Irresistible Impulse

TWENTY-TWO

Tranh led Lucy through the sparse pines, keeping well away from the paths. It had been some years since he had done this, and then it was in a thicker and warmer forest, but he found that he recalled the art of moving through woods against an unseen enemy. He worked his way around to the west of the big house, toward the boathouse. There was no sound but the rain on its tin roof, no motion not made by the gusts. He left Lucy at the wood line with a comforting word, and taking his Russian pistol in hand, he darted across the narrow lawn and slipped into the building.

All the boats were in their places, but as he walked along the wooden decking built around the basin, he could smell the stink of gas and saw that the surface of the water was thick with greenish oil. Some one had poured the gas out of all the gas cans and opened the drain cocks on the big cruiser, spilling its diesel fuel. But the speedboat was loosely tied at the far end of the boathouse dock, its prow pointing out to the Sound. Tranh jumped down into the boat and made a quick inspection. There were two suitcases in the cockpit. Tranh opened them. One was neatly packed with men’s things. The other was full of women’s clothes, roughly stuffed in. The craft was fueled and ready to go. Its engine was still warm. Someone was planning an escape by sea. He popped the engine coming and examined the Chrysler six.

The boathouse had a small repair shop, a workbench with tools and supplies. From a pegboard he took a coil of thin steel wire and roll of duct tape, and stuck them in his jacket pocket, along with the distributor rotor he had taken from the speedboat’s engine. He found an old greasy blanket and a tarpaulin on a shelf, and he took them too.

He came out of the boathouse and found Lucy where he had left her. She was pale and shivering. He slit the blanket and the tarp with his knife and made a rough poncho out of it and slipped it over the child’s head. He led her back into the pine wood.

He smiled at her and smoothed the damp hair off her forehead. “Little sister,” he said in Cantonese, “now we must be soldiers for a little while. In my country, during the war, girls the same age as you were soldiers and they did very well, and you will do very well too. Wolfe is planning to escape with one of the boats, and he plans to take Wooten-siujè with him. So, he must come down this path with her, and we will prepare an ambush for him. Do you know this word, ambush? No? We lie here in wait, and when they come out we will capture them.”

“With our guns?”

“Just so, with our guns. Now, we must examine the ground and see where is the best place.”

The Music Lover finished tying up Edie Wooten with adhesive tape. The Marneys were tied up similarly and locked in the cellar, as was the dog, who had been perfectly friendly throughout. It was going very well. The summer storm had been a good break, because it would have been difficult to handle Marlene, Tranh, and the little girl all at once, and now they were off the island with no way to return in time to stop him. He certainly didn’t want to hurt anyone without it being absolutely necessary, especially not Marlene, who had been kind to poor dumb Wolfe.

He left Edie lying on the couch and went to get the cello. Reverently, he caressed the miraculous finish, and reflected that the instrument was much like himself. Stradivarius had taken mute spruce and sycamore and willow, and with varnish and glue had made it into something divine, just as the dull material of Jack Wolfe, a hick security guard, a hopeless loser, had been transmogrified by the power of Edie Wooten’s playing into the Music Lover, the perfect audience, soon to be the eternal and only audience.

He lifted the cello and placed it carefully into its case, and put the bow into its velvet clips. Now, should he take the cello down to the boat first, or the musician first and then her instrument? Perhaps he should ask Edie? No, it was important to show decision. He went over to her and said in his music lover voice, so much deeper and more cultured than Wolfe’s voice, the voice of an announcer on WQXR, “I’m going to put your cello on the boat now. I’ll be right back.”

“Please don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.

That was puzzling. His brow wrinkled. How could she not understand? She had been telling him to do this in everything she played. “Of course I’m not going to hurt you, silly! I love you. You just rest here for a minute. Be right back.”

He hoisted the cello and slung Marlon Dane’s MP5 on his free shoulder. The cello was lighter than he had expected. It seemed, indeed, lighter than the machine gun. He walked out the front door, swung right and down the garden path to the boathouse.

“You see, little sister, there is the path he must follow to the boathouse,” explained Tranh. They were squatting in the wood line to the west of the house. “It leads through the rose garden and then sinks between two banks and then rises and curves around before it goes down to the boathouse. You see how I have wired and taped your mother’s pistol to the tree there. It is what we call a fixed gun. It is very useful when you have few troops. We have very few troops, only you and me, but if we are clever, we will win. Now, this wire will fire the gun when you pull it. Take it in your hand. You will crawl under the bush. Do it now! Now lift your head over the stone wall. Can you see the path?”

“Yes. A little of it.”

“And that white rose bush at the end. Can you see that too?”

“Yes.”

“Good. This is very important, so listen. When Wolfe passes that bush, not before, you duck your head behind the wall, all the way down to the ground, and you pull your wire twice, then wait one breath, then twice more. I think that when he hears the bullets pass him, he will drop down behind that low bank for shelter, and fire back at the flash and sound of our gun. I think also that he has a machine gun, so you will hear a very loud banging, and you will also hear the bullets passing overhead. They will make a sharp noise like firecrackers, and pieces of wood and leaves may fall down on you. Will you be frightened?”

“No,” said Lucy; then, after a pause, “A little bit, perhaps.”

“Yes, that is normal, but you will still do what is required.”

“Where will you be?” she asked.

“I will wait at the rear of the house. When I hear your shot, I will come up behind him and capture him.”

That was the plan. Tranh thought it a good one. He really had no doubt that Lucy would do what she should, but as always, the most unpredictable part was the behavior of the enemy. When fired on, Wolfe had four choices. He could go to the ground at the convenient sunken path Tranh had left for him, in which case Tranh would come up behind him and stick a gun in his back. Or he could run back to the house, and Tranh would be between him and the house. Or he could run to the boathouse, in which case he would be trapped, with nowhere to go.

As he took up his position he considered the fourth option and the critical angles of the situation. It was near, perhaps too near, but the child was well hidden, and Wolfe would be confused and deafened by his own firing. And there was nothing else to be done. He waited, squatting, watching.

A door slammed. Heavy steps on the gravel path. Wolfe emerged from around the corner of the house, carrying a cello case, and started down the rose garden path. Tranh slipped along the side of the house in a crouching lope, concealed by the rose bushes.

Two shots sounded. Tranh felt a momentary pleasure. An excellent child, though a girl! Then a burst of three from the MP5, a heavy tread, another burst of three. Bad. Wolfe was doing just what Tranh would have done in the same situation. He was charging the ambushing gun, firing controlled bursts. Tranh took off in pursuit.

The Music Lover had to admit that Wolfe had some useful skills. As soon as the shots were fired, he did the right thing, just as in Vietnam. Run toward the ambush, is what the experienced troops used to say, and although it was scary to do it, the guys who did had a better chance than the ones who dropped where they were, because the V.C. always had mortars or heavy weapons zeroed on the most obvious cover.

Whoever was firing from the wood line shot again, high. The Music Lover saw the flash against the rain-soaked leaves. He fired another burst and kept moving. Now he was in the woods. He crouched behind the tree and waited for his ears to stop ringing from his own firing. He listened, but heard nothing but the rush of wind and the patter of the rain through the woods, and his beating heart.

The plan was still in effect, though. He would take down whoever it was and go on as before. Crouching, he moved through the bushes. There it was, a glint of metal, the muzzle of a semi-automatic pistol.

The Music Lover fired a long burst at where the man holding the gun would be. To his surprise, the gun stayed where it was. He moved forward. He came close enough to see that the pistol had been taped into the crotch of a maple sapling. A wire was wrapped around the trigger. He traced it straight back to another tree, where it took a turn and went off to the left and down. He tugged it. It went slack. The Music Lover saw that the wire disappeared into some bushes ten feet away. He raised his weapon.

From behind him a voice said, “Put down your weapon! Surrender!”

The Music Lover whirled around. He saw the Viet-cong standing there, a thin, wet Vietnamese man in the black clothes they all wore, with his pistol held straight out. The Music Lover tried to bring the machine gun up, but before it had moved an inch, the first of three bullets struck him in the chest.

He fell back onto the wet forest floor. It was all a dream, he thought. I never got out of that ambush. Twelve years, the crummy security jobs, the transforming music, the woman, the plan, cutting that guy’s throat, I dreamed it all. I’m still here in Cu Chi. He thought, how totally fucking far out! Wait’ll I tell the guys! He filled his lungs to yell for the medic, and died.

It was eight the next morning before Marlene could talk sensibly. She came up out of the dream resentfully, reluctant to leave the glittering space opera whose wonderful denizens seemed able to answer the deepest questions that afflicted her soul. And unlike a regular dream, this one stayed in her memory, each detail sharp as crystal, although she could no longer understand what they meant.

“Camel spent off the water,” she said to Tranh. “It’s not less than the sixth, more than the vision. Belanthey is the absolute key.”

“Marie-Helene,” said Tranh, “can you understand me? Do you know where you are?”

The French was somehow able to penetrate through the last seductive vapors of the drug. She blinked, sighed, saw the man, knew him, knew herself, recognized the room she lay in as her bedroom at Wooten’s. Her mouth felt all at once unbearably dry. She asked for water, drank.

“I was out of action for a while, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, for nearly an entire day. I believe it was Robinson that put some drug in your lemonade.”

A frightened look. “Lucy …?”

“She is well.”

Then memory flooded back. “My God! Wolfe, Edie, what …?”

Then Tranh had to explain what had happened, editing around Lucy’s part in it, which he did not feel Marlene was yet up to absorbing. There would, apparently, be no trouble with the authorities, who had already come and gone.

“The Wootens apparently can do no wrong in this locality,” he said. “The police arrived, they were polite, they removed the corpse. Miss Wooten explains Wolfe was simply an insane stranger, shot by a security guard. It is fortunate that she speaks excellent French, or it would have been impossible for me to convey the nuances of the necessary fabrication. Wolfe’s association with your company was not mentioned, the press was not notified. So it ends.”

Marlene felt her nose burn and her eyes overflow. “Poor Wolfe! I still can’t believe it. He was … there was something so …” But she could not explain, not to Tranh, hardly to herself, what the dead man meant to her. It was tied in with her brother, and the fucking war, and the men she hired and the men she hurt, all the sweet, slow violent lost American boys.

She stopped crying and asked, “How is Edie? I should go down and see her.”

She made to get out of bed, but Tranh gently prevented her. “Mlle. Wooten is fine, and it seems that she is not to be disturbed in the mornings for any cause. Listen!”

The cello’s music drifted up from below, sonorous and sad.

“I spoke with her last night at some length. A strange story. Would you like to hear it?”

She would. Tranh said, “He spoke to her about her music. Wolfe. He said he knew that she was speaking to him in a way that no one else could understand. Apparently, he was quite knowledgeable about the instrument and its repertoire. She was amazed despite her terror. A sensitive man. It was at root a kind of jealousy, as if by playing to an audience she was betraying him, like a woman who shares her body with many men, and so he had decided to kidnap her so that she would play for him alone. The things he had taken from her, the recordings, these were no longer sufficient to slake his passion.” And more in this vein.

They talked for some time, remembering Wolfe as a comrade, a stranger, a puzzle beyond their comprehension. “He was a soldier too,” said Tranh musingly. “A good one, an infantryman. In Vietnam.”

“How do you know? Did you see his record?”

“I saw him move. I remembered.”

A number of things now came together in Marlene’s mind: Tranh’s isolation from the normally cohesive Vietnamese community, certain things he had let drop, his peculiar skills, the Russian pistol Lucy had seen …

“You weren’t one of our Vietnamese, were you?”

After a moment he shrugged, smiled faintly, and answered, “No. But Tranh Vinh was. He died on the ocean, during our voyage. There were twelve of us on a fourteen-foot sailboat. I took his papers.”

“Who are you, then?”

“No one, to tell the truth. A casualty of the war, perhaps like Wolfe, or your brother. Yes, I know about him. He comes to the office occasionally when you are not there. I give him small sums. We talk about the war.”

“Does he know?”

“No. Only you know. And, you know, sometimes it is very hard for me to recall that there was once such a person as Pham Vinh Truong, who studied in Paris, who taught mathematics in a lyceé in Saigon, who had a wife and a daughter, who joined, reluctantly, the National Liberation Front, who was a major in the 615th Battalion of what you call the Viet-cong, whose family was killed in a bombing raid, who, after the war, was deemed insufficiently devoted to the state, and was imprisoned and reeducated, who escaped by sea, and who …” He stopped and let out a long sigh. “I suppose it was Lucy that led me to this latest chapter in what seems even to me to be an absurd life. She reminds me so much of Nguyen. Not her appearance, of course, but in spirit, her air. I will deeply regret losing her acquaintance.”

“Why should you lose her acquaintance?” Marlene asked.

Tranh seemed surprised at the question. “Because, I assumed, that now that you know my history, you will not wish to employ me. But I hope that you will not feel obliged to inform the authorities of my-”

“Don’t be absurd!” said Marlene, waving her hand dismissively. “I can’t possibly do without you. For the business with long division alone I owe you lifetime employment. Besides, the war is over.”

It is not, thought Tranh, but he said only, “Thank you, Marie-Helene.”

By nine, Marlene had showered, scrubbed most of the foul taste from her mouth, dressed, went down to the kitchen, heard Mrs. Marney’s version of the story (clearly the most exciting thing that had happened on Wooten Island since the Montauk Indian raid in 1687), fended off the substantial breakfast offered, hugged her daughter, heard her version of the story, was appalled and grateful, and sat down at the kitchen table with toast, coffee, and a cigarette.

Mrs. Marney had a little color TV in the kitchen, turned to some morning news show from the city, with the volume turned down to a barely audible murmur lest practice be disturbed. On it a well-groomed woman was interviewing a distinguished-looking older man. Marlene paid it little attention. She still did not feel herself. The colors of the morning were still too bright, the sounds-the sighing of the cello from the music room, the sound of the birds outside the kitchen window-were still too poignant, chance remarks still resonated with covert meaning. Acid, she thought. The fuckhead had slipped her a really immense dose, probably mixed with more exotic indoles.

The TV switched back to an anchorman. He was saying something about a riot. Tape of a night scene, the city, uptown, a gang of black youths, flames from a shop, an overturned car. The anchorman came back, something about the rain suppressing what could have been an even worse riot in the wake of the Rohbling verdict. Marlene’s attention focused on the faint voice. A shot of the distinguished-looking man who had just been interviewed, speaking to reporters in a lobby of the Criminal Courts Building. Lionel T. Waley in white letters across the screen. Marlene felt a chill, one that increased as she saw her own husband shying from a mob of reporters. She got up and ran to the phone.

Karp was in his bed, playing with his sons. He had his knees up under the cover, and Zik and Zak were having a hilarious time climbing up this mount and rolling down it to Karp’s chest, where they were rewarded with a loud raspberry on the tummy. Karp was having a hilarious time too. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more, at this point or into the indefinite future. The phone rang, for the thirtieth time that morning, and as before, he let the machine pick it up.

“Butch!” called the tinny voice. “Pick up! It’s me.”

Karp reached a long arm over and lifted the receiver.

“Marlene! How are you this fine morning? Want to talk to your sons? Boys, it’s Mommy.”

“I saw the TV. What happened?”

“What happened? Mr. Rohbling was declared not guilty by reason of insanity by a jury of his peers, is what happened. How are you, dear?”

“We’re fine. I’m coming home.”

“No kidding? What about your client?”

“That’s finished. The guy’s dead.”

“Well, that’ll teach him not to mess with my wife,” said Karp.

“Are you all right?” asked Marlene nervously. She might be doped up, but there was something about her husband’s tone she did not like.

“Never better,” said Karp.

“You’re not depressed?”

“I was depressed, but now I’m fine. I am also no longer the Homicide Bureau chief.”

“Jack fired you? The bastard!”

“Not at all. The fact is, I bet the farm on this one, and I got whipped, fair and square. He warned me he would have to cream my butt if we lost, and he did, with his usual Irish charm. I am going to be the Special Assistant to the District Attorney for Special Projects.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Nothing. A job with no responsibilities and a low, low profile. With a paycheck, however.”

“Jesus, Butch! What will you do?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ll spend some time hanging around here with the kids. This motherhood racket is a piece of cake. I don’t know why women complain all the time. Yeah, maybe I’ll just hang loose and do my toenails, and read Goodnight Moon and let you shoot all the bad guys. By the way, did you whack this latest guy personally, or did that fall to one of your minions?”

“A minion. Butch, are you really okay? You sound, I don’t know, kind of wacky.”

Karp considered this seriously for a moment, while he licked, nuzzled, and otherwise amused his children. Then he said, “I guess, what it is, when you stretch the rubber band far enough and then let it snap back, it tends to get a little tangled. I made a big mistake, and I should pay the freight. To tell the absolute truth, I feel like somebody just lifted a Mosler safe off my chest. I mean, it’s been years since I haven’t been worrying about something, fighting something, stressed out to the max. You know?”

“Yeah, I do,” she said, with feeling.

“And Roland and Guma took me out last night to commiserate, and Roland was the one who got hammered, because even though he’s such an ambitious bastard, he still felt bad about the trial.”

“And he’ll pick up the bureau.”

“I expect so. God knows he’s lusted after it long enough. And he’ll do a good job. I’ll tell you something, Marlene, when the foreman stood up there-he was that NYU professor I put in there, the alternate-and read the verdict, I felt this incredible sense of relief. Do you think I set all this up? Insisting on running this trial. Just to get a rest?”

“It wouldn’t completely stun me if it was true,” said Marlene. “I saw Lionel T. on the tube, by the way, pontificating, Apparently, justice was done.”

“Maybe it was,” said Karp. “Rohbling’s going somewhere where he won’t have much access to elderly black ladies, maybe not for twenty-five to life, but a good long time. I will say Waley was gracious in victory. A real gentleman, and a lesson in how to run a trial. But I’ll get him next time.”

“That’s my old Butch!” said Marlene. “Speaking of getting, I have a suggestion for your first special project.”

“I’ll entertain it.”

She described her recent contacts with Vincent Robinson and what he had done to her. Karp was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, in quite a different, a sterner voice, “I think it’s time Dr. Robinson was suppressed.”

“On what charge, Counselor?” asked Marlene.

Karp laughed, a muffled sound, because Zak was trying to sit on his face. “Oh, charges! This is Special Projects, honey. We don’ need no stinkin’ charges.”

Karp had a nice office to go with his new job, one just down the hall from the district attorney’s, with the old-fashioned sort of furniture and a good three-window view. Its former occupant was a man named Conrad Wharton, who had been, under the ancien regime, one of Karp’s most implacable enemies. Sitting in Wharton’s special oversize chair, behind Wharton’s special oversize rosewood desk, made Karp prone to unwonted fits of giggles.

It was now four days after the verdict in the Rohbling trial. The press had gone on to other things, as had the militants. Karp was cheerily back at work, a rested, smiling Karp, a different man from the fearsome, hulking scowler he had lately been, and already launching his first special project.

To this end he had called a meeting in the D.A.’s conference room. Around the long oak table sat those interested in the malefactions of Dr. Vincent Fiske Robinson: Paul Menotti, the U.S. attorney, more grumpy than usual at finding himself off his own turf; Cynthia Doland, his lovely shadow, crisp and demure in a pale off-white linen suit; V.T. Newbury, representing Fraud; Lieutenant Clay Fulton, in charge of investigating the murder of Margaret Evans, in which Robinson was a suspect; and Karp, at the head of the table.

Karp said, “We’re still waiting for one more person, but I think we can get started. Lieutenant Fulton will bring us up to date on the status of the investigation. Clay?”

Fulton took a cheap memo pad out of his breast pocket, thumbed through it, and began. After sketching in his surveillance of Robinson the previous winter and what it had yielded, he moved on to the more fruitful recent inquiries.

“First, we know Robinson was in town on the night Margaret Evans was murdered. He was club hopping off a yacht. They docked at City Island, where a stretch limo met them and took them into Manhattan, and carried them from place to place. We interviewed most of the party. Some say Robinson was there with them throughout; others think he might have slipped away for a while with a woman named Virginia Wooten. What I gather from their accounts was that everyone was doped or drunk enough that they wouldn’t have noticed an elephant wandering away for a couple of hours.”

“What does this Wooten woman say?” Menotti asked.

“I don’t know because we haven’t had a chance to talk with her. She seems to have disappeared.” He paused to let this sink in. “On the other hand,” he continued, “she could be anywhere and show up tomorrow. They don’t call these folks the jet set for nothing. Moving to the victim: Margaret Evans was a medical-records specialist responsible for, among other things, the pharmaceutical records at the St. Nicholas Medical Centers dispensary on Amsterdam Avenue and One-oh-fifth Street. She’d been working there for eight years, and her colleagues considered her a good worker. A decent, honest woman, one of them said. On the night she died … hello, Marlene.”

Marlene paused at the door, then walked in. Karp introduced her as a private detective with some special knowledge of Vincent Robinson. “Ms. Ciampi has agreed to help us out pro bono,” said Karp. “Marlene, I think you know everyone but Paul Menotti from the A.G. and his assistant, Cynthia Doland.” Marlene shook hands and sat down.

Fulton continued from where he had left off. “On the night she died, Evans made herself dinner and ate it alone. At about ten-thirty she opened the door to the people who killed her. No signs of forced entry. I say people, because one of them was a woman. She left some short blond hairs in the apartment. A man out walking his dog noticed a couple he hadn’t seen around before walking out of Evans’s building around eleven. He wasn’t close enough to get a good ID, but it was definitely a man and a woman. Both blonds. So it certainly would’ve been possible for Robinson and this woman Wooten to travel uptown, get into Evans’s apartment on some excuse-I mean, he was the victim’s boss, practically-kill her, and get away downtown without being missed by a bunch of dopers.”

“Why’d he kill her, if he did?” asked Menotti. “I have to say this is pretty speculative.”

Fulton said, “She was going to rat him out. We played the black woman’s voice from the hot-line tape to some of her relatives. It was her.”

In the ensuing silence, Karp said genially, “V.T., maybe you can add something here.”

“Well, first, in the last two months,” said V.T., “there has been a very substantial increase in the street supply of prescription drugs in the City and along the East Coast. This is mostly d-amphetamine, Percodan, Nembutal, and Quaaludes, all drugs with a healthy street market. During that same time period, the St. Nicholas Med Centers filled prescriptions for thirty thousand Percodan tablets and fifty thousand Dextramphetamine caps. The service area seems to be unusually prone to painful afflictions and weight problems. Their books seem to balance, though: a bona fide patient for each piece of scrip. But there’s no doubt it’s a racket, and a big one too. We have a watch on a numbered account in the Caymans that we think is associated with Robinson. Major increases in the same period.”

“That’s still pretty vague,” said Menotti. “You won’t even get an indictment on that showing.”

“Did you show it to him?” V.T. asked Fulton.

“No,” answered the detective, “I was saving it for now. This was found in Margaret Evans’s purse.”

He passed a plastic evidence pouch across the table. In it, Menotti saw, was a slip of paper with his own name and his office phone number written on it. “I don’t recall she ever called us,” he said. “Do you, Cynthia?”

“I don’t think so,” said Doland, “but if she called the hot line, she could have called here too. It could have been anonymous. I’ll review the logs, see if she did.”

Karp said, “Fine. Okay, Marlene here has a view of Robinson that might be helpful. Marlene?”

“I’ve spent some time around this man in connection with another case,” said Marlene. “Vincent Robinson is a sadist. I mean that in the technical sense. He derives pleasure from causing pain, and he’s frank about it. He thinks he’s a superior man and has the right to do what he likes to anyone. He is from a well-off family but has the ambition to become enormously rich in his own right. Needless to say, he is totally amoral. He runs with a group of people who fancy themselves decadents. They indulge in sexual fantasies of the sadomasochistic variety and plenty of drugs, dispensed by Robinson, of course. These people are harmless ninnies, except, possibly, to themselves, but Robinson is a truly dangerous man. For one example, he knew that I would be facing an armed and possibly dangerous stalker, and he slipped some psychedelics into a thermos I was using. For another, if he is our killer, the use of the blue suitcase to smother Mrs. Evans was no accident. He wanted to get back at Mr. Karp here for investigating him, and thought copying Rohbling’s style would help confuse the jury. Which it did. His weak point, in my opinion, is his desire for notice, to be admired in his awfulness. I think he uses Virginia Wooten for this. She is essentially his slave, and he keeps her docile through the use of drugs and sexual cruelty. I like her for the accomplice here. I also think she would also know just about everything useful to us about Dr. R.”

“Yeah, that’s why he sent her to Timbuctu,” said Menotti. “Well, there doesn’t seem much point in going on, until we have Wooten to talk to, and since we have no idea where she is …” He left the thought hanging and began to make leaving-the-meeting motions.

“Oh, I think one of us knows where she is, or could make a good guess,” said Marlene. “How about it, Cynthia? Want to help us out?”

Everyone stared at Marlene and then at Doland, who colored slightly and gave a good imitation of a baffled innocent.

“Is this a joke?” Menotti rumbled.

“No. The last time I saw Ms. Doland, she was dressed in a white confirmation dress and white patent mary-janes-no, that’s a lie. I saw her last just the other day at Wooten Island, with Ginnie Wooten and Robinson. Nice white bikini, no mary-janes. The time before that, I should have said, she was beating up a guy in a sex club so he would come on her shoe. You’re one of that gang in your off hours, honey. I came in here this morning and saw you, and I swear, if it hadn’t been for that crisp linen suit and your prissy look, I probably wouldn’t have recognized you. Maybe your boss will want to talk to you about how come it’s been so hard to pin anything on Robinson. Maybe some discreet leaks? But right now the only thing I personally want to know is: where is she?”

There is a great deal of difference, Marlene reflected some weeks later, between being tied up for fun and being tied up for real. She observed this to her husband, just after he had informed her that Ginnie Wooten had made a full statement implicating Robinson in a dense slate of crimes, including the murder of Margaret Evans. They were in their kitchen, putting groceries away.

“Yeah, Ginnie didn’t much care for jail,” Karp was saying. “I can’t say for certain, but I think they arranged for her to be in a cell with a broader ethnic and sexual orientation than she’s used to up on Park Avenue.”

“Our beautiful mosaic,” said Marlene. “And she spurned it?”

“I’m afraid so. They may have made fun of her watchamacallit’s … you know, those things in her crotch. May have hurt her feelings, poor kid. I really think that Robinson thought she’d take the whole rap for him, but Roland offered her a sweet deal and she jumped at it.”

“They arrest him yet?”

“The warrant’s cut. Roland said he’ll call when they have him wrapped. Want to come to the perp walk? We can hold hands and wave to him as he slithers by.”

“No, I don’t want to see his face again,” said Marlene quickly, and knew that it was true and knew why: that leap in front of the subway train attraction, the foul suck of the sadistic, that dwelt in her own soul, that she fought every day, that Robinson had recognized and gloated over. She felt a chill and shook herself.

“What’s wrong?” asked Karp. “You looked funny.”

“I don’t know,” she said lightly. “Someone walked on my grave.”

And as she busied herself with humble domestic tasks that evening, and cast her mind back over the dreadful and bloody year she had just spent, the idea floated into her mind of a party, a truly gigantic and memorable party, symbolizing … she did not quite know, but something-escape, survival, the crazy dance of her life. She would invite everybody, which was feasible now that they had the elevator. She would invite a gang of Jamaican dopers and killers she knew from Brooklyn, and ask them to provide the music, and a Mexican shelter operator and cutthroat feminist, also a killer, and old Dr. Perlsteiner, and a crazy reporter, an old pal from college, if she was in the country, and everyone from her company, Harry and Sym, and Dane, and the Homicide Bureau and the Rape Bureau to party with the criminals, and an elderly British demolition expert she knew and Karp’s old Aunt Sophie (maybe they would get it on?) and of course, the D.A. himself, and everyone in the building, of course, and her whole family, including her crazy vet brother, and Tranh the reformed Vietcong, who would cook shrimp balls and fried dumplings and other delicacies in a giant flaming wok, while Lucy and her gang of girlfriends carried around plates of smoking goodies, and everything washed down with gallons, crates, of champagne. And, of course, Father Dugan, and ask him to bring that Irish kid, Kevin Mulcahey, along, because, if the kid couldn’t get laid at this party, he might as well check into the seminary. Posie, for one, would suck him out of his clothes in a New York minute. She imagined herself gazing over the throng, explaining to the priest who everyone was, all the impossibly conflicted fragments of her life so far, the lions and the lambs cavorting. Maybe he would have something interesting to say, no doubt in Latin. And let’s have that doctor too, Davidoff, the one whose misadventure had caught Murrey Selig’s eye and started the long, slow demise of Vincent Robinson.

Karp would enjoy such a party, the new Karp, the new relaxed, home-at-six Karp, with whom Marlene had for the last few weeks fallen again in love, owing to the time, the bland, missionless time together alone, which (in a good marriage) is to marital bliss what steroids are to lifting weights.

These pleasant daydreams were interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Karp said, “That’ll be Roland,” and picked it up. He spoke for ten minutes, and when he got off there was an odd look on his face.

“Well?”

“Oh, they picked him up with no trouble. Brought him in, he gave them the finger and asked to call his lawyer. No surprise there.”

“And?” She was observing him closely. He was leaning against the counter, idly tossing a can of soup in his hands, with his gaze fixed on infinite nowhere.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Roland just mentioned that Robinson had retained Lionel Waley.”

Marlene set her jaw, flared her nostrils, and, in a voice of brass, said, “Don’t. Even. Think it!”