Reversible Error

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “We really need your help on a police matter.”

  “Oh, really? What matter? And why me?”

  “Well, let me be perfectly frank with you,” Karp said. “The police are working on a series of multiple rape-murders. There’s a pattern there, but they can’t figure it out. I suggested that you would be ideal for helping them.”

  Meissner laughed. “You people must think I’m simple. OK, I’ll bite: tell me why you think I’m ideal.”

  “Because you know the bar scene in New York. Because you’re extremely intelligent. And because you beat the rap.”

  “I beat the rap because I was innocent, Karp.”

  “Yeah, of course. But let’s say for the sake of argument that you beat it because you’re too smart for the police. OK, we accept that; we can’t beat everybody. And just between you, me, and the lamppost, it was a shitty case. A bunch of women whining because they forgot how to say no, and then trying to tie it to a nasty slash murder. Real thin. And let me say this: I could care less if it was you with all those women. That’s past.

  “But the guy I’m talking about is a complete crazy. A razor artist. All we know about him is he’s black. And real smart. In fact, if I had to guess, he’d be one of the only guys we’ve come across who was possibly smarter than you.”

  “I seriously doubt that, Karp.”

  “Well, give it a shot, then. Listen, I’m under a lot of pressure from the bleeding hearts around here to move on these rape charges. Not that we’d win, but it’d put you through a lot of trouble and embarrassment. If you help the police in this one, you’d look a lot better.”

  A long pause. Then Meissner asked, “What would I have to do?”

  “Just look at the case files, talk to the cops, give them the benefit of your experience. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

  Meissner uttered a low chuckle. “OK, you talked me into it. But, Karp, if I get one hint that this is some kind of scheme to entrap me, I walk out, and I’ll bring so much shit down on you you’ll stink for the rest of your life.”

  “Hey, that’s great,” said Karp sincerely. “You got a right to be suspicious. But it’s on the level. I’ll send a driver around for you about ten tomorrow.”

  The next day was frustrating for Marlene: half a dozen court dates, racing from one courtroom to another, calling missing witnesses, fighting to focus on what she was doing, trying not to think only about what Karp was doing, up at the Twenty-eighth Precinct. Nothing started on time, of course, so her carefully constructed schedule was in tatters by eleven-thirty.

  At the noon recess, she called Karp, but he was not yet back from the precinct, where he was supervising the first phase of their Meissner plan. Even Marlene agreed that she couldn’t participate. Meissner might go for a complaisant Karp; having Marlene there would spook him out of his shoes. The afternoon passed in much the same manner. When she broke free at four-thirty, she raced to Karp’s office, rushed through the crowded outer room, and flung open the private door without knocking.

  “You should knock, Marlene,” Karp said. “I could have been picking my nose.”

  She ignored this. “What happened!” she cried.

  In answer, he grinned broadly and rolled his eyes like Groucho Marx and twirled an imaginary cigar.

  “He bit? It worked?” she asked, bouncing on her toes with excitement.

  “He ate it. He digested it,” said Karp.

  Marlene gave a long yelp of joy and, dashing around the desk, threw herself into Karp’s lap. She kissed him hard enough to make his chair squeak.

  “Brilliant man!” she exclaimed when the kissing stopped. “Tell all, omitting no detail!”

  Karp shifted to settle her comfortably on his lap, kissed her again, and began.

  “OK, the car drops him off at about a quarter to eleven. Me and Maus and Fulton spent about two hours before that cooking up a phony file: three murders, only one of which was real. It’s really amazing what a good job they did because I don’t think Clay has passed a cordial word with his guys since all this drug-lord horseshit started. Maybe they were glad about the distraction.”

  “What was it, the real one?” asked Marlene.

  “Some pathetic slashing. The usual Saturday-night domestic. Anyway, we dolled the file up with clues. Cryptic notes. Purple ribbons. Wound patterns.

  “So the bastard comes in, and right away you could see there’s a battle going on. On the one hand, he’s suspicious as hell. On the other hand, he’s fucking thrilled. Real cops. Real grimy precinct house. The Two-eight, in fact—big-time Harlem crime: cops with shoulder holsters smoking cheap cigars, skells being dragged in and booked. It’s better than TV.

  “And Maus and Fulton—they’re deferring to him, he’s one of the real guys now. OK, he looks through the files, takes about half an hour. Nobody says anything. Finally he looks up with this superior smile and he says, ‘Surely you’ve noticed that each of these women was killed on the second day of the month.’

  “You should have seen the detectives. Maus slaps himself on the head. Fulton grabs the files. He checks to see if it’s really true. He curses. He slaps himself on the head. Everybody’s jaw is hanging down. Sherlock reveals the solution: he killed them for the welfare money. He’s not really crazy. He must have known the women! Fulton is falling all over himself congratulating Meissner. Maus is licking his hand. Then Clay had a call and had to go out. We told Meissner thrilling cop stories for half an hour and then he left with the driver.”

  “And what’s next?”

  “They bring in the guy, the killer Maus and Jeffers grabbed the other day. We plant a story in the News, make sure there’s a photographer there when we book him, and make sure the story says the police acknowledge Meissner’s invaluable help. I’ll call him, thank him again, and set him up for the sting.”

  “Which is when?”

  “A decent interval. Let him gloat a little. Say, the end of the week?”

  “Can I watch it happen?” she asked.

  “Of course. We’re gonna sell tickets,” said Karp. “Meanwhile, if you don’t stop squirming on my lap, I’m going to have an embarrassing experience.”

  Instead of rising, she squirmed harder, leaned over, and stuck her sharp little tongue into his ear. “What sort of experience would that be?” she breathed. “Something disgraceful? Gouts of semen on your nice pinstripes? How about if I help it along?”

  She shifted her weight and started to grope for his crotch, but Karp got his arm under her thighs and, cupping her hard round bottom, lifted her up off his lap and onto the edge of the desk. “If I don’t finish this load of paperwork,” he said hoarsely, “I won’t be able to come home and nail you in the manner to which you have become accustomed.”

  She giggled. “Are you telling me that you are giving up the chance for a terrific impromptu orgasm in order to do legal business?”

  “I am telling you that, counselor,” said Karp, “and if you want to know, it’s making me sick.”

  Marlene stood up and rushed to the open window. “People of New York!” she yelled. “Sleep well! Karp is not getting his rocks off on company time. He labors on in your behalf.”

  The clatter of typewriters and the murmuring from the outer office stopped dead. A brief silence, then muffled laughter.

  Karp raised an eyebrow in silent rebuke. “Are you completely finished or would you care to alert the networks?”

  “Sorr-ee!” she said, grinning. “OK, I’ll see you at home.”

  “I’ll probably be late,” said Karp. “I have a thing with Reedy. Drinks.”

  “Drinks? Very impressive—you’re becoming quite the boulevardier. Don’t forget to bring home one of those little folding parasols for my collection. Will there be call girls?”

  “I hope so,” said Karp.

  “Well, I’ll just have to get used to it now that my sweetie is mingling with the power elite. Meanwhile, Marlene’ll be knitting booties and weeping softly to herself. Have a go
od time and don’t bring home any diseases.” She blew him a kiss and left.

  Karp spent an hour on administrative paperwork, filling two wastebaskets with bureaucratic junk mail and dictating into a machine the responses that were absolutely required. Then he read through an eighteen-inch-high pile of cases that his ADA’s intended for the four grand juries that ran nonstop in the New York courts, focusing on the homicides. He found two procedural errors, wrote notes telling the lawyers involved how to correct them, signed off on the ones that were ready to go, and distributed the case files among the wire baskets lined up on a side table.

  The outer office had long since grown quiet. He checked his watch. Two hours gone, vanished into a black hole, which would take the same bite of his life the next day and the day after and the next, world without end. Karp had been amazed to discover, on becoming bureau chief, that he was a competent, even a talented bureaucrat. It was a talent he had neither expected to find in himself nor ever asked for, like a talent for farting tunes. Yet he had never ceased to resent the time spent at it and he had grown to hate those whose joy was the production of paperwork, with a strength of feeling that even he realized was slightly irrational.

  He stuffed some journals he had not had a chance to read into his briefcase and slipped into his suit coat. Leaving the briefcase on his desk, he walked out of the office, his heels clicking on the tile and echoing through the dead halls.

  On impulse, he got off the elevator on the fourth floor and stopped by the complaint room. He could not have explained what drew him there, to the grease trap of the criminal justice system; perhaps it was some desire to wash away the abstract fug of bureaucracy by a brief immersion in ripe legal grunge.

  The waiting area of the complaint room was reasonably crowded for a weekday night. The cops, some in uniform, most in plain clothes, stood around in relaxed attitudes, joking, talking sports, and otherwise racking up overtime. There were not as many of them as there would be later in the year, around Christmas, when arrests and complaints would soar, not because of the increased activity of criminals but because cops needed extra overtime to buy presents.

  Karp spoke briefly to a couple of cops he knew and entered the complaint room proper. There, in a warren of little cubicles, clerks sat by old typewriters; and the two ADA’s on night duty circulated from desk to desk, interviewing cops and their witnesses, if any, and dictating the complaints in legal form to the clerks.

  Roland Hrcany was on duty tonight. Karp spotted him through the doorway of a cubicle and waved. Hrcany gave him an odd look, as if he were surprised and mildly dismayed to see him there. After finishing with the case at hand, Hrcany came out of the cubicle and asked, “What’s up, boss?”

  Karp said, “Nothing much. I just dropped by to smell the Lysol. Having a nice night?”

  Hrcany shrugged. “The usual shit. Domestics and muggings. Wives ‘n’ knives. The Nine is doing their semiannual cleanup of the faggot blowjob artist on the Williamsburg Bridge Plaza. It should get interesting later on. You gonna stay for a while?”

  “No, I can’t. I gotta meet some people for drinks midtown.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Yeah, Rich Reedy from the drug thing wants me to meet a guy.”

  “Reedy, huh? You’re moving in fast company, my man. Careful you don’t lose your boyish charm.”

  The tone with which this was said lacked some of the lightness of Hrcany’s usual banter. Karp met his eyes; there was something wiggling deep in the cold blue pools.

  “I think I can handle the speed, Roland. It’s nice of you to be concerned, though. As a matter of fact, all my near and dear seem unable to resist comment when Reedy’s name comes up. Why is that?”

  Hrcany saw from Karp’s expression that the question was not merely rhetorical. He hung a grin on his mouth and said, “We got enough empty suits in this place. Reedy, white-shoe law firm, big money …”

  “Karp sells out?” asked Karp.

  “Something like that. Also there’s a rumor going around you might be thinking about running for D.A.”

  “Does that bother you?” asked Karp. His antennae were picking up something from Hrcany that he didn’t like. There were more male pheromones in the air than were called for by the conversation. He felt the belligerence rising in him.

  “Why should it?” Hrcany answered, his voice bland. “It’s just that you’re always talking about how there’s no place for politics in the D.A.’s office.”

  “There isn’t. The law’s the law, and … and, Roland, if you’ve got something on your mind, why don’t you just spit it out? You think that my political ambitions, if any, are starting to color the way I run this bureau?”

  Hrcany smiled and patted Karp on the arm. “Hey, don’t start getting pissed off, Butch. Just shooting the shit. Your friends are just getting a little nervous, is all.”

  Karp took a long breath and let it out. He was getting touchy in his old age, although the expectations of others had always weighed heavily upon his spirit. He recalled the times when, as a basketball superstar in high school, friends had inquired solicitously about his health and humor before an important game; it had seemed to him always before a game, and never otherwise.

  Karp waved his hands about to take in the complaint room, and by extension the system of which it was the lowest rootlet.

  “Do you like this? Don’t you think it could be run better?”

  Hrcany snorted. “The Three Stooges could run it better. The point is, though, even if it was run well, it would still be fucked up. We’re trying to impose a system of jurisprudence designed for little English villages on this gigantic city. Fourteen appearances to dispose of a felony? Come on!”

  “We could still make a difference,” Karp said. “Look at the incompetence—things that have to be done twice or three times because nobody took the trouble to do them right the first time. There’s part of your fourteen-appearances problem. Look at the morale—half our lives are spent training unprepared kids because the senior attorneys burn out so fast. That doesn’t have to happen. That …”

  He caught the expression in Hrcany’s eyes and stopped, suddenly embarrassed. You weren’t supposed to show interest or passion about anything but sports. Just do the job, make wisecracks, and put asses in jail. Karp said, “It’s late. I gotta go.”

  “Hey, give ’em hell, boss,” said Hrcany. “You got my vote.”

  There was still something in his voice that Karp did not like, but whether it was just Roland’s habitual faint mockery or something darker, Karp could not determine.

  It was still light, a dusty yellow summer twilight, when Karp left the building and was lucky to find an empty cab on Centre Street. Reedy had chosen a small dim place in the Forties off Madison, full of well-dressed men talking the ad game and television. Karp found Reedy at a table in the back, speaking into a phone. The older man smiled and motioned him to a seat. A waiter arrived and Karp ordered a beer, which was delivered in less than a minute.

  Karp ate nuts and sipped at his beer while Reedy gave directions on an obscure legal or financial deal to some underling. Karp listened casually, the arcane language reminding him of the boredom he had felt sitting in long-ago classes in contracts and commercial law. Apparently someone called Telemax was about to transfer an enormous amount of money to someone else called Rotodyne, and Reedy was poised to run his fingers through the gold as it passed along, grabbing as much of it as he could during the few seconds it was between possessors.

  Reedy at last hung up the phone and turned to Karp with a fierce grin. “Not a bad piece of work. I find it hard to sleep at night unless I’ve made a million during the working day, don’t you?”

  “I toss and turn for hours,” said Karp pleasantly. “It must be nice being a lawyer.”

  “Pah! I don’t make beans at law. I don’t clear more than eight hundred K a year from the partnership. It’s barely enough to pay off the house at Easthampton. The real money’s in the market.”


  “So I’ve heard,” said Karp.

  “Do you have anything in it?”

  “No,” said Karp. “My mother always told me not to gamble.”

  “Good advice,” replied Reedy. “I never gamble myself. Oh, I go to the track with clients and bet just to be sociable. And playing golf, of course. But the market isn’t betting. Or at least it’s not betting if you know who the winner is.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  Reedy tugged at an ear. “I keep these open. You keep your ears open around the right people, you can make a lot of money.”

  “I guess,” said Karp. “But even though I only made a C-plus in business law, I seem to recall that trading on inside information is illegal.”

  Reedy laughed sincerely. “Yes, of course it is. If I’m doing a merger and I go to you and say, ‘Butch, ABC is buying XYZ and the shares are headed for the moon,’ then it’s go-to-jail time. But that’s not the way it happens. Look, what would you say if I told you that you could turn a hundred K into half a million in a week, with just what you know now, if you’d kept your ears open?”

  Karp was about to remark lightly, “I’d say I didn’t have a hundred K,” but seeing that Reedy’s expression had grown serious, said, “You mean overhearing what you were talking about on the phone—Teledyne and Rotomax.”

  “Rotodyne,” corrected Reedy. “It closed at fifteen and a quarter. It’ll go to thirty before … But that’s actually all I’m allowed to say. In any case, you heard it. The stock will be in play. The law doesn’t require you to expunge the information out of your head. Why should you? It’s yours to use.”

  Karp nodded. “But in order for it to do me any good, I’d have to have a bundle to begin with, wouldn’t I? Isn’t that the way it works.”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem,” replied Reedy, smiling benevolently. “There’s always loose money around for people who have a reputation for keeping their ears open. I’d write you a check for one hundred K right now, for that matter.”

  Karp felt a reflexive smile of disbelief stretch over his face. It faded when he saw that Reedy was serious. He opened his mouth to say something, but his mind was quite empty. Although he did not by any means wish to offend the older man, there was something in him that did not want to be beholden to Richard Reedy or anyone else for a sum equal to nearly three times the annual salary of an assistant district attorney. He was racking his brains for the form of a polite refusal when a jowly man of about thirty barged up to their table.