Enemy within kac-13

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Karp took several long, shuddering breaths, as he had learned to do before foul shots, and whipped the beast back into silence-for the moment.

  "So, Zak, you going to tell me what happened?" Karp asked when the pie had been delivered and served out.

  "Nothing happened. Derek Rafferty got in my face."

  "It was my fault, Daddy," said Giancarlo. "Derek pushed me down and Zak came over. He wasn't even playing with us, and he told Derek not to do it, and Derek socked him, and he socked Derek. Twice. And his nose bled all over. It was like ER."

  "Why did Derek push you?"

  "Oh, well, we had these tubes? Like paper tubes from Christmas paper, and we were playing samurais with them, bopping each other and yelling 'euuuahggh!' like they do, and talking pretend Japanese and making karate sounds, and I said some real Japanese, like Lucy taught, and Derek said it wasn't real, and I said it was, and my sister could speak Japanese perfectly, and he said I was like BSing, and we yelled and then he made his eyes, you know, slanty with his fingers, and he said 'Karp's sister is a Jap, Karp's sister is a Jap.' And I put my tube down, and I said if he was going to be a racist and insult my family, he could bite it, and he called me a faggot and I walked away, and he came up behind me and pushed me down. And then Zak came over."

  "He's the faggot," added Zak.

  "Let's not use language like that, Zak," said Karp, eyeing the crowded restaurant for flapping ears.

  "Well, he is!"

  "Really. Do you happen to know what the word means?"

  A brief look was exchanged between the brothers, a microburst of raw information. Karp simply knew that whatever science might say, these two particular little people communicated telepathically. Giggles first, the pair growing and feeding on each other, then helpless laughter, Coke squirting through nostrils.

  "Homosexual," Zak got out at length. The boys were leaning against one another in the booth, shaking and blowing bubbles.

  "And what's a homosexual, hm?" Karp asked.

  Giancarlo said, "It's a boy"-giggle giggle giggle-"who likes… dolls and dresses and stuff."

  "I see. And do you have any evidence that this Rafferty likes dolls and dresses? And stuff?"

  "He does, but it's secret," said Giancarlo, sitting up, with the crazy art-light agleam in his eyes. "He has this secret room, like in his house, that he built into his closet, and he goes in there at night, after dinner, and there are shelves and shelves full of dolls and dollhouses, and he goes in there and takes off his regular clothes and puts on a pink dress and white tights and those little shiny shoes with buckles and a curly blond wig and plays with his dolls, and he has a Quake demo going on his computer so his family won't know. One day his little sister finds out because so many of her dolls are missing; she sneaks into his room and finds out his secret, and he realizes he will have to kill her…"

  More hilarity, and it went on in this vein for the rest of the pizza, with Zak adding particularly gory edits from the side. When the narrative had descended into irretrievable silliness, Karp said, "I appreciate that you want to stick up for your brother, but I think from now on you should let Giancarlo fight his own battles."

  "He can't fight," Zak said.

  "I can, too," said the other disdainfully. "I just don't choose to."

  "You have to fight sometimes," said Zak.

  "Yeah, but not about brain-dead dumb stuff. Did you fight a lot when you were in school, Daddy?"

  "Oh, I guess the usual amount. Some kid shoves you, so you shove back, and you're rolling around on the street. But I wasn't a menace to society like some people I know."

  "He means you," said Giancarlo.

  "I know, dummy!"

  "Idiot!"

  "Faggot!"

  After a barely perceptible instant they both burst into laughter. Karp picked up the last slice and thought, there's too much Marlene in the mix there. He could almost see those sensible, solid, simple Karp genes fighting what had to be a losing battle. Of course his twins would turn out to be like no twins he had ever heard of, unique probably, like his sad and unique little girl. He sighed around the pepperoni and resigned himself yet again to love that passeth mere understanding.

  "How're the boys?" asked the mother, when she ambled in at seventhirty. Father and daughter were on a disreputable red velvet couch, watching television.

  "They're killing monsters in their room," said Karp, looking up. "I was going to put them down after this movie, but now Mommy can do it."

  She ducked out and returned five minutes later, changed into faded jeans and a cotton sweater, holding a generous tumbler of red wine in her hand.

  "Working late again, dear?" Karp asked sweetly. "Or is it him?"

  "Oh, him! I'm glad you think I have any time for dalliance. Actually, it was a woman. What are you watching? Oh, the end of The Graduate." Marlene slid into a slot on the couch next to Karp. "Yes, indeed, the dear, dead sixties. Are you sure Lucy should be watching this?"

  "She hates it," said Karp.

  "Well, yeah," said the girl. "I can't believe people liked this garbage. It's practically a commercial for stalking. I mean the girl finds out he's having sex with her mother and tells him to get lost, and he keeps coming around, and then he breaks into the church and interrupts the ceremony, and what? She goes away with him? Give me a break!"

  "It's romance, dear," said Marlene, although had she been entirely honest with herself, she would have agreed that the film made her feel a little creepy, too.

  "Oh, right! Would you go out with him if he'd slept with your mother?"

  "Well, actually, Dustin and Mom dated for a while, but I don't think they ever went all the way, so I really can't judge. How was school?"

  "Mercifully brief. I ditched class after I played ball with Dad."

  Marlene made a gesture of despair. "Oh, terrific. Fifteen grand a year!"

  "I'll pay you back every penny."

  Karp said, "That's not the point, as you well know. You're supposed to go to school. You're a kid. If you're having trouble, tell us and we'll try to fix it."

  "Nothing's wrong. It's just boring."

  "School is supposed to be boring," said Marlene. "That's why they call it school."

  Karp gave his wife a sharp look. "Thank you, dear. That was helpful. Seriously, Luce…"

  "Seriously? Seriously, I hate it. I hate the kids. I mean, like I have a lot in common with a bunch of girls who worry about their nails and what clubs they're going to bust into, and what kind of sex they're having with whom, and who eat ice cubes for lunch to stay thin. I have no friends. People go out of their way to dis me in the hall. The teachers hate me…"

  "That's not true."

  "It is. They want kiss-butts or girls who are terrifically rich and polite even if they're totally stupid."

  "Oh, I think you're exaggerating, but nevertheless…"

  Lucy let out a sharp breath and nodded. "Right. You're right. I'll try not to ditch too much anymore. But… you know, sometimes the whole thing… I just need a break."

  Karp knew very well, actually. He patted Lucy's hand and said, "Okay. Sure."

  Marlene asked, "So where were you all day? You look like you just got in."

  "Out. Around. I served at Redeemer's for the dinner. And then I was with David the rest of the time."

  "Oh, David again? When are we going to get a look at this guy?"

  Lucy shrugged. "He's real busy."

  "I'm sure. Meanwhile, I'm having some serious problems with you spending so much time with him, especially when you're supposed to be in school. I think you should cut down."

  "Why? You'd be in heaven if I were dating all the time. Then it would be fine. You wouldn't care what I did if it was with some rich dork from Collegiate or St. X's."

  "One, I would care, and that's insulting. And, two, the point is this guy is what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine?"

  "He's not that old."

  "Okay, but he's a grown man. And despite your talents, you're only seventee
n. You've got no business spending all your time with a drifter ten years older than you who you don't know anything about."

  "He's not a drifter. He's a Catholic aid worker. He lives in the Catholic Worker hostel. He's been to all the bad places. He was in Bosnia. He was in Sudan and Burundi. He's just recuperating here so he can go off to some other god-awful place."

  "So he says. People can say anything about their past."

  To avert the detonation he could feel approaching, Karp said lightly, "Where I would draw the line is if he had L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E tattooed on the backs of his fingers. And of course, if he wasn't a Yanks fan…"

  Both of the females ignored this. Marlene said, "And all this homeless business. Okay, you want to go to a church basement and prepare a meal, that's one thing. But wandering into God knows what alley with all kinds of deranged people at all hours-I think that's completely out of line for someone your age. I mean I've been concerned, but I haven't said anything until now, and if you're starting to cut school to do it, well, I'm sorry. I think it's starting to be perverse. You have to stop."

  Lucy shot to her feet. "I'm not going to listen to this… wu zhi ji tan! How can you call yourself a Catholic?"

  "Oh, excuse me? I'm going to be told how to practice my religion now?"

  "Girls, girls…" said Karp.

  Lucy stalked off, muttering in foreign tongues. It was a peculiarity of hers that she never used bad language in English, although she could, and often did, scorch paint in any number of others.

  Slam!

  "Well, dear, you handled that well," said Karp after a short interval.

  "She wants to kill me. She won't be satisfied until she's dancing the fandango on my grave."

  "She loves you so much she can't see straight," said Karp. Marlene started to say something but stopped and instead finished her glass of wine. Karp muted the television, and they sat for some time in the flickering dark. The film ended and people sold stuff at them, silently mugging the virtues of shining things, and then the news came on.

  "Unmute it," said Marlene. They watched the lead story. Richard Perry, a wealthy former congressman from New Jersey, had been kidnapped along with his party of six by unknown persons somewhere in the Balkans, where he had been engaged in a humanitarian mission. They showed some film of Perry posing with a famous photographer and a famous writer, a woman long dedicated to lost causes, in front of a white Land Rover on a muddy mountain road. Then the grave faces of the news team, male and female, the male one giving out that no group had claimed credit for the outrage, that the president, a close friend, had expressed shock. Then the human side-Perry's wife and two young children ducking in the glare of TV lights outside their New York apartment, while a mob shoved little boxes and boom mikes at them.

  "Shit!" said Marlene. "Oh, shut it off!"

  Karp did. "It's a dangerous place."

  "Yeah, but, not to be self-centered, he's also a client of ours. I think we're providing security for that trip. Oleg must be throwing up. Christ, they'll probably delay this goddamn IPO now, and we'll have to go through the whole thing again from scratch."

  "Well, now that you're in such a good mood," Karp said, "I should tell you that Zak got into another fight today."

  "Oh, for the love of Christ! Is he okay?"

  "A shiner. I spoke to him sternly. He was protecting Giancarlo, which I thought was at least mildly exculpatory, but I suggested to him that a quick trigger for violence was not a successful life strategy in the long run."

  "Is that a sly dig, my sweet?"

  "Not at all, my angel," replied Karp with a straight face. "You're a responsible corporate executive and a model of civility. Who was the woman, by the way?"

  "What woman?"

  "The one who kept you from the bosom of your family until the middle of the night."

  "Oh, that one. It was Sybil Marshak, as a matter of fact."

  "No kidding? What did she want?"

  "She…" But at that moment the boys arrived and swarmed their mother, full of the news, questions, arguments, stupid riddles, and small-boy presence, demanding and tender. She dispensed maternal being for half an hour and then rousted them off to bath and bed, at which time they both regressed five years, as they usually did, and she indulged herself in the hidden romance, her chief joy nowadays, truth to tell, and all the sweeter for the knowledge that it would not last much longer. She stroked, she talked, she read from the current favorite (The Hobbit), she answered the questions that baffled the great thinkers, about death, heaven, God, and kissed them good-night, whispering into their ears her secret name for each, which, she thought, they had not ever shared, not even with each other.

  By the time she was through, Karp was in bed. She undressed and climbed in with him.

  "You were saying?"

  "Was I? Oh, right: Sybil Marshak. You know who she is, obviously."

  "Runs the West Side Dems."

  "Yeah. The last person I expected to see. You ever meet her?"

  "Just to handshake, and to receive compliments on my extraordinary physical beauty. Jack and she are fairly close. It's hard to get on a state ticket under the D. column without Sybil. What did she want?"

  "She says she's being stalked."

  "Stalked, huh? Those damn Republicans!"

  "Hot flashes, more likely."

  "It's not legit?"

  "I don't know yet, but it doesn't look like a serious case. There's no specific guy involved, just feelings, doors slamming in the parking garage, phone calls that hang up, seeing the same person on the street at the same time every day. No letters, no recordings, no physical evidence at all…"

  "What, she's nuts?"

  "I wouldn't go that far. If you rub my back, I'll be your friend for life… Oh, thank you. Great." After silence interrupted by sighs of pleasure, talking into the pillow. "Anyway we get people in there a lot, in VIP, mostly women, I'm sorry to say, but some men, too. Famous, right? Rich. They're not supposed to have any problems. But actually they're under a lot of stress. Okay, they got the pills, they got the therapist, they got the sex and the toys. But still there's this panic-'Oh, am I worthy, oh, will I lose it all?' And eventually it comes out. They go agoraphobic, or they can't fly in planes anymore, or they get all compulsive. Sometimes it comes out in paranoia, which is what I think we got here."

  "So what did you tell her?"

  "I said we'd watch her for a couple of days, a week, see if anything jumped out. I also advised her to get rid of her gun."

  "Sybil Marshak packs heat?"

  "Unfortunately, yes. Got a license and everything, which is no surprise: she could get a city license to do pedophilia in public. I tried to convey to her the downsides of firearms, accidents and so forth, but she's a hardhead. She really thinks someone's after her. She insisted I take care of her personally."

  "Which you refused."

  "Which I accepted. It struck me today that if I don't get out of the office once in a while, I am going to go batshit."

  "No guns, right?"

  "Oh, put a cork in it! No, all's I'm going to do is watch her back for a day or so, with a light team, see if I see any characters hanging around her I don't like. I'll put a trace on her phone, too, talk to her building-the usual. Min Dykstra can run the place perfectly well for a couple of days, I mean the bureaucratic stuff, and it'll make Lou happy. He likes me to mingle with the great and near great."

  "Speaking of greatness, when is this stock thing coming off?"

  "Oh, I don't want to talk about it!" Marlene groaned. "In fact, technically, I'm not allowed to talk about any of it. Ha! I love when the law demands behavior I would do anyway. Virtue without pain." Some silence here.

  "Is that still my back you're rubbing?" she asked with a small gasp.

  "Not technically, no."

  The following morning, whatever good mood Karp had brought to the day from the high jinks of the previous night was dissipated by the news Murrow brought.

  "He can't be serious
," said Karp.

  "Apparently he is. The grand jury is scheduled for tomorrow. My new friend Flatow intends to waltz in there, call Cooley, call Nash, call the guy from the ME, and that's it. No homicide investigators."

  "Did you ask him why?"

  "In a roundabout way. He said Catafalco told him that it would be a waste of time because it would just confirm the testimony of the two officers."

  "Oh, Christ! Did you get the report?"

  "No, Flatow just had the precis from headquarters. Apparently he handed it over to Catafalco and hasn't seen it since."

  "And he didn't think it was important enough to ask for?"

  "Um, not really. George is a follow-orders kind of guy. A stamp collector, by the way. He has a nearly complete set of British Empire Trinidad and Tobago." Murrow vamped extreme ennui. "Tell me I don't have to keep hanging out with him."

  "If you didn't want to be bored shitless, you shouldn't have become a lawyer."

  "I'm sorry-everything I know I learned from TV. Who are you calling?"