Immoral Certainty (27 page)

“And what if nothing’s wrong with me—physically?”

Karp sighed and said gravely, “If nothing’s wrong physically, then I think you should, you know … see somebody.”

“Somebody? You mean a shrink? You think I’m crazy?”

“No, I think you’re upset. I think you’re still obsessing about this damn day-care center and the trash-bag killings, for reasons I can’t understand. And it’s sent you off on a toot, and now it’s affecting your body. Witchcraft! For crying out loud, Marlene … !”

“What about that photo? I made that up?”

“A crazy, a peeper. We’ll get shades.” Marlene sagged back against the pillows at the head of the bed. “OK, you got all the answers, as usual. Thank you, Dr. Karp, for the diagnosis. I knew I could count on your warm support….”

“Don’t be like that, babe. I’m really worried about you. I want to help …”

Her one eye, reddened with weeping, regarded him balefully. “You want to help? Then bring me that fucking bowl. I got to puke again.”

CHAPTER
12

“V
.T.,” said Marlene, “did you ever dig up anything on Irma Dean?” She had found Newbury in his office, where she had gone right after finishing her court work for the day. It was the day after the stolen hair, the day after the dripping photograph.

Newbury looked up curiously. “Yes I did, but I thought you weren’t interested any more. Say, Champ, are you OK?”

“Everybody keeps asking me that. No, I’m not. I’m sick, and I’m scared.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you later. What did you find on Dean?”

Newbury went to his file drawer and pulled out a slim folder. He gave it to Marlene, who was curled up in his side chair like a wounded bird. She tried to read through the sheets of notes and printouts in the folder, but found it impossible to concentrate.

“What’s the story here, V.T.? Briefly, I mean,” she asked.

“Deposits in two accounts, monthly. She’s taking in ten to twelve K a month, in cash, besides the monthly check for $12,550 she gets from the St. Michael’s Foundation. The expenses for running the school are paid out of that—see, that’s out of the Citibank account itemized on the next sheet. This other account picks up her monthly check from St. Michael’s she gets as director—for $1518—as well as the cash deposits, always in small amounts. What’s the source, is the question. There’s nothing in the St. Michael’s financial statement that reflects those deposits. I mean, it’s a charity. The parents don’t pay anything, or at least not much.

“She owns the building the school is in outright, and she’s got a mortgage on the adjoining one. The third building, the one on West End Avenue, is income property, but it still doesn’t add up to—”

“Wait a minute, she owns a third building?”

“Yeah, it backs on the day-care center, with the front on West End. Is it important?”

“Could be. My head is screwed on wrong today. Look, V.T., can I take this and study it some?”

“It’s yours. I have a copy. So, tell me, what’s wrong? Early menopause?”

“I only wish. Listen, V.T., if I ask you a question, promise not to laugh, all right?”

“Promise, unless you tell me you’re having a sex change operation.”

“No, seriously. Umm, do you, ah, believe in witchcraft?”

V.T. did not laugh. On the contrary, he seemed to observe Marlene with new interest. After a moment, he said, “That depends on what you mean. I think quite a lot of what we could call witchcraft gets practiced today, and not just in places like Haiti. In New York, too, not to mention Miami and New Orleans. Immigrants from the Caribbean and South America and the Orient bring occult practices from home, for one thing. New York probably has as many practicing witches, brujos, curanderos and so on as it does obstetricians.

“Then there are the mainstream weirdos, usually middle-class kids who got off on acid and never came down—all these little shops selling tarot cards and theosophy books.”

“I don’t mean that,” said Marlene. “I mean summoning the devil, and black masses, and cursing people.”

“Oh,
that,”
said V.T., leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. “Charles Manson and beyond. Yeah, we got that too. People who want to get kicks and don’t care who gets hurt usually can come up with a justifying structure. But what you’re really asking me is, does it work? Does the devil really come? You’re asking is the supernatural real?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Then I’d have to ask you what you mean by ‘real.’ We know that symbols have real power. People die for symbolic reasons all the time. We know that people will give their wills over to other people and do things they would never do otherwise, so that it seems like magic. Hitler, and on a tiny scale, Manson, are examples. We know that psychological states have physical consequences, everything from hives to hysterical paralysis to voodoo death. And we know that people see and hear what they want to or what they think they ought to see and hear. Probably most of what passes for the supernatural comes from that kind of psychological stuff.

“For the rest … as a skeptic who doesn’t understand how a color TV works, I reserve judgment. Somebody once said that magic is science that we haven’t formulated laws for yet…. I’m sorry, I’m not being helpful, am I?” He had observed her sinking lower and lower into herself as he talked.

“No. I wanted you to say that it was all bullshit,” Marlene answered, her voice barely audible. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to anybody, but I think I’m being hexed, and I think it’s working.” Marlene related the story of the big man in black at Vittorio’s, and the connection with the trash-bag killings, and her current malaise. V.T. considered this for a long moment, and then said, “But you said you started to feel bad yesterday morning, before the big guy got the hair.”

“Yeah, but who knows what else they got? Do I track every Kleenex I toss? How do I know how long they’ve been doing this? Why are you shaking your head?”

“Because it won’t wash, Marlene. Maybe you’ve uncovered a band of demon worshippers, and maybe they’re out to get you. I’ll believe that. And you got sick. I believe that. But that doesn’t mean there’s a connection, that the forces of darkness are working you over. I don’t think your head is going to start turning backwards and shit is going to start flying around. And your demon worshippers are going to turn out to be a version of the old scam—some sordid combination of kicks and money. Remember those deposits in Dean’s account?

“Listen to your Uncle V. The first thing you should do is see a doctor. If there’s nothing wrong with you physically, then go see a shrink. Or a priest. But I totally reject the notion that Lucifer is dropping in on Riverside Drive and giving Irma Dean the power to bind and loose.”

“How can you be so sure? I mean I believe you, and all, but …”

V.T. laughed. “Because this is New York, Champ. The devil doesn’t need any help.”

Marlene left without saying anything about what she thought was happening to her. It was really too stupid. She called Raney and gave him a sketch of what V.T. had discovered. He was short with her and seemed uninterested. So, that was that. Grimly, she went back to her chores. It was better than going home.

Freddie Kirsch sighed and threw down his pencil. Perfection was hard. He looked at the typed sheets of the three hours of Q and A he had done on Felix Tighe. He thought it was the best one he had ever done, but still…. The problem was that Tighe was such an incredible liar. All mutts lied, of course, but Tighe was so plausible, so charming. And shameless. When caught in a lie, he just smiled and admitted his lie, “but now he was telling the truth.” The Q and A was a mass of contradictions, backtracks, misdirection, explanations.

The alibi, for example. Felix had told him that he was with a girl at the time of the murder. What girl? He couldn’t remember her name. He had written it down on a matchbook. Balducci had produced the matchbook with “Mimi” on it. Felix had brightened up like a lantern, like Balducci had saved his life.

So they found Mimi. Yes, she had been with him, but not, it turned out, on the night in question. Oh, no, Felix had meant another girl, Josie, Jackie, or something. And then there was the waitress at the place he was at—Larry’s. She would recognize him. Should he take a statement from the waitress? Or forget it? The pages swam and he rubbed his eyes. He looked at his watch. Seven-fifteen. His wife would be pissed off and get on him again about why couldn’t he get a job with decent hours?

Why not indeed? He was working on it. Meanwhile,
People v. Tighe
would have to wait until tomorrow. He stood up and switched off his desk lamp. The funny thing about it, when he thought of Tighe, he couldn’t help sort of liking him. The guy was amusing, anyway, which was more than could be said for the surly toughs that featured in most of his cases.

He put on his jacket and stacked his Q and A transcript neatly. He had a strong case, anyway. He should be able to get a tough plea with no trouble.

Felix Tighe’s new lawyer was a barrel-shaped little man who favored rumpled glen plaid suits and bow ties. He wore his thin dark hair stretched across his scalp like electrical cable, but his eyebrows, ears, and nose were luxuriantly supplied with the growth that had deserted the more conventional locations. His complexion was coarse and sallow. He had a little stump nose like a parakeet’s beak and—his only remarkable feature—large, luminous eyes, which could blaze out or withdraw into dark, hooded sockets according to his purpose. Despite his unprepossessing appearance, he had a reputation as a bon vivant and ladies’ man and as one of the dozen or so best criminal lawyers in Manhattan. His name was Henry Klopper and Felix was terrified of him.

They had met the day after his arrest, when Felix was still recovering from the pounding administered by Patrolman Olson. His head still throbbed and he was dulled out from the analgesics they had given him. He had sought yet more dullness, but his charm had drawn a blank; Bellevue locked-ward nurses are very hard charmees and stingy with dope.

Thus he had been in no cordial mood when the small man strode briskly into the curtained enclosure around his bed, sat down in a straight chair, and pulled a yellow legal pad from a worn briefcase.

“Who the fuck are you?” Felix snarled.

The man took a pair of gold-rimmed glasses from his breast pocket and hooked them on before answering. “I’m Henry Klopper. Your mother has retained me as your attorney.”

“Yeah? Well, when am I getting out of here?”

“Probably tomorrow, if the doctors OK it. They’ll move you to Riker’s Island Jail and then—”

“No, asshole! I mean
out
—like on the street.”

Klopper regarded Felix with an expression that mixed pity and contempt, heavy on the latter. He said quietly, “Mr. Klopper, Felix.”

“What!”

“You call me ‘Mr. Klopper,’ Felix, and in a respectful tone of voice.”

“Fuck you, jerk! I want my mother in here—now!”

Klopper ignored this outburst and continued in the same quiet tone, like a doctor explaining the tumor shadows on the X-ray film. “The reason for that, Felix, is that you are a vicious little shitheel and you are about to go up for at least twenty years. To Attica. Think about that for a minute, Felix. You believe you’re a tough guy, but you’re not, Felix, not compared to the boys up there. Compared to some of those bucks up there, you’re just a momma’s boy, but you haven’t got the sense to lie low and play the game. They will break you like a stick the first week.

“So don’t ask for your mommy, Felix. She can’t help you and she knows it, which is why she hired me, and you can’t help yourself because you’re a complete and utter fuck-up, without the brains God gave an ant. The only person who can help you is me. Now if you want me to help you, you will be respectful, as I said, and speak when spoken to. I am not interested in your plans or opinions. You have only one thing to think about, Felix, and that is to do exactly, precisely what I tell you to do, and nothing else.”

He paused to let what he had said sink in. It hadn’t. Felix did not admit negative comments on his personality or behavior into his consciousness. At that moment he was running through his options. Smashing Klopper’s face in was the preferred one, but he couldn’t do that because his right hand was cuffed to the bed frame. Escaping was always a possibility—get away somewhere, maybe the Caribbean. He could get free on bail and skip …

“What about getting me out on bail?” Felix asked.

Klopper stood up, removed his glasses, put his pad in his briefcase, and locked it. “Felix, you’re thinking,” he said, wagging his finger. “And when you start thinking is when I start leaving. Bail, my Aunt Fanny!”

Felix did not see Klopper again until he was arraigned on the criminal complaint, at which time the lawyer made a perfunctory request for bail, which was perfunctorily denied. Because of his attempt to escape custody, and the nature of his crime, Felix was no longer a good bail risk, despite his job and his ties to the community. After that Klopper had let him stew in Riker’s for the better part of a week. This was a good place to think about spending twenty in Attica and at their next meeting Felix had adjusted his tone to meet Klopper’s expectations. The lawyer was not impressed.

“Very nice, Felix,” he said. “You’re playing the good boy now. ‘Mr. Klopper, this, Mr. Klopper that’—very respectful. I know it’s bullshit, Felix. You still don’t seem to understand: I
know
you. All psychopaths are the same person. Right now you’re thinking, ‘Let this little dork ramble on until I can find some edge I can use to manipulate him, find what phony line I can use to make him happy, so I can game him.’ Right? But it won’t work, Felix. You’re not going to play me—I’m going to play you.”

Felix felt a spasm of fear, akin in an odd way to what he felt when Denise called him, a violation of his hollow and steel-hard center. What Klopper had described was exactly what he had been thinking. He tried to meet Klopper’s eyes and stare him down, but found it impossible. He swallowed in a dry mouth as the lawyer continued.

“OK, Felix, this is your first little doggie trick. You’re going to tell me the truth. I know that’s going to be hard for you, Felix, but I insist. You see, if you don’t tell me the truth, I might make a mistake, and we might lose, and you would go upstate. Not that I give a crap about you, but losing is bad for my business. See? That’s the truth—a little demonstration.