Dobbsie pointed to the poetic justice in the fact that these ill-matched twain—the “shucks-ma’am” boy from Kentucky and the bejeweled, dumpy siren from Marshal Tito’s workers’ paradise—are bound together, forever, by the secret which was no secret at all—except to that stone lady wearing the blindfold.

For that bond, say many who know both these upwardly driven social overachievers, has already turned into a hard-drinking, hard-cursing, fist-fighting shackle. “I wouldn’t invite them anywhere,” says one prominent Manhattan hostess. “Not because of the murder—I couldn’t care less—but because of the filth they scream at one another in public.”

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., won’t sit down at the same table with them.

Neither will Brooke Astor.

And don’t mention their names to actresses Celeste Holm or Dina Merrill.

Dobbsie found some consolation in the fact that, whether or not justice will ultimately be done in the courts of man-made law, justice has been achieved in a more poetic sense: Scottie and Doria have been sentenced to lifelong doses of one another. “It’s a far more horrible punishment than the crime,” says a Coty-award winning designer, “especially for him.”

On the final page of the book, in a somber concluding note, Dobbsie said he had begun his research convinced of Devens’s innocence, but an exhaustive analysis of the record and thirty thousand pages of interviews had forced him to change his mind.

The real mystery, he said, was not who had injected Babe Devens, but how any sane man or woman could question the considered verdict of twelve impartial jurors. How much longer, he concluded, will society ignore the drumbeat of reason and step to the danse macabre of money?

Babe closed the book.

Dobbsie’s cunning interweaving of fact and conjecture astonished her. The man was a shrewd and ruthless master of implication. If the book had been commissioned by the prosecution, it could not have been more effectively calculated to damn Scottie Devens.

Babe telephoned Ash. The machine answered and beeped.

“Ash, it’s Babe. Are you sleeping?”

“Not now I’m not.” Ash’s voice sounded as though she had just crawled out from under a half-dozen Nembutals. “Hi, doll. What time is it?”

“It’s early, I’m sorry. I’ve just read Dobbsie’s book.”

“Don’t you love it? Champagne truffles all the way.”

“I think it’s horrible.”

“Then you must still be in love with that bastard Scottie.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. I didn’t know your sister wrote magazine articles.”

“And books. Dina’s been an oral journalist for four years. She tape-records people and her secretary types up the tapes. She interviewed Pope John Paul for Sewanee Review; it’s been anthologized to hell and back. And she did a great book on Sid Vicious for S and S. She had help on that, Dobbsie edited it a little.”

“She certainly did a job on Scottie. I suppose she had help on that too.”

“She was just trying to be obliging.”

“Who was she obliging?”

“Your family. They wanted the insulin in the lacquer stud box brought out and none of the papers were touching it.”

“But Ash, there was no insulin in the lacquer stud box.”

“How do you know? You weren’t exactly there.”

“Because there wasn’t any lacquer stud box. Scottie used a little ceramic bowl to hold his cufflinks and studs.”

30

CARDOZO NUDGED RICHARDS AND nodded over the heads of the crowd. “Here he comes. Old Faithful.”

The tall, thickset blond man moved down the stairs with a drunken cockiness, an almost falling-down swagger. He had an enormous smile on.

It was close to three in the morning and Cardozo and Richards had been waiting for him almost two hours.

Loring stood a moment in the confusion of the vestibule, rocking back and forth as though physically colliding with the amplified waves of music.

“Tripping on the moon,” Richards observed.

Loring stumbled out of his clothes. Pushing an armload of denim in front of him, he jostled into the clothescheck line.

The clothescheck man flipped Loring’s jeans and T-shirt and jacket over a hanger and slid Loring a numbered chit. Loring stuffed the chit into his right tube sock and slid a dollar back across the counter. Cardozo made careful note which end of which rack the hanger went onto.

The clothescheck man cheated a look at Cardozo.

Unencumbered now, Loring narrowed his eyes and scoped the scene. The main room was mucky, rutted, steaming like a basin in a public pissoir. Shadowy figures grouped and regrouped with the urgency of viruses stalking vulnerable cells. Loring zigzagged into the party area, helping himself to every available wall and pillar.

“Stick with him,” Cardozo told Richards. “Don’t let him leave.”

Richards went after Loring.

The clothescheck man watched Cardozo with a bemused look, studying him. Cardozo let his face open into a warm, wide grin. He crossed to the counter.

“Hi.” The clothescheck man’s eyes were cheerful and his mouth had a tough, defiant twist. “You alone?”

“Not now,” Cardozo said. “My name’s Vince.”

The clothescheck man leaned against the counter and looked at him. “Arnold.”

Cardozo accepted a bone-crushing macho handshake.

A smile slopped down Arnold’s face. “You’re new?”

“Just heard about the place.”

“Who told you about it?”

“You just checked his clothes.”

“Claude?”

“You know him?”

“Everyone knows Claude. He’s wild.”

“You ever partied with him?”

“Hell no. He likes kids.”

“You don’t?”

“I’m into grown-ups.” Arnold’s eyes were probing. “You?”

Cardozo shrugged. “A little of everything.”

“I got some nose whiskey, premium blow.”

Cardozo grinned. “Why not?”

Arnold called, “Hey Herb, cover for me!” He opened a door, and a bright wedge of light fell across the clothes racks. He motioned Cardozo into the rear room.

A naked overhead bulb spotlighted a clutter of mops and crates and empty bottles. The brick walls were covered with decomposing movie posters. The air smelled of mildew.

Arnold placed a pocket mirror on a ledge. He took a vial out of his hip pocket and tapped a spill of white powder onto the mirror.

He offered Cardozo a tiny pink-striped cocktail straw.

“You’d better put that coke away before you make some cockroach very happy.” Cardozo pulled his shield out of his sock. “I’m a cop.”

The word caught Arnold like a shot. “Shit.”

“Relax, I’m not busting you.” Cardozo reached into his wallet between charge cards and lifted out a scissored-down photo of Jodie Downs. “Know him?”

Arnold’s forehead wrinkled. He took the photo and held it nearer the light bulb. “I remember him. Snooty kid. Used to come here every night. Haven’t seen him in a few weeks.”

“Did you ever see him with Claude?”

“Maybe once. Yeah, once. Sure. The last time he was here they left together.”

“What night?”

“The night the sound system blew. That makes it—Friday. Memorial Day weekend.”

Cardozo hurried up into the light drizzle. In his pocket he had the key ring from Claude Loring’s jeans. The asphalt had the gleam of sweating skin, and the lights of slow-moving limousines reflected in it like dropped torches.

The glow of a streetlight caught the tail of the Ford van parked across the avenue.

Cardozo threaded his way through traffic. Tommy Daniels was waiting for him in a niche in the wall.

There were seven keys on Loring’s key ring. The first four didn’t fit the van door and the fifth did.

Cardozo swung the door open. Daniels clambered up behind him into the van.

Cardozo held the flashlight and Daniels took the pictures, snapping the dashboard, the glove compartment, the seat, the floor of the cab.