Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"Himself, eh? What did His Excellency want?"

"He did not vouchsafe to me, Mr. Karp. But Mary said it was important… about a murder, she said. Mr. Hrcany is in there now. And the other one."

Which was Fuller. Fuller, inevitably, was the sort of little toad who puffed himself up by oppressing staff and was widely resented. This he took as a token of his effectiveness in administration.

Karp went into his private office and flipped through the pink squares. Only one was of immediate interest. He pushed the button.

"You found out something," he said when Clay Fulton picked up.

"Yeah. That incident we were discussing."

"Why did the chicken cross the road?"

"That one. I'm in the information business, so it was not unusual for me to ask for all the stolen-car reports put out on the evening in question and their time of transmission. Guess what I found out?"

"That the chicken crossed the road before the car in question was reported stolen," said Karp confidently.

"You got it."

"Which means that he crossed the road for some other reason, which means that he was pursuing the driver and not the car."

"I would say that's a reasonable assumption," said Fulton after a brief pause.

"What're we going to do?"

"You know, all in all, I think St. John's is going to whip Duke. A good big guy is going to take a good small guy every time."

"Not if the small guy is very fast and very sneaky."

"Nice talking to you, Stretch. If you take my meaning."

After he hung up, Karp had this thought: I'm becoming a pain in the ass to my friends. After taking some moments to recover from the irritation and anger this revelation occasioned, he grabbed one of his ledgers and walked to Keegan's office, remembering at the last moment to bring his face back to neutral. The DA was at the head of his conference table, flanked by Fuller and Hrcany. He looked pale, and there was a pinched expression on his face that Karp did not recall seeing there before. Fear? They all looked up when Karp entered and took the chair at the foot.

"What's up?" he asked, to which Keegan glowered, Roland rolled eyes upward, and Fuller said, "We have a problem."

"It's not a problem, Norton," Hrcany replied. "We call them cases. Somebody shoots somebody else, we investigate and come to a conclusion, and then we indict or don't indict the shooter."

This was Fuller's turn to roll his eyes.

Karp looked directly at Keegan. "Jack, what's going on?"

Keegan said, "A little while ago, I got a call from Shelly Solotoff. You remember Shelly, Butch?"

"Yeah, I had lunch with him last week."

"He's representing Sybil Marshak. Apparently, one day last week she shot a mugger in a garage midtown and fled the scene. She called Solotoff this morning, and he called me. We are now deciding how to handle this mess."

"What mess?" asked Karp disingenuously. "Roland just pointed out we have a procedure here. Why don't we follow it?"

"Oh, please!" snapped Fuller. "It's absurd to pretend Sybil Marshak is the same as some drugged-up kid with a gun."

"She's no kid," said Roland. "You got that right, Norton."

"But she had a gun," said Karp. "Drugs we don't know. Did Shelly say anything about drugs?"

"Very funny," said Fuller sourly. "But the press is going to be all over us in a very short time, and we need to get our ducks in a row. Obviously, we can stall for a little bit, feed them some junk about the continuing investigation, and no comment until the results are in, but afterward… I mean she is absolutely fucking key to the campaign. I mean she controls something over thirty percent of the typical primary vote in Manhattan-"

"And?" Karp interrupted.

Fuller was taken aback. "Well… clearly, we have to ensure that

… ah…" He hung up, fumfering.

"Yeah, it's hard to come right out and say it," Karp observed. "Because putting the screws to some poor schmuck for political reasons, that's business as usual. But easing off on someone for political reasons is a crime, isn't it?"

"Who said anything about easing off?" Fuller protested. "I never used any such language."

Karp ignored this, and turned to Hrcany. "We have some facts, I presume."

"Yeah, I talked to Jim Raney, at Midtown South. The vic is a homeless named Ramsey, Desmondo. A short sheet for dope possession and trespass. Nothing but jail time. No violence, no weapons charges. The body was found in a garage on Fifty-fifth off Broadway, dead a couple of hours when they found it. Anonymous call. Well, it being a homeless, they figured it for another one off that serial killer and shifted it to the task force that's running that thing, a detective Paradisio over at the One-seven, and it rattled around there for a while, until they decided it wasn't the same guy after all, and Ed Rastenberg, Paradisio's partner, shot it back to Midtown. So it's a little stale by now, but Raney goes into it, the usual, known associates, any enemies, and so forth. A blank. Okay, this is a bum, so we're not burning overtime here, but, to his credit, Raney persists, and he gets the idea of checking the cars in the garage where it took place. Turns out there's a video camera at the entrance that picks up the license plates pretty good, and he runs the plates of everyone whose car was in the garage at the time of or thereabouts. Not an easy job, but they did it. And they get a list of names and start calling, just fishing, really, did anyone see this guy, anything peculiar. Marshak was one of the ones got called."

Hrcany paused there, significantly.

"This was yesterday?" Karp asked.

"Yeah, and this morning she calls her lawyer and comes in. Doesn't look so good for Sybil. Leaving the scene. Lying low. Only gets a conscience when the cops are nosing around. Naughty, naughty Sybil, and her such a big liberal. Her story is she was in shock, post-traumatic stress, and she's very sorry."

"Raney interviewed her?" Karp asked.

"Yeah, with her attorney present, so he didn't get a hell of a lot. He says she says Ramsey came at her with a knife, and she plugged him. Calls it in to 911 later without giving a name, which checks out. But"-Hrcany paused significantly-"there was no knife recovered at the scene. There was a watch, though, a Lady Rolex, gold, in the vic's pocket."

"Marshak's watch," said Fuller. "That proves it. He ripped her off and she-"

"No," said Hrcany, grinning, "not Marshak's. She doesn't know anything about any watch. She said it was a knife he was flashing. But right now: knife, no; watch, yes.

"Witnesses?" asked Karp.

"As a matter of fact," Hrcany replied, "Marshak said she thought she did see another man hanging out in the background while Ramsey allegedly assaulted her. Another black guy; she said she'd recognize him again. The cops are looking, but"-he waved his hand dismissively- "basically, what we have here is woman shoots and kills unarmed man, and we have only her word that he threatened her. I think we can maintain man deuce, plus leaving the scene."

"Manslaughter two?" cried Fuller in outrage. "Are you crazy! Sybil Marshak? Christ, the woman'll be a hero to every woman who ever got accosted in a parking garage. And her word-hell, if you can't trust a woman like that, who the hell can you trust?"

Karp and Hrcany looked at each other. Hrcany's eyes almost vanished beneath their upper lids. The DA was examining the tip of his unlit cigar, as if the solution had been written there in tiny letters by a remarkably prescient Nicaraguan.

Hrcany said, "Okay, Norton, we'll let her off with a warning, and not only that, we'll sponsor a law. Any rich white bitch with a gun gets to kill one poor black guy and no hard feelings. Or maybe we should make it two, or three."

"Oh, get real, Roland!" Fuller snarled. "Why the hell shouldn't we take her word for it? It's not like she knew the guy, that she had something to gain from shooting him. What, you think she was a crazed racist? Marshak? The woman marched in Selma, for crying out loud! She's the biggest ACLU bleeding heart in the city. She had to be in legitimate fear of her life, or she never would've done it. I mean, if you can't see that…"