Naked Cruelty

CHAPTER V

Now that Kurt von Fahlendorf was safely flying off to Munich with Helen MacIntosh, Carmine could turn his attention back to other matters. Though the Dodo stood at the head of his list, it also contained Corey Marshall. His own enquiries into Morty Jones’s death could not be postponed a moment longer, though the official enquiry was set for November 11, a week after the elections; by then, memories would be blurred, attitudes hardened.

When he poked his head around Corey’s door at five after eight, Corey wasn’t in; not a crime, but Carmine expected his lieutenants to be in before their men, and Buzz was there.

Delia, he noted, was already hard at work, obviously celebrating Kurt’s survival with more festive raiment than usual: a frilly dress in shocking pink, yellow and black stripes, a matching bow on the back of her head. How she managed to type so rapidly and accurately with such long, manicured nails, he had no idea. Today they were painted shocking pink, and as always produced a secondary sound as she hammered away at the electric IBM with the heavy touch of one who had worked for years at manual machines. Hard on the heels of the wallop of the finger striking the center of the key came the click of the nail colliding with the edge of the key. Boom-click, boom-click, like a man in a lead boot with an aluminum knee joint. Wasted on the Dodo, Carmine thought, watching her; she needs one of those cases we don’t have at the moment, saturated with paper, lists, tables and computations.

Even before he checked Corey’s office a second time at eight-thirty, Carmine could feel the sinking sensation invade the pit of his stomach. If there had been no love in what he felt, it would have been easier to bear, but there was love, and love meant hurt, broken bits of dreams, memories of days gone by when Corey had been magnificent.

He was there, setting up his desk for the day.

“What’s my new case?” he asked as Carmine walked in.

“Time to talk about cases after we’ve talked about Morty,” Carmine said, sitting down.

Corey hunched his shoulders. “There’s nothing to say. He hid his depression well.”

“Oh, Cor, come on! I noticed, my team noticed, Abe and his team noticed. How can you sit there saying you didn’t notice, when I came asking you to fill out HPD Form 13l3? I wanted him to see Dr. Corning, you overruled me as Morty’s immediate boss, the one who’d notice most of all. A mere trainee, Helen MacIntosh, was left to go in search of him that morning. It should have been you, and you know it. What I don’t understand is why you chose to adopt that attitude to Morty. He was a sick man.”

“It’s been blown up out of all proportion,” Corey said, voice hard. “There was nothing much wrong with Morty. What made him eat his gun was the sight of Ava all beat up, nothing else.”

“You won’t save your skin by wearing a blindfold, Cor.”

“What would you know about it, Carmine? I’ve been listening to Morty whine about Ava for ten months-it was nothing new, I tell you! Her leaving was the best thing could have happened to him-no more looking at every Holloman cop and wondering.”

“I’m going to have to mention Form 1313 at the enquiry.”

Corey gasped, staggered. “Carmine, you wouldn’t! It was internal, a discussion between the overall boss and the immediate boss-nobody’s business but ours.”

“Everybody’s business, when the object of the discussion took his own life two weeks later,” Carmine said.

“It was internal I tell you! You can’t mention it! Morty did not act depressed, and he had the drinking under control.”

“Then how come he was almost never here?”

“He had a bolt-hole in the cells.”

“To sleep it off.”

“No! To get away from that housekeeper Delia Carstairs found-he hated her.”

“But the kids liked her fine, Netty Marciano reports. I know Morty used to say they cried for Ava all the time, but that was Morty confabulating,” said Carmine. Time Corey realized how far the gossip about Morty and his domestic situation extended.

“Jesus, is nothing sacred?”

“Not where Netty’s concerned, Cor. You know that.”

“He went to the cells to see Virgil Simms,” Corey said, desperate to get Carmine off his back. “They’ve been pals since academy days. It’s not surprising that Morty would have gone to cry on Virgil’s shoulder, open his divorce papers there.”

“I see.” Carmine got up, still seething.

“Hey! Cases? And who’s to take Morty’s place?”

“There won’t be a replacement until after the enquiry panel gives its findings, so you and Buzz will just have to jog along a man short until then,” Carmine said over his shoulder. “I want the pair of you back on the Taft High weapons cache. There are rumors that there’s a smoke and mirrors element. Put your hat on properly, Corey, and find out the truth.”

“I think it was only a matter of time,” said Sergeant Virgil Simms. “Morty didn’t have any luck. He was Sad Sack. Whoever he married would have turned out like Ava because Morty wished it on himself. He always had a yen for a tramp, maybe as a reaction against his mom. She’s one of those hard, selfish women who never miss going to church on Sundays.”

“What’s going to happen to the kids?” Carmine asked.

“Ava’s taking them and moving back into the house, but Morty’s mom is complaining to Child Welfare that Ava’s not a fit mother.”

“Does she genuinely want custody?”

“Hell, no! I can’t come to the rescue, Captain-my wife’s not an Ava lover.”

“No wife is. I take it trouble’s brewing?”

“Definitely. Neither mother nor grandmother wants the kids.”

“It’s hard to believe that Kurt von Fahlendorf’s been found,” said Mark Sugarman to Bill Mitski as they prepared to walk.

“Great news,” Bill answered. “Holloman has good cops.”

“Does that mean you think they’ll nail the Dodo?”

“Yeah, it does. The problem all along has been randomness, but the crimes have to be getting less random, if only because there have been more of them to take into consideration.”

“Oh, I hope you’re right!” Mark said with fervor. “Then we could all relax.”

“You wouldn’t give up the walking?” Bill asked, alarmed.

“No, I wouldn’t. It’s too good for the heart and the waist, Bill.” Mark laughed and slapped his belly.

“Who’s that up ahead?” Bill asked suddenly.

Mark’s lip lifted. “The Siamese twins,” he said, groaning.

“You’re right, they should be joined at the hip. They even walk like it. Repulsive!” Bill shuddered.

“Good evening,” Mark said politely, coming abreast of Robbie and Gordie Warburton.

“And the top of the evening to you, sirs,” said Robbie.

The twins stood to be introduced to Bill Mitski.

“Out for a constitutional?” Bill asked, trying to still his crawling flesh.

“Tonight, yes,” said Robbie. “Such soft weather! I love a New England Indian summer, don’t you? Days in the eighties, nights around freezing, this time of night perfect for walking.”

“Do you walk often?” Mark asked. “I’ve not seen you.”

The twins tittered, sounding effeminate.

“Heavens to Betsy, no!” Robbie cried, and moved on, Gordie automatically moving in time with him.

“Toodle-pip!” Robbie called.

Mark and Bill continued to stand for a moment.

“They give me the creeps,” said Mark.

“They give me the shits,” said Bill.

“Toodle-pip! Who does he think he is, Noel Coward?”

The pair resumed their walk.

“You know what I feel like?” Bill asked as they turned on to Cedar for the east-west segment of their route. It was busier here, cars driving up and down, people on the sidewalks.

“No, what?”

“A party. One of your wing-dings, Mark.”

Mark sighed, shook his head. “After Melantha? No, Bill, I don’t think so. Her death would hang over us like a miasma.”

“One sick bastard is all it takes to wreck things! Carew used to be such a great place to live.”

“It will be again, but not until after the Dodo is caught.”

When he had a little time to spare, Didus ineptus liked to review his plans, and the plans for this next woman were looming larger and larger in his mind as the gap between the fingers of time grew ever narrower. Would it be three weeks, or would he go at the end of two weeks? They thought it had significance for him-what idiots they were! When he moved was simple self-preservation, nothing else. The thing is, did he want to share his glory with a pair of buzzards like Hubert Humphrey and the feral Richard Nixon? That was three weeks. He could be ready to go in two weeks, when the stage would belong to him entirely.

She lived on Cedar Street, and that was perilous. But not impossible. He just had to conduct his expedition accurately. The place he wanted was right next door to the Hochners, who lived in a private dwelling, whereas his target was an apartment block of four storeys that held eight tenants. Were the Hochners not next door it would have been an unattainable goal, but the Hochners were the boy who cried wolf; they were forever calling the cops to complain about the neighbors, and the cops had given up coming to investigate. Of course the Hochners complained about that, but even new broom Captain Fernando Vasquez had tumbled to them, and dealt with their whines by writing them flowery letters.

The Dodo’s quarry lived on the first floor and out the back on the Hochner side; her name was Catherine dos Santos, she was a devout Catholic of unimpeachable virtue, a dark and lovely girl with the look of a Raphael madonna.

He had been saving her through nine others. Oh, there were more deposited in his account for future forays, but Catherine was very special. For one thing, though her hair was midnight-black, her eyes were a striking violet-blue, large, round, fringed by lush lashes, owning an expression of perfect tranquility. She had never been in love, she had told him at the party, and was saving herself for her husband.

She had bars on all her windows. Not imitation bars, but authentic jailhouse bars, an inch in diameter and solid iron. They were bolted to the inside of concrete block walls-no way in except to cut them with a torch, and the Hochners would see the first spit of a spark. Her doors were solid core, only two in number. One, a fire escape, was two doors down on the Hochner side of the building, and bolted top and bottom. The entry door was in the middle of the back wall and held three separate locks, all different.

He had the keys. Even virgins have to pee, and she had gone to Mark Sugarman’s guest toilet not precisely drunk, but a little too light-headed to be bothered lugging her big bag. The keys were in it. While Dave Feinman did a wicked impersonation of Senator Strom Thurmond, he had taken wax impressions of all five keys on her ring. In the middle of a night he had tried the five and found the three he needed, labeled them. Except that he had learned they triggered many sets of tumblers per lock, which was why he came back at exactly the time she was due home. He had to see her open the door.

Using the jungle behind which lived the Hochners, he worked his way to the back of the apartment building and sat in the boundary hedge, absolutely concealed, to see Catherine enter.

She came down the side path so physically close to him that he could hear her pantyhose hissing as her thighs brushed against each other: six-thirty on the dot. Top lock first: three turns right, two left. Then the bottom lock: six turns left, no right. Last, the middle lock: four turns left, three right. All of that done, she leaned her left shoulder against the door and gave it a powerful shove. It came open just enough for her to slip inside. Then came the sound of a big steel bolt slamming home at the top of the door and another at the bottom: only after that did she close the three locks. Fort Knox was ready and armed: what a woman!

His window of opportunity was tight. In Catherine’s case he knew he would have to be inside and waiting before she arrived home, but the Hochners had a small deck outside their back door and could be found on it every afternoon drinking iced tea until six-fifteen, when they retired. No doubt they would soon make their al fresco interlude terminate at an earlier time, but he couldn’t risk bringing that into his calculations. Fifteen minutes were all he would have, though he would be there at six just in case.

He could feel his heart pumping faster, the adrenaline begin to flow at the mere thought of how dangerous this one was, right there on busy Cedar Street. A small, thin voice kept urging him to abandon hope of Catherine, but he suppressed it angrily. No, he would do it! They were getting so boring! In Catherine lay a challenge, and he could never resist a challenge. Whatever the obstacles, he was going to rape and kill Catherine dos Santos.

Next Tuesday evening. Two weeks. They wouldn’t count on that. A week later, and Commissioner John Silvestri would have Carew saturated with cops.

“I want to pull you in, Fernando, because I want to flood Carew with cops on election night and the night immediately after,” said Carmine. “It will be three weeks since Melantha Green, and his cycle is a three-week one. If I’m wrong, I won’t ask for another date, because he’ll have gone to some unpredictable cycle only God could solve. We have to be seen to be doing something to protect the community, and this is the best suggestion I have.”

“Have you talked to the Commissioner?” Fernando asked.

“Not yet. If you have a better idea, I’d rather know now.”

That was the trouble with having new feet in Danny Marciano’s shoes; Carmine didn’t know Fernando Vasquez well enough yet to divine which way he’d jump in any given situation. Danny had jumped the way he was pushed by Silvestri or Carmine, but those days were gone, and had had their bad side; too many empires were built, too many perks and privileges were sanctioned. In time Fernando would settle down and settle in, but his Latin roots were Spanish, not Italian, which made a big difference. This was his first major job in a non-Hispanic area, and he was still groping for the right way to go about things.

“We can’t have young women raped and murdered,” Fernando said. “I’ve read enough about this case to know that no stone’s gone unturned. The guy’s like a ghost-but sex killers always are. No familiar tracks.”

“Now he’s killing, he’ll never stop,” Carmine said, “unless he’s caught. One day he’ll make a serious mistake. I want to flood his victim area with cops to help push him into making that mistake. Will you give me uniforms?”

“As many as I can spare.” Fernando held up one hand, a beautiful member, square in the palm, with long, tapering fingers. “But one thing I ask, Carmine.”

“Ask.”

“Let’s not notify my guys until election day midday, when I’ll call in extra men. I’m not saying there are leaks in my division, but I’d rather make sure the Dodo has as little time as possible to prepare. Agreed?”

“That’s a good idea. I won’t mention it in Detectives either. That way, if the Dodo is planning to go Tuesday night, he’ll have no reason not to until Tuesday afternoon. He may decide then to abort, but it’s short notice, and he doesn’t strike me as the kind to change his plans unless he absolutely has to. A longer wait might spook him, a short one is less likely to.”

“Have you a plan?” Fernando asked.

“Nothing to rival Alexander the Great, no. I just need as many men as possible in cars and on foot.”

“I can give you ten cars-I daren’t make it more. Thirty foot patrols of two men each. That skins me dangerously, Carmine. If anything unrelated happens elsewhere in Holloman, bearing in mind what kind of year the country’s had, things could explode.” Despite his pessimistic words, Fernando looked remarkably cheerful. “But they won’t. If anything happens, it will be earlier, and you won’t get any reinforcements at all.”

Carmine reached out a hand. “Thanks, Fernando.”

It was shaken warmly. “My thanks to you, Carmine. If you didn’t have a weird and quirky detective named Abe Goldberg, all my uniforms would have meant nothing to Kurt von Fahlendorf. I suggest we go see the Commissioner.”

It would not have surprised Helen MacIntosh to learn that Captain Delmonico had deliberately sidelined her to West Germany and Munich, though why she should suspect him of ulterior motives lay deeper than her consciousness. After nearly two months in Detectives, she had concluded that the Captain’s unit was so tightly knit there might be some activities he didn’t want her to know about. These activities were concerned with personalities rather than events, which meant she honestly didn’t care one way or the other about them, but she was sharp enough to sense that he might perceive her differently than she did herself.

By far the hottest item on her secret agenda was the uncovering of the von Fahlendorf kidnappers. Why not the Dodo? Because the laurels for catching him would inevitably be scattered among several detectives, with the Captain himself at the top of the pyramid. Not good enough, just not good enough! Helen was intent upon winning all the laurels for herself, which negated the Dodo. So when she was offered the chance to investigate the von Fahlendorfs in Munich, she leaped at it.

The most uncomfortable part of the expedition was Kurt’s attitude to her; though she had told him explicitly that she was pretending to be his fiancée, by the time they boarded their plane he had somehow become convinced that the engagement was as real as the plane itself. A nuisance, but one she was prepared to suffer considering the prize.

With time differences, they arrived close to midnight at Munich; she wouldn’t get to meet the family until breakfast of Saturday, probably. A large Mercedes car met them, but again, no representative of the family came with it; the uniformed driver informed Kurt in German that it was past the family’s bedtime. The worst feature of the trip, Helen reflected as she climbed in, was that she spoke no German, and had to take Kurt’s word for it when he translated. Kurt himself grew more jovial the closer to his home he got, and seemed to regard the family’s absence as normal.

What she could see of the house when the car drew up an hour later told her that it was huge by American standards; more a palace than a mansion. Her two bags were whisked inside, Kurt kissed her in the vast foyer, and she was conducted up a curving flight of purple Levanto marble stairs to her quarters, a better word than bedroom, as she had a sitting room and a little kitchen as well as a bedroom, and her bathroom looked as if mad King Ludwig of Bavaria had designed it, between the marble swans, dolphins and seahorses that swooped, frisked and floated all over green marble weeds and pink marble shells.

She let the maid finish unpacking her bags, bestowed a ten-dollar note upon the astonished girl, pushed her out the huge double doors, and sat down at a desk in her sitting room to enter her journal, as she wasn’t very tired. Like Kurt, Helen had the knack of sleeping on planes. First class helped, if only he’d admit it, the skinflint.

She met them at breakfast, though no one had told her what time it was served, or where; her answer was to venture out of her quarters at seven, and start to wander. A chance meeting with the butler, who spoke good English, established a valuable friendship. Clearly enchanted by her youth and beauty, he beamed.

“You are too early, fräulein,” he said. “The maid would have brought you coffee at eight, and breakfast when you wanted.”

“Oh, I’m a lark, not an owl,” she said, losing him with the metaphor. “I’ll eat with everyone. What’s your name?”

“Macken, fräulein.”

She glanced around the blue, cream and gilt of the room and looked conspiratorial. “Meet me here after breakfast, Macken, then you can take me on a grand tour.”

“But Herr Kurt-”

“I intend to give him plenty of time with his family.”

And off she went, following Macken’s directions, to a small parlor wherein the family breakfasted at seven-thirty.

Five people sat at a round table, in the center of which stood a big basket of crisp white bread rolls whose aroma assailed the hungry Helen’s nostrils as truffles did a hound’s, a plate of assorted cheese slices, a plate of sliced German sausage, and a plate of salami. At each place-there was a sixth-sat a bowl of butter. Breakfast, it seemed. Alien, but tempting.

The men rose; Kurt performed the introductions, delighted that his Helen had risen early.

She smiled at everybody, sat down, and drank her first cup of coffee at a gulp. It was refilled as promptly as Minnie did a mug at Malvolio’s.

They were strikingly handsome. Kurt set the family pattern: tall, a strong physique, frost-fair hair, pale blue eyes, the kind of features a few movie stars were lucky enough to have, as they obviated any requirement to act. Though she was not really a von Fahlendorf, the Baroness too was very fair, but sleek and exotic, with green eyes. The dark one was Josef, who quite took the breath away: thick black hair, large and dreamy black eyes, the face of an Adonis.

“My dear, I am so glad to meet you,” Dagmar said. “Kurt has written so much about you. Mama, what do you think?”

The Baroness smiled with all the enigma of a cat. “She is beautiful indeed, Dagmar.” Then, to Helen, “I always knew that American cosmeticians were superbly clever. Which company makes your hair dye and what is it called?”

Mouth full of delicious fresh bread roll and butter, Helen blinked, swallowed in a hurry, coughed, almost choked. Oh, hell! she thought. Aristocrats come in two flavors-bitter and sweet. This bunch are so sure of their bloodlines and wealth that they say and do exactly as they like. Bitter? They’d make a lemon feel syrupy by comparison. I am in for a rough ride.

Aloud she said, “I don’t dye my hair, Baroness. It’s my father’s family’s color. My brother has it too.”

The two women exchanged a glance that said they didn’t believe a word of her answer.

“You see,” said Dagmar, nibbling at a roll, “Fahlendorf Farben is contemplating a cosmetics branch, a line to be called Domina. That means-”

“Lady!” said Helen with a snap. “I’m well versed in Latin and Greek, ladies. In fact, I graduated summa cum laude from Harvard-a great university, I’m sure you know.”

“Helen’s father,” said Kurt, looking bewildered, “is the president of another great university-Chubb.”

“Really? How nice,” said the Baroness.

She, thought Helen, must have a pedigree that makes the von Fahlendorfs look like hayseeds and yokels. I bet Catherine de Medici was an ancestress, right along with Lucrezia Borgia. I am going to have fun!

Josef was opposite Helen, and gave her what was probably his most charming smile. “Breakfast is a hurried meal,” he said, his English more heavily accented than that of his in-laws. “I look forward to a more leisurely conversation at dinner, Helen.”

“No more than I,” she said, trying to simper; Josef looked like a man who would succumb to a simper.

He gave her another smile, got to his feet, bowed, and clicked his heels before leaving.

“Oh, dear, flog the in-laws, eh?” said Helen, crunching her roll. “What a delicious breakfast! Nothing sweet in sight, yet nothing slimming. I love it. Is the sausage bologna?”

“No, kaiserfleisch,” said Kurt, who seemed to think it was his job to keep the peace. “It is more delicate.”

“It’s yummy.” Helen piled some on to another roll, well buttered. “I could get fat on this breakfast, Kurt. Seriously, though, is Josef off to work?”

“We all are,” said Dagmar, a touch of ice in her voice. “Dinner is at eight, but we assemble in the red drawing room for an aperitif at half past seven. Macken will send someone for you, otherwise you might get lost.”

“Good thinking,” said Helen, on her third roll. “Kurt, do go with your sister, please. I’m off for a drive later anyway.”

He smiled at her and hurried after Dagmar’s retreating form.

Not much of a dresser for a rich woman, Helen was thinking as she watched them; her skirt, sweater and coat hadn’t come from Chanel or Balenciaga. In New York, I’d pick her as shopping at Bloomingdale’s, not Bergdorf’s. She wouldn’t bother driving to Boston to do Filene’s basement either. Not a clothes horse. Therefore, who is the mysterious woman who can rival the Duchess of Windsor? The Baroness is sartorially up to it, but she’s too old. And there’s something about her… A flaw in what looks like a perfect stone until you really look…

Macken was pottering around the blue, cream and gilt room when Helen walked in at a quarter of eight.

“What does a German butler do?” she asked as he led her down a long, fussily decorated hall. “My father has a butler at Chubb House, but he’s more a superintendent of staff than anything else. He doesn’t open the front door unless he happens to be passing, for instance, and he doesn’t have a pantry full of silverware. We hire an indigent scholarship student to polish the silver.”

She chattered on, apparently oblivious to Macken’s horror at her familiarity, until, passing into the ballroom, she decided she had softened him up sufficiently.

“Macken,” she said earnestly, her eyes on his seamed face rather than the splendor of a room that would have done credit to any palace, “you must understand that I’m far more your class of person than I am of the von Fahlendorfs. And no, I am not going to marry Kurt, so there’s no indiscretion involved. I’m here because Herr Kurt had a horrible time while he was kidnapped, and he needed company to come home. In other words, I’m everybody’s friend, nobody’s fiancée.”

His eyes were grey and keen; they regarded her with liking and respect. “I understand, Miss Helen.”

“Good! We’re supposed to fly home on Monday, but don’t be surprised if it’s tomorrow-Sunday. Kurt’s unhappy here.”

“Yes. It is Herr Josef. Kurt cannot forgive him for the injuries to his sister.”

“What was Josef’s real name?” she asked, not varying the amount of curiosity in her voice. “Was it aristocratic?”

“No, not at all. His name was Richter,” said Macken.

“Where does he come from? His accent in English is different.”

“I do not know, Miss Helen, but I think East Germany.” He swept his hand around in pride. “Is it not a beautiful room?”

“For a family of five, I think it’s downright hedonistic,” Helen said tartly. “I know the family is very wealthy, Macken, but this place must cost a fortune to keep up.”

The dam wall was broken; the old man loved her, and would have told her almost anything. “Indeed, indeed, Miss Helen! It is killing them, but Graf von Fahlendorf will not hear of selling Evensong-that is its name in English.”

“Pretty soon Swansong, sounds like.”

They left; it was a long trek to the front door.

“Do you miss Kurt?” she asked.

“Yes, and no. His work has always interested him more than the factory or life anywhere, I think.”

“Is the factory actually open on a Saturday?”

“Not the factory itself, but Herr Josef and Miss Dagmar go in to the office. It was a wonderful thing, that you found Kurt before the ransom was paid.”

“Why, particularly?”

“Because it was the Baroness’s money, her dowry for the grandchildren.” He opened one leaf of the front door. “Kurt has left you a map in the car, Miss Helen, with the factory and Evensong marked on it.”

She looked at the high blue sky, the sun bathing the park around this palace in warmth, and smiled. “What a shame to have to slave in an office on a day like this,” she said, laughing.

“Herr Josef does not,” Macken said, insisting on escorting her down the great bank of steps. “He leaves the office at noon to visit his mother.”

“Do you know her?” Helen asked, looking at the black Porsche parked exactly where the door would coincide with her knees as she came off the bottom step. Trust Kurt! Control was his middle name.

And there she was, free in tons of time to get used to the Porsche’s quirks, even time to get lost. But driving in Munich wasn’t difficult the way driving in Great Britain had been, with traffic on the wrong side of the road. Germans drove on the correct side, the right. That was the Brits, though: island mentality.

Traffic was light compared to New York City, lighter even than Holloman; clearly not every Bavarian owned a car as yet, or maybe there were fewer two-car families? She cruised around contentedly, taking in the sights, but by half after eleven she was parked outside Fahlendorf Farben at the entrance she had decided looked like the one to the offices.

If Josef came out, she had a good chance of catching him here. What chewed at her was that if he didn’t use this entrance, she’d lost her only chance to investigate Josef as an entity divorced from the von Fahlendorfs. However, her instincts said that he was the kind who detested seeming soiled or working class; if her reading was correct, then she would succeed. At first the showy Porsche had worried her, but after a couple of hours in the city, she had seen enough Porsches on the roads to believe Josef wouldn’t notice her, parked far down the block and behind a cheap Ford. Come on, Josef, prove me right!.

At noon precisely he came through the imposing glass doors and strode across the wide thoroughfare to a dark red Mercedes she hadn’t noticed until that moment. It must have just pulled up. Dark red… She couldn’t really see, but she suspected that the driver was a woman. Slipping the Porsche into gear, she watched the Mercedes ease into traffic, and followed it at a distance that put two cars between it and her.

It proceeded at a pace well within the speed limit and turned off the main road within a kilometre. From that point the red auto drove with purpose, behaving as if its driver had no idea she was being followed. Traffic became sparse so Helen had to stay well back, but she never stood in any danger of losing her quarry. Right into one street, left into another, always moving out of the city central. At no time did the Mercedes navigate a poor district; quite the contrary. When it stopped at last, thirty minutes later, the street was affluent and the house that apparently was its goal was as imposing as the rest. Not in an American way, this affluence, but the three-storeyed and well painted residences were all situated in reasonable gardens.

A young man ran down the ten steps from the front door and across to where a self-contained garage had been constructed at a later date; he used a key on its padlock and then rolled up the door. Very dark, very handsome, very like Josef to look at. The car drove in, but no one came out. There must be a walkway to the house, Helen concluded, easing the Porsche into a vacant space two hundred metres away on the same side of the road.

Now what do I do? Get a closer look at the young man and the woman who might or might not be the woman who obtained the prison plans from Correctional Institutions.

The street was fairly quiet, but not deserted as it would have been in America. People were out and about, walking their dogs, all on leashes. The sidewalks were mined with dog turds, so she would have to be careful where she stepped-gross! It was going to be hard to access the house as each residence was surrounded by an iron rod fence topped with spear heads, and each had a big bay window looking down on the front fence.

Helen took to the sidewalk herself, cursing her jeans and windcheater: they looked wrong in a place where every woman was in grey or brown tweeds and snappy little hats. If she was accosted, she’d pretend to be an English au pair girl; they wouldn’t believe an American au pair girl, popularly supposed to throw the baby out with the bath water. Or so Helen’s friends had assured her when they swapped yarns of life’s adventures.

“Mausie! Mausie!” she called, as if searching for a small and delinquent dog.

Where the garage stood-most houses seemed to make do with kerbside parking-was a little gap, like a side passage; Helen ducked into it quickly and ran toward the backyard, expecting to be brought up short by a connecting corridor. But no such existed. Around the back she discovered why. The house had a fourth floor half buried in the ground; these were by far the most private rooms, as the windows were almost at ceiling level.

She looked down on three people sitting at a table: Josef, the young man, and a woman of about forty. As they were speaking German, she couldn’t have understood what they were saying even if she had been able to hear it, which she couldn’t. The room was insulated, probably air-conditioned: a rarity for Munich. It was also expensively furnished and attractively decorated-a lot of money had been spent on this basement flat. Presumably it was designed for Josef and his visits, which meant the house’s occupants didn’t want the neighbors looking in to see Josef. Well, well…

But this was definitely the woman who had obtained the plans, because she was dressed to rival the Duchess of Windsor, and did. Her outfit was dark red rather than maroon, but it was French and extremely expensive. What were the odds? It had to be the same woman! A beautiful face perfectly made up, as dark as Josef’s-was she his sister, then? And who was the young man, a son or a nephew? He was about eighteen or nineteen years old, Helen estimated, and he was stylishly dressed in the European idea of casual. They were, in fact, a trio any couturier would die for.

She had Kurt’s and Dagmar’s phone numbers and there was a call box at the end of the road, but she decided not to call them. First, see what ensued at dinner tonight.

When the woman in dark red Dior dropped Josef one street over from the factory, Helen learned something else: unless incest was in the equation, she wasn’t Josef’s sister. They exchanged a passionate kiss before Josef transferred from her car to his, a top of the line BMW. So they were lovers. Richter, Richter… Though there was another possibility, given that this youth was about four or five years older than Josef’s eldest by Dagmar. What if Josef and this woman were husband and wife, the marriage to Dagmar bigamous? That would not please a toplofty clan of Prussian junkers with an Italian aristocrat thrown in the mix!

The family dressed for dinner, which Helen, no novice, took to mean black tie for the men and evening gowns for the women. Well, no long dresses for her! Helen climbed into a miniskirted dress of amber with an amber lace overdress-I’ll drown those two bitches in this color! Sheer gold pantyhose and gold shoes, a gold bag, and down her back the famous MacIntosh apricot hair. Out of a dye bottle, indeed! Eat your hearts out, you anemic, skinny blondes!

The look on Macken’s face said he hadn’t seen anyone look like this since Aphrodite, and two footmen in dark green livery stood gaping until Macken barked at them. A smile fixed to her face, Helen swept into the crimson, cream and gilt drawing room, where the three male von Fahlendorfs gaped at her.

The Baroness, exquisitely garbed in charcoal grey with white touches that displayed and vanished as she moved, came up to Helen and brushed cheeks. “My dear, such beautiful legs! You must have done ballet and gymnastics.”

“Track and field, actually,” Helen drawled, vowing that Miss Procter’s would be proud of her.

“We have a perfect table tonight,” said Dagmar, brushing in her turn. “Three couples.”

She was wearing, Helen noted, a dowager-style dress of beads and billows in an unflattering pastel blue-why do blondes wear blue? It diminishes them. The dress screamed Hong Kong and made her look sixty-oh, Dagmar, Dagmar!

The Baron, who thus far hadn’t really impinged on Helen, served sherry or Campari as an aperitif and wandered around the room with Helen in tow, showing her his favorite paintings.

“I would wish for Delacroix or Rossetti, but the museums have them,” he sighed.

“That’s where I’m lucky,” Helen said, grinning evilly. “I get to borrow some of the Chubb collection, though it’s more Impressionist. One of these days the Parsons Foundation will have to cough up its el Grecos, Poussins and whatevers, but until then Dad refuses to build the Chubb art gallery.”

The Baron, she saw, was lost; wasted ammunition. The old man lived in a dream world, and she felt sorry for him, dominated by his wife and daughter. Yet, she noticed, he didn’t seem at all comfortable when marooned with Kurt-I must remember to put that in my journal, she vowed mentally. Kurt sets them on edge, he’s too alien, with his muons and particles. It’s The Bomb, of course. Europe’s in the first line of fire, so to speak, and they’re really paranoid about The Bomb. Look at how they hoped John F. Kennedy would save them. His death meant more over here, and now the von Fahlendorfs have spawned an atomic scientist. Brr!

The children came as a shock. A dowdy little governess shepherded them into the drawing room like clockwork dolls; it had horrified Helen to learn that they shared no meals with the adults-oh, think what she had learned at Dad’s table as a child! They were so stiff and polite-the two boys bowed and clicked heels, the two girls curtsied. Amazing! Even the fifteen-year-old boy, with fuzz on his legs, wore short pants and knee socks. Astounding! Martin and Klaus-Maria, older than the girls, were also darker, though none of the four was as dark as the father. Annelise looked as if she might give the governess trouble, but, Helen was assured, it was Ursel, the youngest, who had inherited the genius. A promising research chemist of the future.

From her tiny conversation with the children, she learned that the family was Roman Catholic-why had Kurt led her to believe they were Lutherans? Because I assumed it, and he just couldn’t be bothered correcting me. He’s a physicist, he believes in time and timespace, whatever that is, and he told me that there is no life after death, it flies in the face of the laws of physics.

Even with all its leaves removed the dining table was too big for six people, especially since the Baron chose to sit at one end and the Baroness at the other. There was more than a yard of space between her and Dagmar on one side, Kurt and Josef on the other; she faced Josef, Dagmar faced Kurt.

“Where did you meet your husband, Dagmar?” Helen asked as a mediocre soup was removed.

“At the polytechnic in Bonn,” Dagmar said, it seemed willing to view this question as permissible. “We were in the same year, and both doing chemistry.”

“Had you done a general degree first? Arts? Science?”

“No. I knew what I wanted to do, so why waste time?”

“Um-you don’t think that four years of college can put a polish on whatever you want to do later on?”

The arctically blue, cold eyes surveyed her from the gold of her head to the hand-made gold lace of her dress. Contemptuously. “A foolish waste of time, which is the most precious article in life. Before you know it, you will be an old woman.”

Especially wearing a dress like that, said Helen’s eyes. “Nothing’s wasted that broadens a life, I believe. Look at me-a Harvard graduate one moment, dealing with Queens traffic the next. Harvard was a help.”

“The Queen has traffic?” Dagmar asked blankly. “In what?”

Her laughter broke all conversation into a transfixed stop-motion; everyone stared, and Helen realized that one didn’t howl with laughter at a von Fahlendorf table. Too bad. “No, you misunderstand. Queens is a borough of New York City, and I was a traffic cop there for two years.”

Someone pressed the button: movement resumed.

“An extraordinary job,” said Josef, dark eyes admiring. “I think you left it, yes?”

“Yes, to train as a detective in Holloman, my home town.”

“Such unfeminine work,” said the Baroness, looking itchy to leave even though the fish was just coming in.

“Work is work,” said Helen in a flat voice, staring at the glaucous eye of a sole above its pursed little rubbery lips. “People give work a sex, when it shouldn’t have one. Detection of crime is eminently suited to the talents of women.”

“Why?” asked Kurt, smiling.

“Because women are naturally nosey, Kurt, love.”

“It cannot pay much,” said the Baron, scraping one side of his sole down to its skeleton and eating with relish.

“I don’t need to worry about money, Baron. I have an income of a million dollars a year from a trust fund.”

Stop-motion again.

“You are enormously rich!” said Josef on a squawk.

“Not for my family,” said Helen, laying knife and fork down together to indicate that she found the fish inedible. “The thing is, we made our money several generations ago, and thanks to good management, we’ve been able to do useful things with it. My father is a famous educator, my parents have brought my brother and me up to regard philanthropy as necessary, and we work to benefit our family reputation, our home state, and our country.”

“Didn’t I tell you Helen was wonderful?” Kurt demanded.

The Baron flipped his fish over to enjoy the more buttery, lemony underside. “What we do not know,” he said, scraping away, “is who kidnapped Kurt. Your getting him back unharmed and saving our money were laudable, Helen, but the crime is not solved.”

“Actually,” said Helen, waving at a footman to take her plate, “it is solved. I know who kidnapped Kurt and tried to steal your ten million, Baron.”

“Nonsense! How could you?” Josef asked sharply.

“Not nonsense, Josef, as you well know. She must be a most expensive mistress, the woman who lives with the young man in that big house. Is he your son too?”

The silence was palpable; the four genuine von Fahlendorfs were staring now at Josef, trying to seem unaffected.

“A joke, Helen?” Kurt asked, face the color of ashes.

“Unfortunately, Kurt, no. It’s the truth. Josef masterminded your kidnapping, which was carried out by a cruel and ruthless woman who is either Josef’s mistress or his real wife. Her assistant-a rather unwilling one, I think-was the young man who looks too much like Josef not to be his son,” said Helen.

Josef broke into a stream of German that dried up when the Baron smacked the table with the palm of his open hand.

“Halte die Klappe!” he roared. “Speak in English, or not at all! Since the day you married my daughter, you have been a leech! I have tolerated you because of Martin, Klaus-Maria, Annelise and Ursel-” Suddenly he floundered, eyes rolling wildly.

Dagmar was howling noisily and Kurt fully occupied in trying to calm her, but the Baroness was behaving most strangely of all, scratching at her chin and throat. The brilliant light of the overhead chandelier showed the beads of sweat breaking through her careful make-up; Helen saw the light. The Baroness was a junkie. Morphine, probably.

It was Macken and Helen who took charge. Kurt was ordered to take his sister away and help her in her own rooms, and the Baroness’s maid summoned to deal with her mistress and her habit.

“Brunhilde knows what to do,” said Macken, revealing that at least the senior staff knew the family secrets. “My lady had a back operation several years ago, and cannot deal with the pain,” he said smoothly.

In a pig’s eye, thought Helen. “Josef can’t be allowed to communicate with his woman,” she said to Macken, “and that means locked in guest quarters like mine, with all the phone jacks unplugged and no one in contact with him who might be susceptible to a bribe. It’s up to the family what they do with him and his accomplices, I’m butting out-going home, I mean.”

“This is all nonsense, Helen,” Josef said as two footmen prepared to march him away. “You spied on me and discovered my sister and her son.”

“Sister?” Helen laughed. “I saw the lip-locker you and Frau Richter-shall I call her that?-exchanged this afternoon.”

Kurt walked in, looking grim. A swift conversation passed between him and Macken; Kurt looked relieved. “You are a woman in a million, Helen,” he said to her. “I must take Papa to his room. He will recover in a moment, then we will decide what to do with Josef. Poor Dagmar!”

“I’m going home tomorrow,” she said.

“I will be coming with you,” said Kurt, and led his father away: a curious business. The old man shrank, muttering about bombs-that much Helen got, even in German-then seemed to cave in and allowed Kurt to assist his faltering attempt to walk.

“You’re a treasure, Macken,” she said to the butler when they were the only people left in the room.

“Thank you, Miss Helen.”

“What did your father do to make a living?”

Macken looked surprised. “He was butler to the Graf.”

Old retainers! “And your son or sons, Macken?”

“One son. He is the head of a government department in Bonn.”

Dagmar begged for admittance as Helen was packing the next morning. “I must thank you,” she said stiffly.

“It’s not necessary. You realize, I hope, that I’m not going to marry Kurt? I came to see if I could solve the kidnapping.”

“That relieves me. You would drive my Kurtchen insane.” She sat on a chair out of the way and watched the jeans-clad Helen work, smoothly and swiftly. “We will save the family name, that is all-important.”

“I figured as much,” said Helen dryly.

“Josef asked me to split two of the ten million off and give it to him,” said Dagmar. “I took it as selfishness, but of course he wanted it for his natural son. His request was denied.”

“May I offer you a word of advice?” Helen asked, stopping to look at Dagmar very seriously

“No doubt I will resent it, but offer it anyway.”

“Josef’s mistress dresses like the Duchess of Windsor-both very expensively and in very good taste. You dress like old Queen Mary, with whose appearance I’m acquainted thanks to an English colleague. You’re a frump, Dagmar, but you needn’t be. Put yourself in the hands of one of those faggy guys always hanging around rich women and let him work a Pygmalion. The best revenge is to live well, so while the Richter woman rots in a German prison, you can flaunt it. You’ll be a happier woman, betcha.”

The sheer insolence deprived Dagmar of a retort.

Helen packed on tranquilly until she finished.

Dagmar spoke again. “Did you mark the woman’s house on your map?” Dagmar asked then.

“Yes,” said Helen, surprised.

“May I have the map? I will need it for the police.”

Helen reached into her enormous shoulder bag and withdrew it. “Here it is, complete with the wrong folds.” She opened it and pointed. “There you are.”

“Well, at least I know what Josef did with his salary.”

“Speaking of houses, this one-” Helen began.

“Will be sold,” Dagmar said with finality, and got up. “I will not see you again-ever, I hope. But thank you.”

Helen and Kurt flew home together on Sunday, and parted in the foyer of Talisman Towers undemonstrably.

“I am tired,” said Kurt, brushing her chin with one hand.

“Worse than being kidnapped?”

“Infinitely. My poor sister! She is heart-broken.”

“Give her my compliments when you talk.”

“I will.”

And, thought Helen, gazing around her attractive but austere bathroom, it may not look like mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, but I like it all the more for that. Something in between would be nice.

“Bigamy!” said Carmine on Monday morning. “It fits. Yeah, it fits like Frau Richter’s hand in her French kid glove. The brother-in-law did it to provide for his legitimate son, since his bastards had so much-and were getting more.”

“Bigamy can happen when a once-whole nation has been split ideologically, and the two parts don’t talk to each other. I daresay the von Fahlendorfs didn’t ask, and Josef sure as hell didn’t say,” Helen said to Carmine, Nick and Delia.

“They won’t prosecute,” Nick said.

“Definitely not,” Delia said.

“They have to do something,” Helen said. “Honor has been insulted, and the Baron’s not the man to suffer that without lashing back. Nor is the Baroness. And Dagmar’s even worse.”

“Well,” said Carmine, leaning back in his chair, “thank God whatever they do is German business, not American. Note, however, that the family pushed Kurt back to our side of the Atlantic with indecent haste.”

“Protecting him from whatever they do,” said Nick.

“Have you seen the evening papers?” Desdemona asked on Tuesday night when Carmine got home.

He was on edge; there was a faint possibility that the Dodo would strike today. “No,” he said, taking his drink.

Prunella came in and sat down with a breathless sigh. “I wish Julian had less imagination, now that he’s found it,” she said, smiling. “Captain Nemo is rather wearing. Did you know that a race of fish men live in the deep ocean right at its bottom? I could bear that if they hadn’t invented this whizz-bang, super-duper death ray.”

Desdemona handed her a glass of red wine, and gave Carmine the New York evening papers; Holloman’s was a morning one.

“It’s in both papers,” said Desdemona, sitting. “The Post has the bigger article.”

It was front page, and headlines: Josef von Fahlendorf, brother-in-law of kidnap victim Professor Kurt von Fahlendorf, had been shot dead outside the von Fahlendorf factory in Munich on this Tuesday at dawn. “Holy shits!” Carmine exclaimed, still reading. What Josef was doing there at that hour no one in authority at Fahlendorf Farben seemed to know, including its managing director, Dagmar, who hadn’t even been aware that Josef was gone from their bed. According to the sole witness, a Volkswagen car eased up behind Josef and the two men in it cut him down with automatic pistols. Heinrich Müller was a factory worker on his way in to Fahlendorf Farben to fire up some new equipment, and he behaved heroically. Instead of seeking shelter, he tried vainly to help Josef, who died in his arms a few minutes later. “Kurt!” he said several times, quite clearly. Müller said the men looked like Turks, had spoken a few words in Turkish. Enjoying this news item immensely, the by-lining journalist said it was evident that Josef thought he had been mistaken for Kurt.

“What do you think?” Desdemona asked.

“That it’s as fishy as Julian’s fish men.” He got up.

“Off to Helen’s minus your drink?”

“Hell, no! She can wait until tomorrow. I’m going to see Delia. Give her a call for me, please? With this news humming on the aether, every hammer and teamster in creation will be tuned to the cop band, so let’s keep my movements secret.”

“Dinner?”

“I should be home in time. Otherwise, save mine.”

“Luckily it’s steak, so we’ll wait. Prunella, looks as if this might be a night for the girls to get blotto.”

“That’s a good chambertin-don’t guzzle.”

Since she didn’t mind the half-hour commute, Delia lived in Millstone, where she could afford a spacious apartment on the waterfront of Busquash Bay. Having chosen a divine color scheme of rust, blue and pink, Delia had stuffed every room with furniture imported from Oxford, where it had graced her grandmother’s home. The walls were a permanently open photograph album of Carstairses, Silvestris, Ceruttis and Cunninghams, the occasional tables boasted lava lamps next to Dresden china lamps, and there were lace-edged, daisy-embroidered doilies everywhere. It was home.

By the time that Carmine got there she had read the newspapers and listened to the local news radio station, WRHN. She also had his drink ready.

“So who did it?” Carmine asked.

“I’m not quite sure, Carmine dear. Whoever, it’s carefully orchestrated. Heinrich Müller was there accidentally on purpose, of that I’m positive. They had to have a witness to point out that the culprits were Turks.”

“Why Turks?” he asked, sipping.

“Because Germany’s filling up with them,” Delia explained. “Turks find German much easier to learn than other European languages, and penniless Turks gravitate there in search of work. I predict that in the future the trend will escalate, but it’s already marked enough to have created a degree of resentment in working class Germans. Turks make convenient whipping boys.”

“I see. And Heinrich Müller?”

“Will get a big fat promotion. Oh, he was there! I’m also sure the men he saw looked like Turks, may well have been Turks. But I very much doubt that Josef died with Kurt’s name on his lips-or that he died so slowly. I don’t know how clever Müller is, but he’s probably clever enough to suspect that he was given this special job in order to be there as a witness. If he earns a big fat promotion out of it, I predict that he won’t care who set it up or for what reason. Dagmar had him pegged as promising.”

“So who do you think set it up, Deels?”

“A von Fahlendorf. Which one is the brain-teaser. Not our Kurt, of that we can be sure, I think. The family was anxious to get him out of Europe. But whether it’s the Baron, the Baroness or Dagmar, I don’t know. My choice is Dagmar.”

“Broken heart and all?”

“The broken heart makes her more likely, in my book. A woman scorned and all that stuff? According to Helen, Josef is-was-a gorgeous looking bloke, smooth as satin, charming as Cary Grant. She’d already forgiven him an attempted scam and must have been positive he wouldn’t err again. But to think he’d kill her baby brother-! Ooo-aa! That’s blood versus love,” said Delia with a shudder. “I’d choose blood over love every time.”

“So would I, I think. What will the German cops think?”

“That some Turks did it. That it was Turks planned the kidnapping too.”

“In which case, why kill Josef?”

Delia pursed her lips. “Some abstruse Ottoman mind-set? A peculiar eastern revenge? I think the German cops will be so grateful to have a solution offered to them that they won’t ask too many uncomfortable questions.”

His glass was empty; Carmine declined a refill. “Thanks, but no. I have to get home for dinner.”

“There’s a chance the Dodo will strike tonight.”

“I know. That means early to bed.”