Immoral Certainty

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Karp, maybe, could kick the old fart into it, she thought glumly; he knew how to pull the levers that could make Bloom act like a real D.A. on occasion. But she couldn’t. And Karp was not here. And if he had been here, she realized, she might not have asked him, because worse than the feeling of losing a case she felt belonged to her was the prospect of going to Karp and asking him for a favor, like a little girl asking for a doll.

  A thought stirred in the back of her mind. She focused on what Raney was saying. “… and so anyway, I pulled together all our notes from the case and got them typed up. I was gonna take them over this afternoon. But then Pete reminded me that he gave you the list of the people with the dolls. It’s a dead end, maybe, but they ought to have it.”

  Marlene gave a yelp and, clutching her ragged mass of paper, fled back down the hall into her office. When Raney followed her in, he found her rummaging through files and drawers and cursing herself for an idiot and a fool.

  Raney said soothingly, “Hey, Marlene, calm down, it’s no big deal. I don’t need it today. It probably don’t mean shit, anyhow.”

  She stopped and stared at him. “I know where he lives. I just figured it out. It has to be.” She shuffled through the stacks of paper on her desk and with a cry brought forth her folder on the Segura case. In a moment she had Balducci’s list of doll owners in her hand. “I was right. She’s here. Irma Dean. I knew that place was too good to be true.”

  “Slow down, Marlene,” said Raney. “You know where who lives? Who’s Irma Dean?”

  She showed him the list. “Irma Dean was one of the people listed as having an expensive doll collection. She runs a fancy day-care center, which I happened to visit last week because one of our secretaries has a kid in it and—are you ready for this?—she thinks the kid is being sexually abused.”

  “So?”

  “So! What do you mean, ‘so’? You don’t think it’s significant that one of the people who could have owned the Segura doll, also could be involved with sexual abuse of children? Maybe one of their games went wrong? Maybe one of them isn’t content to just diddle them anymore, he wants a bigger thrill.”

  “Wait a second, Marlene. I don’t like all those could’ves. It could also be coincidence.”

  “Yeah, it could. Did I say I was going to try this shit this afternoon? But it could also be a beginning. Aren’t you curious to see if maybe Mrs. Dean knows a big blond guy in a black suit?”

  “I guess it’s worth a check-out. I’ll put it in the file for Shaw in Queens.”

  “Fuck Queens, Raney! We’re going up there right now and heat things up.”

  “Hold it a sec, boss. It ain’t our case. They could fry my ass on this.”

  “Bullshit, man! When did you get to be such an old lady? Besides, if anybody asks, I have a legitimate complaint to investigate. Sexual abuse of a minor is still a felony rap. Let me get somebody to take my afternoon calendar and we can go.”

  Raney shrugged and grinned his crazy grin. “Blow in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere,” he said, but under his breath.

  “I remember this place from the doll hunt,” said Raney as he pulled into a no-parking zone in front of St. Michael’s childcare center.

  “You remember the boss lady?”

  “Yeah. Not a lot of laughs. Like a nun from school, a ruler artist.”

  Marlene laughed. “God, Raney, that’s exactly what I thought! She was ready to give me three across the hand for talking in line.”

  They smiled at each other. It was a Moment, and Marlene couldn’t help thinking briefly that it wasn’t one she could have shared with Karp.

  Mrs. Dean, according to her secretary, was down in the basement, where some duct work was being done. They waited in the panelled office for her. When she entered, wearing a suit in pale green silk, her dark hair in an elegant chignon, and looking as unduct-work as could be, she did not make any pretense of being happy to see them.

  “Miss Ciampi,” she said in recognition, seating herself behind the writing desk. “And this is … ?”

  “Detective James Raney, of the New York City police,” said Marlene. She looked at Mrs. Dean again and was startled. The woman had undergone some sort of change. Her brows seemed even heavier, and they curved upward menacingly, like those of Snow White’s stepmother. Her eyes were more glittering and animated and there was more color in her cheeks. It could have been a change of lipstick, but her mouth, which had been an almost prim, pink line was now full, dark, carnivorous. She exuded energy like heat from a stove, and part of it was erotic. Raney felt it, and Marlene could feel him feel it.

  Mrs. Dean did not look like Sister Marie Augustine any more, or like a nun at all, except perhaps one of the very naughty ones in Boccaccio. Her manner had changed, too. She was abrupt, as if her new energy could not be contained, but was about to spill over into violence.

  “What do you want, Miss Ciampi? I’m extremely busy today.”

  “This won’t take long. A couple of things. First, are you familiar with a large man, over six-three and over two hundred fifty pounds, between twenty and twenty-five years old, round face, very short blond hair?”

  “No, I’m not. What is going on, Miss Ciampi? Why did you come here under what now seems false pretenses and why are you here now with the police?”

  Mrs. Dean seemed genuinely affronted. A quiver of doubt roiled Marlene’s mind, but she locked eyes staunchly with the older woman and plunged into it. “We’re here because we’re investigating the murders of two young girls, perhaps more than two, that have been associated with the man I just described. The man and one of the girls was associated with a fancy doll, the kind of doll you have in your collection. We believe it to be, in fact, one of your dolls.”

  “I have already told you there is nothing missing from my collection.”

  “Yes, but there’s something else, too. The girls were sexually mutilated and assaulted. We have received allegations of sexual assault against one of your children.”

  Mrs. Dean stood up. “Both of you leave, this minute!” she ordered.

  Raney stood up, too. He applied a charming smile to his mouth and said, “Hold on, Mrs. Dean, nobody’s accusing you of anything.”

  Mrs. Dean picked up her phone. As she dialed she said, “I don’t know why you have chosen to harass me or this center, but I assure you I am not without friends. If you feel you have cause for a formal complaint, I will be ready with my lawyers. But let me tell you this. If one word of this filthy slander is published before then I will sue you personally and the city and the state for more money than you have ever seen. Now get out!”

  Outside on the pavement Marlene felt the first twinges of what was sure to be a monumental depression. She had screwed things up badly and pulled Raney into the trouble with her. Against his better judgment, she recalled, to her shame. For his part, Raney seemed blithe about the fiasco.

  “Well, didn’t we get our asses kicked?” he said. “Old Mrs. Dean is a bitch on wheels.”

  “I wish I had a warrant to stuff down her throat,” replied Marlene bitterly.

  “Yeah, well, not much chance of that, unless we make some connection with the big guy and her. I mean what are we looking for? A doll-shaped empty space? Whips? Dirty films?”

  “I know, I know, don’t remind me! We may be back to zero, but I know that woman is bent. I can feel it!”

  Raney laughed, “Yeah, and she sure looked like she just had a bowl of Wheaties, didn’t she? Or a piece of ass, one.”

  “Right, like a different person. But there’s something else that’s funny, too. You run a day-care center, a D.A. and a cop come in, say there’s some kind of hanky-panky going on, I figure you might get all concerned, try to find out who squealed, maybe even ask for help in catching the bad guys, huh? But no, she says zip and kicks us out. Which she has every right to do, but still…”

  “It stinks,” said Raney. “Look, I’ll come up here, hang around, see what I can find out. Maybe the big guy’s the
super, or a repairman. If he was ever around here, somebody’d have to have seen him.”

  “Oh, great! Would you do that? That’d be terrific.” Marlene’s smile was like an arc lamp, and Raney basked in its glow. He reached out and squeezed her upper arm. He felt a tingle like electricity run through him. Then her smile faded.

  “Shit, you can’t do that,” she said with a sigh. “You’re off the case. You’ll get in trouble.”

  Raney snorted a laugh. “Hey, what am I, an old lady? But if I was you, I’d worry about my own self. Did you catch what number our friend in there was dialing?”

  “No, did you?”

  “Yeah, I watched her fingers: 638-4300.”

  Marlene groaned and spat out a string of curses. It was the number of Sanford Bloom, the District Attorney.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Driving over the Queensboro Bridge, blinking in the flickering bars of light the bright afternoon made as it shone through the structure, Felix felt he was in pretty good shape as far as Anna was concerned. It had gone pretty good, he thought, all things considered. He had seen it in her eyes. She was a little scared, but also fascinated. He knew the fascination would win out; it always did, and besides he knew that, secretly, they all liked to be batted around a little. It made them feel secure.

  It would have worked out OK that night, too, he thought, if that bitch hadn’t butted in. He made himself stop thinking about that, the shame of being led off by the police, and the other feelings.

  He thought about his car instead. A Ford Falcon, nothing special, not like he was going to have, like a red Corvette, but better than riding the fucking subway with the scum of the earth. The company made him turn the keys in when he was finished with his shift, but of course he had made dupes and they kept the cars in an open lot, so it was pretty easy to borrow a car. The only thing, it was a pain in the ass to roll the speedo back.

  With such thoughts in mind, Felix arrived at the apartment house in Jackson Heights. He walked whistling up the stairs to apartment 302 and put his key in the lock. It would not turn. Kneeling down, he saw that a new lock had been installed. He cursed and shook the door, then pounded and kicked on it until his toes and knuckles ached and it was clear that the apartment was empty.

  By that time several of the doors along the hallway had been opened, on their chains, and anxious or angry faces had appeared in the gaps. There were mutterings and threats to call the cops.

  Felix fled down the stairway in a black haze of rage. The cunt had escaped. He must not have tied her up right after the last time. That was impossible, though. He never made mistakes. It was just that he was so screwed up with all the pressure, not having a place of his own, and that bullshit that went down at the dojo, and of course, what had happened at Anna’s. He went to his car and sat in it with the windows rolled down. He gripped the steering wheel and shook it until his arms trembled from the strain.

  After a few minutes his breathing was under control again. He opened his attaché case, took out a neatly folded white handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. From a plastic bottle he removed two yellow Valiums and gulped them down. Then he reached for his diary. He read through the recent notations and made neat checks next to the ones he had accomplished.

  What he had wanted to do in the apartment here could, of course, not be done, and so he used his fountain pen to obliterate it in a precise black rectangle. It didn’t exist any more and he forgot it. The next appointment, scheduled for that evening, was quite clear, however. He started the car and drove back to Manhattan to keep it.

  “So what do we do now?” Marlene asked, slumping against the low fender of Raney’s Ghia. “I’m clear for the afternoon. I guess we could sit here on the sidewalk and drink Mad-Dog until we black out.”

  Raney grinned and said, “I’ll have to take a rain check on that. I got stuff to do, but I could drop you somewhere.”

  “Doing some detecting?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was going to go to the Academy range and shoot. I tell you what—come along with me to the range and after I’ll buy you a couple of snorts and a steak.” He saw the expression that crossed her face and added, “What’s the matter, don’t like steak?”

  “Guns.”

  “Oh. Bleeding heart liberal, huh?”

  “Yeah. No, not really. It’s liking them—the gun-nut mentality. It freaks me out.”

  “I’m a gun-nut?”

  “Well, you know—cops. And ‘Pistol Jim’ …”

  Raney’s face darkened. “Oh, that. Well, shit, Marlene, I was just trying to be nice, you had a bad day and all. I didn’t want to, like, disgust you or nothing.” He yanked open the door on the driver’s side. “You want a lift, or what?”

  Marlene slid into the car and Raney tore away from the curb. After a couple of blocks, she said, “Raney, I didn’t mean to piss you off. I’m sorry.”

  He glanced at her sideways, to see whether her remark was mere convention, or whether there was something else; finding in her face some genuine concern for his feelings, he went on.

  “Yeah, OK. It’s just … you say gun-nuts freak you out? What freaks me out is that Pistol Jim bullshit, like I’m supposed to be happy about it, I killed four guys. It’s almost a year now, I still got dreams, you know? Like maybe I’d a played it different, it could’ve gone down another way. I still get fan mail too. Some people, I’m a murderer. People think real life is a fuckin’ movie: I could’ve shot the guns out of their hands, I could’ve wounded them, for chrissake.”

  “And … ?”

  “And? You want the truth? The bottom line? It happened so fuckin’ fast, I got no fuckin’ idea whether it could’ve gone different.”

  “What happened?”

  “What, you want to hear this shit? OK, it’s around eleven at night. I’m walking back to my place. I just been to this convenience store for some milk and smokes, and I’m walking past the Schmitkin Bakery on Northern Boulevard. You know it? Yeah, a big place.

  “I see there’s a car in the lot there, with the two front doors and one rear open and the lights on and the motor going. OK. I don’t think much about it, maybe some guys on the night shift stopping to pick up their check. Then I hear this pop, pop noise.

  “They asked me, at the after-firing review if I knew they were shots. Fuck no, I didn’t! I’m telling you this, understand; them I said, ‘Yes sir, definitely shots.’ But I didn’t. I would’ve walked right by, if it wasn’t for the car, you know? I put that together with the noise, and I figure, it’s worth a look.

  “So I walk in the office there. It’s empty, but right away I smell gunpowder. So I take out my pistol and I walk into the back office and there they are. Three guys in leather jackets and stocking masks. The night bookkeeper, the night manager, and this other poor bastard they just shot, to show they were serious dudes and the manager should crack the safe and give them the payroll.”

  Raney paused. They were stopped at a light, and Raney was studying the red disk as if it were a cue card. Marlene said, “And then?”

  “Then I killed them. One, two, three. Another guy came running from the back carrying a goddamn portable TV. I yelled ‘Police, freeze,’ but he drops the set and reaches for his belt. I shot him too. In the face.

  “I said at the review I ordered them, the three guys, to drop their guns, but I didn’t. One guy had a sawed-off twelve gauge and I saw it coming up, so I shot him in the head. He started to go down and the other two brought up their guns too. Big automatics. I just tracked across and gave them each one through the nose. That was it. It took less time than I just took to say it. One of them got a couple of shots off, probably after he was dead. Good thing, too, cause that was one of the two things that saved my ass, afterwards.”

  “What was the other?”

  “They were all four of them white. Harps in fact, from the neighborhood, local hard boys. Honest to Jesus that was the first thing through my mind after they hit the floor. Mother of God, mak
e these mutts not brothers or PR’s!”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Baby, those guys’d been black, I’d be holding down a security guard job right now.”

  “That’s bullshit, Raney.”

  “Yeah? I’m glad I didn’t have to find out. Come to think of it, I probably would of had other opportunities if they’d of canned me. I got other kinds of fan mail too. Nice people, congratulating me for killing scum, wanting to meet me, you know? Job offers. And women. Funny how some chicks get turned on by that shit. Incredible offers I got.”

  “If you took up any, I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “I could’ve guessed. That’s also the movies, you know. That Dirty Harry crap—he’s eating a hot dog and kills a guy and finishes the hot dog. Afterward, when the blue-and-whites and the cameras got there, the big hero here was out in the parking lot puking his guts and crying like a baby. Petey was there too. He had to hold my head out of it. Little do they know.”

  “Little indeed,” said Marlene. She lit a cigarette and Raney did too. They were silent for a few minutes as Raney cruised down Seventy-ninth Street and turned south on Central Park West. “What I think is,” she said, “is that that was a good story, and you’re a good guy.”

  Raney flashed his old grin at her. “No kidding? You mean there’s hope for me yet?”

  “That depends on what you’re hoping for,” said Marlene lightly.

  “Maybe I’m hoping that if I came on to you, you wouldn’t laugh in my face.”

  “Get out of here, Raney!” Marlene said, coughing on her smoke. “Give me a break! I’m practically a married woman.”

  “True, and what could be better than one last fling?”

  “Change the subject, Raney,” said Marlene, with a curtness she did not really feel. She glanced out the window. “Hey, where are we?”

  “The Police Academy. The thing of it is, Marlene, I got a slot reserved on the range and I got to qualify this month. I haven’t qualified indoor since the bakery, so you can come in and watch, or split, or wait. It’s up to you.” He went around to the front of the Ghia, unlocked the trunk and took out an aluminum case. He looked at Marlene expectantly.