Robert Tanenbaum: Reversible Error

Art Dugman went to the wrought-iron railing that rimmed the upper level and fired a round from his shotgun into the ceiling. Shrieks from the women, curses from the men. Plaster floated down on the card table and the men around it, dusting their clothes and the cards and piles of paper money on the table like light snow.

Dugman marched down to the lower level in silence. No one moved. All the players sat frozen like mannequins in a store window. They had all recognized the King Cole Trio, and no one wished to make any inadvertent twitch that might be construed as an attempt to extract a weapon.

As Dugman approached the card table, one of Choo Willis' lieutenants, a large shaven-headed man known as Buster, spoke up. "What the fuck is this, Dugman? Ain't you got no other shit to do?"

In one swift movement Dugman pumped a shell into the chamber of his shotgun and placed its muzzle against Buster's upper lip. "Are you addressing me?" asked Dugman mildly. "I don't believe I solicited a comment." He continued to push on the shotgun. Buster's head arched backward. His chair tipped. Dugman kept the man artfully balanced with just the pressure of the shotgun's muzzle on the man's lip. A thin trickle of blood and saliva started down Buster's chin.

"I'm looking for Choo-choo," Dugman said. "Where is he?"

Buster's eyes bulged and he mumbled something.

Dugman cocked his head. "What's that, Buster? I can't make out what you said."

The muzzle of the shotgun, greased by Buster's copious sweat, had worked its way up until it was now lodged under the man's cheekbone.

"He ain't here. I swear to Jesus, he ain't here."

"Where is he, then?"

"I dunno. He din tell me nothin."

"Was he here tonight?"

"Yeah, early. He was in his office, upstairs. Then he call an say he going out and won be back. An he lef. Hey, man, my face hurt."

Dugman ignored this comment. He asked, "He see anybody?"

"The fuck I know, man? He in there with the door locked. He call down for some drinks and food bout eleven. Thas all I know, man."

Dugman looked at Buster and saw that he was not lying. Gently he shoved on the shotgun and Buster went over with a crash. Dugman swept the barrel of the shotgun across the table, knocking glasses and ashtrays to the floor, and then gathered up the tablecloth as a sack, with the money and the cards inside.

"Thank all you gentlemen. And ladies. And thanks for having your contributions to the Police Athletic League ready on the table when I arrived. That is most considerate."

He walked back up the stairs to the second level and, leaving the crowd to sit under the guns of Maus and Jeffers, went to check out the office of Choo Willis. Clay Fulton was tied into a heavy chair with electrical wire. He was in darkness, blindfolded, in a small room. Although he could see nothing, he could still smell, even though they had broken his nose. He could smell damp, and salt, and his own filth. He thought, from the smell and the sounds, that he was near water, the sea, or the tidal rivers. He was naked and cold. He heard a door open, a scrape, and then someone emptied a bucket of cold stinking water over his head.

He gasped involuntarily. Another scrape of furniture. They were arranging themselves. Someone-he thought it was Manning-said, "Where's the tape, Fulton?"

He didn't answer. He figured he could hold out another twelve hours. Counting one lie. He could buy maybe two, three hours with a lie. Then there would be nothing left. If somebody didn't find him before then, they would have drained everything out of him. There would be nobody home to resist. He would tell them and they would get the tape and they would kill him. He wished the lie he had told about lots of copies was true. In fact there was only one tape. He wished he could see his wife.

He felt the cold pinch as they attached the electrodes. Manning had been in Nam, he recalled. He had learned what there was to learn about making people hurt. They were going to send him a message again, as the saying went. They cranked the generator. Fulton heard himself scream, but as from a long distance away. "There was nothing in the office at all?" Karp asked.

"Nothing," said Dugman. "And nothing in Manning's apartment, or Willis' place either." Dugman had been up all the previous night, breaking and entering in a good cause, and he was tired and red-eyed. They were in Karp's office late the next day, and Clay Fulton had been missing for over forty-eight hours.

"You tried everyplace? Willis' associates, Manning's-"

"We didn't hit Fane," said Dugman.

"No, he's not anywhere near Fane," said Karp, instinctively sure of it. He felt as bad as Dugman looked, oppressed with the futility of going forward with what in any case had been a thin hope. Three cops could not expect to find someone hidden in one of the hundreds of thousands of buildings in the city. And Fulton might have been taken out of town.

"We gonna have to open this up, my friend. Splash it all around the world," said Dugman.

"I guess," said Karp listlessly. He toyed with a pencil. "Just… You said that Willis was in his office last night. And he was alone. He must have made some calls. Would it be possible to-?

"No, wait a sec, there," said Dugman. "I didn't say nothing about him being alone. He had at least two people in there. What I said was nobody saw him with anybody. But there was two people in there."

"How do you know that?"

"The food cart," said Dugman, yawning and rubbing his rubbery face. "They cleaned up after serving, and it was a service for three. Two beer glasses. A soda. Look like some kind of cocktail. Three plates-crumbs and chicken bones. And three coffee cups. No, two coffee. One had tea."

"Nothing else? Nothing written on the napkins?"

Dugman gave him a deadpan stare. "You been watchin too much TV, my man. No writing on the napkins, no poison darts, no match-books with the name of the place he at. None of that shit. Two glasses, two beer bottles, one soda glass, one soda can, three plates, three napkins, knives, forks, spoons, cream and sugar, and a coffeepot. That's all."

The detective rose to his feet and stretched. "I got to go get the real search going. Maybe we'll check, see if we can trace any of the calls they made-that's a good idea, anyway."

"No teapot?" Karp asked abruptly. He desperately did not want Dugman to leave, to start a chain of actions that would make the entire miserable affair public and out of control.

Dugman snorted. "Huh! You persistent, I give you that. No, matter of fact, there wasn't no teapot." He thought for a moment. "No tea bag neither."

"Then why did you say one of them had tea?" "Because of the lemon. There was a squeezed lemon on the saucer of one of the cups. Nobody drinks their coffee with lemon, do they?" Karp felt a flood of excitement and satisfaction wash through him, a feeling a lightness and release. He reflected that it was exactly like that feeling he used to get when he launched a three-point shot from twenty-five feet out and knew deep in his body, in a way that defied the telling, that it was going to float into the basket without touching the rim.

He said, "No, not many people do," in such a strange tone of voice that Dugman stopped and stared at him. Then he said, "Art, did you ever just know something? Like about a crime. When you all of a sudden knew who did it, or how he did it?"

Dugman said, "You mean like a hunch?"

"Yeah," said Karp, "but more than that. Like a certainty. I know where they have Fulton." "This is a fucking fort," said Maus. "How the hell are we gonna get in?" The King Cole Trio were standing outside their van in the trash-strewn shadows of the West Side Highway looking across Eleventh Avenue at the immense front of Pier 87, the old American Line property. The main entrance, through which trucks and cars had once unloaded and provisioned transatlantic liners, was sealed with corrugated steel. There were several smaller doors on either side of the main entrance, and these were barred with heavy steel grids.