Deadly Rich

by Edward Stewart

  “Let’s just say I’m shaking the lead out of my ass. I’m getting my own place.” She spent a moment aligning a little spoon with a big spoon. “I’m leaving Waldo.”

  Cardozo was aware of the faint, sweet perfume that rippled out from her.

  “Care to comment?” she said.

  “Definitely a right decision.”

  “And I’m adopting Happy.”

  He looked at her. He couldn’t believe he’d heard her right.

  “Luddie’s child,” she said.

  “I know who Happy is.”

  “Then why do you have that baffled look?”

  “Not baffled. Just impressed. I’m seeing a new side of you.”

  “I love Happy. I want a child. I want a home. And a career. And a tan.” She said it with a tone of lighthearted adventure, and then there was a split-second hesitation. “And I want the right man.”

  Cardozo noted things about her: the dark pupils; the smooth, faintly glowing texture of her skin; the deep shining brown of her hair.

  “I’d like the right man to be you.” She tipped her head a little to the side, studying him for a reaction. “But I know that’s not going to happen.”

  “Who says?”

  “Stop being gallant.”

  “It’s not gallantry. The truth is, I had a crush on you.”

  “Did you?” For a single unguarded moment she looked eager and almost childishly happy.

  “Actually, that’s not the truth. I was in love with you.”

  “Were you? Honestly?” She smiled as though he’d paid her the most captivating compliment she’d ever had. “And what went wrong? Reality reared its ugly head and you got to know me?”

  “Not quite.” He shook his head. “I got to know myself.”

  There was a lemon wedge perched on the rim of her tulip glass. She studied it, then lifted it and gave it a careful squeeze directly into her diet Pepsi.

  “Vince, something’s been bothering me. I keep thinking of Luddie’s wife—alone, in labor, dying in a New York City Emergency Room. Why wasn’t he with her?”

  “From the information I’ve been able to dig up, he was in El Salvador on assignment machine-gunning nuns.”

  She gave the lemon another squeeze. And another. The movement seemed like a stalling action in a play. “I loved Luddie. I trusted him. He saved my life. How could he have been a killer? Explain him to me, Vince. I want to understand.”

  “He never stopped resenting the five people he held responsible for his wife’s death.”

  “But he always warned me that resentment was a killer.”

  “Because he knew. He was the expert resenter. I’ll bet he never threw away a resentment in his life. And when the order came to hit Shane, he padded the hit list with his five pet hates. Plus one random hit to confuse the scent.”

  “What kind of a man could do that?”

  “A methodical man. Someone who likes to live in separate compartments. One hand does the dirty work that pays the bills, the other hand saves souls to make up for the dirty work.”

  Leigh was somber, disbelieving. “How could his superiors have let him do it?”

  “The war against drugs is a legal twilight zone. There’s no centralized supervision. Too much money can be made by looking the other way. Some of the drug warriors bend the law pretty far. The others don’t want to know, because if they knew, they’d be indictable.”

  Leigh’s hand went to the platinum hummingbird that glinted on her dove gray lapel. Her finger rested a moment, touching the jeweled wing as though drawing assurance from it. “Who ordered Nan Shane killed?”

  “I have a feeling Senator Guardella has classified that information secret. And for a very good reason.”

  “And what’s going to happen to the little girl?”

  “Shane’s mother is taking her in.”

  “I’d like to contribute something. Could you help me arrange it anonymously?”

  “To hell with anonymity. Take credit when you do a good deed. I’ll give you the address.”

  Her hand went again to the hummingbird and made that same gesture of grounding herself.

  “Why are you wearing your brooch?” he said. “I thought it came out only for class reunions.”

  “Tori’s joining us. I know this was supposed to be our goodbye lunch, but I’m not leaving for two weeks. And didn’t you say you had something for me to give her?”

  “I left it with the coat check.”

  “Well, as long as we’re exchanging parcels …” Leigh opened her purse and took out a small package. “I know cops can’t accept gifts—so I’d like Terri to have this.”

  Cardozo stared at the red velvet jeweler’s box tied with a thin gold-colored chain. “What is it?”

  She moved the package across the table toward him. “It’s Oona’s hummingbird.”

  He didn’t take it. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Come on, Vince—it’s worthless in a vault and it’s meaningless on the wrong person. I want Terri to have it.”

  Tori Sandberg picked that moment to come at a brisk, swivel-hipped walk through the narrow aisle.

  “Hi, all. Sorry to be late.” She exchanged cheek-to-cheeks with Leigh and held out a hand to Cardozo. He stood and pulled back a chair for her.

  “Tori, have champagne,” Leigh said. “They’ll never make any money off us if someone doesn’t.”

  Tori Sandberg settled herself in her chair. She took off her silk scarf. She had pinned her hummingbird to the bodice of her ecru blouse. She smiled at Cardozo. Her eyes were luminous and her face had the glow of a girl’s. “Something tells me I’m butting in.”

  “Not at all,” Cardozo said. “Good to see you.”

  “It is good to see you,” Leigh said. “You’re looking terrific. Like you’ve just had a Swiss rest cure. What have you done to yourself?”

  “I owe it all to my changed living situation.”

  “Is there someone new?”

  Tori Sandberg laughed. “Don’t I wish. No, there’s no one new. But I haven’t had a knock-down drag-out domestic brawl-in two weeks.”

  Leigh placed a hand on Tori’s. “Enjoy it while it lasts. And how’s the magazine?”

  “Problems.” Tori shrugged. “Fanfare’s beating us in ad pages for the fifth straight month.”

  Cardozo took his coat-check tag from his breast pocket. “This is for you.” He laid the tag on the pink tablecloth. “I think it might help.”

  Tori Sandberg stared at the number, thirty-two, on the plastic tag and then at him. “This is the way Nelson Rockefeller used to give his secretaries minks, but it’s the wrong season for mink.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s just some reading matter. Unpublished drafts of magazine articles, an unpublished ‘Dick Sez’ column, a list of subscribers to the SACBA employee health plan.”

  “SACBA?” Tori looked perplexed.

  “If you’ve ever heard of them, they’re not doing their job. The health-plan subscribers are quite a collection. A magazine publisher, a newspaper columnist, New York state’s junior senator, a bartender with a drug-dealing record who happens to be her son, a Society Sam victim who happens to have been a coke mule, a captain in the NYPD Internal Affairs Division … and a few hundred others.”

  “Sounds yummy,” Tori Sandberg said.

  “You might be interested in the size of the medical reimbursements. Your friend Kristi Blackwell’s heart surgery brought her close to eighty thousand. Untaxed.”

  Something puzzled was creeping into Tori’s eyes. “But Kristi has never had—”

  Cardozo nodded. “Call it cash transfers in consideration of services Ms. Blackwell rendered on the QT. And Blackwell’s a relatively small fry as this list goes. I think there’s the making of a magazine article.”

  “Why, Vince,” Leigh said, “are you going into the literary business?”

  “Frankly, Senator Guardella burns me up. I want to stick it to her and as many of her hirelings as I can.”
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  “I’ll drink to that,” Tori Sandberg said. “How about some champagne, Lieutenant? On the magazine. You’ve just given us a cover story.”

  “I’m on the job,” Cardozo said.

  “Quit your job for an hour,” Leigh said.

  “Waiter!” Tori Sandberg signaled. “We’ll have some Moët brut—and another diet Pepsi.” Her pinkie came down on the coat-check tag. She drew it toward her across the tablecloth, detouring around the red velvet jewel box. “And whose pretty little package is that?”

  “Ask Vince,” Leigh said.

  Tori Sandberg was looking at him curiously. “Lieutenant?”

  Leigh was watching him too, and he realized he was smiling. He realized he felt happy and just a little irresponsible.

  “It belongs to my daughter.” He reached out and took the box. “It’s Terri’s.”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Vince Cardozo Mysteries

  ONE

  IT WAS DARK IN the confessional. Cold. Staying awake was an agony. If only I could sleep, Wanda Gilmartin thought. It seemed she had never closed her eyes in all her sixteen years.

  “Is there anything else, my child?” The priest was an ash-colored stirring on the other side of the grille. “Make a full confession.”

  Her head slammed groggily into a wood panel. “I stole some stay-awake pills from a friend.”

  “Have you taken them all?”

  She sneaked one into her mouth. “I have two left.”

  “You must give them back and admit what you did.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, Father.”

  The priest pronounced the formula of absolution. “Ten Hail Marys. Ten Our Fathers.”

  Wanda groped in the dark for her crutches. She found a wobbling balance and stumbled out of the confessional. Her ankle ached as though a spike of ice had been driven through it.

  The priest led her to the altar rail. The crutches clacked to the marble floor. She knelt. White and gold vestments slid through light and shadow. A voice intoned.

  Wanda turned her head. The church was a vaulted, echoing emptiness behind her. Why aren’t there other people here? Why is it so dark? So cold?

  “The body of Christ.” The priest laid the wafer into her cupped hands.

  She had been cold and alone, justifying herself to strangers, going through other people’s rituals, for all the sixteen years of her life.

  “The blood of Christ.” The priest tipped the chalice toward her lips.

  She felt as though she were falling into the wine. She realized she still had a buzz on from all the drugs—especially that pink pill. She could no longer follow what was happening.

  Hands helped her up onto her crutches. Helped her along an endless aisle. The cast on her left ankle weighed like a concrete block. Hands helped her through a door and up into a van.

  A voice was asking her questions, oily with caring. “Tell me, my child, how long have you been a runaway?”

  Wanda didn’t know what answer was desired. Always give the customer what he wants. “A long time.”

  Now they were driving. On the other side of the windshield bloated flakes of snow drifted weightlessly in and out of the headlight beams. Her fingers played with the gold chain she had braided into her hair.

  “Tell me, my child, how long have you been prostituting yourself?”

  “A long time. Since I was eleven.”

  The van passed through iron-barred gates and into a garage. Hands helped her out of the front seat and up a narrow flight of stairs. Her crutches thumped on each creaking wooden step. She reached the top and had to rest a moment to catch her breath.

  A parchment-shaded lamp clicked on. She saw a small apartment with Gothic-lettered mottoes hanging up on the walls:

  Bring me young sinners.

  Suffer the little children to come unto me.

  My kingdom is not of this world.

  The kingdom of God is within you.

  You must become again as a child.

  He who dies with forgiveness of sins…wins!

  The air carried a suffocating reek of incense.

  “I need the bathroom.”

  “Right in there.”

  Wanda propped her crutches against the cold white tile wall. She knelt at the toilet and tried to throw up. Her throat could produce nothing but empty retchings.

  She hobbled back into the other room. Darkness was coming at her in waves. She had to force her eyes to stay open.

  The priest stood lighting incense in a small copper bowl. “Tell me, my child, how long have you been taking drugs?”

  “I don’t know—a long time. I’m sorry, Father, I’m fogging out. Could we finish this talk later? I really need to sleep.”

  “There’s just a little bit more of the ceremony.”

  Something in his face was wrong. Something in the moment was bent. It was as though time had taken a right-angled turn.

  “I thought the ceremony was over,” Wanda said.

  “Almost. This is the last part. You’ll feel better if you atone.”

  “I thought I did atone.” Christ, I’ve been atoning for one person’s sins or another’s since I was born.

  “No, my child, you confessed. Now you atone.” Father lifted off his pectoral cross. He kissed it and laid it with a soft thunk on the table beside a highball glass that was still half full. Ice cubes rattled as he raised the glass. He took two long swallows. The rum sent a chilled, 150-proof sting down his throat. He stood a moment, savoring the sensation of icy heat. Then he removed his embroidered stole and draped it neatly over the back of the chair.

  The zipper of the black cassock required care: it had been sticking the last several times he’d worn it. With patient, coaxing tugs he finally freed himself. He arranged the cassock on a hanger and the stole over the cassock, adjusting them so there would be no wrinkles. He hung the vestments in the closet.

  Now he took the transparent waterproof smock from its peg. He slipped into it.

  He returned to the table and swallowed the rum remaining in the glass. He poured a fresh drink from the bottle. The young girl, leaning back in the peach-colored leather chair, watched him with a drowning gaze. She did not make the obvious comment about his drinking.

  The second glass went stinging down the hatch. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  The smock squeaked as he bent to lift her. She moved easily into his arms. He centered her weight on his shoulder and made sure she wasn’t going to slide. Walking sideways, he carried her carefully down the narrow stairway.

  She gave a little bounce at every step. Faint puffs of air parted her lips, and with each puff the smock sent out a mousy little squeak.

  He crossed the cellar and laid her in the galvanized laundry tub. He moved the braids away from her pale, high-domed forehead. Her dark eyes showed surprise, flecked with something else.

  He closed each eye, kissed each eyelid, kissed her lips. She did not flinch from the rum. The inside of her mouth had the salty taste of a spent firecracker. He gazed at her, stretching the small, personal moment.

  “God loves you, Wanda,” he whispered. “So do I.”

  He slipped a tape of Maurice Duruflé’s ineffably beautiful Requiem into his Walkman. He put on his earphones.

  The “Kyrie” surged into his head. He started the electric saw, braced himself against the vibration, and began his work.

  Kyrie Eleison.

  Christe Eleison.

  Two hours later he had finished one bottle of rum and begun another. Wanda lay neatly arranged in a basket—large pieces on the bottom, smaller pieces on top. He took a deep, slow breath and pushed the basket up a steel ramp into the rear of the van.

  He drove slowly into the glassy New York night. The sky overhead had the color of an old bruise. He sat slightly hunched at the steering wheel, squinting, keeping the city streets in focus. Singing along with the “Agnes Dei,” he swung into Central Park
.

  The looping half-lit roadways were deserted at this hour. He ignored the PARK PERSONNEL ONLY sign and eased off the main road, driving around a sawhorse onto an unlit service road. Fifty yards up he pulled into the shrubbery.

  Twigs snapped and bare-limbed bushes trembled. He cut the motor.

  It was a peak moment and he sat there, losing himself. The “Sanctus” surged through his earphones. A powdering of snow drifted down through the air. The silent city was asleep.

  He took the flask from his breast pocket and sat sipping rum.

  Work to be done, he reminded himself.

  He screwed the top back on the flask and reached behind the seat for the pickax.

  TWO

  ON A SMALL OUTDOOR stage, a group of young clowns and ballerinas were dancing for the crowd. Their movements took on a sassy snap as the Dixieland band kicked into the final bars of “New York, New York.”

  Arms linked. Feet fell into smartly synchronized step. Legs high-kicked à la Radio City Rockettes.

  A-one. A-two.

  Top hats and canes arced into the air.

  A-one-two-three-four.

  Sock-it-home kick-spin-kick jump-split-leap-spin hold-it-absolutely-still take-a-deep-sharp-bow. Two thunks on a cow bell.

  A current of excitement fused the crowd into a clapping, screaming applause machine. The air jingled with we-love-you vibes.

  Twenty bows later, the dancers exited the proscenium.

  Behind the canvas drop, Johanna Lowndes pulled off her Columbine cap. She stood near the corner of the wooden stage, catching her breath. She leaned her head on the shoulder of her Pierrot. He wordlessly slipped an arm around her.

  She listened to the cheering, whistling ovation that wanted to go on and on. “You hear that sound, and you realize there’s nothing else in life that matters.”

  Well, almost nothing else. She could feel a familiar craving in her nerves, a need for that certain boost that only a toke on the wow-pipe could give her. “How long do we have till the next set?”

  Pierrot consulted his watch. “Ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “Be right back.” Johanna kissed him and hopped down from the stage. It had been set up ten feet from the woods of Central Park. Peering into the trees, she could see all the way through to Fifth Avenue, past silhouettes of fellow dancers relieving themselves in the bushes.