“You’re being extraordinarily kind, and I appreciate it. But I don’t want a guard, if that’s what you’re offering.”
“Or any other way I can help.”
She shook her head. “I’ve imposed on you enough.”
“No you haven’t.”
She smiled.
“Okay,” he said. “Stay in touch. Or I’ll be worrying.”
“Don’t worry about me. Please.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Does that gate go to the street?”
“Slam it hard. It locks itself.”
After a moment he turned and crossed the lawn, passing under the leafy trees, and then he was lost to sight.
Babe Devens’s head hummed with wondering. She had seen Vince Cardozo fewer than a half-dozen times, but already she felt something she couldn’t put into words. She thought of his dark eyes, his look of weariness, of taking life sadly. She thought of his offer of protection and for some reason it made her feel a little safer.
The iron gate clanged. A pulsation seemed to pass through the darkness. She sat there a long time, wondering things about Vince Cardozo and staring at the space where he had vanished.
33
JUDGE FRANCIS DAVENPORT HELD his head back, a look of brooding fierceness coming from thick gray brows and black eyes. “Counsel, I hope you have your arguments a little better prepared tomorrow than you did today. This court will stand in recess till ten o’clock.”
The silver-handled gavel came slamming down. The judge squinted into the court and said, “Babe, come in, won’t you?”
Babe thanked the clerk who helped her wheel her chair into the judge’s chambers.
“Aren’t you looking splendid,” the judge said. Out of his robes he was a thickset man, heavy-jawed, with silver hair and a patrician accent. “What an absolutely great surprise.”
She angled her head up, offering her cheek to his lips. “Uncle Frank, I need help.”
She could see a wave of guardedness hit the judge. He was obviously afraid she’d come to ask about Scottie’s trial.
“You know, Babe, I was at your baptism at Saint Bartholomew’s. I’ve always regarded myself as your ex officio godfather.”
Her family’s money had put Francis Davenport on the bench and kept him there: he was in no position to decline to perform a favor. All he could do was tactfully dissuade her from asking.
“I happen to care about you very dearly,” he said.
“I know that, Uncle Frank, and I’m grateful.”
The judge heaved a short sigh filled with resignation. “What kind of help do you need?”
“You have police department contacts, don’t you?”
“I have a few friends among the force.”
“What can you find out about a lieutenant detective of homicide named Vincent Cardozo?”
The judge pushed his lips together. “Probably a little.”
“He’s a native New Yorker, as native as you, Babe. Grew up on Charlton Street, in Greenwich Village.”
Judge Davenport was sitting by the unlit fire in Babe’s drawing room, consulting a small leather-bound notebook.
“His father was a Portuguese Jewish immigrant who came to this country as a steam press operator. By the time of his death Baruch Cardozo was a senior administrator in the post office.”
“Baruch,” Babe said, savoring the strangeness of the name. “That’s a Hebrew word. What does it mean?”
“Sorry, Hebrew isn’t one of my languages. They called him Barry for short. Lieutenant Cardozo’s mother was an Italo-American, native born, a lay teacher at Saint Anthony’s school, where Vince had his primary education. Vince was an only child. He’s nominally Roman Catholic. His father observed High Holy Days at the Village Temple till his death and was given a Jewish burial.”
Warm summer twilight floated through the windows.
Judge Davenport turned a page of his notebook. “Vince was very popular with his schoolmates. Spoke back to the teachers, was not popular with the sisters. Ran with the neighborhood gangs. Had a few scrapes with the police when he was a teenager. No felonies of course. Went to Fordham University, political science, graduated cum laude. Graduate work at John Jay College of Criminal Justice—he still has twelve credits to go for his degree—entered the Police Academy, joined the force, worked his way up from patrolman to lieutenant detective in homicide. He’s highly thought of; his clearance rate is one of the highest.”
“What’s his private life?”
The judge was staring at Babe with a curiosity bordering on disapproval. Clearly the web of connection between her and this homicide cop was eluding him.
“Vincent Cardozo’s private life is quiet. Thirteen years ago he married Rose Romano.”
Babe pulled herself upright, spine straight, her back not touching the wheelchair.
“Rose was a schoolteacher, like Vince’s mother. He and his bride moved into a small apartment on Broome Street, not far from where Vince grew up. A year later they had a daughter, their only child, Teresa. Teresa goes to grade school at Saint Agnes, highly intelligent.”
“Are Vince and Rose Romano happy?” Babe asked. She felt remote from the man they were discussing and the life that surrounded him. Her sense of him was sketchy, unfinished; she felt a need to give him definition.
“From all reports, they were extremely happy.”
The past tense caught her. “Are they separated?”
A silence flowed by and Judge Davenport gave her a glance with a trace of warning.
“Five years ago on Christmas Eve Rose Cardozo discovered that the tape deck they were giving Teresa was defective. She went to Crazy Eddie’s in the Village to replace it. She never came home. Christmas Day a patrolman found her in the basement of a high rise being constructed on West Street. She’d been assaulted and stabbed seventy-three times with a sharp instrument.”
The words caught Babe with physical force. “His wife was murdered?”
Judge Davenport drew in a deep breath and nodded grimly.
“Did they find the killer?”
“Never.”
A knot twisted in Babe’s stomach. He’s living with that, she thought. He’s faced that and he’s gone on.
When the judge had gone, Babe took the elevator upstairs. She wheeled to her dressing room and reached resolutely for her crutches.
“Oh Billi,” Babe sighed, staring out at the city sliding past the limousine windows. “Sometimes I think too much has changed. I wonder if I don’t need a thousand years’ more sleep.”
“You’re doing exactly the right thing. All you need, my little princess, is to get smack back in the saddle.”
Babe prayed as the limousine drove west on Forty-seventh and south on Broadway. She prayed when the driver stopped and opened the door for her. Getting out, she found she was still horribly awkward with her crutches.
Billi cleared their way through the stream of humanity. Taxis and construction trucks blocked the Thirty-ninth Street crossing. The air was full of a thousand accents and smells. There was an energy to people’s walks, an animation to their faces. It was as though the city was alive again after a long holiday. People gestured with their hands more than Babe remembered. The population of the city had become more Mediterranean and Caribbean. Faces were darker, sensuality more explicit.
Billi held open the do-not-open steel-and-glass door of a smoked-glass skyscraper on the corner of Thirty-eighth.
Babe hesitated, remembering her little boutique on the ground floor of a Park Avenue town house. Do I really want to do this? she thought, and the answer came, Yes, I really want to do this.
“Sixth elevator,” Billi said.
On the way up to the twentieth floor, Babe’s ears popped four times.
Billi steered her toward a door with a huge gold Babethings logo. He kissed his fingers and pressed them over her lips. “Welcome home,” he whispered.
“Good morning, Mrs. Devens,” the receptionist called out, as though they were old friends, and Babe smiled back, feeling all kinds of uncertainty.
Billi guided her along a corridor opening onto various complexes of smaller rooms. “We have three floors,” he said, “but this is the main floor. Don’t worry—even I can’t find my way around.”