Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“So. . what are you saying? That it was Bernie bribed the juror?”

“Oh, no. That was definitely Panofsky. I told you, he was the fixer. No, just when they were dragging him out the door, Bernie yelled something like, ‘I did it!’ and then some names-Mintzer, De Salerno, Maddux, and some others. Well, he was raving, so no one paid any attention. Later, they remembered.”

“You’ve lost me, Abe.”

“Yeah, it’s complicated. I’m amazed I can remember it myself. They were names of trusts. The firm didn’t have much of a trust business, mostly local guys who made a pile in the forties, wanted to protect their families. Maybe thirty million total. Bernie was in charge of the trust operation.”

“And he was looting them.”

“Looting is strong. He was doing floats, kiting checks, stripping a little interest. He never touched the principle. But definitely stuff that would not stand up to an audit. Heshy found out about it, needless to say. Not much got past Heshy. So, Heshy sets up the frame on Jerry, who practically laughs in their face when they indict him. He’s gonna cram it up Currie’s you-know-what. Now, Currie, like I mentioned, is a piece of work. He’s desperate to get Bollano, he’s got political ambitions, wants to be Tom Dewey number two fighting the mobsters. No ethics to speak of. He figures he squeezes Fein with this bribing a juror charge, it’ll be like. . what’re those things the kids break and all the toys fall out? Mexican. .?”

“A pinata. But what about client privilege? Jerry was their lawyer.”

“Hey, I said the guy was a nogoodnik. Fein knows all about the Bollanos, and Currie figures he’s facing ruin, disbarment, he’ll open up and spill goodies all around. He don’t have to do it in the open. Crack the Bollano mob like that pinata. But Fein wouldn’t play that game, no, he’s ready to go to trial. Then Currie finds out about Bernie and the trusts, you can guess how. Now, from here it’s speculation. I don’t know any of this. You want to hear it?”

“Desperately.”

He laughed. “Okay, cookie. Let’s say Currie calls up Fein. We got the goods on your partner, he’s going down unless you play ball. Jerry thinks fast. He says, here’s the deal-I cop to misdemeanor tampering, you lay off Bernie, and don’t schtup me with the bar. Currie says, what about the Bollanos? Nothing doing, says Fein, you don’t like it, I’ll see you in court, and Bernie can take his chances. So Currie, who’s no dummy, he thinks, one way I got a good collar on a Mob jury tampering, the other way I got to go up against Jerry Fein and Bernie Kusher with a weak case, I could lose my ass. And what do I care about technical violations of the trust regs? No juice there. So they deal. But afterward Currie does put it to him with the bar, and Jerry gets the shaft. Besides the rest of it, Currie was a mean, vindictive son of a bitch.”

“That’s some story,” said Marlene, “but it makes sense. Currie’s dead, you said?”

“Yeah, Garrahy, the D.A., canned him when Bernie took off.”

“Bernie took off where?”

“Oh, after Jerry died, he really did loot the trusts. Lifted over a million and disappeared. That’s why I say that the people who were in the Lamplighter that night recalled the names. It was a big scandal, especially when it came out that Currie knew about the trust irregularities and did nothing as part of the deal with Fein. Bernie put that in a postcard he wrote from Papua or some South Pacific place-wrote it right to Garrahy. You know what Garrahy was like, what he’d do if he found out one of his people was blackmailing a lawyer by suppressing evidence of a crime. Fried Currie’s shorts for him and gave him the boot. The man keeled over a couple of years after that. Heart. Bernie disappeared completely, lost in the Pacific.”

“Like Amelia Earhart,” said Marlene.

“Yeah, but believe me, darling, there were more people looking for Bernie.” Abe smiled faintly, leaned back in his chair, and took his glasses off. He looked tired, as if this journey to the past had given him a kind of jet lag.

Marlene leafed through her notes. “What about the secretary, this Shirley Waldorf? I guess she’s gone, too.”

“Oh, no, she’s still around. I see her from time to time on 34th Street. She lives there.”

“Oh, great! You have her address?”

“No, I mean, she lives on the street. She’s a bag lady, Marlene. Completely meshuggeh. Has been for years.”

“She can’t communicate at all?”

“Oh, yeah, she communicates , all right. You want to go through her files , as she calls them, and pretend that she’s still a legal secretary, she’ll talk your ear off. She carries pathetic piles of trash around in a couple of supermarket carts. Her files . Another casualty of what Jerry did.”

“If he did it,” said Marlene.

“Yeah, right, if he did it.”

In a conference room in the organized crime division they showed Karp the tape of Guma talking to Gino Scarpi at Bellevue. The camera had been concealed in the TV set, and the audio treated with sophisticated electronics to remove the sound of the TV programs so that the targets’ voices came through with clarity. After the viewing, after Eitenberg had turned up the lights, Karp asked Norton Peabody, “This is all you have?”

“Isn’t it enough? It looks an awful lot like conspiracy to me. Your boy’s in bed with the wise guys, and apparently has been for years.”

Karp rubbed his eyes. He pointed them at Peabody, charged heavily with contempt. “Peabody, how old are you?”

The man hesitated, and then said, “Thirty-seven. Why?”

“Yeah, same as me. Ray Guma is fifty-eight, which means he was putting killers away before either of us got out of high school. He started with the Kings County D.A. in 1949. That was just after that office took apart Murder Incorporated. You have any idea what organized crime was like in New York in 1949, how powerful?”

Peabody affected a bored look. “Yes, I saw The Godfather, too. Where is this leading, Butch?”

Karp stared at Peabody until the other man dropped his eyes. “That’s a movie, Norton. I’m talking about real life. Ray Guma started work in that environment, and three years later he got an offer from New York County and he went for it. He has over thirty years in the best homicide bureau in the country. He’s probably put more actual Mafia killers in jail than anyone else in the United States. And you have the gall to call him dirty?”

Peabody shrugged. “So they threw him a fish once in a while, just like a trained seal. He still looks like a trained seal to me.”

Karp got up, and reflected yet again how nice it was to be big and tall. Peabody was, by contrast, well named. Karp loomed over the smaller man for a long moment, fists clenched, until Peabody discovered that it was urgent to turn off the VCR and retrieve his tape. He stayed by the machine, a comfortable three yards from Karp, who said, with conviction, “This is going to be an embarrassment for you guys if you try to construe that horseshit as serious evidence. And I know that Mr. Colombo really hates to be embarrassed in public. His long, scaly tail lashes around in fury and does all kinds of damage to the people close to him.” He nodded politely to both men and left.

He trotted across Foley Square to the courthouse, went directly to Guma’s office, knocked.

“I’m on the phone,” said the occupant’s voice. Karp barged in anyway and made urgent circular motions with his index finger.

Guma said into the phone, “Sol, I’ll have to call you back, I got a crisis here.”

He replaced the receiver and looked up at Karp, who said, “I just came from the Southern District. Your subpoena is because they got the prison ward thing on tape. You and Scarpi.”