Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

As he mused on this, Lucy interrupted his thoughts. "It's so unjust. Can't you do anything?"

Karp put the paper down again. "Technically, yes; practically, not much. It would come down to the word of two police officers against that of a homeless man. No case, even if your guy's telling the absolute truth. It's an imperfect system."

"The system!" Contemptuously. "Everyone blames the system, but the system's made up of people, all of them doing bad things a lot of the time. How do you stand it?"

Karp often wondered the same thing, and now he thought, uncomfortably, of his conversation with Solotoff. Sighing heavily, he replied, "It's not easy, kid. It is just that it's better than the obvious alternatives. Letting crime flourish, for example. Arbitrary violence, for example, which is a lot more feel-good than the law. Look at how popular those movies about the Mob and rogue cops are. The law can't touch the villain, so the hero whacks him out. End of story. But in real life…? You know, your mom was into that for a long time, in real life. Did you like it?"

The girl sniffed. "Oh, I guess not. But can't you do anything?"

"Oh, yeah," said Karp, smiling. "I'll think of something."

Lucy walked out the door, fully intending to go to school. But as she strode down Lafayette to the Lex station, the events of the past days bore her down. She could not remove from her mind the moment when she had touched Fake Ali's shoulder, and his body had slid backward, and the wound in his throat had gaped open like an obscene grin. And the fight with Doug, and what the cops had done to the harmless, decent Real Ali. The world was full of death, sin, and depravity, a choking fog. The thought of sitting in a bright classroom full of silly girls, concentrating on the glories of literature or the course of American history, nauseated her, as did the fact that she had been cutting classes fairly regularly and was hopelessly behind, had failed or would fail all her midterms, and owed in the next two weeks term papers in both French lit and American history that she had not started to think about. At the subway station, therefore, she found her body moving as if controlled by an outside force, away from the Lexington line and through the crowded tunnels to the uptown N train. She toed the yellow line, close to the edge, and stood there as the train came in, the scream of the wheels and the roar of air and engine obliterating thought for a grateful instant. Maybe a crazy person would push her and that would be it, but none did, and she let herself be jostled into the car by the crowd, exhausted and ashamed of these thoughts. She found a seat and gave it up immediately to an old man with a cane. She got the usual embarrassed smile from him, and the usual scowls or confused looks from the able-bodied in their seats. The faces around her seemed gargoylish, oozing sin, selfishness, cruelty. And was she different? Hardly. She would have committed murder, too, had she not been stopped by David.

Rising panic, a foul taste in her mouth, sweat cold on her forehead. The bodies pressed against her as the train swayed. She couldn't bear it. The train stopped, and she squirmed out. Thirty-fourth Street. She stood on the platform, frozen in the moving mob. I'm losing my mind, she thought, this isn't happening to me. The train pulled out. She heard music, a saxophone. She turned. A black man in a skullcap and a long, dirty raincoat was playing "Autumn Leaves," a sweet, rich sound, amplified by the concrete vault of the subway. Across the tracks, on the downtown side, she saw a Chinese man kneel and open a violin case and begin to play the same song, in harmony, a spontaneous duet.

She listened, rapt, until the end of the song, then dropped a dollar into the horn man's case and found that she could move again. One of the little city miracles. She left the subway with a lighter heart and went off to find David Grale. At Holy Redeemer, she found that he had been by the kitchen earlier and had gone off with the bike. This was a grocery man's rig with a big hamper over the front wheel, which was used to bring supplies and food to people too debilitated or ornery to come in for services. One of the layworkers said that David was planning to cruise the yards. Lucy walked west and found the bike where she expected, leaning against a torn chain-link fence. She descended to the homeless village, where she found David and Benz half-dragging, half-carrying what looked like an enormous duffel bag, which, from the sound it made, must have been full of scrap metal. Lila Sue danced around them, flapping her hands in agitation. As Lucy came closer, she saw that it was not a duffel bag, but a man.

"It's a balloon man, he fell from the upstairs tracks in the sky," said Lila Sue helpfully. Lucy's heart sank.

"Hi, Lucy," said David. "Can you give us a hand here?"

"Oh, no, not another one!" she wailed.

"No, just old Jingles," said Grale. "We found him down on the tracks. He's comatose."

"He's comatose and his other toes are frozen," said Lila. "It was too cold on the tracks in the sky, and the pain came through at once, puff puff, said the rain train. Let me tell you my story, Lucy."

"Not right now, Lila," said Lucy. She grabbed one of Jingles's arms, Benz grabbed the other, and David heaved up the bottom half. Jingles, a person of complex ethnicity, was dressed in the usual multiple layers, the top one of which was an army field jacket of extraordinary filthiness. It was covered, as were the equally foul trousers, with dozens of small metal objects-pop tops, squashed cans, gears, fragments of automobiles thrown from street crashes, broken tools, parts from a TV, pieces of a toaster-necessary to keep the CIA from tracking him by means of the beacon they had implanted in his body. These accessories gave him his street name. As she carried, Lucy tried not to think about the grime under her hands, or the smell, a compound of wine stink, unwashed human, and something sharp, sweet, and chemical. Hideous, but one was not supposed to mind those things in the service of the afflicted. She tried (and failed) to imagine St. Catherine licking the sores of the lepers and for inspiration looked back at David, who gave her his angelic grin and said, "He sure stinks, doesn't he? Wine and huffing glue, the famous death-wish cocktail. If Benz hadn't've found him, he would've puked up and strangled in the vomit. And what a loss to the world that would be."

"The boss of the world likes me," said Lila Sue. "I bring her flowers and balloon pickles, and you know what?"

"What, honey?" said David. They were at the incline now, and David was supporting most of the dead weight.

"She has every color, even green and purple chocolate! Now I have a different story."

"Later, Lila Sue," Benz grunted as they lay Jingles down at the top of the slope. As they did so, the man jerked violently, and his face turned slaty blue while appalling noises issued from his mouth. Benz shrieked.

"Christ, he's choking," David cried. "Lucy! Benz! Flip him over. Pry his mouth open. Do it!"

They heaved Jingles over, slipping on the littered ground. David straddled the man, locked his hands under Jingles's midriff, and heaved several times. Cringing, Lucy pried open Jingles's clenched jaws and was rewarded by a spasmodic series of coughs and a gush of foul-smelling yellow fluid all over her hands.

Jingles coughed some more, shook, pissed on himself, and settled again into oblivious slumber, snoring. Lucy held her hands out in front of her like a zombie.

David laughed. "You should see your face, Lucy."

"Oh, shut up! What am I supposed to do now?"

He put an arm around her shoulder. "It's all part of the saint biz, kid. You'll get used to it. Or you won't. Meanwhile, I can only baptize you with water."

He led her across the street and down an alley, where they found a standpipe and faucet without a handle. He took one from his jacket pocket and turned on the water. She washed her hands and dabbed with a handkerchief at the splatters on her skirt and stockings. She sank once more into shame.