Immoral Certainty (17 page)

“Hey, lover boy! Hey, Felix! Look alive now, we ain’t got all night here.”

Felix snapped out of his reverie. They were too far apart, and they had those goddamn flashlights right in their hands. He’d never make it, and if he didn’t get all three of them, he’d be in deep shit with the cops here in Manhattan, too, and he couldn’t afford that.

He allowed the cops to accompany him out of the apartment. He heard Anna double-bolt and chain the lock behind them. She’d calm down, the dumb cunt, but there was no denying that his plans were a shitpile right now. As they entered the hall Felix saw that the door of the apartment opposite was partly open. Felix saw Stephanie Mullen’s face for an instant before she slammed the door.

“Is that her?” Felix asked the cops. “Is that who called?”

“Just move along, buddy,” said the older cop wearily.

“I’ll remember that,” said Felix, grinning.

CHAPTER
8

W
hen Karp arrived, at just five minutes to noon, Santa Monica pier was packed with tourists and local office workers in search of a greasy lunch in the open air. The air was thick and hot under a silvery sky, laden with pale vapors from the Pier’s line-up of small eateries, every offering of which was either fried or carbonated. It was Karp’s kind of place.

He bought a chili dog with onions and a soda and went over to the rail that edged the boardwalk. From there he could observe the spot where the man and the boy with the balloon stood in the postcard picture. Karp had to lean over as he ate his chili dog, so that the grease and bits of chili would drip on the ground and not on his shirt. When he straightened up, Little Noodles Impellatti was standing next to him.

Karp nodded and finished his chili dog. Noodles waited politely, saying nothing. He was dressed in a white silk jacket and a black shirt open at the neck. He had a good tan and wore large sunglasses. He looked like what he was, a gangster on the lam.

“So,” said Karp at last, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Any trouble?”

“I’m here,” said Noodles. “What’s the score?”

“The bad guys are ahead,” answered Karp, and he briefly went over what he had learned from Guma.

Noodles took this in without emotion. He leaned on the rail and looked out to sea. “Tona, huh? I did some work for him once. He’s good.” He looked at Karp, waiting. Karp realized, with something of a shock, that Noodles had placed himself in Karp’s hands, as agreed, and considered that this was the end of his contribution to their escape. Karp had assumed that Noodles would be a treasure-trove of clever Mafia-style evasion plans. But having cut himself off from everything that had directed his life, Impellatti was now as passive as a stone at the bottom of a hill. That’s why they call them button men, Karp thought.

“We have to hide for a while,” Karp said lamely.

“Good idea,” Noodles replied. Karp couldn’t tell whether the other man was being sarcastic. Probably not, he decided.

“Um, have you got a car?” Karp asked.

At this, Noodles lowered his sunglasses and looked at Karp as if Karp had asked whether he had a nose. “Yeah. I got a car. Where’re we going?”

An hour later they were headed north on the San Diego Freeway. Impellatti’s scant possessions were in the trunk already, and it had taken only moments to check Karp out of his motel. He still hadn’t told Noodles where they were going, and Noodles hadn’t asked again. He seemed content enough to be behind the wheel of a fast car, attentive to orders.

There was almost no conversation during the drive. The two men had little enough in common besides business, and Karp was not inclined to bring up business. When he interrogated Impellatti it would be in a formal setting, with a stenographer. Either that or some thug would kill them before they got back to New York, was Karp’s thinking, and the thought made for a sort of timeless quality in the journey, a version of what the sages called Living in the Now.

Karp watched the brown California hills flash by, and the pastel cities named for obscure saints. The car was large, cool, and comfortable, and Noodles was one of the best drivers in the country. The afternoon wore on, the shadows lengthened on the hills. Karp dozed against the glass of his window.

He was brought awake by a change in the motion of the car.

“Where are we? Something wrong?” he asked thickly, rubbing the sleep away.

“No. You said the San Jose exit. This is it.”

“Yeah, OK. Head for Los Gatos on 17. Then take 546 into Ladero. I’ll give you directions from there.”

They continued through progressively smaller and dustier towns, the road becoming narrower and rougher, until they were on a mere farm track, high in the Santa Cruz mountains.

“Hold it. This is it,” said Karp, consulting a crumpled slip of paper. A white sign nailed to a pine tree read “Alice Farm.”

“We’re going here?” asked Noodles.

“Yeah. My wife lives here. I mean my ex-, I mean my soon to be ex-wife. I’m in the middle of a divorce.” Why did I tell him that, Karp wondered a second later. It’s none of his business.

“I don’t believe in divorce,” said Noodles. “You could always work something out.”

Great,
thought Karp,
I need a morality lecture from a Mafia wise guy.
He said, “You just believe in murder, right, Noodles?”

Noodles looked offended. “That’s different. It’s business. I was talking personal.”

They continued up the farm road in silence. A tractor trundled around a bend and Noodles pulled the car over to let it pass. It was driven by a large tanned woman wearing a red bandanna on her head, but otherwise naked from the waist up. Noodles stared after her until she vanished in her dust cloud. “What is this, some kind of nudist colony?”

“Why? Don’t you believe in nudism either?”

“I could give a flying fuck. But if they’re flakes … you know? Flakes make me nervous.”

“No flakes, Noodles. These are all solid citizens. OK, here we are.”

They had driven into a dirt yard outside a large gray farmhouse. Children and chickens scratched happily in the dirt. There was the smell of smoke from a wood fire. Karp got out of the car and stretched. The children stopped playing and stared at him. There were six women sitting on the wide porch that ran along the front of the house. They were shelling peas, knitting, lounging, chatting. They also stopped when they saw him, as if he were someone come with a telegram to announce the death of a loved one. One of the women pulled a T-shirt over her bare upper body. Another of the women stood up abruptly, and Karp recognized his wife.

She looked good, he thought. She was wearing tan shorts and a white sleeveless shirt that showed off her taut, tanned limbs. Her hair was sunbleached and shorter than it had been and her face was clear of the nervousness he remembered from their New York apartment days.

They greeted each other warily, while the other women looked on with expressions ranging from hostile to mocking. Susan herself seemed embarrassed. She led him into a small room in the back of the house and served him some iced tea. They sat in chairs at a dusty white enamel table and talked awkwardly about their separate lives. She was at peace. Karp was happy for her. Karp’s life was going fine. She was happy for him. Karp didn’t mention Marlene, nor did Susan mention her relationship with her lover.

An awkward silence then. Karp looked at her and tried to see her as a no-sexual object, or at least one that was not sexually available to him. He couldn’t quite do it. Despite himself he was making comparisons between Susan and Marlene. Susan was basically more good-natured and forgiving than Marlene. There was, or had been, a sweetness, a comfortable yielding quality of body and spirit about Susan that Marlene definitely did not have, that he desired. It meant peace to him with a woman. But then why did he care so much for Marlene? He blanked this out of his mind, but not before Susan had responded to his stare.

“What are you looking at?” asked Susan.

“What?”

“You were staring at me.”

“Oh, sorry. Just musing on times gone by. If I had done this, if you had done—et cetera. Like that.”

She smiled and said, “Hey, it wasn’t like that. It was just something that happened. It’s nothing to be sorry about either way.”

“So, we could still be friends, and like that.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’d like that.” She really was good-natured.

“Great,” he said. “Let’s get divorced then.”

He brought out the no-fault papers and explained them. He handed her a pen. She smiled thinly and said, “I guess I should use Susan Karp.”

“It’s your name.”

“Funny, I haven’t used it for years. We call ourselves with our mother’s first names or we make one up. I’m Susan Belles.”

“That should make your mom happy. She thinks all this is my fault.”

“All this? Oh, my being gay. Yeah, Mother did always think that anything that happened could be traced to some man.” She signed the documents. “There. The end of Susan Karp. Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, free at last.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“Oh, not really. I don’t feel anything much. Like cashing a check: You’re glad there’s money in the bank, but otherwise no big thing.”

Karp put the documents in his jacket pocket. “I don’t know. I feel kind of sad. We had some good times. I
thought
we had some good times.”

She reached over and patted his hand. “We did, Butch, we were fine. It’s just …”

“Yeah, I know.” He paused, to change the subject. “Seeing as how we’re friends, I have a favor to ask.”

“What is it?”

“Well … it’s a little complex, but I’m in some trouble right now.”

“You? In trouble? What did you get, a parking ticket?”

“No. It’s that guy in the car. His name’s Frank Impellatti. He’s a witness to a murder in New York. Guys are looking for him, for us, and I need a place we can lie low for a little while until I can figure a way to get him back. I thought if it wouldn’t be too much trouble …”

He stopped, because Susan was staring at him with an expression of mingled horror and disgust.

“What’s wrong, Susan?” he said.

“You have to be out of your mind,” she said in a tight thin voice, jumping to her feet and backing away. “I can’t believe this! Too much trouble! My God! You brought a fucking Mafioso to my home? You brought your filth to my home? With children here? You bastard!”

Karp stood up, too. “Susan, what are you talking about! Calm down, for chrissakes! You’re not in danger. Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody’s gonna know.”

“Yeah? So twenty-one women and ten children are going to enter a little conspiracy to protect your witness? Look over their shoulders all the time and teach the kids to lie in school, so you can make your case? So you can win your little macho game? Let’s be friends, you said? You don’t know the meaning of the word. Maybe with your asshole buddies in the courthouse. Not with a woman. You manipulative son of a bitch!”

“Susan, there’s no reason to pick a goddamn fight …” Karp shouted back. He recalled that it had been one of his most familiar lines during his marriage.

“Get out of here!” she screamed. Her face was reddening and splashed with tears. “Get out of here now, and get out of my life, and take your goddamn mobster with you!”

She ran out of the room. Karp considered following her and trying to make her see reason, but after a moment’s thought he realized it would do no good. It had seemed like such a great idea, too. He wondered what he could have done differently. It was like his marriage, that little conversation, a ten-second digest of five years of misunderstanding, and at the end, the familiar feelings of puzzlement and vague shame. He
wasn’t
a manipulative son-of-a-bitch. Marlene would have understood. He suddenly missed her with an intensity that churned his stomach.

“So? What’s happening?” asked Impellatti when Karp returned to the car. “It’s fuckin’ boiling out here. Where are we staying?”

“We’re not. She wants us out of here.”

“What, your wife?”

“My ex-wife. She thinks we’d be a bad influence on the kids.”

“Fuck her! Whyn’t you rap her in the chops a couple?”

“Because I’m not a chop-rapper, first of all, and I don’t think it would be a good idea, seeing as how we’re trying to avoid notice and trouble with the law.”

“She’d turn you in?”

“In a second.”

“Shit! See, that’s what I told you, why I don’t believe in divorce.”

“You made your point, Noodles. The question is, where do we go from here? You like getting a plane out of San Jose?”

“Forget it! No fuckin’ planes. Not with Tona out looking. We got to drive it.”

“Drive? Where to, drive?”

“The City. Two and a half days, tops.” He started the car and reversed violently, then headed down the farm road, the Buick bouncing like a yo-yo and throwing a high wake of gravel.

“You mean drive straight through. The two of us?”

“No, just me. I don’t passenger.”

“Noodles, that’s crazy. You can’t drive for sixty hours straight.”

“Yeah, I can,” said Little Noodles confidently. “I done it before. It ain’t no problem. I got whites.”

Anna did not go back to bed after the cops took Felix away. She sat at the kitchen table and smoked cigarettes and tried to remember who she was. It was like waking up from a dream.

She looked around the ruined kitchen and thought briefly about picking up the smashed china and fixing the broken shelves. There seemed no point. Instead, she got some white wine from the refrigerator and drank a glass. She poured another, but refrained from drinking it down. She didn’t want to get drunk. She
had
been drunk, since the night four months and seven days ago when Felix Tighe had sat down at the bar stool next to hers at Kevin O‘Rourke’s on Second Avenue, had looked into her eyes and said, “I’ve been waiting for you.” It was like the songs, like TV.

But as she thought of those early days, she began (and this both horrified and beguiled her) to experience the draining of romance. Was it really over? Would she never have a man do those crazy things to her again? Maybe
she
was really to blame. Felix was under a lot of stress. If only she had … and so on, until dawn broke into the kitchen and the sound of the door buzzer snatched her out of her reveries.