It was true, Marlene thought insanely: Once you learned to roller-skate, you never forgot. She had found neat rows of shoe-style neoprene-wheeled roller skates in the equipment room, most of them in kids’ sizes but some for the teachers too. A pair of these was on her feet, not quite a fit, but far better than hobbling on bloody rags.
She snapped a look over her shoulder. Alonso was a dark shape panting and stamping like a water buffalo. He was getting closer. Marlene pumped her legs and pressed her stinging feet against the wheels. The shape and the sounds receded. She veered to the left and heard the footsteps accelerate as he moved to compensate. Marlene understood what he was doing. He couldn’t catch her on the flat so he was staying far enough behind her and shifting direction, so as to herd her into one of the corners of the room.
It might have worked; the man was stronger and faster and Marlene was exhausted. But Alonso was not, as Marlene was, a child of the streets. He had not had four seasons of roller hockey, a ferocious game played with steel skates and homemade sticks on asphalt side streets strewn with broken glass, lined with cars, and peppered with speeding traffic. He was not maneuvering Marlene; she was maneuvering him, getting him away from the only available door to the street.
Marlene sensed the corner of the room approaching. She braked. He was two steps away. He reached for her. She accelerated briefly, faked right, cut left, dug her toe in, spun on it into a tight 180 degree turn, ducked double and whipped by him, missing the wall by inches and leaving him standing flat-footed, staring at the empty corner.
Then she was away, speeding across the room. The open door to the hallway loomed ahead. There were two shallow steps; Marlene bent her knees and took them in a single jump. Her wheels raced over the hardwood floor of the hallway. Yes! He had left the door unlatched. She braced, turned, flicked the door aside with elbow and hip and was again in the open, drizzly air, clattering down the front steps, free.
They took Balducci’s car, which was conveniently double parked on Leonard Street. On the drive uptown, Balducci put the flasher on the hood, and they screamed up the West Side Highway at eighty, Karp silent and brooding in the back seat, Brenner and Balducci in front, talking cop talk and communicating with back-up forces over the crackling radio.
They turned off the highway at Seventy-ninth, onto Riverside Drive. Balducci took the flasher off the roof. They headed south, crossed Seventy-eighth Street. Suddenly, Balducci slammed on the brakes and the car skidded wildly on the wet street. “Jesus Christ! Did you see that?” Balducci shouted.
Karp had been thrown hard into the back of the front seat. He shook himself and sat up. “What was it?”
“A damn woman with no clothes on. Christ, I almost hit her!”
Karp rubbed the mist off the rear window and peered out. What he saw was impossible, yet achingly familiar. He knew that naked rear as well as he knew anything. “It’s Marlene!” he yelled. “Go back!”
Balducci shifted into reverse for half a block. Karp grabbed a raincoat that lay crumpled on the back seat and leaped from the car while it was still moving. “Marlene!” he shouted, his heart in his throat. “It’s me, Butch!”
Ten feet ahead of him, she shot him a wild look over her shoulder. He saw her face, a white mask of terror, the black hair plastered down with rain and sweat. She stumbled, slowed.
Then he had her, wrapping the raincoat around her, hugging her, kissing her face. She was shaking and sobbing. “The Buh-buh … the Bogeyman….”
“There, there,” said Karp inanely.
Balducci and Brenner were standing by the open doors of the unmarked car looking back at this scene in amazement. They heard heavy steps on the street, slowing to a stop. They looked up the street, where the headlights shone.
“Who the hell is that?” said Brenner.
“That’s him! That’s the guy!” yelled Balducci. Both detectives drew their pistols and moved away from the car.
“Hey, asshole—you!” Balducci shouted. “Get over here and get your hands up!”
Alonso stood stupidly in the headlights for a moment, then darted out of the light, between two parked cars. The detectives took off in pursuit.
Karp led Marlene back to the car. He looked at her closely for the first time and cursed. “God! Baby, what did they do to you?”
“Shit! Don’t ask. I don’t know.” She stiffened suddenly. “Butch! Raney tried to rescue me. He’s hurt! We’ve got to find him.”
“Marlene, the cops’ll do that. I want you in a hospital right now.”
She pulled away from him. Now that she was safe, energy was flooding through her body from some inner source, making her tremble with excitement. “No, it’s a fucking maze in there—all her buildings are connected. They’ll never find him. Come on!”
With that, to his amazement, she skated away from him, putting her arms through the sleeves of the raincoat as she rolled. Something heavy in the raincoat pocket banged against her leg.
She soon caught up with Balducci and Brenner, who were standing in front of the locked door of the day-care center, pounding on it and ringing the bell. Marlene skidded to a halt next to them and staggered. She grabbed Breriner by the sleeve, as much to support herself as to attract his attention. Her brain was working, but her body was fading rapidly. A black ring closed briefly around her vision. She shook her head and said urgently, “Doug. Jim Raney’s in a second floor room at Two fifty-six West End Avenue. He’s hurt and—”
“Marlene, OK—we’ll get the back-up on it, but we got this big guy loose….”
“No! That’s the point—the buildings are connected! One of you has to go around there and block the entrance or he’ll escape.”
Brenner exchanged a quick glance with Balducci, who nodded, and Brenner took off at a run for the car. Karp came thumping up to the doorway, shouting, “What the hell’s going on! Where did Doug go with the car? I got to get her to a hospital….”
At that moment the door opened. Mrs. Dean stood there, in basic black, looking tired, but otherwise perfectly composed. “Yes? What is it?” she asked calmly.
For a moment the three of them stared at her. Then Balducci, who still had his pistol out, waved his shield and said, “Ma‘am, we’re in pursuit of a suspect. We think he might be highly dangerous. Please get out of the way and let us in.”
Mrs. Dean didn’t move. “What suspect?” she said contemptuously. “There’s no one here but me.” She glared and pointed a thin finger at Marlene. She said, “This woman has been persecuting me for months, and if you think—”
Marlene let out a bellow of rage and thrust forward. “You fucking bitch! Cut the shit! Your fucking fat son kidnapped me and you know it!” She leaped forward, thrusting Mrs. Dean aside with a roller-derby-style hip slam and made off at speed down the hallway. After a stunned instant, Karp and Balducci chased after her.
Down the hall and across the playroom again, Marlene retraced her escape, this time energized by fury. Now the door to the play area was open. She could feel the night air blowing in. The weight in the raincoat’s pocket kept banging painfully against her thigh as she skated. She took it out. It was Raney’s Astra Constable. She held it tight in her hand as she rolled through the courtyard.
Entering the house, she could hear Balducci puffing close behind her. Karp must be in the rear. Cold wet weather always made his bad knee painful to walk on, she recalled, thinking also, Poor Karp! I put him through so much trouble. And Raney….
Balducci caught up with her on the back stairs. He grabbed her by the arm. “Marlene! Jesus, wait up! Did you see him?” His eyes were frightened and wide in the dim light.
“No, but if he hasn’t got past Brenner out front, he’s either in the furnace room,”—she pointed toward it—“or upstairs. Raney’s on the second floor unless he moved him.”
The mention of his partner’s name seemed to lend the man determination. He dashed down to the furnace room and came back.
“It’s empty. What’s the layout here?”
“There’s a complete apartment on the first floor. The second floor is gutted. I don’t know what’s above that. There’s a front stairway and a backstairs. That’s these here.” She indicated the stairwell that twisted up into darkness.
Balducci stared grimly up at it. “What the fuck am I doing here?” he said softly, as if to himself. “My daughter’s getting married tomorrow.” There was a sound of sirens in the street. “That’s the back-up,” he said to Marlene. “I’m going up. You wait here, understand!”
Marlene nodded weakly and slid down the wall. She put the little pistol back in the raincoat pocket. When Karp caught up, wincing, she was mechanically untying the roller skates.
Karp knelt beside her. “You nut!” he scolded. “Why the hell did you run off like that!”
Marlene tossed the skates away with a clank and the soft sound of wheels spinning. A driblet of blood ran from the top of each one. Karp looked at her feet in horror. “Good God!”
Marlene wiggled her bloody toes. “Yeah. It looks worse than it feels. I think I can walk all right. Help me up.”
“The hell with that!” exclaimed Karp. “I’m going to carry you.” He picked her up and rose to his feet. Her body felt like a bag of styrofoam.
Then the shots began from the floor above.
There were two, then two more and finally, in a few seconds, a fifth. Karp was too stunned to hold her and by the fourth shot she had wriggled from his grasp and gone up the stairs at a fast hobble. Karp made a clumsy grab to restrain her, slipped on the first step, landed wrong on his bad leg and with a pang like a lance of fire shooting up through his groin and spine, his knee locked up. Biting his lip, he began to crawl up the stairs on his hands and his good knee, the bad leg sticking out behind him like the tail of a petrified lizard. In the dark stairway, he heard another shot, and screamed, “Marlene!”
The first thing Marlene saw when she emerged from the staircase was Balducci lying unconscious on the floor, groaning softly. Then she saw Alonso leaning against the wall. He was wearing a blue flannel bathrobe with red piping, and blue terrycloth slippers. It was obvious that he had been getting ready for bed when Balducci burst in on him, making a desperate escape to nowhere but the land of dreams. In his hand, looking as harmless as a toy gun in that great mass of meat, was Raney’s Browning Hi-Power.
Alonso was leaning against the wall. He was crying, and the front of his robe was darkened and wet. Little drops of red fell on his blue slippers as Marlene watched. He was bleeding.
He saw Marlene. “I’m hurt,” he said. “I want my Mommy.”
“Yes, she’s coming, Alonso,” said Marlene, her voice shaking. “But you have to give me the gun. It’s not yours.”
“Is too mine,” he replied weakly.
“No, it’s a policeman gun. Only policemen can have it. Now, give it here.” Marlene took a step closer to him. There was a clatter and a thump behind her and Karp clambered into the hallway.
Alonso’s face contorted with fear and terror and he raised the pistol toward the ceiling, then snapped it down and aimed it at Karp. He was shooting as little boys shoot with their fingers, as if he were throwing the bullets out by snapping his arm. He jerked on the trigger and the slug tore a chunk of plaster out of the wall two feet from Karp’s head. His hand pointed high for another shot, but before he could bring it down again, Marlene took Raney’s pistol from the raincoat pocket and put a bullet through the center of his upper lip. He fell crashing to the floor and, after the briefest interval, so did she.
Marlene awoke in a hospital bed, crying and struggling against the tapes that held her left arm to the bed frame. There was a tube running into her arm and a large, dark-faced woman in white was holding her shoulders. “Stop that shaking, honey, you’ll pull your IV out,” she said. Marlene tried to say something, but found her throat too parched to do more than croak.
The nurse saw her problem and gave her some water. “Where am I?” Marlene asked. “Was I shot?”
The nurse said, “Roosevelt Hospital, and you’re not shot that I know of. You came in for a checkup and exhaustion and dehydration and being generally beat up. Then you picked up a secondary staph infection and started spiking fevers. You been in and out for about a week. The folks’re gonna be pretty glad to see you. You’re a pretty famous person, you know that?”
Marlene looked around the small room. Every surface was crowded with floral arrangements. She started to remember what she was famous for and shook her head from side to side, as if willing the unwanted memories back into the dark. “I shot somebody,” she said weakly.
“Yeah. You sure did. We got the papers and the TV waiting to talk to you. Your husband’s been keeping them off. He’s been here almost all the time you been under. Would you like to see him now?”
Husband? thought Marlene. How long have I been sleeping? She nodded and the nurse turned to go. “Oh, and you’ll probably be glad to hear: The baby’s fine.”
Marlene cleared her throat. “Umm, what baby would that be?”
The nurse smiled. “Your baby, honey. You’re close to eight weeks gone.” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t mean you didn’t know?”
“I can’t be pregnant,” said Marlene, flushing. “I have a coil in.”
“Not any more you don’t. They did a complete pelvic on you while you were out. It’s routine in any, ah, case where there might have been, ah …”
“Sexual assault?”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, I’ve seen it before. When they tell you those things are ninety-eight percent effective, they mean it. Ninety-eight ain’t a hundred.”
Marlene felt sweat break out over her body, and a feeling of lightness, as if she were about to faint again.
A concerned look appeared on the nurse’s face. “Are you feeling OK, dear?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. A little shaky is all.”
“I can understand that. Should I go get him for you?”
“Yeah, as long as he’s here,” said Marlene.
Karp came in, looking haggard and drawn. He sat down on a straight chair next to the bed and patted her hand tentatively. “Hi. You’re back,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Physically, not bad. But I feel like I’m going to start crying and won’t be able to stop.” Silent tears were already starting, running down her cheeks and soaking the gauze pad over her missing eye. She forced a laugh. “Karp, we have to stop meeting like this.”
“Yeah. In the whole history of the New York D.A.’s office, only two Assistant D.A.’s have ever been kidnapped in the line of duty, and both of them are in this room. We must be doing something wrong.”
“I did everything wrong.”
“No, we all let ourselves get isolated. You were right about the center and the child killings. I should have followed up on it, but I didn’t. I wasn’t paying attention. A common failing of mine. I’m sorry.”
“Me too. How about a kiss, cutie? Pardon the leaky plumbing.”
“Very nice,” said Karp, after many a minute. “I really missed you, Marlene. I thought you were dead. Shit, I’m going to start crying too.” He blew his nose into a tissue.
“You were here all the time?” she asked. “When I was out?”
“When I could get away. Your folks were here a lot. In fact they just left. And V.T., and Guma, and Raney came by a couple of times.”
“Raney! God, I thought he was dead!”
“No, he’s got some broken bones, but he’s all right besides that. What he told me was, when the big guy knocked him down, he just played dead, like you’re supposed to do when you get attacked by a bear. He got pounded a couple of times but basically he didn’t think Alonso was all that interested in killing him. He just wanted people to leave him alone so he could run errands for his mother.”
“Yeah. His big-boy job. And Balducci?”
“Also survived, but not by much. He took one in the gut. Apparently, he’ll pull through. That guy wasn’t much of a shot, thank God. I talked to Balducci this morning. He says to tell you thanks.”
Marlene was silent for a minute, not wanting to ask but knowing she had to.
“I killed him, didn’t I?”
“Yep.”
Marlene felt something enormous rising out of her vitals, an impossible balloon filled with toxins. She threw back her head and howled, a beast noise, a sound that was pure pain. Karp jumped up on the bed next to her and tried to hold her, but she threw him off, thrashing her arms and legs and her head spastically, like an animal dying on a highway. The nurse stuck her head in the door, alarmed, but Karp waved her away.
After several minutes she collapsed into racking sobs, and then Karp was able to hug her, and say all the comfortless things that were all he had to offer: that it was in self-defense, that he was a murderer, that she saved both his life and her own life and Balducci’s life….
“It doesn’t help,” she replied through sobs. “I know all that. But … what he did, he didn’t really do it. He didn’t understand. He was like a baby. God in heaven, what she did to him, what his life must have been like! And almost his last words were, ‘I want my Mommy.’” She mopped her damp face with a towel.
“If there’s any evil in the world, that’s evil,” she said. “It’s like that line from St. John—the sin against the Holy Ghost, for which there is no forgiveness in this world, or the next. I never really understood what that meant until now.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Marlene. You did what you had to do.”
“Yeah? Maybe Irma felt she had to massacre little children and murder the soul of her own kid. No, you’re right, but, oh hell! Life is such a shit pie!” She sat up on the bed. “Christ, I need a cigarette, and I know they won’t let me smoke in here. So tell me, where is the old bitch now? In jail, I hope.”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead? What happened?”
“She took poison.”
“Couldn’t handle being arrested, or what?”
“We never arrested her.”
“What! Why not?”
Karp sighed. “It’s a long story, Marlene. Are you sure you’re up to it now?”
“Am I ever! You know me. Everything on the surface. I don’t bury things in a dark Jewish soul like some people I could mention. I had my cry. It’ll always hurt someplace, but I know where it is, and why it is, and, fuck it, life goes on. So tell me, what happened?”
“Well, Raney noticed Mrs. Dean at Felix Tighe’s trial, and started wondering about that, and when he found out she was his mother—”
“What! Dean was Tighe’s mother? Alonso’s brother?”
“Half-brother. Yeah, she was his sweet mom—anyway, when Raney found that out, he realized that there was another connection between you and her, the fact I was putting her son on trial. So he went out to see Mary Tighe, Felix’s wife.”
“That shit was married?”
“Yeah. She turned up in the original murder investigation but Freddie didn’t bother talking to her. I didn’t even know she existed until Balducci told me. So Raney runs out and has a really interesting conversation. According to her, for about six months before he did the murder, Tighe kept her chained to the bed in a booby-trapped apartment, and came home every day or so to feed her and potty her and occasionally whip her with a coat hanger.
“She says he’s doing this because she found out his big secret. One day, she overheard Felix making a date with a girl named Denise. So she follows him to the love nest and finds … are you ready for this? … Denise is Mom.”
Marlene gasped in astonishment. “Mrs. Dean was getting it from her own kid?”
“So it seems. Also Felix was so fucked up behind it mentally that he totally denied it. He was in another zone completely. When the wife tried to get him to break it off, he went batshit and creamed her. After that, whenever he was with Mrs. Dean in her Denise mode, he would come home and whale her. Or beat up on other women, she thinks.”
Marlene shook her head in wonder. “My God, what a family!”
“Yeah, to quote Guma, ‘I heard of bad motherfuckers in my day, but I always thought it was a figure of speech.’ Anyway, one day he forgot to chain her up and she escaped. Felix had to look for other prey. That may be why he slammed into Anna Rivas and why he killed the Mullens. Whatever—I got a conviction and I’m going to ask for the max, two consecutive twenty-five to life terms. And I’ll get it, too.”
“Good. So that’s why Raney came after me.”
“Right. He looked up V.T., who, I understand, ran some traces on Dean for you a while back, and V.T. told him about the third building. Since he knew you weren’t in the other two, he figured you were there.”
“And he told you?”
“And he didn’t tell me. I probably wouldn’t have believed him if he had.”
“So how come you showed up with Balducci?”
Karp related the story of Matt Boudreau, Junior Gibbs, and the dolls. “But,” he added, “even that might not have convinced me by itself.”
“Why not?”
“Because you talked to Judge Rice before you left, and he swore that you were traveling to an innocent interview with Mrs. Dean about some janitor, and we thought we knew that you never got to the day-care center.”
“But he knew I was going to the West End Avenue address. He gave me the address … Oh, my God! Not him!”
“Yeah, him. That’s what tipped it for me. Guma came in with some information, which I don’t want to know where he got it, that Rice and that minister, Pinder, were pedophiles. They were in with her deep.”
“I’m nauseous,” said Marlene weakly, covering her face with her hands. “I told him everything. I spilled my guts to that man, and he was so kind and so understanding….”
“Yeah. Not-Nice Rice. Well named as it turns out. Not a judge anymore, needless to relate.”
Suddenly, she straightened up. “Wait a minute! Why didn’t you arrest Dean?”
Karp took a deep breath. “I’m coming to that. The fact was, we didn’t have much of a case.”
“Get outa here! No case, my ass! You had me, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but what did that prove? Alonso was dead. After she recovered, Dean expressed shock and horror that her dear departed son was this kidnapper and trash-bag killer. What a scandal, and so on, but she, of course knew nothing about it.”
“But I saw her. She gave me all this devil crap. She drugged me!”
“Sure, but, once again, try to prove it. It’s basically your word against hers. You have a long history of trying to persecute her, you were out of your mind, you’re a D.A., for chrissake! And we’d be fighting some of the most respected names in the community. It’d look like a witch hunt. So to speak. And who’s going to run the prosecution? Me? With my connection to you? Bloom? Give me a break!”
“But what about all the kids?”
“Yeah, also a great case,” Karp said facetiously. “You know how easy it is to tear apart a kid’s testimony on the stand? Kids under seven? And yeah, even if we’re successful, not only do we put a couple of dozen kids and their parents through incredible torture, but we get her on some pissy little procuring charge. What would she get? Eighteen months? Somebody who has connections with the kind of people she knows? Maybe.”
“So what’d you do?”
“I got Felix to rat her out.”
“He ratted his mother?”
“Of course he ratted his mother. Felix Tighe? The prince?”
“But Butch, you did a deal with that scumbag?”
“Never! He’s going for the max.”
“So how….”
“Freddie Kirsch.”
“But Freddie doesn’t work for us any more,” said Marlene, confused.
“No. But Felix didn’t know that when Freddie went to see him.”
“You set it up? How come Freddie went along with it?”
“Actually, I didn’t exactly set it up. I mean, how could I? Any representation made by Freddie acting as my agent could be construed as a deal.”
“So?”
“It was the Queens burglary. He had to be sentenced for that, in court, in Queens. An opportunity. So I called the firm where Freddie works now and found out when he was going to be in court. Even lawyers like Freddie have to go to court once in a while. And I went up to him and congratulated him on the great job he did on preparing the case on Tighe. That was true at least. And he was knocked over.
“And then he congratulated me on winning the case. We shake, we laugh, we’re buddies. Then I say, ‘Hey, Freddie, Felix wants to see you, how about that?’ ‘What does he want to see me about?’ says Freddie. ‘I don’t know, but do me a favor. Be in Queens County Court on such and such a day and just wave at him. See what he does. It could be important.’
“Now Freddie knows he was a fuck-up here. He’s making a lot of money now, but still … he knows he crapped out in the majors. He could’ve had a big conviction, too, but he didn’t have the balls for it. So here I am, his old Bureau chief asking him a favor, just wave at the guy. Of course he’s going to do it.”
“But wait a minute—how did you know Felix was going to go for it? He didn’t really ask to see Kirsch, did he?”
“No, but I figured when he saw Freddie he’d remember that Freddie almost let him go once. Maybe he would do it again. And it worked. He called Freddie over, they had a nice chat, and Freddie saw him in Riker’s the next day.”
“But didn’t Freddie tell him he wasn’t with the office any more?”
“Of course. He said he was a private citizen. Felix just laughed, and said he knew a lot about a lot of things the D.A. would like to know about, and would Freddie do a deal. Freddie says, hey you want to do your duty and reveal crimes, that’s OK by me, but I can’t deal. Felix laughs. You understand—he’s reading between the lines. He’s clever!
“And then God reached down from heaven and touched Kirsch with inspiration. Freddie looks Tighe in the eye and says, ‘You know, Felix, if it was up to me, you’d be out of here.’ Which was brilliant because, of course, it’s perfectly true. And then Felix gave it to us.”
“What? Come on, I’m dying here!”
“A safe deposit box, full of records of all her clients, names, dates, what they paid for, the kids involved. And pictures. Mrs. Dean was obviously preparing to cover herself if anything happened. She had shots of some fairly prominent citizens in the act with kids. And worse stuff, too. Snuff films of their rituals. She used to gloat over them with Felix, and he used to run them to the bank, which is how he knew about the box.”
“And when you showed her the evidence, she killed herself?”
“I don’t think it was the evidence, or the fear of going to jail. I think it was Felix. Her whole life was based on a fantasy about him being this noble son of the dark forces. When he turned her in, she collapsed. The air just went out of her.”
“You were there?”
“Yeah. We showed her the stuff and told her how we got it. She didn’t say anything. After a while she asked for a glass of water and took out a regular drugstore vial. She took a pill, right there in front of us, as calm as ice, and in thirty seconds she was blue and convulsing.”
Marlene was silent. He went on, “Felix did not reciprocate. He didn’t bat an eye when we told him his mother was dead. Just asked us if the deal was still good. He was very upset when I congratulated him on his free and public-spirited help in solving his mother’s crimes. Then he went crazy.
“By the way, that’s why she grabbed you. Pinder spilled the whole story when we braced him. He was the high priest, or whatever, by the way. She thought all of Felix’s troubles came from someone working a spell on him, or some shit. She picked you as the witch. They were going to take you out to bare earth and run an iron stake through you. It’s traditional. The only thing that saved you was they had to wait for the full moon.”
Marlene shuddered and Karp put a protective arm around her.
“You better rest now. You have to get out of here soon—we got a bunch of conspiracy to commit murder cases to prepare off this, and you’re in charge. Not that we’re going to get much. A schlemiel off the street could plead them on insanity. But it’ll keep them away from kids. For a while.”
Karp spoke briefly about the office, politics, the mysterious collapse of his murder case against Salvatore Bollano. He stopped when he saw that Marlene was barely listening.
Marlene had flopped back on the pillows, suddenly exhausted. The mention of returning to work had brought something urgently to mind. “Uh, Butch—I have some news, too,” she said nervously.
“Oh?”
“Well, you remember how I was always sick the last couple of months, and we thought it was stress and psychosomatic and all that?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, it wasn’t. It was morning sickness. I’m pregnant.”
She watched his face closely. First he started to smile, as if she was cracking a joke. Then, as he observed that she wasn’t joking, a look of pure delighted amazement came over his face, and he looked about ten years old. “But,” he protested, “how come you didn’t know? I mean, periods and all. And you have one of those thingees, don’t you?”
“Well, I’ve tried to shield you from my various female problems, my dear, but in common with many of us skinny hard-driving career girls, I’m about as regular as a rusty alarm clock. And yes I did have one, but it appears that one of your little spermatazoons laid a body check on my thingee and went in to score. It happens.”
A grin spread slowly across Karp’s face until it became an image of complete joy. His gray eyes, which ordinarily had the sheen of sabers, almost twinkled.
“You’re happy, huh?” she asked.
“You could say that. You must be knocked out.”
She nodded. “Funny isn’t it? Out of all this death and misery and murdered children. Race de Cain, ton supplice, Aura-t-il jamais une fin? as Baudelaire asks. And the answer? The envelope please. Better kids. Easy, huh?” She saw he was staring mindlessly at her, the idiot grin still fixed to his face. “What are you thinking about?”
“Oh, this, us, a family. It just occurred to me that that’s all I ever wanted in life. It’s just such a gift….”
“I hope that means you’ll change diapers.”
“Yeah, but I thought I’d mostly do the athletic training. Like, we could start this one at point guard. Then as the other four came along we could work them into the team. How does ‘Magic Karp’ sound? It has a certain ring to it. ‘Larry Bird Karp’?”
“It’s a boy, huh?”
“Of course, it’s a boy. I mean, face facts, Marlene. There’s no money in girls’ basketball.”
He rattled on, and she let him, enjoying his delight, but at a distance. She was relaxing now, tuning in to the secret messages her body was sending and enjoying it. I’m going to plunge into this, she thought. I’m going to treat it as a gift, a surprise from cruel heaven. And I’m going to call her Lucy.