Torrisi led the way to the back of the auditorium and an exit door that opened into yet another hallway. “This place has more secret passages than a Scottish castle,” Murrow muttered. “If these walls could talk.”
“Just an old building with lots of cheap remodeling,” Torrisi replied. “But you’re right about the walls.” He reached a door and grabbed the knob, but before opening it he said, “I’m sorry but Clay and Mr. Murrow will have to stay here.”
Clay started to protest. He was responsible for Karp’s safety and his boss had a way of ending up in more jams than ants at a picnic, as his grandmother used to say. Murrow, worried about some unknown political ramification of all the secrecy, began to voice his concern, too. But Karp waved them both to silence.
“Clay, I’m sure I’m quite safe. Even if the PBA wanted to shoot me, I think they’d plan it better than to do it in their own building,” he said. “If you guys wouldn’t mind getting the car and pulling it up to the curb, I’ll just be a few minutes.”
Clay Fulton and Murrow stalked off, muttering under their collective breath. Torrisi turned the knob and led the way into a room. Again the lights were low, leading Karp to wonder, What’s with these union types. Is it for mood or are they too cheap to buy more lightbulbs? It took a moment for his eyes to adjust; only then did he notice the dark figure of a woman sitting in a chair on the far side of the room. He glanced sideways at Torrisi, who spoke as the woman stood up.
“Butch Karp, I’d like you to meet Liz Tyler. Liz, this is the district attorney of Manhattan.”
The woman said hello but, Karp noticed, made no attempt to shake his hand or approach too closely. It was Torrisi who spoke again. “Sorry about the surprise, Butch; I wasn’t sure Liz wanted to do this until just before the meeting. But I think it would be good for you two to talk.” He stepped back through the door and said, “I’ll wait in the hallway.”
When the door closed, Karp was thinking how he would have liked to shoot Torrisi. What was he supposed to say to a woman who’d been through what she’d been through? No, I can’t help you. He’d met thousands of victims, seen all sorts of injustices perpetrated on them not just by the criminals but also the system. If what Torrisi had told him at the meeting a week ago with mayor-elect Denton was true, she had been raped by both and was still being assaulted.
“Sorry…about what happened,” he said, immediately regretting it as insufficient. But she seemed to appreciate the sentiment.
“Thank you, Mr. Karp,” she replied. “Would you mind if we sat? I’m not real steady on my feet and, well, to be honest, looking up at you hurts my neck.” She tried a half-smile at the joke, and he smiled broadly back.
“Of course not,” he said, taking a seat on the couch while she sat back down in the chair.
As she adjusted herself, Karp used the time to observe. He knew she was in her forties, but she looked haggard and much older because of the dull gray hair and dowdy clothing. However, when she looked up and fixed him with eyes as green as a cat’s, even in the dark, he realized that she had once been a beautiful young woman. But there was a slightly crushed look to the right side of her face, and the eye on that side wandered in its orbit sightless. She quickly lowered her head so he couldn’t see her face.
“So Mr. Torrisi tells me you might represent the city in the lawsuit,” she said, “brought by those…those men,” Tyler said, still looking down.
“I…well, I don’t know,” Karp replied. “Ms. Tyler, please, there’s no need to be ashamed. My wife lost her eye in an accident, and I haven’t believed for one day that it ever detracted from her beauty. Like you, she is still beautiful.”
Liz Tyler looked up, her eyes wet with tears. She didn’t say anything, but the way her lip was trembling in a smile, she didn’t have to.
Karp pushed on so as not to embarrass her. “I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do…the district attorney representing the city in a civil lawsuit. It does sound to me like the city has an excellent chance of winning without my help.”
“Do you think so?” Tyler asked. Her voice held hope but fear ruled her face.
“Well, yes, the truth is a pretty powerful defense…um, forgive me, but is it still Mrs. Tyler?”
The question appeared to slam into the woman like a wrecking ball. She blinked several times and seemed to take several deep breaths before she could answer. “No. Just Miss Tyler, or better yet, Liz. I’m…I’m divorced.”
Karp blasted himself for not thinking quickly enough to have maneuvered around the question. He smiled and said, “Liz it is. And I’d appreciate you calling me Butch. Mr. Karp was my dad.” It was an old joke, but it did seem to take some of the embarrassment out of the air.
“Have you read the files?” Tyler asked.
Now it was Karp’s turn to be embarrassed. The boxes remained sealed in his office. In fact, he’d about decided to call Denton and tell him to have them picked up…that he just didn’t feel he should get involved. “No,” he said. “I haven’t. To be honest, Liz, my forte is not civil law. The city would be wise to use someone else.”
Karp’s answer seemed to deflate Tyler. “Oh.”
“What would you recommend that I do in this situation, Liz?”
His question seemed to take her by surprise. She looked up and this time held his gaze. “Since we’re being honest, I don’t know. After the first trial, I tried to put it all behind me…and failed miserably. It cost me my family. But over the past four or five years, I’ve found a place where sometimes I can pretend that I don’t even have a past. None of it. Not the good things, not the bad things. I have no memory of that…that day, except random snapshots in my head….”
“You remember faces?” Karp asked.
Again, fear on Tyler’s face. She shook her head. “No, no…not like that. I meant the beach. Waking up in the hospital. That sort of thing.” She moved quickly on. “My point is that I don’t know that I really want to go through all of this again.”
Karp looked puzzled. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you here then?”
“I guess because Mr. Torrisi asked me,” she replied. “He and his partner were so good to me following my…my…problem. So were the two assistant district attorneys, Robin and Pam. I would never have gotten through the trial without them going above and beyond to protect and support me as best they could. Do you know that Robin let me sleep on her sofa when I couldn’t go home? They took some of the defense attorney attacks on me personally…like friends would.”
Tyler looked down at her hands and he saw the tears fall and splash on her fingers. “I wasn’t a perfect person before my problem, Mr. Karp. I had an affair outside of my marriage. It was meaningless and short-lived; nonetheless, the defense attorneys found out about it and tried to introduce it at my trial. They tried to say that it showed that I was promiscuous and that explained why I was running by myself on a beach in the morning and maybe didn’t try as hard as I could have to avoid being gang-raped.”
Karp noted the flash of anger. Good, he thought, she isn’t completely beaten and will make a good witness…for somebody else.
“Pam and Robin stopped them with the shield laws, so at least I didn’t have to put my husband through that twice, a second time in front of a jury and a full courtroom. But, of course, the motion hearing where the defense lawyers brought it up was open, and so the press had all sorts of fun with it anyway. Between the defense lawyers and the press, they wouldn’t let the wounds close and heal. They just kept tearing and tearing until I didn’t want to go forward with it. I wanted to drop the charges so that I could run away—find some hole, crawl in it, and pull the dirt back in over the top of me. But Robin and Pam wouldn’t let me give up. I needed them to be strong for me. Now they need me.”
Karp decided to play a little devil’s advocate. “You told me that you don’t remember the attack. What if the wrong men were convicted? What if the only one involved was Enrique Villalobos? Wouldn’t you want those other
men exonerated?”
Tyler leaned forward so that her face moved back into the light. She touched the side that had been crushed. “There was no mistake, Mr. Karp,” she said. “The men who did this have now made a mockery of everything those police officers and detectives, and Robin and Pam, stand for. If you knew these people like I came to know them, you’d know that I’m telling you the truth. Mr. Villalobos might have been there, too, I truly do not know. But the right men were sent to prison.”
Tyler stood up and walked over to where a small mirror hung on the wall. “I’m not asking you to do this so that I can have my life back or so I can ‘move on.’ That’s not going to happen. I’m asking you to do this, Mr. Karp, because those other good people, who still have lives, need you.”
Karp felt the wall crumbling. You can’t do this, he told himself. “I’m sorry, Liz….”
Tyler turned away from the mirror and faced him. “Please, just read the files. Maybe you can just advise whoever takes the case. Please?”
“But there are other lawyers….”
“Yes, but it’s your integrity that matters.” As if someone had taken control of his body, Karp heard himself agreeing to read the files. Then he was shaking Liz Tyler’s hand as she thanked him. Then he was out in the Lincoln sitting next to Murrow, who started peppering him with questions.
“What? What was that all about?” Murrow asked. “What did I miss? You didn’t agree to do anything…dumb…I mean politically sensitive, did you? What’s going on?”
Karp looked into the genuinely worried face of his aide-de-camp. “All in good time, Gilbert,” he said.
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately,” Murrow groused. “It’s not nice to keep secrets from your adviser.”
“Just for the moment,” Karp replied. “I need to do something, but nothing to worry about. Now, let’s move. We’ve got to run if I’m going to pick up the boys and get to class on time.”
A half hour later, Fulton pulled the Lincoln up to the curb at Crosby outside the loft. Karp was disappointed to see Marlene emerge from the building, obviously headed for the Yellow Cab that was waiting across the street. He’d hoped to have a minute alone to talk to her before he had to leave with the twins, but now she was leaving first.
Karp felt drained by the long day and would just as soon have “left the office” back at 100 Centre Street and forgot about it for a few pleasant hours with his family. But he also felt compelled to warn his wife about getting involved in the Michalik case. The evidence looked pretty damning, and Rachman seemed pretty sure of winning a conviction despite Kipman’s questions.
Of course, what he said wouldn’t really matter; Marlene would make up her own mind. It was just that life around the loft had been so much better since she’d returned from New Mexico. Regardless of the little spat earlier, the uncomfortable, brooding feeling that had wedged itself between them over the past few years as their philosophies about the administration of justice took divergent paths had lifted. She seemed so much more at peace with herself than she had in ages. Even the near-death experience at the hands of Kane’s men in Central Park, as well as Hans Lichner’s attempted murder of their son, had not sent her spiraling back down. Still, he worried that some perceived injustice would set her off again as the avenging angel of the downtrodden. He liked the new Marlene and didn’t want to let her go.
“Going out?” he asked as he got out of the Lincoln.
“Yeah, sorry, but there’s spaghetti on the stove and a nice surprise waiting for you,” she said. “The boys are already eating and ready to go to class.”
“Where’s the fire?” he said as he walked up to her.
“Ariadne called and asked me over for dinner,” she said a little nervously. She was never quite sure how he would take hearing the reporter’s name. “Apparently there’s something very mysterious and very important she wants to talk about.”
Karp’s heart skipped a beat. As Marlene suspected, the mere mention of Ariadne Stupenagel was enough to make him tense. The two women had been friends since their days as college roommates at Smith, but Ariadne was trouble even when she was asleep. Attaching words to her name like mysterious and important was like throwing gasoline and dynamite on a fire. He happily accepted Marlene’s good-bye kiss (pleased that she had initiated it after the chill of the morning). “Be careful,” he said, opening the door of the cab for her.
Marlene sat down and looked up. “I will,” she said. “My new middle name is Careful. Careful Ciampi, that’s me.”
Yeah, he thought as he closed the door and watched the cab pull away from the curb. The only problem is your old first name is Notvery.
“I’ll be right out,” he called to Fulton, who’d offered to drive him and the twins to the synagogue before he headed for home. Karp and the boys would catch a cab back later.
Karp hurried up to the loft where a surprise was, indeed, waiting for him. “Daddy!” Lucy squealed, springing off the couch where she’d been petting Gilgamesh, who bounded around like a 150-pound puppy at the unexpected party atmosphere. The sauce-mouthed twins jumped up from their plates of spaghetti and joined in the family hug.
With his arms around his daughter, Karp could feel that she’d gained weight and muscle. He held her away so that he could see her better. He’d always loved her and couldn’t have cared less what she looked like, but this was the first time that he could recall thinking that Lucy had become a beautiful young woman. “Wow!” he said. “You’re looking good, baby.”
Lucy blushed and hugged him again. “It’s all the tortillas and beans,” she said with her head against his chest. At last she pushed off and said, “Come on, sit down and have a plate of spaghetti. You and Mom must have had a fight because she rushed to whip this up before leaving.”
Karp looked longingly at the pot containing Marlene’s famous spaghetti marinara, a recipe she’d learned from her mother, who’d learned from her mother and so on back through the generations apparently to the founding of Rome. But then he glanced at his watch and remembered Fulton was waiting.
“It will have to wait,” he sighed. “We’re going to be late to class.”
“Ah, Dad, do we have to,” Zak complained. “Lucy just got home and John’s here….”
Karp looked puzzled. “John?” He about jumped out of his skin when a man spoke behind him. “Hi, there, chief. Remember me?”
Karp’s look of surprise turned to one of delight as he spun to face the voice’s owner. “John Jojola! You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“We Indians are sneaky like that,” Jojola said, smiling. “Hey, sounds like you need to get going, I’ll be here when you get back…if you don’t mind.”
“Ah, jeez,” Zak whined. “It’s just a stupid bar mitzvah class.”
“Hey,” Jojola said to him with a half-serious scowl. “Don’t neglect your spiritual side or when you need it most the spirits may not be there for you.”
“Is that an Indian saying?” Giancarlo asked.
“Um, no, not that I know of…I just made it up, but I believe it,” Jojola said. “Now get going or I won’t tell you that story later of how Brother Bear lost his tail.”
When the twins had grumbled their way out the door, Karp looked back. “So what brings you to New York?” he asked, not sure that he wanted to hear the answer.
“A dream,” Jojola said. He laughed when he saw the confused look on Karp’s face. “Go on. It’s no big deal. We’ll talk when you get back.”
Why are these things always no big deal, Karp thought as he headed down the stairs, until they are a big deal.
That past spring, the twins had suddenly expressed an interest in going through their bar mitzvah. The request had taken him somewhat by surprise as the boys had been brought up in the Catholic heritage of their mother. However, the more he thought about it, the more pleased he was that his sons were so open to exploring their other half. Then that summer he’d been approached by the rabbi at the synagogue where the t
wins were taking classes. The rabbi was asking prominent Jewish men to teach classes, which would also contain girls who were studying for their bat mitzvah. Karp had agreed, in large part because of the lure of spending more time with his sons.
The meeting with Liz Tyler and the lesson about integrity were on his mind when he began that night’s lesson by setting up a slide show and then turning to the class. “I’m going to talk to you today about a Jew who changed the world. Can anybody guess who?”
“Solomon!” Giancarlo shouted. “Our legal system is based on his court.”
“Bob Dylan!” Zak shouted louder. “He rocks!” He didn’t really like Dylan—that was more his mother’s music—but it was the only Jewish rock musician he could think of quickly and it got the desired laugh from the class. All except Rachel Levine, the thorn in the side of his twelve-year-old maledom and the class know-it-all.
“Try not to be so silly if you can possibly help it, Zak,” Rachel said and turned her attention back to Karp. “I believe Mr. Karp must be speaking of Abraham, the father of three great religions—the oldest, Judaism; Christianity; and Islam, which calls him Ibrahim.” A look of concern crossed the girl’s face. “Of course, the answer depends, Mr. Karp, on whether you’re speaking about actual people. As I’m sure you know, Abraham may have been more myth than man.”
“What makes you think he wasn’t real?” Karp asked. “Isn’t he buried with his wife, Sarah, in the Cave of Machpelah near Hebron?”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yes, there was probably a historical figure named Abraham, hard to prove scientifically, but really, Mr. Karp, I was talking about the man who spoke to God and all that nonsense.”
“My sister talks to a saint who’s been dead for five hundred years,” Giancarlo said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, some dudes shot her full of arrows—the saint, not my sister,” said Zak, always one to dig into the bloodier side of any story.
“My mother says your sister is crazy,” Rachel retorted. “I guess talking to dead saints proves it.”
Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17) Page 19
