Karp broke in, “Guma, as long as you’re here, you might as well work. Take your little friends to Booth Eight and get their statements, OK? I’d like to get out of here before dawn.”
“Oh, no, Butch, do I hafta? OK, ladies, follow me.”
Guma led the call girls away. Hrcany looked after them with a laugh. “Fuckin’ guy! I’m a sex maniac. He’s off the charts. Hey, Butch, I heard about homicide. Good for you, baby.”
“Yeah, thanks, if I live through tonight.”
As they turned back to work, the bomb exploded.
Out of the large number of people opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War a small proportion had become convinced that the only way to stop it was to bring down the entire structure of the state-literally-with explosives. A good place to start was the criminal justice system, and so that day a former cheerleader from Larchmont had dropped off a package containing a dynamite bomb in the fifth floor women’s toilet at 10 °Centre Street. The bomb was not powerful enough to bring down the American state, but it sufficed to bring down the ceiling of the Complaint Room, a good beginning.
Karp was still on his feet, but bent over with his arms over his head. Plaster chunks and bits of masonry rained down on the room and the air was opaque with steam and gray dust. The lights had gone, except for the battery-operated emergency lanterns over the exit. Screams of dismay were coming from the direction of Booth Eight. A figure stumbled toward Karp through the murk. Blinking the dust out of his eyes, Karp saw that it was Debra Tiel.
“Butch! You OK? What the hell happened?”
“Damned if I know, but I think it was a bomb. Look, Debra, stand over by the exit and start yelling for people to come to you. I’ll check the booths and make sure nobody’s hurt. Good thing this didn’t happen two hours ago.” She moved off and began to call people to the exit. Karp picked his way through the wreckage, passing stumbling people made anonymous by the pall of dust that covered their faces and clothes. He bumped into Guma leaning against a wall, trying to get the dust out of his eyes.
“Goom, you OK?”
“Butch, what the fuck! I can’t see for shit.” Karp gave him his still-damp handkerchief, and Guma cleaned his eyes.
“Goddam, justice is blind, but this is too much!” He called out to his prostitutes, “Let’s move it, girls. Next stop my place and a nice shower.” They followed him in a bunch, looking now like so many pillars of salt.
There seemed to be no panic and few serious injuries. Karp saw two cops carrying the mugged Missus McGregor, who was out cold and bleeding from another head wound. Not her day, thought Karp. In the last booth, he found a typist, still sitting at her table, staring at a chunk of masonry and tile that had crushed her machine and missed her head by inches.
“Miss Park, time to go. Miss Park …?”
She was frozen, like a rabbit mesmerized by a snake. There was a rumbling sound and more bits of plaster fell down. Karp could hear sirens in the distance. He kicked the typing table away, swept the typist up in his arms, and walked out of the Complaint Room, down the corridor and down the stairs.
The stairway was full of smoke and the smell of drains. Two men, from the Bomb Squad judging by their flak jackets, raced past him. Then came three masked firemen carrying hoses. Karp yelled, “Fifth floor, I think,” to their backs and then continued down the four flights to the street.
The square was full of fire engines, police cars, and ambulances, and lit with flashing red and blue lights. He deposited his burden with one of the ambulance crews and then began to walk home. A perfect end to a perfect day, he thought. He’d lost his suit jacket and the evening was getting chilly. He began to jog up Broadway. At Canal Street, he stopped at Dave’s, an all-night sidewalk-service joint for a knish and an egg cream. The counterman gave him an odd look. “What happened to you, man?”
“I was bombed,” said Karp. He felt giddy with the release of tension. He related the story of the bombing to the counterman, who was unimpressed.
“That’s New York,” he said.
Later, back in his apartment, after a long hot bath, he called his wife at her parents’ home in Los Angeles. He told her about his transfer to the Homicide Bureau.
“That’s very nice, Butch.”
“It’s more than that, Susan. I don’t think anybody has ever made homicide with as little time in the office as I’ve had.”
“OK, it’s great, cosmic. What do you want me to say, Butch? I guess this means you have no immediate plans to change what you’re doing?”
“Come on, Susan, don’t start all that again.” He thought of telling her about the bomb. He knew she was frightened of New York, and ordinarily he would not miss a chance to play on her natural sympathy for him. But he let it pass, and said instead, “How are you getting along?”
“OK. Still a little confused, I guess. My mother’s driving me batty, trying to find a villain in my marriage. I keep telling her we both needed some space. She says, ‘What space? You’re married, you’re married, you live with your husband. You’re not married, you’re not married, you get a divorce.’ ”
Karp laughed at his wife’s imitation of her mother’s characteristic tone. “Well, I just wanted to tell you that I miss you and I wish you were back here.”
“For what, Butch? Tell me for what? You’re never home. You never talk to me. I have no friends …”
“We had friends.”
“You had friends. Cops and ADAs, sitting around drinking beer and talking hard-boiled about all the nasty things that happened to you that week. And you’re hard-boiled-that’s the worst part. You’re getting, I don’t know … brutal. We stopped talking, you know that? We had about four conversations the whole time I was with you in New York. Three about furniture and one about lamb versus roast chicken. I’m not going to live my life that way.”
“How are you going to live your life, Susan?”
“I don’t know. I went up to Stanford the other day and saw Phil at the Poli Sci Department. He says he can get me a research assistantship starting next month. Maybe I can get back to work on my thesis.”
She talked on for a while about her plans, and mutual friends, but Karp wasn’t really listening. There was a pause on the line. She had asked him a question and he had no idea what it was.
“Butch, are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” Another pause.
“No, you’re not. Good night, Butch.”
He stared at the receiver for a moment after she had hung up. He almost called her again, but couldn’t think of what he could say that would extract them from the knot they were in. He replaced the telephone and slipped under the covers of the bed.
He had built a wall around himself. It was part of his working equipment, like his legal pads. He couldn’t survive without it, and he couldn’t leave the job that required him to build it. Susan didn’t understand that part. He was not sure he did either. In his mind, he started to rehearse the conversation that would finally, convincingly explain to her why things had to be the way they were and why, despite that, she ought to come back to him. But he fell asleep.
Chapter 7
Monday was the first of April and Karp kept expecting somebody to yell “April Fool” in his ear and tell him that the homicide appointment had been a big joke. On his arrival at Centre Street he discovered that he was still scheduled to take a full load of cases in Criminal Court. The dead hand of the Mad Onion was evident in this, Karp thought.
His weekend, in contrast, had been not that bad, not the usual restless, boring intermissions they usually were. He’d awakened that Saturday missing Susan intensely, remembering their conversation with shame. His head was of course full of heartfelt, logical, and compelling arguments which would have been marvelously appropos last night, but which now cluttered up his head like a stack of dusty magazines that don’t get thrown out because you might want to read one of the articles again, someday.