ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, the taping had gone rather well, Karp thought as he walked downtown the following morning. Being interviewed for television was a lot less of a strain when you kept in mind that TV—and all journalism for that matter—was a division of show business. At close range, Weber had struck Karp as a prematurely aging man of no particular intellect or distinction, what they called an empty suit around the courthouse. It was difficult to speak intelligently to someone who was not in the least interested in what you were saying, but merely in his own appearance of interest and perspicacity. Besides, he had a thin scum of pink pancake makeup on the collar of his shirt. You couldn’t take a guy wearing pancake makeup seriously.
Weber’s questions had probed at the gory details of the bombing and whether police incompetence had contributed. Karp declined to elaborate on the first and asserted strongly that there was no evidence for the second. He recalled thinking at the time that somebody was making a point of inserting this accusation into people’s minds; it must be common gossip if Weber had picked it up.
The reporter had also asked about the character of the defendants, about whether they were not, as they claimed, struggling against communist oppression, albeit with deplorable methods and unfortunate results. The implication was that with all the horrible crimes in the city, the DA’s office had better things to do than harass a bunch of freedom fighters whose only real crime was that some clumsy cop blew himself up taking a bomb out of a locker. Weber felt it necessary to mention several times that no one on the plane had been injured. Karp had, with difficulty, remained calm under this barrage, answering in as dull and legalistic a manner as he could generate, that a crime had been committed and that it was his duty to prosecute it on behalf of the people out there in television land.
But toward the end of the ten-minute session Weber had suddenly asked the jurisdiction question: “Mr. Karp, it seems to me that there are other district attorneys involved in this case. The killing took place in the Bronx, did it not? And the airport is in Queens. Yet you seem to be in sole charge. Has some kind of deal been made with the other DAs?” Karp was surprised by this, as being out of character with the rest of the interview. Why should a television audience, why should Weber, give a hoot about jurisdictional issues? Warily Karp had answered, “I don’t know about ‘deal.’ When more than one DA’s office is involved, one of them usually takes the lead, to coordinate evidence and so on. There’s only one set of cops, so … it just makes for a better case.”
Weber pressed on. “And in this case it’s you, correct? You have full responsibility?”
“Right. It’s my case.”
“And you intend to put these people in prison, despite the complexities and conflicts we’ve mentioned?”
“Yes,” Karp had said bluntly, and the camera had hung on his face for what seemed like an unusually long time as Weber summarized the interview in a few brief sentences and signed off.
This morning, as he entered 100 Centre Street, Karp found he was famous for Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes. A couple of people he knew waved to him in the Streets of Calcutta. Roland Hrcany shouted across the hall and mimed the rolling of a camera and the crouch of the news photographer. Apparently, Dirty Warren had seen him too.
“Hey, Mr. Karp, I saw you with that Carl Weber. You looked real good,” he said with a boyish smile.
“Thanks, Warren.”
“Hey, you gonna be on TV again? There was all these camera guys here before. With lights and things. Shitfaced motherfucker! I’ll kill ya, you bastard!”
“No kidding? No, not right away, Warren, it was probably for something else, some big shot.”
“Hey, you’re a big shot, Mr. Karp. They should put you on TV more.” Karp now noticed a TV cameraman with a portapack camera shuffling rapidly toward the elevators. Instantly Warren snapped into a brilliantly accurate imitation—facial expression, carriage, movement—of the cameraman for about three seconds. Then he returned to his ordinary bland expression. The mimicry, like the obscenities, was entirely unconscious.
“Magazine, you scumbag shitface?” he inquired politely.
Karp laughed and picked an old Cosmopolitan off Warren’s wagon, leaving a dollar on the pile. More newspeople were crowding the bank of elevators, struggling to enter the cars. Connie Trask, looking worried, pacing and biting her lip, brightened when she spotted him.
“Butch! God, am I glad I caught you! They’re going crazy up there.”
“Sounds like business as usual. What’s going on?”
“No, really! We got a riot in the office. I wanted to catch you before you landed in it, and I—”
“Wait a second, Connie, calm down. A riot?”
“It’s the Croatians, from Brooklyn. There’s, God, I don’t know, two hundred of them up in our office, yelling and screaming and tearing things up. They’re yelling for you, too. That’s why I thought I better come down.”
“Yeah, thanks, Connie. How about building security, you call them?”
“Yeah, first thing. They sent two guys, a big help.”
“OK, I’ll take care of it. Go to the snack bar and get yourself some coffee or something. OK?”
“All right. Great way to start the day, huh. Hey, I saw you last night on the news. You looked good.”
As Karp dashed into a nearby office and picked up a phone, he began to realize why he and not Bloom had been cast as the featured player in this case on TV. Cursing himself for his own stupidity, he dialed Bill Denton’s number.
It took two hours for the tactical cops to drag the Croatians out of the Criminal Courts Bureau offices and down to the waiting paddy wagons. Used to dealing with radical kids or unruly members of minorities, the cops were disconcerted by having to manhandle respectable middle-aged people led by a priest.
Karp stood in the fourth floor hallway, guarded by an immense black TPF sergeant, and watched the last of them being muscled out. A fiftyish woman with a neat blond perm and a sky-blue pants suit squirmed in the grip of two six-footers. She caught sight of Karp as she was dragged by and let out a stream of spittle-laden vituperation in two languages.
The TPF sergeant said, “Karp, you better watch yourself, these nice folks don’t like y‘all one bit.”
“Free the Five! Free the Five! Long live free Croatia!” the woman shouted as the stairway door closed. The stairwell was echoing and booming with similar shouts. The sergeant snorted.
“That’s it. You’ll be OK, now. The chief’s got building security beefed up for the next week at least.”
“Thanks, Sarge. Any bloodshed?”
“Naw. These folks’re all talk. And we got orders to be real gentle. This demonstration’d been a bunch a brothers, there’d a been hair on the walls. Croatians, my ass!”
Karp thanked the sergeant again and went into the office. A dozen or so attorneys and clerical workers stumbled around in the wreckage, setting up desks that had been overturned and clearing up drifts of scattered paper. He acknowledged their greetings and a scattering of compliments about how well he had looked on television. Hrcany came up to him and handed him a large hand-lettered picket sign. “Here,” he said, “you might want it as a souvenir.” The sign said:
KOMMIE-LOVER KARP
FREE THE FIVE!!
“The price of fame,” Karp said ruefully. “Roland, if I ever go on television again, would you be a friend and kick me in the ass?” He gestured broadly to the wrecked office. “Christ, look at all this crap.”
Roland started to leave and then snapped his fingers. “Shit, I almost forgot. I found you another witness. Guy name of Emil Koltan. He’s a waiter down at the Buda Restaurant.”
“Oh yeah? What’s his story?”
“The story is, I’m having dinner with my dad last night at the Buda, which is the place to go for serious pirogi and paprikash, and we get to talking to Emil. Him and my dad go way back, before ’56 even. So they’re bullshitting about money, how hard it is nowadays, et cetera, and Emil’s talking about how he takes these odd waiting jobs, like banquets, weddings, and so on. I’m not really listening until I realize his tone has changed, to like confidential. He’s asking my dad for advice, and he’s talking about a private dinner he did for a Croat fraternal organization.”
“When was this? The dinner.”
“Just last week, the ninth. It seems these four guys at Emil’s table were a little high and talking freely because they figured nobody could understand them, which was a good bet because they were speaking Serbo-Croat. Little did they know that our boy Emil, though a Hungarian, understands Serbo-Croatian. He was raised in one of the border areas that kept switching around during the last century or so. Anyway, he got the gist of the conversation, which was that they were giving one of them the needle about screwing up something important. Emil says ‘the little one, with thick glasses’ was the goat. Turns out, it was putting a bomb in a locker in Grand Central.”
“Holy shit, Roland!”
“Yeah, wait, there’s more. They’re also talking about stealing a plane. One of them, Emil says, ‘the big one, old, but like a bull,’ is like running a quiz show, snapping out questions about what everybody is supposed to do, making sure they know their parts—”
“Karavitch.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Unbelievable! But Roland, why didn’t this waiter tell anybody about this?”
“Come on, Butch, what’s to tell? They were laughing and joking—it could have been a play, or a practical joke.”
“About bombs and boosting airliners?”
“Butch, they’re Croats. Emil’s a Hungarian. How does he know what a bunch of Croats would find funny? But when he saw them on TV after the hijack and recognized them—”
“He can ID them?”
“Sure. Except for the chick. She wasn’t at the dinner. So he gets concerned and decides to talk to my dad next time he’s in the Buda. My dad is sort of a pillar-of-the-community type, big lawyer, owns property, so a lot of the old country people like to grab him and spill their guts in Hungarian, maybe cop some free legal advice. Anyway, he did, and there I was, and the rest is history. Here’s his name and address.” Hrcany handed Karp a piece of paper. Karp took it, kissed it loudly, and flung his arm over Hrcany’s shoulders in an athletic hug.
“Roland, I’m peeing in my pants. Between Emil and Max Dorcas, Rukovina is going to crack like an egg, that little scumbag. That’s it, that’s the case in—ah, shit!”
Karp grimaced and slammed his right fist violently into the palm of his left hand. “What’s wrong, Butch?” Hrcany asked.
“Dorcas, dammit! There was supposed to be a lineup for him here this morning. Look, Roland, thanks a million for this. I got to call Spicer now to get the lineup going and I’ll tell him to send a man for Emil too. See you later.”
Karp got Fred Spicer on the second ring. “Fred? Karp. Look, things are rolling. I want to do that Max Dorcas lineup right away, and I got another witness in the same case that I’d like you to send somebody for, also right away. OK, here’s his name—”
“Hold on there, Butch, just a second. The Dorcas lineup? Christ, I canceled that, must of been a little past nine.”
“You canceled it? Without asking me? Why in hell’d you do that?”
“There was a riot going on, Butch, hey?”
“What the fuck does that have to do with it, Fred? We weren’t going to do the lineup in the goddamn Criminal Courts Bureau office. Shit!”
“Well, I just thought it was wiser not to, that’s all,” said Spicer, beginning to huff. He was a reasonably good administrative cop, if inclined to be lazy.
Karp gritted his teeth and sat on his rising temper. Spicer could screw up his life more than just about any member of the police department, and Karp could not afford any more problems at present. “OK, OK, Fred. Sorry I snapped. Schedule the Dorcas lineup for tomorrow first thing. I’d like Slocum to bring them in from Riker’s himself.”
“Yeah, he said you wanted him to. Hell, Butch, I got better things for my guys to do than haul scumbags from the jail and back. I’m short as hell now, as it is, and—”
“Fred, bear with me. Believe me, it’s important. But more important right now is picking up this witness. Name’s Emil Koltan. Here’s the address.” Karp read off an address in the 80’s off East End Avenue. Spicer said he would get right on it, which Karp doubted but couldn’t do much about.
After hanging up, Karp went into his office, undamaged except that somebody had scrawled “FREE THE FIVE” across his frosted glass door in pink lipstick. He calmed himself by sheer force of will, put in a couple of hours of paperwork and made a dozen or so phone calls, including one to Denton about the waiter Hrcany had found. Around eleven Marlene Ciampi walked in, as usual without knocking.
“Where have you been this fine morning?” Karp asked sourly. As always, his first sight of Marlene in the morning made his heart bump with love, but today he resented it. Roland’s news had elated him and the conversation with Spicer had cast him down again. Those events, coming on top of the TV appearance and its sequel, made him feel jerked around, a feeling ’e particularly hated.
“I didn’t know you were a Cosmo girl,” said Marlene, pointing to his desk. “This gives us something else in common.” Karp realized he had been carrying the magazine he had bought from Dirty Warren around with him all morning. He cursed and threw it in the trashbasket.
“Silly you,” said Marlene, perching her bottom on the edge of his desk and shaking out a Marlboro. “Now you’ll never know the seven ways to tell if your boss is romantically interested. Hey, I saw you on TV last night.”
“Yeah, right. How was I, great?”
“I thought you were the sexiest thing since Marshal Dillon. I was wet to the knees.”
“I was set up. Fucking Bloom wants a patsy to hang if this case goes sour, and right now it looks like a good bet. I can’t believe the shit that has gone wrong.” He briefly filled her in on what Hrcany had told him and about what had gone down with Spicer. She puffed smoke and listened, then said, “Take it easy, Butch. It’s a complex case. It’s going to take us awhile to settle down all the aspects. Now, you might be interested in another little wiggle I happened to turn up—”
“It’s not that complex, Marlene, for crying out loud!
You wrote the goddamn indictments. That’s what we should be concentrating on. The gang left a bomb. The bomb killed a cop. We got to convince twelve people it went down that way and that’s all she wrote. Period.”
“If they let you.”
“If who lets me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Butch, while you are pursuing the great simplicities, somebody is trying to screw up the case. You have to believe that, and you know as well as I do that there are about a thousand ways to taint a case like this. A couple have already been tried.”
“So? We stopped them.”
“So far. But they only have to score once, and they’ll keep trying. Which is why we have to find out who they are. And soon.”
Karp leaned back in his chair and massaged his scalp. He felt exhausted and irritated. “They! Who’s ‘they,’ Marlene, tell me that! What are we going to do, go off on some paranoid wild goose chase after some fucking conspiracy we don’t even know exists? We got six hundred homicides …”
“I know how many homicides we have, Butch,” said Marlene quietly. “And there’s no need to start shouting at me.”
“Ah, Christ, I’m sorry, Marlene, but what do you expect me to do? I’m hanging on by my fingernails here. I just have to play it straight defense, that’s all. And hope we can catch all the shit. OK, I’m calmed down. Now, what was the little wiggle?”
Marlene had decided on the spot not to tell him about what she had learned from Taylor, at least not yet. Or about what she planned to do with the old soldier. “The wiggle? Oh, nothing much. I found out where John Evans is from, is all.”
“Evans? Oh, the fancy suit at the arraignment.”
“Yeah. He works out of Washington, D.C. For Arthur Bingham Roberts.”
“Oh, that’s just great. Marlene, where the hell do these schmendriks get the bread to hire the most expensive criminal lawyer in the United States?”
“Oh, I wondered about that, too. So I went down to the Fifth Precinct, where they booked those yo-yos who were here this morning. And I got sort of cozy with Father Peter Blic.”
“Who?”
“Father Blic is the priest at St. Gregory’s in Greenpoint, where the Croat cheering section comes from. Our suspects are his parishioners.”
“And the parish raised the money?”
“Oh, sure, they had a bake sale and bingo and put together enough to hire Arthur Bingham Roberts for about twelve minutes. No, this weekend somebody delivered a check to Father Blic, with a note that said that Mr. Roberts had been contacted and was interested in the case. The check was for twenty K.”
“I can see his interest. Are you going to tell me who the check was from?”
“Well, you know, I asked Father Blic that very question, because, as I told the dear man, I was so impressed by the Christian generosity shown by the benefactors of those brave freedom fighters, that I had resolved to make a special novena for them. So he said that while he didn’t know the actual donor, the check was drawn on the account of a law firm called McNamara, Shannon, Shannon and Devlin, and maybe that would help.”
“Hmm, sounds like a bunch of Croatians, all right. What’s their story?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s for this afternoon. What do you think?”
“Not much. They’re no criminal firm, though. Is that it?”
Marlene got off the desk and went to the door. “On the Doyle front it is. Oh, by the way, I sent my injury appeal up through channels. It’s probably sitting in Corncob’s in-basket. Any little thing you can do—”
“Sure, babe, I’ll try, but you know how it is.”
“Alas, I do. See you.” She gave him a lopsided grin and slipped out.
Shortly thereafter, Marlene locked herself in a booth in the ladies’ room and began weeping silently. Mouth wide open, tears gushing, she hugged herself and rocked back and forth, howling softly, her mind blank. After about ten minutes she mopped her face and blew her nose with toilet paper. These sessions had been occurring with increasing frequency during the past year. The overwhelming feelings would unpredictably burst like a summer squall, and then she would excuse herself from whatever she was doing and dash for the bathroom. Spiritual diarrhea, she called it privately, and told herself that it was a cheap substitute for therapy.
But in her heart of hearts she knew better. Something was wrong inside. Things had to change. She thought about what Karp had said about defense. Or dee-fense, as he pronounced it in the jock manner. Defense was not enough, it was not enough to be tough. She wanted to be rescued. She wanted love, a family. She was thirty-one. She wanted Karp to rescue her. If only he could see beyond his arrogant mission to save the world. Oh, Butchie, she thought, I know you so well and you don’t know me at all. I’m going to have to rescue you first.
Marlene left the booth and went to the sinks and mirrors to repair what was left of her face. While she was brushing her hair, Rhoda Klepp came out of one of the booths and occupied the next sink. Since there were ten sinks, this was an invitation. Marlene did not particularly like Rhoda Klepp, but neither did she join in the vituperation heaped on her by the other ADAs. The DA’s office was hiring more women these days than it had when Marlene had started out, but it was still largely a men’s club, and Marlene felt a guilty impulse toward sisterly solidarity.
“How’s it going, Rhoda?” she said heartily.
“Oh, so-so,” replied Rhoda, not taking her eyes off herself in the mirror. “I’m doing the briefing for the monthly targets meeting this afternoon. Chip is such a perfectionist, you wouldn’t believe it. And Sandy too. Never a false move. I think he’s running for president. He always keeps an extra suit in the office in a cleaner bag—God forbid he should get a wrinkle or spill something. Also, he’s got ties. A riot! He tapes phone calls, you know that?”
“Uh-uh. What do the numbers look like this month?”
“Not that great. I don’t think Sandy is going to be very pleased with them.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, people are going to get creamed. Your, ah, whatchamacallit …”
“Karp.”
“Especially. I can’t believe how he goes out of his way to piss people off. Not just Chip, everybody. The cops too.”
“Which cops are those?”
“Oh, you know, stuff you hear. I really shouldn’t be talking about this.” She finished her makeup and backed away from the mirror. She turned this way and that, tucking and pulling at her blouse and adjusting the underlying cables and supports. Marlene stared at this performance, and Rhoda caught her looking. “Make you jealous?” she asked.
“You certainly have a nice figure, Rhoda,” Marlene said evenly.
“Yeah. I used to hate it. But now I love when men stare at my body. You can see them trying to look away, but their eyes always drift back, like little machines, the assholes.”
“Uh-huh.”
Rhoda seemed to take in Marlene for the first time. “It’s power. I guess it’s probably hard for someone like you to understand that. I mean …”
“Right. Look, Rhoda, I sent an administrative appeal up to, um, Chip’s office. Do you know if it got there?”
“Oh, yeah, I think I saw that lying around. What about it?”
“Is he going to sign it?”
“Well, that would depend, I guess. I mean we’ve got to worry about the precedent. We need to check with the general counsel and the insurance people. And so on.”
Marlene was struggling to control her rage, afraid that in another moment she would lose it all and commit a class-A felony. She cleared her throat and said softly, “I hardly think that precedent is a concern. How many ADAs do they suppose are going to be bombed in a year?”
“Well, it’s the principle, then. Ramifications. Whatever,” said Rhoda blithely. As she picked up her handbag and prepared to leave, she favored Marlene with a look of amused contempt. “Get smart, honey,” she said. “You’re a bright girl. Why should Chip hassle himself to do you a favor? You hang around with Karp, some of the smell rubs off, you understand? And now you’re farting around with this stupid skyjack case, which every time he hears about it the DA wants to vomit. You understand what I’m saying? You could really have a future around here if you changed your attitude, hung around with the right people, worked on the right cases, steered them the right way.”
“Will it give me big tits too?” Marlene asked spontaneously, half to herself.
“What?”
“Nothing, Rhoda,” she said. “Have a nice day.”
After Rhoda left, Marlene kicked the wastebasket as hard as she could, twice, making a satisfyingly aggressive clamor. On checking her datebook, she found she was scheduled to interview a woman named Doreen Moore who was accused of stuffing her four-year-old daughter in an oven and roasting her alive.
Rhoda Klepp meanwhile went to the monthly targets meeting, a vastly more comfortable duty. Karp went too, although it was by no means comfortable for him. The monthly targets meeting was where Wharton got to torture Karp, and he had to sit there and take it. The idea was that each bureau would commit to clearance targets and then be held accountable for them each month. As it turned out, however, Karp’s boss, Melvyn Pelso, made the commitments, which he did without consulting Karp or anyone else who knew what was going on in the courtrooms. Pelso got the credit for heroic commitments, and Karp got the blame for failing to meet them. Theoretically, he could have met them, provided none of his attorneys was ever sick or ever took a day off, and provided virtually every defendant pleaded guilty to the top count of the indictment, and especially provided that he practically never went to trial.
Since none of these provisions were met, he always flunked. Today was worse than usual. Because of the events of that morning, Karp had not had a chance to review the cases he had proposed for trial and which he had to defend to Wharton. To his dismay, he found included among them the case of Alejandro Sorriendas.
Karp found Guma in his office, feet up on the desk, smoking a White Owl and reading the National Enquirer. “Don’t strain your mind with that stuff, Guma,” he said. “You might have to use it someday.”
Guma smiled around his cigar. “Hey man, I’m a trial lawyer. I got to keep up with the masses, get a feel for what people will swallow. How about this? ‘Mom Cuts Off Arm to Feed Starving Kids. Dad Watches.’”
“Speaking of trials, you rat, I just got my ass reamed because you stuck that piece-of-shit Sorriendas attempted homicide on the trial roster, so Wharton could give me his little smile and say, ‘Gosh, Butch, things must really be slack in Criminal Courts if we’re going to trial on a domestic assault, hah, hah.’ How the fuck do you expect me to stand up for the real cases when you pull crap like that?”
“Butch, calm down.”
“Why? I thought we had an agreement, and I get up there and get shafted.”
“Calm down, Butch. It’s OK. I just needed something to flash at Sorriendas and his lawyer. I figured you’d catch it and dump it and no harm done.”
“Bullshit, Guma. That list went into typing last night, without Sorriendas. You had your girl type your version, and then you slipped it into the box upstairs so it would be Xeroxed for the briefing book.”
Guma took his cigar out of his mouth and put his feet down on the floor, his face an artful amalgam of hurt innocence and belligerence. “OK, guilty! Guilty, your honor! Big fucking deal. Butch, listen to me, baby. Do I ever steer you wrong? This thing goes down the way I think, you’re gonna be golden.”
“No way, Guma. And just don’t pull shit like this, man …”
Guma held up his hands and smiled disarmingly. “Butch, Butch, what’re we fighting here? We’re the good guys, remember? The white hats. Come on, look, I got a half hour. I’ll buy you a coffee, some danish, we’ll talk.”
It was hard to argue with Guma, Karp had found from long experience, since he had no use for either logic or consistency, and had the endurance of a sumo wrestler. Karp allowed himself to be ushered down to the snack bar on the first floor. When they were settled in the smoky fug with their bad coffee, Guma said, “Look, Butch, these are serious bad guys. Just give me a little juice to squeeze Sorriendas with, and I know we can crack something. Not just the dope, homicides too.”
“Oh, yeah? Which one?”
“Come on, how do you think Ruiz got to be a smack czar in five years? Giving out Green Stamps?”
“No trials, Goom.”
“OK, OK, no trial. But let me squeeze Sorriendas anyway. Get some cops to follow him around, roust him, like that. Whaddya say?”
“I say, if you can get one of the guys to do it, and it doesn’t screw up any of our other investigations, and it’s cool with Spicer, I could care less.”
“Jesus, Butch, thanks a lot. What a prince! Hey, but put a good word in, huh?”
“Sure, talk’s cheap,” said Karp, standing up. “It’s been real, Goom. See you round.”
For the remainder of the court day Karp ran around through the dirty hallways, doing the People’s business. Once he caught sight of Marlene leaving a courtroom with a crowd of people. He waved at her, but she didn’t respond. She looked depressed and drawn. He made a mental note to call her later that evening to find out if she had learned anything about the Croatians’ unknown benefactor.
By six the building had cleared out, except for the cleaning people clattering the waste baskets and maniacs like Karp, who were just beginning the most productive part of their working day. For an hour or so he plowed through the day’s intake of case files, assigning them to the various attorneys under his command and making brief notes on strategy for the ADAs, who would see them for the first time the following morning. Then he reviewed the stack of cases that he would handle personally, and made notes about the police officers and witnesses who would have to be scheduled for the rest of the week. Around eight, feeling peckish, he went out through the echoing hallways and into Foley Square.
He walked up Baxter Street to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese take-out joint, where he ordered a quart of chicken chow mein and a large Coke to go. Waiting for his order in the steamy, brightly lit place, he mulled over the Doyle case. Whenever he thought about a case, he thought visually, as if he were figuring out a basketball play, with bodies moving rapidly in space, rearranging themselves constantly in relation to each other and to the three constants—the ball, the basket, and the rules of the game. He often diagrammed cases in the same way.
He slid a take-out menu sheet from the stack on the counter and turned it over to its blank side. Using a pencil stub he drew in the center a circle marked “BOMB-HOMICIDE” and from that a line connecting it to another circle marked “CROATS” with the names of the hijackers in smaller circles within it. The names “Karavitch,” “Macek,” and “Wilson” were connected in a triangle, with a question mark in it. A line from “Rukovina” led to the “BOMB-HOMICIDE” circle. Rising up from this line were two balloons. In one of them was the name “Dorcas” and in the other the name “Koltan.” Another line led from the “CROAT” circle to one marked “A.B. Roberts.” This line had a question mark and a dollar sign on it.
He drew another line from the “BOMB-HOMICIDE” circle, at the end of which he drew a little square labeled “Device.” He put a question mark over it. Then a line from that box to a circle marked “COPS,” with another question mark. Inside the “COPS” circle he wrote the names “Denton,” “Hanlon,” and “Spicer.” He put a question mark over the last two. Then he paused and chewed the pencil, and finally put another over “Denton.” Then he crossed it out. Then he drew it in again, but faintly.
Finally he drew a large circle around the whole diagram. On its periphery he drew circles marked “FBI” and “BLOOM,” with large question marks over both of them. Under “BLOOM” he wrote “knew K. name—Denton/screwup/TV?” Under “FBI” he wrote “translator/screwup/coaching/how?/why?” That’s the case in a nutshell, folks, he thought. He counted up the question marks. Too damn many. The real question was, which ones were important and which represented the usual crap that accumulated in the wake of a murder investigation cruising through a sea of corruption?
Somebody was trying to get his attention. “Oh-dah ready,” said the man behind the counter. Karp took the heavy brown bag with the bill stapled to the top of it, and then folded the diagram and put it in his pocket. As he left he noticed a dark young man looking into the restaurant window. He seemed to be staring right at Karp. Then he took a comb out of his jacket pocket and, using the window as a mirror, began combing his long black hair. As he did, he cocked his lean jaw with a peculiar little bounce at each stroke of the comb and narrowed his eyes, as if seeking an image of perfection.
Karp went back to his office, squirted packages of hot mustard and soy sauce over the chow mein, and gobbled it down. As he was chewing up the last of the ice in his Coke, the phone rang.
“Karp. We doze, but never close.”
“Hah, hah. Karp? Fred Slocum. I’ve been trying your apartment.”
“Silly you. What’s happening, Fred?”
“All kinds of shit. You hear the news about Max Dorcas?”
“No, what?”
“About half an hour ago somebody tossed a fire bomb into his store.”
“Ah, shit! Is he hurt?”
“No, he closed up at six-thirty. But the place is totaled.”
“Anybody make the guy who did it?”
“Sonny’s checking. Newsstand guy says it looked like a Puerto Rican, dark guy, medium build. Didn’t get a good look at the face, needless to say.”
“You talk to Dorcas yet?”
“Yeah. He’s pretty busted up over it. And I didn’t have to tell him what happened. Somebody called him at home and told him to develop a lapse of memory. They said the next fire he’d be in the middle of it, tied to his wife.”
“Goddammit! What does he say?”
“Well, he’s not too enthusiastic about being a good citizen anymore. I’ll work on him, but …”
“Yeah, I know. Freddy, who knew about Dorcas? I mean, being a witness and spotting Rukovina.”
“In details? Me, Sonny, you, Spicer, probably the C. of D. Anybody you told. In general, that he was a witness in the case? Who knows? The lineup wasn’t no big secret. I mean, this isn’t the Manhattan Project.”
“Not yet, Freddy, but who knows? Did you get to Koltan?”
“Who?”
“Emil Koltan. He’s another witness. Christ! You mean Spicer didn’t tell you to bring him in?”
“Not me, Butch. Never heard of him. Maybe he told Sonny or one of the other guys.”
“Right, but somehow I doubt it. Look, Freddy, he’s really key. Could you go and pick him up right now?” With mounting anxiety, Karp read the name and address off to Slocum. The only people who knew about Koltan, besides the Hrcanys, were Karp and Spicer. And Denton.
After urging speed and security on Slocum, Karp hung up and tried to make sense of these new developments. He unfolded the Chinese menu diagram and spread it out on his desk. It didn’t tell him anything more than it had at the take-out. He remembered what Doug Brenner had said at the clam bar on City Island—if something’s moving funny, there’s got to be a mover. Denton? It seemed incredible, but he had to consider it. Maybe that story about Kenny Moran and Terry Doyle was bullshit. He could check it out. But why would he put Karp in charge if it was a tank job? Bloom? Always a possibility. Did Bloom have something on Denton? But what about the FBI?
He picked up a pencil and drew a wavery light line connecting the circles marked “Bloom” and “Denton.” Then he smiled and drew near the center a stick figure with a frowning face and marked it “Karp.” He drew a heavy jagged line coming down from “Bloom” and striking the stick figure.
A shadow played across the glass on his door. Karp’s stomach churned and he stood up, sweeping the diagram into his desk drawer.
“Knock, knock, anybody home?”
Karp was surprised at how much adrenaline had just pumped into his system and slightly ashamed. He sagged back into his chair, feeling faintly queasy, and called out, “Yeah, come in.”
V.T. Newbury opened the door and entered. He was dressed in a dirty Burberry trenchcoat, a faded blue sweatsuit, and sneakers, and carried a briefcase. He sniffed the air and said, “I’ve been running and you’ve been gorging on Chinese. Oriental decadence.” He sat down on Karp’s wooden side chair. “What’s wrong? You look sick, man.”
Karp grinned weakly. “It must be the MSG. What are you doing here so late? What is it, eight already?”
“More like eight-thirty. I came to pick up some printouts for the strike force.”
“You getting anywhere with that shit?”
“Yeah, but it’s slow. Of course, we’re just errand boys for the Feds, nor do they trust us that much to begin with. We’re not untouchable, you know.”
“You’d think after Watergate, and Hoover, they’d have developed a sense of shame.”
“Minor lapses, my boy. Oh, speaking of which, I ran into your old buddy Pillman the other day.”
“How was he?”
“In rare form. I made so bold as to ask him about the Tel-Air operation. You remember, from Monday?”
“Yeah. Guma’s pride and joy. What’d he say?”
“Tel-Air? What’s Tel-Air? Playing it very close indeed. It piqued my curiosity, though. So I thought I would use some of my own connections in the financial community to noodle around, trace some transactions and so on.”
“The cousins.”
“You got it, boss. Oh, yeah, cousins. You’ll be interested to know I got through to Andrew at the State Department. One of his school buddies is in intelligence liaison and Andrew tried to quiz him about all those mixed signals during the hijack negotiations. Much clearing of throat and sideways looks, but it turned out that Langley was showing inordinate interest in the affair from minute one, as soon as we knew the identity of the gang.”
“That’s the CIA?”
“Yep. Also, this Simon Dettrick I told you about, the spook in Paris? No longer there. Leland called me. Apparently Dettrick flew home on the military jet that carried the hijackers back to New York. Also aboard was Jim Toomey, the guy from the New York FBI office.”
“Oh-ho! You think these guys maybe discussed the situation with our friends? Maybe gave them a little free legal advice, the scumbags?”
“It’s a possibility. Well, I’ll leave you to your musings. See you in court.”
V.T. rose to go. As he went out the door, something popped into Karp’s mind. “V.T., wait a minute. Cousins made me think of your father. He knows the New York corporate law scene pretty well, doesn’t he?”
“You could say that. Why?”
“Could you ask him about a firm called McNamara, Shannon, Shannon and Devlin?”
“What about them?”
“Just what their business is, who they represent. Marlene told me they just issued a big check for the legal defense of the Croats. It looks like they’re hiring Arthur Bingham Roberts. I’d like to know who’s that interested in these assholes walking away from this.”
V.T. whistled softly through his teeth. “Offhand, I’d say it was a gift from God.”
“What do you mean.”
“Well, I needn’t trouble Father on this one. The fact of the matter is that McNamara, et al. get about ninety-five percent of their business from the Archdiocese of New York. I’d bet that the check was Powerhouse money. What’s wrong? You look like you just ate a rat.”
“Oh, nothing. Some things are starting to come clear. Thanks, V.T., see you later.”
After Newbury had left, Karp took out his diagram.
He crossed out the question marks over “Spicer,” “Denton,” and “Hanlon,” replacing them with heavy check marks, and drew a heavy circle around all the policemen. A thick jagged line came down from this circle to strike the stick figure. Poor “Karp”! Then he made a heavy line from the police to “FBI” and to “BLOOM.”
Then he made another circle floating in the upper right of the page and labeled it “CIA,” and connected it with a thin line to “CROATS.” Question mark on that; involvement, but who knew what it was? Almost done. In the upper left he drew a heavy-sided box. An arrow came down from it and touched the dollar sign near “A.B. Roberts.” Another arrow flew over to the “COPS” circle. He pressed hard on this arrow, thickening it and doodling little circles and arabesques around it. Then he doodled a steeple on the heavy-sided box, and on top of it, a cross. He studied the diagram for a long minute, then folded it up carefully and placed it in his trouser pocket. “Holy shit,” he said out loud. “Holy shit.”