Depraved Indifference (28 page)

“What about Doyle, you going to blow that off too?”

“Shit, no! Doyle's different. I'm at least holding some cards on that one, as long as Bill Denton doesn't get hit by a truck. But that's it, ace. No Tel-Airs. I'm going home.”

“Suppose they're connected?” V.T. said in a neutral voice.

Karp, who was shrugging on his suit coat and walking toward the door, whipped around with his arms still half in the sleeves. He looked like a falcon with its wings folded, swooping out of the sky.

He stared at his friend. “What's connected, V.T.?”

“Gotcha!” said V.T., breaking into a broad grin. “It's tenuous but interesting. You have to have a devious mind—”

“V.T., don't screw around with me now.”

“Fine, I'll just skim the high points.”

“Yeah, leave out the parts about which relatives gave you what stuff.”

V.T. sniffed. “To me, those
are
the high points. However. To resume, Tel-Air is a privately held Caymans corporation, which means it's just a brass plate on a lawyer's office down there in the sun. I won't go into how I got hold of this information, but Ruiz owns forty-nine percent of the company. The directors are all stooges of his, except one, who represents the majority shareholder, someone named George Paine. He's not important; in fact, he may not even exist. But the shareholding firm is very important.

“Now here's where it gets tricky. Control of Tel-Air is lodged with another offshore called Delmaris Investments. Ruiz is on the board of that one, together with two other men, Luis Cabrone and Bernardo Gelles. OK, think back a couple of years—Watergate, Vietnam protest, Daniel Ellsberg's shrink, the Carl Hoffman break-in. Got it?”

Karp scrunched up his brows, then shrugged. “Sorry, V.T., I'm drawing a blank.”

“Ah, the tragedy of Alzheimer's and so young! Carl Hoffman? Worked for the Pentagon, realized that senior people in Vietnam and Washington were covering up the real numbers of Viet Cong and N.V.A. troops, inventing body counts. Spilled his guts to the
Washington Post
? Later somebody broke into his apartment, looking for incriminating stuff.”

“Oh, yeah, now it comes back. They found out the guys who did it were on the FBI payroll as ‘informants.' A big scandal.”

“Right, a big scandal. And the names of the guys they nailed for the break-in? The envelope, please: Luis Cabrone and Bernardo Gelles. You like it? Wait, there's more. OK, we got black-bag guys on the FBI payroll connected to Tel-Air and Ruiz. Let's go back to the companies. Delmaris Investments has only two investments. One is Tel-Air. The other is—are you ready for this? Southeastern Air Ferry Service, Limited.”

“Who?”

“Butch, children in rompers know that Southeastern is a CIA front. They ran the whole Guatemalan operation through it. So Ruiz is linked to CIA too. And not only that. It looks like Ruiz and his merry band were used as police and counterinsurgency trainers, plus some other fairly nasty odd jobs, when the CIA helped to whack out the Arbenz regime in Guatemala.

“So that's the corporate connection. Look at Tel-Air more closely and what do we find? Nothing much. The firm has almost no assets. They rent a warehouse out in Jamaica, Queens, and a couple of vans. For a shipping company they do remarkably little shipping. They don't have any bank loans, they're not in commercial paper either. But do they have a cash flow! For the last six months it's averaged around two hundred K monthly. They maintain a small wash account in Mercer Trust, dozens of small deposits, all cash, very cagey.

“Every month or so Ruiz cleans it out, and he or one of his men gets on the direct Swissair flight from Kennedy to Geneva. They're not pricing cuckoo clocks. Every dime goes into a numbered account at the Credit Vosges.

“Only two commodities can generate that kind of loot with no visible honest economic activity. One is dope, which we know he's into from Guma. The other is arms. That would explain one peculiarity: we can't find any supplier for his operation. Plus if he's using Tel-Air to launder his cash, and if almost all his capital goes into the bank, and if all the cash from the bank goes to Switzerland, what does he use for dope buys? He's not growing poppies in Queens, and DEA is positive he's not buying overseas. His volume would make waves for sure and attract the attention of the wise guys in Marseilles and Palermo. That's a tightly held franchise.

“Another fact: in March 1976, during a period when our government was trying to put the screws on El Salvador by cutting down on military aid, a ‘private' group based in Salvador purchased five hundred and thirty thousand dollars' worth of weapons from a French consortium. The same month, Ruiz's account at Credit Vosges showed withdrawals of approximately five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in Swiss francs. Don't ask. DEA corrupted a Swiss bank clerk. Conclusion: Ruiz is getting dope, both heroin and coke, from somebody, for free, selling it here in bulk, and using at least part of the proceeds to buy guns. Any ideas about who could be the middleman?”

“CIA?”

“Two points. But to be fair, I doubt that it's official CIA, not like it was in the Sixties, fucking out of control. There must be dozens of former or even current CIA guys now who are running, or could run, entirely renegade operations funded by self-generated sources. Ruiz's operation looks like one of those.”

Karp tapped his fingers on his desk. The headache was building into a rare skull-buster. He massaged his face and neck and wondered idly where Marlene was right now. He'd have to call her before he left.

“So? What do you think?” V.T. asked. “Pretty neat, huh? It sure as hell gives you something to work Elmer Pillman over with.”

“True. But a connection? Bunch of Croats, bunch of Cubans, neither likes the reds very much, maybe both have a CIA handle, but … or am I missing something?”

“Just one detail. The agent who was the chief executive officer of Southeastern, who is reportedly close to Ruiz, just happened to be on the plane with the Croats on the way back from Paris and has gone into deep bye-byes since. Our mysterious friend Dettrick. Coincidence? Maybe, but there's also those swarthy guys dashing around and burning down luggage stores in Grand Central Station and otherwise threatening witnesses in the Doyle case. They're sure as hell not middle-aged Croatian refugees. Maybe they're Ruiz's people doing a favor for Daddy.”

Karp thought about this for a while. “OK, there's a connect, but only through Dettrick. Let's say Dettrick's behind the game to spring Karavitch et al. or working for somebody who is. What we don't have is the why.”

The door opened and Guma walked in, looking rumpled and tired. When he saw V.T. sitting in the only visitor's chair, he went out and dragged in a wheeled secretary's chair and sat down. Karp said, “Goom, what we want to know is why.”

“Why is a crooked letter, as Mama used to say. Why what?”

“Did V.T. fill you in on a possible link between Ruiz and the Doyle thing?”

“Yeah, a little. The CIA connection, right? Sounds like a fucking movie. What about it?”

“We were wondering why a collection of dope- and gun-running renegade Cubans with CIA connections would suddenly take an interest in Croatian national independence.”

Guma shrugged. “Search me, Jack. Why don't we pick up Señor Ruiz and ask him?”

“Good idea. But why should he tell us anything?”

Guma swiveled around on his chair, wearing a triumphant and not entirely pleasant smile. “Because I have his tiny
culliones
right in my hand. Elvira Melendez will testify that she saw Sorriendas get slashed to pieces by Ruiz and a pal of his, Esteban Otero, a guy they call Hermo. We just finished the Q and A.”

“Brilliant, Guma!” V.T. said. “How did you swing it? I thought she wouldn't talk at all.”

“Besides my charm, which is the stuff of legends, I arranged for some protection for her and for her family down in Miami.”

“Protection?” Karp said. “I thought the People were protecting her in the Women's House of D. And who did you get in Miami, the cops?”

Guma shifted uncomfortably and worked his mobile face as he searched for a plausible lie. Finding none suitable at hand, he decided to come clean. “Well, actually, she's not in jail. I got the bail reduced and sprung her. She should be on a plane for Miami in about twenty minutes. Also, I dropped the charges on her. She's a material witness now in a case against Ruiz and Hermo Otero. I already filed the complaint.”

Karp whistled softly. “My, you've been a busy boy. So the Melendez family is to be reunited in beautiful Miami. Uh-huh. And who did you say you had watching them in the world capital of Latino crime? The South Miami police force?”

“Actually, it's Hialeah. But, uh, I didn't actually involve the local cops.”

“Guma, not the Feds.”

“Shit, no. What kind of jerk do you think I am?”

“Who, then? A private security firm? With what for money?”

Guma threw up his hands. “All right, already! It's under control. I made a couple of calls to some people I know and it's all arranged, no money involved.”

“These people have names, Goom?”

Guma squirmed. “Yeah, just some people I know in North Miami Beach, from the old neighborhood, you know? Jimmy Guardino, and, ah, Tony Buonafacci. They're actually gonna stay in Tony's place.”

V.T. was having a hard time stifling a case of the giggles. Karp felt it welling up in him too, but he struggled to keep his expression neutrally stern. “Ah, Guma, let me get this straight. You parked our material witness and her family with Tony Bones?”

“Yeah. Come on, guys, it's OK. Look, Tony doesn't like Cuban dope dealers, right? For business reasons. And on the personal angle, he's a family man. He don't go for the shit Ruiz was pulling, with the girl and all. Also I figure anybody who could go one-on-one with Joey Gallo and walk away has got to have the edge on a bunch of Cubans. Hey, what's so funny?”

After Karp and V.T. had finished laughing, Karp wiped his streaming eyes and said, “Mad Dog, I love it! You made my week. And you know why I love it? Because I'm not responsible anymore. No more loneliness of command. I can appreciate your work for the artistry it is. It'll be one of the comforts of my declining years.”

Guma said, “V.T., what's he talking about, ‘not responsible'?”

“Karp got the sack today. He's no longer our glorious assistant leader.”

“What? How the hell did that go down?”

In a flat, tired voice, Karp recounted what had happened in Wharton's office. As he did, he found to his surprise that he could not summon the feelings of rage he had felt at the time. He was not calm, exactly.

It was as if something was missing in him that had been there before—a certain feeling of invulnerability. With a start he recognized it as something he had experienced before, when his knee had been smashed and he had lost the dream of physical perfection. He wondered what it was he had lost in Wharton's office.

When he had finished, Guma got to his feet and started pacing the little room. “Goddamn it. We can't accept this. No way.”

“Guma, it's OK,” Karp said tiredly.

“It's fucking not OK,” cried Guma. “It took me years to break you in. How am I gonna get away with stuff if I got some new asshole breathing down my neck? And it will be an asshole, you can bet on it.”

“Got any suggestions? Anybody?” V.T. asked.

“Short of sucking Wharton's weenie in Macy's window, I can't think of anything I could do that would get them to change their minds. I'm not sure I even want them to, if you really want to know.”

“Oh, Butch, for chrissakes, cut out that crap,” Guma said, his voice rising. “You're not quitting on us now. What we gotta do is get rid of them.”

“Guma, be real …”

“No, we can do it. Wharton first. Without Wharton, Bloom is like a prick without balls.”

“A happy conceit,” V.T. said. “Guma, do you think that this is the moment we've been waiting for? I wonder …”

“The moment? What do you mean, V.T.?”

“I mean for the creation of a situation so cosmically, so transcendently embarrassing that the victim would be rendered incapable of participating in public life for years, and which would be so constructed as to hold the perpetrators entirely harmless from retribution. I mean—”

Guma's face lit with comprehension. “Shit, yes! This is it! This is finally it! It's time for the Big Prank.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Karp asked.

So they told him.

14

K
ARP WALKED HOME
up Broadway that evening around half past five. The sky still held some steely light in the west, and traffic still roared in the streets. Usually when Karp went home, the streets of these commercial districts were deserted. No more late nights, he thought: from now on I'm a five o'clock shadow. He had even left his briefcase at the office.

Karp also continued to ponder
Karavitch et al.
and was troubled. He thought he had a reasonably accurate picture of the sequence of events that had led to the death of Terry Doyle, and of course he knew who had done it. What he still lacked was an understanding of motivation. And motivation was the key to this case. “The question is why?” Karp said aloud, banging his fist into his hand as he walked along, just another New Yorker talking to himself on the streets of the world's largest open-air aftercare clinic. He stared in embarrassment and glanced furtively around. A man leaning against a wall with a flat pint of Orange Rock looked at him without interest. At least he wasn't hearing voices. Yet. Suddenly he wanted more than anything to talk to Marlene. He cut right on Grand Street and walked over to her loft. Her window was dark and her two cats, Prudence and the immense and ragged Juris, were sitting on her front step, which meant she was out. Karp considered sitting down and waiting with the cats. Instead he kicked the wall hard enough to hurt his toe and frighten the cats away. Then he went to a lunch counter, where he purchased two leaden potato knishes and a can of Pepsi, and walked home.