This must be what sensory deprivation is like, thought Marlene. Since she had conspired with Alonso to bring her undrugged food she had been left in the dark and unmolested, except for mealtimes. There had been three of these, or four, she was not sure. Kid food, and she was glad to get it: pizza, hot dogs, burgers, candy bars, milkshakes. In between she was left tied up on her cot, in total darkness. Ten days, Mrs. Dean had said, until the full moon. Marlene wondered how many of them were left.
As the unmarked hours passed, deprived of vision, hearing little but her own breathing and the creak of her cot, her sense of smell had become preternaturally sharp. She had become aware of a universe of subtle odors: the damp smell of old stone, the sharp odor of the canvas, the oily smell of the wool blanket, a musty rotting odor she couldn’t quite identify—perhaps some food that had been forgotten and had gone bad. Pervading all these was the stink of her own unwashed body, and the spicy-sulfur smell she remembered from childhood, before her house was converted to oil heat. She was in a coal cellar.
This discovery gave her some pleasure, as indicating that her brain was still working and that she was not entirely helpless. She thought about coal cellars for a while, about the excitement when, as children, she and her older sisters would hang around the coal truck on delivery day to see and hear the black lumps rattle and roar down the tin chute.
More excitement—coal cellars had chutes! That meant there was a way out of this place, or had been. Maybe it was still open and she could slip through. From this moment Marlene began to think actively about escape. All she had to do now was to free herself from her bonds and overpower or evade a monster the size of a Mack truck.
Pending that, she occupied herself with thought. What else could she do? And some action, even mental action, was better than dissolution into sobbing terror. Marlene had no difficulty admitting her fear, but she had long practice in suppressing it through an act of will, which is the only way a person with a vivid imagination can achieve courage.
She thought a lot about Karp. Karp would not be afraid, she thought, and thought half-enviously that his bravery had nothing to do with controlling imagination. Karp had, she knew, no more imagination than a manhole cover. Despite all the proof to the contrary, despite all the destruction that fate had visited on his body, he retained a belief in his own indestructibility.
Yes, Karp was brave. He was also ferociously honest, about deeds, if not feelings, trustworthy, intelligent, a great piece of ass, good-looking, neat. He washed dishes; he picked up dirty clothes: in short, he was a storehouse of all the manly virtues, beneath which noble edifice Marlene had detected an impacted zone of tender sensitivity, to whose excavation she intended to devote a good portion of her energies after marriage. If she didn’t die here in this hole.
She also thought about escape. She had given up on rescue. Judge Rice knew that she was going to visit St. Michael’s, but that was no help, because Mrs. Dean had only to say, “Yes I was expecting her, but the dear girl never showed up.” Why shouldn’t the cops believe her? Even Karp would believe her.
The key to escape was also the greatest barrier: the Bogeyman, Alonso. She had already won a concession from him, in the form of undrugged food, and where one concession had been given, others might follow. In an odd way, he seemed anxious to please her, almost as much as she (exhibiting, as she realized, florescent Stockholm Syndrome) was anxious to please him.
He seemed to enjoy feeding her and tucking her in and tending to her physical needs. After he fed her, he would sit at what looked like a child’s desk near the doorway, a desk that came barely to his knees, and play with little toys, which he would set out on the surface of the desk and converse with. Marlene could not see them clearly enough to make them out, but they appeared to be tiny Kewpie dolls, dressed in bright colors.
But Alonso was not mentally retarded. Somebody (and Marlene thought she knew who) had through some hideous warping of the processes of nurturance frozen him emotionally at about the age of five. His two governing emotions seemed to be a terror of his mother and a bottomless loneliness. Marlene sensed that he was making her into a little friend. Marlene understood that she had to extract from this friendship enough concessions to enable her to break free before he did to her what she suspected he had done to his other little friends.
She began to sing, to keep her spirits up and to pass the time; and to sass anyone who might be listening she sang prison songs. She sang “Parchman Farm,” “Morton Bay,” “No More Cane on This Brazos,” “The Peat Bog Soldiers,” in English and again in German, and Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” In between prison songs she sang “My Bonny Light Horseman,” and thought about Karp and about Raney, or rather about some unlikely blend of their best features.
As she sang, she heard the rattle of a heavy lock being opened and the squeak of hinges. In a minute, she gradually became aware of a presence hovering near her, a soft breathing, a change in the pressure of the air currents on her cheek, and the smell of frying. She stopped singing. Silence and then a chair scraped and Alonso turned on the light.
The overhead light was dim but it dazzled her. When her vision cleared she saw that he was carrying a brown bag. He said, “I brought lunch.”
“Oh, is it lunchtime already? What did you get?”
“Cheeseburgers and french fries and chocolate milk,” he replied, unwrapping these things.
He pulled his chair closer and made as if to lift her head up and bring the cheeseburger to her mouth, but she whined and turned her head away.
“What’s the matter? I thought you liked cheeseburgers.”
“I love cheeseburgers, Alonso, but I want to eat them myself, with my own hands. Couldn’t you untie me? Just my hands?”
He looked doubtful. “I’m not sposed to.”
“Come on,” Marlene urged. “What am I gonna do, beat you up and escape? You’re a great big boy and I’m just a girl.”
He considered this for a while, chewing his puffy pink lips. Then he said, “OK. But don’t tell, all right?”
She smiled at this and nodded for all she was worth and he reached over her and untied the ropes that held her hands to the cot. He smelled faintly of some light and distressingly familiar perfume. Baby powder, she realized with a shock, and something sweeter and not as wholesome underneath it.
Then he handed her the food and watched her as she tore into it. “Mmmm, chocolate milk,” she said through a full mouth. “I used to love this when I was a kid. St. John Bosco was my favorite saint because I thought he invented chocolate milk.”
Blank look.
“Because of Bosco—you know, chocolate syrup.”
“What’s saints?” he asked.
“Saints? You know, saints—people who were very holy and had special grace of God, and intercede for us in Heaven.”
Alonso frowned. “We don’t like that,” he said, with a dull finality she decided not to challenge. Catechism class could wait.
“No, I guess not,” said Marlene quietly. The giant continued to watch her as she finished her meal. She licked the grease from her fingers and then said, “Well, Marlene needs to go potty now. Could you untie my feet?” Be polite and others will be polite to you. Sister Marie Augustine, she thought, I hope you knew what you were doing.
He loosened her ropes and led her, wrapped in her blanket and grasped tightly by the arm, out of the coal cellar through what appeared to be a furnace room, past a heavy door with a big outside hasp and padlock, and down a dim corridor.
Off this corridor was the toilet. Marlene had shameful drug-dimmed memories of being carried to this room and placed on the toilet while her captor watched. Now when she started to close the door, Alonso stepped forward and stood dumbly on the threshold.
“Can’t I have some privacy?”
“I want to watch.”
“You can’t! It’s naughty. Don’t you know that? Didn’t your Mommy tell you that it’s naughty for girls and boys to go to the bathroom together?” This is the right play, Marlene thought. This is the weak place. He’s never had a real adult to deal with before, except her. She had understood, almost instinctively, that the key to controlling Alonso was using the same tone she had used with her little brothers and their friends when she was eleven. It worked. He pulled back, his face worried and confused, and she slammed the door shut.
Later, back in the coal cellar, Marlene sat on the cot while Alonso played with his dolls. He seemed restless and irritable. The little dolls fought one another and conversed, through the man, in high-pitched angry squeaks. He broke off the game after a few minutes and placed the dolls between layers of tissue in a gold candy box.
He rose and came toward her. “I have to tie you up now,” he said.
“Alonso, please. I can’t escape. You have that big door with a lock….” She made her voice high and trembly. “And I’m scared of the dark.”
He looked confused. “You can’t be scared. You’re a bad witch. My Mommy said.” He said this with absolute finality and Marlene was not about to contradict him. Something flashed into her mind.
“Yeah, right, but, if you don’t tie me up, I’ll give you my evil eye. Then I won’t be able to do anything magic to you, or escape.”
Marlene saw his huge round face light with interest at this suggestion. “Really?” he asked.
“Sure. But only if you don’t tie me.”
He held out an immense hand and she removed her glass eye from its socket and solemnly handed it to him.
He examined it closely, openmouthed in amazement, and then carefully placed it in the inside pocket of his black suit jacket. He turned to go, then spun around on her with a fearsome scowl. “You, you better not try to run away, all right? If you run away, I’ll be in big trouble. I’ll have to squoosh you, just like him.”
“Like who, Alonso?”
“The little man. He stole a doll and it was my fault. Mommy said. And I got a licking and I had to squoosh him. I squooshed him with my feet.”
Marlene felt a rush of guilt. Junior Gibbs had taken her hint and died for it. She swallowed hard and said, “You’re really a good squoosher, aren’t you, Alonso. Did you squoosh a lot of people?”
The great head shook vigorously from side to side. “No. Only him.”
“Not Lucy.”
He looked hurt. “No! Lucy was my friend. But she got broken. I put them in the garbage when they get broken.” He smiled and said proudly, “That’s my big-boy job.”
She stared at him, and felt the smile curdling on her face. He gave her a little wave. “I hope you don’t get broken for a long time. I like you,” he said and walked out.
Marlene waited until she heard the sounds of the furnace room door shutting and the lock scraping against its hasp as he locked her in. She stood up and began to explore her prison.
She quickly determined that there was no longer any chute from the old coal cellar to the outside. There was a patch of relatively new brick to show where one had been in the past. The doorway from the coal cellar led to a room measuring about three yards by five yards, containing the dusty hulk of an old coal burning furnace that had long since been converted to oil. Next to it was a shiny new forced-air oil burner feeding into three wide galvanized sheet metal ducts.
The work looked brand new. There were still chips of glittering sheet metal lying on the floor. Marlene felt a thrill of hope. She recalled that on one of her early visits to the day-care center, Mrs. Dean had been supervising duct work. It must have been part of this furnace installation, which meant that she was still in Manhattan, probably in the basement of St. Michael’s.
She went over to the door and pushed on it without much expectation. It was firmly padlocked from the outside. No chute, the door locked—come on, Marlene, use your noodle! She paced back and forth waiting for something to enter her mind. It was warm in the furnace room and she had dropped the blanket. She looked down at her nude body. She appeared to be putting on some weight from all that junk food. Still, she remained pretty skinny. If there was a window, even a small one, she might be able to … suddenly she stopped pacing and struck herself on the forehead.
The ducts! She pulled Alonso’s little desk across the floor to the new furnace and stood on it with her ear against the warm metal. Nothing but the gush of the blowers. That was surprising. If these ducts led to the school she should be hearing voices or at least some indication of an active building. Alonso had said that the meal she had just eaten was lunch, but that could mean anything. But if there was no one in the school, it was probably late at night. She stood listening until her legs grew tired, and then jumped down.
She decided to move at once. Alonso had just left, which meant he might not be back for several hours, which would give her enough time to open a duct, crawl through, and run. She examined the duct joints, and found that they were held together by four sheet-metal screws. A screwdriver, she thought, there’s always an old screwdriver in a furnace room, sometimes two, along with the babyfood jar of assorted screws.
She searched with growing frustration, running her hands along the base of the walls, peering behind both furnaces, but nothing like a screwdriver turned up. There was a fuse box, but no cabinets to search. The only drawer in the place was in the little desk. She yanked it open. Some marbles. A comic book. A gold candy box. The sweetish odor that she had detected on Alonso seemed stronger here. She opened the box.
It was Alonso’s doll collection. He had five of them, each one dressed carefully in a different color, in clothes made from little scraps of bright cloth. They were not, however, as she had thought, miniature celluloid dolls. When she saw what they actually were, she dropped the box and staggered backwards, biting her lip to keep from shrieking in horror. Little fingers.
Guma had never actually met Giancarlo Ferro, but he had heard plenty about him, little of it complimentary. If Vinnie Ferro had been the brains and guts of the clan, Giancarlo had been in charge of cruelty. He was a heavyset, almost squat man with a face as round and yellow and cratered as the moon, a face to which his narrow pouched eyes gave a decidedly Oriental cast. He affected double-breasted suits in pale colors and sported a thin mustache, which explained his nom-de-street.
He really does look like Charlie Chan, Guma thought. They were sitting in the back room of a restaurant the Ferros owned off President Street in Brooklyn: Guma, Tony Bones, Charlie Chan Ferro, and Billy Ferro, an otherwise colorless thug, present only because family matters were being discussed.
Charlie and Tony did most of the talking, which largely concerned violence, chicanery, and sex in the Brooklyn streets of twenty years past. Guma was familiar with many of the names and knew some of the individuals personally. He had been part of that life. He found himself (uncharacteristically) wondering what had kept him in school and sent him to college and law school while all the referenced fucking, shooting, and stealing had been going on. Bad luck, was what he guessed.
The talk drifted on: The two mobsters seemed to have no urgent appointments. Guma grew bored and, since liquor was apparently on the house, he drank two Teachers’ on the rocks, and a Schaeffer. He tore little holes in a napkin. Suddenly he became aware that the hum of talk had ceased; the three men were looking at him expectantly. It was his cue.
“We know who did Vinnie,” Guma said. “And we’re gonna take him in.”
Charlie Chan looked sideways at Tony and a sneer twisted across his wide face. “Is he fuckin’ serious? Forty people saw Joey Bottles do Vinnie.” He glared at Guma. “You gonna bring him in? Go ahead and try. You gonna find forty people was tying their shoelace.”
Guma stared back at him. “Wrong. We got him already, plus Harry and the Bollanos. Joey’s wheelman ratted him out.”
“I heard,” said Charlie. “So what the fuck does that do for me?”
“We need another witness. Your guy DiBello saw it too. We want him to talk.”
Charlie snorted in contempt. “DiBello? That lame? He saw shit!”
“He saw it. We’re holding him as a material witness. All you got to do is call him and tell him to spill the whole story on Joey B.”
Charlie Chan came up out of his chair violently, shaking the table and spilling drinks. “What the fuck makes you think I’m gonna do that, asshole? Who the fuck you think you’re talkin’ to? You think I can’t take out Joey?” He turned to his other guest, his features now writhing with anger.
“Tony, what the fuck you doin’ to me here? You think I can’t handle the Bollanos. You think I need fuckin’ help from the fuckin’ D.A.?”
Tony smiled icily and said, “Guma, why don’t you wait in the car?”
Half an hour later, the door to the white limo opened and Tony Bones climbed in. Guma had been watching Dialing for Dollars on the little TV and making free with the bar. He switched off the set and said, ‘That’s some tough guy in there. I was worried about you there for a while, Tony.”
After a sharp look to make sure Guma was joking, Tony laughed. “Yeah, he’s hard as nails. Fuckin’ guy! I’m trying to break it to him gently, if he doesn’t go along with this, put the Bollanos out of action, he’s dead. In a oil drum with an ice pick up his nose. No, he’s gonna get them. Fuckin’ ludicrous, right? Him going against Harry Pick? But he don’t listen, does he? The Ferros! The fuckin’ family hasn’t shown any sense in twenty years. At least Vinnie had brains. This one—un’ scimmia, un scicco!”
“So he won’t?”
“He will, he will—what d’you think, I can’t roll a scumbag like Charlie? Yeah, he’ll do it. You know what I told him? He’d have a better chance to put it to Joey, if Joey was in the slams. He figures, if there’s no Bollanos left outside, Joey won’t have no cover inside. Like Joey needs cover.”
“He doesn’t know Big Sally’s going to walk?” asked Guma with a nervous laugh.
“Hey—that’s our little secret,” Tony answered, grinning.
“Right,” said Guma. “We going to see Bollano now?”
“Yeah, it’s all set up. I got to get this shit over with and get back down south. The fuckin’ spics’ll be all over me as it is.” Tony spoke to the driver and the big car moved smoothly away from the curb.
Guma finished his drink, and said, “Tony, one last thing … I need a couple of minutes alone with the old man.”
“Alone?” Tony frowned. “How come you want to see him alone?”
“Let’s say if he wants to stay out of jail, I got to put something in his ear. Otherwise the whole deal falls apart.”
“You just tell this to me now? I’m hanging out all over the street on this.” Guma was startled by how quickly the pleasantness had drained out of Tony’s face. He did not like looking at what was left.
“I know, Tony. There’s no problem. We’re under control here. But you understand, unless I can tell Big Sally a couple of things, he’s gonna go up with the rest of them.”
Tony calculated briefly and then slipped back into a cool smile. “OK, paisan, for you, I’ll see what I can do.”
Guma relaxed. The tiger had jumped through the hoop and was back on its little stand. Now all Guma had to do was to convince Salvatore Bollano to use Guma’s plan to escape the clutches of the grand jury, while allowing his own son and several of his most trusted associates to go to jail. No problem, thought Guma. A chair in the face, a few blank shots, he’d go through the hoops like Tony. Gangsters he could handle. His real problem was keeping all of this from Karp.
Karp buttoned his suit coat and stood up and walked to his favorite spot in front of the jury. Klopper had just finished his summation and Karp was about to enjoy one of the few advantages the prosecution retained in criminal cases: the right to have the last word.
Karp’s last word, of course, had to contain a convincing rebuttal of what Klopper had said. This he had composed in his head as Klopper spoke. Mentally, he slotted this rebuttal into the structure of logic he had composed, then outlined and all but memorized the previous night. He took a long, deep breath and began.
The crime was murder. Karp explained what murder was, what he had to prove: That the deceaseds were dead, and dead as a result of the criminal acts of the accused. The Mullens were dead, all right. He had shown that. He reminded the jury of the gory circumstances.
Then he reconstructed the web of circumstantial evidence that tied Felix Tighe to the crime. Anna Rivas’s testimony. Felix beat Anna, the victim called the cops. “I’ll remember that.” He had a knife on the night of the murder. He had the black pants on.
Then the evidence from the Lutz apartment: the knife, the black pants, tying in and confirming the testimony. And the diary—the notation “Big Mouth—9:30,” the day, the approximate time of the killings, confirmed by Josh Mullen’s call to 911. The vacuity of the defense—the exploded alibi, Lutz’s fabrications. Finally the fingerprint on the door frame of the victim’s apartment, a fresh, sweaty fingerprint, laid down on the night of the murder.
That was the evidence. But he now had to deal with the twist that Klopper, in his summation, had put on all those facts in order to lay a reasonable doubt: It was too pat. The cops were framing a convenient bad boy. Could you really believe that an intelligent man like Felix Tighe would have made so many incriminating mistakes?
“Gentlemen of the jury,” Karp said, looking at each member in turn, “I ask you now to consider the character of the accused. That too is part of the evidence. It has been suggested by Mr. Klopper, in his able summation, that the very weight of the circumstantial evidence against the defendant should give you pause. You have seen that the defendant is a clever and articulate man. How could such a clever man have made so many mistakes? Boasting! Keeping the knife! The black pants! Writing down his appointment for murder!
“I will tell you how. Our legal rules require that the People prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, to a moral certainty. I’m sure Judge Montana will explain to you in his charge what a reasonable doubt is. But let’s look closer at that interesting term, moral certainty.
“It means that when you make a decision as a member of a jury you are not striving for scientific or mathematical certainty, but for a kind of decision that engages your full conscience. That’s why the term ‘moral’ is used. It’s not merely a rational calculation: you’re men, not machines. And you bring your moral history as human beings with you to the courtroom: your understanding of good and evil, your experiences with crime and punishment—you’ve all had these—everything that makes you fit to sit in judgment on your fellow man, that enables you to make a judgment ‘to a moral certainty.’
“But we have seen here in these past days another kind of judgment, the judgment of a man who knew that he was above any moral law. He knew it! It may be hard for you to believe this, but we know from his history and his actions that the defendant could not conceive of ever having to pay for his crimes, however dreadful.
“Didn’t he nearly kill a policeman and calmly walk away from his trial? Didn’t he nearly kill the detectives who were trying to bring him to your justice? Didn’t he lie and lie when confronted with the overwhelming evidence against him? And change his lies to suit as each old lie was proven false?
“That is a kind of certainty that you may not have much experience with, gentlemen, but I have. It is immoral certainty. It is the feeling of invincibility that the hardened criminal has, the sure knowledge that he will never be brought to book for his crimes, and well you know from the papers and TV how justified that feeling is in today’s world.
“That is the explanation of why the defendant did not cover his tracks better, why he made so many of what now appear to be mistakes. It was the immoral certainty, the brazen arrogance, of the criminal mind.
“And so, gentlemen, it is for you this afternoon to bring your common sense to bear on the facts of this case, and your moral certainty to bear on the character of the defendant and his deeds. If you do that, you will find that the defendant, Felix Tighe, did indeed go to apartment 3FN at 217 Avenue A on the night of July tenth, and stab to death Stephanie Mullen and her little son Jordan Mullen.
“In this case, good conscience commands, common sense dictates, and justice cries out that you find this defendant guilty, guilty of the murder of Stephanie Mullen, and guilty of the murder of Jordan Mullen.”
Karp sat down. Judge Montana charged the jury. A good charge, Karp thought. You always knew when the judge thought the defendant was guilty, however much they reached for impartiality. Judge Montana did not like naked perjury in his courtroom. The re-run of the evidence helped, too, since the great bulk of it was, by the nature of the case, People’s evidence.
The jury deliberated for an hour and ten minutes, came back, and found Felix Tighe guilty of both murders.
Karp had never freebased cocaine, but he doubted that the fabled rush had much on what he felt in the few seconds after the foreman of the jury said the magic word. He felt powerful, relaxed, expansive. Sexy. That’s why Victory is a goddess.
There was a disturbance. Felix was screaming obscenities at his lawyer, who was paying no attention, apparently glad to be done with the case, maybe even a little glad that he’d lost.
Karp ignored them. You had to figure Felix Tighe would have no dignity, would be a sore loser. He packed his papers into his cardboard folder. The problem with a rush, he realized, is that after it’s over you have to either get another hit of dope or face the world. Karp had no other convictions pending and Marlene was still gone. He walked up the aisle, his face grim, toward a world empty of hope.