Too Many Murders(138)
Smith was listening impassively, his mouth shaped into a sneer. But the eyes, windows on a morphine-dulled brain, were confused and astounded.
“The aristocratic Boston millionaire adopted an aloof pose that enabled him to fill the shoes of someone never seen since 1940, when the original Smith, having no close relatives, joined the army way ahead of Pearl Harbor. You manufactured a blood kinship to the Skepses in the shrewdest way—simply say it to all and sundry, and sooner or later all and sundry will believe it. Including the Skepses. You joined the Board of Cornucopia in 1951, four years after your reappearance in Boston society. Having built that beautiful house, you moved to Holloman and became who you really are—a rude, arrogant, ruthless shit. People at Cornucopia, including the very young Desmond Skeps, accepted the fact that you adorned the Board but did no work. After all, what’s unique about that? Most members of boards do nothing except take fat fees.”
“Envious, Captain?” Smith asked with a purr in his voice.
“Of you? No way, Mr. Smith. I am consumed with admiration of the dedicated socialist agent doing his patriotic duty as he lives high off the hog among his ideological enemies. You’ve never lived in a cold-water walk-up flat on the sixth floor where the pipes freeze, and you never will. You, Mr. Smith, are far above ordinary people, and that won’t change, whichever country you live in, will it, huh? The USSR or the USA, you’ll still be in a limousine, still have servants to treat like dirt, still have all the perks of a rich and powerful party man. Here, it’s a capitalist party. There, it’s the Communist Party. Makes no difference to you! Well, you’ve failed both masters. You’re of no further use.”
“What a romantic you are, Delmonico,” Smith said, lips distorted in an anger he couldn’t quite suppress.
“I’ve been accused of that before, but I don’t find it an insult.” Carmine leaned forward in his chair until his face loomed close to Smith’s. “You know what’s most romantic of all? That you were exposed for what you are by a capitalist toy like a sex-symbol sports car. You so nearly got away with it! That you didn’t is entirely your own fault. Think about that when you sit on your stinking toilet in your prison cell, staring at the stains on your hand-me-down mattress! They’ll have to isolate you because the most degenerate killer or child molester will deem you the pits—a traitor to your country. Oh, but you figure you’ll be imprisoned for murder, not treason, right? Rich guy, bribing the warden for special privileges? It won’t happen, Mr. Smith. Whichever prison is honored by your presence is going to know all about your treason. Your books will arrive covered in shit, your magazines will be torn to ribbons, your pens won’t work—”
“Shut up! Shut up!” Smith screamed, his face the color of his bedsheet. “You wouldn’t dare! The FBI and CIA won’t let it happen! They need names, they think I can give them names! I will be very comfortably housed, wait and see!”
“Who’s the romantic here?” Carmine asked with a grin. “They’ll leave you to Connecticut’s mercy until one of your names bears fruit, and none will. The only names you know belong to your own cell, all implicated in murder.”
“You’re wrong!”
“I’m right. You’ll never come to trial for treason, it’s too sensitive. Prison for murder suits everyone, Mr. Smith, and there won’t be any comfort.”
Smith’s free left hand flailed. “All this for a whore?”
“You bet your life it is,” Carmine said grimly. “Desmond Skeps found out about Dee-Dee and Anna, and brought Dee-Dee to the Maxwell banquet to flaunt her in your face. I’m guessing that he blamed you for the breakup of his marriage and then his affair with Erica—why, I suspect you don’t know any more than I do. He was a paranoid kind of guy, and you represented a bunch of things he envied. You wore your clothes as easily as you did your persona, while he was behind the door when God handed out the gifts. Among his other deficiencies, he lacked courage, so he fortified himself with booze that night. What he didn’t know was that you were Ulysses—but Erica did. She told him. Your good luck that he was too drunk to take it in. Yet that banquet was the start of your downfall.”
“Nonsense, all nonsense,” Smith said wearily.
“Not nonsense. Good sense. How you must have sweated! Though it looked as if you’d gotten away with it, you still made your plans in case you hadn’t. Four months went by. Four whole months! Then Evan Pugh fronted up to your office, bold as brass, and handed you a letter. By the time you’d read it, he was gone. But you’d set eyes on him, and you knew what he was. It takes one to know one. The plan swung into action.” Carmine stopped.