Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"How's that?"

"Why do you want a prosecutor from out of state? It seems a bit extreme. I'm sure you've got plenty of fine lawyers in West Virginia."

"Well, yes, we do," said Orne. "But I'm kind of busy just now." The others chuckled, Karp allowed a smile. Orne continued, "Here's the thing, Mr. Karp. I've heard a lot about you from Saul. I don't think there's a prosecutor in the state that has your experience, hell, half your experience. State's attorney tends to be a young fellow's profession. We've got a man up in Wheeling's been there twelve years, and I doubt he sees three murder trials a year, and those're bar fights and domestics. We don't have any people skilled in unraveling a conspiracy."

"You think it's a conspiracy?"

"Well, let's see: a union reformer gets killed along with half his family in the most corrupt, antiunion county in the state. What're the chances it was a wandering drifter, like in that book, In Cold Blood? I'd say slim to none. Okay, that's one reason. Another is, if I assign a local, people are going to look at his political connections, either to me, or to my many fine enemies, or to Big Coal, or whatever. You on the other hand don't know one end of West Virginia from the other. That's an advantage. Also, Saul assures me that you don't play political games."

"Yes. People have said I have the political skills of a three-year-old."

The governor laughed. "That's good. We want the truth here, and let the bricks fly."

"Sounds good," said Karp. "Another reason might be that, if I crash and burn, I'm a stranger, and it doesn't cost you anything to dump me."

A tiny silence here. Then the governor chuckled. "Well, yeah, I guess that passed through my mind. And as long as we're being brutally frank, I'm also doing it to keep control of this mess, assuming that it might very well lead to some pretty powerful political factors in the state. I don't want the feds to have an excuse to come in here and piss all over another Democratic governor. This is a decent state, with solid liberal instincts, and it's tied to a nasty, regressive bunch of industries-coal, chemicals, power plants. It makes for a funny kind of politics, but just about everyone's now agreed that the old kind of Robbens County behavior just don't cut it anymore, and I mean to clean it up, and I need a pro to do it. Well, Mr. Karp, will you?"

"Sure," said Karp, surprising himself with the ease with which he committed himself. "Resources…?"

"Whatever you need. If you want to hire people, there's money for that. Captain Hendricks will be part of your team, in charge of any detective and forensic work. You'll have priority at the state lab, of course, and a budget that should be adequate. Cheryl here will be your contact with my office and will go down there with you to handle the on-scene public relations. I assume you'll appreciate the help in that area."

"Saul must have ratted about my winning ways with the press."

"Well, no offense, but I think we're going to get a lot of publicity on this case, and I think the viewers would rather see her face on the screen than yours. When can you start?"

"How about the beginning of next week?"

"That's fine," said Orne. "Wade and Cheryl will form up an advance team and have everything ready for you when you get down there."

Orne rose, extended his hand. "Welcome aboard, Mr. Karp. We expect great things from you."

Karp looked into the governor's dark eyes; sincerity flooded from them, which made him feel good for a moment, until he reflected that Orne was a politician and that sincerity was easy to fake.

Lucy drove the refurbished Land Cruiser off the car ferry and onto the streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut, feeling quite uncharacteristically pleased with herself. She had fixed the car, obtained the plates, finished her various chores, whipped her brothers into finishing theirs, and escaped without either mechanical breakdown or dog-based emergency intervening. She had made one final executive-level decision just before leaving, and she was somewhat concerned that she had not called her mother to clear it, but Billy had agreed and she felt confident that she had done the right thing.

Zak the navigator, a street map unfolded across his lap, said, "Right in three blocks."

From the backseat came the tweedle of a Game Boy. Giancarlo was spread out with pillows like a pasha on a divan, his preferred mode of automobile travel. One of the nice things about traveling with the boys was that there was never any quarrel about who would get the shotgun seat. Giancarlo did not covet it, nor would Zak ride anywhere else.

The executive decision was about the dog Jeb. Jeb was a bonehead and varminty as all hell, which meant that he was suspicious of everything that moved, besides which, he was an escape artist of some talent. Billy had tried to break him of the habit of lunging at every stranger, with some success, but clearly Jeb would never make a personal guard dog good enough to sell as such under the Wingfield Farm label. The decision was to turn him into a yard dog. He would spend his professional career pacing behind a high fence hoping that some really stupid person would try to climb over it at night. Not a trivial decision either, because it meant that he would lose over half his value.

Lucy steered onto Route 25 and took it a few miles north to the Reservoir Road exit. A few more turns found them in a leafy neighborhood of middle-class homes set back from the street behind treeshaded lawns. She spotted the right number and pulled into a long driveway.

"Don't get out," she said.

"Why not?" asked Zak, his hand on the door handle.

"It's good manners to wait," she said, a fib. In fact, she knew, weapons were probably pointing at them right now. She waited. Within three minutes, she heard a door open, steps on the brick walk; a handsome Vietnamese man of saturnine mien appeared at the driver's side window.

"Good morning, Freddy," she said in Vietnamese.

Freddy Phat smiled politely. He was always polite, but never friendly. Lucy imagined it was because he resented his employer's relationship with her as something that made that employer vulnerable. Which it did. "He's engaged, just now. Come into the house. Mrs. Diem will give you tea."

That person, gray-haired and severe, all in black, did so, at a wrought-iron table under an umbrella on the brick terrace behind the house. With the tea were croissants and sliced mangoes arranged in elegant spirals. The boys were not interested in the tea, but remained subdued under their sister's eye, and under the spell of the mysterious Tran, whom they had not seen since their infancy, but who was a legend in the family circle. They knew that he was a gangster, and since they had never met an actual gangster (aside from Mom), they were keen with anticipation. Giancarlo hoped to see a suitcase full of $100 bills. Zak wished to see a machine-gun in full blast. Both longed, without much realistic expectation, to watch a vehicle explode.

As if to pique them, a young Vietnamese man dressed entirely in black emerged onto the patio from the house, nodded to them, and walked past through the gate that led to the driveway. When he raised his arm to lift the latch, Zak said, "Wow, he's got an Uzi under his coat."

"Don't stare," said Lucy. "It could be a Skorpion. They use those more."

She watched the man depart. In her experience, Tran employed two sorts of people: either quiet, sad, hard men in their forties and fifties, veterans of the American war, old comrades and alumni of the regime's reeducation camps, like Tran himself; or people like the man in black, younger brothers and cousins of the former type, whose childhood the war had consumed, gangsters from the cradle.

"What should we do when he comes?" Giancarlo asked his sister in a subdued voice. "Do we have to bow or something?"