Resolved (29 page)

Bottles of cold Harp lager were distributed to the adults. Zak grabbed one, was yelled at, allowed a swallow, and then set to peeling potatoes with his brother. The others went out the back door and lounged in the somewhat scruffy yard, and got acquainted. Nora was a surgical nurse by profession, and seemed to know a lot about the Karps. She exchanged some phrases in Gaelic with Lucy (“And that exhausts me knowledge of the dear old tongue, I'm afraid”), listened to Marlene's version of the adventures she'd been through with Jim Raney (in which Raney came out a deal more heroic than he apparently had when he'd recounted them to the bride), and then the women got into child-rearing practices. Karp was content to listen to their talk as he might have the sound of the surf. Lucy drifted inside to supervise the boys, who, from the sounds they made, were spending more time flicking bits of spud at each other than actually peeling.

They were all well into their second beers when Raney arrived, laden with meats and looking wilted and whipped. Beers were provided him, he showered and changed into cutoffs and T-shirt, the fire was started, sweet smoke rose to heaven, the party ate the burgers and hot dogs, plus a French potato salad that Lucy had pulled together while Nora, the slut, had taken her ease like a duchess. Who piled compliments on Marlene, for her talented daughter.

“Oh, the Karp show has only started,” said Marlene, who had by then lost track of the beers. “G.C.!” she called, “give us a tune!” One never had to ask him twice. Zak trotted out to the car and returned with the box. Giancarlo played “The Night We Had the Goat.”

Nora said, “Ah, that's grand, but say, can you play a slip jig at all?”

Giancarlo launched into “The Windy Stairs,” and then “Up in the Garret,” with Nora doing a credible dance with the baby jouncing and giggling in her arms.

Meanwhile, Marlene had sidled up to Raney.

“Tell me,” she said.

“The short version is there's something bent going on. We don't know who's in on it yet, but I think I got them interested enough to get an investigation going. The doc up there is a junkie, and they showed me a kid supposedly in charge of the ward where Felix supposedly died, who was lying through his teeth. The orderly station had a bunch of books there that belonged to someone who was not the hick pretending to be in charge, two in French, one in Arabic.”

“Oh, hot damn!”

“Yeah. In French we got
Reflections on the French Algerian War
by Mouloud Faroun and
The Black Book of Jihad
by Gilles Kepel. In Arabic there's an admiring biography of Sabri al-Banna, a.k.a. Abu Nidal. Close associate in the old days of…?”

“Not what's-his-name: the B'nai Brith bomber?”

“Him. Feisal ibn-Salemeh. Resident at Auburn. It was a pretty slick setup. Salemeh was in total charge of the infirmary for years, and it'd be nothing for him to slip Felix out. They even had this ringer all ready to pretend to be in charge of the prison clinic if anyone came by.”

“I can't believe that no one connected him with the bombings.”

“Hey, he was in jail, under an assumed name. The guys who knew about his background weren't talking to the people trying to find the Manbomber. We'll be having a conversation with ibn-Salemeh's lawyer, I'm pretty sure. He was the conduit, apparently. And it would've been cool if Feisal had remembered to take his library when he ducked out. Auburn will be crawling with feds and state cops by tomorrow. Of course, the feebs immediately cut us out of it, but who gives a shit about that. I just want Felix.”

“And the cops are happy with this?”

“More or less. At least One PP isn't looking at me like I'm a nut anymore. The main thing the Felix connection does for them is to explain the bombing pattern. Yeah, it looked random, because Felix was settling scores and there was no connection between him and anyone with bomb skills. Now there is.”

“But besides Judge Horowitz there's no one who's died in the bombings that has a connection to Salemeh. Or is there?”

Raney's face had grown grim. He stared at his dancing wife and then back to Marlene. “Well, there's you. The Karp family is on both bad guys' lists.”

“Oh, right. Shit!”

“And there's Daoud got killed, the baker. Also the theory is the bombing so far's been a sideshow, and that they're saving it all up for some big bang. Or were until their base blew up on them. I'm not supposed to tell anyone this…but, we got a tip. They're planning to attack the tunnels: Lincoln, Holland, Queens, and Battery. According to the rat, they have fucking tons of high explosive manufactured and ready to go. They were planning on using septic tanker trucks to carry the bombs in.”

“Oh, great! This is going to do wonders for traffic.”

“Tell me about it. Anyway, the interesting thing is, they played us the tape of the guy who called it in. He had his voice disguised, but it was obvious that it was a regular American voice, no accent.”

“Oh-ho.”

“I'd bet on it. Once you have the general outlines, the plot is pretty clear. Salemeh gets Felix out of Auburn and ships him to his pals in the city. Why? Easy. The whole world is searching for skulking Arabs and Felix is an all-American-looking guy. By the way, there's our fella in the ball hat for sure now. So he plants the bombs, buys explosives, whatever. But since Felix is Felix, he's not a happy camper at all. Did you know he was a big racist? Oh, yeah, he doesn't miss a trick, Felix. So he probably wasn't happy taking orders from a bunch of Ay-rabs. So he does a few operations on his own, bombs or people he had a grudge against, that double murder right here in Queens. Which couldn't have made Salemeh's people too happy. So they break up.”

“Wait a minute, what makes you think that there are any Salemeh people left? Who died in the Queens house?”

“Two brothers named Alfiyah, Omar and Fuad, from Brooklyn. Palestinians, born here but very hot Islamists. Dying to be martyrs, according to the neighbors and police intelligence. So to speak. I guess they got their wish.”

“But they were recruited by someone.”

“Oh, yeah, they were just the kind of assholes Salemeh liked to recruit—disposables, okay to put together bombs and then get rid of them. It might have worked, too, except for Felix. I'm guessing that Felix might have helped that house explode. It's a Felix kind of thing. But they're still in business, so since Felix doesn't ever let go of a grudge, as his good-bye present he lets us know what he learned about their plans.”

“I like it. Did the bosses?”

“Not all of it. Now, needless to say, they love that Arabs are in the picture now. Arabs they can handle. They're a little spooked about putting a dead guy out on a wanted bulletin, they want to wait for—”

Raney was snatched away with a jerk on his wrist by his wife, who pulled him into a reel. Marlene had no idea that Raney could do Irish dancing. Maybe Nora had taught him. Before Pete Balducci's funeral it had been several years since she'd seen Raney, and she probably would have let him drop out of her life completely had they not met there. Why? They'd always liked each other. Sexual guilt on Raney's part, her own withdrawal from the world after going crazy, and more so after what had happened in West Virginia.

No, let's not think about this shit, Marlene, let's just have a normal evening with friends, and my, didn't they make a handsome couple, dancing to the wild music. Zak was banging out the tempo on a beer tray with a piece of wood from some toy. Lucy was bouncing the baby on her lap in time. Marlene went over and sat on a wide chaise next to her husband.

“Happy times,” he said. She didn't answer, but laid her head against his shoulder. He put an arm around her. He was still nursing his first beer.

Karp watched the dancers turn. He was listening to the music, but through his head still traveled the lyrics of that song, about keep holding, keep holding on. It was almost there. The weight of Marlene's head on his arm was pressing it against the pipe frame of the chair, making it tingle unpleasantly. The ulnar nerve, the median nerve, the axillary nerve were tingling. He knew that because…

He knew that because…

A drop of water fell on his hand. He looked up at the sky, darkening to deep blue with approaching evening, but clear of clouds. Not rain, but a tear. His wife was crying; her cheeks were wet with it.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Life. I'm in terror.”

“What? What is it?”

“I can't have this. Peace. Felicity. Friends and music and the kids happy and us together. I feel like the skeleton at the feast.”

“That's…not true, Marlene.” He had almost said, “That's crazy.”

“It's okay. I'm being an idiot. Jim thinks Felix Tighe is still alive, and on the loose.”

“What? I thought…”

“That he died in prison, like everyone else thought. Well, he didn't, and he's b-a-a-a-a-a-ck! Apparently, he's also the Manbomber. At least he distributed the bombs. There's probably a cell connected with our old pal ibn-Salemeh. It looks like he masterminded the whole thing from prison.”

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly. I'm sure the details will emerge, but just now they're keeping it all real dark.” A howl sounded over the music. “Shit, what does that dog want?”

“Hamburgers?”

“No, it's something…I better go check.” She heaved herself up and went through the chain-link gate to the driveway. Gog was whining and fretting and when she opened the camper back door, he stuck his face in hers, drooling buckets.

“What is it, pal? What's up? Calm down! Be quiet, everything's okay.” She walked around the truck, looked beneath it, walked down the driveway past Raney's sedan, and out into the street. There were some kids on a bike riding around in the twilight. They zoomed past, shrieking, and the mastiff growled. That was it.

“It's just kids, you big silly. Calm down. It's all right. Look, Magog is fine. Settle down!”

She poured the rest of her beer into the dog's dish and walked back to the party.

Which went on. They finished the beer and started on the Jameson. Nora was imposed upon to sing “West Coast of Clare” and “Four Green Fields,” which she did in a pleasant contralto. A Pogues poster had been discovered in the bathroom, and Zak announced that his brother could play nearly everything on “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash,” so they had to hear some of that, too. Then Marlene tickled her son until he consented to play “Lady of Spain,” which he did off-key, while she sang the lyrics with drunken vigor. Karp watched this resignedly. He didn't much care to drive and he would be driving tonight, but it was worth it to see her having fun. So she drank a little too much, so what? He was feeling better than he had felt in a long while because solution to
Nixon & Gerber
had just that minute popped into his head.

The shot through the arm, not mentioned in the original testimony from the medical examiner because not contributory to cause of death, but noted in the autopsy report. Everyone focused on the fatal bullets from Gerber, ignoring Nixon's non-fatal ones. Keep holding on, keep holding on, like in the song, like they both said the victim had. But he hadn't. He
couldn't
. Karp knew he would have to check when he got back to the office, but he was as sure about it as he was about anything.

Now it was full night. Little Meghan had been put to bed. Raney was on the couch nodding. Karp was making eye signals to his wife.

“We should go,” he announced. He looked out the narrow window that gave a view of the driveway. “You need to move your car, Jim.”

“Oh, hell, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking.” Raney rubbed his face and started to look for his keys.

“Ah, would you look at the man, too plastered to back a car down a drive!” said Nora cheerfully. “And the old lady's got to do it for him.” She snatched a set of keys from a china bowl on a side table and went out.

Karp supervised the boys' retreat, gathering up shoes and socks and various bits of boyish equipage. Lucy supervised her mother. Raney walked them out to the front walk and they were all standing there in front of the house watching as Nora Raney backed her husband's Pontiac out of the driveway. There was a small drop where the lip of the driveway met the road, ordinarily a hardly noticeable little bump. But it was quite enough to trip the trembler switch in Felix Tighe's last bomb, which was fixed by its magnet to the chassis right under the seat she sat on. No one else was even scratched by the blast, although Raney burned all the skin off his hands trying to reach his wife.

“W
E MUST EXPECT SOME REVERSES,” SAID
R
ASHID WITH A
>
confidence he did not really feel. “We are in combat with a super-power, just we few, but the central plan is still intact.”

“How? How is it intact?” demanded Habib, the false Felípe. “Felix blows up the wife of a policeman with one of our bombs, after the bombings were supposed to be over because the bombers blew themselves up in Queens. Now they know that all that was a fraud, and the search for us is still on. We should have killed that piece of shit when we had our hands on him, and then this would not have happened. But, no, we had to have your circles within circles of deception. I think we should leave the city and regroup somewhere else.”

They were sitting in the dingy office of Scarpese General Contractors, the last of the businesses Rashid had purchased over the years. This was their final redoubt, the storehouse of the explosives that they had garnered and made with such care. It was located on St. Nicholas Avenue in Inwood, a neighborhood of upper Manhattan occupied almost entirely by Caribbean and Central American Latinos. The premises consisted of a three-story red-brick workshop/office and a large yard guarded by a high chain-link and razor-wire fence. In the yard were several large flatbed trucks and big black industrial boilers on pallets.

Rashid walked over to the grimy window of the office and looked out on the yard, as if to assure himself that the physical assets of his operation were still there. He had not really recovered from the news that ibn-Salemeh was under investigation by the FBI, that the whole business about Felix Tighe had been discovered. Admit your mistakes, then move on: that was one of ibn-Salemeh's precepts. Rashid had to admit that he had been mistaken about Tighe. He thought the man was just interested in money. He also had no idea that Tighe had the brains to build a bomb himself, with stolen materials, but there it was, and now the television was saying he had been running his own vendetta with what were supposed to be random attacks. That's how they had known that his death was fraud. He had put his signature on everything.

“Leave? No, that is out of the question,” said Rashid. “The plan will go through. But staying very quiet is a good idea. Staying quiet in place. Our papers are good, we have green cards, we pay our bills, we live quietly, we work, day by day we advance the plan. There is no reason for anyone to bother us. However, we cannot allow Felix to be taken by the police. They will sit him down with an artist, or perhaps even have him go through visa photos, and then our faces will become known, mine and yours, Mamoud and yours, Habib. So he must be eliminated.”

“What are we going to do about Rifaat?” asked Mamoud, called Carlos.

All three of them glanced toward the door, where in the next office, a man lay on a cot, scarcely breathing. The child's knife had nicked an artery and the man was slowly bleeding to death. There was no possibility of getting him any medical attention. Rashid lifted two hands palms facing, the classic gesture invoking fate. “He will live or he will die, as God wills. Is the target still staying in that storage place?”

“That is what Saad tells me,” said Carlos-Mamoud.

“Let him do it, then. Tonight. See he has the necessary equipment and drive him away afterward.”

“Saad? Are you sure? I could do it.”

“No, you are critical to the plan. You can not be risked at this stage. And why not Saad? He will be happy to get revenge for his brothers. He already thinks Felix caused the explosion. Make sure there is no body found. Use the casting furnace here. Oh, and be sure to collect the ashes. Perhaps we can still convince them that Felix has always been dead.”

 

Lucy convinced Karp with some difficulty that he was
not
needed at home in the aftermath of the Raney bombing, and that the best thing he could do on the Monday was to go to court and resume trying the
Gerber & Nixon
case. So he had, leaving his stricken family: the boys silent and prone to fits of weeping; Marlene red-eyed, smoking continuously, and sitting in her rocker, creaking gothically back and forth by the hour, and dry as a stone, with an expression on her face that he did not remember ever seeing there before, a look of ashes. And Lucy, girl of steel, even Lucy looking a little rusty under the eyes as she made sure the family ran along, that there was food on the table, and clean clothes and the floor mopped and the dishes done.

So here he was, having, to his shame, put absolutely everything out of his mind except the business at hand. The first thing he'd done, even before leaving for work, was to get in touch with Dr. M.K. Shah, the assistant medical examiner who had done the autopsy on the victim and testified about it during the prosecution's case in chief. Dr. Shah was a little surprised to have the chief assistant district attorney call him at his home at eight on a Monday morning, to ask him about an incidental wound in an autopsy he'd done months ago. He assured the gentleman from the DA that the wound to that particular victim's left arm was of no importance in the demise of the victim, having severed no major blood vessels. Yes, he recalled it well, because it was the first bullet he had recovered—it had smashed the humerus and lodged under the collar bone, painful, yes, damaging, yes, but not contributing to the death…

That was not, however, what Karp wanted to know. When Dr. Shah finally understood what the question was, and that the DA was making no criticism at all of the way he had handled the autopsy or testified at the grand jury and at the trial, he genially confirmed Karp's surmise and announced himself ready to take the stand again at a moment's notice to establish the fact in open court.

In that court, the first business was Karp's cross-examination of Detective Eric Gerber. It was brief.

“Detective Gerber, you've just testified that you shot the victim, Mr. Onabajo, because you thought he was about to overpower your partner, Detective Nixon, and take his weapon, and what I'd like to hear from you is how you knew that.”

“He was shouting at me: ‘Eric, he's got my gun!'”

“‘Eric he's got my gun,' a cry for aid, yes, but from where you were standing, you couldn't actually see that struggle, could you?”

“No, the suspect was in the way. He had Detective Nixon locked up.”

“Locked up? Locked up, how?”

Gerber's right hand went to the collar of his jacket and gripped it. “He had him by the collar. Detective Nixon was wearing a leather jacket, and the guy had a bunch of it in his fist. He couldn't pull away.”

“I see. Now in demonstrating that, we see you're using your right hand. But Mr. Onabajo was using his left hand, of course. Is that correct? He was holding your partner's jacket with his left hand?”

“Right, his left.”

There was a humorous murmur at this. The judge scowled it down.

Karp smiled, too. “So, you are absolutely positive that while he contested for Detective Nixon's weapon with his right hand, he was holding tight to that officer's leather jacket with his left hand, locking him in, as you say.”

“Yes.”

“From where you stood, did it appear to be a powerful grip?”

“Well, yes, the jacket, the leather, was all bunched up.”

“Detective Nixon was not pushing him away, was he, or using his hands to pry loose that powerful grip, was he?”

“No, he wasn't.”

“Why was that?”

“Because he was using both hands to try to keep his weapon away from the suspect.”

“Away from the victim, yes. But he was able to fire, was he not? Two shots?”

“Yes.”

“But these shots did not make the victim release his powerful grip, did they?”

“No. Not that I could determine at that time.”

“And that's why you fired five shots from your pistol, to get him off your partner?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Detective. Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Karp caught the surprised look that passed across Hrcany's face. Karp knew he hadn't expected this. He had expected a lot of questions about the five fatal shots from Gerber's gun, which Hrcany, in his direct questioning, had been at great pains to demonstrate were all necessary to subdue a desperate criminal clawing at an officer's weapon.

 

Marlene stirs. The dog is hungry. Lucy has taken care of everything else, but Gog will accept food only from her own hand, as he has been trained to do. So she leaves the rocker and pours kibble and two cans of beef liver dog food into his trough. She eats a banana and pours out some of the coffee Lucy made that morning. The daughter is out with the boys. Marlene doesn't know where, except that they are away from her and therefore safer than they would be if she had them all on her knee. She sips the stale coffee, not tasting it, and watches the dog eat. The dog tried to tell her about the bomb, and she hadn't listened to him. Gog was bomb trained, Magog was not. Marlene should have known why Gog was upset, but she was too drunk. She checked her own truck but not Raney's sedan. So that was her fault, too.

She finds herself in the room she used to use as an office, a bright room that occupies the end of the loft that looks out on Crosby Street. In former days it had been a jungle of house plants, but now only one brave philodendron survives. She believes that Giancarlo still waters it. It would be the sort of thing he does. She had given all the other plants away, or allowed them to wither.

This is automatic pilot, she thinks, the simulacrum of an active life. She is aware that if she stays in her rocker and never speaks to anyone and never acknowledges anyone speaking to her, her family will call in medical help, and she will find herself in a looney bin, with kindly people trying to help her out of her depression. In fact, she is not depressed. She is in a state perfectly suitable for a woman who has lived a life of willful violence and is now suffering the moral consequences thereof. How else should she be feeling but bereft, miserable, guilty? She knows that mental health professionals do not think in such terms, which is one reason she wants to stay out of their hands. Lucy understands this, but Karp does not, and Karp will be in charge if she has what they will call a breakdown. So she is careful not to have one. If the authorities still existed that once dealt with people like her, the kind that used to burn at stakes, or immur in towers, then she might seek that sort of professional help, but no kindly people, please. Therefore she goes to work.

On the agenda today is Cherry Newcombe. Marlene has put some of Paul Agnelli's money on the street. She has a wide acquaintanceship among the demimonde of lower Manhattan. She knows people who will watch other people for a fee, and ask questions in ways that practically insure that they will be answered truthfully. So she has learned that fifteen-year-old Cherry has recently come into some money, serious money, and that she has clothed herself in splendor, having bought a number of tiny, shiny garments suitable for evening wear, plus a remarkable number of expensive shoes, some gold jewelry, and the hire of a car to take her around to the clubs. Other moneys have been spent on her boyfriend, Gambrell, twenty-two, who is apparently multiply guilty of the crime for which Paul Agnelli has been brought before the bar of justice, to wit, porking Ms. Newcombe, an underage female, but no one seems to be after Gambrell. Even more of this new cash has gone, as far as Marlene's people can determine, to a man called Carter “Smoke” Belknap, a dealer in cocaine. Belknap's usual place of business is a parking lot on Essex at Delancey, next to a club called Boot Kamp, which is, not incidentally, a favorite of Cherry Newcombe's.

Marlene now packs a nylon bag with the implements she will need for the evening's work: a black cotton jumpsuit, black Converse high-tops, a silk balaclava, nylon rope, plastic cable ties, duct tape, and a nine-millimeter Beretta 92FS semi-automatic pistol, fitted with a Jarvis threaded barrel. Marlene had sworn never to use a gun again, but she now construed that oath to mean never use one as an adjunct to some legal, professional activity. What she was about to do was a crime. And a crime in itself was the last item she tossed into the bag, a SRT Matrix sound suppressor, also called a can silencer, the ownership of which in the state of New York is a felony.

She takes this bag, the dog lead, and Gog the dog and leaves her home. It is a long time until dark, but she wants to visit Raney and tell him what happened. She announces this mission to the dog and adds, “Maybe he'll shoot me. Save everyone a lot of trouble.” Her voice sounds strange to her ear, hoarse, as if still suffering from the effects of the last significant noise she can recall making, the scream that shot from her throat when the bomb went off. The dog says nothing, as he has learned not to indulge her in these moods. Besides, he knows she is immortal, as the gods must be if the world is to make sense.

 

Lucy took the twins to Washington Square. This time they did not complain that they were not babies and could wander the city streets at will. Lucy foiled Zak's attempt to slip out with a six-inch chef knife stuck in his waistband under his shirt, and was deaf to his arguments that they required weaponry of some kind, preferably a gun. At the park, Giancarlo unlimbered his accordion and began to play “Brokenhearted I'll Wander,” a tune suitable for their collective mood. Lucy sat on the bench next to Giancarlo; Zak took up a position at some distance, where he could scan the crowd for danger and call in air strikes. She pulled a
Post
from a wastebasket. The Raney murder was still front page, fed by the anastomosing story about the fantastic escape of the killer Felix Tighe from Auburn Prison, his association with the terrorist chieftain ibn-Salemeh, the possibility that Felix was the Manbomber, that he had murdered his ex-wife and her child and now the wife of the man who had arrested him fifteen years ago. There was a big picture of Felix, as he had looked at the time of his arrest, and a more recent one from the prison.