“Stupid place to keep it, then,” said Ricky with a fleeting grin. “And suddenly she’s got money.” He leaned forward. “I mean, real money. Hundreds! She didn’t get that from cleaning houses, I can tell you.”
“Did she say where she got it?”
“Frankenstein,” said Ricky. “That’s all she’d say, and she’d laugh like it was some big joke. Frankenstein.”
“That’s when she broke up with you?”
“Yeah, well, a week or two after that. Broke it off!” He snapped his fingers. “Didn’t see her for, I don’t know, a month or more, then she calls, out of the blue. I wasn’t home. My kid sister took the call. Said she sounded awful. Scared and that.
“I called later, but her ma said she’d gone to work. I figured things can’t be that bad if she’s workin’. Tanny always was one for the drama, y’know. Well, I was just gettin’ over her, so I just decided to let her twist.
“Next thing I hear, she’s dead. Fallen down the stairs. Yeah, right. And I’m . . . I don’t know . . . a monkey’s nuts.”
“Did you tell the police about this? About the ‘F’?”
“Me? That’s a laugh.” He turned his eyes sharply on Albert. “You know what they’d say if I went to them talkin’ about that ring, and Frankenstein and that?”
Albert knew better than most. “They wouldn’t believe you.”
“Believe me?! That’d be the least of my worries, mate. I’d probably end up in jail for her murder! Bird in the hand; that’s the way their brains work.”
Albert extended grace. “Not all of them.”
“Nor so few as I’d risk the odds,” Ricky snapped.
“You’re in luck,” said Simon, returning with the beer. Ricky received it without comment and took a long pull.
“Frankenstein was a man made from other people’s parts,” said Albert, without preamble. “That’s who was paying her.”
Ricky pulled the bottle from the vacuum of his lips. “Frankenstein? He’s just a character in a . . .”
“A club,” Albert interrupted. “They call themselves Frankenstein because they sell body parts. And this,” he raised the ring, “is how they recognize each other.”
Ricky sipped again, and thought, and sipped. “Why would they pay Tan? What’s bodies got to do with her?”
Albert knew. The coincidences were just too hard to ignore. “She was there when each of the women on Parliament Row died,” he said, more thinking aloud than expositing. “And they were harvested for their parts.”
“What’s all this about parts? You keep talkin’ about parts.”
Albert explained, and Simon translated.
By the time the telling was done, the muscular structure supporting Ricky’s lower jaw had ceased to operate. His mouth hung open. He didn’t blink. “Crikey,” he said just above a whisper. “Parts?” Pause. Sip. “Crikey.”
“Crikey,” Albert agreed.
With a jolt, a thought occurred to Ricky. He bolted out of his seat. “Hey! You’re not sayin’ Tan’ killed them women!”
Albert equivocated. “She worked with the doctor who did.”
Simon said, “The same doctor attended them all, Geraldo Marcos. We don’t know how it worked. Maybe he—or this Frankenstein club or whatever it is—would target a potential donor; they would have to be people with access to medical information so they could match donors with recipients. Then what?” it was Simon’s turn to think out loud. He looked at Albert. “They arranged to get her employment in the house?
“Then . . .”
The light dawned slowly for Ricky, but when it did, he sank back into this seat with a sigh bordering on disbelief. “That's how she got all that money!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Simon leaned toward the boy, removed the beer bottle from the tips of his fingers, where it dangled precariously, and set it on the table. “We don’t know that for sure,” he said. “All we know is that she was involved. Maybe she was being forced somehow. Blackmailed, or . . .”
Ricky shook his head. “No, I’d be lyin’ if I said Tan hadn’t changed in the last couple of months. She was like . . . who was that guy who turned into a monster sometimes, and sometimes was just a normal guy?”
“Dr. Jekyll?” said Simon.
Ricky remembered the movie. “Yeah. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That’s what she was. The last couple of weeks we was together it’s like she had this big secret. Or a joke. She’d drop little hints, like that about Frankenstein—that’s what made me think of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, talking about Frankenstein. Monsters, you know? I always felt like she was laughin’ at me.
“Last time I took her to the pictures—RobocopI told her I didn’t have enough for popcorn. She laughed, right there in the theater, and hauled out, I don’t know, thirty or forty dollars. She hands me ten and says, “Use this, little man. And keep the change.
“That’s what I felt like, too. Little man. I told her to keep her money and I just walked out of there.
“Didn’t see her for a day or two. When I finally did, she acted like nothin’ happened. Didn’t say anything about the money, or where it came from. She didn’t laugh at me then. Not on the outside, but I felt like she was laughin’ on the inside.”
Ricky hung his head. “She wasn’t the same Tan anymore.” He looked up. “Cindy says the same.”
Once more he bowed his head before the truth. “When you said that—when I thought you was sayin’ you thought she killed them women—I didn’t jump up because I wanted to smack you or anything. I jumped up because . . . ’cause I was thinkin’ the same thing.”
He retrieved the bottle from the table and took a sip. “People change.”
Simon waited a beat or two, then said, “For better and for worse.”
Ricky sniffed. “Yeah. Well.” He shook himself back to the present. “So, what now? The police?”
Albert enumerated his reticence about that course of action.
“Point taken,” said the boy. “What then, find this doctor she was workin’ with?”
“He’s dead,” said Simon. “Car accident, they say.”
“He’s dead, too!” said Ricky, jumping from his seat again. “That’s too much! Somebody’s killed ’em! Somebody else who was behind ’em, pullin’ strings.”
“Frankenstein,” said Simon. “That’s who we need to find.”
For Albert, the statement sponsored a thought. “Did that doctor have a ring like that?”
“Which doctor?”
“Not a witch doctor,” said Albert. Clarity was painfully important. “The one Tanny was working with.”
“I didn’t mean . . .” Simon thought better of correcting the error. “Dr. Marcos. That should be easy enough to find out.”
Easy? thought Albert. Then, recalling that the vicar inhabited a plane of existence where people walked on water, raised the dead, turned water into wine and routinely went to Heaven, decided he probably had access to ways and means that would be as foreign to Albert as potatoes to postage stamps.
“Potatoes to postage stamps,” he whispered. That was a good one. Just imagine the use people might find for a saying like that, and he hadn’t even been trying! He’d have to write these down as they came to him. Or have Jeremy Ash do it. Especially since he didn’t know where they came from. Was it important, he wondered almost simultaneously, that people know something was wise when they said it, or could it just be something they said that sounded wise, but the reason it was wise didn’t come until later?
“I should think Dr. Chan would be able to get that information,” Simon was saying. “He’s the medical examiner, after all.”
There was an awkward pause on the phone after Simon asked the question. “How very odd you should ask that,” said Dr. Chan. “Almost unbelievably odd.”
“Odd how?”
“Well, first off let me say that no, Dr. Marcos possessed no such ring.”
“Then what’s odd?”
“That you should mention Dr. Marc
os’s ring,” said Chan. “He did have one—one every bit as enigmatic as yours. A Caduceus wrapped around a bird of some sort, whose breast is a heart-shaped diamond. 18 carat gold, so my staff tells me. He was famous for it around the nurses’ station, apparently.”
“That is odd,” Simon agreed. “Where is it now?”
“Ready for more odd?” said Chan. “It was missing from his finger when they found him. Well, let me rephrase. The finger was missing, as well. Fingers often bloat on a corpse, making the removal of rings—in the immediate term—almost impossible, without . . . extreme measures.”
This was, by several orders of magnitude, more than Simon wanted to know. After ringing off, he delivered an expurgated version to Albert and Ricky.
Somewhere in his deductive machinery, the observation that Tanny’s ring might signify membership in some club or secret society had set up shop as absolute fact. Between the observation and the conclusion, therefore, there were none of the annoying rabbit trails that result from too much thought and hamper most investigations. He was able to leap straight to the conclusion: “Different rings; different clubs.”
Simon smiled to himself. “Or maybe a ring is just a ring.”
“The ‘F’ and the nut,” Albert reasoned. “Frankenstein. A man made from other people’s parts. The Caduceus wrapped around bird and the heart; the heart is a body part.”
Simple. Two clubs involved in the same business: one to acquire the parts, the other to take them apart and put them together. He said this as he thought it.
“Here we go!” said Mr. Sweetman, handing Albert an envelope bulging with notes of various denominations, as well as some change. “You may want to count it again, but I’m pretty sure. . .”
“Close enough,” said Ricky who, in one fluid motion, rose from his chair, snatched the envelope from Albert’s hands, stuffed it into his right front trouser pocket, sank back into his seat and sipped his beer.
The motion brought to Albert’s mind the memory of a film clip he’d seen of a hyena attacking a wildebeest. “Wildebeest,” he said aloud.
Simon cast him a sidelong glance, but didn’t say anything.
“There is this place she went once,” said Ricky. “Tanny.”
“What do you mean?” said Simon. “What kind of place?”
“I thought . . . when she broke off with me . . . I reckoned it was some other bloke.”
“You followed her?”
Ricky allowed the answer to be taken as obvious. “It wasn’t a man she met, that day. It was a woman. A nurse.”
“Where did they meet?”
“The Kiwi Cafe. That’s in the Smeeton Building on Queen Street.”
“What did they talk about?” asked Simon.
“Talk? How should I know?” said Ricky. “I’m no lip-reader.”
“Oh, I thought you were close enough to . . .”
“Nah. I was across the street, behind a tree.”
“I see,” said Simon. “Did you recognize the woman? Had you seen her before?”
Had some official person come by at that moment and demanded a count of those in attendance at this meeting of the minds, Albert would, without, hesitation or pang of conscience, have put up his hand. Were that same official, however, to require recapitulation of what was said at the meeting as proof of attendance, the evidence would have proven Albert elsewhere. Questions and answers were simply flying back and forth between the vicar and Ricky too fast for him to assemble into thoughts he could make sense of. He was dazzled by the rapidity of the exchange and couldn’t help but entertain the fleeting suspicion that they’d both been rehearsing the exchange for years, and each knew the others lines by heart.
Not that he was troubled. Quite the opposite. He was confident that the exchange would, when distilled by time and contemplation, yield something useful.
“Nah, but I saw her name tag.” He tapped his chest. “Patricia Hogan.”
“You saw her name tag—from across the street!?”
“Don’t be daft,” said the boy. “’Course not. After they left, Tan went one way—back toward the Row, I guess, and the nurse come straight toward me. First I thought she’d sussed me out, but I was just somethin’ she passed on the way, like a stop sign or a phone pole. Walked right by me. No further than you from me.”
“And you read her name tag?” said Simon.
“That’s right. Patricia Hogan, or maybe Hagan.”
Albert remembered the name. “That’s the nurse who’s missing,” said Albert. “Doctor Marcos’s nurse.”
“Doctor Marcos who died in a car accident,” said Simon; then he remembered something else, “Former girlfriend of Clay Pigeon!”
“Who works at the lab where they tested Woolie-Woolie’s blood,” said Albert.
“And probably that of the ladies of Parliament Row,” said Simon.
“Where did she go?” Albert asked.
“How’d you know I followed ’er?”
Albert thought it obvious. “You’re that kind of person.”
That comment sat at the junction of Ricky’s eyebrows for a second or two; then he said, “Yeah. Well. . . ” A quick, meaningful smile crossed his face. “I did.”
“Where did she go?”
“The hospital morgue.”
Simon sat slumped back in his chair. “Dark deeds, Albert.”
“Dark deeds,” said Albert, and he thought them the clearest, most comprehensive words that had ever crossed his lips. “What happened there?”
“She met this bloke,” said Ricky. “Some kind of doctor, I reckon. Had the outfit, you know. Long white overcoat with deep pockets and that.” He reviewed the memory. “Didn’t have one’ve those periscope things, though.” He draped an imaginary stethoscope around his neck.
“Then what?” asked Simon.
Ricky shrugged. “Dunno. They went inside.”
“Do you remember anything about him?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“You know, approximate height, hair color. Was he white, black . . .”
“Oh, right. Well, he was a mix, I’d say Pakaori.”
“Pakaori?” said Albert.
“More pakeha than Maori. Other way ’round he’d be Maoriha,” Ricky said slyly. “About your height. Had a belly. Hair?” He consulted the image on the canvas of his memory. “Black with gray in it. Or white. Cut short.”
“Did he have a name tag?” Albert asked. Life would be so much easier if everyone just wore name tags.
“Yeah,” said Ricky. “A gold one. But I was too far away to read it.”
“What happened next?” Simon pressed.
“Then? Nothin’. They went inside, I went home. Well, that is, I went to see if Tan had ended up home, but she wasn’t there, so must’ve been at work on the Row, like I thought. Then I went home.”
“If you saw this man again,” said Albert. “Would you know him?”
“Nah. They all look alike to me, that lot,” said Ricky, but the words were barely out of his mouth when, consulting his mental canvas once more, he said, “No, wait. There was somethin’.”
Albert and Simon waited.
“He had an earring, in his left ear. A gold one.”
“That’s not common— among the Maori?”
“Not often,” said Ricky. “They go for tattoos. Feathers. Necklaces. I never saw one with an earring like that.”
“Did he have a ring?” asked Albert.
Ricky thought a moment. “Can’t say, for sure. Not that I noticed.”
“Did the woman, Patricia Hogan, wear a ring,?”
“Or Hagan,” said Ricky.
“Or Hagan,” Albert allowed.
The question was met by a shake of the head. “I don’t know as I’d notice if she did. All women wear rings, don’t they? It’s like askin’ if she had shoes on.”
“We need to go to the hospital to find who wears these rings,” said Albert. He thought that identifying members of the Frankenstein club would go a long way toward
finding out who was behind the Trade.
Simon’s eyes brightened. “I’ve got a better idea!” and, having shared it, left with Ricky and Albert’s blessing in tow.
“I declare,” said Mr. Sweetman, who had been sitting in his favorite chair, petting his dog and smoking his pipe. He stood up as he spoke and the dog jumped from his lap. He bent over the ash pot by the fireplace and tapped out his pipe. “I can’t wrap my head ’round all this business. ‘Dark deeds’ is right. Just about the darkest testament to the fallen nature of the race of man that I’ve ever heard.”
“If only you knew,” thought Albert and, simultaneously, thought, “I hope you never will.”
“I’m assuming it all has something to do with Angela’s companions in my kitchen?”
Albert had forgotten about Phuong and Jimmy.
“Imagine my surprise when I bumped into them when I was searching for the money—which, by the way—I’ve added to your bill. I hope that suits?”
“Yes,” said Albert.
As if on cue, Angela entered the room. “Where is everybody?”
By “everybody”, Albert sensed, she meant James Simon. “He’s gone to ask someone for help.”
“Not the police!” said Angela. “Phuong will bolt if she thinks . . .”
“No,” Albert interrupted, something he rarely did and, even then, only when it was only to avoid compounding misinformation with misunderstanding. “Somebody else. How is she?”
“I’d like to know how long it’s been since she’s eaten,” said Angela. “Bindy’s nearly cleared out the larder feeding her.” She turned to Mr. Sweetman. “I’d keep a close eye on that dog, if I were you,” she said. “The girl’s Vietnamese, after all.
“Speaking of which,” she said, lowering herself to the arm of Albert’s chair and stroking his hair as if that was a natural and normal thing to do. “What are we going to do with her?”
Albert’s response to her proximity was also natural and normal, and did not accommodate rational thought. He stood up and began pacing. “I want her to stay with your sister.”
“My sister! My . . . I don’t even know where she is, Albert!”
What could be better, thought Albert, if Angela didn’t know where her sister was, then how could those searching for Phuong ever find her?
Improvisato Page 28
