Robert Tanenbaum - Resolved

Steps on the stairs as Billy Ireland comes down from the apartment he occupies in the former hayloft. He is a small, well-knit man, of the type Marlene particularly likes, brass-haired, with pool green eyes and a cocky manner. (Of course, being Marlene, she married a completely different style of man.) He is an ex-junkie and a Mozart among dog trainers. They desire each other, but they play at being perfect lady and gentleman, while enjoying the pleasures of flirtation. Having him around enhances her self-disgust- a barely controllable slut after all- which is all to the good, a bonus in fact. They inquire as to each other's sleep, trade earthy innuendos, and discuss the day's program. Ireland is sleeping with Marjorie, one of the dog agitators; Marlene knows it, but he is careful not to flaunt it. The charade requires that he be smitten with Marlene, and he obliges, this being the best job he has ever had.

They work the dogs through the brief cool of the morning. Marlene does basic training, lead work, and the standard commands. Ireland works with Marjorie and Russell, the agitators. They are people who are skilled in annoying big dogs, and who don't mind being mauled and knocked down. Ireland does Kohler training, turning the mastiffs into guard dogs. It is simple, hard work, requiring concentration. The dogs know if you mean it, unlike most humans. Marlene sinks gratefully into the doggy world; she thinks these are her only purely honest relationships.

They work until one, when it becomes too hot to work out of doors. It is Marlene's turn to get lunch at the snack bar on the beach road. She drives there in her battered red Ford pickup. In years past, Marlene often spent a few summer hours lying at the beach while her sons played. No longer. She avoids the beach now. Her bikini tan has faded. Now she has a workingman's tan, face, neck, and forearms. She looks piebald and ridiculous, but what does it matter? No one is going to look at her body.

At lunch, the conversation among the four dog people is lively and mainly about dogs, although they tell junkie stories with self-deprecatory laughter and Narcotics Anonymous stories with simple sympathy. She thinks they are decent, damaged people and is happy to spend her life among them, in that she has a life.

After lunch they work the sniffer dogs inside the barn. Marlene has been supplied with baits by the law enforcement authorities with whom she has contracts: eau de coke, eau de smack, eau de Semtex, C-4, dynamite, black powder. This is even more concentrated work than the guard training. A dog is brought out, it finds the hidden bait, gets its lavish praise. Or else it becomes confused, and wanders sniffing around the barn, and signals at the wrong thing. He's a pet, says Russell after Morris the schnauzer has failed three times to find the hidden dope. "Pet" is not a compliment at Wingfield Farms. Some dogs get it right away, others never do. Part of the art is telling which is which, whether a little extra effort will create a working dog or whether the beast is doomed to chase the Frisbee in the 'burbs. Dog training is a profession that inspires a deep respect for the inexplicable differences between one beagle and a seemingly identical beagle. Marlene reflects that none of her five siblings is a rage-maddened criminal like her. Bloodlines or training, she can't figure it out. She worries about her children. Bad seed? Evil training? It doesn't matter anymore. She's out of all that.

Around four, Marlene goes into her office and does business, pays bills, talks to officials, takes orders for dogs, pitches dogs to prospective owners. In the late afternoon and through the early twilight hours they work the dogs outside again. The agitators menace, the dogs attack, the dogs always win. At dusk they leave. Marlene has her first drink and her second, from a bottle of wine identified only as being a product of California and being red. Billy Ireland goes off somewhere. Marlene makes herself a can of something, she who once could barely tolerate any canned food in the house, she the maker of sauce from scratch, the roaster of veal shanks for stock. Wine with dinner and wine after dinner, too. Ireland comes in around nine. Unbidden, he stands behind her chair and massages her neck and shoulders. He has good hands, he is skillful with the animal body, regardless of species. They have come close a time or two, when she was deep in the wine fog, but have never actually done it. The world's longest first date, Ireland calls it. He is slightly afraid of her, she knows, and he will not press it.

Tottering a little, she climbs the stairs and falls into bed. Another day, barely distinguishable from the day before. Gog the mastiff licks her face and thumps his two hundred pounds down in the doorway, rattling the windows. She weeps briefly, clutching a photograph of her children, and falls asleep.

Karp left the courtroom and climbed down the stairs to his office, one at a time now, where once he had taken flights in three bounds. Karp always used the stairs, up and down, and never the elevator. He hated being trapped in conversation during the painfully slow rides. He had nightmares about being trapped on a slow elevator that, when its door opened, revealed that it was on the same floor from which it had departed so long ago. Too much like his life.

In the office, he disposed of some bureaucratic details swiftly and efficiently and then turned to the pile of case reports he had selected for review. Karp thought that this was the most important part of his job and the one he enjoyed the most. He could review only a small fraction of the cases that the various bureau chiefs thought worthy of trial, but the fact that Karp was looking over their shoulders kept them honest and kept standards from sliding too far. Or so Karp believed. He picked up the case file from the homicide bureau. Husband kills wife, a no-brainer. What was interesting was why the guy wouldn't deal, since he had clearly done it and would go down for it. Middle-class guy, a furrier. Everyone thinks they're O.J., they can walk with a good lawyer. Not today, not in New York County. He made some notes and moved on. Narcotics. Why did he bother? He didn't know the heroin was in his apartment, the cops planted it. Another race thing, the defendant's lawyer was one of the ones who figured if he stacked the jury with enough black faces, they'd walk his guy to piss off the Man. Maybe he would. Karp spotted a flaw in the chain of evidence record and made a note. Check it out.

Next, the rape bureau. More interesting: a doctor was the D, the victim a patient, the charge sexual abuse, first degree. Not completely unusual that, but unusual to try it. Usually, their main interest was in getting past it as quickly as possible, cop a plea to misdemeanor and try to smooth things over with the state medical board and the hospitals. A little public penitence, too: yes, a terrible problem, I'm in therapy, my wife supports me, ask for the forgiveness of God and the victims, etc. An actual trial would do the opposite, keeping the case in the public eye for a week at least, and revealing all the juicy details to the press. Kevin Hirsch, M.D., was the guy, a gastroenterologist. No priors. The alleged crime had taken place at the Aurora Community Health Center, located in a semidecrepit zone of upper Manhattan, where Dr. Hirsch volunteered. The alleged victim was one Leona Coleman, forty-four. According to her statement, on January 12 of the current year she had gone to the clinic to have a colonoscopy. She suffered from bowel problems and chronic diarrhea. The accused had sedated her and begun the procedure, in the midst of which she had suddenly become aware that the physician had his head between her legs and was tonguing her vagina.

Karp read through the file and then thumbed back through it again, thinking he had missed something, but he hadn't. The rape bureau was apparently going to try this fellow on the completely unsupported word of the alleged victim. According to the police report, the alleged assault had taken place on an examination table shielded from a busy ward only by curtains. Was this at all likely? And the act itself, a colonoscopy in progress, diarrhea, the smell… Karp was not at this stage capable of surprise at any of the acts that people chose to relieve the sexual itch, but this still seemed extreme.