Spalding’s eyes narrowed into thin wary slits. A shadow played across his face. “Who did they kill?”
“They killed Jodie Downs.”
“Claude Loring killed Jodie Downs.”
“A bunch of Morgenstern’s freak friends did it and that’s why Morgenstern’s calling you to call me off, and that’s why you’re calling the CD to call me off. You know it, Al. And you’re still letting it go down, and that puts you in the same shit as the rest of them.”
Spalding was shouting. “There was one killer in the Downs case!”
“There was a bunch!” Cardozo shouted back. “I have a witness!”
Something in the D.A.’s face opened just a crack, letting out a thin wisp of fear. “Vince, drop it. There weren’t witnesses.”
“There were witnesses, there were accomplices. Why do you think Loring walked? That was the deal they paid Morgenstern to cut. Loring confessed, Loring walked, they stayed out of sight.”
Spalding expelled his breath, sharply. “Who’s your witness?”
“You think I’m going to tell you? You think I can even trust you? I can trust you to do one thing, and that’s to go straight to Morgenstern. So why don’t you go straight to Morgenstern, and you tell him that last night I moved my files out of my office and put them in the hands of someone who knows how to use them if anything happens to me.”
“What the hell do you think could happen to you, Vince?”
“You know damned well what could happen—I could get sent to Park Slope, I could get my pension lifted, I could get dead.”
“Look, Vince, I honestly think you’re getting a little paranoid—”
“And you lay off the CD. Because I’m going to close this case. And if the CD or anyone else starts asking you about me, you tell them I’m working on special assignment for you.”
“Hold on, Vince. That’s just not believable.”
“Make it believable! Al, it’s, your ass I’ll be saving. Your office fucking miscarried with Babe Devens and Jodie Downs. But it doesn’t need to come out that you knew. You cover for me and I’ll cover for you—that’s the deal, okay?”
Spalding sat for a long time, staring at Cardozo, staring at his desktop, staring again at Cardozo.
“Okay.”
“You can’t go in there,” the secretary said primly. “He’s in conference.”
Cardozo pushed through the door.
Morgenstern looked up from his desk, his eyes barely visible through the lowered slits of his eyelids. “Got a problem, Cardozo?”
“I want Claude Loring.”
“Ever heard of double jeopardy? You can’t touch Loring.”
“He can be indicted for obstruction, and so can you.”
“Bull.”
“You hand Claude Loring over to me for questioning or I will personally tail you and bust you for possession of coke or sucking the cocks of minors, whichever you do first.”
Morgenstern’s eyes pinpointed in cold fury. The office suddenly had the suffocating stillness of a plastic bag.
A petite woman was sitting on a corner of a chintz sofa. She had iron gray hair and she wore a stylish dark silk dress and she had the unflappable look of someone who was always being photographed and reported on.
She was watching Cardozo with an interested, completely calm expression, waiting expectantly for more.
Morgenstern sprang up from his chair.
Cardozo leaned across the desk and grabbed the knot of his blue-and-gold regimental. “You think that pardon’s going to hold?”
Morgenstern wrenched loose. He seized an ivory letter opener.
Cardozo allowed a smile to open on his face. “You think the Republicans are going to let our Democratic governor get away with that?”
“You’re not going to harass my client!” Morgenstern was backed against an étagère loaded with Kiwanis citations and autographed celebrity photos. His cobra-lidded eyes were blinking rapidly and an artery was pulsing in his temple. “We happen to live under a system called the law, Mr. Nazi, and you just get the hell out of this office and don’t come back without a warrant!”
“And let me tell you something, Clarence Darrow. You may be a whiz when it comes to engineering compassionate commutations for cold-blooded killers, but this commutation just boomeranged, because yesterday in Central Park some freak ripped the panties off of Harold Benziger’s stepdaughter and murdered her.”
“There’s no fucking connection!”
“What do you bet the Daily News can find a connection—like poetic justice? And shit will the press love the archdiocese tie-in. I’d like to see how fast His Eminence gives you the gate.”
“I don’t rat on my clients, and if any lies about any commutation appear in any newspaper, I’ll have you off the force! I will personally have your ass!”
“You’ll personally have my ass in your face, snake gills.” Cardozo turned to the little lady on the sofa. “Nice to see you again, Ms. Vlaminck.”
“Have we met?” she said pleasantly.
“We were at the same table at Holcombe Kaiser’s party for Tina Vanderbilt,”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, indeed. Nice to see you.”
“We fought like we’ve never fought before. I told him, don’t do crack, it makes you crazy. He threatened me with the bread knife.”
Faye di Stasio sat there a long time, her breasts rising and falling with the rhythm of her memories.
“I had to get him out. I couldn’t let him stay, crazy like that.”
Tears flooded her eyes. There was a defensive tone in her voice, but she didn’t look defensive. She looked crushed, as if all defenses had failed her long ago.
“I changed the locks. I can’t even begin to tell you the stuff he did.”
She began to tell him.
Cardozo listened patiently. She had something he needed and he was willing to flatter her with attention, even kindness if necessary, to get it.
“The cat—he killed the cat.” She looked at him blankly. “Who’d do a thing like that? Killing a cat?”
They sat there in silence. She lowered her eyes. She seemed shrunken. She was breathing hard, cigarette idling in one hand.
“Faye—where’s Claude now?”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“I’m too tired, too confused to even want to think where.”
“He got a compassionate commutation to take care of his mother. Think he could be with her?”
She floated him a look. “His mother’s been dead three years.”
Cardozo breathed deeply, feeling frustration like a weight across his back. “Will you let me know if he shows up?”
“He won’t show up.” Her lower lip was trembling. “Not if he wants to stay living.”
Cardozo touched her cheek. “Don’t kill him. Phone me and let me do it for you, okay?”
Eight hours later, thinking Claude Loring might have returned to play in his old pigpen, Cardozo personally dredged the Inferno. Mission unsuccessful. It was four in the morning when he decided to call yesterday a day. He pulled himself groggily up the stairs and out into the street.
After the Inferno, New York smelled clean. Mist was closing in, washing the colors out of the buildings opposite.
Cardozo walked slowly south, stepping over fetid pockets of gutter water. The echo of his footsteps followed him. He passed a few moving figures on the sidewalk, a few zonked-out forms in doorways.
At the corner of Little West Twelfth and Gansevoort streets a truck blared its horn, blasting Cardozo out of his thoughts.
He stepped back and watched the driver negotiate the turn. There was a grinning steer painted on the side of the truck, and below it the message Sam’s Beef—Nobody Beats Our Meat.
Cardozo crossed the street. His feet were aware of edges and uneven surfaces, and he looked down and saw that the pavement had changed from asphalt to cobblestones.
His eyes came up and he was struck by something, a sign attached to the warehouse on the corner ahead of him. He paused to read the weathered black lettering.