Yergin turned his massive head slowly toward Werner and regarded him as an alligator might a puppy. “I observe your objection, sir. I do not accept it. It is for this court to obtain the required psychiatric advice, and on the present evidence in this case, I believe that I no longer wish to obtain it from you or your staff at Bellevue Hospital. As for you, sir, I would suggest that as of now you concern yourself not with competency of medical advice, but with competency of legal advice, should the District Attorney’s Office wish to bring a charge of perjury against you.”
“Good for Yergin!” said Marlene from her bed. “What happened then? Yomm! Oh, gorgeous!”
Karp was sitting in Marlene’s room with a cardboard bucket of half-shell oysters picked up from a fish store on First Avenue. Marlene’s face was still partially bandaged, but she was off the dope and feeling more her old self. Every couple of sentences, Karp would season an oyster and slide it into her mouth. It was the sexiest thing either of them had done in months.
“Oh, it was quick work after that. He recessed and asked us for the names of two fresh shrinks. We got him two guys from Downstate Medical Center. After they had finished laughing themselves silly over Ganser syndrome, they told the judge Louis was as competent as he was, or words to that effect.”
“So he’s remanded for trial?”
“You bet. They’re selecting the jury now.”
“What do you think?”
“I think open and shut. Elvis and the physical evidence will bury him. On the other hand, I got a funny call this afternoon. From Sussman. He said, quote, ‘Mister Louis would like to see you about a deal.’ Unquote. He wouldn’t say what it was, wouldn’t say anything, in fact. Very uncharacteristic.”
“Ah, piss on him. He just knows he’s beat. By a better man. Oyster me again, big boy.”
To Karp’s surprise, when he arrived at the Tombs the next morning, Louis seemed positively glad to see him. His eyes glittered and he had an obsequious smile on his face. Sussman sat at the other end of the scarred table and merely nodded as Karp entered the interview room.
Karp examined Louis coldly. “OK, Louis, your lawyer said you wanted to see me.”
“Yeah, yeah, I did. Hey, sit down, sit down. Look, Karp, let’s cut out this jive, you know? I mean we understand each other, right? We’re the same kind, you and me. I mean, I could, you know, work with somebody like you, you dig?”
Louis brandished a fat wad of yellow legal paper, thickly covered with writing. “Look, I got it all worked out. It can’t miss. See, the deal is, we do franchises, but not just one thing, see. We franchise everything! It’s a kind of service-somebody got a product they want to franchise, they come to us, we set it up, turn it over to them. And, look, here’s the best part, we take a fee, plus, we get royalties on the franchises. Or maybe, we take over some of the spots. I, we, could work it out …”
“Louis, what are you talking about? I thought you wanted to deal.” Karp looked at Sussman, who merely shrugged and lifted his eyes to the ceiling.
“Yeah, yeah, this is the deal. It’s hot to trot, man. Man, I figure you to be, ah, Mister Outside, I’ll be Mister Inside. We’ll have us a big office with classy secretaries, you know, fine foxes. And, like, we’ll have a jet. A corporate jet. A corporate jet, man.”
Karp stood up. He addressed Sussman. “This won’t work, Lennie. It’s sneaky, but I think you’ve played your hand on this line.”
Sussman raised his palm. “Karp, cross my heart, this is all him. I have no idea what he’s up to.”
Louis was shuffling through his papers. “Hey, look at this, I got a drawing of the corporate jet. It’s got a what d’ya call it, a logo, on it. Hey, Karp, what do you think, sharp, right? Hey, Karp, where you going?”
“See you later, Louis,” said Karp, reaching for the door.
Louis got up and followed him. “Hey, Karp, let’s, you know, have lunch. We got to make plans.”
Karp turned and glared down at Louis. The man looked bad, that was a fact. His glasses were dirty, and there was a dried crust around his lips. His tan face was blotched and puffy and his hair looked greasy.
“Great, Louis. Let’s make it twenty-five years from next Thursday. I’ll call to confirm.”
Louis’s smile faded. “Twenty-five …? Oh, shit, hey, that’s all past, man. I mean, this is a new start. Right. I mean, I’m sorry. I really mean it. I mean if I caused any trouble at all, I am truly, truly sorry. What’s past is past, though, ahh, you can’t let the past hang you up, right? I mean, I said I was sorry and I meant it. Right? That’s past.”
Louis kept talking in this vein, in an insistent monotone. Karp couldn’t take his eyes away from Louis’s face. He felt a cold chill start in his midsection and crawl up his back. He shuddered.
Then something beyond Karp’s understanding happened. He looked into Louis’s wild, yellow eyes and he saw him. He saw the patently insane creature now babbling before him (hey, Karp, whadya say, Karp, hey what a deal, right? Karp? Hey, whata, whata, deal, right, hey, I’m sorry, alright?); he saw the phony madman under that, and under that the real monster, the beast of blood, and under that, under that, down beneath the rules and the laws, and vengeance and evil, he saw, and felt, a creature, a being like himself, writhing in a white-hot, ice-cold loveless hell, enduring torments so unspeakable that to release it by death, any death, would be an act of profound mercy.
Without conscious volition, Karp observed his hand reach out and pat Louis gently on the shoulder. Then he spun on his heel and left the room. He was sticky with sweat and breathing hard as he walked down the filthy corridors. He walked out of the Tombs into a bright, early summer day. He thought, ridiculously, this is the first day of the rest of your life.
A teenager in pimp clothes bumped into him. “Have a nice day,” said Karp. “Ah, fuck ya!” snarled the pimplet. Karp laughed merrily and headed north. For the rest of the day he sat in Washington Square Park and looked at people. Everything looked scrubbed and new, and impossibly detailed, glowing. He exercised his compassion, and mourned, joyfully, his lost innocence.
“And the thing of it was,” Karp explained to Marlene that night, “I didn’t change my ideas at all. I mean, I didn’t become a bleeding heart all of a sudden. I just was conscious, really conscious, for an instant, that me, and Louis, and Sussman, and shit, even Wharton, were just playing roles, and inside us there was something huge laughing at us all. Not cruelly, or mocking, but, like, ‘when are you people going to wake up?’ It was uncanny.”
“It sounds like it. You and the Grand Inquisitor.”
“Right. I’ve got to read that sometime. And the funniest part is, I don’t care about the trial. I mean, I want him to go to jail for a long time. And he probably will, even though he’s crazy as a loon. But I realized that what got me about him, what he was doing was a violation of the game. He wouldn’t play the game. He wouldn’t suffer with the rest of us. That’s what made him a monster. And I destroyed that. Or something did. Something did.” They were silent for a long while, thinking about how it had all played out.
She was sitting in his lap on a plastic couch in the patients’ lounge. After a while, Karp felt her stiffen and she made a little noise.
“What is it, Champ? Pain?”
“No. I’m scared, Butchie. They’re coming to show me the Face tomorrow.”
“Oh, God! Do you want me to be there?”
“No! I mean, I’ll need, I guess I’ll need some time for myself, you know?”
“Look, Marlene, I got to say this, umm, whatever it turns out …”
She put her hand over his mouth. “No, don’t say anything. Just squeeze me.”
The next day, it was a Friday, she called Karp late, around five.