Counterplay

adamantly against the whole idea was Lucy. She was back in Taos, New Mexico, with Ned, and didn’t want anybody spying on her. I’ve got Ned, she pointed out before she left. He’s the only secret agent man I need.

No one’s doubting Ned’s abilities, Marlene had said as the subject of the conversation stood bashfully to the side with his head down and Stetson in his hand while mother and daughter argued in the loft before they left that past January to return to Taos.

Like her husband, Marlene liked the young man and acknowledged that his hobby as a quick-draw gunslinger at Western competitions had come in handy when Lucy’s life had been threatened several times over the past year. But again, that had all been about reactions; he wasn’t trained to be proactive when dealing with a security threat. He’s only one man, and he may be a target himself. Kane, or whomever he sends, is not going to step out onto the street and ask for a fair fight. You won’t even know the feds are there.

Yes, I will, Lucy said, placing her hands on her hips with her feet apart, an obstinate stance she’d inherited from her mother. And I’m not going to give up my privacy for the latest madman du jour who has it in for this family.

Looking at her defiant daughter, Marlene was struck again by the changes in the thin, pale, and frightened young woman who’d gone to Taos, New Mexico, almost a year earlier to help at a Catholic mission for Taos Indian kids. Bookish and wrapped up in Catholic mysticism, she’d done little up to that point to make herself attractive to members of the opposite sex. A savant at picking up languages-having mastered nearly sixty already-she’d accompanied her mother to Taos, hoping to learn Tewa, one of the oldest and most individualistic languages left in the world from the Pueblo Indians there. Whether it was the outdoor life or her love for her young cowboy, Lucy had blossomed into a tanned, muscular but well-filled-out young woman, who if not pretty in the classical sense of a rose was certainly beautiful in the sense of a desert flower.

Marlene then turned to John Jojola to persuade Lucy, but he’d been no help. These federal agents might be okay in the city, he said. But every time some guy from the FBI shows up in town, it’s all over the reservation faster than you can pick up the telephone. And the people in town can smell the difference between the tourists and out-of-town cops. One spends money on doodads, the other doesn’t. I’m worried that if the bad guys show up in town, we won’t know which is which, and they might spot the feds first, which would make them more cautious. I’d rather they were overconfident. He’d put his arm around Marlene’s shoulders. Come on, I’ll keep an eye on the young lovebirds. Us cowboys and Indians blend in better in our West. If Ned doesn’t see them first, me and my guys will.

Marlene chatted briefly with Kipman and Guma after they arrived on the eighth floor. The men then preceded down the hallway toward the appeals bureau, while Marlene walked into the reception room outside of Butch’s office and found Mrs. Milquetost blocking the way.

“I’m here to see my husband.”

“Is he expecting you?”

Marlene stared at the woman dumbfounded. “Well, yes, now may I go in?”

“Let me see if he’s available,” Mrs. Milquetost said, giving her a look that said “stay where you are” while she walked around her desk and pressed the intercom button.

“Yes, Mrs. Mil-kay-tossed?”

“Your wife is here to see you, Mr. Karp?”

That was too much for Marlene, who threw her legs into gear and breezed past the the receptionist, who responded by grabbing for her, too late, and an angrily squawking, “You can’t-”

Marlene burst through the door nearly knocking Gilbert Murrow off his feet. “Well hello, Gilbert,” she said. “Are you the reason my husband has the gendarme-”

“Don’t hurt me,” Murrow squeaked, only half in jest, and scooted past her.

Marlene slammed the door on the still protesting Mrs. Milquetost. “The next time that woman tries to stop me, I’m going to scratch her eyes out,” she told her husband.

“What if I was having sex with my mistress and you burst in like that?” Karp teased as she reached up to place her arms around his neck.

“I’d have to kill you to avenge my Italian honor.”

“But you wouldn’t know if you didn’t barge past Mrs. Milquetost and had waited in the reception area like a good wife until my mistress had enough time to get her clothes back on. Ow!”

Karp rubbed at his lip where she’d bitten him hard enough to draw blood. “Oh, I’d know, buster,” she hissed and kissed him again, gently on the wound. “The woman always knows…even if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. Now, are you ready to go to dinner? Oh, by the way, it’s the street workers.”

“What street workers?” Karp replied.

“The spooks,” Marlene said rolling her eyes. “The guys watching the loft.”

“What made you change your mind?” Just the night before she’d guessed the poodle people as they lay in bed playing Guess the Spooks. They aren’t really old and that’s probably a bomb-sniffing poodle…yaps and pees all over itself when it finds one, she’d said. Isn’t that right, Gilgamesh?

The huge Presa Canario who camped at the foot of the bed responded with a mumbled “woof” and shifted his enormous head from one paw to the next, hoping that would be the end of it. The couple in the bed had been keeping him awake with their sexual antics, and he was tired. It took a lot of energy to haul his 150-pound frame around all day. He, too, was trained to sniff for bombs, as well as dismember human threats upon the appropriate command. But mostly he just wanted to go for walks, eat, and nap.

“What makes you so sure it’s the street workers?” Karp asked.

“Well, when I came out of the building tonight to walk over here,” she said, “I went right by those guys-both of them clean-cut Ivy League sorts and neither one of them whistled, or yelled, ‘Hey baby, hubba hubba,’ or asked me for a date. And I’m wearing my tightest jeans. You tell me how many street workers in New York would ignore this cute little tush? It’s just not normal.”

“You have a point,” Karp said. She did look hot in the tight jeans that molded to her still perky rear end. The compliment got him another kiss and he was feeling a bit distracted by the feeling of her body pressing up against his. “Can’t we just go home?”

Marlene kissed him again but broke the embrace and fended off his attempts to reengage. “No,” she said. “Now, calm down, tiger. The boys will be home anyway, so it’s hours before you would be able to act on that notion anyway. And Uncle Vladimir said it’s important.”

10

“So now he’s ‘uncle Vladimir’?” Karp inquired as their cabdriver wove his way down Centre and turned onto the Brooklyn Bridge for the ride over to Brighton Beach.

Karp wasn’t sure how he felt about her adopting his “other” family. “Uncle Vladimir” was actually his great- uncle Vladimir Karchovski, his paternal grandfather’s brother and, of greater concern, a power in the Russian mob over in Brighton Beach.

He did not know the man well. He’d always been a distant relative, seen rarely on childhood visits to his grandfather’s house. Back then he’d just been a nice old man who liked to lift him up to eye level, ask if he’d been a good boy, and when he responded in the affirmative, gave him pieces of licorice candy he kept individually wrapped in his coat pockets.

Only when Karp had grown older, probably about the time he entered law school, did his father spill the beans and tell him the truth about his uncle “the gangster.” The announcement had stunned him. His dream was to become a prosecutor with the New York District Attorney’s Office and somehow “gangster” and “prosecutor” didn’t seem to mix well. But his father had assured him that “that” side of the family had always kept their affairs to themselves, and after Karp got on with the DAO, it had been understood that so long as no laws were broken in the County of New York, there would be no cause for family strife.