VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  “It’s rather … witty,” Babe said. And if Billi included it in the line, she would have to wonder if she understood anything about today’s fashions.

  “Witty,” Billi said. “What an apt observation. What ever did we do without you for seven long years, ma petite? Yes, we’ll use it. A little blandness to spice the line.”

  34

  CARDOZO WAS OVERSEEING THE case of an Upper East Side slasher victim that Monteleone was handling, and it took him to Dr. Flora Vogelsang’s neighborhood, a bright half mile of antique shops and art galleries. The air was thick with the smell of money burning, the jostle of women who spent a thousand dollars on a wristwatch, men who paid five hundred for a wallet.

  In the lobby of 1220 Madison a doorman sat with hunched shoulders on a stool by the buzzers. Cardozo approached.

  “Help you?” the doorman challenged.

  Cardozo opened his wallet, flashing the shield and a twenty-dollar bill. Bribes were not tax-deductible, and they couldn’t be recovered from petty cash. They were an inescapable expense of the Job.

  “Does a child psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Flora Vogelsang live here?”

  Cardozo moved through a corridor thronged with delivery boys, derelicts, off-duty cops, neighborhood office workers. It was the standard showing for the noon lineup, an easy way to make five bucks if you resembled the precinct’s suspect of the day.

  He stepped into the viewing room. This was the see-through side of the one-way mirror. A white-faced young woman was sitting there shredding a Kleenex.

  “Thanks for coming, Miss Yannovitch.” Cardozo put on his most sympathetic voice and face. “I know this isn’t easy for you.”

  Tammy Yannovitch was the next-door-neighbor of a woman whose murder was being investigated. Yannovitch had reported seeing a male Hispanic entering the elevator just before she’d heard her neighbor’s dog barking; she’d gone into the unlocked apartment and found the body. A patrolman had caught a male Hispanic trying to break into an apartment three buildings away, roughly the same description, carrying an upholsterer’s knife.

  Cardozo spoke into the mike. “Okay, bring ’em on.”

  On the other side of the mirror seven Hispanics filed into the room and stood blinking into the light.

  Tammy Yannovitch opened her purse and put on her glasses, and right away Cardozo knew her ID was going to be worthless.

  “You wear those glasses often, Miss Yannovitch?”

  “Only when I go to the movies.” She stared at each of the seven, squinting through her pink-tinted Coke-bottle lenses. “It’s hard to be sure—I only saw him that split second.”

  “That’s okay. Take your time.”

  She took her time, said she thought maybe it was number two, maybe it was number four. The men stepped forward and faced right and left and she still wasn’t sure.

  Cardozo was looking at number six. The man was wearing a Miss Liberty T-shirt, and black hair curled from his enormous head. His features were thick, as though a sculptor had laid them on with a trowel. The lobe of his right ear was missing and with his heavy, rounded shoulders he was brutish in appearance.

  “I’m sorry,” Miss Yannovitch said. “I can’t be sure. I’d hate to get an innocent man arrested.”

  Cardozo laid a consoling hand on her shoulder. “That’s okay, Miss Yannovitch. Thanks for your trouble.” He turned to Sam Richards. “Take number six up to the squad room.”

  Cardozo went to the computer room and asked the sergeant to call up the sheet on Waldo Flores.

  Two attempted rape. One conviction.

  Multiple possession and use of stolen credit cards.

  Multiple possession of stolen goods.

  Multiple possession of controlled substances. One conviction.

  Multiple possession of controlled substances with intent to sell.

  Multiple living off immoral earnings of female.

  It was an interesting sheet for a man of Waldo Flores’s range. There was not a single breaking and entering. So, obviously, Waldo was an expert B and E man.

  Cardozo went to the evidence room and checked out two vials of crack.

  Flores was waiting upstairs in the squad room.

  “Hey, Waldo.” Cardozo slapped a hand on his back. “Been a while. You’re looking good. Come on in here. Let’s talk.”

  Waldo’s eyes were serious, questioning. “Lieutenant, I just came by to earn five bucks. Anyone fingered me, they’re crazy.”

  “I forget how you like your coffee. Milk and sugar? Make yourself comfortable, amigo.”

  Waldo sat in a chair. “This place is a Turkish bath. How do you stand it?”

  “A cheerful attitude is the secret, Waldo. God gives me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept the things I can’t. And why don’t you give me your jacket if you’re too hot. Nice denim. Is it a Calvin?”

  “It comes from the Army Navy.”

  “You’ve been boosting at the Army Navy again?”

  “I charged it.”

  “Whose charge card?”

  “I want to see a lawyer. Get me a nice lady lawyer with a big soft ass.”

  “Let’s put your pretty jacket right here on the back of the chair. How’s your coffee?”

  “You drink this shit or you save it to brutalize minorities?”

  Cardozo had to smile. There was something likable about the guy, a kind of engaging street sass.

  “That’s top-of-the-line precinct coffee. I’m doing my best for you. I’m even going to help you out of the jam you’re in.”

  Waldo frowned. “Who says I’m in a jam?”

  “Your rap sheet says you’re an expert B and E man.”

  “That sheet’s a horse’s ass. I been booked for fencing goods I didn’t know was stolen; but breaking and entering, no way.”

  “I know, amigo. You got a way of finding twenty-two-inch TV’s on the street that’s uncanny. I have a serious offer to make you. How’d you like to do a job for me?”

  Waldo flashed two surly dark eyes. “You think I’m going to go for some crazy entrapment? Man, you been smoking.”

  “Do this for me, and we drop the crack charge.”

  “What crack charge?”

  “You’re holding, Waldo.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Cardozo heaved himself up from the chair and went to the door. “Sam, would you come in here a minute?”

  Sam Richards sauntered into the cubicle.

  “Does Mr. Flores look like he’s holding two vials of crack in the right pocket of that jacket?”

  “One way to find out.” Richards reached into the denim jacket and pulled out two vials.

  “You planted those,” Waldo screamed.

  “Take them and label them, would you, Sam?”

  Cardozo brought two more cups of coffee, and this time he shut the door.

  “Here’s the deal, Waldo. There’s a little old lady that has her home and office in a building on Madison and Eighty-seventh.”

  Cardozo explained exactly what he wanted from Flora Vogelsang’s files. “Thursday would be a good night to hit her.”

  Waldo looked into space. He’d served time on two felonies. Nothing mattered to him now except staying out of jail.

  “Any dogs? Any cats?” His voice was low and wispy, like his balls had been cut. “I don’t go in where there are any pets.”

  “No dogs, no cats. This lady’s a loner.”

  The kid at the pizza counter had dyed his hair magenta and he had a safety pin in his ear and he was spending too long arguing on the payphone. When he finally slammed the receiver down and came over to Waldo it was like he was doing someone a favor.

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Pizza—ever hear of it?”

  “What do you want on it?”

  “Nothin’.”

  Twelve minutes later Waldo stood on the corner of Eighty-seventh Street. His eye scanned glitzy shop windows, lit for the night and tucked away behind antiburglar gril
ls. There was a phonebooth halfway down the block. Balancing the pizza box on top of the phone, he dropped a quarter into the slot and dialed.

  Among all the windows shimmering with light there was a four-window row of darkness on the twelfth floor of number 1220. The four windows stayed dark and the ringing went on and finally a machine answered and a woman’s recorded voice said, “Hello, you have reached the office of Doctor Flora Z. Vogelsang.”

  He hung up. In his mind he was rehearsing the moves.

  Traffic sped by. Headlights lashed the street. In the lobby of 1220 the doorman was sitting on a stool, reading The Enquirer. A cab stopped in front of the building and a man wearing an army jacket and designer sunglasses got out. Waldo saw his chance.

  He ran, dodging horn blasts and headlights. The doorman was on the intercom, clearing the man in the army jacket. “Pizza for ten-D,” Waldo called out.

  He got into the elevator and pushed twelve.

  At the door of 12G he untaped a narrow flexible copper rod from his chest.

  Ninety seconds later the door swung inward and Waldo scooped up the pizza box and stepped into the dark apartment.

  He set the pizza on the floor and crept along the corridor, nudging doors open. Behind the fourth door he found the office.

  A rug stretched before the file cabinets, muffling his feet. The drawers made liquid hisses as one by one he pulled them out. He took the penlight from his hip pocket. He crouched down. The pin of light slid along the rows of manila files and stopped at the divider marked K.

  A moment later Waldo had the KOENIG, CORDELIA folder in his hand. He tipped the pages out, folded them, tucked them under his shirt.

  A button on the desk telephone winked lit.

  Waldo raised himself from his crouch and quietly lifted the receiver. The machine had already answered and the recorded voice was saying, “Hello, you have reached …”

  After the beep a live voice said, “Doctor, it’s Hildy, I’ve got to talk to you, please pick up.”

  There was a click. “Yes Hildy? Is this an emergency?”

  Waldo’s heart lurched.

  “He phoned.” Hildy was sobbing. “Robert phoned.”

  “Hildy, sooner or later you’re going to have to break with Robert. This might be an excellent opportunity.”

  Dr. Flora Vogelsang finally got Hildy off the line and hung up the phone. “Meshuggener,” she muttered.

  She lit a Pall Mall, smoked half of it, and realized she wasn’t going to get back to sleep by natural means.

  She slid her feet into her slippers.

  Waldo crept to the doorway. A shaft of light spilling into the hallway caught the pizza box on the floor.

  An old woman stumbled into the corridor. She didn’t see the pizza. She turned on the bathroom light. There was a rush of water and Waldo saw her through the open door gulping tablets, then downing a tumbler of water.

  The bathroom light clicked off and the old woman stumbled back. Her slipper pushed the pizza but she didn’t look down. She leaned on the doorframe, one hand to her abdomen, and burped. A moment later the bedroom light went out.

  Waldo waited five minutes. Sweat was pouring off him. He inched down the hallway and picked up the pizza box.

  The bedroom door was half open. He peeked in.

  Light came through the filmy window curtain. The old lady’s hair was a frazzled spill of gray on the pillow. She lay on her back, hands folded across her as if she had died in her sleep.

  Waldo couldn’t believe there was any sleeping pill in the world that worked that fast.

  He went down the hall to the bathroom. The bottle was on the ledge above the sink. He shoved it into his pants pocket.

  “Whoever gave you your information, you should shoot them.” Waldo Flores’s dark eyes stared at Cardozo above the rim of his cup. “Vogelsang was home.”

  “Did she see you?”

  They were sitting in a booth at Danny’s. The ripped blue Naugahyde benches had been bandaged together with electrician’s tape.

  “No way. She was too zonked on downs to see the walls.” Waldo reached into his I LOVE NEW YORK T-shirt and pulled out three sheets of paper.

  Cardozo flattened out the pages on the Formica tabletop. Creased down the middle and smeared with red grease, they bore the letterhead FLORA Z. VOGELSANG, M.D., PH.D.

  “These are a fucking mess, Waldo. What did you do, slaughter a canary on them?”

  The air conditioning was blasting. Waldo had to cup his hands around the match to light his Winston. “Excuse me. I musta forgot to wear my kid gloves.”

  Cardozo flipped pages.

  “Hey, Lieutenant, I gotta get back to the garage.”

  “So? There’s the door.”

  “I could use a hundred.”

  For an instant Cardozo’s eyes hardened. “Here’s twenty.”

  PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL

  Re: Cordelia Koenig

  psychiatric evaluation

  age: 13-2

  occupation: student

  tests administered

  Wechsler intelligence test

  human figure drawings

  Rorschach

  thematic apperception test

  EKG

  blood analysis

  urine analysis

  vaginal smear

  Cordelia Koenig was agreeable, attentive and polite, with something of a precociously socialized manner. Indeed, in the “grand” manner of a far older woman, she attempted to put the examiner at ease, complimenting the examiner on “your lovely office,” recognizing a flower vase as Meissen, suggesting that the examiner “take your time” and inquiring if she was answering questions too quickly.

  Based on observation alone, the examiner had the impression of an obsessive albeit well-contained preadolescent person, whose hostilities are quite unconscious, and at variance with her social intent.

  Miss Koenig’s work on the Wechsler reflects superior intelligence. Her full-scale score is 131, very superior, consisting of a verbal score of 130, superior, and a nonverbal score of 129, superior. The similarity between scores tends to obscure fluctuations in functioning, indicative of an emerging disturbance.

  The projective tests reveal a shrewd, manipulative, resentful, and confused preadolescent whose modes of adaptation are unstable and tenuous. Her efforts at accommodation are forced and, at times, inappropriate—a fact of which she is obliquely aware. Impelled by aspirations for prestige and approval, she attempts to integrate both her accurate and her bizarrely inaccurate perceptions by linking objectively unrelated aspects of reality and at times grossly distorting these to fit her preconceived matrix of meaning.

  Miss Koenig is very much concerned with the problem of self-importance, unconsciously intermixed with furtive rebellious impulses and an urge for extraordinary, godlike powers: in this regard, she equates female fertility with the power to bestow life and/or death. Consciously, in reaction-formation, she is unable to accept all but the most benign, loving, “good daughter” aspects of herself, despite an awakening realization that the aggression against which she so defends herself originates not in a hostile environment, but in herself.

  Adroit at deceiving both others and herself, Miss Koenig relies on intellect to rationalize away the darker side of her own nature. Given her age and history, and the marked narcissistic infantilism of her parents and parent substitutes, it is not unusual that her identities and identifications are many and unstable, but overall they point to profound sexual bewilderment, morbid preoccupation with biological processes, and a denied longing for exotic, spectacularly attractive female roles.

  Miss Koenig exhibits marked erotic inclination toward her father and toward any man who can be seen as a father surrogate. This, of course, clashes with her image of herself as a model of dignity, self-containment, and aristocracy. She is impelled to irresponsible, hedonistic activity, associating spontaneity (doubtless through observation of her elders) with liquor and psychoactive drugs.

 
Unconsciously, as revealed in her human figure drawings, Miss Koenig feels herself to be at the command of a cold, absent paternal figure and of a cruel, watchful maternal figure, both of whose nurturing is fiercely desired and seductively withheld. She saves her deepest conscious resentment for her father, but on an unconscious level she sees her mother as a dreaded rival upon whom she must humiliatingly depend for survival. Her strongest conscious need is to be noticed; her strongest unconscious need is for the infantile gratifications of affection, specifically to be fed (primary orality).

  Miss Koenig is fending off feelings of despondency, helplessness, aggression, and guilt, despite her persistently positive denial. She wants to take flight from the unbearable contradictions of consciousness and to find respite in unconsciousness, without, however, any loss of prestige and importance. Sudden perceptions of consciously disdained but unconsciously coveted forms of sexual exhibitionism indicate a dangerous rift in her distinction between the imaginary and the real.

  Diagnostically, Miss Koenig reveals an obsessive-compulsive character disturbance, with marked decompensation in intellectual and emotional functioning.

  The physical examination reveals Miss Koenig to be in exceptionally good health except for a transient infection (gonorrhea). For this I have put her on a series of antibiotic injections, the standard remedy in young adults. The physical prognosis is excellent.

  The psychiatric prognosis is less happy. While Miss Koenig shows a degree of resiliency and rational recoverability, her primary orality, obsessive distortive tendencies, and feelings of worthlessness indicate an inadequately substructured personality. Adolescence will almost certainly see the onset of major depressive episodes, with or without concomitant acting-out. Long-term psycho- and psychopharmacological therapy, as well as close monitoring, are absolutely indicated.

  Flora Z. Vogelsang, M.D., Ph.D.

  “Mrs. Devens please. Lieutenant Cardozo calling.” He took a stinging hot swallow of coffee.