Guma shrugged. “Well, I suppose something bad could happen to this kid.”
“Kid?”
“Zachary Stavros…kid as in almost twenty years old. He and his old man are estranged.”
“And you’re saying Daddy might have his baby boy whacked?”
Guma studied his cigar. “Who knows?” he said. “A kid who hates your guts is going to end your happy millionaire life and get you sent off to the can? People get killed for a lot less. But I don’t think the old man knows what Zachary is saying, so he’s probably safe until after the election.”
Karp pondered the possibilities. “You know who the caller was? Maybe he has something more.”
“No. He didn’t give a name. No Caller ID and it wasn’t traceable. I had a hunch it might have been Zachary’s psychologist, who is supposedly the only other person who knows about this. But I talked to the doc, with Zachary’s permission. He, of course, denied revealing ‘confidential information,’ and, well, the voice wasn’t the same.”
“Psychologist?” Karp asked as the red flags went up in his head. Great, I can hear the “dirty politics” accusations now, all based on testimony from a nutcase.
Guma looked up at the ceiling as if he’d suddenly discovered something unusual there. “Uh, yeah…forgot to tell you, but this is a ‘repressed memory’ thing.”
Karp groaned again. Repressed memory was where someone buried-or repressed-the memory of traumatic events, only to “recover,” or recall, them later, usually with the help of a psychologist using hypnosis. It had become popular in the eighties, and he knew of cases in which defendants had been convicted on nothing more than the recovered memory of the accuser. However, it was notoriously unreliable. Instances had been found in which the accuser-usually someone with serious psychological problems that led to the psychologist’s couch in the first place-“recovered” memories of events that they had actually read about in newspapers or heard in long-ago conversations. There had even been cases in which the hypnotist, intentionally or unintentionally, had “planted” in the patient false memories, that upon waking, were remembered as real.
From wide acceptance-by both prosecutors and defense lawyers, depending on which side the repressed memories helped-the science had since fallen into a gray area of the law. Anyway, it was a huge battle to get such testimony into evidence and usually only when backed up by corroborating evidence.
For Karp, if the corroborating evidence wasn’t sufficiently compelling and independently establishing the defendant’s guilt, he wouldn’t consider offering the so-called repressed memory at trial. “I remember the Stavros case, somewhat,” he said, not wanting to rain on Guma’s parade, yet.
“You should,” Guma replied. “It was page-one headline material for weeks. ‘Wealthy socialite disappears.’ ‘Banker husband investigated by police.’ ‘Police clear banker husband when socialite sighted in Buenos Aires.’ On and on and on.”
“They ever find a body?” Karp asked hopefully. Without a body, the repressed memory hurdle became a wall topped with razor wire.
Guma shook his head. “No. But I might know where to look.”
Before Karp had a chance to ask where that might be, Mrs. Milquetost buzzed in on the intercom. “There’s a young man here to see you. Says he has an appointment, though I don’t see it anywhere on my-”
“That’s okay,” Karp said. “This was spur of the moment, send him in.”
A moment later, a tall young man in a black T-shirt and jeans-stunningly handsome despite the too-pale complexion, dark eye makeup, and a “sleeve” of tattoos that covered his entire right arm down to the wrist-walked in. His nearly coal black hair was short and formed into neat ringlets, and he had the sad, deep-set brown eyes of a poet.
Even the air about him was melancholy, until he smiled, at which point the sun seemed to come in the office windows just a tad brighter. He stepped forward to shake Karp’s hand and then turned to Guma. “Hi, Mr. Guma,” he said. “I take it I’m in the right place.”
Guma got up and shook the young man’s hand warmly, then led him over to a couch near Karp’s desk on which they both sat. “I know you’re nervous, but you can trust Mr. Karp. Despite being the district attorney, he’s an all-right guy. I just wanted him to hear your story from your mouth. As I told you, pursuing this would be very difficult.”
“I’m sure,” Zachary said, the smile disappearing as he looked back at Karp. “My father’s a powerful man.”
“Well, that may be true, but that’s not the issue right now,” Guma said. “Whoever sits in that chair over there is pretty powerful, too. There are certainly more important considerations, not the least of which is you would be testifying against your father. He’s your only family, right?”
Zachary nodded. “Yeah, my mom was an only child and her parents died a long time ago…not long after she disappeared,” he said. “My dad’s a second-generation Greek immigrant. His family never wanted anything to do with me. In other words, there’s not much family to this family. Never was…. Now, where should I start?”
3
Roger “Butch” Karp heard fulton grousing the minute he got off the elevator on the fourth floor at Beth Israel Hospital and was glad it gave him something to smile about. Butch hated visiting hospitals, even a nice, modern facility like BI. Above all, he hated the smell of hospitals-the cleaning fluids that couldn’t disguise the stench of urine and blood and the cloying presence of death and disease.
Ever since high school, he’d associated these smells with the pain his mother had been put through as she battled cancer. It didn’t matter that she’d died at home, there’d been too many trips to the hospital for tests and surgeries, too much watching her suffer as the doctors poked, prodded, and shook their heads with long mournful faces.
Nor did it matter that atop the list of Karp’s happiest moments had been his presence at the births of his three children: Lucy, the eldest, and the twins, Isaac and Giancarlo. He still hated hospitals.
Yet he had to laugh as he drew closer to Fulton’s room from which there came the sound of objects crashing to the floor and the detective bellowing at the top of his lungs. “I don’t need nobody’s help to take a piss, young lady. Now, if you’ll just stand aside and hand me the walker, I’ll manage to drain the tank just fine on my own.”
A young female voice argued back. “Now, Mr. Fulton, you aren’t supposed to get out of bed without two nurses here to assist you,” she said. “I’m not big enough to support you by myself if you fell. But if you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll call for another nurse. Or you can use the bottle we’ve provided next to your bed.”
“Ah, for Christ’s sake, I just want to take a whiz in a toilet without a couple of women watching…”
Karp entered the room and saw Fulton perched on the edge of the hospital bed, waving his outstretched arms at a pretty little blond nurse who stood between him and an aluminum walker. Fulton looked up at the intruder with a scowl, but his expression changed when he saw it was Karp.
“Butch! Just the man I wanted to see,” Fulton said. “Now, nurse, my friend Butch here will do just fine with piss duty. As you can see, he’s a big strapping fellow; he’ll save me if I fall in and begin to drown. Now, hand me the walker.”
The nurse-Nancy Hull, if her name tag was accurate-looked at Karp dubiously. But she had to admit that the visitor was a big man-six foot five or so, she guessed-and looked like he worked out. She liked the way he was smiling at her with his curiously almond-shaped eyes which, she noted, were gray and flecked with gold. Nurse Nancy turned and handed the walker to Fulton, who practically jumped out of bed.
Karp quickly realized that the nurse’s concerns were not without merit. His friend nearly toppled over to the side and would have fallen except that Karp reached out to steady him.
“Thanks,” Fulton said, grimacing in pain from having tweaked a knee catching himself. “I’ve got it from here, if you’d kindly get the bathroom door.”
Karp reached for the handle and held the door open. Fulton half walked and half dragged himself into the bathroom with Nurse Nancy positioned on the other side, looking as if she was prepared to dive under the big man to break his fall if necessary.
“Out,” Fulton demanded as he reached the toilet.
