Naked Cruelty

Back in his own office, he wrestled with a different woman, a different feminine dilemma.

Commissioner John Silvestri had always dreamed of a trainee detective program as a way of injecting younger blood into the Detective Division. There were strict criteria governing the admission of a uniformed man (or woman) into Detectives: they had to be at least thirty years old, and have passed their sergeant’s exams with distinction. Silvestri’s contention was that they missed out on some of the advantages only youth could bring with it; his answer was to harass Hartford for a trainee program, admitting a university graduate with at least two years’ experience as a uniformed cop into Detectives as a trainee who would be subjected to a formal program of classes and tuition as well as gain experience on the job. Since he had been harassing Hartford for twenty years about it, no one ever expected to see it bear fruit. But sometimes strange things happened …

No one in the modest, little old city of Holloman could escape its most influential citizen, Mawson MacIntosh, the President of that world famous institution of higher learning, Chubb University. M.M., as he was universally known, had one promising son, Mansfield, who never put a foot wrong. Mansfield was currently working in a Washington, D.C., law firm renowned for turning out politicians. As far as M.M. was concerned, one day Mansfield would also be a president—but of the U.S.A.

Unfortunately M.M.’s daughter, Helen, was very different. She had inherited her family’s high intelligence and striking good looks, but she was stubborn, scatty, strange, and quite ungovernable. Having graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, she joined the NYPD, flew through the academy at the head of her class, and was at once shunted to traffic patrol in Queens. For two years she stuck it out, then quit alleging sexual discrimination. Working outside Connecticut had been a mistake; Daddy’s influence waned across the border. New Yorkers weren’t even true Yankees.

Helen applied to join the Detectives Division of the Holloman PD, and was refused courteously but firmly. So Helen appealed to her father, and everybody got in on the act, including the Governor.

Finally, after an interview with M.M. that saw John Silvestri paint him a picture of his inexperienced, too-young daughter dead in a Holloman ghetto street, the two men cooked up a scheme that saw the Commissioner’s twenty-year-old dream become reality: Helen MacIntosh would join Holloman Detectives as its first trainee. M.M.’s share of things was to prise the money out of Hartford and guarantee that the trainee program would continue after Helen graduated from it. Silvestri guaranteed that Carmine Delmonico and his cohorts would give Helen great training and background for anything from three to twelve months, however long it took.

Madam had not been pleased, but when her father made it plain that her only chance to be a detective was to be a trainee one, she dismounted from her high horse and agreed.

Now, after three weeks in Detectives, during which she was obliged to spend time in the uniformed division, as well as in pathology, forensics and legal, Miss Helen MacIntosh was starting to settle in. Not without pain. Nick Jefferson, the only black man in the Holloman PD, detested her almost as much as Lieutenant Corey Marshall and his two men did. Delia Carstairs, who was the Commissioner’s niece as well as an Englishwoman, was sympathetic enough to act as Helen’s mentor—a role that Helen bitterly resented as surplus to her requirements. As for Captain Carmine Delmonico— Helen wasn’t sure what to make of him. Except that she had a horrible premonition he was a twin of her father’s.

When he entered Malvolio’s diner next door to the County Services building on Cedar Street at noon precisely, Carmine was pleased to see one of the objects of his morning’s labors sitting in one side of a booth toward the back. Now all he had to hope was that she hadn’t spent her morning at loggerheads with Judge Douglas Wilbur Thwaites, the terror of the Holloman courts.

He wished he could like her, but thus far Helen MacIntosh hadn’t presented as a likeable person. Oh, that first morning! She had turned up for work looking like Brigitte Bardot or any other “sex kitten” as they were called. So inappropriately dressed that he’d had to spell out the kind of garb a woman detective ought to wear, from shoes that stayed on her feet if she needed to chase a fugitive to skirts that didn’t drive men mad trying to see her “breakfast”, as Carmine put it. She’d obeyed orders and dressed properly ever since, but it hadn’t boded well. Nor had she seen the necessity of spending time with the uniforms to find out how the Holloman PD worked on all levels, and she was chafing at the bit to join an investigation, something Carmine had forbidden until she was better prepared. Worst of all, she put men’s backs up. Three weeks into the program, and he despaired.

She was writing busily in her notebook—“journal” she called it, denying this indicated a diary.

“How did your morning go?” Carmine asked, sliding into the opposite side of the booth and nodding at Merele, who filled his coffee as she answered with a smile.

“Hard, but enjoyable. The Judge is so interesting. I’ve known him all my life, but doing law with him is an eye-opener.”

“He’s a nightmare for a wrongdoer. Remember that.”

Her laugh sounded; it was a good one, neither forced nor unmusical. “I bumbled until I got used to him, then I did better. I wish the law teachers at police academy were in his league.”

“Oh, he’s forgotten more law than they’ll ever know.”

Delia came in.

Carmine patted the seat next to him. I always imagine, he thought, that today’s outfit is the worst: then I see tomorrow’s. Today was orange, green, pink and acid-yellow checks, over which she was wearing a bright scarlet waistcoat. As usual, the skirt finished well above her knees, displaying two legs that would do credit to a grand piano. Her hair, thank all the powers that be, had gone from purple and green stripes to peroxide blonde, below which her twinkling brown eyes managed to peer between what looked like tangled black wire. The great debate within the Holloman PD was whereabouts Delia managed to find her clothes, but even Netty Marciano, whose sources of gossip were legion, hadn’t managed to find out. Carmine’s private guess was New York City’s rag district.

For three weeks he had been waiting for Helen to complain about Delia’s appearance, but she hadn’t said a word, just gaped at Delia upon first meeting. Perhaps even someone as rarefied as a MacIntosh could sense that Delia was exempt from criticisms about dress and appearance. Delia was a genuine eccentric, and apparently Helen had recognized the fact. Certainly when she opened her mouth and that mellifluous voice with its pear-shaped vowels and clipped consonants sounded, Delia was revealed as posh.

Nick appeared a moment later, and was bidden sit on the same side as Delia. Three of them now occupied one side of the roomy booth, with Helen, alone, facing them.

The lush, ice-pink lips parted, the vivid blue eyes glared. “Why am I in the hot seat?” Helen asked.

“You live in Talisman Towers in Carew, right?” Nick asked.

“Yes. I own the penthouse.”

“I might have known!” Nick looked angry. “Completely exclusive, huh? Your own elevator and everything.”

“Not quite exclusive. I use the same two elevators everyone else does. There’s a slot for a key in them.”

“Do you have any contact with your fellow tenants?” Delia asked. “Any sort of contact.”

“I know a few of them, but the only one I’m on friendly terms with is Mark Sugarman. He’s three floors down, on the eighth. His girlfriend, Leonie Coustain, lives on the tenth floor. She’s French.” Helen pulled a face. “She used to be vivacious and outgoing, but about three months ago she had a nervous breakdown. Now, not even Mark manages to see her. She’s a snail inside its shell. The worst of it is she won’t get any help, Mark says. He’s very much in love with her, and I used to think that they were made for each other. Now—I really don’t know. Leonie sure doesn’t like him anymore, but he swears he doesn’t know why.” She flushed. “Sorry. That wasn’t a good report—I rambled.”

“Sometimes rambling is better,” Carmine said. “I don’t think Leonie fell out of love with Mark. She was raped.”

The color drained from Helen’s face. “Raped?”

“Yes, definitely,” Carmine said, not yet prepared to mention the Dodo. “What do you know about the Gentleman Walkers of Carew?”

“The Gentleman Walkers?” she asked, sounding bewildered. “They walk,” she said, and laughed. “Up and down and around and around Carew. They’re a great group of guys.”

“Do you know them as individuals?” Nick asked.

“Sure, some of them. Not all of them—Mark says there are over a hundred-forty of them. Mark’s their head honcho.”

“Good, a name,” said Carmine. “A big group of men patrolling worried me—vigilantes. But so far they’ve kept well within the law, including when they apprehended a couple of peeping Toms and a women’s underwear thief. Then last night a young woman named Maggie Drummond was viciously attacked and raped inside her Carew apartment. She notified us. Now we have sufficient evidence to act, including coming down harder on the Gentleman Walkers.”

Helen sat, her face a mixture of horror and eagerness. “But I know Maggie Drummond!” she cried. “She goes to all Mark’s parties—so smart! Well, you have to be smart to get post-grad work in bird physiology at Chubb. She’s doing a Ph.D. in bird migration under Professor Hart—the world’s authority.” Her face softened. “Poor Maggie! Will it ruin her, Captain?”

“Scar her, certainly, but she’s unusually resilient. She insisted on seeing me last night, while the ordeal was still fresh in her mind. He’d partially asphyxiated her multiple times, and she was worried that the trauma might cause her to forget details. She even gave us his name—Didus ineptus. That’s the old term for the dodo, now known as Raphus cucullatus.”

“Can’t I be of more use than giving you Mark Sugarman’s name?” Helen asked.

“Yes, you can,” said Delia, “provided you put yourself under my authority and do exactly as you’re told. Will you?”

“Yes, of course,” Helen said, face lighting up.

“Good. I suspect we’re going to meet a number of the Dodo’s victims, and it’s vital that women comprise the front face of the investigation. Ever since their individual attacks, these young women can’t cope with men, no matter how sympathetic. You and I, Helen, have to do all the victim contact until we can persuade them to seek help from Dr. Liz Meyers at the rape clinic. That means we spend as much time as we can this afternoon coaching you in how to behave— it’s a matter of technique as well as feminine bonding. I’m hoping to be taking calls tomorrow after Mighty Mike’s breakfast show, but it’s possible we’ll have some responses after Luke Corby. You’re my shadow, Helen—wherever I go, you go. Understood?”

“Yes!” said Helen fervently. It was here at last, her first case, and she was going to make sure that Delia shone. Because if Delia shone, so did she.

Carmine took himself off to Carew and the eighth floor of Talisman Towers, the only ritzy block of high rise apartments in a district chiefly famous for its peace, prettiness, and hordes of women students at all levels of a tertiary education. Helen had explained that Mark worked from home, so Carmine fully expected to find him in his apartment.

“Like Helen, I own my condo,” Mark Sugarman said, leading the way into a big room that had been intended as the living room, but had been turned into a studio. He indicated two hard chairs at a table, and went to the kitchen area to fetch mugs and a coffee pot, then sugar and cream.

In all visual respects he was a large-yet-medium man, from his height of just under six feet to his face and coloring. What saved him from obscurity were his eyes: long-lashed, widely open, and a vivid green. He was wearing baggy, faded jeans and a short-sleeved shirt whose two breast pockets bulged with items including pencils, cigarettes, a short steel ruler.

If typical artists are supposed to live in extreme disorder, he was not typical, for the room was immaculately kept; it was painted white and its natural lighting consisted of a whole wall of glass panes looking over the treetops toward Long Island Sound, dreamily blue in this lovely start to Indian summer. Rather than an easel, he worked on a drafting board, in front of which sat a bar stool. A tall table to either side held inks, pens, pencils, an electric pencil sharpener, various protractors and T-squares, a neat pile of rags, and a jar of water. As they passed the board, Carmine was amused to see that it held a black-and-white Indian ink drawing of a wacky-looking family of raccoons. It was very well done, its human element only subtly— but tellingly—suggested.

“I’m a book illustrator,” Sugarman explained, pouring the coffee. “This one’s aimed at a general market from teens to nineties, so the publisher wants classy drawings—no cheating with cross-hatching or other short cuts. Therefore, hire Mark Sugarman. Few art schools teach classical ink drawing, so I’m in demand. I learned in London and Antwerp.”

“How long has the neighborhood watch been in existence?” Carmine asked, adding cream and sugar; the coffee was old. “I should tell you that Maggie Drummond was raped last night, and wasn’t frightened enough not to call us. Her rape was atrocious— particularly brutal and demeaning—but I come from her with a request that you tell me everything you know. Maggie is very emphatic. She wants this monster caught.”

The unusual emerald eyes had widened and shone with tears; Sugarman’s coffee slopped. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Time to spill the beans about the Gentleman Walkers, sir.”

“And that’s a relief, Captain.” He drew a breath, reached out automatically for a stack of paper napkins and wiped up his spill. “The first one we knew about was Leonie—my dear, sweet Leonie! I found her when I went up to see if she felt like a walk to blow the cobwebs away. She was—oh, a terrible mess! Not cut up or anything, but bruised and soiled. He’d raped her three times, once real pervert stuff. I wanted to call you, but she wouldn’t let me, swore she’d deny the whole thing. Babbling about her family in France, the disgrace.” He ground his teeth. “Nothing I could say would persuade her to change her mind.”

“Did you believe Leonie was the first victim?”

“I did, but Mason Novak—he’s my best pal—said his girl, Shirley Constable, had behaved so like Leonie that he was having suspicions that had never occurred to him before—he thought Shirley had had a nervous breakdown over her work, even though she loved it. After Leonie, he was convinced she’d been raped, but he can’t even get into the same room with her, so—who knows?”

Carmine put his coffee down. “Mr. Sugarman, even if the women refused to co-operate, you should have brought your suspicions to the police, not organized a neighborhood watch.”

“l see that now, Captain, but at the time neither Mason nor I did. I put an ad in the Holloman Post announcing that I was forming a walking club—Carew residents only need apply. And I was inundated with walkers! The Gentleman Walkers were an instant success.”

“Without further stimulus than the rape of Leonie Coustain, which I presume you didn’t mention? That sounds peculiar, sir.”

Sugarman laughed, a wry sound. “Vanity, Captain. We’d found a way to keep fit—walking. Most walkers give it up because of the loneliness, while we walk in trios, always the same three men—we vary the routes. Guys sorted themselves out into trios of like mind, if you know what I mean. And a man walks each second evening, not every single day. It’s enough to keep the waistline trim and the heart in good shape.”

“And no Gentleman Walker has ever encountered a man who might be a rapist?” Carmine asked.

“Definitely not. The closest we came were the peeping Toms.”

“You did a real service there, anyway. Peeping Toms who are never caught often become rapists later.” Carmine cleared his throat. “I need a list of your members, Mr. Sugarman.”

He rose from his chair at once. “Sure, I’ll get it. I have full details of every Gentleman Walker, it’s one of the club’s strictest conditions.”

Carmine conned the beautifully typed list in some awe. Names, ages, addresses, phone numbers, occupations, days rostered to walk: a painstaking and lucid timetable as well as a list. There were schoolteachers, an occasional physicist, chemists, tradesmen, medical doctors, dentists, plant physical workers, city clerks, technicians, biologists—146 names altogether, ranging in age from twenty-one to sixty-eight.

“You must be a very persuasive recruitment officer.”

Sugarman laughed, disclaiming. “No, I’m the logistics man, not the demagogue. You want to talk to Mason Novak. He’s the soul of the Gentleman Walkers, the one who keeps us inspired—and the one who took over from me as the ultimate authority.”

Carmine found him on the list. “Mason Novak, aged thirty-five, analytical chemist with Chubb. Burke Biology Tower, or Susskind Science Tower?”

“Susskind Science. He’s inorganic, he says.”

“Do you have a meeting venue?”

“Mason requisitions a small lecture theater in Susskind.”

“Um—today is Wednesday, so … Friday, six o’clock?”

“For what?” Mark Sugarman asked.

“Oh, come, Mr. Sugarman! A meeting between the Walkers and Holloman detectives. On Friday, September 27. Call the meeting and emphasize that every Gentleman Walker is to attend. Okay?”

“Certainly.”

“It won’t be difficult to assemble your troops. Listen to Mighty Mike’s breakfast program. I predict that all the Walkers will be agog to discover what’s happened.”

Funny, thought Carmine as his beloved Ford Fairlane headed for home that evening, how troubles never come singly. I have to turn Helen MacIntosh into a first-rate detective when I’m not even sure she’ll obey orders; I have Corey Marshall failing to make the grade as a lieutenant—who could ever have predicted that? Today I learned that our prettiest, most tranquil suburb, Carew, is harboring a particularly dangerous rapist. And my fantastic, six-foot-three wife has been defeated by a twenty-two-month-old child. Desdemona! Twice she’s come face to face with killers and won the encounters, whereas a bullying, shouting, hectoring toddler has worn her down to utter defeat. My Desdemona, always hovering on the verge of tears. It doesn’t bear thinking of, yet it has to be thought of. Not merely thought of: it has to be dealt with, and fast. Otherwise I might lose my wife forever.

He parked the Fairlane in the four-car garage’s only free bay and trod down the sloping path to his front door, aware that his couple of visits after work had made him later than probably Desdemona needed. The house, a very big New England colonial with a square three-storey tower and widow’s walk, stood halfway down two acres that backed on to Holloman Harbor; they had lived in it now for over two years and loved its every mood, from an idyllic summer’s day to the wildest storm to encrustations of ice in a hard winter. But the spirit of the house resided in its mistress, Desdemona, and she was failing.

Nothing he could say had talked her out of a second pregnancy soon after her first; Julian was only sixteen months old when Alex was born. The boys were true fusions of nobly proportioned parents: from Carmine they inherited muscular bulk and a regal presence; from Desdemona they got bones that promised basketball players; and from both they took a high degree of intelligence that boded ill for parental tranquillity. If Julian was already so hard to take, what would it be like when Alex grew into the horrors of toddlerhood, from talking to walking?

The woman who had efficiently managed an entire research facility had retired to a domestic world, there to turn into a superb cook and an indefatigable housekeeper. But ever since Alex’s birth five months ago Desdemona had dwindled, not helped by Julian, a master of the filibuster, the harangue and the sermon.

Okay, he thought, opening the front door, here goes! I am going to do my best to pull Desdemona back from the abyss.

“It’s good to see you, but even better to feel you,” he said into her neck, crushing her in a rather frantic embrace. Then he kissed her, keeping his lips tender.

Understanding that this was no overture to passion, Desdemona put her husband into a chair and gave him his pre-dinner drink.

“Julian’s in bed?” he asked.

“Yes, you tricked him for once. He expected you to be on time, but when you didn’t turn up, he fell asleep.” She sighed. “He had a shocking tantrum today, right in the middle of Maria’s luncheon party. I told her I didn’t want to come!” A hot tear fell on to Carmine’s hand.

“My mother is sometimes not very bright, Desdemona. So I take it our son spoiled things?”

“He would have, except that Maria slapped him—hard! You know how I feel about slapping children, Carmine—there has to be a more effective way to deal with small children.”

Sit on it, Carmine, sit on it! “If there is, my love, you don’t seem to have found it with Julian,” he said—reasonably, he thought. “Tantrums are a form of hysteria, the child takes no harm from being jerked out of it.”

In the old days she would have flown at him, but not these days. Instead, she seemed to shrink. “It wore him out, at any rate. That’s why he’s in bed and asleep.”

“Good. I can do with the peace and quiet.”

“Were you serious when you threatened him with a nanny the other day? We can’t afford a nanny, Carmine, and a stranger in the house would make him worse.”

“First off, woman, I manage our finances. You shouldn’t have that headache on top of two babies. We can afford it, and I didn’t threaten Julian. I was warning him. It’s going to happen, my dear love, though not for the reasons you think. Not for Julian—for you. You’re permanently down, Desdemona. When you think no one’s looking, you weep a lot, and you can’t seem to find your way out of whatever it is plagues you. I went to see Doc Santini this afternoon because every time I insist you see him, you race in and out of his surgery pretending it’s Julian or Alex is sick. Desdemona, honestly! If there’s one thing Doc Santini’s not, it’s a fool. He knows as well as I do that you’re the one who’s sick. He says you’re suffering from a post-partum depression, love.”

She flung herself mutinously into her chair; when Carmine spoke in that tone, even God had to shut up and listen. And, she admitted as her anger died, there was something wrong with her. The trouble was, she knew it was incurable, whereas these men—what did men know about it?—thought it was physical.

“Apparently they’re finding out a lot about women who become depressed after childbirth. It’s nothing Freudian, it’s a physical, hormonal thing that takes time and care to fix. You’ll have to see Doc tomorrow morning, and if you ignore me, wife, I’ll have you taken to the surgery under police escort. My mother is coming round to babysit—”

“She’ll slap Julian!” Desdemona cried.

“Happen he needs a slap. Just because your father beat you as a child, Desdemona, doesn’t make a slap for a transgression cruelty. Sometimes it’s plain common sense. And let’s not get on to Julian, let’s stay with you.”

The tears were running silently down her face, but she was at least looking at him.

“Doc doesn’t want to put you on drugs. You’re a borderline case and you’ll get better naturally if we ease the pressure. In the main, that’s Julian. And the answer for Julian isn’t a slap, I agree with you there because once a slap loses its shock value, he’ll ignore slaps. How am I doing so far?”

“Spot on,” she said gruffly. “Oh, Carmine, I thought it was your work preying on you when you come home, but it’s me! Me! I am so sorry! Oh, what can I do? I’m such a burden!”

“Desdemona, don’t cry! I’m giving you answers for your pain, not reasons. You could never be a burden. That’s a two-way street either of us could travel down. Doc suggested that I employ a young woman to help you. Her name is Prunella Balducci and she’s one of the East Holloman Balduccis, therefore some kind of cousin of mine. She usually works for megabucks on New York City’s upper east side. A couple of weeks ago she got tired of it and came home. Her savings account is loaded, so she isn’t interested in taking a megabucks job. What she wants is to be near her mom and dad for a while. Once she’s had a break, she’s heading for L.A. and a different set of emotional cripples than New York’s. By that, I mean that Prunella takes a job in an emotionally crippled household and gets its inhabitants organized enough for ordinary nannies and housekeepers.” He drew a long breath. “On my way home tonight I called in at Jake Balducci’s place and saw Prunella, who has agreed to come to us until Christmas. By then, she says, your troubles will only be a memory. We can afford what she’s asking in Holloman, Desdemona, so money is not an issue.”