Marlene giggled in spite of herself. “You’re going to be pissed off if it’s a short, neurasthenic poet.”
“That won’t happen if you do your part, Marlene. You have nine months. Think tall, think moves, think hands.”
He dropped the dishcloth and moved around behind her, embracing her from in back. She leaned back against him comfortably and said, “Maybe I should consume old sweat socks and jockstraps too, diced.”
“If you think it will help,” said Karp lovingly into her ear.
FOUR
Phil DeLino was a big, open-faced man with dark, humorous eyes. He wore a nice gray double-breasted three-piece suit that was working hard to cover the weight he had put on since he played tight end for Fordham. His greeting to Karp in his office was warm and seemed sincere.
The small office in City Hall was suitably elegant. It had a window, the appointments were made of wood or leather, and there was a genuine oil painting of a minor nineteenth-century civic luminary on the wall, looking smug and well grafted. Seated, they passed the time in obligatory catching up and discussing the prospects of the various New York teams.
When this pleasant diversion had gone on for ten minutes or so, there was a pause, and DeLino picked up a blue-bound legal notice from his desk and tapped it a few times. “This thing here, Butch. This is a problem.”
“Yes. You mentioned that the Mayor was not pleased.”
“You could say that. He called Josh Gottkind as soon as he found out, and I think they had to replace the phone wires; they were fried. Our corporation counsel is not in favor this fine day.”
“You mean it took His Honor by surprise? What did he think Selig would do? Say, ‘Gee, thanks for the job, sorry it didn’t work out’? It’s hard to believe Gottkind didn’t discuss the issue with him before he decided to go ahead.”
DeLino paused judiciously and smiled before saying, “I think ‘before’ is the operative word. Those of us who serve His Honor rarely get a chance to advise him before he makes his mind up. Our job, and he’s made the point more than once, is to keep him out of trouble when he does what he’s decided to do anyway.”
And take the crap he hands out when it goes sour, thought Karp. He said, “So he wishes this had never happened?”
“Profoundly. And he intends to be forthcoming and cooperative in every way, so that as little of the poo that’s going to be flying around sticks to him.”
“Dr. Fuerza’s been nominated to carry the can, in other words,” observed Karp. “But there’s going to be a lot to carry. The Mayor will not look great under the best of circumstances.”
DeLino nodded and considered this for a long moment. Then he asked, “I guess there’s no way to solve this little problem in a civilized way?”
“Well, yeah, actually there is. If Dr. Selig could be reinstated, with back pay, and with a public acknowledgment that the accusations about his professional and personal behavior were entirely groundless and the result of misinformation purposely conveyed to the Mayor by the parties that wrote the two memos …”
But DeLino was already smiling and shaking his head. “Yeah, right,” he said, “Gottkind would really go for that; we fire somebody for cause and as soon as we get threatened by a lawsuit, we announce that the cause was trumped-up? The City would look like an asshole.”
“The Mayor would, you mean.”
“Is there a difference? Okay, granted, we may have to go to the mat on this one, but”-he glanced again at the legal form on his desk, and at a sheet of paper that seemed to have notes scribbled on it-“do you really think you have a Fourteenth Amendment liberty claim here?”
“Yeah, we do,” said Karp.
“Really? What the hell’s the theory? It sure as shit isn’t a Bishop case.”
Karp grinned and replied, “You know, I still like the Celtics for the NBA title this year. They picked up Parrish and McHale, and if Bird is hot again …”
DeLino chuckled. “Okay, okay, I wasn’t trying to pump you. This is off the record anyway, just a couple of old jocks talking about sports and the grandeur of the law.”
Karp saw DeLino glance at him expectantly. Karp was familiar with the look of men wanting to pass him information, if he would only ask in the right way. He said, “Off the record, huh? Okay, Phil, off the record, I would like to know why.”
“Why what?”
“Why this happened,” said Karp. “Why the Mayor bought himself a bunch of problems by firing a man well known as one of the best forensic scientists in the country. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you think the C.M.E’s slot is more than forensics. And the Mayor never impugned his forensic skills. He just said Selig was administratively sloppy and had an attitude problem. He was arrogant and-”
“Oh, horseshit, Phil! Arrogant? Well, compared to most of the people working for the Mayor, including Dr. Fuerza, he at least had something to be arrogant about. And since when is administrative competence a qualification for a job in New York?”
DeLino laughed. Karp continued, “No, really! And don’t give me the party line-you know there was political clout behind this, and Fuerza doesn’t have much to speak of, which leaves one person.”
The other man dropped his eyes and pursed his lips and then looked up again and said, “He’s been after the Mayor for months on this. We ran on a strong anti-crime platform, as you know, and this year we’re running on it again. We can’t have anyone big in criminal justice saying the Mayor is soft on crime or not supporting the work of the district attorney. Bloom claimed Selig was impossible to work with. He was inefficient, he lost evidence, his people were screwing up cases. The argument was made that we might get into a situation where a big, high-profile case went down the tubes because of an M.E. problem and that all of this would come out: the Mayor knew about it and didn’t act on time, and now a dread killer is back on the street, and so on, and so on. We were assured that the guy was, I mean-whatever his slice and dice skills in the morgue-he was a bum as a leader, and when the stuff we had on him was presented, he’d just slink away. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time that a technician got promoted over his head and fucked up. So Fuerza got the job of digging up supporting stuff that’d make him look bad, and wrote his memo, and Bloom wrote his memo, and so here we are.”
DeLino looked at his visitor, examining his reaction to this information. He saw Karp staring blankly at the window, his cheeks sucked in. It was a characteristic pose that he recalled from his days with the D.A., one that signaled intense thought. It lasted for a long fifteen seconds. Then Karp asked abruptly, “When did it start exactly? How long has Bloom been nudging the Mayor to can Selig?”
“Gosh, I couldn’t say,” said DeLino, surprised. “Why does it matter?”
“Can you find out?”
The man laughed nervously. “Uh, yeah, I could probably find out, but-”
“But why should you help me?” Karp asked rhetorically. “Well, look at it this way, Phil. I believe my case is good enough to rip the City a new asshole, and you know I’m a pretty good judge of cases. I think you guys screwed up royally, on Mr. Bloom’s bad advice. Now, the Mayor doesn’t want to carry the can for it, and we agree that poor little Angie Fuerza can’t carry the whole can, so who’s left? And I’m sure you’ll want the Mayor’s experience on the witness stand at the trial-because, believe me, we’re going to trial on this one-to be as dignified and unstressful as possible. In fact, I think you’d like to be able to go in there right now and tell His Honor that the deal is done in that department, wouldn’t you?”
DeLino smiled the rueful smile of a fixer who has himself been fixed. “I take your point,” he said. “Let me get back to you on that.”
“Is it Sunday already?” asked Lucy Karp when she awakened to find her mother wearing a dark suit, a blood-colored silk blouse and stockings.