Corruption of Blood (15 page)

Marlene looked up. “Yeah, I have. So have you, so has everybody on the staff, so has fucking
Marva
, probably, but we don’t all carry on like that. Face it, I’m losing my mind.”

“No you’re not,” said Beckett automatically. Marlene stared at her more closely, searching her face for signs of the sort of patronizing looks people use to calm the loony down before punching 911. But Beckett seemed merely embarrassed. As well she might be, Marlene thought miserably. One of the very rare black female ADAs, and Marlene’s protégée for the past four years, Beckett was a rail-thin, pale tan woman who might have been extruded from Kevlar, and who had never been observed to exhibit any emotion except fury at rapists. Marlene figured there was a personal story behind that, but she had never asked and Luisa had never volunteered. They were close comrades on the job, but not really friends.

Marlene swallowed hard and said with a sigh, “Oh, I’m being a baby. I didn’t mean to lay a trip on you. Just, lately—it’s like someone’s running fingernails over my blackboard all the time. I can’t relax. I’m obsessive. Like this filing system that Marva screwed up. Did I really need it? I don’t know—I sort of got on all right before I set it up. I mean, I was never famous for losing stuff. But lately, I feel everything’s slipping away, that if I don’t keep track of things, minutely, everything will sort of dissolve—
I’ll
dissolve, or crack, or fall into little pieces… .”

Her voice died away. Great! Now Luisa would be
positive
her boss was crazy. Marlene’s face colored with embarrassment. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Beckett, looking at her impassively, as if waiting for this display of weakness to be over so that they could get down to business again. A good prosecutor, Beckett, but not much of a confidante.

Marlene cleared her throat and said, as briskly as she could manage, “So. You came in here for a reason, right?”

The relief was clear on Beckett’s face as she placed a file on the desk between them. “Yeah, rape and assault. I think the vic might need protection.”

Marlene took the file and skimmed it, which included glancing at several color Polaroids of a forlorn-looking woman, young, blond, pretty, with a fat shiner on one eye, a lumpy jaw, and a cut lip. The woman’s name was Maddy Merrill, twenty-three, a dancer and model. According to her statement, the accused, Albert Buonafacci, twenty-four, a tourist from Miami, had picked her up in a bar in the East Forties, bought her a nice dinner, and taken her to some clubs in a white limo. He had seemed like a nice guy. He had driven her back to her place in Chelsea, and she had invited him in for a drink. The nice guy had rounded out a magical Manhattan evening by beating her up and raping her.

“And the perp is where?” Marlene asked.

“The cops picked him up at his hotel. His story is she was a pros who tried to rip him off so he slapped her a couple. I got a hundred K bail, but he paid it without a twitch and walked out.”

“What’s the problem? Did he threaten her?”

“No, but she says he’s connected, or so he told her. She’s nervous about testifying against a Mob guy.”

“But he didn’t actually threaten her.”

“Not that she said, but …” Luisa checked and gave Marlene a penetrating look. “What, you have a problem with this? The guy’s a bastard, a violent son of a bitch. And he’s, um …” She hesitated.

“He’s Italian, right? Hence a mafioso?”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Beckett.

Marlene made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Yeah, you did. It’s okay, we get it all the time, like black men are muggers and black women are welfare sluts. Welcome to the melting pot. Let me say this: I grew up around guys who are now actually with the Mob—not a lot, but some. But for every guy who’s really with, there are a dozen sleazebags that talk about how connected they are. So our boy could be one of these. Or he could be for real. Okay, say he’s for real, there’s no guarantee that he’ll carry out on a threat. A threat is business, and the dons are not hot on mixing business with pleasure, and he’d be a lot more scared of them than he is of us. Meanwhile, there’s not even a solid threat, so …”

“No protection?”

“Not now,” said Marlene; and observing that Beckett’s fine-boned face was solidifying like a pour of epoxy, she added, “Come on, man! We have women being actively stalked and we got no place to put them.”

Luisa stood up and gathered up the case file. “Thanks for the lecture on the Mob,” she said bitterly. “I’ll pass it on to Ms. Merrill. I’m sure it’ll make her feel a lot better.”

“Oh, Luisa, for crying out loud … ,” said Marlene to the back of the departing woman. The door slammed shut.

A good day, thought Marlene: I’ve alienated my secretary and my deputy. What next?

But next, as it turned out, was a nice lift. The DA called her directly, an event about as rare as a thank-you from a New York cabbie:

“Marlene? Sandy Bloom. Are you busy?”

“Umm …”

“If you can spare a moment, I’d like you to drop by. I’m having an interesting meeting and I’d like your views.”

It happened that Marlene could just spare a moment for the district attorney. She stopped by the ladies’ to make sure that her face and outfit bore inspection, and of course, to check that her glassie was straight in its socket. Glass eyes tend to rotate and you have to check them often, unless you want to depend on the horrified looks of your interlocutors to cue you in that something’s wrong. Marlene claimed she was used to the thing and it didn’t bother her. This was a lie: besides the hair that fell artfully over her bad right eye, she was careful in public to obscure that side of her face with various practiced gestures and postures.

There were two other people sitting in the comfortable brown leather chairs in Bloom’s office when Marlene arrived, both of whom were vaguely familiar: a thin, spectacled man and a blocky, fair-haired woman in a denim suit. The DA was behind his desk, leaning backward in his thronelike judge’s chair. He stopped talking, warmly beckoned Marlene over to them, and made the introductions. The man was a prominent criminal justice scholar working on a project for the Vera Institute of Justice. The woman was the president of the New York State chapter of a national women’s organization. Marlene had seen both of them recently on a talk segment of the “Today” show.

“I was just telling Paul and Beth about you, Marlene,” said the DA, gesturing expansively toward her. “This woman has revolutionized the prosecution of sex crimes in Manhattan.”

Marlene bobbed her head at the fatuous remark, and the two celebrities beamed at her.

Paul said, “We were just talking about the possibility of identifying potentially violent sex offenders. We have some data that show violent sex offenders often have a history of misdemeanor arrests—public nuisance, exposure, sexual battery—before they become violent, and we were exploring the possibility of a program to track these people from their first appearance in the criminal courts.”

They all looked at Marlene, the revolutionary, for a brilliant response. Though feeling short on brilliance today, Marlene understood her new role as the DA’s pet smart girl. She paused for a moment to order her thoughts, and then said, “Well, that’s an interesting idea, but just because some violent sex offenders started small and went on to bigger things doesn’t mean all of them, or even the worst of them, did. Ted Bundy was clean as a whistle. So was John Wayne Gacy. The main problem we’ve had is that not potential but
actual
rapists walk on misdemeanor charges because we can’t nail them for a rape, or because we haven’t felt like going to trial. They plead to misdemeanor sexual abuse, or 130.20, sexual misconduct, which is a class A misdemeanor. They might get off with time served or serve at the most sixty days.”

The woman said, “Yes, but if we had some way of tracking them, we could either get them into some kind of enforced treatment program, or, I don’t know, warn people about them.”

Marlene nodded impatiently. “Yes, we could, if the law were changed, but the problem is we have no basis for assuming that these guys are any sicker than the average mugger, or that therapy would do any good. As far as tracking them, yeah …” She paused. An interesting notion had just popped into her head. “If the same people, the same staff of prosecutors, dealt with misdemeanor sex crimes in the criminal courts bureaus as well as the felonies, maybe then we’d get some perspective, maybe then we wouldn’t let these guys walk when they’ve already raped or abused some people. I mean, it wouldn’t be just another case on the calendar: like”—Marlene here imitated the monotone of a court officer calling out cases—“burglary, plead to trespass, bang, next case; dope dealing, plead to possession, bang, next case; rape, plead to sexual abuse two, bang, next case. It’d be more like, well, homicide. Something that stood out.”

The two visitors were interested in this prospect, of course, and they discussed at some length how it might work. During this interchange, Marlene cast an eye on the district attorney, and got a knowing and appreciative look. What the visitors didn’t quite understand was that the proposed unit that they were discussing, that would deal with sex cases in the criminal courts bureau as well as more serious offenses, would naturally be Marlene’s unit, which would require perhaps a tripling of her staff. But the DA understood it very well.

The meeting wound down, with the usual promises to keep in touch. As the two rape fans were leaving, Bloom motioned Marlene to stay behind. He said, “That was very good, Marlene. With you around, I got my ass covered on sex.” He grinned charmingly, showing the neat white perfect teeth of the wealthy, and patted her arm. “And real tricky too,” he continued. “You know, you set me up a little there.”

She felt her face heat. “I didn’t mean—,” she began, but Bloom interrupted with a gesture.

“No, I understand. And I tend to agree with you. But what we’re talking about here is a fairly massive reorganization of staff. The criminal courts bureau chief is going to be involved, and maybe the bench too. I’m going to have to stroke a lot of guys’ balls on this one.”

“You mean you’re interested in doing it? Actually?”

“Well, we need to talk some more,” said Bloom expansively. “But it could be done. It would put you in the big leagues around here, that’s for sure.” He tossed a sincere look into her eyes. “But you’re a big-league player, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, putting some wattage behind her return smile.

“Yes. Well, here’s the thing. I’m tied up for the rest of the afternoon, and then I have a five-thirty with some of the governor’s people, but … how about coming by my place around, say sevenish, with a preliminary plan. I’ll have a light supper prepared and we can talk about this idea of yours. Nail down the bodies and the numbers. Then you can draft something up over the weekend, a proposal, with all the figures estimated, and so on, and we can start passing it around on Monday.”

Yes, things had definitely turned up, Marlene thought with pleasure as she rode down on the elevator. She wouldn’t, of course, tell anyone about this coup until it was a done deal. After that … she basked prospectively in the praise to come. She could get Marva a promotion, as a real bureau secretary, and there’d be something in the pot for Luisa too. People looked up as she strode humming happily down the hall to her office.

She had just settled herself when the phone rang.

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Butch?”

“Yes, your husband. You sound surprised.”

“Um, yeah, you usually call later, at home. Is anything wrong?”

“Not a thing. I’m just about to leave for National. I’ll get the four-thirty shuttle and I should be home by six, six-thirty. I figured we’d have dinner out.”

“Um, dinner out?”

He caught her tone. “Yeah, like real people. You know, nothing fancy—in the neighborhood, the three of us. We can go to Bobo’s, or Villa Cella, they don’t mind kids.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Marlene blurted out. “I have, um, a meeting.”

A pause on the line. “You have a
meeting?
At seven p.m.? What kind of meeting?”

“A meeting, Butch. It’s work. I’m a DA. Not everybody in the business keeps office hours. Remember?”

“Uh-huh, and I remember that one of the nice things about being a bureau chief was that you didn’t have to hustle around after hours. Who’s the meeting with?”

“With the person I’m going to meet,” snapped Marlene. “What, I’m under suspicion, Counselor? I’m getting
grilled,
as we used to say?”

“Hey, I’m sorry I asked,” said Karp quickly. “So, calm down.”

“I’m calm.”

“Calm down, and I’ll see you tonight, okay? I’ll hang out with the kid and I’ll … ah … see you when I see you, all right?”

“Yeah, and I’m sorry I bit at you,” said Marlene. “I’ll try to get away early. No kidding, I really do miss you.”

“Me too,” said Karp, huskily, not quite succeeding in keeping the worry out of his voice.

Marlene hung up the phone feeling vaguely remorseful, but not remorseful enough to call Karp back and tell him the truth. She would present him with the fait accompli: a huge new sex crimes bureau, a tamed and amenable Bloom. Marlene was not, of course, consciously devising a way to get one up on Karp. She would have denied it, if charged, and copped to a lesser: that she was entitled to her own life, her own career, that she was just doing what everyone did to get ahead, that Karp had nothing to do with it. She even believed this at times, and despised the creeping edge of guilt she now felt as she worked at the preliminary plans for her expansion.

A knock at her door, and without a pause a thin man walked into the office. He was wearing a shabby brown jacket over gray slacks and his face was putty-colored and heavily lined, with eyes like damp, dark stones. He was a hard fifty-five years old.

“Hello, Harry,” said Marlene. “I was just going to call you.”

Harry Bello was a cop who worked for Marlene. He had been a star at Brooklyn homicide for nearly twenty years before his descent into drunkenness. Marlene thought he was, when sober, as now, the best detective she had ever met. He was also Lucy Karp’s godfather.