As the interrogating officer moved from his seat in concealed annoyance to shut the door that had been left intentionally open, Kelvin seized the opportunity to ask Jerry, with a gesture of mouth sign, if he had said anything about the Duncans.
Jerry found the indecorous gesticulation meaningful, but took it for mockery. He also twisted his mouth in reaction.
Has this chap revealed anything? Kelvin wondered. If he has, it would only be a matter of time before his own treachery against the police and the state was known. The exposition would not be a good piece of news.
Kelvin’s inquisitiveness was dispelled when Jerry reaffirmed to his interrogator, “I don’t know any Judas or Kane. I swear. Let me go my own way and mind my damn business.”
Confident that there was no leakage yet, Kelvin, leaning on another desk with folded arms, said furiously, “Look Marvin, how many times have I told you to leave this Judas-Kane thing alone? You are not the one to handle it. Why don’t you check out more important matters? This is your second week on this case and all you have to show for it is a young man sitting before you and crying his eyes out. Again, I will advise you to stop wasting your time acting like you’re investigating Kim Philby. Later on, we might have some fresh and better evidence against the Dean . . . I mean Judas . . . er, whatever. Then we would not have to depend on an indefinite piece of information passed through the phone, ordering you to stop your more taxing jobs and start chasing an invisible Judas. The case was not even properly filed.”
Marvin only frowned, mumbling unintelligible protests. He gave a careless salute by merely flinging his right hand past his nose like he was swatting off flies, then excused himself.
Watching him as he went out, Kelvin thought of what he could do to the stubborn elderly Marvin. He could open his gate of sudden retirement, or simply get him some long weeks of leave. Kelvin Lucas’s connection in the State’s police was far and wide.
Since his university days, he had been loyal to Judas Duncan. Whenever he had problems with the school authorities, he always had the Dean’s brotherly support. Every day after school, he always went to Judas’s house for free, extra lectures in such phenomena as economic crime, corruption, fraud, assassination, drugs and narcotics abuses, and trafficking. But in practical, he was a dull student theoretically. And despite all odds, his godfather, the Dean had made sure he passed through with first-class honors.
Kelvin had joined the police out of pressure from parents who wanted a uniformed man in the family, thereby tarnishing his dream of becoming a professional thief who was going to break the record of the most dangerous robber in history. While Adolf Hitler was his hero, Judas, the Dean, was his mentor.
He had concocted a very dangerous plan to get Judas out of prison in the third year, but it was abandoned because the Dean disliked the method of execution. And then he had promised that one day he would unravel the mystery behind Clara’s death and also the brain behind his boss’s eighteen-year imprisonment.
Judas had told him as he held the iron bars of the prison, “I know you would, my dear Kelvin, and when the masquerades are uncovered, nobody would be able to circumvent my own intransigent type of requital.”
At forty-two, with three legal wives and eleven children, Kelvin still believed that his dream of becoming what he originally wanted to be was not a lost one. He would soon check out of the police and face the world.
Just as he stepped out of his station, he shoved himself into a waiting taxi and directed the driver to take him somewhere within a five-minute walk from Judas’s house. He would trek the remaining distance. He ignored the cabdriver, who was trying to crack a joke and get friendly.
For a moment, Kelvin looked thoughtfully, then sighed, realizing that after some years of slow investigation, followed with some amount of money for the mission, he had fulfilled the promise he made to the Dean in prison. He remembered vividly that he had said with concealed tears, “I know you don’t deserve to be here because you have not done anything wrong to anyone. BM Kazeem and I will take care of your son. Nothing will harm him.” Then he had hardened himself as he remembered a sentence in Hitler’s message of encouragement to the SS. He had said to Judas, “I will make sure I get to the bottom of your case, my Dean. Nobody can hurt you and go scot-free while I still have breath. I promise you this day, I’ll get at whoever framed you up and killed your wife.”
He got out of the taxi and, with quickened steps, walked down to the lone bungalow. He reasoned that he would keep back a vital truth when telling the Dean the outcome of his findings. He shouldn’t hit him with too many blows at a time.
***
Judas had been crawling in and out of his laboratory, taking in a bowl and bringing out a telescope or something. Exhausted by the stress of his work, he sat heavily on a tapestry-covered wing chair in the dining space where he had set his lunch—some self-made wine in a fat flask and a long parcel of weeds.
He rested an arm and stared at the bathroom door down the narrow corridor. As he splashed the contents of the flask into a glass, still looking at the door, he wondered what Kane was doing there all day. He’d seen him enter the bathroom for the fourth time that day, coming out at intervals to watch pornographic films.
On all four occasions, there hadn’t been water spilling as a sign of bathing. Something was going on.
Slowly, pushing his chair backward and standing erect abruptly, he decided to check him out. He moved silently, nearly on tiptoe. He paused for a moment, leaned on the door, careful not to make a sound, and plastered his eyes obliquely on it in an effort to locate a tiny hole the last occupant of the house had carefully drilled there, he was sure, to watch his daughters and female visitors bathe. Judas found it and closed an eye, squinting with the other one. He saw Kane standing before him, with head tilted backward a bit and mouth twitched with pleasure, releasing silent oohs. With mounting interest, Judas started to examine the situation. He noticed that his son kept closing and opening his eyes halfway, like someone trying to sleep. Is there a girl kneeling in front of him? Judas asked himself, then lowered his head to answer. No. Pants down, a hand moving back and forth. “My motherfuckin’ god!” he shouted, laughing. “You’re fuckin’ jerking off.” Just as he was about to bang on the door to make a jest of Kane, the doorbell rang. He quickly went for it. He hated the unmusical sound, even though he’d invented it.
Kane, still in the bathroom, quietly belted his trousers, wondering who was visiting. He bent down to search for the tinier hole he’d also drilled on that door the day he’d arrived.
When Judas had satisfied himself that the caller wasn’t unknown, he opened and held the door for his main man. Superintendent Kelvin walked past him and sat on his favorite seat, clasping hands on his knees, staring ahead.
Without as much as good afternoon, Kelvin began. “Master, er . . . there are some facts I have gathered. You . . . er, Clara.” He waited for Judas to get seated.
“I am so grateful to you, my dearest Kelvin.”
“Before your journey to prison, your wife, Clara, had been having a relationship—sexual, of course.”
“My fuckin’ God!” Judas’s heart skipped for a moment, then began to pound in his head.
“She had been dating one Larry Harrison, a very young widower and the only son of a millionaire. The Larry
