The death of Erica Davenport was the epicenter of a human earthquake; it shook people and their constructions to their foundations, from the chief executives of Cornucopia, through Carmine Delmonico and his family, all the way to the FBI.
“But she’s Ulysses!” Ted Kelly insisted, seeking out Carmine in his office at County Services. “We’ve known that for two years!”
“Then why didn’t you arrest her?”
“Evidence! It’s called evidence? No matter where we went, no matter what we unearthed, we could never find a shred of evidence against her that would stand up in court. If we’d tried her, she would have walked, and in a blaze of publicity that would have harmed our image as much as it enhanced hers.”
“That’s because she wasn’t Ulysses,” Carmine said. “I have actually heard of evidence, Ted, and it wasn’t there for the simple reason that Erica Davenport wasn’t Ulysses. I think she knew who Ulysses is, but that’s a far cry from being him. And you know what, Special Agent Kelly? I don’t like your attitude any more today than I did when I put your big ass on the ground. You’re as thick as two planks.”
“She was Ulysses, I tell you!” Kelly smacked his fists on his thighs, beat them up and down in frustration. “We’d just finished planning the neatest sting operation in espionage history—she couldn’t have resisted the bait, she’d have gone to her drop and we’d have been waiting. Now—Fuck!”
“You found out where her drop is?” Carmine asked, looking astonished and ingenuous.
“This one,” Special Agent Kelly said in goaded tones, then embarked on a tutorial. “Spies have a list of drop sites, they never use the same one twice. Their list is coded and they work through it. They have signals to alert their contact that something is going to be dropped, usually in a deserted spot like woods or an abandoned factory—”
“Or identical briefcases, or a package taped under a seat on a bus, or the fourth brick from the right seventeen rows from the top,” Carmine finished with a grin. “Come on, Kelly! All that’s horseshit, and you know it. The wad of money—the spy who can’t name his contact because he doesn’t know who his contact is—what a load of crap. First off, whoever’s doing this isn’t in it for the money or the intellectual thrill. He’s an ideologue, in it for the greater glory of Mother Russia, or Marx and Lenin—a Communist ideology, anyway. Secondly, the stolen item is passed openly, after a phone call or a fax from a number no one could know about. You can’t tap every phone in the country, or intercept every telex. No matter how fanatically you watch any individual, if he’s as smart as Ulysses he’ll pass his information right under your noses and you’ll never see or smell it. You can’t seriously expect me to believe that you and the FBI don’t know how important in himself Ulysses is! Which means he rides around big cities in a limo, uses private facilities when he has to go, has the run of five-star hotels, eats in places where you and I couldn’t afford the water in the finger bowls—how am I doing, Ted?”
“Ulysses was Erica Davenport,” Kelly said stubbornly.
“Ulysses is alive and well and slipped a noose around that poor woman’s neck,” Carmine said harshly. “Not, however, before he broke her arms and legs in two places each, to be sure how much she knew and whom she might have told.”
The mask fell completely. In a second the clumsy, slightly dense, distinctly lower-grade FBI agent disappeared, to be replaced by a highly trained, highly professional, intelligent and capable man.
“I give in,” Ted Kelly said ruefully. “They warned me you were hard to dupe, but I had to try. The last thing I need or want is anyone at Cornucopia thinking I might be in your league at sniffing out wrongdoers. I want Ulysses to think I’m a dumb official of a dumb institution, and so do my bosses. It’s okay for you, you’re hunting a murderer. You can get farther by spreading your tail and peacocking your skill, but my quarry’s different. I have to pretend I haven’t got to first base even when I’m stealing home. My man doesn’t make mistakes.”
“He is these days,” Carmine said, leaning forward in his chair. “All of a sudden, Mr. Kelly, you and I are hunting the selfsame predator. I’ve known for some time that my killer is your Ulysses. No, it’s not a guess. It’s fact.” He glanced at his railroad clock. “Got a spare half hour?”
“Sure.”
“Then I’ll hang out the Do Not Disturb signs.”
This consisted in closing his doors and routing all his calls through Delia. Then Carmine returned to his desk and told Ted Kelly why he knew that Ulysses had murdered eleven people who sat down to enjoy a charity banquet five months ago.
“So you see,” he concluded, “it may end in our getting hard evidence not of espionage but of murder. Is that going to be a problem for the FBI?”
“Anything but,” Special Agent Ted Kelly said. “Learning there are spies inside the city gates is very alarming for the general populace. You’re welcome to the glory. I’ll slink back to Washington happily looking like a fool. That way, I’m in good shape for the next traitor.”
“I’m not after glory!” Carmine snapped.
“I know, but if we catch the fucker, someone has to shine and it can’t be me. All I can say is, if you do catch him—no, when you catch him!—he can’t ever be let out of prison.”
“He won’t have done anything to warrant a federal trial or a federal prison,” Carmine said, “and Connecticut is a liberal-minded state. None of us can predict what some fool parole board of the future might decide. They’re always stacked with idealists.”
Kelly rose to his immense height and held out his hand to shake Carmine’s warmly. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “His parole board will be stacked with believers in recidivism. I forgive you for calling me a cunt. I behaved atrociously.”
“In public,” Carmine said, steering him toward the outer door, “we continue the pretense—flattened ears, bared teeth and snarls every time we meet. What, by the way, was on the film you took from the telescope camera?”
“Nothing worth reporting on,” Kelly said. “Just Holloman Harbor’s shoreline from the Long Island ferry wharf clear to the point beyond East Holloman. Tide in, tide out. We figured it might have had something to do with a meeting or a drop.”
There was no one in the hall; Special Agent Ted Kelly went down it in three long strides and vanished into the stairwell. As soon as he had gone, Carmine went to see Delia.
“Our federal turkey is no turkey,” he said, grinning. “He’s an eagle, but if you catch sight of his wingspan while he’s in turkey mode, he’ll convince you he’s really a buzzard.”
“A very strange bird,” said Delia solemnly.
“Any news?” he asked.
“Not a sausage. Abe and Corey have exhausted their lists of those who might have sat at Peter Norton’s table, without any responses. I daresay people simply forget. No, don’t go! The Commissioner wants to see you. Now, he shouted. I fear Uncle John is not in a good mood.”
If the expression on Commissioner Silvestri’s face was an indication, “not in a good mood” was putting it mildly. Carmine stood to take his medicine.
“What’s the bastard going to do next?” Silvestri asked.
An innocuous question; he was going to be oblique. “That depends on whether he was in my boat shed himself or not.”
“Why?”
“The assistant is extremely valuable, yes, sir, but expendable nonetheless. My feeling is that he stayed in the Bat Cave and sent Robin to my boat shed.”
“Slimy rodent! How’s Desdemona?”
“No different than she was the last time you asked, sir.” Carmine looked at his watch. “That was an hour ago.”
“And your mother?” Silvestri asked, squirming in his seat.
“Ditto.”
“I hear Myron’s managed to get Erica Davenport’s body out of police custody and is flying her to L.A. for burial.”
Carmine eyed his boss curiously. “Where did you hear that?”
A look of discomfort came over the Commissioner’s face. “I—uh—I was talking to him.”
“Phone or flesh?” Carmine asked warily.
“Phone. Sit down, man, sit down!”
His wariness growing, Carmine sat. “Spit it out, John!”
“That’s no way to speak to your superior.”
“My patience is finite, sir.”
“I guess you know how important Myron is?”
“I do,” said Carmine, waiting for it.
“The thing is, he’s buzzing around in Hartford like a wasp inside a pair of shorts.”
“Angry, pushy and trapped.”
“Those, plus a lot else. He wants Erica Davenport’s murder put as our number one priority, and the Governor thinks that’s appropriate, given the publicity.”
“Myron leaked the story himself,” Carmine said.
“Yeah, well, we all know that. But the Governor wants him buzzing somewhere far away from Hartford. He’s got this bee in his bonnet—”
“Wasps, now bees. Just tell me!”
“I’m sending you to London to investigate Dr. Davenport’s time there as a student.” Silvestri coughed. “An anonymous benefactor has donated funds to send your wife and baby with you because of the recent attempt on their lives. Hartford has made a special grant to fund your own trip,” Silvestri ended, shutting his eyes on the gathering storm.
There were only two ways to go. One would ruin his entire day, the other would at least allow him to vent some kind of emotion. Carmine chose the other, and laughed until he cried.
“Fuck a duck!” He gasped, clutching his sides. “I can’t go to London, I just can’t! The minute I’m away, all hell will break loose. Surely you can see that, John?”
“Of course I can! And I said so! But I may as well have saved my breath. This investigation is being run as a political football, thanks to Myron Mandelbaum.”
“He means well, but he should butt out of what he doesn’t understand. His trouble is that he tends to see life as a movie—everything happens at the speed of light and no one pauses to think. An odyssey to London won’t help me find a killer or a spy, but it might let him get away.” Carmine groaned.
“I know, I know.”
“Did Hartford lay down any conditions? Like, how long I have to stay away?”
“Considering strains on the budget, I’d think the quicker you’re back, the better. The anonymous benefactor can’t bankroll a public servant.”
“Any bets?”
“How can I help?” Silvestri asked.
“Run interference with Hartford for me. It’s Desdemona and Julian preying on Myron’s mind, so if I come back in a couple of days, I’ll have to leave them in London for a few days more. If I can find the name of someone who can tell me about Erica’s time there before I leave Holloman, it will help. I can fly back as soon as I’ve milked the thing dry,” Carmine said.
“Delia! Put her on finding that name, Carmine.”
“She’s the one should be going to England.”
“Yeah, yeah, I agree, but Myron wouldn’t. However,” said the Commissioner, looking conspiratorial, “we might be able to throw some dust in everybody’s eyes. Don’t tell a soul where you’re going, just give it out that you’re moving your family out of Holloman for a while, and drive off to JFK as if you’re going to L.A. I’ll talk to Myron and put the fear of a Catholic Hell in his Jewish soul. He’s to tell everyone that Desdemona and Julian are going to stay with him. It makes sense, so I doubt you’ll be tailed to the airport, at least as far as the departure gates. That way, if you can finish London in two or three days, no one will get too cocky at your absence.”
In the end only Delia and John Silvestri knew where Carmine took his wife and son two days later. After some thought he also decided to confide in Ted Kelly, who could bumble around Cornucopia telling all and sundry that Carmine had gone to L.A. and could arrive back on the next plane if things got out of hand.
Desdemona was relieved and excited, explaining to the women of Carmine’s family that she was looking forward to revisiting the place where she had honeymooned: Myron’s Hampton Court Palace. That gentleman’s lavish hand was everywhere, Carmine discovered; they were picked up at their house by a limousine that had enough space in its nether regions to hold a small party, and whisked onto their 707 aircraft without joining the crush of people waiting to board. Though Carmine objected that his own ticket was economy even if his wife and son were traveling first class, he was put next to them in first class because, the chief hostess said smoothly, he had been upgraded. It didn’t escape his notice that the rest of the first-class passengers shuddered to see an infant and popped extra pills to ensure that they slept through a wailing baby. They needn’t have bothered, he thought with an inward grin; Julian enjoyed the experience, wincing as ascent and descent altered the pressure on his eardrums, but not howling. To him it must be small potatoes after Holloman Harbor.
“I prefer a train,” said Desdemona, thoroughly bored.
Myron had put them in the Hilton, clever enough to know that London’s luxury hotels were not well endowed with big elevators, level floors, high doorways and vast beds; Desdemona needed room, especially in an elevator with a baby buggy. Thus, the Hilton.
It wasn’t his first visit to London by any means, and Delia had given Carmine a name: Professor Hugh Lefevre. She had even arranged an appointment for him: eleven the next morning, at the professor’s residence in St. John’s Wood. Apparently Dr. Lefevre didn’t care to eat out at a restaurant, even an expensive one; Carmine could have a cup of tea, he told Delia.
Expecting some degree of affluence, Carmine trod a street of conjoined houses, rather dilapidated, faintly Georgian, each with a flight of dirty steps leading up to a front door alongside which was a panel of handwritten names. He found his house, went up its steps and discovered that H. Lefevre lived in 105, up a dingy staircase in a dingy hall. There was no bell connection, and 105 of course was not the ground floor. A glance at his watch informed him that he was on time, so he bounded up the dark stairs onto a landing with five doors. His was the back one, would look down on whatever passed for a yard behind the house. He knocked.
“Enter!” said a voice.
Sure enough, the knob turned and the door opened. Carmine stepped into a large room lit only by two windows and the grace of a heavily overcast day. Like the whole house, it was dingy. The wallpaper had faded and peeled, the thick velvet curtains were stained, and the furniture, a mixture of styles, was chipped and battered if wooden or oozing stuffing if upholstered. Books lay everywhere, including a wall of shelves. The desk was piled with papers, and a small manual typewriter sat on a low table to one side of the desk chair, which rotated to face it or the desk.
A man standing by one window turned to face Carmine as he advanced with hand extended to his host, who shook it.
“Professor Lefevre?”
“That is I. Be seated, Captain Delmonico.”
“Whereabouts, sir?”
“There will do. Where the light falls on your face. Hmm! Women must make utter fools of themselves over you. It’s a New World look—America, Australia, South Africa—makes no difference. The Old World look is softer, less blatantly masculine.”
“I haven’t noticed any women making utter fools of themselves over me,” Carmine said, smiling easily. It was a good technique, flattering him yet making him uncomfortable. Well, two can play at that game, Professor. He gazed about, seeming puzzled. “Is this the best England can do for a full professor?” he asked.
“I am a Communist, Captain. It is not a part of my ethic to submerge myself in comfort when so many people know none.”
“But your private way of life can’t benefit them, sir.”
“That is not the point! The point is that I choose to live in a spartan fashion to display my ethic to people like you, who do live in comfort. I imagine your house has every luxury.”
Carmine laughed. “I wouldn’t say every luxury, just those that mean my wife doesn’t have to drudge nor my child know the horror of monotony.”
Ah, a hit! Professor Hugh Lefevre stiffened in his chair, no easy feat for one being devoured by arthritis. Twenty years ago when Erica Davenport had been his student, he must have had a certain attraction for women, been tall, probably moved with languid grace and enjoyed his handsomeness, a thing of straight thin nose, black brows and lashes, a wealth of black hair worn long, and cornflower blue eyes. The remnants of it still showed, but pain and an unnecessary degree of hardship had chewed away at him, outside as well as inside. Warm air, decent food and some help keeping house would have held his diseases at bay. But no, Carmine thought, he had an ethic, and now, when I said “the horror of monotony” to him, he reacted like a steer to a goad.
“What do you do with your money?” Carmine asked, curious.
“Donate it to the Communist Party.”
“Where, in all likelihood, some lip-service member uses it to live in comfort.”
“It is not so! We are all believers.”
Time to stop annoying him. Carmine leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Professor, I don’t mean to denigrate you or your ideals. My secretary told you—I’m glad you have a phone, by the way—that I need some background on Dr. Erica Davenport, who was one of your students, as I understand it.”
“Ah, Erica!” the old man said, smiling to reveal bad teeth. “Why should I answer your questions? Is there a new McCarthy in the Senate? Is she being persecuted by your capitalist government? You’ve had a wasted trip, Captain.”
“Erica Davenport is dead. She was murdered in a particularly brutal way, after a torture that consisted of breaking all the bones in her arms and legs,” Carmine said steadily. “I’m not a capitalist tool, I’m simply the homicide detective assigned to investigate her death. Her political views are not my concern. Her murder is.”
Lefevre wept a little in the easy way of the old; too many cracks develop in the emotional dam wall as the years go by, Carmine thought. And the old man had felt something for her.
“Just tell me what she was like twenty years ago, sir.”
“Like?” The faded blue eyes widened. “Like the sun, the stars! Ablaze with life and enthusiasm, champing at the bit to change the world. We were all very left at the L.S.E.—in fact, we were famous for it. She arrived already indoctrinated to some extent, so to finish the process was easy. When I discovered that she spoke fluent Russian, I understood her future importance. I allowed her to think she had seduced me, then I went to work to—I believe the phrase is, ‘turn her.’ Naturally Moscow was interested, especially after I learned how able and intelligent she was. The chance to insert a sleeper in some huge American business enterprise was too good to miss. But she began to dither—demur, even.”
“Why so frank, Professor? Aren’t you talking to me about your treason as well as hers?”
“What treason? I’ve never done a thing,” Lefevre said smugly. “There’s nothing at the L.S.E. would interest Moscow apart from persons.” He stopped suddenly and looked at Carmine in confusion. “Tea! You’re here for a cup of tea,” he said.
“Thanks, I don’t need one. Go on about Erica.”
“My superiors in the Party took over and arranged for Erica to go to Moscow and meet all the most important people. It was done on a special passport the KGB prepared for her, while her own passport was stamped to show a pilgrimage to the classical world, and she was equipped with souvenirs. Considering that the cold war was just commencing, Moscow was very careful with Erica, who might have to wait a very long time before she was activated.”
Lefevre got up and went to the window, staring down into a yard filled with unkempt long grass and rusting pieces of junk—old kerosene heaters, chamber pots, tin trunks. No discarded washing machines here, Carmine thought, coming to gaze over the old man’s shoulder. The tenants must all belong to the Communist Party.
“So Erica went off to Moscow in the summer of 1948?”
“Yes.” Lefevre stopped again, frowning and pulling at his lower lip. Sighing, he returned to his chair.
“What happened in Moscow?”
“The first trip—three weeks—went splendidly. Erica returned in alt—over the moon. She had met all the members of the Central Committee, and held Josef Stalin’s hand. He wasn’t terribly well, you know. Then she had to return to Moscow for her training, and Moscow wanted to be absolutely sure of her loyalty. It was a nine-week sojourn. For anyone else it would have been longer, but she was an apt pupil, on fire with zeal. Also capable of significantly contributing to her story.”
He stopped again, clearly distressed. Had it not been for the news of her horrifying death, Carmine knew, he would have fished in vain for any of this. No doubt FBI and CIA agents had encountered him in their own enquiries when Ulysses first came on the scene, and he had stuck to Erica’s “pilgrimage” to the classical world. Luck travels with the harbinger of death, Carmine thought. He’s old, lonely and by-passed. Now he can talk about her without endangering her.
“You’ve already told me she was a traitor, Professor. What else is there to know?”
He finally took the plunge. “On her last night in Moscow, Erica was raped. From what she told me, it was at a drunken dinner attended by Party officials and KGB officers just below the top ranks. Why they picked on her I don’t know, save that she had been highly favored by their superiors, she was American, very beautiful, and not sexually generous.”
“It was a terrible rape,” Carmine said softly. “On autopsy twenty years later, she still bore the physical scars. How did she survive, sir?”
“Bound herself up and came back to London as arranged. To me. I sent her to Guy’s Hospital, where I had a friend. It was manic in those days, battling with the teething troubles of the National Health. We arranged that her medical records should get lost in the system. London was a very different place then. The country was still on ration books for food, it was difficult to get decent clothes—a fruitful situation for us teaching in institutions of higher learning. Some very promising students fell into our hands like ripe peaches.”
“What about Erica? She must have returned from Moscow that second time changed out of all recognition,” Carmine said.
“In one way, yes. In another, no. The fire had gone, but an icy determination took its place. She abjured all sexual activity until someone in high authority made her understand that sex is a beautiful woman’s best tool. She was instructed in the art of fellatio. A large amount of money was placed in a Boston bank in her name, and, as far as I know, she began her upwards climb. After a few mawkish letters, I lost contact with her.”
“Then you don’t know that she rose to be the highest executive in a very large American company that manufactures weapons of war?” Carmine asked.
“No, really?” Hugh Lefevre looked delighted. “How truly marvelous!”
“But she didn’t spy for Moscow.”
“You can’t possibly know that. After her training, she would be able to dupe anybody.”
“Erica was a blind for someone else. She must have had a controller—someone who guided her actions and told her what to do. She never behaved like a master spy because she wasn’t a master spy. She was just a blind.”
“I hope you’re correct, Captain. If you are, then Erica’s company is still penetrated. Splendid, splendid!”
When Carmine left, he walked all the way back to the Hilton, as much of his way as possible through Regent’s Park, among azaleas and rhododendrons, blossoming trees and rich carpets of impossibly green grass. Hyde Park it wasn’t, but it had its charms. Only when he found a refreshment pavilion and had that cup of tea did he lose the last of the sour taste in his mouth that was Professor Hugh Lefevre. Old, crippled, fueled by an ideology. There were plenty of people like him; differing ideologies, perhaps, but the same end result.
He joined Desdemona for lunch in the coffee shop, as she had just come in from a long walk through Hyde Park pushing Julian in what she now called a “pram”—less than a day, and his wife’s Englishness was back with a vengeance. But she looked rested and relaxed despite her hike. Myron might be a pain in the ass, but occasionally he got some things right.
How to tell her that he was going home? Directly, no apologies and no prevarication.
“I got everything I needed from Professor Lefevre,” he said, reaching to take her hand. “That means I have to go home.”
The light died in her eyes, but she mustered all her resources and managed to look merely disappointed. “I know you’d stay if you could,” she said steadily, “so it must be very urgent. I imagine all policemen’s wives go through this sort of thing—the divorce rate is so high.” She stretched her mouth into a smile. “Well, Captain Delmonico, you’re not going to get rid of me as easily as that! Yes, I’m disgruntled, but I knew when I married you what sort of person you are. And you do have a fatal attraction for nasty cases! It rubbed off on me straight away, so I must have the same quality. My bed will be cold, but not as cold as yours—I have Julian. Just promise me that when it’s all over, you’ll bring me back here. Not in Myron’s luxury! Some smelly private hotel out on the Gloucester Road will do—I can bear the curry and the cabbage. And we won’t need to hire a pram because Julian seems to prefer a stroller. He’s inherited your curiosity, my love, and likes to see where he’s going.”
“It’s a deal,” said Carmine, kissing her hand. “I’ll worry just the same. London’s a big place.”
“Oh, we won’t be in London,” Desdemona said blandly. “I arranged it with Delia. We both knew you’d go home quickly, so Julian and I are going to stay with Delia’s parents in the Cotswolds. No one will find out where we’ve gone. Myron’s generosity can get us there—I confess I quail at the thought of battling with a baby, a pram and luggage on a train. We’ll travel in a Rolls.”
“It will be trains, buses and taxis next time,” he warned.
“Yes, but you’ll be there to help. I am a very large person, Carmine, but I have only one pair of hands.”
Light was dawning on Carmine. “You are pissed off at me! What a relief!”
“Yes, of course I’m pissed off!” she said crossly. “It’s no fun trying to be a perfect policeman’s wife, I can tell you! I didn’t expect you to find what you were looking for quite so quickly. I thought Julian and I would have you for at least three days. I’ve never seen the crown jewels!”
“That’s good, neither have I.”
“How long have I got?” she asked.
“I was going to see if there’s a plane tonight, but I’ll try for one tomorrow morning. Is that a lynching party?”
“No, at least we can cuddle in a king-sized bed tonight. I’ll call Mrs. Carstairs to tell her we’re coming, then we’ll check out together tomorrow morning and set off in Myron’s Rolls. Our route is west, and so is Heathrow. We can drop you off,” said Desdemona.
“That’s very smart, lovely lady. I don’t think you’re in any danger here, but it won’t do any harm to behave covertly, to use spy terminology. No one knows Delia has parents here.”
“This is a spy thing, isn’t it?”
“My interest is purely murder,” Carmine said.
At last, thought Carmine complacently as the car set him down at the bedlam of Heathrow, I am free of Myron Mendel Mandelbaum! I can use my economy class ticket and suffer the proper indignities of air travel for nine hours. But Myron had the last laugh. No sooner was Carmine on board the 707 than the chief hostess came swanning into the tail of the plane and upgraded him to first class. Accepting a bourbon and soda in a crystal tumbler, Carmine surrendered to the fleshpots.
“You have all the luck,” Ted Kelly said when Carmine ended his story. “We had several tries at Professor Lefevre, but he swore that Erica Davenport was just one more bright American student availing herself of the economic wisdom of the L.S.E. The lying old goat! He fooled us, all the time prating about his membership in the Communist Party. England’s riddled with open Communists, while our really dangerous ones dived underground with the coming of Joe McCarthy. He did more harm than good.”
“Witch hunts always do,” Carmine said.
“We’re no farther ahead for knowing about Erica.”
“I disagree. Ulysses has lost his blind. Have you ever established when exactly Cornucopia began losing secrets?”
“When our blind arrived ten years ago. The rocket fuel governor two years ago brought the thefts into the open when too many people got to know of it,” Kelly said.
“Has Cornucopia lost anything more since Erica began to get cold feet?”
“You think that happened after the Maxwell banquet, right?”
“We don’t know,” Kelly said gloomily. “There haven’t been any leaps-and-bounds advances in Red designs, though we’ve made real big ones. Our own espionage network can’t find anything.”
“Well, my guess is that Ulysses is lying low. He’s got a cache of secrets waiting to go, but he’s not sure if the storm’s blown over. With Erica silenced, he’s probably relaxing, though that depends on what she told him when he tortured her.”
“What could she have told him?” Kelly demanded.
“Whatever passed between her and Skeps at the Maxwell event, first off,” Carmine said. “Ulysses may not have been there that night, but deputed Erica to quiz Skeps about something—maybe what Skeps knew about him? But she sidestepped until the Pugh blackmail letter. What we don’t know is whether it was addressed to her and she passed it on to Ulysses, or whether it was directly addressed to Ulysses.” Carmine growled in the back of his throat. “Like it or not—and I don’t like it!—I have to make that god-awful drive to Orleans to see Philomena Skeps again. Now that Erica’s dead, the lady might be more forthcoming about her relationship with Erica.”
“Why don’t you fly up?”
Carmine sneered. “Oh, sure! There’s no air service, and I can just see the Commissioner authorizing the hire of a plane.”
“Jesus, Carmine, sometimes you’re dumb! I’ll get you there and back in an FBI helicopter.”
“And that,” said Carmine grimly, “is why we small-time cops hate the FBI! Money to burn. Which is not going to stop me taking you up on the offer.”
“Tomorrow?”
“The sooner the better.”
“How’s your family doing in London?”
“Gallivanting all over the shop,” said Carmine, not about to tell this new ally that Desdemona and Julian were actually staying in a house outside a pair of villages called Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. In fact, so paranoid had he become that he had fitted his home phone with a scrambler and conversed with Delia about his family in whispers. In some corner of his mind he wondered what the Carstairses thought when their phone was fitted with a scrambler too, but he didn’t care; no one was going to get at Desdemona and Julian again if he could help it.
“Pity you couldn’t stay with them a little longer.”
“Yes, but they’re safe, and having a great time seeing all the sights.”
“I’ve realized,” Ted Kelly said slowly, “the significance of the shots on that telescopic camera. Ulysses wanted to see how to get to your house by sneaking along the water’s edge. There’s no public access, all the properties go clear down to the water.”
“My interpretation too, Ted. Though he sent his assistant, who’s either fitter or younger or both. If he thinks we don’t know he has an assistant, sending him would let Ulysses establish an alibi.” Carmine gave a wry smile. “The odd thing is that hers isn’t the first body to wind up on that piece of land. A poor murdered teenaged girl was dumped there during the tenancy of the previous owner. That body was moved by a rowboat, whereas Erica was carried or dragged along the shore.”
Kelly was staring, astonished. “Jesus! Lightning does strike twice!” he exclaimed. “That was the Ghost case, right?”
“Yes. She was artistically arranged on the edge of the path, not anchored underwater.”
The FBI agent got to his feet. “Call me when you have a time set up for Philomena Skeps. I’ll have a chopper waiting at what Holloman calls an airport.”
Carmine grinned. “We do have weekday flights to New York and Boston,” he said. “Have you forgotten Chubb has a law school and a medical school that grow experts like a vacant lot grows weeds? There’s always a bunch of Chubb experts testifying in some court.”
What a difference flying made! Carmine was on the ground at a tiny airport for private planes in Chatham twenty-five minutes after rising precariously off the ground in Holloman. It was a curious sensation, especially staring down at the scene—often water—between his feet; the chopper was like a glass bowl inside and a mosquito outside. His pilot was a silent guy who concentrated on keeping the insect flying, though he did speak as Carmine alighted.
“I’ll be waiting here” was all he said.
A Ford Fairlane lookalike was parked by the fence, the keys in its ignition but not a soul in sight. Well, well, Carmine thought, the FBI wants Mrs. Skeps and Mr. Tony Bera to think I drove here in my cop car, ass sore and temper ruffled.
Between his first visit and this one, the Cape Cod villages had greened up and produced some May flowers; the day was fine and the sky blue, the Atlantic placidly calm. I still want a summer cottage here, Carmine said to himself. It would be so great to take my children paddling, teach them to swim, help them build sand castles, have peanut butter and jelly picnics. My son’s experience in Holloman Harbor won’t turn him off. Julian is not timid or shy; he’s too like his mother.
He thought about them as he drove the short distance to the Skeps house. People like Corey’s wife deemed their overt happiness a front, but then, that was Maureen; she could never believe that other women weren’t filled with her own discontent. And of course what almost everyone—even Patrick—failed to take into account was the age factor. Most people had been married at least ten years by the time he and Desdemona tied their knot, and the events that had drawn them together were as perilous as exhausting. Desdemona had never been married, and his own first marriage had been a brief thing of lust rather than love. Age, he reflected, brought wisdom, but it also brought a genuine gratitude for the happiness of sharing life with someone as much liked as loved.
Philomena Skeps was in her front garden watching for him, clad in cutoff jeans, sneakers and a plain white T-shirt. The flesh of her smooth brown legs was firm, and it was evident that her breasts did not need a bra to enhance them; her mop of black hair was carelessly bunched on top of her head. If she was aiming for a gamine look, however, she missed the mark; her beauty belonged in a French salon, not a street market.
“Captain,” she said, shaking his hand firmly. “If we sit behind the house, we can enjoy the fresh air without getting cold. I do so much love fresh air.”
“Where’s Mr. Bera?” he asked, following her down the far side of the house and around the back to a flagged patio.
“He’ll be here when he makes it,” she said, indicating a white, woven cane chair. “Lemonade?”
“Thanks.”
He let her settle, let her chat about the joys of spring and fresh air, watching her as he sipped an excellent proprietary concoction. Her eyes in the sunlight were the same green as water full of ribboned weed, dense and changeful.
“You weren’t tempted to go to L.A. for Erica’s funeral?” he asked, holding out his glass for more S.S. Pierce lemonade.
“No, I wasn’t.” The eyes filled with tears, blinked away. “No one would tell me how she died, Captain, beyond saying she was murdered.” Now the eyes were direct, resolute. “However, I take you for a kind but hard man, and ask you. How did she die? Was it very bad?”
“Yes, it was very bad. She was tortured first. Every long bone in her arms and legs was broken. Then she was strangled with a rope noose.”
“A hanging?”
“No. Simple strangulation, if I may be excused for saying that. It probably came as a relief.”
No tears now, but the creature behind the eyes had retreated to some place he couldn’t reach. “I see,” she said. “That is an odd kind of torture, surely? There was no sexual element.”
“From my experience, it was not a sexual murder. She was tortured to obtain information, I think. Certainly the textbooks would argue no sex was involved, though sometimes I wonder how much—or how little—we know about sexual murder. Did it ever occur to you that she might be in danger?”
“Not of murder. Rape I could understand, because she invited it—so cold, so sexually uninterested. There is a kind of man who regards women like Erica as needing to be brought down a peg or two, and what more effective way than rape?”
God, this is an intelligent woman! he thought. “Did you know that she had been gang-raped as a young woman?”
“No, but it makes perfect sense.”
“She didn’t confide in you?”
“I told you, Captain. We were not on good terms.”
“Recently, yes, but at one time you were. There’s no point in denying it, Mrs. Skeps.”
“Yes, at one time we were great friends. It’s because of me that she became Desmond’s mistress—I begged her. Of course that altered our friendship, though we remained close for a long time after. Had I known of the rape, I would never have asked. I was very selfish, Captain. While Erica kept him sexually sated, Desmond left me alone. It surprised me when she said that they engaged in nothing but fellatio, but of course men love it.”
“Why did it surprise you?” Carmine asked.
“Because she was so uninterested in sex. Not disinterested, uninterested.” Philomena Skeps struck her hands together. “Oh, please! Let’s leave this sordid subject!”
“Why were you such great friends?”
“A marriage of minds. Our intellects meshed perfectly. We loved to read, we liked to discuss what we’d read—all the myriad activities, phenomena and creatures of the world fascinated us. We loved beauty in all its guises—a moth’s antennae, the iridescence of a beetle’s carapace, fish—you name it, we loved it. Neither of us had ever known such a wonderful friendship. So when it ended, I was devastated.”
“Why did it end? How did it end?”
“I still don’t know. Erica ended it out of the blue. In November of 1964, Thanksgiving Day. She was coming here to dinner with me, Tony, young Desmond. But she arrived far too early. I was in the kitchen,” Philomena Skeps said in a desolate voice, “at the counter, making the turkey stuffing. Erica came in, stood about six feet from me, and said our friendship was over. She disliked me, she said, and was sick of pretending otherwise. Desmond was making it hard for her, she said. Young Desmond detested her, and she was sick of that too. There were a dozen more reasons, all much the same as those. I was too astounded to argue, I just stood with my hands full of bread and listened. Then she turned on her heel and left. Just like that! I never really saw her again, except at functions and meetings we couldn’t avoid.”
“It must have been a sorrow for you, Mrs. Skeps.”
“No, a tragedy! Life has never been the same since.”
“How did you cope with the fact that your ex-husband gave Erica control over your son’s inheritance?”
“I was crushed, but I wasn’t surprised. Desmond would have done anything to make life difficult for me. It affected Tony worse. He couldn’t find anything in the will that would enable him to challenge it legally. Of course now that Erica is dead, things will be different.” She couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of her voice.
“Why did your son detest Erica?” Carmine asked.
Her smile was twisted. “Jealousy, of course! He felt that Erica was more important to me than he was, and in one way he was right. An intellect craves equal company, and no matter how great the love, children can never compete on an intellectual level. It is a wise child who understands that. Young Desmond isn’t wise. So he loathed Erica, who stole me from him. When the friendship ended, my son rejoiced. Which reminds me, I must stop calling him ‘young’ Desmond. He’s simply Desmond now.”
How he managed to keep his face expressionless, Carmine never after understood, only that somehow he had, while this very strange woman produced a mixture of Oedipus, Clytemnestra, Medea and about a dozen other Greeks who’d wormed their way into the psychology textbooks. I fervently hope, he thought, that by the time this terrifying amalgam explodes, I’ll be safely retired. Jesus, what a mess!
Speak of the devil!
With two dark parents he couldn’t help but be dark, though face and body were more Philomena than his father. Having come into puberty, he had embarked upon his first growth spurt, and was taller now than his mother. He wore nothing save a pair of cutoff jeans, revealing a wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped physique that ended in beautiful hands and feet. When he moved the hands, they were graceful. His face was as much feminine as masculine, of that kind called epicene, and Carmine doubted that the double-sexed look would vanish as he grew older. Chiseled features in a northern European mold, and large, bright green eyes smudged with thick black lashes. Nor would he develop acne; his brown skin was flawless, innocent of pustules.
Carmine felt his hackles rise. Here was trouble.
The boy came to lean against his mother, standing to one side of her chair, and she turned her head to kiss his arm, smiling.
“Captain Delmonico, this is my son, Desmond.”
“Hi,” said Carmine, rising and extending his hand.
The boy took it, but fastidiously, with a faint moue of distaste around his red-lipped mouth. “Hi,” he said. Then, to his mother, “Is this about the Wicked Witch of Cornucopia?”
“About Erica Davenport, yes, dear. Some lemonade?”
“No.” He stood posed like a Praxiteles statue, oblivious to the fact that the visitor’s foot itched to kick some manners into the conceited little shit. “I’m bored,” he said.
“With all that schoolwork still to do?” she ventured.
“Since my I.Q. is two hundred, Mother, it’s scarcely a problem!” he said tartly. “I need a bigger library.”
“Yes, he does,” she said to Carmine ruefully. “I’m afraid that we’re going to have to move to Boston. The Cape suits me, but it retards Desmond.” Her head went back to her son. “As soon as the legal ramifications are disentangled, dearest, we’ll go to Boston. Just a few more weeks, Tony says.”
“I take it you’ve fully recovered from the chicken pox?” Carmine asked the boy.
He didn’t like the reference to a pedestrian childhood ailment, so he ignored the question. “Where’s Tony?” he asked, fretful and peevish.
“Here!” said Anthony Bera’s voice from the back door.
The change in young Desmond was both sudden and dramatic; he lit up, bounded to Bera and hugged him. “Tony, thank God!” he cried. “Let’s take the boat out, I’m bored.”
“Good idea,” Bera said, “but I have to talk to the Captain first. Why don’t you get things ready? We need bait.”
The boy went off, but not before a little more talk passed between him and Bera. Carmine smothered a sigh of mingled sorrow and disgust. Young Desmond had already been sexually initiated, but not by a woman. Bera was mentor in this area too. A few more Greeks flitted through Carmine’s mind.
“Did young Desmond exaggerate his I.Q.?” Carmine asked as soon as the boy was out of earshot.
“Some,” Bera said, laughing, “but it’s right up there in the genius range.” He frowned. “It’s rather narrow, however. His gifts are mathematical, not artistic, and he lacks curiosity.”
“A detached reading of someone devoted to you, surely.”
“There’s no point in being anything else,” Bera said, not perturbed by the fact that Carmine had realized what was going on between him and the boy.
“I presume you’ll contest the will now?” Carmine asked.
“I’m not sure it’s even necessary. Skeps’s will didn’t make any provision for Erica’s death. If a board of trustees is appointed and it’s impeccable enough to satisfy the children’s courts of New York State, I think things can be arranged minus any legal fuss,” Bera said easily. “The boy’s mother is a good guardian unfairly dealt with by a vengeful ex-husband. Can you see Phil Smith or the other Cornucopia Board members making life hard for Philomena now? As long as they’re among the trustees, things will be hunky-dory.”
A very superficial summary for someone he deems a legal ignoramus, thought Carmine, but it will probably work out that way in the end. And it answers my questions. Cornucopia will go on under the same management for at least another three or four years. After that, given young Desmond—who knows? He’ll probably have graduated from Harvard by then, and be a player. The kid’s homosexuality doesn’t worry me. What does is his patriotism. Is Ted Kelly certain of Anthony Bera’s loyalties in that respect? I’m sure going to ask him!
Rising to his feet, Carmine said his farewells. Philomena didn’t escort him to the Fairlane, Bera did, eyeing the car.
“You’ve put some miles on it coming here three times,” he said, holding the driver’s door open.
“Yeah, well, shit happens,” said Carmine, got in, and drove off with a wave.
A few minutes later he was in the air heading across Nantucket Sound.
“Is that Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard?” he asked as the water became a patchwork quilt land.
“Martha’s Vineyard,” said the pilot.
And so, after flying down I-95 on the Connecticut shore, he reached Holloman while the Fairlane would still have been negotiating the Cape itself. Ducking down as he left the chopper, Carmine resolved to buy Special Agent Ted Kelly a bottle of his favorite tipple. What a difference! Home again in time for a Malvolio’s lunch. The whole trip had taken less than three hours.
For want of something better to do, he went back to his least loved destination, Cornucopia, that afternoon.
Phil Smith had moved into Desmond Skeps’s offices but had not availed himself of Richard Oakes the male secretary, Carmine noted as he waited for Smith’s exquisitely turned out elderly dragon to announce him.
Erica’s decor was still in place, but subtly defeminized; the vases of flowers were gone, the pictures of dreamy country lanes had been replaced by starkly grim Hogarth etchings, and red kid had replaced sage green kid on the padded furniture.
“You need a few swastika flags,” Carmine said.
“Excuse me?”
“A lot of black, white and red in here. Very Nazi.”
“You, Captain, are fond of making incendiary remarks, but I am not rising to the bait today,” Smith said. “I’m too happy.”
“Didn’t like a woman boss, huh?”
“What man genuinely does? I could have stomached her sex, however. What made my gorge rise was her indecision.”
Perhaps aping mourning, Smith was in a black silk suit with a black tie closely covered in white spots; his cuff links were black onyx and yellow gold, his shoes the finest black kid. A sartorial wonder, thought Carmine, sitting down. In fact, Smith looked younger, even handsomer. Being el supremo of Cornucopia obviously pleased him mightily, just as he said.
“Where’s Richard Oakes?” Carmine asked.
Smith looked contemptuous. “He’s a homosexual, Captain, and I don’t like homosexuals. I banished him to Outer Mongolia.”
“And where’s that, in Cornucopia’s version of the globe?”
“Accounting.”
“It would be my Outer Mongolia too, I confess. The arctic wastes of numbers … However, I can’t agree with you about homosexuals. For some men, it’s a natural state of being, not to be confused with some of the sexual criminals I encounter.” To himself he wondered how long it was since Smith had set eyes on Desmond Skeps III—what a shock that was going to be!
The pretense of bonhomie disappeared; Phil Smith reverted to type. “What do you want?” he asked rudely. “I’m a busy man.”
“I want to know your whereabouts all day on the day that Erica Davenport’s body was put in my boat shed.”
“I was here, and I can produce witnesses to vouch for that from eight in the morning until six that evening,” Smith said. “Go and look somewhere else, for God’s sake! The only kind of murder I do is Outer Mongolian. And yes, I would have dealt with Dr. Erica Davenport, but not by extinguishing her life. What kind of punishment is that? By the time I finished with her, she’d have been in a straitjacket.”
“I accept that, Mr. Smith. When you called her indecisive, what did you mean?”
“Exactly what the word suggests. Having a homosexual for a secretary was indicative, believe me. One of the ways Cornucopia stays on top is by absorbing smaller, independent companies, especially if they have clever ideas or find a niche in the market for a new product. Takeover negotiations have a form and a time span that Erica was ignorant of. We missed taking over four companies in fewer than four days, thanks to her. Three belonged to Fred Collins, one to me. We’d been performing the ritual mating dance for months or weeks, depending. But she dithered, the shortsighted fool, then ran to Wallace Grierson.”
“Couldn’t you override her?” Carmine asked curiously.
“Not the way Desmond structured his will—she had the yea or nay, holding Desmond Three’s majority,” Smith said sourly.
“Hmm. So there were advantages in being rid of her, even if your technique would not have involved murder.”
“Are you a fool too, Captain? Haven’t I said that?”
“No, Mr. Smith, I am not a fool,” Carmine said coolly. “I just like to be absolutely sure.” He got up and wandered over to the long wall, where the Hogarth etchings were hanging in mathematical precision. Depictions of a London long gone, a place of horrific suffering, starvation, dissipation, glaringly unwanted humanity. Smith watched him, puzzled.
“These are amazing,” Carmine said, turning to look at the seated figure behind the black lacquer desk. “Human misery at its most acute, and the artist walked through it every day. It doesn’t say much for the government of the time, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t, I suppose.” Smith shrugged. “Still, I don’t walk through it. Why the interest?”
“No reason, really. It just seems a strange theme for the office of a company director, particularly when the products are aimed at creating more human misery.”
“Oh, puh-lease!” Smith exclaimed. “Don’t blame me, blame my wife! I put her in charge of the decorating.”
“That would account for it,” Carmine said, smiled, and left.
From there he went to see Gus Purvey, Fred Collins and Wal Grierson, in that order.
Purvey was genuinely upset, and had flown to L.A. for the funeral. Like Phil Smith, his alibi for the day of Erica’s death was ironclad.
“Mr. Smith says Dr. Davenport was indecisive,” Carmine said to him, wondering if this was old news or new. Old, it seemed.
“I don’t agree,” Purvey said, wiping his eyes. “Phil and Fred are a pair of sharks, they bite everything in their path without stopping to think whether it would go down well or give them indigestion. Erica thought all four companies would wind up a liability rather than an asset.”
Collins repeated Phil Smith’s views, but Grierson came down on Purvey’s side.
“She had a natural caution,” he said, “that I think was why Des picked her to head Cornucopia. I do know, however, that she was in favor of Dormus buying out a small company with good ideas about solar power. That’s decades off, but I’m interested. So was Erica. I want to let the firm alone, just infuse some much needed capital into their infrastructure, and reap the benefits down the track. The same with distillation of fresh water from salt. You have to browse through the world of small companies, Captain, not gobble,” Grierson said, unconsciously echoing Purvey’s shark metaphor. “In that respect Erica’s indecision was great. Unfortunately, in most respects it was disastrous.”
“What’s going to happen now that Dr. Davenport is gone?”
“Phil Smith is bound to take over. Funny, that. For the last fifteen years he’s been inert, now all of a sudden he’s woken up and is behaving like a chief executive.” Grierson frowned. “Trouble is, I’m not sure his burst of energy will last. I hope it does. There’s no way I want the job.”
“What’s Smith’s wife like?” Carmine asked, thinking of the brown pancake hat.
“Natalie?” Grierson laughed. “She’s a Lapp—calls herself a Sami. Hard to believe she’s an Eskimo, isn’t it? Weird blue eyes, blonde hair. The Sami are fair, I’m told. Her English is awful. I like her, she’s—uh—jovial. The kids are real lookers, all blonde. A girl, then two boys. None of them wanted to follow Pop into the firm—amazing how often that happens. No matter how rich people are, their kids do their own thing.”
“No clotheshorses among them?”
“Just good workhorses, Natalie saw to that. She has some bug in her head about the homeland, so the minute each kid got through with college, off they went to the land of the midnight sun. They didn’t stay, of course. Scattered around the world.”
“The Smiths sound like an odd couple.”
This is fascinating, Carmine was thinking; I would never have suspected Wal Grierson of this kind of cozy gossip. Just goes to show. He’s best friends with a woman—his wife.
“The Smiths are absolutely orthodox compared to what the Collinses used to be like when his first wife was alive. Aki was Turkish—another blonde. Gorgeous in a weird way. Came from somewhere near Armenia or the Caucasus. Their sons are the best-looking kids—young men now, of course. One’s a Marine officer stationed in West Germany, the other’s a NASA scientist trying to put a man on the moon.”
“What happened to her? Divorce?”
Wal Grierson’s face sobered. “No. She died in a shooting accident at their cabin in Maine. Some fucking gun-crazy idiot mistook her for a deer and blew her face away. That’s why we put up with Fred’s bimbos. When Aki was alive, he was different.”
“That’s a real tragedy,” Carmine said.
“Yeah, poor old Fred.”
Strange pictures were forming in Carmine’s mind, but they wavered and quivered on the fringes of actual thought, like moving objects some sadistic ophthalmologist deliberately kept right on the margins of peripheral vision. They were there, but they were not there. Swing your head to focus on them, and they vanished—poof!
“Or am I going crazy?” he asked Desdemona, the scrambler on the phone engaged.
“No, dear heart, you’re stone cold sane,” she said. “I know the feeling. Oh, I miss you!” She paused, then added in a master stroke of guile, “So does Julian. He does, Carmine! Every time a man approaches with something like your gait, he starts jigging up and down—it’s adorable!”
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“You have an idea who it is, don’t you?” she asked.
“No, that’s just it—I don’t. I should, yet I don’t.”
“Cheer up, it will come to you. Is the weather nice?”
He got his own back. “Perfect Connecticut spring days.”
“Guess what it’s doing here?”
“Raining. At fifty degrees of latitude, Desdemona, with a climate that mild, it has to rain a lot. It’s the Gulf Stream.”