"I know what basketball is, sir. I'm not a complete yokel, you know."
"Of course you're not a yokel, Flynn. When I think of sophisticated women, you come right after Simone Signouret. Now what can I do for you?"
"Yer fergettin' yer mobile." She did not say "again," although she dearly wished to, and held out the device to him.
"D'you see, sir, the principle of the t'ing is it's supposed to go with you. That's why they made it so small, if you take me point."
Karp exhibited one of his famous glowers, jammed the cell phone in his raincoat pocket, and stalked out. He was one of the dwindling minority who thought that the whole point of ditching work was to ditch work and be out of reach for the duration of the ditch. But Flynn had never once allowed him to slip from the office without that goddamn warbling pickle.
An hour and some minutes later he was playing basketball, three-on-three, half-court, twenty-one wins, winners' ball, and not, in fact, thinking great legal thoughts, but rather thinking nothing substantive at all, which was a delicious relief. Karp had at one time been one of the best young basketball players in the country, a high school all-American, and a standout freshman at Cal. In his sophomore year, however, some gigantic people had tromped on his knee in a game, ending any possibility that he would be another Bill Bradley, and turning his competitive instincts toward the law. He now had an artificial left knee, but he could still score a phenomenal percentage of shots from anywhere on the half-court.
If this kid would get out of his face. The kid was a little over fivenine, and lucky if she hit one-twelve on a damp day. She had a peculiar, large-featured face, not pretty nor plain either-remarkable, memorable in a way hard to describe-with close-cropped dark hair, now sweat-welded to her forehead, and looking at him like a hunting python out of odd, slanted eyes the color of Lucky Strike's fine tobacco. She was guarding him just right, too: close enough to block the sort of feeble jumper Karp was up to these days, and far enough back to avoid a hip and a blast past. He himself had taught her to guard like that, and wasn't he sorry now?
Karp caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, faked left, and whipped a pass around his back at a charging teammate, who went in for a score. That made it eighteen all. The two other men on Karp's team were both his age or a little younger, a dentist named Irv and an NYU professor named Doug, both of whom had played some college ball, although not at Karp's level. The three opposing players were their daughters, all of whom could outrun and outjump their old-fart opponents, which advantage the old farts typically negated by skill, guile, brutal use of their heavier bodies, and selective cheating. Today, however, the girls were hot, and the dads were having trouble even staying even. Karp moved around his daughter, took a pass in the paint, dribbled once, pushed off his good leg, and released the ball. To his astonishment, Lucy Karp came out of hyperspace and blocked the shot. Karp leaped in to smother her return shot, but she outstepped him easily and passed to Althea, who, outpacing her own sire, passed to Jessie, who sank an eight-footer.
From there it went downhill (the penny at last having dropped), and the girls kept the game wide and ran the pants off the fathers, who were reduced to howling, fouling, red-faced, sweat-streaming impotence. On the last play of the game, Karp's daughter and Althea executed a pick-and-roll that would not have embarrassed Larry Bird, and Karp, who had seen it coming, raced to the basket to block the shot, found himself a step late, and had to watch Lucy Karp go up like a homing salmon at the falls to sink it for twenty-one and game.
Irv the dentist threw himself on the floor and pounded it with his fists. "That's it!" he cried. "Beat by a bunch of girls! I'm taking the gas. Honey, the insurance and the will are in my desk in the office. Have a nice life!" The girls were dancing around, hooting with glee and giving each other high fives. Doug slapped Karp on the back and leaned against him, in a parody of exhaustion. "Oh, sharper than a serpent's tooth."
"It had to happen," said Karp. "They're getting better and we're getting older."
"Yeah, but so soon? I was hoping for an early pregnancy to intervene."
Irv got up off the floor, pointedly ignoring Jessie's offered hand. "Get away from me, you! And from now on, back to the kitchen! Knit me a sweater!"
After a good deal of similar, they left for the respective locker rooms. In the lobby, showered and breathing easily again, Karp suggested taking the girls out for a bite, to celebrate their first victory.
"Not this time," said Doug. "I have to grade papers. And, believe me, it's going to be all F's. I hate the young."
"That's a fine idea," said Irv. "I got two root canals this afternoon, and if they think they're getting any novocaine, they got another think coming. Let 'em writhe."
Then the girls emerged looking rosy, even Althea, who was rosy in a milk chocolaty way, and the others left, Irv loudly talking about golf from now on, leaving Karp alone with his daughter. Lucy was wearing a nurse's dark wool cloak, a beret, a black wool skirt, black tights, and heavy lace-up, black boots. She carried her school gear and her athletic stuff in a big Swedish army musette bag. As far as Karp knew, his daughter had hardly ever bought clothes that had not been used at least once. This did not jibe with what he had learned from the fathers of similarly aged daughters, but he had long since given up expecting his kid to fit into any common social groove.
"You're not crying, I see," she said.
"I'm a big boy. I can take a whipping. I have to say, you looked pretty good. You're improving."
"Thank you. But I do play just about every day. And we have a good coach at school. Girls' basketball is suddenly big, so they're more serious."
They walked out of the huge Chelsea sports complex and into a blustery day. Rain was still falling in fits, and the wind from the Hudson bit at the face.
"You haven't changed your mind about the team, I guess," said Karp.
"Don't start, Dad."
"Hey, it's your life. But, like you say, girls' ball is big. And you have the skills. And the size. You're probably still growing."
"Bite your tongue!"
"You could get a scholarship."
"Dad, I speak thirty-eight languages. Getting a scholarship is not going to be a problem. Assuming I want to go to college."
"I didn't hear that," said Karp. "All I'm saying is why not give it a try? You can always drop it, if you really hate playing."
"I'm not competitive."
"Oh, really? Gosh, you could've fooled me in there just now."
"That's not the same thing. That's just fun. I like playing the game. I don't like the winning and losing part. Beating the other guys. It makes me sad. And winning-the way people look at you like you're something special, like they won something because they're in the same school as you. And the way the parents act at the games… it's not for me." She looked up at him. "I'm sorry, really."
She really was sorry, he thought, and he made himself shrug and say, "Ah, forget it, it's no big thing. I'll have to wait for the twins."
"Oh, there's competitive. If they can stop fighting each other for five minutes, they'll be a terror on the boards. Although, you know, Giancarlo is probably more like me than he is like Zak. Zak eggs him on, and he goes with it because he can't stand for Zak to be doing something he's not. Which is weird, because twins are supposed to be the same. Like when they find two of them separated at birth and they both married Mabels and they're both firemen who like to go ice-skating."
"The mystery of genetics."
"Yeah, especially in our family."
Karp declined to pursue that subject, always a vexed one when conversing with his mutant offspring. They waited in the scant shelter of a doorway for his car. Karp watched the traffic flow by and reflected briefly that this was the street up which Cooley had pursued his car thief. No, a little north of here. He wondered whether he should ask Morris to drive him up to the scene, take a look at the ground. He had always done that when he was trying a murder, actually walk the pavements, look in the apartm
ents where human blood had been shed… and then he dismissed the idea. It wasn't his case, not his responsibility. That was for the young farts now, he was done with that part of it.
"What's the matter, Dad?"
"Huh? Why? Did I look like something was the matter?"
"Yeah, you looked like you lost your dog."
Karp laughed. "You've inherited your mom's laser vision."
"Your laser vision, too." Lucy squeezed his arm. "You looked sad. It's not me again, is it?"
"No, just the usual-work, everyday corruption and stupidity."
"Who's being corrupt and stupid?"
"Everyone but me, of course. No, we got this stupid kid accused of killing a citizen, a subway stabbing. It's a death-penalty case, or Jack's going to make it one. It annoys me, is all."
"Did he do it?"
"I don't know. Probably. Convictable, but not ironclad enough for me to want him dead. This god-awful death-penalty crap screws everything up."
"A good Catholic position. We'll convert you yet."
"You better bring your lunch, girl. Here's Morris with the car. Can I drop you someplace? Home?"
"No, thanks. I have some places to go."
"Like where?" asked the dad.
"Just around," Lucy evaded. "Friends. I might go by the church after."
Karp nodded and got into the car. "See you for dinner. Great game, kid."
She waved as they pulled away from the curb.
"How was the game?" asked Ed Morris.
"We got whipped."
"By girls?"
"A fluke, obviously."
Morris laughed. "Or you're getting old, boss."
"Just drive, Ed," said Karp sourly. He sat back in his seat, banished thoughts of aging bodies, and contemplated his daughter. It was hard to know what to do about Lucy. Karp was not the only one trying to figure her out. There was a whole cottage industry up at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical School studying her brain by means of the most advanced technology, and they seemed to be stumped, too. But they had already determined that Lucy Karp could unerringly reproduce all the sounds the human vocal apparatus was capable of generating, with no apparent effort, had an eidetic memory for grammar and vocabulary, and if exposed to a native speaker, could master any language that had yet been thrown at her in something like seventy-two hours. Of the earth's 6 billion, there appeared to be only one other example of a hyperlinguistic prodigy, a Russian boy. In all history, the phenomenon had appeared less than half a dozen times.
Karp recalled that Mozart had had a major problem with his father, and Karp had long since resolved that, despite her gift, Lucy would have as normal a childhood as possible: no going on quiz shows, no exhibition as a freak of any kind. Nor had she, although her childhood had been as far from normal as could be imagined. Which was Marlene's fault. No, don't get into the blaming business. At least Lucy had physically survived her mother's bullet-riddled home life and was now a fine kid, really, although he wished she would have more fun. Clean fun, of course, not the kind he read about in the papers, blow-job clubs at fancy schools. No, safe from that, at least. He thought about the game. Lucy had been wearing a baby sweat suit, as usual, but the other girls had been wearing what Karp continued to think of as underwear, although it was marketed as sports apparel. Jessie had been clad in a cut-down top that left her belly bare and had chosen to cover her loins in what looked like silver paint, thin paint, too, that Lycra or spandex, whatever they called it. Irv seemed not to care that his daughter's butt and sexual organs were perfectly visible. Come to think of it, wasn't noticing the sexual allure of girls of one's daughter's age a sure sign of incipient senility? One good thing about Lucy, in that regard, she was practically a nun-modest clothing, like today's World War II refugee look, and for school she had concocted a kind of uniform-even though uniforms were no longer required at Sacred Heart-out of thrift-shop scroungings. Not a violet-hair or piercings type, Lucy, and no tattoos either, that he could see, although she could have the entire Book of Revelation illustrated on her somewhere he couldn't see. That would be like Lucy, a secretive kid. Also, from her mother, he himself being as frank as the new day, or so he truly believed.
Like where she was going just now? Not to the malt shoppe with the gang, unfortunately. Good works, probably, with street bums. Which you couldn't call them anymore, Karp knew, having been informed by his daughter with some heat that they were "the unhoused." Fine, he was enough of a bleeding heart to sympathize, but he also knew that the bottom layers of society were particularly rich in predators, not to mention the violently unhinged. His baby! Of course, Lucy could take care of herself, not a naif, her, but still… she also got that from her mother, along with the instinct for the hidden life, the peculiar unhealthy interest in the wrong side of society, in violence. No, the violence, that was pure Marlene, not Lucy. Lucy wouldn't hurt a beetle, a girl who would not step on a spider, would probably cuddle up to Son of Sam and try to make him change his ways; Marlene, it would be two in the ear and move on. No, unfair, she was trying. She had given up the crazy shit, the poking guns at men, and worse stuff she used to do in the line of protecting women that he did not want to think about, and now a respectable executive in a growing security firm, a relief, so that all his formidable Jewish worrying energies could concentrate on the girl, didn't want to stifle her though, it was her life… and the church stuff, he was waiting for her to grow out of that, something completely beyond him, although reportedly on his mother's side a long line of Talmudic scholars, so maybe that was genes, too. Losing a child to vice, that was common. There was one guy he knew, a lawyer, whose daughter was an actual call girl, and the drugs, that wasn't just uptown anymore-but losing a child to virtue, that was harder. What could he say? Don't be so good? Girls didn't become nuns anymore, did they? His secret fear.
Maybe she got that from him. He understood that he was known around the courthouse as something of a Boy Scout, not exactly a figure of fun, but not one of the boys either. Was he becoming a prig? Butch Javert? Sea-green incorruptible, like Robespierre? Inhuman? He didn't think so. Like he'd told Murrow, he'd covered up corruption in his day, slid around the strict letter of the law from time to time, in a good cause. It was inevitable, law being a human institution and humans being all crooked timber. So was keeping Jack Keegan in office a good enough cause to justify what Fuller was clearly doing? Karp had to trust his gut on that, and his gut roiled when he thought of putting spin on criminal cases to satisfy political ends. Or maybe that was old-fashioned, too. Was he yesterday's man? A pathetic relic of a better time? Old, getting old…
He physically shook his head to clear these thoughts out of it, drawing a sidelong look from Morris. He heard a warbling, which at first he didn't recognize. Something wrong with the car?
"That's for you, Butch," said Morris. Blank look. "Your cell phone."
Karp fished it out, found the right button, and punched it. He listened and said, "I was just thinking about you."
"Yes, that's a new service of MCI," said his wife. "The cell phone reads your mind while it gives you brain cancer. Where are you?"
"On Fourteenth behind a garbage truck, symbol of my day. I just left Lucy at Chelsea Pier."
"Good game?"
"They beat us."
A whoop in his ear. "I love it. The fall of the patriarchy cannot be long delayed. Did she gloat?"
"No. In fact, she was very commiserating, which made me feel worse."
"Poor Butch! I suppose I will have to pump up your ego tonight via my marital obligations."
"Assuming I can still get it up. What's going on?"
"Oh, the usual. I have an appointment with Kelsie Solette this afternoon, which I am not looking forward to, and I have yet another meeting on our filing."
"Kelsie Solette is big-time. Why does she need protection?"
"Oh, they all need protection, largely from themselves. They bust their hump to get to be superstars, and then they discover that seven million people hav
e no other thought than to rip a piece of their garment off. Or their flesh, and then it's boo hoo, Marlene Ciampi can save me. But, of course, they still have to be seen, which means hanging around clubs in basements with no lighting and one exit, run by the Mob, with the drug supermarket going on in the ladies'." She sighed theatrically. "Meanwhile, everyone down to the stock clerks are going around comparing how much money they're going to be worth when we get this IPO off the ground."
"How much will you be worth? Not that you're not priceless already."
"I haven't a clue. In fact, I think the whole thing is going to fall apart. Internet stocks, yes. I mean that's a feeding frenzy like the tulip mania or the twenties before the crash. But not a security operation, I mean, be serious. It's about as sexy as a sink full of dirty dishes. Unfortunately, Osborne's become a maniac on the subject, and Harry, too, who I always thought had his head screwed on right. What it comes down to at this point is sitting in endless meetings with a lot of little jerks in five-thousand-dollar suits and trying not to drift off. Apparently the next stage is to drag us around to institutional investors to give our spiel and show them that we're not a bunch of thugs with saps and tiny cameras."
"I thought you were."
"Yes, but this is the new security. The world is a dangerous place, the rich getting richer, the poor getting ever more pissed off, governments collapsing, and so on and so on, opportunities internationally for a highly disciplined firm, with modern management, blah blah blah. Complete horseshit, but since I'm a good little soldier…" Marlene sighed again. "Listen, the reason I called, I'll be late at one of these crap sessions, and I wanted to make sure you'd be home when the boys were delivered from after-school."
"No problem. Now that we conquered crime, there's not a hell of a lot for me to do. Will you be home for dinner?"
"Probably later. Feed the monsters and I'll see you around eight. Is Lucy dining in?"
"I forgot to ask. She wandered off with that look where she doesn't want to say what she's doing. The bums, is my guess."
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