On, Off

by Colleen McCullough

  The crowd around the courthouse was so huge that traffic had been entirely diverted from Cedar Street; a line of police with arms linked ebbed and surged in time to the pushing of the people they were trying to contain. Perhaps half the crowd was black, but both halves were very angry. The press were inside the cordon, cameramen with cameras at shoulder level, news photographers clicking away on automatic, radio announcers babbling into their microphones, channel six’s anchorman doing the same. One of the journalists was a small, thin black man in a bulky jacket; he inched forward amid smiles and murmured apologies, hands tucked inside his coat for warmth.

  When Charles Ponsonby was removed from the squad car the journalists rushed at him, the thin little black man in their forefront. One thin black hand emerged from the jacket and went up to his head, jammed a strange hat on it, a hat supporting a strip of white cardboard that said in neat black letters WE HAVE SUFFERED. All eyes had gone to the hat, even Charles Ponsonby’s; no one saw Wesley le Clerc’s other hand come out holding a black Saturday night special. He put four bullets in Ponsonby’s chest and abdomen before the closest cops could draw their guns. But no fusillade cut him down. Carmine had jumped to shield him, roaring at the top of his voice.

  “Hold your fire!”

  And it was all there on TV, every single millisecond of the deed, from the WE HAVE SUFFERED hat to Charles Ponsonby’s look of amazement and Carmine’s suicidal leap. Mohammed el Nesr and his cronies watched it unfold, rigid with shock. Then Mohammed sagged back in his chair and lifted his arms in exultation.

  “Wesley, my man, you have given us our martyr! And that big dumb-ass cop Delmonico saved you for a trial. Man, what a trial we will make it!”

  “Ali, you mean,” said Hassan, not understanding.

  “No, he’s Wesley le Clerc from now on. It has to look as if he acted for all black people, not just for the Black Brigade. That’s the way we’ll work it.”

  It happened two minutes before Claire Ponsonby’s car was due to arrive, so she wasn’t witness to her brother’s fate. At first she was stranded in a moving mass of bodies, then police managed to clear enough space for the Lincoln to reverse back down Cedar Street to the County Services building.

  “Jesus, Carmine, are you crazy?” Danny Marciano demanded, face ashen, body shaking. “My guys were on automatic pilot, they would have shot the Pope!”

  “Well, luckily they didn’t shoot me. More importantly, Danny, there were no flying bullets to wing a cameraman or kill Di Jones — how could Holloman survive without her Sunday gossip column?”

  “Yeah, I know why you did it — and so do they, give them that much credit. I gotta go disperse this crowd.”

  Patrick was kneeling by Charles Ponsonby’s head, thrown up and back, an expression of outrage on its lean, beaky face; a lake of blood was spreading from beneath his body, thinning as it flowed onward.

  “Dead?” Carmine asked, bending down.

  “As a doornail.” Patrick brushed a hand across the fixed, disbelieving eyes to close them. “At least he won’t walk, and I for one think there’s a Hell waiting for him.”

  Wesley le Clerc stood between two uniformed cops, looking harmless and insignificant; every camera was still aimed at him, the man who had executed the Connecticut Monster. Rough justice, but justice of a kind. It never occurred to anyone that Ponsonby had not been tried, might conceivably have been innocent.

  Silvestri came down the courthouse steps wiping his brow. “The judge is not amused,” he said to Carmine. “Christ, what a fucking fiasco! And get him out of here!” he yelled at the men holding Wesley. “Go on, take him in and book him!”

  Carmine followed Wesley into the squad car cage and sat back on the stained and smelly seat, his head turned sideways. Wesley was still wearing that fool hat with its heartrending message: WE HAVE SUFFERED. But the first thing Carmine did was to inform Wesley of his situation loudly enough for the cops in the front seat to hear. Then he plucked the hat off, turned it between his hands. A hard plastic hockey helmet that he had attacked with tin snips to fit it snugly around his ears. Jam it on, and it would stay in place long enough to be seen.

  “I guess you thought it would come off in the hail of cop bullets you expected to cut you down, yet there it was on top of your head to the bitter end. It even survived getting into this shit-heap car. You’re a better craftsman than you realize, Wes.”

  “I have done a great thing,” Wesley said in ringing tones, “and I will go on to do greater things!”

  “Don’t forget that anything you say may be used in evidence.”

  “What do I care about that, Lieutenant Delmonico? I am the avenger of my people, I killed the man who raped and murdered our women children. I am a hero, and so I will be regarded.”

  “Oh, Wes, you’ve wasted yourself, can’t you see that? What gave you the idea, Jack Ruby? Did you think for one minute that I’d let you die the way he did? You have such a good mind! And, more’s the pity, if you had only done what I asked you to do, you might have made a real difference to your people. But no, you wouldn’t wait. Killing is easy, Wes. Anybody can kill. To me, it indicates an IQ about four points higher than plant life. Charles Ponsonby would probably have gone to prison for the rest of his days. All you did was let him off the hook.”

  “Was that who it was? Dr. Chuck Ponsonby? Well, well! A Hugger after all. You don’t even begin to understand, Lieutenant. He was just a means to my end. He gave me the chance to become a martyr. Do I give a fuck whether he lives or dies? No, I do not! I am the one who must suffer, and suffer I will.”

  As Wesley le Clerc was being led away to the cells Silvestri stomped in, chewing fiercely on his cigar. “There’s another one we’ll have to watch every second,” he growled. “Let him commit suicide and there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “He’s also a very bright guy and manually skilled, so taking away his belt and anything he can tear into strips won’t prevent his trying if that’s the way his mind is going. Personally I don’t think it is. Wesley wants everything aired in public.”

  They entered the elevator. “What do we do with Miss Claire Ponsonby?” Carmine asked.

  “We drop the charges and release her forthwith. That’s what the D.A. says. A bucket of dead leaves is not enough evidence to hold her, let alone charge her. The only thing we can do is forbid her to leave Holloman County — for the time being.” The jowly face screwed up like a colicky baby’s. “Oh, what a pain in the ass this case has been from start to finish! All those beautiful, sainted young girls dead, and no one to bring them real justice. And how the hell do I handle the relatives about the heads?”

  “At least the heads represent the closing of a door to the families, John. Not knowing is worse than knowing,” Carmine said as they left the elevator. “Where is Claire?”

  “Back in the same office.”

  “Mind if I do the deed?”

  “Mind? Be my guest. I don’t want to see the bitch!”

  She was sitting in a comfortable chair, Biddy lying at her feet, ignoring the two uncomfortable young women ordered never to take their eyes off her. Since she couldn’t see, somehow that seemed an unpardonable invasion of her privacy.

  “Why, Lieutenant Delmonico!” she exclaimed, straightening as he walked in.

  “No V-8 engine in my car to give me away this time. How do you do it, Miss Ponsonby?”

  She achieved a simper that made her look old, sly, pinched, pitiful; something about the expression gave him one of those lightning flashes of insight so vital to his police career. It said that she was definitely the second Ghost. Oh, Patsy, Patsy, find me something to put her in the killing premises! Find me a photograph or a movie of her and Chuck in the middle of rape and murder. Grow up, Carmine! There is nothing. The only memorabilia they keep are the heads. What use is a picture, still or moving, to a blind person? What use, for that matter, is a head?

  “Lieutenant,” she said with a purr, “you carry your V-8 with you wherever you go. The engin
e’s not in your car, it’s in you.”

  “Have you been informed that your brother, Charles, is dead?”

  “Yes, I have. I also know that he did none of the things you say he did. My brother was a highly intellectual, fastidious and terribly kind man. That peasant Marciano accused me of being his lover — pah! I’m glad that I don’t have a cesspool for a mind.”

  “We have to take every possibility into account. But you’re free to go, Miss Ponsonby. All charges have been dropped.”

  “So I should think.” She tugged the loop on Biddy’s harness.

  “Where are you going to stay? Your house is still a crime scene under police investigation and will remain so for some time to come. Would you like me to phone Mrs. Eliza Smith?”

  “Certainly not!” she snapped. “If it hadn’t been for that woman’s tale-telling, none of this would have happened. I hope she dies of cancer of the tongue!”

  “Then where are you going?”

  “I will be at Major Minor’s until I can move back into my home, so be warned. I intend to retain lawyers to watch for my interests as owner of Six Ponsonby Lane, therefore I suggest that you damage nothing. The house committed no crime.”

  And out she swept. Winner take all, Carmine. Ghost or no Ghost, that is one formidable woman.

  He went back to the house that committed no crime, though he hadn’t offered to drive Claire to Major Minor’s. Silvestri had donated his Lincoln for that. They were now entering upon the saddest time in any case — the flat, uninspiring aftermath.

  By the time everyone arrived at the Hug, the news that the Connecticut Monster had been caught was, in news terms, quite old. Each face looked smoother, younger, and each pair of eyes glowed. Oh, the relief! Perhaps now the Hug could return to normal, for obviously the Monster was not a Hugger.

  Desdemona hadn’t seen Carmine since she returned from her hike, nor had she expected to, with the Ghost watch keeping him away. But just as she was about to leave for her escorted squad car trip to the Hug on this Wednesday morning, the phone rang: Carmine, sounding curiously unemotional.

  “There’s a TV in the Hug boardroom as I remember,” he said. “Turn it on and watch channel six, okay?” Click! He hung up.

  Feet dragging, crushed at his impersonal tone, Desdemona unlocked the boardroom and pushed the button on the TV just as the wall clock registered 9 A.M. Oh, how she didn’t want to see this! No sooner had she gotten through the Hug door than all and sundry were whooping that the Monster had been caught. As if the cops in her squad car hadn’t been full of it! Now she would have to see what Carmine had been up to in the night marches, and she feared that. Presumably he was unhurt, but for three nights she had been eaten by worry, even terror. What would she do if he never came home again? Oh, what on earth had possessed her to declare her independence by hiking the weekend before his Ghost watch commenced? Why hadn’t she realized that he wouldn’t come home on Sunday night? All her hopes had been pinned on that as she walked the magic of the woods: how she would throw her arms around him and tell him she couldn’t live without him. But — no Carmine. Just the echoes of his richly red apartment.

  The TV shimmered into life. Yes, there was the courthouse, surrounded by a crowd many hundreds strong, journalists everywhere, police everywhere. One cameraman from channel six apparently had found himself a perch on top of a van roof and could pan the whole scene; another was in the crowd, and a third on the sidewalk near an arriving squad car. She spotted Carmine standing with a big uniformed captain she recognized as Danny Marciano. Commissioner Silvestri was at the top of the courthouse steps looking very smart in a uniform twinkling with silver braid. Then from out of the back of the squad car emerged Dr. Charles Ponsonby. Her heart seeming to squeeze up, Desdemona watched with jaw dropped. Ye gods, Charles Ponsonby! A Hugger. Bob Smith’s oldest and best friend. I am witnessing, she thought, the extinction of the Hug. Are the Parson Governors watching this in New York City? Yes, of course they are! Our channel is a network affiliate. Have the Parson Governors found that escape clause? If they haven’t, they will redouble their efforts after this bombshell.

  What happened next was so fast it seemed over before it had begun: the little black man, that hat saying WE HAVE SUFFERED, the sound of four shots, Charles Ponsonby going down, and Carmine deliberately putting himself in front of the little black man still holding a squat, ugly pistol. When Carmine did that as the cops all around slapped leather, Desdemona felt herself die, waiting frozen in time for the sound of a dozen guns reflexively cutting him down. His roar of “Hold your fire!” came clearly on the airwaves. Carmine stood miraculously unharmed, the cops were holstering their weapons and moving to grab the little black man, who made no attempt to evade them. She sat shivering, hands over her mouth, eyes starting from their sockets. Carmine, you fool! You idiot! You flaming soldier! You didn’t die — this time. But I am doomed to the fate of a soldier’s woman, always.

  Whom to tell first? No, best tell them all at once, right this moment. The Hug had a speaker system: Desdemona used it to summon every Hugger to the lecture theater.

  Then she went to Tamara’s office; someone would have to man the phones. Poor Tamara! A shadow of her old self since Keith Kyneton had slammed his door in her face. Even her hair seemed to have wasted away, lackluster and unkempt. She didn’t even react, just nodded and continued to sit staring into space.

  The news of Charles Ponsonby’s secret activities broke upon the people in the lecture theater like a clap of thunder: gasps, exclamations, a degree of incredulity.

  To Addison Forbes, it was God in the burning bush: with no Ponsonby or Smith in the way, the Hug would become his. Why would the Board of Governors search elsewhere when he was so eminently suitable? He had the clinical experience that drove researchers to produce, his reputation was international. The Board of Governors liked him. With Smith and Ponsonby gone, the Hug under Professor Addison Forbes would go on to bigger and better things! And who needed the conceited Great Panjandrum from India? The world was full of potential Nobel Prize winners.

  Walter Polonowski hardly heard Desdemona’s crisply succinct summary; he was too depressed. Four kids from Paola, and a fifth coming up from Marian. With a wedding band looming, Marian was shedding her mistress’s skin to reveal a new epidermis striped in wifely colors. They are serpents, we are their victims.

  To Maurice Finch, the news brought sorrow, but sorrow of a peaceful kind. He had always thought that to give up medicine would be tantamount to a death sentence, but the events of the past few months had taught him that this need not be so. His plants were patients too; his skilled and loving hands could tend them, heal them, help them multiply. Yes, life with Cathy on a chicken farm looked very good. And he’d beat those mushrooms yet.

  Kurt Schiller was not surprised. He had never liked Charles Ponsonby, whom he had suspected of secret homosexuality; Chuck’s attitude was a little too subtly knowing, and the art whispered of a nightmare world beneath that anonymous exterior. Not its subject matter, more an emanation from Chuck. In Kurt’s book he had gone down as one of the chains-and-leather boys, heavily into pain, though Schiller had always assumed Chuck was on the receiving end. The passive type, scuttling around to serve some terrifying master. Well, evidently he, Kurt, had been wrong. Charles was a true sadist — had to be, to have done what he did to those poor children. As for himself, Kurt expected nothing. His credentials would guarantee him a post no matter what happened to the Hug, and he had the germ of an idea about transmitting diseases across the species barrier that he knew would excite the head of any research unit. Now that the photograph of Papa with Adolf Hitler was ashes on the hearth and his homosexuality was out in the open, he felt ready for the new life he intended to lead. Not in Holloman. In New York City, among his peers.

  “Otis,” Tamara shouted from the door, “you’re needed at home, so get going! I couldn’t make hide nor hair out of what Celeste was saying, but it’s an emergency.”

  Don Hunte
r and Billy Ho ranged themselves one on either side of Otis, helping him out of the row of seats.

  “We’ll take him, Desdemona,” Don said. “Can’t have his wonky heart playing up if he’s needed.”

  Cecil Potter watched channel six’s footage replayed on CBS in Massachusetts, Jimmy on his knee.

  “Man, will you look at that?” he asked the monkey. “Uh-uh! Hooee! I am so glad to be outta there!”

  When Carmine opened his door that evening Desdemona charged at him, weeping noisy tears, pummeling his chest angrily. Her nose was running and her eyes drowned.

  Hugely gratified, he put her tenderly on the new sofa he had acquired because easy chairs were all very well and good for talk, but nothing beat a sofa for two people to smooch on. He let the storm of tears and ire abate, rocking her and murmuring, then used his handkerchief to clean her up.

  “What was all that about?” he asked, knowing the answer.

  “You!” she said, hiccoughing. “Bloody huh-huh-hero!”

  “Not bloody, and no hero.”

  “Bloody hero! Stepping in front to take the buh-buh-bullet! Oh, I could have killed you!”

  “It’s great to see you too,” he said, laughing. “Now put up your feet and I’ll fix us a couple of snifters of X-O.”

  “I knew I loved you,” she said later, calmed down, “but what a way to learn how much I love you! Carmine, I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”

  “Does this mean that you’d rather be Mrs. Carmine Delmonico than live in London?”

  “It does.”

  He kissed her with love, gratitude, humility. “I’ll try to make you a good husband, Desdemona, but you’ve already had a televised preview of what a cop’s life entails. The future won’t be any different — long hours, absences, stray bullets. However, I figure someone’s on my side. So far I’m still in one piece.”

  “As long as you understand that whenever you do foolhardy things, I’ll bash you up.”

  “I’m hungry” was his answer. “How about some Chinese?”