Robert Tanenbaum - Resolved

"No, you're not a maniac, either," she said. "You're a demon. He's the maniac."

At which she looked over his shoulder at something, like she had before. Felix paid no attention. He grabbed the substance of her breast in his left fist and set his blade for the stroke that would slice it off. He was kneeling awkwardly upon the pipe arrangement, the backs of his knees exposed by Hey Hey's baggy cutoffs, so that it was really no problem for David Grale to roll in, and in one smooth, and, Lucy thought, obviously well-practiced motion, slice through both of Felix's hamstring tendons.

Felix screamed shrilly and flopped around among the pipes like a landed tuna. His knife clattered away. David Grale searched out a short length of pipe and whacked him a few times on the head.

"Don't kill him!" Lucy cried.

"Good Christ, Lucy, look at what he did to you! Isn't that an excess of forgiveness?"

"Shame on you, David," she said, "and thank you. Could you unwrap me, please?"

The fileting knife that Grale used went to work and, in half a minute, Lucy was free. She tried to stand up, but found she could not. He lifted her and carried her a few yards to where some junkie had once made a bed out of cardboard and pink insulation.

"You need to get to a hospital. You still have your cell phone?"

"My bag, if it's still around." As he went to search for it, Lucy thought, This is odd: I'm naked and bleeding, but I'm perfectly comfortable with him. Maybe I'm going into shock.

There were sounds now, and voices. Into the boiler room came several people Lucy recognized from Spare Parts, and with them Spare Parts himself. The giant came to her side and spread an army blanket over her. "Oh, 'ucy, you 'oor sing! Oh!" cried Spare Parts. On his face was an expression of almost childlike grief. Grale came near, too, and handed Lucy her cell phone. "They're on their way. You may want to call home."

"Thank you," said Lucy, and broke down in hysterical sobs. This lasted for some time. The wounds she had endured were really starting to hurt now, and around the corners of her mind slunk fears that she had been permanently maimed. When she had somewhat recovered herself she asked, "How did you know where I was?"

"People have been following you, dear. The invisible people had you in view. I'm just sorry we didn't get here any sooner."

"Soon enough. Did you call the cops, too? I mean, for him."

" 'e'll 'ake 'are ah 'im," said Spare Parts.

"You mustn't hurt him," she said sternly.

"We won't touch him," said Grale, with his most saintly smile.

Felix awoke and realized immediately that he was being carried on foot by several men. The pain in his legs and the back of his head was enormous, but even worse was his fear. He was a cripple now, and would be for some time. He had to get to a doc, even if it meant turning himself in. He escaped once, he could escape again, but he had to get fixed up. He was being transported in some kind of tarpaulin; there was rough canvas against his face. They were probably taking him to a police station, he thought, because if they were going to kill him he'd be dead by now. Bunch of piss bums. Who could figure?

He had tape against his mouth and around his hands. He tested the bonds and felt a little satisfaction. An amateur job: he could get out of this with a little work, maybe an hour or two- tape stretched and his wrists were mighty. The canvas was damp and he heard the patter of drops against it. They were traveling through the streets. He could smell the rain.

Then the rain stopped and there was another smell, smoke and cooking food, and he was put down for a while. He kept working on his wrists and controlling his breathing. He felt himself being picked up again. They were taking him head first and the general direction was downward, because his head felt lower than his feet. That was good because his legs didn't ache so much when they were a little elevated. This went on for some time. He had about a quarter of an inch of play now between his crossed wrists.

Then he felt his head go much lower and he was sliding. He felt the canvas rush past his face and then smooth damp soil and small pebbles against the back of his head, and then sheer dread as he flew through space. It was only for a moment, however, for he landed heavily on his back and felt the horrible stroke of agony as his useless legs followed and hit the ground. The darkness was absolute. He heard the drip of water and a rustling sound, and smelled a dank stench. He was in a sewer.

He heard something- not so much rustling as a light clicking. He wondered what it was. Then he felt something heavy moving on his leg and something else climb up on his chest. Now he knew what that sound was. There were a lot of them; he could smell their stink, sharper than the sewer gas. Warm weight pressed on his face. He twisted and humped and made noises behind his gag. The rats did him the favor of chewing this away in order to get to his delicious soft mouth parts, and so he could scream and scream as they ate the face off his skull.

"No, Stupenagel, they didn't have a point," Karp snapped. "It happens to be the case, one, that the vast majority of black and Hispanic defendants are ill-defended easy outs; and two, that the insanity defense is what it is largely so that people with expensive lawyers, most of whom happen to be white, can avoid prison. It's part of the system, like the kid who sells an ounce of smack gets ten in Attica and the guy who loots a hundred million from the pension fund and wrecks the lives of ten thousand people gets, maybe, six months in a country club jail. I never said it was fair. It's just what we got."

"You seem to have made your peace with it, regardless."

"That shows how much you know," said Karp. Her eyes widened with interest. I'm making a serious mistake here, thought Karp. I'm a public official getting drunk with a reporter, and if I'm not careful, I'm going to spill my guts and get into trouble. He then considered that, although he had been in trouble many times before, he had not ever got into this particular kind of trouble. It was not great virtue; he just didn't drink and never had. Then he thought, and here the unbidden idea surprised him, that maybe it was time he did. Was that the booze talking? Was this how it happened, the descent into disgrace? He found he didn't much care and took another sip of the cognac. It seemed to grow smoother the more you drank. Stupenagel was looking at him with a peculiar smile, and her face seemed to glow.

"You never make peace with it," he said. "It just grinds you down, like a pencil in a pencil sharpener. Dickens said something about it, the inevitable hardening of the soul that results from a life in the courts. You just live with it. You have technical pride- is the case as perfect as you can make it? Even though, even though, we can put guys in jail behind shitty half-baked cases, because the defense is overworked and second rate a lot of the time and lame, and also, do you have the stones to drop a case when it's not perfect, even though the guy's probably guilty and it pisses off the victims and the cops, and the media make a big thing of it? Thin soup, but that's all we have."

"What happens when the pencil is ground down to the eraser?"

"Oh, well, that hasn't happened yet," said Karp. "I have a very long pencil."

A long honking laugh from the reporter. "So anyhow, you let the big one get away. How did you feel?"

"How do you feel always asking people how they feel? Why does the media do that?"

"It sells. People are voyeurs. They're dead inside most of the time, so when someone's kid gets burned up they like to see the mike shoved in the mom's face. The amazing thing is that the mom usually loves the attention. Was Rohbling the bottom of the barrel, do you think? The most evil?"