Reversible Error

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “That’s not illegal, though, is it?”

  “Who knows? It depends where they got their information, because they must have had it from somewhere. Insider trading: that’s when someone who has advance—”

  “I know what insider trading is,” said Karp, thinking about Reedy and his lecture. But this thought brought another, and he said, “What about Agromont?”

  Newbury cocked his head and regarded Karp narrowly. “Agromont. Well, well. You have been doing your homework.” He tossed the printout onto the desk. “You don’t need old V.T. anymore, if you’re that well-connected.”

  “All I know is the name. I was at a party when Fane told Reedy that Agromont was a done deal.”

  “That’s also very interesting. OK, the story is this. Agromont is a medium-size conglomerate. They’re in food, machine tools, cosmetics, and at the time they also owned a good deal of New York real estate, mostly on the West Side. They had the old American Line pier. In any case, someone made a run on the stock last year—bid it up like crazy—but the company fought them off. Sold off some assets at fire-sale prices. A lot of people were left holding the bag.”

  “How so?” asked Karp.

  “Well, if you’ve tied up a lot of capital in a big block of stock and you fail to get control of the company, then you can’t realize your profits. Some people made a bundle by riding the play and getting out before the showdown. But the main people were left holding a big chunk of overvalued stock. Which has sunk since.

  “So they can either take their loss or try again. And Cousin Horton is very much convinced that they are going to try again. Someone has been nibbling at their stock. Little bites from a dozen different buyers: not enough to put it in play, but more than it usually moves. That could have been the origin of your cryptic comment from Fane. Telling a friend that the stock was shortly to go into play and that he should get in long on it.”

  “So is Fane buying?”

  “He’s starting to, it appears. But most of his purchases will probably be through someone else. Would you like me to look into it?”

  “No, what do I care what stocks he buys? I’m not the SEC. But …” Karp rocked and looked out V.T.’s window at the little park behind the courts building and the low tenements of Chinatown beyond it.

  “Yes?” asked V.T.

  “But what I’d really like to know is, could someone use this kind of stock manipulation to launder money, maybe dirty money?”

  V.T. thought for a moment, sounding the tuneless hum he favored when in deep contemplation of chicanery. He said, “Well, what I’d do is, I’d take the dirty money in cash to an offshore bank in the islands, a bank I controlled. Then I’d lend the money to people who were in a position to rig the market, and who needed liquidity to do it, and were willing to trade information on deals at a very early stage. Having got that information, I would use whatever honest dollars I had to make a killing.”

  “Very neat, V.T.,” said Karp, who could barely balance his checkbook, with sincere admiration. “Would it really work?”

  “I don’t see why not. Our fictive man is insulated from the dirty money entirely. The offshore bank made the loan. It’s not required to tell anyone where its capital came from, which is the true charm of the islands. There’d be a dummy holding the passbook for the actual account, which, of course, would never be tapped directly. And the profits on the market are honest gain, the result of sophisticated analysis of trends guided by vast experience—or so my cousin is always telling me. Our man pays taxes on it too—he’s no mobster.

  “So he’s as safe as the Morgan Bank. And, of course, since he’s not paying a premium for the money, he can buy a lot more stock than his competitors in a bidding contest. The people he was backing would be murderous traders.

  “The only possible hitch is if someone traces a cash deposit back to him—unlikely—or if whoever gives him his info rats him out as an inside trader to the feds or the Stock Exchange—slightly more likely.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Karp. “Does Fane control an offshore bank?”

  “Doesn’t everyone? But, if so, it’s improbable that the connection is direct. Let me check it out, though.” He made a note in his diary with a silver pencil. “Anything else?”

  “No, thanks a lot, V.T., this is great,” said Karp. He stood up and made to leave, then paused. “Oh, yeah—who was it that tried to buy Agromont?” he asked.

  “The main player was a slightly greasy and very wealthy little arb named Sergo. He also bought their West Side property and the pier.” He saw the change in Karp’s expression and asked, “A friend of yours?”

  Karp said glumly, “We’ve met,” waved good-bye, and stalked out. The implications of what he had learned from V.T. were still whirling around his brain when he entered his office again, to find Roland Hrcany waiting with an odd smile on his face. He was sitting at Karp’s conference table and he had a cassette recorder placed in front of him.

  Karp gestured at the recorder and said, “Is it time for our dance lesson? What’re you up to, Roland?”

  “It’s a little surprise,” said Hrcany. “See if you can recognize the lyrics.” He pressed the play button and the conversation between Amalfi and Fulton on the fire stairs at Roosevelt Hospital filled the room, their speech hollow and echoing, like the voices of ghosts on old radio shows.

  When it was done, Karp asked, “That’s definitely top-forty, Roland. You mind telling me where you got it?”

  “I got with IAD and wired Amalfi,” said Hrcany.

  Karp looked out the window and rubbed his face. “Why did you do that, Roland?” he asked in a tired voice.

  “I got a tip from an informant that Amalfi and Fulton were both involved in these drug-lord hits,” said Hrcany.

  “And you didn’t tell me about it.”

  “No,” said Hrcany, beginning to feel uneasy. Karp was taking this altogether too calmly. “I thought, you know, you and Fulton …”

  “Uh-huh. You thought that I was protecting Clay,” said Karp. “That I was, ah, conspiring to cover up a bunch of homicides to protect a friend. No, it’s OK,” he added when Hrcany protested, “as a matter of fact I guess I was involved in something not too far from that. Good investigative zeal, Roland. I guess you were relieved to find that Clay was working undercover too. You’ve kept this pretty close, I guess?”

  Hrcany nodded. “Just Waldbaum of IAD knows about it.” He paused. “And the D.A.”

  Karp spun around and faced Hrcany, his eyes shooting sparks.

  “You told Bloom! Why the fuck did you tell Bloom?”

  “Shit, Butch! What was I supposed to do? I thought you were in the bag with Fulton. You said yourself, there’s all kinds of serious players involved in this, and …” His eyes widened in horror. “You think the D.A. is … ?”

  “Great!” said Karp. “The penny drops. As a matter of fact, I don’t think Mr. Bloom is working for a bunch of killers. But some of his friends might be, and Sanford Bloom never kept a secret for more than ten minutes in his whole life. He’s a mouth on legs.”

  Karp rose and paced nervously back and forth. “Roland, didn’t you think? Clay’s out there exposed … Christ! When was this? When did you tell Bloom?”

  “At the staff meeting—yesterday morning, about ten.”

  Karp sat down again and blew out his breath through puffed cheeks. “Then it’s too late,” he said. “I can’t find him anywhere. They’ve got him.”

  He sat there for a while, looking out the window, unable to think of any constructive activity. He barely heard Hrcany’s embarrassed leave-taking. After some indeterminate time he was roused by a tapping on his door. It was Doug Brenner, his driver. Karp remembered that he had made an appointment to meet Brenner and Marlene outside the building fifteen minutes ago, to run up to the Twenty-eighth Precinct for the sting on Meissner. He made some noises of acknowledgment, put on his jacket, and allowed Brenner to lead him away.

  In the car Brenner said, “We’ll never ma
ke it up to Harlem in time.”

  “Yes, we will,” replied Marlene. “Use the siren.”

  Which they did, and did arrive at ten past noon, not too far off the appointed moment. Marlene secreted herself in an interrogation room while the two men went to the homicide squad room, to find Alan Meissner being one of the boys with the King Cole Trio.

  Karp smiled all around. Maus finished a cop anecdote and everyone laughed. Then Karp said, “Well, we’ve invited Mr. Meissner here to help us out again. Art, you want to review this case?”

  Dugman stood up and began, in a professorial tone quite removed from his usual cynical profanity, to outline a serial murder case. The case was wholly fictitious, having been adapted from a B movie Maus had seen on late TV recently, and cheerfully embellished by the detectives of the Two-eight.

  When he had finished, Karp said, “Look, Alan, guys, this is going to take at least an hour—why don’t we have lunch? We can order in sandwiches and drinks from that good deli on Amsterdam, my treat.”

  General agreement: Karp wrote the orders down on a slip of paper—pastrami on rye, corned beef, Cokes, Dr. Brown’s. The detectives made themselves appear busy, thumbing through, stacking, and arranging piles of folders. Lanny Maus turned on a small cassette tape recorder, coughed into its microphone, said, “Testing, testing,” and sang two bars of “She’s So Fine” in a good falsetto. Laughter. He tossed the mike aside, but did not turn off the recorder.

  Karp put an apologetic expression on his face and offered the lunch-order slip to Meissner, saying, “Would you mind calling these in, Alan? It’d save some time. The number’s up on the wall by that phone.”

  Meissner was glad to help. He sat on the edge of the desk and dialed the number penciled on the wall. The phone rang twice and was picked up. A man’s voice said, “Hello.” Meissner thought it sounded vaguely familiar. Meissner said, “Is this the Amsterdam Deli?” The voice said, “Hello, can I help you?”

  Meissner slammed the phone down with a bang. The detectives and Karp looked over at him mildly. His face was turning bright red.

  “Something wrong, Alan?” asked Karp.

  “You fucking son-of-a-bitch!” Meissner yelled. “You tried to trick me.”

  “I’m sorry?” said Karp. “What’s the matter, don’t they have any pastrami?”

  “That wasn’t the delicatessen, you phony bastard! That was him on the phone, the boyfriend. You set me up, you fucker!”

  “Boyfriend? What boyfriend, Alan?” asked Karp.

  “You know goddamn good and well what boyfriend!” screamed Meissner. He was standing less than a foot from Karp now, and little flecks of foam were jumping from his mouth onto Karp’s suit coat. Karp flicked them off with his handkerchief and said, “Yes, I know what boyfriend, Alan, but I wonder how you know. Did you recognize his voice on the phone? From when he called, just before you murdered Ellen Wagner?”

  Meissner uttered a strangled cry and leapt for Karp’s throat. Karp batted his hands away, and in an instant Jeffers, moving faster than anything that large had a right to move, had Meissner locked in a chokehold with his feet dangling six inches off the floor.

  Meissner was struggling wildly, kicking out at everything within reach, like a four-year-old in a tantrum. Jeffers grunted as a heel connected with his shin; he tightened his grip. Dugman moved in, and Karp saw that he had a leather sap in his hands.

  “No, don’t hurt him,” Karp yelled. Dugman grimaced, but put the sap away and brought out cuffs. Working together, the three cops were finally able to get Meissner cuffed and forced down into a chair.

  “He feisty, all right,” said Jeffers, adjusting his rumpled suit. “Raping all them women must be good training.”

  Meissner stared up at Karp, his face flushed with exertion and contorted with impotent rage. “You can’t do this,” he shouted. “This is entrapment.”

  “No it’s not, Alan,” said Karp calmly. “It’s called a spontaneous expression showing consciousness of guilt. You need to check your law books again. Art?”

  Dugman formally rearrested Meissner for the Wagner homicide and read him his rights. Meissner did not take his eyes off Karp’s face; the force of his silent hatred at last made Karp uncomfortable and he turned away, to see Marlene come running in.

  Marlene looked at Meissner, waved gaily, and called out, “Hi, smarty-pants. Gotcha!”

  At this, Meissner began shouting vile obscenities and threats. He continued to do so as two uniformed officers dragged him down to the precinct cells.

  “My, he was upset,” said Marlene. “And he seemed like such a calm, sophisticated type on the phone. Intelligent too. So, my hero, have we really got him?”

  “Yeah, I have a good feeling about it,” said Karp. “It’s a solid consciousness-of-guilt case now. He just ran on spontaneously, which will be obvious from the tape we made. It’s going to be real hard for anyone to defend against, and it’ll stand up legally too. If I was his lawyer, I’d advise a cop-out.”

  “Which we won’t accept,” said Marlene firmly.

  “Uh-uh. We hang tough on the top count. You earned it. Who’re you calling?”

  Marlene said, “JoAnne Caputo. And the others. They could use a laugh.”

  While Marlene made her calls, Karp sought out Art Dugman in his tiny cell of an office. Neat, was his first impression, and reminiscent of a former age. Awards on the wall, pictures of PAL teams, photographs of young black patrolmen in the fifties, unsmiling and austere. Pride of place on the wall went to a framed exhibit of four deformed bullets: neatly typed legends beneath them set out the circumstances in which they had been, on separate occasions, shot into and yanked out of the body of Art Dugman.

  On the uncluttered desk stood a dozen or so photographs of family members, most of which showed children in graduation gowns representing successive levels of education. Karp had not thought of Dugman as a family man: he seemed rather to have been exuded from the streets, living entirely on the underlife of Harlem, like some beneficent parasite.

  After an interlude of stiff conversation about the Meissner case, about the job, and about sports, Karp turned to the subject of his visit, asking, with no great emphasis, whether Clay Fulton’s whereabouts were known.

  Dugman’s deep yellowish eyes narrowed. “Shit, I don’t know where the fuck he is. It ain’t my turn to watch him. Maybe the Bahamas. Brazil.”

  Karp took a deep breath, stared briefly into the abyss, and told Dugman the whole story: Fulton’s odd behavior, the searing interview with the chief of detectives, the swearing to secrecy, the revelations of Tecumseh, the discoveries about Manning and Amalfi and the suspicions about Fane.

  Dugman’s face was as impassive as a cypress tree for the duration of the narrative. Then he began to make a peculiar sound deep in his gullet, a rhythmic buzzing that Karp ultimately deciphered as a chuckle, a sound that at last broke out into frank laughter.

  He laughed until tears streamed from his eyes, interspersing the roars with exclamations such as “He got over me, that boy,” and “Son-of-a-bitch tricky damn mother-fucker,” laughed until Karp was made uneasy and said, “I don’t see what’s so funny, Art. We’re in deep shit, here.”

  Dugman subsided and wiped his eyes with a pearly silk handkerchief. “Yeah, well, whatever, it’s better than what I thought it was. God damn!”

  “I’m glad you’re glad,” said Karp, not without asperity, “but Clay’s still missing, and I’m getting worried.”

  “Ah, shit, Karp, don’t worry about the Loo,” said Dugman. “Man can take care of himself. He’s probably cooping it in some damn museum. He done it before. He’ll turn up.”

  Karp shook his head. “He’s not cooping. I’m almost certain somebody tipped the bad guys he was working for the chief. He didn’t turn up at home last night. Or call in. Martha’s real worried.”

  Dugman’s face clouded. “You think somebody snatched an NYPD detective lieutenant?”

  “It could happen, with these shitheads.
They think they can do what the fuck they want. Let me say this: I hope to God he’s just kidnapped.”

  Dugman snatched up his phone, punched in the familiar number of the Thirty-second Precinct, and asked to speak to Detective Amalfi. He listened for a minute in silence. “When?” he said. Then, “Is Manning around? Uh-hunh. No, no message.”

  He hung up and when he looked at Karp his jaw was tight and twitching. “Amalfi bit his gun last night. Manning’s got a regular day off, but he ain’t at home.”

  “Manning’s got him, then,” said Karp.

  “Not for long, the motherfucker!” said Dugman ferociously. “We gonna turn this whole city upside down.”

  “I don’t think so, Art,” said Karp. “I think we’re gonna have to do this ourselves, real quiet, and I think Clay would agree.”

  “You saying what I think you’re saying? That the chief’d let a lieutenant go down? Someone like Clay Fulton?”

  “I think he’d let a bus full of lieutenants go down on this one, Art. I don’t think he’s thinking all that straight, if you want to know. Sure, he wants the killings stopped, but after that his first priority is to protect the department. That’s why this whole cockamamie business with Clay going under started in the first place.”

  Dugman took a cigar from his breast pocket, stripped off the cellophane, and lit it. He sat contemplating his blue smoke for a while. Then he said, “OK, let’s start that way. Manning’s place. Club Mecca. Choo Willis. His boys. We can do that much, just the three of us. But if that draws a blank …”

  “If it does, then we’ll worry,” said Karp. “And, Art, call me anytime you get anything.”

  There was a message from V.T. Newbury waiting for Karp when he got back from Harlem. He went to V.T.’s office and found him virtually unmoved from where he had been that morning, although looking rather more tired.

  “I think I have your answer,” he announced when Karp had seated himself in the rocking chair.