Depraved Indifference

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  When Karp awakened he was alone. It was early morning. His shirt was unbuttoned and his jeans were lying crumpled at the foot of the bed. Sometime during the night he had come out of sleep to feel Marlene’s mouth on his face and neck, then her hands running over his body, caressing him and pulling off his clothes, and then her mouth again, tongue and teeth, moving slowly down the length of his body. He had lain there utterly passive, the way he knew she wanted him to be just then, and watched by the dim light of the stereo dial the ever fascinating sight of her dark head over his groin, moving slowly up and down, up and down.

  Or perhaps it had been a dream. He checked himself out in the bathroom mirror, saw the marks all over him, and smiled. There was a note stuck in the ceramic toothbrush holder. “Sorry about all that last nite,” it said in Marlene’s neat script, “I believe you. Gone to see Taylor’s Yugos re: Karavitch—in around noon. Crazy bout you (so to speak) M.”

  The note brought the events of the previous day slamming back into his mind. His smile faded. He sat down on the bed, picked up the phone, and dialed Denton’s office. He identified himself as Roger Karp from the DA’s. His office informed him that the chief was on his way to work and forwarded the call to his car phone.

  “What’s up?”

  “All kinds of shit,” answered Karp, “but I’m not sure I want to talk about it over a car phone.”

  “It’s that bad, huh? OK, tell you what—I’ll swing by your place in ten minutes. We can talk there.”

  When Denton arrived, Karp had showered, shaved, and dressed for work. The detective looked around the living room with a bleak eye and said, “Karp, I can’t stand this. I’m going to drag you down to Goodwill and get you some furniture.”

  “I got a stereo.”

  “Great, I’ll squat on the record player. Very relaxing. OK, what’ve you got?”

  Briefly, Karp went over the events of the previous day. When he had finished, Denton pursed his lips, puffed his cheeks, and blew out a stream of air. He looked down at the immaculate tips of his brown Italian shoes. “Well, well,” he said. “A fancy piece of work. You really think the Church, the CIA, and the FBI are conspiring to queer our little case?”

  Karp shrugged. “Yeah, a hair too paranoid, isn’t it? I forgot to tell you, I’m also picking up broadcasts from Venus through my fillings.” Denton hesitated a bit before acknowledging the remark with a thin smile and a short laugh. He should have been here last week, Karp thought as he continued: “But basically, I don’t think it’s a real conspiracy. It’s more like these Croatians were connected across a number of different scams, buried stuff, some of it pretty deep in the past. Nobody expected this hijack, nobody expected a cop would be killed. But it goes down, and a bunch of people are running around in a panic, doing dumb things, but independently. And I don’t think institutions are involved as much as individuals or groups of individuals acting for themselves.”

  Denton raised his eyebrows. “That’s interesting. Why do you say that?”

  “Um, just a feeling right now. Look, if the Church or the FBI, as institutions, had a serious beef with us on this, if it was something attached to the case that was, ah, innocently embarrassing, let’s say, there’s a zillion ways we could accommodate them. Christ, we’re not morons, we do it every day. They’d come in for meetings, we’d discuss it, horse trade a little, and come to some agreement. But the various parties in this mess don’t want to come out in the open with their problems. They prefer to work in secret and do crimes to prevent these guys from coming to trial—suppression of evidence, arson, kidnapping … by the way, is there anything on our Hungarian waiter witness yet?”

  “Koltan? No, we’re still looking. You think these Cubans snatched him?”

  “It’s a possibility. There could be a murder, another murder, connected with it too.”

  “What, the boyfriend?”

  “Yeah, Sorriendas. I read the Q and A that Guma got off Melendez last night. I’ll send you a copy. According to her, Sorriendas was real nervous the last few days before he got it, drinking heavily, raving. From what she gathered, Ruiz was setting up to whack somebody out and the boyfriend didn’t want any part of it.”

  “Did he say who?”

  “No, just that it was somebody muy importante and that it would bring a lot of heat down. Sorriendas figured, and he was probably right, that he was set to take the fall if it did. She thinks, and I think, that he was ready to spill his guts and Ruiz aced him to prevent it.”

  “Who do you like for the target?”

  “Karavitch and company, who else? It’s sure as hell a good way to stop them from coming to trial, and I have an idea that whatever it is that lots of people don’t want to come out is sitting inside the heads of our defendants.” Karp paused for a moment. “Bill, I don’t like them in Riker’s.”

  “Yeah, me neither. OK, this is today’s agenda. First thing, we hit Ruiz and round up him and his merry band. Then, in case we haven’t got them all, or in case one of the other players gets the same idea, I’m going to move the bunch of them. You remember the place in the Bronx where we stashed Frank Siggi and his wife last year?”

  “The place on Mt. Vernon Avenue? Yeah. I like it. But what if I need access to them?”

  “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Gimmel. Why?”

  “I’m going to tell my guys to release the prisoners only to you or Brenner personally. If you have to call, identify yourself as ‘Roger Gimmel Karp.’”

  “Roger Gimmel Karp, a name to conjure with,” Karp said. “I can’t believe we’re doing this, Bill. It’s a movie! I’m expecting to hear the director yell, ‘Cut!’”

  Denton shook his head. “It’s a pisser, all right. But I can piss, too. I know a guy in FBI headquarters, works for the Assistant Director, Investigations. We’ll see if we can put Elmer Pillman through some hoops. As for the DA, that’s touchy. I’d give a lot to know what Bloom’s end of this looks like.”

  “Probably not much. Terry Doyle is just a number or part of a political chip he’s playing. Bloom’s most likely doing a favor for somebody he thinks might help him out someday, or some guy he owes a favor to.” Karp imitated Bloom’s fruity voice: “Sure, Jim, no problem, we’ll take care of it. Regards to the family.”

  Denton chuckled at this and Karp went on. “The critical question is the motivation of the other players.

  The cops? Simple, cops follow orders, and not only orders. They follow hints, raised eyebrows, grunts, especially if they want to make captain at forty. The CIA? Who knows, except what I said before. It’s probably personal and not institutional. I’d really like to have half an hour in a small room with this guy Dettrick.”

  “What about the Arch?” asked Denton. There was concern in his voice. Superchiefs are politicians, and in New York politicians do not lightly take on the archbishop or his works.

  “Same thing, a private scam that went slightly off. Maybe our boy Karavitch did something naughty in 1943 and they knew about it and vouched for him anyway. If they can fix it for twenty K and a little discreet pressure, fine.”

  Denton snorted and glanced at his watch. “Anything else, Butch? I haven’t stood up this long without a drink in my hand since I walked a beat in the old two-seven.”

  “Bill, I love it when you pretend to be a crusty old harness bull at heart. Yeah, there is one thing that bugs the hell out of me. Here’s Karavitch, old guy, sitting pretty in the U.S., a citizen, got a hot young wife, a reasonable income. Why in the world does someone like that decide to pull a crazy stunt like he did, steal a plane, leave bombs around? I can’t figure it. And if I can’t figure it, the defense will set it up so that the jury can’t figure it, either. And you know juries. If they don’t buy the story, as a story, who knows what they’ll do?”

  Denton considered this for a moment and answered, “I take your point. I don’t know what was going on in Karavitch’s mind, but I’ve known a lot of murderers. Besides the crimes of passion a
nd the real loonies, every mother’s son of them killed for one or more of the classic big three.”

  “Love, money, or revenge.”

  “You got it, son. My next paycheck says our boy was on one of those. I’d check his finances. And I’d check his hot young wife.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. You know with all the political bullshit around this case, the basics tend to get lost—motive, means, opportunity, and all that. Shit! I just remembered something. Listen, Bill, can you drop me at Centre Street? If they haven’t bricked up my office yet, I think I got an angle.”

  Riding downtown in a cab, with her underwear stuffed in her bag and still squishy from the night’s exertions, Marlene felt like the Whore of Babylon. The driver, a dark, skinny youngster, kept eyeing her in the rearview. She pulled back her hair and said, “I have one eye, see?” He cleared his throat and pretended not to hear her, but he also stopped looking.

  Half an hour later, bathed and dressed in a nubbly dark gray silk suit and a frilly blouse, she felt slightly better, and when Peter Gregorievitch pulled up in his blue Ford, she was able to muster a bright smile. The old man was the only person in Marlene’s experience who habitually left the driver’s side of the car to open and close the door for his passenger, like a chauffeur in a movie. But you could see by his eyes and the way he carried his thin body that he was no servant.

  They drove through the early morning traffic in silence. Peter Gregorievitch was not a talker. This was her third such trip with him without a word spoken. At the meetings to which he had delivered her, Taylor and Renko Span did the talking.

  He drove her to a tan five-story house on Tenth near St. Mark’s Place. As he drove off to look for a parking space, she entered the building, pushed a button, and was buzzed through the street door. This building, unlike most of the others on the block, lacked the stigmata of vandalism. The mailboxes were intact and shining. The hallways were odorless except for the must of old paint and steam heat. Peter Gregorievitch was the superintendent of this building.

  The man who opened the door of 326 looked like a taller Nikita Khrushchev with more warts. “Ah, Marlene,” he cried, flinging his arms wide in a dramatic gesture of welcome. “So good of you to come again.” He ushered her into the apartment with a bow. “Our friend Goddy is here, as you see. And Peter is … ?”

  “Parking the car. Hello, Goddy.” G.F.S. Taylor was sitting at a round table covered by a pale, striped cloth decorated with peasant embroidery. When he saw Marlene, he rose and took her extended hand. “Delighted, as always.”

  They all sat down. Span poured strong, thick coffee and served a sticky, baklava-like pastry. Marlene ate three pieces as pleasantries were exchanged. Peter Gregorievitch soon knocked and joined them at the table. After a while the coffee cups and dishes were cleared away.

  Taylor had told her beforehand, “It may take some time for these men to trust you. They are not trusting sorts.” The first interview had been stiffly formal. Marlene had talked about her family and her work; Span and Taylor had exchanged anecdotes about Yugoslavians and Englishmen. The second meeting had been easier; they had brought out the slivovitz and had become mildly drunk. The conversation had turned darker: Taylor and Span had talked about the war and Marlene had repeated for the benefit of the two Yugoslavs the story of her maiming.

  Now Renko smiled at her during one of the lapses in the small talk. His small, dark eyes had a look of intelligent appraisal that belied his manner as genial host. “Marlene, how nice it is for old men like us to have the company of a delightful young woman. This does not happen often, so we ask ourselves, Peter and I, why is it we have the pleasure of your company? You come with our old comrade Goddy, so we know that you do not mean us any harm, not that there is much you could do to us. Of course, there are those who would like to harm us if they could.”

  “You mean the communists?” she asked.

  “Pah! We are communists, Peter and I. In Yugoslavia there are left only social fascists, and those jailed or dead. My dear girl, those who are driven in limousines and have hunting lodges and palaces are not communists.

  “However, you must understand that there are groups over here who do not wish for the survival of Yugoslavia, communist or capitalist. Peter and I are Yugoslavs first, you understand? People know us, here and in Europe and in our homeland. You should know that there are people who would like to make anticommunism an ally in their fight against Yugoslavia. The existence of people such as Peter and I, who love Yugoslavia and oppose the regime is—how should I say it?—inconvenient. So, my dear lady, you will forgive us if we are suspicious. Of course, this may be but the imaginings of old men who still believe they are important enough to harm.”

  He hunched his shoulders and shifted his eyes, hamming a man on the run, and then laughed. Marlene and Taylor joined him, and then Marlene said, “Renko, look, what do I know about all this political stuff? I’m a kid from Queens, you know? Vote straight Democratic, always have. But Goddy said you might be able to help me out. Why kid around—you got to know why I’m here. I got a dead cop, killed with a Russian weapon hooked to a booby trap Goddy says came from World War Two. It’s not your usual man bops old lady with closest available object. I’m lost here. Any way you can steer me on Karavitch or his gang, where they got the stuff, their motivation, anything, I’d be grateful. If not, hey, it’s not a total loss. I learned how to drink slivovitz.”

  Renko Span cocked an eyebrow and shot a meaningful look across the table at Taylor. To Marlene he said, “Ah, Marya, you are so frank, you put us old conspirators to shame. Okey-doke. I speak to you straight out. You must hear a story—no, two stories. The first story, it happens in 1944 in the winter. The Nazis and their allies are retreating from Yugoslavia. The Soviets are threatening to cut off their retreat, and so they are moving north and west as fast as they can run. They know they are whipped, but like dogs they seek to destroy what they cannot hold. We partisans, of course, are harassing them always, and from time to time fighting pitched battles, which we now have the strength to do. I am captain of a unit operating in the Vojvodina.

  “One day we are moving along a road through a forest. Suddenly we hear voices, a baby crying. People come out of the forest. They are Serbs, and also some Jews, from a village nearby, very ragged and hungry. Peter, tell me, what was the name of that village?”

  “Vrcevo,” said Gregorievitch around his pipe.

  “Vrcevo. Yes, of course. Well, the people told us that the day before this they had heard that Germans were approaching. How many Germans? we ask. Thousands, we hear.

  “This is always the answer—‘thousands.’ So I send some of my boys into the village to scout. Soon they return—it is deserted, unharmed. This is strange, but we don’t complain so much because we have been fighting hard, we have wounded, and it will be good to sleep in a house for a change. Or even a barn. So we go with the villagers down to their village.

  “We settle in. The villagers go about their tasks. All is quiet for five, ten minutes. Then boom, boom—explosions from the houses, fires, screams. I think, mortar barrage, but there are no shells screaming through the air. Then I think, booby traps.

  “So it was. The Germans had placed booby-trapped explosives through the whole village. We found out later that it was a unit of the Thirteenth SS Division. At the time we wondered why they had expended so much effort on one small village, and later we learned that the Germans were conducting a training exercise, showing troops from different parts of their army skills that would be useful for slowing down the Russians during the retreat into Hungary. Of course, they used a real village. Two of our men and seven villagers were killed and many wounded.

  “I sent a messenger to battalion headquarters for engineers. The weather was turning bad, and these people had no shelter and no way to prepare the little food they had saved. We had to clear the traps from the village. So that afternoon, comes three men. They go through every house, the church, barns, every place. They find
, oh, perhaps twenty, thirty bombs, mostly antitank mines and artillery shells. These were hooked to detonators that they connected to different things people would use—a stove door, a cupboard, even stairs. Very clever this all was.

  “But we think by evening we have outsmarted them. Our men began to unhook the trip wires and remove the detonators. We start to move the explosives to a shed, because we wish to use them. Then, boom, boom, boom! The bombs we thought were safe explode.”

  “Dozies, right?” asked Marlene, excited. “The Germans had the booby traps rigged with the same kind of time-delay fuse that killed Terry Doyle.”

  Taylor grinned. “They had indeed.”

  “And you were one of the three engineers, right? Which is why I’m here. OK, the Germans used Dozies in Yugoslavia. What’s the connection with our guys? Or is there … ?”

  “There is another story, which is not mine to tell.” Renko Span nodded at Peter Gregorievitch.

  The others waited while Gregorievitch fiddled with his pipe and made rumbling sounds in his chest, as if all his words were buried there under a cover of ancient debris. When he began, he spoke slowly and distinctly, pausing from time to time to run his hand over the gray bristles of his head. “This was in Krushak, which is on the road to Senta, in the north. It was eight days after Vrcevo.

  “We were camped. A boy comes to us, nine or ten. He says, ‘Come, please, everyone is dead in my village.’ So we go down. It is true. They have killed the whole village. We can tell it is ustashi who have done it, because of the women.” Here he paused, rubbing his head, seemingly stunned by the grisly memory.