Reversible Error

TWELVE

When Clay Fulton walked into Logan's, people glanced up, as they usually do when a new person comes into a small dark saloon. Then they all looked purposefully away. Nobody offered to buy him a drink. Logan's is a cop bar on Amsterdam near 145th. Everybody in the place when Fulton entered worked for the police, except the bartender, who was a retired cop, and the scattering of women, who were there to meet cops. People from the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth precincts drank there, and also some from the Thirty-second, to the north. Dick Manning drank there, and was drinking there now, which was why Fulton had come.

Manning was sitting in a booth with his partner, Sid Amalfi, joking with a tan woman wearing skintight electric-blue toreador pants and a blond wig. They fell silent when Fulton walked over to them.

"Hello, Dick, Sid," he said. "Can I buy someone a beer?"

"Not today, Fulton," said Manning, scowling.

Fulton ignored this and slid into the booth next to Amalfi. "You know, that's a shame, because I think we have some business to discuss."

"We got nothing to talk about with you, Fulton," said Amalfi.

"Who's your friend, Sid?" the woman asked.

"He ain't no friend of mine," snapped Amalfi.

Manning stared hard at Fulton, who responded with a wide shit-eating grin. Manning turned to the woman. "Say, Doris? We got some business to discuss here. See you later."

The woman sniffed and made off for a more congenial corner. Manning said, "What the fuck are you doing, Fulton?"

Fulton said, "What, I can't have a drink with my brother officers? Especially since we're in the same line of work."

"What're you talking about?"

"Your moonlighting job. I just had a little chat with a friend of yours-Tecumseh Booth."

"I don't know any Booth," said Manning.

"Yeah. Yeah, you do," said Fulton. He took a tape cassette out of his jacket pocket and placed it on the table. "I got it all here. The Clarry hit. Springing him from jail. Choo Willis and the other hits. Club Mecca. It's quite a story. Sort of old Tecumseh's last will and testament, as a matter of fact."

Amalfi's face had gone dead white. "For Chrissake, shut the fuck up, Fulton! You can't talk about it here-"

"Shut up, Sid!" Manning snarled. Then, to Fulton, "You want to show us some evidence, let's go someplace where we can take a look at it, discuss things-"

"Cut the horseshit, Manning," said Fulton, raising his voice. "What I want is in. You guys got a gold mine working, I got a key to the door, and I want my piece."

Heads turned in the bar. Manning held up his hands placatingly. "OK, OK! Look, no problem-but let's go where we can talk."

They went to Manning's car, a loaded white Trans Am. "This is pretty nice, Manning," said Fulton when the doors were closed. "I might get me one of these, or maybe a Benz."

"I like American cars," said Manning. He started the engine, gunned a couple of times, and peeled off up Amsterdam. "You can't beat the pickup."

"That's a point," agreed Fulton. He pulled the cassette out of his pocket. He said, "By the way, in case you're thinking what you might be thinking, this ain't the only one of these, you know. You guys better pray I stay in good shape, if you catch my drift."

From the back seat Amalfi said, "How do we know you ain't just blowing smoke?"

"Listen," said Fulton. He slid the tape into the cassette player and they listened for a while to the voice of Tecumseh Booth.

Manning ejected the tape. He pulled the car over and parked on a side street. "That's enough," he said. "How did you get him to talk?"

"I shot him in the knee. Then I said the next one I'd blow his pecker off. He came around pretty quick."

Manning chuckled. "You're quite a fuckin' piece of work, Fulton. I never would of figured you for a stunt like that. It goes to show you, you never can tell. So where is Tecumseh now?"

"Well, I didn't lie to him. I put the next one in his ear. He won't be making any more tapes."

Manning and Amalfi both laughed. "You got rid of him OK?" asked Manning. "They can't connect you?"

"No problem. I picked him up from where my guys had him stashed and I told them he ran. He's in a trunk in a crusher yard out in the Meadows. So, am I in?"

"I guess you are. How about your boys?"

"No, I don't want nobody else in this. Keep it simple. And keep the cash." Fulton put an expression of avid greed on his face. "And about that-what does our end come to?"

"We get fifty large a hit," said Manning.

Fulton whistled. "Very nice. But I guess the price gonna go up. Now you got an extra mouth to feed, I mean. I don't want to put my partners out any."

Manning smiled. "No. No problem. You got no idea how much cash is floating around in the coke business. It's like fucking Monopoly money. Makes smack look like kids selling lemonade. But I got to talk to my man about it."

"Who is…?" asked Fulton.

Manning waved a cautionary finger. "Uh-uh. You in, but you ain't that in, man. I'll talk to the man tonight and get back with you tomorrow."

Fulton frowned and thought for a moment. "OK, that's cool," he said. He got out of the car. "See you around, partners," he said, and sauntered away.

Amalfi got out of the back seat and dropped down next to Manning. His face was flushed and angry. "What the fuck, Dick! You really gonna let that shithead in on this?"

"Cool down, Sid," said Manning. "He ain't gonna do nothing without us, and I need time to figure. That tape is bad news."

"Yeah, but we could grab him and make him tell where the other copies are. Like he made Tecumseh."

"We could," agreed Manning. "But I'm also thinking he could come in handy another way too."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm starting to like Lieutenant Fulton for these killings we're investigating," said Manning.

After a moment, a smile grew on Amalfi's face. "Yeah," he said, "now that you mention it, so do I."

Dressed in the trousers and shirt of a rented tuxedo, Karp bent and twisted before the cheval mirror near Marlene's bed, attempting for the fifth time to get the bow tie right.

From her position on the bed Marlene gave him irritating advice. "No, you still didn't hold the fat end with your thumb. And don't fling it down like a three-year-old and glare at me like that! If you can't tie a bow tie, why didn't you get one of those clip-on thingees?"

"Because," Karp replied, retrieving the offending item, "only nerds wear clip-ons. And if you're so smart, why don't you tie the goddamn thing?"

"All right, I will," said Marlene, bouncing off the bed. She stood in front of Karp, dressed only in a ragged Let-It-Bleed T-shirt and blue satin underpants, and tied a perfect bow in five seconds flat.

"How did you do that?" asked Karp, amazed.

"I have three brothers, all as ham-handed as you, and not nerds. What are you doing?"

Karp had wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, running his hands under the elastic and clasping a haunch in each one.

"I really know how to tie a bow tie," he said into her ear. "It was just a ruse to get you close so I could do this."

"What a liar, and if you keep doing that I'll never let you out of here, and you'll be late, and all the bigwigs will spot the stains on your pants and make fun of you."

"Let them," said Karp. "I'm not proud."

After considerable kissing and fooling around, Karp said, "I have to go before I come, so to speak."

Marlene said, "I knew it! Get a girl to the absolute squish point, and run off. I guess your career comes first. Dear. Not-quite-wifey will have to rub it off against glossies of Bruce Springsteen while you cavort with the great."

Karp laughed. "Yeah, right-the career. Reedy invited me to this political wingding. The old farts have to check out the new kid, make sure I don't have horns."

"How noble of you to suffer for your little family! Why don't you admit you're ambitious? You'd love to be D.A."

Karp stood up, adjusted his clothing and smoothed his hair in the mirror, then put on his dinner jacket.

"I'd love it, sure," he said, "but whether I buy it depends on the price tag."

"Is there a price tag?"

"Sure. Just like in Macy's. I just haven't been told what it is yet. How do I look?"

"Like a young fart," replied Marlene grumpily. "No, actually you look gorgeous. Have a good time."

He leaned over and kissed her lightly. "Don't wait up."

"I won't," said Marlene, feeling guilty. She heard the hollow slam of the downstairs door and checked the bedside clock radio for the time. Six-thirty. Still hours to kill. She went down the ladder from the sleeping loft, turned on the TV, watched the beginning of a movie, lost track of the plot, switched it off, made an omelet and toast, ate desultorily, fed most of it to the cat, paced the length of the loft, the butterflies growing more huge in her gut. She went down to the gym end of the loft, laced on a pair of light gloves, and slapped the speed bag around until her arms were limp. Seven-thirty.

She peeled off her sweat-sodden clothing, folded back the cover of her bathing tank, and plunged in. She waited for the warm water to relax her, gave up, emerged, dried and powdered herself.

She dressed and made up carefully in the style she thought of as classy-but-available: lots of eye makeup, false lashes, and crimson lipstick. She brushed her heavy black hair, then combed it across the bad side of her face, Veronica Lake style to obscure her glass eye. She put on a long black skirt with buttons up the front, the bottom six undone, and a Chinese raw-silk shirt in red over bare skin-the top three buttons undone.

She checked herself in the mirror: a dark, smallish, pretty woman showing definite nipples. She looked like all the victims. She grabbed her bag and left. Tangerines was housed in a narrow tan building on Madison in the Sixties. Its name was drawn in neon of the appropriate color in the curtained window. Raney was not there when Marlene arrived, and neither was JoAnne Caputo. She paced outside for ten minutes, spurning half a dozen pickup attempts. Finally she turned with a curse and went inside.

There were around two hundred people in the place, most of them members of a youngish crowd who lacked the fame and money to go to the big see-and-be-seen places and who considered themselves too sophisticated for the ignominy of standing behind the velvet rope with fat people from the burbs, gaping at the gilded folk. There was a long bar along one wall, separated from the main room by a low planter and trelliswork, packed with climbing philodendrons, ferns, and aspidistras in pots.

The aisle thus formed was jammed with standees holding drinks-the meat market itself. On the other side of the greenery was the cabaret, a room of twenty or so tables, each lit by little orange globes, a tiny stage, and a dance floor not much larger in front of it. The stage was occupied by a trio and a singer, doing sixties stuff and some contemporary music, with a bias toward the romantic. Couples clutched one another and rocked gently on the dance floor. Contact dancing was back at Tangerines.

Marlene checked out the cabaret briefly, went back to the bar, muscled her way through the crowd, and scored a tonic and lime. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.

For a moment she failed to recognize her. JoAnne Caputo was decked out in a platinum wig and violet lipstick and wearing what looked like an army-surplus tent in mustard brown.

"JoAnne!" Marlene exclaimed. "You look… different."

Caputo's expression was vacant and disturbed at the same time, as if she had just awakened from a nightmare. There was a knotted and ferocious look around her eyes. "I look like shit," she said tonelessly, "but I don't want him to recognize me. Is the cop here?"

"Not yet, but he'll show up. Have you spotted anybody who looks right?"

"No, but I just got here. What do you want me to do?"

Think fast, Marlene, Marlene thought. She hadn't counted on the place being so crowded or on the lines of sight being so constrained. Catching someone in this crowd was a job for half a dozen men.

"OK, here's the plan," she said at last. "You stay in the bar and sort of drift back and forth through the crowd. That's where it's most likely he'll be. If you spot him… um, stick your head through those plants over there and signal. I'll be in the main room over by the far wall. I got to watch for Jim. For the cop."

JoAnne nodded agreement, and took a deep swig of her drink, which Marlene doubted was nonalcoholic. As she left, she saw JoAnne signaling strenuously to the barman for a refill. That's all I need, she thought: an identification by a drunk witness. It was starting to look like not such a great idea.

The far wall of the main room supported a narrow padded shelf running almost its entire length, against which standees could lean and rest their drinks. Marlene leaned and took in the room. To her right were the dance floor and bandstand of the cabaret and to her left was the street wall with its curtained window, glowing pale orange. The barrier of plants stopped just short of this wall, and the passageway thus formed was guarded by a velvet rope. She could just make out the door to the outside around the end of the fernery.

"Come here often?" asked a voice to her left.

She turned to it. He was medium tall, of medium build, wearing a leather jacket over a black T-shirt and black jeans. His dark hair was collar-length and swept back over his ears. His eyes were dark and his features were even, except for his nose, which was long and marked by a lumpy ridge down its center. She looked down at the floor. He wore woven loafers with no socks.

The man smiled winningly. Marlene felt herself smiling back. She said, "Not really. This is my first time," trying to keep the tension out of her voice as she realized that it was the guy. Karp sat in his unfamiliar dinner clothes with two dozen similarly dressed men, all with real bow ties, in a suite of a small, expensive mid-town hotel, listening to Congressman Marcus Fane finish his speech. He sipped his coffee, but passed on the little snifter of brandy set before him. It had been quite a meal: Scottish smoked salmon to start, a cream soup with oysters and crab, an enormous slab of prime rib, decorated with potatoes and mushrooms carved into fanciful shapes, a salad made of some unknown sour greens and yellow flowers, and baked Alaska for dessert.

Karp had never had baked Alaska, nor had he ever dined with a group such as this, one of the little bands of prosperous men who called the shots in the cities of America. He looked down the table at the smooth attentive faces, some of them famous, others obscure, but all radiating confidence and power. They represented the City's largest banks, the big real-estate holdings, a few of the megacorporations that were still headquartered in New York, the insurance industry, the stock market, the state, the newspapers and the TV networks, the archdiocese, the Jewish community, the unions, and the two political parties. Fane represented the downtrodden masses and the federal government.

He was a good speaker, Karp thought. He spoke extempore, and seemed both confiding and blunt. Karp agreed with the burden of the speech, which was that crime was bad and ought to be stopped, and applauded politely with the others when it was over. The party rose. Apparently they were going to adjourn to the other room of the suite, there to indulge in yet more of the secret rituals of the rich and powerful.

Karp joined the flow, and as he did, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Richard Reedy. "Enjoying yourself?"

Karp smiled and answered, "Nice feed. Uplifting speech. I'm waiting for when they bring out the coffers full of gold and we all let the coins run through our fingers and cackle."

Reedy laughed out loud, threw a companionable arm around Karp's shoulder, and carried him into the next room, which was stocked with comfortable chairs and waiters circulating with more after-dinner drinks. "I want you to meet Marcus," Reedy said. "He's a good man to get to know."

Marcus Fane was talking to an elderly man in ecclesiastical costume and a portly man with a red face. Reedy signaled to him in some subtle way that Karp missed and Fane excused himself and walked over to them. He was a stocky man with a smooth medium-brown face and straight oiled hair worn in the fashion of the late Adam Clayton Powell. He grinned his famous and photogenic grin as he shook Karp's hand.

"Well, well, Mr. Karp! Rich here has told me so much about you."

"And what was that, Mr. Fane?" asked Karp blandly.

"Please, it's Marcus," said Fane. "And you're Butch. Why, he's told me you're just the man to inject a little vigor into our criminal justice system."

Karp glanced at Reedy, who winked in his merry way and smiled. Karp nodded and smiled, feeling vaguely uncomfortable.

"You have political ambitions, I hear," said Fane.

"Well…" said Karp hesitantly.

Fane took in the occupants of the room with a broad gesture. "And you've come to the right place. This is where political ambitions are fertilized, sir. With money." He winked broadly.

Karp smiled conventionally at this wisdom. Reedy said, "Maybe we can set up a meeting later in the month, Marcus. Butch, here, and a few key people. Maybe form an exploratory committee?"

"Good idea, Rich. Never too early to dig worms, ha-ha! Call my office and set it up."

Fane was edging away, obviously responding to another invisible signal emanating from one of the other groups of men that had coalesced in different parts of the room. He shook hands with Reedy and Butch again. "Excuse me," he said. "Old pols can't resist working the room. Rich, on that Agromont thing, consider it a done deal."

Fane left and Reedy said, "Well, that's that."

"What's what?"

"He likes you. You're a plausible candidate." Reedy moved over to a coffee setup and drew a cup of black coffee from a silver urn. Karp followed him.

"How does he know that? I barely opened my mouth."

Reedy carefully rubbed a bit of lemon rind around the rim of his cup and sipped. "He knows. You're tall, you have an honest face. Jewish, but not too Jewish. Your record is fine, not that anybody gives a rat's ass. A bad record can sink a candidate, but a good record's not enough to win."

"What is enough?"

"Money. What else? Half a mill should do it, for starters." He looked sharply at Karp. "You haven't got any, have you?"

"Not so you'd notice. My penny jar is pretty full, but I always forget to stop by the bank for those little paper tubes. I guess you don't have that problem."

Reedy grinned. "Don't joke about money, Butch. Money is always serious, especially among our present company."

"I'll remember that. Speaking seriously, then, what about Fane? Is he rich too?"

"Oh, I imagine he's well-off," Reedy answered casually. "He's got some nice income property uptown. Some investments too. People like to give stock tips to congressmen."

"And maybe to judges. You know a judge named Nolan?"

"I know the name. Why?"

"Just wondering. In these drug killings we've been investigating: Judge Nolan released a witness on what, for him, seemed an excess of constitutional zeal. The guy walked out and somebody tried to kill him. Then he disappeared."

"You think he's dead?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. Whoever's doing these killings is pretty slick. It might be interesting to find out if anybody's passed any lucrative information to Judge Nolan in the last week or so."

Reedy nodded. "You'd like me to look into that."

"Yeah, I would, if it's not a problem," answered Karp gratefully, while thinking, ungratefully, that whoever had done it was probably the type who inhabited meetings like this one. Or this one itself. "So, tell me, Marlene," said the guy, "what's your racket?" His name was Glenn. He was a Capricorn, he lived in Inglewood, he liked the music.

"You mean what do I do? I work for the D.A." Marlene watched his face carefully. No rush of sweat to the brow, no wild rolling of the eyes. Instead, mock wariness: "Uh-oh. I better watch my step around you. What are you, a paralegal?"

"Um, in a manner of speaking. How about yourself?"

"I'm in TV," he said. "In production at ABC."

"That's impressive," said Marlene, remembering her cards. "Do you mingle with the stars much?" Keep him talking. Keep him interested. The guy had moved around so that he stood between Marlene and the doorway. She tried to crane her neck unobtrusively, so as to keep the door in view, while at the same time darting glances at the fern wall to see if she could spot Jo Anne.

"Looking for someone?" the guy asked.

"Huh? Oh, no, not really."

"You keep looking at the door," he said.

"Oh, well, I was supposed to meet a girlfriend here later."

"Not a boyfriend?"

"Isn't that why I'm here?" replied Marlene as coquettishly as she could manage. Smile. Lean. Show some tit.

Encouraged, the guy moved closer. She could smell his cologne and the leather of his jacket.

"So. Wanna do something?" He touched his nose meaningfully.

"Um, like what?"

He laughed. "You know, blow. Do a coupla lines in the can. Get in the mood."

Marlene did not lead a sheltered life, but she had never been offered cocaine socially by a stranger before. She hadn't expected the guy to do it, and it threw her out of character. She shook her head spontaneously and vigorously in refusal.

This was apparently not the response expected of Tangerines bimbos. The guy's glib smile faded and he shrugged.

"So. Wanna dance?" he asked.

"No," she said. On the floor she would never be able to watch the door for Raney. Then, seeing his smile vanish completely, she added, "I, uh, hurt my foot playing racquetball. I'm practically crippled."

Smile again. "Hey, I play too. Where do you go?"

"Um, you know, all around."

"Like where? Tenth Street? Midtown Courts?"

"Yeah, those. And, um, you know, the Y." The guy looked at her peculiarly, his expression losing any enthusiasm. He thinks I'm lying. He thinks I'm trying to dump him. This wasn't working. She had to get JoAnne. "Look," she said, "I got to run to the ladies'. Why don't you order me another drink for us. I'll be right back. Don't go away now!" She tried to inject a flirtatious note into her voice. He nodded and she went off, remembering to drag a foot behind her, like Quasimodo.

The rest rooms at Tangerines were located off a long narrow hallway that led from the corner where the main room met the aisle of the bar. Marlene entered it, turned to make sure she wasn't being followed, and then went back into the crush of the meat market.

It was even more crowded now, at the peak of the Friday-night follies, and loud with fevered chatter. Despairing of finding JoAnne in time, she elbowed her way through to the bar and stood up tiptoe on the rail, hoping to spot the preposterous wig. To her vast surprise, she found herself staring down at a familiar head of strawberry-blond curls. It was Jim Raney, dressed for disco in a chino suit and an open-necked blue shirt.

"Raney," she shouted. "Dammit, where have you been!"

He looked up at her in amazement. "Where was I? Where were you? I've been here nearly an hour."

"Never mind that-I've got him," she said. "Follow me!"

She grabbed his sleeve and led him back into the main room. The band was, inevitably, doing "Saturday Night Fever" and showing they could play it loud. Marlene's eyes went to the wall where she had left the guy. The two glasses they had used remained on the little shelf; the man himself was gone.

Marlene clenched her fists and uttered a screech of frustration. Raney asked, "What's up? Where is he?"

"Where is he? He's fucking flown, Raney, that's where he is."

"Could he be in the John?"

"No, impossible! He would have had to get past me there, and he didn't. Shit! He must have skipped. There's a way out around the front."

Raney followed her quickly through the crowded cabaret, stepped around the ferns, over the velvet rope, and out into the street. "There he is!" Marlene shouted. Raney looked in the direction of her pointing finger. A man with a leather jacket stood on the curb, trying to flag down a cab.

Raney walked toward the man. "Hey, buddy," he called, "could I see you a minute?" The guy looked over his shoulder, saw Raney, saw Marlene. His eyes widened as he recognized her. He backed away. Raney took his leather shield holder out of his jacket pocket and flipped it at the guy. "Police," he said, and the guy ran.

Marlene was after him like a dog on a rabbit, across Madison. Raney cursed and followed, but the light on the cross street had changed and he found himself trapped briefly between the lanes of honking traffic.

Marlene was running without thought, concentrating only on the flapping crow shape of the leather jacket as it flickered, caught in one streetlamp after another.

She chased the guy north on the west side of Madison, about ten yards separating them. The foot traffic on Madison was sparse, mostly couples working the bars and panhandlers. They flicked by, barely noticing the chase. Marlene was wearing low heels, a disadvantage, but her quarry was wearing loose slip-ons, which kept flapping off his feet as he ran. Every twenty paces or so he would have to make a little skip to jam them back on, and Marlene would close the distance. Then his longer legs would tell and he would stretch it out again.

Marlene could hear his breathing become louder and more ragged. She was in better shape, she thought: raping probably wasn't all that aerobic. He wouldn't last another three blocks. With relief she heard Raney coming up behind her. The guy suddenly veered left up a side street. When Marlene turned the corner, the guy had slowed to an odd stumbling trot. He had his right hand jammed into the pocket of his jeans. He was struggling to get something out of his pocket. Marlene thought: Knife! Jesus, he brought his knife.

She couldn't stop. She was almost on him. She heard Raney shout, "Hold it, hold…!" The hand came out of the pocket and something shiny flew from it and skittered on the street.

He tried to accelerate again, but Marlene was on him, her fingernails digging deep into the leather of his jacket. He jerked his body violently and nearly pulled her off her feet. One of her shoes went flying. She felt several nails crack off. He swung an arm around, grabbed the front of her shirt, and heaved her around to face him. The shirt tore down the back and her grip on the jacket was broken.

She could see his face now, the sweat-slicked hair, the features red and contorted with rage and fear. He set his feet and aimed a backhanded right at her face.

Marlene crouched and ducked, but his knuckles still slammed against the side of her skull, reddening her vision. He hauled at the shirt, to set her up for another blow, but Marlene came with it, bringing her hard little right fist up from nearly pavement level, putting the full 110 pounds behind it, sinking it up to the wristbone in his crotch.

He let go of the shirt with a shrill cry and bent double. Then Raney was there in a long flying leap, whipping his big Browning pistol down on the guy's head with a sound that echoed from the buildings like a gong.

The guy crumpled without a sound. Marlene collapsed and sat on the pavement, sucking air, clutching the tatters of her shirt to her naked breasts. She felt the sweat drying on her back.

Raney checked the guy's pulse, cuffed his hands behind his back, and knelt down beside Marlene.

"You OK?" he asked.

"Yeah. Fine."

"Light duty, huh?"

"OK, OK, OK," she gasped. "It was a screwup. I didn't think it would go down like this."

"Yeah, well, it happens. By the way, that was quite a shot to the nuts. Characteristic, if I may say so."

"Thanks, Raney," said Marlene sourly. "Hey, can I borrow your jacket? My tits are hanging out here." Raney shrugged it off and she slipped into it, grateful for its warmth as well as the protection it afforded from the gapers in the small crowd that had gathered around them.

Raney stood up and helped Marlene to her feet. She recovered her shoe and leaned against him to put it on. She was still wobbly and dizzy with adrenaline and fatigue. Raney said, "Look, we got to call this in." He pulled a card out of his wallet. "There's a booth on Madison and 66th. Call this number. Ask to talk to Detective Franklin. When you get him, explain the situation and tell him we need a blue-and-white and a bus."

"A bus?"

"Yeah, you know, an ambulance. Hey, are you sure you're OK?"

"Uh-huh. Just a little shook."

"OK, then meet me at the two-oh and we'll book him. What's the charge, do you think?"

Marlene sighed. "Better make it possession for now."

"Possession? What're you talking about? I thought this was the Wagner killer."

"It is. I think. But my witness never got a look at him and I don't know him from Adam. He just fit what we were looking for, in general. Meanwhile, he offered me coke in the place there, and he tossed a vial during the chase. You should find it in the street. It's enough to hang on to him with until I can get JoAnne there and ID him."

"Holy shit, Marlene!" Raney yelled. "You mean to fuckin' tell me-"

"Don't, Raney. It'll work out OK-trust me. Let me make that call now. You got a quarter?"

The guy was loaded and shipped, leaving a small round bloodstain on the sidewalk. The cops found the vial the guy had dumped, half-full of white powder. Raney and Marlene walked back to Tangerines in silence.

The noise of an excited crowd greeted them when they were half a block away from the club. Marlene buttonholed a chubby young woman in a fringed white dress.

"What's going on?"

"It's crazy!" the woman replied. "Some chick with a big knife got this guy cornered in the hallway by the John. She's yelling he raped her and she's gonna cut his business off. It's wild! I'm going home to watch it on TV."

Marlene felt a thrill of despair. "What kind of woman?" she croaked weakly. "A blond in a dark tent dress?"

"Yeah, frosted blond. But it was a wig. She pulled it off and threw it at the guy. It was just like the movies!"

The woman hurried off down the street. Marlene started to run toward Tangerines, but Raney grabbed her arm.

"Marlene, what the fuck is happening?" he cried.

"It's JoAnne. My witness." She broke away from him and trotted heavily down the street to the club, her belly roiling, her heart popping against her breastbone. Fifty or so people were milling around outside and more were flowing out of the door. Marlene pushed vainly against the tide. Raney caught up with her, put his arm around her, hoisted her up on his hip, and, waving his shield and shouting, "Police! Coming through!" forced their way into the bar.

Someone had turned the cleaning lights on, giving the interior of Tangerines the charm of a raddled whore at noon: stained carpet, rusty tin ceiling, overturned chairs and tables, pools of spilled drinks and melting ice. Marlene and Raney moved along the length of the deserted bar, broken glass and ice cubes crunching under their feet.

In the corridor leading to the rest rooms stood three men, two large in white shirts and bow ties, one small in a sports jacket. Raney approached the jacket, flashed his shield, and said, "Police. What's going on?"

The jacket backed out of the way and pointed down the corridor. "Bitch is crazy, man. She took this guy hostage. We haven't been able to get near her-she's got a fuckin' sword in there."

Raney and Marlene both looked where he was pointing. JoAnne Caputo was crouched in the corridor. She was muttering and snarling at a man cringing a few feet from her, backed into the corridor's dead end. In her right hand she held a K-bar knife, Marine issue, which she waved and poked at the man. Marlene noted with horror that the man bore a striking resemblance to the guy they had just arrested. He was bleeding from several cuts on the arm and his face was drawn and frightened.

"Yeah, I see," said Raney. "You the manager?" he asked the sports jacket.

"Yeah. You gonna shoot her?"

"No, I don't think so. You called the police? Good. Look, take your people and clear the area. If any more cops show, send them back here."

The manager seemed relieved and did as he was told. When they were alone, Marlene said, "Raney, let me talk to her."

"Uh-uh. This is police business. You oughta wait outside."

"Bullshit!" cried Marlene, and moved toward the corridor. Raney stuck his arm out to block her, but at that moment heavy steps sounded in the bar and a TV crew-camera with blazing lights, a soundman, and an intrepid local news reporter-came charging in.

"Get out of here! Are you crazy?" shouted Raney at the crew.

Marlene used this distraction to break away from the detective. JoAnne too had turned at the sounds. The TV light dazzled her. She held up her free hand to shield her eyes. She saw someone coming toward her out of the halo of unbearable light. She struck out wildly with the knife, felt it catch in something, heard the ripping of fabric. She saw a face inches from her own, a familiar face. She tried to shake the fog of a dozen drinks out of her mind. Arms wrapped around her, pulling her close to a body slick with sweat, a woman's body.

"JoAnne!" a voice cried. "It's Marlene! It's OK, you got him. It's over." JoAnne Caputo started to wail, horrible screeching cries, the violation of the body at last finding its own voice. Marlene held her, swaying, saying inane and calming things into her ear. The big knife clunked on the floor.

She saw the guy come out of his corner, saw him run past, heard curses and the crash of bodies. She looked over her shoulder and saw Raney wrestle him to the ground. Suddenly the place was full of cops. It was over, but only in real life. There was still the television.