17

 

 

THE GRAND JURY ROOMS OF THE NEW YORK COUNTY COURTHOUSE ARE furnished like movie theaters, with comfortable theater-type seats upholstered in fuzzy beige and arranged in three concentric, concave rows. No drinks or popcorn, and the show is usually duller even than the typical Hollywood epic, but it is still a show, and the spectators, twenty-three citizens chosen at random from the electoral rolls, are usually good-natured about paying attention. Aside from the seats, the furnishings are sparse: a table for the witness, who faces the twenty-three as a lecturer administering to his class. There is no judge and no defense attorney, for the grand jury is the prosecutor’s show—producer, director, and star.

Karp stood in back of his audience but facing the witness and ran through his questions more or less on autopilot, eliciting from a bored police officer that he had on a certain date and time at a certain place, within the borders of the present county, found the body of a human he had later identified as Desmondo Ramsey. Karp had the man describe the scene in the garage, then thanked the cop and dismissed him. The next witness was a medical examiner, a former citizen of Pakistan, and this person was made to say that Mr. Ramsey, otherwise in the pink of health, had met his end through the medium of a bullet that had pierced his heart. Thank you, Doctor. Then came a police ballistics technician who said that he had identified that same bullet as having come from a nine-millimeter Colt pistol registered to a Ms. Sybil Marshak. The pistol itself was produced, in its plastic sack, and duly identified.

These witnesses established the essential facts of the crime. A person had been killed in the present jurisdiction, by Ms. Marshak’s pistol. It remained to be shown that Ms. Marshak had wielded the pistol, and for this purpose Karp called the next witness, Ralph T. Paxton. The grand jury foreman swore him in. Karp moved from the rear of the grand jury room and stood before him, slightly to his right so as not to obscure him from the jury. A thin man, Paxton, about thirty, mustard-colored with oiled hair swept back. He had a wary expression, eyes darting, his tongue over his lips, shoulders hunched. He was wearing a brown jacket, a tieless, clean white shirt, tan slacks, and Nikes, new ones.

Karp gave him a friendly smile and took him through the events surrounding the death of his pal Desmondo Ramsey. As he told the story, he became more confident; his voice, which had been low and hesitant, became louder. Karp gave him his head, only occasionally prompting him to be more definite, and the story emerged: He had been in an alcove of the garage, with Ramsey, who had been doing wine and pills. He had been talking about a score, a big score. They had been baling up scavenged magazines, and Ramsey was cutting twine with his knife, a six-inch hunter. They heard footsteps, high heels, a woman came into view, she couldn’t see them, but they saw her go toward a black Lexus. Ramsey said he was going to take off that white bitch. Those were his words? Yes, those were his words. Do you know the name of this woman? No, not then, but later he had identified her from a photo array: Sybil Marshak. Ramsey had proceeded toward the woman, still holding his knife. Karp held up a plastic bag with a knife in it, and Paxton identified it as the one in Ramsey’s possession on that day. Then what did Mr. Ramsey do? He went up to her. He brandished the knife. He brandished it? Yeah, like he showed it to her, waved it in her face. He told her to give him her bag, her watch. And what did Ms. Marshak do then? She took a gun out of her handbag and shot him. Just like that? Yeah, just like that. It was all over so fast.

In all, a good witness, and well-rehearsed, although not by Karp. That brandished, for example, had appeared in the original Q&A, and so did long stretches of descriptive prose. Karp thanked Paxton, and Paxton walked out of the room. Karp noticed Paxton had more spring in his step than he had had when he entered. Now a final police witness, a detective and a forensic expert. Karp elicited from him that two sets of fingerprints had been found on the hilt of the knife in question, Paxton’s and Ramsey’s, and dismissed him.

Turning to the grand jury, Karp informed them that this concluded the presentation of the people’s case against Sybil Marshak. He explained again about probable cause, that they were not deciding whether Ms. Marshak was guilty of the crime of manslaughter in the first degree, but only whether there was sufficient evidence to bind her over for trial on that charge. Then he recited to them the statutory definition of the crime: with intent to cause serious injury, causes the death of another person. Ms. Marshak, he said, had intended to cause Mr. Ramsey serious injury by shooting him and had caused his death. He then explained the self-defense justification for a homicide. If they believed that Ms. Marshak was correct and reasonable in supposing that she was in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from Mr. Ramsey, and that Mr. Ramsey was unlawfully attacking her, and if they believed that the use of deadly force was reasonable and necessary to avoid this danger, and that she could not in her circumstances resort to the law, then they could bring in a finding of justifiable homicide rather than sustain the indictment for manslaughter.

There was a little murmur then: this was a new one for this grand jury, rather more intellectual effort than they were used to putting out. It is extremely unusual for grand juries to decline to indict. (A different grand jury had, of course, found that Brendan Cooley had shot his man in self-defense, but Cooley was a cop and Lomax was a fleeing felon, no problem there.) There were some questions. Did he actually have to stab her? No, but the threat had to be immediate and reasonable, and it was up to them to decide that it was. Couldn’t she have shot the knife out of his hand? Karp kept a straight face, nor did his eyes roll skyward. That speaks to the reasonableness of the force, he explained. You all have to decide if what she actually did, shooting him through the body, was reasonable in that circumstance.

He left them to their deliberations and sat down on one of the plastic chairs that lined the little room outside the jury room, where witnesses waited. The plan was unfolding, but whether it was the one he had hatched, or the one Marlene had, or some strange amalgam of both, he had really no idea. This present farce was part of the plan. Remarkably, Keegan had actually ordered him to do it, in the presence of an almost preening Norton Fuller. Karp recalled the surprise in both faces when he had agreed without demur.

He waited. He was used to it. A good portion of his professional life had been spent in waiting—for a jury, as now, for a judge to decide, for some piece of paper to trickle through the system. The wait for grand juries was usually short, but this one was taking its time. The little anteroom was crowded with witnesses and prosecutors for pending cases. Some of the ones who were cops looked at him coplike, a wary assessment, and there were conversations in low voices. The word had spread obviously: the NYPD grapevine was the fastest in the world. Karp didn’t care about that. He had never courted popularity with the police, although he would greatly regret it if he had harmed his friendship with Clay Fulton. There were reporters outside, too, with TV cameras. He would have to make a statement later, an important case such as this. He had no friends in the press either, probably a mistake, but too late to correct now. If he’d had friends in the press, he might not have had to concoct this silly plan. Like everyone else in society, it seemed, he could then have created an alternate reality, putting a lot more subtle pressure on Keegan, and if he had not gotten his way, he could have blown the whistle. As it was, if he blew the whistle now, he’d just be fired, branded an incompetent sorehead, and forgotten. The old racist thing would not help there either.

The little amber light over the door to the grand jury room lit up, indicating they had reached a decision. Karp got up and went through the door.

 

Ralphie Paxton left the courthouse feeling pretty good about his performance, so good that he decided to treat himself to a cab ride home. He was supposed to call the lawyer right after he got finished, but he figured that could wait. Man wasn’t paying him any money now, he could just hang for a while, fuckin’ Jews thought they owned you. There was a cab, a woman climbing out of it with a briefcase and long, stockinged legs and one of those little skirts they wore now where you could see practically their whole business. Ralphie positioned himself so he could see most of it, got one of those hard looks those bitches liked to give you, and replaced her in the cab.

The driver was a rag-head, like most of them nowadays. He wasn’t too happy with Ralphie as a fare, but fuck him, what could he do? Ralphie caught him staring in the rearview, his foreigner eyes clouded with suspicion. “No Brooklyn,” the driver said.

Ralphie gave him the address, although he considered for a moment telling the rag-head to go to Canarsie, just to jack the fucker up a little. It wasn’t worth it, not for the money. There was starting to be a problem with money. Five grand when he’d got it from Solotoff seemed to be all the money in the world, infinite riches, far more than Ralphie Paxton had ever seen in his life, but it was proving to be more ephemeral than he had ever imagined. He was drinking Scotch now, not Night Train. He was buying a better quality of sex now, no more blow jobs behind a Dumpster from a skanky crackhead transvestite, no, now it was actual girls, young ones, too, in a bed. He liked that, the lush life, but it was expensive. He had been on the streets for years, rent-free. Paying some guy just so you could live someplace was novel and irritating. And the crack, that was expensive, too, especially when he had to pay for partying. People came around a lot when they knew you were flush. He liked that, being the big man, having a roll to flash around. The girls liked it, too. So it flew out of his pocket. He didn’t really know how much he had left; he was sort of afraid to count it, but it wasn’t more than a grand now, maybe less. The thought of having to go back to the street was not pleasant. He liked taking a shower whenever he wanted, with hot water, and watching TV like a regular person. That he could continue this life by obtaining employment never occurred to him.

He should have held out for more money, he was thinking now. Five grand was chump change to a rich Jew lawyer. He should have had that watch, too, that was worth almost five grand on its own, that fucking Desmondo, although, of course, Firmo would’ve come after him pretty soon, like they said he did, and that would’ve been it for old Des. He really was lucky that bitch had capped him like that; at least it was quick. How to get more money. The lawyer really owed him, but that was a problem, too; he was connected, or so he said. He said that was it, the five grand, payment for information, strictly legal, deductible, he said, but if Ralphie tried to get smart, he’d make one phone call and Paxton would end up under concrete somewhere. Was he telling the truth?

There were two blue-and-whites on Forty-fifth when the cab entered the street. They were double-parked with their doors open and their flashers on. Another bust. Paxton paid the driver what was on the meter and got out. The guy gave him a look, but fuck him, the rag-head, if he expected a tip. Paxton walked up the street to his apartment house, but he hadn’t taken ten steps before a couple of big guys in plain clothes with badges hanging off their necks on chains grabbed him and tossed him against a car and patted him down. He was clean, and they let him go, no apology, like he was a piece of shit. He wanted to tell them he had just testified before a grand jury on a big case, but he let it go.

“Hey, Ralphie!”

Paxton turned. It was Real Ali. Paxton felt a surge of relief. Real Ali was company and didn’t do dope or drink.

“What’s up, Ali?” The two men shook hands.

“Not much. I was just going by, you know. You live around here?”

“Yeah, up there. I got a place now.”

“Yeah, I heard you lucked out behind that Desmondo shit. It’s a ill wind, right?”

“Yeah, you got that right. You still down by the tracks?”

“Still there.” Ali looked both ways and said in a lowered voice, “Look, my man, it’s lucky I run into you. You wouldn’t be interested in a little business proposition, would you?”

“What kind of business?”

“Holding.”

“Holding? What you mean, holding?”

“Holding. Guy wants to leave some stuff in your place, he pays you rent. Like you a locker in the Port Authority, but a lot more than fifty cents. But, hey, if you’re interested, let’s not do business on the street.”

They went into Paxton’s apartment. Ali looked around and, with an approving whistle, agreed that it was pretty sweet. Paxton poured himself a Scotch, although he badly wanted a pipe. He played the genial host, recounting some of the details of his new life. Then they turned to business.

“Here’s how it works,” said Ali. “Man hands you a package. You don’t touch, you don’t smell it, and you don’t look at it. A little later, the man tells you take a walk, see a movie for a couple of hours, leave the door open. The man brings in his people, and they cut the shit up. You come back, the package is history, and you got a grand sitting on your table. That’s it.”

“Who’s the man?”

“You heard of Benny Mastracci?”

Paxton had not. He said, “Sure.”

“Yeah. Call him the Hammer. Benny the Hammer. Man you don’t want to fuck with. But his money’s good.”

“How come you know him? I thought you were through with that shit.”

Ali laughed. “Yeah, that’s what everybody thinks. That’s how come Benny likes to use me, you dig? That’s the fuckin’ point.”

After a brief pause, Paxton laughed, too. Fuckin’ Ali. It was nice to have friends.

Ralphie Paxton met Benny the Hammer late on the following day, a knock on his door and there he was. He looked just like those guys did in the movies, in a sharp black suit, an ugly, hard-faced little white guy, with two big white guys with him, also in suits, with open collars and gold chains. They barged in and checked the place out, noting with approval the grilles on the windows and the police lock on the door. The stuff was in a duffel bag. One of the big guys stuffed it into a closet.

Benny had a gravelly voice, also as established by the movies. He said, “Ali tells me you’re a straight-up guy, or I wouldn’t be here. But let’s understand each other. There’s six plastic bags in there, and I know what’s in them down to the gram. I know what’s in them, and when we come back, the same thing’s gonna be in them as what’s in them now. If not, for any reason, Rocco and Vinnie over there’s gonna stick your head in a tub of cement until it dries. No warning, no second chances, no excuses—that’s just the way we work. You understand what I’m telling you?”

The man’s little ape eyes bored into his, and Ralphie Paxton understood.

 

Guma’s voice on the phone was artificially low and conspiratorial: “The package is delivered. The eagle has landed. The plume of my aunt is in the second shelf.”

Karp laughed. “You love this shit, Guma.”

“What can I say? I missed my calling.”

“Did you scare him?”

“He was pissing himself. I brought Rocco and Vinnie Luna for effect. I thought Vinnie was gonna crack up, but he managed to turn it into an evil grin. I hear it was no bill on Marshak.”

“Like we expected. A black guy comes at you with a knife in a parking garage, the classic nightmare of scared America. Thank God she had a gun is the usual response.”

“You got anything else you want me to do? Besides crawling through tunnels.”

“No, nothing right now—and thanks, Goom. I owe you big.”

“You bet you do. I’m sending you a bill.”

Karp turned off the cordless and put it down on the coffee table. “That was Guma.”

His wife put down her headphones and paused the tape she was listening to. “Did he do it?”

“So he says.”

“You don’t look very happy about it.”

“I’m not,” said Karp. “I want this to be over. This is hell. But I don’t want to talk about my legal daintiness anymore. How’s your stolen phone calls going?”

“The kid did a good job. It was like I figured. Oleg had a positive tip this kidnapping was going down. He had a man in the group that did it. These here are conversations with his man on the scene, Ilya, who that guy reported to. Oleg knew the time and the place of the snatch and where they were hiding Perry. He declined to intervene. Result: an international incident, beaucoup press, and he goes in and gets them out two days before the IPO, guaranteeing all the bozos who make up the bull market will buy the stock: ‘Duh, Osborne, I heard of them, think I’ll buy a thousand.’ Basically, it’s what happens when the KGB discovers capitalism. They love the money, but they don’t quite get it.”

“So you’re going to blow the whistle?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Marlene in a tone that did not encourage probing. “You’ll be interested to know we have a line on Canman, or Mike Dugan does. Lucy’s going over to Old St. Pat’s tonight to get the scoop from this guy who’s apparently the king of the mole people.”

After a considering pause, Karp said, “I’m not sure I like Lucy getting involved in this. Why don’t you go?”

“Because I have other stuff to do, and because Lucy is quite competent enough to collect some information.”

“But that’s it, right? Just information.”

“She really wants to find Canman. He’s a friend.”

“He’s a serial killer.”

“I thought Cooley was the serial killer.”

“There are enough killings to go around for the two of them,” snapped Karp. “You need to back me up on this, Marlene. I don’t want Lucy going anywhere near those tunnels.”

“She has Tran to watch her.”

“Yet another serial killer. I mean it, Marlene.”

“I know you mean it, but we’ve been through this I don’t know how many times before. You want to be protective and a good daddy, but the choice is either backing her up when she wants to do stuff you think might be risky, or forbidding her and making her feel guilty when she goes ahead and does it anyway. She’s seventeen now and it’s only going to get worse. At least she’s not riding every Saturday night in the back of a pickup driven by a drunk teenager, like half the kids her age in America.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No, it’s a lot more scary than looking for a guy in a tunnel while holding hands with the most dangerous man in North America and his numerous associates.”

“I want her right next to me, then.”

“Good. It’ll be a family thing, then, like the magazines are always telling us to do,” Marlene said with finality, and slipped on the headphones.

 

It had taken Lucy some time to get used to the man’s stench, compared to which Jingles’s fierce pong was that of a baby fresh from the bath. The man had to actually be rotting, or have dead animals trapped between the layers of his clothes. He was playing chess with the priest in a room in the basement of the church. They were playing slowly and silently, and after the first half hour she gave up following the game. Lucy was the worst chess player in her family. She had never beaten either of her parents, and recently even Zak had knocked her off, amid merciless laughter. Whatever brain cells were used for chess in normal people had clearly been displaced in her head by those devoted to language: the tricky tonalities of Hmong reigning in place of the King’s Indian defense. After a brief greeting, Father Dugan had returned his attention to the board. The other man had not responded to her at all, which miffed her, and so she passed the time staring rudely at him. There was a good deal to see. He was big, for one thing; his head was like a slightly deflated basketball, covered with a wool cap that was kelly green under the grime. The ear she could see was only a fringe of greased cartilage around a black hole, for the man had clearly been in a bad fire at some time. His face, riven with scars and discolored grafts, was tugged subtly out of place so that one side seemed to smile as the other frowned. Lucy was on the frowning side. He had an untreated cleft palate and a harelip, too, and his eyes were of two different colors, one black, the other a misty hazel. Spare Parts, indeed, although the priest called him Jacob.

“’Eck,” said Spare Parts.

The priest let out a regretful sigh and a low chuckle. He moved a piece. His opponent responded. Then a brief flurry of moves and the man said, “’Eck ’ate.”

The priest toppled his king, winked at Lucy, rose, and said, “Good game. Thank you, Jacob. Why don’t I make us some tea? I think there’s some old doughnuts left from a committee meeting, too.”

Dugan left. Spare Parts said nothing, but slowly replaced the pieces on the board. His hands were huge and showed red in fissures where the skin was not black with filth.

“You’re a good chess player, huh?” said Lucy, oppressed by the silence. “I’m not. I can’t play for beans. Where did you learn how?”

The massive head turned, and he looked at her, into her eyes; she felt an actual jolt, and into her mind came the line from the Yeats poem her mother was always quoting, the one about the creature with a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun. Tran sometimes looked at her like that, in moments of distraction, when the kindly persona he had constructed for her benefit fell away, and she looked into more pain and loss than human beings were really designed for. There was nothing of society in it, only the horrible truth of existence. It took all her will to keep her eyes on his. Finally, he said something, a series of honks with most of the consonants stripped out.

I’ve heard of you, he was saying. You work at the church.

“Yes, Holy Redeemer. Do you go there?”

No. I only come here. I like to play chess. He gives me books. The man drew a deep breath, as if this much language had exhausted him.

You’re looking for Canman.

“Yes,” she said eagerly. “Do you know where he is?”

The great head nodded twice.

“Will you take me there?”

What do you want with him?

“I’m his friend. I want to help him. We think people are looking for him, the police, and also a policeman who may want to hurt him. We can help him, but we have to find him before they do.”

They won’t find him.

“They will. They have sweeps of the subways, of the homeless. You know that! They’re planning a big one on Wednesday because they think Canman is the bum slasher, and they’ll look until they find him. We need to find him first.”

He’s not in the subways.

“He’s not?”

Not in the subways. He’s in Rat Alley.

Father Dugan entered the room then, carrying a tray.

“Here’s our tea,” he said cheerfully. “I see you’re getting along.”

“Jacob says the Canman’s not in the subways.”

“Yes,” said the priest, “we were discussing that before you arrived. Apparently there’s a disused railway tunnel on the West Side that intersects some kind of derelict sewer system. It’s sealed off from the tunnel proper, or was. Rat Alley, as they call it down there. Do you know that line from The Waste Land ? ‘I think we are in rats’ alley, where the dead men lost their bones.’ No? Jacob must know it, though. Jacob reads a lot of poetry.”

“In ‘A Game of Chess,’” said Spare Parts.

“Yes,” said the priest. “The section of the poem in which the line appears, he means. Yet another strange conflation of art and life.” Dugan leaned over as he poured tea into Lucy’s cup, caught her eye, and mouthed, “Keep your eyes on me; don’t watch him eat.”

“Yes, Rat Alley,” Father Dugan resumed, “it doesn’t appear on the city’s maps, not that that’s unusual—there’re fourteen hundred miles of sewer line under New York, apparently, besides unbelievable numbers of pipes and tubes and ducts of various kinds. This particular one seems to be the place where people go to escape when the tunnels get too cozy. They also toss garbage in there and an occasional corpse.”

Lucy was, as instructed, keeping her eyes on Dugan, but she could not similarly restrict her ears. Spare Parts when eating sounded like a large fish trapped in a mud puddle by the retreating tide. These sounds paused, and he said, It’s very dangerous. Canman is crazy. I think he’ll be dead soon, anyway. He is half in love with easeful death.

“Is he sick again?” Lucy asked, alarmed.

After a horrible slurp, the deep voice went on, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter because they will get him soon. They get them all in Rat Alley.

“Who will get him? You mean the rats?” With this, Lucy forgot herself and looked at Spare Parts.

He stared back at her. Crumbs and powdered sugar were around his horrible maw, and his thick, purple tongue swooped out to grab them up. He said, There are no rats left in Rat Alley.

Then he stood up and strode over to a pile of cartons full of donated paperbacks. Lucy had expected him to have the lurching walk of a horror-movie monster, but his stride was strong and athletic. He knelt, selected a book, shoved it into a pocket, and left without another word.

Lucy found herself gasping, and Father Dugan chuckled. “Yes, we don’t breathe too deeply around Jacob.”

“Good Lord!”

“Uh-huh. Stinks like a desert father. What did you think?”

“Of him? Horrible, but not actually scary. He’s very hard, but not evil, like an animal. What’s his story, do you know?”

“Not much. Bits slip out occasionally. Apparently he was born down there. His mother was an illegal of some kind, and probably not all there upstairs. She made her living . . . as you would expect. God knows how he survived, but he did. He got big early, which I guess was a blessing. I have no idea how he learned how to read—he certainly never went to school. I found him one night outside, going through the trash, a pile of books that were too messed up to send anywhere, and I invited him in. He’s bright—you saw him beat me just now—but not exactly with a human intelligence.” Dugan sipped some tea and lit another cigarette. “It makes you count your blessings, doesn’t it?”

“Will he help us find Canman?”

“Oh, he already has. Before you got here, he gave me explicit instructions on how to find this Rat Alley. But he wanted to meet you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, and no false modesty, please. You have quite the rep among the unhoused. Several instances of miraculous healing have been reported.” He wiggled his eyebrows and looked upward.

She giggled and blushed. “Oh, stop it!”

“The pope’s been informed.”

“No, really . . . so we’re really going down there.”

“It looks that way. The sooner, the better. What do your folks think about it?”

“Oh, Dad’s going to object, but he always objects. My mother, of course, is fine with it.” A pregnant silence. “I should go home.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

At the steps leading up from the church basement he asked, “Still having the visions?”

“Few and far between now, although St. T. nearly got me arrested on a train. The message seems to be to study hard and wait. I guess they’re not going to tell me to crown the Dauphin at Reims.”

“And a good thing, too.” He laughed. “And, Lucy? About this whole business . . .” He pinched his lips.

She nodded agreement, hugged him good-bye, and trotted off down Mulberry Street. It was dark at this hour, although the street was lit by the windows of shops and galleries. Banners flapped over the centers of culture and commerce. Just past Kenmare, she spotted a familiar figure moving swiftly in the opposite direction.

“David!”

But Grale did not seem to notice her, or anything else. He was walking rapidly, his tattered jacket flapping like one of the gallery banners, an intense and fixed expression on his face. She moved to intercept him, clutched at his sleeve.

At that he stopped and turned to face her. “David, what’s the matter? Are you okay? You practically ran over me.”

“Oh, sorry.” His face went through a peculiar contortion, as if he were painting David Grale onto something else. But there he was again, the kindly, amused eyes, the angelic expression, the lovely mouth curved into a smile. “Sorry, I was just distracted. What are you doing out? Clubbing? Living the high life of the rich?”

“Oh, right, I’m so much in demand at the more exclusive boîtes. It’s my supermodel face and fashion sense. What’s up with you?”

His smile faded. “More bad news. They found Doug’s body down by the tracks. It’s another one. That makes seven. I’m going over there now, see what I can do. He might have effects or relatives who should be informed.”

Lucy had an unbidden, uncharitable thought that in this particular case the slasher had done society a favor, followed by a spasm of guilt.

Grale seemed to see this transition on her face. “Yeah, I know, I had the same thing, the slasher’s good deed. It shows how far we are from perfect love. Still, it’s a kind of mercy. He had the virus, you know.”

“I didn’t know.” She recalled the fight she had been in with Doug Drug, the blood spilled, and could not help a thrill of loathing.

“Yeah, he had it, and it made him angry. He seemed to go out of his way to share needles with his pals. It’s funny, I know that the rain falleth on the just and the unjust, but wouldn’t it be a kick if like the bad guys got their desserts right here in front of everyone, and the innocent didn’t get raped and murdered? What if there were saints who stuck it to the bad guys in the same way as Mother Teresa took care of the miserable and poor.”

“They wouldn’t stay saints for long, would they?” said Lucy, thinking of her mother. “I mean, if there’s one thing the Church has learned in all this time, it’s that violence and power are corrupting.”

Now he fixed her with his eye and spoke with intensity. “Yes, but don’t you think God gets tired of all this suffering? In Sudan I saw stuff . . . you can’t imagine what people did to each other there. There were times when I wanted to grab an AK and finish off the bunch of them. Not just the bad guys either, all of them, just to make an end, just to let them fly off to heaven or hell or wherever.”

“But you didn’t.”

He seemed to deflate a little. “No. No, I didn’t. But sometimes when I think of people like old Doug there, I have my doubts.” Grale grimaced and shook his head. “Old Doug. He must be getting a stern talking-to right about now.”

“With pitchforks.”

Grale laughed. “Uh-huh, like in the cartoons. But, you know, there’s a theory that hell is completely empty. I mean, figure it out: You die, and all things are revealed. You have absolutely no doubts anymore. God is good, the devil is evil. And God’s mercy extends everywhere, even into the pit. How many souls do you think reject His mercy at that point? Not many, I bet.”

“I don’t know. What about the people who like torment? Or the people who’d never admit they were wrong even if it meant ten thousand years in hell? And what if you don’t like harp music?”

Grale smiled again, but this time in a sadly disapproving way. “You’ve been hanging with the Jesuits again. How is the good father?”

“He’s fine. We found out where Canman is.”

“No kidding! That’s great news. Is he okay?”

“So we hear. We’re going to try to . . . you know, find out more about how he is.” Stupid! she yelled at herself in her head. David was the last one to tell about this. He didn’t have a guileful bone in his body, and he talked to absolutely everybody. All at once she was uncomfortable, wanting to be away home, far from the conflicting and delicious and annoying feelings the man roused in her, and so she made a hurried excuse about having to get up early and practically ran off down the street, her mind full of mortification and all the clever, mature words she never managed to get out in real life.

 

“Are you really going to do it?” Karp asked, embracing his wife the next morning at the door to the loft.

“I’m going to give it a try,” she said. She was wearing an old black Karan suit, something she had bought in a consignment shop before the money came, and a pair of Jil Sander’s she’d got on sale in what seemed another age. She looked severe and felt the same.

“This is all beyond me,” said Karp.

She laughed. “It might be beyond me, too. I’ll call you.”

She took a cab to the office, went in, and sat behind her desk and waited. The call from Osborne came at a little after ten. She picked up her loaded briefcase and went in.

They were all there, sitting along both sides of the table, with Osborne at the head: Oleg Sirmenkov, sitting next to the boss, then Bell, the lawyer, and Harry Bellow, and Deanna Unger and Marty Fox. They stopped talking when she came in, then started up again, pretending that they hadn’t stopped talking. She took a seat at the foot of the long table, placing her briefcase on the table in front of her. She looked at Harry. He was confused, which was good, she thought, because it meant he hadn’t been involved. Everyone else was staring at her, with expressions ranging from fear to contempt to (in Oleg’s case) cold rage.

Osborne began without preamble. “People, this is a security firm, and the worst thing that can happen to a security firm is a breach in its own security. I’m sorry to tell you that we’ve experienced such a breach. Late on Friday night, Oleg informed me that someone had entered his confidential files and removed some highly sensitive phone records, digital recordings of conversations. I immediately contacted Marty, and he brought in a team to try to find out who had penetrated security and where the files had gone, if possible. The team worked all weekend and found that the intrusion had taken place from a machine on our own intranet. They started looking for traces of the missing files on every hard drive in the office and were eventually successful in locating the intruder.”

Osborne looked at Marlene. “I’ve been thinking it over half the night, and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why you’d want to do such a thing. Maybe you’d like to explain yourself, Marlene.”

“Gladly. First of all, just for my own personal curiosity, were you in on it yourself? I mean the scam.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Osborne. “What scam?”

Marlene reached into her briefcase and withdrew a stack of neatly stapled documents. She handed a short stack to Fox and to Harry, and they automatically passed them around the table.

“This is a translated transcript of conversations in Russian between Oleg and a man in Pristina, Kosovo, named Ilya. They demonstrate that not only did Oleg know the identity of the people who kidnapped Richard Perry, but also he knew, considerably in advance, the time and place they had planned to carry out the snatch. Which occurred as planned, as we all know. Further conversations concern the rescue. Oleg was at some pains to make sure that it went down two days before our IPO.”

Osborne had gone pale, which Marlene thought was a hopeful sign. She liked Osborne. Which didn’t mean much, since she liked Oleg, too.

Osborne turned to the Russian. “Oleg?”

Oleg made a little shrug. He smiled winningly. “Well, you know, Lou, truthfully, I think Marlene is maybe a little carried away here. This kind of operation is more complicated than watching out for girl singers, make sure no one sneaks into the dressing room. What you say on the phone to whoever, this is not always what you mean.”

They all looked back at Marlene, who guffawed and said, “Oh, horseshit, Oleg! I got you nailed and you know it. But, hey, you don’t want to believe my version of the story, I’d be glad to hand this package over to the press and let them play with it for a while, send a bunch of investigative reporters over there and let them poke around. The SEC is bound to be interested in it, too, especially the paragraphs on page twenty-one of the transcript where our boy here says”—she flipped through the pages and read—“‘This is most important, Ilya; you must go in on the sixteenth.’ And then Ilya says, ‘We could do it tomorrow, we’re all ready.’ And Oleg says, ‘No, the sixteenth. There is a business reason. Let them sit there for a while, it won’t do them any harm.’ Yeah, I think the SEC would be very interested in that part. It’s probably even worse than messing with Rule 174.”

At this the table erupted with angry noises, directed at Marlene. Osborne had to restore order by pounding his fist on the table and bellowing, and in the following hostile silence he asked, “Assuming you’re correct in your allegations, what do you intend to do?”

“Not much. This is a good firm, more or less. There’s no reason for you to lose all you’ve worked for because one person didn’t quite get it. But I want out. I want to be bought out, now, today.”

“That’s impossible!” said Unger. “We can’t trade in stock for six months after IPO.”

“I don’t mean a public trade. You all have margin accounts. It shouldn’t be hard for you to raise the cash, especially with stock as the collateral. Interior trades are perfectly legal. “We closed at fifty-five and a quarter on Friday. That’s sixty-six point three million that my piece of Osborne is worth. You can divide my stock up among you however you like, I could care less. But I want a check for that amount net of strike price, taxes, and charges, and I want it today.”

“How do we know you won’t release this material anyway?” Fox demanded. “What guarantees can you give us?”

“My sacred word of honor, one, and two, if I blew the whistle, Oleg would kill me. Right, Oleg?”

Like automatons, every head swiveled to look at Oleg. They all thought they were pretty tough people, but they all cringed a little at what they saw in Oleg Sirmenkov’s eyes just then.

Marlene continued, “And then Harry would kill Oleg, wouldn’t you, Harry, even though you might be a little pissed at me now?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, “I guess I would,” in a tone and with an expression that he hadn’t used much since he became a corporate guy, but which was absolutely convincing.

“Which would not be all that good for the firm, either. I just mention that in case Oleg is thinking about killing me anyway,” said Marlene with a bright smile around the table, which was not returned.

Lou Osborne asked Marlene to leave the room, which she did, then walked back to her office, to find Min Dykstra standing guard, embarrassed but resolute about not letting Marlene into her own office. She wanted to know what was going on, and Marlene told her that it was better that she didn’t know. Marlene left and went to the ladies’ room and sat in a booth and used her considerable reserves of self-control to resist tears and actually made a small dent in the steel wall of the booth with her fist. Then she went back to Osborne’s office and hung around, in the invisibility of the corporate pariah, until Bell came out and took her into his office, and they began to negotiate.

Three hours later, Marlene signed her name to an agreement. In it she promised that she would not compete with Osborne by opening her own international security firm or by working for an Osborne competitor, and also that if she ever made public anything whatever having to do with her career at Osborne International, said firm would have the right to strip her of all she possessed, parade her naked through the streets in a cart, transport her to a deserted island, and stake her down in the sun, to be devoured by ants and crabs, or words to that effect. In return she received a certified check for $50,823,000. Then she cabbed downtown and had a long conversation with Ms. Lipopo. If Ms. Lipopo was amazed, she did not show it. Marlene imagined that the banker had experienced all manner of financial eccentricity, and that Marlene’s was nothing much in comparison.

Back on the street, she recalled the first time she had walked out of Ms. Lipopo’s elegant suite. Then she had been heavy, plutonic, rich, as they say, beyond the dreams of avarice. She was still richer than 99 percent of the planet’s people, but she was about to become very much poorer, and she felt light, Apollonian. She stepped off the curb to hail a cab, then stepped back and dropped her arm. Instead, she walked through the money-intent throngs to the subway and took the Lexington Avenue line up to the Hunter College station. The train was not crowded. She found a seat and observed her fellow passengers. She estimated that not one of them had been born in the United States, which obscurely cheered her. On the platform at Hunter College, where she left the train, she found a hairy kid with a guitar singing “I Shall Be Released.” She paused to drop a twenty in his case and tripped up the stairs and to the garage that held her battered Volvo. In it she drove downtown, happily cursing the cabdrivers and truckers, and after stopping off to pick up some supplies for the tunnel expedition, she returned home, changed into worn jeans and a T-shirt, fixed herself a wine cooler, and telephoned the archdiocese about a donation she wanted to make to the Church. And, no, she told the secretary, she couldn’t just put it in the box.