Page 161 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Slow Burn

“Right.” I looked it up later. Some scientist had discovered that an
object becomes invisible at a distance if it is covered with large
irregular color patterns. They do something in the brain of the viewer
so it won’t recognize the real outline of the thing.
“Did any of them notice anything else that evening?”
“Not a thing. Mr. Carbone apparently kept to himself.”
Labelle shoved a folder at me. If I hadn’t been sitting on her desk
it wouldn’t have lodged under my thigh. It had one of those alligator
clips holding some papers inside it together, and she managed to
push it right into a nerve. I winced and slowly got to my feet. She
knew enough about Asian martial arts to have done it on purpose.
Nobody watching or listening, of course, would have a clue about
what had just transpired.
“Indeed he did, Duncan. His was the personality of a hermit and a
miser and a misanthropist. A totally unremarkable person, in fact,
except for one thing. He is the uncle of the Carbone quintuplets.”
“The what?”
“You are perhaps a bit young to remember. In the Sixties and
Seventies, many women unable to conceive experimented with
fertility drugs. The result, in some cases, was multiple births. Alberto
Carbone’s sister-in-law, under the influence of such a drug, gave birth
to five sons in 1970. She and her husband immediately saw the
potential for commercial exploitation; I’m sure it was almost a
necessity, given the unexpected increase in child-rearing expense. The
quints—Quincy, Quentin, Quantrill, Quigley and Quarles—were
signed to an exclusive contract by Sauerfeld Dairies, makers of
Galactomalt, a sweetened and artificially-flavored beverage targeted at
children.”
“Right.” I used to love the stuff. So did my dentist.
“The contract involved personal appearances as well as filmed and
photographed endorsements, so the boys began life as child stars—
almost literally, for the company’s favorite ad portrayed the quints’
faces at the vertices of a five-pointed star.”
I opened the folder. She had managed to find an old magazine
with a full-page Galactomalt advertisement. Five chubby cherubic
faces, glowing with airbrushed health, beamed from the page.
“I had no trouble tracing these five, the deceased’s only living
relatives. They are all back here in the city, after a period of dispersal

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