Murder in a Good Cause

by Medora Sale

  Carlos was standing with the refrigerator door open, shoving things around and swearing. The buru was sitting at a corner of the table, reading a newspaper; Manu sat at the end, beside him, watching Carlos with a calculating, interested, but not especially friendly look on his face. Finally, Carlos emerged with a summer sausage in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other. He put these down on the kitchen table beside a large Italian loaf, a bowl of peaches, and a plastic container of black olives. He grabbed a pile of plates and a couple of knives from the counter and set them on the table as well. As an afterthought, he reached back into the cupboard behind him and brought out a bag of chips.

  “That’s it?” said Don.

  “It’s what there is,” said Carlos.

  “Jesus,” said Don. “You call that crap dinner? I’m sending out for a pizza. You guys want some pizza?”

  Manu’s soft eyes swiveled over briefly in Don’s direction; he shook his head. The others shrugged.

  “I’ll get a large, then.”

  As soon as Don left the room, the conversation switched from English. Manu turned his pale, gloomy face back to concentrate on Carlos; he leaned his long body forward in his chair, his hands grasping his knees tightly, as if to prevent them from lashing out and hitting someone. Carlos was trying desperately to explain something, stumbling over his words. Twelve years as a child and adolescent in North America had lost him facility in his native tongue, a facility that a few months of working with the two other men had not fully restored to him. When his search for a way to end his sentence turned into a lengthy pause, Manu began to speak in a low but emphatic voice. Whatever it was he wanted to get through to Carlos, however, was interrupted by Don’s noisy reentry into the big kitchen.

  “Christ, I wish you sons of bitches would talk in something I can understand. You make me nervous, and I don’t like being nervous.” The threat hung in the air for a second or two before dissolving. “The pizza ’ll be here in thirty minutes,” he added, sitting down beside Manu and cutting himself a large chunk of sausage with one of the communal knives.

  Manu waited until he finished. “I was pointing out to Carlos your great stupidity, yours and his.” The gentleness of his voice almost belied his words.

  “What’s that?” said Don, past a mouthful of hard sausage.

  Carlos leaned back in a relaxed stretch and yawned. “All I said was, why don’t we just leave the rest of it where it is. Nothing’s happened to it before. It’s a lot more dangerous trying to move it, especially with an asshole like Don around. There are cops looking for us everywhere these days. Jesus, there’s one walking two feet behind him at work every time he goes to the can, and he’s stupid enough to trip over them with a box in his hands.”

  “Watch who you’re calling stupid,” said Don resentfully.

  “Sure,” said Carlos. “Anyway, we were lucky to get half a truckload out. Just remember, you wouldn’t have any of it if it hadn’t been for Don and me. But Manu here, he wants—” he paused to jerk his thumb in the direction of Manu, whose eyes widened into clouded, unhappy pools.

  “I want to be able to go back home with enough money to help the fight for independence,” Manu said. “That’s all. And if we sell the rest of the stuff, we can. But before we can sell it, we have to get it out. And besides, as long as it’s there, it is a danger.”

  Carlos leaned forward and turned to the buru, who was still deep in his paper. “Poor Manu. He thinks it isn’t safe anymore,” Carlos sneered. “And he’s afraid. He’s good with cars, but he gets scared, eh, Manu?”

  Manu turned a steady gaze on the other man. “Scared? A man who shoots helpless women shouldn’t talk about scared. I’m not scared. I just don’t want to lose everything.”

  Angry red blotches spread across Carlos’s cheeks. His fingers curled around the edge of the table and whitened. There was a long silence. He seemed at last to decide that Manu’s comments could be taken for rough joking, sat back, and forced out a laugh. “Trying to get it all out now, that’s even more dangerous. It’s crazy.” He flicked his expressive thumb across his throat.

  “It’s safer than your idea,” said Manu doggedly. “Any day they could investigate that house, maybe even Monday. And then what happens to us?”

  “Screw the fucking war for fucking independence,” said Don. “But I sure as hell could use my share of the money. I say we think about Manu’s plan, whatever it is.” Manu froze as Don’s words sank in. His hand moved almost imperceptibly toward his ankle and then appeared at table level with a hunting knife not quite concealed under his downward-pointing fingers. He slowly rose to his feet and flipped the knife so that he was grasping it lightly, palm and fingers up, pointing it upward and moving it in the direction of Don’s belly. Sweat appeared on Don’s upper lip, and Carlos leaned forward, his eyes bright with interest. Suddenly, Manu changed grip on the knife again, brought his hand down with one rapid motion, and slashed a two-inch piece off the summer sausage.

  The buru looked up from his paper. “Nothing will happen before Wednesday at the earliest.” Authority rang in his voice. “And besides that, New York can’t handle any more goods right now. It takes a long time to get a good price for those things, and he doesn’t want any more identifiable stuff around than is necessary, you understand?”

  Manu turned to him with a jerk. “So . . . it doesn’t matter that we’re not safe, eh? Or that we lose everything we’ve worked for here, does it? All that matters is that he is safe and rich. Bastard!” he hissed, and muttered something in his native tongue, something that sounded unpleasant in the extreme. “Now what do we do, eh, Buru?”

  The boss, for it was he who was being addressed, looked at the other three men’s impassive faces. “We wait,” he said at last.

  Sanders walked out to the deck and leaned on the railing, looking down into the garden. It was a cool and melancholy night, neither summer nor fall, smelling neither of dying leaves nor of heat-ripened decay. A bastard of a night, caught unacknowledged between seasons, reminding him of how little he belonged, leaning here, between the pots of basil and the flowering plants that Harriet nursed intermittently when she wasn’t too busy. In fact, she probably regarded him in much the same light, something to be taken up when she wasn’t too busy, looked after for a while, and put back where it belonged. He turned to go.

  He hadn’t heard Harriet’s footsteps behind him. She had kicked off her high-heeled sandals and was standing in her stocking feet, looking at him with her head tilted slightly, her face expressionless in the dark. “Look, Harriet—” he started, but she had begun to speak at the same time.

  “It’s a strange night, isn’t it?” she said, gliding silently up beside him and leaning over the rail. “Not like September at all. I can’t decide if I’m cold or not.”

  He was startled that her thoughts should have echoed his own so clearly and yet that she seemed completely unaware of his unhappiness. It was in some obscure way unfair. “I’d better go, Harriet,” he said. “You’re home, safe. You don’t need a cop around anymore.” He had tried to sound lightly ironic and managed only a bitter whine.

  “Go?” she said, leaning farther over the rail. “I thought you had allowed yourself at least three more minutes.”

  “For chrissake,” he exploded, clutching the rail as if it were her throat, “do you have to?”

  “Have to what?” she said. “Oh, this. Maybe I do. I prefer you irritable, I think. Instead of looking as if you were considering pitching yourself over the railing. It’s not very far, by the way. And you’d land in the bushes. They’re a bit prickly, but too soft for you to do any real damage.”

  “Harriet,” he said in a warning voice, and turned toward her. Angry, he grabbed her by the shoulders, digging his hands into her taut muscles. She flinched automatically and then, controlling herself, looked up at him, her eyes steady; he shuddered at his own rage and pulled her toward h
im until she was tightly enfolded in his grasp. To his horror he could feel his eyes beginning to sting with the hint of tears, and he buried his face in her hair. Time trickled by until his arms began to ache and relaxed their hold; she slipped from his embrace and led him into the living room.

  “Sit down,” she said. He sat and watched her walk across the room, passing over the invisible line into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and take out two bottles of beer. She took clean glasses out of the dishwasher, picked up a bottle opener, and carried the lot over to the table in front of him. “Now, what in hell is wrong with you?” she asked. Her tone was inquisitive rather than sympathetic, and he bridled at it.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” he snapped. “I’m fine. What’s wrong with you?”

  She sat down, one foot under her, relaxed and casual, neither close to him nor far away. The distance a sister might choose. “You first. The way you were looking at Derek’s garden out there, I thought it must be filled with green slimy things out of a horror movie. Assuming that it isn’t, what’s wrong? It’s not like you to go around looking haunted. I don’t think it is, anyway,” she added dubiously, acknowledging that there was much that she did not know about him.

  “You can’t take anything seriously, can you, Harriet?” he said bitterly. “Except your goddamn work and your own goddamn little problems. Everyone else is some kind of joke. No one else deserves consideration or understanding or even sympathy.”

  “You don’t need sympathy,” she said. “You need sleep, and someone to chase besides my friend Nikki. And you probably need a couple of weeks’ vacation as well. And maybe a few other things, but you’d hate me if I were sympathetic. Social workers are sympathetic.”

  “And what does that make you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied slowly. “I don’t know. A woman . . .”

  “Oh, God, yes,” he said painfully. “You are a woman. Agonizingly a woman.”

  Color flooded her pale cheeks. Abruptly, as if she had only just then become aware of his presence. Her arm, which had been lying carelessly over the back of the couch, suddenly seemed to be stretching itself toward him. “Harriet,” he said tentatively, and then sat still. She put down her glass slowly and turned toward him; then, with a slither of pale green silk, she was right against him, her face looking upward. He bent and kissed her, lightly at first, then with a ferocity that was out of his control. Her body seemed as fluid as the silk of her dress, blending into his in spite of the awkwardness of the position. The scent rising from her skin, her hair, her clothes, obliterated awareness of anything but his intense need.

  He applied himself with all the skill at his disposal to getting rid of her panty hose; she twisted under his fingers so that the awkward things slipped down to her ankles, and she kicked them off. At the same time, she had undone his belt and his trousers and was now working at having them join her underwear on the floor. “Just a minute, Harriet,” he murmured. “Your dress—”

  “Screw my dress,” she whispered huskily.

  “No,” he said, pushing her back onto the couch. “Not the dress, lady.” He buried his face in the skin bared as the silk slipped from her shoulder and half-exposed her breast. “You.”

  He knew and yet had forgotten in the intervening months how her body responded to the slightest touch. The crumpled silk tormented every nerve as he pushed it out of the way, and with a cry Harriet flung her legs around him and pulled him close.

  “A gentleman—” said Sanders, leaning on one disheveled elbow and looking down at her.

  “Always makes love on his elbows,” said Harriet, reaching up and kissing him on the chin. “You damn near smothered me,” she added, and giggled huskily.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say. Smothering you was intentional, even though it wasn’t successful. I’ll do better next time. What I was going to say is that a gentleman never makes love in his socks. Everyone knows that. Or his watch. Much less his shirt and tie, I suppose,” he added ruefully. “I am going to look rather rumpled tomorrow.” He sat up, picking up her legs and moving them behind him. “And speaking of tomorrow . . .” He reached over, picked up the telephone, and punched in some numbers. “Sanders,” he said into the receiver as he picked up his untasted beer and took a swallow. “Anything new? . . . Good . . . My number here is—” He reeled off the number with the assurance of one who has been dialing it every day for weeks. “That’s what I said. Yes, until tomorrow morning,” he added after a pause, and hung up, pulling off his tie as he did.

  “Planning on spending the night, are we?” said Harriet. “Aren’t you rather taking me for granted?”

  “Of course I’m spending the night,” he said lightly. “Anything else would be an insult to someone as . . .” Suddenly his voice hoarsened, and he pushed the hair out of his eyes. “My God, Harriet,” he said with a fierceness that startled her, “I almost forgot what it was like with you.” He lowered himself down gently until he was almost on top of her and leaned forward to kiss her. “Now take that damned dress off before I ruin it completely.”

  Chapter 8

  Sanders paused in front of the recently completed office tower. The low morning sun was burning through a slight haze and pouring golden light onto the great commercial tombs erected in the last ten years over every square inch of the financial district. There was silence—stunning and bizarre silence—except for the chirping of a sparrow perched in a small tree that grew wanly in its concrete prison. He looked back at Harriet, her face pale and clean of makeup, dressed in scruffy jeans and a long jacket filled with bulging pockets, and was awestruck by her beauty in that rich morning light. She was looking in every direction except at the building or toward him, unaware of the cloying sentimentality of his thoughts. “Here?” he called at last.

  “Sure. That’s fine,” she said. “Put them down there. Carefully,” she added with a touch of sharpness in her voice. He raised an ironic eyebrow at her, but it was wasted effort. She was deep in calculations. He set down the large aluminum camera case, the almost-as-large lens case, the tripod that had been squashing his fingers as it balanced on the camera case, and finally shrugged carefully out of the green knapsack whose exclusive purpose was to hold objects with very sharp edges.

  “Is all this necessary?” he asked suspiciously when she finally walked up to him and set down the orange cooler filled with sheet-film holders.

  “I would have carried half of it,” she said. “Only you had to go all gallant on me and insist.”

  “You’ve got more stuff than you were carrying around in Ottawa,” he complained. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”

  “Sinar,” she said laconically. “Four by five. Bigger camera.”

  “Does a bigger camera take as much time as a little one?”

  “As the Olympus? Oh, no, that’s a speedy little thing. This is more cumbersome, but the customer expects four-by-five transparencies.” Despair struck as he absorbed her meaning. This was going to take a hell of a long time. As she talked, she was setting a bar on top of the tripod. Onto the bar she slipped a lens mount and a film back and then carefully joined them with a bellows. “There. Instant camera. Make your own. I hope you’re impressed.” She looked around, picked up the tripod, walked with calm deliberation into the middle of the road—not busy at this hour, but not blocked off, either—and set it down. From around her neck she took a large square of double cloth, dark blue corduroy on one side, white cotton on the other, and used it to cover both her head and the film back. “This’ll do,” she said finally. “Do you think you could keep the cars from killing me? You must remember how to do that, don’t you?”

  “When I got a call to investigate a suspicious death on Friday, the last thing I expected to end up doing was this,” he said, walking over to the lane she was occupying. “Standing in the middle of King Street directing traffic.” But Harriet, of course, was pa
ying no attention.

  An hour and a half later, Harriet, who was now set up on the top of the stairs of the building opposite—much to the distress of that building’s security guard, who felt she was doing something obscurely wrong but was not quite sure what—turned to Sanders, gave him a dazzling smile, and pushed the cable release. “That’s it,” she said. “Last exposure. I’ve got four terrific shots: three color, three black and white in each one, twenty-four in all. And unless something goes horribly wrong, we eat next week.” Suddenly, she hurled the focusing cloth at him. As he reached to pluck it expertly out of the air, he was hit, twice, by the weights concealed in the corners. He gave her a reproachful look and folded it up. “Now let’s get some breakfast,” she said. “I’m absolutely starved.”

  Twenty minutes later, they were sitting in a Swiss restaurant, with coffee and fresh orange juice in front of them, having ordered, without a qualm, muesli and a farmer’s breakfast each.

  “Why did you say I needed someone to chase besides Veronika von Hohenkammer?” asked Sanders suddenly.

  Harriet set down her orange-juice glass and looked directly at him. “Because you know how unlikely it is that she killed her mother,” she said calmly. “Your conscience is bothering you.”

  “My conscience? What do you know about my conscience?”

  “A lot,” said Harriet. “Not only do you have a very complicated conscience, but you appear to be completely unaware of its existence.”

  “You mean I make love like a man with a tormented conscience?” he asked grimly.

  She shook her head and waited until the bowls of fresh raspberry and cream-filled muesli were placed in front of them. “No,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “You don’t. You have lots of hang-ups, but they don’t seem to be about sex. Or at least not sex with me.” She picked up a spoon and looked at him sharply. “I’d like to know what would happen if a whore tried to pick you up, though.”