The Prodigal Son (13 page)

“Even though you knew all about this government agency?” Carmine asked incredulously. “Scientists are in the forefront of opposition to exactly the kind of thing this government agency is encouraging, and now I find you actively praising your wife’s source of funding?”

The eyes flashed magnificently. “You squeezed a great deal out of very little, Captain, if you inferred
that
. What you also appear to forget is that this was Millie. I would never do anything that made her work harder, and the agency involved is, after all, interested in enemy action against us. I know Vietnam is a cancer and I don’t believe a word Nixon says about getting our boys out of there, but Millie’s research has nothing to do with Vietnam or who is in the White House, no matter how shifty —
I
voted for Hubert Humphrey!” He sat
back, folded his arms across his mighty chest, and looked as if he was quite willing to take on half of the Holloman PD.

Carmine let him calm down during five minutes of silence, then: “When did her tetrodotoxin next impinge?” he asked.

“When she came home and told me someone had stolen six hundred milligrams of it. Last Thursday. She was upset enough about it to have gone to her father for advice, so I knew she regarded the theft very seriously. She asked me then if I’d mentioned the stuff to anyone, and I said no because I hadn’t.”

“Did you know where it was? How she’d stored it?” from Buzz.

“Frankly, no. If you’d asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if it was water-soluble, or actually in solution. In fact, I assumed it was in solution, but I was wrong — she said she’d put it into vacuumed ampoules and refrigerated it. You don’t usually bother doing that with powders, but it added another step to preparing it for use, and once I realized how absolutely lethal it was, I admired her thoroughness.”

“Did she tell you at the time how it affected a victim?” from Carmine.

“No. I was too concerned with cheering her up. And I freely confess that my mind was elsewhere — I was busy with the problem Dr. Tinkerman was going to be. I was terribly worried.”

“Not any more,” said Buzz.

Hunter shot him a reproachful glance. “Oh, come on, guys, what else would I be than worried?” he asked. “All that work
writing the book, then the chance of some extra income going down the gurgler because of one man’s power and prejudice? Worried? Sure I was worried! So would any of you be!”

“You have some powerful allies at Chubb, Doctor,” Carmine said. “Instead of churning with worry, why weren’t you trying to have Tinkerman’s stand reversed?”

Jim Hunter writhed, apparently in frustration. “For reasons you wouldn’t understand!” he snapped. “Tinkerman could not halt publication of
A Helical God
— he couldn’t even bludgeon me into a less intriguing title — but what he could do was refuse to put C.U.P.’s weight behind the book once it was in the stores — take too long shipping orders, refuse to authorise more print runs — that’s how he would have gone about it. Tunbull Printing stand to make big profits — so does C.U.P. itself, for that matter!— but Max already did a bad thing in printing without authorization, and it wouldn’t have been let happen again. So before you decide I’m the one with motive for Tom Tinkerman’s death, you’d better look at the Tunbulls. Or,” he said, leaning forward, excited, “look at any of the other authors who are publishing with C.U.P. but whom Tinkerman detests. He’s the kind of scholar who’d damn a fellow scholar for quibbling about a minor detail in the life of Jesus Christ. There are suspects up the wazoo!”

“Okay,” said Carmine cheerfully, “let’s go through it again, Doctor.”

That surprised Dr. Jim; clearly he had expected to tell his story and then be dismissed. Now he stared.

“Must we?”

“Oh, I think so. You haven’t mentioned John Hall and I need to know all about your previous contacts with him.”

“
John?
” Dr. Jim seemed astonished at this new line of questioning. “He was a friend. A true friend. We met when we enrolled in the Master’s program in biochemistry at Caltech, and I guess — no, I’m sure — he made the running. Introduced himself to Millie and me. Normally Millie and I don’t pal up with others, but somehow John got under our guard. Millie thought it was because he didn’t have any feelings about mixed marriages — black with white. He genuinely seemed to see why I loved Millie, and why Millie loved me. He was a loner, a real loner. It was a while before we realized that he had more money than he could spend — he never pushed it at us, or insulted our pride by offering to pay. I mean, we used to sit on the public beach and count our nickels and dimes to see if we had enough for a cheap boardwalk lunch, and he’d produce the same number of coins we did. He was in forestry, but his adopted father, Wendover Hall, wanted him to know all about wood biochemistry, and since it’s not a curriculum item, he did the same work we did — just advanced biochemistry. Millie, who’s a great teacher, used to translate it for him in ways he could use.” Hunter shrugged. “And that’s it, Captain. We were just — friends.”

“Equally? You and Millie, I mean, with John?” Buzz asked.

A question Dr. Jim considered carefully; he was now fully aware of the police purposes, and probably, thought Carmine, twenty paces ahead of them. He was very clever.

“No, I guess I was more committed to John than Millie was, but there was one big reason for that.” He drew an audible
breath. “I wasn’t well. Over the eight years I spent in Holloman and New York City, I must have had dozens and dozens of fights. If the fight was one against one I stood in no danger — I could even hold my own two against — but my opponents weren’t honorable. I’d get jumped by up to six guys and get the shit kicked out of me. Then I’d get myself home and have to deal with Millie — crying, in despair, wanting to give up and give in — it was very hard, Captain. By the time we went to California I was moving into an age group that exacted punishment in other ways than force, so the fights ceased. Mind you, even grossly outnumbered I left a few marks on them.”

“Where was the worst damage?” Carmine asked.

“God knows what bled inside my chest and belly, but they seemed to heal, and I don’t have symptoms that suggest anyone did permanent damage. Worst was my face — the sinuses. I couldn’t breathe through my nose any more, and I used to get attacks of face pain that dropped me like a poleaxed steer — I was a mess. At the beginning of our first summer break — June of 1959— John tricked me into seeing some wizard sinus surgeon who begged to repair my sinuses for nothing — he said it was the most fantastic challenge, one he couldn’t let go. But I had a job fixed up, and I knew Millie and I wouldn’t manage unless I worked it.”

He stopped; Carmine and Buzz sat in silence, unwilling to prompt or push. When he had the next chapter assembled and sorted in his head, he’d go on.

“That’s when John confessed about having literal millions from Wendover Hall. And he begged me even harder than the
surgeon to have the operation. If I wouldn’t take the money as a gift, he said, take it as a loan. One day, when I was a full chair professor, I could pay him back. I crumbled when Millie joined him in the begging, and I confess that the attacks of nerve pain were horrific. The surgeon said once he levered all the broken bones off the nerve channels, the pain would disappear. Also the threat of cerebral abscess. All up, between the operation, a week in the hospital and a summer spent recovering, I borrowed ten thousand dollars from John Hall. It weighs on me, so you have no idea how glad I was to think that at last I could pay him back. And then he died. That was not fair! Just not fair!”

Emily Tunbull walked down the short section of road between her house and Davina’s, quietly boiling. How was it that a twenty-four-year-old floozie from God knew where had danced off with Max’s house, business and fortune right under her nose? But who could have guessed it when the skinny bitch had appeared at Tunbull Printing with a portfolio of her work, fluttering her false lashes at Max as she explained that she had just opened this art design studio on the Boston Post Road, and would he be interested in putting a little work her way? And Max, stupid old goat, had whinnied, pawed the ground and deluded himself that he was not an old goat: he was a stallion in his prime.

He had been cunning. No one in the family had suspected what was going on for six solid months — six months during
which Max had taken the bitch out to dinner, given her expensive gifts, handed her the contract for the dismally plain dust jackets C.U.P. wrapped around its works. Val had noticed the signs, but not divined the cause. The dust jackets had brightened up, but in an inoffensive way — their coloring, the lettering, a subtly more modern feel — and Max had been open about the source: Imaginexa, the new design firm on the Boston Post Road not a half mile away. That Max himself had smartened up his appearance and was having the outside of his house painted seemed natural, logical; after all, he was fifty-eight years old, due for a sprucing up.

Emily hadn’t worried about Ivan’s inheritance in many years. Once Martita vanished together with her son, Emily had known it would all come eventually to Ivan, as it should. Who else was left, who deserved to inherit more than Ivan? He had worked very hard to impress Uncle Max, done as he was told, moulded himself in Max’s image. And
pleased
Max, who may have mourned his lack of a son, but knew Tunbull Printing was in safe hands under Ivan.

Until Davina Savovich, the model from New York City who filled Max with grandiose ideas about his importance to C.U.P. What other printer in Connecticut could cope with the demands of a university press, with its strange publications and limited print runs?

At the end of their secret six months, Max and Davina had married; no one was present to raise objections. Instead, the marriage had broken over Emily, Val and Ivan like a half-frozen Niagara Falls. Silly old goat Max had married a woman
nearly one-third his age, and when her belly began to swell, Emily for one knew her life’s purpose was shattered. Yes, naturally the bitch had littered a son! Alexis, yet! Davina was nutty about the Russian czars, insisted on calling her offspring by a Russian name. And old goat Max had consented, as he consented to everything Davina suggested, even insanities like huge, unauthorized print runs. Now it became obvious why Max had painted the exterior of his house: it was waiting for its new mistress to put her touch on its interior — bizarre shapes and colors and patterns, homage to an obscure master named Paul Klee.

Ivan was such a good boy. Never a trouble, never a worry. In high school he had expressed a wish to become a pilot, but when Val explained his position as Max’s heir, he had given up every youthful aspiration, gone to U Conn for a degree in precision engineering, and joined the printery. His choice of bride was perhaps more down-market than Emily for one would have liked, but Lily turned out to be a dear little thing. If her origins showed in her grammar, that was bearable compared to Max’s choice of a wife, thought Emily, still boiling as she trod up the path to the front door. Choice in
wives
, for that matter. Martita had been too stuck up to fraternise with any of the family, now here was Davina trying to tell the family with whom to fraternise! A loathsome bitch, so sure of herself, so sure of Max … Time to unsettle her …

Emily rang the stupid doorbell with its stupid tune, and was thrown completely off balance when Davina answered the door herself — where was horrible Uda? And dressed, yet! No
satin nighties and negligées? Emily was even gladder that she had “dressed” to visit her sister-in-law, who was staring at her.

It was a long time since Waterbury, and Emily Tunbull had learned, as you had to when your men mixed with really important people in the course of their business. The Pollack social climber had learned so well that she hardly ever remembered her maiden name had been Malcuzinski. So she was slim and attractive in a late-forties way, attended the beauty parlor once a week for hair styling and manicure, and shopped for dresses during sales in superior stores. Today she was wearing a well-tailored, darkish blue dress, and the shoes she slipped on her feet once divested of her boots were dark blue Italian kid. A sapphire-and-diamond brooch sat on one lower shoulder. As a young woman she had been ravishingly pretty, but that never lasts; her features had set into a handsome, rather masculine mould, and she wore her crisp dark hair short, expertly cut. Her eyes were dark and very busy: Emily Tunbull missed nothing. As she was about to let Davina know in the sweetest possible way.

“Where’s Uda?” she asked, perching in a chair.

“Doing something for me in the kitchen.”

“How is Alexis?”

“In perfect health.”

“That’s not really what one means when one enquires after a baby,” said Emily, watching Davina light a Sobranie Cocktail cigarette; it was wrapped in green paper.

The thin black brows rose. “La-de-da! What else could you mean, Emily?”

“Davina, he’s a baby! They’re so lovely, and growing all the time — he must be full of tricks and cute stories.”

Now the brows frowned. “At three months he tells stories?”

“No,” said Emily, striving to stay cool. This stupid gold-digger
pretended
to understand the nuances of English! “I mean that when I ask about him, you should tell me lots of cute stories about him.”

Davina yawned. “Uda could, I suppose, if her English were better. And I have a girl sees to him as well — washes his diapers, bathes him, keeps his linen fresh.” She lifted an impatient shoulder. “But why ask me this today, Emily?”

“I guess I haven’t gotten around to it before. You haven’t been much in evidence since his birth, have you?”

“I hemorrhaged, and it exhausted me. The fools of doctors left it too late for a Caesarean. I am only just recovered.”

“If you ate more sensibly, you wouldn’t have suffered.”

“Pah! Thin is in! Alexis was a small baby.”

“You dieted the strength out of yourself. Bones were made to be covered, not seen.”

The developing argument ceased when Uda came in; Davina turned to her gratefully. “Coffee,” she said curtly.