Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

They sat; a venerable waiter brought coffee and a basket of sweet rolls. McBright pointed to these. "Don't start on them. They sold those on the street, fools forget all about crack cocaine." He took one. Karp did, too, and they were indeed marvelous, as was the coffee.

McBright sat back, chewing, and made a gesture with his hand. "Your meeting, boss."

Karp had the feeling of setting out on one of those rope bridges in action movies. This meeting seemed like the worst idea he had ever had, and it had a lot of competition in that league. But thinking this made him laugh, and he admitted it to McBright. "Yeah, well, this seemed like a great idea when I thought it up, but now…? The thing is, Jack Keegan doesn't know I'm doing this, and if he did, he would fire me, without hesitation. He would regard it as a betrayal."

"Isn't it? Maybe you think I'm going to win, and you're currying favor."

"Obviously, you don't really think that, and Collins doesn't think that, or neither of you would have participated in this meeting. But if we're going to probe each other's sincerity, we might as well just eat sweet rolls and talk basketball." A little eye-wrestling here, ending with a wry grin from McBright. Karp continued, "I read that speech you gave at the Urban League. I thought it was a good speech. I thought you were right on principle and wrong on the DA. We don't have a racial bias that I've been able to see. It's not part of the culture."

"Yes, well, we disagree on that. Was that your point?"

"No, my point is that injecting the race question into a DA campaign is the wrong thing to do. Even if it helps you win, it's still the wrong thing to do because you will win upon a basis that will make it difficult or impossible to run the office. The power of a DA is just different from the power of a mayor or a governor. You introduce ethnic politics into it, you're going to call for an equal but opposite response from Jack, and there are plenty of people happy to encourage him to do that. And then you have something real ugly. I don't want to see that."

McBright was looking at him incredulously, a bemused smile on his lips. "You're advising me on my campaign?"

"I'm giving you my take on what's going to happen."

McBright laughed. "I can't believe this. Nobody is that naive."

"Actually, I am. I'm a total loss when it comes to politics. I'm always doing the wrong thing. When I was a kid just starting out in the DA, we had Phil Garrahy in there, and when I knew him, he was old and sick, and he was undecided on whether he wanted to run again. Keegan was homicide chief then, and he thought he had a lock on the job, if Garrahy declined, and I took it upon myself to convince Mr. Garrahy that he should run, and he did, and won, and he died seven months later, and the governor appointed a complete asshole into the job. That was my first foray into electoral politics, and this is my second. Just so you know I have a track record."

A chuckle this time. McBright seemed genuinely amused. "Okay, I take your point. I'll consider it."

The waiter hovered. McBright asked, "You want to order?" and Karp said, "I'm fine with coffee and rolls. I'm not a breakfast guy."

"I am." McBright ordered steak and eggs with grits, then the waiter glided off. "So, was that it?"

"No. I also wanted to say that we have three major cases with racial overtones, Benson, Lomax, and Marshak. In my opinion, all three of them are flawed."

"I rest my case."

"No, because I am on them, and I will fix them. Now, I am not going to insult your intelligence by claiming that if the three gentlemen of color in question had been solid citizens, they would be in just as much trouble, or dead. They were not solid, they all had some kind of sheet on them, plus Ramsey was homeless, and cops are lazy. Show them something that quacks and waddles and they'll say it's a duck, never mind if it's the right duck. If you want to get into an argument about why black kids get introduced into the criminal justice system at about nine times the rate that white kids do, then fine, but leave the DA out of it. That's not the first, or even the fifth, place you should look, and the proof of it is me sitting right here."

"And you're a big racist."

"That's right, I'm a big racist. Everyone else in the office is way to the left of me."

"Since they got rid of Hrcany, anyway."

"Roland wasn't much of a racist, if by racist you mean someone who does bad things to people because they're the wrong color. I never saw him do that, and I worked with him for nearly twenty years. I'll give you that he had a mouth on him, and when he had something nasty to say, which was often, he touched on all the characteristics of the target, including the unmentionable ones. I talked to him about it a million times, but it didn't penetrate. But you could also say that the Reverend Jackson was a racist because he once said that when he heard footsteps behind him at night and he turned around and he saw it was a white guy, he felt a rush of relief."

"And was ashamed of it, don't forget that part. Well, we could chat about race relations and who's the biggest bigot all day, but why don't we just turn to the last page? Why should I believe you? I mean you are from the enemy camp."

Karp sighed in frustration. "Oh, for crying out loud, McBright! I know, and you must know that I know, that young Collins has been leaking you everything that's been going on in the DA since day one, and you've been leaking tidbits to the Reverend for amplification. You have to know I'm telling the truth, unless Collins is making stuff up, and I kind of doubt that. As far as loyalty goes, I'm not a camp guy. Ask Collins. I'm loyal to Jack in the sense that I'm not about to betray any confidences or weaknesses of his to you or anyone else, but my primary, no my only, loyalty is to the office and what it's supposed to stand for, my idea of it. Let's say I'm loyal to the better angels of Jack Keegan's nature, and not to other kinds."

McBright shook his head. "You're a piece of work, Karp. Don't put any of that shit on your job application."

"I don't need the work, man," said Karp sourly. "I have a rich wife."

Who at that moment was emerging from a nasty dream, in which haughty, black-clad store clerks wearing maroon lip-gloss insisted on removing her daughter's clothing in the main aisle of Calvin Klein, explaining that she was not creditworthy and refusing to look at any of Marlene's own credit cards. It's all right, Mom, said the dream daughter, you can't pay for this with money.

Marlene sat bolt upright in bed, her stomach churning, and shook her head violently. Which was a mistake. Something in her head had come loose and was bouncing around in there, causing terminal damage, or so it felt.

That's it, she thought, absolutely no more drinking. Hard liquor, a known poison, what could I have been thinking? No more. Wine only from now on. She got out of bed, did the bathroom, shuffled into the kitchen in her gorgeous robe, now a little rumpled and stained, for she spent a good deal more time in it than she had in any previous robe. The great mass of the Sunday Times lay strewn on the big kitchen table. Observing it, she concluded, after a small pause, that it was Sunday and she had missed church. Since the house was empty, she further concluded that her daughter had dressed and fed the boys and led them off to St. Pat's, thus demonstrating yet again her moral superiority over her mom. They must have walked.

Her husband was not at home either. The dog was at home, and now he came wagging in, looking particularly lugubrious, to rest his massive head on her knee, the better to stain her pashmina anew with his copious slobber. She patted him absently and then, yielding to a pang of yet another addiction, she rose, loaded up the Gaggia, made herself a double shot of espresso, and burnt a couple of pieces of toast umber. The coffee and the charcoal would absorb the poisons, she calculated, and she swallowed four Advil in case that didn't work. She sat again and waited for the dizziness to cease. The dog made his three circles and collapsed at her feet, sighing.