The Cold Blue Blood: A Berger and Mitry Mystery

by David Handler

  All of which was true. Except that white males who were chasing the bad guys got at least seventy-two hours before the heavy leaning started. And she was only getting forty-eight. And it was not fair. And it was not right. And, God, she was so tired of their little boy crap. But she did not want to go running to the Deacon about it. She could not. Must not.

  As Des sat there stroking the page with her charcoal, she noticed a human figure inching its way in her direction over the rocks and tide pools, subtly altering the composition of her drawing. As the figure got closer she realized it was Mitch Berger, looking a bit like an old-time lobsterman as he slogged along in his heavy dark blue sweater and green rubber wading boots. What was it Bella called him—a shlub? He was not a graceful man, for damned sure. He lumbered, his arms held out to his side. When he paused on the slippery rocks to wave at her, he lost his balance and nearly fell over. It also happened he was one truly awful guitar player. No ear. She wondered why she had talked so openly with him when they’d walked on the beach together. She supposed it was because he was observant and bright, because he was not one of them.

  No, that wasn’t it. She’d talked to him because she wanted to talk to him. Could not, in fact, shut up. It wasn’t like Des to confide in a civilian. And her candor may have been ill-advised. Because she had no reason to believe she could trust this chubby, sad-eyed man. None. She’d have to be more careful.

  She watched him now as he made his way across the rocks and trudged up onto the island-side entrance to the bridge. He was heading right for her. She closed her sketch pad and stashed it under her seat. She wiped her hands clean on a tissue. She rolled down her window.

  “Morning, Lieutenant!” he called out to her, pink-cheeked and slightly winded from his morning hike. “How’s your cold today?”

  “I told you—I don’t get colds, Mr. Berger. How’s Baby Spice?” she asked, taking note of the tiny scratches all over his hands.

  “You mean Clemmie? She slept like a baby. Made her first foray downstairs at around four A.M. Came right back up. Used her litter box like a champ. Chased this wadded-up piece of paper around for a while. Then climbed up on my chest and and went right back to … Hey, what are you laughing at?”

  “A man who said he didn’t want a cat.”

  “I’m still not sure,” he insisted. “This is strictly a trial.”

  “Uh-hunh.”

  “May I see it?” he asked her anxiously.

  “See what?”

  “Your sketch.”

  Damn. She had charcoal under her fingernail again. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He peered at her curiously. “You’ve never shown them to anyone, have you?” On her tight silence he added, “You’re afraid to, is that it?” Not accusing her. His voice was very gentle.

  “Like I said, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Lieutenant. We’re all afraid of something.”

  “Is that right? What are you afraid of?”

  “Spending the rest of my life alone.”

  “You think I’m afraid I’m not talented, is that it?”

  “No, I think you’re afraid that you are.”

  She shook her head at him, baffled. “Man, your mind’s on vacation and your mouth’s working overtime.”

  Mitch Berger said nothing to that. Just continued to peer at her with his wounded puppy eyes. She was absolutely positive at that particular moment that he could read her mind.

  “Do you know a lot about art?” she asked him guardedly.

  “I know talent when I see it. That’s my talent. And my job. And I’d really love to see your stuff.”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  “Because I’d like to see what you do to please you, rather than to please everyone else.”

  “Okay, now I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Suit yourself. I thought maybe we were becoming friends. No, hunh?” He let out an unhappy sigh. “Too bad, because you’re my idea of a real first-class individual. But I’ll just have to tell Bud he was wrong. See, when he saw us together on the beach he thought we were. Friends, I mean. Which is why he asked me to give you a message.”

  It turned out that Mitch Berger had something for her about Dolly’s missing money: Havenhurst had it. He’d quietly squirreled it away on her behalf, fearing that Seymour was about to grab it and run. Or so Havenhurst claimed.

  “He figured you’d get on to it real soon,” Mitch Berger added. “And possibly get the wrong idea.”

  “Or possibly get the right one.”

  “Meaning what?” he asked, frowning at her.

  Damn. She was doing it again. “Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.”

  “I’m becoming one of them now. I’ve been to the club. I’ve been sailing. I own boating shoes. Soon, I’ll even have my own schoolboy nickname. What do you think of Boopy? Does that suit me?” On her mocking silence he acknowledged, “I’m not really. I could live here for fifty years and to them I’d still be the Jewboy from New York. I think it’s more a case of them circling the wagons—you’re either with us or you’re against us. And I guess they’d much rather have me with them.” He stood there for a moment, leaning his generous flank against her car. “How well do you know Resident Trooper Bliss?”

  “We have a decent working relationship. Why?”

  Mitch Berger hesitated, choosing his words carefully now. “Is there any chance he’s involved?”

  “He’s been helpful to me, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It isn’t,” he said heavily.

  “Exactly what are you trying to tell me?”

  “Bliss was out on the island that day I got locked in my crawl space. One of the islanders saw him. It’s possible that he’s the one who did it to me.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  Now Mitch Berger was the one who fell silent.

  Des considered this for a moment. Tal Bliss was an old friend of Dolly Seymour. A seasoned veteran at cleaning up local messes. Was there any chance he had tried to clean up this one? That he knew more than he had let on? Was there any chance at all?

  Of course, there was.

  “Don’t you have a movie review or something you should be working on?” she grumbled at him.

  “I was planning to take the train into New York this morning, actually,” he said. “Have to screen a couple of new mega-movies. Will that be okay?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “I thought you might say ‘Don’t leave town.’ Or words to that effect.”

  “If I need to find you, I believe I can.”

  He grinned at her. “Was that a dare?”

  “No, it was an honest response to your inquiry.”

  “The key to the front door of my cottage is under the boot scraper,” he informed her.

  “You just said what?”

  “Well, I can’t take Clemmie with me, can I?”

  “Noo …”

  “Of course, I can’t—she’s just getting acclimated. And you’ll be around the island, right? So I thought you could look in on her later. Make sure she’s all right. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Okay?”

  Reluctantly, Des said, “Okay.” Then she removed her billfold from the inside pocket of her blazer, dug out one of her business cards and handed it to him. “You happen to find out anything else, you can reach me at these numbers. Any hour, day or night. The one on the bottom’s my pager number.”

  “Okay, sure,” he said, tucking it into his pocket. “You coming out?” He meant to the island.

  “In a while.”

  “Later, then, Lieutenant.” He started away from her car and stopped. “Oh, there was one other thing …”

  “What is it, Mr. Berger?” she asked wearily.

  He grinned at her. “I still can’t get you to call me Mitch, can I?”

  “What is it, Mr. Berger?” she repeated, louder this time.

  “Okay, okay … I d
on’t buy a married man like Niles Seymour stashing a girl like Torry Mordarski at the Saybrook Point Inn. It’s no place for a secret tryst. If anything, it’s a place to go if you want to be seen. It doesn’t add up. Not if they were trying to keep their affair under wraps.”

  Des did not say a word to that. She did not say that the same exact thing had occurred to her when she was there. She just nodded and watched him go tromping back out to the island on the wooden bridge.

  When he’d made it about halfway across Mitch Berger paused to wave to her. She raised a hand in grudging response. She was still trying to decide just exactly what he’d meant when he called her a “real first-class individual.” She didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. All she knew was that he was no slouch himself. Bachelor’s degree from Columbia. Master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School. And his late wife had been Park Avenue all the way—the Brearley School, Bennington, Harvard Graduate School of Design.

  Watching him disappear, Des realized that her hands were trembling and her stomach was in knots. Which was her body’s own unique way of telling her it had just been in close physical contact with someone of surging hormonal interest. Surprised and aghast, Des lunged for her sketch pad. Propped it against her steering wheel. Stared out at the island.

  Draw what you see, not what you know.

  Des took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Eyes tightly shut, she drew.

  CHAPTER 9

  A REAL FIRST-CLASS INDIVIDUAL?!

  Jesus, how had he said anything so clumsy and idiotic? As Mitch trudged his way back toward his little house on Big Sister, he could not imagine. It sounded like something straight out of the file on an NBA draft prospect, under the category of character: A real first-class individual. What on earth had he been thinking? He’d wanted to cheer the lieutenant up, that’s what. She’d seemed down. He was trying to say something positive. But he hadn’t wanted it to sound too sexually or racially conscious. And somehow he had gotten all tangled up and, and, bam, out came the scouting report.

  I do not know how to talk to people anymore. I am a butthead. I should be locked up.

  As he made his way along the gravel drive past Bud and Mandy’s house he came upon Mandy, who was busy using a rag to wipe off the pea-green coating of tree pollen and early-morning dew that had formed, paste-like, on the windshield of her MG. Her efforts afforded Mitch a superb view of her taut, quivering behind, which was snugly encased in a skin-tight pair of designer jeans.

  Mandy wore a suede shirt and pair of backless sandals with her jeans. When she turned at the sound of his footsteps on the gravel, her unlined face broke into a bright, sunny smile of even white teeth and gleaming blue eyes. “Mitch, good morning!”

  “Good morning back at you, Mandy. You’re certainly up early.”

  “Well, so are you, sir.”

  “I’m off to New York for the day.”

  In response, she clapped her manicured hands together like a gleeful little girl. “Oh, good! That’s what I figured.”

  Mitch frowned. “You did?”

  “Absolutely. Why else would you be up and out before dawn? I am, too. Going in to the city today. Assuming it’s okay with that black girl.”

  “Do you mean the lieutenant?”

  “Well, yeah,” Mandy said, squinting at the unmarked cruiser that was parked out on the bridge. “Why is she just sitting out there like that anyway? Is she spying on us?” Mandy suddenly seemed very tense, very paranoid. “I find it incredibly inappropriate. This island is supposed to be private. We’re not supposed to have strangers matching us.” Just as abruptly, she relaxed, smiling at him warmly. “You should never wear anything but navy blue, Mitch. That sweater makes you look so handsome and trim.”

  Trim?! Yeah, right. Move over, David Duchovny.

  Mitch shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly very uneasy. Because at the sound of their voices Bud had appeared in the window of his little house. He was watching them. He was watching his lovely and volatile trophy bride talk to an available younger man. Mandy’s back was toward the house—was she aware that Bud was standing there, listening in?

  Of course, she was. That was why she’d said what she said.

  “You’re very kind, Mandy,” Mitch finally responded. “No one has called me trim since I was … well, come to think of it no one’s ever called me trim.”

  Now she let out a laugh, a delicious, cascading laugh that was sure to carry halfway across the island.

  “It shouldn’t be a problem,” Mitch spoke up. “You going in to the city today, I mean. The lieutenant said it would be okay if I did.”

  “Well, that settles it, then,” Mandy concluded with a happy toss of her long blond hair. “Which train are you taking in? We can ride in together.”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I have to do some paperwork before I go. Actually, you’d better not count on me. Just take the train you were going to take. If we run into each other, great.”

  Mandy’s plump lips formed a pout. “I sure hope we will.”

  “So do I,” said Mitch, as Bud continued to watch them through the window. But not if I can help it. Because there was something profoundly unsettling about this woman. Something that was alluring at the same time that it was frightening. Mandy Havenhurst was clearly accustomed to doing whatever she wanted to whomever she wanted and getting away with it. That gave her an air of recklessness, of danger. The Sharon Stone factor, they called it in Hollywood. Playing with fire, they called it in real life. Guaranteed to stir up the blood. And to make Mitch ask himself questions like: Was it by chance that she’d been out here cleaning her windshield? Or had she spotted him coming across the bridge and purposely bumped into him? Questions like: Was it a coincidence that they were both going to New York today? Or was she going in because he was going in? If so, why?

  “What takes you to town, Mitch?” she asked him now. An innocent enough question. So why didn’t it sound innocent?

  “I have a couple of movies to screen. And you?”

  “Personal day,” she replied. “Nothing but pampering. A massage and facial, my hair, fingers, my toes, a new black dress at Bendel’s … I want to look nice for the funeral tomorrow. Bud is furious about it, you know,” she said, leaning a slender flank against her sports car.

  “Why is that?” Mitch asked, wondering how much of this Bud could hear. All of it, he figured.

  “He doesn’t think Niles should be buried in the Peck family plot.”

  “That’s Dolly’s decision to make, isn’t it? She’s the Peck.”

  “Just what I said,” Mandy agreed. “She’s the Peck. But Bud doesn’t see it that way. I think he figured that when the time came he would be the one buried next to Dolly. Which, if you stop and think about it, should make me really angry.”

  “Does it?”

  “Not really,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t think about what happens after we’re all gone. Hell, I don’t even think about tomorrow. Just about now. He’s also pissed that Dolly wants to foot the bill for Tuck Weems’s funeral. Apparently it was just Tuck and some teenaged slut he was living with, and she has zero money. Are you staying over in the city tonight?”

  Again, it was an innocent enough question. Yet, somehow, coming from Mandy it was tinged with the promise of illicit, athletic sex. “I’d planned to, yes,” Mitch replied.

  “Me, too. We should get together tonight. Do you like Thai food?”

  “I do. Very much.”

  “Great! I know a place on Spring Street that will positively blow your doors off. And afterward we can go listen to some jazz.”

  “God, I’d love to. But I have a pretty tight schedule tonight. A screening, followed by dinner with my editor. Can’t do it. Sorry.”

  She frowned at Mitch prettily. “If I were a bit more insecure I’d think you were blowing me off.”

  “Not at all,” he said. Which was not, in fact, completely true. He could have invited her to the screening with him. The invites we
re always for two. So why wasn’t he inviting her? Simple. Because she was trouble. And her husband was watching her every move. And he was not going to get involved in whatever game the two of them were playing.

  “Well, maybe next time,” she said wistfully.

  “That would be great,” Mitch said.

  Now was when Bud decided to officially show himself. The lawyer came scuffing out the front door toward them in his silk bathrobe and slippers, smiling tightly at Mitch. Bud’s hair was rumpled and he was unshaven. Young men, in Mitch’s critical opinion, tended to look more virile when they were unshaven. Not so Bud. The grizzled white stubble on his chin belonged to an aging pensioner. So did the chalky residue of dried saliva that was caked to his lips like Spackle. “Hey, boy!” he called to Mitch in a phlegmy voice. “You’re up early.”

  “We’re both going to New York today, sugar,” Mandy informed him. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Yes, it is,” Bud said, peering at Mitch long and hard. Mitch peered right back at him. The man looked positively ten years older this morning. Also ten times more desperate. His face seemed hollow-eyed and gaunt, his gaze uncertain—even fearful. It was getting to him. The thin ice he was skating on was definitely getting to him. “Take good care of her, Mitch. And of yourself.”

  “I always try to,” Mitch assured him.

  “Make certain that you do.” Now there was a degree of urgency in Bud’s voice. “I don’t believe those numbers, you know.”

  “Which numbers?”

  “The ones that say that crime is down in New York. I think the people who came up with those are the same ones who keep telling us that inflation is under control. If it is, then why does the price of everything keep going up? Do you know what I’m saying, Mitch?”

  Mitch scratched his head. “Not exactly, Bud. No.”

  “I’m saying that New York can still be a dangerous, dangerous place,” Bud asserted, his voice rising. The man’s fists, Mitch observed, were tightly clenched. “Watch yourself, my young friend. I’d hate to see anything happen to you. It would be a shame. A damned shame.”