Deadly Rich (12 page)

Cardozo turned to Sam Richards. “Sam, how are we coming?”

Sam Richards pulled a notebook from the pocket of his blue blazer. “Jogging pouches aren’t manufactured in the city.”

“Nothing’s manufactured in the city,” Greg Monteleone said, “except crack and illegitimate babies.”

Sam Richards prided himself on dressing like a gentleman, jacket and tie always, never a scuff on his shoes; and he’d mastered a cool lack of excitability to go with the dress. He gazed now at Greg Monteleone with no more involvement than the anchor on a TV news show. “Do we want to take a comedy break, or do we want to hear my report?”

“Greg will get his turn,” Cardozo said.

Sam Richards continued. “Red jogging pouches with black
flamingo
stitching are made by Pedro Cardin of Taiwan, they’re ripped off by Petro Cardin of Manila, they’re imported into the metropolitan area by Jolly Boy Imports of East New York, and they’re bootlegged by Nordic Novelty of Bushwick.”

Richards had the sort of smooth African skin that seems to sweat nothing but after-shave lotion. His eyes were brown and large, and a relaxed cynicism flickered in them. As he flipped through his pages he allowed a weary smile to peep through. Every detective in the room knew that most homicide investigations were hopeless until a witness came forward or the killer gave himself up.

“Jolly Boy supplies four jobbers who wholesale to four hundred thirteen outlets. Nordic Novelty doesn’t keep records.”

“Under the circumstances,” Cardozo said, “let’s back-burner the pouches. How are we coming with sporting-goods outlets?”

“In the metropolitan area,” Sam Richards said, “there are sixty-seven outlets selling those weight-lifter belts and gloves. I spoke to eighteen yesterday. Nobody recognizes the Identi-Kits or the photo.”

“Fellas, we are making a fundamentally asshole assumption here.” Greg Monteleone never used a word like
wrong
in front of Ellie when a word like
asshole
would do. “Why is this guy going to buy an item he could walk into any gym and rip off?”

“I was getting to gyms,” Sam Richards said. “High rents have put most commercial outfits out of business. There are only about thirty left in the five boroughs. But if we’re talking high school gyms and private school gyms, add a hundred twenty.”

“Mr. Boom Box does not go to private school,” Greg Monteleone stated flatly. “And I frankly doubt he goes to
any
school.”

“Because he looks Hispanic you don’t think he has an education?” Ellie challenged.

Greg Monteleone sprawled one arm over the back of his folding wooden chair. He studied Siegel with elaborate, almost theatrical disdain. “Because he acts like a jerk I know he doesn’t have an education, and so do you.”

“Not that I don’t trust Greg’s intuition,” Cardozo said, “but let’s still check schools.”

Sam Richards sighed. “I’m only one pair of feet, Vince.”

“Reilly said he can steal us two men.”

“Big spender,” Greg Monteleone said.

“What about me?” Ellie said.

“You get the next two.” Cardozo turned in his swivel chair. “Okay, Greg. You’ve got the mike.”

Monteleone stretched his arms overhead and yawned. “I knocked on a lot of doors in the Marsh and Bonner’s area yesterday.” He consulted his notepad. “Nothing useful. Two maybes on the female Identi-Kit, one on the male, nothing on Delancey. Vince, are we working to rule on this? Do you want a five on every interview?”

Regulations required a written report on every witness or potential witness interviewed. Because the number of the report form ended in a five, cops called the reports fives, and they hated them.

“I think fives are a piss-poor idea when we’ve got these few hands,” Greg said. “Witnesses remember forty-eight hours, tops, and then their imaginations begin playing tricks. Anytime we spend now typing up notes and filling out forms is time we could be tracking down a lead before it fizzles. I spoke to forty-four people yesterday, and if I was doing a five for every interview, I wouldn’t have got through ten.”

“Okay,” Cardozo said. “But don’t anyone get eight weeks backlogged on your fives. Maybe one day a week tidy up the paper work.”

“You mean Sunday,” Greg Monteleone said. “Our day off.”

“There’s no day off,” Cardozo said. “We’re working overtime.” Cardozo turned to Carl Malloy. “Carl, what are we finding out about Jim Delancey?”

“Enough to fill a postage stamp.” Malloy took out his notepad. “At eleven fifty-five yesterday morning, Delancey showed up for work, on foot and alone. At two forty-five he took a five-minute cigarette break, alone, outside the kitchen door. At three o’clock, figuring we’re more interested in what he does after work then during, I took a four-hour break.”

Today everything about Carl Malloy was just a little rumpled—the trousers of his brown suit, his shirt, his half-loosened tie. His hair was still dark on top, but it was going gray at the temples and it needed a combing. He didn’t exactly look bad, but he missed neatness by just enough that it was a little embarrassing to look at him. You had the feeling he was basically a nice, careful guy, but maybe he’d argued with his boss or his wife and he’d momentarily mislaid his self-respect. People would instinctively look away from a guy like that, and it was the right look if you were running a tail on a suspect.

“I was back at Archibald’s at seven. At eight-twenty Delancey left, alone, and went home, on foot, to Twenty-nine Beekman Place.”

“This guy’s a salad chef,” Greg Monteleone said, “and he lives on Beekman Place?”

“With his mother.”

“What the hell do rents run over there?”

“You don’t rent on Beekman Place,” Malloy said. “You own.”

“So what does this mother-son team own, a town house?”

“Two bedrooms on the ninth floor at number twenty-nine.”

“Who paid?”

Malloy turned to beam Monteleone an acidic smile. “At the moment, Greg, I don’t have that information, but if you like, I can phone Mrs. Delancey and ask.”

“Did he talk to anyone on the way home?” Cardozo said. “Did he seem interested in any of the other people on the street?”

“He likes kids,” Malloy said.

“Holy moly,” Monteleone said, “we got us a molester.”

“He smiles when he sees kids,” Malloy said. “Why do I feel I’m defending this guy? Once or twice an adult went by with a child, and Delancey lit up. He didn’t stop, he didn’t stare, he didn’t pull out a pocketful of candy. He just looked happy and kept walking. He was home at nine-oh-five. I hung around Beekman Place for two hours, and he didn’t come out again. Vince, you said get a general idea what he’s about and where he goes. Nobody mentioned a twenty-four-hour tail. I was getting a general idea he’d turned in for the night, and I was getting tired so I went home. I figured I’d pick him up again tonight after work and put in a full night staking him out. Unless you have other ideas?”

“No.” Cardozo shook his head. “Keep going. Get a feel for what Jim Delancey is doing with his time.” He turned now to Ellie Siegel. “Ellie, you’re our resident expert on Judaica. If the killer lit a Jewish Sabbath candle, do you think he was Jewish?”

“It’s a flaky question,” she said. “But if you want a flaky answer—he wasn’t Orthodox, because it’s the job of the women in the house to light the candles, and the candles are lit on
Shabbes
eighteen minutes before sundown. Oona was killed on a weekday, not
Shabbes,
and she was killed in the early afternoon. I really can’t see even a demented link with Jewish ritual here. But possibly the killer is Catholic. They don’t sell votive candles in the supermarket so maybe he used a Jewish candle, which supermarkets in New York do carry.”

“Ellie’s a sly one,” Greg Monteleone said. “She’s going to blame it on us.”

“Greg,” Ellie said, “this is not an us-versus-them issue. Or do you still believe matzohs are made of Christian children’s blood?”

“Which brand?”

“You’re going to get me angry, Greg.”

Ellie and Greg seemed to have a TV comedy act going—Greg would come on the fascist pig, and Ellie would play the outraged liberal. Cardozo had nothing against the act, but he didn’t need it on company time.

“Okay.” Cardozo placed both hands on the edge of the desk and stood. “Clock’s ticking. Back to the hunt, guys.”

Ellie did not leave with the others. “Vince, something’s been bothering me.”

“I don’t want to hear about Greg. You two please just try to get along.”

“You’re not going to hear about Greg. Not from me.” She laid a Xerox of a news clipping on the desk.

Cardozo’s eyes went down to the heading, “Dizey’s Dish” … He skimmed, taking in
solitaire-cut apples en salade
and
thrilled with her new Dauphine-Pléïade by Zelziac of Cologne, the ritziest bidet in the world, but you knew that.

He recognized the column that had showed up in the waste-basket in the changing room. Now his eye came to the paragraph Ellie had highlighted in yellow.

Starting today at 10
A.M.
, everyone who is anyone and that includes Mrs. Charles Evremonde and Petra (“Slim”) Paley, will be dropping in on the second floor at Marsh and Bonner’s to see the divine little boutique that Ingrid Hansen just opened, specializing in casual, chic summer loafing clothes. If you’re looking for a fair-weather silk scarf, look no farther!

“This must be the twentieth time I’ve read it,” Cardozo said. “Still seems like a straightforward paid plug to me. What am I missing?”

“Vince, you lack what I’d call a certain fast-track sensibility.” Ellie smiled. “There are those who do it, and then there are those who read about it because they can’t afford to do it and wouldn’t know how to, even if they struck oil. I find it a real wrong note that this item shows up in that wastebasket.”

“How so?”

“Dizey Duke is a nonstop commercial masquerading as an insider society column. She syndicates her scam in eighty-some tabloids nationwide, right after the sex crimes and just before the hernia-truss ads. The people who shop at Marsh and Bonner’s don’t take her advice—they laugh at it.”

“I thought she was sort of respected.”

“Come off it, Vince. When Dizey Duke goes north,
they
stampede south. When Dizey’s in Morocco noshing couscous with Malcolm Forbes,
they’re
in Marietta Tree’s garden nibbling blinis. If the people Dizey writes about take
any
advice besides one another’s, it’s Vogue’s and
Harper’s
.”

“So you’re telling me this clipping didn’t belong to any of the customers who changed in that room.”

“Not on your life.”

“Then whose was it?”

“The killer’s.”

THEY WERE DISCUSSING DICK BRAIDY
and her troublesome, contradictory feelings toward her ex-husband.

“I don’t know why I got so angry at him,” Leigh said.

Luddie handed her a cup of coffee. “Because he’s earned your anger.”

She shook her head. “No. He was really very sweet and concerned. He even tried to persuade me to exercise with his trainer.”

“I take it he’s still going to that jet-set gym?”

She nodded. “It must take terrific discipline. He’s absolutely determined to get himself into shape.”

“You mean he’s absolutely determined to butter up the celebrities who go there.”

She took a chair by the window of Luddie’s living room and sat gazing out at the city. Beyond the glass, spires threw off sparkling points of light. “You have a truly low opinion of Dick.”

Luddie gazed at her across the tips of his steepled fingers. “Does that surprise you?”

“Yes. And it hurts me. If you don’t respect the people I respect, then you don’t really respect me, and what’s the point our even talking?”

“Leigh, this innocence of yours is wearing awfully thin.
I
know you don’t even like this idiot. How come
you
don’t know it?”

For a moment she felt lost. “Luddie, I resent that. I love him—I do—”

“And do you always divorce the people you love?”

“To save our friendship, yes. He’s probably the best friend I ever had.”

“He’s a best friend like all the ten thousand other best friends in your life. Which is to say, you don’t even know the guy.”

She fixed disquieted eyes on Luddie. She realized he was attacking her, and she couldn’t understand why. “That’s a very distorted view of me and my life.”

“Name me one good trait Dick Braidy possesses.”

“He’s generous. He’s funny. He’s a good listener. He’s a great escort. Every woman in town swears by him.”

“You mean he’s a tattle-tale with the most indiscreet tongue in Manhattan.”

“In all Dick Braidy’s life, he has
never
spoken against a friend.”

“You actually believe what you just said.” Luddie’s hand hesitated and it was a telling hesitation. “May I read to you from today’s ‘Dizey’s Dish’?” He bent down to pick up that morning’s
Trib
from the floor. He folded it open to a middle page.

A prominent actress-socialite, who has had no trouble convincing millions in her twenty-some starring screen roles, can’t get New York State’s star-chamber of a parole board or the city’s disaster of police department to take her seriously. The beauty with the moss-green gaze has evidence that a certain convicted killer was prematurely paroled and at least one Manhattan figure has paid the price—with her life.

Leigh’s first reaction wasn’t shock, it was pure denial: she’d heard wrong. “You’re kidding. You’re making that up.”

Luddie sat calm as a television anchorperson reporting live from the scene of someone else’s catastrophe. He shook his head.

Shock slowly crystallized into understanding. “Shit. You’re not kidding. She really printed that.”

“And unless it was you that gave that story to Dizey, it couldn’t have been anyone but your beloved ex.”

“Look, he didn’t mean it. She wormed it out of him.”

“I don’t buy it. Dick Braidy isn’t a victim of some gossip columnist’s cunning—he’s a broker on the same exchange. He purveys rumor and hot poop to buttress his own social power, and the victim, my friend, is you.” Luddie laid the newspaper down and stared at her. “And I mean that literally. A real killer has really killed, and Dick Braidy is telling the world that you’re ready to finger the guy.”