Robert Tanenbaum: Counterplay

“Payback for the Milquetost innuendos.” Guma smiled at his friend over the tip of the cigar as he slouched further into the chair. “The ‘other reason’ is there may be political implications with pursuing this case at this time.”

“Great.”

“Let me give you a little background,” Guma said, taking his cigar out of his mouth and sitting forward. “As you know, I’ve been spending a lot of time going through old files in that cold, tiny cubicle you so graciously arranged for me in the basement-”

“You asked to be down there.”

“Yeah, but you might have installed some carpeting and a light or two more than the single bulb dangling from a wire in the ceiling-”

“Objection: exaggeration. Get on with it, Goom.”

“Sure, sure. Anyway, I’m shivering in the near-dark at my minuscule desk when I get a telephone call from some guy who says some other guy saw his dad choke his mother. The guy on the phone says they think the dad killed her because she disappeared suddenly without a word.”

“Seems pretty straightforward,” Karp said. “Why aren’t they going to the cops?”

“Because it’s a cold case. The cops aren’t interested.”

“You believe it?”

“Maybe,” Guma said. “I went and talked to the son who supposedly witnessed the murder. At first, he was surprised I knew about it, but then he loosened up and told me the story. Pretty believable as witnesses go, but there are a couple of reasons I wanted to get a second opinion from you before I go forward with this. For one thing, the woman disappeared fourteen years ago.”

Karp whistled. A lot of police departments across the country were creating “cold case” squads to revive old homicide cases. There was no statute of limitations on murder and forensic sciences had been making enormous strides in recent years. But not many DAOs that he knew of were conducting their own investigations.

Then again, Guma wasn’t on the regular payroll. If he and his former detective pal, Clarke Fairbrother, wanted to knock the dust off some old files and see if they could bring some killer to justice, more power to them. But fourteen years was a long time-witnesses die or disappear or “forget”; evidence gets lost…and what about this “political ramification,” he thought. That didn’t sound good. “You want to drop the other shoe now, please.”

Guma sucked on the cigar and looked down at it lovingly before turning his gaze back to Karp. “This kid’s father is Emil Stavros.”

Karp let out an involuntary groan. Emil Stavros. Wealthy banker, moved in the best social circles, and, of greater concern, a major mover and shaker in the opposition party. The party that had at one time backed Andrew Kane as the next mayor of the Big Apple. The thought of Kane…the dead children…Fulton crippled…he had to focus to hear Guma.

“Hey, I know,” Guma said, holding up a hand. “Bad timing with the election seven months away. We can always wait and go after this in December…if you win. If you don’t, well, I expect we’ll all be fired and that will be the last we hear of it.”

Karp caught the challenge in Guma’s comment. His old friend didn’t give a rat’s ass about politics, nor did he have much respect for those who let it influence their decisions. “Let’s presume for a moment that I win the election, what are the other hazards of waiting so that this doesn’t come off as dirty politics?”

Guma shrugged. “Well, I suppose something bad could happen to this kid.”

“Kid?”

“Zachary Stavros…kid as in almost twenty years old. He and his old man are estranged.”

“And you’re saying Daddy might have his baby boy whacked?”

Guma studied his cigar. “Who knows?” he said. “A kid who hates your guts is going to end your happy millionaire life and get you sent off to the can? People get killed for a lot less. But I don’t think the old man knows what Zachary is saying, so he’s probably safe until after the election.”

Karp pondered the possibilities. “You know who the caller was? Maybe he has something more.”

“No. He didn’t give a name. No Caller ID and it wasn’t traceable. I had a hunch it might have been Zachary’s psychologist, who is supposedly the only other person who knows about this. But I talked to the doc, with Zachary’s permission. He, of course, denied revealing ‘confidential information,’ and, well, the voice wasn’t the same.”

“Psychologist?” Karp asked as the red flags went up in his head. Great, I can hear the “dirty politics” accusations now, all based on testimony from a nutcase.

Guma looked up at the ceiling as if he’d suddenly discovered something unusual there. “Uh, yeah…forgot to tell you, but this is a ‘repressed memory’ thing.”

Karp groaned again. Repressed memory was where someone buried-or repressed-the memory of traumatic events, only to “recover,” or recall, them later, usually with the help of a psychologist using hypnosis. It had become popular in the eighties, and he knew of cases in which defendants had been convicted on nothing more than the recovered memory of the accuser. However, it was notoriously unreliable. Instances had been found in which the accuser-usually someone with serious psychological problems that led to the psychologist’s couch in the first place-“recovered” memories of events that they had actually read about in newspapers or heard in long-ago conversations. There had even been cases in which the hypnotist, intentionally or unintentionally, had “planted” in the patient false memories, that upon waking, were remembered as real.

From wide acceptance-by both prosecutors and defense lawyers, depending on which side the repressed memories helped-the science had since fallen into a gray area of the law. Anyway, it was a huge battle to get such testimony into evidence and usually only when backed up by corroborating evidence.

For Karp, if the corroborating evidence wasn’t sufficiently compelling and independently establishing the defendant’s guilt, he wouldn’t consider offering the so-called repressed memory at trial. “I remember the Stavros case, somewhat,” he said, not wanting to rain on Guma’s parade, yet.

“You should,” Guma replied. “It was page-one headline material for weeks. ‘Wealthy socialite disappears.’ ‘Banker husband investigated by police.’ ‘Police clear banker husband when socialite sighted in Buenos Aires.’ On and on and on.”

“They ever find a body?” Karp asked hopefully. Without a body, the repressed memory hurdle became a wall topped with razor wire.

Guma shook his head. “No. But I might know where to look.”

Before Karp had a chance to ask where that might be, Mrs. Milquetost buzzed in on the intercom. “There’s a young man here to see you. Says he has an appointment, though I don’t see it anywhere on my-”

“That’s okay,” Karp said. “This was spur of the moment, send him in.”

A moment later, a tall young man in a black T-shirt and jeans-stunningly handsome despite the too-pale complexion, dark eye makeup, and a “sleeve” of tattoos that covered his entire right arm down to the wrist-walked in. His nearly coal black hair was short and formed into neat ringlets, and he had the sad, deep-set brown eyes of a poet.

Even the air about him was melancholy, until he smiled, at which point the sun seemed to come in the office windows just a tad brighter. He stepped forward to shake Karp’s hand and then turned to Guma. “Hi, Mr. Guma,” he said. “I take it I’m in the right place.”

Guma got up and shook the young man’s hand warmly, then led him over to a couch near Karp’s desk on which they both sat. “I know you’re nervous, but you can trust Mr. Karp. Despite being the district attorney, he’s an all-right guy. I just wanted him to hear your story from your mouth. As I told you, pursuing this would be very difficult.”