“Genug, young lady.” Judge Martinez waved an impatient hand. “Let’s weigh risks. There’s the risk society faces if Mr. Loring is free on bail. As he has no previous record, that risk is minimal. Then there’s the risk Mr. Loring faces if he remains in police custody. So long as we have right-thinking gay-bashing hombres like Lieutenant Cardozo on our force, that risk is considerable. Bail of one hundred thousand dollars is granted.”
Outside the courtroom, Cardozo’s white-knuckled fist came up and slammed into the wall.
He stood there a moment, hardly breathing, hardly moving. The light slanting down from the fluorescent strip in the ceiling flickered.
A chip of plaster flaked down.
He punched the wall again.
Cardozo was reading the five on Midge Bailey, a new homicide.
No sign of forced entry, of struggle or violence. Nothing missing from the apartment. Eighty-seven dollars and a VISA card and a MasterCard in her purse.
The woman next door had been almost apologetic for having called the police. The dog was howling. The door was open.
Cardozo studied the crime scene photos of the fifty-five-year-old housewife. He had spent his career digging around in the mud of low tide, but when he saw a human being worked over the way someone had gone over Mrs. Bailey, he realized he knew nothing whatsoever about the things that crawled on the ocean floor.
The phone gave two sharp clangs. He reached over, dragging it closer by the cord, lifting the receiver. “Hello?”
“Lieutenant Cardozo?” A woman. Cultivated voice.
“Speaking.”
“This is Babe Devens.”
Cardozo settled himself back in his chair. “Well, hello.”
“Am I calling at a bad time?”
“You’re calling at an excellent time. What’s the trouble?”
“If you have time, I’d like to talk to you.”
“I have time,” he said. “Talk.”
“Could we meet?”
“Mrs. Devens, what are you doing in half an hour?” He knew a restaurant on Sixty-seventh Street: bad food, watered booze, good privacy. “There’s a place near here called Danny’s.”
Cardozo walked up Lexington toward Danny’s Bar and Grill, not thinking about Midge Bailey, not minding the mugginess, not minding the red light that stopped him on Sixty-sixth, enjoying the sunshine and the skimpy, bright clothes on the women.
Danny’s was almost deserted this time of the day, and Cardozo was aware of a tight expectancy in his chest as he pushed through the door into the air-conditioned dimness.
The late afternoon light made the restaurant a mysterious dark blue pool. A few early drinkers had taken up places at the bar, huddled in their separate solitudes. A jukebox was crooning softly.
When his tired eyes adjusted he could see down the rows of deserted tables. There was sunlight in the window and it outlined Babe Devens sitting at a far table.
She saw him, and a nervously ingratiating smile flashed across her face.
“Good to see you up and around,” Cardozo said.
“I’m around.” She tapped her armrest. She was sitting in a wheelchair. “Not quite up yet.”
“That’ll come in no time.” He pulled out a chair and sat down facing her. “You’re looking terrific.”
“Thanks. I have a feeling if I can stay far away from hospitals, I might learn how to live again.”
The owner, a burly Irishman with enormous sideburns, came over to take their orders.
“What are you having?” she asked Cardozo.
“A draft Michelob.”
She said she’d have the same. He hadn’t figured her for the draft beer type, but when Danny brought the drafts he liked the way she drank hers and seemed to enjoy the taste.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.
“It’s not exactly a police matter. It’s just that you helped me, and I wanted to thank you in person, and …” She pushed her glass around on the table. “I’ve been trying to see the records of Scottie’s second trial. They’re sealed.”
Cardozo frowned.
“It isn’t usual, is it, to seal court records?”
“Not unless you’re a Kennedy and you accidentally drowned a campaign worker who absolutely was not your mistress and the judge is a friend of the family.”
“Scottie doesn’t have that kind of clout.”
How pretty she is, Cardozo thought, the soft blond hair slanting across her forehead and the large inquiring eyes fixing him with their cool wondering stare, and the bright mouth, silent and expectant now.
“Your daughter was a minor at the time,” he said. “The judge might have been protecting her from publicity.”
“That doesn’t make sense. She was a minor during the first trial, and those records aren’t sealed.”
That stopped Cardozo for a moment. He tried to match the precociously sexy model in the Babethings ads, the teasing face, the seminude glossy body peeling out of the hip-hugging jeans, with his notion of childhood. Cordelia couldn’t have been older than fourteen when those ads began. “There could have been new evidence introduced in the second trial—testimony that gave evidence of another crime, or prejudiced a case already in the courts, or libeled somebody. Hard to say. Judges have pretty broad leeway. They don’t often seal records, but when they do they’re not called to account for their decision.”
“Is there any way I could get to those records?”
“You could sue. You could petition the court.”
Frustration showed in her face. “Lieutenant Cardozo—”
“I wish you’d call me Vince.”
“If you call me Babe.”
“Okay, Babe.”
“Vince—”
That first names broke the odd little pocket of tension that had built up. She smiled, and he had a sense she would be a very easy person to be with.
“You testified at the first trial,” she said. “Did you testify at the second?”
“The honor of my presence was not requested at the second. By then the fix was in.”
“The verdict was rigged?”
“What verdict? The state bought the plea bargain.”
“How was that arranged?”
“Your husband’s attorney made the D.A. an offer and the D.A. accepted. In my opinion the state had the evidence to lock your husband up and in the second trial they threw it away.”
She was looking at him. Her eyes were not saying anything. He could sense that inside this lovely quiet woman there was a huge amount of determination.
“At the first trial Cordelia was the only eyewitness against Scottie,” she said. “He was convicted on her testimony. But at the second trial that conviction was reversed. And Cordelia’s testimony is sealed. Why? What did she say?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“She doesn’t remember.”
“Doesn’t remember or doesn’t want to?”
“A little of both, I think. It was too painful for her.”
Cardozo nodded. “I can see that. A lot of people abandoned your little girl. By the way, who took care of her?”
“My parents raised her. But legally she was the ward of a family friend—Billi von Kleist.”
Cardozo’s eyebrows went up. “Why did she have a guardian?”
“Scottie and I were almost killed in a car crash—our fault, we were driving drunk. Billi was a good friend, and we thought in case anything ever really happened to us, there should be someone to look after Cordelia. Billi adored her, and she adored him, and so I appointed Billi. I never thought it would actually come to pass. But then I went into coma, and Scottie was charged, so Billi became Cordelia’s legal guardian.”
“But Von Kleist let your parents take care of her?”
“He’s not a family man. All he really wanted to be was a friend to her. The sort my parents could never be.”
“You don’t think too highly of your parents.”
“I think they’re confused people. They mix up the nineteenth century with the twentieth. I think they put Cordelia up to testifying against Scottie. They’ve always disliked him. I think Cordelia lied in the first trial and told the truth in the second.”
“What truth?”