“I’ve worked our strategy out, twinnie dear,” Gordie said, waving a thick artist’s paint brush dripping crimson gore.
“Do tell!”
“To get the blood right, we have to witness a slaughter.”
Robert swung around from the typewriter; the exasperation on his face was exactly mirrored on his brother’s, and he gave a whinnying laugh. “Gordie, your face is perfect! We’re getting so good that we won’t even need to be in the same room together.”
“Shall we continue our rhymes a little more?”
“Why not? Um-slaughter… Rhymes with daughter, caught her, bought her, fought her, sort her-”
“Yes, yes, that’s plenty!”
“Party pooper! All jokes aside, Gordie, I do like your sketch. It’s new, it’s different-a novel concept for murder. Why don’t we make more of it?”
“Will Amanda like it if we do?”
“Who cares, twinnie-winnie?” Robert asked, tittering. “She is our aunt, and small potatoes.”
“Don’t forget that we need Captain Delmonico to dig our biggest potatoes, Robbie. Will he like the blood?”
Robert leaped to his feet and executed a stylish pirouette across the black-and-white crazed rug; Gordon joined him at his halfway mark, and they finished together with an entrechat.
“Oh, we haven’t lost our balletic skills!” Gordie cried. “Here’s a harder one-Aubergine.”
“Margarine. Ne’er was seen. Long string bean. Not that keen. Fast machine. Primp and preen.”
The elfin face looked sly. “Ah-Dodo?”
“HoJo. No-no. Old crow. So-so.”
“Darling, you are brilliant!” Gordie went back to his work station. “We will go through with this, Robbie, won’t we?”
“Yes, Gordie, we will. I promise we will.”
“I can’t, Hank,” said Amanda Warburton wretchedly. “I’m so sorry, but while I esteem you as a friend, I’ll never think of you as anything else. I stopped loving a long time ago, and the scars are too many and too deep to eradicate.” Eyes full of tears, she gazed at Hank piteously. “Please understand! It’s impossible, but that’s no reflection on you. I’d like to keep you as my friend, but you may find that an insult.”
Hank’s chief reaction to this rejection was a profound thankfulness that he hadn’t gone down on one knee to propose; it had occurred to him to do so, but something had restrained him-a subconscious knowledge that she would refuse him, probably. So he leaned back in his chair, released her hands, sighed, and tried valiantly to smile.
“No, I’m not insulted, and yes, I’d be glad to continue as your friend. We’ll forget that tonight ever happened. I’ll never refer to it again unless you do, not by look either.” He took a breath and managed to make the smile more genuine. “You’re fun to be with, Amanda. I’d hate to lose our dinners, games, times with Marcia and the animals. Is that all right?”
“Yes, Hank, of course it is! But for tonight, would you prefer that we called off dinner?”
“Good lord, why? Lobster Pot, Solo’s, Sea Foam, Jerry’s? Take your pick,” he said, sounding quite himself.
“Lobster Pot, please. Would you mind taking me to the Mall afterward? A new shipment from Orrefors came in just as I was leaving, and I’d like to get it unpacked. I left my car there and walked home, so it’s just the ride.”
“It’s more than the ride. I’ll help you unpack.”
And so it was arranged.
Amazing how life goes on, Hank thought as they settled into their customary booth; he ordered broiled scrod, she went for soft-shelled crab, and they both had a vinaigrette dressing on their salads. Their talk was perhaps a little stiffer than usual, but Hank held his end up heroically, and by the time they left for the Mall she was relaxed on one drink more than she normally had. Yes, they would get through this.
He was kicking himself for trying to move their relationship up a notch, though his sensible side insisted that if the answer was no, there was no propitious moment. The idea of her was stronger in him than her reality, but had it not been, he would never have dreamed his dreams or fantasized about their love-making. And it was true, hope did spring eternal; by the time they reached the back door of the Glass Teddy Bear, he was able to believe that at some time in the future, she would change her mind. Women always did, especially bolstered by the fact that a suitor had declared himself, then stuck around as a friend. What did they call such men? Cicisbeos, that was it. Education, he reflected, keys jingling in the lock, was a wonderful asset.
He stood back for her to enter first.
“Oh, bother!” she exclaimed. “The light is out, and I can never find the switch panel for the others.”
“Here, I know.” Hank pushed her into the back room and flicked at the bank of switches Amanda could never find. “Gee, there must be a major fuse blown,” he said. “They’re all out.”
The blow fell on the side of his skull and crushed it in the manner of an eggshell-still in one piece, yet shattered to smithereens. Hank Murray was scarcely conscious what had happened, the blood poured into his cranium so rapidly. He was dead even as he hit the floor.
Dazed by a much lighter blow, Amanda was on all fours and crawling toward the shop when the black clad intruder straddled her, put a gloved hand in her mass of hair, yanked her entire trunk upward, and cut her throat clean to the backbone. The blood jetted out at arterial pressure, fine drops showering boxes and the wall behind them like paint from an air brush. The attacker stepped away to let her bleed out, a matter of scant minutes. Then, the business ended, he went into the shop. There, on a dolly and wrapped in padded cloths, the glass teddy bear waited. He swung the apparatus around and wheeled it through the back room on the far side from the blood, out the back door; glancing at Hank’s keys, he removed them and put them in a pants pocket. Despite the security, there was no one in sight; the attacker made sure his silenced pistol was where he could reach it in a hurry, then went to the service elevators. One opened the moment he pressed its button; he wheeled the dolly in and pressed the basement parking level. Again he was in luck; no sign of a guard.
Inside the door to the garage was a bank of alarms. Out came a paper; the attacker consulted it, punched one alarm. It was followed by a shriek and squeal of sirens three floors up, but before the guards in the garage could gather, he and his dolly were hidden in the janitor’s closet. As soon as the pounding feet died away, he wheeled his treasure trove through the door and into the garage, where his van stood parked only feet away. An electric platform carried the dolly up to the level of the van floor, where it was strapped into place. That done, the attacker wormed his way forward into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and was a mile away before anyone checked that entry to the garage. False alarm-wasn’t that typical?
It was noon on Thursday, November 21, before anyone thought to query Hank Murray’s absence and Amanda Warburton’s unopened shop. When Hank’s secretary couldn’t locate him or his keys, she phoned Captain Carmine Delmonico, whom she knew from the days of the Vandal. Oh, pray there wasn’t more trouble!
“Something’s up, sir,” she said. “I have spare keys-could you check the Glass Teddy Bear for me? Miss Warburton and Mr. Murray are great friends, now neither of them can be found.”
His detectives were out; Carmine decided to visit the Mall on his own. Why the secretary was so worried he couldn’t work out, except that some people have a nose for disaster, and he couldn’t afford to ignore someone with a nose whose accuracy he didn’t know. Alarm bells were ringing in him too, that was all.
On his way to the back corridor he passed the Glass Teddy Bear’s window, and his heart sank. The glass teddy bear wasn’t in it, nor were the dog and cat. At the back door he pulled on rubber gloves and examined the lock: no tampering. A turn of the key and he was inside, an almost dark expanse that reeked of blood. When no lights came on he backed out, keeping within his own footprints. Two security guards had turned up; he beckoned them over.
“Stay here and don’t touch a fucking thing,” he said. “I need a phone. Where?”
“The shipping desk, Captain-in there.”
“Where are the fuses for this shop?”
“In that wall cupboard, Captain.”
When he opened the cupboard door with another key he found the Glass Teddy Bear’s fuses in the off position; when Carmine did the up-down-up to switch them on, they stayed on. Someone had probably turned them off here.
At the shipping desk he found a phone. “Stella, tell Dr. O’Donnell I need an M.E. and a forensics tech at the Busquash Mall a.s.a.p. Where are my team?”
“Nick and Delia are here. Helen’s with the Judge.”
“Good. Send me Nick and Delia, please. It’s urgent.”
When he flicked the lights on this time, they revealed a shambles, though it was poor Amanda Warburton who had done the bleeding. Fourth time unlucky, he thought. Amanda had survived three attacks, but they were just the thief softening her up. Hank Murray had died because of his devotion to her. Fifteen big, sealed cardboard boxes said a new shipment had arrived; she and the faithful Hank had probably come in to unpack them. It looked like a huge amount of stock, but undoubtedly wasn’t. Glass came surrounded by relative oceans of packing materials.
Her face was distorted by terror, mute evidence of her last moments, but he didn’t think she had seen her attacker. He came at her from behind while she was crawling, Carmine deduced. Hank had died without a fight; never saw it coming, in all likelihood. There were no bloody footprints, no marks to say who the Vandal-was it the Vandal, or another, more violent predator?-might be. A different man, Carmine decided. His conviction that he knew the identity of the Vandal hadn’t budged. He went outside to speak to the guard.
“Was there any kind of fuss last night?” he asked.
“The alarms went off in Hood’s Antiques about half after ten,” said the guard. “False alarm, Captain. Some clown of a practical joker triggered it at the alarm bank inside the basement garage door.”
“Did that require a key?”
“Sure. They’re in a wall cupboard, same as fuses.”
“And the fire chief is satisfied wall cupboards are safe?”
“With our kind of fuses and alarms, yes.”
Patrick came himself, with Paul Bachman in tow.
“Thanks for the personal touch, Patsy. Anything?”
“No, nothing. Both attacks were incredibly savage. The temporal and parietal regions on the right side of Mr. Murray’s skull were pulverized, like gluing uniformly small fragments on to a sheet of plastic-it’s only the scalp holding the bone together. Miss Warburton’s throat was cut to expose the ventral surface of the vertebrae-only the spinal column kept her head on her shoulders, poor thing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more brutal assault, yet it had to have been done in seconds. The fellow wouldn’t have made contact with the blood. He stayed behind her. He used a knife on her throat, not a razor, because he needed a proper grip for traction to go that deep.”
“A hunting knife, you mean?”
“Yes, or a military version of same.”
“He didn’t leave it behind?”
“If he did, we haven’t found it so far. Want to see his blunt instrument?”
Patrick held up a curious item almost two feet long. Made of clear glass, it was a tube that flared at one end into an open, lily-like shape; its other end was a round, closed bulb.
“By rights the pipe should be a yard long, but this one is only half a yard. It’s a British device for drinking beer, and it’s called, would you believe it, a yard?” He pointed to the wall, where a similar but much longer item sat on a bracket. “The one on the wall is the real thing, very thin glass, but this one is purely an ornament, not intended for use. It’s heavy.”
Carmine grimaced. “You mean anyone can drink that much?”
“For a beer drinker, not a problem. Miss Warburton stocked a good range. The shorty would make an efficient weapon if the bulb is used as the club. The glass is thick enough to have weight and durability. The skull didn’t have a chance.”
“Inventive. Of all the heavy objects in a shop full of them, that half yard makes the best concussive weapon.”
“The whole set also makes an ideal decoration for a wall you don’t want cluttered with yet more paintings. Designed to appeal to expatriate Limeys.”
“The killer didn’t have to know its proper function to see its concussive potential,” Carmine said.
“I agree, I agree! Just tossing theories around. You don’t think he’s an Englishman, Carmine?” Patrick asked.
“Take my word for it, there are no Englishmen in this case.”
Delia came up, unable to hide her distress. “Carmine, this is frightful! That poor woman! She didn’t even believe the glass teddy bear was worth stealing.”
“So why kill her for something he might have gotten by more peaceful means?” Nick asked. “Tied them up and taken it.”
“That’s the question I ask myself,” Carmine said.
“Mind you, she loved it,” said Delia.
“So much that she wouldn’t have parted with it for any sum, Delia. It had other meanings for her than money. After Helen established its true worth, I communicated with my opposite number in the Venice PD, thinking the glass teddy bear had been stolen. But it hadn’t. It was legally Amanda Warburton’s property, bequeathed to her in the will of Lorenzo della Fiori, the glass kingpin. Amanda was his mistress. Unfortunately he had a very jealous wife, who invaded the love nest and stabbed della Fiori fourteen times with a kitchen knife. Amanda was stabbed too, but survived. The glass teddy bear-including its eyes-was made especially for Amanda, and was already en route to America when the fracas happened. His kids inherited his money and all his property except the glass teddy bear. It happened eleven years ago, when the eldest child, a girl, was nine.”
“Then the kids are grown enough for revenge!” Nick cried, having heard Carmine’s explanation.
“No, the kids are in Venice too busy with their education to worry about the past. Having a mother in prison is no picnic. The eldest boy, another Lorenzo della Fiori, is now seventeen and determined to be the next glass kingpin. Kids don’t live in the past unless they’re brainwashed, and the only person who would have done that is in prison.”
“Then where did Amanda’s money come from?” Delia demanded.
“Sale of other Lorenzo della Fiori pieces. She’d acquired a lot over her years with him, and after his death she sold the lot. They’d never been inventoried, he’d freely given them to her, and it never came out at the time. His work is gorgeous and she got top dollar for every piece,” Carmine said.
“What about the star sapphire eyes?” Delia asked.
“Legally an intrinsic part of the work of art. My Venetian counterpart knew nothing about them, and no theft of a pair of star sapphires answering their description has ever surfaced in Europe, let alone in Venice. The theory he offered me was that the stones came from the USSR, which is a source of fabulous treasure and gems. If old Queen Mary of England could buy some of the Russian crown jewels at auction for relative peanuts, who knows what else has been smuggled westward to obtain hard currency?”
“It sounds like a fairy tale,” Nick said. “How did Queen Mary know the jewels were for sale?”
“They were auctioned at one of the great auction houses,” said Delia. “She bought diamonds and pearls, as I remember, and used her own money-she was awfully rich, and laden with ropes and ropes of pearls.” She chuckled. “Now the pearls you buy in a cheap shop outshine the real ones!”
“How do you know all this gossip?” Nick asked.
“It’s not gossip, Nick dear. Cleopatra thought you could dissolve a pearl in vinegar. Of course you can’t.”
“Theft of the bear aside, any evidence?” Carmine asked.
“No,” they said in chorus.
“He’s crafty and clever as well as shockingly brutal,” said Delia. “He also has luck.”
“Luck?” Nick asked. “Expound!”
They guffawed until Carmine’s glare sobered them.
“Consider! Security here is pretty good, yet this chap-not the original Vandal, is my guess-got in and got out again without ever being seen. There’s a strong element of luck in that. Equivalently, Miss Warburton and Mr. Murray ran out of luck. He seizes his moments, yes, but the moments were there to be seized. Thus far, our killer has led a charmed life,” Delia said.
“Then we’re going to proceed on the assumption that our luck is more potent than his,” said Carmine. “Are we finished here?”
“Yes,” Nick said.
“Did Paul give you her keys, or are they missing?”
“No, they were on her, I have them,” Nick said. “Mr. Murray’s keys are missing, so every shop in here will have to change its locks, not to mention the Mall itself.”
“Our killer is not coming back,” Carmine said positively. “He took the keys to create havoc, no other reason. Maybe make us think he’s a valuables thief. He’s not. He’s a killer.”
“What about notifying her next of kin?” Delia asked.
“The Warburton twins? They can wait,” Carmine said. “I’m going to inspect her apartment without that pair breathing down my neck. They give me the creeps.”
“Did they do this?” Nick asked as they used the elevator.
“Possible, but not probable.”
“This is gorgeous!” Nick said, gazing around the spacious luxury of Amanda Warburton’s apartment. “If she owns this, we have to reconsider our estimates of her worth.”
Carmine was already at the desk, which contained no locked drawers or compartments. He held up papers. “Deeds. She owns this free and clear, no mortgages.”
At which moment a pathetic meow came from the bathroom.
“Her animals!” Carmine said. “Jesus, I’d forgotten them!”
They were huddled in the bath as if they knew what had happened to their mistress, the cat pressed into the dog’s belly between its front and back legs, the dog hunched with its nose on the cat’s sleek skull. A water dish was empty; cooing and clucking, Delia refilled the bowl and found canned food in a cupboard. They drank and ate ravenously. Nick, it turned out, was more afraid of dogs and cats than of criminals, and Delia seemed to frighten them; when Carmine went back to his examination of the desk, Frankie and Winston sat at his feet and refused to be banished. He decided to ignore them.
“Her will,” he said, brandishing a single sheet of paper. “Everything to the twins except the glass teddy bear, which she wills in perpetuity to Chubb on condition that it’s displayed in a suitable manner. Wow! Wait until M.M. finds out! God help us if we don’t get it back.”
An accordion file held a portfolio of stocks and shares.
“Blue chip, the lot,” Carmine said. “Robert and Gordon are going to be wealthier than I’d expected, so we move them up on the list of suspects.” A wry grin. “That gives us two names.” He bent down and got a face full of dog hide as well as a sloppy tongue. “Cut that out, Frankie!” To his surprise, the dog desisted at once. A snide smile his team exchanged irritated him: he lashed back. “Delia, don’t stand there decorating the place! Call Marcia Boyce and get her here yesterday. Nick, go back to County Services and ask for someone from the pound with two animal carrying cages.”
Nick and Delia scattered, but not before they flashed each other another snide smile. The chief was being conned by two real experts.
Marcia Boyce was shocked but not rendered speechless. “I don’t know why, but I’ve been expecting something like it,” she said to Carmine in Amanda’s sitting room, its glass wall showing the tree-filled beauty of Busquash Inlet like a landscape painting, complete to mirror-bright water and dreamy little fishing shacks.
“Why, exactly?” Carmine asked, pouring her more tea.
“You’ll laugh at me, but sometimes I see penumbras around people, and Amanda has always had one. Black, laced with the red of fire-or blood, I guess. It’s waxed until lately it’s all but obscured her face and body-kind of like a shroud.”
I hate people like this, Carmine was thinking. They always have after-visions they’re convinced perpetually existed. I bet Miss Boyce consults a ouija board and goes to séances. But I also bet she never showed this side of herself to Amanda, who would have derided it-and her. “Can you tell me anything more concrete, Miss Boyce?”
“Only that, from what Hank Murray and I pieced together, she had had doubts about making the twins her heirs. But then she suddenly announced that she was going to leave them as her heirs because she had no one else. She wasn’t too happy about it, I add.” Marcia sipped her tea, then supplemented it with a dollop of Amanda’s costly cognac.
“How do you feel about the Warburton twins, ma’am?”
“I detest them! Though I wouldn’t have thought they had the guts or gumption for murder.” She looked down at the dog and cat, glued to Carmine’s feet. “Oh, poor babies! What will become of them, Captain?”
“Unless you want them, Miss Boyce, they go to the pound.”
“Oh, no! That’s awful!”
“The solution rests with you.”
“I can’t possibly take them! Amanda managed fine because she could take them to work with her, but I can’t possibly do that. I’d come home to find that Winston had shredded my best upholstery and Frankie had torn the drapes down.”
“Do they do that to Miss Warburton?”
“No, they like her. Would you believe that Amanda trained Winston to perch on the toilet to go for his number ones and number twos? Frankie wees in the shower stall and does his number twos on newspaper. Amanda was a very patient person.”
He kept Marcia Boyce a little longer, but learned nothing new that wasn’t connected with penumbras. The Warburton twins had chameleon penumbras, never the same color for more than a day at a time, and Carmine’s penumbra was amber with a purple edge.
After Miss Boyce departed a little unsteadily for her own apartment on the same floor, all Carmine had to do was wait for the guy from the pound. He arrived fifteen minutes later, a small animal carrying cage in either hand, and a hollow pipe ending in a rope noose tucked in his belt.
Frankie and Winston took one smell and retreated behind Carmine, the dog growling, the cat hissing.
“You never said the dog’s a pit bull, Captain!” the pound guy said in horror.
“He only looks. For a dog, he’s a pussycat.”
Out came the rod. The noose, as Carmine knew, could be loosened or tightened once slipped over the animal’s head; with visions of the insult to these sheltered, much-loved house pets chasing through his mind, Carmine stood watching as the pound guy decided to start with Winston.
“Your cats is worse,” the guy said, preparing his noose. “Your cats got your four sets of claws and your teeth. Your dogs just have your teeth, even your pit bulls.”
Ten minutes later the cat was behind a credenza and the dog vigorously defending it.
“Fuck off,” said Carmine tiredly, “and take your gallows with you. Leave the cages. I’ll deal with the animals myself.”
It was too much. He had made up his mind as the pound guy fruitlessly pursued the gigantic marmalade cat. Amanda Warburton had been a thoroughly nice woman whose life, cruelly shortened, had seen more unhappiness than bliss, and he had liked her. Now she was dead, and no one wanted her beloved animals. The pound? That couldn’t be allowed to happen. Like a totally innocent man thrown without warning into an overcrowded jail cell.
“Butter! Grandmother Cerutti always used butter,” he said, going to the refrigerator.
Diet margarine. No, grandmother Cerutti wouldn’t have had it in her house. So he went down to the corner store, run by two young Nepalese, for a stick of butter. Their cold storage wasn’t very efficient, so he didn’t have to hang around too long waiting for the stick to soften.
“Come on, Winston,” he said to the cat, which had emerged, “I won’t let anyone hurt you. Butter sticks, not gallows sticks.”
It lay upside down on his knees and allowed its paws to be buttered, then walked into its cage when he lifted the door. The dog was just as easy. What was it with the pound guy?
The cages went on the Fairlane’s back seat; Frankie and Winston took a ride in a car that smelled of babies, detectives and assorted evidence.
When he marched into Desdemona’s work room carrying two animal cages, she gaped.
“Two fully house trained, adult pets,” he said in tones that indicated he wasn’t prepared to concede the tip of his finger. “They belonged to a very nice lady who was murdered last night, and there’s no one to take them except the pound. It’s time Julian learned that he can’t pull a cat’s tail without getting scratched, and the dog’s loyal. They are now members of the Delmonico family.”
Desdemona shut her mouth. “Um-am I allowed to ask their names, sir?”
He laughed, hugged her. “The cat is Winston. He sits on the toilet to piss. The dog is Frankie. He goes in a shower stall, but if we have a flap cut in the back door, they’ll probably prefer to go outside except in snowstorms. I buttered their paws, so they can’t go home.”
Desdemona was on hands and knees, opening cages. “Oh, how lovely! Prunella was just saying we should go to the pound for an adult animal as a house pet-puppies and kittens behave like the babies they are, adults are better. Did you bring them food? Does the cat drink milk?”
“Water and canned stuff. I brought what Miss Warburton had in her cupboard. It will cost a bit more to feed us, but two animals will be a help in occupying the kids.”
And that, he thought as he returned to County Services with two empty animal cages, was well done; he didn’t even grudge filling out the form that enabled him to commandeer a uniform to drop the cages at the pound, way out of town.
“The half yard blunt instrument revealed nothing except scalp secretions from Hank Murray and hair lacquer from Amanda Warburton. However, when the killer used it on Miss Warburton, it was a gentle tap to stun. Murray got the full force of a very strong man-massive internal hemorrhages,” said Patrick O’Donnell. “I think he was prepared to encounter Amanda, but Hank came as a surprise. He didn’t really care how Hank died as long as he did. Amanda’s death was planned, I believe. A hunting knife sharpened to split a hair used when the head and neck were up but not stretched-if the neck is stretched by pulling the head way back, the carotid arteries are hard to get at. Most of the traction occurred after he’d done the cutting, to direct the blood spray well away from himself.”
“How did he move the glass teddy bear? Any ideas?”
“First off, he was alone. Paul went over the shop and the back room minutely, and there are no signs of an accomplice. One set of footprints in the shop carpet-size tens or thereabouts, but no chance of a sole pattern or a full outline. From the solid tire tracks, he used an upright dolly to move the bear, which means he’s very strong physically. Of course the dolly might have had a platform raised and lowered by an electric motor-that would help him move the bear off the window shelf on to the dolly. But think of the gall, Carmine! The bear must have been out of the window, wrapped and on its dolly before Amanda and Hank appeared at ten-thirty. Security everywhere!”
“Luck. I also think that he should have put a notice in the window saying the bear had gone for repairs,” said Carmine. “Though his luck is phenomenal, as Delia rightly pointed out.”
“He hadn’t gotten as far as moving the bear out of the premises,” Patrick said. “In the back room the dolly tracks travel clear of the blood even when that necessitated a slight detour. What might have happened if he’d run into a guard?”
“Dressed all in black? A shot between the eyes from a.22 with a silencer. Or he might have been in coveralls by then, had a sheaf of papers, and bluffed his way past the guard.”
Something in his voice made Patrick look up quickly, to meet innocent yellow-brown eyes. “Any other questions?”
“No.” Carmine glanced at his watch. “I have to see the Warburton twins and break the news.”
“Do me a favor, Carmine?”
“Anything, Patsy.”
“Before you let the Warburtons loose in the glass shop, how about sending Helen up there to have a really good look at the contents? She was the one spotted the value of the glass teddy bear, and I notice she seems to have an eye for glass art.”
“Good idea. I’ll do that.”
Helen was waiting in his team’s room, looking flustered and upset. “I wish you’d pulled me out of my teaching session!” she greeted him. “I missed it, I missed it!”
“There are times, Miss MacIntosh, when you remind me of my least favorite queen, Marie Antoinette. You can’t always have what you want, and Judge Thwaites for one would agree with me. His time is more valuable than yours, little though you may care to hear that. Don’t grumble, and bear his crotchets with a good grace. I understand that you feel a special interest in Miss Warburton, but you can still do her a big favor.”
“Yes, yes, anything!” Helen cried eagerly, the crux of Carmine’s homily scarcely impinging.
“Go out to the Busquash Mall and examine the glass shop with a very sharp eye,” Carmine said. “I want to know if anything else is missing, down to the last china-headed pin or glass tear drop. Don’t miss a thing.”
“Yes, Captain.” She was on her feet. “Where are Delia and Nick going?”
“Through Hank Murray’s office and apartment. You stick to the glass shop-is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” And she was gone.
The Glass Teddy Bear had emotional connotations for Helen that even Carmine, so perceptive, had not really grasped. It was the workplace of a woman who had become a genuine friend, and genuine friendships were scarce in Helen’s world, for she had as yet not formed one properly-who was real, who was not? Amanda, she had divined, was a woman who hadn’t had things easy: sweet but iron-hard. They had looked at each other, and clicked.
So when she entered the shop she found it filled with echoes of someone undeservedly dead; Helen had to blink the tears away.
Black shops were extremely rare, perhaps limited only to glass; the lighting, she realized now, was so cunning. Every spotlight or lamp fell upon a treasured piece, with the more economical lines clustered so that they blazed pinpoints of fire. On a slim black pedestal stood a magnificent prism; beside it was an atomizer of water that, squeezed, liberated a cloud of droplets that lit from within as a perfect rainbow. Gorgeous!
The yard and the half yard beer tubes, so different in construction, sat above Lalique and Murano glass picture frames; an exquisite glass teaset, dazzlingly plain, sat in pride of place atop arrays of wine glasses, and a Baccarat crystal ball of solid glass spun the world upside down. How beautiful everything was! If the Warburton twins had a sale to close the shop down, she would be here to buy the prism and the crystal ball.
But this was not doing her job, and she owed the dead woman her very best. Up and down Helen prowled, concentrating hard on the arrangements; what luck that she had paid for Dad’s urn and borne it away a week ago-why had she done that? Clairvoyance?
The counter contained a shelf on which sat jewelry and tiny objects: animals the size of thumbnails, buttons, strings of crystal beads, some faceted, some round globes. Why the buttons in particular made her smile she didn’t know, except that some were suitable for the most ornate of wedding gowns, while others, austere enough to please monks, would look great on a man’s yachting jacket. Though the ones she liked best were dark blue glass on which were gold glass cameos of lions. I’ll be buying Kurt a set of those for Christmas, she made a mental note, and saw a choker of glass beads shading in color from pale pink to deep burgundy. Oh, how perfect for Mom, with her swanlike neck! So ideal! Scorpion hues for a Scorpion lady.
No, no, this wasn’t doing the job!
Back to the shelves, until finally she came to the paperweights, a wonderful collection. One beauty, she was horrified to see, had a label that said $5,000! And there, in the middle, was a vacant space. A space that, Helen was sure, Amanda would have filled immediately after its occupant had been sold.
The insurance company was stringent and Amanda had obeyed their dictates. The paperweight display, thirty in all, was laid out in a plan. The missing one, she was bewildered to discover, wasn’t expensive at $300. Clear glass containing tiny trails of colored glass. According to its photograph, it looked like a map of some metropolitan subway system in a city that gave each route a different color.
Had the killer broken it? Or did something about it appeal when others, far more valuable, didn’t?
“Nothing else is missing,” she said to Carmine on Friday morning, giving her report.
“But you think he took it,” Carmine said.
“If he didn’t, Captain, then it was sold so late in the day that Miss Warburton didn’t replace it,” Helen said. “My hunch is that he’s responsible. I searched the storage drawers until I found an identical one, and left a receipt.” She reached into her capacious bag and withdrew it, put it on the table.
“It looks like a 3-D map of a city subway.”
“It does indeed,” Carmine said, picking it up. “Maybe it’s a dead ringer for his way home?”
She looked shocked at the joke, but wisely held her tongue; the Captain could sometimes be facetious for no apparent reason. Best change the subject. “How did the twins take the news?”
“About as I imagined. Squawks, shrieks, crocodile tears, a fit of hysterics from Gordie that Robbie dealt with by emptying a vase of dead daisies over his head. Underneath, gratification to find themselves Aunt Amanda’s heirs. I gave them the will, since she doesn’t seem to have employed a lawyer, wise woman. But when I told them about the glass teddy bear, they were as chagrined as astonished. If it comes to light, it belongs to Chubb. I’m picking they’ve rushed off with the will to see if they can challenge Chubb’s right to the pièce de resistance.”
“I’ll back Chubb,” said Helen with a grin. “Though it’s irrelevant at the moment, sir, not so? First, get your teddy bear back, then worry about ownership.”
“Exactly.”
“What happened to her pets, Captain?”
A peculiar look came over his face; Delia could have told her that it was embarrassment. “Er-well-er-I took them home for the kids. Mature, already house trained, you know.”
“That’s great, sir! What a relief! I’ve been racking my brains how I could talk my father into taking them, but now I don’t need to bother. I envy you.”
This reception made Carmine feel much better, especially after a rather traumatic night with a howling dog and a puking cat. Desdemona had changed her mind and wanted them gone, but Prunella scorned such intolerance. In two or three days the worst would be over; the Delmonicos would wonder how they had ever gotten on without Frankie and Winston, said Prunella staunchly, then called the carpenter to make an animal flap in the back door. Maybe, thought Carmine with a faint ray of hope, Frankie and Winston would run away and his household could go back to normal. The worst of it was that he had been appointed cleaner-upper of cat vomit.
When Robert and Gordon Warburton discovered that Amanda’s estate, even minus the glass teddy bear, was worth in excess of two million dollars, they were ecstatic. It didn’t hurt nearly as much when their lawyer, a sharp fellow, informed them that they could forget challenging Chubb for ownership of this museum piece that only Chubb could afford to house.
“Where shall we live, dear one?” Gordie asked his brother. “Here, or in that divine apartment?”
“Oh, here, beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Robbie said. “I’d hate not having a garden, and while we’ve improved this so much it would sell for a hundred thou, the apartment will sell at auction for ten times that. Cash in the bank! We need cash in the bank! If we sell the apartment, we can keep Amanda’s blue chip stocks, yet still have plenty of ready money to splash around. Our plans are forging ahead-who was to know that Amanda would contribute so much in death? We hoped for a donation, but-oh, it’s a wonderful, wonderful world!”
“Death has always done well by us, sweetest,” Gordie said, smiling. “Look at Mommy.”
“Thank you, I do not want to look at Mommy!”
“I’m fed up with drawing and painting!” Gordie said suddenly.
Robbie hastened to offer comfort. “There, there, twinnie my love, I know. Just remember that you’re the rock on which our enterprise stands. Do you want to leave no more durable epitaph on our tombstone than ‘The Acting Twins’? Well, do you?”
“No,” Gordie admitted, but grudgingly. “On the other hand, I am fed up with drawing and painting!”
“Oh, saints preserve me!” Robbie cried. He sat down beside Gordon and took his hands, chafing them. “Listen, my darling one, we can’t move on to the next phase until you’ve finished. I was not exaggerating, it’s your work will get us there, and it has to impress Captain Delmonico! How can it, if you won’t finish?”
“He refused to show us the photographs of Amanda with her throat cut,” Gordie said sulkily.
“I couldn’t push too hard, you know that! We need him! If he refuses a far greater request, we’re nonentities, has-beens-”
“Would-be-if-we-could-bes,” Gordie said helpfully.
“I do not need more synonyms!” Robert snapped. “Think of being immortal, Gordie! Of taking reality to a new height!”
“Reality,” said Gordie, “can always be improved on.”
The atmosphere in Carmine’s office on Monday, November 25, grew more anxious and tense with the arrival of each team member. By the time that Delia, the last, put her puce-pink and apple-green body on her chair, it seemed hard to breathe. They had all visited the premises over the weekend, astonished to find no Carmine; now, so close to the Dodo’s due date, he wasn’t here again!
When he did arrive at a quarter after eight he looked well, rested, even cheerful.
“You’ve had a good weekend,” Delia said accusingly.
“A very good one. The two new family members have decided to settle in,” he said, “and it’s going to work better than I’d hoped.” He sighed, smiled. “Desdemona’s come around.”
Nick stubbed out his fourth cigarette. “If we knew what you were talking about, Carmine, that would be a help.”
“Oh! I took Miss Warburton’s pets home last Thursday, and we had a minor crisis that I was afraid might turn out major. But it didn’t. The dog fell in love with Desdemona, and you know what she’s like. About as much aggression as a caterpillar. Besides, she’s English and the English adore dogs.”
Delia’s eyes were twinkling. “What happened to the cat?”
“Attached itself to the real ruler of the house-Julian.”
Nick lit up his fifth. “All well and good, Carmine, but have you forgotten that the Dodo’s due tomorrow?”
“Won’t happen,” Carmine said positively.
Three pairs of eyes stared.
“Won’t happen?” Delia repeated.
“No. He may strike next week or even the week after, but not this week.”
“How can you be so sure?” Helen asked.
“Because this week is Thanksgiving Day, and it spoils his plans. He’s escalating, and there’s only one way he can go-to a longer, more complex process. That means choosing a victim who won’t be missed for three or four days,” Carmine said.
“Of course!” Nick exclaimed. “Even the most solitary person is invited to someone’s Thanksgiving dinner.”
“There’s that, yes, but he himself will be expected to eat Thanksgiving at someone’s table.”
Delia jumped. “You know who he is!”
“I think so, yes.”
“Tell us!” Helen cried.
“I can’t do that, Helen. I have no evidence-not a shred. Until I do, his identity has to remain my secret.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“No,” said Delia, answering when it became obvious that the Captain wouldn’t. “It’s ethics, Helen. What if word should get out? All observation changes events, but if the Dodo has an inkling that his identity is known, the game changes in all sorts of ways. What the Captain knows as fact is still merely suspicion if there’s no evidence to back his contention up.”
“I wouldn’t tell a soul!”
“Of course you wouldn’t. But this is a relatively public place, dear.”
“End of subject,” said Carmine, picking up a sheet of paper. “The Hollow is starting to boil worse than Argyle Avenue, and no one wants a repeat of last summer. We’re not going to have snow before Thanksgiving Day, which means we have to plan for a warm, green winter. Arson and looting can’t be allowed to happen, it’s too hard on the majority of ghetto residents. Captain Vasquez has asked for two-pronged preventive measures and Commissioner Silvestri thinks his ideas are right.” The amber eyes rested on Nick Jefferson. “The uniforms are not going to get much rest-they have to be ready for riot duty in literal minutes. The role of Detectives is to dig for information, which means Mohammed el Nesr and the Black Brigade. Without information, we won’t be able to nip riot nuclei in the bud. Abe Goldberg’s in charge of our contribution, but you, Nick, are going to have special duties. Abe feels you can be disguised-provided, that is, that you’re willing to take on something so risky.”
“I’m willing,” Nick said, looking eager.
“You have a family, and you owe them a duty too.”
“If it hadn’t been for luck and one itty-bitty fire extinguisher, Carmine, my mother and father would have lost their house last July, and again in August, when they had six fire extinguishers. My uncle’s shop was looted. My wife and children won’t stand in my way. I’m up for it.”
“Captain Vasquez has brought in this movie make-up artist-not all his uniforms are staying out in the open with riot gear, but they’re not trained in detection. So a lot rests on you, Nick. This make-up guy swears he can make you look six inches shorter and twenty years older. Go see Abe, okay?”
On the echo of Carmine’s last words, Nick was gone.
“I wish I could do something like that,” said Delia, clearly regretting both her sex and her color.
“How would you like to join the whores behind City Hall? The pimps are black, so are most of their girls. Information, Delia, as much as you can glean. Whores and pimps talk, and I’ve heard your various American accents. Go mulatto, your skin will take that, and your hair color’s perfect.”
“I need a pimp,” said Delia, wriggling in anticipation.
“One of the new academy graduates is black, fortyish and has a perfect face for disguise. Jimmy the Pooch.”
And Delia was gone.
“What about me?” Helen asked, voice steely.
“You have a forensics class from nine until noon, with an afternoon in the autopsy room.”
“I want to be in the field!”
Carmine’s face set. He clasped his hands together and gazed at her sternly. “You’ve entered a predictable phase in your detective training,” he said, “and you have to get through it, Helen, without derailing your career. You’re finding the classes frustrating, even though they are by far the most important part of your curriculum. Later on you’ll see that I’m right, but now, while you’re blind to that fact, you simply obey orders. What do you expect me to do with a twenty-four-year-old apprentice who looks like Jane Fonda, huh? Dye your skin and put you in the Hollow or Argyle Avenue to gather information? How stupid can you get? You’d be kidnapped and raped, and not by the Dodo! By some junkie off his face or some hate-crazed Black Brigader! If I could use you safely in a field job, I would, but there’s nothing that suits your talents or your appearance. Your ambition is boundless, but next time you pass a mirror, look in it. You’d be ideal for corporate crime or thousand-dollar call girls, not work in ghettoes on the verge of riot or tawdry poor-white dives. Class is bred in the bone, never forget that, and accept your limitations without blaming the boss.”
Speechless, she sat with her mind in turmoil, hating the fact that she had exchanged her father for a man who could have doubled for him. Of course he was right, there wasn’t an argument in the world could make him wrong. Fantasy was fine and dandy, but it had no business intruding on reality.
After what she gauged was an interval long enough to save a little face, she got up and went to the team’s room, there to sit at her desk and enter her journal until ten of nine.
His paperwork organized, Carmine went to Corey’s office, a walk that these days felt like a thousand miles of slogging, and always made him feel sick to his stomach. The poor girl! He had hated to do it, especially given that he had reprimanded her on other occasions in recent days, but it had to be done. And, as he had known, Helen MacIntosh possessed sufficient strength of character to realize that the boss was right. Passion had driven her in her perpetual quest to belong, to have an equal chance to shine. But when brutal fact was pointed out, she could step far enough away from her passion to see the truth.
Unfortunately, he thought, entering Corey’s office, Corey Marshall had nothing like Helen’s intelligence. Life for him was a crueler arena, and at this moment his most formidable opponent in it was his boss. A no-win situation.
Sure enough, Corey was on his feet in a second, knuckles on his desk, head snaked forward. He was going to get in first.
“I have my own methods, my own style, my own goals!” he said with lips peeled back from his teeth. “If you’re here to preach me another sermon, don’t bother. I get the work done, I even fill in all Vasquez’s forms! What’s with all his paperwork, tell me that? The guy’s not a cop, he’s a paper-shuffler!”
He left the desk and began to pace up and down; Carmine, face expressionless, took a chair and watched him.
“You look down on me,” Corey said, “but I can’t figure out why. Except that you’re an obsessive who can’t bear the tiniest loose end, even if it’s an end that doesn’t matter a fuck. The whole world has to be squared up! No wonder you love Abe-you’re so like him! A pair of obsessive-compulsive freaks!”
Maureen’s vocabulary, phrases, thinking.
And here I am, Carmine thought, still wondering how I missed this side to Corey. Yes, I was aware that he and Abe were two very different kinds of men-detectives too-but I didn’t see Corey’s incipient paranoia, his lack of tactical planning, the underlying weakness, and the sheer enormity of Maureen’s hold over him. I guess they didn’t exist, at least to their present extent. While ever he took orders he could keep his chin above the rising flood, and the rivalry with Abe was there only as an equal’s chance at a sole lieutenancy. His independence was finite, and the responsibility was mine. He could function at the peak of his talents. Now that he has the responsibility, one part of Corey has filled with overweening pride, while most of him is wandering, lost. And he’s shut me out.
“I wish you’d let me help,” Carmine said suddenly.
“Help? With what?”
“Your difficulty coping with the job.”
Corey closed his eyes. “I seem to remember our having this conversation, or one like it. I don’t know where you get your ideas from, Carmine, but they’re mistaken. What do you want?”
“The Hollow is about to go ballistic, and I need to know that the Taft High weapons case is properly closed.”
“I’ve submitted the paperwork saying it is.”
“Buzz still doesn’t seem so sure.”
“Buzz is an old woman. When am I getting my second-stringer, and who is it?”
“Donny Costello. He’s on his way up.”
The discontented face didn’t lighten. “Costello? He’s as big a nit-picker as Buzz.”
“You need all the nit-pickers you can get, Corey, because you’re not one,” Carmine said. “Watch out for your men.”
“Oh, fuck off, Carmine! Your trouble is that you keep trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs!”
“It’s clear that you never knew my grandmother Cerutti.”
“Fuck off!”
“Corey doesn’t appreciate the value of routines,” Carmine said to John Silvestri at five that evening. “While Maureen is in the driver’s seat, he won’t improve one iota either. I hadn’t incorporated her into the equation, more’s the pity. She’s gotten delusions of grandeur, as the psychiatrists say.”
“Funny how we tend to overlook a man’s domestic situation. Can you imagine two women farther apart than Maureen Marshall and Ava Jones?” Silvestri asked. “They’ve both worn their knees down, but for different reasons.”
“I can’t get rid of Corey, can I?”
“No. We can see the express train roaring down the tracks at us, but until it hits, we have to assume it won’t.”
“Gossip says Buzz Genovese is still insisting the Taft High business isn’t closed, and that worries me.”
“Has he gone over Corey’s head to you, Carmine?”
“Who, Buzz? Not in a thousand years. Too honorable.”
“Who does Corey get as second-string?”
“Donny Costello.”
“Better him, than the kind of recruit a Helen MacIntosh trainee system would give him. Costello doesn’t mind paperwork.”
“How about putting a brake on Fernando’s paperwork, John?”
“Funny, he’s not that much younger than you, but his attitude to the job says every police department he’s ever worked in must be a yard deep in paper. How can you be so relaxed, with the Dodo due to strike tomorrow?”
Carmine rose to his feet. “Want to stroll down to Malvolio’s for a drink?” he asked. “Then I can tell you about Thanksgiving Day. Incidentally, how are you and Luigi related?”
“First cousin, but no Cerutti.”
“I’m improving. It’s taken me a mere eighteen years to find that out. Some detective.”
What Carmine couldn’t know was the ferocity involved in the difference of opinion between Corey and Buzz about Taft High.
Two weeks ago Buzz had confronted Corey yet again.
“Let me continue,” he had begged Corey. “Everything at Taft indicates that there’s a splinter of the Black Brigade operating-and that the Black Brigade is about to go to war against it. You know as well as I do how much black militancy gets wasted on in-fighting, especially places like Holloman, where there are two ghettoes separated by a university campus and a business center. It works to our advantage, but the Black Brigade is entrenched in the Hollow, while something new is going on in Argyle Avenue. And Taft seems to be the ham in the sandwich.”
“It sounds great, but where are your facts, Buzz?”
“Thin on the ground,” Buzz had admitted. “That doesn’t mean I’m imagining things, Cor. There are still weapons at Taft High.”
Corey had flicked the report in his hand. “Your argument is as flimsy as the paper it’s written on, Buzz. I have very reliable snitches in the Black Brigade, and they say that the Taft High business was a genuine mistake, never a part of a plan.”
“But this is not the Black Brigade itself!” Buzz persisted. “It’s a splinter group with a more violent agenda, and its aim is to spread revolution in the style of Lenin-terror first and foremost. One of its cornerstones is high school violence. The Black Brigade soldiers don’t know the splinter group exists, it isn’t something Mohammed el Nesr wants spread about.”
“This report is pure supposition, Buzz. If I were to be guided by it, I’d be laughed at,” said Corey.
“And being laughed at is more important than the chance that there’s violence brewing at Taft?” Buzz demanded.
Flushing, Corey had put the sheets down as if they burned. “That is uncalled for! Give me facts and I’ll be happy to believe you, but I won’t act on hunches. Can’t you see it now?” His voice had taken on tones of hysterical drama. “Taft High School parents sue the city of Holloman for discrimination and defamation! Go away, Buzz! Do the job I’ve just given you-nail whoever held up the Fourth National Bank out in the Valley. It’s both tangible and important.”
Unable to do more, Buzz had left it. There was some justice in Corey’s stand; only the thought of a tragedy involving children had spurred him to such effort.
His report went into the Taft High weapons cache file, but on two Thursdays, when Carmine, Abe and Corey met to discuss the cases of the week, Corey had not produced the report, or even mentioned it in passing. It sat in the back of the file, unread.
Tracking down the Fourth National Bank robbers had taken time, but Buzz Genovese was a good detective, albeit inexperienced. The crime had all the earmarks of a funding exercise rather than self-profit, but Corey’s Black Brigade snitches were very young and very junior in the hierarchy, so knew nothing of Mohammed el Nesr’s thinking, and swore it wasn’t the Black Brigade-with complete truth. A $74,000 take would buy a lot of firearms up to and including fully automatic weapons, but if Mohammed was innocent, who else was there with the organization? A question Corey didn’t ask. Buzz went to his splinter group, and, eventually, to an address: 17 Parkinson in the Argyle Avenue district.
At noon on Tuesday, November 26, Buzz, Nick Jefferson and four uniforms entered the house to find two black men watching a Lakers replay on television; neither man was armed, and a rigorous search of every cranny on all three floors revealed no firearms. 17 Parkinson was a three-family house that had been gutted and completely lined with mattresses, every window boarded up. Milo Washington and Durston Parrish clearly lived in it, but Buzz’s snitch, vouched for by Nick, swore that Milo and Durston were the heads of the new splinter group. So where were the caches of weapons?
Posters had been pinned to the mattresses extolling bloodshed, black supremacy, the slaughter of whites, and, many times over, three capital letters: BPP. It was a new acronym to Buzz.
He stared at Milo Washington, a more commanding figure than Durston Parrish. Well over six feet, a good physique, a handsome face, milk coffee skin and hip threads; the eyes, large and an interesting shade of green, regarded him with contempt. He must, Buzz reflected, be feeling an utter fool-watching a Lakers replay!
“What does BPP stand for, Milo?” Buzz asked.
“Black People’s Power,” Milo said proudly, defiantly.
“So that’s it! Who’re you, man?” Nick asked.
“I am the founder and leader.”
“And articulate when you need to be. Where are the guns?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, Uncle Tom pig?”
A frisson of fear shot down Buzz’s spine; they hadn’t been quiet about raiding 17 Parkinson, thus giving those in the houses nearby time to evacuate before the bullets started humming.
“Something’s wrong,” Buzz said to Nick when the search proved fruitless. “Milo didn’t deny the guns-he’s stupidly articulate, needs time inside having talks with Wesley le Clerc.”
“We’ve got nothing on them,” Nick said. “Watching the Lakers win isn’t a crime, and there were no stashes of any kind.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Milo,” Buzz said to him on the porch, a corner of his mind wondering why the uniforms, clustered around one squad car, looked so upset.
They had all been inside the house when the fracas at Taft High occurred. Two students, two teachers and a riot cop were dead, and another thirty-three were wounded, all but two slightly. Someone on Parkinson had run to the school to alert the kid who led Black People’s Power there; spoiling for action, he gathered his troops, broke out automatics and spare clips from the BPP cache, and set off to bust Milo and Durston free. If the pigs thought they were taking Milo in, they better think again! But one of the BPP kids was a spy, there to tip off the Black Brigade kids when the BPP arsenal surfaced. The BB kids tapped their own cache, and a gun battle developed within the school. Only the intervention of riot police had stopped the hostilities.
Why hadn’t Corey Marshall believed his report? It all hinged on that, thought Buzz, wandering desolately across the courtyard blaming himself-and Corey. He’d known the guns were at the school! Trouble was, he didn’t have enough evidence to lay before Captain Vasquez, who might otherwise have hit the school at the same moment as Buzz hit the BPP house on Parkinson. No, no, it was all wrong! Corey Marshall was the necessary link and-
Someone was pacing the courtyard: Carmine Delmonico. His face was grim, nor did Buzz need to ask why he was out here, pacing. Sometimes a man needed to have space and open air.
Carmine saw him and strode over.
“Do you believe this?” he demanded. “Two rival black power factions, two thousand hapless kids of every color God makes a human skin-shit, shit, shit! How did one faction think it could bust Milo Washington loose, and why did the other faction decide to stop them inside the school? My wife is right, it’s guns! And drugs! Why can’t they use a classroom as a place to learn instead of as a place to come down off of smack?”
The two men turned and began to walk together.
“I knew I was right,” Buzz said at last, clenching his fists. “I kept telling Corey there was a splinter group, but he wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t have any facts, just my cop instincts. I was conned too, Carmine, by Corey’s Black Brigade snitches. They talked me into thinking that the Black Brigade wasn’t worried by the formation of Black People’s Power. Whereas the truth is that Milo was making significant inroads into Mohammed’s army, and war was in the wind. The trouble is Mohammed’s ordinary soldiers are not in the picture-I should have seen it, but I didn’t. Jesus!”
Another silence fell, again broken by Buzz Genovese.
“I put in four hours writing that report, busted my ass, but I didn’t have facts to back up my cop instincts. Just little signs-stray remarks, sidelong looks, interrupted whispers-not facts, facts, facts! The Valley bank holdup went down to finance BPP weapons purchases, but tell me why-just tell me why they had to hide the weapons in a school? A school!” He stopped, recollecting himself. “Well, too late now. Five lives! I am haunted, Carmine.”
“What report, Buzz?”
“The supplementary one I submitted about the Taft High arms cache. Corey closed the case for lack of evidence a month ago-well, I guess you know that. But I knew it wasn’t over. So I watched and listened for another nearly two weeks, then I wrote this second report.” He looked embarrassed. “Sorry, Captain, I didn’t mean to snitch, and Corey was right. There wasn’t a shred of evidence.”
“What do we do about it?” Carmine asked, holding up the second report. He was staring at Commissioner Silvestri and Captain Vasquez, whose faces were carefully neutral.
“If so much as a whisper of this gets out, the media will have a field day. The death of kids in a school is world news,” Carmine went on. “Holloman is full of journalists. The Black Brigade and its splinter, Black People’s Power, are local black power groups with no national impact. To the journalists in this year of riots and terrible violence, the BB and the BPP are peanuts. Martin Luther King Junior dead, then Robert Kennedy-it’s an awful year! But what if it leaks that the Holloman PD had warning of a second weapons cache at Taft High, and didn’t so much as look for it? It’s known now that both groups had a cache at the school, but nothing indicates that the Holloman PD didn’t do its job. Except this.” He put the seven sheets down on Silvestri’s coffee table.
All three men had read Buzz’s report, pulled from the back of the Taft High file by a terrified Corey Marshall. What Carmine didn’t know was whether Corey had intended to bring him the report, or burn it. His cop instincts said Corey intended to burn it, but just as he pulled the sheets, Carmine had walked in.
“You said one of my cases would come back and bite me,” said Corey, handing him the report.
“I’m sorry that it’s so terrible, Lieutenant.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” He sounded petrified.
“I don’t know. But if you have any brain at all, don’t so much as mention it to Maureen. That’s your only hope.”
“I told Corey not to confide in Maureen,” Carmine said now. “He might even obey that order, because I don’t think he could face the tongue-lashing she’d give him.”
“You’re very smart, Carmine,” Fernando Vasquez said.
“If I were, this wouldn’t have happened. I knew that Corey Marshall was weak, but so was I for not acting.”
“That’s aftersight speaking.” Fernando’s beautiful hand indicated the report. “You kept this unduplicated, and you guys in Detectives haven’t caught up enough with modern policing to keep copies of everything. For instance, did Sergeant Genovese keep a copy for himself?”
“No. Why would he? It’s in the file.”
“In future, he should. The world increasingly belongs to the lawyers, Carmine, and some of them are more ruthless than any journalist. I don’t increase paperwork for no reason. I do it to protect my men. With the Dodo on your back, I haven’t gotten around to Detectives yet, but it’s coming.”
“I gather that the existence of one copy of this is a good thing?” Carmine asked.
“A very good thing. What happens if Buzz goes poor Morty Jones’s route, huh? Guilt, depression, a steel meal? Without a copy of his report, he’ll be seen as confabulating,” Fernando said, black eyes like two glistening stones.
“It won’t come to that,” Carmine said. “This time, I’ll make absolutely sure.” He felt sick, pressed his midriff. “John, you haven’t said a thing. Fernando has left me in no doubt of his solution to our troubles-burn the report. What do you say?”
“That God moves in mysterious ways,” the Commissioner said, “and that you’ve acted for the greater good of the Holloman PD. It’s not even a question of blame-attitudes vary. Is Corey’s hard-nosed attitude more reprehensible because five people have died? He had every chance of being right.”
“If you’d read Buzz’s report, John, would you have pulled your men out of Taft High?” Carmine demanded.
“No,” Silvestri said flatly.
“And you, Fernando?”
“I would have blitzed the place, no matter what the parents and teachers said in objection. That was the only way to do it, Carmine. Empty the entire school, then search the cockroaches and fleas to see if they were packing.”
“Lessons for the future,” Silvestri said, sighing. “I am going to maintain that the school was scrupulously searched and all the weapons it contained were confiscated. Luckily the kids involved all went to the juvenile courts, so it’s not our fault if they’re already back at Taft High. As for the BB cache and the second BPP one, the guns had been placed in the school so recently that we’d had no word of it. Like so many other places, we’ve had a bad year with race riots in Holloman.”
“You intend to burn it,” Carmine said, voice flat.
They look like father and son, he thought as Vasquez and Silvestri went to a glass-fronted ornamental cupboard. John took out a big silver tray while Fernando hovered at his side. Trim, in silver-encrusted navy uniforms, very dark of hair and eye, flawless features and a certain catlike grace of movement. Thank God! John has finally found his heir. Not that he intends to retire for some time to come. He has to groom Fernando.
Buzz Genovese’s report burned while Carmine watched the two uniformed men make sure no flake remained unblackened.
“I’ll see Buzz tomorrow morning,” the Commissioner said when Fernando took the tray off to the private bathroom. “It’s sad but simple-when Lieutenant Marshall looked for the report, it had gone. Too suggestive, you think, Carmine? Well, I think Corey deserves to wear the odium, especially in Buzz’s eyes.”
“I appreciate your having me here, John.”
Fernando returned.
The three men sat down again.
“We still have one problem,” said Carmine.
“Corey, you mean?” Silvestri asked.
“I mean.”
“It’s a hard one.”
Fernando leaned back, satisfied that he had done his part; Carmine continued to speak to Silvestri, as if he too thought it.
“I have a solution, John.”
The Commissioner sat up. “You do? Hit me!”
“First of all, Corey’s not suited for his present position. He’s too anti-routine in a job he thinks should have no routine, not to mention that he paints himself into a corner. A more secure man would simply admit that he was wrong, but Corey’s not secure. He’s also dominated by his wife. What he needs is a job having equal status but none of the responsibility-no human beings as individual human beings, just as ciphers.”
Fernando was bolt upright, wary and annoyed. “No!”
“Oh, come on, Fernando, he’s perfect, and you know it. By Christmas you will have completed your reforms-three lieutenants, remember? After pushing Mike Cerutti through one department after another, you intend to put him in as lieutenant in charge of anything with wheels-well, it’s logical, and you’re a logical man. Of course you need a lieutenant in charge of personnel, but a guy very much under your thumb. For that reason it won’t be Joey Tasco, it will be Virgil Simms. Mike and Virgil are good men who can’t afford to forget that you promoted them over a lot of heads, that their income has zoomed, and that they get to wear silver braid. However, you need a senior lieutenant, and whom can you trust in the Uniform Division, tell me that? Ideally you need someone from outside, but you haven’t been here long enough to survive the palace revolution that would provoke. Whereas Corey Marshall has been in the Holloman PD for seventeen years, eleven of them in uniform. Everybody with seniority knows him, and he’s well liked. His being awarded the top job will be seen as shrewd and inarguable. On the other hand, what you know about him chains him to you. He’ll have to work from a list of do’s and don’t’s that you write in letters of stone-he’ll have absolutely no room to maneuver. Nor will his wife have the smallest share in his power. Corey is the perfect senior lieutenant. C’mon, Fernando, admit it!”
“I agree it’s my best answer,” Fernando said. “Damn you!”
“So do I agree, and mine’s the deciding vote,” said Silvestri.
“You told me I had too many lieutenants, and you were right,” Carmine said, grinning. “In future, Detectives will have one lieutenant-Abe Goldberg, and one captain, me. One fewer loot, a lot fewer headaches.”
But, thought Carmine later, driving home, today has been an awful day. Not every death at Taft High was an innocent one, but even a flesh wound is too high a price to pay for a troubled peace. And I have colluded at the destruction of a document that indicts one of my own men and should be published to vindicate another. What might have happened if I had refused to collude? If I had insisted on publication? John Silvestri wears the pale blue ribbon, and he colluded. It’s Vasquez, of course. The new breed, the modern cop.
What good would publication have done? It could only have worked did it happen beforehand, and for that, I blame Corey Marshall. He knew the report existed, but no one else did except its author. It’s a terrible dilemma, and both of its horns are cruel. To have published his findings, Buzz Genovese would have had to go over his boss’s head, and he had seen that as lacking honor. Well, so would I. Honor is preserved, but at the cost of five lives and a bunch of wounded. I can see why John Silvestri has chosen to make Corey Marshall the villain of the piece, but are the three of us-himself, Fernando, and I-innocent?
“One of my worst days,” he said to Desdemona, telling her everything save the collusion.
“Oh, Carmine, a horror! And I do understand why guns are such a large part of it,” she said. “Male creatures are genuinely combative, it’s a part of the sex. Now that we’re busy making war so unpalatable, a different sort of war is breaking out on our streets and in our schools. Or else some kid’s crashed his bike at a hundred miles an hour. Whatever. Young men die violently. When young women do, it’s mostly at the hands of a man.”
“Shall we mourn together, Desdemona?”
“Better together than apart, dear love.” She led the way to the sitting room and got busy at the little bar, so that when next she spoke, it sounded offhand, casual.
“I’m starting to go to church with Maria,” she said.
He took the glass carefully. “Why?”
“It can’t do any harm, can it?”
“No, it never can.”