Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"And are you?"

This was her cue to stamp out in a huff, covering her retreat with blasts of denial, but she did not. She did not have to. Dugan was not her parent.

"Oh, not in the way she thinks. He's not interested, and he's too old and all, but I do have feelings. I mean literally." She blushed again and laughed. "You know, thump-a-thump, gasp, tremble. It's embarrassing."

"I bet it is. And…?"

"And nothing. I just suffer. But I think it's connected in some way to, you know…"

"Your sense of spiritual abandonment?" he asked. She nodded dolefully.

"You don't have ordinary connections? With boys your own age? Dating?"

"Oh, please! For starters, look at me! I'm easily distinguishable from Britney Spears, and so, you know, it's not like I have to set up a velvet rope to keep the crowds back. Second, guys my age, they're not interested in the kind of stuff I am. I could hang out with the nerdy crowd, but the truth of it is I'm not really a nerd, either. At least I can talk to David." She sighed dramatically. "Maybe I should just sign up with the Ursulines and put myself out of my misery."

"You have no true vocation," he said evenly. "It would be something like a fraud, wouldn't it?"

She slumped. "I guess. I guess there's no place for me at all, except lying down in an MRI machine. Maybe I should just let them extract my brain for scientific study. At least then I'd be halfway useful."

Dugan held his hands in front of her face, brought the thumb and index finger of each hand together and made tiny reciprocal motions with them. "You know what this is? The world's smallest violin playing 'My Heart Cries for You.'" He knuckled her on the top of her head.

"Ow! Oh, Faather, don't hit me agin! I'll be good and niver will I go behind the pigsty with Kevin O'Flaherty anymore."

"Seriously, you lunkhead! You are deeply loved, marvelously good, gorgeously talented, and obscenely rich. You should be as happy as God in France."

"The same could be said about Simone Weil."

"Oh, would you forget her for two minutes! You're not Simone Weil, who is also, incidentally, a good argument for some measure of orthodoxy. Listen to me: You were not made to run through tunnels after wretched people with the likes of David Grale. The gift you have, which you acknowledge is from God, is simply too great to risk in that way. And it's grossly irresponsible for David to tempt you to do so. And don't give me that stubborn look! Look, you know that St. Teresa, at age eight, went off down a road with her brother to find some Moors and get her head chopped off so she could be a martyr. Do you think it would've been a good thing if she'd succeeded?"

No answer. Lucy was doing the teenage clam.

"And anyway," he added, struggling to control a temper that had often been his undoing, "Grale is not all he seems."

That got her attention. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean everybody in a St. Francis suit isn't St. Francis. There's a darkness in him that touches on unbalance. Don't tell me you haven't observed it? Or do the glands interfere with your judgment?"

"There's nothing wrong with him!" she snarled with a violence that surprised her.

But not him. He sighed and put his arm around her shoulder. She stiffened, but did not shake it off.

"Okay, we'll drop it. Just promise me you'll be careful."

"Sure."

"And if you're really interested in tunnel lore, I can put you with someone who knows them pretty well. Did you ever meet Jacob Lutz?"

"I don't think so. Who is he, a cop?"

"No, a dweller; a cannibal, too, for all I know. They call him Spare Parts."

"You know Spare Parts?"

"I do. He comes by occasionally to talk. We play chess, too."

"Gosh, he's like the king of the tunnels. I only saw him once, from a distance. What's he like?"

"A troubled soul; like you, like me," said the priest. "In mortal form he's very large and stinks to high heaven, much like some of the early saints, I suppose. I'll set something up. We'll have tea."

In the aftermath, Marlene learned the difference between working private and being part of a billion-dollar security empire when there were bloody corpses to figure out. The police, for one thing, were a good deal nicer to her than formerly, first, because there was not a boss cop in the city who did not dream of a fat postcareer position with a firm like Osborne International, and second, Osborne itself swarmed the area with lawyers and other helpful people. Ms. Solette, scratchless physically, destroyed emotionally, was spirited away to an undisclosed location, with her dog. Marlene was allowed to change her blood-soaked clothes and take a shower right there at the crime scene, although not in the bullet-holed bathroom. Min Dykstra, her assistant, arrived with a change of clothes and clean undies, and a willingness to provide a broad crying surface on either of her shoulders, if desired.

It was not desired. Marlene's first (and nearly sole) interaction with her was an inquiry about Segovia. Answer: in critical condition but still alive. The other four victims were dead, but this toll seemed to have little effect on Marlene, who drifted off to one of the three other bathrooms. She then spent a long time in the shower, so long a time that Dykstra, normally as unflappable a young woman as could be found, kept checking her watch and fingering her cell phone and listening at the bathroom door. Was Marlene having a nervous breakdown in there?

She was not. She was washing her hair. Marlene had a mop of heavy, thick, curly black hair, worn neck length and cleverly cut so that it would cast a shadow over the false eye. But now there were things in it. Tiny bits of skull and scalp with wispy blond hair still clinging that fell to the bathtub floor, as well as little gobbets of matter looking like pink-gray earthworms, parts of the organ in which James Coleman had recently maintained his sorry existence. She nudged one of these toward the drain hole with her toe, which immediately prompted the long-anticipated retch session. This, too, went on for longer than expected.

Dykstra heard the water stop at least, and shortly afterward the sound of a hair dryer. Her heart swelled with relief, for she believed that deranged people do not use hair dryers. She had, however, only worked briefly for Marlene Ciampi.

Who emerged, looking scrubbed and wholesome, except around the eyes, smelling of expensive soap and the best shampoo, and dressed in baggy khaki trousers and a black cotton sweater. She sat through a straightforward interview with a police detective, and then she was whisked away, quite passively, by Dykstra and a covey of hefty VIP-section Osborniks, down the service elevator, out the back way, and into a waiting limo. The press, of course, was in full cry, the combination of celebrity and violence being without question the most desirable of all news stories. But Marlene's troops were skilled at penetrating and evading their wolf packs.

Shortly after they departed the scene, in a black van with smoked windows, a cell phone rang. Dykstra answered and said, "It's your husband."

Marlene stared for a few seconds at the instrument extended to her as if she were unaware of its function, then took it, listened, and said, "Yes, I'm fine… Really… No, I didn't kill him. He killed himself… Yes… Yes… No, I have to go back to the office and write up my report… No, it can't… Yes, I'll see you tonight." All this was delivered with the affect of a recorded announcement. Dykstra and the other people in the limo cast covert glances of admiration at their leader: after something like that, to be so cool! No one said much during the rest of the trip.

Karp put the Solette affair, and his wife's part in it, out of his mind for the rest of the day. He was good at this putting away, from long practice, for if he had gone into uxorious conniptions every time his darling had diced with death, he would not have had enough emotional resources left to run a hot dog stand. Besides, he also knew from experience that Marlene detoxified best when left alone. She would need him eventually, but not just yet. He paged his daughter, leaving a message to call immediately, and called the twins' school and said that he would be picking them up himself. Thus, he put into action the Karp Family Post-Traumatic Stress Coping Mechanism, a regrettably well-oiled machine, and hoped for the best.