Deadly Rich by Edward Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

flyers, junk mail, cigarette butts, gum wrappers, crumpled pizza boxes—the fallout of an average midtown workday—but nothing metal or electronic or remotely solid state. And then, through hurrying feet, his eye caught a wink of chrome from the gutter. He walked to the edge of the sidewalk and stared down.
    A two-foot plastic-and-chrome radio-cassette blasting unit looked as though it had taken the full weight of a crosstown bus. He crouched for a better look, then turned and shot Danks a come-over-here nod. “Was that boom box a Sony?”

FIVE
    C ARDOZO STEPPED FROM THE sunlight of Lexington Avenue into the soft brown-and-red interior of the restaurant that outsiders called Archibald’s and society called home.
    In a place like Archibald’s you waited to be seated. Cardozo waited. Now was the precocktail lull, and the only customers were two overdressed, overmade-up women at a corner table. A man in a Santa Claus-red blazer who looked like a maître d’ dressed for happy hour gave him a glance and a cold shoulder, and went back to handpicking napkin lint from one of the tablecloths.
    Cardozo crossed toward the kitchen.
    The lint picker in the Santa jacket intercepted him. “May I help you?” He spoke with a French accent, and the offer had a broad edge of insincerity.
    Cardozo showed his shield. “Do you have an employee by the name of James Delancey working here?”
    The lint picker’s mouth narrowed in a half smile but the expression on his face didn’t at all match his eyes. “In the kitchen.” He nodded toward the door.
    Cardozo stepped into the kitchen.
    There wasn’t enough ventilation to clear the cooking smells, and the claustrophobic space seemed impossibly ill lit and hot and cluttered. A black man was stirring a cauldron on the twelve-burner stove; a Korean was rolling dough with a champagne bottle; and a Caucasian male stood behind a butcher-block counter, slicing salad vegetables.
    Cardozo watched the bright, narrow blade blur up and down. It worked as fast and as expertly as a precision machine, flipping out a glint with each stroke, flicking paper-thin wafers of cucumber to the side in a neat, staggered pile.
    “James Delancey?” Cardozo said.
    The young white man glanced at Cardozo with a look that was curious and guarded. The click-click of the blade against the butcher block slowed. His curls were full and richly dark and the face beneath them was as tanned and unlined as a surfer’s, and Cardozo wondered if they now had tanning beds along with the cable TV in the penitentiary.
    Cardozo took out his shield case and flipped it open. “Wouldn’t you do better using a Cuisinart on that cucumber?”
    The young man’s eyes flicked without visible interest to the shield. “It takes as long to clean a Cuisinart as it takes me to slice a dozen cucumbers.”
    “Is there somewhere we could talk?” Cardozo said.
    Delancey laid his knife down on the butcher block. He wiped his hands on his apron. He was an extremely well-built boy, lean and broad-shouldered. He looked to be six feet or six one. If he weighed under 180 pounds it wasn’t by much. As he stepped around the counter Cardozo saw he was wearing designer jeans and Bally loafers without socks.
    Cardozo followed him out the side door onto Seventy-fourth Street. Delancey offered a cigarette and Cardozo declined. “Have you been working here long?” Cardozo said.
    “Two weeks.”
    “First job since you were paroled?”
    “That’s right.”
    The late spring heat held a foretaste of summer. Afternoon sun was playing shimmering riffs on upper-story windows.
    “What hours do you work?”
    “Mondays I work eleven A.M . to six P.M. Sundays and Wednesday through Friday I work noon to eight P.M. ”
    Jim Delancey lit his cigarette. “I’m off Saturdays and Tuesdays.”
    “Then you were here during lunch hour today.”
    Delancey nodded.
    “Are you familiar with Leigh Baker, the actress?”
    Delancey sighed. “I saw a lot of her during my