Irresistible Impulse

by Robert Tanenbaum

  Tranh pulled free the white towel that he habitually kept stuck in his waistband and gave it to Lucy. “It may not be as bad as that,” he said. “Forever is a long time. Wipe your face and come inside. First I will give you some soup with winter melon, noodles, and ham. Then we will think together about your difficulty.”

  “I have no money,” said Lucy, rising, her stomach rumbling at the mention of food.

  “That does not matter,” said Tranh. “You are a good customer.”

  The school called Marlene’s office shortly before noon, and the answering service forwarded the call to her beeper. Edie Wooten showed her to a phone and went into the music room to play some Mozart to improve her mood. She had entered only a minute or so into that sunlit, ordered world when she heard Marlene shrieking from the other room. She put down her bow and went to see what the commotion was about. She found Marlene in the act of slamming down the phone. Her face was dead white, including the lips, which had formed a rigid line beneath flaring nostrils. Bolts shot from her eyes. She looked like a Medusa on a Renaissance medallion.

  “Is something wrong?” Edie asked.

  Marlene seemed to look through her. Then she took a long breath and said, “No. Actually, yes. A domestic thing. In any case, I have to go. I’ll be in touch. Work on that list of contacts. And don’t worry!”

  Then she was gone.

  Outside the building, Marlene did not wait for the doorman to whistle down a cab, but ran out into Park and waylaid one in full motion. It screamed off, with Marlene flapping twenties in the driver’s face.

  From his vantage across the broad avenue, the Music Lover watched Marlene leave. He knew who she was and what she was doing in Edith Wooten’s building. He was much vexed. Whistling the opening theme from Boccherini’s Cello Concerto in B-flat, he got into his car and drove off to the south.

  Lucy finished her soup and brought the empty bowl to the counter. She sat on a stool while several customers came and picked up cartoned take-out orders of noodles. When the place was empty again, Tranh lit a cigarette and regarded his guest solemnly. He said, “Now we must decide what to do. The school must by now have found you are missing. They will call your mother. Can you imagine what she will think?”

  “Oh, don’t remind me!” Lucy cried in English, and then explained, “Tranh sinsàang, my mother is a—I can’t think of the word in Gwóngdùngwá—she is a guard against evil people, so perhaps one of these may try to hurt her, or me. So she warns me to be careful. She will think that one of these has taken me.” Tears began again, and Tranh handed her a clean wipe rag. Then he placed a quarter before her on the counter and indicated the pay phone on the wall.

  “Take this and call your mother right away, and let her know you are safe.”

  Lucy hesitated. “Oh, but she’ll be so angry.”

  “Yes, afterward, but first she will be very happy. There is nothing worse than losing a child. What made you do this wicked thing?”

  “I told you, sir. I failed at my lesson and was afraid of disgrace.”

  “You failed? So? Did this not make you work all the harder so that you would not fail?”

  Lucy hung her head. Tranh said, “Listen to me. You are a clever girl, and things come easy for you. Therefore, when you need to work hard, you don’t know how. Thus you disgrace your family by failing, and disgrace your teacher by running away. But you owe everything to your family. Without a family you are a ghost person, nothing! Understand? Rather than disgrace them you must study until blood pours from your eyes. Go, call your mother, now!”

  Marlene’s knees gave way when she burst into her office and Sym said, “Lucy called.”

  “Oh, Jesus, thank you!” Marlene gasped and flopped onto the couch. “Where is she?”

  Sym told her. Five minutes later, Marlene was walking through the door of the noodle shop, thunder breaking around her brow. Lucy was sitting at a table sipping a Coke. Marlene nodded to Tranh and then sat down opposite her daughter.

  “Well?”

  “Guilty,” said Lucy, “with an explanation.”

  “I’ll hear it.”

  Lucy explained about long division and Mrs. Lawrence and the shame and what followed. Marlene lit a cigarette. Tranh brought her a grande crème. “Well,” she said, “guilty with an explanation is a plea on a misdemeanor, like not doing homework. This is a felony. This is felony stupid, Lucy! You realize what could have happened to you?”

  “Yes. I said I was sorry. I’ll never, ever do it again.”

  “You bet your—you bet you won’t, my girl! Now, this is what’s going to happen. This weekend, instead of you going ice skating with Janet and Marie, and instead of having a sleepover—”

  “Mom-mm!”

  “Don’t you dare ‘Mom-mm’ me! Don’t you dare! Instead of doing those nice things, I was saying, you and I are going to be locked in a room together working on this math business, and we will not come out until you are on top of long division.”

  “What about your clients? What about the twins?” asked Lucy in a snotty tone that made Marlene want to wring her neck. She gritted her teeth and glared at her daughter. The child looked away in shame, for Lucy was aware of Mr. Tranh watching them and sending rays of Confucian disapproval, which for some reason had a more powerful effect on her than her mother’s ire.

  “I will take care of that,” said Marlene tightly. “Daddy can handle the twins with Posie, and the clients will just have to look out for themselves. You are not going to fail in school. I may have to kill you, but you are not going to fail. Now, put on your coat. I’m going to take you back to school.”

  Marlene got up, her heart pounding, her mind grappling with a confusing mix of anger, fading fear, and burgeoning guilt. She shuddered and went over to the counter.

  “Thank you, I … am glad you helped my daughter,” she said to Tranh, speaking slowly and distinctly.

  Tranh smiled and nodded. “Is okay. I like … I like her … and I foud … feeled …” He shrugged and threw his hands wide in a gesture of frustration. This gesture, however, attracted Marlene’s attention to what was in one of his hands, which was a worn paperback book with a dirty white cover and red lettering on the spine. Marlene had a similarly worn copy of just that book on her bookshelf at home, had owned it for over twenty years. She gestured at it and said, in French, “Monsieur, I observe you are reading Baudelaire. Is it also the case that you speak French?”

  Tranh’s face was at first blank with amazement and then curiously transformed: a wiry intelligence appeared to flow into it, as from a pump. “But of course I speak French, Madame. I am a Vietnamese, am I not? And I was five years a student in Paris. But I am astonished to find that you do as well. Although it is less remarkable, one supposes, than that your daughter speaks Cantonese. I have heard her speak it on the street. This was how we communicated, you see.”

  “Of course,” said Marlene. “As for me, I was four years with the Mesdames of the Sacred Heart, who insist on accomplishment in French.”

  “So I have always understood,” said Tranh, smiling broadly. “But surely they did not insist on Les Fleurs du Mal. Surely you proper young ladies did not read, let us say, Métamorphoses du Vampire under the watchful gaze of a nun.”

  “I am afraid we proper young ladies did much worse than that, monsieur; at least I did. My four hundred blows were unusually vigorous, I fear. And you may regard my daughter to prove it to yourself: we are two of a kind. It is the wages of sin.”

  “Come, Madame, it is not as bad as that. She is a brave girl, if overly proud. But you have warmed her ears, and I doubt she will repeat the offense.”

  “One hopes,” said Marlene. She looked at her watch. “A pity, but we must go.”

  Tranh inclined his head and intoned, “Horloge! dieu sinistre! effrayant, impassible, dont le doight nous menace et nous dit, Souviens toi!”

  Marlene laughed, “You have it, my friend. Oh! I have forgotten to pay you for the child’s soup, and for the phone ca
ll.”

  She reached into her purse, but Tranh held up his hand and said, “Dear Madame: I had not had a real conversation in five years; I had not had a conversation in French for ten years; and I had not had a conversation in French with a beautiful woman for thirty years. This brief moment has been worth a cauldron of soup, and a phone call to Tibet.”

  “Then, Monsieur,” said Marlene with a slight bow of her head, “you have my most profound gratitude.”

  Outside, in the car, Lucy said, “I like Mr. Tranh, although he’s sort of hard to understand. He’s not a Guóngdùngyàhn—I mean, he’s not Cantonese, is he?”

  “No, he’s a Vietnamese, educated in France—probably an official of some kind. The commies must have given him a hard time when they took over—he looks like he’s been through it. Uh-oh, what’s this?”

  Lucy looked out the car window and said, “Those are those gangsters from the other day, I think.”

  Four oriental youths had just jumped from a Mercedes sedan and entered Tranh’s shop. They leaned across the counter, and one of them started gesturing violently and yelling at the older man. Another unscrewed the top of a sugar dispenser and poured its contents on the floor. A third kicked over chairs and upset tables.

  “Shouldn’t we help him?” asked Lucy.

  “Yeah, if he needs it. But I have a feeling that he may not.”

  In fact, Tranh was speaking calmly to the youth who appeared to be the leader of the gang. Marlene could not see very clearly through the steamed window, but it was obvious that whatever Tranh had said was not something to be lightly borne. The gang leader pulled out a butterfly knife, snapped it open, and leaped over the counter. He grabbed Tranh by the front of his shirt, waving the butterfly knife under Tranh’s nose. Marlene could not see what happened after that: there was a sudden movement, a brief struggle, and the young man was somehow turned around, with his thick hair grasped in Tranh’s left fist. Tranh was holding a thin boning knife in his right hand, the point of which vanished into the kid’s ear. Everyone else was frozen. The kid dropped his butterfly knife. Tranh said something; the kid said something. The other three players began to pick up the upset chairs and tables. Then they backed out, stumbling against one another in the narrow doorway.

  Tranh followed, still gripping the little thug, his thin blade held rigid, an improbable length of steel vanishing into the kid’s ear, the kid’s face twisted into a rictus of pain. Tranh was talking to the kid in a low voice. Suddenly he stopped, withdrew the knife. Blood oozed down the kid’s neck. Tranh delivered a mighty kick against the base of the kid’s spine. The kid went sprawling on the pavement. His friends picked him up, and without another word they got back in their car and drove away, tires squealing. Tranh watched them go, nodded to Marlene and Lucy, and then went back into his shop.

  “Wow!” said Lucy.

  “Wow, indeed,” said Marlene, starting her car. “Very impressive. You know, Luce, I think that whatever Mr. Tranh did in the war, it probably didn’t involve a desk job.”

  “Or noodles either,” said Lucy.

  FIVE

  Dr. Davidoff came in to Karp’s office later that day, accompanied by Clay Fulton and, somewhat to Karp’s surprise, a man named Aaron Weinstein, who was introduced as Davidoff’s lawyer. Karp and Fulton exchanged a brief look. The detective’s eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch, his broad shoulders somewhat more: I didn’t tell him anything, boss.

  The three men settled themselves in chairs around Karp’s desk. Weinstein, a portly, balding man somewhat older than Karp, projected an air of bonhomie, focusing charm on Karp, noting mutual friends, claiming acquaintanceship with the powerful. He told a small joke. The message: we’re all friends here aiming at straightening out this little difficulty, but on the other hand, we are not pushovers. He did it well; that was what Davidoff was paying him for.

  After the usual five minutes of smiles, Karp opened the real bidding with, “So, Doctor, how did you come to be the attending physician at the death of Ms. Longren?”

  Davidoff paused, flicked a glance at his lawyer, and answered, “I was asked to as a professional courtesy by Dr. Vincent Robinson.”

  “I see. And was it usual for Dr. Robinson to call you in for consultation?”

  “No. I mean, yes, it was unusual.”

  “Very unusual? Maybe unique?” Karp pressed.

  Here Weinstein stepped in, asking genially, “Um, could we slow down here a little, Mr. Karp? Maybe we could answer your questions better if we had some idea where they were going. Surely, there’s no implication or suggestion that Dr. Davidoff did anything untoward or wrong. So, what are we …?”

  “Well, actually, we don’t know that, do we?” Karp responded. “What we see is a young woman dead under circumstances that we might call suspicious.”

  “Suspicious!” Weinstein exclaimed. “How ‘suspicious’? Good Lord, there were two physicians in attendance.”

  “Yeah, that’s the point, Mr. Weinstein. An overabundance of docs and an insufficiency of records pertaining to the deceased. There is no record of Ms. Longren ever having been a patient of Dr. Davidoff’s. Moreover, Ms. Longren was an employee of Dr. Robinson, and Dr. Robinson was a beneficiary of her insurance policy. And drugs were involved; there is evidence of a hasty attempt to dispose of barbiturates and other drugs at Dr. Robinson’s apartment.”

  The geniality had flown from Weinstein’s face. He whispered something into Davidoff’s ear. Karp caught the word “records.” Davidoff nodded and licked his lips nervously. Weinstein said, “Actually, Dr. Davidoff does have records of his treatment in this case. Show him, Mark.”

  Whereupon Dr. Davidoff drew from a leather folder a manila records jacket that, when opened, proved to contain only an incomplete cover sheet and three pages of lined loose-leaf paper covered with hurried, scribbled writing. Weinstein sighed gently. Detective Fulton cleared his throat. Mark Davidoff flushed and jiggled his leg. Karp stared at him and said, “Doctor, you have a big decision to make right now. We have an exhumation order in on the body of Evelyn Longren. I think that whatever else we learn from it, we’ll find that she did not die from viral pneumonia. So, pretty soon you’re going to have to decide whether you want to be a witness in a homicide case or one of the defendants.” Karp’s tone was polite, dry, firm, designed by years of experience to pierce the composure of middle-class, heavily lawyered culprits.

  More murmured conversation between doctor and lawyer, at the end of which Weinstein said, “Without any admission of wrongdoing, we are perfectly willing to be completely frank and open as to Dr. Davidoff’s part in this affair.”

  Karp nodded and picked up the phone to call for a steno.

  Harry Bello was back in the office when Marlene returned from re-depositing Lucy at P.S. 1.

  “What’s with Lucy?” he asked, using a tone and wearing an expression designed to promote guilt. (Marlene’s mothering had never been up to Harry’s standards; even Harry’s mother might have fallen short with respect to caring for Lucy.) Although she was prepared to cut Harry some slack, he having been a detective for thirty years and therefore incapable of asking a question that did not assume some vicious secret, she was not having any of it today.

  “Nothing, Harry,” she said shortly. “It’s all straightened out.”

  A doubtful look, a 138-grain magnum doubtful look.

  “She is fine, Harry!”

  Tiny shrug, change of subject. “How did it go with your uptown fiddle player?”

  “Cellist. I like her. It’s some fan, a nut. He’s started to follow her.”

  “Are we taking it?”

  “Yeah, it feels like it could go sour. And she’s got the money for it.”

  Harry’s eyes flicked up to the large board pinned over his desk. He said, “Umnh.”

  Marlene looked at the board, at the names of clients and commitments, at the names of their largely part-time staff written in with black grease pencil on a plastic overlay, and saw what the grunt meant. B
ello & Ciampi handled three kinds of jobs. The first was conventional security for celebrities, which entailed bodyguard services when the women (nearly all their clients were women) were out and about, performing, modeling, having lunch, being vulnerable. This was the cash cow, but also required the most time and the most rigid scheduling. The second was a kind of pest control: finding men who were stalking or abusing women and getting them to stop, either through writs and prosecution or through what Marlene called reason and persuasion. Finally, there was the pro bono work, which usually involved desperate women, often with children, who were fleeing dangerous relationships, passing through shelters, needing to be set up with new lives. This was by far the work most likely to lead to actual violence, and Marlene had always done most of it herself. Now, looking over the manning chart, Marlene had to admit they were overextended, especially if Marlene wanted to continue the time-consuming pro bono tasks. Which she did.

  “We need at least another guy, full-time,” she suggested.

  “Two,” said Harry. “Dane called, said he’s bringing over a guy who might be okay.”

  “Checked out?”

  Harry lifted a noncommittal eyebrow. “Ask him. He’s supposed to be coming in today. Meanwhile, I’ll look around.”

  “For one guy, Harry.”

  “Two, Marlene, you want to spend a night at home, tuck in your kids—”

  “Okay, already, Harry!” Marlene snapped, and went back to her own office, her brow knotted. Harry was perfectly correct, but she resented being told that her fantasy of a cozy little crusade was fading. The little firm had grown perhaps too rapidly. Starting with just Harry and herself two years ago, it now employed the equivalent of twenty full-time people, but because many of their employees were part-time cops, they actually had over thirty people on their payroll. This was a serious problem: neither she nor Harry were famous for their management skills. Sym was bright and willing, and Marlene had started to load her with routine duties, but even Marlene hesitated at giving any independent responsibility to a nineteen-year-old ex-streetwalker.