Justice Denied (15 page)

Karp had sort of forgotten about the Harry part too, in that he was still personally on the case. At the moment he was emerging from an unmarked police car onto the gravel drive of a large Riverdale house. It was a lovely house, a two-story Italianate villa in rusticated brown sandstone with a red tile roof. The grounds were bright with flowering trees, and there was a flash of silver through the boughs from the Hudson. Karp rang the bell, and a maid in a white uniform showed him in.

He had called Sarkis Kerbussyan first thing that morning, and the man had agreed to meet with him immediately. Indeed, he seemed anxious to do so. The servant, a dour, elderly woman, led Karp silently through paneled halls that were floored with marble or dark wood where they were not covered with oriental carpeting. Karp was notably insensitive to works of art, but these carpets struck even him with their obvious quality, the depth and intricacy of their patterns, the brilliance of their colors. It was like walking on soft jewels.

The woman brought him at last to a large semicircular room, white paneled, its walls made of bookcases except on the curved side, where high French windows gave onto a formal garden, just turning bright green. The floor was covered with a ruby carpet bordered in vivid blue. On the carpet, in the approximate center of the room, was a light writing table of some pale wood, and behind the desk was an old man.

The woman left the room, closing the door silently behind her. This is like a movie, thought Karp, being of a class and generation that did not often enter houses of this style, and that instinctively used the fictions of Hollywood as a reference when encountering the remarkable in real life.

The old man rose stiffly to his feet as Karp approached, and smiled and offered his hand, introducing himself as Sarkis Kerbussyan. Karp said who he was and took the proffered chair.

“Nice place,” offered Karp, and immediately regretted it, feeling the hick. Kerbussyan nodded politely. “Yes, I like it very much. I bought it because it reminded me of my grandfather's house at Smyrna, also on a hill above a river, also with a red tile roof and a garden in the back. I have been successful in growing figs here too, despite the climate. Perhaps, if you are interested, later I will show you the house and the garden.” He paused and smiled. “But first our business, yes?”

“Aram Tomasian,” said Karp.

“Yes. An unfortunate mistake. A tragedy for the boy and his family.”

“I take it you don't think he did it.”

Kerbussyan made a dismissive gesture. “An impossibility! I have known the boy since he was born, and also his father and his mother from a very young age. In Beirut, in fact. They were brought there as orphans, and my uncle arranged for them to come to this country. So I know them all very well. They are all businessmen, peaceful people, like me. There is no possible chance that Aram was involved in such a thing.”

At that moment the servant reappeared with a tray containing a coffee service and a small plate of baklava. In the necessary pause while this refreshment was served out, Karp took the opportunity to study his host. Old, at least eighty, thought Karp, but not frail. Rather the opposite, with a full head of thick white hair swept back from a freckled, ivory forehead. He had a strong, fleshy nose over a thick, stiff-looking mustache, also white. He was dressed neatly, as for business, in a well-tailored gray suit, a white silk shirt, and a blue tie. He became conscious of Karp's examination as he poured the coffee and met Karp's gaze out of deep-set brown eyes.

The eyes held an expression Karp had seen before: veiled, layered, amused, ruthless, an expression common to powerful men of a certain stripe. Some of the dons had such a glance, and some lawyers around town, and Karp had also seen something like it in both an Israeli intelligence agent and a Nazi fugitive. Sarkis Kerbussyan was not a simple businessman, or a simple anything.

They drank, they nibbled. Small talk flowed. Kerbussyan, it turned out, had started as a rug merchant—a deprecating smile, denoting his concession that such a trade was almost a parody for an Armenian—and while expanding his businesses into real estate and investments, he had retained his love for carpets and antiquities. Karp learned that the rug beneath their feet was worth a good deal more than the house in which it sat.

“That's a lot of money for a rug,” said Karp, willing to be impressed. “That's pretty nearly enough to bail Tomasian out.”

An incomprehensible look, that could have been anger or pain, flashed across Kerbussyan's eyes for an instant. He put a stiff smile on his mouth and said, “That is being attended to. Five million is a great deal of money to assemble at short notice. As for the rug and other antiquities of value, I am afraid that the courts are reluctant to accept them as bailable items. Not like cash and real estate, you understand.” He glanced away, seeming to take in the carpet and the room's other furnishings for the first time, or as if he were looking at them for the last time.

“Yes, a great deal of money. It is an Ushak medallion carpet made in the region around Smyrna in the seventeenth century. There was one like it in my grandfather's house. But there are only a few of this quality and size left in private hands in the world, and that is where value resides—quality, craftsmanship, beauty, yes, but uniqueness above all.

“Something else too. Objects, certain objects, have a kind of soul. Rugs, for example. In the old days, they say, the rug makers would buy little girls from poor peasant families and wall them up in rooms with a loom and wools of many colors, and the little girls would spend their entire lives working on a single rug. When you bought such a rug, you would, in effect, be buying a whole life, a soul.

“That people would do such a thing is an indication of our fallen state. After all, what is more unique than a human being? Yet we treat one another so badly; we murder for objects. There are objects in this very house that are dripping blood. If we were truly godlike, we would become connoisseurs of souls and not objets d'art, don't you think?”

“We have a way to go,” said Karp. “Meanwhile, people kill for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with objects. Passions. Causes.”

“Yes, but it takes a particular sort of man to kill for a cause, don't you think? To return to the reason for your visit, not a man like Aram Tomasian.”

“No? He sure had enough equipment for it. And he's a member of an organization called the Armenian Secret Army, and he'd written threatening letters to the Turkish mission.”

Kerbussyan put down his coffee cup, pressed his palms together beneath his chin, and looked at Karp. “Mr. Karp, I do not see many people anymore, outside my community, that is. I was curious about why the chief of the Homicide Bureau wished to see me, and so after you called I made some telephone calls of my own. It appears that there was recently a difference of opinion between you and the gentleman who is handling Aram's case.”

“I'm not at liberty to discuss the internal operations of the district attorney's office,” said Karp, irritated both by the other man's knowledge of his argument with Roland and by his own pompous response.

“Of course,” agreed Kerbussyan, “it is a delicate position. But let us say only that you are not convinced that Aram is guilty. You have no wish to discommode your colleague, who is convinced. So what must you do? Obviously, you must find the person who actually did the shooting of this Turk.” He shrugged and smiled. “But of such things I can tell you nothing. If I may say so, a visit to an elderly Armenian seems an unprofitable way to advance your investigation.”

Karp's irritation increased. He was being played with in an insultingly obvious way. He said, “Not if he's the local head of the Armenian Secret Army.”

To his surprise, Kerbussyan laughed, a dry sound like a bronchial attack. “Ah, yes, that. Tell me, Mr. Karp, what do you imagine the Armenian Secret Army to be?”

“I have no idea. I'll bet you could tell me, though.”

Another chuckle. “Yes, but then it wouldn't be a secret, would it? All right, enough fencing. May I assume you have some knowledge of the Armenian genocide? Yes? Very good. One of history's great crimes, but now almost forgotten. ‘Who remembers the Armenians?' You know who said that? Adolf Hitler. The reasoning is clear. The Armenians were ignored and forgotten and so would the Jews be when they were all dead.

“You are yourself Jewish, are you not, Mr. Karp? A good deal in common, the Jews and the Armenians, and not just the disasters of the present century. Do you know that of all the ancient peoples of the Near East mentioned by Herodotus twenty-five hundred years ago, the Cappadocians, the Lydians, the Phoenicians, the Phrygians, and the rest, the only ones to survive into modern times with their cultural identity intact are the Armenians and the Jews? One wonders why.

“It is easier to see why a people obsessed by national survival and the imagined wrongs of history, like the Germans and Turks, should conceive a hatred for the champions of survival and wish to destroy them. Perhaps it is similar to what I have heard of cannibals who seek to obtain the virtues of their enemies by eating their flesh.

“The great difference, of course, is that the genocide of the Jews was exposed by the victorious powers in the second war, and that, overcome with guilt, those powers provided the Jews with an independent nation. The Germans admitted their crimes and paid compensation to the victims. Little enough, but the world attempted some justice. You should not be surprised that Armenians want the same.”

The old man paused and looked at Karp with his deep and level gaze. This speech was a distraction, but from what? Or perhaps the old man thought it was the point. They had in any case drifted far from Tomasian's predicament. The silence continued. Karp said, “You mean they want a homeland?”

“I think there are some that do. The liberation of western Armenia. But it is complex. There are no Armenians left in that country to liberate, and of course, politically it is impossible; Armenia is a Soviet republic. The Turks are allied to the West. And besides, the Armenians are not like the Jews, or like the Jews imagine themselves to be. There is no serious Armenian Zionism, the tie to a particular piece of land. In the eleventh century, when the Seljuk Turks conquered Armenia, much of the nation moved five hundred miles south and founded another Armenia in the Taurus Mountains. The people, that is what counts, the people and the language and the Church.”

“So what do you want?”

The old man's eyes flashed briefly. “A confession. From the Turks. That it happened. That they owe compensation. So, in our cause, Turks are killed. The Turkish ambassadors in Vienna, in Paris, in the Vatican. The consul in Beirut. The director of Turkish espionage in the Middle East.”

“And Ersoy?”

Kerbussyan smiled and shook his head slowly. “Not Ersoy. As you know very well. And also, if an Armenian group wished to kill a Turkish official in New York, which would be a stupidity uncharacteristic of such a group, let me assure you that it would not have been done as this was done, and Aram would not have been the assassin. Not someone who is on record as writing letters of protest.”

“And the weapons … ?”

“Mr. Karp, Aram travels to Europe and the Near East several times a year. He carries bags full of gems. He is well known to customs officials, and his paperwork is always impeccable….” Kerbussyan made a graceful gesture with his hand, indicating a caesura into which a thought might be inserted.

“You're saying he runs guns?”

“You are saying it, Mr. Karp. But supposing an Armenian nationalist organization possessed an asset like Aram Tomasian. Wouldn't he be the very last person to risk in a venture such as the crime in question?”

Karp didn't know. He thought not, but then he wasn't a terrorist leader. Maybe that was exactly what a terrorist would do. On the other hand, it was an additional confirmation of his feeling that Tomasian had been purposely framed. He decided to voice this to his host, since they were pretending to be frank.

“Okay, say I buy that. It means that someone went out of their way to frame your boy. Who would do that? I mean, who among the people who wanted Ersoy dead?”

Kerbussyan appeared to consider this for a moment, nodding, his face all amused concentration. “Those are two separate questions. First, we are not sure that Ersoy was a target. Perhaps Aram is the target, or the Armenian community generally. Any Turk would have done just as well for that. And Ersoy was obvious, accessible, and regular in his movements. As for motive, whether the Turks would like to discredit the Armenians, the question is hardly worth asking.”

“You think they killed their own guy to smear the Armenians?”

Kerbussyan made a dismissive gesture. “I don't say that. But they are a violent and inexplicable people. They have a military government with many quarrelsome factions. Perhaps someone wished to kill two birds with one stone.”

As Karp thought about that possibility, an ornate clock on a side table chimed a clear note. Kerbussyan shifted in his chair and said, “That is really all the advice I can give at this time, sir. If you will excuse me, I have one of my infrequent appointments.”

Karp rose, as did Kerbussyan, and they shook hands formally across the desk. Karp felt as if he had just completed an unsuccessful loan interview, which was not a way he liked to feel. As a result, instead of leaving amid polite pleasantries, he looked the old man in the eye and asked, “What about the money? The million dollars in Ersoy's safe-deposit box. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”

Kerbussyan's face assumed a look of polite confusion. “I have no idea what you're talking about,” he said.

Karp nodded curtly and left the room. The old guy was good, you had to give him that. He had played Karp nicely, giving away as little as possible, and only those things that would steer Karp in the direction he wanted him steered. Admitting Tomasian was a gun runner was good, and probably true. It cast a cloak of sincerity over the conversation, and over the suggestion that the killing might be a Turkish operation.