Reckless Endangerment (46 page)

The headquarters of the Women’s Zionist Organization of America is a six-story brown brick building with peculiar bricked-in arches on its front that give it the air of a converted fire station. At the security desk inside the tiled lobby, Marlene spoke with the head of the square-badge detail, a large, overweight ex-cop named Bogle, who did not conceal his reluctance to take Marlene or her authority seriously. Once again she kept her temper in check and brought the man sullenly through his security arrangements. They toured the building and its entrances, checked the fixed and mobile posts and the communications arrangements (Marlene asked for and was given, not without complaint, a radio tuned to this net). Leaving instructions to call if anything unusual happened, which she knew would be ignored for anything under a major asteroid impact, she sought out Amy Weinstein, got a rushed minute, flashed the face, scattered assurances, and made her exit. She was somewhat surprised that she had not lost her temper, or quit this wretched job, for which she gave credit to St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose spiritual exercises—undertaken by order of Father Dugan—she had put to good use in guarding against the sin of Wrath. The saint advised his followers to focus during the first week on some particularly troublesome sin and, when finding oneself falling into it during the day, to touch one’s breast in a particular way, to express sorrow. Marlene noted that the lapel of her raincoat already had a little dark spot where her thumb had ground against it. It was vastly harder than she had thought it would be, this continuous, rigorous inspection of conscience and motive, and she was astounded to learn that the absence of faith (as she thought) did not diminish in the least the power of the technique, which in the past had enabled Jesuits to smile as Hurons yanked out their fingernails.

When she arrived home with her brood, Posie was waiting. She swept the twins up in her arms and talked the most nauseating babytalk to them, which they ate up, and then there was supper to prepare and the boys to feed and get settled, so it was some time before Marlene could get her alone for a debriefing.

“I think I’m in love,” Posie said. “He’s
so
great!” “Ah, well, that’s terrific, Posie, but what about his sister?”

“Oh, he doesn’t know anything about that,” said Posie dismissively. “He thinks his friends got hold of her, though. The other Arabs.” She grinned again, clearly besotted. “Marlene, he’s so great—he, like,
talks
to me, and reads me poetry, except it’s in Arab and I can’t understand it, but it sounds great anyway, and God, he knows all kinds of stuff, about, you know, politics and how the Jews are doing bad stuff to them, the Arabs, and all.”

“Oh?” With a frozen smile.

“Yeah, I didn’t know
any
of this stuff—like the Jews are trying to take over the whole world and make everybody slaves?”

Marlene ground her thumb into her breastbone, and did not roll her eyes. “Posie, um, I don’t think you should believe everything Walid tells you about that.”

“No, but Marlene, it’s
true
! He showed me, it was in a
book.
I mean, like, they
printed
it.” She wrinkled her brow in unaccustomed thought. “I forget the name of it, though—something, something Zion …”

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?”

Posie’s face lit up. “Yeah! Did you read it too?”

Marlene placed her hand on Posie’s and said, as gently as she could, “Posie, no, I haven’t because that book is a forgery. It’s fake. Everybody knows that. Some Russians made it up a long time ago. It was one of the things the Nazis used.”

Blankness, the smile fading.

“You know who the Nazis were, don’t you?” Marlene asked carefully.

“Like skinheads?”

Marlene suppressed a sigh. She didn’t have time for this. She already had three actual children to raise without having to be responsible for this one, and so she said, rather more sharply than she had intended, “Right. Meanwhile, besides being God’s gift to women, Walid is something of a maniac on the subject of his sister, and if he gets to her, he’s going to kill her, which is going to put a major crimp in your romance. So—you said his friends have her. Does he know where his friends are?”

Posie’s face had now taken on the one other major expression in her repertoire besides beaming delight, which was mulish stubbornness. Marlene had observed this many times in the past, when Posie was attempting to protect men who habitually beat her senseless. There was probably no limit to how far she would go to protect someone who treated her well, and read her poetry and Nazi propaganda.

“No,” she said. “He doesn’t talk about that. Honestly, Marlene, I’d tell you if I knew where she was. I’m, like, I don’t want her to
die.
”

With that Marlene had to be content, for the present, although she was oppressed by the feeling that this was not one of her more brilliant plans.

Posie went off to tend her charges, while Marlene went to her office and looked at the city street map Tran had left on her desk. She examined it idly and folded it to the section that showed Hadassah headquarters. It was a large-scale map with public parking clearly marked. The buses would have a choice of places to park. She was wondering whether she should annoy Bogle with this, and make sure he coordinated with the bus company, when Lucy’s shriek broke in: “Mom! Come here! Daddy’s on TV.”

El Chivato was not used to writing, but he struggled on, his ballpoint carving ruts in the cheap pad. Had he been in Mexico, he would have called, even though he knew his mother would cry, and drive him crazy with her crying, but here, who knew how to make the phones work? In Mexico you called the operator and told her what to do, and in a few moments there came the connection. Or more often not, in which case one waited and tried again. Here, there were only recordings and incomprehensible instructions. He expected that he would be dead when she got the letter, which was entirely his fault, and he was writing to say that she should not blame herself, that her prayers were as efficacious as ever, but that he, Fernando, had sinned by not staying where he belonged, and by coming to this insane place, and by not returning when he should have. His lust for revenge had been too great, which his mother had warned him about; let God punish was what she always said, but did he listen? No, and therefore his luck had run out completely. He still could not believe that he had missed killing the Arab for a second time, he who had always succeeded on the first try. God was clearly angry with him.

He stopped writing and stared at the television. It was a defective set, and the people on it were orange and distorted. Or maybe it was him. Things were looking strange to him lately. He supposed it was that he was close to the world of the dead now, and he could see a little way into it. Picking up his pen once more, he commended himself to his sisters, gave an accounting of the money he had hidden and all monies due him from Don Vincente, the names of some reliable boys who would help her out should Don Vincente prove reluctant to pay, begged her pardon, solicited her prayers, and bade her farewell. He kissed the letter and placed it in an envelope.

He went to the bathroom and scrubbed the remains of the makeup off his face. He was staying in the Hotel Estes, a small pile of box-like rooms on the western borders of Times Square, most of whose tenants were working whores and transvestites. El Chivato fit right in. He regarded himself in the mirror dispassionately. The bloom was certainly off the rose. Deep circles had appeared beneath his eyes, and his cheekbones were staring from skin that looked like old parchment. His lips were cracked and crusted. He thought he looked ten to fifteen years older than he had when he arrived, and he thought that the police would be hard pressed to connect the sketched face they had with his present appearance.

He lay down on the lumpy bed and tried to focus on his next move. He had run out of addresses for the Arab, except one, the location of the target of their bomb. That was on Sunday. Lucky would be there to set it off by radio, the skinned man had been clear about that. So he would be there too.

Meanwhile, aside from that, he was at liberty. He watched a quiz show for a while, too exhausted to rise and switch channels. Then from within a fevered half doze he heard a familiar name. Immediately, he sharpened and watched what was happening. There were the Obregons, being escorted out of a building. There was a picture of another building, a hotel where, the announcer said, they were being kept. A sign hanging in front of it read TERMINAL HOTEL. Then a tall man appeared before a battery of microphones and said something about material witnesses and lawyers and investigations, which El Chivato ignored. But his plans had now changed, and so he paid attention to the name of the man when it appeared in white block letters along the bottom of the screen, and he wrote it down on his pad.

“Daddy, we saw you on television,” piped Lucy when Karp arrived home, tired and late.

“Yeah? How was I?”

“You looked like a television guy. I’m going to a sleep-over at Mary Ma’s house.”

A bustle at the doorway then, as Karp hung up his raincoat and kissed his daughter good-bye and his wife hello, and shot his usual suspicious look at Tran, who was taking his girl away, and patted the hound.

“Did I look like a TV guy?” asked Karp when they were alone, sitting in the kitchen.

“No, you looked like one of those fluff features when they get a new animal at the zoo, and the camera gets trained on the endangered species of bear from Uzbekistan, which always looks like it wants to be somewhere else. What was the point of it anyway? Moving the Mexicans from one place to another doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I should’ve discussed it with you beforehand,” said Karp uncomfortably, “because it comes under the heading of maybe endangering the family. Jack didn’t want to do it, and neither did Clay, but we have to get this bastard without another half dozen or so people getting killed. Or more. So they went for it.”

“It’s a setup,” said Marlene.

“Yeah. The hotel we moved them to is city-owned, a tax-delinquent seizure, evacuated and full of cops. I’ll be down there all day tomorrow, with Clay. There’s supposed to be an unmarked outside here until we nail him.”

Marlene was silent, staring into space after he said this, and he asked hesitantly, “Are you angry about it? I mean, I don’t think there’s really much—”

“Oh, no, it’s not that. I was just thinking about role reversal. It’s usually me who pulls stuff like this.” She grinned at him. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking about how to tell you how
I
endangered the family, and this just makes it easier.”

Karp clenched his fists, screwed up his face, and bent over, as if in the throes of an appendicitis attack. “Okay, tell me.”

So she told him the heartwarming tale of Posie and Walid and their romance, and concluded with, “I was going to do my usual what-he-doesn’t-know-won’t-hurt-him deal on you, and I felt bad about it, but seeing as you beat me to it …”

“Yeah, we’re a pair now,” said Karp. “Somebody is going to rat us to Child Protection if we keep this up. So she didn’t get anything out of the Arab kid?”

“Besides poetry and anti-Jewish politics, no, although there’s still a chance that he’ll spill his guts at some future date. Posie has certainly bought his line; he shouldn’t be too suspicious of her. On the other hand, she might just join the enemy camp. I got the feeling she knew stuff she wasn’t telling.”

“A matched pair,” said Karp, “forty watts between the two of them.” He laughed ruefully. “My God, this is one for the books: it’s like Bullwinkle and Natasha. By the way, the first time she dresses the twins in little S.S. uniforms, she’s out of here.”

“It was worth a shot,” said Marlene weakly.

“Right, from a BB gun. Anyway, it might be best if you and the kids went to a hotel where the cops could keep an eye on you for a couple of days.”

“I don’t think so,” said Marlene immediately and in a tone that did not invite argument. “I have to work this weekend, and the kids are safer here with Tran and the dog than they would be in a hotel being watched by a couple of bored detectives. No, don’t give me that look. Cops are cops, not bodyguards. Tran and Sweetie would both take a bullet to protect the kids, which I don’t think you can say for the average cop. And I can take care of myself.”

Looking at the drugs in his hand, El Chivato tried to remember which was which. He had bought Percodan, D-amphetamine, and penicillin from the kid out on the Deuce last night: two kinds of tabs and a cap. He decided it did not much matter and took a pair of each. He was in the tiny bathroom at his hotel. The mirror still sent back only bad news; he looked like one of the sugar skulls that Mexican children eat on the Day of the Dead. On impulse he wet his hair and soaped it with the little cake provided. Then he took out his skinning knife and shaved his head. He grinned at himself.

The drugs would keep him going long enough to do what was necessary. Clearly, if he was going to die here, which he now fully expected, then it was essential that the Obregons and Lucky die before him. He believed that otherwise he would stay on earth after he died, haunting them, and not ascend to the place in Heaven secured for him by his mother’s goodness. He knew where Lucky would be on Sunday. The key to the Obregons was this
fiscal
on television, Karp. He had already looked up his address in the phone book, and he had gone by Friday night to take a look at it, a quick walk by the corner, a glance down the street. There was a car with two men in it parked across the street, and when he cruised by an hour later, they were still there. So he had come back to his hotel.

The two detectives posted outside the Karps’ loft were stiff and bored by seven-thirty, and so they did not pay much attention to the various people who passed in the early morning. None of them, in any case, matched the description of the man they were looking for: a young couple, black-clad, with spiked hair; an older white guy carrying a tool case; a woman carrying a large leather portfolio; a bald guy with a cane; a dark-skinned kid on a bicycle. This last alone was worth a second look, because they were ready for a young Latino male, but the kid zoomed by and around the corner of Howard Street. They decided he was not worth chasing. Later on the Saturday morning became busy, for in this section of the city industrial firms, galleries, and restaurants take advantage of the relative lull in traffic on that day to make deliveries of large items. Trucks began unloading and the foot traffic picked up. When their relief arrived at ten past eight, they mentioned the kid on the bike and nothing else.