Sins of the Flesh

“Russian rites. Ramsbottom was probably Raskolnikov before Ellis Island, who knows? I ask you, Herbert Ramsbottom? High school was a succession of nicknames, but the one everybody liked best was Herbie Sheep’s Ass. Luckily I wasn’t one of those poor, despised outsiders picked sometimes to literal death.” The blue eyes gleamed impishly. “I had wit, height, good humor—and Rufus. Even the worst of the brute brigade had enough brain to understand I could make him a laughing-stock. I racked my own brain for a new monicker, but none sounded like me until, as I browsed in the library one day, I chanced upon an atlas of the ancient world. And there it was!”

“What was?” Abe asked after a minute’s silence, appreciating the fact that (a rare treat in a detective’s working life) he was in the presence of a true raconteur with considerable erudition.

“Family tradition has it that we originated in Cossack country around the Volga and the Don, so I looked at the lands of the ancient barbarians to find that the Volga was called the Rha, and the Don was called the Tanais. Rha Tanais—perfect! And that really is how I found my new name,” said Rha Tanais.

“You’d have to be a professor of classics to guess, sir.”

“Yes, it’s a mystery to the world,” Rha Tanais agreed.

Abe glanced across to where Mr. Willowy was concluding his ministrations to Peter the lighting blighter, and looking as if he was about to join them. This remorseless glare gave the lie to Abe’s impression of youth; Mr. Willowy was an extremely well preserved fortyish. At six feet he seemed short only when he stood next to Rha Tanais, but no other word than “willowy” could describe his body or the way he moved it. Coppery red hair, swamp-colored eyes, and wearing discreet but effective eye makeup. Beautiful hands that he used like a ballet dancer. Such he had probably been.

“Come and meet Lieutenant Abe Goldberg!” Tanais hollered, muting his tones as Mr. Willowy arrived. “Lieutenant, this is my irreplaceable other half, Rufus Ingham.” Suddenly he burst into bass-baritone song, with Rufus Ingham singing a pure descant.

“We’ve been together now for forty years, and it don’t seem a daaay too long!”

A bewildered Abe laughed dutifully.

“Rufus didn’t come into the world so euphoniously named either,” Tanais said, “but his real name is a secret.”

Rufus cut him short, not angrily, but quite firmly—which one was the boss? “No, Rha, we’re not talking to Walter Winchell, we’re talking to a police lieutenant. Honestly! My name was Antonio Carantonio.”

“Why try to hide that, Mr. Tanais?”

“Rha, my name is Rha! You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“This is The House! Carantonio is The Name! Abe—I may call you Abe?—the story has passed into Busquash mythology by now, they even tell it on the tour buses. I’m sure the Holloman police department must have files in the plural on it. In 1925, before Rufus and I were ever thought of, the owner of this house and a two million dollar fortune vanished from the face of the earth,” said Rha Tanais in creepy tones. “After seven years she was declared dead, and Rufus’s mother inherited. The original owner was Dr. Nell Carantonio, and Rufus’s mother was yet another Nell Carantonio.”

“I’m Carantonio because I’m illegitimate,” Rufus interjected. “I have no idea who my father is—my mother put him down on my birth certificate as first name, Un, and second name, Known.”

Rha took up the narrative. “Fenella—Rufus’s mother—died in 1950, but unlike the original Nell, she did leave a will. Antonio Carantonio IV—Rufus—got the lot.” He heaved one of his sighs, both hands flying into the air. “Can you imagine it, Abe? There we were, a couple of sweet young things, with a positive barn of a house and carloads of money! Fenella had quintupled the first Nell’s fortune and kept the house in repair. Our heads had always been stuffed with dreams and we’d made good beginnings, but suddenly we had the capital and the premises to do whatever we wanted.”

“And what did you want?” Abe asked.

“To design. Glamorous clothes for so-called unattractive women, first. Then bridal gowns. After that came stage costumes, and finally production design. Wonderful!” Rha caroled.

“Wonderful,” Rufus echoed on a sigh.

“Let’s get out of here and have an espresso,” said Rha.

Shortly thereafter Abe found himself drinking superb coffee in a small room off the restaurant-sized kitchen; its chairs were upholstered in fake leopard skin and were replete with gilded carvings, the drapes were black-and-gold-striped brocade, and the floor was a black-spotted fawn marble. All it needs, thought Abe, is Mae West.

“The nice thing about Fenella—Nell the second—is that she approved of gays,” said Rufus. “She was a good mother.”

“Stop chattering, Rufus! Let the man state his business.”

Abe did so succinctly, unsure whether rumors about the six Doe bodies had ever penetrated as high in homosexual strata as this one, since neither he nor his team had ever approached Rha and Rufus, but all worlds gossip. “I’m going to have at least two likenesses of the later Does shortly, and I’m here to ask if you’d mind looking at them,” Abe concluded. “One thing has emerged—that the Does were what my niece calls drop-dead gorgeous. Expert opinion says they weren’t—er—gay, but they were all around twenty years of age, and likely to be seeking careers on the stage, or in film, or maybe in fashion. Mrs. Gloria Silvestri said I should talk to you.”

Rha’s face lit up. “Isn’t she something? She makes all her own clothes, you know, so I take her around the fabric houses. Unerring taste!”

“Let the man state his business, Rha,” said Rufus softly, and took over. “I know what she was thinking. We always have scads of young things passing through and learning the trade. At seventy miles from New York City, Holloman is an ideal jumping-off place before hitting the urban nightmare. Girls and boys both, we see them. They stay anything from a week to a year with us, and I’m glad you found us first rather than last. We might be able to help, but even if it turns out we can’t, we can keep our ears and eyes open.”

Down went his empty coffee cup; Abe stood. “May I come back with my sketches when our police artist has finished?”

“Of course,” said Rha warmly.

On his way to the front door, Abe had a thought. “Uh—is Peter the lighting blighter okay?”

“Oh, sure,” said Rufus, he seemed taken aback that anyone should remember a lighting blighter. “He’s sucking a stiff Scotch.”

“Did you add the theater onto the house?”

“We didn’t need to.” Rufus opened the front door. “There was a ballroom out the back nearly as big as the Waldorf—I ask you, a ballroom? Debutantes running amok in Busquash.”

“I daresay they did back in the late 1800s and early 1900s,” said Abe, grinning, “but I can see why you gentlemen would find a theater stage far handier. Thanks for the time and the coffee.”

From a window the two partners in design watched Abe’s slight figure walk to a respectable-looking police unmarked.

“He’s very, very smart,” said Rufus.

“Definitely smart enough to tell a sequin from a spangle. I suggest, Rufus my love, that we be tremendously co-operative and astronomically helpful.”

“What worries me is that we won’t know anything!” Rufus said with a snap. “Gays aren’t the flavor of the month.”

“Or the year. Never mind, we can but try.” Came one of those explosive sighs; Rha’s voice turned weary again. “In the meantime, Rufus, we have a pool of sicked-up grape juice to deal with.” He stopped dead, looking thunderstruck. “Gold!” he roared. “Gold, gold, gold! When the richest king in the world is blue from unrequited love, he does a Scrooge McDuck and rolls in gold, gold, gold!”

“Open treasure chests everywhere!”

“A waterfall of gold tinsel!”

“He’ll have to roll on a monstrous bean-bag of gold coins, that won’t be easy to make look convincing—”

“No, not a bean-bag! The pool of gold dust at the bottom of the tinsel waterfall, numb-nuts! He bathes in his sorrow!”

Rufus giggled. “He’ll have to wear a body suit, otherwise the tinsel will creep into every orifice.”

Rha bellowed with laughter. “So what’s new about that for Roger Dartmont? Shitting gold is one up on shitting ice-cream.”

Still chuckling at their shared visions of Broadway’s ageing star, the immortal Roger Dartmont, Rha Tanais and Rufus Ingham went back to work, imbued with fresh enthusiasm.

Abe went straight to see Hank Jones as soon as he returned from his interview with the design duo.

“How’s it going, Hank?”

The pencil kept moving. “A proposition, sir?”

“Hit me.”