Enemy within kac-13

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

"What kung fu movie?" asked Karp.

  "Funny you should ask, because Oscar doesn't recall. 'All those movies be the same, man.' No knife on Oscar either, or any physical evidence, but my sense, after talking to Thornberry, the detective who closed, is that the cops didn't look all that hard after they had Benson. Benson looked good to go. The stones, Deng's eyewitness, and Alicia's story-three strikes and he's out."

  "We got Deng to look at Oscar?"

  "In a six-pack photo, against Benson and four dummies. He picked Benson."

  "Wait a second- after he had already ID'd Benson live?"

  "How did you guess?" said Collins. "Naturally, he focused on the guy he'd already identified. So, basically, if we look at it from the defense's point of view, which you're always lecturing us we should do, the case sits on the possession of part of the loot, a totally fucked ID process, and the testimony of a teenaged accessory after the fact who's screwing the guy who probably did it."

  "How does Benson explain the loot?"

  "Oh, you'll love this. He says he did it as a favor to Alicia. She told him she found them in a trash can, and she didn't think they were worth much, but could he maybe find out for her. Jorell is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier."

  "Can we refocus on Oscar?"

  "Maybe over Pat Thornberry's dead body. I'm telling you, the cops are not going to be helpful on this without a big circle jerk involving the eighth floor here and the twelfth floor over at One PP. Also, assuming we have the cops lined up, what do we have on him? No physical evidence, his homies are standing up right now, Alicia is solid for the time being."

  "The time being…" mused Karp.

  Collins nodded. "Yeah, my thoughts exactly. If he's really the guy on this, then Oscar needs to keep Alicia and his pals real happy indefinitely, and Oscar did not strike me as a fellow with the kind of self-control and long-term view that would make that work."

  "You're probably right. Sooner or later one of these people is going to want a favor from us, and if someone asks the right questions, the whole thing will come unglued."

  "So what do we do?"

  "Interesting question, especially now. I think I'll ask the district attorney. He likes to keep decisions like this in his own hands. Meanwhile, good work. I'll probably be working for you if McBright gets in there."

  "A racist remark, I believe," said Collins.

  "See? My horrible reputation is well deserved."

  Collins laughed and made his exit.

  Karp got a chance to present these findings to the DA earlier than he had anticipated, for shortly after Collins left he got a peremptory call from Keegan, personally, telling him to get in there right away. He walked up the two flights.

  Keegan was there with Fuller, which stifled the tiny hope that Karp always kept alive that Jack would return to his real, or noncandidate, persona and that they could then discuss the legal affairs of the office like menches, as they used to. Karp nodded to both of them and sat down.

  "What's this I hear about you sending someone to screw up the Benson case?" demanded Keegan without preamble.

  "I wouldn't say screwing up. I would say familiarizing myself with a top-priority case that I'm going to have to prosecute one of these days. And it's a good thing I did, Jack, because there's a lot more to Benson than meets the eye."

  "The only thing I want to know is, can you convict?"

  "Oh, I think so. I think we could probably blow away the usual inexperienced, overworked court-assigned defense attorney we'd probably get on the case. We do it all the time, as you know. Whether we can blow away the capital-defense-unit lawyers, who are in a completely different class, is another story."

  "What do you mean?" asked Keegan, frowning.

  "Well, if we were in Texas, they'd be loading the needle right now. Benson's a dumb-ass fall guy of the appropriate race, mentality, and background, like they kill in those states every other week. They give the D to a fat-ass crony who sleeps during the trial, and the kid goes down for it. But we are not in Texas, which you can tell because of the tall buildings and the lack of cowshit on the streets." And he proceeded to tell Keegan what Collins had learned and what Karp made of it.

  "My prediction," he concluded, "is that if you go for capital murder in this case, you will lose. Those capital-case people are good. They will tear up little Alicia on the stand. Her connection to Oscar and his merry crew will emerge. Benson's mother and his sister will look like solid gold next to little Alicia. He will walk, and you will look like a fool for bringing a case that weak."

  Fuller said, "It's not a weak case. We have the diamonds."

  Karp rounded on him. "Norton, we're talking legal strategy here, and with all due respect, you don't know dick about legal strategy, but if we need advice on how many paper clips we're going to need or how it will play in the polls, I'm sure you'll have something valuable to contribute." Norton went pale. Karp turned his attention back to Keegan. "Jack, that's my honest opinion. What we have on Benson won't bear the weight of a capital case, not in the state of New York. And we can't start on Simms because we got no entree into it while these people are sticking to their stories. Sorry, but there it is."

  The DA calculated silently, his face pursing and knotting in the segments appropriate to devious thought. His head started to move from side to side with increasing vigor until it became a full negative shake. "Uh-uh, we have to stick with it. And we should announce that we're going to seek it as soon as possible. Will this guy plead out to life without the possibility, do you think?"

  "If you threaten the death penalty? I doubt it. He says he didn't do it. He's been saying he didn't do it since the cops grabbed him up, and he's been consistent throughout, and the cops were not gentle with him, as I understand it. And when the hotshots on the capital-defense team get to him and take a hard look at our case, I very much doubt that they will advise him to seek a plea of any kind. Because they can win."

  "But not until after November," said Fuller. "Am I allowed to say that, Butch?"

  Karp ignored the gibe. Keegan nodded, said, "Okay. We go with death for now. I'll announce it tomorrow."

  "Well, I won't even mention that it's wrong since that seems to cut no ice around here anymore, but we got a situation where one of these phony stories could break down anytime. I mean before the election. What do you do then? Then you're the guy who wanted to put an innocent man to death on a weak case for political reasons."

  "Oh, you're the political adviser, too, now?" asked Fuller nastily. "Something you know dick about, if I may say so."

  Keegan waved a hand as if dispersing a stench. "I'll take that chance. Now, what about Marshak, speaking of weak cases? Or no case, as I understand it."

  "We're still looking at it."

  "What's to look at?" said Keegan. "It looks like simple self-defense. An urban tragedy. Let's move on this, get the grand jury to clear her, and get this out of my craw."

  Karp made some noises that could be interpreted as agreement, or maybe not, at which Keegan threw him a sharp look but did not press the point. An urban tragedy, the words Vasquez had used. Karp did not believe much in that kind of coincidence. He recalled how Fuller had used Catafalco's language in the Cooley case, which had confirmed that Catafalco was leaking to Fuller, and now the DA was using Vasquez's phrase. Vasquez was off the reservation, too.

  The meeting broke up. Karp drifted back to his office, feeling as alone and isolated as he had ever felt in his life. Clearly the resources of the office were compromised, at least for his purposes. It was therefore time to move into phase two of the plan. He was sitting at his desk, tapping his teeth with a pencil, and thinking about how to accomplish this when the phone rang: Flynn reminding him that he had an appointment in half an hour uptown at Sacred Heart. Karp resisted snarling back that he remembered, for he had not. A good, even a devoted, father, Karp had little experience with kids in trouble, and it irked him, and he took full responsibility. He himself had been a perfect forties and fifties kid,
doing homework, obeying teachers and coaches, never causing his parents a moment's worry. Or so he imagined.

  The appointment was with the headmistress, Catharine Royal, RSCJ, an actual nun, to discuss his daughter's future at the school. Marlene was to be there, too, and this prospect worried him more than having to discuss his daughter with a nun, which was getting up there on the worry-intensity scale. On the ride up to Ninety-first and Fifth, he calmed his mind by refusing to think about the problem at all, thinking about lists of things he had to do to ravel the few golden threads of truth from the great knot of political lies that Keegan and Fuller had made of the DA's office. That was still worth doing, he thought. And also, if he didn't think of that, if he considered what was happening to his family, he would not be able to function at all.

  Lucy was waiting in the hallway outside the headmistress's office. It was class-changing time, and the hallway was full of lively girls in pretty clothes, in dance costumes, in athletic gear. On none of the fresh young faces was the look of bleak despair he saw on Lucy's.

  "What's up, kiddo?"

  A shrug. "Midterms are back."

  "The bad news first."

  "It's all bad news. I flunked everything."

  "Everything? French? Not French? English?"

  "Everything. I cut classes. I didn't hand in stuff." She looked down the hall. "Mom isn't coming?" She sounded hopeful.

  "Yeah, she's coming from home." He checked his watch. "Let's go get this done."

  Sister Catharine Royal was a heavy woman with a shiny face fringed by short gray hair. Behind large, gogglelike spectacles her blue eyes were concerned, but kind. They sat, and the headmistress went over Lucy's record. Sacred Heart, she said, was not for everyone. It was a rigorous academic environment, and although it also stressed community service, in which Lucy was, of course, exemplary, a certain standard of performance was required, which standards Lucy had not even begun to meet this term. There were alternatives; the school did not give up easily. Stress affected different people differently, and sometimes the most talented students were just the ones who failed to cope. Karp listened and nodded. That was what he felt, too. They were not considering expulsion, yet. But maybe some time off, a chance for tutoring…

  Then the door opened and Marlene came in. Stumbled in. You could smell her from the doorway. She was wearing a long, fleece-lined leather coat over a translucent shirt studded with crystals, misbuttoned, and with one tail hanging out of her skirt. She staggered to a chair and plopped her alligator bag on the headmistress's desk.

  There was a brief, shocked silence. Sister Royal put on a forbearing look, uttered a brief welcome, and started to repeat a version of what she had just told Karp. She had hardly begun, however, when Marlene interrupted. "Look, Sister, let's get down to business. 'Cause let's face it, this is a business you're running here, am I right? A business. You're in business, I'm in business, so let's talk business. I went to school here myself, right? I was a scholarship girl, in the little uniform, you had nuns here then, not like now, 'Yes, Sister,' 'No, Sister,' all that stuff, and chapel. So what I want to say is we want the kid here in school. I mean what else is she going to do all day? Hang out with the bums? I mean I hung out with bums, too, but they were a different kind of bums, because she's not what you could call socially developed, and that's important-social development. Of course, she doesn't shoot people, not that I learned that here, don't get me wrong. She comes from a good home. A good home. I'm her mother, um, so I know. I mean, you're not a mother, let's face it. What we really want… let's talk a figure. I got plenty. I mean, what do they say, money talks, bullshit walks." And here Marlene let out a hideous cackle and swayed in her chair.

  The headmistress shot a glance at Karp and said, "Mrs. Karp, perhaps it would be better if we met at a later time…"

  "Please, Sister," said Marlene, "it's Mizzzz Ciampi. Not Mrs. Karp. Mrs. Karp is deceased. Mrs. Karp was a wonderful woman, far, far more wonderful than me. Or I. Is that right? She produced my husband, who is a perfect person, as you can see, but my daughter is unfortunately not as perfect, which is why we are doing whatever we are doing. So what are we talking here? You need a new gym? Whatever…" Marlene popped open her bag, spilling stuff all over the desk-keys, cards, crumbled wads of high-denomination currency, and a flat pint of Hennessy. It clunked loudly and spun on the polished wood, the focus of all eyes. Marlene grabbed her checkbook and waved it, the pages flapping in Sister Catharine's face like a slaughtered chicken.

  At that point, Lucy sprang to her feet, uttered a phrase in a language no one in the room understood but whose tone was unmistakable, and dashed from the room. Karp shot up, stuck Marlene's purse under one arm, hauled his wife from her chair and stuck her solidly against his opposite hip, and said, "I'm sorry. I'll be in touch," to the headmistress and frog-marched Marlene out of the office and out of the building, she protesting loudly and drunkenly all the way.

  On the street, he had a little break because Marlene had to lean against a tree on Ninety-first and be sick, noisily and at some length. Karp dashed out to the avenue and tried to spot his daughter, but she was gone. The dead low points of his life came floating by his inner eye, as they will at such times: the moment he had realized that he was too crippled to play big-time ball; the night his first wife had ditched him; the time his second and present wife had been kidnapped; the time that same wife had been kidnapped again, with his daughter; and now. This one was right up there, a competitor in a tough league.

  13

  A metroliner was leaving for New England twenty-two minutes after Lucy arrived at Penn Station, and she took it, paying cash on board for her ticket. The train was crowded, filled with suits tapping laptops and exurban matrons with shopping bags reading paperback novels about shopping. Lucy found a window seat and rested her head against the cool, dusty glass as the train pulled out of the station. Another train was waiting stationary across the platform, and she experienced the common illusion: for an instant she could not tell which train was moving, and this made her think of the science class she had just flunked, and of where she was fleeing-to her best friend, Mary Ma, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Mary was as prodigious in math and physics as Lucy was in languages and had left for MIT in what would have been her junior year in high school. Mary had once used the analogy of the moving trains to explain the theory of relativity to her idiot friend, and thinking of this, Lucy felt tears start in her eyes. Which she suppressed. The train moved into the tunnel, gathering speed. Now she only saw her reflection, ghostly, transparent, and closed her eyes.

  In her head, racing thoughts. Lucy knew enough about spiritual practice to understand that she should exercise some control over these because they were agents that helped to convert mere sadness into paralyzing depression and neurosis, but she found herself too tired to make the effort. It was the sort of emptying exhaustion and dryness that allows intelligent people the world over to sit passively in front of televisions watching moronic pap. So Lucy watched the movie in her mind. She would go to Cambridge and start a new life and live in a house with Mary Ma and never have to go to school again. She would make her own money, which would not be difficult for her. She knew people at Harvard, for whom she could be a lab rat; alternatively, she could walk into any international firm or agency and get a job as a simultaneous translator. No problems there. Mary would be delighted to see her. It was just what any hardworking math superstar needed, a neurotic idiotsavant, religious-nut roommate. Mary would, of course, have made her own friends, geeks who spoke in equations, not Cantonese, and how would Lucy fit in there, she who often stumbled on what was seven times eight? Of course, Mary loved her, but just because you loved someone, you didn't necessarily want to have them in your lap. David, same thing, he didn't want her in his lap either, not that he loved her, far from it. Tolerated maybe. She had such a good heart, though, Mary, and Lucy had really done so much for her in the past, wetback that she was. It really wasn't t
oo much to ask, just a place to hang out while she got her life together. But what if she was cold, frightened, rejecting? Mary had that Chinese thing about family.

  Lucy opened her eyes. Still darkness, and her ghostly face. The tunnel went on for a long time. She looked around the train, at her fellow passengers. Next to her sat a suburban matron with nicely done blond hair and careful makeup. She was wearing a tan raincoat and a tweed skirt and reading Cosmo. The rack above her was stuffed with shopping bags. She played with her pearls as she read about (Lucy peeked) famous people's descriptions of their best orgasms. Lucy wondered briefly if this woman had any children and what their lives were like, and wondered also if a monster was living inside her, as there was in Lucy's own mother. As there was in most people, she imagined.

  She shifted in her seat. The car seemed warmer, more odorous: electricity, oil, damp wool, the perfume of the suburban matron, a heavy tropical scent, like frangipani or mimosa. The light, too, seemed dimmer, more orangy now. Lucy looked at her watch, her cheap watch. It seemed to have stopped. Or maybe time had. Her head throbbed. Her chest felt constricted. Hell must be like this, she thought, a train in an endless tunnel, its cars full of the damned working on laptops and reading magazines about orgasms of other people. She would never get off this train not in her head, not in Boston either. Mary would look at her as at a stranger, a feeble smile, embarrassed introductions to people who did not screw up, who had normal parents, who were normal geniuses, who were not stupid freaks. Stupid freaks. Stupid freak.

  Stupidfreakstupidfreakstupidstupidfreakfreakfreakyfreak, the train said. I don't care, an interior voice said over the sound of the rails, I don't care, fuck them, I'll show them, they'll be sorry they treated me like that, I don't need them, I can do it by myself, fuck them all… and the rest of the usual horseshit of adolescent neuroticism, too tedious almost to mention. Here Lucy was fortunate, in that she had been exposed to at least the beginnings of spiritual training, and as the demonic voices built up to a consuming racket, she began, almost instinctively, to pray, and as instinctively chose the simplest prayer in the book, nothing fancy, asking for nothing but mercy, a one-liner. And not silently either, so that the woman next to her said, "Excuse me?"