No Lesser Plea

Chapter 17

“Karp, I keep getting your mail. When are you going to tell the mail room you moved?”

Marlene had come into his office a little before noon and dropped a pile of envelopes on his desk. “I’ll get around to it, Marlene. I’ve been really busy.”

“I guess that means we’re not going to lunch today.”

“I guess it does.”

She sidled around to his side of the desk, bent over, and licked his ear. He pulled away and gave her his long-suffering look. “Marlene, I got to do all this stuff.” He gestured at the piles of forms, computer printouts, and other paperwork on his desk.

She backed away, her face hardening. “Well, excuse me, Mr. Boss. I beg your pardon. I guess I’ll just climb back into my faucet until the next time you turn on the goddamn tap.”

“Come on, Marlene, give me a break. Look, I appreciate you bringing the mail over and I’ll take care of the mail room today, OK?” He glanced down at the pile of envelopes.

“Hey, Marlene, these are all opened.”

“So? I just want to see what you’re up to. You mind?”

“Yeah, I fucking well mind! Where the hell do you get off opening my mail?”

“Why? You’ve got big secrets?”

“That’s not the point. You don’t open other people’s mail.”

“Oh, no? You think it’s too personal? You spent last night licking my ovaries, and I can’t peek at your personal correspondence. If you were banging your secretary, you’d let her peek at your personal correspondence, wouldn’t you?”

Karp got to his feet. “Marlene, what the hell has got into you?” he shouted. He realized she was picking a fight, but didn’t understand why.

“I would explain it to you, but it turns out I haven’t got the time.” She turned and stormed out, slamming the door and rattling the glass.

Karp slumped back in his seat and made some tooth marks on his pencil. The phone rang. It was Helen Simms, the bureau secretary.

“You all right in there? Nothing broken?”

“Yeah, Helen, it’s fine. Just fine.”

“You want to take this call I been holding. It’s a Mister Sussman.”

After a few initial pleasantries, Sussman got to the point, which was Mandeville Louis.

“Mister Karp, my client believes you have a personal animus against him. I confess, for myself, that I fail to see what you gain by not agreeing to an early disposition of this case, which is going on three years old now.”

“I don’t agree, Mister Sussman. Your client killed two people in cold blood. I want to put him in jail for a long time. That’s not personal, that’s my job.”

“Yes, of course. But you know very well that cases like Louis’s are usually settled expeditiously. The man as no criminal record. He is mentally ill. He can’t be tried. My God, can you imagine what would happen to the criminal justice system if every case of this type was blockaded in the way you seem intent on doing here? Surely Mister Bloom cannot approve. I had understood that he set quite a high priority on greasing the wheels of justice, so to speak.”

“Yeah, but first of all, it’s not every case. It’s one particular case, and second, I don’t believe Mister Louis is mentally ill.”

“Oh? Have you added a forensic psychiatric degree to your credentials?”

Karp was suddenly exhausted. All at once, his little stratagems and evasions, his training sessions, his back-breaking work, seemed utterly futile. Some part of his mind knew the problems he was having with Marlene were connected with the monumental, and-said one part of him-absurd task he had set himself. He was heading for an emotional crash and burn again. And for what? If the law could not punish a ravening wolf like Mandeville Louis, a villain standing ankle deep in blood and laughing about it, then what was the point of it all?

Moral fatigue had dulled Karp’s mind, and he did something foolish. He began telling Sussman what he and Dunbar suspected about Louis’s M.O. He wanted, he needed, the sleek defense lawyer to step out of his formal role as advocate and share Karp’s horror at what Louis had done and at the failure of the justice system to do much about it. Crazy, but true.

“And so, Mister Sussman,” Karp concluded, in his best summation-to-the jury style, “I am convinced that your client, far from being a mental incompetent who committed a single impulsive crime, is a cynical and extremely clever mass murderer who may have been responsible for as many as one hundred killings in the past ten years. He has been consciously manipulating the criminal justice system, and I have decided to put a stop to it. As long as I have any association with the District Attorney’s Office, Mandeville Louis will not cop to a lesser. He can sit in Matteawan as long as he likes. Meanwhile, the police will continue gathering evidence linking him to his other crimes.” This was a bluff. Karp knew he was lucky to get Dunbar to look for the third man. It would be virtually impossible to get the cops to open dozens of closed files.

Sussman, whose interest in justice was tenuous at best, remained unimpressed. “That was very interesting, Mister Karp. Now I’ll tell one. Once upon a time, a little girl named Red Riding Hood lived with her mommy in the middle of a big forest …”

“OK, Sussman, you made your point,” snapped Karp. “I don’t give two shits if you believe me or not. But, you ever feel like calling me again, let me say this. If your man decides to plead guilty to the top count of the indictment, I’m all ears. Other than that, save your dime.” He slammed down the receiver.

Leonard Sussman stared for a moment at the dead phone. Then he dialed a familiar number.

Louis was at arts and crafts when they called him to the phone. He was painting. Robert Fallon was teaching him how. Fallon joked about starting an atelier in the loony bin, to carry on his traditions after he departed for friendlier places. Fallon talked incessantly about escaping, about what he would do when he was free in South America. It was starting to get on Louis’s nerves. First of all, he thought Fallon was bullshitting. All the fucker did was eat. He’d need a guy with a forklift to escape. Louis was putting on weight, too, on the starchy food, but he knew he would never become one of the doughy creatures he saw every day in the lounge. He wondered why there were weight rooms in prisons but not in looney bins.

Also, he didn’t like hearing Fallon talk about what he had done with those girls, and what he was planning to do. Louis did not dwell on the murders he had committed. He didn’t particularly get off on killing people, any more than a mailman gets a charge out of stuffing mailboxes. What Louis got off on was getting away with it.

So when he heard what Sussman had to say about what he had heard from Karp, Louis experienced a blow to the core of his being. Someone had found him out and would not let him off. Nothing like this had happened to him since the ice pick incident over twenty years ago. For an instant of blinding disorientation he was back in the yard of his family’s home, trying to burn a blood-stained jacket as the police car approached.

Sussman was saying, “Mister Louis, I tell you he’s clutching at straws. He hasn’t a case and he’s bluffing. Let me tell him you’ll go to trial-he’ll cave, I know it.”

Louis made no answer. He was shaking and struggling for control. Karp knew. Karp knew.

“Mister Louis. Mandeville. Are you listening?”

“Karp knows,” Louis said, in a creaky voice.

“Beg pardon? What was that?”

“No trial. Set up a hearing, just like before. Nothing’s changed.”

“Mister Louis, did you hear a word I said? This Karp is …”

“Let me worry about that, Sussman,” Louis interrupted. “I’ll worry about Karp.”

“Hey there, Pres, how’s my boy?”

Preston Elvis let out a long, desperate sigh when he heard the familiar voice on the phone. For months after he delivered the fatal heroin shot to Donald Walker he had stayed away from Louis’s apartment, foregoing the delights of DeVonne, the yellow Firebird, and the easy money he got from swiping bits of Louis’s pure heroin and selling it, heavily cut, to his friends. He had returned to the home of sorts he had before, he went to prison, living off the welfare check of a woman named Vera Higgs. Vera, a mild and willing creature of eighteen, had borne him one child while he was in prison and was heavily pregnant with another. He was astonished that Louis had known where to find him.

“What’s the matter, Pres? Cat got your tongue? Say hello to your old friend.”

“What you want, Man?”

“What I want? Well, couple a things. You got a pencil and some paper?”

“Paper? What for?”

“ ’Cause you got to write down your orders, just like in a restaurant. You the waiter. Get ’em!”

Elvis scrounged up a paper bag and the stub of a pencil.

“What the fuck this about, Man?”

“Now Pres, baby, be cool. The first thing is, you gonna be glad to hear I got you a job. Now you gonna be able to keep that fine lady you got there and your baby in style. Gonna make your parole officer sit up and smile too.”

“What the fuck you talkin’ about, a job? What doin’?”

“You gonna be a paper boy, Pres. Now write this down.”

Sonny Dunbar dropped by Karp’s office that Friday to talk about the progress he had made in the search for Louis’s accomplice. Or rather the progress he hadn’t made.

“Butch, look. I’m just one guy, right?” Dunbar was explaining. “If this was a real case, we’d have people watching Louis’s apartment twenty-four hours a day, hitting the people who knew him. We’d have ten, twenty guys out. But this is just me. I got Slocum covering stuff I should be doing, but he can’t do that forever. The loot is on my ass already. He thinks I’m cooping, can you believe it?”

“What are you saying, Sonny, you want to give up?”

“No, shit, I’ll keep plugging. But this guy, Louis-it’s weird. Nobody knows him. I mean the usual snitches. He’s got no rep on the street, no contacts. I checked out that bar in Queens, Torry’s, where Donnie met him. They ID’d Louis, all right, they knew him as Stack, but I drew a blank on ‘Willie Lee.’ ”

“How about the girl friend?”

“Yeah, DeVonne. She knows shit. She saw the guy once, doesn’t know nothing. One thing, she heard Louis call him ‘Pres,’ or ‘Press.’ ”

“That’s good! That’s a name at least. You check it out?”

“Check what out? Is it a first name, a last name, a street name, a private joke? You know how many bloods are called Pres? You ever hear of Lester Young?”

“No, is he in the case?”

“Not that I know of. He was a jazz musician, kicked off about twenty years ago. They called him Pres because he was the president of all the sax players-the best, follow? OK, now if I had the manpower, I could go through every yellow sheet in headquarters and see whether we had somebody who was, one, black, two, about twenty, about six-two, two-hundred pounds, three, had a little scar on one side of his nose, and four, had some name or alias that fit with ‘Pres.’ Now, you want to go downtown with the shit we got and ask for ten guys to do that, and ten guys to work the street?”

“OK, Sonny, you made your point. But I got the feeling we’re not being smart. Let’s say the Louis connection is a dead end. We got to know something more about this other guy.”

They thought for a while in silence. Dunbar glanced at his watch. He was due to meet Fred Slocum in twenty minutes on another case and spend four or five hours walking up and down stairs, knocking on doors, and talking to suspicious people who didn’t see anything ever. Karp thought about punks and hoods, how they revolved like the dumb horses on a carousel, in and out of prison, on and off parole. He studied the clumsy Identikit sketch he had taped to his desk lamp, as if it would somehow yield up a name, an address. He drew idly on a yellow legal pad: a stick figure with no face, then bars across the figure, then he wrote “1970” above the bars and drew a big circle around the whole thing.

“Butch, I got to go,” said Dunbar, getting out of his chair.

“Wait a minute, Sonny. Maybe I got something. You remember Donny said Louis said this guy was just out of the slams?”

“Yeah, so?”

“OK, so he’s about twenty, right? It’s probably his first adult offense. And it’s got to be something like armed robbery, or ag assault.”

“Why? Why not drugs, or rape?”

“Just a hunch. Louis is an armed robber. He’s already got a junkie for a patsy. He needs a strong-arm-somebody like him-don’t ask me why, but I figure it that way. OK, now the field is a little narrower. We’re looking for an armed robbery, first offense-he probably got a bullet-released from prison in late Nineteen-sixty-nine or early Nineteen-seventy, that matches the other stuff we got on him.”

“Butch, what if he’s from Detroit or Jersey? Donnie didn’t say what prison. I mean other states got prisons.”

“Then we’re fucked. For that matter, he could have split town. But, I figure Louis for somebody who’s got to control everything. Look at how successful he’s been. You think he’s going to pick a sidekick who’s going to split, who has any real options. No, we’re looking for a local mutt, Sonny. Just a regular anonymous local mutt. Look, let’s check the parole records. He’s a first offender, he had to make parole, right. One of these guys ever did straight time it’d make headlines.”

Dunbar looked skeptical. “This is another long shot, Butch.”

“Shit, Sonny, a long shot is the only shot we got. And I was right once, wasn’t I?”

Dunbar sighed. “I’ll check it out,” he said.

Number 563 Boynton Street was one of three apartment houses on the block still occupied by human beings. The name of the building, graven in a marble lintel, was Lancaster. In its better days it had sheltered a generation of Irish, then a generation of Jews. The other buildings had been torched by vandals, or by their owners for insurance. Some of these had their windows blocked with glittering tin sheets. Others had been demolished and turned into fields of gray and red lumps, from which sprang jungles of hardy weeds. The streets sparkled with crushed glass.

So many buildings had been cleared that Dunbar, climbing out of his dusty white Chevy, once again had the odd impression he often got in this part of the Bronx, of not being in the city anymore, but out west, among the classic landscapes of the horse opera. In the vacant plains of flattened rubble, the buildings stood like weathered buttes. It was one of the few parts of New York where you could see almost the whole dome of the sky from street level. It always gave Dunbar the shivers.

Karp had been right. There was an armed robber who had been released from Attica at just the right time. And who looked right. And who had the right name. Dunbar patted his gun, unconsciously, and entered the fetid hallway of 563, heading for Apartment 505, the last known address of Preston Elvis.

Dunbar was about to ask the girl who opened the door if her momma or daddy was home, until he saw her swelling belly and the little boy who clung to her pink housecoat. This thin child was the lady of the house. He flashed his shield.

“Police. Are you Mrs. Elvis?”

“What you want? I ain’t done nothin’.”

“Could I come in?”

Silently, she backed away from the doorway. Mother and child stared at him with liquid, sad brown eyes. The living room was the same as all the others he had been in. A lumpy couch-this one was green plastic-and a big color TV. A game show was blaring: a capering man was giving things away to white people.

“That’s a nice new TV, there,” said Dunbar. “Preston got that for you, did he?”

“Who?”

“Preston Elvis. This guy,” said Dunbar, showing the mug shot. “He lives here, right?”

“No, nobody live here, jus us.”

“But, he comes here a lot, doesn’t he? I mean I could find out lots of ways, but it’s easier if you tell me. And, shit, honey, I ain’t from welfare. I don’t give a rat’s ass who lives here or when. I just need to talk to him.”

“He ain’t been ’round for a long while,” she said, sullenly.

Dunbar looked through the apartment. There was a pair of men’s shoes near the couch. The bedroom and bathroom were empty, but there were male clothes scattered around and in the closet, and there were recently used shaving things in the bathroom.

He went back to the woman. The boy had returned to watching TV.

“What’s your name, girl?”

“Vera. Higgs.”

“OK, Vera. I’ll tell you the truth, now. I don’t want to take you downtown. I don’t want to take your little boy away. And I definitely don’t want to tell the welfare that a man’s been living here. OK? But all that is gonna come down, if I don’t get to talk with Preston real soon? So tell me, where’s he at?”

“He workin’. He ain’t done nothin’.”

“Right, and where does he work?”

“I don know. He never tell me shit about what he be up to. Someplace, down in the city. No lie, Mister, I don know.” Her voice became shrill and tears started.

Dunbar believed her. He thought, OK, Sherlock, time to play detective. What he didn’t want was to have to stake out this shithole, maybe for hours or days even, if Elvis decided not to come home for a while. He looked more closely at the miserable dwelling, opening drawers, peering into cabinets, willing something to pop out at him. There was a pile of newspapers on the kitchen table. Idly, Dunbar picked one up and glanced at the headline, something about black leaders selling out their third-world brothers in the struggle against imperialism. Late-breaking news. Then something clicked.

He showed the paper to the woman. “Who reads this paper, you?”

She shrugged. “He bring them here.”

“He ever talk about a dude name of Mandeville Louis? Or Stack?” Shrug. Dunbar said, “I’ll be back.” He left the apartment and rushed down the stairs. It could be a coincidence that Preston Elvis had lying around his apartment twenty or thirty copies of the Claremont Press, the same newspaper that Mandeville Louis had worked for. But somehow Dunbar doubted it.

“Mister Barlow? Emerson Dunbar,” said Dunbar, showing his ID. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

The editorial offices of the Claremont Press occupied a storefront on the avenue of the same name, and consisted of a small shop immediately off the street, where you could buy the Press and a selection of books and records, or place classified ads; and, behind a glass door, one large room, which held a jumble of battered desks, filing cabinets, and other necessaries of journalism. Dunbar was standing at one of these desks, talking to James Barlow, the managing editor of the Claremont Press.

Barlow, a chubby, tan man with an Afro and ferocious side whiskers was dressed in a bush jacket and a black T-shirt. He regarded the police ID with studied repugnance.

“Why don’t you pigs leave us alone? The fucking FBI was here last week. I’m being followed, you know that? Two little blondies in a gray car. You see this phone? Tapped. The entire power of the fascist racist state is ranged against us, but we shall continue to speak and print the truth. Now, beat it! Go fuck with the Times for a change.”

“Mister Barlow, I’m not trying to harass you. This is a routine investigation of a routine crime. All I want to know is, have you seen this man?” He held out the mug shot of Preston Elvis. Barlow barely glanced at it.

“No,” he snapped.

“You sure? Why don’t you take another look? We have reason to believe he worked here.”

“I don’t need to. One oppressed nigger is the same as another. And if you think I’m going to help an oreo pig track down a brother, you’re dumber than you look.”

“Take it easy, Barlow. I gave fifty bucks to the NAACP in 1969.”

“Get out of here!”

“Honest, Barlow, I could care less about this guy’s politics. And they promised me if I broke this case I’d make sergeant-don’t you want to see the brothers get ahead on the force?”

“Brother, my ass! When the oppressed peoples rise up it’ll be class traitors and running dogs like you who’re gonna go to the wall first.”

“I can hardly wait. Lookie here, Lumumba, I’d like to stay and bullshit with you about the class struggle and all, but there’s this guy who seems to have aced about a hundred guys, most of ’em blacker than you, and I’d like to put him away, and this dude Elvis is gonna help me do it. Now, I asked you nice to help me, and you told me to get fucked so what do you say, we go along downtown and I’ll ask you again?”

Barlow jumped to his feet. “Oh, now the pig shows his true colors. You want to take me to jail? Go right ahead. I been in jail before.” He held his hands out rigidly, wrists together. “Go head, muthafucka! Take me in! Hey, people! Uncle Tom is gonna arrest my black ass. If I get shot trying to escape, remember his face.”

There were about twenty people in the large room, and at Barlow’s outburst they stopped what they were doing and began to move ominously toward Barlow’s desk, making belligerent noises.

Dunbar said, “Oh, for cryin’ out loud, Barlow! Get real!” Dunbar knew he couldn’t afford to start trouble. The crowd was obviously not going to let him take Barlow in without a scuffle, and if he called for backup, somebody was going to ask what he was doing there in the first place, which meant he would either have to lie, or get chewed out for wasting time on a dead case.

He snorted in disgust and pushed his way past the growling revolutionary cadres and out of the main office. He heard the crowd cheering as he swung past the glass door.

The detective loitered despondently in the bookstore for a while. There was a good deal on the collected works of Kim II Sung in twenty-five volumes, but Dunbar was able to restrain himself. He had just about become resigned to sitting in his car on Boynton Street until Elvis should decide to show, when he happened to look back into the office.

Everyone had gone back to work after their revolutionary victory. Barlow was dialing a number, reading it out of a small, black book. He looked around furtively as he waited for a connection. He was on the phone for no more than a few seconds of conversation. Then he hung up, put the book in a desk drawer and locked it.

Dunbar thought that was funny. Old Jim Barlow did not seem like a terse man. Probably talk your ear off about the oppressed working classes while ordering a cup of coffee. On the other hand, if he were telling somebody that the cops were after him and he thought his phone was tapped, he might be brief for once.

Dunbar really didn’t want to sit on Boynton Street. Which is why he waited until the place cleared out that night, broke in, picked the desk lock, and copied down all the names, addresses, and phone numbers in Barlow’s little book. All of the thirty-two names were nicknames or first names and initials-Chili T., Joe Q., Chingo Ray, Che M., and like that. Very conspiratorial. As he looked over the list, something almost rang a bell in Dunbar’s head. He looked at the list for several minutes trying to make something happen, and failing. Then he locked everything up again and went home to Queens.

The next morning, early, Dunbar went to Centre Street to let Karp know what he had found. Karp was in court. As he left Karp’s office, he ran into Marlene Ciampi in the hallway. As soon as he saw her, the bell finally rang.

“Hey, Champ. What does the name ‘Chingo Ray’ mean to you?”

“Chingo Ray? A.K.A. Charles Hargreaves, A.K.A. Charlie the Bomber. He’s the guy who got blown up in the townhouse. I’m prosecuting his buddies. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing much. His name turned up in an address book I picked up on uptown. He’s waxed, you say?”

“A probable. We know he was at the townhouse the night it blew up. They recovered a male body-in smithereens-from the wreckage. It could be him. On the other hand, he’s a slippery bastard and smart as hell. It’s not beyond him to have set up the explosion and leave us with a plausible stiff, to cover his tracks. Also, the bomb that blew away that judge’s secretary. Very similar to letter bombs Charlie made in the past. So … tell me about this address book. Where did you get it?”

“Just stumbled over it, is all. Look, Champ. I gotta go detect. Catch you later.”

As he walked to his car, Dunbar thought hard. He had asked Barlow about Elvis. The call made right after he left Barlow must have been triggered by his questions. He didn’t think Barlow was calling out for a pizza; he was calling somebody in the book. Elvis’s name was not in the book, therefore he was calling somebody connected with Elvis. Thirty-two addresses to check out. He decided to start with the late Chingo Ray, resident, according to his little list, at 351 Avenue A.

Nobody answered his knock at the apartment on Avenue A. He slipped the lock and went in, pistol drawn. The place looked like a typical East Village crash-mattresses on the floor, a sleeping bag, filthy sheets, garbage bags full of rotting stuff, graffiti sprayed on the walls, political and head-shop posters. A cheap table and chair stood in the center of the main room. The apartment was deserted, but Dunbar was delighted to see evidence of hurried flight-drawers half open, clothes strewn around, a pot of coffee, and dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

Dunbar put his gun away and checked out the main room. The floor around the table was covered with short snippings of bell wire in different colors. On the table itself were several large manila envelopes. These were stamped and postmarked from different cities- Berkeley, Chicago, Detroit. Oddly, they were not addressed. Dunbar poked around some more. By the stinking trash bags he found more wire, some thin springs and a crumpled package of peel-off labels. It looked like somebody was going through a lot of trouble to create envelopes that could be made to look like they were coming from different places. Dunbar felt a chill run through his body. It had just occurred to him why somebody might want to take such trouble. He grabbed the envelopes and ran out of the apartment without bothering to close the door.

It took him nearly an hour to drive up to Boynton Street, running lights, cutting people off, pounding his fist on the wheel, and cursing every vehicle in front of him. His most vehement curses were reserved for himself. With the wisdom of hindsight it was clear that, once Elvis’s dwelling had been located, someone should have watched it continually thereafter. Now, for some reason, Elvis had formed an association with terrorists. Who could have figured it? Stick-up artists don’t usually move in political circles. The more Dunbar thought about it, the crazier it became.

He screeched to a stop at 563 Boynton, flung himself out of the car, and raced up the stairs. At the Higgs apartment he yanked out his pistol and used it to pound on the door.

When Vera Higgs opened the door a crack, Dunbar threw his weight against it, knocking her to the floor. He stormed through the apartment, kicking through doors, tossing the bed, yanking out drawers. Nothing-no Elvis, no envelopes.

He returned to the living room. The TV was on and the child sat on the floor in front of it. Vera Higgs was just climbing to her feet.

“You knock me down. You din hafta.”

“Right, sorry, it was an accident. Look, Vera, where’s Preston? I’m not fooling now. I got to know where he is.”

Sulkily, she walked slowly to the ratty couch and sat down.

“He ain’t here.”

“Goddamn, I know that! Where is he?”

“I don know. He lef.”

“When? When did he leave?”

“Bout an hour, somethin’ like that.”

“Oh, Christ! Where to?”

“He din say. He never tell me.”

That figured. Dunbar pulled one of the manila envelopes out of his jacket pocket and held it up.

“Vera, did he have an envelope like this?”

“I don have to tell you no thin’. He say, you come back here, I don have to tell you nothin’.”

Dunbar gave a strangled cry. He went over to the little boy, picked him up, and put him on the couch next to his mother. Then he went over to the TV and pointed his pistol at “Lust for Life.” He cocked the hammer.

“Lady, you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m gonna waste your TV. I swear it!” Dunbar shouted. The child began to blubber.

She got to her feet, her eyes widening in terror.

“No! Don! I got my programs comin’!”

Dunbar put up his gun and eased the hammer down. “OK, what about the envelope?”

“Yeah, he got one-it look the same, but it be real fat, thick like.”

“Was there an address on it? Can you remember the address?”

“No, but, like, Pres, he tol me to write one on it, on account of I got real good handwritin’. The teacher, she be sayin’ I could be a schoolteacher, I got such fine writin’. But I had to quit school, you know?”

“Right,” said Dunbar, moving closer to her and trying to control his voice. “Now, Vera, can you remember the name and address you wrote on the envelope?”

“I don know. I copy it down. He done have it writ out, you know?”

“Try, Vera.”

“It somethin’ like Carl, the las name. And some street like Senn, San, somethin like that. It start with a C.”

“Senn? Was it Centre Street, One hundred Centre Street?”

“Yeah, that it. I think.”

I’m so stupid, I should turn in my potsy and be a fucking doorman, thought Dunbar.

“Vera, baby, tell me. The name was Karp, Roger Karp, right?”

She smiled for the first time. “Yeah! Thas right! Karp.”

“Where’s your phone?”

“They cut it off,” she said. “Hey, I don be in no trouble jus for writin’? I din do nothin’.”

But Dunbar was already gone.

Marlene Ciampi was looking for an excuse to see Karp again, and make up. At the same time she despised herself for wanting to. I can’t believe it, she thought for the millionth time. I’m having an affair with a married man, who works where I work. It was so degrading-like the secretary screwing the boss, like a public convenience or one of his perquisites. Here’s your big office, Mr. Karp, your special couch, your walnut bookcases, your leather judge’s chair. Oh, yeah, you want some pussy? Ciampi, put down that case file and drop your pants.

Then again, she felt, she feared, she was truly in love. She could feel herself flush when he came near her. Her belly gave a jump even when she saw his name written. When she awakened in her own apartment, she felt empty, and it took all her self-restraint not to rush to the phone and call him.

And she couldn’t tell anyone about it. Most of her friends from high school were married and had settled suburban lives. They’d think she was a freak. Her family? Mama, I’m fucking this married man. No, he’s not Italian. He’s not Catholic, either. Instant coronary. Her professional friends? Out of the question. That’s all she needed, this story to get around the office.

She rubbed her face and tried to shake these thoughts out of her head. To work. Maybe he’d call. She turned to her brimming in-basket. Sorting through the papers, she noticed that they were still sending her Karp’s mail.

Karp was in his outer office talking with some of his staff when the call came through.

“Mister Karp, there’s a call for you-they say it’s extremely urgent,” said Helen Simms.

“OK, guys, back to work. The city never sleeps. It’s probably the laundry calling, they put in extra starch by mistake.”

The voice on the phone was scratchy and interrupted by bursts of static.

“Butch, it’s me, Sonny. Listen, I found Pres.”

“What, who? Speak up, Sonny, I can hardly hear you.”

“Pres. The third man. His name’s Preston Elvis, and he SKRRRCHHHH, the paper that Louis worked for.”

“You got him? Is he in custody?”

“No! Look, I’m on the Deegan, they patched me through over the radio. Butch, he’s got SKRCHHHWOOOOWRR in an envelope. He’s tied in with that guy, the terrorist. Butch, I think he’s heading for you SSSSCHHHRRWOWR already called the bomb squad, they should be there any minute. So don’t WOORRSCHH.”

“Jesus, Sonny, what the fuck are you talking about. What’s this about the bomb squad. I can’t hear shit on this line.”

“The third man, Butch. Louis set him up with a bomb. Don’t touch any CCCHHWWOOOOWRRCHH.”

“Any what? What?”

“Any mail! It’s a letter bomb. The bomb’s in a nine by twelve manila envelope, with an out-of-town postmark. You better get your office cleared out, too. Butch, are you there? Butch? Ah, shit!”

As soon as Dunbar said “letter bomb,” of course, Karp had thrown down the phone and leaped for the door. He ran to his secretary and told her not to touch any mail. Then, with mounting horror, it came to him that he had still not told the mailroom that he had moved his office. His heart was pounding in his throat as he ran out of the office and toward the stairs to the sixth floor.

Marlene had three pieces of Karp’s mail lined up on her desk. One was an American Express bill. One was a letter from the University of California Alumni Association. The third one was the item that held her interest, a thick manila envelope with a Berkeley postmark, addressed in a flowing, patently feminine hand.

Marlene turned the envelope over and inspected it. The flap was fastened, but not sealed. She had a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wants him back, she thought. It’s a long letter explaining her affair with that woman and how she realized it wasn’t for her and how she’s going to come home to New York and make a great little home for him and have kids. Or maybe she’s sending back a bunch of letters he wrote to her, begging her to take him back, he’ll be her slave, he’ll move to California and sell insurance. Telling her he’s been screwing this little guinea in revenge but that’s all over, she’s the one and only. Or maybe it’s divorce papers.

“Oh, God!” said Marlene out loud, “I can’t stand this.”

She undid the clasp and pulled the flap up.

Now even in the midst of this emotional turmoil, there was a part of Marlene’s mind that remained cool and rational. It was trying to send messages through to Marlene Central, but the circuits were blocked by hormones and random emotional noise. This part of Marlene knew pretty well what she held in her hand. Marlene had, after all, seen pictures of such envelopes before. Perhaps if it had been postmarked Detroit all would have been well.

“Bomb!” said that part of Marlene, as Marlene’s hand came up on the flap. “Bomb!” it said again as Marlene felt the tiny tug of resistance and saw the fine wire glued to the flap. By then it was too late, for electrons were already flowing from the battery to the primer charge. Marlene knew what it was now, and sent an urgent message to her hand and arm to throw the thing away. Her hand came dutifully up, slowly, slowly, while her mind screamed in overdrive. The envelope left her hand, but now it was hardly an envelope any more, more like a hot flower. Marlene brought her arm up in front of her beautiful face as the fireball swallowed her.