Infamy (6 page)

5

W
HEN THE SEDAN ARRIVED AT
the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Central Park Zoo, Officer Ewin pulled over to where a uniformed police officer was waving traffic around a half dozen parked cruisers with their red and blue lights flashing. Karp looked out the window and noted a larger contingent of officers standing by the Arsenal, as the zoo administration building was known, blocking the entrance.

Ewin rolled down his window when the officer approached. “I got the district attorney with me,” he said. “What's the ­latest?”

The officer leaned over and looked at Karp. “Hello, sir,” he said when he recognized him. “The shooter's holed up with
some hostages on the northwest side of the zoo in the Bird House, near the grizzly bear enclosure.”

Despite the urgency of the moment, Karp smiled. “You seem to know a lot about the zoo, Officer.”

The officer, a young man who barely looked old enough to be out of high school, smiled. “Yes, sir, grew up about five blocks from here; been coming since I was a kid. You'll probably have to walk from here if you want to get up to the command post. You need someone to show you the way?”

“Not a problem, Officer,” Karp replied, reaching for the handle and opening the door. “It's changed a lot, but I've been coming here since I was a toddler . . . my kids, too.”

“I knew you were from Brooklyn, sir. Anyways, you'll find the command center no problem if you just head for the bears. I'll radio ahead and let everybody know you're coming.”

“Thanks,” Karp said as he exited. “Eddie, stay with the car, please. I'll call you if I need you.”

“You got it, sir.”

Karp walked over to the knot of officers at the entrance. One of them was detached by his sergeant to accompany him into the six-and-a-half-acre zoo. Walking through the strangely deserted grounds, he was reminded of another hot summer day many years earlier. It was the last time he'd visited the zoo with his mother.

He was a senior in high school and she was dying of cancer. Her bad days far outnumbered the good, so it surprised him and his father one Sunday when she announced at breakfast that she wanted to go into the city and visit the zoo. They'd worried that even the short trip from their Brooklyn neighborhood would be too taxing on her meager reserves of energy and only ramp up the pain that was her constant companion. But she'd argued that she wouldn't have many more days when she'd feel up to such a journey, “and I want to go one more time to see the animals.”

A star basketball player, Karp had planned on going to his school to work with his coach on his game, but he called to say he wouldn't make it. His coach knew the situation at home and told him to spend the time with his mother. “Basketball can wait,” he said. “Say hello to your mom for me, and I'll be looking for her in the stands when the season starts.” They both knew that wasn't going to happen, but Karp had appreciated the thought.

So they'd taken the elevated train into the city. There his dad wanted to hail a taxi to Central Park, but his mom insisted they take the green line subway up to Central Park. A “people watcher,” she'd always preferred to mix it up with humanity, so they rode north with the throng, getting off at the Hunter College station on 68th Street and then backtracking a few blocks to the zoo.

It was a wonderful day. Years later, Karp could still recall entire conversations, as well as the sights, the smells, and the sounds, especially of his mother's voice. She'd been happier, more full of energy than at any other time in the past year as cancer whittled at her stamina and spirit.

Unlike the walkways on this afternoon, deserted due to the gunman, those had been full of New Yorkers and visitors strolling the grounds—families with young, screaming, laughing children, teenagers in love, and old couples holding hands. His mother had been her precancer self, making funny observations about the crowds, guessing at their stories, and giggling at her son's and husband's versions. They'd wrinkled their noses in the odiferous Monkey House, laughed at the antics of the polar bears, and oohed and ahhed when the lion roared. She'd even managed to eat half the hot dog they'd bought for her from a vendor's cart. But gradually her energy waned, and she'd sat wearily on a bench across from a pen where a wolf paced back and forth.

Karp's father left them there to go get her a glass of water. She leaned against her son's shoulder, then looked up at him as a tear slid down her cheek.

“I'm sorry, Mom,” he'd said softly, choking on the words but not knowing what else there was to say.

She'd wiped away the tear and patted his knee before pointing across to the wolf. “I like seeing the animals, but I think about them living their lives in cages, and it makes me sad,” she said. “I think they're in pain, not because they're being mistreated but because they don't belong in captivity. A lot of them go crazy, especially the smart ones, or the ones who know what it was like to live in the wild. For them, only death can set them free from the suffering.” As she'd paused, the wolf stopped his pacing and looked at her. “It's the only thing that will free me, too.”

“Don't say that,” he'd responded, though they both knew it was true.

She'd reached up to touch his cheek and sighed. “It's okay, Butch. I look forward to the day when I'm no longer in this pain. It's destroying more than my body; it's taking my mind, especially when I need morphine. I feel like I'm losing myself, and that's no life . . .” She stopped what she was saying and shuddered as if in sudden agony.

Karp had put his arm around her. “We shouldn't have come,” he said bitterly. “This was too much.”

“You're wrong,” she'd replied. “I'm so glad we had this time. When I'm gone, I want you to have a million memories of me. I'm still alive if I'm remembered by those who I love and who love me.”

Karp's father arrived with the glass of water. This time she didn't resist when he insisted that they take a taxi all the way back to Brooklyn. In fact, she'd slept most of the way and gone straight to bed when they arrived.

There were no more fun trips into the city, and she never made it to any more of his basketball games. Butch had to learn how to give her the pain- and mind-numbing shots of morphine by practicing on an orange, and he watched her deteriorate until at last she was freed by death.

Looking back, Karp could trace his desire to be a prosecuting attorney to his mother's battle against cancer. He'd come to see cancer as a type of evil, and he'd been powerless to stop it or protect his innocent mother. Crimes that people committed against other innocent people were another type of evil, but one he could do something about, and by putting evil people behind bars, he could protect the innocent.

The Central Park Zoo, which was officially opened in 1934 when a haphazard menagerie on the grounds was designated, had changed a lot since the days when Karp visited with his family. By the 1960s, the buildings and pens had fallen into sad disrepair; neighbors of Central Park complained of the smells and visitors of the deplorable conditions the animals were kept in. Eventually, activists forced its closing and renovation, with the
gates opening again in 1988 on a modern facility with habitats designed to recreate the natural environment the animals came from.

That was the zoo his own children had known, the one whose empty pathways beneath the tall trees he was walking on now to where a killer held hostages. But when he pictured the zoo in his mind, it was always the old grounds, the wolf pen, and that last visit with his mother.

Approaching the Bird House and grizzly bear habitat, Karp made his way to the SWAT team command center behind two armored trucks that had been parked as a barrier between those assembled and the gunman. A television camera crew was on the scene, and he recognized the young woman reporter from the shooting scene now smiling triumphantly in between “live” takes. Meanwhile, heavily armed Special Ops police officers were taking position on the sides of the building. He spotted Fulton, who'd been watching for him. The big detective waved him over to where he was listening to a police negotiator speaking to someone—he presumed the suspect—on a cell phone.

“What do we have, Clay?” Karp asked.

“I might have already said this, but the suspect's name is Dean Mueller,” Fulton answered. “He's a former Army Ranger
assigned to the unit he just shot up. He apparently received an Other Than Honorable discharge from the Army about three months ago, but we don't know any details about it. Two uniformed officers spotted him heading for the park exit at Sixty-sixth Street and he ran into the zoo. Now he's got about a dozen people, including some kids, at gunpoint inside the Bird House.”

“Mueller say anything about why he did it?”

Fulton nodded toward the police negotiator. “Not much. Something about he was set up. Don't know what that means. Otherwise, it's mostly been threats to kill the hostages if anybody tries to get at him. The guy's well trained and it's tough to come at him in that building. Good chance of casualties even if he doesn't start killing hostages.”

Karp and Fulton walked over to the negotiator just as the shooter demanded, “I want to talk to the DA!”

“Okay, Dean, what do you need the DA for?” the negotiator asked, glancing at Karp. “He's a busy man.”

“Quit dicking around and get me the fucking DA, or this conversation is over. Get him on the phone.”

Karp stepped forward and held out his hand for the negotiator's cell phone. “This is District Attorney Roger Karp,” he said.

“Yeah, right, you suddenly appeared when I asked? How do I know this isn't some other cop?”

“You know what I look like?”

“I've seen photos.”

“Then I'm going to step out in front of these trucks and come to the door,” Karp said. “You want to talk, we'll talk.”

“Okay, but I'll shoot one of these people if anything goes wrong.”

Karp started to move, but Fulton grabbed his arm. “I don't like it. This guy's already killed today. Maybe he's just looking for more publicity by shooting the district attorney.”

Gently removing his arm from his friend's grip, Karp shook his head. “Something tells me he wants to get out of where he is, not kill me. I'm going to see what he wants.”

Karp moved out from behind the trucks and began walking toward the front doors of the Bird House with his hands up in the air. The door opened a crack, and a young black woman's frightened face appeared. He could see that a gun was at her head and just make out a man's face in the shadows behind her. She pleaded when she saw him, “Help me, please help me.”

Karp smiled at her. “We're going to get you out of this,” he said, as calming as he could.

The woman whimpered. Her terrified eyes darted to the side where the gun was pressed behind one ear. She looked like she was about to faint.

“Mueller, point the gun at me,” Karp said. “You're scaring Miss . . . ?”

The woman's voice quavered, “Franklin. Ann Franklin.”

“You're scaring Miss Franklin, and we wouldn't want her to do anything to interrupt our conversation.”

Mueller's gun turned to point at Karp. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I know who you are. So are we going to talk about a deal so Miss Franklin and the others don't have to die?”

“What sort of deal?”

“I let all of these people go, give myself up, and I'll tell you what this was all about—” Mueller said.

“What is this all about?” Karp interrupted.

“Uh-uh, Karp. All I'm saying is this is big, a lot of money and a lot of movers and shakers . . . on a national level,” Mueller said. “They're behind what happened this afternoon. Why I did what I did. I'll even testify against the bastards; they tried to set me up. But I get a deal before I say anything else.”

“And what do you want?”

“No charges against me. A safe house until after the trial is over and I've testified. Then ten million bucks and a private jet to take me wherever I want to go.”

Karp rolled his eyes. “Why not ask for a private yacht to Cuba, too. I can't do it. You killed someone, and you're going to prison
for that. And where would I get ten million dollars even if I thought your information about this conspiracy was legit enough to let you get away with murder?”

“It's legit, and it's worth it, all of it—the free pass, the money, the jet . . . even the colonel's life,” Mueller said. “I'm small potatoes compared to these people.”

“Small potatoes, maybe,” Karp said. “But you still killed someone.”

“I was told to do it. We had a plan, but they fucked me over.”

“Who is we?”

“That's what you get if I get what I want,” Mueller demanded. “I can help you get them. You ever hear of MIRAGE?”

“You mean like a mirage in the desert?” Karp asked.

“No,” Mueller said. “It's something to do with a black ops raid in Syria last winter. There's a file called MIRAGE. That's what this is all about.” He stopped talking for a moment, and when he resumed, he sounded scared. “They already tried to kill me.”

“Who tried to kill you?”

“Them . . . or more specifically, they had a guy at the picnic. He tried to shoot me. Ask yourself, what's he doing carrying a gun at a picnic in Central Park?”

“He was an off-duty police detective.”

“He wasn't a cop,” Mueller said. “Or if he is, he's dirty. He's
part of this. I met him before. But that's it, no more talking. What can you do for me?”

“It's not what I can do for you, Dean. It's what you can do for yourself,” Karp said. “This can go two ways. Put down the gun and let everybody go. If you want a lawyer, one will be provided for you. You also have the right to remain silent. Do you understand that?”