Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"She's not badly hurt. Her body, anyway. They're checking her over. You seem okay."

"Are you charging me with a crime?" Light on the pleasantries was the Canman.

"Well, I guess I could charge you with any number of crimes, but just now we're holding you as a material witness."

"Witness to what?"

"To the relationship between Detective Brendan Cooley and Shawn Lomax. Cisco Lomax."

"What if I don't know anything material about that?"

"If I think you're lying, which I do, you would be in serious legal trouble."

"And if I tell you what you want to know?"

"Then I can be accommodating."

"Great. Just write out a statement of what you want me to say, and I'll sign it."

"Don't be a wiseass, Mr. Williams. I just want you to tell the truth."

"Oh, the truth. Excuse me, I thought you were a lawyer."

Karp had few real prejudices, but one of them was against lawbreakers with brains and education. He had far more sympathy for the Ralphie Paxtons of the world. So when Karp spoke, he turned the lasers to stun and put an edge in his voice.

"Yes, and we could sit here all day and trade brittle one-liners about the corruption of society. But, frankly, I am bruised and tired, and so is my whole family, which is more or less your fault, nor do I forget that you nearly murdered me and my daughter this afternoon. So you'll forgive me if I cut to the chase. It is not often that I lead Leviathan out of his cave and let him feed freely on a citizen, but I am inclined to do so in your case. If you play with me, Mr. Williams, I promise you that I will indict you on three counts of attempted murder, which is a class A-one felony, and I will convict you, and I will use every chip I have to get you the maximum sentence the law allows and make sure you are placed in the toughest cell block in the nastiest prison in this state. You think you're a tough guy, but, believe me, inside of two weeks you'll be wearing frilly nightgowns and eye shadow, and I will personally attend every parole hearing you get to make sure that it goes on and on and on. Have I made myself absolutely clear?"

A sullen nod. "Yeah."

"Good. The alternative is to pretend for a few minutes that you're the mensch my daughter apparently sees in you, and forget your epic battle against bourgeois America, and tell me the fucking truth."

Which Canman now did, concisely and articulately, with little prompting, and, to Karp's immense relief, the story was the one Karp had constructed over the past months, out of hints and guesswork. Cisco Lomax had been the fence Firmo's man. Lomax had arranged for packages to be transported by the more responsible class of street merchants, including Canman. Canman had seen Lomax with Cooley many times, and Cooley had seen Canman, because Lomax had also been a snitch for Cooley, cultivated slowly over a year. Lomax had helped set up a bust at a site where Firmo would actually take personal possession of a looted shipping container.

"And what went wrong?" Karp asked. This was the crux.

"I don't have the details, but what I heard was that Cisco was just, like, stringing him along. Cooley was paying out serious money, maybe some of it his own, to keep Cisco on board. It could be that Cisco made the whole thing up, the big deal in the warehouse. He was that kind of guy. Anyway, the night it was supposed to have gone down, Cooley gets to the warehouse with a whole army of cops, and nothing's there but a crate of Taiwan watches. He came down later to the yards and routed everyone, looking for Cisco. And me. As it happens, I wasn't there. He must've thought I was in with Cisco on it or something."

"Were you? Where were you that night?"

"At Cannes for the festival. I don't know, man-somewhere across town, negotiating for bags of empties. That's what I do. I'm a fucking homeless. I don't check in at night, all right? The next night was when Cisco got it. Then Cooley started to come around looking for me. So I got small. That's it, that's all I know."

"Okay, you got all that Murrow?"

Murrow looked up from his pad. "Got it."

"We'll have you sign a transcript," Karp said, pausing at the door.

"Can Lucy come by and see me?" asked Williams.

"No," said Karp, looking down at the man with distaste. "Let me ask you something. How can you settle for the kind of life you're leading, living on the street in cardboard boxes? You're smart, you're skillful, you're educated. You could have a real life…"

"I had a real life once. I was an engineer. First, I made toys for people to kill with, and then I made toys to keep rich people from being bored. And I had to take pills to help me forget what I was doing. And after a while the pills made it impossible for me to do that stuff anymore. A self-correcting system. What I wonder, though, is how a bastard like you ever produced someone like Lucy."

"A question I ask myself all the time," said Karp, and shut the door. He sent Murrow back downtown and went to find his wife.

Who was with Father Dugan, just back from surgery.

"Marlene," said Dugan groggily, "was it a figment of my fevered imagination, or did you tell me down there that you gave me an obscene amount of money?"

"Not a figment. Forty-six mil."

He groaned. "Why would you want to do a thing like that for? I thought I was always so nice to you."

"It's tainted gold, Father. I couldn't think of anything else to do with it. Besides, I discovered I wasn't cut out to be quite that rich. It wasn't good for my liver."

"You do realize I'm under a vow of poverty."

"Not a problem. The arch was very understanding. There's a foundation being erected as we speak, the Lucia Foundation, to dispose of the income. I'm the chairman of the board, you're the executive director."

"I see. And what is this foundation supposed to do with its money?"

"To be decided. Good works. Righting wrongs. We'll think of something."

"I'm sure. Could I have a long white limo with darkened windows?"

She laughed. "Only if you take to wearing green spectacles, a Charlie Chan panama hat, and to carrying a malacca."

"Done. Well, well. So the arch swallowed the black sheep getting out from under?"

"Yes. When you give someone forty-six million dollars, your suggestions tend to be treated with respect, I find. Tell me what happened after I left the sewer. Butch was excessively brief."

"I wish I could. Canman had a bomb, and Butch managed to put it out. All I saw were moving shadows. But I heard snatches of what Lucy said to him, some trick of acoustics in the vault. It was quite remarkable. You don't need the actual words, although for an impromptu sermon I wish I could do as good on my best day. No, it was the tone. We say we hate the sin but love the sinner, but we hardly ever bring that into the light. It's so hard to make the distinction so that it's clear to the sinner. But she did that. I've never heard such a combination of wrath and love. It raised the hair on my neck. The Holy Spirit, or I'm a Methodist."

"My poor baby!" said Marlene.

And after he had drifted off, she went outside and saw her husband walking toward her in the hallway, looked toward him expectantly, and saw how it was by his face before he even said, "I'm sorry, baby, he's gone."

Marlene whirled and slammed her fist into the hard plaster wall, and once again, hard enough to leave a smear of blood, and he grabbed her before she could break her knuckles. She wailed then, a long, crooning cry, loud, too, so that hospital staff came out of their stations, and a neuropsych team was discreetly marshaled. But not used, for Karp carried her away and picked up Lucy, who, when she heard, howled, too, in a slightly higher key. Karp wisely made no effort to stop this duet, nor did the words It's only a dog approach his lips as he escorted his very own Italian opera to a waiting cab.