Depraved Indifference (29 page)

At his door, Karp realized immediately that someone had entered while he was gone. The deadbolt was open and he could smell cigarette smoke. He felt a jolt of fear. Someone had tried once to murder him in this apartment, and that incident returned to his mind in all its hideous detail. Perhaps Flanagan had told someone about what he had told Karp, and about the Q and A. And someone had sent a hitman? Who left the place stinking of smoke? Who didn't know enough to relock the door? No, it had to be some asshole snooper, one who didn't expect him home until much later.

In a rage Karp ran through to the bedroom and kicked the door open. He burst into the room, with his fist cocked back next to his ear. From the bed, where she was lying, reading a Barbara Cartland, Marlene Ciampi said, “Put down that knish, big boy, I'm harmless.”

She giggled. So did Karp when he realized he was holding the uneaten pastry in his assault hand.

He let out a long breath and threw himself down full-length beside her. “My God, Marlene, I thought you were a prowler.”

“Yeah, you forgot you gave me a key.”

“True. I give out so many.” He examined the knish. “Hell, I could have hurt you. This thing must weigh thirty pounds.”

“Yes, and it has sharp edges too. Suppose you put it away and tell me how surprised and thrilled you are to see me, and then I might let you chew on my face for a minute.”

When they came up for air, she asked, “Well, aren't you going to thank me?”

“Uh, that was the most marvelous kiss I ever had in my whole life.”

“Not that, you goon. Oh, shit, you didn't even notice. Wait, put your hands on your eyes. Don't peek!”

He did as she asked and felt her leave the bed. In a moment there was a click and Mick Jagger burst into the room, singing about Jumping Jack Flash. “Ta-daaah!” she cried. “Surprise! Isn't it great?” She danced a few sexy steps, and Karp noticed that her legs were bare under her swirling full skirt. “I got it today. KLH speakers, Kenwood amp and tuner, sixty watts per channel. Dual Pioneer cassette deck. Leventhal even delivered. You won't believe how much.”

“How much?” Karp asked, noticing the glowing stereo for the first time.

“A hundred-twenty even. The markup must be amazing. Anyway, what do you think?”

“Um, it's great, Marlene. Thanks, I'll give you a check.”

“Oh, screw the check. I wanted to do something nice for you. A little civilized pleasure in your bleak life.” She sat next to him on the bed again. “Come on, give a little! Doesn't it make your day?”

“Yeah,” he said in a dull voice. “Really.” He got off the bed and took off his tie and jacket. “I'm sorry, baby. I'm a little depressed. Bloom canned me today.”

“Canned you? What do you mean, from the DA? He can do that?”

“No, not yet. Just from the deputy slot. I'm not your boss anymore. Just a plain ADA. But I think I need to start looking for a new job.”

“But why? What the hell happened?”

Karp shrugged. “Some bullshit thing. I got into a fight with Wharton. We had words. It was about you, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I asked him about your appeal and he said he was going to hold it up if I didn't—what was the phrase?—something about changing my emphasis, easing up. I guess I lost it. Called him a pimp.”

Karp went over to his closet and changed into jeans and a gray sweatshirt. He sat down next to Marlene on the bed. She was sitting in its center, legs crossed, hunched over, her hair falling across her bad side like the wing of a shot crow. She was smoking hard. Karp took her hand and kissed it.

“So. What do you think of that? Want to turn on some hot music on my new stereo, maybe lose ourselves in fleshly delights?”

She said nothing. Her hand was like a fresh-killed chicken in his. He touched her shoulder and asked, “Marlene … what is it? What did I do?”

She drew a deep breath and swallowed hard. “Oh, nothing,” she said at last. “It's just, I wish you would think for once. I keep hoping you'll think about something else besides your fucking cases.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Me. I'm talking about me. My claim. Have you got any idea how fucked up I am financially? Or my family?” She looked up at him and with a brusque gesture swept her hair away from her scars and the black patch over the empty eye. “Do you know what this cost?”

“You had insurance …” Karp began lamely.

“Bullshit, insurance. You think the kind of coverage I had takes care of
this
? I had the fucking minimum. Why not? I'm young, healthy, I'm going to live forever, why spend the extra thirty-six forty a week, right? I had to go to my parents, Butch. My parents. They blew their savings. They took out a second mortgage, twelve per cent. My mother told me; my father, he'd kill her if he knew she did. He's sixty-four. He's a plumber. It's funny, I never told you that, and we've been going together two, three years.

“Butch, his back's fucked up. The plumber's disease, right? He was supposed to take it easy. Couple of years ago my brothers chipped in to send them down to Florida, Fort Lauderdale, after Christmas. Maybe start thinking about selling the house in Queens, get a condo or something. That's shot to hell now, isn't it?

“Last Tuesday my mom calls me up. She was crying on the phone. He's going out on jobs. He's lying on his back on wet concrete, goosing pipes. He comes home white from the pain, can't even watch the news on TV. She's crying, but she doesn't say it, you know? When are they going to give with the money, Marlene? This isn't right.”

“Marlene, I'm sorry, I really am. I didn't realize. But …”

“But, what, Butch?”

“But what did you expect me to do? What could I do?”

She swung her feet down off the bed on the side opposite him and started to feel around for her shoes. “I don't expect anything, Butch. They're not your parents, it's not your face.”

“Come on, Marlene. Don't.”

She stood up and turned around to face him. “Don't what? Don't be angry? I am angry. Goddamn angry!” She started to storm around the bedroom, tossing various possessions into her large leather shoulder bag.

Karp felt an unfamiliar kind of anger rising in him as well, anger compounded of self-contempt and guilt. “Where are you going?” he snapped.

She stood at the foot of the bed, hands on hips, chin thrust out, her face dark and furious. “Out. Home. I don't know. Away!”

“Fuck that! You're going to stay and work this out. I want to know first of all what you expected me to do. Say, ‘Yes, Chip, anytime you want a killer sprung, hey, be glad to oblige. You got a little political problem, want to shit-can a good case? Give ol' Karp a call.' What did you want me do, Marlene? Lean over and yank his crank?”

“Yes! Yes, I did!” she cried out. “I expected you to lean a little, compromise, stroke the bastard, for chrissakes. There are a million ways you could wriggle out of any deal you made. What the fuck does it mean? Here's a flash, baby—you're not going to save the world in this job. You're not Gary Cooper, high noon has come and gone, and I'm sick of it. This crap about ‘a man's got t' do whut a man's got t' do'—it's exhausting. It's murdering me—”

“How about you, huh?” Karp shouted. “Tell me you want to throw Karavitch. You want to ride out tomorrow and tell Bobbi Doyle that we're going to let the guys who blew her old man's head off walk away because it's inconvenient for some politicians if we bring them to trial, and besides, Marlene needs a new face!”

“Oh, fuck you, you bastard! You bastard! You don't care about Bobbi Doyle or my face or my family or me. You just care about you, you and your fucking pride. A fucking Jewish prince is all you are. Well, you can yank your own crank from now on, you bastard, because I am taking my little guinea ass out of here. Enjoy the music!”

With that, she grabbed her trenchcoat off the closet doorknob and made for the door. Karp reached for her arm, but she eluded him and went across the living room, her steps striking gunshots on the naked wood. He ran after her and threw his body in front of the outside door. Letting out a string of shrill curses, she tried to shove around him, but he grappled her, pulled her to his body, swaddled her struggling arms. Holding her close like that, he felt an unexpected and unwanted jolt of sexual energy. Embarrassed, he held her away from him at arm's length, holding her upper arms tightly. She promptly kicked him in the shin, hard.

He gasped, but did not let go. She kicked him again. Between gritted teeth he said, “Kick all you want, kid, but let me tell you something. Look at me, Marlene! They won, if we're doing this to each other. This is what they want. They don't want us to care about each other or love each other. I don't just mean you and me. I mean the whole team. They want us to hate and fuck each other over. That's what gives them their power. And that's all they're interested in.

“And about what you said. Yeah, I didn't think about you, and I should have. Big-time lawyer, I should know how to cut a deal, even with a scumbag like Wharton. But I didn't and I fucked myself and I fucked you too, and I'm sorry as hell about it. Now, let me make you a promise. I will get you the money. I don't know how yet, but I will get it. Not just because I love you and you're you, but because it's right.

“As for Wharton, it's open war now. He's going to play hardball, I can play hardball too. We got a thing going I think will settle his hash for good.”

“What thing?” Marlene asked suspiciously.

“I'll tell you later, providing we're still compadres.” Karp released her shoulders and stood away from the door. “If you still want to go, you can,” he said, his gut twisted in a knot.

She didn't go. Instead she leaned against the door post and began to cry, silently as she had done so often in the ladies' room. Her tears smeared her eye makeup around her good eye so that it looked like she wore two patches. After a while she stopped, exhausted. Karp scooped her up in his arms and brought her to the bed. She curled up on her side. In a small voice she said, “I'm sorry. I'm crazy.” Karp was silent. He unfolded a blanket from the foot of the bed and threw it over her. In a few minutes she was asleep. Karp turned down the volume on the stereo and lay down beside her without undressing, but it took a long, long time before he too blacked out.

When Karp awakened he was alone. It was early morning. His shirt was unbuttoned and his jeans were lying crumpled at the foot of the bed. Sometime during the night he had come out of sleep to feel Marlene's mouth on his face and neck, then her hands running over his body, caressing him and pulling off his clothes, and then her mouth again, tongue and teeth, moving slowly down the length of his body. He had lain there utterly passive, the way he knew she wanted him to be just then, and watched by the dim light of the stereo dial the ever fascinating sight of her dark head over his groin, moving slowly up and down, up and down.

Or perhaps it had been a dream. He checked himself out in the bathroom mirror, saw the marks all over him, and smiled. There was a note stuck in the ceramic toothbrush holder. “Sorry about all that last nite,” it said in Marlene's neat script, “I believe you. Gone to see Taylor's Yugos re: Karavitch—in around noon. Crazy bout you (so to speak) M.”

The note brought the events of the previous day slamming back into his mind. His smile faded. He sat down on the bed, picked up the phone, and dialed Denton's office. He identified himself as Roger Karp from the DA's. His office informed him that the chief was on his way to work and forwarded the call to his car phone.

“What's up?”

“All kinds of shit,” answered Karp, “but I'm not sure I want to talk about it over a car phone.”

“It's that bad, huh? OK, tell you what—I'll swing by your place in ten minutes. We can talk there.”

When Denton arrived, Karp had showered, shaved, and dressed for work. The detective looked around the living room with a bleak eye and said, “Karp, I can't stand this. I'm going to drag you down to Goodwill and get you some furniture.”

“I got a stereo.”

“Great, I'll squat on the record player. Very relaxing. OK, what've you got?”

Briefly, Karp went over the events of the previous day. When he had finished, Denton pursed his lips, puffed his cheeks, and blew out a stream of air. He looked down at the immaculate tips of his brown Italian shoes. “Well, well,” he said. “A fancy piece of work. You really think the Church, the CIA, and the FBI are conspiring to queer our little case?”

Karp shrugged. “Yeah, a hair too paranoid, isn't it? I forgot to tell you, I'm also picking up broadcasts from Venus through my fillings.” Denton hesitated a bit before acknowledging the remark with a thin smile and a short laugh. He should have been here last week, Karp thought as he continued: “But basically, I don't think it's a real conspiracy. It's more like these Croatians were connected across a number of different scams, buried stuff, some of it pretty deep in the past. Nobody expected this hijack, nobody expected a cop would be killed. But it goes down, and a bunch of people are running around in a panic, doing dumb things, but independently. And I don't think institutions are involved as much as individuals or groups of individuals acting for themselves.”

Denton raised his eyebrows. “That's interesting. Why do you say that?”

“Um, just a feeling right now. Look, if the Church or the FBI, as institutions, had a serious beef with us on this, if it was something attached to the case that was, ah, innocently embarrassing, let's say, there's a zillion ways we could accommodate them. Christ, we're not morons, we do it every day. They'd come in for meetings, we'd discuss it, horse trade a little, and come to some agreement. But the various parties in this mess don't want to come out in the open with their problems. They prefer to work in secret and do crimes to prevent these guys from coming to trial—suppression of evidence, arson, kidnapping … by the way, is there anything on our Hungarian waiter witness yet?”