Naked Cruelty (44 page)

“Oh, shut up, Gordie!” Robbie said irritably. “Not that Gordie's picture is too pessimistic, Captain, it isn't. It's more that he bewilders rather than enlightens.”

“Correct,” said Carmine, settling to enjoy the situation. “Enlighten me, Robert—if indeed I address Robert?”

“You do because I am,” said Robert. “Gordie isn't wrong, Captain, I do assure you. Our screenplay will be pinched, tweaked and bowdlerized out of all recognition, especially the legal kind, leaving us with something no longer original.” He drew Carmine farther away from Delia and Nick. “It has come to our attention, Captain, that Myron Mendel Mandelbaum is your best friend. In fact, that you share a wife. We have been working maniacally to finish our Grand Guignol, which we beg you to read. It's complete down to the story boards—Gordie is a brilliant,
brilliant
artist.”

“Story boards?” Carmine asked blankly.

“Yes. Imagine your favorite movie drawn as a gigantic comic book—they're the story boards. Film is a visual medium, and its purveyors are not fond of reading words. In fact, words are enemies. Reduced to a comic, any Hollywood dodo—oops!—idiot can grasp its plot and substance.” Robbie pulled a face. “I fear that characterization is another matter.”

“You want me to ask Mr. Mandelbaum to grant you an audience?” asked Carmine, loving it.

“Yes, exactly! Our screenplay is perfect for him, but we can't even get through his outer defenses. If we could just see him in person, I know he'd go for our project!
Blood out of Stone
may not win any Academy Awards, but it will make gazillions!”

“That's sure to appeal to Mr. Mandelbaum,” said Carmine with a grin. “If I get you your audience, will you promise to keep out of my way?”

Robbie gave a theatrical gasp and wrung his hands together. “Captain, Captain, if you do that, you won't even see our dust!”

“Then it's a deal.” Carmine glanced at his watch. “By now he'll be at his office. Can I use your phone?”

“Does a fat baby fart? Of course you can!”

The Warburton twins cavorting in joyous circles around him, Carmine entered their house and stopped. A ghastly head, bloated and greenish, was fixed to the wall in front of him.

“That's Arthur de Mortain,” Gordie said. “Number one in the Stone Man's trail of victims. They are all descended from King Arthur and his legitimate French wife, Ghislaine.”

“Aren't you in the film yourselves?”

“
In
it? Captain, we
are
it!” Robbie cried. “Behold the Tennyson Twins, sleuths extraordinaire!”

“Ah! The action takes place around 1890.”

“Amid London fogs and gloomy graveyards a-drip with dews and yews. The Stone Man will look like a cross between the mummy and Frankenstein's monster.”

“Why not make him smooth and handsome like Gregory Peck?”

That didn't go down well; they were creatures of habit.

“I guarantee you'll love the Warburton twins and whatever they've written,” he said to Myron some minutes later. “It's pure Hollywood.” He flicked over the pages of one of a number of massive albums. “The movie makes a great comic, which I gather also makes it ideal. Not to mention that the Warburtons are refugees out of a comic … Well? Do I tell them to climb on a westbound plane, or not?”

He hung up. “Climb on a westbound plane today, gentlemen. Mr. Mandelbaum will give you a whole morning, and if he likes your comic, lunch afterward at the Polo Lounge.”

“Courted for my connection to a Hollywood movie mogul,” he said with disgust when they arrived at County Services.

“They sure fell on their feet,” said Nick, not approving. “Innocent of all wrong-doing, the richer by whatever poor Miss Warburton left, and now selling their ideas to Myron Mendel Mandelbaum in person.” His lip curled. “They're crooks.”

“I agree, Nick, they are,” Carmine said, “but they're a great example of what can happen to borderline people. Fortune favored them, so crime isn't necessary.”

“Yeah, like lawyers,” said Nick.

“Someone suing you?”

“No. I'm in Shakespeare's camp, is all.”

“He must have had the tights sued off him,” Delia said. “Probably by that twister Bacon.”

“No, no, we are not going down this road again!” Carmine yelled. “Just because a couple of cases have resolved themselves doesn't give us an excuse to celebrate. Too many bodies.”

That's the part of this job I hate the most, he thought, damping down their enthusiasms and elation at the close of a long and very hard investigation.

Helen came in. “Am I allowed?” she asked.

“Sure. It's lunch in a minute anyway.”

“Was Kurt the Vandal?” Helen asked.

Carmine went through that again, with some amendments; she didn't need to know that Kurt saw her, not Amanda, as his victim.

Then she changed the subject abruptly.

“Has Dad seen the glass teddy bear?”

“I'm taking him this afternoon.”

“And I can't go, right?”

“I'm afraid not, no.”

She drew a breath. “I know it's off-limits, Carmine, but I don't see how it can stay sequestered from me,” she said. “It's a brain-teaser, really, and I can't come up with the answer. If you know, and you tell me, I promise I won't mention the Dodo ever again.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Helen.”

“But information brought her back.”

“Okay, one question. Ask.”

“Kurt was at every Carew party, but he certainly wasn't the sympathetic guy on the secluded couch. I mean, he was up front! Bold as brass, nothing sneaky or anonymous. So what's with the stranger no one can identify?”

“None of us has an answer. Kurt could easily have gathered sufficient information to fuel his plans, that's not an issue,” Carmine said. “Who the other guy was is a mystery.”

“Does that mean another Dodo is hunting?”

“If he were, he would have struck by now, and I doubt that Holloman will ever see women concealing rape again, at least in such numbers. Since the victim drawings all show the same man—well, more or less—we have to assume that he did go to the Carew parties. My guess is that he's a psychologist writing a thesis or a book. As he didn't announce any intentions in that direction, he's sneaky and unethical. I understand that Carew is back in party mode, but all the Gentleman Walkers are looking out for the mystery man. If he shows up, he's under arrest.”

“Even if he's done nothing?” Helen asked.

“Only for long enough to be interviewed—and warned, if it seems necessary. No one wants Son of Dodo taking over.”

“I never thought of that.” Helen turned to Delia. “I thought you said lightning never strikes twice in the same place?”

“It depends on the lightning, dear.”

“No, that's too much! Son of Dodo! You're surely not serious?”

“Then who is he?” Delia asked. “
Not
a sneaky psychologist.”

M.M. was staggered. “It's the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen,” he said, gazing at the glass teddy bear. “Helen's right about the eyes, they're mesmerizing.”

“You should have seen it in the shop window, properly lit,” said Carmine. “Took the breath away.”

“I hear you commandeered the dog and the cat.”

“With infant children, I thought it was a good move.”

“Until one of them dies.” M.M. groaned. “What a circus!”

“The voice of experience?”

“Several times.”

“Where are you going to put this beauty?”

“The Aubergs have been nagging me to fund some wonderful art building, but they want it small—intimate, said Horace Auberg. I'm having terrible trouble finding somewhere to put Blue Bear—that's his classy new name—so I think I'll ask Horace for Blue Bear's house. Just one room, with some other pieces around the walls in niches, and Blue Bear in the middle. He'll have to be ten feet away from the nearest spectator in case some maniac tries to swing a hammer at him.” M.M. sighed. “The world is full of maniacs! Look at Kurt von Fahlendorf. I even hoped my daughter might marry him. You can't trust anyone anymore.”

“That you can't,” said Carmine gravely.

“Blue Bear can't stay here either.”

“He's off to a bank vault this afternoon, sir. I'll bring the paperwork around for you, then you can put him in your own vaults.”

“What do you think, Carmine?” M.M. asked as they departed.

“About what, Mr. President?”

“Blue Bear's house.”

“Ask your wife to chair the approval board. She'll know.”

“You have a beautiful house,” said Fernando Vasquez to his host that Saturday night, ensconced in Carmine's leathery study. “So much oriental art, such rich colors.”

“And like the men of ancient Rome, I deal with the decor,” Carmine said, smiling contentedly. It had taken longer to have a dinner for Fernando and his wife than was strictly polite, but Desdemona had to want to do it, and she was only now, in early December, really getting back to her old self.

She was in the kitchen with Solidad Vasquez, leaving the two men to their port and cigars in peace.

“Maureen Marshall thinks that Corey's been promoted,” said Fernando with a grin.

“His pay is up some,” Carmine said, “and he's got a very pretty uniform. I give it six months before Maureen starts chewing about some new imagined slight.”

“Know thine enemy,” Fernando said.

“She won't get through your defenses, will she?”

“Nope. She doesn't know me the way she knows the rest of you. A large part of your difficulties was due to familiarity, and you know what they say about familiarity—it breeds contempt. My strong suit is the sheer number of my men.”

“I can see the point and the strength of your argument, but don't forget that Corey was a uniform for eleven years. Some of your most senior men know him very well.”

Fernando laughed. “I can handle Corey—and Maureen.”

Solidad Vasquez was a willowy beauty with that iron backbone most wives of ambitious men seemed to own. It hadn't taken Desdemona long to discover Solidad's metal, or to admit that her own backbone was of the ordinary kind. But then, thank God, Carmine was not an overly ambitious man. Though it ate at him sometimes, he liked the job he had. Listening to Solidad's artless but crafty chatter, Desdemona found it easy to trace the upward rise of the Vasquezes, and, reading what wasn't said, understood the prejudices and insults that followed those of Hispanic origins. Fernando and Solidad Vasquez were going to get there, hand their children an upper middle class existence.

Desdemona's extreme fairness and height fascinated her guest.

“Your skin is like milk!” Solidad exclaimed.

“Comes of no sunshine as a child,” said Desdemona, smiling. “The part of England I come from gets a lot of rain and little sun. As for the height—my ancestors were Vikings.”

The Vasquez children, two girls and a boy, were older than the Delmonico pair, but not by enough to kill a burgeoning friendship. For the first time in her American career, Desdemona was choosing a friend for herself, someone unconnected to Carmine's huge family. Solidad too was a stranger, it made sense for them to stick together, and they liked being opposites in so much, from size and coloring to background and nationality.

The Vasquezes had bought a house on East Circle four doors down, which meant a jetty and a boat shed.

“I liked them, especially Solidad,” Desdemona said to Carmine after their guests had walked home.

“Good,” said Carmine, not blind. “How's your mood?”

“Back to normal, I would say. No, leave the dishes. Dorcas is coming in tomorrow morning to tidy up.” She huffed. “I can't thank my Aunt Margaret enough,” she said in a whisper as they passed through the nursery to check on the boys.

“You've decided what to do with your legacy?” Carmine asked as they reached their bedroom.

“Yes. It's going on domestic help. By rights it should go on college fees, but I have a funny feeling that domestic help is more beneficial. I'm such a hygiene freak.”

“Anything that gets you through your days more happily is better,” he said. “I love you, Mrs. Delmonico.”

She snuggled close. “And I love you, Captain.”

“How are you coping with the guns?”

“Quite well. The Taft High business opened my eyes a little. New countries take people from so many different places. Slavery was a part of the people movement too, involuntary though it was. Eventually it will all settle down, just not yet.”