Enemy within

8

The next morning Lucy and her father, typically the two earliest risers in the household, sat companionably at breakfast, Karp whipping through the Times, ignoring the travails of nations, including his own, focusing on the scant crime news and sports. Here a little basketball discussion, March Madness, they were nearly down to the Final Four, when she asked abruptly, "Daddy, the police need a warrant to come into somebody's house, don't they?"

"Ordinarily, yes, unless in hot pursuit of a suspected felon," Karp replied, reading on.

"What if it's not a regular house or apartment? Like if it's a little shack where a homeless person is living?"

Karp dropped the paper shield. "Hm. That would depend. If a guy's sitting on a park bench or sleeping in a doorway, no-it's a public place. In the home, the governing rule is from Payton v. New York -you need a warrant except in exigent circumstances. The question then is, what's a home? A homeless shelter is a home under Payton; a cave on government property is not. But there was a case a couple of years back where the cops rousted a guy out of a tent he'd set up in Central Park, and the courts threw out the search. Kind of a nice decision, too; the judge said something to the effect that a place of usual repair at night was a home under the law, regardless of its lack of ordinary amenities."

"So if cops like came into someone's shack that they built, and busted up all his stuff, that would be against the law."

"Well, destroying property without good probable cause is always against the law, warrant or no warrant. An exception would be, for example, if they have reason to suspect there's drugs hidden in the bodywork of a car, they could tear it apart. This is an actual situation?"

"Yeah. A guy I know who lives down by the yards was raided the other day. They roughed him up and smashed all his things. They were looking for the slasher, but Ali didn't know anything."

"They arrested him?"

"No."

"Interesting. He get the name of the cops? Badge numbers?"

"No. They were detectives, I think. Plainclothes. They were looking for this man, they call him Canman, who had the place where I found Fake Ali's body. And Ali-I mean Real Ali-he already told another detective what he knew, which was nothing. He's black-Ali is-and, you know, you think, 'Oh, it's more cop racism,' but one of the two cops was black, so I guess it couldn't be that. But why would they send two different cops to talk to the same person?"

"Oh, some screwup," said Karp. "Tell your friend to report the abuse anyway."

"They won't really do anything, will they?"

"Probably not, but it adds to the record. The type of cop who racks up a sheet of persistent abuse, sooner or later he's going to do something they can't ignore, and at that point, if he's got fifty complaints against him, the bosses will maybe toss him out on his ear. If not, they might let it slide or defend him."

"That sucks."

"What else is new?" Karp agreed, but as he took up his paper again, he was thinking. Detectives harassing the homeless; okay, it happened, they were hot on a trail, sometimes they did not bother with the niceties. A pair of detectives, one white, one black, not exactly common in the NYPD, and they weren't the team primarily responsible for the slasher murders. That was Paradisio and Rastenberg, a pair of lilies. It could have been some other players from that team, but Karp doubted it. Why? No reason, except that little tingle that told him he was right. The rail yards were right in their stomping grounds, too. Had Cooley and Nash been assigned to the slasher team? Unlikely, and even if so, why would they cover the same ground that other cops already had? Preventing just that, conserving resources, was the whole point of a police task force. Again, the notion that Cooley was pursuing something personal, as with Lomax. Now Detective Cooley wanted this Canman character, but for what? Karp's eye paused at an article on the New York page: "Marshak Assailant Had Violent Juvenile Record." Oh, the Times! Now they've decided he was an assailant, not a victim, which went well with the statement of a "source" at the DA that they had not settled on the precise nature of the charges pending further investigation, although second-degree manslaughter could not be ruled out. There was no evidence that Ms. Marshak (the actual assailant here) had been attacked. Police sought a possible witness. Karp wondered who the source was. Roland, probably. More significant was the unnamed source who had sent Ramsey's juvenile records to the reporter, C. Melville Bateson. A great name for a Times reporter-solid, like the pillars of a public building. Ramsey, it seemed, had done six months in Spofford for armed robbery at age seventeen. Juvenile records were supposed to be sealed, and their revelation at an adult trial was prohibited by law. They were easy enough to obtain, however, if you made the effort, and you wanted to blacken the character of a victim, and you were inside the system; like, for example, Norton Fuller.

As he mused on this, Lucy interrupted his thoughts. "It's so unjust. Can't you do anything?"

Karp put the paper down again. "Technically, yes; practically, not much. It would come down to the word of two police officers against that of a homeless man. No case, even if your guy's telling the absolute truth. It's an imperfect system."

"The system!" Contemptuously. "Everyone blames the system, but the system's made up of people, all of them doing bad things a lot of the time. How do you stand it?"

Karp often wondered the same thing, and now he thought, uncomfortably, of his conversation with Solotoff. Sighing heavily, he replied, "It's not easy, kid. It is just that it's better than the obvious alternatives. Letting crime flourish, for example. Arbitrary violence, for example, which is a lot more feel-good than the law. Look at how popular those movies about the Mob and rogue cops are. The law can't touch the villain, so the hero whacks him out. End of story. But in real life…? You know, your mom was into that for a long time, in real life. Did you like it?"

The girl sniffed. "Oh, I guess not. But can't you do anything?"

"Oh, yeah," said Karp, smiling. "I'll think of something."

Lucy walked out the door, fully intending to go to school. But as she strode down Lafayette to the Lex station, the events of the past days bore her down. She could not remove from her mind the moment when she had touched Fake Ali's shoulder, and his body had slid backward, and the wound in his throat had gaped open like an obscene grin. And the fight with Doug, and what the cops had done to the harmless, decent Real Ali. The world was full of death, sin, and depravity, a choking fog. The thought of sitting in a bright classroom full of silly girls, concentrating on the glories of literature or the course of American history, nauseated her, as did the fact that she had been cutting classes fairly regularly and was hopelessly behind, had failed or would fail all her midterms, and owed in the next two weeks term papers in both French lit and American history that she had not started to think about. At the subway station, therefore, she found her body moving as if controlled by an outside force, away from the Lexington line and through the crowded tunnels to the uptown N train. She toed the yellow line, close to the edge, and stood there as the train came in, the scream of the wheels and the roar of air and engine obliterating thought for a grateful instant. Maybe a crazy person would push her and that would be it, but none did, and she let herself be jostled into the car by the crowd, exhausted and ashamed of these thoughts. She found a seat and gave it up immediately to an old man with a cane. She got the usual embarrassed smile from him, and the usual scowls or confused looks from the able-bodied in their seats. The faces around her seemed gargoylish, oozing sin, selfishness, cruelty. And was she different? Hardly. She would have committed murder, too, had she not been stopped by David.

Rising panic, a foul taste in her mouth, sweat cold on her forehead. The bodies pressed against her as the train swayed. She couldn't bear it. The train stopped, and she squirmed out. Thirty-fourth Street. She stood on the platform, frozen in the moving mob. I'm losing my mind, she thought, this isn't happening to me. The train pulled out. She heard music, a saxophone. She turned. A black man in a skullcap and a long, dirty raincoat was playing "Autumn Leaves," a sweet, rich sound, amplified by the concrete vault of the subway. Across the tracks, on the downtown side, she saw a Chinese man kneel and open a violin case and begin to play the same song, in harmony, a spontaneous duet.

She listened, rapt, until the end of the song, then dropped a dollar into the horn man's case and found that she could move again. One of the little city miracles. She left the subway with a lighter heart and went off to find David Grale. At Holy Redeemer, she found that he had been by the kitchen earlier and had gone off with the bike. This was a grocery man's rig with a big hamper over the front wheel, which was used to bring supplies and food to people too debilitated or ornery to come in for services. One of the layworkers said that David was planning to cruise the yards. Lucy walked west and found the bike where she expected, leaning against a torn chain-link fence. She descended to the homeless village, where she found David and Benz half-dragging, half-carrying what looked like an enormous duffel bag, which, from the sound it made, must have been full of scrap metal. Lila Sue danced around them, flapping her hands in agitation. As Lucy came closer, she saw that it was not a duffel bag, but a man.

"It's a balloon man, he fell from the upstairs tracks in the sky," said Lila Sue helpfully. Lucy's heart sank.

"Hi, Lucy," said David. "Can you give us a hand here?"

"Oh, no, not another one!" she wailed.

"No, just old Jingles," said Grale. "We found him down on the tracks. He's comatose."

"He's comatose and his other toes are frozen," said Lila. "It was too cold on the tracks in the sky, and the pain came through at once, puff puff, said the rain train. Let me tell you my story, Lucy."

"Not right now, Lila," said Lucy. She grabbed one of Jingles's arms, Benz grabbed the other, and David heaved up the bottom half. Jingles, a person of complex ethnicity, was dressed in the usual multiple layers, the top one of which was an army field jacket of extraordinary filthiness. It was covered, as were the equally foul trousers, with dozens of small metal objects-pop tops, squashed cans, gears, fragments of automobiles thrown from street crashes, broken tools, parts from a TV, pieces of a toaster-necessary to keep the CIA from tracking him by means of the beacon they had implanted in his body. These accessories gave him his street name. As she carried, Lucy tried not to think about the grime under her hands, or the smell, a compound of wine stink, unwashed human, and something sharp, sweet, and chemical. Hideous, but one was not supposed to mind those things in the service of the afflicted. She tried (and failed) to imagine St. Catherine licking the sores of the lepers and for inspiration looked back at David, who gave her his angelic grin and said, "He sure stinks, doesn't he? Wine and huffing glue, the famous death-wish cocktail. If Benz hadn't've found him, he would've puked up and strangled in the vomit. And what a loss to the world that would be."

"The boss of the world likes me," said Lila Sue. "I bring her flowers and balloon pickles, and you know what?"

"What, honey?" said David. They were at the incline now, and David was supporting most of the dead weight.

"She has every color, even green and purple chocolate! Now I have a different story."

"Later, Lila Sue," Benz grunted as they lay Jingles down at the top of the slope. As they did so, the man jerked violently, and his face turned slaty blue while appalling noises issued from his mouth. Benz shrieked.

"Christ, he's choking," David cried. "Lucy! Benz! Flip him over. Pry his mouth open. Do it!"

They heaved Jingles over, slipping on the littered ground. David straddled the man, locked his hands under Jingles's midriff, and heaved several times. Cringing, Lucy pried open Jingles's clenched jaws and was rewarded by a spasmodic series of coughs and a gush of foul-smelling yellow fluid all over her hands.

Jingles coughed some more, shook, pissed on himself, and settled again into oblivious slumber, snoring. Lucy held her hands out in front of her like a zombie.

David laughed. "You should see your face, Lucy."

"Oh, shut up! What am I supposed to do now?"

He put an arm around her shoulder. "It's all part of the saint biz, kid. You'll get used to it. Or you won't. Meanwhile, I can only baptize you with water."

He led her across the street and down an alley, where they found a standpipe and faucet without a handle. He took one from his jacket pocket and turned on the water. She washed her hands and dabbed with a handkerchief at the splatters on her skirt and stockings. She sank once more into shame.

"What are we going to do with Jingles?"

"Oh, I'll get him over to the VA. They'll keep him for a week until he dries out and then toss him back. And in a couple of weeks, if he doesn't get hit by a car or fall asleep on the tracks, I'll have to do it again. The poor ye have always with you. And the stupid, and the miserable, and the hopelessly damaged."

"Why do you do it then?"

"Why? It's my calling. And I don't have many other skills." He shut off the water, pocketed the handle. "Not like you, for example. Why do you do it? And why aren't you in school?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. It just seems like the right thing to do, helping people. The middle-class life, you know, school and having stuff, and buying stuff… it gives me the willies sometimes. I want all of that"-she gestured widely, taking in the armies of the destitute of New York-"to go away. I want things to be different. So people like Jingles and Benz and Ali can have real lives. How much would it cost? And this city has so much money, it makes me sick, and it's the poor old Church that has to take up the slack, people like you…" She stopped, embarrassed again. "I mean, it can't go on, can it?"

"Oh, yeah. You'd be surprised what people can take and how long horrible things can go on. Meanwhile"-he jabbed a thumb in the direction they had come from-"this is paradise. Jingles's life would be pure heaven to two-thirds of the people on the planet. We have to believe in ultimate mercy, you know."

"Ultimate mercy? You mean grace?"

"I mean death." He had for just a second that look on his face, the stranger she sometimes saw there, and then the lovely smile was back, and he said, "I tell you what-lend me your fancy cell phone, and I'll get old Mr. J. picked up, and then I'll run you across on my bike and we'll distribute charity for a while, and then we'll have lunch. I can tell you need cheering up, my little saintlet. Let's see if we can't generate a few moments of joy."

Thinking of something, Karp called for Murrow and told him what to do. Murrow wrote it down with his small golden pencil in the little leather-bound notebook he always carried.

"Is that legal?" he asked.

"Barely. It's also one of the large number of barely legal things you would not like known that you've done."

"Check. Are you going to the big press conference?"

"I might drop by. I might stand in the back and sob because my words aren't being taken down by newsies to decorate the Bloomingdale's ads."

"Yes, it's sad. I assume this conference is to respond to McBright's speech. What did you think of it?"

Karp picked a thin sheaf of paper from his cluttered desk and flipped through it casually. "An impassioned cry for justice. Unfortunate for Marshak that Desmondo Ramsey had a photogenic, middle-class, grieving family. Basically a decent kid with a few problems, not unlike yourself, Murrow. My daughter knew him slightly, as a matter of fact. Did you catch the reference in the Times to his juvie record?"

"Yeah. Character assassination of the victim. He was in on a stickup as a kid, so, therefore, okay to blast him. But what you asked me to do… that's on another case."

"Yes, it is, but you notice McBright mentions Lomax, too, and also our old pal Jorell Benson, accused killer of a politically significant group member. The picture he's painting is of a DA's office that skews justice according to skin color and politics. A black guy gets shot, they give the white fellow that shot him a pass, just like they're getting ready to give Sybil a pass. A black guy is accused of killing a white, they put him up for the death penalty." Karp thumbed through the transcript pages. "Here's a good part: 'That beautiful lady Justice has a blindfold on. And the job of district attorney demands that her blindfold be tight across her eyes, so that skin color and class and how much money or political influence you have and whether you're homeless or not doesn't matter. But Jack Keegan has tugged that blindfold down so far you can't call it Justice anymore. Another one of those little tugs, Jack, and we might as well call her Ms. Lynch.' Pretty powerful stuff."

"But untrue," said Murrow in a tone tinged with hope.

Karp gave him a hard look, then smiled and tossed the transcript down. "Of course, untrue. And also somewhat true. In fact, Justice is unequal. It's the case that almost everyone on death row in this country got there by killing white people. It's the case that most black defendants are poor and are defended by public defenders with no resources and less than adequate time to prepare cases. It's the case that the cops and us tend to pay more attention when a lowlife kills a citizen, black or white, than when a lowlife kills another lowlife, and it's a fact that a really high proportion of mutts in this town are black or Hispanic. It's the case that the system depends on those inequities, because if every accused felon we got in here could afford to mount a case like Sybil Marshak is going to mount, we would have to expand the courts and prosecutorial systems a hundredfold. But I also think that the inequities are the result of class and poverty. It used to be Irish, Jews, and Italians-now it's blacks and Hispanics. There's no specific racism involved here like there was in the Jim Crow South. Out on the street, with cops, it might be different, but not here. Okay, I'll give you that if Benson had killed his cousin the crack dealer, we would not even be thinking about seeking death. On the other hand, given the vic, I think Roland would come down just as hard on Benson if Benson was a nice Jewish boy." Karp grimaced. "Hell, harder probably, and his instinct is to cream Marshak, too. So, in that sense, McBright is demagoguing. There's no…" Karp moved his hands, searched for a phrase.

"Element of intent?"

"Exactly, Murrow," Karp agreed, after a brief pause to determine whether the kid was cracking wise again. "The element of intent. We're corrupt, but not vile. I don't know about you, but it keeps me going. Now, scram and do that stuff. Let me know how it goes."

Murrow went off, and Karp had to restrain his impulse to call him back, to forget the whole thing. He screwed around with minor stuff all morning, wrote a set of blistering memos to ADAs whose case preparation was not up to his standards, had a couple of brief meetings, spent a good deal of time resisting the temptation to make himself feel more useful by creating work for others. In fact, much of what he used to do had been taken over by Fuller. It was all the administrative stuff he disliked doing, but had recently found that it was just this stuff that had allowed him to get anything important done. It turned out that a threat to delay a load of new furniture was a greater goad to right action than a lawsuit that might cost the state millions or throw some poor sucker unjustly into prison. Fuller had those threats in his pocket now, and Karp, as a result, found himself a lot less potent bureaucrat. The good side of this was that it gave him much more time to poke around the office, visiting courtrooms and making a nuisance of himself to the sloppy and unprepared. He also had time to drop by press conferences.

This was a big one: the area outside the elevator bank on the eighth floor was jammed with TV crews and print reporters and lit with the glare of many lamps. Karp went to the back of the room. A little group of ADAs was back there already. Karp knew a few of them, all ridiculously young-looking. He traded a few wisecracks with Dave Pincus, a homicide guy, and chatted briefly with a few others whose faces he did not immediately know, a thin dark woman in her first few months at homicide, named Meghan Lacy, and a slim, bespectacled blond guy in a good blue suit, Peter something, whose job Karp could not immediately place. He recalled that he used to pride himself on knowing all the more senior ADAs, those who had been there more than a year or so, but it seemed that faces had lost their bite on his consciousness, or maybe it was just that these young, unformed faces had too little bite, like the interchangeable ones who populate TV sitcoms. Or maybe it was the mental decrepitude of age.

Karp was tall enough to see over the heads of the crowd, and he had a good view when Keegan emerged from the DA suite with Fuller and Hrcany in tow. All the TV lights went on now, and the three of them all got that bleached look, like earthlings being levitated on a light beam to a flying saucer. Keegan stepped up to the thrusting mikes and read a short statement. He said that his office had always followed the law without fear or favor, that it would continue to do so, despite claims to the contrary from irresponsible political opponents intent on increasing racial tension to their own selfish advantage. It was not his usual policy to comment on cases before charges were filed. In view of the substantial public interest in a number of current cases, he thought it responsible to make an exception. He introduced Roland as homicide bureau chief and then prepared to take questions.

The journalists shouted all at once; this was not the White House. Keegan restored some order and picked up a question about Marshak. No, charges had not been decided upon. The investigation was ongoing. The DA was not aware of who had leaked Ramsey's juvenile record. It was not this office. He deplored it and said it would have no effect on the charges brought, if any. No, no charge had been ruled out. Murder? No, no indication that such a charge was justified at present. No, nothing was ruled out.

Peter, who was standing close to Karp, murmured, "Headline: 'DA Considering Murder Charge for Marshak.'"

Karp smiled and replied, "Subhead: 'I'm No Racist Nazi, DA Claims.'"

"It's a shame he has to do this," said Peter. "The election, I guess."

"You guess right. It's still a no-win for him."

The press had exhausted Marshak. Now they turned to Benson. Was the DA going for the death penalty? With such a weak case? It wasn't weak, said the DA, and turned to Roland, who stepped forward and gave a rundown on the strengths of Benson, referencing a bunch of other cases where the DA had convicted on the same sort of evidence. They had an eyewitness; they had the loot. Would they be asking for death if the victim hadn't been a Hasidic Jew? That had nothing to do with it, said Roland, straight-faced. Karp knew in his deepest heart that making such a cynically false statement in public was as entirely beyond him as winning the New York marathon and wondered briefly whether this was a defect or a virtue in a public official. So much for Benson. Karp saw a thin brown arm go up. She said her name, he didn't catch it. But he caught the name of her paper.

"Mr. Hrcany," she said. "You seem to be taking your time investigating the murder of a black man shot by Ms. Marshak, and yet the shooting of Shawn Lomax was whipped through the grand jury in record time, despite a number of unexplained details about the shooting and the behavior of the police officers involved, Brendan Cooley and Willie Nash. Could you explain why that happened?"

The volume in the room went up two notches. Cooley's was a familiar name to city beat reporters. Roland was clearly taken aback by the question. He made the mistake of glancing at Keegan, which would look terrific on tape-a sneaky subordinate checking the coming lie with his boss. Then he rolled his great shoulders, squared his jaw, and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about, Miss Umm. Although I'm not intimately familiar with that case, I understand that the officers involved shot Mr. Lomax to defend their lives. The… Mr. Lomax tried to ram their car with the stolen car he was driving."

"Did he? Well, could you tell us then why all the bullets that struck him came from the back? He was shot ten times in the back, Mr. Hrcany. How could he be shot ten times in the back while he was allegedly driving head-on toward the police in their car?"

Uproar, actual baying. Roland's face became immobile, its faint smile fixed like a slug in formalin. "I have no information as to, in reference to, the details of the case. The grand jury obviously has made a decision not to indict… to consider this a justified shooting, and…"

"Did the grand jury see this autopsy report? Did the district attorney tell the grand jurors that Shawn Lomax was shot in the back ten times?" She had a carrying, mellow, cultivated voice, unexcited, each syllable evenly stressed, like an elementary-school teacher asking Johnny whether he had done his homework.

Karp saw the warning front of red appear on Roland's cheeks and sent an urgent thought message: Just say we'll look into it, be gracious, and get the hell out of there! But no; Hrcany was an iceberg in the courtroom, absolutely unflappable, but he was not in one now, and he was being embarrassed in front of his boss and Fuller. By a woman. By a black woman.

He said, "This is not the place to split hairs about what the grand jury did or did not see, miss! Grand jury testimony is secret by law-I don't know where you got hold of that information…"

"I have a copy of the police report."

"Which I'm sure you're not authorized to have. Can we move on?"

Roland pointed to a man. But, of course, the man wanted to know the same thing the woman wanted to know. Blood in the water. Was the DA running a cover-up? If the report was correct, would the DA reindict? Would the police report be generally released? Was Cooley getting a special deal? All the sorts of questions that weren't meant to obtain answers as much as to make public officials look like prevaricating saps on television. Roland's voice grew harsher, until he was practically screaming answers at the reporters. Karp saw Keegan grip Roland's arm and speak into his ear. The DA stepped forward, promised a full investigation of the Lomax affair, and closed the conference. He attempted a dignified exit toward the DA suite door, but he and Roland and Fuller were mobbed by shouting reporters. A couple of cops from the DA squad moved forward to try to clear a lane to the door, but there were too many people, and the TV cameramen, seeing actual conflict, were drawn forward by blood lust. The boom mikes swayed over the press like the pikes of the villagers attacking Frankenstein's lab. Karp thought to himself, why not? And, signaling Peter Whoever and Dave Pincus to follow him, they surged like icebreakers into the throng, using their hips and elbows with abandon.

No one, it turned out, was injured, except in their dignity. Karp managed to shoehorn Roland into an elevator, along with Peter, Pincus, a couple of other ADAs, including Meghan, and a lone cop. Roland's face was brick red by now, and the negative aspects of his personality were in full spate. The elevators in the DA wing are notoriously slow, and during the descent from eight to six Roland had ample time to vent, and he did so in the most vile and obscene terms, concentrating upon the sex of his tormentor and her race, too. Karp was silent during this outburst, not from shock, for he understood something of the demonic forces rolling free beneath the conscious surface of Hrcany's mind, but because he honestly thought that, failing some verbal release, apoplexy was a real possibility. When the car stopped, Meghan Lacy rushed out as if to escape a contagion. Her face was bleached of color.

"You want to talk about this, Roland?" Karp offered, but this was rejected with a snarl as the man stalked away to his office. Karp went back to his own room, feeling traitorous and low. He twiddled a pencil and otherwise wasted public funds. He stared out a dirty window. He thought about touring courtrooms, which generally got his blood pumping, but just now he lacked the energy. A little tap at the door. He grunted assent, and Meghan Lacy came in. Her face looked damp, as if she had been crying and had splashed water on it. Her large, dark eyes were pinkly puffy. She came right to the point.

"I want a transfer. I don't want to work for that man anymore."

"A little extreme, don't you think? He just had a bad day."

She sniffed. "If you had a bad day, would you spew out sexist, racist crap like that?"

"No, but I'm not a tormented Hungarian genius like Roland Hrcany." Karp said it lightly, but she did not smile. She was one of the ones who came to prosecution out of a desire to make the world tidy, to mete out punishment with a fair hand, to work for justice. That type tended to become chronically angry when they finally realized that this was not what public prosecution was all about.

"And what Bateson was saying? Is it true?"

"Was that Bateson? C. Melville? Of the Times?"

She nodded.

"True? I guess partly. She obviously had the police report. Like the DA said, we'll look into it. About transferring, why don't you think about it for a while? You're a good prosecutor. You should stay in homicide."

"Not while he's there. I've noticed it a lot before this, you know. With women. Sly digs, snickers with the boys. Okay, that's like par for the course, right? He never actually, you know, did anything actionable. As for just now: God knows, I hear a lot of ripe language, but this was"-she cast about for words to describe it, failed, settled on-"over the line."

Karp cleared his throat. This was not the first of this sort of conversation he'd had with sharp, young female attorneys in re Roland.

"Look, Meghan-Roland has a problem with women, and with African-Americans, true, but in almost twenty years of working with him, I've never known it to affect his substantive judgment on the job. He has a problem with women because when he was ten, his family was escaping from Hungary during the revolt there when a big Russian bullet went through his mother's head and splashed her brains all over him. I think he just froze up then, some way, in the understanding and tenderness department, and he never got around to unfreezing. I hate psychologizing anyone, but I'd say that Roland finds it hard to trust anyone female. Given that, the fact that he's never, as far as I know, blocked any woman from advancement is significant. And, as you point out, he keeps sex out of the office-no pinching, no hustling. Okay, that's one thing. Then he came to America, where he started in a school in Brownsville that was eighty percent black kids, and he was a skinny white kid with a funny name, who talked funny English. It was not pleasant, and it went on for a long, long time, which is why he made himself into the moose he now is. Is he a racist? I can only say he's kept that out of his work here, too." Karp spread his hands. "They say to understand all is to forgive all. Meanwhile, he's a great prosecutor, and you can learn a lot working for him."

She looked sulky, as the self-righteous often do when called upon to forgive. "A lot of people have had hard lives. That doesn't excuse it."

"No, I guess not." Karp took in a big breath, let it out. "Do you intend to take action, as having been damaged under the equal opportunity laws?"

Her mouth opened, but she thought again and shook her head. "No. I don't need that on my record. The boys don't like it, unless the guy's run his hand up your dress and promised you a fucking pay raise if you let him touch it. He'll dig his own grave, eventually." She got up and left.

All afternoon Karp waited for a call from Keegan, to meet, to strategize the catastrophe, but none came. Apparently, on this issue he was out of the loop. Maybe Jack didn't trust him anymore. That made them even.

He went home early, not as early as a judge, but early for him. He was surprised to find Marlene there before him, on the old couch in front of the TV, remote in her hand, flipping between NBC, ABC, and CNN.

He hung up his raincoat and sat down next to her. She offered a cheek, and he kissed it. "Where is everyone?" he asked.

"The boys are in their room playing with matches. I paged Lucy, but she hasn't called back yet."

Karp looked at the screen. There was an inset still photograph of a familiar face: Richard Perry, in happier days. The rest of the screen was taken up with a shot of a road, at night, in some town, damp from rain, tatty, trash-strewn, not America. In the background, groups of soldiers were standing around a few vehicles, drab Humvees and Land Rovers painted white, the kind of Balkan scene that had over the past decade become as familiar to television audiences as Letterman's grin. In the foreground, an earnest young woman in a rain parka was talking at them.

"Perry's dead?" asked Karp.

"No, he's alive. They got him out."

"No kidding! Who, the army?"

"No, Osborne. Shh! Watch this!"

The scene changed-a taped segment, obviously recorded earlier-it was daylight there in the Balkan village. Several tan Toyota SUVs pulled up to what seemed to be the same soldiers. A door opened and out stepped a tough-looking man in a black jumpsuit. He turned around to open a back door, and Karp saw that OSBORNE INTL. was written in white across his back. Then Richard Perry stepped out of the Toyota, and all the soldiers applauded. Cut to Perry, a close-up; he was unshaven, looking wan and exhausted, saying that it was good to be alive and that he couldn't thank enough the team that had extracted him from captivity. More tough guys in black jumpsuits got out and grinned at the cameras. The announcer came back on and gave a brief description of where Perry and his party were now-en route to a hospital in Germany-and then back to the anchorperson with a split-screen, and Lou Osborne was there, in his office, talking about how great it all was and how Osborne never gave up on its clients.

"How did Osborne get them out?" Karp asked.

"Oleg did it, him and a bunch of ex-Soviet antiterrorist hard guys he has on retainer. It was the Serbs who snatched Perry, apparently, a splinter group, pissed off about Kosovo. The news broke just as I came in with the boys. Lou called me and told me to turn on the tube. I've been riveted ever since."

"I didn't know Osborne could do that-run rescue missions."

"Oh, Oleg has a pretty free hand in that area. Drag enough dollars through those places and rats come out of the woodwork. Lou, of course, is ecstatic."

"It's a good thing. Hard to lose someone like that."

"Oh, not about Perry as such. It's the IPO. It goes out tomorrow under the best possible conditions."

"So you'll be rich," said Karp neutrally.

"I guess. Rich enough to afford to eat at Paoletti's tonight. Why don't you grab up the monsters and I'll smear some makeup over my raddled face. My treat."

"What about Lucy?"

"I'll leave a note. But she doesn't eat anyway."

The next day, a Thursday, the last one in March, Karp saw that Shawn Lomax had finally made it into history in the Newspaper of Record, front page above the fold. There was a picture of Mrs. Martha Lomax, the mother, standing with the usual liberal dignitaries in front of a church. McBright was right next to her, holding an arm. The story was bylined C. Melville Bateson. It had never occurred to Karp that C. Melville was a black woman when he had told Murrow to fax the Times city desk, anonymously, the police report on the Lomax shooting. Maybe that was racism and sexism in him, too, but it didn't matter at this point. For twenty years Karp had been married to his idea of public law, trying to build something fine, or at least to keep the memory of something fine alive, against the slow water-drip erosion of stupidity and moral rot. And now he was down in it, too. Ten, even five years ago, it would never have occurred to him to leak a document to the press, and now he had done it, in a good cause, naturally, but wasn't that what they all said? It was like the first adultery. The first time you talk yourself into thinking it's true love, and before you know it, you're taking stone-faced whores to hot-sheet hotels. He thought yet again about what V.T. had said. Karp was stuck between unsavory choices. He was not going to somehow convert Jack Keegan into the man Garrahy was, the man he needed to work for, and for some reason he did not have it in him to turn into Garrahy himself. And maybe Solotoff had been right-maybe Garrahy wasn't even Garrahy. So he had thrown a bomb. He was a fanatic, after all, everyone said so, and that's what fanatics do. He tossed the paper away, as disgusted with himself as he had ever been.

But it got worse. On arriving at the courthouse he was summoned to the DA's office. Keegan was at his desk, flanked by Fuller. The DA's face was dark with anger. Fuller's bore its usual bland look, but it seemed to Karp to be a little too self-contained, as if the man were holding back an expression more pleased, even triumphant. Through his mind there flashed the thought that they'd found out about the homicide report, and that this was curtains. He sat down, opened his ledger, and asked, "What's up?"

"Wait," said Keegan in a dead voice. Karp noticed that the tip of Keegan's prop cigar was crushed as if he had pounded it on the table. A tape recorder was on his desk, and his fingers danced close to it, as if eager to mash PLAY. Hrcany walked in. Whatever the problem was, Hrcany clearly did not know about it. He was his ordinary cocky self. He pulled a chair away from the conference table and sat.

"Somebody die?" he asked.

"Listen to this!" snapped the DA, and started the tape.

It was scratchy and muffled, but the words were perfectly clear, as was the identity of the speaker. The screaming voice was silent at last, and Keegan stopped the tape.

"Where in hell did you get that?" Hrcany demanded.

"It came up through the mail room in an interoffice pouch, with a note saying copies had been sent to the networks and the papers. How could you have been so stupid, Roland? On top of what's been going on,"-Keegan flung up his hands in disgust-"it's a total disaster."

"Hey, I lost my temper in a goddamn elevator, with no one but staff around. Is that a crime now?"

"He still doesn't get it," said Fuller.

Hrcany sprang to his feet. "Oh, go fuck yourself, you mealymouthed little putz!"

"Sit down, Roland, goddammit!" After a frightening pause, when for an instant it seemed to Karp that Roland would not, that he would spring across the intervening distance and tear Fuller to pieces, the man slumped back into his chair.

"I'd like to know who the fuck recorded that tape," Hrcany snarled. "There were six people in that elevator car-me, Butch, Pincus, a cop named Bradley, Meghan Lacy, and another assistant… Christ, I bet it was Lacy, that little bitch!"

"It wasn't Lacy," said Karp tiredly. "Lacy came to me later to complain about it. I talked her out of writing you up."

"So who was it? You?" The glitter of paranoia flicked on in Hrcany's blue eyes.

"Of course it wasn't me, Roland, and I hardly think it was Dave Pincus. Did you know the other guy… Peter something?"

"No, I thought you did."

"Right, and I thought he was a pal of Dave's or Meghan's from the office. He was wearing a lawyer suit, and he had the top edge of a plastic ID card showing in his breast pocket. A ringer."

"What? You think I was set up?"

"I don't know. The guy might've just hung around hoping to pick up something rich. It was pretty confused, as you recall. He must've had a mini-recorder in his pocket and turned it on when you started your rant."

"Listen to me, now!" the DA broke in, rapping hard on his desk. "I don't give a rat's ass how it happened. It happened, Roland, and it's on you. And I don't want to hear any horseshit about what's a crime and what's free speech. We've had cabinet officers dismissed in this country for telling a dirty joke. People have had their political careers wrecked for a chance remark, and let me tell you, buster, what's on that tape is no chance remark. It's sick! I have had twelve phone calls from the press this morning, asking me what action I'm going to take. I've put them off because I wanted to talk to you first."

Karp watched the DA's face form itself into a mash of righteous hypocrisy. "Look, Roland, I want you to know this isn't about the election or politics. It's simply unacceptable behavior, I mean the indication of attitudes that we simply cannot tolerate in a public organization like this. I think you need help, and I suggest you find some. And I think we should make this painful situation as brief as we possibly can, so… let's make it immediate, as of close of business today."

"You're firing me?" Hrcany was stunned. He turned and looked at Karp openmouthed, as if to say, this is some kind of joke, right?

"Is this really necessary, Jack?" Karp offered. "A leave of absence…"

"Dammit, Butch, I canned you for a lot less. I was able to hide you for a while-what you did, it could've been an accident. You got no history in that area, unlike Roland unfortunately, and people forget. But not this."

Roland was staring at Keegan. From where he sat, Karp could see a vein bulging dangerously in the man's temple. "You're firing me? After eighteen years? For this shit?"

"You can resign," said Keegan in a dull voice.

"Fucking right I resign, and fuck the bunch of you!"

Hrcany got up and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

There was a silence, which Karp broke by saying, "I can't believe this. I can't believe you're doing this."

"I have no choice. There's going to be a firestorm tonight and tomorrow… you saw the way the press is…"

Karp wasn't listening. "This whole thing sucks. It stinks of political expediency."

"Oh?" Keegan's voice rose. "The last time I checked, this was a political office, and let me tell you something, boyo: when you do the shit-work, and you kiss the fannies necessary to run for a political office, then you can pontificate to me about what the hell is necessary to run one." Keegan had turned dark pink in the face and was now jabbing in Karp's direction with his damaged cigar.

"You want my resignation, too, Jack? You can have it."

"Oh, pipe down! Don't get more noble on me than I can stomach! I don't want your resignation. I want you to take up where Roland left off, clean out this mess."

"Mess?" Karp goggled.

"Yeah, dammit! This mess in homicide. Benson, Marshak, the cop killing, what's-his-name, this Lomax thing, the bum slasher. It's wrecking us. I need you to fix it."

"What, you want me to take over homicide?"

"Right, homicide."

"You're making me bureau chief?"

Was that a little cloud that passed over the big pink face? Karp could usually read the DA pretty well, and he thought the man was burning a little too much coal in the sincerity engine. Karp snapped a quick look at Fuller. Fuller met his gaze levelly, but could not help showing a little tightness around the eyes, a lick of the lips, like a lizard practicing a go at a beetle. They were up to something. Karp felt his belly hollow out. There was no trust here. Had there ever been any? It didn't matter.

Keegan said, "Not officially. You can pick anyone you want as deputy, let him deal with the routine stuff. I want you to handle the high-profile cases. Get us out of this right, and we'll see about making it permanent." The DA brought a big politician's grin up from his collection of smiles. "Hell, it's what you always wanted, getting back there. You know you've been mooning after it like a damn kid in a toy store for the last five years. It used to drive Roland crazy."

Which was true, and so it took a good deal of resolve for Karp to say, "I need to think about it. For starters, I need to talk to my wife."

He went back to his office and sat for a while, feeling faintly nauseated. He had thought that by this time he had become utterly void of personal ambition, and it shocked him badly to find that it was not true. He wanted homicide badly, and the knowledge that Keegan knew that and was using the promise of a permanent appointment thereto as a manipulative tool did not entirely still his lust for the job. They wanted to keep him on the reservation until after the election, to saddle him with the political messes they had made, after which… who knew? The irony, of course, was that this leak had made the mess far worse, although building political pressure had been an essential part of his plan. But he had not expected this turn, he had really not expected Roland to ruin himself and leave Karp with the great soggy tar baby of homicide. He had imagined that he could stand off more, a gray eminence on staff, skillfully tweaking the system. Staff people did it all the time, leaking and lying-it was practically in the job description. But if he took homicide now, he'd be right in the center of it, having to fix what he himself had broken, with the prize he shamefully lusted for dangling from the hands of the DA and his nasty little…

Karp picked up the phone and pushed the speed button for Marlene's private line. It rang a long time before someone, not Marlene, picked it up, a man in fact, whose voice was loud and seemed slurred. There were peculiar noises in the background, thumping music, many voices, punctuated by shouts and whistles. The man said that it was crazy in there, but he'd try to find her. A clunk as the receiver was tossed down.

Shortly, he heard his wife's voice.

"What's going on? It sounds like a party."

"It is a party. We started drinking champoo this morning. You should come over and drink some. You could see distinguished corporate security personnel dancing on the desks in various states of undress. There is someone's tie hanging from my desk lamp. I expect panties to follow."

"This is about Perry?"

"Oh, Perry! Foo on Perry! He is rescued. We is rescued by his rescue. Perry is old news. The IPO went off today. Opened at eight, went to sixty and a quarter, and is hovering at fifty-five and a half. Fifty-five and a half. Fifty fucking five. And a half."

"Is that good or bad for the Jews?" Karp asked. She was clearly drunk, and he felt vexed about it because what he needed now was the calm, sensible, no-bullshit Marlene to succor him and support him and say, sure, take a job that involves no home life to speak of and eighteen-hour days, and I will pick up the emotional slack for you, darling…

"Oh, definitely good, especially those married to Osborne principals who have one point two million options at eight. Listen, Butchie, we're all going out to eat and carouse the night away. Could you do the boys and all?"

"Sure," in a flat voice.

"You're so mahvelous. Lovie love. See you later. Bye."

Karp put down the phone. Into his mind floated an aphorism his mother had often used-the worst thing in life is not getting your heart's desire; the second worst thing is getting it. He had missed her, really missed her ever since he was a child and cancer had closed her eyes for the last time, but he felt an unbearable pang of loss just now, the kind that makes you want to wail "Maaaaaa!"

The next thing that floated up unbidden was a bit of wondrous math: 1.2 million at 55 equals beaucoup, beaucoup buckerooskis. His mind skidded away from it. A ridiculous figure anyway, not real money even, some kind of accounting game. And too bad it had happened today, because he really wanted to talk this through with Marlene. Or did he? Hell, she got to do what she wanted, staying out however long the job took. Why couldn't he? Karp was not at all prone to self-pitying resentment, but he was not immune to it either. He felt a space opening between himself and the woman, and maybe part of what was prying it open was the fantasy money. Into that space rushed thoughts about being back at homicide, about having a real job again, the one job he was born to do. He walked the few steps to Keegan's office and told the DA that, yeah, he'd do it. If it could be fixed, he would fix it.