Enemy Within - Hardcover

Tanenbaum, Robert K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743403428 ISBN 13: 9780743403429

Publisher: Atria, 2001

Synopsis

NYC chief assistant district attorney Butch Karp faces a difficult case when a serial killer begins stalking the homeless, a situation that is complicated when his daughter volunteers at the shelters where the murders are occurring.

About this title

About the Author

Robert K. Tanenbaum is one of the country's most respected and successful trial lawyers and has never lost a felony case. He has held such prestigious positions as homicide bureau chief for the New York District Attorney's Office and deputy chief counsel to the congressional committee investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is teaching Advanced Criminal Procedure at his alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law and conducting continuing legal education (CLE) seminars for practicing lawyers in California, New York, and Pennsylvania. His previous works include True Justice, Act of Revenge, and Reckless Endangerment. This is his thirteenth novel.

Reviews

Lawyer and law professor Tanenbaum (Reckless Endangerment) brings back his husband-and-wife team of chief ADA Butch Karp and former gunslinger Marlene Ciampi to fight corruption while bringing up their "mutant offspring" in the whirlwind of IPO-era New York City. Opening with two shooting cases Karp suspects are being rammed through "the system" for purposes of political expediency (it being an election year for the DA), the bedraggled-but-upstanding Karp finds himself in a dire situation involving allegations of racism, police conspiracy and potentially misguided use of the newly reinstated death penalty. His spitfire Italian wife, Marlene from Queens, having hung up her guns for a quiet job with a corporate security firm, is swept away on a tide of newfound paper wealth when her company issues a sky-high IPO following a suspiciously well-timed VIP rescue in Kosovo. Meanwhile, their eldest, wayward genius Lucy (who can absorb languages like a sponge), has gotten herself involved in a dicey situation through her charitable work with the homeless when a serial killer begins targeting her charges. Tanenbaum weaves these three main plots (with several subplots attached to each) in a somewhat bewildering pattern of grotesque social inequalities and dirty city politics; while the problems of Karp and his daughter are clearly on a collision course, Marlene provides a form of comic relief via her demented trajectory of reckless spending and alcoholism. The overall story line is more than a bit far-fetched, but fans of Tanenbaum's characters, sharp dialogue and grasp of the intricacies of New York's legal system will not be disappointed.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Tanenbaum's new Butch Karp/Marlene Ciampi novel opens with a bang. Two NYPD cops on a stakeout spot a snitch at the wheel of a stolen SUV. After a high-speed chase with bullets flying, the snitch is dead, and the hero cop who did the shooting insists it was self-defense: the snitch tried to ram the police car. It's an election year, so everyone but Karp is inclined to accept that explanation. Politics colors other cases too: the trial of a young black street hustler for the murder of a Jewish diamond merchant, and the search for a murderer who's stalking homeless people. Karp and Ciampi's daughter, Lucy, is doing volunteer work with "the unhoused," and Karp is afraid she'll be caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. Meanwhile, Marlene is celebrating the money she's made on technology stocks. She's officially out of the security business until a plea for help from a female rock star drags her back. Vintage Tanenbaum, sure to appeal to fans and likely to increase their numbers. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

They were having lunch at four in the morning, sitting in the unmarked, a black Dodge Fury double-parked on the south side of Forty-seventh Street just west of Tenth. Nash, in the driver's seat, had a couple of chili dogs and a can of Pepsi. Next to him, Cooley was eating an Italian hero and drinking a large white coffee. It was early March and chilly, with a persistent rain, and they had left the engine running and turned on the wipers and the defroster. The car was warm, the windows were clear.

Infrequently, for it was a Sunday night, a car came down the street, slowing to pass the unmarked, and when that happened, both men stopped eating. Nash checked the rearview, and Cooley craned his neck and looked behind him and followed the vehicle as it splashed past. They were looking for a particular car, a van actually, dark blue with white lettering. It belonged to a guy -- whom some other guy had told a third guy about -- who was planning to run in tonight from Virginia with a big load of pistols and automatic rifles to a place on Forty-seventh between Ninth and Tenth. Three other cars were stationed at various places around this part of Manhattan, so that if the guy slipped past the anticrime team that was setting up to make the grab, and ran, there would be cars in position to block the escape.

Nash stole a glance at his partner, who had not said five words since coming back to the car from the all-night joint with their meal. Cooley's brow was flexed, and his jaw was working rather more than crushing an Italian hero strictly required, indicating a certain tension. Cooley did not like being in a blocking car. No, Detective Cooley preferred to be the first one through the door, pistol out, yelling "Freeze, freeze!" or some other hearty police exclamation. While Willie Nash considered himself as brave as it was necessary for an NYPD detective to be, and while no one had ever accused him of not pulling his load, he freely conceded that his partner was in a different class altogether in the guts department. Not exactly crazy, because Nash, who had a wife and three, would not have worked with a nut, but definitely on the unusual side. At thirty-two, Nash, though four years older than Cooley, operated as the junior partner, which he did not mind, really. It suited his flamboyant personality, and he liked the reflected glory and the lush collars you got when you hung around Cooley. Nash told himself that his part of the deal was watching Brendan's back -- a full-time job in itself -- and keeping something of a lid on the younger man's more outrageous impulses. He wondered now if Cooley was pissed at him for not doing something about the Firmo disaster, that failure being one reason why they were not on point tonight, but really, Nash thought, as he completed his first chili dog, what could he have done? First of all, Cooley had been --

"Jesus! That's him. There's that motherfucker!" cried Cooley. Nash looked to his right, startled. A late-model SUV was slipping by, red, an Explorer or a Jeep.

"Who?"

"Lomax, who do you think? Let's go!"

"Cooley, we're supposed to stay here until -- "

"We'll be right back. Come on! Roll!" Cooley tossed his coffee out the window and the remains of his sandwich down into the footwell. Nash put the car in gear and headed after the SUV, which he now saw was a Cherokee SE with New York plates.

"Nice car," he observed. "You sure it was Cisco?"

"I stared the fucker right in the face. Look at him! He's pretending nothing's wrong, just driving along under the limit in a car that's got to be fucking hot as hell. Give him the lights and siren."

Nash stuck the red flasher on the roof and goosed the siren, a quick moan. The next sound they heard was the scream of spinning tires slipping on wet pavement. The Jeep took off, fishtailing down Forty-seventh Street. Without thinking, Nash tromped on the gas, and the Fury leaped forward, dumping his chili dog and soda all over the front seat.

The light was red at Eleventh, but it was clear that the Jeep was going to run it, not a big surprise, and Nash did not brake either as they, too, shot through the intersection, drawing an outraged honk from a taxi. The Jeep made a big skidding right at Twelfth and headed uptown, Nash and the Fury on his tail, keeping a couple of lengths back, Nash now trying, through the pumping adrenaline, to take stock of the situation, gain some control. He should tell someone what they were doing. He should call for some backup. This was crazy. It was turning into a high-speed chase, on trail-slick roads; someone was going to get hurt, and not after some armed-bank-robber, mass-murderer type, but an asshole car-thief snitch...

Thinking thus, he still accelerated, now to ninety miles an hour. At Fifty-third right by the little park, they passed two blue-and-whites parked nose-to-tail for a conversation, and seconds later both of those radio patrol cars joined the pursuit, the radio crackling with demands to know what was going on. Nash did not respond because he was driving too hard. Cooley did not either, although it was his job. The Jeep screamed up onto the Henry Hudson. It suddenly became damply cold in the Fury. Out of the corner of his eye, Nash saw that Cooley had rolled his window all the way down.

"Closer!" he yelled over the wind blast.

Nash saw the needle pass a hundred miles an hour, the car shaking like a blender on the scabbed asphalt typical of the city's arterials, bits of chili flying around, his hands locked tight on the shuddering wheel, and then he saw that Cooley had his gun out, and he wanted to yell out something to make Cooley stop, but he had all he could do to keep the Fury from flying off the elevated highway. He should have stopped, he should have taken control, but he didn't, and he could not really have told anyone why, except that every cop in the world would have understood why not.

Nash brought the unmarked within five yards of the swerving Jeep, and Cooley began to shoot. Nash could hardly hear the flat crack of the shots, the wind filled the car so, and he lost count. He saw the rear window of the Jeep fly to pieces though, and the right rear tire come apart. The rear of the Jeep started to shimmy violently. Cooley was reloading. The Jeep drifted right, struck the guardrails, bounced back, went into a long sideways skid. Nash stepped on his brake and whipped the wheel over hard and felt, sickeningly, his rear tires break loose from the road and felt the tail of his vehicle proceed northward independently of the steering wheel. There was a grinding, metallic thump, a shudder, the scenery revolved, another crash. An enormous boom. The windshield of the Fury starred, buckled. Nash felt sharp things strike his face.

"Brendan! What the fuck...!" Boom. Cooley was firing through the windshield whenever the red shape of the Cherokee came into sight. Both vehicles were out of control, bouncing across the highway and past each other like dogfighters over blitz-time London. Then a louder crash and the red car disappeared -- no, there it was again for an instant -- another crash, and Nash saw a shower of sparks. After a time, Nash was able to bring the Dodge to a stop.

"Let's go!" Cooley shouted, and leaped from the car.

"Cooley! Goddammit! Will you wait?" Cooley did not, but ran into the dark. Nash left the unmarked, too, and found his shaking knees could barely support his weight. Shots, a bunch of them. Now he saw the Cherokee resting sadly on its right wheel rims against the left-side median barrier, with its snout pointed downtown. He saw that Cooley was running toward the stricken car in a combat crouch, firing as he went. Nash pulled out his own pistol and took in the scene. He thought he had time for that because no one seemed to be firing back at him. The unmarked had come to a stop north of the wreck. To the south, one

Edition details

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743403428
• ISBN 13: 9780743403429
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368