Robert Tanenbaum: Bad Faith

“A doctor,” he begged. “Get a doctor.”

LaFontaine had survived the heart attack and today, two months later, was brought before the court for its judgment. This time he sat sullenly in his seat, occasionally glaring hatefully at Karp, while Judge Temple listened to his lawyer plead for leniency. Calling LaFontaine a “despicable human being,” the judge sent him away for the maximum allowable, life with a mandatory minimum of twenty-five years.

As for Nonie Ellis, Judge Temple had given her a three-year suspended sentence. Part of her probation was that she work at the East Village Women’s Shelter.

One of the bigger surprises was that Karp learned that Bruce Knight had reported himself to the New York State Bar Association for violating attorney-client privilege with his erstwhile client Nadya Malovo. Karp had informed the bar hearing officer about the beneficial role that Knight had played in preventing the terrorist attack. The bar determined that Knight would keep his license and set up a program to teach newly admitted lawyers a course in ethics at state bar headquarters in Manhattan.

In order to keep his law firm afloat and pay the bills, Marlene retained his services as her investigator in chief in her private practice, focusing mainly on protecting abused women and working in conjunction with the women’s shelter.

After the sentencing and the end of the workday, Karp had been looking forward to a quiet evening at home with Marlene and the twins. But Warren Bennett had been waiting for him when he exited the Hogan Place side of the building.

“Hi, Butch,” the little man greeted him. “David says he’s ready to … oh boy fuck me … keep his side of the deal. Be on the downtown side of the South Ferry platform tonight at one. Oh, and you may want to … whoop whoop oh boy … bring Fulton and maybe a couple other guys. She can be a handful, you know.”

As he sat now waiting, Karp wondered what he’d given up for this deal. That night at the Bowery Mission, Grale had proposed that if Karp and his friends allowed Malovo to escape so that he could spring his trap, he would eventually return her to Karp’s custody to be tried.

In exchange, Grale wanted to “entertain” the femme fatale assassin long enough to get her to tell him everything she knew about the terrorists and criminals preying on New York City so that he could ramp up his vigilante war against evil. “I think the threat of spending her golden years in my loving care will be enough to get her to talk,” he laughed. “Of course my inclination is to slit her throat and send her back to hell. But I understand that there is a ‘greater good’ of seeing her exposed by you in a New York courtroom.”

Grale had apparently been a convincing host, as evidenced by the dead bombers and gangsters and other nefarious types the police kept finding with their throats cut. One of his alleged victims, however, was harder to figure out. The nude body of a man named James Blankenship had been found hanging by the neck from a tree in Central Park. “JUDAS” had been carved in his chest, and his dead hand clutched a small leather pouch containing thirty bright shiny dimes.

Karp became aware of the rumble of an approaching train. He stood up as the others in his party walked toward the yellow caution line on the platform and peered down the track. A headlight appeared and then an apparently empty train slid into the station.

The train was not, however, completely empty, nor did Karp see what he expected when the door in front of him opened. As agreed, Nadya Malovo was there, a dog collar around her throat and fastened by a leash to a pole. Her eyes were wild and darting, and judging by the bruises and other marks on her filthy body, her stay with the King of the Mole People had not been a pleasant one.

But there was also another passenger, also collared and leashed. In a corner, the beast that used to be Andrew Kane snarled and cowered, one insane eye glaring out of his devastated face.

There was an envelope pinned to his threadbare coat. Fulton removed it and handed it to Karp who opened it and read the letter he found inside.

“An early wedding present for Lucy. With love, David Grale.”