Immoral Certainty (40 page)

They took Balducci’s car, which was conveniently double parked on Leonard Street. On the drive uptown, Balducci put the flasher on the hood, and they screamed up the West Side Highway at eighty, Karp silent and brooding in the back seat, Brenner and Balducci in front, talking cop talk and communicating with back-up forces over the crackling radio.

They turned off the highway at Seventy-ninth, onto Riverside Drive. Balducci took the flasher off the roof. They headed south, crossed Seventy-eighth Street. Suddenly, Balducci slammed on the brakes and the car skidded wildly on the wet street. “Jesus Christ! Did you see that?” Balducci shouted.

Karp had been thrown hard into the back of the front seat. He shook himself and sat up. “What was it?”

“A damn woman with no clothes on. Christ, I almost hit her!”

Karp rubbed the mist off the rear window and peered out. What he saw was impossible, yet achingly familiar. He knew that naked rear as well as he knew anything. “It’s Marlene!” he yelled. “Go back!”

Balducci shifted into reverse for half a block. Karp grabbed a raincoat that lay crumpled on the back seat and leaped from the car while it was still moving. “Marlene!” he shouted, his heart in his throat. “It’s me, Butch!”

Ten feet ahead of him, she shot him a wild look over her shoulder. He saw her face, a white mask of terror, the black hair plastered down with rain and sweat. She stumbled, slowed.

Then he had her, wrapping the raincoat around her, hugging her, kissing her face. She was shaking and sobbing. “The Buh-buh … the Bogeyman….”

“There, there,” said Karp inanely.

Balducci and Brenner were standing by the open doors of the unmarked car looking back at this scene in amazement. They heard heavy steps on the street, slowing to a stop. They looked up the street, where the headlights shone.

“Who the hell is that?” said Brenner.

“That’s him! That’s the guy!” yelled Balducci. Both detectives drew their pistols and moved away from the car.

“Hey, asshole—you!” Balducci shouted. “Get over here and get your hands up!”

Alonso stood stupidly in the headlights for a moment, then darted out of the light, between two parked cars. The detectives took off in pursuit.

Karp led Marlene back to the car. He looked at her closely for the first time and cursed. “God! Baby, what did they do to you?”

“Shit! Don’t ask. I don’t know.” She stiffened suddenly. “Butch! Raney tried to rescue me. He’s hurt! We’ve got to find him.”

“Marlene, the cops’ll do that. I want you in a hospital right now.”

She pulled away from him. Now that she was safe, energy was flooding through her body from some inner source, making her tremble with excitement. “No, it’s a fucking maze in there—all her buildings are connected. They’ll never find him. Come on!”

With that, to his amazement, she skated away from him, putting her arms through the sleeves of the raincoat as she rolled. Something heavy in the raincoat pocket banged against her leg.

She soon caught up with Balducci and Brenner, who were standing in front of the locked door of the day-care center, pounding on it and ringing the bell. Marlene skidded to a halt next to them and staggered. She grabbed Breriner by the sleeve, as much to support herself as to attract his attention. Her brain was working, but her body was fading rapidly. A black ring closed briefly around her vision. She shook her head and said urgently, “Doug. Jim Raney’s in a second floor room at Two fifty-six West End Avenue. He’s hurt and—”

“Marlene, OK—we’ll get the back-up on it, but we got this big guy loose….”

“No! That’s the point—the buildings are connected! One of you has to go around there and block the entrance or he’ll escape.”

Brenner exchanged a quick glance with Balducci, who nodded, and Brenner took off at a run for the car. Karp came thumping up to the doorway, shouting, “What the hell’s going on! Where did Doug go with the car? I got to get her to a hospital….”

At that moment the door opened. Mrs. Dean stood there, in basic black, looking tired, but otherwise perfectly composed. “Yes? What is it?” she asked calmly.

For a moment the three of them stared at her. Then Balducci, who still had his pistol out, waved his shield and said, “Ma‘am, we’re in pursuit of a suspect. We think he might be highly dangerous. Please get out of the way and let us in.”

Mrs. Dean didn’t move. “What suspect?” she said contemptuously. “There’s no one here but me.” She glared and pointed a thin finger at Marlene. She said, “This woman has been persecuting me for months, and if you think—”

Marlene let out a bellow of rage and thrust forward. “You fucking bitch! Cut the shit! Your fucking fat son kidnapped me and you know it!” She leaped forward, thrusting Mrs. Dean aside with a roller-derby-style hip slam and made off at speed down the hallway. After a stunned instant, Karp and Balducci chased after her.

Down the hall and across the playroom again, Marlene retraced her escape, this time energized by fury. Now the door to the play area was open. She could feel the night air blowing in. The weight in the raincoat’s pocket kept banging painfully against her thigh as she skated. She took it out. It was Raney’s Astra Constable. She held it tight in her hand as she rolled through the courtyard.

Entering the house, she could hear Balducci puffing close behind her. Karp must be in the rear. Cold wet weather always made his bad knee painful to walk on, she recalled, thinking also, Poor Karp! I put him through so much trouble. And Raney….

Balducci caught up with her on the back stairs. He grabbed her by the arm. “Marlene! Jesus, wait up! Did you see him?” His eyes were frightened and wide in the dim light.

“No, but if he hasn’t got past Brenner out front, he’s either in the furnace room,”—she pointed toward it—“or upstairs. Raney’s on the second floor unless he moved him.”

The mention of his partner’s name seemed to lend the man determination. He dashed down to the furnace room and came back.

“It’s empty. What’s the layout here?”

“There’s a complete apartment on the first floor. The second floor is gutted. I don’t know what’s above that. There’s a front stairway and a backstairs. That’s these here.” She indicated the stairwell that twisted up into darkness.

Balducci stared grimly up at it. “What the fuck am I doing here?” he said softly, as if to himself. “My daughter’s getting married tomorrow.” There was a sound of sirens in the street. “That’s the back-up,” he said to Marlene. “I’m going up. You wait here, understand!”

Marlene nodded weakly and slid down the wall. She put the little pistol back in the raincoat pocket. When Karp caught up, wincing, she was mechanically untying the roller skates.

Karp knelt beside her. “You nut!” he scolded. “Why the hell did you run off like that!”

Marlene tossed the skates away with a clank and the soft sound of wheels spinning. A driblet of blood ran from the top of each one. Karp looked at her feet in horror. “Good God!”

Marlene wiggled her bloody toes. “Yeah. It looks worse than it feels. I think I can walk all right. Help me up.”

“The hell with that!” exclaimed Karp. “I’m going to carry you.” He picked her up and rose to his feet. Her body felt like a bag of styrofoam.

Then the shots began from the floor above.

There were two, then two more and finally, in a few seconds, a fifth. Karp was too stunned to hold her and by the fourth shot she had wriggled from his grasp and gone up the stairs at a fast hobble. Karp made a clumsy grab to restrain her, slipped on the first step, landed wrong on his bad leg and with a pang like a lance of fire shooting up through his groin and spine, his knee locked up. Biting his lip, he began to crawl up the stairs on his hands and his good knee, the bad leg sticking out behind him like the tail of a petrified lizard. In the dark stairway, he heard another shot, and screamed, “Marlene!”

The first thing Marlene saw when she emerged from the staircase was Balducci lying unconscious on the floor, groaning softly. Then she saw Alonso leaning against the wall. He was wearing a blue flannel bathrobe with red piping, and blue terrycloth slippers. It was obvious that he had been getting ready for bed when Balducci burst in on him, making a desperate escape to nowhere but the land of dreams. In his hand, looking as harmless as a toy gun in that great mass of meat, was Raney’s Browning Hi-Power.

Alonso was leaning against the wall. He was crying, and the front of his robe was darkened and wet. Little drops of red fell on his blue slippers as Marlene watched. He was bleeding.

He saw Marlene. “I’m hurt,” he said. “I want my Mommy.”

“Yes, she’s coming, Alonso,” said Marlene, her voice shaking. “But you have to give me the gun. It’s not yours.”

“Is too mine,” he replied weakly.

“No, it’s a policeman gun. Only policemen can have it. Now, give it here.” Marlene took a step closer to him. There was a clatter and a thump behind her and Karp clambered into the hallway.

Alonso’s face contorted with fear and terror and he raised the pistol toward the ceiling, then snapped it down and aimed it at Karp. He was shooting as little boys shoot with their fingers, as if he were throwing the bullets out by snapping his arm. He jerked on the trigger and the slug tore a chunk of plaster out of the wall two feet from Karp’s head. His hand pointed high for another shot, but before he could bring it down again, Marlene took Raney’s pistol from the raincoat pocket and put a bullet through the center of his upper lip. He fell crashing to the floor and, after the briefest interval, so did she.

Marlene awoke in a hospital bed, crying and struggling against the tapes that held her left arm to the bed frame. There was a tube running into her arm and a large, dark-faced woman in white was holding her shoulders. “Stop that shaking, honey, you’ll pull your IV out,” she said. Marlene tried to say something, but found her throat too parched to do more than croak.

The nurse saw her problem and gave her some water. “Where am I?” Marlene asked. “Was I shot?”

The nurse said, “Roosevelt Hospital, and you’re not shot that I know of. You came in for a checkup and exhaustion and dehydration and being generally beat up. Then you picked up a secondary staph infection and started spiking fevers. You been in and out for about a week. The folks’re gonna be pretty glad to see you. You’re a pretty famous person, you know that?”

Marlene looked around the small room. Every surface was crowded with floral arrangements. She started to remember what she was famous for and shook her head from side to side, as if willing the unwanted memories back into the dark. “I shot somebody,” she said weakly.

“Yeah. You sure did. We got the papers and the TV waiting to talk to you. Your husband’s been keeping them off. He’s been here almost all the time you been under. Would you like to see him now?”

Husband?
thought Marlene.
How long have I been sleeping?
She nodded and the nurse turned to go. “Oh, and you’ll probably be glad to hear: The baby’s fine.”

Marlene cleared her throat. “Umm, what baby would that be?”

The nurse smiled. “Your baby, honey. You’re close to eight weeks gone.” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t mean you didn’t know?”

“I can’t be pregnant,” said Marlene, flushing. “I have a coil in.”

“Not any more you don’t. They did a complete pelvic on you while you were out. It’s routine in any, ah, case where there might have been, ah …”

“Sexual assault?”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, I’ve seen it before. When they tell you those things are ninety-eight percent effective, they mean it. Ninety-eight ain’t a hundred.”

Marlene felt sweat break out over her body, and a feeling of lightness, as if she were about to faint again.

A concerned look appeared on the nurse’s face. “Are you feeling OK, dear?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. A little shaky is all.”

“I can understand that. Should I go get him for you?”

“Yeah, as long as he’s here,” said Marlene.

Karp came in, looking haggard and drawn. He sat down on a straight chair next to the bed and patted her hand tentatively. “Hi. You’re back,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Physically, not bad. But I feel like I’m going to start crying and won’t be able to stop.” Silent tears were already starting, running down her cheeks and soaking the gauze pad over her missing eye. She forced a laugh. “Karp, we have to stop meeting like this.”

“Yeah. In the whole history of the New York D.A.’s office, only two Assistant D.A.’s have ever been kidnapped in the line of duty, and both of them are in this room. We must be doing something wrong.”

“I did everything wrong.”

“No, we all let ourselves get isolated. You were right about the center and the child killings. I should have followed up on it, but I didn’t. I wasn’t paying attention. A common failing of mine. I’m sorry.”

“Me too. How about a kiss, cutie? Pardon the leaky plumbing.”

“Very nice,” said Karp, after many a minute. “I really missed you, Marlene. I thought you were dead. Shit, I’m going to start crying too.” He blew his nose into a tissue.

“You were here all the time?” she asked. “When I was out?”

“When I could get away. Your folks were here a lot. In fact they just left. And V.T., and Guma, and Raney came by a couple of times.”

“Raney! God, I thought he was dead!”

“No, he’s got some broken bones, but he’s all right besides that. What he told me was, when the big guy knocked him down, he just played dead, like you’re supposed to do when you get attacked by a bear. He got pounded a couple of times but basically he didn’t think Alonso was all that interested in killing him. He just wanted people to leave him alone so he could run errands for his mother.”

“Yeah. His big-boy job. And Balducci?”

“Also survived, but not by much. He took one in the gut. Apparently, he’ll pull through. That guy wasn’t much of a shot, thank God. I talked to Balducci this morning. He says to tell you thanks.”

Marlene was silent for a minute, not wanting to ask but knowing she had to.

“I killed him, didn’t I?”

“Yep.”

Marlene felt something enormous rising out of her vitals, an impossible balloon filled with toxins. She threw back her head and howled, a beast noise, a sound that was pure pain. Karp jumped up on the bed next to her and tried to hold her, but she threw him off, thrashing her arms and legs and her head spastically, like an animal dying on a highway. The nurse stuck her head in the door, alarmed, but Karp waved her away.