Enemy Within

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Weeks passed in this way for the divided family, and Karp waited, something he was good at. Like all first-class athletes, he understood that sometimes, for mysterious reasons, you suddenly couldn’t sink the shot, hit the ball, find the inside corner of the plate. Some people railed and went a little crazy when this happened and sought doctors and witch doctors and changed how they did what they did, and beat up on their loved ones, but not Karp. It was Karp’s instinct to stay the same, to be the unmoving center around which the bad luck or juju or mishegoss fluttered or screeched, in confidence that if he did that, it would all come back to the way it had been before. Or not. He could live with that, too. Meanwhile, he was not idle. He had a number of lines in the water, and from time to time he would give them a twitch or two.

  One morning he summoned his favorite twitchee. “Murrow,” he asked, “what are you doing with yourself these days?”

  “Oh, mainly coram nobis petitions. Things seem kind of dead on Marshak.”

  “They do seem that way. Handling petitions is good training, though.”

  “Yeah, but what I don’t understand is how come we convicted all these guys who didn’t do it. Something’s not right.”

  “Or else some of the convicted prisoners who’re petitioning are not telling the truth. They’re just trying to get out of prison.”

  “Really? Gosh, I never thought of that. My boyish heart is shattered. What’s going on with the big cases?”

  “Oh, not much. Jack’s going to run out of time before he has to decide on the death penalty on Benson, which means he’ll have to decide sometime next week.”

  “He’s going to go for it?”

  “Assuredly.”

  “And you’re going to prosecute it?”

  “Mine not to reason why. I’ve given him enough stuff that he can pretend to discover after he wins the June primary so that he really doesn’t have to make a jackass of the office by trying to actually hang Benson. Of course, if McBright wins, he’s probably going to go ahead with it anyway, just to show he’s an equal-opportunity oppressor of the innocent.”

  “I’ve been following his campaign with interest. I notice he doesn’t include Benson in the justice-is-color-blind speech anymore. He heats up Marshak and Lomax, though, in compensation. As to Marshak, do you know a Detective Paradisio?”

  “The bum-slasher task-force guy?”

  “That guy. I’d like you to go down and see him, and tell him . . . get out your little book, Murrow, this is a little complicated.”

  Later that day Karp could, therefore, in good conscience explain to a judge that he should not summarily dismiss the case against Sybil Marshak, as her counsel had moved, because the crime in question appeared to be part of a larger criminal conspiracy subject to a continuing investigation, which was expected to throw a clearer light on the claims of self-defense. Shelly Solotoff was livid. Surely, this was something for a grand jury to decide. Why had the DA’s office declined to bring this case before its grand jury? Ms. Marshak was a public figure; it was inconceivable that she would be involved in anything criminal. She was enduring enormous pain and suffering by having this felony charge hanging over her head. Dark conspiracies were hinted; the phrase star-chamber was used more than once. Judge Frederick North Davis, a portly and phlegmatic gentleman the color of wet coffee grounds, was not overly impressed by these arguments. He pointed out that Ms. Marshak had, in fact, killed a young man with a firearm, and that her pain and suffering might well be assuaged by the fact that she was still living on Central Park West rather than Rikers Island, where almost all of the many other people who had killed young black persons with firearms were presently languishing. In the interests of evenhandedness, the judge also looked sharply at the people’s rep and asked when this investigation might be expected to conclude.

  Karp reached deep into the back of his trousers and pulled out a date. “No more than two weeks, Your Honor.”

  Solotoff followed Karp out of the courtroom and accosted him in the hallway.

  “Up to your old tricks, huh, Butch?”

  “What old tricks are those, Shelly?”

  “Spreading confusion, looking for an angle. You know as well as I do that there’s no ongoing investigation here. You just can’t stand the thought that a grand jury might refuse to indict in a clear case of self-defense. This one is a lot more blatant than Bernie Goetz. The guy came at her with a knife. End of story.”

  “Did he? We’ll see.”

  Solotoff laughed pityingly. “I hate a sore loser. Actually, I hope you do indict. I’m looking forward to creaming you in court.”

  “Me, too,” said Karp amiably.

  “Also, telling fibs to a judge . . .” Solotoff waggled an admonitory finger. “You could get into trouble, assuming I wanted to press the issue.”

  “It’s not a fib. There is an investigation.”

  “Oh, horseshit! There is absolutely nothing going on in Marshak and you damn well know it.”

  This was said in so forceful a manner that passersby looked over, and Karp seemed to notice Solotoff in a different, far more interested way. He turned the famous gaze up a notch. “No, I don’t, but I was kind of wondering how come you’re so positive. Got a pal in the DA, hmm?”

  Solotoff realized what he had done and tried to cover it by saying, “Come on, Butch, you know you’re my only pal in the DA,” followed by a hearty, patently false laugh. Karp did not join him, continuing only to stare, as at a cockroach of unusual size. In the blank seconds thus occupied, Solotoff found that instead of thinking what to say now, to recoup his advantage, his mind was playing over the images of that horrible night: creeping down the back stairs, calling a limo, sneaking out the service entrance of the hotel, stinking, in rags, shoeless, creeping into his apartment where, by miserable chance, his wife was up and entertaining some of her old school friends. He’d said he’d been mugged, an absurd story, which was accepted, if not believed. And the bitch must have told him all about it (she had not, in fact), and he was gloating over it right now. He thought briefly of just bringing it up (Speaking of pals, your wife’s a friendly girl; I was squeezing her tits the other night . . .), but no, especially as he hadn’t scored, better forget the whole thing. The key was to distract Karp from this particular line of questioning, but as it turned out he did not need to, for Karp glanced at his watch and distracted himself.

  “Yeah, well, I’d love to stay and chat, Shelly, but I have an appointment. A former pal of yours in the DA. You remember Ray Guma, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah. Good old Ray. Send my regards,” Solotoff said, still smiling, but with a fading voice. Karp shook his hand and strode off. If Solotoff had hold of his client’s pistol, he would have shot Karp right there in the courthouse hallway.

  For his part, Karp wasted little time thinking about Solotoff as he took the elevator down to street level. The weather had changed within the last few days, and it was warm enough now to venture out without a coat. A presage of spring, and Karp took it as a sign. Maybe the ice would break up now, maybe Guma had something to go with. He walked up Baxter to the China Palace, as unimperial a place as could be imagined despite its name, a red-daubed, dark, and dingy joint smelling of oriental greases, with a dying snake plant in the front window. It was favored by bail bondsmen and an older generation of courthouse workers for its dimness, its quiet, and its cheap food; more important, like most Chinese joints over a certain size, it had a full bar.

  Guma was sitting in the back at a table he had frequented for over twenty years. He was wearing a powder blue knit shirt and a check jacket, which made him look more like a minor Mob guy than he usually did. He had a Scotch started, and Karp ordered an iced tea to keep him company.

  “You know,” Guma said, “I’m gonna do this, I should get a PI ticket. Then I could charge expenses. I must’ve blown a hundred bucks on cabs alone. Not to mention the drinks I had to buy.”

  “I’ll take care of it. You find out anything?”

 
“A little. I’ll give you the bad news first. You ever know Bud Cropsey?”

  “Rings a bell. He was a snake, wasn’t he? One of the guys Mollen used.”

  “You got it. Bud started out as a field associate, then he got blown on that case up in the Two-six where the cops were running a bunch of whores, ’89 or so, and then he went inside and went right up the line, retired captain, head of Confidential Investigation Unit One. His specialty was OC connections to the cops, so I saw a lot of him. Anyway, like I say, he’s retired now, got a place out in Great Neck. I got him to make some calls for me. Not a whisper. Zilch.”

  “Cooley’s clean? He can’t be!” said Karp with a sinking feeling.

  “What can I say? That’s what the man told me. And he’s got no reason to lie. The man’s a snake for thirty years, he’s got no friends in the department. I tried to tell you that before. The Cooleys are their own breed—they don’t take shit and they don’t take money.”

  “Okay, okay, I believe you provisionally. Crap! Was there any good news?”

  “Yeah, that shooting, Lomax. There was a smell on that, and it got up pretty high in the department. One PP got involved. Chief Battle, our old pal, handled it personally.”

  “He got to Catafalco.”

  “Yeah. The funny thing is, it was a straight-up report. Steve Amalfi did the homicide. He noted the funny stuff. The skid marks and the traces on the guard rails were wrong for the story Cooley was telling, and so were the bullet wounds, which you picked up when you read the abridged report.”

  “Abridged?”

  “Must’ve been, unless you left something out when you told me about it. I went to see Amalfi, too. He wouldn’t talk to me, but he said the report speaks for itself, and it does, if you get the whole thing. It’s adding up the little bits that knocks Cooley’s story all to shit. On the surface it’s just barely plausible. A DA who wanted to find something would’ve said, whoa! Hell, a DA who was above room temperature would’ve seen it.”

  Karp was not really interested in why Catafalco had not seen it, more likely, seen it very well but had declined to act. Karp understood that part of it perfectly. What he still did not understand was Cooley. He asked, “Why did he do it then? Amalfi have any ideas? Or Cropsey?”

  Guma shook his head and drained his Scotch. “Not a clue. Cropsey thought it might be something personal. The Cooleys got hot tempers, and they hold grudges. Speaking of which”—here Guma checked his watch—“we should get going if we want to beat the rush to Jersey.”

  “We’re going to Jersey?”

  “Yeah. Oh, right, I didn’t tell you. Connie Cooley said she’d meet with us. She’s over in Harrington, her house. It’s forty-five minutes if we miss the traffic.”

  “Guma, how’re we supposed to get to Jersey? The bus?”

  “What, they don’t give you a driver anymore?”

  “Yeah, I have a driver, but this whole thing is off the books. And the driver is a DA squad cop, and the DA squad works for Norton Fuller.”

  Guma shrugged. “We could rent a car.”

  “We could, but . . . wait here a minute.”

  Karp got up and found a pay phone in the hallway near the men’s room. A crazy notion, but something about it seemed right, a way to break some of the Lilliputian threads that were tying his life to the ground. He called her private number and after some preliminary chat, he blurted out, “Marlene, I need to borrow your limo. Me and Guma have to go to Jersey.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s wrong with your driver?”

  “We’re visiting a brothel, Marlene. Look, I’ll explain later. Just make the call, okay? And, Marlene? Order something kind of discreet.”

  The limo, when it pulled up in front of the restaurant twenty minutes later, was a superstretch Caddie large enough for all the Spice Girls, white with smoked windows.

  “I always wanted to ride in one of these,” said Guma, sinking back contentedly into the pillowlike upholstery. “I especially like the way little honeys stare in the windows. Look at this trifecta coming up here. You could fit all three of their butts in a grocery bag, like casabas.” He grinned horribly, waved. “Yes, girls, it is Brad Pitt, but it’s my day off.” To Karp he remarked, “We should make quite a splash out in Harrington.”

  “A lot of cops live in Harrington, I hear.”

  “Yeah, there’s quite a population. Connie hasn’t been too happy there since the divorce, but he won’t let her sell the house. A funny guy, Brendan.”

  “How so?”

  “He has his little ways, she tells me. But I’ll let you hear it from her.” Guma leaned forward and switched on the television, flicked through channels, and got the third inning of the Mets game. He poked around in the built-in bar and found that someone had filled the tiny refrigerator with Bud. He cracked one, offered one to Karp, who declined, took a long swallow, and sat back with a gratified sigh. “This is the life. You could get used to this.”

  “Yeah, you could, but then it wouldn’t be the same. It’s great because we’re not used to it. If we rode around in one of these things every day, it’d get old fast, and then we’d feel like shit in a regular cab, forget about a bus or a subway.”

  “Yeah, well, you can say that because you’re rich. Look at that fucking guy! He should’ve had that ball. You notice nobody can field nowadays?”

  Karp was about to say that he wasn’t rich, his wife was rich, and only paper-rich at that, but he let it go and watched the game companionably with Guma as the gorgeous vehicle took them north to the Washington Bridge, over the river, north again on the Palisades Parkway, and then through smaller roads lined with suburban trees coming into leaf, past a school, a shopping center, then through still narrower roads, until they came to the house.

  Karp got out and stared at it. It was remarkably like the house he had grown up in, a good-sized split-level, clapboard painted pale cocoa, set on a little hill with a sloping lawn bordered with low shrubs. A blue Voyager sat in the driveway. Above it hung a basketball hoop. Two bikes leaned against the garage door. The woman who answered their ring was petite and dark, with remarkable, large black eyes, and glossy black hair cut in a jaw-length shingle. She looked about thirty, but seemed younger because of her slightness, and at the same time older because of the circles under her eyes and the deep lines under each one, tear trails, Karp thought. The woman was a crier. She looked as if she had recently been crying. She wore a tan tracksuit with blue stripes up the seams and Adidas. She smiled at Guma and kissed him on the cheek and showed Karp a graver face as she shook his hand.

  The living room was spotless, almost unnaturally clean for a house with at least two kids in it. A beige wall-to-wall was on the floor, and the furniture was medium-quality department store, bought out of model rooms, on credit, or with the envelopes the bride got at the wedding: modest and respectable. Karp thought the room looked unused, like an old-fashioned parlor; the family must do its living not in this living room, but in a basement or the kitchen, where the TV was. He took in also the expected picture over the mantel, the colored photographic portrait of the whole family in a gilt frame: Cooley looking proud and satisfied in his dress blues with the green bar of the medal showing over the head of a towheaded boy of about five. A younger Mrs. Cooley with a smoother, less stress-worn face held a baby girl. The current version pointed them to a tweed sofa and offered coffee, which they declined, then beer, also declined, and she sat in an armchair opposite.

  “Thanks for seeing us, Con,” said Guma. Karp nodded agreement and wondered why she was seeing them. The continued presence of the portrait argued against postdivorce hatred.

  “I’m doing it for Brendan,” she said.

  Guma said to Karp, “Butch, I told her about your interest in the Lomax shooting, about how some things about it didn’t add up.”

  “Yes, we really appreciate it,” said Karp. “It must be difficult . . .” His eyes went to the portrait.

  She saw that and said, “I don’t want him hurt. He needs to
stop what he’s doing, where he’s going, but I don’t want him hurt. Just so you know, I will never testify against him in court. They can’t make me, can they, Ray?”

  “Not if you’re his wife, Con. But technically you’re not anymore.”

  “I’m still his wife. I’ll always be his wife. The decree isn’t final. I keep losing the papers.”

  After a moment, Karp asked as gently as he could, “Connie, do you actually know anything about the circumstances under which your husband shot Mr. Lomax?”

  “You mean specifically that? No. I don’t know anything about my husband’s life on the job. That was part of the problem.” She flapped her hands helplessly. “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Begin with the Cooleys,” Guma suggested.

  “Oh, right, the Cooleys! I could talk about the Cooleys all day, maybe not as much as they could, but pretty good. You have to learn if you want to be in that family. Not that I ever could really be in that family because my dad works for Con Ed, not on the job, so I couldn’t really ever understand. According to Rose. That’s my mother-in-law.” Connie shook her head like a dog shaking off a flea. “No. I’m starting wrong. I don’t want this to be just complaining, like on a TV show. Okay, first of all, when I met Brendan, he wasn’t like he is now. We dated in high school. We were high school sweethearts. I never thought he’d join the cops. Brian was in the cops, and Brendan figured that was enough Cooleys. He got a job at Newark, with Continental, he thought he might go into flying, that or air traffic control. Anyway, not the cops. And they let him, I mean Ray did, but I could tell Ray was disappointed Brendan was outside the club. I mean all their friends, everyone they know is in the job. We’d get together at their house, when Brian was alive, and I could see how they closed Brendan out. Nothing obvious, but I could see it, and it hurt him. He loves his family. He loved his brother, worshiped him practically. Not that they ever talked about that. The Cooleys don’t talk, not like me. So I guess this was building up under the surface, for years, Brendan thinking that his family thought he was, I don’t know, a wimp for not being a cop. Anyway, we lived with it, we even joked about it sometimes, about the job, cop jokes. We were happy, I thought. Brendan passed the air traffic controller’s test, he was going to start training. He was all pumped about it, and then Brian got himself killed.”