“As to that, we don’t know. We’re not in a position to do any detective work in West Germany. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Kurt asked, attention pricking.
“Unless you conspire with me in a scheme that may not get any hard evidence, but will identify them.”
“I am interested.”
“First off, when are you due back at work?”
“Whenever I feel up to it, Dean Gulrajani said. I said, at once.” Kurt grimaced. “I need to finish my walls.”
“How about next Tuesday? “
“Why? That’s four full days away.”
“Four full days during which you and I can fly to Munich and I can do some investigating.” Her eyes, a much deeper blue than his, caught and held them. “I know your family would love to see you. It’s so small that there was no one to send here while you were missing, damn it, so I know they’d love to see you. And I know that you’re always telling Dagmar that you want to marry me. Well, I don’t say I will, but I am willing to go to Munich with you pretending to be your fiancee. It gives me a perfect reason to be with you. While we’re there, you can manufacture plenty of excuses to be alone with your family for hours at a time. I can use those hours snooping, but not in a way that will alert the Munich cops. On that, you have to trust me.”
Kurt had listened the way highly intelligent people did, processing the content of what Helen said as she said it; now that she was ended, he had already made up his mind.
“That is an excellent scheme,” he said, smiling, “but I am afraid we have left our run too late. Plane bookings have to be made, and tomorrow’s plane may be full.”
“Plane bookings are made, the tickets are in my bag, and the plane isn’t full in first class,” said Helen.
“
“You stingy old Scrooge! You’re a rich man, you can afford first class.”
“It is a principle,” he said stiffly.
“Then isn’t it lucky I’m paying? Miser! That’s a good reason not to marry you.”
“You have your own money, it would not be a problem.”
“Does this mean that if we were to visit Paris, you wouldn’t take me to the Tour d’ Argent?”
“Most assuredly,” he said with that typical, slightly wrong choice of phrase. “Paris is full of restaurants just as good but far less expensive.”
“I hereby serve you notice, Kurt, that if in future we ever need to fly together, I’ll be in first class and you in coach.”
“I do not understand you, Helen.”
“You don’t have to. Will you call Dagmar first thing tomorrow morning and tell her that we’re coming for the weekend?”
“Of course. And, Helen?”
“Yes?”
“It is an excellent scheme.”
“You mustn’t tell any of them, even Dagmar.”
“I understand that. She is wonderfully loyal, but some of that loyalty is given to Josef. Were it not, she would have sent him packing when she found out about his industrial espionage.”
“Good. Shall I heat the food?”
“I think so. Your news has stimulated me to hunger.”
“I’ll need a car,” she said later, as they ate.
“You can use my Porsche.”
“I might have known you’d have one stashed over there!”
CHAPTER V
Now that Kurt von Fahlendorf was safely flying off to Munich with Helen MacIntosh, Carmine could turn his attention back to other matters. Though the Dodo stood at the head of his list, it also contained Corey Marshall. His own enquiries into Morty Jones’s death could not be postponed a moment longer, though the official enquiry was set for November 11, a week after the elections; by then, memories would be blurred, attitudes hardened.
When he poked his head around Corey’s door at five after eight, Corey wasn’t in; not a crime, but Carmine expected his lieutenants to be in before their men, and Buzz was there.
Delia, he noted, was already hard at work, obviously celebrating Kurt’s survival with more festive raiment than usual: a frilly dress in shocking pink, yellow and black stripes, a matching bow on the back of her head. How she managed to type so rapidly and accurately with such long, manicured nails, he had no idea. Today they were painted shocking pink, and as always produced a secondary sound as she hammered away at the electric IBM with the heavy touch of one who had worked for years at manual machines. Hard on the heels of the wallop of the finger striking the center of the key came the click of the nail colliding with the edge of the key. Boom-click, boom-click, like a man in a lead boot with an aluminum knee joint. Wasted on the Dodo, Carmine thought, watching her; she needs one of those cases we don’t have at the moment, saturated with paper, lists, tables and computations.
Even before he checked Corey’s office a second time at eight-thirty, Carmine could feel the sinking sensation invade the pit of his stomach. If there had been no love in what he felt, it would have been easier to bear, but there was love, and love meant hurt, broken bits of dreams, memories of days gone by when Corey had been magnificent.
He was there, setting up his desk for the day.
“What’s my new case?” he asked as Carmine walked in.
“Time to talk about cases after we’ve talked about Morty,” Carmine said, sitting down.
Corey hunched his shoulders. “There’s nothing to say. He hid his depression well.”
“Oh, Cor, come on! I noticed, my team noticed, Abe and his team noticed. How can you sit there saying you didn’t notice, when I came asking you to fill out HPD Form 13l3? I wanted him to see Dr. Corning, you overruled me as Morty’s immediate boss, the one who’d notice most of all. A mere trainee, Helen MacIntosh, was left to go in search of him that morning. It should have been you, and you know it. What I don’t understand is why you chose to adopt that attitude to Morty. He was a sick man.”
“It’s been blown up out of all proportion,” Corey said, voice hard. “There was nothing much wrong with Morty. What made him eat his gun was the sight of Ava all beat up, nothing else.”
“You won’t save your skin by wearing a blindfold, Cor.”
“What would you know about it, Carmine? I’ve been listening to Morty whine about Ava for ten months-it was nothing new, I tell you! Her leaving was the best thing could have happened to him-no more looking at every Holloman cop and wondering.”
“I’m going to have to mention Form 1313 at the enquiry.”
Corey gasped, staggered. “Carmine, you wouldn’t! It was internal, a discussion between the overall boss and the immediate boss-nobody’s business but ours.”
“Everybody’s business, when the object of the discussion took his own life two weeks later,” Carmine said.
“It was
“Then how come he was almost never here?”
“He had a bolt-hole in the cells.”
“To sleep it off.”
“No! To get away from that housekeeper Delia Carstairs found-he hated her.”
“But the kids liked her fine, Netty Marciano reports. I know Morty used to say they cried for Ava all the time, but that was Morty confabulating,” said Carmine. Time Corey realized how far the gossip about Morty and his domestic situation extended.
“Jesus, is nothing sacred?”
“Not where Netty’s concerned, Cor. You know that.”
