Deadly Rich

by Edward Stewart

  “Okay, Lou. Thanks.”

  When Cardozo looked up, Ellie Siegel was standing in the doorway.

  “I did some reading last night.” She thunked an oversized, falling-apart, dog-eared paperback on the desk, angled so he could read the title: Your Congress—Newly Updated Edition. “Nancy Guardella serves on eight committees and subcommittees, but her power base is the chair of the DEA-oversight committee. They watch the black budget.”

  “What the hell is a black budget?”

  “Off-the-books expenditures.” Ellie was wearing a cotton print dress, and though it was barely ten in the morning, her hair was already curling around her face from the humidity. “The stuff that’s so secret you can’t keep a cost-accounting, because then the Russians would know.”

  “The Russians aren’t a problem anymore.”

  Ellie shrugged. “Okay, the drug lords would know. The Americans would know. Someone would know.”

  She waited while he adjusted the temperature control on the air conditioner. Adjusting the control in no way adjusted the temperature, but it sometimes lowered the noise and it made him feel that at least he tried to be a considerate host.

  “Now and then Guardella makes a stink in Congress, and something slips into the record that shouldn’t.”

  “Like what?” Cardozo said.

  “She raised a huge ruckus last year to get dentistry and psychiatry fully reimbursed.”

  “Reimbursed for who?”

  “For agents who can’t be put on the roster, because it would blow their cover and endanger their lives.”

  “Thoughtful of Nancy. Did she get her way?”

  “The resolution passed. Vince, we should have someone like that fighting for our dentistry reimbursements. On my last crown I had to pay a three-hundred-dollar deductible.”

  Cardozo riffled the pages of Your Congress.

  “I also did some digging into Nan Shane’s will,” Ellie said. “Nan Shane left two surviving relatives, her daughter Dodie and her mother Olivia. The mother lives in Mattoon, Illinois. She has no idea where Nan’s husband is, but she thinks they were divorced two years ago by Salvadorean decree.”

  “Who inherits?” The phone rang. Cardozo lifted the receiver. “Cardozo.”

  “Vince, it’s Tommy at Nynex. That 617 number you wanted is a pay phone.”

  Another button on Cardozo’s phone began blinking. “Shit.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Ellie, could you pick up on two and see who’s calling?” He uncovered the receiver. “Sorry, Tommy. Where’s that pay phone?”

  “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Try me.”

  “This is the guy that’s making nuisance calls to Leigh Baker, right? He’s phoning from the pay phone right in front of the precinct. Go out your front door, look left. Maybe he’s there right now.”

  “You’re probably right, and it’s probably one of my own men. Thanks, Tommy.”

  Ellie knocked on the open door. “To answer your last question, Nan died intestate.”

  “And who was that on the phone?”

  “Rad Rheinhardt. He just got a fourth letter from Society Sam. I don’t know whether it’s my shorthand or Sam’s train of thought, but this one doesn’t make much sense.” She consulted a sheet of scratch paper covered with squiggles and phone numbers. “Sam says, quote, ‘ta ra ta ra ta ra ta roo.’”

  “‘Ta roo?’ What the hell is ‘ta ra ta roo’?”

  Ellie shrugged. “I may not have the right number of ta ra’ s, but Rheinhardt’s sending the letter up. ‘Me ow and the poody tat, ow can you see, Humpty’s dumpty got the bumpty. Kisses, Society Sam.’

  “I SUGGEST, Let’s go party at my place.”

  Cardozo and Narcotics Detective Bob O’Rourke were sitting at a table in a half-deserted Chelsea diner that called itself Mama’s Greasy Spoon. The table was gleaming, not greasy. O’Rourke was dipping his chocolate eclair into his espresso, and in between mouthfuls he was telling Cardozo how he’d busted Nan Shane.

  “She says, Fine. So we jump into a cab outside Achilles Foot. I get her to sell me some coke in the backseat, and I bust her. The rest is mystery.”

  “Tell me about the mystery,” Cardozo said.

  “I have Shane booked and arraigned. The court date’s set. And then a federal narc stops me on the courthouse steps, and he busts me for using and dealing.”

  “Were you using and dealing?”

  “Hell, no. I was sent into Achilles Foot under cover, to buy.”

  Cardozo could see why the city narcs had sent O’Rourke under cover into a teen drug scene. The guy was a not-yet-aging thirty-two who’d kept his baby face.

  “Why Achilles Foot?” Cardozo said. “It’s a federal sting operation.”

  O’Rourke gave him a Where-have-you-been-hiding-for-the-last-quarter-century? look. “Somehow the feds forgot to tell New York that the place was theirs. As far as New York could tell, Achilles Foot was your normal, everyday, obnoxious dope scene, no different from your average Times Square movie theater. Same product. Same activity. The only difference I could see was, the clientele’s whiter, the prices are higher. You have exactly the same dealing in the front room, exactly the same using in the men’s room. Which is also the women’s room. Which is also the sex room.”

  “What do you mean, the sex room?”

  “I mean, when you find used rubbers lying on the floor, fresh, that’s the sex room.”

  Something slimy crawled through Cardozo’s stomach. “So the feds bust you on the courthouse steps, and you show them your shield.”

  “I show them my shield, and they say bullshit. They show me a video of me dealing—instead of just buying like I was sent into Achilles Foot to do.” O’Rourke stared out the window at traffic rumbling north on Eighth Avenue. “And I have to say, this video was awesome.”

  Cardozo felt a subtle increase of atmospheric weight. “They caught you dealing.”

  For a moment O’Rourke didn’t answer and he didn’t exactly react, but his eyes fixed Cardozo with a flat green stare. “No way. Would I be telling you this if they caught me dealing? I may be a little slow, but I’m not crooked. They faked it. What they had was a camera in the wall. Shane was doing this thing with cards. She was telling my fortune, my future, the usual.”

  “Tarot.”

  “On the tape they changed the audio. The way the video came out, I was quoting coke prices and Shane was ordering.”

  “How did they fake that?”

  “Shane wasn’t facing the camera. They dubbed her voice. How they did mine … obviously these people possess a high-tech forgery capability. It sounded like me, so it had to be some kind of voice sampler. It didn’t come out quite in sync, and I was facing the camera, but you had to watch real close to know.” O’Rourke threw Cardozo a baleful glance under hooded lids. “And that was when they told me Nan Shane was a federal agent.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Senator Nancy Guardella.”

  Cardozo played with a ballpoint pen, clicking the point in and out. “Did Guardella show you any proof?”

  “The only proof I got was, Guardella offered me health insurance if I’d keep my mouth shut.”

  “Health insurance?”

  “It’s a scam. They funnel money to you as medical reimbursements, and it’s untaxed. I assume the money’s unlaundered dope funds.”

  “Why do you think Guardella made the offer?”

  “Because Nan Shane may have been an agent, but she was also dealing for real. And so was Guardella’s son. And they both had major habits to support.”

  “Does Senator Guardella know?”

  O’Rourke tossed Cardozo a look that was laden with cold reverberation. “She’s a mother. Mothers know what they want to know.”

  “Can you prove that Yip Guardella’s dealing?”

  “Not anymore, but I could have proved it when Shane was alive. She was ready to take the stand.” O’Rourke gave a little smile that wasn’t a smile at all
. “But a funny thing happened on the way to the hearing. A psycho slasher got Shane.”

  For a moment Cardozo sat unmoving in his chair, staring across the diner. He was seized with a sudden pessimism about the universe. “I take it you don’t buy that explanation.”

  “If you ask me, the people running Achilles Foot work in mysterious ways.” O’Rourke shrugged. “So I don’t get my big case. Or the big promotion that would have come with it. But look at the bright side. I’m doing better than Shane. I’m alive.”

  “I don’t suppose you owe your life to any of that health insurance you mentioned.”

  For ten seconds O’Rourke was looking out the window and then he was looking at Cardozo and then he spoke. “No, Lieutenant. That big a fool I’m not. But I was offered a two-year New York State grant to study drug enforcement in Melbourne, and I grabbed it.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “You found me just in time. My wife and I leave tomorrow.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Tuesday, June 11

  “YOU’RE GOING TO KILL me. Or spank me. Or stop sponsoring me when I tell you what I’ve done.”

  “Tell me what you’ve done, so I can decide whether it’s murder or a spanking.”

  They were sitting in Luddie’s living room. Happy’s exercises were finished, and the child was resting now in his bed, and they were drinking Luddie’s home-ground coffee.

  “I spent the weekend with Vince Cardozo,” Leigh said.

  Luddie’s face held itself—all stern bone, capped by a bristling crop of gray hair—but something impatient and disapproving skittered behind his flat blue gaze.

  “You’re playing your old games,” he said. “You’re trying to neutralize this man.”

  “I have to survive.”

  “He’s not going to harm you.”

  “I had to know that for sure.” She ignored the look of skepticism playing across Luddie’s face. “He doesn’t think I’m involved in Dizey’s death. Except as a witness.”

  “You know, Leigh, I don’t think you’re involved either—except as a witness. Did it ever occur to you, you’re going to enormous lengths to cover up a fiction?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Are you going to see him again?” Luddie asked.

  She looked around at the view through the windows, at the city caught by the oncoming storm. Dark, massed arches of cloud hung pink-bellied in the sky.

  She met Luddie’s gaze with bold, unresigned eyes. “Of course I’m going to see him again.”

  “What’ll you do if he falls in love with you?”

  She smiled. “I’ll be nice to him.”

  “And what will you do if you fall in love with him?”

  “I’ll try to be nice to myself.”

  Luddie’s large eyes were heavy with silent knowing. “Leigh, how long have I known you?”

  “Four years, give or take three months.”

  “How many times have you been in love during that time?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “With you, love is a very public business. You’re going to feel a great need to go public with this cop. And as I understand your relationship with Waldo, he’ll put up with a lot, but he won’t put up with sexual humiliation.”

  “I’m tired of being someone else’s image. I want a little something of my own.”

  “And you really think a homicide detective is going to turn out to be a little something just for Leigh?”

  “Well, why not? Is it all that ridiculous?”

  She looked over at Luddie, but the fight she had expected wasn’t there in his face. Anger seemed to have faded, and in its place she read a sort of stony and sad acceptance.

  “Can’t you ever think of anyone’s well-being besides your own?”

  “I care about Vince. I do.”

  “Haven’t you ever felt disinterested concern for another human being?”

  “I care about Jasmin Hakim.”

  “Jasmin who?”

  “Dick says she’s dating Jim Delancey.”

  “I don’t think you should be putting stock in what your ex-husband says. He’s a professional gossip. Why do you bother with him?”

  “Because I need information about Delancey’s girlfriend.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to warn her. She’s in danger.”

  “Is she? And is it your responsibility?”

  “I think it is. You obviously think it’s not.”

  “I think you’re pushing yourself very hard, Leigh. What are you planning to do?”

  “Tonight I’m going to follow Jim Delancey from work.”

  “What’s the point of that?”

  “The police are following me, so they’ll be following him; and if he’s meeting with her, he won’t be able to hurt her.”

  “Don’t do that,” Luddie said. “Please don’t.”

  “I can’t just sit and let it happen all over again.”

  IN THE COFFEE SHOP across the street from Archibald’s, she waited at a table in the rear. She made no attempt to disguise who she was or what she was doing: she was Leigh Baker, and she was watching Archibald’s two doors through the window.

  Outside the front entrance women wearing diamonds clutched escorts’ arms and picked their way through parked limousines. A line of taxis stretched up Lexington.

  Outside the kitchen door nothing moved.

  Leigh ripped open a pink envelope of Sweet’n Low. A cloud of powder misted down into her cup. She stirred, sipped the coffee, found it horrible, and told herself she wasn’t going to drink it. She picked up her doughnut and bit into the oiliest, most sugar-sodden lump of dough she had ever tasted. She told herself she wasn’t going to eat it.

  Across the street the kitchen door opened, and a Korean in a chef’s hat lugged a garbage can out and set it on the sidewalk. A moment later the door opened again, and Jim Delancey stepped out wearing an apron. He lit a cigarette and looked in her direction.

  Maybe he saw her, maybe he didn’t. She couldn’t tell. Nothing happened on his face.

  The Korean said something. Delancey gave him a cigarette, and the two men stood on the stoop smoking, not talking. Delancey finished his cigarette and tossed the butt into the gutter. He went back inside.

  Leigh looked around her. The coffee shop was almost deserted. In the booth by the front door a uniformed cop sat alone, hunched over a piece of pie. His fingers tapped the edge of his plate in time to a Tony Bennett song playing softly on the radio. A wedding band glinted.

  The counterman was passing a damp cloth over the counter. The movement was aimless: it wasn’t cleaning anything, because there was nothing to clean. Maybe it was just a way of passing the dead hours of evening.

  Leigh looked again at her watch. Five to nine.

  The kitchen door of Archibald’s opened and Delancey stepped out. He wasn’t wearing his apron.

  Leigh signaled the counterman. “Could I have my check, please?”

  The counterman brought her a check for a dollar eighty. She was horrified to see that she had drunk the coffee and finished the doughnut. She opened her purse and put down three dollars.

  Outside, a summer wind gusted hotly along the pavement, swirling sheets of newspaper.

  Delancey turned south on Lexington. People were moving at a leisured pace from storefront to storefront, slowing to glance at the latest in designer rumple wear, at the thirty-nine flavors listed in the window of David’s Cone.

  She followed Delancey at a half-block’s distance.

  He turned east on Seventy-second.

  Traffic thinned. Headlights reflected off the minuscule glass particles that formed part of the glistening asphalt.

  She followed Delancey to the five-hundred block, where Seventy-second Street dead-ended at the East River. It was a preserve of solidly built co-ops, with the odd brownstone sprinkled in. A glass-and-marble condo towered over a vest-pocket park.

  Delancey went into the condo lobby. The uniformed doorman smiled
and went to a bank of buzzers and pushed the top buzzer in the last row. After a moment he turned and nodded Delancey through.

  They know him here, she thought. They trust him. Something skittered in her stomach.

  She waited sixty seconds, then approached the lobby.

  “Help you, ma’am?” The doorman gave her that glance she always got from strangers, the one that said, Do you know who you look exactly like? But you couldn’t be …

  She nodded and answered with the glance that said, Right. I just look like her.

  “Verna Higgins to see Charlotte Mayes. I’m expected.”

  “I’m sorry, there’s no Mayes in the building.”

  “Are you sure? She used to live in Apartment—” Leigh approached the bank of buzzers and memorized the name at the top buzzer in the last row. Bailey, C. Apartment 4-A. Jasmin Hakim lived either in a sublet or under an assumed name. “She used to live up on the eighth floor. In apartment 8-A, I think. Isn’t the A line the apartments right over there?” She pointed west.

  “No, ma’am, A line are the apartments with the small terrace on the river. You must have been here some time ago.”

  “I guess she moved. Thanks anyway.”

  Leigh crossed the street. The far side of Seventy-second gave her a better sightline on the small fourth-story terrace. The terrace was dark, but there was a light on inside the apartment.

  A group of people came out of the condo lobby. They were obviously a party on their way to dinner, laughing and happily tipsy. Their voices receded.

  A girl came out onto the fourth-story terrace. She wore blue jeans and a loose shirt. She went to the railing and looked out over the river. Her slim body glowed in the light from indoors.

  Jim Delancey joined her. Leigh could see him going straight into his rap. His expression was warm and humorous and friendly. His gestures were graceful and flowing—courtship gestures. His hand smoothed the hair that fell over the girl’s face, hair that was dark and perfect and straight.

  The girl laughed.

  They kissed.

  Jim Delancey lit a cigarette, and they spent five minutes passing it back and forth. The girl stood swaying on legs that seemed gradually to lose their steadiness. Jim Delancey’s hand played with a loose strand of her hair and then her face broke into a smile and she gave a shrug.