seated man.
“What do you want?” Corey demanded, sounding truculent.
“Dig out HPD Form 1313,” Carmine said.
“
“You heard me, Cor.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“ ‘Who’ would be a better question, but you know who. Morty Jones. It’s time you and I referred him to Dr. Corning.”
It had always been the team joke that the Jew Abe Goldberg looked like a WASP, and the WASP Corey Marshall looked like a Jew. The older they became, the truer the statement became. Corey had lost weight-Maureen was on a fad diet-and his long, Semitic face had fallen in a little more, giving the scimitar of a nose additional prominence and the permanent black beard shadow on Corey’s jaws the appearance of charcoal stage make-up. His dark eyes blazed into anger.
“That’s crap, Carmine! There’s nothing wrong with Morty.”
“Oh, come on, Cor, where are your eyes? Where’s your sense of smell? Morty Jones is drinking on the job, and he’s gotten himself into a terrible mess,” Carmine said, keeping his voice level, dispassionate. “If I can see it, you must see it-he’s your team member.”
“Yes, and my business!” Corey snapped. “I don’t need the captain sticking his oar in. As soon as Ava comes home, Morty will go back to normal-without the need for a psychiatrist.”
“My sense is that Ava’s not coming home. She’s going to file for divorce, and we have to act before that happens. Dig out the form, Corey. That’s an order.”
“Only if I agree with you, and I don’t. In my opinion, to send Morty to a psychiatrist would be the end of him.”
Carmine’s hands clutched at the air. “Oh, Jesus, where do you guys get your mistrust of psychiatrists from? Dr. Corning has saved at least half a dozen cops from losing their jobs-and worse, their lives. The murder rate is rising nationwide, which makes cop suicides look less, but that’s a false statistic, and you know it. It’s my considered opinion that Morty is very depressed. He may need medication-but not Jameson’s whiskey.”
“I’ll undertake to deal with the booze myself, Carmine,” Corey said, adamant, “but I will not sign your form.”
Carmine got up and left. True, to mention suicide was to give Morty’s situation undue significance, but it was imperative that the drinking stop, and he didn’t think Corey was capable of that kind of therapy. Why
Delia trotted in late that afternoon. “I’ve finished the interviews,” she said, “save for the twins tomorrow morning. Do I get to do them?”
“You can sit in, but I’m having the pleasure,” Carmine said.
“And I’m off to see what noisome things I can find under the California stones,” said Helen lightly, waved at Delia, and left managing to look as if she were intrigued by her task.
“Anything interesting?” Carmine asked Delia.
“Only what Miss Marcia Boyce does for a crust,” Delia said, perching on the chair Helen had vacated.
“Expatiate.”
“Miss Boyce runs a secretarial agency on Cromwell Street. Her girls are skilled in abstruse forms of executive assistance like typing specifications for space rockets, Nobel standard papers in physics and organic chemistry, medical dissertations, mathematical hypotheses-you name it, Carmine, and Marcia Boyce has a secretary who can do it. It costs heaps to hire a Boyce secretary, but those who do can be certain they’ll have no errors in transcribed dictation or deciphered scribbles. Most hirings are to Chubb or U-Conn, but there are lots of out-of-state universities hire too. Educational institutions rarely hang on to a Boyce girl for more than six months-a federal grant runs out and Miss Boyce has her girl back. However, professors who have already won a Nobel Prize hang on to their Boyce girls for years. Miss Boyce doesn’t care which way it goes-she takes a healthy cut as personal profit.”
Delia paused to sip her mug of cop coffee, grimacing. “Of course if Richard Nixon becomes president in November, there won’t be nearly as much research money available. Republican presidents are notoriously anti- research unless it’s armaments related. Pure research will die one of its little deaths because the dodos in Washington don’t understand that applied research sits on a solid foundation of pure research, so… According to Miss Boyce, at the moment everyone is using up LBJ’s lavish research money rather like condemned men eating a last meal.”
“The topic’s fascinating, Deels, but not relevant.”
“Oops, sorry!” The eyes twinkled within their stiff mascara hedges. “Miss Boyce is genuinely worried about Miss Warburton, but she can’t offer anything concrete. Even when the Busquash residents made such a kerfuffle over their skyscraper and sacked the town Elders, Miss Boyce says there was no sort of emphasis on Miss Warburton as a tenant. The word Miss Boyce is fond of is ‘evil’-she says Miss Warburton is being persecuted-her word again-by an evil presence, someone out to torment Amanda in a sadistic way. Marcia doesn’t believe the Vandal is interested in the glass. She thinks his obsession is Miss Warburton herself.”
“How does Hank Murray figure in her ideas?”
“No, it’s not Hank is the Vandal, at least according to Miss Boyce.” Delia gave up on the coffee with a sigh. “The trouble is, Carmine, there seems to be no motive apart from a psychopathia.”
“And there, Miss Carstairs, you and Miss Boyce are wrong.” Carmine filled her in about the glass teddy bear and his eyes.
“Ooh!” Delia exclaimed. “And
“Thanks to Miss Procter’s School for Girls-or so she’d have you think. There’s an element of leg-puller in Miss MacIntosh, but I confess I like her the better for it. We can safely put the bear’s value in the high double millions.”
“Does Miss Warburton know?”
“It would seem not. I’ve shifted Helen to the case to see what she can learn. Obviously our trainee is going to do much better on cases that have an up-market nature.”
“Stands to reason,” Delia said. “I miss Nick!”
“So do I, though I wish he’d make more of an effort to like Helen. Still, Abe says he’s doing fantastically well in Hartford, and he’s a minority representative for us.”
“How can a little boy from the stews of Argyle Avenue come to like M.M.’s daughter?” Delia asked. “Especially given her personality? In time she’ll lose some of the hauteur, the unconscious exclusivity, but it must be very hard for Nick in particular to stomach. He’s had to work so hard to get what he sees as falling into her undeserving lap.”
“I know, Delia, I know.”
The Brothers Warburton announced their advent before they actually appeared; the County Services parking attendant buzzed to say that this pair of spooky twins refused to leave their car on the street; until their Bentley was safely garaged, they were not getting out of it. The attendant was told to let them park, and shortly thereafter the Warburton twins materialized in Carmine’s office looking insufferably smug.
They were exquisitely dressed for a chilly fall day. Both wore what were probably Hong Kong copies of Savile Row suits: Robert’s was a navy three-piece pinstripe with a striped Turnbull & Asser shirt and a Stanford tie; Gordon’s was a pearl-grey silk with a white silk shirt and a self-embroidered white silk ascot. They wafted a hugely expensive cologne, and bore shaves so close the skin gleamed like satin. Even their eyebrows were thinned and brushed, Carmine suspected. A pair of sartorial dazzlers.
“What color’s your Bentley?” he asked, curious.
“Pewter,” said Robert, “with white leather interior.”
Having introduced Delia, Carmine escorted the twins to the largest of the interrogation rooms, sat himself and his papers down opposite the Warburtons, and put on a pair of reading half glasses that gave him a professorial air. Their diary was full-page size, one day to a page, and its cover was a hairy faux zebra skin; the year, 1968, was emblazoned in gold numbers an inch high.
I am fed up with all this light and dark nonsense already, thought Carmine, conscious of a burning desire to cause mayhem. Fire a twelve-pounder shot at this catamaran, hole both hulls!
“I should inform you,” he said, “that I have a very old and dear friend in L.A.-Myron Mendel Mandelbaum.”
