These thoughts occupied her as she strolled aimlessly up Grand Street and across Mulberry, past the shuttered groceries and import shops, and the storefront social clubs around which clustered groups of flashy young men, leaning on their double-parked cars. There was trouble, she thought, but not precisely the right kind. She received a good deal of commentary as she walked past these knots of wise guys. One of the men, short, hairy, and drunk, stood grinning in her path, demanding an obscene favor and handling his genitals, while his pals urged him on. Stupenagel had in her bag, beside camera and notebook, a short, razor-sharp, bone-handled Arab dagger she’d picked up during her first visit to Syria, and she considered briefly gutting this man with it and then escaping from the country with the Mafia on her tail, and whether that would make a good story. That such an action would cross her mind at all showed how irritable she had become out of this silly Marlene thing. She straightened herself, gave the man a withering look, and walked around him as if he had been a load of dog poop on the pavement.
It was at that moment that it popped into her head that she would go undercover as a gypsy cab driver and catch Detective Paul Jackson at whatever it was he was doing.
EIGHT
Marlene waited a couple of days, until Karp was more or less over the snit he had got into over the Lanin affair, and they were comfortably settled in the marriage bed, before she sprang it on him. He laughed and said, “Yeah, right!” before it struck him that she was not laughing along.
“You’re not serious?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m serious. I think it’s a good idea.”
“It’s the worst idea you ever had, Marlene,” said Karp, “and that’s a tough league.”
“Why? Why is it such a bad idea?”
He sighed. “Babe, private investigators are high school graduates. You went to Yale Law. You were on law review. You have a mind. I can’t believe you’re actually thinking of spending your life following sleazes around with a camera.”
“You’re not listening to me,” said Marlene in a controlled voice. “Listen to what I said. I want to start a service that specializes in helping women who are being harassed, and that’d include legal rep as well as straight P.I. I’m not talking about tort or divorce work.”
Karp shifted in bed and gave her a searching look.
“When you say P.I. work, you mean stuff like what gave you that face?”
“Not necessarily.”
“No? Then what? What are you going to do within a legal framework that the cops can’t do a whole lot better?”
“The cops do hardly anything, and you know it,” she retorted. “Enforcing protective orders is down below littering on their priority list. As for what I’m going to do, I’m going to do whatever it takes.”
“You and Harry Bello are going to do this?”
“Yeah. He likes the idea. He’s going to hand in his tin this week.”
“Oh, terrific! Marlene, he’s a psychopath.”
“He’s not a psychopath! How can you say that? He’s your daughter’s godfather.”
Karp tried another tack. “And the two of you think you can make a living from this?”
“What living? Harry’s got his pension, and as far as I know, we certainly don’t have any money problems. Why, is Daddy going to cut me off without a penny if I do this?”
“Oh, of course not, Marlene,” said Karp, starting to feel trapped. “But … God, with just the pair of you … I mean, it’s going to be an all-hours thing. What about Lucy?”
“What about her? We seemed to do okay when we were both at the D.A. working crazy hours and she was a lot younger and needed more attention.”
“And the new baby …?”
“I’ll deal with that when it happens,” she snapped, and then, in a more even tone, “Look, this isn’t about money or domestic arrangements. If I had a job with a firm or a prosecutor’s office, you’d be buying champagne. So what is it?”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Marlene, look in the mirror!”
“What, I got hurt? Jeez, Butch, so I got hurt. I’ve been hurt worse. I thought we had a deal on that.”
Karp paused before answering, trying for a locution that wouldn’t send this discussion off into a raging fight. Still, he could not keep a trace of bitterness from his voice.
“What deal was that, Marlene? The one where you get to do all the irresponsible stuff and I get to eat my heart out?”
Marlene looked at him soberly and nodded, twice. “Yes, I understand that it’s hard for you. But, look, Butch-right after we started going together, I got myself blown up by a bomb. A year later, more or less, I got myself kidnapped and tortured by a gang of satanists. That was before we got married. You must have had a hint, at least, that I wasn’t going to be like your mom.”
Karp did not respond to this verbally. Instead he riffled the pages of the law book he had been reading when this conversation began, and arranged his face in the mulish, tight-jawed expression that he adopted when Marlene was pressing him to come clean with some negative thought.
“Well?” she said, after a minute of strained silence. “Is that what it is? The danger business?”
“No,” Karp admitted. “Not that that doesn’t suck too, but no.”
“What, then? Christ, Butch, come out with it!”
It came, in a rush. “All right. What you’re doing, what you’re planning, it’s not just going to be P.I. work. It’s going to be more of the kind of thing you pulled with Pruitt-”
“Not necess-”
“Let me finish! When it comes down to a case of letting the law take its course, or making sure that some woman doesn’t get hurt, I know what you’re going to do and so do you. It’s going to involve taking out the male party, Marlene. And some of these guys are persistent. So maybe in the back of your mind, there’s a thought about making it permanent. In some cases. I’d bet my next three paychecks that stuff like that would not faze Harry one little bit. And it’s wrong. Don’t you think I know the law’s fucked up in the domestic area? Jesus, Marlene, I was a homicide prosecutor for twelve years! There are probably five domestic homicides for every crime-connected murder. But if you want to change that, do it right! Run for office, lobby Albany, be a legal counsel at one of those shelters, anything, but don’t do this, what you’re thinking about. Because as sure as my ass is on this mattress, you’re going to get in trouble, not little trouble, but big trouble, disbarment trouble, Class A felony trouble. And the worst thing is, while you’re getting in this trouble, you can’t talk about it with me. We can’t be-I don’t know-together in the way I want us to be, because I can’t know about that kind of shit. You understand what I’m saying? I can’t know about it.”
“Why? Because you’ll turn me in?” She asked this lightly, not at all liking how this conversation was turning out, but Karp answered with grim seriousness.
“Yes,” he said, grimly. “In a heartbeat. Christ, Marlene, you know the damn law on conspiracy and accessory to felony. You got away with this goddamn Lanin deal because Harry’s a cop and he covered for you, but if he’s private, he won’t be able to do that.”
“Butch, this is a ridiculous conversation. You sound like I’m planning to set up Murder Incorporated. It’s a security and investigation service.”
“Is it?” he asked coldly. “Fine, then. I beg your pardon. Just so you know that there is no way in hell that our child-excuse me, our children-are ever going to end up with both their parents in jail.” Karp let a long breath out through his nostrils and propped his book up on his chest and started to pretend to read it. Marlene stared at him for a while and then plumped her pillows and got out a magazine. For a long time, until they switched off their lights, the only sound was the turning of pages.