“Don’t fucking tell me what I gotta do,” Vinnie rumbled.
Duane got up and paced. “Okay, fine. Do what you want. You want to stay here till somebody spots you, fuck me! Go do it! This ain’t Alphabet City, bro. It’s fuckin’ Hempstead, Long fuckin’ Island.”
“Yeah, fuck it,” said Vinnie after a considerable, tense silence. “Okay, we’ll head west and all. But I got to do something in the city first.”
“The city! You’re outa your fuckin’ gourd, Vinnie!”
“Don’t fuckin’ worry about it,” said Vinnie confidently. “I’m in and out, no sweat. But I need to borrow your bike.”
Marlene and Harry picked up Lucy at the day-care. She squalled briefly at the changing of the guard and then fell asleep in Marlene’s arms.
“Home?” asked Harry.
“Yeah-no, could we stop by Canal and Lafayette first? I said I would pick up a roll of butcher paper for Lillian.”
No problem. Harry parked the car on Canal, took the baby, and Marlene got out. It was close to six, and the merchants were starting to take in their sidewalk displays. Between Hudson and Centre streets, Canal is a vast emporium, whose many small merchants supply goods both ordinary and exotic, from war surplus to plumbing supplies, to hardware, to art supplies, to specialized equipment for all of the City’s trades. You can buy a slightly used meat freezer, a bolt for an 1898 Mauser, a Norden bomb sight, a box containing a thousand assorted brass zippers, a length of anchor chain, an anchor to go with it, or (as in the present case) a roll of brown butcher paper suitable for the scribbles of preschoolers. Marlene bought her paper and staggered out with the heavy roll on her hip.
As she crossed the broad sidewalk, her eye was caught by an object fluttering from the awning rail of a military-surplus business next door. It looked like a gigantic pair of training pants in international orange, suspended by four heavy cables from a pulley. Marlene studied it for a moment and then went into the store. After a brief conversation with the proprietor, she bought it.
“Harry,” she said when she was seated again in the car, “I got another big favor. After you drop us off, could you go back to Centre Street and get Butch and bring him back to the loft? Tell him I figured a way to get him home for the weekend.”
“You must be out of your mind,” said Karp when he saw what Marlene had wrought.
“I don’t see why,” she said blithely. “It’s a navy breeches buoy. They used to use them to transfer people between ships at sea. Just sit in it and hold your crutches, and I’ll go upstairs and haul you up on the cargo hoist. It’s perfectly safe.”
Karp looked doubtfully at the orange canvas object rotating slowly in the dusty light of their building’s lift shaft. He was familiar with how the building’s industrial operations acquired their raw materials. He also knew how frequently the lift broke down, suspending a load of wire in mid-shaft. Marlene had secured the lift hook to the shackle conveniently placed above the pulley block of the contraption. Thereby it swung, glowing and ominous.
“Come on. It’s just like the Parachute Jump,” encouraged Marlene.
Indeed. It was a lot like the vanished ride at Steeplechase in Coney Island, that once lifted screaming fun lovers two hundred feet into the air and then released them to float down to earth on parachutes. Karp had been on the Parachute Jump at the age of eight. Once-and tossed a heavy meal of hot dog, fries, and root beer over the assembled throng below.
On the other hand, at age eight there were only his brothers to mock him and call him chicken. Now he had Marlene. Leaning on her, he fitted himself into the apparatus. Five minutes later, the lift roared and jerked him into the air.
“There, that wasn’t so bad,” said Marlene cheerfully when Karp was at last standing in their loft.
“It was hell on earth, and I’ll never forgive you,” he replied.
“Thanks a million, Harry,” said Marlene. Bello had gathered his small belongings and was about to slip away without ceremony. Marlene hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.
“Watch yourself,” he said. “You going anywhere this weekend?”
“Harry, honestly! I’ll be fine.”
Harry looked doubtful, glanced at Karp hovering in the background, and after promising to pick Marlene up on Monday morning, made his exit.
Harry didn’t go home. He drove around Alphabet City for a while, and stopped in several bodegas, restaurants, and bars, hoping to pick up some information about the fugitive. Nobody heard nothin’, nobody seen the big guy. He got back in his car, feeling uneasy in a way he had learned, during the past thirty years on the streets, to trust utterly. He drove back to Crosby and parked fifty feet down the street from the door to Marlene’s loft.
Karp seated himself at the kitchen table. “What was that all about, ‘Watch yourself’?”
“Oh, nothing. Harry’s a mother hen. It’s the escape. He’s worried that Vinnie might try something.”
“With you?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re not?”
“He’s a punk, Butch. A loud-mouth asshole. Besides, I have a big man to protect me. Can I sit on your lap?”
“I insist on it,” he said.
After a while, Karp, breathing hard, asked, “Have you thought about how I’m going to climb up to the bed?”
“I already brought the mattress down under the sleeping loft,” said Marlene. “I’m completely handicapped-accessible, as required by law.”
“You thought of everything,” said Karp.
At which point Lucy awakened, squalling. “Except that, of course,” said Marlene.
The next morning, the two of them lay sated in a sticky embrace, having, as Marlene remarked, stored up enough for the coming week.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Karp. “What if we offered Tomasian a deal?”
Marlene groaned. “Who’s Tomasian?” She slithered up onto his chest. “Is he the author of the best-selling How to Make Love to an Armenian?”
“Seriously …”
“Seriously, I expect your thoughts to be focused entirely on the romantic during the tiny fragment of your time you devote to connubial duties. Begin with how much you love me and why.”
“Okay, great face, hot body, terrific comprehension of the nuances of the adversarial system, which is why I put it to you that if we offer Tomasian a real sweetheart deal, and he doesn’t take it, it’d be another indication that he’s the wrong guy. Ow! That hurt, Marlene! Those are delicate organs. Don’t you want to have any more children?”
“Not if they’re like you.” She got to her knees and stretched her arms out wide and flexed her torso from side to side. They were lying on the mattress in the space under the sleeping loft, which Marlene had fixed up as a library. Three walls were lined with a miscellany of bookcases, from brick-and-board to a huge, battered mahogany glass-fronted cabinet that she had salvaged and repaired. She examined her image in the reflection provided by this.
“Am I still beautiful?”
“You’re gorgeous,” he said.
She placed her hands beneath her breasts and frowned. “Badly sagged.”
“Luscious and still perky,” he replied.
“Perky? Really?”
“I swear,” said Karp fervently. “Turning now to the other matter-”
Marlene flopped back on the pillows. “Yes, well, I don’t think we need any further demonstrations that Tomasian is a patsy. We can’t pressure Kerbussyan. We can’t get to Djelal. No evidence links Nassif to any crime. So the only live action is the link to the Bollanos and Guma’s wiretap. That, and the one piece of information that still doesn’t make sense.”
“Which is …?”
“Why the two Turks were buying paint. They should want to keep away from one another. They know the heat’s on. If they’re actually the guys that Joey was talking about, they must be keyed up, ready to run this big deal. So they’re painting? Doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe they’re doctoring the mask,” said Karp. “Painting it black. Or making a fake. Like the Maltese Falcon.” As Sidney Greenstreet: “Nheh-heh-heh! Nheh-heh! By gad, sir. The black bird!”