up!”

  “Then he swallowed something!”

  Faye started to speak, hesitated, bit her lip. “He carries ludes,” she said.

  Blind rage flooded Cardozo. “Claude!” he shouted. “How many did you swallow?”

  An asbestos curtain had dropped around Loring. Nothing was getting in or out.

  Cardozo lashed out with his open palm, slamming the wall half an inch from Loring’s face.

  Loring’s eyes flicked open. They slid toward Cardozo.

  “Get a tape recorder,” Cardozo shouted.

  Richards brought a tape recorder from the squad room. Cardozo pressed the start switch.

  “This is Lieutenant Vincent Cardozo interrogating suspect Claude Loring. Claude, before making any statement you have a right to consult an attorney. If you can’t afford an attorney, we will provide one. Do you wish an attorney?”

  Loring stared at him with the unblinking eye of a potato.

  The telephone jangled. Richards was nearest. “Yeah?” He covered the receiver. “Vince, it’s his lawyer.”

  Cardozo took the receiver. “Vince Cardozo.”

  “My client is to make no statements,” Ted Morgenstern said.

  31

  “LIFT! COME ON, YOU can do better than that!” With a prod that was not all that gentle, the therapist encouraged Babe to perform the leg movement.

  Just as she managed to extend her knee, her leg went off to the side. She stared at the defiant limb, helpless and puzzled. Her vision began blearing at the edges.

  “Keep going.” The therapist was smiling, but he smiled only with his lips. His eyes were carefully assessing. “Come on. You nearly did it.”

  Blinking away tears of frustration, Babe brought the leg up again, awkwardly, hardly breathing and just a bit afraid. This time, to her amazement, she was able to complete the movement.

  Just as an exhalation of relief escaped her, Mrs. Wheelock knocked on the door and said that the man from Viewerworld was here.

  Babe glanced toward the therapist.

  “That’s enough for today,” he said. He unhooked the weight from her ankle. “We don’t want your ball-and-socket joints to go on strike.”

  “Mrs. Wheelock, show the man where it goes,” Babe said. “I’ll be right there.”

  Babe transferred herself into the chair. The therapist stood watching, not moving, not speaking, not completely masking a mild disapproval in his expression. She had told him not to help her even if she begged.

  She wheeled across the room. The therapist, holding the door, suddenly blushed. He had forgotten his agreement: he had helped.

  “Sorry.”

  She smiled. “See you next time. Thanks for not being easy on me.”

  In the bathroom Babe stretched to turn on the shower and adjust the water temperature. She reached her right arm and grabbed one of the eight handles temporarily bolted into the stall. She pulled herself halfway up and reached the left arm to another handle.

  Once she was standing, it was a fairly uncomplicated maneuver to lower herself onto the aluminum stool that had been bolted to the floor. She used one hand to steady herself and the other to soap with. The tingling spray gradually washed the bone-soaking numbness of her joints.

  She allowed herself three minutes in the shower. Then, groping along handles installed in the walls, she centered herself on a foam-cushioned stool. As she dried herself, she glimpsed herself in the mirror, forehead and mouth taut with effort.

  Once dry, she wheeled herself into the dressing room. To give herself tangible goals, she had placed crutches against the wall. She stared at them now. Though it was hard to believe it at the moment, one day she would graduate to them. Next to the crutches she had placed a malacca cane and next to that a pair of Ferragamo half-inch heels.

  It took her nine maddening minutes to dress.

  By the time she wheeled into the guest room on the floor above, the workman had uncrated the viewer and placed it near an electrical outlet.

  He looked around at her. “Do you have any film we can try?”

  Babe had converted this room into her special library, and it was here that she planned to learn her way back to the present. Seven years of back issues of U.S. News and World Report occupied a half wall of shelves, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and W another. The New York Times on microfilm took up two entire bookcases that had had to be placed free-standing, like library stacks.

  Babe handed the man a microfilm box.

  He threaded a roll of film into the machine and demonstrated on-off, focus, and forward and reverse. Babe carefully absorbed the instructions.

  When the workman had gone, she closed the door. After three minutes’ search she found the box of microfilm she wanted.

  She switched the viewer on. The cooling fa
n hummed faintly and a cold milky light fell onto the angled screen. She carefully threaded her tape in and fitted the sprockets to the guidewheels.

  Behind her the wall of the old house creaked.

  Turning the knob carefully, she scrolled to the report in The New York Times, seven years ago, on the fashion page, of her party at the Casino in the Park.

  Babe stretched a hand up from her wheelchair and pushed Gordon Dobbs’s buzzer.

  A manservant admitted her.

  Gordon Dobbs was sitting in the livingroom at an old cherrywood table that served as a desk. A telephone receiver was cradled between his shoulder and his ear and he was scribbling furiously on a pad. He was wearing a jade silk robe over his slacks and shirt, and he turned to acknowledge Babe with a cheery wave.

  He silently mouthed the words just a minute and pointed to the receiver, indicating that he was trapped with an intolerable bore.

  Babe wheeled into the room. Her eyes took in the framed pictures on the wall. Gray birch logs waited for winter in a fieldstone fireplace flanked by neatly loaded bookshelves.

  “Aha—exactly on time,” Dobbsie said, hanging up the phone. “And in that contraption. How do you manage?”

  “I hired a car and driver.”

  “The only way to do things nowadays. Would you like an armchair?”

  “Thanks, but I’m comfortable.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Please. With lots of sugar and cream.”

  Dobbsie rang a small enameled bell and told the manservant to fetch two coffees.

  Babe had noticed that over a third of the books in the shelves were English and foreign-language editions of Dobbsie’s books. “I see you’re very successful with your readers,” she said.

  “Yes indeed. Folks in Kansas and Osaka can’t get enough of the private lives of society’s public people.”

  “Tell me something: do you honestly believe Scottie did it?”

  Gordon Dobbs lit a thin brown cigarette with a gold lighter. “My dearest darling, I know he did it.”

  “I’m not so certain as you.”

  “Naturally not. You weren’t at the trials.”

  “Tell me about those trials.”

  For a half hour Dobbsie described the trials. He had an excellent memory for who had been wearing what. He did not know why the second trial had been closed, and he didn’t even have gossip as to why the record had been sealed.

  “There are too many gaps,” Babe said.

  Dobbsie poured fresh coffee. “If you have any doubts, I suggest you read my book.”

  “I’ve read your book. And I don’t like it.”

  Gordon Dobbs smiled. “I do enjoy candor. Tell me what you don’t like.”

  “To begin with, the tone.”

  A thoughtful look touched the corners of Dobbsie’s mouth. “I felt the tone was appropriate. I was describing money, influence, power—all the things that make people marry and murder one another.”

  “Your research was slanted.”

  He took off his glasses and spent a moment thoughtfully regarding her. “Give me an example.”

  “The insulin in the stud box. In all the years we were married, Scottie never had a stud box. He used a ceramic bowl.”

  Dobbsie frowned. “I got that detail from an article by Dina Alstetter, published in SoHo magazine. Second serial rights were picked up by newspapers and magazines across the country. The same as with my book. Except I had a national TV tour and Dina didn’t.”

  “Scottie couldn’t have put the box there. Mama made him move into the Princeton Club the day I went to the hospital.”

  “Who else could have put a box of insulin on your bedside table?”

  “I don’t know who, but it’s absurd to think Scottie would incriminate himself so carelessly, so stupidly. That box was planted so that Dina would find it.”

  “I happen to know Dina pretty damned well. We’ve worked professionally together and we toured the Sid Vicious book. She’s a totally sweet gal—and she would not print a lie.”

  “Maybe not knowingly.”

  “Babe, even if Dina was careless—which I find highly unlikely—magazines check their facts. People who tell fibs in print get slapped with big fat libel suits.”

  “After the second verdict I’m surprised Scottie didn’t sue you.”

  “Not bloody likely. He’s a crook—as well as a liar and a murderer manqué. The civil rules of evidence are far more relaxed than the criminal. He’d have lost. Unlike Oscar Wilde, he knows when to stop.”

  “Then what’s to keep me from suing you?”

  Dobbsie glanced up at her. “What in the world for?”

  “Libel.”

  “I never libeled you.”

  “What do you call that tan alligator bag in the closet? Scottie never owned a bag like that. So the implication is that it was mine. And whose drugs were in it? The state never proved that Scottie used drugs. So the implication is that the liquid Valium was mine too.”

  “I never said that.”

  “But you published it. The implication’s right there in print, with your name on the book. And now I’m back from the dead, civil rights restored.”

  A hint of hesitation flickered in Gordon Dobbs’s handsome face. “What would you hope to gain in a lawsuit?”

  “Answers to questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why you wrote that book the way you did. What did you stand to gain by prejudicing Scottie’s appeal?”

  Gordon Dobbs was looking at Babe carefully now, and she knew he was estimating her power to hurt him, weighing it against her usefulness to him, calculating what sort of fresh tack to take with her.

  “You’re right to be suspicious of the book,” he sighed. “I signed an agreement with your parents’ lawyer. Bill Frothingham set up the interviews and gave me the information.”

  Babe heard Dobbsie out in silence, fighting to control her growing anger.

  He explained how Lucia Vanderwalk had hired an ex-police detective who had extremely good connections and wasn’t bound by the law. He explained how the detective had reconstructed the crime. He explained how the reconstruction had formed the basis of the book.

  “In return I let Bill Frothingham see the manuscript. He vetted it for errors. There was no obligation to change anything, just to consider your family’s suggestions. They allowed a great deal to stand that wasn’t at all favorable to your great-grandfather.”

  “Did my family pay you?”

  “Yes, I received a consideration.”

  “Naturally they let you publish old family scandal—no one would think they were behind the book. But how could you have put your name to someone else’s accusations?”

  “Frankly,” Dobbsie said, “I believe Scottie was guilty. The book was published after the first trial, so it certainly didn’t harm him. He got his appeal. He got his reduced plea. He got everything.”

  “Of course it harmed him. Coming from my parents it would have been revenge and no one would have paid attention. Coming from you it was news and hundreds of thousands of people believed it. Why else do you think my parents paid you?”

  Dobbsie took Babe’s hands in his. “I’m a bad person, Babe, but I’m not an unusually bad person. I lay no claim to your respect, but I do hope for your friendship.”

  “Did my parents pay Dina too?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “You’ll have to ask her that yourself.”

  “Do you know what I can’t understand?” Babe said. “Why did the insulin in the stud box show up after the first trial and not before?”

  Dina Alstetter gave a cold little smile that wasn’t a smile at all. “It would have showed up anytime anyone had had the sense to look.”

  “And you were the first to have the sense?”

  “I was the first to have the curiosity.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Babe said. “I think that bottle of insulin was planted long after my coma.”

  Dina Als
tetter exhaled. She didn’t move or even show a reaction. “Why would anyone have planted it?”

  “So you could drive another nail into Scottie in print.”

  “That’s rather naive of you, Babe.” Dina Alstetter’s hair was long, straight, and dark and she gave it a quick toss. “It’s not my habit to allow myself to be used.”

  “If the insulin wasn’t a plant,” Babe said, “why wasn’t it evidence at the trial? Why didn’t the police even find it?”

  “Because the police are not particularly effective at their work.” Dina Alstetter rose smoothly from the chair. She wore designer blue jeans and a bodiced lace blouse, and most of her length was in her legs. She walked to the window of her Beekman Place sitting room. Sunlight poured through in a dazzling slant. “Babe, you’ve been away an awfully long time. A lot has changed in this city.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “You may not know that I’ve taken up investigative journalism since my divorce. I’ve won awards. I’ve even been mentioned for a Pulitzer. I’m not trying to impress you, but you should have some awareness that I enjoy the respect of the journalistic community—I may be Ash Canfield’s sister, but that doesn’t mean I’m some neophyte dumb enough to run a story that’s a plant.”

  “Did my parents pay you to publish that article?”

  Dina’s head whipped around. “Absolutely not.”

  They stared at one another.

  “Did the police ever look at the bottle?” Babe asked.

  “As a matter of fact, they didn’t. I don’t suppose New York’s Finest get around to reading SoHo magazine.”

  “And you didn’t take it to them?”

  “My lawyer advised me not to.”

  “Then who has it now?”

  “I have it.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  Babe wheeled herself across the sidewalk, steering clear of shade trees and uniformed maids walking poodles. The neighborhood was a luxurious preserve of solidly built pre-World War I co-ops, with the odd brownstone town house sprinkled in.

  The Provence Pharmacy stood on the corner of First Avenue. As Babe approached, the automated door opened onto a splash of yellow and green frictions de bain on special, piled in neat pyramids.