Resolved

17

Dr. Shah was a good witness. When asked a question he would cock his head slightly to one side and knot his brow, demonstrating that he was making an effort to utter the whole truth, and in his answers he was precise, answering just what was asked. His diction was precise, too, featuring the clipped accent of the vanished empire. His mien was distinguished without being threatening: a pale brown man of about sixty, slightly overweight, with graying sides to his full head of dark hair. He was heavily diploma-ed as a forensic pathologist, and had worked as an assistant medical examiner for fourteen years. Karp watched the courtroom as he took his seat. He felt a tension that had not been there yesterday. All the jurors were alert and staring.

"Dr. Shah," said Karp, "when you first appeared here as a witness some weeks ago, what was your goal, in your testimony?"

"Why, my goal, as required by the law, was to attest to the cause and manner of death."

"And so you discussed those wounds of the victim that taken together produced the shock and exsanguination that were the immediate cause of death, and only those, correct?"

"That is correct."

"But there were other wounds, were there not?"

"Yes, there were."

"Doctor, I would like you to tell the jury about one of those wounds, the wound from the bullet that we have been calling during this trial 'bullet number two,' which was the second bullet shot from Detective Nixon's weapon. What was the path of that bullet and what damage did it do?"

Dr. Shah said, "Yes, well, based on the transcript of my notes, that bullet entered the anterior deltoid muscle at an oblique angle and struck the anatomical neck of the humerus, shattering it, and then rebounded back into the axillary region of the torso, striking against the posterior surface of the clavicle. It caused a greenstick fracture of that bone, and came to rest two centimeters from the medial end of the clavicle, where it was retrieved by me during autopsy."

"Thank you. Now, in plain language, Doctor, what were the physiological results of this damage?"

"The damage was localized, of course, and not life-threatening, but neurologically quite severe. No major blood vessels were damaged- the brachial and subclavian arteries and veins were intact. But the bullet shattered a large bone mass, sending a hail of bone splinters down and medially- that is, toward the body. The ulnar nerve, the median nerve, and the radial nerve of the left arm were all completely severed proximal to the insertion of the deltoid."

"And what would have been the medical results of such damage?"

"The voluntary muscles of that arm would have been paralyzed."

"I see. And after such damage, would the victim have been capable of exerting a powerful grip on something with his left hand?"

"Oh, there is no question of powerful. He would not have been able to grip at all. He would have had no control of that arm whatsoever. It would have been hanging like a dead fish."

"Thank you, Doctor." Karp nodded to Hrcany. "Your witness."

Karp had to give Roland game. When confronted by a hostile expert who is not bullshitting at all, the only strategy is to get him to tell a slightly different story than the one he provided for the opposition, and hope that the jury will take this as reasonable doubt. So Roland had the doc go through the list of nerves in the arm and to say yes or no as to whether those nerves were cut. He was able to prevent Shah from expanding on his answers, to point out, for example, that these other nerves didn't matter, that the major motor nerves were the only ones that counted. Unfortunately, Dr. Shah bridled under this treatment, and became more and more impatient, so that when Roland finally said, "So, Doctor, it's not correct to say that Mr. Onabajo's arm was entirely deprived of neurological impulse, is it?" the medical examiner did not give a simple "no," but burst forth with, "Not relevant, sir, not at all. The left arm was completely paralyzed." After which Roland had to ask the judge to direct the witness to answer the question asked, and to tell the jury to disregard the doctor's answer.

The jury did not like this at all. Karp could see it on their faces. They had heard a solid impeachment and they were shocked. A pair of cops had lied under oath and had been caught in a lie by the testimony of a patently decent man who clearly had no interest in anything but the truth. You need to sit down now, Roland, Karp thought, take the hit and move on and try to fix it in summation, but even as he thought it, he knew Roland would not: it was his one failing as a lawyer. Karp had spoken to him about it any number of times when Roland worked for him in the homicide bureau.

"Dr. Shah," said Roland, "you're a Muslim, are you not?"

"Yes," said the doctor, puzzled, "but what does-"

"Objection, Your Honor, relevance," said Karp instantly.

"Withdrawn; nothing further," said Roland and sat down, with the courtroom burbling around him.

The judge called a recess after that, and Karp went back to his office. In a normal case, this would be the time when a defense attorney who had just seen his case go up in smoke would call and propose a deal, because juries did weird things. For an ADA a bird in the hand was often better than taking even a small chance that it would fly away, and also, with a plea, you got to see the defendant stand up there in court and unravel all the lies. But he knew Roland would not call. The clients would not press him, because they had slipped into hallucination- they believed the story they were telling. It was truth for them, and they had a whole culture backing them up, rather like the Southerners who maintained in the face of all evidence that the Civil War was not about slavery. But the real reason was that Roland Hrcany could not ever admit that Karp had beaten him in a direct head to head. You wanted courtroom lawyers to be scrappy, but Roland carried it to extremes, and his rivalry with Karp, twenty years in the festering, had become toxic.

So there was no call, and the court assembled again. There was no chance of a surrebuttal, because the medical facts could not be disputed. Roland needed to make the jury forget Dr. Shah and his clarity, and concentrate instead on the confusion in the nightclub parking lot. And he did. And he was good, too. He did the little speech about how much we owe to the people who protect us, especially in these trying times, and went on to compare Nixon and Gerber struggling with the gun to the desperate struggles that went on all over the city all the time, especially now that we've been attacked by people who don't share our values. Maybe people like Dr. Shah, hm? Which was not said, but left lying there like a wrapped gift of garbage for anyone to pick up.

And then the usual about the state's obligation to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and then a list of all the reasonable doubts- the conflicting on-scene witnesses, the disagreement about the ballistics, and who knew what a desperate individual might be capable of, doctors didn't know everything, look at what they told you was healthy, and then unhealthy, and then healthy again! Against that you have testimony from two experienced, brave, decorated officers. They didn't have to come up on the stand; the law cannot compel any defendants to appear as witnesses. They came voluntarily because they wanted you to hear the truth from their own lips. Their testimony agrees in every detail. The man was hanging on, he was grabbing the gun, he didn't let go even though shot twice.

It was rare, and when Karp rose to begin his own summation, he could see concern on the faces of some of the jurors. It was time for a Mark Antony opening. Karp utterly abjured any hostility in his mind or heart regarding New York's Finest. Cops were great and glorious and everyone knew that, and everyone wanted to support the police. Unfortunately, however, cops were human, and humans make mistakes, like the two defendants did on the night they killed Moussa Onabajo. What they should have done then was to say, Oh my God, we made a mistake, no, a whole series of mistakes. Karp counted these off on his long fingers. One: we accosted an inebriated man in the dark because we thought he was somebody else and we tried to get him to sell us narcotics. Two: because he wasn't a dope dealer he felt insulted and he abused us, but we persisted until he struck at Detective Nixon with his fists. Three: we did not identify ourselves as police officers. Four: in our anger we violated the police department's own rules of engagement- we drew our guns. Five: we panicked and shot a defenseless, harmless man seven times and killed him. That would have been telling the truth, but these men did not want to tell the truth. They feared the sanctions that the law provides for mistakes of this magnitude. So they made their final mistake: they lied. You did not hear the truth from their lips, but only self-serving lies.

Karp then went on to enumerate the lies and the testimony that established that they were lies beyond a reasonable doubt, focusing on the ballistic and medical evidence. He explained that Nixon was just as guilty as Gerber, even though he did not fire any fatal shots: they were acting in concert, and Nixon had started the assassination. He just wasn't as good a shot as his partner.

After that he said, "These facts are incontrovertible. For whatever reason, in whatever nighttime confusion, these two defendants at some point decided to kill Moussa Onabajo, and they did kill him, in violation of the law, for no reason except that he had made them angry by insisting that he was not a dope pusher and thereafter assaulting one of the officers, who never identified himself as a policeman, with his fists."

Karp moved to one side of the jury box, so that the jurors had a clear view of both him and the defendants at their table. "Now, let me confess something, ladies and gentlemen: if these policemen had come forward in the trial with the truth, if they had come forth crying, "God forgive us! It was dark, we were frightened, we made a terrible mistake, we violated our oath and our department's rules and gunned down an innocent, harmless man,' then I believe that the state would have had an almost insurmountable task in bringing in a conviction for second-degree murder. Not in this season, and not in this wounded city. But they did not do that, they did not do the decent and honorable thing, they did not emulate the brave men who died wearing the shield of New York's Finest. Instead, they came before you arrogant in their lies. They sought not expiation or healing, but impunity. Impunity! Look at them! They don't think they did anything wrong."

Karp spun and pointed his long arm at the defendants. Gerber had the look of a stunned ox. Nixon, bless him, had an actual half smile on his face, the gelid expression of a schoolboy caught in a fib. Karp gave it a couple of beats- not a sound but the whirring of fans- and went on.

"Ironically, Mr. Onabajo came from a nation where policemen and soldiers assault citizens, and kill citizens with impunity all the time. And it is likely that if Mr. Onabajo had been on the streets of Lagos and not New York he might not have defended his reputation with such vehemence. He might have run away. He might have confessed to a crime he didn't commit in order to avoid a worse fate. But he thought he was in a different kind of country, a country where even a struggling street merchant like Mr. Onabajo had dignity, and the protection of the law, where he could practice his religion, and earn an honest living, and care for his family, a country where despite his race and religion he was safe from being murdered by police officers just because they didn't like the way he behaved. Was he wrong about our country? I don't think so. I think we still have that kind of country, despite the terrible pressures of recent events. I hope you think so, too. If you do, if you think we still live in a nation where the police cannot shoot down a man with impunity, then on the basis of the evidence you must find, beyond a reasonable doubt, to a moral certainty, that Eric Gerber and Frank Nixon are guilty of murder in the second degree."

Judge Higbee's charge to the jury took another two hours, a fair and unobjectionable charge, right out of the book. Prosecutors usually take pains to define reasonable doubt and moral certainty, but Karp thought that the facts were so heavily on his side that he felt free to omit this part, confident that the judge would cover the points sufficiently, as he indeed did. Higbee was taking no chances of being reversed on that score. The jury trooped out at 4:10, looking serious, even grim, as homicide juries mostly did. Karp hoped the jury room was cooler than the courtroom. He figured on a fairly long deliberation, because he sensed that it would be difficult for them to reach consensus in a case this troubled and controversial. Therefore, he left the office at about 6:30 and walked slowly home. For once, he had not needed a reminder to take his cell phone with him.

To his surprise, that instrument sang out just as he was about to enter the elevator that went up to his loft. It was a court officer. They were back. Karp trotted over to Lafayette and grabbed a cab in front of the Holiday Inn, taking it the six blocks back to the courthouse. The pack of placard-carrying protesters in Foley Square had grown larger- hundreds and hundreds of people- and there were cops in helmets setting up gray crowd-control sawhorses in the streets. The press had been alerted and was lying in wait at the DA's entrance. Policemen had to help him through that mob. Cameras, reporters, and technicians packed the hallways outside the courtroom. They shouted for his attention like feeding gulls.

The usual butterflies as he took his seat. The little rituals of assembling the court. Time stretched. Then the court clerk took the sheet of paper from the jury to the judge, the clerk asked his dreadful question, the foreman rose, answered, and it was over: startled wails from the police families, applause from some others, gaveled into silence by Higbee.

Then the short formalities of thanking the jury, disposing of the convicts, the exit of the judge, and then chaos, a blur. People slapping his back, pumping his hand, the pressing crowds, the cameras and microphones. He gave a brief press statement, answered a few questions, ignored the personal ones, and broke away into the DA's wing. From his office he could hear cheering from the square.

The phone buzzed and, as he had expected, the DA wanted to see him.

When Karp walked into the DA's office, Keegan got up from his desk and gave Karp the full politician's handshake, with forearm grip and shoulder slap.

"Congratulations, kid!" said the DA. "Would it be insulting to say I always knew you could pull this one off?"

"Only mildly. I didn't realize I could win it until a little while ago."

Keegan laughed and gestured Karp into a chair. Sitting down behind his desk, he lifted his feet up and waggled his prop cigar. They discussed the details of the case for a while and then, in a convenient silence, the DA said, "Butch, we need to talk about something else. I guess you've heard the rumors?"

"About you and the federal bench? Yeah. Any truth to them?"

"The president will put my name in day after tomorrow."

"Congratulations to you, then."

Keegan nodded his thanks. "It just goes to show you: naked and shameless ambition pays off. What about you? Have you thought about what you want to be doing?"

"What I'm doing now, I guess. Maybe take a few cases to keep the juices flowing, if it works out."

Keegan looked at him steadily, as if waiting for something else. He shifted his gaze to the tip of his Bering. "The governor will be asking me for names to replace me, a courtesy. I understand from his people he'd like nonpartisan types. Good government, above the fray; I mean until the next election. It'd be a year and change. I'm intending to put your name in."

Karp felt his face flush. Even with Murrow's warning it was still a shock. He managed to say, "Thank you. I'm flattered," with the aid of some heavy throat clearing.

Keegan said, "I heard them cheering the verdict. We don't hear that very often."

"No. And that should tell us something about the system. When do you think we'll know? I mean, about the governor."

"Oh, a matter of days. But don't worry. I think it's all wired." A political smile here, and a cool assessing look. What's he looking for, Karp wondered. Probably for the first tender blossoms of corrosive ambition. Again, he found himself wishing that he trusted Jack Keegan a little more.

"Good thing we won the case, then."

Keegan burst out in startled laughter.

When he got back to the office, he saw that Murrow had arranged a celebration. Terry Collins was there, in a wheelchair, together with a large number of the more senior ADAs. Karp was surprised to see that they had waited so long after work to wish him well. He was one of those men who, without being popular, inspires great devotion in his subordinates, a fact that had entirely escaped his notice. He was prevailed upon to make a speech, and did, thanking all the little people who made it possible and saying he wanted to devote his career to advancing world peace. He was just starting to relax when his secretary tapped him on the shoulder and said that his wife was on the line.

"You're on the news," she said. "You won your case."

"I did. Let's hope we don't need any favors from the police anytime soon."

"Yes, always looking on the bright side. Well, good for you!"

"Thank you."

"I expected you home by now."

"They threw a little party, but I was just about to leave. Anything wrong?"

"I don't know. I just found out one of your ADAs is concocting evidence. Does that still qualify as wrong?"

"I'll be right home." said Karp.

"This is bad," said Karp, after Marlene had told him her story. "How sure are you that Palmisano knew about all this?"

"I'm not sure," said Marlene. "But it's hard to figure it otherwise. Look, Cherry Newcombe was paid off to lie and to supply underwear and physical samples to an agent of Fong. We know Fong wanted Paul's building and Karen wanted Paul to sell it to him, which he wouldn't. So they concoct this rape charge. There's no rape kit. The only evidence is the traces of Cherry in Paul's car and Paul's semen on the undies. The cop, Detective McKenzie, says he never handled the underwear, that Palmisano just announced that she had obtained it from Cherry, and that Palmisano ordered all the forensic work on it, the DNA matching and all. But Cherry says she gave all the stuff to Fong's guy. By the way, McKenzie said Palmisano seemed to take an unusual interest in the case, which he thought was more or less a piece of shit until the DNA undies turned up. He definitely did not believe Cherry's story, but, as he put it, quote, the woman was on my ass like Agnelli had whacked the president. She wanted him nailed, unquote. Paul swears there is only one likely source of such semen at the necessary time- Karen Agnelli and the fuck he gave her for old time's sake. That means that Fong must've slipped the mystery panties to Karen, Karen must've added the stain, and then taken it directly to Palmisano. Palmisano therefore lied to McKenzie about where she got them. Why would she if she wasn't bent? Q.E.D."

"It's not Q.E.D., Marlene. You have no direct evidence that Karen gave Terry Palmisano anything."

"True. Why don't you ask her?"

"Who, Palmisano?"

"No, Karen Agnelli. She's down at the Human Bean, waiting for you to show up. I called her a couple of minutes before you walked in."

"I'm being manipulated," said Karp.

"Yes. Relax and enjoy it. She's a small, cute blonde; she'll be dressed all in black, by Prada."

"And you arranged this by…?"

"Telling her I knew all and that it was her only chance to stay out of jail." She checked her watch. "Go. You know where it is, right?"

He stood and looked at her with a grumpy expression. "Yeah, corner of Broome and Crosby. You know, Marlene, there are other ways of doing all this shit, ways that many smart people have worked out over the years, ways we call- what's the word?- legal procedure. How come you never use any of them?"

"I do, unless they become inconvenient."

"Speaking of which, how come little Cherry was so forthcoming with her story? Or do I want to know this?"

"You don't."

"And I guess you realize that whatever else happens in this abortion, she can't be called as a witness because you fucked it up with strong-arm stuff."

"I do. But all you need is Karen, and she's ready to fold."

"You're sure of that."

"Yes, I have utter faith in your interrogatory abilities."

"Present company excepted."

"Oh, just go, Butch!" she said sharply. "I can't be cute just now. I want this to be over."

Rashid had promised Felix twenty grand for not telling, and had delivered five of it, and Felix had gotten himself cleaned up and into a decent Midtown hotel and bought himself a bunch of clothes and a couple of nights with an expensive whore. Five grand did not, however, go as far in the city as it had when he went into the joint, so he called Rashid and asked for the rest. Rashid yelled at him and accused him of revealing the plans about the tunnels. Felix denied doing this. He said it must have been one of Rashid's people. He added that if Rashid did not come through with the rest of the cash, not only would he confirm the cop's suspicions, but also give them detailed descriptions of Rashid and his two pals and the names and descriptions of the guys at the famous council of war. Rashid had sighed, a defeated man, and asked Felix where he wanted to pick it up. Felix then named a place on the corner of Tenth Avenue and Thirty-Ninth where they had just demolished a building, a lot filled with rubble surrounded by an easily penetrated chain-link fence. Eleven at night. This night.

Felix was early, to check out the scene, make sure it wasn't a set-up, not that they would ever try anything. One guy, he'd said, and sure enough, here was the one guy with the shopping bag he'd specified. The only light came from the street lamp and the neon on the avenue; Felix stood in the shadow of the adjoining building and watched the man pick his way across the rubble field. The man was twenty feet away when Felix stepped out into the light. The man stopped short when he saw Felix; no, it was a kid, a teenager, dark skinned, in jeans and a T-shirt, an Arab. Felix motioned him to come closer, but the kid didn't move. Instead he reached into the shopping bag.

That was wrong. Felix saw the gun in his hand and the flash and the crack of the bullet over his shoulder. The kid kept the gun pointed at Felix, but nothing happened. The kid looked at the gun, puzzled. A jam. He yanked at the slide. Felix started to move.

In the prison yard there had been any number of debates about what to do if someone was trying to kill you. Jimmy Hoffa was often quoted- charge a gun, flee a knife- after which someone would always say, "Yeah, and look where he is now." But Felix had always thought that was good advice, if you couldn't instantly duck behind cover and get to a car. The thing was, you couldn't outrun a bullet, and you had to figure that a target closing on the shooter would do a lot more to mess up his aim than one running away, where the guy could get into position and squeeze off shot after shot. And if you did have to take a bullet, it was better to be on top of the guy, rather than ten feet away, where he could fill you with holes at his leisure and you couldn't do shit back to him. If the guy was a pro, you were probably dead anyway, but you had to figure a small chance was better than no chance at all. This kid was definitely not a pro.

The Arab kid cleared his jam and brought his pistol up, just a little too late. Felix was on him, knocking his gun arm aside with his left and going in low with the knife. The kid screamed and fell off the blade onto his knees, trying to hold his belly closed and mumbling something in Arabic. Felix stepped behind him quickly and slashed his throat.

Lights flicked on in the windows of the apartment across the street. A car stopped on the avenue and a man stepped onto the curb. Felix heard a woman scream and he saw the man on the curb take a cell phone out of his pocket. Felix knew what number he was dialing. There was, naturally, nothing but newspapers in the shopping bag. He ran for the shadows, toward the river.

At Eleventh, he passed a storefront belonging to a glass company and examined himself in a mirror hanging there. He had been wearing black clothes, so that was all right if he got rid of them soon, but there was blood on his hands and face. He cleaned the knife handle and dropped the knife into a sewer, went into a dark saloon on Twelfth and washed his hands and face, then headed back to his hotel.

There were two police cars parked in front of the hotel, and several uniformed officers on the pavement at the main entrance. Felix was stunned. How did they know? Or maybe it had nothing to do with him, maybe he could just breeze by. No, too dangerous. No one looked at your face in a big commercial hotel, but if for some reason they had already associated him with that dead Arab, like maybe he had a note-"Meet Felix Tighe"- in his pocket, that could trigger this. No, that was crazy, the Arabs didn't know he was there. Or maybe they did. Maybe Rashid had dropped a dime on him, when the kid hadn't shot him. But no, that would mean the Arab in Auburn would be screwed…

No, fuck the Arabs, the Arabs couldn't have… but maybe some clerk had recognized him from the pictures they had in all the papers, on the TV, that Most Wanted program, he'd just made that this week. In any case, he knew he was sweating bullets, and he knew that cops could smell it on you, the fear, and he couldn't do it, he couldn't stand to bluff his way past. He couldn't think anymore, and he was getting close, he couldn't just spin around and run, that would have them on him in a second.

So he ducked into a steak house, and asked the cashier where Radio City was and then stepped out in the opposite direction from the hotel entrance. He walked over to Times Square, bought a nylon duffel, an eight-inch hunting knife, and a change of clothing: jeans, T-shirt, cheap sneakers, work gloves, a raincoat, and a wide-brimmed bush hat. He changed into these in the men's room of the clothing store, tossed the bloody clothes into a trash can, and headed west again. He couldn't take the chance of staying in a fleabag; that would be just where the cops were likely to look. He would have to drop out altogether, to go underground.

Fortunately, from his chasing after the Karp girl, he now knew something about the underground, about places cops hardly ever went. As he walked again toward the Hudson, he was conscious of a feeling he had not had in a while, the feeling of eyes upon him, rational paranoia. He found he didn't like it. He had loved being dead, and now his face was all over town. He was probably the most wanted man in New York at the moment. How to render himself invisible again? As long as his face was unknown, he'd been invisible as a uniformed workingman, and invisible in tourist gear. That wouldn't work anymore. He had to disappear, he had to become someone else, someone everyone saw but didn't look at. His memory threw up a few candidates, and one in particular, who had the added advantage of having some kind of screwy relationship with Lucy Karp.

Felix dry-swallowed another Dexedrine capsule to keep his brain working in the necessary high gear. The new plan gelled in his mind, giving him a little jolt of satisfaction. He was starting to feel on top of things once more. This was his natural state of mind, one entirely unaffected by his recent history, which was that aside from the few murders he had been able to accomplish, every plan he had hatched since leaving prison had ended in failure. The constant inner voice was crooning to him now, telling him he was the king of the world, untouchable, a little god. He turned south on Ninth, and headed toward the Penn Station area and Holy Redeemer.

"How did it go?" Marlene asked. It was after midnight, Marlene was watching celebrities make chitchat on the TV, and Karp had just walked in, looking worn and disgusted.

"That is a piece of work, little Karen," he said, sitting down on the couch. "You were right, though. She doesn't want to go to jail. In fact, that was actually the first thing she said to me when I sat down. No 'hello, how are you, glad to meet you,' just 'I am not going to jail.' "

"It's true, no one has manners these days," she said, as he kicked off his shoes and plopped down with a sigh on the couch next to her. She muted the chatter on the set. "So, is she?"

"Probably not, since she's the only conspirator who knows the whole story. Fong's guy, whoever he is, acted as a cutout between Cherry and Karen. You know what the chances of us finding an anonymous Chinese gentleman who does not want to be found are. Fong we have nothing on without Karen, and nothing on Karen without either Fong or Palmisano. Conceivably we could have assembled a circumstantial case against the bunch of them using Cherry's testimony, but you messed up the possibility of using the girl as a witness."

"And if I hadn't muscled her, we wouldn't know any of this."

"Wrong, Marlene. You could've told me your suspicions, we could've brought the girl in, had a talk with her, with her parent along, as required by law. We could have read her the perjury statute, and the penalties therein, and she would've cracked."

"You're sure of that."

"Dear, the day I can't break a lying fifteen-year-old girl is the day I hang it up. And with that, we could've raided Fong, and audited him, and traced the payoff to Cherry, and maybe even found the guy who picked up the material from her. And then we would've had Karen Agnelli in a bind. As it is, we have to give a walk to the chief conspirator to nail the peripheral ones, which is not how it's supposed to work. Why the hell did you do it?"

She stared at the pretty people on the screen. They seemed to be having a good time, even without sound. What was the answer to her husband's perfectly legitimate question? She didn't know. It had something to do with velocity. She'd taken on Paul Agnelli's problem and she didn't want it anymore. She wanted to go away again.

"The bomb," she said. "Raney. Nora. The kids."

"I don't understand: what has all that to do with Agnelli?"

"Ah, don't grill me, okay? I know it doesn't make sense. I've stopped making sense, okay?" She picked up the remote and made laughter fill the room.

Karp snatched the remote from her and clicked the set off. "This is important," he said. "What's going on? Talk to me, Marlene!"

She turned to face him, so that her remaining eye could fix his. "You want to know what's going on? It's just blood lust, darling. I want to get the people who killed Nora Raney, just like I wanted to get the people who shot Giancarlo. And I couldn't so I took it out on a dumb-ass dope dealer and a silly teenage girl. I know it's crazy and irrational, I know that it's the law's business to find those people and put them away. And, lest you get all bent out of shape, I have no project under way to find them. Or Felix. But the feeling is in me. I want to see their blood. Should I go see someone about this? Yes. Will I? Probably not. I don't believe in psychotherapy. It's a faith, like Catholicism. You have to believe, on the basis of exactly zero evidence, that your maladjustments are due to the fact that Dad diddled you at age ten or Mom didn't love you. Or that your brain soup has the wrong kinds of molecules in it. And I don't."

"So, what do you believe?"

"I don't know. In fate. In doom. That I can't be with the people I love because my presence puts them in danger. That I'm an instrument of justice manipulated by powers outside this plane of existence, divine or demonic, I can't really tell. I need to get back to the island."

"Do you understand how crazy what you just said is?"

"Yes, I do, actually. Which means I'm probably still technically sane, at least in the eyes of the law. Speaking of which, now that you're going to be DA, my exploits are going to come under a good deal more scrutiny. I've just more or less admitted to you that I've committed serious felonies. Let me enumerate: possession of a silencing device, one count; criminal possession of a weapon, two counts; prohibited use of weapon, two counts; menacing, two counts; unlawful imprisonment, second, two counts. I think that's it. It's enough."

"What're you doing, Marlene?"

"I'm confessing to an officer of the law. Maybe jail is the best place for me."

Karp stood up. "No, you're just messing with my head," he said coldly. He felt cold, in fact, the cold of outer space. His wife was receding from him at speed, like an astronaut cut from her tether. "You can't confess to your spouse, as you very well know, but feel free to contact the police. I'm going to bed. You'll let me know your plans."

In the morning she was gone, with her dog and many of her cold weather garments. On the kitchen table was a workmanlike note describing in sufficient detail all the hoops that had to be gone through to get the boys registered in school, and a list of household reminders and contacts- doctors, plumbers, repairpersons, and all the various entities necessary to support a middle-class family in Manhattan. Marlene was severing.

His daughter asked him what was wrong when she came into the kitchen, so he supposed it showed on his face. "Your mom's off again. She left a note."

Lucy read it. "This is not good. It reads like she's not coming back."

"My thought, too."

"Well, don't worry, I can handle this stuff. Do you want me to make coffee?"

"No, sit down."

He sat, too, at the kitchen table, with Marlene's note fuming between them like a contract with the devil. "Listen, you are not, repeat not, going to leap into your mother's role around this house. You're still a kid, you're in college, you need to have a college kid's life. In fact, I think it would be a good idea if you finished up at Boston."

"I can't do that," she said instantly. "How will you manage? What about the boys?"

"I'll manage fine. If I need help, I'll hire it. In fact, I might even rent this place out and get an apartment in a doorman building. With a full-time housekeeper. I'm going to be a big shot with a car and driver and a bodyguard. And the boys are almost twelve. They can mostly look after themselves."

Lucy was about to object that the boys could not look after themselves, and would get into any number of scrapes if they were once outside the eagle eye of their sister, but then thought better of it. Being the district attorney was a completely different thing from being a mere minion thereof, even the chief minion. Her father would have police at his beck in any reasonable numbers. The Karp family had outgrown amateur security. Something in her sighed relief, and also whispered more enticingly of escape from the swamp her family had become and into if not precisely the arms of her boyfriend, at least into his daily presence.

"Okay," she said. "I guess you're right."

"You're sure? You're not going to go up there writhing in Catholic guilt?"

"No, I'm fine," she said, and gave him one of those illuminating smiles. "Sad but happy."

After the public announcement of John Keegan's nomination to the federal bench and the somewhat later and lower-key announcement that Karp had been nominated to fill his term, the usual King Lear power magic occurred on the eighth floor of the courthouse. Keegan immediately became a nullity as far as the DA's office was concerned, and all his power and influence flowed to Karp, even though Keegan was still formally the district attorney. Because Keegan was not actually retiring from public life (indeed, might even be said to be rising in it), there was no dimunition of phone calls or visits to his office. But as far as the DA's operations were concerned, Karp was in practical terms the DA. Those satraps- bureau chiefs and others- who had crony or political associations with Keegan, or who had rivalrous relations with Butch Karp, now either had to start looking for other work or, if they wanted to stay, had to come and render obeisance to the new magnifico.

To Karp's wonder, this latter group seemed perfectly natural in their expressions of congratulations and support, even though several of them, to his certain knowledge, hated his guts and had bad-mouthed him and worked to undermine him for years. During these sessions he experienced feelings he could not recall having previously, swollen bullfrog feelings, satisfaction of boot-on-neck feelings.

"What's the matter, boss? You look queasy," Murrow observed after one of these sessions.

"I am queasy. I can't get used to being brownnosed shamelessly. I want to say, 'Oh, fuck you, you slob, kissing my ass will not preserve your miserable job for a single day,' but I don't. Somehow it's not allowed. Strange."

"Yes. And we recall Lord Acton's famous apothegm, don't we?"

"Yeah. Are we corrupt yet?"

"I certainly am, since I'm browned by a lot more people than you are, being more accessible. I kind of like it, because I know that the hatred focused on the guy who guards the access to the great man and speaks with his voice is a thousand times greater than the hatred focused on the great man himself. And I'm really such a nice guy. So let them writhe in the dust."

"I'll pretend you didn't say that, Murrow," replied Karp, thinking now about power and how very much of it he had: that there are few public officials in American life whose power is more absolute within a defined sphere than that of a district attorney.

"Speaking of writhing," said Murrow, "Ms. Rachman is out there. You want her to come in, or should we make her sweat some of her makeup off."

"No cruelty, Murrow," said Karp. "Send her in. And stay yourself."

Laura Rachman came in in a suit so bright blue that it looked like it had been snipped from a French flag. She was wearing a white blouse and a red, white, and blue scarf, giving her the look of a Fourth of July float. She sat and they made pleasantries for a few minutes, during which it was perfectly apparent that Ms. Rachman was just as prepared to kiss ass as any other subordinate manager in the office. Karp, however, stifled a particularly fulsome trope by saying, "We need to talk about what we're going to do about Terry Palmisano."

"I've suspended her and she's going to resign."

"You read the investigative report I had the DA squad prepare?"

"Yes. It's incredibly shocking. I had no idea she was involved with a witness."

"Uh-huh, well, the problem is that it was a lot more than being involved with a witness."

"Honestly, I didn't even know Terry was gay," said Rachman, and added, with a rueful laugh, "not that there's anything wrong with that." Karp had observed that there was a class of people who did not register negative information and instead filled the air with non sequitur comments, as here. He said, "I assume you read the Q and A we did on Karen Agnelli."

"Yes, and obviously we've dropped the case. I personally called the husband to apologize. He doesn't sound like he's going to sue, thank God."

"Now, focus on this, Laura," said Karp in a more demanding tone. "It has nothing to do with lesbian passion and nothing to do with the husband or lawsuits. It has to do with only one thing: an attorney in this office has knowingly submitted false evidence in a criminal case and wittingly accepted perjured testimony. It's not a question of her resigning; I want her disbarred and I want her in prison. And I want you personally to prepare the case against her."

"Me? Wouldn't that be a felony bureau case?"

"I don't care about the bureaucratic partitions. It's your mess and you have to clean it up. Next, I've scheduled a press conference for seven-thirty tomorrow morning. In it I will break the story of how an innocent man was framed with the connivance of the district attorney's office. I will introduce you and you will stand up there and endure public humiliation as you explain every detail of this miserable farce. I expect the headlines will read 'Gay Love Nest Corrupts Rape Bureau at DA.' "

Rachman opened her mouth to say something, but Karp shook his head and drove on.

"Next, you will dismiss the case against Dr. Kevin Hirsch, which I'm sure you realize is a pile of horseshit, even without the now suspect involvement of Terry Palmisano."

"Oh, I see we're letting off all the white boys today."

"Only those who haven't done anything. You know, one of the things that breaks the liberal heart is that people who've been oppressed for however many centuries, when they escape from oppression it never occurs to them to say, 'Hey, being oppressed is bad, so let's not do any oppression.' No, they pile on to whoever's available with both boots. Isn't that sad and wonderful? But we're not going to do oppression around here. No one's going to use this office to get even. Now, you have patently wasted prosecutorial time on two cases that I know about, in a city that is crawling with bona fide male sexual predators. That's a crime, Laura, a shandah. I expect you to come down on those genuine bad guys like a ton of bricks, regardless of race or social status. I want them put in jail forever, if possible. But we are not going to give a free pass to every black female that accuses a white man. We are going to- for crying out loud- look at the fucking evidence! Do you understand the distinction I just made?"

But Rachman didn't answer this question. Instead, with a half smile on her face, she asked, "When you say every detail, would that include the involvement of your wife? Including your wife's, ah, interaction with Cherry Newcombe?"

So Laura had done her homework. Karp answered, "Of course. I expect you to be as forthcoming as possible. Also, should you come across any material that would prompt a criminal complaint against Marlene Ciampi, I would expect you to pursue it. You would inform me in such a case so that I could recuse myself from any supervisory responsibility. Finally, I want your resignation on my desk by close of business today."

"You're firing me?" Rachman's face blanched, making her face paint look more than it usually did like an amateur spray finish on an old car.

"Not at this time. I've asked all the bureau chiefs for their resignations. When I take over officially in a couple of months I'll decide which of them to accept."

"You're sure you'll be allowed to take over officially if that business with your wife comes out?"

"That's up to the governor, Laura. What's up to me is telling you to do the three things I just told you to do, failing any of which I will fire you. Are we perfectly clear about all this?"

Apparently so. Rachman left. Murrow said, "Whew! That was certainly a high colonic. Do you think she's going to go after your wife?"

"She might. She's vindictive enough. But Marlene's a big girl, with a lot of money and a brilliant legal mind. In any case, it's not a suitable subject for speculation in this office, is it, Murrow."

"No, sir. But are you going to can her?"

"I might. But maybe she'll come around. Maybe no one ever kicked her in the butt before. I certainly needed kicks in the butt at her age, and of course you do, too. In any case, everybody gets a second chance in Karp's All-Star Technicolor Flying Circus and Peep Show."

Lucy Karp had inherited from her father the peculiar notion that the cure for emotional exhaustion was hard work. She put in a morning serving free breakfasts to kids in a church basement at Third and Avenue B, and then did a food distribution- dented cans and past-sell date items at a grocery warehouse on Hudson Street, and then traveled uptown with a group of Catholic Workers to hand out a pallet-load of surplus blankets and ponchos at a refugee center in Inwood. In each of these places her language skills were invaluable. New York was full of people who had dropped into the twenty-first century from the far elsewhere and were hurting in various ways. She forgot about her own troubles, which was part of the deal, too, as it seemed that a crazy mother, a broken family, and a case of sexual frustration did not make the top ten among the afflictions of mankind.

She finished at the refugee center at about seven, had soup and bread with the Catholic Workers in a nearby church hall, and walked out onto Dyckman Street to find it had started to rain. An actual cool breeze was coming from the nearby Hudson. She reached into the big military sack she habitually lugged through her life and drew out a Gore-Tex anorak. There was a bodega nearby and she went in and got a coffee and hung out under the red-and-yellow plastic awning, watching the rain increase in volume, and watching all the people who couldn't afford Gore-Tex anoraks trying to cover themselves with newspapers or plastic trashbags.

Then she saw, across the wide street, dimly through the sheets of rain, a familiar figure, the red doorman's coat, baggy cutoffs, the floppy hat with the skeins of fishing line wrapped around it: Hey Hey Elman doing his little dance. He seemed to have seen her and was gesturing and calling her name. She waved him over, but he shook his head violently and beckoned to her. He seemed more agitated than usual, and this might mean that he was having one of his spells. Hey Hey was normally as harmless as a bunny, but sometimes he decided that some passerby had stolen his thoughts and sought to have them returned, starting a conversation with that person from which it was nearly impossible to withdraw. Which meant the cops, and rough handling, and tears, and having to go down to some precinct to get him released to New York Psychiatric. Lucy had done this herself several times and did not look forward to doing it again. Hey Hey was turning in little circles now, flapping his arms- something she had not seen him do before. She tossed her container in the trash, pulled up her hood, and dashed into the traffic.

When she reached the other side of Dyckman, Hey Hey was half a block away, still beckoning. She shouted for him to wait up, but he just beckoned more urgently and skipped away around the corner. They headed west toward Broadway and the park. Just past Sherman Avenue there was a fire site, a five-story building gutted black and gaping with boarded window holes above a heavily gangster-decorated plywood fence. The fence had long since been penetrated by people seeking salvage or a place to shoot up. Lucy saw Hey Hey duck behind a plywood flap dedicated to the work of RAMON 178. After a moment's hesitation she followed.

Inside, the usual rubble lot, decorated with broken plumbing fixtures, rotting furniture, rusting appliances, and scorched rubble. She saw a flash of red ahead that quickly disappeared into an irregularly shaped blackness, the entrance to the former basement. She stumbled forward through the junk. The rain was coming down harder than before, the breeze had turned into an actual wind, lightning flashed and thunder echoed like cannonades through the Manhattan canyonlands. She laughed to herself and thought, Yes, the pathetic fallacy, the image of my life, chasing a lunatic through a hurricane into a ruin.

She stood for a moment blinking in the dark. Hey Hey was nowhere in sight. She shouted, but nothing came back but dull echoes and the sound of innumerable freshets burbling through the roofless building. When her eyes adjusted she found she was on a brick ledge a few feet above a rubbled slope that led, she guessed, down to the original basement floor. Then there was a sound, a groan, and a sharp, high shout. She scrambled down the rubble and onto concrete.

The air was damp and the damp brought out the smells- burnt things, mold, broken sewage pipes, rats both live and dead. From her bag she took the little Maglite she kept on her keychain. Its narrow beam shone on standing water; the basement was flooded and she had to walk carefully, feeling beneath the black water with her sneakered foot. Another cry just ahead, and there was a glow. Lucy thought it must be another sick one sheltering in the ruins, like the one Hey Hey had led her to before. She reached into her bag to make sure she had her cell phone.

Candlelight was shining from what must have once been the building's boiler room. The boilers were gone, carted off for scrap, but the walls still held twisted stumps of pipes and the floor was a tangle of rusty plumbing. She saw the candle, stuck in a beer bottle, and saw its light reflecting from Hey Hey's red coat. She moved toward him, saying, "Oh, there you are. Why didn't you wait up, man?" She saw him hang his hat on a pipe. That was wrong. Hey Hey never took off his hat. The man turned. Lucy said, "Oh, shit!" and spun and leaped for the door, but she stumbled on a pipe and he had her. He was incredibly strong. His forearm around her neck felt like a tree limb. It only took a few seconds for Felix to choke her into unconsciousness.

Felix Tighe looked on his work and found it good. The bitch was naked and spread-eagled on a frame of one-inch piping, her legs stretched as far as they would stretch, her arms in a crucifixion position. The wacko had been carrying half a dozen rolls of tape in his belongings, which had come in handy; a good omen, Felix thought. He had neglected to buy tape, and he thought it amusing that the victim had supplied tape not only sufficient to immobilize himself but enough to take care of Lucy Karp, as well. The guy's clothes stank, however, and Felix was anxious to get this over with and get back into his own clean ones. Not so anxious that he would leave anything interesting out of his forthcoming session with the cunt.

A clank and a scraping sound told him she had revived. He had three candles arranged to cast light on her face and body and he watched avidly. He loved to see them when they woke up and realized where they were and started to understand what was going to happen to them. The best part of the present setup was that he didn't need a gag. With the thunderstorm and the isolated venue, no one was going to hear her yell. Another really terrific omen.

But the expression on her face was not what he was expecting. She wasn't looking at him in horror at all, but staring at something in the corner of the room, behind him. He snapped a look around; nothing. Then she began to speak, as if to someone standing right there, pausing as if to listen to a reply, and then speaking again. She was speaking in Spanish, not the jailhouse Caribbean Spanish he was familiar with, but a pure, lisping Castilian.

Lucy awoke to pain and a dark, nauseous headache. Hard things were pressing into her back and her thighs ached. She knew exactly where she was and what had happened to her, but no terror stabbed her belly or made her tremble. Instead, all her attention was focused on a dim figure standing in the corner of the room, a middle-aged somewhat plump woman dressed in the black-and-white habit of the Carmelites. The woman had three small moles on her face, which was otherwise distinguished by a long nose, huge round eyes, bushy eyebrows, and a perfect rosebud mouth.

"Is this one of His jokes?" Lucy asked the figure in her native tongue. "I went through agonies to preserve my precious virginity and now I'm going to be raped and murdered in a cellar?"

"It is somewhat amusing, I suppose," said Saint Teresa. "No more amusing, perhaps, than that a woman such as I, who lived only for delight, and fine clothes, and witty companions should have founded a strict order of cloistered contemplative nuns. You can have no idea of the dullness of the conversation of young, ignorant Castilian girls. If it happens as you imagine, I hope you commend your soul to Him and give thanks that you have had the great good fortune to be tortured to death as He was. What an honor! I knew many who would envy you your situation."

"That's a point of view, Reverend Mother," said Lucy, at which the apparition gave her the kind of God-haunted grin one only ever sees on the faces of people far advanced in holiness, and Lucy burst out laughing.

"Who the fuck… what the fuck are you laughing about!" Felix screamed. "You think this is funny? How about this, you think this is funny?"

With which he began to torture Lucy with his knife, and was happy to see that she howled appropriately.

"You're not laughing now, are you, bitch?" he said. It was not as good as he thought it would be, and he was starting to get pissed. He asked her where the Vietnamese was, and she told him he was in Paris, but she didn't know any more. Felix didn't think that was worth too much, but maybe something. Maybe she knew more and wasn't telling yet. But she would.

The problem was that he was causing her pain, but not fear, and so it was about as much fun as torturing an animal: okay, but nothing special, not like doing Mary and the brat or the others, before prison. She was not begging for mercy. On the contrary, she seemed to be praying for Felix's soul and forgiving him for what he was doing to her. She also wanted to know about the goddamn looney he got the clothes off of, and he took pleasure in telling her that her looney was resting quietly and would be released unharmed in time to put on his bloody clothes and take the rap for what Felix was going to do to Lucy. To which she had replied only, "Thank God he's all right."

The worst of it was that he needed the fear to get sexy and so far his attempts at raping her had been unavailing. He used the handle of the knife instead, but it wasn't the same. No, he was going to actually have to cut parts off her to get her off this God shit and make her understand that he was what she needed to worship, the center of everything, the only thing worthy of any attention at all. The problem with that, unfortunately, is that once you started to cut pieces off they went into shock real fast and checked out, and then it was just meat, and not as much fun, although fooling with the body and thinking about the people who would find it gave him a giggle or two. But he was still a little annoyed that she had turned out to be some no-fun religious maniac. He voiced this thought to his victim as he idly twirled the point of his knife under her small breast.

"I'm not a maniac," she said and cried out as he increased the pressure. She felt no need at all to be stoic.

"I bet you think I'm a maniac, though, don't you?" This was a fun game. You asked them a question and however they answered, you zapped them and when they finally agreed with you, you zapped them to say the opposite.

"No, you're not a maniac, either," she said. "You're a demon. He's the maniac."

At which she looked over his shoulder at something, like she had before. Felix paid no attention. He grabbed the substance of her breast in his left fist and set his blade for the stroke that would slice it off. He was kneeling awkwardly upon the pipe arrangement, the backs of his knees exposed by Hey Hey's baggy cutoffs, so that it was really no problem for David Grale to roll in, and in one smooth, and, Lucy thought, obviously well-practiced motion, slice through both of Felix's hamstring tendons.

Felix screamed shrilly and flopped around among the pipes like a landed tuna. His knife clattered away. David Grale searched out a short length of pipe and whacked him a few times on the head.

"Don't kill him!" Lucy cried.

"Good Christ, Lucy, look at what he did to you! Isn't that an excess of forgiveness?"

"Shame on you, David," she said, "and thank you. Could you unwrap me, please?"

The fileting knife that Grale used went to work and, in half a minute, Lucy was free. She tried to stand up, but found she could not. He lifted her and carried her a few yards to where some junkie had once made a bed out of cardboard and pink insulation.

"You need to get to a hospital. You still have your cell phone?"

"My bag, if it's still around." As he went to search for it, Lucy thought, This is odd: I'm naked and bleeding, but I'm perfectly comfortable with him. Maybe I'm going into shock.

There were sounds now, and voices. Into the boiler room came several people Lucy recognized from Spare Parts, and with them Spare Parts himself. The giant came to her side and spread an army blanket over her. "Oh, 'ucy, you 'oor sing! Oh!" cried Spare Parts. On his face was an expression of almost childlike grief. Grale came near, too, and handed Lucy her cell phone. "They're on their way. You may want to call home."

"Thank you," said Lucy, and broke down in hysterical sobs. This lasted for some time. The wounds she had endured were really starting to hurt now, and around the corners of her mind slunk fears that she had been permanently maimed. When she had somewhat recovered herself she asked, "How did you know where I was?"

"People have been following you, dear. The invisible people had you in view. I'm just sorry we didn't get here any sooner."

"Soon enough. Did you call the cops, too? I mean, for him."

" 'e'll 'ake 'are ah 'im," said Spare Parts.

"You mustn't hurt him," she said sternly.

"We won't touch him," said Grale, with his most saintly smile.

Felix awoke and realized immediately that he was being carried on foot by several men. The pain in his legs and the back of his head was enormous, but even worse was his fear. He was a cripple now, and would be for some time. He had to get to a doc, even if it meant turning himself in. He escaped once, he could escape again, but he had to get fixed up. He was being transported in some kind of tarpaulin; there was rough canvas against his face. They were probably taking him to a police station, he thought, because if they were going to kill him he'd be dead by now. Bunch of piss bums. Who could figure?

He had tape against his mouth and around his hands. He tested the bonds and felt a little satisfaction. An amateur job: he could get out of this with a little work, maybe an hour or two- tape stretched and his wrists were mighty. The canvas was damp and he heard the patter of drops against it. They were traveling through the streets. He could smell the rain.

Then the rain stopped and there was another smell, smoke and cooking food, and he was put down for a while. He kept working on his wrists and controlling his breathing. He felt himself being picked up again. They were taking him head first and the general direction was downward, because his head felt lower than his feet. That was good because his legs didn't ache so much when they were a little elevated. This went on for some time. He had about a quarter of an inch of play now between his crossed wrists.

Then he felt his head go much lower and he was sliding. He felt the canvas rush past his face and then smooth damp soil and small pebbles against the back of his head, and then sheer dread as he flew through space. It was only for a moment, however, for he landed heavily on his back and felt the horrible stroke of agony as his useless legs followed and hit the ground. The darkness was absolute. He heard the drip of water and a rustling sound, and smelled a dank stench. He was in a sewer.

He heard something- not so much rustling as a light clicking. He wondered what it was. Then he felt something heavy moving on his leg and something else climb up on his chest. Now he knew what that sound was. There were a lot of them; he could smell their stink, sharper than the sewer gas. Warm weight pressed on his face. He twisted and humped and made noises behind his gag. The rats did him the favor of chewing this away in order to get to his delicious soft mouth parts, and so he could scream and scream as they ate the face off his skull.