While Marlene considered her next move, whatever it would have been was preempted by the sound of thumping feet and shouts of “Freeze! Freeze!” Marlene looked around Lenny Moon’s bulk to see the face of a terrified young cop. He was pointing his.38, perhaps for the first time in real life, at her in the approved two-handed grip, and she saw with remarkable clarity that it was cocked and that the hands that held it were trembling. She would have been happy to freeze, but the cop changed his tune to “Drop that fucking gun! Now! Now!” She could see his finger tightening on the trigger, the knuckle turning white. Make up your mind, sonny, was her thought, and also, oh fuck, what a stupid exit, shot by an infant cop, at which moment Lenny Moon, straining to look over his shoulder at this new source of potential danger to his charge, relaxed slightly his grip, whereupon Little Sally got an arm free and sucker-punched Marlene in the jaw.
It was a good solid shot: Marlene saw the familiar blazing lights and fell to the floor, where Little Sally connected with a couple of hard kicks to the side of her skull. After that she saw through pain-fed mists an impossible number of dark blue-clad legs towering above black, thick-soled shoes, and felt herself frisked and rolled, and cuffed. She heard shouts and more rude language. She blacked out momentarily, relaxing into the puddle of warm blood that had gushed from her bitten lip and tongue, and the next thing she was aware of was being hustled out by a couple of cops and tossed into the rear of a blue-and-white (of which there seemed to be unreasonably many on the street in front of the shelter), the driver of same complaining that the bitch was going to bleed all over his vehicle, until an authoritative voice told him to shut the fuck up, Chapman, and he got in and drove off. Marlene lay back in the cool, disinfectant-smelling plastic, and gladly abandoned all responsibility for herself and others, which is one of the very few pleasant features of being arrested.
When his wife got into violent-felony trouble in the County of New York, which she did more frequently than your regular Smith College, Yale Law grad, Karp naturally had to recuse himself from any involvement in the procedural aspects of the case. He interpreted this, however, as not forbidding the conveyance to him of information about her fate from various sources, for it is no fault to keep one’s ears open; God, after all, did not provide us with earlids, and the criminal justice system was chock full of people in the know who wanted to do the chief assistant D.A. a favor. Thus he learned in short order what had gone down at the EVWS, that his spouse had shot two Mafia soldiers and had been written up for assault in the first degree, that she had been punched out, that Little Sally’s wife, Vivian Fein Bollano, was a shelter resident, that Little Sally and his three fuglemen were in custody on a variety of serious charges, and that the bunch of them, including Mattie Duran, were in the cells at the Ninth Precinct waiting for transport to central booking.
Replacing the phone after the last of several informative phone calls, Karp swiveled around in his big leather chair and stared out the window. He placed a pencil in his mouth and tapped out the rhythm of “Yellow Rose of Texas” between his upper and lower teeth with plenty of grace notes, as his mind drifted like a hang glider through the twisted canyons of the present situation. After four choruses he re-swiveled, stuck the pencil behind his ear, and picked up the phone.
The words “urgent,” “emergency,” and “Marlene,” got Harry Bello out of the meeting he was in and onto the phone. Karp explained what had happened at the shelter, and Harry listened without asking a lot of dumb questions. Karp and Bello were not friends, but Karp thought the guy was a pro, as he himself was, and they both agreed that Marlene was definitely not a pro in her chosen field of endeavor and was bound to fuck up big-time, as now, so they had a basis.
“I’ll go bail her out,” said Harry. “We’re covered for this kind of thing.”
“Yeah, she’s got community ties and a job. It shouldn’t be through the roof. By the way, Harry-this Bollano woman she was seeing, could you fill me in a little on that?”
“She’s a client’s about all I can tell you, Butch,” said Harry after a judicious pause.
“You think she might know something about the Catalano hit, that’s why she took off from the happy home?”
“I couldn’t say, although, considering the husband, she wouldn’t need that much of an excuse.”
“You think Marlene has any information about that, the Catalano thing?”
“I couldn’t say. Marlene knows all kinds of stuff. As you know.”
Karp laughed. “Okay, Harry, go get her. Tell her there’ll be a lamp in the window.”
Karp hung up, rose, grabbed a pad and the pencil, and walked over to the D.A.’s office, where he consulted the printed daily schedule O’Malley kept available to staff. Keegan was booked solid all through the afternoon. Karp regarded the three suits waiting for the next appointment, leaned down, and said sotto voce to O’Malley, “I need five minutes before these guys go in.”
“It better be something,” said the secretary. “These are the boys from Albany on the budget bill.”
“He’d want to know,” said Karp. “I guarantee it.”
She nodded assent. Karp waited, and in ten minutes the door to the inner office opened and Keegan came out with a monsignor, a priest, and a nun. He shook their hands warmly, his eyes at the same time darting over the Albany group and then alighting on Karp, who discreetly extended five fingers. Keegan passed the religious party through, shook hands all around with Albany, made a graceful excuse, and motioned Karp to follow him in.
“Christ on a crutch!” he exclaimed when Karp had given him a telegraphic version of the recent events in the East Village. “That woman doesn’t have the sense God gave a cat.”
“She has her little ways,” Karp allowed.
“At least she didn’t kill them, that’s something. All right, I’ll get Sullivan to handle it. That all?”
“No. You notice who was conspicuously absent from the business at the shelter?”
Keegan wrinkled his brow. “Joe Pigetti?”
“Uh-huh. Who’s supposed to mind Little Sally so he doesn’t shoot up speed and pull shit like this? He’s not there because the federales picked him up today on the say-so of our Chinese friend. So it appears that in one, as they say, fell swoop, the Bollano main guys have been put out of action. One killed, one arrested for various federal crimes connected with the murder of same, and one led to commit a variety of violent acts-and who tipped him off to where his wife was hiding out, I wonder? If Marlene hadn’t stepped in, we could’ve had a couple killings, maybe more, all on Little Sally.”
“So?”
Here Karp paused, wrinkled his nose, and took a long, noisy breath, as if checking the age of a suspect mackerel.
Keegan nodded a couple of times and said, “You’re saying that someone has a hard-on for the Bollanos and they’re, what? Using us to take them out?”
“If so, it’s a subtle play. At the risk of political incorrectness, you might even say oriental subtlety.”
“Our Chinaman.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Karp. “I’ve already got Fulton on the case, and I’m going to V. T. Newbury from Fraud and put him on it. He’s the best paper guy in the business. This Lie has to be connected to something bigger than a Chinatown gang and a mob shooting.”
“Okay, make it happen and keep me posted. Now, scram! I got to talk about money with these apple knockers.”
“I’m gone. I’m taking off the rest of the day, by the way. Besides Marlene, my daughter got mugged this morning.”
“Jesus! Is she okay?”
“A little shaky, maybe,” said Karp, rising to go. “I’m going to complain to the D.A. about crime in the streets.”