Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

Aunt Sophie was running down, the pauses between her remarks getting longer, her voice fading into whispery hoarseness. Karp and Marlene cleaned up the supper things and, with many a sincere promise to return often, made their farewells.

Out in the street, searching for cabs on Central Park West, Karp seemed to have dropped some of the defeated sullenness that he had worn on the ride uptown. He put his arm around Marlene's shoulders and asked, "So how did you like my Aunt Sophie?"

"I loved her," said Marlene with feeling. "There's a lot of her in you."

"You think so? She's a tough old lady. I could use all I can get."

A cab appeared and Marlene stopped it with her ear-cracking two-fingered whistle. As they started their downtown drive, Karp remarked, "Yeah, she's something. When we were in the kitchen, she took one look at me and asked what was wrong, I had such a long face. I looked at her and, I don't know, I started to feel better. And it's funny, I remembered she had the same effect on me when I was a kid, when I was miserable. Like when my mom died. 'There's worse things dolling,' sympathy, but… it somehow put everything in proportion, because you knew that whatever you were going through, it was bullshit compared to what she went through. And there she was, this funny, happy lady.

"And that business with the tattoo…" Karp laughed. "I could never get over the cross mark on the seven. So they wouldn't mix up the corpses. God! I haven't thought about that in years, it's like…" Karp suddenly stopped short and sat up rigid in his seat. He looked at his watch.

Marlene felt the motion and asked, "What is it?"

Karp leaned forward and gave the driver a new address. The cab swung into a left turn and soon was heading north and west.

"We're not going home?"

"No," said Karp. "We're going to a club. Listen to some music. Live a little."

"Butchie, what a treat!" cried Marlene. "Let's hear it for Aunt Sophie! Where are we going?"

"A little joint uptown. Pepper's," said Karp.

"Jesus, Butch, I didn't know you knew about places like this," said Marlene, peering through the smoky darkness of Pepper's. "What an evening of revelations this is turning out to be!"

Settled at a table the size of a dinner plate next to the toilet door, Marlene remarked, "God, they really know how to treat white folks here. Fuck-a-duck, Butch, I haven't come uptown to hear music since high school."

"Takes you back, does it?"

"Yeah, ply me with sweet drinks and I might let you feel me up in the cab."

"Not all the way?"

"Well, perhaps just the tip, if you're super nice. Not a bad band, by the way. Who is it?"

"I don't know the official name. Recognize the piano?"

Marlene put her glasses on and squinted. "Looks like… Clay Fulton?"

"Yup, that's him."

Marlene gave him a suspicious look. "The plot thickens. Could it be that we're here for something other than careless gaiety?"

Karp shrugged and ordered a couple of beers from a passing waitress. The band finished its set, and a few minutes later Clay Fulton walked by their table on the way to the men's room. Marlene was about to hail him but Karp held a finger to his lips and shook his head. Fulton went through the swinging door and Karp stood up. "Be back in a minute," he said.

Fulton was standing at the single urinal. Karp waited for him to finish. He said, "Hey, Clay."

Fulton spun around. His face was tight, and he had dropped a few pounds since Karp had seen him last. "What're you doing here, Butch?" he asked curtly.

"Listening to music with Marlene. Thought I might talk to you while I was up here."

Fulton pretended to look at his watch. "Yeah, well, I'd like to shoot the shit with you, but I got to make some calls."

Karp didn't move from his position in front of the door, and it was clear from his stance that he didn't intend to.

"Let me by, Butch," said Fulton, a stiff smile on his face.

"In a second, Clay. I just need to know something. The word is you took a couple of shots at Tecumseh Booth the other day."

Fulton's smile vanished. "I don't know what you're talking about," he snapped.

"Yeah, you do. Somebody tried to kill Booth at his mother's place, and Dugman's bunch saw you driving away, and I just wanted to-"

"What the fuck is this, Karp? I'm the cop. I ask the questions. Don't bother me with this horseshit! Now, get the fuck out of my way!"

"You're being set up, Clay. And I know what you're doing and you're fucking it up."

For an instant Fulton went rigid, gaping like a gaffed cod. Then his jaw tightened, he uttered an inarticulate growl and tried to force his way past Karp by main force. Karp gave him the hip and pinned him up against the plywood wall of the narrow passage leading to the door.

"Listen to me! I'm your friend, goddammit!" Karp yelled into his ear. "You owe me three minutes without bullshit. And if I have to grab you in a fucking John, that's your fault, not mine."

Karp felt the tension in Fulton's body relax slightly, and he pulled back. There was still less than a foot of space between their bodies. Fulton's face glistened like damp dark wood in the unforgiving light of the naked bulb.

"OK," said Karp, "I'm gonna lay out what I know, just the way it came to me. One, you come in and tell me these dope-dealer killings are connected and you're trying to get put in charge of all of them. Two, I find out Bloom is organizing a task force to look into them, to which you're not invited. I go to the first meeting, and I find out that the official representative of the police force thinks you're poison. Three, you drop out of sight. There's rumors flying around that you're dirty. Four, Tecumseh Booth gets sprung on a technicality under suspicious circumstances. Somebody with serious clout was using it, on a judge.

"Five, I'm worried about you, so I call the C. of D. I get completely stonewalled. This sets me wondering. I'm pretty tight with the chief. I'm pretty tight with you. Why doesn't anybody want to talk to me about these murders? What could it be? Is Denton taking bribes in his old age, a guy who never took a free cup of coffee in his life? Clay Fulton is dirty? It's like the pope saying, hey, I already got the yarmulke, I might as well get circumcised and move to Crown Heights. It doesn't figure, except for one possibility. One possibility would make Denton and Fulton act this way. What is it, Clay? You gonna tell me?"

Fulton looked into his eyes a long minute. Then he sighed and said, "I can't tell you, Butch-believe me, I would if I could, but-"

Karp held up his hand. "OK, OK, I understand. Let's be hypothetical, then. Let's say we got the chief of detectives and his ace lieutenant investigating a series of drug-pusher killings. The lieutenant thinks they're all connected. So what do these ace detectives do? Do they bring their evidence to the task force that the D.A. has started to investigate these selfsame killings? Do they launch a serious public investigation of these killings? They do not. They work in secret. They don't even talk about it to their close personal friend who happens also to be a D.A.

"So this friend starts asking himself, why the secrecy? What's the answer here? The envelope, please. Ah, here it is. The one thing that would cause this kind of shutdown. What if our two detectives have concluded that the only way the killings could have been done the way they were done is if they were done by rogue cops? Something snapped somewhere and you got a couple of guys out trying to clean up the city. Clint Eastwood in real life-they're shooting dope pushers.

"See, it's like your pattern that wasn't a pattern. You get two good honest cops like you and Denton acting in this way, and somebody who knows they're good and honest has to guess what they're doing.