Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

She thumbed off the phone and thrust it back into her bag, cursing softly.

"What's up, chief?"

"Oh, nothing-my daughter is involved in a murder again." She met his eyes, gaped, made a shrill sound edged with hysteria. "Not a sentence we hear much, do we? Especially the 'again' part."

"She's not…?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that. She hangs around with a class of people who tend to get their throats ripped out more than your average taxpayer, and apparently it was her turn to find one today. I should go."

"You want me to drive you?"

"No, I'll hop a cab. I might have to scream my head off a little while, and I don't want to embarrass myself in front of the staff."

With that she got out of the car and was just about to cross the driveway of an underground garage when a squeal of tires and the roar of a powerful engine made her hesitate. She saw the Lexus race up the ramp. It was moving so fast it actually flew for a part of a second when it crossed the drainage depression at the ramp entrance, then crashed down heavily on its springs. It missed her by a foot, and she had barely a glimpse of Sybil Marshak's pale face as the car hung a screeching left and accelerated down the street.

Marlene went back to the car. "What the hell was that all about?"

"A sale at Bloomingdale's?" offered Wayne Segovia.

"Follow her, wise guy. Call me on the cell when you get to where she's going."

The Honda zoomed away. Marlene paused and stared for a moment into the entrance to the garage. What had frightened Marshak so much that she had driven her car without really looking into a New York street, a maneuver that nine times out of ten would have resulted in a crash? It was only the construction vehicles parked to the east that had slowed the traffic enough to make the rapid exit and turn possible. Something real or a phantom of the mind? Marlene turned and walked back toward Broadway, a cab, and her daughter. One crazy person at a time was her thought.

La Pelouse, Karp knew, was one of the remarkably many places in the city where lunch cost in the neighborhood of a hundred dollars without tips or drinks. It was on Sixty-fifth off Lexington, a frostedglass window with the name in gold script on it, and a shiny black door under a stubby black awning. He had never been there, since he was an old-fashioned boy and thought a hundred dollars was still real money, an amount that if you lost it on the street would make you cranky all week.

Inside, past the tiny entrance lobby and the funereal maitre d', was a plain, dove-gray room with white trim, lit by white plaster sconces, in which eighteen tables sat like altars, and a long banquette occupied the left wall. Every table was occupied. As he followed the maitre d', Karp noted the famous faces-big-time movie stars, a network anchor-and thought that, among the more anonymous diners, nearly every name would be associated with some profitable large enterprise. Shelly Solotoff was sitting at a banquette, with a cell phone pressed to his ear. When he spotted Karp, he smiled, waved, moved the phone to his other hand, extended his right for a shake without rising, cupped the mouthpiece, said, "Butch-long time! Want a drink? I'll be done in a sec."

Karp sat and studied the man as he talked. A big man, not as tall as Karp but heavier, a lot heavier than he had been when the two of them had worked at the DA. His hair was dark, medium long, with an attractive whitening at the sides. It had the perfection that expensive barbering and skillful hair-weaving provided. The face was tan, as if he had just come in from the yacht. He looked good, in the manner of male models. Karp checked out the eyes and jowls for signs of plastic surgery and thought he detected that slight Ken-doll stiffening of the underlying muscles. Solotoff caught him looking and gave a little wink. His eyes were large, knowing, and bright brown. His suit was made of a kind of shimmery gray stuff that Karp knew was Italian and expensive, and which Karp would not have worn to a masked ball. The tie was metallic bronze, over a stiff-collared shirt of white silk with little monograms on the French cuffs. Patek Philippe watch, cuff links… yes, he could have guessed, tiny gold scales set into onyx.

Solotoff shifted the phone again. "No, no, Charlie, no jail time at all," he was saying now. "The deal sucks… Right… No, they can't use that evidence, Charlie… No, trust me on this… Yeah, I'll call him after lunch. I got to go, Charlie… Right. Okay, I'll be in touch."

Solotoff smiled and shook his head as he switched off the phone. "My local counsel. Case in Connecticut. The usual, preppy selling E to his buddies. Bad search, but Charlie, the guy's a nervous Nellie. You know who the father is?"

Karp admitted he did not, and Solotoff told him the name of a former U.S. senator.

"That what you do now, Shelly? Dumb rich kid dope cases?"

"Pays the rent. How about you? Still stocking the jails with dumb poor kids?"

Karp shrugged, put on a social smile. "I didn't write the law."

"An unworthy cop-out. Unworthy of you, I mean. Typical of the average DA."

A waiter appeared, bearing menus a yard long. Solotoff waved his away. "Jules, just tell Cyril to make me one of his truffle omelettes. He knows what I like. And an avocado salad and a bottle of Vichy."

Karp opened the menu briefly, folded it, and handed it back to the waiter. "I'll have a corned beef on rye and a kasha knish. And an orange soda."

The waiter goggled for an instant, looked nervously at Solotoff, then donned a condescending smile at m'sieu's little drollery. Karp said, "Tell Cyril to make me another one, easy on the truffles. And the rest the same, too."

The man wafted away.

"Wow," said Solotoff, "a long time. What is it, fifteen years?"

"About that. You're looking good. Wealth suits you."

"You know, I think it does. I'm amazed, frankly, that you're still there. I heard that you left for downtown a while ago. And you went back?"

"Jack asked me to do homicide, and I went for it."

"But then you got blown out of the job. Some race thing?"

"Yeah. A long story. People were carrying signs, 'Ku Klux Karp.' It was just one of those New York things. Jack hid me in staff for a while, and now I'm chief assistant."

Solotoff was shaking his head. "Unbelievable! How can you stand it with all those lames up there?"

"Not all that lame. Roland's still there. You remember Roland? I'd put him up against anyone in the country in a courtroom, on a homicide."

"Oh, right, Roland! The blond beast. That's the exception that proves the rule. Is he still pinching secretaries on the ass?"

"Not that he lets me see. We have policies about that now."

"Yeah, I almost forgot the goddamn bureaucracy. And the corruption."

"You going to offer me a job? Or are you just trying to make me feel bad?"

Solotoff laughed, an odd croaking sound without much volume. "A job? Hey, in a New York minute. Just say the word."

"I don't think so."

"Why not? Really."

Shrug. Karp was growing bored with this line. "I guess I just like public service." Lame.

The other man sprang to it. "Oh, please! Public service is for kids. It's postgraduate school-you learn how the system works, how the judges like things, get a little trial practice. But staying in it? It's strictly for losers, man. It's white-collar sanitation work. You clear the darkies off the street so the quality doesn't have to look at them. I mean it's a joke."

"Not necessarily. Laugh if you want to, and I know you want to, but at the end of the day the system's all we have between anarchy and the police state."

A contemptuous snort. "Yeah, that's a Francis P. Garrahy line. I remember it well, the old fraud. Christ! Someone as smart and competent as you-it's like meeting a grown man who still collects baseball cards and plays flip with them."