Enemy within

5

As he had promised, Karp was waiting on the corner of Grand and Crosby at four-thirty when the bus from St. Joe's pulled up and disgorged his twin sons. He spotted them, they spotted him, and there was that little jolt of love, mixed on this occasion with irritation, which he consciously suppressed. He waved and grinned.

The Karps had never gone in for stupid twin games, such as identical dressing, but their twins had taken differentiation to an extreme. Isaac, called Zak, the elder by two minutes, had already, at eight years, turned into something of a roughneck, hot-tempered, an athlete, and the self-appointed protector of his gentler brother from all save himself. Giancarlo, called Zik (a name he had borne in the days when they were two indistinguishable lumps) only by his brother, was an artist, a musician, and a diplomat of sunny disposition.

"Yo, Daddy," called Giancarlo happily. "Where's Mom?"

"At work."

"Can we get pizza?"

"Of course," said Karp. "How was school?"

"Okay, except Zak got in a fight."

"Shut up, Zik!' yelled Zak, and stalked away up Grand Street. He had the hood of his parka pulled up, and he was walking hunched like a old monk to keep it covering his face. Karp took a couple of steps, grabbed his son by the shoulder, and tipped the hood back, revealing a magnificent shiner.

"You're such a rat, Zik," snarled the malefactor.

"Oh, what were you going to say?" Giancarlo responded. "You walked into a doorknob? You know the school's going to call."

This was true, and it would not be the first time. The kid got into fights. The parent-advice columns were unanimous that this was not a good thing. Karp himself had not been much of a fighter beyond the usual school-yard scuffles and arguments around games. He was now at something of a loss. As he recalled, his own father had never been involved in any disciplining of Karp and his brothers. And certainly he had never met a school bus. Raising the kids was Mom's job. Karp had on this occasion been obliged to cancel a late meeting, one of those affairs that he had arranged and which would take a week and any number of personal calls to reschedule. Marlene did not have to cancel any of her meetings. Marlene was making more money than he did now, by a little. Was that the reason? But he had the more significant career, they both agreed about that, so why wasn't he getting cut some slack there? He loved his family, but still… And did he, in fact, have a career? He wasn't DA. He wasn't going to be DA. A couple of years ago he had been DA in all but name, but now there was Norton Fuller snapping at his heels. Fuller was nearly ten years younger and unencumbered by wife and three. Norton was at his desk right this minute, or maneuvering or conniving or cranking out paper, and would be in there long after dark, just as Karp used to. Norton wasn't halfway down the dreaded mommy-track, sitting in a gritty Original Ray's settling an argument about pizza toppings. Down in Karp's subbasement, the Wounded Patriarchy shook off its uneasy sleep and rattled its chains. If you had married someone normal, the beast whispered, someone regular, you wouldn't have this problem. No one else has this problem. You would have normal children…

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 seventeen. 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?"

"Catafalco," said Karp, punching a speed-dial button. He waited. Murrow heard: "Butch Karp. Is Lou in?… Yes, I would… Lou?… Yeah, fine. Look, Lou, on that Cooley thing, do you think you could shoot the homicide report on that over to me?… Because I want to read it, Lou… Uh-huh… Fuller is handling it? What does that mean, Fuller is handling it?… Uh-huh. Yeah, I see. Okay, Lou, right. I understand… Uh-huh. Right, talk to you later." Slam of the phone. "Fuck!"

"Uh-oh," said Murrow.

"Uh-oh is right." Karp knitted his hands behind his head and leaned back in his tall judge's chair. After a minute or so of silence, during which his assistant could practically see the gears whirling behind his eyes, Karp said, "Murrow, this is an interesting situation. My colleague Mr. Fuller has informed one of our fine bureau chiefs that all matters to do with the appearance of Detective Cooley before the grand jury are to be referred to him and to no one else. The question I put to you is, what is my play in response?"

Murrow waited a beat to see whether this was a rhetorical question. Karp's gaze told him it was not. He answered, "Well, in the first place, it's a big incursion on your authority. You're chief for operations, he's chief for admin. This is clearly part of an operation, so-"

"But is it? Public relations comes under admin. Cooley's is a case that might have a major impact on the office's public image. And the DA's political future. Not a bright line, at least not to Fuller."

"Then you should go to the DA, grab up Fuller, and duke it out."

"Okay, but think how that would play. I go in there whining that Catafalco's keeping the homicide report to himself because Fuller told him to. Fuller smiles his rat smile and says, 'Oh, Butch, I didn't mean you. Of course, you can read it. I just didn't want to read about it in the papers until the legal process is complete. I mean, grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, aren't they? I'm trying to control copies,' and so on and so forth. So I look like a turf-covering whiner, and I wasted the DA's time, one; and, two, suppose I do look at the homicide report and I say, 'Whoa, this is a fishy shooting.' What happens then?"

"You pull the case off the schedule until we figure out how to handle it."

"Uh-huh, but that lands us back in the DA's office again. Now we have to look at the DA's motivation."

"Which is…?"

"Ah, now you have me. What is, in fact, going on in the tortured soul of Jack Keegan? Here we have a confident and talented public figure, a man who aspires to greatness. Unfortunately, he spent his formative years under the influence of a man who was undeniably great, and who had what was basically a very simple soul. Francis P. Garrahy just knew what was right and just did it. He wasn't perfect, of course; maybe sometimes he wasn't even right. But when he did decide that something was right, he had absolutely no doubt about what to do. Jack isn't like that. He lives in a world that's a lot more complex than the one Garrahy lived in, and it worries him. And he's ambitious in a way that Garrahy never was. Garrahy thought that just being the best district attorney in the history of the world was a pretty good deal. Jack wants to sit on the Supreme Court someday, and it colors his every decision. Be warned, Murrow: if you want a pure heart, eschew ambition."

"Like you?"

"We're not talking about me, though," said Karp a little sharply. "So… Jack is serving two masters-his sense of decency that he learned at Phil Garrahy's knee, and the demon ambition. As we're in an election year, the demon has got a lot more power, which is why Norton Fuller is being jacked up to his present influence. Jack wants to think that because he's got me in there, the great traditions of the office are being maintained, and meanwhile Fuller will handle the dirty jobs, with Jack sort of not knowing what's going on."

"You think Mr. Keegan is in on this business with Cooley?"

"Good question. He's in but not in. Fuller would never throw his weight around with Catafalco like he's doing unless he thought he had backing from Jack. But Jack hasn't actually told him to do anything. He doesn't need to. Fuller's skill is knowing when Jack needs faintly stinky stuff done on his behalf without having to be told. Okay, now let's say I go in there and say, 'Jack, this grand jury case is fucked-the shooting stinks.' Fuller then says, 'That's a matter of opinion, Jack, but what's sure as God's green apples is that if we come down hard on Cooley, we will lose the police unions, and the election.' Jack turns his noble head and looks at me. Now, what's my play?"

"I have no idea."

"Then listen and be enlightened. I have two alternatives. One, I can let Fuller roll me, which would mean he could roll me at will in the future, which means that my usefulness to Jack and this office would be at an end. Or I could say, 'Jack, if you do this, I will resign in protest, go to the press, make a stink.' In which case, I'm out of a job I can do better than anyone else on the horizon, and which Jack and the office badly needs. So for me, and for what I still pretend are the higher values of the New York DA, it's lose-lose. This was a conclusion also arrived at by the nuclear powers. I have the H-bomb, but I don't use it. It gives me status and leverage, but not control. And therefore…?"

"And therefore you will avoid such a confrontation."

Karp grinned. "Very good, Murrow. We'll make a conspirator of you yet."

"My boyhood dream. Meanwhile, what do we do?"

"Oh, I'll think of something. But before I get any further into it, I need to get my hands on that report. Make it happen."

Sybil Marshak lived in the Wyoming, a famous pile of rococo white limestone on Central Park West in the Eighties. Marlene picked up the surveillance a little after four, having spent the day flashing false smiles at a covey of investment bankers, literally on Wall Street. The Osborne agent was Wayne Segovia, a sharp, dark, wiry man with a neat spade beard. When Marlene walked up to his car, he was smoking a cigarillo and doing crossword puzzles in a pulp crossword magazine.

"What's a five-letter word meaning 'black,' starts with an s?" he asked when she slipped into the car, an anonymous gray Honda. On the front seat was a big Nikon with a Polaroid back and a 500mm lens on it.

"Try sable," said Marlene. "Anything doing?"

"Just snapping citizens." He indicated an envelope full of Polaroid photos on the dashboard. "So far nothing stands out. I was hoping for a guy with long hair and fangs carrying a 'Death to Marshak' sign, but no."

"She go out?"

"Once. Hopped a cab to a hair salon on Sixty-third and Madison, got a rinse and set. I would've gone with a lighter color, bring out her eyes a little."

"We'll put that in the report. Anything interesting?"

"Not that I could see. But this is a damn stupid way to check for stalkers."

"Yeah, it is, but humor me for a couple of days. Anything on the phone?"

A black electronic device was on the backseat, with a coiled lead that ran into a plug in Segovia's ear. "Just the usual. She gets a lot of calls. Makes a lot, too. If I was her, I wouldn't be so casual about using a cordless to make them, considering the kind of political stuff she's into."

"I could mention that, too. Most people don't realize how easy it is to steal off a cordless." Marlene popped the door. "I think I'll go up and talk to the building staff."

She did so. The doorman on duty said he had noticed nothing, heard nothing about any stalker. He assured Marlene that no one could get into the building without being checked out. Every visitor had to be announced. It was a good building. Marlene thought it was a good building and, like all buildings, was about as secure as Central Park if anyone really wanted to get in. Kelsie Solette's building was a good building, too. She did not say that, however, but went into the bowels of the basement to interview the janitorial staff and the super, who also assured her of the goodness, etc.

When she emerged into daylight again, she found that Wayne was standing outside the car waving wildly. She trotted across Central Park West.

"What's up?"

"She's in her car, heading south."

They both jumped into the Honda, and Wayne screeched into a U-turn.

"Why the car? Why not a cab?"

"Maybe she wants to park and neck," he said. "Maybe she's going out of town. There she is, the Lexus."

By running a light at Seventy-seventh, Wayne had slid into convenient trailing range of the black Lexus. They followed it down to Broadway and Fifty-fifth, where the car hung a right and disappeared into an underground parking garage.

They pulled into a loading zone across the street. A building was being renovated two doors down. The sound of riveters and metal bashing made it hard to converse. "What now?" shouted Wayne.

"Use our highly trained mental powers to intuit where she's going and whether anyone there is plotting to harass her."

Wayne chuckled. "Ah, boss, I wish I had you along every day. Meanwhile, what's a Siberian river, two letters?"

"Ob," she replied as her phone warbled. She thumbed it, announced herself, stuck a finger in the other ear, listened.

"Doesn't fit," said Wayne. "I think it ends with k."

"Agh!" Marlene cried.

"Ag? Nah, no good. I said it ends with…" He stopped because she was talking rapidly into the phone, snapping out directions to someone, promising to arrive at a place.

She thumbed off the phone and thrust it back into her bag, cursing softly.

"What's up, chief?"

"Oh, nothing-my daughter is involved in a murder again." She met his eyes, gaped, made a shrill sound edged with hysteria. "Not a sentence we hear much, do we? Especially the 'again' part."

"She's not…?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that. She hangs around with a class of people who tend to get their throats ripped out more than your average taxpayer, and apparently it was her turn to find one today. I should go."

"You want me to drive you?"

"No, I'll hop a cab. I might have to scream my head off a little while, and I don't want to embarrass myself in front of the staff."

With that she got out of the car and was just about to cross the driveway of an underground garage when a squeal of tires and the roar of a powerful engine made her hesitate. She saw the Lexus race up the ramp. It was moving so fast it actually flew for a part of a second when it crossed the drainage depression at the ramp entrance, then crashed down heavily on its springs. It missed her by a foot, and she had barely a glimpse of Sybil Marshak's pale face as the car hung a screeching left and accelerated down the street.

Marlene went back to the car. "What the hell was that all about?"

"A sale at Bloomingdale's?" offered Wayne Segovia.

"Follow her, wise guy. Call me on the cell when you get to where she's going."

The Honda zoomed away. Marlene paused and stared for a moment into the entrance to the garage. What had frightened Marshak so much that she had driven her car without really looking into a New York street, a maneuver that nine times out of ten would have resulted in a crash? It was only the construction vehicles parked to the east that had slowed the traffic enough to make the rapid exit and turn possible. Something real or a phantom of the mind? Marlene turned and walked back toward Broadway, a cab, and her daughter. One crazy person at a time was her thought.

La Pelouse, Karp knew, was one of the remarkably many places in the city where lunch cost in the neighborhood of a hundred dollars without tips or drinks. It was on Sixty-fifth off Lexington, a frostedglass window with the name in gold script on it, and a shiny black door under a stubby black awning. He had never been there, since he was an old-fashioned boy and thought a hundred dollars was still real money, an amount that if you lost it on the street would make you cranky all week.

Inside, past the tiny entrance lobby and the funereal maitre d', was a plain, dove-gray room with white trim, lit by white plaster sconces, in which eighteen tables sat like altars, and a long banquette occupied the left wall. Every table was occupied. As he followed the maitre d', Karp noted the famous faces-big-time movie stars, a network anchor-and thought that, among the more anonymous diners, nearly every name would be associated with some profitable large enterprise. Shelly Solotoff was sitting at a banquette, with a cell phone pressed to his ear. When he spotted Karp, he smiled, waved, moved the phone to his other hand, extended his right for a shake without rising, cupped the mouthpiece, said, "Butch-long time! Want a drink? I'll be done in a sec."

Karp sat and studied the man as he talked. A big man, not as tall as Karp but heavier, a lot heavier than he had been when the two of them had worked at the DA. His hair was dark, medium long, with an attractive whitening at the sides. It had the perfection that expensive barbering and skillful hair-weaving provided. The face was tan, as if he had just come in from the yacht. He looked good, in the manner of male models. Karp checked out the eyes and jowls for signs of plastic surgery and thought he detected that slight Ken-doll stiffening of the underlying muscles. Solotoff caught him looking and gave a little wink. His eyes were large, knowing, and bright brown. His suit was made of a kind of shimmery gray stuff that Karp knew was Italian and expensive, and which Karp would not have worn to a masked ball. The tie was metallic bronze, over a stiff-collared shirt of white silk with little monograms on the French cuffs. Patek Philippe watch, cuff links… yes, he could have guessed, tiny gold scales set into onyx.

Solotoff shifted the phone again. "No, no, Charlie, no jail time at all," he was saying now. "The deal sucks… Right… No, they can't use that evidence, Charlie… No, trust me on this… Yeah, I'll call him after lunch. I got to go, Charlie… Right. Okay, I'll be in touch."

Solotoff smiled and shook his head as he switched off the phone. "My local counsel. Case in Connecticut. The usual, preppy selling E to his buddies. Bad search, but Charlie, the guy's a nervous Nellie. You know who the father is?"

Karp admitted he did not, and Solotoff told him the name of a former U.S. senator.

"That what you do now, Shelly? Dumb rich kid dope cases?"

"Pays the rent. How about you? Still stocking the jails with dumb poor kids?"

Karp shrugged, put on a social smile. "I didn't write the law."

"An unworthy cop-out. Unworthy of you, I mean. Typical of the average DA."

A waiter appeared, bearing menus a yard long. Solotoff waved his away. "Jules, just tell Cyril to make me one of his truffle omelettes. He knows what I like. And an avocado salad and a bottle of Vichy."

Karp opened the menu briefly, folded it, and handed it back to the waiter. "I'll have a corned beef on rye and a kasha knish. And an orange soda."

The waiter goggled for an instant, looked nervously at Solotoff, then donned a condescending smile at m'sieu's little drollery. Karp said, "Tell Cyril to make me another one, easy on the truffles. And the rest the same, too."

The man wafted away.

"Wow," said Solotoff, "a long time. What is it, fifteen years?"

"About that. You're looking good. Wealth suits you."

"You know, I think it does. I'm amazed, frankly, that you're still there. I heard that you left for downtown a while ago. And you went back?"

"Jack asked me to do homicide, and I went for it."

"But then you got blown out of the job. Some race thing?"

"Yeah. A long story. People were carrying signs, 'Ku Klux Karp.' It was just one of those New York things. Jack hid me in staff for a while, and now I'm chief assistant."

Solotoff was shaking his head. "Unbelievable! How can you stand it with all those lames up there?"

"Not all that lame. Roland's still there. You remember Roland? I'd put him up against anyone in the country in a courtroom, on a homicide."

"Oh, right, Roland! The blond beast. That's the exception that proves the rule. Is he still pinching secretaries on the ass?"

"Not that he lets me see. We have policies about that now."

"Yeah, I almost forgot the goddamn bureaucracy. And the corruption."

"You going to offer me a job? Or are you just trying to make me feel bad?"

Solotoff laughed, an odd croaking sound without much volume. "A job? Hey, in a New York minute. Just say the word."

"I don't think so."

"Why not? Really."

Shrug. Karp was growing bored with this line. "I guess I just like public service." Lame.

The other man sprang to it. "Oh, please! Public service is for kids. It's postgraduate school-you learn how the system works, how the judges like things, get a little trial practice. But staying in it? It's strictly for losers, man. It's white-collar sanitation work. You clear the darkies off the street so the quality doesn't have to look at them. I mean it's a joke."

"Not necessarily. Laugh if you want to, and I know you want to, but at the end of the day the system's all we have between anarchy and the police state."

A contemptuous snort. "Yeah, that's a Francis P. Garrahy line. I remember it well, the old fraud. Christ! Someone as smart and competent as you-it's like meeting a grown man who still collects baseball cards and plays flip with them."

"Phil Garrahy was a number of things," said Karp, feeling the edge creep into his voice, "but fraud wasn't one of them."

"Oh, give me a break! Mr. Fucking DA! He was in office as long as Brezhnev and just as sharp there at the end, and even when he had his game, the Mafia controlled half a dozen major industries, all the unions, and Tammany Hall. Corruption was absolutely endemic in practically every city bureau, and virtually every cop in the city was on the pad, during which time Garrahy's greatest achievement was nailing the quiz show scandals."

"We'll have to agree to disagree on that, Shelly."

"What, it's not true? Plus the guy caught the biggest fucking break any DA ever caught-all the years he was in there crime rates were at the lowest in centuries. Which might have been helped by the fact that the cops were running a reign of terror in the less desirable parts of town. You ever notice how you never see a black face in those Times Square photographs from the forties and fifties? Fifth Avenue? Central Park? That's why. Nightstick justice, aided and abetted by you guys back then. Totally corrupt, and based on wholesale police perjury. And don't think it's not still going on."

"I said we'd have to agree to disagree on that," Karp repeated in a tone that did not invite rejoinder. Solotoff locked eyes with him for a long moment, and Karp saw something in them that he could not identify-not fear exactly, but… something dark and complex. Then it was gone, and Solotoff laughed again. "Jesus, I had you going there for a while. Still the old grouch… good old Butch! Ah, here's our food."

They ate, and the conversation turned small. Sports, political anecdote, the antics of judges, movies, family. Solotoff was on his third wife, a cosmetics-empire heiress, and trophies of the hunt. Solotoff had the big condo on Park, the place in Quogue, membership in the best of the clubs that took Jews. He did most of the talking, he having the best toys. Boasting, sure, but maybe a tone of desperation there underneath? Karp wondered why this fellow was trying to sell a half-stranger his life in this way, or why he was trying to crap on Karp's. But he had determined to get through the wretched meal with good grace and covered adequately his lapses of attention. He found his mind drifting toward the Cooley case, running along in a parallel track that allowed him to utter the required grunts of appreciation, ask the appropriate questions. An idea rose, gelled-a plan, risky but feasible.

They finished. Karp declined the dessert and watched Solotoff line his arteries with creme brulee. Solotoff made a call on his cell, and when they got to the street, a pearl-gray Lincoln was just gliding up to the curb.

Solotoff shook Karp's hand vigorously and said, "Hey, I was serious a while ago. I hate like hell to see a smart guy like you fucking wasting his time." He lowered his voice "The DA's no place for a yiddisheh kop, bubeleh, and you know it. Let the goyim take out the garbage! See you around, pal."

Not if I see you first, thought Karp, but he smiled politely until the car door closed. By the time his own ride showed up, the plan was fairly complete. This is why I'm still at the DA, asshole, was the thought he threw after the retreating limo.