Irresistible Impulse

FOURTEEN

Marlene came up from an unpleasant dream involving babies, whips, and priests to the furious shaking of her daughter.

“Mah-om! Get up! I’m going to be late for school, and they’re screaming their stupid heads off!”

They certainly were.

Marlene sat up, rubbed her face, and shook her head. Clearly Karp was gone. No surprise on the first day of that miserable trial, but …

“What-where’s Posie?” she asked around a thick tongue.

“I don’t know. Anyway, she’s not here,” was the reply. Marlene groaned and slipped back into automatic mode: dress, no shower, babies cleaned and fed, dog walked, Lucy to school, Marlene to the office, with the little boys.

“Sym, did Posie call or anything?”

“No.” The girl looked doubtfully at the pair of squirming rug rats. “Do I have to take care of them?”

“No, Sym, I’ll do it myself,” said Marlene, taking the proffered coffee and sticking the sheaf of message slips between her lips. “I’m sure they’ll be fine playing out on the fire escape,” she mumbled, and regretted it immediately when she saw Sym’s expression. Sym would kill for Marlene, or take a bullet, but watching babies was out, at least for now.

Marlene gulped down her coffee, placed the babies in what used to be the nursery, and which had become something of a dumpster and storeroom, removed the poisonous and deadly materials and objects, dug out the few pathetic toys that had been left behind, set up the folding gate at the nursery door, and went to her cubicle to smoke and return calls, with the door open so that she could hear any wails.

The message sheaf was unusually fat. Like Macy’s and Toys “R” Us, Marlene’s was a business that thrived amid the warmth of the holidays, reaching a crescendo around the twelve days of Christmas. It was then that the eggnog flowed and made rational such thoughts as, “Because you won’t take me back and let me be a loving dad again, I will kill you and the kids and myself.” Also, the merry season stimulated any number of women to let the guys come around, whereafter they almost always recalled just exactly why they had tossed them out in the first place, which no amount of tinsel and ho-ho-ho could disguise, and told the guys this, and got their lumps, again. It was not, for Marlene or for many of her clients, A Wonderful Life.

Three from Edie Wooten, one marked urgent. Marlene put these aside: it couldn’t have been that urgent or Sym would have beeped her. A call-in from Wolfe. Six violations of protect orders, two serious, three phone harassments. Four cold calls, ladies having problems with their gentlemen. These first, some counseling, referrals, an appointment made. Some calls to friendly cops. Calls to men, at work, telling them to cut it out, that someone was watching. An hour, two hours, passed this way. Suddenly, Marlene leaped to her feet, heart in mouth, and slammed down a ringing phone. The silence had just struck her. The babies! She dashed out.

Tranh was sitting on the floor next to the playpen. He had made up a solution of dish-washing liquid in a pan, from which he was drawing bubbles with a piece of twisted wire. The twins were rapt and cooing, clinging to the playpen’s bars, bouncing on their chubby legs and grabbing at the iridescent globes as they floated past. Tranh looked up and smiled.

“L’innocent parodis, plein de plaisirs furtifs/Est-il déjà plus loin de l’Inde ou que la Chine?” he said.

Marlene’s heart went back into its place. A Vietnamese assassin who quotes Baudelaire is watching my kids, she thought briefly, then sighed and trotted back to work. Good, affordable child care is hard to find in New York.

Karp had blocked out his opening statement over the weekend, and that morning he had reviewed it carefully with Terrell Collins, even rehearsing it a couple of times, which was a thing he rarely did. The presentation of an opening statement is a peculiar art form that, like singing the blues, has many pretenders but few masters. Like the blues, the opening statement tells a story; like the blues, it is, or must seem, extemporaneous, natural. It must have a sort of artless grace to it, yet it must also penetrate deeply, so that all the evidence that appears during the course of a long trial will be slotted by the jurors’ minds into the places that the prosecutor has prepared for each piece.

Karp was good at this, and liked doing it. On the other hand, this was not your usual liquor-store shooting. He was starting to feel … not precisely nervous, but that he was overtraining, that Waley had him spooked. Since he had arisen that morning at six, something had been nagging at his mind, and he couldn’t bring it to the surface. It irritated him, like a ripped cuticle. A half hour before they were due in court he found himself walking back and forth down the length of his office, taking deep, slow breaths and trying not to think of anything.

“I’m taking notes,” said Collins, watching him. “This is great, the secrets of trial prep revealed. By the master.”

“No, the secret is, wear three pairs of underpants. Also, rub the Speedstick over your whole face, so they don’t see you sweat.”

“You’re kidding,” said Collins.

“Yes, I am.” Karp looked at his watch, again. “Okay, last minute: what did we forget? Witnesses all here, we’re missing witnesses …”

“Yes,” said Collins,” they were all here ten minutes ago, the last time you asked, but I sent them down to Coney, get some hot dogs, some beers, relax a little.”

“Nobody likes a wiseass, Collins,” said Karp, not unkindly. He had grown to like and admire the young man. Without being asked, Collins had taken over all of the tedious tasks involved in trial preparation-the marshaling and scheduling of witnesses, sending the cops of the D.A.’s squad on necessary errands and ensuring these were accomplished, tracking down and securing physical evidence, and keeping in order the mass of paperwork associated with any major trial. As a result of having this work taken from his hands, Karp had arrived at the first day of trial tired but not utterly exhausted.

Collins replied, “Especially not a preternaturally handsome Negro wiseass. I know it. I try to deal with it.”

“Try harder,” said Karp. He shuffled through Collins’s carefully done backgrounders on the defendant and the witnesses, reflexively, to do something with his twitching hands. He was reading through Rohbling’s brief biography for the twentieth time when the thought finally emerged, like a bubble in thick soup. He snapped his fingers. “Oh, I know what I wanted to ask: did a nanny called Clarice ever show up as a subject in any of this?”

Collins thought for a few seconds. “Not that I recall. Where did you get the name?”

“Perlsteiner mentioned it. It could figure later, so why don’t you dig a little-find out what happened to her. She apparently made our boy what he is today, or helped.”

Collins scratched a note. Karp resumed his pacing and breathing. Collins said, “You think that between your opening and Waley’s we’ll take the whole morning?”

Karp stopped and turned. “Oh, Waley won’t open now.”

“He won’t?”

“No, why should he? He doesn’t have a theory of the case that’s different from ours. He’s not out to show there’s a reasonable doubt that Rohbling killed Jane Hughes. He’ll let us go ahead and do that, and stress the bizarre aspects of the case on cross, and then when we conclude, he’ll get up and say yes, yes, this terrible crime, but it could only have been committed by a madman.”

Wolfe came in just before noon, looking haggard and worried. Marlene asked him what was wrong. “You talk to Edie yet?”

“No, what happened?”

“The guy came in last night, into her bedroom.”

“Oh, Jesus! Did he do anything?”

“No, just stayed there and stared at her. Sat on the bed. He had a stocking on his face. Didn’t say anything.”

“Was it Evarti?”

“She couldn’t tell who it was, but it wasn’t Evarti. I checked. He’s in L.A., playing piano. Anyway, she didn’t recognize the guy. She was pretty freaked out.”

“You saw her? Last night?”

Wolfe did not answer immediately. He rubbed his face and cleared his throat. “Well, what it was … I was following Robinson. Guy left a club downtown, not Cuff’s, another one on St. Mark’s, about eleven. Got in a cab, going uptown. I followed him in the car. I think he made me. He must’ve, because he got off at Lex and Forty-first and ran into the subway. I parked and tried to chase him, but you know-it’s a big station. I went up to the street again and I saw a guy go by in a cab that I thought was him and I followed that, but it turned out it wasn’t. So then I went by her apartment to check, and he’d already been and gone. The doorman didn’t see anyone. I feel real bad about it, Marlene.”

“Don’t. It takes three people to set up a real tail, which means twelve for a continuous job. We’re not set up to do stuff like that. You did good, Wolfe. At least now we know for sure who it is.”

“She called him,” said Wolfe.

“Oh, crap, she shouldn’t have done that!”

“Yeah, I said. She said he just laughed at her and told her to relax and enjoy it.”

“That sounds Like Robinson. I should call her.”

She did. It was a brief conversation. When Marlene put down the phone, she said, “Well, well, that’s interesting.”

“What?”

“She wants somebody to sleep in, dog her steps. Doesn’t care what it costs.” She looked at Wolfe. “Interested?”

She saw his Adam’s apple move as he gulped. “Um, yeah, I guess. If you think it wouldn’t be, you know …”

“What, improper? For crying out loud, Wolfe, the sister is the town pump! High society isn’t going to worry if Edie’s got a live-in guard.”

He shrugged and bobbed his head. “Then, okay, I guess. Sure.”

She laughed. “Gosh, Wolfe, you sound like somebody was twisting your arm. You get a nice room on Park Avenue, get to mix with the culture vultures, travel to exotic places-” She stopped. His jaw was tightening. She said, “There’s a problem here that I don’t see. What?”

“Oh, nothing. Just, you know, being around classy people. It’s, um, I keep thinking I’ll do something dumb.”

“Hey, ninety percent is don’t drink from the finger bowls, don’t fart too loud, and always flush. The rest you’ll pick up. So, can I tell her you’re the guy?”

He nodded.

“Great! One thing, though. If Robinson is serious about this, and he feels blocked, he could try to get through you. I need to know that you’re ready for that. Whatever it takes.”

“Oh, yeah. That part I got no problem with,” said Wolfe with a ghostly smile, and then Tranh came in and announced that he had made lunch.

Karp was into his peroration, rolling, feeling good, feeling the jury was focused, attentive, with him. He had told them what the crime was, had told them Rohbling had done it, and now he was about to defuse, to the extent he could at this point, the only possible defense.

“This is an unusual crime, ladies and gentlemen, something you don’t see every day. Some would even call it bizarre. But throughout this trial I would like you to keep one thing clear in your minds. We are not here to examine the inner workings of a human mind. The law does not trouble itself with reasons. We all have dark feelings, fears, rages, worries. I do. You do. But we are civilized, decent human beings. We don’t let ourselves be carried away by our obsessions. And so we must try to concern ourselves exclusively with Jonathan Rohbling’s actions. We will show in the course of the trial just exactly what the defendant did to Jane Hughes. We will show how he planned to disguise himself as a black man, so that he could walk freely around Harlem and insinuate himself into the confidence of Mrs. Hughes. We will show that, far from succumbing to any spontaneous mad rage, he brought into the apartment of the unsuspecting victim his murder weapon, a cloth suitcase, with which he planned and intended to smother her to death. We will show that after the crime, far from surrendering himself to the police, shocked at what he might have done in a moment of uncontrollable rage, or in the derangement of his mind, he stealthily and carefully made his escape. We will show that days later, when confronted by a police detective on the trail of Mrs. Hughes’s murderer, as you will learn, he steadfastly denied that the suitcase he had used in the murder was even his. He was fully aware of the evil he had done, fully aware that it was wrong. He didn’t want anything to do with that suitcase, because he knew that it connected him with the crime. He knew, as you will learn, that in that suitcase there was evidence that placed him in Jane Hughes’s apartment, that announced him as the murderer. And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when you have considered all the evidence we will present, we believe that you will find that the defendant, Jonathan Rohbling”-here Karp paused and looked for a scant three beats at the defendant. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the jury looking too, which was the point. Rohbling appeared scrawny in his nice gray suit. His glasses were still smudged, and his lips were still flecked with the white crust. In the moment that the eyes turned on him, the muscles on the side of his face gave a decided twitch. Karp twirled on his heel and faced the jury, selecting at random the eye of juror number four, Mrs. Ethel McNamara, to hold with his own, and continued- “… planned to murder Jane Hughes, did murder Jane Hughes, and sought to escape from the consequences of a horrible crime that he knew he had done, that he knew was the worst crime one human being can perpetrate against another; and therefore, the People expect that you will find the defendant guilty of the crime for which he has been indicted, the crime of murder in the second degree.”

Karp sat down at the prosecution table. Judge Peoples said, “Mr. Waley?”

Waley rose and declined to open until later. Karp caught from the jury box a tiny sigh of disappointment, a fainter version of the sort heard at the theater when they announce that the star is to be replaced by an understudy. Karp, oddly, felt disappointed himself. At the judge’s direction he rose again and called city engineer Michael Constanzio to present a drawing of the crime scene.

“That went pretty good,” said Terrell Collins.

“Yeah, well, there’s not much you can do to screw up the obligatory witnesses,” Karp replied. “He’s not going to waste much time opposing the fact that a woman got killed in New York County.” They were gathering up their materials, cleaning off the long prosecution table.

“I thought he’d object more. When we showed the crime-scene shots-”

“No, he’s piling up treasure with Peoples,” said Karp. “Peoples likes a smooth run. And like I told you, he doesn’t need a different theory of the case. He’s going to walk the little turd on insanity.”

The hallway outside the courtroom was packed with the press and garishly lit by the lamps of the TV crews. Karp and Collins no-commented and body-checked their way through the throng to the elevators. Once in the car, Karp passed his folders to Collins and slipped out of the building via the D.A.’s back exit.

He trotted south through the chilly street to the Federal Building and went up to Menotti’s office, where a secretary directed him to a conference room.

He slipped in and sat in a chair against the wall, meaning to be unobtrusive, for someone as large as Karp always a difficult goal. In fact, everyone in the room looked up at him. Paul Menotti, sitting at the head of the table, glowered. V.T. Newbury smiled and waved. Cynthia Doland, at her boss’s right hand, regarded him with her usual neutral expression. Menotti paused and hastily introduced Karp to the three strangers at the table. The elderly black man in the dark jacket and clerical collar was Ephraim Coates, the chairman of the board of St. Nicholas Medical Centers, Inc. The thick middle-aged woman in the cerise suit and the gold jewelry was Dr. Sylvia Olivero, the director of the St. Nicholas clinic at 135th Street in East Harlem. The third stranger was Vincent Robinson.

The meeting continued. Karp was something of a connoisseur of interrogatory events, and before too many minutes had passed he realized that this one was not getting anywhere. It was, in the parlance of the prosecutorial bar, a mere circle jerk. Coates was clearly a respectable stooge who had no answers to the technical questions the federal prosecutor wanted answered. Olivero had the answers, but her performance seemed too pat, as if she had been rehearsed, and the answers she gave drove the meeting ever deeper into the bottomless morass of Medicaid regulations, an area in which the doctor had more experience than anyone else in the room. Robinson was polite and bored; they had nothing solid on him and he knew it.

Equally bored, and starting to feel the exhaustion of a day in court, Karp had started glancing at his watch and thinking about how he might gracefully retire when V.T. rose and walked out of the room, motioning Karp to follow him.

In the hallway, V.T. grinned and rolled his eyes. “Fascinating, isn’t it? All the thrills and glamour of Broadway as it used to be.”

“I’m uncharmed, V.T., and I’m beat. Like the old lady said, where’s the beef?”

“This is the vegetarian part, I’m afraid,” said V.T. “What do you think of Robinson?”

“He looks as bored as I felt. What’ve you got on him?”

“Between you and me? In the language of your people, bupkis. St. Nicholas is dirty, we know that, but welcome to the club. Whether they’re dirty like every other poverty health operation, or dirty dirty, felony dirty, is something that it’s going to take the usual eighteen months to determine. Meanwhile, my quasi-legal sources in the banking industry inform me that the doc has something like seventeen million dollars in accounts in various banks in Grand Cayman. The deposits started nine years ago when Robinson first got his Medicaid mills going, but approximately three-quarters of that total had been placed there over the last year-cash deposits. What does that suggest to you?”

Karp shrugged. “That he’s found some new way to scam Medicaid?”

“Uh-uh. Medicaid pays in attractive green checks. Robinson’s declared income is in the form of checks paid by private clients, and checks issued to him by St. Nick as a shareholder and medical adviser. He could conceivably have drawn cash off those, but we checked with his banks and he didn’t. So wherefrom all this cash? Who that we know runs an all-cash business?”

“What, he’s connected?” Karp laughed at the thought. “Robinson is a Mob guy? Come on, V.T., the guy may be slime, but he’s Park Avenue slime.”

“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” said V.T. huffily. “But it’s hard to explain those deposits any other way.”

“Okay, so what’s your theory? He’s moving coke to the upper crust?”

“No, not coke. He doesn’t need coke. He’s a doctor who runs a ton of drugs through a network of clinics. He’s also got a multimillion-dollar accounting system. I’m thinking prescription drugs, or money laundering, or a little of both. He lays off some of the cost of his product on the public fisc, and then sells to the wise guys for cash on the barrel.”

“Hm, put that way, it’s not too funny anymore,” said Karp. “It sure adds weight to the possibility that Robinson whacked that nurse. A white-collar fraud is one thing, assuming she was going to rat him on it, but now you’re talking Rockefeller Law minimum sentences for dope. Look, V.T.: let’s go back in there and you get Menotti to let me ask him a question.”

They did so. Newbury whispered into Menotti’s ear. He frowned, then nodded. After finishing the line of questioning he had under way, Menotti said, heavily, “The Homicide Bureau would like to ask Dr. Robinson a question. Mr. Karp?”

“Yes, thank you, Paul. Dr. Robinson, was Evelyn Longren ever involved in transferring payments of any kind for the St. Nicholas organization?”

Karp watched Robinson’s face very carefully when he said the name and was rewarded by a fascinating display. First, the quick involuntary flicker of alarm, which was what Karp was looking for, then a brief moment of calculation, the eyes blank, then the feigned innocent recollection, the handsome brow knotted. (The other two St. Nicholas people were genuinely puzzled. It was clear that they had no idea who Evelyn Longren was.)

“No, Miss Longren was my private nurse at my private practice,” Robinson said. “She had no contact at all with my work at the medical centers.” Robinson was looking Karp right in the eye as he said this, and after he said it he smiled and kept the stare. Karp had been lied to by experts, and he knew the signs, and he also knew well the arrogant gaze of the malefactor who knows you have nothing on him, who knows he’s going to get away with it, and loves rubbing the world’s face in it. Why can’t they ever resist showing off? Karp thought, and returned the smile. Deep in his prosecutorial heart, almost below the conscious level, he felt a familiar little sensation, a precise analogy to the beep that sounds in the cockpit of an F-15 when its missile has locked onto a target.

“Posie’s back,” said Sym over the intercom late that afternoon. “She already sneaked in the back there, but you ought to go see her.”

Marlene found the young woman in the nursery with the twins, who were bubbling with glee to have their nurse back and, apparently, delighted with the new colors in her face. Tranh had vanished into his kitchen. Zak was on her lap, trying to tug off the fresh bandage that covered her left eye and ear. Zik was tapping like an osteopath on the cast on her right wrist, using a rubber Zimby.

“Christ in Heaven!” Marlene cried. “What happened to you?”

“I’m sorry, Marlene,” said Posie in a whispery voice. “I should’ve called. I had to go to the emergency room and-”

“Oh, don’t be silly! You’re hurt. What happened?”

“I was, like, in a car wreck,” said Posie, looking at Marlene and then quickly away.

“Oh, yeah? Whose car? When was this?”

“Um, last night. Some guy, I didn’t know his name.”

“Uh-huh. You went to St. Vee’s?”

She had. Not wanting to waste time listening to more lies, Marlene went back to her office and called St. Vincent’s emergency room. Identifying herself (illegally) as a police officer, she found, after a number of calls, the duty nurse who had treated Posie. The duty nurse, a woman for whom blunt trauma was as an open book, did not think Posie had been injured in a car accident. She thought Posie had been beaten, and had so reported it to the police, as required by law.

Marlene said nothing after she got off the phone, but went back to work. Harry came back, cursing equally the Germans and ladies’ professional tennis. They shared news, and then Marlene took Posie and the boys and Lucy back to the loft. While Posie was giving the boys their bath and Lucy was settled with her homework, Marlene rifled the patched denim bag that served Posie as a purse, locating a ragged address book, from which she recorded one address. She changed into her black leather pants and engineer boots and put on her motorcycle jacket and a Yankees cap, into which she thrust her hair. Then she went to her tool closet, took an eighteen-inch pipe wrench from her plumber’s chest, wrapped this object in several sheets of the Times, and walked out.

Twenty minutes later, Marlene was pounding on the door of a tenement apartment at Sixth Street off C. The door was painted the color of old dried blood, and little flakes of it bounced into the air as she struck it. The hallway stank of hot lard, it being largely a Latino building now, but the smell seemed to be mixed with the scorched chicken feather stink of the former Jews layered over the cabbage of the yet more former Irish.

After three minutes of banging a voice answered from the other side: a curse and an inquiry. Posie’s Luke was a late, heavy sleeper.

“It’s me, Luke. Open up, honey!” Marlene called out sweetly.

Heavy steps. The door rattled and swung open. Luke Last-name-unimportant stood blinking in the doorway, dressed in a pair of ragged blue jeans and nothing else, a thin man in his late twenties, with a stupid-handsome face and shoulder-length dirty dirty-blond hair.

“Yeah, what?” he asked and then, looking her over, “Who’re you?” Marlene had her baseball cap pulled low over her forehead.

“Do you always come to the door with your fly wide open?” she inquired. Of course, he looked down, and when he did, Marlene whacked him over the head with the pipe wrench.

He staggered back into the apartment, his knees sagging. Marlene followed him in, slamming the door behind her, and hit him across the face with the wrench, a two-handed tennis serve swing. He went down, sprawling on his back, blood exploding from his nose. Marlene stood above him, adopted a wood-chopper’s stance, and brought the head of the tool down on his groin as hard as she could. He shrieked high and loud, and curled up on his side in a fetal position, breathing hoarse, bubbly cries. Marlene knelt beside him with her knee pressed into his neck.

“This is for Posie,” she hissed into his ear. “You are not to see her again. You are not to talk to her on the phone. If you see her coming on the street, you are to run away. In fact, the best thing for you to do is to get out of town permanently. If I hear that you have seen her or talked to her, I will come back, with help, and then I will take you apart. You will not be able to walk or talk or move for years after that. Nod your head if you understand.”

He nodded so hard he sprayed blood all around his head, like a flower.

Down in the street, Marlene had to lean against her car with her head down before the nausea passed. She stripped the bloody, shredded newspaper from the wrench and tossed it into a waste-basket. She used a tissue to wipe up blood drops. They came off easily from the oily leather.

Marlene drove slowly to Grand Street to buy her family dinner. She ordered two large pizzas at Lombardi’s on Spring Street and, to kill time while they were baking, she walked down Mott to Grand and Ferrara’s. There, at one of the tables in the back, she saw Father Dugan, dressed in a canvas jacket and a flannel shirt, sitting with a youth of about eighteen wearing a maroon parochial school blazer. The boy had the kind of Irish beauty that drew the eye, especially Marlene’s eye: shiny red curls, that milky skin, eyes from heaven. She sat one table away from them. They were deep in conversation, speaking in low, confidential voices, and if the priest noticed her, he made no sign. The waitress came, and she ordered a double-shot americano and a napoleon pastry. After violence, sugar was Marlene’s rule.

The two had stopped talking while the waitress was at Marlene’s table. When she left, Father Dugan met Marlene’s eye and nodded, smiling. “Join us?” he said.

Marlene moved her coffee and napoleon and sat in a chair at the other table. The boy stared at her, confused. He blushed, the red moving up his pale cheeks like spilled wine on a tablecloth.

“This is Kevin Mulcahey, Marlene. Marlene Ciampi, one of our parishioners,” said the priest. The boy mumbled a greeting but did not offer to shake hands. He said, “Well, hum, thanks, Father. I’ll see you later.” He got up so abruptly he knocked his chair over, made an embarrassed noise, righted the chair, snatched up an ugly plastic, bulging briefcase and almost ran from the restaurant.

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” said Marlene. “I didn’t mean to scare your friend away.”

“Oh, Kevin’s all right. He’s a little nervous. We were discussing his vocation.”

“You’re recruiting him?”

“Rather the reverse. I’m advising him to take some time.”

“You don’t think he’d make a good priest?”

Father Dugan sipped his cappuccino contemplatively. “I have no opinion either way, but the fact is, he lusts after women and it frightens him to death, and so he imagines that becoming a priest will solve the problem. I was trying to suggest to him, gently, that this is not necessarily the case.”

“You’re speaking from personal experience?” Marlene ventured lightly. He looked at her, his face calm but his eyes radiating the sort of soul-shriveling loving disappointment she recalled so well from Sacred Heart. They must have a special school that teaches them how to do that, Marlene thought as adolescent sweat broke out on her face.

He broke the gaze and said musingly, “Yes, sex. It’s so difficult for secular people to comprehend that there are a certain number of men and women in the world who don’t care for it, for whom it’s rather an irritation. Like psoriasis, for example. Or they just don’t like it, like some people just can’t stand olives or peanut butter. Some of these people are naturally attracted to celibate institutions and are content in them. Others of them persist in sexual activity because the society seems to demand it and they don’t wish to appear odd or unhealthy, and so they are unhappy and make their partners unhappy. Conversely, there are highly sexed people who have been taught that those feelings are shameful and to seek refuge in celibacy. They often get into trouble. As they say, when priests fail it’s either Punch or Judy. But there are worse things too, sad to say. Choirboys, et cetera.” He paused and looked at her closely before resuming. “A few of these, however, are able to convert their passion into spirituality, and these become the great saints in the world-Augustine, of course, Francis, Teresa of Avila, St. Ignatius Loyola-”

“Ignatius? I thought he was a misogynist.”

“Well, he thought it best to steer clear of women, but that was because they couldn’t get enough of him. A little, skinny, limping guy and they practically followed him around on the street, slavering. Fine ladies, princesses, even, and of course he wanted to avoid scandal, which would have torpedoed the Society. It did, of course, eventually, but that was much later.” (Marlene knew the story, naturally, from school: the Sacred Heart has something of a grudge against the founder of the Jesuits because, by his fiat, the Society of Jesus is the only religious order that does not have a sister house of nuns, and Sacred Heart nuns are ordinarily just those whom nature has designed to be Jesuits. Marlene occasionally thought that this unfair exclusion, much alluded to by the mesdames, had something to do with her own choices in life.)

“What Kevin needs,” said Father Dugan, steering the conversation again, “is a nice but not too nice girl, experienced but unthreatening.”

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled,” said Marlene. “Would you like the rest of the pastry? My eyes were bigger than my stomach. Besides, I have to go pick up my pizzas.”

“Bless you, no, thank you,” said the priest, smiling again and patting his belly, which as far as Marlene could see was perfectly flat. “It’s an indulgence I can’t afford.”

“Oh, come on! I won’t tell-seal of the confessional.”

The priest laughed. “Ah, Loyola, how wise you were to protect us from the temptations of charming penitents! No, really, dear, quodcumque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi.”

“Um, anything you thus press on me, I discredit and revolt at?” Marlene translated.

“Yes, Horace. Very good.” He beamed at her, his eyes full of affection and pain, mixed well. She thought that he must be nearly as lonely as Tranh, or Harry. He stood up and dropped some coins on the table.

“Now, I have to go too,” he said. “I have to fix the trap in the rectory sink. Oh, you would know where can I find some plumber’s dope and a cheap used pipe wrench?”

“You plumb?”

“We Jesuits are advised to be all things to all men. To Father Raymond and Mrs. Finn, our housekeeper, I am a plumber.”

“In that case, you can get the dope at Canal Hardware off Lafayette,” said Marlene. “I just happen to have an eighteen-inch pipe wrench in my car. You can borrow it.” They walked out of the restaurant to Marlene’s VW, where she handed over the tool.

“Ah, thank you. You were plumbing today too?”

“No,” said Marlene, “I was just using it to beat up a guy.”

Father Dugan inclined his head inquiringly.

“Sunday, Father,” said Marlene. “In the box.”

“What happened to Posie?” asked Karp as he helped Marlene clear away the remains of the family’s informal dinner.

“Some piece of shit pounded on her. Again. The worst part is, she went looking for it. Christ, Butch, she lives with me. She knows what I do. It’s like … shit, I don’t even know what it’s like.”

“A nun on the stroll?” suggested Karp.

“Thank you. You know, I may have to hand in my feminist card, but I’m starting to think that some women want to get pounded, just like some guys like to have women pee on them.”

“It’s the natural result of the contradictions caused by our corrupt patriarchal society,” said Karp primly. Marlene snorted. “God, and if you believed that, wouldn’t you be the perfect man!”