Legion (24 page)

K
I
NDERMAN WAS STANDING AT THE CURBS1DE DIRECTLY IN front of the Biograph Cinema. He was waiting for Sergeant Atkins. His hands in the pockets of his coat, he was sweating, anxiously glancing up and down M Street. It was almost noon and the date was Sunday, June the twelfth.

On March twenty–third it had been determined that fingerprints lifted at three of the crime scenes matched three patients in the open ward. All three were currently in the disturbed ward, pending the results of a close observation.

Early in the morning on March twenty–fifth, Kinderman had gone to the home of Amfortas along with Doctor Edward Coffey, a friend of Amfortas and a neurologist at District Hospital; he had ordered the CAT scan for Amfortas that had revealed the fatal lesion. At Coffey’s insistence, the front–door lock of the house had been picked and Amfortas was discovered dead in his living room. It was later to be classified as an accidental death, for Amfortas had died of
a subdural hematoma resulting f
rom the blow to his head when he fell, although Coffey told Kinderman that, in any case, Amfortas would have died within two weeks because of the deliberately untreated lesion. When Kinderman had asked him why Amfortas would allow himself to die, Doctor Coffey’s only answer was, “I think it had something to do with love.” A black woolen windbreaker with a hood was found hanging in a closet in Amfortas’ bedroom.

On the third of April, Kinderman’s only other suspect, Freeman Temple, suffered a mentally disabling stroke and was now a patient in the open ward.

For three weeks following the murder of Keating, police security and precautions had continued in force at Georgetown General, then were gradually relaxed. No other murders took place in the District of Columbia involving the Gemini modus operandi, and on June eleventh the seemingly Gemini–related murders were placed on the Homicide inactive file, although classified as open and still unsolved.

“I am dreaming,” said Kinderman. “What are you doing?” He stared numbly at Atkins, who was standing before him dressed in a pinstripe suit and tie. “Is this some joke?”

Atkins looked inscrutable. “Well, I’m married now,” he said. He’d returned from his honeymoon the day before.

Kinderman continued to look shell–shocked. “I cannot stand this, Atkins,” he said. “It’s strange. It’s unnatural. Have mercy. Remove the tie.”

“I might be seen,” said Atkins without expression, his eyes unblinking as they stared into Kinderman’s.

Kinderman grimaced in disbelief. ‘‘ You might be seen?’’ he echoed. “By whom?”

“People.”

Kinderman silently stared for a moment, then he said, “I give up. I am your prisoner, Atkins. Tell my family I’m okay and am being well treated. I will write to them as soon as my hands stop shaking. My guess is two months.” His gaze dropped lower. “Who picked out the tie?” he asked in a hollow voice. It had a floral Hawaiian motif.

“I picked it myself,’’ said Atkins.

“I thought so.”

“I could mention your hat,” said Atkins.

“Don’t.” Kinderman leaned in closer, eyes probing. “I had a friend from school who became a Trappist,” he said, “a monk for eleven years. All he did was make cheese and now and then pick grapes, although mostly he prayed for people in suits. Then he quit the monastery and you know what he bought? The first thing? A two–hundred–dollar pair of shoes. Loafers with little tassels on top and in the instep new pennies all shiny and bright. Am I making you nauseous? Wait. I’m not finished. The shoes were colored purple, Atkins. Lavender. Am I making a point or as usual talking only to a tree?”

“You are making a point,” said Atkins, though his tone conceded nothing.

“Better stay in the Navy.”

“We’re going to miss the beginning of the movie.”

“Yes, we might be seen,” said Kinderman darkly.

They entered the theater and took their seats. The film was Gunga Din, to be followed by another, The Third Man. At the end of Gunga Din, when Din stood atop the temple of gold blowing faltering notes of his warning bugle call after Thugee bullets had struck him, a woman sitting one row back began to giggle and Kinderman turned around and glared. The venomous look had no effect, and when Kinderman turned around to Atkins to tell him that they ought to move to other seats, he saw that the sergeant was crying.

The detective glowed fondly. He stayed in his seat, content with the world, and wept himself when “Auld Lang Syne” was played in the background at the burial of Din. “What a film,” he breathed. “Such schmaltz. I love it.”

When the double feature was over, they stood in the busy and sweltering street in front of the theater. “Now let’s go and have a nosh,” said Kinderman eagerly. Neither man was working that day. “I want to hear about the honeymoon, Atkins, and your wardrobe. I am feeling some need of preparation for the future. Where to go now? To the Tombs? No, no, wait. I have a notion.’’ He was thinking of Dyer. He hooked his arm through the sergeant’s and led him off. “Come. I know the absolutely perfect place.”

Soon they were sitting inside the White Tower smelling hamburger grease and discussing the movies they had seen. They were the only customers there. The counterman was standing at the grill with his back to them. He was tall and powerfully built and his face had a rawboned, rough–hewn look. His white uniform and cap were spattered with grease. “You know, we talk about evil in this world and where it comes from,’’ said Kinderman.
“
But how do we explain all the good? If we are nothing but molecules we would always be thinking of ourselves. So how come we are always having Gunga Dins, people giving up their lives for somebody else? And then even Harry Lime,” he said with animation. “Harry Lime, who is the opposite, an evil man, even he makes a point in that scene on the ferns wheel.” He was speaking of The Third Man. “That part he says about the Swiss and how after all these many centuries of peace the biggest product they have given us to date is the cuckoo clock. This is true, Atkins. Yes. He has a point. It could be that the world cannot progress without angst. Incidentally, I am working on a burglary–homicide on P Street. It happened last week. We must get into that tomorrow.”

The counterman turned and gave him a silent, dour look, men went back to the burgers, beginning to build an even dozen on the small, square bottoms of the buns. Kinderman watched him placing a pickle slice on each patty, a faint look of wistful longing in his eyes. “Could you maybe put an extra slice of pickle on them, please?”

“Too much pickle’s gonna ruin ‘em,” the counterman growled. He had a voice like a drill sergeant, low and rough. He was placing the tops of the buns on the burgers. “You want continental cookin’, go to Beau Rivage. They got all of that saucy crap over there.”

Kinderman’s eyelids drooped. “I’ll pay extra.”

The counterman turned and set six burgers on a paper plate in front of each of them. His face and his eyes were stone. “What to drink?” he asked.

“A little hemlock, please,” said Kinderman.

“We’re all out of it,” the counterman said tonelessly. “Don’t fuck with me, pal. My back hurts. Now, whaddya want to drink?”

“Espresso,” said Atkins.

The counterman shifted his gaze to the sergeant. “What was that, Professor?”

“Two Pepsis,” said Kinderman quickly, pressing his hand down on Atkins’ forearm.

The counterman’s breath blew a hair in his nostril. With a glower he turned to get the drinks. “Every wiseass on M Street comes in here,” he muttered.

A large group of Georgetown students came in and soon the place was alive with laughter and chatter. Kinderman paid for the burgers and the drinks and said, “I’m tired from sitting.” He stood up and Atkins followed his lead. They took their food to a stand–up counter that was set in an opposite wall. Kinderman bit into a burger and chewed. “Harry Lime was right,’’ he said. “Out of turmoil comes a poem– this burger.”

Atkins nodded in agreement, contentedly chewing.

“It’s all part of my theory,” Kinderman said.

“Lieutenant?” Atkins held up a forefinger, pausing to chew and then swallow a mouthful. He pulled a white paper napkin from its dispenser, wiped his lips and then leaned his face closer toward Kinderman’s; the babble in the room had grown excited. “Would you do me a favor, Lieutenant?”

“I am here but to serve, Mister Chips. I am eating and therefore expansive. Let me have your petition. Is it properly sealed?”

“Would you please explain your theory?”

“Impossible, Atkins. You will put me under house arrest.”

“You can’t tell me?”

“Absolutely not.” Kinderman took another bite of a burger, washed it down with a swallow of Pepsi and then turned to the sergeant. “But since you insist. Are you insisting?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. First take off the tie.”

Atkins smiled. He unknotted the tie and slipped it off.

“Good,” said Kinderman. “I cannot tell this to a perfect stranger. It’s so huge. It’s so incredible.” His eyes were aglitter. “You’re familiar with The Brothers Karamazov?” he asked.

“No, I’m not,” Atkins lied. He wanted to sustain the detective’s giving mood.

“Three brothers,” said Kinderman, “Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha. Dmitri is the body of man, Ivan represents his mind and Alyosha is his
heart. At the end–the very end–
Alyosha takes some very young boys to a cemetery and the grave of their classmate Ilusha. This Ilusha they treated very meanly once because–well, he was strange, there was no doubt about it. But then later when he died they understood why he acted the way he had and how truly brave and loving he was. So now Alyosha–he’s a monk, by the way–he makes a speech to the boys at the gravesite and mainly he is telling them that when they’re grown up and face the evils of the world they should always reach back and remember this day, remember the goodness of their childhood, Atkins; this goodness that is basic in all of them; this goodness that hasn’t been spoiled. Just one good memory in their hearts, he says, can save their faith in the goodness of the world. What’s the line?” The detective’s eyes rolled upward and his fingertips touched his lips, which were smiling already in anticipation. He looked down at Atkins. “Yes, I have it! ‘Perhaps that one memory may keep us from evil and we will reflect and say: Yes, I was brave and good and honest then.’ Then Alyosha tells them something that is vitally important. ‘First, and above all, be kind,’ he says. And the boys–they all love him–they all shout, ‘Hurrah for Karamazov!’ “ Kinderman felt himself choking up. “I always weep when I think of this,” he said. “It’s so beautiful, Atkins. So touching.”

The students were collecting their bags of hamburgers now and Kinderman watched them leaving. “This is what Christ must have meant,” he reflected, “about needing to become like little children before we can enter the kingdom of heaven. I don’t know. It could be.” He watched the counterman lay out some patties on the grill in preparation for another possible influx, then sit on a chair and begin to read a newspaper. Kinderman returned his attention to Atkins. “I don’t know how to say this,” he said. “I mean the crazy, incredible part. But nothing else makes sense, nothing else can explain things, Atkins. Nothing. I’m convinced it’s the truth. But getting back to Karamazov for a moment. The main thing is Alyosha when he says, ‘Be kind.’ Unless we do this, evolution will not work; we will not get there,” Kinderman said.

“Get where?” asked Atkins.

The White Tower was quiet now; there was only the sizzling from the grill and the sound of the newspaper turning now and then. Kinderman’s stare was firm and even. “The physicists now are all certain,” he said, “that all the known processes in nature were once part of a single, unified force.” Kinderman paused and then spoke more quietly. “I believe that this force was a person who long ago tore himself into pieces because of his longing to shape his own being. That was the Fall,” he said, “the ‘Big Bang’: the beginning of time and the material universe when the one became many–legion. And that is why God cannot interfere: evolution is this person growing back into himself.”

The sergeant’s face was a crinkle of puzzlement. “Who is this person?” he asked the detective.

“Can’t you guess?” Kinderman’s eyes were alive and smiling. “I have given you most of the clues long before.”

Atkins shook his head and waited for the answer.

“We are the Fallen Angel,” said Kinderman. “We are the Bearer of Light. We are Lucifer.’’

Kinderman and Atkins held each other’s gaze. When the door chime sounded they glanced to the door. A disheveled derelict walked in. His clothing was shredded and thick with soil. He walked mutely toward the counterman, and then stood with his eyes upon him in a meek and silent plea. The counterman glowered at him over his newspaper, stood up, prepared some hamburgers, bagged them and gave them to the bum, who then silently shuffled out of the shop. “Hurrah for Karamazov,” Kinderman murmured.