Too Many Murders

by Colleen McCullough

  That would do it, Carmine thought. I doubt anything Smith has said in here would alter the jury’s verdict, either. It’s the mention of her wounds that will matter, not the date. A Rilke original! Man, the guy must have some contacts! Not that the jury would ever see this diary. Bera would find some way to have it struck from evidence.

  And the feminism aspect fizzled out with Pauline Denbigh. Carmine abandoned it without much regret. All his enquiries had produced nothing that helped the case against Dean Denbigh’s wife, nor had it unearthed a lover. Perhaps she truly was a sexually frigid person. Perhaps all her energies were channeled into women’s causes and her love of Rainer Maria Rilke.

  Bianca Tolano tore at the heartstrings. “I noted her at the table next to Dee-Dee the whore, and couldn’t tell the difference between them,” Smith said on the twenty-second of December. “A pair of whores! One the brassy finished product, the other the demure, sweet whore-in-the-making. The one in the making reminds me of Erica, so I’ll visit the death on her that I long to give Erica. I’ve seen my tool. A sycophantic crawler named Lancelot Sterling drew my attention to him when I paid a visit to the twentieth floor of Accounting. A crippled runt named Joshua Butler. I admit I went there thinking Sterling might be my tool, but he’s a deviate, not a cripple. Scum! When Joshua Butler left work I loitered in my Maserati and offered him a ride home. He was enthralled! I ended by taking him out to my house—no one was home—and giving him dinner. Stravinsky waited on table and agreed he was perfect for our purposes. By the end of the evening he was so enchanted he would have done anything for me. Not that I mentioned what I wanted! I simply started peering into his more disgusting fantasies. He’ll do beautifully, though Stravinsky, stronger-stomached, will have to do most of the psychic exploration.”

  Intermixed with Smith’s cold-blooded planning were touches of—mercy? Carmine wasn’t sure that was the right word. But he did seem to have compassion for two of the victims, Beatrice Egmont and Cathy Cartwright. Eventually Carmine concluded that Smith esteemed them as worthy matrons who did not deserve to die, so should die quickly, painlessly.

  Evan Pugh, he was interested to see, was intended to get a dose of KGB powder and die of nonspecific septicemia. Not a pleasant death by any means, but not as payback as the death he did get. Nor as terrifying while the agony lasted. He would have been in the hospital, drugged to the limit and not really suffering the way the bear trap made him suffer.

  The three black victims had their entry.

  “The waiters will have to die too. Interesting, that for all their prating, white Americans still use black ones as their servants. And their whores, witness Dee-Dee. Stravinsky will procure out-of-state assassins—three, one for each. I like the idea of three different guns, all American-made. With silencers, as in the movies. Stravinsky thinks I go too far, but the decisions are not Stravinsky’s. I—am—so—bored!!! These American fools can’t catch me, so what does it matter?”

  Jesus, you supercilious bastard! You’re bored! Isn’t that a shame?

  The entry for the twenty-ninth of March was fascinating.

  “And to think I was convinced the threat was over! Now I find it isn’t. How stimulating! I am wide awake, alert and intelligent, as their advertisement says. Well, Mr. Evan Pugh, Motor Mouth is going to kill you differently than originally planned. The bear trap will be used, with Stravinsky doing an impersonation of Joshua Butler. The preparatory work has already been done, just in case. I have suspected for a long time that the blackmailer would be Mr. Evan Pugh, so the beam has been located and the bolt holes reamed out one size too small, no threads. Stravinsky has the proper tools, a strong right arm and sufficient height. You shall have your wad of money—a drop in the ocean to me! And you shall have a most painful death. Motor Mouth. So American. The bear trap is made in America too.”

  The entry on the fourth of April concerned Desmond Skeps.

  “Dead at last, Desmond Skeps, with your perpetual whinging about Philomena, your denial of your own guilt in driving her away. A very good woman, for an American.

  “I did enjoy watching him die! I despise those men who obtain sexual pleasure from the suffering of others, but I confess that I was moved to an erection at the sight of Desmond Skeps trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey, eyes and brain alive, the rest of him as dead as a dodo. I played with him, I and my tiny soldering iron. How he tried to scream! But his vocal cords weren’t up to it. Just hoarse yowls. The ammonia in his veins really hurt, but the Drano at the end was inspired. What a way to go! I loved every minute of it. From the moment he told me that he’d appointed Erica as young Desmond’s guardian, he had no further use. He was so enamored of her business acumen, never knowing that the acumen was mine. Bye-bye, Desmond!”

  Of Erica’s murder he had nothing much to say; clearly it wasn’t necessary for him to dwell on her agony.

  “Stravinsky broke the bitch’s arms and legs one bone at a time, but she gave nothing away except the names of her Party friends in Moscow. Had she had anything more to confess, she would have. Stravinsky especially enjoyed it. We agreed that it would have to be the hired assassin Manfred Mueller—as good a name as any—who got rid of her body. I wanted it put on Delmonico’s property, Stravinsky thought that a mistake. Of course I won the argument, so Mueller took the body there. My luck that the gigantic wife appeared. Not that it made much difference. Mueller got away cleanly. So, unfortunately, did the wife. A grotesque.”

  The entry on the sniper in the copper beech was extremely interesting; Smith was very rattled.

  “I have lost my luck,” he wrote. “The great Julius Caesar believed implicitly in luck, and who am I to contradict him? But the trouble with luck is not that it runs out—it doesn’t. Rather, it encounters another man’s luck that is stronger, and fails. As mine has. I have encountered Delmonico’s luck. Now all I can do is send him in a thousand different directions at once. Manfred Mueller is willing to kill as many of Holloman’s illustrious citizens as he can, and lay down his own life in the process. His price? Ten million dollars in a Swiss bank account in his wife’s name. I have done it. But Stravinsky says it will not answer, and I very much fear that Stravinsky is right.”

  Interesting, thought Carmine. He said something like that to my face. About losing his luck because mine is stronger.

  That was the last entry in the fifth book. Tired and sick, Carmine gathered his evidence together and put it in an old box he marked ODDMENTS—1967. Then he took it to the cage and saw it put among a dozen other equally grimy boxes. Even if the faithful Stravinsky donned the uniform of a Holloman cop and came asking, he would not get it.

  Stravinsky… A code name, it had to be a code name. The exercise books had given absolutely no hint as to who Stravinsky was. The music? No, surely not! Any bets Stravinsky is Stravinsky because Stravinsky picked the name? Or the KGB bosses? He’s like Smith, KGB. And here I thought Desdemona had seen him when Erica’s body was dumped. Now I learn that the sniper dumped the body. Smith always spoke of Stravinsky as an almost-equal, as someone whose opinion he respected. Stravinsky was treasured, valued too much to confide his identity to the pages of these diaries of murder.

  “I always feel let down at the end of a difficult case,” Carmine said to Desdemona that evening. “As usual, the end of it depends on the courts—anticlimactic, not high drama. Smith can’t escape conviction, but I strongly suspect Pauline Denbigh will, and as for Stravinsky, he won’t even be identified.”

  “You don’t think he might be Purvey or Collins?” she asked.

  “No, that feels wrong. This is master and apprentice, not a hierarchy.”

  “What will happen to Cornucopia?”

  “There’s only one hand strong enough to take the helm, and it belongs to Wal Grierson, who won’t like it one little bit. His heart’s at Dormus with the turbines, not spread across thirty different companies.” Carmine shrugged. “Still, he’ll do his duty—pray note that I do not include the word ‘patriotic’ in that! Mea
ningless cant, when it’s trotted out endlessly.”

  “Your mama will come out of her conniption fit the moment she hears the villains have been caught. Though what will she hear, Carmine? How much of it will make the news?”

  “Precious little. Smith will be written off as a maniac found fit to stand trial. The information in the exercise books will never be used. He’ll go down on physical evidence—the razor for Dee-Dee and the killing kit for Skeps. His motive? Control of Cornucopia,” said Carmine without regret.

  “How can that be stretched to encompass Dee-Dee?”

  “The DA will allege that she tried to blackmail him as one of her customers.”

  “He’ll hate that! He’s a shocking Puritan.”

  “Then let him produce a better reason for killing her. One thing for sure, he won’t admit to treason. He’s convinced he won’t stand trial for treason.”

  “Do you think he will?” Desdemona asked curiously.

  “I have no idea,” Carmine said.

  “He must be a very vain man.”

  “Vain in every way,” Carmine said with feeling, “from his custom-made clothes to his custom-made house.”

  “Not to mention his custom-made sports cars.” She unwound her legs. “Dinner.”

  “What is it tonight?”

  “Saltimbocca alla Romana.”

  “Wow!” Carmine slipped an arm about her waist and walked with her to the kitchen.

  “Myron’s bringing Sophia home,” she said, setting out the dishes and checking her ziti in tomato sauce. The frying pan was already sitting on the stove, the veal and its prosciutto waiting alongside a small bowl of minced fresh sage. “Fancy a sear of marsala liquor in the pan afterward?”

  “Why not? Has Myron gotten over his depression?”

  “The moment, I gather, you ripped him a new arsehole for making Sophia’s life hard.” She lit the gas under her pan, wiped it with a smear of olive oil. “Fifteen minutes and we can eat.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  * * *

  “Have you decided which one gets the lieutenancy?” asked the Commissioner.

  “Sir!” cried Carmine, looking thunderstruck. “That’s not my decision to make!”

  “If it’s not yours, whose is it, for crying out loud?”

  “Yours and Danny’s!”

  “Crap. It’s yours. Danny and I will go along.”

  “Sir, I can’t! I honestly can’t! Just when I think one guy is it, the other one comes back stronger than ever! Look at their last two cases! Abe collars the mummy fruitcake in a brilliant piece of work. Right, he’s got Larry’s job. Then Corey collars Phil Smith’s papers in a brilliant piece of work. John, they’re both so good! It’s a crying shame that I have to lose one of them to another police department when he doesn’t get the job. Abe is intellectual, thoughtful, sensitive, calm and precise. Corey is clever, thinks on his feet, seizes the initiative, has enough logic to pass, and copes. Different qualities and different styles, but either of them would make a much better lieutenant than Larry Pisano, and you know it. So don’t go passing the buck to me, Commissioner! You’re the head of this department—you make the decision!”

  Silvestri listened solemnly, temper unruffled. When Carmine ran down he smiled, nodded, and looked insufferably smug.

  “Did I tell you that I had a call from J. Edgar Hoover this morning?” he asked. “He was mighty pleased at the solution to the Cornucopia mess, and very happy to have the FBI take the credit for what was Holloman Police Department work. Well, I played along all dipshit dopey local cop, then I struck a pretty neat deal with him. I wouldn’t contradict a thing, provided that he took Mickey McCosker and his team onto the FBI payroll. J. Edgar was delighted to oblige.” Silvestri huffed, immensely tickled by his own crafty thinking. “Therefore, Captain Delmonico, there are two lieutenant’s jobs going begging. One for Abe, and one for Corey. And I’ll have a proper number of detectives on my payroll at last.”

  “I could kiss you!”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “You can have the honor of telling them, John.”

  “Any idea who you want for your own team?”

  “One certainty. Your niece Delia, if she’s willing to go to police academy and qualify.”

  Silvestri gaped. “Delia? Honest?”

  “Dead earnest. That woman is a brilliant detective, she’s wasted as a secretary,” Carmine said.

  “She’s too old and too fat.”

  “Depends on her, doesn’t it? If she makes it through, she makes it through. I’m betting she will—she’s got all of the Silvestri guile and brains. She doesn’t need to be Hercules, just capable of giving chase and tackling. If she can’t cross a foaming torrent hanging onto a rope by her arms, tough shit. She comes from the academy straight onto my team.”

  “What about Larry’s men?”

  “I’ll split them up. One to Abe, one to Corey. That way, we each have one experienced detective, plus one new. We’ll choose our second-stringers from the applicant pool.”

  “It might earn Delia some enemies.”

  “I doubt it. The most the pool will be hoping for are two men into detectives. Instead, there’ll be three.”

  “No one will ever believe she’s a cop!” Silvestri cried.

  “Ain’t that the truth?”

  What fantastic news! Carmine left County Services in the Fairlane, a very happy man. Summer was almost here, though it rarely became hot until after Independence Day, six weeks away.

  He picked up the winding, leafy domain of Route 133 and headed for Philip Smith’s property. It bore the scars of much frantic digging, he noted after he passed through the imposing gates and followed the curves of the drive to the house.

  “Though,” Special Agent Ted Kelly had told him, “no one’s found another secret compartment. You Holloman cops scooped us. Great stuff you found!”

  One of the better outcomes, Carmine reflected as he pushed the bell, was the disappearance of the FBI back to their federal playground. No one would be more relieved than Wal Grierson.

  Natalie Smith opened the door, then put her finger to her lips and led him back down the steps to an exposed position on the grass many yards away from the nearest FBI hole.

  “They have put microphones inside,” she said.

  “How did you know that what I have to say is better said without federal eavesdroppers?” he asked.

  The impossibly blue eyes narrowed as the face smiled. “I know because you are the only one who really understands,” she said, her accent far less thick. “Philip found it impossible to believe that a local policeman could spoil his plans, but I knew differently.”

  “The faithful Stravinsky,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “Stravinsky? Who is that? The composer?”

  “You, Mrs. Smith. Stravinsky can’t be anyone else.”

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “No. I have no proof.”

  “Then why do you say I am this Stravinsky?”

  “Because your husband is a very rigid, puritanical man. He has strong feelings about women, wives, whores, the whole feminine half of the human race. Yet on the surface he seems to have abandoned you, his wife. That, Mrs. Smith, he would never do. Therefore he knows that his wife is capable of looking after herself. As would Stravinsky. Who else can the faithful Stravinsky be, except you? Who else shares Philip’s days, nights, thoughts, ideas, aspirations, plans? Who else could impersonate Joshua Butler going up the sophomore stairs at Paracelsus? And why couldn’t Stravinsky get rid of Erica’s body? Because he didn’t have the strength. Mounting a bear trap took every ounce of it. He could hold a pillow over an old woman’s face, or slip a needle into a drugged woman’s vein. His appearance can be so scary that he could walk the streets of Harlem looking for professional gunmen in complete safety. You, Mrs. Smith, you! Don’t bother denying it. You’re a master of true disguise. You alter your appearance from inside your mind.”

  She stared
across the lawn, red lips compressed. “So what are you going to do with Stravinsky, my dear Captain?”

  “Advise him to quit the country in a hurry. Not today, but certainly tomorrow. You must have your cache—money, a weapon, travel documents. Use them!”

  “But if I choose to stay with Philip, what can you do?”

  “Hound you, Mrs. Smith. Perpetually hound you. Do you think, because I can stand here talking to you as if you’re a human being, that I’ve forgotten you tried to murder my daughter? I haven’t. It burns my brain like a white-hot poker. I’d give a lot to kill you, but I prize my family too much.”

  “You won’t stop my going?”

  “I can’t.”

  “I too am KGB,” she said, staring at North Rock.

  “Stravinsky would have to be. I trust that fact will make you welcome in Moscow?”

  “I will survive.”

  “So will you go?”

  Her shoulders hunched. “If I can say goodbye to Philip, I will go. He would want it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have plenty to tell them in Moscow when they debrief you.”

  “You would indeed hound me,” she said slowly. “Yes, you would. I will go tomorrow.”

  “Tell me how. I want to be sure you do.”

  “I will send you a telegram from Montreal. It will say, ‘Stravinsky sends greetings from Montreal.’ Of course I could have someone else send it, but my patriotic duties in America are at an end. KGB will want me back.”

  “Thank you, the telegram will be fine.”

  * * *

  A sorry conclusion, but the only one, Carmine thought as he drove away. Today Stravinsky will visit the hospital to see Smith, and say her farewells. He, good KGB agent that he is, will wish her well. Any federal tape recorders will inform those who listen that the grieving wife is simply telling her husband that her psychiatrist is putting her in a private hospital for a few days, and that it’s on the outskirts of Boston. She’ll catch the commuter plane from Holloman to Logan, but not to leave the airport. She’ll switch to the Montreal plane and be away, the faithful Stravinsky. A murdering bitch, but indeed a faithful one. That squat figure, that shapeless body, that rather terrifying face. But most of all, those spooky blue eyes. A contradiction, that’s Stravinsky.