Robert Tanenbaum: Enemy within

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"Are you all recovered now?" asked Karp. It was later. They were in bed.

"Oh, I guess. He was eleven. That's old for a dog. And he went out fighting instead of in a vet's office. I guess I should be happy for him. You think this is dumb, right?"

"Not at all. Man's best friend. The emotion does you credit, I guess. We never got into pets in my family. I don't have the feeling for them."

"Yes, and I love you anyway. Isn't that strange?" A pause here. "I gave away all my money. To the Church. Well, actually to a foundation Mike Dugan's going to run. Forty-six million. Easy come, easy go. Do you think I'm crazy?"

"A nice question. It should be put, 'Do you think I'm crazier than you already did,' and the answer is no, not really. I didn't like the way you behaved when you had all that money, and it wasn't in any way real to me when you had it. What did you do with the rest of it?"

"Oh, well, I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid," answered Marlene with a sniff. "The rest will take care of the kids' education and a stake in life and so forth, and to tide me over until I decide what I'm going to do with the remains of my miserable life. I'm thinking vaguely of getting some acreage, maybe breed and train mastiffs. I seem not to be able to get along with people very well, poor or rich."

"Was that why you were always drunk?"

"You noticed? Yes, well, there was that business at Solette's, that didn't help. And I also recall noticing that the rich guys my age all had girls with them fifteen years younger than me, and I realized I was not a babe anymore, and that the only guys who were ever going to hit on me were ones who wanted me to help them get rich, like Peter Walsh. I realize that I have faithfully toed the feminist line all these years-don't make me a sex object and so forth-which is a lot easier if you have a face and you wear a six, so I felt like a hypocrite in the bargain…"

"Peter Walsh? The PI?"

"You know him?"

"His name came up. What's your connection?"

"He came on to me for a job at Osborne. Came in for an interview, too. Apparently he worked for your old pal Shelly Solotoff. He was the one who set up that sting on Roland. Talked about it quite cheerfully. It's all on tape."

"Is it?"

"Yeah, Osborne tapes all their interviews."

"I'm surprised he admitted it. Doesn't he know in some of the jurisdictions Osborne has offices it's illegal to record conversations without other-party consent?"

"Well, he's a cocky little bastard. Maybe he thought it would be louche and impressive." Marlene pouted. "But we were talking about me. Why is it every time I start to pour my heart out, we wind up discussing felonies?"

"You want me to say that despite our advanced age and disabilities, I still consider you the most desirable of women?"

"It would be a start."

Karp rose early the next day and arrived at an almost empty office. On his desk, from Murrow, were two copies of the Canman transcript. He walked upstairs to the DA's office and laid one of them on Keegan's desk. At a little past nine, Karp called the general counsel's office at Osborne and had a brief conversation with William Bell, at which Bell agreed to send over a copy of Peter Walsh's interview tape. Karp did not have to threaten to subpoena the tape as evidence of a crime. Osborne wanted to keep Karp, and any other of Marlene Ciampi's relatives, very happy. A courier brought it in forty minutes later. After checking it out in the AV suite, Karp walked down to the chambers of Judge Marvin Peoples, the hardest-working and earliest-arriving and only black Republican judge on the Supreme Court in and for the County of New York, and gave him a condensed version of the tale of Marshak and Solotoff, and the judge duly issued a warrant for the search of the offices of Sheldon Solotoff and the seizure of certain recorded telephonic communications.

Ten minutes after he returned from handing the warrant to a couple of DA squad cops, his secretary buzzed him and said that the DA wanted to see him right away. He went up and found, not to his surprise, that Norton Fuller was there. Both he and the DA were looking grim.

The DA flipped the pages of the Canman transcript. "Would you mind telling me what this is all about?"

"Not at all," said Karp. "This statement demonstrates that Cooley knew Lomax, and that he had a serious grudge against him. His story that he was in pursuit of a stolen vehicle that just happened to contain Shawn Lomax is therefore false. This is confirmed by the fact that Cooley didn't know the vehicle was stolen when he set off in pursuit. The stolen-car call didn't come in until after Lomax was dead. A simple examination of police records will bear that out. A similar examination of the crime-scene analysis will demonstrate that the chase did not go down as Cooley and the other police witnesses testified. I refer to the complete analysis, not the mere excerpt on which our grand jury presentation was based. The complete analysis is quite competent. It shows that at no time was Cooley in danger of being rammed by Lomax's vehicle. The tire marks and damage to the vehicles don't add up to that at all. In fact, Lomax was so incapacitated by gunfire that he couldn't have threatened the detectives at all. Incapacitated by fire from the rear, by the way, and he was shot through the head by Cooley while Cooley was on the ground less than ten feet away."

"A police cover-up," said Fuller, trying the phrase out for the first time.

"No. The police report is complete and accurate. The grand jury verdict was the result of incompetence encouraged by political expediency. They guessed correctly that we would give Cooley a pass, and we did. It's our bad."

"Wait on that-" began the DA, but Karp said, "No. There's only one way out of this now, and that's to take our lumps and move on. Speaking of which, I want you to look at this videotape. It concerns a different but curiously related case."

Karp went to the large television in the corner, switched it on, and slipped the videotape into the VCR on top of it.

They watched the interview in silence.

When the tape ended, Fuller said, "What a load of bullshit. What did you threaten him with to get him to say that?"

"Quite a lot, as it happens, but it's true nevertheless," said Karp.

Fuller turned to the DA. "This is ridiculous, Jack. He concocted this whole thing to get back at me. It's palace politics pure and simple. I mean really! The idea that anyone would take the word of some piss bum against the word of me and Sybil Marshak…"

"And we have confirmation, or will have before long, from Peter Walsh, Solotoff's PI, the man who found Mr. Paxton there. He will testify that the original story Paxton told him is the same in every respect as the one you just saw. Solotoff made the whole thing up and conspired with you to suborn perjury. And it would have worked if there hadn't been that watch. No one carrying a watch that expensive would have gone for a cheap mugging. That's how I knew that Paxton's story had to be phony. And you did your part, Norton, by releasing Ramsey's juvenile record, making him out to be a violent criminal. And you got Jack to push through a grand jury whitewash, which worked out okay, by the way, because now I have a perjury charge to hang over Paxton's head, to make sure he behaves when we bring Marshak up again."

"I can't believe you're listening to this… this vile conspiracy, Jack. I would never dream of conspiring to suborn perjury."

The DA maintained a stony silence, but Karp could see a faint grimace of disgust blossom on the noble face. Karp said, "You weren't paying attention. Shelly taped you, just like Nixon. The conspiracy is an open book."

"It's not! There is absolutely nothing incriminating in any conversation I ever had with Solotoff…" Fuller froze and stared at Karp, then at the DA. The disgust was in full flower now.