Robert Tanenbaum - No Lesser Plea

This latter group took Karp expertly in hand, and, having determined that there was nothing life threatening about Karp’s condition, took a brief medical history, which Karp grunted through gritted teeth, and recommended that he go straight to the emergency room at Bellevue or Beth Israel-depending on his insurance coverage.

“No, thanks, that’s OK,” he gasped. “I just need to get home. If one of you could call me a cab …”

The physical therapist was a stocky Puerto Rican with a lumpy but pleasant face and close-cropped graying hair. He had rolled up Karp’s pant’s leg and examined the knee, which was by now the size of a grapefruit and getting purple.

“All right, buddy, but I hope you know what you’re doing. You want to get that in ice and keep it there, right? As soon as you get home. You got something for pain?”

“Yeah, I think I have some Empirin and codeine left.”

The PT man rolled his eyes. “It’s your body, mister. I had a knee looked like that, I’d crawl into a bottle of Demerol and stay a week.”

Somebody found tape and scissors, and they made an immobilizing wrapping for Karp’s knee out of a couple of newspapers from the trash. They got him into a cab and the PT volunteered to help him into his apartment. The cab pulled away, the crowd broke up, and the two teenagers began playing horse again.

“I wonder who that dude was,” said the black kid. “He sure could play some ball.”

“Who the fuck cares,” said the redhead. “Shoot.”

“Hector Delgado,” said the PT in the back of the Checker. Karp had his foot elevated on the folded jump seat. He was still in intense pain.

Karp told him his name and shook hands. “Good thing we found a Checker,” Delgado said with a chuckle. “They couldn’t fit you into one of them little ones, huh? So tell me, Butch, you always play a little basketball after work, on that knee?”

“Hector, you want the truth? I haven’t touched a basketball in, what? Almost fourteen years.”

“So why today?”

“Just crazy. I don’t know. My girl got hurt today. I must have gone batshit, blamed myself or something. Maybe I wanted to get hurt, too. Who knows?”

“What, you cracked up the car?”

“No, if you can believe this, some shithead sent me a bomb in the mail and she opened it by mistake. She’s in Bellevue.”

“Well, don’t worry, she’s in good hands.”

“In Bellevue? I thought it was a … you know, where they send the poverty cases.”

“Yeah, but it’s also the best hospital in the city. Funny, right? If the president got shot in New York, they’d send him there. Don’t worry. Look, give me her name and I’ll look her up. I’ll tell her you’re flat on your ass for a week and won’t be chasing any tail.”

Karp did so. When the cab reached Karp’s building, Delgado helped him out. A black man leaning against the doorway sprang forward and opened the outer door for them. Karp thought his face looked familiar. I’ve probably ridden on the elevator with him a hundred times and never said a word, he thought. New York, right? The coldest inhabited place on the globe. On the other hand there were people like Delgado, who would go out of their way to help a stranger.

Delgado guided Karp into his apartment, set him on the bed, took off the newspapers, helped him out of his shoes and trousers, and made a cold pack with ice from the freezer and a towel. Karp thought achingly of Marlene, who had filled his ice trays for the first time. Delgado fed Karp some pills from the medicine cabinet, and Karp sank back on the pillows to wait for the codeine to kick in.

“OK, Chief,” said Delgado, “you’re all set. Hey, you got no food in the fridge. You just move in? You want me to bring some stuff up from the corner?”

“No, that’s fine, Hector. You’re a prince. You ever want to kill somebody, let me know. I work for the DA. I’ll cop you a good plea.”

Delgado laughed. “Hey, all right, I got a list. OK, I got to run, take it easy.”

After the man left Karp felt the first pangs of utter loneliness. He reached out to the bedside table and lifted the phone onto his chest. Who should he call? V.T. was out of town. Hrcany? Guma? Yeah, he’d call Guma, who’d bring a pizza and a bottle of wine, and they’d sit around and bullshit and maybe he’d figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

He started to dial Guma’s number and then stopped. He didn’t want to see Guma. He wanted to see Marlene. He should have let them take him to Bellevue. They could have given him a walking cast, or a wheelchair, and then he could have sat by her room at least and been there when she came around. OK, Guma could drive him to the hospital. He had just started to dial again when he heard the first sounds from the door.

Clicking, bumping sounds. Somebody was trying to get in. It couldn’t be Delgado, or a friend with chicken soup. They would ring the bell. Karp heard the lock snap and the turning of the doorknob. There was nothing in the apartment to absorb the sound, so Karp could hear all the details of the break-in. Of course, he hadn’t followed Delgado to the door, so the dead bolt wasn’t set. The door swung open and Karp heard someone come into the apartment.

And he knew exactly who it was, because he had just remembered why the guy who had opened the door downstairs looked so familiar. Karp had been looking at his Identikit portrait almost every day for three years.

For a panicked moment Karp considered dialing 911. Then he realized that not only would the line be busy but that Elvis would hear him dialing. Karp placed the phone on the bed carefully, and slowly slid off, balancing on his good leg and clenching his teeth against the pain. The codeine was starting to work, but the knee still sent darts of fire up his leg. It was still completely useless as something to walk on.

Karp thought of all the scene-of-the-crime pictures he had seen while at Homicide. Lots of macho hard-boiled laughs about those. He imagined himself in one of them. Not funny. He imagined his own body on an autopsy table. His heart thumped audibly against his chest. A few hours ago he had fancied himself ready to die, but now-with a killer in the next room-he found himself not wanting to die at all. Instead, he wanted to kill.

The first thing to do was to get moving. Elvis was checking out the kitchen, and would be coming through the closed bedroom door in a few seconds. Karp didn’t think it was a good strategy to hide under the bed. In the movies, killers always looked under the bed. Karp looked under the bed anyway. It was still a bad idea. But one of the slats would do for a cane. He jimmied it out and rose wretchedly to his feet.

He heard steps coming toward the bedroom door. An image from his childhood flashed into his mind. He had done something very bad, broke a lamp or something, and he was cowering in the bedroom listening to his mother searching the house for him. He was in for a serious spanking. He remembered what he had done then and he did it again. He hobbled over to the bathroom and locked himself in.

Elvis heard the bathroom door close and the shower go on. He smiled. This was going to go down smooth as shit. Mostly everything had been going right since his phone call from Louis. He had written it all out, under Louis’s coaching, on the piece of brown paper bag that he kept in his wallet and consulted half a dozen times a day. No more forgetting stuff for Pres. He had made contact with the Claremont Press. He had talked all that political bullshit with Barlow and them, and got the names of brothers who were into trashing the system. They had been glad to send a tough kid who was ready for anything and obviously not a cop (they had checked, of course-people remembered him from Attica), to Chingo Ray, who could always use another mule. He’d picked up the bomb. He’d dropped it into a mail cart. He waited outside until he heard it go off. It had all worked out as Louis said it would.