Immoral Certainty (10 page)

“I appreciate that, Pete, but really, what do you think?”

Balducci glanced at his partner before he answered. “Well … you know, these things, with kids. It’s usually somebody they know….”

“Right!” said Marlene vehemently. “But this doesn’t
feel
right for one of those….”

“Intuition?” Raney asked this in a flat voice, almost mocking. Then he added, “Marlene.”

Marlene scowled at him. He looked away and joined his partner in the doorway. “No, not intuition. I notice you didn’t say woman’s intuition. Jimmy.”

“Not guilty,” said Raney.

“The reason it’s not intuition is that somebody chopped the girl’s finger off after she was dead. You recall? I can’t see the family sex offender doing that, can you?”

“If he was trying to make somebody think he was a weirdo, I could,” Raney snapped back, a bar of color starting across his cheekbones.

“We’ll check it out, Marlene,” said Balducci. “C’mon, Jimmy.”

In the car, Balducci fished the butt of a Parodi cigar out of the ashtray and lit it. “So? What do you think?” he asked, puffing vigorously.

“The D.A.? I’m in love, Petey. What a face! What a terrific little ass! In that little knit dress. I had to sit on my hands up there. I was wondering what would happen, all the time she was yapping away, what would happen if I just reached out and gave it just a slow, firm squeeze.”

“A ninety-day suspension would happen, asshole. I meant the fuckin’ case.”

“Oh, that. A piece of shit. Some spic fucked her, then killed her, then he panicked and figured to lay it on some looney. But, you know, Peter, I believe, in the interests of crime-prevention we should leave no stone unturned in this one, and since it’s such an involved case, I think we’re gonna need a lot of guidance from the D.A. A lot of conferences. A lot of reviewing the evidence. Strategizing. In the evenings.”

Balducci glanced sourly at his partner. “Forget it, Raney. She’s definitely out of your league. Besides, you know Karp, the bureau chief?”

“Yeah, the big guy. What about him?”

“She’s the girlfriend. They’re a serious item, I hear.”

“I could care less. I don’t want to marry her. I just want to spread that little ass and fuck her brains out a couple three times. Don’t look at me that way, Balducci! You’re not my goddamn father.”

“I wish I was, I’d break your head.” Raney rolled his eyes and assumed his habitual expression of disdainful boredom. He started the car and shot out into traffic.

“One-fourteenth and Lex, the bereaved momma,” he said. “Then some strategizing with the D.A. Marlene.”

Maria Segura sat up stiff in her chair at her kitchen table, looking at nothing. Balducci sat across from her, his notebook out. Raney paced back and forth behind her. A child, the three-year-old Carmen, played on the dirty floor with some pots, a broken and naked plastic doll, and an old carton. The other child, five, was in school. In the other room, a large color TV blared out
Lust for Life.
Segura shook her head loosely. The etheric stink of active alcoholism filled the apartment, floating lightly over the basic stench of East Harlem tenements: garbage, bad drains, stale urine.

“I tole you. I tole you a million times. I don’ know nothin’ ’cep what I a’ready tole you. I lay down, she’s here watchin’ TV. I wake up, she’s gone. Then the cops came. I tole them the same exac’ thing.”

“You remember seeing her with anybody? Did she talk about meeting anybody? A man?”

“Bogeyman!” shouted the little girl from the floor. “Bogey, bogey Man!”

“Shut up, Carmen!” said her mother. “What I know, where she goes, who she sees? She’s a wild kid, Lucy.”

“Was,” said Raney from behind her. “Was. She’s dead.”

Segura did not respond to this, but looked longingly toward a cupboard, where dwelt her true love.

“How about this one here,” asked Balducci gently. “She a wild one, too?”

“What, Carmen? Nah, she’s a sweetheart, never gives me no trouble.” She turned to the child and cooed, “Ain’t you a sweetheart, baby?”

The child looked up, as if startled by this affectionate tone. She scrambled to her feet and toddled over to the table. She wore a Care-Bears T-shirt and underpants. “Dolly,” she said, and placed the broken pink carcass on the table, stretching on tip-toe to reach.

“That’s a nice dolly,” said Balducci affectionately.

“I’m going to look through Lucy’s stuff, Maria. That all right?” Raney asked. The woman nodded and he went down the narrow hallway to the children’s bedroom.

Carmen was rummaging in her carton. In a moment, she stood up and trotted back to the table. She had a doll in each hand, both of which she gravely handed to Balducci.

“Go play, Carmen!” said the mother. “Don’t bother the man, hey!”

“No, that’s all right, Missus. I want to see the dollies.”

Balducci held one in each hand and smiled at the little girl. Then his scalp prickled and his belly tightened. One of the dolls was a filthy Barbie with one leg and half its hair gone. He put it on the table and held the other one up.

“Mrs. Segura,” he asked, “where did this come from?”

Mrs. Segura looked at the doll and shrugged. “I dunno. I think, maybe Lucy brung it home. I think she say she found it inna garbage.”

“Uh-huh.” He turned to the child. “Carmen,” he said, as gently as he could, “where did you get this doll?”

“Lucy’s dolly,” she said. “I could play wif it,” she added, growing worried.

“Sure you can. But do you know where Lucy got it?”

The child was silent for a long time. Balducci waited, smiling hard. Then in a low voice she said, “Bogeyman. It’s a secret.”

Raney clumped back into the room. “Nothing except this.” Raney held up a glittering object, but Balducci gestured him into silence and turned his attention to Carmen.

“Honey, are you saying that a man gave this dolly to Lucy?”

A solemn nod.

“And did you ever see this man?”

Another nod.

“What did he look like? Can you remember?”

“Bogeyman!” said the child, screwing up her face.

“The bogeyman, huh? And what did the bogeyman look like?”

“He have no hair, an’ no ears, an’ big eyes an’ big, big, teef.”

“What’s going on here, Pete? We doin’ some bedtime stories?”

“I think we got something, but I can’t figure it yet.”

“What is it?”

“Tell you later. What did you find?”

“Just this. It didn’t fit with the scene.” He held out a small, heart-shaped box covered in gold foil. The name of a Belgian chocolatière was embossed on the top.

Balducci took the box and held it out to Carmen. “Do you know what this is, honey?”

“Lucy candy. She give me
one
piece.”

“And where did Lucy get the candy?”

“Bogeyman.”

“What is this ‘bogeyman’ business, Pete?” asked Raney.

Balducci gave him a warning look, stood up, and patted the little girl on the head. He picked up the doll, the one from the Bogeyman. It felt dense and heavy, like a nightstick.

“We’re going to have to take this along, Missus. It’s evidence,” he said.

The woman nodded, glad to see them going, but little Carmen began to sniffle.

As the two policemen left the apartment, she broke out in a wail. “Wan’ my dolly,” she cried, betrayed by the nice man. They were down at the first landing when the slaps began. They could hear them, sharp and solid, through the door. The slaps went on and on, and the shrieks, but by that time the two men were far enough away that they could pretend that they didn’t hear.

Driving downtown, Balducci took the opportunity to study the doll more carefully. He clucked and muttered for a mile or so on the East Side Drive, until Raney said, “Pete, will you stop it with that doll, for cryin’ out loud! What the fuck is goin’ on here? Bogeyman?”

“Jimmy, I got four daughters. I put a lot of cash into dolls over the years, you know? I never seen nothing like this one.”

“She could have ripped it off.”

“Fuck, she could have! Look at this thing, Jimmy!” He propped it up on the dashboard. It was a fourteen inch doll dressed in a royal blue shot-silk traveling dress of the eighteen-seventies, with matching bonnet, the elegant costume only slightly soiled by grubby hands.

“Look—porcelain head, handpainted, same with the arms and feet. The dress is real silk, hand stitched. And this trim, here, is real lace, and not just real lace, but made to scale. The stitches are so fine you can hardly see them. This thing must have cost, shit, a grand easy, maybe more. Places that sell dolls like this, it’s by appointment only and they keep the goods locked up until they see your money. You think a seven year old PR kid could have lifted something like this? What, she found it in the garbage, in East Harlem?”

“OK, I get the picture. But now the question is, if we assume that some guy gave her the doll, and the chocolate, why’d he do it? The first-class treatment, I mean. For Lucy Segura, if he’d a wanted to win her over, he could’ve gone into Macy’s and picked up something for fourteen ninety-five that would’ve knocked her socks off. Same with the ten-dollar imported candy. A Mars bar would’ve done it. Not to mention, there’s probably not that many of those dolls. We could trace it.”

Balducci looked at the doll. He closed its blue eyes with his fingertips, gently, and let them pop open again. The hair was done in chestnut ringlets, probably real hair, he thought.

“Yeah, we could trace it. Which we’ll start tomorrow. But about why: Christ, Jimmy, we know the guy’s crazy. Maybe he’s dumb, too. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“I hope so,” said Raney. “I’d like to meet the mutt. I bet he packs a knife. Or a gun. In fact, I think I might have his gun in my trunk.”

Balducci scowled at his partner. “I didn’t hear that, Jimmy. No bullshit like that, OK? I’m too short for any of that stuff. I mean it!”

Jimmy Raney flashed his fallen angel grin. “Hey, Petey, just a joke. You know me. By the book, asses in jail. Besides, I want him for Marlene.”

The man and the little girl sat in the park together, not touching, on the broken bench, amid the flat bottles in their bags and the broken shards of glass. It was dusk. Boys were still shooting baskets on the other side of the playground.

The child said, with a giggle, “You not the bogeyman. The bogeyman bad.”

The Bogeyman said, “The bogeyman isn’t bad. It’s the children he comes to get that’re bad. Are you bad?”

The girl shrugged. She said, “You got more candy? That gold candy?”

The man smiled and brought out a small heart-shaped box covered in gold foil. He offered it to the girl. She took one of the chocolates and looked at the man. He nodded and she took another. She put one into her mouth and waited for the explosion of sweetness.

The girl’s name was Brenda Meigs. She was seven years old, plump in an unhealthy way, frizzle-haired, plain. Her racial make-up was complex and obscure. It had given her a pale ochre skin, which was marred on the arms and the edge of the jaw by bruises, some fresh and livid purple, others aging to dull yellow. The man observed them with a practiced eye. He touched a long bruise on her forearm with a pale forefinger, gently. The child snatched her arm away.

“You hurt yourself,” said the man.

“I fell down.”

The man smiled. It was the common lie, used by the child as well as the abusing parent, for who can believe at such a tender age that the source of love is also the source of death? He knew a lot about child abuse. He was a connoisseur of damaged children. He knew them in all their guises: the cringing ones, the broken in spirit; the violent ones, who acted out on the playground their harsh domestic dramas. He befriended them, gave them candy, toys and affection, and after a while he carried off a chosen, select group to a place where no one would be able to hurt them again.

He looked happily down at the little girl, who was sucking on her second chocolate, her eyes closed in delight, scuffing her ragged sneakers against the concrete under her bench. It was getting dark, but he knew that no distraught mother would be out on the streets looking for this little one. Brenda’s mother, he had learned, was a pill-head, and she had a new boyfriend with a good connection.

Brenda would wander the streets, popping in on friends and a few relations in the mean neighborhood, cadging meals, hoping to be allowed to sleep in a bedroom corner. If not, she would slip into a supermarket and steal something small and sweet, and then try to sneak back to her bed, praying that her mother had scored downers and was nodding off.

He could supply her with food, at least, if not shelter. Not yet. He gave her candies and bought her meals at fast-food joints. He liked the same fast food that she did. In any case, it seemed to him that she was healthier.

And of course, he could not take her to a regular restaurant, because people might remember. That had been drilled into him quite thoroughly, along with the rest of the specifications. The children had to be abandoned and abused. But there was nothing that said he couldn’t be kind to them. Or that he couldn’t feed their little spirits as well as their bodies.

“Tell me, Brenda,” he said. “Do you think you would like a nice doll?”

The bar called Larry’s on 48th Street west of Seventh was not the sort of place that Anna Rivas would ever have gone alone. She didn’t understand why Felix had brought her here. It was not the kind of place she thought a rising young executive ought to frequent.

It was dark, for one thing, which was sort of romantic, but Anna suspected that the illumination was designed not so much to encourage romance as to conceal the stains on the red-flocked wallpaper and the carpet. The vinyl booth they sat in was cracked in places, and the cracks were roughly patched with masking tape. And the other people, what she could make out of them, were not the kind she thought she would be mixing with when Felix Tighe had asked her out for a “night on the town,” as he had put it.

The men were either dirty-looking and dressed in trucker’s jackets and baseball hats or sleazy types with shirts open to the breastbone, wearing dangling gold at neck and wrists. One of these was sitting at their table now. Felix had been talking to him for ten minutes, some kind of business deal, something about refrigerators, ignoring her.