Karp was pale and his jaw was tight. Very quietly he said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Sonny. Like I said, I’ll try to get the best deal I can, but if not … it’s my case.”
Dunbar glared at Karp for a long moment, his teeth clenching. “Ahh, fuck you all!” he shouted, and strode out of the office, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the glass.
“Listen, don’t worry about him, Butch,” said Guma into the stunned silence. “He’s a good guy. He’ll come around when he cools off.”
“You think so?” said Karp bitterly. “How about me, you think I’ll come around? Get used to it all?”
Nobody said anything for a bit, as Guma and V.T. got to their feet and started cleaning the lunch scraps and papers off Karp’s desk. Karp sighed and tried for the millionth time to scratch under his cast. “Guma,” he said, “could you draw up the subpoena for Werner’s records? I’m swamped here.”
“Sure thing, Butch. I’ll do it now.”
The intercom buzzed and Karp answered it. He listened for a few seconds and then slammed it down with a muffled curse.
“That’s all I needed. The Great One wants to see me, immediately.”
Karp struggled to his feet and hoisted himself on his crutches. He picked up his trend charts. Maybe he could convince somebody upstairs that the system was going down the drain at an increasing rate.
“What’s it about?” asked Newbury.
“They didn’t say. Maybe he found out I put a criminal in jail last June and wants to know whether it slowed up the system any. Who the fuck cares!”
Chapter 20
Garrahy’s old office had changed. There was a new beige rug, some contemporary graphics of the traffic-accident-on-Alpha-Centauri school, and the obligatory row of Spy legal caricatures. There was also a new secretary; Ida had finally joined the other Ida’s in the dust of history. The new one, Jerri, was blonde, and dressed for success. Mr. Bloom was on the phone, Karp was told, and he should make himself comfortable in the conference room. Did he want coffee? He did not.
Karp clump-clumped into the conference room. Conrad Wharton was there, seated in one of the leather armchairs toward the head of the table. Karp maneuvered himself into one of the chairs at the other end.
“Hello, Butch,” said Wharton pleasantly. “How are you feeling?”
“I can’t complain, Conrad. What’s this all about?”
“Oh, I think we’d better wait for Sandy on that. I think he’d want to tell you personally.”
Wharton regarded Karp with a benign expression, a half-smile playing about his Kewpie doll lips. Karp thought Wharton looked a little too much like a cat studying a mouse. He began to go over in his mind all the things he had done recently that Wharton might be able to nail him for. He was just starting to get nervous when he realized this was exactly what Wharton wanted. He made himself smile back.
“And how about you, Conrad? The ship of state sailing smoothly? All the columns of figures adding up?”
“Some of them, Butch, some of them. Our throughput is holding up nicely, and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? Although, I hear rumors from time to time about padding.”
“Padding?”
“Yes, you know, inventing cases to make it look like the clearance rate is higher than it really is.”
“No joke? That’s low, Conrad, that must be really tough on your system.”
“Yes, it is. But we’re putting controls in place that should put a stop to it. Audit systems, and so on. Sandy is a real bug on clean data.”
At that, the real bug himself walked through the door. As usual, he looked tan and fit. He was wearing the trousers and vest of a navy pinstriped suit, and his sleeves were rolled up to show his Patek Phillipe, and to show he was not above a little hard work. After more than a year of contact with him, Karp thought he was about the most completely phony man he had ever encountered.
“Well, hiya guy!” said Bloom heartily. “No, don’t get up,” he said, as he reached across the table to shake Karp’s hand, although Karp had made no move to do so. Bloom sat down next to Wharton and opened a folder that Wharton handed him.
“Butch, this concerns one of your people, so I wanted to talk it over with you before I took any adverse action. I have here a Grand Jury subpoena for a Vera Higgs. Are you familiar with that?”
“Yeah, I am. What about it?”
“What about it! It’s a Grand Jury subpoena, Butch. The witness was never brought before the Grand Jury. This assistant, this Kaplan, used a legal instrument as a … a convenience so that he could break an alibi and depose new testimony in a Criminal Court case.”
“Mister Bloom, the use of Grand Jury subpoenas for things like that has been an unofficial practice in this office for all the time I’ve been here. Mister Garrahy knew about it, and …”
“You know, Butch, I get a little tired of hearing what Mister Garrahy allowed and didn’t allow. The fact remains that it’s a serious procedural violation. I had to take a very unpleasant phone call from Lennie Sussman this morning. He was furious that Kaplan and what’s-his-face, Hrcany, went out and coerced his alibi witness into changing her story, using an illegal subpoena.”
Karp struggled for control. He took a deep breath and said carefully, “Uh, Mister Bloom …”
“Please, it’s Sandy.”
“Uh, Sandy. I’m sorry you had an unpleasant phone call, but the guy the woman was protecting with her fake alibi has been wanted for three years for involvement in a double homicide. He was also the guy who blew up Marlene Ciampi. And tried to kill me.
“Now as to the legality of the usage, Miss Higgs was interviewed in an assistant district attorney’s office prior to her appearance before the Grand Jury. This is common practice. She had every opportunity to so testify, and can be rescheduled to do so at any time. So the Grand Jury subpoena was legit.”
Bloom began shaking his head even before Karp had finished.
“Butch, it won’t wash. It’s obvious that your people’s use of a Grand Jury subpoena was what pressured the woman to flip on this thing. Sussman will never accept it and neither will Judge Stein. I spoke to the judge at noon and he agreed we can work it out, but …”
“Wait a minute, you brought this business to a judge? Merv the Swerve is going to make a profound legal analysis of this crummy little procedural zit? I can’t believe I’m hearing this. And who gives a shit what Sussman will accept? He’s on the other side. What is going on here?”
Bloom’s face darkened and began to reassemble itself into a pout.
“If you would let me finish. Both the judge and Sussman would be satisfied with an agreement that the Higgs testimony will not be used in the trial, and that both Hrcany and Kaplan will be privately reprimanded.”
“I bet they would! Oh, crap, don’t tell me you agreed to that!”
“Yes, I did. It’s a good agreement. Don’t you realize that your people could be cited for abuse of process at a judicial hearing. They could even be disbarred.”
“For this bupkes? Sandy, give me a break. Uh-uh, there’s no way I’m going to go along with this deal, and Hrcany and Kaplan would be fools if they did, and they’re not fools. No, I want a full, open judicial hearing. I’ll advise Kaplan to ask for one, and I’m positive Roland will demand one. And we’re not suppressing that testimony, either. Sussman doesn’t like it, let him challenge it in open court, on the record.”
“I don’t understand your attitude, Butch. I thought you were a team player,” said Bloom petulantly.
“I am! I am a team player. I want my team to win. I play by the rules, but I still want to win. Look, let’s carry the metaphor further. What’s the score?”
“Score? What are you talking about?”
“This.” Karp opened his folder and spread his charts of trial percentages and conviction rates out on the table. He began to explain what they meant, in terms of public service and attorney morale. But as Karp spoke, and as he observed the mounting annoyance on both of the other men’s faces, he realized neither of these men was interested in either public service or attorney morale. He recalled what V.T. had said months ago about people who sought power for its own sake rather than as the means to perform useful or beloved work.