Falsely Accused by Robert Tanenbaum Page A

coming through here again, you’re going to be in serious trouble.”
    Marlene was out of there almost before the sound of the gavel had ceased reverberating. She did not want to see Pruitt, nor, for that matter, to see Carrie Lanin. Who she wanted to see was Harry Bello.
    Karp was not surprised when, several days after his meeting with Phil DeLino, he received an urgent summons to the office of his firm’s senior partner, Jack Weller. He had been naughty and was about to get his desserts.
    Weller was a hefty man in his early seventies, and looked, if you didn’t look too closely, ten or twelve years younger. His thick gray hair was expertly stitched to his scalp, and the perpetually tanned skin of his face had the slick surface signifying expensive little surgeries and peels. He had, naturally, the perfect pearly teeth and shiny fingernails of the well-cared-for wealthy. A shiny man, was what Karp always thought when he saw him, and he thought it this morning in Weller’s huge corner office. His teeth shone, as did his nails, the surface of his Sheraton desk, the brass fittings on his yellow suspenders, and his diamond and gold cuff links. His face, however, did not shine; it was dark with displeasure.
    Karp was motioned with a curt wrist flick to a tan leather side chair. He was made to wait while Weller finished flipping through a document. Karp watched the cuff links twinkle as the pages snapped. He thought he knew what the document was. While he waited, he studied Weller’s tan. The man was just back from St. Barts. Weller took a lot of vacations, and the year at B.L. was divided, like the medieval liturgical year, into before-and-after St. Barts, Aspen, East Hampton, and the Foreign Trip, Europe or Asia in turn.
    Karp didn’t dislike Weller, although he might have if the man had spent more time around the office. They were polar opposites as lawyers, of course, but Karp was by now used to being a quarter-turn different from most of his colleagues, and he was prepared to render Weller the sort of bland deference we reserve for someone who has made it possible for us to earn vast shitloads of money.
    Weller finished reading and looked up at Karp. He sighed. “This won’t do, Butch.”
    â€œI’m sorry? What won’t do?” asked Karp.
    â€œSuing the Mayor. Didn’t you realize that I was vice-chairman of his re-election committee?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t realize that. But I don’t see what it has to do with Murray Selig getting his day in court.”
    â€œYou didn’t get clearance from the executive committee either.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t realize I had to. I’ve never brought in any business before. It never came up.” This was a lie, of course, but a plausible one. It made Karp look like something of a jerk, but this had never bothered him much, especially when the lookers were people like Jack Weller.
    Weller’s face darkened beneath the tan, and he looked like he was about to say something nasty, but reconsidered. He had not spent much time with Karp, but something vestigial in him signaled a warning that Karp was not somebody who was prepared to take a lot of verbal abuse without returning it, and possibly some actual physical abuse as well.
    â€œWho’s the judge?” Weller asked instead.
    â€œWe have selection today,” answered Karp. “Craig, Roseman and Hollander are on the wheel.”
    â€œWell, I know Joe Hollander and Larry Roseman pretty well, and I know people who’re close to Craig. He’s brand-new. It shouldn’t be hard to get you out of there without prejudice to us, or causing a problem for the client.”
    Weller then launched into a long, detailed statement about what he was going to do and what he wanted Karp and some other people to do in order to cancel the firm’s role in Selig’s case. It was an admirable plan and Karp might even had admired it, had he been listening