Sins of the Flesh (21 page)

“Well, sure, I know that! But why, in your exalted opinion, has the metal infused my rounded bearings?”

“Because, my man, you have survived a day of Delia Carstairs and Simonetta Marciano. Steel
cajones!
What color was the big satin bow in Netty’s hair today?”

“Emerald green. Does she always look like someone out of a World War Two movie?”

“Always, but more in the style of Betty Grable than Rita Hayworth. Beautiful legs!”

“I had no idea that the Commissioner has a bastard half brother who is a full-bird colonel in the U.S. Army!”

“That, Hank, is merely the tippest tip of Netty’s gossip iceberg. By the time you walk out of here, you’ll know the dirt on everyone in Holloman. Netty is an oracle,” Carmine said, smiling.

“She’s a doll too. As far as I can tell, she’s marshaling food or a chocolate malted from all the troops who visit me.” The cat’s eyes gleamed. “And I
will
walk out of here, Carmine,
I will!
The docs reckon I got a good chance.”

“I managed to rescue your painting,” Carmine said gravely. “As far as I can tell it didn’t suffer in spite of the fracas. No change in the night foreshore has been announced, so you’ll be able to finish it later. And don’t worry about money. The Commissioner is doing a deal with the cop insurers, and I’m doing one with mine. Delia will be in to see you tomorrow morning after you’re rested, and you can tell her what you want done with your apartment.”

“Cool!” Hank said, and fell asleep.

That left Carmine to wander off in search of a neurosurgeon who could tell him how Hank was really doing. Having found one, he listened intently to a tale pitched in layman’s language, and was grateful for the young doctor’s consideration.

“Hank has a marvelous spirit going for him, Captain, so he won’t just give up and give in. The slug did a lot of damage, but too low down to prevent such a determined guy from walking again. We’ve removed all the bone splinters and reduced cord swelling; now we have to get the branches of the cauda equina—a kind of horse’s tail that forms the bottom end of the cord—to sit properly in what bone canals and channels remain. The longest job belongs to the plastic surgeons, who have to build Hank a right buttock to replace what the bullet’s exit wound tore away. It’s going to take quite a while.”

Equally important, Carmine had to think through how much he would tell Desdemona, who mustn’t be allowed back on the East Coast yet. Some ideas were shaping inside his head, and he needed to nut them out too. Myron? No, Sophia. That was it! He’d call his daughter and tell her what was going on. Sophia wasn’t his daughter for nothing, she would know the right plan of action. When dealing with women, it was always best to leave things to a woman.

P
erhaps due to his rather special lines of women’s clothing, or perhaps due to his well-known bloody-mindedness about said lines (he refused to say), Rha Tanais always held a fashion parade on the Saturday before Labor Day. If asked, he would explain that he based it on a Buckingham Palace garden party, though the very few who had sampled both venues voted the Tanais turnout more generous in its refreshments. It was also more exclusive; he rigidly banned all persons he disliked, no matter how important they were. So when the invitations were sent out and your rank absolutely demanded one, and you didn’t get it, you just curled up into a ball and
died.
The Queen didn’t have the power to do that: Rha Tanais did. There were wails of rejected woe from the Hudson River to the Canadian border (Rha Tanais thought New Jersey was a figment of the imagination).

If anything were needed to put the finishing touches on a warm late summer’s day, Delia decided, it was the sight of Shirl (Simonetta) strolling the grounds of Bushquash Manor clad in the most exquisite wedding dress anyone had ever seen, complete to a trailing bouquet of white orchids and a veil looking like mist.

“Such a hot and horrible month,” she said to Rufus.

They were sitting in what he called a summer house and she called a folly; a small round open-sided temple some distance from the mansion, and it afforded a splendid view of the comings and goings in the garden as well as all Busquash Inlet.

“I met another Simonetta today, when I called in on Hank,” Rufus said. “Ravishing, straight out of World War Two.”

“Netty Marciano. Her husband was a cop,” Delia said. “She was known as the gossip to end all gossips. But people thought she’d lose her title without her cop source. Hah! She has eyes and ears everywhere, from the Hartford Capitol through Electric Boat and Cornucopia to the most sequestered college at Chubb—and then some! CIA and the FBI both use her as a consultant on Holloman and Connecticut affairs. Netty is amazing.”

His eyes, gone quite khaki, gleamed. “You’re pulling my leg, Delicious Delia.”

“Anything but!”

“Something good came out of August.”

“I wish I could say that!”

“I’m sorry you can’t say it! Rha and I met you.”

She blushed. “And I met the pair of you.”

“We think we may have a clue for you.”

“About what?” she asked absently, eyes on Shirl.

“We think we know who the current John Doe prisoner is.”

Delia jerked around to face Rufus. “Tell me—
now!
”

“Case Stephens, but his real name is Chester Jackson. Shirl reminded us about him this morning shortly after six. We were tagging her dresses—you know, telling her when to change, which one to wear next—it would have been half after six by then. She was in a foul mood, but she always is at the crack of dawn, when she’s tagging. And she said she’d like Case Stephens as her groom! I told her not to be an idiot, that Case had gone two months ago, and she said he couldn’t have, because his dog was still here! I reiterated my opinion that she was an idiot, she reiterated her conviction that Case was still here. She kept on and on about the dog—a ratty little thing named Pedro—and insisted she’d seen it that morning as she came in just before six. It was rummaging through the garbage. Such a mood! If Shirl wasn’t such a gorgeous bride, we’d get rid of her, but she’s inimitable.”

“Did you believe her, Rufus?” Delia asked urgently.

Rufus considered the question. “I think so, yes. She really did believe Case was there because of the dog. Case adored the scrawny little thing! He carried it everywhere in a cute little wicker shopping basket lacquered blue—the dog sat in it like a teeny prince, and people made fools of themselves over the sight. And in one way I could understand why Shirl was convinced Case was still around—he and the dog were inseparable.”

“You did the right thing, Rufus dear, in telling me.” She got up, looking sheepish. “It’s the little girls’ room for me, alas!”

And off she went to the house, one of the privileged few who didn’t have to use the portable outdoor toilets. Into the house, down the hall past the grand staircase, and into Rufus’s studio, which she knew better than any of Rha’s rooms. There she picked up the phone and called Abe’s home number.

“Goldberg.”

“Abe?”

“Yes, Delia, it is I. What’s up?”

“Oh, thank God you’re there! Abe, I’m at the Rha Tanais garden party, and Rufus has just informed me that a young man who was in their employ some months ago has apparently left his dog behind, and it isn’t in character. The dog’s name is Pedro and the young man’s stage name is Case Stephens. Real name is Chester Jackson. It’s a zoo here today, but if you were here at the crack of dawn tomorrow, you might find the dog. It must either be extremely shy, or sticking to its master. Look for a chihuahua or something similar—small and ratty is the general description. Find Pedro, and you’ve grounds for a search warrant everywhere on this property.” A vision of Ivy Ramsbottom rose in front of her; Delia swallowed painfully. “Make sure your warrant includes Little Busquash and Ivy Ramsbottom.”

“I owe you one, Deels. Thanks a million.”

When she returned to the folly she found Rufus gone, but Ivy waiting for her. Feeling a traitor, Delia sat down.

“Desdemona would so enjoy this,” she said.

“Captain Delmonico’s wife? One of the few who can look me right in the eye,” said Ivy, smiling. “Very tall women have an extremely hard time of it.”

“Male or female, anyone who differs from the herd has a hard time of it,” Delia said. “Too short, too tall, too fat. The odd thing is that too thin is now a desirable state of being, thanks to wearing clothes. What a reason! It doesn’t seem right.”

“If it flies in the face of what Nature intended, then it definitely isn’t right,” Ivy said.

S
omeone had already cleared and tidied the grounds of Busquash Manor, Liam Connor discovered when he walked casually onto the property at half after five in the morning. If animals were involved, Liam was usually the one in charge, and after several phone calls late on Saturday afternoon, Abe had decided to send Liam in alone to look for Case Stephens’s little dog.

“Evidence says it’s timid, so a search party might panic it into fleeing the neighborhood, at least for a while. Delia says it was seen in the bushes that conceal the cottage from the mansion, so start looking there,” Abe had said to Liam over the phone. “If you can’t find the animal—its name is Pedro—by ten a.m., then we’ll send in a major search party.”

But there it was, the same tannish-brown as fallen autumn leaves, huddled under one of the bushes that grew in a straight line thirty feet from Ivy Ramsbottom’s end windows. Liam went close to it, but not threateningly so, and hunkered down. A long-haired chihuahua, he decided, not quite as ratlike as the ordinary ones. He fished a baggie out of his pocket, opened it, and broke off a small piece of cooked white meat.

“Hey, Pedro,” he said, smiling. His hand came out holding the chicken. “Try this, guy, it’s better than garbage.”

Two enormous brown eyes stared up at him; as is characteristic of chihuahuas, it was shivering with anxiety, but the combined smell of man and meat was welcome, and the smile said the stranger was good people.

Liam fed the dog all of the chicken, which it devoured ravenously; it was thin, the Tanais trash apparently not yielding much edible, but, significantly, it had not roamed farther afield in search of sustenance. The reason for that, Liam suspected, lay in some smell of its beloved master lingering in this spot, nowhere else. What was different about here, then? Only what might have been the top part of a finely netted birdcage just behind the dog’s position under the bush.
A ventilator?
Jesus! This couldn’t wait!

He was on his car radio in less than a minute, asking Abe to get that warrant. “It’s not only the dog, Abe—there’s a ventilator! Case Stephens is at the other end of it!”

From then on it went very quickly. Confronted at her door by Abe Goldberg, Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti, with ambulance paramedics waiting behind them, Ivy Ramsbottom sighed and held the door wide open, then found herself handcuffed.

“Where is Case Stephens?” Abe asked.

“Go through the door in the kitchen that doesn’t lead outside, and you’ll find a room with a chair elevator in it. When you sit in the chair, press the DOWN button. To ascend, press the UP button,” Ivy said calmly. “It is the only way in and out.”

“Tony, stay here with Miss Ramsbottom. Liam, with me.”

It was a very large chair that took the two slight men with space left over. The ride was smooth, the stench in the padded chamber below more bearable than the sight of what remained of Case Stephens. Feeling as if his ghost was passing through Auschwitz, Abe knelt to ascertain that the heart still beat, the vital spark lived on, while Liam returned up in the chair calling for the paramedics.

“Why?” Abe asked Ivy when he ascended again, the last to leave save for the forensics team, which would stay.

She stood, an immensely tall, immaculately turned out woman in her thirties, hair lacquered into place, dark red lipstick following the curve of a generous mouth faithfully, and blue eyes wide in bewilderment. Asked the question, she made no reply.

“Why?” Abe repeated. He phrased it a different way: “Why did you do
that
to them? What had they ever done to you?”

The calmness, the lack of surprise and the immediate request to retain the legal services of Mr. Anthony Bera on behalf of Ivy all told Abe that Rha Tanais—and Rufus Ingham—deemed Ivy guilty.

“We ought to tape this and make it official,” Rha said, his gentle face sadder, his eyes bright with unshed tears, “but I am so big, and I believe interrogation rooms are tiny. We have a recording studio here—could we use that, with your own people manning the machines and perhaps even some drinkable coffee?”

“I’ll check with the captain” was as far as Abe would go; the answer turned up in the person of the captain, and Delia armed with notebooks, files, pens, pencils.

Neither man was insensitive enough to attempt to treat Delia as the dear friend she was, Carmine noted, nor to attempt to drop her hints as to what they would like her or dislike her to do: indications that they genuinely knew nothing of what had gone on at Little Busquash?

“The studio’s ideal,” Carmine said after closely inspecting it. “Room for all of us to sit inside comfortably, plenty of microphones, and, so Charlie Watts informs me, an electronic hook-up to rival anyone’s.” His white teeth flashed. “In fact, it’s technically much better than anything in County Services. Charlie and Ed can man the recording booth alone.”

It didn’t take long to set up; things probably didn’t if Captain Delmonico were in command, Rufus thought. Rufus sat next to Rha, and facing Delia, on the timer and taking the notes. Oh, poor little baby! He tried to send her a telepathic message, and—she got it! Her eyes met his, wrenched with pain, and fell.

“Before we get the signal to start, Captain, how is Case?” Rha asked. “Is there any chance he might live?”

“Professor Jim Pendleton says there’s a chance, and he’s a world authority on anorexia nervosa. Same kind of thing, different path and radically different cause, of course, but starvation is starvation. Case had fresh, clean water to drink, so his kidneys haven’t packed up yet, the Prof says. Oh, he’ll never be the same strong, perfectly healthy young man he was—organs and systems heal, but there are scars, and they don’t. Because of the water, he may have continued to survive for another week or ten days. As it is, he couldn’t be in better hands.”

“I don’t understand how you discovered what was going on when we’ve been right next door and not suspected it,” Rha said.

“The model who wears your bridal gowns saw his dog—Pedro. At six in the morning, yesterday, so you told Delia, Mr. Ingham. She recognized the dog’s significance. After that, things were easy,” Carmine said. “The dog could smell his master. That meant Case was still alive, and that meant straight to Judge Thwaites. He won’t issue a warrant unless he can see a genuine need for it. Today, he saw the need.”

“What’s happened to the dog?” Rufus asked.

“Pedro’s in Holloman Hospital Animal Care, being well fed and pampered. He’s already been taken to see his master several times,” said Abe. “Strictly speaking, dogs are forbidden visitors for human patients, but the rules have been slightly relaxed for Pedro, who’s disinfected regularly.”

“Poor Pedro!” said Delia, sighing. “Unless they’re water retrievers, dogs loathe being bathed.”

Carmine had had enough. “Okay, are we ready to record?”

“Roger!” came from the control booth.

“Then let’s roll. Mr. Tanais, your full name and any other names by which you are known? Please spell them.”

“My professional name is Rha Tanais”—he spelled it—“and my given birth name is Herbert Ramsbottom”—he spelled it. “I was born on November second of 1929, at Busquash Manor.”

“You have a sister?”

“Yes, I have one sister, Ivy Ramsbottom. She was born at Busquash Manor on December fifth, 1910.”

“One moment, please” Delia interjected. “1910? You said 1910?”

“That can’t be right, sir. 1910 would make the lady almost sixty years old,” Carmine said.

“Yes, Ivy is almost sixty. She’s a youthful looking woman anyway, but she’s also had a series of face lifts and other kinds of plastic surgery.”

“Then you lied to me when we talked some days ago. You gave her a birth date of 1920, the year Antonio III died.”

Rha shrugged. “Needs must when the devil drives, Captain. You have to take our word for it whichever date we give, because Ivor Ramsbottom never registered Ivy’s birth. She’s a non-citizen.”

“Were you lying when you described your and Ivy’s mother as a simpleton?”

“No, that was true. Our father had”—Rha drew a quavering breath—“peculiar tastes, Captain. I gave you a second false date, as it happens. Ivor was hired as chauffeur in 1903, not in 1909. By 1909 he was in complete control of everything, including Antonio III. Except in the matter of the money. That, he could never manage to get his hands on.” Rha shifted his body in his chair restlessly, then turned to look at Rufus. “You tell them, Rufus. I—am—tired.”

“The one who could tell you most is Ivy,” Rufus said in level tones, one hand on Rha’s, “but she won’t. Not now, poor thing. Of the three of us, she suffered by far the worst—we were too young, and what we know comes from her. Ivor started sexually molesting her when she was six years old, and by the time she had her first period, she’d been raped a hundred times or more. Ivor was a monster who didn’t look like a monster. He looked like an angel, heaven come down to earth.”

“Ivor was the Un Known?” Abe asked.

“Yes. That portrait was his, except that Ivor had blue eyes, and we thought that the man in the painting had black eyes. So we gave him a different title—No One.”

“Was he involved with Dr. Nell Carantonio?” Carmine asked.

“Who wasn’t he involved with? Yes, he was her lover, but he wanted to marry her to get his hands on her money. She refused.”

“Was he aware of the laws for bigamy?” Liam asked. “Unless his children’s mother was already dead?”

“No, she was still alive when Dr. Nell disappeared.”

“Was he married to your mother, Mr. Tanais?” Delia asked.

“There was a wedding certificate saying he married Uta Lindstrom in Wisconsin in 1910,” said Rha. “Ivy told us he had to marry her—she was pregnant.”

“Rha has the certificate,” Rufus said, “though Ivy never understood why he never harmed or killed Uta. As far as Rha and I could reason it out, Ivor just liked tormenting and killing the people in his life.”

“Including Dr. Nell?” Carmine asked.

“Oh, yes!” Rufus shivered. “That was diabolical. She was terrified of small spaces and feared death by drowning.”

“What happened to her, Rufus?”

“Ivor locked her in a tightly lidded steel trunk, put heavy chains around it, put it in a dinghy and rowed out of the Inlet one night. Then he tipped the trunk into the water. It sank like a stone,” Rufus whispered, looking sick. “She was seven months’ pregnant, but she wouldn’t marry him.”

“When did he meet Fenella?” Carmine asked.

“She was a child,” Rha said, looking like death. “You don’t know our worst secret, but we have to tell you. We just ask that it not be spread far and wide. If it were, nothing of benefit to anyone could come out of it. Rufus and I are half brothers. Ivor Ramsbottom fathered both of us at much the same moment in time, since we were born within an hour of each other. No one can possibly know how it feels to live in a body half of whose chromosomes belonged to a devil enslaved by cruelty and murder. But we know how it feels. Every morning the first thing we remember is that our father was a Caligula. And we shoulder the burden of that knowledge, desperately trying to prove that mere chromosomes do not make the man, that our mothers gave us true goodness. Not for anything would we have betrayed Ivy had we known, if only because we know what her life has been like.” Rha sat up, eyes stern. “We do not apologize for misleading you. Sometimes family wins.”

“But you’ll never reproduce,” Carmine said.

“Vasectomized as soon as it became available, just to be completely sure,” Rufus said.

“What happened to Ivor?” Liam asked.

“Ivy killed him in 1934, when it became obvious that he was wearing Fenella down. Looking back on it, we suppose too that she did the math and realized Ivor would soon start molesting Rha and me,” Rufus said. “Yet one more debt we owe Ivy. No matter what crimes she committed, she’s a good person at heart.”

“Was the padded cellar there then?” Carmine asked.

“No, but the cellar itself was. Antonio III had grown fed up with his staff stealing the contents of his wine cellar, and built a new one attached to Little Busquash. No one got past Ivor, who, whatever else he was, was not a drinker. Ivy lured Ivor to the cellar on some pretext—it was empty at the time, between Fenella’s gyrations and Prohibition’s dying throes. Ivy stunned him and then took the elevator back upstairs and locked it. She told Fenella that Ivor had grown tired of waiting for his money and skipped town for parts unknown. When Ivor had been in the cellar two months she went down into it again, gave him ether, and castrated him. Then she left him to die. Rha and I were old enough to remember Fenella constantly weeping while Ivy chanted like a Greek chorus that he was gone for good.”

“How long was Ivor in the cellar?” Abe asked.

“Until the gun emplacements on Busquash Point were poured in 1942,” Rha said. “By then he was bare bones and Fenella ill. Ivy tipped him into the six-yard concrete mixer. No one even noticed.”

Rha and Rufus were both looking better, as if sharing the secret of their paternity had lifted a gigantic weight from them.

I wonder, thought Carmine, whether we have the whole story now, or if they’re still hiding the finishing touches? But that didn’t grieve him; what did were the innocent lives ruined by forces beyond their control—by the power of a parent.
A parent!

Two hours later, Carmine called a halt. Nothing further had come out, nor would continuing the process produce results. Denying any complicity, Rha and Rufus stuck to their story. More important, they hadn’t tripped themselves up in any detail.

Ivy Ramsbottom, they learned on their return to County Services, was in the lone woman’s detention cell, and refusing to apply for bail. The bed was too short and narrow for her, and another was being located; Anthony Bera had paid a visit to see his client in an interview room, and there was nothing else in the report.

Delia had elected to remain at Busquash Manor with Rha and Rufus, unsure what to do or say, but inwardly convinced that she still owed them more than a police presence. She had, besides, one vital question to ask, a question that couldn’t be asked in front of a half dozen instinctively turned off cops.