Immoral Certainty

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Uh, sorry, Dana, I’m in your way.”

  The woman fluttered her hands and grinned, revealing a row of crooked poor-people teeth.

  “Garsh, Marlene, that’s awright,” said Dana Woodley, in an accent infrequently heard in the halls of 100 Centre Street. Woodley was an anomaly on the D.A.’s support staff, which ran more typically to gum-cracking tough kids from Queens with stiletto heels and whore make-up or struggling black single mothers. She hailed from an Appalachian hollow called Daggersville, and had been transplanted to New York by way of a crashed love affair that left her with a kid, a suitcase, and no prospects. She dressed in frilly white blouses tied with little velvet bows, and narrow dark skirts. Her best feature was a mass of glowing auburn hair, which she kept in a long cheerleader’s pony tail. Besides that, her face was long and sallow, and devoid of make-up, and her eyes were the color of damp stone, thin and wary.

  As she smiled back at this woman, Marlene could not help but be aware of the admiration, nearly the adoration, in the other’s look. The notion that a woman could be a lawyer and deal with men on an equal footing had hit Dana Woodley like a shot of benzedrine. For her part, Marlene had not been a role model before this, and was not averse to a little admiration.

  Marlene got off the desk, lit a cigarette, and said, “What a day! Did you ever feel, when you bought something you thought you wanted, that whoever sold it to you knew you were coming?”

  “Oh, sure, all the time. ’Course, I am an ol’ hillbilly, no reason they shouldn’t try to treat me like a sucker. If’n they can get away with it, which they-all’d have to get up purty early in the day t’do.”

  Marlene laughed. “Whut’s s’funny,” asked Woodley.

  “Sorry, I get a kick out of your rap, is all. No, it’s no lie. I could listen to that corn pone talk all day. It’s like a cheap tour out of here. Meanwhile, speaking of sucker, I just arranged to get two cops in here on a detail to reopen the Segura case, and I think I got taken, and I can’t figure out how.”

  “Shoot, Marlene, long as they gave you the overhead along with the two bodies I don’t see how they—”

  “Wait … overhead?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s support staff, paperclips, phones, and like that. See, if’n they come ’n work outa this office, we got to supply all o’ that? So they got to agree on a fund transfer cause it’s a different budget—the po-lice, ’n all?”

  “Oh, shit! You’re probably right. That jerk-off! I better go see Karp before Spicer gets to him.”

  “Yeah. Say, how come y’all reopenin’ Segura?”

  Marlene quickly explained the reasoning behind the decision, which Dana grasped rather more quickly than had Lieutenant Shaughnessy. Her mouth tightened and her eyes got flat and hard.

  “I swear, Marlene, thing like that…. ‘Vengeance is mine saith the Lord’ according to gospel, an’ I mostly believe it, but a man’d do a thang like that to a little girl, it’s just so purely mean, some’n like that just wants killin’. An’ I always think of Carol Anne. Shoot, they make it sorrowful hard on motherin’ in this city!”

  “They do, all right. How’s the kid, by the way. Day care working out?”

  The thin face brightened. “Oh, my, yes! We got us a scholarship through the church. It ain’t half a purty place, too. Carol Anne cain’t wait to go in the mornin’s.”

  “Terrific! It almost restores my faith in anything working out. Speaking of which, I better get right in there.”

  Karp’s day had continued to deteriorate. During the afternoon of the initial meeting on the Ferro killing, Tony Harris had come grinning into his office with what he imagined was good news.

  “Hey, Butch, how about this!” Harris was waving a piece of yellow paper, his face creased by a snaggly smile.

  “What you got, Tony?”

  “I was right. His car’s gone. Impellatti’s. One of Devlin’s guys just called. They talked to the attendant at the garage where he kept it. The guy remembers Impellatti coming in and asking for it, maybe three in the afternoon the day after the Ferro hit. The guy said,” here he read from the paper, “‘Impellatti looked dishevelled and nervous, not normal, like he’d been running.’”

  “That’s real interesting, Tony,” said Karp, finding it difficult to enjoy the other man’s enthusiasm. “So where did he run to?”

  “This I don’t know. The other question is why was he running, if Guma’s right.”

  “You mean about Harry Pick having no beef with him? It’s a plausible theory, but it doesn’t get us anywhere. He could be in Timbuktu by now, and even if he walked in the door tomorrow we still wouldn’t have a case against the shooter or Harry Pick.”

  “You mean because there’s no independent corroboration? Yeah, but if we had Impellatti, surely we could get somebody at the scene to come across.”

  “At the scene?” exclaimed Karp, his eyes popping. “That crowd at Alberto’s? Witnesses? Dream on, child!”

  Harris’s face fell. “So what do we do with this?” He flapped his paper.

  “File it, Tony. File it deep. If Noodles walks in here or if Harry Pick has a crisis of conscience and wants to confess, then you can dig it out. Don’t look at me like that! You think I don’t sympathize? Everybody wants to fry a don. It beats the shit out of running fucked-up skinny black kids through the mill, hey? But right now, my boy, there’s no percentage in putting any more steam into this one.”

  Then the phone rang and he had a long, unpleasant conversation with the head of the D.A. Investigations Squad. And then Marlene came in, looking belligerent.

  “I just got my ass chewed by Fred P. Spicer, our noble D.A. squad chief,” said Karp sourly when he saw Marlene. “And as you know, he is one of the people I least like to get chewed by. What did you do?”

  “I know, I know, I forgot to nail down the overhead.”

  “The overhead! Shit, Marl, that’s only the half of it. You said they could keep their cases? On a detail? Which means Shaughnessy’s going to maintain his clearance quotas on my budget. Plus, you didn’t name-request the two officers, which means Shaughnessy could send over a couple of clapped-out boozers he’s been trying to get rid of for years.”

  “He wouldn’t dare!”

  “I don’t know about that, but as it turns out he didn’t. We’re getting Balducci and Raney, which from his point of view is almost as good.”

  “Why? Are they duds?”

  “No. Balducci’s a decent cop, a good detective. Trouble is, he’s retiring this year. So, what happens is, Shaughnessy fills the vacant slot with a fresh body. The quotas that go with that body are supposed to be assigned to the refill, but since Balducci’ll be checking out from Spicer’s shop, the quotas’ll hang around here for at least a couple months. Nobody’ll really expect us to follow up on them, but Shaughnessy’ll get a free ride for the duration of the switch. It’s a classic buddy-fuck: cop trick number four-oh-seven-two-b. Spicer’s gonna need a quart of Vaseline for his ass.”

  “And Raney? Tell me he’s the famous brain-damage case.”

  “No, but I could see where Shaughnessy might want to get rid of him. You remember that Clint Eastwood shoot-out in the Schmitkin Bakery last summer? Off-duty cop, four perps, heavily armed, all four ended up dead?”

  “Yeah, in Jamaica. That was Raney?”

  “That was Raney. Pistol Jim Raney, as I believe he’s called. A credit to the force, especially if the Viet Cong ever try to take Manhattan.”

  “Oh, Christ, that’s all I need on Segura!”

  “Segura! You’re doing this for Segura?”

  “Yeah. What’s the matter? I told you I was reopening the investigation. We discussed it.”

  The phone rang. Karp ignored it.

  “We didn’t discuss anything, Marlene,” he said testily. “You made up your mind and ran off, and left me with the mess. As usual.”

  “As usual! Fuck you, ‘as usual!’ That’s what I love about talking to you, these little zingers you put in there—like I�
��m nothing but a fuck-up around here.”

  The phone rang again.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Marlene asked.

  “No! And, first of all, I didn’t say you were a fuck-up. I just meant there’s a way to do stuff right, procedure—”

  “Procedure! Do my ears deceive me? When did you become such a bureaucrat all of a sudden? Look, Butch—you really going to tell me I can’t have two lousy cops to look in to what could be a goddamn maniac wandering around out—”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t have them! Did I say you couldn’t have the damn cops? Although, of course after Balducci hands in his potsy, you’ll only have Raney, the biggest loose cannon in the N.Y.P.D. And as I recall it, you were going to hang the mother for this one until I stepped in.”

  “You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you? I can’t believe you’re being this way, just because fucking Spicer …”

  The door opened, after a perfunctory knock, and Connie Trask’s face appeared in the doorway. “That call’s for you, Butch,” she said, smiling sweetly. “See, the way it works is, when it rings, you’re supposed to pick it up and talk in the little holes there.”

  “Connie, come on, I’m busy. Can’t I call them back?”

  “Um, guy sounded like he had to talk to you right now. It’s long distance. A Mr. Frank Impellatti.”

  “Holy shit! Little Noodles?”

  “He didn’t say nothing about noodles,” said Trask. “Pick up on three.”

  Karp was on the phone for about two minutes, during which he said “uh-huh” half a dozen times. Then he said, “Wait a minute, Impellatti, I got a lot more questions. How do I … ah, shit!” Karp stared angrily at the receiver and then tossed it back in its cradle.

  “What was that?” asked Marlene.

  “That was Frank Impellatti, the guy who fingered Vinnie Red. I can’t believe this—I was just talking to Tony about this, that we needed this guy to walk in, and now he walks in. This is like the movies.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s hiding out in California. In Beverly fucking Hills, if you can believe it. He wants to come in and spill his guts on the Ferro hit, maybe some other stuff, too.”

  “Butch, that’s great!”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Karp said glumly. “He says he won’t move unless I go out there and get him. It has to be me, and alone.”

  “No kidding? Why’d he pick you?”

  “The fuck I know. He said, ‘I’m a no bullshit guy, and I hear you’re a no bullshit guy, so maybe we could do business.’ That was it.”

  “You don’t get a tribute like that every day.”

  “Yeah, my head’s still in a whirl. Look, kiddo, about the two cops, I’ll figure out some way to fix it. But only until Balducci retires. We don’t have a case by then….” He shrugged and made a gesture of helplessness, his hands spread and fluttering.

  But Marlene seemed to be thinking about something else.

  “So. You’re going to California.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “You’ll be down in L.A. Were you thinking about going up north, checking out your old stamping grounds?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it, obviously, but it’s an idea.”

  “Like where might you go? For instance.”

  Karp looked at her. She was staring out the window. When he was silent, she turned to face him, holding her head slightly cocked so she could make full use of her good eye.

  Karp said, “This is an interesting line of questioning, counselor, but I’m not sure where you’re leading.”

  “Oh, well, I just thought that since you asked me to marry you lo, these many months, and since we might be considered to be engaged, but we can’t really, because you are, after all, still married to a woman who, I seem to recall, lives north of L.A. out there, I just thought that you might take this opportunity to locate this woman and obtain her signature on a petition for divorce. That was my thinking.”

  “It was, huh?”

  “Yes. And since the fact that we are neither married nor engaged has not prevented you from leaping on my body at every possible opportunity to do the dirty, and monopolizing my time in the bargain, thus preventing me from finding an alternative life’s companion, and since I have absolutely no desire to be a forty-year-old office girlfriend, which I have recently felt well on the way to becoming, it strikes me that this would be an ideal time to take care of that little business.”

  “It strikes you that way, does it?”

  She came toward him then, and leaned over him as he sat in his chair. She put her face very close to his, and placed her warm hand on the back of his neck, above the collar. It burned against his skin and he felt the sweat start from his forehead.

  “Yes, it does,” she said. “And moreover, as we say in subpoenas, ‘therefore, fail not,’ because if you come back from California without said petition, as much as I love you, and as much as I dig to explore the ultimate frontiers of sexual pleasure with you, I will fucking cut off your water, and you will never get to experience the elaborate erotic treats I have been storing away for my wedding night since the first glimmers of puberty. What do you say to that, buster?”

  “You got a deal,” said Karp.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Karp was gone the next morning, the Tuesday, flying the friendly skies to Los Angeles and Little Noodles. On the unfriendly earth, meanwhile, Marlene Ciampi trudged through her day, trying not to think about Karp, or where he was going, or whether he was really going to find his wife, and do the necessary thing. Mostly, she succeeded, helped in no small part by the deadening routine of the calendar court at which she was now representing the people of the state in their fight against crime.

  “Calendar 104, John Mogle,” said the uniformed court officer. Two men got up from a bench at the rear of the courtroom and started up the center aisle. Marlene checked her files and the list of numbers she had prepared and found 104. She stuck her list between her teeth, balanced most of her folders on the hip-high wooden barrier that divided the well of the court from the spectators’ benches and thumbed rapidly through the stack of folders that pertained to this court, Part 42.

  She pulled the right file, read through it: a hit and run with injuries. The two men, one thin, middle-aged in a gray suit, the other bigger, younger, in a long leather coat—lawyer and defendant—reached the barrier, and the court officer let them through. Marlene piled her stacks on the edge of a table and went to join the two men before the bench, still reading the complaint.

  “Are the People ready?” asked the judge.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” said Marlene, voicing the perpetual lie of the Criminal Courts, as she finished reading the complaint and simultaneously prepared her plea bargain, all thoughts of Karp driven from her mind.

  Four cases later, having finished her responsibility at this particular Part, Marlene loaded her files into a ragged brown paper portfolio, waved to the clerks and court officers and headed out for her next courtroom.

  Two men stood up as she passed them and followed her out.

  “Miss Ciampi?” said one of them, touching her arm.

  She could tell they were cops because they had their shields dangling from their breast pockets. But even without the shields, she would have known. They were both cops around the eyes.

  The older of the two, the man who had spoken, was a medium-sized man in a cheap gray suit, with a face the color and texture of a used grocery bag left out in the rain, folded, wrinkled, covered with pale brown spots. He had thinning black hair combed straight back and dark pouches under dark eyes that were liquid, sad and wise.

  “I’m Detective Balducci,” he said in a soft voice. “This is Detective Raney.” Raney was the Bad Cop of the team, naturally. He had the classic wiry track-and-field body and was a strawberry blond besides, with thick dollops of hair like red gold framing a flat, pale face. As she shook hands Marlene saw a scattering of freckles, no nose to speak of,
a long thin mouth curled in a wise-ass smirk, eyes the color of the shallow end of a swimming pool.

  His handshake was slightly harder than necessary. The smirk again, but the eyes didn’t join in. The eyes were distant, intelligent, but with something there besides, something a little scary. An odd feeling shot through Marlene, repugnance mixed with curiosity, even attraction. Another crazy Irishman. Pazz’ irlandesi, her grandmother would have said, rolling her eyes heavenward.

  They walked to her little office, where she laid out the case of the murder and violation of Lucy Segura. Balducci took notes. Raney perched on the side of her desk and stared at her, except when she happened to look at him, when he looked quickly down at his long, freckled hands.

  When she had finished, Balducci closed his notebook and got to his feet. He gave her an avuncular smile and said, “OK, Miss Ciampi….”

  “Please, it’s Marlene.”

  “Yeah? I got a niece Marlene. I’m Pete. He’s Jimmy. OK, Marlene, we’ll get right on this thing. I’m not saying we’re gonna devote like full-time to it or anything, but we will check it out.”

  “I appreciate that, Pete, but really, what do you think?”

  Balducci glanced at his partner before he answered. “Well … you know, these things, with kids. It’s usually somebody they know….”

  “Right!” said Marlene vehemently. “But this doesn’t feel right for one of those….”

  “Intuition?” Raney asked this in a flat voice, almost mocking. Then he added, “Marlene.”

  Marlene scowled at him. He looked away and joined his partner in the doorway. “No, not intuition. I notice you didn’t say woman’s intuition. Jimmy.”

  “Not guilty,” said Raney.

  “The reason it’s not intuition is that somebody chopped the girl’s finger off after she was dead. You recall? I can’t see the family sex offender doing that, can you?”