Too Many Murders (12 page)

Armed with a key, Carmine triggered the doors, which opened onto an interior plush with squabbed tannish-pink leather, a rosso antico marble floor, and carved and gilded trims. The panel bore
only two buttons:
UP
and
DOWN
. How arrogant, he thought, amused. At the top it opened directly into the apartment, which was huge. First was a foyer the size of most living rooms, then a living room the size of most houses, with glass walls on two sides; one overlooked North Holloman, and one Long Island Sound and the Harbor. Carmine could see his own home’s jetty clearly, and his square tower with the widow’s walk. A low-powered telescope on a tripod made him wonder what else Desmond Skeps had seen, and in more homes than Carmine’s. Mr. Skeps, he thought, I do not like you. Privacy is our last defense against the barbarian, and you are as big a barbarian as federal governments.

The decor was interior decorator beige, conservative and safe, nor were there any precious objects scattered around to suggest that Skeps collected art or even kitsch. The pictures on the walls were second-rate watercolors the decorator had probably passed off as first-rate, though in the bedroom this individual had gone for etchings torn out of over-sized Victorian books and framed. The bill had undoubtedly been astronomical, but Carmine spared no pity for a man who didn’t know second-rate when he saw it.

Skeps had been murdered not in his bed but on his massage couch, a taller, narrower item of furniture that would have suited his murderer’s intentions admirably. Either he had climbed onto it voluntarily, or the murderer was strong enough to lift him there bodily after his glass of single malt Glenlivet and chloral hydrate. Certainly he wouldn’t have consumed the Scotch lying flat out on what was to become his deathbed. A strong killer, Carmine said to himself, thinking of the bear trap. These two killings were done personally, and they argued great physical strength. Look for someone rolling in money and built like Mr. Universe and you won’t go far wrong. But what if no one was both? What if no one was either?

Patsy’s boys had been over the crime scene meticulously, so he didn’t bother going over it again. What he wanted was to get an idea of Desmond Skeps from his living arrangements.

He knew what the rest of the world knew already, and from the
same sources: gossip magazines, columnists, an occasional serious article in the
Wall Street Journal
or the
New York Times
. Skeps’s father, a successful manufacturer of automobile parts, had seen the war clouds gathering over Europe in 1938, and had not overlooked Southeast Asia either. He had founded Cornucopia (the name, he said, simply meant a horn of plenty) to manufacture artillery, then branched into airplane engines and machines of war. After Pearl Harbor his empire mushroomed, and it never ceased to grow. Now, in 1967, it manufactured surgical instruments and equipment, guns and howitzers, turbine engines, generators, atomic reactors, missiles, and small arms, and had branched into plastics, particularly those with military importance. Cornucopia had a huge research facility and was on the cutting edge of all it manufactured; it also held a large number of defense contracts for the armed services.

Skeps’s job was enormous, but not hands-on in any way. He had about fifty managing directors, and they didn’t lay their hands on much either; about three or four down the pecking order saw the first such men, Carmine guessed. Well, that was what happened in any conglomerate, and Cornucopia was a modest conglomerate. The physical description he had of Skeps was of a tall, thin, dark and ungainly man who was magnetically attractive to women. That was the power operating, of course, the same as with Myron Mendel Mandelbaum. Once married to a very beautiful woman, he had driven her away with his jealousy, and he had not married again. There was one child, a boy, now aged thirteen, who went to the Trinity Grey School. His name—no surprise—was Desmond Skeps III. His mother had full custody, which indicated Skeps had done something pretty bad to blot his copybook.

What Skeps thought of his son or the boy’s mother was hard to tell, as no photograph or portrait of either hung in the apartment. He would have to see the mother, of course, but that necessitated a trip to Orleans, on Cape Cod, where Philomena Skeps lived. So, at the moment, according to his information, did the boy, convalescing from some serious illness. He had been out of school already for five
weeks and wasn’t expected back at school before Trinity Grey closed for the academic year. Which probably meant he would have to repeat. No fun, that.

“What do you think?” he asked Abe and Corey after their tour.

“That someone beat the ME’s boys here,” said Corey.

“I agree,” said Abe, pointing to a vase that had been dusted twice for prints, only the color of the powder giving it away.

Carmine scowled. “My mistake,” he said. “I figured we’d do better to get the smaller fry out of the way before tackling Mr. Skeps, a real whale. I’m scared he won’t give us latitude for the rest. The question is, was anything removed, and if it was, what, why, and by whom?”

“An arm of the Justice Department,” Abe said.

“FBI—the Commissioner has heard something, he dropped a hint. But he didn’t get it from an official source, nor long before our arrival. Jeez, I hate that!” Carmine cried. “Why not come to us and tell us they’re interested instead of floundering around like cock-roaches on a wedding cake?”

“They’ll be downstairs in the offices,” Corey said, looking aggressive.

“We play it cool, guys,” said Carmine.

The agency, they learned as they ducked under the police rope at the entrance to Desmond Skeps’s offices, was indeed the FBI. He was standing, all six foot five and two-fifty pounds of him, in the middle of the main office supervising two Cornucopia janitors removing a four-drawer filing cabinet precariously perched on a dolly. He was a good-looking man with thick dark hair and dark eyes, but how he got to be an agent in the field was a puzzle to the three Holloman cops; his sheer size made him far too memorable for most investigative purposes.

“At your size, Mister, why don’t you just pick it up and carry it? Or is that beneath your dignity?” Carmine asked affably.

The giant jumped, tried to look commandingly superior, and
failed. “I hope you’re not going to be obstructive,” he said, flashing his credentials. “I’m Special Agent Ted Kelly of the FBI, and this is vital evidence.”

“Have you got a warrant?” Carmine asked.

“No, but I can get one faster than your cat can lick her ear,” he said, “so don’t even think of it.”

“My cat’s ear is squeaky-clean, Special Agent Kelly. I have a warrant right here, so I’m taking the vital evidence by the power vested in me by the State of Connecticut, County of Holloman. The name’s Carmine Delmonico. This is Abe Goldberg, and that’s Corey Marshall. Guys, wheel my evidence out. And you, Special Agent Kelly, are contaminating my crime scene. Why don’t you go get your pieces of paper, then come back and make your seizures legal?”

“I would get you, wouldn’t I?” Kelly asked, his face flushed. “I can’t say I wasn’t warned.”

Carmine lifted the rope. “Goodbye, Mr. Kelly. And don’t come back until you’re willing to share everything you’ve got with the Holloman Police Department.”

Shit! he thought as he was left victor on the field. That filing cabinet means I won’t be home early tonight, no matter what tricks Myron is up to; by tomorrow the Feds will have pulled enough strings to get their evidence back. No other filing cabinet has been targeted, so whatever Special Agent Kelly hopes to find lies within this one alone. And why do I think there’s more to this than a routine FBI presence? He went to the nearest phone and dialed.

“Delia? Dig out our security clearances, there’s a good girl. Keep yours with you, and send mine over here right now. I’d rather not get arrested on a federal warrant, it’s too hard to find a Get Out of Jail card.”

He hung up on the squawks, grinning, then dialed again. “Danny? The Feds are here, and I smell something rotten in the state of Cornucopia. Tell Silvestri he might have a harder fight on his hands than we expected. Now put me back to Delia.”

She had stopped squawking. “Your credentials are on their way,”
she said briskly, “and mine are in my handbag right next to my Saturday night special. What else, Captain?”

“Corey and Abe should be wheeling a filing cabinet into County Services any minute. It’s a big bone of contention, Delia, and we may not win the fight to keep it. The moment it arrives, I want it put in my office and as many photocopiers as our power supply will stand put in there too. Get all the girls out of the typing pool and put them to photocopying the contents”—he grinned—“faster than your cat can lick her ear. Said contents, I add, are for your and my eyes only.”

“What about the girls?” she asked anxiously.

“I don’t think we need to worry about them. They’ll be working too fast to notice what they’re copying.”

“And,” she said, catching on, “they’re dear girls, but they wouldn’t know a polymer chain from a chain reaction.”

“Exactly.”

And that should do it, he thought, putting the receiver down again. Just get the filing cabinet back to County Services, guys! It’s a myth that big men are slow, but here’s hoping I caught Mr. Ted Kelly on the wrong size-seventeen. By the time he remembers that he could snatch it en route, he’ll be too late. I hope the cabinet doesn’t do my Fairlane’s backseat much harm.

They looked like ordinary offices. Carmine walked from room to room noting the usual paraphernalia: desks, chairs, typewriters, telex and Xerox machines, calculators. Then, fascinated, he found two small rooms whose desks were filled by massive consoles he recognized only because sometimes he was called upon to visit Chubb’s computers, rented out to firms and institutions when Chubb didn’t need them. These were just such computer terminals, so somewhere in the bowels of the building there existed an arctically air-conditioned vault occupied by the computers themselves. It made sense that Cornucopia would have its own computer banks.

The police rope was confined to Desmond Skeps’s properly walled domain only, about half the space the floor offered. On the far side of his wall were more offices that continued to function, and in
less salubrious surroundings. Grey panels fenced people off into cubicles about chest-high, obliging each denizen to stand up to see out and about. Today there was a lot of standing up; nerves, probably. In the far corner he found a larger office, fully enclosed, that bore a sign saying it was the lair of one M. D. Sykes. When he opened the door he discovered a small, middle-aged man behind a desk that dwarfed him.

“Captain Carmine Delmonico, Holloman Police. What does the M.D. stand for, sir, and what’s your function?”

Terrified, the little fellow rose to his feet, fell back again, gulped and swallowed. “Michael Donald Sykes,” he said, squeaking. “I’m the general manager of Cornucopia Central.”

“Which is?”

“The central firm, Captain. The one that oversees all the other Cornucopia firms. They are its subsidiaries,” said Mr. Sykes, finding courage.

“I see. Does that mean that, for example, Landmark Machines doesn’t own itself? That Cornucopia owns it?”

“Yes, it does. No Cornucopia firm has much autonomy.”

“So you’re in charge, now that Mr. Skeps is dead?”

The round face screwed up as if about to burst into tears. “Oh, no, Captain, no! I occupy a limbo somewhere between middle and top management. Mr. Philip Smith is senior vice-president and a nominal managing director. I imagine that he will assume command.”

“Then where do I find Mr. Philip Smith?”

“One floor down. His office is directly under Mr. Skeps’s—the view, you understand.”

“Plus the key to the executive washroom?”

“Mr. Smith has his own washroom.”

Wow! said Carmine, but silently. He took the elevator down a floor, followed the signs and was intercepted by an elderly, beautifully dressed woman who looked him up and down as if he’d come about the janitor’s job before she reluctantly agreed that he could see Mr. Smith.

His office had that same wonderful two-sided view, but no telescope. Philip Smith himself was tall and suave, immaculately tailored in grey silk, and sported a tie Carmine had heard about but never seen: the pure silk, handmade version of the Chubb produced by an Italian designer. His shirt was French cuffed, his links understated solid gold, and his shoes handmade in St. James’s, London. He was fair and handsome, spoke with a Philadelphia Main Line drawl, and had grey eyes that perpetually hunted for a mirror in which to see himself.

“Terrible, just awful!” he said to Carmine, offering him a cigar. When Carmine declined, he offered coffee and was accepted.

“How much of a real difference does the death of Mr. Skeps make to the operation of Cornucopia?” Carmine asked.

It wasn’t a question Smith had expected; he blinked, had to stop to formulate his answer. “Actually, not a lot,” he said finally. “The day-to-day functioning of the various Cornucopia companies is left to their own management teams. Cornucopia Central is a little like the father of a large brood of children—it does all the things kids can’t do for themselves.”

You condescending prick, thought Carmine, face politely interested. I should pay you back for that with a couple of hours in a County Services interrogation room, but you’re small potatoes in spite of the wardrobe, Mr. Smith.

The coffee arrived, and gave Smith a breathing space while the snooty secretary poured—heaven forbid he should pour a cup for himself!

“Why is there an FBI special agent sniffing around your nether parts, Mr. Smith?” Carmine asked as soon as they were alone again.

But the nominal managing director was ready for that one. “Inevitable, given the number of our defense contracts,” he said smoothly. “I imagine D.C. and the Pentagon automatically take an interest in the violent death of an important man.”

“How violent do you think the death of Mr. Skeps was?”

“Well, er—I don’t know, exactly. One presumes murder to be violent by definition.”

“When did Mr. Kelly arrive?”