Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

Marlene grinned back. "Being nasty and unreasonable? I guess."

"No, I mean figuring out the right thing to do and then doing it regardless of who it hurts, even if it hurts you."

"That's a moral stance, not a metier. I really don't know what mine is. I can do a lot of different things pretty well, but none of them seem to make me particularly happy." Marlene laughed. "But enough of me. What about you, baby? You know what you're going to do with your life more than any of us."

"Do I? Oh, yeah, the languages-obviously, I like to learn them, but for me that's like walking or breathing. It's not life's work, and also obviously, you don't see me bursting at the seams with joy."

"No, we don't. It's depressing, too, and guilt-making. You know I always think every downer in the family is my fault."

"Well, it is, Mom, and you better believe we hate you for it."

"Thank you, darling. But I wish, I don't know, I wish you were more gay."

"What!"

"Oh, Christ, I don't mean gay gay! I mean lighter, more like a teenager. I mean you are only seventeen. I mean when I was seventeen…"

Lucy put her hands over her ears and said, "La la la la la…!"

"Oh, stop that! You know very well what I mean."

"Yeah, I do." Lucy sobered instantly and bit nervously at a ragged fingernail. "How can I explain this without sounding like a nut? Look, you know the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible?"

"Of course. What about it?"

"Well, you know the right-wing fundamentalists, that's an important story to them. They claim God wants different people to stay different, and that's their interpretation of the story. It's why they object to the UN, and racial mixing."

"Okay, but they're crazy. What does that have to do with you?"

The girl looked down, tapped nervously on the edge of her plate. Then she raised her head and looked directly at Marlene with eyes that were like hot copper pennies.

"Right, it's symbolic, it's a metaphor, but there's also something real under it. Language is… I don't know, a mystery, and partly it's a religious mystery. 'In the beginning was the Word,' you know? What does that mean? And like the Pentecost, when they all spoke in tongues. Language comes from meat, but it's not meat itself. No one understands why there are so many of them or what that means either. But, Mom, the thing is, I think God is putting Babel together again. In my head. That's what I'm for. I'm an instrument, for some use. And I don't know what it is. I'm supposed to wait to be told. You can see why that would make it hard to get into teenage chitchat and hanging out. I mean it takes all my energy."

Lucy rose and picked up the recorder. "Let me get going on this." She started to leave, but before she could, Marlene stood up, too, and gave her a long, silent hug and kissed the shorn head, half-terrified of its contents.

It was not a cheerful group that gathered in the Karp loft the following day, a Saturday afternoon, the guests having been selected for qualities other than congeniality. Tran and Marlene were in a kitchen corner, speaking low in French; Father Dugan was talking with Lucy, catching up with her academic exploits of the past weeks and drinking a good deal of better wine than he was used to. Somewhat later, the four of them were huddled in the living room, speaking in low voices, in both French and English, with Lucy jumping in as occasional translator. Dugan and Tran had, of course, both heard a good deal about one another, but this was their first vis-a-vis. To Marlene's great relief, they seemed to get along, both of them being basically conspirators. Plots thickened.

Karp, Clay Fulton, Guma, and Murrow were meanwhile sitting around the dining room table, amid a litter of beer bottles, drinking and swabbing tortilla chips through Marlene's salsa. Fulton loved Marlene's salsa, but did not like what he was hearing, the business with Firmo, the gold watches, the hookup between Cisco Lomax and Firmo, and how that connected (they thought) to bullets flying down the Henry Hudson Parkway in the middle of a rainy night. Fulton was silent and glowering when Karp finished with the story of the visit to the Cooley home.

After half a minute or so, Karp asked, "Well? What do you think?"

"What do I think? I think you got a lot of nerve dragging me in here for this horseshit."

"It's not horseshit, Clay," Karp relied. "It's the only story that explains the facts. Cisco Lomax screwed Brendan Cooley out of the collar of his life, the collar his father couldn't make, and when he saw him driving by in the night, he lost his head, took off after him, and blew him up."

"You want to think that, fine! There's a thing called a grand jury you use for checking out if someone maybe did a crime. You think you got a case, take it to them. That's the way the system works."

"I know how the system works," snapped Karp. "The problem is the system isn't working in this case, which is why we're having this cockamamy meeting. There's only one person we know about who can testify to the connection between Lomax and Cooley before the parkway shooting, and that's John Carey Williams, aka Canman."

"No, you only think that. You don't actually know shit. And, anyway, what the hell do you expect me to do about it? Crawl through the tunnels and catch him myself? The guy is already the subject of a major search, for chrissake. He's the chief suspect in the bum slashings."

"If the cops catch Canman, he'll never see a courtroom."

"Oh, right, your theory about Cooley knocking off bums to cover his story. I mean really, Butch. Take a breath and just think that through. You're off the rails there completely."

Karp said, "Think what you want. Meanwhile, you asked me what I want you to do. Well, what I really want you to do is start a full-scale investigation of Brendan Cooley, a real one, not another half-assed whitewash."

"That's out of the question."

"I know. And I'm sorry about that, I really am. How about this, though? You've got access to personnel records. Find out where he was the days those victims got it. It shouldn't take long, and if you're right, an alibi should turn up. On the other hand, if he was off-shift and unobserved at the time of every single one of the six killings…"

Fulton gritted his teeth. "All right, I guess I can do that. Is that all?"

"No. When we pick up Canman, I want to turn him over to you personally."

"You know where Canman is?" asked Fulton in a tone and with an expression that made his astonishment plain.

"Yeah, we do. We have contacts, let's say, in the tunnel community. Father Dugan does, I mean. You make the arrest and keep him in your sight until we can get him in front of a grand jury. How about it?"

Fulton scowled and thought for a long moment. "Okay, you got it. But I didn't hear any of this other shit. And-last time-that is all I'm going to do in connection with this abortion." He stood up. "Thanks for the beers."

"There's one other thing," said Karp.

"I told you…"

"No, this has nothing to do with Cooley. You said you had responsibility for locating high-crime areas on the computer and reinforcing the cops there, drug corners and that sort of thing."

"Yeah, I do. What about it?"

"There's a character, a person we'd like to see some pressure put on."

"A dealer?"

"Well, he's into a lot of things," said Karp smoothly. "Name's Ralphie Paxton. He's at 542 West Forty-fifth, apartment 3B. We want a lot of cops on the street for a week or so, busting people, frisking the usual suspects."

"Uh-huh. Well, a neighborhood like that, we wouldn't need much excuse. I can do that, no problem. You want to tell me what it's about?"

"Do you want to know?"

For the first time in a while, Fulton favored Karp with his familiar toothy grin and deep chuckle. He waved a big finger in Karp's face. "You're getting too smart for your own good, Stretch. I'm going to have to lock you up one day."