Corruption of Blood

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “No deal, Guma,” said Marlene.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then fuck you very much, and I’ll try to do the same for you someday!” he shouted, and slammed out of the office. Marlene sighed and went back to her columns of figures, hoping that Luisa Beckett would be happy about this. Marlene certainly wasn’t.

  District Attorney Bloom lived on Park Avenue just north of Sixty-fourth Street, in a duplex on the top floor. His family had made a pile as meat-packers during the Civil War and an even greater pile later when the meatpacking district had become Sutton Place and their stockyards had turned into the most gilded real estate on Manhattan Island. Bloom also owned a large spread in Westchester, where he kept his family, preferring to spend the bulk of his time in his pied-à-terre. He was the kind of person who actually called it that.

  Marlene arrived shortly after seven, having splurged for a cab. She was wearing her working clothes, a plain gray wool suit, and a cream silk blouse, with a tan raincoat on top. She carried a large leather bag and a briefcase, in which rested her work of the last four hours.

  A green-coated doorman smelling lightly of drink ushered her in and told her she was expected. The elevator was brass, rosewood, and mirrored. Marlene checked her face and adjusted her eye.

  The door to Bloom’s place was opened by a short middle-aged Latina woman in a tan uniform and apron, who took Marlene’s coat and bag and directed her silently down a hallway lined with lit paintings. Marlene spotted a small Hockney and what looked like an Utrillo.

  Bloom was waiting in a large room fitted out as a library: two walls book-lined floor to ceiling, an oriental rug on the floor, and on the third wall two large windows decked out with pale drapes and showing the lights of Park Avenue and the East Side beyond it. In the center of the room was a long mahogany library table with suitable chairs and an arrangement of side tables, standard lamps, dark leather couches, and club chairs, in one of which sat the master of the establishment.

  Bloom looked up from the book he had been reading. He was wearing a baby blue knit golfing cardigan with the seal of a country club on it, an open-necked tattersall check shirt, tan whipcords, and Gucci white loafers, no socks. He rose and greeted Marlene warmly, which included a lingering squeeze on the arm and some remarks about how good she looked, as if he hadn’t seen her for months, instead of just a few hours ago. He offered her a drink and she accepted a white wine. Bloom opened a bottle of Pouilly at a small bar hidden behind a panel made from phony books, placed it in a silver ice bucket, and brought it over to a coffee table. He made a little ceremony of pouring it out into crystal goblets, accompanied by some wine-snob chatter. His eyes were bright and it was obvious that this was not his first drink of the evening.

  They sat at the coffee table, Marlene on the couch, Bloom on the club chair opposite, and drank. Bloom refilled their glasses. He described his meeting with the “governor’s people": they wanted his support on a big anticrime bill now before the legislature. According to Bloom, Bloom was the pulsing center of criminal justice clout in the state of New York. The actual content of his talk was not, however, about legal or judicial ideas and plans, but about politics, specifically the politics of personal relationships, about which Marlene was ready to agree he was a reigning expert. One guy was out to get him, these two were in collusion because one owed the other a sleazy favor. That one was fucking his colleague’s wife. Bloom went on, and did not spare the bottle.

  Finally, at one of the infrequent pauses, Marlene said briskly, “Well, should we get going? I’ve worked up a lot of stuff and I don’t want to be out too late.”

  Bloom stared blearily at her, as if he had forgotten the ostensible purpose of their meeting. He said pettishly, “Yes, well, but supper. We haven’t had our supper yet. I’m starving, aren’t you?”

  No: what Marlene was was irritated and starting to get woozy from the wine. But “Sure,” was what she said, imagining a pizza or a plate of sandwiches. Wrong again; the DA ushered her down the hallway and into a dining room, where a table had been set for two. Candles were lit. They sat, and the Latina servant began to serve a full meal: lobster bisque to start, an arugula salad, little fillets with roast potatoes and asparagus. And more wine, of course. The DA went to a wine closet built into the paneled wall of the dining room and brought out a Chateau Petrus. Marlene learned what it had cost, and what a hard bargain Bloom had driven with the wine merchant, and how hard it was to get first-growth seventies, and so on and on until Marlene wanted to throw something heavy at him. Instead, she drank three glasses of the stuff, which was, she was still able to admit, truly marvelous.

  A familiar feeling struck Marlene about then, almost a déjà vu. This was exactly like a bad blind date with one of the stuffed shirts she had spent evenings with in law school. Marlene had been living with three other poor students in a New Haven fleabag, subsisting on peanut butter and spaghetti, and from time to time, when she was feeling unusually resentful of her poverty and the squalor in which she lived, she would allow herself to be picked up by some rich jerk and fed lavishly at a fancy restaurant, after which the main problem was how to keep him out of her pants. Marlene had never actually let herself be fucked for a nice meal, but she knew any number of distinguished and brilliant women, in both college and law school, who had, and thought little of it.

  The dishes were cleared at last. Marlene said, “Can we get through this now? I really have to go soon.” Karp would be waiting at the loft now; Lucy would be fast asleep. She was struck by a powerful desire to be away from this bore and sitting in comfy clothes in her own kitchen talking to her husband. Or in bed.

  She had interrupted one of Bloom’s insider anecdotes. He frowned petulantly and said, “Yes, yes, all right. My God, you’re relentless, aren’t you? You should relax more, my dear. Go with the flow, as the kids say. I tell you what—I have a Zabar’s cheesecake. I’ll have it served in the library, with coffee and brandy. How would that be? Cozy? And you can at long last unburden yourself. Sound good?”

  “Fine,” said Marlene, rising. Okay, she thought, be polite, be correct, people do this all the time, you have to learn to get on with people you don’t particularly like, be a grown-up. She lifted her chin and constructed a smile on her face, and forced a little self-deprecating laugh.

  Bloom returned the smile and chuckled. See! she thought. It’s easy. They removed to the library.

  The servant brought a tray with a whole, perfect blond disk of cheesecake and a silver coffee service. Bloom went to the bar. Marlene arranged her papers on the mahogany coffee table and waited. After a while, Bloom returned with two snifter glasses, each containing a hefty shot of amber liquid. Bloom poured out the coffee and sliced the cheesecake, and sat down on the couch next to her. Marlene ignored the cake, and the pressure of his thigh next to hers, took a quick sip of coffee, slipped on her specs, and went into her spiel. She felt curiously detached now, as if she were floating back among the towering bookcases watching a windup version of Marlene making the pitch. She glanced at Bloom from time to time to see how he was receiving it. He seemed all right, with the same bland semismile he usually wore stuck like a cheap decal on his pink face.

  She finished and looked up. “That’s it. Any questions?”

  Bloom shook his head. “No. I’m overwhelmed. A terrific job, Marlene. I think that’s a really good base to go on with. Very feasible.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do. You’ve got a great, great future with the office. Onward and upward,” he said, patting her thigh several times. “Let’s drink to it!” He raised a snifter, Marlene raised hers, they clinked, they drank. Marlene liked cognac, and this was the best she had ever tasted, a bubble of smooth fire in her throat.

  They had another. They talked, and now she started to talk, about herself, about Karp. Bloom seemed interested. He drew her out. The conversation became more intimate. There was something avid about his interest in Karp, in “what
he was really like,” something disturbing. Marlene found herself talking automatically, without thinking. She experienced once again that feeling of detachment, of not being herself, in her body, in charge.

  It was hot in the room, and Marlene slipped out of her suit jacket, for some reason not feeling it was an odd thing to do. Bloom removed his golf sweater.

  A hiatus here, blankness. Marlene drifted off into a dream. She was naked in a cage, in some sort of zoo. Karp was in the next cage. There were people watching them expectantly. She was full of sexual desire and so was Karp, but she was nervous and embarrassed. Then, in the strange way of dreams, it became all right, natural. She pressed against the bars, spreading her thighs. He stroked her thighs and belly. She squirmed.

  She awoke, gasping. She was lying on her back, on the couch, with her skirt hiked up and her legs asunder. Her shirt was open to the waist and her bra had been unhooked. The district attorney was kneeling over her, breathing hard, with one of his hands under the elastic of her panty hose, groping at her crotch.

  In a convulsive movement, she sat up and thrust him away. She stood up, tottered, her head spinning, and fell back against the arm of the couch. Bloom stroked her leg and said soothingly, “Relax. Relax, there’s nothing wrong… .”

  She struggled again and found her feet, in deep panic now, disoriented and feeling ill. There was a peculiar medicinal taste at the back of her throat. Drugged. Something in the brandy. She saw her jacket and snatched it up and shoved it under her left arm and did the same with her bag. With her right hand, she held her blouse closed. She started to walk away, but Bloom reached out and grabbed her left arm. His face was flushed. He said in his best avuncular tone, “Hey, look, let’s sit down and talk about this. Before you run off and do anything rash, let’s just sit …”

  Marlene set herself, hauled back, and threw a solid right cross into Bloom’s mouth. It was not an artful blow and her father would have disapproved of the right hand lead, but it was a sincere one, with all her meat and considerable skill behind it. Bloom staggered away from the punch, caught the backs of his calves against the coffee table, and crashed down on it. Two of its legs collapsed, dumping him on the carpet, so that the cheesecake and everything else on the coffee table slipped down the slope thus created, covering him with a mess of glutinous dessert, cold coffee, cream, sugar, and shattered crockery.

  Marlene ran out of the apartment, without stopping to pick up her coat or her briefcase and her carefully prepared plan. She adjusted her clothing in the elevator, and raced past the lobby without disturbing the nodding doorman in his chair. On the sidewalk she was overcome with nausea. She knelt and puked her expensive meal into the gutter. Then she wobbled herself upright, whistled through her fingers, and snagged one of Park Avenue’s plentiful yellow cabs.

  Once in the warm and deodorant-scented taxi, the shock caught up with her. She came apart. One part of her, that is, stood apart and analyzed the situation with a cold and well-trained logic. She had, of course, been a fool to think that Bloom was interested in her ideas. Bloom might have actually used the rewards available to him to help her career, if that was necessary to get her into bed, but the main thing was the sexual titillation of fucking the head of the rape unit, and not just that, no, not just, or even principally, for love of Marlene’s sweet body, but to put it to Karp. To fuck Karp.

  And there was, of course, no way of getting back at him, even though she was almost certain that she had been drugged. What would she tell the police, for example? That she had gone to a man’s apartment while her husband was away, and he had what … grabbed a cheap feel? And who was the guy? Oh, the district attorney? Did you talk to the rape unit? Oh, you are the rape unit? Delightful. And of course, her career was now in the toilet, permanently.

  Another part of Marlene was balled up, screaming in shame and rage. Marlene was, needless to say, no stranger to sexual violence. She had, in fact, once been kidnapped and subjected to various intrusive rituals by a gang of satanists. This was different, and, in a way, worse. She herself had written this script. What had Karp called him? A corrupt fuck. Yes, and of course she had known that, and of course she had conspired to hide that from herself, to pull off a coup, to show that she could succeed where Karp had failed, in controlling Bloom, in getting—what was it?—past Butch in a way? Because that would mean that she didn’t need him in some pathetic fashion, that their relationship was purely voluntary, that she was in control, and free.

  As she had been since she (sort of) stopped believing in God at the age of twelve. This thought crossed her mind quickly, but not quickly enough, for now the taps were opened and the vast reservoirs of shame and guilt supplied as part of her Catholic girlhood and held back these many years by her worldly success, by her confidence, burst forth and flooded her spirit. She blubbered noisily down Broadway, prompting a nervous look in the rearview by the cabbie.

  The final part of her was barely conscious. This was the part that knew that, if only fleetingly, she had considered letting Bloom screw her, for the advantage it would bring. That she had instantly rejected it did not in the least balance the horror of having made the calculation, having considered it at all. It was indelible, like a bloodstain on white silk.

  Marlene was now moving toward a state that, as she well knew, the Church calls acidie: the condition of believing that one is beyond salvation, which is itself a mortal sin, and unique among the sins in that the indulgence in it is its own punishment.

  Arriving at Crosby Street, she thrust a ten-dollar bill at the cabbie, double the fare, and staggered through her door and up the stairs.

  In the dark loft, she checked the child, stifling her sobs so as not to wake her. Karp was asleep too; she could hear his heavy breathing. It was past two. She rinsed her mouth out at the sink and brushed her teeth for a long time. Then she curled up on the red couch in the living room and drew a quilt around her against a chill that was as much from within her as from the air in the loft. That was how Karp found her in the morning, wide awake and staring at nothing.

  The thin man settled easily into the house in Little Havana. He watched a good deal of television and slept late.

  It was fairly cool for Miami, nights in the sixties, but the thin man kept the air-conditioning set high, and slept under blankets. He had a serious air-conditioning deficit, almost thirteen years’ worth. The Cuban brought him his meals, takeout from American places, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, Dairy Queen. Another deficit to be made up. The man who called himself Bishop had told him not to go out, which he thought somewhat peculiar, because he would have to go out sometime, or there was no point in his being there at all.

  One day, a little over a week after his arrival from Guatemala, the Cuban went out and returned with Bishop. They sat at the Formica table in the kitchen and drank American beer. For a few minutes they made small talk about how they both were doing, how the country had changed, about sports and television.

  Bishop slid a paper across the table. It was a list of names. All of them were familiar to the thin man.

  “You want all of these done?” the thin man asked.

  “No. I wish we could leave all of them alone, but that may not be possible. The point is, we want the minimum possible hangout here. It’ll depend on how much the investigation learns before it collapses.”

  “It’s going to collapse, though?”

  Bishop smiled. “Assuredly. That operation’s already under way. We just need to stay one step ahead for a relatively short period.” He tapped the list of names. “We may not need to do anything. I’d prefer that, frankly.”

  The thin man thought about that for a moment and drew the obvious conclusion.

  “So you have people inside. The investigation.”

  “Oh, yes, our sources are quite good,” said Bishop. “That’s what we do, after all. We’re spies.” He laughed, and the thin man laughed too.

  EIGHT

  “It must be nice to have your wife and kid here in
Washington,” said Bert Crane conversationally. “How are they settling in?”

  “Oh, just fine,” said Karp. “It’s an adjustment.”

  “I’m looking forward to meeting her. You’ll be at the Dobbses’ tomorrow night, right?”

  Karp had forgotten the dinner party. He always forgot parties. In the city, Marlene had kept track of their social obligations. He hoped she had kept track of this one, and secured a baby-sitter. Somehow he doubted it; Marlene wasn’t into tracking anything anymore. He said, “Oh, yeah, we’ll be there.”

  “Good. Dobbs is doing us a favor on this one, you know. Parties are where things happen in this town, or so I’m given to believe. We haven’t quite burrowed in on the social side the way I’d hoped we would. These damn loose ends up in Philadelphia—I haven’t stroked egos and bought lunches to the extent I should have.” He rubbed his face and stared briefly out of his window at the train yards. Karp thought he looked more drawn and tired than he had in his plush Philadelphia office that first day. These were changes similar to those Karp saw every day in his own mirror. The expression “pecked to death by ducks” popped into his mind.

  “Things are looking up, though,” Crane resumed. “I’ve just been invited to address the Democratic caucus. This could be a turning point for us, but we need something splashy, some breakthrough, to throw to the dogs.” He looked at Karp speculatively. “That CIA stuff we got from Schaller, for example …”

  “You’re not serious.”

  Crane flushed and opened his mouth to say something else, but instead sighed and grumbled, “No, damn it, now they’ve got me doing it. I never thought I’d be in a position where leaking material in an investigation would look good. No, obviously, once that stuff gets loose, everybody remotely associated with any leads it provides will head for the tall timber. Or worse. Of course, they know we’ve got it.”