Too Many Murders(147)

Natalie Smith opened the door, then put her finger to her lips and led him back down the steps to an exposed position on the grass many yards away from the nearest FBI hole.

“They have put microphones inside,” she said.

“How did you know that what I have to say is better said without federal eavesdroppers?” he asked.

The impossibly blue eyes narrowed as the face smiled. “I know because you are the only one who really understands,” she said, her accent far less thick. “Philip found it impossible to believe that a local policeman could spoil his plans, but I knew differently.”

“The faithful Stravinsky,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Stravinsky? Who is that? The composer?”

“You, Mrs. Smith. Stravinsky can’t be anyone else.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“No. I have no proof.”

“Then why do you say I am this Stravinsky?”

“Because your husband is a very rigid, puritanical man. He has strong feelings about women, wives, whores, the whole feminine half of the human race. Yet on the surface he seems to have abandoned you, his wife. That, Mrs. Smith, he would never do. Therefore he knows that his wife is capable of looking after herself. As would Stravinsky. Who else can the faithful Stravinsky be, except you? Who else shares Philip’s days, nights, thoughts, ideas, aspirations, plans? Who else could impersonate Joshua Butler going up the sophomore stairs at Paracelsus? And why couldn’t Stravinsky get rid of Erica’s body? Because he didn’t have the strength. Mounting a bear trap took every ounce of it. He could hold a pillow over an old woman’s face, or slip a needle into a drugged woman’s vein. His appearance can be so scary that he could walk the streets of Harlem looking for professional gunmen in complete safety. You, Mrs. Smith, you! Don’t bother denying it. You’re a master of true disguise. You alter your appearance from inside your mind.”

She stared across the lawn, red lips compressed. “So what are you going to do with Stravinsky, my dear Captain?”

“Advise him to quit the country in a hurry. Not today, but certainly tomorrow. You must have your cache—money, a weapon, travel documents. Use them!”

“But if I choose to stay with Philip, what can you do?”

“Hound you, Mrs. Smith. Perpetually hound you. Do you think, because I can stand here talking to you as if you’re a human being, that I’ve forgotten you tried to murder my daughter? I haven’t. It burns my brain like a white-hot poker. I’d give a lot to kill you, but I prize my family too much.”

“You won’t stop my going?”

“I can’t.”

“I too am KGB,” she said, staring at North Rock.

“Stravinsky would have to be. I trust that fact will make you welcome in Moscow?”

“I will survive.”

“So will you go?”

Her shoulders hunched. “If I can say goodbye to Philip, I will go. He would want it.”

“I’m sure you’ll have plenty to tell them in Moscow when they debrief you.”

“You would indeed hound me,” she said slowly. “Yes, you would. I will go tomorrow.”

“Tell me how. I want to be sure you do.”

“I will send you a telegram from Montreal. It will say, ‘Stravinsky sends greetings from Montreal.’ Of course I could have someone else send it, but my patriotic duties in America are at an end. KGB will want me back.”

“Thank you, the telegram will be fine.”

* * *

A sorry conclusion, but the only one, Carmine thought as he drove away. Today Stravinsky will visit the hospital to see Smith, and say her farewells. He, good KGB agent that he is, will wish her well. Any federal tape recorders will inform those who listen that the grieving wife is simply telling her husband that her psychiatrist is putting her in a private hospital for a few days, and that it’s on the outskirts of Boston. She’ll catch the commuter plane from Holloman to Logan, but not to leave the airport. She’ll switch to the Montreal plane and be away, the faithful Stravinsky. A murdering bitch, but indeed a faithful one. That squat figure, that shapeless body, that rather terrifying face. But most of all, those spooky blue eyes. A contradiction, that’s Stravinsky.

There was still time to make his last call on this nasty case, a kind of valediction his so-called insatiable curiosity made imperative. Namely, a visit to some of the inhabitants of the Cornucopia Building.

He took an elevator to the thirty-ninth floor, and found Wallace Grierson occupying Desmond Skeps’s old office.

“Look what you’ve done!” Grierson said angrily.

“You’re in a suit and tie,” Carmine said mildly.