Depraved Indifference (22 page)

Denton laughed sourly. “Yeah. Just remember, everybody, every detective on this case, runs through the New York DA squad. Anybody comes to you from left field, you can figure him for a setup. Uh-oh, I got a call waiting. By the way, how do you figure the Church angle?”

“I don't. I got an appointment with somebody at the Arch who owes me a favor, maybe I can squeeze him a little. I'll keep in touch.”

When Karp put down the receiver, his private button lit up at once. He had a call, too. It was Guma.

“Butch, dammit, you hear what happened?”

“They found Hoffa?”

“Yeah, right. Sandro Sorriendas turned up dead. In his place up in Washington Heights, a knife job.”

“Who? Oh, yeah, your Cuban dope kingpin. The cops like anybody for it?”

“They do. Are you ready for this? The girlfriend, Ellie Melendez. What bullshit!”

“Why don't you like her, Goom? He busted her up pretty bad. Maybe she figured to get her licks in before he got around to it again and finished the job.”

“Butch, I know this lady. She's a bird. Scared of her shadow. Could she start for the Jets? No. Could she tackle a tough mutt like Sorriendas with a knife? Same answer.”

“Why do the cops like her?”

“You know cops. What they like is a simple clear on a homicide, and the simplest is a domestic. He got whacked in the middle of the night, she was there, so they got their opportunity and motive. No forced entry. Case closed. On the other hand, he put up a helluva fight—defensive wounds, the place is wrecked. No way Melendez is going to chase him around the room with a combat knife.”

“What's her story? I gather that if she didn't do it, at least she saw the whole thing.”

“She hasn't said word one since they booked her. Shakes, yes. Crying, yes. But no statement. Or so they say. I haven't laid the famous Guma charm on her yet, which I intend to do this afternoon.”

“Good luck. By the way, who
do
you like for it?”

“Ruiz, who else? Who has apparently dropped out of sight, according to Pinky Billman.”

“Guma, you got Ruiz on the brain. Think about how many other kinds of people could have killed an uptown Latino dope handler. Maybe he was parking his pork someplace he shouldn't have. Maybe somebody is trying to give Ruiz a message, knocking off one of his boys. You don't know …”

“I know, Butch, believe me. It's on the street. Sandro and Ruiz had words in public last Thursday. I think it was about Melendez, as a matter of fact, but I'm not sure. Also Pinky gets a call from one of his snitches, guy named Arpado, day before yesterday. Says Sandro is pissed off, maybe he'd like to put it to Ruiz, but he's scared shitless. He also wants to know if Pinky is straight arrow, because everybody knows that Ruiz has protection. So the story is on the street. If somebody sold the same story to Ruiz, which is a reasonable bet, the Serpent's going to go for the knife, guaranteed.”

“Who's protecting Ruiz that everybody knows?”

“Aha! I figured that would get your attention. This we don't know exactly. Like I told you the other week, the Feds got that Tel-Air place in Queens staked out. They're making movies, they're tapping phones. Nobody else gets a taste, though, and nobody's supposed to make waves, might fuck up the big federal case. Meanwhile, the way I hear it, Ruiz is running all the dope in the world.”

“Let him, I could give a shit. But if he killed somebody in New York County, his ass is mine. Keep in touch on this, Goom, I'm starting to like it.”

“I knew you would. By the way, welcome back to Planet Earth, jewboy.”

The Streets of Calcutta were more jammed than usual when Karp went down to get some coffee. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees the previous night, and an icy rain outside showed no sign of diminishing. This stimulated in New York's legions of street people an intense desire to exercise their right as citizens and see justice done in open court. As a result, the place stank like a wet dog.

It was unusually noisy too. Spats and shoving episodes exploded like ladyfingers and echoed off the high ceilings. Karp's attention was drawn to a particularly loud argument. Munching a doughnut, he wandered over and shouldered through the knot of people surrounding the protagonists. A security guard had a half-nelson on a dark, wiry young man with a huge black mustache, who was struggling and yelling in some guttural language. Two other security guards were attempting to reason with an enormous and oddly costumed being, whom Karp recognized as the Walking Booger.

The Booger was to filth what Fred Astaire was to ballroom dancing. Even squeaky clean he would have been no treat. He had a harelip and a cleft palate, a huge nose reddened and eroded by some disease, and tiny, red-rimmed eyes. His cratered face was fringed by rank, coarse hair and a beard that for many years had relieved its owner of the necessity of ever wiping his nose. He was making violent gestures and adding incomprehensible roars—“Ahnk orhn Ink, 'm!”—to the general din.

Karp now observed that the center of the controversy was Dirty Warren, who was lying among a scattering of magazines at the feet of the dark mustache, who was trying to kick him. Warren was dabbing at his mouth with a blood-stained handkerchief and staring around him with a bewildered expression. Karp leaned over and helped him to his feet.

“What's going on, Darryl?” Karp asked one of the guards.

The guard, a husky black man with a shaved head, looped his finger a couple of times close to his forehead. “Aw, the same old shit. Dirty Warren called this gentleman here a bad name, and this gentleman popped him one.” He turned to the gentleman in question and roared, “Goddamn it, shut up, you!” The stream of foreign invective from the dark mustache subsided to a low rumble. “So the Booger sees this,” Darryl continued, “and goes for this guy. Ripped the front right off his jacket. He's some kind of Turk or Pakistan, some damn thing. Thinks his momma insulted, old Warren call him a motherfucker. I try to explain, Warren calls everybody motherfucker. He don't care, he want to beat Warren's ass. Shit, I never saw the old Booger get mad before.”

“Me neither,” Karp said. “A good thing, too.”

“Yeah, he's a solid citizen, the Booger. You know, some of these bondsmen send him on errands. He carries checks around sometimes, big cash too. Honest as the day is long.”

“He ever get mugged?” Karp asked, fascinated.

Darryl raised his eyebrows. “You think some skel gonna hit
him
for cash? Get his butt kicked
and
stink for a week.” He turned and addressed the crowd, “OK, folks, the party's over. Let's break it up.” The crowd started to drift away. Then he said, “Frank, take our friend here to the security room, let him cool out. Booger, you gonna be good now? You gonna buy this man a new jacket, right?”

“Ank ark 'n gnphnk.”

“Good boy. Warren, you try and watch your mouth sometimes. Go sell some magazines.”

“OK, Darryl, thank you,” said Dirty Warren meekly.

As Karp walked toward the elevators, he reflected that a man with a high school education had just disposed of an assault and battery and property damage case with perfect justice in three minutes for a public cost of about twenty-eight cents. Not for the first time he questioned the social utility of his profession. The elevator came. Just before the doors closed, Karp caught a glimpse of Dirty Warren on his knees, gathering up his tattered stock. The little man's face went blank as he drifted into one of his strange fits of being possessed by another personality. His eyes became lidded, his head cocked to the side, and his hand moved up to caress his hair, in a detailed parody of male narcissism. Karp felt a shock of recognition. He had seen that exact gesture before. But where?

At one that afternoon, Karp was sitting next to Marlene Ciampi in the jury box in a fourteenth-floor courtroom. The only other occupant of the box was a tall, thin man half hidden behind
The New York Times
. There was no jury because this was merely the arraignment on the grand jury indictment in
Karavitch et al.

The case was called. “Where the hell are they?” Karp asked under his breath.

“I'll go see,” Marlene answered and slid quickly out of the box and down the courtroom aisle. Karp felt a tremor of uneasiness: the possibility that “something” might happen to the hijackers was never far from his mind. He looked out at the spectator seats in the courtroom. A scattering of print journalists and dozing streetniks, but most of the seats were occupied by Croatian supporters, including that indefatigable cheerleader, Father Blic.

“Are the People ready in
Karavitch et al.
?” asked the judge. Benjamin Devine was a spare, elderly man who ran a no-nonsense calendar court.

Karp rose. “Your Honor, the defendants are not present at this time. It's possible they were delayed in traffic. May we have a second call on this case?” The judge grunted his assent and the clerk called the next case on the calendar. Karp sat down. The Croats murmured to one another and stayed put.

“Excuse me, please, but do you think there will be much delay?”

Karp twisted around to face the man behind the
Times
. A foreigner, was Karp's first thought. The man wore his graying brown hair swept straight back, longer at the top and shorter at the sides than was fashionable in New York. Also, he spoke with the faint roll of an accent, one that Karp had heard before. “You see, I have an appointment in two hours some distance from here, and if there is to be a long delay, I must call—”

“No, I doubt if it'll be that long. They probably got tied up en route.” Karp paused, then gestured to the Croatian spectators. “Ah, are you with them? The, ah, Croats.”

The man started and then smiled broadly, showing uneven brown teeth. “Me? No, no, not at all. Oh, allow me … Terzich.” He stood slightly and thrust his hand forward. Karp shook it awkwardly over his shoulder and introduced himself as well. “I have been retained by the court for translation. And you, of course, are the famous prosecutor of this case. I have seen you on television.”

“Uh-huh. That's interesting. A translator, huh? Is there much call for Croatian translators in New York, Mr., ah, Terzich?”

The man smiled again, shyly. “Well, not very much. I am called from time to time. I am a professor of Slavic languages at Columbia. Associate professor.”

“And originally you're from …?”

“Yugoslavia. Like them.” He gestured at the cheering section.

“But you said you weren't a Croat.”

“I am not. I am a Serb. From the Vojvodina.”

“But you can translate their language?”

Terzich chuckled. “It is the same language, Mr. Karp. We are the same people, divided by a common language, as I believe Mr. George Bernard Shaw said about the Americans and the British. This is why it is called Serbo-Croatian.”

“Huh!” Karp said. “Then what's Yugoslavian?”

The associate professor chuckled again. “Well, this is difficult to explain in one breath. There is a joke in Yugoslavia that we have two alphabets, three religions, four languages, five nationalities, and six republics. But Serbo-Croatian is one of the languages and two of the alphabets. You see, we southern Slavs became literate rather late in history. The Church gave us our writing, and those who were converted by Catholic missionaries took up the Latin script, and those who were converted by Orthodox missionaries took up the Cyrillic script.”

“Like Russian?”

“Very like Russian. The Catholic south Slavs became Croats; their Orthodox cousins, you might say, became Serbs. Since then, of course, the history of the two peoples has been very different. Which causes many problems. And one of them has come to rest on your doorstep, I think.”

“The case, you mean?”

“Yes. You could say that this case began in 1389. That was when the Turks crushed the Serbian empire at the Battle of Kossovo. Thus began five hundred years of appalling slavery for the Serbs, and centuries of nearly unending combat for the Croats, who found themselves on the front line of European resistance to the Turks. As a result of this …” Terzich stopped abruptly and smiled a sheepish smile. “Forgive me, Mr. Karp, I am carried away by my subject. The occupational disease of all professors is to lecture at the slightest provocation.”

“No, that's OK,” Karp said. “It's just hard to believe you would think that the motives for a crime could be traced back to things that happened so long ago.”

“Yes, this is what Americans believe generally. You have abolished history, have you not? Your Henry Ford says, ‘History is bunk,' and you nod, yes, the past is dead, only the future is real, and we can change this as we like. Perhaps this is true for you, though I doubt it. But in Yugoslavia we breathe history like the air. We cannot escape it, even when it carries, you might say, traces of poison.

“And so must you, because, believe me, there is no way to keep this history bottled up inside Yugoslavia. You are surprised it escapes and kills one policeman? Sixty years ago, it started a war that killed ten million people and changed the world. Perhaps even your life was changed by this little event, Mr. Karp. The First World War? Perhaps someone got shot instead of married. Perhaps someone decided that Europe was no longer healthy and made the voyage to America. So it is possible that you owe your existence to something that began inside my country.”

Terzich paused and nodded his head in the direction of the Croatians. “These people are living out a kind of historical dream. The defendants you are prosecuting they consider heroes. They were all raised on tales of dashing Croat warriors in red cloaks, killing Turks, killing Austrians, killing Serbs, all for the freedom of Croatia and the glory of its holy church.”

Karp shook his head. “But it wasn't any blow for freedom. They failed. It was a screwup from the start. They killed an innocent man for nothing.”