Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

Karp did not need to think. "No, it was pretty clear the whole thing was set up to make me feel like an asshole and a loser. I didn't cop to it then because… Christ, who the fuck knows? I guess I couldn't really imagine why anybody would go through that much trouble."

"Shelly is strange. He used to ask me about you, obsess practically. You were the fair-haired boy, you were winning all those cases, looking good. How did you do it? You must've been cutting corners." Guma took a last puff on the Macanudo and placed it neatly in the ashtray. He splashed another quarter inch of whiskey into his glass. "Some guys never get it, the line. The biggest case he was ever on, and he cut some corners to win it because he assumed you and me and everyone else was doing it, too. Especially you. And now? Let's face it, the guy's a high-priced pimp living on a rich wife, draping himself in a lot of liberal causes, bitching about the corruption of the district attorney's office…"

"That he got canned from. The scales fall from my eyes. Guma, I'm a college graduate, I'm not a dope. Why didn't I see that about him? Back then or recently?"

Shrug, smile, hands out, palms up. "What can I say? You got a blind spot. You're a fucking superstar in a very hard business, and you got no idea that people could look at you and be jealous, and hate you, and smile at you while they hate you."

"He's Sybil Marshak's attorney."

"I know. And he's going to walk her and spit right in your face. I'd give odds that's why he took the case in the first place."

"But he wouldn't have faced me. I had nothing to do with homicide until after Roland pulled his boner in the elevator."

Guma grinned, extended an index finger, and slowly tugged down on his lower left eyelid.

"Oh, please," cried Karp. "You're not suggesting he set that up to get Roland out of the way so he'd have a shot at me! How could he? How'd he know that Roland would shoot his mouth off?"

"Hey, he worked in the bureau. He knew Roland had a tendency to unload all kinds of unpopular shit when he thought no one from the outside was listening. The press conference was common knowledge. He took a chance, and he lucked out. And who else is Jack going to turn to, a case like this Marshak thing? Butch, the Fireman, Karp is who. Matter of fact, it's a wonder Roland's lasted so long. If that hadn't've worked, Shelly would've tried something else. An underage girl would've been my personal choice, I wanted to shaft Roland Hrcany. You find that guy in the elevator, a hundred bucks says he's linked up some way with old Shel."

"I can't believe it."

"Then don't. Meanwhile, he's going to cream you in Marshak. If it ever comes to it."

"Unless I find out about the watch."

"Come again?"

Karp explained all about the watch. Guma's face seemed to take on more life as Karp talked, his body becoming more erect, fuller, as if someone were inflating it with a pump.

"What do you think?" Karp asked when he was finished. "Am I crazy or what?"

"No, you're not crazy. Jesus, Augie Al Firmo! He's connected up to his ears, you know. With the Gambinos."

"I didn't know. We ever catch him?"

"Never, and he's been in business now for a long time. Shit, he might even be older than me. I don't know how many times they've tried to sting him, but he always slips away, or someone else takes the fall for him. I remember back in '84, Ray Cooley tried to take him down. They had a sting set up over two years. A bunch of detectives were running one of the biggest fake burglary rings on the East Coast. I mean they were pretend ripping off shipping containers and pretend fencing stuff all over the place. They were paying off the Mob. Half a dozen of them liked it so much they were doing it for real. You remember that… the Mollen people were real cranky behind it."

"Yeah, now I do. That was Ray Cooley?"

"Yeah. He really wanted Augie Al, but no soap. They picked up a bunch of his associates and a couple of the cugini, but they couldn't make anything stick to the man. Nobody ratted him out either, which is unusual. But Augie Al's always been a big carrot-and-stick guy. Nowadays he's semiretired, only handles high-end ice, watches, opticals, like that. Guns, too. Fancy stuff they truck in from those Second Amendment-type states." Guma stopped, scratched his head. "You know, now that I'm thinking about it, there was a thing back then where he was using street people to move stuff around. Smart, really."

"Why smart?"

"Hiding the shit in plain sight. You got a guy in an army jacket with fifty fake Rolexes, who's gonna think three of them are real? There's five cutouts between Firmo and the skell."

"And he doesn't get ripped off?"

"Hey, probably all the time, same like the dope guys. It happens once, the skell gets toasted, and move on. A cost of doing business. He buys wholesale, he sells retail. What can I say, it's a living. So to bring it back, probably the guy Marshak shot was a mule for Firmo. I don't see what that buys you on your case against her."

"I don't either. It was just a loose end." But Karp's mind was vibrating with notions. The watch. Ramsey shot. Firmo. The Cooleys, father and son. The father failing to catch Firmo. The son chasing a skell named Canman. Bent cops. Skells muling hot items. An unusual number of skells found with their throats cut. Toasted. Canman a suspect. Cooley chasing Canman. Cooley killing Lomax, whom he knew. How? Lomax, a sheet for fencing, theft. Connection between Lomax and Firmo? Don't know. Cooley on a gun-running stakeout the night of the Lomax shooting. Connection? Don't know. Firmo linked up with Cooley? Don't know. Cooley linked to the bum slashings? Don't know. How to find out?

"Ah, shit!" Karp snarled.

"What?"

Karp shook his head. "Nothing. Just that I need an investigative apparatus to figure out something, and the one supplied by the taxpayers for just such purposes seems to be out of order." He explained the tantalizing connections.

"Do like Felkes-hire a PI," said Guma.

"Be serious."

"Hey, why not? Your wife's rich. Come to think of it, your wife's a PI. Hell, you want to, I'll ask around. I take it you think Cooley's dirty."

"Filthy. Got to be. Why else would he take a chance like that, a big public shooting, to get Lomax? What, you don't think so?"

Guma waggled a hand, palm down. "Hey, anything's possible. The pope could be hocking the Vatican silver. But Cooley being dirty I would tend to doubt."

"Why, because he's a hero?"

"No. But I knew Ray. I knew all of them, matter of fact. Did you know they were from south Brooklyn?"

"No. But you know everybody."

"I don't know Donald Trump. I don't know Jennifer Lopez…"

Karp ignored this. "How well do you?"

"Ray Cooley was a year ahead of me in Cardinal Hughes. We were on the same teams. He was a pitcher. The 'Two Rays of Sunshine,' as the Brooklyn Eagle had it. Neither of us had the stuff for the bigs, but we fucking burnt up the parochial-school league. I hit.387, he had like fifty strikeouts his senior year."

"And that's why Brendan Cooley isn't dirty?"

"The Cooleys," said Guma portentously, waving an admonitory finger, "are not as you and I. If you're interested, I could probably find out whether anyone on the cops got a bad smell off the kid. And I could talk to Connie Sassone."

"Who is…?"

"Brendan's ex. She's a niece of my ex's. My first ex. Nice kid. I was there when they got married."

"Would you?"

"Sure, why not? Dying don't take that much of my time."

Karp let that pass. To fill the silence he asked, "Remind me what happened in the Falla case. I recall you got a conviction."

"Yeah, I did. Felkes did great, brought the bastard stepfather up there, but he couldn't break him, hammered the cops, but they did their usual 'Hey, it's routine, we talk to the relatives in a child case,' blah blah. Felkes got the confession tossed, but it didn't do him a lot of good. The thing was Manuel didn't help himself, the way he looked. Fucking hulk, fat, greasy hair, pockmarked, falling asleep at the trial. Guy looked like Frankenstein in a suit. One time he was actually drooling. Every mother's nightmare, right? They were only out forty minutes and convicted on the top counts, rape and murder two. Felkes didn't give up though. He was running out his appeals when science marches on, they invent DNA, and it turns out Manuel doesn't match the semen they found in the kid. He did eleven years anyway, they turned him loose, and he dropped dead within a week. We got the stepfather though. I did him, too, as a matter of fact. Twenty-five to life. It was when you were out private." Guma laughed, raised his glass. "The fucking system, right? Gotta love it."