Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

Armed with this opinion, he had driven himself, in his 1985 Cadillac Seville, from his place in White Sulphur Springs to Windy Grove in Robbens County, where he shacked up (as he said) with Marva, his baby sister, who was living in the ancestral home. After a day of rest to recover himself (on Marva's insistence, actually, since he felt fine), he had reported to the Robbens County Courthouse, where he terrified the staff, who had become used to Bill Murdoch's slack ways. Judge Bledsoe disliked slackness, nor was he overly fond of fancy lawyers, especially fancy lawyers from New York, especially very large fancy lawyers from New York. Judge Bledsoe was, on the outside at least, a rather small man.

Karp thought he looked, close up, like a rooster. The TV photo had been taken some years ago, it seemed. He had a cowlick, for one thing, which stuck up like a silvery crest, and wattles that got red when he was annoyed, which Karp thought might be most of the time. Maybe it had been a mistake to let Hawes do most of the talking. They were in Bledsoe's chambers. Bledsoe had recorded his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the investigation so far (although Karp thought that was really none of his business) and with the arrest and detention of Moses Welch. His wattles had reddened at the mention of bribes, and reddened more when Karp had explained (in approximate terms) just how Murdoch had been dispatched. When they told him about the plan to apprehend the Cades, the red moved up his jaw and blossomed on his cheekbones. Karp imagined that if it reached his crown, it would detonate, like a thermometer in a cartoon.

"You want this court to participate in a public fraud?" Bledsoe asked, his voice quiet but deadly.

Hawes hemmed; Karp interjected, "Your involvement will be minimal, Judge. You have no reason to speak to the media and can refuse to comment if asked. Obviously, you're one of the few people who need to be apprised of the plan. Also you'd be issuing the warrant. We'd want to have Sheriff Swett do the arrest."

"Why?"

"Because Swett will leak it to the Cades as genuine."

"If Swett is corrupt as you claim, then get rid of him."

"Good idea, but after the Cades are in custody."

"So your plan is to fight corruption by chicanery."

Karp took a deep breath and kept his face neutral. "Yes. Because given the time frame the governor has set, there are only two other alternatives. One is to let them get away with it. The other is to go up onto Burnt Peak and drag them out of there. I assume being a local man you know what that would be like."

"I'm not afraid of Ben Cade."

"I'm glad of that, sir. I am. I have it on expert advice that doing the dragging would cause the biggest bloodbath since the Robbens County War, even assuming we could get official permission for an assault. I'm as big a fan of legal niceties as you are, Judge, but I wouldn't want that blood on my hands, if there was any alternative. And I think we have one here."

Karp and Bledsoe played the staring game for a while, the judge's mouth line bending down into a hair-thin parabola.

"This how they do things in New York, Mr. Karp?"

"When necessary, sir."

"All right. I want all this documented and signed by you two and anyone else with cognizance of it. Who does what when and where and to whom. That includes the putative suspects. I assume they're on board?"

"More or less."

"What does that mean?"

"We're working on the details."

The judge grunted. "Well, make sure they know exactly what they're getting into."

"Yes, Judge," said Karp. "And, Judge? That would be a document you'd want to take some care of."

Bledsoe shot him a fierce look, then tapped his breast pocket, slowly, thrice. "It'll sit right here, Mr. Karp. I think that'll be all for now." Bledsoe turned pointedly to some papers on his desk. Karp got up immediately and left, and after a moment's hesitation, so did Hawes.

Out in the hallway, Karp said, "What's the matter, Stan? You look like you've never been contemptuously kicked out of a judge's chambers before."

"Never like that. I don't think he likes you much."

"No, he made that very clear. Which is just another reason for me to take a low profile and you to take a high one. On the other hand, I have the impression that Judge Bledsoe is the kind of judge who, if he doesn't like a lawyer, makes an extra effort to be scrupulously fair, as opposed to the kind who in similar circumstances will try to fuck you up. Let's get out of here. I want to talk in the open air."

They found a bench in the courthouse square, in the shade of a huge oak. Karp said, "I meant it about you being the center of this thing. You have to convince Floyd that you're going to do everything you can to pin this on anybody but the people who did it. Besides that, you're going to have to play a corrupt bastard in front of a TV audience, the town, all your friends, and your family. And you can't tell anyone about it until we have those people in custody. You understand that? Not your wife, not your parents."

"And you're wondering if I can do it."

"Yeah, a little. I'm a control freak and I'm giving up control. It makes me jumpy. I guess I want to make sure you understand how miserable you're going to be. And also this: undercover work, which is what this is, is the worst work in the world. I've seen it a million times in the cops. A decent guy pretends to be a scumbag all day, pretty soon he finds it hard to go back to being a nonscumbag. Every undercover detective I know has been divorced at least once." Karp allowed a moment to let this sink in. "But if we're lucky, it won't last long."

"I can do this," said Hawes. "I'm not worried about that. I'm not worried about a failure. What I'm worried about is, even if this works, and we get them, and we can convict them, and Floyd, and the rest, and you're back in New York City, I'll still be here. I'll still be here with my family. And the Cades will still be up on that mountain, mad as hell, and looking for someone to hurt."

Karp nodded. He didn't have a good answer to that.

This conversation stuck irritatingly in Karp's mind and nagged at him during the even more unpleasant interview he and Marlene had that evening with Emmett and Dan Heeney, in the living room of their home.

"You must be out of your mind if you think we're going to do that," declared Emmett at the conclusion of Karp's pitch for the idea. "Get arrested for killing our family?"

"It's not a real arrest," said Karp patiently. "It's a scam. I explained that the Cades are holed up-"

"I heard you. That's not our business. Hell, maybe now is the time to blast those Cades out of there. Let 'em drop napalm on 'em, I don't give a rat's."

"Well, but that's not going to happen, Emmett. The only way, the only practical and realistic way to bring those men to where we can get at them is to show them that they have nothing to fear, that the law has made a big mistake again."

"Okay, but why us?" said Emmett sulkily.

"It's the most convincing scenario. It'll get the kind of publicity they won't be able to ignore. And, frankly, it's so outrageous that they won't believe it's a scam. Also, you have an interest in it. I'd have thought you'd be glad to do it."

"Well, you thought wrong." Emmett crossed his arms.

Marlene said, "Emmett, I know it's an awful thing to ask you to do, and I was truly disgusted when Butch brought it up. But he's right when you consider the alternatives. What you need to do is think about what your dad would've wanted you to do. What would Red Heeney have done?"

Emmett made no response to this. A silence ensued. Then Dan said, "He's worried about Kathy."

"I am not!" snapped Emmett.

"Yeah, you are. You're thinking of what she'll be thinking while everyone else thinks you killed our family. And you're thinking about what her parents will say, what the town will say."