Chapter 13
Friday, December 24th, 1965
“Oh, bother!” said Desdemona, nose twitching. “That wretched sewer vent is playing up again.” For a moment she debated whether to knock on her landlord’s door as she went down the stairs, then decided against it. He wasn’t too pleased at the presence of cops on his premises, and had been hinting that it might be better if Desdemona found herself new digs. So she would bear the sewer vent without another confrontation.
When she opened her door the stench of feces hit her forcibly, but she didn’t notice. All she saw was the blackened, congested face of Charlie, the cop who usually took the night watch on a Thursday night. He was lying as if he had struggled desperately, arms and legs akimbo, but it was the face, the face…Swollen, tongue protruding, eyes bulging. Part of Desdemona wanted to scream, but that would have marked her as a typical woman, and Desdemona had spent half a lifetime proving to the world that she was any man’s equal. Hanging on to the door jambs, she forced herself to remain unmoving for long enough to be sure she could stand. Tears gathered, fell. Oh, Charlie! Such a boring duty, he had told her once, asking for a book. He’d gone through everything he fancied in the County Services library, which wasn’t many. A Raymond Chandler or a Mickey Spillane? But the best she had been able to offer him was an Agatha Christie, which he hadn’t liked or understood.
There, that did it. Desdemona let go of the jambs and began to turn to retreat to her phone. Then she noticed the big piece of paper stuck over the window that let light into the upper landing. Glaringly black on glaring white, immaculate printing.
YOU’RE A SNEAK,
YOU UTTER FREAK!
THAT DAGO FELLOW
IS NO OTHELLO,
BUT I’LL GET YOU YET!
UNTIL THAT DAY – SWEAT!
“Carmine,” she said calmly when he came on the line, “I need you. Charlie is dead. Murdered.” A gulp, a long intake of breath. “Right outside my door. Please come!”
“Is it still open?” he asked, equally calm.
“Yes.”
“Then shut it, Desdemona, right this minute.”
Hardly any desk sergeant had ever seen Carmine Delmonico go past at a run, but he was flying, Abe and Corey racing behind with his coat, his hat, his scarf. Not a minute later Patrick O’Donnell was on his tail.
“Wow!” said Sergeant Larry D’Aglio to his clerk. “The shit must be hitting the fan in all directions.”
“Not on a morning like this,” said the clerk. “Too cold.”
“Garotted with piano wire,” said Patrick. “The poor bastard! He put up a fight, but reflexive. The wire was round his neck and through the loop before he knew what was happening.”
“Loop?” asked Carmine, turning from the doggerel on the window.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it. A loop at one end of the wire, a wooden handle at the other. Slip the handle through the loop, step back, and yank with all your might. Charlie never managed to lay a hand on him.”
“Then he stuck up his notice cold as ice – look at it, Patsy! Absolutely straight, exactly in the middle of the pane – how did he fix it there?”
Patrick looked up and looked amazed. “Jesus!”
“Well, Paul can tell us when he takes it down.” Carmine squared his shoulders. “Time I knocked on her door.”
“How was she when she phoned it in?”
“Not gibbering, at any rate.” He knocked, called out loudly. “Desdemona, it’s Carmine! Let me in.”
Her face was pinched and white, her hands shook, but she was in command of herself. No excuse to take her in his arms and try to comfort her.
“Some red herring,” she said.
“Yes, he’s upped the ante. What have you got to drink?”
“Tea. I’m English, we don’t go in for cognac. Just tea. Made the proper way, on leaves, not bags. Holloman is quite a civilized place, you know. There’s a tea and coffee shop where I can get Darjeeling.” She led the way to her kitchen. “I made it when I heard the sirens.”
No mugs; cups and saucers, frail, hand painted. The teapot was covered with what looked like a Dolly Varden doll, its spout and handle poking out of opposite ends of a thickly padded crinoline finished with frills. Milk, sugar, cookies even. Well, maybe scrupulous attention to domestic rituals is her way of being strong. Coping.
“Milk in first,” she said, lifting the doll off the pot.
He wasn’t game to tell her that he took it the American way, weak, no milk, a slice of lemon. So he sipped the scalding liquid politely and waited.
“You saw the notice?” she asked, looking better for the tea.
“Yes. You can’t stay here now, of course.”
“I doubt I’d be let! My landlord wasn’t happy about my guards. Now he’ll be foaming at the mouth. But where can I go?”
“Protective custody. We keep an apartment in my building for people like you.”
“I can’t afford the rent.”
“Protective custody means no rent, Desdemona.”
Why was she such a miser?
“I see. Then I’d better start packing. I don’t have much.”
“Have some more tea first, and answer some questions. Did you hear anything unusual during the night? See Charlie?”
“No, I heard nothing. I’m a deep sleeper. Charlie said hello when he arrived – I heard him come in, even though it was later than my usual bedtime. He’s usually on the cadge for a book, even if he doesn’t like my choice of authors very much.”
“Did you give him one last night?” No need to tell her that Charlie wasn’t supposed to read on duty.
“Yes, a Ngaio Marsh. The name intrigued him, he didn’t know how to pronounce it. I thought he might like her better than Agatha Christie – Marsh’s victims usually die in a terrible mess of excrement.” She shuddered. “Just like Charlie.”
“Any sign that he actually entered this apartment?”
“No, and believe me, I’ve looked. Not a pin out of place.”
“But he could have. This is one thing I didn’t count on.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Carmine, please.”
He got up. “Does anything ever make you scream, Desdemona?”
“Oh, yes,” she said gravely. “Spiders and cockroaches.”
“Zilch as usual,” Patrick said in Silvestri’s office. “No fingerprints, no fibers, no detritus of any kind. He must have used a measure on the window, the notice – it’s too big to be called a note – was so perfectly placed. Equidistant to a millimeter. And he fixed it with four little balls of Plasticene, pressed the four corners into it, even adjusted the left side to raise it a fraction. And he’s an original! It was done in forty-eight-point Times Bold Letraset. On paper thin enough to have put a lined graticule behind it – every letter is dead even. Cheap cartridge drawing block, the kind kids buy at any big chain store. He pressed the Letraset down with something rounded and metal – a knife handle or maybe a scalpel handle. Not a stylus, too blunt.”
“Can you get any idea of how big his hands are from the way he pressed the paper into the Plasticene?” Marciano asked.
“No. I think he put a rag between his fingers and the paper.”
“What made you say the garotte was unusual, Patsy?” Carmine asked, sighing. “A loop and handle’s not that unique.”
“This one is. The handle isn’t wood as I thought. It’s a carved human femur. But he didn’t carve it. It looks incredibly old, so I’m carbon dating it. The wire is piano wire.”
“Did it bite in hard enough to cut the skin?” Silvestri asked.
“No, just hard enough to occlude the airway and carotids.”
“He’s used one before.”