American Sextet

by Warren Adler

  For the first time since he had begun the adventure, he felt the pressure of time.

  On the evening of the Czech's assignation, Jason sat in his car outside of the townhouse to make sure the man wasn't being followed. From his vantage, he had an excellent view of the quiet street. He could see the windows of the apartment and he'd instructed her to keep the lights off and watch the headlights of his car. If she saw them go on or heard the motor start, she was not, under any circumstances, to buzz open the front door.

  In order to keep this vigil, he had to miss an important meeting of the Fairfax County Council, although he had made arrangements to have it covered by one of the reporters from a weekly paper, a chancy business at best. To do this was a violation of all his professional instincts.

  He looked at his watch. The ambassador was nearly fifteen minutes late, which he attributed to the inefficiency of the communist system. It also gave him second thoughts about the chance he was taking. It could ruin everything. Perhaps it was a sign to abort the whole idea. He grew increasingly impatient as he watched people pass, hurrying homeward. He observed each person carefully, watching for signs of surveillance as well. An old man walked haltingly down the street, slightly bent and unsteady. The man carried a paper bag in his arms as he meandered in his direction. Ignorning him, Jason turned his attention to the rearview mirror to check the other end of the street. When he looked back he noticed that the street was suddenly deserted.

  At the same time he saw that the lights had come on in the apartment, giving him a brief glimpse of Dorothy as she drew the draperies.

  "Son of a bitch," he muttered. It was the old man...

  He'd obviously evaded the American security system. Too bad it would be a futile victory, he thought with delight as he gunned the motor and moved out of the parking space.

  But, by God, they had bagged themselves an ambassador.

  IX

  Love had split Fiona into two persons. One of them was coldly rational, a sensitive observer, relentlessly self-critical, a brutally honest judge of the other. That other was preposterous, adolescent, sickeningly romantic, capable of violent mood swings from glorious euphoria to extreme anxiety and depression.

  Even now as she lay embraced in Clint's arms, one could not resist ridiculing the other. The absurd other had let this man materialize beside her at 6 A.M., fresh from his legitimate marriage bed. They had always avoided any references to sex in connection with his wife, as if by evading the subject they might deny its existence.

  She wondered how many other Washington mistresses allowed such an early morning assignation to occur. It did not, after all, interfere with one's work day. He could pop off to his office and, after a long day, a stalwart hard-working husband and father could return to the legal nest, still master of his kingdom. For some reason, too, mornings did not induce the heavy angst of an evening tryst, as if the day still held the promise of a resolution in favor of true love.

  True love! The sensible part of her berated the other part for letting herself get caught in the coils of such hopeless folderol. If there was a shred of individuality and backbone in the other just moments before he would arrive, it would quickly disintegrate under his warm kiss. Soon he would be naked beside her, showering her with kisses, loving her body as well as her soul. (This other put a very high premium on spirituality.) At this moment of his arrival, she was the object of a formidable attack on all her vulnerabilities. The sensible one could only observe and try to understand. Not that it mattered--the other, the wild one, soared on waves of selfish pleasure.

  Because he was the dissimulator, she had to accommodate herself to his meandering schedule, knowing it could only be worked around the rhythm of his married life. This made his wife, the formidable and mysterious Ann, the true manipulator of their time together. That humiliation alone was enough to revolt her sensible self, fill her with shame and humiliation and curse her fate as the natural twin of the other.

  "You're wonderful," Clint told her. "A gift."

  "And you my darling."

  "I love you."

  "I love you."

  Under normal circumstances, they could thrash around together until nearly eight. Then a somewhat pale and enervated Clint would shower and dress and be off to face his morning's duties. She wondered if anyone in his office ever noticed his temporary exhaustion. For her part, she would rise after he had gone, energized and rosy-cheeked, ready to take on a thousand eggplants and whatever strenuous assignments the day had to offer. Unfortunately, the pain of forced separation was getting worse now that their meetings had become a ritualized pattern, like getting one's meals at a set hour.

  That morning she had to confine their lovemaking to a mere hour, although she didn't explain her physical greed until it was time to hop out of bed. Yet even in that time frame she managed to induce his usual orgasmic quota, three, an accomplishment that never failed to make him marvel at his masculine prowess. Even that had become a part of the ritual, an expectation that seemed beyond their control, as if their desire for each other needed tangible validation.

  The eggplant had called an eight o'clock meeting of the entire homicide squad. The teenage killer had struck again. More significant was the fact that the new killing had taken place while the Marine suspect had been in custody.

  Nor was there time to dwell on the more important question between them. Had he told Ann? And if he had, what then? It was the impermanence of it as well that had begun to unravel her. Despite her liberation, she discovered that, like all good Irish girls, she really wanted to be married. That revelation grew more and more powerful with its denial. It jarred her. Having such conventional desires would have warmed the cockles of her parents' hearts, had she told them. As it was they'd simply given up on her ever marrying.

  She bent over him to implant a goodbye kiss. As she did so, she suddenly thought of Dorothy. What was the real commonality between them? Naturally, the passionate one would hear none of that. It was the other that was pursuing Dorothy's imaginary killer, if only to prove a point.

  At the meeting, she forced herself to concentrate on the eggplant's every nuance, making sure that when his eyes drifted her way, she showed rapt attention. Actually, she was still thinking of Dorothy. If the eggplant knew what they were up to, he would explode.

  "I want every available man on this case," the eggplant ordered, as if they were all to blame for this affront to the dignity of his office. When he was in this state, the force became all male again. It was not, of course, the appropriate time to remind him of her gender.

  "Think I should fill him in on the Curtis case?" Cates whispered during a lull in the speech as the eggplant pored over an assignment sheet. She assumed he was joking.

  "Only if you're planning your own castration."

  The eggplant began another tirade. Once he'd spent himself, the meeting broke up and they were assigned to follow up on a series of call-in leads. The chief had authorized the newspapers to print the usual "Any information on the teenage killings, etc." and offering a police number which came directly into their office.

  The result was a maze of confused leads, an endless descent into fantasy and anxiety. They talked to parents of teenagers, who swore they knew the killer, tips that proved worthless, especially those instigated by revenge. They spent the day in the heavily populated black ghetto areas of Northeast Washington, walking up stairways and through corridors of incredible filth.

  But the wide publicity given to the murders and the race of the victims had stirred the ghetto community, feeding its paranoia. Many of those to whom they talked were certain, as some had been during Atlanta's similar crisis, that the beginning of the crusade to violently eliminate all blacks had begun. Guilt-ridden whites continued to give money to the fund for the victims' illegitimate children.

  Cates's unenthusiastic response to the assignment and bored demeanor throughout their interviews was not surprising to her. The ghetto was as foreign to him as it was to her.
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br />   "What are they going to tell a honky and an oreo?" Cates asked, knowing that it was futile, a ploy for the eggplant to show that homicide was working double time. They both knew it was an exercise in bureaucratic hypocrisy. Still, they checked things out with obstinate efficiency.

  During their afternoon break, Fiona took time out to cajole Flannagan on the phone. He was the man in charge of the Mobile Crime Lab, to whom she had come often for favors, invoking the old ethnic tie.

  "Come on, Mick, give it a dust-off for a daughter of the old sod," she begged him. Both of them knew the case wasn't strong enough for an official Mobile Crime Lab sweep.

  "And what do I get if I do?" It was his typical response, more banter than proposition.

  "Satisfaction. And you'll go to Irish heaven."

  "And stink through eternity of corned beef and cabbage."

  "Would that be heaven or hell you're talking about?"

  "Hell. Heaven is an authentic Irish pub with Guinness hisself servin' the brew..." He paused. "Oh shit, Fiona, why do I have to be pressed in the middle of an earthquake? You saw him this morning. Apoplectic."

  "How can you tell?"

  "He turns ebony-black."

  The fact was that the commonality between them was racial as well as ethnic. The dwindling numbers of whites drew them closer together. The blacks didn't object. It gave the whites an opportunity to learn the pains of being a minority.

  "I'll get on it as soon as I can," Flannagan said finally.

  "Thanks, Mick."

  "He finds out, he'll have my ass."

  "Who the hell would want your ass?" she said, hanging up, knowing she had pushed as hard as she could.

  As expected, the leads turned up nothing of significance.

  "Home?" Cates asked as they got into the car.

  "Hell no."

  "There again?"

  "It's not on the taxpayer's tab."

  He shrugged and headed for the dead girl's apartment.

  "And suppose we do find evidence of murder. What then? It would have to be proof positive. You saw him. He has a one track mind."

  She nodded. He was right, of course. What was one more dead honky?

  Entering the apartment, she sensed something immediately awry.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know," she admitted.

  He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

  "They're still there."

  She began to move around the apartment. Somebody had been in this place since she had last been there. It was her police training, she would have argued, if someone had suggested that it might be intuition. A matrix in her mind had been disturbed.

  She began poking into the closets again, opening the medicine chest, cautious now about smearing prints, berating her earlier carelessness. It had always been difficult, even under the best conditions, to look for something that had not yet become tangible in her mind. She felt Cates watching her, confused, as she stood in the center of the bedroom, surveying it, taking mental inventory of each object, then comparing it with the subconscious memory of her previous visits.

  "Anything?" Cates asked.

  It occurred to her slowly at first, a blip on her memory screen that grew each time her eyes washed over the white chest in which Dorothy kept her underwear. She inspected it from every view. The blip grew in her mind until it focused on the upper drawer of the chest. Although it was closed, it wasn't flush against the edge. Not that she could remember if she had actually pushed the drawer to its furthest point, but it was enough awry to trigger her curiosity and she opened it. Without having to go through the neat pile of white panties, she knew immediately. The large sizes were gone. Opening the lower drawer, she checked the stockings. Gone. The shoes, too, were gone.

  Cates had been observing her, understanding immediately.

  "El kinko."

  "What?" But it was coming to her as well.

  "Our man. He's a dress-up freak."

  She felt the flush begin at the back of her neck and spread upward and around to her face.

  "Very common," Cates said authoritatively.

  "I'm either very straight or very dumb," she conceded.

  "That makes me an expert in kink."

  "I'd never have guessed. It could explain the caller."

  Suddenly there was no time to dispel his confusion. The door to the apartment began to rattle and she heard the sound of metal. Someone was obviously picking the lock. With hand signals, she directed Cates to the other side of the door. Both drew their pieces. The sound of the metal pick continued. They could see the knob begin to turn and the door swing outward.

  They heard voices. There was no attempt to be clandestine. At least two of them, Fiona thought, holding up two fingers, tensing as heavy footsteps crossed into the apartment.

  "Jeez," Flannagan screamed, a vein palpitating in his jaw. One of the cops behind him had reacted quickly by stepping back into the hallway and flattening himself against a wall.

  "Sorry," Fiona said, putting her piece back in its holster, relieved. In retrospect, she knew, it would probably be deemed a mistake to have drawn, a needless risk. If Flannagan had reacted badly, they might have had a huge problem on their hands.

  "I'm doing you a favor, Fi. I don't need to have the shit scared out of me."

  "We got nervous," she said apologetically, as two technicians entered the room with their equipment.

  "What I need most is a good set of prints," she said, drawing Flannagan aside and explaining about the drawer. "Dust the inside as well. Closets, too. And the cans in the refrigerator, the Beluga caviar."

  Flannagan shook his head and smiled. Despite their kinship, Fiona suspected he didn't quite take her seriously.

  "Anything else, your bigness?"

  "One other place. The toilet seat. Especially that spot that a man uses to lift it."

  "Gross," Flannagan said, chuckling.

  Latent fingerprints, at best, were always a problem. And without a real crime, she wasn't sure how she was going to handle the situation. She'd wait and see.

  Fiona and Cates went for hamburgers at a little bar not far from Dorothy's apartment. The waitress set down two beers and they sipped in silence for awhile. Observing Cates, she realized he was getting an odd lesson in unorthodox procedures. She was actually corrupting him, a thought that made her uneasy. Obviously, he had enough problems. He was a black man with white features and a white view of the world. Reflecting on it, she felt a flush of sisterly warmth.

  "You said it could explain your caller," Cates said.

  "Can't you guess?" she teased. He tensed, reacting exactly opposite to what she intended. He must have mistook it for a put-down. She realized suddenly that she really hardly knew the man.

  "He wanted to see if the apartment was empty," she said, hoping that she did not seem smug. "...to get his unmentionables."

  "But you said he didn't respond. How could you know it was even a man? And you said hello. It wasn't Dorothy's voice."

  His interrogation increased her uneasiness. She was presenting theory as fact, superimposing imaginary circumstances.

  "Don't you see?"

  He shook his head, still unconvinced. "I don't see."

  "But the clothes are gone."

  She was begging him to understand, seeking vindication. But his eyes darted from side to side, revealing his mind's wanderings.

  "Your theory," he began, cautious not to offend her. "Its hypothesis is based on him knowing she was dead. How would he have known that? It wasn't in the papers."

  His deduction surprised her. How indeed? He was right.

  "He knew," she stammered.

  "How?"

  It was like coming into a dark room with all exits locked. He didn't let her suffer long.

  "Martin," Cates said softly. "We told Martin."

  No, she decided, the man on the phone was not Martin. That man was frightened, with something to lose, something big.

  "Martin is the logical one,"
Cates mused, reinforcing his affirmation. "That is ... if your theory holds."

  "Sounds reasonable," she said without conviction.

  "That's still not murder," he said gently, revealing the soft edges of doubt. Was he mocking her?

  "But it is a motive," she pressed.

  The waitress brought their hamburgers.

  "People kill for less," he said.

  No, she decided. A deeper fear was the issue here. Clint's kind of fear. How could she possibly convey that to Cates without confessing how she had discovered it?

  "We still don't have a victim."

  "But we do." She felt on the edge of hysteria.

  "A murder victim?"

  "Soon," she said. "You'll see."

  He shrugged and bit into his hamburger.

  Back at the apartment, Flannagan had just begun wrapping up. Seeing Fiona, he shook his head.

  "Miss Tidy lived here. All spit and polish. Bet most of what we found is yours or his," he said, pointing to Cates. "And the girl's. But not many."

  "You think someone might have wiped them away?"

  "That's police stuff. I'm only a flunky."

  He pinched her cheek. "We dusted where you said. I got nothin' under the seat," Flannagan added, smiling.

  "We got one good two-hand set," he said, his professional instincts showing now. "Some good takes on the inside of a drawer, the one with the undies."

  "And the caviar cans?"

  "Smears."

  "Where was the two-hand set?"

  "Damnedest place. The closet rail. Good and clear."

  "See," she said, turning to Cates. "We're just missing pieces."

  "I'm with you, Fiona. Partners, remember?" She wondered if he was humoring her now.

  He handed her the batch of prints, separated into a plastic envelope and marked. She quickly dropped them into her purse.

  "It would have taken longer if we really did it right, Fiona," Flannagan said, as she walked him to the door. He had lowered his voice.

  "Look," he said. "It's all the time I can spare. He finds out I've taken time away from the other, he'd shit." She pecked him on the cheek.

  "Thanks, Mick."

  She was already calculating the problems that lay ahead. She couldn't deal with Slaughter, the latent prints man. He guarded his domain with more than the usual paranoia and would probably ask too many questions. Somehow, she knew she'd have to enlist the help of the FBI. Another personal favor. So much of police work depended on personal connections. What she had in mind, however, was a little too personal--Tom Gribben.