AS CONRAD WHARTON tied his yellow tie in front of the mirror, he wondered fleetingly, but not for the first time, whether he could wear a bow tie. A bow tie was distinctive and bespoke confidence. More important, you could wear it forever without fear of getting food stains on it, something that eventually happened with a four-in-hand tie no matter how careful one was, and then it was shot to hell. You might as well throw it away, because the cleaners never got the stains out right. Wharton spent a lot of money on his ties. This one was a Countess Mara, thirty-two fifty, but he felt it was worth it, especially when he removed his jacket and you could see the little monogram on the bottom. His shirts were monogrammed too, on the cuffs, a W inside a C. He had designed it himself, and approved the memos emanating from his office with the same mark. He called it his chop mark.
He studied his face, wishing for length and cragginess, then sighed. No, a bow tie would make him look even more like a cheap doll, one with a ribbon around its neck. He attached his tie tack, a pair of miniature silver handcuffs, and donned the jacket of his dark gray suit. He buttoned it, then let it hang open, revealing the tie tack and the Countess Mara monogram. He loved this effect, the combination of class and a touch of violence—handcuffs. It wiped the chicks out in the singles bars, where he found it an unfailing conversation starter. Women loved a crime fighter.
Unfortunately, when he stood up to give his speech this afternoon at the Waldorf, he would have to keep his jacket buttoned. As he thought of the speech, butterflies jumped from little perches in his belly and started to flutter about. It was an important speech, one that would make his reputation in the wider world represented by the International Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, at whose winter meeting he was speaking. It was an important step for him; Bloom, he well knew, had wider ambitions—the governorship for starters—and in a year or so would leave a convenient hole for somebody with the right political connections, reputation, and skills.
Wharton collected his wallet, keys, and briefcase, slipped into a camel-hair overcoat, and left his apartment. It was shaping up very well, he thought. The missing ingredient was serious money, because if Bloom decided to run for higher office, there would be a real race for the job and plenty of money would be required to make a real stab at the DA’s slot. And he thought he would make a start on getting close to serious money this afternoon, because he was having lunch with V.T. Newbury.
Wharton had been sucking around Newbury ever since he found out that his father was Edwin Brace Newbury, senior partner at Vernon Cornwell Gibbs, and among the half dozen wealthiest and most influential lawyers in New York. Until now, unaccountably, and despite the offer of numerous favors, he had met with no luck. Newbury always seemed to be busy for lunch and never showed up at the evenings Wharton arranged in his apartment for selected pols and presentable attorneys from the office. Two days ago, however, Newbury had called him up and actually invited him to lunch. They had arranged to eat at what Newbury had described as the best little Northern Italian restaurant in New York. The speech was at two. He had time for a leisurely meal and then an unhurried cab ride uptown to the Waldorf. As he walked out onto the chilly street, the butterflies vanished. It was all working out. He was golden.
His good mood dissipated abruptly when he got to the office and found that Rhoda Klepp had not reported for work that morning. Wharton made it a point never to appear at any official function without at least one special assistant to carry things and dance attendance. Rhoda was scheduled to meet him at the hotel, and more important, she had written the speech itself and was supposed to have left it on his desk. Yet it was not to be found.
“What do you mean you can’t find her,” Wharton shrieked at his secretary. “Just find her!”
“I called her ten times,” the secretary responded. “She doesn’t answer her phone. Maybe she’s real sick.”
“Oh don’t be stupid, Rhoda’s never sick,” he snapped. “What am I supposed to do now? I’ve got to give a speech this afternoon. Do you think you could find that maybe?”
He stomped into his office and slammed the door. While he sulked, all other administrative work stopped as half a dozen public employees examined every stack of exposed paper in the office and thumbed through every file drawer. Eventually a carbon of the speech was found in one of Rhoda Klepp’s desk drawers. It had to be retyped, naturally, since Wharton could not be expected to give a speech from a carbon copy.
After that, peace reigned in the Bureau of Administration, and Wharton left for his luncheon appointment at eleven-fifty with a jaunty wave. Everybody in the outer office smiled and waved back, and wished him good luck on his speech. Wharton liked what he called a happy ship. In fact, he demanded it.
Karp stood up, stretched, and went to his bedroom window. He twitched the cord on the Venetian blinds and pale morning sunlight streamed in. On the bed, Marlene groaned and covered her eyes. “It can’t be morning already,” she wailed. “I reject that entire concept.”
“I’m afraid it is, cutie. We danced the night away and now it’s time to go to work.”
“Oh, let’s bag work. I can’t believe we just spent six hours listening to that moron schmoozing on the phone.” She groaned again and rolled facedown. Then she popped her head back up. “No, Christ, we can’t bag work, can we? Today’s the big day.”
“Yeah, lots to do. God, this fucking case! I can’t believe we’re going to wrap up Karavitch today. And Bloom. You think it’ll really go down like we figured?”
“No question. We’re the two greatest prosecutors in the galaxy and we’re on a roll. Why are you worried about Bloom? Shit, he’s dead meat with what we got on those tapes.” She giggled. “I still can’t believe it. Arthur Bingham Roberts and Sanford Bloom, two of the great legal minds of the century, dancing around each other to see how they can get this case thrown out with tainted evidence without actually coming out and saying it—‘I’m a scumbag, Sandy, and so are you, so get the fucking typewriter admitted, and it’s a wrap.’ Oh, no, too indelicate. How did it go? I got it here somewhere.”
She rummaged through the sheets and pads of yellow legal paper that were scattered around the bed and the floor, found what she was looking for, put on her glasses, and read.
“OK, this is the part I love. Roberts says, ‘Yes, I quite understand. It’s unfortunate that the victim should have been a policeman.’ And Bloom says, ‘Yes, there’s no question of simply dropping the case. The publicity, ah, and of course the evidence is heavily against them, the bomb and the note. I mean, Arthur, they did plant the thing.’ Roberts says, ‘Yes, unless some technicality should intrude that would taint the evidence.’ Bloom: ‘Technicality?’ Duhhhh! It’s like the Three Stooges. Then Roberts: ‘Yes. That young man you have on the case, Karp. He seems like a hard charger. Perhaps he could be induced to charge a bit too hard.’ Bloom says, ‘Umm, naturally, the integrity of my office can’t be compromised in any way.’ He means, how am I going to cover my personal tushie. Roberts gives him the zinger: ‘Naturally. And of course we feel the same way. But you’ll recall that there is a translator involved here, a Professor Terzich. Now our man Evans has regrettably let slip to this Terzich the consequences of the defense providing the prosecution with evidence obtained during constitutionally protected conversation between the defense counsel and the defendant. We have reason to believe that Terzich would not be adverse to a dismissal in this case, and can be counted on to cooperate. Now, if somehow the police were to contact Terzich and obtain this evidence—do you follow?’ Does he follow? Does the pope have indoor plumbing? Bloom says, ‘Umm, what sort of evidence are we talking about here?’ And Roberts says, ‘The typewriter that typed the note with the bomb, Sandy. Rukovina’s typewriter. Tempting, wouldn’t you say?’ And Bloom gives this little conspiratorial chuckle, and he says, ‘Oh, yeah, tempting as hell. OK, Arthur, I think I can handle things at this end, all right. This could just about solve our little problem here.’ And Roberts says, ‘I thought it might. I trust that this Karp is not indispensable to your organization?’ And our leader says, ‘Oh, he’s dispensable, is he ever dispensable! He’s a piece of Kleenex, the son of a bitch.’ Bango! Go directly to jail, Mr. Bloom. Shit, they’ll burn his license to practice law in Foley Square at high noon. And Roberts’s too. I love it!”
Karp nodded, his face grim. The naked confirmation of his suspicions about Bloom gave him no pleasure. “It’s still hard for me to believe. Even hearing it I can hardly believe it. Throwing away the integrity of the district attorney’s office, Garrahy’s office. And for what? To do some national security shitheads in Washington a favor? Yeah, we got Bloom and Roberts. It’s Karavitch I’m still worried about. If we just had something solid that he was really Dreb, it’d be such a shot from left field that he’d crumple. Which reminds me.”
He sat on the bed and dialed John Evans’s number. The conversation was brief. When he had hung up, Marlene asked, “How did it go?”
“How could it go? I got him by the balls. I told him we’re interviewing Cindy Karavitch, Macek, and the old man starting at four-thirty today. I also told him we were hip to the typewriter scam and about the statements we’ve got from Flanagan and Terzich.”
“And about the tapes?”
“I think I’ll save that for Bloom. As it was, he was practically blubbering. Let him make some panicky phone calls, stir up the pot a little.”
“Sounds good. By the way, what are we doing about the Israelis?”
“If they’re clean on the weapons charge, all I intend to do is write a note to Elmer Pillman describing what happened. Let him take it from there. Foreign agents are an FBI matter.”
“He’ll probably give them a kiss. They solved his problem with the Cubanos.”
“Frankly, Scarlet, I don’t give a damn. Speaking of kisses—”
“Get away from me. We both smell like bread mold. I’m taking a shower. Want to join?”
“Love to, but I got this cast. You’ll have to bathe me all over with your tiny pink tongue.”
“Make an appointment. You going to go to the Prosecuting Attorney’s meeting with me later?”
“If I can figure out how to get dressed with this thing on my arm, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
The Villa Cella on Mulberry Street was not what Wharton had expected. It was small—just ten tables— and dark, with a low brown tin ceiling and white tiles on the floor, like a public restroom. The rickety tables were done with paper placemats printed with maps of Italy, folded paper napkins, thick glass tumblers, and vases of plastic flowers. The walls were yellow stucco and covered with framed oil paintings of mountains, vineyards, and ruins.
The headwaiter had greeted V.T. effusively and ushered them to a table in the rear of the room. When they were seated, Wharton looked around him dubiously. The clientele seemed to be mostly prune-faced old men with napkins tucked into their necks, slurping soup. “You say the food here is good?” he ventured.
“Good? The best. They keep rather a low profile because they’re Piedmontese, and this is a southern Italian neighborhood. I’ve wanted to bring you here for some time, Conrad—”
“Please, Chip.”
“Yes, Chip, of course. As I say, you struck me as someone who had the capacity to appreciate the finer things. Ah, Giusseppe, mille grazie.” The waiter had brought their menus. Wharton was dismayed to find it handwritten entirely in Italian.
“Ah, marvelous,” V.T. exclaimed, “they have bollito misto. And I think cold spinach pancakes to start. What looks good to you, Con—ah, Chip?”
“Oh, I’ll have the same. I haven’t had any bollito misto in years.”
“You’ll love the way they do it here. They use the whole calf’s head. What about wine? The house red is Barbera D’Asti. Let’s split a carafe.”
“Well, actually, I have to give this speech today, I’d like to keep my head clear.”
“Oh, nonsense. If you don’t take any wine with your meal, they’ll know you’re a barbarian.” The waiter returned and V.T. ordered. Wharton was thinking about how he could avoid eating the disgusting food in this trashy place, and how he could avoid drinking more than a token amount of wine. Wharton would have liked a martini, but he didn’t suppose they knew how to make a decent one in this place. He was also thinking about how he could bring the conversation around so as to wangle an invitation to meet Edwin Brace Newbury.
“So, V.T., how’s your father?” he began.
“My father? Fine, so far as I know. How’s yours?”
“Umm, I meant, he must be a fascinating man.”
“Father fascinating? Yes, I suppose so, if you’re mad about the half dozen sailing anecdotes that make up the bulk of his conversation, or if you’re interested in trusts, but otherwise not. Now his brother, my Uncle Preston, he’s fascinating. Ran away from Choate at sixteen and hopped a freighter to New Zealand. Married a Maori princess, I understand and—oh, good, here’s our wine.”
A busboy balancing a large tin tray on his shoulder was hovering over the table. On the tray were twelve one-liter carafes of the house red. The busboy plucked one of them off and set it in front of V.T. Then, as he walked away, he seemed to stumble. The tray wobbled, broke loose from his grip, and deposited most of the eleven liters of dark purplish Barbera D’Asti on Conrad Wharton.
After the pandemonium had died down, after the prune-faced old men had been treated to the spectacle of Wharton leaping about like a purple jack-in-the-box, shrieking about lawsuits, pursued by the restaurant’s entire staff lavishing apologies, after the busboy had been ostentatiously fired, only then did V.T. manage to get Wharton seated and concentrated on his immediate problem.
“Look, Chip, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this, but all is not lost. There’s a place I know on Grand Street, does dry cleaning while you wait. It’s quarter of one now. If I take your suit, shirt, and tie up there, they can do them and I can be back here by twenty past. It’s only two blocks away. You can sit in the can and read the paper. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Wharton grumpily agreed. Not only did he have no choice, not if he still wanted to make that speech, but he began to realize that what was, after all, a fairly minor inconvenience could be parlayed into something far more important, a hook into V.T. Newbury. They went to the men’s room; Wharton stripped down to his shoes, socks, and underwear and made himself as comfortable as he could in the single booth. The privacy lock in the door had been removed, leaving a small round hole, so he wadded up some toilet paper and wedged it shut.
As he sat, he thought about the best way to handle payment for this obligation. Maybe a game of squash at the old man’s club. Tennis in the country. Sailing? Not until next year, but it was a good thought. Alone for hours on a yacht, he would be able to … These pleasant thoughts jolted to a stop and Wharton let out a short yowl of alarm. There was a brown eye staring at him through the round hole in the door.
“Hi, sugar,” said a low voice. “Are you waitin’ for me?”
Wharton shot to his feet as the door was pulled open. He tried to keep it closed, but could get no purchase on the smooth metal. “Excuse me, I’m using this toilet,” he shouted.
“If you are, you shittin’ through your damn underpants, man,” said the person who opened the door. She was very tall, and dressed in a canary yellow turtleneck sweater dress cut above the knee and tight as skin. She had strong features, heavily made up, and a huge mane of elaborately curled dyed blond hair. She came toward him, smiling with a wide mouth of glossy violet.
Wharton backed up. “What are you doing here?” he cried, “This is a men’s room.” He could back up no farther. The toilet handle was pressing into his buttock and his legs were straddled on either side of the bowl.
“Sugar playing hard to get?” she said. “Well, some like to bust the door down, some like to be coaxed. Come to Momma, son. I ain’t got all day.” With that, her hand shot out like a striking cobra, pulled down the waistband of his Jockey shorts, and grabbed a handful. Wharton yelped and threw a clumsy punch at her head, which she easily batted aside with her other hand.
“Oh, rough trade, huh? Listen, fat boy, you mess my hair I’m gonna dance on your head. Now settle down and get your blow job.” She sank to her knees in one practiced motion, and began to haul Wharton by his penis toward her mouth.
“OK, Jerome, that’s enough.” The speaker was an immense, hachet-faced, balding man of about fifty. There was a shorter, heavier man behind him. The big man said, “Stand up, Jerome! You,” to Wharton, “put it away, the party’s over. Let’s go.”
The blond let go of Wharton and stood up. “Goddamn it, Sharkey, what the fuck you doin’ this side a town? Vice never come by Little Italy.”
Sharkey grinned. “That would be telling, sweetheart.” To Wharton he snapped, “Hey, Tubby, get your clothes on. Move it!”
Things were moving too fast for Wharton. He decided to exert some control, forgetting for the moment how difficult it is to exert control when one is clad in wine-soaked skivvies. “Just one moment,” he said in a commanding tone. “Are you men police officers?”
Sharkey’s eyes widened. “Who the fuck you think we are, Alice?”
“Let me see your identification!” Wharton ordered in the same peremptory tone.
Ed Sharkey had been a vice cop in New York for almost twenty years. Unlike other kinds of police officers, vice cops almost never have to deal with innocent victims of crime. All those with whom they come into contact on the job are involved willingly in some nasty illegal act; all of them are, to use the technical criminal justice term, scumbags. That many vice cops (and Sharkey was no exception) derive a substantial portion of their personal income from shaking down these scumbags does not help their attitude. Thus vice cops do not easily learn patience and forbearance. They are very often angry and disgusted people, and their anger and disgust are directed not so much at the professionals in the vice trade—the pushers and whores—as at the users and Johns, the solid citizens whose lust and hypocrisy make it necessary for vice cops to earn their living in such a degrading fashion.
This explains why, when Wharton asked to see some identification in the commanding tone that worked so well with his frightened subordinates, Ed Sharkey reached out, grabbed Wharton by the front of his T-shirt, yanked him out of the booth, and clouted him across the face twice with a hand having the general dimension and texture of a first-baseman’s mitt. Then he punched Wharton in the center of his pot belly. The T-shirt ripped away from the cop’s fist and Wharton collapsed to the floor, wheezing and bleeding heavily from the nose.
Sharkey moved in for a few kicks, but his partner put a firm hand on his arm. “Ed, enough,” he said. The big cop’s shoulders relaxed and the deep flush passed out of his face. He became all business again.
“Jerome, what’d you do with the john’s clothes?” he asked the blond.
“Me? I didn’t do shit! He was just like you see when I got in here. Hey, dude is fuckin’ crazy anyway. You ever hear of a guy want to run away from a blow job? And it was a house call, like. Dude drives by my walk last night, he says here’s twenty, you be such and such place, such and such time, give me good head, you get another twenty. So I come here and the little fucker freaks. And I get busted. Hey, Sharkey, this some kind of entrapment shit?”
Sharkey ignored her and helped his partner heave Wharton up on his wobbly legs. People who graduate from law school usually miss the experience of being hit in the face by a big cop, although there are those who would like it to be made part of the bar examination. It certainly made Conrad Wharton forget about issuing any orders. Instead he whimpered, “Please, I didn’t … it was that woman’s fault. She attacked me.
Sharkey laughed. “Woman? I don’t see any woman here. How about you, Jerome? You see any woman?”
The blond sniffed haughtily. “You’re a pig, Sharkey, you know that? You don’t let a girl have any secrets.”
The panel on “The Systems Approach to Criminal Justice” was meeting in the Imperial Ballroom, and by ten of two the ornate chamber was nearly filled with prosecuting attorneys and affiliated crime fighters from across the nation. Among them were Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi. A stage at one end of the room was furnished with a cloth-covered table and a podium with microphones. To the left of the stage an easel sign displayed the title of the session, and the panel members had little cards in front of their places with their names on them. Three panel members and a moderator had already taken their seats, which left one empty, the one marked “CONRAD T. WHARTON.”
Karp looked around at the crowd. “Big turnout for this bullshit.”
“Yeah, I haven’t see so many white males in one room since I graduated from Yale Law. I hope our main speaker isn’t late.”
“You nervous?”
“Only about that enormous chandelier suspended over our heads. I hate having shit like that over me. Do you think there’s any chance it’ll fall?”
“I hope not. Wipe out all these guys it’d set criminal justice back two weeks. Hey, V.T., how’s it going?”
Newbury, slightly out of breath, slid himself into the empty seat beside them. He was carrying a white paper dry-cleaner’s bag and hangers. “I didn’t miss anything yet, I see. You know, I just had the most peculiar experience. I was lunching with Chip Wharton, and he had an unfortunate accident with some wine—”
“How sad!” Marlene exclaimed. “And did you place him in a booth in the men’s room and go to get his clothes dry-cleaned?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. But imagine! When I returned, he was gone. I wonder what could have happened to him?”
Karp said, “Maybe he got tired of waiting and came here to speak in his undies, like in a bad dream.”
V.T. said, “Possible, but … look, I do believe that’s him now, taking his place behind his little name card.”
“Gosh, V.T., are you sure?” Marlene asked. “It doesn’t look much like Wharton to me.”
“I’m prepared to swear to it. Look, he’s even wearing the little name tag with the blue speaker’s ribbon on it.”
“Oh, well, then, I guess you’re right. Hey, they’re starting.”
At the podium, the moderator, a chubby, balding person wearing a serious suit and a little mustache, made greeting noises, a little joke, and then introduced the first speaker, the distinguished lawyer and administrator, and a great pioneer in criminal-justice-systems development, Conrad T. Wharton. Consulting an index card, he then described Wharton’s career in glowing terms. There was a brief round of applause, the moderator sat down, and the speaker marched up to the podium. He adjusted the microphone and put a thin sheaf of paper on the podium. He smiled and began to read his speech. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “it is a great honor to be able to speakable shit you here buggy today. For years the crimanix whorehouse rat turds butt fucker justice system has been plagued by the simple inabilititty cunt face asshole to evaluate its suckass cocksucker in prickassing cases.”
Since it was an after-lunch meeting, perhaps the audience was a little slow on the uptake. But a few minutes into the speech there were murmurs and nervous laughter. A few minutes later the murmurs grew angry and the shouts began. People started to walk out.
“Hey, where’s Guma?” Marlene asked. “He should be here to see this.”
“No,” V.T. said. “Like all great directors he never attends opening night. Actually, I think he’s paying off the troops. And he’s got to spring Jerome.”
The place was emptying fast. The panelists and the moderator were standing about, flapping jaws and wondering what to do.
“Want to go?” Karp asked.
“I don’t know,” said Marlene. “Dirty Warren is really wailing. Maybe I’ll stay and see what happens. You?”
“Got to go see Bloom.”
“Oh-ho! Give him one from me too.”
“I will. You coming, V.T.?”
“No, I think I’ll stay for the peroration. I never realized the systems approach was so interesting.”
Sanford Bloom’s day had started off quite well and had gone precipitously downhill from there. At nine that morning he had met with the New York State Attorney General and some important people from Justice in Washington. He had managed to let them know he was available for higher office, and they had appeared to consider this seriously. At noon he had given the welcome and keynote address to an appreciative audience of IAPA members at the Waldorf, which had been received, he had noted, with much more than perfunctory applause.
In the afternoon, however, things had started to come unglued. First there was an hysterical call from Wharton, in which he claimed to have been assaulted by a transvestite prostitute while dressed in his underwear in the men’s room of an Italian restaurant, and then to have been beaten and arrested by the police. He was calling from the precinct cells.
Saying he would arrange for a lawyer, Bloom had cut the conversation short. He found it very disturbing to think that Wharton was anything but completely in charge. The man knew all the secrets. Then the courthouse reporter from the Post called, asking questions about some disturbance during a session down at the Waldorf. Wharton had apparently gone crazy and started shouting obscenities at the audience. Bloom had put the reporter off until later, but could not do the same with the president of the IAPA, who had called in a fury to denounce Wharton as a disgrace to the profession. Bloom was confused. How could Wharton deliver an obscene speech when he was being arrested on a sex offense? He got rid of the president by promising a full investigation and a meeting the next afternoon. Then he took two aspirins and a Gelusel.
But the worst call was from Arthur Bingham Roberts. John Evans had called Roberts that morning in a blind panic, with a story about how Karp knew all about the typewriter and the translator, and what should he do, what should he do? Roberts had told him to stonewall, and he was advising Bloom to do the same. There was no direct evidence proving collusion between defense and prosecution to obstruct justice by throwing the case. As long as they kept that in mind, and kept their heads, Karp could do nothing.
Good advice, but still hard for Bloom to take, since he knew there was direct evidence. He had just accumulated a few more feet of it while Roberts was talking. By the time Roberts had said good-bye, Bloom’s forehead was covered by a thin sheen of sweat. The first thing he did after hanging up the phone was to remove the tapes for the last two months from the locked cabinet where he kept them, shove them in his briefcase, and lock the briefcase. The next thing was to pick up the phone.
He needed somebody to fix this, and he was not a fixer. He preferred to stay above the messy fray, at what he called “the policy level.” When his secretary came on, he snapped, “Get me Wharton’s private line.” The phone rang twice before he realized what he was doing. Wharton wasn’t there, of course. Wharton was in jail on a sex charge. He slammed the receiver down. I’m losing my mind, he thought. This can’t be happening.
Rhoda Klepp. Rhoda was in on the whole thing. He remembered the three of them laughing about it over drinks—‘We just fucked Karp in the ass’—it must have been just last week. In fact, it had been her idea to bring Floyd in on it. They needed a dependable cop, as she put it, and she had gone to Floyd herself. Rhoda would know what to do.
He buzzed his secretary and told her to get Rhoda Klepp. While he waited, he played with a desk toy, a clear plastic box holding a substance that mimicked breaking surf when you rocked it. It was supposed to soothe. It hadn’t worked by the time the secretary rang back. Bloom dropped it like a hot iron and grabbed the phone. The secretary said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Bloom. Ms. Klepp is on sick leave today.”
“Sick leave? Call her at home. I need to talk to her.”
“I did that, Mr. Bloom. Her mother is there with her. Apparently Ms. Klepp has had a, she said a kind of temporary breakdown. She’s, ah, heavily sedated.”
“Oh. Well, leave word I want to see her as soon as she’s back.”
“Yes, sir. Oh, while I have you on: Mr. Karp is here and wants a few minutes. He says it’s urgent.”
“No! Absolutely not. I can’t see him at all today. I’m booked solid.”
“Yes, sir, I told him that, but he was very insistent. He said if you couldn’t see him now, then you should be sure to watch ABC at seven tonight because they were going to break the, um, Yugoslavian typewriter story.”
“Oh. He said that? Well, OK, but just for five minutes.”
When Karp entered the big office, Bloom came around the desk with his hand out and his famous charming smile pumping out wattage.
“Butch! So glad to see you’re up and around. My God, were we worried when we heard! How are you feeling? Have a seat.”
Bloom ushered Karp to one of a set of comfortable leather club chairs arranged around a glass coffee table, and sat down in another.
“Coffee? No? Too early for a drink, ha-ha. Well, what can we do for you?”
Karp peered at him as at a museum specimen: genus Politician, species empty suit. He thought, how can a man be so phony and still process real food and air? At length he said, “It’s a legal problem—evidentiary law. I thought I’d consult with you before I did anything.”
“Sure. Glad to help. That’s what I’m here for, hah-hah. What is it?”
“Last week a police officer tried to palm off on me some evidence in the Karavitch case, evidence that was the result of unlawful collusion between the defense, in the person of the translator, Stefan Terzich, and the police. If I had accepted this tainted evidence, of course, it would have compromised our entire case. Luckily I did not. I have written statements from both the officer, Flanagan, and the translator, that confirms that the presentation of this evidence was part of a conscious plot to destroy our case and, incidentally, to ruin me.”
“Come now! Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
The tone of this remark was hearty, as usual, but Karp could see the tightness around Bloom’s eyes and the pearls of sweat on his upper lip. The man was frightened half to death.
“Yes, it did seem hard to believe. Who would want to do that? It was a real mystery, until last night, when someone placed on my desk additional evidence that established beyond doubt the identity of the person responsible for the collusion.”
“It did?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you and Arthur Bingham Roberts conspired to concoct the taint and palm it off on me. Here’s the evidence.” Karp reached into his suit pocket, pulled out four cassette tapes, and placed them in front of Bloom on the coffee table. Bloom bent forward rigidly at the waist, his hands gripping the ends of the armrests, white-fíngered, the smile freezing into a rictus of terror.
“These are tapes of telephone conversations you had and recorded during the past two months. One of them has a conversation between you and Roberts that outlines the entire plot. Other conversations between you and some of your staff confirm it. They’re copies, of course. I suppose you still have the originals.”
Bloom darted a glance at his briefcase, then looked up at Karp. He cleared his throat, but his voice still croaked. “This was illegally obtained. You can’t use this in court.”
“Yes, I agree. Of course, given the statements I’ve taken down alluding to the involvement of your office and Roberts in this thing, there’s certainly probable cause to subpoena the originals.”
“It was Wharton’s idea.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, he worked it all out with Roberts. You don’t understand the kind of pressure we were under. You have no idea in the world. Important people are involved. Issues of national security.” Bloom stammered and flung his hands up in the air, as if to illustrate the futility of explaining how important it all was. “That man, Karavitch, he knows too much. It’s absolutely impossible for him to be allowed to go to open trial. Impossible. So we had to … so Wharton had to set it up. I knew it was wrong.”
“What did he know?”
“Who?”
“Karavitch. What did he know that was so important? Did they tell you?”
Bloom looked shocked. “No, God, no. It’s top secret. They said national security, I told you.”
“But I know.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Karavitch is actually a man named Josef Dreb, a Nazi war criminal, who murdered the real Karavitch and took his identity. During the war, not only did he kill Jews and other civilians, but he also murdered a number of Allied flyers. Despite that, he was recruited into the U.S. intelligence services by men that knew who he really was and most likely what he had done. It didn’t matter to them because it was, as you keep saying, national security. There’s other stuff, but that’s the nut of it. This whole thing has been about protecting those men. Your part was springing a Nazi mass murderer. That’s the national security angle. That’s why you compromised the integrity of the District Attorney’s office.”
“My God!” Bloom collapsed back in his chair and stared into space. He seemed to be deflating as Karp watched, like a rubber raft with a hole in it. Karp stood up. Bloom shook himself and said, “What! Where are you going?”
“Back to my office.”
“But—but, what are you going to do?”
“Do? Well, I’m going to continue to prosecute the Karavitch case, for one thing.”
“No, not that shit! About me—these tapes.”
“I don’t know. What do you suggest?”
“What do you want?” said Bloom, his eyes darting like frightened roaches.
“Want? I don’t understand.” Karp stared at Bloom in silence, watching the expressions flicker over his sweaty face.
“I mean,” Bloom said at last, “I just thought that while you’re here, hah, we could discuss your career. Now that business about the bureau chief job, that was all Wharton’s doing. There’s no reason why we couldn’t put you right back there.”
“In the bureau chief slot?”
“I meant the assistant bureau chief slot. No, no, of course, the bureau chief. Needs some new blood in there, absolutely.”
“I agree. Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. And ah, speaking of Wharton, he’s been very resistant to getting Marlene Ciampi’s appeal for compensation approved. Maybe you could—”
“Of course, anything I can do—oh, no!” Bloom seemed genuinely stricken.
“What’s wrong?”
“We denied the appeal already. It’s out of our hands. I’ll have to go to Albany on that.”
“Well, whatever you can do. I have to go back down now. I have some interrogations scheduled.”
“Is that it?”
“Sure.”
“But … these tapes. What about the … you know.”
“What about them?” Karp said mildly. “I uncovered evidence of a serious crime and I turned it over to you. You’re the district attorney.”
“Christ on a crutch!” Marlene said. “I would’ve given anything to have seen his face when you said that—‘You’re the district attorney.’ He must of messed his pants.”
They were in Karp’s office, waiting for the cops to bring in the hijackers. Karp was in his swivel chair and Marlene was perched on the edge of the desk, smoking.
“I’m surprised you were so calm. You must have wanted to ream him up one side and down the other.”
“Yeah, but the game’s over and I won by twenty. It’s an old jock habit. Also, I’m pretty sure he bugs his office too. So I wanted to get on the record that there was no quid pro quo.”
“You think he understood that we kept another copy of the tapes?”
“God, yes! He’s not that stupid. He’s finished and he knows it. Next case.”
“Yeah. Want to go over our game plan one more time?”
“Sure.” He was looking at the poster of the young Karavitch still pinned to the wall. He continued to do so as Marlene went over the line of questioning she intended to pursue with Cindy Karavitch. There was something wrong with the poster. He had felt it every time he looked at the blank photo of the young man, the real Djordje Karavitch, dead these thirty years. Maybe.
“Hey, are you listening? I just asked you a question,” Marlene said peevishly. “Why are you staring at that poster?”
Karp turned around, his face lit with a grin of pure delight. “I just figured it out. Our shot from left field.”