Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

It wasn’t a case of chasing ghosts. With improvements in forensic investigation tools, like national databases for DNA and fingerprints, cases formerly thought to be unsolvable were being brought to justice more and more frequently. And some just needed a fresh set of eyes.

He’d found several cases that held promise. But the excitement he was feeling at the moment had been initiated not by his investigations, but a telephone call. As he stepped off the elevator, his mind flashed to the photograph of the victim, Teresa Stavros, a beautiful woman when she’d disappeared some fifteen years earlier and whose face had worked its way into his dreams.

Entering the outer office, he was met immediately with the disapproving glance of his boss’s receptionist. “Hello, Mrs. Milk-Toast,” he said cheerily.

Mrs. Milquetost glared at him. They’d been having this battle over the pronunciation of her name ever since she started working several months earlier.

“There are three syllables in my name, Mr. Guma-Mil-Kay-Tossed…it’s French, Mr. Guma…Mrs. Mil-Kay-Tossed,” she lectured. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d be so kind as to remember that in the future.”

Guma smiled and said, “Sorry, I was just yanking your chain, Darla. I promise to do better in the future. Is the boss in?”

Just then Butch Karp opened the door and stuck his head out. “Mr. Guma, if you’d be so kind as to join me in my office,” he said.

“Would you mind not antagonizing my receptionist,” Karp said after he shut the door. “Mrs. Milquetost may be a bit eccentric, but she is efficient, minds her own business, and, unlike my last receptionist, doesn’t seem to be spying on me for Andrew Kane.”

“Sorry. Can’t help it,” Guma laughed. “She reminds me of my fifth-grade teacher, Sue Queen. A real tyrant. But I’ll try.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Karp replied. Then his eyebrow arched, he grinned wickedly, and added, “There isn’t something going on between you and Mrs. M, is there?”

Guma looked horrified. “What in the hell do you mean by that?” he demanded.

“Oh, I don’t know. You say she reminds you of your fifth-grade teacher, but this reminds me more of a twelve-year-old boy yanking on the ponytail of a girl he likes-”

“Christ on a crutch, give me a break. Are ya blind?” Guma exclaimed. “She must be a hundred years old-”

“I looked at her resume, she’s two years younger than you. A widow, too.”

“There’s chronological age and there’s psychological age,” Guma sniffed. “I date women who look closer to my psychological age.”

“Yeah, but teenagers under the age of sixteen are off limits in the state of New York,” Karp said, circling around to his seat on which he plopped down with a self-satisfied smirk. “Nevertheless, I’ll thank you kindly if you’d avoid boinking Mrs. Milquetost should you ever find her drunk at an office party and in a compromised position. Office romances are such a pain in the ass.”

“Screw you, Karp,” Guma said, smiling as he sat in the leather chair by the bookcase, across the room from his boss’s desk. He’d never been one who liked sitting in a chair across a desk from someone else; it made him feel subservient. He glanced at the small stand with a green-shaded reading lamp next to the chair and reached for a small black object. “Black bishop,” he said. “Yours?”

Karp shook his head. “Nah, you know I’m too impatient for chess. I saw it earlier on the floor and figured it was yours or V.T.’s, so I put it there.”

Guma and V. T. Newbury were two of Karp’s oldest friends. They’d all graduated law school and hooked up with the New York DAO within a few years of each other. In contrast to Guma, or Karp, Newbury possessed a dry wit and cool exterior, and had been a handsomely aristocratic Yale Law boy and the scion of a senior partner in one of the city’s most prestigious white-shoe law firms; but he’d turned his back on civil litigation and wealth for the low-pay but high-reward task of prosecuting criminals. Guma was the hot-blooded son of Italian immigrants. When just starting out at the DAO, he’d carried quite a chip on his broad, neckless shoulders, especially around better-heeled colleagues, but it had been offset by his sense of humor, abilities in the courtroom, and general joie de vivre.

Both Guma and Newbury possessed rapier-sharp legal minds. But Newbury preferred the complex, thinking-man’s cases, which was why Karp had him heading up the White Collar Fraud and Rackets Bureau. The bureau primarily focused on business fraud, organized crime, and public corruption. He and his team, known around the office as “the Newbury Gang,” had aggressively and successfully prosecuted high-level politicians, government officials, and other white-collar felons in and out of the justice system.

Meanwhile, Guma liked his cases down and dirty, the messier the better. He hated to plea bargain and was happiest in the courtroom in front of jurors-preferably women jurors-watching him dismantle the bad guy’s defense and send him off to prison.

One thing they did have in common was the game of chess. They’d been going at it ever since Karp had known them, both playing in styles that matched their personalities. Newbury preferred the classical attacks and defenses; he could name them and recall the point at which they’d been used in world tournaments. Guma had learned his game at the knee of old Italian men sitting in parks on sunny days. He simply attacked, making up for his lack of finesse with an innate sense for an opponent’s weaknesses. Defense was a foreign word to Guma, except when applied to the other attorney, at which point it became a curse word.

“Not mine,” Guma said of the chess piece, which he put back on the table. “Maybe V.T.’s. It’s certainly his taste-expensive-but I’ve never seen that particular bishop. Check out the detail in the carving. It looks like a little statue.”

“I’ll check it out later,” Karp said, yawning. “Excuse me, guess I’m a little bushed. So what’s this case you’re all pumped up about? And don’t you want to bring it up at the regular meeting?”

Every Monday morning, Karp met with his bureau chiefs and a few other select assistant district attorneys to review cases, which meant grilling each other to ensure that the convicting evidence was trustworthy and looking to shore up weaknesses. The practice had started with the Old Man, Frank Garrahy, who believed that cases were won or lost in the preparation stages, long before they went to trial.

“I will next week,” Guma said, reaching into his coat pocket for a cigar, which he stuck in his mouth without lighting. “But I wanted to run it by you first, and for you to meet someone, before I take it to the rest of the law-school underachievers you employ.”

“Meet?” Karp said, looking at his watch. “When?”

“In about three minutes, if this kid is punctual, and I suspect he will be,” Guma said. “But there’s another reason why I wanted to talk about this before the meeting; you know how some people like talking to the media more than they should.”

Karp had a standing rule that no one in his office was supposed to discuss anything with the press without prior approval-especially to comment on ongoing cases. But it was only natural for young assistant district attorneys, some of whom got invited to the meeting to discuss big cases, to want to highlight their exalted position as “someone in the know” by leaking juicy tidbits to the media. Karp was also getting uneasy with the way Guma was obviously trying to break bad news to him “gently.”

“Spill it, Guma,” he growled. “You’re getting entirely too much pleasure out of watching me squirm.”