Reversible Error

SIX

The district attorney's conference room was not called the throne room during the long administration of Francis P. Garrahy. Karp remembered it as an austere, slightly battered place with a heavy glass-topped oak table and cracked brown leather chairs. The air had been redolent with the odor of the D.A.'s pipe and the cigars of his cronies. There had been a dusty, bad portrait of FDR, in a naval cloak, on the wall.

All this was gone. The walls were decorator gray and there was a vague, pastel semiabstract painting in place of FDR. The furnishings were motel modern and color-coordinated: teak table, teak chairs upholstered in nubbly bluish wool, and, of course, the throne itself, a special chair in which only the D.A. himself was allowed to sit, a chair that, while still harmonious with the decor, was slightly larger, somewhat higher, a bit more luxuriously padded and a bit more richly covered than the other twelve chairs in the room, as befitted the august behind that occupied it.

Karp used to make it a habit to come late for meetings with Bloom, and when he entered, Bloom would always say something designed to be embarrassing and sarcastic. But when Bloom had discovered that Karp didn't care, he took to delaying his own entry until Karp had arrived. This succeeded in making all the other attendees angry with Karp. Karp now arrived precisely on time and left immediately at the time the meeting was scheduled to end, whether someone was talking or not.

At ten o'clock that morning there were four people sitting around the table when Karp and Hrcany entered. Two of them were cops, in plainclothes, but with their police ID clipped to the breast pockets of their jackets. One was a heavyset light-complexioned black man, the other was a thin, smaller, dark-complexioned white man. Both were dressed in similar dark well-cut suits. The white man wore a white-on-white shirt and a red silk tie. The black man wore a blue shirt with a white collar, and a blue silk tie. Karp knew they were narcotics cops, just as he knew they would have $120 Bally loafers on their feet.

Sitting close to the throne was the D.A.'s chief of administration, Conrad Wharton. Wharton was a small pink man with thin blond hair combed straight across, blue eyes, a pink cupid's-bow mouth, and a little round belly.

"Hello, Conrad," said Karp. Wharton looked up from the papers he was studying and looked at Karp as if Karp were a large turd that some stray dog had deposited on the table.

"Hi, Chip!" said Hrcany, imitating the voice that schoolgirls use to call each other to play. Wharton liked to be called Chip, which he considered a more regular-guy name than Conrad. Hrcany never failed to use "Chip" in that tone, in nearly every sentence he directed at Wharton-not exactly what Wharton had in mind when he concocted the nickname. Wharton pursed his lips and studied his papers, while a faint flush rose up his neck.

The fourth man was a sleepy black gentleman in his mid-fifties, with graying hair, dressed in a rust three-piece suit. When Karp and Hrcany came in, he looked up and gave them a bright smile, then went back to thumbing through a well-worn diary and making notes in it with a mechanical pencil.

At five past the hour, the door to Bloom's office opened and the D.A. entered with a well-dressed man of about sixty in tow. Bloom was a man somewhat below the average in height, trim, with large moist eyes, a wide mouth, and a thin prominent nose. His gray-blond hair was razor cut and set like an anchorman's. He sat in his chair, seated the other man to his right, and made introductions. The cops were Narcotics Squad, working out of the Thirty-second Precinct in Harlem-Dick Manning and Sid Amalfi.

The other black man was Dwight Hamilton, there representing Harlem's congressman, Marcus Fane, who was unavoidably detained in Washington. The man with Bloom was Richard Reedy, a Wall Street lawyer. Reedy and Fane were co-chairmen of an organization called Citizens Against Drugs.

Bloom began to speak. Like many men who enjoy the sound of their own voices and have the confidence attendant on a captive audience, he was not succinct. There was a good deal of "this great city" and "this scourge of drugs that is sapping the vital energy" and "citizens working together for the common good." Wharton took, or seemed to take, voluminous notes. Karp doodled idly on the pad placed before him, while his mind drifted.

His eyes lit on Reedy. He knew the man slightly by reputation, as someone who had made a lot of money in the sixties and continued to grow richer in the various ways that lawyers can grow rich in New York. He was on committees. He owned a good deal of property in Harlem and was a close political ally of Marcus Fane.

He looked the part: a square, ruddy Irish face, a big nose, a broad brow, a humorous twist to the mouth, shrewd blue eyes. He looked up and met Karp's stare. There was a moment of sizing up; Karp felt he was being explored by an intelligence both cynical and amused. His eyebrow twitched upward a fraction, his eyes rolled slightly toward Bloom and then up toward the ceiling: the universal facial gesture signaling that one is suffering a bore.

Bloom ran down at last. "And now, I'd like to turn the gavel over to my very dear friend Rich Reedy. Rich has done so much, so much for the people of this city. I'm just tickled to death that he's gone ahead and volunteered his valuable time to help us out in this so important undertaking. Rich?"

Reedy cleared his throat and spoke in a pleasant tenor voice. "Thanks, Sandy. I don't have much to say. I'm flattered myself to have been asked to serve. I see our role, mine and Congressman Fane's, mainly as support, getting the word out to the community that something's being done to clean up this mess, to stop these monsters from thinking they can flout the law and kill with impunity on our streets.

"That, and generally overseeing the conduct of these cases, so that citizens can believe that the… processes of the law retain their integrity. The police, the courts, and so forth. Right now we're in the early stages. It's a police matter, so let's hear from the police."

He turned and looked across the table at Manning. Manning glanced briefly at his partner and said, "All right, as many of you know, we finally have an arrest in one of these killings. A man named Tecumseh Booth. The police picked him up night before last. He's got a long sheet. He was spotted at the scene of the crime by an informant. Right now we're keeping him on ice; maybe when he sees we're serious about this he'll want to talk.

"On the other seven murders-not much, but we have people working on them. We have other likely victims-major traffickers-under surveillance. Sooner or later somebody's going to make a mistake."

Manning spoke further about the details of the surveillance operation, what resources were being applied to it, and then summarized the circumstances of the eight killings, focusing mainly on the most recent one. "We think we have some real chances with the Joker Brown hit. It's fresh, anyway. We got a witness says he saw Brown talking to a black male shortly before he disappeared."

"That sure narrows it down," said Hrcany, as if to himself. All eyes turned his way.

"Did you have a comment, Roland?" asked the D.A.

"No… actually, yes, I did have a comment. I didn't catch the charge on this Booth guy."

"Charge?" asked Manning.

"Yeah. What did you charge him with? Intentional murder? Driving without a license… what?"

A barrage of looks was exchanged around the table. Papers were thumbed through. Finally Manning said, "We actually haven't decided yet. It depends."

Karp spoke up. "Another point of clarification, Detective Manning: are you or Detective Amalfi the arresting officer here?"

"No."

"But the arresting officer was in your squad? Or out of your precinct?"

Manning paused for several seconds before replying. "Not exactly. An associated unit."

"An associated unit," Karp repeated. "Does this associated unit have a name?"

Manning slowly pulled out a small loose-leaf pad and paged through it. "Detective Maus was the arresting officer," he said.

"That's interesting," said Karp. "And since Maus doesn't work for you, he works for…?"

Manning paused again, waiting for someone to say something. No one did, so he said, "Ahh… Lieutenant Fulton, over at the Two-eight."

"Thank you," said Karp. "That's what was confusing me. I was wondering why Lieutenant Fulton was not present, since I was given to believe that he had been placed in charge of the dope-dealer murders."

Dwight Hamilton now spoke for the first time. He had an elegant voice, quiet but nevertheless commanding attention. "Fulton won't do."

"What does that mean, Mr. Hamilton?" asked Karp.

Hamilton smiled sadly and shook his head and said, "I'm very much afraid you'll have to get that from the police, Mr. Karp."

Karp had turned inquiringly toward Manning, when Bloom said peevishly, "Would you please tell me what's going on here? Why are we getting bogged down in these details? Let's stick with the big picture, people!" He might have said more, had not Wharton leaned over to him and begun whispering rapidly behind his cupped hand, like a Shakespearean villain.

Karp resumed his conversation with Manning. "Detective, can you illuminate us here? Why won't Fulton do?"

Manning shrugged. "Hey, I just go where they send me, boss. Maybe they think Fulton is unreliable. There's a lot of money floating around up there, around drugs. Maybe some of it ended up in the wrong place."

"Who's 'they,' exactly? Is there an active investigation now on Lieutenant Fulton?" Karp snapped back.

"That would be confidential information," said Manning.

"Fine," said Karp "Let's talk about nonconfidential information, then. Our prisoner, Booth. My colleague here asked a question about the legal situation with respect to Booth. What's the charge, and what's the evidence?"

Bloom broke in again. "Butch, could we move on? All these legal games can be dealt with later."

"Oh, legal games? Sorry, I thought legality was the point of this operation. But since you bring up 'games,' I'd like to have a turn. See if anyone remembers this one: in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have a right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law; and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. Ring a bell?"

Bloom relieved himself of a small chuckle. Wharton assumed a pitying grin. No one responded, and Karp went on. "What I've heard here is that somebody has been arrested and imprisoned for going on forty-eight hours without a charge, and without, to my knowledge, anybody from the D.A.'s office interviewing him, or even being informed of the arrest-"

"Hold on, Butch," Bloom spluttered. "I was informed."

"Right, I forgot. So you've personally interviewed the prisoner and determined that there's sufficient evidence to support a charge under law? No? Gosh, that's a shame. Because when I call Tom Pagano over at Legal Aid and tell him that we're holding a prisoner who hasn't even seen a D.A., much a less a defense lawyer, and is being held without charge, God knows what kind of shit is going to hit the fan!

"Besides which, we have omitted to invite either the arresting officer on our big breakthrough, or his superior, and we have hanging in the air an innuendo against the reputation of that superior, who happens to be one of the most decorated members of the NYPD."

"Fulton's dirty," said Manning flatly.

Karp turned on him, eyes narrowing, and met Manning's defiant gaze. "Is he? Are you from Internal Affairs?"

Manning smiled. "You know I wouldn't tell you if I was."

"No, you seem like a pretty tight-lipped guy," said Karp. He was about to go on, but something nagged at him-the last conversation he had had with Clay Fulton. Fulton was certainly not himself. Could it be true? It took some of the steam out of him. Damn Fulton! Why hadn't he kept in touch?

Reedy jumped into the tense silence. "What we have here, it seems to me, is an example of why we need this task force. There's an accusation in the air, unfounded maybe, but there it is. There may be others. We're all grown-ups here. I don't think it implies any disrespect for the police department to say that corruption has been a problem, especially in the drug area. We also see what happens when there isn't coordination. Everybody starts playing their own game, running their private systems, their private deals.

"Let's start over. We have a suspect. Obviously, the thing to do is what Mr. Karp has suggested so eloquently-bring him into the compass of the law, but at the same time being conscious of the need for the utmost security. I'm sure the business about who's running the police end can be straightened out by consultations with the NYPD at the highest levels. But above all, let's keep talking to each other! I trust that will suit both Mr. Karp and Detective Manning?"

Karp had to admit it was smoothly done. He met Reedy's eye and saw once again that amused twinkle. What Reedy had said made a certain amount of sense, given the information Karp now possessed. Besides that, he had realized (somewhat to his surprise) that he wanted Reedy to see him as a reasonable man. He nodded and said, "Sure," and so did Manning.

That essentially wound up the meeting, except for some administrative details. Karp left Hrcany to deal with those, and went out to wait for the elevator. As he watched the lights, he felt someone come up behind him. It was Reedy.

"That was quite a performance," Reedy said. "Do you have the whole Constitution by heart, or just the Bill of Rights?"

Karp grinned and replied, "Still working on it. I think you might've been the only guy in that room who got the reference, God help us."

"I'm afraid you're right. Sandy, dear man that he is, is something of a dim bulb in the legal firmament. And he does go on!"

The car arrived and they stepped in. Karp said, "I'm surprised you think so. To hear him talk up there, you're like his closest friend."

Reedy laughed lightly. "Anybody Sandy is with at the moment is his closest friend. He likes to be liked. As for me, I agree with Moliere, 'the friend of all the world is not to my taste.'" He paused. "Nor to yours either, I've been told."

"Yeah? Let's just say that the district attorney and I have had some professional differences over the years."

"He's no Phil Garrahy, that's for sure," said Reedy sadly.

"Who is?" Karp replied, recording, as he was meant to, that Reedy was one of the select group who had known that Francis Garrahy liked his friends to call him Phil. The elevator door opened. Karp turned and extended his hand. "This is my floor. Nice meeting you, Mr. Reedy."

Reedy returned the handshake warmly and then placed his finger on the door-hold button. Karp paused in the elevator doorway. Reedy said, "I'll tell you what-Butch, is it?-I'd like to buy you lunch. We can talk about the Constitution and other things of mutual interest. How about tomorrow, noon?"

"OK," said Karp after the briefest pause, intrigued by what had turned out to be an odd twist to the morning's doings. And at least Reedy hadn't said "Call my girl."

"Is the Bankers' Club all right?" asked Reedy. Karp was about to make a smart remark, when someone hailed him from the corridor. It was a small fat man of about forty-five, with a sallow homely face, big ears, thinning black curls, and a mouth of prodigious width from which stuck the stump of one of those dense black cigars known in the city as guinea stinkers. He was wearing a red tie and red suspenders that strained to their limit against the hard gut that protruded over his belt line. Numerous reddish stains specked the white acreage between his tie and his suspenders.

"I'll be there," said Karp to Reedy, who smiled again and released the door. To the fat man he said curtly, "What is it, Guma?"

Guma waggled his hand as if it were loose and hanging by a thread from his wrist. "Ooooh! He's got the rag on today! What happened, another tiff with our glorious leader, the scumbag?"

"You got spaghetti sauce on your shirt, Goom," said Karp. The transition from trading quips with Richard Reedy to kanoodling around with Raymond Guma was proving hard for him to handle. Was he just a hair embarrassed about Guma? Was there something mocking in Reedy's farewell smile?

"It's marinara sauce and I wear it like a badge of honor," replied Guma, lifting his chins proudly. "You're marrying a guinea, you should get used to it. Who was the suit on the elevator?"

"Guy named Reedy. The scumbag, as you call him, has him working on these drug killings, some cockamamie task force. Interesting guy, by the way. He's buying me lunch."

"Yeah? He's gonna eat pizza off the truck?"

"Uh-huh. I'm gonna see if he'll spring for two slices with pepperoni. Let him show a little class."

"Ah, these white-shoe types are all dick-heads. You know, you shouldn't be seen with guys like that. People might start thinking you're selling out."

Karp looked pointedly at his watch. "Thanks for the advice, Goom. You wanted to see me about something."

"Yeah, speaking about fucking Italians. Petrossi fishtailed on us."

"What! When was this?"

"Hearing this morning. We had it worked out he would plead guilty on the intentional murder charge and we'd drop the felony murder charges for the other two guys who were killed at the scene. Now he says he wants a trial. I guess he got to thinking why take fifteen, twenty in Attica for free. He could be in there a real long time if we convicted him on all three counts, but he could also beat it entirely and walk."

"Not a fucking chance!"

"We think so, but there's no law against the asshole betting on the come. That's what makes Vegas. Meanwhile…"

"Yeah, we got a trial we didn't expect. But you should be in good shape-you're prepped and all."

Guma inspected his feet and said hesitantly, "Yeah, that's what I wanted to see you about. I'm really strapped here, Butch. I got the Rubio Valdez trial, the world-famous burglar and amateur lawyer wants his twenty-third trial. I got that abduction thing from Washington Heights, I got to go on the appeal in Bostwitch-"

"Goom, what is this shit?" Karp cut in. "This is a multiple homicide. It's your case. The kids can handle fucking Valdez."

"Um, and also there's the judge in Petrossi. Judge Kamas."

"Who? Oh, yeah, the new one they got to replace Birnbaum. What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing, but… ah, there's a conflict, with me. I mean, I know her."

"Yeah, she's a judge, of course you know… Oh, you mean outside. She's a friend of yours?"

"Ehhm… somewhat more."

Slowly Karp's eyes widened and he placed his hands carefully over his ears. "I don't want to hear this, Guma."

"Butch, it was fate. How the fuck was I supposed to know she was going to be moved into Supreme Court? She was a Family Court judge. We met in a restaurant, for Chrissakes."

"I can't believe this. You're schtupping the judge in Petrossi. But now she knows you're her ADA. What'd she say?"

"Well, to tell the truth, she doesn't know. That's the point. That's actually why I can't do the trial. Look, it's a long boring story…"

Karp casually wrapped a long finger around one of Guma's suspenders and said, "Bore me, Mad Dog, I think I need to hear it."

"Butchie, believe me, someday we'll laugh about this whole business. Anyway, the thing of it is, we met in this restaurant, we fell into this conversation about her kid's teeth-she's divorced, right?-a common interest there, and I was giving her all this advice because of what I went through with my kid's teeth. I mean, did you ever see her? Kamas? Forty years old, but a terrific body, you know?

"Anyhow, we were making good progress, a couple, three drinks, and then she says, gosh, you must be an orthodontist, and-so help me, Butch, I didn't think-I pulled out this card I happened to have on me and gave it to her. Yeah, I am an orthodontist, ha-ha, et cetera, et cetera. So she thinks I'm him."

"Who, Guma?" asked Karp, fearing he already knew the answer.

"Well, remember when Marlene was nice enough to refer me to her brother John…?"

"Oh, that's a relief!" said Karp, his hands clenching stiffly before him, his voice rising. "There's no problem, then. You're fucking the judge in what is probably the most famous and press-ridden murder case in the last six months, and you told her that you were my future brother-in-law. It's perfect. Guma, just tell me one thing: most guys only got one cock to worry about. How come I got to concern myself with yours?"

Guma said, "C'mon, Butch, that's not fair."

"No, you're right. My apologies. I'll calm down in about a fucking week!"

"So I'm off the case?"

"Yeah, Goom, go play with the burglars."

"Who you gonna give it to? Be a shame to blow it at this late date."

Karp gritted his teeth and took a long, slow breath. He patted Guma softly on the shoulder. "Goom," he said, "you're… a one of a kind. Don't worry, I'll think of something."

Two hours later, his mood in no way improved, Karp was sitting in front of a gigantic desk in a gigantic office on the fourteenth floor of police headquarters. Across the desk was a smallish man wearing a neat blue suit and hard blue eyes, who looked enough like Karl Malden to use his American Express card. The man's name was William Denton, and he was the chief of detectives of the New York City Police Department.

Karp got right to the point. Denton was not big on pleasantries in any case, and Karp had no stomach for them this afternoon.

"Clay Fulton," said Karp. "I'd like to know what he's doing."

"Why don't you ask him?"

Karp paused and swallowed. He had worked with Denton closely over the years, and trusted him-so far. On the other hand, Denton was a cop, and one of the half-dozen most powerful men in the city's criminal justice system. Karp was, in contrast, a bureau chief in what was but one of the five independent prosecutors' offices operating in New York. There was just the one police department, and although legally the police were supposedly there to serve the district attorney, the reality was more complex.

There was no way he could pressure Denton. He had used up all his chips just getting an immediate appointment with the C. of D. Karp determined now to lay out his problem as squarely as he could, and if Denton wanted to tell him to get lost, that was it.

"Well, Chief," Karp replied, "I have tried that. The problem is that my buddy Clay, who I have worked with on and off for nearly ten years, and who has always impressed me as the straightest shooter around, has apparently traded in his personality on a new model, something out of the KGB stockroom.

"These dope-pusher homicides. He comes in, tells me you're going to let him coordinate them as one big case. Fine. I don't hear from him for a couple of weeks. I call him, I don't get called back. Fine, too. He's busy, it's going slow-I can understand that.

"Then I hear, like by accident, he's arrested somebody in connection with the Garry thing. The guy is squirreled away in some pen, no contact with me, no charge even. Not fine, Chief. I go to a meeting this morning with some heavy hitters, the D.A. wants a task force to coordinate the operations on these hits with the cops and the community. There's two cops there, playing hard ball for no reason I can see, and when I ask why Clay isn't there, everybody looks at me like I just farted. Then everybody starts acting like Clay Fulton is in the tank on this, and I'm the only one in town who hasn't got the message. Also not fine.

"So I put it to you, out front, what the hell is going on?"

Denton did not answer immediately. He looked at Karp for a long moment, and then picked up a yellow pencil from his desk and stared at it, held between his two hands, as if it were an oracle, as he rocked gently back and forth in his chair.

At last he spoke. "What if I said you're going to have to trust me on this one?"

"I'd trust you. If I ever thought I couldn't trust you, I'd move to Ramapo, New Jersey, and do divorces and real-estate closings. But that's not the point. Something's moving, out of Bloom's office. Maybe it's just typical smoke and mirrors, but I doubt it. The guys in that room-Reedy, Fane's guy-don't show up for a private meeting unless they have a serious interest in an issue. They might be on a platform or cut a ribbon for any kind of bullshit, but when they show up personally in a little room, something is going down.

"If you tell me you're in control on that end-OK. But somehow I doubt it. I'm involved, like it or not, and if I'm not helping you, there's at least a chance that I'll miss something important or actually screw something up.

"Also, there's Clay himself. Now, we both know that the only way to survive in this business, where everybody's fucking one another as hard as they can, is to put together a bunch of people you trust. At least that's what keeps me alive. Clay is one of my people that way, and I'm one of his, or at least I thought so. If he's in trouble, I want to know about it. I'm not talking officially here, I'm talking personally."

Karp stopped talking and shrugged helplessly. That's it, he thought, it's my only card, and I played it. He hadn't mentioned that if he was the only one who didn't know what was going on, he couldn't protect himself. Bloom could sucker him into something nasty and destroy him. He knew Denton liked him, but he doubted that such a consideration would be particularly telling to the chief of detectives.

Denton considered Karp's statement for a moment and then seemed to make a decision. He placed the pencil on his desk with a snap and rolled his chair forward, as if ready to issue orders.

"Clay's not in any trouble with the department. Far from it." He paused and gave Karp one of his intense stares. "Let me ask you something. What's the thing the department fears more than anything else?"

"You mean corruption?"

Denton grimaced in distaste and shook his head.

"Corruption! Hell, no! Corruption has been part of police work since the beginning of time. We root it out when we can, but we basically accept it, like flat feet or hemorrhoids. Every so often we drop the ball and something like the Knapp Commission goes into action.

"Look, I've been a cop for thirty-four years this October. There's less corruption in the department now than there ever has been, but people are more worried about it than ever before. If it goes on like this much longer, it's going to wreck the department, and then where will they be!

"But it's not corruption I'm talking about. That's not what scares the bejesus out of me. Look, we've got over twenty-eight thousand men out there, almost all of them with little more than a high-school education, all of them armed to the teeth. A lot of them spend eight hours a day in hell. They see what crime does. They see what junk does. They see the mutts laugh in their faces day after day. They arrest some scumbag and he's out on the street before they are." Denton paused again, and seemed to sigh. He lowered his voice.

"Did you ever think that one or two of them might crack, might decide to, say, abbreviate the judicial process? I'm talking Guatemala. Argentina. El Salvador."

As he grasped what Denton was saying, Karp felt a violent chill run through him, and he gritted his teeth to control it.

"You… think it's a rogue cop? Killing these pushers?"

"Yeah. We're pretty sure. Clay's accumulated a lot of evidence. The victims all went with their killers willingly, or let them in without a hassle. We don't have any witnesses who were close enough to make a definite ID, but we do have one person who saw one of the victims get into a car with two men, and his hands were cuffed behind him. At least one of the killers is a black man. That's all we know."

"But couldn't it be an impostor-somebody with fake ID?"

"Very doubtful. The kind of victims we have are wise to that scam. If it was a thug doing it, the word would have spread around. No, it was somebody they knew by sight was a real cop. He came, he arrested them, they went quietly, and he killed them. Or he killed them when they opened the door.

"The other thing that's convincing is the pattern. These guys, the killers, are smart in ways that only a cop is smart. The hits are absolutely clean. They're designed to have no apparent connection with one another, so that we'll think they're the result of a drug war."

Karp marshaled his thoughts against the horrifying scenario that Denton was calmly building for him. "What about this arrest in the Clarry killing? This Booth guy? How do you figure that?"

"I think they've changed their pattern. Makes sense. We're catching on, after all. This was an assassination in the back seat of a car, using a driver that the victim trusted. A Mafia-style hit. Once again, clouding the waters. It was only luck that we nailed Booth. And we got the gun too. Know where it was last seen? A police evidence locker. That was the clincher."

Something still didn't jibe for Karp. "Chief, assuming you're right, why haven't you got five hundred guys on this thing? What is this business about not charging Booth?"

"Think it through for yourself," Denton replied. "You know what kind of hell we go through when a cop kills somebody in self-defense. Can you imagine what would happen if it came out that a bunch of cops were setting themselves up to be judge, jury, and executioner? Butch, the Knapp business left this department lying on it side, gasping for air. If this came out, it would kill it dead. They'll take our guns away. They'll break up the force. It'll be chaos.

"When Fulton came to me with this, it struck me that in one way we were lucky that it was him that discovered it. He's probably the best man on the force for the job. He's a brilliant detective. He's emotionally mature. He's black and he knows Harlem. And one of our main suspects is in his unit."

"Who?"

"You're familiar with the King Cole Trio? Rough boys. That Dugman is from another age-a head breaker. It could be that they got too rough one day. Maybe they got to like it. Maybe just one of them is involved. We decided on a strategy. You heard the rumors that Fulton is dirty already? That's by design. I want him close to the scumbags up there, in a way that you can't get close unless you're bent. I guarantee you somebody up there knows who's doing these guys, and sooner or later one of them is going to cross paths with Fulton and let it drop.

"The main thing, though, is that it meant that we didn't have to tell anyone else. Fulton's working alone."

"Completely alone?" Karp said in astonishment.

"Completely. He came to me with his suspicions and I decided that full knowledge had to be limited to him and me. And now you."

Karp wrestled with the enormity of this statement. Then he said, "But, Chief, that means he's got no backup. If some wacko asks him for a meet at three in the morning in a vacant lot, what's he gonna do? Beg off?"

"If he thinks it's worth it, he'll go," said Denton. "There's a hundred undercover cops on the force that take risks just as bad every day."

Karp had ready in his mind the argument that those cops had radios and people watching out for them and people they could at least talk to, but his reading of Denton's expression convinced him that the chief of detectives had already written off Fulton's safety as a necessary sacrifice to his plan.

Karp changed tacks. He said, "But it's all going to come out anyway, when it goes to court."

Denton looked at Karp silently, his face a mixture of sadness, anger, and massive determination. Then slowly he shook his head.

Karp felt another chill, and this time his scalp prickled and sweat broke out on his palms and on his forehead. Karp ran a hand across his face and took a deep breath.

"Chief, if you're going to tell me that when Clay finds this guy he's going to kill him, with your… blessing, then I don't want to hear it. I can't know it. Maybe I better go now."

"Stay where you are. I'm not at the point where I'm hiring assassins myself. Maybe I should, but I can't. There's a little mental hospital upstate that specializes in caring for the violent offspring of the very rich. Whoever this cop is, he's a sick man, and he has to be taken care of. He'll go there. Quietly, discreetly, and for a very long time. I've already made the arrangements. I've moved police funds into an account that will pay for it when the time comes. Illegally, of course. If this comes out, my own career will be ruined as well, not that it matters much in the scale of things."

Denton sighed and seemed to survey his office, with its awards and memorabilia, as if he were imagining what it would be like to be hauled out of it, to jail. When he resumed speaking, it was from behind a wan smile.

"You know, I liked what you said about trusting people. I guess I operate the same way. But this thing… it's something else. You and I have always gotten along pretty well. You're smart and honest, and you know how to treat cops, which is rare down your street. I understand the kind of problems you have over there. That's by way of saying we have a relationship that means something to me.

"But let me say this. Nobody is to know anything about what we've just discussed. I gave my word to Clay that it was between him and me, and I've broken that word. I think for good reason, but he may not. So you can't reveal your knowledge to him either, ever. And when I say nobody, I mean nobody. Not your best friend, not your girlfriend. Is that agreed?"

Karp cleared his throat and said, "Yes."

"I'll try to keep you up-to-date on what's happening. I expect the same from you. And, Butch…"

"Yes."

"I have to say this. If you tell anybody, I'll find out about it, and if I do, I'd say a career in Jersey doing divorces will look pretty attractive to you."