Escape by Robert K. Tanenbaum Read Free Book Online

put her in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
    Usually the pendulum of her moods swung the other way at the appearance of V. T. Newbury in the office. But he'd stalked in that morning and without so much as an "Is he in?" stormed the inner office, from which the sounds of discord soon emanated. It broke her heart that Newbury and Karp seemed to be at such odds these days, and she continued to hope that they would reconcile. But the shouting matches had been growing more frequent and angry of late. As she had confided to her boyfriend, work at the New York DAO wasn't so pleasant anymore.
     
    A deep, irritated voice followed Newbury out of the office. "Damn it, V. T., come back, we can talk this over. You're overreacting."
    Newbury whirled and faced the open door. His pale complexion turned bright red. "I think we've said all that needs to be said," he replied. "As for my 'overreactions,' they are none of your business."
    Not knowing what else to do, Mrs. Milquetost picked up her telephone and placed a call to the building's janitorial services to complain about "mildew in the air conditioner." She'd actually planned on making the call later, but now seemed a good time with all the tension in the room. She hazarded a glance at the ADAs on the couch, who'd looked up when V. T. stormed out of the inner sanctum but now had their noses buried even further in their reading material. She wished she, too, had a copy of Law Enforcement Magazine to hide behind.
    V. T. Newbury had only recently returned to the DAO after he'd been badly beaten during a robbery. His assailants had broken his nose and fractured a cheek bone—both requiring the services of plastic surgeons to repair—as well as cracking several ribs and giving him a concussion. But from what she gathered listening in on conversations among those who had known him for many years, the most serious injuries weren't physical.
    Despite his refined features and somewhat effete mannerisms, V. T. Newbury was said to be as tough and fearless a prosecutor as anyone in the New York DAO. Specializing in white-collar and organized crimes, he'd taken on the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and reduced them to common felons doing time, and put away a dozen supposedly "untouchable" mob bosses on racketeering and criminal conspiracy charges. He currently headed up the New York DAO bureau of racketeering and public corruption, which for more than a year had been pursuing recently discovered cases against New York City police officers that had been shoved under the rug. None of them had ever been able to intimidate V. T. Newbury—not billionaires, not gangsters, and not crooked cops.
    But not anymore ... not since the beating that put him in the hospital for two weeks. The old fire and zest for the fight seemed extinguished, as was the sense of humor that, while dry as a Silver Bullet martini, was also as integral to his personality as monogrammed handkerchiefs were to his wardrobe. As he walked through the halls of the Criminal Courts building, he looked like a dog that expected to get beat for some unknown infraction.
    The rumor around the office was that he was going to accept an offer from his uncle, Dean Newbury, to join the family's white-shoe law firm in Midtown. He would be taking the place of his father, Vincent Newbury, who'd died suddenly that past fall of a heart attack. Along with a guaranteed, and substantial, rise in income and nicer digs—on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper with a view of Central Park, instead of a tiny office in the Criminal Courts building—he'd gain a ticket out of the primordial swamp of prosecuting New York's criminals. Little wonder the office pool was running four to one that he'd be gone within a month. And no one blamed him.
     
    No one except Butch Karp, apparently. A legendarily straight arrow who saw prosecuting criminals on behalf of the citizens of New York City as a calling nearly on par with the priesthood, the district attorney had