Naked Cruelty (41 page)

“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.”

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2
to
END OF YEAR

1968

W
hen Helen asked Captain Delmonico for the return of her completed journals, he denied her request. “They're locked up and they stay locked up until you've finished your training,” he said. “One question before you go, please. Why did you show part of them to Kurt von Fahlendorf? My instructions were explicit.”

“Sir, I showed Kurt the parts relevant to his kidnapping, in the hope he'd offer me a clue,” she said—well, it was half true.

One eyebrow rose, but he said nothing.

“I admit I didn't preserve its security properly when I began my journals, but I have learned, sir. Delia chewed me out because my gun and badge were in my bag too—she was right, of course.” Her laugh sounded unconcerned. “But no one burgled my bag, sir.”

“Did you have an enjoyable little vacation?” Carmine asked.

“More enjoyable than you could know, Captain. I managed to avoid Dad's Thanksgiving table.”

“That can't have impressed him.”

“Well, no, it didn't, but I had an excellent excuse.”

She really must have had a good excuse, Carmine thought, for M.M.'s Thanksgiving dinners were huge and required the whole of his rather meager family. His practice was to have his bursars find him fifty poor freshman students on scholarship who wouldn't be able to afford to go home. Helen's loss would have been felt.

“The Dodo didn't strike,” she said, heading for the team's office. “He's way overdue.”

“Yes, he's done what he intended to—confuse us,” Carmine said. “You're on your own, Helen, I'm afraid. Nick and Delia are still on special duty. I know it's not glamorous, but your most valuable occupation will be to man the phones and study. Stella only fields my calls, so the team phones are unattended. Fred has linked all three team offices plus Lieutenants Marshall and Goldberg together, which means you'll be busy with messages.”

He was smiling; the least she could do was smile back. But as she went to sit at her desk, Helen was fighting annoyance. How dared they? Oh, why wasn't she older and plainer, why did her hair have to be the famous apricot?

The phone rang.

“Helen MacIntosh taking messages for everyone!”

This was greeted by silence; then came a laugh. “Helen? Isn't this your phone?”

“Oh, Kurt! I'm sorry, just—oh, it doesn't matter.”

“I've been trying to get you for over a week.”

“The Captain gave me leave. They've got something going on that I'm not equipped to participate in, and since I had a private matter to attend to, I applied for leave.”

“I went around to Talisman Towers,” he said, “but no one was ever home. Thanksgiving Day, I suppose. But when your father didn't know where you were, I was
worried
!”

“Oh, poor Kurt! I'm sorry.”

“You keep saying that. I'll forgive you anything if you come to Solo's with me tonight.”

“What a brilliant idea! I can tell you everything.”

“I'll pick you up at six forty-five,” he said.

“Uh—no, that's too difficult. I'll meet you there at seven, okay?”

“It will have to be,” he said, and hung up.

Typical Kurt: he was there to welcome her. Sometimes Helen contemplated arriving somewhere an hour earlier than the appointed time, just to see how early Kurt arrived. Not only was he dreamy to look at, he was also a total gentleman. And a genius besides.

“Did you finish your equations?” she asked, accepting a glass of French chambertin.

“Yes, I did, then went back and rewrote the ones on the tank wall.” He added sparkling mineral water to his own glass.

“Honestly, Kurt, how can you ruin a wine this good by diluting it? Sometimes you don't make sense.”

“It's heavy, darling Helen, and I want a clear head.” The icy blue eyes gleamed. “I want to hear your news, for instance.”

“No, let's start with your news,” she said.

“How do you know I have any?”

“I can read you like a book.”

“Ach, so … It is stale news by now, but you are entitled to know it, I think. Josef was indeed married to the Richter woman, which made his marriage to Dagmar bigamous.”

“I am so sorry!”

“Sorrow is not necessary. No one will ever know. Frau Richter and her son were shot dead just minutes after Josef—isn't that amazing? Such a coincidence!”

Helen threw her head back and laughed. “About as amazing a coincidence as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meeting at Yalta!”

“That is ironic,” he said placidly, starting on his shrimp cocktail. “This is delicious! You are not shocked?”

“No, Kurt, I'm not shocked. Who did it?”

“Turks, I believe.”

“Who are now on their way back to Turkey to live the life of lords,” she said, still chuckling.

“About that, I cannot postulate.”

“Did the Munich cops make the connection between Frau Richter and Josef von Fahlendorf?”

“How could they? Josef was careful to leave no evidence, and the Frau, who had all the documentation, kept it in her desk—not even locked, can you imagine that?”

“Yes, actually I can,” said Helen, who felt no pity for the Richters. What if she had been fool enough to fall for a con man and foisted him into the MacIntoshes? It wouldn't have happened, of course, any more than it would happen in the future, but she understood the von Fahlendorf predicament completely. Dagmar had the flaws of genius: she could conceive new formulae and processes and she could administer a multi-factory company with all the shrewdness and knowledge of a born business person, but she couldn't judge people or manage her private life. How like her was Kurt? Very different in most respects, but …

“Would you fall in love with the wrong person?” she asked.

He raised his head from his food, smiling. “You tell me.”

“If I could, Kurt, I wouldn't need to ask.”

He put down his fork, took her hands. “Helen, Helen! I am in love with you. I have been in love with you since I first met you at that party of Mark's ten months ago.”

“Oh, rubbish!” she cried, removing her hands. “You only think you are. It's not real.”

And like that, he gave it up! “Have it your own way,” he said, pushing the empty shrimp cocktail bowl to one side, a habit that was not etiquette, perhaps, but some people couldn't bear to look at a dirty plate, and Kurt was one such.

“When did Dagmar tell you?” she asked.

“The day after we returned here.”

“Thus making sure baby brother Kurt wasn't incriminated.”

“How could any von Fahlendorf?” he asked, eyes wide. “There was nothing to connect our family to Turks on a rampage.”

“How many
did
die?”

“I have no idea.”

“Another question, Kurt—how wealthy are you?”

“I have more than enough for my personal needs.”

“As much as I have?”

“No, Helen. One-fifth of it—ten million.”

“Safely invested?”

“Absolutely.”

They settled to eat the main course, neither with the temperament to grieve over dead Richters, dead Turks or dead innocents. Dagmar had done the cleaning up her own incompetence had made necessary, it was as simple as that.

“Now,” he said over coffee, “I want to hear your news.”

Her face lit up. “I bought a new apartment,” she said.

“I wasn't aware you were unhappy at Talisman Towers.”

“I wasn't, but then I had a chance at an eighth floor condo on Busquash Inlet,” she said, speaking in a rush. “They are so divine, Kurt! The owner of this one was murdered—had her throat cut. I happened to know her a little, and enough about her heirs to think that if I got in fast, they'd sell to me. I offered them one-point-two million, and they jumped at it. Of course probate hasn't been granted yet, but it's tied up so that they can't get out of it. You know them—the Warburton twins.”

He had listened with intense concentration, and nodded when she had ended. “Yes, I know the building, it is beautiful, and the view must be superb. But Helen! So much money! It isn't worth a quarter of the price you paid.”

“I agree, if it were not for the fact that no more high rises will ever be built on Busquash Peninsula. It would have gone for a million at least at auction. The twins were well aware of that. Everyone is happy!”

“Have you moved in?” Kurt asked.

“Yesterday, finally. I wanted to buy all new furniture—by that I mean some very old, some middling, and some very modern.”

“I ‘d love to see it.”

“Abandon your coffee and follow me to my new home. I'll make us Jamaican Blue Mountain.”

Amanda would not have known her apartment, Helen had wrought so many changes. The carpet and the upholstery were cobalt blue, the walls and ceiling lime-green, and interesting antiques were scattered about. Her lamps were Tiffany and her chandelier 1910 Murano glass, a collection of magnificent paintings adorned the walls, and two bronze slave-girl lights six feet tall provided the first illumination once the front door was opened. Had she paid attention to her mother, whose taste was famous, she would perhaps have chosen a less strident theme, but Helen had her own ideas and Angela hadn't been able to budge her. Mom was a source of New York shops and galleries, nothing else.

Kurt hated it, except for the Matisse and the Renoir, which, she admitted, were on loan from her father.

“They do not belong,” Kurt said. “They are too delicate.”

“I see what you mean, and anyway, I think I have to give them back,” she said, sounding displeased. “Dad says my security isn't good enough.
I
say, why should anyone know they're here?”

“I know now, and as time goes on, more and more people will. Come, Helen, your papa is right! There is a black market for work of this caliber.”

“Come and have a look at the bathroom” was her rejoinder, leading the way through a big bedroom containing an enormous bed and into a bathroom tiled in Norwegian Rose marble. “See? It even has a Jacuzzi, and I didn't have to change a thing, I liked it just as it was.”

“I like the Jacuzzi,” he said, smiling at her, “but I would like it better if you and I were in it minus our clothes.”

She gave him a considering look. “I'll think about it. Come and see the kitchen. It's so perfect that I'm thinking of taking cooking lessons.”

“Every woman should know how to cook.”

She gasped. “You male chauvinist pig, Kurt!”

His eyes flashed. “I do not mind the reference to my sex, or to being called a chauvinist, but I will
not
be called a pig!”

“Pig, pig, pig!” she shouted.

He turned and left her; she heard the front door slam.

“Holy shits!” she said, only half inclined to laugh. The other half was angry—was he
that
German, that he had no sense of humor? Why did “pig” insult him more than the rest of a famous phrase? For a moment she thought about racing downstairs and begging his pardon, but then the MacIntosh stubbornness cut in; her chin lifted. Fuck Kurt von Fahlendorf!

A Jacuzzi—she'd immerse herself in its bubbles all alone. Not that she would have consented to sharing it with Kurt or any other man. Delia laughed and called her a “professional virgin”, and she had admitted the truth of that to Delia. It didn't mean she was a physical virgin, it meant she was a cockteaser who pretended to outraged indignation when a man tried to have sex with her, convinced that she wanted it.

“You invite rape, Helen!” one man had said, frustrated.

“Go on!” she exclaimed. “I'm not the one at fault, you are!”

What she suspected about Kurt was certainly true of her: emotional coldness. Never having experienced a strong sexual drive, Helen could only ape its externals, and wondered how many other women were the same. The few men who had attracted her were all dark in a Silvestri way rather than a Captain Delmonico way, and she knew who her next target was going to be: Fernando Vasquez. That he was married and the father of children didn't enter into her calculations: ethics and money never did, for she had none of the first and too much of the second. Christmas would see her make her move on Fernando, who was surely ripe for an affair, a deduction made for the crudest of reasons: gossip said he'd been faithfully married for a very long time.

Now was the right moment to get rid of Kurt, who was proving hard to get rid of. Which von Fahlendorf had commissioned the Turks, Dagmar or Kurt? It could as easily have been Kurt. In fact, in some ways Kurt made more sense. Would a Muslim culture accept a commission from a woman? Dagmar knew what was afoot, yes, but had she enacted the plan? Probably not, Helen concluded. No, Kurt did that before he boarded the plane, and in such a way that these foreign thugs had obeyed orders to the letter. How did he find them in a basically law-abiding immigrant populace? Kurt might be Nietzsche's Superman, but he was also mild-mannered Clark Kent, America's alter ego.