VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  Meridee Downs covered her mouth.

  “Jodie Downs took the stranger to his apartment on West Fifty-second Street, where according to his own admission they smoked ‘five or six joints’ and did ‘a couple of lines’ of coke. During sex—again Jodie Downs’s own admission—the stranger attacked him with a razor, maiming him and cutting off one of his testicles.”’

  Lockwood Downs listened with eyes downcast. His fingers rested on the table, tips just touching.

  “Jodie Downs was admitted to Saint Clare’s Hospital through the emergency room. Examining psychiatrists found Downs to be quote ‘a guilt-ridden sexually obsessed young man bent on self-destruction.’” Morgenstern turned a page with a little snap. “There are photographs that go with this report, and I assure you they are the equal of any photographs the prosecution might be hoping to introduce into evidence.”

  Silence hit the table.

  Cardozo absorbed the fact that Morgenstern had gotten hold of the report, just as he’d accepted that pages from the sealed record of one of Morgenstern’s trials had turned up blank. Cardozo felt the old familiar outrage, but no surprise. He had long ago realized that Morgenstern’s network was a cancer metastasizing into every institution in the city.

  Smoke puffs fueled the stillness.

  Cardozo realized he would never forgive Morgenstern for that cigar. For everything else, the deals, the sleaze, the distortions, maybe. For that cigar, waved in the face of these parents, no way.

  “The report by the hospital psychiatrist is privileged,” Cardozo said quietly. “Am I right, Al?”

  “We’d have to ask the Supreme Court,” the D.A. said glumly.

  “Dead men,” Morgenstern said, “do not enjoy doctor-patient confidentiality. In any case, we don’t need the report. The doctor who wrote it, Dr. Larry Fenster of Saint Clare’s, is willing and ready to take the stand in Claude Loring’s defense.”

  The D.A. narrowed his eyes in solemn speculation. “So what kind of deal do you have in mind, Ted?”

  “Negligent homicide,” Morgenstern said.

  “Negligent?” Lockwood Downs stared at Morgenstern disbelievingly. “You’re going to claim Claude Loring killed my son by accident?”

  “No,” Morgenstern said. “The state is going to claim it.”

  Cardozo and the Downses came down the broad marble steps into Foley Square. A sharkskin-sleek gray stretch limousine was waiting by the curb and a uniformed chauffeur stepped out to hold the door.

  “Is this yours?” Cardozo asked.

  Lockwood Downs nodded. He seemed sandbagged. “Ours for two days. The district attorney’s letting us use it.”

  A current of coolness reached out from the open limousine door. Cardozo was aware of the heat of the sunlight on his shoulders, aware too of Meridee Downs standing there looking like a dying leaf. “I wish I could have done more,” he said.

  “You did enough.” Downs’s voice broke. “You were there.”

  A truck backfired, and pigeons wheeled up into the soft blue sky of a summer’s day.

  “Can we give you a lift anywhere?” Meridee Downs asked.

  “Sure, if you’re heading uptown.”

  There was a bar in the back seat, and a color TV, and a tape deck, and a videocassette player. A heavy smell of perfume hovered pleasantly over the smell of leather upholstery. They sat quietly as the limo dodged expertly through Chinatown and took the FDR Drive north along the river.

  Lockwood Downs drew his breath in. “I want to kill them for what they’re doing.”

  The sun, subdued to dusky copper, slanted in through the raised windows. The U.N. and new riverside luxury co-ops whizzed past. Meridee Downs’s eyes fixed on Cardozo. “Lieutenant, do you recommend the plea bargain?”

  Cardozo knew what the D.A. wanted him to say and he knew what he felt like saying. “Doesn’t quite balance out. Jodie lost his life. You lost a son. The killer loses a few months.”

  Her face was puzzled. “The district attorney told us fifteen years.”

  “Fifteen’s the maximum. No one but Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan serves the maximum. Loring’s going to the mat voluntarily. The minimum is the most he’ll get. Eight years. Then you have to subtract time off for good behavior. Also, you have to consider early parole. So if you want to know what I think, I think the plea bargain’s a mistake. I think the state can get a conviction without it.”

  “The district attorney said if we accept it there won’t be a trial.”

  “There’ll be a hearing. Loring will plead guilty, waive trial; the judge will sentence him.”

  “If we go to trial we may not win,” Lockwood Downs said.

  The material of Meridee Downs’s dress made a rustle in the quietness. “And Morgenstern will make everyone think Jodie did it to himself, he deserved it. Lieutenant,” she said, “Jodie tried to turn himself around. He tried hard. He may have done bad things, but nothing like what was done to him. He never murdered anyone.”

  “The plea bargain’s up to you,” Cardozo said. “Whichever way you decide, the D.A. will back you.”

  “Where we live,” Lockwood Downs said thoughtfully, “they haven’t even heard of alternative life-styles. ‘Gay’ means happy or it means AIDS. It’s forty minutes from Chicago and eighty light-years from New York. We have to go on living in that town.”

  “But it’s murder,” Meridee Downs said, “not shoplifting. Loring has to pay.”

  “But we have to go on living,” Lockwood Downs repeated.

  The limousine stopped in front of the Waldorf. Swedish and Israeli flags were flying. A doorman sprinted out and held the door.

  The hotel lobby glittered with lights and polished oak, brass and crystal and gold and velvet and green Italian marble.

  “We’ve come up in the world,” Lockwood Downs said bitterly.

  Cardozo went with the Downses while they picked up their room key and then he watched them cross through the ultra-well-dressed throng to the elevator.

  Meridee Downs turned and gave a quick, sad little wave.

  He waved back, with a sense of standing outside a disaster helplessly looking in, of watching a man and a woman mutilated by events.

  He went to the checkout desk. A young woman looked up at him.

  “Suite twelve twelve,” he said, unobtrusively showing his shield. “Who’s paying?”

  The young woman cast him a look, then checked through a bin of room registration forms. She drew out a card. “Prepaid by American Express card.”

  “Mr. Downs’s card or someone else’s?”

  “Pyramid Enterprises.”

  Back in his cubicle, Cardozo phoned American Express. He jotted Pyramid’s phone and address on a scratch pad and stared at them until the association he wanted clicked in his mind.

  He went through his Rolodex. His finger stopped at Melissa Hatfield’s card, Beaux Arts Properties, Inc. The telephone number and address were the same as Pyramid’s.

  He lifted the phone and dialed.

  Her honeyed, moneyed voice came on the line. “Beaux Arts.”

  “Melissa, it’s Vince Cardozo.”

  “Nice to hear a sane voice. You are sane, aren’t you?”

  “Always.”

  “It’s a madhouse here today. Never work in real estate.”

  “It’s a promise. Could you do me a favor?”

  “If it’s legal.”

  “Absolutely. Can you tell me what Pyramid Enterprises is?”

  “That’s easy. Pyramid is our Delaware corporation.”

  He read her the American Express number. “Who uses that credit card?”

  “Nat Chamberlain. It’s for entertaining company clients.”

  At 10:45 the next morning, Meridee and Lockwood Downs stepped into District Attorney Alfred Spaulding’s office. Hopelessness lay on them like a palpable shroud.

  The district attorney offered coffee. He offered to send his secretary for Danish, for orange juice. They said they’d had breakfast at the Waldorf,
thanks.

  “There’s no sense dragging this out.” Lockwood Downs was holding his wife’s hand. They were sitting side by side at the conference table, in a cone of summer morning light streaming through the ten-foot casement. Their faces were drained. “We’ll go along with the plea bargain.”

  “This office will abide by your decision,” the district attorney said quietly.

  “If I may so,” Ray Kane said, “I think you show commendable wisdom.” Kane had come alone; apparently Morgenstern had been sure of the Downses accepting the plea bargain and hadn’t considered it important enough to show up for.

  “We’d like to thank you for all your help,” Lockwood Downs said, “and we’d like to thank Lieutenant Cardozo for his.”

  Lockwood Downs’s eyes met Cardozo’s, and at that moment the squirrel that was leaping around inside Cardozo’s ribs turned into a rat.

  “We know you have a lot of murders in New York.” Something had happened to Meridee Downs’s voice. It was like stone, as if there were no more tears in it. “We appreciate the trouble you’ve gone to on our behalf.”

  And that was it. Short, rehearsed speeches. They made their exit quickly. Cardozo was rising from his chair with them, and the next moment he was looking at an empty doorway.

  He turned to the D.A. “How do you happen to know Nat Chamberlain?”

  Something hovered over the D.A.’s face. “Nat who?”

  “He’s paying for the Downses’ suite at the Waldorf. He’s paying for their limousine. He’s probably paying for their plane tickets. He owns Beaux Arts Tower.”

  A furrow appeared between the D.A.’s eyes. He turned to Ray Kane. “Ted told me your office was paying for all that.”

  “The office is paying.” Ray Kane smiled, snapping the gold locks on a pancake-thin pigskin briefcase he had never bothered to open. “Nat owes Ted some favors, Ted called them in. Not to worry, gentlemen.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d love to take you two to coffee, but I have a meeting with the mayor’s commissioner for cultural affairs. Good seeing you both.”

  After Kane had left, Cardozo stood staring at the D.A.

  “Why did you let Morgenstern get involved?”

  “Where was I going to put them, Holiday Inn? Morgenstern has a budget for that kind of thing; this office doesn’t.”

  “It’s not right, Al. A lot of things in this case aren’t right.” Cardozo could feel a vein in his forehead beginning to pump up. “The plea bargain’s a fucking farce. How can you buy diminished responsibility?”

  “Vince, what are we going through this for? The parents are gone, you’re not winning anyone’s vote, certainly not mine. I accept diminished responsibility because Loring is a cokehead, he admits he was high.”

  “Sure, to save his neck he admits it. But tell me something. We dusted that apartment for fingerprints—and there were fingerprints of everyone on God’s earth except Claude Loring. How does a man snowed out by coke remember to remove fingerprints of a crime he claims he was too snowed out to know he’s responsible for?”

  The D.A. pointed his finger at Cardozo. “Vince—you’ve done your job, let me do mine. Do us both a favor and just butt the hell out of this.”

  “Right,” Cardozo said with disgust.

  Three minutes later he walked down the steps of the Criminal Court Building, crossed Foley Square, and rounded the corner without looking back.

  “Claude Loring, Junior,” Judge Francis Davenport said, “you are accused of negligent manslaughter in the death of Jodie Downs.”

  Loring stood facing the bench. He was wearing a dark suit and a conservative striped tie. The suit was new and it fit. Quite a change, Cardozo thought, from sawed-off Levi’s denim jackets. Loring was even clean-shaved, and with the moustache gone his face had lost its pirate glow. Gray skin was tight across jutting cheekbones; eyes were dull sockets.

  “How do you plead to the charge? Guilty or not guilty?”

  Loring’s voice was small and tight. “Guilty, Your Honor.”

  Judge Davenport leaned forward, arching his thick gray eyebrows. He studied the defendant.

  In his seat at the rear of the almost deserted courtroom, Vince Cardozo folded his arms and watched. The image sank into his memory: Judge Davenport with his plump, pink face gazing at Claude Loring with his wasted face.

  “Mr. Loring, do you understand the legal meaning of the words negligent and manslaughter?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “You admit you took Jodie Downs to an apartment in Manhattan? You admit you tied him up and engaged in behavior which contributed to his death?”

  Cardozo looked across the aisle to where Lockwood and Meridee Downs were sitting erect and alone. He felt the pathos of what was happening to them. A boundary was being crossed. They’d spent their lives not breaking laws, and till now they’d thought the rest of the world had been doing the same. But someone had changed the rules and forgotten to send them a telegram.

  “I was very spaced out, Your Honor,” Claude Loring said.

  “That’s well and good, Mr. Loring, but do you or do you not admit you engaged in behavior which contributed to Mr. Downs’s death?”

  “He asked me to, Your Honor, and I deeply regret it.”

  “Did you intend to kill Mr. Downs?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Meridee Downs dropped her head into her hand. Her husband put his arm around her. The Downses’ faces were telling Cardozo about loss, about a belief in simple justice that was being murdered as stupidly and brutally as their boy had been.

  “And did you intend him bodily harm?”

  “No, Your Honor. It was a scene.”

  “A scene?”

  Ted Morgenstern rose. According to the morning’s Post, there had been a birthday party for him the night before, eight hundred of the New York Four Hundred discoing in black tie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his eyes had a puffy look. “Your Honor, a scene is a sexual encounter between consenting adults. It is a common and usually harmless transaction in the sadomasochistic community. My client was drugged and under the impression that the acts Mr. Downs requested would not lead to bodily harm.”

  “This is a pretrial hearing, not a trial, Counselor, so please resist the temptation to prove your client innocent of murder. Mr. Loring is pleading guilty to a lesser but still serious felony, and it is my duty to be sure he understands the meaning of the charge and of his plea.”

  “My client admits he performed the acts, Your Honor, without realizing or intending that they would contribute to Mr. Downs’s death.”

  “Counselor, I’m not questioning intent to contribute to death, only intent to perform acts which reasonably constitute reckless endangerment of human life. That is after all the issue which we are here to determine. Mr. Loring, you admit that you freely consented to perform the acts?”

  Morgenstern nodded yes.

  Loring took the cue. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “You admit to these acts and you do not dispute the state’s claim that Mr. Downs’s death resulted?”

  Loring glanced again at Morgenstern, who nodded no.

  “I don’t dispute anything, Your Honor.”

  “Do you understand that in entering a plea of guilty you forgo jury trial and may be sentenced at the discretion of this court to the maximum term allowable by law?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Give this a moment’s reflection, Mr. Loring. Do you wish to change your plea to not guilty and to be tried by a jury?”

  Morgenstern shook his head absolutely no.

  “I plead guilty, Your Honor.”

  Judge Davenport settled back in his chair, face set in a slumber of judicial indifference. “Let the record show that Claude Loring, Junior, pleads guilty to the negligent manslaughter of Jodie Downs. Do the people accept his plea?”

  The D.A. rose. “The people accept.”

  “Let the record so show. Prisoner is remanded for sentencing three weeks hence in this courtr
oom at ten thirty in the morning.” Court adjourned with a thump of Judge Davenport’s gavel.

  Lockwood Downs rose. His hands were visibly shaking. Up till this moment everything might have seemed a nightmare, but Cardozo could see that this was real to him now: the courtroom, the prisoner in handcuffs and a neatly fitted new suit being led out between two guards, the judge retiring to his chambers, the defending attorney in his snappy dark suit and French cuffs crossing the room to confer with the D.A. in his snappy dark suit and French cuffs, two power brokers thrashing out a merger.

  Lockwood Downs helped Meridee to her feet. They stood in the aisle, pulverized, afraid to take even a step in a world where there was suddenly no support for anything or anyone.

  Cardozo went to them.

  “It takes three weeks to decide on a sentence?” Deep new lines had etched themselves into Lockwood Downs’s face.

  “Judges like to take their time,” Cardozo said. “They have a theory it avoids reversible error.” He didn’t bother saying what he thought of the majestic crud of the law, pulsating with crimes against common sense.

  “And then what happens to Loring?” Downs asked.

  “State penitentiary.”

  As Meridee Downs looked up at Cardozo he saw her face flood with hatred.

  “That’s worse than a city jail?” she asked.

  He nodded. “If you can believe it.”

  “We won’t be coming back for the sentencing,” Lockwood Downs said.

  Cardozo could feel the man’s pride, the instinct not to cause a scene, not even now when all the promises the universe had ever made him were being taken back.

  “I’ll be here,” Cardozo said. “I’ll phone you.”

  37

  “SCARED OF NEEDLES?”

  Jerry Brandon snapped the cartridge into the syringe. He regarded Babe with a hint of mischief, as though they were about to embark together on a lighthearted adventure, a trip through the funhouse of her mind.

  “I can’t say I love them,” Babe said.

  “Get ready to love. There are people in this town that kill for twenty cc’s of this stuff.” Brandon had gone gray and a little haggard since Cardozo had last seen him, but he still had his smart-talking police-doctor mask, cocky and charming. “Why don’t you have a seat before we boost you to outer space?”