Immoral Certainty (31 page)

The address Mrs. Dean had given her was on West End Avenue off Seventy-eighth Street. It was a reddish townhouse with large bay windows stuck between two condoized towers, the kind of building that was usually broken up into apartments in this neighborhood. It had the usual broad stone stairway leading to the front door, but Dean had told her to ring at the wrought iron gate under these stairs. She did, received an answering buzz that released the gate’s lock, and rang the bell belonging to the door of the ground floor apartment.

Mrs. Dean herself opened the door for her.
She looks older,
was Marlene’s first thought as she shook hands with the woman. Mrs. Dean was dressed in a wide-skirted black dress with a small white collar: the return of the nun. She gave Marlene a cold, formal smile and ushered her through a long ocher-painted hallway dimly lit by sconces made to resemble candelabra and into the living room.

This proved to be a large dark room furnished in the style of the high-bourgeois West Side—good Duncan Phyfe sofa and wing chairs in pale striped silk, flanking a mahogany coffee table, heavy brocade drapes on the windows, oriental rugs over beige carpets and, on spindly dark side tables, large ceramic statuary lamps with pale silk shades, the lamps in the shape of classical lovers or funerary urns. There were tea things on the coffee table.

“Please sit down, Miss Ciampi,” said Mrs. Dean, motioning to a love seat in pale green silk, and seating herself in a wing chair on the other side of the low table. “I thought we could have some tea while we talk.” She poured for herself and Marlene and then sat back and looked steadily at her, as if waiting for her to begin something. The apartment was very quiet; the heavy drapes muffled the street sounds. Somewhere a mechanical clock ticked.

Mrs. Dean seemed to be making an effort to be pleasant. It was a lovely day. This was a nice room. Marlene drank her tea and waited for the older woman to get to the point. When this failed to happen, Marlene took a yellow pad and a pen out of her briefcase and said, “Mrs. Dean, why don’t we start with this man you’ve identified. What’s his name?”

Mrs. Dean seemed not to hear this question.

Instead she glanced around the room, and said, “I’ve always meant to redecorate this place. It was my late husband’s apartment before we were married. My second husband. But we never seem to have time—my work keeps me so occupied.”

She looked back at Marlene, who felt obliged to say conversationally, “Yes, running the center must be a big responsibility.”

“Oh, not the center. My real work. As you very well understand.”

Marlene shook her head slightly in confusion and smiled. “I’m sorry … ?”

Mrs. Dean went on, oblivious: “You’re very subtle, but very powerful. That’s what put me off; I ought to trust my vibrations always. I couldn’t imagine you would strike directly at
Him.”

“Mrs. Dean, I’m getting lost here. What are you
talking
about?”

“Of course, when you sent your agents against me I had to act. You’ll be saddened to learn that the little fool got the wrong doll.”

Marlene felt a flush start across her face. She had forgotten about Junior Gibbs. Was it possible that he had burgled the Dean place, been caught, and ratted her out? She gave herself some good legal advice and kept her mouth shut. Mrs. Dean stood up abruptly and began pacing back and forth in an agitated manner. “No,” she continued, “you were clever, but not clever enough, my dear. One of the few advantages of age, I think, in our profession.”

She’s flipped out, thought Marlene. Completely loony tunes. This was certainly a new wrinkle on the case, and Marlene was content to sit back and let the lady rave on. In fact, except that her feet were quite cold, she felt remarkably comfortable just sitting and listening and drinking tea, as at a childhood visit to an aging aunt not quite right in the head, but harmless.

What was she talking about now? Something about her marriage to the Prince of Darkness and the Son of the Dark Union. Actually, her feet were
very
cold, almost numb. There must be air conditioning on, which was
crazy,
it was such a nice fall day outside.

“All for Him,” Mrs. Dean was saying, “as was foretold—first the rituals, then the blood, then He shall come into His power and rule in the name of Lucifer all the kingdoms. And woe to any servant of the powers of earth who does not bend her knee in homage.”

“I’m going, Mrs. Dean,” said Marlene, reaching for her briefcase. “I hate to say this, but you need psyo … phys … psychological help.” That was odd—she seemed to have trouble talking. Her briefcase was impossibly far away, Marlene thought. Why did I put it way over there? She had to get out of this cold, too. It had crept up to her thighs; her calves and feet felt like frozen meat. Mrs. Dean kept talking and her voice seemed to be getting louder, even though she seemed much farther away.

“Yes, I knew that he was one of the Powers of the Earth the minute I laid eyes on him. And he in turn knew me for an adept. I was seventeen, and he took me away from that stifling little town that very night, and we rode through the stars together. There was never such a love. He blazed with an immortal fury and we did things that had not been thought of since Egypt was new.

“He crushed our enemies with his power and then … until … he said I must leave you for a while, leave this sphere, I am called by our Father below, but I leave you a babe who shall be greater than I, the greatest the ages have known. I shall live again in him, and you shall live forever with me in him.

“In Him. Who you have profaned, and chained. But great workings are under way, never fear. I know your power and I know how to stop it. Now listen to your fate. In ten days it will be the full moon. I will take you out and place you on naked earth, and pierce your heart with a sword of iron. I will eat your heart on a table made of a sacrifice, a child without blemish. In ten days, your power will flow into me and He will be released.”

I’ve been drugged, Marlene was thinking as this went on. One part of her mind accepted this while another part was screaming in terror like a rat in a slowly contracting cage. Mrs. Dean sat down across from her and patted her on the cheek. Marlene’s face felt enormous under her touch, as it did at the dentist’s.

“That’s right, relax,” said Mrs. Dean. “We find it works so well with the children. Of course, we give them a lower dose, so that they’ll wiggle a little for the uncles. Money for the cause, money for the cause.

“Yes, it was my second husband who taught me about that. His tastes ran that way. Not that I minded. After all, I was wedded for eternity to my Francis. No mere earthly bond could interfere with that. And he was so rich. Francis would not have wanted me and the boy to be degraded by poverty.

“Of course, he wanted a son of his own. I told him that my womb had been enobled by carrying the Son of the Son of the Morning, but he would not listen, being a crass man of money and a creature of no spirit.

“In the end, I bore him a son, of a kind, one that would be but a foot-stool to Him, the firstborn one. And then he died for his impertinence. Mr. Dean, I mean. And the son never grew; I had to keep him at home with me, although I said that he was in an institution. But he is useful for some of our work. Very useful. Our services make a nice exhibition for the children. They never tell.” Mrs. Dean giggled.

Marlene heard the door open, but she couldn’t turn her head to see who it was. She heard heavy steps approaching. Mrs. Dean said, “I don’t believe you’ve met my younger son. This is Alonso.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said the Bogeyman, sweeping Marlene up off the sofa and into his thick arms, like a child.

CHAPTER
14

K
arp burst into the Bureau office, moving fast, slamming the door, the wind of his passage lifting papers from nearby desks. People moved to get out of his way. They expected no recognition nor did they receive any. While he did not actually run anybody down, he would have. Passing by Connie Trask’s desk, he said, “Anything?” She shook her head sadly and he cursed under his breath and plunged toward his private office. This had been going on for three days.

Ray Guma and Tony Harris were waiting for him within, sitting at the scarred oak conference table. The table was littered with newspapers, tabloid and respectable, all turned to the same story, which was, as one of the tabloids had unfelicitously headlined it: LADY D.A. IN MOB SNATCH.

Guma picked up the tabloid and tossed it contemptuously down again. “This is such bullshit, Butch. Mob snatch, my ass!”

“Not now, Ray” said Karp.

“Kidnapping a D.A. is not a wise-guy trick, Butch.
You
know that! The call we got is a scam, Butch. ‘Lay off the Bollanos or else!’ It’s from the movies, for cryin’ out loud! These aren’t crazy Colombians, Jamaicans, who knows what—we’re talking respectable middle-class gangsters here.”

“They’re still gangsters. I’m not saying Bollano ordered it. It could be some punk out to make a rep. It could be some asshole off the boat from Palermo. They shoot
judges
in Sicily—maybe he figures a D.A. is fair game.”

“Butch, I talked to Marlene before she left. I was probably one of the last people in the office to see her. She was talking about a break on this child abuse thing she’s been hot on, the one she says is hooked into the trash-bag killer. Isn’t it more reasonable—”

“There’s nothing there, Ray. I’ve been over it with Marlene. And it’s not our case.”

“Our case, horseshit! Did you check it out?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did. I got a judge and a minister saying she was en route to the child-care center to look into what appeared to be a minor case of kiddie diddling. She never got there.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it turns out that Jimmy Raney has had this mutt watching the center on and off for weeks under the obviously mistaken impression that the center is tied in with these trash-bag murders, and the mutt says she never showed up on the afternoon we’re talking about. What the fuck is this, Guma? You cross-examining me to see if I’m trying hard enough to find Marlene? Fuck you!”

The color had risen to Karp’s face, an unusual and threatening sign. Guma flung out his hand in a gesture connoting extreme frustration and looked pointedly up at the ceiling, but said nothing more.

After a moment, Tony Harris entered the uncomfortable silence. “Butch, on this Ferro killing thing for the grand jury: I’m missing something. You’re calling all the guys Noodles said were in Nyack the morning after, right?”

“That’s right,” said Karp. “They were all at the castle too.”

“But the castle was a bust. We got nothing,” Harris complained.

“So it appears.”

“Then why are we going ahead with these?” asked Harris, irritably smacking the sheaf of subpoenas down on the table. “In fact, why did we stage that raid anyway? You had Armand spotted for a crook weeks ago. So he tipped Bollano, we know that. The bugs were all disconnected, nobody said anything on the phone. They have a meeting anyway, the cops are there snapping away, and it turns out the cops can’t quite get anything that’s in focus enough to identify anybody, nor are any of them willing to swear they recognized any of the participants. Maybe they’re all on the wire, too.”

“It’s possible,” said Karp abstractedly.

“So what I want to know is, what are you gonna ask them that’s gonna do us any good?” Harris asked, observing his boss with dismay. He’s losing it, thought Harris, as he observed Karp’s slumped affect: exhaustion and boredom mixed. This thing with Marlene has taken the edge right off him. For his part, Harris felt abandoned and resentful, especially after what had happened with the great raid on the Mafia castle. Karp regarded the younger man wearily and said, “We’re just going to ask them if they were there, what they talked about, like that.”

“But what good will
that
do. It’s no crime to have a meeting, especially if we have no evidence there was conspiracy taking place.”

“It’s a crime if they lie about it,” answered Karp. “All grand jury witnesses have transactional immunity. If they lie we can get them on perjury.”

Harris’s irritation grew and his voice got louder. “But Butch—they don’t have to lie! They
know
we got nothing.”

“They’ll lie,” said Karp with assurance. He looked sharply at Guma. “They’ll lie because they’re mutts and they think they can get away with it.”

“Relax, kid,” said Guma, “he’s got a ringer.”

Harris stared. “What do you mean ‘ringer’? What’s he talking about, Butch?”

Karp said neutrally, “I did a deal with the Feds. There were two FBI agents planted as electrical linemen on the road outside the castle. They had cameras and a parabolic mike set up. They can ID everybody there and testify about a lot of the conversation at the meeting.”

“No kidding!” said Harris, hurt feelings and admiration warring in his tone. “That’s great, Butch, but it would have been nice to tell me about it, considering I’m putting together all this grand jury stuff.”

“Sorry, Tony,” Karp said in a mollifying tone. “I’m devious. It comes with the job.”

Harris stood and gathered his papers. “Yeah, well, I guess I should contact the Bureau and set up their testimony. Oh, by the way, any word on Marlene?”

“No, not yet,” Karp said quickly. “Go direct to Pillman on that, Tony. We’re keeping the whole thing kind of close.”

Harris left and Guma started chuckling as soon as the door had closed. Karp snapped, “What’s so funny, Guma?”

“You. Him. ‘Devious.’ I love the way you come on like somebody who’s totally out front, and all the time the wheels and deals are turning around. I’m glad you finally admitted it. It’s good training for the kid there and an inspiration to your loyal staff. Personally, I intend to take it to heart.”

Karp shot him a lowering glance. “Don’t be cute, Guma.”

“Who, me?” said Guma, goggling his eyes like Little Orphan Annie. “Never happens. And by the way, not to change the subject, but how did it go in court today? The Mullen murders.”

“Not bad. The general can still use a bayonet. Klopper is a pain in the ass, of course: His way of insinuating that his client and him are being crushed by the awesome power of the state. And the bastard wears you down with a shitload of objections he knows are going to be overruled. It’s exhausting, it confuses the witnesses and the jury…. I don’t know though, I got a feeling it’s going to backfire with Montana.”