Resolved (34 page)

“Me? Wouldn't that be a felony bureau case?”

“I don't care about the bureaucratic partitions. It's your mess and you have to clean it up. Next, I've scheduled a press conference for seven-thirty tomorrow morning. In it I will break the story of how an innocent man was framed with the connivance of the district attorney's office. I will introduce you and you will stand up there and endure public humiliation as you explain every detail of this miserable farce. I expect the headlines will read ‘Gay Love Nest Corrupts Rape Bureau at DA.'”

Rachman opened her mouth to say something, but Karp shook his head and drove on.

“Next, you will dismiss the case against Dr. Kevin Hirsch, which I'm sure you realize is a pile of horseshit, even without the now suspect involvement of Terry Palmisano.”

“Oh, I see we're letting off all the white boys today.”

“Only those who haven't done anything. You know, one of the things that breaks the liberal heart is that people who've been oppressed for however many centuries, when they escape from oppression it never occurs to them to say, ‘Hey, being oppressed is
bad,
so let's not do any oppression.' No, they pile on to whoever's available with both boots. Isn't that sad and wonderful? But we're not going to do oppression around here. No one's going to use this office to get even. Now, you have patently wasted prosecutorial time on two cases that I know about, in a city that is crawling with bona fide male sexual predators. That's a crime, Laura, a
shandah
. I expect you to come down on those genuine bad guys like a ton of bricks, regardless of race or social status. I want them put in jail forever, if possible. But we are not going to give a free pass to every black female that accuses a white man. We are going to—for crying out loud—
look
at the fucking evidence! Do you understand the distinction I just made?”

But Rachman didn't answer this question. Instead, with a half smile on her face, she asked, “When you say every detail, would that include the involvement of your wife? Including your wife's, ah, interaction with Cherry Newcombe?”

So Laura had done her homework. Karp answered, “Of course. I expect you to be as forthcoming as possible. Also, should you come across any material that would prompt a criminal complaint against Marlene Ciampi, I would expect you to pursue it. You would inform me in such a case so that I could recuse myself from any supervisory responsibility. Finally, I want your resignation on my desk by close of business today.”

“You're
firing
me?” Rachman's face blanched, making her face paint look more than it usually did like an amateur spray finish on an old car.

“Not at this time. I've asked all the bureau chiefs for their resignations. When I take over officially in a couple of months I'll decide which of them to accept.”

“You're sure you'll be allowed to take over officially if that business with your wife comes out?”

“That's up to the governor, Laura. What's up to me is telling you to do the three things I just told you to do, failing any of which I
will
fire you. Are we perfectly clear about all this?”

Apparently so. Rachman left. Murrow said, “Whew!
That
was certainly a high colonic. Do you think she's going to go after your wife?”

“She might. She's vindictive enough. But Marlene's a big girl, with a lot of money and a brilliant legal mind. In any case, it's not a suitable subject for speculation in this office, is it, Murrow.”

“No, sir. But
are
you going to can her?”

“I might. But maybe she'll come around. Maybe no one ever kicked her in the butt before. I certainly needed kicks in the butt at her age, and of course you do, too. In any case, everybody gets a second chance in Karp's All-Star Technicolor Flying Circus and Peep Show.”

 

Lucy Karp had inherited from her father the peculiar notion that the cure for emotional exhaustion was hard work. She put in a morning serving free breakfasts to kids in a church basement at Third and Avenue B, and then did a food distribution—dented cans and past–sell date items at a grocery warehouse on Hudson Street, and then traveled uptown with a group of Catholic Workers to hand out a pallet-load of surplus blankets and ponchos at a refugee center in Inwood. In each of these places her language skills were invaluable. New York was full of people who had dropped into the twenty-first century from the far elsewhere and were hurting in various ways. She forgot about her own troubles, which was part of the deal, too, as it seemed that a crazy mother, a broken family, and a case of sexual frustration did not make the top ten among the afflictions of mankind.

She finished at the refugee center at about seven, had soup and bread with the Catholic Workers in a nearby church hall, and walked out onto Dyckman Street to find it had started to rain. An actual cool breeze was coming from the nearby Hudson. She reached into the big military sack she habitually lugged through her life and drew out a Gore-Tex anorak. There was a bodega nearby and she went in and got a coffee and hung out under the red-and-yellow plastic awning, watching the rain increase in volume, and watching all the people who couldn't afford Gore-Tex anoraks trying to cover themselves with newspapers or plastic trashbags.

Then she saw, across the wide street, dimly through the sheets of rain, a familiar figure, the red doorman's coat, baggy cutoffs, the floppy hat with the skeins of fishing line wrapped around it: Hey Hey Elman doing his little dance. He seemed to have seen her and was gesturing and calling her name. She waved him over, but he shook his head violently and beckoned to her. He seemed more agitated than usual, and this might mean that he was having one of his spells. Hey Hey was normally as harmless as a bunny, but sometimes he decided that some passerby had stolen his thoughts and sought to have them returned, starting a conversation with that person from which it was nearly impossible to withdraw. Which meant the cops, and rough handling, and tears, and having to go down to some precinct to get him released to New York Psychiatric. Lucy had done this herself several times and did not look forward to doing it again. Hey Hey was turning in little circles now, flapping his arms—something she had not seen him do before. She tossed her container in the trash, pulled up her hood, and dashed into the traffic.

When she reached the other side of Dyckman, Hey Hey was half a block away, still beckoning. She shouted for him to wait up, but he just beckoned more urgently and skipped away around the corner. They headed west toward Broadway and the park. Just past Sherman Avenue there was a fire site, a five-story building gutted black and gaping with boarded window holes above a heavily gangster-decorated plywood fence. The fence had long since been penetrated by people seeking salvage or a place to shoot up. Lucy saw Hey Hey duck behind a plywood flap dedicated to the work of RAMON 178. After a moment's hesitation she followed.

Inside, the usual rubble lot, decorated with broken plumbing fixtures, rotting furniture, rusting appliances, and scorched rubble. She saw a flash of red ahead that quickly disappeared into an irregularly shaped blackness, the entrance to the former basement. She stumbled forward through the junk. The rain was coming down harder than before, the breeze had turned into an actual wind, lightning flashed and thunder echoed like cannonades through the Manhattan canyonlands. She laughed to herself and thought, Yes, the pathetic fallacy, the image of my life, chasing a lunatic through a hurricane into a ruin.

She stood for a moment blinking in the dark. Hey Hey was nowhere in sight. She shouted, but nothing came back but dull echoes and the sound of innumerable freshets burbling through the roofless building. When her eyes adjusted she found she was on a brick ledge a few feet above a rubbled slope that led, she guessed, down to the original basement floor. Then there was a sound, a groan, and a sharp, high shout. She scrambled down the rubble and onto concrete.

The air was damp and the damp brought out the smells—burnt things, mold, broken sewage pipes, rats both live and dead. From her bag she took the little Maglite she kept on her keychain. Its narrow beam shone on standing water; the basement was flooded and she had to walk carefully, feeling beneath the black water with her sneakered foot. Another cry just ahead, and there was a glow. Lucy thought it must be another sick one sheltering in the ruins, like the one Hey Hey had led her to before. She reached into her bag to make sure she had her cell phone.

Candlelight was shining from what must have once been the building's boiler room. The boilers were gone, carted off for scrap, but the walls still held twisted stumps of pipes and the floor was a tangle of rusty plumbing. She saw the candle, stuck in a beer bottle, and saw its light reflecting from Hey Hey's red coat. She moved toward him, saying, “Oh, there you are. Why didn't you wait up, man?” She saw him hang his hat on a pipe. That was wrong. Hey Hey never took off his hat. The man turned. Lucy said, “Oh, shit!” and spun and leaped for the door, but she stumbled on a pipe and he had her. He was incredibly strong. His forearm around her neck felt like a tree limb. It only took a few seconds for Felix to choke her into unconsciousness.

Felix Tighe looked on his work and found it good. The bitch was naked and spread-eagled on a frame of one-inch piping, her legs stretched as far as they would stretch, her arms in a crucifixion position. The wacko had been carrying half a dozen rolls of tape in his belongings, which had come in handy; a good omen, Felix thought. He had neglected to buy tape, and he thought it amusing that the victim had supplied tape not only sufficient to immobilize himself but enough to take care of Lucy Karp, as well. The guy's clothes stank, however, and Felix was anxious to get this over with and get back into his own clean ones. Not so anxious that he would leave anything interesting out of his forthcoming session with the cunt.

A clank and a scraping sound told him she had revived. He had three candles arranged to cast light on her face and body and he watched avidly. He loved to see them when they woke up and realized where they were and started to understand what was going to happen to them. The best part of the present setup was that he didn't need a gag. With the thunderstorm and the isolated venue, no one was going to hear her yell. Another really terrific omen.

But the expression on her face was not what he was expecting. She wasn't looking at him in horror at all, but staring at something in the corner of the room, behind him. He snapped a look around; nothing. Then she began to speak, as if to someone standing right there, pausing as if to listen to a reply, and then speaking again. She was speaking in Spanish, not the jailhouse Caribbean Spanish he was familiar with, but a pure, lisping Castilian.

Lucy awoke to pain and a dark, nauseous headache. Hard things were pressing into her back and her thighs ached. She knew exactly where she was and what had happened to her, but no terror stabbed her belly or made her tremble. Instead, all her attention was focused on a dim figure standing in the corner of the room, a middle-aged somewhat plump woman dressed in the black-and-white habit of the Carmelites. The woman had three small moles on her face, which was otherwise distinguished by a long nose, huge round eyes, bushy eyebrows, and a perfect rosebud mouth.

“Is this one of His jokes?” Lucy asked the figure in her native tongue. “I went through agonies to preserve my precious virginity and now I'm going to be raped and murdered in a cellar?”

“It is somewhat amusing, I suppose,” said Saint Teresa. “No more amusing, perhaps, than that a woman such as I, who lived only for delight, and fine clothes, and witty companions should have founded a strict order of cloistered contemplative nuns. You can have no idea of the dullness of the conversation of young, ignorant Castilian girls. If it happens as you imagine, I hope you commend your soul to Him and give thanks that you have had the great good fortune to be tortured to death as He was. What an honor! I knew many who would envy you your situation.”

“That's a point of view, Reverend Mother,” said Lucy, at which the apparition gave her the kind of God-haunted grin one only ever sees on the faces of people far advanced in holiness, and Lucy burst out laughing.

“Who the fuck…what the fuck are you laughing about!”
Felix screamed. “You think this is funny? How about this, you think
this
is funny?”

With which he began to torture Lucy with his knife, and was happy to see that she howled appropriately.

“You're not laughing now, are you, bitch?” he said. It was not as good as he thought it would be, and he was starting to get pissed. He asked her where the Vietnamese was, and she told him he was in Paris, but she didn't know any more. Felix didn't think that was worth too much, but maybe something. Maybe she knew more and wasn't telling yet. But she would.

The problem was that he was causing her pain, but not fear, and so it was about as much fun as torturing an animal: okay, but nothing special, not like doing Mary and the brat or the others, before prison. She was not begging for mercy. On the contrary, she seemed to be praying for Felix's soul and forgiving him for what he was doing to her. She also wanted to know about the goddamn looney he got the clothes off of, and he took pleasure in telling her that her looney was resting quietly and would be released unharmed in time to put on his bloody clothes and take the rap for what Felix was going to do to Lucy. To which she had replied only, “Thank God he's all right.”