Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

She pulled a CD case at random out of the rack next to her computer and saw it was Dire Straits, the Brothers in Arms album, and laughed. She put the CD she had just made into the Dire Straits jewel box, took a bottle of Hennessy out of her bottom drawer, and like a private eye should, poured herself a stiffer hooker and sat in her chair facing the wall that celebrated her sordid career and drank it slowly. In a while, she slipped the album into the CD slot on her machine and put the earphones on and poured herself another, and in time she got to the point where rock-and-roll lyrics seemed to be, more than the gospels and the prophets, a guide to proper living. She thought, after all the violence and double-talk you do the walk, you do the walk of life. When the music stopped, she went to the bathroom, fixed her face, sprayed some Binaca into her mouth, left the building, walked to her hotel, checked out, had the doorman hail her a cab, and headed for home.

Karp went back to the office after the Jersey expedition and hung around until the building was as deserted as a courthouse ever gets, waiting for Murrow to get back or call, but neither happened. Who called instead was his wife, saying she had come home to his bed and board. A brief call, and unsatisfactory. She sounded drunk, in fact. Karp put that out of his mind, as he was by now so skilled at doing, and continued his paperwork. The homicide bureau was operating fairly well, he thought. The city was now running at a pace of around six-hundred murders a year, of which somewhat less than half were his. A few years back it had been more like twenty-two hundred a year, with three a day in Manhattan. Now the pressure for corrupting plea bargains was a lot less. People who killed people could expect to go away for a reasonably long time, which might deter them from doing it again, or from sinking into crimes the law considered worse, such as selling marijuana. But, oddly enough, he was finding, the prep on the cases before him was no better than it had been when the same staff was working three times as hard. Not as good, even, in some cases. A mystery, one he did not expect to solve.

He worked swiftly, efficiently, peppering the files with notes, most of them pointed, merciless, finding inconsistencies, omissions, unwarranted assumptions. He was surprised that he could still do this, on autopilot almost. He could still penetrate through the fog of semiliterate police reports, technical gibberish, precedents, motions, testimony, lies and veracities, to a place where the truth lay plain. Or rather its predicate; the jury would, if the prosecutor didn't mess up, transubstantiate this tangled mess into truth, or legal truth at least, not necessarily the same thing.

Karp became aware that it had grown dark outside. It was 7:38 by his watch. He began stuffing files into the worn cardboard envelope he used as a briefcase, then stopped. Why bother? He was tired. The thought of lying in bed next to Marlene and working on cases, as they had on so many nights, she beside him reading a magazine, or a novel, companionable… no, he wasn't ready for that yet. Leave the office in the office. Yet it was hard, he found, surprisingly hard, to leave the place naked of legal impedimenta. Nothing to hide behind. He laughed at himself. Workaholic, not just a figure of speech, a joke. He actually felt lightheaded in the elevator; withdrawal symptoms.

The evening air was mild, damp, smelling of concrete and buses. The courthouse district was nearly deserted at this time of day, except of the homeless, moving into the vacated public spaces, the broad plazas, the architectural nooks, even here a few streets from the center of police presence. He heard a bottle smashed, a yell, and walked on, north on Centre, past the new high jail, with the Best Health Deli and the Nha Hang Pho noodle restaurant conveniently built into its street-level floor (message: we're part of the economy, too), and across Canal, where the air changed, becoming warmer and spiced with the indefinable melange of Chinatown. Here it was not deserted, not at all; the crowds were still out shopping, looking for action; in the many lofts above, the indentured needlewomen of Fujian were just getting their second wind, moving into double-digit hours. As Karp jaywalked and reached the north side of the broad thoroughfare, the crowd parted for a young oriental woman in pigtails and a padded jacket and loose trousers, calling, "Kissamee, kissamee," as she shoved a heavy canvas cart full of cut cloth. The crowd tittered knowingly; yet another just off the boat, excuse me her only phrase of English, and mispronounced.

Karp crossed Lafayette onto Howard and left the crowd behind. Crosby Street was dark and nearly deserted as he approached the entrance to the loft. A man was leaning against a dark sedan, and as Karp passed, the man said, "Hey, Karp!"

Karp turned and was not entirely surprised to be looking into the belligerent face of Brendan Cooley.

"You know who I am?"

"Yeah, you're Brendan Cooley." Karp extended his hand.

Cooley ignored it. "I want you to lay off my family. That's out of line. You got something to say to me, you come see me."

"Your ex-wife wanted to see me. I went out to her home with her cousin, Ray Guma."

"That's bullshit, and you know it. And I'm gonna have a little talk with Uncle Ray, too. The pair of you were out pumping her."

"And what were we pumping her about, Detective?"

"The fuck I know! You got some bug in your head that I'm dirty or something. You're going around talking to people, making these suggestions… I don't know where you get this shit… I'm the bum slasher? Why not the Boston Strangler? Maybe you think I got Jimmy Hoffa, too."

"You know what it's about, Detective," said Karp softly, but Cooley didn't seem to hear him.

"I don't understand, what is it? My dog pissed on your car?"

"Lomax."

"Lomax? Lomax? I went through a fucking grand jury on Lomax. Your fucking grand jury, as a matter of fact. I was cleared. It was a good shooting, end of story. So what is this shit about the slasher? Why am I singled out for special persecution, huh? Answer me that!"

Karp looked at the detective. He was dressed in plain clothes, anticrime clothes, a flannel shirt (to hide the pistol) over a faded red T-shirt, blue jeans, and tan leather work boots. He looked like a typical New York artisan, which was the point. He was angry, with what seemed like righteous anger, which Karp thought was as well thought-out and authentic as his construction-guy costume.

"I live just up there," said Karp, pointing. "You could come in and we could talk about it."

"I know where you fucking live, man. And there's nothing to talk about, except you telling me you're gonna leave me alone, me and my family, especially my family."

Cooley took a step closer to Karp and waved a finger in his face, like a gun. The thought briefly crossed Karp's mind that if Cooley had really done what Karp thought he had, then the policeman was crazy and might kill him right here, in front of his home. Then he dismissed that thought. Cooley's anger did not look like crazy anger, but the controlled kind, a standard policeman's tool, and then another, perhaps more disturbing, thought arose: What if Karp was wrong? No one had anything but nice to say about Brendan Cooley, so where did Karp get off playing Javert to his Jean Valjean?

"Okay, Detective Cooley," Karp said in as mollifying a tone as he could manage, "I will never disturb your family again. I'm sorry my visit to Connie upset you so much."

Cooley glared at him, but still the set of his jaw relaxed slightly, and his face showed confusion, then a hint of suspicion. "You fucking better not. And what about the rest of this horseshit?"

"Lomax? Well, that's a different story, isn't it? I know you knew Lomax, and I know why you went after him that night. I know about Firmo and the stolen watches, and how Lomax screwed up your operation. I know you pursued him and shot him to death, shot him from your car, and finished him off with a shot through the passenger-side window. It was an assassination, Detective."