Naked Cruelty

by Colleen McCullough

  Corey looked horrified. “The old way is the best way!”

  “Then don’t fuck up. Whatever you do, don’t fuck up.”

  Delia was waiting outside Corey’s office door, which Carmine had closed on leaving. He stared at Delia in surprise.

  “What’s up? Isn’t Corey treating you right?”

  “If being ignored is incorrect, he isn’t. But is there any way Corey can do without my talents?” Delia asked.

  “Give me a good enough reason, and I’ll cut you loose.”

  “Helen.”

  His brows furrowed, something stirred in his eyes that Delia couldn’t assess, except that Helen worried him. “Expand.”

  “She’s a very good girl, but younger and more inexperienced than she’ll admit. That’s the trouble with growing up in that particular household, I imagine. Stacks of success, money, power—and ego. It hasn’t escaped me that you’ve chided her several times for arrogance and insensitivity, and I agree, she has too much of both. It’s just that—” her long, red nails fluttered like the tips of flesh-colored butterfly wings “—my thumbs are pricking, as the Bard would say. Let me stay with her, please!”

  Too much money, too much beauty, too much too soon … “I see. Well, you and Desdemona have already kicked my ass over the rape victims, so who am I to ignore God-sent warnings? If you think she might inadvertently cause trouble, Delia, then by all means stay with her. If Corey gripes, refer him to me.”

  The bright red mouth broke open in a beam, revealing that Delia’s teeth also wore lipstick; with a squeeze of his arm, she was gone, her clunky shoes booming up the stairwell.

  She found Helen already surrounded by files, with what she privately called a “Joan of Arc” expression on her face, which lifted to see who came in, visionary, beatified.

  “Oh, Delia! I thought you were going to Corey,” Helen said, Joan of Arc replaced by Snow White choking on an apple.

  “The boss changed his mind,” Delia said artlessly, pulling up a chair and sitting.

  “I thought he was finally trusting me!”

  “He always trusts you, Helen. Try to climb out of that oversensitive skin of yours to see what I believe is called the big picture. No, let me put it another way. You interpret Captain Delmonico’s actions and orders as pertaining exclusively to you, but that’s wrong. He acts and orders to achieve maximum results from every member of his teams, highest to lowliest. Between his telling you to work the old rape victims on your own and his ordering me to join you, he must have seen that something would come up needing more than one pair of hands.”

  “But what could?”

  “We have to find it. Surely you know me well enough by now to understand that if the credit belongs to you, I will gladly give it to you. I’m not greedy.”

  Yes, but you are, Helen. Second-string bothers you, your eyes have turned stony. Ambition! So much ambition!

  Keeping her voice neutral, Delia embarked upon the story of the Ghost, who had abducted teenaged girls, tortured and raped them, then murdered them. It was a famous case which Delia went into more deeply than any of the filed reports did.

  “You’re saying that lightning won’t strike in the same place twice,” Helen said at the end. “I get the message” She shrugged, smiled. “So okay, any suggestions as to where we look?”

  “Yes. We’re going out. My Buick, or your Lamborghini?”

  “Will it offend you if it’s my Lamborghini and I drive?”

  “Lord bless you, no, child! All those horses are fun.”

  “Where to?”

  “Mark Sugarman’ s, with every drawing of the Dodo we have.”

  He was not annoyed to see them. Just resigned. “I hope you realize that this is my ninth interview?”

  “Lord bless you, no!” Helen cried, enamored of Delia’s phrase. “Actually this isn’t an interview, it’s a collaboration.”

  It had been agreed in the car that she would take the lead; Helen used his big white table to spread the drawings. “The police artist did these, but he’s not a patch on you, and we need more drawings. Would you do them?”

  He was in love with Leonie Coustain, but who could resist those wonderful eyes when they held pleading? Mark Sugarman swelled a little. “I’m clay in your hands,” he said, laughing. “Yes, I’ll do them.”

  “Now?” she wheedled.

  “Yes, now.” He walked across to shelves and supplies for a sketching block of thick, raggy paper, then filled an empty jar with pencils. “I’m ready. From here on, you have to direct me.”

  Helen looked over the drawings and found one, full face, that showed a dark-haired, dark-eyed man with a beaky nose.

  “This one first,” she said, disappointed when he took it to his drawing board and pinned it in the left-hand corner, then tore off a sheet of paper and fixed it to the center of the board with what looked like plasticine.

  “Oh, I can’t watch unless I move one of your tables.”

  “I forbid it. Sit there, at the bar. You’re as close now as I can bear. Do you want a better drawn copy?”

  “No, I want you to work with the bones of this face and do as I say.”

  “For you, Helen, that’s not difficult. Tell me.”

  “Make the nose straight and narrower, the mouth smaller but its lips fuller, and the brows more arched,” she said. “He needs to be twenty pounds lighter, whatever that would do to his face, and his coloring should be on the fair side.”

  Silence fell. The two women watched, fascinated, as the new face grew below the one in the top left-hand corner. Mark kept working, it seemed oblivious, until he sighed, stretched, and turned on his stool to face them.

  “Well? Is that what you want?”

  It was difficult to credit that the one drawing had its basis in the other; Mark’s version was handsomer in a Hollywood way, yet didn’t look like anyone they knew.

  “Shit,” said Helen, “I was sure I’d recognize him!”

  Mark had swung back toward the drawing board and was studying his work in a frowning concentration. “You know, girls, I am positive I’ve seen this guy somewhere,” he said. He continued to look for some minutes, but in the end sighed in defeat. “It beats me! I can’t place him.”

  Helen seized another drawing, of a fairer but fatter man. “Do you mind doing the same thing to him?”

  “Of course not. If it can help, I’ll feel that at least I did something for Leonie.”

  This progressed faster, as if the pencils, all sharpened, knew their route around the blank paper more unerringly. At the end, all three gasped.

  “It’s the same man!” Helen cried.

  “Definitely,” said Delia.

  “And I’m no farther ahead with my memory, girls. I know him, I know I know him! Where?”

  “A party?” Helen suggested.

  “Could be, though I can’t label him with a name, and every man at a Sugarman party is a friend, not an acquaintance.”

  “The mystery man who converses in a corner with victims?”

  “Is that—?” Mark shook his head. “No. It’s not unlike, but it’s not like either.”

  “Okay, let’s go through the Gentleman Walkers—the handsome ones,” Helen said. “Sorry you can’t help, Delia, but if you don’t mind sitting there, I think Mark and I ought to do that.”

  “I can help,” Delia said, going down on all fours to get at her huge briefcase. “I brought the relevant Gentlemen with me in photographic form.” She shook the case like a dog a hard pillow; pictures cascaded out. “It’s best if all three of us do this, because people’s ideas of beauty differ so much.”

  For a moment Delia thought Helen was going to have a temper tantrum, but good sense won; she laughed. “You are so right, Delia! I’m dying to see your idea of handsome!”

  A merry half hour ensued, at the end of which Mark adm
ired Delia’s choices more than he did Helen’s; since he qualified in both women’s listings, he couldn’t be dismissed as biased.

  “Your choices are all male models,” he tried to explain to an incensed Helen. “You have no place for subtleties like charm or kindness. To me, they illuminate a face to beauty, whether they’re men or women. I agree that Kurt von Fahlendorf is very handsome, but his face is Narcissus—no character.”

  “How can you say that, Mark?” Helen demanded aggressively. “Delia picked him too—and you did yourself! But to say he has no character—oh, that’s ridiculous! One day he’s likely to win a Nobel Prize, yet his colleagues love him! Ordinarily they hate the prize winners. If you saw him with his sister or mother—!”

  “That’s not what I mean, and I agree, he has to go down in every list of handsome men. It’s just that he’s not near the top of my list, any more than he is of Delia’s. I agree with you, Delia. Mason Novak every time, followed by Arnie Hedberg and Mike Donahue. Bill Mitski’s ahead of Kurt. I put Greg Pendleton up there as well.”

  “Oh, go take a running jump!” said Helen, pouting.

  “No need, Helen. None of the Gentlemen is my mystery man.”

  “Shit, triple shit!” said Helen.

  “Time to go, dear.” Delia turned to Mark and held out her hand, smiling. “Thank you so much for your patience, Mark. Um—may we take your drawings?”

  “Oh, burn them!” Helen snarled, and swept out.

  “She’s been spoiled,” said Mark, taking Delia’s briefcase and staggering. “Man, this weighs a ton! Funny,” he said as they waited for an elevator, “she got markedly nicer for a few weeks after she joined the Holloman PD. I’d begun to think that she had the makings of a wonderful woman.”

  “She still does.” Delia got in, Mark following. “I put her relapse down to disappointment at not shining as brightly as the sun at the end of some time period she’d set herself. She didn’t think her junior status would last. She’s been with us for ten weeks now, which I imagine is the length of her tether.”

  Mark loaded the briefcase into the Lamborghini’s trunk, and watched the car roar away.

  “Poor Helen!” he said, then went back inside Talisman Towers.

  Mason Novak was walking out. “Just the man I came around to see! How about lunch?”

  “As head of two ‘Who Is The Handsomest?’ polls, Mason, how could a mere eleventh on the list turn you down?”

  “Huh?”

  “Wait while I get a jacket, and I’ll tell you over lunch. It makes a marvelous story. Where are we going?”

  “Up-market, or down?”

  “Sea Foam, and I’ll pick up the check,” Mark said. “When the story’s as good as mine, we don’t need eavesdroppers.”

  Mason listened, entranced, then shouted with laughter. “My God! I don’t know whether to shiver with amusement or fear.”

  “Neither,” said Mark loyally.

  “I think a lot depends on whether Helen MacIntosh likes me, don’t you?”

  “She likes you fine, but it’s Kurt she has her eye on.”

  “Poor Kurt!” Mason said, real pity in his voice. “I’d hate to head any Helen MacIntosh list, from handsome to husband. Do you think Kurt fills both roles?”

  “I have no idea, and you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going to ask.”

  ***

  I hate this year! thought Carmine as he trudged up the stairs to his office. Between Fernando Vasquez, M.M., John Silvestri and my own limitations, I haven’t managed to get out into the field nearly as much as I want to. Delia and Nick can manage fine, but that’s no consolation. I keep getting flashes of insight that go nowhere, one of my lieutenants is in a state of covert rebellion, and I have a rapist-murderer uncaught after ten months. Not to mention a glass teddy bear that’s a museum piece and a bank robber cum vandal who seems to have disappeared in a puff of smoke. My wife’s moving away from me into an ideal world where she can see her sons grow up untainted by violence, I haven’t set eyes on my pre-med daughter since she started at Paracelsus, and Myron isn’t visiting.

  “What have I done wrong?” he asked Patrick O’Donnell later.

  The blue eyes twinkled. “Nothing, cuz, nothing! You’ve hit a patch of doldrums, is all. Until the wind fills your sails again, you just have to sit becalmed.”

  “I wouldn’t mind, except that I’m missing something, Patsy. Every time I think I’ve sunk my teeth into the Dodo, a distraction intrudes—Vasquez with some new scheme, or John in need of yet another report, or, or, or!” Carmine said passionately.

  “I know the feeling. Now that I’m fifty-seven, John wants to know whether I’m going for retirement at sixty or sixty-five—how the hell do I know yet? A lot depends on Ness, whether she retires at sixty. We’re the same age, our kids are grown and off our hands—work fills our lives, damn it!”

  Carmine knew that his cousin’s decision rested ultimately on whether he felt the empire he had built was built on solid foundations. When he had begun as Medical Examiner, forensics were virtually non-existent; now it occupied more floor space and staff than necrology, and more of his time too. And it kept expanding as new discoveries were made. Had Patsy prepared for them sufficiently? Would sixty-five be better?

  “How’s Desdemona?” Patrick asked.

  “Recovering from the depression, but now she’s got a new bogey—sons and guns,” Carmine said.

  “Oh, that one! Maybe you should send her to talk to Ness. Even primary school has its share of gun worries, but they have to be put into perspective. There’s a huge cultural gap too.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know! But actually it’s not Desdemona worrying me as much as my detectives. When a man eats his gun, it’s the culmination of a whole slew of problems that ought never to have been allowed get that far. Or that big. Any fool can see that, yet Corey refuses to—and he’s no fool! I can’t trust him to see what’s under his nose in foot-high letters.”

  Patrick opened a filing cabinet drawer and removed a full bottle. 200ml beakers made great glasses, there was a carboy of distilled water, and every laboratory had an ice machine.

  “The sun’s been over the yard arm for hours, and John does not rule here. You’ve been in that uniform for days, so don’t refuse me.” He put a clinking beaker in Carmine’s hand.

  “I have no intention of refusing. Cheers!”

  “Cheers! The trouble with Corey, cuz, is that the canker eating at him you can’t remove—Maureen the snake, Maureen the scorpion. I hear he was reprimanded.”

  “Rumor does not lie. Unfortunately Maureen was planning on a move to police captain some place other than Holloman. Well, the reprimand kills any hope of that, which is good for Corey.”

  “I agree. He couldn’t thrive out of his home town. Is he cooking any more reprimands?”

  “It depends whose side you want to take in his little team war. Buzz Genovese says there are still weapons at Taft High, but Corey is adamant there aren’t. I gave Corey Nick Jefferson and Delia, but he wouldn’t use them until I told him in person. He thinks I’ve planted them as spies.”

  “Jesus, he’s paranoid! As if you’d ever do that. You’re quite capable of doing your own dirty work.” Patrick put his beaker down. “Corey has to go, Carmine, you realize that. He’s running a personal agenda and sees you as his enemy.”

  “I know, but I haven’t worked out how to do it. Nor, more importantly has the Commissioner. We won’t lose another man by a cop suicide, but there are other ways. Corey’s not capable of looking after his men properly.”

  “Have you talked to John about it?”

  “Only briefly.”

  “Time to sit down with John and get it all out in the open, cuz. If anyone has a solution, it will be John Silvestri.”

  “I can’t be sure how he’ll react
, Patsy. He might jump too brutally. He’s capable of great mercy and sympathy, but also of putting a man’s head on the chopping block.”

  “When he decapitates, the circumstances are different. Corey is a seventeen-year veteran who’s spent his whole cop career in the Holloman PD. The mercy and sympathy will be there. He knows dear sweet Maureen, just like the rest of us. Nasty bitch!”

  “I guess you’re right.” Carmine drained his beaker and stood. “Thanks, Patsy. I’ll lay everything out for John scrupulously.”

  ***

  On his way across the building, Carmine looked at his watch. Six o’clock. Too late for Desdemona to salvage her dinner, but early enough to put parts of it in the refrigerator. He disliked destroying her work, but he had a job to do that couldn’t wait.

  She behaved, as always, like the perfect policeman’s wife. “Never mind, my love,” she said over the phone, “it was only a beef roast. Prunella and I will have some tonight, and the rest can go into a shepherd’s pie tomorrow. What flavor would you like the minced beef to have? Curry? Italian? Plain old Limey? I’d top a curry or an Italian one with risotto, an English one with mashed potatoes.”

  “English,” he said promptly. “How’s the kids?”

  “Like runner beans—I can almost see them growing. Oh, I do hope they don’t shoot to seven feet!”

  “So do I. That means custom-made beds, mattresses, sheets, blankets, watching for round shoulders and sway backs—”

  “Carmine, stop! They might inherit their height from you.”

  “Well, we’re not short. I’m five-eleven, my pa was six-one, and the Ceruttis are taller than the Delmonicos. Whether you like it or not, wife, our sons will play basketball.”

  “Rather that than American football! Wake me up when you come to bed, please.”

  And that was that. He phoned Malvolio’s and got Luigi.

  “Do you ever go home, Luigi?” he asked, suddenly curious.

  “Home is Malvolio’s. I live upstairs anyway.”

  “Jesus! How long have I known you?”

  “Um … 1950 or thereabouts, Carmine.”