Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

"You're right. I'm sorry," she said flatly. "What about the cops? On the rape thing."

"Yeah, I talked to Dworkin this morning."

"Dworkin? Come on, Butch, Jerry Dworkin? The guy's a broom. He hasn't had an idea since 1953."

Karp sighed. "No, he's not a rocket scientist, but he is the D.A. squad chief and he's the guy I have to work with."

"And what did he say?"

"He said, 'Great, but what am I supposed to do with it?' Or words to that effect. What he meant was, if they catch a guy wrapping panty hose around a rape victim, your stuff helps to make a better case. They could bring the other women in and get an ID on the guy. But until then…"

Marlene stood up again. "Until then he's not going to budge his fat ass."

"Marlene, you're gonna kill me, but the guy's got a point. What do you want the cops to do? Check out every date made in every singles bar in New York? They don't have the troops. Look, Guma was just in here with a Tape-murder. The bastard got away clean as a whistle, and we don't have lead one. A psycho this is, wrapped the girl up and stabbed her thirty-nine times, nice girl, nice building. That's what the cops are going after, not some-"

"What did he wrap her up in?"

"What? I don't know, some sheet or something. Why?"

"Was she slender, dark-haired?"

"Marlene, I don't know. Guma's got the case."

She moved toward the door, excitement starting to flow through her. Karp said, "Hey, are we OK now?"

She flashed him a quick smile. "Yeah, sorry I snapped."

"OK, remember we have a date tonight. My aunt."

She waved in acknowledgment and was gone.

JoAnne Caputo was waiting in her office when she returned. The woman was wearing scruffy jeans and a leather car coat too warm for the weather, as a kind of armor. Her dark hair was dirty and pinned back and she still had smudgy circles under her eyes. She wore no makeup.

"Something going on?" Caputo asked. "You look excited."

"Yeah, something might be," said Marlene. "There's a chance our boy killed somebody with his knife."

"Oh, Christ! Who?"

"I don't know yet. Let me make a phone call."

Marlene dialed Guma's number and was told he was on the phone.

"He's in. Let's go!" said Marlene, and hustled Caputo out.

Guma was out again by the time they got to his office, but they tracked him down in a busy corridor outside a tenth-floor courtroom.

"Goom! We got to talk," said Marlene.

"Hey, sweetie," said Guma with a wide grin. "I'd love to, but I'm in court like five minutes ago. Hey, tell me, what's the difference between a lady lawyer and a pit bull?"

"Lip gloss," said Marlene, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, you heard it already." Guma looked more closely at JoAnne Caputo. "Who's your friend?"

Marlene made the introductions. "Goom, JoAnne's a… witness in a case you just picked up, a rape-murder?"

"Yeah, the Wagner thing. Bad shit. A witness?"

"Not exactly. But we won't know unless we see the case file. Where is it?"

"My girl's got it. Under Wagner, Ellen. Feel free." He looked more closely at Caputo and smiled. "Don't I know you from somewhere?" he asked her.

"For Chrissake, Guma!" cried Marlene.

But Caputo's eyes had gone wide. She cried out and pointed her finger at Guma.

"You! You're the guy from Adam's!" she called in a shrill voice.

People in the hallway stopped and looked. Guma's jaw sagged and his face took on a stricken expression. Oh, no, Marlene thought in a panicked instant, she's cracked up. She's going to start accusing people at random. As gently as she could, she said, "Ah, JoAnne, I really don't think that Guma here could be…"

Caputo shook her head vigorously and said in the same excited tone, "No, he's not the rapist! He was hitting on me the night I met him. At Adam's." The crowd became more interested and there were chuckles from one or two of the regulars.

Guma held up his hand in a protective gesture and backed away. "Uh, ladies," he said, "it's been a pleasure, let's have lunch, but…" He scuttled away and was gone through a courtroom door.

Marlene looked at Caputo in amazement. "Guma was there? He hit on you that night?"

"Yeah, the fucker was all over me. Sorry, I hope he's not a friend of yours."

"As a matter of fact, he is a friend of mine, but he's also a chauvie, horny scuzzball when it comes to women, and he knows I know it. It's OK as long as you regard him as a separate, though exotic species, in a National Geographic kind of way, like a spiny anteater."

Caputo grinned broadly at this, and it struck Marlene that this was the first time she had ever seen the woman smile. It lit her face through the ever-present mask of pain, like a photoflash behind filthy glass.

They went quickly to Guma's secretary, retrieved the Wagner case file, and repaired to Guma's private office to examine it. In a few minutes Marlene let out a sharp yelp of triumph.

"It's him! No forced entry. He left the panty hose wrapped around the victim's head. It's him! We got him!"

"What do you mean, 'we got him'?"

"Oh, shit, JoAnne-it's horrible, but the murder puts your case into a whole new category as far as the cops are concerned. It's a violent murder. It's big-time. Assuming…" She paused speculatively.

"Assuming what?"

"Assuming we can convince them that it's the same guy."

"That's hard?"

Marlene frowned and scratched her head with a pencil. "It could be. Cops don't like advice. They like to figure it out for themselves. They like clues and witnesses and snitches. They might take some convincing that a serial rapist who never stabbed anybody would all of a sudden turn into a crazy slasher. I don't know…"

They were silent for a while. Then Marlene said, "You said you had something to show me. On the data?"

JoAnne nodded and pulled some folded paper out of a large leather bag.

"Yeah. I was thinking about disguises, the ones the guy uses." She spread the papers on Guma's desk. "Look, there are nine pantyhose rapes, but only five descriptions. It makes sense in a way. It's probably a lot of work to get the disguises right. I mean, think what it would take for you to pretend to be five different people. Also the pickups all took place at one of five singles clubs, and the rapes occurred at intervals of three to four days afterward. So I was trying to see if there was some kind of pattern to the disguises and the clubs."

The paper laid out on the desk showed four columns:

Case Club Date Descr.

1 D 12/15 v

2 C 1/03 w

3 A 1/17 x

4 O 2/01 y

5 T 2/15 z

6 C 3/12 x

7 T 4/25 v

8 C 5/24 y

9 A 6/07 z

"What does it mean?" Marlene asked.

"OK, it's in chron order, of course. The second column is the name of the club. D is Dreamland, C is Clancy's, A is Adam's, O is the Omega Club, and T is Tangerines. All big noisy places, dark, and so on. Then the date when they met the guy, and the right column is the code for the disguises." She passed Marlene another piece of paper: V = 5'10/blond short/blue/white jeans windbreaker W = 5'8/dark long/brown/bump nose/casual/avi-glasses X = 6'1/sideburns-red med./brown/sm nose/scar/cowboy Y = 5'10/thin brown/hazel/hornrims/3-piece suit Z = 5'8/blond curls/blue/cleft chin/glasses/finger miss

"Five different guys," said Marlene. "I'm still amazed! What do you think about the finger on Z?"

"In the Z disguise he's missing the pinky on his left hand. Or so it appeared to the victim. He even brought it up, so she'd be sure to notice. Want to bet it's phony?"

"No bet," said Marlene. "So what does it all mean?"

Caputo shook her head glumly. "I don't know yet. But somehow he's got to have a system to keep the disguises straight with the different clubs when he makes his hit. But there's no pattern. He goes Dreamland, Clancy's, Adam's, Omega, Tangerines, then Clancy's, then Tangerines, then Clancy's again, then Adam's."