VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  Lucia Vanderwalk exhaled loudly. “Hadley,” she commanded, “will you kindly say something?”

  “I’m amazed at Lieutenant Cardozo’s research,” Hadley Vanderwalk said imperturbably.

  “Tell him it’s not true!” his wife cried.

  “It’s not true.” Hadley Vanderwalk paused to light his pipe. “The money went to Ted Morgenstern.”

  A disbelieving expression flared on Lucia Vanderwalk’s face. “Hadley, how can you be so stupid?”

  “Morgenstern took his percentage—a large one,” Hadley Vanderwalk said. “He passed the rest on to Mrs. Banks and to Scottie. Morgenstern’s a clever man. He organized a syndicate to back Mrs. Banks’s restaurant. He organized another to back Scottie’s career. Both have been profitable, I understand. Morgenstern gave us a chance to invest. We foolishly turned him down. Principle, you know.”

  Cardozo took out his notebook and made a show of consulting his notes. “At the second trial Ted Morgenstern introduced a psychiatric and physical examination of Cordelia made by Dr. Flora Vogelsang.”

  “That record is sealed!” Lucia Vanderwalk cried.

  Cardozo gave her a long, slow look.

  Mrs. Vanderwalk took a cigarette from a crystal box. “Dr. Vogelsang, for your information, is a vicious old Freudian and she should be burnt at the stake. She called Cordelia mad. Can you imagine, from inkblots and projective I-don’t-know-what’s she had the gall to accuse our granddaughter of inventing stories. I’m ashamed for Beatrice to have to hear this, but Dr. Vogelsang claimed Cordelia hated her mother and was in love with her stepfather. It was the most revolting oedipal offal, the lot of it.”

  “Ted Morgenstern introduced another medical report into evidence,” Cardozo said. “Dr. Frederick Hallowell’s. That report showed that Scott Devens was infected with the same disease as Cordelia—gonorrhea.”

  “Must we?” Lucia Vanderwalk snapped. Her finger tapped a furious bolero against her pearls.

  “Yes, Mama,” Babe Devens said. “We must.”

  “What were we to do?” Lucia Vanderwalk pleaded. “Let the papers get hold of it? Tell the world that Scott Devens had intercourse with his stepdaughter, a twelve-year-old? We had to protect the child.”

  “Babe, you have to understand,” Hadley Vanderwalk said. “We thought you were lost and gone. We had to choose. Justice for our dead daughter—or a chance for our granddaughter. We chose Cordelia. Maybe it was wrong, but given the circumstances, that was the best decision we could make at the time.”

  “The second trial would have destroyed her,” Lucia Vanderwalk said.

  “Cordelia had no comprehension of what Scott had done to her,” Hadley Vanderwalk said.

  “She was only a child.” Lucia Vanderwalk stubbed out her cigarette. The ashtray was Steuben. The table was Chippendale. The cigarette was Tareyton filter. “Scott seduced her with drugs. Terrible things—marijuana, cocaine …”

  “Injections of morphine,” Hadley Vanderwalk said. “At twelve she was an addict.”

  “You have no idea,” Lucia Vanderwalk said, “how hard that child has had to work to put her life back together, to put all this horror behind her, how hard she’s worked to get off drugs. It took courage and persistence. You’re not going to undo the healing of seven years, surely you’re not!” Babe absorbed the plea quietly.

  “Don’t blame us for cooperating with Ted Morgenstern,” Hadley Vanderwalk said.

  “If we hadn’t, he would have attacked Cordelia’s innocence.” A sigh settled on Lucia Vanderwalk’s lips. “Destroyed it.”

  “Her innocence?” Cardozo felt the ambiguous weight of the word, felt its several facets. “Why do you say her innocence?”

  “A child’s innocence matters!” Lucia Vanderwalk’s face was a mask of determination, mouth and jaw set. “A child’s belief in her own innocence matters!”

  And suddenly Cardozo saw. “My God. Morgenstern got Devens off by accusing Cordelia!”

  Lucia Vanderwalk’s face stiffened.

  “He accused your granddaughter of the attempted murder! Cordelia, not Devens!” Cardozo felt a wave of certainty pass through his chest. “And you were afraid it was true. From the beginning you were afraid. That’s why you hired your own investigator. To protect your grandchild. Your investigator planted evidence. And to keep the accusation alive when Devens appealed, you planted evidence yourself.”

  “Lucia,” Hadley Vanderwalk said without the slightest sign of stress, “you don’t need to deny this, you don’t need to make any comment at all.”

  Lucia Vanderwalk was hardly breathing. “I will not permit this poison to be stirred up again.”

  “Cordelia confessed,” Cardozo said. It was a wild shot.

  “Never,” Hadley Vanderwalk said.

  “Oh yes she did,” Cardozo said. “She confessed to that psychiatrist.”

  Neither Vanderwalk answered. Lucia’s body appeared to be jerked by some invisible force into boardlike rigidity.

  Cardozo kept putting it together. “Mrs. Banks helped you frame Scott Devens. He agreed to stay framed, but he held out for the plea bargain. You paid him and Mrs. Banks off and you had the record sealed. And just to be double sure, Ted Morgenstern had blank pages substituted.”

  The air in the room congealed into a shining stillness. Lucia Vanderwalk seemed not even to be breathing.

  Cardozo could imagine her instructing the cook in the morning, reading the mail before lunch, taking an afternoon walk around the garden, putting on a fresh dress, hammering out a deal with Ted Morgenstern over Ceylon tea and watercress sandwiches.

  “You did this for yourself, Mama,” Babe said quietly. “Not for me, not for Cordelia.”

  Lucia Vanderwalk had a voice like a terrorist’s captive reading a prepared statement. “Your father and I did it for the family. There are some ghosts that we keep at home.”

  “I do remember something,” Babe said, “something about Cordelia. Only it’s foggy.” She had a numbed, desperate look, as though a puff of breath could have erased her. “Cordelia was standing by my bed. I wasn’t conscious, but I knew she was there, and I was trying to wake up, because something horrible was happening … and I knew I had to reach out my hand and stop her … but I couldn’t come to the surface.”

  She was sitting in the big chair by her fireplace, taut, trying to appear calm, trying not to cry.

  “It’s strange, I was afraid for her—not myself.”

  Raindrops made a whispering sound against the windows.

  “Your twelve-year-old daughter about to commit murder,” Cardozo said. “I’d be afraid for her too. It’s natural. You love the little monster.”

  Her eyes held a stillness, an expectancy, as though a second blow were about to fall and there was nothing she could do but accept it.

  “Look, this is me, Vince. You don’t have to impress me. Stop trying to be your mother. She’s a lousy role model. Go ahead, bawl. Your husband went to bed with your daughter and it looks like your daughter tried to kill you. Come on, cry, scream, curse.”

  Tears were finally welling in her eyes, finally starting to roll down her cheeks. All she needed was a nudge.

  “And they talk about Jewish mothers,” Cardozo said. “Your mother sacrificed you for your daughter, and she’s twisted that around to make you feel responsible for it.” He knelt beside her. “Your daughter’s a guilt-ridden zombie because one subject your mother has never allowed to be aired—never—is what Cordelia did and why. There’s no atonement, no forgiveness for her. Lucia Vanderwalk won’t allow atonement or forgiveness when a family reputation’s at stake. Imagine a child being alone with a secret like that. I’d say you have grounds for matricide or nervous breakdown or at least a few tears. You have Medea for a mother and an emotional paraplegic for a daughter and you haven’t had one moment of honest unmanipulating love in your whole life. Go ahead. Let me hear a few sobs. Loud and clear. I’m not going to tattle on you.”

  Babe stared at him. Her body gulped in
a breath and she dropped her head into her hands. She closed her eyes and started shaking as though a wave had hit her.

  She was dismayingly beautiful in her tears. Her defenselessness called out every protective instinct in him. There was a sudden sweet tightness in the back of his throat. He became aware that what he felt for her was not a passing attraction nor even simply desire. An excitement and a tenderness that were far more than sexual moved him.

  He took her hand and pulled her toward him and suddenly he took all of her and closed her tight into his arms. They embraced, their kiss growing in intensity, and he felt her breasts through the soft fabric of her blouse.

  That was it. They were across the physical frontier peacefully and without effort. There was a long soft lingering moment of knowing that one day they were going to make love.

  And then they pulled apart.

  She looked at him. He wanted her to remember his eyes. He wanted her to see what was in them: that he was with her, that he cared.

  “Vince,” she said, “isn’t there a drug that acts as a hypnotic—while people are under they recall buried memories?”

  “Sodium pentothal.”

  “The police use it, don’t they?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “If I saw Cordelia injecting me seven years ago and I’ve forgotten—wouldn’t sodium pentothal make me remember?”

  “It might.”

  Something nervous and uncertain played across her face. “Could a police doctor do it?”

  He saw determination in her and he saw, too, that she was scared out of her skin. The last thing on earth she really wanted to know was who had held that syringe.

  He nodded. “I’ll set it up.”

  36

  CARDOZO PUSHED THROUGH THE revolving doors of the Criminal Court Building into air conditioning and Muzak and the dimness of high vaulted ceilings. He was heading toward the elevator when a voice from the newsstand called “Vince!”

  A suntanned man with black curly hair put down the change for a New York Times and strode forward, tall, smiling, moving with purposeful grace in his dark summer suit.

  Cardozo shook the hand of Alfred Spaulding, D.A. The D.A. steered him into a waiting elevator. “The Beaux Arts handyman is willing to confess to killing Jodie Downs. Morgenstern wants to talk plea bargain.”

  “Come on, Al. We have Loring without a confession.”

  “But with a guilty plea we don’t have to go to trial. And there’s no chance of some crazy jury finding him innocent. We go straight to a hearing before a judge and Loring gets sentenced. Nice and neat.”

  The elevator deposited them smoothly on the eighth floor. They made their way down the wide, bustling corridors. The D.A. stopped, his hand on the knob of the familiar frosted glass door. “Let’s just walk through the motions, hear Kane out.”

  “Al, why am I here? What do you want from me?”

  The D.A. twisted the knob and motioned Cardozo to go first. “Vince, you know Lucinda MacGill.”

  Lucinda MacGill was wearing a gray linen suit and her body and carriage radiated presence and competence. Cardozo shook the hand she offered. Her eyes were intelligent and there was a warning in them. She flicked her head just a degree toward the inner office. Cardozo followed her glance.

  It was an old-fashioned room of casement windows and leather chairs and oil portraits of dead justices. Lockwood and Meridee Downs were sitting at the conference table. Lockwood Downs got up from his chair as Cardozo came into the room.

  “I didn’t know you were in town,” Cardozo said.

  “We got in last night.” Lockwood Downs’s eyes were weary. “We were hoping you’d call.”

  Wariness stirred in Cardozo and he didn’t know if it was for himself or for the Downses. His eyes went to the window, where Ted Morgenstern stood whispering with his chubby associate, Ray Kane. They were both wearing Armani summer suits and they emanated a lazy awareness of their own power, like Roman emperors on a picnic.

  The D.A. waited till everyone had sat. “Counselor Morgenstern has an offer.”

  “I’ll plead Loring guilty of manslaughter”—Morgenstern steepled his fingers together—“if the state will allow mitigating circumstances.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lockwood Downs said. “I’m in real estate, not criminal law. Could someone explain why my son’s death would be manslaughter and not murder?”

  “Murder involves malice aforethought,” Morgenstern said.

  “The question is whether or not Loring planned to kill your son,” the D.A. explained.

  Downs’s face was drawn, lined with fatigue. “How can Mr. Morgenstern prove Loring didn’t plan it?”

  “It’s up to the state to prove he did. Mr. Morgenstern has to prove very little.”

  “And what is a mitigating circumstance?”

  “Anything that diminishes Loring’s responsibility. For example, if he had a mental condition that impaired his judgment.”

  “Or took drugs,” Morgenstern said.

  “Took drugs?” Downs sounded incredulous.

  Ray Kane handed Morgenstern a sheet of paper.

  Morgenstern slipped a pair of bifocals over his nose. “We have a very strong precedent. On Palm Sunday, 1984, Christopher Thomas—a cokehead who had been free-basing for two years—massacred ten people in their Brooklyn home. A jury accepted the defense of diminished responsibility by reason of cocaine intoxication. They found Thomas guilty of ten counts of manslaughter. Now we’ll all admit that that case was a good deal more heinous than what we’re dealing with here.”

  Cardozo looked at Lockwood Downs, flailing in the dark side of the moment. His wife reached across the table and clenched her husband’s hand.

  Nothing came to Cardozo in words, only a knobbed something inside his ribs, a buried quiver of knowing he wasn’t just going to sit there with the parents and see the son’s murder whittled down into justified assault.

  “What in hell is Counselor Morgenstern talking about,” Cardozo said, “body count? Murder is murder, and it’s just as illegal whether you kill one or a hundred.”

  Morgenstern’s eyes glinted angrily in a pulp of wrinkles.

  “Ted,” the D.A. said, “I can see an argument for manslaughter, but you’re going to have a hard time selling me on mitigation.”

  “Provocation,” Morgenstern said.

  Cardozo cut in. “Could I have a word with you, Al?”

  In the other room, Cardozo shut the door. “Their son’s been murdered, for God’s sake, and you and Morgenstern could be pricing rugs in a Persian bazaar.”

  “Vince, take it easy.”

  “At least give them a meaningful choice. If it’s manslaughter, it’s manslaughter—no mitigation. Loring’s already getting away with murder.”

  The D.A. shook his head. “Whether or not I buy Morgenstern’s argument, a jury might. If Morgenstern thinks he can produce mitigation, I want to know about it here, not in the courtroom.”

  “You know damned well he’s going to say the victim was guilty and the killer was innocent and if anyone should be on trial it’s Jodie Downs, cocksucking dopester and disgrace to the human race.”

  “If all he has is a bluff like that we’ll tell him it’s no deal.”

  “Al, I’m not going to let you subject that man and woman to Morgenstern’s tactics.”

  “It’s not up to you, Vince. I warned them what they were in for. They wanted to hear Morgenstern out. Any decision on a plea bargain is up to them.”

  Back in the conference room, Morgenstern was calmly trimming and lighting a cigar. He waited till Cardozo and the D.A. took their seats. After four unhurried puffs he spoke.

  “Jodie Downs had a police record. Three years ago he was picked up by a Transit Authority officer for sodomy in a subway men’s room.”

  The shell came in on target. Meridee Downs’s face froze. Lockwood Downs looked at Cardozo quickly, terrified, then dropped his head.

  Cardozo hadn’t known, and he realized Jodie Downs’s
parents hadn’t known either. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Was Downs arraigned?”

  Morgenstern nodded, smug. “He was arraigned in night court and paid a fine.”

  “Let me see what’s on that sheet.”

  Morgenstern’s assistant passed the tattered Xerox copy across the teakwood tabletop.

  Cardozo’s eyes scanned the lines of erratically spaced type. “Jodie Downs pleaded guilty to loitering in a public place, not sodomy.”

  Morgenstern’s eyes crinkled into a half smile. “The arresting officer’s report is more explicit.”

  Cardozo turned to Lucinda MacGill. “Can Morgenstern use that report?”

  MacGill glanced toward the D.A. He nodded, giving permission, and she answered. “Counselor Morgenstern will claim the report shows a pattern of reckless self-endangerment. The judge will admit it as mitigating evidence. At that point the arresting officer can be called to testify.”

  “There’s something I don’t understand.” Meridee Downs was gripping the table edge as though the room were somersaulting around her. “Jodie did some wrong things in his life. No one’s denying that. But what does any of this have to do with his murder?”

  “Counselor Morgenstern is sending you a message.” Lucinda MacGill’s voice was tight with controlled anger. “Unless you and Mr. Downs accept the plea bargain, he’s going to defame hell out of your son.”

  “Harsh words, Counselor,” Morgenstern said.

  “Scuzzy tactic, Counselor,” she replied.

  “Let’s bear in mind,” the D.A. said, “that it’s Counselor Morgenstern’s job to defend his client, and this is a pretty standard defense.”

  “He’s not defending the killer,” Lockwood Downs said. “He’s prosecuting our son.”

  “In Mr. Morgenstern’s business,” Cardozo said, “it comes down to the same thing.”

  Morgenstern continued, speaking quietly and steadily. “I have here a police report from the nineteenth precinct. This will be a very important part of Claude Loring’s defense. Three years ago, on the night of June twenty-third, Jodie Downs picked up a stranger in a gay s.m. bar called the Strap on Tenth Avenue.”