Corruption of Blood Read Online Free Page A

the youngest, age seventeen months, had the oral version.
    Marlene chomped away at her sandwich, leaning over her plate, dripping fragments and talking around mouthfuls. She had been hunting Morgan for weeks now, having the kids examined by psychologists, making sure the evidence they generated was genuine and that the enraged social workers did not encourage them to stretch the truth in any way. Marlene was in charge of a small unit at the DA’s specializing in sex offenders, and Morgan was the current hot case.
    Morgan would admit nothing and he had a good lawyer. His wife was the key to the case.
    “I hit her with recordings of the oldest kid’s testimony, right. Timeesha, nine years old. The shitbag has been fucking her since she was six. No response. Din see nothin’. He’s a good man. Wait’ll I nail her as an accessory. Then we’ll see.”
    Finishing her sandwich, she took a long swallow, and sighed. Then she looked up at Karp as if she had just noticed him. “Pretty speedy, huh?” she said, laughing at herself.
    “I’d say so. How about a juicy one?”
    “Sounds right.”
    She crossed over and sat on his lap and gave him a wine-and-marinara kiss. “Mmm, good! And the last straw? Ann Silber came into my office as I was just about to leave and totally collapsed. Out of control. I had to stay with her for an hour before she was fit for company.”
    “The new kid? What happened to her?”
    “Oh, she went out with the cops on an abandoned child call. They found this six-month-old boy in a shooting gallery. Skin and bones, with maggots crawling over his eyes.” She shuddered. “How’s Lucy?”
    “Fine. Relatively maggot-free.”
    “Nice to hear. How was yours?”
    “The usual,” said Karp. “I got an interesting call about a job.”
    Karp didn’t expand on this, nor did Marlene pump him. Karp got lots of offers.

TWO
    Marlene regarded Karp’s trip to Philadelphia as merely a good excuse for a day off and had asked him to bring home a cheese-steak and a Liberty Bell piggy bank. Karp was scarcely more enthusiastic as he rode the elevator up to Crane’s Market Street office. The car was done in dark, gold-flecked mirrors, with shiny baroque brass rails and trim. A fancy building, and a fancy office, he observed when he got there: dark wood panels set off the shine of the mahogany furniture and the blond receptionists.
    Crane had a huge corner office with a good view of Ben Franklin hanging in the cloudy sky. He stood up when Karp entered and so did the other person sitting there, a tall, saturnine man with deep-set intelligent eyes.
    “Glad you could make it, Butch,” said Crane. “You know Joe Lerner, of course.”
    “Sure. Long time, Joe.” The two men shook hands. Lerner seemed to have aged little in eight years. A little more jowly, the crinkly hair receding and graying on the sides, he still crackled with a nervous, aggressive energy. Karp imagined Lerner was remembering the green kid Karp had been and was doing his own assessment of the current version.
    They left immediately for lunch, which was taken in one of those expensive, dark, quiet saloon-restaurants that thrive around every major courthouse in the nation by purveying rich food and large drinks to lawyers and politicians and providing a comfortably dim venue for deals.
    Seated in a secluded booth, the three men declined cocktails and ordered carelessly: the “special.” No bon vivants, these. There was a period of obligatory sports talk. All were basketball fans, all had played in college, but only Karp had played NBA ball, albeit for six weeks as part of an undercover investigation. Crane wanted to hear all about that.
    The food came; they ate. Over coffee, Crane settled back and gave Karp an appraising look, which Karp returned. Crane was a good-sized man in his early fifties, who exhibited the perpetual boyishness that seems to go with being a descendant of the Founding Fathers and rich. He had a sharp nose, no lips to speak