"Good one, Dad," Zak said later as they left class. "Hope you're ready for a bunch of angry telephone calls."
Karp shrugged. "Why should the weekends be any different than during the week."
"Well, I think it's an interesting question," Giancarlo said.
"You would," Zak said with an exaggerated rolling of the eyes. "Then again, you think opera is interesting."
The boys were still squabbling when they got back to the loft, where Karp sent them off to their room, hoping to relax for a couple of hours, reading on the couch, before O'Toole and Meyers returned from sightseeing. He'd just settled in with John Keegan's book Intelligence in War when the telephone rang.
"Got a minute?" Newbury asked.
"For you, yes," Karp replied.
"I won't keep you long," the head of his white-collar crimes bureau said. "I just need your opinion. It has to do with the 'No Prosecution' files."
Newbury and his gang had been investigating hundreds of "lost" files found in the District Attorney's Office and stamped "No Prosecution." They'd come to light during the initial investigation that brought down Andrew Kane, when he was still just a wealthy attorney, investment banker, and mayoral candidate, and exposed his plans to corrupt and compromise the New York City Police Department, as well as the Catholic Archdiocese, for his own ends.
The files were criminal complaints brought against police officers and members of the clergy. They had been originally sent to Kane's law firm by the city attorney, aka Corporation Counsel, to review and make recommendations on how to make them go away. In most instances, Kane had recommended that the cases be settled (earning large sums of money for Kane). Then, if it suited his purpose, Kane would also recommend against prosecution for the accused. It was something he could use to manipulate the accused as well as the city, the NYPD, and the archdiocese.
Since the "No Prosecution" files had been given to Newbury's Gang, as his cadre of assistant district attorneys and investigators were called, dozens of cases had been reopened and the accused indicted, as should have happened the first time around. Dozens more indictments were expected.
In the course of the investigation, Newbury had learned that Kane had spread the wealth to a few other large law firms. "Whether it was because they were part of what was going on, or he simply couldn't keep up, we don't know yet," Newbury said. However, he'd just learned that his family's firm, run by his uncle, Dean Newbury, had been assigned to a number of cases in which white police officers had been accused of racially motivated crimes in their precincts.
"All the cases were settled and no charges were brought against the accused officers," he said. "However, so far there doesn't seem to have been any irregularities, though some warrant further investigation. Maybe Kane kept the worst offenders for himself-to use as leverage-and shuffled the rest to other firms so as not to raise hackles. Be that as it may, I've assigned one of the other assistant district attorneys, Galen Benson, to handle the investigation of my uncle's involvement. But if you'd like me to step down and move to another bureau, I'll understand."
"Why would I want to do that?" Karp asked, though he knew why Newbury had made the offer.
Vinson Talcott Newbury came from Old New York Money. His family could trace its roots back to the Mayflower on his mother's side and the middle 1700s on his father's. (Though we seem to know little enough about the paternal DNA before that, he'd once told Karp with a laugh. I suspect they were black sheep, and it's been kept in the closet.) Whatever their beginnings, the Newbury side had established themselves as one of the premier white-shoe law firms in Manhattan; their clients included some of the wealthiest, most powerful men and corporations in the country. And V.T. had dutifully followed the predestined course set for him from boarding school to Yale and then Harvard Law. However, he'd then caused something of a minor scandal after law school by going to work for the New York DAO. Years later, they were still looking down their noses because instead of accepting a lucrative position in the family firm, he'd stuck with the blue-collar work of prosecuting Manhattan's criminals.
Extraordinarily handsome with long, blond hair combed back from an increasingly sharp widow's peak, but only about five foot seven, he could also be somewhat sardonic. But Karp knew him as a loyal friend, a man of honor, and one of the best white-collar crimes prosecutors in the country.
Still, heritage meant something and Newbury was the "death before dishonor" type, which is why he'd made the offer to step down as the bureau chief. "Well, there's the potential for the press to see it as a conflict of interest," he replied to Karp's question. "Don't want to start off your new term with a messy scandal, you know."
Karp had brushed it off. "I don't run my office according to what the press may think. I have no doubt that if something comes up with your uncle that you need to bring to my attention, you'll do so," he said. "But to tell you the truth, it is my opinion that you could be trusted to prosecute yourself if you deserved it."
Newbury cleared his throat and seemed to be having trouble speaking, which made Karp smile. He knew that such shows of faith were the sort of thing his friend treasured most. A true throw-back to a better time, he thought.
"Thanks, Butch," Newbury said at last. "And I'll keep you apprised. Oh, and by the way, that very same uncle called this morning. He wants me to drop by and meet some of his cronies. I'm sure it's the annual push to get me to join the family practice. Only it's a little more pushy this time since Dad died. I think Uncle Dean is feeling the years and there's no other heir to the family throne. The old man's laying it on thick, all sorts of hogwash about meeting people who could do me 'a lot of good' in the future, whatever that means."
"Take him up on it," Karp chided. "Lot of money in private practice."
Newbury laughed. "No thanks," he said. "I want to be able to sleep at nights after work. I'm not saying he or the firm are scoundrels or crooks. God knows my dad was a good and decent attorney who did plenty of pro bono work. But when your bread is buttered by wealthy, powerful men who think of themselves as being above the law, or at least the IRS, well, the world can be full of compromises. And I'm not the compromising sort."
Karp knew that Newbury wasn't the compromising sort and hadn't wasted any more time worrying about his friend's uncle. His more immediate concern was Lucy's sudden reappearance in New York in the company of S. P. Jaxon. He'd liked and trusted the agent since their rookie years with the DAO. But Jaxon worked in a world filled with terrorists and death, and his daughter had already experienced more of both than any twenty-one-year-old should have had to.
When she arrived at the loft late that afternoon, Lucy had told her parents that she was just in town for a couple of days to help Jaxon with a "translation issue." While she was usually willing to discuss her life in great detail, she'd been taciturn about the exact nature of this problem. However, she had dropped one bomb and that was that Jaxon was no longer working for the FBI. He'd apparently gone over to what the now former agent used to call "the dark side" of private industry.
"Why didn't he tell me?" Karp asked Marlene later as he helped prepare dinner by chopping onions and peppers.
"Maybe because he knew how you'd react," she replied, forming another pillow-shaped gnocchi, a type of pasta made from potato. "You lifer public servants have a way of sneering at those of us former public servants who get tired of bureaucracy and grub for money in the public sector. But I suspect it has more to do with the fact that you're both busy, especially him."