Legion (3 page)

Dearest Billy,

Don’t get sore, but when the phone woke us up, Mom insisted we should go and visit Richmond, as a punishment, I guess, so I thought we’d better get an early start. She said Jews in the South should stick together. Who’s in Richmond?

You had fun at your Police Encounter Group? I can’t wait to get home and hear all about it. I fixed you the usual and put it in the fridge. Are you planning to be home tonight, or as usual ice–skating on the Potomac with Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve?

Kisses,

Me

A small, fond smile warmed his eyes. He replaced the note, found the cream cheese, tomatoes, lox, pickle and an Almond Roca on a plate in the refrigerator. He sliced and toasted two bagels, poured coffee and sat down to it all at the table. Then he noticed the Sunday Washington Post on the chair to his left. He looked at the plate of food before him. His stomach was empty but he could not eat. He had lost his appetite.

For a time he sat drinking his coffee. He looked up. Outside a bird was singing. In this weather? He ought to be put in an institution. He’s sick, he needs help. “Me, too,” the detective muttered aloud. Then the bird fell silent and the only sound was the beat of the pendulum clock on the wall. He checked the time; it was eight forty–two. All the goyim would be going to church. Couldn’t hurt. Say a prayer for Thomas Kintry, please. “And William F. Kinderman,” he added aloud. Yes. And one other. He sipped at the coffee. What a twisted coincidence, he thought, that a death like Kintry’s should occur on this day, this twelfth anniversary of a death just as shocking and violent and mysterious.

Kinderman looked up at the clock. Had it stopped? No. It was running. He shifted in his chair. He felt a strangeness in the room. What was it? Nothing. You’re tired. He picked up the candy and unwrapped it and ate it. Not as good without the pickle taste first, he mourned.

He shook his head and stood up with a sigh. He put away the plate of food, rinsed out his coffee cup at the sink and then left the kitchen and walked up the stairs toward the second floor. He thought he might nap for a while and allow his unconscious to work, to sort out clues he never knew he had seen, but at the top of the stairs he halted and muttered, “Gemini.”

The Gemini? Impossible. That monster is dead, it couldn’t be. And so why was the hair on the back of his hands prickling upward? he wondered. He held them up, the palms turned down. Yes. They are standing on end. Why is that?

He heard Julie waking up now and clumping to her bathroom, and he stood there for a while, baffled and uncertain. He ought to be doing something. But what? The usual lines of investigation and induction were precluded; they were looking for a maniac, and the lab would have nothing to report until tonight. Mannix, he sensed, had already been squeezed of what little he knew, and Kintry’s mother was surely to be left alone at this time. Anyway, the boy had never had unsavory acquaintances or habits; that much Kinderman knew himself from his regular contact with him.

The detective shook his head. He had to get out, to get moving, to pursue. He heard Julie’s shower running. He turned and walked back down the stairs to the foyer. He recovered his gun, put on his hat and coat and went out.

Outside, he stood with his hand on the doorknob, troubled and thoughtful and undecided. The wind blew a
Styrofoam
cup down the driveway and he listened to its thin and forlorn little impacts; then it was still. Abruptly he went to his car, got in and drove away.

Without knowing how he’d gotten there, he found himself parked illegally on Thirty–third Street, close to the river. He got out of the car. Here and there he saw a Washington Post on a doorstep. He found the sight painful and glanced away. He locked the car.

He walked through a little park to a bridge that traversed the canal. He followed a towpath to the boathouse. Already the curious had gathered and were milling about and chattering, although no one seemed to know just exactly what had happened. Kinderman went up to the boathouse doors. They were locked and a red–and–white sign said closed. Kinderman glanced at the bench by the doors and then sat down, his breath coming raspingly as he drooped with his back against the boathouse.

He studied the people on the dock. He knew that psychotic killers frequently relished the attention that their violent deeds had drawn. He might be here in this group on the dock, perhaps asking, “What happened? Do you know? Was someone murdered?” He looked for somebody smiling a little too fixedly, or with a tic or with the stare of the drugged, and most especially for anyone who’d heard what had happened but then lingered and asked the same questions of some newcomer. Kinderman’s hand reached into an inside pocket of his coat; there was always a paperback book in there. He pulled out Claudius the God and looked at its jacket with dismay. He wanted to pretend to be an old man who was passing his Sunday by the river, but the Robert Graves novel held the danger that he might unwittingly actually read it and perhaps allow the killer to elude his scrutiny. He’d already read it twice and knew well the danger of becoming engrossed in its pages again. He slipped it back inside the pocket and quickly extracted another book. He looked at the title. It was
Waiting for Godot
. He sighed with relief and turned to Act Two.

He stayed until noon, seeing no one suspicious. By eleven there’d been nobody else on the dock and the flow had stopped, but he’d waited the extra hour, hoping. Now he looked at his watch, and then at the boats that were chained to the dock. Something was nagging at him. What? He thought for a while but could not identify it. He put away Godot and left.

He discovered a parking ticket on the windshield of his car. He slipped it out from under the wiper blade and eyed it with disbelief. The car was an unmarked Chevrolet Camaro but it carried the plates of the District Police. He crumpled the ticket into his pocket, unlocked the car, got in and drove off. He had no clear idea of where to go and wound up at the precinct house in Georgetown. Once inside he approached the sergeant in charge of the desk.

“Who was giving parking tickets on Thirty–third near Canal this morning, Sergeant?”

The sergeant looked up at him. “Robin Tennes.”

“I am thrilled to be alive in a time and a place where even a blind girl can be a policewoman,” Kinderman told him. He handed him the ticket and waddled away.

“Any news on the kid, Lieutenant?” the sergeant called out. He hadn’t yet examined the ticket.

“No news, no news,” replied Kinderman. “Nothing.”

He went upstairs and walked through the squad room, deflecting the questions of the curious, until at last he was in his office. The space of one wall was taken up with a finely detailed map of the northwest section of the city, while still another was covered by a blackboard. On the wall behind the desk, between two windows that faced toward the Capitol, hung a Snoopy poster, a gift from Thomas Kintry.

Kinderman sat behind his desk. His hat and coat were still on, the coat buttoned. On the desk were a calendar pad, a paperback copy of the New Testament and a clear plastic box containing Kleenex. He pulled out a tissue and wiped his nose, and then gazed at the photos set into the facings of the box: his wife and his daughter. Still wiping, he turned the box a little, disclosing a photo of a dark–haired priest; then Kinderman sat motionless, reading the inscription. “Keep checking those Dominicans, Lieutenant.” The signature read “Damien.’’ The detective’s glance flicked up to the smile on the rugged face, and then to the scar above the right eye. Abruptly, he crumpled the tissue in his hand, threw it into a wastebasket and had reached to pick up a phone when Atkins walked in. Kinderman looked up as he was closing the door. “‘Oh, it’s you.” He released the phone and clasped his hands together in front of him, looking like a garment district Buddha. “So soon?”

Atkins sauntered closer and sat on a chair in front of the desk. He slipped off his cap, his eyes shifting up to Kinderman’s hat.

“Never mind the insolence,” Kinderman told him. “I told you to stay with Mrs. Kintry.”

“Her brother and sister came over. Some people from the school, the university. I thought I should come back.”

“And a good thing, Atkins. I have lots for you to do.” Kinderman waited while Atkins produced a little red notepad and a ballpoint pen. Then he continued: “‘First, get hold of Francis Berry. He was chief investigator on the Gemini squad years back. He’s still with San Francisco Homicide. I want everything he’s got on the Gemini Killer. Everything. The whole entire file.”

“But the Gemini’s been dead for twelve years.”

“Is that so? Really, Atkins? I had no idea. You mean all of those headlines in the papers were true? And the radio and television, Atkins? Astonishing. Really. I’m floored.”

Atkins was writing, a small, wry smile curving his mouth. The door cracked open and the head of the crime lab team looked in. “Stop loitering in doorways, Ryan, Come in here,” Kinderman told him. Ryan entered and closed the door behind him.

“Attend me, Ryan,” said Kinderman. “Notice young Atkins. You are standing in the presence of majesty, a giant. No, really. A man should get his just recognition. Would you like to know the highlights of Atkins’ career with us. Certainly. We shouldn’t cover stars with an okra basket. Last week, for the nineteenth–”

“Twentieth,” Atkins corrected him, holding up his pen for emphasis.

“For the twentieth time, he brings in Mishkin, the notorious evildoer. His crime? His unvarying M.O.? He breaks into apartments and moves all the furniture around. He redecorates.” Kinderman shifted his remarks to Atkins. “This time we send him to Psycho, I swear it.”

“How does Homicide fit into this?” asked Ryan

Atkins turned to him, expressionless. “Mishkin leaves messages threatening death if he ever comes back and finds something out of place.”

Ryan blinked.

“Heroic work, Atkins. Homeric,” said Kinderman. “Ryan, have you anything to tell me?”

“Not yet.”

“Then why are you wasting my time?”

“I just wondered what was new.”

“It’s very cold out. Also, the sun came up this morning. Have you any more questions of the oracle, Ryan? Several kings from the East have been waiting their turn.”

Ryan looked disgusted and left the room. Kinderman followed him with his gaze and when the door had closed he looked at Atkins. “He bought the whole thing about Mishkin.”

Atkins nodded.

The detective shook his head. “The man hears no music,” he said.

“He tries, sir.”

“Thank you, Mother Teresa.” Kinderman sneezed and reached for a Kleenex.

“God bless you.”

“Thank you, Atkins.” Kinderman wiped his nose and got rid of the tissue. “So you’re getting me the Gemini file.”

“Right, sir.”

“After that see if anyone has claimed the old lady.”

“Not yet, sir. I checked when I came in.”

“Call the Washington Post, the distribution department; get the name of Kintry’s route boss and run it through the FBI computer. Find out if he’s ever been in trouble with the law. At five in the morning in the freezing cold chances are that the killer wasn’t out for a stroll and came across Kintry just by accident. Somebody knew that he’d be there.”

The clatter of a teletype machine began to seep through the floor from below. Kinderman glanced toward the sound. “Who can think in this place?”

Atkins nodded.

Abruptly the teletype stopped. Kinderman sighed and looked up at his assistant. “There’s another possibility. Someone on Kintry’s paper route might have killed him, someone he’d already delivered a paper to before he got to the boathouse. He could have killed him and then dragged him to the boathouse. It’s possible. So all of those names should go into the computer.”

“Very well, sir.”

“One more thing. Almost half of Kintry’s papers had yet to be delivered. Find out from the Post who called in and complained that they didn’t get their paper. Then cross them off the list and whoever is left–whoever didn’t call in–feed their names to the computer as well.’’

Atkins stopped writing in his notepad. He looked up at the detective with surmise.

Kinderman nodded. “Yes. Exactly. On Sunday people always want their funny papers, Atkins. So if someone didn’t call and say they wanted their paper there could only be two reasons–either the subscriber is dead or he’s the killer. It’s a long shot. Couldn’t hurt. You should check those names also with the FBI computer. Incidentally, do you believe there will come a day when computers will be able to think?”

“I doubt it.”

“Me, too. I once read some theologian was asked this question and he said that this problem would give him insomnia only when computers started to worry that maybe their parts were wearing out. My sentiments. Computers, good luck, God bless them, they’re okay. But a thing made out of things cannot think about itself. Am I right? It’s all ka–ka, saying mind is really brain. Sure, my hand is in my pocket. Is my pocket my hand? Every wino on M Street knows a thought is a thought and not some cells or
chazerei
going on in the brain. They know that jealousy is not some kind of game from Atari. Meantime, who is kidding whom? If all those wonderful scientists in Japan could manufacture an artificial brain cell only one–fourth a cubic inch, for an artificial brain you’d need to keep it in a warehouse one and a half million cubic feet so you could hide it from your neighbor, Mrs. Briskin, and assure her nothing funny’s going on next door. Besides, I dream the future, Atkins. What computer that you know could do that?”

“You’ve eliminated Mannix?”

“I don’t mean I dream the general, predictable future. I dream what you never could guess. Not just me. Read Experiment with Time, J. W. Dunne. Also Jung the psychiatrist and Wolfgang Pauli, his bigshot quantum physicist buddy that they call now the father of the neutrino. You could buy a used car from such people, Atkins. As for Mannix, he’s the father of seven, a saint, and I’ve known him for eighteen years. Forget it. What’s peculiar–on my mind–is that Stedman didn’t notice any sign that maybe Kintry first was hit on the head. With what was done to him, how could this be? He was conscious. My God, he was conscious.” Kinderman looked down and shook his head. “‘We must be looking for more than one monster, Atkins. Someone had to hold him down. It had to be.”