“Does Jim Hunter know there’s a black baby?”
“No. Nor does Millie. The only ones who know are Max and the Savovich twins — and me now, of course. I told her that I’d try to keep her secret,” Delia said. “I actually felt sorry for her, Carmine! What if the family history’s true?”
“It shifts the epicenter of this business,” Carmine said, pacing up and down. “However, for the moment I think you and I will keep Davina’s secret. True or not, everyone will infer Jim. Millie would be devastated, although she’d insist the black family history was fact. That attitude wouldn’t save her from malice and speculation from workplace to the O’Donnells. Besides, how does the Negro look skip generations? I thought the gene was dominant, that it overwhelmed the Caucasian gene.”
“As time goes on, that gets less cut and dried,” Delia said. “In Mendel’s time the laws of inheritance were ironclad, now they’re not. Ask Jim Hunter — the biochemistry’s his field.”
“But people are not educated in modern ideas on it.”
“Precisely.”
“Oh, Deels, this is terrible! Let’s say the father is Jim Hunter — when could it have happened?”
“Alexis was born at full term on October thirteen, which would put his conception around Christmas of 1967 until New Year of 1968,” Delia said. “From August of 1967 until that Christmas, Jim wrote A Helical God as well as bore his full research load, coming to its fruition right about then into the bargain. He wouldn’t have had a second to devote to a love affair, especially with Davina. Whereas she would have been among the very first to see the finished manuscript, given Max’s submission to her. A very small window indeed, Carmine, around a year ago.”
“Of course he’d known Davina from earlier books.”
“Yes, why is that?” Delia asked. “Working in Chicago, yet published by Chubb.”
“Max Tunbull should be able to answer that,” Carmine said.
“Or the old Head Scholar. What a pickle!” cried Delia.
I need a walk, said Carmine to himself, shrugging into his down jacket and making sure his gloves were in a pocket. Then it was down to the cobbled yard between the vast twenty-year-old County Services building and the old annex containing the cells.
Sheltered from the worst of the wind, Carmine yanked the hood over his head and began the familiar trek that every tormenting case seemed to provoke. Up and down, around the perimeter, then two diagonals before starting again. Whom would he meet today? He always met some other tormented soul.
Today, Fernando Vasquez, having a hard time adjusting to a Connecticut winter after years of Florida.
“You look like Scott of the Antarctic,” Fernando said.
“Thanks a million for comparing me to the guy who didn’t make it,” Carmine said stiffly.
“Yeah, but he did it the hard way. Amundsen had dog sleds and more dog sleds and all that Scandinavian know-how. Scott was an Englishman, doing it on a shoestring, walking to the Pole. I mean, it almost feels like Amundsen was cheating.”
“You’re not a Spanish grandee! You’re a British bootstrapper. Who’s been indoctrinating you? Are you and Desdemona cheating on me? In a dog sled? ‘Mush, Fernando, mush!’”
Their steps went well together; they strode in silence then for several complete rounds, smiling.
“How’s the uniformed division going?”
“Slow but steady. They’re getting used to the forms and the reports, especially after I brought in that hotshot lawyer Anthony Bera to give them a seminar on police roles in evidence as well as demystifying courtroom procedures. He’s impressive. They tended to believe him whereas they had ceased to believe me — new broom’s bristles worn to stubble and all that shit.”
“We got you just in time, Fernando. How are the loots?”
Vasquez threw his handsome head back and laughed. “Great! Especially Corey. He has a feel for the work.”
“More than he ever did for my kind of looting. But he’s not your favorite, is he?”
“With Maureen for a wife? Shades of Torquemada! No, the one I lean on is Virgil Simms.”
“Makes sense. Speaking of him and certain events, have you heard how Helen MacIntosh is going?” Carmine asked.
“Gun happy as ever. She’s leaving her Manhattan precinct for the greener pastures of Nashville.”
“Whom did she kill?”
“Four hoods in three separate incidents. Came out squeaky clean from the internal enquiries, but her colleagues were beginning to step ten paces around her and even then worry if it were far enough to avoid stray bullets.”