Now, she saw with irritation, there was dust on her hands. She went into the bathroom and washed. Once her hands were clean she rinsed the lemon-shaped ball of tea-rose glycerine soap till it too was clean. She set it back in its little marble tray.
The soap, still damp, rolled off the tray onto the floor.
“Shit.” Gabrielle got down on all fours and chased the soap under the sink. It bounced off the wall and struck something.
The something, Gabrielle saw with surprise, was a small burgundy-velvet jeweler’s box that, for some reason, was sitting beside the drainpipe.
Gabrielle picked up the jeweler’s box. She shook it. Whatever was inside made a velvety sort of rattle. She placed the box carefully on the edge of the sink.
She picked up the soap. She washed her hands again. She washed the soap again and placed it firmly in its tray. She dried her hands on one of Oona Aldrich’s monogrammed towels, and then she arranged the towel on the rack so the monogram showed and the dampness didn’t.
Finally she opened the jeweler’s box.
A cabochon-cut ruby-and-diamond ring winked at her.
THE FRONT DOORBELL WAS JANGLING in the rhythm of a Sousa march. Zack realized it was Tori, she’d forgotten her key, she was ready to make up. He pulled on his Jockey shorts and stumbled through his dizziness down the stairs and opened the front door.
A short, fat woman in a gold lame shawl was standing in the outer vestibule. He had the impression that she was already talking to somebody.
“I was on Sixty-fifth Street,” she was saying. “I saw a light on. Did I wake you up?”
He hadn’t the faintest idea who she could be or what she could be doing there at that hour. The extraordinary greens and purples and blues of her eye shadow reminded him of a ballerina’s stage makeup, but she couldn’t be a ballerina—not with two hundred pounds on a five-foot-one frame.
“Who are you?” he said. “Who let you up here?”
“I’m Gaby—Annie MacAdam’s daughter, remember? I’ve shown apartments in this building. The doormen know me.”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
“It’s three o’clock in the morning.” She reached into an enormous straw beach bag and took out a small burgundy-velvet jeweler’s box. “And do you know where your ruby-and-diamond ring is?”
“Oh, Christ. The ring.” He didn’t take the box from her. “Keep it.”
“What?”
“Keep it. It’s yours.”
“What’s the matter? I mean, seriously, what’s the matter with you?”
“A crazy man just gave you a forty-two-thousand-dollar ring. If you had any brains, you’d be out of here and halfway across town by now.”
“Maybe I don’t have that kind of brains. And maybe I don’t want to.” As though she’d been invited in, she walked past him into the apartment. She plunked the jeweler’s box down on the hall table. She glanced at the Brancusi, the Arp, the Bracque pen-and-ink hanging on the wall, and then her eyes came back to him. “Now, tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I want to sleep. That’s what’s bothering me.”
“You’re not going to sleep unless you tell someone.” She lowered her shawl to her. shoulders. Her dark hair was pinned back from her forehead with carved ivory combs. She closed the front door. “I’m someone. I’m here. Tell. Why are you giving away the ring? It’s a beautiful ring.”
“Because the woman I bought it for broke our date.”
“She broke a date, so you’re giving her ring to a stranger?” She had an odd way of snapping questions right out, as though she had a right to the answers.
“She’s dead. Does that satisfy you? I don’t want the damned ring. It reminds me of her. So take it and get out.”
“I’m not going to take a present you give me when you’re not yourself.”
“Trust me—I’m myself.”
“When did you last eat?”
“How do I know when I last ate?”
A smile opened on her face. “You don’t have any idea what makes you feel the way you feel. You don’t know what makes you sad, what makes you happy. I don’t think you even have any idea what really turns you on.”
“On that subject, little girl, I am the expert.”
“I could turn your life around right now—without forty-two-thousand-dollar rings, without women, with nothing more than you’ve already got in the house.”
“Only one thing could turn my life around—and they’ve both walked out on me.”
“Want to bet?” She held out her right hand. She had strangely slender fingers, so pale and soft that a pink light seemed to shine through them. “Come on. What have you got to lose?”
Her mouth was smiling, but something serious peeped through her brown eyes.
Why not? he thought. I can’t feel worse than I do now.
“Okay,” he said. “Bet.”
She looked straight at him, firm-jawed, and gave his hand a single, brisk shake. He felt something energizing shoot through him.
“What have you got in that kitchen?” she said.
“I don’t know. What do you need?”
“Butter, flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, cocoa, cinnamon, a dash of salt, and forty-two minutes.”
“What the hell are you going to do with all that at this hour?”
“I’m going to make you the best chocolate pudding you’ve had since you were three years old.”
He wasn’t sure which of them was hallucinating. “Are you serious?”
“Where in the law books does it say it’s wrong or illegal or impossible to have a simple solution to a complicated problem? Look—I may not know much, but one thing I do know is desserts. I studied in Paris. My chocolate pudding could save the world. But I’ll settle for pulling you out of your funk. In forty-two minutes you’re going to be the happiest man in New York City—and then if you still want to give me that ring, I’ll take it.”
FIFTY-SIX
Saturday, June 15
CARDOZO LIFTED THE PHONE on the second ring. “Cardozo.”
No one answered, and at first he thought he was the recipient of some electronic mistake, and then he thought, I’ll be damned, I’ve got a breather. And then a woman’s voice said, “Vince, it’s Leigh. Do you have a minute?”
His heart took a little running jump in his throat, and that jump gave him a scare. Do I have a minute? he thought. I’ve had a minute all week. He realized he’d been waiting for this call, hoping for it. “Sure. I’ve got a minute. Just a sec.” He reached out and closed the cubicle door. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Is Waldo away?” Right away he regretted asking that. It sounded too eager. Pushy, almost.
“No,” she said. “I’m not calling about that.”
He tried to ignore the falling sensation in his stomach. He tried not to let his disappointment show in his voice. “Then … is something the matter?”
“Annie MacAdam had lunch at Archibald’s. She says Jim Delancey is still working there.”
“Why’s that a problem?”
“You know why.”
“No. I don’t know why.”
She didn’t answer.
Cardozo realized he was playing dumb, getting back at her. It was petty, but he felt just a little bit rejected that she hadn’t phoned before now and he couldn’t help it.
“Jim Delancey should be behind bars,” she said.
“Look,” he said, “it might interest you to know that the night Gloria Spahn was killed, Jim Delancey was home and he didn’t leave the building.”
“How do you know he didn’t?”
“We had men watching both entrances. Delancey never came out.”
“You mean your men never saw him come out.”
“That’s right. They never saw him.” Cardozo realized he was arguing with her, and it bothered him because it meant he’d lost control. “They’re good men with twelve years on the force, and they weren’t sleeping on the job.”<
br />
“You’re angry with me.”
“No, not angry. Just busy.”
“I’m sorry to bother you. Good-bye, Vince.”
She clicked off, and Cardozo sat there holding the dead receiver, thinking, Vince Cardozo, you’re an idiot.
TORI DIDN’T SEE THE TIMES till late Saturday afternoon, sitting on the beach. Gloria Spahn’s death had three inches on an inside page of Section Two.
“My God.”
She tried to reach Zack from the pay phone at the yacht club. The answering machine picked up.
“Zack, it’s Tori—I just saw about Gloria in the Times. How horrible! You can reach me at Sorry Chappell’s.” She gave him the number. “I’ll try again later.”
She phoned again when she got back to Sorry’s, and again the machine answered.
“Hi. It’s me again. I’ll be spending tonight and tomorrow night here unless I hear from you. Call me if you need me.”
LEIGH PAID THE CABBIE and got out on Fifty-first. She waited till she saw her guard’s black Plymouth pull to a stop, and then she walked north on Beekman Place, past beautifully maintained town houses. It was after eight, and a soft evening light suffused the street, giving it the quality of a stage set. Stone and glass and brass glowed with cleanliness.
Two high-rises had been built at the end of the block. Number Twenty-three, where Jim Delancey lived, was an eighteen-story building immaculately surfaced in brown granite. Its brick neighbor, number Twenty-nine, was twenty stories, with contrasting white marble window ledges.
Twenty-nine occupied the corner lot, and though it had a Beekman Place address, Leigh realized as she approached that it had no entrance on Beekman Place.
She reached Fifty-second Street and turned east. A third of the way up the block she came to the entrance of Twenty-nine. A uniformed doorman sat on a stool just inside the glass-paned door, reading a newspaper.
Leigh turned and retraced her steps. She wanted to see if there was any way that one person could watch the two entrances.
On Fifty-second, west of the Beekman intersection, there was a twenty-foot stretch where both doors were visible.
But Beekman was a different story. If you positioned yourself anywhere besides the corner, there was no way you could see the entrance to Twenty-nine. And even from the corner you didn’t see the door itself, only the awning over the sidewalk. If someone came out of Twenty-nine and turned east, away from Beekman, it would be impossible to get a good look at them.
Leigh returned to Twenty-nine. The doorman laid down his paper and held the door for her. “May I help you, ma’am?”
“Sorella Chappell said she might be getting back from the Hamptons today. Is she in?”
AFTER FORTY MINUTES OF CHITCHAT and iced tea and Sorry Chappell asking what on earth was making Tori so nervous these days (“She was so antsy she drove me out of my own house!”), Leigh brought the conversation back once more to how beautifully Sorry had designed and decorated her apartment. “Didn’t you say you’d added a room on?”
“Why, yes,” Sorry said, “I did add on last year. A little studio next door came on the market. They were asking much too much, but it was a chance at last to have a decent library. And you know how I love books.”
“You had to take down a wall?”
Sorry nodded. “A wall into the building next door. And you wouldn’t believe the construction permits it required. And the bribes that had to be paid. Three hundred thousand to the owners for a room no larger than a maid’s, and one hundred eighty thousand to commissioners in outright graft. And not a penny tax deductible. Would you like to see?”
“I’d love to.”
Sorry took her through the living room.
“Here’s where we go next door.” Sorry opened a sliding glass-paneled door with an arched lintel. “There’s a three-inch drop between buildings, so we decided to raise the floor. Fenny found the most beautiful parquet in a pre-Civil War mansion in Newark.”
Leigh glanced down at the parquetry—L-shaped pieces of dark oak and paler maple laid in an interlocking grid. Sorry had hidden most of it under a tan-and-jade Persian rug.
“At the last minute,” Sorry said, “an awful little man from the Landmarks Commission stepped in and tried to stop everything. Twenty-nine Beekman is Sullivan and Sons and Twenty-three is Sanford White. You’d have thought I’d asked an Orthodox Jew to mix milk and meatballs. But I gave a party for the mayor—and contributed to his campaign—and it all worked out. What do you think of it?”
Against the north wall, on a Biedermeier rosewood-and-green-marble table, an enormous Tiffany vase held an arrangement of blue iris and anemones. Their airy scent filled the room. At the west wall the faint last light of day fell through French windows. On the south wall light from beaded shades softly touched shelves of rare bindings.
On the east wall, between two Sargent portraits of the Duchess of Marlborough, a mahogany door with a peephole and two Fichet locks stood unobstructed.
“And that door—” Leigh said.
“They wouldn’t let me block it up. Fire laws.”
That’s how he did it, Leigh realized. He used this apartment to cross from one building to the other.
She nodded. “You’ve done an absolutely lovely job. I can’t imagine a more perfect spot for reading.”
The compliment seemed to strike a glow in Sorry. “One does want one’s home to be just right, doesn’t one?”
“One wants it, but so few of us have your knack.”
“Well, as they say at dinner parties—I am in the book.”
Leigh looked at her watch. “I’ve taken up much too much of your time. Can I get out this way?”
“You don’t want to do that—use the front door.”
“I’d like to see the building next door.”
“Suit yourself.” Sorry unlocked two bolts, opened the door and stood aside. “Heaven to see you.”
They touched cheeks.
“Oh, Leigh, by the way”—Sorry lowered her voice—“are you getting along with your police guard?”
“It’s a perfect marriage,” Leigh said. “I hardly know he’s there.”
“I never see mine,” Sorry said. “I wonder if he still exists.”
“He’s probably sitting downstairs in an unmarked car right now.”
“I’ve seen a man down there in an unmarked car, but I don’t think he’s mine.” Sorry raised an eyebrow. “I’ll say no more about unpleasant subjects. Let’s get together soon. Lunch?”
“Lunch.”
They touched cheeks one last time. Leigh stepped into the corridor and pressed the elevator button. Behind her she heard Sorry’s two locks snap back into place.
In the shaftway gears hummed.
Leigh studied the corridor. There were only four doors: the elevator, the stairs, Sorry’s studio, and another apartment with ten days’ worth of New York Times piled up on the doormat.
The elevator came. She stepped in and pushed the button for the ground floor.
The door closed. The elevator dropped smoothly. On fourteen it stopped again.
A young man stepped on. He was flawlessly dressed, like a male model, in a double-breasted navy-blue blazer, pale pink shirt, regimental tie. He glanced automatically at Leigh, didn’t seem to see her.
Her heart contracted. It was Jim Delancey.
He faced the front of the car and pressed the button for one. The door closed and the elevator began dropping again. He didn’t turn around. There was no more than three feet of space between them.
The elevator stopped on eleven. A blond woman in designer jeans and a batik blouse got on. She glanced at her fellow passengers. It was an automatic checking-out-the-danger New York glance: Are you muggers, or can I safely ignore you?
The woman pressed the button for six and stepped back to let the door close. After a moment she turned her head and looked over at Leigh.
Leigh read embarrassment and indecision on the woman’s face.
On
six the elevator door opened. The sounds of a party in progress rolled down the corridor: voices and laughter and Bobby Short singing Cole Porter.
The woman held the door. She looked again at Leigh, this time with a kind of guileless amiability, like a child. “Excuse me, aren’t you Leigh Baker?”
“Why, no.” Leigh’s voice felt tight and too high in her throat. From the edge of her vision she watched Delancey. He showed no reaction. “People ask me all the time—but my eyes aren’t her color.”
“I could have sworn,” the woman said. She got off and let the door close.
Leigh stepped to the side of the elevator, as far from Delancey as the cabin allowed. He turned his head slightly, showing her a half profile. He was smiling.
She tried to push down her terror, tried to concentrate on the panel where blinking lights counted out the descending floors.
Five … four …
Delancey let his blazer drop open. Metal glinted.
Leigh felt the strength sliding out of her knees. Dear God, no.
It took her a moment to realize the glinting thing was only the clip on his suspender. He was wearing regimental-striped suspenders that matched his tie. He snapped the right suspender.
She gave an involuntary start.
Delancey’s expression stayed cool and indifferent. His thumb hooked the suspender again, pulled it out till it was as taut as a bowstring. Then released it.
Even though she knew the snap was coming she gave a start. She couldn’t control her reaction.
He snapped the suspender again. And again.
She wanted to scream.
The elevator slowed to a stop at street level. The door opened. Delancey was nearer the door, but he made no move to get out. Nor did he make any move to let her pass.
She pulled in a deep breath. “Excuse me.”
For just an instant they were facing each other. The tiny black pupils of his eyes jabbed like needle points. Lady, the look said, I am going to get you.
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