Depraved Indifference (24 page)

“Shit! OK, let's walk over to Seventh.”

“Dammit, Marlene! I don't feel like walking!” This statement was so uncharacteristic and said with such vehemence that it brought her up short. She looked into his face. Even by streetlamp light she could see that his face had a gray, unhealthy look. There were tiny, glittering beads of sweat on his upper lip. “God, Butch, you're sick,” she exclaimed. “What is it?”

“Nothing. I'm not sick.”

“Yes, you are. You look like you're in pain.”

In fact, Karp was in agony. The first shot of wintry weather always caught him unawares; during the intervening year he made himself forget what cold and damp did to his injured knee. He was walking on what felt like a mass of hot razor blades.

“Come on, let's get out of the rain,” said Marlene, pulling him under a shop awning. As he followed, she saw he was limping. “It's your knee, isn't it?”

“No. It's OK,” said Karp automatically, grimacing in pain.

“Bullshit, Butch. If you're hurting, we'll go back to your place. Why didn't you just say so?”

“No, it's OK, I can walk.”

“I can't believe this! Now, look, I'm in charge. We will go to your place. On the way we will stop off and get some tea, some honey, a lemon, and a flat pint of Christian Brothers. I will put you in bed, tuck you in, and feed you hot tea and brandy.”

“And? And?” said Karp, rolling his eyes and pretending to pant like a Newfoundland dog.

She giggled. “We'll see. If you're good.”

They walked slowly up Sixth to Eighth Street, sticking close to the buildings to avoid the freezing rain. After stopping at a liquor store and a mini-mart, they entered the recessed doorway of Karp's apartment house; a large man emerged from the shadows and blocked their way. Marlene gasped and stumbled back against Karp, who felt the jolt of adrenaline, the fight or flight syndrome that is as characteristic of a stroll through Manhattan as dog shit. The man stepped into range of the streetlight's glow and Karp immediately relaxed. He was no mugger but a middle-aged, well-dressed white man. He was also soaked and thoroughly distraught.

“Excuse me, please, but could you help me?” he asked, smiling. He was stocky and had a face like hundreds of others in the garment district or diamond district. Karp had a couple of uncles with the same look. The slight accent clinched it. “I am sorry to bother you, but I have locked myself out of my car.” He smiled in embarrassment. “It's a rental. I was driving out to the airport. I have a seven o'clock flight tomorrow morning, so I make a plan to turn the car in, stay at the Sheraton, get a good night's sleep—”

“Where's the car?” Marlene said.

“Please, all I want, you should be so kind, just call for me Avis, they'll send a man.”

“Nah, that'll take hours. Is that it?” Marlene pointed to a beige Galaxy parked in the no-parking zone in front of the building. Its parking lights glowed yellow in the rain. “OK, here's what we'll do. Butch, let me have the keys. You guys watch the car so somebody doesn't boost it. I'll be right back.”

“Marlene, what … ?” Karp began, but she just smiled, unlocked the lobby door, and vanished.

“What is she doing, the young lady?” the man asked.

“Don't ask me, mister. I'm usually the last to know. You from out of town?”

“Me? No, from New York, West End Avenue. Oh, excuse me—Abe Leventhal.” He stuck out his hand and Karp shook it. “How come you ask? Oh, the rental. Listen, I bought a Chrysler, new last year. So I'm a schmuck, I believe you should buy American. Five times it's in the shop, if you can believe it. The brakes go down to the floor. I'm driving along, the door comes open by itself. No wonder they're going broke. My brother-in-law tells me, ‘Buy a Mercedes, buy a BMW, they never break down.' Listen, if they last forever I wouldn't touch them, from those
momsers
. God forbid I should buy a German car! So I'm renting two days a Ford. It didn't break down yet, I figure I'm lucky. Ah, what is this?”

Marlene had emerged from the lobby holding a wire coat hanger. “Right, let's get this gentleman into his car,” she said briskly, and went past them into the street. Bending the hanger double, she pushed it down between the window gasket and the glass. It took her about ninety seconds to spring the locking mechanism and open the door.

“This is marvelous!” exclaimed Leventhal, beaming. “You saved my life. Who would believe in New York strangers would help you out like this? I wouldn't believe if my own family would go out of their way like this. Listen, I got to do something nice for you. You got a stereo?”

“He doesn't,” Marlene said.

“Okey-dokey, I tell you what. Here's my card.” He reached into his back pocket, yanked out a wallet the size of a softball, and handed Marlene a card. It bore a crowned loudspeaker and the legend, “
ABE LEVENTHAL, THE STEREO KING.
”

“Come by the store anytime, pick out anything you want: loudspeakers, tuner, turntable, whatever. You can have it at cost.” He shook hands with both of them, repeating his thanks, got in the Galaxy, and drove off.

“What do you think of that!” Marlene said with wonder. “We did a favor for somebody and we didn't get shot or otherwise abused. Call the networks. And you're going to get a stereo practically for free. New York must be changing.”

“Yeah, could be. And maybe Edmund Gwenn will be Santa in Macy's this year. Marlene, where did you learn to jimmy a car like that?”

“Wouldn't you like to know. God, I'm freezing. Let's go in and make some hot drinks. Oh, no! You don't have any pots.”

“I have a pot. It was in the stove when I moved in.”

“Terrific! We'll chase out the spiders and make some toddies and think about our new stereo. Gosh, Butch, this could be the beginning of a whole new era. Next year, a table!”

The following morning, Connie Trask observed the big smile on Butch Karp's face and flashed one in return. “My, my, don't you look happy. Your horse come in?”

“Oh, much more spiritual than that, Connie. What's on for this morning?”

She frowned. “Well, I hate to do this to a happy man, but you're loaded.” She consulted her desk calendar. “There's a Paul Flanagan, a detective sergeant, waiting to see you right now. He wouldn't say about what. Then at ten-thirty you got to be uptown to see Father Keene. I got Brenner to pick you up at ten. Then one o'clock, you got the monthly report with Wharton. Tony Harris is working on the report, he says he'll have it by noon. Two o'clock is the Weaver arraignment, you said you wanted to be there when Harris does it. Then V.T. wants to see you. I put him in for three-thirty, and Ray Guma at four. Is that OK?”

“Yeah, I guess. Can't Pelso go to the meeting with Wharton?”

“He could if he wasn't in Bermuda. Some big-time international event. When you going to get some of those free travel goodies, Butch?”

“Soon. I'm scheduled for a trip to North Dakota when Hell freezes over.”

Karp strode toward his office, his good mood diminished but not entirely gone. Marlene was incomparable when she made her mind up to delight, as she had last night with her erotic nurse routine … Of course, she could just as easily transmute into an abusive monster, for causes that were beyond his competence to divine. He had decided long since that his only choice was to hang in there and take it, and hope that Marlene would work things out herself.

“You're Sergeant Paul Flanagan? Roger Karp.”

The man waiting for Karp in his office was wearing a natty tweed sports jacket, charcoal slacks, and faintly tinted aviator-style glasses. The two men shook hands and Karp waved Flanagan into his wooden visitor's chair.

“So what can I do for you?”

Flanagan reached into his breast pocket and extracted two sheets of paper. He handed one to Karp and said, “You know what this is.”

Karp glanced at it. “Yeah, it's a copy of the note found in the locker with the bomb that killed Doyle. What about it?”

Flanagan smiled and handed Karp the other sheet. It was the same message, but it was not a copy. Karp felt a tremor of apprehension. “Where did you get this, Flanagan?” he snapped.

The smile grew wider. “I typed it myself. On Milo Rukovina's typewriter. And I checked it out with the lab. It's the same typewriter that typed the note in the locker.”

Karp leaned forward in his chair and stared at the other man with such intensity that the detective's smile faded and he asked nervously, “Is something wrong? I thought it was pretty good evidence.”

“It is. It's very good evidence. It links Rukovina and the other conspirators to the actual placing of the bomb. Tell me, how did you happen to come across this piece of very good evidence?”

“Oh, just luck,” Flanagan said modestly. “It turned up as part of a routine investigation. Of the bombers and their associates. I figured I'd see if the type on this typewriter we found matched up with the manifesto they got the papers to print.” He gestured to the two sheets on Karp's desk. “And there it is.”

“Right, there it is. Good work, Sergeant. By the way, are you new on Fred's squad? I don't think I've seen you around before.”

“Oh, I'm not with the DA squad. I'm BSSI.”

Karp raised his eyebrows. “Oh? That's interesting. Why would the Bureau of Strategic Surveillance and Intelligence want to run its own investigation on this case?”

Flanagan shrugged. “It's routine, like I said. A political bombing—”

“Yeah. These guys are a little to the right of the people the Red Squad usually gets involved with, no?”

Flanagan shrugged again and smiled. “Hey, I just follow orders, man.”

Karp tapped a pencil on his desk and looked again at the two sheets. He sighed wearily, his good mood entirely evaporated now. When he looked up at Flanagan and spoke, his voice was calm and careful.

“Sergeant, I'm going to assume that you're just what you appear to be, a cop following orders, and that you're not involved in any conscious effort to obstruct justice. And I'll continue to assume that, as long as I believe you're answering the questions I'm about to ask you as honestly as you can, with no more of this happy horseshit about routine investigations.”

A flush broke across Flanagan's cheekbones, and his jaw tightened. “What the hell are you talking about, Karp?”

“There isn't any investigation of the Doyle bombing besides the one that I'm running out of this office. If you're not working for Fred Spicer, and indirectly for me, you're not working on this case.”

“That's bullshit.”

“No, it's not. And if you like, I'll get on the horn to the C. of D. and you can hear it directly from his own ruby lips. But you probably don't want me to do that, because Chief Denton doesn't like cops who try to screw up investigations.”

Flanagan's face faded several shades toward white, and he chewed his lip nervously. “OK, wait. What's going on here?”

“I don't know, Sergeant, but I need to find out. Why don't you tell me how you came across this stuff?”

Flanagan pursed his mouth and thought for a few seconds, assembling his story. Then he said, “You're right, there's no investigation. Couple of days ago, Wednesday, a guy calls me, says he's got evidence on the Doyle case, on this guy Rukovina. I tell him, go see Spicer, he's got the action on that case. But he says no, he wants to go to BSSI, nobody else.”

“Did he say why?”

“Yeah, I asked him that. He said he didn't trust you—I mean those guys.” Flanagan paused, but when Karp remained silent, he went on. “Anyway, I set up a meet, and he takes me to this apartment house in Yorkville where Rukovina lived. We go down to the storeroom in the basement, where they keep bikes and stuff. And there's the typewriter. It's got Rukovina's prints all over it. Oh, yeah, I forgot, I got lab reports on that too. That's it.”

“And … ?”

“And nothing. That's it. I went to the lab, got a rush on the prints and the type comparisons. Then I came down here.”

Karp looked the other man full in the face. “Sergeant, don't act dumb. Who was the guy, what was his name, where did he come from, why is he ratting on our friend Rukovina? Give!”

Flanagan looked away. “Oh. This I don't know.”

“Fuck, you don't. Was he a regular snitch?”

“No way. Look, I swear I never saw the guy, before or since.”

“Yeah, maybe, but you know who he is. And I need to know.”

“I'm telling you, goddamn it! He was just a guy …”

Karp reached for the phone. “I told you I'm not fucking around, Flanagan. In about five minutes I will have Denton on this line, and you will be ordered to report to his office forthwith, and you will spill your guts. After which, if I'm any judge, you will spend the rest of your career working in a blue bag out of some precinct in the South Bronx.” Karp started to dial. Flanagan cleared his throat heavily. Karp stopped dialing and glanced up.

“OK, OK. I wasn't supposed to tell you anything. Shit, man, I don't know what the fuck is going on. They told me this was coming down from the DPC level.”

“Floyd, right?”

“Yeah, how did—”

“Never mind. Who was the guy?”

“Yeah, I can see how I'm getting hung out to dry here. Well, fuck them.” Flanagan smiled ruefully. “The guy didn't give his name, as a matter of fact. But I figure, I'm not going to go to no DA with no fucking homicide evidence without knowing who the guy is who's giving it to me. So I set up my partner to tail him. After we break up in Yorkville, he takes a cab and Jimmy follows him to Columbia. It turns out the guy is some kind of professor. Name of Terzich. Stefan Terzich.”

“Ah, shit!” Karp yelled, flinging his pencil against the wall.