“Well, Elmerâ”
“Goddammit, Karp, don't call me âElmer.' Pillman, everybody calls me Pillman.”
“OK, Pillman, what've I got? I've got you trying to queer my case on
Karavitch et al.
I've got you protecting a major narcotics trafficker and gunrunner. How's that for openers?”
“It's garbage. You're blowing smoke.”
“How about Miami? How about what you and Ruiz pulled on the SOBA people? I've got that too. Still garbage?”
Pillman licked his lips. He was even paler now. “How the fuck ⦠? You've got Ruiz, haven't you, or Hermo ⦠Ah, Christ, what a mess. Look, Karp, you got to understand, these people are informants. They're flaky, but they're valuable assets, you understand? OK, Ruiz runs dope and guns, but if not him, a million other guys. Meanwhile I keep a line on some really dangerous people, the kind who blow up airplanes and assassinate politicians.”
“What about assassinating New York police officers? Is that in the class of excusable crimes?”
Pillman snorted and twisted his mouth into a parody of a patronizing smile. “Karp, that was an accident. I mean real assassinationsâthe Kennedys, Kingâ”
“Pillman, stop it. Let's understand each other. You were naughty in Miami: illegal wiretaps, bag jobs, and worse: one of Ruiz's boys turned out somebody's lights just to build up machismo with the SOBAs.” Karp was spitballing, but he could see from the shocked expression on Pillman's face that it was an accurate guess. It's always murder, the unexplainable infraction, he thought, as he plowed on: “OK, that means you and this mutt are married. But I could care less, Pillman, believe me, about what went down then. It's none of my business. Are we in Miami? It's snowing up to your ass out there.
“But, Pillman, when your little shithead supplies the bomb that goes into a device that was designed, no accident, designed to kill the man defusing it, and did in fact kill said man, a New York City police officer performing his lawful duty, then I do care.”
Pillman's jaw had dropped and a look of unfeigned shock and incredulity had captured his face. “Wha-what?” he sputtered. “What was that about the bomb?”
“Ruiz supplied the Soviet grenade the Croats used to make their bomb. Come on, Pillman, don't tell me you didn't know that.”
“I didn't. I didn't, I swear to God! Oh, Christ, this is it, it's all over.”
Pillman was so genuinely distraught that Karp was taken aback. But he pressed on: leaning toward Pillman, he locked the other man's gaze to his and said, “You didn't, huh? OK, say I believe you on thatâhow did you know there was any connection between Ruiz and the Croats? Why are you screwing up the case?”
“I got a call. Right after we got the word on the hijack. The caller told me that two of the hijackers, Rukovina and Raditch, had been involved in that assassination of the Yugoslav consul-general in Marseilles. They'd arranged for and delivered Soviet weapons for the hit to a group of Croats in France. Ruiz had supplied the weapons.”
“Why Soviet weapons?”
“Why do you think? It makes Belgrade think the Sovs are supporting separatist movements in Yugoslaviaâso it works against the possibility of reconciliation between Yugoslavia and the Kremlin. It also stirs up the Croats and other separatist factions in Yugoslavia.”
“Who would want that?”
“Us for starters. Yugoslavia is a pain in the ass. They're a big hole in the south flank of NATO. They're neutral commies, but if they ever hooked up with the Warsaw Pact, which they could do tomorrow, it'd be a disaster. It'd be much better to have a set of reliable anticommunist states in that strip. Or so the thinking goes.”
“Whose thinking, Pillman? Who called you?”
Pillman squirmed and held out his hands in a supplicating gesture. “Come on, Karp. I can't tell you that. We're talking national security here. This is big time.”
“OK,” Karp said flatly.
“OK? What does that mean?”
“It means OK. What do I care what kind of games you're in as long as you're not playing on my court?
The only reason I give a damn about this spy bullshit is so I can find out who's queering my case and make them stop. They want to start wars? Fuck 'em, I'm 4-F.”
“But what are you going to do? I mean about Ruiz?”
“Ruiz killed a guy named Sorriendas and he did it in the County of New York, so if we can catch his ass I will put him up for murder two. If he wants to cut a deal by ratting on you, or whoever he's involved with in dope or guns, I will tell him to get fucked. People don't kill people in New York County on my watch and then walk, I don't care what kind of spying they did for somebody. If the narcos want to lay extra charges oh him, or the Feds, fine, that's their business. Everybody will get their shot.
“On the Karavitch thing, it's even simpler. If everybody would just get out of my way, it's a lock. They go to trial and let a jury decide. That's how I work. They pay me to put asses in jail, not run exposés. And you will stay out of my way from now on, Pillman, won't you?”
He smiled nastily and Pillman slowly nodded his head.
“So I think Elmer is cooled out, too,” Karp said to Marlene as she snuggled in his lap. It was an hour after Pillman had slunk out and Karp was feeling pretty good. He had proudly narrated the afternoon's events, only moderately distracted by the pressure of her small, hard breast jammed against him or the warm nuzzling on his neck.
“That's my man,” she breathed, “I'm sitting in his lap squirming like a snake, and he's recounting macho triumphs.” She ground her bottom into his lap. “Uh-oh, I can feel itâit's grown another two inches. Jesus, Butch, another day like today you'll have to tape it to your knee.”
“Marlene, why do you like to make fun of me? I already said I was sorry. And I thought you cared about this case.”
She drew back, looked at him seriously for a moment, and then kissed him on the cheek. “I do care, baby. And it's great about the evidence and Pillman and all the rest. Really. But my caring machine is wearing out, you know? I'm not like you, not straight and determined. There's something missing, you understand? In my life. And I'm being consumed by this damn claimâ”
“I said I'dâ”
“Yeah, yeah, you did, and I believe you, but stillâshit, I need a smoke.” She got up off his lap and began casting through her bag for her Marlboros. When she had lit up and the little office was blue with smoke, she added, “What I need is a break.”
He stood up. “And a break is what you're going to get. We're going up to V.T.'s this weekend, lie around, play in the snow ⦔
“Oh, Butch, really? Hot damn!” She ran to him and gave him a bear hug that flexed his ribs. “When do we leave? Oh, boy, this is just what we need, a little nestling under quilts in a four-poster, far from the madding crowd and the fucking city.”
He grinned and said, “We could leave right away. All we have to do is pack. I'll run up to midtown and rent a car.”
“Oh, don't do that, I got a car we could use. Let's go now! I'll pick you up outside your place in what? Forty-five minutes?”
“Marlene, you can't drive. You only have one eye.”
“The hell I can't. Half the people driving in New York are totally blind. Besides, it's only a couple of blocks. You can drive us up to the country.” Before he could object, she had blown him a kiss and run out.
An hour later Karp was dubiously eyeing the vehicle Marlene had driven up to the curb. It was a 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air, pink on the bottom and white on top. The rear end was considerably higher than the front, and it had wide-track Eagles on the rear wheels and speed-shop stickers all over the rear quarter windows.
“This is the car? Where did you get it?”
“It's Larry's, from Larry and Stu in the loft downstairs. They're in Bermuda for three weeks. Larry found it in Biloxi when he was down visiting his mom and fell in love with it. Isn't it great? Hey, let's get in, I'm freezing my genuggies off here.”
In fact, the temperature now hovered in the low teens and the air was filled with swirls of gritty snow. They loaded the suitcases into the car and got in. Karp sat behind the wheel, a custom job made of welded chain that was about half the size of an ordinary wheel. It had a large green plastic knob attached to it at the two o'clock position. Marlene slid in next to him. “Look, Butch, a make-out knob. That's so you can steer with one hand with your arm around your best girl.”
“Marlene, this is a stick shift,” he said, examining the huge chrome shaft sticking out of the floorboards. It had a white plastic skull on its end with red jeweled eyes.
“Yeah, right, a Hurst shifter. We got 446 cubes under the hood, too. Let's roll, big boy!” She looked at him oddly. “Karp, don't say you can't use a stick shift. That's like saying you can't get it up.”
“Oh, no, sure I can. It's just, I don't drive much.” The truth was that Karp had not driven a car more than half a dozen times since law school, where he had owned a sedate secondhand Plymouth with automatic. He had perhaps three hours' total experience with a stick shift, logged at age seventeen on his brother's VW.
The important thing, he recalled, was not to stall. He pressed the accelerator gingerly. The engine rumbled. Muffling had obviously been of secondary interest to whatever redneck maniac had built this car. He recalled vaguely that something called a tachometer had something to do with shifting. There was a large black gauge bolted to the top of the dash that jerked every time he goosed the gas. That must be it. He cautiously depressed the clutch and slid the skull in the direction first gear was in the 1951 VW.
“Hey, let's go,” she said, “time's a-wastin'.”
The tach went from one to seven. He decided four was a safe bet. He pointed the wheel away from the curb and tromped on the gas until the needle hit four. The air was filled with an ear-rattling roar that sounded like a dive bomber taking off from a carrier. Karp smiled bravely at his best girl and popped the clutch.
Twenty minutes later, they were barreling north on the Saw Mill River Parkway through a mild blizzard. The snow was bone dry, forming dancing pinpoints of brilliance in the headlights.
“Good thing there's no traffic,” Marlene said. She was curled up in the suicide seat, her high boots tucked up under her black wool skirt, trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. “You're, ah, quite a driver there, Butch.”
“Thanks,” he said hoarsely around a tongue as dry as flannel.
“But, um, maybe you should shift out of second. You'll get better mileage. Third's probably up and to the right. If you want.”
“Yeah, oh sure, I was just warming her up,” he said, reaching over to do it. But as he looked down, he had occasion to notice for the first time something odd. “Say, Marlene? This car has no ignition key.”
“Yeah, well, actually, it doesn't really need one.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Well, I sort of forgot to get the keys from Larry, so I sort of jumped the ignition.”
“You boosted this car? That I'm driving?”
“Don't be mad, Butch. It's cool, honestly.”
“Oh, shit, Marlene! What if we get stopped? That's it, curtains. No job, no future. You lunatic, don't you realize that assistant district attorneys are not supposed to do crimes? Christ, Marlene, sometimes I don't know ⦠Oh, God, is there registration in the car? At least if we have the goddamn registration ⦔
Karp began to look for it, behind the front visor first, and then stretched across to pop open the glove compartment and fumble inside it. The car veered back and forth across the road, as he yanked out a handful of assorted material.
“Butch, take it easy, it's all right!” she cried as they hit the shoulder.
“It's not all right. Turn on the dome light. OK, what's this: map, map, tire billâoh, shit.” He held up a plastic baggie. In the yellow light she saw that the bag contained a miniature wooden pipe, a packet of Zig-Zag cigarette papers, and a half ounce of brownish vegetable substance that Karp doubted very much was Bugle cigarette tobacco. He let it drop to the seat.
“I can't believe this. This is not happening,” he said in a faint voice.
“We could throw it out the window,” she suggested brightly.
“Good idea, Ciampi. I'm sure the car isn't dirty down to the floorboards. The trunk is probably full of toot, for chrissakes.”
They drove in strained silence for a minute or two. Then he gradually became aware that odd splatting sounds were issuing from between her clenched lips.
“What's so funny, Marlene?”
She exploded into hysteria, thick, choking, exhausting laughter. “Karp,” she gasped at last between guffaws, “we'll cop a plea ⦠we're first offenders ⦠they'll give usâthey'll give us six months suspended ⦔ and she started laughing uncontrollably again. And it was, after all, pretty funny, and so he started to laugh, too, harder and harder. He had to wipe the tears away so he could see the snowy road.
When they had finally quieted down, she snuggled up to him and he put his arm around her and used the make-out knob to steer. She said, “I love this. I want to drive through this blizzard with you forever and never stop.”
“Sounds good. We'd have to stop to get food. And pee,” he said, always the sensible one.
“No. We'd keep driving. We'd never eat and we'd pee in the backseat.” She turned on the radio. It was tuned to a rock station and the Birds playing “Eight Miles High.”
“We'd have to stop to ⦠you know, do the dirty,” he said, acutely aware of her pointed tongue scrounging around his right ear.
“No, we wouldn't,” she whispered.
Then she pulled away from him and he was aware of her bouncing on the seat. In a flash she had reached up and hung a pair of rose silk bikini underpants on the rearview mirror. “I've wanted to do this all my life,” she said, “and the moment has come.”