Naked Cruelty

by Colleen McCullough

  “And could he?”

  “No!” she said scornfully. “Kurt’s narrow, and his gifts are mathematical. Chemistry is terra incognita to him.”

  “They should have had a Prunella Balducci when Kurt was less than two years old,” said Carmine.

  “Eh?”

  “No matter.”

  “How intensive is the search for Kurt going to be, Captain?”

  “That depends on the FBI. They take the lead in kidnappings.”

  “Are they on their way?”

  “They’ll be at County Services by the time we get back.”

  Robert and Gordon Warburton came galloping down the path from their house just as Carmine and Helen were about to climb into the Fairlane.

  “Captain, Captain!” said Robbie breathlessly, “is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “That Kurt’s been kidnapped.”

  “Yes, it is. Did you see him last night?”

  “Not see,” said Gordie. “Heard.”

  “What did you hear, Gordon?” Carmine asked.

  “The Porsche coming home about one in the morning—Wednesday to Thursday, that is. Late for Kurt!”

  “Why did you hear it and not Robert?”

  “I’m on Kurt’s side of the house. Robbie hears Mason Novak come and go—his garage is in his backyard.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t look, Gordon?” Carmine pressed.

  “Wellll … When he grated his gears, I confess I did get up to have a look, Captain. I mean, Kurt never grates his gears!”

  “An observation I confirm, Gordon,” said Helen.

  “What did you see?” Carmine asked.

  “Not Kurt, for sure! Two people, a woman and a man. They got out of the Porsche and played with the remote as if they’d never seen one before. When the door went up, they got back into the car and drove in. I went back to bed,” said Gordie.

  “Did you get a look at them?” Helen asked eagerly.

  “Since there’s a lamp post there, yes. The woman was about forty, the man younger. She wore what looked like dark red, but she had a hat with a veil on her head, so her features were a mystery. I think her hair was dark. Certainly she had a good figure. The man deferred to her. He had thick, wavy dark hair and a handsome face, but don’t ask me to identify him in a line-up because I couldn’t do it.” He giggled. “Handsome is as handsome does, Captain.”

  Carmine growled. “Keep on like this, Gordon, and you won’t be half as handsome.”

  “Ooo-aa!”

  “Did either of you see Kurt on Wednesday?” Helen asked.

  “Yes, around five-thirty. The Porsche was parked on the kerb and he came running out of the house dressed for a date, we thought,” said Robbie. “Very smart!”

  “They’re weirdos,” said Carmine as he and Helen drove away. “At first I thought they were bent. Now I don’t think the homo act is real. Though they’re not straight.”

  “Think of pretzels,” said Helen, grinning.

  “Let’s both write reports, huh? That way, yours will end up with Corey Marshall, who’ll shove it at the Feds.”

  “Anything you say, Captain.”

  “Your journals are excellent, by the way.”

  She went pink. “Truly?”

  “Oh, yes. I especially like the colored inks.”

  “Well, I’m long-winded, so having different colors makes it easier to find a specific passage.”

  “I may adopt it myself.”

  She went pinker.

  Of course the case was huge, not to mention very complicated. The person kidnapped was a foreign national resident in the United States; his father, who was paying the ransom, lived in West Germany; and the ten million dollars were bypassing the United States on a much shorter journey between Munich and Zurich. Worse, none of the police forces involved had any jurisdiction over a large and prestigious Swiss bank.

  “It’s brilliant,” said Carmine to Desdemona that night as they got ready for bed. His eyes, at once appreciative and caring, had noted that his wife looked calmer, fresher, more alive.

  “If you put that nightie on, it’s only going to get ripped off,” he said, climbing into his side of the big bed.

  She giggled and draped it over a convenient chair. “There! I can grab it in an emergency. Having children rather inhibits nudity.” She slid into bed and gave a luxurious stretch that had him wanting her more urgently than he had planned; he groaned, rolled over and buried his face in her neck.

  “Carmine, stop! You know that drives me wild! I want to say something,” she said in a low voice, yanking at his head until he gave up and lay still to listen. “Now I understand why the second child can be perilous. You were right to want to wait a year or two longer. Prunella says some women need quite an amount of time to get their hormones back to normal, and she thinks I am one such. I’ve been—I’ve been down in the dumps since Alex was born, and I got myself in a terrible muddle. It all went to Julian, I haven’t given Alex the attention he should have. But, you know, I couldn’t see it! Not until I had a few heart-to-hearts with Prunella, anyway. Normally I’m efficient enough to cope with whatever comes along, so these past six months have been a shock. But I’m getting better now, dear love, I truly am. With Prunella to take the brunt of Julian and teach him a routine, I have enough time and energy to love Alex the way he has to be loved. He’s not a scrap like Julian, and this time with him is vital.” She sighed, stroking Carmine’s hair. “Our elder son is a handful, and I now understand that old saying better—there’s no training for politics or parenthood.”

  “Well, it’s not hard to see that you’re feeling much better,” he said, zeroing in on her neck again.

  “No, no, wait! I want to thank you, Carmine, for being not only understanding, but finding the answer to my depression. East Holloman is one vast extended family, you have access to all sorts of people. And I thank you for setting the network in motion. How else would I ever have found a Prunella?”

  “Finished?”

  “Yes.”

  He went back to driving her wild by kissing her neck, his arms around her, her legs around him. How great it was to make love to a six-foot-three wife!

  Though wives of any kind were far from Carmine’s mind the next morning, when the FBI hit town. No Ted Kelly this time, of course, as espionage was not on the menu; this team was led by Special Agent Hunter Wyatt, a very different kind of man and investigator. Of medium height and build, he moved well; his face was studious down to a pair of wire-rimmed glasses behind which genuinely grey eyes regarded the world with what appeared to be a deep-rooted skepticism. Carmine liked him, and took him off to Malvolio’s for coffee.

  “Beats cop coffee,” he explained, “and you’ll be getting plenty of that. Unless you have an expense account bigger than a Holloman cop’s, Malvolio’s is the best place to eat.”

  “This suits me fine. Fill me in,” said Hunter Wyatt.

  Privately deciding that if you had a name like Hunter Wyatt you were a shoo-in for a career in law enforcement, Carmine filled him in. “Tell me my bones are wrong,” he ended.

  “I can’t. Your bones are right. Number one, this isn’t an American operation. The kidnapping occurred here, but it was carried out by foreign nationals. Number two, I think we have to suspect that Herr Josef von Fahlendorf is the mastermind, even if he didn’t leave Munich. Number three, we’re not going to find Kurt von Fahlendorf alive, the usual way—he’ll be left in an impregnable prison without food or water. That might be a car trunk or a cellar or something so weird that its nature hasn’t occurred to us. They don’t dare leave him alive because he’s a mature man of undeniable genius. He’s used to looking for the tracks of unknown particles on backgrounds that are one mass of loops, whorls, curves and paths, which makes him the kind of guy who’ll notice a tiny bump in a smooth wall or the f
aintest seam where a door used to be. He probably has superlative hearing, and who knows what sounds may have percolated into his prison?”

  “You’re the expert, Hunter, so what kind of prison might Germans have chosen?” Carmine asked.

  “Not a car trunk, I’d say. They’d gravitate toward something like a cellar, except that ordinary cellars conduct sound, so it would have to be isolated from things that produce noise. I’d go for a quarry or some underground prison. I notice that this coast on army maps is riddled with old gun emplacements—very German! My guess is that the guy is in Connecticut, and not far enough away from Holloman for the kidnappers to need an Interstate. If Gordon Warburton is right and the kidnappers are a man and a woman, that reduces their physical strength. Either there are three or four of them, the unknowns male, or the duo you picked is strange. Why a woman? When we know that, Carmine, we’ll know it all.”

  “Yeah, especially given that Kurt wasn’t drugged. If they needed to render him unconscious, they did it with a blow or blows to the head,” said Carmine. “They chopped off his finger while he was out to it, and by the time he woke up, he was imprisoned.”

  “An hour,” Wyatt said immediately. “He was seen by your two patrolmen at ten on Wednesday night. By eleven-thirty at the latest, he was locked up, one finger gone. Why no drugs?”

  “My guess is that they’re amateurs,” Carmine said. “Their German experience didn’t include garage doors opened by a remote, and their lack of drugs suggests that they labored under the misapprehension that our customs people might have searched them scrupulously. People always assume that the unknown world behaves exactly the same as the world they know. German customs is very severe, especially if there’s a suspected link to East Germany. So let’s assume there is a link to the East.”

  Hunter Wyatt had been scribbling in his notebook; he looked up with a smile. “Want to join the FBI, Captain?”

  “And lose the network my wife admires? No, thanks.”

  “It seems to me,” Hunter Wyatt said, “that we should expend our energies on finding Kurt von Fahlendorf.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Has Corey Marshall given you all our information?”

  “Yes. He’s a good cop—has to be to grill the girl the way he did, considering who she is. She has to be a good cop too, because she co-operated all the way. The kidnappers aren’t afraid of being found, or of Kurt’s being found. What kind of guy is von Fahlendorf? A jock? A nerd? He looks like a movie star.”

  “He does look like a movie star. But according to Helen MacIntosh he’s not into how he looks. In fact, he seems to be what his profession would indicate—a nerd.”

  “Then every available law enforcement individual in Holloman should be looking for Kurt von Fahlendorf. If we find him alive, he’ll be an ideal witness.”

  “If,” Carmine cautioned, “he remembers people and events.”

  Leaving Hunter Wyatt with Corey and his team, Carmine went to see the Commissioner.

  Who had already held two press conferences, but, typical John Silvestri, played his cards shrewdly; the action, he pointed out, would certainly be in and around Holloman, but also as far afield as Munich and certain huge American cities.

  “As far as the journalists are concerned, there’s a certain thrill to this case,” the Commissioner said. “It’s big money, foreign nationals, German involvement, da de da de da. I led the sharks a dance.”

  “You can also feed them people like the Terrible Twins Robert and Gordon Warburton,” Carmine said, finding a grin. “As the twins are actors, they’ll relish the publicity attached to living next door to the kidnapped man.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” said Silvestri with a purr.

  “Now I have to discuss what we’re going to do, John. Hunter Wyatt agrees that we’re not going to find the kidnappers here in America, so he’s willing to join forces with Holloman and other police departments who volunteer to look for Kurt. I don’t know how you want to publicize this, but our aim is to find Kurt alive, before lack of water kills him. So I need the uniforms, of course, if Fernando’s willing. We divide the county up into blocks and allocate searchers to every one of them. If people like the Gentleman Walkers want to volunteer, I can do with them. But it has to be a search under rigid control, or we’ll miss sections and repeat others. If Fernando’s willing, I’d like him to take charge in conjunction with Hunter Wyatt. Detectives is not in a position to assume command—among other cases, we still have the Dodo.”

  “You won’t have opposition from Fernando,” the Commissioner said in the voice that told Carmine he, and no one else, would be in overall command. “I’ll start by getting the cops of neighboring counties on the job in their territory.”

  And that, thought Carmine, hurrying away, is why I love John Silvestri. He never pussyfoots around, it’s straight for the throat. Unless, that is, he’s holding a press conference, when he’s smoother than Marzullo’s butter-cream.

  Next, Corey Marshall and his team. At first Corey was inclined to take the news of searching as a demotion, but after some persuasive talking, Carmine managed to make him see that locating the victim was actually more praiseworthy than apprehending the kidnappers, and was also a task that the FBI did not feel beneath it. It was highly likely, Carmine hinted, that in finding Kurt, they would have a fantastic lead to the kidnappers, sitting smugly in West Germany.

  Morty Jones, he noticed as he left, was looking ghastly. Carmine rolled an eye at Helen, who unobtrusively followed him out.

  “What’s with Morty?”

  “He was served with papers from a lawyer’s office yesterday, but he won’t open them. Just lugs them around.”

  “They’ll be divorce papers. Why won’t he open them?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Those three guys hate me. They think I’m your spy or snitch or something.”

  “Ignore that, and keep me informed.”

  “I feel like a snitch,” she muttered.

  “Don’t. You aren’t. I’m worried about Morty.”

  “Okay.” She went off to the Ladies—yes, she was smart! Corey wouldn’t know she’d snitched to the boss. But humiliating for her, Carmine thought, having to slink around corners. She was a snitch, but of the noble kind.

  On the surface, things were going well for Morty Jones. Delia had come through with an excellent woman to keep his house in far better shape than Ava had, he was forced to admit. Milly worked eight to five Mondays to Fridays, did the washing and ironing, left a hot meal for them at night, and in a very few days had washed or sent to the cleaner’s every drape, curtain, blanket and bedspread his home possessed. All of which made his kids happy. She was a cheerful person who asked about their day at school as if it really interested her, and saw to it that they did their homework. Milly also cooked delicious food.

  But she couldn’t make Morty happy. She wasn’t Ava—sloppy, self-absorbed Ava, so glamorous as she flitted around in satin and feathers and high-heeled mules, bestowing kisses and apologies on the kids because she hadn’t made their lunches or found them clean clothes—oh, Ava, Ava!

  He had no idea what was in the envelope the process server had dropped on him yesterday afternoon, but his heart was leaden. So leaden, in fact, that he couldn’t nerve himself to open the packet no matter how he tried. All Thursday night at home he had stared at it, then brought it in this morning still intact. He must open it, he must!

  “Cor, I don’t feel well,” he whispered as soon as he had a little privacy. “I got to open these papers, but not here, not with that nosey little bitch sniffing around. Can I go down to Virgil? He’s on, and I got privacy there.”

  “Sure,” said Corey absently, only half hearing.

  Virgil was busy discharging a tank full of drunks, but nodded toward the women’s cell and left Morty to what he imagined was a much needed nap; the guy looked fucked.

  But the papers and ph
otographs that spilled out of the cheap brown envelope were not conducive to a nap. Ava was suing for divorce alleging cruelty, and asking for full custody of the kids, who, she stated, were not fathered by Morty. She was also asking for every cent he had in the world. Apparently it didn’t matter that everything was in his name!

  There were two groups of photographs, both in color: one was of a full length, naked Ava covered in hideous bruises, particularly nasty on her lower trunk and private parts; the other consisted of head shots showing a taped up nose in a swollen face black with bruises and cut around the mouth. Oh, Jesus, had he done that to her? She’d gone to the hospital emergency, then she’d found herself a lawyer. She wanted the kids! She wanted the house! She wanted his income and his savings! And there it was in full color, what he had done to her. Supported by, said a letter, witnesses as well as many photographs.

  His career was over; Captain Delmonico had an absolute loathing for men who beat their wives. His chances of happiness were over. Oh, Ava, Ava! Why did you screw around? Who will believe that I only ever touched you that once, you whore, you sad bitch, you any man’s cunt? They’ll believe you. They always believe the woman. They’ll say I made up the screwing around. Oh, Ava, Ava! Why?

  He sat down on a naked bed, buried his face in his hands and wept, wept, wept …

  Virgil Simms looked in, sighed, and went back to his work.

  “We won’t wait for Morty,” Corey said. “He’s not well, went to lie down. The sooner we start to search our block, the sooner Fernando will allocate us a fresh slice.”

  “May I have my own wheels?” Helen asked.

  Corey eyed her warily; she was too pushy, reminded him of Maureen. “Is that stupid little wop car wired to base?”