Counterplay

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Which is why,” Ellis added, “with your permission—and no disrespect to you, Mr. Fulton, I know your guys are providing security for the Karp family—but I’d like to have some of my guys watching, too. As good as I’m sure Clay’s guys are, my teams are trained to spot these people and their techniques before they can succeed.”

  Seeing the look on Fulton’s face, Karp started to say that he felt safe with the NYPD providing security—not to mention his wife’s former life as a security expert—but Fulton spoke first. “I agree. These assholes already caught me with my pants down once. It can’t hurt to have extra eyes and extra firepower around.”

  Karp closed his eyes and a malapropism of one of his favorite Yankees ever, Yogi Berra, popped into his head. “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

  4

  AFTER THE TWO FEDS LEFT, KARP STAYED TO TALK AWHILE longer, knowing that the long hours Fulton had with nothing to do at the hospital weighed him down with thoughts of the future.

  In many respects, they couldn’t have been more different. Karp was a Jew, born and raised in Brooklyn, the son of a moderately successful businessman and a schoolteacher mother.

  Fulton had been raised in Harlem, the son of a single mom who’d worked three jobs rather than have her boys learn to rely on government handouts. He was the youngest of three brothers. The eldest, Percy, had been shot and killed by a robber while working as an assistant manager in a liquor store. The perp had never been caught, and the injustice of that had been one of the primary reasons that Clay had become a cop. His other brother, Donald, had been drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1968 just in time for the Tet Offensive. He’d not returned and been listed as missing in action.

  The common denominator between Karp and Fulton was their shared sense of right and wrong as actually being separate and distinct from one another—no gray areas for them. Fulton had never accepted so much as a dime or a cup of coffee walking the streets as a young cop or as a middle-aged detective. Nor did he break the rules to catch bad guys. And Fulton knew that Karp would have quit the work he loved rather than accept a bribe, or give in to a threat, or “do whatever it takes” to win a conviction, unless he could do “it” the right way. His nearly perfect conviction rate on homicide cases was due to intense preparation, a brilliant legal mind, and—as Fulton had seen time and time again in court—a sense of integrity that jurors connected with.

  They were an odd pair of brothers, but brothers they were in the truest sense. Fulton lay back on the bed, let out a sigh, and strapped his right leg into a continuous-motion machine that flexed and unflexed the knee joint to keep it from stiffening, and to increase its range of motion. “This thing will drive you nuts,” he grumbled as the machine began whirring away. “Every four hours the dungeon masters they call nurses come in and move it to the other leg—hurts like a bitch when the knee is stiff. A man can’t get any sleep.”

  Karp made a motion as if playing the world’s smallest violin. “Feeling sorry for yourself, again, Detective Fulton?” he said. “Whatever happened to Freight-train Fulton, the human wrecking machine fullback out of Syracuse who gave out as much punishment as he took?”

  “Nobody around here to punish, ’cept Nurse Nancy,” Freight-train sulked. “And if I give her too much lip, she threatens to give me an enema when I’m sleeping. She would, too…. But on to more important matters; what’d you think of that guy?”

  “By ‘that guy,’” Karp replied, “I take you to mean Ellis, not Jaxon, who I regard as a friend and the second most honest cop I know. He gives you his word on something, you could bank it. A rare trait these days. But as for Ellis, ‘spooks’ have always made me nervous, especially if they’re ex-military.”

  “You picked up on the military vibes, too?” the detective asked.

  “Yeah, but not a foot soldier; more the born-to-command type. I don’t know what it is about these guys…they’re always just so sure that they’ve got it all figured out, and they’re condescending—the rest of us don’t know what in the hell is going on, so we shouldn’t even try to understand. They’re the ones with the data, let them make the decisions, and they don’t take it kindly if you question those decisions or their motives. After all, they’re out to save Mom, apple pie, and the American Way…. Then again, maybe we need people like that these days to deal with the terrorists.”

  “Why, Butch, are you suggesting that circumstances can sometimes require measures that might be a little bit outside of the letter of the law?” Fulton asked with a lifted eyebrow. “Do I see that stiff neck bending?”

  Karp knew his friend was only giving him grief, but scowled at him anyway for effect. “No, of course not,” he answered. “While I’m sure it’s going on, and maybe is even in our best interests, anybody—anybody—breaks the law in New York County, even in the name of national security, and they will answer to the NYPD and the DAO.”

  “Just asking,” Fulton replied with a grin. “Wanted to make sure the rules of the game weren’t changing around here.”

  Mention of the word game brought on an awkward silence, broken first by Fulton. “You know, they’re right about Kane coming after you and the family. He may be the world’s biggest liar, but he was telling the truth when he said the game was on between you and him. The worst thing about it is, I’m not in any position to protect you and it’s eating me up.”

  Karp patted him on the shoulder. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, your guys are mother-henning me worse than Nurse Nancy does you. I can’t sneeze in my bedroom without someone stepping out of the closet to hand me a tissue and say ‘Bless you.’ ”

  Fulton laughed. “They’re good men, but this Kane, he’s something else, and that Samira Azzam…. They killed those kids without blinking an eye, and I don’t expect they’ll blink when it comes to the twins, or Lucy, or Marlene, though I expect that wife of yours can take care of herself…. How’s she doing, by the way?”

  Karp hesitated—not because he wanted to keep anything from Fulton, who was as trusted as a brother, but because sometimes it was just plain hard to tell how Marlene was doing. They’d been together for almost thirty years—about as long as he’d known Fulton—having met when they were both young assistant district attorneys. But he never quite knew what was going on in that head of hers.

  Marlene Ciampi was a violence magnet. She’d quit the district attorney’s office after a letter bomb meant for Karp caused her to lose an eye, and started a firm that provided security to high-profile and wealthy clients. One of her “hobbies” had also been protecting women from abusive, often dangerous men.

  Now, she was trying to deal with the recent death of her mother. Karp sensed that she was troubled about something regarding the death but wasn’t ready to talk to him about it.

  “She’s still trying to adjust to her mother being gone and deciding what to do about her dad. He’s reaching that point where he can’t really live alone,” Karp said. “But he doesn’t want to leave the family home…. And she’s still going through the ups and downs of trying to stay out of trouble, and the trouble on New Year’s Eve didn’t help much.”

  Both men were quiet for a moment, reflecting on what might have been. An Iraqi terrorist had nearly pulled off blowing up Times Square on New Year’s Eve by planting explosives in an abandoned subway tunnel beneath the area. Tens of thousands would have died except for the actions of Marlene, a spiritual Indian police chief from the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico named John Jojola, as well as an old Vietnamese gangster, Tran Do Vinh, a cowboy, Ned Blanchet, and a millennialist vigilante, David Grale.

  As strange a team of superheroes as ever walked out of a comic book, Karp thought. “It’s tough to play by the rules when the other guys don’t have to,” he said.

  “Yeah, the question is how do we win this game with Kane under those circumstances?” Fulton mused.

  “Last man standing, I expect,” Karp replied before his eyes glanced at the braces and he immediately regretted the comment. “Clay
, I didn’t mean—”

  Fulton held up a hand. “No offense taken. I understood where you were coming from. But you’re right; it’s going to be him or you. Just stay on your toes, Butch. Whenever you think you’ve got him figured out, try to look at it from another angle. We can win this one, too. This is a game to him, he’s going to make a mistake, and we have to be ready.”

  When Karp was at last ready to leave, he stood and put on his coat. He felt something in the pocket and reached inside, pulling out one of Guma’s Cuban cigars, which he tossed to Fulton. “It’s from Ray. Don’t tell Nurse Nancy where you got that,” he said.

  “I won’t, and tell Goom thanks,” Fulton said, giving the cigar a lingering sniff. “Hey, Butch?”

  “Yeah, Clay?”

  “When we’re ready to catch this guy, if there’s any way possible, I’d like to be in on it.”

  Karp smiled grimly and nodded. “Sure…as long as you promise me that he won’t have any ‘accidents’ before we haul his ass into court.”

  “Of course,” Fulton replied with a chuckle. “But if I’m lucky, he’ll try to escape again.”

  As Karp left the hospital, he pulled the peacoat around him to ward off the chill. Officially, it was spring, the last snow had melted, and there had certainly been those days he loved best when, washed clean by winter’s snows and rains, the city gleamed and trees began to put forth tender green leaves, as the grass in the parks woke from hibernation. But tonight Old Man Winter was reminding the citizens of Gotham that he might have one last punch to throw before he was counted out.

  Walking out of the entrance, Karp was quickly flanked by two brawny plainclothes cops, each of them with a neck bigger than his thigh. The cheap suits did little to disguise their occupations; they even walked like guys who were carrying guns and hoping for a chance to use them. Criminy, has it come to this? he thought. An armed escort.

  Karp would have settled for the driver of his official city car, an armored Lincoln. But Fulton wouldn’t hear of it.

  In fact, when Karp complained about his new shadows, Fulton had fixed him with his “don’t fuck with me” glare and spat, “I already screwed up once this year and got people killed, and the year’s just started. Now, I know I can’t guarantee I’ll do any better this time, but let me try to do my job.”

  The look in Fulton’s eyes had told Karp it was pointless to argue.

  Karp’s two escorts drove him back to the family loft on the corner of Crosby and Grand and parked in front of the building. They were still there when he brought out the trash two hours later. They started to get out of the car, but he motioned for them to remain where they were. It was getting colder, and he was only going to toss the garbage in a Dumpster in the alley.

  Karp closed the lid on the Dumpster and was about to turn to leave when a shadow emerged from the deeper dark of the alley. He chided himself for letting the security detail remain in the car and prepared to fight. Go down swinging, you big dummy, he thought.

  “Good evening, Mr. Karp,” said a soft, raspy voice.

  Before he could say anything else, the speaker was racked by a fit of coughing that sounded deeper and wetter than was healthy. But Karp had recognized the voice and relaxed. “David Grale,” he said. “I guess the question is, what brings you out on a night like this?”

  The last he’d seen Grale, the former Catholic social worker–turned–homicidal maniac, was on New Year’s Eve when Grale had been pivotal in helping thwart the terrorist attack on Times Square. Since then, he’d disappeared back into the labyrinth of man-made and natural tunnels that honeycombed subterranean Manhattan Island with his army of Mole People, homeless wretches who lived beneath the city, venturing out only to find, beg, or steal the basic necessities of life.

  Some years earlier, Grale had started to take it upon himself to hunt down and kill men who at that time had been preying on the homeless of New York City. He believed that his victims were men but possessed by demons. At least that was the story according to Karp’s daughter, Lucy, who’d first met Grale when he was serving soup to the poor by day and killing by night in a perceived battle between good and evil.

  Now Grale, according to Lucy, was some sort of spiritual leader and avenging angel for the Mole People. They’d rallied behind his cause, and quite a number had given their lives to stop the bombing plot.

  Karp wasn’t sure how to feel about Grale. The man was by his own admission a serial killer—even if his targets were themselves discovered to be murderers and rapists, and wanted by the police. “The others,” as Grale referred to them, also lived below the city streets or in dark places where regular citizens did not go if they knew what was good for them. No one would mourn their loss, but the law did not hold a special place for vigilante killing.

  Then again, that was also a line Marlene had tiptoed around on behalf of defenseless women. It all added up to a conundrum for Karp.

  Whatever else Karp thought of the man, Grale seemed to have some inexplicable tie to his family that wove his mad purposes into the fabric of their lives. He was dangerous, probably insane, and yet he kept showing up in the proverbial nick of time to save them from, for lack of a better word, “evil” men. Karp couldn’t quite bring himself to condemn Grale’s actions when there’d been times these actions were all that saved his family from tragedy.

  Even in the dim light that filtered into the alley, Karp could see that Grale’s lifestyle was taking its toll. Always tall and thin, his face now appeared drawn and haggard, almost skeletal. Lank dirty hair hung raggedly around his pale face, a thin beard filling in the hollows. He shivered beneath the hooded Xavier College sweatshirt as he tried to wrap his arms around his thin chest for warmth.

  “Yes, what would bring me out on a night like this,” Grale responded, “away from the warmth of my underground kingdom…. I’m afraid that I have been waiting for the opportunity to warn you.”

  “Warn me?” Karp asked.

  “Yes,” Grale said. “Warn you that Kane is coming. His vengeance will begin soon.”

  “You know where he is or what he plans to do?”

  Grale shook his head, which seemed to set his whole body trembling, and he was racked again by the damp cough. “No. Nothing concrete or I would be there, not here. But haven’t you noticed the sudden jump in your crime statistics, especially those for violent crimes like murder, rape, and assaults?”

  As a matter of fact, Karp had been apprised of the numbers just that morning. His aide-de-camp, Gilbert Murrow, had come into the office, worried about how a spike in the stats would be portrayed in the media. Karp had assured Murrow that a fluctuation seven months before the election wasn’t going to turn the population against him. He wondered how Grale knew…. Or was it just a lucky guess?

  “What does that have to do with Kane?” he asked Grale.

  “Evil men are getting bolder and their numbers are growing,” Grale said. “They’re drawn to the city like rats to cheese. Those of the others we’ve managed to catch jabber on and on about ‘something big’ brewing.”

  Karp was not a big believer in Grale’s theories about the gathering forces of darkness and an upcoming Armageddon-like battle with New York City at its center. His daughter gave them credence, but Lucy was something of a spiritual eccentric herself. It all sounded like something either out of the Bible or a comic book, whereas professionally he preferred to rely on the State of New York Revised Criminal Statutes such as they applied to crimes committed in the County of New York.

  “I can’t do much with that, David,” Karp said. “I need to be able to charge people with crimes so that, if convicted, they can be put behind walls and razor wire.”

  Grale looked at him, his dark eyes burned with either madness or fever. Karp couldn’t tell which, but they also seemed to be judging him. Grale appeared to be about ready to say something else but was interrupted by a coughing fit. When it stopped, he wiped at his mouth with his hand, and glanced at the dark stain on the sleeve of his swe
atshirt.

  Karp saw it, too. “You want to come in and warm up?” he said, looking up at the light shining out of the windows of the fifth-floor loft where his wife and twin boys waited. Faint laughter and happy shouts could be heard through the century-old brick walls.

  Grale gazed up at the windows with obvious longing. He’d been in the loft before, back when he was still just a handsome young social worker dedicated to helping the poor and the object of Lucy’s schoolgirl crush. He smiled, perhaps at the memory, or perhaps the gesture, but then shook his head. “No…but thank you for the kindness of the offer,” he said. “I think that may cross the line of this ‘professional’ relationship between the two of us, Mr. Karp, and we will both need all the friends we can get in the coming months. Anyway, I need to be returning to my flock.”

  Grale suddenly stepped back into a doorway where Karp could not see him though he was only a few feet away. A spotlight stabbed into the alley, catching Karp in its beam.

  “You okay, Mr. Karp?” the voice of one of his police bodyguards called from the Lincoln, which had silently rolled to a stop in front of the alley.

  “Yeah, sure,” he answered. “I was just looking at the stars for a moment.”

  “No problem,” the voice said. The car pulled a U-turn to take up a position across the street.

  Karp glanced back over his shoulder. “David?” He peered into the darkness, but there was no answer, just the whispering of shadows.

  5

  ON HIS WAY UP TO THE MONDAY MORNING MEETING, GUMA decided to stop at the small cafe inside the Criminal Courts building to grab a cup of coffee. He wanted to be bright and alert when he presented the Stavros case to the other assistant district attorneys. Not that he wasn’t ready—on the contrary, he felt in fighting trim, having done his roadwork and gone numerous rounds with his sparring partner, Karp.