Resolved

16

"WE MUST EXPECT SOME REVERSES," SAID RASHID WITH A confidence he did not really feel. "We are in combat with a super-power, just we few, but the central plan is still intact."

"How? How is it intact?" demanded Habib, the false Felнpe. "Felix blows up the wife of a policeman with one of our bombs, after the bombings were supposed to be over because the bombers blew themselves up in Queens. Now they know that all that was a fraud, and the search for us is still on. We should have killed that piece of shit when we had our hands on him, and then this would not have happened. But, no, we had to have your circles within circles of deception. I think we should leave the city and regroup somewhere else."

They were sitting in the dingy office of Scarpese General Contractors, the last of the businesses Rashid had purchased over the years. This was their final redoubt, the storehouse of the explosives that they had garnered and made with such care. It was located on St. Nicholas Avenue in Inwood, a neighborhood of upper Manhattan occupied almost entirely by Caribbean and Central American Latinos. The premises consisted of a three-story red-brick workshop/office and a large yard guarded by a high chain-link and razor-wire fence. In the yard were several large flatbed trucks and big black industrial boilers on pallets.

Rashid walked over to the grimy window of the office and looked out on the yard, as if to assure himself that the physical assets of his operation were still there. He had not really recovered from the news that ibn-Salemeh was under investigation by the FBI, that the whole business about Felix Tighe had been discovered. Admit your mistakes, then move on: that was one of ibn-Salemeh's precepts. Rashid had to admit that he had been mistaken about Tighe. He thought the man was just interested in money. He also had no idea that Tighe had the brains to build a bomb himself, with stolen materials, but there it was, and now the television was saying he had been running his own vendetta with what were supposed to be random attacks. That's how they had known that his death was fraud. He had put his signature on everything.

"Leave? No, that is out of the question," said Rashid. "The plan will go through. But staying very quiet is a good idea. Staying quiet in place. Our papers are good, we have green cards, we pay our bills, we live quietly, we work, day by day we advance the plan. There is no reason for anyone to bother us. However, we cannot allow Felix to be taken by the police. They will sit him down with an artist, or perhaps even have him go through visa photos, and then our faces will become known, mine and yours, Mamoud and yours, Habib. So he must be eliminated."

"What are we going to do about Rifaat?" asked Mamoud, called Carlos.

All three of them glanced toward the door, where in the next office, a man lay on a cot, scarcely breathing. The child's knife had nicked an artery and the man was slowly bleeding to death. There was no possibility of getting him any medical attention. Rashid lifted two hands palms facing, the classic gesture invoking fate. "He will live or he will die, as God wills. Is the target still staying in that storage place?"

"That is what Saad tells me," said Carlos-Mamoud.

"Let him do it, then. Tonight. See he has the necessary equipment and drive him away afterward."

"Saad? Are you sure? I could do it."

"No, you are critical to the plan. You can not be risked at this stage. And why not Saad? He will be happy to get revenge for his brothers. He already thinks Felix caused the explosion. Make sure there is no body found. Use the casting furnace here. Oh, and be sure to collect the ashes. Perhaps we can still convince them that Felix has always been dead."

Lucy convinced Karp with some difficulty that he was not needed at home in the aftermath of the Raney bombing, and that the best thing he could do on the Monday was to go to court and resume trying the Gerber amp; Nixon case. So he had, leaving his stricken family: the boys silent and prone to fits of weeping; Marlene red-eyed, smoking continuously, and sitting in her rocker, creaking gothically back and forth by the hour, and dry as a stone, with an expression on her face that he did not remember ever seeing there before, a look of ashes. And Lucy, girl of steel, even Lucy looking a little rusty under the eyes as she made sure the family ran along, that there was food on the table, and clean clothes and the floor mopped and the dishes done.

So here he was, having, to his shame, put absolutely everything out of his mind except the business at hand. The first thing he'd done, even before leaving for work, was to get in touch with Dr. M.K. Shah, the assistant medical examiner who had done the autopsy on the victim and testified about it during the prosecution's case in chief. Dr. Shah was a little surprised to have the chief assistant district attorney call him at his home at eight on a Monday morning, to ask him about an incidental wound in an autopsy he'd done months ago. He assured the gentleman from the DA that the wound to that particular victim's left arm was of no importance in the demise of the victim, having severed no major blood vessels. Yes, he recalled it well, because it was the first bullet he had recovered- it had smashed the humerus and lodged under the collar bone, painful, yes, damaging, yes, but not contributing to the death…

That was not, however, what Karp wanted to know. When Dr. Shah finally understood what the question was, and that the DA was making no criticism at all of the way he had handled the autopsy or testified at the grand jury and at the trial, he genially confirmed Karp's surmise and announced himself ready to take the stand again at a moment's notice to establish the fact in open court.

In that court, the first business was Karp's cross-examination of Detective Eric Gerber. It was brief.

"Detective Gerber, you've just testified that you shot the victim, Mr. Onabajo, because you thought he was about to overpower your partner, Detective Nixon, and take his weapon, and what I'd like to hear from you is how you knew that."

"He was shouting at me: 'Eric, he's got my gun!' "

" 'Eric he's got my gun,' a cry for aid, yes, but from where you were standing, you couldn't actually see that struggle, could you?"

"No, the suspect was in the way. He had Detective Nixon locked up."

"Locked up? Locked up, how?"

Gerber's right hand went to the collar of his jacket and gripped it. "He had him by the collar. Detective Nixon was wearing a leather jacket, and the guy had a bunch of it in his fist. He couldn't pull away."

"I see. Now in demonstrating that, we see you're using your right hand. But Mr. Onabajo was using his left hand, of course. Is that correct? He was holding your partner's jacket with his left hand?"

"Right, his left."

There was a humorous murmur at this. The judge scowled it down.

Karp smiled, too. "So, you are absolutely positive that while he contested for Detective Nixon's weapon with his right hand, he was holding tight to that officer's leather jacket with his left hand, locking him in, as you say."

"Yes."

"From where you stood, did it appear to be a powerful grip?"

"Well, yes, the jacket, the leather, was all bunched up."

"Detective Nixon was not pushing him away, was he, or using his hands to pry loose that powerful grip, was he?"

"No, he wasn't."

"Why was that?"

"Because he was using both hands to try to keep his weapon away from the suspect."

"Away from the victim, yes. But he was able to fire, was he not? Two shots?"

"Yes."

"But these shots did not make the victim release his powerful grip, did they?"

"No. Not that I could determine at that time."

"And that's why you fired five shots from your pistol, to get him off your partner?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, Detective. Nothing further, Your Honor."

Karp caught the surprised look that passed across Hrcany's face. Karp knew he hadn't expected this. He had expected a lot of questions about the five fatal shots from Gerber's gun, which Hrcany, in his direct questioning, had been at great pains to demonstrate were all necessary to subdue a desperate criminal clawing at an officer's weapon.

Marlene stirs. The dog is hungry. Lucy has taken care of everything else, but Gog will accept food only from her own hand, as he has been trained to do. So she leaves the rocker and pours kibble and two cans of beef liver dog food into his trough. She eats a banana and pours out some of the coffee Lucy made that morning. The daughter is out with the boys. Marlene doesn't know where, except that they are away from her and therefore safer than they would be if she had them all on her knee. She sips the stale coffee, not tasting it, and watches the dog eat. The dog tried to tell her about the bomb, and she hadn't listened to him. Gog was bomb trained, Magog was not. Marlene should have known why Gog was upset, but she was too drunk. She checked her own truck but not Raney's sedan. So that was her fault, too.

She finds herself in the room she used to use as an office, a bright room that occupies the end of the loft that looks out on Crosby Street. In former days it had been a jungle of house plants, but now only one brave philodendron survives. She believes that Giancarlo still waters it. It would be the sort of thing he does. She had given all the other plants away, or allowed them to wither.

This is automatic pilot, she thinks, the simulacrum of an active life. She is aware that if she stays in her rocker and never speaks to anyone and never acknowledges anyone speaking to her, her family will call in medical help, and she will find herself in a looney bin, with kindly people trying to help her out of her depression. In fact, she is not depressed. She is in a state perfectly suitable for a woman who has lived a life of willful violence and is now suffering the moral consequences thereof. How else should she be feeling but bereft, miserable, guilty? She knows that mental health professionals do not think in such terms, which is one reason she wants to stay out of their hands. Lucy understands this, but Karp does not, and Karp will be in charge if she has what they will call a breakdown. So she is careful not to have one. If the authorities still existed that once dealt with people like her, the kind that used to burn at stakes, or immur in towers, then she might seek that sort of professional help, but no kindly people, please. Therefore she goes to work.

On the agenda today is Cherry Newcombe. Marlene has put some of Paul Agnelli's money on the street. She has a wide acquaintanceship among the demimonde of lower Manhattan. She knows people who will watch other people for a fee, and ask questions in ways that practically insure that they will be answered truthfully. So she has learned that fifteen-year-old Cherry has recently come into some money, serious money, and that she has clothed herself in splendor, having bought a number of tiny, shiny garments suitable for evening wear, plus a remarkable number of expensive shoes, some gold jewelry, and the hire of a car to take her around to the clubs. Other moneys have been spent on her boyfriend, Gambrell, twenty-two, who is apparently multiply guilty of the crime for which Paul Agnelli has been brought before the bar of justice, to wit, porking Ms. Newcombe, an underage female, but no one seems to be after Gambrell. Even more of this new cash has gone, as far as Marlene's people can determine, to a man called Carter "Smoke" Belknap, a dealer in cocaine. Belknap's usual place of business is a parking lot on Essex at Delancey, next to a club called Boot Kamp, which is, not incidentally, a favorite of Cherry Newcombe's.

Marlene now packs a nylon bag with the implements she will need for the evening's work: a black cotton jumpsuit, black Converse high-tops, a silk balaclava, nylon rope, plastic cable ties, duct tape, and a nine-millimeter Beretta 92FS semi-automatic pistol, fitted with a Jarvis threaded barrel. Marlene had sworn never to use a gun again, but she now construed that oath to mean never use one as an adjunct to some legal, professional activity. What she was about to do was a crime. And a crime in itself was the last item she tossed into the bag, a SRT Matrix sound suppressor, also called a can silencer, the ownership of which in the state of New York is a felony.

She takes this bag, the dog lead, and Gog the dog and leaves her home. It is a long time until dark, but she wants to visit Raney and tell him what happened. She announces this mission to the dog and adds, "Maybe he'll shoot me. Save everyone a lot of trouble." Her voice sounds strange to her ear, hoarse, as if still suffering from the effects of the last significant noise she can recall making, the scream that shot from her throat when the bomb went off. The dog says nothing, as he has learned not to indulge her in these moods. Besides, he knows she is immortal, as the gods must be if the world is to make sense.

Lucy took the twins to Washington Square. This time they did not complain that they were not babies and could wander the city streets at will. Lucy foiled Zak's attempt to slip out with a six-inch chef knife stuck in his waistband under his shirt, and was deaf to his arguments that they required weaponry of some kind, preferably a gun. At the park, Giancarlo unlimbered his accordion and began to play "Brokenhearted I'll Wander," a tune suitable for their collective mood. Lucy sat on the bench next to Giancarlo; Zak took up a position at some distance, where he could scan the crowd for danger and call in air strikes. She pulled a Post from a wastebasket. The Raney murder was still front page, fed by the anastomosing story about the fantastic escape of the killer Felix Tighe from Auburn Prison, his association with the terrorist chieftain ibn-Salemeh, the possibility that Felix was the Manbomber, that he had murdered his ex-wife and her child and now the wife of the man who had arrested him fifteen years ago. There was a big picture of Felix, as he had looked at the time of his arrest, and a more recent one from the prison.

"What's wrong?" said Giancarlo, after his song was done.

"Nothing."

"Yes, there is. You said, 'Oh, good Christ! Oh, Jesus!' under your breath when I was playing."

"It's fine, Giancarlo, I just thought of something I had to do. Play on!"

He shrugged and did. People paused in their walking by, and a number stayed to listen, so sweet and sad was the music. Soon afterward, a weedy teenager with a tin whistle arrived, and a bearded man in his mid-twenties came and opened his violin case and began to play, and then a pretty young woman with a Gaelic drum, a bohdran, and the four of them started in on "The Heather Breeze," as if they had been playing together forever. It was music squeezed from the rock of misery, designed over the centuries to make you forget the cruelties of life for the space of a song.

Hours passed in this way. They ate lunch from the cancer wagons. Lucy checked in with her father, and with her mother, getting neither, but leaving messages. When work let out, more musicians came by and they played the sun down. Someone mentioned an open mike night at a coffeehouse on Christopher and so they all trooped over there, Lucy being happy enough to stay in the safety of the crowd. Giancarlo formed a band, with four people who were all twice as old as he was, to be called Blind Boy Please Help. They made forty-eight dollars. The thought passed through Lucy's mind that it would be very pleasant to wander the world in this way, with her two brothers, playing innocent music and letting events drift by. She looked at Zak while she was thinking this, and got a bright smile, an unusual sight on that face, and she knew that he had been thinking just that, too. Her cell phone buzzed; she spoke briefly into it and switched off.

"Who was that?" Zak asked.

"I have to meet a guy in about an hour."

"A boyfriend?"

"Uh-huh. Leo DiCaprio. He saw me in the street and fell in love. He wants to marry me, but I don't know… I don't want to be, like, spoiled."

"He's a jerk, and he's probably about five-three. No, really, who?"

"A guy I want watching our backs," she said and would say no more.

Karp could see that Roland was as rattled as he ever got, which was not much. He seemed a little hesitant with his next and final witness, the powerfully gripped other detective, Frank Nixon. Nixon was wearing glasses today, rimless ones, instead of his usual contact lenses. His dark blond hair was swept back, combed close against his skull with water like an altar boy's, and he had a shirt on that was a size too big around the collar, making him look like the guy on the beach who got sand kicked in his face. The signal here: a mild and unthreatening fellow. He had a sharp high-cheeked face built around a ski nose and a set of pale, smart blue eyes.

Roland spent a good deal of time on the first moments of the altercation, when the victim allegedly went for the detective's weapon. Karp understood that he was doing this because Karp had focused his questioning of Gerber on those moments, and that meant that Karp thought they were vulnerable, that Karp would concentrate on those moments during his summation. He would ask the jury if it were reasonable that a man shot several times could hang on with a powerful grip. Roland meant to fix in the jury's collective mind that it was reasonable, that it did happen, and that two cops were swearing that it happened in just that way.

It was a simple trap and Roland was walking, nay running, into it, singing tra-la-la. When the direct questioning of Detective Nixon was completed, therefore, all Karp's work had been done for him by the opposition, which is every litigator's highest hope. Karp now rose and paused. He looked at the witness; he looked at the judge and the jury. From the beginning of this trial, from the moment it had become known that the defense was going to place the defendants on the stand, and expose them to cross-examination, all the speculation in the press had been that this examination would make or break the trial. And when the word got out that Karp was taking the case, they went into a frenzy of anticipation, for Karp was the best cross-examiner in the recent history of the DA. He had just demonstrated this by his demolition of Hugo Selwyn, the ballistics expert, and everyone was looking forward to dramatic fireworks. It was going to be like on TV.

"I have no questions for this witness, Your Honor," Karp said, and the courtroom gasped and burbled with noise, requiring the judge to wield his gavel and threaten to clear. When order had been restored, Roland announced that the defense's case was concluded. Higbee's eyes flicked to Karp's, who said, "Your Honor, may we approach the bench?"

The judge dismissed the jury for five minutes. When the two counsels stood beneath the presidium, Karp said, "We have a rebuttal case, Your Honor, and since it's closing on three thirty, I would suggest carrying it over until tomorrow."

Roland said, "Your Honor, we'd like an offer of proof here. It's inconceivable to me that the state could rebut the defense case except by a repetition of previous material."

"Your Honor, I believe I know my responsibilities under the rules," Karp replied. "Our rebuttal case will include new material impeaching the defendants' testimony, as required."

It was an easy call. The judge brought the jury back in, told them what was going on, and what a rebuttal was, and dismissed them for the day. Reporters mobbed both attorneys outside the courtroom. They asked Karp why he hadn't cross-examined. They asked if he was throwing the case. If he was throwing the case because the cops were white and victim was black. Or Muslim. Karp brushed by them silently, as he always did. The more perspicacious among them noted that he was smiling happily, and wondered why. The reporters had Roland Hrcany, however, who loved to talk with the press, and he supplied enough information for two. He was glad to explain that the reason that Karp had not cross-examined was that the direct had been done with such skill, and the story was so obviously true, that any cross would have been otiose and harassing, and that's why Karp, for whom he had the greatest respect, had wisely declined to pursue it.

The street outside of Raney's house is full of parked cars when Marlene pulls up, both private and police vehicles. She must park a block away and walk back. As she does, she passes men she recognizes from the cops. They recognize her, too, and many give her hard looks, for most of them think that she should be wearing an orange jumpsuit up at Bedford instead of walking free on the streets.

Inside the house it is crowded, hot, and noisy with voices and music and the clink of glass against glass, for they are waking Nora Raney in the grand old style. Jim Raney is a famous and popular cop and his wife was a charmer. There is an open bar, much patronized. The place smells of many colognes, whiskey, smoke, and beer. Marlene steers her way through beefy men and hard-faced women with short hair (none of whom resemble the lovely policewomen of televisionland), all with drinks in their hands. Raney is on the couch in just the place he was sitting when his wife grabbed up the keys and went out to move his car. A woman who shares his bright Irish good looks sits next to him on the couch and an older woman sits on the other side, dabbing her eyes: the sister and the mother. In an armchair nearby, a red-eyed, red-haired woman dandles little Meghan. Nora's sister over from Ireland, Marlene guesses.

She meets Raney's eyes, which are red-rimmed, too, as if he had been swimming in chlorinated water. He is very pale, the freckles stand out on his forehead. His hands are wrapped in bandages. He sees her and makes a motion of his head, of his eyes. She understands and leaves. The backyard is empty, the Weber grill sits where it sat on the night of the explosion, a burger lies mummified on the grate. Marlene lights a cigarette and wonders again why she has stopped drinking.

After a few minutes, Raney comes out. "Give me one of those," he says.

She pulls out a Marlboro, lights it, and raises it to his mouth. It is intimate without being sexy. They are comrades of a special type.

"It's a good wake," she observes when half the cigarette has vanished.

"Yeah, pity Nora couldn't come. She always said that. 'Pity old O'Hara couldn't come.' At the guy's wake. Are you going to ask me how I feel?"

"No. I believe I can guess. I wanted to tell you…" No, when it came down to saying the words she couldn't, not about the dog and it being all her fault. There was no point to it. It was self-immolating self-indulgence. "… how sorry I am. I liked her."

He just looked at her, waiting. She said, "What will you do, Raney?"

"I don't know." He lifts his hands. "There's some deep damage, they tell me. The bosses are going to consider this a duty injury, trying to rescue a victim, so if I throw in my tin, I'll get a three-quarter pension. I might do it. I could've lost my enthusiasm for police work, all things…"

"They'll get him."

"Yeah, and there's been a hundred forty-eight cops through here in the last couple of days and every single one of them looked me in the eye and said, 'Don't worry, we'll get him.' I said the same thing myself to families. Like it matters."

She helps him to a final drag and then crushes out the butt under her shoe. He says, looking up at the milky hot sky, "I mean, it does matter. If he came in here right now, I'd shoot him like a dog, and I wouldn't feel a thing. 'Don't worry, we'll get him.' Of course they'll get him. He's fucking doomed, now that they know it's him. There's no place he can go. But I got no feeling about it, you know? It's like a fucking meteor came through the roof and killed my life. My wife. So, I might not feel anything for a while. But definitely not wanting revenge. I'm not like you, Marlene."

"I know."

"I thought I was, but I'm not. I just want to take Meghan and go hide now. Get out of the city. Her folks want us to come stay with them in Clare. The west coast of Clare, like in the song. You want to hear something funny? If we hadn't had you over, I'd be dead and you'd be here talking to her. And she wanted you over to get a look at you because she was worried we used to get it on, and she wanted to check you out. I got to get back in there or they're going to send a search party. They all want to help, but I'll be glad when it's just me and the girl again."

Marlene has nothing to say to that. He looks around the yard, as if he's seeing it new. He adds, "I still see her, you know. And hear her. Opening cabinets. Walking, her step when it's quiet. My ma says it's the communion of the saints, the dead are all around us. I don't know. I can't believe all that about playing harps in the white robes, either. You ever think about that?"

"Death? A good deal. Although even if harps and white robes exist, they're probably not in store for me. Lucy's the expert on faith, though. You could talk to her."

"I don't know. I wish I had it. I swear to Christ I do. I wish I had it like my old lady and my gran did. Or Nora. The fucking Irish! Aside from the music it was the only decent thing we ever had and we get over here and get a little money to jingle together and a warm place to shit, and we let it go like a used Kleenex."

With that he walks back into the house. She leaves the yard and goes down the driveway, past the scorched place, her feet crunching on broken auto glass, and down the street to her car. The drive takes unusually long, for they are checking the tunnels, as they have at unscheduled intervals since it was revealed that the Manbomber's plan was to blow them up. The expressway is backed up for miles. She takes out her cell phone and has a long, interesting conversation with Detective McKenzie, the arresting officer in the Agnelli case. Then Marlene plays a CD of the Pavarotti Rigoletto on her stereo, and smokes in the chill of her air conditioner. She doesn't care if it takes four hours to get back to the city. She has to wait until dark before she can go to work.

Lucy and the boys walked down Crosby south of Broome. It is a narrow dark street, almost devoid of traffic in the night. Someone has painted the streetlight shadows of the hydrants and parking signs with black paint on the pavement, producing the ambiance of a stage set.

"Give me your knife, Zak," Lucy said.

"You took it, remember?" he answered grumpily.

"She means the one in your sneaker," said Giancarlo.

"Yeah, that one," said Lucy, who had only suspected. "But I'll give it right back."

He handed over a big Case jackknife. She knelt next to a manhole cover and tapped a syncopation on it. Again.

A minute later there was a heavy rattle and scrape and the manhole cover was raised from below, and slid to one side, and a tall, thin man jumped out, so quickly that it might have been a piece of stage magic. He was wearing a dark sweatsuit with the hood up and had a rucksack on his back and a heavy belt such as utility workers wear, from which dangled a number of tools and pouches. The sweatpants were tucked into rubber knee boots. His face was mushroom pale and he had a long pale beard. A dank smell rose from him, alien but not unpleasant.

"Hello, David," said Lucy. The man smiled and the smile illuminated his face in a way that was not entirely pleasing. Both Zak and Lucy, who saw it, felt a chill, and Giancarlo, who did not, sensed that chill and drew closer to his twin. There was something inhuman in the look, not cruel or uncaring, but rather beyond humanity entirely, the look Lucy imagined must have appeared on the faces of one of the tormented torturers with whom God has so generously supplied the Catholic Church.

"I'm glad to see you, Lucy," said David Grale. "You know, besides Father Dugan, you're the only person I miss up here in the world. And look at you! You've turned into a lovely young woman!"

Lucy felt herself blush and was glad of the night. At one time she had maintained a crush of gargantuan proportions on this man, when he was a Catholic Worker and a fellow servant of the poor. And she was not called lovely very often.

He turned to examine the twins. "And these are your brothers. All grown up, too, I see, and I see God has sent an affliction to… which one are you?"

"Giancarlo."

"Great things often arise from the afflictions God sends. You're a believer, I think… yes?"

"Yes."

"Yes. And your brother is not. Isn't that mysterious?"

Grale walked across the pavement and sat on the deep windowsill of an art gallery, right on the little sawteeth set there to prevent such sitting. They stood in a group in front of him, like tourists gawking at an exhibit.

"Dear, would you possibly have a cigarette on you?" he asked.

She did and he lit one up, inhaling luxuriously and blowing a column of smoke.

"I love these," he said, "and, you know, I don't think I have to worry about lung cancer." He grinned. "They said you were having some trouble," he said.

"A little. You know about the Manbomber, right?"

He'd heard nothing but rumors. Grale did not do current events. She quickly filled him in, especially about the more recent revelations: that Felix Tighe was alive (and she had to explain who he was) and had set off a bomb that had killed a cop's wife in the presence of all the Karps; that a man of Latino or Middle Eastern appearance had tried to kidnap Giancarlo, and one other thing.

"I know Tighe. He called himself Larry Larsen and said he was a homeless ex-con, you know, down at Holy Redeemer. He was pretty curious about my connection with Tran. You remember who Tran is?"

"The Viet bodyguard, yeah. Why did he want to know about Tran?"

"I thought he was just making conversation. I mean it's pretty unusual to know someone like that and Tighe is a con artist. You know, they want to find out all about you so they have some kind of angle… that's all I thought it was. But now, that there's this connection with ibn-Salemeh, that explains it. They wanted to find out where he was, and they figured I'd know."

"Do you?"

"Of course. And that was the reason for the snatch on G.C. They figured if they had him, I'd tell."

"Would you?" asked Giancarlo.

"No, silly. I wouldn't care if they gave you a million nuggies," she said, giving him one. "But there's another thing. You remember when we used to talk about spiritual stuff and about how dumb people were if they believed that 'spiritual' meant 'good'?"

He nodded. "Yes. I miss those discussions. As I recalled we talked about saints and demons…"

"Yes. Anyway, I think Felix is one. I mean he's inhabited. I told Father Dugan about it and he sent a guy around, a priest, and the guy agreed. He put a kind of zinger on Felix and Felix stayed away from the soup kitchen after that. I saw him in front of our place a little while later. I gave him some cash and he booked. But now, with all this, with the Arabs coming after us and him, too… and my parents can't know this is going on, they have enough to deal with right now, and… you were the only one I could think of."

He finished his cigarette, stubbed it out carefully, and placed it in a tin box he took from his pocket, nodding all the while. "I see. So you want me to marshal the armies of the night to look after you and your brothers." He grinned again, more wolfishly this time.

"Yeah, just until they catch them. Can you do that?"

"I'll need a little while to set it up. I'm sure Spare Parts will help out once he knows the story. Actually, I'd very much like to meet this Felix. I must say, I'm a little surprised at you calling on me. I thought you had scruples about…" He gestured vaguely, taking in all of society's norms and the corpus of Christian morality.

"I guess you were wrong," she said. "About Felix, you'll be careful, right? I mean-"

"Oh, you think if I confront him and he happens to not survive, I'll be infected?"

"Yes."

"Darling, who do you think lives down there where I live? What do you think I'm doing down in the deep tunnels?"

Actually, she hadn't thought about that at all. "So how do you keep from, you know…"

"Being infected? I don't. I trust to the Holy Spirit to keep them all under control." He laughed and, lowering his voice an octave, said, "My name is Legion."

"That's not funny."

"No. It's a shame. It's hard to be in polite company anymore." He rose and hoisted his pack onto his shoulders. "It was nice seeing you, Lucy. Boys. Don't worry, we'll keep an eye on you all." His mad eyes met hers. "God be with you," he said.

"And also with you," she replied.

He walked over to the manhole and lifted it with a tool he took from his jangling belt. In a moment he was gone. The lid clanged dully into place.

"Boy, that was great!" exclaimed Zak. "God, Luce, you know all the cool people. How come I don't get to meet cool people like that?"

"He's an insane serial killer, Zak," she said.

"Yeah, wow!" Zak exclaimed, his face shining. "Neat!"

It is dark by the time Marlene enters Manhattan. Policemen and camo-clad Guardsmen populate the entranceway to the Battery Tunnel, and trucks of various types are pulled out of line for inspection, including Marlene's. There is an altercation between Gog and the NYPD's bomb dog, which Marlene has to sort out, with much exhibition of identity papers. Vere are your paperz? No longer an ironic line, it seems, in New York. They clear her without a thorough search of her truck- silly them- and she creeps through, her many felonies unrevealed.

As she turns east on Houston her cell phone buzzes. One of her street informants: Cherry Newcombe is on the move. Marlene drives into the Lower East Side on Essex, parks in a certain lot near Delancey. It's still a little early, so she goes into the camper and lies down on a foam pad with her dog, who is transported by this act to paradise. She allows him to nuzzle her face and then wipes herself off with a towel kept for that purpose. She stares into his brown eyes and hopes that she may come back as a dog: a short intense life where morals and ethics are reduced to mere loyalty seems good to her just now. "Why was I not made a dog, like thee?" she purrs. Oh, shut up and rub my belly, the dog replies.

She dozes and wakes with a start. Voices and the occasional sound of thumping music. She strips her clothes off and gets into the jumpsuit, sneakers, and balaclava. She loads her pistol and screws in the suppressor. Peering out the camper's side window, she sees that a black Lincoln Towncar with custom gold trim is sitting in a dark corner of the lot. A white guy is leaning in the passenger window. He walks away and she slips out.

There is a black man sitting in the driver's seat listening to Usher sing "U Remind Me." Marlene looks in the passenger window and taps on the frame with the butt of her weapon. "Get out of the car," she says politely.

Smoke Belknap looks at her without expression. "It's in the glove. You want the money, too?"

"I don't want either. I'm not after dope or money. I want you out of the car."

"Well, then fuck you, bitch! You want to cap me, go the fuck ahead. You not getting my ride."

Marlene shoots Belknap twice in the car stereo to make her point. The pistol makes a thirty-decibel sound, about the same as clearing your throat in church.

"I don't want your car, either. Get out now. Take your keys."

Belknap gets out, slamming the door. "Then what the fuck do you want?"

"I want you to make a call to one of your customers."

After some protest, Belkap places the call, and after a good deal more protest, he himself is placed in his car trunk. When Cherry Newcombe comes out of the nearby nightclub on the promise of a sachet of particularly pure and cheap cocaine, Marlene kidnaps her and forces her into the back of the camper. There she is introduced to Gog, who does his insane carnivore act, which is not entirely an act, while Marlene explains what she will let the dog do if Cherry does not tell her right now the truth about Paul Agnelli, Mr. Fong, the ex-wife, the phony rape charge, how Agnelli's DNA had arrived on Cherry's underpants, and how Cherry's fibers and other traces had arrived in the back of Paul's car.

After urinating in terror on Marlene's foam pad, and after she stops crying, the girl is forthcoming into a tape recorder for some time. It is a complex plot, and Cherry does not know all the higher details, but enough. She's been paid three thousand dollars for her participation, which amounted to her testimony, a used pair of panties, and a selection of hair and secretions. A Chinese man had paid the fee and taken the stuff; that is all she knows.

Afterward, she starts crying again and asks Marlene what will happen to her, what the cops would do, what Fong will do when he finds out. She starts to cry again. Marlene looks at the girl, the absurd sex-ruined child in her expensive tiny dress, and finds that she feels nothing at all.

"I don't care," she says honestly. "There's a trunk-latch button inside the car. Go let your dope dealer out and maybe he'll give you a freebie."

Marlene climbs into her truck and drives away. As she drives she feels that something is amiss, that she has forgotten to do something. When she has parked and is walking toward her door, she realizes what it is. In the past, when Marlene participated in acts of violence, she always became nauseated, and threw up. But she's not nauseous now. She feels fine. She feels nothing at all.