Babe sat down in the black Barcalounger. Her movements were tentative and gingerly. She was a very scared porcelain doll.
Brandon took her arm and placed the tip of the needle at the little blue vein pulsing in the crook. His thumb pressed slowly on the syringe.
Cardozo waited by the wall, out of the light. Babe shot him one scared look. “Babe,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”
Brandon withdrew the needle. “Count backwards from a hundred.”
Babe’s eyes fixed as if they had lost their sight. “One hundred … ninety-nine …”
The outer layers of her brain began shutting down. At 93 she closed her eyes.
Brandon gave the go-ahead nod, and Cardozo pressed the start button on the tape recorder.
Brandon ejected the empty cartridge from the syringe and loaded another. “Showtime.” He took her arm, feeding the point of the needle into the vein. “It’s yesterday, Babe,” he said.
At first there was no reaction. Her breathing was slow and deep, almost hoarse. And then there was a tiny movement on her face, and Cardozo could sense something taking shape. Her lips moved. A puff of voice came out. “Yesterday.”
“You’re waking up. Where are you?”
For a while she lay there, hammocked on the Barcalounger, limp and passive and still. And then she opened her eyes. Her glance circled the room. It passed over Cardozo as though he were a table. “I’m in our bedroom.”
“Tell me about the bedroom, Babe. What do you see?”
“It’s sunny through the windows.”
“What color are the window curtains?”
“Pale green. They have orange flowers.”
“What do you do, Babe? You wake up and then—?”
“Slippers. On the floor by the bed.”
“What kind of slippers?”
“Blue silk.”
Brandon pursed his lips at Cardozo, and the nod of his head said, My my, aren’t we snazzy. “Fine. Now let’s go further back, Babe. You’re in the hospital.”
There was a silence as though she were processing the command and trying to locate the mental file. She frowned, and finally something clicked and she said the word hospital.
“You’re waking up in the hospital. It’s the first time you’ve ever woken up in that hospital. What do you see?”
“It’s dark.” A strange childish sort of sobbing began coming out of her. “Scottie isn’t here.” She shook her head from side to side, and her eyes were tearing over. “No one but me.” Her wrists and fingers knotted over the armrests. Her face twisted with effort. “I can’t move.”
“Babe, can you see anything?”
“A window.” She squinted, trying to see something. “The window’s in the wrong place.”
“What else?”
“No clock.”
She stiffened. “A door just opened. Now there’s light.” She narrowed her eyes, tracking some moving object. “A woman came in. She’s wearing a nurse’s cap. She’s leaning over me, very close.” Babe’s posture suddenly altered: her head came up and forward, her shoulders tensed. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my bedroom?”
“You’re doing fine, Babe, just fine. Everything’s okay. Stay there in the hospital. Just hold it there.”
Brandon came across the room to Cardozo and spoke in a lowered tone. “Where was she before the attempt was made?”
“A big blowout—it was the anniversary of her company. Press reception kind of thing. Celebrities, booze, fancy food.”
“Okay, I’ll walk her through the party and get her back to the town house.”
Brandon returned to the Barcalounger and reloaded the syringe. “Babe—last night you were at a party. Tell me about that party.”
“Party,” she repeated. Her eyes were still shut and there was something held back in her voice, something half thinking and half dreaming.
“You’re at a party, Babe. Now. You’re at the party.”
Her head drooped for a moment. “I’m not supposed to be here. They don’t know.”
“Who doesn’t know?”
“Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh and the Mad Hatter.”
Brandon gave Cardozo a look. “You said celebrities?”
“Is that normal?” Cardozo said. “I thought this stuff was like truth serum.”
Brandon shrugged. “One man’s truth is another man’s Disneyland.”
Disconnected sighs were coming out of her.
“What do you see, Babe? What are you seeing?”
“Watch out for the trucks.”
Brandon turned his eyes back to Cardozo, his glance asking whether or not to go on.
Cardozo frowned, puzzled: it was as though Babe had set out walking down a perfectly familiar street and suddenly for no reason had swerved into an alley. He nodded, keep going.
“Babe, what kind of trucks?” Brandon asked.
She opened her eyes, looking at the huge trucks. “Meat trucks.”
At those two words, meat trucks, a sick nervousness began humming inside Cardozo. It was as though Babe had stepped off the map into pitch black space.
“Where are these meat trucks, Babe?”
“In the street outside the building.”
Cardozo was signaling with his hands, stretch it out.
“Tell me about the building.”
“The building is on the corner. The cobbled street meets the asphalt. The building is falling apart. The sign is in English and Spanish. Body parts of cows. The doorway is on the left. That’s where I go in. Only they don’t know.”
Brandon turned to Cardozo. “I don’t know about you, but I’m lost. You want to get her back to the party?”
Cardozo felt the premonition of something larger. “No—follow this.”
“You go in the doorway, Babe. Then what?”
“Up the stairs in the dark. One flight. Another flight. I can hear voices.”
“Whose voices?”
“Mickey Mouse. Richard Nixon.”
Cardozo narrowed his eyes in speculation. The two men stared at each other.
“I open the door.”
She had the face of a little girl peeking into a forbidden room. The peeking turned into a shy half-smile. The shy half-smile became a big grin.
“They don’t hear me. John Wayne is passing champagne.” The grin wiped off her face. She sat up in the Barcalounger, alert now. “The man is naked.”
“What man, Babe?”
“The young man. He has blond hair. He’s lying in the corner. They’ve drugged him. Winnie the Pooh and the Mad Hatter pick him up and tie him to the H.”
Something began coming to Cardozo, some inexplicable sense that the nightmare at the end of Babe’s alley fitted into someone else’s nightmare.
“What’s the H?”
“Wood. Black wood. White wall. Alice in Wonderland and Donald Duck help with the mask.”
Cardozo felt evil imploding. This isn’t happening, he thought. I’m not hearing this. She didn’t see this.
“What kind of mask, Babe?”
“Black leather. There are two slits for the eyes and no ears and there’s a zipper over the mouth. The young man can’t move and he can’t make any sound.”
Cardozo felt blood rush along his scalp.
“Minnie Mouse has a beautiful red silk gown on. Hundreds of sequins, hand-stitched. She takes the cigarette from her mouth and—” Babe gasped. “And she puts it out in the young man’s hand.”
Cardozo’s neck muscles tightened and his throat was suddenly dry. “Ask her which hand.”
“Which hand, Babe? Which hand does Minnie Mouse put the cigarette out in?”
“His left hand.”
There was dread at the pit of Cardozo’s stomach. Common sense said there was no way she could know, no way she could be saying what she was saying.
“She closes his fingers around the cigarette. He makes a sound. A moan.”
Disbelief was thudding so hard through Cardozo’s vei
ns that the image of Babe in the chair and Jerry Brandon bending over her seemed to come apart before his eyes.
“Richard Nixon takes the knife from the table. It’s a curved knife. It’s a melon knife, I think.” Sweat needled her forehead. “Richard Nixon walks up to the naked man and he takes the knife and he …”
Waves of trembling broke over her. Cardozo could feel the terror in her, the kind that comes from knowing you have to turn your eyes away or your mind will snap.
Brandon looked at Cardozo, asking, and Cardozo nodded. “Ask her what Nixon does with the knife.”
“What does Nixon do with the knife, Babe?”
A spasm ripped the muscles of her face. “No—I don’t want to see it!” She covered her eyes.
“You do see it, Babe. You do see it.”
She brought her hands down a little, far enough to peek over them. “He cuts the young man. The poor young man can’t defend himself and Richard Nixon …”
Cardozo’s heart turned over in his chest. “Ask her what the cut looks like. Ask her does it have a design.”
“What does the cut look like, Babe? Does it have a design?”
She stiffened. “He cuts a circle.”
“What’s in the circle?” Cardozo said.
“What’s in the circle, Babe?”
“There’s a Y, dripping blood.” She doubled over, her arms clamped across her stomach, and made retching sounds.
Brandon touched her forehead. “Babe, go back to sleep.”
A blankness flowed into Babe’s eyes. She slumped back against the Barcalounger.
“Wow,” Brandon said. “What was that all about?”
Cardozo bent over her. He took her hand in his. It was cool, limp. He massaged her knuckles. It was five minutes before her eyes opened slowly. He spoke in a low voice, tinged with sympathy. “Come on. You’ve earned a little fresh air.”
He helped her up and he helped her onto her crutches. He kept a firm guiding hand on her arm.
They walked out to where the daylight was dark gold, barred with gray. The streets were alive, bustling and active with people hurrying home from work. A Spanish vendor was selling authentic Italian ices. A small Chinese girl ran past, pigtails flying. They let the thickly peopled sidewalk carry them along.
Babe lifted her eyes to where the skyline stopped sharp against the sky. “What did I remember?” she said.
“You didn’t.”
With a pained blinking of her eyes she turned to him. “It wasn’t Cordelia?”
“You didn’t remember. Brandon tried to get you back to that night but he couldn’t.”
Cardozo turned off the cassette player.
Ellie Siegel was staring thoughtfully into her can of cherry Coke. “Somebody told her,” she said.
“Who could have told her? Who knew about the cigarette butt in Downs’s left hand? Who knew about the peace sign carved on his chest? We kept that stuff out of the papers.”
“Vince, is there any possibility maybe you mentioned some stuff to her?”
“Why the hell would I mention it to her?”
“Because you’re sorry for her. Maybe you wanted to make her feel important. A lot of cops tell their girlfriends things they shouldn’t, little inside shit about ongoing investigations—”
“She is not a girlfriend. Jesus Christ, enough with the matchmaking.”
“Would you give me back my head, please? I’m just trying to understand how there could be such a mix on that tape. She has insider details and then all that mishegoss about John Wayne and Mickey Mouse. And Nixon. What’s with the thirty-seventh president? Added to which, there’s nothing about apartment six, nothing about Claude Loring. Devens just has isolated bits and she’s filled in the rest with comic book stuff.”
“It bothers me. I heard her saying those things and it locked right in to a feeling I’ve had all along about this Downs killing.”
“The case is solved, Vince.”
“Where did the mask come from? Where did that cigarette butt come from? Who was the woman that bought the mask from Pleasure Trove and took it to Beaux Arts Tower?”
“Wait a minute. Loring confessed. The evidence backs up his confession. The witnesses back up his confession. You’re not going to tell me that crazy tape raises any questions about his guilt. Neither does the mask or the cigarette or the woman no one could identify. They don’t make Loring innocent. No way. The woman may not even connect. The mask is a mass-produced item. The cigarette—no one’s ever been convicted on a cigarette unless the charge was littering or polluting the atmosphere at the Four Seasons. The questions in this case have been answered. That’s why those files in your lap are marked Case Closed.”
Cardozo sat there with his Diet Pepsi on ice, sealed in a state of wondering. “Too many coincidences. Morgenstern defended the Devens murder attempt and the Downs killing. We put Babe Devens under and out comes the Downs killing.”
“Vince, you’re over the line. You’ve got a mishmash, not coincidence. Mickey Mouse is not an accessory in the Downs killing. Richard Nixon has an alibi. You’re not going to get any judge to subpoena Alice in Wonderland.”
Cardozo was silent, frowning.
“But assume she was there,” Siegel said. “Where does it get you? Downs is being tortured and murdered, and in walks Babe Devens, up two flights of dark stairs. Forget she can’t even walk now. Forget apartment six is on the sixth floor. Forget she had nurses watching her around the clock, forget the coma. Forget she sees the murder and doesn’t see the murderer, forget what she does see is half of Disneyland. She’s there while the handyman is taking Jodie Downs apart. Just ask yourself: what is Babe Vanderwalk doing in that place at that time? Who or whose purpose does it serve? Her own? The handyman’s? The victim’s? Where was she before and where did she go afterward? How come no one saw her?”
“So why did she tell that story?”
“Because you and Dr. Kildare had her flying on Medicaid angel dust.”
“How did she get the details?”
“You mean how did she get the wrong details? She made them up. How did she get the right details? Maybe she made them up too and got lucky. Or maybe there is something to ESP, maybe she knew because you knew, because you’ve been fixated on this case for so long that anyone who can read lips would know what you’re thinking.”
Cardozo put down his glass and rested his head on the back of the seat. Through lowered lids he stared at the dead TV screen.
“G’night, Vince.” Siegel came across the livingroom and patted him on the cheek. “The chicken was delicious.”
“The neighbor cooked it.”
“It was still delicious.”
He sprang to his feet and came with her into the hallway. Thoughtfully, she considered the man holding the door for her.
“Vince, I don’t mean to spoil the ending for you, but Loring did it.”
He nodded, eyes blank with fatigue. The latch clicked shut.
For two more hours he sat staring at photos and fives, his mind toying with connections, trying to tease the new piece into place.
“Hey, Dad—aren’t you sleeping anymore?”
His daughter was standing in the doorway, in rumpled night-clothes, and he felt a rush of absurdity and guilt.
He closed the file. He walked slowly, feeling an ache in his back, and he wondered if he was turning into one of those middle-aged deskmen with back problems.
Terri followed him down the hall to the kitchen. He put a pan of milk on the burner. Hot milk, his instant sleeping pill. She got a cup out of the cabinet for him.
Cardozo stood watching his daughter. That movement of the arm she had from her mother, and the way she took charge of the stove with her head a little on one side was her mother’s too.
“How you feeling, Dad?”
So was the question, and the dark-eyed look, with their implied gentle nagging.
“I’m okay.”
She mixed Sweet ’n Low and cinnamon in the cup and handed
him the milk. She suspected something. He knew she sensed he wasn’t right.
“Get some sleep,” she said.
But that night he didn’t sleep.
A gob of milky light smeared on the wall. Cardozo adjusted the lens. The image leapt into focus, a tall beautiful woman with black curly hair that came to her shoulders.
Babe sat with her crutches leaning on the wall behind her, hands pushed down in the pockets of her skirt. After a long moment of deliberation she said, “There’s a seven-year gap in my memory and even if I knew these people, they’ve changed and I might not recognize them.”
“Or on the other hand you might.”
Cardozo clicked to the next. A slim blond girl with deep-set eyes. Mystery woman taking mask into BAT.
Babe pulled back, shook her head no.
The next. A middle-aged man with hollow eyes and wisps of black hair over his ears.
“That’s Lew Monserat, the art dealer. He’s lost weight. Is he well?”
“You mean mentally? I wouldn’t swear to it.”
Cardozo made check marks in the log, one for recognition and another for a certain hesitation that might have masked recognition.
Claude Loring flashed onto the wall, sweaty in his sawed-off Levi’s jacket, striding into the entrance of the Inferno.
It began with something vague. Babe just stared, still and silent.
The photo exuded a terrific sense of cocaine tension, cocaine power, cocaine violence, all held under tight Valium control.
Cardozo could feel she was beginning to make a connection. Her face tightened and paled. She was on the brink of something.
“His eyes look so cold. He makes me feel afraid.”
“Do you know him?”
“Should I?”
“There are no shoulds about it. Maybe you’ve seen him somewhere, maybe you haven’t.”
“Seven years ago he would have been a child.”
“But you feel something.”
“Yes, I feel something, but … Vince, I’m sorry, I just can’t tell. Maybe it’s just that he looks so intense.”
“What does that remind you of, someone looks so intense?”
“It makes me think … I’d like to draw him.”
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