“My, my, are we still boycotting Archibald’s?”
“No. Of course not. I just … I don’t know if I’m ready to face that place.”
“Of course you’re ready. And if you’re not, all the more reason to go. It’ll be therapy. And I’ll be with you.” There was a click on Tori’s end of the line. “Sorry. Let me see who’s phoning.” In a moment she was back. “I have to take this call. Can I call you right back?”
“I’ll be here.”
Leigh spent the next three minutes in front of her mirror, trying to decide whether to wear her hummingbird brooch on her blouse or on her jacket. She’d pinned it to her blouse, for the second time, when the phone gave a soft buzz.
“Tori?” Leigh arranged a pillow against the headboard and pulled her feet up onto the bed. “I was being silly. Archibald’s will be fine.”
Tori didn’t answer.
“Tori? Do you hear me?”
Still no answer.
Leigh sat up. “Are you there?”
The silence flowing over the line had a familiar, disturbing resonance. It was as though someone had boosted the volume on a radio receiver that was tuned to no station at all.
And then she heard breathing. Exactly the same breathing as before. A spike of panic ran up her spine.
“Don’t think anything’s changed.” It was the same voice as before, softly rasping, forced down to an abnormally low register. It didn’t have the slightest trace of a Hispanic accent. “Don’t think you’re safe. I’m watching you. I’ll get you very soon.”
XENIA DELANCEY OPENED the bedroom door. At the end of the corridor she could see Jimmy sitting on the living room sofa. He seemed to have forgotten that the phone was still resting in his lap.
“Aren’t you working today?” she said.
He gave a start—that child-caught-out look. “You’re home early, Mom.”
“Yes, I felt poorly.”
Jimmy’s glance did not stay on her. She could tell he was hiding something.
“Me too,” he said.
“Are you phoning someone?”
“No, just sitting here.” He placed the phone back on the end table. It seemed to her a guilty movement.
“I made these for you.” She handed him a milk-pint-sized package neatly wrapped in tinfoil, with a red ribbon tied in a perfect bow.
He unwrapped the package. “Wow. Chocolate chip cookies. Thanks, Mom. These are great.” He just sat there staring at them.
“Would you like some milk to go with them? Or a nice cup of cocoa?”
“No, thanks.” His voice was oddly low and without expression. He still wouldn’t look at her. “I’m going out. There’s something I have to do.”
ON THE BEDSIDE TABLE the phone purred softly. Even though Leigh had been waiting for the sound, the mouse gnawing at her nerves gave a leap forward.
The purr came again. Beneath the telephone the answering machine clicked into life. One eye winked green.
“Hi, it’s Tori again. Sorry to take so long. You haven’t left, have you?”
Leigh lifted the receiver. “No, I’m here.”
“Has something happened? You sound awful.”
“The man who attacked me wasn’t Rick Martinez. The man who rode in the warehouse elevator with me wasn’t Rick Martinez. And the man who just phoned threatening my life wasn’t Rick Martinez.”
“Wait a minute. You just had a threatening call?”
“Two minutes ago. It was the same voice as before—and the same threat. The police didn’t get him. He’s still out there.”
“Phone Vince Cardozo. I’m not kidding. Right away.”
Leigh dialed Vince Cardozo’s direct line. After six rings a woman answered. “Vince Cardozo’s line. Ellie Siegel speaking.”
Some instinct made Leigh hesitate. “Detective Siegel, it’s Leigh Baker.”
“Yes, Miss Baker. How can we help you?”
Leigh noted the we. “Could you ask Vince—could you ask Lieutenant Cardozo to phone me? It’s an emergency.”
“Is it anything I can help you with?”
“I’ve had another threatening phone call.”
“And are you still at Mr. Carnegie’s?”
“Yes. At Waldo’s.”
“Vince should be back in ten minutes. Let your machine take calls and don’t answer till you know who’s calling.”
“I’ll do that. Thank you.”
Pacing her bedroom, Leigh felt trapped, walled in. Feelings are not facts, a voice in her mind prodded. It was Luddie’s voice. She heard all the AA slogans in Luddie’s voice.
She dialed Luddie’s number. The line was busy. Her finger broke the connection. There was too much fight-or-flight energy jittering through her now to allow her to sit still. She paced to the window.
The sun was stroking the slate rooftops of the town houses across the garden. In the sky a lemon crescent of moon hung steady through pale, drifting clouds.
She crossed back to the phone and called Waldo’s number at work.
“He’s not in,” the male secretary apologized. “Can I take a message?”
“No, thank you.” She dialed Luddie again. The line was still busy. “Luddie, damn you, stop yakking. I’ve got to talk to you!”
The answering machine gave a click.
Her nerves jumped at the sound.
Nothing more happened. The machine sat there mute and still. Something shivered through her like the buzzing of a fly against a window screen. And then the green light went on, and she heard her voice recite its message, and the beep beeped.
She waited.
No one spoke.
Silence flowed across the line.
Instinct was shouting at her: He knows you’re here! Don’t let him trap you! Get out! Get to safety!
A kerchief, she decided; dark glasses.
Hide as much of myself as possible. Mustn’t let him recognize me.
She pulled open the top right-hand bureau drawer and chose the plainest of her Hermes silk scarves. She knotted it like a hood around her hair.
In the left-hand top drawer she found an enormous pair of polarized Ray-Bans. She put them on and studied herself in the mirror. Very little of Leigh Baker showed, and the room looked pink.
She left the house through the kitchen door. A taxi was passing in the street. She hailed it.
Twelve minutes later, outside the door of Luddie’s building, she stood pressing his buzzer.
A buzz replied and the door swung open.
WITH A LURCH AND A JERK the elevator finally deposited Leigh on the eleventh floor. Luddie’s door was already open, and a thin, beautiful black woman stood there looking surprised.
Leigh took off the dark glasses and the kerchief.
“Leigh Baker,” the woman said. “Has the world gotten smaller, or are we running into each other all over the place?”
Even without her clinging coffee lace dress, Leigh recognized Tamany Dillworth. “I didn’t know you knew Luddie.”
“Luddie and I go way back.”
I sincerely doubt it, Leigh thought. “I’ve been trying to reach him for half an hour and the line’s been busy.”
“Believe it or not, it was not me tying up the line. A Con Ed crew cut through something in the street they shouldn’t have.”
Behind Leigh the elevator door closed, and she heard the elevator begin its redescent. “Is he home?”
“He should be back any minute now.” Tamany stood aside to let Leigh past her into the apartment. “I’ve been keeping Happy company.”
Leigh’s heart sank. This woman was running errands for Society Sam and somehow she’s wormed her way into Luddie’s trust. “Are you one of Happy’s regulars?”
Tamany nodded. “Twice weekly—Mondays and Thursdays. You too?”
“Tuesdays and Fridays.” Leigh walked to the living room. Bright girders of sunlight slanted through the windows. Happy sat on the floor, dressed in a sailor suit, gazing at the keys of his toy piano.
; She bent and kissed him. He looked up at her and then punched the first four notes of “The Happy Farmer.”
“You seem to bring out the composer in that child.” Tamany flicked a smile at Leigh as if they’d become old friends. “Say—as long as you’re here, how would you like to save my ass? I have an audition at two, and I want to be cool and collected and glamorous and on time. Luddie’s already twenty minutes late. Would you mind sitting with Happy till he gets back?”
“I wouldn’t mind at all,” Leigh said with all the phony good cheer she could muster. “What role are you up for?”
“The first black bitch on a national-network daytime soap.” Tamany burst into laughter. “They’re casting heavily against type.”
Leigh walked with her into the hallway. The elevator was waiting, the door already open. “By the way, my producer’s looking for featured bit players, but I couldn’t find you at the address you gave Lieutenant Cardozo.”
Tamany snapped her fingers. “I moved. I forgot to tell him. But you can always reach me through Luddie.” She stepped into the elevator. “Before I forget. Shows you what a scatter-brain poor Tam is today.” She opened her purse and took out two letters. “Could you give these to Luddie?”
“I’ll be glad to.”
As the elevator door closed Tamany waved and blew a kiss.
Leigh turned and crossed the hallway. A small pewter vase sat on the drop-leaf table beside Luddie’s door. She laid the letters beside the vase. Behind her the chains in the elevator shaft clunked like medieval clockwork. A sense of incompleteness, of something left undone, nagged at her.
She turned and looked again at the elevator door.
The elevator went back down after I arrived. But it was waiting on this floor just a moment ago. Which means somebody took it back up. But Luddie’s is the only apartment on the floor. So where did they go?
Her eye traveled from the elevator to the emergency stairway. The doors matched: both were steel, painted dark green. The only difference between them was that the stairway door had been left open an inch and a half, and a narrow ribbon of darkness fluttered at its edge.
There, she realized, behind that door.
She picked up the letters from the table. She tried to look natural, as if she hadn’t the least idea that she was being watched. She stepped back into Luddie’s apartment, closed the door quickly behind her, and bolted it.
SEVENTY-TWO
“DON’T THINK ANYTHING’S CHANGED.” Jim Delancey forced his voice down into a toneless, rasping register. “Don’t think you’re safe. I’m watching you. I’ll get you very soon.”
“Those were her words?” Cardozo said.
“Her exact words and her exact voice. Deep. Growling. Like laryngitis.”
They were sitting in Cardozo’s cubicle. The door to the squad room was shut. In the window the air conditioner was laboring like a stressed-out life-support system.
“How do you know your mother was calling Leigh Baker?”
“When I picked up the phone, a woman’s voice was saying, Is that you? Lunch is okay—something like that. It was Leigh Baker’s voice, exactly the same as in her movies.”
“How did your mother get the number? It’s unlisted.”
“Baker has a charge account at Marsh and Bonner’s. The credit department has the number.” Delancey released a breath slowly and his broad shoulders sagged. “How much trouble is my mother going to be in?”
“Threatening a person’s life is against the law.”
“But it’s my fault. She was doing it to help me.”
Cardozo gave a half nod of assent. “And she’s not the only woman who’s bent the law trying to help you. Tell me something, Jim. Why did Nancy Guardella go to bat for you on the parole?”
The answer was silence.
Cardozo held his gaze on the well-built, pale young man—trying to read the meaning of that silence. He knew Delancey wasn’t stonewalling. The boy had come to the precinct of his own free will. He was here to protect his mother, here to deal.
Delancey took a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket. “I had a record of drug busts and burglaries.” He tapped a cigarette loose. It took him three matches to light it. “I’d beaten up two girlfriends and tried to kill a third.” He exhaled a long, fluttering feather of smoke. “And then Nita went over that wall. Who in his right mind was going to believe I was innocent?”
“Somebody might have believed it. Who knows, maybe I would have. You should at least have given the truth a try.”
Jim Delancey’s head came up and his eyes seemed to say, lieutenant, you’ve got to be an even bigger fool than me.
“Yip Guardella was my coke dealer. He sold me drugs the night Nita died.” There was a frightening coldness in the way Delancey was speaking of the past and of himself, as if he were discussing someone he had once known but hoped to God he’d never run into again. “Nancy Guardella freaked when she found out. Achilles Foot was a government sting operation. She didn’t want it coming out in the trial that her son was dealing when he should have been stinging. So we made a deal: She’d get me off, but I could never mention drugs, or her son’s dealing, or who was paying for my defense. And I could never say where that diary had come from.”
“Nancy Guardella had the diary faked to get you off?”
“Which it didn’t do.”
“So then she got you early parole?”
“And she’s taking care of my mom.”
“She must be taking very good care of your mom.”
“She is.”
“I assume that’s why you didn’t use Yip as an alibi when Oona was killed?”
Delancey nodded. “I couldn’t involve him.”
“Then why go to Achilles Foot at all?”
“I wanted him to know Aldrich was making trouble. I had to make him understand there was no way I was going back to prison, no way I’d let them take that parole away from me.”
That’s why Guardella wanted the wire in my task force, Cardozo realized. She had to be ready. For all she knew, Delancey was killing the socialites. If the task force turned up evidence of his guilt, Xenia would have tried to leverage a second defense the same way as the first: by threatening to expose Yip and Achilles Foot and Guardella’s whole sick setup.
The phone on Cardozo’s desk rang. “Excuse me.” He lifted the receiver. “Cardozo.”
“Today there was mail,” Greg Monteleone said. “And guess who picked it up. Tamany Dillworth. She took it to Five-twenty-three East Fifty-ninth, eleventh floor.”
“Who lives on the eleventh floor?”
“Ostergate, Ludwig. She spent a little over an hour. Then another woman went up and Dillworth came back down.”
“Who was the other woman that went up?”
“Never saw her before. Kind of dowdy, with a kerchief. Might have been a cleaning woman.”
“Where did Dillworth. go?”
“Right now she’s across the street from this pay phone—Four-seventy-eight East Eightieth. The buzzer’s got her name taped over it.”
LEIGH FELT A PRESENCE like a cold shadow. She’d felt it for almost a half hour now.
Nothing moved in the room but the squares of reflected sunlight trembling on the wall. Happy had stopped playing with his piano; he’d gone to his room. There was no sound now but the soft electric hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.
From time to time she rose from her chair. Sometimes it was to get up and look at the clock in the kitchen. Sometimes it was to go to the front door. Through the peephole she could see the entrance to the stairway. The inch and a half between the door and the jamb never changed, never shrank, never grew.
She crossed to the living room window and stared down into the street. Cars and pedestrians battled for possession of the intersection. Con Ed men climbed in and out of a ten-foot trench in the asphalt. Maybe they’d repaired the phone line.
She went to Luddie’s desk. Only two of the five buttons on the push-button phone had been labele
d with numbers. As she lifted the receiver the first labeled button lit.
She held the receiver to her ear and listened. The line was dead.
The second button lit as she pushed it, and the light went out behind the first. Again she listened, and again the line was dead.
She laid the receiver back in the cradle. The second button stayed lit. How could that be? she thought.
She was about to lift the receiver again when the light went out.
Luddie had an extension in his bedroom, she remembered. Someone must have lifted it while she was checking the line.
She realized it had to be Happy, playing with the phone. She went to the corridor. Both bedroom doors were open. “Happy?” she called.
No one answered.
Happy’s was the first door. She looked into the bedroom.
Happy sat quietly on the floor arranging alphabet blocks. He turned around and smiled at her. She went to him and kissed her fingers and pressed them over his lips.
But if it wasn’t Happy playing with the phone, then who …
Her heart dropped three stories inside her chest.
He’s in the apartment, she realized. He slipped in while the front door was open, while I was at the elevator talking to Tamany.
There was a scratching sound behind her.
She went softly, quickly to the bedroom door.
The scratching came again. And then the door buzzer.
“Luddie!” She ran to the front door. “He got in! He’s in here!” She grabbed the bolt and pushed it back.
Tried to push it back. She couldn’t get it to slide far enough.
“Take it easy,” a man’s voice said behind her.
She froze.
There was an instant when the only sound was the scratching of Luddie’s key in the lock.
She turned.
Arnie Bone, the hired guard, stood ten feet from her, face, expressionless, legs spread in a soldier’s stance. He began walking toward her, taking all the time in the world. “You just love making my work difficult, don’t you.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Keeping an eye on you. It’s not an easy job, with you running wild all over the city. Dashing into old warehouses. Harassing Delancey. Harassing his girlfriend.”
Deadly Rich Page 61
