“Have you ever killed anyone?” Cordelia asked.
“Of course.”
“Tell me about it. Get me hot.”
“She’s great,” Monteleone said. “She’s handling it.”
Monteleone could have been watching a game show. He wasn’t feeling what Cardozo was feeling. Cardozo had a sense of a change in the man’s expression. Something shifted behind the eyeslits.
The man lit the heater, then with the eyedropper measured mineral water into the cup. “I fought in the Second World War. Many people were killed.” He placed the cup over the flame and slowly tapped the crystals from the four vials into the water.
“Not that kind of killing,” Cordelia said. “I mean for kicks.”
“There are kicks in war. You’d be surprised.” One by one the man snipped the corners off the four envelopes and tapped their powdered contents into the mix.
“He’s cooking a speedball,” the technician said.
“That’s no speedball.” Cardozo didn’t believe it. He saw it happening in front of him, and he couldn’t believe it. “He’s melting down crack. That’s a fucking speedball express. Once that hits their bloodstream they’re going to be out of control.”
The man filled the syringe from the cup, drawing the liquid up into the transparent chamber. He laid the syringe on the table. He held out the red tubing, smiling.
Cordelia came toward him, smiling back at him. She stretched out her arms, palms toward the ceiling.
“Eenie, meenie, minie, moe,” the man said. “Where oh where shall the goodies go?”
“You choose which arm,” Cordelia said. “You always bring me luck.”
The man carefully knotted the tubing around her upper left arm. The swollen dark vein jutted in the crook.
Cordelia turned slightly, so that the man had to reorient himself. As he touched the tip of the needle to the pulsing vein, he was facing the TV camera.
Cardozo could feel something wordlessly taking shape. There was a tiny preparatory movement on the man’s part, and then with a quick jab he sank the needle tip into the vein and began to lower the plunger.
White-hot realization shot through Cardozo. “He’s giving it all to her! It’ll kill her!”
Cordelia’s free hand whipped up. Her fingers dug under the mask, clawing it up off the man’s eyes. His pivoting gaze froze. For one blinking, unbelieving moment the unmasked face of Baron Billi von Kleist stared straight into the camera.
Of course, Cardozo realized. Not Monserat. Von Kleist. The suitor, the guardian, the best friend.
Cordelia stretched out her hands to grab the syringe. The needle was shooting glittering droplets into space. Twenty fingers twisted around one another, tangoing across the screen, zooming in and out of focus, grappling for possession.
The baron bent Cordelia backward over the table. The lit heater wobbled and went over. Flame jetted across the tabletop.
The baron reached with his right hand for the mineral water.
Cordelia, using both hands, twisted the syringe from his left hand. She took three steps away from him and stood at the edge of the screen.
The baron doused the flame in Evian. When he turned again to face Cordelia, he raised the scissors in his right hand.
It was a face-off, the needle with its payload versus the scissors with their cutting edges.
Panic and determination were mingled in Cordelia’s expression. Now she was circling out of camera range, and the baron was turning, eyes tracking her.
“No way I’m going to let this happen.” Cardozo flung open the truck door and bounded across the street.
He dove into the building entrance and leaned on the buzzer to 4A to spook them, maybe to stop them, anyway to buy time, and he leaned on all the other buzzers to get into the building. A rattling buzz answered and released the lock and he yanked the inner door open.
The indicator showed the elevator on the third floor.
He took the first flight of stairs in a blind run. His legs thrust him up past two and three in a single continuous lunge.
On four he swerved into the corridor, his shoes slapping and skidding on the tiled floor. He faced the door of 4A, tested the knob, stepped back. He drew his revolver and took dead aim at the lock and fired one shot. Wood and metal shattered. Holding the gun with both hands at eye level, he kicked the door in.
The baron was swaying in the livingroom at the end of the corridor. In the colors of real life his bathrobe was maroon and ochre. His feet were splayed apart and he was trying to steady himself by gripping the back of a chair.
His back arched and cords stood out at the base of his suntanned neck. His breath was a whinny, a struggle for air. Red foam was bubbling from his lips.
The chamber of the empty syringe was jutting out of his throat, like a grotesquely oversized tiepin that had been shoved in twelve inches too high. The needle had dug in to the hilt.
Above the pale and trembling lips the large staring eyes turned toward Cardozo. The baron’s pupils had become pinpoints of disbelieving, dwindling light. The moment became a silence. The baron’s eyes closed and his hands lost the chair. He fell in a sideways heap.
Cordelia had retreated to a corner, hands covering her face as if to choke back the whimpers coming from her.
Cardozo crossed to her. Her fingers closed around his.
“Did I kill him?” she whispered.
Cardozo glanced over at the corpse. “Somebody had to.”
“All I wanted to do was get his confession on film.”
“Was it Von Kleist who gave you the insulin and syringe to kill your mother?”
Cordelia nodded.
“He gave you dope, had sex with you from the time you were twelve?”
“Everything.”
“And Monserat?” Cardozo asked.
“Lew never touched me.” Cordelia staggered to the couch and dropped onto a cushion. “Lew was just one of Billi’s fronts. Billi had a hundred of them.” She was looking at her panties hopelessly; they were a riddle she couldn’t solve. The dope was in her blood, fogging her. “People thought Billi was … was attractive and … got involved and then … couldn’t get …”
Cardozo was thinking that it had taken one scared immature drug-addicted girl to do what no policeman, no court could ever have done, to make Billi von Kleist pay in kind for the pain and murder he had strewn, to ensure that he would never twist or take another life.
“I loved him.” She was staring at the corpse, leaning down to touch the lapel of the robe. “I still …”
She was beginning to nod out. Silent tears were tracking down her cheeks. The tear from the right eye was already at her chin and the tear from the left was only halfway to her mouth.
Cardozo wondered why that was, why one tear was faster than the other, what force in the universe decided things like that.
Her head dropped. Cardozo caught her before she could hit the floor. He eased her back onto the sofa. “You’re going to be okay,” he soothed.
She had passed out. He had no idea how the hell he was going to get her out of this. A flying carpet was all he needed.
55
THE PRINT MAN FINISHED dusting and the photographer finished taking pictures and the men from the M.E.’s office zipped Baron Billi into a body bag. They filed out of the loft, leaving the chalk outline of a dead man in the floor.
Cardozo phoned Ted Morgenstern. “Get down here to Lew Monserat’s loft. Cordelia Koenig has killed Baron Billi von Kleist. You’re going to defend her.”
Twenty minutes later Ted Morgenstern identified himself to the sergeant guarding the crime scene. He stalked into the apartment with the confidence of a predator.
“Where’s my client?”
“In the hospital. Have a seat.”
There was an edge of command to Cardozo’s voice. Ted Morgenstern’s face betrayed a rush of irritation, but he sat.
Cardozo pushed buttons on the VCR, and the TV set bathed the room in ghostly voices and images.
Morgenstern did his best to stay frosted, and when the tape had run he put on an air of smug, lighthearted adventure. “Who made that tape? The police? It’s inadmissible.”