Robert Tanenbaum - Malice

Frustrated, Karp rapped his knuckles on the legal pad. But at least he would have another four years in office to figure out who was responsible. Election night had come and gone, and he'd been elected district attorney in a landslide.

Of course, some of that had to do with the fact that he was unopposed, an empty victory that had sent Gilbert Murrow into a strange melancholy. Even the attempt on his life, and subsequent death of an apparently prolific burglar with a long criminal jacket that included sexual assault, had not thrown Murrow in as much of a funk. When asked about it, he'd explained that it was because his magnificent plans for brilliant last-minute campaigning had become moot, the battle won without firing a shot. They'd watched the returns with a few close friends in the Karp-Ciampi loft, then everybody had gone home early.

Karp's concentration was interrupted when the lights went on in the apartment across the way. He'd leased the space and had it finished for Marlene's art studio and given it to her as a present. She seemed to find real peace there, though he had yet to see one of her paintings.

Marlene walked back to the easel and picked up the paintbrush again. She looks…I don't know…content, he thought. It had certainly been a long road home. The funny tilt of her head was because she'd lost an eye opening a letter bomb intended for him nearly twenty-five years earlier. The explosion that cost her her eye had also taken a finger, but most significantly it had been the beginning of her loss of faith in the justice system's ability to deal with violent criminals. The ensuing years had seen her drawn into a world of violence as a sort of avenging angel for those unable to protect themselves, but also at odds with her Catholic upbringing in Queens and with her justice-by-the-book husband.

Watching her paint, he found it hard to believe that someone so beautiful and such a loving mother and wife was so capable of meting out deadly force. But during the past year, with the spiritual guidance of John Jojola, and her art, she at last seemed to be making peace with the past. She was still capable of swift violence, as she'd proved at St. Patrick's, but at least that had been in reaction to a situation she'd been thrust into and had saved many innocent lives. Not to mention the Pope, he thought.

Karp paced back into the living room, his hands behind his back, and then back to the kitchen sink to get a glass of water. Only there he was distracted again, this time by a blue note attached by a magnet to the refrigerator. It read: "Mikey O'Toole, Nov. 19."

Good, he thought, something to take my mind off Kane. He flashed back to the telephone call from Mikey. Well, I'm in a little trouble out here in Idaho, and I was hoping I might ask you for a little bit of advice.

Mikey's brother, Fred, had been one of Karp's best friends from his college days at Berkeley. They'd met shortly after they arrived on campus as highly recruited freshmen for the basketball team in the mid-1960s. In stature, they were bookends-both about six foot five and a rail-thin 190 pounds-and both loved basketball. But that's where the similarities ended.

Dark-haired and clean-cut, Karp had a round, Slavic face. His gray, gold-flecked eyes were somewhat slanted, as if one of his Jewish ancestors in Poland had been ravaged by an invading Mongol. On the other hand, O'Toole's ancestors were from Ireland and he had the wild mane of red hair, freckles, and sea-green eyes to prove it. A native of Mississippi, his southern drawl stood in sharp contrast to Karp's Brooklynese.

The difference continued beyond their looks and accents. Karp was a good student-thanks in part to his schoolteacher mother and his own drive to excel at everything he did, whether it was on the court or in the classroom. If something did not come naturally-a right-handed hook shot (he was a leftie) or calculus-then he worked at it until it did. He actually enjoyed practice and brought the same intensity level he did to games.

O'Toole, on the other hand, saved himself for game day. He had, perhaps, more natural ability than Karp, but he didn't work at it. He also was always on the verge of academic ineligibility, not because he wasn't intelligent, but because he placed a higher priority on chasing coeds and chugging beer. But during a game, O'Toole was a natural force, a dribbling, shooting, shot-blocking thunderstorm of a power forward.

Despite the differences in their personalities and personal habits, Karp and O'Toole had become fast friends, and then evolved into something more like brothers. Karp's college basketball career ended one day during a game when a tumble with another player resulted in a knee so badly damaged that the surgeon who opened him up said the joint "looked like a turkey leg after Thanksgiving." Nothing was still attached where it was supposed to be.

When he was laid up in the hospital, it was O'Toole who sat with him for hours to keep his spirits up. At one especially low point when Karp was lamenting that his basketball career was over, O'Toole grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Hey pal, my basketball career was over the day you walked onto the campus," he said. "At some point we all have to hang up the Chuck Taylors and get on with our lives. It might be because of a lack of talent or maybe old-fashioned laziness, like me, or because of an injury like you…or maybe you just get too goddamned old, but it happens to every one of us. The only question is what are you going to do about it? The way I see it, you are meant for more important things than even the NBA, and basketball was just going to delay you from getting down to the real business of your life."

O'Toole had, of course, been right and with that Karp had turned his energies to getting through college and then law school. And O'Toole was the first to call and congratulate him after he passed the New York State bar exam and went to work for the DAO.

O'Toole had gone his own way. He graduated with a degree in physical education with the sole intent of coaching basketball at the college level. Over the years, he'd gradually worked his way from a small two-year community college program to an NCAA Division II team that he'd led to the National Invitational Tournament championship. That had landed him a job as the assistant coach of a Pac-10 Division I program. Then, when the head coach retired, O'Toole was the overwhelming choice to replace him.

In the basketball-crazy Pac-10, O'Toole's university had been a perennial basement dweller for at least ten years before he took over. In his first year as head coach, they'd played well enough to get an invitation to the NCAA's Big Dance. The next year, they got as far as the Sweet Sixteen.

Next year, the Final Four, and then who knows, he said when Karp called to congratulate him on getting as far as he had.

Life in general seemed to be going well for both friends. Karp was an up-and-comer in the District Attorney's Office and had met and married Marlene, with whom he'd had three children.

As for O'Toole, he'd fallen in love and married Jenny Dunlap, a pretty blond cheerleader at Berkeley. A bit on the wild side herself, Jenny had been a good match. They'd had no children of their own, but had pretty much raised Fred's kid brother, Mikey, eleven years younger, after the O'Tooles' parents were killed in an automobile accident during Fred's junior year.

If Fred O'Toole had one particular fault as a coach, it was that he spoke his mind and sometimes forgot who was listening. After another loss in the Sweet Sixteen, he'd complained in front of a sports reporter that it was hard to compete against some of the teams from back East because they were supported by mob money and that the NCAA, he believed, wasn't doing enough to counter it.

The story made for an instant scandal. But O'Toole had no proof. Stung and angry, the NCAA had called him on the carpet where he was "charged" with conduct detrimental to the college athletic community and especially that of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.