Resolved

Now Again
18

"No, Stupenagel, they didn't have a point," Karp snapped. "It happens to be the case, one, that the vast majority of black and Hispanic defendants are ill-defended easy outs; and two, that the insanity defense is what it is largely so that people with expensive lawyers, most of whom happen to be white, can avoid prison. It's part of the system, like the kid who sells an ounce of smack gets ten in Attica and the guy who loots a hundred million from the pension fund and wrecks the lives of ten thousand people gets, maybe, six months in a country club jail. I never said it was fair. It's just what we got."

"You seem to have made your peace with it, regardless."

"That shows how much you know," said Karp. Her eyes widened with interest. I'm making a serious mistake here, thought Karp. I'm a public official getting drunk with a reporter, and if I'm not careful, I'm going to spill my guts and get into trouble. He then considered that, although he had been in trouble many times before, he had not ever got into this particular kind of trouble. It was not great virtue; he just didn't drink and never had. Then he thought, and here the unbidden idea surprised him, that maybe it was time he did. Was that the booze talking? Was this how it happened, the descent into disgrace? He found he didn't much care and took another sip of the cognac. It seemed to grow smoother the more you drank. Stupenagel was looking at him with a peculiar smile, and her face seemed to glow.

"You never make peace with it," he said. "It just grinds you down, like a pencil in a pencil sharpener. Dickens said something about it, the inevitable hardening of the soul that results from a life in the courts. You just live with it. You have technical pride- is the case as perfect as you can make it? Even though, even though, we can put guys in jail behind shitty half-baked cases, because the defense is overworked and second rate a lot of the time and lame, and also, do you have the stones to drop a case when it's not perfect, even though the guy's probably guilty and it pisses off the victims and the cops, and the media make a big thing of it? Thin soup, but that's all we have."

"What happens when the pencil is ground down to the eraser?"

"Oh, well, that hasn't happened yet," said Karp. "I have a very long pencil."

A long honking laugh from the reporter. "So anyhow, you let the big one get away. How did you feel?"

"How do you feel always asking people how they feel? Why does the media do that?"

"It sells. People are voyeurs. They're dead inside most of the time, so when someone's kid gets burned up they like to see the mike shoved in the mom's face. The amazing thing is that the mom usually loves the attention. Was Rohbling the bottom of the barrel, do you think? The most evil?"

"Oh, no way," said Karp instantly. "Rohbling was, in fact, a nut. I argued that he wasn't, but he was. We had an eleven-year-old a couple of years ago who killed both his parents, same thing. Also with a screw missing. But there is evil."

"You think so?" she said. "It depends on how you define evil. I had an interview once with a man who ordered the massacre of an entire village in Guatemala. He was right there watching his men murder old women and little kids. He had no regrets. He thought it was necessary to suppress the Communists. Slept like a baby. Wanted to sleep with me, too, although probably not like a baby."

"Did you let him?" asked Murrow.

Karp and Stupenagel both stared at him. The reporter laughed, that astounding bellow. "Why, Murrow, I thought you'd drifted off to bye-byes. What flattering curiosity, too! As a matter of fact, I didn't, but not because he was a brutal mass-murdering scumbag piece of shit. The problem was he had the most appalling bad breath; it was as if his conscience had crawled into his glottis and died. I have, however, shared my silky body with men who could have eaten that fellow for breakfast. I have unusual tastes…"- here she batted her thickly mascaraed eyelashes at Murrow and licked her lips in a parody of lasciviousness-"… which is probably why I'm not married and driving my little girls to soccer practice. My point, however, was that doing things that most of us would consider grossly evil seems to have no effect on the personality, precisely because no one really believes that anything they do is really evil. There's always a justifying excuse. Eichmann famously went to the gallows with the perfectly clear conscience of a man who just did his duty. Milosevic is outraged that the Hague tribunal thinks he did anything wrong. So evil is something we call other people, people we don't agree with, or else a word we use for a particularly gross violation of the law. Shooting a liquor store clerk is bad. Raping and murdering lots of little girls is evil. The first represents nothing but a difference in power: the winners get to say what's evil. The second is an essentially meaningless verbal enhancer, like 'heinous' or 'inhuman.' Or don't you agree?"

"I don't. Everyone knows right and wrong, no matter how much they rationalize it or deny it. Even the Nazis knew they were doing wrong, and they had a whole elaborate system for making thousands of murderers think they were doing the world a favor. But they kept it real dark, even to the end, and they denied that any of it took place." He paused. The word "evil" was not one he used in the courtroom; he didn't think it added anything to an argument, and it rarely crossed his lips in everyday speech. He had been surprised, just now, to hear the word slip out of his mouth. He continued, "Well, it's a religious rather than a legal term, isn't it? My daughter's take on it is that it's real and palpable, but then she believes in God and the devil. She thinks that what makes evil evil is the lie. Your guy really didn't massacre helpless people, he was fighting communism. The pedophile isn't really raping children because the children really like it. Every crook I ever met had an excuse. In fact, that's how we nail most of them. They're actually anxious to tell their sad story. How I didn't mean any harm. How she made me do it. Lucy thinks that demonic forces actually get into people and whisper this kind of shit into their heads, and that's why they do stuff that doesn't make any rational sense. Man kills wife, kids, self."

"It's a theory," said Stupenagel. "How is little Lucy, by the way? Not so little anymore. God, how the years fly! I don't know how I'd feel having a little time clock staring me in the face every day. My child is an adult? My child is fucking guys, having babies? Tick tock." She shuddered. "Or maybe not. Has she recovered?"

Karp didn't like to talk about what had happened to his daughter. "I guess. She seems all right. She goes to school in Boston. She just came back for the Christmas break."

"He tortured her, I heard. You must have used mucho chips to keep it out of the press."

"I did and I will continue to do so," he said coldly, and with his sternest look.

"Sor-ry. And you never actually found the scumbag?"

"The case was closed by forensic evidence."

"I heard someone left a cleaned skull in a plastic bag in a church."

"No comment."

"Oh, please! We're just talking. I heard there were little gnaw marks all over it."

"What part of 'no comment' didn't you understand, Stupenagel?"

"Okay, okay. So she's fine. Well, good. Any dish in her life, or is she still on that virginity kick?"

"You'd have to ask her," said Karp, with an increased chill in his tone, and gave her another and more intense blast of the Karp Stare. The reporter let her eyes slide away from his and chuckled. "Maybe I will. I assume she's still with the languages? How many does she know, now?"

"I don't know, fifty or sixty."

"Christ! Yet another thing to be envious about. Here I am traveling in obscure corners of the world and aside from French and Spanish I can barely order a drink or ask where's the bathroom. Speaking of which, where is it? I have to take a slash."

Karp told her. She unfolded herself from her chair like a complex doll. Karp was not surprised to see that, although she had drunk more than the two men put together, she did not weave or stagger.

"Don't go anywhere, boys," she called out. "This is starting to be fun." She slammed the door closed with a twitch of her hip.

"You're rolling your eyes, Murrow," said Karp. "Does that mean you're falling in love?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm totally smitten. Christ, what a monster! But I'll admit to a certain morbid fascination, like watching a crocodile eat a deer. Is she always like that?"

"As far as I know. According to my wife, she's utterly unreliable as a friend and entirely lacking in moral values, aside from bravery and fanatical devotion to journalism. She's very good, too. She gets the story. Marlene says she likes to be around Stupe because she's the only person she knows who makes her feel like a good person in comparison."

"Is she serious? About lusting after you?"

"I think so. We've had some odd moments over the years. The occasional grope. I always say, 'no, thanks,' and she takes it with a laugh, like now."

"What if you said 'yes, please'?"

"Oh, she'd be in the rack in a heartbeat. She has a kind of competitive thing with Marlene, from years back. Marlene apparently didn't put out much in college and Stupe was always stalking her boyfriends with sex."

"And they're still friends?"

"Yes. The human heart is mysterious. The heart has its reasons."

"You're waxing philosophical, boss."

"I'm waxing drunk. I may throw up on the governor. I believe that's what Brenda Starr in the girls' can is kind of hoping for."

"Is that a real danger?"

"I don't know. I doubt it. I'll probably nod off in a while, get up choking on vomit, stagger into the toilet and puke, and then emerge as a steely-eyed and sober public servant with a massive headache. It's my bon vivant mode. Is that a pitying look, Murrow?"

"No. But if you don't mind my saying so, you've had a rough time recently. Maybe you should take a break."

"I do mind your saying so," snapped Karp. "I'm fine. I can do my job fine."

Murrow got up. "Maybe I should take off."

"Sit down!" Karp ordered. "If you think I'm going to let you leave me alone, drunk, with the dragon lady of American journalism, you're nuts."

Murrow sat down. He poured himself another little drink.

A long silence ensued. In the distance telephones rang and there was an occasional metallic clang from the barely functioning heating system.

Marlene had not intended to attend Karp's coronation. She had avoided the city since Lucy's release from New York Hospital in September and thought she would be wrongfooted to appear as the Wife in her husband's moment of triumph. Also, she thought her wide reputation as an unindicted violent felon would not add luster to the occasion. But when she expressed these thoughts during a phone conversation with her daughter, she got an earful, including an accusation that her hesitance had nothing whatever to do with diffidence or finer feelings, but stemmed entirely from her monstrous narcissistic ego and her superstitious, moronic paranoia, the diatribe ending with the threat that if Marlene did not attend this party she would not be invited to Lucy's wedding. Marlene meekly acquiesced; she found she was willing to avoid present pain in the form of her daughter yelling at her even if it promised greater pain in the future: returning to the city, seeing her husband and children. So she'd become a moral coward, too. It didn't matter much. It was just days. When she thought about it, she realized she had gotten her wish. She was more and more like the dogs. She thought she might as well let Billy Ireland fuck her. Why not? She didn't care for the flirty tension anymore, it was too much like having a real personality. But she would only let him do her dog style. That would be most suitable. First, though, this trip to town.

She had, of course, no suitable clothes at the farm. Buy a new outfit? No, she had a closet full of costly garments from her brief stint as an IPO millionaire. But they were all at the loft, which meant she would have to go back there. Could she sneak in and out? No, the boys and Lucy were on winter break from school. Was she so low that she would buy an outfit she didn't need and would never wear again just because she didn't have the courage to face her children? No, that was lower than letting her dog boy fuck her from behind. She was mildly surprised to see that there were still some things beyond her.

So on the Friday morning she left before dawn, having slept hardly at all, and drove west in her truck. The weather reports the night before had been full of the massive storm that had socked Buffalo and smothered Albany and was now whistling down the Hudson Valley like the Twentieth Century Limited. There were only two inches on the ground when she got out of the tunnel, but traffic was already incurably snarled, even without the tunnel security delays. It was just past 8:30 in the morning when she came up into the gray daylight of Manhattan. The hundred-mile trip had taken her four and a half hours.

"She's been gone a long time," said Murrow. He was starting to feel the liquor, just a trace of blurriness, of fuzzy face, but he was far from drunk. Murrow was of the class, nearly extinct in the city, where children were taught to drink at their parents' table. He had been taking sherry or a light cocktail with his mother from the age of fourteen, and at Brown he had been famous for drinking men twice his size under the table. Karp was over twice his size, but not any kind of a drinker. He looked at his boss and regretted having brought the cognac, for he had not expected the arrival of the reporter, or that the afternoon would have, under her influence, degenerated into a debauch. Karp, he knew, had a tendency to be a little morose, even when cold sober. Murrow did not want to think about how he was going to get Karp into shape to meet the governor in the time remaining. He checked the bottle and glanced at his watch. He prayed for more snow, for blizzards, lightnings, earthquakes.

Karp observed Murrow glancing at his wrist. "Maybe she fell in. Maybe her bladder is the size of the Chrysler Building. Would you like to go to the ladies' and check?"

He spoke with unnatural slowness and deliberation. Murrow thought that Karp had no real idea how drunk he was. That could be a problem. He poured more cognac into his own glass, filling it over the halfway mark. It was one way to keep Karp from drinking much more. If that goddamned woman would just get back and absorb the rest, things might still be rescued.

"No, I think I won't," said Murrow. "She's a big girl."

Two minutes later she reappeared, brandishing a magnum bottle of Veuve Cliquot. Murrow's heart sank; the city was practically shut down by the blizzard and he couldn't imagine where she had found a liquor store open. He expressed this thought, somewhat sourly. "My child," said Stupenagel, "only four things are required of an international correspondent: accuracy, speed, courage, and the ability to find alcoholic beverages any place in the world at any hour." She yanked out the cork with a bang and a flourish.

"Some people think it's vulgar to make a loud pop when you open wine," said Murrow, but held out his glass.

"Well, they're not invited to our party, are they?" she said, pouring. "I was in the can, and I thought, Hey, it's a celebration, we require champagne. And also to wash the cognac out of the system, to clear our heads, polish our wits, so we don't disgrace ourselves when the governor arrives. Is he sleeping?"

"Stunned, I think," said Murrow. "You know, you really are a wicked person."

"Wicked?" she exclaimed. "Wicked. That's a word you don't hear much anymore, except as an intensifier in New England. Wicked good maple syrup. What else is wicked besides witches? I can't think of anything. You wouldn't say 'wicked empire,' or 'wicked dictator,' would you? Evil is the classier term, because it's about power, and whatever we say, we can't help loving power. But I like wicked, the implied cleverness in there, the delight in turning things to one's own advantage, outsmarting the goody-goodies, generating a healthy and renewing chaos. As here. Wake up, Karp, it's time for your champagne. Jesus, it's cold in this office. We won't need an ice bucket for the bottle. Is something wrong with the radiators?"

"They've been fixing the system for months," said Murrow. "That, or it's an experiment to see if criminal justice can be improved by rapidly changing the temperature of the courthouse. They've tried everything else. Last summer they actually had the heat on, or so it seemed. At least this building is old enough so that the windows still open. Why are you so intent on getting him drunk?"

"I'm not getting him drunk, Murrow. You can't get someone drunk nowadays like you could in Victorian novels." She added in an oily voice: " 'Have some Madeira, m'dear.' " Champagne splashed into the glass that Karp held out. He drank some, finding it cooling after the brandy and quite pleasant.

"See?" said Stupenagel. "He wants to get drunk. Why? Perhaps his life has gotten away from him. Perhaps things haven't worked out the way he planned, and he wishes a few blessed moments of oblivion?"

"Perhaps you're a pathetic, lonely alcoholic who wants company," said Karp.

"Oooh!" crowed Stupenagel. "A new side of Karp emerges. See, Murrow, I may be wicked, but that was cruel."

Karp was starting to feel queasy. He couldn't recall what he had eaten for lunch, but if the past was any guide, he would shortly learn what it had been in full Ektachrome. It was twenty years since he had been this drunk at an office event- that horrible, magical night when Marlene had helped him stagger back to his lonely apartment and his life with her had started. They had all been drinking Olde Medical Examiner then, a punch concocted by some wiseasses from the morgue out of fruit juice and absolute alcohol. The present drunk was rather more elegant. He wondered if he would be quite as sick. But other than the messages from his belly, he felt fine. He hadn't thought about Marlene, or what she was doing, or whether she was really going to show up here with his family or not, and he hadn't thought obsessively about his own future, either, for the better part of two hours. He felt enclosed in a comfortable blanket, the fuzz of it against his face, its warmth relaxing his limbs. Everything was going to be just fine. This was why people became drunks, he thought. If you could feel like this all the time, it might make more sense than he had previously imagined to live in a cardboard box and never bathe. He felt a sudden burst of affection for his fellow drunks.

"I'm sorry, Stupenagel," he said. "It was the liquor talking, not me."

"Oh, no offense, Karp," she said. "If I took umbrage at everything said to me during drunken bouts, I wouldn't have any friends left."

"Assuming you had any at the onset of the bout," observed Murrow in a not quite inaudible voice.

"Murrow, what is it with these little digs?" she said, fixing him with her eye. "Would you like a blow job? Would that calm you down? Excuse me, Karp, this will just take a second." She slid off her chair and stumped across the office on her knees for a few feet, with her mouth open, making vacuumlike sounds, and saying, "You know, some of these little skinny guys have the most enormous schlongs. I hope I don't crack my jaw. I hate when that happens."

"I'm sorry," said Murrow, "I have to have my special rubber underwear or it doesn't work."

When they had stopped giggling and Stupenagel was back in her chair, she said, "What were we talking about before Murrow got carried away by his disgusting lusts? Something important…"

"Whither modern jurisprudence?" suggested Karp. "Very important."

"Indeed it is. Well, whither? The age of Keegan is about to end. Now begins the age of…"

"Please! I don't want to hear it. It's funny, I've just been thinking about the last time I got drunk in this office. Not this office, one of the big bays down on six. We were having a party, and everyone was pretty well oiled, and some of the guys got weapons out of the evidence lockers and they were playing grab-ass cops and robbers, like a bunch of kids. They had some porno films, too. This was when porn was illegal, Murrow, way before your time."

"What, no tits and ass on demand, twenty-four seven?"

"No, Murrow, back then, in order to see it legal you had to go on a date. You had to wear a jacket and tie and buy flowers and beg and tell lies. Anyway, we watched porn films, and got even more fucked up, bras hanging from the light fixtures… And Garrahy found out about it, and hauled all of us up to his office, standing in rows like prisoners in a roll call, and he just reamed us all new ass-holes. I never heard anything like it, before or since. Because he thought that the DA was like a church and what we did was sacred, and screwing around with it like we did was like blasphemy. He always said, whatever you do on the job, imagine how you'd feel if it got printed on the front page of the Times. He believed that and he lived it. And the people like me who came up under that regime never forgot it. We didn't always live up to it, but when we did something slimy we had the grace to feel bad about it. The sad thing was that when he was reaming us out, we could see how old and weak he'd become: he had to stop and catch his breath between excoriations. Ray Guma said it was the last scoop of ice cream in the carton, that speech. It was close to the end of his term, and everyone figured he was going to hang it up, hoist the jersey up to the rafters, and go out with the cheering. Keegan was head of homicide then, and all ready to step into the shoes."

"But he didn't, as I recall," said the reporter. "Garrahy ran again."

"Yeah, he did. I went up to see him one afternoon. I'd done something that deserved a compliment, I forget what it was. And he started talking about leaving, about how it was time for him to go. What do you think, Karp? He asked me, a pissant kid. So I said, 'Oh, no, Mr. Garrahy, no, everyone wants you to stay. Everyone will come out and work on your campaign, all the staff.' So, instead of retiring he ran again. I managed the campaign, as a matter of fact. Not that the issue was in any doubt. He got another term, and a couple of months later he was dead. The governor appointed a piece of shit to replace him. Sanford Bloom, an actual felon. I don't think Jack Keegan has ever really forgiven me for that."

The radiator now let out a groan that stopped conversation. It sounded as if something heavy and metallic were being dragged over a number of hogs.

"They must still be working down in the basement," said Karp, reaching over to touch the radiator. "Stone cold. Cold as a well digger's ass. Cold as a bail bondsman's heart."

"That's good, Karp," said the reporter. "Have you ever thought about a career in journalism?"

"Briefly, but I failed the aptitude test. You know, where they make you eat raw zebra that's been dead for a week?"

"Mm-mm!" Smacking those large lips. "Love it! So, are we going to freeze now? We could take off all our clothes and crawl under my space blanket. That always works."

"Do you actually have a space blanket?" asked Murrow.

"I do." She groped in her bag and showed a corner of the thing, red and silver. "Prepared for everything, my motto. Alternatively, Murrow, we could kill Karp and crawl inside him for the warmth, like arctic peoples do with dogs."

"Do they really do that? I thought that was just a story."

She shuddered delicately. "They really do, my boy, and I've done it. Why do you think I drag a space blanket around with me?"

Murrow stood up. "Luckily, I know where there's an electric heater. We may not have to eviscerate the chief assistant district attorney. I believe that's a misdemeanor offense."

"Oh, go ahead!" cried Karp. "I don't mind."

"Be right back," said Murrow, and left.

"Leave the door open," said Karp, too late. "What are you doing, Stupenagel?"

She had crossed the intervening space in an instant, and was settling herself on his lap. "Just getting warm. You don't want me to freeze, do you? Would you like to see a special heat-producing trick I learned in Siberia?"

"No."

"How about a plain vanilla, repressed Jewish lawyer little kissee, then?" She grabbed his head and suited the action to the offer. Her mouth tasted faintly of lemons under the various alcohols, quite pleasant, Karp thought, and also thought that if you were a man, and a woman sat on your lap and ran her unusually long and muscular tongue down your throat you could not, no matter how uxorious you felt, scream like a Victorian virgin and slap her face.

She came up for air at last. "There! Wasn't that nice?"

"Yes. Now could you get off me?"

"What is your problem, Karp? We're a couple of grown-ups having grown-up fun, a few scant moments of delight snatched from the general shit pie of life. Don't you think Marlene does it as much as she can?"

"Does she?"

"Of course. With that hunk out there that trains her dogs. You think they play hearts all evening?"

"She's not out there. She's in town, and I expect her at any moment. With the kiddies."

"Then they can all watch." The mouth descended on him again. I must really be drunk, he thought. This must be another reason people drink, besides forgetting their problems. People drink to remove inhibitions, so they can have pleasures they ordinarily forbid themselves. Was he having pleasures? To an extent. This was pleasurable but also slightly sickening, like eating a quart of rocky road ice cream at one sitting.

They heard footfalls and a clanking scrape, as if someone was maneuvering a large appliance through the narrow dogleg corridor outside Karp's office. Stupenagel immediately began to bounce up and down on Karp's lap, making the chair's springs squeal, and at the same time crying in falsetto, "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, do it, give it to me, oh, that's so good. Ooooh!"

Karp shot to his feet, dumping the reporter onto the floor and knocking the judge's chair over backward. He staggered, became entangled in the legs of the chair, and went down, too. The reporter was hooting laughter as Murrow peeked in, clutching to his bosom a large electric baseboard heater.

"Did I interrupt something?"

"No," said Karp, struggling to stand. There was something wrong with the message center that normally controlled his legs.

"No, we were just finishing up," said Stupenagel. "It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I feel like a real woman now."

"Oh, shut the fuck up, Stupe!" said Karp, finally upright.

"I could leave," said Murrow. "Just let me find an outlet for this and I'll be gone."

"Take her with you," said Karp as he picked up his chair.

"No, I want more, more, more," said Stupenagel. "You promised!"

"Gosh, boss, this is just like those lawyer TV shows, where they're always grabbing each other after court. I'll just plug this in- here- and you can have your privacy back."

"Oh, for crying out loud, Murrow, we're not doing anything. This woman is a maniac."

"You have the right to remain silent," Murrow intoned, as Stupenagel laughed like a maniac.

"Turn it on high," said Stupenagel to Murrow as he plugged the thing in. "I want to be covered with greasy sweat. I want my blood to boil."

The two men looked at her, then exchanged a look. "Perhaps a moderate setting," said Murrow, "just to chase the chill. And now that I've done that, why don't I go check with the state people on when this show is going to get going."

He made to leave, but Karp was up so fast that his chair vibrated on its central springs.

"I'll go," he said, almost bodychecking the smaller man on his way out. "I have to go to the…"

He was out the door. Murrow shut it and addressed the reporter. "Well, if you don't mind, I think I'll go back to my desk. I have a few things I need to catch up with and-"

"Oh, fuck that, Murrow! Sit your tiny little ass down and have some more wine. It's Friday, for Christ's sake. You have nothing that won't wait." She poured two glasses full of champagne. He was interested to see that, drunk as she was, she did not spill a drop. He took a glass and sat on the couch. She perched on the edge of Karp's desk. She raised her glass. "Dead friends."

They drank. "Have you even got any dead friends, Murrow?"

"A kid from my soccer team in middle school drowned in a boating accident."

Her snorting laugh. "Oh, perfect! That's so American, which is why I spend as little time as I can in my homeland. Let me show you something." She rummaged in her big sack of a purse, removing files, notebooks, a large jar of French Imodium tablets, an Urdu-English Dictionary with no cover, a ball of soiled tissue, a cell phone, and a thick greasy nylon passport wallet. She opened the wallet and plucked out a creased photograph.

"This was taken in the bar of the Summerland Hotel in Beirut in 1982," she said. "That gorgeous creature in the middle is me, if you can believe it. The other five people in it were all killed on the job." She pointed a finger at one grinning face after another. "Beirut, a bomb, about a week after the picture. This one, a sniper in Sarajevo, this one disappeared in Chechnya. Peru, kidnapped. Guatemala, shot at a roadblock. What do you think of that, Murrow?"

"I think it's sad. I think you need some new friends."

"Nobody wants to be my friend anymore. No, that's not true. I don't want to be their friend anymore. Do you know why? Because they all get killed."

"You need friends in safer professions."

"That's a good idea, Murrow. You could be my friend. We could get married. I could get a job on the style section. Or I could marry Karp. Tell me the truth, do you think there's any possibility that he'd dump Ciampi and go for it?"

"He seemed pretty devoted."

"Devoted. That's a great word you don't hear much anymore, except in obits. 'Devoted wife of Abraham Schnitski.' I could write obits, that might be a good way to conclude my career in journalism. Does he ever talk about her?"

"Marlene? No, he tends to keep the private life separate."

"But come on… they've been married years. I can't believe he doesn't play around a little. All these cute little lawyerettes tripping around the office, a good-looking alpha-male man, the aphrodisiac of power. Off the record, Murrow."

"Honestly, I really couldn't say."

"Oh, please, Murrow. I'll let you feel me up."

"Really, I don't know anything that would be worth that."

"Oh, fuck you. But seriously… never? No chewing face in the supply closet with what's-her-name, the little Irish?"

"No. Strange as it seems, he takes his marriage vows seriously. Many people do, you know. It's a point of honor."

"Good Christ! Honor? I've slipped into a time warp. As long as it's not just me that turns him off. I mean, you don't think it's me, do you? I'm losing it, maybe? Oh, God, my entire life ethos has been based on the idea that men are dogs: show them a damp pussy and they have all the discrimination of a cheap windup toy. Honor is not a concept I have seen much associated with the sex act. What is this, a trend? I hope not. The New Victorians. I could do a feature, if I wrote that kind of shit. How about you, Murrow? Do you keep your honor bright?"

"My honor is my loyalty," said Murrow.

She laughed. "Just as the Nazi SS used to say. And you knew that, didn't you? A man with an historical imagination; it makes me all shivery. If only you weren't such a little Murrow. Have some more champagne." She poured, her hand steady as a cliff. "Murrow, could I ask you something?"

"That's all you've been doing."

"No, really. I have to whisper it."

"Oh, go ahead." He felt her hot breath on his ear.

"Do you see that sprinkler head sticking out of the ceiling?"

Murrow looked up. The ceiling was very high, a characteristic feature of office buildings erected before the age of air-conditioning. The brass sprinkler nozzle stuck up from a dropped pipe that ran the length of the room. "What about it?"

She whispered.

"You might," he said, "but wouldn't you regret it later?"

"I never have before," she said. "It's sort of my trademark." She reached both hands up under her skirt.

During her long drive in, Marlene had rehearsed her speech. She thought that if they could just keep quiet and let her say it, and played along, they could all get through this pretty well. In addition to the crazy stuff, there was a lot of what Marlene still thought of as divine-intervention love in the Karp family. And it was also helpful that all its members were essentially decent people. Except for her. And she wasn't quite sure about Zak, although he was still young.

In the event the thing went off well enough. She sat stiffly in a chair in her kitchen (her former kitchen?) and spoke to the three children, who stood before her in a group. A speech from the throne. She said, "Babies, I'm barely hanging on here, and if you ask me any questions about what I'm doing, or why I'm not here, or when I'm coming back I will die. I'm not going to make up happy stories about it. It's bad and I can't disguise it. I've been a terrible liar, I thought I was being smart, that I was trying for… oh, forget that, I don't want to justify what I did. But now all we have is the truth."

She paused, forcing herself to look at their faces, Lucy's patient, Zak's closed and hurt, Giancarlo intently listening, his eyes invisible behind his dark glasses, leaning slightly against his brother. She wished for a cigarette, a prop.

"The truth is that this is a big day for the man I love most in the world and if I have anything to do about it, it's going to be a good day. We are, I am, going to pack all the family garbage into plastic bags for one day and just concentrate on making it right for your father. Can we just do that?"

Giancarlo said, "But if we do that and we're all happy and like that, like we used to be, you'll start crying and you'll have to think about why you're not here with us."

"Yes, but you know, sweetheart, I think I can just suck it in enough so that won't happen. I think for once I can just be here now. It's supposed to be the route to true happiness anyway."

A brief silence and then Lucy said, "That's good, Mom. Did I tell you Dan's here?"

"No. That's great. He's lurking while we have our family conference."

"Yes, and I'm going to go back there and ease him into the flow." She kissed Marlene on the cheek and walked off.

"They're kissing all the time," said Zak. "They never stop."

Karp reeled into the eighth floor men's room and leaned on a sink. His face felt as though someone was holding a velvet throw cushion gently but firmly down on it. His lips and tongue seemed the size of hamburger rolls. The floor rolled slowly under his feet, which seemed farther away than they ordinarily were.

I'm drunk, he thought. Drunk as a skunk. Or a lord. He sort of enjoyed the rolling-floor feeling, but not the velvet-cushion one. Despite knowing he was drunk, he felt fine, not in the least impaired, or rather not so impaired that a little extra care would not put him right. The Inner Karp, however, informed the drunk that this feeling was exactly what led people to climb into motor vehicles and drive them at full speed down the wrong side of the freeway, under the impression that they were fully in control of the situation.

The Inner Karp also took this opportunity to inquire why Karp was doing this, getting drunk just before such an important and prestigious occasion. Karp strove for an answer; he was interested, too. A phrase floated up from memory: You're wound up so tight that one day you're going to crack and when that happens, look out! His wife's voice. First or second wife? Hard to tell; they had both expatiated on the theme. Can't believe I married a man who doesn't drink. That was definitely Marlene. Days of wine and roses? The drunk drawing the partner down the drain of self-destruction. Not really. Marlene was what she called a maintenance drunk. Come to that, Jack Keegan was pretty nearly in the same class, along with half the cops and judges in New York. And a binge every twenty years was not exactly a ticket to Betty Ford. But why now?

You couldn't discount Stupenagel's presence, the woman did drive him crazy, her challenging routine, daring him to match her drinking, as if that were some kind of achievement. And also not wanting to look like a wuss in front of Murrow. And why had Murrow brought that cognac? To celebrate, obviously, and it had gotten out of hand.

Or had it? Karp splashed some water on his face and dried it on a rough paper towel. Karp did not let things get out of hand, not consciously anyway, and only where his wife was concerned. Marlene was perpetually out of hand. So… he wanted to get drunk? The room swam, the white walls wavered like the reflection in a swimming pool. Karp fought off a wave of nausea. No, there was a purpose here, the need for some greater access to the reptilian brain. Down there must lie the answer to… what? What was the question? Why he felt this way. He had won, triumphed over everything, it had been a great year and the next would be even better. Why then did he feel like everyone knew a secret that he didn't know? He gets to be prom queen but it's all a big practical joke, a pig date on a metropolitan scale.

A toilet flushed, a stall door swung open, and out walked a man named Kevin Battle. Chief Inspector Battle was the chief of staff of the police commissioner's office and one of the major foundation stones of the Blue Wall. He had survived half a dozen PCs and confidently expected to be PC himself someday soon. He startled a little when he saw Karp. Karp was not his favorite person this year, so his smile was even more full and false than it usually was.

"Butch Karp! Man of the hour!" Solid slap on shoulder. "How're you doin' fella?"

"Fine, Chief. You're with the DA and his…?" Karp couldn't actually say "cronies" so he hung the end of the sentence on silence. Battle did not seem to notice.

"Oh, yeah, just sitting around telling lies. You ought to come by and tell some yourself. We were wondering where you'd got to?"

"I'm talking to a reporter. Telling lies myself."

Hearty laugh. The guy was good, Karp thought. He hates my guts and if I didn't actually know that, I would think he was being genuinely friendly. Karp had the same sort of feeling he had when he heard a great musician play or saw a great athlete perform: I will never be able to do that no matter how hard I try. That effortless phoniness. He wondered, not for the first time, whether this defect was a deadly disadvantage in his chosen walk of life.

Battle said, "You want to be careful around the jackals, fella. They'll eat you alive." He washed his hands, dried them, inspected his heavily decorated uniform in the mirror, brushed off a bit of lint. He paused at the door, his sharp blue eyes narrowing slightly as he gave Karp an appraising look.

"You all right? You look a little pale."

"I'm fine, Chief." Forming the words with extra care.

"Yeah? You don't look fine. A little early celebrating, huh?"

"A friendly drink with well-wishers." Change the subject. "So, do you have anything new on the governor?"

"Yeah, we just got the word he's on the Deegan, behind a snow plow. They said figure forty-five minutes. By the way, you know anything at all about this heating plant? Jack couldn't get through to anyone. If they don't turn it on there's gonna be ice on the walls by the time the big fella gets here."

"I know nothing," said Karp easily. "It's a shame, we wanted to give him a warm welcome."

Another hearty laugh, and Battle slipped away. But before he did, he gave Karp a look. It was a half-humorous, half… something else. Pitying? Contemptuous? Karp didn't know, but he had seen it far too often on the faces of Keegan and the various political hierarchs he hung with. Karp had met them all- party bosses, borough presidents, big contributors, judges- in various meetings the DA had arranged in the past months. Karp always got the big hello, the two-handed political handshake, the shoulder grip, but always there was that peculiar look. It was, of course, impossible to confront any of them on it. They'd think him crazy, or crazier than they probably thought him already.

Now it was less than an hour to the event and he still didn't know the punch line of the joke everyone else seemed to know. Maybe the governor would know what it was. Karp thought that if he got a little drunker, he might just ask him.

"Did you hear any of that?" Lucy asked as she entered the guest room and closed and locked the door. Dan Heeney, on the bed, looked up from the Powerbook on his lap and slipped down his headphones. "Say what?"

"Oh, nothing," she said, and lay down next to him. "What're you doing?"

"Well, since Zak told me you have a superwireless node in this building, I've been downloading some stuff from NASA, the new MAP data."

"Map of what?"

"No, it stands for Microwave Anisotropic Probe. It's a deepspace research satellite. It measures the background radiation of the big bang. Are you bored yet?"

"Almost. You're sure you don't want to come to this thing? You could see me in a little black dress."

"I'll see you before you leave. I'll pick lint off of you."

"But we'll go to a fancy restaurant after. We could sit together and play footsie."

"Gee, tempting, but I already agreed to do a conference with a couple of guys at Cal Tech and a guy at Case. Some fairly heavy hitters are supposed to join in. Besides, it should just be family going. How's your mom, by the way?"

"Ruined. Crazy, but holding it all together with masking tape and rusty wires. It's like the House of Atreus when she shows up."

"The who?"

"A Greek myth about getting paid back for your bad deeds unto the fourth generation. The Greeks were an ancient people who lived far across the sea…"

"Yeah, ha ha. We'uns din need no furriners up t' th' homeplace. Nossiree bob! We'uns spoke English jes like the Lord Jesus done."

"Barbarian hick. Anyway, it just kills me to see her like that. It hurts worse than torture in a way, you know? Because I don't have any memory of the pain. We don't, really, it doesn't get stored that way. We have empathy, yeah; my dad's got an awful knee injury and when he sees a guy get hurt on TV, it drives him nuts. He says he feels it all over again. That's not the same thing as recall. But spiritual pain goes on and on, because we can remember it. What we did to someone else, our sins against them, what we failed to do, how we let down the people who loved us, how we were violated and humiliated in the spirit."

"That's hard to believe," he said. "If I was mooning about, I don't know, the problem of evil or whatever, and I got a tooth abscess, I'd dump that high-tone speculation pretty fast."

"Not the same thing at all," said Lucy. "Yeah, you'd stop those thoughts and go to the dentist and get it fixed and then you'd have the problem of evil all over again, and the memory of the abscess wouldn't interfere with that spiritual pain. It might make it worse."

"Yeah, but it's her problem, not yours."

"Well, see? Physical pain can block it for a while, as can pleasure, which is why they sell so much heroin. And that's all I want to say about it."

She wormed closer and slid the laptop to the floor. "So, could you render me unconscious right now?"

"We're fresh out of heroin."

"Use your mouth, then," she said.

Why don't they cancel this goddamn thing, Murrow thought again, looking out the window into what seemed a wall of grits, so thick was the fall of snow. He also thought, This is what hell is going to be like, trapped in a room, waiting for an event indefinitely postponed, with someone very much like Ariadne Stupenagel. He wished fervently that he had been a better man heretofore, and instantly resolved upon the reform of his character. He glanced upward past the window to the ceiling, its pipe, its sprinkler head, and the sprinkler head's new decoration, a pair of lacy lavender silk panties. It had only taken her two tries. Murrow wondered whether Karp would hold him responsible for this. Probably. He tried to estimate whether, if they moved the desk and Karp stood upon it, and upon, say, three volumes of the Criminal Code, he could reach it and pull it down. Drunk. Falling, breaking his neck. The scandal…

The demon reporter was slouched in Karp's big chair. She was facing the window, muttering and swinging her big bottle like a metronome, clunking it dully at the end of each stroke against Karp's desk. A maddening sound. Every dozen or so beats the bottle would rise into sight and then vanish again as she drank a slug, and then clunk, clunk.

Impelled to speak by the Sartrean horror of the moment, Murrow said, "They're going to have to cancel this."

The chair spun around. She pointed the champagne's snout at him like a shotgun. "That's where you're wrong, my son. They'll never cancel this, not if a fucking glacier came down from the Catskills and buried the Bronx. The gov can't be seen to be stopped by a little snow. It would make his little willy seem smaller than the willy of the mayor, and that would never do. Ninety percent of American politics is about who has the biggest willy. And there's another reason." She looked stupidly at the mouth of the bottle for a moment as if the other reason dwelt there, and then stuck it into her own mouth.

"What reason?"

"Ah," she said, "that would be telling. See the way it works is I ask you and you tell me and then you read all about it. But here's a hint: how could they possibly have picked a situation that would get this event less publicity than holding it on a Friday afternoon the week before Christmas. Okay, they didn't order the storm, but since they have it, they for sure ain't going to waste it. This party is destined for page eleven below the fold, and not even local TV coverage."

"They didn't want to publicize it."

"No, and that's why I'm here. You would be surprised at how many good stories start at events no one is supposed to go to. Embassy cocktail parties thrown by second-rate countries. Unveilings of statues of national poets no one's ever heard of. Friday afternoon coronations of obscure legal bureaucrats."

"But why?"

The answer to this was a snicker. The chair swiveled back until the reporter faced the window. The champagne bottle swung and clunked against the desk. A shadow appeared in the glass of the door. Murrow felt a pulse of relief at Karp's return, until he noted that the shadow wasn't nearly tall enough. The door opened and in walked a small elderly man swathed in a fur-collared overcoat and a fur hat, both thickly encrusted with snow. The man brushed this off and looked around Karp's office owlishly. He did not fail to notice the panties on the sprinkler or that the long, booted legs reflected in the window pane did not belong to Butch Karp.

"You look like you been having a party," he said. "Where is everybody?"

The chair swiveled. "Oh, Guma," said the reporter. "Did you bring anything to drink?"

"What a question!" said Ray Guma, drawing from the deep pockets of his overcoat two unopened fifths of Teacher's scotch.

"What've you been up to, Guma?" asked Stupenagel. Her glass, which had held cognac and champagne, now was half full of scotch. She held it up to the cold light of the ceiling fixture to check for insects and other floaters, a habit born in the third world, where the scotch is often not what it should be.

"Dying," said Guma. "They tell me it's in remission now, but meanwhile I got about twelve inches of gut left and I'm missing half the accessories."

"Oh, spare us the details! To tell you the absolute truth, I thought you were dead already."

"To tell you the absolute truth, I am," said Guma. Murrow could believe it. He had heard stories of Guma's exploits in the old days, and it was hard to credit them to the withered man hunched in his coat on the couch, who had once been infamous as the Mad Dog of Centre Street. He looked like the mummy of a monkey, although his eyes still glowed with a calculating intelligence.

"I'm like in that Christmas carol movie, the ghost of Christmas past," Guma continued. "I hope you've been good, Stupenagel."

"Very, but not through any fault of my own. Being bad has fallen out of fashion, I think."

After a moment's reflection, Guma said, "You know, Stupenagel, you really broke my heart back there when I was jumping your bones. I really thought we had something."

"We did have something, Goom. You had information I wanted, and I had a warm body and we exchanged, quid pro fucking quo."

"No, just come out and say it," said Guma. "You don't have to let me down easy."

Another snorting laugh from Stupenagel. Murrow looked at the two of them and tried to keep the horror off his face, as he envisioned this pair going at it. Where was Karp? Murrow discovered that he had a glass of whiskey in his hand. He definitely did not want to drink anymore. Guma and Stupenagel seemed to have forgotten him. They were talking companionably about events of some years back, when they had apparently had their inconceivable fling. Stupenagel was saying, "Yeah, I spent time in Guatemala, in India, in Mexico, in Argentina, in fucking Sudan, all places where beating up the press is practically like a requirement for promotion in the police, and I didn't get a scratch. I come home to the land of the free and what happens? I get pounded to shit by a corrupt cop. No wonder I drink."

Murrow slipped out like a ferret and went straight to the men's room. He dumped the scotch down the sink and used the glass to drink tap water, as much as he could hold, a trick his mother had recommended as a way to flush the toxins from the system and avoid a hangover. As he did so, he could not help noticing an almost operatic performance from the last toilet stall. Someone was, as they used to say in his prep school, blowing lunch, although it sounded like breakfast, too, and the dinner from the night before. He waited, and was not entirely surprised when Karp emerged.

"Well, that was fun," said Karp when he saw his underling. "Care to join me in a puke?"

"No, I'm a diluter, not an expeller," Murrow said, holding up a glass of New York's purest. "How do you feel?"

"Like a street person has been living in my oral cavity. Can I borrow your glass? Dilution sounds good."

Murrow looked on in wonder as Karp drank. After a long while he said, "Croton Reservoir's on the phone, boss. They're hearing sucking noises and they'd like you to cut back a little."

Karp laughed briefly, put down the glass, and washed his face. "Tell me, Murrow, do you do this often?"

"Not that much anymore. But I did, nearly every weekend, from about age seventeen to a couple of years ago."

"May I ask why?"

"Oh, I guess sex was a lot of it, it helps in going to bed with people you shouldn't really go to bed with. And blessed amnesia, relaxation of every moral code, tolerating boring, stupid people- the usual. And habit. I grew up with parents who drank martinis at five-thirty, every single day."

"Amazing," said Karp, shaking his head. "And you're still alive and halfway competent. I salute you. Is that woman still in my office?"

"Yes, she is," Murrow admitted.

"Still drinking?"

"Steadily. Your pal Guma showed up and brought more jet fuel."

Karp brightened. "Oh, yeah? Good old Guma! Are they playing nice?"

"Sort of. I gather they have a history."

"Yeah, years ago. Being the two most promiscuous heterosexual people in New York with college educations, it was probably a mathematical certainty that they would sooner or later end up in the rack together. It didn't last, though."

"A real shame," said Murrow. "They seem to deserve each other."

Karp gave him a stern look. "Why don't you let me be the disapproving puritan, Murrow. It suits my age and status better. Guma happens to be one of my best friends, and Stupenagel is one of my wife's best friends. I realize that neither of them is completely housebroken, and they leave hair on the couch, but they're both the kind of person that they don't make many of anymore, sort of throw-backs to a more dramatic and less politically correct age, and I prize them for it when they're not pissing the hell out of me. Everything is better nowadays, of course- we don't smoke, we don't drink, we're strictly monogamous, or else if we're not we have to be investigated by the whole fucking legislature and go on Oprah to confess, and that's fine and dandy, and it also happens that I was all goody-goody like that, way, way before it became fashionable, or required, if you can believe it, but still… I detect a certain shrinking of the great human canvas, especially around the neighborhood of the courthouse. Not only do we not have smoke-filled rooms, we barely have mafioso anymore, or political bosses. Instead we have pissant little white-collar criminals on the one hand and brainless thugs on the other. It makes for a lot less interesting life if you're in the business of putting asses in jail. Are we done here, by the way? We hang out together in the men's any longer, people'll start to talk."

"Not that there's anything wrong with that," said Murrow, pushing open the door.

Karp laughed. "Yeah, right. Another cosmic change. In any case, Guma and Stupenagel: both extinct- no, endangered- species. The hard-drinking, I-don't-give-a-shit reporter, and the quasi-legal DA. They're like grizzly bears. Horrible and terrific at the same time. I mean, everyone says, 'Boo-hoo, save the bears,' but would you want one in your backyard, eating the poodle, the cat, little Susie?"

"Why is he quasi-legal?"

"Because Guma is, or was, the reigning expert on La Cosa Nostra in this office, encyclo-fucking-pedic on the subject. He knew them all, the whole Brooklyn Mob, including Murder Incorporated. He was on a first-name basis with every capo regime in the city over the last thirty-five, forty years. He saw them rise and he saw them fall, and helped out in both directions."

"You mean he was corrupt?"

"Not as such. But his relation with the Mob was extremely Sicilian. Guma probably put more Mafiosi in prison than any other living New York prosecutor, but he also let a lot of them go, if he thought it was better for the long-term health of the criminal ecology. Not a strictly legal position, maybe, but one that suited him and the times. It was a risk, too. Swimming with the sharks. The Mob doesn't shoot people like us as a rule, but they'll make an exception for guys who pull shit like Ray pulled from time to time. Giving a break to a slightly dumber and/or less vicious guy so as to grab up a slightly more dangerous gangster- like that. And, of course, that's another thing he's got in common with Stupenagel. College-educated middle-class people usually don't put their bodies on the line in their daily work. That's the way of civilization, of course, which as reasonable men we have to approve, but it's also a little dull. Like you and me, Murrow."

As he said this, Karp experienced a minor epiphany, in that he finally understood why being married to Marlene was necessary to his life. Yes, she drove him crazy, but she also prevented his life from going gray. He thought of the few peers who had been at it as long as he had. Keegan, his caution, his perpetually unsmoked cigar. Others, graying men who wore ratty cardigans in their offices. Some of them had Dickensian eccentricities that everyone excused, but joked about all the same. He shuddered.

"What?" said Murrow.

Karp gave him an inquiring look. "What what?"

"All of a sudden a strange expression appeared on your face, like you discovered the secret of life, or were having a stroke."

Karp let out a short hard laugh and threw a big arm over Murrow's shoulders. "It was the secret of life, my son."

"May one know it?"

"When you're older, Murrow. It wouldn't make any sense to you now. Let's go back and join the party and see what excesses our friends have perpetrated in our absence."

"Oh, good," said Guma when Karp and Murrow entered, "you didn't fall in. What the hell is wrong with the heating? My nuts are freezing off."

"No loss to the world, if you ask me," said Stupenagel.

"I didn't ask you," said Guma. "What I asked you was if you could breathe on them to take the chill off, but oh, no…"

Karp sat on his couch, a little grumpily, because he could not figure out a polite way of kicking Stupenagel out of his chair. Instead, he said to Guma, "You can't smoke in here, Goom. In fact, you're not supposed to be smoking at all."

Guma admired his big Macanudo and took another puff. "Excuse me, are you speaking as the deputy fire marshal or as my personal fucking physician? Every time I smoke one of these things it takes fifteen minutes off my life, and considering what my life is like nowadays, it's worth it. That's yet another thing that was better in the old days- right, Stupenagel?"

Stupenagel said, "Yes, Karp, we've been sharing some old-fart moments, even though he's, of course, vastly older than I am. Decades. Guma longs for the days when the criminal justice system was even more arbitrary and vicious than it is now, and when, in his phrase, 'you fucking jackals' knew your place, which was to take our split of the graft and stick to the sordid affairs of the lowlifes."

"An exaggeration," said Guma.

"You think the system is arbitrary and vicious?" asked Karp.

"Yes, of course," she said, "don't you?"

"No, not really," said Karp.

Stupenagel swiveled Karp's chair around and stared at him as if he had just wondered why, if the Earth was a ball, the people on the bottom half didn't fall off. Karp noticed this, and also that she had somehow partially undrunked herself. Her jaw had stiffened up and her eyes were no longer floating in a boozy sea. He recalled that this was one of Stupenagel's more valuable journalistic talents, but whether it was a result of ruse or immense natural capacity, he had never been able to tell.

"I mean, it's not what it should be," he continued, "it's a human institution, like the church and the press. Humans are fallible beings."

"There's no comparison at all," she replied. "The press, my sweet fanny! What if every time I wanted to run a story I had to convince twelve high school graduates selected at random that it was true, while some other guy tried to convince them it was false."

"You'd be wrong less often?" suggested Karp.

"Excuse me, but if we had to print retraction notices as often as DNA evidence freed people you guys convicted, we wouldn't have any room for the bra ads, and Guma would stop reading the paper. Can you really sit there and tell me that the American justice system has any other purpose than the aggrandizement of fucking lawyers? Oh, and to make sure that rich people don't have to pay for their crimes any more than once or twice a decade. Do you realize that over ninety percent of the people in this country believe that some innocent people are convicted of murder? A hundred and fucking ten murder and rape convictions at last count thrown out because of genetic testing."

"What's the alternative? The Star Chamber?"

"Yes, that's what you guys always say, although we have no evidence at all that the Star Chamber was any less unjust than trial by jury. The reason they invented juries in the first place was so that the English barons could do what they damn well pleased and be tried by their pals instead of having to face the king's justice. It's designed to give the rich a better break than the poor- that's what it's fucking for."

"Commie pinko atheist slut," said Guma. "I guess the way they do it in Red China is better."

"No, but the Euros get by without juries very well, thank you, and their crime rates are a tenth what ours are."

"That's a non sequitur," said Karp. "The crime rate has nothing to do with juries."

"No, but it's got to have something to do with your fucked-up system. Hey, you want to warehouse a third of the black male population? Go right ahead! But don't dress it up like it's justice."

"Oh," said Guma, "now she's gonna go with the oppressed minorities. Wait a second, let me get out my towel."

"Asshole! Tell him he's an asshole, Karp."

Karp, who had occasionally entertained private flashes of the type the reporter was expressing, said nothing, but took refuge in aphorism: "The law is born from despair about human nature: Ortega y Gasset," he intoned, which put a temporary stopper on the conversation. After a moment, Karp said to Murrow, "Listen, go find that woman from the governor's office and get a straight answer out of her about if and when this thing is going to start."

Marlene spent a reasonably pleasant hour watching Zak conquer Asia on the computer, and listening to Giancarlo play some new songs and watching him demonstrate a device that read pages in a book and spoke the text in a creaky mechanical voice. As she had promised, she did not break down. Around noon, Lucy and Dan emerged from the guest room, hand in hand. Marlene observed that her daughter's mouth, already generous, seemed puffed across half her face and that her normally dull skin shone with a milky light, except for the numerous red marks. Lucy engineered a lunch: cold shrimp quiche, salad, and white wine for the big people, zapped frozen tacos and lemonade for the boys. Giancarlo valiantly charmed and, Marlene noted with pleasure, Dan Heeney stepped up to the plate and batted a few long balls in that department, too. An excellent addition to the Karp family, she thought, and would get along fine with whichever respectable woman Karp would next take up with.

After that it was time to get ready. Marlene bathed in the big tub she had made long ago out of a black rubber electroplating bath she had found onsite when she'd first taken this loft. What a long time ago it seemed, before SoHo, before Karp and the children, before the first killing. She stayed in the bath for a long time, not long enough to wash her sins away, but long enough to have a good silent weep, and to prompt her daughter to tap discreetly on the door.

She dressed in baggy slacks of heavy, braided black silk, tucked into knee boots and a long wool tunic that buttoned down the front. By the time she emerged from the bedroom, the family was dressed and ready, the boys looking strangely unformed in jacket and tie, Lucy surprisingly elegant in the little black number.

"Don't rush," said Lucy. "I called. Flynn said the whole thing's been delayed for a couple of hours."

Murrow returned five minutes later. "They're setting up the cameras again," said Murrow. "The man is entering the building as we speak. They're saying half an hour."

Stupenagel slid out of Karp's chair and turned toward the window. "And the snow seems to be letting up. I can see across the square now." She stepped back and checked her reflection in the glass. She hiked her skirt up and around and tucked in her shirt, then reached into her bag and brought out a compact, which she flipped open.

Guma said. "If you're gonna shave your legs, Stupenagel, I believe I'll ask to be excused."

"I never shave my legs," she replied, examining herself critically in the mirror. She wielded a hairbrush. "I have a Moldavian who likes to yank the hairs out with his teeth, one by one."

The three men watched as she whipped through a quick and efficient toilette, finishing with a blast of breath spray. She looked as though she had been supping tea and ladyfingers for the past three hours, rather than guzzling large quantities of assorted alcohols.

"Well, boys, I think I'll circulate and collect lies. Thanks for the drinks and the philosophy." She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder.

"Aren't you going to take your underpants?" Murrow asked grumpily.

She fixed him with a look down her long nose, one that made Murrow acutely aware of how much taller she was than he. "And what underpants would those be, sir?"

"The ones on the sprinkler head."

She made a show of peering at them. "Lovely. What makes you think I tossed them up there?"

"What makes me think…? Jesus, Stupenagel, I saw you yank them off and throw them."

"Yet another demonstration of the unreliability of the eyewitness. In an alcohol-driven sex fantasy, you imagined me removing my underwear and tossing it up there, but in fact I am wearing the pair I set out with this morning. Would you like to check?"

"Yes!"

"Care to put some money on it, sonny? Say a hundred bucks my loins are enclosed in a pair of chaste and hygienic Hanes cottons, in black?"

Murrow looked desperately at Guma and Karp; the former was intently examining the damp tip of his cigar, the latter made an almost imperceptible negative motion of his head.

"I've been set up," said Murrow.

"I don't know what you're talking about, dear boy," she said, "but clearly you're not about to put your money where your mouth is, so I will bid you all a temporary adieu. Butch, if your lovely bride shows up, tell her I said hi, and to give me a call sometime. Guma, let me know when you die, okay? I'll send a wreath."

She left. Both Guma and Murrow blew kisses at the door. Karp sat down behind his desk and said, "Listen, both of you: speaking of being set up, why am I getting these weird looks whenever any of the big boys mentions me being the DA?"

"Weird looks?" asked Murrow.

"Yeah. Like they all know something I don't know. What is it, I'm going to be standing up there being sworn in and a big bucket of blood is going to come down on my head like in Carrie? What?"

"That must be about the pool," said Murrow after a nervous silence.

"What pool?"

"The one about how long you'll last before fucking up so bad politically that the governor can ask you to resign with no shit sticking to him."

"Oh," said Karp. "Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

"I thought you'd disapprove. I mean, of my involvement."

"In the pool? You're betting I'm going to get canned?"

"No, I'm running the pool. I'm taking the bets. The line is fifteen to one you won't last the year, and forty to one you won't win election if you run."

"I'll take some of that action," said Guma and laughed, and then Murrow joined him and finally Karp, who said, "Tell me, does Jack Keegan have any money in the pool?"

"Yeah, but he's picking up some of my risk. Like me, he thinks you'll hang in there."

"That's a surprise."

"No it ain't," said Guma confidently. "Keegan knows he's a twisty, ambitious prick, but he also knows that you're the closest thing to a reincarnation of Francis Phillip Garrahy that he's likely to see in this life. And he loved Phil. As long as it doesn't hurt his ambitions he'd like to see one like him in the DA. Which is why he's kept you around all these years, and protected you, when it would've been a lot better for him to have given you the boot. And why he used a bunch of chips with the party of evil to get you the appointment. You didn't realize this?"

"It's particle physics to him," said Murrow and Karp was about to come back with a rejoinder when the phone rang. He listened for a moment or two, and Murrow, observing his face, asked, "Bad news?" Karp held up a shushing hand and continued to listen. He said, "I understand" several times and hung up.

"What?" asked Murrow.

"Bomb threat," said Karp.

"Here?"

"Yeah, it sounded like the real thing, too. They said they're going to take down this building unless we release Feisal ibn-Salemeh."

Rashid clicked off his cell phone, put his car in gear, and drove carefully away. It was his supreme moment, giving orders to Karp in that way. He felt for the first time in his life entirely in control. Except for the car.

He had never driven in this kind of snow before, and the tension of driving racked his nerves. But besides that, he felt everything had worked out remarkably well, a tribute to his organizing genius: the gigantic coup was now fact, all the layers of deception jerked away to reveal the perfection of their plan, nearly six years in the making: assembling the papers and the money, infiltrating the sleepers, buying the necessary firms, gaining the skills. Then those morons had blown up the World Trade Center and suddenly no Arab could move freely around the country and they had had to recruit Felix. A mistake as it turned out, but he had brilliantly compensated for it, and no real harm done, because of the depth, the intricacy of the plan. The bidding for the contract to supply two boilers for the building, which, of course, they won. Everyone knew that Americans thought only of money, so in order to gain access to any place all you had to do is become the low-bid contractor. He had seen that the boilers were put in place, he had led the quick violent action that neutralized the few outside workmen. His troops were completely in charge of the courthouse basement. Rashid had wired the blasting cap to a cell phone ring circuit, and left the construction site and driven a few streets away and made his call. All that was needed now was for Carlos and Felнpe to arrive from the Inwood site with a plastic pipe full of acetone peroxide crystals. They would insert the pipe into a hollow drilled into the seventeen thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate that filled one of the boilers. Placing the initiator charge was the trickiest part of the operation, but ibn-Salemeh had been adamant about doing it that way. You had to have a good burn to bring down a prewar building of solid masonry and steel, and the initiator was essential to a good burn. But the peroxide was sensitive stuff and it had to be made fresh before use.

Rashid checked his watch. At this moment Carlos would be installing the initiator into the heart of the great bomb.

He drew the car to the curb, or at any rate out of the middle of the street. He had not counted on the snow, but it seemed to be letting up and would make no difference to the success of the plan. He had to keep moving because they would be trying to pinpoint the location of the cell phone from which the calls originated. He sat for a moment with the heater running full blast, enjoying the quiet of the blanketed city. Then his cell phone warbled. That would be Carlos giving the coded message that the bomb was ready for detonation, that the booby traps guarding it were in place, and that the whole crew was out of the building. He answered the phone and waited. But it wasn't the coded message.

"They're not answering at the courthouse," said Lucy, hanging up the phone.

"It's probably crazy there, with the snow and the governor and the ceremony," said Marlene. "Let's just go."

"Can't we finish this game?" asked Zak.

"No," answered his mother, tossing in her cards, "you'll have your whole life to play hearts. Get your coats!"

So they bid Dan good-bye and bundled up in their warmest and hit the frozen streets. It was the kind of day when not people who love people, but people who own four-by-four high-bed pickup trucks with knobby tires, feel like the luckiest people in the world.

"It seems to be letting up," observed Marlene as she steered east on a nearly empty Grand Street.

"Yeah, from a total white-out blizzard," said Lucy, sitting next to her. "I'm glad it's you driving." In the family, Marlene was famous for her winter driving skills. As she passed Baxter, Marlene found that the sole lane down the center of the snowy road was blocked by a plumbing company van. The driver had skidded sideways and was now doing the worst possible thing, gunning his engine, spinning his wheels, and digging himself in even deeper.

"That moron!" said Marlene and rolled down her window. "Don't do that!" she yelled, "Rock it!" The engine up ahead continued to roar, however, and sent up blue clouds of stinking smoke.

"Can you back up?" asked Lucy.

"No, there's a big tow truck behind me," said Marlene, after checking her side mirrors. "Crap!" The tow truck honked its air horn helpfully.

Then the passenger-side door of the van opened and a man jumped out. He walked back to the rear of his truck and examined the situation, which was that the rear wheels were sunk to the hubs and spinning on solid ice. He yelled to the driver, who stuck his head out of the window and yelled back. The wheels stopped spinning. The man opened the double rear doors of the van and yelled something else. The driver stepped down from the van.

"That's Tamazight," said Lucy.

"What?"

"Those guys are speaking Tamazight, like the guy we saw…" She rolled her window down and looked out at the man behind the plumber's van, who was now talking into a cell phone.

"That's him," said Lucy. "That's Maybe Gonzales. What're they doing out here? Should we call the cops? Mom?"

Marlene doesn't answer. She is staring at the man, who has put his cell phone away and is now removing a short length of three-inch plastic pipe from the rear of the van. The tow truck honks again. Marlene understands what she's seeing, and understands what she has to do. She hands Lucy her cell phone.

"Yeah, call the cops. Tell them we've spotted people who are probably members of the Manbomber gang, right next to the courthouse. They've got what looks like big pipe bombs. Give them the details on the guys, and remind them that the governor is in the courthouse right now. Then call Dad and tell him the same thing."

"What are you going to do?" Lucy asks. She doesn't like the look on her mother's face.

"Call," says Marlene and slips from the cab of the truck. She goes to the rear and pops the camper door.

Zak asks, "What's going on, Mom? Why did we stop?"

"A little problem. Look, both of you, it's real important that you stay here with Lucy. I have to go and check on something."

She takes a key ring out of her bag and uses a cylinder key to open a steel lock box bolted to the bed of the truck. The can suppressor is still screwed to the barrel of the Beretta nine-millimeter from the night she used it on Cherry and her dealer.

"What's going on, Mom?" asks Giancarlo. The guide dog whimpers.

She has not cleaned the pistol, has not wanted to think about the pistol at all. Now here it is in her hand again, with her non-blind son staring at it and her with a mix of horror and fascination she cannot bear seeing. She slams the camper door on his protesting cry.

She runs forward. The two men are trudging through the drifts, two men in black coveralls, each one carrying a short length of gray, three-inch pipe capped on each end. She shouts to them to stop. They turn and see her and her gun. They start to run, slipping and sliding in the snow.

Karp is closeted in the DA's office with the DA and the governor of New York and all the senior NYPD people on the premises, and the governor's security chief.

"He was real clear," said Karp, and not for the first time. "There's a bomb in the basement big enough to destroy the entire building and he'll set it off unless he hears from ibn-Salemeh that his release is under way. He said we're not to bring in the feds, not to inform the press, and not to bring any additional police onto the scene. He said they're observing the building and if any move is made to evacuate it, or to move cops in, they'll blow it up. He gave us two hours."

Everyone looked at the governor. The governor looked at Karp. "Are we sure this isn't a bluff?"

"Well, I can't say from the conversation I had with him, Governor, but the connect between ibn-Salemeh and the Manbomber is fairly explicit by now. We shouldn't be in any doubt that these people can build, deliver, and explode bombs. And they don't care about killing people one bit."

The state police security man, a fellow named Lambert, said, "Governor, the limo is waiting right outside the DA entrance on Leonard Street. I can't see how they could learn you're moving, give the order, and explode the bomb before we had you safe and away."

The governor ignored this. "What about the other people in the building? How many are there, Jack?"

Keegan said, "Usually about fifteen hundred, and we have more than the usual number of kids in the day-care center. It's the big day for judicial staff Christmas parties and people like to bring family. There's usually well over a hundred. Do you want an exact count?"

"No, it's more than enough. We're staying." He turned to an aide. "Get Auburn on the phone. I want to talk to the warden."

While this was being done, they heard the sounds of a scuffle outside, a loud male voice and a higher female one, indignant. Karp stood up and walked to the door. Outside in the narrow corridor, his secretary was facing off with a state trooper twice her size.

Flynn met Karp's eye. "It's your daughter. She says it's an emergency and this lummox wouldn't let me by to tell you."

There is an excavation on the Baxter Street side of the courthouse. Half the street and all of the sidewalk have been taken up and replaced by a pit shored up on three sides by raw two-by-eights. On the fourth side is a ramp faced with perforated steel plates and large enough for a five-ton truck. This is how they moved material for the cooling and heating renovations down into the basement. Marlene sees the two men disappear down the ramp and she follows. A hole has been cut in the side of the building and shored with steel girders. Past that is the basement proper. Marlene sees them enter a hallway. Crouching slightly, she pursues them. She is thinking, These are the people who killed Pete, and Nora and those others, and all the self-pitying feelings of the day and the previous days are gone, and she is focused on the passing instant only, in full predator mode.

She is in a hallway, painted pale green. There are black bloodstains on the floor and two bodies, both of men in construction worker clothing. A man steps from a doorway holding a Skorpion submachine gun. He fires a burst at Marlene but he doesn't aim low enough and she hears the rounds snapping over her head and whining down the hall. She raises her pistol and without breaking her stride shoots him in the chest and face. He falls in the doorway and she trots forward and steps over him.

Marlene is on a small landing. Steel steps lead down to the floor of the main boiler room. Six men are on the floor of the room. Two of them are the men in coveralls she has chased here and the other four are wearing construction gear. Of these, three are armed with pistols or submachine guns. The scene is very clear and sharp to her, almost unnaturally so, like a museum diorama showing how the Indians made pemmican. There is a rough table in the center of the group, on which lie the two plastic tubes. One of them has been opened and wires emerge from it. These wires are wrapped around others coming from a cellular phone with its case removed. The man wrapping the wires looks up like a high school teacher interrupted at a demonstration of some elementary physics fact. It is Maybe Gonzales, the Berber. Because Marlene has a silenced weapon, they don't realize that she is killing them for a few seconds and so she takes out Gonzales and two of the armed ones and then there is a return fusillade from the floor and she has to retreat.

Lucy's 911 call got a lot of attention. The 911 system has been trained to take bomb threats very seriously, and after the operator had determined that Lucy Karp was a real person, and responsible, and the daughter of the soon-to-be DA, and that the threat was lodged in the courthouse, the governor also being onsite, things moved with dispatch. The recent events in New York had caused to be created several specialized Emergency Service Units to deal with terrorists. One of these teams was lodged in police headquarters, a few hundred yards from the courthouse. Three minutes after being scrambled, two extremely costly specialized black, four wheel-drive vehicles were racing up Baxter Street, loaded with enthusiastic, heavily armed men.

"Where are you now?" Karp asked.

"On Baxter, about a hundred feet from the north end of the courthouse," said Lucy. "I can see the construction hole Mom went down. Here come the cops."

"Cops? Christ, Lucy, we're not supposed to bring any cops in. He said they'd blow the building if we did."

"Who said?"

"Never mind that! I want you to go away from the building. Take the boys and leave."

"But what about Mom?"

"Lucy, take the boys and go! Run!"

Rashid tried again to raise Felнpe on his cell phone, to no avail. There had been no message from Carlos giving the ready signal, but there had been one from the boy he had watching the courthouse, telling of lights and sirens and the arrival of the police in strength. It was the snow, he thought. The initiator had been delayed by the snow and their timetable had been thrown off. No one could have counted on the snow. So he could not really be blamed. But the men were armed, they should have no trouble fending off the police for the few moments it would take to rig the bomb. The chief would, of course, be angry, but on the other hand, as Rashid would explain to him, the success of such an operation would make it possible, perhaps, to win his release with a mere threat. That was definitely the line to take. Against that, there was the loss of Carlos and Felнpe, or Mamoud and Habib, valuable men, but not irreplaceable, and a few others. He picked up his cell phone again and dialed a long-memorized number.

His heart missed a beat. He should have heard the explosion from here, the entire city should have heard it. He dialed again and again. Nothing. He does not know what to do now. He sits paralyzed.

A garbage truck-mounted snow plow, its yellow light flashing, is moving down the street. His car is blocking it. The plow driver honks. Rashid backs up too quickly, fishtails, smashes his rear lights against another car. There is a police car behind the snow plow. Its occupant gets out and walks around the garbage truck to see what the problem is. He walks over to Rashid's car and raps on the window with his knuckle. Rashid rolls it down. The cop looks in. At roll call that afternoon, this patrolman had been cautioned against racial profiling. Yes, they were looking for Arab men, but that didn't mean they could roust anyone who looked Arab. You had to have something else, some probable cause. And they had distributed sketch artist pictures of three men made from witnesses of the neighbors of that house that had blown up in Astoria.

The cop took a long look at this guy and thought that he looked enough like one of the guys in the sketch to constitute probable cause. Besides, it was freezing out and the guy was sweating bullets. He backed away.

"Sir, please step out of the car," he said.

Rashid flung the door open violently and began to run down West Houston Street. The cop had been a fairly good schoolboy safety not too many years ago and it only took him about twenty-five yards to catch Rashid and bring him crashing down on the untrodden snow.

Marlene is sheltering behind a wall and trying to think how many bullets she has left. She is in good position, although outgunned. One of them ought to lay down a base of fire and the others should rush her, but she thinks that this will not occur to them for some time, and then the police will be here. The main thing is that the bomb is not complete. Marlene knows a good deal about bombs and she has decided that what is on the table is a cell phone detonator and a pair of initiator charges. The main charge must be elsewhere. She gets down low and snaps her head around the corner of the door, and someone fires a burst and she shoots at the flash, and then the place explodes.

She is tossed halfway across the corridor when the wall she is leaning against blows out. The ceiling holds; she is not crushed. She does not lose consciousness, but is stunned by the magnitude of the sound. She has gone deaf. Her main problem, however, is sight. The blast from the initiator charge set off by Rashid's phone call has shattered every lightbulb in the basement, and the place is a cave, except for the dim emergency lights. These lights are dim because the air is nearly opaque with dust.

Marlene stands up and starts walking out of the basement. Her face is coated in ancient soot blown loose by the blast and stings from many small cuts. There is one on the side of the bridge of her nose that leaks blood into her good eye, and she has to keep wiping it off. She walks into the murk. After a while she sees flashlight beams ahead. Good, she thinks, the cops.

The DA's suite had been secured by every cop in the building- the DA detective's squad in its entirety and any uniforms or detectives who happened to be in the building at the time. The press had been shoved into a blocked-off hallway where they murmured and groaned like cattle in the vestibule of an abattoir. Inspector Battle was in command, of course, a duty that consisted of screaming into the phone, blaming various officers of the department for allowing this to happen, throwing a wide cordon around lower Manhattan, and attempting to insure that no additional police converged on the courthouse. On being informed that an ESU had rolled on a call some minutes ago, he demanded to be patched through to the unit commander.

He heard the explosion and stopped talking. Everyone stopped talking, all the little groups of powerful men felt a pang of mortality. The building did not collapse; everyone pretended they had not been frightened.

The governor spoke to the warden at Auburn and explained the situation. Then he called the commander of the state police and arranged for a helicopter to be sent to the prison. An aide approached him just after he put down the phone.

"Governor, we're thinking we should go ahead with the swearing in. It shows coolness under fire. Every one of those reporters has a cell phone and if we don't talk to them pretty soon, we're going to have mobs out there. We want to play it as bomb scare, small explosion, business as usual."

The governor agreed. But when they looked for Karp, he was nowhere to be found.

Detectives Renzi and Butler of the DA squad had been sent to guard the north fire stairway entry on the eighth floor, and as usual had been told zip except not to let anyone in or out. They knew who the approaching figure was and hailed him cordially, although they did not move out of his way.

"Sorry, Butch, no one in or out," said Renzi.

"Are you guys still on the DA squad?" asked Karp.

They acknowledged that they were.

"And am I the DA?"

They looked at each other. "I guess you are, now," said Butler. "Congratulations."

"Thank you. As the DA, I'm ordering you to let me through, and I'm ordering you to follow me down to the basement."

With that, he pushed past them and through the fire door.

As he descended, Karp was thinking about something Marlene had said to him once, that the working class was so invisible to the ruling one that someone dressed in overalls and a hard hat and carrying a greasy clipboard and a couple of tools could get in nearly anywhere. And he recalled what the super, Arno Nowacki, had told him about the boiler job, and the unknown low-bid contractors. Plumbers never got security checks. Of course, that's how they did it, how they moved tons of explosive into the courthouse basement in front of everyone's nose. It was as stupid, bold, and effective as 9-11.

They reached the basement, to find the main lights were out and the hallway lit dimly by the emergency lights.

Renzi grabbed his arm. "What's the story here, Butch. What're we down here for and what are we looking for?"

"They didn't tell you anything?"

"Are you kidding?"

"A bunch of terrorists have a bomb in the boiler room. They dragged it in here inside a boiler. They're threatening to blow the building unless we let one of their guys out of Auburn."

The two cops shared a look. "Ah, Butch, um, sir, I think we ought to go back where we were and leave this to the experts."

"You can do what you want," said Karp. "I need to look for my wife." Before they can say another word, he has vanished into the nearly opaque air.

Sergeant Jerome Bishop had been in this special ESU since its inception. On arriving at the courthouse, he had deployed his ten men to block all the exits and then followed his lieutenant and a team of six to find the bad guys. Bishop took the point himself. He was a big, self-confident man, an athlete, a superb shot with a spotless record, and yet he knew that some of the people on the squad still thought that he got the plum assignment because the bosses wanted a black face in there. So he took the point as often as he could, not that he needed to prove anything to assholes, but because he thought it went with the stripes.

He heard the bomb explode and flinched involuntarily, but the ceiling did not come down on them. It was inky, though, and all the ESUs turned on their lights. When the dust came pouring out they were ordered to mask up. Bishop moved cautiously forward into the cone of his light. He heard footsteps and stopped. A figure loomed in his beam, coming toward him. He told the radio net he had a possible perp in view and was ordered to engage and capture him. Bishop had an MP5. He made sure the selector was on single shot and drifted quietly to one side of the hallway.

"Freeze!" Bishop shouted. "Get down!" His shout was muffled by the mask.

The figure kept coming. Was it saying something? He couldn't tell- the sound the mask made against his ears and the net chatter in his ear bud made it hard to hear ambient sounds much softer than a gunshot or a siren. He could see now that it was a slight person dressed all in black, just as in the description the girl gave them. He shouted again for the guy to get down, get down!

Marlene, deaf, raises her hand to wipe the blood away and walks into the flashlight beam. Her eye is dazzled. She calls out, "Hello! Is that the police?"

Bishop sees the figure's hand rise, he sees the gun in it. He understands the rules of engagement. He flicks on his laser sight and the red line reaches out and touches the target's center of mass.

Karp trotted past the still-smoking boiler room, and stepped over a mangled corpse. In the thick dust on the floor he saw the print of high-heeled boots. He saw that they headed toward the boiler room and away from it. He felt a rush of relief. He called her name. The dust is thinning a little. He can see lights ahead, flashlights and the red pencil of a targeting laser.

Bishop hears a shout from the direction of his target. The red pencil moves. Another target has appeared, a large man in a suit. It rushes at the first target and takes it down. More shouts. Bishop speaks into his radio, and orders his team forward.

"Jesus, Marlene, you could've been shot! Didn't you hear him shouting to get down?"

She looks at him and shakes her head, points to her ears. He realizes she can't hear anything. But he can. Half a dozen gas-masked men in black are surrounding them, pointing weapons.

"I'm the district attorney," says Karp.

"Get down! Get down! On your face!"

Karp and Marlene do as they are told. The cops snap handcuffs on them. Sergeant Bishop wonders why both of his prisoners are hysterically laughing.