Too Many Murders

“That’s true, Delia, I’m the first one to admit it.”

“Well-ah-would you mind if I followed a hunch of my own? That is the right word, isn’t it?”

“For a gut feeling, yes. Sit down, Delia, please! I can’t bear watching a woman stand while I’m on my butt.”

She sat, pink with pleasure. “You see, most of these deaths have to be connected, don’t they? You’ve always felt that, but nothing has come to light to support it. What I’m wondering is, where could they all have been present at one and the same time? The only answer, I believe, is at either a public meeting or a function of some sort. You know what I mean-you sit in a row waiting ages for the curtain to rise or whatever, and you start talking to those around you. Or you sit at a table with strangers and strive to chum up-if you don’t, you have an awful evening. Most people are naturally gregarious, so they achieve this end. You do see what I mean, don’t you?”

“I love the English habit of ending every sentence with a question,” said Carmine, smiling. “But yes, Delia, I do see.”

“Then if I may, I’d like to use my spare time to find out how many public meetings and functions have been held within the city of Holloman itself over the past six months.”

“Just six months?”

“Oh, I think so. More time than that, and I believe the murderer’s crisis would not have occurred at all. Something happened that didn’t present as a threat at the time, but by the third of April, it did. If I can find an affair which all of our dead people attended, then we have one side of the equation.”

“Delia, it’s a huge undertaking,” Carmine said. “Sooner or later it might have had to be done anyway, but I was saving it for Corey and Abe and total investigative inertia.”

“I am aware of that, and I do not pretend to claim it as my own idea,” she said with dignity.

“Oh, Delia, don’t go all huffy on me!” he said, looking hangdog. “I didn’t mean to steal your thunder, honest!”

She softened at once. “Well, I know that, Carmine dear. But may I do it?”

He shook his head, defeated. “You won’t listen when I warn you. What else can I say except, go to it?”

She hopped up, beaming. “Oh, thank you, thank you! I have a protocol worked out,” she chattered on her way to the door. “I intend to concentrate on the affairs themselves first. Then, if I find one or more that fits, I’ll go to phase two.”

“Goodbye, Delia!”

A glance up at the railroad clock told him it was almost noon. He picked up the phone, and after several false starts was finally connected to Special Agent Ted Kelly of the FBI.

“Eaten yet?” Carmine demanded.

“No.”

“See you in Malvolio’s in a quarter of an hour.”

Though Kelly had to drive and find parking in the County Services underground facility, he was sitting defending a booth when Carmine walked in.

“You’d swear they knew who I was,” he said as Carmine slid in opposite him, “yet there’s not one cop in here I’ve ever set eyes on.”

Carmine grinned. “They can smell you, Ted. No, seriously, what do you expect in a place the size of Holloman? The whole department knows there’s a giant from the FBI in town.” He consulted the menu as if he didn’t already know what he was having. “A Luigi Special salad with Thousand Island dressing. Then I don’t need to waste space on vegetables tonight.”

Merele the waitress had filled their coffee mugs and stood poised. Kelly ordered a hot roast beef sandwich, then leaned back with a sigh. “You were right about Malvolio’s,” he said. “It’s the best thing about this fucking awful town.”

Kelly spoke sincerely, seriously. Carmine’s anger stirred at such rudeness. Sit on it, Carmine, don’t say a word! “How’s the search for the elusive Ulysses going?”

“Nowhere. Tell me about Joshua Butler.”

Carmine looked surprised. “I sent you my report, Ted, but if you want it verbally, okay. He raped and murdered Bianca Tolano, then chewed a cyanide capsule rather than be taken in for it. The crime lacked spontaneity-by which I mean that Butler followed a rape out of a textbook to the letter.”

The FBI man gave a loud Bronx cheer. “Don’t be stupid, Delmonico! I want to know the other details.” He leered. “A little bird told me that he had peanuts for balls.”

“Which little bird?” Carmine asked, looking at Kelly through a thick red haze.

“You don’t need to know,” Kelly said smugly.

“Don’t fuck with me, you FBI cunt!”

Jaw dropped, the FBI man stared at Carmine incredulously. Then his outrage conquered his amazement and he stiffened in his seat. “Them’s fightin’ words,” he said, not joking.

“Then let’s step outside.”

The diner had grown absolutely quiet. Luigi flicked his fingers at Merele and Minnie, who scuttled behind the counter, and thirty assorted cops looked enthralled.

“You mean it? You actually mean it?”

“I’m fed up with being pissed on by a Fed!” Temper roaring in his ears, Carmine snarled. “Let’s step outside.”

“You gotta take that back! We fight, there’ll be rumbles from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine!”

“You’re still being clever, you big-city, know-it-all cunt! You piss on my town, you piss on my department-Eat shit!”

“We step outside,” Kelly said, scrambling to his feet.

It was very brief. The two men squared off, fists clenched, and Kelly swung a haymaker that didn’t connect. The next thing, he was sitting on the ground wondering if he’d ever be able to breathe again.

All he could see when he looked up were cops’ faces in Malvolio’s windows, and Carmine’s hand reaching down.

“I never so much as saw that coming,” he said after he got his breath back-a painful business. “But I refuse to be called a cunt. Forget lunch!”

“Refuse to eat with me after I put your ass on the ground and the rumbles will turn into real tremors,” Carmine said, his mood rejoicing. “It’s high time guys like you realized that you can’t shit on the locals.”

They walked inside and sat down again.

“Thanks for doing me no visible damage,” Kelly said sourly.

“Oh, I couldn’t reach your face, so it had to be your bread basket,” Carmine said, still enjoying the sweet victory. “Now who told you about Joshua Butler’s testicular endowments?”

“Lancelot Sterling, the head of Butler’s section.”

“What a lovely boss! Remind me not to apply to Cornucopia for a job. Why wasn’t I supposed to know that?”

“No reason, honest! I was-I was just being smart. But I never thought I’d hear you sticking up for a piece of shit like Joshua Butler.”

It was Carmine’s turn to display incredulity. “Jesus, Mr. Kelly, you are thick! It’s true that I abominate the kind of conduct in law enforcement that elevates gratuitous gossip to the status of need-to-know information, but I didn’t deck you on behalf of Joshua Butler. I did it for me and, man, it felt good! A kind of one-man Holloman Tea Party.”

But that Kelly couldn’t believe. In fact, Carmine wondered if he knew even now what the fight had really been about.

“You’re just evading the issue,” he said. “You stuck up for Joshua Butler, Delmonico.”

“If that’s going to be your written reason when you make your report to J. Edgar or whoever, you’ll probably avoid a rap on the knuckles, but luckily for me, my word is good enough for my boss.” Carmine pushed away his empty bowl. “That was one fine salad.

Goodness gracious me, Mr. Kelly, you’ve hardly eaten a thing! Tummy sore, huh?”

“You’re a sanctimonious prick!” the FBI man snarled.

Carmine laughed. “Since I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, can I have the FBI’s file on Erica Davenport?”