Colleen McCullough - Naked Cruelty

“You do because I am,” said Robert. “Gordie isn’t wrong, Captain, I do assure you. Our screenplay will be pinched, tweaked and bowdlerized out of all recognition, especially the legal kind, leaving us with something no longer original.” He drew Carmine farther away from Delia and Nick. “It has come to our attention, Captain, that Myron Mendel Mandelbaum is your best friend. In fact, that you share a wife. We have been working maniacally to finish our Grand Guignol, which we beg you to read. It’s complete down to the story boards-Gordie is a brilliant, brilliant artist.”

“Story boards?” Carmine asked blankly.

“Yes. Imagine your favorite movie drawn as a gigantic comic book-they’re the story boards. Film is a visual medium, and its purveyors are not fond of reading words. In fact, words are enemies. Reduced to a comic, any Hollywood dodo-oops!-idiot can grasp its plot and substance.” Robbie pulled a face. “I fear that characterization is another matter.”

“You want me to ask Mr. Mandelbaum to grant you an audience?” asked Carmine, loving it.

“Yes, exactly! Our screenplay is perfect for him, but we can’t even get through his outer defenses. If we could just see him in person, I know he’d go for our project! Blood out of Stone may not win any Academy Awards, but it will make gazillions!”

“That’s sure to appeal to Mr. Mandelbaum,” said Carmine with a grin. “If I get you your audience, will you promise to keep out of my way?”

Robbie gave a theatrical gasp and wrung his hands together. “Captain, Captain, if you do that, you won’t even see our dust!”

“Then it’s a deal.” Carmine glanced at his watch. “By now he’ll be at his office. Can I use your phone?”

“Does a fat baby fart? Of course you can!”

The Warburton twins cavorting in joyous circles around him, Carmine entered their house and stopped. A ghastly head, bloated and greenish, was fixed to the wall in front of him.

“That’s Arthur de Mortain,” Gordie said. “Number one in the Stone Man’s trail of victims. They are all descended from King Arthur and his legitimate French wife, Ghislaine.”

“Aren’t you in the film yourselves?”

“ In it? Captain, we are it!” Robbie cried. “Behold the Tennyson Twins, sleuths extraordinaire!”

“Ah! The action takes place around 1890.”

“Amid London fogs and gloomy graveyards a-drip with dews and yews. The Stone Man will look like a cross between the mummy and Frankenstein’s monster.”

“Why not make him smooth and handsome like Gregory Peck?”

That didn’t go down well; they were creatures of habit.

“I guarantee you’ll love the Warburton twins and whatever they’ve written,” he said to Myron some minutes later. “It’s pure Hollywood.” He flicked over the pages of one of a number of massive albums. “The movie makes a great comic, which I gather also makes it ideal. Not to mention that the Warburtons are refugees out of a comic… Well? Do I tell them to climb on a westbound plane, or not?”

He hung up. “Climb on a westbound plane today, gentlemen. Mr. Mandelbaum will give you a whole morning, and if he likes your comic, lunch afterward at the Polo Lounge.”

“Courted for my connection to a Hollywood movie mogul,” he said with disgust when they arrived at County Services.

“They sure fell on their feet,” said Nick, not approving. “Innocent of all wrong-doing, the richer by whatever poor Miss Warburton left, and now selling their ideas to Myron Mendel Mandelbaum in person.” His lip curled. “They’re crooks.”

“I agree, Nick, they are,” Carmine said, “but they’re a great example of what can happen to borderline people. Fortune favored them, so crime isn’t necessary.”

“Yeah, like lawyers,” said Nick.

“Someone suing you?”

“No. I’m in Shakespeare’s camp, is all.”

“He must have had the tights sued off him,” Delia said. “Probably by that twister Bacon.”

“No, no, we are not going down this road again!” Carmine yelled. “Just because a couple of cases have resolved themselves doesn’t give us an excuse to celebrate. Too many bodies.”

That’s the part of this job I hate the most, he thought, damping down their enthusiasms and elation at the close of a long and very hard investigation.

Helen came in. “Am I allowed?” she asked.

“Sure. It’s lunch in a minute anyway.”

“Was Kurt the Vandal?” Helen asked.

Carmine went through that again, with some amendments; she didn’t need to know that Kurt saw her, not Amanda, as his victim.

Then she changed the subject abruptly.

“Has Dad seen the glass teddy bear?”

“I’m taking him this afternoon.”

“And I can’t go, right?”

“I’m afraid not, no.”

She drew a breath. “I know it’s off-limits, Carmine, but I don’t see how it can stay sequestered from me,” she said. “It’s a brain-teaser, really, and I can’t come up with the answer. If you know, and you tell me, I promise I won’t mention the Dodo ever again.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Helen.”

“But information brought her back.”

“Okay, one question. Ask.”

“Kurt was at every Carew party, but he certainly wasn’t the sympathetic guy on the secluded couch. I mean, he was up front! Bold as brass, nothing sneaky or anonymous. So what’s with the stranger no one can identify?”

“None of us has an answer. Kurt could easily have gathered sufficient information to fuel his plans, that’s not an issue,” Carmine said. “Who the other guy was is a mystery.”

“Does that mean another Dodo is hunting?”

“If he were, he would have struck by now, and I doubt that Holloman will ever see women concealing rape again, at least in such numbers. Since the victim drawings all show the same man-well, more or less-we have to assume that he did go to the Carew parties. My guess is that he’s a psychologist writing a thesis or a book. As he didn’t announce any intentions in that direction, he’s sneaky and unethical. I understand that Carew is back in party mode, but all the Gentleman Walkers are looking out for the mystery man. If he shows up, he’s under arrest.”

“Even if he’s done nothing?” Helen asked.

“Only for long enough to be interviewed-and warned, if it seems necessary. No one wants Son of Dodo taking over.”

“I never thought of that.” Helen turned to Delia. “I thought you said lightning never strikes twice in the same place?”

“It depends on the lightning, dear.”

“No, that’s too much! Son of Dodo! You’re surely not serious?”

“Then who is he?” Delia asked. “ Not a sneaky psychologist.”

M.M. was staggered. “It’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, gazing at the glass teddy bear. “Helen’s right about the eyes, they’re mesmerizing.”

“You should have seen it in the shop window, properly lit,” said Carmine. “Took the breath away.”

“I hear you commandeered the dog and the cat.”

“With infant children, I thought it was a good move.”

“Until one of them dies.” M.M. groaned. “What a circus!”

“The voice of experience?”

“Several times.”

“Where are you going to put this beauty?”

“The Aubergs have been nagging me to fund some wonderful art building, but they want it small-intimate, said Horace Auberg. I’m having terrible trouble finding somewhere to put Blue Bear-that’s his classy new name-so I think I’ll ask Horace for Blue Bear’s house. Just one room, with some other pieces around the walls in niches, and Blue Bear in the middle. He’ll have to be ten feet away from the nearest spectator in case some maniac tries to swing a hammer at him.” M.M. sighed. “The world is full of maniacs! Look at Kurt von Fahlendorf. I even hoped my daughter might marry him. You can’t trust anyone anymore.”