VC01 - Privileged Lives Read online

  He peered into the tub and then his eye went up to the shower curtain rod. Something caught his attention. He took off his shoes, stepped up onto the edge of the tub and squinted at the bright stainless steel.

  Tiny scratches ran lengthwise across the distorted reflection of his nose.

  He checked the rod three feet further on and found the same scratches.

  A shoplifter on heroin was screaming abuse from the lockup cage. Cardozo’s ears winced as he climbed the stairs. He stopped at Detective Monteleone’s desk.

  “Greg, the super says there were shower curtains in all the unsold apartments—clear plastic with a white border. The shower curtain in six is gone. What do you think?”

  Monteleone looked up from his pre-World War II Underwood. He had rolled a virgin five into the carriage. “I think exactly what you think I think. The killer wrapped the leg in it.”

  “There was no spill. How did he tie it?”

  Monteleone shrugged. “Rope.”

  “There weren’t any fibers in the bedroom.”

  “Wire.”

  “There weren’t any scratches on the polyurethane. And if he used the curtain, why’d we find the garbage bag fragments?”

  “He spread the curtain to do the messy work, then used the bags to clean up, then got rid of the leg and the curtain.” Monteleone held out a bitten buttered bagel.

  “Thanks, I ate.” The furrows on Cardozo’s brow deepened. “I found scratches on the shower curtain rod. There used to be rings. They’re gone too. Metal, not plastic. Who uses metal rings nowadays?”

  “My grandmother-in-law. No one else.”

  “You ever tried to unhook those things? Why would he bother?”

  “I don’t think he would, Vince. Anyone using a shower curtain to dispose of a human leg would pull the curtain off the rings. But if the rings are gone, it’s something else. Maybe the building agents were showing one of the other apartments, a shower curtain got torn, so they replaced it from six.”

  “The shower in the other bathroom would already have curtain rings. They’d just take the curtain.”

  Monteleone scratched his moustache. “What does the super say?”

  “He says the last time he checked there was a curtain in six, but he doesn’t remember when the last time he checked was.”

  “I don’t think it connects to the killing.”

  “Somebody still took it.”

  “Petty larceny.”

  10

  BARON BILLI VON KLEIST had taken up his favorite position: observer. Leaning against the mantelpiece, he shrugged one broad shoulder, adjusting the hang of his dinner jacket. His gaze continued to sweep the party.

  Ash Canfield’s livingroom was thronged with the people who controlled the look, as opposed to the power, of New York. Waiters circulated unobtrusively with trays of champagne. The mayor was seated at the Boesendorfer, rippling out Cole Porter for one of Alan Jay Lerner’s widows.

  “Hey, circulate. You’re one of my stars.” Ash Canfield was wearing her blond-rinsed hair upswept and wide on her head; long black lashes half-veiled her gaze. “Just introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know.”

  “My dear Ash,” Baron Billi smiled, “not only do I know ninety-nine percent of the people here, I know half the clothing—intimately.” He had counted over a dozen of his designs being worn tonight. The gowns sent a massively mixed message—See my body, want my body—and Drop dead, you could never afford me. Tough swank—the look that Billi had pioneered after assuming control of Babethings—had not only reversed the company’s sweetness-and-light image, it had tripled earnings.

  “Do you know Irina, princess of Serbia?” Ash said.

  “Oh, please, is that a threat?”

  Billi saw Lewis Monserat, dealer, talking with Dina Alstetter, the sister of the hostess. They were standing in one of the open terrace doorways, their diet-slim bodies glowing in the light of a Lalique lamp.

  Billi made his way across the room.

  “Well, handsome Billi,” Dina said. She touched a hand to her crisply waved auburn hair.

  “Lovely, lovely Dina. So tan and lean. The evening shows promise—at last.” Billi took Dina Alstetter’s hand and ceremoniously lifted the long, manicured fingers to his lips. “And when may we look forward to your debriefing on Barbados?”

  “Barbados was glorious. Karim’s yacht is unbelievable. You’ve got to patch up with him. Three stewards, and my own maid.”

  “New York must be quite a comedown.”

  “In more ways than one.” Dina was wearing gray silk and she kept touching the rose quartz and gold dividers of her pearl necklace. “I see my baby sister has assembled her usual collection of trend-setters and fashion terrorists—all busily dripping pearls, ashes, and borrowed bons mots.”

  “Watch out for your own glass house.” Lewis Monserat flicked flame from a gold lighter and held it to Dina’s cigarette. He’d combed his gleaming black hair straight back, rather than over his forehead, and somehow the effect was to make his eye sockets look far more hollow than usual.

  “Tell me,” Billi said, “is that woman in the very bad fake Fortuny Princess Irina of Serbia? Don’t turn too obviously—just behind you to the left.”

  Dina turned and her blue-gray eyes made no pretense of not staring.

  Lewis Monserat looked and said the woman was one of the new curators of the fashion collection of the Metropolitan Museum, just hired away from Dallas—“Doesn’t that make you want to salaam?”—and then he began pointing out the other stars in Ash’s new crop of instant celebrities.

  “You can always count on Ash’s network,” Dina sighed. “Whether you need a broker or an abortionist, a friendly judge or a caterer, Ash always knows someone who knows someone. Only do you notice there’s someone very important missing?”

  Billi looked around the room. “Who?”

  “The host.” Dina ran her hand through her hair with a look of iced merriment. “Will you two excuse me? I’m ravenous.”

  Dina pried her way through conversational groupings. Guests were throwing their heads back with the open-mouthed hilarity of television youth. From outside came the sound of dance music.

  Taking one of Ash’s Lowestoft plates in hand, Dina surveyed the buffet table.

  There were candle-warmed tureens of eggs scrambled to a froth and slivered with white truffle; chargers heaped with chilled Mediterranean langoustes; mousse de crevettes; assorted crudité’s with a Pernod dip; ice swans of gray Iranian caviar that could only have been procured from the commissary at the U.N.; cold filet de veau in port jelly sliced paper-thin, with miraculously smooth béarnaise to dollop over it; boiled quails’ eggs sumptuously marinated in Polish buffalo grass vodka; wine aspics; and at the dessert end of the table towers of freshly imported exotic fruit, creamy ices, and tangy sherbets in frosted crystal cups.

  Rising from bunches of grapes, gazing down on the cold stuffed lobster like an embalmed maître d’, was a 17th-century French marble bust of Socrates.

  Ash Canfield reached into the picture, switching a cluster of white grapes with a cluster of red. She stood back, judging the effect.

  “Hi, Sis,” Dina said. “Quite the royal spread.”

  Ash smiled a little uneasily. “Help yourself.”

  “The mousse looks yummy. When’s the host arriving?”

  Ash blinked and stood frozen in a sudden cave of silence.

  Dina gave her sister’s hand a mischievous little pat. “Chin up. The show must go on.”

  “Excuse me,” Ash said. “The bandleader’s played that tune three times.” She quickly joined the tide flowing through the open French windows out onto the terrace.

  A dance floor of polished oak had been laid down. Men in black tie and women in new summer gowns whirled to the music of a nine-piece orchestra. Beyond them the city pushed up a steel and glass skyline that burned with the hard glow of diamonds on a bed of black velvet.

  Ash found Gordon Dobbs by the bandstand, whisperi
ng with a sax player, jotting something in his notebook.

  “Ash my dear, only you could have gotten this crowd together.” As Gordon Dobbs slid his notebook back into his dinner jacket, diamond shirt studs sparkled in his boiled shirt. “I know for a fact that Jackie deFonseca sent last-minute regrets to the vicomtesse de Chambord so she could come here. Tomorrow morning all New York will be talking of nothing but.”

  Gordon Dobbs wrote a column for New York magazine. Ash viewed him as a sort of protector in a fierce and flammable world. He did not pretend to be other than what he was, and he had a reliable talent for cutting enemies down to gossip-size nuggets.

  “Why the notebook?” Ash asked. “Surely you’re not working.”

  “Bet your sweet ass I am. Working the joint, seeing who’s with whom and who’s not, who’s saying what and who isn’t.”

  “But you can’t write the party up—you’re the guest of honor!”

  “My dear girl, a professional gossip has an obligation to his readers. He is on twenty-four-hour call.”

  Ash took his arm. “You’re not going to say anything about Dunk—please, Dobbsie.”

  “I’ll have to at least mention he was indisposed. Otherwise it’ll look as though Suzi and Liz scooped me.” Gordon Dobbs’s dark eyes twinkled beneath curly hair beginning to gray. “And we don’t want people saying you made me guest of honor just to shut me up, do we?”

  “Can’t you write about something else? Dunk isn’t the only important person who’s not here.” Ash hesitated. “If I give you a very, very hot story, will you leave Dunk out of your column?”

  “Depends how hot.”

  “Babe Devens has come out of her coma.”

  Gordon Dobbs’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you pulling my leg?”

  “It’s the absolute eye-witness truth.”

  “So spill, spill.”

  Ash drew Gordon Dobbs to a corner of the terrace and filled him in on the details. “But don’t you dare quote me.”

  “Let me have it exclusive. For a week.” Gordon Dobbs recapped his pen. “And show me where people are getting that terrific-looking pink grapefruit sorbet from.”

  At the buffet table, Hadley Vanderwalk was helping Lucia empty the contents of two sorbet cups into one.

  “Tante Lucia,” Ash smiled. “Uncle Hadley. I’m so glad you could make it.”

  “Splendid party,” Hadley said. “One of your delightfully rash impulses.”

  “Tante Lucia, you remember Gordon Dobbs.”

  Lucia had dressed in black, with a brocade jacket. She had put a pink ribbon in her hair. It was as though she still saw herself as a bright, irrepressible little girl. She had charmed her father when she was six, why not the world now? “Yes,” Lucia said, “of course I remember Mr. Dobbs.”

  Gordon Dobbs lifted an asparagus-and-Saint-André canapé to his lips and nodded mysteriously.

  “Isn’t the news glorious?” Ash said.

  Lucia Vanderwalk knit her flawlessly pruned eyebrows together. “News?”

  “I visited,” Ash said. “Didn’t Uncle Hadley …”

  “Mr. Dobbs,” Lucia said, “would you excuse us?” Her narrow gaze went from Ash to Hadley and back to Ash. “Where can we talk privately?”

  In the library, morocco-bound sets of Eugene Sue and Macaulay sat on shelves with beveled brass edging.

  “You gave your word.” Lucia’s lips were set in a thin line of fury.

  “My word?” Hadley seemed honestly baffled.

  “That you wouldn’t tell anyone about Beatrice. And of all people, you had to go and tell her.”

  Ash’s lips trembled. One hand played with the clasp of a cabochon emerald earring. “I’m sorry, Tante Lucia. I only wanted to cheer Babe up.”

  Lucia stood there, rigid and unyielding, staring at Ash in absolute motionlessness. “You’ve never been trustworthy. Not as a child, not now. If there is any publicity, if anyone or anything disturbs my daughter’s recovery, I shall hold you personally responsible.”

  Ash looked at Lucia, her thick-lashed blue eyes fixed and blank and uncomprehending. And then something dropped like a curtain. “Would you excuse me? My guests.”

  Turning, Ash bumped into a chair. As she crossed the hall to the livingroom, she looked a little out of control, not quite managing things with her usual grace.

  “A little hard on the poor gal, don’t you think?” Hadley said. “You can’t really expect to keep Babe’s recovery under wraps.”

  “We’ve got to keep it under wraps, as you choose to put it, till we’re sure Beatrice can cope.”

  “Of course she’ll cope. She’s as strong as a Thoroughbred and she’ll be getting the best physical therapy money can buy.”

  “And can Cordelia cope? This is going to throw the poor child completely back into her mother’s shadow.”

  “Do you really see your daughter and granddaughter as rival flowers struggling for the same patch of sunlight?”

  “How can you ask that? In seven years have you understood one single word the psychiatrist has said to us?”

  Hadley Vanderwalk took an imperturbable swallow from his glass of champagne. “You’re too many jumps ahead for me, Lucia old girl.”

  There was a change in Lucia. She suddenly smiled.

  “Cordelia,” Lucia said. “There you are. We’ve been searching all over.”

  Hadley turned. It was difficult to say how long Cordelia had been standing in the doorway. She had her hair swept up this evening. She was wearing a bodiced blouse of Edwardian lace fastened at the collar by a cameo brooch set with a small emerald, and she looked chic and striking and strangely unconcerned.

  “And you’re wearing your great-grandmother’s brooch,” Lucia said. “I love seeing it on you.”

  “Anyone care to dance?” Cordelia asked.

  “It would be a great relief,” Hadley said.

  On the dance floor, Hadley inhaled his granddaughter’s perfume—Joy, the most expensive in the world. The jewels that flashed from the girl’s wrists were diamonds.

  “Were you and Grandmère arguing about me?” Cordelia asked.

  “Grandmère thinks you’re going to have some kind of crisis now that your mother’s back.”

  “And what do you think, Grandpère?”

  “I think you’re old enough to behave like the young lady you give every sign of being.”

  “Thank you, Grandpère.”

  The band was playing a very slow “I’ll Be Seeing You,” and Cordelia danced like a little girl, her cheek angled down toward her shoulder, looking up at her grandfather.

  A hand tapped Hadley on the shoulder. Hadley turned his head. The hand belonged to Count Leopold de Savoie-Sancerre, a bald, paunchy gentleman in his middle seventies with a chestful of World War II Danish military decorations.

  “Doublecut, if you please,” Count Leopold said. His partner was Lucia Vanderwalk, and she was frowning at her husband.

  As Hadley handed Cordelia over to the count, he whispered to his granddaughter, “Pray for me.” He took his wife’s hand. “I seem to be running into you all over the place, my dear.”

  The band broke into a manically up-tempo “Darktown Strutters’ Ball.” Count Leopold methodically boogied Cordelia toward the edge of the dance floor. “The countess has some very fine snort. What do you say?”

  Cordelia smiled. “You’re on.”

  Countess Victoria de Savoie-Sancerre, forty years her husband’s junior, was bent over a Chippendale side table in the spare guest room. Long dark hair half hid her face, and her wide-apart green eyes didn’t bother looking up as Count Leopold and Cordelia came in.

  “Company,” Count Leopold sang out.

  “Close the door.” With a gold safety razor Countess Victoria was carefully pulverizing the cocaine spill on a Cartier purse mirror. An enormous ruby-and-diamond ring blinked on the joint of her finger. “Anyone know why Dunk isn’t at the party?”

  “Dunk and Ash are breaking up again,” Cordelia said.
<
br />   “Is it true Dina Alstetter had an affair with Dunk and he ditched her for Ash?”

  “Years ago,” Cordelia said.

  “No wonder Dina’s acting so smug.” Countess Victoria arranged the coke into lines. “Youth before beauty.”

  Cordelia took a hundred-dollar bill from her purse and rolled it into a tight little cylinder. She bent over the mirror.

  “Be careful,” Countess Victoria warned. “I got this stuff through a Nicaraguan freedom fighter. It’s eighty percent pure.”

  11

  AT 7:59 A.M., CARDOZO entered the precinct house. Pandemonium was back to normal after the long holiday weekend. The lobby swarmed with cops, their waists thick with the dangling paraphernalia of the Job: beltloads of .38-caliber rounds, service revolvers, leather-wound billy clubs, staticking radios, and handcuffs that rang discordantly with each step. Greetings and backslaps were being exchanged like calls on the floor of a stock exchange. Cardozo traded a few, joining the flow up the stairs.

  In his cubicle the three button on the phone was lit. It was Dan Hippolito, reporting on John Doe’s blood. “He had enough alcohol in him to pickle an elephant. Enough coke to orbit a hippo. Plus considerable quantities of heroin and meth.”

  “Was he a junkie?”

  “Nah, with junkies the circulation is so bad you see necrotic tissue in the toes, but Johnny’s got no punctures and five good toes.”

  “What does the combination of drugs tell you?”

  “Nothing special. You can buy it prepackaged on the streets. There’s usually some other shit in it, but that metabolizes without a trace.”

  Cardozo thanked Dan, then phoned the lab. “Hey, Lou, did you check John Doe’s hair? Any chance he dyed it?”

  “It’s the first thing we check with blonds. The color’s real. He did use a very expensive conditioner—high in vitamin E. But it’s over-the-counter stuff.”

  Cardozo drew a line through the memo in his notebook. At 8:05 he crossed the hall for his task force meeting.

  “How are we doing on garbage?” he asked.

  Siegel shook her head. “No leg yet.”