“Shit, triple shit!” said Helen.
“Time to go, dear.” Delia turned to Mark and held out her hand, smiling. “Thank you so much for your patience, Mark. Um-may we take your drawings?”
“Oh, burn them!” Helen snarled, and swept out.
“She’s been spoiled,” said Mark, taking Delia’s briefcase and staggering. “Man, this weighs a ton! Funny,” he said as they waited for an elevator, “she got markedly nicer for a few weeks after she joined the Holloman PD. I’d begun to think that she had the makings of a wonderful woman.”
“She still does.” Delia got in, Mark following. “I put her relapse down to disappointment at not shining as brightly as the sun at the end of some time period she’d set herself. She didn’t think her junior status would last. She’s been with us for ten weeks now, which I imagine is the length of her tether.”
Mark loaded the briefcase into the Lamborghini’s trunk, and watched the car roar away.
“Poor Helen!” he said, then went back inside Talisman Towers.
Mason Novak was walking out. “Just the man I came around to see! How about lunch?”
“As head of two ‘Who Is The Handsomest?’ polls, Mason, how could a mere eleventh on the list turn you down?”
“Huh?”
“Wait while I get a jacket, and I’ll tell you over lunch. It makes a marvelous story. Where are we going?”
“Up-market, or down?”
“Sea Foam, and I’ll pick up the check,” Mark said. “When the story’s as good as mine, we don’t need eavesdroppers.”
Mason listened, entranced, then shouted with laughter. “My God! I don’t know whether to shiver with amusement or fear.”
“Neither,” said Mark loyally.
“I think a lot depends on whether Helen MacIntosh likes me, don’t you?”
“She likes you fine, but it’s Kurt she has her eye on.”
“Poor Kurt!” Mason said, real pity in his voice. “I’d hate to head any Helen MacIntosh list, from handsome to husband. Do you think Kurt fills both roles?”
“I have no idea, and you know what?”
“What?”
“I’m not going to ask.”
I hate this year! thought Carmine as he trudged up the stairs to his office. Between Fernando Vasquez, M.M., John Silvestri and my own limitations, I haven’t managed to get out into the field nearly as much as I want to. Delia and Nick can manage fine, but that’s no consolation. I keep getting flashes of insight that go nowhere, one of my lieutenants is in a state of covert rebellion, and I have a rapist-murderer uncaught after ten months. Not to mention a glass teddy bear that’s a museum piece and a bank robber cum vandal who seems to have disappeared in a puff of smoke. My wife’s moving away from me into an ideal world where she can see her sons grow up untainted by violence, I haven’t set eyes on my pre-med daughter since she started at Paracelsus, and Myron isn’t visiting.
“What have I done wrong?” he asked Patrick O’Donnell later.
The blue eyes twinkled. “Nothing, cuz, nothing! You’ve hit a patch of doldrums, is all. Until the wind fills your sails again, you just have to sit becalmed.”
“I wouldn’t mind, except that I’m missing something, Patsy. Every time I think I’ve sunk my teeth into the Dodo, a distraction intrudes-Vasquez with some new scheme, or John in need of yet another report, or, or, or!” Carmine said passionately.
“I know the feeling. Now that I’m fifty-seven, John wants to know whether I’m going for retirement at sixty or sixty-five-how the hell do I know yet? A lot depends on Ness, whether she retires at sixty. We’re the same age, our kids are grown and off our hands-work fills our lives, damn it!”
Carmine knew that his cousin’s decision rested ultimately on whether he felt the empire he had built was built on solid foundations. When he had begun as Medical Examiner, forensics were virtually non-existent; now it occupied more floor space and staff than necrology, and more of his time too. And it kept expanding as new discoveries were made. Had Patsy prepared for them sufficiently? Would sixty-five be better?
“How’s Desdemona?” Patrick asked.
“Recovering from the depression, but now she’s got a new bogey-sons and guns,” Carmine said.
“Oh, that one! Maybe you should send her to talk to Ness. Even primary school has its share of gun worries, but they have to be put into perspective. There’s a huge cultural gap too.”
“Tell me something I don’t know! But actually it’s not Desdemona worrying me as much as my detectives. When a man eats his gun, it’s the culmination of a whole slew of problems that ought never to have been allowed get that far. Or that big. Any fool can see that, yet Corey refuses to-and he’s no fool! I can’t trust him to see what’s under his nose in foot-high letters.”
Patrick opened a filing cabinet drawer and removed a full bottle. 200ml beakers made great glasses, there was a carboy of distilled water, and every laboratory had an ice machine.
“The sun’s been over the yard arm for hours, and John does not rule here. You’ve been in that uniform for days, so don’t refuse me.” He put a clinking beaker in Carmine’s hand.
“I have no intention of refusing. Cheers!”
“Cheers! The trouble with Corey, cuz, is that the canker eating at him you can’t remove-Maureen the snake, Maureen the scorpion. I hear he was reprimanded.”
“Rumor does not lie. Unfortunately Maureen was planning on a move to police captain some place other than Holloman. Well, the reprimand kills any hope of that, which is good for Corey.”
“I agree. He couldn’t thrive out of his home town. Is he cooking any more reprimands?”
“It depends whose side you want to take in his little team war. Buzz Genovese says there are still weapons at Taft High, but Corey is adamant there aren’t. I gave Corey Nick Jefferson and Delia, but he wouldn’t use them until I told him in person. He thinks I’ve planted them as spies.”
“Jesus, he’s paranoid! As if you’d ever do that. You’re quite capable of doing your own dirty work.” Patrick put his beaker down. “Corey has to go, Carmine, you realize that. He’s running a personal agenda and sees you as his enemy.”
“I know, but I haven’t worked out how to do it. Nor, more importantly has the Commissioner. We won’t lose another man by a cop suicide, but there are other ways. Corey’s not capable of looking after his men properly.”
“Have you talked to John about it?”
“Only briefly.”
“Time to sit down with John and get it all out in the open, cuz. If anyone has a solution, it will be John Silvestri.”
“I can’t be sure how he’ll react, Patsy. He might jump too brutally. He’s capable of great mercy and sympathy, but also of putting a man’s head on the chopping block.”
“When he decapitates, the circumstances are different. Corey is a seventeen-year veteran who’s spent his whole cop career in the Holloman PD. The mercy and sympathy will be there. He knows dear sweet Maureen, just like the rest of us. Nasty bitch!”
“I guess you’re right.” Carmine drained his beaker and stood. “Thanks, Patsy. I’ll lay everything out for John scrupulously.”
On his way across the building, Carmine looked at his watch. Six o’clock. Too late for Desdemona to salvage her dinner, but early enough to put parts of it in the refrigerator. He disliked destroying her work, but he had a job to do that couldn’t wait.
She behaved, as always, like the perfect policeman’s wife. “Never mind, my love,” she said over the phone, “it was only a beef roast. Prunella and I will have some tonight, and the rest can go into a shepherd’s pie tomorrow. What flavor would you like the minced beef to have? Curry? Italian? Plain old Limey? I’d top a curry or an Italian one
