Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17)

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “A little,” Guma said, nodding. “According to witnesses, the dead man, Ivan Kaminsky, was shoved off the platform by a young black man, who, with several other young black men, then chased another man who was the spitting image of the victim.”

  “Ooooh, so maybe what we got here is a case of mistaken identity,” Stupenagel said, her mind already working on the story. “The killers—and I’d bet any amount of money it’s Sykes and his gang—decided that Igor knew too much, but somehow they went after the wrong brother first.”

  “But that would mean that someone told them that Kaminsky represented a danger to them,” Marlene said. “But Villalobos wouldn’t have told them he’d been stupid.”

  “The letter,” Karp said. “The letter Kaminsky wrote to Breman, who passed it on to Klinger.”

  The room was silent as the implications of what he’d just said hung in front of them. “Breman or Klinger or both told Louis,” Kipman finished the thought. “Which makes them accessories to murder and attempted murder.”

  Guma whistled. “That’s real big-game hunting…a U.S. District Court judge and the Brooklyn District Attorney.”

  “So what’s the next step?” Fulton asked Karp. “You want me to round up Sykes and his cronies and see if the witnesses in the subway station can pick them out of a lineup? It would put a pretty good damper on their lawsuit if they were in prison.”

  Karp thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “Let’s see if we can get recent photographs of Sykes & Co. and let the witnesses pick them out of a photo lineup and, if they do, put them in front of a grand jury,” he said. “But I want this kept quiet. This isn’t just about the murder of Ivan Kaminsky. Right now, we can’t prove that Breman or Klinger or Louis had anything to do with it.” He looked pointedly at Stupenagel. “I am assuming that this was all off the record.”

  Stupenagel protested. “Why is it that you naturally jump to the conclusion that I’m the only one in the room who can’t be trusted? Never mind, don’t answer that. But you don’t have to worry. In fact, you might remember that I’m the one who talked Marlene into looking into this because Robin and Pam are friends of mine. But the old deal still stands. When it’s time, I get first crack.”

  Karp nodded. “Fair enough. The problem now is that we need Kaminsky and…if we can figure out a way to get it, the letter.” That reminded him of another missing link in the case. He turned to Fulton. “What about Hannah Little?”

  Fulton shook his head. “She disappeared from her neighborhood after the trial. She and her family put up with a lot of crap from the ‘solid citizens,’ who apparently thought it was worse to be a snitch than a rapist. They even burned her mother’s car one night. Then her brother got shot out in California and that was it. Hannah and her mother packed up in the middle of the night and left Bed-Stuy. I tracked her to Ohio from a letter she wrote back to a friend, but that was the last anybody heard from her.”

  The group was silent, contemplating the extraordinary turn of events. Murrow cleared his throat. “Well, I hate to be outdone when it comes to handing out Christmas presents, but Ariadne and I have another. Okay with you, my love?”

  “Say that last part again, you silver-tongued devil, and you can pretty much say anything else you want and I won’t care.”

  “My love,” he said again.

  “Would someone throw cold water on them?” Karp said. “Okay, Murrow, it’s going to be pretty tough to top Guma, but you can try.”

  Trading narration duties, Murrow and Stupenagel recounted their adventure at the Sagamore Hotel. When they finished, Karp groaned.

  “I knew it was too much to hope that everybody was doing this by the book,” he growled, wondering if the sudden indigestion was from too much rich food and wine or the story he’d just heard. “You do realize that not a word of what you overheard would ever make it into a court of law, right? Not to mention—which you also seemed to have been aware of when you made your escape—that you could probably be prosecuted for assault on a police officer and trespass.”

  Karp looked at Murrow and frowned. “Don’t you think that maybe I should have heard about this a little sooner?”

  Murrow looked hurt, but Stupenagel came to his defense. “To hell with that, Karp. The only reason that story’s not splashed across the cover of the New York Times under my byline is because Murry talked me into waiting…. Now, you want to shut up and apologize to a man who is absolutely loyal to you, or do you need me to kick your ass?”

  “All right, enough,” Karp said. “You don’t have to convince me about Mr. Murrow’s loyalty, which I return, by the way, in full measure. But you and I, and by the nature of his job, Gil, have different obligations. Yours is to inform the public. Mine is to protect the public by prosecuting criminals, but I also have to follow the rules…and that’s protecting the public, too.”

  “Oh, bring out the fife and drum,” Stupenagel said. “I thought we’d heard enough speeches this past fall from the two losers we had running for president. Jeez, Marlene, I thought you liked the strong, silent type.”

  Marlene shrugged. “No comment. I have to sleep with him and if he’s cranky, I won’t get any…know what I mean?”

  “I give,” Karp exclaimed. “Why does everybody pick on me? Okay, Stupe, as Paul Harvey would say…now, the rest of the story.”

  “I should make you squirm, Karp, but because my other good friends here are waiting, I’ll tell you,” Stupenagel said. “I went back up to Bolton Landing the Monday after Honey Buns and I were up there playing secret agents…and doctor, but I won’t go into that. I stopped in a local real estate office and asked what a place like that cute little fishing lodge costs where Ewen keeps the beautiful but dim mistress. Well, when the place got bought two years ago, it went for 2.4 million smackers, which is pretty stiff on a union boss’s salary…but even tougher if you’re twenty-four years old and working at the local Quickie Oil & Lube.”

  “What’s that mean?” Karp asked.

  “I was about to tell you. Sheesh, Karp, you have no sense of story pacing,” Stupenagel said. “Let me remind you that I am one of the finest nonfiction writers of the twenty-first century. I was trying to build in a little suspense.”

  “As you can see, we’re all already on the edge of our seats,” Marlene said, getting a little impatient herself.

  “Good, just where I like my audiences at this point,” Stupenagel said. “What it means is that the house was purchased not by Ed Ewen but by his sister’s son, Michael Mason, a good-looking kid in his midtwenties who makes his living in oil…changing oil in other people’s cars, that is. He couldn’t have bought that house if he’d saved every penny since childhood. Besides, he doesn’t live there; he’s got a live-in girlfriend and they’re shacked up in a one-bedroom in the woods.”

  Stupenagel looked around, pleased that she had everybody’s undivided attention. “Anyway, I dropped by the house after first calling union headquarters and finding out that Ewen was in but unavailable. Anyway, the door gets answered by this blond bombshell who could be the separated-at-birth twin of our own Miss Crystal Vase.”

  “Oh, please, God,” Guma prayed earnestly. “Let me be the one who reunites them.”

  “Oh, please, Guma, try not to make me ill,” Stupenagel said. “That poor girl is going to wake up tomorrow, take one look at you, and swear off drinking for the rest of her life…. So anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted by the Italian Scallion—”

  “That’s Italian Stallion.”

  “I asked the blond bombshell if ‘Mr. Ewen’ was at home. At first she was a little suspicious—I’ll tell you why in a moment—but I gave her the business card of the real estate woman I’d talked to, a LeAnne Dalton, which seemed to reassure her. Anyway, I told her that I was just in the neighborhood because I had a buyer who was interested in the property and was willing to pay top dollar. I asked her if she was Mrs. Ewen, which made her all giggly. She said, ‘Not yet,’ so either Mr. Ewen is stringing her
along, or the current Mrs. Ewen is about to be turned out to pasture. The bastard. Anyway, the next part of the story I’ll turn over to my sweetie.”

  Karp looked at Murrow. “Okay, sweetie, spill the beans, and I can only hope that you kept the felonies to a minimum.”

  Murrow grinned sheepishly at Karp. “Uh, my part was to see if I could track down Captain Carney’s property in Florida. Fortunately, he’s either not as clever as Ewen or just figures that he doesn’t have to be as careful because of the distance. He’s got a real nice beachfront condominium in Key West. Again, a call to a real estate agent revealed that I could get a similar condominium in that building on the same floor for a cool 1.5 million.”

  “Must have shook down a lot of hookers when he was walking the beat,” Guma said, to general laughter.

  Karp could feel the wine wearing off and the beginnings of the headache he knew he’d be battling while the twins were ripping open their presents and screaming with Christmas greed. He looked at Newbury, who was scribbling notes on a napkin. “Well, V.T., looks like you may have your smoking gun.”

  Newbury looked up and grinned. “You’d burn your hand if you grabbed the barrel. When I can think clearly again, we can strategize who to put the screws to in that lot and blow the lid off this baby.”

  Marlene hurried off to the kitchen and returned with a magnum of champagne. “I was saving this to get my own sweetie good and liquored up for New Year’s Eve,” she said. “But I think this calls for a celebration.”

  Karp winced. The champagne would force the headache to retreat for a little while, but it would be back with a vengeance. But he raised his glass to toast with the others. “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

  “Hey, what does a girl hafta do to get a little drinky around here?”

  Crystal Vase stood wobbling in the hallway. She teetered like a tree about to fall in the forest, and then went over. She hit the ground with a dull thud and didn’t move.

  Hairsmith-Dupont was the first to reach her. She knelt beside the young woman and felt her neck. “She’s got a pulse,” she announced.

  “That’s all Guma needs,” Stupenagel said. “Poor girl.”

  “Very funny,” Guma replied, pulling Crystal into a sitting position and then, with the help of the other men, lifting her to her feet. She woke up again as they were putting her in a chair.

  “Ray,” she mumbled so low that he had to lean forward to hear her. “Ray, take me home.” She then threw up on him.

  “Okay, show’s over,” Marlene said. “Ray, shall I call you a cab?”

  22

  Saturday, December 25

  KARP WOKE UP WITH WHAT FELT LIKE ALL OF SANTA’S REINDEER stampeding around in his cerebellum. Marlene, on the other hand, cheerfully jumped out of bed to make sure Santa hadn’t messed up after the guests left the night before.

  The wrapped presents had needed name tags, and faux Santa, feeling no pain from the champagne, was sure to have messed up at least a few. The unwrapped presents—those that the real Santa had hand-delivered straight from the North Pole, even those clearly stamped Made in China—needed to be sorted into clearly recognizable piles that demonstrated Santa did indeed know that the boys had been equally good. As much good as could be expected of Zak, anyway.

  Returning from her inspection tour, Marlene didn’t appear to be suffering from any ill effects of alcohol. In fact, she was humming a Christmas carol and making loud sighing noises to encourage him to get up. When that didn’t work, she invited the boys—who were bouncing off the walls in their bedroom waiting for him to rise so that the yearly greed fest could begin—to instead bounce on the bed.

  “AAAHHH,” he’d cried. “I’m getting up. I’m getting up. Please, I think my brain is hemorrhaging.”

  The twins stopped, concerned looks on their faces. “Don’t worry, guys, Daddy’s just a little hungover,” said Marlene, demonstrating none of the Christmas spirit she professed to have in spades. “Giancarlo, find his slippers and bathrobe. Zak, go wake up Lucy and Ned…but don’t go in their room, on pain of death, just knock.”

  Zak ran out. A moment later, there was a shriek, then Lucy’s outraged voice. “Get out of here you little brat! MOTHER!” Marlene trotted out of the room to carry out the threatened sentence on Zak, who apparently dodged the axe and ran back into the bedroom to jump on the bed. “They’re naked, you know,” he said, peering down at his father, who groaned and rolled over to plant his face in the pillow.

  When Karp finally shuffled into the living room, Marlene handed him a cup of hot herbal tea—“chamomile and peppermint with some ground-up Tylenol, perfect for a hangover”—and then forced him to drink when he growled that he didn’t want it. Jojola smiled and lifted a cup. “It’s good, even without the Tylenol. Merry Christmas and belated Happy Hanukkah.”

  Karp just stared at him until Jojola decided to join the boys, who were salivating next to the piles of unwrapped presents, waiting for the starting gun from their mother. Lucy got her revenge on Zak by taking extra time “to fix my hair” before emerging from the bedroom with Ned, who got the evil eye from her father.

  Not that he would have admitted it to Marlene, but Karp felt better after a half hour or so of sipping the tea while sitting on the couch, laughing at the twins, who were practically hyperventilating with avarice. The boys shredded expensive wrapping paper without a second glance and fell upon their presents like lions on a gazelle. Over by the door, Gilgamesh happily gnawed on his Christmas present: a big soup bone from the kosher deli that had moved in on the ground floor, replacing a Chinese restaurant-supply store.

  Meanwhile, Lucy carefully pried open the tape and unfolded the paper on her presents as if she intended it to be used again. One of her gifts was a lacy, red negligee from Victoria’s Secret, with a matching red thong. Instead of the embarrassment such a present might have caused her in the past, she held it up against her body and asked Ned what he thought.

  “I think I might die when I see that on you, but what a way to go,” he replied with enthusiasm until he glanced over at Karp, which put an immediate end to any further comments.

  “It’s from your father and me,” Marlene said.

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Karp insisted.

  Marlene next brought out a large box for Ned, which he accepted shyly, complaining that he’d didn’t need “anything more than what you’ve already given me.” Inside the box was a two-thousand-dollar Neiman-Marcus version of the Marlboro Man’s fleece-lined coat.

  “It’s made of buffalo hide,” she said.

  The young man sat stunned, stroking the baby-soft skin. “I don’t know what to say. It’s the most beautiful thing—outside of my horse and Lucy—that I’ve ever seen in my life.” He stood and retrieved a box from beneath the tree and handed it to Marlene, who sat down next to Karp to open it.

  “It ain’t much,” he said. “But there’s a story to it.”

  Marlene opened the wrapping and then the box. Inside was a crucifix with Jesus on the cross that had been carved out of a single, gnarled piece of light-colored wood.

  “Tell her where you got the wood,” Lucy said.

  “It’s from that old piñon tree that you were hung up on over the gorge,” he said, referring to the tree that had prevented her and Lucy from plunging seven hundred feet into the Rio Grande Gorge that summer. “There wasn’t much left of it—most went to the bottom with your truck—but enough for this here carving.”

  “The idiot climbed down that cliff to get it,” Lucy added.

  “I had a rope on me, tied to my horse.”

  “Good idea,” Lucy teased. “What if the horse decided to take off before you were ready, or maybe came to see what you were doing….”

  “She’s too smart for that,” Ned said in defense of his horse.

  “But it’s what I get for falling in love with a cowboy,” she concluded. “They can’t ever do anything the easy way. It’s like they’re always in a movie.”

&n
bsp; Love? Karp thought. Get me my shotgun; I’ll shoot the sneaky bastard.

  Marlene examined the crucifix. It was simple—the work of someone with only a pocketknife for a tool—yet the simplicity gave it grace and power, and it had obviously taken Ned many hours to carve.

  “It’s beautiful, Ned,” she said and walked over to give him a kiss on the cheek.

  Blushing, Ned said, “I thought something carved out of that tree might still have some luck left in it for you and your family.”

  There’s something wrong with this kid, Karp thought. Nobody’s this nice.

  “Trees have spirits, too,” Jojola noted as he emerged from the boys’ bedroom with an armful of presents. There were two small bone-handled knives for the boys, who looked with puppy dog eyes at their father, who in turn rolled his but nodded. Jojola gave Lucy and Ned matching silver bracelets—“made by one of the best silversmiths in the pueblo”—and a beautifully woven rug to Marlene. “It’s Navajo,” he shrugged. “But they’re okay people once you get to know them. A little full of themselves.”

  The last present Jojola handed to Karp in a small box. Inside was a stone carving of a bear. “It’s a fetish,” he explained. “We believe that every human being has a kinship with an animal spirit guide with whom they share personality characteristics. Mine is the eagle. Marlene’s is the cougar.”

  “Figures,” Karp said. “Something with claws that bites.”

  “Independent, courageous…a giver of life to its cubs, and a bringer of death, but only to feed or protect her family.”

  There was an awkward silence that followed the word death, so Jojola moved on quickly, “I asked the spirits to show me your totem. A bear appeared to me in my dreams and he spoke with your voice, saying something like, ‘Wa a leak come salon.’ I don’t know what that means—it’s not Tiwa, my people’s language, but it’s probably important.”

  “Wa alaikum salaam,”Lucy corrected him. “It’s Arabic and means ‘And unto you peace.’ It’s a traditional response to the greeting ‘A salaam alaikum,” which means ‘Peace be unto you.’ I wonder where you would have picked that up.”