Robert Tanenbaum: Irresistible Impulse

“Why’d he kill her, if he did?” asked Menotti. “I have to say this is pretty speculative.”

Fulton said, “She was going to rat him out. We played the black woman’s voice from the hot-line tape to some of her relatives. It was her.”

In the ensuing silence, Karp said genially, “V.T., maybe you can add something here.”

“Well, first, in the last two months,” said V.T., “there has been a very substantial increase in the street supply of prescription drugs in the City and along the East Coast. This is mostly d-amphetamine, Percodan, Nembutal, and Quaaludes, all drugs with a healthy street market. During that same time period, the St. Nicholas Med Centers filled prescriptions for thirty thousand Percodan tablets and fifty thousand Dextramphetamine caps. The service area seems to be unusually prone to painful afflictions and weight problems. Their books seem to balance, though: a bona fide patient for each piece of scrip. But there’s no doubt it’s a racket, and a big one too. We have a watch on a numbered account in the Caymans that we think is associated with Robinson. Major increases in the same period.”

“That’s still pretty vague,” said Menotti. “You won’t even get an indictment on that showing.”

“Did you show it to him?” V.T. asked Fulton.

“No,” answered the detective, “I was saving it for now. This was found in Margaret Evans’s purse.”

He passed a plastic evidence pouch across the table. In it, Menotti saw, was a slip of paper with his own name and his office phone number written on it. “I don’t recall she ever called us,” he said. “Do you, Cynthia?”

“I don’t think so,” said Doland, “but if she called the hot line, she could have called here too. It could have been anonymous. I’ll review the logs, see if she did.”

Karp said, “Fine. Okay, Marlene here has a view of Robinson that might be helpful. Marlene?”

“I’ve spent some time around this man in connection with another case,” said Marlene. “Vincent Robinson is a sadist. I mean that in the technical sense. He derives pleasure from causing pain, and he’s frank about it. He thinks he’s a superior man and has the right to do what he likes to anyone. He is from a well-off family but has the ambition to become enormously rich in his own right. Needless to say, he is totally amoral. He runs with a group of people who fancy themselves decadents. They indulge in sexual fantasies of the sadomasochistic variety and plenty of drugs, dispensed by Robinson, of course. These people are harmless ninnies, except, possibly, to themselves, but Robinson is a truly dangerous man. For one example, he knew that I would be facing an armed and possibly dangerous stalker, and he slipped some psychedelics into a thermos I was using. For another, if he is our killer, the use of the blue suitcase to smother Mrs. Evans was no accident. He wanted to get back at Mr. Karp here for investigating him, and thought copying Rohbling’s style would help confuse the jury. Which it did. His weak point, in my opinion, is his desire for notice, to be admired in his awfulness. I think he uses Virginia Wooten for this. She is essentially his slave, and he keeps her docile through the use of drugs and sexual cruelty. I like her for the accomplice here. I also think she would also know just about everything useful to us about Dr. R.”

“Yeah, that’s why he sent her to Timbuctu,” said Menotti. “Well, there doesn’t seem much point in going on, until we have Wooten to talk to, and since we have no idea where she is …” He left the thought hanging and began to make leaving-the-meeting motions.

“Oh, I think one of us knows where she is, or could make a good guess,” said Marlene. “How about it, Cynthia? Want to help us out?”

Everyone stared at Marlene and then at Doland, who colored slightly and gave a good imitation of a baffled innocent.

“Is this a joke?” Menotti rumbled.

“No. The last time I saw Ms. Doland, she was dressed in a white confirmation dress and white patent mary-janes-no, that’s a lie. I saw her last just the other day at Wooten Island, with Ginnie Wooten and Robinson. Nice white bikini, no mary-janes. The time before that, I should have said, she was beating up a guy in a sex club so he would come on her shoe. You’re one of that gang in your off hours, honey. I came in here this morning and saw you, and I swear, if it hadn’t been for that crisp linen suit and your prissy look, I probably wouldn’t have recognized you. Maybe your boss will want to talk to you about how come it’s been so hard to pin anything on Robinson. Maybe some discreet leaks? But right now the only thing I personally want to know is: where is she?”

There is a great deal of difference, Marlene reflected some weeks later, between being tied up for fun and being tied up for real. She observed this to her husband, just after he had informed her that Ginnie Wooten had made a full statement implicating Robinson in a dense slate of crimes, including the murder of Margaret Evans. They were in their kitchen, putting groceries away.

“Yeah, Ginnie didn’t much care for jail,” Karp was saying. “I can’t say for certain, but I think they arranged for her to be in a cell with a broader ethnic and sexual orientation than she’s used to up on Park Avenue.”

“Our beautiful mosaic,” said Marlene. “And she spurned it?”

“I’m afraid so. They may have made fun of her watchamacallit’s … you know, those things in her crotch. May have hurt her feelings, poor kid. I really think that Robinson thought she’d take the whole rap for him, but Roland offered her a sweet deal and she jumped at it.”

“They arrest him yet?”

“The warrant’s cut. Roland said he’ll call when they have him wrapped. Want to come to the perp walk? We can hold hands and wave to him as he slithers by.”

“No, I don’t want to see his face again,” said Marlene quickly, and knew that it was true and knew why: that leap in front of the subway train attraction, the foul suck of the sadistic, that dwelt in her own soul, that she fought every day, that Robinson had recognized and gloated over. She felt a chill and shook herself.

“What’s wrong?” asked Karp. “You looked funny.”

“I don’t know,” she said lightly. “Someone walked on my grave.”

And as she busied herself with humble domestic tasks that evening, and cast her mind back over the dreadful and bloody year she had just spent, the idea floated into her mind of a party, a truly gigantic and memorable party, symbolizing … she did not quite know, but something-escape, survival, the crazy dance of her life. She would invite everybody , which was feasible now that they had the elevator. She would invite a gang of Jamaican dopers and killers she knew from Brooklyn, and ask them to provide the music, and a Mexican shelter operator and cutthroat feminist, also a killer, and old Dr. Perlsteiner, and a crazy reporter, an old pal from college, if she was in the country, and everyone from her company, Harry and Sym, and Dane, and the Homicide Bureau and the Rape Bureau to party with the criminals, and an elderly British demolition expert she knew and Karp’s old Aunt Sophie (maybe they would get it on?) and of course, the D.A. himself, and everyone in the building, of course, and her whole family, including her crazy vet brother, and Tranh the reformed Vietcong, who would cook shrimp balls and fried dumplings and other delicacies in a giant flaming wok, while Lucy and her gang of girlfriends carried around plates of smoking goodies, and everything washed down with gallons, crates, of champagne. And, of course, Father Dugan, and ask him to bring that Irish kid, Kevin Mulcahey, along, because, if the kid couldn’t get laid at this party, he might as well check into the seminary. Posie, for one, would suck him out of his clothes in a New York minute. She imagined herself gazing over the throng, explaining to the priest who everyone was, all the impossibly conflicted fragments of her life so far, the lions and the lambs cavorting. Maybe he would have something interesting to say, no doubt in Latin. And let’s have that doctor too, Davidoff, the one whose misadventure had caught Murrey Selig’s eye and started the long, slow demise of Vincent Robinson.