Naked Cruelty

by Colleen McCullough

  “I think it was only a matter of time,” said Sergeant Virgil Simms. “Morty didn’t have any luck. He was Sad Sack. Whoever he married would have turned out like Ava because Morty wished it on himself. He always had a yen for a tramp, maybe as a reaction against his mom. She’s one of those hard, selfish women who never miss going to church on Sundays.”

  “What’s going to happen to the kids?” Carmine asked.

  “Ava’s taking them and moving back into the house, but Morty’s mom is complaining to Child Welfare that Ava’s not a fit mother.”

  “Does she genuinely want custody?”

  “Hell, no! I can’t come to the rescue, Captain—my wife’s not an Ava lover.”

  “No wife is. I take it trouble’s brewing?”

  “Definitely. Neither mother nor grandmother wants the kids.”

  “It’s hard to believe that Kurt von Fahlendorf’s been found,” said Mark Sugarman to Bill Mitski as they prepared to walk.

  “Great news,” Bill answered. “Holloman has good cops.”

  “Does that mean you think they’ll nail the Dodo?”

  “Yeah, it does. The problem all along has been randomness, but the crimes have to be getting less random, if only because there have been more of them to take into consideration.”

  “Oh, I hope you’re right!” Mark said with fervor. “Then we could all relax.”

  “You wouldn’t give up the walking?” Bill asked, alarmed.

  “No, I wouldn’t. It’s too good for the heart and the waist, Bill.” Mark laughed and slapped his belly.

  “Who’s that up ahead?” Bill asked suddenly.

  Mark’s lip lifted. “The Siamese twins,” he said, groaning.

  “You’re right, they should be joined at the hip. They even walk like it. Repulsive!” Bill shuddered.

  “Good evening,” Mark said politely, coming abreast of Robbie and Gordie Warburton.

  “And the top of the evening to you, sirs,” said Robbie.

  The twins stood to be introduced to Bill Mitski.

  “Out for a constitutional?” Bill asked, trying to still his crawling flesh.

  “Tonight, yes,” said Robbie. “Such soft weather! I love a New England Indian summer, don’t you? Days in the eighties, nights around freezing, this time of night perfect for walking.”

  “Do you walk often?” Mark asked. “I’ve not seen you.”

  The twins tittered, sounding effeminate.

  “Heavens to Betsy, no!” Robbie cried, and moved on, Gordie automatically moving in time with him.

  “Toodle-pip!” Robbie called.

  Mark and Bill continued to stand for a moment.

  “They give me the creeps,” said Mark.

  “They give me the shits,” said Bill.

  “Toodle-pip! Who does he think he is, Noel Coward?”

  The pair resumed their walk.

  “You know what I feel like?” Bill asked as they turned on to Cedar for the east-west segment of their route. It was busier here, cars driving up and down, people on the sidewalks.

  “No, what?”

  “A party. One of your wing-dings, Mark.”

  Mark sighed, shook his head. “After Melantha? No, Bill, I don’t think so. Her death would hang over us like a miasma.”

  “One sick bastard is all it takes to wreck things! Carew used to be such a great place to live.”

  “It will be again, but not until after the Dodo is caught.”

  When he had a little time to spare, Didus ineptus liked to review his plans, and the plans for this next woman were looming larger and larger in his mind as the gap between the fingers of time grew ever narrower. Would it be three weeks, or would he go at the end of two weeks? They thought it had significance for him—what idiots they were! When he moved was simple self-preservation, nothing else. The thing is, did he want to share his glory with a pair of buzzards like Hubert Humphrey and the feral Richard Nixon? That was three weeks. He could be ready to go in two weeks, when the stage would belong to him entirely.

  She lived on Cedar Street, and that was perilous. But not impossible. He just had to conduct his expedition accurately. The place he wanted was right next door to the Hochners, who lived in a private dwelling, whereas his target was an apartment block of four storeys that held eight tenants. Were the Hochners not next door it would have been an unattainable goal, but the Hochners were the boy who cried wolf; they were forever calling the cops to complain about the neighbors, and the cops had given up coming to investigate. Of course the Hochners complained about that, but even new broom Captain Fernando Vasquez had tumbled to them, and dealt with their whines by writing them flowery letters.

  The Dodo’s quarry lived on the first floor and out the back on the Hochner side; her name was Catherine dos Santos, she was a devout Catholic of unimpeachable virtue, a dark and lovely girl with the look of a Raphael madonna.

  He had been saving her through nine others. Oh, there were more deposited in his account for future forays, but Catherine was very special. For one thing, though her hair was midnight-black, her eyes were a striking violet-blue, large, round, fringed by lush lashes, owning an expression of perfect tranquility. She had never been in love, she had told him at the party, and was saving herself for her husband.

  She had bars on all her windows. Not imitation bars, but authentic jailhouse bars, an inch in diameter and solid iron. They were bolted to the inside of concrete block walls—no way in except to cut them with a torch, and the Hochners would see the first spit of a spark. Her doors were solid core, only two in number. One, a fire escape, was two doors down on the Hochner side of the building, and bolted top and bottom. The entry door was in the middle of the back wall and held three separate locks, all different.

  He had the keys. Even virgins have to pee, and she had gone to Mark Sugarman’s guest toilet not precisely drunk, but a little too light-headed to be bothered lugging her big bag. The keys were in it. While Dave Feinman did a wicked impersonation of Senator Strom Thurmond, he had taken wax impressions of all five keys on her ring. In the middle of a night he had tried the five and found the three he needed, labeled them. Except that he had learned they triggered many sets of tumblers per lock, which was why he came back at exactly the time she was due home. He had to see her open the door.

  Using the jungle behind which lived the Hochners, he worked his way to the back of the apartment building and sat in the boundary hedge, absolutely concealed, to see Catherine enter.

  She came down the side path so physically close to him that he could hear her pantyhose hissing as her thighs brushed against each other: six-thirty on the dot. Top lock first: three turns right, two left. Then the bottom lock: six turns left, no right. Last, the middle lock: four turns left, three right. All of that done, she leaned her left shoulder against the door and gave it a powerful shove. It came open just enough for her to slip inside. Then came the sound of a big steel bolt slamming home at the top of the door and another at the bottom: only after that did she close the three locks. Fort Knox was ready and armed: what a woman!

  His window of opportunity was tight. In Catherine’s case he knew he would have to be inside and waiting before she arrived home, but the Hochners had a small deck outside their back door and could be found on it every afternoon drinking iced tea until six-fifteen, when they retired. No doubt they would soon make their al fresco interlude terminate at an earlier time, but he couldn’t risk bringing that into his calculations. Fifteen minutes were all he would have, though he would be there at six just in case.

  He could feel his heart pumping faster, the adrenaline begin to flow at the mere thought of how dangerous this one was, right there on busy Cedar Street. A small, thin voice kept urging him to abandon hope of Catherine, but he suppressed it angrily. No, he would do it! They were getting so boring! In Catherine lay a challenge, and he could never resist a challenge.
Whatever the obstacles, he was going to rape and kill Catherine dos Santos.

  Next Tuesday evening. Two weeks. They wouldn’t count on that. A week later, and Commissioner John Silvestri would have Carew saturated with cops.

  “I want to pull you in, Fernando, because I want to flood Carew with cops on election night and the night immediately after,” said Carmine. “It will be three weeks since Melantha Green, and his cycle is a three-week one. If I’m wrong, I won’t ask for another date, because he’ll have gone to some unpredictable cycle only God could solve. We have to be seen to be doing something to protect the community, and this is the best suggestion I have.”

  “Have you talked to the Commissioner?” Fernando asked.

  “Not yet. If you have a better idea, I’d rather know now.”

  That was the trouble with having new feet in Danny Marciano’s shoes; Carmine didn’t know Fernando Vasquez well enough yet to divine which way he’d jump in any given situation. Danny had jumped the way he was pushed by Silvestri or Carmine, but those days were gone, and had had their bad side; too many empires were built, too many perks and privileges were sanctioned. In time Fernando would settle down and settle in, but his Latin roots were Spanish, not Italian, which made a big difference. This was his first major job in a non-Hispanic area, and he was still groping for the right way to go about things.

  “We can’t have young women raped and murdered,” Fernando said. “I’ve read enough about this case to know that no stone’s gone unturned. The guy’s like a ghost—but sex killers always are. No familiar tracks.”

  “Now he’s killing, he’ll never stop,” Carmine said, “unless he’s caught. One day he’ll make a serious mistake. I want to flood his victim area with cops to help push him into making that mistake. Will you give me uniforms?”

  “As many as I can spare.” Fernando held up one hand, a beautiful member, square in the palm, with long, tapering fingers. “But one thing I ask, Carmine.”

  “Ask.”

  “Let’s not notify my guys until election day midday, when I’ll call in extra men. I’m not saying there are leaks in my division, but I’d rather make sure the Dodo has as little time as possible to prepare. Agreed?”

  “That’s a good idea. I won’t mention it in Detectives either. That way, if the Dodo is planning to go Tuesday night, he’ll have no reason not to until Tuesday afternoon. He may decide then to abort, but it’s short notice, and he doesn’t strike me as the kind to change his plans unless he absolutely has to. A longer wait might spook him, a short one is less likely to.”

  “Have you a plan?” Fernando asked.

  “Nothing to rival Alexander the Great, no. I just need as many men as possible in cars and on foot.”

  “I can give you ten cars—I daren’t make it more. Thirty foot patrols of two men each. That skins me dangerously, Carmine. If anything unrelated happens elsewhere in Holloman, bearing in mind what kind of year the country’s had, things could explode.” Despite his pessimistic words, Fernando looked remarkably cheerful. “But they won’t. If anything happens, it will be earlier, and you won’t get any reinforcements at all.”

  Carmine reached out a hand. “Thanks, Fernando.”

  It was shaken warmly. “My thanks to you, Carmine. If you didn’t have a weird and quirky detective named Abe Goldberg, all my uniforms would have meant nothing to Kurt von Fahlendorf. I suggest we go see the Commissioner.”

  It would not have surprised Helen MacIntosh to learn that Captain Delmonico had deliberately sidelined her to West Germany and Munich, though why she should suspect him of ulterior motives lay deeper than her consciousness. After nearly two months in Detectives, she had concluded that the Captain’s unit was so tightly knit there might be some activities he didn’t want her to know about. These activities were concerned with personalities rather than events, which meant she honestly didn’t care one way or the other about them, but she was sharp enough to sense that he might perceive her differently than she did herself.

  By far the hottest item on her secret agenda was the uncovering of the von Fahlendorf kidnappers. Why not the Dodo? Because the laurels for catching him would inevitably be scattered among several detectives, with the Captain himself at the top of the pyramid. Not good enough, just not good enough! Helen was intent upon winning all the laurels for herself, which negated the Dodo. So when she was offered the chance to investigate the von Fahlendorfs in Munich, she leaped at it.

  The most uncomfortable part of the expedition was Kurt’s attitude to her; though she had told him explicitly that she was pretending to be his fiancée, by the time they boarded their plane he had somehow become convinced that the engagement was as real as the plane itself. A nuisance, but one she was prepared to suffer considering the prize.

  With time differences, they arrived close to midnight at Munich; she wouldn’t get to meet the family until breakfast of Saturday, probably. A large Mercedes car met them, but again, no representative of the family came with it; the uniformed driver informed Kurt in German that it was past the family’s bedtime. The worst feature of the trip, Helen reflected as she climbed in, was that she spoke no German, and had to take Kurt’s word for it when he translated. Kurt himself grew more jovial the closer to his home he got, and seemed to regard the family’s absence as normal.

  What she could see of the house when the car drew up an hour later told her that it was huge by American standards; more a palace than a mansion. Her two bags were whisked inside, Kurt kissed her in the vast foyer, and she was conducted up a curving flight of purple Levanto marble stairs to her quarters, a better word than bedroom, as she had a sitting room and a little kitchen as well as a bedroom, and her bathroom looked as if mad King Ludwig of Bavaria had designed it, between the marble swans, dolphins and seahorses that swooped, frisked and floated all over green marble weeds and pink marble shells.

  She let the maid finish unpacking her bags, bestowed a ten-dollar note upon the astonished girl, pushed her out the huge double doors, and sat down at a desk in her sitting room to enter her journal, as she wasn’t very tired. Like Kurt, Helen had the knack of sleeping on planes. First class helped, if only he’d admit it, the skinflint.

  She met them at breakfast, though no one had told her what time it was served, or where; her answer was to venture out of her quarters at seven, and start to wander. A chance meeting with the butler, who spoke good English, established a valuable friendship. Clearly enchanted by her youth and beauty, he beamed.

  “You are too early, fräulein,” he said. “The maid would have brought you coffee at eight, and breakfast when you wanted.”

  “Oh, I’m a lark, not an owl,” she said, losing him with the metaphor. “I’ll eat with everyone. What’s your name?”

  “Macken, fräulein.”

  She glanced around the blue, cream and gilt of the room and looked conspiratorial. “Meet me here after breakfast, Macken, then you can take me on a grand tour.”

  “But Herr Kurt—”

  “I intend to give him plenty of time with his family.”

  And off she went, following Macken’s directions, to a small parlor wherein the family breakfasted at seven-thirty.

  Five people sat at a round table, in the center of which stood a big basket of crisp white bread rolls whose aroma assailed the hungry Helen’s nostrils as truffles did a hound’s, a plate of assorted cheese slices, a plate of sliced German sausage, and a plate of salami. At each place—there was a sixth—sat a bowl of butter. Breakfast, it seemed. Alien, but tempting.

  The men rose; Kurt performed the introductions, delighted that his Helen had risen early.

  She smiled at everybody, sat down, and drank her first cup of coffee at a gulp. It was refilled as promptly as Minnie did a mug at Malvolio’s.

  They were strikingly handsome. Kurt set the family pattern: tall, a strong physique, frost-fair hair, pale blue eyes, the kind of features a few
movie stars were lucky enough to have, as they obviated any requirement to act. Though she was not really a von Fahlendorf, the Baroness too was very fair, but sleek and exotic, with green eyes. The dark one was Josef, who quite took the breath away: thick black hair, large and dreamy black eyes, the face of an Adonis.

  “My dear, I am so glad to meet you,” Dagmar said. “Kurt has written so much about you. Mama, what do you think?”

  The Baroness smiled with all the enigma of a cat. “She is beautiful indeed, Dagmar.” Then, to Helen, “I always knew that American cosmeticians were superbly clever. Which company makes your hair dye and what is it called?”

  Mouth full of delicious fresh bread roll and butter, Helen blinked, swallowed in a hurry, coughed, almost choked. Oh, hell! she thought. Aristocrats come in two flavors—bitter and sweet. This bunch are so sure of their bloodlines and wealth that they say and do exactly as they like. Bitter? They’d make a lemon feel syrupy by comparison. I am in for a rough ride.

  Aloud she said, “I don’t dye my hair, Baroness. It’s my father’s family’s color. My brother has it too.”

  The two women exchanged a glance that said they didn’t believe a word of her answer.

  “You see,” said Dagmar, nibbling at a roll, “Fahlendorf Farben is contemplating a cosmetics branch, a line to be called Domina. That means—”

  “Lady!” said Helen with a snap. “I’m well versed in Latin and Greek, ladies. In fact, I graduated summa cum laude from Harvard—a great university, I’m sure you know.”

  “Helen’s father,” said Kurt, looking bewildered, “is the president of another great university—Chubb.”

  “Really? How nice,” said the Baroness.