Irresistible Impulse

FIVE

Dr. Davidoff came in to Karp’s office later that day, accompanied by Clay Fulton and, somewhat to Karp’s surprise, a man named Aaron Weinstein, who was introduced as Davidoff’s lawyer. Karp and Fulton exchanged a brief look. The detective’s eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch, his broad shoulders somewhat more: I didn’t tell him anything, boss.

The three men settled themselves in chairs around Karp’s desk. Weinstein, a portly, balding man somewhat older than Karp, projected an air of bonhomie, focusing charm on Karp, noting mutual friends, claiming acquaintanceship with the powerful. He told a small joke. The message: we’re all friends here aiming at straightening out this little difficulty, but on the other hand, we are not pushovers. He did it well; that was what Davidoff was paying him for.

After the usual five minutes of smiles, Karp opened the real bidding with, “So, Doctor, how did you come to be the attending physician at the death of Ms. Longren?”

Davidoff paused, flicked a glance at his lawyer, and answered, “I was asked to as a professional courtesy by Dr. Vincent Robinson.”

“I see. And was it usual for Dr. Robinson to call you in for consultation?”

“No. I mean, yes, it was unusual.”

“Very unusual? Maybe unique?” Karp pressed.

Here Weinstein stepped in, asking genially, “Um, could we slow down here a little, Mr. Karp? Maybe we could answer your questions better if we had some idea where they were going. Surely, there’s no implication or suggestion that Dr. Davidoff did anything untoward or wrong. So, what are we …?”

“Well, actually, we don’t know that, do we?” Karp responded. “What we see is a young woman dead under circumstances that we might call suspicious.”

“Suspicious!” Weinstein exclaimed. “How ‘suspicious’? Good Lord, there were two physicians in attendance.”

“Yeah, that’s the point, Mr. Weinstein. An overabundance of docs and an insufficiency of records pertaining to the deceased. There is no record of Ms. Longren ever having been a patient of Dr. Davidoff’s. Moreover, Ms. Longren was an employee of Dr. Robinson, and Dr. Robinson was a beneficiary of her insurance policy. And drugs were involved; there is evidence of a hasty attempt to dispose of barbiturates and other drugs at Dr. Robinson’s apartment.”

The geniality had flown from Weinstein’s face. He whispered something into Davidoff’s ear. Karp caught the word “records.” Davidoff nodded and licked his lips nervously. Weinstein said, “Actually, Dr. Davidoff does have records of his treatment in this case. Show him, Mark.”

Whereupon Dr. Davidoff drew from a leather folder a manila records jacket that, when opened, proved to contain only an incomplete cover sheet and three pages of lined loose-leaf paper covered with hurried, scribbled writing. Weinstein sighed gently. Detective Fulton cleared his throat. Mark Davidoff flushed and jiggled his leg. Karp stared at him and said, “Doctor, you have a big decision to make right now. We have an exhumation order in on the body of Evelyn Longren. I think that whatever else we learn from it, we’ll find that she did not die from viral pneumonia. So, pretty soon you’re going to have to decide whether you want to be a witness in a homicide case or one of the defendants.” Karp’s tone was polite, dry, firm, designed by years of experience to pierce the composure of middle-class, heavily lawyered culprits.

More murmured conversation between doctor and lawyer, at the end of which Weinstein said, “Without any admission of wrongdoing, we are perfectly willing to be completely frank and open as to Dr. Davidoff’s part in this affair.”

Karp nodded and picked up the phone to call for a steno.

Harry Bello was back in the office when Marlene returned from re-depositing Lucy at P.S. 1.

“What’s with Lucy?” he asked, using a tone and wearing an expression designed to promote guilt. (Marlene’s mothering had never been up to Harry’s standards; even Harry’s mother might have fallen short with respect to caring for Lucy.) Although she was prepared to cut Harry some slack, he having been a detective for thirty years and therefore incapable of asking a question that did not assume some vicious secret, she was not having any of it today.

“Nothing, Harry,” she said shortly. “It’s all straightened out.”

A doubtful look, a 138-grain magnum doubtful look.

“She is fine, Harry!”

Tiny shrug, change of subject. “How did it go with your uptown fiddle player?”

“Cellist. I like her. It’s some fan, a nut. He’s started to follow her.”

“Are we taking it?”

“Yeah, it feels like it could go sour. And she’s got the money for it.”

Harry’s eyes flicked up to the large board pinned over his desk. He said, “Umnh.”

Marlene looked at the board, at the names of clients and commitments, at the names of their largely part-time staff written in with black grease pencil on a plastic overlay, and saw what the grunt meant. Bello amp; Ciampi handled three kinds of jobs. The first was conventional security for celebrities, which entailed bodyguard services when the women (nearly all their clients were women) were out and about, performing, modeling, having lunch, being vulnerable. This was the cash cow, but also required the most time and the most rigid scheduling. The second was a kind of pest control: finding men who were stalking or abusing women and getting them to stop, either through writs and prosecution or through what Marlene called reason and persuasion. Finally, there was the pro bono work, which usually involved desperate women, often with children, who were fleeing dangerous relationships, passing through shelters, needing to be set up with new lives. This was by far the work most likely to lead to actual violence, and Marlene had always done most of it herself. Now, looking over the manning chart, Marlene had to admit they were overextended, especially if Marlene wanted to continue the time-consuming pro bono tasks. Which she did.

“We need at least another guy, full-time,” she suggested.

“Two,” said Harry. “Dane called, said he’s bringing over a guy who might be okay.”

“Checked out?”

Harry lifted a noncommittal eyebrow. “Ask him. He’s supposed to be coming in today. Meanwhile, I’ll look around.”

“For one guy, Harry.”

“Two, Marlene, you want to spend a night at home, tuck in your kids-”

“Okay, already, Harry!” Marlene snapped, and went back to her own office, her brow knotted. Harry was perfectly correct, but she resented being told that her fantasy of a cozy little crusade was fading. The little firm had grown perhaps too rapidly. Starting with just Harry and herself two years ago, it now employed the equivalent of twenty full-time people, but because many of their employees were part-time cops, they actually had over thirty people on their payroll. This was a serious problem: neither she nor Harry were famous for their management skills. Sym was bright and willing, and Marlene had started to load her with routine duties, but even Marlene hesitated at giving any independent responsibility to a nineteen-year-old ex-streetwalker.

So they muddled on; as yet no disaster had occurred. In order to do what Marlene wanted done, Bello amp; Ciampi needed cash flow, and cash flow came from frightened rich people, who, Marlene did not require a Chicago economist to verify, had all the cash. All businesses have natural scales: auto factories do not employ twenty people, nor do florist shops employ twenty thousand. The firm’s natural size was going to plateau at about fifty full-time slots in the field, Marlene estimated. Of course, she could can the whole thing and go back to running what amounted to a risky hobby, turning down ninety-five percent of the women she might have helped. That, or give up her personal life in the cause of muscular feminism.

And it was not going to be so easy to get the people. Checking out potential staff was a tedious but necessary task, since security work was one of the favorite occupations of serial sex murderers, and Marlene would have preferred not to inadvertently bring one of these aboard.

At her desk, she saw the phone message slip Sym had marked urgent in red letters and taped to the desk lamp. It bore a familiar name, Carrie Lanin, a name that, together with the red message, made her think, oh, marvelous, this is all I need today. The woman was by way of being Marlene’s first customer: in a sense, the founding victim. An attractive single mother, a fabric designer, she had run afoul of a true obsessive, a man who had known her in high school and apparently had thought of little else since. He had arranged a meeting with her, and had instantly become jealous, aggressive, obdurate in his attentions. Marlene had once run a domestic-violence unit in the D.A.’s office, and had a good sense of what sort of man was likely to pose a physical danger. She had sensed that this man, Rob Pruitt, was the type that sang death is better than being without you, darling, and you go first. Marlene had therefore done a little preemptive striking, goading Pruitt into attacking her and then nailing him. He had gotten two to five for first-degree assault.

Marlene made a quick calculation of the usual time spent in prison for that crime, and concluded that Pruitt must have been sprung, unless Carrie Lanin had turned up yet another unsuitable swain. She dialed the number.

“Marlene!” cried Lanin in a shrill voice. “Oh, Jesus, thank God you called. I’ve been locked in here crouched by the phone all day. He’s back!”

“Pruitt.”

“The scumbag called me like nothing ever happened. He still loves me. At work yet. I had to go home.”

“Did you call the cops? The protection order’s still valid.”

“Oh, of course I called the cops, Marlene. They agreed to stop the war on crime to find this guy who wants to send me flowers and candy. An arrest is fucking imminent!” Her voice teetered close to hysteria.

Keeping her own tone calm, Marlene said, “Okay, Carrie. What exactly did he say to you?”

“Who, the scumbag? Oh, the usual shit. How he only wanted to be with me, take care of me-oh, and he had some choice words about you. You’re the bitch who came between us. He’s going to get you out of the way too.” A pause. Then, sobbing. “Marlene, I’m really freaked. His voice. It was like a fucking zombie, like he was dead already. What should I d-d-do?” Blubbering.

Marlene waited until the crying had subsided, reflecting the while that she spent a good deal of her time, probably as much as some vacationing psychiatrists, listening to people cry over the phone. Then she said, “Carrie, listen to me. I’m going to put a man on your place. I’m going to call in some chips with the cops. We will get him and we will prosecute the violation. He’s on parole, he’ll go back to jail. Stay calm, let the machine answer. If it’s me, I’ll ring once, hang up, and call again. Got that?”

More protests, but the weeping phase seemed to be over for now. In a few minutes Marlene was able to hang up and start worrying about where she was going to find the guy she had promised Carrie Lanin.

“What did you think of that?” said Karp to Fulton, when Dr. Davidoff and his lawyer had left.

“He sounds on the level,” the detective answered after a moment’s consideration. “I don’t think he’ll be inviting Robinson over for drinks anytime soon-you could see he was really pissed off.”

“Right, the guy set him up. He had a corpse on his hands and he wanted his buddy to carry the can, and it would have washed if not for Murray Selig. So, we dig the girl up and go from there.”

Fulton nodded, and they moved easily into the various other cases the detective was handling for the Homicide Bureau. These were not many. Fulton was coming to the close of his career with the NYPD, a career so plump with glory-the Department’s first black college-educated detective lieutenant, and holder of innumerable awards, including the Medal of Valor, was how he was usually introduced-that he could write his own ticket, and what he chose to write was a vague assignment that allowed him to function as the private cop of the head of the New York D.A.’s Homicide Bureau.

The two men had been close for years, since, in fact, Fulton had been a detective third and Karp a damply fresh assistant D.A. Fulton was a dozen years older than Karp in regular time, and about a century older in street experience, and something in Karp had attracted Fulton from the first day. He had barged in and became Karp’s mentor, a post he still endeavored to fill.

“I hear you’re going to take over this granny-killer thing, Rohbling,” he observed casually, flicking a speck from the lapel of his beautifully cut blue suit. Something of a dude, Fulton. He wore custom shoes too, but since his wife was well off, an executive with a restaurant chain, he did not take bribes.

“Can’t keep anything from a big-time dick like you,” said Karp lightly. And then, noting Fulton’s dour expression, added, “You don’t approve?”

“Approve ain’t the point, son. You’re going to get creamed on this one.”

“Why? It’s a solid case.”

“Case ain’t the point neither. Unless you got a jury from a Black Muslim mosque, which you are definitely not going to get, this fucker going to fly away on an NGI.”

“Race isn’t going to be an issue here,” said Karp stiffly, thinking in passing of his conversation with Roland.

Fulton gaped theatrically and wiggled his finger vigorously in an ear. “Sorry, son, I must be getting deef. I thought I heard you say race don’t count in this one.”

“It doesn’t.”

Fulton’s face broke into a broad smile, and he started to laugh, short bursts of low chuckle that went on for some time, an infectious merriment in which Karp was hard pressed not to join.

“What?” he exclaimed at last.

“Son, listen good here,” Fulton said. “Look at it the other way. What if a black boy’d whacked five white grannies? They put him under the fuckin’ jail, man. They put him so deep under, he be oil. You want to talk to that boy, you got to drive into the Texaco, say, gimme a quart of thirty-weight. Hey, how you doin’, Leroy? Leroy say, glug, glug, glug… ”

Karp, laughing, said, “That was a good imitation of a Negro, Clay. You’re getting better at it.”

“Yeah, well, I get a lot of practice.”

“No, but seriously, what’s your point? The system’s so racist we nail a black kid for the same crime we give a pass to a white kid on?”

“This is a surprise to you?”

“It’s a surprise you think I’d let it go down like that,” said Karp sharply.

“It ain’t you, son,” replied Fulton, turning sober. “It’s just the fact that nine times out of ten, your crazy nigger goes to the slams, and a rich white kid with a good voodoo head shrinker is going to walk. Now, if he happen to have killed a quinella of cute little blondie girls, that’s one thing. Jury might say, he’s crazy, but hang his white ass anyway. Now, a bunch of old black ladies, all but one of them on welfare?” He shook his head. “You might win it, ’cause you’re that good, but it’s going to be uphill, son. Way uphill. Steep.”

Karp was shaking his head doggedly. “Say what you want,” he said, “if the case is presented right, the jury will do the right thing. Meanwhile, what about this guy Featherstone? You know him?”

“Uh-huh,” said Fulton, happy to change the subject. One of the reasons he liked Karp was that he had rarely met a person of either race so devoid of race prejudice. On the other hand, that may have made it hard for him to understand how deeply that particular poison was etched into the bone of the society. “Gordy Featherstone. He just got his gold tin when I was in the Two-Eight, in ’76 or so. Wasn’t on my squad, but I heard he was a pretty good cop. Smart. Didn’t take. Didn’t kick ass that much. The collar on Rohbling was a nice piece of work too.”

“Yeah, it was. I need to talk to him about it in the next couple days. But as far as you know, there’s nothing in there that might come up to his disadvantage?”

Fulton grinned again. “Well, he’s black. That’s usually enough.”

They finished their conversation, Fulton promising to look into the affairs of Dr. Vincent Robinson, and then the detective left, leaving Karp with the burden of Rohbling lying embodied in the thick files on his desk and on the wire cart nearby. He had already gone through it all once, enough to follow the case’s presentation to the grand jury. That was coming up in a few days, and Roland Hrcany would bear the brunt of that task. Karp had no doubt that an indictment would be secured on all five homicide counts; grand juries almost always did what the prosecutor asked of them. Then they would arraign on the indictments, a judge would be selected, and the trial date would be set. The trial before a petit jury was, of course, something else again.

He picked up the file on the murder of Jane Hughes and resumed reading. This was the crime for which Jonathan Rohbling had been arrested, and was for that reason the key to the prosecution. The other four women had not even been classed as homicides until Rohbling had confessed to killing them. Mrs. Hughes had been sixty-eight, the widow of a mechanic, the mother of five, the grandmother of seven. On Saturday, April 20 of current year, at around eleven in the evening, neighbors in her respectable St. Nicholas Avenue building had heard shouts and crashing sounds from her apartment. Shortly thereafter, witnesses had seen a young black man carrying a soft-sided dark suitcase leaving the building. He was unknown to these witnesses. The following day Mrs. Hughes’s son had arrived early to take his mother to church. There being no answer to his ring, he had the superintendent open the door, and found his mother dead on the kitchen floor, amid signs of a violent struggle. The medical examiner had declared smothering to be the cause of death. Karp read through the M.E.’s report. There had been no sexual assault. Gordon Featherstone had caught the homicide case.

Karp read through the sheaf of DD5’s generated by the detective’s investigation. With allowances for the stilted language required by the NYPD, these were good, clear reports, a separate form for every action carried out in pursuit of the unknown killer. What was missing was the contemplation, the thinking, the instinct, that had led Featherstone along his successful path. Karp had to piece this together from hints. Son reports nothing of value missing from the apartment. Son reports mother did not own a dark soft-sided suitcase. Coffee set out for two persons on coffee table in living room of victim’s apartment. No sign of forced entry. Now the interpretation: Mrs. Hughes had known her assailant, had been entertaining him, in fact. The assailant was not a thief, nor was he a rapist. That let out the local bad boys. The family and friends all had alibis; there was no sign of murderous rancor there either. Confirmed: Featherstone’s witnesses did not find the picture of the killer in the zone book at the Two-Eight. There were fingerprints (Karp read the forensics reports), but they did not match any stored in the files of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. A request was sent out, without much hope behind it, to the FBI. Of more immediate interest were the fibers found under Mrs. Hughes’s nails and, curiously, between her teeth and caught deep in her respiratory tract. They were navy blue cotton canvas fibers. A mystery.

Karp loved this part. He loved reading the DD5’s and the arrest reports, the crime-scene unit reports, the forensic and M.E. reports. He loved seeing how the little tendrils of information curled into cords, and then ropes, and then stout cables, winding around a particular person, tying him tightly, dragging him with Karp’s help, of course, to justice. Ultimately, he would have to re-create Featherstone’s process for the jury, to show them that the cable had coiled itself inevitably around the throat of one man and one man alone, the D., Jonathan Rohbling.

And as he thought this, he could not help thinking a more disconcerting thought. In general, despite the importance accorded motive in the fictive universe of films and books, Karp thought motive irrelevant. If the facts showed the guy did it, who cared why he did it? Naturally, since juries read books and saw movies, motive inevitably made an appearance. Still, you never wanted the prosecution to rest on purported mental states-did the defendant hate, or love, or fear, or desire-because it was a place for the defense to introduce doubt, and of course, there was inherently doubt in any objectification of an inner state. So Karp never based his presentation on motive; he wanted to convince the jury only that the defendant was at a certain place and did a certain thing to the victim, which caused the victim’s death.

Here, however, the nature of the crime cried out for some explanation. Why would a young white man from a wealthy Long Island suburb travel to Harlem, disguise himself as a black man, and murder elderly black women? The jury would want to know. Karp wanted to know. He read on, although he doubted he would find the answer among the DD5’s.

“Hey, Marlene,” said Marlon Dane at the door to her office, “this is the guy. Wolfe, this is Marlene Ciampi, the boss.”

“Glad to meet you,” said Wolfe, stepping forward and holding out his hand.

Marlene shook it and sized him up. A muscle guy, first of all. The hand was big, hard, and warm, and attached to a considerable arm and shoulder. Six-three, two-ten, Marlene’s experienced eye estimated, a jock, a bodybuilder. The face was pleasant enough in an all-American way, sandy hair, cropped closer than was fashionable, odd sandy eyebrows that stood out sharply against what must have been a tanning-parlor tan. He wore a tweed jacket over a white sweater over a shirt and tie, with dark wool pants and shined shoes. The eyes were tan too, the nose undistinguished, the expression-what was it? Not quite menschlike. An astronaut, but one of the ones who never got to go on a moon mission. Well, she thought as she gestured him to a seat, that’s what you generally got when you hired security. The best you could expect was just enough of the almost right stuff to get by.

They sat down. A little small talk. He’d spent time down South and in New England, wanted to try his luck in New York. He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a folded resume. Marlene read it. Clean, neatly typed, not too many misspellings. Jackson Wolfe, age thirty-one, unmarried. It was a usual sort of history. High school (letters in football, track), one year of college, military service with an M.P. unit in Korea, honorable discharge, black belt in tae kwan do. The job history was a scatter of security work in several big East Coast cities, no longer than two years in each place. Also not untypical. Security was America’s fastest-growing business and nearly the only one in which a strong, quick, presentable, unskilled man who didn’t much care for the classroom could freely move from job to job and earn a modest living. It was the modern equivalent of being a cowboy or a seaman a century before, a drifter’s job.

Marlene looked up from the resume. “It says here you’re working for Macy’s now. How come you want to leave?”

“I don’t much like working retail.”

“Why not?”

Wolfe shrugged and said, hesitantly and with what seemed embarrassment, “Well, you know. It’s all shoplifting, pilferage. I don’t like … I mean, the people we pick up, most of them, they’re pathetic. Some skinny teenager, they got to have the sixty-dollar bag with the logo, the right sneakers they saw on the TV. We bust ’em, they sit in the office crying, you know, what’ll my dad say, and stuff. Even the pros, you know, miserable junkies, most of them. And the-what d’you call ’em-the guys who think they’re girls-”

“Transvestites?”

“… yeah, them: I couldn’t believe it, a PR kid, a boy, trying to walk out with an eight-hundred-dollar gown. Pathetic! Anyway, I figure I’d rather, you know, protect people from, like, terrorists, wackos, and like that. And when Dane-Lonny-told me you might be looking-”

“Right. Well, as a matter of fact, we are looking for some people.” Marlene looked at Wolfe. He met her gaze, his eyes mild, neutral, a reflecting lake, willing to be liked.

“You have any problems with working for a woman, Mr. Wolfe?” she asked.

Shrug. “No. A boss is a boss, as long as they’re not, you know …”

“What?”

“A jerk. Let me do my job, and stuff.” Wolfe allowed himself a shy smile.

Marlene smiled back. One advantage of hiring cops part-time was that your backgrounders were all done for you. The chances of getting a bum or a weirdo were much reduced. On the other hand, cops already had a job, a job that always came first, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to generate the coverage Bello amp; Ciampi needed for their clients out of the constantly changing patterns of their part-time availability. Also, when some dignitary visited, or some disaster happened, they might have the bulk of their coverage yanked away without much notice.

“Okay, Mr. Wolfe, let me check these references and run your name for record, and I’ll get back to you.”

“Okay, well, ah, thanks for the interview. I, ah, hope I can work here.”

Marlene smiled and shook the proffered hand again, and Wolfe walked out. She took the resume into Harry’s office, where she found Marlon Dane waving around a Heckler amp; Koch MP5 submachine gun.

“No,” said Marlene.

“Marlene, would you just listen?” said Dane, cradling the hideous thing like a puppy.

She glared, cocking her head to fix him with the full force of her good eye. Dane was a former cop, discharged on one of those odd NYPD disability pensions that paid people half their pay forever for extremely subtle injuries. Dane had been pushed down a flight of stairs by a fugitive, producing a stiffness in his right elbow such that were he to be involved in a furious gunfight, he might not be able to out-draw the desperado. Besides that he was fine: more than that, was bursting with energy. He was a stocky man with dense brown hair, dark eyes, and a curiously lush thick-lipped mouth. Today he was dressed in his undercover outfit, a red hooded sweatshirt stained with plaster dust, faded jeans, and yellow construction boots. He looked like he was about to set a rivet with the gun.

“I don’t have to listen, Lonny,” said Marlene. “This is not open to argument. I thought I made myself clear the first time you brought it up, and also the second through fifth times, but let me restate it in simpler terms. Ready? No machine guns. None. Not one. Negatory on the machine guns. We are eighty-six as far as machine guns go. Do I have to go on, or do you get it yet?”

“Marlene, I got to say, you’re making a mistake here,” Dane persisted, ignoring this last. “All the big security firms use these. The clients expect it, especially the big shots. It looks cool too, the client gets out of the limo, we’re standing there with these babies slung under our coats …”

Marlene sighed. “But, Lonny,” she said in a controlled manner, “you know, we have very few clients who are heads of state or oil ministers. The people who try to get to our clients are jerky boyfriends and lone nuts, not gangs of international terrorists. I get nervous with some of the guys we hire carrying revolvers. They start carrying something like that, I might as well check into a psycho ward.”

“But …”

“Lonny? Please? End of discussion.”

Which it was. Dane put the weapon away in his duffel bag, and conversation turned to a report on the man Dane was watching, Donald Monto, the rejected swain of one Mary Kay Miller. Monto had been spending his evenings drinking and cruising past Ms. Miller’s Brooklyn home. Before long, Marlene had every confidence, he would be drunk enough to break down her door, as he had on two past occasions, and try to beat Ms. Miller into jelly in order to demonstrate his affection. On the next occasion, however, Dane would be there, would identify himself, and should the man fail to retreat (a reasonable expectation), Dane would, in the presence of Ms. Miller, render Monto incapable of doing anything anti-door for a good long time, perhaps indefinitely.

“That stronzo!” snapped Marlene when Dane had gone. “Fucking machine guns!”

“Muscle,” said Harry. “He does okay, though, he don’t have to do much heavy thinking. How was his friend?”

“Looks all right,” she said, tossing the resume on the desk. “More muscle. You’ll check him out. If he’s okay, let’s give him a shot. He sounds like he’s got a sympathetic heart, and he looks like he can take care of himself. This is not an everyday combo.”

“He probably likes bazookas, your luck,” said Harry. Marlene had her first serious laugh of the day.

Outside the building, the Music Lover looked up from across the street at the wide semicircular window. He could see Marlene and Harry. If she turned her head, he thought, she could look right at me. And then she would turn her head away. He was so full of delicious pleasure at the thought that he quivered, and his groin grew hot.

SIX

“You look beat,” Karp said.

“I’m totally ruined,” Marlene said. “I have to pee, and I can’t bear the thought of moving my body out of bed to the bathroom. Could you, like, do it for me?”

“I would, but I’m too tired.”

“Your trial, huh?”

Both of them were talking like zombies, lying corpse-like in bed, staring up at the ceiling with glazed eyes; it would have been amusing if either of them could have spared the energy to laugh. It was Sunday night after a weekend with no rest.

“Right,” sighed Karp. “I have to see Waley tomorrow. I thought I should know the case and the relevant law before I met him. He probably does. But I had to spend all Friday with this silly woman who screwed up a perfectly simple case, where the witnesses weren’t-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” groaned Marlene, putting her hands over her ears.

“Right, why bother? The bureau is going to go down the tubes.”

“Uh-huh. Explain to me again why it was so important for you to take this case, even though everyone told you not to.”

“It was important because I am an arrogant schmuck, and as an arrogant schmuck I naturally believe I can do things that no one else can do, like managing a major case against the best defense lawyer in the country while running a homicide bureau that handles a thousand cases a year. How’s Lucy doing?”

“Terrible. She went to bed in tears again. I feel like I’m tearing pieces of flesh from her body. She’s so ashamed of herself she can’t think straight, and I lose my temper. I am many things, but apparently a math teacher is not one of them. Why can’t she learn this shit? I’m thinking. It’s easy! And of course, it’s not easy for her for some reason, and then I think she needs to go into some kind of counseling, so she can tell someone what a bad mother I am. Anyway, it’s clear that something else is going on-it’s not intellectual deficit. I mean, for Christ’s sake, the kid speaks Chinese, she reads at the ninth-grade level … Fuck! I can’t think about it anymore. Look, could you, like, stroke my head?”

“Like this?”

“Yes. Kind of ease the toxic thoughts out of there. Would you mind terribly if I wet the bed?”

“Not at all. On the other hand …” He paused, listening. “I think we are both going to have to get up anyway.” A thin cranky wail drifted through the loft, which was soon followed by a second, almost identical cry, and then both gained volume until they had reached the precise pitch and intensity that evolution had found to be the most irritating to the human adult-but doubled.

“Teething,” said Karp unnecessarily, and swung his feet out of bed.

Marlene clenched her own teeth, distorted her face into a Medusa-like rictus, balled her fists, and thrashed her legs violently about, emitting a hideous sound somewhere between a muffled shriek and a sob. The spasm lasted for a good half minute, leaving Marlene limper even than before. Karp ignored the display, having grown used to it since the twins arrived. Marlene had assured him that the release it afforded helped prevent her from dashing their tiny brains out.

“I’ll get Zak,” said Karp nobly, the senior twin being notoriously the harder to calm.

Marlene grunted, cursed, stiffened her jaw, got out of bed, and clumped into the bathroom. This can’t go on, she thought. I have to do something to make this stop.

Karp was not ready to meet with Lionel T. Waley the next morning. The regular meeting of the bureau to review cases had gone badly, although young Nolan had much improved his case against Morella and had received a nice round of applause. Karp was not as up on the cases as he usually was and was compelled to fake it, a habit he deplored in others and despised in himself. Roland Hrcany made sure that Karp knew he knew that Karp was screwing up, and Karp was certain that many of the others did too. While he could depend on Roland’s native sadism to prevent any truly wretched cases from going forward, the meeting simply added to his feeling that things were slipping out of control.

Lionel Waley’s presence made him feel it even more, through invidious comparison, for if anyone was ever in complete control, it was Waley. Karp had taken as much care with his appearance as he could manage, but he had slept only three out of the last twenty-four hours and it showed. He had definitely remembered to shave, because there was a prominent gash smarting under his chin, and he was dressed, although he realized just after he had risen to shake Waley’s hand that the shirt button over his belt was undone, allowing a charming view of his undershirt.

Waley was, in contrast, as perfect as an oil portrait of a nineteenth-century alderman, and like one of these, he seemed to glow softly. He was a slight, well-proportioned man in his early sixties. His hair was white and curly, like that of a show poodle, or Santa, and this lent a softness to what otherwise would have been too severe a face. His eyes, large and canny under thick white brows, were gray-blue, and he wore a beautifully tailored, conservatively cut suit of a similar shade, the sort of ineffably custom color that never appears on pipe racks at even the best department stores. He spoke in deep, mellow. tones, like an oboe in low register, and he had the perfectly neutral accent of a newscaster.

After a somewhat briefer than usual bout of pleasantries, Karp said, “Your meeting, Mr. Waley. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I believe we can do something for each other, Mr. Karp, and put this dreadful tragedy behind us in a way mutually credible to our respective causes.”

This was not the sort of language that dripped from the mouths of lawyers much in evidence at 10 °Centre Street. The stately period was not often heard in those precincts, and when it was, Karp was frequently the source. He enjoyed a certain formality of language, as befitting the dignity of the law (assuming it still retained any in Centre Street) and tending both to suppress the passion that could lead to legal errors and to allay the hostility of the lowlifes. Now, however, Karp found it irritating, perhaps because he sensed that Waley considered him one of the lowlifes.

Bluntly, therefore, he snapped, “You want to make a deal?”

“Any arrangement that would avoid the spectacle of a trial would, I think, be an act of mercy, for my client, for his parents, and, given the case’s peculiar circumstances, for the community at large.”

“What about the families of the murdered women? You think it would be a mercy for them too?”

Karp’s tone was harsh, but Waley seemed not to notice. In the same mild voice he answered, “Frankly? Yes, I believe so, unless you still imagine that it would be purgative or healing for them to sit in a courtroom day after day, pecked at by the vulture press, while experts jabber on about precisely how their beloved mother, or sister, or grandmother died. You don’t believe that, do you?”

In fact, Karp did not; nevertheless, and paradoxically, that he agreed only served to heighten his irritation. He said, “Okay, Mr. Waley, you made your point. If Jonathan says he’s really, truly sorry, he can go home, no hard feelings.”

A tiny pause, as if something faintly disgusting had occurred. Then Waley said, “Really, Mr. Karp, I did not expect cheap sarcasm from you, someone with your reputation among the criminal bar of this city as a decent and honorable man.”

Karp’s neck grew warm; he could hardly believe it. Embarrassed? By a lawyer? He cleared his throat and snapped, “What’s your plan, counselor?”

Waley replied, “My only aim here, Mr. Karp, is to obtain for Jonathan Rohbling the psychiatric treatment he very badly needs, in a setting where he has some chance of recovery. We would therefore offer a guilty plea to manslaughter in the second degree on the homicide of Jane Hughes, the sentence not to exceed five years. All other charges would be dismissed. We would make application to the court that sentence be served in an appropriate facility, and we would expect the People to concur.”

“You’re serious?”

“Perfectly.”

“So, essentially, we would give your client a free pass for four murders and around three years in a psychiatric country club for the fifth? I’m curious, sir, why you would imagine there to be any advantage to the People in such an arrangement.”

“The advantage is avoiding a racially divisive circus trial, which cannot but lead to the same result.”

“That’s breathtaking confidence, even for you, Mr. Waley. We have a confession for all five murders. We have solid forensic evidence linking Rohbling to the murder of Jane Hughes-”

Waley waved his hand dismissively. “Mr. Karp, the murder of Hughes is neither here nor there. We concede Hughes died as a result of my client’s actions. But the boy is insane, a palpable and obvious lunatic. Your confession, so-called, is therefore meaningless and without legal effect, as I’m certain any judge will confirm. And any jury confronted with the evidence will bring in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“He was found capable of assisting with his defense.”

“Oh, yes,” said Waley irritably, “so he is. He can also tie his shoes and go to the toilet by himself. You know very well that has nothing to do with what we’re discussing. He is, in fact, insane.”

“That is your opinion. I disagree.”

Waley stared at him for what seemed a long while. “You disagree? Tell me, Mr. Karp, have you met my client? Have you spoken at any length with Jonathan Rohbling?”

“No, of course not. Why should I? I know what he did, which is the only issue here.”

“Is it? Yes, I suppose it must be, to you.” Waley’s face took on a look that was nearly wistful, with little flarings of the nostrils. “You know, Mr. Karp, as much as I respect our adversary system, it is at times like these I wish that we could simply sit down like civilized men and just do the decent thing, to do what we would want done if our own families or loved ones were involved in this dreadful affair. Instead we will lend our considerable talents to making each other look foolish or evil, we will bring out what the British charmingly call trick cyclists to pontificate upon whether this pathetic boy is mad or sane, and in the end the jury will either commit him for treatment, which is what we ought to have done during this interview, or else condemn him to certain, miserable death in some prison.”

“Death?”

“Of course, death! I don’t mean the formal penalty. But what do you suppose the fate will be in Attica or Dannemora of a slight, pale boy accused of murdering five black grandmothers?” Waley coughed and stiffened his face, as if the air in Karp’s office had somehow congealed or turned noisome. Then, in one dramatic motion, he rose to his feet and slipped his fawn cashmere topcoat over his shoulders. He smiled sadly, extending his hand, which Karp shook. “A pleasure, Mr. Karp. Regrettably, it seems we will be much in each other’s way in the coming months.”

Waley paused at the door. “They tell me you have never lost a homicide case, Mr. Karp. A string of over one hundred now, isn’t it?”

“Something like that.”

Waley smiled. It was a warm, delighted smile, and Karp felt his face twitching to return it. “Well, well,” said Waley, and left.

“It was the most uncanny thing, V.T.,” said Karp that afternoon over a mediocre Chinese lunch. “I mean, it’s not like I’m a blushing virgin. I’ve been around the block with the defense bar, good ones, sleaze balls, the usual range, but this guy was a piece of work. You know, for an instant I actually felt myself wanting to accept his offer. He seemed so reasonable, so decent …”

“Perhaps he is,” said V.T. Newbury. He was a small, fair, handsome, elegant man whose most common facial expression was one of ironic surprise. He wore it now.

“Oh, right!” Karp snorted. “V.T., he’s a lawyer. Be real! No, but, Jesus, I tell you, man, I haven’t had a warm douche like that in years. Some kind of weird rays coming off that guy.”

“Probably has demonic powers.”

“I’d believe it. Three sixes tattooed on his ass, the whole thing. What a technique, though! Fucker’ll go through a jury like a dose of salts.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“I’m pissing in my pants, V.T. You know, I’ll tell you something strange. When he was sitting there, I swear I was flashing on Garrahy. Not because he looked like him, or he sounded like him, because he didn’t, but there was a presence there, like the guy was the best and he knew it and it didn’t affect him-there was no arrogance. You remember Garrahy-there wasn’t an arrogant bone in his body. Well, this guy is the same thing, like God reached down and touched him and said, Hey, Lionel, somebody got to be the best fucking defense lawyer in the universe and I picked you.”

“You sound like you’re in love,” said V.T.

Karp laughed. “I don’t know, man, but I’m definitely going to have to bring my lunch to this trial. The thing of it is, whatever you do in life, there comes a moment-I mean, let’s face it, I won a lot of cases, but seventy-five percent of them were mutts with a dumb alibi and a court-appointed good Democrat out of Brooklyn Law night school. This is going to be something completely different.”

“As they say on the Monty Python show. So, you feel like backing out?”

“What I feel like is getting into my jammies, pulling the quilt over my head, and putting my thumb in my mouth. You want the last shrimp? Another thing I flashed on when I was coming over here. It happened back in ’61. Summer after my sophomore year. I was a hot ball player, I’d just burned up the PAC-Ten, set a single-game scoring record, and set a couple of Cal records too. I had triple doubles in a dozen games. Okay, it’s the summer, I’m playing ball in the Rucker Summer League, up in the Rucker playground on 155th Street. This, you should know, is like the killer playground of the world. There’s guys playing there, that’s all they do, street guys. If they could read and write, they’d’ve been All-Americans, first-round draft choices. So it’s a tough game, but I’m hot, I’m like one of four white guys playing in the whole place. I could still move back then, and jump, not too embarrassingly, and shoot, of course. Okay, so at Rucker, in those days, the thing was, you never knew who’d turn up. Chamberlain would come by, Richie Guerin, Oscar Robertson, and the thing was, you weren’t supposed to notice them as anything special, they would just jump in and run around with the playground guys. Now, of course, there would be TV cameras and the whole entourage, but back then it was still a game. Anyway, it’s after the regular competitions, pick-up playground games, it’s getting dark, that kind of blue twilight you get in the summers here when you think it’s never going to be night, and you can play forever, the lights are on, and the game I’m in ends and some guys leave and others drift in. This is done on automatic pilot, five guys strip off their shirts, five guys keep them on, and you’re playing, twenty-one points, deuce rule, make it, take it. Okay, so seven seconds into the game I notice the guy I’m playing against is something special, and I look, and I think to myself, holy shit, it’s Elgin Baylor. This was the year he averaged thirty-eight points a game in the NBA. So, in the next fifteen minutes I learned the difference between a hot sophomore college ball player and one of the best basketball players in history.”

“How did you do?”

“He pounded me into the ground like a tent peg-what do you think?”

“And your point is …?”

“I’m not sure,” said Karp, his forehead wrinkling. “Obviously, I want to win, but maybe even more I want to be in the game with this guy. He gets my juices flowing. You know, we win cases all the time because we only go in there, to court, when we think we have an overwhelming case, and when the mutt hasn’t got the sense to cop a plea. But the fact it, the system is skewed to let the guy off unless the prosecutor’s really sharp. We should get beat a lot more, and we would if we faced more people like Waley.”

“Lucky us,” said V.T. “What am I hearing, you think you’ll get creamed?”

Karp shrugged. “I’m not sure I’d bet my next three paychecks on me to win. He’ll go with NGI, so it’s going to be dueling shrinks, which is always a toss-up. Also, with him in there, I make one mistake it’s all over. But that’s the job: they let the bull in, you got to wave the cape. Otherwise, you walk up the aisles selling enchiladas. So what’re you up to?”

What V.T. was up to was the undermining of a complex Medicaid-fraud scheme. He described the convolutions of this with verve and humor, while Karp, not really following the details, was content to relax and listen in the dim booth, occasionally dropping a piece of Mongolian beef into his mouth and nodding appropriately.

Suddenly, however, he grew alert. “What was that doc’s name again?” he asked.

“Which doc? Robinson?”

“Yeah, Vincent Robinson. What do you have on him?”

“Oh, Vince! Old Vincent is a rare bird. He runs a string of clinics, three in Harlem, one in Washington Heights, two in the South Bronx. A social benefactor, Dr. Robinson. He does well by doing good.”

“These are Medicaid mills?”

“We think so. Medicaid and Medicare.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You haven’t been listening. I’m hurt. To review, Medicaid is the federally funded program for people on welfare. Medicare is for the old, regardless of income. The federal government sets rates for particular payments for medical procedures and drugs in both cases, but with Medicaid the money is run through the state, and through city agencies with the state making a contribution. The paperwork is extremely complex. For example, you can have a health-service provider bill another provider for services, only some of which are Medicaid-eligible under Part Two-”

“Snore,” said Karp. “Just the story on Robinson, please. What’s he up to?”

“But all the fun is in the details!”

“No, really, V.T. Tell me about Robinson.”

“Well, since you insist, about a month ago the Southern District U.S. Attorney’s Office got an anonymous tip that Robinson’s clinics were dirty. They have a hotline for stuff like that. They did some preliminary screening and found discrepancies. Okay, no surprise there, the regs are so complicated that practically everyone in the program is in some kind of irregularity, but Robinson’s operation was big enough and funny enough to flash on the screen. Paul Menotti caught the case. You know him?”

“By rep. A hard charger.”

“To be sure. Anyway, Paul called me in, because of the state law violation, of course, but also because, though I blush to say it, if you want to find out where naughty money is flowing, I am The Man.”

“And was there naughty money flowing?”

“Mmm, that’s what we’re trying to determine. There’re a couple of different ways to defraud these programs. Most fraudulent docs just add on treatments they haven’t done and bill for them. An old lady comes in, they have some lackey slip her the happy pills, and then they bill for a full examination, with lab work. A little upscale from that is where they invent patients, which has the advantage that they don’t even have to have a real clinic, just a bunch of government patient numbers and a vivid medical imagination.”

“Where do they get the numbers?”

“Oh, from actual people, alive or dead. Mrs. Jones dies and they keep using her number for billing. Or Mrs. Jones wanders off to another provider, but she’s still, quote, getting her pills every week, unquote, and the feds’re paying. And then, finally, we have the whole lab and drug business, kickbacks to and from labs and pharmacies-the labs pad their billings and the clinics get a schmear off it. Or the clinic generates scrip for drugs, but the pharmacy doesn’t really supply them, and they get a cut of the billings. Or the pharmacy really does supply drugs, which the feds pay for, and then the drugs get sold on the street. The only limit is the human imagination.”

“This is big money?”

“Immense. A bonanza. Fifteen billion in Medicare-Medicaid money goes through New York City every year. Robinson’s clinics alone have over thirty million bucks’ worth of the pie. How much of that is skim, God only knows.”

“Assuming God is an accountant.”

“Of course God is an accountant. It’s the basis of all morality.”

“You can’t get to him? Robinson, not God.”

“Not yet. As I said, he’s a rare bird. Very smart, very smooth.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Yes, we’ve had several dates. It’s all a big misunderstanding. Dr. Robinson is a Park Avenue specialist. He maintains an interest in St. Nicholas Medical Centers, Inc., which is the holding company for the clinics, out of noblesse oblige: he has an investment in the corporation, and he gets a modest return in exchange for his medical advice and his Harvard degree. The board of the corporation and the management of the clinics are full of local fronts, of the correct ethnicity. We find any fraud, in other words, his tame Negroes and Hispanics take the fall.”

“So what happened to the money he’s supposed to be skimming here?” Karp asked.

“Ah, that’s the question,” said V.T., beaming. “And the answer? The answer is, we don’t know yet. We have to move somewhat gingerly with Robinson. He is heavily accoutered with legal counsel. What we do know is, one, he set up St. Nicholas, and two, St. Nicholas is dirty. It follows that he has his fingers in the money stream somehow, but …” V.T. shrugged elegantly. “What’s your interest in the doctor? Prostate acting up again?”

Karp laughed. “Au contraire. If anything, it is I who will be jamming large irregular objects up Doctor Robinson’s rectum. Tell me, does Dr. R. strike you as the sort of man who might remove a close associate if that associate grew troublesome?”

“ ‘Remove’? You mean the Big M?”

Karp nodded. “Could be. His nurse slash girlfriend turned up dead this past September, in his bedroom, and Robinson went through a lot of trouble to distance himself from the death. The death itself is suspicious.”

“Oh-ho,” said V.T. and was silent for a moment, playing with his lip. Then he said, “Well, since you ask, I’d have to give that a qualified yes. There is a shitload of money floating free here, and if someone was, say, threatening to tell us where it is, or trying to grab a piece of it, then, yes, I’d say Robinson could do the deed. As a moral being, Dr. Robinson is easily distinguishable from Dr. Schweitzer.”

“It sounds like it,” said Karp. “We’re digging up the nurse for a full postmortem. If it shows anything nasty, we’ll get the doc in for a frank exchange of views.”

“Speaking of which, why don’t you sit in with me and Menotti before that? It might give you some sense of a possible motive, or maybe you’ll pick up something we missed.”

Motive again, thought Karp, his mind drifting involuntarily back to Rohbling. Greed seemed so simple compared to whatever impelled young Jonathan. He made a mental note: if Waley pleaded NGI, he would have the defendant examined by somebody he trusted more than the usual Bellevue hacks.

He realized V.T. was staring at him. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Had a thought. Yeah, good idea. I’d like to meet Menotti.”

“Then come with me,” said V.T. “There’s a meeting to talk about warrants at one-thirty today.”

Still strained with each other, but holding hands nevertheless, Marlene and her daughter walked with the big dog down Canal Street toward Tranh’s noodle shop.

“Oh, no!” cried Lucy when they had come near enough to see the debris on the pavement, the police sawhorses set up as barriers, the yellow crime-scene tape. Tranh’s was a black vacancy in the row of shops, stinking of char and dripping with dirty water, from out of which presently emerged a stocky middle-aged man in a firefighter’s coat and helmet. He paused at the barrier to write on a clipboard. Marlene approached him.

“Excuse me, I’m a friend of the man who ran this place. Do you know … did anything happen to him?”

“Not as far as I know,” said the man. “Somebody lived back there behind the restaurant, but he must’ve got out.”

“This was an arson, wasn’t it?”

The officer’s face grew blank. “It’s a case under investigation.”

“Yeah, right. Look, I used to be with the D.A. Here’s my card. I saw a serious altercation the other day between the owner and a bunch of punks who were trying to extort him. I can ID them anytime you want.”

The investigator took the card and expressed his thanks. Then Lucy shouted, “Mr. Tranh!” and pointed across Canal Street, where, indeed, Mr. Tranh was emerging from the all-night Chinese movie theater. He was dressed in an army blanket, black trousers, and flip-flops, and carried a cheap Day-glo orange vinyl duffel bag. Marlene and Lucy dashed across the wide thoroughfare to him and deluged him with a babble of questions in Cantonese and French, while the dog sniffed suspiciously at Tranh’s blanket.

Tranh responded to Marlene in the latter tongue. “Madame, I beg you, relieve yourself of any concern. I am perfectly well.”

“But what happened, M. Tranh?”

“I was visited in the early morning by arsonists. Interesting, because I had just made up my mind to purchase a grille for the window. This demonstrates the necessity of acting swiftly upon one’s instincts, does it not? In any case, they threw a stone through the glass, followed by a gasoline bomb. I am not a heavy sleeper, and so I was warned and was able to escape through the back door.”

“My God! I didn’t realize you lived behind the restaurant. You must have lost everything.”

“Yes. Everything, save for these trifles.” Tranh indicated the duffel bag with his toe. “I regret only my little library, some items of which had sentimental value. This is now the third time I have lost everything. One grows accustomed to it, I find: to having nothing.”

“But where will you stay?” Marlene asked. “And you can’t go wandering around in a blanket. It is the autumn already. Have you got any cash?”

“A little, thank you. And I am given to understand that there are facilities for the destitute-”

“Ah, your compatriots of the Vietnamese community will provide for you?”

“I fear not. The Vietnamese community and I are not in communion. No, I refer to the establishment of the city itself.”

“The men’s hostels? Never! They are, you comprehend, a species of hell, full of robbers and those of degenerate tastes. I will not allow it. No, I have a suite of small rooms connected with my business. You will stay there until we can devise a better solution.”

“Madame, I could not possibly impose upon you …”

“Nonsense!” cried Marlene. “I insist. Are you not my friend?” she said. “And it is no imposition. In return, you can perform a valuable service for me perhaps. I operate a security business. I detect that you are not altogether lacking in useful skills associated with such work. Therefore, let us walk!” She took the man’s arm, whereupon he nodded in assent and lifted his bag.

“Mom! What’re you talking about?” demanded Lucy, who was unused to being the one who was missing the story, at least in Chinatown.

“Mr. Tranh is going to live behind my office,” said Marlene.

“With Sym and Posie?” Lucy began to giggle.

“We’ll work something out,” said Marlene, an interesting idea beginning to form in her mind.