Giselle and Frank Nugent had maneuvered the purse between them so it was wedged where Nugent’s fingers could worry it open. Giselle’s half-numb hands started digging around inside, trying to identify her lighter by feel alone. She found it surprisingly difficult because her fingers had almost no feeling in them.
“Who did you tell about what you found out?”
“Nobody.” Danny’s voice was weak, his face gray; he was sweating. “I was going to call Kiely from here, but...”
When he fell silent, Paris turned to Heslip.
“We figured you were just dumb enough to make a good fall guy for Kiely, but you were even dumber; you set yourself up for Petrock by staging a fight with him on the same night we killed him. When the cops find you, they’ll close out both murders.”
No response, so he switched to Ballard.
“How much have you found out, and who have you told?”
Ballard was silent also. If Bart could take it, he could. Paris turned to Sebastian with an exasperated look.
“Which of them will you most enjoy killing first?”
In the kitchen at the Officers Club, Eddie Graff said, “I’ll serve the head table.”
Nobody demurred. Bernardine had already shown herself to be a shrieker if things weren’t exactly right, and besides, all was confusion; the magnificent windtorte was just being rolled toward the dining room under the pastry chef’s excited directions. Dieter Konrad was nowhere around.
Graff slipped the grenade from the cummerbund, put the ring around his thumb, and immersed the grenade in a huge tureen of green-turtle soup. His thumb gripping the inside edge of the big ceramic oval so only the ring was visible, he picked up the tureen and followed the windtorte through the service door.
Ballard, on his knees with his hands still interlaced behind his head, had been forced downward by the muzzle of the sawed-off shotgun against the back of his neck until the side of his face was pressed against the floor.
“Now, Mr. Paris?” asked Sebastian in a voice thick with an excitement almost sexual.
Now that the moment had come, Larry Ballard felt a strange calmness. Since it was the last thing he was going to get to do, he wanted to wipe the sneer off Paris’s face.
“You don’t get it, do you, Paris? All those sub-rosa plans and contracts and papers you’ve been so worried about — they’re all null and void anyway.”
Paris had lost his lazy pose. He was standing over Larry. “Go into that a little more, Ballard, or I’ll have Burnett crush your testicles with his gun butt.”
Larry was winging it. “We’re private detectives with a big outfit hired by Kiely to find out what was going on. The retainer he paid was so hefty that the firm’s assignment didn’t end with his death. It won’t end with ours, either.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Ask Sebastian if there wasn’t a Chicano said he was my friend asking questions at the union the same day I was.”
By Sebastian’s sudden tense silence, Ballard knew he had scored. He kept talking, desperately...
“Stop talking and light the goddamned lighter,” said Giselle hoarsely. She couldn’t do it herself. Her hands were too numb. She had just enough feeling to hold it upright on the floor between them. Nugent did nothing. Jesus. “Feel the little cog?” she asked in her most rational voice. “Just flick it with your thumb.”
Finally, he did. She heard it rasp. But — nothing. He did it again. Again, nothing happened. Flint gone? Out of butane? Again. Nothing. Again.
Giselle felt sudden heat scorching the backs of her hands. She braced herself for Nugent’s screams, his frenzied attempts to twist away from the pain. But after an initial violent jerk he was silent. Fainted, maybe?
The pain was searing, the smell of scorched flesh sickening. Was it G. Gordon Liddy who had held his arm over a lighted candle every night as a young man to discipline himself?
She felt the ropes part. Her hands were free! Frank Nugent was suddenly crying and babbling behind her, but—
The light went on at the foot of the companionway.
No! Giselle cried inside herself. Not now! Not yet! Her hands were free but they were still tied together, her ankles were still tied. She was still helpless.
“Oh my God!” exclaimed Inga Rochemont’s voice.
The guests were standing, craning, commenting as the Viennese windtorte was wheeled into the exact center of the dining room, right next to Bernardine’s table. Antoine, beaming, removed the lid of baked meringue to show the treasures within the torte. There were ooohs and ahhhs of appreciation.
Dieter burst through the service door howling. “You cannot do this! The Officers Club view is famous! You have put that... that... monstrosity right in front of...”
Antoine carefully replaced the lid before rushing him. White-clad chefs and sous-chefs got between the two men, managed to get them back through the service door and into the kitchen.
Muffled shouts, cries, the clatter of thrown pots came through the closed service door — but the Viennese windtorte remained where it was. Shamefaced waiters hurriedly began serving big oval white ceramic tureens full of green-turtle soup to each table. Some degree of normalcy was returning.
“Where did your wife disappear to?” demanded Bernardine testily. The party was not going to her liking at all. First, that upsetting fuss over the dessert; then Paul acting oddly; and finally, Ken had twice removed her hand from his knee, the second time with unmistakable intent to discourage.
“She probably went to the ladies’ room, mother,” said Paul in a remarkably soothing voice; but he made “mother” lowercase.
“And where is Ms. Marc?”
Where indeed? And Ken was sure Inga wasn’t in the ladies’ room, either. Just the three of them, isolated at this table.
So he kept looking around the room, alert for danger. That hassle over the big cake thing could have been a cover for some attack on Paul, and without Giselle here all the security worries fell on him. But everything looked okay.
His busy eyes took in the gray-haired waiter approaching their table with his tureen, slid away, dismissing him as he began filling the soup bowl at Inga’s empty place.
But wait a minute! The water was sweating. Tinted aviator glasses hid his eyes. Why? Mustache and grayed hair without a strand out of place in the midst of all his running and scurrying? High heels on his shoes — elevators that added three inches to his height. The ring glinting on his thumb...
On his thumb? Hey, Ken had seen that sort of ring before.
He shoved back his chair and sprang to his feet as Eddie Graff overturned the soup tureen in Paul’s lap and pulled the pin. The live grenade fell on the floor and bounced around.
“Hngrenaydwe!” yelled Ken.
Eddie Graff was already lost among a dozen other men dressed exactly like him.
Ken scooped up the grenade like a shortstop fielding a one-hopper between second and third, while, as if they had rehearsed it, a soup-stained Paul Rochemont sprang forward to jerk the lid off the windtorte. Ken flipped the grenade underhand like he was making a double play at second. The grenade caromed off the lid and into the magnificent windtorte. The strawberry whipped cream creme-glace shuddered in all its perfection as the deadly oval disappeared into its rosy depths.
The grenade exploded. Perfect pale meringue shell, pink whipped cream, plump strawberry segments were blown all over everybody. Bernardine, Paul, and Ken were covered from head to foot with the biggest blast of harmless sweets, because they were closest to the windtorte.