Naked Cruelty

“I got into the elevator with him yesterday,” Abe said as the two of them concluded their business, “and he cut me dead. I wouldn’t worry, except that lately he’s been saying some hard things about you, Carmine.”

“He feels as if the whole world’s against him at the moment,” Carmine said, knowing he couldn’t palm Abe off with platitudes; Abe was almost preternaturally sensitive to atmosphere in a way that, for instance, seemed to give him second sight about secret compartments. So while he wasn’t in the slightest paranoid, he could see through evasions. “First, he inherited Morty while you got Liam and Tony, then Wes Cooper dropped dead—that’s more than anyone’s fair share of bad luck. And most of his cases haven’t worked out well. You know Corey—he takes things to heart, Abe, without always seeing the best way to fix them.”

“Say no more,” Abe said with a wry smile, and took himself off to his own office.

What do I do about Corey? Carmine wondered, reaching the top of the stairs.

Having entered the Holloman PD straight from high school, Corey had been a cop for seventeen years, and spent the last five of them in Detectives: he knew the ropes. Yet he wasn’t making it as a lieutenant. Most of the considerable paperwork was devoted to interviews, simultaneously a cop’s nightmare and salvation; out of them came so many leads. But first, they had to be written down. If, for instance, a case went cold, like that triple murder at the railroad station in 1930, the written testimony was all that stood between continued frigidity and a case suddenly on fire. Regarding that old triple murder, pathetically inadequate reportage had stymied Carmine until he found a lead elsewhere. Morty Jones’s notes were vestigial, and Corey’s not much better. Nor did Corey have Morty’s excuse, of working for Larry Pisano for nine years; his boss had been Carmine, a stickler. Now that he thought about it, Abe had done most of the writing up, but he had seen Corey put in his two cents’ worth. Now he had to wonder if those had been the only occasions. Abe would never have told; that kind of pettiness wasn’t in the man.

Corey’s notes about the much vaunted Ziggy Taylor heroin shipment were unacceptable—three lines! Had it been a genuine tip from a snitch, or Corey manufacturing something more impressive than a series of bag snatchings and burglaries? Drugs had come to be regarded as Corey’s turf, for no other reason than that Corey had laid claim to it with an elaborate network of snitches. It was also, Carmine well knew, the hardest area to police—free-wheeling and under the control of the lieutenant. I am being conned, Carmine thought, for no other reason than that Corey knows he can’t hack it. He knows the lieutenant’s job is too big for him, but he can’t let it go.

What to do?

Silvestri’s office loomed; squaring his shoulders, Carmine entered it.

Fernando Vasquez had come into a uniformed division fizzing with anticipation; no one knew what to make of a Puerto Rican boss after the crafty Commissioner had finally broken the news. The uniforms, stunned, didn’t know at whom to be angry, or to whom they could go with their grievances when the time came, as come it would; Judge Thwaites got the blame for this bizarre appointment, and Commissioner John Silvestri said nothing to dispel the misconception. Sergeants like Joey Tasco and Mike Cerutti had filed every one of Captain Vasquez’s qualifications in their minds looking for ammunition, the trouble-makers started assembling their troops, and the entire uniformed division was prepared for war.

At interview several months before, Carmine had been a little surprised at Vasquez, though very agreeably. Silvestri, he knew, was absolutely determined to bring in fresh blood of a different kind, for nothing escaped that black eagle’s eye in his anything but ivory tower at the top of County Services. And he had set his heart on Fernando Vasquez.

Laying eyes on Vasquez again today only reinforced Carmine’s conviction that this man would lose no battles, let alone the war. He looked like every super-efficient army major Carmine had ever seen: on the short side, ramrod straight, solidly built, radiating not so much confidence as determination. His dark face was handsome in a Silvestri mode, with a straight, blade-thin nose, a very firm mouth, and black eyes that looked clear through a man, exposing him for what he was. Not the kind of man you could lie to, and not a sympathetic type either. Get on the wrong side of him, and you’d wish you hadn’t. Carmine liked the new captain, and hoped he had sufficient flexibility to sort the sheep from the wolves fairly painlessly. Mind you, Vasquez had a lot riding on this appointment: it was his first virtually autocratic command, and if he couldn’t make a go of it, his career would inevitably dwindle.

There were going to be drastic changes, and immediately, Captain Vasquez announced. No more cosy sergeants’ room, for one. In future, breaks shorter than meal breaks would be taken in whatever area a uniform inhabited, and meal breaks would be taken in the general staff canteen, or off the premises. There would be no more unofficial tenured-for-life positions. The new practice would be ruthless rotation of all duties; even the most senior cops would serve on the desk, in records, the cages, the cells, patrol, traffic, the myriad jobs uniforms did. Joey Tasco was already off his beloved desk and Mike Cerutti out of patrol, and revolution wasn’t even a tiny storm cloud on the horizon; both men had been dumped immediately into equally responsible jobs they had to battle to learn without losing face. Some of the changes were shrewdly aimed at more junior men, suddenly given work they had despaired of ever getting. It was a kind of balancing act: for each old leader knocked down a peg, there was a young leader thrust up a peg. For, having got the job, the new captain had sent for copies of the personnel files, and had every one of his 200-plus men firmly in his mind on the day he started. Yes, he said cheerfully, there would be mistakes.

“Not with the old stagers who need a shake-up, however. It will be with the younger men moving upward. Only the job can reveal whether my guess was right.”

After an hour listening to Fernando, Carmine felt exhilarated. What were his problems, compared to those of a man with such a huge group of men under his command?

“What’s eating you, Carmine?” Silvestri asked suddenly.

Carmine blinked. “I didn’t realize it was obvious, John.”

“I’ve known you a long time. Spit it out.”

“Corey Marshall’s not making the grade.”

“A shame, but no surprise.”

“I chose the wrong way to go about settling him and Abe into their new jobs,” said Carmine bleakly. “I really thought that after good tutelage in the basics, it was better to let them find their own way. It worked with Abe, but not with Corey.”

“In what way?” Fernando asked, sounding interested.

“Organization, including paperwork. Except for Buzz Genovese, the reports from Corey’s team are lousy. For instance, there was a drug-related murder of a prostitute behind City Hall a month ago— before Buzz’s time. Corey handled it himself, but if I were a cop thirty years in the future trying to make head from tail of it, I couldn’t. He hadn’t taken enough photos and his description of the scene was pathetic. I chewed him out about it, but he never bothered to augment the report. There are a lot of Corey’s cases done like that.”

“Does he offer a reason?” Silvestri asked.

“Sure. It’s not important enough to merit the time spent on the kind of report he would an interesting crime.”

Fernando let out a breath. “Ah! He’s an exclusive man.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your lieutenant resents pedestrian cases, he wants glamor.”

“Yes, exactly,” Carmine said, nodding. “He dislikes routine of any kind as well, hence sloppy time sheets and poor rapport with his team members.”

“No, he’s okay with routine, believe it or not. How long did he work for you?”

“Five years.”

“So he’s okay with routine, otherwise you wouldn’t have put up with him for five minutes, let alone five years. He wants exclusive-looking cases, not chickenshit stuff, and I’d be willing to take a bet he thinks your cases are much better than his. But he hexes himself— who’s got his ear?” Fernando asked.

“His wife,” said Carmine and Silvestri in unison.

“That makes it tough.”

“Welcome to the Holloman Police Department,” Silvestri said with a wide grin. “That’s the trouble with small cities. No one can keep a secret. Within six months Netty Marciano will have you squared away too, Fernando.”

When he stopped laughing, Carmine asked a question. “Is it true that you’re going to reorganize the uniformed hierarchy?”

“Given the fullness of time, yes,” Fernando said readily. “There are too many sergeants among the uniforms, which leads to confusion—who’s senior to whom, et cetera. There’s no hurry, Mr. Commissioner. It will happen when I’m ready.” He stretched luxuriously. “Detectives is overloaded with chiefs as well. If the Holloman PD has a fault, it’s lack of Indians. Your loots basically do the same work as your team members, Carmine. Your division sounds as if whoever structured it thought paperwork a terrible bogey.”

“That was Johnny Catano,” said Silvestri. “He was chief for years, but never captain. His belief was that each team of three men should be led by a lieutenant, with himself as the most senior. Carmine was made the first captain in 1966, more as a thank you than any change in structure.”

“Mr. Commissioner and I are aware there are too many chiefs, but it’s not easy to fix,” Carmine said. “Tell me more about your changes, Fernando.”

“I want three lieutenants, who will be promoted up from the sergeants. I need an executive, Carmine, so as not to fritter away my own time on—paperwork. I’ve been brought in to get this police department in shape for the stormy times that are coming. Two assassinations within three months are appalling. We can’t let it happen again.”

“Ah! Hence the rotation of men like Joey Tasco and Mike Cerutti. Under the old tradition, they would have automatically stepped into the new officer slots, though it’s years since Joey’s been anywhere but the desk, and Mike anywhere but patrol. It’s brilliant. By the time you have to appoint your new loots, you’ll know who are the best men.”

“So I believe.”

“You’re right about stormy times,” Carmine said. “I’ve had to put Corey and his team on a case I wish I could take myself—is that an indictment of me, or Corey? Not of me, I contend. The Principal of Taft High found a cache of firearms in the gym. We have them in the cage already, but the kids aren’t talking and we don’t know why the cache was there. Both Taft and Travis, the two high schools, have disciples of Mohammed el Nesr and his Black Brigade among the pupils, but Mohammed is vigorously denying any BB connection.”

“Lieutenant Marshall should do well,” Fernando said. “It’s potentially high profile and certainly important. What was in the cache?”

“The report will be on your desk, but it’s scary. Twenty .45 caliber and ten .22 caliber semi-automatic pistols, as well as spare clips. A lot of people could have died.”

Silvestri crossed himself. “As well for us that our high school principals are on the ball. If it’s not the Black Brigade responsible, then who is? They’re not the kind of arms high school kids have access to, and it’s not some parent’s collection. It’s an arsenal cache, not an array of different guns. Just .45s and .22s, all the same make and model.”

“It’s their potential as automatics worries me,” Carmine said.

“Kick ass, Carmine, including Corey’s.”

“Actually it’s up his alley, if he sticks to procedure. My chief worry is, what’s he not writing down?”

Carmine took time that Friday to drive around Carew, look at houses belonging to rape victims and Gentleman Walkers. Why did Nick have to conceive such a hot dislike of Helen? He couldn’t pass up an opportunity to needle her.

Helen had been right when she called Kurt von Fahlendorf’s house the prettiest in the district. It was a pre-Revolutionary saltbox with a pillared porch set in an acre of beautifully gardened grounds; a look around the back revealed a breezeway connecting the main structure to what, in the old days, would have been a kitchen annex. Now it was probably a guest house; someone whose family resided in West Germany would need adequate guest accommodation. The guy definitely had money, Carmine decided, between the address and the wages he must pay his gardener.

Mason Novak, the inorganic chemist whom Mark Sugarman had called the spirit of the Gentleman Walkers, lived in a small cottage on Curzon Close just two doors down from Kurt von Fahlendorf. A man named Dave Feinman lived in a neat little cottage on Spruce Street just around the corner from Curzon Close. He was a widower and was listed as a retired freelance statistician who still took an occasional commission.

No Walker seemed impoverished, and hardly any were married or lived with a woman. Probably because wives were not likely to want their husbands off patrolling for the benefit of other women when they had a woman at home. Privately Carmine thought that the reason for 146 unattached men in Carew lay in its hordes of young women. Carew was rich pickings for one kind of man in particular: a gentleman. And what else were the Gentleman Walkers?

Arnold Hedberg, a professor of history at East Holloman State College, lived his on-the-verge-of-forty existence in the bottom third of a three-family house on Oak Lane that he owned outright, no mortgages. Mike Donahue, a plumber with a thriving business, was young enough at thirty-one to live in a block of apartments he too owned, though he had a mortgage. He had plenty of women tenants under his own roof, but none had been targeted by the Dodo. Gregory Pendleton was a forty-five-year-old assistant district attorney; he occupied the top floor of a six-storey apartment block on State Street that he owned outright. Bill Mitski was another who lived in a private house he owned; he had an accounting business that specialized in taxation. And more, and more … Few Gentleman Walkers were genuine bachelors. Most seemed to be men who had suffered so badly in the divorce court that they were once bitten, twice shy. Sugarman, Mitski, Novak and von Fahlendorf described themselves as “single”— which didn’t say that they weren’t towing more wives than Bluebeard. If his divorce was through, a man was legally single.

After due consideration Carmine decided that his entire team, including Helen, should accompany him to the Gentleman Walkers’ meeting at six o’clock on the seventh floor of the Susskind Science Tower on Chubb’s Science Hill campus. This was Henry Blackburn’s brain child, and a good one. The President of Chubb just after the Second World War, Blackburn had sequestered 29 acres of Chubb land on Cedar to the east of the Green, and given it to the Chubb School of Architecture to turn into a science campus. Both the Burke Biology Tower and the Susskind Science Tower hadn’t gone up until 1960, but there were plenty of smaller buildings dotted around, as well as the great truncated, grassy pyramid that was the physics bunker, where all work went on way underground in cooled and filtered air. This grassiness was a perpetual frustration as far as the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament was concerned; they had nowhere to paint their CND symbols, so had to content themselves by parading with placards that said BAN THE BOMB.

Having heard the widely disseminated news of Maggie Drummond’s rape, all the Gentleman Walkers came to a venue Carmine thought ideal for an observer down on the podium, as every face was visible in the curved tiers of seats.

Delia and Helen sat on the podium flanking Mark Sugarman on one side, with Carmine and Nick on his other side. The Walkers stared hard at them, but hardest at Helen, whom most of them seemed to know. Probably, thought Delia, we don’t look much like cops, between two women and a black man.

Mark Sugarman began. “I’m sure you know that Maggie Drummond has been raped, but what you won’t know is that six other girls have come forward—I won’t name names, but some of you will make educated guesses. You’re here tonight to meet the police in charge of the case, answer their questions, and ask questions.”

He introduced Carmine and his team, while Carmine’s eyes continued to rove across the assembled ranks. Easy to decide who was Mason Novak and who Kurt von Fahlendorf; they sat together in the front row, together with a very elderly fellow of the kind Carmine always called a “Dapper Dan”—a bit like the 1930s movie star, William Powell, even including the little mustache.

Kurt von Fahlendorf was a looker in any language. Six feet tall, a good physique, and the kind of Nordic good looks a fan of Teutonic myth might associate with Siegfried. His crew-cut hair was so fair that it glittered as if made of frost—no fan of the fashionable Beatles-length hair here! His eyes were the same shade of ice-blue as Desdemona’s, and his facial features sharply defined, including high cheekbones that made it easy to mentally put a Wehrmacht general’s cap on his head. Odd, that he didn’t look Gestapo. Maybe that’s because I heard Helen on Prussian junkers? To Carmine he seemed cold in a scientific way; the eyes were extremely intelligent, but not involved as were the eyes of Mason Novak next to him. This was a passionate man, about the same height and physique as von Fahlendorf, but coppery in coloring and owning a face most women would probably prefer to the Prussian’s; despite his facial irregularities, Mason was powerfully attractive. The heart and soul of the Gentleman Walkers? Yes, he looked all of that. The way he and Kurt sat said that they were very good friends who trusted each other, which said a lot about both men. Probably not the Dodo.

Mark then asked each Walker to rise and give his name; after driving around Carew and looking at records, this was a bonus Carmine hadn’t expected. He had imagined that he would be obliged to demand identification, which would have put the meeting on a different, more antagonistic footing. Sugarman was a good guy. Feinman was a youthful sixty-eight, fit and appealing; he probably had no trouble pulling women. Arnold Hedberg looked studious, Mike Donahue looked as if he went rock climbing for pleasure, Gregory Pendleton was darkly handsome, Bill Mitski a “gold” man—hair, eyes, skin.

What all shared was remarkable physical fitness, and none was small in stature, maybe because small men would have found it hard to stay in stride with long-legged men: a man’s height was in his legs, not his trunk.

“Our patrols are convivial because we always walk with the same companions,” said Dapper Dave.

“Do you roster everybody?” Delia asked.

“Yes, for every second night, come hell or rainstorms,” Sugarman answered. “We field twenty-four trios, with two men in reserve. As Dave says, always the same three men in a trio. They sorted themselves out amicably during the first six weeks, and haven’t changed since. So on any one night, we saturate the district. That’s why we don’t understand how we’ve missed him.”

“You walk at the wrong hour, Mr. Sugarman,” Nick said. “He starts earlier than you do, so by the time you’re on the streets, he’s already inside his premises of choice.”

“Yes, but he has to come out!”

“If he were a run-of-the-mill rapist, sir, you’re right, he would be leaving while you’re patrolling. Unfortunately he makes a night of it,” Nick said. “Instead of attacking and leaving at once, he remains—and rapes multiple times—for about five hours. So he’s in before you start, and not out until way after you’ve all gone home.”

“We’re useless!” Mason Novak cried, voice breaking.

“No, sir, you’re not,” Carmine said in a strong, positive voice. “Look at what you know you’ve done! While you’re on the streets patrolling, the women of Carew know they can walk safely. You’ve apprehended three potential rapists. And as long as you enjoy the exercise, keep on going. Your activities may not affect the Dodo, but they do make Carew safer nonetheless.”

That made them feel better; they began to sit up straighter, murmur among themselves.

“You’ve saturated the district between six and seven-thirty,” Delia said, “which is particularly important now that the days are drawing in. Do women ever approach you to walk with them?”

“The last couple of days, yes,” Gregory Pendleton said.

“That’s a trend will increase,” Carmine said. “Believe me, the women of Carew are grateful for the Gentleman Walkers.”

“Is there anything we can do to improve our technique?” Mark Sugarman asked.

“You could split into two shifts, the second one from seven-thirty until nine, but it’s not going to affect the Dodo.”

“Is that his police tag?” Bill Mitski asked. “It’s what he calls himself. Didus ineptus. The old Latin name for the Dodo. We’re using the English form, Dodo.”

Mason Novak scowled, displeased. “The media will love it.”

“True, and that carries some advantages, Mr. Novak. We’ll get publicity when we need it because the name is catchy. That may be why the Dodo picked it.”

“He’ll get publicity too,” said Arnold Hedberg.

“If by that you’re assuming the Dodo is a publicity hound, sir, you’re wrong,” Carmine said, fighting to remember his name. “The Dodo has been plying his craft in absolute secrecy for nearly seven months, which I think says loud and clear that he doesn’t want publicity. Maggie Drummond was a mistake, Professor Hedberg, but he had no way of knowing how brave she is. He couldn’t frighten her into silence. Now the police are aware of his activities, and his earlier victims have found the courage to speak up. Life is getting harder for the Dodo.”

“Should we disband?” Mason Novak asked, despondent now.

Carmine looked surprised. “Now why would any cop want to disband a gentlemen’s walking club? Haven’t I already indicated what a good job the Gentleman Walkers are doing? Let’s hear no more about disbanding, please.” He’s mercurial, Carmine was thinking as he spoke the soothing words; Mason Novak isn’t quite stable, but luckily Sugarman knows it, and can handle him.

He spoke aloud again, but in a different voice: this one was stern, minatory, expressive. “I want all of you to remember one thing, sirs. The Dodo is not a peeping Tom, an underwear thief, or a simple stalker. He’s the big cat of sexual predators—cunning, awake on all counts, innovative, and silent. There’s a great deal more to him than meets the eye. The person his colleagues, friends and acquaintances know is usually impossible to associate with rape, torture and murder. I don’t mean that you ought to look at everyone you know differently, I mean that sooner or later this extinct bird will crash because of a small mistake. If you think you’ve found a contradiction in someone that plain doesn’t make sense, tell us.”

“When may we see Maggie?” Arnold Hedberg asked.

“Not for a while, sir. We’re taking her into protective custody. We don’t think she’s in any real danger,” said Delia, who looked like a barber’s pole tonight—diagonal red and white stripes, “more that there’s no virtue in taking chances.”

“The Chubb Medical School has one of the world’s top rape psychiatrists in Dr. Liz Meyers,” Carmine said as the meeting broke up some time later, “and she’ll be running a special clinic for the Dodo’s victims.”

Kurt waited for Helen to come down from the podium.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” he said, ranging himself alongside her as the crowd moved toward the door.

“Since I’m a detective in the Captain’s own team, why wouldn’t I be here?” she asked in a discouraging tone. Now was not the moment for Kurt to assert ownership—in front of all these men, yet! Still, he was a pussycat, no argument there; his manners were impeccable, his kindness something he didn’t need to prove to her after eight months of dating, and his genius was allied with a very rare quality: Kurt could get down to a layman’s level effortlessly. What she found harder to admit to herself was that she loved Kurt’s respect for her. Thus far she hadn’t invited him into her bed, and he genuinely liked that. Why? Because he was looking for a wife, not a mistress; every date that ended in a few delicious kisses and strokes without going farther pleased both of them. He thought she was virtuous. She thought his search for a virtuous bride extremely convenient. Fighting off amorous boyfriends was not Helen’s favorite pastime.