Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

“I’m sure,” Zachary said, the smile disappearing as he looked back at Karp. “My father’s a powerful man.”

“Well, that may be true, but that’s not the issue right now,” Guma said. “Whoever sits in that chair over there is pretty powerful, too. There are certainly more important considerations, not the least of which is you would be testifying against your father. He’s your only family, right?”

Zachary nodded. “Yeah, my mom was an only child and her parents died a long time ago…not long after she disappeared,” he said. “My dad’s a second-generation Greek immigrant. His family never wanted anything to do with me. In other words, there’s not much family to this family. Never was…. Now, where should I start?”

Roger “Butch” Karp heard fulton grousing the minute he got off the elevator on the fourth floor at Beth Israel Hospital and was glad it gave him something to smile about. Butch hated visiting hospitals, even a nice, modern facility like BI. Above all, he hated the smell of hospitals-the cleaning fluids that couldn’t disguise the stench of urine and blood and the cloying presence of death and disease.

Ever since high school, he’d associated these smells with the pain his mother had been put through as she battled cancer. It didn’t matter that she’d died at home, there’d been too many trips to the hospital for tests and surgeries, too much watching her suffer as the doctors poked, prodded, and shook their heads with long mournful faces. Nothing can be done…. We’ll try to make her as comfortable as possible. Sorry, son.

Nor did it matter that atop the list of Karp’s happiest moments had been his presence at the births of his three children: Lucy, the eldest, and the twins, Isaac and Giancarlo. He still hated hospitals.

Yet he had to laugh as he drew closer to Fulton’s room from which there came the sound of objects crashing to the floor and the detective bellowing at the top of his lungs. “I don’t need nobody’s help to take a piss, young lady. Now, if you’ll just stand aside and hand me the walker, I’ll manage to drain the tank just fine on my own.”

A young female voice argued back. “Now, Mr. Fulton, you aren’t supposed to get out of bed without two nurses here to assist you,” she said. “I’m not big enough to support you by myself if you fell. But if you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll call for another nurse. Or you can use the bottle we’ve provided next to your bed.”

“Ah, for Christ’s sake, I just want to take a whiz in a toilet without a couple of women watching…”

Karp entered the room and saw Fulton perched on the edge of the hospital bed, waving his outstretched arms at a pretty little blond nurse who stood between him and an aluminum walker. Fulton looked up at the intruder with a scowl, but his expression changed when he saw it was Karp.

“Butch! Just the man I wanted to see,” Fulton said. “Now, nurse, my friend Butch here will do just fine with piss duty. As you can see, he’s a big strapping fellow; he’ll save me if I fall in and begin to drown. Now, hand me the walker.”

The nurse-Nancy Hull, if her name tag was accurate-looked at Karp dubiously. But she had to admit that the visitor was a big man-six foot five or so, she guessed-and looked like he worked out. She liked the way he was smiling at her with his curiously almond-shaped eyes which, she noted, were gray and flecked with gold. Nurse Nancy turned and handed the walker to Fulton, who practically jumped out of bed.

Karp quickly realized that the nurse’s concerns were not without merit. His friend nearly toppled over to the side and would have fallen except that Karp reached out to steady him.

“Thanks,” Fulton said, grimacing in pain from having tweaked a knee catching himself. “I’ve got it from here, if you’d kindly get the bathroom door.”

Karp reached for the handle and held the door open. Fulton half walked and half dragged himself into the bathroom with Nurse Nancy positioned on the other side, looking as if she was prepared to dive under the big man to break his fall if necessary.

“Out,” Fulton demanded as he reached the toilet.

“But-” Nurse Nancy began to complain.

“Out. Nonnegotiable. Vamoose! Butch can stay if it makes you feel any better, but you have to scram…. Please.”

The nurse stood back with a sniff and shut the door. Satisfied that his privacy was not going to be invaded, Fulton positioned the walker so that he could relieve himself. “They’re saying I can go home in the next day or two,” he grumbled back at Karp. “But I have to stay off my legs for a few weeks, then gradually rehab back into shape. I can’t wait. The worst thing about this place is all these people treating me like a child. A big, helpless child. I just want to get back to work and hopefully someday run into the mo’fo who did this.”

Karp listened patiently to the rant, which he’d heard since shortly after that terrible day. A farmer in upstate New York, out trying to discover what all the black smoke over by the highway was about, discovered the massacre. Fulton had been found lying with his head on the body of a murdered child, passed out due to loss of blood and shock. His survival had been touch and go for a bit, and there’d been concern about brain damage from the blood loss. But he’d pulled through with his wife, Helen, at his side, and there appeared to be nothing physically wrong with him other than the damage done to his knees.

The surgeons had been able to repair one knee with the expectation that it would fully recover with physical therapy. You were lucky, the surgeon told him. The bullet damaged a ligament and nicked a pretty major blood vessel, but it didn’t hit the bone. However, the joint in the second knee had been destroyed, requiring a total knee replacement and the honest assessment, You may never walk quite normally again. There was damage to the perineal nerve that affects how you raise and lower your foot-a condition known as “drop foot” may result, as well as a general loss of strength.

“I was going to have to have my knees done someday anyway because of football,” Fulton said as he finished his business and washed his hands. “This was just a little earlier than I’d hoped.” He paused and looked down at the floor. “It’s probably going to get me on the department’s physically-unable-to-perform list…mandatory retirement.”

Fulton’s voice had gone froggy at the statement, and Karp pretended not to notice him swiping at the tears on his face. He assured Fulton that if the police department forced him to retire, he’d still have the job as head of the DAO’s investigations unit. “That won’t change,” Karp said reassuringly.

“Thanks, I appreciate it…but it’s not the same,” Fulton replied. “I’ve been part of the NYPD for most of my life. That’s who I am…a cop with the finest police department in the world…. I wouldn’t be part of the thin blue line anymore.” Fulton seemed to realize the effect he was having on his friend and quickly added, “But that’s okay. You and I can still put the bad guys in the can. I’ll just do it as a civilian with the DAO, right?”

“Yeah, right, Clay,” Karp agreed. He hesitated. “I’m sorry. Sorry I asked you to oversee this one. We should have had the feds handle the whole thing.”

Fulton scowled. “To hell with that,” he said yanking paper towels from the dispenser. “We’ve been over this before. The traitor was a fed, Michael Grover. That’s how we got ambushed.”

Karp nodded. “Yes, I know, I just-”

Before he could finish the thought, Fulton had dismissed it. “I’m the only one who’ll have to answer for this fuckup. I knew something wasn’t right…I could feel it…. I should have just stuck with my own guys like I wanted; guys I’ve known practically their whole adult lives. But I didn’t follow my instincts and now all those kids and those men are dead.”