Karp noticed how Denton and Torrisi turned to look at Kipman. Aha, he thought, et tu Brute, a plot!
Kipman looked at him and quickly up at the ceiling. "Ahem, well, Butch," he said, reaching up to adjust the half-moon reading glasses on his nose. "Apparently, you can. We…um, I, did a little research and, um, apparently the governor has the authority to appoint you as special counsel in this matter. It seems that because you were appointed by him to replace Keegan, rather than elected, he can also appoint you as special counsel on this case. Officially, as the interim DA, you are working at his pleasure, not the electorate's."
Karp couldn't help but be amused by Kipman's unusual discomfiture. "So Harry," he rubbed it in, "apparently you've been plotting behind my back? I thought you said you didn't know what this was about?"
Kipman swallowed hard, his Ichabod-like Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, but he nodded and adjusted his glasses again. "Well, um, technically what I said was that I got a call from the mayor who said you would be present and that he wanted to talk to us, which was the truth. But ah, yes, I've had a previous conversation or two with Mr. Denton and Mr. Torrisi and, um, it's a no-brainer that you are the best man for this job, and they enlisted me in their, um, well, I guess you could call it a plot."
Denton chuckled. "Don't blame him, Butch. I've known Harry for a long time and knew that if there was some legal way to do this, he'd know about it or could find it. I approached him and asked him to look into this possibility because I knew you might not believe me or Dick. But I also swore him to secrecy until you and I could get together without the press being around to wonder what the DA and mayor-elect were discussing with one of the former detectives involved in this case."
The room fell quiet again. Karp gazed up at the ceiling; Torrisi stood near the window looking at the gray day outside; Denton kept his eyes on Karp; Kipman stared at his fingernails again. At last Karp sat up, but he shook his head. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't think you need me, and my job is prosecuting criminals for the people of New York City."
Torrisi started to say something, but Denton held up a hand to silence him. "Look, do me a favor, read the evidence, then make up your mind. If you still feel you can walk away from this, then no hard feelings, we'll get someone else."
With the other three men looking at him like dogs waiting for someone to throw a stick, Karp exhaled. "Okay, I'll take a look and let you know. I doubt I'll change my mind, but maybe I'll be able to help you or whoever you find with the strategy."
The meeting ended with a round of handshaking. A few minutes later, Karp was walking north on Centre Street when a Yellow Cab pulled up on the other side of the street and a tall, blond woman hopped out. She waved as she ran across the nearly deserted street toward him. "Hiya, Butch, imagine finding you here. Heard you just came from City Hall. Imagine that…and on a Sunday…and my sources tell me the mayor-to-be and a couple of other interesting folks were there, too."
If Karp could have run away with any chance of success, he might have started sprinting. But he knew Ariadne Stupenagel would just have followed him all the way home.
Loud, brassy, obnoxious, and persistent as lice, Stupenagel wasn't the worst journalist he'd ever met; in fact, if put on the rack or jabbed with a red-hot poker, he might even have admitted that she was pretty damn accurate and fair in her reporting. He also knew she was fearless and indefatigable in her pursuit of a story.
That past summer and fall, she'd done a series of four stories for the Village Voice based on what was supposed to be the rather ordinary life of a district attorney. While she did a good job on it, she was still one of them. The media. The ink-stained, hollow-eyed wretches who lied and misinformed depending on what was in it for them. She'd even managed to seduce his aide-de-camp, Gilbert Murrow, which made him nervous as all hell about their pillow talk.
"Hello, Stupe," he said with the least enthusiasm he could manage. He knew she wouldn't take the hint, but he wanted to let her know that he wasn't pleased about being spied on.
Ariadne fell into step beside him. "So want to tell me what's up between you and hizzoner-to-be?"
"Nope."
"Oh, then that was an admission that you met with Mr. Denton?"
"Nope."
"You're not going to tell me much of anything, are you?"
"Nope."
They'd reached the entranceway to 100 Centre Street, and Karp pulled up and faced the reporter. Stupenagel had her usual irritating "I know more than you think I know" smirk on her face, but he wasn't giving in.
"Sorry, Ariadne, you're going to have to go find some other mouse to torment today. This is where we part ways. I'm going inside."
Ariadne looked hurt. "That's cold, Karp. I thought we had a great working relationship and here you're not even going to invite a girl in to get warm."
"Nope," he replied, and walked up the steps where a security guard held open the door for him.
"You know I'll find out," she yelled before the door closed, but he didn't turn around.
Karp smiled. She probably will, he thought. Doesn't matter, I won't be getting involved in this. He took the elevator up to his eighth-floor office and let himself in. Flicking on the light, he pulled up short.
In the middle of the outer office was a mountain of boxes all marked in black Magic Marker "People v. Jayshon Sykes et al."
He sighed. Why is it everybody seems to know me better than I know myself? Well, I don't want to leave these here for the secretary to find in the morning. The newspapers and television stations would have a field day if word got out.
An hour later, he'd carried all the boxes into his inner office and stacked them in a corner with the telltale lettering against the wall where it couldn't be read easily. But he didn't open them. Instead, he put his coat back on, tugged the Cossack hat around his ears, and left the building. As he headed north toward home, the wind pushed him along, adding to the feeling that he was being swept along in a current he couldn't see or control.
4
Marlene dabbed halfheartedly with her paintbrush at the canvas on her easel. She couldn't quite get the dark green-gray ocean around the pier right, though she was reasonably satisfied with how she'd roughed in the Coney Island Ferris wheel in the foreground of the painting.
The day had fortunately warmed up quite a bit since the morning, but the sun was weakening and clouds were moving in; she was still starting to feel the cold seep beneath her parka as she stood on the boardwalk. A little hot tea would hit the spot, she thought, recalling the Russian teahouse she'd seen when she arrived in Brighton Beach a quarter mile or so down the boardwalk from where she had set up her easel.
She was working on her latest assignment in the painting course that she was taking through New York University. "A landscape," the professor had demanded, "only I want you to work objects into the foreground to get better acquainted with depth of field." Hence the Ferris wheel…and she planned to insert a beachcomber between it and the distant pier. It was really too cold to be painting; she kept the tubes of acrylic paints in a shirt pocket inside her parka but could put only a dab on her palette at a time or it would stiffen too much to use.
Marlene didn't really know why she'd chosen this location. Probably because of the discussion she'd had with her husband that morning about the rape case. But she'd also needed to take her mind off her visit to her parents' house that morning and she didn't want to go home.
Her parents still lived in the same house in Queens where she and her five siblings had been raised for most of their lives. It was a modest four-bedroom, three-story (including the basement) brick that epitomized the postwar era in which it was built-solid, family oriented, a celebration of middle-class values. There was a small backyard where her father had erected a metal swing set, taking inordinate pride in how he'd used Folger's coffee cans filled with cement to anchor the legs. It was still there-although rusted and unusable, her father had never been able to bring himself to take it down.
/> All of her life her parents had tended to their home and yard as proof of a good life well spent. But lately she'd noticed the signs of neglect: peeling paint inside and out that her father would never have allowed in bygone days; dirty windows; and little things that didn't work, like doorknobs. The gardens that her mother would have in the past carefully cleared of detritus and turned with fresh compost in preparation for the next spring were filled with the golden-brown husks of weeds, leaves, and bits of paper and other trash left by the passing wind.
When she entered the house, she found her father panicked as he trotted around, looking beneath couch cushions and under furniture. "My car keys," he said, his voice choking with tears, "I can't find them. Help me find them, Marlene."
"What's the rush, Pops? What's the matter?" Marlene asked, unsettled by the wild look in her father's eyes and the tears that rolled down his cheeks.
"Your mother, she's gone," he shouted. "I think she wandered off again…and in this cold she'll freeze to death." He overturned another cushion, and not finding his keys, began to sob.
Marlene moved quickly across the room and put her arms around him. "It's okay, Pops," she said. "When was the last time you saw her?"
Although she was determined to remain calm for her father's sake, there was some cause for alarm. Her mother suffered from Alzheimer's, and of late she'd taken to leaving the house-ostensibly to visit a neighbor or check on her gardens-but once outside she'd forget where she was going and then where she'd come from. She'd just wander off and was not always properly clad for the weather, which on a day like that one could be dangerous for an eighty-four-year-old woman.
"Maybe an hour ago," her father said. "I went back to our bedroom to take a little nap… I'm so tired, so tired…she keeps me awake, you know, just gets up out of bed and wanders around the house. I just wanted a little nap. But when I woke up she was gone. Mary, Mother of God, please help me find my keys."
Marlene grabbed her father's hands and forced him to look into her eyes. "Pops, look at me…have you looked everywhere in the house?" Once they'd found her mother curled up in a ball in the linen closet; she said she'd just been looking for someplace safe from a mysterious "them" who were watching her.
Her father nodded. "I've looked everywhere…everywhere." But the pressure of Marlene's hands had the desired effect of helping him calm down. He brightened. "Except the basement," he said. "She hasn't gone down into the basement in years, but maybe…would you check the basement for me?"
Marlene gently guided her father to his favorite chair and told him to stay put. She then went to the doorway leading down into the basement. As a child she'd been afraid to go down into the musky, dark, damp basement, which was more of a root cellar. She was sure that if she walked down the wooden steps, something would reach through and grab her ankles…and that would be that, she'd disappear, never to be heard from again. The recollection sent a chill down her spine.
Get over it, Ciampi, she scolded herself. No monsters were down there, at least not the type that carried off little girls. A monster was carrying off her mother, but it was not dangerous to Marlene. She stood at the top of the stairs and, listening carefully, thought she heard some sort of furtive sounds coming from below. Putting aside childhood fears, she walked down the stairs.
A below-garden window allowed in a diffused light; there was no other illumination. But Marlene could see the back of a tiny, gray-haired woman facing a wooden workbench in the corner.
"Mom?"
The woman turned and when she saw Marlene, she smiled and asked in her slightly accented English, "Josephine? Is that you?"
Marlene moved closer, although she knew the misidentification had more to do with the Alzheimer's than the lighting. "No, Mom, it's Marlene, your youngest daughter. Josephine was your oldest."
The old woman's face took on a confused look. "Marlene? I don't have a daughter named Marlene…or do I?"
Marlene suddenly found herself struggling against tears. "Yes, Mom, me. Marlene. Your youngest. What are you doing down here? You had Dad worried. He thinks that you wandered off again."
"Nonsense," her mother said with a cheerful laugh. "I'm just down here canning peaches. Would you like to help?"
Marlene walked over to her mother and looked at the bench. In years gone by, she had happily assisted her mother in canning peaches and snap peas, as well as putting away jars of olives. All she saw now were dusty old mason jars and rusted lids, but no peaches or paraffin. Her mother's birdlike hands, however, fluttered away with invisible ingredients. "Remember when you were a little girl and we would can peaches, and you would sing to me the songs you'd learned in school?"
"Yes, Momma, I remember," Marlene said. She had seen a lot of cruelty in the world, but she had never known anything as cruel as Alzheimer's. Bit by bit it took the human being-the wife, the lover, the mother, and friend-who had occupied the body and left some replacement, like one of those body-snatcher science fiction movies.
As a result, a marriage that had been as solid as the rock beneath Manhattan and remained warm and loving through sixty-five years was crumbling before Marlene's horrified eyes.
She would never have thought it possible. Her father, Mariano Ciampi, and mother, Concetta Scoglio, met in the main hall on Ellis Island in 1936, both just off the ships that brought them from an Italy that was plunging headlong into fascism and war. He was twenty, she was seventeen, and it was love at first sight. However, her parents had hustled her away from the barbarian who hailed from Sicily, "that land of gangsters and sheepherders," pointing out to the protesting girl that she came from Florence, a civilized city. Oil and water, her parents said, but the young couple managed to stay in touch, and six months later-under threat of elopement-her parents gave them permission to wed.
Mariano had found work at a fruit and vegetable store in Washington Heights, delivering orders and eventually running the store for the owner. His benefits included getting to take home all the bruised fruit he and Concetta could eat, as well as free rent in the tiny flat above the store. They'd scrimped and saved and eventually he bought the store from the owner. Over the years he had purchased other fruit and vegetable markets from Washington Heights to Little Italy and the Village.
The only interruption in their upward mobility was when Mariano volunteered for the army, feeling it was his duty to fight for his adopted country. He'd been wounded at Anzio and honorably discharged, returning home quietly with a Purple Heart and a piece of a German grenade still in his shoulder, ready to resume building his fruit and vegetable empire, which Concetta had proved adept at running in his absence.
In the first four years of marriage, before he shipped out, he and Concetta had produced three babies-one of whom, Frankie, had died at age three of a childhood illness. The war had briefly interrupted the production line, but by the time Marlene was born in 1948 (something of a surprise to all involved) she was the sixth (living) child.
When they moved to the house in Queens, Mariano and Concetta handled the prejudices of the predominantly Anglo population-the snide remarks about being "connected" to the Mafia, the wop jokes, and comments about "dirty Italians"-with grace and dignity that eventually won the respect of even their most acrimonious neighbors.
Naturalized as citizens, they'd emphasized the importance of good citizenship and education to all of their children. Instead of vacations, new cars, and a bigger house, they'd put their discretionary income toward sending their children to the best parochial schools and colleges.
Marlene thought her parents had the most perfect marriage of any she had ever encountered. Yes, Mariano and Concetta could fight like bantam roosters. Her mother was no wallflower or shy, mail-order bride from the old country. She wasn't afraid to speak her mind, and if Mariano stepped out of line, he was bound to hear about it. But their love was just as passionate, and the rhythmic squeaking of their old bed echoing throughout the house at night was as reassuring to Marlene and her siblings as family dinners.
She'd even caught them making out in their bedroom at their sixtieth anniversary party, having escaped the well-wishers and family members. "Your father, he still turns me on." Her mother had shrugged at Marlene's teasing. Just a few years later, that woman was disappearing like a lost ship into fog banks, and for the first time in Marlene's life, her father spoke of her mother in words other than adoration.
It was especially tough on Marlene as she was the only child in easy commuting distance. Two other siblings had died-Lieutenant Angelo Ciampi in Vietnam during the Tet offensive of 1968, and Josephine, a chain-smoker, of lung cancer in 1986. The others were scattered about the country, none closer than a day's drive. So it had been left to Marlene, the baby of the family, to shepherd their aging parents through what were supposed to be their golden years.
Standing at the workbench, Marlene's mother leaned toward her and spoke in a conspirator's low voice. "You know, the man upstairs, he isn't really your father. Your father was never bossy like that one. That one keeps telling me what I can and can't do." She sighed. "I don't know what they did with dear Mario, but that's not him."
"Who is 'they,' Mom?" Marlene asked. When there was no answer, she continued, "Mom, that really is Pops. He's just tired, and you really should let him know where you are. He worries when he can't find you." It's you who's lost, Mom, she thought. Come back, Mom, please. "Let's go upstairs and make Pop some breakfast."
"Good idea, we'll take him some peach preserves," Concetta said, grabbing a cracked and empty jar. "He always loved my peach preserves."
Marlene whipped up a breakfast of eggs and Italian sausage and tried just as hard to whip up a festive "everything's normal" conversation, talking about the twins and Lucy and Butch's campaign. But there was little if any response, and eventually she stopped trying and they ate in silence, until Concetta looked up and asked Mariano if he'd liked the peaches.
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