'If you ask him to hire me.'
'Yeah! What's wrong with that?'
'It sucks is what's wrong with it,' snapped Marlene, this unhelpful comment being the only way she could bring into words the complex of emotions that whipped her about when both Karp and career occupied the center of her thoughts. She knew she was a decent prosecutor, and had helped to revolutionize the handling of rape and child abuse crime in Manhattan, but she also knew that she was no Karp. Karp had over a hundred successful homicide prosecutions, Karp had been featured in a New York Times Magazine article as the iron man of the fight against crime, Karp had been appointed a bureau chief by the legendary Garrahy. And Karp was higher than she was in the hierarchy of the DA and always would be, and at some level of her mind anything she achieved in her career lay under the shadow of bimbohood: beautiful Marlene-she got where she is through the bedroom.
That this shadow was largely of her own making did not in the least diminish the pain it caused her. She could not tolerate the thought of starting a legal career again in a new city where she did not wish to live, among strangers, where she had not even the modest reputation she possessed in New York, and where she would obtain her job on her husband's recommendation. A bimbo in Washington, like those 'secretaries' kept by congressmen you read about in the papers-it was not to be endured.
Karp finished his packing and closed the carton. 'Want to go?' he asked. She looked at him and writhed inwardly and then shook her head as if to dispel the oncoming fog of depression. In her saner moments, she was honest enough to realize that it was not Karp's fault that she felt this way, nor his fault that he was a superstar, a workaholic, a job-obsessed, macho son of a bitch…
'What's wrong,' said Karp, struck by her odd expression.
'Oh, nothing,' she said, going toward him. 'I just realized I'm going to miss you.' The music from the other room had turned slow.
'Let's dance,' she said, and they shuffled, locked together, weaving around the furniture.
V.T. Newbury walked into Karp's Washington office, three weeks after his blithe agreement to take the Kennedy job, and immediately stifled a number of second thoughts. Karp looked up from his desk, which was covered with a stack of gold-stamped blue volumes, some open, some closed, all festooned with scraps of markers made of torn yellow bond. He smiled wanly.
'Good, you made it,' said Karp.
'I did.'
'Any problems getting away?'
'There was gnashing of teeth from one end of Manhattan to another. Three wine merchants closed their doors and the family went into mourning. Again.'
'They don't like you going to Washington?'
'They love me going to Washington, but they were thinking of something more along the lines of deputy assistant secretary at Treasury. Where did you get this furniture?'
'It came with the job. Like it?'
'It's very forties. You look like General Wainwright on Corregidor.'
'I feel like it too. Have a seat, V.T. It's been sprayed for insect life, I think.'
V.T. sat on Karp's couch, an object made from the skin of a large puce nauga. You could still see where it had been shot, the holes now oozing fluffy white stuffing.
'Your office is next door,' Karp continued. 'Fulton'll be across the hall.'
'He decided to come?'
'Yeah, another divorce in the making. He'll start next week.'
'Do I get furniture as nice as this, or is yours special because you're the boss?'
'As a matter of fact, I think you have a wooden desk. I saved it for you because I know you're the kind of guy who appreciates the little touches. The drawers don't open, but luckily we happen to have an unlimited supply of these unassembled gray steel shelves'-here Karp gestured at several long brown cartons stacked against his walls- 'so that shouldn't be a problem. The good news is we're not being paid.'
'We're not?'
'So it seems. They're fucking around with our budget on the Hill. Me and Crane and Bea Sondergard… did you meet her? Good lady. We're all on per diem and you and Clay will be too, until we get it straightened out. That means a hundred and twenty-five dollars each and every day we work, no sick leave, no vacation time, no benefits. Sound good?'
'Irresistible. But what about the staff? If we can't hire…'
'Well, actually, we can't hire, not yet. The commit-tee'll be staffed with people detailed from the Hill and from various federal agencies. That'll get us started, although we sort of have to take pot luck about who we get. I'm sure we'll get sent the very best people, and not the shitheads every agency in Washington has been trying to dump for years. Besides that, Bea informs me that if the per diem account runs out before we get a budget, we won't get paid at all. Not to mention, if this goes on long enough, we won't have anything in the account to pay our experts.'
'That's nice,' said V.T. 'How am I going to run a research operation without experts?'
'Get with Bea on that. I don't think she actually intends to commit fraud, but she runs pretty close. It's a matter of juggling, according to her. Everybody does it.'
'Everybody does it! How often I've heard that in court, just prior to sentencing! Tell me, am I to gather from this that the sun of approval does not exactly shine from Congress on this enterprise?'
Karp grinned. 'You could say that. But as Crane keeps telling me, here we are.'
'Here we are indeed. So what should I start with meanwhile?'
Karp pointed at his desktop. 'You see all these nicely bound blue books? The Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, in twenty-six volumes. The Warren Commission.'
He rummaged through the stacks of books on his desk, jerked one out, and tossed it across to V.T. The rest of them slumped into a new configuration, like geological strata during orogeny. 'I'm on volume twenty. Here's volume one, the report proper, eight hundred eighty-eight pages of crisp prose. The rest is hearings and exhibits. You'll have your very own set pretty soon, I hope. Meanwhile, don't lose my notes.'
'Read the whole thing, huh?' said V.T., hefting the volume he had just received.
'For starters. Then there're the critics. I've collected the essential ones: Lane, Meagher, Josiah Thompson, a couple others.' He pointed to a steel shelf lined with books. 'Read them too. They've done a lot of work and raised some interesting questions. You'll see my notes on them-feel free to make your own. When you're finished we'll get together with Clay and map out a strategy for the investigation.'
V.T. said, 'Sounds right.' He paged through the book on his lap. 'So. What's your take so far?'
'Um, let me keep that to myself for now,' said Karp after some thought. 'I'd like your viewpoint without you knowing what I think. But, obviously, if there weren't serious problems with this beast'-he tapped the pile of blue books-'we wouldn't be here, would we?'
'No, I guess not,' said V.T. 'It's hard to believe we are in any case. John F. Kennedy! It certainly stirs the old memories. You know, I met him once.'
'Oh?'
'Yes, on a sailboat. I was something like twelve, so it must have been fifty-three or fifty-four. My uncle Tally Whitman had asked me on a sailing vacation on his boat, basically to keep my cousin Frank company. He was about my age and the problem was that Frank's sister, Maude, had invited a friend from Brearley along, and Tally didn't want the kid ganged up on by two seventeen-years-old girls.
'Well, we set out from New Haven, where Tally kept the boat-he had a beautiful ketch, an Alden design, a forty-eight-the Melisande, it was called. Of course, in the first five minutes I fell desperately in love with Effie, the Brearley friend-who was by the way a raving beauty, in love in the way you can only fall at twelve. We gunkholed along the North Shore for a week and then crossed over to the Vineyard, and put in at Vineyard Haven. And there were the three Kennedy boys and some friends in the next slip. A bachelor outing; they'd come across from Hyannisport that day.'
'So you met him,' Karp broke in. He liked V.T. a good deal, but he had a limited patience for his stories about life in high society, with endless glosses on who was related to whom, and who did what to whom at Newport in the year whatever.
'Yes,' said V.T. 'I had no idea who they were, of course, but Uncle Tally had been at school with Bobby, at
