Too Many Murders (32 page)

“He is these days,” Carmine said, leaning forward in his chair. “All of a sudden, Mr. Kelly, you and I are hunting the selfsame predator. I’ve known for some time that my killer is your Ulysses. No, it’s not a guess. It’s fact.” He glanced at his railroad clock. “Got a spare half hour?”

“Sure.”

“Then I’ll hang out the Do Not Disturb signs.”

This consisted in closing his doors and routing all his calls through Delia. Then Carmine returned to his desk and told Ted Kelly why he knew that Ulysses had murdered eleven people who sat down to enjoy a charity banquet five months ago.

“So you see,” he concluded, “it may end in our getting hard evidence not of espionage but of murder. Is that going to be a problem for the FBI?”

“Anything but,” Special Agent Ted Kelly said. “Learning there are spies inside the city gates is very alarming for the general populace. You’re welcome to the glory. I’ll slink back to Washington happily looking like a fool. That way, I’m in good shape for the next traitor.”

“I’m not after glory!” Carmine snapped.

“I know, but if we catch the fucker, someone has to shine and it can’t be me. All I can say is, if you do catch him—no,
when
you catch him!—he can’t ever be let out of prison.”

“He won’t have done anything to warrant a federal trial or a federal prison,” Carmine said, “and Connecticut is a liberal-minded state. None of us can predict what some fool parole board of the future might decide. They’re always stacked with idealists.”

Kelly rose to his immense height and held out his hand to shake Carmine’s warmly. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “His parole board will be stacked with believers in recidivism. I forgive you for calling me a cunt. I behaved atrociously.”

“In public,” Carmine said, steering him toward the outer door, “we continue the pretense—flattened ears, bared teeth and snarls every time we meet. What, by the way, was on the film you took from the telescope camera?”

“Nothing worth reporting on,” Kelly said. “Just Holloman Harbor’s shoreline from the Long Island ferry wharf clear to the point beyond East Holloman. Tide in, tide out. We figured it might have had something to do with a meeting or a drop.”

There was no one in the hall; Special Agent Ted Kelly went down it in three long strides and vanished into the stairwell. As soon as he had gone, Carmine went to see Delia.

“Our federal turkey is no turkey,” he said, grinning. “He’s an eagle, but if you catch sight of his wingspan while he’s in turkey mode, he’ll convince you he’s really a buzzard.”

“A very strange bird,” said Delia solemnly.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Not a sausage. Abe and Corey have exhausted their lists of those who might have sat at Peter Norton’s table, without any responses. I daresay people simply forget. No, don’t go! The Commissioner wants to see you. Now, he shouted. I fear Uncle John is not in a good mood.”

If the expression on Commissioner Silvestri’s face was an indication, “not in a good mood” was putting it mildly. Carmine stood to take his medicine.

“What’s the bastard going to do next?” Silvestri asked.

An innocuous question; he was going to be oblique. “That depends on whether he was in my boat shed himself or not.”

“Why?”

“The assistant is extremely valuable, yes, sir, but expendable
nonetheless. My feeling is that he stayed in the Bat Cave and sent Robin to my boat shed.”

“Slimy rodent! How’s Desdemona?”

“No different than she was the last time you asked, sir.” Carmine looked at his watch. “That was an hour ago.”

“And your mother?” Silvestri asked, squirming in his seat.

“Ditto.”

“I hear Myron’s managed to get Erica Davenport’s body out of police custody and is flying her to L.A. for burial.”

Carmine eyed his boss curiously. “Where did you hear that?”

A look of discomfort came over the Commissioner’s face. “I—uh—I was talking to him.”

“Phone or flesh?” Carmine asked warily.

“Phone. Sit down, man, sit down!”

His wariness growing, Carmine sat. “Spit it out, John!”

“That’s no way to speak to your superior.”

“My patience is finite,
sir
.”

“I guess you know how important Myron is?”

“I do,” said Carmine, waiting for it.

“The thing is, he’s buzzing around in Hartford like a wasp inside a pair of shorts.”

“Angry, pushy and trapped.”

“Those, plus a lot else. He wants Erica Davenport’s murder put as our number one priority, and the Governor thinks that’s appropriate, given the publicity.”

“Myron leaked the story himself,” Carmine said.

“Yeah, well, we all know that. But the Governor wants him buzzing somewhere far away from Hartford. He’s got this bee in his bonnet—”

“Wasps, now bees. Just tell me!”

“I’m sending you to London to investigate Dr. Davenport’s time there as a student.” Silvestri coughed. “An anonymous benefactor has donated funds to send your wife and baby with you because of the recent attempt on their lives. Hartford has made a special grant to
fund your own trip,” Silvestri ended, shutting his eyes on the gathering storm.

There were only two ways to go. One would ruin his entire day, the other would at least allow him to vent some kind of emotion. Carmine chose the other, and laughed until he cried.

“Fuck a duck!” He gasped, clutching his sides. “I can’t go to London, I just can’t! The minute I’m away, all hell will break loose. Surely you can see that, John?”

“Of course I can! And I said so! But I may as well have saved my breath. This investigation is being run as a political football, thanks to Myron Mandelbaum.”

“He means well, but he should butt out of what he doesn’t understand. His trouble is that he tends to see life as a movie—everything happens at the speed of light and no one pauses to think. An odyssey to London won’t help me find a killer or a spy, but it might let him get away.” Carmine groaned.

“I know, I know.”

“Did Hartford lay down any conditions? Like, how long I have to stay away?”

“Considering strains on the budget, I’d think the quicker you’re back, the better. The anonymous benefactor can’t bankroll a public servant.”

“Any bets?”

“How can I help?” Silvestri asked.

“Run interference with Hartford for me. It’s Desdemona and Julian preying on Myron’s mind, so if I come back in a couple of days, I’ll have to leave them in London for a few days more. If I can find the name of someone who can tell me about Erica’s time there before I leave Holloman, it will help. I can fly back as soon as I’ve milked the thing dry,” Carmine said.

“Delia! Put her on finding that name, Carmine.”

“She’s the one should be going to England.”

“Yeah, yeah, I agree, but Myron wouldn’t. However,” said the Commissioner, looking conspiratorial, “we might be able to throw
some dust in everybody’s eyes. Don’t tell a soul where you’re going, just give it out that you’re moving your family out of Holloman for a while, and drive off to JFK as if you’re going to L.A. I’ll talk to Myron and put the fear of a Catholic Hell in his Jewish soul. He’s to tell everyone that Desdemona and Julian are going to stay with him. It makes sense, so I doubt you’ll be tailed to the airport, at least as far as the departure gates. That way, if you can finish London in two or three days, no one will get too cocky at your absence.”

In the end only Delia and John Silvestri knew where Carmine took his wife and son two days later. After some thought he also decided to confide in Ted Kelly, who could bumble around Cornucopia telling all and sundry that Carmine had gone to L.A. and could arrive back on the next plane if things got out of hand.

Desdemona was relieved and excited, explaining to the women of Carmine’s family that she was looking forward to revisiting the place where she had honeymooned: Myron’s Hampton Court Palace. That gentleman’s lavish hand was everywhere, Carmine discovered; they were picked up at their house by a limousine that had enough space in its nether regions to hold a small party, and whisked onto their 707 aircraft without joining the crush of people waiting to board. Though Carmine objected that his own ticket was economy even if his wife and son were traveling first class, he was put next to them in first class because, the chief hostess said smoothly, he had been upgraded. It didn’t escape his notice that the rest of the first-class passengers shuddered to see an infant and popped extra pills to ensure that they slept through a wailing baby. They needn’t have bothered, he thought with an inward grin; Julian enjoyed the experience, wincing as ascent and descent altered the pressure on his eardrums, but not howling. To him it must be small potatoes after Holloman Harbor.

“I prefer a train,” said Desdemona, thoroughly bored.

Myron had put them in the Hilton, clever enough to know that London’s luxury hotels were not well endowed with big elevators,
level floors, high doorways and vast beds; Desdemona needed room, especially in an elevator with a baby buggy. Thus, the Hilton.

It wasn’t his first visit to London by any means, and Delia had given Carmine a name: Professor Hugh Lefevre. She had even arranged an appointment for him: eleven the next morning, at the professor’s residence in St. John’s Wood. Apparently Dr. Lefevre didn’t care to eat out at a restaurant, even an expensive one; Carmine could have a cup of tea, he told Delia.

Expecting some degree of affluence, Carmine trod a street of conjoined houses, rather dilapidated, faintly Georgian, each with a flight of dirty steps leading up to a front door alongside which was a panel of handwritten names. He found his house, went up its steps and discovered that H. Lefevre lived in 105, up a dingy staircase in a dingy hall. There was no bell connection, and 105 of course was not the ground floor. A glance at his watch informed him that he was on time, so he bounded up the dark stairs onto a landing with five doors. His was the back one, would look down on whatever passed for a yard behind the house. He knocked.

“Enter!” said a voice.

Sure enough, the knob turned and the door opened. Carmine stepped into a large room lit only by two windows and the grace of a heavily overcast day. Like the whole house, it was dingy. The wallpaper had faded and peeled, the thick velvet curtains were stained, and the furniture, a mixture of styles, was chipped and battered if wooden or oozing stuffing if upholstered. Books lay everywhere, including a wall of shelves. The desk was piled with papers, and a small manual typewriter sat on a low table to one side of the desk chair, which rotated to face it or the desk.

A man standing by one window turned to face Carmine as he advanced with hand extended to his host, who shook it.

“Professor Lefevre?”

“That is I. Be seated, Captain Delmonico.”

“Whereabouts, sir?”

“There will do. Where the light falls on your face. Hmm! Women
must make utter fools of themselves over you. It’s a New World look—America, Australia, South Africa—makes no difference. The Old World look is softer, less blatantly masculine.”

“I haven’t noticed any women making utter fools of themselves over me,” Carmine said, smiling easily. It was a good technique, flattering him yet making him uncomfortable. Well, two can play at that game, Professor. He gazed about, seeming puzzled. “Is this the best England can do for a full professor?” he asked.

“I am a Communist, Captain. It is not a part of my ethic to submerge myself in comfort when so many people know none.”

“But your private way of life can’t benefit them, sir.”

“That is not the point! The point is that I
choose
to live in a spartan fashion to display my ethic to people like you, who do live in comfort. I imagine your house has every luxury.”

Carmine laughed. “I wouldn’t say every luxury, just those that mean my wife doesn’t have to drudge nor my child know the horror of monotony.”

Ah, a hit! Professor Hugh Lefevre stiffened in his chair, no easy feat for one being devoured by arthritis. Twenty years ago when Erica Davenport had been his student, he must have had a certain attraction for women, been tall, probably moved with languid grace and enjoyed his handsomeness, a thing of straight thin nose, black brows and lashes, a wealth of black hair worn long, and cornflower blue eyes. The remnants of it still showed, but pain and an unnecessary degree of hardship had chewed away at him, outside as well as inside. Warm air, decent food and some help keeping house would have held his diseases at bay. But no, Carmine thought, he had an ethic, and now, when I said “the horror of monotony” to him, he reacted like a steer to a goad.

“What do you do with your money?” Carmine asked, curious.

“Donate it to the Communist Party.”

“Where, in all likelihood, some lip-service member uses it to live in comfort.”

“It is not so! We are all believers.”

Time to stop annoying him. Carmine leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Professor, I don’t mean to denigrate you or your ideals. My secretary told you—I’m glad you have a phone, by the way—that I need some background on Dr. Erica Davenport, who was one of your students, as I understand it.”

“Ah, Erica!” the old man said, smiling to reveal bad teeth. “Why should I answer your questions? Is there a new McCarthy in the Senate? Is she being persecuted by your capitalist government? You’ve had a wasted trip, Captain.”

“Erica Davenport is dead. She was murdered in a particularly brutal way, after a torture that consisted of breaking all the bones in her arms and legs,” Carmine said steadily. “I’m not a capitalist tool, I’m simply the homicide detective assigned to investigate her death. Her political views are not my concern. Her murder is.”

Lefevre wept a little in the easy way of the old; too many cracks develop in the emotional dam wall as the years go by, Carmine thought. And the old man had felt something for her.

“Just tell me what she was like twenty years ago, sir.”

“Like?” The faded blue eyes widened. “Like the sun, the stars! Ablaze with life and enthusiasm, champing at the bit to change the world. We were all very left at the L.S.E.—in fact, we were famous for it. She arrived already indoctrinated to some extent, so to finish the process was easy. When I discovered that she spoke fluent Russian, I understood her future importance. I allowed her to think she had seduced me, then I went to work to—I believe the phrase is, ‘turn her.’ Naturally Moscow was interested, especially after I learned how able and intelligent she was. The chance to insert a sleeper in some huge American business enterprise was too good to miss. But she began to dither—demur, even.”