Naked Cruelty (8 page)

“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.

“You shouldn't associate yourself with this investigation,” he said in a scolding voice. “This Dodo might see you.”

“Oh, Kurt, honestly! I live in a security apartment, not the top floor of a two-family house,” she said, exasperated. “I'm a cop! A professional cop who graduated at the head of the NYPD academy, what's more. The Dodo's not that stupid. Like all predators, he goes after prey he knows he can handle. I swear on your starched-up Lutheran God that he couldn't handle me.”

“Do not take the name of God in vain!” he said, horrified.

“Bah, humbug !” she said, laughing at his seriousness.

Just behind them, Carmine and Nick walked with Mason Novak, and behind them were Bill Mitski, Mark Sugarman and Greg Pendleton.

“You were Shirley Constable's friend, right?” Nick asked Mason Novak.

“Yes.”

“Have a talk to Delia Carstairs in about five days' time. She'll be able to advise you by then.”

“I think Shirley's retreated too far to be saved,” Mason said miserably. “She won't even let me be in the same room.”

“Too pessimistic, Mr. Novak. We cops have seen Dr. Liz Meyers in action, and she's something else.”

Didus ineptus
heard that conversation as well as several others, and ground his teeth—but inaudibly. There was no point in belonging to the Walkers if he didn't utilize every asset this association of men owned. He hadn't been among the first to join, but he wasn't among the last either; to sit in the middle was ideal, for the middle was always a clump, a jumble, a crowd.

I should have killed Maggie Drummond, he was thinking. What's the difference between detection thanks to a woman too stupid to keep her mouth shut, and the discovery of her dead body? The body is preferable, but it's too late now. Because I left her alive, the cops know about me and my methods. Protective custody, eh? She's safe. Move ahead,
Didus ineptus!
Maggie Drummond had recognized the name, the taxonomy too. Would the cops deem him an untutored ignoramus, not to know about
Raphus cucullatus
? The wop captain was educated and intelligent, but was he subtle? It would take a very subtle man to unravel all the strands that tied and trussed the Dodo.

In his heart he'd known that Maggie Drummond meant trouble, but he had to have her. Such a glorious neck! Long and slender, curved like a swan's. The only one on his list whom he could bear to throttle first—all others paled. Yes, yes, yes, she was trouble! But if he kept her alive, he could go back for a second visit, do it all again. Work her throat to death then.

Whenever they had met he had actively disliked her, an emotion their conversations had revealed she reciprocated. And he had done battle with his extinct bird: fierce battle. It had won, and now the cops knew all about him. No, not all. Just far too much.

Waving and calling messages, he climbed into his car and drove away down Cedar Street toward Carew.

A disappointed and disgruntled Kurt von Fahlendorf turned into the blind little pocket of Curzon Close and put his black Porsche away in its garage. Having seen for himself that the electric door came fully down, he walked not toward his house but to a spot on the kerb where a gap in the trees permitted a view of the night sky. So wonderful! Yet not, he acknowledged, in the same league as southern hemisphere skies, free from humanity's lights and displaying the whole gauzy panoply of the Milky Way. After he gained his basic science degree it had been a struggle: did he pursue astrophysics, or particle physics?

Tonight he had felt like taking Helen to the Motown Café for a drink and dance, but she hadn't wanted to; this wretched detective's job of hers had eaten into her leisure a little. But if he star-gazed for a few minutes in peace and quiet, he would forgive her. He always did forgive her.

“Star-gazing, Kurt?” a voice asked.

Oh no! The Warburtons.

“Having been underground or indoors all day and evening, the rising winter stars are better than a glass of Moët,” he said, keeping the annoyance out of his answer. If the Warburtons thought they were getting under one's skin, they'd never leave.

“No walking tonight?”

“At this hour? No, a Walkers' meeting. Why not join, Robbie?”

Came a whinny of laughter, curiously amplified; Gordie was there too—when was he not?

“Dah-ling!” Gordie exclaimed, coming to stand under the lamp. “So much Teutonic seriousness! Robbie and I would be as much use to the Gentleman Walkers as Dame Margot Fonteyn.”

Kurt couldn't help his lip, which lifted in contempt. “You are correct,” he said, his voice betraying only the slightest trace of an accent. “I will contact Dame Margot tomorrow.”

“No Helen?” Robbie asked maliciously.

“Helen is in the police. Tonight she is on duty.”

“Oh, my!” said Gordie. “A face that could launch a thousand ships, blue blood, and a mind in the Holloman sewers.”

When they bunched into fists it could be seen that Kurt's hands were big; they bunched. “Retract that, you slimy worm, or I will insert Robbie's head all the way up your arse.”

The twins backed away in a scuttle, only half afraid because that was their nature: pull the cat's tail and get out of the way of its claws. “Silly!” Robbie cried. “If your English were more locally colloquial, you'd realize what he said was a clever pun.”

“In a pig's eye it was,” said Kurt, demonstrating just how colloquial he could get. He turned on his heel and walked off.

The twins watched him go, looking at each other in glee.

“He's so thin-skinned,” Robbie said, putting his arm around Gordie's waist and turning toward their house.

“Prussians were never my favorite people,” Gordie said.

“How many have you met, sweetest?”

“Kurt.”

“They say he's loaded. Oh, and that face! It's to die for. Why didn't Mother Nature give us Kurt's face?”

“Our face is fine, it suits our style,” said Gordie. “We have
plasticity
! Kurt has the face of a marble statue.”

“True, true. They say his papa has an enormous factory.”

“Which little bird twittered that?” Gordie demanded.

“Babs, the waitress in Joey's diner.”

“Is there anything Babs doesn't know?”

“The identity of the fellow WRHM and HN are calling the Dodo.”

“A putrid fowl.” Gordie shuddered.

They walked together through their red-lacquered front door and divested themselves of their jackets: a dark grey one for Robbie and an ecru one for Gordie.

“Dark—light—dark—light—dark—light,” Gordie chanted, skipping nimbly from a black tile to a white one on the tesselated floor, a caricature of an over-sized child.

“Stick to the white,” Robbie said, leaping on a black tile.

“Light!” said Gordie, on a white tile.

“Dark!”

“Light!”

“Dark!”

“Light!”

Which finished their dance; they had reached the living room doorway and encountered a geometrically crazed carpet in black and white. Laughing, they flopped into easy chairs, Gordie in a white one and Robbie in a black one, breathless and happy.

“Do you think it's time we told Aunt Amanda where we are?” Gordie asked.

“Patience, twinnie-winnie, patience.”

“Our clown and check will go to San Diego, and you know we're renting the house to strangers. What if they pinch our present?”

But Robbie's mind still dwelled on their neighbor.

“There was a professor named Kurt

Who wore a plutonium shirt;

A mushroom-shaped cloud

Did Kurt really proud

When the garment proved far from inert.”

“Very good, Robbie! I love your limericks.”

“The Dodo's victims do have one thing in common,” Delia said the following Monday, the last day of the month.

“Expound,” said Carmine.

“None of the seven has what I'd call a menial job, though there are several thousand Carew women working at menial jobs. Shirley is an archivist—extremely thin on the ground. Mercedes is a dress designer, but not a struggling would-be. She's the chief designer of that famous boutique line, “Cobweb”. Leonie's a brilliant mathematician, working at Chubb and surrounded by men who regard her as a freak. Esther was on a fast track at East Holloman State College teaching the more esoteric aspects of commerce—apparently her teaching abilities were outstanding. Marilyn is the one I'd call unlucky, in that she should have been in Alberta working the digs there—she came home unexpectedly. No, the Dodo didn't send her any trick messages, the summons was genuine. Natalie buys women's clothes from factories for Huxley's department stores. She has an unerring instinct for what women are going to want to wear, so Huxley's are feeling her absence severely. And Maggie, as we all know, is a bird physiologist at Chubb, no mean feat,” Delia said.