VC03 - Mortal Grace (54 page)

Bonnie paid her cab and hurried into 474. It was a run-down loft building and several of the floors had wood planks nailed across the windows.

Cardozo double-parked and propped his placard in the windshield. He crossed the street and entered the tiny vestibule. Flyers and messages had been stickered to the wall: a Chinese take-out menu; a hand-scrawled
Mamie—will be back 5
P.M
.
—
L.
; a typed plea to
Please keep the street door locked after 8
P.M.
There have been incidents in the vestibule.

The old-fashioned dial indicator over the elevator was pointing to
8.
He studied the building’s directory.

There were ten floors and ten tenants. Most of the tenants had weirdly spaced gaps that made their names unpronounceable. Letters had obviously fallen off the board. The name
ERBRO
, however, was centered very neatly beside the numeral
8.

“How’s Beverly adjusting to your new work shift?” Cardozo asked. It was 9:30
P.M
. and he was sitting in the cubicle that was Esther Epstein’s office at the V.A. hospital.

“I can’t say she’s in love with these hours.” Mrs. Epstein treated her moody Angora cat like a surrogate daughter, and the fastest way into her graces was to ask about Beverly. “But a job’s a job, and in this economy, at my age, I’m lucky to have one.”

“Esther, I need some information. Could you to look up the army record of a man called Colin Draper for me?” He spelled the name.

Her large, dark eyes examined him. “This is official?”

“It’s official.”

“Because we can’t give out information for personal reasons.”

“I don’t personally know the man.”

She flattened the front of her white cotton blouse and sat there. He was aware of a fierce, pushy decency in her; aware, too, that he was going to have to guilt-trip her.

“Do I need a court order to ask a favor from my own next-door neighbor?”

“Save your court order, I’m not a criminal.” She sighed. “At least not yet.” She stuck her head out of the cubicle and peered up and down the gray-carpeted corridor. Her hands tapped instructions into the keyboard. Little blips of light flashed and a column of amber print crawled up the screen. “Colin Draper served with the 32nd infantry in Panama.”

“What rank?”

“He was a Catholic chaplain.”

Cardozo frowned. “He was ordained?”

“Of course he was ordained, how else do you think he could have been a chaplain?”

Cardozo could recognize a fact when he was staring into an I.B.M. monitor at one. “What kind of discharge did they give him?”

The screen jump-cut to a new page of print.

“I shouldn’t be telling anyone this without a court order. If you weren’t a cop—”

“But I am a cop, Esther.”

“Colin Draper was given a medical discharge. He had a psychotic break. He’s still getting medication—Thorazine, fluorizan, methamphetamine, zilboacin…”

She stopped. The cursor flickered restlessly at the bottom of the screen. She frowned. “Your friend missed his last appointment. That was over a week ago.”

“Colin Draper is not a friend of mine.”

“Seems funny.” She was shaking her head. “He couldn’t get along without his medication. Maybe something’s happened to him?”

“Could he be getting it under another name?”

“Possibly.”

“See if you have anyone called Erbro in there.” He spelled it.

She shook her head again. “No
Erbro
listed.”

He ran it through his mind. “How often are these files updated?”

“This one’s updated every time he comes in for medication.”

“The minute he comes in—the minute he shows up on this computer—would you let me know?”

She gave him a tight-mouthed stare.

“I’ll visit Beverly every night while you’re out. I’ll play with her.”

“She likes being read to.”

Cardozo kissed her. “Esther, I love you. And can you get me his fingerprints?”

SIXTY-EIGHT

“I
T’S GETTING HARDER AND
harder to spring you,” Pierre Strauss said as he and Jaycee Wheeler came down the concrete steps of the Lower Manhattan House of Detention. Police sirens and Con Ed drills jammed the air. “This last escapade cost two thousand cash.”

Jaycee looked up at a sky swirling with pigeons. She rubbed her wrists. They were still swollen. “We’ll sue them. They made me wear handcuffs even when I went to the John. The heteros didn’t wear cuffs.”

He shook his head.

“I’m serious. That’s discrimination.
You
try wiping your ass with handcuffs on.”

“I’m sure I’ll get a chance one of these days. Can I give you a lift?”

“Sure.”

Inside the cooled cavern of Pierre Strauss’s Porsche he asked, “Where can I drop you?”

“St. Pat’s.”

“Christ, Jaycee—not again.” The red light changed and he eased the blue Porsche across Canal.

“We’re not going to ease up on the cardinal till he eases up on us.”

Pierre Strauss didn’t answer. He had never yet won an argument with Jaycee. That was why he liked her and that was why he bailed her out with his own firm’s petty cash.

She was staring out the tinted glass at shop windows along Bowery. “Where do you suppose I can get a jar of dog piss?”

“I doubt the ASPCA sells it.”

“Think anyone would know the difference if I used green Gatorade?”

A little after 6
P.M.
that evening, Barry Ignatius Cardinal Fitzwilliam mounted to the pulpit of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to read the lesson.

Turnout was small. There were no more than two hundred souls spread out in a space that was built to hold three thousand.

Then the shouting began.

What most surprised the cardinal about the interruption was the sheer volume. There seemed to be thousands of protesters.

Yet, when he raised his eyes from the Bible and peered over his reading glasses, he saw only a dozen or so, scattered through the pews. Anger was burning and ugly in their faces. They raised bell jars of urine-colored liquid into the air. They began dropping communion wafers into the jars.

The cardinal felt shock and a sadness that went to the bone.

He watched plainclothes policemen and policewomen close in to arrest the demonstrators. Over half tonight’s congregation, he realized, were cops on duty.

He had to wonder:
Doesn’t anyone come here to worship anymore?

“I’ve heard from Father Damien again.” Jonquil let a tease sneak into her drawl. “He wants to see me—badly.”

“Are you going to see him?” Cardozo’s voice asked.

“That depends.” Jonquil stooped to check her reflection in the steel rectangle of the coin return. She adjusted the angle of her newly washed and spin-dried blond hair. “Are you still interested in meeting with him?”

“Very much so.”

“If I set it up, what do I get—besides your eternal gratitude?”

“What do you want?”

“How about easing my parole so I’m free to leave town legally.”

“I might be able to swing it.”

“And—there’s an
and
—how does a thousand dollars sound? We’re talking cash, okay?”

“What’s your phone number?”

“The George Washington is not that kind of hotel. I’ll phone you in about an hour.”

Jonquil placed the receiver back on the hook. She waited for the muffled clunk of the quarter dropping, then carefully worked the cylinder of paper napkin out of the coin-return slot. Her quarter was stuck to the Vaseline-coated tip.

Across the lobby, the desk clerk looked up from his falling-apart copy of the
Paris Review.
Under arched eyebrows, he shot Jonquil a mildly reprimanding glance. She slipped the napkin and the quarter into her change purse and blew him a kiss.

Her movements were swift now and resolved. She stepped into the elevator and pushed 5. She let herself back into her room.

“Everything. The asphalt. The steel. The behavior.” Father was still carrying on his half of the conversation.

“Sugar, you’re so right.” With a neat curtsying dip, Jonquil retrieved his glass from the floor. He had slouched so far down in the armchair that his ass was practically parked on the rug.

“Too much decay in this city.”

“Mmm-hmm. Say that again.” She dropped ice cubes into his glass and hers. She topped hers with iced tea and his with rum. Father had brought the bottle. He always brought the bottle. There was barely half an inch left in the bottom.

She held the glasses up to the light to be sure the colors matched. Father hated to drink alone.

“Too many people have fallen away from God.” He tilted his head back and stared toward the elephant-shaped crack in the ceiling. “Fallen away from the sacraments.”

“That’s the trouble, mmm-hmm.” She arranged mint sprigs between the ice cubes. Each glass got a lemon wedge neatly bisected on the rim. She crossed the room and placed his glass firmly in his hand.

“The sacraments could save this city.” Father lifted his rum through a slant of lamplight and took two long, gulping swallows. “Communion and confession could turn New York around.”

“Speaking of confession…” Jonquil arranged herself at Father’s feet, her legs out to the side. “There’s this cop that’s been on my conscience. Vincent Cardozo?”

Father was silent for a moment. And for another.

“He’s asking me a lot of questions about you.”

A flick of Father’s eyes held her. “About me?”

“About you, Daddy.”

“Did you tell him what he wanted to know?”

“He thinks I did.” Jonquil raised a manicured hand. The tip of her forefinger stroked the softening line of Father’s jaw. “I pulled a little of the old wool over his eyes.”

“You’re good at that.” Father diddled his fingers through the curls of her wig. “Awfully good.”

“It’s no trick. When a man likes you, he wants to believe you. He almost
has
to believe you.” Jonquil sighed. “But my conscience hurts something awful.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s bad karma to lie. Maybe I should tell him the truth.”

She gave Father’s mind a moment to edge toward comprehension.

“Unless…unless you have some way of persuading me not to?”

Father’s eyes locked on to hers. Suddenly they were icy and sober. “How could I persuade you”—he burped softly—“persuade you not to?”

Jonquil forced a dry swallow down the constricting column of her throat. God, how she hated moments of truth! “Maybe you could advance me a couple thousand?” She pressed Father’s hand to the beating skin of her breast implant. “For services—to be rendered?”

“You’re going to have to account for this money, you know.” Captain Tom O’Reilly counted out twenty-five twenties on his desk top. Beside them he counted out ten fifties.

“I appreciate this,” Cardozo said.

“You’ll need something to carry it in.” O’Reilly handed him a precinct business envelope. “I hope you do know what you’re doing. Because your story’s all over the place. Listening to you makes me feel I’ve been shot in the head.”

Cardozo stuffed the bills into the envelope. They were old currency, wrinkled and faded and soft as laundered cotton. “You haven’t been shot in the head, sir.”

Cardozo returned to his cubicle. He phoned the George Washington Hotel and asked to speak to Jonquil.

“Sorry,” the desk clerk said, “there are no phones in the rooms.”

“Could I trouble you to go up and knock?”

“I can’t leave the desk. Anyway, she’s got a priest with her.”

A starter’s pistol went off in Cardozo’s chest. “Don’t let that priest leave.”

“And who the hell are you?”

“My name’s Cardozo. I’m a cop. I’m coming down there right now.”

Cardozo grabbed his jacket. He was halfway out of the cubicle when he remembered the envelope of money. He dashed back and retrieved it.

He was halfway out of the squadroom when a phone began ringing.

“Vince,” Ellie called. “Your phone.”

“Take the message,” he shouted.

Ellie exhaled slowly and walked into Cardozo’s cubicle. The desk looked as though a typhoon had passed over it. She lifted the receiver.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant Cardozo isn’t in the precinct at the moment. This is Detective Ellie Siegel—could I take a message?”

There was a hesitation and then a voice spoke with a nervous Irish brogue. “Could you tell him Mrs. Olga Quigley phoned?”

“With reference to what, Mrs. Quigley?”

“I used to clean house for Father Joe Montgomery and there’s something I ought to tell Lieutenant Cardozo.”

“I’m working on that case too. Could we talk about it?”

SIXTY-NINE

C
ARDOZO KNOCKED ON THE
door to Jonquil’s room.

No answer.

He tried the handle. It turned with a click and the door opened. He knew right away the dark was hiding something.

An Ice-T rap number pounded through the wall. Lemon-scented room deodorizer and patchouli cologne and peppermint breath-freshener layered the air in densities that would have asphyxiated a woolly mammoth. The shut window sealed in a temperature that must have reached ninety degrees.

He found the light switch beside the door. There was only one soft light, a lamp on the bureau with a scarf thrown over the shade.

It took him a moment to see Jonquil staring at him from the shadow. Her gaze was flat, empty. Part of her was on the chair, but most of her had spilled forward onto the floor. Blood had pooled in an oval around her knees.

In her nakedness she was a startling sight. At least she startled Cardozo. She had breasts too perfect to be nature’s, and a penis, and a head of close-cropped hair that had gone a grandmotherly gray. He saw two stab wounds, one in the heart and one in the stomach.

He felt for a pulse. There was none in the wrist, none in the carotid in the neck. He found her room key on the bureau next to the spilled cologne. He locked the door and tore into the corridor.

The elevator was waiting and he thought it might be faster than the stairs. He didn’t count on the woman who got in on the second floor with two squabbling children. It took three minutes to reach the lobby.