"Anybody I know?"
"Yeah, Rich Reedy from the drug thing wants me to meet a guy."
"Reedy, huh? You're moving in fast company, my man. Careful you don't lose your boyish charm."
The tone with which this was said lacked some of the lightness of Hrcany's usual banter. Karp met his eyes; there was something wiggling deep in the cold blue pools.
"I think I can handle the speed, Roland. It's nice of you to be concerned, though. As a matter of fact, all my near and dear seem unable to resist comment when Reedy's name comes up. Why is that?"
Hrcany saw from Karp's expression that the question was not merely rhetorical. He hung a grin on his mouth and said, "We got enough empty suits in this place. Reedy, white-shoe law firm, big money…"
"Karp sells out?" asked Karp.
"Something like that. Also there's a rumor going around you might be thinking about running for D.A."
"Does that bother you?" asked Karp. His antennae were picking up something from Hrcany that he didn't like. There were more male pheromones in the air than were called for by the conversation. He felt the belligerence rising in him.
"Why should it?" Hrcany answered, his voice bland. "It's just that you're always talking about how there's no place for politics in the D.A.'s office."
"There isn't. The law's the law, and… and, Roland, if you've got something on your mind, why don't you just spit it out? You think that my political ambitions, if any, are starting to color the way I run this bureau?"
Hrcany smiled and patted Karp on the arm. "Hey, don't start getting pissed off, Butch. Just shooting the shit. Your friends are just getting a little nervous, is all."
Karp took a long breath and let it out. He was getting touchy in his old age, although the expectations of others had always weighed heavily upon his spirit. He recalled the times when, as a basketball superstar in high school, friends had inquired solicitously about his health and humor before an important game; it had seemed to him always before a game, and never otherwise.
Karp waved his hands about to take in the complaint room, and by extension the system of which it was the lowest rootlet.
"Do you like this? Don't you think it could be run better?"
Hrcany snorted. "The Three Stooges could run it better. The point is, though, even if it was run well, it would still be fucked up. We're trying to impose a system of jurisprudence designed for little English villages on this gigantic city. Fourteen appearances to dispose of a felony? Come on!"
"We could still make a difference," Karp said. "Look at the incompetence-things that have to be done twice or three times because nobody took the trouble to do them right the first time. There's part of your fourteen-appearances problem. Look at the morale-half our lives are spent training unprepared kids because the senior attorneys burn out so fast. That doesn't have to happen. That…"
He caught the expression in Hrcany's eyes and stopped, suddenly embarrassed. You weren't supposed to show interest or passion about anything but sports. Just do the job, make wisecracks, and put asses in jail. Karp said, "It's late. I gotta go."
"Hey, give 'em hell, boss," said Hrcany. "You got my vote."
There was still something in his voice that Karp did not like, but whether it was just Roland's habitual faint mockery or something darker, Karp could not determine. It was still light, a dusty yellow summer twilight, when Karp left the building and was lucky to find an empty cab on Centre Street. Reedy had chosen a small dim place in the Forties off Madison, full of well-dressed men talking the ad game and television. Karp found Reedy at a table in the back, speaking into a phone. The older man smiled and motioned him to a seat. A waiter arrived and Karp ordered a beer, which was delivered in less than a minute.
Karp ate nuts and sipped at his beer while Reedy gave directions on an obscure legal or financial deal to some underling. Karp listened casually, the arcane language reminding him of the boredom he had felt sitting in long-ago classes in contracts and commercial law. Apparently someone called Telemax was about to transfer an enormous amount of money to someone else called Rotodyne, and Reedy was poised to run his fingers through the gold as it passed along, grabbing as much of it as he could during the few seconds it was between possessors.
Reedy at last hung up the phone and turned to Karp with a fierce grin. "Not a bad piece of work. I find it hard to sleep at night unless I've made a million during the working day, don't you?"
"I toss and turn for hours," said Karp pleasantly. "It must be nice being a lawyer."
"Pah! I don't make beans at law. I don't clear more than eight hundred K a year from the partnership. It's barely enough to pay off the house at Easthampton. The real money's in the market."
"So I've heard," said Karp.
"Do you have anything in it?"
"No," said Karp. "My mother always told me not to gamble."
"Good advice," replied Reedy. "I never gamble myself. Oh, I go to the track with clients and bet just to be sociable. And playing golf, of course. But the market isn't betting. Or at least it's not betting if you know who the winner is."
"And how do you know that?"
Reedy tugged at an ear. "I keep these open. You keep your ears open around the right people, you can make a lot of money."
"I guess," said Karp. "But even though I only made a C-plus in business law, I seem to recall that trading on inside information is illegal."
Reedy laughed sincerely. "Yes, of course it is. If I'm doing a merger and I go to you and say, 'Butch, ABC is buying XYZ and the shares are headed for the moon,' then it's go-to-jail time. But that's not the way it happens. Look, what would you say if I told you that you could turn a hundred K into half a million in a week, with just what you know now, if you'd kept your ears open?"
Karp was about to remark lightly, "I'd say I didn't have a hundred K," but seeing that Reedy's expression had grown serious, said, "You mean overhearing what you were talking about on the phone-Teledyne and Rotomax."
"Rotodyne," corrected Reedy. "It closed at fifteen and a quarter. It'll go to thirty before… But that's actually all I'm allowed to say. In any case, you heard it. The stock will be in play. The law doesn't require you to expunge the information out of your head. Why should you? It's yours to use."
Karp nodded. "But in order for it to do me any good, I'd have to have a bundle to begin with, wouldn't I? Isn't that the way it works."
"Oh, that's not a problem," replied Reedy, smiling benevolently. "There's always loose money around for people who have a reputation for keeping their ears open. I'd write you a check for one hundred K right now, for that matter."
Karp felt a reflexive smile of disbelief stretch over his face. It faded when he saw that Reedy was serious. He opened his mouth to say something, but his mind was quite empty. Although he did not by any means wish to offend the older man, there was something in him that did not want to be beholden to Richard Reedy or anyone else for a sum equal to nearly three times the annual salary of an assistant district attorney. He was racking his brains for the form of a polite refusal when a jowly man of about thirty barged up to their table.
Reedy rose and shook the man's hand, and Karp pushed his chair back and stood to be introduced. Reedy said, "Frank Sergo, Butch Karp." Karp took the proffered hand, which was damp and cold, like a pack of hot dogs just out of the refrigerator. Sergo was nearly a full foot shorter than Karp, and fat, and the necessity of acknowledging this disparity, which no success in the marketplace could ever repair, seemed to annoy him. Karp had seen this before in short men, and he hoped it did not turn, as it often did, into active belligerence.
Reedy had briefed him on Sergo when he had set up the meeting-the newest of the boy wonders of Wall Street, nearly a billionaire at thirty, ruthless and proud of it. Karp had no trouble believing it. Immediately upon sitting down, Sergo literally snapped his fingers for the waiter, ordered a drink-a martini that had to be made with some exotic vodka and prepared according to directions so precise that they might have sufficed to assemble a nuclear warhead-and, ignoring Karp, began to talk to Reedy in a rasping monotone about money and about himself.