Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"Some gangsters wanted to kill her dad," she said, "and they wanted to make sure no one could identify them. So they killed everyone in the house. Anyway, that's what Emmett thinks. Emmett was out that night, so he escaped."

"I didn't mean that."

"I know. Here, wipe your face." She handed him her bandanna, already quite damp. "You meant, why do bad things happen to nice people like Lizzie and her parents. Because only God is good, and God is far away. Evil is in charge down here."

"But we're good."

"Only by reflection of God. We see the sun shining out of a puddle, but it's not the sun. We can't be good, really, but we're obliged to try. Meanwhile, the rain falls equally on the just and the unjust."

"It still makes me sad."

"Yes, me, too. Man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward, but we feel better after a good weep. We're a pair of weepers, aren't we?"

"Uh-huh. We take after Mom. Dad doesn't cry much. I don't think I'll cry as much when I'm grown up, though. Zak doesn't cry either, and he doesn't like to watch it. That's why he left."

"Where did he go?"

"Probably to shoot something," answered Giancarlo equably. "That's what he does instead."

Karp listened to Marlene's news in silence, made the conventional noises, asked, "You think it was a hit?"

"The whole family? I doubt it, unless the Colombians are diversifying into coal. That poor child!"

He waited.

"I know what you're thinking. But I'm in the dog business now."

"That's good, Marlene," he observed neutrally. "You going back to the place?"

"No, I thought I'd come into town and stay over. I'm on the Van Wyck. I thought we could spend the evening together, go out, see a movie. I need distracting."

Karp hung up the phone and let the camera of his mind pan over the innumerable murder-scene photographs he had looked at during the twenty years he had been prosecuting murders. He had not, of course, viewed the ones of the Heeney murders, but he could slot in the faces well enough. They all looked like life-size dolls, the fresh ones did, instantly distinguishable, even without the visible blood and damage, from a sleeping person. You always passed them around to the jury, the defense always objected to this, and the judge always let them pass. A cheap trick; the jury wanted vengeance for the horror on the glossy eight-by-tens and the poor schmuck in the box was the closest they could get to it. But Karp always did it anyway. He had never known a murder victim personally. One "knew" lowlifes who got whacked, but that was not the same thing. He had come close from time to time, Marlene being what she was, or had been (he hoped), but it had never actually come to him.

The phone buzzed its intercom tone. The DA wanted to see him right away. Karp grabbed a pad and walked across the hall to his boss's office. Keegan was behind his desk, a burly, fleshy, florid Irishman with a still intact white mane, although there was a rumor that he weaved. He was taking a Bering corona from its metal tube as Karp walked in. This was a bad sign. It meant that something had happened to the prop cigar he always had at hand or in mouth, which never got wet or smoked, but which sometimes, in moments of anger or stress, got chomped on or flung across the room. As now, obviously.

Karp took a seat without being asked and sat erect, pad on lap, miming the loyal retainer.

"I had a call from the congressman just now," Keegan began. New York boasts a number of congressmen, being so very populous, but Karp knew which one had called.

"Oh? I hope you conveyed to him my very best regards."

"Don't be cute. What are you doing with this mutt, Bailey?"

"Prosecuting him for first-degree assault."

One of Keegan's bushy eyebrows elevated itself. "Personally?"

"No, of course not. But I'm taking a personal interest in the case."

"So I gather. My man was telling me all about it. He said you threatened to shove Bailey under the jail forever and a day unless Bailey told you a pack of lies about how the congressman paid for his last campaign."

"That's true," agreed Karp, "except for the lies part. Bailey is a smurf for Beemer Pennant, and Pennant, we know, is laundering pimp money through political action committees run by your pal. I thought it was worth a shot."

"I see. Even though I told you that there isn't remotely enough evidence of alleged laundering to justify pissing off my one political ally north of the park."

"I thought he was all for the other guy last year."

"He had to be for the other guy, but he wasn't for the other guy hard enough for him to win. And there are other elections."

Karp knotted his brow dramatically. "Okay, let's see if I got this. You don't want to annoy your guy uptown, since we don't have enough evidence to move forward, but you don't want me to put the squeeze on this mutt, which might result in us getting the evidence. So… um… how will we ever get your guy uptown?" Karp snapped his fingers. "Oh, now I understand. You think it's okay for the congressman to launder money for a pimp and a murderer, so we'll kind of give him a walk on it."

"Oh, for Christ's sake. Forget I said anything. I'll take care of it myself."

"Fine. What about Mr. Bailey?"

"I said, I'll take care of it." The DA's face was closing in on the color of fresh hamburger, and the prop cigar was directed at Karp like a weapon. Karp wondered if the DA was going to sacrifice this one so soon after breaking it out. Again he reflected upon how stupid it was, this silly duel between him and Keegan. Keegan would never change, would never quite get it. While in many respects his instincts as a DA were perfectly fine-he knew the law, knew procedure, was essentially honest-he remained capable of identifying his own political survival with the Good and the True. Casuistry was the technical term; maybe it had something to do with the twenty years Keegan had spent in Jesuit institutions. Lucy would know.

"Out of curiosity," said Karp, "what are you going to let him cop to? Community service?"

"If I want, gaddamn it." the DA said, his voice rising.

"Okay, but just so you're aware: he sliced his girlfriend's nose off. She took a hundred and eight stitches. I thought we frowned on that kind of stuff. In any case, the poor woman is attracting some press interest. A big-time plastic surgeon from Downstate is volunteering to fix her up."

A little lie there. In the old days, before he became corrupt, Karp would never have told it, nor would he ever have used the press as a shillelagh. On Keegan's face he observed the frustrated anger turn into a more calculating sort. That was one thing Jack Keegan would never do, place himself in the position of seeming soft on a heinous offense in the light of publicity; no, not for a wilderness of congressmen.

"Ah, you can do what the hell you like," Keegan snapped. "One thing though-I want to see any deal you make on this whole issue, and I want to see it before it's made. Is that clear?"

Karp rose. "Perfectly clear, boss."

Back in his office, Karp made a call to Bill Ricci, who was the ADA officially in charge of the People's case against Bailey, and instructed him to make no deals whatever with Bailey, to go for the highest penalty allowed by law, and to prepare for a trial. Then, after an uncomfortable interval of self-contempt, he dialed the number of the Post and spoke to a woman he knew who specialized in human-interest crime stories and gave her the details of the situation of Ms. Carolyn Watson, the former (he surmised) love interest of Mr. Bailey. After that, inured to perfidy, he had no trouble in calling a famous plastic surgeon for whom he had once done an enormous legal favor. This favor was called in. The man seemed relieved to be off the hook. Having thus arranged reality to comport with his recent spontaneous fiction, Karp signed out of the office and had his driver take him to the Sloan-Kettering Center at Sixty-seventh and First.