Escape by Robert K. Tanenbaum Read Free Book Online Page B

returned with a guilty verdict.
    Karp, however, was the courtroom brawler. A tactician in the sense of military warfare, he wasted little time cutting to the chase, tearing the heart out of defense strategies while ripping the truth out of hostile witnesses and defendants who dared to lie on the stand. He was a true believer—a champion of the U.S. Constitution, which to him was as sacrosanct as any Torah, Bible, or Qur'an, and a modem, laser-focused, metro-savvy Don Quixote committed to the ultimate victory of right over wrong, good over evil.... Which earned him a great deal of teasing from Guma, who occasionally referred to him as Miss Goody Two-Shoes.
    Despite their differences, however, Newbury, Guma, and Karp shared a common dedication to the cause of justice. Early on they'd come to respect each other's strengths and joke about their foibles. They always knew where they could find someone to lean on when the frustrations and burden of trying cases in the busiest district attorney's office in the country weighed heavily.
    Although he would himself have been a plum recruit for any private law firm in the city, Karp also admired Newbury's dedication to a career of public service when he could have easily given in to his father's yearly invitation to join the family firm. But all of that had changed when Newbury, responding to an anonymous tip regarding the NYPD investigations, went to meet the source only to be accosted by two young black men who'd beat the living hell out of him.
    A few days after the assault, Karp had arrived outside his friend's hospital room when he overheard V. T.'s uncle, Dean Newbury, head of the family firm, urging him to give up the DAO for private practice. A subsequent exchange between Karp and the older man had grown heated and then ended when V. T. had sided with his uncle and said that he was thinking about accepting the offer.
    Karp had backed off. One of his oldest friends was lying in a hospital bed, and he had a right to consider what was best for him. "What he needs is space," he'd confided to Mrs. Milquetost in a rare moment of openness. "But this is where he belongs, he'll be back."
    But when V. T. got out of the hospital and returned to work at the DAO, word soon spread that he was going to quit. Karp even brought it up at one of the Monday morning staff meetings, telling those assembled not to worry about the rumor, because V. T. would never be "happy kissing fat-cat asses and whoring himself to oil companies." He'd meant it as a joke, but Newbury reacted by gathering his papers and walking out without a word, leaving the room filled with an embarrassed silence and averted eyes.
    The discord between Karp and Newbury had quickly become common knowledge among the several hundred assistant district attorneys and bureau chiefs, as well as several hundred more support staffers. Even some of the regular street people who hung around the Criminal Courts building knew that closed-door meetings between him and V. T. were growing increasingly rancorous.
    And now there was even more fuel for the gossip-mongers, Karp thought as he glanced at his receptionist, who kept looking under the pile of papers on her desk as if whatever it was she was searching for would magically appear where it had not been before.
    He was about to invite the wide-eyed ADAs into his office when a large black man burst through the door. Clay Fulton pulled up short when he saw Karp standing a few feet from him. Fulton nodded toward the inner office. "Can I speak to you for a minute?" he asked.
    Karp walked back into his office with a knot growing in the pit of his stomach. A former college football player who still looked like he could tote the rock, as well as a New York Police Department detective, Fulton wasn't the sort to make dramatic entrances or mysterious requests for a private audience unless something important was up. He was in charge of the NYPD detectives assigned to investigate cases for the DAO, as well as