“You need a few swastika flags,” Carmine said.
“Excuse me?”
“A lot of black, white and red in here. Very Nazi.”
“You, Captain, are fond of making incendiary remarks, but I am not rising to the bait today,” Smith said. “I’m too happy.”
“Didn’t like a woman boss, huh?”
“What man genuinely does? I could have stomached her sex, however. What made my gorge rise was her indecision.”
Perhaps aping mourning, Smith was in a black silk suit with a black tie closely covered in white spots; his cuff links were black onyx and yellow gold, his shoes the finest black kid. A sartorial wonder, thought Carmine, sitting down. In fact, Smith looked younger, even handsomer. Being el supremo of Cornucopia obviously pleased him mightily, just as he said.
“Where’s Richard Oakes?” Carmine asked.
Smith looked contemptuous. “He’s a homosexual, Captain, and I don’t like homosexuals. I banished him to Outer Mongolia.”
“And where’s that, in Cornucopia’s version of the globe?”
“Accounting.”
“It would be my Outer Mongolia too, I confess. The arctic wastes of numbers … However, I can’t agree with you about homosexuals. For some men, it’s a natural state of being, not to be confused with some of the sexual criminals I encounter.” To himself he wondered how long it was since Smith had set eyes on Desmond Skeps III—what a shock that was going to be!
The pretense of bonhomie disappeared; Phil Smith reverted to type. “What do you want?” he asked rudely. “I’m a busy man.”
“I want to know your whereabouts all day on the day that Erica Davenport’s body was put in my boat shed.”
“I was here, and I can produce witnesses to vouch for that from eight in the morning until six that evening,” Smith said. “Go and look somewhere else, for God’s sake! The only kind of murder I do is Outer Mongolian. And yes, I would have dealt with Dr. Erica Davenport, but not by extinguishing her life. What kind of punishment is that? By the time I finished with her, she’d have been in a straitjacket.”
“I accept that, Mr. Smith. When you called her indecisive, what did you mean?”
“Exactly what the word suggests. Having a homosexual for a secretary was indicative, believe me. One of the ways Cornucopia stays on top is by absorbing smaller, independent companies, especially if they have clever ideas or find a niche in the market for a new product. Takeover negotiations have a form and a time span that Erica was ignorant of. We missed taking over four companies in fewer than four days, thanks to her. Three belonged to Fred Collins, one to me. We’d been performing the ritual mating dance for months or weeks, depending. But she dithered, the shortsighted fool, then ran to Wallace Grierson.”
“Couldn’t you override her?” Carmine asked curiously.
“Not the way Desmond structured his will—she had the yea or nay, holding Desmond Three’s majority,” Smith said sourly.
“Hmm. So there were advantages in being rid of her, even if your technique would not have involved murder.”
“Are you a fool too, Captain? Haven’t I said that?”
“No, Mr. Smith, I am not a fool,” Carmine said coolly. “I just like to be absolutely sure.” He got up and wandered over to the long wall, where the Hogarth etchings were hanging in mathematical precision. Depictions of a London long gone, a place of horrific suffering, starvation, dissipation, glaringly unwanted humanity. Smith watched him, puzzled.
“These are amazing,” Carmine said, turning to look at the seated figure behind the black lacquer desk. “Human misery at its most acute, and the artist walked through it every day. It doesn’t say much for the government of the time, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t, I suppose.” Smith shrugged. “Still, I don’t walk through it. Why the interest?”
“No reason, really. It just seems a strange theme for the office of a company director, particularly when the products are aimed at creating more human misery.”
“Oh, puh-lease!” Smith exclaimed. “Don’t blame me, blame my wife! I put her in charge of the decorating.”
“That would account for it,” Carmine said, smiled, and left.
From there he went to see Gus Purvey, Fred Collins and Wal Grierson, in that order.
Purvey was genuinely upset, and had flown to L.A. for the funeral. Like Phil Smith, his alibi for the day of Erica’s death was ironclad.
“Mr. Smith says Dr. Davenport was indecisive,” Carmine said to him, wondering if this was old news or new. Old, it seemed.
“I don’t agree,” Purvey said, wiping his eyes. “Phil and Fred are a pair of sharks, they bite everything in their path without stopping to think whether it would go down well or give them indigestion. Erica thought all four companies would wind up a liability rather than an asset.”
Collins repeated Phil Smith’s views, but Grierson came down on Purvey’s side.
“She had a natural caution,” he said, “that I think was why Des picked her to head Cornucopia. I do know, however, that she was in favor of Dormus buying out a small company with good ideas about solar power. That’s decades off, but I’m interested. So was Erica. I want to let the firm alone, just infuse some much needed capital into their infrastructure, and reap the benefits down the track. The same with distillation of fresh water from salt. You have to browse through the world of small companies, Captain, not gobble,” Grierson said, unconsciously echoing Purvey’s shark metaphor. “In that respect Erica’s indecision was great. Unfortunately, in most respects it was disastrous.”
“What’s going to happen now that Dr. Davenport is gone?”
“Phil Smith is bound to take over. Funny, that. For the last fifteen years he’s been inert, now all of a sudden he’s woken up and is behaving like a chief executive.” Grierson frowned. “Trouble is, I’m not sure his burst of energy will last. I hope it does. There’s no way I want the job.”
“What’s Smith’s wife like?” Carmine asked, thinking of the brown pancake hat.
“Natalie?” Grierson laughed. “She’s a Lapp—calls herself a Sami. Hard to believe she’s an Eskimo, isn’t it? Weird blue eyes, blonde hair. The Sami are fair, I’m told. Her English is awful. I like her, she’s—uh—jovial. The kids are real lookers, all blonde. A girl, then two boys. None of them wanted to follow Pop into the firm—amazing how often that happens. No matter how rich people are, their kids do their own thing.”
“No clotheshorses among them?”
“Just good workhorses, Natalie saw to that. She has some bug in her head about the homeland, so the minute each kid got through with college, off they went to the land of the midnight sun. They didn’t stay, of course. Scattered around the world.”
“The Smiths sound like an odd couple.”
This is fascinating, Carmine was thinking; I would never have suspected Wal Grierson of this kind of cozy gossip. Just goes to show. He’s best friends with a woman—his wife.
“The Smiths are absolutely orthodox compared to what the Collinses used to be like when his first wife was alive. Aki was Turkish—another blonde. Gorgeous in a weird way. Came from somewhere near Armenia or the Caucasus. Their sons are the best-looking kids—young men now, of course. One’s a Marine officer stationed in West Germany, the other’s a NASA scientist trying to put a man on the moon.”
“What happened to her? Divorce?”
Wal Grierson’s face sobered. “No. She died in a shooting accident at their cabin in Maine. Some fucking gun-crazy idiot mistook her for a deer and blew her face away. That’s why we put up with Fred’s bimbos. When Aki was alive, he was different.”
“That’s a real tragedy,” Carmine said.
“Yeah, poor old Fred.”
Strange pictures were forming in Carmine’s mind, but they wavered and quivered on the fringes of actual thought, like moving objects some sadistic ophthalmologist deliberately kept right on the margins of peripheral vision. They were there, but they were not there. Swing your head t
o focus on them, and they vanished—poof!
“Or am I going crazy?” he asked Desdemona, the scrambler on the phone engaged.
“No, dear heart, you’re stone cold sane,” she said. “I know the feeling. Oh, I miss you!” She paused, then added in a master stroke of guile, “So does Julian. He does, Carmine! Every time a man approaches with something like your gait, he starts jigging up and down—it’s adorable!”
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“You have an idea who it is, don’t you?” she asked.
“No, that’s just it—I don’t. I should, yet I don’t.”
“Cheer up, it will come to you. Is the weather nice?”
He got his own back. “Perfect Connecticut spring days.”
“Guess what it’s doing here?”
“Raining. At fifty degrees of latitude, Desdemona, with a climate that mild, it has to rain a lot. It’s the Gulf Stream.”
When Simonetta Marciano barged into his office, Carmine was surprised at the intrusion, but not at the manner of it; Simonetta always barged, it was her nature. She had never grown out of the war-year 1940s, which had seen her greatest triumph, the marital catching of Major Danny Marciano, who had thus far escaped entrapment. Barely out of her teens, Simonetta had no use for the GIs in her own age group. She wanted a mature man who could keep her in good style from the beginning of their relationship. And, setting eyes on Major Marciano, Simonetta went after him with all the delicious ploys of youth, beauty, and high spirits. Now he was within a couple of years of retirement from the Holloman Police, while she was in her early forties.
Today she was clad in a button-down-the-front dress of pink with darker pink polka dots; it ended at her knees, displaying good legs in stockings with seams, and her shoes were pink kid with oldfashioned medium heels and bows on their fronts. Her dark hair was rolled back from her face in a continuous sausage, and on the back of her head she had pinned a huge pink satin bow. The fashion these days was for pink or brownish lipstick, but Simonetta wore brilliant red. All of which might have suggested to strangers that she was free with her favors, but they would have been mistaken. Simonetta was passionately devoted to her Danny and their four children; her baser qualities were all channeled into gossip, and there was nothing she didn’t know. She had feelers into the Mayor’s offices, Chubb, the clutter of departments that made up County Services, the Chamber of Commerce, the Knights of Columbus, Rotary, the Shriners, and many more places that might yield some juicy tidbit. Having Simonetta on your side, her husband joked, was like enjoying all the benefits of the Library of Congress without the hassle of borrowing.
“Hi,” said Carmine, coming to peck her rouged cheek and put her into a chair. “You look great, Netty.”
She preened. “Coming from you, that’s a compliment.”
“Coffee?”
“No, thanks, I can’t stay, I’m on my way to a women’s lib meeting in Buffo’s wine cellar.” She giggled. “Lunch and a good Italian red as well as lots of dirt.”
“I didn’t know you were a feminist, Netty.”
“I’m not,” she said, and snorted. “What I am into is equal pay for equal work.”
“How can I help?” Carmine asked, genuinely baffled.
“Oh, you can’t! I’m not here for that. I’m here because I remembered hearing Danny say you and yours were looking for people who attended the Maxwell Foundation banquet.”
“You were there yourself, Netty.”
“I was, at John’s table. None of us knew a thing about what you were looking for, I remember that.” She plunged off on an apparent tangent. “You know the Lovely Peace funeral home?”
“Who doesn’t? Bart must have buried half of East Holloman.”
“The half that matters, anyway.”
He was intrigued; this was typical Simonetta, a perfectionist at the art of gossip. Drop crumbs on the water and gather all the ducks, then produce your shotgun, that was Simonetta.
“He hasn’t been the same since Cora died,” Netty said.
“They were a devoted couple,” Carmine said gravely.
“Such a pity he didn’t have a son to take over the business! Daughters are well and good, but they never seem to want to follow in Pop’s footsteps.”
“Except, as I recollect, Netty, the older one’s husband is a mortician who has taken over Bart’s business.”
“Don’t let Bart hear you call him a mortician! He likes the old description—undertaker.”
Carmine had had enough. “Netty, where are you going?”
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there! It’s eighteen months since Cora died, and Bart’s daughters worry about him,” Netty said, determined to pursue her own convoluted course. “They let him alone for the first six months, but when he didn’t start to get out and around, they pushed him. He got nagged into going to the Schumann whenever there was a new show in town, to the Chubb Rep season, the movies, public meetings—the poor old guy got no peace.”
“Are you leading up to informing me that he was at the Maxwell banquet?” Carmine asked.
She looked crestfallen. “Gosh, Carmine, you’re impatient! But okay, Bart’s daughters nagged him into buying a plate for the Maxwell banquet.” She cheered up. “I was talking to his younger daughter yesterday, and she said something about Bart’s being at the banquet. Seems he didn’t have a good time, at least when he sat down at some table he told Dolores was full of drunks and weirdos. We were sitting next to each other in Gloria’s beauty parlor, and Dolores mentioned this after I asked how Bart was doing.” She grinned. “I got a blow by blow description of Bart’s progress, we had plenty of time waiting for the lotion to set.” She got up, gathering her sweater, her car keys and her pink plastic pocketbook. “Gotta go, Carmine, gotta go! You go see Bart. Maybe he can help.”
And off she went, almost colliding with Delia in the doorway.
“Goodness! Who was that?” Delia asked.
“Danny Marciano’s wife, Simonetta. One of the most valuable resources the Holloman PD owns. In fact, if the FBI could tap into her, their worries would be over.” Carmine consulted his watch. “Nearly lunchtime. Could you find me a number for Joseph Bartolomeo, please, Delia? And an address.”
As Carmine remembered the proprietor of the Lovely Peace funeral home, he had lived in a very nice house next to his place of business, both conveniently located a reasonable walk or a short hearse ride from St. Bernard’s Catholic church. But after his wife’s death he had handed the business over to his son-in-law and bought a condominium apartment in Carmine’s old spot, the Nutmeg Insurance building just yards down Cedar Street from County Services.
After some thought, Carmine decided to have Delia make the call inviting the undertaker to lunch at Malvolio’s. He was at home, and had no hesitation in accepting.
By the time Carmine walked into Malvolio’s his guest was installed in a booth at the far end of the big diner, sipping at a mug of coffee Minnie had already produced. Though his name was Joseph Bartolomeo, everyone who knew him called him Bart, and it suited him, having few connotations of ethnic background or physical type. The world was full of Joes, from Stalin to McCarthy, Carmine reflected, but of Barts there were far fewer. Now approaching seventy, Bart looked any age from fifty to eighty, for he had an Alec Guinness quality of anonymity that meant people failed to remember what he looked like or how he behaved. His physique was ordinary, his face was ordinary, his coloring was ordinary, his manner was ordinary. Which had been great assets for an undertaker, that self-effacing person who conscientiously cares for the beloved dead, organizes and supervises their obsequies, and leaves not a trace of himself behind to mar the last memories.
“Bart, how are you?” Carmine asked, sliding into his side of the booth and holding out a hand.
Yes, even his grip was ordinary: neither too limp nor too firm, neither too dry nor too moist.
“I’m well, Carmine,” Bart said with a smile.
It wasn’t necessary to
offer him condolences a year and a half old; Carmine had been at Cora’s funeral. “Let’s have our lunch, then we’ll talk,” he said. “What’s your fancy?”
“Minnie says the special’s good—brisket. I think I’ll have that, and rice pudding to follow,” Bart said.
Carmine ordered a Luigi Special salad with Thousand Island dressing. With no Desdemona at home to cook ruinous dinners, he could revert to his bachelor meals.
They ate with enjoyment, passing the time as old East Hollomanites did. Only after Minnie had cleared the pudding bowls away did Carmine become serious.
“I had a visit from Netty Marciano this morning,” he said, “and she told me that you were at the Maxwell banquet. Is that right, Bart?”
“Yes, I bought a plate. It was real well organized, but I didn’t enjoy it much, at least at first,” Bart said.
“Take me through it, I need to know.”
“Well, I was supposed to be at a table of friends, but when I got there I found out the rest had canceled—the gastric bug. So they sat me with five dentists and four wives—the odd dentist was a woman who turned her back on me. I didn’t know one of them. They had a great time, I had a lousy time.” Bart sighed. “That’s the trouble with going anywhere on your own. And with being an undertaker. The minute people ask you what you do for a crust, they look at you as if you’re Boris Karloff.”
“I’m sorry,” Carmine said gently.
“When the dessert was cleared, I decided to look for a better place to sit,” Bart went on in his soft, anything but ordinary voice. “My first try was a flop—Dubrowski the lawyer and some lawyer pals from out of town. They all talked about business, whether the clients would tolerate a raise in fees, that kind of thing. I didn’t stay past telling them I was an undertaker and getting the Boris Karloff treatment.”
“Lawyers are the pits,” Carmine said with feeling.
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