The Manhattan DA’s office was at Foley Square, about two miles away; when it didn’t rain, Karp walked the distance. He walked down Sixth, over to Broadway, and then straight south, moving fast, with long powerful strides. Every ten steps or so Dr. Rosenwasser’s magic knee would give a little soundless pop, just to let everybody know it was still on the job. Most people would have felt it as a jab of pain, but Karp had been playing hurt since he was twelve years old. “No pain, no gain,” had been drummed into him by a succession of beefy older men, until he had grown up into a perfect little masochist. Winning made the difference; it was the balm beyond compare, the incomparable analgesic. So that when, playing hurt, Karp had received the injury that ended his athletic career, and the beefy older men had no more time for him, it was natural to switch to criminal law, a field that presented many of the same conditions and offered many of the same rewards as topflight athletics.
It had the same elements of intense preparation and concentration, of confrontation in a circumscribed arena, where passion and aggression were bound by elaborate rules, of the final decision, and the emotional charge that went with it: won, lost, guilty, not guilty. He had done well at law school-Berkeley-and had earned a place on what was generally agreed to be the Celtics or the Knicks of the prosecutorial league-the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, then in its last years under the direction of the legendary, the incorruptible, the incomparable Francis P. Garrahy.
In fact, as he walked that morning past the lower fringes of Greenwich Village, past the faded commercial streets of lower Broadway, the chic squalor of Soho, the tacky circus of Canal Street, and into the gray ramparts that held the administrative heart of New York, he felt again that little turmoil in the belly that for years had signaled for him the start of competition. His shoulders flexed, his jaw tightened, his face, which when relaxed was fairly pleasant-broad forehead, slightly crumpled largish nose, full mouth, gray eyes-became grim, even predatory. He began to look like what they tell you to look like in New York-if you don’t want to get mugged.
By the time Karp rolled into Foley Square, he had worked up a mild sweat and an appetite. He cut across Chambers Street and went into Sam’s to take on fuel. Sam’s was a luncheonette, one of the thousands of such establishments, all different and all the same, that had been dispensing fast and semi-fast food to New Yorkers for generations before the appearance of the first Golden Arch. Nobody remembered when Sam’s had come to Foley Square; probably Foley used to stop by for a prune Danish and a container of coffee before going out to collect graft. Sam’s had a street window that was opened for knishes and egg creams in mild weather, a counter, four booths, six tables, tile floors, a stamped tin ceiling and a pay phone.
Karp was greeted by the current proprietor, Gus.
“Two?”
“Yeah,” said Karp. “One butter, one cream cheese.” As Gus sliced and toasted the bagels, Karp glanced around the breakfast-crowded store. Mostly courtroom types, lower-level bureaucrats, a couple of hard cases with their lawyers, getting the story straight before the trial.
“Hey, Butch.”
Karp saw Ray Guma, another assistant district attorney, waving from a rear booth, and waved back. Gus was about to wrap the bagels in waxed paper and put them in a bag, but Karp stopped him.
“Don’t bother with that, I’ll eat them here.”
“I already put the coffee in a container, I’ll get a cup.”
“No, that’s alright,” said Karp, “I like the cardboard.”
He paid and walked back to where Guma was sitting, balancing his bagels on top of his coffee container and clutching his briefcase under his arm.
“Hey, Goom,” he said. “Hey, V.T.! I didn’t see you. This adds a tone of unwonted elegance to my breakfast.”
“Good morning, Roger,” said V.T. Newbury. “Do join us.”
The two men were both assistant DA’s like Butch Karp, and like Karp were both athletes and both smart and aggressive men. Besides that the three had little in common. V.T. (for Vinson Talcott) Newbury was Old New York Money, Yale, Harvard Law, and an intercollegiate single sculls champion two years in a row. He was an extraordinarily handsome man: straight blond hair, worn long and swept back from a widow’s peak, large blue eyes, even, chiseled features, and a lithe well-proportioned body. He looked like the kind of man that cigarette ads in the 1920s depicted to show that their products had class. Luckily for envious souls, he was quite short, a hair under five-seven. He was sensitive about this modest flaw and had adopted-as a matter of self-protection-a sardonic mien, often describing himself as “a perfect little gentleman.”
Ray Guma was short too, but with no obvious compensating physical virtues. He had a funny, swarthy, gargoylish face in constant, extravagant motion, mounted on a stocky and hairy body, with big ears and a little neck. He had grown up rough and tough in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn, one of six children of an Italian plumber. He’d gone to Fordham on a baseball scholarship (shortstop), played a season in the Yankee farm system, batted.268 (he had trouble with inside curves), and then had worked his way through NYU Law.
Guma slid over and Karp sat down next to him. V.T. said, “I’m glad you stopped by, my boy. Perhaps you can settle a fine point of discussion for us. My learned friend here was just speculating on the sexual proclivities of our colleague, the divine Ms. Ciampi.”
“Definitely a dyke,” said Guma.
“It’s true,” said Newbury. “The evidence is overwhelming, especially from one for whom the laws of evidence are life itself. Consider the facts: one, we know that Ray Guma, Mad Dog Guma, is irresistible to women …”
“Awww, V.T., I didn’t say that …”
“Irresistible, I say, and two, the luscious Ciampi, undeniably a woman, has succeeded where all women before her have failed, in resisting his fabled blandishments. Not even a cheap feel can he cop in the dingy corridors of justice. What do we conclude, gentlemen of the jury? That Guma is losing his touch? That the technique to which legions of cocktail waitresses and singles-bar secretaries have succumbed no longer works? Never, I say! The explanation, the only explanation that will stand the test of reason is that Ciampi is queer, a bull-dagger in fact.”
“You’re really a shit, V.T., you know that?” said Guma, flushing in discomfort.
“Just trying to state your case, Goom. Let’s ask Karp, who is a true man of the world, and from San Francisco besides, which should make him an expert witness.”
Karp washed down the last of his bagels with coffee and dabbed his lips. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” he said. “This conversation sounds like a cross between Screw Magazine and Archie Comics.”
“No, really, Butch. This chick is driving me crazy. Look, I’m a nice Italian boy from Brooklyn. She’s a nice Italian girl from Queens. I try to talk to her, I get nothing but bullshit.”
“Goom,” said Karp, sliding out of the booth, “I got to go, but let me suggest a change in approach. You’re trying to interest an individual who made Law Review at Yale, you don’t yell ‘Hey Champ, sit on my face, I’ll guess your weight’ across the bullpen. Which is, I think, the most endearing thing I ever heard you say to her. Meanwhile, if Veronica won’t put out, try Betty. See you guys.”
Karp left the luncheonette to Guma’s despairing waiclass="underline" “I don’t want her fucking law degree, I want her body!” He moved across Foley Square, at this hour already full of civil servants and their victims, and strode briskly up the steps of 10 °Centre Street, the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building.
This was a massive sandstone cube, Mussolini-modern in style, occupying a full square block. Stuck on to its left side was a similarly massive structure: the Manhattan House of Detention, New York’s jail, known as the Tombs. The first four floors of the Criminal Courts Building were packed with room after featureless room, each packed with paper, pink, blue, yellow, and white, on which were inscribed the names of New York City’s criminals, and those of their victims, and a history of their crimes and punishments. The men in the Tombs might come and go, but here, at least, they had achieved immortality.