Counterplay

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

• ISBN13: 9780743271134
• ISBN10: 0743271130
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-08-29
• Publisher: Atria

Summary

Tanenbaum's last novel, Fury, ended with a breathtaking cliff-hanger. Now readers can enjoy the exciting conclusion -- bursting with more suspenseful twists -- in his latest, Counterplay.

When betrayal results in the cold-blo

Author Biography

Robert K. Tanenbaum has taught Advanced Criminal Procedure at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, at Berkeley.

Excerpts

Prologue 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 wasn't 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. You're just out of your element, he told himself. But something more than the drive had put him on edge. In fact, he hadn't felt quite right since waking up that morning. What's the matter, Clay?his wife, Helen, had asked as he dressed for the day, sensing his disquiet. Nothing, he'd lied.Just don't want to mess this up . . . got to make sure my t's are crossed and i's 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 couldn't tell.Don't 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 wife's words. He wasn't particularly superstitious, but he was also careful not to tempt fate by ignoring gut feelings and a woman's intuition. Still, there was nothing he could do about it except keep his eyes open.I've got to go, baby, he'd argued.You know I won't ask one of my guys to do something I wouldn't. Besides, I promised Butch I'd ride shotgun. Oh to heck with Butch, she'd pouted.And to heck with your machismo. If you'd 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 didn't 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 wasn't 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 agent . . . his name is Haggerty . . . to slow down a bit, but he didn't 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 "I've 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, he'd appeared to be headed for a landslide victory to become the next mayor of New York City. But that was before he'd been exposed by Fulton's 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.

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