No Lesser Plea

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “Great, Louis. Let’s make it twenty-five years from next Thursday. I’ll call to confirm.”

  Louis’s smile faded. “Twenty-five … ? Oh, shit, hey, that’s all past, man. I mean, this is a new start. Right. I mean, I’m sorry. I really mean it. I mean if I caused any trouble at all, I am truly, truly sorry. What’s past is past, though, ahh, you can’t let the past hang you up, right? I mean, I said I was sorry and I meant it. Right? That’s past.”

  Louis kept talking in this vein, in an insistent monotone. Karp couldn’t take his eyes away from Louis’s face. He felt a cold chill start in his midsection and crawl up his back. He shuddered.

  Then something beyond Karp’s understanding happened. He looked into Louis’s wild, yellow eyes and he saw him. He saw the patently insane creature now babbling before him (hey, Karp, whadya say, Karp, hey what a deal, right? Karp? Hey, whata, whata, deal, right, hey, I’m sorry, alright?); he saw the phony madman under that, and under that the real monster, the beast of blood, and under that, under that, down beneath the rules and the laws, and vengeance and evil, he saw, and felt, a creature, a being like himself, writhing in a white-hot, ice-cold loveless hell, enduring torments so unspeakable that to release it by death, any death, would be an act of profound mercy.

  Without conscious volition, Karp observed his hand reach out and pat Louis gently on the shoulder. Then he spun on his heel and left the room. He was sticky with sweat and breathing hard as he walked down the filthy corridors. He walked out of the Tombs into a bright, early summer day. He thought, ridiculously, this is the first day of the rest of your life.

  A teenager in pimp clothes bumped into him. “Have a nice day,” said Karp. “Ah, fuck ya!” snarled the pimplet. Karp laughed merrily and headed north. For the rest of the day he sat in Washington Square Park and looked at people. Everything looked scrubbed and new, and impossibly detailed, glowing. He exercised his compassion, and mourned, joyfully, his lost innocence.

  “And the thing of it was,” Karp explained to Marlene that night, “I didn’t change my ideas at all. I mean, I didn’t become a bleeding heart all of a sudden. I just was conscious, really conscious, for an instant, that me, and Louis, and Sussman, and shit, even Wharton, were just playing roles, and inside us there was something huge laughing at us all. Not cruelly, or mocking, but, like, ‘when are you people going to wake up?’ It was uncanny.”

  “It sounds like it. You and the Grand Inquisitor.”

  “Right. I’ve got to read that sometime. And the funniest part is, I don’t care about the trial. I mean, I want him to go to jail for a long time. And he probably will, even though he’s crazy as a loon. But I realized that what got me about him, what he was doing was a violation of the game. He wouldn’t play the game. He wouldn’t suffer with the rest of us. That’s what made him a monster. And I destroyed that. Or something did. Something did.” They were silent for a long while, thinking about how it had all played out.

  She was sitting in his lap on a plastic couch in the patients’ lounge. After a while, Karp felt her stiffen and she made a little noise.

  “What is it, Champ? Pain?”

  “No. I’m scared, Butchie. They’re coming to show me the Face tomorrow.”

  “Oh, God! Do you want me to be there?”

  “No! I mean, I’ll need, I guess I’ll need some time for myself, you know?”

  “Look, Marlene, I got to say this, umm, whatever it turns out …”

  She put her hand over his mouth. “No, don’t say anything. Just squeeze me.”

  The next day, it was a Friday, she called Karp late, around five.

  “Hi.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m at your place. I let myself in.”

  “My place? Don’t move, I’ll be right there.”

  It was rush hour, and Karp had to put a body check on a distinguished elderly member of the bar to get a cab.

  The door was open. Karp rushed through the apartment to the bedroom.

  She was standing at the foot of the bed in a long-sleeved tan summer dress. She was completely transformed. Her ordeal had stripped the softness from her, and the planes of her face showed clear, through the taut skin. The right side of her face was discolored in patches and covered with a quilting of fine white scars. A black patch covered her right eye. Her hair was cropped short, and some peculiarity of the wounding had created a white blaze through her black hair from the forehead to the crown.

  The cover girl was utterly lost. Instead, she had a face out of archaic imagination, like something painted on terra-cotta on an Aegean island or cut into bronze at Mykonos, for a hero’s grave.

  As Karp stood there, his heart pierced and full at once, staring, her mouth, which was perfectly still, hardened into a grim line, and her one eye flashed defiance like a hawk’s eye, out of her hawk face. Her hands were clenched at her hips, in her old way, and Karp saw that her left hand was clad in a tight black kid glove.

  Karp slowly raised both hands above his head. “Don’t shoot,” he said weakly. “I give up.”

  Then he went toward her and picked her up, placed her on the bed, and pinned her beneath him. And he kissed her face, starting with the scarred part, and then her mouth, for a long time. He kissed every scar and the bad eye and the good eye.

  Marlene started to cry. She cried so hard she couldn’t breathe on her back. She wriggled out from under him and went into the bathroom to sob great, whooping, wracking sobs for nearly ten minutes, while Karp stood outside and said her name, and she said, “Just a second, just a second.”

  She came out, and said, “Whoosh! OK, that’s over. Christ, I think my patch shrank.” She walked over and examined herself in the long mirror on the bedroom door. Karp came and stood behind her. She saw his reflection looming over her own, and suddenly she giggled.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Belmar. I just thought of Belmar, for no reason.”

  “What’s Belmar?”

  “It’s a resort town on the Jersey shore. It’s part of the ethnic Riviera—we used to go there when I was a kid. They had this severed head, it was an attraction on the Boardwalk that would tell your fortune. Anyway, there were all these blue-collar bungalow resorts, little hotels, too. Italians around us, Russians to the north, Polish, Irish.

  “I just had the image of you and me walking up the Boardwalk in Belmar.”

  “Do they allow Jews?”

  “Only with a responsible adult. Karp, let’s go sometime. Jesus, I haven’t been there since Christ was a corporal. We’d blow their pants off—Pirate Jenny and the Giant Jewboy. They’d be strolling the sand in their Jockeys.”

  “It’s a deal. However, right now this minute …”

  She turned toward him. “What do you think of glass eyes? Tacky, right?” She still had tears in her voice.

  “No, I think a glass eye can be tasteful,” said Karp conversationally, close to tears himself. He said, “Champ, I want you so much, I’m nauseous.”

  She held her hands out, palms up. “Well,” she said, “here I am.”

  A Biography of Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Robert K. Tanenbaum is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five legal thrillers and has an accomplished legal career of his own. Before his first book was published, Tanenbaum had already been the Bureau Chief of the Criminal Courts, had run the Homicide Bureau, and had been in charge of the training program for the legal staff for the New York County District Attorney’s Office. He also served as Deputy Chief Counsel to the Congressional Committee investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. In his professional career, Tanenbaum has never lost a felony case. His courtroom experiences bring his books to life, especially in his bestselling series featuring prosecutor Roger “Butch” Karp and his wife, Marlene Ciampi.

  Tanenbaum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He attended the University of California at Berkeley on a basketball scholarship, and remained at Cal, where he earned his
law degree from the prestigious Boalt Hall School of Law. After graduating from Berkeley Law, Tanenbaum moved back to New York to work as an assistant district attorney under the legendary New York County DA Frank Hogan. Tanenbaum then served as Deputy Chief Counsel in charge of the Congressional investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

  The blockbuster novel Corruption of Blood (1994), is a fictionalized account of his experience in Washington, D.C.

  Tanenbaum returned to the West Coast and began to serve in public office. He was elected to the Beverly Hills City Council in 1986 and twice served as the mayor of Beverly Hills. It was during this time that Tanenbaum began his career as a novelist, drawing from the many fascinating stories of his time as a New York ADA. His successful debut novel, No Lesser Plea (1987), introduces Butch Karp, an assistant district attorney who is battling for justice, and Marlene Ciampi, his associate and love interest. Tanenbaum’s subsequent twenty-two novels portrayed Karp and his crime fighting family and eclectic colleagues facing off against drug lords, corrupt politicians, international assassins, the mafia, and hard-core violent felons.

  He has had published eight recent novels as part of the series, as well as two nonfiction titles: The Piano Teacher (1987), exploring his investigation and prosecution of a recidivist psychosexual killer, and Badge of the Assassin (1979), about his prosecution of cop killers, which was made into a movie starring James Woods as Tanenbaum.

  Tanenbaum and his wife of forty-three years have three children. He currently resides in California where he has taught Advanced Criminal Procedure at the Boalt Hall School of Law and maintains a private law practice.

  Tanenbaum as a toddler in the early 1940s. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

  A five-year-old Tanenbaum in Brooklyn, near Ocean Parkway.

  Tanenbaum’s family in the early 1950s. From left to right: Bob; his mother, Ruth (a teacher and homemaker); his father, Julius (businessman and lawyer); and his older brother, Bill.

  Tanenbaum’s high school varsity basketball photo from the ’59–’60 season. He played shooting guard, center, and forward, and earned an athletic scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley, where he continued to play.

  Tanenbaum shooting during a basketball game his junior year of high school. He wore the number 14 throughout high school and college.

  Tanenbaum’s senior portrait. In addition to basketball, he also played first base for his school’s baseball team.

  Standing outside a courthouse in downtown Manhattan are Tanenbaum, James Woods, NYPD detective Cliff Fenton, and Yaphet Kotto. Woods and Kotto played Tanenbaum and Fenton in the 1985 movie Badge of the Assassin, based on Tanenbaum’s book of the same name about a real-life murder mystery in 1971 Harlem.

  Seen here in the late 1980s, Mayor Tanenbaum poses with Ed Koch, then mayor of New York City, while Tanenbaum’s son Billy stands in front wearing a hat given to him by Koch. The two mayors were meeting to discuss a tourist exchange program between Beverly Hills and New York City.

  While mayor of Beverly Hills, Tanenbaum awarded Jimmy Stewart, seen here, with this proclamation of Outstanding Citizen of Beverly Hills in the late 1980s.

  Tanenbaum and his wife, Patti.

  Tanenbaum with Patti and their children Roger, Rachael, and Billy at home in California.

  Tanenbaum’s author photo, which has graced the covers of many of his books.

  Gallery Books

  Proudly Presents

  BAD FAITH

  Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Coming soon in hardcover

  from Gallery Books

  Turn the page for a preview of Bad Faith . . .

  PROLOGUE

  THE HANDSOME YOUNG FDNY PARAMEDIC JUMPED from the back of the ambulance with his gear bag and looked up at the old four-story walk-up on the Upper West Side. Once a haven for junkies, including the infamous Needle Park, much of the neighborhood had been gentrified and cleaned up. However, the West 88th Street building, located between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, had fallen into disrepair. The steps leading up to the building’s entrance, like the sidewalks along the narrow, tree-lined street, were cracked and uneven; a rusted fire escape climbed the faded red bricks of the façade; what paint remained around the windows was peeling away.

  There was certainly nothing charming about the bitter November evening air, nor the three large white men standing in front of the stoop who moved to block the paramedic. “False alarm,” said the man on the left, the words coming out from his bearded lips in puffs of condensation that hung briefly in the chill breeze before dissipating.

  “Sorry, but we got a 911 call about a child in medical distress, and I have to check it out,” the paramedic replied. He tried to step past, but the man in the middle—the tallest of the three and ruggedly handsome with long, wavy gray hair swept back from his tan face—placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder and stopped him.

  “Sorry, brother, but as Brother Frank just told you, your services are not needed here,” the man said, fixing the paramedic with his intense blue eyes. He was smiling wide, his big, white teeth flashing in the dusk, but there was nothing friendly about his demeanor.

  The paramedic scowled and brushed the larger man’s hand off of his shoulder. “I’m not your brother, Mac, so keep your mitts to yourself.”

  “What’s the problem, Raskov?”

  Justin Raskov turned at the sound of his partner’s voice. “Yo, Bails, these jokers won’t let me in the building,” the young man replied to the other paramedic coming up behind him.

  “Well, it ain’t up to them,” Donald “Bails” Bailey Sr. growled as he moved ahead of his partner to glare at the big men confronting them. “We got an emergency call for this address and we legally have to check it out. And you, my friend,” he added, thrusting his jaw at his opponent’s face, “are breaking the law and I’m maybe two seconds from sic-ing New York’s finest on your ass.”

  In his experience, Raskov was used to seeing even the most recalcitrant people move out of the way when stared down by his pugnacious partner, a muscular middle-aged black man who’d been a staff sergeant in the army and still carried himself like one. But the three other men closed ranks, two behind the third, who was obviously the leader and who now raised his hand, palm outward, and thundered, “‘YOU SHALL NOT PASS THROUGH, LEST I COME OUT WITH THE SWORD AGAINST YOU!’”

  At the unexpected outburst, Raskov took a step back but Bailey stood his ground and rolled his eyes. “Frickin’ great,” he sighed. “We got us a Bible thumper. Numbers 20:18, right? Yeah, I know the Good Book, too, and I’ll take that as a threat.” He looked back at the ambulance whose driver had his head out of the window listening to the exchange.

  “Hey, Dougy, call the cops and tell them we got three morons preventing us from responding to a 911 medical emergency, and one of them just said he was going to attack us with a sword.”

  When he finished, Bailey looked back at the three men and tilted his head with a slight smile on his face.

  “Tell you what, asshole. If there’s somebody in that building who needs our help and doesn’t get it on time because of your cute little antics, it’ll be on your head.”

  Disconcertingly, the big man smiled back. “The true believers of this household are under the protection of the Lord.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see how that works when the cops show up,” Raskov said.

  As if on cue, a patrol car swung around the corner and pulled over to the curb behind the ambulance. Two officers got out and hurried up to the knot of men. “What seems to be the problem here?” the older officer asked.

  “Hey, Sergeant Sadler, how ya doin’?” Raskov said to the cop. “We got a 911 call that a child has a medical emergency in Apartment 3C. But these jokers won’t let us check it out.”

  Sadler nodded at the paramedics. “Evening, Justin, Don,” he said before frowning and turning to the three men on the stoop. “One of you want to explain?
” he asked.

  The man who’d shouted the Biblical verse stepped forward. “I am the Reverend C. G. Westlund and God’s emissary at the End of Days Reformation Church of Jesus Christ Resurrected. I speak for the family in Apartment 3C. The call was in error and any intervention by these gentlemen would be against the family’s religious beliefs.”

  “Well . . . Reverend . . . is it true there’s a sick kid in there?” the sergeant asked, his voice indicating that his patience was not going to last long.

  “The child’s infirmities of the body are being healed by the power of prayer,” Westlund answered. “God’s will and compassion are the only medicine the child needs.”

  “Then with all due respect . . . get your ass out of the way, and let the paramedics do their job,” Sadler barked. “That or you, me, and your pals here are all going to take a little ride down to the precinct house where I’ll toss your butts in the pokey for obstructing these fine officers of the FDNY in the performance of their lawful duties.”

  Westlund turned his head slightly to his right, and the man he’d identified earlier as “Brother Frank” suddenly rushed forward with a growl as though to attack the sergeant. But Trent Sadler, a grizzled old veteran who’d been dealing with street thugs and violent criminals for more than twenty-five years, was ready. He stepped neatly to the side, and in one swift motion pulled a Taser stun device from the holster on his belt and applied it to the neck of the would-be assailant.

  Brother Frank yelped and fell to the sidewalk in a twitching heap. Keeping his eyes on the other two, Taser at the ready, the sergeant spoke to his partner.