“Marlene, what are you doing? Stop that! Ahhgh, there's the turnoff!”
The Chevy shot across three lanes onto the Taconic Parkway as she unzipped his fly and began to fumble within. “Mar ⦠stop it, we'll get killed!” he yelled.
“Who cares? It'll be a once in a lifetime experience. Ah, there he is. Yumm.”
“Wait, I'll pull over,” he gasped as her head descended.
“'on't 'ou 'are!” she said, her mouth full and moving like the pistons in the straining 446, just as hot but much slower. With a final noisy lick she raised her head, flicked off the dome light, and heaved her naked thigh across his lap. “Marlene, this isn't wise,” he wheezed.
“Yeah, it's real foolish. But I'm dying for you. It's going to fry like a sausage. OK, let me just ⦔
She reached under her full skirt and clutched the blazing item shooting up from his groin like a Hurst four-speed stick, pointed it into the right place, and sank down with an audible slurp and a grunt of pleasure. “Don't slow down, don't, don't slow down,” she hissed around the teeth she had sunk into the curve of his neck. In a minute the first wave of climax rolled through her, and she yelled over the scream of the engine and the tires, over the pounding of the music.
Karp's life was passing across his eyes as he wove S-shapes on the snow of the Taconic State Parkway and jammed his hips up to meet Marlene's frantic bouncing. The tiny part of him still capable of thought was trying to figure out how he could have predicted that a stable and idealistic young lawyer would spend the last few seconds of his life fucking a crazy woman while going sixty-five miles an hour through a blizzard in a stolen car loaded with dope. But after a short while that part of him was completely extinguished, and he surrendered to the oblivion of pleasure.
T
HEY DIDN'T DIE
. To Karp's immense surprise, not only did they survive, but they were able to navigate the worsening blizzard and arrive at their destination at eight o'clock. They were just in time for dinner.
Their hostess, Annabelle Partland, owned an isolated farmhouse in the hill country outside Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and as they pulled the Chevy into the snowbound farmyard, all they could see of her was a person wearing an immense orange parka, the kind used in Antarctic expeditions, and a fur-lined hood pulled tight around a face. When the car engine was finally turned off, Karp found his ears ringing in the unaccustomed silence. As he stepped out into the freezing wind he could actually hear the snowflakes striking the windshield.
Marlene threw her red parka up over her shoulders and dashed for the house, with Karp and Annabelle behind her, lugging bags. The door lintel was so low that he had to duck to enter. As he did, he noticed a carved wooden sign over it, which said:
I haven't got any.
And I don't want any.
In the mud room inside the door, Annabelle shucked off her great garment and hung it on one of a row of wooden pegs. When her hood came off she released a mane of pale coppery hair vibrating with static, and a round, wide-mouthed, pleasant freckled face. She was wearing a gray Ragg sweater, a set of Oshkosh overalls much stained with clay, and high woolen leg warmers patterned with Icelandic designs. She smiled at Karp and said, “My, you certainly don't look prepared for this blizzard.” He took off his Yankee baseball jacket and stamped the snow off his high-top sneakers. “Yeah, right,” he admitted. “I don't get out of town much.”
“Well, you're
really
out of town now,” she said and led him down a narrow passageway to a small dining room, where a table was set for six and where Marlene was already pouring herself a glass of red wine. V.T. came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel.
“Hi, Butch, Marlene. What's happening,” he said cheerfully.
“Grand theft auto,” Karp answered.
“Pardon?”
“Ask her,” he said. “For the record, I'm an unwitting accessory.”
“Karp, you rat! V.T., this man is going to turn my ass in to the law because I ⦠oh, never mind, it's entirely too tedious to go into right now.” She stuck her tongue out at Karp, then looked around the beamed, candlelit dining room. “Gosh, this is a great place, Annabelle. When did you get it?”
“In 1793,” she said. “Let's eat.”
An hour later, Karp was sitting with Marlene on a couch in the low-ceilinged living room. They were stuffed with white bean soup and sausage washed down with quantities of thick French wine. Marlene, mellow and slightly drunk, was smoking. Karp was staring at the fire and playing with a smooth rock he had picked up off the walnut coffee table. A stereo was playing a McGarrigle Sisters record.
Cold sober and just starting to relax from the drive, he looked around the room, fascinated. It was filled with remarkable objects. On the walls, besides dozens of paintings and drawings, some richly framed, others stuck up with pins, there were elaborate tufted quilts that looked like the vestments of extraterrestrial priests. The rugs on the polished wide-planked floor were irregular in shape and had the energy of bright animals. Pots and ceramic sculptures in fantastic variety sat on shelves, on tables, or were scattered in rows on the floor, some like stones from a riverbed, some like relics of ancient civilizations, some like silver and neon explosions. The furniture was a mix of heirloom antique and extravagant crafts. The couch on which they sat was a Duncan Phyfe upholstered in blue silk, on which a variety of embroidery work had been flung, together with a collection of odd pillows that were themselves soft sculptures. The chairs placed at either end of the coffee table were artful constructions of smooth tree-limbs laced together with rawhide, hemp cable, and soft, quilted leather.
“This is some place,” he said, breaking the silence.
“Yeah,” Marlene answered, “not your usual motel modern. What do you think of old Annabelle?”
Karp shrugged. “She seems pretty nice. V.T. is obviously her total slave. He wants to marry her.”
“Yeah? Will they?”
“It's in doubt. V.T. wants to stay in the city and Annabelle refuses to leave here.”
“I don't blame her. In fact, I sympathize entirely. She's in her own place, and she's her own boss. I really like her, which is strange, because when I walked in here, for about two seconds I was blinded with envy. But she's, I don't know, so completely herself. Like the Wife of Bath. âI am my own woman, well at ease.'”
“Like the sign on the doorââI don't have any â¦'”
“Right. Every woman's secret wishâto be ten forever, with all your toys arranged just so and infinite playtime and no nasty boys to break in and mess things up.”
Karp looked at her as she stared into the fire. The good side of her face, fine-boned and noble, caught the glow of the flames and seemed to shine with its own light, like a cameo carved from a red gem. He fought down the intense desire that gripped him. He said coolly, “Boys, huh?”
“Yeah, or men. Oh, naturally one wants a man on tap, should one wish to fuck one's brains out on the odd evening. Oh, shit, Butch, your expression. You take everything so personal.”
“I thought sex was personal.”
“Yeah, sure, but I was talking generally. Never mind, it's just girl stuff. God, I needed this break.” She gestured broadly to the room. “Look at this. This is a beautiful place. Remember beauty, Butchie? Funny, in school I hung around with a gang of artists, sculptors, musicians, whatever. After a while, I started to think they weren't, I don't know, serious? Solid?
“I would talk to them, and they would just smile or joke. It finally struck me that they had nothing to say, or what I mean is, if they had something to say, they would draw it, or sing it. I couldn't understand it then. It pissed me off, all the shit going down in the world, and they're farting around with paint.
“So I switched to pre-law and started hanging around with political types. Engaged, but boring.”
“Smash the state?”
“No, never those guys. Male chauvinists, every damn one of them. Serve the people and squash your old lady, it never fails. No, more like Free the Tanktown Seven. A bleeding heart.”
“I'm surprised you didn't go into public D.”
“Yeah, only I figured the wretched of the earth get more lumps from the skels than they do from the cops. Besides, there's the powerâ”
“Ah, power, my favorite subject,” V.T. said as he entered the room, holding a bottle in one hand and four stemmed glasses in the other. “Annabelle decided to break out one of these in your honor. A '70 Margaux, the beverage of the ruling classes. Her father sends her a case for her birthday every year, in the hopes that the wine will befuddle her into marrying a bond salesman and moving to Darien.”
As he poured the wine, Annabelle entered, checked the fire, and flung a couple of chunks of applewood onto it. Sitting in a leather chair, she pulled an embroidery hoop out of a canvas bag and began to stitch, in between sips of wine.
“Hey, V.T.,” Karp said, “you sure Guma said he was going to come tonight?”
“He said, but you never know with Raymond. We'll have to make do without him for the nonce. Meanwhile, you can tell me all about Ruiz the Serpent and his Soviet grenade.”
Karp recounted the events at the bomb range and the carton that linked Tel-Air and the Croat bombers, and then related his conversation with Pillman. “So you guessed right, V.T.,” he concluded. “Ruiz must have whacked somebody in Miami, and Pillman went along for the ride. You should have seen Pillman's face when I slipped that in.”
V.T. said, “Uh-hmm,” and stared into the fire.
“V.T., you're thinking something.”
“Yes, I am. This is really puzzling, isn't it?”
“You noticed. Well, spit it out.”
“That call that Pillman got right after the hijacking, saying he should lay off Karavitch because Ruiz supplied the Croats in Marseilles with Warsaw Pact weapons, and two of the Croats on the hijack were involved in itâthat's puzzling.”
“Why? It was bullshit anyway. Whoever called must have figured the Grand Central bomb came from that same load, but why tell Pillman that? Better let him think he's covering up for something besides a New York cop killing.”
Marlene said, “That can't be right, Butch. According to Pillman, he got that call before Terry was killed.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, so either Pillman's lying orâ”
V.T. cut in, “Or the phone call was the truth. The caller was really concerned about the Marseilles connection. Rukovina and Raditch were really involved. Somebody was using them as mules to carry munitions to Croat terrorists. Which means the Grand Central bomb wasn't part of any conspiracy outside our little band in New York.”
“Right,” Karp said. “Now I'm with you. I've been thinking that's the key to understanding this case. The political, the institutional stuff, it's just smoke. Really, it's all private: secrets, ripoffs, ambitions, egos.”
“Why is that different from the way it always is?” asked Annabelle calmly. She got three blank looks from the others. “I mean,” she continued, “that sounds to me like the ordinary life of institutionsâjust what you saidâsecrets, ripoffs, ambitions, and egos. The odd thing is why you're surprised.”
There was a brief, embarrassed silence into which V.T. said, “Umm, the point is, dear, it's not supposed to be that way, which is why it's interesting. Watergate was an aberration, after all.”
“Was it?” Annabelle said, more sharply. “How come you're so sure?”
“Because they screwed up, Annabelle,” Marlene said. “Just like our guys screwed up. That's the problem with conspiracies. Christ, it's hard enough to get anything done in real life out in the open, with the full force of the law, and public opinion working for you. It's almost impossible to do anything that's both illegal and secret, if it requires a lot of organization and lots of people working together. Almost all criminal action is massively simple and stupid.”
Annabelle shrugged and picked up her embroidery hoop again. “You may be right. What do I know? It just seems to me that things could hardly be as dreadful as V.T. says without some form of connivance between the bad guys and the supposed good guys.”
“Oh, connivance!” exclaimed V.T., laughing. “That's a different story. Do we have connivance, Butch?”
“Lots of connivance, V.T. Yeah, you see, Annabelle, we all work for a guy, connivance is like his middle name. Not the same as conspiracy, though. More opportunistic.”
“That's the point,” put in Marlene. “Nobody plans that things should be screwed up. It's just the sum of everybody working a private angle in the public business. And Bloom has a real big angle.”
“Yeah, but be fair, Marlene,” Karp said. “Bloom is a master at covering his tracks and letting somebody else catch the shit. For example, I'd give a lot to know who called him after the hijack. You remember I told you Denton told me that he knew Karavitch's name before the cops or the TV had it. Even more, I'd like to confirm my hunch that somehow old Sanford was involved in getting that cop to plant the phony evidence on me. That would be a crusherâdisbar city. But there's no chance in hell of us ever finding out.”
“Yeah, unless you could get hold of his tapes,” replied Marlene.
“Tapes? What tapes are those?” he asked.
But he did not get an answer just then, because at that moment all the lights in the house went off and the stereo stopped playing. Marlene gave a little shriek of alarm.
“Oh shit, it's a CIA hit team,” V.T. said. “They tracked us here and now they're going to silence us because we know too much.”
“I thought you said there wasn't any conspiracy, V.T,” said Annabelle.
“That was just a story to ease your mind, dear. I just want you to know that I'll defend you to the death or until it becomes personally inconvenient, whichever is first.”