Absolute rage kac-14

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "Yes, and if I stay, I'll be alone together, and you'll be consumed with your case."

  "Oh, consumed, conshmumed! Look, darling: it's one case-count it, one-instead of the fifty I usually have to follow. Two, the people who did it are morons operating under the assumption of impunity. They've made a million mistakes, and they'll make more. Their hillbilly asses are mine. Three, as you just saw, I apparently have the entire Wehrmacht at my disposal. Four, no political horseshit to cope with. Compared to what I usually do, this is flower arrangement."

  "Wait until you're here awhile," she said sourly. "Things won't seem so simple. This is a truly weird place."

  "Why, because they talk funny and there're no Chinese restaurants?"

  "No, really, Butch! There's a strange feel to it. Everyone's polite and helpful, at least when they're not trying to kill you, but you get the feeling that everyone knows a secret that they'll never tell. And there are little looks you catch, like in a family when someone mentions insanity, and everyone but the guest knows about Auntie Rose up in the attic. It's funny, but I've been trying and trying to think of where I had that feeling before and I can't quite recall it. But stick around and you'll see."

  "Yeah, we'll see," said Karp dismissively. "Meanwhile, you'll let me know."

  "You'll be the first. Where are you going now?"

  Karp was up and moving toward the door. "I think I'll have Trooper Blake drive me to our new home, where I will take a shower and change my shirt, and then I'm going to show the flag to the state's attorney."

  "Use short sentences," said Marlene, "and talk slow."

  State's Attorney Hawes did not salute the flag when Karp carried it into his office late that afternoon. He looked as if he wanted to burn and trample it, the way Iranians so often do to Old Glory. He sat behind his desk with his jaw (and, Karp assumed, his ass as well) as tight as could be and gave curt answers to Karp's polite questions about the triple murder.

  Karp remembered about talking slow. He let a little silence descend, after which he said, "Mr. Hawes… Stan, if I can call you that?"

  Hesitation, a short nod and a grunt.

  "Good. I'm Butch. We seem to have got off on the wrong foot, so let's roll the tape back and start again. If I were you, I'd be pissed, too. You picked up the biggest murder case in the last decade, and all of a sudden I show up, a big-time out-of-town prosecutor, and it looks like the big boys in Charleston think you can't handle your job. And on top of that, it's becoming more and more likely that you indicted the wrong guy."

  "I can convict him."

  "Well, you might be able to and you might not. That's not the point. I'm just now starting a complete review of the forensic evidence, and I would bet your next two paychecks that we come up with enough material to absolutely exonerate Moses Welch and shine a pretty bright spotlight on a couple, three other people."

  "Who?"

  "Earl, Bo, and Wayne Cade, plus George Floyd. Since Floyd works for Lester Weames, I'd assume he gave the order."

  "Where'd you hear that?"

  "It's around. Amos Jonson says that's how it went down."

  "Hah! Jonson would say the Cades killed JFK."

  "I agree. But the fact remains that Bo and Earl tried to kill my wife the other day and came around the Heeney place with weapons, in the hours of darkness. That's suggestive to me that Jonson or whoever was not just whistling 'Dixie.' Now here's a prediction. We will find their fingerprints at the crime scene, and on cans and bottles found at a lookout place above the crime scene, and we will find that the blood-covered boots that are virtually your whole case against Moses Welch were purchased by a member of the Cade family, and if we're a little lucky, we might get DNA evidence off the two pieces of footwear we have that were soaked in the victims' blood, evidence connected to the bunch that we like for it. That would constitute a pretty good case, wouldn't it?"

  "A lot of ifs." Sulkily.

  "Uh-huh. Look, Stan, I know you wish I would just dry up and blow away, but I'm not going to. So there's two things you need to know about me. One is, I've tried and won over a hundred homicide cases, some of them against the best defense lawyers in New York. I am extremely good at this, not because I'm a genius or a better lawyer than you are, but just because of that experience. Two is, I have absolutely no political or ego-building agenda here. As far as I'm concerned, this was your case and it's still your case, and I will direct the PR lady that the governor sent down to present it that way to the press. I am perfectly content to lurk in the background while you win it." Karp's face broke into a grin. "You're looking at me like I'm trying to sell you a condo in Florida."

  Hawes's face relaxed a trifle. "It is a little rich. Why the hell did you come down here, then?"

  "The truth? I got some political problems with my job in New York that I'm not ready to deal with yet, and this was an opportunity to carve out some space. The main reason, though, is Saul Sterner. You know who he is?"

  Hawes shrugged. "The union lawyer?"

  "That's the one. He's an old friend. I studied under him in law school. He asked me to do it, and it's kind of hard to keep from doing stuff Saul asks you to do." Karp paused and was relieved to see that Hawes was working this over in his mind, that he was entertaining the idea that this was maybe not going to be a complete disaster. A rather too transparent face for a lawyer, Karp thought, but in the circumstances an advantage.

  "So do we have a basis here?" Karp asked. "For now, you're willing to accept that I'm not bullshitting you?"

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "There's always a choice. In your case the choice is cooperating with me and learning something about your profession and ending up a hero, or being a hard-ass and nursing a wounded ego and ending up looking like a jerk. But I don't think you're a jerk, and more important, I think you're basically honest. My wife, who you've met, has the best scumbag detector in North America, and she says she's getting a low reading in your case. However, to be frank, I think you're a good bit brighter than she thinks you are. I mean, Moses Welch? For that kind of crime?"

  Hawes flushed a little and dropped his eyes, but said nothing.

  Karp went on, "And as long as we're being frank, I have to say this, too: nearly everybody who starts out in this business makes the mistake you made. The cops bring in a guy and they say, 'He's the one,' and you look at the guy and the evidence and who's on D and you make an assessment: Can I win? The answer looks like yes and so you go forward, because it's a hot case, and you need a win. And when new evidence starts to show up, like it did here, that your guy is wrong, you start to figure out ways to get around or to discount that evidence, so as to keep your case in the win column. It's done every day. It's lazy and it's rotten, and it's the reason why the prisons in this country are filled with innocent mental retards who were defended by drunks or incompetents and prosecuted by people who wanted a win more than they wanted to honor their oath of office."

  "Thank you for the lecture."

  Karp ignored the sarcasm. "You're welcome. I expect it'll be the first of many. The fact of the matter is, you swung at a sucker pitch and fucked up, and what you do when you fuck up in this business, if you're a mensch, is you admit it and bust your hump finding the right scumbag the next time. As it is, you're getting off easy. You should try fucking up big-time in New York City, when you got four major networks and the New York Times putting you in the crosshairs. What kind of ball did you play?"

  Hawes goggled at this change of pace. "Who says I played ball?"

  "Every prosecutor I ever met played a competitive team sport."

  After a long beat, Hawes said, "Baseball. High school and college."

  "Varsity?"

  "Yeah. Third base. I had a tryout with Charleston. The Alley Cats, Class A with Toronto."

  "How'd you do?"

  "Good field, no hit. I went to law school instead. Let me take a wild guess: you played basketball."

  "You got it. High school all-American and two years at Cal befo
re I screwed up my knee. You're a local boy, I take it."

  "Born and raised. My dad managed the Exxon out on Lincoln at 130."

  "So you know the situation: the unions, the miners, all the corruption horseshit."

  Hawes nodded.

  "And you wanted to be state's attorney so you could clean up the evildoers and bring civility and justice to benighted Robbens County. Is that a bitter laugh, Stan?"

  "My main goal was to last long enough to get a decent job a long way away from Robbens County. And it ain't horseshit, neither. These guys don't fuck around. And I got a wife and two kids." Hawes's eyes passed briefly over a framed picture on his desk.

  "You were actually threatened?"

  "I was talked to in a friendly fashion."

  "By who-Weames?"

  "No, Weames don't do the talking. Floyd."

  "My wife's met him. I hear he's a sweetheart."

  "Mm. If I ordered a carload of sons of bitches and they just sent him, I'd sign the invoice."

  "You think he's the type who'd pull a trigger?"

  "I don't know about trigger, but George likes to hurt folks."

  "How about the sheriff? I assume he's up to his ears in it."

  "Oh, yeah, but Swett's in a different class. Swett's a good-natured slob, good-natured for a Cade, I mean. His mom's Ben Cade's cousin, which would make him a second cousin of your alleged perps."

  "Ben Cade being the Cade patriarch."

  "You got it. Then we have Judge Murdoch. He's a Hergewiller."

  "Not a Cade."

  "No, the Hergewillers are a lot more high-tone than the Cades. Rudy Hergewiller was the sheriff here during the first Robbens County war. His people've been on the more legal end of union busting around here ever since. Your boy Poole is a Hergewiller on his mother's side."

  "He's not my boy," said Karp automatically, but filed the fact away. "I assume the judge's on the graft like the sheriff."

  "Yeah, but it's not even graft the way you're thinking. The company takes care of the sheriff and Murdoch like they've taken care of everyone with any power in the county since Big Tom Killebrew bought the place. It ranges from cases of whiskey at Christmas to bags of cash. It's accepted, like, I don't know, the hot dogs at a company picnic."

  "And what does the company buy for this money?"

  "It gets to do what it wants. It keeps it being 1910 inside the county. That was a good year for them and they don't see any reason for changing just because the rest of the world has moved on a little. Mainly it's controlling the union, the workers, that and the environmental stuff, although there they have to deal with Charleston and Washington a lot more."

  "And how about you? Do you have any bags of cash?"

  "I have an envelope of cash. I'm not important enough for a bag." Hawes reached into a bottom drawer of his desk and came out with the classic fat manila envelope.

  "I found this in my desk drawer two days after we arrested Mose. No note, nobody saw who left it there. It's two grand in hundreds."

  "That's pretty cheap to buy a state's attorney on a triple murder. Did you get bought?"

  "I don't know. I guess I was waiting for one of the usual suspects to show up-somebody saw them do it, or some piece of evidence no one could ignore. When Welch waltzed into town in those boots…" He shook his head, as if to clear it of fog. "I can't rightly recall what I thought. Relief. Okay, it wasn't one of their killings, it was just some damn imbecile, a misfortune. I wasn't going to get any calls in the middle of the night-'You know what we want you to do, Stan.' Then I got that envelope."

  "I notice you didn't spend it."

  "No. And we could use the money." He picked it up and let it drop, sighing. "I guess I could have it cast in a block of Lucite, with a label, like a desk ornament."

  "Before that, I'd recommend handing it over to the staties as evidence. Speaking as your legal adviser, now."

  "I guess," said Hawes, putting the envelope back in the drawer. "So what do we do now?"

  "Wait on the forensics. Speaking of which, the state guys came up with a couple of footprints off that boot of yours at the murder scene."

  "Don't tell me. It was worn by a man half the size of Mose Welch."

  "We don't know for sure, but that's the way I'd bet," said Karp. "But you knew that."

  "Well, what do you want me to do, apologize?"

  "Yes. To Welch and his family, and in public. You're bad, you take the shit."

  Hawes looked off to the side until most of the red flush had departed from his cheek. He gave a curt nod.

  "Good," said Karp. "So, if the crime lab stuff shows what we think it will, that'll be enough for a warrant on the Cade boys and maybe Floyd. Then we'll see if Floyd will rat out Lester Weames."

  "That'll be something to see, Willie Murdoch issuing a warrant to arrest the Cades and Floyd. Maybe if they signed their names in blood on the bathroom mirror."

  "Well, we'll just have to see," said Karp, and then, with a meaningful look: "I always like to give everyone a chance to do the right thing."

  "Hi. It's me."

  "Well, it's about time," said Marlene. "Where are you?"

  "Back at the farm."

  "You were supposed to keep in touch. We haven't spoken since my miraculous escape from the killer mosquitoes. What is it, a whole week?"

  "Six days. Sorry. We've been running around a lot, and by the time I thought about it, it was too late. I actually did call a couple of times, but you weren't in."

  "I'm not in now. We've moved, or I've moved. The state stashed us in a corporate lodge. It's pretty nice if you're really into intense boredom. On the upside, my client is sprung."

  "That's great! They found the real bad guys?" Lucy's excitement as she said this was rather greater than what could be explained by an abstract passion for justice.

  "Well, we have a good idea of who they are, but there seem to be difficulties with the judge. How was your trip? The boys behaved?"

  They were angels, it seemed. Lucy spun out the story of her trip, studded with amusing anecdotes. The boys had risen to the occasion of contact with their sister's peers, older but not really grown-ups, with surprising charm. They had done Boston with a minimum of whining. GC liked the Fine Arts; Zak had loved Bunker Hill. Both had loved the Museum of Science and the Aquarium. It was just the kind of conversation with her daughter that Marlene liked, a cheery tale of normal children behaving normally to the world's eye. Marlene did not much care what the world thought of her, but she wished very much to be reassured that she had not screwed up her kids too badly. Lucy had learned to provide such assurances whenever they were remotely possible, as now. It had been a nice trip.

  "So I guess you'll be coming home soon," said Lucy.

  "I don't know. Plans are a little vague just now. Your father seems to regard this as an opportunity for a second honeymoon."

  "That's nice."

  "Yes, but when the phrase second honeymoon has entered my mind, which I confess it has from time to time, I usually envisioned the Cote d'Azur or Tuscany, not McCullensburg, West Vee Ay. Also, strangely enough, he seems to want me involved in the case. We had a little council of war the other day to review the forensic results, and Stan Hawes, the state's attorney here, objected strenuously to my presence. I'm not one of his favorite people. Your father took him aside and said that we needed all the brain power we could get on this and that I was the second-smartest person he knew, and now that the Welch kid is history, I was clear to stay."

  "That must have made you feel good."

  "I guess. Second-smartest isn't bad."

  "Who's the first?" asked Lucy.

  "That's what Hawes said, and Butch said, 'We'll get him, too.' He was talking about V.T."

  One St. Andrew's Plaza is where the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is quartered, just a block or so south on Centre Street from the building where Karp had spent most of his working life. It was still steaming in the City when Karp entered the cool of the lobby
. He had thought it was hot in West Virginia, but a few weeks in the mountains had sufficed to make the nearly solid air of the City's streets a shock to his system. The gold lettering on the door said Criminal Division, Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section, New York Branch. Karp went in and told the secretary that he had an appointment with her branch chief, Mr. Newbury.

  "Nice office, V.T.," said Karp as he shook hands. It was not a particularly nice office, for a federal bureaucrat of some standing, but small and overfull of GI furniture, and with one narrow window. There was, however, a set of original Daumier prints on the wall, and a large framed poster showing the final scene in Little Caesar, Edward G. Robinson dying in the gutter, with the caption being the film's famous last words, "Is this the end of Rico?"

  "My palatial office, as my staff calls it," said the other, waving Karp to a seat. "The problem is I am housed in the U.S. Attorney's Office but not of it, therefore of low pecking order when it comes to goodies. I report directly to the criminal division in D.C."

  "And you're here because of…?"

  "It's where they keep all the money," said Newbury in a confidential voice. He was a small, elegant man, handsome in a peculiar old-fashioned, old-money way, like a model in a 1920s cigarette ad. He was from a famous New York family of hoary antecedence, with its wealth so extensive and encrusted with verdigris that it was simply no longer a consideration. He had started in the DA's office at about the same time as Karp, an unlikely enough event for one of that pedigree, and with even greater unlikelihood he had become Butch Karp's best friend. Karp had not seen him for some time, but it was not entirely friendship that had brought him here. V.T. Newbury was one of the nation's premier experts on dirty money.

  After some chatter about personal things, Karp brought up his current occupation, laying out the case itself and the peculiar sociopolitical matrix in which it was embedded.

  "So we have enough to arrest and probably convict at least three of the perps, Earl and Wayne Cade, they're cousins, and Bo Cade, Earl's brother. Floyd was more careful, but I don't think it'll be much trouble getting the Cade boys to roll on him. The problem is the judge, a guy named Murdoch. Completely in the tank to the people who apparently own the town and who, indirectly or not, set up the hit on the victims. The state cop I'm working with, Wade Hendricks, thinks that as soon as we ask for a warrant and show our cards, this turd is going to warn them off and make a lot of trouble with the warrants, and in general screw up any chance that we'll be able to get these guys. So, why I thought of you is, I need another judge."