Enemy within kac-13

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "Oh, shut the fuck up, Jeepers!" Kelsie Solette cried. The dog, undeterred, wriggled from her arms, dropped off the bed, and prepared to defend her territory. "Who the hell are you?"

  Kelsie Solette had a pinched hillbilly face, saved from indistinction by enormous cornflower eyes. The thick mascara of last night smudged her pasty cheeks, and her thin blond hair was arranged in gelled spikes, her trademark look. She sported a dozen or so earrings, a nose ring with a three-carat canary diamond in it, and a row of pearls stuck through her left eyebrow. She was wearing a black T-shirt with iridescent sequins sewn on it in a swirling pattern.

  "I'm Marlene Ciampi."

  This took a few seconds to register. "Oh, yeah. The security lady. Cool. That's a whacked look. Where'd you get the outfit?"

  "From my father. He's a plumber. Look, Ms. Solette-"

  "Kelsie."

  "-Kelsie, I've just been talking to your bodyguard-"

  "Yeah, Pete's great, isn't he?"

  "Well, actually, no, not as a bodyguard he isn't. I just walked in here on the strength of dressing like a utility worker. You basically have no security at all. Jimmy Coleman could walk in here anytime and slit your throat."

  "He's in jail," said the singer nervously. "Isn't he?"

  "Is he? I heard he went to Rikers on a 240.30, agg harassment two. That's an A misdemeanor. When was that? Four months ago? He could be walking any day. He'll be out and he'll be pissed off, unless you think he's forgotten you. And at least we know about him. I'm more worried about the ones we don't know about. The letters."

  Marlene sat down on the edge of the bed. The dog, which had been yapping continuously, a steady, idiotic, nerve-scraping noise, now decided to bite Marlene on the ankle. She trod delicately on its little paw. It yelped and ran under the bed, and then the two of them had to get under the bed and chivy the creature out and calm it, or actually Kelsie did the calming while Marlene sat and tried to control her irritation.

  When quiet had been restored, Marlene said, "Look, Kelsie, your manager called us for a threat assessment. We did the assessment and sent it in. No response. Have you read it?"

  "No, man. Petey handles that end."

  "Kelsie, I'm sorry, but Petey can just about handle ordering coffee. And maybe he can pick you up and get you through a crowd at a club, and scare off a drunk trying to hit on you. But you're under at least one serious stalking threat, and you need serious protection."

  "Oh, shit, man! Pete's been with me since the day."

  "Fine, keep him around. My point is you need a pro in here. I could have someone assigned today, write up a plan, staff you up…" Marlene stopped. Solette was shaking her head.

  "I don't know. You mean like a stranger? Being here all the time?"

  "Well, yeah…"

  "Uh-huh. No, that sucks. This is my home, you know? I don't want people I don't know hanging."

  She's worried about the drugs and the sex, thought Marlene. People leaking stuff to the tabloids. "Our people are very well trained and completely confidential," Marlene said primly.

  "I mean, if it was you, that would be different." Solette turned on her for the first time the famous smile, which, helped by a growly voice and a good deal of body language, had generated a sheaf of platinum records and a megahit movie.

  Marlene's smile in return was unenthusiastic. "Sorry, I don't do that kind of work anymore. You're a couple of years late."

  Solette leaned forward on the bed. "You used to, I heard. You shot a bunch of creeps."

  "I did. I gave it up."

  "Why? I'd love to shoot Coleman."

  "You might think that," said Marlene, "but, believe me, girl, it's not like in the movies. At least it wasn't for me. And eventually I screwed up, and a woman got killed. So I hung up the gun." She waited for this to be absorbed and then added, "Meanwhile, what are we going to do about your problem?"

  A buzzer sounded in the apartment. Marlene said, "That's your coffee. Or some nut, one."

  Solette was chewing her finger. Now she looked about twelve. "Now you got me all freaked. I have to think about this, talk to people…"

  Marlene made the usual arguments at this point, but she could see that they were not biting into the stubbornness that was often associated with the sort of determination that made stars. At last she rose, pulled a card case from her packet, and left it on the dresser. "No problem. There's my private number. You call me anytime." Marlene extended her hand, and the singer took it in one that was bed-warm and unpleasantly moist at the fingertips. Marlene left then, declining the coffee and Danish offered by the feckless bodyguard, feeling vaguely stupid and wrong-footed. The moronic disguise! What was she doing running security checks? She had a dozen people to do things like that. She suppressed a familiar irritation, familiar to people who do work that they are good at and find profitable, but do not truly love.

  After Lucy Karp left the settlement at the rail yards, she walked to Holy Redeemer and helped prepare and serve the evening meal. She did this once or twice a week. Formerly, she did the same service at Old St. Patrick's on Mulberry, but she thought they needed her more at HR. The clients were lower on the food chain than the ones at St. Pat's, many of whom had actual homes. Redeemer picked up most of the people who used to live in Penn Station and who now clung precariously to life in the shrinking zone of nongentrified Chelsea and the grates and doorways of the Midtown West Side.

  Or so she told herself. As she prepped, stirred, served, she kept looking around, as if for something forgotten. This meal had netted forty or so people, mostly men, but a few women, now eating at half a dozen trestle tables. Paper tablecloths were on the tables and real dishes and cutlery and napkins and slightly wilted overage flowers. The nuns who ran the place believed that the main function of a soup kitchen was not soup per se, but civilization, something a lot harder for the homeless to obtain on the island of Manhattan than mere food. Lucy believed this, too, and acted the part of hostess, making conversation with the insulted and injured, exhibiting good table manners, and feeling, generally, like a complete fool. No one seemed to notice that she felt utterly unsuited to the work, a fraud. She was, she knew, not nearly as good as people believed her to be, was a wretched thing, in fact, selfish, a hypocrite.

  What she really wanted to do, all the time, and exclusively, was study languages. She accepted helping the miserable as an obligation of her faith and envied the nuns who appeared to take positive joy in it. Envy was, of course, a sin; but pride was a worse one, and she knew she drooped with pride; it oozed disgustingly from every pore. Unique in the world, as everyone kept telling her. People at the lab, scientists visiting from all over, from Europe, Asia, astounded scholars, all wanted a chance to peer into her brain, a waiting list a yard long, as for a particle accelerator or a radio telescope; it held, they thought, the secret of language. No wonder it swelled a girl's head. A good thing, too, she was an ugly geek, or she would have become some monster of ego, like a rock star, cut off from God. But, no, the whole point was that this muttering, filthy derelict across from her was also unique, just as loved by God. Why couldn't she, even for one instant, pull her mind away from the boil of three dozen languages and the lure of the other three thousand, word and nuance, idiom and tone, and the bottomless mystery of grammar? And there he was.

  Lucy felt her face color as it always did, and she was ashamed, as she always was, and turned away to refill a tray of bread from the bin in the kitchen. When she came back to the dining area, he was among the guys, talking it up, spreading light and laughter. She paused by the doorway to spy on him. Tall, nearly six feet, and thin, dressed in his winter costume, a cheap, fake-fleece denim jacket and jeans, and his red muffler and Broncos wool cap. Nothing special to look at, most people would have said-a bony, mobile face, a long nose, pink at the tip from the chill outside, dirty-blond, ear-length hair, and blue-gray eyes that made her want to wet her pants when he looked at her. And looking, she thought, as she always did, stupid, stupid, although that d
id not keep her from making calculations, seventeen minus twenty-six was… so when she was twenty-five, he'd be… no, stupid!

  Lucy had never had a big crush before. She went to a girls' school; she didn't have a social life to speak of, a couple of close friends, all as geeky as she, a social status at school so low that people speaking to her at lunch had to be disinfected by trained technicians before they could speak to anyone else. The people she met up at the lab where she spent the rest of her spare time just wanted to talk about her Wernicke's Area or stem affixes in Old Slavonic.

  David Grale. How often had her pen, poised to take down some flaccid fact in chemistry or American history, slid into those lovely characters and outlined them, made them 3-D, shadowed and crosshatched them, adorned them with vines and ivy, placed them in hearts, before she'd ripped the sheets into tiny, tiny pieces, as she quaked with shame! And did it again.

  He was talking to a man called Airshaft-so-called because some malformation had placed two symmetrical, squarish dents in his temples-and with Ralphie and Desmondo, from the yards. As she stepped forward and put out the new bread, Ralphie caught sight of her and waved, and then David Grale looked up and smiled and motioned her over.

  She smiled back in a controlled, sophisticated way and started to stroll casually over, whereupon a schizo sitting at the table she was passing jerked back his chair, tripping her, and she went headlong onto the floor. She was considering crawling under one of the tables and closing her eyes until everyone left, and later inventing a story about narcolepsy, when she felt a hand on her arm, and it was he helping her to her feet, a concerned look on his face.

  "Are you okay?" Grale asked.

  "Yeah, fine. My feet are too big." She laughed harshly, blushed crimson. Perfect.

  He sat her down with the other men, leaned back in his chair, waved his hand elegantly, and called out, "Marcel? Another round of cognacs, if you please." And to Lucy: "The service here is terrible lately. You should have seen it in the old days. Champagne flowing like water, the glittering crowds, the true sweetness of life… all gone."

  Lucy said, "Ah, yes, the baroness was saying much the same thing just the other day. The caille en sarcophage were overdone. As for the Kool-Aid… barely drinkable. And it's so crowded that no one comes here anymore. Sad, really."

  "True. Still, the floor show remains amusing." Grale turned in his chair toward the kitchen doorway. "There's an indefinable appeal about a man carrying a bus box that makes you completely forget Fred Astaire. There's nothing in theater quite like it, don't you find?"

  "Except two of them carrying a coffee urn."

  Desmondo said, "You guys are nuts," and stood up. "I got to go help a guy put stuff out. You coming, Ralphie?"

  Ralphie got up, too, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. They dumped their dirty dishes in a big rubber box and left, followed by Airshaft, who left his lying there. The diners drifted out of the hall. Lucy and Grale sat and talked quietly and inconsequentially, making small jokes and allowing many long silences. It was her favorite time in her entire present life that was not connected with linguistics. Then, as usual, Grale said he had to indulge his only vice, looking up in mock fear as he did so, bobbing his head, as if he expected a celestial censure. It was still dripping outside, so they leaned against the wall under the overhang of the basement entrance, looking out onto Twenty-eighth Street. He smoked, and she smoked to keep him company, although it was not a habit, and she did not really enjoy it after the first aromatic flare.

  "So what's the language of the week, Lucy?"

  "Gaelic."

  "Say something in it."

  "You're the most wonderful man in the whole world and I lust after you, body and soul, and may God forgive me," said Lucy in Gaelic.

  "Wow! What does that mean?"

  "If you don't shut the door, the cat will escape and eat the chickens."

  He laughed. "And why Gaelic especially?"

  "Oh, we're doing this big project with Harvard linguistics, and Berkeley, too. They want to take me sequentially through the whole Indo-European reach, from Ireland to modern India. They think it'll tell them something about linguistic affinities. Like the closer the languages, the shorter the time to learn, and also they'll be studying my brain in the MRI while I do it." She shrugged. "I sort of wanted to get more into African languages, but they're paying, so…"

  A cloud had passed over his face. "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "Oh, sorry-a little distracted. Tell me more about this project."

  "No, really… what's wrong?"

  "Ernie Whalen. I'm starting to get a little concerned about him. Actually a lot concerned."

  "Jingles? What's wrong with him?"

  "Nothing, as far as I know. It's just that I haven't seen him in three days. He's not in his usual flops, and people don't recall having seen him. Not even Airshaft, and they usually hang with the same group. So…"

  "You think something might have happened to him?"

  Grale flicked away his cigarette, shook his head. "I don't know. It's a dangerous lifestyle. Funny. These guys, our guys-people think they're all the same, but they're just as different from each other as straight people. I mean except for the actual crazies. Desmondo's an entrepreneur. If he were white, and educated, and laid off the crack for a while, he'd be down in the Alley running a dot com."

  "Ralphie would be vice president for public relations."

  "Right. Real Ali would be a professor of comp lit at NYU," said Grale, laughing.

  "What would Canman be? An artist? Or an engineer?"

  Grale frowned. "Oh, Canman. You still hanging around with him?"

  "I saw him today. He seemed worse than usual. Nasty."

  "He's always nasty."

  "Not like this. He's scared. I think it's the killer. He's thinking about leaving, going down to the tunnels."

  "Is he?" Grale sighed. "Maybe he'll find peace there." A thin smile. "Sometimes it's hard to love them the way I should. I am further from perfection than I would wish."

  "Oh, stop it! You do more than anyone else."

  "But it's never enough. The poor you have always with you, always, always, always." He lit another cigarette. "Sorry. I'm tired. I just have walked ten miles today. I'm really worried about Jingles."

  "What, you think…?"

  "It's a possibility. This guy, whoever's doing it, he can't, you know, be a stranger, like those kids a couple of years back who were squirting lighter fluid and setting guys on fire. Nobody's seen any strangers around and, believe me, I've asked. I'm starting to think the worst."

  "You mean it's one of the guys?"

  Grale nodded. "It could be. And it can't be one of the nutcases either. If it were, they'd be walking around with blood all over them, holding the knife and talking to the Martians. No, this bastard is smart, and well-organized, with a grudge against the world and a place to hide. And he gets around, too. There's been one in Chelsea, one up in Clinton, and one under the old highway near the West Village. You're shaking your head, but you got to admit it's a possibility."

  "It can't be Canman," said Lucy vehemently. She thought of the man in the paper house that afternoon, the look of fear and rage on his face, the long, shining, sharp blade in his hands.

  "I know it's hard to believe someone you like would do horrible stuff like that," said Grale, "but I mean, face facts. You said yourself he was nervous. Maybe that's why."

  She was about to protest, but as she looked in his face, she saw he had that look on, what she secretly called his St. Francis face: guileless, kind, humorous, utterly sweet. Irresistible.

  "What should we do?" she blurted instead. "Not the cops…"

  "No, of course not. I'll go find him and talk to him."

  He doesn't like you, Lucy thought, but said only, "What if he goes into the tunnels?"

  "Oh, that's okay," said Grale easily. "I know the tunnels. I have lots of pals in the tunnels. And look, don't worry. I can't believe he's the one either. But maybe
he's scared because he saw something. I'll find out."

  5

  As he had promised, Karp was waiting on the corner of Grand and Crosby at four-thirty when the bus from St. Joe's pulled up and disgorged his twin sons. He spotted them, they spotted him, and there was that little jolt of love, mixed on this occasion with irritation, which he consciously suppressed. He waved and grinned.

  The Karps had never gone in for stupid twin games, such as identical dressing, but their twins had taken differentiation to an extreme. Isaac, called Zak, the elder by two minutes, had already, at eight years, turned into something of a roughneck, hot-tempered, an athlete, and the self-appointed protector of his gentler brother from all save himself. Giancarlo, called Zik (a name he had borne in the days when they were two indistinguishable lumps) only by his brother, was an artist, a musician, and a diplomat of sunny disposition.

  "Yo, Daddy," called Giancarlo happily. "Where's Mom?"

  "At work."

  "Can we get pizza?"

  "Of course," said Karp. "How was school?"

  "Okay, except Zak got in a fight."

  "Shut up, Zik!' yelled Zak, and stalked away up Grand Street. He had the hood of his parka pulled up, and he was walking hunched like a old monk to keep it covering his face. Karp took a couple of steps, grabbed his son by the shoulder, and tipped the hood back, revealing a magnificent shiner.

  "You're such a rat, Zik," snarled the malefactor.

  "Oh, what were you going to say?" Giancarlo responded. "You walked into a doorknob? You know the school's going to call."

  This was true, and it would not be the first time. The kid got into fights. The parent-advice columns were unanimous that this was not a good thing. Karp himself had not been much of a fighter beyond the usual school-yard scuffles and arguments around games. He was now at something of a loss. As he recalled, his own father had never been involved in any disciplining of Karp and his brothers. And certainly he had never met a school bus. Raising the kids was Mom's job. Karp had on this occasion been obliged to cancel a late meeting, one of those affairs that he had arranged and which would take a week and any number of personal calls to reschedule. Marlene did not have to cancel any of her meetings. Marlene was making more money than he did now, by a little. Was that the reason? But he had the more significant career, they both agreed about that, so why wasn't he getting cut some slack there? He loved his family, but still… And did he, in fact, have a career? He wasn't DA. He wasn't going to be DA. A couple of years ago he had been DA in all but name, but now there was Norton Fuller snapping at his heels. Fuller was nearly ten years younger and unencumbered by wife and three. Norton was at his desk right this minute, or maneuvering or conniving or cranking out paper, and would be in there long after dark, just as Karp used to. Norton wasn't halfway down the dreaded mommy-track, sitting in a gritty Original Ray's settling an argument about pizza toppings. Down in Karp's subbasement, the Wounded Patriarchy shook off its uneasy sleep and rattled its chains. If you had married someone normal, the beast whispered, someone regular, you wouldn't have this problem. No one else has this problem. You would have normal children…