Justice Denied

7

Have a good time?” asked Karp when Marlene arrived, breathless, at the loft. She put on a smile and declined to tell her husband that she had been chased from the park by armed thugs bent on murder. Instead she conveyed delight in the recreational opportunities of the neighborhood and then asked, “How did your thing with Roland go? Did he attack you with his triceps?”

Karp also put on a smile and declined to tell Marlene about Roland offering him a piece of ass. He did mention the idea of a bet on the Tomasian thing.

“You should have taken him up on it. We could use the money,” said Marlene, placing the baby, with a full bottle stuck in her gob, on a large mat in the center of the living zone. She then went into the kitchen and set the kettle to boil. Karp followed her in and sat on a stool at the butcher block counter.

“Unless you don’t think it’s a lock?” she added, looking at him questioningly.

He took a while before replying. “I honestly don’t know. I’d hate to think Roland was right, but like I said before, and like I said to him, that’s not the damn point. Why doesn’t anybody get this? The point is the investigation’s fucked. And I’ve been trying to think how I can straighten it out.” He paused, looked at her, and then glanced away. Then he asked, “Harry Bello’s coming to work starting Monday, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, why?” She caught the expression on his face, and her eyes narrowed and she snarled. “Oh, no! No fucking way! You’re not going to take my only investigator away from me. You’ve got a hundred cops you could use.”

“Yeah, but this is an off-the-books job. I can’t set up a regular cop and go, ‘A couple of your brother officers screwed up an investigation, why don’t you go straighten it out?’ Besides, where am I going to get them? Midtown South? Forget it! The D.A. squad? Those guys are all Roland’s asshole buddies. They love him. No way are they gonna put anything real into a job like this.”

“Harry’s a cop,” Marlene protested.

“In a manner of speaking. What he is is your personal ninja. There’s no way I can make him do anything. Which is why this has to be a favor, you to me.” He saw her jaw stiffen. “Honest, it’ll be a short-term thing. And it’s not gonna be anywhere near full-time…. Look,” he continued as he saw that these words were having little effect, “why don’t you do the whole thing?”

Startled, Marlene replied, “What! Butch, I’m up to my ears with my regular stuff. I can’t take on a homicide investigation.”

“It’s not a homicide investigation, Marlene. It’s just some checking up. Harry and you can do it in three or four days. See some people is all. Come on, you know you love this kind of stuff, cruising around with old Harry, the heavily armed semi-psychotic. Hell, you might even get shot. Make your week for you.”

Marlene’s mouth wriggled as she fought to suppress a grin. “I’m being manipulated,” she said.

“Yeah, and it’s working too. Hey, what’s that noise?”

There was indeed a faint rattling sound coming from the living room. They both ran around the divider. The baby’s mat was empty.

Hearts in throats, they followed the clattering noise to a corner of the living room where, under a rickety end table, their baby was yanking and sucking on an electric lamp plug she had just pulled from a wall socket, and seemed to be trying to pull the heavy ceramic lamp down on her delicate little head.

“My God! She can crawl!” cried Marlene, delighted and terrified at once. She snatched the infant out from under the table and held it to her breast, kissing it soundly. “Butch, get the baby whip! This child needs some harsh punishment. What were you thinking of, you birdbrain? (Kiss.) Plunging into danger? (Kiss.)”

“I wonder where she gets it from,” said Karp. Marlene raised an eyebrow at that, but he understood that it was a done deal. In the quite recent past he would have fought hard against Marlene taking up a task that involved her wandering the streets with someone like Harry Bello. Now he had arranged it. It was the baby, he concluded. His considerable endowment of protective instinct had become transferred from his wife to his daughter. It was not so much that he cared less about Marlene than he had in the past. It was more that he had come to realize that she was going to put herself at risk from time to time, for her own reasons, and that if he attempted to thwart her at this, she would simply lie to him and the relationship would eventually collapse. Looking around at the loft, which now seemed to hide a baby’s hideous death in its every cranny, he understood that this was the way it was supposed to work.

That Monday was, besides Harry Bello’s first day, the baby’s debut at Lillian Dillard’s group day-care. Marlene arrived well before time in order to deal with any first-day terrors, but Dillard pounced on Lucy and charmed her out of her rompers. The faithless wretch didn’t even glance up as Marlene sidled out of the room, feeling ridiculously annoyed. After all I’ve done for her.

Pausing at the entranceway, she watched Susan Weiner deliver little Nicholas with the aplomb of a Fed-Ex courier. Little Nicholas knew what was good for him too; he trudged into the center like a trouper, his shiny Sesame Street lunch box doubtless filled with food of matchless nourishment and perfectly free of harmful substances.

Marlene waved to Susan, who smiled and approached her.

“First day, huh? Any problems?”

“Not a one. It breaks my heart.”

“Yes,” said Susan, “it’s a long day. That’s why we try to schedule at least an hour of quality time in the evening.”

Marlene gave her a look to see if she was serious and then smiled politely. Marlene didn’t believe in quality time. Kids didn’t have Filofaxes; their needs were unscheduled. Marlene wanted to be a full-time mother and a full-time prosecutor. That she could not was yet another indication that life sucked, and blathering about quality time to assuage guilt was not going to change the fact that both her child and her career were suffering a net loss because of each other.

Susan was talking about how she had to go because there was this big rush on at work, where they were designing a custom façade for a gallery, and the architect wanted to pin the marble on with bronze roses and they couldn’t find exactly the right ones, and they ought to get together for lunch sometime.

Marlene wanted to kick her teeth in. She was wearing two grand on her back, and both her eyes were real and she had a perfect life and Marlene couldn’t help liking her and wanting to bask a little in that sublime confidence and grace.

Susan said good-bye and skittered off down the street and of course found a cab instantly going in the right direction. Marlene clumped off disconsolately to Centre Street, where she found her secretary and her staff acting peculiar and Harry Bello waiting in her office.

“Scaring the help, Harry?”

“How’s the kid?” asked Bello. Marlene knew that he did not mean Marlene herself, but her daughter, his goddaughter. Marlene told him about the new day-care and, seeing the look that he gave her, explained that it was a good place that she had thoroughly checked out and then added the name of the woman who ran it and the address. She knew that before long Harry would determine for himself whether or not Lillian Dillard had lived a blameless life back through grade school, and would also have checked out the other children and their parents and whether the facility was up to code in every respect. I ought to give it up and let him be the mom, she thought.

She looked at his face, which was the color of an old grocery bag left out in the rain for a long time, and just as empty of any human expression. He was unnaturally still too. He didn’t twitch his hands or rub his nose or do any of the small motions we inherit from the great apes, but sat, barely blinking, like a zombie waiting for a command from the hougan.

Harry didn’t talk much either; he never had, even when he was still tearing up the bad guys in Bed-Stuy with his partner. The partner had done all the talking. And Harry’s wife had done all the talking when he wasn’t at work. Then they had both died in the same week, and the partner’s death at least had been Harry’s fault, and that was, more or less, why Harry was what he was: a soul waiting for reincarnation but still visible to the rest of us. Old women crossed themselves when they saw him coming.

On the other hand, you didn’t have to tell him anything twice. Or once either. Without a word Marlene handed him the folder on the Alphabet City Jane Doe. He read it silently. Marlene turned to other work. After fifteen minutes, he put it back on the desk and said, “You think he might do it again.” Marlene felt a rush of gratitude and smiled at him. With no prompting at all, Harry had seen in the photographs and the autopsy report and the bare-bones investigation exactly what she had seen, and understood that of course this was why an anonymous death with some oddly sexual bits might be important.

She said, “Yeah. What do you think? Too stale?”

“I could try to find him.”

Marlene’s brows knotted. “What, the killer?”

He gave her a look, the one he gave her when she missed the subtext of one of his telegraphic messages.

“No, the guy who called it in. For starters,” said Bello, rising and picking up the fat file. “Can I keep this?”

Marlene nodded and Harry Bello disappeared, and she wasn’t entirely certain that the door had opened. Five minutes later, she cursed and banged her desk. She had forgotten about the agreement with Karp, about Harry and the Armenian thing.

Karp had sort of forgotten about the Harry part too, in that he was still personally on the case. At the moment he was emerging from an unmarked police car onto the gravel drive of a large Riverdale house. It was a lovely house, a two-story Italianate villa in rusticated brown sandstone with a red tile roof. The grounds were bright with flowering trees, and there was a flash of silver through the boughs from the Hudson. Karp rang the bell, and a maid in a white uniform showed him in.

He had called Sarkis Kerbussyan first thing that morning, and the man had agreed to meet with him immediately. Indeed, he seemed anxious to do so. The servant, a dour, elderly woman, led Karp silently through paneled halls that were floored with marble or dark wood where they were not covered with oriental carpeting. Karp was notably insensitive to works of art, but these carpets struck even him with their obvious quality, the depth and intricacy of their patterns, the brilliance of their colors. It was like walking on soft jewels.

The woman brought him at last to a large semicircular room, white paneled, its walls made of bookcases except on the curved side, where high French windows gave onto a formal garden, just turning bright green. The floor was covered with a ruby carpet bordered in vivid blue. On the carpet, in the approximate center of the room, was a light writing table of some pale wood, and behind the desk was an old man.

The woman left the room, closing the door silently behind her. This is like a movie, thought Karp, being of a class and generation that did not often enter houses of this style, and that instinctively used the fictions of Hollywood as a reference when encountering the remarkable in real life.

The old man rose stiffly to his feet as Karp approached, and smiled and offered his hand, introducing himself as Sarkis Kerbussyan. Karp said who he was and took the proffered chair.

“Nice place,” offered Karp, and immediately regretted it, feeling the hick. Kerbussyan nodded politely. “Yes, I like it very much. I bought it because it reminded me of my grandfather’s house at Smyrna, also on a hill above a river, also with a red tile roof and a garden in the back. I have been successful in growing figs here too, despite the climate. Perhaps, if you are interested, later I will show you the house and the garden.” He paused and smiled. “But first our business, yes?”

“Aram Tomasian,” said Karp.

“Yes. An unfortunate mistake. A tragedy for the boy and his family.”

“I take it you don’t think he did it.”

Kerbussyan made a dismissive gesture. “An impossibility! I have known the boy since he was born, and also his father and his mother from a very young age. In Beirut, in fact. They were brought there as orphans, and my uncle arranged for them to come to this country. So I know them all very well. They are all businessmen, peaceful people, like me. There is no possible chance that Aram was involved in such a thing.”

At that moment the servant reappeared with a tray containing a coffee service and a small plate of baklava. In the necessary pause while this refreshment was served out, Karp took the opportunity to study his host. Old, at least eighty, thought Karp, but not frail. Rather the opposite, with a full head of thick white hair swept back from a freckled, ivory forehead. He had a strong, fleshy nose over a thick, stiff-looking mustache, also white. He was dressed neatly, as for business, in a well-tailored gray suit, a white silk shirt, and a blue tie. He became conscious of Karp’s examination as he poured the coffee and met Karp’s gaze out of deep-set brown eyes.

The eyes held an expression Karp had seen before: veiled, layered, amused, ruthless, an expression common to powerful men of a certain stripe. Some of the dons had such a glance, and some lawyers around town, and Karp had also seen something like it in both an Israeli intelligence agent and a Nazi fugitive. Sarkis Kerbussyan was not a simple businessman, or a simple anything.

They drank, they nibbled. Small talk flowed. Kerbussyan, it turned out, had started as a rug merchant-a deprecating smile, denoting his concession that such a trade was almost a parody for an Armenian-and while expanding his businesses into real estate and investments, he had retained his love for carpets and antiquities. Karp learned that the rug beneath their feet was worth a good deal more than the house in which it sat.

“That’s a lot of money for a rug,” said Karp, willing to be impressed. “That’s pretty nearly enough to bail Tomasian out.”

An incomprehensible look, that could have been anger or pain, flashed across Kerbussyan’s eyes for an instant. He put a stiff smile on his mouth and said, “That is being attended to. Five million is a great deal of money to assemble at short notice. As for the rug and other antiquities of value, I am afraid that the courts are reluctant to accept them as bailable items. Not like cash and real estate, you understand.” He glanced away, seeming to take in the carpet and the room’s other furnishings for the first time, or as if he were looking at them for the last time.

“Yes, a great deal of money. It is an Ushak medallion carpet made in the region around Smyrna in the seventeenth century. There was one like it in my grandfather’s house. But there are only a few of this quality and size left in private hands in the world, and that is where value resides-quality, craftsmanship, beauty, yes, but uniqueness above all.

“Something else too. Objects, certain objects, have a kind of soul. Rugs, for example. In the old days, they say, the rug makers would buy little girls from poor peasant families and wall them up in rooms with a loom and wools of many colors, and the little girls would spend their entire lives working on a single rug. When you bought such a rug, you would, in effect, be buying a whole life, a soul.

“That people would do such a thing is an indication of our fallen state. After all, what is more unique than a human being? Yet we treat one another so badly; we murder for objects. There are objects in this very house that are dripping blood. If we were truly godlike, we would become connoisseurs of souls and not objets d’art, don’t you think?”

“We have a way to go,” said Karp. “Meanwhile, people kill for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with objects. Passions. Causes.”

“Yes, but it takes a particular sort of man to kill for a cause, don’t you think? To return to the reason for your visit, not a man like Aram Tomasian.”

“No? He sure had enough equipment for it. And he’s a member of an organization called the Armenian Secret Army, and he’d written threatening letters to the Turkish mission.”

Kerbussyan put down his coffee cup, pressed his palms together beneath his chin, and looked at Karp. “Mr. Karp, I do not see many people anymore, outside my community, that is. I was curious about why the chief of the Homicide Bureau wished to see me, and so after you called I made some telephone calls of my own. It appears that there was recently a difference of opinion between you and the gentleman who is handling Aram’s case.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the internal operations of the district attorney’s office,” said Karp, irritated both by the other man’s knowledge of his argument with Roland and by his own pompous response.

“Of course,” agreed Kerbussyan, “it is a delicate position. But let us say only that you are not convinced that Aram is guilty. You have no wish to discommode your colleague, who is convinced. So what must you do? Obviously, you must find the person who actually did the shooting of this Turk.” He shrugged and smiled. “But of such things I can tell you nothing. If I may say so, a visit to an elderly Armenian seems an unprofitable way to advance your investigation.”

Karp’s irritation increased. He was being played with in an insultingly obvious way. He said, “Not if he’s the local head of the Armenian Secret Army.”

To his surprise, Kerbussyan laughed, a dry sound like a bronchial attack. “Ah, yes, that. Tell me, Mr. Karp, what do you imagine the Armenian Secret Army to be?”

“I have no idea. I’ll bet you could tell me, though.”

Another chuckle. “Yes, but then it wouldn’t be a secret, would it? All right, enough fencing. May I assume you have some knowledge of the Armenian genocide? Yes? Very good. One of history’s great crimes, but now almost forgotten. ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’ You know who said that? Adolf Hitler. The reasoning is clear. The Armenians were ignored and forgotten and so would the Jews be when they were all dead.

“You are yourself Jewish, are you not, Mr. Karp? A good deal in common, the Jews and the Armenians, and not just the disasters of the present century. Do you know that of all the ancient peoples of the Near East mentioned by Herodotus twenty-five hundred years ago, the Cappadocians, the Lydians, the Phoenicians, the Phrygians, and the rest, the only ones to survive into modern times with their cultural identity intact are the Armenians and the Jews? One wonders why.

“It is easier to see why a people obsessed by national survival and the imagined wrongs of history, like the Germans and Turks, should conceive a hatred for the champions of survival and wish to destroy them. Perhaps it is similar to what I have heard of cannibals who seek to obtain the virtues of their enemies by eating their flesh.

“The great difference, of course, is that the genocide of the Jews was exposed by the victorious powers in the second war, and that, overcome with guilt, those powers provided the Jews with an independent nation. The Germans admitted their crimes and paid compensation to the victims. Little enough, but the world attempted some justice. You should not be surprised that Armenians want the same.”

The old man paused and looked at Karp with his deep and level gaze. This speech was a distraction, but from what? Or perhaps the old man thought it was the point. They had in any case drifted far from Tomasian’s predicament. The silence continued. Karp said, “You mean they want a homeland?”

“I think there are some that do. The liberation of western Armenia. But it is complex. There are no Armenians left in that country to liberate, and of course, politically it is impossible; Armenia is a Soviet republic. The Turks are allied to the West. And besides, the Armenians are not like the Jews, or like the Jews imagine themselves to be. There is no serious Armenian Zionism, the tie to a particular piece of land. In the eleventh century, when the Seljuk Turks conquered Armenia, much of the nation moved five hundred miles south and founded another Armenia in the Taurus Mountains. The people, that is what counts, the people and the language and the Church.”

“So what do you want?”

The old man’s eyes flashed briefly. “A confession. From the Turks. That it happened. That they owe compensation. So, in our cause, Turks are killed. The Turkish ambassadors in Vienna, in Paris, in the Vatican. The consul in Beirut. The director of Turkish espionage in the Middle East.”

“And Ersoy?”

Kerbussyan smiled and shook his head slowly. “Not Ersoy. As you know very well. And also, if an Armenian group wished to kill a Turkish official in New York, which would be a stupidity uncharacteristic of such a group, let me assure you that it would not have been done as this was done, and Aram would not have been the assassin. Not someone who is on record as writing letters of protest.”

“And the weapons …?”

“Mr. Karp, Aram travels to Europe and the Near East several times a year. He carries bags full of gems. He is well known to customs officials, and his paperwork is always impeccable….” Kerbussyan made a graceful gesture with his hand, indicating a caesura into which a thought might be inserted.

“You’re saying he runs guns?”

“You are saying it, Mr. Karp. But supposing an Armenian nationalist organization possessed an asset like Aram Tomasian. Wouldn’t he be the very last person to risk in a venture such as the crime in question?”

Karp didn’t know. He thought not, but then he wasn’t a terrorist leader. Maybe that was exactly what a terrorist would do. On the other hand, it was an additional confirmation of his feeling that Tomasian had been purposely framed. He decided to voice this to his host, since they were pretending to be frank.

“Okay, say I buy that. It means that someone went out of their way to frame your boy. Who would do that? I mean, who among the people who wanted Ersoy dead?”

Kerbussyan appeared to consider this for a moment, nodding, his face all amused concentration. “Those are two separate questions. First, we are not sure that Ersoy was a target. Perhaps Aram is the target, or the Armenian community generally. Any Turk would have done just as well for that. And Ersoy was obvious, accessible, and regular in his movements. As for motive, whether the Turks would like to discredit the Armenians, the question is hardly worth asking.”

“You think they killed their own guy to smear the Armenians?”

Kerbussyan made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t say that. But they are a violent and inexplicable people. They have a military government with many quarrelsome factions. Perhaps someone wished to kill two birds with one stone.”

As Karp thought about that possibility, an ornate clock on a side table chimed a clear note. Kerbussyan shifted in his chair and said, “That is really all the advice I can give at this time, sir. If you will excuse me, I have one of my infrequent appointments.”

Karp rose, as did Kerbussyan, and they shook hands formally across the desk. Karp felt as if he had just completed an unsuccessful loan interview, which was not a way he liked to feel. As a result, instead of leaving amid polite pleasantries, he looked the old man in the eye and asked, “What about the money? The million dollars in Ersoy’s safe-deposit box. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Kerbussyan’s face assumed a look of polite confusion. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

Karp nodded curtly and left the room. The old guy was good, you had to give him that. He had played Karp nicely, giving away as little as possible, and only those things that would steer Karp in the direction he wanted him steered. Admitting Tomasian was a gun runner was good, and probably true. It cast a cloak of sincerity over the conversation, and over the suggestion that the killing might be a Turkish operation.

The servant entered and stood by the door. Karp followed her out, passing as he did so two stocky, scowling men wearing field jackets and handlebar mustaches. Terrorists in training.

Karp got back into the car, awakened the driver, and was conducted back to the City. Mulling over what Kerbussyan had said about the motive for Ersoy’s death, Karp decided that it might be worth at least poking around in that direction. On the other hand, he had an instinct for the culpable lie, arguably the most valuable, to a criminal prosecutor, of all the subtle talents. The old man had indeed been frank about a number of things, but when he had said that he did not know about the slain Turk’s hoard of money, he had been lying through his teeth.

When Karp returned to his office, he found a distraught Tony Harris waiting for him. The young man looked as if he had just lost his family in a freak accident: he was pale and sweating and his eyes were hollow. A bearing less like that of the ordinarily chipper Harris could hardly be imagined.

“I got wiped in Devers,” Harris blurted out when Karp came in. So he had not lost a loved one, but a murder case, and one that should have been a lock. Karp gestured Harris into his private office and sat down behind his desk. His knee was throbbing again.

“What do you mean ‘wiped,’ Tony?”

“Wiped! Case dismissed. The fuck-head walked out smiling and shot me the finger. God! Those witnesses! I sweated bullets getting them to testify. I swore to them; I swore it was a lock, that Devers was sure to go away for twenty. Now they’re gonna see him every day on the street. Or worse. Probably worse.”

Harris looked like he was about to burst into tears. Karp understood the man’s agony, if he had never shared it. He said, “How did it go down? This was at pretrial?”

“Yeah, the Legal Aid, Conyers, goes up for motions. I figured it was gonna be the old horseshit about the gun, its association with the defendant and all. But no, he moves to dismiss the eyewitness testimony. I was standing there like a frog on a rock. I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.”

“What grounds?”

“People v. Hachett. I never heard of it. On lineups. Basically it holds that in lineups, where witnesses have specifically identified an item of clothing worn by the alleged perpetrator, such an item can’t be worn at the lineup, so the witness supposedly IDs the perp, not the clothes. When I did the lineups down at the station house, Devers was wearing a leather hip-length coat. The two girls, it turns out, mentioned the coat to the cops, but the cops never mentioned it to me. I mean we had the guy. The girls knew him, for chrissake, and so did the lady in the hallway. So he went into the lineup in the coat. That was it. The whole fucking case trashed. Oh, yeah, Freeland was there too, enjoying the hell out of it, it looked like.”

“Freeland? He was there?”

“Yeah, he waltzed in and talked to Conyers.”

“The son of a bitch. He must have been in on it.”

“In on what?” asked Harris.

“The scam. You were royally fucked, kid. Swindled.”

“How? I saw the case. I read it. The judge read it. It was real. I mean, you could argue with the application, but-”

“Hackett’s an Appellate Division case,” Karp interrupted.

“Yeah, I realize that, Butch; that’s the fucking problem, they threw out the conviction on Hackett,” replied Harris impatiently.

“It was reversed by the Court of Appeals.”

Harris opened his mouth, but no words came out. It was an old trick. New York calls its lowest felony courts “Supreme Court,” and the first level of appeal is called the Appellate Division. The actual supreme judicial authority in the state is called the Court of Appeals. A Supreme Court decision can thus be reversed by the Appellate Division and confirmed by the Court of Appeals, and although every lawyer licensed to practice in the state has explained this odd nomenclature on the bar exam, people still get confused, even judges.

Harris still looked stunned. He was pale and shaking his head. Karp, controlling his genuine rage, made his tone gentle.

“Okay, there’s no use crying over it. You got robbed. I’ll have some words with Mr. Freeland tomorrow. You should take off. Go home. Get drunk.”

“I can’t. I’m on call this afternoon until eight.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re in no shape to do intakes. Scram. No, really-out. I’ll cover the shift.”

Amid protestations, not very sincere ones, Harris was packed off.

Karp had now traded an afternoon of sedentary desk minding for a long evening that might require considerable mobility. He had done this as much for himself as for Harris. That morning he had made an appointment for an arthroscopy, an investigative procedure that was sure to be followed by a major operation, one that was not certain to succeed. A week hence he would be disabled. In a couple of months he might find himself a cripple.

These thoughts bred in him an almost desperate desire to move, to act, to get away from papers and negotiation, to walk on the bloody margins of crime scenes, to talk with cops and skells, to breathe smoke and kick ass, while he still could.

All in all, therefore, given Karp’s record, and this extra rocket up his pants, it was probably not the best afternoon in the year to murder somebody on the isle of Manhattan.

Murder was little on the mind of the man in the blue shirt as he walked carefully down the sunny aisle of Hudson Street, looking for a victim. He had most of a fifth of white port sliding through his body, cranking him up, giving him confidence. Two months out of Elmira, he was back at his chosen profession, purse snatching. He’d just quit his straight job, humping stuff at a warehouse. Actually, they’d canned him for being late too much. His daughter had booted him out on the street, and he had missed a meet with his parole officer. He had to score something today so he could get a place, and maybe find another job humping so the bitch of a parole officer wouldn’t be on his case.

The West Village was a good place for it. Plenty of rich women by themselves. He needed a handbag off a rich white lady. Or a skinny faggot. Grab him, shove him in a doorway, take the purse, the wallet, the watch. Take all of two minutes.

He crossed 10th Street, moving north. At the corner a couple of obvious out-of-towners, a youngish couple, stood talking and studying a map. The woman had a shoulder bag.

The man in the blue shirt looked them over. The man was big and athletic-looking. It would’ve been a possibility with a gun, but all he had was a cheap kitchen knife with a five-inch blade. Besides, he didn’t much like guns.

The man with the tourist map looked up and stared at him. He had nasty blue eyes and close-cut reddish hair. He looked southern, looked like he could handle himself. The man in the blue shirt passed on.

There she was. His heart accelerated and his gut roiled, as might happen to a man upon catching sight of a lover. A young woman, pretty, in a light coat, maxiskirt, and polished boots. A large, expensive-looking leather bag hung from a strap at her shoulder. She was moving right toward him on the sidewalk.

Now she turned and approached the entrance to an apartment building. This was perfect. All he had to do was follow her into the doorway and, when she stopped to open the outer door, lift the bag and take off.

She stood in front of the glass door and opened the bag to extract her keys. He made his move. She must have seen his reflection in the glass of the door, for she whirled to face him, her mouth opening.

He grabbed for the bag, caught its strap, and yanked hard, hoping to pull the woman off her feet. But she had wedged herself into a corner of the doorway and set her heels. And she had started screaming.

Echoing off the buildings, the screams seemed as loud as sirens. They hurt his ears. He heard footsteps behind him, and someone shouted. He let go of the strap and grabbed the woman’s coat with his left hand and pulled his knife out of the waistband of his jeans and flashed it in her face. She screamed louder. He had to stop that noise. He stabbed her in her chest. She gave a last cry when he did this, different in tone from her screams for aid, a shriek like a baby’s mindless call. Slowly she turned away from him and sank to her knees, still clutching the bag.

He cursed and stabbed her again, in the back, the force of the blow knocking her flat. She turned on her side and drew up her knees. Now she was quiet. The man in the blue shirt picked up his prize from the woman’s limp hands and turned. A black man in a leather apron stood on the sidewalk in front of the shop adjacent to the woman’s apartment building. There was shock and rage on his face. The man in the blue shirt spun away from him and ran south on Hudson Street. He heard shouts, and more screams, and the sound of running feet behind him.

On the sidewalk in front of her apartment house, Susan Weiner’s perfect little life drained away in a widening red pool.