Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

February

Clay Fulton gripped the armrest of the big armored Lincoln like he used to cling to the safety bar on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island when he was a kid. At six foot three and two hundred and fifty pounds, plus thirty-odd years on the New York Police Department, there wasnt a whole lot that frightened him. But zipping along a snow-patched country highway in upstate New York at sixty-five miles an hour made him nervous as a cat at the Westminster Dog Show.

Youre just out of your element, he told himself. But something more than the drive had put him on edge. In fact, he hadnt felt quite right since waking up that morning.

Whats the matter, Clay? his wife, Helen, had asked as he dressed for the day, sensing his disquiet.

Nothing, hed lied. Just dont want to mess this upgot to make sure my ts are crossed and is dotted.

Helen smiled and stretched languorously, making no move to prevent a breast from slipping out of the ancient nightshirt she wore. Come back to bed, she said, her voice suddenly husky-with sex or tears he couldnt tell. Dont go today. Let one of your young guys and the feds handle it. I got a bad feeling, baby.

Fulton felt a chill run down his spine at his wifes words. He wasnt particularly superstitious, but he was also careful not to tempt fate by ignoring gut feelings and a womans intuition. Still, there was nothing he could do about it except keep his eyes open. Ive got to go, baby, hed argued. You know I wont ask one of my guys to do something I wouldnt. Besides, I promised Butch Id ride shotgun.

Oh to heck with Butch, shed pouted. And to heck with your machismo. If youd rather play cops and robbers than stir it up with your wife, then to heck with you, too.

Helen had, of course, popped out of bed before he left to make sure he knew she didnt mean any of it. But her unease combined with his own had filled him with a sense of foreboding that he still had not shaken eight hours and more than four hundred miles later.

The road wasnt even that bad. The fields and wooded areas on either side were snow covered, but the potentially slick spots on the asphalt were few and apparently of no concern to his driver-a young, moonfaced FBI agent, who whistled tunelessly and looked back and forth at the countryside like a tourist on holiday.

Fulton wanted to ask the agenthis name is Haggertyto slow down a bit, but he didnt want to come off as chickenshit. So he kept his eyes on the unmarked New York State Highway Patrol car on the road ahead of them and maintained a bored expression on his face.

Only normal to feel apprehensive, he thought. After all, a very dangerous individual was sitting in the backseat next to Special-Agent-in-Charge Michael Grover. If not the most dangerous man in America, the prisoner, Andrew Kane, certainly ranked right up there. He was the most cold-blooded criminal Fulton had ever met over a long and Ive seen everything career, and rich too, which made him even more dangerous.

Fulton glanced up at the mirror in the visor. Kane, the glib, handsome, and fabulously wealthy head of a Fifth Avenue law firm, stared out the side window, his hands cuffed together and locked to a chain-link bellyband. Six months earlier, hed appeared to be headed for a landslide victory to become the next mayor of New York City. But that was before hed been exposed by Fultons boss, New York District Attorney Roger Butch Karp, as a homicidal megalomaniac whose tentacles went deep into the NYPD, the city government, and even the Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

Although technically a detective with the NYPD, Fulton worked as the head of the squad of detectives assigned to the NYDAO. Hed taken the job at Karps request. The two of them had known each other for most of their respective careers, meeting when Fulton was a rookie cop and Karp a still wet-behind-the-ears prosecutor working for legendary DA Frank Garrahy.

Fulton and Karp had not always worked together. Karp had even gone into private practice for a short stretch before returning to the DAO where hed been working as the chief of the vaunted homicide bureau when the governor appointed him to fulfill the remaining two years on the term of then-district attorney Jack Keegan, whod been appointed to the federal bench.

The term was nearly up and now Karp was running for the office in Novembers elections. It was a thought that made Fulton chuckle. His old friend took to politicking about as well as a cat to water; he hated it and few things put him in a sour mood as did the necessity of what he labeled kissing up to people you wouldnt spend two minutes with otherwise.

Are we there yet? The mocking voice interrupted Fultons recollections and brought him back to the moment. He glanced up at the mirror and into the smirking eyes of Andrew Kane.

Looking at Kane, it was hard to imagine him as a monster. Despite being approximately the same age as Karp and Fulton, the blue-eyed, blond-haired, and boyish Andrew Kane looked more like a well-preserved former fraternity president than a vicious crime boss charged with capital murder and a host of other major felonies. Nevertheless, they were on their way to a private psychiatric hospital in upstate New York to have Kane evaluated by doctors selected by his defense team, who hoped to have him declared insane and therefore not responsible for the crimes hed been accused of.

The states psychiatrists had already examined Kane and declared him fit to stand trial. Fulton had read their reports. Kane, they said, had an antisocial and schizophrenic personality disorder with strong narcissistic tendencies. In other words, he didnt give a shit about anybody else but himself.

Still, the important thing from the legal vantage of the prosecution was that he knew and appreciated the nature, quality, and consequences of his acts and that those acts were wrong. If the prosecution could prove that Kane possessed such a state of mind, he would be held accountable for his crimes, and any attempt at an insanity defense would be defeated.

Naturally, however, Kanes dream team of lawyers-the very best that money could buy-insisted that he be tested by their own doctors. The states psychiatrists were obviously prejudiced, they argued, and the judge in the case, Paul Hans Lussman III, had allowed it. Like most judges, he was inclined to bend over backward on defense motions in a death penalty case so as to give the defendant every benefit of the doubt. Besides, no jurist likes to be reversed, especially on capital cases, which have a way of making it to the U.S. Supreme Court for the entire world to watch.

So now Fulton was riding shotgun on the transport security team. The New York City Department of Corrections was nominally in charge of getting Kane to and from the hospital for his evaluation. But Karp had asked him to oversee the security measures, which to Fulton meant he had to be there every step of the way.

Well get there when we get there, Fulton replied to Kane.

If we get there, Mr. Fultonif we get there, Kane laughed.

Fulton glanced at Haggerty, the driver, who smiled and rolled his eyes upward. They both knew that every precaution had been taken.

In fact, Fulton had taken a page from the past by re-creating a security detail hed been on back in the late sixties.

Essentially, he was creating a diversion. To transport Andrew Kane, a five-car motorcade had wheeled up the driveway from the city jail known as the Tombs, and proceeded to the Willis Avenue Bridge. Crossing the East River, the motorcade converged with the Major Deegan Expressway, heading north toward Albany.

Meanwhile, an hour after the motorcade left, a hooded Andrew Kane was rushed out of the DAs elevator and into the armored Lincoln with Fulton and the two federal agents. A single unmarked NYPD sedan had escorted them up the West Side Highway and over the George Washington Bridge, where the New York cops were relieved at the sight of two state patrol cars with four armed officers inside each, with one taking the lead while the other brought up the rear.