you can draft something up over the weekend, a proposal, with all the figures estimated, and so on, and we can start passing it around on Monday.'
Yes, things had definitely turned up, Marlene thought with pleasure as she rode down on the elevator. She wouldn't, of course, tell anyone about this coup until it was a done deal. After that… she basked prospectively in the praise to come. She could get Marva a promotion, as a real bureau secretary, and there'd be something in the pot for Luisa too. People looked up as she strode humming happily down the hall to her office.
She had just settled herself when the phone rang.
'Hi, it's me.'
'Butch?'
'Yes, your husband. You sound surprised.'
'Um, yeah, you usually call later, at home. Is anything wrong?'
'Not a thing. I'm just about to leave for National. I'll get the four-thirty shuttle and I should be home by six, six-thirty. I figured we'd have dinner out.'
'Um, dinner out?'
He caught her tone. 'Yeah, like real people. You know, nothing fancy-in the neighborhood, the three of us. We can go to Bobo's, or Villa Cella, they don't mind kids.'
'I'm sorry, I can't,' Marlene blurted out. 'I have, um, a meeting.'
A pause on the line. 'You have a meeting? At seven p.m.? What kind of meeting?'
'A meeting, Butch. It's work. I'm a DA. Not everybody in the business keeps office hours. Remember?'
'Uh-huh, and I remember that one of the nice things about being a bureau chief was that you didn't have to hustle around after hours. Who's the meeting with?'
'With the person I'm going to meet,' snapped Marlene. 'What, I'm under suspicion, Counselor? I'm getting grilled, as we used to say?'
'Hey, I'm sorry I asked,' said Karp quickly. 'So, calm down.'
'I'm calm.'
'Calm down, and I'll see you tonight, okay? I'll hang out with the kid and I'll… ah… see you when I see you, all right?'
'Yeah, and I'm sorry I bit at you,' said Marlene. 'I'll try to get away early. No kidding, I really do miss you.'
'Me too,' said Karp, huskily, not quite succeeding in keeping the worry out of his voice.
Marlene hung up the phone feeling vaguely remorseful, but not remorseful enough to call Karp back and tell him the truth. She would present him with the fait accompli: a huge new sex crimes bureau, a tamed and amenable Bloom. Marlene was not, of course, consciously devising a way to get one up on Karp. She would have denied it, if charged, and copped to a lesser: that she was entitled to her own life, her own career, that she was just doing what everyone did to get ahead, that Karp had nothing to do with it. She even believed this at times, and despised the creeping edge of guilt she now felt as she worked at the preliminary plans for her expansion.
A knock at her door, and without a pause a thin man walked into the office. He was wearing a shabby brown jacket over gray slacks and his face was putty-colored and heavily lined, with eyes like damp, dark stones. He was a hard fifty-five years old.
'Hello, Harry,' said Marlene. 'I was just going to call you.'
Harry Bello was a cop who worked for Marlene. He had been a star at Brooklyn homicide for nearly twenty years before his descent into drunkenness. Marlene thought he was, when sober, as now, the best detective she had ever met. He was also Lucy Karp's godfather.
'Tonight's okay,' said Bello.
That was another thing about Harry Bello, and it took some getting used to. Harry not only didn't waste words, sometimes he eliminated both sides of whole conversations. Marlene would have said something about having a late meeting and asking whether it would not be too much trouble for Harry to pick up Lucy at day care and to watch her while she was out. How Harry knew that Marlene was about to call him to ask just that favor, and not something else, was a mystery. Another one was how a man with eyes that dead could light up and be such a sweet godfather to her daughter.
'Thanks,' she said. At least one problem was taken care of. She looked up at him expectantly; Harry did not drop by for small talk; barely for large talk. 'What's happening?' she asked.
'Mrs. Morgan caved.'
'She did?' Marlene shouted, springing to her feet and clapping her hands together like a little girl. 'Oh, Harry, when? What happened?'
'I told her Morgan wanted to pin it on her son, kid's eighteen. Messing with the little girls. So… she gave him up.'
'What? When did Morgan try to pin it on the son?'
A slight tilting of the lips; Bello's working smile. 'After I suggested it to him,' he said.
Marlene shook her head in admiration. 'Harry, you're a piece of work.'
Harry said, 'That protection argument. The guy's definitely connected.'
Marlene switched gears. 'Argument? Oh, yeah, Luisa's wise guy. He is?'
'He's Tony Bones's oldest kid.'
'No kidding? Did he threaten her?'
A shrug.
'So do you agree with Luisa, or what? Protection?'
Another shrug. 'I'll look into it. When'll you be home?'
'Ten or so, probably, but Butch should be home way before that. Thanks, Harry.'
He nodded and was gone.
Marlene had a final visitor, around five-thirty. She was deep in the most difficult task of public administration, figuring out how many people are required to do something that nobody has ever done before. Thick bound printouts of court records spread out across her desk, personnel manuals gaped open on chairs, and Marlene was punching a desk calculator with enthusiasm, one pencil clenched in her teeth and another, forgotten, stuck in her hair, when Raymond Guma walked in after a perfunctory tap on the glassed door.
She looked up, not pleased, and removed the pencil from her mouth, saying, 'Not now, Goom.'
'This'll just take a second,' said Guma. He was a stocky man in his late forties with a monkey face, large spreading ears, and a greasy mop of black ringlets that had just started to recede back from a low forehead. The shadow of his beard was more than Nixonian, giving him a seedy appearance that was reinforced by the big tie knot pulled down to the third button and the bagginess of the trousers. He looked at the cluttered desk. 'What're you doing, your taxes?'
'Just some admin shit,' said Marlene snappishly.
He stood staring, in no hurry to leave.
'What is it?' she asked.
'Oooh, who's got the rag on today? I heard about your little display this afternoon. Maybe you're suffering from lack of nooky too.'
'Fuck you, Guma! Is that what you came in here for, to bust my hump?'
Guma rested a pudgy thigh on the edge of her desk. 'No, it's business. Guy charged with rape and assault, name of Buonafacci?'
'Tony Bones's kid.'
Guma's eyebrows lifted. 'You know already?'
'Yeah, Guma, even though we're a bunch of dumb cunts around here, we occasionally get the message. What about him?'
'Tony called me. He wants to know can anything be done.'
'Done? What is this, Guma? Since when are you running errands for the cugines?'
Guma pulled his chin in sharply, spread his hands, and frowned. 'Hey! What're you talking 'errands.' One, the guy's a friend, the father, it's a courtesy, find out what's happening to his kid. What's the difference he's a don? Two, Tony could do us a lot of favors on open cases. It'd be nice having him owing us a big one. Three, he's willing to make it right with the girl.'
Now, of course, this sort of thing happens all the time in DA's offices. Criminals know more about crime than
