Festival of Deaths

by Jane Haddam

  The cab driver took off from the curb in a squeal of brakes, as if he were trying to prove something, and Lotte went around the back of the moving van to find DeAnna. She was standing on a marble-topped coffee table in a pair of skin-tight black leather leggings and a black leather tunic encrusted with flattened bullets. She had her feet in four-inch stiletto heels the color of burnished moonlight. The moving man she was talking to looked a little shell-shocked. He was young and uniformed and obviously unused to being told what to do by a woman. Lotte thought he was certainly unused to women like DeAnna Kroll, assuming there were women “like” DeAnna Kroll. DeAnna had traded her cornrows this evening for the world’s most outrageous Afro. It billowed out from her scalp like a wiry mushroom cloud with a mind of its own.

  “The coffee tables have got to be wrapped in cotton,” she was saying. “If they’re not wrapped in cotton, they might get scratched, just faintly scratched, on the table-tops. If they do get scratched, no matter how minorly, my set designer is going to have a psychotic break. You got it? You wrap them in cotton, Shelley doesn’t have a psychotic break, I don’t have a bad day, everybody is happy.”

  “But Ms. Kroll—”

  “I don’t want to argue about it,” DeAnna said. “I don’t want to argue about anything. I just want you to do it.”

  “But Ms. Kroll—”

  “Do it.”

  “Come talk to me,” Lotte said, over DeAnna’s shoulder. “It’s cold and you need a break.”

  The moving van was backed up to the loading door at the rear of the Hullboard-Dedmarsh building. Lotte had gone there because she knew she would find DeAnna just where she had found her and because she knew it would be a good place to talk in private. The rest of the cast and crew would be meeting in the front, where Prescott Holloway and his limousine were scheduled to pick them up. Lotte got DeAnna far enough from the moving van so that the young man began to relax and then said, “Well, I have done what we discussed. I have started it. What about you?”

  “I’ve done what we discussed, too,” DeAnna said. “I’ve got a friend at CBS News.”

  “And?”

  “And he’s legit,” DeAnna said with conviction. “Absolutely legit. There’s no hype about it.”

  Lotte felt her muscles begin to unkink. It was hardly credible, but Lotte thought she had been tense ever since she found out that Maria Gonzalez had died—or at least ever since the police investigation had started, when it became more and more clear that whatever had happened had not been a standard-issue mugging. Lotte had met her share of murderers—nobody could have been living in a major city in Germany in 1942 without coming in contact with those—but all the murderers she had met had been murderers for abstraction, the sort of people who bayed for blood over matters of mistaken principle or the illusion of religion. Murderers like that Lotte had always dismissed as essentially insane. Something went wrong with their blood chemistry and it was infectious, that was the trouble. The trick was to catch the disease early, before it could spread. Insanity was how Lotte explained routine mugging murders, too. The murderers took drugs that made them temporarily insane. This thing with Maria Gonzalez was very different. That a man or a woman could murder someone they actually knew, someone they had talked to, someone they had eaten lunch with and taken messages for—it was horrible. That was what Lotte had told David on the phone. Horrible. David had told her she was naive. The Nazis had murdered people they knew, people they had talked to, people they had eaten lunch with and taken messages for and sometimes even gone to bed with. All murderers are alike.

  There was a low concrete restraining wall at the edge of the short driveway leading to the loading door. Lotte sat down on it, got out her cigarette case, and lit up.

  “So,” she said. “Tell me. What did your friend mean by legit?”

  “He meant big-time legit,” Lotte said. “This Gregor Demarkian was an FBI agent. He did work on kidnappings for years, and he was good at it so he got assigned to Washington and the sensitive political work, problems with Senators and Congressmen and that kind of thing. Anyway, one day around, I don’t remember, 1977 or 1978, he started helping some people in Oregon and Washington with these murder investigations they had, string of young girls, looked like it was the same person. The FBI isn’t supposed to handle murder cases except in national parks or on Indian reservations, because murder isn’t a federal offense, but they got around it that time because there were two states involved, Demarkian supposedly told the director at the time that he was investigating a man who was carrying on an interstate commerce in murder. If you see what I mean.”

  “Very clever,” Lotte said.

  “Yeah, Lotte. I know. He is very clever. He tracked this guy for Oregon and Washington and a couple of other states, and because of the help he gave them the guy finally got caught, and that was Ted Bundy.”

  “Ah,” Lotte Goldman said, sitting up a little straighter and nodding. “Mr. Bundy. I’ve heard of Mr. Bundy.”

  “Everybody’s heard of Mr. Bundy,” DeAnna said drily. “He’s the most famous serial killer since Jack the Ripper. Anyway, that’s how Demarkian got what he wanted. Bundy escaped from jail—a couple of times—ending up rampaging across the Florida countryside, Demarkian gave the police down there some help and they ended up convicting Bundy—and then Demarkian went to the powers-that-were and told them that if the FBI had had the procedures in place to deal with someone like Bundy, someone like Bundy would never have been able to do the kind of damage he did.”

  Lotte thought about this. “As a thesis, it’s dubious.”

  “Of course it’s dubious,” DeAnna agreed, “but it’s like I said. Demarkian got what he wanted. Which was a special department of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that does nothing but track serial murderers.”

  “He founded this department?”

  “You got it.”

  “And he headed it?”

  “For ten years,” DeAnna said. “He was good at it, too. He was involved in all kinds of famous cases. He got his picture on the cover of Time magazine. He was a real big noise.”

  “Why did he stop?”

  “His wife got some really nasty form of cancer and he took a leave to look after her,” DeAnna said. “Then when she died, I guess he just didn’t have the heart for it. My guy at CBS said that people were saying at the time that Demarkian looked depressed enough to be suicidal. They were really worried.”

  Depressed enough to be suicidal when his wife died—that spoke well for him. Lotte was amused at herself. Here DeAnna was, rattling off a string of credentials and professional accomplishments, and the first thing she says to make Lotte feel she will be able to trust this man is that he was depressed enough to be suicidal when his wife died.

  “I’m getting to be an old Jewish person,” she told DeAnna. “I ought to be a grandmother, the way I think sometimes these days. What about the things we have read about? The murder in Vermont? The one this past May at the convent—”

  “I’m getting to that,” DeAnna said. “Them, I guess. He does a lot of that sort of thing.”

  “He’s a private detective?”

  “Nope. Doesn’t have a license and tells anyone who asks that he doesn’t intend to get one.”

  “Then how can he take on these investigations?”

  “By the simple expedient of not charging for them. Not that money doesn’t change hands, mind you. There’s a rumor going around that right after Demarkian cleared up a murder at the chancery up in Colchester a couple of Easters ago, John Cardinal O’Bannion directed some Catholic charitable funding organization he’s head of to donate twenty-five thousand dollars to some cause Demarkian’s pet priest is involved with—”

  Lotte nodded. “That would be Father Tibor Kasparian. David’s friend. Did you check into these private investigations, or whatever you’re supposed to call them? You’re sure he really did the investigating?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s got letters of thanks from police departments all
over the place, including one from the police department in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, which I was actually able to check out. I talked to the guy he worked with on the Hannaford case. The guy couldn’t have been more impressed.”

  The cigarette was burned to the filter. Lotte dropped it on the ground, smashed it out with her foot, and took another from her case.

  “That settles it then,” she told DeAnna. “He’s just the person we’re looking for.”

  “I agree.”

  “Now our only problem is convincing him he wants to interest himself in our problem. Did your person at CBS News indicate that this would be difficult?”

  “I didn’t ask him if it would be difficult.”

  “David says Father Tibor Kasparian says Mr. Demarkian is not always anxious to be involved. Ah, I wish he were coming to us instead of us going to him. I wish he were coming to New York.” Lotte took a deep drag on her newly lit cigarette. “I can’t help thinking it would be so much more convenient. We’ll ask him to help us and then what? All the evidence will still be here.”

  “Maybe,” DeAnna said.

  “Ms. Kroll?” the young man from the moving van called out. “What about sofas with marble arms? Do they get wrapped in cotton too?”

  DeAnna looked up and shook her head. “Duty calls,” she said. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I’m going to be fine.”

  “Go in the front and entertain the troops. Next year I’m going to rent a U-Haul and get Max to load it. You sure you’re all right?”

  “Fine,” Lotte said again.

  DeAnna turned away and started heading back to the moving van. “We’ll get Demarkian in on it and everything will be just fine,” she said. “You wait and see.”

  Lotte Goldman sighed.

  She didn’t know if getting Demarkian in on it would make everything “just fine,” but at least it would be doing something.

  2

  THE POLICE SHOWED UP at Itzaak Blechmann’s door ten minutes before he was intending to leave for the Hullboard-Dedmarsh building. They were the same two policemen who had come before, twice before, with their badges held out and their faces set like bad clay models in a kindergarten class. They reminded Itzaak of the policemen he had known in Leningrad. All policemen were the same, he told himself. All governments are the same. Law and order can mean only one thing: a license to commit terror.

  When Itzaak saw the faces of the two policemen through his peephole, his stomach heaved so badly he thought he was going to throw up right there on the floor. He had to put his head against the doorjamb and close his eyes and count to ten before he could open up.

  The taller of the two policemen was thick and ham faced and vaguely lewd, so that everything he said sounded obscene, even something as simple as “Can I have a glass of water?” The shorter of the two was mostly bald and called the taller one “Chickie.” Itzaak didn’t like the idea of a grown man people called “Chickie.” He wouldn’t have liked it even if the grown man had been a civilian. The idea of a policeman named “Chickie” made him start to sweat.

  Itzaak had his two suitcases packed for the tour and piled next to the door. Chickie and the other cop looked at them as they came in. Itzaak had been getting his coat out when they buzzed. He still had it in his hand. He put it over the suitcase and then went into the living room, where the cops had already sat down.

  The two of them always came in and sat right down, without asking. Itzaak had the idea that this was not permissible in the United States, but he didn’t know for sure, and he couldn’t see what he was able to do about it. The one called “Chickie” was sitting in his Barcalounger, his favorite chair in the world. The other one was sitting on the sofa.

  Itzaak took a straight chair from his dining room table—his dining room was part of his kitchen; it was that kind of New York apartment—and sat down in it. The two cops looked at him as if he were a performing flea who had just done something terribly clever.

  “Well,” Itzaak said. “Well. Here you are again.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Blechmann,” the smaller cop said. “Here we are again.”

  “I take it you’re not going to be here for long,” Chickie said. “Since you’re packed and everything.”

  “I am leaving on the tour,” Itzaak said. “With the rest of The Lotte Goldman Show.”

  “Ah,” the smaller cop said. “The Lotte Goldman Show.”

  “My leaving has been cleared with the police department,” Itzaak said. “Just like the leaving of everyone else who works on the program.”

  “Cleared,” Chickie said. “Oh, we know it’s been cleared.”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” Itzaak said.

  The one called Chickie had been staring at the ceiling. The other one had been staring at the floor. Now they looked at each other and nodded a little. Chickie reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a stenographer’s notebook. His jacket was a badly cut brown tweed. Policemen here were like students in Leningrad in this one respect: their clothes always looked as if they had been modeled on creatures from another planet.

  Chickie looked through his stenographer’s notebook. Itzaak reminded himself that there was no Leningrad any more, there was no Soviet Union, and since he had done nothing wrong nothing wrong could be done to him.

  Chickie stopped at a page covered with blotted-ink scrawl. “We checked it out,” he said. “With Immigration and Naturalization. We checked out your green card.”

  “What is there to check out about my green card?”

  “We checked it out to see if it was legitimate,” Chickie said. “You know. The real thing. Not forged.”

  “Of course my green card is legitimate. I have been in the United States for six years.”

  “There are people, been here twenty years, their cards aren’t legitimate,” the smaller cop said.

  “I am already taking citizenship classes.” Itzaak felt himself go stiff. His head especially went stiff. It went so stiff he couldn’t think straight. “If I pass my test, I will take the oath this coming Fourth of July.”

  Chickie looked through his stenographer’s notebook some more. “We checked out your Social Security card,” he said. “That turned out to be legitimate, too.”

  Itzaak didn’t answer this. He thought anybody who faked a Social Security card had to be crazy. You had to pay all that money to the Social Security administration. How would you get it back if your Social Security card was faked?

  Chickie was checking through his notebook again. “We tried to check out your background in—Leningrad, did you say?”

  “It’s St. Petersburg now,” Itzaak said. “It was Leningrad then.”

  “Well, things seem to be a little confused over there. We can’t seem to get anybody to give us a straight answer about anything.”

  “Like about why you were in jail,” the short one said.

  “And what you were in jail for,” Chickie said. “Did you know we knew you had been in jail?”

  “It was on your application at INS,” the short one said, “but we didn’t need that. We knew anyway.”

  “You can always tell when a man’s been in jail,” Chickie said.

  “He walks funny,” the short one said.

  “Your application at INS said you’d been in jail for political reasons,” Chickie said. “It said you’d been in jail for your religion.”

  “I am a practicing Jew,” Itzaak said, stiff, stiff, paralyzed. “At the time, Leningrad was not a good place to be a practicing Jew.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Isaac, we were thinking about that. We surely were. I mean, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? If you’d been in jail for, say, murder, you wouldn’t tell the INS that.”

  “I was not in jail for murder.”

  “Funny about your being a practicing Jew,” Chickie said. “We got one of those in the department. Wears one of those little hats just like yours.”

  “Yarmulke.”

  “Yeah
, yarmulke,” Chickie said. “Thing is, he doesn’t have a Spanish girlfriend just like yours.”

  “A Catholic girlfriend,” the short one said.

  “He wouldn’t even talk to a Catholic girl,” Chickie said. “So it kind of makes me wonder.”

  “Just like we wonder about which Catholic girl your girlfriend really was,” the short one said.

  “You say it was Carmencita Boaz,” Chickie said.

  “But it could have been either of them,” the short one said.

  “Look at it this way.” Chickie slapped his notebook shut. “Your super saw you with a Spanish woman. That was it. The people in Carmencita’s building, they never saw you at all. So it makes us think, if you see what I mean. It makes us curious.”

  “Because if your girlfriend was Maria Gonzalez instead of Carmencita Boaz,” the short one said, “you’d probably be in a lot of serious trouble right about now.”

  Itzaak Blechmann did not believe that the people in Carmencita’s building had never seen him. He thought they were protecting Carmencita’s reputation, because he came late and stayed all night sometimes. He didn’t blame them for thinking he and Carmencita were doing all sorts of things they weren’t actually doing. What else would they think? He too wanted to protect Carmencita’s reputation. He wanted to protect Carmencita more than anything. Now it appeared that he couldn’t even protect himself.

  “I never spoke more than politenesses and business to Maria Gonzalez in my life,” he said helplessly. “She did not like me. And she was very devout.”

  Chickie put his notebook back inside his jacket and stood up. “That’s all we came out here about. We just wanted you to know the way we were going these days. We just wanted you to know.”

  “We thought you might have some kind of comment you wanted to make,” the short one said.

  “Or some information you wanted to supply us.”

  “Or some suggestion you might want to make.”

  “Or something,” Chickie said. “I’m convinced of it. One of these days, you’re going to give us something.”