Irresistible Impulse

by Robert Tanenbaum

  Karp took a few deep breaths, put the conversation out of his mind, and called the chief medical examiner. He got a secretary, who put him on hold. He placed the phone on his desk and began going through the stack of paperwork that Connie Trask had marked with stapled-on notes, heavily underlined in red, as requiring his immediate and personal attention. About fifteen minutes passed in this way.

  At last dim noises from the phone’s earpiece informed him that the C.M.E. was on the line.

  “You know, Murray,” he remarked, “there are probably high public officials in this city who would resent being put on hold for a quarter of an hour.”

  “I was cutting,” said Selig. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m returning your call, Murray. The Longren death?”

  “Oh, yeah! Interesting case. Let me get a hold of it, just a sec.”

  Clunk of phone hitting desk, squeak of swivel chair, rustling papers. Minutes passed.

  “Okay. She wasn’t choked or strangled. Drug analysis shows phenobarbital, flurazepam, and ciretidine.”

  “Which are what? I know what phenobarb is.”

  “Well, flurazepam is a common tranquilizer; it’s Dalmane, the sleeping pill. Ciretidine is an antiulcer drug.”

  “She had ulcers?”

  “Uh-huh. But she shouldn’t have been taking sedatives in those dosages if she was taking ciretidine, since ciretidine potentiates the effect of sedatives.”

  “So cause of death was … ?”

  “She had the flu, she doped herself up, or was doped up, there was some fluid in the lungs, as there usually is with flu, but her breathing reflexes were so suppressed that she couldn’t clear it. Essentially she just stopped breathing.”

  “You’re ruling natural causes?” said Karp, his voice rising.

  “Well, Butch, what the hell else is it? She might have recovered without the dope, sure, but the dope didn’t actually kill her. I’m not saying there couldn’t be a winnable civil suit against the doctor who treated her, a malpractice thing, but homicide? I don’t think so.”

  “But, damn it, Murray! Why the hell did Robinson go through that charade with Davidoff if there wasn’t something fishy going on?”

  “Oh, fishy I’ll grant you. Robinson screwed up, and he wanted the signature of the well-respected internist Dr. Davidoff on the death cert: cause of death viral pneumonia. It’ll be useful in case of an inquiry, and Davidoff’s insurance will participate in any defense and settlement. Fishy, yes. Slimy and unprincipled, yes. Murder? Can’t show it.”

  “Oh, hell, Murray, first we have four homicides that you guys list as natural causes, and now you cry homicide and get me all worked up and it really is natural causes. I mean, what the fuck, Murray!”

  “Hey, what do you want from my life? We messed up on Rohbling’s victims, I admit it. Now we’re being extra careful with anomalous cases, like this one. You don’t want that?”

  Karp let out a quantity of air. “Oh, shit, Murray, I’m just pissed off in general. Look, thanks for the quick turnaround on this. It’s one thing off my plate at least.”

  Back in the law library, Karp found it hard to plunge back into the details of Rohbling. He was uncharacteristically confused as to what to do about filling the second seat in the coming trial. In fact, he had actually been thinking about picking Collins, a calm, serious man who had won a couple of nice convictions in small-time gang shootings, but had never worked on a major, high-profile case. He was certainly ambitious enough, and he was at the point in his career that he was ready to join the dozen or so senior people in the bureau, like Hrcany and Guma, who could be trusted to handle their cases with minimum supervision from Karp. Collins’s race had pressed itself on Karp’s consciousness to the same degree that Hrcany’s Hungarianess or Guma’s Italianess had; that it might be a factor in the man’s employment had simply never occurred to him. Karp felt a bit of a schmuck about this, as he occasionally did when an office adultery was revealed, which every single person in the office except him had known about, including the janitors. Now, of course, he couldn’t use Collins, because it would look to Keegan that he was acceding to a cynical manipulation. On the other hand, cutting Collins out of a chance he deserved because of that was … what? Double-English reverse nondiscrimination prejudice? With a curse he got up and stomped off down the hallway to Collins’s cubicle, where he found the man, as expected, working late.

  Collins looked up from his work and smiled. He was a chocolate-colored, broad-shouldered man who retained the lithe grace he had exhibited playing football for Lafayette.

  Karp said, “Look, Terry … ah, shit, this sucks!”

  “What did I do?” said Collins, alarmed.

  “Nothing. I want you to second-seat me on Rohbling.”

  “Jesus! That’s what sucks?”

  “No.” Karp felt the sweat of embarrassment on his forehead. “But. Okay, here it is: the D.A. just told me I should use you because of the politics of this particular trial.”

  “Because I’m black? That does suck, if you want to know. So this would be like, a … decorative assignment?”

  “Oh, fuck, no! I’ll work your ass off. As a matter of fact, I told him to get stuffed, but I was thinking of using you anyway, so you can if you want to, I mean, I do want you, but not because of that.”

  Collins thought for a moment and played with his thin mustache. In the tangled racial politics of the time and place, it was a situation with which he was familiar enough, and he was mildly amused by his boss’s discomfort. He grinned and said, “Okay, boss. In that case you got yourself a boy. So to speak.”

  EIGHT

  “Harry, can you pick up Luce at school?” Marlene asked as the afternoon grew hectic. Wolfe had arrived and waited patiently, like a well-trained dog (he had donned a cheap sports jacket and polyester slacks and obtained a new, and even more unfortunate, haircut) for Marlene to take him to Edie Wooten’s place, an appointment for which they were surely going to be late, because Marlene had taken longer than she had planned to instruct Sym in the intricacies of filling out quarterly withholding forms (Harry could have done that, but he didn’t have time, since he had to deal with the agent of the German tennis star; the Germans liked to have endless meetings about Fraulein Speyr’s tour, parodically thorough, them, and as far as Harry doing the teaching, Harry could not teach a cat to lap cream); and Marlene had to spend a half hour on the phone with the landlord negotiating the new office lease, and Posie had called saying Zak had swallowed a pin, but she wasn’t sure, and could they have hot dogs for lunch, and there was another panicked call from Carrie Lanin (one more love offering/threat from Pruitt), and Marlene had to spend another half hour calling in favors from cops she knew from the old days to put the word out that the warrant on Pruitt was serious and not just some domestic horseshit.

  “No problem, Marlene,” said Harry, which is what he always said, and what he would have said had she asked him to load the building on his back and dump it off Pier Twenty-eight.

  “I’m forgetting something important,” she said out loud to no one as she gathered up her bag and coat and beckoned to Wolfe. “It was something about you—have you got a gun?”

  Wolfe shook his head. Marlene sighed. “Well, you’ll need one. Can you shoot? Yes, of course you can shoot. I’ll get Dane to give you one of his—he has about fifty of them. Sym! Concealed-carry application for Wolfe, okay? Don’t forget! Okay, let’s go!”

  They breezed by Sym, muttering over government forms, and were out the door before Marlene braked sharply and called back inside. “Sym! I just remembered. Wolfe isn’t bonded. Get the paperwork from Allied and fill it out and make sure he signs it and notarize it and get it back to them.”

  Sym rolled her eyes and grunted in acquiescence.

  Marlene pushed the yellow VW (which for a wonder started right up and purred) through the uptown traffic as only a one-eyed, heavily armed woman was likely to push, endangering herself and others but escaping injury, and
arrived at Edie Wooten’s building only ten minutes past the appointed time. The doorman gave them what seemed like an extra fish eye as he rang upstairs and handed Marlene the handset. Edie Wooten sounded nervous and distraught.

  “Oh, God, I forgot you were coming, again!” she wailed. “Look, I know this is an imposition, but could you come back another time? We’re having some difficulty, a family thing—”

  Marlene, however, was not having any of this. “No, Edie, we actually have to do this now. I have your bodyguard here, and he’s on the clock, and I have to start going through your list of possibles with you, before the concert, which is the day after tomorrow—”

  “Oh, God! Yes, all right, you’d better come up.”

  This time Edie herself came to the door to let them in. She was dressed in a navy skirt and sweater, and her face was flushed. There was music booming in the apartment, not the music of the cello but heavy, raucous, metallic rock. Marlene looked inquiringly at the woman as they stepped into the hall.

  “My sister,” said Edie, as if that explained everything.

  Marlene made the introductions, and Edie shook Jack Wolfe’s hand. Then she led them through a hallway lined with paintings to a small room set up as an office, equipped with a Sheraton desk, upholstered straight chairs, an Empire sofa in blue silk, and three oak filing cabinets. There was a marble fireplace, with some Meissen musicians on the mantel. The walls held framed concert posters showing Edie looking serene, wrapped around her cello. She closed the door against the din.

  Wolfe was looking around like a mooncalf. Marlene noticed that he was staring at everything but the client.

  “The list?” said Marlene, getting down to business.

  Edie riffled through papers at the desk, apologizing. She was clearly under some tension; her face was drawn and lacked the beatific glow Marlene had observed during their previous meeting.

  “Here it is,” said Edie, handing over several sheets.

  It was a list of names only, and so Marlene, suppressing her irritation, had to go through them one by one with Edie, to identify the people and find out where they could be reached. This took some time. Edie offered refreshments; Marlene declined. Edie got up and paced around the room. She was extremely nervous, and Marlene wondered why.

  Marlene said, “Well, we’ll check all these out. If your guy isn’t on the list himself, maybe one of these people saw something or knows something. Meanwhile, have you had any more contact?”

  “What? Oh, with the Music Lover?” said Edie vaguely. “Just a note. Wait, I’ll get it.” She walked out of the room. Marlene exchanged a glance with Wolfe. In Marlene’s experience, being stalked tended to concentrate the mind of the stalkee to the exclusion of nearly everything else, but Edie seemed oddly distracted.

  They heard voices off, angry ones, and an increase in the volume of the trashy rock music. The doors opened, and Edie came in. She was even more flushed, with a desperate expression in her eyes. Following close behind her was a woman wearing a thin silvery spaghetti-strap mini-dress over pink thigh-length stockings and platform shoes. She was extremely thin, her face all sharp bones around bright, heavily mascaraed blue eyes, her neck stringy and taut, her collarbones staring through pale skin that seemed too fragile to hold in her vital organs. She pushed past Edie into the room and looked at Marlene and Wolfe with sharp interest, like a predatory bird examining a fallen nestling.

  “Oooh,” she said, “are these the bodyguards?”

  “Ginnie, please …” said Edie Wooten. The thin woman ignored her. She looked Wolfe up and down, swaying slightly on her heels, and, apparently finding nothing to detain her, turned her gaze on Marlene. Marlene stood up and said, “Hello, I’m Marlene Ciampi.”

  Edie said, “Oh, excuse me, Marlene, this is my sister, Virginia Wooten.”

  Marlene was about to extend her hand but decided not to. The woman was on something, clearly. She combined the hyperactive movements of the speed freak with the slurred diction of the sedative aficionado. That suggested she was taking setups— Dexamils and Qualuudes together—or speedballs, injecting heroin and cocaine simultaneously.

  “Marlene? Mah-leeeene! Mah-leen fum da Bronx? Oh, Jesus, Edie, you have no fucking class at all, do you? Where did you find this, in the yellow pages?” She laughed, a soundless giggle that contorted what was actually the (presumably) last years of an extraordinarily pretty face. The giggles died down. No one else made a sound. Edie was rending her usual tissue. Ginnie was staring intently at Marlene’s face. “My God, this is rich!” she said, snorting. “What is that, Mah-leen, a glass eye? Oh, marvelous, a one-eye private eye! You’re inimitable, Edie darling. She imagines someone is pursuing her, and then she hires a half-blind detective to stop him.” A spate of laughter that ended with a racking cough. “Get me a fucking drink, goddammit,” she snarled at her sister. Edie, her face white, dashed away.

  Ginnie strode with the unnaturally careful stride of the drugged to the sofa and arranged herself on it, showing her thin white thighs nearly up to the crotch and the garters that held up her pink stockings. No tracks on the thighs, Marlene observed. She probably takes it in the veins on the tops of her feet.

  Ginnie said in a mock confidential voice, “My dear little sister, you understand, Mah-leen darling, is a pather—a pathological liar. What’d she tell you? Some man was chasing her? Some bad man? Who was going to put his big weenie into her? Well, darling, I can tell you that—that the only thing that’s been between her thighs is that fucking costly Stradivarius, that absolutely no one was ever allowed to touch. Now, I, on the other hand, am the one who really needs a bodyguard.” She turned her attention to Wolfe. “How about it, Silent Sam? Would you like to guard my body?” She wriggled her hips and ran a long pink tongue around her mouth and giggled again.

  Neither Marlene nor Wolfe responded to this, although Marlene noticed that Wolfe’s ears went red. Edie came back into the room bearing a tumbler full of clear liquid and ice cubes. She handed it to her sister, who took a swallow, coughed, and sprayed out what was in her mouth. She came off the sofa like a cheap toy, her face reddening, the cords of her neck rigid. “You moron! I wanted a drink! Don’t you know what a drink is, fuckface!”

  She reached back to throw the heavy tumbler at her cringing sister, but Marlene was there with a neat wrist lock, on which she applied a hair more pressure than was strictly necessary. The tumbler fell to the carpet.

  “Oww! You’re hurting me!” the woman cried. She had to bend her knees to relieve the pain.

  “Sorry, but that’s a no-no. Darling,” said Marlene. “Now, are we going to be good and let the grownups get on with their business?”

  A burst of hysterical cursing, quite remarkable in its fluency and rage.

  “Oh, don’t hurt her,” Edie wailed. Tears gushed from her eyes. Marlene shrugged and let the lock go, and Virginia Wooten fell down on all fours, still cursing. A loud buzzer sounded from elsewhere in the apartment.

  “That’s for me, that’s for me!” Ginnie cried, and scrabbling to her feet, without a backward look or another word, she left the room, taking care to slam the door so hard behind her that the figurines shook on the mantel and the posters slid askew.

  Edie collapsed in tears on the sofa. Marlene handed Edie a package of tissues from her bag.

  When the weeping had lapsed into sniffles, she said, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Marlene. Oh, God, I don’t know what to say. I’m so mortified!”

  “Well, don’t be. This is not nearly the worst thing that someone has said to me in this business. I have an extremely thick skin. But I’m a little concerned about you. Does she, ah, come here often?”

  “Oh, she makes a descent three or four times a year, I guess, usually when she’s having problems with her current man.” This was said with sighing resignation.

  “Why do you let her?”

  “Why?” Edie seemed surprised by this question. “She’s my sister. My parents gave up on her, oh, years ago, a
nd I’m all she has. She was raised in this apartment. The idea of barring the door to her—I couldn’t ever do that. I keep thinking that some day she’ll … I don’t know … burn out, if that’s the expression. She … what she’s like now, she wasn’t always like that. She was beautiful and—we can’t say gay anymore, can we—but spirited, and fun. The house was always full of her friends. My parents are rather solemn people, and of course the girl genius ha-ha was always sawing away, sawing away. Oh, I just worshipped her, my big sister …” She began to cry again, softly, a slow drip of tears.

  “Yes, well, Edie,” Marlene said, “the point from my perspective is, do you recall at our first interview, we talked about people with a disordered lifestyle and how vulnerable they were?”

  “You mean prostitutes?”

  “Yeah, them and drug addicts. And that also applies to the people they’re in intimate contact with. A junkie is a doorway to some fairly nasty people. Your sister is a—”

  “Ginnie isn’t a drug addict!”

  “Well, actually, she is, my dear. And one of the things we’re going to explore is her possible connection to whoever is bothering you.”

  Edie shook her head metronomically during this last exchange as if by that motion she could order her sister’s life. “No, no, that’s just not possible, that’s not—”

  “As well as,” Marlene continued, “the possibility that she is the one that’s actually producing this harassment.”

  Edie Wooten just stared, struck dumb.

  “While you were out of the room just now, she told me that you were making the whole thing up, that you were a pathological liar hallucinating out of sexual deprivation.”

  “I am not sexually deprived,” Edie blurted, and then blushed, and then the two women burst into laughter. Wolfe looked confused and arranged his face in a bland smile.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Marlene. “We’ll need his name too, or theirs. While we’re at it, you said something about receiving another note from the guy?”