On, Off

“Right, talk to me. I need to know certain things, and you are the only one I can ask.”

“Ask what?”

“About the Hug.”

She pulled a face, but accepted the cognac, which he took as acquiescence. “Very well, ask away.”

“I understand the Prof’s state of mind, also Dr. Finch’s, but why is Polonowski so edgy? I ask, Desdemona, because I want you to give me answers that don’t have to do with murder. If I don’t know why a Hugger acts suspiciously, I tend to think of murder, and maybe waste a lot of valuable time. I’d hoped that Francine would clear you all, but she hasn’t. This guy is as cunning as a sewer rat, so he had a way of being in two places at once. Give me the low-down on Polonowski.”

“Walt’s in love with his technician, Marian, but he’s also tied hand and foot to a marriage I think he regretted years ago,” she said, swirling the brandy in its balloon. “There are four children – they’re very Catholic, hence no contraception.”

“Loose not the stopper of thy wineskin until thou reachest Athens,” Carmine quoted.

“Well put!” she cried appreciatively. “I suppose poor Walt is one of those chaps whose wineskin has a mind of its own when he climbs into bed next to his wife’s wine cup. Her name’s Paola, and she’s a nice woman who’s turned into a shrew. Much younger than he, and blaming him for the loss of her youth and looks.”

“Is he having an out-and-out affair with Marian?”

“Yes, for months.”

“Where do they meet? At Major Minor’s some afternoons?” he asked, referring to the motel on Route 133 that did a brisk trade in illicit fornication.

“No. He has a cabin somewhere upstate.”

Shit, thought Carmine. The guy has a cabin we didn’t know about. How handy. “Do you know where it is?”

“Afraid not. He won’t even tell Paola.”

“Is the affair common knowledge?”

“No, they’re very discreet.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Because I found Marian in the fourth-floor toilet howling her eyes out. She thought she was pregnant. When I sympathized and advised her to have herself fitted with a diaphragm if she was hesitant about the Pill, the whole story tumbled out.”

“And was she pregnant?”

“No. False alarm.”

“Okay, let’s move on to Ponsonby. He’s got some weird art on his office walls, not to mention shrunken heads and devil masks. Torture, monsters swallowing their children whole, people screaming.”

Her laughter pealed out so infectiously that he felt warmed. “Oh, Carmine! That’s just Chuck! The art is simply one more facet of Chuck’s insufferable snobbishness. I feel sorry for him.”

“Why?”

“Hasn’t anyone told you that he has a blind sister?”

“I do my homework, Desdemona, so I do know that. I take it she’s the reason why he stayed in Holloman. But why do you feel sorry for him? Her, yes.”

“Because he’s built his entire life around her. Never married, no close relatives, though they’ve known the Smiths since childhood. There are just the two of them in a pre-Revolutionary house on Ponsonby Lane. Once they owned all the land for a mile around, but Claire’s education was expensive, so was Chuck’s, and I gather they were hard up in their parents’ day. They’ve certainly sold all the land off. Chuck adores surrealist art and classical music. Claire can’t see the art, but she’s a music fan too. They’re both gourmets and wine buffs. I suppose I feel sorry for him because when he speaks of their life together, he waxes rhapsodical, which is – well, strange. She’s his sister, not his wife, though some of the crueler members of the staff do joke about them. I think that in his heart of hearts Chuck must resent at least some aspects of being tied to Claire, but he’s far too loyal to admit that, even to himself. He certainly can’t be the Monster, he doesn’t have the time or the liberty.”

“I just found the artwork weird,” he said apologetically.

“I like the artwork. Either you do, or you don’t.”

“Okay, moving on again. Sonia Liebman.”

“A very nice woman, very good at her job. She’s married to an undertaker, Benjamin Liebman. Their one chick is at a college near Tucson, doing pre-med. Wants to be a general surgeon.”

An undertaker. Shit, I didn’t do enough homework. “Does Benjamin work for someone, or is he retired?”

“Good heavens, no! He has his own establishment somewhere near Bridgeport.” Desdemona closed her eyes, screwed them up. “Um – the Comfort Funeral Home, I think.”

Double shit. An ideal place for a killer into dissection. I’ll have to pay the Comfort Funeral Home a visit tomorrow.

“Satsuma and Chandra?”

“Looking for jobs elsewhere. Rumor hath it that Nur Chandra has already had an offer from Harvard, anxious to even the Nobel Prize score. Hideki is still not sure. His decision somehow rests on the harmonies in his garden.”

Carmine sighed. “Who’s your pick, Desdemona?”

She blinked. “No one at the Hug, I say that with truth. I’ve been there for five years, which makes me a latecomer. Most of the researchers are a bit bonkers in one way or another, but that goes with the territory. They’re so – harmless. Dr. Finch talks to his cats as if they could talk back, Dr. Chandra treats his macaques like Indian royalty – even Dr. Ponsonby, who’s less fond of his rats than the others, shows interest in their doings. None of the researchers is psychotic, I’d swear to that.”

“Ponsonby isn’t fond of his rats?”

“Carmine, truly! Dr. Ponsonby plain doesn’t like rats! A lot of people don’t like rats, including me. Most researchers get used to them and manage to develop great affection for them, but not all. Marvin will pick up a rat with his bare hand to give it a shot in the tummy, and it will kiss him with its whiskers for the attention. Whereas Dr. Ponsonby uses a furnace glove if he can’t get out of picking up a rat. Their incisors can go straight through a thinner glove – well, they can gnaw through concrete!”

“You are not helping, Desdemona.”

Tiny sharp taps on the window brought Desdemona to her feet. “Bugger, sleet! Just ducky for driving. Take me home, Carmine.”

And that, he thought with an inner sigh, is the end of any trying to hold her hand again. It’s not that she turns me on, it’s more that somewhere underneath all that competent independence is a darned nice woman struggling to get out.

Chapter 12

Thursday, December 16th, 1965

Since it hadn’t snowed before Thanksgiving and the first half of December had been no colder than usual, most Connecticut people thought Christmas might be green. Then it snowed heavily the night before Carmine was due to go to New York City to see the Parsons. As he loathed trains and was not about to make his journey jammed in a railroad car that stank of wet wool, bad breath and cigarettes, Carmine set out early in the Ford to find I-95 down from three to two lanes, but negotiable. Once he hit Manhattan only the avenues had been ploughed, chiefly because no one could ever get enough cars off the streets to plough. Where he was going to park the Ford he had no idea as he inched down Park Avenue until he could turn up Madison, but Roger Parson Junior had thought of it. When he stopped outside a building that was neither the largest nor the smallest on that block, a uniformed doorman rushed out to take the keys and shove them at a minion. He himself conducted Carmine into a purply princely lobby of Lovanto marble, past the bank of elevators to a single one at its end. The executive elevator: a lock on its controls and a decor fit for executives.

Roger Parson Junior met him when its doors opened on the forty-third floor, Richard Spaight at his shoulder but