Enemy within

12

"Good God!" said Karp. "What happened!"

His daughter had tried to slip-slide into the loft that evening, but the dad was lying in wait for her, wanting to discuss earlier events, and grasped her by both shoulders while he checked out her face. It had been washed in a rest room, but the cheekbone and temple flashed a blossoming red-violet bruise, and the firm little chin had road burns.

"Nothing," said Lucy. "I tripped and fell."

"Please! You look like you've been six rounds with Sonny Liston. What happened?"

And he chivied her into the kitchen and made her some tea and listened while she told him the story.

"I think they must have been the same guys that roughed up Real Ali. The white guy… he was really scary."

"Cooley," said Karp. "The other one is Nash."

"How did you…? Oh, right, you said you'd check them out."

"I didn't have to. I've had my eye on them for a while."

"Really? How come?"

Karp contemplated his daughter and considered the events she had just described and this question. He was not one for bringing the office home, but from time to time he would discuss a case with his wife, especially when she had some peripheral connection with it. But Marlene was now… somewhere else, and Lucy had, in fact, become involved in this one, and he was under no illusions about her innocence when it came to acts of blood. So he said, "How come is that Brendan Cooley killed a man named Lomax last month. He said he spotted Lomax in a stolen car, pursued him onto the Hudson Parkway, and shot him when Lomax tried to ram his car. The black cop you saw, Willie Nash, was there, too, driving. Our guys set a record for running the case through the grand jury, at which time it was not brought out at all the bullets that killed Lomax came from behind. I also found out that the car wasn't reported stolen until after Lomax was dead." He paused and was not disappointed when the penny instantly dropped.

"So they were chasing Lomax, not a stolen car. Why?"

"Ah, that's the big question, which actually I seem to be the only one who wants to know." And he went on to explain Brendan Cooley's unique status in the NYPD.

"So they let him go after he shot this guy, and now he's going after the slasher?"

"They did let him off, but as far as I know, he's not assigned to the slasher team. That's Detective Paradisio's guys-you remember him? And Cooley's not one of them. So…"

"So he wants Canman for something else," said Lucy, and Karp saw her face light up in a way so reminiscent of her mother that it brought a stinging to his eyes. "What could it be?" she asked, and supplied the answer. "Obviously, he's running some kind of racket. Lomax was in with him, and he whacked him, and Canman was…" She stopped, and her brow knitted. "No, that's not right. Canman wasn't in any racket. Unless…"

"What?"

"Well, he had this cart, like a laundry cart, and he used to push it around town collecting cans and other stuff, like from trash piles in the rich neighborhoods. He would sell the stuff to the sidewalk vendors and keep the metals for the recyclers. And people knew him, street people, and like rip-off artists, not real bad guys, just like people who had pipe or aluminum scrap."

"Thieves, you mean."

"I guess. I guess at that level the line between thieves and scavengers is pretty thin. And he'd buy their stuff and put it in the cart and haul it to the recycler. That was his business. So he could have had some contact with stuff that was worse than he usually went in for. I know he used to go by Second and Twelfth sometimes."

"I see," said Karp, not really surprised that his darling was familiar with the city's big nightly thieves' market. "What kind of guy are we talking about here?"

"Canman? He's smart, but he keeps it hidden, mostly. He wasn't always a street person. Back in the life-that's what he calls it, 'back in the life'-he was pretty well-off, I guess, a family, a suit type. I think he was an engineer of some kind. He can make anything out of anything. And then… it's hard to say. The only time he ever talked about his life was when he got sick and I was taking care of him."

"Oh? When was this?"

Lucy realized that she had let a secret slip, thought of a covering lie, and then declined to use it. It didn't make sense anymore, especially now that they were sharing confidences. She bobbed her head and had the grace to blush. "Yeah, well, I told you guys I was staying over with friends, to study. This was this past winter. Basically, he just went crazy. He was angry all the time and got into fights at work, and starting weird projects, and he lost his job, and his wife had him committed, and they shot him full of drugs and kicked him out, like they do nowadays, and his wife divorced him, and he ended up on the street. He takes pills. He says he knows enough to medicate himself. He's still angry, but he can function okay. I mean he makes real money. He keeps it in a mail-drop box."

"What's he angry about?"

"The same stuff that gets everyone angry: hypocrisy, unfairness, stupidity, the way things don't work, the bad guys winning all the time, injustice. Most people, they just see all that and they say 'What's on TV?' or 'Let's get high,' or have sex or whatever, but some people don't, and some of them go crazy behind it. They can't turn away, and they don't believe in God, so they have no place to go but the street."

"This is your theory of homelessness?"

"Oh, no. Most of them are nuts or dopers or drunks," she said cheerfully. "God bless them. But some, like Canman, and Real Ali, and maybe David, they're seekers. Saints in training or failed saints, you could say."

"Is Canman the slasher?"

A shadow passed over her face, and she took a moment before answering. "He could be. I know he always carried a knife. I heard he cut a guy once who was trying to rip him off. And he makes bombs, booby traps, really to protect his stuff. I mean it's the street. But I can't believe it, not really." She laughed. "Actually, he looks too good for it. It's probably someone nobody would ever suspect." Again, he saw that shadow cross her face.

"That's not how it works in real life, though," said Karp. "In real life, the guy who looks like he did it usually did do it. It looks to me like Detective Cooley chased Lomax and executed him because of some prior relationship that your Canman knows about. And, unfortunately, Canman is in the crosshairs as the slasher just now, which means if Cooley found him, he could just take him out, and all anybody'd do about it is give him another medal."

"Provided the slashings stopped."

"Yeah, but that'd be too late for Canman. I wish someone could get word to him, to get him to surface."

"We're working on that," said Lucy. "He doesn't trust the cops."

"Who does? And what makes it a problem is this damn election. Jack's gone batty on the subject-don't rile the police, don't rile the Jews, don't rile the West Side Democrats, and so we're throwing cases right and left. It's like Italy or Guatemala down there."

She patted his arm. "Poor Daddy! There's nothing you can do?"

"You already asked me that. I have a nasty plan."

"Oh, no! I thought you were the only one in the family without nasty plans."

"Not anymore, obviously. There's still Giancarlo; he's pretty clean as far's I know."

"This is why you've been walking around with that long face lately?"

"Partly."

"And Mom. What are we going to do about her?"

Karp got up and put the cups in the sink. "Watchful waiting. I'm hoping she'll snap out of it, like she has before."

"She needs to go into detox."

"Thank you for the medical opinion. I tell you what, why don't you let me worry about your mother, and you worry about staying in school. I think they're serious this time. You flunk these midterms coming up, and you're toast."

"Don't nag, Dad! I know this."

"Well…?"

"I'll try," she lied.

"I'm unhappy with this," said Karp, frowning. "This is not what I wanted. And what about the watch?"

He said this to Mimi Vasquez and Gilbert Murrow. Murrow looked uncomfortable, and faintly embarrassed. Vasquez was angry. Her face was flushed and pouty. "You keep saying that, what about the watch, but it's got no goddamn connection with the Marshak case. In fact, there is no Marshak case, as I just got finished telling you. We've interviewed over twenty of Ramsey's known associates. We asked them about the knife. Answers: don't know; yeah, he had one, but different; yeah, he had that one, if you say so and twenty bucks. Did he do angel dust? Yeah, all the time; no, never; yeah, if you say so and twenty bucks."

"He didn't use," said Karp.

"Why, because your daughter says so? Paxton, who was a known intimate of the victim in this case, swears he used it all the time and got crazy and violent behind it. I would say he makes a more compelling witness than your daughter, who, if I can say so, tends to cast a more forgiving light over these characters than I do, or than a jury will, and I don't even mention the fact that it takes me an hour to wash the stink out of my hair. Nobody we talked to ever saw him with the watch, except for the three guys who said he stole it from them and could they get it back. There is no, repeat, no known association between Marshak and either Ramsey or Paxton. Paxton sticks to his story about the knife and the attack like it was attached to his left testicle. And, yeah, it's Ramsey's prints on it. Bottom line? It's a dead end."

Karp seemed to ignore her tone and frustration and asked, "What did you say she was doing in the building?"

"Her insurance guy has his offices there. She was going to do some business with him and then drive out to her place upstate. That's why she had her car. Perfectly innocent. She drove in there, did her business, returned to her car, he jumped her with the knife, she pulled her gun, shot him, panicked, got back in the car, and booked. End of story, an urban tragedy."

"Or so we're being led to believe."

Vasquez banged her hand on the arm of her chair. "Jesus! Those are the facts, damn it! There is no case against her on those facts." Her voice had risen to a shout. Karp stared at her, saying nothing. "Why are you obsessing about this goddamn case?"

"Because of the watch."

"Oh, will you please shut up about the watch already! Who cares how he got the watch!"

"I care, and I'm the bureau chief, and don't tell me to shut up in my own office, Ms. Vasquez."

They stared at each other. No contest: Karp had the hardest stare in the building. Vasquez dropped her eyes.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Karp. I'm sorry you're not satisfied with my work." She seemed about to burst into tears. Karp was not feeling that great himself. He had nurtured Vasquez almost from her first day in the office because he thought she was a good prosecutor, and because she reminded him of his wife as she once was, a handsome, scrappy, humorous, tough ethnic girl from a tough part of town. Also contributing to his discomfort: he had thought she liked him and had liked that. In fact, she had been in love with him for years, hopelessly and silently (not unusual among a certain stratum of female attorneys around the place), a kind of office joke that everyone knew about except Karp, which made it funnier. Karp felt hurt and betrayed: Why couldn't she see the point? Vasquez felt abused: Why was he torturing her with this craziness?

At this point, into the strained silence entered the ever tactful Murrow, reading out of his tiny notebook. "Lady Rolex, chronometer, fourteen-K gold with diamond bezel and gold expansion band, serial number zero one seven eight five zero nine two, reading one oh six when logged in, reported stolen from NPK Bonded Warehouse at JFK last August, along with a bunch of other stuff, mainly watches, optics, and perfume. The cop I spoke with, a Lieutenant Robert Maguire, says they suspect that whoever did the theft is fencing the stuff out through a ring run by Augustine Albert Firmo, but have been unable to nail down a case. Firmo seems wise to the usual stings." Murrow looked up from the notebook. "Does that help?"

"I don't know," said Karp. "Is there a connection between Marshak and Firmo? Between Ramsey or Paxton and him?"

Murrow said, "Between a big-time fence and a street guy? Why would there be? Street guys usually sell fake Rolexes."

Vasquez shoved her notes roughly into a cardboard folder. "This is ridiculous. What does it matter? You think Sybil Marshak ordered a hot Rolex and killed Ramsey because she didn't like the way it looked on her wrist? You might as well look at their horoscopes."

"Calm down, Vasquez," said Karp.

"No!" She stood up, bristling. "I don't understand any of this. Christ, Butch, it's you who's always saying don't speculate, stick with the facts, can you make a case or not, and if not, forget it. And there's no case here, and you're speculating like crazy, like you're on some kind of vendetta against this woman. Or against her lawyer. I don't want any part of it. It's weird and it's… sick."

"Thank you, Mimi," said Karp stiffly. "I'll tell Tony you're back on the chart. Just leave your notes with Murrow." She stared at him for a couple of long seconds, then turned on her heel and left.

Karp leaned back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head. "Take a lesson from that, Murrow," he said wearily. "The key to this job is skillful management of people."

"You had her in the palm of your hand. It was masterful."

"Yeah, right. Yet another friend down the toilet. You think I'm crazy, too, don't you?"

"Not as such. But I also see her point. I'm also thinking, what if it wasn't his watch? That would cut into your objection about his motivation for his run at Marshak."

"Wasn't his watch? Whose watch was it then?"

"He could've been holding it for someone, transporting it. Maybe someone the cops had their eye on, who didn't want to get caught with it on him. Say this guy uses street people to mule stuff around. Ramsey was something of a hustler. He could've done favors like that for a commission."

"Yeah." Swiveling in his chair, Karp turned his attention to the window, where a greasy rain was falling. Something was nagging at his mind, a connection he ought to be making, something about street people and thieves, but he wasn't making it. And there was something else, too, a name. He thought hard, but couldn't come up with it. It was like that a lot lately, as if part of his mind was locked up with some complex problem, leaving free about as much processing power as a pocket calculator deployed. He was making mistakes, not seeing stuff, screwing up with people. And he knew very well what the drain was. He felt Murrow's eyes on him, the pressure of his waiting. He swiveled back. "When was the watch logged in as evidence?"

Murrow consulted his papers. "The twenty-eighth at six-eighteen P.M. Why?"

"Oh, no reason, really. It showed the wrong time though. Look, Murrow, I got to give this some more thought. You're right, that's a good idea, maybe he was a mule. Okay, let's let Marshak hang for a while. Go and find this Maguire again, ask him to give you a list of Firmo's known associates. Maybe that'll jog something."

Murrow nodded and wrote a note, looking doubtful. The intercom buzzed. Murrow left and Collins came in.

"I want to thank you," said Karp when the young man had seated himself. "I had an interesting conversation with McBright on Sunday."

"He's a smart guy."

"He is, and remarkably well-informed about what's going on in this office. Remarkably."

Karp paused to let that sink in. He was not going to confront Collins about the leakage just yet, but he wanted him to be in no doubt that Karp knew what was going on. And a leak could be convenient, to disseminate both truth and things not necessarily true but which it might be convenient to have known. "In any case, we had a frank exchange of views about some racially tinged cases. Of which Benson is one. I take it you've seen the alibi witnesses, so-called?"

Collins opened a notebook. "Yes, I did. Yolanda Benson, forty-one, and Darcy Benson, nineteen, mother and sister. These are decent people, by the way. The mom's a teacher's aide, the sister's a student at Fashion. The father's an electrician, divorced a long time, but he comes by and helps out. I took the original Q amp;A and went through the questions again. This was in their home on West One Hundred Thirty-third Street. According to them, on the evening of, Jorell came in just after five because he wanted to watch the Holy Cross-Syracuse game on TV. Jorell is apparently a big college-ball fan, and he had a bet down. He had Syracuse and five points."

"They remembered this?"

"Yes, adamantly. They said it was a close game, and Jorell was jumping off the couch and yelling at the TV. They were eating dinner in front of the TV, and Jorell was so excited he hardly ate anything, and they were having barbecue pork chops, apparently a favorite of his. Anyway, Syracuse won by seven, and Jorell was pumped. He said he was going out to collect his bet and left around seven, returning after midnight. The murder went down at a little past six, so that's a stone alibi, if you believe them."

"And do you?"

"Wait, there's more. I reinterviewed Alicia Wallis, the girlfriend. Sixteen, but going on thirty. She says that on the afternoon prior to the killing Jorell told her he was going to hit a, quote, Jew diamond guy, unquote, that evening on the subway, that he had the knife and everything. Afterwards, he came to her mother's apartment, around seven, all excited and showed her the diamonds and asked her to keep them for him. Which she did. Two days later, Jorell came back, picked up some of the stones, and tried to sell them in the district and got caught. The cops visited her, and she first lied for him, and then she says she got scared because the guy had been killed, and she wasn't about to mess with no murder charge, and she told all. Now, back to the sister. The sister says that Alicia Wallis is a lying little street tramp, and she, Darcy, has been trying to get her brother to dump her for months. Darcy says that Alicia's been balling Oscar Simms since forever, and everyone in the 'hood knows it except for her dumb-ass brother, and if you want to know who stabbed that guy, you could do worse than look at old Oscar."

"And did you look?"

"Oh, yeah. It turns out that the police had looked, too. Oscar's an alumnus of Greenhaven, three years for armed robbery and two other arrests for robbery, dropped to larceny and time served in jail. Oscar has an alibi, too, supplied by a couple of homies, Duane Morgan and Tyrone Apger, also with sheets on them. A pretty tough crew, by the way, with a history of going after the black hats."

Karp voiced a couple of dramatic chords.

"You got it. They were watching a kung fu movie at the Academy, which is downtown, not too far from the murder scene."

"What kung fu movie?" asked Karp.

"Funny you should ask, because Oscar doesn't recall. 'All those movies be the same, man.' No knife on Oscar either, or any physical evidence, but my sense, after talking to Thornberry, the detective who closed, is that the cops didn't look all that hard after they had Benson. Benson looked good to go. The stones, Deng's eyewitness, and Alicia's story-three strikes and he's out."

"We got Deng to look at Oscar?"

"In a six-pack photo, against Benson and four dummies. He picked Benson."

"Wait a second- after he had already ID'd Benson live?"

"How did you guess?" said Collins. "Naturally, he focused on the guy he'd already identified. So, basically, if we look at it from the defense's point of view, which you're always lecturing us we should do, the case sits on the possession of part of the loot, a totally fucked ID process, and the testimony of a teenaged accessory after the fact who's screwing the guy who probably did it."

"How does Benson explain the loot?"

"Oh, you'll love this. He says he did it as a favor to Alicia. She told him she found them in a trash can, and she didn't think they were worth much, but could he maybe find out for her. Jorell is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier."

"Can we refocus on Oscar?"

"Maybe over Pat Thornberry's dead body. I'm telling you, the cops are not going to be helpful on this without a big circle jerk involving the eighth floor here and the twelfth floor over at One PP. Also, assuming we have the cops lined up, what do we have on him? No physical evidence, his homies are standing up right now, Alicia is solid for the time being."

"The time being…" mused Karp.

Collins nodded. "Yeah, my thoughts exactly. If he's really the guy on this, then Oscar needs to keep Alicia and his pals real happy indefinitely, and Oscar did not strike me as a fellow with the kind of self-control and long-term view that would make that work."

"You're probably right. Sooner or later one of these people is going to want a favor from us, and if someone asks the right questions, the whole thing will come unglued."

"So what do we do?"

"Interesting question, especially now. I think I'll ask the district attorney. He likes to keep decisions like this in his own hands. Meanwhile, good work. I'll probably be working for you if McBright gets in there."

"A racist remark, I believe," said Collins.

"See? My horrible reputation is well deserved."

Collins laughed and made his exit.

Karp got a chance to present these findings to the DA earlier than he had anticipated, for shortly after Collins left he got a peremptory call from Keegan, personally, telling him to get in there right away. He walked up the two flights.

Keegan was there with Fuller, which stifled the tiny hope that Karp always kept alive that Jack would return to his real, or noncandidate, persona and that they could then discuss the legal affairs of the office like menches, as they used to. Karp nodded to both of them and sat down.

"What's this I hear about you sending someone to screw up the Benson case?" demanded Keegan without preamble.

"I wouldn't say screwing up. I would say familiarizing myself with a top-priority case that I'm going to have to prosecute one of these days. And it's a good thing I did, Jack, because there's a lot more to Benson than meets the eye."

"The only thing I want to know is, can you convict?"

"Oh, I think so. I think we could probably blow away the usual inexperienced, overworked court-assigned defense attorney we'd probably get on the case. We do it all the time, as you know. Whether we can blow away the capital-defense-unit lawyers, who are in a completely different class, is another story."

"What do you mean?" asked Keegan, frowning.

"Well, if we were in Texas, they'd be loading the needle right now. Benson's a dumb-ass fall guy of the appropriate race, mentality, and background, like they kill in those states every other week. They give the D to a fat-ass crony who sleeps during the trial, and the kid goes down for it. But we are not in Texas, which you can tell because of the tall buildings and the lack of cowshit on the streets." And he proceeded to tell Keegan what Collins had learned and what Karp made of it.

"My prediction," he concluded, "is that if you go for capital murder in this case, you will lose. Those capital-case people are good. They will tear up little Alicia on the stand. Her connection to Oscar and his merry crew will emerge. Benson's mother and his sister will look like solid gold next to little Alicia. He will walk, and you will look like a fool for bringing a case that weak."

Fuller said, "It's not a weak case. We have the diamonds."

Karp rounded on him. "Norton, we're talking legal strategy here, and with all due respect, you don't know dick about legal strategy, but if we need advice on how many paper clips we're going to need or how it will play in the polls, I'm sure you'll have something valuable to contribute." Norton went pale. Karp turned his attention back to Keegan. "Jack, that's my honest opinion. What we have on Benson won't bear the weight of a capital case, not in the state of New York. And we can't start on Simms because we got no entree into it while these people are sticking to their stories. Sorry, but there it is."

The DA calculated silently, his face pursing and knotting in the segments appropriate to devious thought. His head started to move from side to side with increasing vigor until it became a full negative shake. "Uh-uh, we have to stick with it. And we should announce that we're going to seek it as soon as possible. Will this guy plead out to life without the possibility, do you think?"

"If you threaten the death penalty? I doubt it. He says he didn't do it. He's been saying he didn't do it since the cops grabbed him up, and he's been consistent throughout, and the cops were not gentle with him, as I understand it. And when the hotshots on the capital-defense team get to him and take a hard look at our case, I very much doubt that they will advise him to seek a plea of any kind. Because they can win."

"But not until after November," said Fuller. "Am I allowed to say that, Butch?"

Karp ignored the gibe. Keegan nodded, said, "Okay. We go with death for now. I'll announce it tomorrow."

"Well, I won't even mention that it's wrong since that seems to cut no ice around here anymore, but we got a situation where one of these phony stories could break down anytime. I mean before the election. What do you do then? Then you're the guy who wanted to put an innocent man to death on a weak case for political reasons."

"Oh, you're the political adviser, too, now?" asked Fuller nastily. "Something you know dick about, if I may say so."

Keegan waved a hand as if dispersing a stench. "I'll take that chance. Now, what about Marshak, speaking of weak cases? Or no case, as I understand it."

"We're still looking at it."

"What's to look at?" said Keegan. "It looks like simple self-defense. An urban tragedy. Let's move on this, get the grand jury to clear her, and get this out of my craw."

Karp made some noises that could be interpreted as agreement, or maybe not, at which Keegan threw him a sharp look but did not press the point. An urban tragedy, the words Vasquez had used. Karp did not believe much in that kind of coincidence. He recalled how Fuller had used Catafalco's language in the Cooley case, which had confirmed that Catafalco was leaking to Fuller, and now the DA was using Vasquez's phrase. Vasquez was off the reservation, too.

The meeting broke up. Karp drifted back to his office, feeling as alone and isolated as he had ever felt in his life. Clearly the resources of the office were compromised, at least for his purposes. It was therefore time to move into phase two of the plan. He was sitting at his desk, tapping his teeth with a pencil, and thinking about how to accomplish this when the phone rang: Flynn reminding him that he had an appointment in half an hour uptown at Sacred Heart. Karp resisted snarling back that he remembered, for he had not. A good, even a devoted, father, Karp had little experience with kids in trouble, and it irked him, and he took full responsibility. He himself had been a perfect forties and fifties kid, doing homework, obeying teachers and coaches, never causing his parents a moment's worry. Or so he imagined.

The appointment was with the headmistress, Catharine Royal, RSCJ, an actual nun, to discuss his daughter's future at the school. Marlene was to be there, too, and this prospect worried him more than having to discuss his daughter with a nun, which was getting up there on the worry-intensity scale. On the ride up to Ninety-first and Fifth, he calmed his mind by refusing to think about the problem at all, thinking about lists of things he had to do to ravel the few golden threads of truth from the great knot of political lies that Keegan and Fuller had made of the DA's office. That was still worth doing, he thought. And also, if he didn't think of that, if he considered what was happening to his family, he would not be able to function at all.

Lucy was waiting in the hallway outside the headmistress's office. It was class-changing time, and the hallway was full of lively girls in pretty clothes, in dance costumes, in athletic gear. On none of the fresh young faces was the look of bleak despair he saw on Lucy's.

"What's up, kiddo?"

A shrug. "Midterms are back."

"The bad news first."

"It's all bad news. I flunked everything."

"Everything? French? Not French? English?"

"Everything. I cut classes. I didn't hand in stuff." She looked down the hall. "Mom isn't coming?" She sounded hopeful.

"Yeah, she's coming from home." He checked his watch. "Let's go get this done."

Sister Catharine Royal was a heavy woman with a shiny face fringed by short gray hair. Behind large, gogglelike spectacles her blue eyes were concerned, but kind. They sat, and the headmistress went over Lucy's record. Sacred Heart, she said, was not for everyone. It was a rigorous academic environment, and although it also stressed community service, in which Lucy was, of course, exemplary, a certain standard of performance was required, which standards Lucy had not even begun to meet this term. There were alternatives; the school did not give up easily. Stress affected different people differently, and sometimes the most talented students were just the ones who failed to cope. Karp listened and nodded. That was what he felt, too. They were not considering expulsion, yet. But maybe some time off, a chance for tutoring…

Then the door opened and Marlene came in. Stumbled in. You could smell her from the doorway. She was wearing a long, fleece-lined leather coat over a translucent shirt studded with crystals, misbuttoned, and with one tail hanging out of her skirt. She staggered to a chair and plopped her alligator bag on the headmistress's desk.

There was a brief, shocked silence. Sister Royal put on a forbearing look, uttered a brief welcome, and started to repeat a version of what she had just told Karp. She had hardly begun, however, when Marlene interrupted. "Look, Sister, let's get down to business. 'Cause let's face it, this is a business you're running here, am I right? A business. You're in business, I'm in business, so let's talk business. I went to school here myself, right? I was a scholarship girl, in the little uniform, you had nuns here then, not like now, 'Yes, Sister,' 'No, Sister,' all that stuff, and chapel. So what I want to say is we want the kid here in school. I mean what else is she going to do all day? Hang out with the bums? I mean I hung out with bums, too, but they were a different kind of bums, because she's not what you could call socially developed, and that's important-social development. Of course, she doesn't shoot people, not that I learned that here, don't get me wrong. She comes from a good home. A good home. I'm her mother, um, so I know. I mean, you're not a mother, let's face it. What we really want… let's talk a figure. I got plenty. I mean, what do they say, money talks, bullshit walks." And here Marlene let out a hideous cackle and swayed in her chair.

The headmistress shot a glance at Karp and said, "Mrs. Karp, perhaps it would be better if we met at a later time…"

"Please, Sister," said Marlene, "it's Mizzzz Ciampi. Not Mrs. Karp. Mrs. Karp is deceased. Mrs. Karp was a wonderful woman, far, far more wonderful than me. Or I. Is that right? She produced my husband, who is a perfect person, as you can see, but my daughter is unfortunately not as perfect, which is why we are doing whatever we are doing. So what are we talking here? You need a new gym? Whatever…" Marlene popped open her bag, spilling stuff all over the desk-keys, cards, crumbled wads of high-denomination currency, and a flat pint of Hennessy. It clunked loudly and spun on the polished wood, the focus of all eyes. Marlene grabbed her checkbook and waved it, the pages flapping in Sister Catharine's face like a slaughtered chicken.

At that point, Lucy sprang to her feet, uttered a phrase in a language no one in the room understood but whose tone was unmistakable, and dashed from the room. Karp shot up, stuck Marlene's purse under one arm, hauled his wife from her chair and stuck her solidly against his opposite hip, and said, "I'm sorry. I'll be in touch," to the headmistress and frog-marched Marlene out of the office and out of the building, she protesting loudly and drunkenly all the way.

On the street, he had a little break because Marlene had to lean against a tree on Ninety-first and be sick, noisily and at some length. Karp dashed out to the avenue and tried to spot his daughter, but she was gone. The dead low points of his life came floating by his inner eye, as they will at such times: the moment he had realized that he was too crippled to play big-time ball; the night his first wife had ditched him; the time his second and present wife had been kidnapped; the time that same wife had been kidnapped again, with his daughter; and now. This one was right up there, a competitor in a tough league.