They held the meeting in one of the conference rooms on the top floor of NYPD headquarters, first thing after lunch on Monday afternoon. The room was paneled with light wood and carpeted in blue, and it had blue drapes that were pulled back to reveal tall windows that looked out on Police Plaza. There was a flag stand against one wall holding the national banner in the center and the flags of the state, the city, and the NYPD flanking. On the opposite wall was an oil portrait of the Police Commission, circa 1910, six plump and whiskered Irish gentlemen, who stared out at their successors with bland confidence. The center of this room was occupied by a long table in pale oak trimmed with a darker wood, in shape a near oval with the ends truncated, and around it sixteen comfortable blue-upholstered swivel armchairs. Each of these chairs was occupied, and several more people, of lower rank or more peripheral to the meeting’s purpose, sat in straight chairs against the wall. The highest-ranking person at the meeting sat at the head of the table, closest to the window, so that he was enveloped in an intermittent glory of afternoon sun flowing through the great panes and anyone addressing him was illuminated, as by a searchlight. This was Chief Inspector Kevin X. Battle, a silver-haired, pink-faced man in his late fifties, urbane, smooth, careful, the epitome of a fourteenth-floor suit. Chief inspector is the highest regular rank in the NYPD, and this particular chief inspector was even more exalted, since he served as the uniformed chief of staff for the police commissioner, the political appointee who ran the Department. Battle’s presence at this meeting attested to its significance, and also explained the presence in the room of a number of people who had little to contribute and no direct knowledge of any facts germane to the meeting’s purpose, which was to determine the likelihood that New York was in danger from a band of Arab terrorists. They were there in obeisance to the bureaucratic law that states, in effect, that a subordinate shall not meet privately with his boss’s boss. The subordinate in this case was Detective James Raney, and since he was meeting a boss at a stratospheric level, this meant that every level between him and the police commissioner had to show. Thus he was accompanied by his watch commander, his precinct commander, his zone commander, the commander of all the detectives in Manhattan, and a deputy chief inspector from the office of the chief of detectives. Since the affair extended to Brooklyn, there was a contingent too from that proud borough, and a man also from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Since the affair involved political groups, the head of the Bureau of Strategic Surveillance and Intelligence (the former Red Squad) was there, looking not at all pleased. In addition to these worthies, and their accompanying fuglemen, there were also present the two people besides Raney who knew what was going on: Butch Karp, representing the New York D.A., and Clay Fulton, representing essentially himself. As one of the Department’s few tolerated eccentrics, Fulton had, in practical terms, neither superiors nor subordinates. Everyone in the room knew who he was, and everyone thought someone else had invited him.
Chief Inspector Battle looked sourly around the table. He did not like such meetings interrupting his intolerably busy schedule, and his assumption going into it was that it was either a bout of hysteria on the part of the district attorney who had demanded it, or, more probably, a ploy by that gentleman to generate political support and money from the Jews. Battle naturally understood who the real players around the table were and who the merely ritualistic attendees. Karp was a well-known crazy man, yet another smart Jew, but reportedly unreliable with respect to supporting the Department. Raney was a trigger-happy hooligan whose remarkable streak of luck was going to run out one day and leave the Department probably facing a nasty lawsuit (Cop Shoots Nanny, Three Kids). Fulton was untouchable because of his race and record, but was not, nor had he ever been, a team player to Battle’s standards and would never, as a result, see captain’s rank. Battle’s instinct was to can this as quickly as possible, while establishing a foolproof ass-covering apparatus. Battle’s own ass was protected by (figuratively) four inches of molybdenum-vanadium steel, a barrier he had worked for decades to develop, and there was not the slightest chance that he would endanger it, not for a legion of putative sand-nigger bombers. While demonstrably loyal to the commissioner of the day, Battle had as his primary loyalty the Job, and, a thin little hair back from that, his own career. He reasonably hoped to retire a super-chief (of Patrol, for choice), and after a stint as police chief of a smaller city, it was not out of the question that he might return to the Apple as the big cheese.
He got the meeting under way, paying due attention to bureaucratic courtesy, which meant that the bosses had to give their completely hollow and noncommittal opinions before the working cop who knew something got to speak. The burden of this guff was that if there really was an Arab terror cell in operation it would be a bad thing, but that the Department (and My part of it, of course) was fully capable of dealing with it, under the wise orders of the brass.
Then it was Raney’s turn. He was wearing a dark gray suit, a gleaming white oxford shirt, a blue tie with tiny pale Nixonian dots, and his black wing tips were mirrors. He had never been on the fourteenth floor before, had never, since leaving the Police Academy, been in a police building that did not have pea-soup green walls, brown linoleum on the floors, and a pungent aroma of tobacco, Lysol, and acidic coffee. He thought he could get used to this kind of class pretty soon.
He was not in the least nervous as he began his presentation. His closest experience to what he was now doing was his service as an altar boy. There was God down there at the end of the table, and all you had to do was go through a set of well-rehearsed motions and he would be happy and you could go off back to regular life.
Raney was a decent enough presenter (he had learned much from Karp’s style in covering similar material the other night), bold enough to eschew the heavy circumlocutions of police jargon, and he told his story smoothly and succinctly. The Shilkes killing; the idea of a violent conspiracy wider than four boys; the discovery of the floater Ali and his tattoo; the business of the Daoud sister and the knife and the stabbing of Train Wilson on the Deuce; the raid on the East Village Women’s Shelter and the kidnap of the sister; the discovery there of 9mm shell casings with Czech military markings; the interrogation of Hassan Daoud and his son, Walid (they both had alibis); the evidence for Arab participants in the raid.
“Who was that who said they were Arabs?” Battle interrupted.
“Lucy Karp, sir, age ten,” said Raney. “She was sharing a room with the kidnapped girl and hid in the closet. She overheard them talking.”
Battle looked at Karp. “No relation, I presume,” said Battle.
“My daughter,” answered Karp.
A soft murmur in the room. “Excuse me, your daughter was in a battered-women’s shelter?” asked Battle.
“Yes, my wife does volunteer work for them, and my daughter occasionally befriends some of the younger residents, as apparently happened in this case. Fatyma Daoud was teaching her Arabic.” Incredulous stares. “My daughter is something of a language prodigy, Chief,” Karp added.
“I see,” said Battle. “So, is that it? A stabbing, a floater with a tattoo, another stabbing, a kidnap from a shelter by ‘Arabs’ of some kind on the evidence of a ten-year-old?”
“Not quite,” Karp said, and related the story of Ibn-Salemeh and Khalid, as he had heard it in John Haddad’s office.
Battle was skilled at keeping his face unrevealing of his thoughts, and so no one saw how truly irritated he was at these revelations. A city councilman had been involved in this stupidity, which meant that even greater circumspection was required. John Haddad could not be hauled into a precinct and sweated for more information about the shadowy Mr. Rahmali; nor was it wise to launch at this time a major roust of the Arab community, not until the P.C. had worked the mayor and seen how much clout Haddad exercised on issues critical to the Department. His suspicion was confirmed that this was some kind of political thing that the Department would do well to keep at arm’s length.
“Very interesting, Mr. Karp,” Battle said icily. “It’s always fascinating when the New York D.A. extends his investigatory reach to the outer boroughs.” He turned to the BSSI chief, whose name was Richard Bailey. Bailey was an elderly desk-jockey inspector with a lot of pals among the brass, who was filling his present post as a sinecure before retirement. Battle said, “Dick, you have anything on this?”
Bailey cleared his throat. “Not a thing, Chief. In fact, I spoke to Don Herring at the Bureau this morning when I got the heads-up for this meeting. He said, and I quote, ‘it is extremely unlikely that there has been significant penetration of the continental United States by Middle Eastern terror organizations.’ So …” He shrugged elaborately.
Battle grunted and looked down the table, straining for a way out of this garbage that would cover the Department and let him get back to serious work. His gaze lit upon the one face that stood out in the ring of pale, attentive, respectful ovals around the table. This face was not particularly respectful or attentive. It was bored. It had an expression on it that might even be called insubordinate. And it was deep brown. Chief Battle well understood that in this year of 1981, the slightest taint of racism was an absolute career killer, and so he never, even among his closest friends, allowed a word disrespectful of minorities to pass his lips. On the other hand, if one had to stick someone with a tar baby, so to speak…
“Lieutenant Fulton,” he boomed, “perhaps we could have your thoughts on this, and why don’t you begin by explaining your connection with the case?”
Fulton explained that he was there at the request of the district attorney’s office, and that he had reviewed the case at the request of same, he being a legitimate member of the D.A. squad, and there being some sense that there might be a suspect involvement of a public official, Mr. Haddad. Which, he was happy to say, there was not. But having reviewed the case material presented by Detective Raney in some detail, he had to respectfully disagree with Inspector Bailey. It was his professional opinion that there was sufficient evidence to suggest the existence of an alien conspiracy of unknown capability and extent, certainly enough to warrant a full-scale investigation.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” said Battle, smiling faintly. That was what he had expected and desired the man to say. “Since you feel that way, why don’t we put you in charge of the investigation? Say, you and Sergeant Raney for starters, and other resources as required. You’ll report through BSSI and Inspector Bailey here, if that’s all right with you, Dick? Good. And please—watch the overtime, people. We’re getting killed on it this year.” He got to his feet. “Gentlemen, thank you for coming,” he said crisply, as if attendance had been voluntary, and then strode out, followed by two junior suits who had been sitting in chairs along the wall.
“Well, wasn’t that a rat fuck?” said Raney, who was sitting in Karp’s office with Fulton. All three men had their jackets off and were dabbing themselves with wads of paper towels. It had started to rain heavily while they were walking the few blocks from Police Plaza to Centre Street, and they had gotten soaked, which did not improve their moods.
“It’s more or less what I expected,” said Karp. “The cops don’t like D.A.’s telling them they’re asleep at the switch.”
“Speaking of sleep,” said Raney, “am I crazy or did Inspector Bailey actually doze off while Fulton was talking? Are we really going to report to that crock?”
Fulton said, “Absolutely. We will generate paper and send him every scrap of it, at least a ream every day, tabbed and indexed. He’s not going to read any of it, but it’ll cover our butts with the chief. Meanwhile, we’ll do what we need to do.”
“And he’s going to give us what we need?”
“No, and we’re not going to ask him either, unless we want to dick around until Christmas. Me, you, White, maybe we can steal some people from the D.A. Squad, I can call in some favors uptown if we need to, but that’s going to be it. We’ll get a piece of paper with Battle’s name on it we can wave around the precincts so they don’t laugh in our faces if we need a canvass or something.”
“That’s not enough,” said Raney.
“No, but it’s what we got. So, where do we start?”
“What did your FBI guy say?” Karp asked Fulton.
“What Bailey’s guy said, more or less. The Bureau is real careful nowadays about setting up intelligence operations against domestic political groups, or so they tell me. What, us spy on a peaceful businessman of Arab heritage? Us? Also, it’s well known in the Bureau that local cops, when you can drag them away from beating up minorities and collecting graft, can barely tie their own shoes. The idea that we picked up a terrorist cell that they missed …”
“Got it,” said Karp. “So, no help there. Suggestions?”
“Get on the kidnap,” said Fulton. “It’s the most recent crime. Go over the scene, check the forensics, do a canvass. There were a bunch of guys involved, somebody must have seen something, recognized a car, seen a license plate.”
“We should have a talk with this Khalid character, what’s-his-name, Chouza,” said Raney.
Fulton frowned and shook his head. “Yeah, you said that the other night. But like I said then, what if he spooks? These guys are probably pretty good at that.”
“If he spooks, at least we know he’s dirty,” said Raney.
“Uh-huh, and then him and an unknown number of associates are loose in New York with—what was it, Butch?—a two-hundred-fifty-kilogram bomb. We don’t know shit about what they’re doing yet. It’s way too early to brace Khalid.”
“We could follow him, low-profile.”
“Yeah, we could if we had the troops,” said Fulton. “It takes eight people to provide full-time one-man surveillance, and if you want to set up a moving surveillance on anybody who’s likely to be looking for it, you need at least three cars. Also, if we’re going to concentrate on anyone, I’d rather concentrate on the Daouds.”
“Oh, fuck the Daouds!” snapped Raney, who was getting a little tired of being told his business by this guy, whatever his rep. “The Daouds are patsies. The kid is a dim bulb; the father is a straight-up bakery guy who barely speaks English.”
Fulton’s genial smile did not break. “Right, Jim, but if they’re such nobodies, why did a slick bunch of guys with automatic weapons go through a lot of trouble to lift the daughter?”
Raney opened his mouth to answer this and then realized he didn’t know the answer, that the answer to that particular question would be one of the prime goals of any investigation. He subsided, cursing under his breath.
“Yeah, right,” said Fulton sympathetically, “me too.” He looked over at Karp, who was gazing dreamily out the window and slowly drying his head. “Say, Ace—you got any ideas here, now that you got us into this shit?”
Karp said, to their surprise, “I guess you noticed who was missing from the meeting today.”
A moment’s thought and Raney answered, “Roland?”
“Yeah, Roland’s having a bad day all around,” said Karp, and he told them the story, widely circulating now through Centre Street, of the weekend’s developments in re: Morilla. “I’m concerned about the supposed gunman here,” Karp concluded. “The late Ahmed. I hate it that he’s an Arab.”
This dangled for a moment, and then Raney bit with a puzzled grimace. “So he’s an Arab—you’re not saying there’s a connection?”
“Not yet,” said Karp, “but you might want to touch base with Alfasano in the Six, see if he’s got any more story on the deceased. There could be a link.”
Raney nodded agreeably, not desiring another argument. “Yeah, okay. So they’re going to spring the Mexican brothers?”
“Probably walking free this minute,” said Karp.
Two hours after his release from Rikers, Jodón Obregon was reclining on a comfortable bed in a West Side hotel. Next to the bed stood the large suitcase that had been delivered that morning to the offices of Manny Huerta. Huerta had turned it over to him upon the brothers’ release, pointedly not inquiring what was in it. The delivery of such suitcases was not an uncommon event in Huerta’s practice. The lawyer had been paid, in cash.
Jodón had enjoyed a long, hot shower, several cool drinks, and a cigar, and was awaiting the arrival of a blond whore he had ordered from the bell captain. There was one item of business remaining before he could fully relax, however. He picked up the bedside phone and dialed a familiar number.
El Chivato answered on the fourth ring. Jodón was effusive in his praise—all had worked out as they wished. They were free, and the money was promised. Lucky was terrified and willing to do anything to stave off the attentions of El Chivato.
Who listened to this without comment, saying only, “I have to get back to Nogales.”
“Yes, you can go tonight. But there’s one last thing. You have to pick up the money.”
“From Lucky?”
“Yes. I arranged for you to meet him in Brooklyn, five-thirty this evening. Take down this address.” He read out the address of a garage on Fulton Street that Lucky had given him. “Okay, this is a car-repair shop, but it’ll be closed for the day. There’s an office you can see from the street. He’ll be there, sitting in the office. With the money in a suitcase. You go in, pick it up, and get out. You got that?” Jodón asked.
“Yes. How much is it?”
“Two point two million. That’s something, huh?”
“Yes.”
Jodón waited for the kid to say something else, but there was nothing but the hiss of the line. He said, “So, again, a good job. I’ll recommend you to all my friends. Maybe I’ll see you back in Mexico …” Another long pause. For some reason the kid didn’t want to hang up. Then he heard the click of the broken connection, and with a feeling of relief and a vague unease, as if something had been left undone, he hung up the phone.
It was not until over an hour later, with the blond whore on top of him, bouncing vigorously away, that he understood, and the understanding drove an icy spike of fear through his vitals and drew the stiffness from his organ, causing the girl to break her rhythm and look down at him with a confused expression.
He heaved the girl off him, wiped himself with a corner of the sheet, and grabbed instinctively for the phone. But who to call, what to do? José was no help, the lawyer was no help—a plane ticket out? Yes, but to where? Nothing could be planned until he had assurance that the little maricón was truly dead. He put the phone down and tried to think how he had come to do such a stupid thing. The excitement of being released perhaps, the strong drinks after long abstinence. This was what had caused him to tell the most dangerous man in Mexico to pick up over two million (imaginary) dollars without also telling him where to deliver it.
“The car is about as clean as a car can get,” said Detective Joe Alfasano to the two detectives who had come by to check out the dead Arab and his rolling sepulcher. Alfasano was an overweight, balding fellow who sported the last Adolphe Menjou mustache in New York. He had no problem talking about this case to two strange cops because this was not an ordinary case; the brass was interested in this one big-time, and these two, Raney and White, had hinted broadly that they were working for the fourteenth floor. He did not have much to share as yet, but he was sharing for all he was worth.
“It’s been wiped and vacuumed. It smelled of Windex when we cracked it. The stiff was in the trunk, by the way, naked, no bloodstains on the trunk carpet.”
“So killed someplace else, he bled out, and they stuck him in there,” observed White. “You got a previous owner on the car? I understand it had stolen plates.”
“No, that’s what I mean by clean,” said Alfasano. “The VINs were ground off, not just the ones on the engine block and the chassis, but the ones on the axles too, which they don’t usually bother with. Whoever sold the killer the car was a serious pro. Nice car too. A ’75 Firebird, black, with red interior, got the stencil on the front and everything.”
“A Firebird, huh? In good condition, is it?”
“Perfect. Runs smooth, the engine’s been steam-cleaned. The upholstery’s in good shape. Why, you in the market?”
White smiled briefly and said, “No, just that why use a nice car like that for a dump car. Why not steal a car from a dentist, or use the vic’s own car?”
“Maybe it is his car,” said Alfasano.
White exchanged a look with Raney and said, “If it was his car, why would it have phony plates on it? Why would the killer bother? No, this is a special kind of car. This is an armed-robbery getaway car, bought or rented from a chop shop. It’s like Avis uptown: you pay your money, you get a clean, fast, good-running car for the job. After, you take it back, the guy wipes it, paints it, dumps the stolen plates he supplied, and it disappears. It never was. If for some reason you got to dump the car, nobody can trace it back to you or to the guy you got it from.” He paused and explained, “Eight years on the heavy-crimes unit out of the Two-Eight. Now, the guys who do this kind of work tend to be a close-mouthed bunch, or they’re out of business, or dead. However …”
“What?” said Raney and Alfasano almost simultaneously, provoking a chuckle from White. “There’s one guy up in Inwood I recall,” said White, “used to specialize in muscle cars, Firebirds, GTOs, Mustangs. A Dominican guy, real precise, a perfectionist. He used to grind the VINs off the axles too. And he owes me a favor.”
As it turned out, Felipe Valdés, the chop artist, did not mind giving up the name of Connie Erbes to Detective Alonso White. Erbes was not a regular customer and was unlikely to take violent revenge if busted. Also, White had sworn to him that he would not have to testify, and White, Felipe knew, was not only a man of his word, but had, in the old days, placed his bulk between Valdés and any number of “accessory to” charges.
Ramon Valdés, when questioned at the Club Carib, said he hadn’t seen Connie for a while. The word was she was laying low, trying to shake a troublesome boyfriend. And yeah, he had an address for her.
The door to the apartment Connie Erbes reportedly occupied was unresponsive to knocks and, surprisingly, unlocked. The detectives entered, therefore, with drawn guns, crouching. They found a place unkempt, piled with take-out debris and smashed furnishings, but unoccupied. Raney went to check out the bedrooms, White to cover the rest of the apartment.
One bedroom had clearly not been occupied for a long time, and Raney ignored that one. The other showed signs of recent occupancy. The bed was rumpled, the sheets stained. There were some women’s clothes on the floor of the closet, and the smashed ruins of a dressing table. In a wastebasket he found wads of bloodstained cotton wadding. Raney looked under the bed. A brassy gleam attracted his eye, and he reached the little thing out with a rubber-covered hand. He was examining the cartridge closely, although he had known what it was the instant he had it in his fingers, when White came in, looking gray.
“Find something?” asked Raney.
“Oh, nothing much,” said White. “Ray Netski’s stuffed into the refrigerator with a bunch of holes in his chest. Besides that …”
“Oh, Christ!”
“Yeah, the beat goes on. Looks like he’s been dead a couple of days. We need to find this woman.”
“Uh-huh. Look at this.” He stood up and handed White the cartridge.
White peered at it. “What is that, Russian writing on the base?”
“Uh-huh. They were thick on the ground in ’Nam. That’s a Soviet-made 7.62mm round for the AK-47 assault rifle.”
“Roland,” said Karp, “you’re acting like a baby,” knowing it was the least calming thing he could say, and not caring anymore, not caring if the red-faced man who had just barged into his office cursing and screaming had a stroke, launched himself across the desk at which Karp sat, fists flying, or vanished through the earth like Rumpelstiltskin.
Roland didn’t seem to hear, however, but, standing by the open door, continued his diatribe. “… and didn’t think to even fucking inform me, a meeting at police headquarters, on my case. Who the fuck died and left you king shit? Huh? You trying to ruin me? You son of a bitch!”
Karp had on his desk a paperweight, a heavy piece of Lucite enclosing a rifle bullet once removed from his shoulder. Right next to it was a regulation baseball bearing the signature of Mickey Mantle. Instantly Hrcany’s last words were out, Karp sprang to his feet, grabbed the paperweight, and flung it at Roland’s head. It grazed his ear and slammed into the wall next to the door, making a sizable dent. Roland’s jaw dropped, and he went pale. He touched his ear and looked at the claret on his fingertips. Then he looked at Karp, who had the baseball in his hand and was in the final stages of a serious wind-up.
Roland ducked the bean ball, which flew through the doorway. A sound of shattering glass and a woman’s short, shrill yelp. Roaring, Roland took two long steps and a leap, and threw himself across the desk at Karp’s throat, bearing the larger man down behind the desk.
Karp had not had a serious physical fight (except once with his wife) since age thirteen, and it quickly crossed his mind that he could be in serious trouble in this one. Roland’s hands were on his throat, cutting off air and blood supply. He had once seen Roland, on a bet, actually bend a horseshoe with his hands. Things were starting to go gray when a deluge of cold water fell on both their heads, followed by a sound like the clang of a cracked bell.
Karp coughed water from his nose and slid out from under the spluttering Hrcany, the side of whose face was now covered with blood. Marcie O’Malley, the D.A.’s secretary, stood over the two of them, holding the galvanized one-gallon watering can with which she maintained the small rain forest of houseplants in the D.A.’s suite. This was the source of the flood, and also of the sound, for she had whaled Roland a couple across the skull.
“Jesus, Marcie!” said Roland, exploring his head with a cautious finger.
“Don’t you Jesus me, young man,” said the fierce O’Malley. “I’ve never seen anything like it, carrying on like a couple of mutt dogs on the street. How could you, right in the district attorney’s office! Broken glass! You should be ashamed of yourselves. And the both of you attorneys …” The enormity of this last fact overwhelmed the woman’s reserves of outrage, and she left, closing the door behind her.
Karp got to his feet, righted his chair, and fished a couple of clean paper napkins out of a bottom drawer. He handed these to Roland, who held them in a wad against his bleeding ear. He got to his feet too and collapsed into Karp’s visitor armchair.
“Christ, Butch,” he said, probing gently, “you almost tore my ear off.”
“I was aiming to split your skull,” said Karp huskily. There seemed to be something wrong with his vocal cords.
“Why, ‘cause I was yelling at you?”
“No,” Karp croaked, “because a man is dead, a cop is dead, a cop who was supposed to be a pal of yours is dead, and what’s on your mind is your status, your goddamned ego, whether Butch Karp is fucking with you or not. That’s why. I couldn’t stand it anymore, Roland. It’s fucking unworthy of you. And you’ve been poisonous like that ever since you took that damn job.”
Hrcany was studying his fingernails intently, as if a remarkably engrossing novel had miraculously been imprinted on them.
“I mean, fuck it, Roland,” Karp added, “it’s okay to be wrong. Everybody’s a schmuck sometimes. The difference between the occasional schmuck and the incurable schmuck to the bone is, do you fucking cop to it and drive on?”
Roland shook his head sharply from side to side, like a man discouraging a small flying insect. “Okay. On this Netski thing—I do feel bad about it, especially since he probably got it looking into this thing for me, these threats. I think we should pick up the Obregons again. That was his girlfriend, the Erbes woman, who rented the car the Arab who killed Morilla was found in.”
“You think she killed Netski?” asked Karp with a hidden sigh. That “okay” was all the acknowledgment he was going to get on the subject of Roland’s errors of judgment and his atrocious behavior over the last weeks. It was back to business, with Karp hoping faintly for a less abrasive relationship with the Homicide Bureau chief in the future.
“I doubt it,” said Roland. “There’s another guy involved. Who knows, maybe a third Obregon brother we don’t know about. I’ll have them picked up. The cops are already looking for the woman.”
“And the Arab connection, the Russian bullet in the apartment? The Czech bullets in the women’s shelter?”
Roland tossed his hand, fingers spread, a gesture of bafflement. “Fuck if I know, man. We’re back to zero on this whole thing. Let’s reserve theorizing until we get more information.”
“A wise policy, Roland.”
“And fuck you too,” said Roland, a hard smile cracking his face. He got up to leave.
Karp said, “Roland, I want to apologize for trying to kill you.”
“Ah, shit, that’s okay,” said Roland. “My dad tried a lot harder than that about a million times. I’m surprised I made it this far. What can I say? I’m a fucking pain in the ass.”
“You are not paying attention,” chided Tran. He was trying to teach Lucy how to spot a tail by dashing across busy streets just before the traffic started, and then observing the results in a plate-glass window set perpendicular to the direction of travel. It was a simple enough dodge, but the child seemed uninterested, dull, and recalcitrant.
Lucy was about to offer a reflex denial of this charge, as kids do, but then a little flower of maturity chanced to blossom in her soul, and she came out with what was on her mind, in Cantonese:
“That’s right, Elder Brother, I am not. I am worried about Fatyma. I still cannot understand how you allowed this to occur. It is confusing. I think it was cowardly to allow her to be taken without a fight, although I know you are not a coward.”
“You are mistaken, Little Sister,” said Tran. “I am a great coward. This is the proof: in my country there are one million dead heroes, but I am alive after twenty-five years of war. I am very good at running away.”
“And you are not ashamed of this?”
“No. Shame is for when we act inappropriately. Sometimes it is appropriate to fight like a demon, and other times it is appropriate to run like a rabbit.”
Lucy thought assiduously, trying to digest this odd lump of notions, so alien to the popular culture in which she had been raised. At length she remarked, “I think I understand, Elder Brother, although I cannot see how you can tell what is appropriate and what is not, when to run and when to fight.”
Tran smiled benignly. “Well, as to that, that is the study of a lifetime, which you have barely begun. For now you should accept the guidance of your elders.”
Oh, right! thought Lucy, who could only absorb so much Confucian wisdom at one time. Changing the subject somewhat, she said, “Still, I would very much like to get Fatyma back from whoever has stolen her.”
“Surely this is a matter for the police.”
“Oh, the police! If the police find her, they will return her to her horrible father, and he will make her marry that old man or else kill her. No, she must be found by her friends.”
“And how will her friends do that? She is hidden in so large a city, or maybe she is already taken to another country.”
Lucy’s jaw firmed up in a way that reminded Tran powerfully of the same expression on Marlene’s face. She said, “I don’t know how yet. But I will ask my mother.”
“That is always a wise way to begin any enterprise,” said Tran.
Marlene was at her kitchen table drinking coffee when they hit her with this. Hearing it, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, for she was exhausted with overwork. In the first place, Harry was moving out of the office for his new life with the Osborne Group, leaving Marlene to cope with all their various protective operations. She had spent the morning in court, filing orders and representing several abused women at hearings, then up to St. Vincent’s to see Mattie, who had prevailed upon her to watch the shelter while she was laid up. The shelter was, naturally, in an uproar. Verda and the rest of the small staff were trying hard, but Mattie had kept the operation of the place very close, especially the financial end. The records were a mess, Mattie apparently having filed much of the comings and goings of the residents in her head and in piles of loose papers stuffed in folders. Marlene had worked in the tiny office for hours, interrupted by continual crises—fights between residents, sick children, and the necessity of convincing thirty-odd women that the place was still safe, that they were better off in than out, despite the recent gunplay. Cops were, of course, in and out, interviewing the residents, collecting bits of evidence, and generally stirring things up. She had ordered her calls forwarded to the shelter’s phone, which, of course, never stopped ringing.
A miserable day, and now this. “Ah, Lucy, darling,” she said weakly, “I’m sorry, but I got my hands full already. There is no way we can mount a search for Fatyma.”
“I thought you were a detective,” said the implacable child. “I bet her father knows where she is. I bet he’s just waiting to do something bad to her, and it’ll be your fault.”
Marlene groaned and looked around the room for support. Tran was sipping coffee with his usual neutral expression, looking remarkably like a feeble, retired clerk. A tiny Frenchified jerk of the mouth and eyebrows was all she got from him—what can one do? it said. Posie was supervising a finger-food meal with the boys—cooked carrots and bread-and-jam slivers—giggling with them and spilling sunny personality around the room.
“Or the brother,” Lucy added contemptuously, “Mr. Gorgeous.”
“Walid,” said Posie. “I never dated a Walid. I bet he’s got a great body.”
“Posie, you could think about something else for one minute, you know,” snarled Lucy, and she got a sly giggle back.
An idea drifted lazily into Marlene’s exhausted brain. She looked at Posie more closely. The girl was wearing oversized USMC fatigue pants that hung nicely on her broad hips, and over that she wore a sleeveless garment of some shiny silver-blue fabric, a retro-shop find, that stretched tightly over her cantaloupe-sized breasts, solid as round shot. She was on one of her interminable diets (grapefruit and yogurt), and this one actually seemed to be doing her some good. She’d dropped some suet (with the resilience of youth), and the arrival of spring had allowed her constant excursions with her small charges, which had toned her legs and put some color into her formerly doughy complexion. Her best feature was still her hair, which ran like a river of hot tar, straight as a die, down her back to her buttocks.
No, I can’t do that, was Marlene’s first thought, it’s evil; and then, no, it wouldn’t work; and then, no, it’d be too dangerous. But of course, once it had been reduced to a protection problem, it was a done deal as far as Marlene was concerned, since she knew a great deal about protecting people and had every confidence in pulling that part of it off.
“Um, Posie …” said Marlene.
Posie turned to her, her gigantic smile pumping out innocence and animal sensuality in equal measure, and Marlene, thinking, oh, my, what a piece of work I’ve become, said, “You know, Posie, maybe it’s time you dated a guy named Walid.”