Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

The man smiled winningly. Marlene felt herself smiling back. She said, "Not really. This is my first time," trying to keep the tension out of her voice as she realized that it was the guy. Karp sat in his unfamiliar dinner clothes with two dozen similarly dressed men, all with real bow ties, in a suite of a small, expensive mid-town hotel, listening to Congressman Marcus Fane finish his speech. He sipped his coffee, but passed on the little snifter of brandy set before him. It had been quite a meal: Scottish smoked salmon to start, a cream soup with oysters and crab, an enormous slab of prime rib, decorated with potatoes and mushrooms carved into fanciful shapes, a salad made of some unknown sour greens and yellow flowers, and baked Alaska for dessert.

Karp had never had baked Alaska, nor had he ever dined with a group such as this, one of the little bands of prosperous men who called the shots in the cities of America. He looked down the table at the smooth attentive faces, some of them famous, others obscure, but all radiating confidence and power. They represented the City's largest banks, the big real-estate holdings, a few of the megacorporations that were still headquartered in New York, the insurance industry, the stock market, the state, the newspapers and the TV networks, the archdiocese, the Jewish community, the unions, and the two political parties. Fane represented the downtrodden masses and the federal government.

He was a good speaker, Karp thought. He spoke extempore, and seemed both confiding and blunt. Karp agreed with the burden of the speech, which was that crime was bad and ought to be stopped, and applauded politely with the others when it was over. The party rose. Apparently they were going to adjourn to the other room of the suite, there to indulge in yet more of the secret rituals of the rich and powerful.

Karp joined the flow, and as he did, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Richard Reedy. "Enjoying yourself?"

Karp smiled and answered, "Nice feed. Uplifting speech. I'm waiting for when they bring out the coffers full of gold and we all let the coins run through our fingers and cackle."

Reedy laughed out loud, threw a companionable arm around Karp's shoulder, and carried him into the next room, which was stocked with comfortable chairs and waiters circulating with more after-dinner drinks. "I want you to meet Marcus," Reedy said. "He's a good man to get to know."

Marcus Fane was talking to an elderly man in ecclesiastical costume and a portly man with a red face. Reedy signaled to him in some subtle way that Karp missed and Fane excused himself and walked over to them. He was a stocky man with a smooth medium-brown face and straight oiled hair worn in the fashion of the late Adam Clayton Powell. He grinned his famous and photogenic grin as he shook Karp's hand.

"Well, well, Mr. Karp! Rich here has told me so much about you."

"And what was that, Mr. Fane?" asked Karp blandly.

"Please, it's Marcus," said Fane. "And you're Butch. Why, he's told me you're just the man to inject a little vigor into our criminal justice system."

Karp glanced at Reedy, who winked in his merry way and smiled. Karp nodded and smiled, feeling vaguely uncomfortable.

"You have political ambitions, I hear," said Fane.

"Well…" said Karp hesitantly.

Fane took in the occupants of the room with a broad gesture. "And you've come to the right place. This is where political ambitions are fertilized, sir. With money." He winked broadly.

Karp smiled conventionally at this wisdom. Reedy said, "Maybe we can set up a meeting later in the month, Marcus. Butch, here, and a few key people. Maybe form an exploratory committee?"

"Good idea, Rich. Never too early to dig worms, ha-ha! Call my office and set it up."

Fane was edging away, obviously responding to another invisible signal emanating from one of the other groups of men that had coalesced in different parts of the room. He shook hands with Reedy and Butch again. "Excuse me," he said. "Old pols can't resist working the room. Rich, on that Agromont thing, consider it a done deal."

Fane left and Reedy said, "Well, that's that."

"What's what?"

"He likes you. You're a plausible candidate." Reedy moved over to a coffee setup and drew a cup of black coffee from a silver urn. Karp followed him.

"How does he know that? I barely opened my mouth."

Reedy carefully rubbed a bit of lemon rind around the rim of his cup and sipped. "He knows. You're tall, you have an honest face. Jewish, but not too Jewish. Your record is fine, not that anybody gives a rat's ass. A bad record can sink a candidate, but a good record's not enough to win."

"What is enough?"

"Money. What else? Half a mill should do it, for starters." He looked sharply at Karp. "You haven't got any, have you?"

"Not so you'd notice. My penny jar is pretty full, but I always forget to stop by the bank for those little paper tubes. I guess you don't have that problem."

Reedy grinned. "Don't joke about money, Butch. Money is always serious, especially among our present company."

"I'll remember that. Speaking seriously, then, what about Fane? Is he rich too?"

"Oh, I imagine he's well-off," Reedy answered casually. "He's got some nice income property uptown. Some investments too. People like to give stock tips to congressmen."

"And maybe to judges. You know a judge named Nolan?"

"I know the name. Why?"

"Just wondering. In these drug killings we've been investigating: Judge Nolan released a witness on what, for him, seemed an excess of constitutional zeal. The guy walked out and somebody tried to kill him. Then he disappeared."

"You think he's dead?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. Whoever's doing these killings is pretty slick. It might be interesting to find out if anybody's passed any lucrative information to Judge Nolan in the last week or so."

Reedy nodded. "You'd like me to look into that."

"Yeah, I would, if it's not a problem," answered Karp gratefully, while thinking, ungratefully, that whoever had done it was probably the type who inhabited meetings like this one. Or this one itself. "So, tell me, Marlene," said the guy, "what's your racket?" His name was Glenn. He was a Capricorn, he lived in Inglewood, he liked the music.

"You mean what do I do? I work for the D.A." Marlene watched his face carefully. No rush of sweat to the brow, no wild rolling of the eyes. Instead, mock wariness: "Uh-oh. I better watch my step around you. What are you, a paralegal?"

"Um, in a manner of speaking. How about yourself?"

"I'm in TV," he said. "In production at ABC."

"That's impressive," said Marlene, remembering her cards. "Do you mingle with the stars much?" Keep him talking. Keep him interested. The guy had moved around so that he stood between Marlene and the doorway. She tried to crane her neck unobtrusively, so as to keep the door in view, while at the same time darting glances at the fern wall to see if she could spot Jo Anne.

"Looking for someone?" the guy asked.

"Huh? Oh, no, not really."

"You keep looking at the door," he said.

"Oh, well, I was supposed to meet a girlfriend here later."

"Not a boyfriend?"

"Isn't that why I'm here?" replied Marlene as coquettishly as she could manage. Smile. Lean. Show some tit.

Encouraged, the guy moved closer. She could smell his cologne and the leather of his jacket.

"So. Wanna do something?" He touched his nose meaningfully.

"Um, like what?"

He laughed. "You know, blow. Do a coupla lines in the can. Get in the mood."

Marlene did not lead a sheltered life, but she had never been offered cocaine socially by a stranger before. She hadn't expected the guy to do it, and it threw her out of character. She shook her head spontaneously and vigorously in refusal.