The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

* * * *

  In 2042, with the Commemorative Trial approaching, several other countries were again talking about following the example of New Zealand, which had declared itself sanctuary ground for Last Great War criminals in 2022, after the trial and execution of Wilhelm Feder, “the last of the first-generation Nazis,” in 2020-’21. But no other country actually did until after the trial and death sentence of Walter Brouyer Volsung and six other children and grandchildren of Nazis—the famous Toronto doctor, Parisian professor, pair of South American schoolteachers, German housepainter, and Austrian musician—in 2045-’46.

  Of course, that death sentence was never carried out, and all the defendants were eventually freed, though Volsung was later convicted in Kansas for his own White Klan activities, and finally died in prison. Probably the New Nuremberg Judgment had never been meant as anything more than symbolic, even though the global outrage that led twenty-eight more nations to declare themselves sanctuary ground in protest would surely have grieved Dr. Fairchild.

  Cagey followed the satellite coverage of the Trial avidly. I’m sure she enjoyed fantasizing about what she’d have done if they had taken her up on her offer to play one of the defendants. I have always been profoundly grateful, however, that April Greenhill escaped it. What might have been fun for Cagey would have been torture for April. Her self-esteem suffered a deep enough wound as it was.

  Her notarized affidavit was dated from Christchurch, New Zealand, Monday, October 13, 2042—which was not the eve of a national holiday over there. It arrived in Hodag Crossing on Wednesday, the Fifteenth, and read as follows:

  * * * *

  “I wish to depose that at no time on Saturday evening, 11 October 2042, did Clement Batory Czarny attack or otherwise molest me in any way. On the contrary, he untied me from where others had tied me, covering me with his own cape for all but the last few minutes of our imprisonment, until he needed it back to help him create a diversion to cover my escape; and he also made me wear the silver Star of David neck charm, formerly the property of Solomon Barghoothi Goldfein, which M. Batory had been wearing under his shirt, and which I herewith enclose to return to him, as being unfit to wear it myself. Clement and I communicated with each other in American Sign Language because we were afraid that our captors would be able to hear anything we said or whispered, the way we were able to hear them, through the house audio system. M. Batory bit his own arms to get the blood we needed for setting up our act, and he also had me use some of it to mark crosses on my body for my own protection in case he lost control of himself, which he never did the whole time. I only smeared these crosses at the last minute, finishing and lying still, as if dead, just before the door finally opened, even though this happened much later than we had originally expected it to happen. I first screamed when we heard the voices of M.’s Ramon Mendoza y Mendoza and Keiko Kato Ko-Ko, because we knew that she would want to help us if she could, although we could not be sure about M. Mendoza until a little later, when we heard more of what he had to say, and without his spontaneous help and the loan of his cloak, I am not sure I could have made my escape alone, after all. I did not scream again because we heard two R.S.A. Secret Service agents arrive and knew they would have arrested me. I did not finally give M. Batory back his cloak and lie down on the table for good until we heard that the door was about to be opened at the insistence of M. ‘Lieutenant’ C. W. Thursday.

  “I do not know whether the sworn affidavit of a third-generation criminal against humanity can or will help a very brave and gentle man, but in case it can help and might be needed, I herewith offer it freely and willingly, and do solemnly swear and attest to its truth.”

  * * * *

  She signed her name “April Wagner (formerly and improperly ‘Baxter’) Greenhill.” I was glad that at least she had kept her old first and final names.

  The four of us—Cagey; my husband Arlie, who had come up to join us after his Milwaukee conference; Jason Maklowski; and I—read it through in the hospital waiting lounge.

  I said, “So now she even thinks of herself as a criminal against humanity.”

  “We can hope,” said Cagey, “that time, New Zealand, and Aunt Cherky will help cure that.”

  Arlie was examining Solly Goldfein’s star of David, a thumbnail-size neckcharm on matching silver chain. “This is what left a first-degree burn around his neck and a couple of second-degree burns at the base of his throat before he got it off?” my husband asked. “Yes, it’s quite a field, psychosomatics.” Arlie had never seen Clement’s fangs.

  Maklowski rumbled, “What bothers me is the thought of those two kids cringing behind that bolted door all the time we stood there, me and Hartwick, with their ears up to the audio system, hoping and praying nobody would open up yet because they figured they’d be in as much danger from us as from Fairchild and his boys. What hurts even more is that they were right.”

  “Unfortunately,” Cagey agreed. “But not irremediably. You know, that silver bullet of your partner’s would have downed anybody, but we’ll never feel sure whether a plain old lead bullet would have downed Clement Czarny.”

  “Help me get it straight,” said Arlie. “It was this Fletcher floater who started out tailing the three of you—you two and April Greenhill—but when you parted company with her, Stallion Drinkwater took over tailing you while Fletcher tailed April to the rest home, snuck into the back seat of her car, leaving his own car hidden in the woods, and kidnapped her on her way back to town.”

  “Yeah, you got it pretty straight,” Cagey told him, “except that it was one of the fraternity’s cars Fletcher had driven out there and hidden in the woods. If ‘hidden’ is the right word. More like just left. The area around Clear Lake and Hodag Crossing is pretty well acclimated to stray cars appearing in odd places around the lake and woods and then disappearing again. What with students, woodsy types, and suchlike. Perceives itself as a very low-crime area, or April would have been in the habit of giving the backseat floor a glanceover before getting in her car.”

  “And all the time,” Arlie went on, “with Fletcher wearing a black cape like Czarny’s, just so that, in case anybody should catch a sight of him tailing and kidnapping April, they could put the blame on their dracula.”

  “Playing him for all the mileage they could get out of him,” said Cagey. “A blatant dracula was a made-to-order red herring for them. Already in love with April Greenhill, too, so they also figured maybe they could get her supposed father’s supposed whereabouts through him. If all else fails, drive him up a wall and let him torture her for them.”

  “Only he fooled them there,” I said, feeling happy about that, anyway.

  “The only bad reports on him,” Cagey summed up, “the only hints that he might be a dangerous character, were the ones that came from those yeggs who were setting him up to be their patsy.”

  “Real nice boys,” said Maklowski. “Not that they were above doing their own torturing, given a righteous cause. Fletcher and Drinkwater do it to Tallpines until they have to burn him up in a car wreck to cover the evidence, and then a year later Drinkwater sees a great excuse for wiping out a non-Wasp in another flaming wreck. Real nice boy, Drinkwater. Best of the lot. Turns out to be a secret doublecross agent for the White Klan, ready to help turn a nice Vanilla girl into a martyr for the Neo-Nazi cause, but not to risk her marrying a Jewish boy. Only he can always tell Pater Fairchild that kind of marriage would make it harder to drum up public opinion against her and get a conviction, and Fairchild buys it! I’m guessing that Drinkwater’s telling the truth when he claims he confessed to Fairchild earlier Saturday, and they planned it out together how to stage their little scene for Czarny’s benefit. Lord! And us shrewd Secret Service buggers would probably have gone right along without looking the gift horse too deeply in the mouth.”

  Arlie asked, “How did Drinkwater make it into the White Klan with his Indian genes?”

  “My b
est guess is that the Klan was playing him for their own patsy,” Maklowski replied. “Scratch him, and we’ll probably find out he wanted into the Klan because he’s secretly ashamed of his Native American heritage, but they talked him into playing it up because it made such a doggone good cover for a White Klan spy.”

  “Hey!” said Cagey. “In a sense, Tommi and I led Drinkwater to Czarny. You could even say that it was us coming up here to poke around that made them spring the trap.”

  Maklowski half shook, half nodded his head. “And probably a darn good thing. If they hadn’t felt forced into springing it a little too early, if they’d waited till they were ready, who knows? They might’ve pulled it off. All I know is, I’m staying with the Service just long enough to file my report, so I can send my resignation in along with it.” He shot a look at Cagey that might have been called sly, if his face had seemed built for slyness. “I don’t suppose there’s an opening in your organization, ‘Lieutenant’?”

  “There might be,” she answered with a noncommittal grin. “Drop me an application whenever you resign from your present job. Meanwhile, coming up with us?”

  I thought he was about to refuse again; but he looked at Cagey and may have guessed she was sizing him up. Her sidekicks had to be willing and able to face-to-face with people, especially people they’d wrongly suspected or otherwise injured. “Sure,” he said at last, “why not? Just for a couple of minutes. I think I’d like to see the kid’s reaction to this.” He tapped the hardcopy affidavit in Cagey’s hand. “Not that it’ll be needed. It got fairly obvious as soon as the smoke started settling that he’d been as much a victim as she was. But he ought to get a boost out of reading it.”

  Considering the carefully impersonal tone of April’s affidavit, I was much less sure.

  Arlie hesitated. If Maklowski hadn’t opted to go, I’m sure my husband would have waited with him, on the pretext that he’d rather wait to meet the vampire in full dracula costume. In that case, of course, he’d have given Solly’s star of David to one of us to take up.

  As it turned out, Clement already had two visitors, Keiko and Val, which gave our two menfolk a good excuse for staying “only a minute.” If Val hadn’t been there as well as Keiko, we might all have slipped away again at once.

  Clement was saying to Val, “No, fledgling, why depledge? It wasn’t the whole Rose, just Dr. Fairchild and three of the brothers. We’ll get another pater and pull through. Maybe M. Wandervogel would be willing to fill in for a while. ... I’d be proud to big-brother you myself,” he added.

  Then, looking up, they all greeted us. We came in, introduced Jason Maklowski and my husband, and Cagey got herself a cup of coffee from the room beverage serve.

  The vampire was sitting up in a stuffed chair, most of his remaining bandages hidden by a satiny blue turtleneck bathrobe, a new gift from Cousin Donna, that showed only the swathing around his wrists and a little of his lower arms. His silver cross was back around his neck, standing out against the blue background of his robe; his earring was in place, and his ring back on his finger. Keiko perched beside him on an unflowered bit of window ledge, while Val sat on the end of the bed.

  “I could really check out and go home this afternoon,” Clement assured us.

  “To that little, half-finished attic?” said Keiko, who had seen it when she went there to pack his bag for the hospital stay.

  Cagey rested her hand briefly on his shoulder in the old-fashioned gesture of supportive friendship. “You stick here as long as they want you, and don’t worry. My department’s got a whole special account for medical expenses incurred by ex-suspects in the course of our pursuing a case.” Letting go of his shoulder, she went over and sat on the bed beside Val.

  “Look, son,” Maklowski said awkwardly, even though he hadn’t been the one who fired the shot, “sorry about what happened. That silver bullet, I mean. No hard feelings?” He extended a tentative hand.

  Clement accepted it, shaking gently because of his wound. “Of course not. The dracula pretty well has to be killed at the end and resurrected again for the sequel screenshow. I’d just like to keep the bullet for a souvenir, if I may. The medics are saving it, and they say it’s all right with them if nobody else wants it for official purposes.”

  “Son, it’s yours. Have it made into another earring or something if you like. I’ve got a silversmith friend down in Winnetka, does great work.”

  Keiko suggested, “Sounds a lot more practical than a lump of used bullet.” Clement beamed and thanked the soon-to-be-ex-S.S. man; and the talk moved on.

  At Maklowski’s urging, Cagey got April’s affidavit out of her pocket and let Czarny read it. He read quietly and somberly; and I noticed that the fingers of his other hand moved up and meshed, as if without conscious thought on his part, with Keiko’s fingers. Finishing the document, he handed it up to her, saying he didn’t mind it being passed around but would rather not hear it read aloud.

  Arlie gave him the star of David. Handling it easily, now, he turned it over and over in his free hand and said, “It’s going back to her, of course. As soon as I can figure out what to say in the cover letter. ... But wasn’t Mendoza terrific?” he went on more enthusiastically. “How he got them airplane tickets like that, at the last minute, and they must have used false names, too! On a holiday weekend. And even getting around the passport problem somehow! He was my big brother when I was a pledge. Hope I can make somebody else half as good a one.”

  “Mendoza’s a member of Amnesty Universal,” Cagey remarked. “They must have some pretty good strings and some pretty good tricks.”

  Seeming more surprised than I was by Czarny’s reaction to April’s affidavit, Maklowski found a chance to excuse himself fairly soon after that. My husband and Valentino opted to bow out with him. Glancing at Keiko’s hand, which had separated itself from Clement’s but remained hovering near to mesh again at a moment’s notice, I felt that Cagey and I ought to be cutting out soon, as well.

  First, however, the vampire told us very soberly, “But M. Greenhill’s affidavit isn’t any good, Lieutenant. It’s just as well if it won’t be needed, because I’d have to invalidate it myself. I…did…attack her, you see. Almost right away. I…tried to force a kiss. ... No, not bite her,” he added, possibly seeing something in our faces. “Kiss her. I’d just had a very good dinner—thanks to your generosity—I wasn’t at all hungry ... not with that kind of hunger. It was just plain…animal lust. It was Solly’s star of David on my neck that stopped me. That was when it burned. Like a flare. I’m just glad it was still under my shirt, glad I’d forgotten I was wearing it, till then. Like Solly still watching out for her…for both of us. It didn’t go beyond that kiss. I managed to hold it down ... uh ... I mean, hold it in check the rest of the time. But with her tied down like that when I first ... It was only after that, that I covered her up and got her untied and ... uh ... started chewing my arms. And she had to get Solly’s star off my neck and around hers. I couldn’t handle it at all.”

  “But the rest of what she says is true,” I clarified. “It’s only that one tiny little detail about the kiss—”

  “Yes, but any inaccuracy at all is enough to invalidate a solemn statement, isn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily,” Cagey said with finality. “And since we won’t be needing it anyway, the question shouldn’t arise. Ever.”

  “Well, anyway, you see how grateful I am to have been resurrected this time,” he went on with a shy smile. Do you remember what I told you in the restaurant? I’m afraid that if I had died…this time ... Well, I’ve seen the worst. I almost died in a state of deadly sin—”

  “Because of the kiss?” I cried. “Under the most ... under those circumstances?”

  “Well, maybe not so much that, as ... I was all hate inside. The most terrible, violent, burning ... obsessive hatred. Toward Dr. Fairchild and Clearwater and Fletcher…and even poor old
Spuds. It was probably the hatred I was feeling the whole time for them, the…the terrible thirst for revenge…that helped me keep myself away from her. Thank God for that, anyway! But to have hurt her would have been to do what they wanted. ... I’m really sorry you were the one who got the brunt of my performance, Sergeant Tomlinson,” he went on, looking up at me, “but, in a way, maybe it was better that way. If it had been Dr. Fairchild or one of his men who opened that door ... But at least I was still able to remember you and Lieutenant Thursday were friends and innocent bystanders, in a way. Anyway, if I had really died in that state, I think I’d have been damned as deeply as the old count himself, so you can see ... That’s the fearfulness of it,” he finished. “When you make victims out of people, you turn them into victimizers themselves. Unless they’re real saints, saints by nature, not just good because they have to be…and it keeps going on and on.”

  “You’re going to make it, kid,” Cagey told him easily, standing up and giving his uninjured shoulder another friendly half-squeeze. “Just keep on with those prayers and weekly reconciliations and whatever, and one of these years we’ll be begging you to help us through those pearly gates. Well, Sergeant, shall we go join the gentlemen?”

  “Oh!” Clement exclaimed when we were at the door. “Just one more thing. Lieutenant ... I know it’s a lot to ask…but if you could give me a ... some kind of letter of introduction to the circles you move in?”

  I remembered that, along with everything else, he was a social climber. And of course, Cagey being a Warrington, he naturally assumed that she was a social lion.

  She grinned. “Fella, I hardly ever move in the social circles I move in, myself. But sure, I’ll always be glad to wangle you a few invites, any time you’re in town. Tell you what, we’ll talk about it more tomorrow.”

  * * * *

  (The hospital room, immediately following)

  * * * *

  After M.’s Warrington and Tomlinson left, Keiko’s fingers again found Clement’s.