Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

The waiting area of the complaint room was reasonably crowded for a weekday night. The cops, some in uniform, most in plain clothes, stood around in relaxed attitudes, joking, talking sports, and otherwise racking up overtime. There were not as many of them as there would be later in the year, around Christmas, when arrests and complaints would soar, not because of the increased activity of criminals but because cops needed extra overtime to buy presents.

Karp spoke briefly to a couple of cops he knew and entered the complaint room proper. There, in a warren of little cubicles, clerks sat by old typewriters; and the two ADA's on night duty circulated from desk to desk, interviewing cops and their witnesses, if any, and dictating the complaints in legal form to the clerks.

Roland Hrcany was on duty tonight. Karp spotted him through the doorway of a cubicle and waved. Hrcany gave him an odd look, as if he were surprised and mildly dismayed to see him there. After finishing with the case at hand, Hrcany came out of the cubicle and asked, "What's up, boss?"

Karp said, "Nothing much. I just dropped by to smell the Lysol. Having a nice night?"

Hrcany shrugged. "The usual shit. Domestics and muggings. Wives 'n' knives. The Nine is doing their semiannual cleanup of the faggot blowjob artist on the Williamsburg Bridge Plaza. It should get interesting later on. You gonna stay for a while?"

"No, I can't. I gotta meet some people for drinks midtown."

"Anybody I know?"

"Yeah, Rich Reedy from the drug thing wants me to meet a guy."

"Reedy, huh? You're moving in fast company, my man. Careful you don't lose your boyish charm."

The tone with which this was said lacked some of the lightness of Hrcany's usual banter. Karp met his eyes; there was something wiggling deep in the cold blue pools.

"I think I can handle the speed, Roland. It's nice of you to be concerned, though. As a matter of fact, all my near and dear seem unable to resist comment when Reedy's name comes up. Why is that?"

Hrcany saw from Karp's expression that the question was not merely rhetorical. He hung a grin on his mouth and said, "We got enough empty suits in this place. Reedy, white-shoe law firm, big money…"

"Karp sells out?" asked Karp.

"Something like that. Also there's a rumor going around you might be thinking about running for D.A."

"Does that bother you?" asked Karp. His antennae were picking up something from Hrcany that he didn't like. There were more male pheromones in the air than were called for by the conversation. He felt the belligerence rising in him.

"Why should it?" Hrcany answered, his voice bland. "It's just that you're always talking about how there's no place for politics in the D.A.'s office."

"There isn't. The law's the law, and… and, Roland, if you've got something on your mind, why don't you just spit it out? You think that my political ambitions, if any, are starting to color the way I run this bureau?"

Hrcany smiled and patted Karp on the arm. "Hey, don't start getting pissed off, Butch. Just shooting the shit. Your friends are just getting a little nervous, is all."

Karp took a long breath and let it out. He was getting touchy in his old age, although the expectations of others had always weighed heavily upon his spirit. He recalled the times when, as a basketball superstar in high school, friends had inquired solicitously about his health and humor before an important game; it had seemed to him always before a game, and never otherwise.

Karp waved his hands about to take in the complaint room, and by extension the system of which it was the lowest rootlet.

"Do you like this? Don't you think it could be run better?"

Hrcany snorted. "The Three Stooges could run it better. The point is, though, even if it was run well, it would still be fucked up. We're trying to impose a system of jurisprudence designed for little English villages on this gigantic city. Fourteen appearances to dispose of a felony? Come on!"

"We could still make a difference," Karp said. "Look at the incompetence-things that have to be done twice or three times because nobody took the trouble to do them right the first time. There's part of your fourteen-appearances problem. Look at the morale-half our lives are spent training unprepared kids because the senior attorneys burn out so fast. That doesn't have to happen. That…"

He caught the expression in Hrcany's eyes and stopped, suddenly embarrassed. You weren't supposed to show interest or passion about anything but sports. Just do the job, make wisecracks, and put asses in jail. Karp said, "It's late. I gotta go."

"Hey, give 'em hell, boss," said Hrcany. "You got my vote."

There was still something in his voice that Karp did not like, but whether it was just Roland's habitual faint mockery or something darker, Karp could not determine. It was still light, a dusty yellow summer twilight, when Karp left the building and was lucky to find an empty cab on Centre Street. Reedy had chosen a small dim place in the Forties off Madison, full of well-dressed men talking the ad game and television. Karp found Reedy at a table in the back, speaking into a phone. The older man smiled and motioned him to a seat. A waiter arrived and Karp ordered a beer, which was delivered in less than a minute.

Karp ate nuts and sipped at his beer while Reedy gave directions on an obscure legal or financial deal to some underling. Karp listened casually, the arcane language reminding him of the boredom he had felt sitting in long-ago classes in contracts and commercial law. Apparently someone called Telemax was about to transfer an enormous amount of money to someone else called Rotodyne, and Reedy was poised to run his fingers through the gold as it passed along, grabbing as much of it as he could during the few seconds it was between possessors.

Reedy at last hung up the phone and turned to Karp with a fierce grin. "Not a bad piece of work. I find it hard to sleep at night unless I've made a million during the working day, don't you?"

"I toss and turn for hours," said Karp pleasantly. "It must be nice being a lawyer."

"Pah! I don't make beans at law. I don't clear more than eight hundred K a year from the partnership. It's barely enough to pay off the house at Easthampton. The real money's in the market."

"So I've heard," said Karp.

"Do you have anything in it?"

"No," said Karp. "My mother always told me not to gamble."

"Good advice," replied Reedy. "I never gamble myself. Oh, I go to the track with clients and bet just to be sociable. And playing golf, of course. But the market isn't betting. Or at least it's not betting if you know who the winner is."

"And how do you know that?"

Reedy tugged at an ear. "I keep these open. You keep your ears open around the right people, you can make a lot of money."

"I guess," said Karp. "But even though I only made a C-plus in business law, I seem to recall that trading on inside information is illegal."

Reedy laughed sincerely. "Yes, of course it is. If I'm doing a merger and I go to you and say, 'Butch, ABC is buying XYZ and the shares are headed for the moon,' then it's go-to-jail time. But that's not the way it happens. Look, what would you say if I told you that you could turn a hundred K into half a million in a week, with just what you know now, if you'd kept your ears open?"

Karp was about to remark lightly, "I'd say I didn't have a hundred K," but seeing that Reedy's expression had grown serious, said, "You mean overhearing what you were talking about on the phone-Teledyne and Rotomax."

"Rotodyne," corrected Reedy. "It closed at fifteen and a quarter. It'll go to thirty before… But that's actually all I'm allowed to say. In any case, you heard it. The stock will be in play. The law doesn't require you to expunge the information out of your head. Why should you? It's yours to use."