"Yes, it's called Thais That Bind," said Lucy casually, at which Warren, who took an inordinate delight in puns (in English-any fool could pun in Chinese), cracked up and fell in love, in that order. Warren's laughter infected the two girls, and soon they were all three staggering against walls, clinging to each other, convulsed by the hysteria-so irritating to the adult world-that is peculiar to the adolescent psyche.

Lucy was not entirely lost in herself, however, and had been keeping an eye on the two ma jai. They were standing a half block away, conversing and glaring at the three kids through their dark gla.s.ses. They did not like that there was laughter going on, since there was at least a possibility that some of it was directed against them. As Lucy watched, they seemed to make a decision and started to move rapidly toward the group, pushing through the Mott Street crowds, who were quick to yield the way.

Lucy sobered instantly, grabbed the two other kids by their arms, and tugged them north on Mott Street. The two gangsters now pulled close enough to nearly tread on their heels and started to talk nasty.

"Look at the three girls," said the thin one. "Which one do you want?"

Pockface said, "Only one girl has an a.s.s worth f.u.c.king. One is too big and the other has none at all."

And much worse as they moved up Mott and across Ca.n.a.l. Warren kept mumbling out of the side of his mouth, asking for an explanation: Why are these guys following you? Why don't you call a cop? What's going on? Where are we going? To all of which Lucy replied with soothing words and urged them all along west on the north side of Ca.n.a.l Street, nearly running, Warren pale and tripping over his feet, the thugs dancing around them, poking them, calling out the colorful obscenities with which Chinese is so plentifully supplied. They collected disapproving glances from the shoppers and merchants along the way, but no one interfered.

Lucy judged her distances and nudged Warren in the ribs.

"Warren, the Pearl River Market is coming up. When we get there, cut and run in. They won't follow you."

"No, I'll stay with you," said Warren, surprising both of them as the words came out. His gla.s.ses were misted with strenuous perspiration. Lucy frowned. She had never been gazed at with devotion before, and it made her cross.

"Warren, just go! It's a plan. We'll be all right. Now . . . run!" She shoved him away, and he vanished into the large Chinese food store. In the same motion she spun and shouted at the gangsters, "Gou pi! Cao ni ma bi!"

It took a second for the gangsters to understand that a skinny white girl had yelled at them, in public, "Dog fart! f.u.c.k your mother's p.u.s.s.y!" In that instant Lucy (and a split second later, Janice) were off like deer, the gangsters pursuing. So intent were they on the chase that they failed to notice when they crossed Baxter Street, which marks the border, in gangland, between China and Vietnam.

Halfway to the next street, Lucy slowed; Janice looked in panic over her shoulder to see what was wrong and discovered that the two ma jai had disappeared.

Gasping for breath, hands on her knees, Janice demanded, "What happened? Where are they?"

"Someplace they'd probably rather not be," Lucy replied, gasping. "It's okay, we're cool now."

At this Janice Chen, who had been holding herself in with great effort since Doyers Street, exploded.

"Cool? What the h.e.l.l do you mean, cool? What are you doing to me? What's happening? Who were those guys and what did they want? Where did they go? I swear, Lucy, I'll strangle you if you ever pull anything like this again." And more in the same vein, with the waterworks thrown in. Janice finally collapsed into a heap on the pavement, leaning against a wall. Lucy squatted next to her.

"They were trying to send you a message, Janice."

"What? Who? What message?"

"Whoever shot those guys. They want your family to know they can pick you up whenever they want."

"Why me? Why not you?"

"Because it's your store, Janice. They might have figured that if somebody saw something, it was a family member. Remember how that guy looked up when Mary panicked? And n.o.body knows I was there. Which is good, because they won't be keeping an eye on me and maybe I can find out what's going-"

"Stop it!" Janice shrieked. "I can't stand this mystery stuff like it was some game you're amusing yourself with. It's not TV, Lucy. It's not one of your books."

She stood up abruptly and brushed herself off. "I don't want this to be happening. I just want to be a regular person and let other people worry about murders and s.h.i.t."

She looked so miserable standing there, weeping, that Lucy reached out to put an arm around her shoulder, but the other girl shrugged it away.

"No! Just leave us alone, huh? Just leave us alone!"

She ran off in the direction of the Asia Mall. Thus did Lucy learn what her mother well knew about the heroine business: that, unlike in books and movies, the people one saved were not always grateful. Rather the opposite, in fact.

It was part of Karp's management style to appear unannounced at various bureau offices at the end of the day, to pick up the kind of gossip that would not ordinarily reach the ears of the D.A. and to generally spread the sort of terror without which prosecutorial organizations tend to get lazy and sloppy, as he had recently demonstrated in the case of People v. Ragosi. He stopped by the Felony Bureau, to find the Felony chief, Sullivan, gone for the day, amused himself by poking a few sticks into various anthills, and then went down the hall to Homicide.

Ray Guma was sprawled out on the green couch in the bureau chief's office when Karp walked in, not dissuaded by Roland's growled "Go away!" Guma was drinking from a giant container of coffee, and Karp could smell the bourbon in it from the doorway. It was known that Guma often softened the day with a snort after the Supreme Court judges had gone home, which they all liked to do around four, and the place reverted to its natural proprietors. No one begrudged Guma this frailty. He had not been known to appear drunk and incapable in court (drunk, yes; incapable, never) and besides, he was from another age, which the younger men, reared on the movies of that epoch, suspected was tougher, cleaner, and supported a n.o.bler masculinity than their own deplorable era.

"What can I do for you, Butch?" asked Roland, smiling like a haberdashery salesman.

Karp smiled back and took one of Roland's side chairs. "Nothing, Roland, I just wanted to tell you guys again how much I enjoyed the performance up in Jack's conference room the other day. Did you rehea.r.s.e that, or was it improvised?"

"He asked for it," said Roland dismissively. "Guy's full of s.h.i.t anyway. When was the last time Rackets won a case? I don't mean bookies and that c.r.a.p. He's just trying to horn in on my murder, like I'm going to deal him in."

"Meanwhile, you got s.h.i.t on the case. Guma? What's the good word among the wise guys this week?"

Guma said, "The prairie dog sends signals to the hawk."

The other two men stared at him. "Goom, put away that coffee, for now," said Roland.

"The prairie dog sends signals to the hawk," Guma repeated with emphasis. "The hawk's trying to eat him, and he's sending up signals, help the hawk out a little. It's amazing."

"That's it," said Roland, "I'm calling 911. It's time for the rubber room."

"What're you talking about, Guma?" Karp asked.

"Prairie dogs. They live in these burrows, and they come out to feed on the ground. And the hawk flies over them, he's figuring one of the prairie dogs might not spot him up there in the sky, he dives and bang! Lunch. If he figures right, if the little guys don't really see him, he'll nail the dog before it gets into the hole. If not, no payoff. The bird has to fly up there again and start over. The only thing is, the hawk can't make too many mistakes, he'll knock himself out, maybe he'll starve, or his chicks'll starve. So-and here's the funny thing-the prairie dog knows this; so if it spots a hawk up there, it'll like make a little nod of its head. The hawk sees this, it doesn't dive on that prairie dog, doesn't waste the effort."

The two other men exchanged looks. Roland said, "Guma, what the f.u.c.k are you talking about?"

Guma ignored this and continued, his voice low and gravelly; Karp listened, fascinated. This was a different Guma. "So you have to ask, what's in it for the prairie dog? What the f.u.c.k does he care about some hawk, the hawk spends the day whacking his pals? Hey, but it's dog eat dog out there. So to speak. The prairie dogs are competing for turf, I mean real turf, 'cause they eat gra.s.s, bushes, whatever. So the dog figures, the hawk's gotta eat somebody, let him eat the guy who's a little slower than me, doesn't look around enough, too busy stuffing his face to check out the sky. I'll help him out, no skin off my a.s.s, and plus, there'll be more leaves and s.h.i.t for me."

He took a long swig from his cup and was silent.

Roland said, "That was good, Guma. It's always nice to learn something about the world we live in. Now, would you please get the f.u.c.k out of here and sleep it off!"

Karp said, "No, Roland, Guma had a point, didn't you, Goom?"

"The point is," said Guma slowly, "the point is, things are not always like they seem. You gotta have all the connections or it don't make sense, like the prairie dog tipping off the hawk. And we don't."

"You're talking about Catalano, right?" asked Karp.

Guma gave him a long, bloodshot stare. "Of course, what the f.u.c.k else're we talking about? Like I said before, this is a family thing, it's got f.u.c.k all to do with the grand jury."

"So what's going on in the family?" Karp asked.

"Wait a minute," said Roland. "I want to know where you got all that s.h.i.t about the prairie dogs. I thought you were a sports and p.u.s.s.y man."

"I am, Roland," said Guma with grave dignity. "But man does not live by sports and p.u.s.s.y alone. For your information, I got it off a PBS program."

"I don't believe this," said Roland, batting the side of his head with the heel of his hand. "Guma watches PBS? What're you, joining the ACLU, too?"

"I watch nature programs, Roland. I watch every f.u.c.king thing they got, David Attenborough, Nature, National Geographic, Wild Kingdom, I watch f.u.c.king Nova, they got an animal program on. What, you're surprised?" He finished the cup and put it down. "It's no big thing. a.s.suming I don't score with any beautiful young women, and you know they're all out there just looking for fat, ugly fifty-eight-year-old lawyers with no money, I go back to my miserable, s.h.i.tty apartment and I watch. It's relaxing. There's a whole world out there with no f.u.c.king money involved. Eat and be eaten, just like the G.o.dd.a.m.n city, except they don't take a percentage. And the lion, or the f.u.c.king hyena, wants to get laid, he doesn't have to make any conversation, he doesn't have to develop his communication skills, he doesn't have to respect her in the f.u.c.king a.m., he just does it, and the b.i.t.c.h gets the dinner, too. What can I say, it relaxes me."

"I knew it," said Roland, "he gets off on the animal f.u.c.k scenes."

"Get back to the family, Guma," said Karp. "What kind of family thing?"

"Oh, yeah. The Bollanos." He paused, as if in thought, or maybe, Karp imagined, the old cells weren't firing quite as fast as they used to.

"You know," he began musingly, not yet ready to focus, "Phil Garrahy didn't waste five minutes worrying about the Mob. He thought it was grandstanding, like Tom Dewey did. f.u.c.king Dewey got Luciano deported for what? A nickel pimp charge, and that was the only racket Lucky wasn't even in. Had a big impact on prost.i.tution in New York, no more wh.o.r.es in town after that, which is not surprising because practically the only thing Luciano wasn't involved in was pimping. Phil had a clear sense of what was important, and the wise guys understood that. They did their thing and Phil did his, because he knew that, whatever the f.u.c.king New York Times says, it's better for the city to have vice organized, private, out of sight. Which is why in the old days, you didn't have what you got today, with the drugs and the wh.o.r.es in your face all the time, and the punks blasting away out on the street. And this b.u.m, Colombo, he's got a hair up his a.s.s, he wants to make sure n.o.body confuses him with the Mob family. I ask you one question: Did he play any ball, Colombo? No, he was on the f.u.c.king debating club. He was the kind of kid got his face pushed in the mud in the schoolyard, probably ran to the nuns with it. Never trust a D.A. didn't play ball, they're looking to prove something, they got a d.i.c.k on them-"

"The family, Goom," said Karp patiently. Ordinarily he could listen to Guma talk about the Mob and the old days for hours, but he had things he had to do. Guma switched neatly into the new track without a b.u.mp.

"Yeah, Eddie Cat. What I said up there in Jack's, I was p.i.s.sed, you know? f.u.c.king Anselmo. What I'm thinking now is, is it reasonable to a.s.sume the don was in the dark here, and the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking he did know, not that he told Pigetti, whack this guy, but he let it out to Joe that maybe it would be a good idea. I can't see Pigetti just whacking Eddie Cat without any cover at all, is why. If he wanted to move in on the Bollanos, he would've taken out the old man and the kid and Eddie. So the don's not clean, is my thinking. You know Little Sally's a nutcase, everybody knows that. But let me tell you something else: he's following in the footsteps there."

"The don, you mean?" asked Karp. "I thought he was this icy calculator."

"Oh, I'll give you icy calculator; s.h.i.t, yes. But also the word is maybe the good ten and the three of hearts slipped under the couch while he's playing, he didn't notice it. Besides that, he's-Big Sally, I mean-he's not a nice guy."

Roland burst out laughing. "Oh, wait, stop the presses! He's not a nice guy? Christ, Guma, he's a f.u.c.king Mafia don! He's supposed to be a choir boy?"

Guma ignored this and continued talking to Karp. "These guys, they're, when you get right down to it, real conservative. The family's over in the corner there; they might whack each other, they might whack a girl gets in the way, but they leave la famiglia alone. You understand this, Butch, Sicilians and the family. They sell wh.o.r.es, they use wh.o.r.es, they sell dope, whatever, but they don't think of themselves as bad guys. Okay, so there's rumors about Big Sal, always was, that he's like bent, from way back. Not short eyes, not a f.a.ggot, nothing like that, but there's a twist there. Big Sally would go to some lengths to see it didn't get out. With the big guys, there can't be what they call an infamia, they won't do business with a guy like that, and no business means . . ." He made a thumbs-down gesture, suggesting early retirement under a layer of paving material.

"So, you're thinking what?" Karp asked. "That Eddie was going to spill this whatever? That's why he was killed?"

"No, I'm not saying that, necessarily, but it was something like that," said Guma reflectively. "You hear stories, too. They don't have much domestic felicity at the Bollanos, which is not that common either, the cugines like peace and quiet they come home from a hard day at the rackets, and the girls ain't into calling the cops they get rapped in the chops a couple times. So, that could hook up, too, someone's f.u.c.king someone, I mean for real, in a bed. But we don't know. It's like I was saying about the prairie dogs and the hawks. There's a message there for somebody, but we can't read it yet. We don't even know who's eating who. But that kind of stuff, that's where we should be looking."

Marlene, driving back to Manhattan on autopilot, thinking about selective amnesia, thinking Jesus f.u.c.king Christ I tried to kill my mother, and about her daughter, the ticking bomb. Of course, Marlene hadn't actually connected with that hot iron, but on the other hand, the kid had access to more sophisticated weaponry. The pistol in the glove compartment was sending out malign rays. Wondering why your kids hate you is a winless game, but one with the addictive qualities of a slot machine. She turned on the stereo, cranked the volume up, punched b.u.t.tons, rejected rock 'n' roll, immature mooning after love, music of youthful rebellion, yes, she really needed more of that just now, settled on WQXR, Haydn sweetly blaring, a symphony. She blanked her mind, a necessary technique in many professions, including hers, and let the harmonies ma.s.sage her. By the time she reached the Queens Midtown Tunnel, the yammering in her head had been reduced to the usual low buzz of demonic voices conveying the usual neurotic messages, familiar as road signs: you're wasting your life, you're making your family miserable, you're going to end up dead in an alley or in prison; your kids will get shot by a maniac, bad mother baaaad mother, worthless, worthless, worthless . . .

The traffic gelled at the entrance to the tunnel, and Marlene called the dog into the front seat. "Sweety, come talk to me. I need the wisdom of the deep animal spirits." He came up from the rear deck of the station wagon and, with a damp sigh, draped himself across the front seat, his hindquarters down on the floor and his immense, hideous head resting on Marlene's thigh, or rather upon the old towel that she had placed across her legs. She stroked him behind his velvety ears.

"Oh, tell me about memory, Sweety. How can we live with each other if we can't agree about what happened? Now that I know I'm suppressing stuff, I wonder what I suppressed with Butch, or Lucy. I realize sometimes the family walks on eggs around me, and of course Butch is the world champion of papering over, pretty rich for a professional confronter of crime, but not in the sacred hearth, oh, no, the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and Lucy, who knows what's cooking in there? I could've done something horrible and never remembered it. It would have to be pretty bad compared to what I can remember. And they talk about what trauma does to kids, and I think Lucy, a year old, some maniac grabs her out of her stroller and Jim Raney blows the guy's brains all over her, four years old, her dear Mom has a little nervous breakdown over practically getting raped by her boss, drags her out of town barely functional, at seven she procures a murder weapon for a kid who kills a cop, Mom covers that up, of course, and never mention, at ten she watches Mom blow away a guy who's after one of her clients, right there on the street, and a little later a friend of hers gets murdered and stuffed in a trunk by a bent cop, and the next year she watches Tran shoot a guy dead and even helps a little, and now what? I'm upset she's a little tense, a little withdrawn? Doesn't want to make fudge with Mommy anymore? I should be thankful she's still in the church, but G.o.d forgive me, that irks me, too, like she is just doing it to p.i.s.s me off, the famous religious failure, I can do it, Mom, and you can't, nonny nonny nonny, oh, Jesus, is that an unworthy thought, or what, Sweety? Christ in heaven, how does this c.r.a.p get into my brain? No, she's sincere, otherwise she'd probably be a serial killer already. And why can't I, Sweety? Why doesn't the grace come to me anymore? It used to. Come on, Sweets, you must have some religious ideas. Is there a secret Church of Dog? Does Dog exist, as the dyslexic agnostics ask? No, you don't need it, because you don't know you're going to die. Or maybe you do. How the h.e.l.l would we know? We can't even talk to each other and we can talk."

The car entered the filthy, gleaming tube, and the radio was cut off, leaving Marlene with static, with the swish of traffic outside and the stentorian breathing of the dog inside.

"Meanwhile, Sweets, let's use this moment. In a couple minutes, unless there's a tanker explosion that fries us all to a crisp or a crack in the tube, which is also something to worry about-of course, in that case you would heroically save me by dragging me out in your mighty jaws-but absent that, we will emerge into bright sunlight on Third and go uptown to talk to Harry Bello and get a lecture full of good sense, and it really is an absolutely gorgeous day, gorgeous, far too good for New York, if you ask me, and we will feel good again, through the dark tunnel into G.o.d's light, like Dante. Here we go."

And it was so, the sunlight flooded the broad canyons, Haydn came back with the final chords, and the fruity QXR voice informed us all that it had been the Ninety-fourth Symphony, called The Surprise, which made Marlene chuckle and bounce the dog's head on her knee, thinking, yeah, it always is a surprise, the good stuff amid the s.h.i.t, and how pathetically grateful I am for it. The dog shuddered in delight and s...o...b..red into G.o.d's lap.

Chapter 6.

THE OFFICES OF OSBORNE GROUP, INC., were housed in a twenty-four-story building on Third in the Sixties. The building was an undistinguished crate in the usual degraded International Style (gla.s.s over steel, and on the columns and in the lobby marble facings colored like pale toast and as thick), the den of small firms in fields representative of the city's business, including especially the innumerable parasites that cling like lice to the creative spirit-agents, producers, publishers, packagers, ad agencies, tax lawyers-plus a scatter of legal and medical professionals, and on the ground floor behind gla.s.s windows a discount brokerage and a health club. It was a respectable if not prestigious building and right for a security agency that liked to think of itself as having some cla.s.s.

Marlene had her own marked parking s.p.a.ce in the underground garage, which was a nice perk, and meant, among other things, that she could shop at Bloomies and get home without schlepping packages on the bus or trying to hail a cab or taking out a second mortgage to pay for parking. Many women in New York would work for Satan to get a deal like that, and Marlene knew it and was grateful that she only had to work for Lou Osborne, who was a pretty decent guy. In fact, she only had to report to her pal and former partner, Harry Bello.

Who was in, and looking good, as he usually did these days. During his last years on the cops Harry had run into some bad luck and got into the sauce and done some dreadful things, things he couldn't live with, and been in the process of committing slow suicide. They'd called him Dead Harry then. Marlene wasn't sure whether she or G.o.d's infinite mercy had saved Harry, but saved he was, now a prosperous security executive, and good at it, and while remaining a reliable pal, not in the least willing to cut Marlene any slack. She found his paternal concern alternately chafing (she already had, for Christ's sake, one semi-oppressive Italian father) and comforting (he was also the smartest detective she had ever met, fearless, and loyal). The arrangement was that Marlene ran her own business how she liked and worked for Osborne under Harry's nominal supervision, straight security for organizations and the well-to-do, celebrities even, as Marlene had a rep of the kind that the golden people delighted in, a sort of violence-chic. Which she herself despised, but it paid the bills.

He was wearing an expensive-looking gray suit and a blue striped tie, and he'd gained some weight in the last year or so, which he had needed to do. Not much hair left on Harry, and he still had those dark, sunken cop eyes, but his face was now healthy, rather than damp-clay swarthy, and he no longer looked like a fresh corpse.

Marlene greeted him with a kiss, went to the little refrigerator, opened a c.o.ke, and flopped in one of Harry's leather sling chairs.

He said, "You know, you're supposed to call in, we send you on an appointment. How did it go?"

He meant the abortion clinic. "I was my usual charming self and a credit to the firm," said Marlene. "I don't think I made a sale. In fact, I think Ms. Hyphen-Name expected something very different. More of a sister, which I was not."

"Well, you must've done something right, because she called this morning and signed up. Site hardening, security service, the works. They caught two of the guys there, did you hear?"

"Wait a minute, she hired us? I thought she was going to throw me out of there."

Harry indicated amus.e.m.e.nt by crinkling his eyes and twitching the left side of his mouth up a quarter of an inch.

"What's so funny?" Marlene was a skilled reader of Harry's minimalist emotional field.

"You never can tell the effect you're having on people. Back on the Job, I used to bang away at some witness, trying to get cooperation, and it was no, no, I didn't see nothing, I wasn't there, and a couple days later you get a call, they want to sing. Meanwhile, who's Vivian?"

Marlene had to laugh. "That was cute. Where did you find out about old Vivian?"

"Woman's been calling here every couple hours," said Harry. "Won't give her full name, asks for you, no, n.o.body else can help her. The girl up front figured it might be something we should know about, so she told me. So?"

"She's from the shelter. No, don't roll your eyes at me, Harry! Showed up in a blanket and a pair of panties, been abused. Vivian Fein, she calls herself, maiden name, and she didn't strike me as someone who normally goes by the maiden name. She tried to hire me to investigate the suicide of her father. Gerald Fein." Marlene waited for Harry to make the connection.

"Not Jumping Jerry? You got Jumping Jerry's daughter in that shelter?"

"Yep. She was serious about it, too. Had a diamond the size of a golf ball she was going to give me as a retainer."

Harry didn't appear to hear this. "Jesus, that takes me back. Jumping Jerry. It was what? Nineteen sixty, right? Right, yeah, because it was my last year in the city before I transferred out to Brooklyn."

"You were in on the investigation?"

"Nah, I was in Auto at the time. But there was an investigation. Fein was mobbed up-you knew that?"

"I recall something of that nature."

"Yeah, what they call a Mafia lawyer. So the thought was that he might've had some help going off. But nothing turned up, and we had to let it go down as a legit suicide. Arnie Mulhausen had the investigation."

"You remember this? I'm impressed, Harry."

Bello smiled deprecatingly. "It's a habit. But I tell you, it's not that impressive because stuff is starting to slip. I'm trying to think of Mulhausen's partner and I can't. Stocky guy, Irish, thin red hair. Donovan? Donohue? Something like that, and he had a nickname, B something . . . Billy-club? No. Anyway, Mulhausen pa.s.sed while I was still working out of Bed-Stuy, so what's-his-name would be the guy to see. Dolan? I'll think of it."

"Guy to see? What, you want me to do this?"

"Why not?" replied Bello easily. "She's got means. We're running a business here, Marlene. It's got to be a long project, lots of billable hours at the top rate, and we got partic.i.p.ation on a sliding scale based on our billables. She wants you, we know that, so go for it."