Falsely Accused Page 6

  Marlene made sure the children were belted in and said, “Girls, just give me a minute, I have to walk Sweety,” and then went around and popped open the hatchback. Sweety, who did not need a walk at all but who was not going to turn down a freebie, leaped out. Marlene snapped the short leather lead onto its collar and headed down Henry Street. She went once past the schoolyard and then crossed and came back down the other side. The dog snuffled along the curb, marked a power pole, sniffed the tires of the Fury and the shoes of the man leaning against it. Marlene looked him straight in the face. His hair was shorter and thinner than it had been in high school, and his skin was clear and tanned, but the eyes, pale and a shade too close together under straight, heavy brows, were the same. It was Pruitt. He returned her look with a blank stare for a moment and then opened his car door abruptly, so that she had to pull the dog sharply away from its swing. Then he sat down in the driver’s seat and started the engine. As she walked back to her car, she could feel his eyes on her back.

  All in all, Marlene considered that the heroism she was displaying in involving herself in the confrontation of a potentially dangerous stalker was as nothing compared to what she went through in preparing a nice dinner for her family that evening. The odor of broiling lamb chops went right to her gut, and it was only with the greatest of self-control that she managed to cook, serve, and sit through the meal. She herself consumed only a few small chunks of Italian bread.

  “Not eating?” observed her husband.

  “Can’t slip anything past you,” replied Marlene tightly.

  “Are you sick, or.. . ?”

  “It’s definitely ‘or.’ I made an appointment with Memelstein to confirm.”

  Karp beamed and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “That’s great, babe.”

  “What’s great?” asked Lucy Karp.

  “Mommy’s pregnant,” said Karp, and, seeing the blank expression on her face, added, “She’s going to have another baby. It’ll be your brother. Or sister.”

  “Which one?” asked Lucy suspiciously.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Could she sleep in my room?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I made my own lunch today,” said Lucy after a pause.

  “Really? What did you have?”

  “Chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. And a celery,” Lucy said and added, “For health.”

  “Didn’t the ice cream melt?”

  “No,” said Lucy straight-faced. “Can I watch TV? I mean, may I be excused?”

  After the child had dashed off, Karp said, “That was a competent lie.”

  “What do you expect from the spawn of two lawyers? And what did you do today, dear?”

  “Among many other duties, I filed Murray’s suit first thing this morning. The Bloom thing.”

  “Bloom? I thought the Mayor and the health department were the defendants.”

  “Legally, yes. But Bloom is behind it all. Which I will demonstrate. And find out why. Speaking of which, do you remember Phil DeLino?”

  “Vaguely,” said Marlene. “He worked for you when you had Criminal Courts. He didn’t stay long, did he?”

  “No, he was one of those guys who zip through to punch their ticket. But a good guy. A great deal maker. Even if he had a losing hand, he’d tough it out with the defendant. And he’d go to trial too; he had the balls for it. I was sorry to lose him. Anyway, he called me late today. He’s a special assistant in the Mayor’s office.”

  “Yeah? What did he want?”

  “To talk about the suit. Off the record. The Mayor apparently is not pleased. I’m seeing him tomorrow.”

  Marlene got up and started clearing dishes. “Speaking of former acquaintances, I spent the morning with Carrie Lanin. Did you ever meet her?”

  “She was in that play group, right? Madeleine?”

  “Miranda. She was spooked. It seems somebody she went to high school with is stalking her.” She filled Karp in on Lanin’s story while she washed and he dried.

  “You think the guy could be dangerous?” asked Karp as he tossed chop bones to Sweety, who crunched them up like Fritos.

  “That’s what I’m going to try and find out. I got Harry in on it.”

  Karp paused in his wiping as a familiar and unpleasant thought sprang into his consciousness. “Uh, Marlene, this isn’t going to, um, get you into trouble, is it?”

  “It’s too early to tell. And what if it is? You know I—” She stopped talking and grimaced as a spasm of nausea passed.

  “What’s the matter? Still feeling sick?”

  Marlene groaned. “Yes. They call it morning sickness for a good reason. It’s not supposed to last all fucking day.”

  “Maybe it’s different when you’re carrying a first-round NBA draft choice in your womb. Extra male hormones… ?”

  Marlene giggled in spite of herself. “You’re going to be pissed off if it’s a short, neurasthenic poet.”

  “That won’t happen if you do your part, Marlene. You have nine months. Think tall, think moves, think hands.”

  He dropped the dishcloth and moved around behind her, embracing her from in back. She leaned back against him comfortably and said, “Maybe I should consume old sweat socks and jockstraps too, diced.”

  “If you think it will help,” said Karp lovingly into her ear.

  FOUR

  Phil DeLino was a big, open-faced man with dark, humorous eyes. He wore a nice gray double-breasted three-piece suit that was working hard to cover the weight he had put on since he played tight end for Fordham. His greeting to Karp in his office was warm and seemed sincere.

  The small office in City Hall was suitably elegant. It had a window, the appointments were made of wood or leather, and there was a genuine oil painting of a minor nineteenth-century civic luminary on the wall, looking smug and well grafted. Seated, they passed the time in obligatory catching up and discussing the prospects of the various New York teams.

  When this pleasant diversion had gone on for ten minutes or so, there was a pause, and DeLino picked up a blue-bound legal notice from his desk and tapped it a few times. “This thing here, Butch. This is a problem.”

  “Yes. You mentioned that the Mayor was not pleased.”

  “You could say that. He called Josh Gottkind as soon as he found out, and I think they had to replace the phone wires; they were fried. Our corporation counsel is not in favor this fine day.”

  “You mean it took His Honor by surprise? What did he think Selig would do? Say, ‘Gee, thanks for the job, sorry it didn’t work out’? It’s hard to believe Gottkind didn’t discuss the issue with him before he decided to go ahead.”

  DeLino paused judiciously and smiled before saying, “I think ‘before’ is the operative word. Those of us who serve His Honor rarely get a chance to advise him before he makes his mind up. Our job, and he’s made the point more than once, is to keep him out of trouble when he does what he’s decided to do anyway.”

  And take the crap he hands out when it goes sour, thought Karp. He said, “So he wishes this had never happened?”

  “Profoundly. And he intends to be forthcoming and cooperative in every way, so that as little of the poo that’s going to be flying around sticks to him.”

  “Dr. Fuerza’s been nominated to carry the can, in other words,” observed Karp. “But there’s going to be a lot to carry. The Mayor will not look great under the best of circumstances.”

  DeLino nodded and considered this for a long moment. Then he asked, “I guess there’s no way to solve this little problem in a civilized way?”

  “Well, yeah, actually there is. If Dr. Selig could be reinstated, with back pay, and with a public acknowledgment that the accusations about his professional and personal behavior were entirely groundless and the result of misinformation purposely conveyed to the Mayor by the parties that wrote the two memos …”

  But DeLino was already smiling and shaking his head. “Yeah, right,” he said, “Gottkind would really
go for that; we fire somebody for cause and as soon as we get threatened by a lawsuit, we announce that the cause was trumped-up? The City would look like an asshole.”

  “The Mayor would, you mean.”

  “Is there a difference? Okay, granted, we may have to go to the mat on this one, but”—he glanced again at the legal form on his desk, and at a sheet of paper that seemed to have notes scribbled on it—“do you really think you have a Fourteenth Amendment liberty claim here?”

  “Yeah, we do,” said Karp.

  “Really? What the hell’s the theory? It sure as shit isn’t a Bishop case.”

  Karp grinned and replied, “You know, I still like the Celtics for the NBA title this year. They picked up Parrish and McHale, and if Bird is hot again …”

  DeLino chuckled. “Okay, okay, I wasn’t trying to pump you. This is off the record anyway, just a couple of old jocks talking about sports and the grandeur of the law.”

  Karp saw DeLino glance at him expectantly. Karp was familiar with the look of men wanting to pass him information, if he would only ask in the right way. He said, “Off the record, huh? Okay, Phil, off the record, I would like to know why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why this happened,” said Karp. “Why the Mayor bought himself a bunch of problems by firing a man well known as one of the best forensic scientists in the country. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does if you think the C.M.E’s slot is more than forensics. And the Mayor never impugned his forensic skills. He just said Selig was administratively sloppy and had an attitude problem. He was arrogant and—”

  “Oh, horseshit, Phil! Arrogant? Well, compared to most of the people working for the Mayor, including Dr. Fuerza, he at least had something to be arrogant about. And since when is administrative competence a qualification for a job in New York?”

  DeLino laughed. Karp continued, “No, really! And don’t give me the party line—you know there was political clout behind this, and Fuerza doesn’t have much to speak of, which leaves one person.”

  The other man dropped his eyes and pursed his lips and then looked up again and said, “He’s been after the Mayor for months on this. We ran on a strong anti-crime platform, as you know, and this year we’re running on it again. We can’t have anyone big in criminal justice saying the Mayor is soft on crime or not supporting the work of the district attorney. Bloom claimed Selig was impossible to work with. He was inefficient, he lost evidence, his people were screwing up cases. The argument was made that we might get into a situation where a big, high-profile case went down the tubes because of an M.E. problem and that all of this would come out: the Mayor knew about it and didn’t act on time, and now a dread killer is back on the street, and so on, and so on. We were assured that the guy was, I mean—whatever his slice and dice skills in the morgue—he was a bum as a leader, and when the stuff we had on him was presented, he’d just slink away. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time that a technician got promoted over his head and fucked up. So Fuerza got the job of digging up supporting stuff that’d make him look bad, and wrote his memo, and Bloom wrote his memo, and so here we are.”

  DeLino looked at his visitor, examining his reaction to this information. He saw Karp staring blankly at the window, his cheeks sucked in. It was a characteristic pose that he recalled from his days with the D.A., one that signaled intense thought. It lasted for a long fifteen seconds. Then Karp asked abruptly, “When did it start exactly? How long has Bloom been nudging the Mayor to can Selig?”

  “Gosh, I couldn’t say,” said DeLino, surprised. “Why does it matter?”

  “Can you find out?”

  The man laughed nervously. “Uh, yeah, I could probably find out, but—”

  “But why should you help me?” Karp asked rhetorically. “Well, look at it this way, Phil. I believe my case is good enough to rip the City a new asshole, and you know I’m a pretty good judge of cases. I think you guys screwed up royally, on Mr. Bloom’s bad advice. Now, the Mayor doesn’t want to carry the can for it, and we agree that poor little Angie Fuerza can’t carry the whole can, so who’s left? And I’m sure you’ll want the Mayor’s experience on the witness stand at the trial—because, believe me, we’re going to trial on this one—to be as dignified and unstressful as possible. In fact, I think you’d like to be able to go in there right now and tell His Honor that the deal is done in that department, wouldn’t you?”

  DeLino smiled the rueful smile of a fixer who has himself been fixed. “I take your point,” he said. “Let me get back to you on that.”

  “Is it Sunday already?” asked Lucy Karp when she awakened to find her mother wearing a dark suit, a blood-colored silk blouse and stockings.

  “No, baby,” Marlene laughed, “it’s a school day. I just have some business downtown. I put your clothes out for you.”

  Lucy glanced over at the top of her bureau, where a red jumper, white shirt, and yellow- and red-striped tights were neatly arranged. She grimaced but said nothing. Ten minutes later, she appeared in the kitchen and sat down at the table. Marlene noted that instead of the pretty tights Lucy was wearing her worn jeans under the jumper, but decided to say nothing; healthful eggs, toast, and milk were going down without a murmur, and she did not have time for a major battle this morning. With a tiny pang she realized that a certain perfection in child rearing was going to go by the boards as she started working again, and hoped Lucy’s psychiatrist would explain this to her twenty years hence.

  Keys, raincoat, slicker for Lucy were gathered up and the dog was marshaled, panting and dripping slime at the door. A grocery bag was found for Lucy’s project, a shoebox diorama depicting the purchase of Manhattan Island from the Indians by Peter Minuet. She had used one of her prized possessions, a plastic wedding-cake groom, as a stand-in for the canny Dutchman, who stood proudly extending a mass of cut-up Monopoly money to several glum paper Manahattas, while in the background ranged the forest primeval, populated by plastic animals: an armadillo, a polar bear, and a lavender warthog. Marlene was surprised to see that Lucy had done a second shoebox, in which Minuet was a tiny pink baby doll wrapped in cloth and glue, with a beard made of a swatch of Lucy’s own black hair, and the Indians were red modeling clay.

  “You did two projects?”

  “Yes.”

  “What, for extra credit?”

  “No. I made one for Bobby Crandall.”

  “Why couldn’t he make one himself?”

  Lucy shrugged. “He said he couldn’t. He wanted one like mine.”

  “Urn, darling, I don’t think you’re supposed to do other people’s work for them. I think it’s against the rules, you know?”

  At which point Lucy shrugged again and uttered a stream of twittering Chinese.

  Marlene’s mouth opened in stupefaction. “What the f—, I mean, what was that, dear? Chinese?”

  Lucy looked away, as if bored by her accomplishment. “Janice Chen says it.”

  “But what does it mean?” asked Marlene.

  An impatient grimace. “It doesn’t mean something, Mommy, it’s just a saying.”

  Marlene experienced another of the peculiar feelings she was having about Lucy in recent months, compounded oddly of loss, fear, and pride. Her daughter spoke Chinese! Her daughter had a secret life at seven years! The birth closeness was fading, was almost gone; what would replace it was at the moment still in flux.

  They left the house early to pick up Miranda Lanin on Duane Street. Carrie Lanin was waiting by the door with her daughter. “Any contact?” Marlene asked.

  “The usual. He called a couple of times last night.”

  “You have the tapes?” Carrie nodded and handed Marlene a cassette. “And this.” She gave Marlene a box containing a cheerleader doll and a note in the same precise writing. It said, “My Love is strong and True. I’d do anything to be with You. Love always.”

  “Unsigned, as usual. Did you see him?”

  “No, this was left on the seat of my car. I al
most fainted.”

  “Was the car locked?”

  “Of course!”

  “Okay, that’s good. A little B and E never fails to impress. You know what to do?”

  “Yeah, go to work and come home.”

  “And stay there. Things may start to heat up.”

  Marlene gathered the two girls and drove them to P.S. 1. She looked for Pruitt’s blue Dodge but didn’t see it. Maybe stalkers took a day off; she hoped he hadn’t picked this one.

  Two hours later, Marlene was waiting impatiently at a scarred metal desk in the nest of cubicles used by the D.A. squad, a group of detectives that did special tasks for the district attorney’s office. In the main these involved corruption investigations, but squad members also took on the jobs that in private practice fell to private detectives: finding and bringing in witnesses, looking things up, and other official minutiae. Marlene was waiting for one detective in particular, who was engaged, she hoped, in none of these official duties.

  She saw him come in the door, a compact man in a rumpled gray suit and the traditional gum-soled black shoes. Harry Bello was in his early fifties but looked older. He had a face like a fallen leaf in a gutter, brownish gray and drooping and crumpled with lines. If he stood on a corner, or in a doorway, or sat on a park bench, not one in a thousand would see him, or would notice him only as part of the furniture of the street, a trash basket, a standpipe, which was one reason why he was a great detective.

  He had been known for it in Brooklyn for twenty years until his wife had gotten sick and Bello started to drink heavily, and then his partner was killed in a shoot-out, while Harry sat hung-over in the car, and then his wife died and he drank more heavily, and during a long bout of this he gunned down a kid who might or might not have been the kid who killed his partner. The cops had covered that up and shifted Bello to a quiet precinct to log hours until retirement.

  From this living tomb Marlene had redeemed him, if not to full life, then to a useful sort of walking death. Bello no longer drank, but neither was he working a spiritual program at A.A., unless you figured that his relationship with Marlene and her daughter filled that purpose. His eyes were like cinders, burnt and dangerous.