“Yeah, but he thinks he can manipulate Bloom, which means he’s playing on Bloom’s court. You, on the other hand, decline the game entirely, which is what drives Bloom crazy. You just don’t give a shit. Are you finished with that? I want to clean up.”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Karp, and then sat in silence, flexing his chilled knee and thinking about what Marlene had said. It didn’t make sense to him, but he had learned over the years to appreciate Marlene’s judgments about people, even when he didn’t agree with them, and he treated her pronouncements like those of an expert witness in, say, blood chemistry-recondite but usable in court.
She finished her wash-up and sat down next to him on the couch. She lit her evening cigarette, one of the five she allowed herself each day.
“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“Do? What can I do? It’s his case and it’s a strong case against his guy.”
“But what if he didn’t do it?”
Karp smiled. “Then because our system is just, he’ll walk out a free man.”
“I can see you don’t want to discuss this seriously,” she replied sharply, “but I am simply not going to believe you’re going to let an innocent man get nailed for this, and-don’t interrupt-and let the guilty party walk away laughing, just because you don’t want to hurt Roland’s feelings.”
“Don’t get started, Marlene,” warned Karp. “I meant what I said about getting off, and you know why? Because in court we’re not like the defense attorneys. It’s not a symmetrical thing. They don’t have to prove anything; they don’t have to even believe their client is innocent. That’s not their job. All they have to do is insert doubt. It’s a simpler service, like dry cleaning.”
“I know all this, Butch. What’s your point?”
“My point is, if we don’t believe the guy’s guilty, it does matter. The doubt is there on the prosecutor’s side and the jury can smell it.”
“Oh, what horseshit! You mean to tell me that innocent people don’t get convicted? Christ, there are even words for the process: framed, railroaded-”
“Okay, I’ll modify that: not for homicide, not by conviction where there’s competent counsel and not in New York City at the present time. Sure, in Coon Squat, Georgia, where they have one homicide in a decade, yeah, they grab the town asshole and nail him to a tree. But not here, not recently. Christ, Marlene, that’s why these bozos Bloom put in have been copping stone killers to man deuce. That’s what I’m trying to change. It’s hard to convict someone who you’re absolutely one hundred percent convinced is guilty. Trials are a bitch! And you could get wiped if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. That’s why they don’t do them.”
“Okay, right, but what if Roland is really convinced the guy did it?”
Karp thought about that for a moment, and then said, “Well, look: this case is two days old. Two days. They’ve made terrific progress, and Roland is hyped up about it. I would be too. Now if, after however many months, Roland brings this case to trial, then he’ll really believe the guy did it, and moreover, if he does, then the guy really did it. Roland is good.”
“You’re going to leave it at that, huh?”
“What do you want me to do, babe? Second-guess him? Conduct a parallel investigation? You know I can’t do that. Meanwhile, Roland’ll do the right thing when the time comes.”
“Well,” said Marlene, “you have touching faith, but faith is as nothing without works. You might think about an ancillary investigation.”
“How do you mean?”
“Where’s the girl? The alibi? She’s missing, a missing person. Her family will be concerned.”
“What are you suggesting, Marlene? That I pump up the cops to find a girl who just happens to be a possible material witness in Roland’s case? What do I tell Roland? Gee, Roland, there are fifty thousand missing persons every year in Manhattan, and I thought I’d pick one and put the max on it, just for laughs, and guess who it is-”
“Okay, okay, it’s a lame idea. Why are we talking about this goddamn case anyway? It’s not like I don’t have my own problems. And speaking of which, since we’re talking shop in the sanctity of our home, I think I can get Harry Bello to come over to the D.A. squad.”
“You can? That’s great,” said Karp, genuinely impressed. Bello was a detective of uncanny skill, whose eccentricity, alcoholism, and general mulishness had caused him to be banished to a backwater in Queens, which had not prevented him from solving, in concert with the Karps, a case that the criminal justice hierarchy in Queens had not wanted solved. Bello had become, as a direct result of this, both dry and Lucy Karp’s godfather, as well as persona non grata from one end of Queens to the other.
“Yes,” Marlene continued, “the borough assistant chief was delighted to help. In fact, he gave out that if Harry never sets foot on his turf again, it’ll be a day too soon. He’ll start next Monday.”
“I presume you’ll monopolize him,” said Karp.
“It’s not a choice. I doubt he’ll work for anybody else. You know Harry.”
“Very clever, Marlene. Your own private investigator, and I bet it’s a permanent steal. Harry’s not going to show up on the D.A. squad’s budget, is he? He’ll be on the Queens detective chart until the day he hands in his tin.”
She giggled. “How well you know me, my love. And I learned how to run that scam from you, if you recall.”
“So you did,” responded Karp, happy now that both the unpleasantness about Roland’s case and the agony in his knee had abated. “And I believe it’s time for us to stand clutching each other at our baby’s doorway, watching her sleeping and making stupid noises, after which, if you’ll help me climb that fucking ladder, I intend to take to my bed.”
4
It took Denny Maher two and a half hours to finish the flattened Jane Doe. As he had feared, the teeth were all over the place, from the windpipe to the base of the brain. He gathered them carefully and placed them in a plastic bag. There was evidence of careful dental work; she had not been raised in poverty. Death had been instantaneous, of course, from massive brain damage, but the woman had at least been alive when she hit the ground. The hyoid and trachea were intact, and there was no sign that the woman had been strangled, stabbed, or shot. He examined the hands, which had been placed in plastic bags. He took samples from under the fingernails for later microscopic examination, and as he handled the cold fingers he noticed that there was extensive bruising around the wrists. That was an odd note, although nearly any mark could be explained by a falling-body death. Still, you got marks like that when someone’s wrists were tightly held.
He examined the woman’s vagina, a difficult and tedious procedure, for the organ was badly torn by bone fragments from the disintegrated pelvis. He took samples and put them aside for later microscopic and chemical analysis. Ordinarily he would have taken samples also from the rectum and oral cavity, but these were so badly damaged and contaminated by the explosive eversion of the viscera and by direct impact that such samples would have had little forensic value. What did have value was something he discovered on the inside of the woman’s thigh, high up near the crotch and protected by that location from the general ruin: the clear and unmistakable marks of human teeth. He rolled the body, first to one side, then to the other. More teeth. He got out the Polaroid rig and took photographs.
Maher secured and labeled his samples and covered and refrigerated what was left of the Jane Doe. Before going home, he stopped by his office and wrote a note to himself to call the police officers in charge of the case and, if what he now strongly suspected was borne out by the lab, the rape bureau of the D.A.’s office as well.
“Does that hurt?” asked the orthoped.
Karp, who had turned pale and nearly cracked a molar gritting his teeth, gasped, “Yeah, that hurts.”
“How about this?” said Dr. Hudson, twisting. Karp let out a shrill yelp.
“I’ll assume that’s affirmative,” said the doctor. Then he
allowed Karp’s knee to relax back on the examining table. Dr. Hudson rolled a little distance on his stool and examined a chart. He was a squat, muscular man with a gray crew cut and a squared-off face that seemed accustomed to issuing bad news.
“I saw you what? Four years ago?” the doctor asked, reading from his chart. “I told you to come back every six months and you didn’t bother. So. What’ve you been doing with that thing?” He indicated the reddened lump that was Karp’s left knee.
“What do you mean, what’ve I been doing? I use it when I walk,” said Karp.
“No unusual strains? Falls?”
“Well, a little basketball.”
The doctor’s eyes widened. “Basketball? What, on asphalt? In the playground?”
“Yeah, that, and, um, I was on a pro team for a couple of months last winter as part of a murder investigation.”
“You’re joking! No, wait, you’re that guy! D.A. Karp, they called you-played for the Hustlers, right?”
“Right,” said Karp, an appeasing smile creasing his lips.
“Get the hell out of my office!” said Dr. Hudson.
“So did he really throw you out?” asked Marlene. It was lunchtime later the same day; they were seated in Karp’s office, and she had brought him a sausage sandwich and a root beer from one of the cancer wagons that plied Foley Square. She herself sipped coffee. She had a lunch date later.
“No, worse,” replied Karp, shoving bits of onion back into his mouth with his fingers. “He gave me a lecture. Apparently I’ve totaled the joint. He said he’ll need to do an arthroscopy to be sure, but he thinks I’m going to need another operation, maybe a complete arthroplasty.”
“That sounds pretty grim.”
“It’s grim, all right. I’ll be on crutches for six weeks at least after the operation, not to mention the fact of how we’re going to pay for it.”
“But you’ve got medical-”
“No, I don’t, not for this. It’s a prior existing condition. I checked already; they won’t pay.”
Marlene’s heart sank. “How much?”
“Um, we won’t get much change from a ten thousand dollar bill.”
Marlene finished her coffee and tossed the cup in the trash. She rose. “You mean, there goes our exclusive condo in the heart of one of New York’s most desirable neighborhoods? Maybe, but I can’t think about it today. I have to see this woman about our kid.”
“The parole officer?”
“And her sister, the one with the kid. It’s sounding better and better, and I know we’re going to get in because we absolutely have to get a break right now.” She blew him a kiss and whirled out the door.
Karp waited. Thirty seconds later she stuck her head in the door again, looking stunned. “Hey, if you’re on crutches for six weeks, how are you going to get up to the loft?”
“The penny drops,” said Karp. “As a matter of fact, I don’t know how I’m going to get up the stairs. But I can’t think about it today.”
She grinned. “Smart move. See you around, cutie,” she said, and closed the door.
Marlene took the elevator down from the sixth floor, where Karp had his office, to street level, and walked out of the special entrance reserved for the D.A.’s staff onto Leonard Street. She walked up Leonard to Church and a half block down Church to a branch New York State Parole office.
Inevitably, it was painted in the official bureaucratic colors, green to shoulder height and tan above, a scheme designed by famous scientists to increase suicidal tendencies, especially when lit by dim fluorescents. There were rows of plastic shell chairs in pleasing shades of avocado and pink, and a heavyset clerk with streaked black and blond hair who sat behind a glassed-in counter munching corn chips and talking on the phone. Four of the chairs were occupied by the kind of people who have to visit their parole officers on a regular basis.
Marlene went up to the clerk’s window and asked to see Geri Stone. The clerk continued talking and munching. Marlene asked again, louder. The clerk scowled and said, around a bolus of chip debris, “She’s with someone. Take a seat!”
Marlene sat on her anger and decided not to flash her ID and make a scene. This was, after all, a private mission. She took a seat. The clerk talked on behind her window. Time stopped.
At least twenty minutes later, the door opened again, and a pretty young woman entered, who belonged in such a place far less than even Marlene. She had her black hair cut in an artful shingle, she wore a mannish tweed suit that did not make her look mannish, and had that air of entitlement and confidence that even the City cannot strip from some bright and successful young women. Marlene checked the shoes and bag, found them expensive and tasteful, and thought, the girl’s made a mistake-probably looking for a brokerage.
But no, the woman advanced on the clerk’s station and, smiling, said, “Hi, Mavis, is Geri free?”
The clerk paused in her conversation and returned the smile. “Hi, Susan. I’ll buzz her.” Magic.
Marlene rose and went over to the woman. This had to be the sister, the one with the kid, thought the trained investigator, and so it was. Susan Weiner, mother of a three-year-old, an industrial designer, married to a rising TV producer, and a woman who obviously knew how to make New York sit up and beg. This information and this impression were conveyed to Marlene in a giddy rush as they walked together down a green, dimly lit hallway.
Weiner stopped by a frosted glass door, which opened, allowing the passage of a bullet-headed black man in his thirties, who glowered at them and brushed by so forcefully that they both had to jump back a step.
“A satisfied client,” laughed Weiner, and went into the little office.
Geri Stone was the older sister, by perhaps five years, which made her early thirties. She was rounded, blurry, where Susan was crisply cut and lean, and had adopted a stern proletarian plainness in contrast to her sister’s stylish flair. Her hair was a nondescript brown frizz, and she had on a lipstick that was too bright and a fuzzy sweater of an unfortunate blue shade that greened her sallow complexion.
She greeted her sister effusively.
“God, you look gorgeous. Get away from here, you’re so thin.”
“That’s a gorgeous sweater,” responded Susan. “Where’d you get it?”
And similar cooings. At length they noticed Marlene. Geri shook Marlene’s hand in a formal, manly grip. They were all to go to lunch, Geri’s suggestion when Marlene had called her to make contact with Susan. An odd arrangement, Marlene had thought at the time-why was Geri inviting herself along for a discussion about day-care? Now, of course, the reason was clear, a set of family dynamics you could explicate on the back of a business card. The dowdy social worker was in love with her glamorous sister.
They ate at a local bar. Geri turned out to be one of those people who justified their caloric intake by informing you about how little they had been eating for the past week. Marlene was not particularly hungry, but decided to order a cheeseburger with fries and a beer just for spite.
They chatted. Susan was witty and flippant, a game Marlene played back at her. Geri was more serious, in fact something of a bleeding heart. When Susan mentioned the guy who had almost knocked them down in the hall, Geri launched into his pathetic case history: mildly retarded, alcoholic, abused as a child, dragged through foster homes, a juvie sheet that went back to age twelve and a record of stupid petty crime that turned violent when he had a load on. She had struggled mightily to get him an early release from his last stretch and into a program that specialized in helping people with what she called “institutional malaise.”
“Hmm, interesting,” said Marlene, not really interested but making an effort to be polite in the face of a certain hostility she sensed coming from the parole officer. She was not sure whether this stemmed from her own job, as the kind of person whose delight it was to put poor, misunderstood victims of society in jail, or if it was a kind of jealousy for the attention of Susan Weiner.
Their food came. G
eri fussed and harried the waitress over the crispness of her salad and the provenance of the salad dressing. Weiner caught Marlene’s eye and rolled her own slightly, along with an indulgent smile. We the Thin.
It would have been easy to dislike them both, Geri for her fussy self-righteousness, Susan for her air of unthinking entitlement, but Marlene found herself warming to them, not as individuals precisely, but to the relationship.
These two sisters had something that Marlene had only read about in books, the kind of spiritual closeness that had entranced female writers in the nineteenth century. Marlene had two sisters of her own, whom she loved, of course, but conventionally. Annie was a housewife with a brood of kids out on the Island. Pat was a city planner in Philadelphia. She saw them at birthdays and holidays, and there was warmth then but no real intimacy.
Marlene did not envy them, precisely. If she had been Susan, she would have found Geri’s combination of mother-hen advice and effusive praise unbearable. And as Geri, Susan’s blithe princess act would have driven her to violence. But it was oddly pleasant to bask in the warmth of their relationship, which was as rare in the circles Marlene frequented as hot-chestnut vendors in Midtown.
The lunch ended, not without (as Marlene had expected) an unbearable niggling over who owed what on the check, presided over by Geri, wielding a pencil. At the point when she was calculating the tip, to the nearest cent, Marlene whipped a twenty out of her wallet, snatched the check from Geri’s fingers, slapped the check and the bill on the table, and clunked a sugar dispenser down on both.
“My treat,” she said. “Let’s move, Susan.”
“God, yes,” said Weiner, glancing at her watch. “I already missed my Jazzercise.”
“Your Jazzercise-” said Geri. “Honestly, it’s like a religion with you.”
“You should try it, Geri, seriously, I’m always trying to get her off her behind. Do something! Marlene, you work out, right? What, aerobics?”
“I box,” said Marlene. A snuffle of unbelieving mirth. “No, I don’t mean I get in the ring. I have a body bag and a speed bag, and I jump rope and curl dumbbells. My dad taught me, and I’ve kept it up.”
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