VC01 - Privileged Lives

by Edward Stewart

  Suddenly the men pushed the girl to the floor. Her reaction was unstaged: surprise and pain.

  Two of the men held her down. Without warning, something slopped down on the girl. It took Cardozo a moment to recognize what he was seeing: animal intestines from a slaughterhouse.

  There was mindless terror in the girl’s kicking and thrashing.

  Cardozo knew what she was thinking—she believed these lunatics were going to kill her. That was what they wanted her to believe, that was what they wanted to get on film.

  At the same time there was a bell going off in his head: the animal intestines triggered an association that wasn’t quite making it to the surface.

  And then it came to him.

  The butcher shop viscera that Nuku Kushima had encased in lucite and made part of her art.

  Connections began spinning off one another in Cardozo’s mind.

  Intestines in Kushima’s art and intestines in Lew Monserat’s home video, and Monserat was Kushima’s dealer.

  Claude Loring killed Jodie Downs. Doria Forbes-Steinman recognized Loring as a friend of Monserat’s.

  No big deal—a lot of New Yorkers were friends.

  Monserat and Loring both frequented the Inferno.

  Still no big deal—more than a few New Yorkers were into kink and anonymous sex.

  Count Leopold and Countess Victoria de Savoie-Sancerre had a key to Monserat’s new party pad. The countess had put on a blond wig and walked into Pleasure Trove, paid cash for a bondage mask, and carried it into Beaux Arts Tower.

  Was that a big deal?

  Putting on a disguise, giving a false name, paying cash—yes, that was a big deal. Buying the mask the first business day after the killing meant it was a replacement for the fifth Kushima mask, the mask found on the victim.

  Monserat had said the fifth mask didn’t exist, but this contradicted the artist’s first statement. As dealer for Kushima’s work Monserat could easily have owned or borrowed the fifth mask and destroyed the records.

  Since Monserat didn’t live in Beaux Arts Tower, that raised a question: who had Vicki given the mask to? Obviously it could have been anyone, even the doorman. All the well-heeled people in that building probably dealt with Monserat—and transporting a mask was not an offense like transporting drugs or a minor across state lines for immoral purposes.

  And then there was Babe.

  Babe Devens recognized Monserat’s former party pad—abandoned four days after the Downs killing—as the scene of a masked party where a young man had been tortured in exactly the same way as Jodie Downs. Babe had been dreaming, but that was another story—or question. The tape in Monserat’s VCR showed disjointed snippets of other sadistic parties, some masked, some not. So dreaming or not, Babe had been right on the money.

  A lot of pieces, a lot of holes.

  What to do?

  Consult the dreamer.

  47

  IT WAS QUIET EXCEPT for the hissing on the soundtrack, and in a way that hissing made the room even more silent. Babe’s wide green-blue eyes followed the movement on the screen.

  A man in evening clothes crossed the screen. Behind him four black beams attached to the wall formed the letter H, with two crosspieces, almost as tall as he was.

  “That’s Lew Monserat,” Babe said.

  Another man in evening clothes entered the frame.

  Babe leaned forward. “That’s Binny Harbison.” She sounded astonished. “This must be an old tape.”

  “Who’s Binny Harbison?”

  “A designer. I heard he died three years ago.”

  Now the woman in the gown appeared. She put a cigarette to her mouth. Both Binny Harbison and Lew Monserat offered lights. The woman took a light from Binny. She crossed to one of the Queen Anne chairs and sat.

  Babe’s face was suddenly an oval of concentration. Her gaze played over the hard jaw, the high forehead, the widely spaced dark eyes, the aquiline nose. “There’s something …”

  The woman leaned back against the chair, watching the column of smoke from her cigarette drift up into the unstirring air.

  “There’s something wrong with her hair,” Babe said. “It’s fake. She’s wearing a wig. Could you stop the film?”

  Babe peered at the TV screen.

  “The picture’s so bad. Even the nose could be false. But still there’s something …”

  Babe got up and went to the door. “Mathilde, could you come here a moment?”

  A white-haired Frenchwoman with a swatch of blue cloth in one hand and a pair of pinking shears in the other stepped into the room. Babe introduced Mathilde Lheureux, her assistant, and Cardozo said how do you do.

  “Do you recognize that dress?” Babe asked.

  Mathilde approached the TV screen. “You designed that dress. It is red, with hand-stitched sequins.”

  “Of course.” Babe took Cardozo through a workroom where eight women were working sewing machines and into an office. She shut the door. “Excuse the confusion,” she said, “we’ve hardly moved in.”

  She went to the deep bookcase that held art folders. Tall, moving lightly, she was showing more and more of the grace that had been locked up in her for seven years. She studied labels, found the folder she wanted. She unlaced the strings and laid it open on the drafting table. She turned sheets of paper with a little snap.

  “This one,” she said.

  Cardozo looked down at a delicate sketch of a faceless woman in a gown that was warm, ripe red, the color of a perfect strawberry.

  “I designed it for Ash Canfield,” Babe said. “She wore it to my party the night I went into coma.”

  Babe felt silence, motionlessness in the house. Every piece of furniture seemed to say Ash is gone. She looked about the room, seeing the moody Corot woodscape over the fireplace, all the small doodads and objects that had been Ash’s enthusiasms and now, without her, seemed pitiful and meaningless, like abandoned pups.

  “First stop, a drink, yes?” Dunk said.

  “Isn’t it a little early for that?”

  “You know what the Countess Rothschild used to say—‘Oh, well, what the hell’”

  He mixed martinis, strained them carefully into two glasses, and garnished them with garlic olives. He came across the livingroom and handed Babe one. They settled onto facing couches.

  She studied his face, the squarely set eyes, the bobsled nose and dimpled chin, the long curling lashes, all the physical details that had been Ash’s obsession. And Dina Alstetter’s. And, once upon a time, hers too. It seemed peculiar: Ash gone, the obsession surviving.

  “It’s sweet of you to come by,” he said. “You look more and more terrific every day.”

  There were dark lines under Dunk Canfield’s eyes, accentuated by his deep tan, and they seemed to speak of weeks of sleeplessness. A yachting cap sat rakishly atilt his hair, bleached from the Corfu sun.

  “How are you, Dunk?”

  “It’s been one of those days. It’s been one of those lives.” His posture sagged and his head hung forward. “I loved her. I was a rotten bastard to her, but I loved her. We weren’t always the best lovers or the best friends—as you well know—but damn it, we knew how to have fun. She was my best playmate ever. And we were just getting back together. And this time it would have worked. I know it would have.”

  Babe was silent.

  “I walk through these rooms—they feel so lonely, so empty.”

  “What are you doing with yourself? Aren’t you getting out at all?”

  “I was out with Vicki the other night—she took me to some of the discos—it’s not a lot, but it’s a toe in the water. I really don’t feel up to dinners, meeting people, making chitchat. There’s always that obligatory I’m-so-sorry and I’m so tired of it. And every damned little thing reminds me of her. I order Château-Margaux and I remember when she and I last drank it. I play a record and it’s her favorite. I try to read and the words on the page start a chain of associations and I wind up thinking of her. Loo
k what I found, going through her things.”

  Dunk pulled a pack of glossy photographs out of a manila envelope and handed them to Babe.

  She looked at them—candids of Ash, appearing rather tipsy in some airport or other. One showed Ash dancing on a VIP lounge couch, a gaggle of nuns staring in open shock.

  “Our trip to Bavaria, remember?” Dunk said. “When we all went to Caroline’s schloss and at Shannon they announced ‘Boarding all passengers on Aeroflot to Moscow and all passengers on Mr. Getty’s jet to Bad Nemetz.’ It’s one of those silly moments you never forget.”

  “I remember.” Babe remembered being embarrassed, but it was obviously one of Dunk’s golden moments and she wasn’t going to say anything to tarnish it.

  “Speaking of mementos …” Babe opened her own envelope and handed Dunk her sketch of the red gown. “Do you remember the dress I designed for Ash?”

  He shook his head. “I got rid of all her clothes. The day after she died I phoned the Junior League thrift shop and told them to send a truck.”

  Cardozo held the door for Babe.

  The air inside the Junior League thrift shop smelled of floor wax, camphor, and the perfumes of forty different millionaires’ wives. The women floating up and down the aisles did not seem to be shopping so much as strolling, enjoying a break in lives that were all intermission to begin with, pausing to examine a froth of petticoat or an onyx bookend. They had a bored air, but there was a seriousness in their boredom, as though they were pursuing highly competitive careers.

  “How do you tell who’s selling and who’s buying?” Cardozo whispered.

  “The saleswomen are wearing originals,” Babe said.

  Cardozo glanced along the racks of dresses and evening gowns, seemingly crushed together helter-skelter, all exuding an aroma of last decade’s chic; shelves of figurines and glasses and vases; stacks of books coming apart at the bindings.

  “Garth, look!” a woman cried. “Depression glass candlesticks!”

  Babe examined the sleeve of an oxydized mink that had gone the color of an old toupee.

  A young woman approached. She wore slacks and a silk blouse with a patterned scarf, her reddish-brown hair pinned behind one ear with an emerald clip. “May I help you?”

  “Who takes deliveries?” Babe asked.

  “Cybilla handles those. I’ll see if she’s free.”

  Everyone in the store looked free to Cardozo.

  By the window, he observed two women discussing a flared rust-and-black patterned dress.

  The younger woman was thin and blond, bright-eyed, agitated, a princess with a small p, doing coke or possibly prescription speed, worried about her age, her body, her left contact lens.

  Her opponent was a tall, slender woman with steel-gray hair softly waved over an intelligent face.

  They were disagreeing. It was clearly a collision of life-styles.

  Cardozo understood what the young blond woman did not: the Junior League boutique was not Crazy Eddie’s; you didn’t hondle with the help, who in any case were not help but Park Avenue volunteers.

  The woman in slacks spoke to the gray-haired lady, who came smiling across the shop.

  “Great to see you, Babe. You’re looking just terrific.”

  “So are you, Cybilla.”

  “We’re going crazy. Three cartons of tip-top junk just came in from Truman Capote’s old garage and we’re understaffed.”

  “Cybilla,” Babe said, “this is Vincent Cardozo. Vince, Cybilla deClairville—a good friend of my mother’s and mine.”

  Cybilla raised her left eyebrow. She held out a perfectly and unobtrusively manicured hand. One gold band and nothing else. “You look familiar to me, Mr. Cardozo. Have we met?”

  “Your home was robbed eleven years ago,” he said. “They almost killed the butler. How’s he doing?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “The Bonnard is all stitched up?”

  “As good as new, Mr. Cardozo.”

  Babe showed Cybilla her sketch of the red dress. “Do you have this dress?”

  Cybilla studied the sketch. “I’m afraid we don’t. It’s a bit out of our league.”

  “But it came in with Ash Canfield’s things.”

  Noncomprehension lines knotted Cybilla’s brow.

  “I designed it for her,” Babe said. “I’d like it for sentimental reasons. I’ll buy it, of course.”

  “We don’t have any of Ash’s things,” Cybilla said.

  “But Dunk gave you everything.”

  “No he didn’t. Dunk hasn’t said boo to me in three years.”

  Countess Vicki de Savoie-Sancerre joined the conversation, tall and leggy in an orange jumpsuit. “Hello, Babe, you’re looking glorious, as always.”

  “I didn’t know you worked here,” Babe said.

  “Every Thursday this month, taking over for Betsy.”

  Cybilla handed Countess Vicki the sketch. “Have we had a dress like this?”

  Countess Vicki stared at the sketch. “Oh, Dunk Canfield brought it in and it was purchased the same day.”

  “Do you happen to have the receipt?” Cardozo asked.

  Countess Vicki smiled and held out her wrists. “Lieutenant, handcuff me. I didn’t make out a receipt. I just put the money in the register.”

  For an instant Duncan Canfield’s face glowed from the entire screen, patterned pinpoints of vibrating light and dark.

  Charley Brackner pushed a button that split the screen.

  From the bottom half Canfield’s image sent out sharp glints like sparks from a flint. In the upper half appeared the message:

  WELCOME TO IDENTI-KIT COPYRIGHT 1985

  HERE IS YOUR MENU OF CHOICES:

  [1] MALE

  [2] FEMALE

  “Female,” Cardozo said.

  Charley Brackner’s brown eyes glanced up at him. “Female?”

  “Read my lips. Female.”

  Charley pushed another button. A new message appeared:

  HERE IS YOUR MENU OF CHOICES.

  FACE SHAPE

  HAIR

  EYEBROWS

  EYES

  NOSE

  CHEEKS

  LIPS

  JAW

  CHIN

  “How would he disguise himself,” Cardozo said, “if he wanted to be a woman for the night. For Halloween. For a joke.”

  “Okay. A wig, eyeshadow, lashes …”

  The cursor began snatching options from the top half of the screen and moving them down onto the face. Feature by feature a drifting current of superimpositions redrew reality.

  “How good is our man at this stuff?” Charley said.

  Cardozo studied what was coming up on the screen. “Better than you are.”

  “Sorry about that. Lipstick?”

  “Definitely lipstick. I could even give you the shade.”

  “Color we don’t have.”

  Fleetingly the smile left Canfield’s face, then returned with Cupid’s bow lips.

  “Less like a hooker,” Cardozo said.

  New lips, more lady-like, fell into place. Gradually a change passed over the face. The likeness to Canfield began to die and the likeness to someone else, to something else, began to spread. There was a precise moment when the balance tipped, when the human being faded away, when all gentleness in the face had gone, and suddenly the image seethed with almost theatrical violence and anger.

  “Try adding more hair, earrings—you know, women’s things.”

  The hair dropped from her ears—for she was now definitely some kind of she—to her neck to her shoulders.

  Cardozo stood there, staring. There was still a faint stain of doubt, a sensation that something was missing.

  “Give her a dress.”

  Suddenly she was wearing a severe dark dress.

  “Make it lighter, flouncier.”

  “Vince, we only have a limited line of dresses in this program. Saks Fifth Avenue we are not.”

  “I can draw yo
u the type I want.” Cardozo drew it on a piece of scratch paper.

  “Vince, never go into fashion.”

  The dress toppled into place.

  Charley Brackner pressed a button and now the face occupied the entire screen, casting a hard glow, like sunlight on snow.

  “That’s good,” Cardozo said. “Can you print that face?”

  Charley pushed a button.

  Seven minutes later Cardozo was sitting in his cubicle staring at Dunk Canfield transformed.

  He angled the picture under his desk lamp. Specks of dust floated in the grayish flicker. Light vibrated on the face. The face was trapped in fluorescence. The eyes stared back at him, cheerless and vacant.

  Unless Canfield had an identical twin of the opposite sex, there could be very little doubt: Sir Dunk was the same person as the ugly woman in the videotape wearing Ash Canfield’s dress.

  Cardozo heaved himself up from the desk. He went into the squad room and studied the bulletin board. “Who took down the flyer for the Gay Cops’ Dance?”

  Monteleone whooped. “You going, Vince? Take me along?”

  “The CP ruled that that flyer stays up.”

  The CP had issued an edict affirming the right of any and all organizations on the force to post notice of peaceful assemblies.

  “Look under the Uniformed Sons of Erin novena. Under, Vince. Underneath.”

  Cardozo undid the bottom thumbtacks on the novena announcement and found the gay cops’ flyer.

  Technically, hiding the gay cops’ flyer under the Uniformed Sons of Erin’s was not a violation. Nevertheless, after he had made a note of the name and precinct of the organizer, Cardozo tacked the flyer over the latest communiqué from the CD’s office.

  Sergeant John Henning, president of the Gay Policemen’s Caucus and organizer of the Gay Cops’ Dance, shook a Marlboro loose from the packet. He looked across the coffee shop booth at Cardozo. “Do you mind?”

  “You’re going to die that way.”

  Sergeant Henning lit his cigarette and signaled the waitress for another round of coffees. “You always draw morals?”

  “Never. Am I going to insult you if I ask you about drag queens?”

  For just a flash, Sergeant Henning’s eyes narrowed. Then they crinkled into a blandly diplomatic smile. “The only insult is asking if it’s an insult. What do you want to know?”