Reversible Error Read online

  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 b
reathing 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.