Naked Cruelty

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 to SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30 1968 CHAPTER VI

He hadn’t struck a week early after all; when push came to shove, he just hadn’t felt like it. What was the point in moving up to murder if simultaneously he made life easier for himself? The big, muscular cop Carmine Delmonico was a hazard he knew he was capable of beating, but the victory must be worthy of Catherine dos Santos, she of the prison bars and multiple locks.

She had told him the story as they huddled together on Mark Sugarman’s couch, giggling.

“The realtor told me,” she confided, violet-blue eyes shining. “Such a joke! Simons built the apartments and reserved mine for himself. He hoarded money, you see. Can you imagine it? No one tried to rob him because no one knew he hoarded money, so when he died, the bars and bolts became his executioners. The firemen took hours to break in. And there he was, on his bed, surrounded by stacks of bank notes, swollen up-disgusting!”

“You don’t mind living with that history?” he asked, smiling.

“Heavens, no. I’m safe, that’s the main thing.”

One by one he had picked the necessary details out of her; when the party broke up he saw her to her car like the gentleman he was, lightly kissed her hand, and never bothered to see her again in case she remembered what they had talked about. Had she cried for him? Sat by her phone hoping that he’d call? If she had, a fruitless wait. In those days he had merely been making up his list, hadn’t even started raping in the clumsy, amateurish way he’d tackled Shirley Constable. Well, a man had to learn by experience, didn’t he? And the list had to be complete, so far back in the past that none of the women would remember.

When Didus ineptus parked his Chevy on Persimmon Street in its usual spot on election day, Tuesday, November 5, his mind was filled with his own brilliance. No coincidence that he had begun his career on a leap year and a presidential election year: luck favored the bold, and he’d sensed what a disastrous year 1968 would be.

He always parked there, yes; he had been doing so for long enough now for his fellow Persimmon Street parkers to recognize his car. The moment he got out, he couldn’t help but see the cops. They were everywhere: cruising in squad cars, strolling the sidewalks in pairs, holsters open, cuffs easy to get at. As he turned in the direction of Cedar Street he had a sudden impulse to abandon his foray, then grew angry at his own cowardice. Plan A was clearly impossible, but Plan B was just as good. He limped down Persimmon Street dragging his right leg, and in the instant when no cops were visible he leaped off the sidewalk into Plan B’s bushes, which flourished in fits and starts right along the back fences of the blocks facing Cedar Street. The sun was lowering, a month and more past the equinox now, and the shadows at ground level were heavy, darkly dappled.

His blood was pumping hard; the thrill of the chase had invaded him, and he knew how and where he was going better than these uniformed idiots could imagine. In a gap, he lay full length and walked it on his elbows, his combat camouflage ideal, until the next profusion of low-slung leaves permitted him to rise to a squat, peer toward Cedar Street or the back of a building. Catherine’s apartment block lay nearly 300 yards from Persimmon Street, but the worst of it was that the Hochners were beyond her, closer to Cranberry Street. His shelter was thickest where he could not use it, with Plan A discarded.

Mountain laurels grew along the back fence of Catherine’s block-good, sturdy evergreen bushes that no one tended. And there, right opposite him, was Catherine’s door at last! He put on his ski mask just in case, eased his back with its load of knapsack, and pulled the three keys from his pocket. The Hochners, he saw, had finished their iced tea and were going inside, and the cops weren’t smart enough to extend their patrolling off the street sidewalks. He would have to trust to his luck that while he ran from the bushes to the awninged back door, no one upstairs was gazing into the backyard.

The sun plunged down into the foliage of an old oak growing behind the Hochners, and with its going the light decreased; the Dodo checked using his peripheral vision, saw nothing, and ran for Catherine’s door. The keys went in and turned in the same order as hers; he felt the last lock relax and did what she did, leaned his shoulder heavily against the door and pushed it open.

AAA-OOO-GAA!

WOW-WOW-WOW-WOW-WOW!

AAA-OOO-GAA!

The world erupted into noise. Deafened, stunned, the Dodo stood for perhaps three seconds leaning against the door, then leaped for the bushes alongside the Hochners and went to earth, trembling, eyes blinded by sweat, those abominable alarms still shrieking and wailing in his ears. What was it? What hadn’t he done? The wretched woman had tricked him! He, Didus ineptus, had fallen for a trick!

Plan C. He had to get away from here before the area swarmed with cops like flies on carrion. The knapsack was shrugged off, the ski mask, the jacket and the pants. From the exterior of the knapsack he pulled a series of aluminum tubes, screwed them together, and worked to make sure that his ordinary slacks were well down over his socks, not tucked in anywhere. Then, as the noises continued, he wormed his way around the back of the Hochners, who had emerged and were standing at Catherine’s door. Like a snake he slithered across the exposed ground bordering their back deck before burying himself in their bushes again. Then, down their far boundary to Cedar Street, where he crouched and watched the cops thunder by until, in a temporary lull, he appeared on the sidewalk supported by his crutch, limping along. The next bunch of cops rounded the corner from Cranberry Street, split up to pass him on both sides, and left him to make his way to Persimmon Street and his car.

He was stopped twice, asked if he had seen anyone; he looked bewildered, said no, and was allowed on his way. The crutch was genuine, he was dressed in yellow checkered slacks and a red jacket, and he seemed a little simple. He never came under any suspicion, even from a stray squad car minutes later.

The bitch! The fucking bitch! How had she tricked him?

***

Carmine gazed about in amazement. No one, looking at the fortress from its outside, could ever have believed how beautiful Catherine dos Santos’s apartment was. None of the bars showed; instead, there were ceiling-to-floor falls of frail silk curtains that shaded from palest green gradually through to the dark green of a pine forest, then began to fade to pale again, all around the room, a gradual color waxing and waning. The carpet was dark green, the ceiling palest green. Chairs, tables, occasional furniture were carved mahogany upholstered in vivid peacocks.

“I rarely spend time in the living room,” said Catherine. She had shut off the alarms; no one else could. “He must have watched me enter, but of course he couldn’t see me deactivate my alarms-I press a section of the door jamb and paint it again when it wears.” She led them farther into her artificially lit retreat. “Between the bars and the four bedrooms, I was lucky to find this place. In here I paint,” she said, showing them a studio with a half finished oil of dried flowers on the easel.

“In here I sew and embroider,” showing them a second room.

Shades of Desdemona! thought Carmine, staring at a priest’s chasuble on a dummy. Is that what all spinsters do?

“And in here I illuminate manuscripts,” Catherine said. “I confess it’s my greatest pleasure. You’d be surprised, Captain, at how many institutions and people want something illuminated.”

“So you sell your work?”

“Oh, yes. It’s my hedge against an indigent old age.”

“Do you ever go to parties, Miss dos Santos?” Helen asked as they returned to the living room.

“Only Mark Sugarman’s. The last one was four months ago.”

“Did you meet anyone memorable at a Sugarman party?”

She concentrated, then nodded. “Yes, I did. A very nice man! We had a long, pleasant conversation, but he