After filming a neat guest bedroom, they moved back along the corridor to film the living room, kitchen, dining areas.
“The Kurts are remarkable housekeepers,” Flynn commented. “House-proud, to use a German expression.”
Cocky said, “Strange that such a good-looking, healthy young couple have no children.”
“I suspect they are otherwise directed,” Flynn said. “Did you notice the BMW in the back of the driveway?”
“Registered to Mrs. Kurt,” Cocky said. “Anne Kurt. She’s a primary school teacher.”
“Expensive transportation for a primary school teacher. Do you wonder what it’s meant to express?”
After videotaping the main floor of the house, they returned to the kitchen.
“Well,” Flynn said. “We’ve established where we are. And so far found nothing. Will our luck hold?”
Cocky opened and closed a door to a broom closet. “This house must have a basement.”
“Yes.”
The second door he opened led to the basement steps.
In the basement, Flynn filmed the heating-cooling system, the washer and drier, the neatly stacked suitcases, the clean collection of lawn mower, rake, snow shovel, the floor-to-ceiling wine rack.
Cocky looked at two bottles of wine. “BMW tastes in wine, too.”
“Cocky, old son.” Not filming, Flynn was just looking around. “The ceiling is square.”
“So’s the floor,” Cocky said.
“We’re in a rectangular house.”
“Yes.” Cocky looked at all four corners of the room. “A half basement?”
“Half a basement, more like it.”
“There’s no way out. No door.”
“Fiddle with that wine rack, if you will. That being the only object obscuring the wall in this subterranean world of Kurt.”
Cocky removed the wine bottles from the left-hand side of the rack, waist high. “A regular doorknob.” Cocky chuckled. “How clever!”
The wine rack swung open.
He entered the next room.
He switched on the light.
He said, “Oh, damn.”
Flynn followed him with the camera.
Viewing through the camera, Flynn said, “Dear, dear. We found what we didn’t want to find.”
He filmed the huge Nazi swastika flag on the wall; the framed photographs of Hitler, Goebbels, Göring, and three other men he did not recognize, each of the three in a strange costume undoubtedly meant to be a uniform; the computer table, computer, and printer; the six metal chairs scattered in the room, another six folded against the wall.
He also filmed a large print hanging on the back wall.
On the right of the painting was a sunlit rural area, red barns and a white steeple in green rolling hills.
On the left side of the painting was a dark, urban area, squalid streets, decrepit redbrick buildings, windows smashed The tallest building, the top obscured by dirty clouds, had a Star of David on it.
In the middle of the painting, beautiful, muscular men and women marched from the rural area to the urban area. In their left hands the men carried assault weapons; the women, brooms.
The biggest figure was a blond man in the center of the painting, leading them, his right fist raised to the sky.
Flynn lowered the camera. “Oh, dear.”
He felt so sad.
From across the room, Cocky said, “A sizable gun collection. Twelve assault rifles. Twelve forty-fives. Eight—”
“All right!” Flynn snapped angrily. “But is any of this actually illegal?”
“This is.” Cocky was facing Flynn.
Between them was a chest-high concrete wall.
Flynn walked around the end of the wall.
On Cocky’s side of the wall was a concrete work counter.
And on the counter were five bombs.
“Ah,” said Flynn. “It’s illegal to make bombs in a residential neighborhood?”
“Usually against zoning laws.” Cocky laughed. “Of course it is.”
As Flynn filmed the small bombs precisely spaced on the counter, Cocky commented: “These four essentially are ready for detonation. This last explosive device, as you can see, is a work in progress.”
After filming, Flynn heaved a great sigh. “All right. Let’s go upstairs and call Captain Reagan’s personal communicator. He has it at the Policepersons’ Ball with him. Tell him we found what we hoped not to find. Let’s get out of here before a heavy truck goes by and sets one of these darlings off. Leave the lights on, Cocky. Lights will make the cleanup squad feel safer.”
“Ha!” Flynn chortled. “Checkmate!”
Cocky sat back in his chair. “I suspect you had help, Flynn. Ever since you finally moved your queen—”
“Ah, a man is nothin’ at all, Cocky, without a little help from his friends. Surely you know that.”
“Who helped you?”
The television facing the old leather couch driveled on. A canned audience was finding something about a pregnant fifty-seven-year-old woman uncannily funny.
“Hark,” said Flynn. “I hear the elevator. The man approaches.”
Lieutenant Kurt entered the office closely followed by his wife. He looked around the big room.
Flynn and Cocky were on the couch, apparently watching the television.
“Flynn?” Kurt looked through the office’s dark spots. “Inspector Flynn?”
“Ah, Lieutenant Kurt!” Flynn rose as if he had not known Kurt was there. “And Mrs. Kurt! How very nice of you both to come.”
“Captain Reagan ordered me to report to you here.” There was more contempt in Kurt’s diction than curiosity. “Immediately.”
“Yes, he did,” Flynn said agreeably.
“In the middle of the Policepersons’ Ball,” Anne added.
Especially in his tuxedo did Kurt look handsome and physically fit. Tall, his shoulders were wide, his chest deep, his waist slim.
Flynn turned on the light over his desk. “Lieutenant Concannon and I have been looking at your remarkable conviction record, Lieutenant Kurt. Come, and look at it yourself, the way it’s presented here.”
Looking down at the desk, a slight smile played on Kurt’s face.
“Isn’t that remarkable?” Flynn asked Anne.
She nodded, blankly.
Forcefully, Kurt asked, “Why was I ordered here?”
“In the middle of the night,” his wife added.
“You don’t see anything remarkable about this presentation of your conviction record, Lieutenant? Nothing unusual?”
Cocky said, “Statistically impossible?”
“No.”
“Lieutenant Concannon and I just wanted to point out to you how extraordinary your conviction record is.” Flynn started back toward the couch. “Instead of your kickin’ around the dance floor, we thought you’d rather kick back with us. Sit and watch a bit of television with Lieutenant Concannon and me. Relax, after your great labors.” Flynn sat on the divan. “Pull up a pew, you two. This program is hilarious. It suggests the variety of human nature, it does.”
Kurt and his wife stood behind the divan.
Impatiently, Kurt said, “What the hell is this about? I’ve heard of you, Flynn. ‘Reluctant’ Flynn. A damned eccentric, ignorant of police matters, the law . . .”
“I’ve got it!” Cocky said. “The President of Harvard!”
That confused Kurt.
Cocky pressed the videotape button.
On the screen appeared first a beautiful photograph of Anne Kurt, then one of John Kurt, then one of them together, then a panning shot of their bedroom.
Anne gasped.
“I compliment you on your housekeeping, Mrs. Kurt,” Flynn said over his shoulder. “Your house is immaculate throughout!”
“Jack! Our bedroom!”
Kurt shouted, “What’s this about, Flynn?”
“Sure, and you could eat ice cream off your kitchen floor, so clean it is!”
<
br /> “Good taste in wines, too.” Cocky fast-forwarded the tape.
“That’s right, Cocky. Speed it up. Our guests are familiar with their own home.”
Cocky slowed the tape to show him opening the door concealed as a wine rack in the Kurts’ basement.
“Oh, God!” Anne gripped her husband’s arm. “Jack!”
Kurt’s hands were gripping the back of the couch.
On the screen, the camera was entering the lit, hidden room. The Nazi swastika flag came to fill the screen.
Overvoice, Flynn was saying, “Dear, dear. We found what we didn’t want to find.”
“Son of a bitch!” Kurt shouted. “What right did you have to enter my house?”
Flynn handed Kurt a piece of paper over the back of the couch. “This warrant.”
Kurt looked at it. “Goldston. Judge Goldston. I might have known.”
He dropped the warrant on the couch.
“You’d never have known about the warrant, if we had found nothing.”
The five bombs appeared on-screen.
Overvoice, Cocky said, “These four essentially are ready for detonation. This last explosive device, as you can see, is a work in progress.”
Flynn stood up. “Show’s over.” He smiled at Anne. “Surely, parts of this tape can be readied for submission to House Pretty magazine, or whatever it’s called, without any editing at all.”
Beneath his tuxedo jacket, Kurt’s shoulders were visibly flexed.
Tight-jawed, Kurt said to Flynn, “What can you do?”
Anne pulled her husband’s arm. “Jack! Let’s get out of here! This is crazy. This crazy place. This can’t be serious.”
“Me? What can I do?” Flynn answered, “Nothing. I’m afraid your problem is educational, Lieutenant Kurt.” He lit his pipe. “There is nothing I can do to improve your education at this point. At least, not all in this night.”
Anne said, “In fact, my husband has done nothing wrong.”
“He has a right to his opinions,” Cocky said. “But not to run an unlicensed bomb factory.”
Flynn pointed his pipe stem at the display on his desk. “Your husband has been using his position on the Boston Police force with bias.”
Looking up over the back of the couch at Anne, Cocky said, “The bombs you have in your basement, lady, could blow up half the town!”
“Falsifying evidence . . .” Flynn watched them both carefully.
“Jack. Jack!” She tugged her husband’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go home.”
Flynn glanced at the clock on the mantel. “I expect the bomb squad is still there, Anne. At your pretty home. Captain Reagan and I thought we would delay you—and your friends—to avoid an unfortunate accident, being as we are, all police together.”
“‘Accident,’” Cocky snorted. “The resistance of you and your friends, Kurt, could blow up all your neighbors, women, children, dogs, cats, and canaries lost in the trees.”
Kurt looked at Cocky. “You two can’t keep me here. I’m black belt—”
“Ah, blather,” said Flynn. “I keep telling you, lad. You’ve got a bad educational problem. You don’t know blather from bombast.”
Flynn had heard the elevator clank down to the first floor, then rise again.
He was expecting people in blue uniforms to enter the office, to arrest Boston Police Lieutenant Detective John Kurt and carry him off to the hoosegow.
Instead, it was Grover, alone, who entered the office.
He carried on both forearms a stack of magazines. The stack reached nearly to his chin.
Grover blinked in the office’s pools of light. “You here?” he asked Flynn.
“All present,” Flynn said. “The ball is over. At least, for some of us.”
An odd glaze had come over Kurt’s eyes.
Standing in the office doorway, burdened with the stack of magazines on his arms, Grover said, “A male nurse from Human Services finally arrived at the Lovesons’ apartment. He says he’s going to file a complaint about me, a cop taking care of a sick old woman overnight. I called Human Services early this afternoon. Finally he showed up at nearly midnight.”
Kurt turned on his heel.
With determination he started to walk toward the door.
His wife followed him closely, as if tethered to him.
Seeing Kurt marching toward him, fists clenched at his sides, Grover continued uneasily. “I thought I had better rescue these magazines. You said you absolutely want them.”
Kurt stopped in front of Grover in the doorway.
Following her husband so closely, blindly, Anne Kurt bumped into him.
Kurt said, “You going to try to stop me from going through that door, Whelan?”
Clearly, Grover had no idea what he was going to do.
He had no idea what was going on.
Bending his knees properly, Grover leaned over to put the stack of magazines on the floor.
Apparently, his head close to the floor, Grover saw Kurt brace his feet on the floor.
And, apparently, thinking he was about to be clobbered, instinctively Grover raised his left forearm over his head.
Knees bent, head down, clearly intending only to stand back, get away from Kurt, Grover sprang up from the floor like a powerful spring unsprung.
Without looking, he raised his left arm as he sprang, in an effort to keep his balance.
The cast on Grover’s left wrist connected with Kurt’s nose with enormous, unintended kinetic energy.
Kurt’s nose was smashed into his head.
Falling backward, Kurt knocked over his wife.
“Good lad, Grover!” Flynn shouted from across the room. “You got the both of them with one blow!”
In her evening gown, Anne Kurt lay spraddled on the floor. Her unconscious husband was docked between her legs. His nose bled profusely on her organdy gown.
In flight-or-fight stance, legs apart, fists and arms raised, still expecting to be attacked, Grover stared at the formally dressed couple on the floor.
“Did I do that?”
Pinned by the weight of her husband’s heavy shoulders and chest on her torso, Anne was trying to wriggle out from under him. Simultaneously, she was trying to wipe the blood pouring from his nose off her party dress.
Kurt was totally coldcocked.
Grover looked at Flynn. “I did that?”
“Indeed you did, Grover. Indeed you did. Well done! There hasn’t been a better use of a cast since Branagh’s As You Like It!”
TWENTY-ONE
Late the next afternoon, Flynn left his house to go for a walk by himself.
He had spent that Saturday midday attending Jenny’s victorious swim meet. For the fifty-eleventh time, Flynn had marveled at how otherwise apparently reasonable people, parents, coaches, other fans at a swim meet, could cheer, holler, scream, stamp their feet encouragingly, shout advice at competing teenagers whose heads were underwater.
All that noise in a confined, tile environment had left Flynn’s ears ringing.
A mile from home, ringing the doorbell of Anthony Capriano’s condominium, Flynn heard through the door a recording of a Paganini violin concerto being turned off.
The door opened.
“Mr. Flynn?”
Flynn had telephoned ahead, asked if a visit from him would be welcome that afternoon.
Through the open door, Flynn’s nostrils instantly were assaulted by the smells of Italian cooking.
“Mr. Capriano.”
The smile in the strong old face was wonderful. “You don’t know people call me Mr. Anthony?”
They shook hands as Flynn stepped through the door.
“Let me help you with your coat.”
At age seventy-nine, Anthony Capriano seemed far more physically fit than his two sons, Tony and William. His shoulders were broad and still full. His arms looked like they could still heft half a cow without strain.
His stomach was a great deal flatter than his so
ns’.
His eyes were as bright and lively as his grandson’s.
While Mr. Anthony was hanging up Flynn’s coat in a hall closet, Flynn looked around the living room.
As a widower, Mr. Anthony had found a convenient place to live, however anachronistic it was.
A glass window running along one whole wall threw too much light on the heavy, dark furniture and rugs of the room. It caused the dozens of framed photographs in the room to glare from almost every angle.
Clearly this was the living room of a widower who had given up his family home, but not much of his family furniture: a mahogany gate-legged table where probably babies’ diapers had been changed and family parties held, a massive couch where guests had slept and teenagers sprawled, stuffed armchairs where he and his wife doubtlessly had sat and loved and argued and laughed and cried and ruled the family.
Certainly Mr. Anthony had not given up many framed photographs of the family. They seemed to fill every inch of wall, every table surface.
There were wedding photographs of Mr. Anthony and his wife, photos of their parents, of their children, Tony and William and a third son as toddlers in Easter suits, in First Communion suits, in Little League Baseball uniforms, football helmets, military uniforms; pictures of their weddings and children; pictures of cars then new, the interior of the butcher shop through the years.
“It is proper and correct that you should visit me, Mr. Flynn.” At a heavy buffet table, Mr. Anthony poured out two generous glasses of red wine. “I hope the smell of my cooking does not bother you.”
“I’m enjoying it.”
“Good!” Mr. Anthony placed Flynn’s glass of wine on a table beside the chair he expected Flynn to use. “I am expecting a very young couple for dinner.” He sat in a heavy, brown, upholstered chair which probably had been his personal chair most of his adult life. “My grandson, Billy.” Smiling again, he showed rows of apparently perfect teeth. “And your wonderful daughter, Jenny.” He saluted Flynn with his wineglass. “I compliment you and Mrs. Flynn on your daughter.”
“And I you on your grandson.” Flynn raised his glass, then took a taste of his wine.
Savoring his red wine, Mr. Anthony said, “Jenny promised to bring her violin with her tonight, play for me again. I enjoy her playing, of course. But watching her face while she plays is an even greater treat. She concentrates so. Wrinkles her nose. Her blue eyes grow huge when she is going through a difficult passage. When she’s done with a difficult passage, she sticks out her lower lip and tries to blow her hair off her damp forehead.”
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