Hoax

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  The other set of files concerned allegations of malfeasance brought against one of the firm’s other major clients, the New York City Police Department. The charges were investigated first by the department’s Internal Affairs Division, but the investigators’ findings were then passed on to Plucker, Bucknell and Kane, which had been retained by the department for two primary purposes.

  One was to review the IA reports and then pursue a course to reduce the liability of the department and city from citizen lawsuits by settling cases out of court. Kane and his associates accomplished this in the same way they handled the sexual assault accusations made against the Catholic clergy. Victims of police misconduct—or in some cases, the families if the victim didn’t survive the encounter—were quickly offered sums of money to forget any claims. In exchange for the money, they were required to sign papers stating that they were dropping all rights to sue or seek any other sort of redress against the officers, the NYPD, or the City of New York.

  However, that did not cover the firm’s responsibilities. A city statute required that in any instance of alleged police misconduct in which a monetary settlement was reached, the Internal Affairs report had to be reviewed for potential criminal charges by an independent law firm, which then passed them along with any recommendations to the DA’s office.

  Kane didn’t try to save every cop who got in trouble. With most, he actually looked at the cases on their legal merits and, if warranted, passed them along with recommendations that the district attorney review the facts for the purpose of considering charges.

  In fact, he saw some cases as an opportunity to hang certain types of officers out to dry. He especially delighted in recommending prosecution for otherwise upstanding officers who may have made an error in judgment or an honest mistake. There’d even been times when the people who worked for him arranged for false allegations—a prostitute claiming an officer raped her, or a drug dealer complaining of a shakedown—to be brought against officers who had interfered with one of his criminal enterprises or who represented a danger to someone under his protection.

  There were some cases that couldn’t be brushed under the rug. These needed to be handled more delicately—especially if the press or one of the community activists got wind of it early and made a simple case of police brutality the cause du jour.

  Of the two, the press was usually the easiest to sidetrack. He might take the reporter or editor to lunch and point out that “not all the facts are known and you might want to approach this with a little caution…. And hey, now that we’re through talking business, what are you doing next Saturday? I’m having a little get-together, and there a couple of Hollywood types I’d like you to meet, in case you ever dust off that screenplay you were telling me about last month.”

  Usually, the community activists could be bought off with contributions to their causes and bank accounts to at least take a wait-and-see approach. If not, they were encouraged to take their activism elsewhere, like California.

  Occasionally, Kane ran into someone with ethics, and courage, but they were few and far between. And of course, not every case could be dealt with as quietly and efficiently as he would have liked.

  On rare occasions, the media or the activists bit into a case and held on no matter what strings he pulled, or the victims refused to be intimidated. He then had to call on his bulldog associates to win the court battles that could not be averted with money.

  Such had been the circumstances that past winter when the district attorney’s office charged two police officers with murder for the shooting of a black immigrant they—wrongly—thought was trying to sell them drugs. He’d assigned one of the newer additions to his staff of associates, a former assistant district attorney named Roland Hrcany, to represent the officers. The case was going well and looked like it would result in an acquittal—which would have further solidified his standing with the police officer’s union—but then Karp had stepped in for the original prosecutor and the officers were convicted.

  Over the years, Kane had built himself a loyal following within the NYPD by protecting certain officers and detectives from criminal charges. These officers tended to be rogues, already corrupt or well on the road, who proved useful sometimes when he needed the long arm of the law for his own purposes. He’d commanded their loyalty by overturning any IA recommendations to pursue criminal charges with a letter he included in their files, which were stamped, like the Catholic clergy cases, No Prosecution.

  In all the years that his firm had worked for the police department and the Catholic Church, none of his recommendations had been overturned. In fact, he doubted the files had even been looked at because of the men who’d been in the office of district attorney during that time.

  The first had been Sanford Bloom. Kane liked dealing with people like Bloom. They were so basic in their desires and the way they went about asking for what they wanted—no slow corruption of their moral fiber or gentle bending of their principles to look the other way. Bloom wanted money, cash, straight out. Not even for doing anything in particular, just an understanding that he would make special concessions for Kane’s clients and never, ever question one of his recommendations. But Bloom was greedy and stupid and wound up in prison.

  Bloom’s successor, John X. Keegan, had been more of a challenge. Keegan, unlike Bloom, was an essentially honest public servant and not the sort to be swayed by anything as crass as money stuck in a brown envelope and left in his desk drawer on the first day of every month.

  When Keegan first became DA, Kane briefly considered having the district attorney’s office burgled to remove the No Prosecution files just in case Keegan got nosy. But Kane didn’t know if Keegan, who’d been with the office for decades, was already aware of the files and would wonder why they were missing.

  It was also a matter of how Kane viewed the world. He not only believed that every man had a weakness to be exploited, but that he was the one who could find and use that weakness. The existence of the files represented a real risk to him. Even a cursory examination of either set would have shown where he and his associates had ignored obvious criminal acts and recommended against prosecution. The very least he could expect would be disbarment, and his involvement might even rise to the level of criminal conspiracy. If not, the exposure would probably ruin him politically if the press ever found out. He had no doubt that his privileged relationship with those jackals would disappear in an instant for that big a story, especially if it could be backed up with paperwork proof. Without the files, even if allegations were made in specific instances, he could rely on the concept of “plausible deniability”—one of his favorite terms of the late twentieth century. In other words, he couldn’t be expected to recall every case reviewed by a firm as large as his, and that in the final analysis it was up to the Manhattan district attorney to review the file and decide whether to accept his recommendation.

  Allowing the files to remain in the DA’s office after Bloom was exposed, Kane realized, was one of the pitfalls of having a narcissistic personality disorder. Logic dictated that he destroy the files; his ego made him think that he could get away with it. He could play with fire, which would make the business of corrupting Jack Keegan that much more exciting.

  Kane had wined and dined the district attorney and made sure he was on the A-list for all the best social gatherings, as well as the famous parties in his penthouse on Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue or at the hunting lodge in Vermont. He quickly learned that Keegan didn’t have the usual chinks in his armor: He liked women but was deft at avoiding being compromised; he made no overtures about needing help with his campaign finances; nor was he a closet homosexual, a drunk, or a drug addict.

  Kane was growing a little frustrated when, in an inspired moment over cognac with Keegan in the quiet of his study, he pretended to be somewhat tipsy and shared his dream of someday becoming mayor of New York City. And, “if the truth be told, and all modesty aside,” he said with an embarrassed smile,
“I dare aspire to even bigger dreams.”

  Inwardly, Kane was smiling to see Keegan looking thoughtful and rising to the bait like a fat trout. Emboldened by the brotherhood of 90-proof alcohol, the district attorney confided that unlike many of his law school classmates, his dream had not been to be the next Clarence Darrow or Francis Garrahy. No, it was his ambition to someday be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Where I feel I might make some small contribution to this great country,” he’d slurred patriotically and, to Kane’s thinking, pompously.

  After that night, Kane made sure that his parties included the people whom Keegan would see as being helpful in achieving his dream, such as members of the House and Senate judiciary committees and their staffs, presidential advisers and attorneys, and important autocrats with the U.S. Department of Justice. He even managed the occasional appearance of one or two of the justices themselves, around whom Keegan fawned like a new puppy. With beautiful women, movie stars, and pro athletes thrown into the mix, Kane laughed as he watched his good friend fall into his web.

  For his part, Keegan was a man who knew where his allegiance lay. Although he considered it simply professional courtesy toward a fine lawyer and good friend, he, too, neglected his duty to review the No Prosecution files and paid no more attention to them than had the felonious Sanford Bloom. The files had remained sealed and locked away in the filing cabinet.

  • • •

  However, when Keegan called him to announce that he’d been appointed to a federal judgeship—something Kane already knew as he’d practically drawn up the papers himself—he made the decision that the files needed to be retrieved. He had very little information on the man who would be replacing Keegan, a selection he had not participated in, which he chided himself as an oversight on his part.

  All that his spies seemed to be able to tell him about Roger Karp was that he was a straight shooter. Keegan also informed him that Karp wasn’t the sort to party or hobnob with society folks.

  When Kane had asked Hrcany, who’d been hired because of his skill and experience but was unaware of the firm’s more nefarious deeds, what he knew of his former colleague, he was told that Karp was virtually devoid of vices. “I think the only things he loves are his family and the law.” Karp apparently lacked even Keegan’s ambition and had mostly risen to his current position, according to Hrcany, “because he enjoys what he does, and he’s the best trial lawyer in the state.”

  It was hard for Kane to imagine that anyone in today’s world got anyplace on merit, but true believers, like martyrs, could be dangerous. So until he could figure out how to bring Karp into the fold, Kane decided that he would stop sending No Prosecution files to the DA’s office, and claim it was an oversight if questioned later. In the meantime, the old files, which were kept in a cabinet just off the DA’s main office, would be removed and destroyed.

  Then the terrorists tried to blow up the courthouse and messed up everything. Fools, he thought. Amateurs. The whole scheme was poorly executed by bumbling idiots. The building had been damaged enough, however, that the DA’s office had been abandoned for a period of time, the filing cabinets moved to other locations. Or at least that’s what he thought after his burglars tried to find the No Prosecution filing cabinet and came back empty-handed.

  Then he was stung by a nasty turn of events. It began with a worried telephone call from O’Callahan. A priest, Father Michael Dugan, had been in that morning requesting an audience with the archbishop. He wouldn’t tell O’Callahan much other than it seemed that one of his former parishioners had come into possession of certain government files that indicated corruption within the police department and the church. Pressed for more, Dugan shook his head and said he wasn’t personally in possession of the files. He told O’Callahan, “You’ll just have to believe that these files could destroy the church in New York. I must talk with the archbishop alone.” To stall until he could speak to Kane, O’Callahan said he would pass on the request to the archbishop.

  The files could only be from the No Prosecution cabinet, and for one of the few times in his life, Kane felt fear grip his gut as if he had eaten too many green apples. He ordered O’Callahan to have their people watch Dugan around the clock and try to discover the whereabouts of the files. The task seemed nearly impossible. The priest ran a foundation and met with dozens of people every day. Therefore, it was a matter of luck that one of his spies was watching Dugan’s office when he saw a Hispanic teenager leave the building. The spy knew he’d seen the young man’s face before and so had followed him to his place of employment: the district attorney’s office.

  “His name is Alejandro Garcia,” O’Callahan reported. “He works as a janitor in the courthouse at night. We checked the city employment records, and he was working during the time of the bombing and afterward. He could easily have removed the files as part of the cleanup crew. It’s got to be him.”

  It wasn’t conclusive, but Kane agreed. He considered whether to have Garcia and Dugan killed. But he had no idea where the files were or who else might know about them. Plus it was difficult for his men to follow Garcia into his neighborhood. The kid might have given up the life of crime, if his spies were correct, but he still had the fierce loyalty of his gang behind him, and efforts to find him in Spanish Harlem had been met with hostility by the locals.

  Kane decided on a different tack. He had O’Callahan make overtures to Dugan and, through him, Garcia. A certain interested party would pay a great deal of money for the files, Dugan was told. The same party was also willing to see that Garcia was signed to a major recording contract. “As you noted yourself,” O’Callahan had reasoned, “that information could be harmful to the church, as well as the police department, and think of the people who would suffer if either of those institutions was damaged by the contents of those files.”

  Surprisingly, Dugan and Garcia had turned out to be more true believers. Instead of taking the money and recording contract, the priest had threatened to go to the district attorney if a meeting with Archbishop Fey wasn’t arranged. That’s when Kane came up with his grand plan. If he couldn’t kill Garcia, at least not right away, he would frame him for murder. The teen could contemplate spending the rest of his life in prison, maybe even the death penalty, or he could turn over the files.

  So the plan had been to make it look as if Garcia had murdered ML Rex as part of the East Coast–West Coast rap war. It had been almost too easy. They’d found a patsy, Vincent Paglia, through one of his mob connections, to take the victim to the nightclub where Garcia was known to be a regular at their open-microphone night. The MC had been paid by Pentagram Records to arrange a battle rhyming confrontation between the two, and then a miracle happened. Not only had the entire audience heard the two young men putting each other down, but afterward Garcia had actually threatened to kill the rap star in front of a half-dozen people. It was almost too rich that the DA’s kids were two of those witnesses; it was just the sort of devilment that Kane loved.

  It was an excellent plan. The cops tracked Paglia down, who’d fed them his story. Then an anonymous caller led the detectives to Garcia and the altercation at the Hip-Hop Nightclub. Garcia was picked up for questioning, and Paglia picked him out of a lineup.

  With that accomplished, Kane had sent O’Callahan back to Dugan. “If he gives up the files now,” one priest explained to the other, “the witness recants, says he made a mistake. Half the files before the witness goes to the cops, half after your boy is released.”

  “What if he gets out and we don’t give up the second half of the files?”

  O’Callahan pretended to look shocked. “What? You mean we could not rely on your word…tsk, tsk, what is this world coming to?” But then his expression hardened. “We either have all the files in our hands, or he doesn’t walk out of jail alive. The Tombs can be a dangerous place.”

  “What if he decides to take his chances at trial and turns the files over to the DA?” Dugan asked.

  O�
�Callahan had shrugged. “He won’t live out the month and neither will his friends, including you.”

  Dugan had started to rise from his seat as if to attack O’Callahan. But the black-hearted priest wasn’t stupid; he’d brought plenty of muscle with him to make his offer.

  “Who is this ‘we’ you keep mentioning?” Dugan said, sitting back down. “Does the archbishop know about this?”

  “You’ve seen the files…you tell me what you think the archbishop knows,” O’Callahn sneered. “As far as ‘we,’ that’s a need-to-know security clearance that I’m afraid you don’t have. So, what’s it going to be, Mike?”

  “We’ll think about it,” Dugan snarled and stormed out of the room.

  Both O’Callahan and Kane assumed that after the priest and Garcia had a chance to think, they’d come around. Then after Kane had the files, the pair would have an unfortunate, and fatal, accident. But they seemed to be taking their time thinking, and he was running out of patience.

  Kane reached down as his cell phone suddenly began buzzing on his belt. He snapped it open and answered. “What is it?” he said sharply.

  “We may have some trouble,” O’Callahan said. “Apparently, the district attorney wants to talk to their star witness.”

  “What about?”

  “We’re not sure. Karp’s office wanted him picked up, but fortunately we got the word first and told him to leave work and lay low until we got to him.”

  “Kill him.”

  “What? Without Paglia we won’t have an eyewitness putting Garcia at the scene.”