Kane wanted to leave but thought that if he did, people would notice and think it was due to Karp’s slight. He forced himself to remain, and in spite of himself, stole the occasional glance at the district attorney. So he noticed when the large black man, whom he’d assumed to be Karp’s police bodyguard and chauffeur, left and then returned with a worried look on his face. The black man and Karp stepped away from the others and spoke briefly.
Then Karp raised his head. There were a couple of hundred people in the room and yet his eyes had immediately locked on Kane’s. A shiver ran up Kane’s spine, and there was that word again. Nemesis.
7
“JEEZ, BOSS, WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?” MURROW ASKED WHEN he caught back up to Karp. “It wouldn’t hurt to have Andrew Kane’s machine and money behind you when you run, and you pretty much told him to kiss your big Jewish ass.”
“If I run,” Karp reminded his special assistant, whose main functions were to operate as his troubleshooter, keep an ear to the ground for what was going on in the office, and be the official keeper of his life. “And what does the ethnicity of my derriere have to do with it? He rubbed me the wrong way.”
“What?” Murrow said, scrambling to keep up with his boss’s long-legged gait. “The nicest rich guy in all of Manhattan, beloved by everybody from Donald Trump to the Rev. Al Sharpton, plus assorted drag queens, taxi drivers, and Broadway producers, the New York Rangers, Yankees, and Mets en masse, as well as black anarchists, Greenwich Village poets, and the art gallery crowd—” Murrow took a breath—“rubbed you, Saint-I-Don’t-Do-Lunch-I-Do-Criminals Karp, the wrong way?”
“Can it Murrow,” Karp growled. “It’s late, I want to say hello to whoever you say I have to and go home to bed…. It’s been a long day, and I just didn’t feel like being schmoozed by Mr. Schtick.”
Karp was grumbling in part because he didn’t really know what had set him off about Kane. True, he didn’t like politicians in general, or white-shoe lawyers in particular. He didn’t move in the same social circles as Kane and couldn’t imagine spending any quality time with him. But if that was all it took to get on his shit list, most of Manhattan’s population would have qualified.
As he moved toward the door and the possibility of a quick escape, Karp wondered briefly if he was guilty of reverse snobbery and weighed the evidence. Kane had lots of money, while he, as a public servant, made a merely comfortable middle-class living. Kane had lots of friends; he had only a few close ones, and even they thought he was a bastard a lot of the time. Kane seemed to move through life like a fish in water; he seemed destined to ram his head into brick walls. On the other hand, they were both successful in their chosen fields, which therefore meant that Kane was not worthy of licking his black oxfords.
Satisfied that he’d examined the issue objectively, Karp announced as much to himself as Murrow, “I don’t know why, but I smell a rat whenever I see that guy. And IF I run, I don’t want to have sold my soul to Andrew Kane.”
The large, colorful woman trotting alongside the two men—rather precariously in her heels—snorted and grinned. “Don’t let him kid you, Murry baby. He’s running. He might not be willing to admit it to himself yet, but he’s on the campaign trail…. And what a juicy way to start. I can see the headline now: DA Karp Slams Next Mayor of New York. Says ‘Kane’s a Weasel!’ ”
Karp scowled, an intimidating feature on a man of his height and countenance. “That was off the record, Stupenagel. And besides, I called him a rat, not a weasel,” he snarled under his breath so that the other partygoers would not hear.
Ariadne Stupenagel smiled even more broadly, the bright red lipstick she wore to match her dress leaving a ruby ring on her prodigious set of teeth. “Now, Butch, you know how it works,” she teased. “If you want something off the record, you have to ask me reeaal nice before you go spouting off…. And ‘weasel’ is sexier.”
Karp pulled up short and turned on the female journalist. He leaned forward until his face was only inches from hers. It irritated him that she continued to smirk when most men would have blanched at his expression; not only that, he thought that there was also a mocking look in her eyes, which made him even angrier.
Most women would have described Karp’s face as rugged and, except when he was scowling, not unattractive. His close-cropped, tea-colored hair sported a distinguished dusting of gray at the temples, even if there were fewer trees in the forest on top. Further examination would have revealed that the body was still reasonably trim from a daily regimen of sit-ups, repetitions on an old rowing machine, and a short, but brisk, walk to work. Despite the damaged knee, there was a certain economy of motion when he moved that identified him as an athlete however long he might have been removed from his glory days.
“Then the deal’s off,” he said with as much venom as he could muster. “Go find some other putz to follow around. And if that off the record comment appears in print, I’ll get Fulton…,” he nodded toward an even larger, black man standing some ten feet away and surveying the crowd around Karp like a hawk watches a field for mice, “to follow you around until he catches you doing something illegal, which he will; then I’ll throw the friggin’ book at ya.”
Murrow, who was four inches shorter than Stupenagel and seven shorter than Karp, jumped between the two like a little boy trying to break up a fight between his parents. “Come on, come on,” he begged looking up from one face to the other. “We’re all friends here, right? Hey, am I right?”
The tension passed when Stupenagel laughed and tousled Murrow’s hair. “Murry, you sweet little hunk of man meat, one of these days I’m going to throw you on my grill and have you for dinner,” she said. “You are so damned cute when you’re trying to keep the peace. But don’t worry, baby, Mommy and Daddy were just about to kiss and make up. Right, Butch?”
Murrow’s jaw dropped nearly to his bow tie as his mind tried to imagine what she meant by her “grill” and whether he would survive such a roasting. He’d met the woman six months earlier and still couldn’t believe the stuff that came out of her mouth, most of it sexual in one way or another.
The image of being slowly rotisseried by Stupenagel popped like a soap bubble, however, when his boss wagged a long, cigar-size finger at her. “Uh-uh, Murrow. Lesson number one: never ever believe that anyone in the press is a friend. They’d crucify their own mothers on page one if they smelled a Pulitzer, or even a free drink. Think of it as being the circus trainer in the lion’s cage—as long as you have a whip, a gun, and are looking them square in the eyes, you’re probably safe. But never turn your back on the sons (and daughters) of bitches, or they’ll eat you for lunch.”
“Oooooh, Butch, you know how it turns me on when you start talking about whips and eating people,” Stupenagel retorted, waving her breasts back and forth as if offering a sample.
“In your dreams, Stupe,” Karp groused but to Murrow’s relief his boss was clearly trying not to smile at the reporter.
“Believe me, big boy, you’ve starred in a few of my dreams,” she purred, giving what she thought was a pretty fair Mae West imitation. “Now whatdya say we put our little boy to bed, and then I’ll give you somethin’ to dream about. Oooh. Oooh. Oooh.”
Karp rolled his eyes, but he felt the irritation that Kane had somehow inspired drain away as if someone had pulled a plug in his pool of anger. Stupenagel had been his wife’s roommate in college. As journalists went, she wasn’t a complete liar and malingering scumbag—which for Karp was about as complimentary as he got of the press. She’d been halfheartedly trying to get into his pants for years, but they both knew that the banter wasn’t serious and that she’d also leave his comment about Kane out of her story. However, it did remind him to wring Murrow’s neck on Monday morning for ever talking him into climbing in bed with the press—figuratively speaking—political aspirations be damned.
• • •
Only six months earlier, Karp had been content to be the chief assistant district attorney for
the county of New York, responsible for the day-to-day operations of the six hundred–plus lawyers who prosecuted crimes committed on the island of Manhattan. But then he’d been appointed by the governor to fulfill the remaining term of DA Jack Keegan, who had happily skipped off to a seat on a federal bench. The term would expire at the end of the next year, and between then and now—about eighteen months—he had to make a decision whether to run for the office.
Karp’s distaste for journalists was matched by his distaste for politics, especially the phony glad-handing that went with it, like attending this fund-raiser for a new cathedral.
Privately, he thought New York needed a new cathedral like it needed more terrorists in airplanes. There was a black-and-white drawing of the proposed cathedral on an easel next to where the musicians launched into a new piece (he had no idea what they were playing, but it was pleasant enough and sounded vaguely familiar). The drawing was divided by lines indicating how many millions had been raised so far. Fifty million only thirty million to go. He wondered how many of the homeless people who camped out at night in the doorways and alcoves of the city’s churches and cathedrals could be sheltered and how many children might not have to go to bed hungry if all that money were going for good works instead of cement and stained glass.
However, as Murrow pointed out, if Karp wanted to be in a position two years hence to actually make a difference in people’s lives, including the lives of the homeless and hungry, then he had to make nice with people who had money and influenced public opinion. So Karp had found himself nodding in at least tacit agreement with the well-heeled patrons at the fund-raiser when they chattered on about how the new cathedral would “help heal” the city from the pain of September 11, 2001. He was used to speaking his mind—what others thought be damned—but now he held his tongue and worried that he was already losing his soul on the altar of politics.
The mere thought of it made him grumpy. Back in the seventies, when he’d started out as a young, idealistic prosecutor, Karp had the privilege of working for Francis P. Garrahy. Incorruptible as granite and nearly as impervious to the storms that regularly regaled the office, Garrahy had been the district attorney so long that entire generations of New Yorkers believed he’d been appointed for life, despite seeing his name on the ballot every four years.
Under Garrahy’s watch, the office had been run with integrity and a religious fervor for the rule of law. The secret to fighting fair and winning, he told his prosecutors, was preparation and attention to detail. “We only get one crack at ’em,” he’d reminded them on a regular basis. “Take your time, do your homework, cross your t’s and dot your i’s. Go after them only when you know the answer to every question before you ask it.”
Garrahy treated his staff with the same sense of fair play. Promotions and rewards were based on merit, not longevity or political connections. As a result, he’d created and nurtured one of the best-trained, best-prepared, and most highly motivated prosecutorial staffs in the country. The convictions rates followed as a matter of course.
The golden era of Garrahy had lost some of its shine by the time Karp joined the office. The old man was in his seventies by then and slowing down, while the size of his staff had grown exponentially along with a burgeoning caseload. It was too much for him to oversee as he once had. Worn out by the good fight, he’d left the door open for the efficiency experts, who appeared on the scene with their charts and graphs and “quality assurance” meetings with the staff. They tossed around catchphrases like “case management,” which boiled down to trials being an inefficient way of dealing with rising crime rates and their insistence on more plea bargains and deals to clear up the caseloads.
Under Garrahy, the efficiency experts were more of a nuisance than a real problem. They were barely tolerated and often ignored by those who actually tried to make felons pay for their crimes like Karp and his colleagues like Roland Hrcany, V.T. Newbury, Ray Guma, and the woman who would become his wife, Marlene Ciampi. But then Garrahy died in office and his job was handed over to Sanford Bloom, a political appointee who had no business being out of prison, much less the New York district attorney.
During Bloom’s reign, the efficiency experts became a real power. They decided that the attorneys needed to meet certain quotas in dealing with their caseloads, quotas that could only be reached by avoiding trials and making bargain basement deals. Felons who actually got any prison time at all were in and out before they had a chance to catch their breath and prepare for the next robbery or rape or murder.
Karp and those like him found themselves on the defensive, having to pick their fights and find ways around the experts to retain some semblance of a justice system that hadn’t completely collapsed. Fortunately, when all seemed lost, Bloom turned out to be as crooked as the people he was charged with putting in prison and, thanks to Karp, soon joined them behind the walls.
Bloom was replaced by Keegan, who had headed the homicide bureau during Karp’s early years and was Bloom’s chief assistant district attorney through no fault of his own. Keegan was actually a decent sort—certainly on the opposite end of the moral spectrum from Bloom and one hell of a trial attorney himself. Unfortunately, he’d spent his ten years as DA mostly biding his time as he awaited an appointment to the bench. But at least he’d been smart enough to put Karp in charge of the details of actually prosecuting criminals while he handled the two-martini luncheons and highbrow dinner parties.
Keegan’s time in office had stopped the downward spiral of the office initiated by Bloom, but had not reversed the process. That was Karp’s dream. The lure of returning the New York District Attorney’s Office to the respect it had enjoyed under the old man—with a few twists of his own—was the main reason he was now seriously considering putting up with the politics and compromises necessary to run for the office. Not, as he seemed to constantly have to remind everybody, that he had committed to the decision to run…yet.
• • •
Of course, deciding at this hour against seeking office would have just about killed Murrow, who splashed around in the muck of politics like a pig in mud. Armed with an eccentric taste in fashion—he preferred bow ties and vests, tweed coats, and pocket watches that he thought made him look dangerously intellectual—and an acerbic wit, Murrow also had a taste for intrigue that would have served him well in the court of Czar Nicholas. He was certainly in his element as Karp’s de facto campaign manager and always hatching new plots to garner publicity.
One of Murrow’s schemes Karp had reluctantly okayed was to allow Stupenagel to profile his personal and professional life for a series of stories she was calling “A Summer in the Life of the Big Apple’s DA.” She’d sold the Village Voice on the freelance piece, but had known better than to come straight to him with her request. Instead, she’d schmoozed Murrow—sometimes Karp wondered if that included a romp in the hay—who had then pitched it to him as the perfect opportunity to reach a segment of the population he might not otherwise. As Murrow mournfully pointed out, Roger Butch Karp was not exactly “in” with the young crowd.
The Village Voice was what Murrow and Stupenagel called an “alternative” newspaper, supposedly offering a different viewpoint from the big dailies and television stations. The few times he’d looked at it, the stories seemed to feature eccentrics, whistle-blowing city bureaucrats who’d lost their jobs probably because they actually were incompetent, and anyone with an “alternative lifestyle”—all of it sandwiched between advertisements for breast enlargements, banks, laser hair removal, phone sex, restaurants, escort services, and personal want ads. But Murrow had assured him that the newspaper enjoyed a strong readership with twenty-five- to forty-five-year-old professionals in Manhattan who cared about politics and actually voted.
Murrow had also pushed for Stupenagel’s request that she be allowed to report how his professional life intersected with his personal life. “It will illustrate your warm, cuddly man of the people side, and show the people t
hat they have a friend in the justice system,” his special assistant pleaded when he balked.
“What if I don’t have a warm, cuddly side?” Karp groused.
“You don’t,” Murrow responded, “but the voters don’t have to know that until after the election.”
Karp thought it over. If he was going to let any journalist close enough to do a personality profile that included some of his private life, it had to be Stupenagel. For all the bad judgment she’d exercised when picking a career, she had proved herself to be a loyal friend to his wife, Marlene Ciampi. He figured she would be the last journalist to screw him over, though it was still not outside the realm of possibility.
The deal was that she could sit in on the myriad of meetings that ate into his work schedule and, on rare occasion, any court appearances he might make. Such access came with the understanding that he could designate some closed-door conversations, investigations, and trial strategies off limits because they were too sensitive or inappropriate for publication. But she also got to pick and choose which public appearances outside the office that she would get to cover.
Of course, Stupe (as he happily referred to her at every opportunity) chose the summer months to play fly on the wall because she knew that violent crimes, especially murder, would skyrocket when the heat soared and tempers in the naked city were twisted tighter than a rusted nut. Nothing like a rash of homicides flooding the DA’s office to fill a reporter’s notebook, he’d thought when she’d explained her idea, especially if I would do something sensational, like crack under the pressure and beat a suspect senseless while she takes notes.
Originally, Stupenagel proposed writing three or four long pieces. “Depending on how bored I get sitting in your office, watching you shuffle papers and yell at slavish assistant district attorneys all day long,” she complained one afternoon as he shuffled some of those papers. “Don’t you ever actually do anything? You know, single-handedly capture a serial killer after a gun battle and then personally persuade a jury to send him to death row like they do on TV. Maybe even throw the switch yourself?”
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