American Sextet (11 page)

"Because people are interested," he explained
patiently.

"They are?"

"Makes important people seem human. Just like
us," he continued, although he detected some lingering confusion.
Actually, he was more puzzled than she. There was some odd equation between sex
and power. Maybe being in the public arena was so repressive to a person's id
that when the pressure was off, they got weird. Was it Dorothy that brought out
these oddities? It was as if she had the ability to recreate an entirely new
code of sexual behavior, a completely different set of morals.

Or maybe conventional morality, the accepted rules of
sexual conduct, wasn't the truth at all, but merely existed as a protective
facade, made to hide a humanity that didn't fit the concept of the
Christian-Judaic ethic, squaring off human instincts to fit the perfect rounds
of manufactured convention. It surprised him to probe so deeply, but it explained
what he had only dimly understood before. Aberrations sold because recounting
them secretly reassured people. It amazed him to see how his original idea had
grown, expanded, become important in a larger context. He was becoming an
instrument of greater awareness, of a philosophical truth. The great middle
class and their packaged notions about themselves and their leaders was a pack
of lies and he was going to be the first to blow the lid off them. It was their
false indignation that made them so vulnerable and made what he was doing so
valuable. He would actually be doing a great service to society, contributing
to the highest goals of life, knowledge, awareness, insight.

With four men to keep track of, her scheduling required
careful balancing, playing havoc with her attendance record at Saks. On
Wednesdays, her normal day off, she began seeing two of her lovers: Arthur
Fellows in midday and General Templeton in the evening.

During their debriefings she often got them mixed up, much
to Jason's irritation.

"I'm merely trying to ascertain where Arthur stands in
the power struggle at the White House." His frankness only confused her.
She had no idea which little detail was especially relevent to him.

"I keep forgetting things."

"Try to remember."

Sometimes in Dorothy's recounting, the paths of the two men
figuratively would cross in a single day.

"It's a small, exclusive club and it meets on the
pinnacle of a pyramid," he sighed.

"Arthur says Eddie may not get to be chairman,"
Dorothy told him, comprehending little. Jason forced himself to remain casual.

"Did he say why?"

"Something about the President favoring Mulligan's
man." Mulligan meant Ed Mulligan, Arthur's rival for the President's ear,
the other Presidential counsel.

"I feel bad for Eddie," she said. "He wants
to be chairman more than anything in the world. And he thinks he will be.
Arthur is all for it."

"You discussed that?"

"I just listened. Like you told me."

"Good girl."

"Is it very important?"

"Very."

The paths of Dorothy's other two lovers also crossed in
conversation.

"Charlie had lunch with Tate today."

"Did they?"

"They have lunch all the time."

"What do they talk about?"

"All I know is that Tate is going to run for the
Senate and Charlie is going to try to get lots of money for him to run."

"But they're different parties."

"Gosh." He wondered if she understood.

Jason had discovered another factor that seemed to take the
sting of evil out of what he was doing. The men seemed to have a genuine
affection for Dorothy and she enjoyed being with them. Not only did she, too,
enjoy the sex, but the men's company entertained and amused her.

Sometimes after a debriefing, he would ask her questions
that had a special relevance for him alone.

"Do they ever ask about you? Where you come from? How
you live? You know, questions like that."

"You said I should tell them as little as
possible." She paused. "I tell them about Pennsylvania. Growing up in
a coal town. Things like that. I also tell them how I feel about things."

"Like what?"

She thought for a moment and smiled. "About how much I
like the snow. And the springtime. And clean things. But mostly they talk about
themselves."

"Egos," Jason said.

"They're like little boys."

She was more like a little girl herself, he thought. And
they obviously didn't want the reality of Dorothy to interfere with their
fantasies of her, as if they could create her whole, just the way they wanted
her to be. It was, of course, one of his secret fears that one of them, or some
of them, or all of them, would fall in love with her. Emotional betrayal
brought out the killing beast, made reactions less predictable. Also, he feared
that she, too, might fall in love with one of them. That would complicate
everything.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, his paranoia would
take control and he would shake her awake.

"Do they talk about love?"

She always slept deeply, what seemed like a silent
dreamless contented sleep, and prodding her awake was always an effort.

"The men. Any of them talk about love? Loving
you?"

"Me?" Slowly, she emerged out of the fog of
sleep. "Of course, they love me. Why do they come to visit me?"

He shrugged and moved to embrace her.

"Like you love me, Jason," she whispered,
cuddling into his embrace.

"Like me?"

Though not reassured, it was a subject he preferred not to
explore further. He made love to her instead.

The Czech ambassador literally picked her up at Saks.
Although he spoke English fairly fluently, his understanding of the tongue was
faulty. He assumed Dorothy also sold perfume. When she protested, he persisted
stubbornly.

"You are a pretty lady. You will know what I should
buy."

It was an odd hour and the store was too busy.

"I am the Czech ambassador," he said, obviously
used to pulling rank when the occasion called for it.

Reluctantly, she helped him, after telling one of the
salesgirls in perfume that she would let her write the sale so she could get
the commission.

"What kind do you use?" he asked finally, after
he had sniffed all the available scents.

Before he was through, he had his card in her hand. She
read it and knew instantly how to pronounce his name.

"I'm Polish," she said, explaining that she used
the name Curtis because it was easy to pronounce.

"A fellow Slav," he said, putting out his hand.
He was a chubby man in his middle forties, blond and good-humored with a
high-pitched, easy laugh.

"May I call you?" he asked. "If you don't
mind going out with a communist."

"I never met a communist," she told him.

As with all her encounters with men, she told Jason
everything. It was becoming second nature to her now and she studied his face
to read his reactions.

"Another windfall," he said happily. After
considering it for a while, his enthusiasm abated. As an ambassador from a
communist country, he was obviously under complete surveillance. And he was
married. It would be dangerous for the man to take risks and give the Americans
a weapon that could be used against him by his own government. But he did not
reject the idea outright. He had, of course, contemplated that a diplomat would
one day fall into the net, but he had never calculated that it would be a
communist diplomat, truly a bonus. The Profumo case in England came to mind. Profumo was the English defense minister, who shared a prostitute
with a Russian naval attaché. It made worldwide celebrities out of all the
participants. She hadn't read or heard about it, of course. Nor would the
implications have hit home if she had.

The risk of his plan was premature discovery. He dreaded
the possibility of losing control of the material, even though he had Dorothy
sign a paper giving him worldwide marketing rights to her story.

A communist diplomat! The idea was intriguing. Surely the
man was clever enough, knowing that he was under surveillance, to throw them
off the scent when he was pursuing an infidelity. When he appeared again at
Saks, this time under the pretext of buying makeup for his wife, she had been
fully briefed, reporting the conversation back to Jason.

"He asked me to meet him at a hotel," she said,
giggling. "He really is very cute."

"And direct."

"I said what you told me to."

He had instructed her to tell the ambassador that she was
frightened of going out with a communist, that all ambassadors were under
surveillance, that their lines were tapped and their whereabouts carefully
monitored.

"He just laughed and told me not to worry. Although,
he did look around and lowered his voice when he spoke. 'I have my ways,' he
told me."

"What ways?"

"He didn't say, but he told me not to worry, to trust
him and no one would ever know."

He wondered how many people had been deceived by such an
imperative? Especially Dorothy. Weighing the alternatives, he decided to tempt
fate. Bagging a certified communist was worth the risk.

"Invite him to the apartment," he told her. It
was too good an opportunity to enhance the story and increase its value. And
value in raw monetary terms was an extremely important consideration. The cost
of the operation had stretched his finances to the breaking point. He was
behind on his bank note and Jane had begun legal proceedings to collect back
support payments for Trey. His last few phone conversations with his ex-wife
had ended badly, and he had begun to worry about Trey's future.

"I'm working on something big, Jane," he'd said.
"A book. I should get a solid advance and catch up."

"I've heard that before." She had hung up
abruptly. She was right, of course.

"You'll see," he muttered into the dead phone.

For the first time since he had begun the adventure, he
felt the pressure of time.

On the evening of the Czech's assignation, Jason sat in his
car outside of the townhouse to make sure the man wasn't being followed. From
his vantage, he had an excellent view of the quiet street. He could see the
windows of the apartment and he'd instructed her to keep the lights off and watch
the headlights of his car. If she saw them go on or heard the motor start, she
was not, under any circumstances, to buzz open the front door.

In order to keep this vigil, he had to miss an important
meeting of the Fairfax County Council, although he had made arrangements to
have it covered by one of the reporters from a weekly paper, a chancy business
at best. To do this was a violation of all his professional instincts.

He looked at his watch. The ambassador was nearly fifteen
minutes late, which he attributed to the inefficiency of the communist system.
It also gave him second thoughts about the chance he was taking. It could ruin
everything. Perhaps it was a sign to abort the whole idea. He grew increasingly
impatient as he watched people pass, hurrying homeward. He observed each person
carefully, watching for signs of surveillance as well. An old man walked
haltingly down the street, slightly bent and unsteady. The man carried a paper
bag in his arms as he meandered in his direction. Ignorning him, Jason turned
his attention to the rearview mirror to check the other end of the street. When
he looked back he noticed that the street was suddenly deserted.

At the same time he saw that the lights had come on in the
apartment, giving him a brief glimpse of Dorothy as she drew the draperies.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered. It was the old
man...

He'd obviously evaded the American security system. Too bad
it would be a futile victory, he thought with delight as he gunned the motor
and moved out of the parking space.

But, by God, they had bagged themselves an ambassador.

Love had split Fiona into two persons. One of them was
coldly rational, a sensitive observer, relentlessly self-critical, a brutally
honest judge of the other. That other was preposterous, adolescent, sickeningly
romantic, capable of violent mood swings from glorious euphoria to extreme
anxiety and depression.

Even now as she lay embraced in Clint's arms, one could not
resist ridiculing the other. The absurd other had let this man materialize beside
her at 6 A.M., fresh from his legitimate marriage bed. They had always avoided
any references to sex in connection with his wife, as if by evading the subject
they might deny its existence.

She wondered how many other Washington mistresses allowed
such an early morning assignation to occur. It did not, after all, interfere
with one's work day. He could pop off to his office and, after a long day, a
stalwart hard-working husband and father could return to the legal nest, still
master of his kingdom. For some reason, too, mornings did not induce the heavy
angst of an evening tryst, as if the day still held the promise of a resolution
in favor of true love.

True love! The sensible part of her berated the other part
for letting herself get caught in the coils of such hopeless folderol. If there
was a shred of individuality and backbone in the other just moments before he
would arrive, it would quickly disintegrate under his warm kiss. Soon he would
be naked beside her, showering her with kisses, loving her body as well as her
soul. (This other put a very high premium on spirituality.) At this moment of
his arrival, she was the object of a formidable attack on all her
vulnerabilities. The sensible one could only observe and try to understand. Not
that it mattered--the other, the wild one, soared on waves of selfish pleasure.

Because he was the dissimulator, she had to accommodate
herself to his meandering schedule, knowing it could only be worked around the
rhythm of his married life. This made his wife, the formidable and mysterious
Ann, the true manipulator of their time together. That humiliation alone was
enough to revolt her sensible self, fill her with shame and humiliation and
curse her fate as the natural twin of the other.

"You're wonderful," Clint told her. "A
gift."

"And you my darling."

"I love you."

"I love you."

Under normal circumstances, they could thrash around
together until nearly eight. Then a somewhat pale and enervated Clint would
shower and dress and be off to face his morning's duties. She wondered if
anyone in his office ever noticed his temporary exhaustion. For her part, she
would rise after he had gone, energized and rosy-cheeked, ready to take on a
thousand eggplants and whatever strenuous assignments the day had to offer.
Unfortunately, the pain of forced separation was getting worse now that their
meetings had become a ritualized pattern, like getting one's meals at a set
hour.

That morning she had to confine their lovemaking to a mere
hour, although she didn't explain her physical greed until it was time to hop
out of bed. Yet even in that time frame she managed to induce his usual
orgasmic quota, three, an accomplishment that never failed to make him marvel
at his masculine prowess. Even that had become a part of the ritual, an expectation
that seemed beyond their control, as if their desire for each other needed
tangible validation.

The eggplant had called an eight o'clock meeting of the
entire homicide squad. The teenage killer had struck again. More significant
was the fact that the new killing had taken place while the Marine suspect had
been in custody.

Nor was there time to dwell on the more important question
between them. Had he told Ann? And if he had, what then? It was the
impermanence of it as well that had begun to unravel her. Despite her
liberation, she discovered that, like all good Irish girls, she really wanted
to be married. That revelation grew more and more powerful with its denial. It
jarred her. Having such conventional desires would have warmed the cockles of
her parents' hearts, had she told them. As it was they'd simply given up on her
ever marrying.

She bent over him to implant a goodbye kiss. As she did so,
she suddenly thought of Dorothy. What was the real commonality between them?
Naturally, the passionate one would hear none of that. It was the other that
was pursuing Dorothy's imaginary killer, if only to prove a point.

At the meeting, she forced herself to concentrate on the
eggplant's every nuance, making sure that when his eyes drifted her way, she
showed rapt attention. Actually, she was still thinking of Dorothy. If the
eggplant knew what they were up to, he would explode.

"I want every available man on this case," the
eggplant ordered, as if they were all to blame for this affront to the dignity
of his office. When he was in this state, the force became all male again. It
was not, of course, the appropriate time to remind him of her gender.

"Think I should fill him in on the Curtis case?"
Cates whispered during a lull in the speech as the eggplant pored over an
assignment sheet. She assumed he was joking.

"Only if you're planning your own castration."

The eggplant began another tirade. Once he'd spent himself,
the meeting broke up and they were assigned to follow up on a series of call-in
leads. The chief had authorized the newspapers to print the usual "Any
information on the teenage killings, etc." and offering a police number
which came directly into their office.

The result was a maze of confused leads, an endless descent
into fantasy and anxiety. They talked to parents of teenagers, who swore they
knew the killer, tips that proved worthless, especially those instigated by
revenge. They spent the day in the heavily populated black ghetto areas of Northeast Washington, walking up stairways and through corridors of incredible filth.

But the wide publicity given to the murders and the race of
the victims had stirred the ghetto community, feeding its paranoia. Many of
those to whom they talked were certain, as some had been during Atlanta's similar crisis, that the beginning of the crusade to violently eliminate all
blacks had begun. Guilt-ridden whites continued to give money to the fund for
the victims' illegitimate children.

Cates's unenthusiastic response to the assignment and bored
demeanor throughout their interviews was not surprising to her. The ghetto was
as foreign to him as it was to her.

"What are they going to tell a honky and an
oreo?" Cates asked, knowing that it was futile, a ploy for the eggplant to
show that homicide was working double time. They both knew it was an exercise
in bureaucratic hypocrisy. Still, they checked things out with obstinate
efficiency.

During their afternoon break, Fiona took time out to cajole
Flannagan on the phone. He was the man in charge of the Mobile Crime Lab, to whom
she had come often for favors, invoking the old ethnic tie.

"Come on, Mick, give it a dust-off for a daughter of
the old sod," she begged him. Both of them knew the case wasn't strong
enough for an official Mobile Crime Lab sweep.

"And what do I get if I do?" It was his typical
response, more banter than proposition.

"Satisfaction. And you'll go to Irish heaven."

"And stink through eternity of corned beef and
cabbage."

"Would that be heaven or hell you're talking
about?"

"Hell. Heaven is an authentic Irish pub with Guinness
hisself servin' the brew..." He paused. "Oh shit, Fiona, why do I
have to be pressed in the middle of an earthquake? You saw him this morning.
Apoplectic."

"How can you tell?"

"He turns ebony-black."

The fact was that the commonality between them was racial
as well as ethnic. The dwindling numbers of whites drew them closer together.
The blacks didn't object. It gave the whites an opportunity to learn the pains
of being a minority.

"I'll get on it as soon as I can," Flannagan said
finally.

"Thanks, Mick."

"He finds out, he'll have my ass."

"Who the hell would want your ass?" she said,
hanging up, knowing she had pushed as hard as she could.

As expected, the leads turned up nothing of significance.

"Home?" Cates asked as they got into the car.

"Hell no."

"There again?"

"It's not on the taxpayer's tab."

He shrugged and headed for the dead girl's apartment.

"And suppose we do find evidence of murder. What then?
It would have to be proof positive. You saw him. He has a one track mind."

She nodded. He was right, of course. What was one more dead
honky?

Entering the apartment, she sensed something immediately
awry.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," she admitted.

He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

"They're still there."

She began to move around the apartment. Somebody had been
in this place since she had last been there. It was her police training, she
would have argued, if someone had suggested that it might be intuition. A
matrix in her mind had been disturbed.

She began poking into the closets again, opening the
medicine chest, cautious now about smearing prints, berating her earlier
carelessness. It had always been difficult, even under the best conditions, to
look for something that had not yet become tangible in her mind. She felt Cates
watching her, confused, as she stood in the center of the bedroom, surveying
it, taking mental inventory of each object, then comparing it with the
subconscious memory of her previous visits.

"Anything?" Cates asked.

It occurred to her slowly at first, a blip on her memory
screen that grew each time her eyes washed over the white chest in which
Dorothy kept her underwear. She inspected it from every view. The blip grew in
her mind until it focused on the upper drawer of the chest. Although it was closed,
it wasn't flush against the edge. Not that she could remember if she had
actually pushed the drawer to its furthest point, but it was enough awry to
trigger her curiosity and she opened it. Without having to go through the neat
pile of white panties, she knew immediately. The large sizes were gone. Opening
the lower drawer, she checked the stockings. Gone. The shoes, too, were gone.

Cates had been observing her, understanding immediately.

"El kinko."

"What?" But it was coming to her as well.

"Our man. He's a dress-up freak."

She felt the flush begin at the back of her neck and spread
upward and around to her face.

"Very common," Cates said authoritatively.

"I'm either very straight or very dumb," she
conceded.

"That makes me an expert in kink."

"I'd never have guessed. It could explain the
caller."

Suddenly there was no time to dispel his confusion. The
door to the apartment began to rattle and she heard the sound of metal. Someone
was obviously picking the lock. With hand signals, she directed Cates to the
other side of the door. Both drew their pieces. The sound of the metal pick
continued. They could see the knob begin to turn and the door swing outward.

They heard voices. There was no attempt to be clandestine.
At least two of them, Fiona thought, holding up two fingers, tensing as heavy
footsteps crossed into the apartment.

"Jeez," Flannagan screamed, a vein palpitating in
his jaw. One of the cops behind him had reacted quickly by stepping back into
the hallway and flattening himself against a wall.

"Sorry," Fiona said, putting her piece back in
its holster, relieved. In retrospect, she knew, it would probably be deemed a
mistake to have drawn, a needless risk. If Flannagan had reacted badly, they
might have had a huge problem on their hands.

"I'm doing you a favor, Fi. I don't need to have the
shit scared out of me."

"We got nervous," she said apologetically, as two
technicians entered the room with their equipment.

"What I need most is a good set of prints," she
said, drawing Flannagan aside and explaining about the drawer. "Dust the
inside as well. Closets, too. And the cans in the refrigerator, the Beluga
caviar."

Flannagan shook his head and smiled. Despite their kinship,
Fiona suspected he didn't quite take her seriously.

"Anything else, your bigness?"

"One other place. The toilet seat. Especially that
spot that a man uses to lift it."

"Gross," Flannagan said, chuckling.

Latent fingerprints, at best, were always a problem. And
without a real crime, she wasn't sure how she was going to handle the situation.
She'd wait and see.

Fiona and Cates went for hamburgers at a little bar not far
from Dorothy's apartment. The waitress set down two beers and they sipped in
silence for awhile. Observing Cates, she realized he was getting an odd lesson
in unorthodox procedures. She was actually corrupting him, a thought that made
her uneasy. Obviously, he had enough problems. He was a black man with white
features and a white view of the world. Reflecting on it, she felt a flush of
sisterly warmth.

"You said it could explain your caller," Cates
said.

"Can't you guess?" she teased. He tensed,
reacting exactly opposite to what she intended. He must have mistook it for a
put-down. She realized suddenly that she really hardly knew the man.

"He wanted to see if the apartment was empty,"
she said, hoping that she did not seem smug. "...to get his
unmentionables."

"But you said he didn't respond. How could you know it
was even a man? And you said hello. It wasn't Dorothy's voice."

His interrogation increased her uneasiness. She was
presenting theory as fact, superimposing imaginary circumstances.

"Don't you see?"

He shook his head, still unconvinced. "I don't
see."

"But the clothes are gone."

She was begging him to understand, seeking vindication. But
his eyes darted from side to side, revealing his mind's wanderings.