The man now seemed calmer and, in fact, embarrassed at his outburst. The officers restraining him released him, and Russell was removed to the cells without further incident. Karp introduced himself to the man, who turned out to be James Turnbull, the proprietor of the leather shop on the ground floor of Susan Weiner’s building.
“Mr. Turnbull,” asked Karp after steering the man to a quiet corner of the station-house corridor, “what was that all about?”
Turnbull shook his head, as if amazed, and spoke in a soft West Indian accent. “I just lost it, I guess. You see a woman, a neighbor, slaughtered before your eyes. When I saw him, I just wanted to smash his damned face in.”
“Him? You mean the man in custody?”
“Yeah. He killed Susan.”
“You’re sure? You’d make a statement to that effect?”
“Of course. That’s what I came down here for. I was too shaken up earlier.”
They walked off to find a stenographer, found one, and Turnbull dictated a statement and signed it. As Karp was about to find the officers who had witnessed the altercation and obtain statements from them, Cimella hailed him.
“Look what I got,” the detective said. He held up three sealed evidence bags, two large, one smaller. The two large bags held a dark blue shirt and a woman’s leather purse. The small one held a short kitchen knife.
“Where did you get those?” asked Karp.
“Our friend Shelton. It turns out he was visiting a friend on the second floor of his building and found these under the stairwell. He called the house, they sent a car out, and they found the stuff. Cop just gave them to me.”
“That’s Susan’s bag,” said Turnbull. “I made it.” He looked close to tears. Cimella said to Karp, “So, we got it all. Are you always this lucky?”
“It’s clean living, Charlie,” said Karp, grinning. “Luck has nothing to do with it.”
“Yeah, well, in that case, you can go talk to the jackals. There’s fifty of them outside the house. I told you they’d eat this one up.”
Karp’s shift on call lasted until eight. There were no more murders in Manhattan during its span, for which he was profoundly grateful. He had the police driver take him home and limped up the stairs.
The sound of heavy thumps and energetic grunting issued from the far end of the loft. Karp shouted a greeting, which was returned with a breathy “Hi.” He then sat down on the couch, removed his clothes, put on a bathrobe; and applied a chemical cold pack to his knee.
He had just bought a carton of these, and kept them near the old red couch, which he had taken over as a dressing room and bed. He could no longer bear to climb the ladder to the sleeping loft. After a half hour, with the knee partially anesthetized by the cold pack, he clumped down to the gym, an ill-defined area beyond the wall of the dining room. It held, among other things, Karp’s rowing machine and Marlene’s speed bag and body bag.
She was pounding away at the latter, dressed in baggy red shorts, a cut down T-shirt, and sneakers. Karp watched her in silent admiration as her muscles bunched and played and shining sweat bounced off her face. The baby was in her recently purchased playpen, bouncing, cooing, and rattling her bars. Karp took a towel and played peek-a-boo with his daughter until Marlene finished her workout and began to strip off her speed gloves. When she turned at last to face him, he saw that her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.
“What’s wrong?”
“You were on the news.”
“What? Oh, yeah, the West Village thing. That made you cry? My performance?”
“No, dummy, the vic. Susan Weiner.”
Karp now recalled where he had heard the name. “Oh, shit, the woman from the day-care!” He went over and hugged her. “I’m sorry, babe-but at least we got the guy.”
Marlene leaned against him and sighed deeply. “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll make her family feel better. Her husband can sleep with a copy of the indictment.”
She shook herself and wiped some sweat from her face. “I didn’t mean that. Sure, it’s great you caught the guy. I don’t know why it’s affecting me like this. I wasn’t particularly close to the woman. It’s just that her life … she seemed so on top of it all, like the grime didn’t stick to her. You know how everybody in the City seems sour and cynical and paranoid? She had a shine on her that made you think, yeah, she’s making it, she’s happy, with a job and a kid and a nice place to live, and she doesn’t look like a survivor of the Long March. So it’s, hey, she can do it, maybe I can do it too. Now she’s a piece of meat on a slab.”
“Speaking of meat, what’s for dinner?”
She pushed him away and slapped at him with her towel. “Oooh, how could you say that? I can’t believe you said that.”
“What? What?” sputtered Karp, taking a step back. “Hey, what do you want? I’m sorry your friend got killed, but-”
“She wasn’t my friend.”
“Okay, I’m sorry your acquaintance got killed. What should I do, go into mourning eleven hundred times a year? Beat my breast? I’d be paralyzed in a week if I did that, and so would you. People get killed and sometimes, not very often, they’re people like us. The only thing we can do is find the bastard who did it and make sure he won’t do it again. Does this make a difference? No, there’s ten more where he came from. Are things getting better? No, every year they get a little worse. It’s useless and stupid, but we keep doing it because that’s what we do. We’re pros.”
“What’s your point, Spinoza?” snapped Marlene.
“I don’t have a point,” Karp admitted. “I just hate it when you get like this. You get pissed off about how shitty everything is, and you bring it home and take it out on me.”
“Who else is there? But yes, you’re right! I was wrong. I wavered for an instant from the absolute control you have every right to expect.” She slapped her own cheek, twice. “There! I needed that. Now I can make your dinner in an orderly manner-”
“Come on, Marlene,” he sighed, “don’t do a number-”
“-while you provide your daughter with forty-six minutes of fatherly attention as per contract.” She stomped away in a stiff robot-like walk. Clattering of pots. Karp picked up the baby, who needed changing, badly. A perfect day.
They ate dinner in an atmosphere of chill correctness. They were just clearing the dishes away, and Karp was struggling to think of some magic language that would get them out of marriage hell, when the phone rang.
He picked it up. A woman’s voice: “What’re you going to do to him?” She sounded drunk or drugged.
“I’m sorry, who is this, please?” said Karp.
“I killed her. I killed her. I let him out, the fucking nigger scumbag bastard fuckhead. I let him out and he killed her …”
The woman’s voice dissolved into sobbing. Then there was a loud crash over the line as if the phone had been tossed against something solid, followed by a hollow cacophany of wailings and things being smashed, picked up by the unattended receiver. Karp hung up.
“Who was that?” Marlene asked, seeing the odd expression on her husband’s face.
“I don’t know. I think it was about the Weiner case. A woman, claims she had something to do with letting Russell loose.”
Marlene went white and sat down on a kitchen stool. “Oh, shit, it must be her sister. The parole officer I told you about-the one I had lunch with when I met Susan. Russell must be one of her parolees. In fact, Christ, I think it was the guy she was talking about when we had lunch-the prize pupil. He had a weird first name, didn’t he? Foley? Mosie?”
“Hosie Russell.”
“Yeah, Hosie. Oh, God, what a nightmare! The poor woman!”
Karp embraced his wife and didn’t say a word, and this time she clung to him fiercely.
“Who is this guy Kerbussyan?” asked Roland Hrcany, “and why did Karp go to see him this morning?”