“That’s a thought,” Marlene agreed. “Paint stores sell plaster too. We could check it out-”
This speculation was interrupted by a car horn out on Crosby blaring “shave-and-a-haircut.”
“Oh, my God!” cried Marlene. “It’s Raney.”
“Well, invite him up. It’s a queen-sized bed. Or did you forget that I’d be home?”
Marlene jumped out of the bed and ran to the bath. A sound of splashing. Karp called out, “So much for the tiny fragment of my time. When Raney calls …”
Marlene rushed dripping from her whore’s bath and up the ladder to the sleeping loft. Drawers slammed open and shut. Panties, denim cutoffs, black Susan B. Anthony T-shirt, sweat socks, Converse high-tops. Down the ladder.
“Don’t be a goon. I forgot I said I’d go to the park for touch football. You know, the detectives’ game-we always go.” She stopped and put a hand to her face. “Oh, Butch, I forgot to tell you. I’m sorry!”
“No, no problem. You go ahead.”
“No, really, get dressed, and I’ll get Lucy. We can all go”
“Hey, relax,” he said. “Look, really, you’ve been cooped up here with the kid full-time for weeks. Take an afternoon off. I’ll be fine. In fact, I’ll enjoy it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
She planted a hot one on his lips and scooted for the door.
“Just don’t break anything,” he called after her.
Harry Bello saw Marlene get into Raney’s beat-up Ghia and zoom away. Shaking off sleep, he cranked his engine and followed them at a discreet distance.
Two hours later, Marlene was lying propped up against the base of a big maple, her third Schaeffer chilling her hand, staring dreamily up through the mosaic of toothy leaves and blue sky. She had a bruise on her hip and a skinned elbow, grass in her hair, and drying sweat all over her body, and she felt wonderful.
There were about a hundred people attending the game and picnic, all current and former Manhattan detectives, their wives, dates, and children. Marlene supposed she qualified as a date. Several touch football games of varying levels of formality were taking place simultaneously: the “official” North-South game restricted to male detectives, a “ladies” game, a kids game, an old-timers game. Marlene had participated in the ladies game without resentment. Cops played rough. So did the ladies, for that matter.
She shifted her weight to ease the pressure of a root against a sore place, and felt an unaccustomed pressure against one buttock. Raney’s wallet. He had been red-dogged as quarterback, and the wallet had popped out. She had been spectating at the time, and he had given it to her to hold.
The afternoon wore on. The games became more uncoordinated and hilarious as players drifted off the field, got their load on, and drifted back into the game. At last no one but kids remained on the grass, and everyone else repaired to the grills to scarf up chicken, burgers, franks, potato salad, chips, and more beer.
“We should get back,” said Marlene woozily. Raney slipped a hand around her waist and fingered her belly above her cutoffs.
“We should,” he said. “But first, how about slipping into the bushes and fooling around?”
“Get married, Raney,” she said, laughing.
“I’m waiting for you, babes,” he said. “You really want to go? They’re gonna let off fireworks later.”
“Next year,” she said. “No, really. There’s no food in the house, and my husband’s hopping around there on one leg. I could grab a cab if you really want to stay….
Raney drove her home, carefully. He was fairly loaded too. The Chopin tape he always had going on the car stereo played the Polonaise in A-flat major, and Marlene nearly drifted off.
In front of the loft, she kissed him solidly on the mouth, thanked him for a terrific day, and ran upstairs. Harry Bello’s car sneaked around the corner two minutes later, cruised by the front door of the loft, and parked across the street.
Karp was on the floor with the baby when Marlene came in, the baby banging a spoon on a pot and on Karp-an appealing domestic scene. She joined them, hugged the child, kissed Karp.
“Whew!” he said, fanning the air in front of his face. “A few beers, dear?”
“A few, if you must know. How have you two been amusing yourselves? Did I miss anything exciting?”
“Yeah, actually you did. Watch this! C’mere, Lucy.”
Karp rose on his good knee, reached for the baby, and stood her on her feet. “Go ahead, walk to Mommy.”
To Marlene’s incredulous delight, Lucy took three tottering steps and fell giggling into her mother’s arms.
“I’m squirming with guilt now. I missed her first steps.”
“Unnatural mother!” said Karp. “But that’s nothing. Okay, Lucy, let’s show Mommy.” He picked up a pink sponge ball and handed it to the baby. Then he made his arms into a wide horizontal loop. “Okay, there she goes. She’s driving down court, she’s in the lane, she fakes, she fakes again, there’s the shot … shoot it, Lucy!”
Almost on cue, with a convulsive heave Lucy shot the ball straight up into the air so that Karp, by contorting his body and shuffling on one knee, was able to arrange for the ball to fall through his arms. “Two points, and the crowd goes wild!”
Much was made of this, and there ensued a period of the sort of wordless familial being that stands at the root of any human capacity for happiness.
After this, time to eat. Marlene decided to take the baby with her to the store so that Karp could relax, deep ethnic and gender conditioning causing her grossly to underestimate the amount of time a man can be alone with an infant without murdering it, abandoning it, or suing for divorce.
Passing 23rd Street, making for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, Jim Raney was suddenly aware of an emptiness in a characteristic place below the base of his spine. He cursed. Marlene still had his wallet. He couldn’t face the weekend without cash or plastic. He whipped his car into an illegal U-turn and headed south again.
Marlene changed the baby, filled its bottle, and carried the child downstairs. At the ground-floor landing she paused to unchain the stroller from its pipe. She put Lucy in the stroller, rolled it down the shallow steps to the sidewalk, and set its brake. It was quiet on Crosby Street this late on Saturday. No more deliveries and almost no through traffic. Crosby Street, narrow, cobbled and inconvenient, is only six blocks long and goes nowhere in particular. This is one of its virtues as a place to live.
Harry Bello saw Marlene emerge from her building with Lucy. He briefly considered getting out and saying hello to them, but thought that Marlene might be pissed at him for hanging around. Instead he drifted back to his consideration of the case of Mehmet Ersoy. He already knew who had done the killing. That was the easy part. The hard part was why, and if he didn’t know that, it would be almost impossible to assemble a compelling case. There was a treasure, with a willing buyer, and then it hadn’t been sold to the buyer at all but stolen from the seller, and it was now about to be sold to the mob for what must be a lower price. It didn’t make sense. Harry cogitated, staring blankly at Marlene, Lucy, and the empty street.
Vinnie Boguluso came swiftly out of the alley where he had been hiding and ran across the street, barely twenty feet in front of Harry’s windshield. Marlene had her back to him. She was double-locking the big front door of the loft.
Harry Bello, heart in mouth, flung open the car door and pulled his.38 in almost the same motion. “Vinnie! Freeze!” he shouted.
Marlene spun around and saw Vinnie coming toward her, toward the baby. Vinnie checked in surprise when he saw the cop with the gun, but then continued toward Marlene.
Harry’s gun was pointing at Vinnie, but there was no way he was going to fire a pistol with Lucy anywhere near the line of fire.
Vinnie reached the stroller. He yanked the baby out by her arm and clutched her roughly to his chest. He had his switchblade knife out. He pressed its blade into the tender flesh of the baby’s neck.