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drink, slipped down, and rested her head on Karp’s lap. He was now able to use both hands on her head and did. She sighed and closed her eyes.
    â€œI’m putting you to sleep with this, right?”
    â€œOh, not at all. This is divine: head rub and complex criminal procedure. I’m in heaven. Go on—so how does he launder his pimp money if not through Lenox?”
    â€œOkay, so we’re looking hard at young Beemer, his associates, their businesses, et cetera, and we find Danila Wilson. Ms. Wilson is very close to Pennant; you might say she’s an intimate associate of his. She owns and operates a publicity agency, Wilson, Lowery, Jones.”
    â€œA front?”
    â€œNot at all. A legitimate agency, that does legitimate publicity. They have rap stars, and straight businesses, and artists. This is a high-class operation. But a nice chunk of their business, it turns out, is managing the congressman’s public image and his campaigns. They print up the posters and do the TV commercials. And it’s kind of funny because even though the congressman is in his twelfth term and regularly wins by thirty-point margins, he pays them a very large amount of money. Inordinate, you might even say.”
    â€œLike how much?”
    â€œOh, for this campaign, four point three mil.”
    â€œGot it,” said Marlene. “The pimp money goes in as fake contributions from Pennant’s smurfs and comes back out to him as overpayments to his girlfriend’s company.”
    â€œYou’re really smart, Marlene. Do you think it has anything to do with me massaging your head all these years?”
    â€œMaybe, maybe not, but I think it would be prudent to keep doing it. I’m thinking a state case is going to be hard to make.”
    â€œYes, that was Jack’s point. Obviously, the way you handle something like this is you grab up the little guys, hit them with a blizzard of charges. We’d go with first-degree falsifying business records, because of the intent to conceal another felony, which in this case would be the pimping operations, and, of course, the 470.10 money-laundering second degree, nice felonies, and we’d hope that they’d deal, roll the big guys, right up to Pennant and Wilson, and Soames.
    â€œWho is . . . ?”
    â€œSorry, Alonzo P. Soames, Soapy Soames—our congressman’s campaign manager and main guy uptown. He actually writes the checks to Wilson and would obviously know the whole story.”
    â€œBut . . . ?”
    â€œWe have some likely little guys, people making just over min wage, who got five-figure bonuses, and paid it all into the campaign war chest. Phony on the face of it, and enough to warrant a search of the relevant paper—the campaign records, and Wilson’s, but I’ve been told that’s a no-no. In writing. Basically Jack doesn’t want to go up against that crowd right now. He thinks it would look like a vendetta against the people who supported his opponent. Especially with Ku Klux Karp as the lead agitator.”
    â€œThey’re still calling you that?”
    â€œNot to my face, but it’s well-known I’m this big racist,” said Karp bitterly. “Jack adverts to it often in his subtle way. My own theory is that he wants me around mainly to keep the white vote in his pocket, one of the little ironies of my life. It goes to show you, once you’re blackened, so to speak, in New York politics, that’s all she wrote.”
    â€œSo why don’t you quit?”
    â€œMarlene, don’t start that again . . .”
    She sat up abruptly and looked him in the face. “No, really. It’s not like we need the money.”
    â€œWhat would I do? Conduct a practice devoted to defending us against dog-bite lawsuits?”
    â€œThat would be more fun than what you’re doing now, although my dogs only bite people who deserve it. Besides,