Ted Morgenstern looked as though he’d been slammed in the stomach with a baseball bat. “Are those the only copies?”

“There are dupes,” Cardozo said.

Morgenstern was sitting there, dead. “The police have them?”

“The cops don’t know the dupes exist. They don’t even know the originals exist.”

“Who has the dupes?”

“I do. In a bank vault.”

Ted Morgenstern closed his eyes.

“I’ve been thinking about Cordelia’s defense,” Cardozo said. “You know how I think you should handle it? Offscreen. Like in the Downs case and the Devens case. You flashed Jodie Downs’s medical file at his parents. They didn’t want it made public and they accepted a plea bargain and Loring got off. Seven years ago, Cordelia Koenig caught the clap from Baron Billi. You had Devens catch himself a dose. You flashed the medical records at the Vanderwalks, they saw a connection between her gonorrhea and his. They weren’t going to let that get into the newspapers, so they let Devens walk. Are you following me, Counselor?”

“Not exactly.” The resolve had drained out of Morgenstern’s voice.

“People take your suggestions. With your clout you can get the D.A. to accept a plea of justifiable manslaughter.”

“Excuse me,” Lucinda MacGill interrupted. “Why not head this off at the coroner’s office and go for accidental death?”

Her balls took Cardozo’s breath away.

“With accidental,” she said, “there’ll be a hearing, no charges, no trial, and the existence of the tapes won’t even need to be known.”

Ted Morgenstern sat there cracking his knuckles. “It’ll mean calling in a few favors. But accidental is definitely the way to go.”

“Okay,” Cardozo said. “In exchange for accidental in the Von Kleist killing, you get Baron Billi’s tapes.” He felt a strange elation. He had never thought he would be holding the power to influence events, to make the world jump like a trained dog as the Ted Morgensterns and the Vanderwalks and the D.A.’s of New York routinely did. But for the first time in his life he held that power, and it was more potent than a loaded magnum and more addictive than a jeroboam of crack.

Morgenstern rose and walked to the window and stared at police and reporters swarming down in the street. “And what do you want for the duplicate tapes?”

“That’s simple. Baron Billi’s groupies get visas to Paraguay and they have till Saturday to use them.”

“You’re joking.”

“Here’s another laugh. Sir Dunk turns his wife’s estate over to the AIDS foundation.”

Cardozo phoned Jodie Downs’s parents from the precinct. Lockwood Downs answered.

“Jodie’s death wasn’t simple murder,” Cardozo said. “Claude Loring was working for other people. We just caught them.”

It took Lockwood Downs a moment to speak. “I wasn’t expecting this. Meridee and I had just about given up hope that anyone would ever pay.”

“These people are going to pay.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know.”

“Thank you for keeping on it, Lieutenant. We both thank you.”

Sixty seconds later Cardozo told Babe everything, not attempting to sweeten any of it. The telephone receiver pressed the silence of her shock into his ear.

“Where have they taken Cordelia?”

Cardozo gave Babe the address of the hospital. “Look,” he said, “I know it sounds like the end of the world, but worlds are ending every day and it’s not always such a bad thing. Other kids have gotten off drugs. Cordelia can do it. Just remember I’ll be there beside you.”

“Will you, Vince? Be beside me?”

Vince Cardozo, he asked himself, what the hell are you doing?

He realized he was in love with her, dreaming of some kind of happily ever after that just didn’t exist. He and Babe Devens were from two different planets on opposite sides of the sun.

He thought about that and decided, just for today, to forget happily ever after.

“Yeah. I’ll be right beside you,” he said. “Meet you at the hospital. Fifteen minutes.”

He hesitated, then decided he had time to make one last call. It was Terri’s lunch break. She’d be home. He dialed and his daughter answered on the fourth ring.

“Remember that day we got called away from the beach? I’m going to make it up to you.”

“Daddy, you don’t have to make anything up to me.”

“I want to. How about this weekend? Would you like to go swimming?”

“It’s too cold.”

“It’s not too cold in the Virgin Islands. I have three days off. What do you say? No way the precinct can beep me in Saint Thomas.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, and that’s not an answer. Do we have a date?”

She was silent only a moment. “You twisted my arm. It’s a date.”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Vince Cardozo Mysteries

for Jackie Farber,

Stowe Hausner, and Steven Hollar—

who made the difference

ONE

SOMETHING WAS WRONG. LEIGH Baker kept hearing voices. The goose-down pillows in their Porthault cases that had begun the evening under her head were now lying on top of her, like a barricade, and she had to push them aside to see.

The Levolors were angled against whatever light the sky had to offer, but her time sense told her it was night. She stared a long moment at the light that beaded the perfume bottles and silver-backed brushes on the dressing table. Her eye followed the light to its source, the TV screen.

She recognized the man who did the weather wrap-up on Fox Five. The remote was lying on the little painted papier-mâché table beside her bed, on top of Vogue and Vanity Fair. She reached for it. Her fingertips touched the highball glass. An unthinking reflex brought the glass to her lips.

Slivered ghosts of ice cubes slid beneath her nose. The liquid had a brownish color and it smelled like Johnnie Walker and diet Pepsi. It flowed over her tongue without any flavor. To avoid spilling she drained the glass before setting it back down.

She patted her pillows into a fresh headrest behind her. She picked up the remote and pressed the Off button. The image on the TV screen collapsed into a white lozenge that sputtered and decayed into darkness.

She laid her head back and closed her eyes.

Even with the TV off she still heard those voices and she could not drop off to the state where she wanted to be, that oceanic feeling of floating nothingness.

At the sound of a latch clicking she opened her eyes again.

Light floated in from the living room, and a teenage girl stood silhouetted and slim in the doorframe. Taking fast, shallow breaths, Leigh’s daughter came into the bedroom with gingerly steps, as though she were walking on someone else’s legs.

Leigh pushed herself to sitting. “What is it? Nita, what’s wrong?”

The girl’s face was a blank surface. She worked her throat, worked her jaw, trying to force words out. Nothing in her expression changed, but suddenly her eyes looked as if they were full of icicles and a terrible little cry came out of her. “What does it mean?”

“What does what mean, darling?”

Like a comet flicking its tail, Nita turned and tore out of the bedroom and across the darkened living room, through the French window and out onto the terrace.

Leigh touched one foot down onto the floor and then the other. She tested her standing muscles. They seemed to work, though she listed a little to the left and she knew right away that she needed another drink.

Now she tested her walking muscles. They were slow to answer her head’s commands, but they took her to the bedroom door.

And then Nita’s voice: “No!”

It seemed to Leigh that something flew across the terrace, low and fluttering. She blinked and it took her mind a moment to process the image. A white dress. White arms. White legs. Nita.