Robert Tanenbaum: Enemy within

"I rest my case," said Karp, wishing more than anything that he knew for sure whether that look was born out of revulsion for the act, for Fuller's compromising the integrity of his office, or because the weasel had been so stupid as to get caught.

Fuller was pale now, sweating, and his words came out in a highpitched jabber quite different from his normal voice. "Jack, I swear there is nothing there, nothing they can prove. Of course, I talked to Solotoff. It's our most politically sensitive case. But at no time did I say or do anything even remotely suggested by these charges. Solotoff will back me up on this a hundred percent."

Karp laughed and said, "Oh, Norton! The absolute index of your incompetence for this kind of work is the fact that you still don't understand that when I put the hooks to Shelly Solotoff, you will be the very first bit of meat he throws me."

The DA said, "If you'll excuse us, Norton."

Fuller said, "Jack, you want to be very careful now. The primary is nine weeks away and-"

"I said, if you'll excuse us, Norton. I will attend to you in a few minutes."

Fuller left. Karp had read about people slinking out of a room, but he had never seen it actually done until then.

The DA's lips had disappeared into a rigid horizontal line. "So," he said after a long time. "Where are we?"

"He has to go, immediately. I have no great interest in prosecuting either him or Solotoff, but at a minimum both Fuller and Solotoff get disbarred. I'll let you decide what should be done with both of them beyond that. I can indict Marshak behind this new material, and I intend to go forward with it. Cooley is a little more problematic, but I intend to give the grand jury another crack at him, too."

The DA was shaking his head from side to side like an old clock's slow pendulum, and his expression was the kind that rare and spiny fish see from the other side of the glass.

He said, "I can't believe it. You still, at your age, want to be the white knight. It's preposterous. It's like still wanting to be a cowboy. I should have gotten rid of you years ago. I don't know, it must be a brain lesion. You simply never learned how things get done."

"I guess not."

"Then let me give you some advice. The problem with the white knight is he comes to the castle and they send him off to slay the dragon. And he slays the dragon. Then there's another dragon, and he slays that, too. And another. Sooner or later, though, there'll be a dragon so big that the white knight's going to get chewed up and fried, you can put money on that. So the moral of the story is, when you grow up, you don't want to be the white knight. You want to be the guy that sends the white knight out to kill the dragon. Get it?"

"Is that you, Jack?"

"Yes, it is. Or was. This little drama you produced just lost me everything I worked for my whole life."

"Well, you know, I don't know about that. People might like to see a DA who's not afraid to clean his own house and take some political risks. McBright is the pol in this race, and he's good. I might even say he's better than you at working a crowd. In a political race, an ethnic race, a special-interest race, he's going to whip you. But if you demonstrate integrity and courage, maybe people will decide they like that better than having someone in here who's always telling them what they want to hear. If not, maybe the office isn't worth having."

"That's your opinion, is it?"

"Yes, it is. And while you're soliciting my opinion, you should cut your losses on Benson. As I pointed out earlier, he's not convictable on capital murder. I mean while you're starting to do the right thing without fear or favor…"

"Oh, terrific. The police vote, the West Side liberal vote, and now you want me to dump the Jewish vote, too. You think I can get elected by the Ukrainians?"

"I'm Jewish, and I'll vote for you."

"Oh, get out of here!" Keegan growled. "I'm sick of the sight of you."

Karp bristled at Keegan's tone and leaned over Keagan's desk, placing his face inches away from his boss's. "Don't you ever talk to me like that! If you can't handle truth anymore, and want to break faith with everything we're really all about, just tell me and I'm gone for good." Karp pulled back.

Keegan peered into Karp's eyes and suddenly slumped in his chair, now appearing like a half-filled laundry bag set on a subway seat by a seasoned strap hanger. While staring down at his desk, Keegan spoke in a depressed, steady monotone. "OK, OK, you're right. Maybe I'm the only prick around here, but it's tough. It's tough sledding. I just want to be DA."

Karp went out. He found Brendan Cooley waiting for him in the hallway outside his office, alone.

Karp ushered him in, sat him down, settled himself into his chair, and gave the detective a long, searching look. "What are we going to do with you, Cooley? It's not very often I get to jam up someone who saved my life. Read this!" Karp tossed over the transcript of Canman's Q amp;A and waited as Cooley paged through it.

Cooley flipped it back across the desk. "It's just talk. He doesn't know anything. You got nothing solid."

"Actually I do. The problem with a scam is that it might look good on the surface, but it never stands up to serious poking. The simple fact is that you lied, and your partner backed your play, about chasing a stolen car. We can absolutely prove that wasn't the case. That knocks the blocks out from under your testimony. Then we have the crime-scene analysis, and the medical forensics, neither of which confirms your story. Then you have the witnesses, the patrol cops, and your partner. They're caught in a lie. Okay, cops stretch it all the time, especially to cover an excess of zeal by a brother officer, but when we put it to them that they're covering up an assassination, will they hold up? When they're looking at dismissal and prosecution for perjury? I don't think so. I know I can indict, and I'm pretty sure I can convict you, if not for murder, then for manslaughter one." Karp waited. Cooley stared at him, his face stiff. He said nothing. A smart guy.

Karp continued, "I actually think you're guilty of murder. You might be thinking, in a trial who knows how it would go? A popular heroic cop, the victim a lowlife. The right jury might give you a pass. You know and I know that we don't ever really try the crime that's in the statute books. We try a particular defendant against a particular victim, which is why you're always better off killing a black person, God help us. Or maybe that's changed. The jury pool isn't what it was when we were coming up. You might get convicted, which would be twenty-five to life, hard time. On the other hand, while I'm not corrupt enough to give you a pass, like some of my colleagues here, I am corrupt enough to recognize that you're basically a decent man stuck in a job he hates."

Cooley snapped out of his trance. "What? What're you talking about?"

Karp held up a meliorative hand. "Cooley, I'm not going to insult you by trying to psychologize here. But I met your wife. I know your story. Your dad, your brother, the whole cop thing. What you should do now is look at where you are and where your whole life is going. Right now, you got Dad and the cops and nothing else. You lost your wife and kids. It's not what you wanted out of life. You're never going to be able to replace your brother, or show your father that you could bring down the bad guy that got away from him."

"Goddamn it, leave my family out of this!"

"Right. But just look at it, is all I ask. Now, like I just said, I'm twisted enough to take into account what you did down in the tunnel and the kind of person you really are. You're not someone who needs to be off the streets forever. So your choice is, what I'm giving you here is, on the one hand, a trial for murder, a huge scandal, incredible heartbreak for your family, and the real possibility that your life could be completely gone. I will try that case myself, and I am very, very good at prosecuting homicides. The other thing to keep in mind is that we could have a guy in here next year who wants to make his rep by showing that white cops don't get to blow away African-Americans whenever it strikes their fancy. He will want to drop the jailhouse on your head. Or, on the other hand, I will offer you a plea: manslaughter in the second degree. That means you will have to stand up in front of a judge and admit that you were reckless in pursuit of a fleeing felon and killed a man. That's not a lie, even you'd have to admit that. You'd serve the minimum in a low-security facility along with crooked accountants and corrupt assistant district attorneys and lawyers, eighteen months, twenty months, something like that. Don't answer me now. Talk to your lawyers, talk to your family. But don't take too long, okay? I don't know how long I'm going to be in a deal-making position myself."