No Lesser Plea by Robert K. Tanenbaum

wanted to know the details, and all.”
    “Nothing to worry about, we’ll take care of the paper shuffling from this end. We’ll be having our regular meeting next Thursday; that’ll be a good time for you to start.” Conlin stood up. Karp stood up. They shook hands. Conlin said he looked forward to working with Karp. Karp made an appropriate parting mumble and found himself once more in the outer office.
    Karp said to no one in particular, “Holy Shit, I’m in.” A stifled laugh made him turn around. Conlin’s secretary said, “Congratulations. However, it seems your former boss is not so anxious to let you go. He called while you were in there and said for you to report to the Complaint Room for duty tonight.”
    “Oh, crap!”
    “Have a heavy date?”
    “No, just dinner with some friends. Screw it, I’ll eat fast.”

Chapter 6
    I t was just a short walk from Foley Square to Mulberry Street in Little Italy, but Karp found himself in a different world, one of the last remnants of the European ethnic neighborhoods that once dominated the social and political life of Manhattan. Karp’s own parents had been born in similar neighborhoods; Ray Guma’s parents had been raised along these very streets.
    The air itself was exotic, perfumed with anise, strong cheese, and frying garlic. On this temperate evening, chatting old ladies dressed in black sat on folding chairs on the sidewalk outside their apartment houses. The dusty storefront social clubs were brightly lit, each one with its handful of old men. Grocery stores displayed enormous rope-bound cheeses and great rectangular cans of olive oil covered with rococo inscriptions.
    There were also a fair number of import-export firms which seemed never to have any business, their display windows always showing the same espresso machines and tarantella-dancing dolls, on tattered red crepe paper. Oddly enough, they were extremely profitable, although the source of their profit was not espresso machines. In some of their back rooms Sicilian assassins, lately smuggled in, sat waiting for their assignments. In others, men guarded suitcases full of cash. This had been going on for eighty years. The Mob clung to its roots.
    Karp pushed past the door with the white, green, and red wooden cut-out map of Italy and entered Villa Cella Ristorante Italiano. Guma and V.T. Newbury were waiting at the center table, the one Italian family restaurants usually reserved for regulars. It was set for four places. When they saw him they gave a round of applause. “Sit down, kid,” said Guma. “How’d it go with Conlin?”
    “OK, I guess. The fix was in. I’m starting at Homicide next Thursday.”
    “Hot shit,” said Guma, “we can drink the night away.”
    “Maybe you can,” Karp replied glumly. “The Onion put me in the Complaint Room tonight, the asshole.”
    “What! I thought I was the only one he had a hard-on for.”
    “Don’t flatter yourself. No, he was all bent out of shape because he thinks one of us has been screwing his secretary, and she’s leaving. I wised off to him about it and he put it to me.” A strange expression came over Guma’s face as Karp said this. Karp suddenly caught on. “It was you ! Goddamit! Hey, V.T., the Goom is dorking Miss Kimple and I get the shit for it. You owe me one, Mad Dog.”
    “Honest, Butch, how did I know she would fall in love? Christ, I only balled her a couple of times.”
    V.T. looked up from his study of the wine list. “Guma, we are going to have to start a collection and hire one of your Sicilian relatives to castrate you. You’re a positive menace to the peace of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.”
    “Fuck you too, V.T.”
    “Or,” V.T. continued, “we could turn your ass in to Conrad Wharton, the scourge of porn. Why should he content himself with dirty pictures and tapes when pornography incarnate stalks the halls of 100 Centre Street.” The other two men laughed.
    “Wharton, my ass,” said Guma.