Reversible Error

by Robert Tanenbaum

  Karp swallowed hard, and hugged her. He felt something shift within him, like the tumblers of a rusty lock, something opening. Marlene looked him full in the face and said, “That’s better. Let’s eat.”

  They did, and Karp ate a portion nearly as large as his head. He had eaten nothing since his two-bagel breakfast. And he drank a glass of wine too, which was not something he usually did, but then, it was not every day that he sold out everything he believed in.

  Finally, in a silence, Marlene said, “Well, you seem a little more human now. You looked like death on toast when you walked in here, so I knew I was right that you had a real bad day. What happened?”

  “Urn,” said Karp, “I need to tell you this but I can’t. What I mean is, whatever I say, you have to not try to guess the details, all right? You can’t know this.”

  Marlene nodded solemnly and Karp continued. “Basically, I’ve been asked to suppress the prosecution of a set of major crimes. I respect the people who asked me to, and there are reasons for them to do what they’re doing, and they’re endangering themselves. I mean, it’s not a cheap scam. On the other hand … I don’t know what the other hand is. I’m kind of, I don’t know—morally paralyzed. It’s like a musician waking up one day and he’s tone deaf.”

  He laughed bitterly. “It’s funny. Today in this fucking meeting Bloom had I gave this big lecture about constitutional protection, and now I’m a party to serious subversion.

  “I don’t know, maybe I’ve just been lucky. Maybe corruption comes to everybody in this business, like a rite of passage. Like losing your virginity. No, worse: somebody close to you dying. You think everything’s over, your life’s finished. But it’s not. You go on. But I can’t. The thought just popped into my mind while we were eating. If this thing has to go down, I’m out. I’ll keep my mouth shut, but I’m finished at the D.A.”

  “Your good angel,” said Marlene.

  “You’re my good angel,” replied Karp.

  Marlene drew back and shook her head. “Uh-uh, don’t lay that on me! Let’s try to avoid the merging of our personalities as long as possible. I meant that you’ll do what you have to when the time comes. Meanwhile, do you want to see my printouts?”

  “Can I get drunk first?”

  Marlene ignored this and went to her briefcase and drew out a sheaf of computer tractor paper and several sealed envelopes.

  Sitting next to Karp again, she spread the printout across both their laps. “This is terrific. We have a serial rapist. Nine rapes averaging around two weeks apart. Victim always the same physical type—thin and dark, short brown hair. Each time the victim was accosted in a singles bar. The rapist gets her phone number. In each case, he shows up at her house for a date, pulls a knife, makes her undress, insults her, wraps panty hose around her head, and rapes her.”

  “Panty hose?”

  “Yeah, it’s his trademark. The guy’s a serious nut.”

  “Has he hurt anybody yet?”

  “No, he just raped them. That doesn’t hurt.”

  “Come on, Marlene, you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, were they beaten or cut? No, as a matter of fact. Not yet. You want to give me odds that this bozo is going to stay such a sweetheart?”

  Karp thumbed through the printouts. “Good point. Meanwhile, as I’m sure you know, it’s hard to get the cops pumped up about date rape.”

  “This isn’t date rape,” snapped Marlene.

  “No, but the bastard is smart—he knows as well as we do what brings the heat down.” Karp pointed to a column on the printout. “What does this mean here? It looks like he had blond hair, then brown, then black. Mustache, beard, clean-shaven … you sure it’s the same guy?”

  “It’s got to be. He disguises himself in the singles clubs, but he always does it the same way. Why, don’t you believe it’s one guy?”

  Karp said nothing for a moment or two. He was thinking about Fulton’s killer, the cop, and how the drug-lord killings had assumed a pattern that was no pattern, had been designed to attract the minimum attention from the police. Could Marlene’s case be the same? Another cop? That was all he needed.

  “Yeah, it could be,” Karp said at last. “It could be. Look, Marlene, this is really good work. Let me talk to a couple of people over at the cops. Not to get your hopes up, but maybe we can figure out a way to nail this guy.”

  Marlene whooped and hugged him tightly. “Oh, I knew I would wrench some advantage out of fucking the boss one day!” she exclaimed. “And here it is. You really think it’s a good idea? The pattern analysis?”

  “Yeah, I really do. The problem is how to use it and how to build cases based on pattern as evidence. But it does get around the only-one-witness problem in taking rape cases to trial, which should help.”

  Karp leaned over and picked an envelope off the floor. “You dropped this in your ardor.” He gestured to the dining and kitchen area. “I’m going to start cleaning this up and then I’m going to bed. I’m whipped.”

  “God, he cleans, he pulls strings, he fucks women … the last good one in New York, and I got him,” said Marlene as she opened her letter.

  Karp began to clear the table, stacking the dirty dishes neatly by the side of the steel sink. He had just started to run hot water into the basin when Marlene let out a cry of anguish.

  “What is it?” asked Karp in alarm.

  “The fuckers! They’re firing me!”

  “What!” Karp dried his hands and went to her side. She thrust the letter at him and flung herself down on the couch.

  The letter was from the director of the Administrative Bureau, Conrad Wharton. It said:

  It has come to my attention that you are planning to marry a member of the district attorney’s staff who currently occupies a supervisory position on that staff. This is to inform you that New York State antinepotism regulations [NYSAC 32-5436(e)] prohibit spousal, or other close familial connections, between persons at different supervisory levels in the same department or office.

  Therefore, be advised that your employment with the District Attorney’s Office, County of New York, will terminate fourteen (14) days after the date of such marriage, unless, by that time, your spouse shall have left the District Attorney’s Office or is no longer in a supervisory position.

  “Ain’t that some shit?” said Marlene when Karp had done reading.

  “Yeah,” answered Karp, “especially since we were just planning a little nepotism ourselves.”

  “You call catching a serial rapist nepotism!” cried Marlene.

  “No, I’d like to think I’d go out of my way and use up chips with the cops for any ADA who came to me with a good theory and no solid evidence—but try to prove it in an administrative hearing. Look, I’ll check the regs tomorrow, but I think they got us, kid. I recall a case when I first got to the office. An ADA—Frank Hobart his name was—married a secretary and she had to quit. I never thought about it until now.”

  “She had to quit, huh? They never make the man quit. You’re not getting fired.”

  “That has nothing to do with it, Marlene. I have seniority. The junior spouse is the one who goes. Christ! Listen to me—he’s got us talking like a couple of bureaucrats. OK, look, how bad could it be? You have to leave anyway, for the baby. What’s a couple of months?”

  Marlene stood up in a combative posture, tense, with her hands clenched at her hips. “It’s not just a couple of months. It’s my career! And what about the rapist? The tracking system? That’s going to go out the window too. And that shithead is going to keep raping women until he checks into the geriatric ward, not to mention any other rapists who are bouncing around doing the same kind of thing.”

  “But, Marlene,” said Karp, “you said you wanted to relax and take care of yourself. And the baby. So how come you’re generating what could be a major investigation? Hey, roll with it. Wharton’s doing you a favor.”

  This was the wrong thing to say, which Karp discovered when Marlene crumpled up the
letter and threw it at him, screaming curses, and then followed it with her stack of printouts, a couch pillow, and an ashtray. She then raced out of the living area and up the stairs to the sleeping loft. He could hear her strangled sobs and honking nose-blows continuing as he glumly finished the dishes.

  “Roland, I don’t understand,” said Karp. “You gave me all this shit about doing this task force, and now that I’m getting you off, you’re bitching and complaining.”

  This was the next morning, in Karp’s office. Roland Hrcany was pacing back and forth before Karp’s desk like an overdeveloped puma. “Yeah, but that was when I thought it was horseshit. I didn’t realize Reedy and Fane were in on it. That’s heavy muscle and heavy exposure.”

  “I didn’t know you had political ambitions, Roland,” said Karp diffidently.

  Hrcany flushed. “Yeah, well, I don’t intend to cop robbers to larceny fifty times a day for the rest of my life either. There’s a world beyond this horseshit, boy. What’s the matter, don’t tell me you never thought about it!”

  The words took Karp aback. In fact, he hadn’t, but now, for the first time, he began to think of this lack of ambition as a defect rather than as a point of pride. Grubbing for power sucked, but watching assholes who had it fuck over you and your friends (not to mention your one true love) was getting less and less attractive.

  Karp shrugged and went on. “The main thing is, I need you on Petrossi. We’re going to trial this week.”

  “Petrossi? That’s Guma’s.”

  “Not anymore it isn’t. It’s our hottest case, speaking of visibility. I figured you’d lap it up.”

  Hrcany smiled crookedly. “Yeah, if I can learn the case. Fucking Guma keeps it all in his head or on little scraps of paper. By the way, why’d you can him off the case?”

  “He was fucking the judge.”

  Hrcany laughed. “Yeah, right! No, really, why did you?”

  “Ah, it’s complicated—he wanted to dive into something else, there was a conflict— and, between you and me … I’d rather have you in there. It’s a major case, and Guma …” Karp waggled his hand like a plane in an air pocket.

  Hrcany nodded in agreement. “No kidding. OK, I’ll see what I can do. Give my love to the big shots.”

  “Good-bye, Roland,” said Karp.

  Ten minutes later, Peter Schick was standing in Karp’s office saying, “Why me?”

  “Because I think you can do it. Because I haven’t got anybody else,” Karp replied.

  Schick laughed. “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

  Karp leaned back and considered the younger man for a moment. He seemed to be doing well. According to Harris, who was minding him, he was hardworking and cheerful. Karp felt a vague twinge of guilt.

  “A little of both,” Karp said. “Mostly it’s going to meetings and listening to what the great ones say. You’ll be taking notes, writing up memos—crap like that. Also, catching the legal work that’s associated with these cases.”

  “What, the murder cases?” Schick asked nervously.

  “Well, obviously, any really big cases, I’ll be there personally, or one of the other senior people. But there’s a lot of other stuff that a big investigation like this generates, and you’ll be catching all of that. Just use your judgment; handle what you can handle, and if you can’t, let me know.”

  What Karp did not say was that the assignment of his most junior attorney to the drug task force was a clear signal that Karp cared little about what went on there. And Karp didn’t. Bloom, he knew, was incapable of running a serious investigation. Whatever was going on in the drug task force was important only as politics.

  There was something deep running underneath the conventional assertions of concern about drugs in Harlem, which was why Reedy and Fane were involved. But Karp now had a direct line into that, outside the machinations of Bloom and Wharton, and he intended to pursue it, starting at lunch, that very day. The Bankers’ Club occupied the penthouse floor of a seventy-story tower on Manhattan’s southern tip. Through the great windows that stretched from floor to ceiling one could look out on sky and harbor as from the pilothouse of an immense and barely moving vessel. Once, New York’s bankers had clubbed together in red leather chairs in paneled rooms, shielded from the un-elect by thick Florentine walls and plush draperies. Now, however, in the mid-seventies, they spent their last years as the world’s undisputed financial lords, in such mortgaged aeries, flaunting it proudly to the ants below.

  Karp and Reedy sat at one of the select window tables. The waiter stopped by for their drink order and Reedy ordered a Tanqueray martini. Karp ordered a Coke. Reedy raised an eyebrow and the waiter almost did too.

  “Don’t you drink, Butch?” asked Reedy.

  “No,” said Karp. “It’s my Indian blood. I go crazy and take scalps.”

  Reedy laughed, perhaps a trifle more than the joke was worth. He had a good laugh, hearty and loud, with lots of air expelled. The laugh reminded Karp of the crusty Irish homicide D.A.’s of Garrahy’s generation, the men who had taught him his trade, and of Garrahy himself. They had laughed like that. He found himself being charmed, and not minding it.

  The charm continued. Reedy was a splendid raconteur and knew everybody in New York. He told a funny story about the mayor and one about the cardinal archbishop, and one about how the chairman of a major bank and the heir to a real-estate fortune were both trying to get into the pants of a prominent TV personality.

  He also talked about himself, interspersing bits of personal information, between the funny stories. Karp learned he had grown up in Irish Yorkville, one of ten children of a news truck driver, and worked his way through St. John’s and Harvard Law School hauling boxes at the Fulton Fish Market.

  “And do you know,” Reedy said, “from that day to this I’ve never put a piece of fish in my mouth or allowed it in my house. And on Friday, before they changed the rules, we had salad, omelets—pizza pie, for God’s sake! But no fish.”

  Today Reedy was eating filet mignon for lunch, with a glass of the house red, which today was a ’66 Chambertin. Karp was having the same, and also drinking the wine. Marlene had been working on him over the past months, and while she had not yet convinced him that the ability to drink wine was as much an appurtenance of civilized life as the ability to control the bowels, he had gotten to the point where he no longer gagged when the stuff hit his throat.

  So he was relaxed, and well-fed and entertained, content to wait for Reedy to deliver whatever punch line he had in mind. It came over the coffee, which was served in little cafe filtre silver pots. Reedy’s came with a slice of lemon, something Karp (the big-city provincial) had not seen before. A man of definite tastes, Reedy.

  Reedy had gradually steered the conversation toward the subject of Karp himself, pumping him skillfully about his background and his work. Karp went through the whole sad story: the basketball wonder boy, all-state guard, high-school All-American, Berkeley, the accident, the knee, the lost chance at the NBA, law school, working for Garrahy.

  “Now, there was a man,” Reedy said reflectively.

  “Yeah, I sure thought so. Did you know him at all?”

  “Not as well as I would’ve liked. We were on committees together, Church and Irish functions and all. But being in different branches of the law … and”—a sudden sly grin—“I was always after the money, to be frank, and Phil, well, as you know, he was after something else. It’s not often you meet someone of whom you have no trouble saying, ‘There’s a better man than I am.’” He raised his glass. “To his memory,” said Reedy, and they both drank and were silent for a long moment.

  Karp was aware of the other man watching him closely. Finally Reedy said, “I daresay he’s missed at the office.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Especially given the present incumbent.”

  “Especially,” Karp allowed cautiously.

  “He has ambitions, you know,” Reedy said.

  “Bloom
? Does he?”

  “Yes, he wants to be governor.”

  “He’s got my vote,” said Karp sourly. “I might even vote twice.”

  Reedy laughed. “Yes, I expect you might. He’s a plausible candidate. In fact, I will tell you, in the strictest confidence, mind, that he will be the candidate.”

  “Oh? No damned nonsense about the primaries?”

  Reedy smiled and shook his head. “Butch, be serious. In an open race like the next one will be, the primary is a bought thing. Sandy is personable, he speaks well on civic issues, he hires the best speech writers and pollsters, and he’s already got the smart money lined up. Unless he gets caught with his hand in the till or his dick where it shouldn’t be, he’s a shoo-in for the nomination.

  “Which leaves an interesting opening. Assuming he declares in, say, February of next year, it will leave whoever is appointed to replace him nearly seven months of incumbency before the general election. He’d be hard to beat.”

  “Yeah, he would,” agreed Karp.

  “Any ideas on who it might be?”

  “I haven’t thought about it much. I’m sure Bloom has any number of people he could recommend. The governor’s got cronies too. It’s a nice plum for somebody.”

  Reedy’s smile became broader. “You don’t see it? Look, Butch, these people”—he cast his hand to encompass the room and the towers of Wall Street beyond the glass—“the people who run New York, what worry do you think is uppermost in their minds? Crime!

  “There’s no damn reason to strive and hustle to accumulate wealth if you can’t walk in the street without being hit over the head by some bastard who just walked out of jail. The city’s crying for leadership to stop this, to drive the scum back into their holes, and to punish them when they dare to come out.

  “Leadership. Now, don’t sit there and tell me you’ve never imagined yourself in that role.”