by GC Smith
John Bertram Wiley interrupted with an automatic, “yes Agnes.” He folded back the pink brocade bedspread and carefully placed it on the antique white French Provincial bench at the foot of his bed.
Agnes disappeared into her dressing room and John Bertram turned on the TV to late news. The screen showed a draped gurney being wheeled toward an open door of a waiting ambulance. The newscaster babbled about another Moultrie Bay razor murder.
John Bertram thought about Cynthia Echols murder here on Lady Caroline Island. He reflected on the razor killings in the County. Scary, he thought, horrible.
Agnes came into the room, “Dear God, John, turn that thing off. I’m exhausted. I need sleep.”
John Bertram snapped off the TV and settled into his bed. He relaxed for the first time in many years. Their troublesome daughter had matured to become a fine woman. A lawyer like himself and now married.
John Bertram smiled upward toward the darkened ceiling. He'd long since figured out that Agnes considered their daughter a hindrance to her plans despite her outward show of affection for the girl. He had worried. But now worries were gone. His secret, was now, after today, nothing more that a faded image of a distant past.
It had been a perfect day and like Agnes, John Bertram was pleased with the elegance of his daughter's wedding. He was equally pleased with the political points he had scored with the right people.
Now his path was clear.
The newlyweds boarded Delta flight 899 bound for Boston. Marie Della Porta was their first victim together on home territory since their return from Hilton Head. They had done five others since Belgardo, five unsolved murders. All women. All caressed by the carbon steel of his straight razor. Each time the scent of blood had led Capers deeper into insanity, his sense of power, of invulnerability nurtured.
Each time Joan, now his wife, the aberrant product of upper class Southern breeding , joined his madness, savoring the dual pleasures of gemstones and gore. But those murders had been in the relative anonymity of large cities, Charlotte, Atlanta, Palm Beach, New Orleans, Houston.
Marie Della Porta was here in Moultrie Bay. Home turf. Bringing the action back to Moultrie Bay was especially satisfying. The perfect nightcap for Joan’s and Micah’s perfect wedding day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Moultrie Bay, SC
August 3
Johnny Donal, back in Moultrie Bay after a week of crook chasing, tugged loose his necktie and thumbed open his collar button. Had he never left the South Philadelphia neighborhood of his youth, he wouldn't be encumbered by a necktie and starched shirt. He wouldn't wear a custom tailored suit coat to be tossed carelessly over the arm of a chair. Nor would he be chairman and chief executive officer a P.I. firm, specializing in providing security services and investigations for the hospitality industry, worldwide. Home office in Moultrie Bay; branch offices in New York City, Houston, Denver, and San Francisco. In the year previous, Donal Associates, had grossed eighteen million dollars, putting Donal's personal income in the high six figure bracket.
Donal had picked up on the trail that had gone cold on him in New York City back in May. He'd spent the last six days, mostly on planes, circumnavigating the continental United States chasing Thomas Donleavy. Los Angeles, back to New York. Then Chicago and Atlanta, and now home, a six days culmination of six dogged months on the case. He was tired, but it was that good tired that comes of accomplishment. The months of internet contact with police agencies and investigative organizations worldwide had paid off. The Haverton case was wrapped and Donleavy was cooling his heels in the Atlanta, Georgia jail. Most of the ten million that Donleavy had scarfed from Haverton was recovered from offshore accounts. Donal Associates' would pick up the recovery fee, a well earned million bucks, give or take a few after final accounting.
Donal rubbed the tender bruise on his thigh where Donleavy had slammed him with the attaché case. The S.O.B. was pretty quick for a seventy-two year old office type. Donal chuckled, remembering the packets of currency -crisp, banded hundreds, fifty grand worth of them- that had scattered around the Atlanta hotel room when the lock sprung.
Donal rummaged through a disorganized kitchen cabinet. He found the Peter Pan peanut butter far back in a corner behind two cans of tennis balls and a shoe box that contained pieces of a disassembled S.U. carburetor from his 1950 Jag. He spread rye bread with peanut butter, piled on a couple of slices of sweet Vidalia onion, and pulled a bottle of Dos Equis from the refrigerator. The cat appeared at the kitchen window, yowling, and Donal let her in. She jumped up onto the kitchen counter and licked peanut butter from the blade of the knife that Donal had used.
In the newly plastered, yet unpainted living room, Donal picked up a book from atop the CD changer, removed the screwdriver that served as a place mark, and collapsed into a threadbare chair; his favorite, a sun faded hulk that Victoria was threatening to have carted off by the Salvation Army. Well, if she'd get herself back to Moultrie Bay and stay for a while, and if Freddy ever finished this restoration, she might get the chance. Victoria's taste and good sense were assets Donal would be a dope to overlook when he shopped for badly needed furniture, new or antique.
It was four o'clock, Friday, and Victoria would arrive for the weekend from Columbia in a few hours. More and more Donal resented their separations. He found himself increasingly impatient waiting for her to return.
Donal began to read, volume three of Churchill's History of the English Speaking People, but, between his exhaustion from the week's trip and his thoughts continually drifting to Victoria, concentration failed. Churchill's prose hypnotized him. His eyes closed, his fingers relaxed, and the book slipped to his lap annoying the cat who had gotten there first.
A shrill sound lanced into Donal's sleep. Scowling, still half asleep, he crossed the room and picked up the phone on the seventh ring.
“Donal.”
“Johnny. Tony Androlini. I have to see you. Now.
“What's the problem?”
“My sister. Marie Della Porta.”
Donal had read the N Y. Times and Atlanta Constitution accounts of the Della Porta murder, front page news across the country, Donal's buddy, Hook, quoted at length in the articles. But until this instant, Donal had not known that the victim was Tony’s sister. The connection jolted him fully awake.
“My God. I didn't know. I'm sorry.”
Androlini's diminished voice, none of the graveled basso that Donal had come to know over the years, came back over the phone. “I need you John. When can you get here?”
“Half an hour.”
Donal retrieved his discarded suit coat, shrugged into it, took his car keys. He pulled the front door closed, leaving behind the cat that was trying to get outside again, not hearing her plaintive meows.
... Donal and Tony Androlini went back a way and then some. They had met when Donal was riding a South Carolina Highway Patrol car, still wearing a uniform and a badge. Donal had picked up a kid driving a Corvette ninety miles per hour. The kid was sober and he didn't give Donal any lip. Donal made a snap decision that what the kid had done was a stupid sixteen stunt rather than a malicious act. He drove the kid home instead of booking him.
The kid was Androlini's son and his father was man enough to accept that the boy screwed up and to assure the uniformed cop that the kid would be dealt with in a way that a lesson would be learned.
Androlini wasn't one to forget a favor. When Donal went private after eighteen years on the force, it was Tony who hired him to track an embezzler. The case gave Donal the break that made his agency. Tony talked him up throughout the resort business community and in rapid succession clients came his way. First accounts on Hilton Head; then, as Donal's reputation grew, accounts with resorts throughout the United States. Big business; big bucks. Donal becoming a major player in the P.I. industry.
Donal turned the car into the brick paved drive and pulled to a stop between two huge Magnolia trees. A walkway led to wide steps and massive mahogany doors
. A crystal chandelier glowed behind a mullioned fanlight.
Tony Androlini opened the door before Donal had a chance to knock. He grasped Donal's bicep and waved him inside the house with his free hand. The man no more than sixty looked eighty. “Jamison,” he whispered?
“Yes, thanks.”
Androlini poured a stiff one from a crystal decanter and passed the drink to Donal. He rambled, somewhat coherently, but not quite. “I was in Peru. Came back yesterday. The Sheriff's Department had four days to figure out that I was Marie's next of kin and just now managed it. Marie and her husband Joseph moved here from Atlantic City. Less than a year ago. Joe claimed to be retired. He wasn't. He was here to organize the rackets on Hilton Head. Any way he died a little over a month ago. Marie was alone in that big house. Just down the street from here. She was my baby sister, a lot younger than me. Twenty-three years younger. I want the bastard who killed her.”
“Tony,” Donal began.
“Don't,” Androlini said. “I don't have time for crap. The doctors pussyfoot around, but I know. I don't really care. My Sarah is gone.” He stated it flatly.
Donal remembered that it had been less than a year ago at Tony's wife Sarah's funeral that he had last seen the man. The man speaking to him now wasn't the same Tony. The physical difference between then and now was shocking.
“The Sheriff's folks will ... ,” Donal started.
Again Androlini stilled him. “Don't give me that. Those nit-wits aren’t getting a God dammed thing done. They're running around in circles while the maniac who did that to Marie is out there walking around free.” The sudden strength in Androlini' s voice was startling.
“Tony, they're at a disadvantage with this kind of thing.”
“You call it this kind of thing? My God man Marie was murdered. Mutilated. And you call her death this kind of thing?”
“I'm not soft pedaling, Tony. Believe that.”
Androlini interrupted, unaware that Donal had spoken.
“Get the son of a bitch Johnny. Or, I'll get him myself.”
“Don't be a fool,” Donal said.
Androlini sat, expression vacant, silent for a while, and then, “I know.” He stared into his glass. “Emotions talk big, but I have to know who murdered Marie.”
“I'll do what I can. I can't make promises.”
“You're as good as they come Johnny. You got Bobby Ondano for me?”
“Ondano was different. He was a thief, with a thief's patterns. Marie was murdered by a psychotic. Psycho's are individuals; they don't run to form. That's why it's so difficult for the cops.”
“Well, dammit, the Sheriff should start with the fact that Marie's house wasn't broken into and Marie wouldn't have opened the door to anyone she didn't know.”
“Was the house equipped with an alarm system?”
“Yes. And Marie kept it armed.”
“Was it on the night she was killed?”
Androlini hesitated, then said, she always, ... Oh hell,
I don't know. The cops haven't said anything about it.”
Donal made a mental note to ask Hook.
“There has to be something.” Tony sipped the whiskey. “Her murder may have something to do with her goddamn husband. Joe Della Porta made enemies. Maybe one of them did it? Maybe it was a cover-up to look like the other killings.”
“Why?”
“I think maybe somebody was after something. Maybe Joe had something valuable enough to kill for.”
Donal felt sure that Androlini's theory was a shot in the dark by a man desperate for an explanation that would lead to his sister's murderer. “What makes you think that,” he asked?
“I don't know,” Tony said, voice faltering, “I'm guessing. Trying for any kind of an answer.”
“Give me something to work with. Names. Enemies or associates of Joe's. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I can,” Androlini coughed out the words. “Try, William Rumors, Carlo Genevese, and Mark Antonio Rudella. They're Philadelphia hoodlums transplanted to Hilton Head. Gli amici delgli amici. Scum.
“My brother in law, Joe, did business with those bastards. He was no better than them. He was one of them.”
***
Donal, left, depressed by the interview, and drove back downtown. It looked like everything that could conspire to destroy a man had come down on Androlini. The man he had just left was far cry from the robust Tony Androlini who had hired Donal to find Bobby Ondano.
Ondano, Androlini's comptroller had taken off with thirty million dollars of corporate funds that were supposed to have been escrowed against completion of construction projects.
Donal told Androlini the truth when he said that thieves had patterns, habits, by which they could be traced. Ondano, a perfect example of predictability, was a sports car enthusiast and through inability to let go of his enthusiasm had trapped himself. He had wasted time detouring on his way to the airport to drop off his 1958 Porsche Spyder. Donal, himself a car buff knew about Ondano's hobby and was tipped to the sale of the car and the delivery agreement by a contact in the low country chapter of the Sports Car Club of America. When Ondano showed up with the Porsche Donal was waiting. Androlini got his thirty million back and Donal collected ten percent.
That had been Donal’s start, a big start. Donal Associates was now one of the largest and -those in the know said- the best P.I. outfits in the country. A still growing investigative and security agency, the Moultrie Bay home office merely a convenience to Donal's choice of the Lowcountry as the place to live.
Donal moved his 12 cylinder Jag XJS, a fine car but in no way comparable to the 120 Roadster that he had driven on the amateur race circuit and still owned, into the office building's garage. Entering his suite of offices on the second floor, he noticed that the door to Mike Sullivan's office was open; Mike's head bent over a pyramid of papers stacked on his desk.
Donal dropped heavily into the chair beside Mike's desk. “How come you're in the office this late on a Friday night? They shut down the bars?”
Mike looked up, “As a matter of fact, boss, I'm following your orders. Getting rid of the paper work backlog. Decided it's time to get it off my desk.”
“Past time. Maybe now we can bill some accounts.” Donal stretched his frame in the chair.
“What about your desk,” Mike asked, the mischievous grin that Donal had known for years lighting his Celtic mug?
“I'm the boss in case you've forgotten. Makes a difference.”
Donal began to massage the back of his neck. Watching him, Mike dropped his bantering tone. “You seem down. Something bothering you?”
“I spent the last hour with Tony Androlini. Marie Della
Porta was his sister.”
“Holy Christ. I didn't know.”
“Nor did I, Mike.”
“Tony wants you to find her killer.”
“It's a police matter not our kind of case. I know it and you know it but Tony isn't listening.”
“You'll help him'?”
“I’ve got no choice. You get to play Sancho Panza.”
“You're the one who taught me that it's almost impossible to get the scent of a psycho. Where the hell will you start?”
“Tony told me his brother-in-law had enemies and that they may be tied to the murder. The brother-in-law died recently and Tony thinks that someone Marie knew and trusted got into the house looking for something. He thinks that that person murdered his sister and he feels that the razor killer's M.O. may be a cover.”
“Sounds far fetched.”
“I don't think much of Tony's theory either, but he swears that his sister wouldn't have let a stranger into the house. Tony contends that she wouldn't have opened the door unless she knew who was there.”
“He give you anything else?”
“He told me Della Porta was old country Italian. A racketeer. He kept the wife in the dark. Tony could never convince his sister that Della Porta was anything other than a retired import broker. After
a while he quit trying. Anyway, he gave me a couple of names we can check out.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Donal paused for a second and then said, “Friendship might color my judgment. I need you to look over my shoulder.”
“Kind of a role reversal.”
Under normal circumstances Donal would have agreed. Mike tended to be the impatient one; the charger of windmills. Donal usually was the one who steadied the kid. Donal had known Mike since he was a fifteen year old star on the State Police League basketball team. The kid, left fatherless by a Marine Corps jet jockey who didn't get the stick back soon enough to abort a bad carrier landing, had been a pain in the ass, always pestering Donal to talk about cop work. He idolized Donal. Wanted to be a cop like Donal. If anything Mike's hero worship increased when Donal went private. After Mike got his B.S. in Criminal Justice, he decided against joining the Department. Instead he went to work for Donal.
Agreeing to take on the Della Porta case for Tony wasn't a normal circumstance. Most of Donal's clients were strangers when they brought their troubles to him. Tony Androlini was a friend. Quixotic mission or not Donal had no choice. Tony had asked.
Donal said. “I'll go see Hook in the morning. See what the Sheriff's folks have. Then I want to see Della Porta's lawyers to get a look at his will and other estate papers. After that you and I can check out the people on Tony's list and his sister's friends and acquaintances.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“Hell, I don't know,” Donal replied, “but remember the cardinal rule of this business. Go fishin'. Sort what you catch later.”
“Gotcha, boss.”
Donal tried to call Hook but he was neither at home nor in his office. He arranged with Hook's secretary for an nine a.m. meeting and left the message that he had been retained by Tony Androlini to investigate his sister's murder.