Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

The boys were standing in the doorway looking at her, their expressions like those of refugee children staring through barbed wire. She sat on the bed and spread her arms.

"Come'ere handsomes!"

They sat on either side of her, and she kissed them both.

"Where were you?" asked Zak.

"I was in a hospital."

"Were you sick?"

"Sort of."

"Are you going to die?" Giancarlo here, always cutting to the chase.

"Eventually, but not until you both learn to clean up your room or get married, whichever comes first. Who's in the kitchen?"

"Aemilia," said Zak. "She's making us fried chicken and french fries."

"Good. All the important food groups. Is she nice?"

A pair of shrugs. "Okay," said Giancarlo. "She mainly leaves us alone. Mom…?"

"Yes?"

"Are we ever going to get back to regular again?"

"Regular like how?"

"Oh, you know… all of us together, and Lucy and all of us having dinner and fun and talking."

"I sure hope so," said Marlene. "But, look, I'm the problem here, not you or Dad. I'll be straight with you guys, okay? I made a mistake, and it got some people killed and hurt, and other stuff happened that kind of knocked me off my feet. I'm not good for you all to be around right now. Lucy is staying with Uncle Tran in the country for a while, and I'm going to take off for a little while, too."

"You're getting divorced, aren't you?" Giancarlo's eyes started with tears. His brother was impassive. The emotional life of the twins was not really his concern. Zik handled that end of things.

"I am not. I just need a time-out, just like you need a time-out once in a while."

"You could take it in your room."

"No, grown-ups can't take a time-out in their rooms. They have to go away for a while. But, look." Here she grasped a hand from each in her two hands. "I swear to you I will fix myself up and then we will all be regular together."

And she jollied them and got them smiling, which she could always do (skilled phony that she was), and got them into the kitchen for their meal, then threw some things into a suitcase and stuffed into a duffel bag clothes that never imagined that they would ever be so stuffed, then dashed down the hallway to her office and grabbed up a pile of mail and tossed it into her bag. She found the lead and clipped it to the dog's collar. Someone to talk to. A quick good-bye, a flurry of kisses, and she was out.

The driver goggled when the dog jumped in and curled up on the seat. He was about to say something when Marlene got in, slammed the door, and thrust two $100 bills at him.

"It's just a dog," she said.

Like a playing card snapping over, his thoughts changed from worrying whether the dog would rip the damned upholstery and get him into trouble with the limo service, to contemplating what he would buy with the money.

That accomplished, Marlene dabbed at her damp eyes with a tissue, then poured and drank off a glass of crackling dry Chablis and heard as if for the first time the voice that said, oh, hell, you've had two, you might as well finish the bottle. No, not quite yet. Osman wanted to know their destination.

"I don't know. Some hotel. The Plaza. Go up Broadway." He nodded and pulled away, out to Canal, then north on Broadway.

Just a couple of nights, get myself together. Taper off a little. These were her thoughts, and to keep her mind occupied with trivia, she started to open her mail.

There must be, she thought, a jungle telegraph that tells everyone when you get a hold of a chunk of money. She had never received mail like this before. Business envelopes from people skilled in managing money, or stealing it. Prospectuses from firms needing capitalization, in larger, thicker ones. Large, creamy envelopes, almost as rich as leather, with invitations to gather at cultural events and give money to worthy causes. This appealed to her. A worthy cause. Here was one. The New York Foundation for the Arts. What more worthy, and it was tonight. At the Regency. She might be worthless herself, but she could still do some good. Besides, it would be an opportunity to wear some of those clothes, and there would be champagne. Here she could test her resolve. A couple of glasses, three at most, write a check, show the flag, and away. Like a regular person.

Traffic stopped Karp at a corner. for the first time since he had fled the clinic, he looked around to see where he was. A glance at a street sign located him in Murray Hill. He knew this corner-that deli, that chicken place, that saloon, the red awning in front of the Italian restaurant. He crossed the street, went through a glass door into a tiny entranceway, found and pressed a little button.

"Yeah?" said a gravelly voice out of the rosette of holes in dull brass.

"Guma, it's Butch."

A pause. "Butch Karp?"

"No, Butch Stellarezze, the numbers guy. Let me in, huh?"

The buzzer sounded. Karp went through and took the creaky elevator to six. The hallway he entered was dark and peeling, lit by a single fortywatt bulb. Water stains splotched the ceiling. This was a rent-controlled building, and the landlord was not generous. Raymond Guma was waiting in his open doorway. Karp had been prepared for some changes-he had not seen Guma (and he felt the shame of it now) in over six months-but he was startled by the man's appearance. Guma had always been a stocky, fleshy man, a combination of Yogi Berra and something out of an illustration in Rabelais or Boccaccio. Now his flesh hung slackly on his frame, his once-generous belly shrunken almost to nothing. He was wearing a velour bathrobe in dark green, gray sweatpants, and a white T-shirt, none of them too clean.

"Been a while, Butch," said Guma, shaking Karp's hand. "Come on in. Don't mind the mess. The girl's coming in tomorrow." He stood aside to let Karp enter.

Smells of cigars and Scotch over the base pong of old apartment, unwashed clothes, of which a pile sat on a straight chair, a stink unpleasantly familiar, reminding Karp of forced childhood visits to aged relatives. When did Guma get old? He had retired barely a year ago, after forty-odd years prosecuting for the DA both here and in Brooklyn, and at the retirement party, a blast of historic dimensions, he had still been the Mad Dog of Centre Street, the Goom, grabbing women, sucking down his Teacher's, singing in Italian, telling the old nasty jokes. Playing the clown. A pose. He was not, in fact, a clown. Among other things, he knew more about the New York Mob than anyone else on either side of the law and had taught Karp rather more than Karp wanted to learn about manipulating the legal system.

Guma led Karp into the living room, pointed to an armchair, closed the door to the kitchen (not before Karp had seen its piles of soiled dishes, the brown bags overflowing with garbage, the stacks of pizza boxes), and sat down on a dingy sofa with a little sigh. It was dim in the room; the avenue just visible through three big windows dressed with venetian blinds, all at different heights, one crooked. The sofa faced a large TV set, switched on with the volume a low grumble, the screen showing thousands of white birds in some rookery. Karp recalled that Guma was a nature-documentary fan, a surprising taste in one so thoroughly urban.

"Want a drink?" Guma asked. "You look like you need one."

"I'm fine. You go ahead yourself."

"Sure? Okay, I think I will." A fifth was on the coffee table among the stacks of black videotape boxes, and Guma splashed a little of it into a squat tumbler, raised it, said, "Absent friends," and took a sip.

"You lost a little weight there, Goom. You feeling okay?"

"You mean besides the cancer? I'm doing great. Never better."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Yeah, well, the networks didn't pick it up for some reason." Guma shrugged, grinned, showing large, uneven teeth. "Hey, what the fuck-I'll go out with all my marbles intact." He held the glass up, swirled its contents. "Actually, they chopped a couple parts out, they say I'm in remission. I'm supposed to revamp my lifestyle, but I can't see the percentage in it, you know? If it comes back, it comes back." He plucked three-quarters of a Macanudo Lonsdale from a brown-glass ashtray and relit it.