Karp grunted, fantasies of a Swedish au pair and a place on Central Park West, or Park Slope, at least, going glimmering. He did not have the energy for the seven millionth rep of this particular unwinnable argument, based as it was on his unshakable belief that a SoHo walk-up loft, however luxuriously appointed, was no place to raise a family. Nor did he think it the right time to raise the other possible solution, that Marlene stop running a half-assed security agency and take a respectable job with a law firm or a D.A. On the other hand, the less petulant part of him said, if she were someone who wanted such a job, she wouldn’t be Marlene, and you wouldn’t love her, so there! This set of thoughts flashed through his mind like a reflex, a kind of mental cramp. He wondered whether they would ever go away, or if he would continue to think them as long as he was with Marlene.
“This has to do with another of your waifs, I understand,” he said, to change the subject. “Lucy said you’ve got the noodle man living in Posie’s old room.”
“He’s not a waif and he’s not a noodle man,” said Marlene. “I think he was a policeman, or something like that, in Vietnam. I saw him face down four fairly nasty punks without breaking a sweat. He’s educated, he speaks a couple of languages-”
“Not including English, I gather.”
“So he’ll learn. Anyway, I’m going to feel a lot better with him in the place at night, especially when we’re taking care of runaway women. And I guarantee we’re both going to feel better with Posie here.” She poked him in the ribs. “Admit it! Don’t you feel better already? The twins are fed and p.j.’d and nestling in their cribs, in clouds of baby powder. We’re lounging at our ease.” To demonstrate ease of lounging, she moved closer to him on the sofa and nuzzled his neck. “And if, God forbid, we should want to fool around in the marital bed some night and the yelling starts, Posie will leap out and do her thing.”
“This, ah, you imagine is the clinching argument?” he asked, pulling her closer.
“It better be,” said Marlene.
The following morning, feeling better than she had in weeks by reason of a luxurious eight hours in the rack, Marlene skipped lightly off to work. Posie had indeed done her thing with the night screams, so Marlene was also enjoying that oily-jointed relaxation that follows upon uninterrupted conjugal delights. Lucy was markedly calmer during the morning’s preparation and ride to school; Marlene, observing this with satisfaction, reflected that the child’s equilibrium had been as much affected as her own by the nonnegotiable demands of the twins. Things would now improve; she even had hopes for long division.
“How do you like your new roommate?” she asked Sym as the girl handed over the steaming cup.
“He’s okay for a old guy,” said Sym. “He cook better-he cooks better than Posie, anyway. He ain’t got much to say, though.”
“That’s because he doesn’t speak much English. Try to talk to him and he’ll learn. You got your TV back there-watch shows, explain what’s going on. Any messages?”
“Dane called last night. Said he ran off that Monto guy from in front of Miller’s house.”
“Any trouble?”
“He didn’t say none. Guy drove by is all, saw Dane and got small.”
“Um. Be hard to get him on a violation for that. But he’ll be back. Harry in?”
“Yeah. He looked pissed off too.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I don’t think he features the old guy.”
Harry’s emotional range was a narrow one, covering only a few degrees on either side of what in a normal person would have been suicidal depression, but Marlene had learned to read the subtle arrangement of the ridges on his stony face and was able to confirm Sym’s assessment.
“What’s wrong, Harry?”
A movement of the head in the direction of the living quarters.
“What’s the problem, Harry? He’s a good guy. He needs a place to stay and I need Posie at home. Besides, he’ll be security at night.”
Harry frowned more deeply and with his eyes and head indicated an easterly direction, where lay Chinatown. “What about …?”
“Not a problem. They put him out of business, which was what they wanted. They’re not going to pursue him all the way to regular New York.”
Harry grunted and turned to the window. The conversation was over. It would never have occurred to Marlene that Harry was jealous, that he considered himself the waif-in-chief, and wished not to share Marlene’s rescuing talents with other desperate males. After a few moments of studying the Walker Street traffic, he said, “I checked on Wolfe. He’s clean. He’ll be by today, later.”
Good, thought Marlene as she walked to the living quarters. That meant Harry had not been able to find any obvious lies or distortions in Jack Wolfe’s work history, or any criminal record in any of the states he had worked, which meant she had her extra full-time man. She found Tranh washing dishes in the little kitchen.
Tranh looked up and smiled. “Good morning. How you are?” he said in English.
“Good morning, and I’m fine, thank you,” replied Marlene in the same tongue, and then, in French, “I am impressed, sir, at your progress in our language. Recitations from Shakespeare cannot be far off. Meanwhile, I observe you have accomplished wonders of sanitation.”
The kitchen was indeed gleaming, the floor and surfaces still damp and bleach-scented, while on the small stove a pot bubbled, releasing a spicy, meaty aroma.
“It is only a little thing, Madame,” replied Tranh in French. “I am obliged to you.”
“There is no obligation, for I intend to take advantage of you, if you are willing. As I said the other day, I suspect you have talents beyond the kitchen, which I will liked to have employed-no, pardon, which I would like to employ. Is that correct? The subjunctive mode-”
“Perfectly correct, Madame. You are offering me employment, then?”
“Yes, surely.”
“Of what sort?”
“It would be in the nature of security. Often women and children, fleeing from violent men, must stay here. They require protection. Also, there is work of a similar sort outside, investigations and security …”
“But I am merely a cook,” said Tranh. He was no longer smiling.
“With respect, M. Tranh, you were not always a cook.”
Tranh dropped his eyes and scrubbed dry a spot on the already shining plate he was holding. “No, that is true. I was not always a cook. When I was younger, I was a teacher.”
“Nor always a teacher,” said Marlene. “You were, I suspect, a policeman or-”
“No, never! Not a flic!” Tranh replied curtly.
“Calm yourself, M. Tranh. I do not mean to pry. A soldier, then.”
“Yes, a soldier. Of a type,” Tranh agreed. “But you know, I do not believe I can accept your kind offer, Madame. My status in this country is … irregular. I would not wish for you to get into trouble with the authorities for employing me.”
“That does not concern me,” said Marlene. “Half or more of the waiters in Chinatown are in a similar position. I will pay you out of-how does one say- ‘petty cash’-you understand, the money we use to purchase stamps and so on. You will live here and take from the box I will show you whatever you need. For example, you will require clothing and other necessaries. I will place, let us say, five hundred dollars in the box today, and each week two hundred more. Well, what do you say?”
Tranh paused for thought and then sighed. “What can I say but thank you, Madame? I accept your kind offer. I can only hope that you have not purchased a cat in a pocket.”
“Marvelous!” exclaimed Marlene, and shook Tranh’s hand. It was like grasping a skein of cables. “And you must call me Marlene. ‘Madame’ makes me feel like a piano teacher, or the keeper of a brothel, or a nun of the Sacred Heart.”
Tranh smiled broadly, and Marlene could see that he was missing several teeth on the scarred side of his face. He said, “Marlene? That is an American name?”
“I suppo
se. It is a contraction of Maria Elena.”
“Ah! In that case, I will call you Marie-Helene, if I may. I am Tranh Do Vinh. Vinh.” He made a stiff little bow.
“Vinh it is,” said Marlene. “Tell me, Vinh, is it possible that you can read English?”
“Oh, surely, and well too. I have read Jack London and Mark Twain. And Shakespeare. And I can under stand the spoken words if the speech is not too rapid. Why, have you something you wish me to read?”
“Yes, wait here a moment.”
Marlene went out to the office, picked up a thick file from her desk, went back to the kitchen, and handed it to Tranh.
“This is the file on a client I believe you can help. Would you look through it please, Vinh?”
He wiped his hands on a dish towel, and seating himself at the table, he flipped through the pages. Marlene suspected that whatever he said about not being a flic, it was not the first time he had examined such a dossier.
He looked up. “Interesting. This man is now free from prison?”
“Yes. And he is evidently still obsessed with Carrie Lanin.”
“You fear that he will now do her an injury?”
“I’m certain of it. And since he knows, from before, that I will stop him, he may also try to eliminate me.”
“I see,” said Tranh. “Well, this we must prevent, no?”
He held up a photograph of Rob Pruitt that Marlene had taken when she first became involved with the stalking of Carrie Lanin. “They are a kind of vampire, these men, are they not? As in the poem: ‘It is in my blood, the black poison; I am the sinister glass in which the fury sees itself.’” He tapped the face. “This one-a nasty sparrow, I think.”
“Extremely nasty.”
They smiled at each other. He said, “But of course, we can do nothing until he makes the first attempt. That is the law, I comprehend?”
“You comprehend exactly, my friend,” replied Marlene. “He must make the first move.”
“And I am to make the second, yes? In an anonymous fashion.”
“You have seized upon the situation accurately,” said Marlene. “Please keep the file. The information we possess is all there. And inform me as to your actions.”
Marlene walked out of the kitchen feeling curiously lightheaded. She reckoned that no other member of the Smith College class of 1969 was hiring a Vietnamese hit man in stilted schoolgirl French. Perhaps “hit man” was a trifle strong: hiring “Vietnamese noodle cook with presumptive quasi-military background and frightening martial arts skills” might have been more accurate-same difference. Once again that feeling of stepping off the little platform onto the rope, no net below, a feeling that terrified her, but one that (as she had realized for some time now) she could not live without.
After his meeting with Menotti, Karp walked the few blocks back to 10 °Centre Street, where for the rest of the afternoon he watched Roland Hrcany complete the presentation of People v. Rohbling to the grand jury. Hrcany was coldly efficient at this. The witnesses were well drilled, and the whole affair proceeded with the smooth, nearly meaningless aplomb of a masque at Versailles. Hrcany did not speak to Karp either during the event or afterward, when the two of them waited in the little anteroom for the grand jury to signal the bringing in of a true bill. When the little light went on that indicated this legal milestone, Hrcany turned to Karp, made a little mock bow and a waving “it’s all yours” gesture with his hand, and went back into the jury room.
Karp wheeled the wire cart containing the Rohbling case files to the bureau law library, hoping for a few hours of uninterrupted study, but Connie Trask, who well knew all his wiles, found him before he had made much progress.
“He wants to know where you been all day,” she said, giving the pronoun the special intonation that designated the district attorney himself.
“Jesus, Connie, I was with the grand jury. He knows that,” Karp said.
“I think he meant before that, when you were hiding somewhere, where you didn’t tell me like you’re supposed to.”
“What does he want?”
“Well, you know, he don’t discuss the legal niceties with me, although the fact is I’ve been running your bureau for you recently. You might want to have a little chat with Roland too, because he’s fairly pissed off about things in general and he’s started to take it out on me, in the absence of you, which shit, boss, I don’t get paid for taking.”
“Sorry, Connie,” said Karp, genuinely ashamed. “It’s this … I get caught up.” He gestured to the stacks of files.
“Yeah, well, nobody asked you to take that on. In fact, they said not to.”
“They did and I didn’t listen and there’s no help for it now. Is my spanking over? Thank you. Okay, I’ll see Keegan and I’ll fix it with Roland. Anything else?”
“Yeah, the M.E. called. They got that autopsy done on that exhumation order. Longren.”
Karp ripped a sheet of yellow paper off his pad and wrote on it “do not touch this stuff!!! karp.” He placed it on the Rohbling material and then went back to his office and called the district attorney.
“Where the hell were you?” asked that official when he picked up.
Karp explained. Keegan said, “Let me understand this. You don’t have enough on your plate. You’re looking for a homicide where two docs swore it was a natural death?”
“It was fishy, Jack. Robinson is a bad guy.”
“Give me strength, Lord! Okay, buddy, it’s your funeral, and that’s not a figure of speech. What’s new with the case of the year? I assume you got the indictment.”
“We did. Also, I met Waley.”
“What did you think?”
“A handful.”
Keegan laughed, a full-throated noise. “Yeah, he’s that. He make an offer?”
“Uh-huh, It amounted to we walk his boy with our sincere apologies.”
“Expected. You’ll arraign on the murder indictments tomorrow.”
“Right. We’ll go with murder on all five homicides he confessed to.”
“Confession going to hold up?”
“If the judge likes it, it’ll hold up,” said Karp, verging toward the snappish, “same as always. You have some sort of problem, Jack? They revoke my law degree or what?”
“You have my full and utter confidence, Butch, you know that, until you fuck up and I throw you to the wolves.”
They both laughed, releasing tension.
“Seriously, though,” Keegan resumed, “if you lose the confession, all you have is Jane Hughes. Are we good on that?”
“We can show he did it, all right. What the jury will make of it is something else. As you’re aware.”
“Yeah, dueling shrinks. My fucking favorite. Who’s our guy in the event of?”
“I was going to go with Emanuel Perlsteiner.”
“Perlsteiner? Jesus, Butch, the guy’s a hundred eight years old and he talks like Dr. Strangelove. Can’t you get a more impressive mouthpiece for the horseshit?”
“He’s seventy-four, he’s convincing, he’s extremely impressive, in my opinion, and I trust him.”
“The Jews stick together, right? Speaking of ethnic matters, who do you have second seating on this?”
“Well, Roland can’t do it, obviously, because he has to watch the bureau,” Karp replied, and then, suddenly suspicious, asked, “Why, do you have a suggestion?”
“Yeah. What about Terrell Collins?”
Karp answered in a controlled voice, “Collins is a good lawyer. He’s one of several that might be right for it.”
“Come on, Butch,” said Keegan, “a black face on the prosecution bench is not going to do you any harm. Not in this case. It also wouldn’t hurt to let him examine some witnesses.”
“Excuse me, there must be something wrong with the connection. I thought I was talking to Jack Keegan, the guy who taught me that one prosecutor has to work the whole case because otherwise the jury’s going to get the idea that the case is too hard for one guy to
understand, and therefore too hard for them to understand.”
“Be nice, Butch,” said Keegan.
“Nice is my middle name, Jack,” said Karp. “And I want to stay nice, which is why I am going to forget that you just told me to put a guy in second seat because he is brown in color.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Butch! You just said he was a good attorney.”
“He is. And I intend to give his skills due consideration when I make my selection.”
A pause on the line. Karp could imagine the red creeping up Keegan’s neck. “You do that,” said Keegan tightly, and broke the connection.
Karp took a few deep breaths, put the conversation out of his mind, and called the chief medical examiner. He got a secretary, who put him on hold. He placed the phone on his desk and began going through the stack of paperwork that Connie Trask had marked with stapled-on notes, heavily underlined in red, as requiring his immediate and personal attention. About fifteen minutes passed in this way.
At last dim noises from the phone’s earpiece informed him that the C.M.E. was on the line.
“You know, Murray,” he remarked, “there are probably high public officials in this city who would resent being put on hold for a quarter of an hour.”
“I was cutting,” said Selig. “So, what can I do for you?”
“I’m returning your call, Murray. The Longren death?”
“Oh, yeah! Interesting case. Let me get a hold of it, just a sec.”
Clunk of phone hitting desk, squeak of swivel chair, rustling papers. Minutes passed.
“Okay. She wasn’t choked or strangled. Drug analysis shows phenobarbital, flurazepam, and ciretidine.”
“Which are what? I know what phenobarb is.”
“Well, flurazepam is a common tranquilizer; it’s Dalmane, the sleeping pill. Ciretidine is an antiulcer drug.”
“She had ulcers?”
“Uh-huh. But she shouldn’t have been taking sedatives in those dosages if she was taking ciretidine, since ciretidine potentiates the effect of sedatives.”
“So cause of death was …?”
“She had the flu, she doped herself up, or was doped up, there was some fluid in the lungs, as there usually is with flu, but her breathing reflexes were so suppressed that she couldn’t clear it. Essentially she just stopped breathing.”
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