Depraved Indifference

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “What does he mean ustashi, and what about the women?” Marlene asked Taylor in a low voice.

  “The ustashi were irregular troops of the Croatian fascist regime,” Taylor answered.

  Gregorievitch resumed. “The women were all piled in a heap in the Orthodox church, naked. They had all been murdered, some in a horrible way. Impaled, but not as a man is impaled. Also, we found the pregnant ones, those that showed, they slit their bellies open. Always this was done, I cannot understand why—to kill a woman and an innocent baby before it is even born. We found the men, mostly old men and children, in a shallow trench nearby. They had all been shot. I have seen many bad things in the wartime, but this was the most bad thing, in Krushak.

  “The boy with us had escaped by hiding under a chicken coop. But he saw it all. These were ustashi, he said, but there were also German soldiers. From his description of their uniforms and insignia we knew they were Prinz Eugen.”

  “That’s the Thirteenth SS Division again,” Taylor said. “These were two companies en route to link up with the main body of the division at Senta, and creating havoc as they went.”

  “So,” Gregorievitch went on, “we went back to our commander and told him what had happened, and he decided our battalion should set an ambush for these Nazis and their friends. We marched like madmen through rough country to get in front of where we knew they had to pass, in a place where the road twists around three hills. We killed many of the SS, but some escaped. They were well armed and fought like wolves. We killed all the ustashi except for three. Two escaped with the SS. We saw them drive away in a half-track, too fast for us to follow. The third we captured. I will not say what we did to him, but I think in the end he told us the truth. He said that the leader of the ustashi, one of the two who escaped, was Djordje Karavitch.”

  “My God!” Marlene said in a breathless voice. “That’s how he picked up the Dozy. Damn it, Renko, this guy’s a war criminal—why wasn’t he turned in?”

  Renko smiled wanly. “He was many times. But always nothing was done. Who knows why? Perhaps he has friends who protect him. Perhaps the government here thinks he is a great anticommunist patriot persecuted by the regime in Yugoslavia. Emigré politics are complicated, my dear.”

  “How did he get out of Yugoslavia anyway?”

  “Oh, that is easy. There was such confusion at the end of the war. We made a search for him, you can be sure, because of Krushak. Peter, would you get the poster?”

  Gregorievitch rose stiffly from the table and left the room, returning in a few moments with a large, soiled brown envelope. From it he took a yellowing sheet of paper protected by tape and clear plastic food wrap. He laid it on the table. Marlene saw a poorly printed photograph of a young man in a black uniform, with light hair and light eyes, a strong nose, and an air of serious purpose. Seated at a desk, he had a pen in his left hand as if he were about to sign a document. Behind him in the photograph was a large poster marked with the backward-seeming letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, showing a handsome soldier in a Nazi uniform bayoneting a monstrous soldier marked with a hammer and sickle. There was Cyrillic and Latin text above and below the photograph, and Marlene could pick up the name “Karavic” in the latter.

  “Wanted dead or alive, huh? Look, Renko, this is terrific. I’d consider it a great favor if you’d let me borrow this for a day to make copies.”

  Renko smiled. “Of course you may. Obviously, the ease you have is interesting to us. We would like to see this man brought to justice even after so many years.”

  After that, despite the early hour he brought out a tray with a dusty bottle and four small crystal glasses. They all tossed molten plum brandy back in their throats and said, “U nasdravi j’e!”

  As Marlene and Taylor were leaving, Span clutched her sleeve and spoke so that only she could hear. “Marlene, this man, he will be in prison a long time?”

  “Karavitch? Yeah, if we nail him on the murder charge.”

  “If? There is some doubt that he did this?”

  “Not in my mind, but you can never tell what will happen in the mind of a jury. And there can’t be, as we say, a shadow of a doubt, or the guy walks.”

  Renko clutched harder, and Marlene, looking at him in surprise, saw that his normally genial face was contorted with sorrow and worry. “This must not happen!” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Sure, Renko, but, hey, what’s wrong?”

  “If this man is walking the streets now, Peter will find him and kill him. Do you understand? Since the plane and the pictures in the newspapers and the TV, he has thought of nothing else. So …”

  Marlene disentangled herself and patted his arm. “Renko, we’ll do our best” was all she could say. He nodded. Then he asked, “How could I lose Peter Gregorievitch after all these years? Who else would I talk to?”

  In the street outside, she turned to Taylor and said, “I’m glad you took me there. Those are great old guys. Oh, sorry—I didn’t mean—oh, hell.”

  Taylor laughed. “Yes, age is an insult in the U.S., isn’t it? What a peculiar people you are! Sometimes I forget and think I’m at home, and then all of a sudden it’s like bloody Timbuktu. Yes, they’re very decent old chaps. They don’t talk to everyone, you know. You have a way of bowling people over, I think. Quite charming in its way.”

  “Thank you for that too,” said Marlene, smiling. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. A couple of other things. One, the Soviet grenade—where did they get it? Two, about Karavitch coming out of the woodwork after all these years. You would think that with his background, he’d want to keep the lowest possible profile. Any ideas?”

  “Only vague ones. There’s someone who might be able to help you more, and I think I can get you in to see him, if you’re game. Name’s Dushan.”

  “Another Yugoslav?”

  “Yes, but one of a rather different cut.”

  “How so?” asked Marlene.

  Taylor looked around and inhaled the peppery fumes of St. Mark’s Place sharply through his mustache. “Well, to begin with, he’s a spy.”

  15

  KARP LOOKED OUT the car window at the gusts of sleet and the frozen working classes while Denton did business on his phone. An unseasonable blizzard had dumped almost two feet of snow on New England, and Fun City was bracing for an imminent transformation into a hellish, snarled winter wonderland. Karp was not looking forward to facing his former staff; worse would be the various degradation rituals that Wharton had no doubt cooked up.

  On entering his office, he found two symbols of his demotion already waiting in his box. One was a thick stack of case files. He was no longer excused from feeding the insatiable maw of the Criminal Courts Bureau and would have to prosecute these this morning with about two hours of preparation. The other was a brief note from a man named Harvey T. Arnoldson announcing that he was the new Deputy Bureau Chief. Could Karp arrange to visit him at his convenience?

  Karp decided to get it over with. It was an uncomfortable meeting on both sides. Arnoldson was about fifty, with long graying hair and the kind of sideburns that had gone out of fashion in 1970 for everyone but truckers. He had been doing solid but undistinguished work in the Frauds Bureau since he had passed the bar exams and had been as surprised as anyone when the promotion was dumped in his lap. He was careful and slow and followed orders, which was why he had gotten it.

  They exchanged pleasantries and agreed that it was an uncomfortable situation. Arnoldson said Karp did not have to hurry about moving his office. Karp thanked him. Arnoldson said he expected a weekly report from all of his attorneys and expected them to make their numbers. Karp said he would so report and would try his best on the numbers. More pleasantries. Good-bye.

  Karp was not particularly concerned any longer about being fired or about having to report to Bloom’s babysitter. Either everything would be changed within weeks, or he would be on the street. Meanwhile, he had to blaze through the morning’s cases and then follow up on his angle.
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br />   He had remembered something Marlene had said about Mrs. Karavitch and one of the others. He thumbed through the Q and A transcripts and found the right section: the flight attendant, Daphne West, had observed Cindy Karavitch going into the can with Pavle Macek, presumably for some in-flight service, while her hubby was schmoozing in first class. Had Karavitch known? Was the hijack connected in some way to the ancient comedy of an old man betrayed by a young wife? Not enough information yet, he thought, but the existence of a love triangle was a crack in the solidarity of the group into which he could insert the thin edge of a wrecking bar.

  If the district attorney’s ministers had thought that they could wear Karp down by piling on cases, they had misjudged their man. Br’er Rabbit was back in the briar patch. Court work was a tonic after the wrangling tedium of bureaucracy, and by three o’clock, when his last appearance concluded, he was juiced up and happier than he had been in months.

  When he got back to his office, the first thing he saw was a big sheet of computer paper pinned to the wall above his desk. On it someone had drawn a cartoon of an unnaturally tall Karp playing basketball with a squat figure who could be identified as Conrad Wharton by the large corncob emerging from his rear. The iconography was simple: Wharton was tripping him under the basket, but he was still making the shot. It had been signed by virtually every member of the Criminal Courts staff, and most had written messages of support and encouragement.

  Karp stared at it for a long while, chuckling and grinning like a maniac. Then he noticed a manila envelope taped to the wall, so it would not be lost among the drift of paper on his desk. It was from Marlene. In telegraphic phrases she summarized what she had learned that morning and said she would try to nab him that afternoon. She closed with a lewd suggestion that warmed him from his heart on down. Included in the envelope was a copy of the wanted poster from Renko Span.

  He studied the face on the poster. It was remarkable even through the heavy grain of the photograph: the long, predatory nose, the wide mouth with its corners slightly raised to indulge the photographer, the broad, intelligent forehead with the light hair slicked straight back. The pale eyes looked straight into the camera and conveyed intensity of feeling and a certain grim seriousness. A righteous reformer, Karp thought, not a machine guy. This guy wouldn’t make deals.

  Something didn’t jibe. There had been a cynical, mocking cleverness about the man he had questioned that did not fit with the face before him. This guy in the photo looked tough, but he believed in something. Karp had considerable experience in sizing up bad guys, and he had figured the man in the FBI interrogation room for a serious criminal, the kind that believes in nothing but himself and his ability to outsmart the world. Of course, he thought, people change in thirty years. And the face was a good match—the nose and eyes were unmistakable. This was Djordje Karavitch in his salad days. Karp realized with a bit of a shock that the picture had been taken when Karavitch was about thirty-three, about the same age as Karp himself. He shuddered. He did not want to think about the future just now. He pinned the poster above his desk.

  An hour later, as he was plowing through the preparation of the next day’s cases—calling witnesses, arranging for police officers to appear, scratching notes on yellow paper—Connie Trask buzzed him to say that Fred Slocum needed to talk to him right away.

  “Butch?” said the detective, speaking loud to make his voice heard above the buzz of noise in his office. “We went into Tel-Air about an hour ago.”

  “Yeah? How’d it go? You get Ruiz?”

  “We got zilch. Denton laid on a big operation, stealers from half the precincts in Queens, tacticals, machine guns, mortars, tanks. But the place was cleaned out. Nobody there but an old watchman; he hasn’t seen anybody since Wednesday. Ruiz has a big place in Forest Hills and we hit that too. Also zilch. He’s running.”

  “Crap! The bastards were tipped.”

  “Probably,” Slocum agreed. “I tell you, though, we stirred up a hornet’s nest out there. There was a bunch of federales on stake-out in a couple of vans around Tel-Air and they went crazy. Queens detectives wasn’t thrilled, either, but Denton was running the show so they had to smile and eat it. Lots of dire threats, though, from the Feds.”

  “I’m trembling.”

  Slocum laughed. “I’m sure. We’ll find them, though. Denton’s got an army working the case. The guys thought it was a little weird, the C. of D. putting the max on for a shitty case like this—a skel gets knifed, who gives a rat’s ass?”

  “It’s more complicated than that, Fred.”

  “I figured. When you get around to it, the foot soldiers would appreciate you sharing the details.”

  Karp ignored this last remark. He had just thought of something. “Fred,” he said, “what’s the situation with the physical evidence in Karavitch? From his place. What’ve you got and where is it?”

  “Uh, there ain’t much, maybe half a carton of stuff. We got some papers from Karavitch’s place, a calendar marked with the dinner they all had before they took off, a receipt for the plane tickets—like that. It’s stuff that ties them to Croat political bullshit and the flight, but shit, we know they’re crackpots and we know they were on the flight. On the bomb, we’re thin. We went over Macek’s repair shop and the super’s shops in all the buildings that Karavitch managed, figuring maybe they built the bomb in one of those places. Forensic found some wire and some insulation in Macek’s shop that matched up with the bomb fragments, but what the hell, one piece of wire looks like another piece of wire. They found some brick dust too, in the same place.”

  “Brick dust, huh? Does it match?”

  “‘Not inconsistent with the samples found at the crime scene and in the body of the deceased.’ You know how Forensic is. But same difference—brick dust ain’t fingerprints.”

  “Fingerprints ain’t fingerprints, if it comes to that. But what do you think? Macek built the thing in his repair shop, right?”

  “Sounds like it to me, but try to prove it.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll have to. You didn’t find any explosives, huh?”

  “Not a trace.”

  “That figures. Where’s the stuff now?”

  “I threw it all in an old carton I picked up in Macek’s shop. I got it here.”

  “Great, Fred—look, do me a favor. Could you drag that carton down here? I want to take a look at it.”

  After Slocum had dropped the carton off, Karp examined each of the plastic envelopes. As Slocum had said, it was not much, some small tools, assorted debris, and a stack of papers, all in a small, open corrugated carton that still had bits of Styrofoam excelsior from the original packing. But he hadn’t planned to learn much by inspecting himself. Picking up the phone, he called Marino at Rodman Neck and then Doug Brenner for a ride.

  Jamaica Bay looked like the North Sea by the time they got to the police range at Rodman Neck. The sun was obscured by clouds the color of dirty sidewalks, and the wind off the bay shot through Karp’s raincoat, pierced his body, and flew out the other side. His knee ached and he almost limped as he climbed the stairs into Marino’s building.

  The bomb squad captain was waiting for him with another man, whom he introduced as Sergeant Dalker, the officer in charge of the bomb-sniffing dog unit, also housed at Rodman. Dalker, a thin man with a fox-like face, was holding a German shepherd on a short leash. The dog’s name was Rosie. As he spoke briefly about the capabilities of such animals, Karp noticed that he had the odd habit of asking the dog for concurrence whenever he made a statement about her.

  Karp explained what he wanted and they set up the plastic bags, opened, in a row on the floor. Dalker led Rosie along the row. When she got to the seventh bag, she made a whimpering noise deep in her throat.

  “Is that something?” Karp asked.

  “Could be,” said Dalker, squatting down next to the dog’s head. “What is it, Rosie? You smell something?” In the bag was a hacksaw. Dalker looked over his shoulder at the othe
r two men. “It’s possible that the saw was used on or near some explosives, maybe to saw through a dynamite stick, or more likely, somebody with explosives on his hands used the tool. But the trace is faint and Rosie’s not sure, are you, Rosie?”

  The dog drew a blank on the other bags. In vain they went through the routine two more times with the bags in different order. Karp looked at Dalker, who shrugged and waggled his hand from side to side. Karp sighed and said, “OK, guys, thanks, it was worth a shot.” He put the carton down on the floor, and he and Brenner started sealing the bags and tossing them in.

  Then Rosie barked and lunged forward and started to claw at the sides of the carton. Karp stumbled backward out of her way, startled. “What’s that all about?” he asked. “Rosie changed her mind?”

  “No,” Dalker said, “it’s the damn carton.” Unloading it swiftly, they placed it in the center of the floor. The dog stuck her nose in it, shook it with her teeth, whined, wagged her tail, and did all the other things that explosive-sniffing dogs do when they find explosives. “There was high explosive packed in that carton for quite a while,” Dalker said. “Right, Rosie? Wasn’t there?”

  As Dalker talked sweetly to his dog, Marino said, “Butch, most explosives will volatilize over time. If they’re packed in something absorbent like cardboard or this styro, the packing absorbs some of the vapors, and naturally that’s what the dog smells.”

  But Karp was hardly listening. He was staring at the top flaps of the carton. They had been hanging down on the outside, probably since Slocum had picked it up casually in Macek’s repair room, so that nobody had noticed the top of the carton when it was closed. Rosie’s prodding nose had lifted it and exposed the outside of the flap.

  On it was a glossy, neatly typed label addressed to P. Macek at his shop. Though it was much covered by dust and grease, Karp had no trouble reading the fat red letters of the Tel-Air logo printed across the top.

  “Doug, this evidence we got here, I want you to bury it,” Karp said an hour later as the two of them sat in the car outside the dark mass of the Criminal Courts Building. “Take it someplace and hide it. And I don’t want anybody but you, me, and the Chief of D. knowing where it is.”