Irresistible Impulse Read Online Free PDF Page A

he felt the ache of loss so strongly that his knees wobbled and he had to look away and concentrate on his breathing. He left the counter and walked over to their table, smiling.
    “Everything okay?”
    Their eyes met his, three smiling eyes and one glass one. Everything was okay. It was the peak of his day.
    Karp’s habit, when getting ready to leave work, was to hunt through the several yellow pads he had used during the day, and empty his pockets and wallet of the rags of paper he had used to jot down things that must not be forgotten. These he interpreted and converted into a Dictaphone tape containing instructions to his people and memos to the administrative powers, which tape he would hand to Connie Trask, the Secretary of Steel, with the confident expectation that she would cause the paper to fly in the right directions, and see that all was done that ought to be done. The junior attorneys were more afraid of Trask than they were of Karp, which was as it should be.
    Karp dictated a memo holding off the trial in Morella until young Nolan had a chance to correct his errors, and was about to turn the page when his eye was caught by some notes that did not seem to fit the case at hand:
    Selig/Longren/nurse/28/pneum./?? Davidoff doc/poss.hom./Fulton
    He rubbed his face. The details were what got you, the necessity of keeping hundreds of names and dates in your head, the details of a dozen ongoing trials and a hundred or so active homicide cases, so that when someone came up to you on the fly and asked, “Hey, on the Ishkabibble case, should we do A or B?” you could give him a sensible answer. Karp knew himself well enough to understand that he had no natural talent for administration and required expert help to prevent the bureau from collapsing into chaos. In this, at least, he was superior to most of the world’s bureaucrats.
    The meaning of the cryptic message burst into his mind. Just as quickly he got rid of it. He clicked the button. “Connie, remind me to call Clay Fulton tomorrow and get him on a possible homicide. The deceased is named L-O-N-G-R-E-N. Murray Selig has the details, so send someone over there and get his file on it.”
    On to other items, most of which were covered by a “so-and-so is bugging me about X; take care of it!” and, done at last with the agony of command, Karp slipped the belt out of the machine, got into his coat, gathered his evening’s reading, and went out. The outer office was deserted, except for Trask, who looked meaningfully at the clock.
    “Sorry, Connie,” said Karp, dropping the Dictaphone record on her desk.
    “Some of us got a life,” she remarked.
    “Busy day, Connie, what can I say?”
    “Not a thing. I hear you’re going to do Rohbling yourself.”
    “Yeah, I am. You going to give me heat about it too?”
    Trask put a phony big-toothed smile on her shiny brown face. “Gosh, no, boss, I’m just a dumb secretary, just like you’re Superman. I’ll sing ‘Amazing Grace’ at your funeral.”
    “I can handle it. I did it before.”
    “Uh-huh. And we were both a lot younger then. Meanwhile, you got a date with your wife five minutes ago. Speaking of funerals.”
    “Ah, shit!” cried Karp, and dashed out of the office.
    “And a pleasant evening to you too,” said Connie Trask to the slamming door.
    The offices of Bello & Ciampi Security occupied the second floor of a loft building on Walker Street off Broadway. When Karp arrived there after the ten-minute walk from the Criminal Courts building (which had taken him seven and a half minutes), the office was closed. A sign on the white-painted steel door indicated what the office hours were and gave an emergency telephone to call after hours. In fact, the office never closed. Karp knocked on the door. No answer. He pounded, feeling the familiar irritation, attempting to suppress it.
    “We’re closed. Call the number,” shouted a voice.
    “It’s me. Open up!”
    The door opened a crack. A thin,