Immoral Certainty (13 page)

“Dana? Hey, it’s quitting time. This is civil service, you know?”

Woodley smiled sheepishly. “Jest finishin’ up some briefs.”

“Yeah? Who’s making you work so hard?” Marlene looked over the partition. On Woodley’s desk was an open ream box of 100 percent rag paper, the kind used for dissertations. A few dozen sheets of neat typing were stacked at its side.

“A little moonlighting, Dana?”

Woodley blushed deeply. “Yeah, I, ah, put up these cards? At all the colleges? This ’un here got to be done Friday. I won’t get in no trouble, will I?”

“Over this? Hell, no! We had a clerk here once ran a real-estate business on office time for twenty years. Retired a millionaire, I heard.” Marlene looked at the other woman closely. Her lip was trembling, and she was obviously close to tears.

“Dana, I meant it. I’m not going to rat you out.”

“No, gosh, it ain’t that! I’m just goin’ crazy with Carol Anne.”

“Carol Anne? But I thought you had that great day care….”

“Yeah, I do, but she’s started actin’ real strange, like, she has these turrible nightmares, like she never done before. And she cries somethin’ fierce when I drop her off in the mornin’. And last night, she was playin’ with her dolls and shouting, and when I went over to see what she was doin’, she had the little Ken and Barbie there with their clothes off, and she was makin’ them do it. And the language, filthy words, comin’ out of that little mouth. It purely broke my heart. And I got to work, to save any money at all, don’t I? So I got to, I got to …”

Here the woman broke down in sobs. Marlene went around the barrier and placed her arm around Woodley’s shoulder. “Dana, it’s OK, kids go through stuff like that,” said Marlene soothingly, thinking at the same time that she actually had no idea whether that was true.

“I don’t believe it,” said Woodley through her sniffling. “Somebody at that center been putting evil in that child’s head.”

“Did you talk to them about it? The center, I mean.”

“Oh, no!” Woodley said, shocked. “I jes couldn’t, Marlene. I’d be so ashamed. And I
cain’t
take her out, not right now when I’m jes startin’ to get a little ahaid.” More crying. Marlene comforted her, and found herself, to her own surprise, volunteering to ask about the day-care center.

Raney was waiting for her outside the D.A.’s office entrance on Leonard Street, at the wheel of a ten-year-old Karmann-Ghia, bottle green except for the left fender, which was primer red. The passenger seat, she learned as she climbed in, was rotted to the springs and covered with a dirty tan chenille bedspread.

“Gosh, Raney,” she said, “I thought you were offering me a ride in a real po-lice car, and now this. Does it go?”

“Better than most cop cars, but of course you don’t get the genuine cigar and puke smell. I’ll make it up to you some day. Where to?”

She gave him her address and they turned north up Centre Street. The early summer night was warm and Raney had the window open and the stereo playing a tape. Chopin flowed out of expensive speakers. Marlene added up the junker car, the expensive stereo, the classical music, the cop driving: It made an intriguing sum. It made her curious.

Raney drove aggressively and fast, squirting the little car in front of cabs and around trucks, barreling through intersections on yellow lights. While he drove, they talked, the inconsequential chat of strangers—shop, personalities, the damn City. Nothing personal.

In a few minutes they were in front of Marlene’s loft building on Crosby Street, a grim looking industrial structure on a narrow road strewn with debris. “You live here?” Raney asked doubtfully.

“Yeah. Why, you think it’s unsuitable for a classy broad like me?”

Raney grinned and shrugged. “Hey, what do I know? I’m just a working stiff from Queens.”

“Me too. I went to St. Anthony’s in Ozone Park.”

“No kidding! I went to Curran. You go straight through? We must know a lot of the same people.”

“No, I got a scholarship to Sacred Heart.”

Raney drew back in mock awe. “Hey, hey! Very fancy. I’m impressed. I never had a Sacred Heart girl in my car before. I guess you don’t kiss on the first date.”

She tried to summon up an appropriate cold look at this remark, but as she got out of the car she felt her mouth twitching into a copy of Raney’s crazy grin. “You think this is a date, Raney,” she said through the window, “you spent too much time with the nuns. Let’s keep it professional, hey?”

As she unlocked her door, she realized that the vibes in that car had owed nothing to the professional. She recalled that nasty old tingle, no mistaking it.
Why am I a sucker for the bad boys?
she asked herself. And speaking of bad boys, she wished Karp would get home.
Is he divorced yet?
she wondered.
Am I going to be a respectable married lady, married to a rising legal bureaucrat? Is that what Butch has turned into?
She shook her head to straighten out her thoughts.
Don’t be crazy, Marlene,
she said to herself, knowing it was advice she rarely took. As she walked up the stairs a tune popped into her head. It was “Bonnie Light Horseman,” an Irish ballad about a girl who loved a dashing cavalry man. Who of course has dashed off to the wars, never to return.
Marlene, control yourself,
she thought. But the tune wouldn’t go away.

“I brought you some food,” said the Bogeyman. He handed the girl a white paper bag. She opened it and started chewing listlessly on a cheeseburger. She was sitting on a bed in a small room on the ground floor of a brownstone. The Bogeyman had one just like it, down the hall. This room had in it a bed, a hooked rug, a small deal table that supported a color TV, and an armchair. The TV was tuned to a cartoon show. There was one door and one window, which was barred with a heavy grille.

The Bogeyman sat in the armchair. “Are you happy here, Brenda?” he asked gently.

“Do you got any ice cream?” she replied.

“Yes, we can get you some ice cream. How do you like your dolly?”

Brenda glanced at the doll, shrugged, then turned back to watch the cartoons. It was a twenty-four inch French porcelain doll, dressed for winter in green velvet, with a muff of real sable.

“Not every little girl has a nice doll like that,” he said. Then, after a pause, “You know I gave a nice doll to another little girl, and I got in trouble.”

She looked up at this. “Who? Emilia?”

“No, not Emilia. Is Emilia your friend?”

“Yes, but I hate her. Can she come to our house and play?”

“No, not today. Anyway, I got in bad trouble with my mother, ’cause this little girl lost my doll. My mother yelled at me. And she spanked me. On my heinie. With a strap.”

The girl’s eyes grew wide. Then she giggled. “Your momma can’t spank you. You a big man.”

“No, no. Your mother can always spank you, if you’re bad. She’s always your mother.”

“My momma mean,” said Brenda. Then, “Do I live here now?”

“Yes.”

“Could I see your momma?”

“I don’t think so,” said the Bogeyman. “Maybe later. After the uncles.”

“What’s uncles?”

“Men who tickle you. After the uncles tickle you, you can see my mother.”

“Is she nice?” asked Brenda, doubtfully.

“Sometimes she’s nice,” said the Bogeyman. “But sometimes she’s a witch.”

Anna Rivas awakened to the sound of music and, rolling over, discovered Felix was gone, as usual. Anna was confused about that part of Felix. On the one hand, she wished that he would stay over on nights when they were together, and had hinted shyly to him that it would make her happy, but he was always gone. No note, no farewell, just gone. On the other hand, it was part of the mysterious romance of the relationship—the dark stranger appearing and leaving unpredictably. Anna had read a lot of romantic novels.

She stretched luxuriously and wriggled, remembering the previous night. She sniffed the pillow where his head had rested and retrieved a faint whiff of the heavy cologne he favored. Her body was still tacky with sex. She sighed and began her day.

As she drank her coffee and watched the morning news on the TV, there was a knock on the door. Anna opened it and Stephanie Mullen came in, dressed in a thin bathrobe under which she was obviously wearing nothing. Anna observed that the bathrobe was none too clean.

“Hiya, cutie,” said Stephanie. “Look, I hate to bother you, but I’m trying to get the boys off to school and I’m out of milk.” She came into the one room that served as the parlor, dining area, and kitchen. “Boyfriend take off?”

“Yeah, he had an early meeting,” said Anna. “I’ll get the milk.”

“Thanks. A meeting, huh? I hope he’s up to it. You guys didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Anna felt a blush rising on her face. Stephanie saw it and laughed. “Hey, I couldn’t help noticing. The damn walls are thin, you know? You gonna see that guy much you ought to get the bed bolted down or something. I could sell tickets.”

“Please, Stephanie, you’re making me embarrassed.”

“Sorry—hey, look, nothing to be ashamed of. The guy’s a stud, so enjoy!”

Anna said nothing, but busied herself with cleaning up her breakfast. She liked Stephanie, ordinarily, and respected her as someone more experienced in the world, but she did not care for the implication that she was having herself serviced by Felix, like some animal. As she handed Stephanie a quart container of milk, she said, “He’s … it’s not just that, you know. He’s just wonderful. Exciting. Romantic. I can’t believe it … me! It’s crazy, but …”

Stephanie looked at her closely. “You really fell for this guy, huh? What’s he do for a living, by the way?”

“Oh, he’s in business. He’s some kind of big international executive.”

“Is he? Well, I’m glad you’re happy, but …”

“But what?” Anna was disturbed by the expression on Stephanie’s face.

“Nothing. I guess I’m naturally suspicious. You know, you work in clubs, in the record business, you get like a sixth sense about dudes. This guy you got … I don’t know. Look, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but there’s like, something
off
about him, dig?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Anna. But, in her heart of hearts, she did.

Felix Tighe was selling a living room set on credit, which was what he did for a living, besides being a burglar. Of course, it was just temporary, until he could put together a really big operation, something that involved flying first class and wearing nice silk suits and having a Mercedes with a car phone. Felix hadn’t figured out what those guys who had those things did, or where they kept the really good-looking girls, the ones from the magazines. You sure didn’t see any of them around his usual haunts.

While he waited for this better life, his current job was at least adequate. The commission was decent, he got the use of a company car, he got to cheat people, which gave him a kick, and it gave him an excuse for wandering through neighborhoods during the day.

The neighborhoods were not that hot—the one he was in now was the part of Queens known as East New York—but Felix had learned that even fairly poor families had some hockable little item: a gold cross, a set of silver spoons, that he could pick up without much effort. Or pills. He could get rid of any number of prescription sleeping pills or diet pills at Larry’s.

Like this woman here, fat as she was, might have an interesting medicine chest. Felix watched with amusement as she pawed through the samples of fabric. Selling didn’t take much: just a lot of soulful staring into their eyes, and appreciating their good taste. A coo, a wink, and there it was, $695.95 for a living room set, Spanish Renaissance in crimson velvet, nothing down and thirty-six months to pay, only 21 percent interest, and a contract that said that if they missed even one month, they had to come up with the whole principal or the stuff would be dragged away. But right now all the bitch was thinking about was the nothing down and
having
the furniture, so that maybe her old man or somebody would look at her the way Felix was looking at her, like she was a person.

The woman sat poised with pen in hand over the contract, stretching her little moment out. She was talking about how her little dog had died.

She was thinking about getting another one. Felix smiled and invented a little dog of his own. He didn’t mind old ladies, up to a point. It was always amazing to him how people could get through fifty, sixty years of life and stay so dumb, so pluckable.

Suddenly, for no reason he could think of, the image of his own mother flashed into his mind. His mother didn’t know what he did for a living. She thought he was a big-time executive, which stopped her from nagging him, but made it difficult to hit her up for money. She had money, that was for sure, and friends with money. Not for the first time, Felix began to think about how he could get his hands on some of it, or maybe use her contacts to set himself up in something with a little more class. But if he did that …

The woman signed the contract and held it out to him, smiling, flapping the pages slightly, like a five-year-old back from the first day of school with a finger painting. Felix took it from her, his smile blank, his eyes elsewhere. The woman felt the first stirrings of disappointment.

“When will they deliver, you think?” she asked brightly, trying to recover the mood.

“Soon, a couple of days. I’ll call you,” he growled, and made his escape. Outside, he paused and shook his head. No, Ma was for emergencies, like this burglary business, or the odd hundred “loan.”

Whether she believed his success story or not, he didn’t know, or care. He only knew that he couldn’t ask her for anything serious or accept anything from her that would give her an edge on him. He stopped, startled. Where did that thought come from? His Ma loved him. He was her favorite boy. But he knew if he ever got dependent on her she would get him involved in that church of hers and he couldn’t hack that. That was it. He turned off those thoughts, which were starting to make him nervous. He was good at that, shutting off thoughts.

When he wanted to remember things, he wrote them down. In the car he noted the sale down in the small black diary he always carried. He used a fine-pointed marker pen and wrote in tiny capitals, like the lettering on engineering drawings. He looked over the display of the week’s appointments. Each completed task had a tiny check next to it. “Date w. Anna” was checked. “Take care of M. /move out.” M. was Mary, his wife. That was checked. He had taken care of her. “Date w. Denise” wasn’t checked. It was written in the slot representing this coming evening.