All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Behind him, Nurse Whitcomb and the pretty young blond lady were coaching the game young floater in the bed on convincing jerks and moans.

  Officer Little Bird came back into the room and said, “They’re at the end of the corridor.” She positioned herself at the door. The blond ducked into the bathroom. Judge Farquhar heard its door close. Nurse Whitcomb would have her back turned on the bed, looking like she was busy with nurselike fussing around.

  Too much sound-soaking in the hospital to hear footsteps coming down the corridor, but after another minute the room door opened again and the pair of detectives brought in this tattoo artist, M. Elias Hammer. The judge started listening very carefully.

  “All right,” Hammer was saying, “so they’ve done for another one. Should’ve cleaned them out of town a long time ago. What the hell are we paying you pollies for?”

  “Just take a look at it, M. Hammer,” said Sergeant Lestrade. “All we want is your expert opinion.”

  “How come you never called me in to look at those other victims?”

  As far as Hammer ought to know, neither of the other victims had been tattooed. Judge Farquhar shuffled his papers again, checking the warrant at the bottom. But then, Hammer could have guessed…

  Lestrade was answering evenly, “They were already dead, M. Hammer. Beyond any help of expert advice.”

  A short pause. The judge stole a look around and saw Lestrade and Hammer approaching the bed, Clayton joining Little Bird at the door.

  A slow moan from Davison-Poe.

  “You seem to be starting with his right shoulder, M. Hammer,” Lestrade remarked, probably for Farquhar’s benefit.

  The judge stole another glance around. Yep, that’s what Hammer was doing, all right. Had the snaps unsnapped and was pulling the hospital gown as low as he could. Like he wanted a look at that one spot in particular. Of course, he could just be a little eccentric in how he went about getting one of those blame things off somebody else. Wasn’t something anybody outside a hospital staff did every day.

  “Hey!” said Hammer. “What...”

  Judge Farquhar slipped the search warrant down far enough to uncover the signature line.

  “We never said where it was, M. Hammer,” Lestrade replied in a polite neutral voice. “Nurse, can you help us here?”

  Nurse Whitcomb turned around. So, figuring it was what any attending medic would do, did Judge Farquhar. Hammer probably wouldn’t know his face, unless from the campaign literature—and that had been several years ago—and the occasional photo in the papers or quick shot for the screen news.

  Hammer wasn’t even looking in his direction. He was staring at the nurse. “But that’s...”

  Judge Farquhar checked his pen, but the suspect got himself under control, only muttering something indistinguishable.

  More moaning from Davison-Poe. Nurse Whitcomb making soothing, nurselike sounds as she eased the hospital gown completely off his chest.

  Hammer demanded, “What the hell—”

  The judge had been there when the signals were prearranged: Lestrade nodding to the nurse, the nurse giving the patient a tiny pinch on the back of the neck, the patient letting go with, all in all, a fairly convincing scream.

  Bringing the blond out of the bathroom in a rush.

  “WHAT THE HELL!” shouted Hammer. “You’re dead!”

  Judge Farquhar poised the point of his pen touching the signature line.

  Rosie Lestrade was saying, “And you’d know that, how, M. Hammer? Never brought around any photos of the second victim, did we?”

  “In the paper—Monday—wasn’t it?”

  “Congratulations, M. Hammer,” Lestrade said dryly. “Not too many people would remember a face that well from one newspaper photo seen forty-eight hours ago. Not unless they had already recognized the face from before it appeared in the paper.”

  Judge Farquhar had already signed the warrant. He folded it and slipped it to Sergeant Lestrade.

  Who passed it to Clayton and told the suspect, “Sorry, M. Hammer, but that wasn’t your first little slip. Taken all together, you’re under arrest on suspicion of two murders.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Sunday, October 8

  Only half a week, and things were already settling back into normal. Dave didn’t know—and didn’t ask—whether the Dante’s Delight gang had held a meeting Friday night. Julie had spent all Friday night with him, while Corwin and Angela had been in Boca Raton Thursday to Saturday visiting her family in the hospital, and come back showing off twin engagement rings, hers with a lozenge of black onyx embedded in a moonstone, his with a circle of moonstone embedded in black onyx.

  True, Kim Little Bird had been in private conference Thursday with the Old Woman and Chief Grayling about something or other, and had shown up for her Saturday morning shift wearing her sleeves as far down as they went. And this afternoon she sat in an easy chair catacorner to Sam’s, wearing a knowing look on her face. All the same, Dave wasn’t even going to ask. After all, Kim was at least half Native American: father one-quarter Vanilla, mother one-quarter Cinnamon.

  But whether or not the Purgatorio was up and running again—and, as the Old Woman kept pointing out, it wasn’t illegal—Sam’s Sunday afternoon rolegame parties had come back strong. Hard as it was to believe after the week just wrapping around, they hadn’t missed a single Sunday. In fact, Sam said that the unavoidable ripple of publicity was bringing in more than enough newcomers to replace the few old regulars it had cost them.

  Of course, Julie, Corwin, Angie, Sam, Paul, Curly, and Kim Little Bird had already heard all about how Lestrade cracked the case, but Sam’s living room was full of people who hadn’t, people who were avidly interested.

  “Elias Hammer was Sergeant Lestrade’s suspect from our first interview with him,” Dave was telling them. “It was the way he kept badmouthing one whole class of people, trying to aim us against one group in particular. That kind of prejudice tends to set the Old Woman’s back up. Made her think ‘frame-up’ from the outset. Only, she always makes herself look at all the angles, always says it’s bad procedure to label anyone a ‘prime suspect’ until all the facts are in. And she couldn’t get enough for a search warrant of Hammer’s premises until we put that charade on in the hospital room.

  “Turns out Hammer was the one Sam bought the tattoo stamp from. Also the one Julie went to for her dragon tattoo—and, whatever the floater’s faults, and murder is a big one—he did good stuff in his legitimate workline. But he saw the old scars on Julie’s back, dating from before the group went to…well, softer techniques, and he figured them for what they were. He also recognized his own stamp design near the hollow of her right shoulder, put two and two together —”

  “A little lopsidedly,” Julie threw in, “and got five.”

  “— and couldn’t stand the thought that he might have provided a membership badge for a bunch of smasters.”

  “Not smasters,” Julie insisted. “Purgatorians.”

  Dave pecked her a kiss. “Okay, I think I see the difference…finally…but Hammer, along with most of the world, didn’t and probably never will. Seems he had some personal bad experience with a couple of smasters, years ago in Cleveland. Anyway, he started secretly trailing Julie whenever he could, mostly on wraparound days. He had AA meetings himself Friday evenings, but he saw Julie and a lot of other people coming into Sam’s house Sunday afternoons, never dug far enough to learn they were just innocent rolegamers, and assumed Sundays were when the smastering was going on—with a lot more people than there ever were in Dante’s Delight Purgatorio. On Sundays it outraged him, as a card-carrying Christian, even more. So he made himself a duplicate stamp—of course he still had his original design on file—and used it on the first young floater he thought he recognized from Sam’s Sunday gatherings who came to him for a tattoo.”

  Dave noticed
Angie hugging Corwin a little tighter.

  “Hammer figured all the members of the group wore it in the same place he saw it on Julie,” Dave went on.

  One of the new faces in the living room asked, “Didn’t it tip him off, that Harry Jackson wasn’t already wearing the tattoo?”

  “He figured, for once correctly, that it had something to do with full initiation. Explained Harry’s lack of scars, welts, and similar markings the same way to himself. So in Hammer’s own psychomystique, it was the smasters—as he saw your group—who were actually committing the murder, and he was saving your victim from sinking any farther into the depths of depravity.

  “Harry died very quickly from strong poison in the ink. Hammer started marking him up almost at once, while the heart was still beating slightly, he said, but the victim was as unconscious as if he’d been in medical surgery. Hammer’s conscience was still functional enough to keep him from perpetrating the same kind of torture he wanted to stop. Of course, not knowing what the ‘Purgatorians’ were really doing—knowing only a few of the things they had stopped doing years ago—he got it all wrong, and marked the body up in ways Dante’s Delight would never have done, even back before they toned their original techniques down. Hammer wanted to make it look, if not like deliberate murder, at least like smastering gone too far. Then he dumped the body in the Vigo to hide the fact that so many of the marks had been made post-mortem. Our Lady Lestrade was right all along in suspecting that angle, even while the rest of us couldn’t see any reason for someone wanting to disguise simple murder, make it look like death from torture.

  “Well, we interviewed him, along with the other tattoo artists in town, and he did his best to aim us at the floaters he wanted us to stop. When we didn’t seem to be taking the bait, and someone else he thought he recognized from Sam’s came to him for a tattoo, he did a repeat —”

  Corwin’s arm tightened around Angie.

  “— and this time dumped the body into the pond behind the place where he knew Julie was living, both from trailing her and from the phone book—he had her full name from his customer records.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive yourself, Julie,” someone remarked from the far side of the room.

  “He wasn’t ready with his poison stamp, yet,” she answered, shivering in Dave’s arm. “And he wanted to trail me. He was too good at that. I never even suspected…but, in a way, I am the one who killed Harry and Gaia.”

  “No, Julie,” Dave assured her, “never, never think that. It was Hammer who killed them, not you. Never you at all.

  “Of course, as soon as we had the search warrant, it was easy enough to find the second stamp. Once Hammer told us what poison he had used, our labs were able to verify its presence in the traces left on the stamp and in the victims’ blood.”

  “What poison was it?” somebody else asked.

  “Privileged information,” Dave answered him. “Sorry, we never give details like that to the public. Not writing any recipes for wannabe criminals, gang!”

  “What about at the trial?” a fourth questioner wanted to know.

  “Even if you go to the trial, pal, that’ll most likely be one of those details kept between members of the court, safely out of hearing of the general audience. But there may not even be a public trial. Hammer might end up directly in a prison for the criminally insane.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  Corwin broke it. “He must be a man very unhappy with the role allotted him in this world.”

  “What about poor Harry and Gaia?” said Angela.

  “Was not our empathy with them taken for granted?” Corwin sounded surprised. “What can we do, except pray that they were happy until their early deaths, and have returned to happiness beyond the Veil.”

  Julie shuddered against Dave’s chest. “And I’m wearing that man’s tattoo!”

  “Well,” Dave said soberly, “whatever else he was, he was still a good tattoo artist, and gave you a fine dragon. Give it a little time, lover. If it keeps on bothering you, we’ll float a loan, have Dupont and O’Toole remove and replace it.”

  “Let’s all chip in for that,” Sam suggested. “It can be a farewell purgatory for you away from the Purgatorio, Julie. Or a wedding gift. And I think I can talk my good neighbors into bumping you to the head of their client list.”

  “Thanks, Sam, thanks.”

  “What, exactly, did you have to do in all this, Corwin?” Hank Algood wanted to know.

  Corwin dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “I? Oh, I served as a supernumerary in more or less the operatic sense. Simply the one who coincidentally required emergency hospitalization.”

  None of the other principals contradicted him. It had been his own prearranged choice of cover story: Dave supposedly recognizing Julie’s stamped tattoo, added to Gaia Soderstrum looking so much like a young woman known to have come to Sam’s role­gaming Sundays, had been enough to bring the police Tuesday; Corwin’s presence there had been more or less accidental. He said the full truth would have been more embarrassing than commendatory to him.

  Kim Little Bird stood up. “Enough shop talk. Let’s get on with the games we came here to play!”

  “Right,” Sam agreed. “Underground Catholics in Elizabethan England, in here. Who else is rulemastering today?” He looked around the group.

  “Knights of the Round Table, anyone?” Hank Algood proposed. “I’ll even let Robin Hood into the act for once.”

  A newcomer got to her feet and said, “How about Zeus versus Odin?”

  “I came all prepared to rolemaster a rattling game of Starcatchers,” somebody else offered.

  Another newcomer, a portly floater like a red-bearded Santa just approaching middle age, stood up and introduced himself: “Oziah ‘Ozzie’ Prendergast ‘Gillikin’ here. Anyone for a good game of Oz?”

  Glancing from Sam to Prendergast ‘Gillikin,’ Corwin decided, “I think that I should enjoy playing a villain in the marvelous land of Oz. As I recollect from my childhood scanning of the Oztories, the villains tend to meet…interesting fates.”

  “Like being melted with a bucket of water?” Curly teased him.

  “Ah! To be melted! Slowly to dissolve away and soak smoothly back into Earth’s bosom. How restful, how tranquil and soothing, that sounds following certain of the recent events through which we have actually lived.”

  “Supernumeraries and all the rest of us?” Angela delivered a feather-touch punch to his upper arm. He caught her hand with a barely visible squeeze.

  Which inspired Dave to snuggle Julie closer yet in his arm. “What do you say, dear Lady? Shall we join the Starcatchers, you and I?”

  “Why not, Dragon Prince? We might even give them a few tips on catching stars.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Saturday, December 9

  Rosemary Lestrade had started shedding her shyness of synagogues, mosques, and Christian churches even before she graduated from grade school. She had already decided to be a detective, and qualms about other people’s places of worship, especially in a basically monotheistic world, could only have been a handicap in that workline. So she had no trouble at all functioning in Saint Martha’s on the day of the double wedding. Not even with three officiating monotheistic clerics on hand, no less: Dave’s minister, Julie’s minister, and the pastor of Saint Martha’s to tie the knot for Corwin and Angela.

  Aside from the choice of venue—something about Catholic guiderules—Dave and Julie had had first choice in all the wedding plans. It was only fair. With Angela’s father and siblings still in rehab down in Florida and Corwin’s parents still world-cruising, the younger pair planned a renewal of vows ceremony a year or two down the road. In effect, a second wedding for the benefit of all the members of both their families.

  Dave had his mother to march him down the aisle, Julie her father, Angela a floater
named Hank Algood, and today Lestrade herself was filling in for Corwin’s mother. At one point, he had suggested they do it handcuffed together. Since he had sounded half serious, she had scorched that idea in a sentence and a half, including a side threat to let his big sister Corinna, who was coming down from Arbor City, take over. He had never mentioned it again.

  Today, for once in his life, he was wearing white, a rented tux matching Dave’s. He looked good in white. Probably pointless to try talking him into it on other occasions. Both brides wore long white satin dresses with billowy skirts. Christian weddings tended to very oldstyle fashions. As for Lestrade, she put on the rust-colored slacks and tunic she kept for the rare formal occasion, added a white rosebud in the boutonniere hole, and called it good.

  The actual ceremony was short and sweet: exchanging of vows, exchanging of wedding bands, exchanging of long kisses. The photo-taking afterwards lasted longer. The reception was at the Wabash House, where Lestrade nursed her champagne for the toasting, drank two or three Scotch-and-waters between toasts, ate about as much good food as everybody else, and never even noticed at what point between cutting the twin wedding cakes and the middle of the dancing the happy couples slipped away.

  “Smiling looks good on you, Rosie,” Chief Grayling remarked. “You should do it more often.”

  He must have been celebrating hard. Even in purely social situations, he never called her “Rosie” unless he was getting pickled.

  * * * *

  The Honeymoon Suite had mellow lighting, a bottle of champagne on ice, a tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries, and a huge, heart-shaped bed with covers turned down. The sprays of greenery on the walls suggested the approaching Christmas season: all evergreens and holly. Red-ribboned sprays of mistletoe dangled everywhere.