Robert Tanenbaum - Resolved

There was a pattern of abuse alleged in support of the state's case. The rape bureau had put out an 800 number: call if Dr. Hirsch diddled you or worse. He paged through the testimony. Four women had responded. Two thought something had happened during deep anesthesia but weren't sure what. One felt she'd had her breast touched inappropriately. The last claimed that Dr. Hirsch had seduced her in his office and they'd had a wild affair for six months and that he'd promised he'd leave his wife for her and then didn't. No tonguing of vaginas during colonoscopies. A dozen years back, Karp's wife had been the founding chief of the sex crimes bureau and so Karp knew more than most about the particular difficulties of prosecuting such cases. If this guy had done it, why hadn't he copped to a lesser? Why did he want a trial? Why, come to that, did sex crimes want a trial? Little bells were going off. Karp put the file to the side and reached for his phone.

Laura Rachman, chief of the sex crimes bureau, was a big blonde who dressed in colors more flamboyant than were usually seen in the courthouse, the colors of national flags. Today she was wearing a crisp linen suit of an eye-challenging green with a white blouse. Her hair was arranged in sprayed waves around her wide oval face, which she had carefully painted in matte fleshtones to resemble human skin. Karp did not like Rachman particularly and was unfailingly polite to her as a result.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked. Wonted. Rachman's vowels were artificial, like her face. She had escaped Queens and did not wish to be mistaken for an outer-borough person.

"Yeah, have a seat." He gestured, she sat, crossing her legs. The short skirt of the suit rode up over her nylon-covered thighs. Karp focused his eyes on her face. "It's this Hirsch thing. What's the story there?"

"What do you mean, story? It's pretty clear. He's a serial sexual abuser and we're going to hit him with the max. You have a problem with that?"

"Yeah, I do. What did you offer him?"

"Sex abuse two and six months. He spit in our eye. He says he didn't do it."

"Uh-huh. Well the thing is, I don't see that you've got a trial here. That's my problem."

Little patches of natural color appeared under the blusher. "You're questioning my judgment?"

"It's my job, Laura. I question everyone's judgment. Basically, the whole thing rests on Coleman's testimony, with no corroborating evidence or witnesses…"

"It's a sex case. There's never corroborating testimony in sex cases."

"Not often, right, but here you've got a doc doing an unlikely act in a place where it'd be easy for him to get caught. You've got nothing solid that he's not a Boy Scout…"

"That's not true. We've got three other women."

Karp waved a hand. "You've got two women who think something happened when they were under anesthesia. The third woman says she had an affair with him, he seduced her, but I don't see any background on her. Is she cool?"

"She's fine. She'll stand up."

"Great, but I want to see it in writing that someone checked that she's not a fruitcake who also had passionate affairs with the mayor, the pope, and Warren Beatty. Also, your defendant, the guy's done nine thousand colonoscopies, according to his statement. And he's never indulged his taste for fecally flavored cunnilingus until now? Until your victim came along? What's she like, the victim?"

"Wait a minute, we're blaming the victim now? I'm sorry, when did the middle ages come back?"

Karp suppressed a sigh. "Laura, the defense is going to attack the character of the complainant because that's your entire case. The woman has to be squeaky, and I don't see from this file that you've made a significant effort to determine that. Does she have a grudge against the doc? Is she trying to muscle him on something? Is she a flake? Does she have any pattern of complaints against docs for this kind of thing?"

But Rachman was not listening. "I can't believe I'm hearing this crap. I'll tell you what the problem is. The problem is the D is a nice Jewish doctor and the victim is black."

"No. The problem is that the case is not prepped for trial, and I'm not going to sign off on a trial slot until it is."

She stood up and yanked her skirt down. "Fine. I'm going to Jack on this."

"Go ahead," said Karp, "and I'll tell him the same thing I told you: The case isn't ready."

After she was gone, Karp spent a few moments predicting what would happen if Rachman took the wretched thing to Keegan. She would get on his calendar, Keegan would call him and ask what it was about, Karp would tell him, and Keegan would yell at Karp for not handling it at his level, meaning that Keegan wanted to be protected from having to make decisions on cases that would rile either the blacks or the liberal bleeders, the two squishiest elements of his political support. And Karp would therefore need something else, something that wasn't in the case file, to give the DA.

"Murrow!"

In a moment the man appeared. Karp understood that Murrow was out and about much of the day on his master's business, but it seemed that whenever Karp called him, he materialized, like a djinn. Karp thrust the Hirsch file at him.

"Look this over," said Karp and explained his problems with the case. "There could be something fishy about the vic here. Ask around."

Felix opened his eyes upon blackness. He was stiff and crampy and didn't know where he was. It took a few seconds for him to recall even who he was. He tried to sit up and bumped his head. His exploring hands told him he was in a box, his ears said he was in a vehicle of some kind. He pushed upward against a slightly yielding stiffness slick against his palms. Waxed cardboard?

Memories arose now, like the ghost images on photo paper rising to sharpness in the developer bath. The Arab. Injections. He touched his chest and felt the hardness of staples in the Y-shaped pattern made by an autopsy. But his own organs were intact. He was alive; it had worked; he was out.

The vehicle slowed, turned, and came to a halt. Felix felt himself lifted, carried, heard the grunts of men and short bursts of a foreign tongue. There were clicking sounds. The cover of the cardboard coffin rose up. He blinked in the sudden light. A face came into view, tan, with a short beard and thick hornrims over dark eyes.

"Are you all right?" The voice was soft and slightly accented.

Felix sat up, wincing a little at the pull of the staples. There were two other men in the room. The smell of gas, gray concrete walls- it was some kind of garage. The other two men were darker than the first one, with close-cropped heads and hard features, one meaty, the other a whippet. The muscle, Felix thought, and wondered briefly if he could take them. One at a time, maybe. The two hard men grabbed his arms and helped him out of the coffin. The third man brought a striped cotton robe for him to wear. Felix felt rubbery and weak. "I got to piss," he said. His voice sounded strange to him, shaky and hollow. They had to almost carry him to the bathroom.

It took Felix three days to get back on his feet. It was the drugs, Rashid said. Rashid was the one with the beard and the glasses. The others were Carlos (big) and Felнpe (thin). Felix didn't figure that an Arab would hang with a pair of greasers, and they were definitely that, because he heard them jabbering away in Spanish. Felix knew enough jailhouse Spanish to deliver an insult or make a demand, and so he knew they were for real. They were out of the house all day working, Rashid said. Rashid had a little home business, something to do with computers. He had a couple of machines in a room on the top floor of the house, at which he sat and tapped when he wasn't hanging around Felix, making sure he was all right and bringing him food and smokes. Felix figured him for some kind of faggot butler, not a real player.