Deadly Rich

by Edward Stewart

  “Would you say this guy looked anything like either of these men?” Cardozo took the Identi-Kit and the photo of Jim Delancey from his pocket.

  The doorman stared at them both a moment. “Maybe this one.” He picked the Identi-Kit. “But the guy I saw, his eyes were a lot crazier. Like he was doing major crack.”

  Cardozo stepped outside again. Twenty feet away, across Sixty-seventh Street, police were setting up sawhorse barricades.

  “What’s happening over there?” Cardozo said.

  “A film crew from You and Me Productions is in town,” the cop said. “I think it’s a dog-food commercial.”

  Cardozo watched men placing card tables in the archways of the building across the way. Lights were burning dimly behind the vaulted windows of the first story; the rest of the building was dark. Workmen were spreading tablecloths over the card tables and anchoring them with platters of bagels and oranges.

  Cardozo crossed the street. The Sixty-seventh Street doors of the building had permanent brass plaques telling you this was the Dominion Club and the entrance was on Park Avenue. He went around the corner and pushed the buzzer.

  A uniformed policeman with icicle eyes approached and told Cardozo he’d have to move on. “Filming is about to start. You’re in the shot.”

  Cardozo took out his shield.

  The officer blinked. He touched the brim of his cap, embarrassed, and stepped back.

  In a moment, through the carved glass panels, Cardozo saw an inner door open. An ashen-faced old man shuffled down the steps, buttoning a green uniform jacket over a cotton undershirt. Cardozo held up his shield. The old man opened the front door. Cardozo saw that he was wearing slippers with his uniform trousers.

  “Are you the night watchman?”

  “This week.”

  “A man was killed about an hour ago on the southwest corner of Park and Sixty-seventh. Did you happen to see anything?”

  The old man pulled at an earlobe. “Only thing I saw was a kid, hour and a half ago. He was hanging around the front door. Had to chase him away.”

  “Can you describe this kid?” Cardozo said.

  “Dark hair, dark skin, six feet tall or so, heavy-set, could have been in his mid-twenties. He was stoned or drunk. Had headphones.”

  “Did this kid seem to be any particular ethnic type? Irish? Italian? Black?”

  The answer came fast. “Spanish. The music coming out of his earphones was ‘ay, ay, ay, bamba, mira’.”

  Cardozo brought out the Identi-Kit drawing and the photo. “Would you say he looked like either of these men?”

  The old man held the photo at arm’s length, then the drawing. He handed back the Identi-Kit and stared a moment longer at Delancey. He nodded. “He looked like this guy. You know—Hispanic.”

  “OKAY, CARL,” Cardozo said, “where was he last night?”

  Malloy sighed and pulled his notepad out of his pocket. “We’re not running a twenty-four-hour surveillance, just establishing his pattern. Right?”

  Today two blackboards stood at the front of the room. On the right, Oona Aldrich’s, with a list of possible witnesses dribbling way down the right-hand side; on the left, Avalon Gardner’s, with a witness list that had gone no farther than two names: a doorman and a night watchman.

  “Right,” Cardozo said. “So where was he?”

  Malloy puckered his lips and flipped through the pad. “All his usual places at all his usual times. Left work at eight-fifteen, that’s maybe five minutes earlier than his regular check-out. Cut straight over to Third. Walked home, like he always does. Bought a Frozfruit from a deli right next to the Baronet movie theater. Reached Beekman Place at eight-fifty, went straight upstairs. I hung around till midnight.”

  “Till midnight.” Cardozo saw what was coming. “Avalon Gardner was killed between twelve-thirty and one-thirty.”

  “I didn’t see Delancey leave the building.” Malloy’s shoulders shaped a helpless shrug. “For thirteen days he’s been a creature of habit. I’m sorry, Vince. I was playing the odds. I put in my full eight hours, plus four hours overtime. I was dead tired. I went home at midnight.”

  During the three seconds that no one in the utility room spoke, the sounds of a traffic jam in the street seemed to be coming from a bank of bullhorns on the other side of the wall.

  “It was a judgment call.” Malloy snapped his notebook shut. “Okay, I goofed. But if you want Jim Delancey watched around the clock, you’re going to have to give me two men at least, and please explain to my wife.”

  “Okay.” Cardozo’s hands made pacifying, oil-on-troubled-water movements. “It’s nobody’s fault but the economy’s. We’re way under strength. I’ll try to steal a couple of detectives to help out.”

  Malloy sat staring at his lap, avoiding every eye in the room, looking absolutely miserable.

  “Hold it.” Greg Monteleone was making a face as though he’d bitten into a Tootsie Roll and found glass. “Does anyone know one good reason why Delancey would kill this guy?”

  “It could be he’s getting even,” Ellie Siegel said. “I reviewed the newspaper reports of the trial. The defense contended that Nita Kohler was a drugged slut who deserved what she got. The state called ten character witnesses to rebut.”

  Cardozo waited through Ellie’s dramatic little pause. “Do we get to hear the names, or do we take a lunch break first?”

  “The witnesses were Leigh Baker … Dizey Duke … Benedict Braidy … Tori Sandberg … Annie MacAdam … Gloria Spahn … Sorella Chappell … Fennimore Gurdon—”

  Cardozo stopped her. “Who are Chappell and Gurdon?”

  “They run an interior decorating outfit. Avalon Gardner also testified. And so did Oona Aldrich.”

  “You could be right.” Greg Monteleone shrugged. “But there are eight living people on that list. If Delancey’s getting even, why hasn’t he killed them too? He’s had thirteen days.”

  “Does it even have to be the same guy who killed Oona?” Sam Richards said.

  “The cuts looked like the same guy did them,” Cardozo said. “The autopsy will clear that up. In the meantime, Ellie, will you check out Gardner’s will. Check out his address book. Draw up a list of beneficiaries and friends.”

  Ellie Siegel’s green gaze met his for just an instant of narrow-eyed silence. The ballpoint pen in her hand made a swift notation in her notebook.

  Cardozo rose to his feet. “That’s it, guys. Meeting adjourned, full steam ahead.”

  Ellie rose from her chair, but she didn’t leave with the others. “I don’t suppose you saw Dizey Duke’s column yesterday morning?”

  “Did I miss something?”

  She fixed Cardozo with a look that was not quite a smile. She opened her purse and handed him a neatly scissored clipping.

  Talk of le tout Park Avenue is the scrumptious dinner Annie MacAdam is serving chez elle tonight. Annie’s eight-room duplex has been newly decorated by the hot, hot interior design firm of Gurdon-Chappell, who (don’t tell a soul) were called in last season to rescue Prince Charles’s London digs. Cahn’t wait to see the blue on that trim, said to be a dream. Bets are being taken as to dessert, with the smart money favoring ginger crème brulée. Poor Annie must be limp after the awesome task of whittling down the guest list to 80 very close friends, but then she’s had to do it often enough before.

  He handed back the clipping. For a moment his silence flowed into hers.

  “Twice in a row, Vince. My instinct says he’s getting his coordinates from Dizey’s sneak previews.”

  Cardozo’s phone rang. He lifted the receiver. “Cardozo.”

  “Vince.” It was Captain Reilly’s assistant. “The captain wants to see you right now. In his office.”

  “YOU KNOW DEPUTY COMMISSIONER Bridget Braidy,” Tom

  Reilly said.

  “Yes indeed,” Cardozo said. “We met at the PBA banquet.”

  Bridget Braidy rose from her chair. She wore a loosely fitted dark blue business suit and a blou
se with an enormous matching floppy bow tie. Her broad, wide-nosed face was smiling, and the smile showed slightly discolored, stubby teeth. “It’s good to see you again, Lieutenant.”

  They had to shout. A mass of radio and TV people, newspaper and wire-service reporters had jammed into Reilly’s office. Two dozen voices were screaming at once. Flashbulbs popped, mini-cams fought for good angles, microphones thrust themselves into the air.

  “Commissioner Braidy has brought some terrific news,” Tom Reilly said. “We’re getting fifty men.”

  Cardozo shook Bridget Braidy’s hand, a thank-you for the string-pulling he knew it had taken. “Believe me, they couldn’t have come at a better time.” There was no such thing as extra men in New York’s permanently understaffed police force. The mayor’s new budget had slashed the carotid artery of support services, and contrary to media hype, the latest increase in police funding had been gobbled up by a City Hall salary-and-perks grab.

  “Okay, okay.” Tom Reilly came around to the mike that had been set up in front of his desk. “A little order, please.”

  The sound of shouting died down to the sound of talking.

  “We’ve got a very important announcement and we want to just make it briefly, so we can get on with our work of protecting the public and you people can get on with your work of informing the public.” Tom Reilly smiled broadly at Bridget Braidy. “I don’t suppose I have to introduce Assistant Deputy Commissioner Bridget Braidy to any of you.”

  Braidy took the mike. The talking stopped. With an almost coquettish movement her hand went up to pit-pat her hair. In the glare of photographers’ lights the hair was a strange dark brown with glints of a stranger, darker brown. Tiny, barely noticeable diamond earrings made two little glints in the lobes of her ears. I’m a woman, they seemed to say, but see? I don’t flaunt it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Bridget Braidy said, “we’ve all been outraged, and rightly so, at the killings of Oona Aldrich and Avalon Gardner. The mayor and the commissioner have asked me to announce that an enlarged task force is being established, effective immediately, to cope with this crisis. The mayor and the commissioner are contributing twenty-five detectives each from their personal-security forces, a total of fifty men and women. Heading up the task force will be one of the Department’s most experienced and distinguished officers, Lieutenant Vince Cardozo.”

  Bridget Braidy stepped not very far to one side, and Cardozo found himself speaking into half a mike.

  “The force and I,” he said, “are very grateful to the mayor and the commissioner for this assistance. It’s an example of what can be done when city agencies pull together, and it’s going to make a real difference.”

  “Any leads?” a redheaded woman called out.

  “Quite a few. We’re following them up right now.”

  “The two killings were committed by the same person?” a blond-bearded man asked.

  “Very possibly.”

  A young guy in jeans and a Kiss-Me-I’m-Italian T-shirt jammed a mike into Cardozo’s face. “Do you think a task force can compensate for the innocent lives this creep has taken?”

  The young man stood there, hating, but Cardozo answered calmly, riding his own unruffled beat. “Compensation is not the issue in this or any investigation.”

  Bridget Braidy interposed a hand and smoothly lifted the mike. “This investigation will send an unequivocal signal that the city administration holds all human life precious and that the people of New York City will not be terrorized.”

  “What about the eleven people slain in New York City in the last thirty-six hours?” a young man in a New York Mets cap shouted. “Any task force for them?”

  Putting together any kind of task force meant pulling cops off your everyday New York atrocities that never reached the papers, concentrating them for one splashy moment on an atrocity that had made it to page one. It meant pulling uniforms out of the high-crime neighborhoods and hoping the city’s killers and robbers and muggers would not declare a two-for-one day.

  “It’s a horrible statistic,” Bridget Braidy said, “and we cannot and will not countenance it.”

  “Isn’t this response too little too late?” a young woman shouted. She was wearing the trademark T-shirt and red beret of the Guardian Angels.

  “No,” Bridget Braidy said.

  “In the last ten years,” the young woman shouted, “New York has seen the militarization of the entire city north of Ninety-sixth Street. There’s nothing magic about the number ninety-six. The street isn’t fortified. Sooner or later the killing was bound to trickle south. Isn’t the question for law enforcement whether we’re going to go after the causes of crime, or just throw task forces at the problem to make sure homicide stays north of Ninety-sixth?”

  “Young lady,” Bridget Braidy said, “we’ve had plenty of homicides south of Ninety-sixth, and long before Society Sam. To cite just one, my own niece—Nita Kohler—was murdered four years ago on East Seventy-eighth Street. And that tragedy has given me a very personal perspective on these homicides and a personal commitment to seeing that this perpetrator is brought to justice.”

  I don’t believe I’m hearing this, Cardozo thought. He leaned toward Reilly. “How soon are we getting these men? I need to put a round-the-clock tail on a suspect starting today.”

  Reilly shook his head. “It’s not going to be that soon.”

  “How about stealing me two detectives from the embassy watch?”

  “I’ll see what I can do, but don’t mention anything. Keep it sweetness and light in front of these guys, okay?”

  TWENTY

  “IS SOMEONE USING AN APPLIANCE?”

  The voice was female. Carl Malloy didn’t recognize it. He glanced around from his desk. A young woman was standing just inside the doorway.

  “What kind of appliance?” Goldberg shouted.

  “Electrified marital aid?” DeVegh shouted.

  Besides Goldberg and DeVegh there were four other detectives in the squad room, all men, and they broke up laughing. The girl just stood there. Malloy remembered having seen her yesterday. He’d assumed she was one more problem that had walked in off the street.

  “Something’s pulling the current way down.” She had auburn hair, cut long and wavy.

  “Way down!” DeVegh echoed.

  Malloy couldn’t see what was funny about that, but the detectives cracked up again. He was trying to type up a summary of last night’s tail. But with all the laughing and racket he couldn’t concentrate. The sound of a TV game show was spilling in from the little storage room where the detectives knocked off to have coffee; voices were shouting in the corridor and FTP radios erupted in bursts of static. Phones were ringing everywhere.

  “I’m losing files,” the young woman said. “Who’s running a heavy-amp appliance?” She had a sweet, lost look, but she was standing her ground. Malloy found himself pulling for her.

  “Check the little girls’ room,” Goldberg shouted. “Someone must’ve left a vibrator running.”

  Malloy could tell she was inwardly withering. One instinct said, Leave it alone. Another instinct said, Go help the poor kid. He pushed up from the desk, put on a smile as wide as a billboard, and went to her.

  “Never mind these nitwits,” he said. “They’re just horsing around.”

  She squeezed out a smile for him. “I already looked in the women’s room. There’s no appliance in there.”

  “Would you like me to check the men’s room?”

  Her eyes signaled gratitude.

  Malloy walked into the corridor and down to the men’s room. The cleaning crew used cakes of industrial-strength camphor to tamp down the stink of the urinals, and the smell of it lay heavily on the damp, unmoving air. One of the lights had blown, leaving the two toilet stalls in dimness.

  Greg Monteleone was standing in front of one of the sinks, practicing his charisma in front of a mirror. In one hand he held a hair dryer and in the other a comb. He seemed to be teasing
his hair into a wave while the hot breeze of the dryer strafed his receding hairline.

  “You’re fucking up the power,” Malloy said. “Your dryer’s pulling on the current, and the kid on the computer is losing her files.”

  Monteleone clicked off the dryer. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  “You could warn her before you turn on the dryer. You could give her enough time to save her files.”

  “Next time I’ll give her sixty seconds’ warning. Anything to save your sex life, Carl.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Back in the corridor Malloy stopped by the computer. “One of the detectives was using a hair dryer. He’ll give you warning next time.”

  “Thanks,” the young woman said. “I appreciate it.”

  She smiled, and Malloy could feel her looking at him, and he found himself thinking regretfully that there were more tiny lines around his eyes than when he’d been a young man, a lot more gray in his hair, and a little less hair.

  “Hey, if you ever feel like taking a break,” he said, “there’s a really great place on the corner. They make their own ice cream.”

  “I didn’t take a lunch hour.” She looked at her watch. “I am sort of hungry.”

  SHE TOLD MALLOY her name was Laurie Bonasera.

  They were sitting in a booth off at the side of the ice-cream shop, eating double scoops of peach ice cream with sprinkles.

  “It’s an Italian name,” she said. “It should be spelled Bu-o-na-sera, with a u, but we leave the u out to make it more American.”

  Malloy was looking at her. For the first time that day all the tension had drained out of him, and his body felt relaxed. “Red hair’s not usual for an Italian girl.”

  “That’s because my father’s Irish. He married an Italian.”

  “Marrying an Italian didn’t used to be all that usual for Irish guys.”

  “My dad’s father took a while to accept it. But when I was born with red hair, it helped bring him around.”

  Laurie Bonasera went on like that, telling Malloy little things about herself. Malloy nodded, liking her smile: it softened the space around her. It had a glow.