Naked Cruelty

by Colleen McCullough

  “Of course she was right,” said Desdemona.

  “I was hoping you’d be on my side,” he said, disgruntled.

  “Not when it has to do with the effects of rape.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave it.”

  She leaned over to kiss the top of his head. “Thank you, dear heart.”

  “How are things with you?”

  “Much better. I don’t break down anymore. Julian is turning into a human being, believe it or not, and Alex is just divine. The sweetest little chap, quite different from Julian—oh, he was sweet at six months too, but looking back, I can see the germ of Julian the defense attorney. It was in the way he looked at me—measuring me up. Alex slobbers.”

  “Slobbers?”

  “Pools of drool.”

  “I haven’t noticed,” Carmine said, surprised.

  “You don’t have breasts, Daddy. Alex is far more like you than Julian is. Loves his food, does Alex.”

  “That does bode well! Not a defense attorney type.”

  Julian burst into the room, arms stretched out, and landed on Carmine’s lap. “Daddy, Daddy!”

  “Hi, Captain. How’s the sub tonight?”

  “Oh, him! I’m in the Wild West now, Daddy.”

  “Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickock, huh?” Carmine asked, racking his brains for Wild West heroes not famous for killing people, and very conscious of Desdemona’s presence.

  “No, I’m Julian Delmonico, and I round up steers faster than anybody else on the Chisum Trail!”

  Prunella flourished a large book. “It’s hard to find one that’s not full of shoot ’em up dead, but I try, Captain.” Her voice changed to command mode. “Bed time, Mister Delmonico! I am the boss of the roundup and you are a mere cowboy, so ride ’em!”

  Julian’s goodnight kisses were entirely dutiful; he let out a piercing shriek. “That’s me, rounding up!”

  “It’s a wild country with a wild past,” Carmine said to Desdemona when they were alone. “He’s half Calabrian, and you Brits haven’t always been peacefully inclined. You even had a civil war. I know you find the prospect of raising two sons in America appalling—is that why you’re depressed?”

  Her rather plain face grew plainer, as it always did when she was unhappy; the pale blue eyes were teary. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I really don’t, Carmine. After all, you stand for law and order.”

  He crossed to her chair and squeezed himself in it beside her, one arm around her shoulders. “Yet twice you’ve had to get yourself out of danger,” he said, throat tight. “Lovely lady, that’s a part of the law and order. We’ve been married now for nearly three years, and I can’t live without you. Every time you feel blue, remember that.”

  “That’s the trouble,” she said. “I do.”

  Sitting up, he turned her head so that he could see into her face. “Does that mean you’ve thought about leaving me?”

  “No, of course not, silly! More that I worry about you in your job, I think. You’re right, this is a wild place. It’s—it’s gun-happy! You even had to teach me to shoot, remember?”

  “That was common sense, Desdemona, nothing else. The odds are infinitesimally small, yes, but I’d rather be sure than sorry.”

  “I won’t be able to deflect Julian from guns for much longer, will I?” She sounded desolate.

  “Not when he plays with Ceruttis and Balduccis, I’m afraid. But you can’t forbid him to play with his peers either. That would isolate him. And you can’t tell me that British kids don’t play with toy guns. Sure they do! Violence is entrenched.”

  “Yes, but how many kids find a gunman in their backyard?”

  “That’s unfair. Neither American nor British kids.”

  “Unless their father is an American cop.”

  “Not even then. It was a simple quirk of fate.”

  She got up suddenly and went into the kitchen; Carmine didn’t make the mistake of following her to pick at her cringing flesh. Sweet Jesus, don’t let a second wife desert me because of my job!

  ***

  When all the election results of that very close victory were in, Richard Nixon was President and Hubert Humphrey the also-ran. “It’s Humphrey’s name,” moaned Nick, a fanatical Democrat. “Hubert! The moral of the story is not, don’t christen him that because he won’t get the Democrat nomination, it’s really because he won’t get elected when his rival’s got a name like Richard.”

  “At least Connecticut voted Democrat,” said Delia.

  “And all that’s in the past,” said Carmine. “More to our purpose is the fact that the Dodo investigation has foundered.”

  It hadn’t seemed possible that the new slant on the Dodo’s appearance would go nowhere, but that was exactly where it went.

  “We have nowhere to go and no place left to look,” he said to his assembled team on Monday, November 11. “It’s a purely local Carew affair, in that nothing has ever come to light about it outside of Carew. The Dodo, the Gentleman Walkers and the victims are all based in Carew. His last chosen date was the nation’s election day, which on the surface looks ideal, and he thought so too. His failure leaves us confounded—how is he going to adjust his timetable? His pattern to date has been at three-week intervals, but will he wait three weeks, bringing him to November 26, or go down to two weeks—November 19—or even one week—tomorrow? If it’s tomorrow, we’re shit out of luck, folks. Captain Vasquez wouldn’t be amenable to saturating Carew with cops so quickly after a Dodo failure, and I’m not sure we should ask him for that on any date, even the twenty-sixth. We can definitely assume that this guy has a list of victims that isn’t going to run out anytime soon, and, from what happened on election day, we might be excused for assuming that he has a list of plans as long as his victims. If we were going to catch him by saturating the area with cops, we would have succeeded then. His contingency plan was better than ours. He escaped. We got egg on our faces.”

  “Maybe what we should be considering is his needing to blow off steam?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, that’s an element,” Carmine said when no one else replied. “Not getting as far as first base with Catherine should cause a huge sense of frustration. But I think the Dodo is too cold-blooded for that kind of reaction. I read him as more likely to retreat into his shell and not try anything for months. Lull us into believing that he’s moved on to an equivalent of Carew in another state.”

  “No, Carmine, he won’t do that,” Nick said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Carew is home. He’s been living in Carew for a long time. If she’s been in Carew for longer than a few weeks, he knows every Carew woman’s face. Not that I think any woman who hasn’t attended a Sugarman party is in danger. That’s where he picks them. But he won’t retreat into his shell—Carew is his shell. The drive is too strong for months of inertia. He’ll go for another victim, probably in three weeks—the twenty-sixth.”

  “Could we set him up with a victim?” Helen asked. “I live in Carew, and I’m willing to be bait.”

  “Thank you for the offer,” Carmine said, “but the Dodo works exclusively off his own list. We’ve been here before, remember?”

  “How about trying to find his victims instead of him?” Delia asked. “We have to try, Carmine!”

  “The pool is too big, it just is. He likes professional women who live decent but not celibate lives,” said Nick when Carmine didn’t answer. “Ethnic background, religion, physical type are all different, Delia. The pool’s too big.”

  “Okay, the Dodo goes on a back burner,” Carmine said. “From what Corey says, the Black Brigade is restive, and the Taft High weapons cache is a bone of contention between him and Buzz. He says there are no weapons left at the school, Buzz thinks there might be. Emphasis: might be. Abe and his team are going on general duty. Nick and Delia, you’re going to Corey. The most im
portant item to ferret out is the weapons cache—does it or does it not exist?”

  “Corey has good connections with the Black Brigaders,” said Nick. “What makes Buzz disagree?”

  “It seems to depend on whether or not there’s a splinter of the Black Brigade operating at Taft High,” Carmine said. “A sub-group could exist without the parent group’s full knowledge, given Mohammed’s secretiveness. A couple of years ago he was militant, but he’s never inclined toward violence for the sake of violence. I do know that some Black Brigaders get irritable at what they see as Mohammed’s sloth, or even timidity. When the confrontation over Wesley le Clerc never got off the ground, Mohammed kind of retreated. That’s why I’d be surprised if there isn’t a splinter group forming.”

  “You think it’s at the school?” Delia asked, grimacing.

  “I don’t know. Help Corey and Buzz find out.”

  He was wearing his navy suit trousers; out of his cupboard came his silver-braided dress jacket. “I have to go, and I won’t be back today,” he said.

  “What do you want me to do, sir?” Helen asked.

  “Go back over the rape victims, right back to Shirley, see if you can find something new or any points in common we’ve overlooked.” Jacket on, he ran a finger around its high neck.“How I hate this neck! All you can do, Helen, is read. If you get bored, read one of your textbooks.” He left his office.

  “He looks so splendid in his dress uniform—my heart leaps,” said Delia, sighing.

  “Thanks a million!” Corey said with a snarl when Carmine walked in two days later.

  “Excuse me?”

  Corey waved a sheet of paper back and forth under Carmine’s nose. “This! You betrayed me. I thought you agreed to keep the Form 1313 business between ourselves?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” Carmine asked, surprised.

  “When we talked a few days ago, I thought we agreed that you’d brought up 1313 of your own volition, as a way of finding out how I felt about Morty. And I told you! He displayed no evidence of depression or suicidal tendencies, which is why I refused to submit the form. After all, it’s designed so that a man’s senior in the chain of command can’t plot against him—two signatures, two statements!”

  “Until you tell me, Corey, I don’t know where you’re going.”

  The paper flapped again. “I wish I could say this is a letter of commendation,” Corey said, shaking in rage, “but it’s not. It’s a written reprimand!” His voice took on the tones of Judge Thwaites passing sentence on someone he deemed contemptible. “Do not let anyone else under your command eat his gun, Lieutenant Marshall, do you hear me? This time it’s a caution, but if there is a next time, the full weight of the Law will fall upon you!” He dropped the letter. “A reprimand! Me!”

  “No aspect of Morty’s death should be the object of sarcasm, especially when you choose Judge Thwaites. The enquiry wasn’t conducted under any Holloman public official, which should tell you that its findings are impartial,” Carmine said.

  Corey sneered. “Oh, sure!”

  “I still don’t get your drift, Corey.” Make him say it out loud, don’t let him suppress it to chew like a cow its cud.

  “You and Silvestri have more pull than any other cops in the whole of Connecticut, including the Staties. You made sure I was reprimanded, you and Cousin Silvestri. All you had to do was pick up the phone. and call in a few favors.”

  “Jesus, Corey, how paranoid can you get? This was an enquiry into Morty Jones’s death, not any alleged negligence on your or anyone else’s part,” Carmine said, stunned. “And you’re right about Form 1313—it would have been considered and discarded as the right of two superiors to differ. What made the panel sit up and take notice was your own conduct, Corey. You harangued them about your innocence.”

  “You and Silvestri killed my chances of being exonerated,” Corey interrupted.

  Carmine stared, stupefied. “Exonerated? What a word to use! No one is persecuting you, Corey, and you weren’t on trial. But you behaved as if you were, and that’s what earned you the reprimand. The panel became convinced that at least some of the smoke originated in a fire. You talked for a full half hour not about Morty Jones, but about yourself, the demands of your duties, how difficult I, and ultimately John Silvestri, made your job. Have you been listening to Maureen? Have you? I’m sure she’s an admirable wife domestically, but she knows nothing about police procedures. Whenever she sticks her oar in, you’re the one gets in trouble. And she’s been worse ever since you became a loot, Cor. Much worse! Like that crap about Abe Goldberg and my favoring him over you—I could hear Maureen saying it.”

  “You can’t bring my wife into this,” Corey said aggressively. “It’s the pot calling the kettle black—rumor says your wife is a basket case. You’re passing the buck.”

  “My wife is ill,” Carmine said, holding on to his temper, “nor does she try to interfere in my police business. I can’t say the same for Maureen. And if I see it, Cor, so does everyone else. Including Cousin Silvestri. Tell her to butt out.”

  “She’s got my best interests at heart,” Corey said stoutly.

  Oh, a lost cause! thought Carmine. “You deserved to be reprimanded,” he said. “Morty was reaching out for help, and you refused to see it. I know why. For exactly the same reason that you can’t be bothered writing a good report—there’s too much pain in the effort. No one has demoted you. The reprimand will go on your record, and that’s a shame, but it could only matter if you were moving on—”

  Light dawned. Shit, Carmine, you fool! Maureen has made plans to move onward and upward, which means out of Holloman and out of the Holloman PD. Now it can’t happen. Corey has spoiled her plans. Not me. Not Silvestri. Corey. She’s known right along, but gave him the wrong advice—harangue the enquiry panel.

  “If you wanted to look squeaky-clean, Corey, you should have blamed yourself a little. Tell Maureen no one’s perfect.”

  Corey swallowed. “Why are you here, Carmine?”

  “I’ve come to see why you’re making no use of two highly experienced and intelligent detectives in Delia Carstairs and Nick Jefferson,” Carmine said. “They’ve been with you two days, yet you haven’t even bothered to see them, let alone give them orders. What’s going on?”

  “No, I haven’t seen them or used them,” Corey said, waxing indignant. “They appeared out of the blue, and I’ve had no kind of written direction from you—any kind of communication, even a phone call. According to Captain Vasquez—” he held up a fat pamphlet “—I could be sued if either of them was injured on the job. I mean, what’s the matter with this place these days?”

  “I’m amazed that you read boring stuff like that,” Carmine said solemnly. “One of the penalties of a captaincy, you may tell Maureen, is an overwhelming amount of paperwork that can’t be avoided or postponed, plus a daunting number of conferences and meetings that achieve virtually nothing. And, if the captaincy is in the Holloman Police Department, it comes with a uniform coat whose collar could double for a guillotine. In the current landslide of duties that have little to do with Detectives, I overlooked the particular piece of paper that notified you about Carstairs and Jefferson, both of whom, for the purposes of shuffling paper, are men. They are now your men, Lieutenant, to do with as you please.”

  “Carstairs is a woman!” Corey protested.

  “Does paper have a sex? Perhaps they should be its?”

  “You’re a sarcastic bastard, Carmine.”

  “I am indeed. If you think that my ability to slip the dagger between your ribs is formidable, Corey, almost six years of being associated closely with me should tell you how awful it is when I twist the dagger inside the wound. And the first twist of the dagger is this: make sure your wife keeps her place.”

  “Wives are off-limits for discussion, Carmine, you know that.”

  “I oug
ht to—it’s my own regulation. Sometimes, unfortunately, the rules have to be broken. You should be asking when, not why—you know the why. The when is now because this person who is vital for your well-being—your wife—has made your police business her business, and put a black mark on your career that would otherwise not have happened. Maureen’s made herself the subject of this talk, which I find extremely distasteful. I have nothing to say about her apart from her police interference, which has got to stop. Do you see that?”

  “How come you never talked to Morty about his wife, then?”

  “Oh, come on, Corey! Ava wasn’t my business.”

  “Nor is Maureen.”

  “She is, when she makes mischief within my division.”

  “She doesn’t. It’s your imagination.”

  “Okay, then I’ll drop the subject. You’ve been warned, and so has she.” Carmine leaned forward, looming. “If you don’t improve your attitude, Corey, there will be other reprimands. You’re going to have to learn what nearly a year of winging it hasn’t taught you—how to be a good lieutenant. You’re slipshod and careless, which you never used to be. How much of your apparent efficiency when you were on my team was due to Abe Goldberg’s covering up, I don’t know, but now you shape up, hear me? We’re looking at a green winter, and that means trouble.”

  “You can’t possibly be naive enough to think there are still weapons at Taft High, Carmine. Did Genovese go over my head? If he did, I’ll crucify him!”

  “No one has gone over your head, but in asking me, you’ve just revealed one of your deficiencies—you don’t trust a man the moment his opinion conflicts with yours. Differing opinions are healthy, Corey, they indicate your men can think for themselves. Trust doesn’t enter into it. Buzz Genovese is a new detective, he needs guidance, not derision. Or are you in favor of the trainee system and more Helen MacIntoshes?”