Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

Karp shrugged and rubbed his knuckles over his mouth. "It's embarrassing," he began.

"What, you wet your pants before you go in front of a jury? Shit, everybody knows that. You're famous for it and nobody holds it against you."

Karp laughed out loud in spite of himself. "No, it's this fucking drug thing. I've been an asshole and I don't like it. I've been ignoring my instincts for months now and I've made a complete fuck-up of it."

"Welcome to the club," said Marlene. "Everybody blows one occasionally. So what's the story?"

"No, it's not just blowing a case. I just got myself involved in… sliminess. Politics. I didn't look where I should've looked because I didn't want to see. I wasn't on top of the investigation itself because I was playing games. I was playing games with Chief Denton. I was playing different games with Reedy and Fane. And then, of course, Roland started playing his own games. Why not? The fucking boss is doing it, right?"

And then he did tell her the whole story, from the conversation in his office with Clay Fulton about the drug-lord murders, to the scarifying interview with Bill Denton, to the revelations about Amalfi and Manning and Fane brought out by Tecumseh's confession and the further investigation by Clay. Reluctantly he also described his own involvement with Fane and Sergo and Reedy.

"And so there we have it," he concluded, "the whole investigation down the drain and me standing there like an idiot faked out of my jock. And there's Clay."

"Yeah, there's Clay," said Marlene, patting Karp's hand. "Do you think they, Manning, would actually kill him?"

"In a minute," said Karp. "All they need is Tecumseh's tape recording, and pow! pow! he's dead. Amalfi's gone, so the tape he made with Clay is pretty much useless, and the Tecumseh tape is all there is to connect Manning and Amalfi and Choo Willis to the killings. I'm on the tape and I can vouch for it, which makes it significant as evidence. So Manning has to have it.

"I don't even want to think about what the fucker is doing to Clay right now to get him to tell him where it is. If he gets it, and gets rid of Clay, we can't touch him. With the money they have, they can buy every snitch in Harlem. Oh, yeah, they can kick him off the force, but I doubt he's depending on his pension. Basically, we have no serious legal case. And, of course, Manning is the only connection we have with Fane, Sergo, and Reedy."

"I don't understand," said Marlene. "These stock guys all of a sudden decided to be dope dealers?"

"No, it probably went in stages. Fane owns the Club Mecca, where Choo Willis hangs out. So he had to know that Willis was a big-time dealer. Maybe they were even partners. Fane is in stocks with Reedy and later with Sergo. They're doing OK, but then Sergo comes up with this Agromont deal. Now they can get really rich.

"Maybe Fane approaches Willis with the idea about using drug money to buy stock. It's a perfect laundry when you add the off-shore bank. Drug money goes out-loans to buy stock come back in. The profits from these LBOs are so huge that the dirty money is swamped when the deals come off."

"But the Agromont deal didn't come off, you said," Marlene objected.

"Yes, that's what started this mess. They, the stock guys, were going to lose everything, including the cash they had got from Willis. They were running millions through their bank, but now they needed hundreds of millions."

"There's that much in dope?"

"In coke there is," said Karp. "And, of course, the more you buy, the better the deal from the suppliers and the bigger the profits. But the only way they could get as big as they had to get as fast as they needed to was to take over other big dealers. Which meant they had to have a foolproof way of knocking them out. That's where Manning and Amalfi came in. Manning was dirty already; he knew Willis. And the rest is history."

Marlene shook her head. "It still seems incredible. Guys like that…"

"I met Sergo," said Karp. "It's not that incredible."

"Are you positive Reedy's involved?" Marlene asked.

"I'm not positive about anything anymore," Karp replied grimly. "I'm pretty sure he's involved with the stock deals. He set up the offshore bank. He must have known what it was being used for. He's tight with Fane and Sergo. But whether he had actual guilty knowledge of the murders? That I can't say for sure."

"You sound like you'd be sorry if he was really deep in on it."

Karp nodded. "Yeah. I guess. I have to admit he got to me. That's really what makes me writhe inside. He read me like a book and got to me." He laughed. "I guess I'm queer for elderly Irish lawyers. Garrahy really meant something to me. I felt… I wanted that slot filled again, and he saw that and moved right in.

"And the chance to be D.A. That was the corker." He waved his hand to indicate the loft. "I mean, look at this! We're going to have a baby, for Chrissake! Is this a place for a kid? Five flights walking up and a floor full of splinters and God knows what kind of shit lying around. And you're going to have to stop work, at least for a little bit-"

"I'm not."

"OK, great, you're not. You're going to squat down in front of Part 30, say, 'Excuse me, your Honor,' pop the kid out, hand it to the stenographer, and continue the case. I wanted… I don't know, something more solid, a little comfort, a house maybe. Shit, Marlene, I'm thirty-three years old, and what do I own? Three suits, a first baseman's mitt, and a pair of sneakers."

"You have a rowing machine," said Marlene.

"Thank you! I rest my case. But you catch my drift. This can't go on. Running the bureau, dancing little circles around Bloom, waiting for a knife in the back. So when I saw a possible out… And now it's all shit, and Clay is fucked, and I don't know how to crawl out of it. So… am I moping? I'd like to change my plea on that. First-degree mopery. Yes, I'm moping. I have moped. And I plan to mope some more." The King Cole Trio sat in their dusty black van in the street outside the Club Mecca. This was a four-story building with apartments on the top two floors, offices on the next one down, and the nightclub itself occupying the rest. It had a gaudy tan stucco Moorish facade on its street side and a large green marquee that carried the club's name in neon letters shaped like Arabic script and an expanse of lettering that advertised the club's show.

The men did not talk as they worked, the only sound in the van being the snick-clunk of reloading weapons. The club had closed its doors to the public at three A.M., but the Trio knew that for a good number of its habitues this merely signaled the start of the evening.

The detectives left the van and marched abreast to the front door. All three carried Ithaca twelve-gauge pump guns. The door was covered by a steel gate pierced with fanciful Moorish designs and secured by a Yale lock. Maus knelt and brought out a ring of keys. "We don't need no stinkin warrant," he muttered, and after several tries found a passkey that worked.

They entered the darkened lobby of the club and walked softly down the carpeted hallway to where a strong light shone from under a door. The door, a cheap interior wood-core model, was locked. Jeffers backed up a few yards, braced, propelled himself into violent motion, and crashed through the barrier with no more apparent effort than an ordinary man would use to pass a beaded curtain.

The nightclub they entered had two levels: an upper horseshoe filled with tables, on which the three detectives now stood, and a lower level consisting of a deck of tables grouped around a large dance floor. Both faced a full stage decked with a heavy red-and-gold curtain. There were a dozen or so people on the lower level: showgirls, demiwhores, and a group of Choo Willis' hard boys. Five of the men were playing cards at one of the tables. The scene was brightly lit by the overhead cleaning lights.