ruin her, Captain?”
“Scar her, certainly, but she’s unusually resilient. She insisted on seeing me last night, while the ordeal was still fresh in her mind. He’d partially asphyxiated her multiple times, and she was worried that the trauma might cause her to forget details. She even gave us his name-
“Can’t I be of more use than giving you Mark Sugarman’s name?” Helen asked.
“Yes, you can,” said Delia, “provided you put yourself under my authority and do exactly as you’re told. Will you?”
“Yes, of course,” Helen said, face lighting up.
“Good. I suspect we’re going to meet a number of the Dodo’s victims, and it’s vital that women comprise the front face of the investigation. Ever since their individual attacks, these young women can’t cope with men, no matter how sympathetic. You and I, Helen, have to do all the victim contact until we can persuade them to seek help from Dr. Liz Meyers at the rape clinic. That means we spend as much time as we can this afternoon coaching you in how to behave-it’s a matter of technique as well as feminine bonding. I’m hoping to be taking calls tomorrow after Mighty Mike’s breakfast show, but it’s possible we’ll have some responses after Luke Corby. You’re my shadow, Helen-wherever I go, you go. Understood?”
“Yes!” said Helen fervently. It was here at last, her first case, and she was going to make sure that Delia shone. Because if Delia shone, so did she.
Carmine took himself off to Carew and the eighth floor of Talisman Towers, the only ritzy block of high rise apartments in a district chiefly famous for its peace, prettiness, and hordes of women students at all levels of a tertiary education. Helen had explained that Mark worked from home, so Carmine fully expected to find him in his apartment.
“Like Helen, I own my condo,” Mark Sugarman said, leading the way into a big room that had been intended as the living room, but had been turned into a studio. He indicated two hard chairs at a table, and went to the kitchen area to fetch mugs and a coffee pot, then sugar and cream.
In all visual respects he was a large-yet-medium man, from his height of just under six feet to his face and coloring. What saved him from obscurity were his eyes: long-lashed, widely open, and a vivid green. He was wearing baggy, faded jeans and a short-sleeved shirt whose two breast pockets bulged with items including pencils, cigarettes, a short steel ruler.
If typical artists are supposed to live in extreme disorder, he was not typical, for the room was immaculately kept; it was painted white and its natural lighting consisted of a whole wall of glass panes looking over the treetops toward Long Island Sound, dreamily blue in this lovely start to Indian summer. Rather than an easel, he worked on a drafting board, in front of which sat a bar stool. A tall table to either side held inks, pens, pencils, an electric pencil sharpener, various protractors and T-squares, a neat pile of rags, and a jar of water. As they passed the board, Carmine was amused to see that it held a black-and-white Indian ink drawing of a wacky-looking family of raccoons. It was very well done, its human element only subtly-but tellingly-suggested.
“I’m a book illustrator,” Sugarman explained, pouring the coffee. “This one’s aimed at a general market from teens to nineties, so the publisher wants classy drawings-no cheating with cross-hatching or other short cuts. Therefore, hire Mark Sugarman. Few art schools teach classical ink drawing, so I’m in demand. I learned in London and Antwerp.”
“How long has the neighborhood watch been in existence?” Carmine asked, adding cream and sugar; the coffee was old. “I should tell you that Maggie Drummond was raped last night, and wasn’t frightened enough not to call us. Her rape was atrocious-particularly brutal and demeaning-but I come from her with a request that you tell me everything you know. Maggie is very emphatic. She wants this monster caught.”
The unusual emerald eyes had widened and shone with tears; Sugarman’s coffee slopped. “Oh, Jesus!”
“Time to spill the beans about the Gentleman Walkers, sir.”
“And that’s a relief, Captain.” He drew a breath, reached out automatically for a stack of paper napkins and wiped up his spill. “The first one we knew about was Leonie-my dear, sweet Leonie! I found her when I went up to see if she felt like a walk to blow the cobwebs away. She was-oh, a terrible mess! Not cut up or anything, but bruised and soiled. He’d raped her three times, once real pervert stuff. I wanted to call you, but she wouldn’t let me, swore she’d deny the whole thing. Babbling about her family in France, the disgrace.” He ground his teeth. “Nothing I could say would persuade her to change her mind.”
“Did you believe Leonie was the first victim?”
“I did, but Mason Novak-he’s my best pal-said his girl, Shirley Constable, had behaved so like Leonie that he was having suspicions that had never occurred to him before-he thought Shirley had had a nervous breakdown over her work, even though she loved it. After Leonie, he was convinced she’d been raped, but he can’t even get into the same room with her, so-who knows?”
Carmine put his coffee down. “Mr. Sugarman, even if the women refused to co-operate, you should have brought your suspicions to the police, not organized a neighborhood watch.”
“l see that now, Captain, but at the time neither Mason nor I did. I put an ad in the
“Without further stimulus than the rape of Leonie Coustain, which I presume you didn’t mention? That sounds peculiar, sir.”
Sugarman laughed, a wry sound. “Vanity, Captain. We’d found a way to keep fit-walking. Most walkers give it up because of the loneliness, while we walk in trios, always the same three men-we vary the routes. Guys sorted themselves out into trios of like mind, if you know what I mean. And a man walks each second evening, not every single day. It’s enough to keep the waistline trim and the heart in good shape.”
“And no Gentleman Walker has ever encountered a man who might be a rapist?” Carmine asked.
“Definitely not. The closest we came were the peeping Toms.”
“You did a real service there, anyway. Peeping Toms who are never caught often become rapists later.” Carmine cleared his throat. “I need a list of your members, Mr. Sugarman.”
He rose from his chair at once. “Sure, I’ll get it. I have full details of every Gentleman Walker, it’s one of the club’s strictest conditions.”
Carmine conned the beautifully typed list in some awe. Names, ages, addresses, phone numbers, occupations, days rostered to walk: a painstaking and lucid timetable as well as a list. There were schoolteachers, an occasional physicist, chemists, tradesmen, medical doctors, dentists, plant physical workers, city clerks, technicians, biologists-146 names altogether, ranging in age from twenty-one to sixty-eight.
“You must be a very persuasive recruitment officer.”
Sugarman laughed, disclaiming. “No, I’m the logistics man, not the demagogue. You want to talk to Mason Novak. He’s the soul of the Gentleman Walkers, the one who keeps us inspired-and the one who took over from me as the ultimate authority.”
Carmine found him on the list. “Mason Novak, aged thirty-five, analytical chemist with Chubb. Burke Biology Tower, or Susskind Science Tower?”
“Susskind Science. He’s inorganic, he says.”
“Do you have a meeting venue?”
“Mason requisitions a small lecture theater in Susskind.”
“Um-today is Wednesday, so… Friday, six o’clock?”
“For what?” Mark Sugarman asked.
“Oh, come, Mr. Sugarman! A meeting between the Walkers and Holloman detectives. On Friday, September 27. Call the meeting and emphasize that every Gentleman Walker is to attend. Okay?”
“Certainly.”
“It won’t be difficult to assemble your troops. Listen to Mighty Mike’s breakfast program. I predict that all the Walkers will be agog to discover what’s happened.”
Funny, thought Carmine as his beloved Ford Fairlane headed for home that evening, how troubles never come singly. I have to turn Helen MacIntosh into a first-rate detective when I’m not even sure she’ll obey orders; I have Corey Marshall failing to make the grade as a lieutenant-who could ever have predicted that? Today I learned that our prettiest, most tranquil suburb, Carew, is harboring a particularly dangerous rapist. And my fantastic, six-foot- three wife has been defeated by a twenty-two-month-old child.
