Absolute rage

12

"Then I tripped on something, " Marlene said, and took another sip of gin and tonic, "a root, or a goddamn alligator, and went headfirst into the swamp. When I got out of it, I leaned against a tree and screamed for, I don't know, three hours? Then the dog barked and I heard your guys thrashing around in the bushes. They must have heard me." Another pull on her drink. "At which point I was discovered by this major countywide search you organized, adding the last possible increment of embarrassment."

"People get lost up here all the time, Mrs. Karp," said Hendricks.

"Marlene, please. And you're Wade, right?"

"Right. Couple of times a year we got to go up some mountain and find a hunter. Sometimes it's people who lived here all their lives. They fall in holes, they get tangled in some laurel and get exhausted, heatstroke, hypothermia, depending on the season, or they get wrecked like you did. It's no big thing, really."

They were in the living room of the Heeney house, Marlene, Karp, and Hendricks. Marlene was freshly bathed, with her hair in a towel and wearing a black T-shirt with a calligraphic design on it and her only pair of clean shorts. She wanted a nap, and more than that, she wanted the previous twenty-four hours not to have happened.

Hendricks looked at his notepad and thumbed back through some pages.

"You said the boy said his name was Darryl?"

"Sounded like Darl. You think there's any chance of finding him?"

"Maybe. Lots of Darryls in these parts. This man behind the sheet-how come you asked if he was a Jonson?"

"Just a guess. The Jonsons are feuding with the Cades, right? If someone wanted to rat out the Cades for the murders, I figured it might be the other clan. Also… the way the boy talked, calling the man he in a funny way, like he was a leader or something, more than just an older relative."

Hendricks tightened his chin, causing his upper lip to protrude, and knotted his brow. Another of his portfolio of Gary Cooper grimaces, Karp thought. "Well. It might could be. It could be you talked with old Amos Jonson. That would be something."

"Why?" Karp asked. "Who is he?"

"No one's seen him for a while. He's the only survivor of the Jonsons of his generation. I guess he must be in his late sixties if it's him. He had four brothers and a sister, all dead." Hendricks looked directly at Marlene. "Killed."

"By the Cades?"

"That's what people say. Two of them were passed off as mining accidents. No one was prosecuted. The last brother, name of Jonathan, was shot by Ben Cade, right on his own front porch. His sister, Dora, said she saw the whole thing. Well, they had to bring old Ben in on that. A couple of days before the trial, someone tossed a couple of sticks of dynamite through her bedroom window. Killed her and a couple of her kids, as I recall. So they had to let him go. That was when Amos sort of disappeared. Of course, there are still lots of Jonsons around, even if they keep sort of a low profile. He could've been staying with his kin all this time."

"Can we find him?" Karp asked. "According to Marlene, he's got lots of answers. Would he testify, do you think?"

"I would doubt it," said Hendricks after a silence.

"Right," said Karp. "And I expect that this guy Floyd and the three Cades would have alibis provided by all the merry Cades and various henchmen and would not be forthcoming out of, say, remorse."

Karp received the expected laconic agreement and clapped his hands briskly. "Well! Assuming that Marlene's guy is not just some kind of grudge horseshit, we now know who done it. Not a small thing, but on the other hand, we have bubkes on anyone from a purely legal standpoint."

"Pardon, bup what?" said Hendricks.

" Bubkes," said Karp, "a term widely used in the New York bar to signify an insufficiency of probative material. The point is, an anonymous message from a probable clan enemy is almost worse than nothing at all. That leaves the possibility of forensic evidence linking one or more of these guys to the crime. We have prints at the scene. I assume these scumbags have prints on file?"

Hendricks made an assenting noise. "The Cades do. I don't know about Floyd."

"We'll find out and see if there're any matches. Next, we have the famous sneaker. We'll check that for biological traces of the last wearer and do a DNA workup. Also, we have the famous boots, expensive and new. We'll check around town and see who bought a pair like that recently. The murder gun, if it's still available, would be nice. Juries always like to see a murder weapon. Wade, I'd like your guys to go over all the evidence collected the first go-around. My assumption is they didn't bust their humps over it when Mose Welch stepped into the frame."

"As we speak," said Hendricks, "they're reviewing the material at the Charleston lab, and I got people going over the grounds outside right now."

Marlene added, "I've got beer cans and bottles from that overlook, too. It'd be interesting, at least, if any prints on them matched the prints found in the house."

"Good idea," said Karp. "What I'd like to do now is…"

A young man came into the room. He was wearing plain clothes and rubber gloves, which identified him as one of the crime-scene people in Hendricks's outfit. He stopped short and looked at Hendricks inquiringly.

"What's up, Frank?" asked Hendricks.

"We found something, Captain. I thought you'd want to take a look."

They all followed Frank out through the kitchen to the back stairs. Marlene saw that the storm door that had lain by the side of the stairs since the murders had been moved aside, and that in the damp, grassless earth near the stairs were two near-perfect impressions of boot soles. Marlene recognized the wavy tread pattern as being from the size-nine-and-a-half Rocky-brand boots found with Heeney blood all over them, and said so.

Hendricks looked down at the impressions. "Damn it all, Frank, how in the hell did this get missed the first time?"

"No excuse, sir. Just pure sloppy work. Nobody thought to move the storm door to see what was underneath it."

Hendricks looked to have a few other things to say to old Frank. Marlene could see muscles working in his jaw, and a dark flush was spreading up from the jawline. She said, "Say, Frank, could you generate a body weight from that print? By how deep the boot sank into the soil?"

The technician looked up at her with relief, and perhaps gratitude on his face. "Yes, ma'am, we could. A range, anyway. Within five or so pounds."

"Well, if it's all right with Captain Hendricks, if you could do that test right away and it turns out that the fellow who made them was much less than two hundred pounds, I can probably get my man out of jail."

The technician looked at Hendricks, who nodded abruptly. "Go do it," he ordered.

To the Karps, he said, "I got to run into town now and see how they're doing on our temporary headquarters."

"We have headquarters?" asked Karp.

"Yeah, in the old Burroughs Building. An insurance company used to have it. They went bust and the state grabbed it up for the taxes. They still got all their furniture and equipment in there and the building's still in good shape. I got people cleaning it out now, putting phones in and all. I assumed that was okay. It's right near the courthouse. Trooper Blake's got an unmarked standing by and he'll drive you anywhere you need to go."

Karp found himself nodding in agreement, keeping the surprise off his face and suppressing any expression of what he knew to be petty annoyance.

"Good. That's real good, Wade."

"Also, we've arranged quarters for you. I was thinking it wouldn't look that good for you all to both be staying here, I mean it being the murder scene. There's a kind of lodge west of town, Four Oaks. They rent it out for groups, industry and church groups having retreats, what passes for the tourist industry here. I arranged a cabin. I'll be staying there, and some of my guys and Cheryl, too. If that's all right?"

"I'm overwhelmed. Thanks," said Karp. Hendricks took his leave, and Karp and Marlene went back into the house, where Marlene refreshed her drink.

"Well," she said. "No flies on Captain Hendricks."

"No. I feel like a nature film where the queen ant is being shoved into position by the worker ants, my swollen abdomen being wiggled into position so I can lay the eggs. I guess I'm staying."

"You hadn't planned to?"

"I haven't planned anything since Lucy called. I've been responding to the crisis, which turned out to be a noncrisis."

"And you feel dumb because I'm just raddled with bug bites instead of smashed to pieces or kidnapped by desperadoes."

In answer he sat next to her on the couch, threw an arm around her shoulder, kissed her cheek.

"Ugh, how can you stand it? I look like an illustration from a medical textbook. I should have one of those black rectangles across my eyes."

"My bug-bitten beauty," Karp said tenderly. "I've missed you. Call me old-fashioned, but I used to like coming home to the happy family every night."

"Or the unhappy family, on occasion, if you recall."

"Even that. Anyway, it seems that since I'm here now instead of next week, I might as well put my game face on and play. Have you thought about what you'll do?"

"Well, I'll see my client out of jail and the charges dismissed, which should be a matter of days. Beyond that, I don't know. Leap on my horse and vanish with a hearty 'Hi-yo, Silver.' "

"Why not stay?"

"And do what?"

"Nothing. It's summer. Take a break. You went from busting your hump as a corporate mogul to busting your hump as a struggling dog farmer. Why not kick back?"

He cupped his hand to his ear. "Listen…"

"What? I don't hear anything."

"My point. No howling animals. No gormless employees requiring direction. No darling children yammering for attention. We haven't been alone together since Christ was a corporal."

"Yes, and if I stay, I'll be alone together, and you'll be consumed with your case."

"Oh, consumed, conshmumed! Look, darling: it's one case-count it, one-instead of the fifty I usually have to follow. Two, the people who did it are morons operating under the assumption of impunity. They've made a million mistakes, and they'll make more. Their hillbilly asses are mine. Three, as you just saw, I apparently have the entire Wehrmacht at my disposal. Four, no political horseshit to cope with. Compared to what I usually do, this is flower arrangement."

"Wait until you're here awhile," she said sourly. "Things won't seem so simple. This is a truly weird place."

"Why, because they talk funny and there're no Chinese restaurants?"

"No, really, Butch! There's a strange feel to it. Everyone's polite and helpful, at least when they're not trying to kill you, but you get the feeling that everyone knows a secret that they'll never tell. And there are little looks you catch, like in a family when someone mentions insanity, and everyone but the guest knows about Auntie Rose up in the attic. It's funny, but I've been trying and trying to think of where I had that feeling before and I can't quite recall it. But stick around and you'll see."

"Yeah, we'll see," said Karp dismissively. "Meanwhile, you'll let me know."

"You'll be the first. Where are you going now?"

Karp was up and moving toward the door. "I think I'll have Trooper Blake drive me to our new home, where I will take a shower and change my shirt, and then I'm going to show the flag to the state's attorney."

"Use short sentences," said Marlene, "and talk slow."

State's Attorney Hawes did not salute the flag when Karp carried it into his office late that afternoon. He looked as if he wanted to burn and trample it, the way Iranians so often do to Old Glory. He sat behind his desk with his jaw (and, Karp assumed, his ass as well) as tight as could be and gave curt answers to Karp's polite questions about the triple murder.

Karp remembered about talking slow. He let a little silence descend, after which he said, "Mr. Hawes… Stan, if I can call you that?"

Hesitation, a short nod and a grunt.

"Good. I'm Butch. We seem to have got off on the wrong foot, so let's roll the tape back and start again. If I were you, I'd be pissed, too. You picked up the biggest murder case in the last decade, and all of a sudden I show up, a big-time out-of-town prosecutor, and it looks like the big boys in Charleston think you can't handle your job. And on top of that, it's becoming more and more likely that you indicted the wrong guy."

"I can convict him."

"Well, you might be able to and you might not. That's not the point. I'm just now starting a complete review of the forensic evidence, and I would bet your next two paychecks that we come up with enough material to absolutely exonerate Moses Welch and shine a pretty bright spotlight on a couple, three other people."

"Who?"

"Earl, Bo, and Wayne Cade, plus George Floyd. Since Floyd works for Lester Weames, I'd assume he gave the order."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"It's around. Amos Jonson says that's how it went down."

"Hah! Jonson would say the Cades killed JFK."

"I agree. But the fact remains that Bo and Earl tried to kill my wife the other day and came around the Heeney place with weapons, in the hours of darkness. That's suggestive to me that Jonson or whoever was not just whistling 'Dixie.' Now here's a prediction. We will find their fingerprints at the crime scene, and on cans and bottles found at a lookout place above the crime scene, and we will find that the blood-covered boots that are virtually your whole case against Moses Welch were purchased by a member of the Cade family, and if we're a little lucky, we might get DNA evidence off the two pieces of footwear we have that were soaked in the victims' blood, evidence connected to the bunch that we like for it. That would constitute a pretty good case, wouldn't it?"

"A lot of ifs." Sulkily.

"Uh-huh. Look, Stan, I know you wish I would just dry up and blow away, but I'm not going to. So there's two things you need to know about me. One is, I've tried and won over a hundred homicide cases, some of them against the best defense lawyers in New York. I am extremely good at this, not because I'm a genius or a better lawyer than you are, but just because of that experience. Two is, I have absolutely no political or ego-building agenda here. As far as I'm concerned, this was your case and it's still your case, and I will direct the PR lady that the governor sent down to present it that way to the press. I am perfectly content to lurk in the background while you win it." Karp's face broke into a grin. "You're looking at me like I'm trying to sell you a condo in Florida."

Hawes's face relaxed a trifle. "It is a little rich. Why the hell did you come down here, then?"

"The truth? I got some political problems with my job in New York that I'm not ready to deal with yet, and this was an opportunity to carve out some space. The main reason, though, is Saul Sterner. You know who he is?"

Hawes shrugged. "The union lawyer?"

"That's the one. He's an old friend. I studied under him in law school. He asked me to do it, and it's kind of hard to keep from doing stuff Saul asks you to do." Karp paused and was relieved to see that Hawes was working this over in his mind, that he was entertaining the idea that this was maybe not going to be a complete disaster. A rather too transparent face for a lawyer, Karp thought, but in the circumstances an advantage.

"So do we have a basis here?" Karp asked. "For now, you're willing to accept that I'm not bullshitting you?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"There's always a choice. In your case the choice is cooperating with me and learning something about your profession and ending up a hero, or being a hard-ass and nursing a wounded ego and ending up looking like a jerk. But I don't think you're a jerk, and more important, I think you're basically honest. My wife, who you've met, has the best scumbag detector in North America, and she says she's getting a low reading in your case. However, to be frank, I think you're a good bit brighter than she thinks you are. I mean, Moses Welch? For that kind of crime?"

Hawes flushed a little and dropped his eyes, but said nothing.

Karp went on, "And as long as we're being frank, I have to say this, too: nearly everybody who starts out in this business makes the mistake you made. The cops bring in a guy and they say, 'He's the one,' and you look at the guy and the evidence and who's on D and you make an assessment: Can I win? The answer looks like yes and so you go forward, because it's a hot case, and you need a win. And when new evidence starts to show up, like it did here, that your guy is wrong, you start to figure out ways to get around or to discount that evidence, so as to keep your case in the win column. It's done every day. It's lazy and it's rotten, and it's the reason why the prisons in this country are filled with innocent mental retards who were defended by drunks or incompetents and prosecuted by people who wanted a win more than they wanted to honor their oath of office."

"Thank you for the lecture."

Karp ignored the sarcasm. "You're welcome. I expect it'll be the first of many. The fact of the matter is, you swung at a sucker pitch and fucked up, and what you do when you fuck up in this business, if you're a mensch, is you admit it and bust your hump finding the right scumbag the next time. As it is, you're getting off easy. You should try fucking up big-time in New York City, when you got four major networks and the New York Times putting you in the crosshairs. What kind of ball did you play?"

Hawes goggled at this change of pace. "Who says I played ball?"

"Every prosecutor I ever met played a competitive team sport."

After a long beat, Hawes said, "Baseball. High school and college."

"Varsity?"

"Yeah. Third base. I had a tryout with Charleston. The Alley Cats, Class A with Toronto."

"How'd you do?"

"Good field, no hit. I went to law school instead. Let me take a wild guess: you played basketball."

"You got it. High school all-American and two years at Cal before I screwed up my knee. You're a local boy, I take it."

"Born and raised. My dad managed the Exxon out on Lincoln at 130."

"So you know the situation: the unions, the miners, all the corruption horseshit."

Hawes nodded.

"And you wanted to be state's attorney so you could clean up the evildoers and bring civility and justice to benighted Robbens County. Is that a bitter laugh, Stan?"

"My main goal was to last long enough to get a decent job a long way away from Robbens County. And it ain't horseshit, neither. These guys don't fuck around. And I got a wife and two kids." Hawes's eyes passed briefly over a framed picture on his desk.

"You were actually threatened?"

"I was talked to in a friendly fashion."

"By who-Weames?"

"No, Weames don't do the talking. Floyd."

"My wife's met him. I hear he's a sweetheart."

"Mm. If I ordered a carload of sons of bitches and they just sent him, I'd sign the invoice."

"You think he's the type who'd pull a trigger?"

"I don't know about trigger, but George likes to hurt folks."

"How about the sheriff? I assume he's up to his ears in it."

"Oh, yeah, but Swett's in a different class. Swett's a good-natured slob, good-natured for a Cade, I mean. His mom's Ben Cade's cousin, which would make him a second cousin of your alleged perps."

"Ben Cade being the Cade patriarch."

"You got it. Then we have Judge Murdoch. He's a Hergewiller."

"Not a Cade."

"No, the Hergewillers are a lot more high-tone than the Cades. Rudy Hergewiller was the sheriff here during the first Robbens County war. His people've been on the more legal end of union busting around here ever since. Your boy Poole is a Hergewiller on his mother's side."

"He's not my boy," said Karp automatically, but filed the fact away. "I assume the judge's on the graft like the sheriff."

"Yeah, but it's not even graft the way you're thinking. The company takes care of the sheriff and Murdoch like they've taken care of everyone with any power in the county since Big Tom Killebrew bought the place. It ranges from cases of whiskey at Christmas to bags of cash. It's accepted, like, I don't know, the hot dogs at a company picnic."

"And what does the company buy for this money?"

"It gets to do what it wants. It keeps it being 1910 inside the county. That was a good year for them and they don't see any reason for changing just because the rest of the world has moved on a little. Mainly it's controlling the union, the workers, that and the environmental stuff, although there they have to deal with Charleston and Washington a lot more."

"And how about you? Do you have any bags of cash?"

"I have an envelope of cash. I'm not important enough for a bag." Hawes reached into a bottom drawer of his desk and came out with the classic fat manila envelope.

"I found this in my desk drawer two days after we arrested Mose. No note, nobody saw who left it there. It's two grand in hundreds."

"That's pretty cheap to buy a state's attorney on a triple murder. Did you get bought?"

"I don't know. I guess I was waiting for one of the usual suspects to show up-somebody saw them do it, or some piece of evidence no one could ignore. When Welch waltzed into town in those boots…" He shook his head, as if to clear it of fog. "I can't rightly recall what I thought. Relief. Okay, it wasn't one of their killings, it was just some damn imbecile, a misfortune. I wasn't going to get any calls in the middle of the night-'You know what we want you to do, Stan.' Then I got that envelope."

"I notice you didn't spend it."

"No. And we could use the money." He picked it up and let it drop, sighing. "I guess I could have it cast in a block of Lucite, with a label, like a desk ornament."

"Before that, I'd recommend handing it over to the staties as evidence. Speaking as your legal adviser, now."

"I guess," said Hawes, putting the envelope back in the drawer. "So what do we do now?"

"Wait on the forensics. Speaking of which, the state guys came up with a couple of footprints off that boot of yours at the murder scene."

"Don't tell me. It was worn by a man half the size of Mose Welch."

"We don't know for sure, but that's the way I'd bet," said Karp. "But you knew that."

"Well, what do you want me to do, apologize?"

"Yes. To Welch and his family, and in public. You're bad, you take the shit."

Hawes looked off to the side until most of the red flush had departed from his cheek. He gave a curt nod.

"Good," said Karp. "So, if the crime lab stuff shows what we think it will, that'll be enough for a warrant on the Cade boys and maybe Floyd. Then we'll see if Floyd will rat out Lester Weames."

"That'll be something to see, Willie Murdoch issuing a warrant to arrest the Cades and Floyd. Maybe if they signed their names in blood on the bathroom mirror."

"Well, we'll just have to see," said Karp, and then, with a meaningful look: "I always like to give everyone a chance to do the right thing."

"Hi. It's me."

"Well, it's about time," said Marlene. "Where are you?"

"Back at the farm."

"You were supposed to keep in touch. We haven't spoken since my miraculous escape from the killer mosquitoes. What is it, a whole week?"

"Six days. Sorry. We've been running around a lot, and by the time I thought about it, it was too late. I actually did call a couple of times, but you weren't in."

"I'm not in now. We've moved, or I've moved. The state stashed us in a corporate lodge. It's pretty nice if you're really into intense boredom. On the upside, my client is sprung."

"That's great! They found the real bad guys?" Lucy's excitement as she said this was rather greater than what could be explained by an abstract passion for justice.

"Well, we have a good idea of who they are, but there seem to be difficulties with the judge. How was your trip? The boys behaved?"

They were angels, it seemed. Lucy spun out the story of her trip, studded with amusing anecdotes. The boys had risen to the occasion of contact with their sister's peers, older but not really grown-ups, with surprising charm. They had done Boston with a minimum of whining. GC liked the Fine Arts; Zak had loved Bunker Hill. Both had loved the Museum of Science and the Aquarium. It was just the kind of conversation with her daughter that Marlene liked, a cheery tale of normal children behaving normally to the world's eye. Marlene did not much care what the world thought of her, but she wished very much to be reassured that she had not screwed up her kids too badly. Lucy had learned to provide such assurances whenever they were remotely possible, as now. It had been a nice trip.

"So I guess you'll be coming home soon," said Lucy.

"I don't know. Plans are a little vague just now. Your father seems to regard this as an opportunity for a second honeymoon."

"That's nice."

"Yes, but when the phrase second honeymoon has entered my mind, which I confess it has from time to time, I usually envisioned the Cote d'Azur or Tuscany, not McCullensburg, West Vee Ay. Also, strangely enough, he seems to want me involved in the case. We had a little council of war the other day to review the forensic results, and Stan Hawes, the state's attorney here, objected strenuously to my presence. I'm not one of his favorite people. Your father took him aside and said that we needed all the brain power we could get on this and that I was the second-smartest person he knew, and now that the Welch kid is history, I was clear to stay."

"That must have made you feel good."

"I guess. Second-smartest isn't bad."

"Who's the first?" asked Lucy.

"That's what Hawes said, and Butch said, 'We'll get him, too.' He was talking about V.T."

One St. Andrew's Plaza is where the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is quartered, just a block or so south on Centre Street from the building where Karp had spent most of his working life. It was still steaming in the City when Karp entered the cool of the lobby. He had thought it was hot in West Virginia, but a few weeks in the mountains had sufficed to make the nearly solid air of the City's streets a shock to his system. The gold lettering on the door said Criminal Division, Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section, New York Branch. Karp went in and told the secretary that he had an appointment with her branch chief, Mr. Newbury.

"Nice office, V.T.," said Karp as he shook hands. It was not a particularly nice office, for a federal bureaucrat of some standing, but small and overfull of GI furniture, and with one narrow window. There was, however, a set of original Daumier prints on the wall, and a large framed poster showing the final scene in Little Caesar, Edward G. Robinson dying in the gutter, with the caption being the film's famous last words, "Is this the end of Rico?"

"My palatial office, as my staff calls it," said the other, waving Karp to a seat. "The problem is I am housed in the U.S. Attorney's Office but not of it, therefore of low pecking order when it comes to goodies. I report directly to the criminal division in D.C."

"And you're here because of…?"

"It's where they keep all the money," said Newbury in a confidential voice. He was a small, elegant man, handsome in a peculiar old-fashioned, old-money way, like a model in a 1920s cigarette ad. He was from a famous New York family of hoary antecedence, with its wealth so extensive and encrusted with verdigris that it was simply no longer a consideration. He had started in the DA's office at about the same time as Karp, an unlikely enough event for one of that pedigree, and with even greater unlikelihood he had become Butch Karp's best friend. Karp had not seen him for some time, but it was not entirely friendship that had brought him here. V.T. Newbury was one of the nation's premier experts on dirty money.

After some chatter about personal things, Karp brought up his current occupation, laying out the case itself and the peculiar sociopolitical matrix in which it was embedded.

"So we have enough to arrest and probably convict at least three of the perps, Earl and Wayne Cade, they're cousins, and Bo Cade, Earl's brother. Floyd was more careful, but I don't think it'll be much trouble getting the Cade boys to roll on him. The problem is the judge, a guy named Murdoch. Completely in the tank to the people who apparently own the town and who, indirectly or not, set up the hit on the victims. The state cop I'm working with, Wade Hendricks, thinks that as soon as we ask for a warrant and show our cards, this turd is going to warn them off and make a lot of trouble with the warrants, and in general screw up any chance that we'll be able to get these guys. So, why I thought of you is, I need another judge."

Newbury mimed looking in drawers and under the drift of papers on his desk. "Gosh, we had a bunch of judges stashed here the other day, but they must all be out at the fumigator's."

"What I mean is, the guy takes home eighty-two five per year. He paid cash for a sixty-grand car, and since he got into robes, he's bought hundreds of acres of property plus a twenty-room house. How are they getting him the money?"

Newbury wore an incredulous look. "You want me to initiate a prosecution against a county judge for taking bribes?"

"No, of course not. I just want the goods on him. I want enough documentation to knock him out of the box. Look, these guys are crude. They've been screwing this county so long that they've almost forgotten it's illegal. It won't be multiple anonymous transactions via Nauru and Liechtenstein. It might even be actual big cash deposits, naked. All I need are bank records, or sources of funds if they used noncash transfers."

"Why not go to the state on this?"

"Too long to get them moving, too political. I don't know who we can trust. The governor agrees."

Newbury nodded. "I see. And our legal basis would be…?"

"Our long friendship. Come on, V.T., think up a plausible entry. You're a fed, aren't you?"

"Well, yes, your federal government, where the Fourth Amendment is just a slogan. Still…" Newbury looked off to the side, seemingly studying the poster of the dying Hollywood gangster. Karp waited confidently as his friend's remarkable brain ticked away.

"Robbens County," Newbury said after a minute of this. "Where have I heard that name recently?"

"The murders maybe? There was some coverage…"

"No, murder is of little interest to us here in the white-collar world. Whacking is so blue-collar. Of course, now that the Russians and the Viets are getting involved, this may change, but… no, I'm positive it was more recently, the other day, I think. Some report…"

He flicked through a set of vertical files and pulled out a slim sheaf of papers, scanned them briefly. "Yeah, here it is. This is about the methamphetamine production and distribution system in the Northeast, and it looks like your Robbens County produces a good deal of crank. Do you think that might be the source of some of Judge Murdoch's extra disposable income? Say yes."

"Yes," said Karp.

"Well, then on the basis of a knowledgeable and anonymous informant, I feel justified in adding Judge Murdoch as a subject of the investigation we're currently running on meth-gang money laundering."

"And about time, too. How long before you know something?"

"If they're as dumb as you say? A day or two."

"That fast?"

V.T. gestured to the Little Caesar poster. "It's part of the wonder of RICO. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act is the neatest thing to come along since they closed down the Star Chamber. We practically have general warrants to fish and fish around anyone named until we find something. Your judge is a gimme if he ever used the banking system. We could make toast out of Learned Hand."

Karp walked north through Foley Square, keeping as much as possible in the shade of the tall buildings. He passed 100 Centre Street, easily resisting the impulse to drop in and see what was going on. He passed the Tombs and spared a thought for what it must be like to be imprisoned without air-conditioning, without even a fan, in this oppressive heat. Sympathy, but even more bafflement. Despite all the years he had spent in criminal justice, Karp had never developed a workable psychology of crime. Okay, you had your lunatics, but most of these slobs were rational actors. They thought risking that horror was actually worth some marginal gain, so they broke into buildings, stole cars, passed bad checks, stuck guns in ribs. Many of his colleagues, Karp knew, thought that the criminals didn't mind jail and prison, that it was a rite of passage for lower-class youth of a certain stripe: no big, as they said. Karp didn't believe that. He believed that criminals were able to suppress in their minds the inevitability of punishment, as we all suppress the other inevitability, quite successfully, for most of our lives. For jail was inevitable. Virtually no one did just one crime. Crime inevitably became habitual, and sooner or later Leviathan would notice and chomp! Into the stinking, sweating cages. Helped along by cops and such as Karp.

He crossed through Chinatown. Everyone, it seemed, was out on the street, except those in the sweatshops, literally sweating today no doubt, just like the jailbirds, although these had committed no crime except being born poor in Asia. He passed vent fans that blew out air only a little hotter than that filling the narrow streets. Did South Asians suffer as much from the heat or was that racism? He passed little groups of men in T-shirts or wife-beater undershirts, with rags knotted around their heads, all smoking. The breath from the doorways was scented with boiling rice, anise, venerable greases. Crosby Street was less crowded. Here it was almost entirely industrial, except for his building, which had been converted to residential lofts. There was also one sad Chinese brothel and gambling den, his neighbor.

The loft was breathless as a tomb, oven warm. Quickly he gathered clothing, filled two large suitcases, called a cab. He stripped, took a brief shower, dressed again in fresh clothes. He had the cab take him to Penn Station, where he caught the Metroliner to D.C. He fell asleep somewhere in New Jersey and slept until Baltimore. From Union Station, he cabbed out to National Airport, to the general aviation terminal. The West Virginia King Air waited on the apron. Inside was Governor Orne and a party of state bureaucrats and legislators. Karp took a seat in the rear of the plane, attracting some inquiring looks but no conversation.

Shortly after takeoff, the governor came aft and sat down next to him.

"How'd it go with your pal?"

"Fine," Karp said. "The fix is in. Have you got a replacement in mind? I mean, assuming Murdoch agrees to go quietly."

"Oh, he'll go. He may whine a little, but he'll resign. Bill Murdoch doesn't want to go anywhere near prison, and he knows I'll stick him in Mt. Olive, and not in any of the country clubs we got now. Cheryl tells me you got suspects."

"We do." Karp laid out briefly who they were and the case against them.

"Good. I want Floyd, though, and I want Weames. I don't want to leave this with a bunch of pathetic hillbillies taking the fall."

"We're in agreement then."

"I thought we would be. As far as a replacement, I have a man I think will do fine. He's retired from the state supreme court, name of Bledsoe."

"Retired?"

"Well, he's old but he can run me into the ground. The thing about him is he don't scare. Speaking of which, I hear you might run into some trouble actually arresting these fellas."

"Wade's been making noises like that. He seems to want to avoid a Waco situation."

"So do I. I don't have the manpower or the budget for a siege. If it comes to that, we'll have to bring the feds in, and avoiding that was the whole point of this exercise. I realize Hendricks is in charge of the police work, but I'm looking for you to provide the subtle angles. Wade sometimes lacks subtlety, and he's got no sense of resources. He's a get-the-job-done kind of fella. Hell, that's one of the reasons I came to Washington this trip. I think our LEAA grant's going to be cut, and God knows where I'll find the money to keep your operation going. So speed… you know? If you can manage it, I sure would appreciate getting this behind us as soon as possible."

"We could just grab them and hang them."

The governor looked startled, then laughed. "Bite your tongue, son. We don't have a death penalty in this state. We can't afford one, tell the truth. I'm counting on you for-what did we used to call it?-all deliberate speed."

The FedEx package from V.T. took a week to arrive, during which time Karp had essentially nothing to do: deliberate speed indeed. Marlene went to New York for a meeting of her foundation board and returned to find Karp in a lounger by the pool at the lodge, picking through papers.

"Is that it?"

"Yeah, Judge Murdoch's ticket to retirement. How was your trip?"

"Sure are a lot of people in New York, and those tall buildings. When are you going to use that?"

"Now."

"Will you change out of your bathing suit?"

"Yes, this is a pinstripe occasion. I've always wanted to fire a judge."