She added her phone number and signed it, and sent it with the film copy, in the lab envelope to make clear that it was a copy, to Harley Blaine
There was a travel agency across the street, and there she purchased two open return tickets to Dallas. She was about to return to her car when she had a thought and went into a nearby People's variety store for some additional purchases.
'Hey, there,' said a friendly voice behind her. She turned, and there was a black woman in a tan cloth coat over a pale green uniform skirt. It took a second for Marlene to recognize her as the nanny from the park.
'Hi!' said Marlene. 'How're you doing?'
'Just fine! I'm goin' to Carolina next week. I'm starting school.'
'Dietician?'
'Nah, X ray. That food smell make me sick. How about yourself. You take my advice?'
'Yeah. Yeah, I did. I think I'm going to be working in a law office pretty soon.'
'Oooh, hey-paralegal? That's good work that paralegal, 'cept you need clothes.' She cast a doubtful eye over Marlene's ensemble.
'Um, yeah,' said Marlene, 'except this is more like quasilegal. They don't make you dress up as much.'
Marlene went home and called Harry and asked him to come down, without explaining the situation. Harry said, 'Tomorrow afternoon.'
The following morning Karp went to the office, not at eight, as he had in the past, but around ten-thirty. The placed bustled with people who either did not meet his eye, so busy were they, or else, even worse, spoke briefly to him in sympathetic or condescending tones. Charlie Ziller was one of those who did not meet his eye. There were several call-back messages from Clay Fulton. Karp rang the New Orleans office of Pete Melchior, the retired NYPD cop turned private investigator, and found Fulton in.
'What's up, Butch? I've been hearing all kinds of weird stuff.'
'It's all true. The word is, no further field investigation. Come on home.'
'No, further… what? I was going to go to Miami and show our pictures to Odio. And this Kelly guy is looking pretty good. I got an eyewitness who saw him with Carlos Marcello a couple times back in the sixties.'
'Forget Kelly. He's another dead end. V.T. figured it out. He's quitting, by the way. I guess I am too.'
A long pause on the line. 'That bad, huh?'
'Yeah. We got beat, old buddy. Come home.'
V.T. was in his office tossing personal items into an old leather satchel. 'They accepted my resignation with regret,' he remarked as Karp came in. 'Jim Phelps is getting out too.'
'Phelps? Why him? He's a tech. I thought Wilkey wanted to up the status of the tech work.'
'Yes, up, but only in the desired direction. Phelps is convinced there was hanky-panky in the autopsy photos and the X rays. Wilkey wants a second opinion. Or a third, until, apparently, he finds a techie who believes there's no problem.'
V.T. looked around the gutted office. 'I'm off. Oh, speaking of no problem, have you seen the prelim report from Dr. Selig and the autopsy boys?'
'No, I didn't know it was in. They don't show me stuff anymore. What did they say?'
'Briefly, all the wounds of the two men are consistent with two shots from the upper left rear. And thus the magic bullet is still magic.'
'Wendt signed on to this shit?'
'He did not. A voice crying in the wilderness, however. He'll get his day in front of the committee, but I doubt it'll do much good. All the other docs, including your old buddy Selig, were being very cautious. Nobody wants to join the nut parade.' He hefted his satchel and grasped Karp's hand. 'What about you? You going to stay around for the whitewash? Tom Sawyer says it's fun.'
'I don't think so. Me and Marlene are going to fly down to Dallas on our own, to check something out. Marlene found some stuff. She… we think there's a good chance that Harley Blaine, Richard Dobbs's old lawyer, is the queen on the board.'
V.T. dropped his satchel with a bang. 'You're not serious!'
Karp nodded heavily and explained the nature of the evidence and what they had done about it. V.T. remained silent for a moment, thinking and chewing his lip. Then he said, 'You think this is wise? Going out there, the two of you? Whatever you've got on him, this guy's got a track record of collecting evidence from recently dead people.'
'I don't know, V.T. I need to close this out, in my own mind. I mean, it's completely circumstantial. There's a million ways of laughing it out of court. The witnesses who might've talked are dead and the live ones aren't talking. It's not something I can show to Wilkey; he wouldn't understand it, because he doesn't have the instinct, and because he just wants to close this down with a minimum of fuss, and this could be big-time fuss. Marlene thinks there's a chance Blaine'll tell us something. I think you have to be Sicilian to think it'll work, but there it is: we're going, if Blaine calls back.'
Blaine called back at four that day. 'Will you hold for Mr. Blaine?' said a polite male voice. Marlene would.
When he came on the line, Harley Blaine sounded weaker than he had some months previously, but his voice still carried the same ironic tone.
'Miss Ciampi. Well, here we are again, talking about the dear dead days of yore. Your package arrived, and I will say that I did not expect to be surprised by anything at my stage of life, but I was surprised. My heart must be stronger than my doctors are telling me, or it might've just gone off the rail when I saw that film. What a devil that Dick was! And we thought he couldn't keep a secret!'
'I take it then that you didn't know about the film, or the shots of Weinberg at Arlington,' said Marlene.
'Mmm, why don't we reserve such conversation for our tete-a-tete. There's a Delta plane that leaves National at ten-twenty tomorrow. Do you think you could be on it? I'll have you met.'
'And my husband.'
'Of course, and Mr. Karp. I'll look forward to meeting you both. Until then.'
He broke the connection.
'It was weird, Butch,' Marlene said later, when Karp had returned home and they were seated on the ratty couch in their living room. 'It was like we were doing him a favor. He wasn't even breathing hard, or no harder than he usually breathes-the guy must be on his last legs.' The front bell rang.
'That must be Harry,' said Marlene, rising.
'Or a Cuban gunman,' said Karp.
But it was Bello. They had a nice dinner. Marlene made a Sicilian dish, veal rolls with parsley and pine nuts, and Harry had brought a bottle of Vignamaggio Chianti from the city. Harry didn't drink anymore, of course, so Marlene had most of the wine herself, and became quite merry, despite Karp's continually referring to the dinner as the Last Meal. Harry was well briefed on the investigation and the purpose of the trip. The various negative outcomes were not mentioned, not in words, although Marlene and Bello exchanged a number of looks that contained major cable traffic.
In the morning, Karp gave Harry the thick red envelope. 'Hide it behind the refrigerator,' he said. 'They never look there.'
Harry accepted the thing solemnly. 'Take care of her,' he said.
'Take care of Lucy,' said Karp, the statement delivered in a tone that allowed interpretation: either 'for tonight' or 'until age eighteen.'
'No problem,' said Harry. Meaning, either.
In the airliner, taxiing to the runway, Marlene said, offhandedly, 'He wouldn't risk bombing the plane, would he?'
'Marlene,' said Karp, 'you should wait until we're high in the air before saying things like that.' He slumped in his seat and tightened the safety belt another notch.
No fireball, however, marred an uneventful flight. At Dallas-Ft. Worth International, there was a man in the arrival lounge with a sign that said Ciampi/Karp. He was a young blond, with an unstylish crew cut and a roughly triangular physique, his big shoulders straining against a neat tan blazer. He wore brown whipcord trousers over cowboy boots, and a western shirt with a bolo tie. On the clasp of the bolo and the breast pocket of his blazer was a seal that bore a silhouette of a chess queen in white, on a dark green field.
