In answer, he grinned broadly and rolled his eyes like Groucho Marx and twirled an imaginary cigar.
"He bit? It worked?" she asked, bouncing on her toes with excitement.
"He ate it. He digested it," said Karp.
Marlene gave a long yelp of joy and, dashing around the desk, threw herself into Karp's lap. She kissed him hard enough to make his chair squeak.
"Brilliant man!" she exclaimed when the kissing stopped. "Tell all, omitting no detail!"
Karp shifted to settle her comfortably on his lap, kissed her again, and began.
"OK, the car drops him off at about a quarter to eleven. Me and Maus and Fulton spent about two hours before that cooking up a phony file: three murders, only one of which was real. It's really amazing what a good job they did because I don't think Clay has passed a cordial word with his guys since all this drug-lord horseshit started. Maybe they were glad about the distraction."
"What was it, the real one?" asked Marlene.
"Some pathetic slashing. The usual Saturday-night domestic. Anyway, we dolled the file up with clues. Cryptic notes. Purple ribbons. Wound patterns.
"So the bastard comes in, and right away you could see there's a battle going on. On the one hand, he's suspicious as hell. On the other hand, he's fucking thrilled. Real cops. Real grimy precinct house. The Two-eight, in fact-big-time Harlem crime: cops with shoulder holsters smoking cheap cigars, skells being dragged in and booked. It's better than TV.
"And Maus and Fulton-they're deferring to him, he's one of the real guys now. OK, he looks through the files, takes about half an hour. Nobody says anything. Finally he looks up with this superior smile and he says, 'Surely you've noticed that each of these women was killed on the second day of the month.'
"You should have seen the detectives. Maus slaps himself on the head. Fulton grabs the files. He checks to see if it's really true. He curses. He slaps himself on the head. Everybody's jaw is hanging down. Sherlock reveals the solution: he killed them for the welfare money. He's not really crazy. He must have known the women! Fulton is falling all over himself congratulating Meissner. Maus is licking his hand. Then Clay had a call and had to go out. We told Meissner thrilling cop stories for half an hour and then he left with the driver."
"And what's next?"
"They bring in the guy, the killer Maus and Jeffers grabbed the other day. We plant a story in the News, make sure there's a photographer there when we book him, and make sure the story says the police acknowledge Meissner's invaluable help. I'll call him, thank him again, and set him up for the sting."
"Which is when?"
"A decent interval. Let him gloat a little. Say, the end of the week?"
"Can I watch it happen?" she asked.
"Of course. We're gonna sell tickets," said Karp. "Meanwhile, if you don't stop squirming on my lap, I'm going to have an embarrassing experience."
Instead of rising, she squirmed harder, leaned over, and stuck her sharp little tongue into his ear. "What sort of experience would that be?" she breathed. "Something disgraceful? Gouts of semen on your nice pinstripes? How about if I help it along?"
She shifted her weight and started to grope for his crotch, but Karp got his arm under her thighs and, cupping her hard round bottom, lifted her up off his lap and onto the edge of the desk. "If I don't finish this load of paperwork," he said hoarsely, "I won't be able to come home and nail you in the manner to which you have become accustomed."
She giggled. "Are you telling me that you are giving up the chance for a terrific impromptu orgasm in order to do legal business?"
"I am telling you that, counselor," said Karp, "and if you want to know, it's making me sick."
Marlene stood up and rushed to the open window. "People of New York!" she yelled. "Sleep well! Karp is not getting his rocks off on company time. He labors on in your behalf."
The clatter of typewriters and the murmuring from the outer office stopped dead. A brief silence, then muffled laughter.
Karp raised an eyebrow in silent rebuke. "Are you completely finished or would you care to alert the networks?"
"Sorr-ee!" she said, grinning. "OK, I'll see you at home."
"I'll probably be late," said Karp. "I have a thing with Reedy. Drinks."
"Drinks? Very impressive-you're becoming quite the boulevardier. Don't forget to bring home one of those little folding parasols for my collection. Will there be call girls?"
"I hope so," said Karp.
"Well, I'll just have to get used to it now that my sweetie is mingling with the power elite. Meanwhile, Marlene'll be knitting booties and weeping softly to herself. Have a good time and don't bring home any diseases." She blew him a kiss and left.
Karp spent an hour on administrative paperwork, filling two wastebaskets with bureaucratic junk mail and dictating into a machine the responses that were absolutely required. Then he read through an eighteen-inch-high pile of cases that his ADA's intended for the four grand juries that ran nonstop in the New York courts, focusing on the homicides. He found two procedural errors, wrote notes telling the lawyers involved how to correct them, signed off on the ones that were ready to go, and distributed the case files among the wire baskets lined up on a side table.
The outer office had long since grown quiet. He checked his watch. Two hours gone, vanished into a black hole, which would take the same bite of his life the next day and the day after and the next, world without end. Karp had been amazed to discover, on becoming bureau chief, that he was a competent, even a talented bureaucrat. It was a talent he had neither expected to find in himself nor ever asked for, like a talent for farting tunes. Yet he had never ceased to resent the time spent at it and he had grown to hate those whose joy was the production of paperwork, with a strength of feeling that even he realized was slightly irrational.
He stuffed some journals he had not had a chance to read into his briefcase and slipped into his suit coat. Leaving the briefcase on his desk, he walked out of the office, his heels clicking on the tile and echoing through the dead halls.
On impulse, he got off the elevator on the fourth floor and stopped by the complaint room. He could not have explained what drew him there, to the grease trap of the criminal justice system; perhaps it was some desire to wash away the abstract fug of bureaucracy by a brief immersion in ripe legal grunge.
The waiting area of the complaint room was reasonably crowded for a weekday night. The cops, some in uniform, most in plain clothes, stood around in relaxed attitudes, joking, talking sports, and otherwise racking up overtime. There were not as many of them as there would be later in the year, around Christmas, when arrests and complaints would soar, not because of the increased activity of criminals but because cops needed extra overtime to buy presents.
Karp spoke briefly to a couple of cops he knew and entered the complaint room proper. There, in a warren of little cubicles, clerks sat by old typewriters; and the two ADA's on night duty circulated from desk to desk, interviewing cops and their witnesses, if any, and dictating the complaints in legal form to the clerks.
Roland Hrcany was on duty tonight. Karp spotted him through the doorway of a cubicle and waved. Hrcany gave him an odd look, as if he were surprised and mildly dismayed to see him there. After finishing with the case at hand, Hrcany came out of the cubicle and asked, "What's up, boss?"
Karp said, "Nothing much. I just dropped by to smell the Lysol. Having a nice night?"
Hrcany shrugged. "The usual shit. Domestics and muggings. Wives 'n' knives. The Nine is doing their semiannual cleanup of the faggot blowjob artist on the Williamsburg Bridge Plaza. It should get interesting later on. You gonna stay for a while?"
"No, I can't. I gotta meet some people for drinks midtown."