No Lesser Plea

by Robert Tanenbaum

  Karp was in his outer office talking with some of his staff when the call came through.

  “Mister Karp, there’s a call for you—they say it’s extremely urgent,” said Helen Simms.

  “OK, guys, back to work. The city never sleeps. It’s probably the laundry calling, they put in extra starch by mistake.”

  The voice on the phone was scratchy and interrupted by bursts of static.

  “Butch, it’s me, Sonny. Listen, I found Pres.”

  “What, who? Speak up, Sonny, I can hardly hear you.”

  “Pres. The third man. His name’s Preston Elvis, and he SKRRRCHHHH, the paper that Louis worked for.”

  “You got him? Is he in custody?”

  “No! Look, I’m on the Deegan, they patched me through over the radio. Butch, he’s got SKRCHHHWOOOOWRR in an envelope. He’s tied in with that guy, the terrorist. Butch, I think he’s heading for you SSSSCHHHRRWOWR already called the bomb squad, they should be there any minute. So don’t WOORRSCHH.”

  “Jesus, Sonny, what the fuck are you talking about. What’s this about the bomb squad. I can’t hear shit on this line.”

  “The third man, Butch. Louis set him up with a bomb. Don’t touch any CCCHHWWOOOOWRRCHH.”

  “Any what? What?”

  “Any mail! It’s a letter bomb. The bomb’s in a nine by twelve manila envelope, with an out-of-town postmark. You better get your office cleared out, too. Butch, are you there? Butch? Ah, shit!”

  As soon as Dunbar said “letter bomb,” of course, Karp had thrown down the phone and leaped for the door. He ran to his secretary and told her not to touch any mail. Then, with mounting horror, it came to him that he had still not told the mailroom that he had moved his office. His heart was pounding in his throat as he ran out of the office and toward the stairs to the sixth floor.

  Marlene had three pieces of Karp’s mail lined up on her desk. One was an American Express bill. One was a letter from the University of California Alumni Association. The third one was the item that held her interest, a thick manila envelope with a Berkeley postmark, addressed in a flowing, patently feminine hand.

  Marlene turned the envelope over and inspected it. The flap was fastened, but not sealed. She had a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wants him back, she thought. It’s a long letter explaining her affair with that woman and how she realized it wasn’t for her and how she’s going to come home to New York and make a great little home for him and have kids. Or maybe she’s sending back a bunch of letters he wrote to her, begging her to take him back, he’ll be her slave, he’ll move to California and sell insurance. Telling her he’s been screwing this little guinea in revenge but that’s all over, she’s the one and only. Or maybe it’s divorce papers.

  “Oh, God!” said Marlene out loud, “I can’t stand this.”

  She undid the clasp and pulled the flap up.

  Now even in the midst of this emotional turmoil, there was a part of Marlene’s mind that remained cool and rational. It was trying to send messages through to Marlene Central, but the circuits were blocked by hormones and random emotional noise. This part of Marlene knew pretty well what she held in her hand. Marlene had, after all, seen pictures of such envelopes before. Perhaps if it had been postmarked Detroit all would have been well.

  “Bomb!” said that part of Marlene, as Marlene’s hand came up on the flap. “Bomb!” it said again as Marlene felt the tiny tug of resistance and saw the fine wire glued to the flap. By then it was too late, for electrons were already flowing from the battery to the primer charge. Marlene knew what it was now, and sent an urgent message to her hand and arm to throw the thing away. Her hand came dutifully up, slowly, slowly, while her mind screamed in overdrive. The envelope left her hand, but now it was hardly an envelope any more, more like a hot flower. Marlene brought her arm up in front of her beautiful face as the fireball swallowed her.

  Chapter 18

  Karp’s chest hurt. He had a broken heart. He was breathing mere pints of air, and his face ached with unshed tears. His stomach was empty and his mouth was still sour, because after he had entered the shattered office and seen the scorched and bloody thing that lay behind Marlene’s desk, he had vomited. After that, he had knelt by her side and tried to help, covering her with his jacket and mouthing meaningless words of reassurance, more for him than for her, since she was mercifully unconscious. The cops and the emergency team had arrived a few seconds later and gently moved him aside so they could tend to her.

  Now he was waiting in a hallway in Bellevue, studying the cracks in the peeling green paint and trying to forget his last sight of her as they wheeled her past, the black and red Halloween mask on her face, blowing red bubbles. He shared the waiting with a crowd of assorted Ciampis, sitting in stunned silence on benches, pacing nervously, or—in the case of her mother— sobbing without letup. Karp didn’t introduce himself, nor did they make any effort to include him in their circle of grief.

  A tired young man in green scrubs came through swinging doors and approached the Ciampis. Karp watched from across the hall. The doctor spoke quietly to the family. Several of the women began to shriek at once. The mother fainted, and the family redirected its attention to this immediate crisis. The doctor saw Mrs. Ciampi settled on a bench and then strode briskly away. Karp followed him.

  Once past the swinging doors Karp accosted the surgeon.

  “Hey, Doc, wait up. What’s the story on Marlene Ciampi?”

  “You are?”

  “Roger Karp. I work with her. At the DA’s office.”

  “Well, as I told them back there, she’s pretty badly hurt. In fact, it’s amazing she survived. Of course, she was sitting down at the desk when the explosion occurred, so there’s only minor damage from the waist down. She’s going to need extensive reconstructive surgery on her face, though. And the hand.”

  “The hand?”

  “Yes, it looks as though she was able to get her arm up over the left side of her face. She’s going to lose a lot of function in the left hand. And, of course, the right eye is completely gone.”

  “Of course,” said Karp, the nausea rising in him again.

  The doctor looked at him curiously. “Say, are you OK? You look like you got blown up, too.”

  Karp looked down at his clothes, which were caked with blood and soot. “I wish,” he said. He turned away and walked out of the building.

  Karp was startled to discover, on emerging from the hospital, that it was still day, the smoky yellow twilight of late summer in the city, hot and humid. He had mistakenly thought his hospital vigil had lasted through the night.

  Karp began walking rapidly down First Avenue. He wanted to go home and change his clothes. He wanted to get drunk. But most of all he wanted the guy who planted the bomb, and the guy who made it, and the guy who thought it up. He had a pretty good idea about who two of these were. And he wanted them without Miranda or Escobedo. He wanted them raw.

  By the time he got to 20th Street, Karp’s imagination had subjected them to a series of punishments not authorized by the New York State Penal Code. Also, in the sliver of his mind not given over to rage and grief, he was beginning to understand how seductive an idea was vengeance, and how—beneath all the talk about rehabilitation and civil rights—that idea remained as the ancient core of criminal justice. Bad guys have to be hurt, and they have to be seen to be hurt. The cops’ old song.

  On the other hand, thought Karp, recoiling from his own fantasies, if you impaled criminals in Times Square, wouldn’t that brutalize the society even more? Wouldn’t that start a vicious cycle that would make a civil society impossible? What was the point of all this mindless hurting and counterhurting? Or of anything?

  Karp’s mind raced around these thoughts for a while and then clattered to a stop, like the little ball in a pachinko machine. His vision grew blurred and he felt sick. He had been walking rapidly for half an hour, crossing streets whenever there was a green light, and now he wasn’t sure where he was
. He sagged like a drunk against the chain-link fence around a playground. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at his hand. It was filthy with soot and what could have been dried blood. There was a drinking fountain in the playground. Karp drank deeply from it then washed his face in the tepid water, drying himself with his shirtsleeves.

  He sat on a bench, watching the slight breeze ruffle the leaves of a dusty maple tree. He watched some ants attack a Crackerjack nugget. He watched two teenagers playing horse on the basketball court, a very tall black kid in white Converse high-tops and a slightly shorter, but faster, redhead. All these were of equal interest. Everything else was on hold.

  The basketball took a bad bounce off the rim and rolled to Karp’s feet. This was interesting, too. Karp picked up the ball and stood. He was about twenty-five feet from the hoop. He stared at the ball for a long moment. The kids yelled, “Hey, Mister, let’s have the ball, huh?”

  Karp held the basketball in both hands. He saw a thin, glowing wire leading from the center of the ball to the basket. He gave the ball a little shove and it traveled neatly along the wire and through the basket, without touching the rim. The glowing wires were Karp’s secret. He had constructed a network of them from every square inch of a standard basketball court forward of the foul line to the basket. He knew the right combination of push and spin from every one of those square inches to the basket, left-handed, right-handed, backward over the head. He didn’t have to think about it anymore, just find the right wire and the push came from his body naturally, like breathing or walking. It had taken him only about twenty thousand hours of practice over ten years to learn how to do this.

  The kids whistled and the redhead said, “Hey, luck-eee!” The black kid retrieved the ball and said, “No way, man! That old dude can shoot.”

  “Shoot, my ass! Shit, he couldn’t make that shot again in a million years. Look at him, he’s a wino or some shit!”

  The black kid laughed. “Baby, you wrong there. That dude could wipe his ass with you on this court.”

  “Bullshit! A buck says he can’t make it again.”

  The black kid looked over at Karp, who stood motionless. “Hey, mister! This little man here say you can’t make that shot again. How about it?”

  Karp raised his hands silently and the kid threw him the ball and he sank the shot in a single liquid motion, one-handed this time.

  “See?” said the black kid. “I told you he could play ball.”

  “That still don’t mean shit. A fuckin’ foul shot don’t mean he can play ball.”

  “I bet he could take you apart under the boards too.”

  “No way, man!”

  “Ask him, then. It’s your ball, man.”

  The redhead, his face flushing now, grabbed the ball up and yelled at Karp, “Hey, you! You want to play a little one on one?”

  Which was exactly what Karp wanted. He wanted to descend once again into the waking dream that had been his refuge for most of his life, the world of thump, thump, bang, swish, of trajectories and patterns, a world with no problems he couldn’t handle, where there was always another shot, where violence could be stopped by a whistle, where pain was only physical, and could be borne. Yes, Karp wanted to play a little one on one.

  The black kid sat down behind the basket, leaned against the fence, and watched his friend get his ass whipped. The redhead was an OK player, but then neither of them had ever seen anything like Karp, except on TV. The redhead’s speed didn’t do him any good, because Karp seemed to know where the kid was going before he himself did. Karp could lose half a step and then the kid would make his play and Karp would be there to snatch the ball out of the air, spin, fake, shoot, and score. And he was wearing wing tips.

  The redhead got madder and madder and began to foul Karp, giving him the hip, the elbow. After ten minutes, he was doing everything but holding Karp by the wrists. Karp didn’t mind and didn’t say a word. He could score off-balance, from either hand, on both sides. Karp was ahead, twenty to two, when he took to the air for a jumper, ten feet out. The kid was playing in his face and he went up too, not for the ball, but to swat Karp out of the sky. They collided with a beefy smack, their legs tangled, and Karp fell and landed on the black asphalt on his bad knee and the kid fell on top of him.

  They heard Karp’s bellow across the playground, and pedestrians on First Avenue paused and turned their heads, wondering who was being murdered—before going about their business.

  Karp, his body arched like a bow and rigid with agony, continued to scream at top volume until his throat was raw and he was out of breath; then he just sobbed. Through a red haze of pain he saw a circle of faces surrounding him: young ball players, elderly checkers players, mommies, kids, crazy people, an ice cream man, and, since the midtown East Side of Manhattan contains one of the world’s largest concentrations of medical establishments, an assortment of nurses, orderlies, nurses’ aides, medical technicians, and a physical therapist.

  This latter group took Karp expertly in hand, and, having determined that there was nothing life threatening about Karp’s condition, took a brief medical history, which Karp grunted through gritted teeth, and recommended that he go straight to the emergency room at Bellevue or Beth Israel—depending on his insurance coverage.

  “No, thanks, that’s OK,” he gasped. “I just need to get home. If one of you could call me a cab …”

  The physical therapist was a stocky Puerto Rican with a lumpy but pleasant face and close-cropped graying hair. He had rolled up Karp’s pant’s leg and examined the knee, which was by now the size of a grapefruit and getting purple.

  “All right, buddy, but I hope you know what you’re doing. You want to get that in ice and keep it there, right? As soon as you get home. You got something for pain?”

  “Yeah, I think I have some Empirin and codeine left.”

  The PT man rolled his eyes. “It’s your body, mister. I had a knee looked like that, I’d crawl into a bottle of Demerol and stay a week.”

  Somebody found tape and scissors, and they made an immobilizing wrapping for Karp’s knee out of a couple of newspapers from the trash. They got him into a cab and the PT volunteered to help him into his apartment. The cab pulled away, the crowd broke up, and the two teenagers began playing horse again.

  “I wonder who that dude was,” said the black kid. “He sure could play some ball.”

  “Who the fuck cares,” said the redhead. “Shoot.”

  “Hector Delgado,” said the PT in the back of the Checker. Karp had his foot elevated on the folded jump seat. He was still in intense pain.

  Karp told him his name and shook hands. “Good thing we found a Checker,” Delgado said with a chuckle. “They couldn’t fit you into one of them little ones, huh? So tell me, Butch, you always play a little basketball after work, on that knee?”

  “Hector, you want the truth? I haven’t touched a basketball in, what? Almost fourteen years.”

  “So why today?”

  “Just crazy. I don’t know. My girl got hurt today. I must have gone batshit, blamed myself or something. Maybe I wanted to get hurt, too. Who knows?”

  “What, you cracked up the car?”

  “No, if you can believe this, some shithead sent me a bomb in the mail and she opened it by mistake. She’s in Bellevue.”

  “Well, don’t worry, she’s in good hands.”

  “In Bellevue? I thought it was a … you know, where they send the poverty cases.”

  “Yeah, but it’s also the best hospital in the city. Funny, right? If the president got shot in New York, they’d send him there. Don’t worry. Look, give me her name and I’ll look her up. I’ll tell her you’re flat on your ass for a week and won’t be chasing any tail.”

  Karp did so. When the cab reached Karp’s building, Delgado helped him out. A black man leaning against the doorway sprang forward and opened the outer door for them. Karp thought his face looked familiar. I’ve probably ridden on the elevator with him a hundred time
s and never said a word, he thought. New York, right? The coldest inhabited place on the globe. On the other hand there were people like Delgado, who would go out of their way to help a stranger.

  Delgado guided Karp into his apartment, set him on the bed, took off the newspapers, helped him out of his shoes and trousers, and made a cold pack with ice from the freezer and a towel. Karp thought achingly of Marlene, who had filled his ice trays for the first time. Delgado fed Karp some pills from the medicine cabinet, and Karp sank back on the pillows to wait for the codeine to kick in.

  “OK, Chief,” said Delgado, “you’re all set. Hey, you got no food in the fridge. You just move in? You want me to bring some stuff up from the corner?”

  “No, that’s fine, Hector. You’re a prince. You ever want to kill somebody, let me know. I work for the DA. I’ll cop you a good plea.”

  Delgado laughed. “Hey, all right, I got a list. OK, I got to run, take it easy.”

  After the man left Karp felt the first pangs of utter loneliness. He reached out to the bedside table and lifted the phone onto his chest. Who should he call? V.T. was out of town. Hrcany? Guma? Yeah, he’d call Guma, who’d bring a pizza and a bottle of wine, and they’d sit around and bullshit and maybe he’d figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

  He started to dial Guma’s number and then stopped. He didn’t want to see Guma. He wanted to see Marlene. He should have let them take him to Bellevue. They could have given him a walking cast, or a wheelchair, and then he could have sat by her room at least and been there when she came around. OK, Guma could drive him to the hospital. He had just started to dial again when he heard the first sounds from the door.

  Clicking, bumping sounds. Somebody was trying to get in. It couldn’t be Delgado, or a friend with chicken soup. They would ring the bell. Karp heard the lock snap and the turning of the doorknob. There was nothing in the apartment to absorb the sound, so Karp could hear all the details of the break-in. Of course, he hadn’t followed Delgado to the door, so the dead bolt wasn’t set. The door swung open and Karp heard someone come into the apartment.