Justice Denied (35 page)

“You must be out of your mind,” said Karp when he saw what Marlene had wrought.

“I don't see why,” she said blithely. “It's a navy breeches buoy. They used to use them to transfer people between ships at sea. Just sit in it and hold your crutches, and I'll go upstairs and haul you up on the cargo hoist. It's perfectly safe.”

Karp looked doubtfully at the orange canvas object rotating slowly in the dusty light of their building's lift shaft. He was familiar with how the building's industrial operations acquired their raw materials. He also knew how frequently the lift broke down, suspending a load of wire in mid-shaft. Marlene had secured the lift hook to the shackle conveniently placed above the pulley block of the contraption. Thereby it swung, glowing and ominous.

“Come on. It's just like the Parachute Jump,” encouraged Marlene.

Indeed. It was a lot like the vanished ride at Steeplechase in Coney Island, that once lifted screaming fun lovers two hundred feet into the air and then released them to float down to earth on parachutes. Karp had been on the Parachute Jump at the age of eight. Once—and tossed a heavy meal of hot dog, fries, and root beer over the assembled throng below.

On the other hand, at age eight there were only his brothers to mock him and call him chicken. Now he had Marlene. Leaning on her, he fitted himself into the apparatus. Five minutes later, the lift roared and jerked him into the air.

“There, that wasn't so bad,” said Marlene cheerfully when Karp was at last standing in their loft.

“It was hell on earth, and I'll never forgive you,” he replied.

“Thanks a million, Harry,” said Marlene. Bello had gathered his small belongings and was about to slip away without ceremony. Marlene hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.

“Watch yourself,” he said. “You going anywhere this weekend?”

“Harry, honestly! I'll be fine.”

Harry looked doubtful, glanced at Karp hovering in the background, and after promising to pick Marlene up on Monday morning, made his exit.

Harry didn't go home. He drove around Alphabet City for a while, and stopped in several bodegas, restaurants, and bars, hoping to pick up some information about the fugitive. Nobody heard nothin', nobody seen the big guy. He got back in his car, feeling uneasy in a way he had learned, during the past thirty years on the streets, to trust utterly. He drove back to Crosby and parked fifty feet down the street from the door to Marlene's loft.

Karp seated himself at the kitchen table. “What was that all about, ‘Watch yourself'?”

“Oh, nothing. Harry's a mother hen. It's the escape. He's worried that Vinnie might try something.”

“With you?”

“Yeah.”

“And you're not?”

“He's a punk, Butch. A loud-mouth asshole. Besides, I have a big man to protect me. Can I sit on your lap?”

“I insist on it,” he said.

After a while, Karp, breathing hard, asked, “Have you thought about how I'm going to climb up to the bed?”

“I already brought the mattress down under the sleeping loft,” said Marlene. “I'm completely handicapped-accessible, as required by law.”

“You thought of everything,” said Karp.

At which point Lucy awakened, squalling. “Except that, of course,” said Marlene.

The next morning, the two of them lay sated in a sticky embrace, having, as Marlene remarked, stored up enough for the coming week.

“I've been thinking,” said Karp. “What if we offered Tomasian a deal?”

Marlene groaned. “Who's Tomasian?” She slithered up onto his chest. “Is he the author of the best-selling
How to Make Love to an Armenian
?”

“Seriously …”

“Seriously, I expect your thoughts to be focused entirely on the romantic during the tiny fragment of your time you devote to connubial duties. Begin with how much you love me and why.”

“Okay, great face, hot body, terrific comprehension of the nuances of the adversarial system, which is why I put it to you that if we offer Tomasian a real sweetheart deal, and he doesn't take it, it'd be another indication that he's the wrong guy. Ow! That hurt, Marlene! Those are delicate organs. Don't you want to have any more children?”

“Not if they're like you.” She got to her knees and stretched her arms out wide and flexed her torso from side to side. They were lying on the mattress in the space under the sleeping loft, which Marlene had fixed up as a library. Three walls were lined with a miscellany of bookcases, from brick-and-board to a huge, battered mahogany glass-fronted cabinet that she had salvaged and repaired. She examined her image in the reflection provided by this.

“Am I still beautiful?”

“You're gorgeous,” he said.

She placed her hands beneath her breasts and frowned. “Badly sagged.”

“Luscious and still perky,” he replied.

“Perky? Really?”

“I swear,” said Karp fervently. “Turning now to the other matter—”

Marlene flopped back on the pillows. “Yes, well, I don't think we need any further demonstrations that Tomasian is a patsy. We can't pressure Kerbussyan. We can't get to Djelal. No evidence links Nassif to any crime. So the only live action is the link to the Bollanos and Guma's wiretap. That, and the one piece of information that still doesn't make sense.”

“Which is … ?”

“Why the two Turks were buying paint. They should want to keep away from one another. They know the heat's on. If they're actually the guys that Joey was talking about, they must be keyed up, ready to run this big deal. So they're painting? Doesn't make sense.”

“Maybe they're doctoring the mask,” said Karp. “Painting it black. Or making a fake. Like the Maltese Falcon.” As Sidney Greenstreet: “Nheh-heh-heh! Nheh-heh! By gad, sir. The black bird!”

“That's a thought,” Marlene agreed. “Paint stores sell plaster too. We could check it out—”

This speculation was interrupted by a car horn out on Crosby blaring “shave-and-a-haircut.”

“Oh, my God!” cried Marlene. “It's Raney.”

“Well, invite him up. It's a queen-sized bed. Or did you forget that I'd be home?”

Marlene jumped out of the bed and ran to the bath. A sound of splashing. Karp called out, “So much for the tiny fragment of my time. When Raney calls …”

Marlene rushed dripping from her whore's bath and up the ladder to the sleeping loft. Drawers slammed open and shut. Panties, denim cutoffs, black Susan B. Anthony T-shirt, sweat socks, Converse high-tops. Down the ladder.

“Don't be a goon. I forgot I said I'd go to the park for touch football. You know, the detectives' game—we always go.” She stopped and put a hand to her face. “Oh, Butch, I forgot to tell you. I'm sorry!”

“No, no problem. You go ahead.”

“No, really, get dressed, and I'll get Lucy. We can all go”

“Hey, relax,” he said. “Look, really, you've been cooped up here with the kid full-time for weeks. Take an afternoon off. I'll be fine. In fact, I'll enjoy it.”

“You're sure?”

“Positive.”

She planted a hot one on his lips and scooted for the door.

“Just don't break anything,” he called after her.

Harry Bello saw Marlene get into Raney's beat-up Ghia and zoom away. Shaking off sleep, he cranked his engine and followed them at a discreet distance.

Two hours later, Marlene was lying propped up against the base of a big maple, her third Schaeffer chilling her hand, staring dreamily up through the mosaic of toothy leaves and blue sky. She had a bruise on her hip and a skinned elbow, grass in her hair, and drying sweat all over her body, and she felt wonderful.

There were about a hundred people attending the game and picnic, all current and former Manhattan detectives, their wives, dates, and children. Marlene supposed she qualified as a date. Several touch football games of varying levels of formality were taking place simultaneously: the “official” North-South game restricted to male detectives, a “ladies” game, a kids game, an old-timers game. Marlene had participated in the ladies game without resentment. Cops played rough. So did the ladies, for that matter.

She shifted her weight to ease the pressure of a root against a sore place, and felt an unaccustomed pressure against one buttock. Raney's wallet. He had been red-dogged as quarterback, and the wallet had popped out. She had been spectating at the time, and he had given it to her to hold.

The afternoon wore on. The games became more uncoordinated and hilarious as players drifted off the field, got their load on, and drifted back into the game. At last no one but kids remained on the grass, and everyone else repaired to the grills to scarf up chicken, burgers, franks, potato salad, chips, and more beer.

“We should get back,” said Marlene woozily. Raney slipped a hand around her waist and fingered her belly above her cutoffs.

“We should,” he said. “But first, how about slipping into the bushes and fooling around?”

“Get married, Raney,” she said, laughing.

“I'm waiting for you, babes,” he said. “You really want to go? They're gonna let off fireworks later.”

“Next year,” she said. “No, really. There's no food in the house, and my husband's hopping around there on one leg. I could grab a cab if you really want to stay….

Raney drove her home, carefully. He was fairly loaded too. The Chopin tape he always had going on the car stereo played the Polonaise in A-flat major, and Marlene nearly drifted off.

In front of the loft, she kissed him solidly on the mouth, thanked him for a terrific day, and ran upstairs. Harry Bello's car sneaked around the corner two minutes later, cruised by the front door of the loft, and parked across the street.

Karp was on the floor with the baby when Marlene came in, the baby banging a spoon on a pot and on Karp—an appealing domestic scene. She joined them, hugged the child, kissed Karp.

“Whew!” he said, fanning the air in front of his face. “A few beers, dear?”

“A few, if you must know. How have you two been amusing yourselves? Did I miss anything exciting?”

“Yeah, actually you did. Watch this! C'mere, Lucy.”

Karp rose on his good knee, reached for the baby, and stood her on her feet. “Go ahead, walk to Mommy.”

To Marlene's incredulous delight, Lucy took three tottering steps and fell giggling into her mother's arms.

“I'm squirming with guilt now. I missed her first steps.”

“Unnatural mother!” said Karp. “But that's nothing. Okay, Lucy, let's show Mommy.” He picked up a pink sponge ball and handed it to the baby. Then he made his arms into a wide horizontal loop. “Okay, there she goes. She's driving down court, she's in the lane, she fakes, she fakes again, there's the shot … shoot it, Lucy!”

Almost on cue, with a convulsive heave Lucy shot the ball straight up into the air so that Karp, by contorting his body and shuffling on one knee, was able to arrange for the ball to fall through his arms. “Two points, and the crowd goes wild!”

Much was made of this, and there ensued a period of the sort of wordless familial being that stands at the root of any human capacity for happiness.

After this, time to eat. Marlene decided to take the baby with her to the store so that Karp could relax, deep ethnic and gender conditioning causing her grossly to underestimate the amount of time a man can be alone with an infant without murdering it, abandoning it, or suing for divorce.

Passing 23rd Street, making for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, Jim Raney was suddenly aware of an emptiness in a characteristic place below the base of his spine. He cursed. Marlene still had his wallet. He couldn't face the weekend without cash or plastic. He whipped his car into an illegal U-turn and headed south again.

Marlene changed the baby, filled its bottle, and carried the child downstairs. At the ground-floor landing she paused to unchain the stroller from its pipe. She put Lucy in the stroller, rolled it down the shallow steps to the sidewalk, and set its brake. It was quiet on Crosby Street this late on Saturday. No more deliveries and almost no through traffic. Crosby Street, narrow, cobbled and inconvenient, is only six blocks long and goes nowhere in particular. This is one of its virtues as a place to live.

Harry Bello saw Marlene emerge from her building with Lucy. He briefly considered getting out and saying hello to them, but thought that Marlene might be pissed at him for hanging around. Instead he drifted back to his consideration of the case of Mehmet Ersoy. He already knew who had done the killing. That was the easy part. The hard part was why, and if he didn't know that, it would be almost impossible to assemble a compelling case. There was a treasure, with a willing buyer, and then it hadn't been sold to the buyer at all but stolen from the seller, and it was now about to be sold to the mob for what must be a lower price. It didn't make sense. Harry cogitated, staring blankly at Marlene, Lucy, and the empty street.

Vinnie Boguluso came swiftly out of the alley where he had been hiding and ran across the street, barely twenty feet in front of Harry's windshield. Marlene had her back to him. She was double-locking the big front door of the loft.

Harry Bello, heart in mouth, flung open the car door and pulled his .38 in almost the same motion. “Vinnie! Freeze!” he shouted.

Marlene spun around and saw Vinnie coming toward her, toward the baby. Vinnie checked in surprise when he saw the cop with the gun, but then continued toward Marlene.

Harry's gun was pointing at Vinnie, but there was no way he was going to fire a pistol with Lucy anywhere near the line of fire.

Vinnie reached the stroller. He yanked the baby out by her arm and clutched her roughly to his chest. He had his switchblade knife out. He pressed its blade into the tender flesh of the baby's neck.

“Drop the gun!” he shouted.