“Uh-huh. Okay, but I have this secret, what does it matter if I tell you first? What can you do? It’ll still come out.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Karp. “The point is, if I’m not surprised, then we’re in control, not them. We can do a deal. Let’s say we find out the Mayor likes to get sucked off by a python, he keeps it in a bathtub down at City Hall …”
“I love your imagination. Snakes can’t suck anything, though-they have no lips.”
Karp rolled his eyes. “Let me write that down, I never want to forget it. It’s just an example, Murray, for chrissake. Okay, we tell the D.: forget the chickadees, we won’t touch on the snake. Alternatively, we bring up the chickadees ourselves.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“Anything you bring up voluntarily has less sting than it does if the other side brings it up. In the hypothetical we’re discussing, we’d go in with a shrink: Dr. Selig has this chickadee problem, he’s fighting it, he’s in recovery. In your professional opinion, did it affect his work one iota? No. No further questions. Now the jury sees a courageous guy who’s trying to conquer an embarrassing fault, and isn’t afraid to admit it. Shit, if he’ll come out about the chickadees, he’s sure as hell not hiding anything else. Get the point?”
“Point got,” said Selig. “But I’m sorry-right now no secret vices spring to mind. I’ll talk to Naomi, though. She knows my faults better than I do.”
Karp gave his client a hard and unamused stare, but his client’s eyes slid away. Karp was about to say something when the buzzer on his desk bleated, and the receptionist announced the arrival of the Mayor of the City of New York.
Stupenagel stuck her pencil behind her ear and flipped through the pages of her steno pad. The story she had just heard was consistent and logical, but still it stirred some reportorial instinct of suspicion. “It was lucky that this cop Bello was there when this guy started to beat on you,” she said, trolling.
“There was no luck to it, Stupe. I told you, he was shadowing her. We figured Pruitt would make a move sooner or later.”
“Sounds almost like you baited a trap.”
“Carrie Lanin is not a criminal,” Marlene said with some heat. “She has the right to go anywhere and see anyone anytime. She doesn’t have to live like a hermit because some asshole is harassing her. Besides”-here she pointed at the livid bruises that covered most of her face-“do you think I planned for this to happen?”
Stupenagel did not. She had a good imagination and considerable experience with violence, but this experience did not support the notion that someone who looked like Marlene Ciampi would risk her face to put some jerk in prison. She nodded slightly and changed her tack.
“How long do you think he’ll get?”
“Oh, maybe five years, maybe three.”
“Is that worth it?”
Marlene took a deep breath and searched for an answer. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe somebody will shank him in prison. Maybe he’ll discover he likes fucking punks up the ass.”
“Not very likely, is it? The guy sounds truly obsessed.”
“Yeah,” Marlene agreed. “Maybe that’s why I got involved. Maybe I thought that the only thing that worked against an obsession was a counter-obsession, a stronger one. I just felt … impelled to stop him, you know? Do you ever get feelings like that? Yeah? Anyway, it felt good.”
Stupenagel wrote this down and then put her pad on the coffee table. “Speaking of obsessions, I think I’m getting one over this gypsy cab business. And the jailhouse suicides.”
“Why? I thought you said it was likely that they really had killed themselves.”
“Yes, yes, I did,” said Stupenagel impatiently, “but … I have a feeling that not all is as it should be in the old Two-Five. I went to a retirement racket the other night-your good buddy Roland set it up-and after I talked to Clancy, I lounged in the bar, keeping my little ears open and engaging in good-natured sexist banter. There was so much testosterone in the air, I felt myself growing a beard. Anyway …”
“What about Clancy?”
“Clancy’s just a bureaucrat. Nice guy, knows nothing. This Jackson character, on the other hand-”
The phone rang. “I better get that,” said Marlene, and left for her office at the end of the loft. Stupenagel refreshed her drink and began to compose in her mind the story she would hand in later that afternoon. After five minutes, Marlene returned and sat down with a puzzled look on her face.
“Who’s Suzy Poole?” she asked. “I know the name.”
“Of course you do. She’s the super model. Cover of Vogue this month? Why do you ask?”
“Oh, that was her.”
“Suzy Poole called you? What did she want?”
“Oh, you know-fashion tips, my famous makeup secrets-”
“No, really!”
“Off the record, Stupe,” said Marlene heavily. “I mean it.”
“Swear to God.”
Marlene gave her a hard look. “If this gets out, it will not be God who will punish you.” She leaned back and lit a Marlboro, only her third of the day, she was happy to realize. “Well, she’s being stalked. By this guy she had a fling with. And she wants me to help her out. Carrie Lanin knows her-from the rag trade. That’s how she got my name. Carrie was talking up my prowess in some ladies’ john on Seventh Avenue.”
“Wait a second-models at that level must have security up the ying-yang. Doesn’t she have, like, a regular bodyguard?”
“Oh, yeah, that was my thought too. She said she’d tried that. It’s like living in jail, she said. The guy is everywhere. He’s got some money too. Somehow he always gets her number no matter how many times she changes it. And he’s smart too. There’s no physical evidence, no threats.”
“What does she expect you to do?”
“Get rid of him, of course.”
“Will you?”
Marlene watched the smoke from her cigarette circulate up to the ceiling and said lazily, “Oh, I might. I just had the thought when I was talking to her that it could be an interesting thing to do. I mean, as a business.” She turned an interested face to Stupenagel’s bemused one. “So, what happened with the gypsies?”
“Oh, yeah. I was telling you about Jackson. Paul. The cops at the Two-Five are not anxious to talk about Detective Jackson, even when a little drunk and getting any number of cheap feels off the kid here. Something’s smelly going down up there in Spanish Harlem. This morning I got with a guy I know at Internal Affairs, Tommy Devlin. They have their suspicions, but nothing solid. Jackson lives a little too well, but that could mean he’s just lucky at the track. They haven’t had any complaints, not that a bunch of illegal Guats are going to make much of a stink if they’re getting shook down by a cop. They think that’s how the government collects taxes. I asked him about the suicides too. Those he swears’re strictly kosher. The M.E. autopsied the first two as genuine hangings. Apparently there’s ways to tell hanging from getting strangled. The third kid just stopped breathing like the ones I told you about in Asia. They called it ‘panic death.’”
“So where are you going with it?”
“Oh, I think I’ll work the gypsies a little more, see if I can find someone who’s not too scared to help.” She finished her drink, stood up, and shrugged into her coat.
“In fact, I’m off now. I’ll let you know when the story comes out.” Marlene walked her to the door. “You know, we should really get a picture of you for this piece.”
“Never!” said Marlene vehemently.
“Suit yourself.” Stupenagel paused by the door. “You know, you may think me a cynical bitch, but my heart really goes out to those poor bastards. They escape from total hell down there, and they come up here and some fucking scumbag cop takes their few pathetic dollars, when a rookie cop’s base salary is about eight times the per capita income of Guatemala. If that fucker is running a racket, I’m going to have his ass for it.”