Depraved Indifference (50 page)

“Karavitch and I wound up in Trieste. We had a tiny room, a little bigger than a closet, and we were lucky to get it. He would lie in bed all day ranting and drunk. I would try to find food for us and grappa for him. Steal it, usually. I found out I was a survivor, too. One day I come back to the room. Dreb is there and Karavitch is lying on the bed with his throat cut. Dreb tells me he found him like this. I believe him. People in those days would kill you for a pair of shoes, a half kilo of cheese. Also, if I don't believe him, if I believe he killed Karavitch himself, then he will know it, and he will kill me too. I was sixteen and I wanted to live.

“So, he says he will take Karavitch's papers and we will escape together. They look very much alike, did I mention that? They could have been brothers. He says he has a contact with the U.S. Army. We will go away and work for them and have lots of food and clothes and not have to run any more. But first he must tattoo numbers under Karavitch's arm, where all the SS have them. Then they will think the body is Dreb. He has the equipment. I don't know where he got it, but he has it, and he does the job. Underneath his own arm there is a bandage. He has taken off his own number.

“So then I realize, he is not going to kill me. He needs me. Who can vouch for Djordje Karavitch better than his little shadow, Pavle Macek? I tell him everything about Karavitch, so he can pass better, and I know a lot about Karavitch: his mother, his father, his schools, he is allergic to milk, everything. Karavitch likes to talk about himself, and I am always there, like a dog at his feet. But with such a man as Dreb, it is a good thing not to be too trusting. So when we come to America I write a paper, and I give it to someone I know, someone important to Croatian affairs here in New York, and say if I die, to open it and tell everyone what is inside.”

“That's interesting. Is this just a letter, or is there documentary proof that he isn't Karavitch?”

“There are no documents, only my word, but that is good enough.”

Yeah, thought Karp, it was before you started balling his old lady. Now your word isn't worth shit. “OK, go on,” he said. “How come you're still with him?”

“As for that, you should also understand that what I have felt for Karavitch, so now I feel for Dreb. But Dreb is no longer Dreb—he becomes Karavitch. He does all the things Karavitch would do, among the Croatians here in New York, but better even than the real Karavitch would have done. He is stronger, more powerful. And I follow him, and things go well, until her.

“Now he is getting old and she is so young and beautiful, an American, a girl from the West. But he cannot bear such a free creature always around him. So he must break her to his will. And how does he do this? As he learned in Keinschlag, in the SS school there. Discipline. Political lectures. History. We are going back to Croatia, we will crush the reds, the people will rise to welcome us, and so on, year after year.

“And he succeeds. She is on fire to liberate Croatia. To strike a blow. She is tamed, but she is no lapdog. He has made a wolf. He beats her—she loves it, she laughs in his face—‘Make me hard,' she says, ‘to fight for Croatia.' I am a Croatian, and he is half Croatian, and she never saw Croatia, but she is more Croatian than the two of us together.

“Now she starts to taunt him. You know how emigrés are all the time talking, talking about what they will do, how to make the revolt, how it will be when they are in power. Especially Rukovina, chatter, chatter. She is at all the meetings. Afterward, she mocks us, Karavitch and me. Of course, she speaks Serbo-Croatian, so it's even worse. She says we are not men, that we are chattering grandmothers. We are too fat and comfortable, she says, to really do anything. We are afraid of a little blood. She says this to us, we who have walked to our knees in blood.

“I see it working on him. The Croatian people, the honor, the glory, all he taught her. You see, now he has forgotten he is Dreb. He is really Karavitch. And this plane, this bomb, this is what Karavitch would do, the mad gesture.”

“And he got you to make the bomb?”

“Me?” Macek laughed, an unlikely high cackle. “
He
built it. In my shop, as she looked on. She handed him the tools. He had saved this timer switch from the war, and his skill was still what it was. I wished many times as I watched him that he would slip, and we would all be blown to Hell.”

“So who did it? Macek or Karavitch?” Marlene asked as they waited in the hallway for Karavitch to be brought up from the pens.

“Damned if I know. Not that it matters. We got the story now and we got our shocker. He's dead meat.”

“Get 'em, tiger.”

The man who called himself Djordje Karavitch smiled broadly after Karp had laid out, point by point, the case against him. “Come, now, Mr. Karp, you must try something better than that. I have also interrogated prisoners in my time, and of course, the game is to convince one that the others have betrayed him, so that he will in turn betray them. I compliment you; you have learned a good deal about the construction of this bomb you claim has killed a policeman, and you may have convinced my wife and Macek to say that I made it. But what is that good for? Do you believe a man in my position would risk all to construct a booby trap with the sole purpose of killing a policeman? And you say it was to impress my wife?

“And yet you know my wife has betrayed me with this man. Will anyone accept the evidence of these two lovebirds against me? I would not need the services of so distinguished a law firm as the one Mr. Evans represents to make a fool of you in court.”

“Yes, but it's not likely that you will have the services of Arthur Bingham Roberts much longer.”

“Oh?” Karavitch looked toward Evans, who shrugged.

“Uh-huh. Because the Church put up the money to pay for defending Djordje Karavitch, who is a kind of hero in its eyes. And you're not Djordje Karavitch.”

The old man barked a laugh. “That is insane. Has someone been filling your head with nonsense about me?”

“Nope. I figured it out all by myself. With some help from the Mossad. You know about the Mossad, don't you? You've probably felt their breath on you from time to time.” Karp reached into his briefcase and pulled out the Yugoslav poster with the young Karavitch's picture on it. “Would you examine that, please?”

Karavitch took the poster, put on a pair of thick reading glasses, and looked at it. “So?” he said. “The communists wanted me after the war. They wanted thousands. What of it?”

“That is you, then?”

“Of course, it is me. It looks like me, it has my name on it. Of course it is me. What nonsense are you talking?”

“Bear with me a moment, Mr. Karavitch. Would you sign your name on this paper?” Karp pushed a yellow pad and a pen across the table.

The old man smiled and signed his “Djordje Karavitch” with a flourish. “You know, Mr. Karp, in case you have any other old papers you wish to compare with this, sometimes signatures change over the years.”

“I'm aware of that. But some things never change. I notice you signed with your left hand and took the poster I gave you with your left hand. You are left-handed, are you not?”

“Of course.”

“Of course, but you know it's amazing about handedness. It pervades our own lives, but it's one of the last things we remember about others. I bet you couldn't recall the handedness of a single one of your friends or acquaintances. It's not something that ever comes up, except on athletic teams. Now in this poster here, for example, you're writing, and of course, you're using your left hand.”

“Of course. What are you driving at, Mr. Karp?”

“Wait, I'm almost there. That's what I thought too. Then I began studying this poster. It's very interesting because it's really a poster within a poster. The subject is photographed in his office, and there's a poster on the wall behind him. Are you familiar with that poster?”

The old man peered at the paper. “Yes, it's a propaganda poster, against the communists.”

“Uh-huh. Can you read the writing on it?”

“No, I cannot. It is too blurred. What is the point of this? It's just an old poster.”

Karp reached into his briefcase again and took out a hemispherical glass paperweight, a common object on nearly every desk in the building. They made fairly good magnifiers.

“My eyes are better than yours, but I can't read it, either, because it's in Cyrillic script, or so I thought. It looks that way at first glance. But just now I thought to myself, why would a poster on the wall of a Croat nationalist be in Cyrillic script? The Croats use Latin script, don't they?”

The old man did not answer. Karp slammed the paperweight down on the poster. The sound echoed in the room, startling the stenographer. “Now you can read it and so can I. I don't know what it says, but I can read it, because it's not Cyrillic script at all. Those are Latin letters, but they're reversed. The negative was reversed when it was printed. It must have been a rush job during the war. Djordje Karavitch is writing with his right hand, isn't he, Hauptsturmfuehrer Josef Karl Dreb?”

The old man waved his hand weakly in front of his face, as if waving away flies. “I don't know what you are talking about. I am Djordje Karavitch.”

“No, you're not. This photograph proves you're not. And it would be child's play to get the records, school records, dental records, medical records, to demonstrate it beyond a shadow of a doubt. The Yugoslavs would love to help and so would the Israelis. Especially the Israelis. No, your scam is based on nobody looking very closely, on the fact that you fixed it so that everyone thought that Dreb was dead, on the acceptance of the man who knew Karavitch best, Pavle Macek.”

“I am Karavitch,” the old man intoned.

“Yes. And you're going to Attica for life as Karavitch. Because, you Nazi fucker, you are going to plead guilty to the top count of the indictment, and you're going to rat out your friends too, because if you don't, this—who you really are, Dreb—will be all over town. The Croatians will spit on you. The Church will wash its hands. Your wife will know she married a goddamn fake. You'll stand in a glass cage in Jerusalem and whine that you vas only following orderz, and the Jews will hang your filthy ass.”

“I am Karavitch.
I am Karavitch!
” screamed the old man. His face was turning red and flecks of spittle flew through the air and fell to the tabletop.

“Calm down your client, counselor,” said Karp to the white-faced Evans. “He needs some legal advice.”

As Karp left the room, the old man began to shout once again his identity to the world, his voice high and cracking.

“My hero,” said Marlene.

“Yeah, who was that masked man? Christ, Marlene, I'm dead. When was the last time I got a night's sleep?”

“I think a week after this past Shevuos. I might even give up my chance to possess your fine young body for eight straight.”

“I'm not that tired.”

“Oh, you thing! So, that's it. One down, only six hundred and twelve homicides to go. It all worked out.”

“Yeah. Except for one detail. Your compensation. I don't trust Bloom worth a shit to muscle the state. In fact, he could fuck it up so bad that we'd never see daylight and never prove that it was him that screwed us.”

“Oh, that. Well, you did your best—”

“Bullshit. I haven't started. Here, sit on my lap so your ear's next to the phone. I want you to hear this.”

She did so, squirming nicely, while Karp dialed a long-distance number. “This is his private number. I screwed it out of Evans. Only presidents and above get this one.”

The phone rang for two rings and someone picked it up.

“Hello?” said the golden voice of Arthur Bingham Roberts.

“Roberts? Karp here, of the New York DA.”

The voice lost forty degrees of warmth. “Yes? What do you want?”

“Well, Roberts, I want a favor.”

“A favor?”

“Yeah, a legal favor. I want to retain you as counsel in a compensation case. I want you to sue the State of New York for a friend of mine.”

“You can't be serious.”

“Oh, I'm dead serious, Roberts. It won't be hard to win, because justice is on our side, and justice is something I know you dote on. You and our fine district attorney. Come on, say you'll take the case. For me.” A pause.

“Very well. One of my associates will contact you.”

“Uh-uh, Roberts, no associates. I want you up there in Albany personally. After all, it
is
the most important case of your career, because if you lose it, I guarantee you won't have a career.” A longer pause.

“I see. I should warn you that my fees are quite high in cases like this.”

“Oh, get real, Roberts. Your fee is zero on this one.
Nada.
We get
all
the money, and it better be a whole shitload of it. Am I making myself clear?” The longest pause of all.

“Perfectly clear. Is that all?”

Marlene put her soft lips to Karp's ear and whispered, “Ask him if he does divorce work.”

A Biography of Robert K. Tanenbaum

Robert K. Tanenbaum is the
New York Times
bestselling author of twenty-five legal thrillers and has an accomplished legal career of his own. Before his first book was published, Tanenbaum had already been the Bureau Chief of the Criminal Courts, had run the Homicide Bureau, and had been in charge of the training program for the legal staff for the New York County District Attorney's Office. He also served as Deputy Chief Counsel to the Congressional Committee investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. In his professional career, Tanenbaum has never lost a felony case. His courtroom experiences bring his books to life, especially in his bestselling series featuring prosecutor Roger “Butch” Karp and his wife, Marlene Ciampi.