graphic designer, was down working in her basement studio. It was my turn to drop Sarah off at school. As I sipped my coffee, waiting for her to come down the stairs, something else occurred to me, something ugly that refused to be ignored. If those two hikers had in fact stumbled over the Malik, a.k.a. Melvin, then his death stood to do a lot more for Larry Mac’s constitution than a week in the Caribbean. Dead men don’t hold up well under cross-examination.
ROBERT HIRAM FISHBEIN bore an unfortunate resemblance to the late Groucho Marx, but in spite of his looks, he’d once been a political highflyer. The District Attorney of Queens County was an even more ambitious man than Larry McDonald. And that is really saying something. Fishbein, perhaps beyond any of us connected with the Moira Heaton investigation, had benefitted from its conclusion. Of course, if the real facts were ever made public, it would have done very few of us proud.
That said, D.A. Fishbein had parlayed the good press that followed in the wake of the Heaton case into a lot of goodwill, political capital, and, most importantly, into a nice fat campaign chest. Unfortunately, he’d ignored his handlers’ sage advice to run for state attorney general and overplayed his hand. Instead, he mounted a feeble campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, and got squashed like a bug. His message played about as well upstate as a minstrel show in Brownsville. That was the difference between him and Larry Mac. Fishbein had let his ambition control him. Larry had the knack for modulating his ambition so that he could keep his eye on the individual steps on the way to the penthouse.
Fishbein, having squandered his big chance, had settled into a kind of comfortable purgatory. He could be Queens D.A. forever, and never anything more. But I understood ambitious men and knew he would not, could not accept his fate. For years, no doubt, he had tormented himself with false hope that there must be some way for him to crawl out of his dungeon and regain the spotlight. That’s why I knew he would take my call. I was a good luck charm. I’d gotten him to the main stage once before. Why not again?
The Queens D.A.’s office might seem like an odd place for me to start, but frankly, Fishbein was about my best option. A cop may be a cop for life in his own head. The rest of the world, however, stops seeing him that way the second he takes off his uniform. As time passes, his old buddies barter their badges for golf bags and he’s left with no connections on the force. Of course I knew lots of cops, but unlike guys who moved around a lot, I had spent my entire abbreviated career in one precinct. The only guys I’d ever been really tight with had served with me in the Six-O. With Larry missing, Rico disgraced, Ferguson May dead, and the rest of my ex-precinct-mates possibly under suspicion for taking bribe money from a murdered drug lord, I didn’t have a lot of places to go.
“Prager, how the hell are you?” Fishbein, normally cool and shrewd, couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. “What can I do for you?”
“Maybe I can do something for you, Mr. D.A.”
There was a profound silence on the other end of the phone. His prayers had been answered. Praise the lord!
“Like what?” he wondered, more composed.
“I can’t really say now, but it could be big. I’ll need your help.”
“You’ve gotta give me more than that, Prager.” He was anxious, not a fool.
“Drugs and cops,” I said.
More silence. Then, “What do you need?”
“For now, I need to know everything about the body that was found in Gateway National Park last night. I mean everything.”
“That’s federal.”
“C’mon, Mr. D.A., let’s not dance that dance, okay?”
“Do you have a fax machine?”
I gave him the number.
“You’ll have it within the hour,” he promised. “Anything else?”
“Just one thing.”
“And that is?”
“If this amounts to anything,
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