Robert Tanenbaum - No Lesser Plea

“Oh, crap!”

“Have a heavy date?”

“No, just dinner with some friends. Screw it, I’ll eat fast.”

It was just a short walk from Foley Square to Mulberry Street in Little Italy, but Karp found himself in a different world, one of the last remnants of the European ethnic neighborhoods that once dominated the social and political life of Manhattan. Karp’s own parents had been born in similar neighborhoods; Ray Guma’s parents had been raised along these very streets.

The air itself was exotic, perfumed with anise, strong cheese, and frying garlic. On this temperate evening, chatting old ladies dressed in black sat on folding chairs on the sidewalk outside their apartment houses. The dusty storefront social clubs were brightly lit, each one with its handful of old men. Grocery stores displayed enormous rope-bound cheeses and great rectangular cans of olive oil covered with rococo inscriptions.

There were also a fair number of import-export firms which seemed never to have any business, their display windows always showing the same espresso machines and tarantella-dancing dolls, on tattered red crepe paper. Oddly enough, they were extremely profitable, although the source of their profit was not espresso machines. In some of their back rooms Sicilian assassins, lately smuggled in, sat waiting for their assignments. In others, men guarded suitcases full of cash. This had been going on for eighty years. The Mob clung to its roots.

Karp pushed past the door with the white, green, and red wooden cut-out map of Italy and entered Villa Cella Ristorante Italiano. Guma and V.T. Newbury were waiting at the center table, the one Italian family restaurants usually reserved for regulars. It was set for four places. When they saw him they gave a round of applause. “Sit down, kid,” said Guma. “How’d it go with Conlin?”

“OK, I guess. The fix was in. I’m starting at Homicide next Thursday.”

“Hot shit,” said Guma, “we can drink the night away.”

“Maybe you can,” Karp replied glumly. “The Onion put me in the Complaint Room tonight, the asshole.”

“What! I thought I was the only one he had a hard-on for.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. No, he was all bent out of shape because he thinks one of us has been screwing his secretary, and she’s leaving. I wised off to him about it and he put it to me.” A strange expression came over Guma’s face as Karp said this. Karp suddenly caught on. “It was you ! Goddamit! Hey, V.T., the Goom is dorking Miss Kimple and I get the shit for it. You owe me one, Mad Dog.”

“Honest, Butch, how did I know she would fall in love? Christ, I only balled her a couple of times.”

V.T. looked up from his study of the wine list. “Guma, we are going to have to start a collection and hire one of your Sicilian relatives to castrate you. You’re a positive menace to the peace of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.”

“Fuck you too, V.T.”

“Or,” V.T. continued, “we could turn your ass in to Conrad Wharton, the scourge of porn. Why should he content himself with dirty pictures and tapes when pornography incarnate stalks the halls of 10 °Centre Street.” The other two men laughed.

“Wharton, my ass,” said Guma. “I can’t figure out why Garrahy keeps him right there in his office. The fucker is scared shitless of courtrooms, one, and two, he’s an incredible schmuck. A schmuck from Schmuckland.” He kissed his pinched fingers in a gesture of connoisseurship.

“True,” said V.T., “but Conrad has attached himself to the boss’s pet project, which is one way that weasels get on in the world. Deep in Francis P. Garrahy’s Irish-Catholic soul is an abhorrence of public pornography. In the old days, when he was coming up, you couldn’t see pussy until you were married. In fact, where Garrahy came from, you couldn’t see it even after you were married. Now he has to look at snatch every time he goes in to buy cigars.

“Conrad observes this and sells his all-out campaign against smut to the DA. Now he’s got a private office next to Garrahy’s and an army of twerps just like him to drag two-bit magazine publishers into court for five grand fines, like we have space on the calendars for that shit. No, Conrad is going places. He knows how to exploit the foibles of great men.”

“Bullshit. He’s an empty suit,” said Karp.

“As a prosecutor? No question. But Conrad isn’t interested in being a prosecutor and putting asses in jail. He’s interested in power. You know, Butch, there are two kinds of people in the world: people who are interested in doing real things-growing gardens, or inventing, or trying cases-and people who are interested in making other people jump through hoops. Conrad is one of those. And they’re hard to stop because while the rest of us are learning how to do the things we want to do, they’re spending all their time collecting power. Watch the guys who volunteer to do the secretarial and bureaucratic bullshit that nobody else wants to do. They usually wind up running the show.”

“Let ’em,” said Karp. “As long as they leave me alone.”

“Ah, but that’s just the point. They can’t leave you alone. Anything real-passion, excellence, skill-is a reproach to them. It’s a source of satisfaction that they can’t control. They have to destroy it. Look at Stalin and Trotsky. Trotsky ran the Russian Revolution almost single-handed. Stalin was the Communist Party’s administrative boss. Look who won. And I’ll tell you something else. Conrad’s got you targeted, Butch. He mooches around me a lot because he thinks my old man has pull, which he does, and the little piss-ant doesn’t miss an occasion to put you down.”

“Fuck him, he can’t touch me.”

Guma broke in. “Hey, what is all this Trotsky bullshit? This is supposed to be a party. Hey, Margo!” He gestured to the waitress, who came out from behind the bar and over to their table. She was a good-looking woman of about twenty-five, plump, with heavy eye makeup and a blond streak in her dark hair.

She pulled out her pad and smiled. “How are you all tonight? Ready to order?”

Guma said, “No, we’re still waiting for someone. But bring us a bottle of Barolo, the Fontanafredda. And the big antipasto, for nibbles.”

She scratched on her pad. “OK. Hey, Ray, classes are starting in two weeks.” She flashed a smile at Guma, who got red in the face and looked away with a sickly grin.

“Going back to law school, Goom?” V.T. asked.

“No, I am,” said Margo. “Well, paralegal anyway. Ray says he can get me a job.”

“Oh, really?” said Karp. “You’re a helluva guy, Guma.”

“Yeah, he sure is,” said Margo, the light of love, or at least opportunism, gleaming in her eyes. “I’ll go get your wine.”

She left. Guma said, “OK, guys …”

“Very tacky, Mad Dog, very tacky,” said Newbury.

“Yeah, Goom, is that the same technique you used on Kimple? Maybe you promised her a job in Villa Cella,” Karp said.

“Hey, what the fuck. She’s a bright kid, why shouldn’t I encourage her?” Guma protested.

“To quote you, Goom, ‘It’s not her mind I want, it’s her body.’ Tell the truth, Margo is more your speed than Ciampi,” said V.T.

“Don’t remind me. God, that’s an ass I’d love to get a piece of. What a body! Hard, tight-knishy little tits. She can probably yank nails with her snatch. By the way, where is she? You invited her, didn’t you, V.T.?”

“I did, and I believe she’s here now.”

The door opened and Marlene Ciampi breezed in, in blazer, knee-length gray flannel skirt, and high boots, a Marlboro gripped between her teeth like a stogie. Her thick, kinky, coal-colored hair was parted in the middle and drawn into a bun, getting a little ragged this late in the day. She had a heart-shaped face and the conventionally regular features of a cosmetics model, which she downplayed by keeping her eyebrows thick and her expression tight and belligerent.