All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Just prints and photos,” Lestrade decided. “This lot might enjoy body searches. Process Davison first, then bring him straight back to Interrogation. I’m taking his statement myself. Personally.” She glanced at her partner—she had had him brief her on who was who during the drive back. “For the others. Detective Clayton, you take Imani’s statement. Officer Little Bird—Whitcomb. Officer Vergucchi—Osaka. Officer Brown—Friedman. I don’t think they’ll give you any trouble.”

  “Sarge,” Dave asked, a little shakily, “do you want me in there, with…”

  “No, Detective, I do not. No ‘good polly, bad polly’ games tonight. It’ll be ‘bad polly’ all the way.”

  “Old Woman…if you decide to see Whitcomb…can you go just a little bit ‘good polly’ on her?”

  Lestrade searched his face. Almost—not quite—gave him a tiny smile of reassurance. But all she answered in words was, “We’ll see. We’ll just see. Anybody keep track of what happened to M. Garvey?”

  “I think she went back to the waiting room, Sergeant,” said Little Bird.

  “Good. Keep her there. Officer Wentworth,” she went on, as he came out to join her squad. “I haven’t given you anything else to do. Take M. Garvey some sandwiches, coffee, whatever she wants. Go out and buy her a paperback book if she doesn’t like our choice magazine selection. Anything that makes her happy.” As if anything could. “I’ll be in Interrogation. Waiting for Davison.”

  Once in the interrogation room, she turned her back on the never-curtained steelglass picture window, shook the pieces of M. Garvey’s letter out on the sink counter, fitted them together, and read the message. Mush. Flowery, overblown mush. Sydney Carton, take a back seat.

  Good Lady God! Why wasn’t there anybody to write me mush like that, back when I was M. Garvey’s age?

  Pocketing the torn letter again, she leaned back and waited.

  CHAPTER 23

  Still Tuesday, October 3

  In good time, Lotus Blossom Lee delivered Davison to Interrogation, left him there, and shut the door behind her. He stood near the door, looking around uncertainly, never quite venturing to meet Lestrade’s eye.

  “Take a seat, M. Davison,” she told him in a calm, emotionless, carefully controlled voice, with a gesture at the easy chair facing the window.

  He crossed the room, sat down in the chair as if it was Gojira ready to chomp, and looked to right and left at the nailed-down snack table and the wire recorder on its stand.

  “Coffee, M. Davison?” This time she made her voice almost motherly.

  “Thank you. That would be extremely welcome.”

  She poured a cup. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Of the former…two dollops, if you please, and…tonight… I think…two spoonfuls of the latter. For the caloric energy.”

  She added the sugar, stirred it well, poured in the cream, brought the fine china cup and saucer—nothing too soft for the interviewees, at all costs avoid any appearance of police brutality—and set it on the snack table beside the chair. “Cookies? Petits fours? Maybe a sandwich?”

  “Thank you again. A sandwich would taste delectable.”

  She got the sandwich plate out of the mini-fridge. “Egg salad, ham salad, liverwurst, or chicken?”

  “The first, please. Eggs are, after all, the youngest and tenderest of chickens.”

  She took off the cellophane, put the sandwich on a fine china plate—different pattern from the cup and saucer; even for luxury interrogation rooms, the budget extended only to discontinued floor-sample place settings—cut it into four neat triangles, added a linen napkin, brought them over and set them beside the coffee. By now anyone could see he was starting to relax.

  A couple of teenage girls happened to stroll by, at their ease in the back alley. It being as wide and well lit as the front walkway, and almost as full of shop windows. They looked in, grinned, pointed, poked each other lightly in the upper arm, exchanged a word or two inaudible through the sound-soak-treated steelglass, then waved at somebody or something out of sight of the occupants of the room, and hurried away.

  Taking her post well to the side of the chair, Lestrade got down to business. “Well, M. Davison,” she said in abnormally friendly tones, “suppose you tell me why, exactly, you saw fit to disobey my direct ‘suggestion.’ Didn’t I make it plain enough?”

  “Craving your indulgence, Sergeant, if I might beg enlightenment as to what final, comprehensive, and absolute authority the police enjoy over the licit activities of free civilians?”

  That tore it.

  She scorched him royally. She excoriated him raw. She dragged his bloody carcass through red-hot embers and laid him out in lilies. She personally escorted him through every monotheistic hades she had ever heard anything about, and tossed in the Buddhist and Etruscan hells for good measure.

  His coffee sat cooling beside him forgotten, his sandwich untouched, his mouth hanging half open like a stunned puppy’s.

  She never even thought about relenting until she saw him trying to blink back tears. She didn’t actually wind down and finish up until he fumbled his handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose.

  “Your coffee is probably cold,” she observed, making a sudden shift to Polite Hostess. “Hotten it for you?”

  He answered not a word. Just sat still with his head bent down. Well, Dave always told her, out of the depths of his mercifully limited experience with it, that she had the most scorching tongue of his acquaintance. Came in handy now and then. She picked up the lukewarm cup, took it over to the sink and emptied it out, refilled it, added the sugar and cream, and brought it over to the easy chair.

  By now he had his head back on the cushion, eyes closed, breathing still a little ragged, but obviously hard at work pulling himself together again. The teenage girls were back, peering in and giggling. The beauty of a scorching tongue was the way you could apply it across the room and never lay a finger on the honored recipient.

  Too bad it didn’t work on the really hard scumbags.

  “Well, that did me some good, anyway,” she remarked. “Here’s your hot coffee.” She set the cup back down in its saucer.

  He picked it up with extreme caution, took a few sips, and said in a small voice, “Overblown? Pompous? Pretentious? Puffed-up? Conceited?”

  “Use your famous memory, M. Davison. That was the least I called you.”

  “…These may perhaps comprise the adjectives I most fear true of myself. Apart from those which I already knew to be justified.”

  “Oh, you’ve justified everything I called you.”

  “Hyp…Hypocrite?”

  “Okay, on that one, I guess maybe I could have stopped with ‘lying.’ You’re going to give me your statement now, and you’re going to tell me the truth. I want to know exactly what you were doing to get yourself arrested. I’d say, ‘in your own words,’ but I strongly suggest that for once in your life, just for the record and the comfort of the stenographer, you stick with words the rest of us don’t need to look up in unabridged dictionaries. And no hearsay, no interpretations of anybody else’s motives. Or movements that you didn’t witness directly. I’ll also take it as a personal favor if you leave out any mention of that mild little scorching I just made you a present of. Oh, by the way,” she added, to get him a little more at his ease, “thanks for understanding how a middle-aged female bachelor can get a kick out of reading kiddies’ picture books. All right, your turn to talk, my turn to just listen.” She tabbed on the wire recorder, gave it the date and the “statement of” tag, stepped back, and got out her pipe.

  He looked at the turning wire and then at her. “Where… Where shall I begin?”

  “Begin with whatever decided you to sign that consenting adult form.” She stood back to be silent, only tapping the bowl of her pipe with her fingernails sometimes, raising an eyebrow at him now and then,
and listening in amusement whenever he stopped and groped for a simple word in place of a perfectly good complicated one.

  Yesterday morning, she mused, when we brought him to the morgue, he was talking more or less like any ordinary floater. Must have been the stress. Now he’s only got himself to worry about…

  “Why did I sign it?” he began, and shook his head helplessly. “I sincerely wish I could answer that. The thought of Angela’s—M. Garvey’s—safety seemed to be uppermost in my mind. If poor M. Soderstrum had indeed been murdered in mistake for her…and if the Purgatorio’s symbol indeed betrayed their involvement…Yet that I could scarcely believe. But I had already, in some sense, betrayed them to you, so the consi-…the thought of clearing them was also present in my mind, of clearing them and thus freeing your attention to find the real murderer…who might be attempt-…trying to frame Dante’s Delight. In either case, it still seemed to me that I was ideally situ-…placed to discover the truth about them, and that knowing the truth must benefit us all. But…there is also the fact that I…had earlier been strongly moved to accept their invitation on my own count, before any of those other factors obtr— arose. So, forgive me, I really can neither understand nor eluci-…explain my own psychomystique in this case… Is ‘psychomystique’ a word common enough to be admitted?”

  Lestrade gave him a nod. He continued,

  “Please understand… If I may insert a few words of explanation? In the Purgatorio’s own concep-…self-image? its activities are neither immoral nor perverse, but of altr-…of social benefit. I won’t argue the point here and now. Misled they well might be, but depraved in the usual sense of that word they are not. Their guiderules are almost monastically stringent—I mean, strict—and forbid anything of a…of a sexually carnal nature.

  “At every meeting, two members play the role of ‘penitents’ and suffer, the others accept the role of ‘angels’ who administer… I’m sorry, I cannot quickly think of a simpler word—the sufferings. The roles trade off, and every member dreads ‘angel’ duty above ‘penitent’ duty. Before each meeting, the desig-…the penitents whose turn it is must fast quite strictly for about a day. My fast began yesterday, as soon as I had signed the form. Paul—M. Osaka—undertook the role of my fellow penitent, for they do not believe that anyone, even during initiation, should suffer alone.

  “Arriving at M. Imani’s home about midday, we found a light colla-…meal waiting on the dining-room table: five plates, each holding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, some carrot sticks, and an olive, with a tall glass of cold water at each plate. The angels naturally needed their energy. M. Osaka and I, of course, must maintain our fast, and had our hands bound to the arms of our chairs, to prevent inadvertencies—apologies—absent-minded nibbling. In truth, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have never appealed to me, and at this time I felt no pressing desire for any kind of food; but the glass of water I thought I could have drained thrice over and requested more.

  “This mild version of the torment of Tantalus formed no official part of the purgatorial ceremonies. It was a mere informal…may I use the word ‘prelude’?…a last time of socializing before the business of the day. Among their guiderules is that mealtime conversation be always kept light and diverting. Certainly, the sight of that glass of water, coupled with the awkwardness of conversing without the use of one’s hands, helped divert my mind from what was to come. It distracted me sufficiently that by the time Sam, Curly, and—that is, M.’s Imani, Friedman, and Whitcomb—had finished their repast, even peanut butter and jelly had begun to look more or less tempting. M. Osaka and I may actually have carried the bulk of the conversation, being unburdened by any need to work in bites and sips.

  “A quarter of an hour after the conclusion of the luncheon and clearing away of the dishes—M. Osaka’s and mine being covered with cellophane and set aside for later consump-…for eating afterwards, we were unbound, M. Whitcomb gave me a purple candle, herself took a white one, and led me up the stairs. There are seven levels of initiation and, in my foolhardiness, I had requested the first three in one session, which is allowable. The membership tattoo is given only after the fourth level—the new member’s initial angel duty—and I had originally thought that only then would I be able to penetra-…to learn the full secrets of the Purgatorio. Although dreading that fourth level above all, I hoped to…speed things up as much as lay within my power. Sergeant Lestrade, I wish those young women just outside the window would take their departure.”

  Lestrade broke her silence long enough to say, “They’ve got the legal right to stay there as long as they like, M. Davison. Don’t worry, the soundproofing is good unless we scream. I think they’re window-shopping you.”

  “Thank you. It lends one a certain empathy with merchandise on display. Well!” Turning to face as much as possible away from the window, he cleared his throat and continued, “Where was I? Oh, yes! Every member must of course repeat the fourth level at alternate meetings. Of the six penitential levels, five can be repeated more or less at the penitent’s own choice. The first level, however, must be experienced once only. I…cannot testify for certain as to how M.’s Imani, Osaka, and Friedman whiled away this interval, but I glimpsed them setting up a three-player chess board as I followed M. Whitcomb out of the room. I must confess to a moment of envy.

  “Gaining the Purgatorio, M. Whitcomb had me lie down, still fully clothed, on one of the two cots they have in the withdrawing room—behind the curtain—and adminis-…gave me a dose of some hallucinogen…commonly called…let me think… Dreamdust? Visionquest?…ah! Visiondust.”

  Lestrade nodded. Safe enough stuff, as substances went.

  He went on, “As I closed my eyes and lay quiet while it took effect, she began murmuring me through a kind of guided meditation. Bit by bit, as the illusion deepened into seeming reality, I lost awareness of the sound of her voice, so that after a certain point I can no longer testify how much of the vision was due to her guidance and how much to my own psychomystique.

  “I shall not prolong the description of that hallucination. Some of its details mercifully blur in my own memory. It involved my slow roasting through being forced by hideous demons to crawl on my hands and knees over glowing embers, my piecemeal dismemberment and consumption at their hands before my very eyes, the rattling and shaking together of my bones beneath the gaze of my impaled head. I suppose that some part of my mind must have remained aware of the visionary nature of the whole experience, or it could not have been borne, nor would my subsequent actual and physical experiences have seemed more than pallid anticlimax. At last there followed the reassembly and reclothing in flesh of my skeleton—in itself, a painful process enough—the reattachment of head to neck, and blessed resurrection into wakefulness. All very shamanic.

  “After questioning me as to the unfolding of my vision, M. Whitcomb was—no, that is interpretation—appeared quite satisfied, and allowed me half an hour to rest, along with one small piece of candy to suck, while she went to summon the others. I suppose, had I been the competent spy I had set myself out to be, I should have seized this oppor—…chance to search the Purgatorio. I did not. I simply rested, in both body and mind.

  “The others arriving in the tower chamber, M. Osaka joined me in the withdrawing room—behind the curtain—where we changed into swimming trunks, somewhat more hip-hugging than my own preferred style for beachwear. When we emerged, M.’s Imani and Friedman bound my fellow penitent face downward to a sort of inclined frame—you may have noticed it—then led me to the raised bar, stood me on a three-legged stool, and enclosed my wrists in a pair of metal rings above my head. They then removed the stool and left me hanging by the wrists while they returned to flog M. Osaka with rubber hoses.”

  Lestrade raised her brow and tapped her pipe, but made no vocal comment.

  “To my astonishment—for is not this the device one so often sees apparently applied in screenshows and suchli
ke entertainments—the pain of hanging by one’s wrists is immediate and pervasi-… I mean…runs through—the entire body. I can only hope they have means of faking it for the actors. I drew some comfort from the reflec— the thought that at least this was not the more infamous suspension by the thumbs, nor the hands-behind-the-back strappado, nor being yanked up and down. I could not, however, bear even to imagine what it must be to a heavier person, like M. Imani or M. Friedman. The sound of the hoses falling on M. Osaka’s back, I think I found to increase my own suffering more than it fostered any comforting sense of fellowship. From time to time, M. Whitcomb wiped my face with a dampened cloth and murmured a few words of encouragement; but, taken all in all, up until half an hour ago, I should have called it the second to the longest five minutes of my life.”

  The longest, Lestrade figured, being any five-minute segment of yesterday morning before the second victim turned out not to be M. Garvey. Okay, what bumped this hanging by the wrists episode out of second place? The scorching I just gave him? Rosemary L. Lestrade, you must be even better at it than you thought! Maybe it wouldn’t be such a waste of time to try it on the real scumbags.

  “When it was over at last—some of the more experienced purgatorians endure up to ten minutes, never longer, but to me as an initiate they were merciful—my fellow penitent and I were helped back to the cots behind the curtain, where M. Friedman massaged M. Osaka’s back with oil, and M. Whitcomb bandaged my wrists. The suspension process creates a groove, you see, with the flesh mounding up on either side.” He held up one wrist, as if Lestrade could see through the bandage. “It is not permanent. We were given one swallow of water apiece, and half an hour to recup-…to recover somewhat, during which time I tried to persuade M. Osaka that he had done more than enough for one day, that I could endure the third level without the camaraderie—I’m sorry, the companionship? of a fellow sufferer. He refused.