Irresistible Impulse (21 page)

“That kid you didn’t want did a good job,” said Keegan, smiling for the first time.

Karp smiled too. “You want me to take down my pants, give you a better shot? Yeah, he did real good on the motion to suppress evidence response—first-class. I told him he was a credit to his race. When Peoples rolled our way on it, he nearly broke his jaw to keep from grinning, especially since the great white hope here got sunk on
his
motion. On the other hand, the law is a lot more clear on the suppression of evidence side—”

“Oh, wah wah!” said Keegan, chuckling now.

“A
lot
more clear,” said Karp with a straight face, “as well you know; Fourth Amendment is like Macy’s window compared to the Fifth and the Miranda precedents, where we see but through a glass, darkly. That’s why he did it.”

Keegan looked confused. “Who did what?”

“The judge,” said Karp. “Peoples. He had two motions. No way in hell was he going to give both of them to either side, not in
this
case. Guy’s carving a statue—Mr. Fair, in fucking bronze. So he zinged us on the one with the most tortured law, and the one where we had the weakest line. He’s saying, we’re not going to play with confessions here, buddy. I’m giving you your physical evidence, now make a case! He wants this trial.”

“As do we. And will you make the case?”

It was not a casual question, and Karp did not answer lightly. “As to the facts? Absolutely. The guy was there, ID’d going in and going out in lineups by stand-up citizens. We have the wig and the makeup, and both match evidence found at the crime scene. His dyed skin was under her nails, for Christ’s sake! The suitcase fibers match the ones in the vic’s throat. He left prints on the tea things. On and on. And there’s the ashtray. He was there, he killed her. That’s not the problem. The problem is that after Peoples handed down on the suppression-of-evidence motion, Waley got up and changed his plea to NGI.”

Keegan grunted. “This doesn’t make me fall off my chair.”

“No, me either. So it’ll be dueling shrinks.”

“Yes,” said Keegan. A meaningful pause, and then the district attorney said, “You’re still going with the Ancient Mariner.”

“Dr. Perlsteiner. Yes.”

“This is an error, in my opinion. He’s too old to make the right impression.”

Karp shrugged. “What can I do, Jack? I trust the guy. He’s done real good for us in the past. Meanwhile, if you don’t like the way I’m handling the case—”

“Oh, don’t be an ass!” Keegan snapped. “Who the hell else am I going to put in there? Superman’s booked solid and Jesus is dead. No, it’s you, bucko, and as much as I’d like it if you listened to me just once …” He stopped and picked up one of his ever present Bering silvery cigar tubes and twirled it around his fingers. “Let me say this,” he resumed, “just so you understand. I am now bracing myself for calls from uptown, during which I will express to what we used to call the colored community the highest confidence in Mr. Roger Karp and in his ability to win this case. This is not a lie. No, I take it back: it’s only a
little
lie, because I thought and I think that you were a damn fool to take it on. Now I realize it’s not your fault, but Rohbling now has a free pass on the murders of four black women. If he gets a walk to Happy Valley on the fifth …” Here he shook his head and rolled his eyes. “There will be a typhoon of shit flying around, and I will not be able to protect you, not without walking away from this chair myself, which I don’t intend to do. Now, do we understand each other?”

“Yeah, we do. You really think I’m a jerk, don’t you?”

“
I
do. But I also think you’re the best murder prosecutor in the city.”

“Next to you.”

The lights on the D.A.’s phone had begun to flash.

“No,” said Keegan, “because I am the district attorney, and the district fucking attorney, like, as I once supposed, the chief of the Homicide Bureau, does not try gigantic murder cases. Now scram, and God bless you. I got to take these calls.”

Marlene sat in her office wondering why, having devoted her life to helping people much in need of help, she did not have a friend in the world. She had just gotten off the phone with Carrie Lanin’s sister, who was staying with her in the wake of her outing with Pruitt. The sister said that Carrie didn’t want to speak to her, that she was devastated by what had happened. “Why didn’t you protect her?” she had said. Why didn’t
you?
was Marlene’s thought, but she had said nothing, had just taken it and made soothing noises and had hung up the phone, depressed.

Her conversation with Harry had done nothing to improve the mood. Harry had gotten the buzz from the detectives who had caught the Pruitt case: much wrinkling of noses around the precinct. On the other hand, a great story—girl slays killer abductor—and the cops didn’t see much of a percentage in spending a lot of time trying to break Lanin’s story, if breakable, only to find out if she had received any help in whacking a guy who, all agreed, badly wanted whacking.

But Harry was mightily pissed, believing that somehow Marlene had set the whole thing up and, worse, set it up without consulting him. So Harry hated her too.

As did, naturally, La Wooten and her family and associates. Marlene fingered the copy of the
Times
on her desk, where it lay turned to the review of the recent concert. The reviewer had raved over the Shostakovich performance. It had “captured all the despair and agony inherent in the piece.” No kidding, thought Marlene. Wooten and her group had gone back to play after seeing what the Music Lover had done in the dressing room, Wooten red faced and sniffling with her eyes streaming. It was just bad luck that the slimeball had gotten past
both
of them. She never should have left the hallway, never should have shown herself in the lobby, should never have answered her beeper, should have had another man … Meanwhile Marlene had started some of her people on an examination of Wooten’s intimates and of the people known to be in the Julliard buildings at the time. Not much hope there, just checking for criminal records and asking around. Any perverts among you musicians? Still, something could turn up, and then there was the boyfriend. Definitely she wanted to know more about the boyfriend.

Marlene threw the newspaper into the wastebasket and stomped out of her office. She could hear Tranh in the back of the office, rattling pots. Perhaps she should saunter over and sit down for a cup of excellent
filtre
and a discussion of Verlaine?
Non, merci
. For now Tranh was to be avoided, at least until she had arranged a suitably safe place for him in her mind.

She walked out of her cubicle to the open area. Lucy was lying in her accustomed after-school position, belly down on the oriental rug with her books and papers spread around her head end like a messy blossom. She was writing firmly and confidently on a worksheet. Marlene stood for a moment watching her daughter. She was certainly becoming a long drink of water: the pipe-stem legs were in constant motion, crossing and recrossing, flicking upward so that the heels nearly touched the barely swelling butt and then splaying outward in a demonstration of near-gymnastic limberness. Her head was thrust forward close to the paper so that her mass of black curls swung forward, obscuring the worksheet to all but their owner. Not an ergonomic position, but Marlene could remember doing her homework the same way at Lucy’s age. Like her mother, Marlene thought: a precocious child, with a remarkable gift for languages. Unlike her mother, who had been a docile wimp at that age, Lucy was a wiseass who exhibited occasional flashes of adult-like perception and maturity. Eight going on eleven going on thirty.

She wondered if Lucy felt toward her as she had felt toward her own mother in those distant pre-adolescent days, when she had first understood that her own life was to be on a different course from the one her mother had followed. She was not going to marry a local and make a home in the womb of Italianate Queens; nor was she going to get a “good job” as a schoolteacher while awaiting same. She remembered the sense of disappointed expectation in her mother’s eyes as the woman waited in vain for Marlene to “settle down.” She was still waiting, despite the marriage and the three grandchildren. A pang went through her, the mother’s bane. Did Lucy feel the same way about
her?

Something must have been communicated through the ether between them, for Lucy twisted and looked back at Marlene, startled.

“Spying on me again?”

“It’s not spying. I’m your mother. I’m
required
to stare at you—it’s a New York statute.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and said something low and not in English.

“What was that?” asked Marlene.

Lucy giggled. “It means, ‘they will believe it in Hunan.’”

“Yes, dear. Correct me if I’m wrong, but little Chinese girls don’t talk that way to their devoted parents,” said Marlene. She sat down next to Lucy, who closed her notebook, in a gesture of privacy.

“What’re you working on?”

“Math. Factoring.” Casually said.

Marlene put an impressed expression on her face. “My, my! Do you need any help with it?”

“No, it’s easy. Tranh showed me how to do it.”

Ah, Tranh, you indispensable monster!

“You’re still getting on okay with him?”

“Uh-huh. He’s neat. It’s like having our own private restaurant here. He’s learning more English too. He says, ‘I watch much of TV.’” A pause. Lucy looked into her mother’s face; Marlene looked into her husband’s eyes. “Is Tranh, like, in trouble?” the girl asked.

“Not that I know of,” said Marlene carefully. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Uncle Harry hates him. He was saying bad words to himself in his office. About Tranh. He was supposed to watch Miranda’s mom, wasn’t he? I mean, Tranh was.”

A chill went through Marlene. “What gives you that idea, darling?”

“Because I was in Tranh’s room and I saw the whatchamacallit, the folder with the pictures and stuff … ?”

“The case file?”

“Uh-huh. The case file about Ms. Lanin and that guy who was chasing her. He got killed, didn’t he?”

“That’s right, he did.”

Lucy thought for a few seconds and then said, “Probably Tranh did it.”

Marlene swallowed hard “What makes you say that?” she asked, managing with some effort to keep her face placid and her voice steady.

“He had a big spot of blood on his sneaker yesterday, the other pair. I saw it in his closet. But now it’s not there. Also, he has a gun in his bag. A weird semi-auto. With Russian writing on it. It’s not a nine or a forty-five, or—”

Marlene interrupted the gun talk, to which her daughter had become regrettably prone of late. “Yeah, but that’s not what the police think, Luce. They think that Ms. Lanin got the gun away from the man who kidnapped her and shot him with it. He was shot with that gun, the bad guy’s gun. That’s the first thing. Second, it’s not allowed to go poking around in other people’s stuff. So don’t do it anymore, okay? I mean it! And also, what you just said about Tranh? I don’t want you to talk about it to anyone else, ever. Understand?”

Lucy nodded. “Sure, Mom. I would never say it to anyone but you anyway. I’m not a dope!”

“No, you’re certainly not,” said Marlene. “But, Lucy? Don’t even say it to
me
.”

“Okay.” She held a forefinger to her temple. “Bzzzt! It’s erased. Can we go shooting?”

Was this a quid pro quo? Amnesia in exchange for a treat? Marlene hoped not, although being taken to the range to bang away with a .22 was very nearly Lucy’s favorite activity. She decided that math prowess, in any case, deserved a reward. Marlene looked at her watch. “Sure. After your homework’s done,” she said.

The Music Lover carefully pasted the review from the
Times
into his scrapbook and took the opportunity to peruse the volume once again. He was in the room of his little apartment dedicated to Edith Wooten and her music. The walls and the ceiling were papered over with concert posters and programs, from the very first one to the one just passed. A white wooden shelf held more intimate souvenirs: a pair of white panties, a white brassiere, a toothbrush, a set of keys, pink lipstick, a pair of tan leather gloves. Above these, pinned to the wall, was his private photo gallery, both standard publicity shots and his own compositions—Edie on the street, Edie shopping, Edie practicing, and several shot with a telephoto lens, of Edie in her bathrobe, Edie in a half slip, one small breast showing. His favorite
.

He placed the scrapbook back in its special trunk with the three others and lay down on the camp bed that was the room’s only other furniture. The bed was made up with a white duvet covered with a white cotton duvet cover printed with tiny pink roses, the same as the one on Edie Wooten’s bed up on Park Avenue. The pillow was a square one in oyster-colored silk that came from Edie’s bedroom. That had been his biggest coup once; it still smelted of her Jean Naté. Now of course he could get anything he wanted. It was easy since he had learned how to make himself invisible
.

Perhaps too easy? No, the thrill was still there. The Music Lover became excited, thinking about the treasures he would soon possess, thinking about control, about the power he had over her, over the music. He went to the closet and brought out a huge boom box. He really needed a good stereo system, but he moved so much, and so quickly too, that it was impossible. Into the slots fed a tape of Edie playing Schubert’s
Quartet in A Major,
the
Rosamunde.
As the music swelled through the room, he lay back on the bed and fixed his eyes on the ceiling, where he had taped a poster-sized blowup of Edie playing her cello. It was an informal shot, taken during practice at a summer music festival. Edie was wearing a tank top and shorts, her head was back, and her face was full of joy. She was laughing, in fact. Exposing her throat. The Music Lover opened his bathrobe. He pressed the pillow against his cheek. Her naked thighs were pressing against the bare wood. The music swelled. He breathed in her fumes, her music, he stroked himself slowly, trying to make it last until the end of the first movement
.