Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"It's funny," he said, leaning back in a cloud of pungent smoke, "months go by, I don't hear from my old pals at the office, and then in the same week I get a visit from Roland and now from you. I figure Jack'll be by tomorrow." He looked around the room appraisingly. "Maybe I should redecorate, my social life is starting to look up so much."

"Roland came by?"

"Yeah, right after you guys canned his ass. He was drunk and looking for someone to get drunker with. Which we did. We watched my Serengeti tape. I figure he wanted to see rending flesh. He's really pissed at Jack. You, too, matter of fact."

"Why me? Christ, I was on him for years to keep a goddamn cork in it. And I practically begged Keegan to let it slide."

"Yeah, well, he wasn't being that rational. He thinks he was set up."

"I know."

"Was he?"

"Probably. Why, I don't now. Not that he had any shortage of enemies."

"No. Still it's a shame. What about you? I hear you're running homicide again."

"Not exactly. He wants me to clean up the political cases, make sure nothing interferes with his coronation. If anything goes wrong, he's got someone to toss out the door after Roland."

Guma squinted at Karp through the smoke. "That don't sound like the old Butch. You were never a cleanup type of guy. You were more of a look-under-the-rug kind of guy, see what other people stuck in there. How's Marlene?"

Karp shot him a sharp look. "As usual. Why do you ask?"

Shrug. Puff. Sip. "Oh, you know. Even here in the leper colony people drift by. Such as yourself. Roland. A couple others. You know, share views, listen to the drums of the distant villages."

"Oh, yeah? And what do the drums say?"

"They say Marlene made a bundle off her firm's IPO. They say she started buying out the stores, riding around in a limo. They say she started hitting the bottle pretty good, and she fucked up and got some people killed."

"You believe that?"

"I don't know. No offense, but you know and I know your bride was never that tightly wrapped to begin with. Be honest? I never figured her for a lush, but still you got to admit she pulled a lot of weird shit back in the day."

Karp wanted to go. This had been a stupid idea, coming here. He hadn't seen the guy in a while, he was in the neighborhood, he dropped by. Guma had never been what you could call a confidant of his, not like V.T., but there were things you couldn't even say to a confidant, stuff you needed a wife to talk about, but his wife was out of action just now, occupied by a hostile power. So now he had to either get up and leave, like an asshole, or start talking about Marlene, which he definitely did not want to do, not to Guma-but he could change the subject. And, of course, Guma knew the DA, knew not only where the bodies were buried, but who had stashed them there and why, and now Karp started in on it, the whole miserable thing.

"You leaked that story on Cooley? You?" was the response when Karp got to that part.

"Yeah, I did. It was that or quit and go public with it, which for some reason I wasn't willing to do. I couldn't in good conscience ask Clay to help any more than he had already. Keegan was in the tank. I wasn't going to get any resources for doing an investigation. I was pissed, Goom. I figured if I lit a fire, make it impossible for them to bury it, Roland would get behind it-"

"Roland?"

"Yeah, I know he's a cop groupie, but there's a line. He'll blink at a little perjury, and little taint in the evidence, but he's hell on bent cops. It's a point of pride with him. Was. He was no way going to stay quiet for what's starting to look a lot like an assassination and a cover-up. Not by the cops so much, but by us. They presented us with a load of stinking fish, and we said, 'What smell? We don't smell anything.' The fucking election."

"You should've got Roland in on it from the beginning."

"Yeah, I know, I know! But I had no idea he was going to get sandbagged at that press conference or ruin himself after. It was the background I didn't count on, the racial thing. Benson, boom! Marshak, boom! Lomax, ka-boom!"

"You have a political-wile deficit, pal, is what it is. It's a murky pool."

"I know it. I still can't believe I took that route." Karp paused, remembering, reconstructing the origins of the debacle. "You know what it was? It was Shelly Solotoff. I had lunch with him just before, and he gave me this load of horseshit about the DA, how corrupt it was, Garrahy was a fraud, I was wasting my time-you know, the usual crap you get from people like that. God knows why they feel it necessary to shit on the system. But, anyway, he went on and on, and I just decided right after that I was going to do something crazy, just to kick-start the damn thing, bring Jack to his senses-"

"Oh, Shelly Solotoff," Guma interrupted. "He's a piece of work. You knew I got him canned?"

"You did? I thought he quit to go private."

"We let him resign, let's say. This was way back there. Garrahy's last year; Jack was heading homicide. You were doing that crazy liquor-store holdup artist, and Shelly was working the Victoria Falla case. It was his first major, and Jack had me looking over his shoulder. You remember that one?"

"Little girl, found naked, raped and murdered up in Inwood, yeah. They liked a guy for it, a bum, and then… didn't it turn out he was the wrong guy?"

"Right. The bum's name was Manuel Echiverra, a local drunk. Had a sheet on him for dickie-waving, annoying little schoolgirls. Anyway, you know the cops always grab up characters like that in a child sex case, and they looked at him pretty good because he was on the block a lot where the vic lived. He stayed in a box under the highway. Slept on a bag of rags, and when the cops tossed it, some of the rags turned out to be little Victoria's clothes."

"Uh-huh. It's coming back now. You got the indictment."

"Of course, but some stuff didn't fit. Not a hint of violence in the record. The guy could barely walk around. He was crippled up some way, I forget how, and he had the syph, too: the guy's brain was cheese. On the other hand, after claiming he found the clothes in a Dumpster, he made a full and free confession after a couple of days in custody, hoho. Okay, the bottom line was that the cops also looked at the vic's stepdad hard, too, but since they had Manuel-you know how it is. They filed and forgot. It ain't like in the movies, as you well know. Shelly was all set to nail Manuel, but wonder of wonders, there was a serious player on D, Jerry Felkes; you know Jerry?… Right, he's a judge now. A terrific lawyer, and Shelly was getting spooked a little. So it comes time to hand over the Rosario material, he doesn't hand over the incriminatory stuff on the stepdad. I mean, why cloud the issue with another guy who also attracted the attention of the cops? Reasonable doubt, shit, we don't want any of that."

Guma finished his drink, reached for the bottle, hesitated, put it down, thus demonstrating that he could still leave it alone. "Armand Figuroa, the stepdad. A real prince. He was fucking the other daughter, too, as it turned out. Seven years old. By the way, Shelly didn't vouchsafe us any of this stepfather business when he presented the case to the bureau. Just the Manuel stuff, and it looked solid."

"When did you find out?"

"Felkes called Jack. He actually hired a PI out of his own pocket, and the guy came up with the missing police records. Jack and me talked about getting Shelly disbarred, but we decided not to. A high-profile case, the scandal… Jack reamed him out and gave him the boot. He hated you, by the way, Shelly. I mean back then. Maybe he still does."

"What? Why the hell did he hate me? I never did anything to him. He invited me to lunch, for crying out loud."

"And was he a pleasant companion?"