Two days later, a man from the State Department of Corrections called the office of the chief assistant district attorney for New York County. The chief ADA had a short list of convicts about whose status he wished to be notified whenever the status changed in any way. These were all people sentenced to long prison terms, whom Karp never wanted to see let out on the street, or given new trials, or shifted to lower levels of security than maximum. Felix Tighe was on that list, so the corrections guy called Karp to tell him that the man's status had changed permanently. Karp called his wife to tell her the news.
"Can we spit on his corpse?" she asked.
"Not officially. I guess I could find out where he's buried and dance on his grave."
"We could hire a band. God, that was a long time ago! I was pregnant with Lucy and we didn't know. That horrible woman. His dear old mom. I had nightmares about that for years."
"But not anymore."
"No, now I have nightmares about me. How are you?"
"Keeping up. It's hot. I thought I'd come out with the boys this weekend, hit the beach."
A long silence. "I don't know if that's such a great idea. You could go to Jones Beach."
"Oh, fuck Jones and fuck his beach! Marlene, you can't hide out there forever. You have a family. We miss you."
"Do you? My warm maternal ways. I need some more time, Butch, you know?"
"It's been almost a year."
"I'll come in."
"When?"
"I'll call you," she said.
2
It was the kind of case that Karp would have liked to try, if they still let him try cases. Failing that, he thought Terrell Collins was doing a pretty good job for the People on this, the first day of trial. Collins was a tall, graceful man nearly the same color as the victim in the case, one Moussa Onabajo, late of Nigeria. On the stand was one of the several witnesses to the killing, a man named Touri. As Collins took him through the warm-up- who he was, how he knew the victim, what if anything he saw on the night of- Karp turned his eye on the defendants, Eric Gerber, detective third grade, NYPD, and Frank Nixon, detective second.
Only the backs of their heads were visible from the rear of the courtroom where Karp stood; Nixon had a full head of dark yellow hair, Gerber's skull was a thick blocklike object covered with short red bristles. Gerber should have picked different genes had he set out to be the defendant in this sort of case. He looked like the Nazi trooper in a dozen war movies. Nixon had a more intelligent look, but he could have played the SS officer, the one who lifts the heroine's chin with the riding crop. There was no evidence in either man's record of racism in action, but in their minds, who knew?
Collins and the People's case had nothing to say on the subject. Karp had made that decision early on, in the face of Keegan's broad hints and the rage of what seemed like a good two fifths of the city's population. Karp caught some eyes upon him, including some hard ones. He had the rep as someone insensitive to racial issues, a rep he shared with a recent mayor of the city. Karp had every right to be in the courtroom, to sit at the prosecution table if he wanted to, but he was turning heads now and he wanted all the heads to be turned toward Collins and the witness. He slipped out.
He knew what Touri was going to say anyway. That on a certain night six months ago, while standing outside the Club Balou on Greenwich Street, he had observed his friend, Moussa, being accosted by two men, the present defendants. That he had heard the two men try to buy dope from Moussa. That Moussa had grown angry, because Moussa was a good Muslim and didn't even use dope, much less sell it. That Moussa had pushed that man there, the defendant Nixon, and shouted abusive words and had engaged in a shoving scuffle with Nixon, and struck Nixon in the face with his fist. That the two men had then pulled pistols and shot Moussa dead. Thus the testimony of Bradley and three others was essentially the same. Against this was the defense's story, which was that the two undercover cops had identified themselves to Moussa as police officers and he had attacked Nixon physically. In the ensuing scuffle, Moussa had tried to grab Nixon's pistol, and that was when the shooting had begun.
None of the witnesses had seen or heard anything resembling this series of events. What Karp surmised was that the cops had made a simple mistake and compounded it into tragedy. They had picked the wrong guy, neither Gerber nor Nixon being experts at distinguishing among several Nigerians on darkened street corners, and when it had become perfectly clear that it was the wrong guy, since the right guy would have sold them dope if he hadn't made them or would have been cool if he had made them and been holding, neither of the two cops had possessed the sense to disengage, to stay in their tourist personae and drift off. Certainly there were plenty of actual dope deals going down along Greenwich Street that night. Instead, they had responded to the victim's outrage with outrage of their own, abandoned the rules of engagement set down in elaborate detail in the NYPD Patrol Guide, and blew the fellow away, using seven bullets from two guns to do it.
A stupid tragedy: that was what it actually was, Karp believed, but the law, that Great Ass, had no slot for stupid tragedy. Its only concern was culpability. Was the act criminous? The grand jury had determined that it was. Were the defendants culpable? That was what Collins and all of them were doing in there. Yes, they were, said the People. No, they weren't, said the counsel for the defense. Now, now, boys, said the judge, when necessary. It is as dignified and noble as a schoolyard punch-out, or the scuffle outside a mean little nightclub that had cost Moussa Onabajo his life.
Karp shook his head violently to clear it of these thoughts, unseemly ones for someone in his position, and drew a startled look from a passing clerk typist. Oh, great, he thought, now I'm twitching like a maniac in the courthouse halls. I'm going crazy, too. And this "too" his mind tossed up made him think of she to whom it referred, the one already crazy. This recollection hit him with the force of a blow, as it did several times in each day, and he paused at the door to his office and leaned heavily upon the doorknob to keep himself upright, to keep from falling to the floor and writhing in pain, howling. The spasm passed as always, leaving the perpetual dull ache, tinctured with resentment. Why did she have to be like that?
***
The monster in her lair. It is close, dank, fetid with the bones of her victims. In reality it is large, sunny, white-painted, a bedroom on the upper floor of a farmhouse near the shore on the north fork of Long Island. But what is reality? Marlene no longer knows. She lives alone now with a varying number of large fierce dogs and a dog trainer named Billy Ireland, with whom she is strenuously not having an affair, although she often wants to. Marlene has strong sexual desires, and a likely relief for them nearby and willing, but she denies herself this, and she denies herself also the solace of her children and her home. It's part of the punishment. Marlene is clever enough to organize a mass assassination and escape the grip of the law, but not clever enough to escape the guilt. She organized this crime to avenge an attack on her son Giancarlo. Giancarlo is blind as the result, or perhaps he is not blind at all. His vision tends to flick on and off, like an old bar sign. Her favorite child, the artist, blind: this was her thinking, and his brother, the twin, probably had murder down to his name at age eleven, although you couldn't tell what was going on inside him at all, you were lucky if you got three words a day out of him, Giancarlo does all the talking the two of them need. Maybe he's twisted inside there, that's her big fear, like Mom, thinks of nothing but guns, shooting, maybe we'll see him up on the tower one day, a sniper, one of those beautiful, smooth, deadly American boys. "The mother's fault" is what they always say, although in this case definitely true.
So, the deal is she has to stay away from the bunch of them, the boys to protect them from the Monster Mom, and far from Butch, to protect herself from that look he gives her without meaning to, a look of revulsion. No, she could take revulsion, it was her desert, after all; but he mixes it with the still-warm embers of love into an emotional slurry that she can't endure seeing.
She doesn't have to avoid her daughter, because her daughter has removed herself from the maternal orbit. Or has she? She doesn't run away, she talks on the phone, but like a stranger, which is fine with Marlene, one less thing to strip off, although one would think that Lucy, of all people, would understand why she did it. Lucy has that rage, too, when the family is threatened, some kind of gene from Sicily? Although she has succeeded in keeping it under better control than her mother has. A real Catholic, Lucy, of the Saint Teresa rather than the Torquemada type. Marlene is pretty sure that Lucy has not actually killed anyone. Accessory, maybe, but not actually the trigger person yet, for which the mother is truly thankful.
She drags herself out of bed and steps over a huge black dog into the bathroom. Minimal ablutions, only a blurred look in the mirror. She has cut off her hair. Dressing is no problem. She has slept in her underwear and a faded Take Back the Night T-shirt. She pulls on greasy overalls and socks and goes down the stairs, the dog like a thumping shadow behind her. In the sink the evidence of her dinner, a can of soup eaten directly from the pot. Marlene lives now on soup, bread, cheese, and wine. She looks at the bottle she opened last night and its companion juice glass, sticky with red remains. A little aching here, ruthlessly suppressed. She will have a large glass of wine with lunch, which is European and permitted and then not a drop more until suppertime. She is not a lush. Drinking to oblivion after a good day's work is what a lush does. She can't have a family, but she can run a business, and she does. The dogs love her. Breakfast is black espresso made in an hourglass stove-top pot and a chunk of bread and sliced tomato from Giancarlo's old garden. She tries to keep the garden up, but the weeds are gaining on it. Symbolic.
After pulling on green Wellingtons, Marlene goes out the back door. She sees a large, sagging barn, white-painted and peeling, with the sun just rising over its roofline, and several outbuildings. The yard is covered with tanbark. This place used to be a dairy farm, but now it is a kennel and dog training establishment. She can hear the barks and howls as she steps out into the Sound-scented morning and lights her first cigarette. Wingfield Farms Registered Neapolitan Mastiffs is a non-no-smoking facility. She enters the barn and flicks on the lights. There is louder barking, panting, and whining, and the sound of many claws against stone. She checks the stock in leisurely fashion, caressing or admonishing as required, accompanied by her own private dog, Gog the mastiff, who is silent amid the barking as befits his exalted status. There are six Neapolitan mastiffs, several dobes and shepherds, and a bunch of smaller dogs, mixed curs and beagles, in training as dope and bomb sniffers. Business is good in that area.
Steps on the stairs as Billy Ireland comes down from the apartment he occupies in the former hayloft. He is a small, well-knit man, of the type Marlene particularly likes, brass-haired, with pool green eyes and a cocky manner. (Of course, being Marlene, she married a completely different style of man.) He is an ex-junkie and a Mozart among dog trainers. They desire each other, but they play at being perfect lady and gentleman, while enjoying the pleasures of flirtation. Having him around enhances her self-disgust- a barely controllable slut after all- which is all to the good, a bonus in fact. They inquire as to each other's sleep, trade earthy innuendos, and discuss the day's program. Ireland is sleeping with Marjorie, one of the dog agitators; Marlene knows it, but he is careful not to flaunt it. The charade requires that he be smitten with Marlene, and he obliges, this being the best job he has ever had.
They work the dogs through the brief cool of the morning. Marlene does basic training, lead work, and the standard commands. Ireland works with Marjorie and Russell, the agitators. They are people who are skilled in annoying big dogs, and who don't mind being mauled and knocked down. Ireland does Kohler training, turning the mastiffs into guard dogs. It is simple, hard work, requiring concentration. The dogs know if you mean it, unlike most humans. Marlene sinks gratefully into the doggy world; she thinks these are her only purely honest relationships.
They work until one, when it becomes too hot to work out of doors. It is Marlene's turn to get lunch at the snack bar on the beach road. She drives there in her battered red Ford pickup. In years past, Marlene often spent a few summer hours lying at the beach while her sons played. No longer. She avoids the beach now. Her bikini tan has faded. Now she has a workingman's tan, face, neck, and forearms. She looks piebald and ridiculous, but what does it matter? No one is going to look at her body.
At lunch, the conversation among the four dog people is lively and mainly about dogs, although they tell junkie stories with self-deprecatory laughter and Narcotics Anonymous stories with simple sympathy. She thinks they are decent, damaged people and is happy to spend her life among them, in that she has a life.
After lunch they work the sniffer dogs inside the barn. Marlene has been supplied with baits by the law enforcement authorities with whom she has contracts: eau de coke, eau de smack, eau de Semtex, C-4, dynamite, black powder. This is even more concentrated work than the guard training. A dog is brought out, it finds the hidden bait, gets its lavish praise. Or else it becomes confused, and wanders sniffing around the barn, and signals at the wrong thing. He's a pet, says Russell after Morris the schnauzer has failed three times to find the hidden dope. "Pet" is not a compliment at Wingfield Farms. Some dogs get it right away, others never do. Part of the art is telling which is which, whether a little extra effort will create a working dog or whether the beast is doomed to chase the Frisbee in the 'burbs. Dog training is a profession that inspires a deep respect for the inexplicable differences between one beagle and a seemingly identical beagle. Marlene reflects that none of her five siblings is a rage-maddened criminal like her. Bloodlines or training, she can't figure it out. She worries about her children. Bad seed? Evil training? It doesn't matter anymore. She's out of all that.
Around four, Marlene goes into her office and does business, pays bills, talks to officials, takes orders for dogs, pitches dogs to prospective owners. In the late afternoon and through the early twilight hours they work the dogs outside again. The agitators menace, the dogs attack, the dogs always win. At dusk they leave. Marlene has her first drink and her second, from a bottle of wine identified only as being a product of California and being red. Billy Ireland goes off somewhere. Marlene makes herself a can of something, she who once could barely tolerate any canned food in the house, she the maker of sauce from scratch, the roaster of veal shanks for stock. Wine with dinner and wine after dinner, too. Ireland comes in around nine. Unbidden, he stands behind her chair and massages her neck and shoulders. He has good hands, he is skillful with the animal body, regardless of species. They have come close a time or two, when she was deep in the wine fog, but have never actually done it. The world's longest first date, Ireland calls it. He is slightly afraid of her, she knows, and he will not press it.
Tottering a little, she climbs the stairs and falls into bed. Another day, barely distinguishable from the day before. Gog the mastiff licks her face and thumps his two hundred pounds down in the doorway, rattling the windows. She weeps briefly, clutching a photograph of her children, and falls asleep.
***
Karp left the courtroom and climbed down the stairs to his office, one at a time now, where once he had taken flights in three bounds. Karp always used the stairs, up and down, and never the elevator. He hated being trapped in conversation during the painfully slow rides. He had nightmares about being trapped on a slow elevator that, when its door opened, revealed that it was on the same floor from which it had departed so long ago. Too much like his life.
In the office, he disposed of some bureaucratic details swiftly and efficiently and then turned to the pile of case reports he had selected for review. Karp thought that this was the most important part of his job and the one he enjoyed the most. He could review only a small fraction of the cases that the various bureau chiefs thought worthy of trial, but the fact that Karp was looking over their shoulders kept them honest and kept standards from sliding too far. Or
so Karp believed. He picked up the case file from the homicide bureau. Husband kills wife, a no-brainer. What was interesting was why the guy wouldn't deal, since he had clearly done it and would go down for it. Middle-class guy, a furrier. Everyone thinks they're O.J., they can walk with a good lawyer. Not today, not in New York County. He made some notes and moved on. Narcotics. Why did he bother? He didn't know the heroin was in his apartment, the cops planted it. Another race thing, the defendant's lawyer was one of the ones who figured if he stacked the jury with enough black faces, they'd walk his guy to piss off the Man. Maybe he would. Karp spotted a flaw in the chain of evidence record and made a note. Check it out.
Next, the rape bureau. More interesting: a doctor was the D, the victim a patient, the charge sexual abuse, first degree. Not completely unusual that, but unusual to try it. Usually, their main interest was in getting past it as quickly as possible, cop a plea to misdemeanor and try to smooth things over with the state medical board and the hospitals. A little public penitence, too: yes, a terrible problem, I'm in therapy, my wife supports me, ask for the forgiveness of God and the victims, etc. An actual trial would do the opposite, keeping the case in the public eye for a week at least, and revealing all the juicy details to the press. Kevin Hirsch, M.D., was the guy, a gastroenterologist. No priors. The alleged crime had taken place at the Aurora Community Health Center, located in a semidecrepit zone of upper Manhattan, where Dr. Hirsch volunteered. The alleged victim was one Leona Coleman, forty-four. According to her statement, on January 12 of the current year she had gone to the clinic to have a colonoscopy. She suffered from bowel problems and chronic diarrhea. The accused had sedated her and begun the procedure, in the midst of which she had suddenly become aware that the physician had his head between her legs and was tonguing her vagina.
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