Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

Emmett was sitting in the Jimmy in the same place. "How'd it go?" he asked.

"Like clockwork. Let's go home. I need to make some calls."

The first one was to her husband. She described her day, to which he replied, "He actually said, 'There's no law in Robbens County'?"

"Words to that effect."

"So I reckon you're gonna have to tame that town with your blazing six-gun, clean up the bad guys, and save the farmers."

"Oh, stuff it! And it's miners in any case, and I'm not going to clean up anything. I just want to get this poor schmuck out of jail and get the cops to do their job. That might be a problem, if Poole is right about the state of local justice. He seemed like he still has enough brain cells left to convey actual facts. We shall see. What's happening in the real world?"

"You didn't hear? Probably the stagecoach with the paper didn't get there yet."

"Hey, half the people around here are watching CNN on satellite as we speak. What happened?"

"Oh, some hyped Latino kid tried to stick up a grocery over in Alphabet City with a cheap.22. The guy who ran it was one of our fine recent immigrants from East Asia. When he understood what the kid was doing, he hauls out this native blade and goes for him. The kid shoots him, the guy takes the bullet and keeps chopping. End of story? Our storekeeper cuts the kid's head off and places it in his window. The body gets tossed in the Dumpster. Apparently that's what they do in the colorful markets of his native land. It discourages thievery, he says."

"I bet it does. He speaks English?"

"He barely speaks Chinese. No, we had to get a guy down from Columbia to translate. Where is my daughter when I need her? Anyway, he's a Karen, apparently, from Burma or Myanmar or whatever the hell they're calling it today. Totally illegal, of course, and we don't have relations with his country of origin. I love this town."

"Is self-defensive decapitation an offense?"

"Not as such. Probably get him on failure to properly dispose of a corpse, a D-class misdemeanor, and failure to report a crime. I'd love to bring that one into the criminal courts with the litterers and fare jumpers. Meanwhile the Latino community is up in arms and the Asians want to give him a medal. The poor little shit!"

"Who, the kid or the Karen?"

"Both. Once again we are reminded that the law is a cultural construct."

"Which also reminds me: Do you know anyone at the Department of Labor?"

"Not really. Why?"

"Because if this place is as corrupt as Poole says it is, we may need some federal muscle. Isn't killing a union leader a federal case?"

"It might be," said Karp after a moment's consideration. "I know someone who would know for sure, though."

"Who? Oh, right, your guy Sterner."

"Uh-huh. Saul would be the one to call. Strangely enough, I have a message slip from him right here. I was just about to call him when you called."

"Well, see what he has to say and let me know. If I can pass this stinker off to someone real, I'll be a happy Girl Scout."

Karp dialed the number on the message slip, area code 202, a Washington number. Saul Sterner was a macher in that town, or had been. Karp tried to figure out how old he was. He'd been general counsel at Labor in the Johnson administration and then done labor law for a while at the highest levels, chief counsel for the mine workers and then for the AFL-CIO. Somewhere in between all that, he had taught for a half dozen years at Boalt Hall, the University of California Law School, which was where Karp had met him. They had kept in touch on and off over the years. He must be eighty, at least, Karp thought.

But the voice over the phone was vigorous, the old New York accent softened neither by the years nor by dwelling among the mighty.

"Butch, you momzer, how the hell are you?"

"Can't complain. How about you?"

"I can complain, and I do, but no one listens. How's Keegan treating you?"

"Oh, you know Jack. He has his little ways."

Sterner chuckled. "That's what I hear. Listen, let's get together. I need your counsel on an issue."

Karp doubted this; Sterner famously had as much use for counsel as a guided missile. "I'm flattered. What kind of counsel?"

"Ehhh… a little something out in the country, a union thing."

"You don't want to talk about it on the phone."

"Not particularly. Let's have lunch tomorrow. I haven't seen you in a million years."

"You want me to come down there?"

"Nah, I'll come up. I got some things at the federal courthouse in the morning. We'll sit, we'll eat pastrami, we'll talk."

"Sam's on Canal?"

"Perfect!"

"I'll be there. Listen, Saul… it's funny, because I was just about to call you. It's something you'd probably know about. Marlene's down in West Virginia working for some friends, a couple of young men. Their dad was killed, actually the whole family, father, mother, and sister, all shot in their home. Marlene thinks it could be related to a labor problem. There's a possibility that the murders came out of a disputed union election. What'd be the federal interest there, if any?" There was silence on the line for so long that Karp thought they might have been cut off. "Saul? Hello?"

"Yeah. What's she doing there, Marlene? I thought she was out of the PI business."

"Well, yeah, she is. This was a favor. The woman who was killed was a friend of hers, from the Island, and her kids think there's something fishy going on with the investigation. From her first pass at it, so does she. They picked up a retarded guy and tried to stick him with it, but she says it's a frame, and clumsy, too."

"Well, that's very interesting, Butch. I should say, small world. That was just what I wanted to talk to you about as a matter of fact."

"The Heeney murders?"

"Them. Let's say twelve-thirty at Sam's on Canal." Click.

Karp recalled that Saul Sterner had a thing about punctuality. Teaching, he would ceremoniously lock the doors of his classroom at the stroke of the hour. After a couple of weeks, everyone was on time or had dropped the course, and at that point he gave a little lecture on the subject: Ladies and gentlemen, the legal profession begins with the ability to show up at a certain place, a courtroom, at a time certain. If you can't do that, I don't care to waste my time talking to you.

Karp was, accordingly, there at the minute and found Sterner waiting for him in the bright and noisy dining room, dressed, as always, in a brown suit off the rack and 100 percent made by union labor in the United States. No pinstripes for him, the uniform of the enemy, no foreign-sweated stitchery. In the old days, it would have been covered with cigarette ash, but no more. As Karp approached the table, Sterner was reading the menu through bifocals, reading it suspiciously, as if it were a defective opinion, his chin down on his chest, his pugnacious jaw and the thick lower lip thrust out in concentration. His head was large for his stocky body, his nose was large, too, the forehead over it wide, freckled, and fringed by white, curly hair. His hand delivered a crushing grip still. Karp thought he looked good for a man as old as he was and said, as he sat down, "You're looking good, Saul."

"Ahhh, you don't know. It's no fun getting old. Every time I forget my keys nowadays, it's oy vay, Alzheimer's."

"Never."

"Hey, everything passes. I'm happy, I had a good life, I knocked some heads, I kicked some heinie. What more can you ask?"

"That's the secret of life? Knocking heads?"

"You mean it's not?" said Sterner, miming wonder, and laughed. "Meanwhile, I'm having the corned beef. The waiter says the pastrami is dry. This I take as a symbol of the end of the world as I knew it. That there should be dry pastrami at Sam's on Canal Street. A shandah! Also, the waiter was a Lebanese kid instead of an old Yid who would tell me I was lucky to get pastrami at all." Sterner laughed again. "Tell me, do I sound enough like an old fart yet, or should I mention my bladder?"