No Lesser Plea

Chapter 11

So far, so good, was what Mandeville Louis thought, upon waking up in his little room in the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. They put him in a private room because he was a potentially violent case, which was fine with Louis. He figured he might have to stay here for six months, let things cool down, maybe see what could be done about fixing the witnesses. Six months-certainly not more; then a change of scene, permanently. He figured he was washed up in New York. The cops, the system, had his name, and since his way of life depended on complete anonymity, it followed that he had to get out of town and change his identity. He had no desire to be known as a criminal, to be rounded up whenever there was an armed robbery, to have cops intruding on his private life. He did not regret having to leave. Hell, he had had a damn good run anyhow. But he was not going to go to prison.

Louis lay with his hands behind his head and thought about places to go. He also tried out new names. Maurice Pemberton of Los Angeles. Lewis Pemberton. Forrest Stanton. Of Detroit. Of Philadelphia. Of D.C. Louis smiled. In his confinement, he was beginning to feel liberated. He thought, that’s why I got into trouble. I was getting in a rut. No more.

He heard the key turn in the lock. He put his glasses on and sat up. The door opened and a big, beefy male ward nurse filled the doorway. He was carrying a tray filled with little white paper cups.

“Medication,” he said. He had a farmer’s face, decorated with pockmarks. Louis gave his most winning smile, and got a cold stare back. “What is it?” he asked.

“Just take it, huh.”

Louis swallowed the spoonful of red liquid.

Later he went to the dining room and had breakfast. He observed his fellow inmates. They did not look particularly crazy. He suspected a fair proportion of them were pulling the same sort of scam he was to get off some crime. In all, a better class of people than you might expect in a loony bin. Nobody screaming or jerking off, like you read about. Everybody nice and calm, he thought as he looked around the room. He felt calm himself. He was sure everything was going to be just fine.

After breakfast, he found himself in the dayroom, although he did not remember walking there. A large television set was on in one corner, and vinyl couches were grouped around it, all occupied by men in bathrobes. They watched the gray flicker, their eyes dull, their faces slack-soap operas and situation comedies. Nobody laughed.

Louis watched, too. There seemed no reason not to, although he rarely had watched television on the outside. He noticed the man next to him was urinating on the floor, the pool slowly spreading toward Louis’s foot. He got up.

He found himself walking across the dayroom to the terrace. Two male nurses stood talking near the door to the terrace. Louis thought he should tell them about the man peeing on the floor, but when he got to them it didn’t seem that important. He went out on the terrace, which was furnished with steel and plastic chairs in primary colors.

He sat down and faced the sun, which was full and warm. An elderly white man with scarlet rashes all over his face sat down in a chair across from Louis. He stared at Louis for a moment and then put his face through an elaborate grimace, eyes screwed up, tongue thickly protruding. He smiled at Louis, as if nothing odd had passed.

“You’re new here?”

“Yes, this week.”

“I’ve been here for months and months. I’m the oldest inhabitant.” Again he let loose a spectacular grimace.

Louis wanted to ask why the man was making faces. Then he remembered he was in a booby hatch. A ripple of discomfort passed across his mind, but soon faded.

“I killed them, you know,” the Oldest Inhabitant said. “But it wasn’t my fault.” Another grimace. Louis thought the man was doing a good imitation of a crazy person. He recalled doing a very similar thing with his face in Judge Braker’s courtroom. In fact, the grimaces had nothing to do with the man’s mental state. They were the result of a condition called tardive dyskinesia, one of the unhappy side effects of fifteen years of maximum dosages of Thorazine. Thorazine gave quiet wards to the people who ran mental hospitals. It gave the people in the wards blotched faces, facial spasms, tremors, incontinence, and massive deterioration of just those portions of the brain that distinguish us all from the turtles. Also impotence, not that people with tardive dyskinesia got a lot of nooky.

“I had to,” said the man. “Doris, Jennifer, and little Edgar, and the maid. It was the Holy Ghost. It didn’t say anything about the maid. You understand, I wouldn’t have done anything to the maid if she had stopped yelling. But she wouldn’t, and I couldn’t hear the Voice. So what could I do?”

Louis nodded agreeably, and said that no, there was nothing he could have done.

“I have been washed in the Blood of the Lamb, did you know that?” said the elderly man. “The Holy Ghost told me, I should wash them in the Blood of the Lamb, too, Doris, Jennifer, and little Edgar. But afterwards, not the maid.” He cocked his ear as if listening to a distant sound. Grimace. Smile. “Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you.”

Part of Louis wanted to get up and walk away from this nut, and another part of him wanted to invite the nut for a walk, and beat his brains out with a rock. But these parts of Louis were separated from the part of Louis that actually did things by the thick, pleasant buffer of the psychoactive drug.

Then it was noon, and time for more of the red liquid. Then it was evening, and tucking-in time and more medication. Then it was tomorrow. And the next day. On Thursday, Louis saw the psychiatrist, Dr. Ghope.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Ghope wanted to know. Actually, Dr. Ghope had a pretty good idea of how Louis was feeling, since it was he who prescribed the Thorazine. Dr. Ghope did not like trouble. When planning his medical career, years ago in his native Bangladesh, he never imagined himself in charge of a ward full of homicidal maniacs. He had specialized in psychiatry-a field of medicine his young nation needed about as much as it needed fashion models-so that upon finishing his studies, he could emigrate to the United States, to New York, and listen to the troubles of wealthy matrons at one hundred dollars an hour.

But it had not worked out that way for Dr. Ghope. There was some difficulty about his diploma, and more difficulty about his license to practice. He had assiduously sought out the correct person to bribe, but had been unsuccessful, probably because, so he believed, of his problems with idiomatic English.

He felt himself lucky to have landed this job. It was hardly any work at all, consisting mainly of regular interviews with patients who were either perfectly sane or incurably crazy. His colleagues were largely drawn from the subcontinent or the various corners of the developing world, so he did not feel isolated, as he might otherwise have in the upstate backwater in which the mental hospital was situated.

Every so often, Dr. Ghope would meet with several of his colleagues to decide if any of the crazy people had become sane. How this could have happened as a result of weekly interviews with a psychiatrist who barely spoke English and massive doses of tranquilizers was a question beyond the theoretical grasp of Dr. Ghope. But lacking theory, Dr. Ghope had developed a technique. Upon arrival, each new patient would be slammed with a dose of Thorazine, the chemical equivalent of the maul that slaughterhouse workers use to drop steers. Thereafter, the dose would gradually be reduced. If the patient did not show any obvious signs of mental disturbance during his interviews with the psychiatrist during a certain period, he would be pronounced cured, and ready to rejoin society. It was a simple technique, but effective. It had earned him the nickname “Dr. Dope” throughout every level of the hospital.

The period necessary to obtain a cure varied with the number of intakes from the outside. The more people sent in from the courts, the more people became sane. Dr. Ghope and his colleagues did not want crowded wards, which meant trouble, budget problems, and more work. The only restriction on this system was the notoriety of the patient. They knew better than to let an infamous ax murderer out on the street while the memory of the crime was still fresh. They did this as infrequently as they could, but after all, they were only human. In short, the hospital was part of the criminal justice system.

Dr. Ghope consulted Louis’s case file. He read what Dr. Werner had written. It was always a pleasure to read Dr. Werner’s notes. Such a learned man! And his referrals seemed never to give much trouble. He, Ghope, had cured so many of them. Dr. Ghope looked across his desk at the thin, yellowish-skinned man slumped in the plastic chair. He certainly didn’t look violent now. Perhaps he would be an easy cure.

“How are you feeling?” he asked again.

Louis raised his eyes. “Feel fine. Sleepy.”

“Excellent! Well, let us see. Mandeville, your name is? What an unusual name! Yes, indeed. Well, Mandeville, have you experienced any delusions this week? Have you acted out?”

“Wha’?”

“Excellent. First-rate! Any problems with your medication?”

“Medi’shum.”

“Oh, very good. Very good, indeed. Well, Mandeville, you seem to be progressing splendidly. Steady progress is our rule here, as you shall find.” Dr. Ghope made some notes with his fountain pen, capped the pen, replaced it in the breast pocket of his white lab coat and closed the folder. “I will see you next Thursday. Until then, please do continue your excellent progress,” he said, and rang the buzzer for the nurse to come and lead Louis away.

Louis was in the Arts and Crafts room, coiling a clay candy dish, trying to remember what he had to do that was important. His dosage had been reduced over the last few months, but he still felt like there was a concrete block tied to his higher mental functions. Louis was extremely sensitive to drugs, which was why he had never used any himself on the outside; and of course nobody paid enough attention to him on the inside to find this out. Had he not met Fallon he might have continued inexorably declining into carrothood, and so truly have reached that state-for which the hospital had been designed-of not being a danger to himself or others. He stopped coiling the clay and glanced idly around the big, light-filled room. Most of the inmates were busy with clay or rubber band and wooden toy boats. In the corner, by the window, one man was painting at a large easel. Louis wandered over to see what he was doing.

“Holy shit!” said Louis, when he saw the painting.

“Ah, a connoisseur,” said the man, with a friendly smile. He was a big, soft, moon-faced man, pasty of complexion, with a hooked nose, thick moist lips, longish, thinning black hair and a fringe of dark beard, like Henry VIII.

He held out a large, long-fingered hand, blackened with paint. “Robert Fallon,” he said. Louis shook the hand and said his name. He could not take his eyes off the painting. Its subject was a scene of sadistic pornography brilliantly executed, explicit, and suggestive at the same time. It was as full a realization of the lower reaches of the human spirit as Rembrandt or Monet were of the higher.

Louis watched Fallon paint for a while. Fallon didn’t mind. He enjoyed adulation. At one time Fallon was considered one of the most promising artists of his generation. Were it not for his unfortunate desire to rape, murder, and mutilate little girls-a desire to which he had given full vent some six years before in the art colony of Millbrook, New York-he might have continued as an ornament of the Manhattan salons forever. He had got himself put into Matteawan, after being arrested, by his version of the same scam Louis had used. He had just gone semi-catatonic and refused to admit that he remembered anything at all about the four little girls, the sink in the basement, the plastic bags, and the box of blood-clotted industrial razor blades.

The hospital was really his only choice, since he understood that his life span-had he been sent to Attica-would have been no more than a few weeks. Thugs have their standards, too. He was happy in the hospital, although, as the Millbrook Ripper, Fallon was on Dr. Ghope’s list of unreleasable inmates. He painted, he sold his paintings at premium prices to a small group of wealthy admirers, and saved his money in a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. One day he planned to escape and live out his days in a less effete country, perhaps in South America, where they still appreciated extraordinary men, and where little girls could be purchased like bananas.

The light began to fade and Fallon got ready to put away his work. As he cleaned his brushes he fixed his companion with his huge and shining blue eyes, and said, “You’re the shotgun artist, right?”

“What’re you talking about, shotgun artist?” said Louis coldly.

Fallon chuckled. “Hey, it’s OK. I know everything that goes on here. No, really, just making conversation-why should I care if you slaughter a hundred shopkeepers? Let me just finish up here and we’ll go into the lounge and have a nice chat.”

Louis let himself be towed by the big man into the day room. He had little enough will in any case, and the painter seemed to be the only inmate he had met so far who was not a zombie. He thought maybe Fallon would be able to help him remember what he had to do.

“Friend,” said Fallon, “the first thing is, we’ve got to get you off the dope. You see, decadent societies always try to clip the wings of their superior men. Three centuries ago it was the stake and torture. Now it’s tranquilizers. You understand what I’m saying? The sheep can’t handle wolves like us and they haven’t got the balls to kill us any more. So they send us to so-called hospitals to ‘cure’ us. And what’s the cure? Slow poison. Hey, you can barely understand what I’m saying, you’re so doped up. Listen, next time that asshole with meds comes by, do what I do. Give him a dumb smile, take the drink, hold it in your mouth, and then spit it out into some toilet paper. Here, take some of mine.”

Louis did as he was told. By that evening, his head was clearer. The feeling of being wrapped in a warm blanket was fading. The next day he spat out all three doses. The day after that, he remembered what he was supposed to do.

Elvis almost fell out of bed when he heard the voice on the phone. What made it especially unnerving was that the bed he was in belonged to the voice on the phone, as did, in a manner of speaking, the woman who shared it with him.

“Elvis, my man! How you doin’, bro? You comfortable an’ all?”

“Man? Hey, that really you, huh? Where you at, Man?”

“Where I at? Where the fuck you think I at, asshole? I’m in the goddam nuthouse, where I got to be to keep from goin’ to the slams for about a thousand years, cause goddam Snowball Walker snitched on my ass, instead of bein’ dead in his grave, where you was supposed to put him. Now what the fuck happened?”

Elvis explained about leaving the package in Room 10.

“You left the shit! Goddam, Pres! If I wanted to leave the fuckin’ package I coulda hired a goddam white man from the Railway Express Company to leave the package. You suppose to watch the mutha-fucka take the stuff. An’ since Snowball wasn’t there you didn’t get the damn paper with my phone number on it, did you? No, you sure as shit didn’t.

“Now listen to me, little bro. You fuck up once, OK, you jus’ learnin’. You fuck up again, you dead. You dig what I’m sayin’?”

Elvis dug. And resented it. He had moved into Louis’s apartment, which apparently included, as an appliance, the occasional favors of the luscious DeVonne. He told himself he would keep an eye on things until Louis’s situation cleared up, which, he hoped, would not be for a long time. Meanwhile, he could live damn good on Louis’s stash, and after that was gone, he was pretty sure he could, with a solid base like Louis’s pad, figure out some ways of bringing in easy money. Elvis had big plans.

Which was why the voice on the phone had come as such a shock. Elvis tried to get his thoughts together. There was obviously no need for panic. Louis was behind bars, prison or crazy house didn’t make no never mind, and Elvis was outside. Shit, Louis needed him, right?

“Now wait a second, Man,” said Elvis, putting a little sass into his voice, “don’t go comin’ at me like that. I ain’t your nigger.”

“You ain’t?” said Louis after a long pause. “I think you wrong there, little bro. But I see how you could maybe think that, I do indeed. Now say if I go wrong now, but you thinkin’ ‘Shit, Louis in the can now, I get to play with his toys, play his fine stereo, an’ all, sleep on his soft bed, nothing can’t touch old Pres.’ That right? Yeah.

“But the problem with that, see, is if it turns out I gotta do time in Attica, well then it’d be my duty to stand up in court and tell them all ’bout you, boy, how you help me plan the crime, how you stood right by me when I blew those two dudes away. That make you guilty, same as me, the law funny that way. So we both be in Attica at the same time. You gonna love that, Pres, I promise you that. Shit, Pres, there’s dudes in there, they’d shove goddam broken glass up your asshole for ’bout fifty dollars apiece.”

“Ah, Man, I din mean …”

“No, lemme go on, Pres,” said the soft voice on the line. “It hurt me you not doin’ all you can to help me out, especially since it was your own self got me into this. Anyway, let’s say I don’t go to Attica, let’s say I stay here in Matteawan. Shit, Pres, this place-a fuckin’ blind man could walk outa here. So you see, Pres, I figure we friends, you gonna help me outa the fine affection you feel for your main man, but if not, you know I’m gonna come after you, one way or the other. I’m up on murder one already, so I don’t have shit to lose, you dig? An’ when I catch you, an’ I will catch you, cause you a dumb muthafucka, I will cut your black ass into tiny little pieces. Now, you dig how you might of been wrong about you not bein’ my nigger anymore?”

Elvis was bathed in sweat, both from fear and from the effort of having ventured to suggest an independent course of action for himself. Elvis did not fear the law; there were thousands of ways of avoiding it, and even if it caught you it was no big deal. But he was pretty sure there was no way on earth of avoiding Mandeville Louis, and he was absolutely sure that if Louis caught him, it would be a big deal.

“Hey, Man, hey be cool. Jus bullshittin’, that’s all. Shit.”

“Good. I like your attitude, Pres. Now, listen, here’s what I want you to do.”

“The problem,” Karp was saying to V.T. Newbury, “is that he only has two weeks to get certified as a candidate. Vierick’s been campaigning for months. Every time somebody gets mugged, the mayor puts Vierick on TV, with the implication that the city needs a war on crime under a new general, which is him.

“Meanwhile, Conlin is going batshit. He can’t come out publicly as long as Garrahy is hanging fire, but short of that he sure as shit is acting like a candidate. Hogging press? Fucking guy is now inviting reporters from the Times and the News to sit in on Homicide Bureau meetings. It’s unbelievable. Morale is in the toilet.”

The two men were sitting on a bench in Foley Square. It was spring again. The Marchiones had been in their graves for over a year. Karp was carrying a full load in Homicide, as was Ciampi. Hrcany was in Felony Trial. Newbury was in Frauds, conducting interminable and arcane investigations of the financial markets, most of which involved, according to him, jailing his relatives and their friends. He loved it. Guma was in the new Narcotics Bureau, also, presumably, jailing his relatives. Conrad Wharton had been named chief administrative officer of the District Attorney’s Office.

“Something’s wacky there, Butch,” said Newbury. “Why doesn’t Conlin get together with the other bureau chiefs and tell Garrahy he’s either got to run or to declare for a successor, you know, for the sake of the glorious DA’s Office? I mean, the thought of Vierick in there ought to shake him up. Or, dare I say it, a Republican.”

Karp laughed. “Bite your tongue. Yeah, I can’t figure it out either. I’ve heard some weird rumors, but Conlin assures me that he’s been pushing Garrahy to run for a year.”

“What does he say Garrahy says?”

“That he’ll see how he feels when the time comes. Anyway, the time has come. I’ll tell you though: I wish I was a fly on the wall at the next bureau chiefs’ meeting.”

They were silent for a while. Then V.T. said, “We couldn’t bug his conference room, could we? I mean, that would be wrong.”

“Oh, very wrong, and besides there isn’t time. The meeting’s today at four-thirty. However, talking about ‘flies on the wall’ and ‘bugs’ has got me thinking. You know that big wooden wardrobe at one end of Garrahy’s conference room? If somebody was standing in it, he could hear everything that was going on at the meeting.”

“Yes, he could. But surely you’re not suggesting that you or I …”

“Of course not, V.T. I’m way too big and you’re way too couth. No, for this venture we need somebody small, slimy, utterly devoid of moral discrimination, yet possessed of a kind of animal cunning, and most of all, somebody who has absolutely nothing to lose as far as career goes.”

“I believe you’re right, Butch. But where are we to find a colleague so utterly devoid of professional ethics, so desperate a villain that he would stoop to spying on our esteemed leaders? I mean, where in the New York District Attorney’s Office would we find a creature so vile?”

“Where indeed?” said Karp.

“No fucking way!” said Guma. “You guys are crazy.”

Karp, Newbury, and Marlene Ciampi were ranged around Guma’s desk, like detectives around the suspect in an old-time movie. Karp had been inspired to drag Ciampi along on the theory that the presence of a woman would turn Guma’s brain to mush, a necessary preamble to the plot. She came, but was not amused.

“Come on, Goom,” said Karp. “There’s nothing to it. We got to find out what Conlin’s been feeding Garrahy about the election, and this is the only way. There won’t be another chiefs’ meeting until it’s too late.”

“You do it, then!”

V.T. said, “Raymond, where’s your spirit of adventure? What happened to the Mad Dog we used to know? You lost your nerve?”

Guma scowled like a sulky Pekinese. “Up yours, V.T.! Look folks, I’m a busy man-got places to go, people to see. Let’s have lunch sometime …”

“Guma, we got to have you in on this. Name your price.”

“Fuck you too, Karp. What d’you think, I’m some kinda sleaze bag? ‘Name your price,’ my ass! It’s unprincipled, that’s why I’m not gonna do it, and nothing you can say is gonna make me change my mind.”

At this, Ciampi leaned forward from where she was perched on the corner of Guma’s desk and looped her finger through one of Guma’s curly locks.

“Guma,” she said, “this is the final offer. Do the job and I promise that when we ride up on the elevator when it’s crowded and you accidentally-on-purpose brush my bazoom with your arm, I won’t kick you in the ankle anymore.”

“Yeah? And you won’t yell out, ‘Guma, stop mashing my tits!’ anymore?”

“You got it. I’ll pretend it was an accident and back away.”

Guma looked at his wristwatch. “When’s the goddam meeting?” he said.

Outside Guma’s office Ciampi spoke to Karp with some heat, “OK, I owed you one, and I consider us even, with interest.” She began to walk off.

Karp said, “Hey Champ, it’s all for the cause. Where you going? Aren’t you going to wait around for the payoff?”

“Sorry fellas, I got to get into my hot pants and get down to Times Square. Leroy gonna whup my ass if I be late.”

At 5:30 that afternoon, Karp and Newbury entered Guma’s office to get the dirt. They found him seated at his desk, smoking a White Owl and reading the Post. The office coat rack was propped up against the sill of the wide-open window. A pair of navy-blue trousers and a pair of jockey shorts fluttered in the breeze like ignoble flags over Foley Square.

“Guma, what’s going on?” asked V.T. “You know, you don’t really have to undress in order to jerk off, but let me say I admire your delicacy.”

Guma dropped his paper and gave the two other men a sour look. “Shut the fuck up, Newbury. I swear I’ll never forgive you guys for this. I was in that goddam closet for two and a half hours. It was like a fucking bad dream.”

“What happened,” said Karp, “what did you hear?”

“I should’ve gone before I went in there, but who knew the meeting was gonna take so long?”

“What are you talking about, Goom?”

“I peed in my pants, for Chrissake, a fucking drop at a time. It was murder. Then I had to wash my stuff out in the men’s room and come back here buck naked. Hey, V.T., feel that stuff and see if it’s dry, will ya? Jesus, talk about embarrassment …”

V.T. said, “Anything, Guma. I will be your personal laundress, but for God’s sake tell us what happened!”

“What happened was that Conlin did a big bullshit number about how while he, Conlin, supported the old man to the limit, the support just wasn’t there in the office. He said the younger attorneys respected Garrahy, but wanted new leadership. Oh, he was rare, made you want to cry.”

Karp was astounded. “And nobody else said anything?”

“Nope. It was Conlin’s show. Oh yeah, he brought out a poll he said he had done, that showed Garrahy splitting the Democratic vote with Vierick thirty points apiece. If Vierick runs as an independent, which he says he’s going to do, that means a turnover in the general election. He had all the figures.”

“What a piece of crap, that bastard!” cried Karp. “How the hell can Garrahy believe that?”

“Maybe he wants to believe it, Butch,” said V.T. “Maybe he’s tired and looking for an excuse to quit.”

“He can’t quit. I need, I mean the office needs him.”

“Then what do you intend to do about it?”

“I’ll think of something,” said Karp.

That weekend the Bullets clinched the city-wide Lawyer’s League title for the fifth straight year. Which meant a party for the team in Garrahy’s office, which meant that Karp could sneak in for five minutes with Garrahy alone, when the DA was likely to be in as good a mood as he would attain at any time-and without having to get on his official calendar, of which Conrad Wharton had become the virtual master.

The party was scheduled for twelve o’clock on Monday. At a quarter to, Karp entered the DA’s outer office. Ida, Garrahy’s secretary, who had been with him for thirty years and was one of the last Ida’s in New York, looked up and smiled.

“So early, Butch? You must really love chicken salad.”

“Ida, I could say that I came up here to bask in your youthful beauty, but the fact is I’m in a jam and I need five minutes with Mister G.”

“Oh? Nothing serious, I hope.”

“No, just a personal matter.”

Ida nodded and spoke briefly into her intercom. Then she gestured Karp into the inner office.

Garrahy was sitting behind his desk in an office that was a large and airier version of Conlin’s, with even more impressive memorabilia. A good proportion of the photographs covering one wall antedated Karp’s birth; the man had been the Manhattan District Attorney since before Pearl Harbor.

He was starting to look it. Garrahy had aged visibly during the past year and grown smaller than his clothes, in the way of old men.

“Sit down, Butch, sit. What a season, hey? What is this now, four, five in a row for the Bullets? If the Yanks could do the same this year, oh boy!”

Karp allowed as how that would be a good thing, and the two men spoke about baseball for a few minutes, as any strangers might do. Karp was nervous, not because he was speaking to one of the most powerful men in the city, but because he could not take his eyes off the inch of space between Garrahy’s neck and the collar of his shirt, or take his mind away from the thought that he was about to ask for something that could not be delivered.

They reached the end of baseball talk and there was a silence. Garrahy glanced at his watch. Karp plunged in.

“Mister Garrahy, I hope you won’t think I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but I, I mean I and the other attorneys in the office are, well, concerned is the word, I guess about what your plans are for running for another term.”

Garrahy drew on his pipe and looked bleakly at Karp through the woody smoke. “Well, well. Are you concerned that I’ll run or concerned that I won’t?”

“That you won’t, of course. Everybody I know wants you to continue as DA.”

Garrahy leaned back in his tall swivel chair and appeared to consider this. “That’s very interesting. But that’s not what I’m being told. I’m being told that there’s a mighty yearning for a fresh face at the top of this office. I’m also being told that if I run, I’ll split the party vote. What do you think of that?”

“I think it’s nonsense, sir. If you announced, you’d win the primary and the election both, in a walk.”

“In a walk, hey? It’d have to be. I don’t have the energy to do anything else. No, Butch, I’ve just about decided to let it slip away. Mary’s got her heart set on spending half the year at our place in Florida, and I tell you the thought of another winter in the city …” He waved his hand.

“Mister Garrahy, look, I’m just a kid, wet behind the ears, what do I know? I’ve got some nerve coming in here presuming to tell you how to run your life, but Florida? I mean, that’s for, for appliance salesmen. You’re the DA! You stand for something in this city and we need you to keep on standing for it.”

Garrahy grinned around his pipe. “That’s quite a speech, Butch. I hope you’re that good in court.” But like all politicians, he liked to be wooed, and wooing had been scarce for some time. “So you don’t think I’m too old?”

Karp felt himself blushing. “No, I don’t,” he said in as firm a voice as he could muster. Which was a lie. Of course you’re too old, he thought. You’re old and weak and probably ill, and you’ve let the office go down the drain. But it’ll go down the drain about ten times faster if you’re not around.

“I don’t know,” Garrahy mused. “But in any case, this discussion is probably moot. With the time left I couldn’t possibly put together the organization to get the signatures for a nominating petition.”

Gotcha, thought Karp. “Forgive me, sir, but there you’re wrong. There are about two hundred attorneys in this office. I will personally guarantee that if you give the word, every one of them will be out on the street pulling in signatures. We could get five thousand signatures in a week. I’ll organize the whole thing myself.”

“Hah! You will, will you? A children’s crusade for Phil Garrahy? You almost make me want to run, just to see that.”

There was a discreet knock at the door, and Ida entered, carrying sandwiches on a huge caterer’s tray wrapped in yellow plastic. Behind her trooped the Bullets. Before turning to greet the team, Garrahy said to Karp, “I’m glad we had this talk, Butch, and I’ll keep what you said in mind. And I’ll get back to you.”

“What was that all about?”

Karp and Joe Lerner were loading their paper plates with delicatessen. “What was what all about, Joe?”

“I got big ears, Butch. What is the boss going to let you know?”

“Oh, nothing much. We were just discussing his political plans. Hey, is there any pastrami on that side?”

“Yeah, here’s a pastrami with Swiss cheese. So tell me, when did you get to be Phil Garrahy’s political adviser?”

Karp looked up and met Lerner’s gaze. The older man looked worried.

“Oh, crap, Joe. I just told him that everybody in the office wanted him to stay DA and … uh …”

“And what?”

“And I said I would organize the ADAs to hit the streets and campaign for him.”

Lerner’s chicken salad sandwich halted halfway to his mouth, which hung open for a long moment and then snapped shut in a grim line.

“Goddamn, Butch, why in hell did you want to do something like that?”

“Because nobody else wanted to. Our great boss, Jack Conlin, was feeding him a line of bullshit about how nobody wanted him, and how he couldn’t win, et cetera. I just told him the truth.”

“Oh, you did, did you? Well, good for you. But let me tell you something you might not have thought of in your pursuit of truth. Let’s say Garrahy runs. If he runs, he wins, we all know that. That gives us at best four more years of the half-assed leadership we’ve got now. At worst … ah shit, Butch, look at the man! He’s a walking corpse. You think he’s going to last four years? And when he goes, the governor gets to appoint his replacement, which means sure as hell we’re going to get some Republican dickhead in there, instead of Jack Conlin, who whatever you think about him, at least knows his way around a fucking courtroom.”

“Conlin can’t fill Garrahy’s shoes.”

“Did I say he could? Do you know anybody who could? But Jack’s the best we got, and you might have taken away his chance to get the office and maybe grow in it. Fill his shoes! We’ll be lucky to get somebody fit to kiss his shoes. Wake up, Butch! It’s Nineteen Seventy-one and there aren’t any heroes anymore. Why the hell didn’t you come to me and talk about it instead of weaseling around like this?”

“I wasn’t weaseling! I’m going to go down and see Jack and tell him what I did.”

“Oh, that’s sweet of you. Hey, Jack, I just put twenty-five years of your life in the shit can-just thought you’d like to know.”

“Dammit, Joe, I figured you of all people would understand. I mean Jack lied to him. He lied!”

“So he lied. In his place, I would have done exactly the same thing. What do you think we’re running here, a convent? God, Butch, you’re a damn fine lawyer and you’ve got-you had-a hell of a career in front of you, but you sure can be an insufferable, self-righteous prick!”

Lerner turned on his heel and strode away. Karp put his plate down. He wasn’t hungry and he had a cold feeling in his belly. He thought, Joe’s full of shit. I did the right thing. Then he walked out of the party and down the stairs to see Jack Conlin.