Falsely Accused (16 page)

“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.

Stupenagel's article about Marlene's work on behalf of Carrie Lanin was published two weeks later in the
Village Voice.
It was a good piece, Marlene thought, almost good enough to make her not hate the reporter for publishing a photograph of what Pruitt had done to her face. Marlene had not been the only interview: Stupe had broadened the article to cover the whole phenomenon of women being stalked in New York, and seemed to have ferreted out anyone in the greater metropolitan area who had ever thought seriously about violence against women resulting from that peculiar obsession.

Marlene read the article twice, underlining here and there and making marginal notes. Then she called Stupenagel.

“You total shit,” she said when the reporter picked up the phone.

“Marlene! You saw the article?”

“Of course I saw it, you jerk! How could you do that to me? Oh, crap! Why do I even ask?”

“What's wrong? I thought you came out of it very well,” said Stupenagel. “They even put a sidebar in there describing your colorful past.”

“What's wrong is that I'm going to have to carry this face to my mom's house on Sunday, and it's improved enough to give me a shot at passing it off with a white lie about a car wreck, which you have rendered impossible by printing that picture and dwelling on how it happened.”

“Yeah, but how did you like the piece?” said Ariadne.

Marlene bit back a ferocious response. There was as much point in getting angry with Ariadne for the wreckage she occasionally left in her wake as it would be to get miffed at a typhoon; the woman was as insensitive as a tropical low.

“I loved it,” said Marlene. “I'm going to have it bronzed. I was especially fascinated with that NYU woman you dug up—is she legit?”

“Professor Malkin? Oh, yeah, legit up the wazoo. Did you like the typology? Slobs, sadists, and strangers. I love it!”

“Yeah, but what I wanted to know was, did she have some way of telling them apart, I mean at the beginning?”

“Hmmm, interesting question,” said the reporter. “To tell the truth, I didn't get into it with her that deeply. I went to her because she had the statistics I needed, and I just threw the three-types thing in because I thought it sounded neat. Why are you asking?”

“Oh, just curiosity,” said Marlene disingenuously. “Do you happen to have the good professor's number?”

Clunk of phone and rustle of paper while she fished it out. After Marlene wrote it down she asked, “And what's with you, Stupe? Anything happening in the great world?”

“I cut off all my hair,” said Stupenagel, to Marlene's surprise. She was not surprised that she had done it, just that she thought it worthy of mention.

“Did you?”

“Yes. And dyed it black. Very punky.”

“Getting interested in fashion, are we, in our old age?”

“One must keep up,” said Stupenagel airily. “For some of us, the ability to make tempting popovers does not suffice. Speaking of fashion, though, did you ever get back with Suzy Poole?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And?”

“Bye, Stupe.”

Marlene pushed the button down in the middle of Stupenagel's outraged squawk, and immediately dialed Professor Malkin's number. She got a secretary and made an appointment for a week hence. Then she dressed carefully, with as much fashion as she could manage, and called a cab.

The model, Suzy Poole, lived in a high-rise apartment building on Fifth Avenue at Seventy-first Street. The security was about what you would expect in a government installation holding mid-level nuclear secrets. Marlene was examined, checked over the intercom, and elevatored to the fifteenth floor by a manned car, whose operator waited to see her admitted to the Poole apartment.

Which was largely white and black, with splashes of meaningless abstract color and neon sculptures on plain stands, an obvious package by a decorator at the forward edge of au courant. Poole herself was garbed in black—tights and a sort of loose Chinese jacket in heavy cotton, an outfit that, in combination with her essential physique, made her look like a recent releasee from a Japanese prison camp. Her face, despite the famous razor cheekbones and a nose that appeared to have more than a normal complement of tiny, angled bones, seemed, without the intervening miracle of photography, curiously malformed, like that of an embryo bird.

Marlene was seated in a complicated chrome and leather sling, offered a drink, stared at with frank horror, and subjected to a long story of persecution. She took notes. The gentleman was named Jonathan Seely. He was an account executive at a big ad agency that had hired Ms. Poole to associate her cheekbones with an upmarket new perfume. A romance had blossomed, then faded, when Ms. Poole had discovered the gentleman was, as she put it, a sadistic son of a bitch. He had hit her. In the
face.
Now he wouldn't stop calling. Somehow he was able to obtain her private, private number, however often she changed it. Every time the phone rang she jumped. It was interfering with her work. She was a prisoner in her own home. And so on.

Marlene closed her notebook. The model stopped talking and looked at her expectantly. Marlene said, “Well, I think I have enough to go on. Let me do some nosing around and get back to you. Tomorrow?”

Suzy Poole let a crease of doubt mar her perfection. “Umm, sure, but what do you think now? Will you be able to help?”

“Oh, yeah, I think so.”

“Like what? Not guards.”

“Oh, no. You don't need me for guards, and the point is not to make a more secure prison for yourself, but to make him stop bothering you. For example, I noticed you haven't filed for a protective order. That'd be one of our first steps.”

Poole made a moue of distaste, charming. “Ooh, do we have to, like,
involve
the courts? I mean, can't we handle it in a more discreet way?”

“You're concerned about this guy messing with your career if you name him publicly in a legal action?”

“I guess.”

Marlene fixed the woman's enormous dark blue eyes with her solo jet one, and said, “Let's get one thing straight before we go any further, Ms. Poole. This man has declared war on you. He is torturing you. He is beyond decency. Pleas haven't helped. In order to make him stop, we must therefore make his life as unpleasant—no,
more
unpleasant—than he has made yours. Now, I think I can do that, and going to court is—”

The phone rang. Suzy Poole uttered a little startled noise and touched her hand to her heart.

“I'll get it,” said Marlene, and picked up the nearest phone before Poole could say a word.

“Bitch!” said a hissing voice in Marlene's ear.

“Mr. Seely?” said Marlene pleasantly. “This is Ms. Poole's protective service. We ask you please not to call this number again.”

Silence, and then the click of a disconnection.

“He'll call again,” said Marlene. “If you're going to go ahead with this, I'll have my partner make an appointment to rig up a recording device on your line. It's critical that we get a physical record of him annoying you. So, are we hired?”

Suzy Poole nodded. “Yes. You're hired. Do you, ah, want me to give you a check?”

“Not right now,” said Marlene. “I want to get my license first.”

When Marlene left Suzy Poole's she cabbed downtown (marking the cab ride as a legitimate expense in a little book she had purchased for this purpose) and filed a P.I. application at the New York State Building on Foley Square. It was a formality. The state of New York does not want lowlife types carrying guns and poking into the private affairs of its citizens, and so keeps its private-investigator licensing laws strict. The stringency is, however, greatly reduced for former members of the NYPD, and a cynic might see a connection between the verve with which the police resist any relaxation of the City's laws against legal gun ownership (in a town where any fifteen-year-old can pick up a piece for pocket change) and the ease with which retired cops float into the armed security business. Harry would have no trouble getting a P.I. license, and, of course, neither would the respectable lawyer and former prosecutor Marlene Ciampi.