Falsely Accused (11 page)

“He walked, Harry.”

“I heard. She tried.”

Meaning Beckett. “What are we going to do, Harry? What'll I
tell
her?”

“It depends,” said Bello.

Yes, it did depend, on what Marlene herself was willing to do, which simultaneously infuriated her and excited her.

“We should talk,” said Marlene. “Eight-thirty?”

“Paglia's,” said Bello and hung up.

When Marlene picked up the girls at the P.S. 1 schoolyard, the teacher on yard duty called her over and informed her that cap pistols were not approved accessories, and that her daughter should not bring hers to school again. When Lucy was settled in the front seat of the VW, Marlene looked her over and saw a silvery butt protruding from the pocket of her red corduroys.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, dear?” Marlene asked sweetly.

Wordlessly, her daughter yanked it out, showed it briefly, and stuck it back in her pocket. It was a battered metal six-shooter with plastic grips, about two-thirds full size and quite real-looking.

“Where did you get it, Lucy?”

“Bobby Crandall gave it to me.”

Light dawned. “The kid you did the project for, huh? This is the payoff?”

Lucy nodded. After a pause she said, “Girls could have guns.”

“Yes, they could,” said Marlene, disturbed and proud at the same time. “But some girls have daddies that might think that kids shouldn't play with guns at all, boys
or
girls. I wouldn't go waving that around the house, and you can't take it to school again, understand? The teacher will take it away from you. Plus, no more doing school stuff for other kids. It's against the rules too, okay?”

Marlene was hoping for another burst of Chinese, but Lucy just nodded, her hand deep inside her pocket, from which issued little clicking sounds.

“Well?” Carrie Lanin's face was bright with hope as she met Marlene and the children at the door to her loft. Marlene noted that she had installed a heavy new police lock on it.

“I think we did pretty good, considering. He got a year and three years' probation.”

“Yippee!” Carrie shouted. “He's really in jail?”

“Well, actually, no, they suspended the sentence,” said Marlene too quickly, “but now it's on record and if he ever comes near you again—”

“If he
ever…
! What are you saying, he's
free
? He's
out there?
” Both women's eyes involuntarily flicked to the door and lock for an instant, and when Lanin turned her gaze back onto Marlene it was vibrating with fear and, naturally, anger, not at Pruitt nor at the criminal justice system in general, but at Marlene, as being the only vaguely responsible adult present to take the shit.

Marlene braced herself. She was used to this, bored with this even, from the old Rape Bureau days. You would expect violated women, women whose essential self-confidence had been stripped away by a practical demonstration of exactly how vulnerable they were to any asshole who cared to make the effort, to appreciate a sympathetic and willing listener. But no; those who weren't nearly catatonic were looking for someone on whom to take out their rage and, absent the perp himself, the lucky winner was more often than not Marlene or one of her people.

Carrie Lanin was not as bad as some. There was a lot of nasty language, a lot of look-what-you-got-me-into, and a glass and a picture frame got broken. The girls came running out of Miranda's room and stood for a moment in shocked silence in the doorway, until Carrie caught sight of her daughter. Then, with a groaning sob, she swept up the frightened child into her arms and collapsed against the wall, weeping.

Marlene took charge. She grabbed a handful of paper towels from the kitchen and handed it as a nose wipe to the afflicted woman. She took Lucy aside and gave her a child-size version of what was going on: a bad man was after Miranda's mommy and Mommy was going to make him stop and Lucy had to take Miranda away and watch TV or play and keep out of the way while Mommy talked with Miranda's mommy.

To Marlene's delight and pride, Lucy took this all in without a murmur and, taking Miranda by the hand, proposed playing Barbies in her bossiest tone. Miranda was quick to acquiesce, and the two of them ran off. Marlene got Carrie settled on the couch and put some water on for tea.

“I'm sorry,” said Carrie after a while. “You've really been great. I don't know why I said all that horrible crap to you.” She laughed humorlessly. “I must be going crazy.”

“No, you're not. It's normal; forget it! Now, are you ready to listen to my plan? Good. Okay, what we need to have happening now in his twisted little mind is that I become the big barrier to happiness with Carrie. It's started already, but we want to push it.”

“We do?”

“Yeah, because it takes the pressure off of you. And off the other barrier to happiness.”

“What do you mean, other—”

“Miranda. I don't think she fits into the fantasy. He was stalking her too, the other day at the school.”

“Oh, Jesus…!” Carrie said in a strangled voice and began to cry again. Marlene ignored this and continued, “What I think is, he's going to start stalking me. He's going to try to hurt me in some way, get me to lay off, like he probably did to that boyfriend of yours. But, basically, he won't be able to.”

“Why not?” asked Lanin, curiosity penetrating through the misery.

“Because I'll be stalking him,” said Marlene, with rather more confidence than she was feeling.

“I have a thing I have to do tonight” was how Marlene broached her plan to Karp that evening as they put away the dinner dishes together.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I'm meeting Harry down the street. To talk. You know this guy I told you about? He's been harassing Carrie Lanin?”

“Yeah, what about him? I thought you had a protect order on him.”

“We did, but he violated it and did a lot of other stuff. He went to arraignment today. Copped to misdemeanors and walked.”

Karp shrugged. “What else is new? How did Carrie take it?”

“Not well. That's, um, I mean, Harry decided he wanted to check the guy out some more. That's what we're going to talk about.”

Karp carefully put down the dish he was drying and gave Marlene a look.

“What?” she complained to the look. “What? Harry's going to fuck a little with this guy's head. And I'm going along for the ride. Christ, Butch, the way you're looking you'd think I never went riding out with a cop before.”

“You were a D.A. It was your job. Now what is it? Your hobby?”

Marlene's eyes narrowed dangerously. “Excuse me, was that a put-down? Was that delivered in a how-silly-you-little-woman-you manner?”

“Oh, come on, Marlene, don't start—” began Karp, regretting the fatal words.

“Because if it was, if that's going to be your attitude, then I will no longer inform you about what I'm doing. Is that what you want?”

“No, of course not,” said Karp automatically, “but …”

“But what?”

“It's just … I'm sorry, I worry about you. It's natural, isn't it? It's in the genes or something. Men worry about their wives when they're pregnant.”

“Ah, the Pleistocene argument, very good,” snarled Marlene, and then, seeing his expression, she softened and touched his arm. “Okay, you're worried, but I can take care of myself, as you very well know, and I'll be with a heavily armed and extremely competent cop. Jeez, Butch, old ladies from the League of Women Voters get to ride with cops nowadays. It's no big thing.”

Karp nodded, resignedly, and forced his face into a stiff mask that might have been taken as agreeable by anyone other than his wife. “Sure,” he said, and afterward, not being able to help himself, he asked, “Why is Harry doing this? I thought the case was closed. I mean, there's no investigation …”

“That's right,” said Marlene cheerfully. “Technically, we're illegally harassing a citizen. You going to turn us in?”

Karp rolled his eyes and put his hands over his ears and walked out of the kitchen.

Marlene went to the bedroom and pulled a seaman's sweater over her T-shirt and tied black high-top Converses on her feet. She caught her hair up in a rubber band and pulled a dark blue wool watch cap over it. A short black leather coat completed the outfit.

She went back to the kitchen, searched briefly, and took a bottle out of the grocery cabinet and stuck it in her coat pocket. She checked on Lucy, who was sleeping heavily in her typical running-at-full-tilt position. Marlene pulled the kicked-off pink quilt over the child, kissed her forehead, and went out.

She stuck her head through the living room door. “See you later, Butch,” she said.

Karp looked up from the papers he had spread on his lap and the couch around him, his face lit oddly by the muted television. He took in Marlene's costume and shook his head. “You forgot the cape,” he said.

She stuck her tongue out at him and left. As soon as she was on the stairs she felt the familiar sense of release, the tingling in her limbs, the expansion of her lungs, that she had felt when, as a proper Catholic schoolgirl in Queens she had climbed out her bedroom window at night to meet bad boys.

Of course, she was not meeting a boy now, or a lover of any age. It would never have occurred to Marlene to violate her marriage vows—well,
occurred,
yes, but not actually to follow through. And in the old days, what she had been after down the family drainpipe was not precisely sex, although that was fascinating, but risk. And not merely risk, because she had never been one for simple daredevilry. She had no interest in say, skydiving, or motorcycle racing. No, it had to be prohibited risk, risk in the teeth of decent expectations.

It had started, really, at age twelve, she reflected on the stairway, when an aunt had escorted her and a group of cousins to the famous off-Broadway production of
Threepenny Opera.
By the end of the show, St. Teresa of Avila had been eclipsed by Pirate Jenny as Marlene's ideal of womanhood. She had purchased the cast recording, and then the German version, and for the next few months she made everyone around her sick of Brecht and Weill. She found herself now humming Jenny's song about the pirate ship and then, as she reached the last landing, singing the chorus in a loud voice with a fairly accurate Lotte Lenya accent.

She laughed to herself, thinking that it had worked out more literally than she might have liked. She could wear a pirate's patch for real now, and had the letter bomb that destroyed her eye and maimed her hand been a little more powerful, she might have been sporting an actual hook.

She let the big steel door slam behind her and walked out onto the damp and chilly street. There she paused, sucking in the night through flared nostrils. Marlene had long since given up the hope of leading a life that made conventional sense, settling instead for one with two irreconcilable but complementary modes: the Good Mom Desperado, not, she thought, a character much to be seen in opera. Or life.
A woman must have everything
—that was also a line from a song, she thought, as it flashed through her head. Joni Mitchell. I'm trying to, she thought.

Marlene made her way up Grand to Paglia's restaurant. When she had first moved to this neighborhood, the place had on most nights been full of local Italians and cops from the old police headquarters down the street. Now it had become SoHo-ized, like most of the places in the area. There was a maitre d' and a line of elegant couples waiting for seats. Marlene pushed past these to the bar, where she found Harry Bello waiting, staring blankly at a club soda.

Marlene sat on a stool beside him and ordered the same, wishing, not for the first time, that fetuses enjoyed booze. When it came, she finished it in a few gulps and said, “You up for this?”

Harry ignored the question. “He's out.”

“Driving?”

“Eating. A Spanish joint on C.”

“You know where his car's at?”

Harry nodded.

They paid and left. On impulse Marlene swiped a big white chrysanthemum from the large vase in the restaurant's entranceway.

They waited in Harry's old Plymouth and watched Rob Pruitt walk down Seventh Street to where he'd parked his blue Dodge. He got in and cranked it up and drove off.

“What do you figure, a quarter mile?” asked Bello.

“Maybe less, but after it happens he'll probably futz around for a while trying to fix it. Let's go.”

They left the car and entered a tenement building. Pruitt lived in the front apartment on the third floor. Harry picked the lock in two minutes, and they went in.

The apartment was simply furnished and remarkably clean and neat. Pruitt had obviously patronized several of the many used- and unpainted-furniture stores in the neighborhood. He owned a gold velvet easy chair and a scarred thirteen-inch TV on a battered tin stand, and a table, chairs, and chest of drawers in unpainted pine. He slept on a box spring and mattress, neatly made up with gray military surplus blankets. The closet and drawers held an odd combination of worn work clothes and brand-new dressy casuals, many with the store labels still attached. Like the furniture, these last were clearly purchased from shops in the immediate area: colored silk shirts, stiff leisure suits, and the tan leather jacket Carrie had described, clothing suitable for a visit to one of the local salsa clubs. Pruitt was good at taking on the local coloration.

In the bedroom also, Marlene's flashlight picked up a corkboard, covering nearly an entire wall, on which was arranged a photographic homage to Carrie Lanin: yellowed and faded clippings from student newspapers, showing her cheerleading and prom queening; some pages neatly cut from the same high school yearbook Marlene had already seen, ditto; a wedding photograph (sans groom); an 8 x 10 glossy high school photo in cap and gown. There were also a dozen or so recent photographs, candids obviously, of Carrie on the street. Pruitt had some skill with a camera.