Irresistible Impulse

by Robert Tanenbaum

  Marlene’s eyebrows shot north. “He did? He could read all that fine-print crap? In English?”

  “Uh-huh. He real—he’s real smart, you know? Like he was some kind of professor or something.”

  “You like him?”

  A slow nod. It was hard for Sym to admit she liked any man. “He’s okay. For an old guy.”

  The old guy was in his room. Marlene knocked and walked in. Tranh was on his narrow bunk, rummaging in his rubberized duffel bag. When Marlene entered, he seemed to freeze, his hand in the bag, as if some animal within had gripped it with its teeth. His face was unreadable.

  She looked him over. He was dressed in a long-sleeve black wool shirt buttoned to the throat and black canvas pants. On his feet were cheap high-top sneakers, also black. Tranh had taken a surprisingly small amount of money out of the cash box and replaced his lost clothing. Black was apparently his color, for he had selected it in all the garments he had purchased in the surplus stores and the bargain going-out-of-business emporiums that lined Canal Street.

  “What is going on, Vinh?” she asked in French. “How is Miss Lanin and her undesirable friend?”

  He withdrew his hand from the duffel and rested it, with the other on his lap. “Not well, I am afraid. I have followed Pruitt to his apartment, which is located on Avenue B. There I observed him not two hours ago in conversation with a man of disreputable and malign appearance. I followed them to another apartment in the neighborhood, where they entered, and shortly afterward Pruitt emerged alone carrying a package wrapped in black plastic, like so.” He held his hands about two feet apart. “I suspect it is a weapon, a firearm.”

  “Shit! What are you going to do?”

  “I feel that now we must watch Miss Lanin continuously.”

  Marlene chewed her lip and considered this, working out coverage schedules in her head. Tranh interrupted her train of thought. “Marie-Helene, I believe I can do this by myself, if you permit.”

  “What, you’re going to move in with her?” said Marlene in English, forgetting herself in her surprise.

  “On the contrary, I believe the correct strategy is to watch her dwelling and workplace at a distance until he should make an undoubted aggressive move.”

  “Vinh, allow me to remind you, it requires three agents to provide effective twenty-four-hour coverage.”

  “I know it; however, you have not two other agents to spare, I believe. No, Marie-Helene, I will do it myself.”

  “You propose to watch her apartment from the outside all night? It is an absurdity!”

  “I have done it before,” Tranh replied quietly.

  This stopped Marlene’s next objection, because to pursue the point would certainly have brought up exactly how he had done it before and where and when, and she was not sure that she wanted to know. In any case, he was right. She could not mount a twenty-four-hour watch on anyone just now.

  He lit a cigarette and offered her one, which she took, and they spent a few seconds on the business of mutually lighting up. “All right,” she said, “but if you spot him, I want you to call the police.”

  Tranh raised an ironic eyebrow. “To be. sure, the police,” he said. “They will arrest him, one supposes.”

  “Of course. He has violated his order of protection. Also, if he is in fact armed, that is another offense.”

  “I see,” said Tranh. “He will be imprisoned for several years, and then released, and then?”

  “Just call the cops, Vinh,” said Marlene sharply, dispensing with the French. “And don’t let anything happen to her, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Tranh humbly, in English. “You the boss.”

  When Marlene left, Tranh took a small bundle covered in oily rags out of his duffel, and unwrapped it on the bed, revealing a large semiautomatic pistol gleaming dully with oil. Skillfully, without thought, he began to take it apart. It was a very old pistol, a Tokarev TT M 1930, manufactured in 1932 for the Red Army. In 1959, along with a great mass of other obsolete Soviet equipment, it had been shipped to the People’s Republic of Vietnam as a token of fraternal concern with the liberation struggle against the puppet regime to the south. It had come into Tranh’s hands that year, and he had kept it with him almost continuously since then. He had not, of course, had it in prison. He had buried it, heavily greased, when he learned they were coming to arrest him, and he had dug it up after his reeducation, and taken it with him when he left the country in 1978. He had used it to shoot five Thai pirates who had attacked the crowded sailboat in which he had made his escape to the Philippines. Since then he had not required it.

  After carefully cleaning and re-oiling the weapon, he assembled it, snapped a magazine of Mauser rounds into its handle, put on a navy pea coat and a wool watch cap, and, with the pistol snug in a pocket of his coat, left the office.

  He took the subway uptown to Thirty-fourth Street and walked to the building at Thirty-sixth and Seventh in which Carrie Lanin was employed as a fabric designer. There he lounged among the garment district throngs until five-thirty, when Lanin emerged from the building. He followed her to the Sixth Avenue subway, getting off at Chambers Street, and then tailed her to her home, a loft on Duane Street. There he waited, crouched in a doorway. A car arrived, and he tensed, but it was only the daughter, Miranda, being dropped off after school by a car pool.

  The sky became purple, then black. It was cold, but not too cold, and there was no wind. Tranh ate two Hershey bars. In a while he fell into the mental state, neither awake nor asleep, that he had developed during his military career and perfected in prison. In this state he could indulge himself in hynogogic dreams; he could imagine another life. In this life he was at the head of a classroom, teaching a class of bright youngsters in fresh school uniforms. Sometimes he taught mathematics, or it might have been French literature. After school was over, he would go home to his wife and daughter. His wife was a nurse; his daughter was nine years old.

  Every time a car went down Duane Street, which was not often, he came out of the trance and was alert. Then he went back to the small house near the hospital in Ben Hoa in 1968. Thus the night passed.

  In the morning it was the same in reverse. The car pool picked up Miranda, and then Carrie Lanin set off for work. Tranh followed. Carrie went into her office building. Tranh went into a coffee shop and bought coffee and a scrambled egg and bacon sandwich to go. He squatted against a wall across from the office building and ate; and waited. He thought that he had more patience than Rob Pruitt with his new gun, and that whatever was going to happen would happen soon.

  He was correct. With a song in his heart and an M-l carbine (the wire-stock model) under his coat, Rob Pruitt arrived in a stolen Chevy to pick up his sweetheart at work and begin a wonderful life of perfect romance. He parked at the fire hydrant in front of the building and went in.

  Seven minutes later, he came out again, gripping Carrie Lanin by the arm. Nobody on the crowded street gave them any notice, except as another pair of objects to dodge: an ordinary-looking man with cropped brown hair and dark eyes set perhaps a little too close together and a blonde in her early thirties, with a classic American-pretty former cheerleader face, now unflatteringly frozen in the paralysis of terror. Pruitt had the carbine suspended by a strap around his neck, with his right hand under the coat gripping the stock and trigger and the muzzle peeping out between the buttons, pointing at his companion. Carrie hung from his grip, barely able to keep her knees working; she had just seen her supervisor and his secretary shot down.

  Pruitt was extremely happy as he politely opened the car door for his bride. He had only had to shoot two people, which was less than he had figured on shooting. He hoped that they weren’t hurt too badly. In any case what was done was done, and his plan was working well. He was positive Carrie would understand why it was necessary and would come to admire him for it.

  He pulled into the crowded street, turned at the next corner onto Thirty-fifth, and headed west. As he drove, he explained his
plan to Carrie. He had his own car parked on Eleventh. They would change to that car and drive through the Lincoln Tunnel. And they would keep driving until they reached Alaska, where they would start a new life. Nobody asked questions in Alaska about what you had done in the lower forty-eight. It was a frontier. He would get a good job maintaining the pipeline, and they would be happy.

  “My—my daughter …” said Carrie. Her mouth was so dry that it was hard to speak. Her words sounded odd, as if they were being broadcast over a cheap speaker.

  Pruitt frowned. “You’re not understanding me, Carrie. This is a new life. We should’ve had this life before, see? We don’t want any reminders of the old life, okay? Look, I got everything planned out. You’ll see. It’ll be great.”

  Carrie Lanin resumed her silence. She had already noted that the door handle had been removed from the passenger door. She closed her eyes; tears leaked out from between her lashes.

  They turned south on Eleventh Avenue, drove for a few blocks, and then turned into a deserted side street near a ruined warehouse. Pruitt parked behind a blue 1977 Mercury.

  “Here we are,” he announced cheerily. “I got a great deal on this car, Carrie. Only six thousand—” Pruitt stopped. There were two eyes looking at him out of his rearview mirror. Instinctively, he swung his head around. Tranh smashed him across the face with his heavy Tokarev pistol, shattering his nose. Then Tranh leaned forward and cracked Pruitt across the face twice more, until the man lay still against the driver’s door, blowing red bubbles. Carrie Lanin stared at him. He said to her, “Do not to be afraid, Madame. You are safe.”

  Then he unbuttoned Pruitt’s coat and pulled out the carbine. He rested the muzzle against Pruitt’s cheekbone and offered the other end of the weapon to Carrie Lanin.

  “No … I can’t,” said Carrie in a whisper. She seemed to have no breath left.

  Tranh nodded and gently lifted her right hand. He placed it on the pistol grip of the carbine. He worked her finger through the trigger guard, which was somewhat difficult because he was wearing gloves and her hand was entirely passive, like the hand of someone under hypnosis. She had her eyes closed.

  He steadied the stock of the carbine with his left hand, and with his right hand he pressed the woman’s finger against the trigger. He used five rounds.

  Carrie Lanin still had her eyes closed. Her ears rang; she could not stop shaking. Tranh leaned forward, rolled down the passenger window, pushed Carrie against the dash, and snaked himself out onto the street. There was no one around. Into her ear he said, “You fight for the weapon. You shoot it. He is dead. I am not here. Do you understand? I am not here. Do you understand it is best?”

  A slight nod. Tranh looked down at himself and brushed a few bits of brain and other tissue off his pea coat. The blood did not show except as a darker dampness against the navy blue wool. Then he went to a phone booth and placed an anonymous call to the police.

  TEN

  Marlene was backstage at Alice Tully Hall, in the Juilliard School of Music, standing outside the performers’ dressing room, when her pager buzzed. She snarled an obscenity at the little box, choked it into silence, and stuck her head through the dressing room door. It was a small room, but just large enough for a small party, which was what it now contained. Edie Wooten was sitting with a glass of Evian water in her hand, flanked in the manner of Renaissance paintings by her mother and father, both of whom were drinking Krug from crystal flutes. In another little group stood the members of Wooten’s quintet: Anton Ten Haar, the Dutch violinist whom Marlene had seen at Wooten’s apartment, thin, long haired, pale, and dry looking; Felix Evarti, the pianist, squat, dark, curly headed, and damp looking, with a nervous manner; Norma Merriam, the second fiddle, a tall woman in her forties with a long gray ponytail; and Curtis Dumont, the violist, a portly dark brown man with a pointed white beard. They all paused and looked at Marlene when she appeared, as at a visitor from another, and more hostile, planet. Edie Wooten was the only one of the group who smiled.

  “Come and have a drink, Marlene,” she offered after a tiny uncomfortable pause.

  Looking at the scene, Marlene flashed briefly on Degas, or some other painter of the bourgeois world in its theatrical manifestation. Black and white were the prevailing colors, the gowns of the three women, the white tie of the men, set off by the bright splashes of the bouquets, the glitter of the bottles and glasses, the exotic touch lent by the complexion of the single black. It looked so warm and cozy, so arranged, that Marlene briefly felt herself the wolf at the door. No, she thought, not the wolf, the sheepdog, but they still didn’t want it in the house. She had felt this way before, in similar company, which was why she chose not to devote her life exclusively to the protection of celebrities and the rich.

  Her eye cast once again around the room, a professional look. She had already checked out the bouquets—no contributions from the Music Lover—but the people were another matter. She caught an expression of active distaste on the face of the pianist, Evarti. Mr. and Mrs. Wooten showed the bland, tanned politesse of the wealthy. The others were neutral, uninterested. Marlene shook her head.

  “No, thanks. I just wanted to tell you I’ve got to make a call. Wolfe is just backstage, if you need him.”

  “Is anything wrong?” asked Edie.

  “No, this is something else.”

  She left and found a pay phone in the small foyer. People were already gathering there in numbers, heading for their seats. One of them had to be their guy. A face swam out of the crowd, a man, blond, well dressed, tall. Their eyes met and he passed on. It stirred a memory. It was the man they had passed in the elevator lobby at the Wootens’. Ginnie’s boyfriend. Marlene made a mental note to ask Wolfe if he had checked him out yet. Then she stopped herself from examining the passing faces. An impossible security situation, of course, but Marlene thought that the man they wanted would move toward the performers’ dressing room, as he had several times before. They had a chance of intercepting him there.

  “What’s up, Sym?” she said when the call went through.

  “We’re on the TV. Pruitt snatched Lanin from her office, and he drove away in a car. Then she got the gun away or something and shot him. Blew his head off.”

  A wave of adrenaline. Marlene’s palms and forehead popped with sweat. “Where’s Harry?”

  “He’s at the precinct. The One-Oh. With her.”

  “They’re not holding her for it?”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Sym. “He shot two people in her office. Maybe they going to give her a medal. Anyway, Harry said call, tell you what was going down.”

  “Okay, right. She’ll probably call me from the precinct, and I want to be paged when she does. Where’s Tranh?”

  “In the back. Cooking something.”

  Cooking? “Put him on,” she ordered, and when Tranh came on, she asked, “What happened, Vinh?”

  “The man arrived at the office building,” said Tranh in French, speaking staccato, a military report. “He came out of the office holding Madame Lanin. He took her into a car. I supposed he had a weapon under his coat, so I could do nothing. Then I followed them—”

  “How? How did you follow them?”

  “In a cab,” said Tranh. “It was”—he seemed to search for a word—“cinématique, you know? Follow that car! So, they parked. I approached cautiously. There were shots. I ran and found them. He was dead. I went to a phone and called the police, without giving my name. This was correct, yes?”

  “Yes. Then what?”

  “The police, many cars. They took her in charge. I returned here. I am preparing noodles with scallions and cod, and hot peppers.”

  “How was she?”

  “Frightened, of course, but well. And free now, naturally. Of him, I mean. I suppose it is a satisfactory denouement.”

  Marlene was about to press Tranh for more details, but decided she did not want to know any more details. No, definitely not.

  She hung up and lo
oked around the small, pretty space, feeling mildly disoriented. The bronze statue of Beethoven looked down at her, offering no inspiration. The crowd had thinned. She followed the last of the concertgoers through the doors of the little hall.

  The stage was brightly lit, furnished with four straight chairs and a black Steinway for the first piece, the Mozart quintet. As she watched, a man in a dinner suit came out and made a pitch for the New York Chamber Music Society, and boosted the present concert, and then the lights dimmed and the quintet of musicians walked on, the string players holding their instruments. As they took their seats in the hushed hall, Marlene walked down the side aisle and through the door that led to backstage. Wolfe was standing at the entrance to the corridor that led from the stage to the dressing room.

  “Anything up?” she asked him.

  “No one who looks wrong so far,” he said. “Not that we’d know.”

  “No. Okay, I’m going to hang out at the stairway end of this hall. I spotted that guy we saw in her building, the sister’s boyfriend, the blond. You get anything on him yet?”

  “Sorry, no. Working on it. He still wearing the leather jacket?”

  “No, a suit and tie. Okay, we’ll watch for him. Anyway, anyone who wants to get to the dressing room has to pass one of us.” Wolfe nodded. He had his eyes fixed on the musicians, who were making tuning noises. Marlene went down the hall, and as she approached the dressing room door, she saw the stairwell door slowly swinging closed. Through the safety glass window she saw the shadow of a man.

  She stopped, backtracked, and threw open the dressing room door. One look sufficed. She shouted over the Mozart, “Wolfe, he’s here!” and took off toward the stairwell. There were sounds above her on the stairs, but they also seemed to come from below. She yelled, “Wolfe, check downstairs! I’m going up.”

  So she did and found herself on a floor of the music school, lined with practice rooms. The wide corridor stretched before her, quite empty. She ran to one of the glass-windowed soundproof doors. Empty. To another. A girl was sitting alone playing a French horn. All the rest of the practice rooms were empty, except for one in which a slender black youth was pounding away on a grand piano. Marlene had her hand on the door and was about to push through when she stopped herself. What would she say to him? She hadn’t seen the intruder; thus, no identification was possible. It could have been the pianist or the horn player, but it could have as easily been someone else, who had slipped down some other corridor. The building was one of the most complex in Lincoln Center, containing not only Alice Tully but two theaters, dozens of studios, practice rooms, and offices, and a warren of hallways connecting these in odd ways, not to mention the unusually large number of exits such a facility naturally required. She thought again of the boyfriend, the blondie. He had seen her in the lobby; he had known she was out of position. He could have just lost himself in the crowd, gone out, entered again through the school proper, and approached the dressing room from the stairway side.