On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  “It’s highly inconvenient,” said Dr. Nur Chandra, speaking to Carmine in his imposing library, “but necessary, Lieutenant. The Hug was perfect for my needs, even to — and including — Cecil.”

  “Then why go?” Carmine asked.

  Chandra looked scornful. “Oh, come, my good man, surely you can see that the Hug is past tense? Robert Smith won’t return, and I am told that the Parson Governors are seeking a way out of financing the Hug. So I would rather go now, while things are in flux, than wait until I have to step over yet more bodies. I need to get out while this monster is still killing, so that I am quite removed from suspicion. For you won’t catch him, Lieutenant.”

  “That sounds good and logical, Dr. Chandra, but I suspect that the real reason you’re anxious to hustle yourself off right now concerns your monkeys. Your chances of taking them with you in the middle of the present chaos is much higher than after the Hug’s situation occupies more Parson attention than a will. You are, in effect, making off with close to a million dollars in Hug property, however your contract may be worded.”

  “Oh, very shrewd, Lieutenant!” Chandra said appreciatively. “That is precisely why I am leaving now. Once I am gone and my macaques gone with me, it will be a fait accompli. Disentangling the situation, legally and logistically, would be hideous.”

  “Are the macaques still at the Hug?”

  “No, they’re here in temporary quarters. With Cecil Potter.”

  “And when are you leaving for Massachusetts?”

  “Things are already in motion. I myself will go on Friday with my wife and children. Cecil and the macaques go tomorrow.”

  “I hear you’ve bought a nice place outside Boston.”

  “Yes. Very much like this, actually.”

  In walked Surina Chandra clad in a scarlet sari encrusted with embroidery and gold thread, her arms, neck and hair blazing with jewels. Behind her were two little girls about seven years of age — twins, Carmine thought, astonished at their beauty. But the emotion was gone in a second as his eyes took in their apparel. Matching dresses of lace covered in rhinestones, with stiff, full skirts and little puffed sleeves. Both an ethereal ice-green.

  Somehow he got through the introductions. The girls, Leela and Nuru, were indeed twins; demure souls with enormous black eyes and black hair in braids as thick as hawsers straying over their shoulders. Like their mother, they smelled of some eastern perfume Carmine couldn’t like — musky, heavy, tropical. They had diamonds in their earlobes that left the rhinestones for dead.

  “I love your dresses,” he said to the twins, hunkering down to their level without approaching them too closely.

  “Yes, they are pretty,” said their mother. “It’s difficult to find this sort of children’s wear in America. Of course they have lots sent from home, but when we saw these, they appealed.”

  “If it isn’t a rude question, Mrs. Chandra, where did you find the dresses?”

  “In a mall not far from where we’re going to live. A lovely shop for girls, better than any I’ve found in Connecticut.”

  “Can you tell me where the mall is?”

  “Oh, dear, I’m afraid not. They all look much the same to me, and I don’t know the area yet.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember the name of the store, then?”

  She laughed, white teeth flashing. “Having been brought up on J. M. Barrie and Kenneth Graham, of course I do! Tinker Bell.”

  And off they drifted, the twins waving back at him shyly.

  “My children have taken a fancy to you,” said Chandra.

  Nice, but unimportant. “May I use your phone, Doctor?”

  “Certainly, Lieutenant. I’ll leave you in private.”

  You sure can’t fault them on manners, even if their ethics are different, Carmine thought as he dialed Marciano, his fingers trembling.

  “I know where the dresses come from,” he said without preamble. “Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell, two words. There’s one in a mall outside Boston, but there may be others. Start looking.”

  “Two stores,” said Marciano when Carmine walked in. “Boston and White Plains, both in classy malls. You’re sure of this?”

  “Positive. Two of Chandra’s little girls were wearing dead ringers of Margaretta’s dress, except green in color. Thing is, which Tinker Bell would our Ghosts patronize?”

  “White Plains. It’s closer unless they live near the Mass border. That’s possible, of course.”

  “Then Abe can go to Boston tomorrow, while I take White Plains. Jesus, Danny, we’ve got a break at last!”

  Chapter 23

  Tuesday, February 15th, 1966

  The Tinker Bell at White Plains was located in a mall of smart clothing and furniture stores interspersed with the inevitable delis, fast-food outlets, drugstores and dry cleaners. There were also several restaurants catering more for lunch than dinner. It was a new structure on two levels, but Tinker Bell was too canny to situate itself one floor up. Near the entrance on the ground.

  It was, Carmine noted as he surveyed Tinker Bell from the outside, a very large premises entirely devoted to clothing for girl children. They had a sale going for overcoats and winter wear; no cheap nylon stuff in here, all natural fiber. There was even, he saw, a section devoted to real furs through an archway that said Kiddiminx. Several dozen customers browsed the racks even at this early hour, some with children in tow, some alone. No men. How many shoplifters in a place like this? the cop wondered.

  He entered with as much confidence as he could muster, looking — and feeling — utterly incongruous. Apparently he had a neon sign on his forehead blinking COP on and off, as women moved quickly away from him and the store assistants started to huddle.

  “May I see the manager, please?” he asked one hapless girl who didn’t make the huddle in time.

  Oh, good, they could remove him from the floor! The girl led him immediately to the back of the merchandise and knocked on an unmarked door.

  Mrs. Giselle Dobchik ushered him into a tiny cubicle stuffed with cardboard boxes and filing cabinets; a safe sat to one side of a table that served as Mrs. Dobchik’s desk, but there was no room for a visitor’s chair. Her response to the sight of his badge was unruffled interest; but then, Mrs. Dobchik struck him as the kind whom little ruffled. Mid-forties, very well dressed, blonde hair, red-varnished nails not long enough to snag the goods.

  “Do you recognize this, ma’am?” he asked, removing the shell-pink lace dress Margaretta had worn from his briefcase. Out came Faith’s lilac dress. “Or this?”

  “Almost certainly Tinker Bells,” she said, beginning to feel the inside seams, and frowning. “Our labels have been removed, but yes, I can assure you that they’re genuine Tinker Bells. We have special tricks with the beading.”

  “I don’t suppose you know who bought them?”

  “Any number of people, Lieutenant. They’re both size tens — that is, for girls between ten and twelve years of age. Once past twelve, a girl tends to want to look more like Annette Funicello than a fairy. We always have one of each model and color in each size in stock, but two is a strain. Here, come with me.”

  Following her out of her office and over to a large area of glittery, frilly party dresses on dozens of long racks, Carmine understood what she meant when she said two the same size and type was a strain; there must have been upward of two thousand dresses in hues from white to dark red, all picked out in rhinestones or pearls or opalescent beads.

  “Six sizes from three years to twelve years, twenty different models, and twenty different colors,” she said. “We’re famous for these dresses, you see — they walk out as fast as we can get them in.” A laugh. “After all, we can’t have two girls in the same model and color at the same party! Wearing a Tinker Bell is a sign of social status. Ask any Westchester County mom or child. The cachet extends into Connecticut — quite a few of our clients drive in from Fairfield or Litchfield Counties.”

  “If I may collect my dresses and b
riefcase, Mrs. Dobchik, could I buy you some lunch? A cup of coffee? I feel like a bull in a china shop here, and I can’t be good for business.”

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate the break,” said Mrs. Dobchik.

  “What you said about two girls wearing the same Tinker Bell to the same party leads me to assume that you do keep fairly detailed records,” he said, sucking at a chocolate malted through a straw — too much kid stuff.

  “Oh, yes, we have to. It’s just that both the models you’ve shown me have been perennials for some years, so we’ve sold a big bunch of them. The pink lace has been out now for five years, the lilac one for four. Your samples have been so abused that it’s not possible to tell exactly when they were made.”

  “Whereabouts are they made?”

  She nibbled on a cruller, clearly enjoying her role as an expert.

  “We have a small factory in Worcester, Mass. My sister runs Boston, I run White Plains, our brother runs the factory. A family business — we’re the sole owners.”

  “Do men ever come in to buy?”

  “Sometimes, Lieutenant, but on the whole Tinker Bell clients are women. Men may buy lingerie for their wives, but they usually avoid buying party dresses for their daughters.”

  “Would you ever sell two dresses in the same size and color to the same buyer on the same day? Like, for twins?”

  “Yes, it does happen, but it involves a wait of a day for us to get in the second dress. Women with twins order in advance.”

  “What about someone’s buying, say, my pink lace and my lilac whatever-it-is —”

  “Broderie Anglaise,” she interrupted.

  “Thanks, I’ll write that down. Would someone buy two models in different colors in the same size on the same day?”

  “Only once,” she said, and sighed in reminiscent pleasure. “Oh, what a sale that was! Twelve dresses in the ten-to-twelve size, each one a different model and color.”

  The hair on Carmine’s neck stood up. “When?”

  “Toward the end of 1963, I think it was. I can look it up.”

  “Before we go back and I get you to do that, Mrs. Dobchik, do you remember who this buyer was? What she looked like?”

  “I remember very well,” said the perfect witness. “Not her name — she paid cash. But she was in the grandmother age group. About fifty-five. Wore a sable coat and a snappy sable hat, had blue-rinsed hair, good but not overdone make-up, big nose, blue eyes, elegant bifocal glasses, a pleasant speaking voice. Her bag and shoes were matching Charles Jourdan, and she wore longish kid gloves in sable brown like the shoes and bag. A uniformed chauffeur carried all the boxes out to her limo. It was a black Lincoln.”

  “Doesn’t sound as if she needed food stamps.”

  “Heavens to Betsy, no! It remains the biggest single sale in party dresses we’ve ever had. One-fifty each, eighteen hundred bucks. She peeled hundred-dollar bills off a two-inch stack.”

  “Did you happen to ask her why she was buying so many party dresses in the same size?”

  “Sure I did — who wouldn’t? She smiled and said she was the local representative of a charity organization that was sending the dresses to an orphanage in Buffalo for Christmas gifts.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  Giselle Dobchik grinned. “It’s just as believable as buying twelve dresses in the same size, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  They returned to Tinker Bell, where Mrs. Dobchik produced her record of the sale. No name, cash tendered.

  “You took the numbers of the bills,” Carmine said. “Why?”

  “There was a counterfeit scare at the time, so I checked with my bank while the girls were boxing everything up.”

  “And they weren’t counterfeit?”

  “No, they were the real McCoy, but the bank was interested in them because they’d been issued in 1933 right after we went off the gold standard, and were in near-mint condition.” Mrs. Dobchik shrugged. “Ask me did I care? They were legal tender. My bank manager thought they’d been hoarded.”

  Carmine scanned the list of eighteen numbers. “I agree. They’re consecutive. Very unusual, but no help to me.”

  “Is this a part of some big, exciting case?” Mrs. Dobchik asked, walking him to the door.

  “Afraid not, ma’am. Another hundred-dollar bill scare.”

  “We now know that the Ghosts had planned the second series of murders before they started on the first,” Carmine said to his fascinated audience. “The sale was made in December of 1963 well before the very first victim, Rosita Esperanza, was abducted. They ploughed through a dozen girls at the rate of one every two months for two years with twelve Tinker Bell dresses packed in mothballs against the day when they’d be used. Whoever the Ghosts are, they are not following a moon cycle, which is what the psychiatrists want to think now that they’re down to one every thirty days. The moon has nothing to do with the Ghosts. They’re cycling on the sun — twelves, twelves, twelves.”

  “Does finding out about Tinker Bell help?” Silvestri asked.

  “Not until there’s a trial.”

  “But first, find the Ghosts,” said Marciano. “Who do you think Grandma is, Carmine?”

  “One of the Ghosts.”

  “But you said these aren’t women’s crimes.”

  “I still say that, Danny. However, it’s much easier for a man to disguise himself as an elderly woman than a young one. Rougher skin and creases don’t matter as much.”

  “I love the props,” Silvestri said dryly. “Sable coats, a chauffeur and limo. Could we try the limo angle?”

  “I’ll get Corey on to it tomorrow, John, but don’t hope. The chauffeur was the other Ghost, I’m picking. Funny, that. Mrs. Dobchik could remember every detail about Grandma down to bifocal glasses, but not a thing about the chauffeur apart from a black suit, cap, and leather gloves.”

  “No, it’s logical,” said Patrick. “Your Mrs. Dobchik is in the clothing business. She caters to wealthy women every day, but not to workingmen. The women she files in her memory, and she knows every kind of fur, every make of French bags and shoes. I’ll bet Grandma never took her kid gloves off for a second, even when she peeled hundreds off her stack.”

  “You’re right, Patsy. Gloved throughout.”

  Silvestri growled. “So we’re no closer to the Ghosts.”

  “In one way, John, yet we have made progress. Since they leave no evidence and no one has come forward with a description, we’re looking for a needle in a haystack. How many people in Connecticut, three million? As states go it’s pretty small — no big cities, a dozen small ones, a hundred towns. Well, that’s our haystack. But I wasn’t long into this case before I realized that looking for the needle isn’t the way to go. The Tinker Bell dresses may seem like one more dead end, but I don’t think that’s true. They’re a new nail in the coffin, another piece of evidence. Anything that tells us a fact about the Ghosts gets us that much closer to them. What we’re looking at is a jigsaw puzzle made of cloudless blue sky, but the Tinker Bell dresses have filled in a blank space. The amount of sky is growing.”

  Carmine leaned forward, running with his idea. “First off, one Ghost has become two Ghosts. Secondly, the two Ghosts are as close as brothers. I don’t know what color their skin is, but what they see in their collective mind is a face. More than anything else, a face. The kind of face you don’t see on white white girls, nor very often on black black girls. The Ghosts work as a team in the true sense — each has a specific set of tasks, areas of expertise. That probably extends to what they do with and to their victims once captured. The rape turns them on, but the victim has to be a virgin in every sense — they’re not interested in heavy petters with intact hymens. One Ghost gives the victim her first kiss, so maybe the other Ghost deflowers her. I see the teamwork persisting — you get to do this, I get to do that. About the actual killing, I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the subservient Ghost does it. He cleans up. The only reason they keep t
he heads is the face, which means that when we find them we are going to find every head going back to Rosita Esperanza. While ever their activities weren’t known to the police, they got a kick out of the daylight abductions, but from Francine Murray on, they sweated. I’m beginning to think that they switched to the night because of police awareness, not as part of a consciously designed new method. Night abductions are less risky, simple as that.”

  Patrick sat with eyes narrowed as if focused on something very small. “The face,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve heard you discard all the other criteria, Carmine. What makes you think it’s just the face? Why have you discarded color, creed, race, size, innocence?”

  “Oh, Patsy, you know how often I’ve been fixed on all of them and each of them, but I’ve finally settled for the face. It came to me on the drive — wham!” He palmed a fist, wham! “Margaretta Bewlee told me. My black pearl after a dozen creamy ones. What did she have in common with the other girls? And the answer is, a face. Nothing except a face. Feature by feature, hers is the same as all the others. I got sidetracked by her differences, so much so that I overlooked the one similarity — the face.”

  “What about the innocence?” Marciano asked. “She had that too.”

  “Yes, it’s a given. But innocence isn’t what drives our pair of Ghosts to abduct these particular girls. The face does. If a girl doesn’t have the face, all the innocence in the world won’t interest the Ghosts in her.” He paused, frowning.

  “Go on, Carmine,” Silvestri prompted.

  “The Ghosts — or maybe one Ghost — knew someone with the face. Someone they hate more than the rest of humanity put together.”