Carmine didn’t stay a moment longer than he had to. Their minister is a greater comfort to them in their pain than I could ever be. I’m the agent of doom, maybe of retribution, and that’s how they see me. They’re in there praying that their little girl is fine, but terrified that she is not. Waiting for me, the agent of doom, to return and tell them that she is not.
Commissioner John Silvestri appeared on local TV after the six o’clock news was finished, appealing to the people of Holloman and Connecticut to help search for Francine, to come forward if they had seen anything unusual. A desk cop had his uses, and one of Silvestri’s best was his public image – that leonine head, superb profile, calm dignity, air of candor. He didn’t try to parry the anchorwoman’s questions the way a politician would, so shrewd a politician was he. Her rebarbative remarks about the fact that the Connecticut Monster was still at large and still abducting innocent young women didn’t dent his composure in the least; somehow he managed to make her look like a handsome wolf.
“He’s smart,” said Silvestri simply. “Very smart.”
“He must be,” said Surina Chandra to her husband as they sat in front of their gigantic TV screen. They had paid a fortune to bring in a special line from New York City so they could channel-hop on cable until eight, when they sat to eat dinner. What they hoped to see was an item about India, but that was a rare occurrence indeed. The U.S.A., they had discovered, wasn’t a scrap interested in India; it was involved in its own problems.
“Yes, he must be,” said Nur Chandra absently, his mind on a triumph so great he wanted to shout it to the world. Only he dare not risk it, dare not. It had to remain his secret. “I’ll be sleeping in my cottage for the next few days,” he added. A smile curved his perfect lips. “I have important work to do.”
“How can anyone call the Monster smart?” Robin demanded. “It isn’t smart to murder children, it’s – it’s stupid and inhuman!”
I wonder, Addison Forbes asked himself, what her definition of “smart” might be if I pushed her to explain it?
“I agree with the police commissioner,” he said, discovering a crushed cashew nut hiding beneath some lettuce. “A very smart fellow. What the Monster does is disgusting, but I do admire his competence. He’s made total fools out of the police.” The nut melted on his tongue like nectar. “Who,” he said bitterly, “had the gall to order Desdemona Dupre to hunt us down like animals and ask us where we’d been! We have a spy in our midst, and I for one will not forget that. What her idiocies mean is that I’m behind in my clinical notes. Don’t wait up for me. And throw out that quart of ice cream in the freezer, do you hear me?”
“Yes, he is smart,” said Catherine Finch. She eyed Maurie anxiously; he hadn’t been the same since that Nazi schmuck tried to kill himself. With more steel in her character than Maurie had in his, she thought it a pity the Nazi schmuck hadn’t succeeded, but Maurie had a great big conscience and it was telling him that he was the schmuck. Nothing she could say prevented Maurie from blaming himself, poor baby.
He didn’t bother answering her, just pushed his brisket away and got up from the table. “Maybe I’ll work a little on my mushrooms,” he said, plucking a flashlight from the pungent porch as he passed through.
“Maurie, you don’t need to be in the dark tonight!” she cried.
“I’m in the dark all the time, Cathy. All the time.”
The Ponsonbys didn’t see Commissioner Silvestri on TV because they didn’t own one. TV was lost on Claire, and Charles referred to it as “the opiate of the uncultivated herd.”
Tonight the music was Hindemith’s Concerto for Orchestra, a windy, brassy blare that they enjoyed most when Charles had found a particularly good bottle of pouilly fumé. They were eating lightly, a fines herbs omelet followed by fillets of sole poached in water liberally laced with very dry white vermouth; no starches, just some romaine lettuce with a walnut oil vinaigrette, and a champagne sorbet to finish. Not a coffee and cigars meal.
“How they do insult my intelligence sometimes,” Charles said to Claire as Hindemith entered a quieter phase. “Desdemona Dupre came looking for all of us with some tale of needing all of our signatures on a document that Bob certainly knew nothing about, then an hour later the police arrived in their thousands. Just when I was in the middle of a train of thought that did not need the thump of jackboots. Where was I all afternoon? Tchah! I was tempted to tell them to go to hell, but I didn’t. I must say that Delmonico runs a smooth operation, though. He didn’t deign to grace us with his own presence, but his minions betray the stamp of his style.”
“Dear, dear,” she said placidly, fingers twined loosely about the stem of her wine glass. “Are they going to persecute the Hug every time a girl is abducted?”
“I imagine so. Don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. How sad a place the world becomes. Sometimes, Charles, I am very glad that I walk through it blind.”
“You walked through it blind today, you always do. Though I wish you wouldn’t. There’s some story going around that Desdemona Dupre is being stalked. Though what she could have to do with the other business is a bit of a mystery.” He giggled. “Such a vast and unprepossessing creature!”
“Threads weave predictable patterns, Charles.”
“That,” he said, “depends upon who’s making the predictions.”
The Ponsonbys laughed, the dog wuffed, Hindemith let loose.
Much to Carmine’s surprise, he found his mother’s car parked outside Malvolio’s when he pulled up shortly after 7 P.M., Corey and Abe delivered to their long-suffering wives.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, helping her out. “More problems?”
“I thought you might need company. How’s the food in there? Any hamburgers to take away?”
“No burgers to go, but let’s eat inside. It’s warm.”
“I did my best for Captain Marciano this afternoon,” she said, eating a fry (she called it a chip) in her fingers, “but it took half an hour to track them all down. I couldn’t find a one of the researchers themselves until I realized that it might be the first of December, but up on the roof it was warm and sheltered from the wind. They were up there having a round table discussion on Eustace. All of them, and they looked as if they hadn’t moved in yonks.”
“Yonks?”
“A long time.”
“I’m sorry to have inflicted it on you, but I couldn’t spare any cops while there was a hope of finding Francine.”
“It’s all right, I blamed you. Very caustically.” She picked up another fry. “Ever since word got round about my police guard, I’m regarded differently. Most of them think I’m putting it on.”
“Putting it on?”
“Making it up. Tamara says I’m trying to catch you.”
He grinned. “A tortuous scheme, Desdemona.”
“A pity my ruined work didn’t yield that clue.”
“Oh, he’s far too smart to have left one beyond the first time. He knew you wouldn’t report it.”
She shivered. “Why do I think you think it’s the Monster?”
“Because it’s a red herring, woman.”
“You mean I’m not in danger?”
“I didn’t say that. The cops stay.”
“Is it possible he thinks I know something?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Red herrings don’t need reasons apart from creating illusions.”
“Let’s go back to your apartment and watch the Commissioner on the late news,” she said.
Then, afterward, she smiled. “The Commissioner looks like a sweetie. Didn’t he handle madam smarty-pants anchorwoman well?”
Carmine’s brows rose. “Next time I see him I’ll tell him that you think he’s a sweetie. Cute word, but your sweetie once took on a twelve-man German machine gun nest single-handed and saved a whole company. Among other things.”