Dina Alstetter replied to that notion by sitting in a chair, very much in the manner of a cat staking out its turf, and lighting a fresh cigarette. “Vinnie Fields was the banal widow of a banal San Francisco billionaire and I very much doubt she’ll have any callers.”
“What do you want to tell me?”
She breathed in, breathed out, and said, “I have evidence.” She opened her purse and drew out a mini-cassette recorder.
Cardozo had to wonder, What kind of woman would bring a tape recorder to her dead sister’s viewing? and the only answer that came to him was, This kind of woman.
Dina Alstetter pressed a button. There were two voices on the tape.
One was Dina Alstetter’s. “You know he stole your clothes.”
The other voice was a shadow of Ash Canfield’s. “Did he?”
“I’m asking you. Did he? Say yes or no. You have to say it, Ash. This isn’t a videorecorder.”
“Yes.”
“Dunk stole your clothes. Duncan Canfield stole your clothes and jewels and sold them.”
“Yes.”
“He was flagrantly unfaithful to you. You knew he was unfaithful to you. He made no secret of it. He humiliated you and made you miserable.”
“Yes.”
“He introduced you to drugs and provided them.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted to divorce him and you still do.”
“Yes.”
“It’s he who wants the reconciliation, not you.”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t slept with him since the separation.”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t, Ash. Say you haven’t if you haven’t. Or have you?”
“No.”
“Do you regard him as your husband?”
A long silence.
“No.”
“You’ve intended to divorce him since the separation and you’ve never wavered in that intention.”
A long silence.
“No.”
“Is it your intention that Duncan Canfield remain in your will?”
“No.”
“Is it your intention to modify your will and to bequeath Duncan Canfield no more than one dollar? Is that your intention, Ash?”
“Yes.”
Cardozo listened and frowned, and when the tape had whirred to a stop he looked at Dina Alstetter. “You recorded that in the hospital?”
She lit another cigarette from a burning stub. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“To prove she was going to disinherit him.”
“Was she?”
“For God’s sake, is the tape in Chinese?”
“On that tape you’re stuffing words into a dying woman’s mouth.”
“We had discussions long before Ash took ill. She knew all about Dunk and his gay party set.”
“What gay party set?”
“The count and that loathesome Lew Monserat.”
“What did she know about them?”
“That they were carrying on, doing drugs, throwing orgies. That’s why she filed for a separation. She was in full possession of her faculties when she filed. Dunk has no right to her money.”
“I don’t get it. You certainly don’t look like you need the money.”
“I don’t have to need money to want justice.”
“No, but you sure seem to need his scalp. What the hell did he do—jilt you?”
“I know you only mean to be rude—but if I didn’t need a favor from you, I’d slap you for that.”
Cardozo frowned. “You’re in love with that airhead?”
She drew in a breath and let out a sigh. “Since you insist on having the background, let’s just say Dunk and I used to be friends and one day we stopped.”
“Be a pal, use someone else to stir up trouble for him. This doesn’t involve me.”
“But it most certainly does. He killed her and my feelings about Duncan Canfield don’t even enter the picture because that is a rock-bottom fact.”
“A disease killed her.”
“He gave her the disease.”
“Now how the hell did he do that?”
“The autopsy will show how.”
“There’s not going to be an autopsy. Your sister’s embalmed. Mrs. Alstetter, you have all my sympathy, and I’ll throw in some advice. You haven’t got a case, and you sure as hell haven’t got any evidence. There’s not a doubt in my mind that the son of a bitch wanted his wife dead. But there’s no such crime as malice. At least, it’s not my department, and if there is, you’re as guilty of it as he is.”
She snapped her purse shut. “All right—if I have to prove it to you by getting her medical records, I will.”
“Examination of head reveals left eye missing. Left eye socket is site of bullet entry wound.” Dan Hippolito was dictating into a microphone suspended over the examining table. “Exit wound is in left posterior parietal area.”
Dan glanced over and saw Cardozo. With his hand gloved in skin-hugging bloodied plastic, he moved the microphone aside, then lifted his curved Plexiglas face shield.
“Hiyah, Vince, I’d shake hands but you caught me in the middle of things.”
Cardozo looked down at the body of the one-eyed young male Hispanic. “Am I interrupting?”
“The patient will keep. What’s up?”
“Got time for a cup of coffee?”
“Sure.”
They went to Dan’s office, a small stark white subterranean chamber. Dan popped his hands out of the gloves. He took off his rubber apron and surgical smock and hung them on the coat stand.
There were two chairs and a desk and a table with a hot plate and a coffee pot. Dan had arranged a small forest of plants against one wall. Another wall was lined with shelves of medical books.
Cardozo took a seat. “Dan, would you look at a medical report for me?”
“Hey, there’s sloppy work in this department, but I don’t want to snitch on a colleague, okay?”
“Not to worry, this isn’t an autopsy.”
Dan came back from the hot plate with two Styrofoam cups of coffee.
Cardozo handed him the folder.
Dan turned pages. “What are you looking for?”
“A general impression. Is it kosher?”
“You know, my practice for the last twenty years has been dead people.”
“This woman is dead.”
Dan Hippolito sipped coffee and kept turning pages. “That begins to be evident. Catastrophic weight loss—fulminating fever—uremia …” He looked up, open curiosity sparking his dark eyes. “Friend of yours?”
“Friend of a friend.”
“Okay, let’s start at the beginning.” His eyes scanned. “Valium, Dilantin, phenobarbital … Was this female an alcoholic?”
“Yes.”
“So we’re medicating for alcohol-induced epilepsy.” He read on. “Stereomycin is an antifungoid, Dilantin is an antiseizure, Dramamine is an antinausea … Okay, a rabbi I am not, but this is about as kosher as a pig’s foot. What were they doing, experimenting? You wouldn’t prescribe this combination to a chimpanzee.”
“Why not?”
“The drugs counteract one another.” Dan flipped through more pages. “Procaine to desensitize the trachea.”
“Why are they doing that?”
“It’s generally done prior to a bronchoscopy.”
“What’s that?”
“Go down the throat and cut a little tissue from the lungs to biopsy for cancer. Except they’re doing a dye test on the brain artery.” Dan swiveled in his chair. “These records would make sense if she had lung cancers entering the bloodstream and metastasizing to the brain. That I could buy, but—” He stopped at the next page. “Methadone? Are these pages for one patient? Because methadone has one use and one use only, purely political, to shift addicts from free-market heroin to government-owned heroin. Was she a junkie?”
“She did a lot of drugs.”
Dan shook his head. “I don’t see a consistent diagnosis. Gamma globulin you give for hepatitis, but what’s the blood analysis? There’s no cell count, no sedimentation rate, nothing. These records are incomplete.”
He whipped through pages and came to something that made him stop.
“Now this is downright interesting. Tegretol. That’s specific for temporal lobe infection. Which means it’s not a tumor attacking the brain, it’s an organism.” Dan frowned. “What kind of brain infection did she have?”