“Did my parents pay Dina too?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “You’ll have to ask her that yourself.”
“Do you know what I can’t understand?” Babe said. “Why did the insulin in the stud box show up after the first trial and not before?”
Dina Alstetter gave a cold little smile that wasn’t a smile at all. “It would have showed up anytime anyone had had the sense to look.”
“And you were the first to have the sense?”
“I was the first to have the curiosity.”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Babe said. “I think that bottle of insulin was planted long after my coma.”
Dina Alstetter exhaled. She didn’t move or even show a reaction. “Why would anyone have planted it?”
“So you could drive another nail into Scottie in print.”
“That’s rather naive of you, Babe.” Dina Alstetter’s hair was long, straight, and dark and she gave it a quick toss. “It’s not my habit to allow myself to be used.”
“If the insulin wasn’t a plant,” Babe said, “why wasn’t it evidence at the trial? Why didn’t the police even find it?”
“Because the police are not particularly effective at their work.” Dina Alstetter rose smoothly from the chair. She wore designer blue jeans and a bodiced lace blouse, and most of her length was in her legs. She walked to the window of her Beekman Place sitting room. Sunlight poured through in a dazzling slant. “Babe, you’ve been away an awfully long time. A lot has changed in this city.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You may not know that I’ve taken up investigative journalism since my divorce. I’ve won awards. I’ve even been mentioned for a Pulitzer. I’m not trying to impress you, but you should have some awareness that I enjoy the respect of the journalistic community—I may be Ash Canfield’s sister, but that doesn’t mean I’m some neophyte dumb enough to run a story that’s a plant.”
“Did my parents pay you to publish that article?”
Dina’s head whipped around. “Absolutely not.”
They stared at one another.
“Did the police ever look at the bottle?” Babe asked.
“As a matter of fact, they didn’t. I don’t suppose New York’s Finest get around to reading SoHo magazine.”
“And you didn’t take it to them?”
“My lawyer advised me not to.”
“Then who has it now?”
“I have it.”
“I’d like to see it.”
Babe wheeled herself across the sidewalk, steering clear of shade trees and uniformed maids walking poodles. The neighborhood was a luxurious preserve of solidly built pre-World War I co-ops, with the odd brownstone town house sprinkled in.
The Provence Pharmacy stood on the corner of First Avenue. As Babe approached, the automated door opened onto a splash of yellow and green frictions de bain on special, piled in neat pyramids.
A cool breeze of perfumed air conditioning fanned her face.
The young druggist behind the counter looked at her wheelchair with frank curiosity. “Help you?” he offered.
Babe took the bottle from her purse. “I phoned the manufacturer,” she said. “They told me they sold this lot number to you.”
The smile on the druggist’s face dimmed. His hair was richly dark and clipped almost in a crew cut. His face betrayed a residual sprinkling of teenage acne. His eyes met Babe’s for just a second longer than necessary. “It’s possible,” he said.
“Is there some way you can check?”
A frown slipped across his face. “I can see if it’s in the computer,” he said doubtfully.
“I’d be grateful,” Babe smiled.
He went behind a glass partition and two minutes later he came back holding what looked like a three-inch cash register printout. “We filled this prescription almost six years ago.”
Babe’s heart gave a skip behind her ribs. “Could you tell me who you filled it for?”
32
“YOUR HONOR, THIS IS a wholly improper arrest,” Ted Morgenstern’s voice boomed into the half-empty courtroom. Cords stood out at the base of his extraordinarily wrinkled neck. “Lieutenant Cardozo interrogated Mr. Loring without counsel and without advising him of his Miranda rights.”
Watching Morgenstern, Cardozo felt a sort of weary, sick recognition: not only of the face that was never without a tan, the hawk eyes, the thin nose and lips, the gray-fuzzed shaven head crossed with wrinkles and scars, but of the delivery, the cranked-up outrage, the whole farce of legal nit-picking that masqueraded as a struggle against injustice.
Lucinda MacGill, tall, showing a mouthful of fine white teeth, moved with a tennis pro’s grace toward the bench. Her hair bounced lightly. “Your Honor, Lieutenant Cardozo wasn’t obliged to read Mr. Loring his rights until arresting him.”
“From the moment Lieutenant Cardozo waved a warrant in my client’s face, Mr. Loring was effectively under arrest!” Morgenstern made a heroic gesture that threw open the jacket of his tux, revealing mother-of-pearl shirt studs and a blue silk cummerbund. It was unlikely dress for court, but Counselor Morgenstern obviously had no time to rush home and change before tonight’s dinner-and-dancing date.
Behind Judge Joseph Martinez’s eyes was a sudden flare-up of interest. He lifted his chin and cocked his head slightly to one side, arching his graying moustache. “At what time did Lieutenant Cardozo wave an arrest warrant in Mr. Loring’s face?”
Cardozo rose from the front row of pale varnished benches. “Shortly after ten this morning Claude Loring was shown a warrant issued by Judge Levin.”
Judge Martinez’s eyes were cold and assessing. “When did you read him his rights?”
“After talking with him and determining there was cause for arrest.”
“What time, Lieutenant?”
“Around noon.”
“By which time,” Ted Morgenstern broke in, “Mr. Loring was suffering acute methaqualone poisoning.”
Lucinda MacGill stood there, tall, light-haired, alert and sharp. “The police did not drug Mr. Loring. He went to the men’s room and drugged himself.”
“One thing at a time, Counselor. Did Lieutenant Cardozo interrogate Claude Loring for two hours without reading him his Miranda or allowing him counsel?”
“Five hours, Your Honor,” Ted Morgenstern interrupted. “I didn’t see my client until three o’clock this afternoon at Saint Clare’s Hospital.”
Cardozo’s eyes connected with Morgenstern’s and hate flashed between them. The emotion was more than personaclass="underline" it was a natural instinct, an antipathy between alien species.
They both knew the city: who the players were, how things got done, what worked. The difference between them was that they played on different teams for different rewards. Morgenstern had the notoriety, the plugs in gossip columns, the town house in the East Sixties, the dukes and duchesses to dinner, the limo. Cardozo had the citation for bravery, the forty-seven thousand salary, the walkup apartment, Mrs. Epstein going dutch with him on lamb chops, the Honda Civic.
“For three hours no one could see Mr. Loring because he was unconscious,” Lucinda MacGill said. “That was Mr. Loring’s choice.”
The judge’s head had tipped back, his mouth slightly open. “It’s the police’s duty to safeguard any person in their custody. In this duty, as in his Miranda obligations, Lieutenant Cardozo conspicuously failed.”
Without a beat of hesitation Ted Morgenstern stepped forward. “Your Honor, I request that this charge be dismissed.”
“Murder one? Dream on, Counselor.”
“In that case I request reasonable bail for Claude Loring.”
Lucinda MacGill stepped toward the bench. “The people oppose bail for Claude Loring. He’s a sociopath, impulsive and unreliable. To free him before trial could put innocent citizens at risk and it could result in his absconding.”
“Your Honor, it could be a year or more before this case comes to trial. Are the police asking a South African-style preventive detention?”
“Your Honor, I resent the attempt to turn this arrest into an act of political repression. Mr. Loring is accused of a serious and brutal charge, the taking of an innocent human life.”