Read Online Corruption of Blood by Robert Tanenbaum - Free Book Online Page B

at the New York DA, his soon-to-be-former office. On a nearby chair, a chunky, milk chocolate-skinned man in a tan, pin-striped, double-breasted suit was bent over with helpless laughter. It was the hiccupping kind of laughter, nearly soundless, the infectious kind, and Karp himself felt it tickling his own face.
    “It’s a good opportunity—,” he added.
    The laughter increased in intensity, and the other man, who was a detective lieutenant in the New York Police Department, started to lose control of his limbs and slide off his seat.
    Karp started to laugh too, as the thought of trying to convince a hysterically laughing man to take charge of the field investigation of the death of John F. Kennedy suddenly struck him as hilarious.
    Several minutes passed in this way, and when the lieutenant, whose name was Clay Fulton, and who was Karp’s oldest and best friend in the cops, had advanced to the stage of gasping “Oh, God” and wiping his eyes with his lemon silk handkerchief, Karp took up his case again.
    “Seriously, Clay… .”
    “Oh, God, don’t start,” Fulton groaned. “My heart can’t take much of this anymore.”
    “Seriously,” Karp persisted. “I think it’s a good deal. You were set to retire from the job anyway.”
    “You are serious about this,” said Fulton, sitting up again.
    “I keep saying.”
    “You’re going to go find out who aced JFK, and you want me to help you?”
    “You got the picture. What’s your problem?”
    Fulton let out a whoosh of breath and scratched the side of his heavy jaw. He regarded Karp through narrowed eyes. “Well, I got a couple. One, what makes you think we’re gonna do any good on a thirteen-year-old investigation, that the guys who were there when the corpse was still warm couldn’t’ve done?”
    “Maybe they didn’t want to. Maybe they were incompetent. Besides, it was Texas. You ever been in Texas?”
    “Yeah, in the army. Why?”
    “Well, so you know what it’s like. Do they have food? Do they have shows? Do they have clothes? They’re hicks, face it. So, get a couple of sharp New York kids like us in there, a little hustle—it’ll be a whole different story.”
    Fulton laughed again. “So what you’re saying is because you can’t get a knish in Texas, we’ll make it happen thirteen years later, where they drew a blank?”
    “That’s it. I rest my case.”
    Fulton stared at him for a moment and said, smiling, “You need professional help, not a cop.”
    “Come on, Clay. You’re a homicide investigator. Investigate the homicide of the century! What’re you gonna do when you retire? Security for department stores? Teach at John Jay? You’ll go batshit.”
    “This is for me, right? You’re doing me a favor ? Just a minute, let me make sure my wallet’s still here.” He patted at his suit coat pocket. “Okay, wise guy, how long you figure this gig is going to take? Months? Years?”
    “This I don’t know,” admitted Karp. “Say a year …”
    “Okay, that means I’m gonna have to go to Martha and say, ‘Guess what, baby? We’re going south. Back to the land o’ cotton …’ ”
    “Oh, horseshit, Clay! Washington isn’t the South! ”
    “Do tell,” said Fulton, giving Karp a hard look. “And there’s Texas, too. Those old boys’re gonna love having a big-city nigger poking around in what they did or didn’t do, the heaviest case they ever saw.”
    Karp was taken aback, and felt himself flush with embarrassment. It had not occurred to Karp that Fulton and his wife would be at all discommoded by moving from their apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to a city that was still heavily segregated, in fact if not in law, or that poking into a Texas investigation might be a problem for a black man.
    Karp said, “Okay, forget it. I wasn’t thinking… .”
    Fulton stood up, leaned over, and placed his hand on Karp’s arm. “No, I appreciate being asked … I guess.”
    He perched on the edge of the desk and