Marlene had been buying her meat at Agnelli's for nearly twenty years, and she superstitiously attributed to her patronage the fact that it was the last Italian butcher surviving in the ruins of Little Italy. When she had first moved to Crosby Street, back in the days when living in lofts had been the illegal dodge of the penurious rather than the privilege of the wealthy, there had been half a dozen Italian butchers. All but Agnelli's had been replaced by Asians. Marlene had nothing against Asians, but she is not going to buy meat from one- fruit, yes, meat, no- racism, maybe, but there it is.
She puts the dog into a stay and walks in to the dingle of the bell. Agnelli's is an old-fashioned place, which Marlene does not mind at all. The floor is hexagons of black-and-white tile, the ceiling is tan stamped tin, supporting lazy ceiling fans, each with a pigtail of flypaper. The windows are nearly obscured with hand-painted signs announcing specials, but space has been left for a shelf of bright green excelsior, on which rests a tray of pork chops and a tripod of legs of lamb, decorated with lace paper doilies. Within, two sides of the room are fronted by gleaming white porcelain and glass display cases. Salamis and hams hang from chromed racks. The man behind the case looks up when the bell rings and, when he sees who it is, says, "Hey, look who's here! Long time, Marlene!"
Joe Cotta the assistant butcher is dark and squat, with the big-eyed, friendly face of a little boy. He has been the assistant butcher at Agnelli's for nearly as long as Marlene has been a patron, but she does not recall ever seeing him alone in the shop before. Joe is terrific with a crown roast, but he sometimes forgets to collect the money, and it is painful to watch him make change. She says, "How's it going, Joe?" and looks around for the responsible adult, but there does not seem to be anyone out front. Maybe Paul Agnelli is cutting meat in the back.
"Oh, not too bad," says Cotta. "Not too bad. We ain't seen you around much, Marlene. What, you're going to the supermarket?"
"Never, Joe. How's the veal today?"
"Veal what? We gotta roast, we got scallopine…"
"I'm making it marsala. So… you're all alone here or what?"
Cotta reaches in the case and lifts out a limp white slab of meat. "Look at this here, for marsala? It's like paper."
"Looks terrific… give me two pounds." Cotta wraps the meat in white waxed paper. Marlene moves her position to see if there is anyone in the cutting room, but from what she can see of it, it looks empty.
"Mrs. A stepped out?"
"Oh, no, the two of them're down at the court. I'm here all by myself." He hands her a neatly wrapped package with a smile.
"Court? What, a traffic thing?"
"Oh, no, Marlene, it's real serious." He lowers his voice and leans forward confidentially. "They said Paulie did a- what do you call it, the kind where you go with a girl's too young and like that?"
"Statutory rape?"
"Yeah, that. Anyway, Paulie's in big trouble, because she says he did, even though he didn't. A colored girl. Mrs. A? Holy Jeez, I thought she was gonna have a heart attack. They got Biaggi for the lawyer, but Mrs. A says he's not doing much."
"Nick Biaggi? Oh, marrone! He must be seventy-five. Why don't they get someone else."
"I don't know. You know Paul. He thought it was all like a joke, and then it hit him he could go to jail."
The bell dings and an elderly woman in black comes in. Joe Cotta starts to move away toward the new customer, but Marlene waves her package at him, and says, "Joe, that's two pounds at five ninety-five a pound, makes eleven ninety, and I'm giving you a ten and two ones." Cotta takes the bills and rings the sale up and places them in the cash drawer. Marlene hands him a business card. "Joe, listen, tell Paulie to give me a call at home. I'm a little worried about this, and I still know a lot of the players in the sex crimes bureau. Maybe I could help."
"Uh-huh. Okay, I'll tell him, Marlene." He turns away. "Nice seeing you again. Mrs. Alloni, what can I get for you today?"
Marlene forgets about getting her dime, places her veal in her net bag, and walks out into the heat. She snaps her fingers and, like a shadow, the dog falls into step. She makes a few more purchases and walks home. There is a dark blue Ford parked in front of her building. It is not the sort of vehicle one usually finds on Crosby Street in the middle of the day; her pace slows, her pulse rises.
She feels a surge of relief when Jim Raney gets out of it.
They hug, a little stiffly. "To what do I owe?" she asks.
"I need to talk to someone," he says. "I think I'm going crazy."
She steps back and looks him in the face, and sees someone who has not been getting all the sleep he should: pouchy eyes, little lines. No more Peter Pan.
"You better come up, then," she says.
She makes iced tea. The boys come out and say hello, and help unload the groceries, checking them out for anything interesting (yes! tortoni cups). Raney is an old pal, practically an uncle. Zak asks him if he's still hauling that old Browning around and Raney says that he is and they will have to drag it out of his cold dead hands, and Zak explains to him how much better off he would be with the Glock or the Beretta. Giancarlo tells the Irish joke about the old guy who calls the airlines and asks how long the flight was from New York to Dublin and the girl says, "Just a minute, sir," and he hangs up and says, "Jaysus, I'd no idea they'd got so fast." Then Marlene chases them out and sits down across from the detective at the kitchen table.
"So. What's driving you crazy? And may I say that you came to the right place if you're into the blind leading the blind."
"Yeah, well, I thought you'd be sympathetic being as how you got a history with this thing. This is about Felix Tighe."
"The late Felix. What about him?"
"You know his ex-wife was murdered."
"I didn't know. Was it in the papers?"
"Yeah, but she changed her name. Married a guy on the job, as a matter of fact. They had a little girl, nine. The perp got her, too."
"Wait, this was that thing in Forest Hills? That was Mary Tighe?"
"Yeah. And the way they got done, it was a Felix kind of scene. Mean. Sadistic."
"But he's dead."
"Right. So after that a skell named Steve Lutz, who was a chief prosecution witness at Felix's trial, gets killed by a bus bomb. And, of course, there's Pete Balducci, one of the arresting officers, who gets it with another bomb. And now, just the other day, who has a bomb placed in his car?"
"Henry Klopper," says Marlene. "Who happened to be Felix's lawyer."
"Yeah. And as the other arresting officer, I'm starting to get a little nervous."
She stares at him, and then a laugh bursts from her throat. After a second or so, he laughs along with her.
"Yeah, it's really hilarious, Marlene. I knew I could count on you."
She wipes her eyes. "God, I'm sorry. It's just- I don't know- it's so Friday the Thirteenth. Hey, evil man comes back from the grave and starts killing the people who put him in jail- happens all the time."
"You can see why I haven't brought it to the attention of the higher authorities: 'Uh, Chief, I cracked the Manbomber case. I know who the guy is, and you won't even have to go for the death penalty, because the fucker's already dead.' "
"Okay, coincidence," says Marlene, "always our first thought, but that's looking a little thin after four incidents. So maybe a surrogate, an agent. Felix met someone skilled with explosives in the joint and they fell in love. With his dying breath, Felix gives him a list of people to clip."
Raney is nodding. "Uh-huh, yeah, that was actually my first thought. But what's wrong with it is Mary and her girl, Sharon. If they got it with a bomb, that story would look a lot better. Them being raped and tortured to death, you'd have to figure a really sick fuck, another Felix, practically, for the job. So that's a hard trifecta- devoted to Felix Tighe, who as I recall wasn't the kind of human being to generate a lot of devotion, plus the sophisticated bomb-making skills, plus the psycho angle. Not many guys around could rape a little girl in front of her mother and then slice the two of them up the way he did."
"He paid to have it done that way."
"Right, I thought of that, too. Except Felix didn't have any money that we know of. His mom had the fortune, but that all got eaten up with civil suits because of that chicken ranch day-care center she was running. He could've had some stashed, but if you were a fucking totally depraved, skilled bomber and a guy who's doing twenty-five to life gave you a shitload of money for doing a set of crimes that would have every single fucking cop in the universe on your ass forever… I mean, why wouldn't you just say, 'Sayonara sucker'? Come to that, Felix was no dummy himself. How could he believe in a deal like that? It's not like he was the Mob. He couldn't really get back at somebody who shafted him."
"He could pay in installments," she says. "The perp sends him clippings and he releases another wad of cash, but that assumes money, and it assumes another agent faithful to Felix on the outside, the guy who's writing the checks, and then you've got the same problem. So, where are we going with this?"
She can see some color coming back into Raney's face now, and his swimming pool eyes are lit with more of the old fire.
"Okay, just let me spin the whole thing out," he says, his hands gesturing in circles. "This's been rolling around in my brain all month. Maybe you'll call the guys with the butterfly net after you hear it, but I got to tell someone."
"Be my guest. You want some more tea?"
"No, I'm good." He takes a couple of deep breaths. "So, now I'm thinking, not friendship, not money- a cult. There was a cult, if you recall. Felix's dear old mom ran it."
"Irma Dean, the day-care queen."
"That was her. Worshiping the dark forces and all that shit. The thing was, she thought that Felix was the reincarnation of his late dad, who she thought was the next thing to Satan. And she raised Felix in all of that, just like we got raised in the Church."
"But Felix wasn't into that," Marlene objects. "Or am I not remembering this right? It was the other brother who was the demonic assistant. Felix was in denial because she was bonking him. They had that whole sexual thingy together, Felix and Irma."
"Yes, but what if there was another brother? Or, if not another brother, a- what d'you call it- an initiate. Felix dies in prison, and that unleashes the revenge killings. Now this bastard is the spawn of Satan, et cetera."
"Stretching it."
"Yeah? Shit, Marlene, I know I'm stretching it! Stretching is all I got, because what I really believe is beyond stretching. It's beyond fucking sane!"
She watches him sit back in his chair and rub his face. "And what is that, Jim?"
"I think he's alive," he says. "The minute I walked into that crime scene in Forest Hills and I found out who the vics were, I said to myself, Oh, shit, Tighe's escaped. He did this. It was a fucking signature, practically. And then I remembered he was dead. Supposedly. I actually called the fucking prison, Auburn, and confirmed it. The body went out to a cousin here in the city. But what if…" he floundered, "I don't know, some strange mix-up?"
"He is dead. You think he snuck out of Auburn like Sleeping Beauty? Christ, you know they autopsy all prisoners who die inside. What, he's carrying his brains and his guts in a shopping bag while he does these crimes? Also, there's Judge Horowitz."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean Horowitz was the only other person specifically targeted by the Manbomber. The bastard wanted him so bad that he took two cuts at him before he got him, and as far as I know the judge had nothing whatever to do with Felix Tighe. The judge in Felix's case was old Tim Rooney, as I recall, now deceased. So that weakens the link between the Manbomber and Felix. I assume that you all've checked out all the people Horowitz might have pissed off."
Recalling the FBI presentation, Raney says, "Yeah, yeah, a million cross-checks, but there's no clear pattern, and there's no obvious bad guy that all the deaths would benefit. There were people who might have wanted to hurt Horowitz, but nobody recent and the others are still in prison. That's basically the argument that the bombs are random, and anything that looks like a connection is coincidence- the whole six degrees of separation deal. But in this case I don't buy it."
Without thinking very hard about it, Marlene says, "I agree," and is rewarded with a grateful look. In fact, she doesn't know whether she agrees or not, but only that it is pleasant to be brought out of herself in this way, to be distracted by the needs of someone who is not a family member.
"That's great, Marlene. So, I'm not going nuts?"
"Not any more than you were already. The question is, what do you want to do about it?"
"I don't know, to be honest. I can't talk about this with the cops. They'll put me on the rubber gun squad. I can't assign anyone to investigate and I don't have any real time to investigate it myself."
She waits for him to continue. When he doesn't she says, "Ah, the pregnant pause."
"Just look into it, Marlene. Nothing big-time. I don't know what you charge, but…"
"Oh, right, a NYPD lieutenant is going to pay a PI for an investigation. Don't be ridic."
"So… what does that mean? You will, you won't…?"
"No, you've got the juices flowing, now. And we owe it to Pete, just to check it out. He would've if it was you or me."
He gives her a searching look. "You're not just, like, humoring me?"
"No, I think it's something that has to be checked out," she says quickly. "And let me start by going over the Tighe file. I can get that from Butch. I want to find out what I can about the devil cult and whether Felix had any likely near and dear. The third brother issue. Then we should investigate the cousin, find out what he did with the body. I'd like to see the grave. Or the ashes."
"He probably flushed them."
"I would have," she says, "but you never can tell about families."
Lucy got to South Station in Boston early in the evening, and took the T to Kendall Square, near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dan Heeney, her so-called boyfriend, had an apartment near there, a three-bedroom in a modern building he shared with a couple of other geeks. She had a key, but she rang the bell instead.
"This is a surprise," said Dan when he opened the door. "Wow. Why didn't you call?"
Lucy eased past the startled young man and into the apartment. The living room was large, light, and filled with more than the usual amount of furniture, electronic equipment, expensive monitors, and fast-food detritus. There were no obvious signs, however, of a female presence.
"I just came by to use the bathroom," she said. "All toilets in New York are closed until further notice to counter the terrorist threat."
Once locked in the bathroom, she made a quick inspection. The room was, naturally, disgusting, which was a good sign. Dan's roomies were Maruf, a Pakistani engineer betrothed since the age of ten, and Wan, a chubby genius to whom sex was a distant rumor. The boyfriend, in contrast, although somewhat softer than was fashionable, had the milky radiance of a quattrocento angel. Girls followed him down the street with jaws agape. Lucy had never been jealous before, nor had she before Dan had anyone to be jealous about, nor had the fellow ever given her any cause for jealousy. Yet she was jealous, and enjoyed being so, and enjoyed watching herself in the throes of jealousy; it appealed to the romantic and literary side of her nature. It made her feel Sicilian, and closer to her mother, although she would have jumped in front of a subway train before admitting this to herself.
A quick check revealed no indication that a female had ever visited the squalid place, or that the sexual act had ever transpired on the premises. No condom wrappers in the wastebasket. No hairpins. She was actually poking through it! Degrading! Marvelous! She popped out, approached the bemused boyfriend, and threw her arms around him.
"Hello, sailor," she said. "Got a kiss?"
He had. It took a while. Kissing was, remarkably, the extent of their intimate relations and they made the most of it, until cyanosis presented a real danger.
"I really just came to Cambridge for that," she said through heavy gasps. "I guess I'll go home now."
"Being it's you," he said, "I would almost believe it." He led her over to a love seat, moved some books and a pizza box out of the way, and sat her down. More of the same. She was going to have red marks all over her face from his beard, but she didn't care.
"Okay, let me guess," he said in the first intermission. "You decided that you would finally let me slake my lusts, as you put it."
"Yes, I sensed that you're finally ready to make a lifelong commitment, so that the church can be reserved and lust-slaking can be at least contemplated."
He sighed. "The concept of 'too young' still evades you, I see."
"It does. But that's okay. I don't mind a little heartbreak. I don't mind being spurned now in favor of some future woman who might be better than me. I'm slavishly devoted to you. I admit it."
"So this visit is just to, I don't know, crank up our frustration to an even higher level?"
"Speak for yourself," she said airily. "My mind is set on higher things." She pulled away and looked him in the eye. "Seriously. I needed to get away and I needed to see you. My mom's back."
"Uh-oh."
"Yeah, but the fact is, while she's deigning to grace our happy home and watch the boys, I can get away."
"You could get away anytime. Your dad's an adult."
"Oh, please! Did you ever see him in the kitchen? And if it was you, you'd do the same, wouldn't you?"
A nod, a reluctant grunt. Dan Heeney was from West Virginia, the son of a union official who'd been murdered along with his wife and young daughter, an event that had both precipitated the current crisis of the Karp family and brought Lucy into his life. He often had the odd feeling that suffering on such a scale was part of what made him attractive to her. And her to him. He could not imagine going out on a date with a regular girl, talking exclusively of pop music, movies, classes, gossip.
"Anyway, I don't want to talk about that part," she said. "I just need to be with some dumb-ass materialists for a little while."
"At your service, ma'am," said Heeney. "Them saints visiting you again?" In the mountain accent he used to lighten things, and when he was nervous.
"Not saints, no. I have a thing going with a guy- don't laugh- I think he's a demon."
"With the head turning around backward and strange powers?"
"Uh-huh. He wants me to have his pagan love child so he can rule the world. I'm thinking it could be, like, you know, cool."
She looked at him sharply, then punched him in the shoulder.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"You were checking me out to see whether I was joking. How could you!"
"Well, hell, I don't know which of all the stuff you spout is for real. It all sounds like Twilight Zone to me."
"Actually, I'm a little scared," she said.
"Really?" He saw that she was not joking, that she was pale and worrying her lower lip between her teeth. He felt a chill himself. He came from a family where courage was the expected thing, but he had never met anyone with the guts that Lucy Karp had shown him last summer in West Virginia. He didn't want to think about what could frighten her.
"Uh-huh. I brought in an expert in the field. He thinks this guy is the real thing."
A laugh popped out of his throat. "Oh, come on! So you have to find the hidden chest with the secret ring in it? The parchment with the spell written in blood."
She gave him a sad look that was harder to bear than if she had exploded in anger.
"No, those are metaphors. Devils don't have horns and angels don't have wings. The unseen world operates through bodies, but they don't control them like robots. It's not like in the movies. That's why it's scary. It's all spiritual; it's in your head and your heart. The actual violence, it's not from scarlet rays of power, it's just some guy decides that his life will be just great if he chops up a bunch of little girls. I mean, it makes sense to him because a being has convinced him that his own pleasure and power are more important than the lives of the little girls and their families and all that. And that means…"
She stopped abruptly and examined his face, which had upon it an expression both cautiously neutral and doting. She touched his cheek and smiled. "You don't believe any of this, do you? You think I'm a lunatic."
"Yup."
"I know. And it must be so relaxing. Secular humanism, the La-Z-Boy of philosophy. It's all waves and particles, isn't it, operating according to fixed laws, right?"
"You got it."
"And the mind is just chemicals, and the spirit is just a fantasy, right?"
"Right."
She nestled against him and he put a protective arm around her. She felt like a bird, delicate and hot. "Fine, then," she said. "Alleluia, I'm converted. And could we go out tonight? I want to breathe smoke and drink whiskey and listen to loud stupid music and mindless conversation, and dance until my feet hurt and then I want to go to bed with you and torment you with my partial unavailability."
"Sounds like a plan," he said.
Judge Amos Higbee was a cocoa-colored, bulky man with a passing resemblance to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, a resemblance he did nothing to disguise; he cultivated a brush mustache and a rumbling slow delivery.
"Mr. Karp," he growled, not looking up from his papers, as Karp walked in to his chambers. "Mr. Karp, I'll ask you to wait for your colleague. Have a chair."
Karp sat and thought about Higbee and the triplex chemistry that would develop between them and whomever the detective's union had hired to replace Hank Klopper. Karp ran through the likely members of the defense bar in his mind. Eliminate anyone who hadn't defended a cop. Foolish of them not to pick someone with experience in that particular and peculiar brand of defense. An upside-down trial. He'd explained it all to Murrow, but he doubted that the young man could fully comprehend the true weirdness of such a trial. For every instinct of a defense lawyer, reinforced over hundreds of hours in the courtroom and library, was to attack the police, their methods, their skill, their honesty and integrity. And the prosecutorial bar was conditioned to establish just the opposite, which is why the prosecution of rogue cops was such a kidney stone to a DA's office, and why it was so rarely done, and even more rarely successfully done. A cop had to do some truly lunatic act, impossible to cover up, or do some ordinarily horrendous act in front of a video camera. Neither was present here, which was why it was a bear. He needed a couple more days, a week, which was why he had asked for this meeting. He didn't think whoever picked up the D would object.
Object. Keegan hadn't. Why? Karp thought again about Keegan's puzzling good humor. Murrow hadn't come back with anything yet. He'd have to lean on him. Why did Jack seem almost to want him to take the case? Because he wanted it lost? Or won? The case was extremely tough, but Karp was the best litigator on the DA's staff, and thus provided the best chance at a victory. On the other hand the DA had never registered any particular anxiety about winning the case. In fact, he had been conspicuously silent and offhand about it, as if he didn't want either credit or blame to touch him. Or maybe he thought the case impossible and wanted to stick Karp with the loss. Why? Karp losing a case with a black victim and a white defendant would simply confirm the opinion in a large segment of the African-American community that Karp was a bad actor, a racist, but why would that be to Keegan's advantage? He could fire Karp any time he wanted if he wanted to curry favor with that segment, and he hadn't, not even a couple of years ago when he was involved in a serious race with a black candidate. Could Keegan have turned nondevious in his old age?
A knock on the door. Higbee said, "Enter!" in his basso, and Roland Hrcany stepped through the door. The former head of the homicide bureau of the New York DA greeted the judge and took a seat.
Karp became conscious of the amazed expression on his face, and that Roland was aware of it, and was enjoying the effect of his entrance. He'd trimmed his hair, Karp noticed, as Roland shook hands with Higbee and traded pleasantries. During his long career at the DA Roland had worn his blond hair long, brushing his jacket color. Together with his brutal features and his weightlifter's body, it had given him the air of a professional wrestler, but this had not detracted at all from his effectiveness in the courtroom- helped it, probably. He had one of the best records ever for felony convictions, and had been forced out when someone had tape-recorded one of his famous, obscene misogynist-racist tirades.
The business was quickly accomplished. Karp asked for an extension of the recess, Roland objected. Again, topsy-turvy. The defense was always asking for delay, the state for celerity. Higbee commented on this dourly, and made his decision. The trial would resume after the weekend, as originally scheduled, with the same jury.
Hrcany and Karp left the chambers and stood uneasily together in the hallway outside.
"This is a surprise," said Karp. "I was under the impression your practice was restricted to celebrity hit-and-run cases, the dope in the limo, stuff like that."
Hrcany grinned, not pleasantly. "Well, you know, Butch, I've always been tight with the cops. When Hank went down, O'Bannion called from the detectives' endowment and asked me if I'd come in as a closer, and I said I would."
"A closer, huh? He can only throw twenty pitches, but nobody can hit them. Ninth inning, three on, no out, he retires the side."
"Right. A kind of legal Mariano Rivera."
"That what they told you, Roland? The detectives? Just waltz in there, put our boys up on the stand, let them tell their sad story, and boom, acquittal. The seats in the jury box won't even cool off."
"Something like that," said Hrcany. "I was surprised to find you were on the case. I thought that was Jack's big no-no."
"I was confused about that, too," said Karp. "He doesn't seem the same old Jack, playing the political angles and all that. A minor stroke in the paranoia lobe is what I'm thinking. I can't make up my mind whether he's hoping against hope that I'll pull it out of the fire, or that he knows it's lost and I'm his choice for going down with the ship."
"The latter. Definitely."
"We'll see. Now tell me the truth, Roland. Did you know I was up for the People when you took this case? I mean, is this yet another chapter in your- what is it now?- your twenty-two-year effort to see which of us has the bigger pecker?"
Hrcany laughed briefly. "Don't flatter yourself. I happen to think that it's a shame when a pair of detectives who don't have a single mark against them as far as bigotry is concerned get second-guessed on a shooting behind an infamous outdoor drug market. Second-degree murder, my ass! Fucking immigrants come to this country, first time they ever saw indoor crappers and civil liberties, they think it's a free ride, they can do all the shit they want and they're invulnerable. Then some cop does his duty and if it happens the guy is of a certain race, you PC assholes drop the courthouse on him. I think it sucks. That's why I took the case."
"You were an immigrant, Roland. You told the story a million times, how you and your dad came here after the Hungarian revolution with only a couple of suitcases and-"
"That was completely different."
"Why? Because you were white?"
"Oh, fuck you!"
"You know, Roland, I think that your single flaw as a lawyer is that when you tell a serious fib, your earlobes get a little red. It's more obvious since you cut your hair. You've been dying to grind me to powder on a courtroom floor for years and now's your big chance."
Hrcany glared for a moment and then chuckled. He clapped Karp on the shoulder. What an absolutely peculiar relationship I have with this man, thought Karp.
"Now that you bring it up, I think I will enjoy it."
"Unless you lose," said Karp. "See you in court, counsellor."