Depraved Indifference (25 page)

“No, honest, that was his name,” Flanagan said hastily. He wiped his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“Yeah, right, I believe you. It figures.” Karp found himself staring at the twitch in Flanagan's lower lip. “So tell me,” he said after an uncomfortable pause, “what does Professor Terzich do, when he's not professing?”

“What d'you mean? Like private life?”

“No, public. I'll give you a hint. It has something to do with translation.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Flanagan, you're playing games again. If you were suspicious enough to check out your informant as far as you did, you must have also learned that he's the court-appointed translator in the Karavitch case. Two of the defendants, Raditch and your boy Rukovina, don't speak English. That means when they appear in court, they have to have a translator. More important, the translator has to be present when their lawyer confers with them. You understand this, Flanagan? The translator is privy to the protected relationship between client and lawyer guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. He can't go and rat out his whatever, his translatee, to the cops or the prosecution.”

“Yeah, but why is that any skin off your ass?” asked Flanagan. “You didn't get him to do it.”

“That's not the point. I'm responsible for the legality of the evidence I present. If I showed up in court with that tainted typewriter and presented it as honestly come by in the course of an investigation, not only would the case be garbage, but the State would have good cause to boot me out of there on my ass, not to mention disbarment proceedings, if they believed that I had guilty knowledge of the taint and presented it anyway. Which I'm willing to bet they had somebody in the wings prepared to swear to. Probably Terzich, those sons of bitches!”

“Who you talking about, Karp? You saying you were set up? This whole thing is a setup to get you?” The cop was frankly incredulous.

Karp shot him a sour look. “Did somebody set this up? Does Howdy Doody have a wooden dick? Come on, Flanagan. This thing was scripted, choreographed, and directed from minute one. Not specifically to get me, no. Springing Karavitch and company is the main thing. But I think I was the cherry on top. That made it extra sweet. And I'll be honest with you—I would've rolled too, if I didn't know that there was an absolute lock on this investigation by the C. of D. himself. No fucking way you could've told me something new that I hadn't got from him or one of my guys first.”

“So who was it?” Flanagan asked.

Karp didn't answer. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a minute. Then he said, “All right, Sergeant, here's what we're going to do. I will get a stenographer in here and I will ask you some questions. Then we will get this Q and A typed up and you will sign it. Then you will go back to fighting the red menace and forget all about this case, unless and until somebody tries something like this again, at which time you will come see me immediately. Understood?”

Flanagan understood. Two hours later, Karp was alone in his office, looking at the neatly typed Q and A transcript and the lab reports about the typewriter and the fingerprints. He stuffed these papers in a large manila envelope, sealed it, signed his name across the flap, and stuck cellophane tape over the signature. He addressed the front of it to himself.

Brenner was waiting for him on the White Street side.

“We're going to 52nd and Madison, no?” Brenner asked as Karp slid into the front seat.

“Yeah, let's go,” Karp grunted.

“Oh, you're in a good mood today. Is there any truth to the rumor that you're planning to convert, providing the pope drops all this crap about Jesus?”

The laugh bubbled up inside Karp and burst out, filling the car. Once started, he found it hard to stop. Brenner glanced at him sideways, a doubtful smile on his rough face. “Hey, it wasn't that funny. You OK, Butch?”

Karp wiped his streaming eyes. “Yeah, it's OK. You had to be there. Look, swing left here and hit the post office. I got to mail a registered letter.”

Monsignor Francis Keene's office in the archepiscopal chancery was small but cozy, and had a nice view of Madison Avenue. One wall was all books; another was bare, except for a crucifix. The narrow wall behind the substantial mahogany desk was covered with framed photographs, some of Keene with groups of priests and others showing Keene in a football uniform.

Keene himself looked like a chunk of native basalt, a former lineman who had fought fat to a standstill in his middle years. His gray hair was closely cropped around his squarish skull, and his face was organized around a large crumpled nose and dark, bushy eyebrows.

A jock, was Karp's first thought on entering the office. He tried to imagine him wearing one of those funny hats priests wore in the movies. It was difficult. So was imagining him at prayer.

Keene had a big hand and a hard grip. He ushered Karp into a brown leather chair and sat down himself behind the desk. Karp glanced at the photographs. Keene caught his eye and smiled. Karp said, “I see you used to play some ball.”

“Yes, starting defensive tackle, three years. A small Catholic school in the Midwest.”

“Yeah, Notre Dame. I think I've heard of it. You look like you could still go in for the sack.”

“On a good day, Mr. Karp,” Keene chuckled. “But thanks anyway. I believe you played some ball yourself.”

Karp felt an uncomfortable reprise of his recent paranoia. Somebody had taken the trouble to investigate his background and convey it to Keene. “Yeah, but not a contact sport.”

“Like the law, in that respect, no?” Keene smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Well, Mr. Karp, I have to tell you that Billy's family was very pleased with the disposition of his case. We all owe you a debt of gratitude. If there's anything I can do—”

“Actually, Monsignor, there is something. I'm given to believe that you're sort of a troubleshooter for the, ah, the—”

“The Church, Mr. Karp? Yes, I imagine you could call me that. The Archdiocese does what it can to avoid unnecessary embarrassment, and I try to help where I can. Although I do have other duties.”

“Yeah, right. So I thought you might know something about a murder case I'm working on right now.”

“A murder case? Involving clergy?”

“No, it's this Karavitch case. The gang that hijacked the plane to Paris. They also left a bomb that exploded and killed a cop. Terry Doyle, his name was.”

Keene's eyebrows came together in a frown. “I'm not sure I see the involvement of the Archdiocese in this affair.”

“Let me help you out. These defendants were barely out of their handcuffs when somebody sent a check for twenty K to one of the most expensive criminal lawyers in the country for their defense. The source of that check was the Archdiocese.”

“I see. And … ?”

“And I'd like to know why.”

Keene looked out at Madison Avenue for a moment, his brows still wrinkled. Then he turned back to Karp. “Supposing it were true—I'm not sure I have to give the prosecution that sort of information.”

“Of course you don't. You could kick me out of here this minute. But I suspect that the main point of the aid, and the reason for the discreet way it was handed out, is to keep the lid on some connection these guys have with the Church. A lid that I will do my personal best to pry off if I don't get the answers I want.”

“I wouldn't advise doing that, Mr. Karp,” said Keene, his voice rumbling.

“Why? Because it might harm my career? If you know enough about me to know I used to shoot hoops, you also know it would be real hard to screw up my career any more than it is already. Now we can fence around some more and trade threats, or you can tell me what I want to know and I'll be out of here. And like you said, you owe me one.” He tried a frank and boyish smile. “What do you say?”

Keene shrugged and smiled back. “You want to know why the Church is helping to pay for the defense in this case? It's no big mystery, Mr. Karp. You appear to have, if I may say so, a certain tendency toward morbid suspicion. I imagine it must be a natural occupational hazard of your profession. Not the law; I mean the business of catching criminals. I've noted it often in my many friends on the police force. I find it interesting because it is the diametric opposite of a hazard in my own profession, which is credulity, the tendency to look for the good in people.

“There's a passage in Sartre I've always liked. He describes how once during the Resistance he was trapped in a cellar with an old priest. They were both hiding from a Gestapo search. Sartre asked the priest whether there was any wisdom he had distilled about the human condition as a result of hearing thousands of confessions. The priest replied, ‘Most men are better than they believe they are.' I would suggest as a corollary: ‘Most men are better than other men believe they are.'

“We should keep that in mind when we talk about Djordje Karavitch. The story is rather complex, as you might imagine, since it took place in the Balkans in the midst of war. Do you know anything about Yugoslavia, Mr. Karp?”

“Croats and Serbs, you mean?”

“Exactly! Croats and Serbs. The Croats are, of course, Catholics. The Serbs are not. It may be hard to imagine in these ecumenical and irreligious times what it once meant for a nation to be so constructed. Yes, there is Ireland, but what goes on in Belfast is the palest shadow of what has happened within our own time in Croatia. But how they believe! It is a sad statement on our world that the faith needs oppression for its fullest flowering. The Irish. The Poles. The Croats.”

“You mean under the Turks?”

“Oh, no, I mean the Serbs. When Yugoslavia was formed in 1919, it meant surrendering the Croatian people and their religion to the domination of an alien faith. Like Ireland under the Protestant Ascendancy. The Serbs were on the winning side in the First World War, you see, so they picked up the marbles—the courts, government jobs, army, police.

“The Church helped where it could. It supported youth groups, unions, political organizations, anything to keep alive the spirit of a Catholic Croatia. I should add, to a greater extent than would be the case today. In politics, at any rate.”

“What does this have to do with Karavitch?” Karp asked irritably.

“I was just coming to that. From his earliest youth, Karavitch had been active in Catholic and nationalist organizations. He was a devoted follower of the great Croatian leader, Stefan Raditch. When Raditch was murdered in 1928, Karavitch was plunged into despair. In the end, his faith sustained him, as I trust it still does. He became an editor of a Catholic newspaper in Zagreb and a prominent youth leader. Of course, he was constantly harassed by agents of the central government.

“During the war he fought hard against the communists, and afterwards—”

“Wait a minute. You mean World War II? The communists in Yugoslavia were on our side, weren't they?”

Keene paused and answered with more than a hint of annoyance, “Things were very complex in those years, as I've said. In any case, after the war it was, of course, impossible for Karavitch to stay in Yugoslavia, and so it was arranged for him to come over here.”

“Arranged? By whom?”

“Friends, I suppose. I don't see that it bears much on the present situation. Pavle Macek came over at that time as well.”

“And that's the story?”

“Yes. You sound surprised, Mr. Karp. Mr. Karavitch was for many years a fighter in the cause of Catholic freedoms. You are yourself Jewish, I understand. Perhaps you are a member of a Jewish organization. If that organization wished to aid in the defense of someone who had fought against anti-Semitism and had been arrested for some outrage against, let us say, an Arab embassy, I daresay you might approve of that organization coming to his aid. It's the same here. The Church has an obligation to see that he has a decent defense, however misguided his recent actions. Surely you would not dispute his right to defend himself, or our right to aid him?”

“No, not at all. I don't even object to being fed this line of malarkey I've been getting from you. What I do object to strenuously is cops messing up my case against these rats because you, or somebody in your line of work, leaned on a deputy commissioner with political ambitions.”

Keene rose slightly out of his chair, like a tackle coming off the scrimmage line. His face flushed and his neck seemed to swell around his stiff white collar. “What the devil are you talking about?”

Karp stood up. “If you don't know, I strongly suggest you find out, Monsignor. Now, you know very well that a case against whoever slipped the word to Pretty Boy Floyd for obstruction of justice would probably not get very far. But I will file such a case if—”

Keene was on his feet now. “Are you threatening me?”

“Threaten you? How can I threaten you? You're the Powerhouse. Look, Monsignor, the war stuff I could care less about. Karavitch carried water for the Germans? So what? It was a long time ago, and there's plenty of VWs in New York. But your boy killed a cop, also a good Catholic, by the way, and so I'm going to put him away for it if I can.

“That's why you got to call off the fellas, Monsignor. I mean it. Like I said, I can't threaten you, but I guarantee you, the cops put this one in the tank, you'll never make cardinal. Talk about embarrassment, for the Church and all, if this ever got out. Which it will. Hentoff would eat it up with sour cream. And besides, Monsignor, it's not nice. You hired yourself a good lawyer. Now play fair.” Karp gestured at the photographs as he strolled toward the door. “For the Gipper, huh?”

In the car, Brenner asked, “I see you're smiling. How did it go?”

Karp leaned back in his seat and stretched, then rolled the window down to dispel the effects of Brenner's White Owl. “It went OK. We had a frank exchange of views about morality.”