Resolved (28 page)

“I mean that Keegan will have the gift of it. Within limits, he can pick someone to fill out the last year of his term.”

“No, it's a gubernatorial appointment and the gov is a Republican.”

“True, but Keegan could preempt that by appointing a profoundly nonpolitical acting DA during the time of his confirmation hearings, at which point the gov would not like to look like he was politicizing the office by trying to push some Republican back in there for the final year of the term. The
Times
wouldn't like that. And that leaves…” He paused and looked meaningfully at Karp.

Karp pointed a finger at his own chest. “What? Me? You have to be joking.”

“It's you, boss.”

“What about ‘Ku Klux Karp'?”

Murrow waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, but that's going to disappear when you win this trial, and put those two white cops away for killing a black man. You see all those pickets out in front of the courthouse? They're going to be your best friends if this goes down right. That's why Keegan hasn't said anything, and why he wanted you to take this trial. He's waiting to see how it goes.”

Karp suddenly realized why Keegan had made no objection to his taking on
Gerber & Nixon
. “And if I lose?”

“Then the governor will be able to present you to the great and the good as Jack's first choice, an excellent lawyer, blah blah, but he has this unfortunate reputation, doesn't really seem to understand black lives are just as valuable, blah blah. The great and the good will know that he tried to be nonpolitical, and then he can go ahead and appoint someone his party owes a favor to.”

“You have this all figured out, huh?”

“It's not particle physics,” said Murrow, “and I happen to be interested. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Going to win?”

“I might. But I'd have more of a chance if you left me alone so I could find out how I know these fuckers are lying.”

 

Lucy parked the boys in the loft and made them swear that they would not budge from the place until an adult returned.

“Are you gonna tell?” asked G.C.

“I will definitely tell if you're not here when I get back.”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Out,” she said, and left. As she headed uptown on the baking train, she writhed in a moral quandary more uncomfortable than the damp heat. Clearly the thing to do was tell the parents, call the cops, kidnapping was serious, not something to fool around with. On the other hand, G.C. was right. Confronted by an actual threat rather than her own guilt-driven paranoia, Marlene would instantly snatch both of them back to the far reaches of Long Island, would register them in school out there, and keep them in paranoid security behind razor wire, protected by a herd of mastiffs, and that would be the effective end of the Karp family. Better to identify and neutralize the threat first. It did not occur to her that she was doing here what her mother had taught her, nor did she doubt for a moment that she was equal to a gang of kidnapping thugs of whatever size and resources. She had resources of her own; another thing learned at her mother's knee.

An hour later, Lucy was giving out candy bars and cigarettes in a dim underground vault lit by candles stuck in bottles and jars. It was a disused railway tunnel, bored into the rock of the Hudson shore to service a Lackawanna Railroad pier that was never built. It was difficult to access, dry, cool, and extensive, and had both official and unofficial connections to the remainder of New York's many-thousand miles of tunnels. For these reasons, it was popular with that segment of the homeless who wanted even less to do with the authorities than the more sociably inclined destitute. New York City has a substantial population living almost entirely underground—no one knows how many, but estimates run to several thousands. The “regular” homeless called them the mole people.

Lucy was now walking through their largest settlement. As in the city's sunnier precincts, a certain proportion of the population was evil, and several of these regarded Lucy with bad intent as she moved past, but they knew that if they tried anything with her they would immediately be torn into tiny little pieces, in as painful a manner as possible. Lucy had been coming here since age fourteen dispensing small gifts and her particular brand of hard-headed goodness. For her the place was as safe as church.

Deeper into the tunnel, the railway engineers had carved bays out of the living rock and lined them with brickwork, intending them to hold the sidings of the notional railway. These were now the sites of separate communities, and the most populous of them, which Lucy now entered, was known as Spare Parts. The ruler of this troll kingdom was also called Spare Parts for the place was named for him. She found him on his throne, a sprung couch set up on railway ties, lit from below by a Coleman lantern's hard glare. The effect was stunning, like a pagan idol on an altar, although this god could and did come down from on high to reward and punish. Spare Parts the man had a cleft palate and a harelip, one brown eye and one pale silver eye, and only one ear (the other being a scrap of greasy cartilage), all stuck on a head the size and approximate shape of a half-deflated basketball. Other than that, Spare Parts was only slightly smaller than Shaq O'Neill. Lucy climbed up and sat beside him, an unusual privilege.

“Hello, Jacob,” she said. “I brought you a Dove Bar. I hope it's not too melted.” She removed it from its insulated bag and handed it over. The big man took it in his filthy paw and, raising it high, let the whole thing slide into his maw. Lucy politely looked away and tried not to pay attention to the wet noises. Spare Parts did not like people watching him eat.

“Ank 'ou, 'ucy,” said Spare Parts, when the sounds had ceased. “I 'ove 'ove 'ars.”

“You're very welcome, Jacob,” she replied. They conversed briefly about the underground world, mainly about deaths and sicknesses and recoveries, together with tips and hints, about who could use what kind of help, and how to manage things so that the needy would accept what they needed. It was strangely restful, like something from a fairy story. As usual, Lucy found that she could understand him fairly well, her skillful brain supplying the dentals and palatals that the man could not pronounce. She imagined that he didn't speak to anyone as much as he spoke to her. After an interval of silence, she said, “Have you seen Grale?”

“E's a'oun'.”

“Is he still, you know, down with the rats?”

“Not nany 'ats 'eft now.”

Not many rats left. David Grale was a religious maniac and a serial killer. The people he killed were feral humans who lived in an ancient and unrecorded tunnel. It was rumored in the upper tunnels that they lived on human flesh. For sure they lived on rats. Grale considered it his ministry to cut their throats.

“If you see him, tell him I'd like to talk with him again, okay?”

“Ih I shee 'im I'll 'ell 'im,” said Spare Parts, after a pause. Spare Parts didn't care for David Grale. Compared to David Grale, Spare Parts was the borough president of Manhattan.

 

“What's wrong with the boys?” Karp asked. Marlene was driving the truck east on the Belt Parkway, heading for Raney's house in Woodmere. The radio was tuned to an oldies station, the Isley Brothers telling the listener to keep holding on, keep holding on…

“I don't know,” she answered. “They do seem a little subdued.”

“Subdued? The pair of them look like the after picture in a Prozac ad. Usually they're up to meet new people they can embarrass us in front of. Whatever it is, Lucy's in on it. She barely met my eye when I came in,” said Karp.

“What can I say, our children are master criminals. I belief in Old Vienna, ve haf called zis
eine
ab-reaktion. In order to define zemselfs ze
kinder
must go srough a period in vich zey reject zhe parental walues.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Although, given the differences between your
walues
and mine, it's surprising that they knew what to react against. Or that they didn't become saints.”

“Actually, if you noticed, they did become saints, at least Lucy and G.C. did,” said Marlene.

“Yes,” said Karp. “Are you going to claim credit for the assist on that one?”

“No comment. And how was your day, dearest?”

“Not bad. Murrow thinks I'm going to be the next DA.” he explained the theory about Keegan, the federal judgeship, politics, and the trial. Marlene nodded, as if he were telling her something she already knew.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” she said. “It was just a matter of time before Jack got his slot. He's been wangling for it for years; it's practically a courthouse joke. And who else are they going to get besides you? Congratulations, sweetie.”

“Not so fast. There are a lot of qualified people,” said Karp, to which she snorted, “Oh, please!” and then, musingly, “I wonder if it'll change you. Nothing else has.”

“Well, I haven't got it yet,” he said, choosing to ignore the last remark. “According to Murrow, I have to win this trial to be eligible.”

“I guess,” said Marlene, as if this was obvious to small children. “How did it go today?”

He shrugged and rubbed his face. The feeling of being on the edge of some trial-winning revelation had not dissipated after leaving the courtroom. It still tugged at his mind, making him uneasy with domestic relations. Even the song on the radio seemed to be a part of the puzzle—keep holding on,
to what?
Soon it would be the birds in the trees and the drops of water on the windows that held high significance, and the slope down to madness.

“Hello? Ground control to Major Tom…”

Karp shook his head, as if to dislodge an insect. “What? Sorry, I was thinking.” The radio turned to a discussion of California dreaming.

“About what?”

“I don't know. The trial. Anyway, Roland had Gerber up there all day. I could see that it was killing him to do it, but they must have insisted.”

“How was he?”

“He looked pretty good. Roland spent most of his time getting out their story about the victim trying to sell them heroin, but….” He pointed. “You need to get off on Twenty-seven east, on your right here.”

“I see it,” she said. “Well, they can't be too morose. Giancarlo is playing his accordion back there.”

Karp twisted around and peered through the rear window of the pickup, but the matching window of the camper back was dirty and he could only make out shadows. He could hear the tweedle of the accordion, though. It sounded fairly morose to him, but he didn't know anything about music.

The Raney home in Woodmere was a postwar brick bungalow, immaculately kept, on a pleasant street of similar ones. Marlene pulled the truck into the driveway, and they all got out, trooped around to the front, and Zak pushed the bell. The door flung open.

“Now here you are and very welcome all of yez, but Raney's not home and there's no dinner at all.”

“You're Irish!” said Giancarlo.

This was even more obvious to those of the Karps with intact vision. Nora Raney had bright red hair done up in a once neat but now dissolving bun, pale freckled skin, grape green eyes, a snub nose, and not much in the lip department. She stood in the doorway, dressed in pale blue surgical scrubs, with a whining red-haired toddler, a miniature of the mom, on her hip.

“That I am,” she said with a laugh, “and don't I rue the day I came to America and married a policeman. Well, don't stand there like statues, come in!”

They entered the house. The living room, Marlene saw, was furnished with a combination of Mom and Dada stuff, the kind of solid dark pieces that Irish immigrants bought in the 1920s when the man of the house got on the civil service, and lighter, brighter young-marrieds gear from Ikea and the Door Store. It was the same sort of furniture (substituting Italian for Irish) that Marlene had supplied her own home with twenty years ago, and she felt a pang of…something. Regret? Sorrow? Fear? Yeah, fear was a lot of it, always bubbling up, tainting all the homely sessions of her life. Smile, Marlene, she told herself, this is supposed to be fun. She caught Nora looking at her. Could she smell it, too? No, that was just the young bride checking out the old flame, who wasn't even really an old flame anyway. Good for Raney, though, and the kid was gorgeous.

They were in the kitchen, where a pot was steaming on the stove and piles of potatoes sat in a plastic basket on the table.

“There's not a bite in the house except those spuds…”

“Gosh, you really
are
Irish,” said Giancarlo, and got the back of his mother's hand lightly across the top of his head. But Nora laughed, and said, “Yes, and isn't it a bloody parody. And I was going to make a potato salad to go with the barbecue that Raney's supposedly bringing home, but he's not home. He came down from that prison he was visiting and checked in at headquarters, and there he's sat with no word since he called at half three this afternoon. And I would have been here to go to the shops, y'see, but Moira Flannery asked me to take a shift for her, and I couldn't say no, could I, because hasn't she covered for me a thousand times when Meghan was a babe? Well, and so here we are, I swear it's just like the Great Famine, but at least there's beer.”