Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

"Yeah, after we talked, I sent some people over to collect the whole tray. You think it'll be enough?"

"Not nearly."

"So how you gonna bust him?"

"I don't know yet. I'll think of something."

Dugman smiled crookedly. "Well. You might at that. If you do, and it's OK with the chief, let me know. I'd like to bust a rich white dude one time. Make a nice change." Two hours later, Karp, although he still hadn't thought of something, was feeling considerably better. He was stretched out naked, facedown, on a throw rug, while Marlene walked up and down his spine, wiggling her toes. Marlene was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Albert Schweitzer on it, and nothing else.

"Mm, that's getting there," said Marlene as she trudged. "You felt like Grand Street asphalt when I started. How do you feel?"

"More," said Karp with a deep sigh.

Marlene knelt astride his back and began kneading his shoulder muscles. "God, you're tense!" she exclaimed. "I'm surprised. You should be positively laid-back now that this drug-killing is solved."

"Not finished," mumbled Karp into the rug.

"It's not? You got Clay back, didn't you? By the way, I ran into Martha at the hospital. She was shaking with relief. I didn't think Clay looked all that bad, though. I mean, considering he's been tortured. So what's the problem, anyway? If you have Manning… you do have Manning, right?"

"Dead," said Karp.

"Oh, I see. That's the problem."

She massaged him in silence for a few more minutes, then said, "It's Reedy. You can't get Reedy."

"Mmm-hm," said Karp. He was trying not to think about Reedy, trying, in fact, not to think about anything but Marlene's hands on his back and the thin bar of intense heat that was pressing against the small of his back where her groin touched it. He was also thinking about spinning around and pulling her down on him for a sweaty clinch on the floor, balancing this possibility against the delights of the continuing back rub.

But Marlene abruptly stopped her rubbing, stood up, and sat on the bed. She pulled a Marlboro from a pack and lit it. Karp looked up at her. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"No, except I'm starting to get tense myself. The fucking job."

"Leave it at the office," said Karp.

"Oh, yeah, look who's talking! That's my line. The problem is, I got one trial pending, which is Meissner, and about a hundred other cases, mostly rapes, which I should be preparing seriously, because with the new law we could win some of them, or at least muscle some good pleas, but I can't because as soon as Meissner is finished I have to leave.

"Also, there's only a couple of other people in the bureau who know how to handle the new law, who understand how to develop cases. It's a completely different situation. Ideally we should set up a structure, train new ADA's, run programs to get the cops up to speed, contact the E-wards and the crisis centers-to pull it all together. Like you always say, the D.A. is the captain of the team. But in this case, there's no captain, no team."

"What do you want me to do?" Karp asked. "I could talk to some of the zone commanders-"

"No!" said Marlene vehemently. "That's another thing that's wrong. Look, don't take this personally, because you've actually really been terrific all these years, and all, but…" She took a deep drag and let it out. "I can't work for you anymore. The rules are right. I thought it through after we nailed Meissner. There's enough tension in my life without adding the craziness of working for my husband."

She grinned at him. "Especially considering I'm a nervous wreck to begin with. Look at that fight we had about Meissner, all the nasty things I said about you and about the baby."

"You didn't mean all that?"

"Of course I didn't mean all that. Look, it's one thing to take me seriously; it's another thing to take me seriously when I don't want to be taken seriously. But that's an example, and it comes from working for you. It would just screw up my working life and my personal life, not to mention the Little Stranger to be. So that's it."

Karp felt a mix of satisfaction and disappointment; the disappointment was odd because he had wanted Marlene to quit, but he found that he did not like the thought of Marlene being whipped by anything. He said, "You could transfer to another bureau."

"Which one? Felony is Sullivan, one of Bloom's empty suits. Can you see me working for Charlie Sullivan? I'd last three days. Rackets? Fraud? Narco? Possible, but they don't sing to me. I want to do rape; rape needs doing, but I can't figure out how to make it happen." She laughed ruefully. "All those damn cases; it's a shame we can't work a Meissner on all of them. Your basic rapist doesn't take calls when he's on the job."

She put out her cigarette and crawled into bed and Karp followed her, and they had a close-knit and vaguely sad little bang, which blended imperceptibly into a deep and merciful unconsciousness.

From which Karp awoke with the solution to all his problems glowing in his mind with crystalline perfection. He had come floating up out of an unremembered dream and there it was-perfect, legal, nasty, and decisive-tying up a hairy mass of loose ends. Oddly, his mind buzzed with the notion of reversible error. A legal concept, one of the pillars of the system: judges made mistakes, which were reversed by other judges. In the trial of life, the judge that banged his gavel irritably and without recess in a corner of Karp's soul had found him guilty. He had misjudged Clay; he had misjudged Reedy. Your Honor, if it please the court, this particular set of errors is indeed reversible. Is it? You can remove the shame? The self-contempt? No, sir, but I can nail the bad guys. That was something.

And he could. All that was required was the cooperation of the guilty. Karp's first call that morning, once he was settled (and his staff commenting on how uncommonly cheerful he was looking) was to Denton. Denton was in a meeting of chiefs and commissioners and could not be disturbed. Karp said to the secretary, "Would you take a note in to him? It's urgent. Say, 'Butch says that if you want him to stay on the reservation on the Pier 87 thing, I need ten minutes of his time right away.'"

The secretary was impressed and agreed to take the note in, promising to call back when she had an answer. Karp rang off and called the district attorney and made an appointment to see Bloom for five minutes one hour from now. The police-department secretary rang him back. "Denton says be here in fifteen minutes."

This was just enough time for Karp to walk at a quick pace out of the Criminal Courts Building, south on Baxter to One Police Plaza, check through security, and ride the elevator up to the fourteenth floor, where the departmental superchiefs had their offices. He announced himself to the receptionist, and shortly thereafter Denton walked into the room, in shirtsleeves, looking irritated. He jerked his head at Karp and led him into a small and unoccupied private office.

"What is this, Butch? I'm up to my neck in budget."

"Sorry," said Karp. "This won't take long. I need your blessing, apparently, to go ahead with the prosecution of the ringleaders on the drug-lord killings."

"I thought we had an understanding on that," said Denton, glowering.

"We did, but obviously the situation has changed. Sweeping up some sick cop is one thing; covering up a massive conspiracy to use drug money to finance stock manipulation is something else entirely."

"What are you talking about?"

"Manning and Amalfi were hired by Richard Reedy and Marcus Fane to wipe out the competition in the Harlem drug trade, to produce the cash they and some other people needed to get them out of a hole they were in on some stock deal. They also arranged for the kidnapping and torture of Clay Fulton. Fulton has a tape that ties Manning to the killings and he has a taped confirmation from Amalfi of the connection between Marcus Fane and the killings Amalfi and Manning did. We also have circumstantial evidence linking the flow of money from an offshore bank to a series of stock deals on the one side, and to drug money on the other. Reedy set up the bank. He was there in the Club Mecca the night after Clay got lifted, probably talking to Willis and Manning."