Cardozo sighed. “That still leaves three residents unaccounted for.”
Sam Richards smiled. “Doyle’s in the Betty Ford clinic, coming off cocaine. It’s his third try. The smart money says he’s not going to make it. Notre Dame is at the Aga Khan’s resort in Sardinia, shacked up with Senator Behrend of Nebraska’s wife. The duke and duchess are in Issy-les-Moulineaux with Countess Rothschild, who is terminally ill with bone marrow cancer.”
“How’d you get all that?” Cardozo asked.
“I found a very good source. Maybe you’d like to meet him.”
“Frankly, they’re the reason we have cockroaches in the building.” Gordon Dobbs was discussing Saveurs de Paris, the bakery on the fourth floor of Beaux Arts Tower. “Their croissants aren’t even fresh. Don’t worry, I never buy from them.” He chuckled, “They didn’t make any of these.”
Cardozo’s glance went down to the colorful assortment of tiny glazed cakes laid out on the silver platter. He bit into another one, the third he’d taken, despite his worries about softening up his gut. They were superb pastries, the sort of pastries that must exist in children’s dreams. Through a mouthful of hazelnut, he asked about the super.
“Bill Connell’s divine—you need a drip fixed, he has the handyman here in three seconds. His wife’s an invalid, you know, and that’s why he plays around.”
There it was again: the superficially pleasant remark, the sting in its tail. Cardozo asked what Dobbs knew about the dental clinic on four.
“Let’s call a spade a spade. They’re a welfare mill. Some very peculiar people walk in and out of that office. It’s common knowledge that the good doctors are, shall we say, liberal with their prescriptions for painkillers.”
Cardozo sensed Dobbs had no evidence, no information, not even a reasonable suspicion: he was doing this because he wanted two cops in his livingroom, because he wanted to turn that evening at dinner to the jeweled blonde beside him and say, “Guess who came to tea at my place today … the fuzz.”
Cardozo asked about the psychotherapists on five.
The boom of Gordon Dobbs’s laughter filled the room. He rocked back and forth in his chair. “Poor souls—they’re having a very hard time of it. Competition’s tough. New York is licensing far too many psychiatric social workers. I mean, make up your mind! Are they doctors or mother’s helpers? I spoke to one of them in the elevator, mentioned Jung and drew a complete blank. Obviously they do a lot of work for the state. Someone’s paying for that space, and believe me, it’s not those shabby clients of theirs.”
“You wouldn’t happen to be acquainted with any of them?”
“The patients? God, no.” Dobbs’s smile was ingratiating and seemed to say, We understand one another, it’s just you and I against the riffraff in the world.
Cardozo mentioned Lily Lobkowitz.
“Princess Lil? Her ex-husband’s Polish, she’s a Copa girl from Enjay.”
“Enjay?”
“Joisey. Her sister is Senator Galucci’s wife. The princess has a slight drinking problem. One glass of sherry and she’s off to the races. My heart goes out to the poor thing. She’s never invited anywhere anymore. Her brother-in-law gave her the apartment—the poop is, she had to go to a priest and swear by the Virgin Mary to stop shoplifting from Bendel’s.”
Dobbs did not look at all the way Cardozo would have imagined a professional society gossip. With his dark eyes and lithe build, his curly hair beginning to gray, he looked the sort of a man who made his living as a mercenary on battlefields, not in drawing rooms. What he sounded like was something else.
“The Duke and Duchess de Chesney?” Cardozo asked.
“They’re British, of course; the best sort of British. Never pull rank. Marvelous conversationalists—always in demand. They’re in Paris because Countess Rothschild is dying and wanted to have someone entertaining around while she’s fading. Now, to me that says a great deal.”
“Debbi Hightower?” Cardozo said.
“She claims to be an actress-hyphen-model, but I doubt she could act her way out of a birthday cake at a stag party. Poor child; some people should not do cocaine. Off the record, I’ve heard that she’s a call girl.”
“Do you know any of her johns?”
“Well, I’ve seen some very sheepish-looking gents stopping on her floor.”
“Recognize any of them?”
A suggestion of color crept up Gordon Dobbs’s cheeks. He lifted a porcelain teacup and sipped. “I wouldn’t feel right naming—No, you have to ask her. I’m sorry I brought it up; it’s not my business.”
Cardozo moved right along. “Will Madsen?”
“The rector of the church on the corner? He’s done wonders bringing in people for lunchtime services, and their concerts are a joy. He’s an absolute gentleman, never talks religion. I respect that in a man of the cloth, don’t you?”
This man’s asking me what I respect? Cardozo thought. “Fred Lawrence?”
“Does income tax returns for some very glam people. I must say he’s worked magic for me—IRS hasn’t audited me in seven years, and that’s a world’s record.”
Dobbs’s livingroom had a cool, cavelike comfort. One wall was shelved, with discreet track lights pinpointing terra-cotta idols and figurines, beaten gold masks, carved bronze and ivory, painted fragments of pottery. Dobbs was obviously a collector. The fireplace was carved marble, and curtains of silk and peach velvet made the windows here seem taller than in six.
“Baron Billi von Kleist?” Cardozo asked.
He wondered if there wasn’t an instant’s hesitation before the reply came.
“Billi’s a marketing genius, and quite close to the White House. The first lady—I kid you not—the president’s wife was at his apartment for dinner two months ago. And of course the designs he markets are truly imaginative—though I must say this latest line of his takes a little getting used to.”
“Notre Dame?”
“I don’t have to tell you, Lieutenant, that any young man in a torn Saint Laurent with punk green hair singing songs like “We Are Going to Kill You’ is utterly harmless. That whole punk drag thing is strictly for Middle America. He’s Scientology, never goes near drugs or alcohol. He’s always on tour—you never see him in the building. At the moment he’s having an affair with the wife of Senator Behrend of Nebraska. They’re at the Aga Khan’s resort in Sardinia.”
There were taps. Detective Sam Richards’s feet clicked on marble as he moved from the foyer with its black-and-white checkerboard floor back into the light pooling by the terrace. He stood holding a teacup, staring out at the view.
“Phil Bailey?” Cardozo asked.
“Phil’s president of NBS-TV—utterly unpretentious—more a businessman than an artistic type, but just as much at ease talking to David Bowie as to King Juan Carlos. His wife’s a charmer. She could have been a concert harpist, but she gave it up to marry him. She’s Israeli, but very polished. I love Israelis like that. And I hear the son’s a gifted architect.”
Cardozo caught just an edge, like a blade winking under a sleeve: Dobbs didn’t like Jews, made exceptions, had no idea that Cardozo was a Portuguese Jewish name: probably feeling damned liberal about it, Dobbs was giving him the condescension he reserved for Catholics.
“Hank Doyle?”
Dobbs lifted his hands. A gold wedding band flashed. No other finger jewelry. “What a horrific tragedy. Hank’s wife and I used to have long talks in the elevator. She told him he had to choose, it was snort or Charlayne, and he chose snort. Now he’s at the Betty Ford Clinic—but seriously, do you know anyone who’s recovered from coke? It’s just too cheap and too available. And now all this crack nonsense. Dreadful.”
A bell rang. Cardozo’s eyes went toward the foyer.
The front door opened and a thickset six-foot-tall blond man in overalls walked in, pocketing a key. He had a slight limp, the sort that shrapnel-wounded veterans had brought back from Vietnam. His nose had a bump as though it had once been broken.
Dobbs turned. “In the master bathroom, Claude, the porcelain faucet.”