“His lawyer? A Legal Aid?”
“Bullshit, a Legal Aid. We’re talking Leonard Sussman.”
“Oh, shit! Did you talk to him? What’s the deal?”
“The deal is, one, Sussman’s fee is being paid by a benefactor who prefers to remain anonymous. Three guesses who. Two, the story is, Elvis came to you to tell you to lay off his dear girl friend, who was apparently threatened by one of your minions. You viciously attacked him with lye and boiling water, as a result of which he is blinded and disfigured. He drew his gun merely to defend himself against this unprovoked attack. Oh, yeah, he will plead to a concealed weapons charge. How about that shit?”
“This is a fucking joke. What about the goddamn bomb!”
“What bomb? Just because our man is, get this, ‘politically active,’ we are going to try to frame him for an act of terrorism. A scandal.”
“But, the girl friend, Higgs, she told Sonny that she … oh, crap!”
“Oh, crap is right. Vera is tight as a clam. Didn’t see nuffin’, didn’t write nuffin’, don’t know nuffin’. Except one thing. Preston Elvis was warm in the bosom of his little family on the night of March twenty-sixth, Nineteen-seventy. She remembers that, clear as a bell. Mandeville Louis? Never heard of him, either of them. We been struck out, Chief.”
“Uh-uh, baby, we’re just getting started.”
“What are you going to do, Butch?”
“Damned if I know, now. I’ll think of something.”
At ten o’clock that night, Karp cruised into the prison ward of Bellevue, showed his credentials to the guard, and rolled his wheelchair up to the bedside of Preston Elvis. Elvis’s head was swathed in bandages yellow with furacin and his right arm was in a cast. Karp sat silently, and after a while Elvis became aware that somebody was in the room.
“Who … who there?” he said nervously.
“Don’t worry, Pres, it’s not the hit man, yet. It’s just your latest victim.”
“Who, Karp? What the fuck you doin’ here? Get outa my room!”
“Come on, Pres, I’m just a fellow sufferer come to keep you company. Like a candy striper. Would you like something to read?”
“Fuck you, muthafucka! You finished, man. I’m gonna sue your ass, what you did to me. I’m gonna sue every fuckin’ thing you got.”
“Oh, yeah? Is Sussman going to do it for a contingency fee? Or is Mandeville Louis going to pay for that, too?”
“Fuck off! I ain’t talkin’ to you. I don have to talk to you. My lawyer say …”
“Shut up! I don’t give a rat’s ass what your lawyer says. I’m not here to ask you any questions because I already know what you did and how you did it. I don’t need anything from you, Pres. But you need something from me.”
“Fuck I do!”
“Yeah, you do, Pres. Lookie here. We got you on the weapons charge, and I think we could probably make simple assault stick. OK, needless to say, we go for the max, five years, and I’ll make sure you do straight time, if I have to use every chip and every bit of pull I got to my name. Think about it, Pres. Five in the joint, blind, no face, a fucked-up arm. But they won’t be looking at your face, Pres. They’ll be a lot more interested in the other end. They’ll be betting your tail in poker games, Pres. I raise you two smokes and you can fuck Elvis. After a couple years you’ll be able to park a VW up your asshole.”
“Shut up! Nurse! Get this bastard out of here!” Elvis yelled.
“OK, Pres, I was just going. But here’s another thing to think about. Your good buddy, Louis. You think he’s about to let somebody who could finger him on a murder rap live in prison for five years? I mean, you know him better than most, right? Few cartons of cigarettes is all it would take up there. What do you think?”
Elvis was cursing shrilly. Karp heard somebody coming in the hallway, and other people in the ward were yelling for quiet. He leaned closer to Elvis’s bed and spoke softly, with a terrible intensity.
“I don’t want you, Elvis. You’re just a little piece of shit to me. But you give me him, him, and you’ll walk, free and clear, I swear it. I swear it. Free. And. Clear.”
Karp did not go back to his room after this episode. Instead, he went to see Marlene, and begged the night nurse to let him spend a few minutes in her room. She was nearly as bandaged as Elvis. Only her mouth and a small patch of clear skin on the left side of her face remained uncovered. Her left hand was immobilized and suspended in a complicated frame attached to the bed. She appeared to be asleep. The room was full of flowers, from friends and relatives, and from Karp, who had ordered flowers sent every day since the bombing.
He rolled into the room and watched her for some minutes. Then he began to speak, softly, and to weep, a long, snuffling monologue. He told her how miserable and ashamed he was, and how he would make it up to her if it took him his whole life. He enumerated all the things he could have done that might have prevented her from getting hurt. He said he wished it was him lying there, instead of her. Worst of all, he told her they had the man who planted the bomb and he would give that man his freedom if he would help put Mandeville Louis away, and that he, Karp, was the lowest worm in the universe and if Marlene never looked at him again it was only what he deserved. And more in the same line.
After he had run out of steam and wiped his face on the sleeve of his bathrobe, he noticed, with some dismay, that she was gesturing him closer with her good arm. He rolled to the side of the bed and leaned over. She was saying something, but her voice was very weak. He put his ear next to her mouth.
“Butch …” she whispered.
“Yeah, baby, I’m here, what is it?”
“Butch, Butch, for chrissake … don’t be such a schmuck!” she sighed, and drifted back into her drugged sleep.
She still loves me, thought Karp, and kissed her cheek.
Chapter 19
The remains of a giant mushroom-and-pepperoni pizza with extra cheese had been pushed to one side of Karp’s bed. Guma had brought it, together with four quarts of Schaeffer, and Karp, desperate after nearly a month of hospital food, had eaten most of it. Mike Kaplan, Roland Hrcany, V.T., and Sonny Dunbar were arranged around the room, drinking beer, smoking, eating cannolis out of greasy paper, and generally helping with Karp’s readjustment to life on the outside. Tomorrow he was scheduled to go home-on crutches.
Karp tried to get into the spirit of celebration, but failed. This was noticed.
“Hey, Butch, smile! It’s supposed to be a party. You look like a rainy day in the cancer ward,” said Guma.
“Yeah, Karp, lighten up!” said Hrcany. “Have some more beer. Hey, I’ll get my projector, we’ll set it up and watch skin flicks.”
“No, maybe later,” said Karp. “Listen, guys, let me not beat around the bush. I need some help here. Sonny and Mike are already in it, but we’re not going to pull it off as a part-time thing. Especially with me on crutches.”
“What, this is the liquor store case, that guy Louis?” asked Guma.
“Yeah, but let me fill you in on the details.”
After Karp had done so, Guma gave a low whistle.
“Holy shit! This guy Louis aced Sonny’s brother-in-law, blew up Marlene, and almost killed you, while he was locked up?”
“I see your point, Butch,” said V.T. “If this guy walks, nobody will be safe in their beds.”
“Yeah, safety in bed is one of our most sacred rights as Americans,” said Hrcany. “OK, you must have a plan. How do we nail the fucker?”
Karp grinned for the first time that evening. “We have to do two things. First, we have to crack Elvis. We’re not going to be able to get next to him officially, not with Sussman on the case. So we’re going to go after his alibi.”
“The girl, Vera,” said Dunbar.
“Right, but we also have to cover his movements from the time he was captured back as far as we can go. Where he went, the newspaper job, friends, hangouts. We should give Louis’s place a good toss, too. Elvis may have been hanging around there. He’s a skell, right? He must have done something we can bag him for.”