"Hardly. Have you thought any more about what I said?"
"Some," said Karp. "But I think it's sort of moot at this point. I've just about made up my mind to quit."
"Quit?" said Harrison in a tone of astonishment. "You can't quit now. Why are you talking about quitting?"
"Um, for some reason I have a hard time getting people to understand this, but I have no money. I haven't been paid. The prospect of my being paid remains dim. And when I say I have no money, I don't mean that I can't afford to lunch at the Palm this week. I mean I can't buy the necessities of life for my family. I have a few pathetic CDs which I am going to have to cash in early to keep us alive in New York while I look for a job."
"You're serious? That's the hang-up? You're that broke?"
"Oh, yes," said Karp, wondering where this was leading.
"No problem, then. Good, very good. I'll be speaking with you later."
He hung up, leaving Karp with the uncomfortable sensation that a deal had been closed, in which he himself was a fungible commodity.
"I need a car," said Marlene, shaking off her raincoat in the Dobbs kitchen. To journey from Federal Gardens to McLean, not a burden when the weather was fair and warm, was a serious trial now that the fall nastiness had set in with damp vigor.
This complaint had been voiced with increasing frequency. Maggie looked sympathetic and said, "Why don't you buy one, then?"
Marlene shot her an uncharitable glance. "With what for money? And no, I don't want to borrow from you either. The problem is that transit authorities understand that the only people likely to be traveling from Lower Arlington to McLean in the morning are domestic servants, so who gives a shit if they're waiting for hours and slogging through the freezing rain. Keeps them from getting uppity."
"Stop it!" laughed Maggie, and then more thoughtfully, "You could probably get the Mollens' car pretty cheap."
"Who're the Mollens?"
"They live down the street. It's a VW and he's a Member from Milwaukee." Seeing Marlene's incomprehension, she added, "They make auto parts in Milwaukee. Can't have a foreign car anymore. They're hot to get rid of it and it's a darling car. Yellow, one of the kind with a square back."
"A D Variant," said Marlene. "What do they want for it?"
"I could call Sheila and find out," said Maggie helpfully, going for the phone.
The call did not encourage. "Twelve hundred!" Marlene said. "That's about eleven hundred more than we have in our checking account. Oh, well, fuck it anyway! We were going to go into town today, right?"
So they were and so they did. The children were left with Gloria, and Marlene and Maggie climbed into the deliciously warm and mighty Mercury wagon and headed for the GW Parkway.
They went first to the East Wing of the National Gallery, where Marlene had never been before, and cooed or snarled appropriately at the various treasures, and had lunch in the restaurant there, next to the little waterfall, and then went out onto the sodden and dripping Mall and hailed a cab to take them downtown for some shopping.
Actually, Maggie shopped; Marlene only advised and by dint of sincere argument, delivered with a passion she had not required since last she stood in a courtroom, kept her friend from making the sort of egregious mistakes that had left her with a bale of pricey but useless garments. Marlene found she enjoyed this vicarious shopping. There was no guilt involved, for one thing, and there was the Pygmalion-thrill of reshaping someone who had unlimited money and zero fashion sense.
They spent nearly four hours at it, ending up at Woodies on F Street, and at last, having had most of the packages shipped, and having spent enough to buy two used Volkswagens, the two women emerged, exhausted, onto the crowded streets.
The weather had improved in those hours. The front that had brought chilling rain for the past week had apparently moved away east. The air was clear and fresh, if chilly, and blue sky was trying to pop out between masses of swiftly moving, ragged clouds. They decided to walk east on G Street to Ninth and catch a southbound cab back to the National Gallery, where they had left the Mercury.
"Feeling depressed?" asked Marlene, noting Maggie's glum expression.
"Yes, it's like postpartum psychosis. A huge mass of money has moved out of my account and all there is in exchange is a bunch of new clothes, which I will have to wear, after which they will have been worn. It seems so futile."
"Gosh, I thought we were having fun."
"Oh, yeah, I didn't mean… I don't know what I mean! I guess I just need a kind of fun that doesn't involve spending money. If there is any of that kind left." She halted and turned to face Marlene. "I'm just another discontented rich Washington matron, aren't I? The truth-am I pathetic?"
"Oh, don't start!" said Marlene, grabbing her arm and hustling her along the street. "You just need something to jazz you up a little. There's no risk in your life, is the problem." They were at the corner of Ninth. The sides of the streets were occupied by street vendors selling a variety of cheap articles-hats and scarves, African trinkets, knockoffs of expensive handbags, umbrellas. Marlene looked up the street and spotted the decorative lanterns that marked the precincts of Washington's small Chinatown. She clutched Maggie's arm. "Dim sum! I could kill for a dozen dim sum."
"Do we have time?" asked Maggie nervously.
"No, if we're not back on the dot, Gloria'll ditch the kids and go back to El Salvador, but who cares? It's just what you need; we'll probably be poisoned and then you can stop sweating the small shit like you do and worry about something important, like your liver rotting out. Let's go!"
They headed north on Ninth. At about the center of the block, a crowd of about a dozen people had gathered. They were representative of that quite large proportion of the citizens of Washington, D.C., who are neither tourists nor officials; nearly all of them were black, Latino, or Asian. Marlene felt a rush of nostalgia for grubby New York and pushed forward to see what they were looking at.
"It's three-card monte," she told Maggie in a low voice. The monte man was a heavily built, swarthy Latino with a spade beard and a black leather coat and cap. At the table, betting, were a huge black construction worker with a yellow hard hat worn backward and multiple dusty sweatshirts, a smaller construction worker, similarly attired, and a thin, ocher-colored man in a greasy black raincoat with a jerky manner and an avid look in his eye. This last was doing most of the betting, crumpled fives and ones thrust decisively down beneath a flat and heavy piece of metal on the army blanket that covered the tabletop. He won more often than he lost, cackling each time he found the ace of spades among the two red aces. The construction workers were betting too, but not winning nearly as often.
"The point is to pick the black ace after he does his shuffle. The little guy in the raincoat is the shill," Marlene informed Maggie in the same low voice. "He's winning most of his bets. The other guys are getting skinned."
Marlene turned her attention to the monte man. As she suspected, he was using the standard monte hand switch. After each round he did a show, holding the diamond ace and the spade ace faceup in one hand, widely separated, and the heart ace faceup in the other. Then he'd throw them down with an exaggerated motion, so that everyone could see he was throwing diamond, spade, heart, and then he'd move the cards around a few times, to "confuse" the suckers, take bets, and do the reveal.
Of course, the "confusing" maneuvers on the table that attracted the closest attention from the bettors were entirely irrelevant, because on the initial throw-down, the monte man had switched the diamond and the spade in his hand with a lightning motion of his fingers. If you knew where to look, and Marlene did, you could spot it every time, despite the distracting motion of the other hand, the one with the ace of hearts.
Now the big construction worker uttered a cry of dismay and a curse. He'd been worked up via a few two-dollar wins to risk a twenty-dollar bet, and he'd just lost it. The hustler scooped up the bills and wrapped them ostentatiously around a thick roll of cash he pulled from his poc
ket. "Who wants it, who wants it?" he cried. "Double you money if you pick the black ace, double you money, les go, les go!"
"Marlene?" said Maggie, "I, um, thought you wanted to get some Chinese food."
"Yeah, but I just had an idea," Marlene replied, steering Maggie out of the crowd. "I can beat this guy."
"What do you mean? I thought it was fixed."
"It is fixed. That's the point. I know how he fixes it. The problem is, how to pull it off without getting our throats cut…"
"My God, you're serious!"
"You betcha. I'm tired of riding the bus. Oh, hey mister!"
This was addressed to the larger of the two construction men, who were pushing their way out of the crowd. Marlene got up close to him and flashed a smile. "Look, um, I got a way you can get your money back. Interested?"
The big man looked doubtful. "Yeah, how'm I gonna do that?"
"Me and my partner here are gonna take that sucker off. When we do, they're gonna try to come after us. I need a couple of blocking backs to slow them down for a couple of minutes. What'd you blow, around fifty? Yeah? Okay, it's worth that, plus fifty on top."
"A hundred each?" A suspicious look. Two suburban white ladies were going to take off a fairly heavy street dude? "We don't got to give you any money before we get our hunnerd do we?"
"No, man, it's a straight-up deal. Cash in hand up front. All you got to do is stand there and be big when they make their move."
Maggie was standing there listening to this with her mouth half-open. It opened all the way when Marlene said to her, casually, "I need twelve hundred dollars. Do you have a bank nearby where you can get it?"
"Um… sure, I mean, I can get it on my Visa. Across the street. But, Marlene…"
"No buts," snapped Marlene. "Make it twenty ones, twenty tens and the rest in fifties and hundreds. Hurry!"
Maggie scooted off without another word, and Marlene returned to the table to watch the action. Ten minutes passed; Marlene was starting to get nervous; the cops would have to come by soon to break up the scam. Then she spied Maggie, looking flushed and wild-eyed, trotting across the street.
Marlene took a fat bank envelope from her and whispered, "Just stand right here and don't say a word. When I signal, run out on Ninth and get a cab and have it waiting on the corner at G Street. Can you do that?" Maggie nodded, her eyes wide and frightened.
Now Marlene slipped the promised money to her two blockers, told them to stay close on either side of her, and then moved right next to the shill at the table. She asked the monte man shyly, "Can I play?"
Big smile, gold glinting. "Why, sure you can, sugar, just takes two little dollars, get four if you win."
Marlene laid her money down and picked a red card. She gave a little shriek of dismay and quickly placed another deuce on the blanket. When she had lost about twenty dollars in this way, growing more and more agitated, she cried, "Oh, God, my husband will kill me. Can I, um, bet higher, like ten? Do I still get double if I win?"
The monte man's smile was dazzling. "Sure, honey, it's the same, ten dolla, fifty dolla, hundred dolla, what you want." Marlene bet ten, and as she expected, the man left out the switch and she won. She gave a cry of delight, and the monte man said, "See what I mean, everybody got a chance to win." The shill came in on the next round, and "lost" ten, as did Marlene and a heavyset black woman with thick glasses. Marlene lost four more tens; the black woman dropped out after three rounds. Marlene reached into her bag and pulled out a fifty. "Oh, Lord, I just knew it was the right card! Please, mister, give me a chance to get even?"
She felt the crowd getting thicker around her, as if the people on the street could smell the presence of serious money. The monte man graciously allowed her to risk a fifty. She placed a bill under the bar, the monte man covered it with his own bills and went into his deal. Marlene lost, and a sigh went through the crowd. Marlene cried out and danced around in a circle in what seemed to be frustration, during which she signaled Maggie to get the cab.
"A hundred, a hundred!" yelled Marlene, waving currency. The monte man's eyes were getting wide now, and he snapped a look nervously over his shoulder. It'd be just his luck for the jakes to come along now before he could take this bitch's whole paycheck. He slapped four fifties under the bar and did his deal. He was automatically reaching for his winnings, when the crowd cheered and he looked down at the ace of spades showing in Marlene's hand.
"I won, I won!" shouted Marlene, jumping up and down like a six-year-old.
The monte man didn't change expression. It happened sometimes. The suckers made a mistake and picked the right card instead of the "right" card. He'd just have to shift them a little slower on the table.
Marlene went back to losing tens to kill some time, until she saw a D.C. cab pull up at the corner and wait. Then she went back to fifties, lost twice and won once. She pulled her stack of bills from the bank envelope and ostentatiously thumbed through them, arranging the denominations. She needed his greed pumped up to the max or this scam wouldn't work.
The monte man wasn't smiling much anymore. He let the shill play a round and win, and then it happened just as Marlene had hoped. In moving to collect his money the shill stumbled and tipped the table over. The cards fluttered to the ground and the monte man and the shill both knelt to pick them up. The shill got up first with the black ace in his hand, and Marlene saw him crimp one of its corners before he placed it on the blanket, just as she was meant to.
The shill then had a run of success, building his bets up to hundreds, always picking the crimped card, which the poor monte man somehow failed to notice. Marlene won a hundred dollars too, picking the crimped card. The monte man made jokes about how he must be losing it today. Marlene tried to put a look of greedy cunning on her own face and asked, "Ah, how much can I bet?"
"Anything you want, sugar," was the casual answer.
"Okay," said Marlene, "I bet eight hundred." A gasp and murmur from the crowd. She placed her wad under the bar and the monte man counted out sixteen hundred and added it to the stack.
He picked up the three cards, showed them, did a little shuffle as if nervous, showed them again, the black ace partly covering the heart in one hand, the diamond alone in the other. Marlene knew that in that little shuffle the monte man had smoothed the crimp in the black ace and made an identical crimp in the corner of the diamond, concealing it with the ball of his index finger. As he snapped the cards down he also rotated the spade so that the formerly crimped edge faced his way and not toward Marlene. What appeared on the table was two uncrimped cards and one crimped one, just as in the last half dozen rounds, except that now the crimped ace was the diamond.
Marlene poised her hand over the false winner and then in a single darting motion, flipped over the black ace, scooped up the stack of bills, and darted between the two construction men. The monte man shouted in rage, knocked the flimsy table aside, and made to chase Marlene down. An arm like a log held him back. "Where you goin', man?" asked the big construction worker. "We want to play some more."
The monte man yelled, "Fuckin' bitch got my money!"
"Ain't your money no more, man, she beat you," replied the big man reasonably, and the crowd murmured assent.
"Hijo de puta!" screamed the monte man, and reached into his back pocket, bringing out, with the same practiced snap he used with the cards, an eight-inch butterfly knife. The big man backed quickly away a few steps. The crowd opened up like a flower, amid shouts and screams. The smaller construction man picked up the steel weight from the monte table and, coming in on the blind side, swiped its owner across the temple. Blood gushed, the monte man staggered but stayed on his feet. With wild swings of his blade he cleared a path and took off at a clumsy run down Ninth, toward the spot where his quarry was just entering a cab.
Marlene threw herself breathlessly into the seat next to Maggie and looked out the back window. She saw the monte man break out of the crowd and come running toward them, screaming imprecations i
n Spanish, waving his blade and spraying blood. Marlene pressed down the door locks on both sides and shouted, "Move this cab!"
The monte man had reached them. Maggie looked out the side window and saw a bloodstained, shrieking face pressed up against the glass. She saw the waving knife, and then the man's fist crashed against the window.
Marlene dangled a twenty-dollar bill in front of the driver's face. "Come on, beat the light. Do it!"
The driver, lately of Cairo and its fabled Darwinian traffic system, had no trouble with this request, and might even have done it gratis. He hit the gas, darted into the intersection, through which the G Street traffic had already started to move, grazed a panel truck, provoked a chorus of horns, caused a Mercedes to swerve and slam into a gray government car, and got through to clear pavement.
Maggie was white and shaking. There was a smeary bloodstain on her window. She stared at Marlene, who was calmly counting the take. Marlene looked up and grinned.
"Having fun yet?" she asked.
At five-thirty, Bea Sondergard walked into Karp's office wearing a toothy grin. Such grins had been in short supply lately, and Karp returned it.
"Ta-daaaaah!" sang Sondergard, and flipped a thin brown window envelope onto Karp's desk.
"It can't be!" said Karp, picking it up.
"It is! It's a miracle. I've alerted the Pope."
Karp opened the envelope and read the amount on the green Treasury check within. "What happened?" he asked.
Sondergard shrugged. "Search me, Jack. About three-thirty the guy from the CG took a call and they packed up and left. A half hour ago a messenger arrived with these checks. I made some calls, but nobody could tell me what was going on. Basically, they just cleared our budget, pay, admin, travel, the whole nine yards. The word is, it came direct from Flores. In any case, we're in business!"
When Bea left, Karp called Hank Dobbs's office and was told he had gone home. He called the Dobbs home.
When the congressman came on the line, Karp said, "I like the way you work. Our budget came through just now. We have checks."
Corruption of Blood kac-7 Page 24
