Enemy within

6

At The Seventeenth Precinct, the Desk directed Marlene to a detective second grade named Fred Paradisio, whom she found in a typical detective-squad bay of the type that has been described so often that it is as familiar as a suburban bathroom. It smelled of burnt coffee and sadness, and the mingled low-end aftershaves of its inhabitants. Paradisio was a barrel of a man with oily, thinning black locks, and a head disconcertingly wider at the jaw than at the top. He had large, friendly eyes that lied, "Hey, I'm just a slob like you, you can trust me, pal." Marlene identified herself and asked to see her daughter.

"Sure, Mrs. Ciampi," said the detective, "but if we could, I'd like to talk to you a bit first. You want some coffee or a soft drink?"

"I want to see my daughter."

"In a second." He pointed. "Have a chair."

Marlene bobbed her head and sat.

Paradisio settled himself in his swiveler and opened a notebook. "Okay, the situation here is that at two forty-six P.M. today 911 logged a call from your daughter saying that she had found a dead body in a makeshift shelter on a service walkway above the MTA rail yards. She was told to wait for the police. At two fifty-seven, a patrol vehicle arrived at Eleventh and Thirtieth, and the officers descended to the scene described by your daughter. This was a shelter made of newspapers baled together and waterproofed. Apparently there's a kind of homeless hangout under there."

"Yes, I know," said Marlene impatiently.

"Oh, yeah? You're down there a lot, communing with the homeless?"

"No, but she is."

"You mean you let her run down with those people? She's not like a runaway?"

"No, she is not. Detective, what's the point of this? I'd like to see my daughter now."

"Just a second, let me just get through this." He peered again at the notebook. "The officers at the scene entered the newspaper structure and found a black male later determined to be Jerome Watkins, and he was determined to be deceased at the scene. They called it in, and me and my partner proceeded there. We are ruling it a homicide right now, subject to further investigation. We rousted all the other derelicts in the area and found your daughter in a packing-crate structure occupied by a black male named Ali Rashid Kalifa, aka Moses Belton. Belton has a record: armed robbery, assault, larceny. Served a couple of jolts upstate back in the eighties. Did you know about this? Your daughter hanging around with that type of person?"

"Yes."

"You approve of this?"

"Detective, are you investigating my fitness as a parent?"

"Uh-uh, no, what I'm trying-"

"Then get to the point, finish whatever you are doing, and let me see my daughter!"

Paradisio looked hurt, in a studied way. "Fine. Your daughter actually found the body. According to this Ali, or Belton, she went and made the call, cool as anything, and then lost it. Ali or Belton said he was comforting her when we got there. She looked like she'd been crying, as a matter of fact. Okay, let me get to the point here…"

"Thank you."

"The structure where the body was found was occupied by a man named John Carey Williams, aka Canman. Williams is a two-fer man. He buys aluminum cans from other homeless and crushes them and transports them to the recycle center. Apparently this person is some kind of special friend of your daughter. We would really like to talk to him."

"You like him for the bum slasher?"

Paradisio's genial-slob persona nearly cracked beneath this unexpected remark, but he coughed and recovered. "Gosh, I didn't say anything about the bum slasher. I didn't even say that Watkins was slashed at all."

"But he was, or you wouldn't be going through this act with me. What is this, vic number four? Even if he's just taking out lowlifes, you still got a serial killer on your hands. You think Lucy saw something, or knows something about this Canman."

"Let's say she hasn't been forthcoming."

"If you would just let me speak to her, Detective, I'll let you know whether she knows anything or not. Or do I have to go all lawyerly on you now?"

Paradisio did not want lawyerly. Marlene was led to an interview room, in which she found her daughter with an American-history text and a notebook open in front of her, calmly doing her homework.

"Well, homework!" said Marlene. "We should get you in jail more often."

To Marlene's surprise, the girl rose and embraced her and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry! I mean about yesterday… I keep losing my temper at you. I don't know what gets into me. Demonic forces." Lucy laughed unconvincingly. Marlene held her away and looked her over. She was wearing her usual uniform: a black sweater over a white shirt, a black wool skirt, black tights, and some kind of surplus combat boots. There was no color in her face and her eyes looked bruised.

"You're forgiven. You're a model of filial deportment compared to the way I acted at your age. Listen, we got us a little problem here."

"I didn't do anything." Wary.

"I know you didn't, but they think for some reason you're withholding information, and you can't do that. Recall that you're still on probation from that stunt you pulled last year. You do not want the police cross with you. Sit down and tell me what happened."

Lucy slumped in her chair and closed her book with a bang. She took a deep breath and began. "Okay. After school I went to Holy Redeemer looking for David. He wasn't there, so I scouted around the neighborhood, you know, the homeless hangouts, and then I went down to the yards. I talked to Real Ali-"

"Excuse me, this is Moses Belton?"

"I don't know about that. I've always called him Ali, or Ali Rashid. I'm teaching him a little Arabic. He's a Muslim, the regular kind. Anyway, no one else was around, so I looked in Canman's paper house. There was someone on the bed there, and at first I thought it was Canman. He was all covered up with blankets. But then I realized that his dog wasn't there. And I went over and touched him, and I saw that it was Fake Ali. We call him… I mean, we called him that because he really thought he was the fighter. He was pretty crazy, but harmless, really a very sweet person, except if he thought you were George Foreman. Anyway, I saw he was dead. And… I sort of lost it then-I ran back to Ali's and told him, and he calmed me down, and I walked up the block and found a pay phone and called the cops. That's it."

Marlene sighed heavily in the silence after this. "You really have the life, don't you, baby?"

The girl looked away from this sympathy and piled her books into the old musette bag she used. "Yeah. Could we go now?"

"Not quite. The detective out there thinks there's something you're not telling. About this guy Canman. John Carey Williams. He's a friend of yours?"

"Just one of the guys."

"Lucy, darling, now is not the time to be evasive."

Lucy bowed her head and froze. Marlene waited a minute. She could hear her daughter's breath go in and out. Then Lucy said, "I guess I saw him. When I came out of the paper house. He was on the access walk, maybe a hundred yards away, and I saw Maggie. His dog. I yelled at him, but he turned away and ran. I'm sorry. I should have told the cops, but…"

"He's a friend of yours. I understand. You know, the cops are starting to like him for the slasher. What do you think?"

"I don't know, Mom!" The tears started to leak. "I don't know anything anymore. Now, could we please go home?"

"You've read this already?" asked Karp, indicating the homicide report on the Lomax shooting. It had arrived four days after he had asked for it, the day the case, assuming all the players could be rounded up, would actually be presented to the grand jury, having been rescheduled from the previous Friday.

"Yeah," said his special assistant.

"What do you think?"

Murrow gathered his thoughts. "I don't know, chief. A couple of cars sliding around on the wet road, bullets flying everywhere… I mean, who knows what really happened? The report says the evidence is not inconsistent with the testimony of the officers involved."

"Yeah, but that's like saying the Warren Report is not inconsistent with the evidence they decided to gather and use." Karp tapped the folder on his desk. "There's something funny in this thing. No, two things funny. You know what they are?"

"No, and I'll bet you're going to tell me."

"No, you tell me." Karp opened the folder, splaying out the crimescene photographs over his desk. "What's wrong with this picture?" Murrow leafed through them. They were of the Cherokee and the surrounding road, and the unmarked police vehicle. The Cherokee was full of bullet holes, and its left fender and headlamp were smashed. The police unmarked was similarly damaged, with a severe crumpling of the left front and side. That much was clear; the pictures of the road and the side barriers, with chalk marks and tape measures, were more obscure.

"Well, there was a glancing head-on crash of some kind," Murrow ventured. "That confirms the cops' story at least. Lots of bullet holes in the Jeep. You can see where the slugs went through the rear seat. But wait a second…" He shuffled through the eight-by-ten glossies. "The windshield has three holes in it. That seems to confirm the police story. I guess I'm stumped on the fishy part."

Karp smiled. "The autopsy, Murrow! Holes in the windshield, but no holes in the front of the vic. Lomax was killed from behind. But I doubt if your pal Flatow is intending to bring that out to the grand jury. The guy had ten bullet wounds in him, with eight bullets recovered. Of those, seven were from Cooley's gun, one from Nash's. Nash must have shot the man after the cars stopped moving because he was driving during the chase and didn't have his gun out. Cooley was shooting from outside the car, too. But, of course, it's impossible to distinguish the shots he took then from the ones he fired during the chase. Like you say, cars whirling around, night, a confused situation. Lomax could have been bouncing around in there, and just by chance all the bullets ended up in his rear."

"Pretty unlikely, don't you think?"

"Very. But we don't build cases on unlikely, especially not with the Blue Wall holding solid. In any case, that's what the grand jury will hear." Karp collected the photographs, stacked them neatly, and returned them to the report folder. "Well, what else is new? A cop does a bad shooting and skates." He seemed lost in thought. Murrow waited a decent interval and asked, "What was the other thing? You said two things were fishy."

"Oh, right. The other thing is we got two experienced cops sitting on a street in the middle of the night waiting for a major collar to go down. They're waiting for a gun dealer, they're going to grab a bunch of automatic weapons-a pretty big deal. Then this car drives by. The officers state that they recognized the vehicle as stolen from a radio report and pursued it, which led to the chase in question and all the shooting."

"That's fishy?"

"Murrow, it's the fishiest thing about this goddamn case. It makes no sense at all. Let's say they made it as hot. Let's say the car belonged to, I don't know, the mayor's favorite aunt. Is it credible to you that they would have left their assigned position in a gun bust they'd been working on for weeks to go chase it? And if they chased it, does it make sense that they would have tried so hard to stop it with gunfire, in clear violation of police department regulations? I mean, where was the win in it for them? Even if they caught the guy, even if the chase didn't result in someone running into a car full of nuns, they were still headed for a gigantic chewing out. You assholes left your post for what? A stolen car? Give me a break! So what was it?"

"They were overtaken by a sudden insane animus against car thieves?"

"Maybe," said Karp, laughing, "but then they would have used the old sudden-insane-animus defense. No, really-it's the key to the whole thing. A fishy shooting is always a pain in the butt, even if it's a lot clearer than this one; you get a cop up there, he says he was in fear of his life, it's hard to prove even manslaughter beyond a reasonable doubt, never mind depraved-indifference murder, unless maybe he put ten bullets into an unarmed old lady in a nightgown in broad daylight in front of a bunch of Shriners. Here you got darkness and danger, you got a known felon in commission of a felony, you got a motor vehicle, deadly weapon in use-typically, that would be a gimme for the cops, and, you know, I wouldn't have even looked at it probably, if it wasn't so obvious that they were trying to sneak something through. On the other hand, if what we're looking at here is a personal thing, if Cooley and Nash weren't just pursuing a random hot car, if the reason they were so weirdly anxious for a crappy stolen-car collar was because they knew Mr. Lomax…"

"Then you have the element of intent," Murrow finished.

"Just right, Murrow: the element of intent. So- did they, in fact, know the man? If this was a normal investigation, we would get the cops to find out whether the two defendants had any contact with the victim, and what that relationship was. But since the defendants are cops, we can't, or we can't right now."

"Because of the… um?" Murrow gestured vaguely in the direction of the DA's office across the hall.

"Yes, because of the um. If I still had Clay Fulton here, it would be a different story, but they kicked him upstairs to Police Plaza, and if I went to that yo-yo who's running the DA squad now, the news of the request would be in Fuller's hands and up on the twelfth floor of One PP practically before I put the phone down. However, I have a plan."

"May one know it?"

"Not just now. Meanwhile"-here Karp looked at his watch-"you might wander by and see if the grand jury has taken up this case yet. It'll do you good to see corrupt practices taking place before your very eyes."

"Okay, but why don't I stand up and in a voice of doom cry out, 'Cooley! Cooley, you knew the victim! Cooley, you murderer!' Then if he turned white and fainted, we would know he was guilty."

"Good plan, Murrow. Let's use that as a fallback if mine doesn't work. Now, scram."

When Murrow was gone, Karp hit a speed-dial button. One of the secrets of the modern age is that every important person in the world has a private number, known only to a select few. Karp had one of these, and he knew a bunch of others, such as this one, mostly people in New York's criminal-justice and forensic establishments. Karp's mind did not often dwell on Judaica, but he liked the image of the Nine Just Men for whose sake Ha-Olam does not destroy the wicked world, and while he did not puff himself up so much as to consider himself personally one of these, he imagined that all of the Just would have each other's private numbers.

After a few rings, a throaty bass voice said, "Yeah, Fulton."

"Clay, it's Butch."

The voice turned softer, and they chatted about family, sports, the local scene. Fulton was one of Karp's oldest friends, one of the first black college graduates to serve in the NYPD and a mentor from Karp's earliest days at the DA. He had been head of the DA squad and had functioned almost as Karp's private police force until being promoted to inspector and kicked upstairs, where the bosses could keep a closer eye on him.

"They keeping you busy up there?" Karp asked.

"Oh, you know-it's paperwork mostly. They found out I could spell. Surprised the shit out of them, I think, me being a colored fellow and all. Strategic planning they call it."

"What's the strategic plan?"

"Frisk as many niggers as possible is the main one."

"Is it working?"

"Hey, crime rate's down. Of course, it's down just as much in cities where they don't do shit like that, but that don't cut much ice up here on the twelfth floor. How's by you?"

"Not that great, actually. I need to talk to you about stuff, but not over the phone. Lunch?"

"Sure, where at?"

"How about Lemongrass on Varick?"

Pause. "Isn't that a vegetarian place?"

"Uh-huh. It smells of carrots and no cop would be caught dead eating there. See you in a bit."

It did smell of carrots, and purity, and contained several elegant, slow-moving young waitpersons, who seemed by their expressions to be suffering directly from mankind's abuse of the planet. Lucy ate here all the time, which was how Karp had learned of the place. Both men had a meatless, cheeseless, taste-free dish of quasi-lasagna and filled up on the bread, which was surprisingly good.

"This better be worth a set of ribs at Jack's," grumbled Fulton when the waitress had tripped off. Fulton was a big, dark brown man in his late fifties with a brush mustache and a balding dome of a head. He had an elegant gray suit on, and silver cuff links with gold detective badges on them. His expression, disarmingly genial at most times, was now a little wary.

"You got it, a whole cow, if you want. Push that crap aside and take a look at this." Karp handed a manila folder across the table.

Fulton opened it, saw what it was, and shot a hard stare across the small table.

"What's going on, Butch?"

"That's what I need to know. Read the whole thing, especially including the autopsy. Take your time."

Fulton did so, reading silently, spreading the pictures out over almost the whole of the table, including those that were quite out of place in a vegetarian restaurant. When he was done, he shoved the papers and photographs back into the folder and handed it back to Karp.

"So?" Fulton said.

"So what do you think?"

"About what? This Lomax? He fought the law and the law won."

"Come on, Clay."

"Oh, don't you give me that 'Come on, Clay.' Let me ask you something-do you know Ray Cooley?"

"More or less. Not personally. He was borough chief of detectives. Retired a couple of years ago. What's he got to do with it?"

"I'll tell you what, Stretch. There is probably not a senior cop in this city in the last twenty-five years who was more respected than Ray Cooley. When the Mollen Commission shit hit the fan, they got Ray Cooley to clean out the Manhattan houses that were dirty because everybody knew he was clean as a whistle, and that he was a cop's cop and wouldn't sacrifice the little guys to protect the big ones. And he didn't. And he was decent, especially compared to the usual gang of Paddies they got running the department-I'm talking about racism here. Never a hint. Now, Ray had two sons, both of them cops. Brian, the oldest, got himself shot. He was working undercover out of the Twoeight, talking out there one night to a CI he had, over on Fourteenth east, and somebody drove by and popped a bunch of caps. They were trying to get the snitch, but they got Brian instead. He pushed the snitch down and tried to return fire, but they got him. The younger son, that's the fella you have in that file, got the Medal of Valor two years ago. You know what he did?"

"No, I don't, but-"

"Listen! A hostage situation. A guy holed up on the fifth floor, stoned out of his gourd, he's got his girlfriend and two little kids, and a pistol. The girlfriend's mother runs out of the place, calls the cops. These are black people, by the way. Brendan Cooley happens to be in the neighborhood. I think he was working the Three-oh then, before he went over to anticrime. So him and his partner answer the squeal. Okay, you know a hostage situation, you got your protocols, your regs. Call for the specialists, the negotiating team, the snipers, the helmets, the SWATs. Brendan goes in there, and he decides this guy isn't going to wait for that, he's going to pop in the next two minutes. So what does he do? He stands in the doorway, he throws down his weapon, he takes off the vest he put on, he even rips open his shirt, and he goes, 'Hey, you want to shoot someone, shoot me! Go ahead, shoot. But, for Christ's sake, let the woman and the kids go!' For some reason-I don't know, God was having a slow day, maybe He decides to tweak this fuck-head's brain the right way-and he goes with it. He lets the kids go, the girlfriend. By the time they roll up the heavy artillery, Brendan's got the guy's piece and they're sitting on the bed together, the guy's crying his eyes out on Brendan's T-shirt. What do you think of that?"

"Sounds like something of a cowboy, Brendan."

"That's what you derive from that story?"

"Yeah, speaking as a cowboy myself. How come they didn't ding him for not going by the book?"

"Oh, they chewed him, all right. But the press got ahold of it, and it was too much for them, especially given that the usual story is white cop blasts black guy. Here the white guy saved three, maybe four, uptown-type folks."

"And what's the moral of all this, Clay? That he saved four so he gets to cap one for free?"

Fulton waved a finger in Karp's face, a finger like the barrel of a.38. "Hey! Don't be a jerk! The moral is, number one, Brendan Cooley is a good cop, and not just with white people, and two, the status of Ray Cooley in the department is such that his son, his one remaining son, is about as untouchable as anyone has ever been in the department. He could be dealing smack out of a whorehouse across from City Hall and he'd never see a courtroom. You may not like it, but there it is. If you think the job is going to go after him because he shot a mutt like Cisco Lomax, in a halfway plausible self-defense situation, you are nuts."

Karp had been breaking a lump of bread into small pieces and lining them up neatly in front of his plate, as if to shield him from what he was hearing. He said, "Look, we know each other for what? Getting to be twenty years now. You know I'm not a cop-baiter. If you recall, some years ago a rogue detective was doing assassinations to order for a dope king, and you found out about it, and he snatched you up and tortured you to find out what you knew and if you had told anyone yet. And when that trio of thugs you used to run out of the Thirty-second Precinct broke you loose, you arranged for them to whack him."

"That would be hard to prove."

"I don't have to prove it," Karp snapped, and in a milder tone said, "I'm talking to an old and trusted friend here. With whom I am unfailingly honest. To resume, these guys also took care of any witnesses to that particular cop's felonies, all justifiable shoots, of course, and you covered up the guy's evil empire, and he got an inspector's funeral, and his widow got the pension. This was in the interest of protecting the rep of the department and maybe also the rep of the bad detective, who happened to be black and was also a pretty good guy before he jumped into the shit. And, if you recall, I sat down for all of that. Hey, I know it's rough justice."

"What's your point here, Butch?"

"That I know how the game is played, which I shouldn't even have to demonstrate to you. But since you've gotten so puffy now you're a boss, I thought I would anyway. But I also know there are lines, and you know that as well as I do. We don't do frames, that's one line. We kick out cases that don't pass the laugh test. We like it when the guy who actually did the crime is the one the cops bring in, not just a guy who did some similar crimes and they want to get his ass off the street. And, especially, while I'd like the line here to be pushed back in the direction of a little less tendency to violence, I believe we still draw the line at assassination."

"What are you talking 'assassination'? Where the hell did that come from?"

Karp tapped the report. "From here. Look, I have no question it's a bad shooting. But you know and I know that I would never ever be able to make that case, not against that copy anyway, for reasons you've just eloquently laid out for me. And you know that if I spent energy worrying about evil shit that went down on the island of Manhattan where I don't have a decent case, I wouldn't have the strength to take a good piss. But this one worries me. I want to know why two perfectly rational, competent cops took off on a high-speed chase, with guns blazing, to rescue some dentist's sport utility vehicle from a car thief. Hah! I can see by your face that it worries you, too. You saw the same goddamn thing I did when I read that report."

"Bullshit!"

"I know you too long, Clay."

Fulton slammed the table, drawing looks. It was not a table-slamming sort of place. In a controlled hiss, veins bulging on his forehead, he said, "Well, what exactly do you expect me to do about it, pal? Call in the snakes on Ray Cooley's kid?"

"Of course not. Start an IAD beef on this guy and the snakes would be falling all over themselves, deep-sixing unpleasant evidence. It'd be son of Warren Commission. But it should be pretty easy to find out if that really was a chase of a stolen vehicle, if it was reported and sent out, if Cooley reported himself in pursuit. You're the guy who has all those crime pattern reports. And if it was that, well… all you got to do is tell me it was just a boyish outburst, a mistake in judgment. They were bored, say, middle of the night, a hot car goes by, they figure on a quick collar just to pass the time. But the guy runs, and it gets out of hand, the adrenaline shoots up, the bullets fly… Honestly, hell, I'd love a story like that. Just bring me that story and you'll never hear anything more about it from me. It's not like I got nothing better to do."

"And say it's not that story?"

"If it's not… ah, shit… well, then, I'll have to decide how to go forward with it, depending on the available evidence and the nature of the case, just like I always do. But in any case you're out of it. Your name'll never come up."

"It better not, Stretch. I don't intend to spend the rest of my time on the job running a motor pool out on the ass end of Staten Island." Fulton stood up abruptly, threw some bills on the table, and walked out. Karp caught up with him on the sidewalk, under the restaurant's pink and pale green awning.

"You hate me now, right?"

"Ah, fuck, I don't know," said Fulton, a disgusted look on his face. "The old days when we were working together and I didn't give a rat's ass about what the bosses thought, I would've gone into this with you, no problem. Now we got a crew up there in the Plaza, they're falling all over each other to show they're not a bunch of Paddy racist motherfuckers, they got to have some more black faces up on the top floors. I mean I know I'm good, but I'd be kidding myself if I pretended that wasn't a part of it. Meanwhile, I am there, and I can do a lot of good, not just for myself-shit, you know I'm not into that crap-but for the job, and providing a little counterbalance for boss types who think that walking while black is a major felony. But the downside is, now I am a boss, I have to think like one, and even though it pisses me off to see how I slipped into that thinking, there it is. I bought it, now I have to pay for it." Fulton smiled bleakly and shook Karp's hand as his official car drew to the curb. "You keep me honest, Stretch. But not too honest, hear?"

"Deal," said Karp, and then as an aside, "You almost might want to have a talk with the partner, Nash."

"Why would I want to do that? Because he's black?"

"No, but what you said, about doing some good, about counterbalance. You always kept pretty good track of rising black detectives. There could be trouble for him, if I'm right. I mean if I'm right, he told a couple of fibs there to cover his partner. Do you know him?"

"As a matter of fact, I do: one of my boys, as you guessed. A good guy, wife and kids, a solid cop. There is no way, I mean no way, I'm going to involve him in this crap."

"Not even a friendly heads-up?"

"Nothing, because this conversation never took place."

"But you will look at those calls?"

"Yeah. Give me a couple of days. I'll call you," said Fulton out the rear window, and the car drove off.

Murrow reported back to Karp late in the day. "Well?" asked Karp. He was comfortably seated with a pile of case files on his lap, feet up on the desk.

"As expected. No indictment, smooth as silk. Cooley and Nash are back in harness as we speak." Karp just nodded and returned to his reading. "What are you going to do, boss?"

"What can I do? The wheels have ground, and the ham sandwich has not been indicted. Did you see this? Shawn Cisco Lomax's epitaph. An inch and a half on page A20 of the newspaper of record."

Murrow picked up the tiny clipping and saw it was from the one-column digest of regional news that the Times ran daily on one of its back pages. He read, "Police Shoot Car Thief on Henry Hudson Highway. Police officers in pursuit of a car thief opened fire when the fugitive turned the SUV he was driving around on the northbound West Side Highway and attempted to ram the unmarked police vehicle pursuing him. Shawn Lomax, 23, of 312 W. 127th Street, was pronounced dead at the scene. Police sources said that Mr. Lomax had a long criminal record. The two police officers involved were not injured." Murrow put the clipping down on the desk. "Gosh, it's in the papers, so it must be true." Karp ignored the remark and kept reading. Murrow, usually sensitive to his boss's moods, ignored the snub. He was oddly reluctant to leave, without… without what? Some assurance that the good guys were going to win? He was very young.

"Did you hear the latest? They found another dead street person."

This time Karp looked up. "Where?"

"In a midtown parking garage. What does that make this month, six?"

"The same MO?"

"No, this one was shot, apparently. It could still be the same guy."

"I doubt that very much. Murderers tend to be creatures of habit, and crazy murderers even more so. I wonder…" Karp shut down the emerging thought.

"Wonder what?"

"Nothing, Murrow, don't you have something to do?"

"Go talk to your daughter," said Marlene when Karp got home that evening. He was happy to see her by the stove stirring, which always gave him a shameful atavistic thrill. He was taken aback, however, by her tone.

"What happened?"

"You heard about the new homeless killing?"

"What, that shooting midtown? Oh, shit! Don't tell me she was involved in that one, too?"

"No, surprisingly, but she knew the guy. She's broken up about it, plus I told her if she kept hanging around those people, I was going to pack her off to live with Patsy in Santa Barbara. Unfortunately, they don't allow us to lock them up in convents anymore."

"A hollow threat, surely?"

"No, I was serious. She has to learn to listen, dammit!"

Karp let this go by. "Where are the boys?"

"I said they could stay at Matt Fleming's until later. I'll pick them up. I have to go out anyway." She lifted the cover on a pot of potatoes and turned down the heat. "By the way, the famous David is coming to dinner tonight."

"She invited him?"

"No, it was me." Marlene gave an extra stir, more vigorous than the stew really needed, and shook off the wooden spoon on the edge of the pot, like a rim-shot in Vegas. "Another crime against my name. He seemed perfectly reasonable about it, though. Maybe he can talk some sense into her. She absolutely can't go hanging out in dark alleys with bums until they catch this bastard."

Karp changed out of his lawyer costume and into jeans and a worn sweatshirt. He announced himself at Lucy's door and received a grumbled admittance. Once inside, he made that quick, near-furtive inspection familiar to all parents of teenagers, a forbidden window on the secret life. As usual, the room was neat as a nun's cell, a little too neat, to Karp's thinking, betokening a compulsive mind, perhaps unhealthily so. The room contained a simple box spring and mattress, a Door Store desk and swivel chair, a Tabriz carpet of some value on the floor, and on two of the walls modular birch bookshelves stretched from the floor to the ceiling, solid with books, almost all of them dictionaries and works in languages Karp couldn't read. Over the bed hung a large polychrome crucifix in the Spanish style, dripping blood drops and radiating agony, that always gave Karp the willies when he saw it. The wall over the desk was corked, and on it were pinned pictures and documents of various kinds, all secured with four pushpins at the corners and lined up square: family photos (numerous), school awards (few), Polaroid snaps of pals (fewer), a reproduction of a painting of Cardinal Mezzofanti, the Pete Rose of language, who could translate 114, and one of Francis E. Sommer, the DiMaggio, who was fluent in 94. Raised above these was an oval photocopy of Simone Weil, which disturbed Karp nearly as much as the vivid crucifix. All Karp knew about Weil was that she was a French Jew who, having escaped the Nazis, starved herself to death in sympathy with concentration camp victims, which in Karp's view was not the sort of role model appropriate for a seventeen-year-old. His gaze shifted quickly to the center of the cork and the large world map, which showed with pins how the kid was gaining on the language superstars. There seemed to be more every time Karp looked, pushing forty by rough count. The competition with Weil, if any, was not apparent to the paternal eye, which noted again the absence of rock stars, kittens, Garfields, or other normal teenage-girl stuff.

The abnormal was at her desk. Her head, round, shorn, and vulnerable, was drooping like a spent blossom on her long, thin neck as she wrote in a notebook. From the cassette machine on the desk came the voice of a man speaking a language curiously like English, but incomprehensible to Karp.

"What's that?" he asked.

She switched it off and swiveled around to face him. "Dutch. The text on the list. It's easy."

"Say something in it."

"Ik weet dat je het niet goed vindt, maar ik doe het touch." "Which means?"

"'I know you don't think it's right, but I'll do it anyway.'"

"That seems to be your motto." Karp sat on the bed. "What're we going to do about this, Luce? You're driving her nuts."

"She's driving me nuts. My gosh, if she wanted me to be a nice, regular little kid, she should have paid some attention a little earlier."

"She just wants you to be safe and happy."

"No, what it is, she's guilty that she neglected me while she ran around protecting women with firearms, and, mamma mia, look how I turned out. It's an embarrassment." She flung back in the chair, making it squeak. "And then she goes and… oh, God! I can't believe she called him, like I was a little kid and she was making sure he wasn't a molester. I'll die!"

"No dramatics, please," said Karp. Then they heard the elevator arrive, which they both decided to ignore. "Look, at the risk of being overly rational, this is the situation you're in, and so my advice is make the best of it for the couple of years you have left at home. Everyone has a cross to bear, so to speak. Like you all say, offer it up."

Lucy glared at him, then sighed, closed her eyes briefly. "Okay, I'll try. You're right. It's just… I was really upset is all. I tend to lose it when my friends get killed."

"You knew this guy well?"

"Oh, yeah, as well as any of them let you know them. Desmondo Ramsey. Early twenties, got into the crack business as a teenager, went to jail, tried to live at home but… he comes… he came from a respectable family, by the way, over in Newark. Three sisters, all college grads, mother runs a dry cleaner's. Anyway, he couldn't stand the pressure, his family guilting him out all the time, so he split and came to the city. Hustled things-not stealing, I mean street trade, hauling stuff for street merchants, like a lot of them do, laying stuff out, holding good sidewalks for them. That was his big ambition, to have a table. He was a good salesman, too, friendly, a nice smile. Once in a while one of his merchants would give him something to sell, a pen set or a watch or a radio. He read books, too, you know, not a dummy at all. We used to talk about stuff, Malcolm and Fanon, and the Church. And business stuff, like how to succeed, stuff like that." She sighed. "And now he's dead, someone just shot him down like a dog."

"It's a rough life," said Karp.

"Yes, I know. They're out there getting murdered, and my social role is to be protected and sheltered in the upper-middle-class cocoon, according to her, get good grades, have respectable middle-class friends, go to a good college, shop, chatter…"

"Lucy, when I rank sheltered middle-class girls, you are not in the top ten, I hate to tell you. You're not probably in the top million. I mean you've done your lower-depths adventure already, you've been shot at and kidnapped, and God knows what else. Don't you think it's time for a rest, maybe catch your breath a little?"

"No, I don't." Lucy sprang to her feet, a false and cheerful look on her face. "I should help set the table, shouldn't I?"