KARP LOOKED OUT the car window at the gusts of sleet and the frozen working classes while Denton did business on his phone. An unseasonable blizzard had dumped almost two feet of snow on New England, and Fun City was bracing for an imminent transformation into a hellish, snarled winter wonderland. Karp was not looking forward to facing his former staff; worse would be the various degradation rituals that Wharton had no doubt cooked up.
On entering his office, he found two symbols of his demotion already waiting in his box. One was a thick stack of case files. He was no longer excused from feeding the insatiable maw of the Criminal Courts Bureau and would have to prosecute these this morning with about two hours of preparation. The other was a brief note from a man named Harvey T. Arnoldson announcing that he was the new Deputy Bureau Chief. Could Karp arrange to visit him at his convenience?
Karp decided to get it over with. It was an uncomfortable meeting on both sides. Arnoldson was about fifty, with long graying hair and the kind of sideburns that had gone out of fashion in 1970 for everyone but truckers. He had been doing solid but undistinguished work in the Frauds Bureau since he had passed the bar exams and had been as surprised as anyone when the promotion was dumped in his lap. He was careful and slow and followed orders, which was why he had gotten it.
They exchanged pleasantries and agreed that it was an uncomfortable situation. Arnoldson said Karp did not have to hurry about moving his office. Karp thanked him. Arnoldson said he expected a weekly report from all of his attorneys and expected them to make their numbers. Karp said he would so report and would try his best on the numbers. More pleasantries. Good-bye.
Karp was not particularly concerned any longer about being fired or about having to report to Bloom’s babysitter. Either everything would be changed within weeks, or he would be on the street. Meanwhile, he had to blaze through the morning’s cases and then follow up on his angle.
He had remembered something Marlene had said about Mrs. Karavitch and one of the others. He thumbed through the Q and A transcripts and found the right section: the flight attendant, Daphne West, had observed Cindy Karavitch going into the can with Pavle Macek, presumably for some in-flight service, while her hubby was schmoozing in first class. Had Karavitch known? Was the hijack connected in some way to the ancient comedy of an old man betrayed by a young wife? Not enough information yet, he thought, but the existence of a love triangle was a crack in the solidarity of the group into which he could insert the thin edge of a wrecking bar.
If the district attorney’s ministers had thought that they could wear Karp down by piling on cases, they had misjudged their man. Br’er Rabbit was back in the briar patch. Court work was a tonic after the wrangling tedium of bureaucracy, and by three o’clock, when his last appearance concluded, he was juiced up and happier than he had been in months.
When he got back to his office, the first thing he saw was a big sheet of computer paper pinned to the wall above his desk. On it someone had drawn a cartoon of an unnaturally tall Karp playing basketball with a squat figure who could be identified as Conrad Wharton by the large corncob emerging from his rear. The iconography was simple: Wharton was tripping him under the basket, but he was still making the shot. It had been signed by virtually every member of the Criminal Courts staff, and most had written messages of support and encouragement.
Karp stared at it for a long while, chuckling and grinning like a maniac. Then he noticed a manila envelope taped to the wall, so it would not be lost among the drift of paper on his desk. It was from Marlene. In telegraphic phrases she summarized what she had learned that morning and said she would try to nab him that afternoon. She closed with a lewd suggestion that warmed him from his heart on down. Included in the envelope was a copy of the wanted poster from Renko Span.
He studied the face on the poster. It was remarkable even through the heavy grain of the photograph: the long, predatory nose, the wide mouth with its corners slightly raised to indulge the photographer, the broad, intelligent forehead with the light hair slicked straight back. The pale eyes looked straight into the camera and conveyed intensity of feeling and a certain grim seriousness. A righteous reformer, Karp thought, not a machine guy. This guy wouldn’t make deals.
Something didn’t jibe. There had been a cynical, mocking cleverness about the man he had questioned that did not fit with the face before him. This guy in the photo looked tough, but he believed in something. Karp had considerable experience in sizing up bad guys, and he had figured the man in the FBI interrogation room for a serious criminal, the kind that believes in nothing but himself and his ability to outsmart the world. Of course, he thought, people change in thirty years. And the face was a good match—the nose and eyes were unmistakable. This was Djordje Karavitch in his salad days. Karp realized with a bit of a shock that the picture had been taken when Karavitch was about thirty-three, about the same age as Karp himself. He shuddered. He did not want to think about the future just now. He pinned the poster above his desk.
An hour later, as he was plowing through the preparation of the next day’s cases—calling witnesses, arranging for police officers to appear, scratching notes on yellow paper—Connie Trask buzzed him to say that Fred Slocum needed to talk to him right away.
“Butch?” said the detective, speaking loud to make his voice heard above the buzz of noise in his office. “We went into Tel-Air about an hour ago.”
“Yeah? How’d it go? You get Ruiz?”
“We got zilch. Denton laid on a big operation, stealers from half the precincts in Queens, tacticals, machine guns, mortars, tanks. But the place was cleaned out. Nobody there but an old watchman; he hasn’t seen anybody since Wednesday. Ruiz has a big place in Forest Hills and we hit that too. Also zilch. He’s running.”
“Crap! The bastards were tipped.”
“Probably,” Slocum agreed. “I tell you, though, we stirred up a hornet’s nest out there. There was a bunch of federales on stake-out in a couple of vans around Tel-Air and they went crazy. Queens detectives wasn’t thrilled, either, but Denton was running the show so they had to smile and eat it. Lots of dire threats, though, from the Feds.”
“I’m trembling.”
Slocum laughed. “I’m sure. We’ll find them, though. Denton’s got an army working the case. The guys thought it was a little weird, the C. of D. putting the max on for a shitty case like this—a skel gets knifed, who gives a rat’s ass?”
“It’s more complicated than that, Fred.”
“I figured. When you get around to it, the foot soldiers would appreciate you sharing the details.”
Karp ignored this last remark. He had just thought of something. “Fred,” he said, “what’s the situation with the physical evidence in Karavitch? From his place. What’ve you got and where is it?”
“Uh, there ain’t much, maybe half a carton of stuff. We got some papers from Karavitch’s place, a calendar marked with the dinner they all had before they took off, a receipt for the plane tickets—like that. It’s stuff that ties them to Croat political bullshit and the flight, but shit, we know they’re crackpots and we know they were on the flight. On the bomb, we’re thin. We went over Macek’s repair shop and the super’s shops in all the buildings that Karavitch managed, figuring maybe they built the bomb in one of those places. Forensic found some wire and some insulation in Macek’s shop that matched up with the bomb fragments, but what the hell, one piece of wire looks like another piece of wire. They found some brick dust too, in the same place.”
“Brick dust, huh? Does it match?”
“‘Not inconsistent with the samples found at the crime scene and in the body of the deceased.’ You know how Forensic is. But same difference—brick dust ain’t fingerprints.”
“Fingerprints ain’t fingerprints, if it comes to that. But what do you think? Macek built the thing in his repair shop, right?”
“Sounds like it to me, but try to prove it.”
“I’m not sure I’ll have to. You didn’t find any explosives, huh?”
“Not a trace.”
“That figures. Where’s the stuff now?”
“I threw it all in an old carton I picked up in Macek’s shop. I got it here.”
“Great, Fred—look, do me a favor. Could you drag that carton down here? I want to take a look at it.”
After Slocum had dropped the carton off, Karp examined each of the plastic envelopes. As Slocum had said, it was not much, some small tools, assorted debris, and a stack of papers, all in a small, open corrugated carton that still had bits of Styrofoam excelsior from the original packing. But he hadn’t planned to learn much by inspecting himself. Picking up the phone, he called Marino at Rodman Neck and then Doug Brenner for a ride.
Jamaica Bay looked like the North Sea by the time they got to the police range at Rodman Neck. The sun was obscured by clouds the color of dirty sidewalks, and the wind off the bay shot through Karp’s raincoat, pierced his body, and flew out the other side. His knee ached and he almost limped as he climbed the stairs into Marino’s building.
The bomb squad captain was waiting for him with another man, whom he introduced as Sergeant Dalker, the officer in charge of the bomb-sniffing dog unit, also housed at Rodman. Dalker, a thin man with a fox-like face, was holding a German shepherd on a short leash. The dog’s name was Rosie. As he spoke briefly about the capabilities of such animals, Karp noticed that he had the odd habit of asking the dog for concurrence whenever he made a statement about her.
Karp explained what he wanted and they set up the plastic bags, opened, in a row on the floor. Dalker led Rosie along the row. When she got to the seventh bag, she made a whimpering noise deep in her throat.
“Is that something?” Karp asked.
“Could be,” said Dalker, squatting down next to the dog’s head. “What is it, Rosie? You smell something?” In the bag was a hacksaw. Dalker looked over his shoulder at the other two men. “It’s possible that the saw was used on or near some explosives, maybe to saw through a dynamite stick, or more likely, somebody with explosives on his hands used the tool. But the trace is faint and Rosie’s not sure, are you, Rosie?”
The dog drew a blank on the other bags. In vain they went through the routine two more times with the bags in different order. Karp looked at Dalker, who shrugged and waggled his hand from side to side. Karp sighed and said, “OK, guys, thanks, it was worth a shot.” He put the carton down on the floor, and he and Brenner started sealing the bags and tossing them in.
Then Rosie barked and lunged forward and started to claw at the sides of the carton. Karp stumbled backward out of her way, startled. “What’s that all about?” he asked. “Rosie changed her mind?”
“No,” Dalker said, “it’s the damn carton.” Unloading it swiftly, they placed it in the center of the floor. The dog stuck her nose in it, shook it with her teeth, whined, wagged her tail, and did all the other things that explosive-sniffing dogs do when they find explosives. “There was high explosive packed in that carton for quite a while,” Dalker said. “Right, Rosie? Wasn’t there?”
As Dalker talked sweetly to his dog, Marino said, “Butch, most explosives will volatilize over time. If they’re packed in something absorbent like cardboard or this styro, the packing absorbs some of the vapors, and naturally that’s what the dog smells.”
But Karp was hardly listening. He was staring at the top flaps of the carton. They had been hanging down on the outside, probably since Slocum had picked it up casually in Macek’s repair room, so that nobody had noticed the top of the carton when it was closed. Rosie’s prodding nose had lifted it and exposed the outside of the flap.
On it was a glossy, neatly typed label addressed to P. Macek at his shop. Though it was much covered by dust and grease, Karp had no trouble reading the fat red letters of the Tel-Air logo printed across the top.
“Doug, this evidence we got here, I want you to bury it,” Karp said an hour later as the two of them sat in the car outside the dark mass of the Criminal Courts Building. “Take it someplace and hide it. And I don’t want anybody but you, me, and the Chief of D. knowing where it is.”
“Yeah, I’ll hide it in my kid’s closet. You want me to drop you home or you going in?”
“No, you go home,” Karp said, sliding out of the car, “I got some calls to make and I’m supposed to meet up with Marlene later.”
In his office, Karp found that the person he most wanted to call also wanted to call him, and pretty badly, it appeared. His secretary was gone for the day, but while he had been out she had plastered the back of his chair with taped-on pink phone message slips marked “URGENT,” all from Elmer Pillman of the FBI.
They made him wait a full three minutes on hold, with no Muzak, just to put him in his place. When Pillman got on, he came right to the point. “You asshole! Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you realize how much work you just blew to hell today?”
“Why, Elmer, what are you talking about?” Karp asked mildly.
“Don’t play dumb with me, you shithead!” Pillman roared. Karp could feel the scowl through the phone lines and moved the receiver a few inches away from his ear. Pillman sounded like a tiny man shouting into a bucket: “The fuck-up you pulled out at Tel-Air. Six months of work. The DEA, the ATF, the Bureau, even your own goddamn Queens narco! And you trash the whole thing because you think, you think, there’s a connection wit’ some goddamn spic knifing.”
“Tel-Air? Elmer, what makes you think I had anything to do with going into Tel-Air?”
Silence. Then a bellow of rage. “What? I’ll tell you what, asshole! I just talked to your boss, the DA. He fingered you. How do you like that, jerk-off?”
“Gosh, if he said that, then Mr. Bloom is sadly misinformed. I’m just an ordinary New York County ADA, Elmer. I don’t command squadrons of men in Queens County like you do. As I understand it, that operation was set up by Chief Denton personally. Maybe you should talk to him, since you’re so upset. Wait a second, I’ll get you his number.”
“I’ve got his goddamn number!”
“Oh, yeah, how silly of me. You’re the liaison between the Feds and the NYPD. My, my, I bet your colleagues are pissed at you, Elmer. I bet they’re blaming you for the mixup.”
“Karp, you motherfucker, I swear to God I’ll get you. You’ll wish you never were born before I’m through with you. If you think you can fuck with the Bureau and get away with it, you—”
“But I’m not fucking with the Bureau, am I, Elmer,” Karp broke in, his voice grown hard. “The Bureau has nothing to do with it. This is your show. It’s a solo all the way. So I’m only fucking with you. You see, Elmer, I know about you and Ruiz, and I know why you’ve been trying to queer my case against Karavitch and his little gang. It took me awhile, but I finally found out. Good-bye, Elmer.”
Karp hung up and looked at the sweep hand on his watch. In less than fifteen seconds the phone rang. Karp picked it up and said gently, “Yes, Elmer? More talkies?”
“I didn’t like what you just implied,” Pillman said lamely.
“You didn’t? What a sensitive nature. I wouldn’t have thought it, considering how you’re always screaming at people and calling them bad names.”
“Cut the bullshit, Karp. We need to talk and not over the phone. How soon can you get up here?”
“Never is how soon, Elmer. I’ll be in my office for another hour. If you’d care to stop by, I’ll see if I can squeeze you in.” Karp hung up and quickly dialed a Massachusetts number. A pleasant female voice answered, and Karp asked to speak to V.T. Newbury.
“Well, well, how fortunate,” said V.T. when he got on the line. “I’d been meaning to get in touch with you all day. What happened? Is the despicable Ruiz in custody?”
“Afraid not. I think somebody tipped him, and he’s on the run. But that’s sort of what I needed to talk to you about. We found out that the Ruiz operation supplied the grenade that blew up Doyle.”
“Ah-ha! The missing link. How did you find that out?”
“Tell you later. Right now I probably got Pillman coming over here in ten minutes. I just told him I know all about him and Ruiz and why he’s trying to bag Karavitch et al., and he’s going to pump me to find out if I’m bluffing.”
“And are you?”
“For shit’s sake, V.T., of course I am. All I know for sure is the grenade connection; beyond that it’s Blank City. That’s why I’m calling you. You’re into all this conspiracy jazz. I need some ideas, and fast.”
“I’m flattered. OK, let me think.” For what seemed like an endless interval, Karp sat with the earpiece growing sweaty around his ear and listened to V.T.’s breathing and the tuneless whistle he always made between his teeth when he was deep in thought. Finally he came back to earth. “Right. Let’s start with the two facts we know for sure: one, Pillman is trying to queer the case, and two, Ruiz supplied the bomb. Now, the strange thing about these two facts is that they don’t fit together.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because there is no way that Pillman would have authorized, or allowed, or paid for, Ruiz giving explosives to Karavitch’s group. It’s off the charts.”
“Why?”
“Because whatever else he is, Pillman has been an FBI agent for over twenty years. He may be corrupt, but I can’t conceive of any FBI agent abetting domestic violence for any reason.”
“What if somebody is blackmailing him? Ruiz, maybe.”
“Still no go. And for another reason. As they used to ask us in law school, who benefits? Why should Ruiz want to give grenades to the Croats or help them out with a little thuggery? For Pillman? No way, because why would Pillman want to help the Croats? It doesn’t make sense—it’s circular. The Cubans must have been mobilized by somebody else. From Ruiz’s point of view, supping a grenade or two to somebody or breaking a few heads is merely a sideline, something he’d do practically as a favor for whoever is making his operation possible. But it’s not Pillman. You don’t know the guy the way I do, Butch. This is a bureaucrat, not an entrepreneur. The only critical question is why Pillman is shielding Ruiz.
“Now let’s add another fact. Before he came to New York as deputy, Pillman was stationed in Miami, where he helped to break up a group called SOBA. This was a bunch of militant right-wing Cubans who were planting bombs on people they didn’t think were sufficiently anti-Castro. A very classy piece of work, by the way, and Pillman got a lot of credit for it. This was in, like, ’68 or ’70. I’m pretty sure Ruiz was there around then too, and he was tight with a lot of former Batistianos. Pillman could have used him as an informant, maybe a provocateur, maybe skirting the edges of legality.”
“V.T., damn it, why didn’t you tell me this stuff before?”
“Because I was thinking CIA, not FBI. They’re in two separate, noncommunicating compartments of my brain, as they are in real life. You remember, we were going to use the possible CIA link with Ruiz to beat up on Pillman. But what if there’s a much closer link? What if somebody’s beating him up from the other side?”
“How do you mean?”
“Say it’s like this. A connection is created between Karavitch and the Cubans. Pillman doesn’t know about it. He’s just going about his business fighting evildoers. The Karavitch case lands in his lap. But as soon as he starts working on it, he gets a call, say—and this had to be almost as soon as the names of the skyjackers were made public—he gets a call telling him that Ruiz is involved. Immediately he knows that the Croats can’t come to trial, because if they do, they might rat on Ruiz and his operation, and then Ruiz or one of his people might rat on Pillman. Alternately, somebody who knows about Ruiz and Pillman is pressuring Pillman to lay off the Croats. There’s your blackmail. Either way, it’s in Pillman’s interest, if he can do it without being too obvious about it, to prevent the Croats from coming to trial. Q.E.D.”
“That’s very fancy, V.T., very fancy indeed. For some strange reason I like it.”
“Why, thank you, Butch. I hope it works. Oh, one other thing. I know it’s late notice, but why don’t you come up and stay with us this weekend? We have plenty of room and since you’re not a big shot anymore, you can take a weekend off now and then. I invited Guma too.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yup. The Big Prank rolls next week. We have to do some last-minute strategizing, at which you are perfectly welcome should you care to risk one-to-five in Elmira. Also, I’d like you to meet Annabelle. And bring La Siciliana. You both could use a break.”
“What about the snow? There’s supposed to be a blizzard up there.”
“Not to worry. The plows are out and I got through OK this afternoon. Besides, it’s tapering off.”
Once broached, the idea of spending a weekend with Marlene in the country was overwhelmingly attractive. He could not remember offhand the last time he had so indulged himself, probably years. He agreed to come that evening if Marlene was willing, and V.T. dictated what seemed like an impossibly complex set of road directions.
A few minutes after he had finished with V.T., Karp heard the outer door open and then footsteps crossing the deserted outer office. A shape loomed up against the frosted glass and then Pillman entered.
He was pale, his eyebrows hairy knots, and his wide frog’s mouth was compressed into a razor line. Karp motioned to the chair and Pillman dropped his blocky body into it like a sandbag. He eyed Karp sourly for a moment and then rumbled, “So? I’m here. What have you got?”
“Well, Elmer—”
“Goddammit, Karp, don’t call me ‘Elmer.’ Pillman, everybody calls me Pillman.”
“OK, Pillman, what’ve I got? I’ve got you trying to queer my case on Karavitch et al. I’ve got you protecting a major narcotics trafficker and gunrunner. How’s that for openers?”
“It’s garbage. You’re blowing smoke.”
“How about Miami? How about what you and Ruiz pulled on the SOBA people? I’ve got that too. Still garbage?”
Pillman licked his lips. He was even paler now. “How the fuck … ? You’ve got Ruiz, haven’t you, or Hermo … Ah, Christ, what a mess. Look, Karp, you got to understand, these people are informants. They’re flaky, but they’re valuable assets, you understand? OK, Ruiz runs dope and guns, but if not him, a million other guys. Meanwhile I keep a line on some really dangerous people, the kind who blow up airplanes and assassinate politicians.”
“What about assassinating New York police officers? Is that in the class of excusable crimes?”
Pillman snorted and twisted his mouth into a parody of a patronizing smile. “Karp, that was an accident. I mean real assassinations—the Kennedys, King—”
“Pillman, stop it. Let’s understand each other. You were naughty in Miami: illegal wiretaps, bag jobs, and worse: one of Ruiz’s boys turned out somebody’s lights just to build up machismo with the SOBAs.” Karp was spitballing, but he could see from the shocked expression on Pillman’s face that it was an accurate guess. It’s always murder, the unexplainable infraction, he thought, as he plowed on: “OK, that means you and this mutt are married. But I could care less, Pillman, believe me, about what went down then. It’s none of my business. Are we in Miami? It’s snowing up to your ass out there.
“But, Pillman, when your little shithead supplies the bomb that goes into a device that was designed, no accident, designed to kill the man defusing it, and did in fact kill said man, a New York City police officer performing his lawful duty, then I do care.”
Pillman’s jaw had dropped and a look of unfeigned shock and incredulity had captured his face. “Wha-what?” he sputtered. “What was that about the bomb?”
“Ruiz supplied the Soviet grenade the Croats used to make their bomb. Come on, Pillman, don’t tell me you didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t, I swear to God! Oh, Christ, this is it, it’s all over.”
Pillman was so genuinely distraught that Karp was taken aback. But he pressed on: leaning toward Pillman, he locked the other man’s gaze to his and said, “You didn’t, huh? OK, say I believe you on that—how did you know there was any connection between Ruiz and the Croats? Why are you screwing up the case?”
“I got a call. Right after we got the word on the hijack. The caller told me that two of the hijackers, Rukovina and Raditch, had been involved in that assassination of the Yugoslav consul-general in Marseilles. They’d arranged for and delivered Soviet weapons for the hit to a group of Croats in France. Ruiz had supplied the weapons.”
“Why Soviet weapons?”
“Why do you think? It makes Belgrade think the Sovs are supporting separatist movements in Yugoslavia—so it works against the possibility of reconciliation between Yugoslavia and the Kremlin. It also stirs up the Croats and other separatist factions in Yugoslavia.”
“Who would want that?”
“Us for starters. Yugoslavia is a pain in the ass. They’re a big hole in the south flank of NATO. They’re neutral commies, but if they ever hooked up with the Warsaw Pact, which they could do tomorrow, it’d be a disaster. It’d be much better to have a set of reliable anticommunist states in that strip. Or so the thinking goes.”
“Whose thinking, Pillman? Who called you?”
Pillman squirmed and held out his hands in a supplicating gesture. “Come on, Karp. I can’t tell you that. We’re talking national security here. This is big time.”
“OK,” Karp said flatly.
“OK? What does that mean?”
“It means OK. What do I care what kind of games you’re in as long as you’re not playing on my court?
The only reason I give a damn about this spy bullshit is so I can find out who’s queering my case and make them stop. They want to start wars? Fuck ’em, I’m 4-F.”
“But what are you going to do? I mean about Ruiz?”
“Ruiz killed a guy named Sorriendas and he did it in the County of New York, so if we can catch his ass I will put him up for murder two. If he wants to cut a deal by ratting on you, or whoever he’s involved with in dope or guns, I will tell him to get fucked. People don’t kill people in New York County on my watch and then walk, I don’t care what kind of spying they did for somebody. If the narcos want to lay extra charges oh him, or the Feds, fine, that’s their business. Everybody will get their shot.
“On the Karavitch thing, it’s even simpler. If everybody would just get out of my way, it’s a lock. They go to trial and let a jury decide. That’s how I work. They pay me to put asses in jail, not run exposés. And you will stay out of my way from now on, Pillman, won’t you?”
He smiled nastily and Pillman slowly nodded his head.
“So I think Elmer is cooled out, too,” Karp said to Marlene as she snuggled in his lap. It was an hour after Pillman had slunk out and Karp was feeling pretty good. He had proudly narrated the afternoon’s events, only moderately distracted by the pressure of her small, hard breast jammed against him or the warm nuzzling on his neck.
“That’s my man,” she breathed, “I’m sitting in his lap squirming like a snake, and he’s recounting macho triumphs.” She ground her bottom into his lap. “Uh-oh, I can feel it—it’s grown another two inches. Jesus, Butch, another day like today you’ll have to tape it to your knee.”
“Marlene, why do you like to make fun of me? I already said I was sorry. And I thought you cared about this case.”
She drew back, looked at him seriously for a moment, and then kissed him on the cheek. “I do care, baby. And it’s great about the evidence and Pillman and all the rest. Really. But my caring machine is wearing out, you know? I’m not like you, not straight and determined. There’s something missing, you understand? In my life. And I’m being consumed by this damn claim—”
“I said I’d—”
“Yeah, yeah, you did, and I believe you, but still—shit, I need a smoke.” She got up off his lap and began casting through her bag for her Marlboros. When she had lit up and the little office was blue with smoke, she added, “What I need is a break.”
He stood up. “And a break is what you’re going to get. We’re going up to V.T.’s this weekend, lie around, play in the snow …”
“Oh, Butch, really? Hot damn!” She ran to him and gave him a bear hug that flexed his ribs. “When do we leave? Oh, boy, this is just what we need, a little nestling under quilts in a four-poster, far from the madding crowd and the fucking city.”
He grinned and said, “We could leave right away. All we have to do is pack. I’ll run up to midtown and rent a car.”
“Oh, don’t do that, I got a car we could use. Let’s go now! I’ll pick you up outside your place in what? Forty-five minutes?”
“Marlene, you can’t drive. You only have one eye.”
“The hell I can’t. Half the people driving in New York are totally blind. Besides, it’s only a couple of blocks. You can drive us up to the country.” Before he could object, she had blown him a kiss and run out.
An hour later Karp was dubiously eyeing the vehicle Marlene had driven up to the curb. It was a 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air, pink on the bottom and white on top. The rear end was considerably higher than the front, and it had wide-track Eagles on the rear wheels and speed-shop stickers all over the rear quarter windows.
“This is the car? Where did you get it?”
“It’s Larry’s, from Larry and Stu in the loft downstairs. They’re in Bermuda for three weeks. Larry found it in Biloxi when he was down visiting his mom and fell in love with it. Isn’t it great? Hey, let’s get in, I’m freezing my genuggies off here.”
In fact, the temperature now hovered in the low teens and the air was filled with swirls of gritty snow. They loaded the suitcases into the car and got in. Karp sat behind the wheel, a custom job made of welded chain that was about half the size of an ordinary wheel. It had a large green plastic knob attached to it at the two o’clock position. Marlene slid in next to him. “Look, Butch, a make-out knob. That’s so you can steer with one hand with your arm around your best girl.”
“Marlene, this is a stick shift,” he said, examining the huge chrome shaft sticking out of the floorboards. It had a white plastic skull on its end with red jeweled eyes.
“Yeah, right, a Hurst shifter. We got 446 cubes under the hood, too. Let’s roll, big boy!” She looked at him oddly. “Karp, don’t say you can’t use a stick shift. That’s like saying you can’t get it up.”
“Oh, no, sure I can. It’s just, I don’t drive much.” The truth was that Karp had not driven a car more than half a dozen times since law school, where he had owned a sedate secondhand Plymouth with automatic. He had perhaps three hours’ total experience with a stick shift, logged at age seventeen on his brother’s VW.
The important thing, he recalled, was not to stall. He pressed the accelerator gingerly. The engine rumbled. Muffling had obviously been of secondary interest to whatever redneck maniac had built this car. He recalled vaguely that something called a tachometer had something to do with shifting. There was a large black gauge bolted to the top of the dash that jerked every time he goosed the gas. That must be it. He cautiously depressed the clutch and slid the skull in the direction first gear was in the 1951 VW.
“Hey, let’s go,” she said, “time’s a-wastin’.”
The tach went from one to seven. He decided four was a safe bet. He pointed the wheel away from the curb and tromped on the gas until the needle hit four. The air was filled with an ear-rattling roar that sounded like a dive bomber taking off from a carrier. Karp smiled bravely at his best girl and popped the clutch.
Twenty minutes later, they were barreling north on the Saw Mill River Parkway through a mild blizzard. The snow was bone dry, forming dancing pinpoints of brilliance in the headlights.
“Good thing there’s no traffic,” Marlene said. She was curled up in the suicide seat, her high boots tucked up under her black wool skirt, trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. “You’re, ah, quite a driver there, Butch.”
“Thanks,” he said hoarsely around a tongue as dry as flannel.
“But, um, maybe you should shift out of second. You’ll get better mileage. Third’s probably up and to the right. If you want.”
“Yeah, oh sure, I was just warming her up,” he said, reaching over to do it. But as he looked down, he had occasion to notice for the first time something odd. “Say, Marlene? This car has no ignition key.”
“Yeah, well, actually, it doesn’t really need one.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Well, I sort of forgot to get the keys from Larry, so I sort of jumped the ignition.”
“You boosted this car? That I’m driving?”
“Don’t be mad, Butch. It’s cool, honestly.”
“Oh, shit, Marlene! What if we get stopped? That’s it, curtains. No job, no future. You lunatic, don’t you realize that assistant district attorneys are not supposed to do crimes? Christ, Marlene, sometimes I don’t know … Oh, God, is there registration in the car? At least if we have the goddamn registration …”
Karp began to look for it, behind the front visor first, and then stretched across to pop open the glove compartment and fumble inside it. The car veered back and forth across the road, as he yanked out a handful of assorted material.
“Butch, take it easy, it’s all right!” she cried as they hit the shoulder.
“It’s not all right. Turn on the dome light. OK, what’s this: map, map, tire bill—oh, shit.” He held up a plastic baggie. In the yellow light she saw that the bag contained a miniature wooden pipe, a packet of Zig-Zag cigarette papers, and a half ounce of brownish vegetable substance that Karp doubted very much was Bugle cigarette tobacco. He let it drop to the seat.
“I can’t believe this. This is not happening,” he said in a faint voice.
“We could throw it out the window,” she suggested brightly.
“Good idea, Ciampi. I’m sure the car isn’t dirty down to the floorboards. The trunk is probably full of toot, for chrissakes.”
They drove in strained silence for a minute or two. Then he gradually became aware that odd splatting sounds were issuing from between her clenched lips.
“What’s so funny, Marlene?”
She exploded into hysteria, thick, choking, exhausting laughter. “Karp,” she gasped at last between guffaws, “we’ll cop a plea … we’re first offenders … they’ll give us—they’ll give us six months suspended …” and she started laughing uncontrollably again. And it was, after all, pretty funny, and so he started to laugh, too, harder and harder. He had to wipe the tears away so he could see the snowy road.
When they had finally quieted down, she snuggled up to him and he put his arm around her and used the make-out knob to steer. She said, “I love this. I want to drive through this blizzard with you forever and never stop.”
“Sounds good. We’d have to stop to get food. And pee,” he said, always the sensible one.
“No. We’d keep driving. We’d never eat and we’d pee in the backseat.” She turned on the radio. It was tuned to a rock station and the Birds playing “Eight Miles High.”
“We’d have to stop to … you know, do the dirty,” he said, acutely aware of her pointed tongue scrounging around his right ear.
“No, we wouldn’t,” she whispered.
Then she pulled away from him and he was aware of her bouncing on the seat. In a flash she had reached up and hung a pair of rose silk bikini underpants on the rearview mirror. “I’ve wanted to do this all my life,” she said, “and the moment has come.”
“Marlene, what are you doing? Stop that! Ahhgh, there’s the turnoff!”
The Chevy shot across three lanes onto the Taconic Parkway as she unzipped his fly and began to fumble within. “Mar … stop it, we’ll get killed!” he yelled.
“Who cares? It’ll be a once in a lifetime experience. Ah, there he is. Yumm.”
“Wait, I’ll pull over,” he gasped as her head descended.
“’on’t ’ou ’are!” she said, her mouth full and moving like the pistons in the straining 446, just as hot but much slower. With a final noisy lick she raised her head, flicked off the dome light, and heaved her naked thigh across his lap. “Marlene, this isn’t wise,” he wheezed.
“Yeah, it’s real foolish. But I’m dying for you. It’s going to fry like a sausage. OK, let me just …”
She reached under her full skirt and clutched the blazing item shooting up from his groin like a Hurst four-speed stick, pointed it into the right place, and sank down with an audible slurp and a grunt of pleasure. “Don’t slow down, don’t, don’t slow down,” she hissed around the teeth she had sunk into the curve of his neck. In a minute the first wave of climax rolled through her, and she yelled over the scream of the engine and the tires, over the pounding of the music.
Karp’s life was passing across his eyes as he wove S-shapes on the snow of the Taconic State Parkway and jammed his hips up to meet Marlene’s frantic bouncing. The tiny part of him still capable of thought was trying to figure out how he could have predicted that a stable and idealistic young lawyer would spend the last few seconds of his life fucking a crazy woman while going sixty-five miles an hour through a blizzard in a stolen car loaded with dope. But after a short while that part of him was completely extinguished, and he surrendered to the oblivion of pleasure.