Naked Cruelty

by Colleen McCullough

  “That’s what I thought. Don’t tell me he brought his own dinky table!” Helen said, a little incredulously.

  “More likely that he transported a table from somewhere else in the apartment—don’t leap to the madder conclusions first.”

  This time Helen’s flush was pure mortification; lips tight, she left the bedroom to search for a table that fitted the marks. When none did, she checked again, and found the card table tucked in a niche to one side of the living room window. “Bingo!”

  They opened it and stared at its green baize, which bore a number of marks and stains; there was still a faint reek of xylene. Smears of greasepaint marred the baize in several places.

  “Paul will be able to get enough to match the color,” said Delia in quiet triumph.

  “What’s this?” Helen asked, pointing to a spot that also showed marks, but these were colorless. She sniffed. “Condom lubrication, do you think?”

  “I do, but there’s no trace of semen. His mutton gun jammed.” Delia began to fold the table. “We’ll take it with us,” she said. “I wonder what else is here? We have to find it before the fingerprint boys arrive.”

  But the apartment yielded nothing else.

  “Where did he wait for her?” Helen asked.

  “Behind the front door, I suspect. With Maggie Drummond, it was a wing chair, but there’s no hiding place in Melantha Green’s living room. He jumped her literally as she was entering, which might suggest that these photos are right—Melantha had martial arts skills.”

  “Do you think three weeks is his cycle, Delia? Do you?”

  “It seems likely, but that’s speculation best suited for one of the Captain’s think-tanks, if you mean the direction his future assaults are going to take.”

  “Think-tanks? I’ll be excluded!” Helen cried. “I want my own think-tank here and now, with you, Delia—with you! Why do we always wait for the men to lead, tell me that? It’s obvious to me that this girl wouldn’t have had time for a party since last year, if then. Added to which, she was in a serious relationship with a surgical resident who wouldn’t be going to parties either. They would have met on the ward, not at a Mark Sugarman party. Nick’s wrong, but he’s a man, so he’s believed.”

  Delia was watching her, and frowning. “Stop thinking about this murder for a moment, Helen, and think about your own conduct. What you’re doing right now is passing the buck to Nick for your exclusion from the Captain’s inner circle, just as if he’s not entitled to have one. You’re restless, impulsive and ambitious. I don’t blame the Captain for keeping you in your place, silly girl. You push too hard. There’s one American saying that I just love: shape up, or ship out.”

  A silence fell; Helen’s face was beet-red. “I’m sorry.”

  “I hope so.”

  Suddenly Delia looked indignant. “I love and esteem our boss, but he can be thoughtless. He’s buzzed off in our wheels. We are stranded.”

  “No, we’re not,” said Helen in a more cheerful voice. “I did a deal with the cop who got sick—if he brought my Lamborghini here, I promised not to breathe a word about his weak stomach.”

  “Clever chicken! Just answer me one question: how are we going to get a card table into a Lamborghini?”

  “We aren’t. I asked my queasy cop to hang around in case we had any bulky evidence to transport.”

  At six that evening, dressed in the shortest of miniskirts and with her wonderful legs sheathed in shimmering lilac pantyhose, Helen was sitting on a stool in Buffo’s Wine Cellar waiting for Kurt von Fahlendorf. None of the staring young men would have believed for a second that this glorious young woman had spent her afternoon pursuing the aftermath of a particularly brutal murder. It was very unlike Kurt not to be doing the waiting; he was obsessed by gentlemanly conduct.

  He came clattering down the area steps not two minutes later and perched himself on the vacant stool next to her, leaning to kiss her on the cheek. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Muons.”

  “Of course it’s muons. It’s always muons,” she said with a smile, and leaned to kiss his lips, which pleased him. “Are there any other ill-behaved sub-atomic particles?”

  “Loads of them. That’s the thrill—finding new ones. We do, all the time. What are you drinking?”

  “The house red, but I haven’t tasted it yet.”

  “A glass of house red,” he said to the bartender. “You look amazingly lovely, Helen.”

  “Do I? Good lord! I wonder if that makes me a ghoul?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t make remarks that mean absolutely nothing to me. What is a ghoul?”

  She ignored the question. “Do you know a light-colored black medical student named Melantha Green, Kurt?”

  His brow creased. “Melantha Green? From Mark’s parties would be the only place, but … No, I do not remember a light-colored Negro girl. Well, you know there are Negroes at Mark’s parties—this is New England, not the South. But though I have been going to Mark’s parties for years and you, for eight months only, someone with a name like Melantha would be memorable.”

  “That’s a pity, we need background. Melantha was raped and strangled by the Dodo last night.”

  Even in Buffo’s dim light Helen could see that Kurt had gone pale. He was not a morbid or prurient type.

  “Oh, Helen! The poor thing!”

  “A thing is certainly what the Dodo made of her. Try to imagine it, Kurt! All the fire and energy a black woman must have poured into her life, then a sick psycho just—ended it! Put a cord around her neck and throttled her in stages as he raped her over and over. And I never knew that black skins can show bruises—oh, it was awful!”

  Kurt retched, clapped a hand over his mouth. “Helen, please! I know these things happen and I know you deal with them, but I—I cannot bear to hear of them!”

  “I’m sorry, Kurt, I didn’t mean to upset you. I get angry and indignant about some things, especially rape.”

  “Drink your wine—Buffo has uncorked a good red for a change. And let us alter the subject, eh? I am not very strong of the stomach,” he said, his English becoming more stilted as he grew more upset. “I will not ask you about your day, but about your mother and father. Are they perhaps well?”

  She laughed, humor restored. “‘Perhaps’ is a word you can’t apply to that pair,” she said, chuckling. “They’re never unwell, especially with a presidential election scant weeks away. Dad is terrified that Richard Nixon will get in.”

  “Why is that necessarily bad?” he asked.

  She eyed his noble, impassive face in some amusement, then shook her head. “You’re too foreign to understand,” she said.

  “Tell me about your father, Helen. I am aware that to be the President of Chubb is a prestigious position, but your papa seems more important than that.”

  Helen shrugged, blew a rude noise with those fabulous ice-pink lips. “Dad’s a perfect illustration of the fact that the job can make the man, but that the man can also make the job. He’s got the word they applied to John F. Kennedy—charisma. No matter how important the men in a room might be, when my father walks in, they pale. Something in him, not something anyone can cultivate. Added to which, he’s got genuine ancestors—something most Americans have to scratch for. Not merely one of his antecedents, but three of them came over on the Mayflower—well, he couldn’t be President of Chubb without a Mayflower connection. And Mom has connections too—she’s Cleveland, Ohio rich, like a bunch of great American families.” She stopped, grinning. “There! Does that help, Kurt?”

  “Yes, I think so. You must arrange a dinner with your parents, Helen. It’s time I met them.”

  Her heart sank, then soared. What did meetings matter?

  “Sure,” she said, and sipped her wine.

  “Have you time for dinner? We could eat here, or anywhere else you fancy.”

  �
�Here would be fine,” she said, keeping her sigh of despair inward; what was the sense in dating Kurt von Fahlendorf, when he all but threw up at the mere mention of rape or murder?

  I need a cop or a doctor for a mate, she told herself—a man who’ll relish my telling him all about my day, a man who understands danger, blood, death. Kurt likes things that whizz around at near the speed of light and collide—which makes him far more dangerous than anybody else I know, though he’d never see that.

  And what was he talking about now? Oh, no! No, please, no! He was on a ponderous fishing expedition to find out which precious stone she liked best—diamond, ruby, sapphire, emerald?

  “Listen here, Kurt,” she said pugnaciously, “don’t you dare go getting ideas about buying me a ring! When I put a ring on my finger, I’ll do the choosing—hear me? The man’s sole function will be to pay for it.” She gave a giggle. “There! That’s tidied up. Let’s look at the menu, I’m starving.”

  Heavens! he thought. Rape and murder all afternoon, and she is hungry!

  Food, however, soothed them both. Buffo’s wasn’t one of Holloman’s top restaurants, but it served well-cooked Hungarian fare; Buffo was a Hungarian who had fled after the Russians crushed the 1956 rebellion, and was still a passionate patriot.

  Stomachs full of schnitzel (Kurt) and goulash (Helen), heads pleasantly buzzing from the wine, the couple left at ten.

  “Do we leave your Lamborghini here, or my Porsche?” Kurt asked outside. “Let it be the Lamborghini, my darling Helen! Come home with me for coffee.”

  She shook her head in the way he had come to associate with an unbendable negative. No matter how he pleaded or what new, brilliant argument he produced, Helen didn’t want to prolong the evening. A fair man, Kurt could understand why; her afternoon must have been traumatic. So he watched her leap nimbly into the car, and stood as she roared away down South Green Street. Other open sports cars didn’t survive ten minutes on a Holloman street, yet Helen’s Lamborghini bore a charmed life.

  Shoulders hunched, Kurt walked the half block to where his metal-roofed black Porsche was parked, unlocked it, took the steering wheel lock off, and finally, after several adjustments to the dashboard, drove away.

  “There goes Professor von Fahlendorf’s Porsche,” said a patrol cop to his new (and rather stupid) companion as they cruised the other way up South Green Street.

  “Do we chase it?” the jerk asked.

  “What for? He’s not speeding or weaving.”

  Which little incident made them the last people to see Kurt von Fahlendorf, who never made it home.

  She was obliged to do it, she admitted. On that same mild Wednesday evening Amanda Warburton invited her nephews over to her apartment for a home-cooked meal.

  Things went better than she had expected; when she descended to let them into the garage beneath Busquash Condominiums she found herself gazing at a pewter-colored Bentley, and had to admire it. No more clunkers for the twins, obviously!

  “It’s ten years old and it guzzles gas,” said Robbie as they walked to the elevator, “but we should worry! Gas is dirt-cheap. We like the lines of this model.”

  “Rightly so,” she said. “You have good taste.”

  She continued this theme as the twins dutifully gushed over her huge apartment. “Having good taste,” she said as she led them from her burgundy and pink bedroom, “why the drama of black and white? I would have thought a trying color combination to live in the middle of, surely?”

  “Shock value,” said Gordie, sitting where he could see the view, illuminated by a waning moon.

  “Explain that to me.”

  “We’re movie people,” Robbie said, uncorking wine, “and we understand the importance of the personal image. A key element is difference—be unusual, eccentric even, if your talents are not those of a Paul Newman or a Rock Hudson.”

  “Where do your talents lie?” she asked, moving around her kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind, boys, but I had our dinner catered by Sea Foam—shrimp cocktails and roast beef.”

  “Wonderful!” chorused the twins.

  They ate, she noted, with an appearance of enthusiasm, but left a good amount uneaten.

  “We have to watch our weight,” Gordie confided.

  “Let’s go back to your talents,” she said, pouring coffee—at least she could make that! Except, she discovered, that it wasn’t something called decaffeinated, so they drank very little. She was beginning to gain the impression that West Coasters were riddled with dietary superstitions that, if Robbie and Gordie were anything to go by, did not have the imagined effects.

  “Talents,” said Robbie, drinking camomile tea. “The one that’s appreciated at the moment is our acting, but we have scads of aspirations.” He looked coy. “We can’t talk about them—it would tempt Fate.” One boneless-looking hand waved around. “All we can say is that we have a very big project coming to fruition.”

  “Does it require me to put in money?” Amanda asked warily.

  The gooseberry eyes opened wide. “Amanda dear, no! We need millions! In other words, we need a top Hollywood producer.”

  “Gordie, are you sure you wouldn’t like some camomile tea?”

  Robbie put his cup down and rose. “We must be going, dear Amanda. You’re sure you don’t mind our dropping the ‘aunt’?”

  She laughed. “Since I’m only a few years older than you, I prefer not being an aunt.” While Gordie gathered their coats, she looked at Robbie. “Where are your hearts?”

  He understood immediately. “In our prosperity. The Bentley. Flying first class. In walking down the red carpet at a premiere and being cheered by the crowd.”

  “General fame and fortune,” she said.

  “In a nutshell, yes. But I didn’t mention the biggest. In winning the first twinned Oscar.”

  “It’s laudable, and I wish you very, very well.”

  After the twins departed Amanda sat at her glass wall and thought for a long time, chiefly about her money, her will, and the glass teddy bear.

  She picked up the phone and dialed. “Did I wake you, Hank? Then how about coming over for some coffee and devil’s food cake?”

  He arrived in twenty minutes, smiling broadly. “Don’t the twins eat dessert?” he asked.

  “They eat very little of anything except things I didn’t have—what a world the West Coast must be! I mean, why drink coffee at all if you want the caffeine removed? And if you strip all the fat off meat, it doesn’t roast well, and why would you want to fry a bean twice? I gave up.” She looked down at the dog and cat, sitting at Hank’s feet. “Frankie and Winston are glad to see you. Robbie and Gordie squealed and ran away. I had to put the animals in the spare bedroom.”

  In answer, he picked Winston up—a struggle. “Winston, you have been conning Marcia into thinking Amanda isn’t feeding you—I swear your weight’s gone up to twenty pounds.”

  They sat at the plate-glass window. It was after midnight and the half moon was overhead, pouring an intangible, gold-hued light down upon Busquash Inlet; the leaves of the trees glinted with colored highlights, fully turned now in preparation for a season’s sleep. Some sea creature broke the burnished surface of the water in ominous, ever-widening ripples, and a romantic soul with a yen for the fires of winter had lit one, its smoke writhing in delicate tendrils toward the stars. Even here, eighty miles from New York City, they were dimmed and the sky yellowed by a million urban lamps. Lovely or ugly, according to your tastes.

  By mutual consent they turned away from the window. Hank gave Amanda his customary tender kiss, smiled at her, and started for her front door.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said.

  On Thursday Nick came back from his compassionate leave looking worn and harried, but Imelda had come through having an aneurysm on the non-dominant middle cerebral artery clipped, and seemed to have no others to
explode in the future. The Jefferson clan had rallied, so that, the operation itself over, Nick was free to go to work. Two grandmothers had moved into his house to prepare it for the invalid, and he was underfoot.

  “I can’t even do the marketing,” he complained to Carmine.

  “Here, you’re definitely useful,” said Carmine.

  “What’s Helen’s status?”

  “Delia thinks she’s been punished enough, so I returned her to duty as a full trainee yesterday, when Melantha was found.”

  “Fair enough,” said Nick, grimacing. “What’s with the Dodo and a black woman?”

  “No one knows, nor can the psychiatrists come up with a theory,” Carmine said, frowning. “I am assured that in the few cases of multiple murder that we know of, the killer has never crossed a racial frontier, though rape is cloudier. But now this sicko is killing, so how do we categorize him? Admittedly his rape victims have been of all persuasions and all Caucasian origins, but Melantha is a black woman, avowedly so. It doesn’t seem to have fazed him—my feeling is that to him, her color isn’t even important.”

  “Christ! He is sick.”

  The two women were summoned as soon as Nick was fully up to date; Nick found enough amusement to smile, eyes resting on a remarkably restrained Delia, wearing rust, navy and black.

  “Why won’t you listen when I talk about the source of the Dodo’s knowledge about Carew women?” Nick asked, sounding exasperated.

  All eyes swung to him. “Hit us,” said Carmine.

  “Parties. Delia and I keep telling you that Carew is famous party country. Until Leonie was raped, Mark Sugarman gave regular parties. Mason Novak was another party giver, usually in conjunction with Dapper Dave, as their backyards abut. Von Fahlendorf is too exclusive to be a collaborator, but he has thrown an occasional party. Those four are all Gentleman Walkers, but there are other famous party givers too.”

  “Right on, Nick,” said Delia, beaming.

  “You’ve got my ears, Nick. Keep on going,” said Carmine.

  “For starters, tongues get loose. The booze flows, and there is always pot. The men are in charm-the-women mode, there are loads of couples huddled in corners or on sofas letting their hair down about themselves. I’m not describing orgies. No one tries to find a place to engage in sex—sex follows after a couple has left the party, if you get my meaning. The party itself is a gab-fest. Talk, talk, talk. Cheap wine or spirits, finger food, loud music, a chance to unwind among like-minded souls. It’s amazing what people say about themselves under the influence of intoxicants or hallucinogens, even when people don’t know each other. What if the Dodo goes to Carew parties, cruises in search of women he fancies, then gets them in a corner and quizzes them, all charm and honey like a psychiatrist?”