Falsely Accused

TWENTY

In the morning Hector was gone. Marlene called the church and then the shelter, but neither Father Raymond nor Mattie Duran had seen him. Oddly, Lucy seemed altogether less morose this morning and did not ask any questions about Hector. The day passed without event, and without word of the boy.

The next morning, the Thursday, Karp was preternaturally cheerful at breakfast, a sign of nervousness on a day when a verdict was in the offing. He expressed confidence. Craig had given a good charge the day before, most of the law had gone Karp’s way, but, of course, with juries … Karp refused to think about what would happen to him if they lost.

An especially warm kiss sent him on his way. Marlene dressed and went to the gun safe for her Colt. She was going to move a woman for Mattie that morning. Harry was busy with some celebrity in midtown. As she removed her pistol, she checked, as always, to see that the boxes of ammunition and the little nickel 22 were in their places, and then carefully shut and locked the safe’s door.

It was pouring outside, a heavy spring rain. She took Lucy to school and then bought a paper at a stand, holding it over her head as she dashed to her car to read it. Ariadne’s story was on the front page, in the center above the fold, with a picture of Bloom and one of a thin and tired-looking Latina woman identified as Corazon Machado.

BLOOM DENIES RAPE CHARGES IN GROWING SCANDAL

On the jump page was a supporting piece: the state attorney general, Milton Veers, had appointed a special prosecutor to look into the charges that the district attorney had been involved in a conspiracy associated with the Twenty-fifth Precinct extortion rackets. The lead editorial demanded that Bloom step down as D.A. until these allegations, and those from Mrs. Machado, were put to rest. Below the fold was the story of Seaver’s suicide. It was decorated with leaks from the brass at Police Plaza regarding the investigation of corruption in the Twenty-fifth. Marlene noted that, apparently, the corruption was widespread and involved drugs and burglaries as well as prostitution and extortion. She offered a prayer that some of it would stick to Joseph Clancy.

Marlene shifted her fugitive woman without incident, and then drove back to the Walker Street office to do some paperwork and return calls. She was just considering whether to place an ad in Cosmopolitan when the private line rang.

“It’s me,” said Karp. “Reinstatement, back pay, and two point one million. They were out for six and a half hours. I’m jelly.”

“Congratulations, baby!” said Marlene with real feeling. “Oh, good for you! Murray must be ecstatic.”

“Yeah, he’s fairly jolly. We’re in my office, drinking champagne. I have Naomi’s lipstick all over me.”

“Not on your fly, one hopes.”

Karp laughed. “Yes, a smudge or two, but let’s not get petty, Marlene. Oh, speaking of sloppy blowjobs, I seem to be back in Jack Weller’s good graces. He was effusive. The Mayor is now playing himself as a wronged victim of the evil manipulator, Sandy Bloom, and Weller is joining the chorus. Now it’s good for the firm to have made a principled stand defending a fine public servant. Can you believe this?”

“Easily. So, no more talk about leaving, huh? We’re filthy rich forever. On to Goldsboro?”

“Ah, shit, I don’t know, Marlene,” said Karp, sobering. “Since this case I have less enthusiasm for cleaning up the piles of poop left by major corporations. And between you and me, dear, Goldsboro’s hands are not entirely clean.”

“What? And B.L. is going to defend them? I’m shocked. Shocked!”

“Yeah, right. Oh, also, did you hear? Jack Keegan didn’t get his robe. They gave it to Jerome Oster.”

“Who he?”

“Nobody special-some law school professor. This will kill you, though: he’s married to Milt Veers’s sister.”

“The A.G.,” said Marlene, recalling the article in the paper. “Sandy’s covering his ass, you think?”

“Bet on it! But it’s not going to work this time. Look, fuck Bloom anyway. We want to celebrate tonight. Can you set up a sitter and we’ll pick you up in Murray’s car around seven?”

It was more than agreeable to Marlene, who could not recall when last she had spent an evening on the town that did not involve packing heavy-caliber firearms. She collected Lucy at school, noting with pleasure that she was again playing with her old friends, Janice Chen and Miranda Lanin.

Lucy was fed and sent downstairs to stay with neighbors. The only problem was what to wear; she was now swollen enough so that none of her good skirts would close. She chose a blue beaded suit with a long jacket and faked it with safety pins at the waist. At least she had a bag and shoes to match this outfit, and if anybody bitched she could shoot them with her gun.

The evening was a success. The Seligs were roaring, Karp was more relaxed and happier than Marlene had seen him in some time, thanks in part to a whole glass and a half of Dom Perignon. They went to Le Cirque. Le tout New York seemed to pass by their table, showering congratulations on Murray, on Naomi, and Karp, the man of the hour. Nor was Marlene excluded from the general approbation: an extremely famous actress approached her hesitantly in the ladies’ and gushed about how much she admired her and what a wonderful job she was doing with those poor women; it hardly diminished Marlene’s sense of well-being when she followed this with a detailed description of what her ex, the bastard, had done to her. They exchanged numbers.

In the morning Marlene was up early, having passed the evening happily enough on soda water, while Karp, the wretched sot, was still snoring. He was to be allowed to sleep in.

She roused Lucy, started the coffee, and switched on the little kitchen television set to the Today Show. The weather; an author pitching a book; a review of the breaking news. Marlene was cracking eggs into a bowl when the mention of a familiar name brought her out of the pleasant trance of domesticity. She looked up at the screen: a color photograph of Joseph Clancy in his blue uniform with medals. They cut to tape from the night before. A police radio patrol car sat at the curb on a street in Spanish Harlem, the yellow tape holding back a crowd. The passenger door of the car was open. The camera dwelt lovingly on the thick, dark stains spreading over the back of the seat.

The on-scene reporter, a studious black man, reappeared, saying, “Although there were numerous witnesses to the crime, the street was crowded because of an auto accident on the next corner, and, according to police, the stories conflict. Some witnesses said it was a tall teenager in a gang jacket. Others said it was a middle-aged man. Some said it was a thin child not more than twelve. All we know for sure is that an hour ago, someone stepped from the crowd, fired four bullets into the head of Sergeant Joe Clancy as he waited for his driver to fetch their usual coffee and donuts from the convenience store behind me. A police hero is dead, four children are without a father, and no one knows why.”

Marlene left the eggs in their bowl and walked down to her office. She consulted the Rolodex where she kept business cards, and made a call, and left a message. Then she finished scrambling eggs and making toast. She called her family to the table. Her heart was gelling in her chest. The phone rang. She dashed down to her office to pick it up.

“This is Detective Moon. You called me?”

“Yeah. This is about the mugging, the attempted murder? My friend Stupenagel?”

A pause. “Yes, well, Ms. Ciampi, see, that case’s been cleared. We believe that Paul Jackson did that. I’ve already spoken with your friend and she agrees.”

“Oh, good! That’s what I was going to say. I didn’t want to leave any loose ends. Oh, gosh, here I am bothering you with a case you already solved, and you’re probably busy with this terrible murder. Sergeant Clancy. God, I was just talking to him the other day.”

“You knew Joe Clancy?”

Marlene explained why she had been at the Two-Five, omitting, of course, the rest, and then said, “My God, three thirty-eights in the head! At least he didn’t suffer.”

Another pause. “Um, where did you hear they were thirty-eights?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. Didn’t they mention it on TV?”

“They were wrong if they did. Twenty-two’s. They thought it was a Mob hit at first. Then everybody’s talking about this little kid. Look, I got to run, Ms. Ciampi. Thanks for your help.”

Marlene mumbled a good-bye. As soon as the phone was down she went to her gun safe. It took her two tries to work the combination. Her vision blurred; her face felt like a bag of blood.

She reached in and pulled out her chromed.22. Oh, you clever child, she thought, stifling the mounting horror. You heard me yelling at Clancy on the phone, you and Hector both, and you put your little heads together, didn’t you? You spied from your window up there and got the combination and then swiped the pistol and gave it to Hector, and then you put your little silver cap pistol in there so it wouldn’t be missed until Hector had a chance to use it. And you remembered what Clancy had said about running on a schedule. He knew just where to find him.

Marlene replaced the cap pistol where she had found it and closed the safe. She took several deep breaths and pinched her cheeks to get the color back into them. Karp and Lucy were at breakfast already, Karp in his ratty plaid bathrobe, unshaven and happy, Lucy neatly got up in her white leather skirt and a shirt with tiny red checks, chatting to her father about something silly. Marlene forced a smile and sat down, poured some coffee.

“I think I’ll take the whole day off,” said Karp. “I think I should get a day off every time I make three quarters of a million dollars.”

Lucy was impressed by the figure. “I could get a pony!”

“Of course, m’dear,” said Karp expansively. “We’ll train it to go down the fire escape, and it can sleep in your bed.”

And more nonsense of the same sort, Marlene dying inside, laughing away.

They stopped at the school. Lucy opened the door to get out, but Marlene stopped her. “Luce, could I ask you something? You tell me the truth, don’t you? I mean, if you did something really bad, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Lucy did not squirm or avoid Marlene’s gaze, but looked her boldly in the face and replied, “If it was something about you and me, I would. Like if I promised to do something and you asked me did I do it and I didn’t I would tell you.”

“But what if it was, like, a crime? Would you tell me?”

Lucy thought about this for some time. “I would if you asked me and I thought it, well, it wouldn’t hurt anybody.” She hesitated. “But God is the judge of everything, isn’t He? Sister Theresa says, God judges the truth in our hearts.”

Marlene felt a stone rise in her throat; she had made this and would have to live with it. What a rocky path, she thought, and then she said, “Listen! A great man, a priest, said this a long time ago: La falsita non dico mai mai, ma la verita non a ogniuno. It means, I never, never tell a lie, but the truth is not for everyone. Do you understand that?”

Lucy smiled a small Sicilian-Jewish smile. “Of course, Mommy,” she said, and she sang the short Chinese phrase she had used months ago when they had played with the guns. Then Marlene watched her darling little accessory to murder in the first degree run across the pavement into first grade.

And Marlene thought that, yeah, God would judge, judge her and judge Lucy, and she imagined herself arguing at the Throne, probably against a Jesuit, that yeah, it was murder, but here was Clancy, still a hero, instead of a disgraced slimeball, out of a job or in jail, and there’d be an inspector’s funeral and the Emerald Society would play “Flowers of the Forest” on the pipes, and they’d fire a salute and the pale woman would get the flag folded into a blue, starry triangle, plus the pension, plus the insurance, and without a doubt the Department would pass the hat so that little what’s-his-name could stay in the fancy institution, and besides, the son-of-a-bitch deserved it, and let God sort it out, because she, Marlene Ciampi Karp, could not.

“Hector’s back,” said Karp when Marlene returned with Lucy that afternoon. “Really? When?”

“A little past noon. He just walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. I fed him some tuna and he went and sacked out. The poor kid looked beat.”

“Did he say anything about where he was?”

“Oh, yeah! Hector? Hector likes to keep it close. Oh, also, his mom called. We had a nice talk in broken English. I don’t think we should have any trouble getting her settled here. Stupenagel has taken her up.”

Marlene forced a conventional smile. “Oh, that’s nice,” she said. Superconducting magnets were pulling her toward the gun safe.

He had replaced the real pistol, the good boy. She took it out and sniffed the muzzle, which stank of burnt powder. She slipped the thing into her bag and headed for the door.

“Hey, where’re you going?” called Karp.

“Oh, stupid me, I left something I need at the office. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. No, you stay here, Sweety!”

She drove to West Street, to the abandoned pier where gays held parties on summer nights. She walked to the end of the wooden structure, sat down on the edge, and disassembled the pistol. Then she compounded a felony by throwing each piece as far as she could in different directions, there to join generations of other murder weapons on the bed of the slow and stately Hudson.

The next day, Saturday, was the first real hot New York day of the year. Marlene Ciampi was wearing a T-shirt that said Ray’s Pizza, in white on blue. Her daughter was wearing one with the line about a woman needing a man like a fish needs a bicycle, in black on yellow. Behind the daughter trailed a wire cart loaded with soiled laundry, and behind that trailed the huge black dog.

They were walking down Mott Street in Chinatown. The rain of the past week and today’s heat had summoned forth the traditional rich scents of the district-anise, hot oil, rancid meat, rice water, and steam, all on top of that ineffable odor, clean New York. There was a potsy court drawn on the pavement in pink chalk, and Lucy left her cart and picked up a filthy bottle cap from the gutter. She tossed it for a turn of onesies.

Marlene watched Lucy bounce fairy-light through the squares. She looks like a regular kid, she thought, clinging to the hope that this was indeed largely the case, that her offspring was not, in fact, an embryo Duchess of Malfi.

They went into Wing’s Hand Laundry and passed the dirty stuff over the scarred counter, receiving a blue ticket in return and a brown paper package of clean stuff. Marlene paid, and they were about to leave when she had a sudden thought.

“Lucy,” she said, “say your Chinese saying to Mr. Wing.”

“Shen gao huang di yuan,” said Lucy. Middle high high high low.

“Do you know what that means, Mr. Wing?” asked Marlene.

Mr. Wing had to think for a moment, because the saying was in Mandarin and not Cantonese, but it was a familiar saying nonetheless, one he had lived by all his life.

“It means: The mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away,” said Mr. Wing, and then wondered why the white ghost woman with the little girl and the demon dog was laughing until tears sprang from her eyes.