“Going to take the case yourself?” asked the D.A. sourly.
“No. Not unless you really want me to,” said Karp, straight-faced.
Keegan burst into laughter. Karp continued, “I thought Vasquez should do it, but it’s really up to Roland. What I’d really like to do is nail the don. But we don’t have the stuff.”
“No, we don’t. The bastard skates again. Still, he can’t be very happy. His kid’s gone, and his big capo Pigetti has got to be counting the days until he can take away the whole thing.”
“My heart bleeds,” said Karp. He had not told the D.A. about the horrors recorded on Marlene’s tape.
“Yeah, but now we come to the cherry on the top. Mr. Tommy Colombo and how we grind his face in it. Any ideas?”
“Yeah. I’d like to hold a joint press conference at which I’ll announce these arrests and Colombo will announce the formation of a federal-state Asian crime task force, with federal funding, of course, and-”
“You’re kidding, right?” said Keegan uncertainly.
“Not at all. And, at which Mr. Colombo will offer a formal public apology for irregularities in his office that besmirched the spotless rep of our own Raymond Guma. Fade to black. Applause.”
Keegan chortled again. “Jesus, Butch, you’re a piece of work. Remind me never to piss you off. What makes you think Tommy will go for that?”
“Oh, I think he will. Tommy was vacationing at East Hampton until just a few hours ago. He was going to attend some big-time political clambake out there. I was able to get hold of him and inform him about the parts of this weekend’s events that he might have missed on television, and I told him that if he didn’t want to play nice, then at the press conference at three this afternoon you would announce that while he was chasing nickel-dime garbage-collection rip-offs, there had been a massive infiltration of Asian killers into our glorious city, which he had refused to acknowledge, and had even given immunity to the chief murderer, also that his organization was so incompetent that one of our fine ADAs, Ray Guma, was about to start a civil suit against him personally, for defamation, and that his superiors in D.C. were thinking seriously about an internal investigation of prosecutorial malfeasance. I still have some people in D.C. who owe me favors.”
“A certain amount of bluff there, am I right?”
“A certain amount, which he is in no position to assess, but there’s enough pastrami in that sandwich to make a big, embarrassing splash on the slowest news day of the summer. Tommy wants to bury this, and get back to sucking ass out on the Island. I expect to hear the blades of his helicopter momentarily, circling the Javits Building.”
“You made a friend for life there, son.”
“Oh, Tommy will come around. He’s so paranoid and ambitious that the best approach is enthusiastic and open-handed cooperation. It drives him nuts. If he plays nice, I’ll give him something sweet to chew on.”
“Like?”
“Like Judge Herschel Paine.”
“Hah. You don’t have anything solid on Paine.”
“No, but something could turn up,” said Karp.
Marlene was wearing white sandals, a crisp, palest-yellow shirtwaist in which it was impossible to conceal a large handgun, and a round French schoolgirl’s straw hat with a dark band. To Karp’s eyes she looked barely older than Lucy.
“How about a cooling chopped liver sandwich and a frosty celery tonic?” Karp asked after a discreet kiss.
“Lead the way, Jewboy,” said his wife.
They ate in a brightly lit, noisy deli around the corner from the courthouse. During the meal Karp filled her in on the morning’s various coups, with which she was well pleased, but after which she said, “This was the surprise?”
“Oh, no, the surprise is for last, like the cherry on top of the charlotte russe.”
“I always ate the cherry first,” said Marlene.
“Queens goyim, feh!” said Karp. “What do you know?”
As Karp had expected, and as he had determined from a window high above, the woman and her shopping cart were at their accustomed bench. Karp walked up to her and said, “Shirley Waldorf, I presume,” and was rewared by the astonishment on his wife’s face.
The old woman was startled, however, and stood up, looking wildly in all directions. Karp put a gently restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Miss Waldorf, I’m Roger Karp. I’m the chief assistant district attorney. We’re interested in reopening the investigation of the murder of your employer Gerald Fein, and we understand you may have some information relevant to that case.”
The woman blinked several times, and then she cocked her head and her eyes narrowed. “Are you real?” she asked.
“I think so,” said Karp. “This is my wife, Marlene Ciampi. Marlene, say hello to Shirley Waldorf.”
Marlene extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Waldorf.” The woman hesitated and then took her hand and watched the two hands as they shook, as if observing a new phenomenon. Marlene wondered how long it had been since someone had shaken her hand, and then the old woman looked up and into her eye. Shirley’s face was weather-beaten and grimy and had the bemused, slack look of the typical street dweller, but Marlene could see another face, her real face, beneath this, as if it were trying to swim up out of a depth of filthy water.
Shirley Waldorf said, “I sometimes see things that aren’t there. I was in the hospital for my nerves.”
“Yes,” said Karp, “you’ve had a hard time. But, we’d really like to take a look at what you have. I understand you have some records that belonged to Mr. Panofsky.”
“Yes, him,” said Shirley, as if referencing Beelzebub. “He kept it locked up tight in his desk. I knew there was something fishy going on, because I had keys to all the filing cabinets in the office and we had a big Mosler safe, but he wouldn’t put his things in the safe, oh, no. I started looking for evidence against him after Mr. Fein pleaded guilty. And there it was, right in that desk.”
“But how did you get the records out without Panofsky knowing?” Marlene asked.
“Oh, it was easy. I’d purchased all the office furniture, and I had the original invoices. I sent a copy of the invoice for Panofsky’s desk to the furniture company and said we’d lost our keys and could they send me another one. He’s a very bad man, you know.”
“Yes, we know,” said Karp. “Okay, Shirley, why don’t we go up to my office and look at what you have and make copies and all that? And then we’ll talk about finding you a place to stay.”
So they did, the two of them and the bag lady, into the courthouse through the D.A.’s entrance, and into Karp’s office, prompting a certain amazed interest on the part of the office staff, and Karp ordered a bagel and coffee delivered for his guest, and they sat around his big table and unwrapped Shirley’s treasures from layer upon layer of plastic bags.
“My God, this is the tag book!” Marlene exclaimed, holding a thick ledger bound in brown leatherette. She thumbed through it, shaking her head, and uttering little whistles of astonishment. It was all there, the record of over a decade’s worth of political corruption, implicating many men who had since become powers in the land, all in Panofsky’s neat handwriting. There was a rusted paper clip on one page, and Marlene turned to it.
“Why is this marked, Miss Waldorf?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s the payoff for the two jurors in the Gravellotti murder case. It came, as you see there, from Mr. Bollano. I told Mr. Fein about it, and he became very excited because, you see, it cleared him of the bribery charge. He called up Mr. Bollano, and he said Mr. Bollano had set up a meeting to talk about it. And the next morning, that’s when the meeting was, and when they pushed him off.”
She started leaking slow tears then, and Marlene gave her a pack of tissues. That was the last piece of the puzzle. Poor Shirley had set up the death of her beloved. Fein must have threatened to blow the whistle on the bribed jurors, and that would have involved Panofsky, which would have led to the uncovering of the network of corrupt payoffs. Marlene could imagine Panofsky’s mind racing to find a space to crawl out from under, recalling Nobile had once worked for the building, getting him to obtain a key, selling the idea to Bollano. Take him out, make it look like a suicide. Okay by them, and the delicious little Vivian as an extra on the deal. Jake Gurvitz gets Nobile to procure the key. Selling the meeting to Fein: Jerry, let’s meet, but not in the office. There’s a couple other people involved, major big shots, don’t want to be seen going into a meeting with Sally Bollano. We’ll step up to the observation deck, talk there, keep it private. Yeah, it could’ve worked that way. No way to prove it now, but there was enough in this book to knock Heshy the Armpit clean off the bench.