Sins of the Flesh Read online

  “But this Walter is enough for you?” he asked tonelessly.

  “More than enough! Inside my own mind, Walter, you stand on a high pedestal as the greatest happening of my whole life!” Her voice took on a note of triumph, though to Walter it just sounded louder. “I refuse to give up the search! Somewhere is another person who will serve both our ends, Walter—yours as well as mine! I want to see you granted your freedom, acknowledged as a citizen in good standing of your country.”

  He had heard it all before, but it had been a while, and with a sinking at the core of him he realized he had forgotten, that he had been fretting over a nothing, a replica Walter Jess hadn’t had any luck finding. He knew that! What had made him forget it?

  “Jess, there are too many new pathways,” he said. “I’m at a crossroads all the time. You said they’d be hard to open up, a real struggle. But they’re not. Opening them up is so easy that I’m caught in a stampede.”

  A huge mixture of emotions boiled up in her; she wanted to shout, sing, trumpet her victory, but the impassive face in front of her dazzled eyes forbade it. All that would do was confuse him, he had no idea what he was saying.

  “Then it’s time we changed our methods,” she said calmly. “Between us, we have to work out a system that lets the pathways open up naturally—they’re doing that now, but much faster than we anticipated. We don’t want to slow them down, Walter, what we want is to enable you to deal with the stampede.”

  Ari Melos came in; Jess had neglected to close the door.

  “A session on a Monday afternoon?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, forcing herself to sound offhanded. “We need some privacy, Ari. Close the door for me, please.”

  Outside in the corridor Dr. Aristede Melos looked at Walter’s door, its complex lock, and stood frowning. The atmosphere in there had been electric. Jess was making another breakthrough, but he wouldn’t know what it was until he read about it in her next Walter paper. Secretive bitch!

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 1969

  When Delia walked into her office she found Carmine Delmonico in her chair, his feet propped on her worktable, and the ugliest dog in Holloman, Connecticut, sound asleep on the floor beside him. He was in his work clothes, a fine white cotton shirt open at the neck and with its sleeves rolled up, a pair of dun chinos, and rough suede desert boots.

  His eyes were open, and twinkling at the expression of huge joy busy writing itself on her face. Then she pounced on him to give each cheek a smacking, lipsticky kiss, while he adroitly transferred her to her chair and himself to a spare one, ignoring the dog’s semi-hysteria at seeing Delia.

  “When did you get in?” she asked, thumping the dog.

  “Yesterday’s Red Eye, but I slept on the plane—Myron put me in first class.”

  “It does make a difference. Why are you here?”

  “I’m surplus to requirements in California, Deels. It took me one day to see how right Sophia was about Desdemona, who dived into the life like a man dying of thirst into a mirage that turns out to be real. Sophia was also right about the kids, who think they’ve arrived in toddler heaven. It took me two days to see that Myron and Sophia between them could set up world peace, if only the world were sensible enough to grant them the authority. Desdemona has absolutely nothing to do except amuse herself in whatever way she fancies, and the kids are at the center of a heaving mass of helpers, entertainers, you name it. Myron had found a great niche for me as his gofer at the studios, and I was enjoying being ordered around.” The big shoulders shrugged. “Then the shit hit the fan for Myron—some movie deal, don’t ask me. He had to fly off to London and couldn’t take me along.

  “By the seventh day I realized that a rudderless Carmine was a handicap to a wife in need of a few weeks in Sybaris or some other place riddled with hedonism, and in no shape to compete for his sons’ attention with Bozo the Clown, Buck the cowboy, Tonto the Indian, Captain Kidd the pirate and Flash Gordon from Mars. So I flew home.”

  Delia drank in his beloved face. “You’re a sensible man.”

  “The animals were grieving, so I figured I’d be welcome—Winston actually lost a pound after a week at the kennels, poor guy, and Frankie was a zombie,” Carmine said, rolling his feet across Frankie’s belly to its groans of pleasure. “How about lunch at Malvolio’s?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Frankie, mind the house,” Carmine said, escorting Delia out. “You can fill me in once we find a quiet booth.”

  Nothing loath, Delia recounted the events of her August to date, ending with her visit to HI to see Jess Wainfleet, and her own odd reaction to Walter Jenkins.

  “Yeah, that guy.” Carmine sipped his coffee, frowning. “You don’t know about him, of course, whereas I know him about as well as you can know anyone without actually meeting them. I was on the panel that agreed the Asylum could take him as an inmate—he’s an out-of-state lifer, and then he was very rare—the mania never let up for a second. Dr. Jess Wainfleet had just put HI together, and she wanted Walter exactly the way he was. The Asylum facilities plus HI and some hefty grant money saw Walter an inmate. I guess no one thought anything would come of Walter as a guinea pig—he’d killed a total of nine of his fellow lifers as well as three guards. Terrible crimes! Yet Dr. Wainfleet has made a kind of human being out of him.”

  “Walter is the HI blue-eyed boy,” Delia said, “but I confess I didn’t take to him. I described him as a robot, which quite upset Jess. She teetered on the brink of taking offense.”

  “HI and Jess Wainfleet do good work, according to the people who should know. The unadulterated maniacs like Jenkins are few and far between. Wainfleet’s papers on him are cagey, she never really advances a hypothesis. Some psychiatrist pals of mine maintain that she’s stalling for two reasons—one, that she hasn’t mined all the gold out of Jenkins yet, and the other, that she’s looking for a second Jenkins to confirm the first.” Carmine smiled. “But enough of that! What about the Shadow Women?”

  “Abe’s been far luckier with his starvation victims, but I don’t want to steal his thunder.”

  “You can’t. I’ve already seen him.”

  “What do you think of Hank Jones’s paintings?”

  “They’re the way of the future. I must meet him. Cease the sidestepping, Delia! The Shadow Women?”

  “Oh, Carmine, I’m not sidestepping! The truth is that there have been no developments capable of shining any light on a really impenetrable darkness,” said Delia, misery personified.

  Winston’s large bowl of raw meat was licked clean; when Carmine put Frankie’s dinner down he smiled at the sight of it, but did not relent by giving Winston more. Not that he intended dieting an animal, which he regarded as cruelty; more that it boggled the mind to think of Winston’s going a week actually leaving food in his bowl. That was the minus side of keeping pets; when you had to board them out, they fretted, no matter how luxurious the kennels. Who would ever have dreamed Winston would grieve?

  When he settled himself in his over-large armchair, he had Winston on his lap and Frankie squeezed into the seat alongside him; he also had a stack of files on the table and time to think.

  It had been Desdemona sent him home. Where would he be without Desdemona, his glorious ship of the line, her bows cleaving the sea as she forged ahead at full sail? Well, she needed time in dry dock, he went on inside his metaphor, and a long overhaul could not be accomplished with a husband to worry about, or two kenneled pets.

  “You’re going home, dear heart,” she said bluntly. “Miss Monson has your tickets and the chauffeur will call at her office to pick them up en route to the airport. Concita has packed your bags, so all you have to do is pack your briefcase.” She dropped a kiss on his brow. “I feel so well, but experience has taught me that unless I stay here in this palace long enough, I’ll flag as soon as I get home again. You’ve made love to me so many times in a week that I’m dizzy, so I’ll survive without it better than you will, I suspect. Go hom
e! Apparently Holloman is peaceful, but Hartford isn’t, with a war brewing between the Comancheros and the Puerto Ricans. We may have watched our astronauts skip around on the Moon, but North Hartford is rapidly becoming a moonscape we don’t have to fly a rocket to walk on. So you might be needed. Abe’s case is blowing sky-high, even if Delia’s isn’t.”

  His amber eyes had studied her wonderful face with its big nose and big chin, amusement glittering in their depths. “Who’s the little dicky-bird sings you these songs, wife?”

  “An anony-mouse, not a dicky-bird, husband.”

  “I love you, I’ll always love you, and I’m going home.”

  Now he studied Hank Jones’s paintings in wonder. After so long in No Man’s Land, the Does had names and identities.

  Abe had more work to do with Rha Tanais and Rufus Ingham, but had already outlined his future course: Tony Cerutti the bachelor would go on the road to interview parents, schoolfriends, history prior to joining Rha Tanais—named after two rivers in an atlas of ancient times, yet! Liam would deal with the accountant, Nicolas Greco, and bureaucratic data.

  However, the case that most intrigued Carmine was Dr. Nell Carantonio, whose body had never been located. The first thing he found fascinating was her medical degree, very rare for a woman in 1921, the year she had graduated from Chubb Medical School, another coup—Chubb graduate a woman doctor in 1921? In a social climate seething with prejudices against women in any profession, Dr. Nell seemed to have led a charmed life. Her student years must have been stuffed with all kinds of cruelties and denigrating plots, but no record of them had survived, and she graduated in the top five of her class, which plain didn’t happen. Women’s papers were marked down, their clinical work sabotaged; some of the worst and most ruthless bigots were their professors. But no, Dr. Nell graduated high. Following which she was allowed to intern at the Holloman Hospital in numerous fields; her final choice of anesthetics seemed to have been a personal wish, as she had been offered residencies in general medicine and pediatrics as well. Once in Anesthesiology, she had been well respected and never short of surgeons requesting that she administer the gas for them. The entire twenty-seven years of her life had been pursued as she wanted, and with success. Then—poof! She vanished into thin air.

  The wealth had been in the family for three generations, its source being complicated little machines that did chores previously in the purlieu of human beings; the savings in time and money had enabled Antonio Carantonio I to build a small empire his son and then his grandson had continued to build. Antonio Carantonio III had just the one child, Eleanor called Nell, and had sold out his company interests for want of an heir. If Nell wanted to be a doctor, it was fine by him. He gave her his blessing and two million dollars safely invested in blue-chip stocks. Even the Great Depression, endured while the courts waited to see if she were dead, did not affect the fortune. Then Fenella Carantonio had parlayed the two million into ten million, simultaneously preserving her mansion and the secret of her only child’s paternity. Rufus Ingham, also known as Antonio Carantonio IV. The homosexual business partner and personal lover of Rha Tanais.

  “‘O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’” Carmine murmured. “I wonder who gets what when Rufus is no more? Nor is Rha the kind to have progeny.”

  Dr. Nell’s body could be anywhere, and Rufus’s father might still be alive. Carmine picked up the portrait of Un Known and examined it very closely. The background was a landscape reminiscent of Louvain after the Kaiser’s war machine had rolled through it, all smoke, crumbled medieval walls of niches once occupied by statues, a fire-torn sky …. Did it have some significance, or was it just the first circle of Hell? And the eyes—he reached for his magnifying glass and thrust the portrait under the central spotlight of his lamp, then held the magnifying glass above it. No, the eyes were not black. Their pupils were widely dilatated, but around their edges he could discern a ring of dark blue. Blue! Blue, not brown! This would have to go to the artist for cleaning—who knew what other secrets it held?

  How old would Un Known be now? Rufus was forty in November, so was Rha, and what kind of man would have appealed to Fenella in the days of her limbo waiting for Dr. Nell to be declared dead? In 1930, say, she was twenty-two years old, so—not a man in her own age group, someone at least ten years older. Make Un Known forty in 1930, and that would make him around eighty. Then he was probably dead. It was all there to be learned, and Carmine wanted to learn it all. An ideal project for himself, one that could be run in tandem with Abe’s case, without stealing any of Abe’s limelight. An attitude of mind only Carmine cherished; he knew his detectives were neither jealous nor defensive, therefore it was up to him to watch out for their professional welfare.

  Malvolio’s was always where the dickering went on between members of the same police unit. It wasn’t so much that walls had ears, as that office chats could be interrupted, phrases overheard out of context, phones ring, people dragged off to do something perceived as more urgent. Whereas food and the partaking thereof were sacred; only the direst of emergencies could intrude on them.

  Carmine tipped twenty-two pounds of cat off his lap and put the phone there instead, then dialed Abe’s home number.

  “Breakfast in Malvolio’s at eight?” he asked.

  “Betty thanks you. The boys have been nagging for pancakes, and I hate them. You’ve just made the Goldbergs very happy.”

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1969

  At eight in the morning Malvolio’s was full, its largely cop custom in desperate need of what they mostly couldn’t get at home: a solid breakfast of eggs, crisp bacon, hotcakes-and-syrup, or, if desired, meatloaf and mashed potatoes; for the graveyarders, this was dinner, not breakfast. The powder-blue-and-white Wedgwood decor went well with cop navy blue, especially the roomy padded seats of the booths, upholstered in navy-blue leather that fifty years of serge-clad bottoms had kept polished and supple. Luigi, the owner/proprietor, dreaded the thought that one day his granddad’s Italian leather would finally give up the ghost, but so far it hadn’t. His granddad had bought the very best.

  Abe was already in a booth, a two-man, sandwiched between an end wall and the four revolving counter chairs that finished in the waitress’s gap. The booth was extremely private, the four chairs unpopular because of the waitresses; this morning all were occupied by Nutmeg Insurance workers.

  “Good spot,” said Carmine, sliding opposite Abe. “How goes it, Merele?” he asked the elderly waitress, already filling his coffee mug.

  “Busy,” she said with a beaming smile.

  Having ordered eggs-over-easy with plenty of bacon and hashed browns, the two men drank their coffee, unwilling to talk seriously until after they’d eaten. The food came quickly; they ate quickly.

  “I know we talked yesterday, Abe, but I need an extra word this morning,” Carmine said, pleased to note that Abe was hanging on to his resolve to quit smoking; even the delectable aroma of a Nutmeg Insurance cigarette wafting right under his nose wasn’t costing him exquisite pain, just a bearable agony. “Do you foresee needing Delia?”

  “No, the three of us can handle it, though it would be a help if you okayed Tony’s travel applications a.s.a.p.”

  “Consider it done. What I want to talk about is our oldest open case—Dr. Eleanor Carantonio.”

  The mild grey eyes widened. “Dr. Nell?”

  “Yep, Dr. Nell. I know it kinda brushes against your own case, but not, as far as I can see, in a way that would make it—or me!—a nuisance if I investigated it for what it is.”

  “Nor can I. Frankly, to me it’s more a red herring than a contributor to our case, and I’m not willing to waste my time on it, that’s for sure. So go to it, Carmine. But why?”

  “Call it a hunch. I took the file home last night and read it thoroughly. Maybe it’s forty-four years of hindsight prodding me, but whatever it is, my hunch says it might pay to take a new look at her disappearance. I’d work it together with
the weird non-appearance of the Un Known.”

  “What on earth do you suspect?” Abe asked, fascinated. It was never sensible to dismiss Carmine’s hunches, they had a habit of producing results. “Come on, Carmine, give!”

  “I don’t know how or why, but my hunch says the John Does are connected in some way to Dr. Nell’s disappearance. The root cause lies in the events that happened between 1925 and 1935.” His face took on a heroic resolution. “In fact, I guess I’m here telling you this morning because it may be that you and your team should be doing the investigations. Common sense says it’s all one case, and I have qualms about horning in.”

  Typical Carmine, thought Abe. Having seen some kind of light himself, he didn’t want to take over Abe’s case now that it was going somewhere thanks to Abe’s team’s efforts. And that was a great feeling, to know that the boss was not greedy for the glory, but the case came first, not individual egos. “No,” Abe said in a firm voice, “you won’t be horning in, Captain. I have more than enough to do following my present leads, and if there is a connection between the two cases, it’s better to start at either end. I’ll keep to my end, you take the antique end, and whoever needs Delia can grab her.” He smiled ruefully. “Poor old Deels isn’t having any luck with the Shadow Women.”

  “Tell me about it! The odd thing is that I keep thinking the answer has already been found—something Delia said to me yesterday triggered it, but then it slid back under the sludge before I spotted its shape. That means she knows it too.”

  Dr. Eleanor Carantonio’s file had yielded the name of her law firm: Gablonski, Uppcott, Stein & Stein. It was still practicing, and the names of the partners hadn’t changed according to the Yellow Pages. His not knowing it meant that none of its members were in criminal law—it would be a family-style business more concerned with wills, trusts, conveyancing and civil disputes. A phone call informed him that none of the partners dated back as far as 1935, but that Mr. Uppcott’s father had been there from 1923 until his retirement in 1961. Yes, the present Mr. Uppcott was still with the firm, and could see him within the hour, as an affidavit interview had been canceled due to the heat wave.