Richards took over, his voice gentle. “What freaked you?”

Claude’s teeth left dents in his lower lip. “I had a fight with my roommate. He threw me out, threw my records and tapes on the street.”

“Why’d he do a shitty thing like that?”

“The bastard met someone else.”

Cardozo cut in. “How’d you feel about that, Claude—angry? Angry enough to get coked up and kill the first kid you could drag out of the Inferno?”

“I wasn’t anywhere near the Inferno that weekend, I was crashing at Faye’s! I was out for half an hour scoring coke!”

“Claude,” Richards said, “we know it was more than half an hour.”

“Okay, maybe a couple of hours.”

“That’s not what your friend Faye says.” Cardozo handed Loring the handwritten statement he had taken from Faye di Stasio.

For a long, long moment Loring stared at the page, not breathing, nothing moving but his bloodshot eyes.

“I have to sit here and take this shit?” he screamed. The sheet was fluttering wildly in his hand.

Cardozo lifted the phone. “Send her in.”

A moment later Faye di Stasio stood in the doorway. Behind her dark glasses and the disheveled jeans and T-shirt she wore like camouflage, she seemed scared and vulnerable.

“I told them the truth, Claude.” There was a desperate apologetic plea in her face. “They know.”

Claude dropped his head into his hands.

“Claude,” Cardozo said, “the clothescheck saw you leave the Inferno with Jodie Downs the night before the murder.”

Claude hugged his arms across his chest.

Richards crouched down, facing Loring knee to knee. He put a gentle hand on Loring’s shoulder. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Claude.” Richards gently lifted Loring’s head up from his crossed arms. “Whatever’s bothering you, you can tell us. Let go of it, Claude. We’re here to help you.”

Something was happening to the play of moods across Loring’s face. The fear and hostility had left his eyes and were replaced by a dreamy wondering. Suddenly his face fogged in and he slumped violently forward.

Cardozo shot to his feet. “What happened in the john?”

“He crapped is what happened,” Richards said.

Cardozo grabbed Loring’s left arm. His eye ran along the road map of veins. “You let him shoot up!”

“He didn’t shoot up!”

“Then he swallowed something!”

Faye started to speak, hesitated, bit her lip. “He carries ludes,” she said.

Blind rage flooded Cardozo. “Claude!” he shouted. “How many did you swallow?”

An asbestos curtain had dropped around Loring. Nothing was getting in or out.

Cardozo lashed out with his open palm, slamming the wall half an inch from Loring’s face.

Loring’s eyes flicked open. They slid toward Cardozo.

“Get a tape recorder,” Cardozo shouted.

Richards brought a tape recorder from the squad room. Cardozo pressed the start switch.

“This is Lieutenant Vincent Cardozo interrogating suspect Claude Loring. Claude, before making any statement you have a right to consult an attorney. If you can’t afford an attorney, we will provide one. Do you wish an attorney?”

Loring stared at him with the unblinking eye of a potato.

The telephone jangled. Richards was nearest. “Yeah?” He covered the receiver. “Vince, it’s his lawyer.”

Cardozo took the receiver. “Vince Cardozo.”

“My client is to make no statements,” Ted Morgenstern said.

31

“LIFT! COME ON, YOU can do better than that!” With a prod that was not all that gentle, the therapist encouraged Babe to perform the leg movement.

Just as she managed to extend her knee, her leg went off to the side. She stared at the defiant limb, helpless and puzzled. Her vision began blearing at the edges.

“Keep going.” The therapist was smiling, but he smiled only with his lips. His eyes were carefully assessing. “Come on. You nearly did it.”

Blinking away tears of frustration, Babe brought the leg up again, awkwardly, hardly breathing and just a bit afraid. This time, to her amazement, she was able to complete the movement.

Just as an exhalation of relief escaped her, Mrs. Wheelock knocked on the door and said that the man from Viewerworld was here.

Babe glanced toward the therapist.

“That’s enough for today,” he said. He unhooked the weight from her ankle. “We don’t want your ball-and-socket joints to go on strike.”

“Mrs. Wheelock, show the man where it goes,” Babe said. “I’ll be right there.”

Babe transferred herself into the chair. The therapist stood watching, not moving, not speaking, not completely masking a mild disapproval in his expression. She had told him not to help her even if she begged.

She wheeled across the room. The therapist, holding the door, suddenly blushed. He had forgotten his agreement: he had helped.

“Sorry.”

She smiled. “See you next time. Thanks for not being easy on me.”

In the bathroom Babe stretched to turn on the shower and adjust the water temperature. She reached her right arm and grabbed one of the eight handles temporarily bolted into the stall. She pulled herself halfway up and reached the left arm to another handle.

Once she was standing, it was a fairly uncomplicated maneuver to lower herself onto the aluminum stool that had been bolted to the floor. She used one hand to steady herself and the other to soap with. The tingling spray gradually washed the bone-soaking numbness of her joints.

She allowed herself three minutes in the shower. Then, groping along handles installed in the walls, she centered herself on a foam-cushioned stool. As she dried herself, she glimpsed herself in the mirror, forehead and mouth taut with effort.

Once dry, she wheeled herself into the dressing room. To give herself tangible goals, she had placed crutches against the wall. She stared at them now. Though it was hard to believe it at the moment, one day she would graduate to them. Next to the crutches she had placed a malacca cane and next to that a pair of Ferragamo half-inch heels.

It took her nine maddening minutes to dress.

By the time she wheeled into the guest room on the floor above, the workman had uncrated the viewer and placed it near an electrical outlet.

He looked around at her. “Do you have any film we can try?”

Babe had converted this room into her special library, and it was here that she planned to learn her way back to the present. Seven years of back issues of U.S. News and World Report occupied a half wall of shelves, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and W another. The New York Times on microfilm took up two entire bookcases that had had to be placed free-standing, like library stacks.

Babe handed the man a microfilm box.

He threaded a roll of film into the machine and demonstrated on-off, focus, and forward and reverse. Babe carefully absorbed the instructions.

When the workman had gone, she closed the door. After three minutes’ search she found the box of microfilm she wanted.

She switched the viewer on. The cooling fan hummed faintly and a cold milky light fell onto the angled screen. She carefully threaded her tape in and fitted the sprockets to the guidewheels.

Behind her the wall of the old house creaked.

Turning the knob carefully, she scrolled to the report in The New York Times, seven years ago, on the fashion page, of her party at the Casino in the Park.

Babe stretched a hand up from her wheelchair and pushed Gordon Dobbs’s buzzer.

A manservant admitted her.

Gordon Dobbs was sitting in the livingroom at an old cherrywood table that served as a desk. A telephone receiver was cradled between his shoulder and his ear and he was scribbling furiously on a pad. He was wearing a jade silk robe over his slacks and shirt, and he turned to acknowledge Babe with a cheery wave.

He silently mouthed the words just a minute and pointed to the receiver, indicating that he was trapped with an intolerable bore.