Robert Tanenbaum: Enemy within

Karp paused, for so long as Murrow, who was used to thoughts intruding in this way on the natural flow of his boss's conversation, prompted him, "And…?"

Karp chuckled. "And I have to go to a meeting. Sometime we'll have a longer talk about the role of the police in the criminal justice system."

"Oh, good! Can I invite my friends?"

"Go to your room, Murrow," said Karp, at which point his intercom rang.

"Mr. Solotoff is on the line," said his secretary.

"Shelly Solotoff?"

"He didn't give me his Christian name, sir. Would you like me to inquire?"

"No, it's got to be the guy and there's nothing Christian about him. Look, Flynn, I'm running late. Make my excuses and tell him I'll get back to him." Karp hung up and walked down the short corridor that separated his office from that of the district attorney.

Who was at his desk, in shirtsleeves, playing with a big, unlit claro Bering cigar, and talking with his assistant DA for administration, Norton Fuller. Karp felt a burst of irritation when he saw Fuller, who was sitting in the side chair to the DA's left, where Karp normally sat during a one-on-one. Fuller was a new thing. Previously, Karp and Jack Keegan had met alone after Karp's staff meeting, wherein Karp would tell the DA what he thought the DA needed to know, and the DA would give his orders, many of which Karp would actually carry out. Now, however, Keegan had started to invite Fuller to these meetings. Karp sat down in the other side chair and arranged his face into neutral pleasantness.

"Hello, Jack. Norton." The other two men nodded and continued their conversation, which was about the DA's schedule of political speeches. Karp watched them interact, not paying much attention to the content. Keegan was looking good; politicking seemed to energize him. He was a big man, not as tall as Karp, but more massive, with a red Irish hawk-face and a great mane of silver hair, worn long and swept back. Norton was half his size, the sort of person who in Karp's tough old Brooklyn neighborhood would have been called a shmendrick: Woody Allen without the nose or the sense of humor. Karp did not like Fuller very much, but Karp always made an effort to be nice to the man, since it was Karp's own fault that the man was here. Karp hated administrative work, the sign-offs, the endless committee meetings, the columns of figures, and was not shy of complaining about it to Keegan, so that when the DA had brought Fuller in, not as a sort of glorified clerk, but as a grandee nearly as powerful as Karp himself, reasoning (he said) that the operations of the DA were ultimately dependent upon the stuff Fuller had charge of-budgets, personnel, training, scheduling, computer systems, and the like-it seemed ridiculous for Karp to complain. He suspected that Keegan had manipulated him into this situation, a suspicion that had approached certainty when the man Keegan picked as administrative chief was Fuller, a political operative of some reputation in the state. Also Karp's fault; Karp avoided politics to the extent possible and complained bitterly when he had to stand in for Keegan on the rubber-chicken circuit. Now he no longer needed to. Fuller had taken on those tasks. He liked rubber chicken and giving speeches in hotel ballrooms. He had a little folding stand that he stood on when he did, so that his head appeared at an acceptable height above the lectern.

Fuller was going through a list of venues Keegan had to appear at. Even Keegan seemed bored. At a break in the spiel, Keegan asked Karp, "You heard the news?"

"About the president?"

"Fuck the president! I mean about McBright. Norton here says he's going to announce today."

"He'll make a fine district attorney," said Karp.

"No, Butch, you're supposed to express horror and predict sheer anarchy and chaos in the streets."

Karp said, "McBright! My God, there'll be sheer anarchy and chaos in the streets. Besides that, do you think he has a chance?"

Fuller answered, "Hell, yeah, he has a chance, the fucker. Historic first black New York DA? The minority vote'll eat it up, and the usual West Side liberal-guilt vote, a lot of that will roll his way, too. I think we got a fucking serious fight here, chief." Fuller had a deep, gravelly voice, remarkable in so small a man. Karp suspected he kept it low through conscious effort. That and the salty language. Being tough was high on Fuller's list of virtues.

"Which means," Fuller continued, "we absolutely have to have the whole goddamn white, ethnic, law-and-order vote, which means we got to have the union endorsements, especially the cops."

"We've always had the union endorsements," said Keegan.

"Right, but McBright's father is a sanitation worker. That's a lot of votes. And there's the Jews, too. This whole fucking Benson thing. You need to come out on that ASAP. In fact, it would be good if you came out with it when McBright announced. Fucking steal some of the bastard's thunder."

Both men now looked at Karp. Keegan asked, "What's going on with Benson, Butch?"

"Roland thinks it's a strong case," said Karp.

"Roland always thinks it's a strong case," said Keegan. "What do you think?"

Karp waggled a horizontal hand. "Strong depends on what you're going to do with it. Strong enough to convict? Yeah, I'd say so."

"Remind me."

"Jorell Benson, nineteen, record for strong-arm robbery, did time in Spofford and Rikers. Just after six P.M. in a stairwell of the Bowery subway station on the M line, it's a Friday, last August, he accosts Moishe Fagelman. Fagelman's a diamond merchant. He's going home for the Sabbath. Benson demands his jewels and money, shows a knife. Fagelman resists and is stabbed. He dies on the platform. Two days later, Benson walks into a shop in the diamond district and tries to sell three stones. The merchant, needless to say, recognizes the stones, calls the cops, and they grab him up. Subsequent search of Benson's room reveals a paper envelope with seven other diamonds. These are identified as belonging to Fagelman. Benson's story is that he found the stones in the subway."

"Well, duh, I'll believe it," said Fuller.

Karp ignored this and went on, "No murder weapon was found, and no blood was found on Benson's clothes. The token clerk at the Bowery station, a Mr. Walter Deng, picked Benson out of a lineup as having been through the station at about the time of the murder. On interrogation of Benson's known associates, the police came up with Alicia Wallis, age sixteen, who told the cops, and later testified to the grand jury, that Benson had told her he was going to, quote, get paid off of one of them Hymie diamond guys, unquote, and that he had shown her the proceeds of the robbery on the night thereof. Benson has no significant alibi, admits that he was on the subway at approximately the time of. That's basically the case. The good part, that is."

"What's the bad part?"

"Alicia. At the original Q amp;A she said she didn't know nothing. Then later, she went to the cops and told her diamond story. Roland wants to call her and cross-examine her as to her conflicting testimonies and let the jury decide when she was telling the truth."

"And you think…?"

"It's a risk. It's allowed under the Green decision, as you know, but it's a risk in this case. You got a young girl there, probably show up at the trial in a white dress and Mary Janes-the defense will bring out how she was browbeaten by the cops to implicate her boyfriend, establishing in the jury's mind that maybe the cops did other not so nice stuff to close out a high-profile case with the first likely African-American male. Assuming we get past that, I would predict a conviction on the token clerk's witness and the possession of the stolen goods. Benson, by the way, has an IQ of seventy-two. The question for you, Jack, is do we have enough coal to fire up a death-penalty conviction, and here I'd say we have not."