“Very simple, Mr. Doone. I said that to impress you. You don’t think I’m reliable. I’m white and soft. Well, I’m not soft. Let me put it this way. If I put my life on the line, will you go for a deal?”
Doone narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “Wha’ you gon do, nuh?”
In answer Marlene reached out and picked up the .38. She was aware of hurried movement and excited voices behind her, and footsteps, and clicking sounds that she knew to be weapons cocking, weapons pointed at her.
John Doone raised his hand in an arresting gesture. The noises stopped. She said, “May I?” and, carefully not pointing the gun at Doone, pressed on the cylinder release. The cylinder fell open and she worked the ejector rod, dumping six fat hollow-point bullets out on the desk.
She lined them up like toy soldiers and selected one. It disappeared into the cylinder and she snapped the gun closed. She looked into Doone’s eyes as she spun the cylinder three times. The ratchet noise it made was the only sound in the room, besides the constant dulled beat of the reggae. She continued to look into his eyes as she raised the pistol to her temple and squeezed the trigger.
The revolver said, “Click,” and the room sighed with the mass release of breath.
She broke the gun again and placed it on the desk. The single cartridge was in the next chamber to fire. “Looks like my lucky day, Mr. Doone,” said Marlene. John Doone threw back his head and laughed until the tears flowed.
Marlene waited until she was out of the house before allowing herself the luxury of a tremble. Her steps down the entrance path were unsteady, and the cold breeze dried the sweat on her brow. She found the Walking Booger sitting on the curb in front of the house. He had found a Kentucky Fried Chicken box in the trash and was eating the scraps, crunching up the bones like a dog and licking his fingers, as advertised.
“Booger,” said Marlene, “I believe I have set a new Olympic record for free-style stupidity, but I pulled it off. You should’ve been there. It was like Vegas. Now you see it, now you don’t.”
“Ngorn ’on mang.”
“Good point,” said Marlene cheerfully. “Now we have to find a phone so we can call Poco. Come on. You can take your lunch.”
The giant rose from the curb and stuck the chicken box into his mail sack. At the corner, Marlene found a heavily barred convenience store manned by two suspicious Pakistanis, a store that held a working pay phone. She called Poco’s service and gave him the pickup address, and then went out to loiter under a large, elaborately graffitied NO LOITERING sign.
They waited twenty minutes, during which time the Walking Booger rummaged happily in a dumpster and nobody bothered Marlene. When Poco arrived, she noted that he had at least a dozen fiber deodorizers shaped like little pine trees hung on every available purchase of his cab. A valiant effort, although the Booger’s pong would have challenged the Snoqualmie National Forest. Within the steamy interior, therefore, a faint pine scent fought a losing battle with dead dog (the base note of the Booger’s fragrance) and was totally overwhelmed when the street person climbed in again.
“Holy shit, Marlene,” he complained, “I gonna have to steam-clean the whole car.” Marlene calmed him with kind words and folding money and they set off. At Fulton and St. James, Poco hung an unexpected right, instead of heading straight for Flatbush Avenue and the Manhattan Bridge approaches, and weaved through the streets around Pratt Institute before returning to De Kalb going west. His eyes met Marlene’s in the rearview and they were worried.
“Hey, Marlene, you know a coupla white guys drive a late-model Chevy, one of them smokes cigars?”
Marlene fought down a stab of fear. “Um, why do you ask?”
“Because they been followin’ us, man.”
“What? Are you sure?” asked Marlene, resisting the impulse to look over her shoulder.
“Yeah, they been on our tail since Fulton. They don’ seem to mind if we seen ’em either, you know. Wan’ me to try an’ lose ’em?”
“No, just get us back home as quick as you can.”
This was jarring. And confusing. Two men in a car had been following Francine. Marlene also recalled her last meeting with Bello and his description of the two putative arsonists. She wracked her brains but could come up with no rational explanation for why two Philadelphia torches, if her pursuers were indeed them, should be following her around. If the followers were also Francine’s persecutors, then … something clicked. Francine had seen the fires set. Arson murder. It was the only plausible explanation.
Back at Crosby Street, she paid off both Poco and the Walking Booger and stumped slowly up the stairs, cursing her bulk. When she reached the loft, she called Bello at the hospital, but the nurse there said he was in group therapy. Marlene tried to imagine Bello spilling his guts, his secrets, to a bunch of strangers. She left a message, hung up, and flopped on the red sofa, where she fell into a profound sleep.
From which she was awakened by a kiss.
“Butch! You’re home!”
“That, or you’re having a particularly intense sexual fantasy,” he said.
She struggled to a sitting position and rubbed her face vigorously. “Blaagh! What time is it?”
“A little after seven.”
“My God! I just collapsed.” Then, turning to him, “That was a nice wake-up. I missed you. Mmm, what a day!”
“You’re still in one piece, anyway. I checked the dumpster next door before I came up.”
“Oh, that! He’s just a big teddy bear. No problem. He’s going to let me talk to Leona when she gets back. He’s keeping her on ice somewhere.”
“Oh, yeah? And how did you convince him to do that?”
“The truth? You can take it, without having a paranoid shitfit?”
Karp gritted his teeth, squinted and clenched his fists, in a caricature of a man about to be shot from a cannon. “OK, hit me!” he said in a strained voice.
“I pretended to shoot myself in the head.”
Karp looked at her to see if she was kidding, and determined that she was serious. “Oh. Well, that’s always a convincer. What do you mean, shoot yourself, Marlene?”
“I set up a Russian roulette with a pistol he had, but I palmed the cartridge. Worked like a charm. The fans went wild.”
Karp leaned back against the cushion and let out a long sigh. After a minute’s silence she said, “You’re mad at me, but honest to God, he was going to kick my ass out of there. It was the only thing I could think of to do that would convince him I wasn’t just another candy-ass college grad. You understand? Butch? Talk to me …”
He sighed again and his voice, when it came, was cracked, despite the effort he was making to control it. He said, “I’m not … I understand that it’s something that I’m going to have to get used to. You’re not going to change. Hell, if you carry on like this when you’re eight months pregnant … anyway, it’s real hard for me. It’s like being blindsided, catching an elbow in the guts.” He spread his hands helplessly and she saw, with no little shock, that his eyes were soft with tears.
He shrugged. His head nodded as if he had reached a decision. “I guess I’ll get used to it.”
He sounded and looked so woebegone that Marlene had to suppress an urge to throw her arms around him and promise to reform her ways, and forever after cross with the green and not in between. This would, however, have been a lie, and Karp would have known it. He would have to get used to it. She felt odd—both frightened and exhilarated, as if she had left a small, stuffy room filled with women and had entered an enormous room occupied only by Mr. Death.
It also, paradoxically, made her feel intensely domestic. “You must be hungry,” she said, rising. He nodded and let his tongue loll comically.
She gave him a squeeze and then stumped over to the refrigerator. “I got fresh linguini and I have some sausage sauce left over from Harry—”
“Left over from Harry?”
“Yeah, I had him over, the poor bastard. Before he went on a binge. What’s t
hat look for?”
“Hey, what do I know? You’re queer for cops? First Raney, now Bello. Fine, but if one day I’m taking a leak in a station house and somebody’s got ‘For a good time, call Marlene’ written up there, I just want you to know, I’m gonna be pissed off.”
“That’s fair,” she said cheerfully, glad that he was joking. You had to give it to Butch, she reflected: he bounced back.
“OK, dinner. Linguini and sausage. There’s a melon, there’s prosciutto, I could make a little salad, there’s what’s left of the cannolli—”
“How come we always have to eat Italian food?” asked Karp.
“How come?” asked Marlene in mock amazement, and then, shifting accent to Low Queens, “’Cause you married an Italian, you bum, that’s why.” She opened a drawer and took out a wooden spoon, which she brandished, her other hand clenched on her hip. “Whassa-matter, you don’ like it? You don’ like Italian food, you shoulda married a Joosh goil, huh? Huh!”
Marlene’s voice now went up in pitch and volume, to a fingernail-on-blackboard screech, and she made a hook of her finger and placed it over her nose. “Yah wanna a Joosh goil? I’ll give yah a Joosh goil. Make more money! I wanna car-ar! I wanna mi-ink! Oy vey, I broke a nail!”
“I can’t believe this,” said Karp. “Anti-Semitism, right in my own home.”
Marlene looked startled. She laughed nervously. “Oh, don’t be silly, I’m not anti-Semitic.”
“Oh, no? What about this performance? How come you sort of slurred my name when you introduced me to your folks?”
“I did not,” cried Marlene with an embarrassed giggle.
“Did too. Your grandma still thinks my name is Carpa. She keeps asking me how’s Giuseppe and them down by Sheepshead Bay.”
“Oh, don’t! I was just kidding.”
“Uh-huh. That’s how it starts: first jokes, then the camps,” lectured Karp. “However, now that I’ve established moral ascendancy, I forgive you.” He patted the sofa. “Come here, my little Himmler.”
Marlene complied, and poked him viciously in the ribs. “You’re the shits, you know that?”
Karp put his arm around her and drew her close. “Mmm, that’s better. Now that you’ve revealed yourself, are you going to show up in one of those tight black leather girls-of-the-S.S. uniforms, like they have in men’s magazines? And torment my flesh?”
“Tight is not a word I can deal with right now. Ooo, what are you doing?” She slapped facetiously at his hand. “You can’t be interested in this body.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Karp, fumbling with a hook. “Of course, we don’t want to Injure the Child.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Marlene as she wriggled free of her slacks. “Vee haff our vays. I thought you wanted supper.”
“That too,” said Karp.
The next morning, early, Marlene slipped from bed, and the snoring Karp, to the telephone, where she called Bello. This time she was put through.
She quickly covered her interview with Francine, her experiences at Doone’s and the sight of the shadowing car.
“The same guys?” said Bello doubtfully.
“I don’t know,” said Marlene. “Two guys, a late-model Chevy, one was smoking a cigar. It could be anybody, but the question is why are they following me, except …”
“Yeah, the arsons.”
“You figure she saw the arsons, came to me, and they saw her at my place … ?” She left it open. She had a bad feeling about what had become of Francine Del Fazio.
A pause. Bello thought. Then he said, “You got a camera?”
Forty minutes later, Marlene had slipped out, dressed in her maxi-coat over boots, two sweatsuits and boots. She carried her big leather bag, into which was tucked the Polaroid camera she had received as a wedding present.
The day was clear and chilly. As she stepped out into the street, she cast her eye along the blank windows of the loft buildings on both sides of the street. If she was really being followed, there would be eyes behind one of them. Somebody would be making a call.
She walked slowly to Grand Street, went into a store, bought two lemons and a pound of butter, and then stopped on Lafayette Street and hailed a cab. She told the driver to head up Broadway.
“Where you goin’, lady?” the man asked.
“I don’t know yet. Just drive.”
The cab headed north. After a few blocks Marlene was gratified to see the familiar Chevy slip into position, keeping two cars behind in the thickening morning traffic. They were still locked in as they passed Herald Square, and at 35th Street, Marlene told the cabbie to hang a left.
“Lady, I don’t know where you’re goin’,” said the cabbie patiently, “but I hope you ain’t in no hurry.”
The street, as ever, was packed with cars and trucks delivering merchandise to the firms of the garment district. By the time they passed Seventh Avenue, they had slowed to a walking crawl. Marlene paid the driver and added a five on top of the meter. She leaned forward and checked the cab’s rearview mirror. When the Chevy was wedged tightly between double-parked trucks on either side, she got out of the cab.
She walked east on the packed sidewalk until she reached the stationary Chevy. Then she stepped out onto the street and, standing in front of the car, took a photograph of the startled pair in the front seat. Then she spun on her heel and disappeared into the crowd. It took the men in the car a few seconds to react, and nearly a minute before Joey could wriggle out from behind the passenger seat, to stand cursing on the sidewalk. There was clearly no point in trying to follow on foot. Traffic had moved and horns were already starting to honk. Joey got back in the car.
“Fuck it,” said Carmine, puffing his cigar. “We know where she lives.”
“This fucking city!” said Joey. “I wouldn’t fuckin’ live here if you paid me.”
Marlene walked quickly around the corner, went a block south on Eighth Avenue and caught the IND southbound to the East Houston station. A three-block walk down Crosby Street brought her home.
Her back and thighs were aching powerfully as she clumped into the loft, breathing hard. Karp was relaxing with a cup of coffee and reading Sports Illustrated.
“You OK?” he asked with concern.
She dropped her coat on the floor and collapsed into the rocker with a groan. “I want to give birth,” she said. “Hello? You can come out now. Ring-a-levio, one-two-three! Home free all!”
“Why did you have to run out?” Karp asked.
Mutely she held up the bag with the lemons and butter.
“Damn it, Marlene, why did you have to schlep downstairs? I can drag stuff up from now on.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t just that.” She pulled a Polaroid snapshot out of her bag and held it up for him to see. “You ever see these guys before?”
Karp came over and examined the photograph. “No. Should I have?”
“Not really. They’ve been following me around for the last day or so.”
“Following you?”
Sighing, Marlene told him the story Bello had told her, about the two probable arsonists and Francine Del Fazio. When she had finished, Karp said, “I’m missing something, right? Aside from how incredibly dumb it was for you to do what you just did, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would a couple of out-of-town torches follow you around? Because they maybe thought that somebody you saw once in the last twenty years spilled her guts to you. Why the hell would they do that? There’s no case—you’re not a witness to anything.”
She shrugged. “Sure, and guys like that know exactly what counts in court and what doesn’t. Maybe they want to light my fire. Meanwhile, I can’t think about it anymore. I’m going to bed again. Wake me when I go into labor.”
Marlene shrugged out of her clothes and into a flannel nightgown, and climbed grumbling up the ladder to bed. Karp made himself a bowl of raisin bran and ate it while thumbing idly through his magazine. Once again it was brought home to him that being inside something
made it nearly impossible to read about it credulously. For years that had been true for him in reference to crime reporting; now it was true for pro sports as well. At best, they always got it a little wrong. It made it hard to believe anything you read. Of course, nearly everyone was an expert on something, so that everyone should have had that realization, yet everyone still read and watched the press and quoted it as an authority. Go figure.
He cleaned up, put on a duffel coat, and went out for a walk. He looked around the nearby streets for a lurking Chevy with two men in it, but spotted nothing obvious. There was too much traffic in any case. He stopped by the Chinese candy store and bought the Times and the News. Force of habit.
Back at the loft, he tossed the papers aside. He was too twitchy to read. Practice started at two; it felt unnatural to be idle on a workday morning. He considered calling up one of his friends for lunch, then remembered that all of his friends lunched on sandwiches at their desks, with a phone shouldered into their ears. As he had, most days, back then.
Instead he walked down to Marlene’s office and leafed through the Simmons file she had assembled. He saw her note to herself:
1. Where was he killed? Where did he go after game? (Butch)
2. Girl, cars—check limos. (Bello)
3. Drugs—Doone (? hold off)
4. Sister (A.S.)
Well, Marlene had certainly done her bit. The sister was missing and it was not likely that Stupenagel was in a position to find her. He crossed off item four. Number two was solved, although Bello was no longer in the play. He crossed that one off too.
He himself had drawn a partial blank on number one. It seemed almost certain that Simmons had gone away from the stadium with his sister. The question was where did they go. Was she with him when he died? If she knew something, and she was really a snitch for the Queens D.A., why wasn’t she in protective custody now, spilling her guts?
He looked at the list again. His vague boredom and irritation began to coalesce, and became focused for the first time on whoever had dealt this mess. Like everyone else in the criminal justice system, Karp hated a mystery. They were rare enough, in fact. The identity of the perp in ninety-five percent of criminal cases was perfectly clear. Joe and Sally fight. Joe buys gun from Jim, announcing that it is for killing Sally. Joe shoots Sally five times in the head. Joe is found with the gun, his Nikes full of Sally’s blood.
Material Witness Page 22
