She moved to the window. She stood with her back to the men.
“Who killed our son?” she asked in a voice so calm and matter-of-fact that Cardozo was chilled.
“I intend to find that out,” he said.
She turned. She looked at him. “Do you promise?”
“Now Meridee,” Downs cut in, “all the lieutenant can do is his best—”
She pushed off her husband’s hand. “Lieutenant, do you have a child?”
“I do,” he said. “A girl.”
“An only child?”
“That’s right.”
She took Cardozo’s hands in hers. “Then you’ll find Jodie’s killer? You’ll see—he gets what he deserves?”
Cardozo knew exactly what she was going through. His eyes promised. “I’ll find him. He’ll get what he deserves.”
Cardozo returned to the precinct and felt an unaccountable craving for sweets. He ordered in blueberry pie and milk.
He sat reviewing the task force’s fives and then he phoned the one nine and asked for Detective Barry MacPherson. The mumble that came over the line was either a bad connection or a mouthful of cheese blintz.
“Barry, you had an attempted homicide over there, first week in June, three years back.”
“We had nine attempts and six successes, I remember the week well. So does my wife. June third’s our wedding anniversary. That was the year we didn’t get to go to Colorado. This year we didn’t get to go to the Bahamas.”
“Keep plugging. Maybe next year you won’t get to go to Paris.” A delivery boy brought the pie, sticky and sugary, a purple disaster. Cardozo made a face. “The victim’s name was Jodie Downs, twenty years old, ex-aspiring actor, fashion design student, gay. He picked up a slasher in a bar, lost one of his balls.”
“Ouch.”
“You weren’t by any chance on the case, were you, Barry?”
“It’s hard enough remembering the ones who die. The survivors I have a very short retention for.”
“He’s dead now.”
“Can’t say I recall him.”
“Jodie Downs.”
“A lot of stiffs under the bridge in three years.”
“Could you messenger me whatever paper you’ve got?”
“You got it.”
Ellie Siegel came into the cubicle. She stood there a moment just staring at Cardozo. “Ever heard of the Rawhide bar?”
“Tell me what I’m missing out on.”
“Eighth Avenue and West Twentieth.” She sailed an interoffice memo down onto the desk. “The bartender recognized the flyer. His name is Hal. He’s tending bar till eight. So you got time to enjoy your pie.”
Cardozo shoved the paper plate at her. “You enjoy it.”
She looked at the purple stain sinking through the crust into the cardboard. “Vince, you know your problem? No self-respect, putting junk like that into your gut. Some night I’m going to cook you a decent meal. You’re too young to be going to pot.”
“I’m not going to pot.”
“Mr. America you’re not.”
“Who’s talking, Miss Universe? I get my share of propositions.”
“You’d get better propositions if you ate right. Knock off ten pounds and maybe you’d even get a shiksa to marry you.”
“You’re a pushy Jewish broad, you know that?”
“I’m as Irish as you.”
“I’m not one percent Irish.”
“So we match.”
“You think you’re going to get me with insults, you really think insults are going to give me a hard-on?”
“Who needs you, Vince? You’re a macho bitch.”
Cardozo pushed through the door. He took a deep breath, tasting the air, disliking the smell of spilled beer that seemed to have gone a stage beyond rot.
The bartender hefted himself up into a standing position. A black-moustached giant, steel studs sprayed across his leather like diamonds, he came down the bar, passing a damp cloth along the wood. The rag stopped two swipes away from Cardozo. “What’ll it be?”
“Diet Pepsi.”
The bartender gave Cardozo the can of soda.
The shadows in the bar were deep—almost night. Tatters of street light played through the synthetic buckskin that had been rigged across the windows.
“You’re Hal?” Cardozo asked.
“That’s right.”
“You know this guy?” Cardozo laid a flyer on the bar.
The bartender put on granny glasses and they gave him a look totally at odds with the piratical black beard. A tiny loop of steel glimmered in his right ear. He studied the flyer a moment, then folded his glasses back into his vest pocket. “Yeah. I know him.”
“Tell me about him.” Cardozo showed the bartender his shield.
“Jodie and I dated.”
“And?”
“Are you a narc?”
“Homicide.”
Shock hit the bartender’s face. He leaned down against the bar. “He’s dead? How?”
“We want to find out.”
The bartender began to wipe a glass. From the pool table, clear and clean as the tap of a woodpecker, came the contact of a cue on an ivory ball, then the rumble of dead weight dropping down a felt-lined pocket.
“He never mentioned any threats?” Cardozo asked.
“He didn’t get threats. He got propositions.”
“Who’d want to kill him?”
“I don’t know. Me, sometimes.”
“Where were you the twenty-fourth?”
“Week ago Saturday? Same place I am now. Right here.”
“Where was he?”
“The Inferno.”
“What’s the Inferno?”
“Sex club on Ninth. He practically lived there. It’s where we met.”
Wind-whipped rain spattered down, making soapsuds in the gutter outside the precinct house as Cardozo hurried from the alley into the lobby. His cubicle was hot and still. He stood with his finger on the light switch, trying to guess from the mound on his desk how much departmental garbage had come in. He pressed the button. The light flung his shadow across the wall and filing cabinet.
The Jodie Downs file was on his desk, along with a note from Detective Barry MacPherson of the nineteenth please to take care of the hospital report.
There were four pages of NYPD letterhead covered with amateurish, misaligned, misspelled typing—clearly a departmental job—and there was a sheaf of public health reports, slightly better typed, with photographs attached.
The police report was grim, sad reading.
Jodie Downs had reviewed mug shots and sat at twenty-one lineups and had not been able to recognize his attacker. The assailant had never been found. The Identi-Kit picture, based on Jodie’s description, showed a stocky, well-built man in his late twenties, with strong jaw, dark curly hair, a high smooth forehead, a moustache covering a sensual full upper lip. Possibly Hispanic or Italian. There was nothing real about the perpetrator: he was a dream, a stud who swaggered through a million male fashion drawings and probably ten million gay jack-off magazines.
Police and Lenox Hill Hospital psychiatrists profiled Downs as a bewildered and guilt-ridden young man, unable to reconcile the contradictions in his own personality, compulsively drawn to the temporary self-obliteration of drugs and sexual acting out.
Cardozo looked at the photographs and felt sick. They’d been taken, he supposed, for insurance purposes—in case Jodie Downs had sued for loss of his testicle.
Cardozo went to the door and hollered for Monteleone.
A moment later the light from the squad room outlined Greg’s solid frame.
“Greg, you used to work Vice Squad. What do you know about a place called the Inferno?”
“You got six hours, Vince. It doesn’t open till midnight. Doesn’t get swinging till two.”
“What goes on there?”
“What doesn’t go on. It’s a sex club. Sex and drugs.”
“Gay?”
“Vince—it’s got everything. Maybe no animals, maybe no liquor license, but believe me there are categories of behavior there that even the Supreme Court couldn’t put a name to.”
“What kind of dress?”