brought him in with his brains spilling out of his head. Nobody ever forgets something like that. My point, if you'd care to listen, is that without some experienced political guidance and some cover, you will not get to the truth. You will not be allowed to. So the choice I put to you is whether you want to remain a 'legal and forensic' choirboy with an unsullied heart, and get kicked out on your ass, or whether you want to play this game and win. Let me know when you make up your mind which.'
He rose from his chair and stalked out of the room, leaving Karp sitting there thinking about what Clay Fulton had said those many weeks ago: indeed, he was way over his head. And in muddy water too.
After vomiting copiously in a primrose yellow toilet, Marlene washed her face, dried herself on one of the charming flowered guest towels, and went looking for a place to lie low until the wretched party had reached its end and she could sneak out.
She walked away from the sound of well-informed conversation, down a darkened hallway and through a door. She found herself in an echoing room with tall windows and a flagstoned floor, smelling oddly of both earth and chlorine. The windows on the left side were lit, those to the right, dark. To the right, then, obviously a pool; to the left a greenhouse, or, she supposed one should say, a conservatory. There was a door and she went through it.
The room was large, about fifty by thirty feet, and had one wall all of glass, which by night threw back the reflection of the overhead fluorescents and the variously shaded greens of the plants, mingled with the brighter hues of their blossoms. There were large specimens of the usual indoor plants-impatiens and prayer plants and tradescantia-but also more exotic growth. Huge staghorn ferns hung from the sprinkler pipe supports. Ficus and hibiscuses, oleanders and eucalypts grew from pots, and there were tables covered with weird aloes, and euphorbias and other fleshy, striped and waxy-flowered items that Marlene could not identify. A faint scent of jasmine floated over the bass note of the moist earth.
She saw a flash of a remarkable lavender color through the dense branches of a large croton and went around a potting table to see what it was. The plant was in a pot on the floor. It had dark green shiny leaves like a rhodie, but its flowers looked like giant purple pansies. She poked under its branches to see whether there was a label.
Behind her a voice said, 'It's Brunfelsia floribunda, from Brazil.'
Marlene jumped back six inches and whirled, startled. Maggie Dobbs was sitting on a low green wooden bench in an alcove made by a pair of potting tables.
'It's lovely,' said Marlene, recovering her composure. 'Do you, um, do all this?' she asked, gesturing to the conservatory.
'Yup. Me and Manuel the gardener. I have a green thump. Thumb.' She held up her hand with the thumb sticking out. The fingers, Marlene saw, were wrapped around a squat brown bottle. Maggie looked at the bottle as if she had just noticed its attachment to her hand. 'Want a drink? It's B and B.'
'Um, I think I had enough already tonight, thanks. As I'm sure you observed. I have to apologize…'
'Nah! Life of the party. It was worth it to see the expression on that jerk Jim Royce's face when you started talking about fucking corpses. Oops! Excuse my French!' She placed her hand over her mouth and giggled. Marlene wondered how long she had been hiding from her own party behind the potted plants. Apparently, and contradicting her previous thinking, the ability to give nice parties was not a perfect recipe for the good life.
'Mind if I join you?' Marlene asked.
'Sit,' said Maggie, and she took a swig from her bottle. There were two bars of hectic red across her cheeks and her blue eyes were bleary, but aside from this, she still looked neat and doll-like in her golden hostess costume. Marlene did not want to think about her own appearance; she thought she had removed all of the vomit from her hair. Some people are neat from the core out, she decided, of which happy company Marlene was not a member.
Marlene leaned back against the wall behind the bench, drew out her Marlboros, and lit one.
'Oooh! Ciggies! Thank God!'
'You want one?'
'God, yes! I'm quitting.'
On impulse, Marlene finger-palmed the cigarette and used a standard sleight-of-hand production, seeming to pluck it out of thin air with a snap of her fingers.
'Yikes!' cried Maggie. 'Do that again!'
Grinning, Marlene hummed an upbeat version of 'Tea for Two' and did a little routine of vanishes, acquitments, and productions using her own lit cigarette.
'That's terrific!' Maggie screamed. 'How did you learn to do that?'
'I had a lot of time to practice. A physical therapist I had after I got blown up thought it was a good way to strengthen my hands.' She held up her hand and wiggled the mutilated fingers.
'Blown up?' Maggie said, her eyes widening.
'Yeah, by a letter bomb.'
'Oh, God, she was blown up, she knows corpse fuckers, she does magic…' She hung her head and her golden Dutch boy covered her face. 'I'm so dull I could scream.'
'Well, I'm dull too, now, invisible, in fact, at least according to what's-his-face-that Royce asshole. Wife-of- hood.'
'Yeah, he treats me like I was Twiggy, only not as socially valuable.'
'Well, at least you're dull and rich,' said Marlene. 'It beats being dull and poor.' It was a cruel thing to say, and Marlene immediately regretted saying it.
Maggie let out a wail. 'I know! I'm so ashamed! I have everything and most people have nothing and I'm still miserable. And, of course, even saying that makes me feel even more ashamed. I have a marvelous husband and two marvelous children. There's no end to it.' A fat tear plopped onto her cheek.
'Well, I'm miserable too,' said Marlene, thinking once again of the first conversation she had had that day with a cigarette-bumming woman on a bench, and what she had concluded from it, 'but I'm damned if I'm going to be maudlin. Come on, fuck 'em all! We'll join the… Wife-Of Self-Defense Association.'
Maggie gave her a long unfocused look. 'Is there one?'
'I think we just formed it. You can be the first president.'
'No,' said Maggie instantly. 'You be the first president. I have to be the secretary.'
That started them giggling. Marlene exclaimed, 'I love it! It's even got a good acronym. WOSDA.'
'Yeah,' said Maggie, 'as in 'Darling, WOSDA matter with you now?'
By the time Karp tracked Marlene down, an hour or so later, they were still laughing like banshees, clinging to each other on the green bench, the empty bottle stashed behind a potted oleander.
Bishop visited the house in Little Havana over the weekend. The thin man was watching golf on television when he strode in.
'Interested in a little work?' Bishop asked.
'No, I like sitting on my ass watching golf,' said the thin man sourly.
'Jerry James Depuy,' said Bishop, 'may have become a tiny problem.'
'I thought he was dead.'
'Yeah, he's dead. His works have apparently outlived him. Apparently some ex-cop was asking questions of the widow. It turns out this guy works for the House committee on contract. She told him that she'd given all his stuff to the AP and they'd given it to Georgetown U. for their Kennedy archive.'
'So? Aside from that bullshit with Ferrie, he didn't know dick.'
'Yes, well, we always knew Ferrie was one of the weak links. Secrecy was not his strong suit. He liked to brag. The point is, it turns out that among the material passed on to the archive were several spools of eight- millimeter film.'
The thin man looked away from the TV for the first time. He stared straight into Bishop's eyes. 'I got that film, if that's what you're thinking. When Ferrie went down.'
'Yes, you did, the original reels. But film can be copied. It's entirely possible that the little asshole showed the film to Depuy and Depuy copied it. I went to the archive myself the other day and found that the committee staff had already grabbed Depuy's material.'
'But you don't know that the film they have is Ferrie's film.'
'No, I don't,' Bishop agreed. 'But the possibility is extremely disturbing. We're going to be busy people if a
