Immoral Certainty

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Yeah. Hey look, man, I was just there with a friend. Dude say, you know, pick yourself up a color TV, a VCR. I thought it was gonna be like some kinda flea market.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Matt. No promises, but you give us some help on this other thing, I’ll personally talk to the judge, all right?”

  Boudreau flashed a gold and ivory smile. “Yeah, talk to the judge. OK, you know Junior Gibbs? No? Real little fella. OK, Junior and me been tight for a long time, you know? Hey, we walk down the street together, big an’ little, it’s a trip, dig? The ladies dig it, you understand?

  “OK, so Junior brings me stuff from time to time, see if I can get a price for it. So, about two weeks ago, he comes to my apartment. He don’t look so good—nervous, and all. And he shows me this, like, fancy doll. Like it was an antique, dig?

  “Now, you understand, I do not deal in this kinda shit, no way. Stereo stuff, fur, jewelry is my main line. Silver. But no antiques. So I tell this to Junior, and he says, no, this doll is worth like ten, twelve grand. And he says, it’s true, because this lady D.A. told him.

  “So I told him, ‘Shit, man, you tellin’ me a fuckin’ DA told you to rob this doll? They gonna put you under the jail, man.’ Then he starts tellin’ me ’bout all this devil shit…. I din listen no more man. I got no time for that, you know? They’s enough shit goin’ down on the street, I don’ need to worry ’bout no devils, you understand?

  “Anyway, he on me an’ he on me, and finally I tell him, I give him two hundred an’ a half for the doll. Maybe I could sell it somewhere, give it to some fox, whatever, and, like, him and me are tight, like I said. Then the crazy motherfucker say, he goin’ back for more. He say they got a bunch of dolls, man, and it’s a easy take off, because while they’re doin’ this devil jive, voodoo or some shit, there ain’t nobody watchin’ the house.

  “Oh, yeah, the other funny thing was, it’s like some kinda care center for kids, this place. They got all these kids in there watchin’ the voodoo. They got this other kid tied down on this table and all these weird dudes jumpin’ around and pouring shit on her, and cuttin’ her and jackin’ off on her. An’ this old bitch runnin’ the show, like a preacher in front of the church, you know? That’s what he said, man. I din believe half of that shit myself.

  “And Junior, he ain’t no bigger than some damn kid hisself, so he could slip in easy. Anyway, the thing of it is, I saw where somebody kidnapped this lady D.A. and then when Junior din show up….”

  “When didn’t he show up?” asked Karp.

  “He was spose to come over my place last Wednesday. But he din show. I akst around, but nobody seen him. And that’s like unusual, ’cause Junior, he don’t travel much, you unnerstand? A homeboy. He ain’t been to Jersey his whole life. So I figure somebody grabbed him, too. Maybe the same folks who grabbed the D.A. So I figure, you know, I’d like tell you.”

  But not until you were in trouble yourself, thought Karp uncharitably. He turned to Hrcany, who had come into the room during Boudreau’s tale, and said, “Roland, call Balducci. He’s probably home now, but get him! Ask him if he still has that fancy doll he picked up in that trash-bag case. If he’s got it, get him to bring it here. If he hasn’t, ask him if it was marked in any way, any kind of identifying mark. Matt, where’s the doll you got off Junior?”

  “In my place, if I ain’t been ripped off yet.”

  “OK, Roland, get the address and the key and send Brenner along with Matt here to get it.”

  Hrcany looked bemused. He squinted at Karp and said, “You believe this horseshit?”

  “I don’t know what I believe any more, Roland,” said Karp. “But I want to see both those dolls.”

  Alonso, bent almost double, followed the bloody smears across the floor of the playroom. That was another thing he would have to clean up. He had so much to do, he couldn’t hold it in his head all at once. He had to get the witch tied up again; that was the first thing. His Mommy said. Tonight she had to go away. Then Brother would be OK. The witch was hurting Brother. That made Alonso feel bad, as if it was somehow his fault. Maybe it was. Everything was Alonso’s fault. No matter how hard he tried, it never was enough. That’s because he was bad. And stupid. Not like Brother. Felix was perfect.

  Then he had to wrap up the policeman and take him away to the garbage. The policeman wasn’t supposed to be there, so it was his fault. What else? Fix the window. And the lights. Alonso didn’t think he knew how to do that. His Mommy would be mad. So many things to think about. He could never do it all. He would get a spanking. Hot tears came into his eyes and splashed down on the floor. Another thing: clean the floor.

  He straightened up and cocked his head. That was a funny sound: a clicking, buzzing sound, like some kind of machinery, but irregular. The sound grew louder. He saw a white shape in the shadows coming toward him. The witch. Running? No, not running, faster than running, impossibly fast, with a noise of wheels.

  Karp stared at the two dolls on the table in front of him as if waiting for them to confess. They were as silent as the three men in the interrogation room with him: Hrcany, amused, Brenner, carefully neutral, and Balducci, irritated and inclined to show it.

  “Can I go now?” Balducci said. “I got dragged away from a wedding rehearsal for this bullshit. My daughter’s getting married tomorrow, I don’t need to be working nights.”

  The doll that Boudreau had told them he got from Junior Gibbs was a bride, wrapped in a white confection of satin and Alençon lace. At the mention of weddings, looking at the doll, Karp experienced a flash of pain so intense that it clouded his vision and choked his throat.

  Idly, nervously, he fingered the fabric of the bridal doll, pulled at the ribbons that held its veil. The veil came loose in his hands. He turned the doll over. The high-necked gown was closed with a row of miniscule buttons down the back. He flicked at these with his fingers and they came open, revealing a white porcelain neck.

  “Balducci, you ever look under your doll’s clothes?” he asked.

  The men laughed, and Balducci, flushing, said, “No, I never did. It’s a doll, for cryin’ out loud. And I told you—it don’t lead anywhere.”

  “There’s a number on this one,” Karp said quietly. “Maybe there’s a number on the other one.” The three men rushed to look where Karp was pointing. On the nape of the bride’s neck, where the porcelain met the fabric of the body, a six digit number in black ink was inscribed. In a moment they had unclothed the Lucy Segura doll enough to see a similar number in the same place.

  “Well, look at that!” said Hrcany.

  “It don’t prove anything,” Balducci snapped. “It don’t prove she owned the doll. It could be like an antique dealer’s number.”

  “It could,” agreed Karp.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Balducci. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll take both of these down to that doll guy and get them checked out. Maybe there’s records, from auctions or something.”

  Brenner said, “You gonna skip the wedding?”

  Balducci clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh, shit! Yeah, well Raney’ll do it. I’ll call him tonight. That OK, Butch?”

  “Sure. Fine,” said Karp absently. He was recalling a conversation he had had with Marlene in her loft. He had been right about Marlene’s case, hadn’t he? The evidence wasn’t there to connect Lucy Segura to Mrs. Dean. It was a fantasy, ludicrous in comparison with the evidence he had just used to convict Felix Tighe. He had been right; why then did he feel so massive a sense of despair?

  These thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of Guma, who threw open the door to the interrogation room and announced his presence with a loud sneeze.

  “Christ! I’m catching a cold!” said Guma, rubbing his eyes. When he saw Karp he brightened. “Butch! Damn it, man, I been looking all over for you. I missed you after court and I been sitting in your office for a couple of hours. A cop came by looking for Roland and said you and him was doing something up here. What’s going on
?”

  “Not much, Goom. Playing with dolls. What’d you want to see me about?”

  “Nothing much. I just figured out what happened to Marlene. It wasn’t the wise guys who got her. It was that bitch with the day-care center.”

  Karp felt his face break out with cold sweat. He cleared his throat heavily and asked, “What’d you find out Guma?”

  “She never went to the day-care center the night she disappeared.”

  “What do you mean? Where did she go?”

  “That I don’t know yet. What I do know is that Dean is definitely running a kid sex racket out of that place.”

  Karp frowned. “How do you know that, Guma?”

  “Informants,” said Guma, too quickly.

  Karp’s eyes grew steely. “What kind of informants, Guma? What is the bullshit, anyway? I got a judge and a minister who say that Marlene left for the center. She never got there.”

  “Yeah. But it turns out that both the judge and the minister are well known baby-fuckers themselves. Maybe they’re Dean’s customers too—”

  “Are you crazy!” shouted Karp. “Rice and Pinder? That’s impossible!” But even as he said it, Karp knew that it wasn’t impossible at all. Marlene had sensed it at some level, the existence of a criminal conspiracy involving people with credentials so lofty that even to suspect them would be to bring down the wrath of the establishment. Which meant that they could do virtually anything —exploit children, murder children, kidnap an assistant district attorney—with no fear of getting caught. Immoral certainty. And Karp had played his role as part of the establishment, of the conspiracy of ignorance that made it possible.

  “The other thing is,” Guma went on, “V.T. and Raney think that Irma Dean is Felix Tighe’s mother. V.T. thinks she could have been snatched because of her connection with you and the murder trial.”

  Karp gaped. “V.T.? What the fuck does V.T. have to do with this? Dean is Tighe’s moth … ?” Then he stopped. Events were obviously out of his control. Instinct took over. When the game plan broke down, when all else failed, go for the basket. Karp stood up. “Fuck all this! Brenner, Balducci—get the dolls! We’re going to see Mrs. Dean.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  It was true, Marlene thought insanely: Once you learned to roller-skate, you never forgot. She had found neat rows of shoe-style neoprene-wheeled roller skates in the equipment room, most of them in kids’ sizes but some for the teachers too. A pair of these was on her feet, not quite a fit, but far better than hobbling on bloody rags.

  She snapped a look over her shoulder. Alonso was a dark shape panting and stamping like a water buffalo. He was getting closer. Marlene pumped her legs and pressed her stinging feet against the wheels. The shape and the sounds receded. She veered to the left and heard the footsteps accelerate as he moved to compensate. Marlene understood what he was doing. He couldn’t catch her on the flat so he was staying far enough behind her and shifting direction, so as to herd her into one of the corners of the room.

  It might have worked; the man was stronger and faster and Marlene was exhausted. But Alonso was not, as Marlene was, a child of the streets. He had not had four seasons of roller hockey, a ferocious game played with steel skates and homemade sticks on asphalt side streets strewn with broken glass, lined with cars, and peppered with speeding traffic. He was not maneuvering Marlene; she was maneuvering him, getting him away from the only available door to the street.

  Marlene sensed the corner of the room approaching. She braked. He was two steps away. He reached for her. She accelerated briefly, faked right, cut left, dug her toe in, spun on it into a tight 180 degree turn, ducked double and whipped by him, missing the wall by inches and leaving him standing flat-footed, staring at the empty corner.

  Then she was away, speeding across the room. The open door to the hallway loomed ahead. There were two shallow steps; Marlene bent her knees and took them in a single jump. Her wheels raced over the hardwood floor of the hallway. Yes! He had left the door unlatched. She braced, turned, flicked the door aside with elbow and hip and was again in the open, drizzly air, clattering down the front steps, free.

  They took Balducci’s car, which was conveniently double parked on Leonard Street. On the drive uptown, Balducci put the flasher on the hood, and they screamed up the West Side Highway at eighty, Karp silent and brooding in the back seat, Brenner and Balducci in front, talking cop talk and communicating with back-up forces over the crackling radio.

  They turned off the highway at Seventy-ninth, onto Riverside Drive. Balducci took the flasher off the roof. They headed south, crossed Seventy-eighth Street. Suddenly, Balducci slammed on the brakes and the car skidded wildly on the wet street. “Jesus Christ! Did you see that?” Balducci shouted.

  Karp had been thrown hard into the back of the front seat. He shook himself and sat up. “What was it?”

  “A damn woman with no clothes on. Christ, I almost hit her!”

  Karp rubbed the mist off the rear window and peered out. What he saw was impossible, yet achingly familiar. He knew that naked rear as well as he knew anything. “It’s Marlene!” he yelled. “Go back!”

  Balducci shifted into reverse for half a block. Karp grabbed a raincoat that lay crumpled on the back seat and leaped from the car while it was still moving. “Marlene!” he shouted, his heart in his throat. “It’s me, Butch!”

  Ten feet ahead of him, she shot him a wild look over her shoulder. He saw her face, a white mask of terror, the black hair plastered down with rain and sweat. She stumbled, slowed.

  Then he had her, wrapping the raincoat around her, hugging her, kissing her face. She was shaking and sobbing. “The Buh-buh … the Bogeyman….”

  “There, there,” said Karp inanely.

  Balducci and Brenner were standing by the open doors of the unmarked car looking back at this scene in amazement. They heard heavy steps on the street, slowing to a stop. They looked up the street, where the headlights shone.

  “Who the hell is that?” said Brenner.

  “That’s him! That’s the guy!” yelled Balducci. Both detectives drew their pistols and moved away from the car.

  “Hey, asshole—you!” Balducci shouted. “Get over here and get your hands up!”

  Alonso stood stupidly in the headlights for a moment, then darted out of the light, between two parked cars. The detectives took off in pursuit.

  Karp led Marlene back to the car. He looked at her closely for the first time and cursed. “God! Baby, what did they do to you?”

  “Shit! Don’t ask. I don’t know.” She stiffened suddenly. “Butch! Raney tried to rescue me. He’s hurt! We’ve got to find him.”

  “Marlene, the cops’ll do that. I want you in a hospital right now.”

  She pulled away from him. Now that she was safe, energy was flooding through her body from some inner source, making her tremble with excitement. “No, it’s a fucking maze in there—all her buildings are connected. They’ll never find him. Come on!”

  With that, to his amazement, she skated away from him, putting her arms through the sleeves of the raincoat as she rolled. Something heavy in the raincoat pocket banged against her leg.

  She soon caught up with Balducci and Brenner, who were standing in front of the locked door of the day-care center, pounding on it and ringing the bell. Marlene skidded to a halt next to them and staggered. She grabbed Breriner by the sleeve, as much to support herself as to attract his attention. Her brain was working, but her body was fading rapidly. A black ring closed briefly around her vision. She shook her head and said urgently, “Doug. Jim Raney’s in a second floor room at Two fifty-six West End Avenue. He’s hurt and—”

  “Marlene, OK—we’ll get the back-up on it, but we got this big guy loose….”

  “No! That’s the point—the buildings are connected! One of you has to go around there and block the entrance or he’ll escape.”

  Brenner exchanged a quick glance with Balducci, who nodded, and Brenner took off at a
run for the car. Karp came thumping up to the doorway, shouting, “What the hell’s going on! Where did Doug go with the car? I got to get her to a hospital….”

  At that moment the door opened. Mrs. Dean stood there, in basic black, looking tired, but otherwise perfectly composed. “Yes? What is it?” she asked calmly.

  For a moment the three of them stared at her. Then Balducci, who still had his pistol out, waved his shield and said, “Ma‘am, we’re in pursuit of a suspect. We think he might be highly dangerous. Please get out of the way and let us in.”

  Mrs. Dean didn’t move. “What suspect?” she said contemptuously. “There’s no one here but me.” She glared and pointed a thin finger at Marlene. She said, “This woman has been persecuting me for months, and if you think—”

  Marlene let out a bellow of rage and thrust forward. “You fucking bitch! Cut the shit! Your fucking fat son kidnapped me and you know it!” She leaped forward, thrusting Mrs. Dean aside with a roller-derby-style hip slam and made off at speed down the hallway. After a stunned instant, Karp and Balducci chased after her.

  Down the hall and across the playroom again, Marlene retraced her escape, this time energized by fury. Now the door to the play area was open. She could feel the night air blowing in. The weight in the raincoat’s pocket kept banging painfully against her thigh as she skated. She took it out. It was Raney’s Astra Constable. She held it tight in her hand as she rolled through the courtyard.

  Entering the house, she could hear Balducci puffing close behind her. Karp must be in the rear. Cold wet weather always made his bad knee painful to walk on, she recalled, thinking also, Poor Karp! I put him through so much trouble. And Raney….

  Balducci caught up with her on the back stairs. He grabbed her by the arm. “Marlene! Jesus, wait up! Did you see him?” His eyes were frightened and wide in the dim light.

  “No, but if he hasn’t got past Brenner out front, he’s either in the furnace room,”—she pointed toward it—“or upstairs. Raney’s on the second floor unless he moved him.”

  The mention of his partner’s name seemed to lend the man determination. He dashed down to the furnace room and came back.