Immoral Certainty

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Yeah, in about an hour and a half.”

  “OK, make the contact, then get in a car and drive like a sonofabitch someplace where they won’t look for you. Lay low for a couple of days and I’ll get something together, bring you both in.”

  “What are you talking about, Guma? Lay low, my ass! I’m going to pick up Impellatti, drive to LAX, get on a plane, and come home.”

  “Butch, you’re not listening. Listen to me! You think Harry Pick would lose sleep over wasting a planeload of people to get this guy? You remember why they call him Harry Pick? No planes, and stay out of big towns. Hotels ain’t such a good idea either. Can you think of any place you can hide out? Like in the country?”

  “Yeah,” said Karp, after a moment’s pause. “I just thought of a place they’ll never look.”

  “What do you mean, the doll’s a dead end?” snapped Marlene. Peter Balducci sighed. “Marlene, for now, a dead end. I’m not saying something couldn’t turn up.” He and Raney were in Marlene’s office at the end of a long and frustrating day. He looked at his partner for support, but Raney had his chair tipped back against the wall, staring up at the high ceiling, watching the smoke from his cigarette and Marlene’s curl and twine up to the high ceiling.

  “Like I told you on the phone, I saw this guy, what’s-his-name, the doll guy …” He checked his notebook. “Schlechter, he’s got a place on Madison, a doll expert. He recognized the maker. The doll’s Belgian, made about nineteen-ten. He said there’s only about fifty of them around.”

  “Eleven grand a copy,” said Raney.

  Balducci snorted. “Yeah, can you believe it?”

  “Did he know how many of them were in the city?” Marlene asked.

  “No, and he didn’t sell that particular one, either. But he gave me a list of the kind of collectors who could touch an item like that.” He passed a sheet of paper to her across the disordered desk. “Fourteen names. Three were out of the country. I checked out all the others. Nothing.”

  “What, ‘nothing’?”

  “Nothing, nothing. None of them got a doll like that missing. None of them got a record with anything more than a parking ticket.”

  Marlene looked at the list. The addresses were all Silk Stocking East Side or upper West Side. “How do you know none of the dolls was missing?”

  Balducci rolled his eyes. “Christ, Marlene! We don’t know these folks had a doll like that. Just they could’ve had. We had to check them out because we could’ve got lucky. Like, ‘Oh, yeah, officer, that’s the one that cousin Reginald the sex fiend ripped off last June.’ Besides that, what am I supposed to do? People who can pay eleven grand for a doll, you don’t just walk in and toss their place.”

  “What are you telling me, Pete? Above a certain tax bracket we don’t have sex killers?”

  Balducci glowered at her and got to his feet. “Marlene, you know damn well I don’t think that. Now come on! We’re two people, we got a full load besides this crap, we’re not gonna follow every citizen that could’ve had access to an expensive doll. Not until we know something else about who we’re looking for.”

  “He’s big, he’s white, he wears black clothes, and he’s got short, blond hair,” said Raney.

  The others looked at him, dumbstruck for a moment. “How the hell you know that, Jimmy?” Balducci demanded.

  Raney let his chair drop down with a crack like a gunshot. “Because while you were talking to the doll collectors, I went back to Lucy Segura’s neighborhood and hung out. There’s a playground, a couple of schoolyards. I figured if the little sister saw him, he had to be in some public place where he was hustling her. I mean, he didn’t pick her up at her door, right? So I found a couple of kids playing basketball in a schoolyard on One-sixteenth. They remembered seeing a guy with that description talking to a little kid three days before Lucy disappeared. They thought he was a priest.”

  “Kids!” snorted Balducci. “They’ll tell you any damn thing …”

  “Right, so I cruised the fast-food joints on One-sixteenth and up Lex. The day manager at the MacDonald’s also remembered a guy in black and a little girl. They came three, four times. Guy bought a meal for the kid and himself. He wouldn’t have recalled it, but the guy was so big. Maybe six-four, three hundred pounds. Black raincoat, black suit, and fedora. He doesn’t remember if he had a dog collar on or a regular shirt.”

  Balducci frowned. “Maybe it was a priest, Jimmy. Maybe it was a priest with another little girl.”

  “It’s the guy, Petey.”

  Balducci looked at Marlene for support, but she was gazing at Raney with admiration, who was gazing back with a similar expression.

  Balducci shook his head. “Right. It’s the guy. An arrest is imminent. You two figure it out. I’m going home.”

  After Balducci left, Marlene said, “Your partner seems grumpy.”

  “Yeah, he can get that way. He’s just P.O.’d because he wants to can this case, and I don’t. We’re gonna get that guy.” He smiled at her.

  He’s got a nice smile, thought Marlene, returning it. “Well, I’m glad you’re with me on this,” she said. “How are you going to handle it?”

  “We’ll nose around the buildings where the doll people were, see if anybody’s seen a big blond dude.”

  “What if they haven’t?”

  “Then Pete’s right—it’s square one again. Hey, we got lucky. There’s no guarantee our luck’s gonna hold.”

  Marlene nodded and sighed. “Yeah, you’re right, I guess.” She looked at her watch. It was six-ten. “Anyway, time to go home.” She stood and started stuffing her briefcase.

  “Can I drop you off?”

  “Don’t you want to get home yourself?”

  “Haven’t got one. I share a place with a couple of other cops in Jamaica.”

  “OK. I just have to drop some things off at the Bureau office. I’ll meet you on the Leonard Street side in ten minutes.”

  Marlene expected the Bureau office to be deserted this late in the day, but the lights were on and she heard the sound of typing. She threw some files in an in-basket for filing. At the sound, the typing stopped and Dana Woodley stuck her head up over a partition. She looked startled.

  “Dana? Hey, it’s quitting time. This is civil service, you know?”

  Woodley smiled sheepishly. “Jest finishin’ up some briefs.”

  “Yeah? Who’s making you work so hard?” Marlene looked over the partition. On Woodley’s desk was an open ream box of 100 percent rag paper, the kind used for dissertations. A few dozen sheets of neat typing were stacked at its side.

  “A little moonlighting, Dana?”

  Woodley blushed deeply. “Yeah, I, ah, put up these cards? At all the colleges? This ’un here got to be done Friday. I won’t get in no trouble, will I?”

  “Over this? Hell, no! We had a clerk here once ran a real-estate business on office time for twenty years. Retired a millionaire, I heard.” Marlene looked at the other woman closely. Her lip was trembling, and she was obviously close to tears.

  “Dana, I meant it. I’m not going to rat you out.”

  “No, gosh, it ain’t that! I’m just goin’ crazy with Carol Anne.”

  “Carol Anne? But I thought you had that great day care….”

  “Yeah, I do, but she’s started actin’ real strange, like, she has these turrible nightmares, like she never done before. And she cries somethin’ fierce when I drop her off in the mornin’. And last night, she was playin’ with her dolls and shouting, and when I went over to see what she was doin’, she had the little Ken and Barbie there with their clothes off, and she was makin’ them do it. And the language, filthy words, comin’ out of that little mouth. It purely broke my heart. And I got to work, to save any money at all, don’t I? So I got to, I got to …”

  Here the woman broke down in sobs. Marlene went around the barrier and placed her arm around Woodley’s shoulder. “Dana, it’s OK, kids go through stuff like that,” said Marlene soothingly, th
inking at the same time that she actually had no idea whether that was true.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Woodley through her sniffling. “Somebody at that center been putting evil in that child’s head.”

  “Did you talk to them about it? The center, I mean.”

  “Oh, no!” Woodley said, shocked. “I jes couldn’t, Marlene. I’d be so ashamed. And I cain’t take her out, not right now when I’m jes startin’ to get a little ahaid.” More crying. Marlene comforted her, and found herself, to her own surprise, volunteering to ask about the day-care center.

  Raney was waiting for her outside the D.A.’s office entrance on Leonard Street, at the wheel of a ten-year-old Karmann-Ghia, bottle green except for the left fender, which was primer red. The passenger seat, she learned as she climbed in, was rotted to the springs and covered with a dirty tan chenille bedspread.

  “Gosh, Raney,” she said, “I thought you were offering me a ride in a real po-lice car, and now this. Does it go?”

  “Better than most cop cars, but of course you don’t get the genuine cigar and puke smell. I’ll make it up to you some day. Where to?”

  She gave him her address and they turned north up Centre Street. The early summer night was warm and Raney had the window open and the stereo playing a tape. Chopin flowed out of expensive speakers. Marlene added up the junker car, the expensive stereo, the classical music, the cop driving: It made an intriguing sum. It made her curious.

  Raney drove aggressively and fast, squirting the little car in front of cabs and around trucks, barreling through intersections on yellow lights. While he drove, they talked, the inconsequential chat of strangers—shop, personalities, the damn City. Nothing personal.

  In a few minutes they were in front of Marlene’s loft building on Crosby Street, a grim looking industrial structure on a narrow road strewn with debris. “You live here?” Raney asked doubtfully.

  “Yeah. Why, you think it’s unsuitable for a classy broad like me?”

  Raney grinned and shrugged. “Hey, what do I know? I’m just a working stiff from Queens.”

  “Me too. I went to St. Anthony’s in Ozone Park.”

  “No kidding! I went to Curran. You go straight through? We must know a lot of the same people.”

  “No, I got a scholarship to Sacred Heart.”

  Raney drew back in mock awe. “Hey, hey! Very fancy. I’m impressed. I never had a Sacred Heart girl in my car before. I guess you don’t kiss on the first date.”

  She tried to summon up an appropriate cold look at this remark, but as she got out of the car she felt her mouth twitching into a copy of Raney’s crazy grin. “You think this is a date, Raney,” she said through the window, “you spent too much time with the nuns. Let’s keep it professional, hey?”

  As she unlocked her door, she realized that the vibes in that car had owed nothing to the professional. She recalled that nasty old tingle, no mistaking it. Why am I a sucker for the bad boys? she asked herself. And speaking of bad boys, she wished Karp would get home. Is he divorced yet? she wondered. Am I going to be a respectable married lady, married to a rising legal bureaucrat? Is that what Butch has turned into? She shook her head to straighten out her thoughts. Don’t be crazy, Marlene, she said to herself, knowing it was advice she rarely took. As she walked up the stairs a tune popped into her head. It was “Bonnie Light Horseman,” an Irish ballad about a girl who loved a dashing cavalry man. Who of course has dashed off to the wars, never to return. Marlene, control yourself, she thought. But the tune wouldn’t go away.

  “I brought you some food,” said the Bogeyman. He handed the girl a white paper bag. She opened it and started chewing listlessly on a cheeseburger. She was sitting on a bed in a small room on the ground floor of a brownstone. The Bogeyman had one just like it, down the hall. This room had in it a bed, a hooked rug, a small deal table that supported a color TV, and an armchair. The TV was tuned to a cartoon show. There was one door and one window, which was barred with a heavy grille.

  The Bogeyman sat in the armchair. “Are you happy here, Brenda?” he asked gently.

  “Do you got any ice cream?” she replied.

  “Yes, we can get you some ice cream. How do you like your dolly?”

  Brenda glanced at the doll, shrugged, then turned back to watch the cartoons. It was a twenty-four inch French porcelain doll, dressed for winter in green velvet, with a muff of real sable.

  “Not every little girl has a nice doll like that,” he said. Then, after a pause, “You know I gave a nice doll to another little girl, and I got in trouble.”

  She looked up at this. “Who? Emilia?”

  “No, not Emilia. Is Emilia your friend?”

  “Yes, but I hate her. Can she come to our house and play?”

  “No, not today. Anyway, I got in bad trouble with my mother, ’cause this little girl lost my doll. My mother yelled at me. And she spanked me. On my heinie. With a strap.”

  The girl’s eyes grew wide. Then she giggled. “Your momma can’t spank you. You a big man.”

  “No, no. Your mother can always spank you, if you’re bad. She’s always your mother.”

  “My momma mean,” said Brenda. Then, “Do I live here now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could I see your momma?”

  “I don’t think so,” said the Bogeyman. “Maybe later. After the uncles.”

  “What’s uncles?”

  “Men who tickle you. After the uncles tickle you, you can see my mother.”

  “Is she nice?” asked Brenda, doubtfully.

  “Sometimes she’s nice,” said the Bogeyman. “But sometimes she’s a witch.”

  Anna Rivas awakened to the sound of music and, rolling over, discovered Felix was gone, as usual. Anna was confused about that part of Felix. On the one hand, she wished that he would stay over on nights when they were together, and had hinted shyly to him that it would make her happy, but he was always gone. No note, no farewell, just gone. On the other hand, it was part of the mysterious romance of the relationship—the dark stranger appearing and leaving unpredictably. Anna had read a lot of romantic novels.

  She stretched luxuriously and wriggled, remembering the previous night. She sniffed the pillow where his head had rested and retrieved a faint whiff of the heavy cologne he favored. Her body was still tacky with sex. She sighed and began her day.

  As she drank her coffee and watched the morning news on the TV, there was a knock on the door. Anna opened it and Stephanie Mullen came in, dressed in a thin bathrobe under which she was obviously wearing nothing. Anna observed that the bathrobe was none too clean.

  “Hiya, cutie,” said Stephanie. “Look, I hate to bother you, but I’m trying to get the boys off to school and I’m out of milk.” She came into the one room that served as the parlor, dining area, and kitchen. “Boyfriend take off?”

  “Yeah, he had an early meeting,” said Anna. “I’ll get the milk.”

  “Thanks. A meeting, huh? I hope he’s up to it. You guys didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  Anna felt a blush rising on her face. Stephanie saw it and laughed. “Hey, I couldn’t help noticing. The damn walls are thin, you know? You gonna see that guy much you ought to get the bed bolted down or something. I could sell tickets.”

  “Please, Stephanie, you’re making me embarrassed.”

  “Sorry—hey, look, nothing to be ashamed of. The guy’s a stud, so enjoy!”

  Anna said nothing, but busied herself with cleaning up her breakfast. She liked Stephanie, ordinarily, and respected her as someone more experienced in the world, but she did not care for the implication that she was having herself serviced by Felix, like some animal. As she handed Stephanie a quart container of milk, she said, “He’s … it’s not just that, you know. He’s just wonderful. Exciting. Romantic. I can’t believe it … me! It’s crazy, but …”

  Stephanie looked at her closely. “You really fell for this guy, huh? What’s he do for a living, by the way?”

  �
�Oh, he’s in business. He’s some kind of big international executive.”

  “Is he? Well, I’m glad you’re happy, but …”

  “But what?” Anna was disturbed by the expression on Stephanie’s face.

  “Nothing. I guess I’m naturally suspicious. You know, you work in clubs, in the record business, you get like a sixth sense about dudes. This guy you got … I don’t know. Look, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but there’s like, something off about him, dig?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Anna. But, in her heart of hearts, she did.

  Felix Tighe was selling a living room set on credit, which was what he did for a living, besides being a burglar. Of course, it was just temporary, until he could put together a really big operation, something that involved flying first class and wearing nice silk suits and having a Mercedes with a car phone. Felix hadn’t figured out what those guys who had those things did, or where they kept the really good-looking girls, the ones from the magazines. You sure didn’t see any of them around his usual haunts.

  While he waited for this better life, his current job was at least adequate. The commission was decent, he got the use of a company car, he got to cheat people, which gave him a kick, and it gave him an excuse for wandering through neighborhoods during the day.

  The neighborhoods were not that hot—the one he was in now was the part of Queens known as East New York—but Felix had learned that even fairly poor families had some hockable little item: a gold cross, a set of silver spoons, that he could pick up without much effort. Or pills. He could get rid of any number of prescription sleeping pills or diet pills at Larry’s.

  Like this woman here, fat as she was, might have an interesting medicine chest. Felix watched with amusement as she pawed through the samples of fabric. Selling didn’t take much: just a lot of soulful staring into their eyes, and appreciating their good taste. A coo, a wink, and there it was, $695.95 for a living room set, Spanish Renaissance in crimson velvet, nothing down and thirty-six months to pay, only 21 percent interest, and a contract that said that if they missed even one month, they had to come up with the whole principal or the stuff would be dragged away. But right now all the bitch was thinking about was the nothing down and having the furniture, so that maybe her old man or somebody would look at her the way Felix was looking at her, like she was a person.