Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

Karp noticed that Fuller got white when angry, while Hrcany got red, and wondered idly whether this meant anything about their characters. Hrcany was just beginning a sarcastic rant to the effect that people accused of crimes often took liberties with the truth, when Karp said, almost to himself, "She probably was in fear of her life. She thought she was being stalked."

They all stared at him. "How do you know that?" the DA asked.

"She was a client of my wife's. Or, no, I think she just came in for a consult. Marlene trailed around after her for a couple of days, but couldn't spot anyone. That doesn't mean she wasn't being followed by someone."

"See! There you are," crowed Fuller.

"Not really," said Karp coldly. "It just means she was spooked. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the shooting we have here. Look, this is a premature discussion. I don't know why we're here. Clearly, there's a prima facie case against Ms. Marshak on the evidence as it now stands. We should charge her, as Roland suggests, with manslaughter second and see what develops. The police may find the witness, and depending on what he says, and whether we believe him or not, we can reconsider the charges, up or down." He looked at the DA. "Or am I wrong, Jack? Are we really starting to throw naked political influence into the balance when we assess charges?"

Keegan held his gaze for what seemed a long time before he looked away, and then there was a quick, barely perceptible glance at Fuller. The DA said, "No, of course not. We'll charge her and see what happens with the witness, if any. It's early days yet on this."

The meeting dispersed, although Keegan motioned Fuller to stay behind to talk press and politics.

Karp motioned Hrcany to step into his office. "What do you think?"

"Of all that?" Hrcany gestured in the direction of the DA's office. "Pure politics. I think Jack's running scared on this election, and the little scumbag is feeding off it. We haven't had a serious contested election for DA in I don't know how long, and now we do. McBright is waving the figures for how we charge people on account of their race, heavier the blacker, and how we never go after bad cops or corrupt landlords or the kind of respectable people who make a good living off the misery of the downtrodden, et cetera. It's a pile of shit, we know that, but we also have an electorate that's more swayed by that kind of thing than it used to be. If McBright really gets the vote out uptown, Jack's in trouble. Let's say he holds on to the unions, the cops and all, and he loses the beautiful mosaic-then the white guilty-liberal vote is the swing, and now we got a leader of that vote up for homicide. I think it's rich." He laughed unpleasantly.

"I mean, do you think Jack or Fuller is going to… I don't know, screw up this case in some way to win the election?"

"Not to win the election, no. But Jack's not worried only about the election or, mainly, to tell the truth. I don't know if even little Norton understands that. Did you see him? He's scared shitless about his federal judgeship. He sees it flying away with old Sybil because if she goes down for this and the party thinks Jack didn't pull every wire he could to get her off, he'll never get sponsored, unless he moves to North Dakota and starts a new life under an assumed name. Sybil's got strings to every politician in the state."

"And this cuts no ice with you," said Karp dully. Roland's attitude always tended to annoy him a little, and now it annoyed him a lot. Although Roland had supported the outcome Karp sought, a pursuit of the case without fear or favor, it was clear that the man had a personal issue with the accused.

"No ice at all, buddy. Oh, I'm going to love nailing that hypocritical bitch. It will give me an enormous amount of pleasure to put her fat ass in jail for a long time."

"Assuming she's guilty."

"Yeah, right," said Hrcany dismissively. "Actually, I'd like it better if Marshak was the bum slasher, but this'll have to do."

"So you're saying that Marshak was not officially a client of ours," said Lou Osborne.

"Not officially," said Marlene. They were in Osborne's office, an expensive area that yielded nothing in modernity to Captain Picard's office on the starship Enterprise -the expected glass and chrome, and the smooth and snaky molded wooden desk and cabinets, and chairs like clever steel-and-fabric traps. Osborne had to be content with non-imaginary technology though, and he had a lot of it-a computer workstation behind his desk on an AnthroCart, and two large-screen monitors set into a bookcase that lined one wall. One of these had a stock market feed on it, and the other had CNN running silently. The other walls, those that weren't windows, contained Osborne's photos-with-the-famous collection and various awards and testimonials, and a large, bland abstract oil.

To Osborne's questioning look, she responded, "Someone comes in and says they're being stalked, the first thing we do is find out if there's any solid evidence for it. Otherwise we're running a therapy shop, not a security operation. Even VIPs are nuts sometimes, hard as that is to believe."

"But there was a real stalker with Marshak, wasn't there?" He poked his chin at the TV screen. "They're saying that's why she had the gun, she was in fear of her life."

"That may well be, but, in fact, no one we saw followed her into that garage. We were there. In fact, Marshak almost ran me over getting away. Now, I'm not saying she wasn't so spooked that some bum walks up to her to ask her the time and she plugs him in a panic. I actually told her to get rid of that gun."

"And you're a witness. You're going to have to testify against her, that you saw her there at the time of the shooting. And they'll say she came to you expressing fear and you told her to, in effect, see a psychiatrist. Jesus Christ! That's why we have a VIP department in the first place. A prominent woman walks in here, I don't care if she says she's being chased by Martians, you put someone with her!"

He stared at her briefly, that cold Secret Service-Marine Corps stare, and then his eyes flicked up to the TV screen.

She decided not to get mad. "Lou, relax-you know this isn't about me, or about Sybil Marshak. I take it there's no news about Perry or his people?"

"Not a word. Oleg flew out there the minute we heard, of course, and he's off in the mountains with a crew he put together. God knows he's got enough contacts out East there, but… they don't even know if it's political, Serbs or Albanians, or just a gang of freelancers."

"Assuming there's much difference. Have you thought about delaying the offering?"

At this, Osborne tossed a glance at the stock market screen, where he had hoped to see his own stock floating ever upward the day after tomorrow. "I've been on the phone with the underwriters all morning. They're panicking. If we don't go out on schedule, it'll be a signal to the market that we don't have our shit together. It'll be years if ever before we can float another one." Again the glance at the screen. "It's like voodoo; once you have the curse, it's hard to get clean again. What about that singer?"

"Kelsie? A problem, too. But we're covering her at the depth she needs without involving her people. We got a man in the building, twenty-four/seven, and we follow her when she's out. She knows about that, but not about the inside guy."

"And this Coleman? The stalker?"

"He's out and we're looking for him, but… it's not like we're the cops. I got Wayne on it."

"Fine, fine… but, Marlene?" Here he shrugged into his inspiring-boss persona. It was a little frayed just now, but she had to applaud the effort. "Let's make an extra effort to ensure that no one newsworthy gets into trouble this week? Please?"

"I'll try. And don't worry too much about the IPO. I'm sure it'll be fine. Fastest-growing business in the U.S., la-di-da."