Counterplay

27

“Relax, Goom, you set them up perfectly. Now we come in tomorrow like Mariano Rivera and mow ’em down one, two, three. Game over.”

They’d just returned to the office after court was recessed to discuss the next day’s plans when Guma wondered aloud if he’d handled the Coletta testimony effectively. Karp wasn’t used to having to give Guma pep talks.

“You know and I know that you can present the best case in the world and all it takes is for one juror to not ‘get it,’ and the slime-ball walks,” Guma replied. His shoulders slumped as he sat in the leather chair near the bookshelf.

Karp pulled open one of the side drawers in his desk and reached inside. He removed a silver flask. He unscrewed the top and sniffed. Karp grimaced and took out two glasses and poured several ounces of brown liquid into each. “I believe you left this here some time ago, but I’m assuming that whatever you had in it wasn’t damaged by age,” he said. He walked over to hand his friend the drink.

“Probably improved with age, unlike me,” Guma said, gulping his down and holding out his glass for another. He thought for a moment, then said, “It is sort of funny how desperate they are to slow this down. What’s up with that?”

Karp looked into his glass as if into a crystal ball but came up empty. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t trust ’em any farther than I can toss ’em. So if they want to slow things down, let’s be quick tomorrow.”

Whatever Guma was going to say was interrupted by a panicked squawk on the intercom as Mrs. Milquetost tried to warn him about the men coming through the door. But before the words were out of her mouth, in walked Jaxon and Fulton, who was still using the braces, though his legs appeared to be gaining strength.

“Well, it looks like the cavalry has arrived,” Guma said.

“Yeah, but to save you or me?” Karp replied, though he already knew the answer from the look on Fulton’s face. “Gentlemen, you have the floor, as they say.”

“Just making sure your ass lives to fight another day,” Fulton said to Karp.

“A few days ago, we suddenly picked up an increase in some of the email ‘chatter’ and telephone calls with certain al Qaeda sympathizers we keep track of in this country,” Jaxon explained. “Not a lot of details, just something big and soon.”

“I thought we assumed that would be Putin,” Karp said.

“Yeah, and he’s still high on the list,” Jaxon said. “But then I got a call from your wife.”

“Marlene?” Karp asked.

“Well, unless you’ve taken up polygamy, that would be the one. Anyway, yes, Marlene called and asked me to come over to your loft-”

“I knew I couldn’t trust her,” Karp joked, but he didn’t like the way this was going.

“Boss,” Fulton said and put a finger to his lips, “shhhhhh…this is important stuff.”

Jaxon continued, “Yeah, well, if she’d have me, I might give into the temptations of the flesh…don’t tell my wife I said that. But like Clay said, this is important. I buzzed on over to your loft and this is what she had waiting for me.” He held up a plastic bag with two objects inside.

Karp felt the chill in his spine that he thought might have disappeared for good back in July. “The white king and white queen. Kane?”

Jaxon shrugged. “Yeah, might be,” he said. “I’ve never been real happy with the ‘evidence’ that he was dead. However, it could also be someone still trying to warn you that even if Kane is dead, his plans are still in motion.”

“So who are the white king and queen?” Guma asked. “Butch and Marlene?”

“Well, so far the chess pieces have been sent before an attempt on the life of someone involved in Kane’s downfall,” Jaxon said. “So that’s probably our best bet. Maybe as a distraction from the big plan to hit Putin.”

“Oh, so whacking me is the ‘little’ plan?” Karp said lighter than he felt.

“Don’t be offended,” Fulton said. “Whacked is whacked.”

“So when do we anticipate the whacking?” Guma said.

Jaxon shrugged. “We’re really not sure. These little warnings have always come without much time to react. So soon, I’d guess, maybe tomorrow, or maybe Saturday, when all the attention is focused on the Pope. Anyway, we’d like you, Marlene, and the kids to take a little trip to the countryside with us. We have a safe house until this is-what?”

Karp was shaking his head. “Sorry. Not going. I have a trial to finish tomorrow. And Marlene and I are supposed to sit in the VIP section at St. Patrick’s on Saturday, and she’s looking forward to it.”

Fulton swore. “Dammit, Butch, the trial can be postponed a few days. And if you go to the cathedral, maybe that’s where they’re planning the hit, which means you could be endangering a lot of innocent people even if you’re willing to chance getting your own ass shot off. Now, you put me in charge of your security detail, so I insist you listen to me.”

Karp clapped his hand on the big man’s shoulder. They’d been together a long time, and he knew that Fulton was doing his job. But he still shook his head as he said, “Not going to do it, Clay. How would it look if halfway through a murder trial and during the Pope’s visit, the chief law enforcement officer for the County of New York cut and ran because some wacko or terrorist or combination of the two threatened him. Everybody in this city has known since 9/11, if not before, that Manhattan is one big bull’s-eye and that we’re all at risk. I’m not going to hide.”

They all argued for a half hour before reaching a compromise. Karp would finish the trial, but he wouldn’t go to St. Patrick’s because of the risk to others if he was targeted. But neither would he be leaving the city for a safe house; he’d remain in the loft or at his office until the threat passed.

Fulton wasn’t happy, but he accepted the deal. “Except going to and from the courthouse-at which times I will have my men sitting in your hip pockets-you and the rest of the family are under house arrest, and I don’t want to hear anything more about it.”