“She won’t tell. Give him your word, Anne. You too, Toby.”
“I can’t take anyone’s word, Leon—not even yours—we’re talking about my
balls
!”
Anne’s thoughts were racing. “Listen to me, Mickey. Those photographs on the wall are twenty years old.”
God
, she prayed,
let him believe me!
“They’re not girls anymore. You weren’t committing an offense against minors.”
“I was phoning grown women?” Mickey digested the information. His eyes went hopefully to Leon. “Is that the truth? Am I in the clear?”
Anne flew at Mickey and slammed her knee up into his groin. He doubled over.
She pulled Toby free and ran. Tried to run. Mickey’s hand caught her foot. His blade tore into her side. She slammed down onto one burning knee.
She saw her father’s face, an ashen O of shock.
Toby dove at Mickey, clawing and screaming. Mickey’s arm sideswiped the boy, lifting him like a newspaper, floating him back onto the bed.
Anne crawled toward the desk, scrabbling for cover. She had no strength to push Mickey away. He was on top of her now.
“Let her go!” Toby was hammering on Mickey’s back. “
Let her go
!”
“Okay, Mr. Brandsetter.” A state trooper stood in the open doorway. “You and your ankle radio are about two hundred yards off-base.” He stepped into the cabin. “Say, what the hell’s going on here?” His hand went to his semiautomatic. “Get up and drop that knife, fella.”
Mickey raised the knife and charged.
FORTY-SEVEN
3:20 A.M.
C
ARDOZO SLAMMED HIS HONDA
to a stop in front of Leon Brandsetter’s Connecticut home. The lights in the house were blazing. A state police car and a blue Pontiac with a federal license were parked in the driveway, and a Porsche was crazily angled on the lawn. Its New York State vanity license spelled
BULLION
, and its radial tires had chewed up two yards of Leon Brandsetter’s carefully nurtured sod.
He heard voices. Screams. He ran around the side of the house. A voice called from the woods, shouting the name
Mickey
. Movement rippled the rhododendron leaves, and a knife-waving figure exploded through.
“Mickey,” Cardozo said. “Mickey Williams.”
Mickey jerked to a standstill. He gave Cardozo a puzzled, fumbling look.
“Why don’t you drop the knife.”
Mickey squinted. “Is that Vince?”
“Long time, hey? Drop the knife.”
The knife arm stayed above Mickey’s head, swaying like a branch in a slow wind. “If I drop the knife, you’ll kill me.”
“No one’s going to kill you, Mickey.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’ve never lied to you, Mickey. I’m not going to start now. Drop the knife.”
“Oh, Christ,” Mickey cried out. “Every chance I ever had I screwed up.”
“We all screw up, Mickey. It’s okay. Drop the knife.”
One by one, the fingers of Mickey’s right hand opened. The knife dropped like a spark through the night air. His left hand caught it and he made a fast, low dive.
The crown of his shaved head smashed into Cardozo’s shoulder. They pitched over and hit the ground and tumbled and rolled. Mickey managed to thrust himself on top. He swung the knife up and slashed down.
Cardozo wrenched to the side. The blade missed his eye by a millimeter, then gouged a chunk out of his temple and dug into the lawn.
Cardozo freed his arm and scrambled a hand for his shoulder holster. He jerked the gun loose and thumbed the safety off. As the blade crunched into his upper arm, he twisted to the side and jammed the gun barrel against Mickey’s ribs.
“Drop the knife.”
The blade came arcing down. Cardozo pulled the trigger.
The force of the bullet kicked Mickey backward, eyes wide, mouth shaping a liquid red scream.
Two state troopers came crashing through the branches, guns drawn. Mickey lurched to his feet, took a staggering step toward them, and toppled forward onto the grass.
In the emergency room of the Bridgeport hospital, a male intern sewed ten stitches into Anne Bingham’s side, and six into Cardozo’s shoulder and three into his temple. He asked if they planned to be going far. “I wouldn’t drive. You’ve both lost a little blood and you’ll feel woozy.”
Anne nodded, and Cardozo had the impression of a shocked and decent and deeply befuddled woman trying to make sense of events that were coming too fast and crazy to make any sense at all.
“We won’t drive,” Cardozo promised. He held the door to the waiting room.
“Drink liquids!” the intern shouted.
Anne bought two cups of Pepsi from a machine. She handed one to Cardozo. They sat there for a moment and then the moment was a minute.
“I keep trying to understand what happened,” she said, “and why.”
“Two of the oldest reasons in the world.” Cardozo cracked his knuckles. “For Mickey, it was sex. For your sister and Catch, it was money.”
“I never knew they were having money problems.”
“They were, and they both saw Toby and the trust fund as the solution.”
“But how could either of them have gotten hold of the money if they sneaked Toby out of the country?”
“Nowadays, New York allows divorced parents with custody to take their children out of state—even if the ex-spouse has visitation rights. Toby was free at age twelve to choose to live with either parent, so whoever had the boy got the money, no matter where they went. When Kyra got her jury summons, she decided the trial made a good cover to get Toby out of the country. She phoned Catch on the thirteenth, as soon as she was selected, and told him the custody hearing had to be postponed. Then she finagled you into taking her place on the jury.”
“But Mark phoned on the seventeenth and told Catch the same thing.”
“And by then, Catch was already in New York. Kyra’s call had made him suspicious, and Mark’s call made him more so. He’d come up with a plan of his own. He knew Mickey, and he knew the male Coreyite grooming code. Thanks to nine months of weight lifting and steroids, he was starting to bulk up. After Kyra’s postponement, he shaved his head and bought brown contact lenses. In a generic way he looked like a Coreyite
trying
to look like Catch. In fact, verbally described, he looked like
Mickey
trying to look like Catch. Of course in person, with or without his wig, Catch was still recognizably Catch. Toby was probably surprised at the hair and the eyes and the weight, and he probably asked questions, but he still recognized his father. Which is why he went with him.”
“Devious.”
“Very. When Catch came to New York on the fourteenth, he had his secretary forward Seattle calls to his cell phone; he made phone charges at Seattle shops, so it seemed he was still in Seattle. The idea was to snatch Toby and make it seem the Coreyites had done it to hang the jury.”
“That’s why he phoned the threat to Kyra.”
Cardozo nodded. “But he knew it was you on the phone. He’d already killed Kyra. The call was camouflage. It had nothing to do with the Coreyites except to throw suspicion on them.”
Anne’s eyes held a musing wonder. “My father said Catch recommended Mickey to him as a client.”
Cardozo nodded. “A little over two years ago, when Mickey was living in Seattle, Catch represented him in a welfare suit, pro bono.”
“But when did Mickey get involved with my father?”
“When Mickey’s old cult buddy John Briar was dying. The Coreyites flew Mickey back East to keep vigil by the bedside. I don’t know why Mickey killed Briar, but I don’t buy that Corey Lyle hypnotized him.”
“Tonight Mickey said he was afraid John Briar’s dying words would implicate him in child molestation. That’s why he killed him.”
“Children.” Cardozo sighed. “Mickey’s addiction and nemesis. He’d already been found guilty of child abuse in Texas and he’d broken parole. When the Briar case hit the evening news, Texas sued New York for extradition. Catch put Mickey in touch with your father. By then the BATF was trying to hang the Briar killings on Corey Lyle. Leon put together a secret deal that gave Mickey a free hand.”
Anne shook her head. There was enormous sadness in her eyes. “And then Mickey was caught making dirty phone calls from the cabin. He forced Leon to take the blame by threatening to expose the deal.”
“What a tangle, hey?”
Anne gazed at Cardozo with an uncomplicated desire to understand. “But why did Mickey and Catch have to
kill
?”
“In Mickey’s case it was fear. He got scared that the calls would be tied to him. He didn’t want to be sent back to Texas.”
“And what was Catch’s reason?”
“Greed plus steroids triggering murderous rage. Sergeant Bailey saw him watching Toby at school. He couldn’t risk her identifying him later. Same thing with your sister. After he forced her to write that note, she was a dead woman.”
Anne was somber. “What about the evidence in the trial?”
“I wouldn’t have too much confidence in it. The BATF tried for a decade to jail Corey Lyle, and they’d stopped caring how. I think they saw their chance two years ago, when Yolanda Lopez phoned to report that Mickey Williams had murdered John Briar. In twenty-four hours, the whiz kids at BATF worked out a scenario to nail Corey. They got Mickey to confess to two murders and claim Corey had put him up to it.”
“But Mickey didn’t kill Amalia.”
Cardozo shook his head. “Amalia died a natural death six hours before her husband. The autopsy was suppressed.”
“Then Yolanda was lying? Those tapes and those phone calls were fakes?”
“Let’s just say someone fiddled with the evidence. Yolanda was doing her job, and it happened to involve a lot of phoning and a fair amount of lying.”
“You believe that?”
Cardozo shrugged. “I’ll lay you odds she doesn’t serve a day in jail.”
“But a federal agency wouldn’t—”
“They might if they thought their budget was about to be cut.”
“If only people didn’t get so scared and greedy.”
“The world would be a better place, and I’d be out of a job.” Cardozo crushed his paper cup and dropped it into the trash basket. “Come on. We should get you back to your father’s.”
As they came out of the hospital, the headlights of early morning traffic were moving thinly down the street.
“Anne!” A solitary figure stood waving on the curb beside a Connecticut state trooper’s car. “Lieutenant!”
Anne squinted. “It’s my father.” She broke into a run.
“Anne.” Leon’s eyes were frightened. “Are you all right?”
“All patched up.”
“Thank God.”
They embraced.
“Lieutenant.” Leon leveled a rueful smile of greeting and held the car door. “Why don’t you come with us and get some sleep? We have two guest rooms.”
“Thanks, but I should be getting back to New York.”
“Lieutenant,” Anne said, “how can I ever thank you?”
“You just did.”
She darted a kiss onto his cheek, then slid into the backseat.
Leon slid in beside her. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’m sure.”
The car moved slowly down the street.
“I’ve said some pretty inexcusable things to you.” Leon placed his hand on hers. “I hope you know I didn’t mean them.”
“I know you didn’t. And I’ve said some inexcusable things myself. Let’s forgive each other and forget it.”
“Agreed.” His hand squeezed hers, then withdrew. “What’s next on your agenda?”
“A little sleep—and then the big job. I have to make a home for Toby.”
“You’ll be a good mother.”
“I hope.”
“But a boy needs a father too.” Leon’s gaze came around slowly. “Mark Wells has been phoning. He’s phoned three times since you went into emergency.”
“Really?”
“Can’t blame him. He’s worried about you. You should call him back.”
She nodded. “I will.”
“You know, Anne, of all the men in your life—”
“Come on, there haven’t been that many.”
“But of them all, I think I’ve always liked Mark the most.”
She was thoughtful. “So have I.”
On Christmas morning fifteen months later, a Maine spruce tree glowed in the living room of a Murray Hill town house. Anne sat on the sofa, peeling the green-and-gold wrapping off a flat package the size of a framed photograph.
She peered at the beautifully penned lettering. “‘
Whereas Mr. and Mrs. Mark Wells, hereinafter referred to as the parties of the first part. …
’ What in the world is this?”
“It looks like a contract.” Mark slipped on his glasses and studied it. “A five-year-renewal with option to extend.”
“Renewal of what?”
“Of our family.” Toby dropped onto the sofa between them. “To make sure we stay together.” He tipped back his French Culinary Institute baseball cap. “I’ve already signed, see?”
“I’ll sign on.” Mark scrawled a signature above Toby’s and passed his ballpoint to Anne.
“I don’t know.” She smiled. “Shouldn’t I consult a lawyer?”
“Your lawyer,” Mark said, “advises you to grab a good deal while you have the chance.”
Anne signed.
Toby hugged them both, then went back to the tree and began searching among the presents.
“Look at that kid,” Mark said softly. “Who’d ever guess what he lived through a year ago?”
“He’s got guts,” Anne said. “And a lot of sense.”
“And you’ve done a great job.”
“No. We’ve all done a great job.”
“Hey—Aunt Anne—Uncle Mark—look what Lieutenant Cardozo gave me!” Toby came running across the room, waving a small black book with silver lettering: “A police officer’s handbook! And he signed it!”
About the Author
Edward Stewart (1938–1996) grew up in New York City and Cuba. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Harvard, where he edited the famed
Lampoon
humor magazine. He studied music in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and worked as a composer and arranger before launching his career as a writer. His first novel,
Orpheus on Top
, was published in 1966. He wrote thirteen more novels, including the bestselling Vince Cardozo thrillers
Privileged Lives
,
Jury Double
,
Mortal Grace
, and
Deadly Rich
.