And that was what happened on Karp's watch in a cheap street killing of a nobody. This-he glanced in distaste at the nicely bound blue volumes-was an investigation of the murder of a president in front of umpteen thousand people, supervised by the chief justice of the United States. Karp recalled what Bert Crane had said about Warren and his report-that Warren was rusty, that the problem with the report was the peculiar life histories of both the main suspect and the guy who'd shot him. The critics made much of that too, but Karp thought both they and Crane were off the mark. The problem with this thing was that it was a lousy investigation. A third-year law student could've come in off the street and walked Lee Harvey Oswald through its gaping holes.
Karp rose, put his suit jacket on, grabbed some more reading material, and threw it into an accordion folder. He walked through the deserted office and out into the darkening streets. The Federal Center metro station was a block away, and he took the Red Line train to the Court House stop in Arlington.
The Federal Gardens Apartments consisted of four two-story red brick buildings with tacky and pretentious white colonial porticoes, despite which they remained easily distinguishable from Mount Vernon. Most of Karp's neighbors appeared to be noncommissioned military on temporary assignments or the kind of working stiffs that dressed in uniforms with embroidered name tags. There was a rusty playground set in the worn grassy quadrangle, which was littered with trash and forgotten plastic toys. There were lots of children in the complex, although Karp, who left for work at seven and returned after dark, saw them mainly on weekends. He heard them often enough, though. The interior walls were thin.
He entered his apartment and turned on the light. A small living room contained a nubby plaid couch, an easy chair with a reddish flowered slipcover worn at the arms, a scratched blond wood coffee table, a standard lamp with a rusty nylon shade. In the rear of the ground floor there lurked a tiny dim kitchen and a dining alcove with a table of the same blond wood and four chairs. There was a dark stain on the table in the shape of a map of China, where someone had once spilled ink, probably during the second Roosevelt administration. Up a narrow flight of stairs were two bedrooms and a bath. The place was dark and low-ceilinged, but it was cheap and ten minutes by train to Karp's office.
Cheap was the main thing. Housing prices in the District had exploded in the seventies and Karp had vastly underestimated the cost of keeping two households. As it was likely that he would be unemployed after the committee concluded its work, he had resolved not to touch his small savings until then. He now understood why congressmen took bribes.
Karp changed into comfortable clothes, went down to the kitchen, and heated up and consumed, without tasting it, a TV dinner. Then he went into the living room, lay down on the couch, and read for ten minutes before falling into a profound sleep.
He awoke with a start to the sound of a violent argument in the apartment next door. Screaming, breaking things, and an unfamiliar sound, the whining and barking of a dog. The quarrel reached a crescendo and then abruptly terminated with a slamming door and a final crash of something breaking. The whining and barking, however, continued. Karp cursed and checked his watch. He was late for his nightly phone call.
Marlene was cool when she answered, as if she were speaking to a distant relative.
'How're things?' he asked.
'Not bad.' And, away from the mouthpiece, muffled: 'It's Daddy.'
'Got a new husband yet?'
'Yeah, I just picked this dude off the street, name of Frank or Ralph, something like that-anyway, he's far better than you in every possible way.'
'Good. As long as you're happy.'
'I'm euphoric,' she said, and then after a brief pause, 'I was on TV yesterday.'
'Yeah? What, you hosted 'Saturday Night Live'?'
'Almost as good. I talked to the National Association of Attorneys General about rape. One of the locals picked up about twelve seconds of moi for the local news. I did my line about how after the legislature changed the law on corroborative evidence, our conviction rate went up thirty percent.'
'That's great, Marlene! God, Bloom usually hogs that whole thing for his buddies and his own self.'
'Yeah, well apparently, I'm one of Bloom's buddies now,' she said.
'Oh?'
'Yeah, a bunch of feminists had a rally in front of the courts building and the TV gave them a big play. Apparently, car theft gets something like eighty times the investigative resources that rape gets, and forget about narco. Also there was a series about rape in the Voice and a piece in New York with a couple of juicy horror stories. Mr. Bloom was very glad to have his very own pet feminist talk to the press.'
'So you're famous.'
'Please! Quasi-famous at the most.'
'Like it?'
A pause. 'Yeah. Yeah, I do. It's nice to get some recognition, and I think it'll be good for the program.'
'You get any new staff yet?'
'No, but… what's that supposed to mean?'
'It means don't hold your breath. Bloom is a master of the meaningless gesture. He could be setting you up.'
'I can take care of myself,' Marlene snapped, with more edge than she had intended. 'Just because you've had a running war with him for all these years doesn't mean I have to. We're separate people, something which has been getting a lot clearer to me since you left.'
'Marlene, what are you talking about?' Karp demanded, his voice rising. 'Bloom is a corrupt fuck, and you know it.'
A pause. 'Let's change the subject, Butch,' said Marlene coolly. 'What's going on down there? Solved the crime of the century yet?'
'Yeah, well, it would help if I had a staff, or money to pay one, or an office that worked, but besides that it's going great. Why don't you come down here for the weekend? I miss you.'
'I have stuff to do and no money. Why don't you come up here?'
'Same answer.'
'Great. Well, in that case, I'll see you when I see you. Here, talk to your daughter.'
Clunking of phone, sound of tiny running feet. His heart clenched.
'Daddy, I have an elephant balloon.'
'That's great, baby,' said Karp, and chatted with his daughter for a few minutes, in the sort of unrewarding and stumbling conversation possible with a three-year-old who is really only interested in when you're coming home.
'Lucy, good night now,' said Karp. 'Let me talk to Mommy again.'
But the child placed the phone carefully back on the hook, and Marlene did not call back. After some moments of agonized waiting, Karp punched up their number, but hung up before it could ring.
On the Monday following another miserable work-clogged and lonely weekend, Karp for the first time marshaled his investigative staff. They met in a small windowless office that had been designated the conference room. It was bare and dusty except for two long folding caterer's tables placed end to end and a motley collection of chairs, which the attendees had dragged from their own offices. There were little piles of dead cockroaches on the floor and the room stank of a recent extermination.
It was not, Karp thought, a particularly impressive group for the task at hand. Most of them were young, in their mid to late twenties, congressional staff types, all of them, male and female, wearing neat career suits in muted colors. There were also several older men in cheaper suits who exuded the vague bonhomie that marked them as political hacks. Karp was sure that none of them had ever investigated a homicide or worked a major criminal case. Bright or slow, ambitious or defeated, they were paper pushers all.
V.T. Newbury was, of course, solid, but Karp had his doubts about whether Newbury or anyone else could form this mob into an effective research organization. Karp glanced across the table at Clay Fulton, who gave him a hooded, eye-rolling look. Fulton was solid too, but even under his supervision none of these people was going to be able to hit the streets of a strange town and ferret out secrets from the lowlifes. Ziller was there- Karp still didn't know quite what to make of him-as was Jim Phelps, V.T.'s photo expert; short, bearded, wearing a cheap tan safari suit. At the end of the table sat a small dapper man with a brush mustache and heavy black horn-rimmed glasses- Dr. Murray Selig, former chief medical examiner of New York and the chairman of the forensic panel.
