“They don’t hear me. John Wayne is passing champagne. The man is naked.” “What man, Babe?” “The young man. I don’t know him. He has blond hair. He’s lying in the corner.”
“Which corner, Babe?”
Babe walked slowly into the other room. Also empty. Also white. There were two paper cups by the radiator, lying on their side.
Cardozo picked one up and saw the dry ring of coffee in the bottom. A bit further along a bottle top glinted. He stooped. Heineken beer.
“Winnie the Pooh and the Mad Hatter pick him up and tie him to the H.”
Now she snapped around and stared at the north wall. Something about it absorbed her. She was holding herself slightly forward of the perpendicular, trembling, on the brink of something.
His eye scanned, picking out details where there had only been featureless white. Ripples in the plaster. Lumps in the paint. A small elephant-shaped stain, a little below shoulder level, the color of rust. Next to it two holes, each a quarter inch in diameter. Someone had bored through the plaster into the wood beam beneath.
Below the two holes, at knee level, another pair of holes, identical to the first. Four feet to the right, two more pairs of holes, similarly spaced.
There was another rust-colored stain at ankle level, this one shaped like a tiny map of South America.
“Vince,” she said, her voice tight and shaking. “I’m going to be sick. I have to get out of here.”
Cardozo dialed Melissa Hatfield’s work number.
“I see you people are putting up a condo in the meat-packing district. Charming neighborhood.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“Would you have time to run another real estate trace for me? Two lots down from your new condo there’s a warehouse. Five eighteen Gansevoort.”
“I know the building. It’s your basic abandoned firetrap.”
“You sure it’s abandoned? There are names on half the mailboxes.”
“Those are welfare drops. Standard scam with the Department of Human Resources, getting aid for nonexistent dependent children. No one lives there. We wanted to buy, so we checked. The owner’s holding out, listing bogus rent-control tenants. You can’t evict anyone under rent control. The land rights are going to skyrocket and the owner thinks he can make a killing. He’s got a surprise coming. The city’s reassessing all the property on that block. The taxes will quintuple and he’ll have to sell. Nat Chamberlain’s going to be the only bidder the city allows. So you see, it pays to contribute to the mayor’s reelection campaign.”
“The owner’s got more than welfare phantoms in there. Somebody’s been using the front apartment on the third floor. And I think they had a lease, because they made improvements. I need to know who.”
“I suppose the owner could have leased to an actor or artist—something temporary. Anything’s possible. I’ll check.”
“You ever see anything going on in that apartment?”
Cardozo pointed. The warehouse appeared dead, remote, the clouds behind it a menacing smudge.
The old man’s eyes narrowed blearily beneath a shock of white hair. A varicose, hawklike nose dominated his face. He shrugged, not bothering to lift himself from the doorstep where he had made himself a pallet of newspapers and old rags. A smell of animal blood rose from the pavement.
Cardozo opened his wallet and pulled out a ten-dollar bill and dangled it.
The old man reached up a trembling hand and took the money. The rip in his undershirt widened and another fold of white torso blobbed out. “Used to see things. Hasn’t been anything going on up there since they moved out.”
“When did they move out?”
A soot-caked fingernail scratched white cheek-stubble. “First week in June.”
“Remember the name of the moving company?”
“Shit, I don’t remember my own name.”
“What kind of furniture?”
“Couches, tables, lamps, cameras, black leather shit.”
“What kind of black leather shit?”
“Black leather shit like they got in all those asshole clubs around here.”
“What kind of cameras?”
“Video. You could hock ’em for maybe eighty bucks.”
“Did you see the people who used the place?”
Silence.
Cardozo opened his wallet again.
A prostitute wobbled past on high heels, slowing to stare at the ten-dollar bill. The skirt was ass-hugging tangerine stretch nylon and the blond wig could have been swiped from a department store dummy.
A ship’s horn bleated on the river.
The old man took the money; the prostitute immediately picked up speed, calves rippling with muscle.
“They had parties. Fridays, Saturdays. Limousines parked up and down all along here.” The old man’s hand indicated the deserted street.
“Every weekend?”
“Just now and then.”
“What kind of people?”
“What kind of people ride limousines? Rich assholes. Scared they’re gonna get mugged or bitten by a rat.”
“How were they dressed?”
“Tuxes, dresses, costumes.”
“What kind of costumes?”
“Leather.”
“Any idea what they were doing up there?”
“I dunno.” The old man broke out laughing. His breath was an explosive mix of beer and tooth decay. “They never invited me.”
“Come on, earn that twenty. You must’ve heard something, seen something.”
“Couldn’t see nothin’. They closed the curtains. Heard music. Singin’. Once in a while screamin’.”
“Screaming?”
“Sounded like screamin’. Music was so loud couldn’t be sure.”
“What kind of screaming? Like someone was singing, or drunk, or hurting or what?”
“Screamin’ like someone was screamin’.”
Cardozo stared at the warehouse. The one streetlight still working made the block look all the more abandoned.
“Did you ever see a body carried out?” he asked.
“All they did was carry each other out of that place. Some of them arrived so stoned they had to carry each other in.”
“You never saw a dead body?”
“How you gonna tell the difference? They were dead on their feet. Haven’t seen ’em in a month. Since those movers.”
Cardozo patted the old man on the shoulder and crossed toward the warehouse. He had almost reached the other sidewalk when a blue Pontiac swerved around him, pulling to a stop in the middle of the block.
A black-and-white cat mewed from the gutter.
The blond wig turned. The prostitute stepped with exaggerated elegance off the sidewalk, clacked across the cobblestones, and bent down to confer with the driver.
After a moment the driver threw open the passenger door and the prostitute hopped in.
Tony Bandolero, from Forensic, was waiting in the shadow by the warehouse door. He was frowning, running a hand through his curly brown hair. “Why are all transvestite hookers black?”
“Are they?”
“That one is.”
Cardozo watched the Pontiac pull across Washington Street. “Why are the customers all white, why do they all have New Jersey license plates?”
“Do they?”
“That one does.”
Cardozo pushed open the door and flicked on the flashlight. They went inside and up the stairs.
“What do those hookers charge?” Tony Bandolero asked.
“I hear fifty bucks.”
“Fifty bucks for a blow job? No wonder the country’s going to hell.”
A rat froze for an instant in the light, then scurried.
Tony Bandolero held the flashlight and Cardozo opened the door with his MasterCard.
In the dimness of the apartment the shadow of the window ribbing made a slanting pattern on the floor. Cardozo crossed through the puddles of light. He gazed out through the panes. The moon was glowing on the roofs of the city.
“These scratches look like someone was moving something heavy.” Tony was squatting close to the floor. The flashlight lay on its side, lighting up a triangle of polyurethaned planking. “Refrigerator, maybe.”