On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  Altogether Carmine counted eleven trains, each in motion save for the humble local at its station, their speeds varying from the rush of the Super Chief down to the crawl of one freight train hauling so many oil tanks that it had pairs of diesel locomotives inserted throughout its formidable length. And all in miniature! To Carmine it was a wonder of the world, a toy to die for.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life,” he said huskily. “There aren’t the words to describe it.”

  “I’ve been building it since we moved in here sixteen years ago,” said the Prof, who was cheering up rapidly. “They’re all powered by electricity, but later on today I’ll switch to steam.”

  “Steam? You mean locomotives powered by wood? Coal?”

  “Actually I generate the steam by burning alcohol, but the principle’s the same. It’s a lot more fun than just sending them around on household electricity.”

  “I bet you and your boys have a marvelous time down here.”

  The Prof stiffened, a look in his eyes that gave Carmine a chill: he might have led a charmed life, but below the depression and self-indulgence was at least some steel. “My boys don’t come down here, they’re banned,” he said. “When they were younger and the door had no locks, they trashed the place. Trashed it! It took me four years to repair the damage. They broke my heart.”

  It was on the tip of Carmine’s tongue to expostulate that surely the boys were old enough now to respect the trains, but he decided not to horn in on Smith’s domestic business. “How do you ever get to the middle of it?” he asked instead, squinting up into the lights. “A hoist?”

  “No, I go in underneath. It’s assembled in sections, each fairly small. I had a hydraulics engineer install a system that enables me to jack a section up as much as necessary, and move it to one side so I can make my alterations standing up. Though it’s more for cleaning than anything else. If I’m changing from diesel to steam, I just drive a train to the edge, see?”

  The Super Chief left its route, crossed via several sets of points while other trains were stopped or diverted, and drew up at the table edge. Carmine almost imagined he could hear it clanking and hissing.

  “Do you mind if I take a look at your hydraulics, Professor?”

  “No, not at all. Here, you’ll need this, it’s dark under there.” The Prof handed over a large flashlight.

  Of rams, cylinders and rods there were aplenty, but though he crawled through every part of the table’s underside, Carmine could find no hidden trapdoors, no concealed compartments; the floor was concrete, kept very clean, and somehow an alliance between trains and young girls seemed unlikely.

  The kid in him would have been ecstatic to spend the rest of the day playing with the Prof’s trains, but once he was satisfied that the Smith basement held nothing but trains, trains, and more trains, Carmine took his leave. Eliza conducted him through the house when he asked if he might inspect it. The only thing that gave her an anxious moment was a switch lying on the sideboard in the dining room, its end ominously frayed. So the Prof beats his boys, and not softly. Well, my dad beat me until I got too big for him, mean-tempered little runt that he was. After him, U.S. Army drill sergeants were a piece of cake.

  From the Smiths he went to the Ponsonbys, not far away, but the place was deserted. The open garage doors revealed a scarlet Mustang, but not the station wagon Carmine had seen parked in the Hug lot. Weird, the people who drove V-8 convertibles! Desdemona, and now Charles Ponsonby. Today he must be out with his sister in the station wagon; sister and guide dog probably demanded room.

  He decided not to visit the Polonowskis; instead he stopped at a phone booth and called Marciano. “Danny, send someone upstate to look at Walter Polonowski’s cabin. If he’s there with Marian, don’t disturb him, but if he’s there alone or not there at all, then your guys should look around politely enough that Polonowski doesn’t remember things like search warrants.”

  “What’s your verdict on the Groton abduction, Carmine?”

  “Oh, it’s our man, but proving that is going to be hard. He has changed his pattern, rung in the new year with a new tune. As soon as Patrick gets back, talk to him. I’m taking a drive around the Hugger homes. No, no, don’t panic! Just a look-see. Though if I find anyone at home, I’m going to ask to inspect places like basements and attics. Danny, you should see what’s in the Prof’s basement! Wowee wow!”

  While he was in the booth he tried the Finches, whose phone rang out unanswered. The Forbeses, he discovered, used an answering service, probably because Forbes saw so many human patients. Its cooing operator informed Carmine that Dr. Forbes was in Boston for the weekend, and gave him a Boston number. When he called it, Dr. Addison Forbes barked at him irritably.

  “I’ve just heard that another girl’s been taken,” Forbes said, “but don’t look at me, Lieutenant. My wife and I are up here with our daughter Roberta. She’s just been accepted into ob-gyn.”

  I am running out of suspects, Carmine thought, hung up and went back to the Ford.

  Coming into Holloman city on Sycamore, he decided to see what Tamara Vilich got up to on a holiday weekend.

  Having checked who it was through the glass panel, she opened her front door clad in very non-Hugger clothes: a floating garment of filmy scarlet silk slit up both sides to her hips, very sexy, not much left to the imagination. She is one of those women, he thought, who never wears underpants. A female flasher.

  “You look as if you could use a decent cup of coffee. Come in,” she said, smiling, the scarlet of her raiment turning her chameleon eyes quite red and devilish.

  “Nice place you have here,” he said, gazing about.

  “That,” she said, “is so hackneyed it sounds insincere.”

  “Just making polite conversation.”

  “Then make it with yourself for a minute while I deal with the coffee.”

  She vanished in the direction of the kitchen, leaving him to absorb her decor at his leisure. Her taste ran to ultra modern: brilliant colors, good leather seating, chrome and glass rather than wood. But he hardly noticed, his attention riveted on the paintings assaulting her defenseless walls. In pride of place was a triptych. The left panel showed a nude, crimson-colored woman with a grotesquely ugly face kneeling to adore a phallic-looking statue of Jesus Christ; the center panel showed the same woman sprawled on her back with her legs wide open and the statue in her left hand; the right panel showed her with the statue jammed into her vagina and her face flying into pieces as if struck by a mercury-tipped bullet.

  Having taken in its message, he chose a seat from which he couldn’t see the revolting thing.

  The other paintings displayed more violence and anger than obscenity, but he wouldn’t hang a one of them on his walls. A faint reek of oil paints and turpentine told him that Tamara was probably the artist, but what drove her to these subjects? A rotting male corpse hanging upside down from a gallows, a quasi-human face snarling and slavering, a clenched fist oozing blood from between its fingers. Charles Ponsonby might approve, but Carmine’s eye was shrewd enough to judge that her technique wasn’t brilliant; no, these weren’t good enough to interest a finicky connoisseur like Chuck. All they had was the power to offend.

  Either she’s sick, or she’s more cynical than I suspected, he thought.

  “Like my stuff?” she asked, rejoining him.

  “No. I think it’s sick.”

  Her fine head went back, she laughed heartily. “You mistake my motives, Lieutenant. I paint what a certain market wants so badly it can’t get enough. The trouble is my technique isn’t as good as the masters in the field, so I can only sell my work for its subject matter.”

  “The implication, for peanuts. Right?”

  “Yes. Though one day maybe I will be able to earn a living at it. The real money is in limited editions of prints, but I’m not a lithographer. I need lessons I can’t afford.”

  “Still paying off the Hug embezzlement, huh?”

&
nbsp; She uncoiled from her chair like a spring and returned to the kitchen without answering.

  Her coffee was very good; he drank thirstily, helped himself to an apple Danish fresh out of the freezer.

  “You own the premises, I believe,” he said, feeling better.

  “Been checking up on people?”

  “Sure. It’s a part of the job.”

  “Yet you have the gall to sit in judgement of my work. Yes,” she went on, stroking her throat with one long, beautiful hand, “I own this house. I rent the second floor to a radiology resident and his nurse wife, and the top floor to a couple of lesbian ornithologists who work at the Burke Biology Tower. The rent’s saved my bacon since my — er — little slip.”

  That’s right, Tamara, brazen it out, it suits you better than indignation. “Professor Smith implied that your husband of that time masterminded you.”

  She leaned forward, feet tucked under her, lifted her lip in contempt. “They say you won’t do what you don’t want to do, so what do you think?”

  “That you loved him a great deal.”

  “How perceptive of you, Lieutenant! I suppose I must have, but it seems an eternity ago.”

  “Do you let your tenants use the basement?” he asked.

  Her creamy lids fell, her mouth curved slightly. “No, I do not. The basement is mine.”

  “I have no warrant, but would you mind if I looked around?”

  Her nipples popped out as if she were suddenly cold. “Why? What’s happened?” she asked sharply.

  “Another abduction. Last night, in Groton.”

  “And you think, because I paint what I paint, that I’m a psycho with a basement soaked in blood. Look where you want, I don’t give a fuck,” she said, and walked into what he realized had once been a second bedroom, but now was her studio.

  Carmine took her at her word, prowled around the basement to find nothing worse than a dead rat in a trap; had he liked her, he would have removed it for her, but as he didn’t, he didn’t.

  Her bedroom was very interesting; black leather, black satin sheets on a bed whose frame was stout enough to take manacles, a zebra skin on the black carpet with its head intact and two glowing red-glass eyes. I bet, he thought, walking about quietly, that you’re not on the receiving end of the whips, honey. You are a dominatrix. I wonder who is being flogged?

  A photograph in an ornate silver frame stood on the bedside table on what he guessed was her side of the bed; an elderly, stern woman who looked enough like Tamara to be Mom. He picked it up in what, had she entered the room, would have seemed an idle manner, then slid its back out quickly. Bingo! Paydirt. Behind Mom lay a full-length picture of Keith Kyneton; he was stark naked, built like Mr. Universe, and up like a fifteen-year-old. Another thirty seconds and Mom was back on the table. Why don’t they realize that hiding one photo behind another is the oldest trick in the Book of Deceptions? Now I know all about you, Miss Tamara Vilich. You might be flogging others, but not him — his work would suffer. Do you play games together, then? Dress him up as a baby and paddle his backside? Play a nurse giving him an enema? Or a strict schoolteacher dishing out humiliations? A hooker picking him up in a bar? Well, well!

  With nowhere else left to go, he went home, but got off the elevator on the tenth floor and pressed Desdemona’s intercom. Her voice answered tonelessly — not evidence of distaste, evidence of technology.

  “There’s been another one,” he said baldly, peeling off his outdoor layers.

  “Carmine, no! It’s only been a month!”

  He gazed around, located the work basket and a tablecloth that was being finished more rapidly than it would have been in her hiking days. “Why,” he demanded, mood darkened to utter discouragement and in need of someone to lash out at, “are you such a miser, Desdemona? Why don’t you spend money on yourself? What’s with this frugal living? Can’t you buy a nice dress once in a while?”

  She stood absolutely still, a white line about her compressed lips, her eyes displaying a grief he hadn’t seen there even for Charlie. “I am a spinster, I save for my old age,” she said levelly, “but more than that. In five more years I’m going home — home to a place with no violence, no gun-toting cops, and no Connecticut Monster. That’s why.”

  “I’m sorry, I had no right to ask. Forgive me.”

  “Not today, and perhaps not ever,” she said, opening the door. The outdoor clothes followed their owner, tossed in a heap on the floor. “Goodbye, Lieutenant Delmonico.”

  Chapter 15

  Tuesday, January 4th, 1966

  The first working day of the New Year was blowy and snowy, but the weather hadn’t prevented someone from daubing the Hug with graffiti — KILLERS, BLACK HATERS, PIGS, FASCISTS, swastikas, and, right along the front façade, HOLLOMAN KU KLUX KLAN.

  When the Prof arrived and saw what had been done to the apple of his eye, he collapsed. Not with a heart attack; Robert Mordent Smith’s crisis was of the spirit. An ambulance bore him away, the team manning it well aware that when they arrived one building down at Emergency, they would be shouting not for cardiologists but for psychiatrists. He wept, he moaned, he raved, he babbled, the words he uttered complete gibberish.

  Carmine came over to see the Hug for himself, as thankful as John Silvestri that the winter was proving a hard one after all; the real racial turmoil wouldn’t explode until spring. Only two black men had braved the elements to brandish placards already torn to tatters by the wind. One’s face was familiar; he halted outside the entrance and studied it. Its owner was small, thin, insignificant, very dark skinned, neither handsome nor sexy. So where, where, where? Buried memories tended to surface suddenly, as this one did; once things were in Carmine’s mind, they stayed there, resurrected when given a nudge by events. Otis Green’s wife’s nephew. Wesley le Clerc.

  He tramped across to le Clerc and his companion, another would-be-if-he-could-be who looked less determined than Wesley.

  “Go home, guys,” he said pleasantly, “otherwise we’ll have to dig you out or plough you under. Except, Mr. le Clerc, a word first. Come in out of the cold. I’m not arresting you, I just want to talk, scout’s honor.”

  A little to his surprise, Wesley followed him docilely while the other man scuttled away as if let out of school.

  “You’re Wesley le Clerc, right?” he asked after they moved inside, stamping the caked snow off their boots.

  “What if I am, huh?”

  “Mrs. Green’s nephew from Louisiana.”

  “Yeah, and I got a record, save you the time looking me up. I’m a known agitator. In other words, a nigger nuisance.”

  “How much time have you served, Wes?”

  “All up, five years. No stealing hub caps or armed robberies. Just beatin’ on redneck nigger haters.”

  “And what do you do in Holloman apart from demonstrating in a peaceful manner and wearing a Black Brigade jacket?”

  “Make instruments at Parson Surgical Supplies.”

  “That’s a good job, takes some manual and intellectual skill.”

  Wesley shaped up to the much bigger Carmine like a bantam rooster to a fighting cock. “What do you care what I do, huh? Think I painted that stuff out there, huh?”

  “Oh, grow up, Wes!” said Carmine wearily. “The graffiti’s not Black Brigade, it’s kids from Travis High, you think I don’t know that? What I want to know is why you’re out there freezing your ass off while the weather’s too bad to attract an audience.”

  “I’m there to tell Whitey that it’s time to worry, Mr. Smart Cop. You won’t catch this killer ’cos you don’t want to. For all I know, Mr. Smart Cop, you’re the one killing black girls.”

  “No, Wes, he’s not me.” Carmine leaned against the wall and eyed Wesley with unmistakable sympathy. “Give up on Mohammed’s way! It’s the wrong way. A better life for black people isn’t going to come through violence, no matter what Lenin said about terror. After all, a good many white people have terrorized black Americans for two
hundred years, but has that destroyed the black spirit? Go back to school, Wes, get a law degree. That will help the black cause more than Mohammed el Nesr can.”

  “Oh, sure! Where am I going to get the money for that?”

  “Making instruments at Parson Surgical Spplies. Holloman has good night schools, and there are bunches and bunches of people in Holloman eager to help.”

  “Whitey can shove his lordly patronage up his ass!”

  “Who says I’m talking about Whitey? Many of them are black. Businessmen, professional men. I don’t know if they exist in Louisiana yet, but they sure do in Connecticut, and none of them are Uncle Toms. They are working for their people.”

  Wesley le Clerc turned on his heel and left, flinging his right fist into the air.

  “At least, Wes,” said Carmine, smiling at Wesley’s retreating back, “you didn’t flip me the bird.”

  But Wesley le Clerc wasn’t thinking of rude gestures as he scrunched through the worsening snow. He was thinking of Lieutenant Carmine Delmonico in a different way. Bright, very bright. Too cool and sure of himself to give anyone an excuse to cry persecution or even discrimination; his was the soft answer turned away wrath. Only not this time. Not my wrath. Through Otis I have the means to feed Mohammed information he will need come spring. Mohammed looks at me with a little more respect these days, and what’s he going to say when I tell him that the Holloman pigs are still nosing around the Hug? The answer is inside the Hug. Delmonico knows that as well as I do. Rich, privileged Whitey. When every black American is a disciple of Mohammed el Nesr, things are gonna change.

  “The way is hard,” said Mohammed el Nesr to Ali el Kadi. “Too many of our black brothers are brainwashed, and too many more have been seduced by Whitey’s greatest weapons — drugs and booze. Even now the Monster has taken a real black girl, our recruitment isn’t picking up enough.”