Absolute Rage

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Marijuana?”

  “Yeah. It’s getting as big as coal around here. We go down and chop it back some from time to time, but there’re lots of hollers and not enough of us.”

  The plane climbed rapidly. Hendricks loosened his seat belt. He grinned. “Wild and wonderful. We’ll be down in twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

  As they were. The trip to the capitol was swift, in a convoy of two state police vehicles. Karp and Hendricks rode in the back of one of them, with the captain pointing out the features of what looked to Karp like a nice little city on the banks of a not-too-clean river. The capitol itself was the usual massive gray-stone, gilded-domed structure. The governor was meeting them in his office there, instead of the one at the governor’s mansion, in the interests of privacy, Hendricks explained.

  “In case I piss on the rug.”

  “We’re careful folks hereabouts.”

  “I might, though. I never met a governor before. The excitement . . .”

  Hendricks laughed and opened a walnut-paneled door.

  They were ushered in immediately. The office was modern and not impressively large, much like its occupant. Roy Orne was a small man with excellent barbering and a peppy manner. A young woman, trim in a fawn suit, her blond hair in a neat bun, was introduced as “my aide” Cheryl Oggert. Shakes all around, seats, offer of coffee, soft drinks, declined, the usual banter. Governor Orne asked how was the flight; Karp commented on the abundance of mountains. Laughs.

  Time to turn serious: Orne asked if Karp had read the binders. What did he think?

  “I think you got the wrong man. I think the people down there botched the investigation.”

  “Incompetence, do you think, or malevolence?” asked the governor.

  “Hard to tell. Could be either. Based on the other binder, I would tend to bet on the latter. Otherwise it was a really dumb investigation. In any case their suspect is a joke.”

  “What does your wife think?”

  Karp was taken aback. The governor had certainly done his homework. “Well, clearly, she believes her client is innocent,” Karp said carefully. “As to malevolence, there seems to be plenty to spare. An attempt was made on her life the other day.”

  The governor looked grave, and a glance flicked between him and Hendricks. “Well. That’s awful. Was she hurt?”

  “No. Marlene is hard to hurt. Experts have tried. Of course, she’ll be out of there once I get there, provided you want me. Speaking of which, why do you?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Why do you want a prosecutor from out of state? It seems a bit extreme. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of fine lawyers in West Virginia.”

  “Well, yes, we do,” said Orne. “But I’m kind of busy just now.” The others chuckled, Karp allowed a smile. Orne continued, “Here’s the thing, Mr. Karp. I’ve heard a lot about you from Saul. I don’t think there’s a prosecutor in the state that has your experience, hell, half your experience. State’s attorney tends to be a young fellow’s profession. We’ve got a man up in Wheeling’s been there twelve years, and I doubt he sees three murder trials a year, and those’re bar fights and domestics. We don’t have any people skilled in unraveling a conspiracy.”

  “You think it’s a conspiracy?”

  “Well, let’s see: a union reformer gets killed along with half his family in the most corrupt, antiunion county in the state. What’re the chances it was a wandering drifter, like in that book, In Cold Blood? I’d say slim to none. Okay, that’s one reason. Another is, if I assign a local, people are going to look at his political connections, either to me, or to my many fine enemies, or to Big Coal, or whatever. You on the other hand don’t know one end of West Virginia from the other. That’s an advantage. Also, Saul assures me that you don’t play political games.”

  “Yes. People have said I have the political skills of a three-year-old.”

  The governor laughed. “That’s good. We want the truth here, and let the bricks fly.”

  “Sounds good,” said Karp. “Another reason might be that, if I crash and burn, I’m a stranger, and it doesn’t cost you anything to dump me.”

  A tiny silence here. Then the governor chuckled. “Well, yeah, I guess that passed through my mind. And as long as we’re being brutally frank, I’m also doing it to keep control of this mess, assuming that it might very well lead to some pretty powerful political factors in the state. I don’t want the feds to have an excuse to come in here and piss all over another Democratic governor. This is a decent state, with solid liberal instincts, and it’s tied to a nasty, regressive bunch of industries—coal, chemicals, power plants. It makes for a funny kind of politics, but just about everyone’s now agreed that the old kind of Robbens County behavior just don’t cut it anymore, and I mean to clean it up, and I need a pro to do it. Well, Mr. Karp, will you?”

  “Sure,” said Karp, surprising himself with the ease with which he committed himself. “Resources . . . ?”

  “Whatever you need. If you want to hire people, there’s money for that. Captain Hendricks will be part of your team, in charge of any detective and forensic work. You’ll have priority at the state lab, of course, and a budget that should be adequate. Cheryl here will be your contact with my office and will go down there with you to handle the on-scene public relations. I assume you’ll appreciate the help in that area.”

  “Saul must have ratted about my winning ways with the press.”

  “Well, no offense, but I think we’re going to get a lot of publicity on this case, and I think the viewers would rather see her face on the screen than yours. When can you start?”

  “How about the beginning of next week?”

  “That’s fine,” said Orne. “Wade and Cheryl will form up an advance team and have everything ready for you when you get down there.”

  Orne rose, extended his hand. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Karp. We expect great things from you.”

  Karp looked into the governor’s dark eyes; sincerity flooded from them, which made him feel good for a moment, until he reflected that Orne was a politician and that sincerity was easy to fake.

  * * *

  Lucy drove the refurbished Land Cruiser off the car ferry and onto the streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut, feeling quite uncharacteristically pleased with herself. She had fixed the car, obtained the plates, finished her various chores, whipped her brothers into finishing theirs, and escaped without either mechanical breakdown or dog-based emergency intervening. She had made one final executive-level decision just before leaving, and she was somewhat concerned that she had not called her mother to clear it, but Billy had agreed and she felt confident that she had done the right thing.

  Zak the navigator, a street map unfolded across his lap, said, “Right in three blocks.”

  From the backseat came the tweedle of a Game Boy. Giancarlo was spread out with pillows like a pasha on a divan, his preferred mode of automobile travel. One of the nice things about traveling with the boys was that there was never any quarrel about who would get the shotgun seat. Giancarlo did not covet it, nor would Zak ride anywhere else.

  The executive decision was about the dog Jeb. Jeb was a bonehead and varminty as all hell, which meant that he was suspicious of everything that moved, besides which, he was an escape artist of some talent. Billy had tried to break him of the habit of lunging at every stranger, with some success, but clearly Jeb would never make a personal guard dog good enough to sell as such under the Wingfield Farm label. The decision was to turn him into a yard dog. He would spend his professional career pacing behind a high fence hoping that some really stupid person would try to climb over it at night. Not a trivial decision either, because it meant that he would lose over half his value.

  Lucy steered onto Route 25 and took it a few miles north to the Reservoir Road exit. A few more turns found them in a leafy neighborhood of middle-class homes set back from the street behind tree-shaded lawns. She spotted the right number and pulled into a long driveway.


  “Don’t get out,” she said.

  “Why not?” asked Zak, his hand on the door handle.

  “It’s good manners to wait,” she said, a fib. In fact, she knew, weapons were probably pointing at them right now. She waited. Within three minutes, she heard a door open, steps on the brick walk; a handsome Vietnamese man of saturnine mien appeared at the driver’s side window.

  “Good morning, Freddy,” she said in Vietnamese.

  Freddy Phat smiled politely. He was always polite, but never friendly. Lucy imagined it was because he resented his employer’s relationship with her as something that made that employer vulnerable. Which it did. “He’s engaged, just now. Come into the house. Mrs. Diem will give you tea.”

  That person, gray-haired and severe, all in black, did so, at a wrought-iron table under an umbrella on the brick terrace behind the house. With the tea were croissants and sliced mangoes arranged in elegant spirals. The boys were not interested in the tea, but remained subdued under their sister’s eye, and under the spell of the mysterious Tran, whom they had not seen since their infancy, but who was a legend in the family circle. They knew that he was a gangster, and since they had never met an actual gangster (aside from Mom), they were keen with anticipation. Giancarlo hoped to see a suitcase full of $100 bills. Zak wished to see a machine-gun in full blast. Both longed, without much realistic expectation, to watch a vehicle explode.

  As if to pique them, a young Vietnamese man dressed entirely in black emerged onto the patio from the house, nodded to them, and walked past through the gate that led to the driveway. When he raised his arm to lift the latch, Zak said, “Wow, he’s got an Uzi under his coat.”

  “Don’t stare,” said Lucy. “It could be a Skorpion. They use those more.”

  She watched the man depart. In her experience, Tran employed two sorts of people: either quiet, sad, hard men in their forties and fifties, veterans of the American war, old comrades and alumni of the regime’s reeducation camps, like Tran himself; or people like the man in black, younger brothers and cousins of the former type, whose childhood the war had consumed, gangsters from the cradle.

  “What should we do when he comes?” Giancarlo asked his sister in a subdued voice. “Do we have to bow or something?”

  “A bow is always appropriate when meeting an Asian gentleman,” said Lucy. “He doesn’t speak much English. If you want to know something, ask me and I’ll translate.”

  The boys had finished the last of the food and were, despite themselves, growing restless, when Tran stepped out on the terrace. He was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and dark slacks, with woven leather sandals on his feet. Lucy immediately arose and embraced him, receiving the canonical three kisses on her cheeks.

  “My dear, I am so happy to see you,” he said, holding her at arm’s length and studying her. “You have become a young woman overnight. As I have become an old man.” This in French, in a peculiar colonial accent spiced with antique Parisian slang. He had been a student there and a Left Bank busboy, before he returned to the long war.

  “You never age, Uncle,” she replied, but she was surprised to observe many signs that he had. She had never thought much about it before, but she imagined that he must now be in his midsixties, or perhaps even older. Just slightly taller than she, he was still erect and sinewy, but his eyes had sunk deeper into their sockets and the skin was pulling away from the bones of his face. Their eyes met, and he smiled slightly, turning away. She felt a blush; he always knew what she was thinking.

  The boys had risen. Tran said in slow English, “I hope you’re not in danger, Lucy. You travel with such tough bodyguards.”

  She said, in the same language, “My brothers, Giancarlo and Zak. Boys, our uncle Tran.”

  At this Zak bobbed his head uncomfortably, but Giancarlo delivered a bow that would not have insulted the emperor of China. No one laughed. Tran nodded gravely and showed them around the garden, which was formal in the French manner: paths of white gravel between geometrically clipped hedges, neat flower beds, miniature fruit trees, and exotic tropical flowers in large wooden or ceramic pots. A small greenhouse held orchids, hibiscus, and cyclamen. A large fishpond, fed by a waterfall, contained huge carp, each of whom had a name. Tran showed them how to feed them by hand. Giancarlo found a paper bag and made an origami boat. Zak built a raft from twigs. They amused themselves and waited patiently for the gangster stuff to begin. Lucy and Tran sat on a stone bench in the russet shade of a Japanese maple.

  “They seem to be fine boys. Exactly alike to look at, but very different as people.”

  “Yes. Totally different. It’s a wonder to science.”

  “Remarkable! And you? Your studies progress well?”

  “I’m not flunking out, another wonder. I spend most of my time on the languages and being a lab rat. Studying holds little interest, I’m afraid. It seems like a delay before I do what I’m meant to. The other students seem like children; that, or worried old people in young bodies. Of course, I don’t expect to fit in anywhere.”

  “Oh, you poor child. Pardon me while I weep bitter tears.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Yes,” he said after a pause, “but you should be used to your fate by now. Has anything vocational presented itself?”

  “Rather an embarrassment of riches, Uncle. Offers from banks, from the UN. Also there are people who come to watch my demonstrations who are definitely not from the scientific community.”

  “Well, yes. You would be God’s gift to any intelligence service. Are you interested in that sort of work?”

  “Not at all, or rather not for a government. I might want to do something for the Church, though.”

  “You are still religious, I take it.”

  “Yes. Did you think it would fade?”

  He looked at her consideringly. “Perhaps not. And what of love? Do you lie on riverbanks under blossoming trees with beautiful young men?”

  “Oh, yes. I have a little machine, like in the butcher’s. There are so many they have to take numbers.”

  “I am glad to hear of it. It should serve to distract you from an excess of piety.”

  “I am joking, Uncle, as you must know.”

  “Why must I? You seem fascinating to me, and delicious: slim, elegant, and graceful, when you are not distracted by self-consciousness. Very like our women, I think. Most Western women seem like cows to me. In fact, were we in a civilized land, like France or Vietnam, and were I only a little younger, I would certainly try to seduce you myself. I see I have succeeded in shocking you. This will only serve to confirm my reputation as an evil man.”

  Lucy was flustered, rather than shocked, since it had never occurred to her that anyone could find her delicious. Broaching the subject, however, brought thoughts of Dan Heeney to her mind, which had brought the color to her cheeks. Did Dan find her delicious? He had certainly not made a pass at her, although since no one had ever done so, perhaps she had missed it. It was just a phrase, after all. There may have been a whole series of obvious openings that had slipped by. The movies made it seem simple, but the movies also made shooting people seem simple, and from what she had observed of her mother’s life, it was not at all thus. Maybe they lied about sex, too. She had an impulse to tell Tran all about Dan Heeney, but suppressed it. Why? She couldn’t have said.

  “Speaking of which,” she said, to change the subject, “how is the gangster business?”

  “Flourishing, although the Indians at Foxwood are cutting into the gambling somewhat. I have some more restaurants, and a restaurant supply business, and some other businesses. I have dispensed with the girls.”

  “Why?”

  “It became annoying. One finds an unpleasant type of person in that business. I still extend protection to some ladies of a superior class, but no more happy-beer places. Then there are the loans, and protection for the Vietnamese community. If they did not pay me, they would have to pay someone else, who would undoubtedly be greedier than I am.
” He sighed. “I’ll tell you what it is, my dear. I am used up and cranky [grillé et grogné]. I was not meant for this life, and the life I was meant for no longer exists. I don’t even wear my own name anymore. I smoke more pipes than is good for me. My associates are perhaps getting nervous. From time to time, I must eliminate an overly ambitious young man, and what for? Even Freddy sometimes looks at me in a way he should not. I would despair to have to eliminate Freddy. Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, Tran, drive to the airport, board a plane for Vietnam, and sit at a café in Saigon, smelling the air and drinking little cups of coffee until someone finds you and puts you out of your misery.’ ” A tiny pause. “Tell me, how is your mother?”

  * * *

  She was bored and irritated at the same time. She had not had a decent cup of coffee in ten days, since McCullensburg appeared to be in the vast Bad Coffee Zone of the United States, and she was drinking a little more wine than was good for her. Given the situation, she really had nothing to do. Her husband would soon come, and she suspected that one of his first acts would be to spring Mose Welch, which made her continued presence here otiose. And it was hot. And there were gnats.

  Cursing without energy, she went into the house, took her second shower of the day, dressed carefully, and drove to town. Her only remaining useful activity was visiting her client once each day, to bring him a pint of chocolate ice cream and play a game of Chinese checkers with him. She had purchased the Chinese checkers herself in the Bi-Lo and taught him the game, and she did not let him win. Mose was getting better at it, though, either that, thought Marlene, or I am losing my marbles, so to speak. Or maybe playing Chinese checkers with a moron in a county jail is about my speed.

  They had spectators, too. The cops came by to kibitz, and Sheriff Swett often found time in his busy schedule to stop by for a chat, as now.

  “How’re you doin’, Mose?” called the sheriff heartily. “That pretty good ice cream?”

  “It’s pretty good ice cream, Sheriff,” said Mose happily. “It’s chocolate.”