Depraved Indifference

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  He walked to the bathroom. Karp had the body of a basketball guard—tall, hard torso, long arms, muscular wrists. Karp had, in fact, been an all-state guard as a schoolboy in New York and then a star at Berkeley in the early Sixties. In his junior year, however, a pileup under the boards had produced what the California Board of Orthopedics had voted the worst non-fatal sports injury in the history of the Pacific Conference. After a brief conversation with his doctor and a glance at the X rays, Karp had decided that he probably would never start for the Knicks. He sulked briefly, switched to pre-law, and ended up as a DA in New York. It was much the same thing. If you play basketball, you want to start in the NBA; if you want to prosecute criminals, you want to work for the New York DA’s office.

  Karp’s bathroom was the best thing about his apartment. It was a relic of the Twenties, when each apartment had taken up an entire floor. The renovators had left it alone: the huge ball-and-claw bathtub, the marble-topped washstand, the heavy porcelain and chrome fixtures. Adjusting the shower to the Venusian temperatures he craved, Karp mulled over the strange phone call. The Chief of Detectives was coming directly to an assistant DA, in private, with what could be a major case, heavy with publicity. Why hadn’t he gone to Sandy Bloom, the New York County DA, with this prize? The DA had, of course, the pick of any case in his jurisdiction, and it was certain that Bloom would give any case with the slightest aura of potential professional benefit to Count Dracula before he would give it to Butch Karp. Denton would have to spend many chips to control the case in this way. Why? Because he thought that Bloom would not prosecute this case? Why again? Stepping under the shower, Karp laughed out loud. Singleminded is often absent-minded: he was still wearing his Yankee hat.

  Twenty minutes later, Karp opened his door to Bill Denton. Denton looked like what he was, a very smart Irish detective. He was impeccably dressed in a tan suit and had pointed, gleaming Italian shoes on his curiously un-cop-like small feet. Coming in, he looked around quizzically.

  “You just move in?”

  “No, I’ve been here six years. I’m not into furniture.”

  Denton nodded. “I can see that. You could have a dance.”

  “Right. Anyway, Chief, what can I do for you?”

  Denton walked over to the window, which had a dusty set of old-fashioned wooden Venetian blinds pulled all the way up. He looked out at Sixth Avenue for a moment and then turned and leaned against the window sill.

  “This case. We have one cop dead and two others seriously injured up in Jacobi. The hijacked plane has apparently taken off from Gander and is on its way to Paris. They let the women and kids and a couple of sick people off. They have forty-two men on board, plus the flight crew of five. They don’t seem to have any weapons but the bomb. And we know that they know how to make a bomb.

  “After they took the plane, they contacted the FBI and told them that there was a bomb in a locker at Grand Central and that there were other bombs hidden around the city, but they didn’t say where. They’ve demanded that the papers print a manifesto on the front page tomorrow, and then they’ll tell us where the others are. In the locker with the bomb was an envelope that had the manifesto. The papers have agreed. Meanwhile, we’re opening every public locker in New York.”

  “Find anything yet?”

  “Plenty. We found heroin. We found cocaine. We found stolen goods up the kazoo. Ah, let’s see, we found a dead baby, couple of dogs, also dead. A machine gun—”

  “But no bombs.”

  “But no bombs. We’re still looking, though. Now, let’s look at this case. First of all, we have the homicide, potentially murder one, killing a cop in the line of duty. Two, we know approximately who did it.”

  “One of the hijackers.”

  “Right. OK, the bomb was placed in Grand Central, which is in New York County. The killing was done in Rodman Neck, which is in Bronx County. The killing was done in the course of the crime of kidnapping, which was initiated at LaGuardia Airport, which is in Queens County. And, of course, skyjacking and kidnapping are also federal crimes. So we have a case in which three district attorney’s offices and two U.S. attorney’s offices have an interest. You like it?”

  Karp rolled his eyes. “I love it. Holy shit!”

  “Yeah. We’re looking at a jurisdictional and procedural mess that could take years to figure out, and that’s with goodwill all around, which we might not have in some quarters.” Denton raised an eyebrow and shot Karp a curious look. “I want to see these guys nailed before I retire in eight years.”

  “OK, so what’s the deal?”

  “The deal is, as far as the detectives and the PD are concerned, this is your case. You get the troops and the support; nobody else gets any, not Bronx, not Queens, not the Feds. Just you.”

  “And Bloom … ?”

  Denton shook his head vigorously. “Believe me, Sandy Bloom is not going to go up against us on this one. A cop is dead. You’ve got one of the best conviction records in the DA’s office. Everybody knows that you’re a nailer and he’s not. So what’s he gonna do? Complain to the commissioner? To the mayor? He’s the wrong party, one, and given his attitude, Mr. Bloom is out of favors in both places. No, he’ll play along. He’ll hate it, but I guarantee, in public at least, he’ll roll.”

  “OK, that makes sense. But you understand, it’s not beyond him to try to screw me on this. He hates my guts.”

  Denton smiled. “Yeah, I know. That’s another reason we picked you.”

  Karp smiled back. “So now what? Where’s the plane?”

  “It looks like the hijackers are taking it to Paris. We’re not sure why, but the French are holding a couple of Croatians who whacked out the Yugoslav consul-general in Marseilles a couple of months ago. The hijackers may want to deal for their release.”

  “Will they roll on that?”

  “Who knows? The French could do anything.”

  “But obviously I work with the Feds to get the hijackers back here.”

  “Right. You know Pillman down at the FBI? He gives you any trouble, call me. I’ll arrest him for impersonating a police officer. Oh yeah, Pete Hanlon up at Arson and Explosion is expecting you—that’s all set up. You want any help, any extra bodies, let me know direct. I’m catching this one personally.” Denton stood up and stretched. “My poor ass. You got a real comfy place, Karp. OK, anything else you need to know?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Denton frowned. “Why what?”

  “Why everything. Why is the chief of detectives handling this one personally? Why are you using chips, fuck Bloom, fuck the FBI, anything you want, steal bodies from other cases? That why.”

  Denton looked uncomfortable and color started to rise on his neck. “I told you, it’s a cop. You know what that means.”

  “Sure, I do, but cops have died before. Couple of years ago we had cops assassinated by radicals, and the cases didn’t get this kind of heat. So all this is—what can I say—unexpected.”

  Denton was silent for a moment. Once again he looked out the window. The light was shading into nightfall, and when he turned, Karp could hardly make out his features.

  “Unexpected, eh? Let me sum up thirty years of police work for you in one phrase. ‘Expect the unexpected.’ Want to hear a story? You ever hear of Kenny Moran? No? Yeah, he was way before your time. Kenny Moran. Helluva guy. From one of those old cop families, cops back to Cork. Father, grandfather, uncles, all on the job.

  “We went to Academy together. I didn’t know him real well then, but we were the same age; we made detective third about the same time. Then we were partners out of the one-seven, both of us hotshots. But Kenny was rare. Big, good-looking guy, black Irish, you know? Looked like a goddamn poster in blues. And he had a … a presence, never had to raise his voice. He could walk into a bunch of assholes making trouble and all of a sudden they were dancing his tune. Nobody ever saw anything like it.

  “And religious. Pillar of the church: Sodality, Holy Name, whatever they we
re selling he was buying. Not preachy, he just had the faith. Went to confession couple of times a week, though God knows what he had to say. Guy was straight as a ruler.”

  “Sounds like he should have been a priest,” Karp said, not knowing where this was going, but content to listen to the quiet voice in the darkening room.

  “Yeah, I thought that, too. But what a cop! I was the bad guy, naturally, and when he did the good guy, shit, hardass slimeballs would be snitching on their mothers.

  “Anyway, he had this sister, Kathleen her name was. He lived with her in this apartment off Flatlands Avenue. Of course, she married a cop. About three weeks on the job he decides to dive into Sheepshead Bay to pull out a drunk and cracks his head on a piling, bang, lights out. Leaving her with one on the way, also of course. So Kenny has an instant family to take care of, not that he minded. The sun rose and set on Kathleen.

  “So one fine day in June, it’s gotta be eighteen years ago—I remember every detail—we’re in the car, and this squeal comes in, homicide, and they give the address, and Kenny goes white. We tear ass all across Brooklyn, hitting ninety on Atlantic Avenue, and we get to his apartment on Flatlands. The neighbors called in because they heard the kid crying.

  “We go in and you guessed it. Groceries all over the floor, place ripped up. There’s Kathleen, naked in the bedroom, cut to pieces, blood over everything, and there’s the kid, must have been three, in his stroller, screaming. He’s got her blood all over him.”

  Denton took a deep breath. Now he was just a silhouette against the fading day.

  “Did they ever catch the guy?”

  “Shit, yes, we caught him. That day, as a matter of fact. He’d of gone to Russia, we would have caught him. Mutt named Hector Sales, your basic Brooklyn punk mugger, in and out of the joint for robbery, assault—the usual. We put the word out on the street and by that evening somebody snitched Hector out; he was showing off Kenny’s spare gun in a bar over in Canarsie.

  “We went over and picked him up. The Lieutenant was antsy about Kenny making the collar, because of the personal involvement and all, but Kenny just looked him in the eye and told him that he was a cop and that it would be an honest collar, with no rough stuff, and the Loot believed him. And me too. You understand, Kenny was that kind of guy.

  “I’m running on, but there’s not much more. We grab Hector in his room. The gun is there. The bloody clothes. Even the goddamn knife. Down to the precinct. Kenny is treating this guy like a brother, I couldn’t believe it. I do my bit, I yell, I threaten, Kenny sends me out. Twenty minutes later Kenny sticks his head out, Hector wants to make a statement.

  “So there’s four of us in the room with him—me, Kenny, the Loot, and the stenographer. This is before Miranda, of course. Hector says his piece. He raped her, by the way. Then Kenny says in a quiet voice, ‘Why did you kill her?’ Just like that, like he was asking why he bought a Pontiac. And Hector just shrugs, and says, ‘I don’t know, man, she pissed me off. I mean, yelling and carrying on. What’s a piece of ass, right? I mean, she wasn’t no virgin or anything.’ Then he smiled at Kenny. He smiled, can you believe it?

  “And Kenny kind of nods and reaches out to take Hector’s arm, I figure he’s going to lead him down to the cells, right? I mean, Kenny’s face is like stone. Then he pulls his gun and puts the barrel in Hector’s ear and blows his brains out.”

  Denton sighed again. “That’s the story. Expect the unexpected.”

  Karp’s throat was dry; his knee was aching from standing. “What happened then?” he asked the voice in the dark.

  “To Kenny? Not much, except of course he was through with the cops. Walked for the homicide on a temporary insanity. Spent some time in a hospital and got a job as a bartender in Paramus. Raised his sister’s kid. Never married. Passed on two years ago, cancer.”

  “Yeah. I never heard that story. But, umm, the connection with what we were talking about …”

  “The connection? Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t know. The kid.”

  “What kid?”

  “Kenny Moran’s sister’s kid. Kathleen Doyle’s kid, Terry Doyle. He was the cop who just got his head blown off. You get the picture?”

  “I got it,” Karp said. “OK, I’ll do what I can.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Denton said. “One thing you ought to know, though. After the FBI got through to the Department about the bomb and the hijack, the PC called the DA’s to tell them what happened. Bloom said, ‘What have you got on this Karavitch?’ That’s the name of the leader of the hijackers.”

  “So? Did you have anything?”

  Denton smiled an unpleasant smile. “That’s not the point. Bloom knew the bastard’s name before we told him. How about that?”

  “How about that.”

  A mile to the south, Marlene Ciampi, Assistant District Attorney, beloved of Butch Karp, sat on the fire escape of her loft on Crosby Street, stroking Prudence, one of her two cats, and dabbing her one eye with a tissue. She had been crying ever since she had learned from the six o’clock news about the explosion at Rodman Neck. Marlene knew the three men fairly well, having become something of a bomb squad buff over the past two years. This had started as part of her job, prosecuting a case against a group of political bombers. Then she had been blown up by a letter bomb. Only the bomb had been meant for Karp, sent by a mass murderer up for a murder one rap. She had opened a package because Karp was married and she was having an affair with him and by some evil chance the letter had been postmarked from the city where his wife lived. The bomb had taken two fingers and an eye, and scarred the left side of her face.

  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 yo
u 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

  “THE 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.