“My poor baby!” said Marlene.
And after he had drifted off, she went outside and saw her husband walking toward her in the hallway, looked toward him expectantly, and saw how it was by his face before he even said, “I’m sorry, baby, he’s gone.”
Marlene whirled and slammed her fist into the hard plaster wall, and once again, hard enough to leave a smear of blood, and he grabbed her before she could break her knuckles. She wailed then, a long, crooning cry, loud, too, so that hospital staff came out of their stations, and a neuropsych team was discreetly marshaled. But not used, for Karp carried her away and picked up Lucy, who, when she heard, howled, too, in a slightly higher key. Karp wisely made no effort to stop this duet, nor did the words It’s only a dog approach his lips as he escorted his very own Italian opera to a waiting cab.
• • •
“Are you all recovered now?” asked Karp. It was later. They were in bed.
“Oh, I guess. He was eleven. That’s old for a dog. And he went out fighting instead of in a vet’s office. I guess I should be happy for him. You think this is dumb, right?”
“Not at all. Man’s best friend. The emotion does you credit, I guess. We never got into pets in my family. I don’t have the feeling for them.”
“Yes, and I love you anyway. Isn’t that strange?” A pause here. “I gave away all my money. To the Church. Well, actually to a foundation Mike Dugan’s going to run. Forty-six million. Easy come, easy go. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“A nice question. It should be put, ‘Do you think I’m crazier than you already did,’ and the answer is no, not really. I didn’t like the way you behaved when you had all that money, and it wasn’t in any way real to me when you had it. What did you do with the rest of it?”
“Oh, well, I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid,” answered Marlene with a sniff. “The rest will take care of the kids’ education and a stake in life and so forth, and to tide me over until I decide what I’m going to do with the remains of my miserable life. I’m thinking vaguely of getting some acreage, maybe breed and train mastiffs. I seem not to be able to get along with people very well, poor or rich.”
“Was that why you were always drunk?”
“You noticed? Yes, well, there was that business at Solette’s, that didn’t help. And I also recall noticing that the rich guys my age all had girls with them fifteen years younger than me, and I realized I was not a babe anymore, and that the only guys who were ever going to hit on me were ones who wanted me to help them get rich, like Peter Walsh. I realize that I have faithfully toed the feminist line all these years—don’t make me a sex object and so forth—which is a lot easier if you have a face and you wear a six, so I felt like a hypocrite in the bargain . . .”
“Peter Walsh? The PI?”
“You know him?”
“His name came up. What’s your connection?”
“He came on to me for a job at Osborne. Came in for an interview, too. Apparently he worked for your old pal Shelly Solotoff. He was the one who set up that sting on Roland. Talked about it quite cheerfully. It’s all on tape.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah, Osborne tapes all their interviews.”
“I’m surprised he admitted it. Doesn’t he know in some of the jurisdictions Osborne has offices it’s illegal to record conversations without other-party consent?”
“Well, he’s a cocky little bastard. Maybe he thought it would be louche and impressive.” Marlene pouted. “But we were talking about me. Why is it every time I start to pour my heart out, we wind up discussing felonies?”
“You want me to say that despite our advanced age and disabilities, I still consider you the most desirable of women?”
“It would be a start.”
Karp rose early the next day and arrived at an almost empty office. On his desk, from Murrow, were two copies of the Canman transcript. He walked upstairs to the DA’s office and laid one of them on Keegan’s desk. At a little past nine, Karp called the general counsel’s office at Osborne and had a brief conversation with William Bell, at which Bell agreed to send over a copy of Peter Walsh’s interview tape. Karp did not have to threaten to subpoena the tape as evidence of a crime. Osborne wanted to keep Karp, and any other of Marlene Ciampi’s relatives, very happy. A courier brought it in forty minutes later. After checking it out in the AV suite, Karp walked down to the chambers of Judge Marvin Peoples, the hardest-working and earliest-arriving and only black Republican judge on the Supreme Court in and for the County of New York, and gave him a condensed version of the tale of Marshak and Solotoff, and the judge duly issued a warrant for the search of the offices of Sheldon Solotoff and the seizure of certain recorded telephonic communications.
Ten minutes after he returned from handing the warrant to a couple of DA squad cops, his secretary buzzed him and said that the DA wanted to see him right away. He went up and found, not to his surprise, that Norton Fuller was there. Both he and the DA were looking grim.
The DA flipped the pages of the Canman transcript. “Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”
“Not at all,” said Karp. “This statement demonstrates that Cooley knew Lomax, and that he had a serious grudge against him. His story that he was in pursuit of a stolen vehicle that just happened to contain Shawn Lomax is therefore false. This is confirmed by the fact that Cooley didn’t know the vehicle was stolen when he set off in pursuit. The stolen-car call didn’t come in until after Lomax was dead. A simple examination of police records will bear that out. A similar examination of the crime-scene analysis will demonstrate that the chase did not go down as Cooley and the other police witnesses testified. I refer to the complete analysis, not the mere excerpt on which our grand jury presentation was based. The complete analysis is quite competent. It shows that at no time was Cooley in danger of being rammed by Lomax’s vehicle. The tire marks and damage to the vehicles don’t add up to that at all. In fact, Lomax was so incapacitated by gunfire that he couldn’t have threatened the detectives at all. Incapacitated by fire from the rear, by the way, and he was shot through the head by Cooley while Cooley was on the ground less than ten feet away.”
“A police cover-up,” said Fuller, trying the phrase out for the first time.
“No. The police report is complete and accurate. The grand jury verdict was the result of incompetence encouraged by political expediency. They guessed correctly that we would give Cooley a pass, and we did. It’s our bad.”
“Wait on that—” began the DA, but Karp said, “No. There’s only one way out of this now, and that’s to take our lumps and move on. Speaking of which, I want you to look at this videotape. It concerns a different but curiously related case.”
Karp went to the large television in the corner, switched it on, and slipped the videotape into the VCR on top of it.
They watched the interview in silence.
When the tape ended, Fuller said, “What a load of bullshit. What did you threaten him with to get him to say that?”
“Quite a lot, as it happens, but it’s true nevertheless,” said Karp.
Fuller turned to the DA. “This is ridiculous, Jack. He concocted this whole thing to get back at me. It’s palace politics pure and simple. I mean really! The idea that anyone would take the word of some piss bum against the word of me and Sybil Marshak . . .”
“And we have confirmation, or will have before long, from Peter Walsh, Solotoff’s PI, the man who found Mr. Paxton there. He will testify that the original story Paxton told him is the same in every respect as the one you just saw. Solotoff made the whole thing up and conspired with you to suborn perjury. And it would have worked if there hadn’t been that watch. No one carrying a watch that expensive would have gone for a cheap mugging. That’s how I knew that Paxton’s story had to be phony. And you did your part, Norton, by releasing Ramsey’s juvenile record, making him out to be a violent criminal. And you got Jack to push through a grand jury whitewash, which worked out okay, by the way, be
cause now I have a perjury charge to hang over Paxton’s head, to make sure he behaves when we bring Marshak up again.”
“I can’t believe you’re listening to this . . . this vile conspiracy, Jack. I would never dream of conspiring to suborn perjury.”
The DA maintained a stony silence, but Karp could see a faint grimace of disgust blossom on the noble face. Karp said, “You weren’t paying attention. Shelly taped you, just like Nixon. The conspiracy is an open book.”
“It’s not! There is absolutely nothing incriminating in any conversation I ever had with Solotoff . . .” Fuller froze and stared at Karp, then at the DA. The disgust was in full flower now.
“I rest my case,” said Karp, wishing more than anything that he knew for sure whether that look was born out of revulsion for the act, for Fuller’s compromising the integrity of his office, or because the weasel had been so stupid as to get caught.
Fuller was pale now, sweating, and his words came out in a highpitched jabber quite different from his normal voice. “Jack, I swear there is nothing there, nothing they can prove. Of course, I talked to Solotoff. It’s our most politically sensitive case. But at no time did I say or do anything even remotely suggested by these charges. Solotoff will back me up on this a hundred percent.”
Karp laughed and said, “Oh, Norton! The absolute index of your incompetence for this kind of work is the fact that you still don’t understand that when I put the hooks to Shelly Solotoff, you will be the very first bit of meat he throws me.”
The DA said, “If you’ll excuse us, Norton.”
Fuller said, “Jack, you want to be very careful now. The primary is nine weeks away and—”
“I said, if you’ll excuse us, Norton. I will attend to you in a few minutes.”
Fuller left. Karp had read about people slinking out of a room, but he had never seen it actually done until then.
The DA’s lips had disappeared into a rigid horizontal line. “So,” he said after a long time. “Where are we?”
“He has to go, immediately. I have no great interest in prosecuting either him or Solotoff, but at a minimum both Fuller and Solotoff get disbarred. I’ll let you decide what should be done with both of them beyond that. I can indict Marshak behind this new material, and I intend to go forward with it. Cooley is a little more problematic, but I intend to give the grand jury another crack at him, too.”
The DA was shaking his head from side to side like an old clock’s slow pendulum, and his expression was the kind that rare and spiny fish see from the other side of the glass.
He said, “I can’t believe it. You still, at your age, want to be the white knight. It’s preposterous. It’s like still wanting to be a cowboy. I should have gotten rid of you years ago. I don’t know, it must be a brain lesion. You simply never learned how things get done.”
“I guess not.”
“Then let me give you some advice. The problem with the white knight is he comes to the castle and they send him off to slay the dragon. And he slays the dragon. Then there’s another dragon, and he slays that, too. And another. Sooner or later, though, there’ll be a dragon so big that the white knight’s going to get chewed up and fried, you can put money on that. So the moral of the story is, when you grow up, you don’t want to be the white knight. You want to be the guy that sends the white knight out to kill the dragon. Get it?”
“Is that you, Jack?”
“Yes, it is. Or was. This little drama you produced just lost me everything I worked for my whole life.”
“Well, you know, I don’t know about that. People might like to see a DA who’s not afraid to clean his own house and take some political risks. McBright is the pol in this race, and he’s good. I might even say he’s better than you at working a crowd. In a political race, an ethnic race, a special-interest race, he’s going to whip you. But if you demonstrate integrity and courage, maybe people will decide they like that better than having someone in here who’s always telling them what they want to hear. If not, maybe the office isn’t worth having.”
“That’s your opinion, is it?”
“Yes, it is. And while you’re soliciting my opinion, you should cut your losses on Benson. As I pointed out earlier, he’s not convictable on capital murder. I mean while you’re starting to do the right thing without fear or favor . . .”
“Oh, terrific. The police vote, the West Side liberal vote, and now you want me to dump the Jewish vote, too. You think I can get elected by the Ukrainians?”
“I’m Jewish, and I’ll vote for you.”
“Oh, get out of here!” Keegan growled. “I’m sick of the sight of you.”
Karp bristled at Keegan’s tone and leaned over Keagan’s desk, placing his face inches away from his boss’s. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that! If you can’t handle truth anymore, and want to break faith with everything we’re really all about, just tell me and I’m gone for good.” Karp pulled back.
Keegan peered into Karp’s eyes and suddenly slumped in his chair, now appearing like a half-filled laundry bag set on a subway seat by a seasoned strap hanger. While staring down at his desk, Keegan spoke in a depressed, steady monotone. “OK, OK, you’re right. Maybe I’m the only prick around here, but it’s tough. It’s tough sledding. I just want to be DA.”
Karp went out. He found Brendan Cooley waiting for him in the hallway outside his office, alone.
Karp ushered him in, sat him down, settled himself into his chair, and gave the detective a long, searching look. “What are we going to do with you, Cooley? It’s not very often I get to jam up someone who saved my life. Read this!” Karp tossed over the transcript of Canman’s Q&A and waited as Cooley paged through it.
Cooley flipped it back across the desk. “It’s just talk. He doesn’t know anything. You got nothing solid.”
“Actually I do. The problem with a scam is that it might look good on the surface, but it never stands up to serious poking. The simple fact is that you lied, and your partner backed your play, about chasing a stolen car. We can absolutely prove that wasn’t the case. That knocks the blocks out from under your testimony. Then we have the crime-scene analysis, and the medical forensics, neither of which confirms your story. Then you have the witnesses, the patrol cops, and your partner. They’re caught in a lie. Okay, cops stretch it all the time, especially to cover an excess of zeal by a brother officer, but when we put it to them that they’re covering up an assassination, will they hold up? When they’re looking at dismissal and prosecution for perjury? I don’t think so. I know I can indict, and I’m pretty sure I can convict you, if not for murder, then for manslaughter one.” Karp waited. Cooley stared at him, his face stiff. He said nothing. A smart guy.
Karp continued, “I actually think you’re guilty of murder. You might be thinking, in a trial who knows how it would go? A popular heroic cop, the victim a lowlife. The right jury might give you a pass. You know and I know that we don’t ever really try the crime that’s in the statute books. We try a particular defendant against a particular victim, which is why you’re always better off killing a black person, God help us. Or maybe that’s changed. The jury pool isn’t what it was when we were coming up. You might get convicted, which would be twenty-five to life, hard time. On the other hand, while I’m not corrupt enough to give you a pass, like some of my colleagues here, I am corrupt enough to recognize that you’re basically a decent man stuck in a job he hates.”
Cooley snapped out of his trance. “What? What’re you talking about?”
Karp held up a meliorative hand. “Cooley, I’m not going to insult you by trying to psychologize here. But I met your wife. I know your story. Your dad, your brother, the whole cop thing. What you should do now is look at where you are and where your whole life is going. Right now, you got Dad and the cops and nothing else. You lost your wife and kids. It’s not what you wanted out of life. You’re never going to be able to replace your brother, or show your father that you could bring down the bad guy that got away fr
om him.”
“Goddamn it, leave my family out of this!”
“Right. But just look at it, is all I ask. Now, like I just said, I’m twisted enough to take into account what you did down in the tunnel and the kind of person you really are. You’re not someone who needs to be off the streets forever. So your choice is, what I’m giving you here is, on the one hand, a trial for murder, a huge scandal, incredible heartbreak for your family, and the real possibility that your life could be completely gone. I will try that case myself, and I am very, very good at prosecuting homicides. The other thing to keep in mind is that we could have a guy in here next year who wants to make his rep by showing that white cops don’t get to blow away African-Americans whenever it strikes their fancy. He will want to drop the jailhouse on your head. Or, on the other hand, I will offer you a plea: manslaughter in the second degree. That means you will have to stand up in front of a judge and admit that you were reckless in pursuit of a fleeing felon and killed a man. That’s not a lie, even you’d have to admit that. You’d serve the minimum in a low-security facility along with crooked accountants and corrupt assistant district attorneys and lawyers, eighteen months, twenty months, something like that. Don’t answer me now. Talk to your lawyers, talk to your family. But don’t take too long, okay? I don’t know how long I’m going to be in a deal-making position myself.”
Cooley sat frozen for a full minute. That was good, Karp thought. He was thinking seriously, not going in for histrionic denials. And for an instant there Karp thought he had seen relief on the man’s face. Then Cooley snapped his head down once and rose to his feet. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, and walked out.
Karp sighed and looked out the window for a while, twiddling a pencil against his teeth. The phone rang. His secretary said it was Sheldon Solotoff, and it was urgent.
Enemy Within Page 41
