Robert Tanenbaum - No Lesser Plea

By noon, about two-thirds of the pile of papers had shifted from the in-basket to the out-basket. The door banged open and Guma stepped in, smoking a larger-than-usual cigar and holding a cardboard carton.

“All right! Lunch for the cripple. You like corned beef? We got corned beef. You like pastrami? We got pastrami. I got celery tonic, cream, black raspberry. I got dibs on the cream.”

“Goom, glad to see you! I hear you’re not crazy anymore.”

“Yeah, well, that Werner’s a helluva shrink. He’s got the magic touch.”

The door opened again, and V.T. Newbury walked in, followed by Sonny Dunbar. Newbury was wearing a long white lab coat with a stethoscope sticking out of the side pocket. He had a sheaf of manila folders under one arm.

“Looking good, V.T. Where’d you get the outfit? Hey, Sonny.”

“Denny Maher lent it to me. The name tag too,” said V.T.

V.T. leaned over so Karp could read the white plastic tag pinned to his breast pocket.

“Doctor Frankenstein?”

“Yeah. It got me into Bellevue to spring Guma. I guess that says something. And to rifle Werner’s files. And make copies.”

“So what did you learn? Give,” said Karp around his corned beef sandwich.

“What we got is this,” said Guma, pointing to the folders that Newbury had placed on the desk. “Each time Louis was examined, Werner sent up a report. His opinion is that Louis was incompetent, with a confirmation by another psychiatrist. A guy named Edward Stone. The same thing happened to me.”

“So? Where does that get us?”

“Butch, I was examined by three shrinks. Count ’em, three. The third guy was this old dude, Perlsteiner. He’s old but he don’t miss much. He said there was nothing wrong with me.”

“Little does he know,” said Newbury.

“Up yours, Newbury. And, we find, on examining these records here, that Perlsteiner also examined Mandeville Louis on three occasions, and wrote reports saying that Louis was faking it. Reports that never made it into the file.”

“Goom, this is great!” Karp exclaimed. “Great! Werner doesn’t know we have this. We’ll subpoena him for all documents relating to Louis. He’ll never turn over the dissenting opinions. Witholding evidence! I’ll tear him a new asshole on the stand.” Karp turned to Dunbar. “What is that, Sonny? The sworn question and answer statement from Elvis’s girlfriend?”

“Yeah, it looks solid. We got him good, now.”

“Right. He’s looking at so much time now he’s got to give us Louis for a walk.”

“What?” Dunbar said, his voice rising. “Tell me you didn’t say ‘walk.’ ”

“Well, you know we’ll try to get the best deal we can on him, but if he holds out, I’ll tell you right now, I’ll walk him to get Louis.”

“Let me understand this. I bust my black ass hunting down this muthafucka, who has blown up one of your people, your people, and killed my brother-in-law, and near killed you, and you tell me that after all that, you’re thinking of giving him a free ride?”

“Come on, Sonny. Louis is the goddamn target here. Elvis is a tool. It’d be like, in a vehicular manslaughter, putting the car in jail instead of the driver.”

“Don’t give me ‘tool,’ man. I want his ass in jail. His ass.”

“For chrissake, Sonny, the son of a bitch is blind, or close to it. You think he’s going to go back to armed robbery in Braille?”

“Fuck that, man! What, are you the judge and the jury all of a sudden? You saying he’s suffered enough? I thought this was the law around here. You think I sat up with my wife night after night, her crying her eyes out about Donnie, for a deal? I want his ass in jail!”

Karp was pale and his jaw was tight. Very quietly he said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Sonny. Like I said, I’ll try to get the best deal I can, but if not … it’s my case.”

Dunbar glared at Karp for a long moment, his teeth clenching. “Ahh, fuck you all!” he shouted, and strode out of the office, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the glass.

“Listen, don’t worry about him, Butch,” said Guma into the stunned silence. “He’s a good guy. He’ll come around when he cools off.”

“You think so?” said Karp bitterly. “How about me, you think I’ll come around? Get used to it all?”

Nobody said anything for a bit, as Guma and V.T. got to their feet and started cleaning the lunch scraps and papers off Karp’s desk. Karp sighed and tried for the millionth time to scratch under his cast. “Guma,” he said, “could you draw up the subpoena for Werner’s records? I’m swamped here.”

“Sure thing, Butch. I’ll do it now.”

The intercom buzzed and Karp answered it. He listened for a few seconds and then slammed it down with a muffled curse.

“That’s all I needed. The Great One wants to see me, immediately.”

Karp struggled to his feet and hoisted himself on his crutches. He picked up his trend charts. Maybe he could convince somebody upstairs that the system was going down the drain at an increasing rate.

“What’s it about?” asked Newbury.

“They didn’t say. Maybe he found out I put a criminal in jail last June and wants to know whether it slowed up the system any. Who the fuck cares!”

Garrahy’s old office had changed. There was a new beige rug, some contemporary graphics of the traffic-accident-on-Alpha-Centauri school, and the obligatory row of Spy legal caricatures. There was also a new secretary; Ida had finally joined the other Ida’s in the dust of history. The new one, Jerri, was blonde, and dressed for success. Mr. Bloom was on the phone, Karp was told, and he should make himself comfortable in the conference room. Did he want coffee? He did not.

Karp clump-clumped into the conference room. Conrad Wharton was there, seated in one of the leather armchairs toward the head of the table. Karp maneuvered himself into one of the chairs at the other end.

“Hello, Butch,” said Wharton pleasantly. “How are you feeling?”

“I can’t complain, Conrad. What’s this all about?”

“Oh, I think we’d better wait for Sandy on that. I think he’d want to tell you personally.”

Wharton regarded Karp with a benign expression, a half-smile playing about his Kewpie doll lips. Karp thought Wharton looked a little too much like a cat studying a mouse. He began to go over in his mind all the things he had done recently that Wharton might be able to nail him for. He was just starting to get nervous when he realized this was exactly what Wharton wanted. He made himself smile back.

“And how about you, Conrad? The ship of state sailing smoothly? All the columns of figures adding up?”

“Some of them, Butch, some of them. Our throughput is holding up nicely, and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? Although, I hear rumors from time to time about padding.”

“Padding?”

“Yes, you know, inventing cases to make it look like the clearance rate is higher than it really is.”

“No joke? That’s low, Conrad, that must be really tough on your system.”

“Yes, it is. But we’re putting controls in place that should put a stop to it. Audit systems, and so on. Sandy is a real bug on clean data.”

At that, the real bug himself walked through the door. As usual, he looked tan and fit. He was wearing the trousers and vest of a navy pinstriped suit, and his sleeves were rolled up to show his Patek Phillipe, and to show he was not above a little hard work. After more than a year of contact with him, Karp thought he was about the most completely phony man he had ever encountered.

“Well, hiya guy!” said Bloom heartily. “No, don’t get up,” he said, as he reached across the table to shake Karp’s hand, although Karp had made no move to do so. Bloom sat down next to Wharton and opened a folder that Wharton handed him.