“I am not doing any such thing,” responded Marlene in a voice unnaturally calm. While Karp gaped and glared and shot flames from his nostrils, she continued, “You object to what I’m doing. It upsets you. A couple of years ago, you dragged this family off to that hellhole in D.C., taking Lucy away from her friends and her relatives without a moment’s thought …”
“Wait a min-”
“… without, as I say, a moment’s thought, and as I recall I did not scream or yell or insult your integrity or your love for your daughter, or me …”
“I didn’t-”
“… whereas I have given this a great deal of thought. Are you going to sit down and listen?”
Karp picked up his chair and sat down in it, after the manner of men who are tied into similar chairs with paper targets on their breasts.
“As I say,” Marlene resumed, “a great deal of thought. I didn’t want to get a gun at all. Harry thought I needed one-let me finish this, please! — because he was concerned for my safety. I decided to get one because I was concerned for his safety. We’re going to get in the way of domestic violence from time to time, and I intend to back him up just like he backs me up, and I need a gun for that. As far as safety goes around here, I have a gun safe, in which the guns will sit, locked and unloaded when they’re not attached to my body. I also intend to show them to Lucy and let her handle them so she knows what they are and what they can do.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms.
“Is that it? You’re finished?”
“For the nonce,” she replied.
He sighed and rubbed his face. It had taken Karp a long time to learn that in domestic disagreements, the point was not, as it was in the courtroom, to win, but rather the restoration of felicity. This apparently required a different set of skills from those he had honed to a diamond edge, and it was clear to him that he had still not got it right. “I said/she said, “I was sorry a million times about Washington, and you keep bringing it up whenever I give you shit about something you want to do. It’s not fair.”
Marlene thought about that for a little. “You’re right,” she said, “it’s not. I’ll try to lay off of that.”
“Okay, and I’m sorry I said that about Lucy and the gun. It was a cheap shot.” He sighed again. “But.”
“Yes?” she said, a long, drawn-out yes.
“I don’t know what ‘but.’ Sometimes I think I’m inside this, ah, plastic bubble, and if I can just push through, everything will be clear and I’ll just accept everything. I mean, I’ll stop worrying about you and the kid the way I do. I mean, if you’re here, I’ll love you, and if you’re gone, you’re gone and I’ll be sad. But no churning stomach all the time. And sometimes I think, I’ve done it, and I’m through, but then something like this goes down and I realize there’s another bubble outside the one I just went through. And I think things like, she’s acting crazy because she wants me to stop her. That’s not true, is it?”
“No. Of course, if I was really crazy, I wouldn’t tell you the truth, would I? Or would I? Tell me, do you trust me?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said immediately. “With my life. I trust your integrity. I trust your decency. However, it’s my learned opinion as a professional criminal justice guy of long standing, and some reputation, that you’re into something that’s way over your fucking head. That’s not a trust thing, that’s a judgment thing. I could be wrong.”
“Thank you for that opinion. I will consider it in my chambers.”
“You do that,” said Karp.
Both of them had on their faces the kind of shy smiles they wore when they realized that they had yet again escaped the shoals and riptides and were back on the fair, broad seaways of marriage.
“So,” said Karp brightly, “what kind of gun did you get?”
“A Colt Mustang.380. The guy threw in a cheap revolver too.”
“Well, mazeltov,” said Karp with a bland smile. “Use them in good health.” He stood up. “I think I’ll help Lucy with her bath.”
In all, a good day, was Marlene’s thought when, toward midnight, she floated into the antechamber of sleep. Karp had given her one of those violent fucks she dearly loved, and which she thought one of the ways in which a good marriage discharges otherwise unappeasable aggression and discontent. She was sore and lightly bruised, and Karp, now breathing huskily beside her, had numerous flaming bite marks on him, at least one of which, she hoped, would show above his collar the next morning.
At this point the phone, her closely guarded private number, rang next to her ear. She snatched it up on the first ring. There was a woman on the line.
“Is this Marlene Ciampi?”
“Yes?”
“This is Harlem Hospital Center Admitting. Do you know a person named”-she pronounced it wrong, carefully-“Ariade Stupenagel?”
“Yes, Ariadne. Has something happened to her?”
“Yes, she’s in the E.R. now. She doesn’t have health insurance, and when we asked her for a responsible party, she gave us a card with your name on it.”
“What happened to her?”
“Urn, ma’am, are you the responsible party? Otherwise, you know, I can’t, um, discuss-”
“Yes, yes, I’ll be responsible,” Marlene snapped. “What was it-an accident?”
“Uh, no, ma’am,” said the woman. Marlene could hear paper rustling. “We have police involvement in this case. This is an assault case.”
TWELVE
“They picked her up by the Mount,” said the detective. “That’s up at the north end of the park near 104th Street, east. It’s used as a composting area. Real deserted.”
“How did you find her?” asked Marlene. They were sitting on plastic chairs in a crowded hallway in Harlem Hospital’s E.R., surrounded by sick or bleeding people, some on gurneys, some slouching exhausted in the same sort of chairs. Marlene was in the sweats, sneakers, and leather jacket she had thrown on after getting the call. The detective was dressed in a rumpled blue suit and a damp tan raincoat, a chunky, sad-eyed black man. He seemed intelligent and concerned. Marlene had identified herself as the victim’s closest friend, a former D.A., and a current private investigator. The detective was therefore somewhat more forthcoming than detectives usually are when interviewing people connected to victims.
“We got a call at the precinct,” he said. “Anonymous, of course.”
“Of course. What precinct? The Two-Five?”
“No, the Two-Three,” said the detective. “Anyway, a night like this, she would have died for sure, exposed like she was. We’re treating it as attempted murder.”
“She was naked?”
“Underpants, socks, and sneakers.”
“Raped?”
“We’re checking that. It looks like a gang thing to me. Some of these kids are pretty nasty little suckers.”
“I doubt that,” said Marlene. “That it was a kid gang.”
The detective looked at her sharply. “Oh, yeah? Why is that?”
“Ariadne is six-one and strong. She isn’t your typical New York housewife or secretary. She carried a nine-inch Arab dagger almost all the time and she knows how to use it too. For the last ten years or so she’s been playing risky games with guerillas, bandits, and secret police all over the world. She could eat the average gang of kid muggers for breakfast.”
“You think she was a target? It wasn’t random?”
“I’d bet on it.”
The detective wrote something on his notepad. He asked, “So she had enemies.”
Marlene snorted a laugh. “You could say that. Ariadne enjoys pissing people off. She thinks it’s her professional responsibility as a journalist.”
“Like who, in particular?”
“I don’t know,” said Marlene after a brief pause. “Take your pick. Last year she exposed some nasty connections between American officials and the generals who’re murdering Indians in Guatemala. She did a piece recently on stalkers that might’ve gotten some people annoyed.”