Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

Karp nodded. "But in order for it to do me any good, I'd have to have a bundle to begin with, wouldn't I? Isn't that the way it works."

"Oh, that's not a problem," replied Reedy, smiling benevolently. "There's always loose money around for people who have a reputation for keeping their ears open. I'd write you a check for one hundred K right now, for that matter."

Karp felt a reflexive smile of disbelief stretch over his face. It faded when he saw that Reedy was serious. He opened his mouth to say something, but his mind was quite empty. Although he did not by any means wish to offend the older man, there was something in him that did not want to be beholden to Richard Reedy or anyone else for a sum equal to nearly three times the annual salary of an assistant district attorney. He was racking his brains for the form of a polite refusal when a jowly man of about thirty barged up to their table.

Reedy rose and shook the man's hand, and Karp pushed his chair back and stood to be introduced. Reedy said, "Frank Sergo, Butch Karp." Karp took the proffered hand, which was damp and cold, like a pack of hot dogs just out of the refrigerator. Sergo was nearly a full foot shorter than Karp, and fat, and the necessity of acknowledging this disparity, which no success in the marketplace could ever repair, seemed to annoy him. Karp had seen this before in short men, and he hoped it did not turn, as it often did, into active belligerence.

Reedy had briefed him on Sergo when he had set up the meeting-the newest of the boy wonders of Wall Street, nearly a billionaire at thirty, ruthless and proud of it. Karp had no trouble believing it. Immediately upon sitting down, Sergo literally snapped his fingers for the waiter, ordered a drink-a martini that had to be made with some exotic vodka and prepared according to directions so precise that they might have sufficed to assemble a nuclear warhead-and, ignoring Karp, began to talk to Reedy in a rasping monotone about money and about himself.

Karp had rarely met a man he liked less. It was not that Sergo was vulgar, or sloppy, or that every other word was an obscenity (all women in his conversation were cunts; all his business rivals were cocksuckers). Some of Karp's closest friends shared many of these traits, after all. Rather it was the hollowness that Karp detected within the shell of tough and brutal talk. Sergo's life was about nothing but the making and spending of large sums of money, together with complaints that the world failed to pay him the respect due his great wealth.

Sergo had launched a long and pointless story about how badly he had been abused at that season's most elegant restaurant. To his satisfaction, Karp (to whom Sergo had still not addressed a word) observed that Reedy was as bored as he himself was.

"So they brought out the fucking caviar," Sergo said, his mouth working around a bolus of nuts and vodka, "and it was fucking gray caviar. So I called the schmuck headwaiter over and I told him I ordered black Molossal caviar, and if he thought I was gonna pay a hundred twenty bucks for gray caviar, he was out of his fucking mind, and if he didn't get the right caviar on the table in ten seconds I was gonna buy the fucking restaurant and fire every incompetent son-of-a-bitch in the place." He laughed, as if he had made a joke. "Fucking cheap caviar! I get sick from cheap caviar. You know?" He looked at Karp for the first time, as if to stimulate agreement. Without expression, Karp said, "It makes me puke."

Sergo accepted the remark at face value. "Yeah!" he said. "You might as well be getting fucking tuna fish."

Reedy took this as a convenient point of entry into the business of the evening. Sergo was, as Reedy said, looking for someone to back. He wanted to get into politics, and a D.A.'s race was one on which he could immediately achieve preeminence. As he put it, "I got everything else, I ought to have a politician, ha ha!"

Numbers were mentioned, shockingly high numbers, to Karp, and as soon as what appeared to be an agreement was reached, Sergo rose heavily, without ceremony, shaking the little table and spilling his drink, waved to both men, and stalked out, waiters and bus-boys scurrying to remove themselves from his path.

Karp looked over at Reedy, his brows bunching dangerously and his jaw tight. Reedy grinned and shook his head. "Yeah, I know. It's disgusting, but there it is. The only beauty part is, the schmuck is a virgin. Besides the market, he knows from nothing and he won't know enough to meddle. He'll pay for practically the whole thing; you won't have to deal with a mob of people who think they've got some lock on you."

"Why the hell do we need that kind of money anyway?" asked Karp irritably. "I ran a campaign for Garrahy, his last campaign, with next to nothing and a bunch of volunteers."

Reedy gave him a pitying look. "Oh, yeah, Garrahy! All the hell Phil Garrahy needed at the end was his name printed on the ballot. Look, there are a million and a half voters in the county. How many of them know your name? Ten? That's what the money's for. To get your beautiful face on the tube, for Chrissake."

Karp fumed silently for a moment, knowing this was perfectly true and hating it. Then he said, "OK, we need money. What about the asshole? What's he going to want?" asked Karp sourly.

"I can deal with him," said Reedy confidently.

Karp looked at him. "Oh?"

"Yeah, you know what we were talking about? About inside information? You think Sergo cares about what's legal and what isn't? I could put him in jail in a minute."

"Then why don't you?" snapped Karp, suddenly tired and irritated beyond all endurance.

Reedy reached over and patted his hand. "Because you will, after you're D.A. You're going to go after your biggest political contributor and put him away for fraud. It'll be a gigantic public trial and after it you'll be so golden in this corrupt town that you can run unopposed for the next thirty years."

Karp felt a grin moving uncontrollably across his face. "You're quite a piece of work, Mr. Reedy," he said. "Quite a fucking piece of work. I'm glad you're on the side of truth and justice. By the way, I hope you're not thinking of defending Mr. Sergo when the time comes."

Reedy looked startled for an almost invisible instant; then his loud, frank laughter pealed out, and after a moment Karp joined it. As he laughed, the name of Marcus Fane popped unbidden into his mind, and he lost much of his good humor. Fane and Reedy were business and political associates. It was on the tip of his tongue to broach the subject of what he had learned from Fulton, to warn Reedy off the congressman, to protect his friend and sponsor. But, in fact, Karp was by nature a close-mouthed man; and a decade of keeping criminal investigations confidential had not made him any more liberal with his words. The moment passed, yet Karp was surprised to feel a pang of regret.

A ringing phone dragged Sid Amalfi up out of a drugged sleep. He checked the bedside clock-three-fifteen in the morning, the pit of the night. He fumbled for the phone, knocking over the bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand. His heart was pounding even before he answered.

"Sid? Dick. We got troubles, man. You gotta meet me now."

Amalfi struggled into a sitting position. "Now? For Chrissake, Dick, it's the middle of the night. What the fuck is going on?"

"I can't talk on the phone," said Manning, his voice tense. "You got to get over here right now."

Amalfi rubbed his face vigorously, trying to push away the urgent need for sleep, trying to straighten out the web of stories that he had told in the past few days, trying to stay alive.

"Ah… Dick, you want to give me a clue about what this is all about?"

"Fulton," said Manning. That was it, then. Amalfi had told Manning that Fulton had simply skipped at the hospital; there had been no opportunity to commit the murder they had planned. Now Manning had either found out that Fulton was not crooked or had discovered another way to get at him. In either case, it was essential for Amalfi to cover himself. Fulton knew all about him; Hrcany and IAD had the tape, so they knew everything too. His only out was to lay everything off on Manning. Then maybe… A plan started to jell in his sleep-addled mind. He said, "OK. Where?"