by Otto Penzler
She shook her head.
“English Lit.”
“I’m not a teacher.”
“Then why’d you ask what kind I thought you were?”
She said, “You want me to tell you what I do?”
“You’re a lawyer. Wait. The Honda—you’re a public defender.” Karen shook her head and he said, “Don’t tell me, I want to guess, even if it takes a while.” He said, “If that’s okay with you.”
Fine. Some guys, she’d tell them what she did and they were turned off by it. Or they’d act surprised and then self-conscious and start asking dumb questions. “But how can a girl do that?” Assholes.
That night in the bathroom brushing her teeth Karen stared at her reflection. She liked to look at herself in mirrors: touch her short blond hair, check out her fanny in profile, long legs in a straight skirt above her knees, Karen still a size six approaching thirty. She didn’t think she looked like a social worker or a schoolteacher, even college level. A lawyer maybe, but not a public defender. Karen was low-key high style. She could wear her favorite Calvin Klein suit, the black one her dad had given her for Christmas, her Sig Sauer .38 for evening wear snug against the small of her back, and no one would think for a moment she was packing.
Her new boyfriend called and stopped by her house in Coral Gables Friday evening in a white BMW convertible. They went to a movie and had supper and when he brought her home they kissed in the doorway, arms slipping around each other, holding, Karen thanking God he was a good kisser, comfortable with him, but not quite ready to take her clothes off. When she turned to the door he said, “I can wait. You think it’ll be long?”
Karen said, “What’re you doing Sunday?”
They kissed the moment he walked in and made love in the afternoon, sunlight flat on the window shades, the bed stripped down to a fresh white sheet. They made love in a hurry because they couldn’t wait, had at each other and lay perspiring after. When they made love again, Karen holding his lean body between her legs and not wanting to let go, it lasted and lasted and got them smiling at each other, saying things like “Wow,” and “Oh, my God,” it was so good, serious business but really fun. They went out for a while, came back to her yellow stucco bungalow in Coral Gables, and made love on the living room floor.
Carl said, “We could try it again in the morning.”
“I have to be dressed and out of here by six.”
“You’re a flight attendant.”
She said, “Keep guessing.”
Monday morning Karen Sisco was outside the federal courthouse in Miami with a pump-action shotgun on her hip. Karen’s right hand gripped the neck of the stock, the barrel extending above her head. Several more U.S. deputy marshals were out here with her, while inside, three Colombian nationals were being charged in District Court with the possession of cocaine in excess of five hundred kilograms. One of the marshals said he hoped the scudders liked Atlanta as they’d be doing thirty to life there pretty soon. He said, “Hey, Karen, you want to go with me, drop ’em off? I know a nice ho-tel we could stay at.”
She looked over at the good-ole-boy marshals grinning, shuffling their feet, waiting for her reply. Karen said, “Gary, I’d go with you in a minute if it wasn’t a mortal sin.” They liked that. It was funny, she’d been standing here thinking she’d gone to bed with four different boyfriends in her life: an Eric at Florida Atlantic, a Bill right after she graduated, then a Greg, three years of going to bed with Greg, and now Carl. Only four in her whole life, but two more than the national average for women in the U.S. according to Time magazine, their report of a recent sex survey. The average woman had two partners in her lifetime, the average man, six. Karen had thought everybody was getting laid with a lot more different ones than that.
She saw her boss now, Milt Dancey, an old-time marshal in charge of court support, come out of the building to stand looking around, a pack of cigarettes in his hand. Milt looked this way and gave Karen a nod, but paused to light a cigarette before coming over. A guy from the Miami FBI office was with him.
Milt said, “Karen, you know Daniel Burdon?”
Not Dan, not Danny, Daniel. Karen knew him, one of the younger black guys over there, tall and good looking, confident, known to brag about how many women he’d had of all kinds and color. He’d flashed his smile at Karen one time, hitting on her. Karen turned him down saying, “You have two reasons you want to go out with me.” Daniel, smiling, said he knew of one reason, what was the other one? Karen said, “So you can tell your buddies you banged a marshal,” Daniel said, “Yeah, but you could use it, too, girl. Brag on getting me in the sack,” See? That’s the kind of guy he was.
Milt said, “He wants to ask you about a Carl Tillman.”
No flashing smile this time, Daniel Burdon had on a serious, sort of innocent expression, saying to her, “You know the man, Karen? Guy in his forties, sandy hair, goes about five-ten, one-sixty?”
Karen said, “What’s this, a test? Do I know him?”
Milt reached for her shotgun. “Here, Karen, lemme take that while you’re talking.”
She turned a shoulder saying, “It’s okay, I’m not gonna shoot him,” her fist tight on the neck of the twelve-gauge. She said to Daniel, “You have Carl under surveillance?”
“Since last Monday.”
“You’ve seen us together—so what’s this do-I-know-him shit? You playing a game with me?”
“What I meant to ask, Karen, was how long have you known him?”
“We met last week, Tuesday.”
“And you saw him Thursday, Friday, spent Sunday with him, went to the beach, came back to your place . . . What’s he think about you being with the marshals’ service?”
“I haven’t told him.”
“How come?”
“He wants to guess what I do.”
“Still working on it, huh? What you think, he a nice guy? Has a sporty car, has money, huh? He a pretty big spender?”
“Look,” Karen said, “why don’t you quit dickin’ around and tell me what this is about, okay?”
“See, Karen, the situation’s so unusual,” Daniel said, still with the innocent expression, “I don’t know how to put it, you know, delicately. Find out a U.S. marshal’s fucking a bank robber.”
Milt Dancey thought Karen was going to swing at Daniel with the shotgun. He took it from her this time and told the Bureau man to behave himself, watch his mouth if he wanted cooperation here. Stick to the facts. This Carl Tillman was a suspect in a bank robbery, a possible suspect in a half-dozen more, all the robberies, judging from the bank videos, committed by the same guy. The FBI referred to him as “Slick,” having nicknames for all their perps. They had prints off a teller’s counter might be the guy’s, but no match in their files and not enough evidence on Carl Edward Tillman—the name on his driver’s license and car registration—to bring him in. He appeared to be most recently cherry, just getting into a career of crime. His motivation, pissed off at banks because Florida Southern foreclosed on his note and sold his forty-eight-foot Hatteras for nonpayment.
It stopped Karen for a moment. He might’ve lied about his boat, telling her he was moving it to Haulover; but that didn’t make him a bank robber. She said, “What’ve you got, a video picture, a teller identified him?”
Daniel said, “Since you mentioned it,” taking a Bureau wanted flyer from his inside coat pocket, the sheet folded once down the middle. He opened it and Karen was looking at four photos taken from bank video cameras of robberies in progress, the bandits framed in teller windows, three black guys, one white.
Karen said, “Which one?” and Daniel gave her a look before pointing to the white guy: a man with slicked-back hair, an earring, a full mustache, and dark sunglasses. She said, “That’s not Carl Tillman,” and felt instant relief. There was no resemblance.
“Look at it good.”
“What can I tell you? It’s not him.”
“Look at the nose.”
“You
serious?”
“That’s your friend Carl’s nose.”
It was. Carl’s slender, rather elegant nose. Or like his. Karen said, “You’re going with a nose ID, that’s all you’ve got?”
“A witness,” Daniel said, “believes she saw this man—right after what would be the first robbery he pulled—run from the bank to a strip mall up the street and drive off in a white BMW convertible. The witness got a partial on the license number and that brought us to your friend Carl.”
Karen said, “You ran his name and date of birth . . .”
“Looked him up in NCIC, FCIC, and Warrant Information, drew a blank. That’s why I think he’s just getting his feet wet. Managed to pull off a few, two three grand each, and found himself a new profession.”
“What do you want me to do,” Karen said, “get his prints on a beer can?”
Daniel raised his eyebrows. “That would be a start. Might even be all we need. What I’d like you to do, Karen, is snuggle up to the man and find out his secrets. You know what I’m saying—intimate things, like did he ever use another name. . . .”
“Be your snitch,” Karen said, knowing it was a mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
It got Daniel’s eyebrows raised again. He said, “That what it sounds like to you? I thought you were a federal agent, Karen. Maybe you’re too close to him—is that it? Don’t want the man to think ill of you?”
Milt said, “That’s enough of that shit,” standing up for Karen as he would any of his people, not because she was a woman; he had learned not to open doors for her. The only time she wanted to be first through the door was on a fugitive warrant, this girl who scored higher with a handgun, more times than not, than any marshal in the Southern District of Florida.
Daniel was saying, “Man, I need to use her. Is she on our side or not?”
Milt handed Karen her shotgun. “Here, you want to shoot him, go ahead.”
“Look,” Daniel said, “Karen can get me a close read on the man, where he’s lived before, if he ever went by other names, if he has any identifying marks on his body, scars, maybe a gunshot wound, tattoos, things only lovely Karen would see when the man has his clothes off.”
Karen took a moment. She said, “There is one thing I noticed.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“He’s got the letters f-u-o-n tattooed on his penis.”
Daniel frowned at her. “Foo-on?”
“That’s when it’s, you might say, limp. When he has a hard-on it says Fuck the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Daniel Burdon grinned at Karen. He said, “Girl, you and I have to get together. I mean it.”
Karen could handle “girl.” Go either way. Girl, looking at herself in a mirror applying blush-on. Woman, well, that’s what she was. Though until just a few years ago she only thought of women old enough to be her mother as women. Women getting together to form organizations of women, saying, Look, we’re different from men. Isolating themselves in these groups instead of mixing it up with men and beating them at their own men’s games. Men in general were stronger physically than women. Some men were stronger than other men and Karen was stronger than some too; so what did that prove? If she had to put a man on the ground, no matter how big or strong he was, she’d do it. One way or another. Up front, in his face. What she couldn’t see herself playing was this sneaky role. Trying to get the stuff on Carl, a guy she liked, a lot, would think of with tender feelings and miss him during the day and want to be with him. Shit . . . Okay, she’d play the game, but not undercover. She’d first let him know she was a federal officer and see what he thought about it.
Could Carl be a bank robber?
She’d reserve judgment. Assume almost anyone could at one time or another and go from there.
What Karen did, she came home and put a pot roast in the oven and left her bag on the kitchen table, open, the grip of a Beretta nine sticking out in plain sight.
Carl arrived, they kissed in the living room, Karen feeling it but barely looking at him. When he smelled the pot roast cooking Karen said, “Come on, you can make the drinks while I put the potatoes on.” In the kitchen, then, she stood with the refrigerator door open, her back to Carl, giving him time to notice the pistol. Finally he said, “Jesus, you’re a cop.”
She had rehearsed this moment. The idea: turn saying, “You guessed,” sounding surprised; then look at the pistol and say something like “Nuts, I gave it away.” But she didn’t. He said, “Jesus, you’re a cop,” and she turned from the refrigerator with an ice tray and said, “Federal. I’m a U.S. marshal.”
“I would never’ve guessed,” Carl said, “not in a million years.”
Thinking about it before, she didn’t know if he’d wig out or what. She looked at him now, and he seemed to be taking it okay, smiling a little.
He said, “But why?”
“Why what?”
“Are you a marshal?”
“Well, first of all, my dad has a company, Marshall Sisco Investigations. . . .”
“You mean because of his name, Marshall?”
“What I am—they’re not spelled the same. No, but as soon as I learned to drive I started doing surveillance jobs for him. Like following some guy who was trying to screw his insurance company, a phony claim. I got the idea of going into law enforcement. So after a couple of years at Miami I transferred to Florida Atlantic and got in their Criminal Justice program.”
“I mean why not FBI, if you’re gonna do it, or DEA?”
“Well, for one thing, I liked to smoke grass when I was younger, so DEA didn’t appeal to me at all. Secret Service guys I met were so fucking secretive, you ask them a question, they’d go, ‘You’ll have to check with Washington on that.’ See, different federal agents would come to school to give talks. I got to know a couple of marshals—we’d go out after, have a few beers, and I liked them. They’re nice guys, condescending at first, naturally; but after a few years they got over it.”
Carl was making drinks now, Early Times for Karen, Dewar’s in his glass, both with a splash. Standing at the sink, letting the faucet run, he said, “What do you do?”
“I’m on court security this week. My regular assignment is warrants. We go after fugitives, most of them parole violators.”
Carl handed her a drink. “Murderers?”
“If they were involved in a federal crime when they did it. Usually drugs.”
“Bank robbery, that’s federal, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, some guys come out of corrections and go right back to work.”
“You catch many?”
“Bank robbers?” Karen said, “Nine out of ten,” looking right at him.
Carl raised his glass. “Cheers.”
While they were having dinner at the kitchen table he said, “You’re quiet this evening.”
“I’m tired, I was on my feet all day, with a shotgun.”
“I can’t picture that,” Carl said. “You don’t look like a U.S. marshal, or any kind of cop.”
“What do I look like?”
“A knockout. You’re the best-looking girl I’ve ever been this close to. I got a pretty close look at Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, when they were here shooting Scarface? But you’re a lot better looking. I like your freckles.”
“I used to be loaded with them.”
“You have some gravy on your chin. Right here.”
Karen touched it with her napkin. She said, “I’d like to see your boat.”
He was chewing pot roast and had to wait before saying, “I told you it was out of the water?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t have the boat anymore. It was repossessed when I fell behind in my payments.”
“The bank sold it?”
“Yeah, Florida Southern. I didn’t want to tell you when we first met. Get off to a shaky start.”
“But now that you can tell me I’ve got gravy on my chin . . .”
“I didn’t want you to thin
k I was some kind of loser.”
“What’ve you been doing since?”
“Working as a mate, up at Haulover.”
“You still have your place, your apartment?”
“Yeah, I get paid, I can swing that, no problem.”
“I have a friend in the marshals lives in North Miami, on Alamanda off a Hundred and twenty-fifth.”
Carl nodded. “That’s not far from me.”
“You want to go out after?”
“I thought you were tired.”
“I am.”
“Then why don’t we stay home?” Carl smiled. “What do you think?”
“Fine.”
They made love in the dark. He wanted to turn the lamp on, but Karen said, no, leave it off.
Geraldine Regal, the first teller at Sun Federal on Kendall Drive, watched a man with slicked-back hair and sunglasses fishing in his inside coat pocket as he approached her window. It was 9:40, Tuesday morning. At first she thought the guy was Latin. Kind of cool, except that up close his hair looked shellacked, almost metallic. She wanted to ask him if it hurt. He brought papers, deposit slips, and a blank check from the pocket saying, “I’m gonna make this out for four thousand.” Began filling out the check and said, “You hear about the woman trapeze artist, her husband’s divorcing her?”
Geraldine said she didn’t think so, smiling, because it was a little weird, a customer she’d never seen before telling her a joke.
“They’re in court. The husband’s lawyer asks her, ‘Isn’t it true that on Monday, March the fifth, hanging from the trapeze upside down, without a net, you had sex with the ringmaster, the lion tamer, two clowns, and a dwarf?’”
Geraldine waited. The man paused, head down as he finished making out the check. Now he looked up.
“The woman trapeze artist thinks for a minute and says, ‘What was that date again?’”
Geraldine was laughing as he handed her the check, smiling as she saw it was a note written on a blank check, neady printed in block letters, that said:
