“Yeah, and it was weird, Jodie hated it but liked it, Jodie held on to that cigarette, he was moaning like he was coming.”
“Was Jodie killed at the party?”
“No—he was cut, but not killed.”
“Describe how he got killed.”
“It was my job to dump the merchandise after the parties. If it was a dead body, I’d truck it back to the funeral home. If it was a kid, I’d take them back to where they were staying, pay them off. I was supposed to take the mask off Jodie and take him back home. But he was calling me a dumb fag and a lot of things—so I decided Jodie, you’re a two-time winner, and I took him to Beaux Arts Tower to have a scene alone with him. We smoked some more crack and Jodie kept saying ‘Do it, do it.’”
“What did he mean, ‘Do it’?”
“Kill him. You have to understand—I was on crack. And he was asking for it, begging for it. So I choked him.”
Claude Loring mopped his face with a red-checked handkerchief.
“After Jodie was dead I guess I panicked.”
“Because you’d killed him,” Lucinda MacGill said.
“Because I’d killed him and I was out of crack and I needed to keep going. There I was with this body in this evil mask and what the shit was I going to do? Talk about drawing a complete blank—I knew I had to get a second wind, get it together, I couldn’t just sit there with this body scaring the bejeezus out of me. And then I remembered my coke dealer was on duty at the front door.”
“Hector,” Cardozo said.
Loring nodded. “Son of a bitch didn’t want to let me have any. But I pushed his buttons and he let me have a lid. I snorted it and then it was like no problems. I saw what I had to do—cut the body up and drop the pieces in different garbage chutes. There was a saw up on seventeen, they were remodeling up there. So I started to cut him up and I got one leg off and it was really hard work, and I was beat, so I thought, okay, time off. I was planning to come back in a few hours, but I passed out.”
He began sobbing.
“I hate myself and I hate what I did. But it’s like it wasn’t me. Monserat gave me drugs and once I was high I was like a dog on a chain. Wherever Monserat wanted me to go I would go. I tried to fight, but I guess I was really weak.”
Now he was playing the cocker spaniel, all soft and appealing, with great big blue eyes, begging for understanding.
The spring in the swivel chair groaned as Cardozo leaned forward. “Okay, Claude, that will be it for now.”
Greg Monteleone took Loring back to the lockup.
Lucinda MacGill was shaking, a survivor who had barely made it across the border of the damned. She had to plant the soles of her shoes on the floor until she was steady, and then she stood.
“How are you?” Cardozo asked.
“Older,” she said. “You think you know all about the unbelievable. And then you hear a story like that and your brain wants to shut down.”
“Loring is willing to repeat all that in exchange for immunity.”
“From what? He’s already been convicted of killing Downs.”
“He can still be tried for dealing crack. For assaulting Babe Devens with intent to kill.”
Cardozo felt the cool, deliberate touch of Lucinda MacGill’s attention.
“Loring’s claim that Lewis Monserat sent him to kill Cordelia Koenig—that bothers me,” she said. “Do you believe him?”
“Damned right I do. You don’t?”
Her expression was concerned, serious. “Loring could be saving his own skin.”
“He’s got no reason to go after Cordelia or her mother. It’s got to be Monserat.”
“Why? You say Monserat wanted Babe dead and Scott Devens convicted so Cordelia would inherit and he’d marry her and get control. … I don’t know, Vince. He’s forty years older.”
“And money’s money. And Monserat loves money. And Cordelia loved Monserat. He gave her drugs. He gave her strokes when no one else was giving her anything. You heard her last night. She wanted to marry him.”
MacGill’s eyes were a cool, boiling green. “Legally, Loring is just as useless as Cordelia. What you’ve got is two attempts to murder Babe Devens and the unsupported testimony of two confessed would-be murderers. Loring claims Monserat put him up to it, and you claim Monserat put Cordelia up to it, and what Cordelia claims we’re not going to know till she gets a lawyer. But she’s a drug addict and barely legal age, and Loring is a drug addict and a convicted killer. You can’t even bring Monserat in for questioning on evidence like that. Morgenstern will crucify you.”
“What if we just take portions of Cordelia’s statement?” Cardozo said. “The sexual acts with Monserat while she was underage and the drugs he provided her?”
“Vince,” Lucinda MacGill said, “I spent last night saving you from that. It’s not going to hold up.”
“What about the kiddie porn?”
“He’s masked in all the films you showed me. Unless you’re holding some footage back, you haven’t got an ID.”
“Cordelia will come around,” Cardozo said. “She’ll ID him.”
“And all you’ll have then is the same, uncorroborated, totally inadmissible statement you began with.” Lucinda MacGill sighed.
“She was there, for God’s sake,” Cardozo said, belligerent now.
Lucinda MacGill’s eyes reached out patiently. “She was a child, she was drugged, it was seven years ago. She absolutely has to be corroborated.”
“The videotapes are corroboration,” Cardozo said.
“I wouldn’t be in such a rush to use those tapes. They show drug use, which impeaches Cordelia’s judgment and memory, and they show sodomy, which impeaches her character and credibility. The tapes might not even be allowed into evidence if the court rules that she can’t waive self-incrimination. And if it can be proved the tapes are seven years old, they get Monserat off, because the statute of limitations on the offenses has run.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cardozo muttered.
“The long and the short of it is, the sex and drug charges are going to backfire. So forget them.”
“So how do we get to Monserat?” Cardozo said.
“I’m fresh out of bright ideas,” Lucinda MacGill said.
Out in the squad room, the television had been moved onto the Mr. Coffee table. It was the bottom of the eighth. The count was three and two. The Mets had men on second and first. The St. Louis Cardinals were ahead by one run. A shout went up from the detectives as Gary Carter struck a two-base hit.
Cardozo felt a sharp dagger of pain behind his eyes.
“Vince, stop making faces as though I’m the one who makes up these laws.”
“You’re the one who keeps springing them on me.”
“That’s my job.”
“Monserat tried to kill Cordelia. He’s going to try again.”
“Then give her a guard. Vince, you can’t bring him in on Loring’s evidence. Be realistic. Loring is a felon, a convict. He’d do anything for his next hit of coke. He’s tainting some very important people. You hear a lot of those names in real estate and arbitrage and junk bonds and corporate takeovers and restructurings and political fund-raising.”
“You’re saying because these people are tied in with money, with real estate, with politicians, because they have dinner with the Rockefellers and get photographed with Brooke Astor, they can’t be touched? The city’s bombing out socially and economically, but so long as there’s gold to be made playing three-card monte with the ruins, it’s okay to chop up anybody you want and jack off over the videotape?”
“You’re saying that, not me. What’s this thing you’ve got? Poor people commit murder too. It’s not just the rich.”
“Poor people don’t have Ted Morgenstern. They get caught.”
“Loring had Ted Morgenstern. He got off with two months.”
“I don’t care about Loring. He’s a windup doll. I care about that fuck of an art dealer.”
“Ease off, Vince.”
He thumped a hand against the desk. A drawer splintered. “I don’t believe what this city’s become. This used to be my home. Now you need ten million for openers in this city.”
“What the hell has that got to do with anything? You’re off on a tangent, Vince.”