Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“Except for Herschel Panofsky,” said Marlene.

“Yeah, except for him,” said Doherty, giving her an interested cop look.

“That didn’t make you suspicious?”

“Oh, suspicious, yeah. But, like Arnie said, who’s to say the guy didn’t have a great front, the only guy he leveled with was his partner? I checked up on Panofsky, just on my own, and he was alibied pretty tight on the day of. The guy became a judge later on. Changed his name. Anyway, I let it go.”

“Anything else fishy?”

He frowned. “Fishy isn’t the word I would use here. But, yeah, there was the key business. The door to the maintenance area was always locked. The management was real careful about that, for obvious reasons. Fein had a key. We found it in his pocket after he hit. Where’d he get it? We figured he bought it off one of the maintenance guys, and we sweated every one of them, every person who had access to a copy, and came up with zip.” He paused and stared out the window again. From the yard came the liquid trilling of a robin, and they both listened to it for a while.

Doherty looked at his watch and leaned forward in his recliner. “I got to start moving,” he said.

Marlene put away her notebook and stood. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“I wish I had something else for you. You know, you have, detectives have, hundreds of cases, and most of the time you figure you gave it your best shot. Here, though. .” He waggled a hand. “Nothing to go on, not really. And the family bought it, and that was it, case closed. Everybody bought it, as a matter of fact, except the secretary. She wasn’t in any doubt.”

“Secretary?”

“Uh-huh. Fein’s personal secretary. She took it harder than the family, practically. She got to be something of a pain in the you-know-where after. She couldn’t understand why we were treating it as a suicide when she knew for a fact that it wasn’t.”

“What was her evidence of that. . oh, first, do you recall her name?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. A hard one to forget. Waldorf, like the hotel; first name. .?” He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them. “Jesus, it’s gone! Sheila? Sharon? One of those. What she had was a bunch of letters, carbons, of stuff he’d sent out, all about relocating in California, applying for the bar there. Plans, you know? Therefore, not going to kill himself. Arnie looked at her stuff, didn’t find anything definite. She kept coming by, here’s more papers, Detective. After a while we didn’t bother looking. I mean, the case was closed. Panofsky had to get rid of her. I guess she was an embarrassment.”

Marlene made a note, shook hands, and they walked together to the front door, in her head asking the questions that couldn’t be asked out loud, like how does an ex-cop on a pension afford a half-million-dollar house and a country club membership, tarpon fishing in Florida, and exactly how bent had Arnie Mulhausen been, and who else got paid off, and by whose money, for whisking Gerald Fein’s murder under the rug back in 1960?

Ray Guma walked into Karp’s office unannounced, slammed the door behind him, and flipped the thing onto Karp’s desk. Karp looked at it, and then up at Guma, who was frowning so hard that his chin showed dimples and his thick eyebrows nearly met in the middle.

“That looks like a subpoena, Ray,” said Karp. He picked it up with two fingers, like a dead fish, and snapped the folded document open. “Yep. I was right. It’s a federal subpoena. When did you get it?”

“Just now. What the fuck is going on, Butch?”

“You got me,” said Karp. He read through the document. “No indication of what they want you for, but there never is. The statute is 18 U.S.C.371, the good old criminal-conspiracy steamer trunk, could be anything. Got a guilty conscience, Goom?”

“Get out of here! Me?”

Karp laughed. He read the name of the issuing assistant U.S. attorney. “Douglas E. Eitenberg. You know him?”

“Never heard of the asshole. He must be new.”

“Call him yet?”

“No, I was so pissed I didn’t trust myself not to blow up on the phone there. I figured Jack’s out of town, you’re the man, I’d talk to you first.”

“Wise. You want me to call him?”

“I want you to rip his lungs out.”

“Maybe later. Okay, Goom, calm down, go back downstairs, give Roland a heads-up on it so he knows what’s happening, and since I’m king for a day, I will call our colleagues and find out what the story is.”

Keegan was at the Greenbriar in West Virginia at a big-time legal institute barbecue of the sort that he never offered to let Karp stand in at. Karp would be the district attorney for two whole days. As such, according to protocol, he should have called the U.S. attorney directly, or Eitenberg’s boss in the organized crime and public corruption division, but he decided to let protocol go hang for once, and just penetrate through the bureaucracy in the hope that his temporary clout would blast some plain speaking loose from the lowly worker bee across the square.

He had O’Malley make the call (this is the office of the district attorney calling) and got the guy on hold and kept him there for a minute.

Eitenberg had a light voice, one that seemed only recently to have changed, and he spoke very carefully, with more than the usual number of ahs and ums.

After the briefest pleasantries, Karp said, “Yeah, Mr. Eitenberg, just checking out this subpoena you issued to one of our assistants, Mr. Raymond Guma. Do you recall that one?” Eitenberg did. “Well, here’s the thing, Mr. Eitenberg, as a rule, we in the criminal justice business, being the good guys and all, we try to avoid this sort of thing, throwing subpoenas at one another. I mean, just as an example, if one of your fine federal law enforcement officers inadvertently violated the laws of New York state, we would not expect to find them in shackles walking the perp walk the next morning. No, a couple of phone calls, a friendly meeting or two, we’d straighten it all out. Unless there’s some particular reason why Mr. Colombo doesn’t want to go that way.” Silence on the line.

“Is there?” Karp asked. Ums and mumbles, and Mr. Eitenberg would like to consult with his management.

Fifteen minutes later, that management called, in the person of Norton Peabody, the head of the organized crime division, a man Karp knew to say hello to, and by reputation. Buttoned down and intense was the rep. More pleasantries, after which Peabody said, “Doug Eitenberg tells me you have some issues on this subpoena we sent out to Raymond Guma.”

“Issues, yeah. I didn’t mean to get your boy all bent out of shape, but we were a little concerned. A subpoena? Why not a call? Or a visit? You look out your window, you could wave at my office.”

“Well, the problem with that approach, Butch, is your guy showed up on surveillance saying some pretty disturbing things to a pretty bad wise guy. We thought it was best to keep the whole thing formal for now. You understand, given the sensitivity-”

“What wise guy was that, Norton?”

“Gino Scarpi. We have them taped in the prison ward at Bellevue.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Peabody! Ray was interviewing Scarpi at my direct request.”

“That’s interesting. It was clear from our tape that he had no recording device on him. Was there one in the room?”

“No, because he wasn’t there to gather evidence. He was there to gather intelligence. It’s not the same thing.”

A pause. “Don’t you think it’s irregular to send an assistant district attorney to talk to a Mob gunman? Don’t you have investigators for that?”

“Yes, of course, but so what? He wasn’t sneaking off to conspire with a criminal, for God’s sake. He was interviewing a prisoner at my direction. And for this he becomes subject to a subpoena? What is wrong with you guys?”