"Catafalco," said Karp, punching a speed-dial button. He waited. Murrow heard: "Butch Karp. Is Lou in?… Yes, I would… Lou?… Yeah, fine. Look, Lou, on that Cooley thing, do you think you could shoot the homicide report on that over to me?… Because I want to read it, Lou… Uh-huh… Fuller is handling it? What does that mean, Fuller is handling it?… Uh-huh. Yeah, I see. Okay, Lou, right. I understand… Uh-huh. Right, talk to you later." Slam of the phone. "Fuck!"
"Uh-oh," said Murrow.
"Uh-oh is right." Karp knitted his hands behind his head and leaned back in his tall judge's chair. After a minute or so of silence, during which his assistant could practically see the gears whirling behind his eyes, Karp said, "Murrow, this is an interesting situation. My colleague Mr. Fuller has informed one of our fine bureau chiefs that all matters to do with the appearance of Detective Cooley before the grand jury are to be referred to him and to no one else. The question I put to you is, what is my play in response?"
Murrow waited a beat to see whether this was a rhetorical question. Karp's gaze told him it was not. He answered, "Well, in the first place, it's a big incursion on your authority. You're chief for operations, he's chief for admin. This is clearly part of an operation, so-"
"But is it? Public relations comes under admin. Cooley's is a case that might have a major impact on the office's public image. And the DA's political future. Not a bright line, at least not to Fuller."
"Then you should go to the DA, grab up Fuller, and duke it out."
"Okay, but think how that would play. I go in there whining that Catafalco's keeping the homicide report to himself because Fuller told him to. Fuller smiles his rat smile and says, 'Oh, Butch, I didn't mean you. Of course, you can read it. I just didn't want to read about it in the papers until the legal process is complete. I mean, grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, aren't they? I'm trying to control copies,' and so on and so forth. So I look like a turf-covering whiner, and I wasted the DA's time, one; and, two, suppose I do look at the homicide report and I say, 'Whoa, this is a fishy shooting.' What happens then?"
"You pull the case off the schedule until we figure out how to handle it."
"Uh-huh, but that lands us back in the DA's office again. Now we have to look at the DA's motivation."
"Which is…?"
"Ah, now you have me. What is, in fact, going on in the tortured soul of Jack Keegan? Here we have a confident and talented public figure, a man who aspires to greatness. Unfortunately, he spent his formative years under the influence of a man who was undeniably great, and who had what was basically a very simple soul. Francis P. Garrahy just knew what was right and just did it. He wasn't perfect, of course; maybe sometimes he wasn't even right. But when he did decide that something was right, he had absolutely no doubt about what to do. Jack isn't like that. He lives in a world that's a lot more complex than the one Garrahy lived in, and it worries him. And he's ambitious in a way that Garrahy never was. Garrahy thought that just being the best district attorney in the history of the world was a pretty good deal. Jack wants to sit on the Supreme Court someday, and it colors his every decision. Be warned, Murrow: if you want a pure heart, eschew ambition."
"Like you?"
"We're not talking about me, though," said Karp a little sharply. "So… Jack is serving two masters-his sense of decency that he learned at Phil Garrahy's knee, and the demon ambition. As we're in an election year, the demon has got a lot more power, which is why Norton Fuller is being jacked up to his present influence. Jack wants to think that because he's got me in there, the great traditions of the office are being maintained, and meanwhile Fuller will handle the dirty jobs, with Jack sort of not knowing what's going on."
"You think Mr. Keegan is in on this business with Cooley?"
"Good question. He's in but not in. Fuller would never throw his weight around with Catafalco like he's doing unless he thought he had backing from Jack. But Jack hasn't actually told him to do anything. He doesn't need to. Fuller's skill is knowing when Jack needs faintly stinky stuff done on his behalf without having to be told. Okay, now let's say I go in there and say, 'Jack, this grand jury case is fucked-the shooting stinks.' Fuller then says, 'That's a matter of opinion, Jack, but what's sure as God's green apples is that if we come down hard on Cooley, we will lose the police unions, and the election.' Jack turns his noble head and looks at me. Now, what's my play?"
"I have no idea."
"Then listen and be enlightened. I have two alternatives. One, I can let Fuller roll me, which would mean he could roll me at will in the future, which means that my usefulness to Jack and this office would be at an end. Or I could say, 'Jack, if you do this, I will resign in protest, go to the press, make a stink.' In which case, I'm out of a job I can do better than anyone else on the horizon, and which Jack and the office badly needs. So for me, and for what I still pretend are the higher values of the New York DA, it's lose-lose. This was a conclusion also arrived at by the nuclear powers. I have the H-bomb, but I don't use it. It gives me status and leverage, but not control. And therefore…?"
"And therefore you will avoid such a confrontation."
Karp grinned. "Very good, Murrow. We'll make a conspirator of you yet."
"My boyhood dream. Meanwhile, what do we do?"
"Oh, I'll think of something. But before I get any further into it, I need to get my hands on that report. Make it happen."
Sybil Marshak lived in the Wyoming, a famous pile of rococo white limestone on Central Park West in the Eighties. Marlene picked up the surveillance a little after four, having spent the day flashing false smiles at a covey of investment bankers, literally on Wall Street. The Osborne agent was Wayne Segovia, a sharp, dark, wiry man with a neat spade beard. When Marlene walked up to his car, he was smoking a cigarillo and doing crossword puzzles in a pulp crossword magazine.
"What's a five-letter word meaning 'black,' starts with an s?" he asked when she slipped into the car, an anonymous gray Honda. On the front seat was a big Nikon with a Polaroid back and a 500mm lens on it.
"Try sable," said Marlene. "Anything doing?"
"Just snapping citizens." He indicated an envelope full of Polaroid photos on the dashboard. "So far nothing stands out. I was hoping for a guy with long hair and fangs carrying a 'Death to Marshak' sign, but no."
"She go out?"
"Once. Hopped a cab to a hair salon on Sixty-third and Madison, got a rinse and set. I would've gone with a lighter color, bring out her eyes a little."
"We'll put that in the report. Anything interesting?"
"Not that I could see. But this is a damn stupid way to check for stalkers."
"Yeah, it is, but humor me for a couple of days. Anything on the phone?"
A black electronic device was on the backseat, with a coiled lead that ran into a plug in Segovia's ear. "Just the usual. She gets a lot of calls. Makes a lot, too. If I was her, I wouldn't be so casual about using a cordless to make them, considering the kind of political stuff she's into."
"I could mention that, too. Most people don't realize how easy it is to steal off a cordless." Marlene popped the door. "I think I'll go up and talk to the building staff."
She did so. The doorman on duty said he had noticed nothing, heard nothing about any stalker. He assured Marlene that no one could get into the building without being checked out. Every visitor had to be announced. It was a good building. Marlene thought it was a good building and, like all buildings, was about as secure as Central Park if anyone really wanted to get in. Kelsie Solette's building was a good building, too. She did not say that, however, but went into the bowels of the basement to interview the janitorial staff and the super, who also assured her of the goodness, etc.
When she emerged into daylight again, she found that Wayne was standing outside the car waving wildly. She trotted across Central Park West.
"What's up?"
"She's in her car, heading south."
They both jumped into the Honda, and Wayne scre
eched into a U-turn.
"Why the car? Why not a cab?"
"Maybe she wants to park and neck," he said. "Maybe she's going out of town. There she is, the Lexus."
By running a light at Seventy-seventh, Wayne had slid into convenient trailing range of the black Lexus. They followed it down to Broadway and Fifty-fifth, where the car hung a right and disappeared into an underground parking garage.
They pulled into a loading zone across the street. A building was being renovated two doors down. The sound of riveters and metal bashing made it hard to converse. "What now?" shouted Wayne.
"Use our highly trained mental powers to intuit where she's going and whether anyone there is plotting to harass her."
Wayne chuckled. "Ah, boss, I wish I had you along every day. Meanwhile, what's a Siberian river, two letters?"
"Ob," she replied as her phone warbled. She thumbed it, announced herself, stuck a finger in the other ear, listened.
"Doesn't fit," said Wayne. "I think it ends with k."
"Agh!" Marlene cried.
"Ag? Nah, no good. I said it ends with…" He stopped because she was talking rapidly into the phone, snapping out directions to someone, promising to arrive at a place.
She thumbed off the phone and thrust it back into her bag, cursing softly.
"What's up, chief?"
"Oh, nothing-my daughter is involved in a murder again." She met his eyes, gaped, made a shrill sound edged with hysteria. "Not a sentence we hear much, do we? Especially the 'again' part."
"She's not…?"
"Oh, no, nothing like that. She hangs around with a class of people who tend to get their throats ripped out more than your average taxpayer, and apparently it was her turn to find one today. I should go."
"You want me to drive you?"
"No, I'll hop a cab. I might have to scream my head off a little while, and I don't want to embarrass myself in front of the staff."
With that she got out of the car and was just about to cross the driveway of an underground garage when a squeal of tires and the roar of a powerful engine made her hesitate. She saw the Lexus race up the ramp. It was moving so fast it actually flew for a part of a second when it crossed the drainage depression at the ramp entrance, then crashed down heavily on its springs. It missed her by a foot, and she had barely a glimpse of Sybil Marshak's pale face as the car hung a screeching left and accelerated down the street.
Marlene went back to the car. "What the hell was that all about?"
"A sale at Bloomingdale's?" offered Wayne Segovia.
"Follow her, wise guy. Call me on the cell when you get to where she's going."
The Honda zoomed away. Marlene paused and stared for a moment into the entrance to the garage. What had frightened Marshak so much that she had driven her car without really looking into a New York street, a maneuver that nine times out of ten would have resulted in a crash? It was only the construction vehicles parked to the east that had slowed the traffic enough to make the rapid exit and turn possible. Something real or a phantom of the mind? Marlene turned and walked back toward Broadway, a cab, and her daughter. One crazy person at a time was her thought.
La Pelouse, Karp knew, was one of the remarkably many places in the city where lunch cost in the neighborhood of a hundred dollars without tips or drinks. It was on Sixty-fifth off Lexington, a frostedglass window with the name in gold script on it, and a shiny black door under a stubby black awning. He had never been there, since he was an old-fashioned boy and thought a hundred dollars was still real money, an amount that if you lost it on the street would make you cranky all week.
Inside, past the tiny entrance lobby and the funereal maitre d', was a plain, dove-gray room with white trim, lit by white plaster sconces, in which eighteen tables sat like altars, and a long banquette occupied the left wall. Every table was occupied. As he followed the maitre d', Karp noted the famous faces-big-time movie stars, a network anchor-and thought that, among the more anonymous diners, nearly every name would be associated with some profitable large enterprise. Shelly Solotoff was sitting at a banquette, with a cell phone pressed to his ear. When he spotted Karp, he smiled, waved, moved the phone to his other hand, extended his right for a shake without rising, cupped the mouthpiece, said, "Butch-long time! Want a drink? I'll be done in a sec."
Karp sat and studied the man as he talked. A big man, not as tall as Karp but heavier, a lot heavier than he had been when the two of them had worked at the DA. His hair was dark, medium long, with an attractive whitening at the sides. It had the perfection that expensive barbering and skillful hair-weaving provided. The face was tan, as if he had just come in from the yacht. He looked good, in the manner of male models. Karp checked out the eyes and jowls for signs of plastic surgery and thought he detected that slight Ken-doll stiffening of the underlying muscles. Solotoff caught him looking and gave a little wink. His eyes were large, knowing, and bright brown. His suit was made of a kind of shimmery gray stuff that Karp knew was Italian and expensive, and which Karp would not have worn to a masked ball. The tie was metallic bronze, over a stiff-collared shirt of white silk with little monograms on the French cuffs. Patek Philippe watch, cuff links… yes, he could have guessed, tiny gold scales set into onyx.
Solotoff shifted the phone again. "No, no, Charlie, no jail time at all," he was saying now. "The deal sucks… Right… No, they can't use that evidence, Charlie… No, trust me on this… Yeah, I'll call him after lunch. I got to go, Charlie… Right. Okay, I'll be in touch."
Solotoff smiled and shook his head as he switched off the phone. "My local counsel. Case in Connecticut. The usual, preppy selling E to his buddies. Bad search, but Charlie, the guy's a nervous Nellie. You know who the father is?"
Karp admitted he did not, and Solotoff told him the name of a former U.S. senator.
"That what you do now, Shelly? Dumb rich kid dope cases?"
"Pays the rent. How about you? Still stocking the jails with dumb poor kids?"
Karp shrugged, put on a social smile. "I didn't write the law."
"An unworthy cop-out. Unworthy of you, I mean. Typical of the average DA."
A waiter appeared, bearing menus a yard long. Solotoff waved his away. "Jules, just tell Cyril to make me one of his truffle omelettes. He knows what I like. And an avocado salad and a bottle of Vichy."
Karp opened the menu briefly, folded it, and handed it back to the waiter. "I'll have a corned beef on rye and a kasha knish. And an orange soda."
The waiter goggled for an instant, looked nervously at Solotoff, then donned a condescending smile at m'sieu's little drollery. Karp said, "Tell Cyril to make me another one, easy on the truffles. And the rest the same, too."
The man wafted away.
"Wow," said Solotoff, "a long time. What is it, fifteen years?"
"About that. You're looking good. Wealth suits you."
"You know, I think it does. I'm amazed, frankly, that you're still there. I heard that you left for downtown a while ago. And you went back?"
"Jack asked me to do homicide, and I went for it."
"But then you got blown out of the job. Some race thing?"
"Yeah. A long story. People were carrying signs, 'Ku Klux Karp.' It was just one of those New York things. Jack hid me in staff for a while, and now I'm chief assistant."
Solotoff was shaking his head. "Unbelievable! How can you stand it with all those lames up there?"
"Not all that lame. Roland's still there. You remember Roland? I'd put him up against anyone in the country in a courtroom, on a homicide."
"Oh, right, Roland! The blond beast. That's the exception that proves the rule. Is he still pinching secretaries on the ass?"
"Not that he lets me see. We have policies about that now."
"Yeah, I almost forgot the goddamn bureaucracy. And the corruption."
"You going to offer me a job? Or are you just trying to make me feel bad?"
Solotoff laughed, an odd croaking sound without much volume. "A job? Hey, in a
New York minute. Just say the word."
"I don't think so."
"Why not? Really."
Shrug. Karp was growing bored with this line. "I guess I just like public service." Lame.
The other man sprang to it. "Oh, please! Public service is for kids. It's postgraduate school-you learn how the system works, how the judges like things, get a little trial practice. But staying in it? It's strictly for losers, man. It's white-collar sanitation work. You clear the darkies off the street so the quality doesn't have to look at them. I mean it's a joke."
"Not necessarily. Laugh if you want to, and I know you want to, but at the end of the day the system's all we have between anarchy and the police state."
A contemptuous snort. "Yeah, that's a Francis P. Garrahy line. I remember it well, the old fraud. Christ! Someone as smart and competent as you-it's like meeting a grown man who still collects baseball cards and plays flip with them."
"Phil Garrahy was a number of things," said Karp, feeling the edge creep into his voice, "but fraud wasn't one of them."
"Oh, give me a break! Mr. Fucking DA! He was in office as long as Brezhnev and just as sharp there at the end, and even when he had his game, the Mafia controlled half a dozen major industries, all the unions, and Tammany Hall. Corruption was absolutely endemic in practically every city bureau, and virtually every cop in the city was on the pad, during which time Garrahy's greatest achievement was nailing the quiz show scandals."
"We'll have to agree to disagree on that, Shelly."
"What, it's not true? Plus the guy caught the biggest fucking break any DA ever caught-all the years he was in there crime rates were at the lowest in centuries. Which might have been helped by the fact that the cops were running a reign of terror in the less desirable parts of town. You ever notice how you never see a black face in those Times Square photographs from the forties and fifties? Fifth Avenue? Central Park? That's why. Nightstick justice, aided and abetted by you guys back then. Totally corrupt, and based on wholesale police perjury. And don't think it's not still going on."
Enemy within kac-13 Page 10
