Depraved Indifference (6 page)

She put the cat down. Lighting a cigarette, she blew a ragged cloud over Crosby Street. Now she thought about her new life, as it spread out from the bomb. The pain. The recovery. Throwing herself back into work. Getting used to the startled looks, the embarrassed, averted glances. Loving Karp.

Yes, that was the good part, or was it? Did Karp really love her, or was it guilt? She used to be suspicious of men who loved her because she was gorgeous; now she was suspicious because they might be guilty or pitying.

And of course, she felt guilty too, because underneath the sharp Barnard and Yale Law grad and tough-talking lawyer still lived the Sacred Heart girl from Queens, whose grandparents had come over from Sicily, and who wanted to get married in white in a church. Wheels within wheels. Marlene had been periodically depressed since the explosion, trying to work it out herself while slaving twelve hours a day at what arguably was the most depressing job in the greater New York area.

“I'm cracking up, folks,” Marlene said out loud to the sympathetic silence of Crosby Street. She flicked her cigarette butt out into the street, watched it explode into sparks, and went back inside.

She poured herself a glass of white wine from the jug in the refrigerator. It tasted like air conditioning. She downed it and poured another. The phone rang.

“Hi. It's me.”

“Butch? Hi, baby.”

“What're you up to, Champ?”

“Going crazy. Drinking. Crying. Did you hear about Terry Doyle?”

“Yeah. All about it. Denton was here earlier.”

“Denton? The Chief? At
your
place? Holy shit! What'd he want?”

“He gave me the case.” Karp described his conversation with his recent visitor. When he had finished Marlene said, “Butch, that's cosmic. I'm in, right?”

“If you want.”

“If I want? I'm the best you got on bombs, baby. Besides, I know all the guys on the squad. And they'll spill their guts to me, which could count heavy if somebody fucked up on the squad. Otherwise it'd be the blue wall. Shit, I'm jumping up and down, Karp.”

“Great, besides, I might get to see you more. For the past two weeks you've been avoiding me.”

“Ah, Butch, come on, cut me some slack here. You know how I—”

“Yeah, I know how you feel, you don't like to see me when you're depressed. But I miss you, Marlene. When are you going to hear about the compensation?”

Marlene had been trying in vain to get the state to pay compensation for her injury and the colossal hospitalization costs. She had given Karp this as the cause of her depression, a plausible fib. Karp was not one for deep psychological probing.

“Oh, who the fuck knows. A couple of weeks. When do we start this case?”

“Tomorrow morning, if you want. We could go out to the hospital and then over to Rodman. Say ten?”

Marlene agreed and they hung up. Once again love was left unsaid between them.

4

“T
HE PLANE'S IN
Paris,” said the voice on the phone. “It landed about midnight, our time.”

Karp sat up in bed and groped for his watch. Six-forty, Saturday morning. Denton was off to an early start. Karp knuckled the sleep from his eyes and said, “What's the situation?”

“Unclear. I got this from Pillman and he wasn't exactly forthcoming. You going to see him today?”

“I plan to. We were going to see Hanlon first and find out what happened at the bomb range.”

“We?”

“I've got Marlene Ciampi working with me on this.”

“The one who got blown up a couple of years back?”

“Yeah, what about her?” Karp had picked up on the dubious note in Denton's voice.

“Ahhh … well. Are you sure she's, ah, right for this particular job?”

“It's my case, Bill. My players.”

“So it is. Who are you going to steal from our end?”

“I'll work with the regular DA squad for now and keep it small to begin with. I'll let you know if I need hands.”

“You do that,” Denton said.

Karp got up, put in his usual half hour on the rowing machine, and dressed in a tan poplin suit and cordovan loafers: his summer uniform. He had two of the tan and two navy pinstripes for the winter, bought from a Chinatown tailor he had helped out after a robbery.

Dressed, Karp called Lieutenant Fred Spicer's office. Spicer headed the squad of NYPD detectives assigned to help the DA's office with investigations. Spicer had a regular day off, but the duty sergeant agreed to send around a car and driver. After calling Marlene to say he'd be over in fifteen minutes, he called Chief Inspector Peter Hanlon and set up an eight-thirty appointment at police headquarters. Karp thought it unremarkable that the man who ran the Arson and Explosion Division was in his office at seven-thirty on a Saturday. Not this Saturday.

Finally, Karp called Vinson Talcott Newbury, another assistant district attorney, at home.

“Hey, Butch! Make it snappy, kid. I'm out the door.”

“Going to Annabelle's?”

“Where else? What's happening?”

“I need one of your well-placed cousins, V.T.”

“Butch, your belief that my family controls the Western world is flattering, but I have to be in Great Barrington by eleven. Can't it wait?”

“Not really.” Karp gave Newbury a brief outline of the bomb and hijack case. “What I need,” he continued, “is a line into Paris, the embassy, or whatever—whoever's handling the U.S. interest in getting these guys back.”

“Why don't you work through the Feds here?”

“I will, but I want an edge. Denton has a feeling that the Feds are not being their usual forthcoming selves. What do you say?”

“I say it's going to put a dent in my emotional life, such as it is. Annabelle believes there's a time for work and a time for play. However, between my fabled charm and my monstrously overdeveloped sexual apparatus—surprising in one of such diminutive stature—I believe I can repair any resultant damage. Besides, no favor is too great for the man who bought me my first knish. Let me make some calls.”

“You have somebody?”

“Well, we have a first cousin at State: Andrew. He's in economic affairs, probably not directly connected, but he's pretty senior. I'm sure we have somebody in Paris, a second by marriage or a once removed. I'll find out. I tell you what—give me a buzz at Annabelle's around noon, I should have something.”

The black Ford pulled up two minutes later. Doug Brenner, a large, jowly detective, was at the wheel. Karp got in the front seat and Brenner pulled away.

“We're going to the ranges, right?” asked Brenner.

“Yeah, but first we got to pick somebody up. Stop by 49 Crosby and honk.”

Marlene was wearing a yellow shirtwaist dress set off by a white sweater knotted around her shoulders and white canvas shoulder bag. As she skipped lightly down the iron stairway from her door, she looked to Karp like a college girl meeting her date for the big game. Her black hair had grown out since the explosion, and she wore it shoulder-length, parted on the right so that it fell like a pall across the bad part of her face and her left eye. She had her glassie in place this morning, Karp noticed; this was her habit during official business. Among friends she wore a pirate patch and her hair pulled back.

Marlene climbed into the back seat, greeted both men, and lit a cigarette. Brenner lit the stump of a cigar he fished out of the ashtray. Karp opened his window. He caught Marlene's glance in the rearview mirror and winked. She smiled and stuck out the tip of her tongue for an instant. Thus their relationship proceeded in public, at Marlene's insistence, although the DA's office was wasting its money on any detective who did not know about it at this point. The same for their friends among the attorneys. Karp thought it childish and had said so many times, but lately he had left off arguing, resigned to playing things Marlene's way.

Karp had never met Peter Hanlon before, but he had known many people with something to hide, and Hanlon looked like one of them. He sat behind his glass-topped oak desk and regarded the two ADAs with a carefully neutral expression. He was a medium-sized man with a black pompadour and a small, sharp nose on which perched heavy, dark-rimmed glasses. The dark rings under his eyes indicated that he hadn't slept well.

“Mr. Karp,” he began, “you seem to have friends in all the right places. Bill Denton speaks very highly of you. What can we do to help?”

“Well, Inspector, we're obviously going for a murder one on this for the terrorist group. Bill's notion is that we would put together a team of detectives from across the Department to gather all the relevant evidence—one investigation, one case.”

“I see. And you would be in charge of all of it?”

“That's right.”

“What about the Department's own internal investigation?”

“The Department can do what it likes, naturally. But we would expect you to give us any physical evidence you turned up, and access to any reports. The usual. I know it's early, but have you come up with anything yet?”

Hanlon shook his head and flapped his hand. “Oh, no, it's far too early for that. It hasn't been twenty-four hours since—since the accident.”

Karp perked up at this. “Accident? Is that what you're calling it?”

Hanlon cleared his throat. “No, not at all. I mean the explosion, the event.”

“But you said ‘accident.' That implies that there was some kind of error that led to the explosion. Was there?”

Hanlon's face darkened and his jaw got tight. Karp thought, he's going to say he doesn't like being cross-examined. I just got started and I'm screwing this up.

“I don't like being cross-examined, Mr. Karp.”

“Sorry,” said Karp, forcing a grin. “Habit, I guess. Look, Inspector, I think maybe we're getting off on the wrong foot—”

“I knew Terry Doyle. He was a friend of mine,” Marlene said.

Both men stared at her. She went on. “I met him back in '74 when I was on the Brownstone Bomb Factory case. He was new and I was new, so I guess we just gravitated toward each other. He was a funny guy. Cocky. He had this thing about booby traps. He loved to rig these little devices and leave them around. You'd go to sit down at the typewriter or pick up a phone and kablooie! White smoke, red smoke, whistles.

“But I'll tell you one thing, he loved the Job. Loved it. And the bomb squad, too. So I want you to know that I want to nail the motherfuckers who did this as much as anyone on the Job. But I want to do it the way Terry would have wanted it. If there's any shit flying around I'll do my best to see it doesn't stick to the Department.”

For a moment the only sound was the hum of the ventilation system. Then Hanlon said, “I see. Naturally, I feel the same way, Miss, ah, Ciampi, is it? A real tragedy, a great loss. The inspector's funeral is Monday.”

In the elevator going down, Marlene leaned against Karp's flank and sighed. He put his arm around her and squeezed gently.

“Thanks for jumping in with Hanlon,” he said.

“I had to. Jesus, Butch, you can't get into pissing contests with police brass. In another minute you'd of had your shlongs out on his desk looking to see who's got the biggest.”

“Mine is.”

“Of course, but the point is we can't roll into these guys just because Denton is fronting for us. I don't care how corrupt some cop is, if they think the Department's going to get slimed, it's stonewall, period. Even Denton won't do you any good then. He's a cop too.”

The elevator stopped and, demurely separated, they walked out onto Police Plaza.

“You're going too fast, Marlene. Why would anybody think the Department screwed up on this one? A cop tried to defuse a bomb and it blew up. We know who did it. What's the problem?”

“I don't know, but Hanlon was weirded out. You saw that too, right? So what else could it be except something that might reflect on the job? He's a secret Croatian? He doesn't want to catch a bunch of cop killers?”

“No, but I'll tell you something else wacky. He asked about whether we were going to get the hijackers back for trial. I told him we were sure that we would and that we had something working already?”

“Which was bullshit, of course.”

“Of course. But he believed it. And he didn't look happy about it. Not at all.”

They got to Rodman Neck at mid-morning. Captain Frank Marino, the bomb squad detective in charge of the investigation, was expecting them. Marlene knew him from her previous work and liked him. This guy didn't pull any punches.

Like his boss, Marino wasn't happy either, but for more obvious reasons. And he was willing to talk about them.

“I still can't believe it,” he said as he walked with Karp and Ciampi toward the fatal bunker. “Jack Doheny has been taking bombs apart for twenty years. He was like my best guy. Now this. You know we haven't lost a cop since 1933?”

“I know,” Marlene said. “You got a line on what happened?”

Marino didn't seem to hear. “The goddamnedest thing! A brick, he said, it's just a brick. I listened to the tapes about fifty times. They pulled it perfect at Grand Central, set it up, clipped it, all by the book. Then they go and pull a damn bonehead … OK, here we are.”

They had arrived at the lip of the bunker. Several vans were parked in the area, and men were carrying equipment and bundles of plastic evidence bags to and fro, vanishing down the ladder and reappearing, like delving dwarves. A stiff wind was blowing off the bay, flipping Marlene's dress around. Somebody whistled appreciatively.

“Can we go down?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Marino answered distractedly. “Follow me.”

The bunker was as active as a stirred-up anthill; the ants were PD technicians in blue jumpsuits with a couple of white coats thrown in. Most of them appeared to be involved in an impossible task—placing every scrap of wood, metal, wire, every crumb of interestingly foreign substance into a plastic evidence bag and neatly labeling it. By the light of powerful lamps set up on poles, two men were taking photographs like they owned stock in Kodak.