Naked Cruelty

I don’t think so,” she said. “I really don’t, Carmine. After all, you stand for law and order.”

He crossed to her chair and squeezed himself in it beside her, one arm around her shoulders. “Yet twice you’ve had to get yourself out of danger,” he said, throat tight. “Lovely lady, that’s a part of the law and order. We’ve been married now for nearly three years, and I can’t live without you. Every time you feel blue, remember that.”

“That’s the trouble,” she said. “I do.”

Sitting up, he turned her head so that he could see into her face. “Does that mean you’ve thought about leaving me?”

“No, of course not, silly! More that I worry about you in your job, I think. You’re right, this is a wild place. It’s- it’s gun-happy! You even had to teach me to shoot, remember?”

“That was common sense, Desdemona, nothing else. The odds are infinitesimally small, yes, but I’d rather be sure than sorry.”

“I won’t be able to deflect Julian from guns for much longer, will I?” She sounded desolate.

“Not when he plays with Ceruttis and Balduccis, I’m afraid. But you can’t forbid him to play with his peers either. That would isolate him. And you can’t tell me that British kids don’t play with toy guns. Sure they do! Violence is entrenched.”

“Yes, but how many kids find a gunman in their backyard?”

“That’s unfair. Neither American nor British kids.”

“Unless their father is an American cop.”

“Not even then. It was a simple quirk of fate.”

She got up suddenly and went into the kitchen; Carmine didn’t make the mistake of following her to pick at her cringing flesh. Sweet Jesus, don’t let a second wife desert me because of my job!

***

When all the election results of that very close victory were in, Richard Nixon was President and Hubert Humphrey the also-ran. “It’s Humphrey’s name,” moaned Nick, a fanatical Democrat. “Hubert! The moral of the story is not, don’t christen him that because he won’t get the Democrat nomination, it’s really because he won’t get elected when his rival’s got a name like Richard.”

“At least Connecticut voted Democrat,” said Delia.

“And all that’s in the past,” said Carmine. “More to our purpose is the fact that the Dodo investigation has foundered.”

It hadn’t seemed possible that the new slant on the Dodo’s appearance would go nowhere, but that was exactly where it went.

“We have nowhere to go and no place left to look,” he said to his assembled team on Monday, November 11. “It’s a purely local Carew affair, in that nothing has ever come to light about it outside of Carew. The Dodo, the Gentleman Walkers and the victims are all based in Carew. His last chosen date was the nation’s election day, which on the surface looks ideal, and he thought so too. His failure leaves us confounded-how is he going to adjust his timetable? His pattern to date has been at three-week intervals, but will he wait three weeks, bringing him to November 26, or go down to two weeks-November 19-or even one week-tomorrow? If it’s tomorrow, we’re shit out of luck, folks. Captain Vasquez wouldn’t be amenable to saturating Carew with cops so quickly after a Dodo failure, and I’m not sure we should ask him for that on any date, even the twenty-sixth. We can definitely assume that this guy has a list of victims that isn’t going to run out anytime soon, and, from what happened on election day, we might be excused for assuming that he has a list of plans as long as his victims. If we were going to catch him by saturating the area with cops, we would have succeeded then. His contingency plan was better than ours. He escaped. We got egg on our faces.”

“Maybe what we should be considering is his needing to blow off steam?” Nick asked.

“Yes, that’s an element,” Carmine said when no one else replied. “Not getting as far as first base with Catherine should cause a huge sense of frustration. But I think the Dodo is too cold-blooded for that kind of reaction. I read him as more likely to retreat into his shell and not try anything for months. Lull us into believing that he’s moved on to an equivalent of Carew in another state.”

“No, Carmine, he won’t do that,” Nick said.

“Why?”

“Because Carew is home. He’s been living in Carew for a long time. If she’s been in Carew for longer than a few weeks, he knows every Carew woman’s face. Not that I think any woman who hasn’t attended a Sugarman party is in danger. That’s where he picks them. But he won’t retreat into his shell-Carew is his shell. The drive is too strong for months of inertia. He’ll go for another victim, probably in three weeks-the twenty- sixth.”

“Could we set him up with a victim?” Helen asked. “I live in Carew, and I’m willing to be bait.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Carmine said, “but the Dodo works exclusively off his own list. We’ve been here before, remember?”

“How about trying to find his victims instead of him?” Delia asked. “We have to try, Carmine!”

“The pool is too big, it just is. He likes professional women who live decent but not celibate lives,” said Nick when Carmine didn’t answer. “Ethnic background, religion, physical type are all different, Delia. The pool’s too big.”

“Okay, the Dodo goes on a back burner,” Carmine said. “From what Corey says, the Black Brigade is restive, and the Taft High weapons cache is a bone of contention between him and Buzz. He says there are no weapons left at the school, Buzz thinks there might be. Emphasis: might be. Abe and his team are going on general duty. Nick and Delia, you’re going to Corey. The most important item to ferret out is the weapons cache-does it or does it not exist?”

“Corey has good connections with the Black Brigaders,” said Nick. “What makes Buzz disagree?”

“It seems to depend on whether or not there’s a splinter of the Black Brigade operating at Taft High,” Carmine said. “A sub-group could exist without the parent group’s full knowledge, given Mohammed’s secretiveness. A couple of years ago he was militant, but he’s never inclined toward violence for the sake of violence. I do know that some Black Brigaders get irritable at what they see as Mohammed’s sloth, or even timidity. When the confrontation over Wesley le Clerc never got off the ground, Mohammed kind of retreated. That’s why I’d be surprised if there isn’t a splinter group forming.”

“You think it’s at the school?” Delia asked, grimacing.

“I don’t know. Help Corey and Buzz find out.”

He was wearing his navy suit trousers; out of his cupboard came his silver-braided dress jacket. “I have to go, and I won’t be back today,” he said.

“What do you want me to do, sir?” Helen asked.

“Go back over the rape victims, right back to Shirley, see if you can find something new or any points in common we’ve overlooked.” Jacket on, he ran a finger around its high neck.“How I hate this neck! All you can do, Helen, is read. If you get bored, read one of your textbooks.” He left his office.

“He looks so splendid in his dress uniform-my heart leaps,” said Delia, sighing.

“Thanks a million!” Corey said with a snarl when Carmine walked in two days later.

“Excuse me?”

Corey waved a sheet of paper back and forth under Carmine’s nose. “This! You betrayed me. I thought you agreed to keep the Form 1313 business between ourselves?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Carmine asked, surprised.

“When we talked a few days ago, I thought we agreed that you’d brought up 1313 of your own volition, as a way of finding out how I felt about Morty. And I told you! He displayed no evidence of depression or suicidal tendencies, which is why I refused to submit the form. After all, it’s designed so that a man’s senior in the chain of command can’t plot against him-two signatures, two statements!”

“Until you tell me, Corey, I don’t know where you’re going.”

The paper flapped again. “I wish I could say this is a letter of commendation,” Corey said, shaking in rage, “but it’s not. It’s a written reprimand!” His voice took on the tones of Judge Thwaites passing sentence on someone he