Trap (9781476793177) (4 page)

Karp felt the old competitive zeal that tended to well up inside of him when evil reared its ugly head in his jurisdiction. The investigation into the surge in hate crimes by young neo-Nazi skinheads and the apprehension of the perpetrators was the responsibility of the New York Police Department. But it would be his office that would prosecute them when they were caught, and he intended—if the evidence indicated—to demonstrate in court that these were not isolated incidents, but part of a larger, organized conspiracy.

He'd asked Fulton to track the cases and keep him apprised. So far the thugs had set fire to a synagogue, badly burning a rabbi who tried to put the fire out; assaulted Jews; and several months earlier in November gone on a rampage in the predominantly Jewish Diamond District, shattering windows before moving on to other Jewish-owned businesses they'd identified in different parts of the city. They'd chosen the date carefully, as it fell on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, when in November 1938 paramilitary forces and non-Jewish civilians in Nazi Germany and Austria ransacked Jewish-owned stores and synagogues. Shards of glass from the smashed windows had littered the streets, giving rise to the name. As German authorities looked on, without attempting to stop it, hundreds of Jews died, thousands more were severely injured, and more than thirty thousand were arrested and sent to death camps, never to be heard from again.

Seventy-plus years later, the neo-Nazis in New York had accomplished their mission, and most had faded back into the shadows from whence they came. There'd been a few arrests, but the suspects had sullenly refused to talk, and the evidence against them had mostly resulted in a few misdemeanor assault and destruction of private property charges.

The New York version of Kristallnacht had struck a particularly troubling note with Karp. Several years earlier, his twin sons had come to him and their mother, Marlene Ciampi, and announced that they had decided to pursue going through with the bar mitzvah. As Marlene had been raised in a strict Roman-Catholic family, but hadn't brought up the boys as such, and Karp was Jewish more by spiritual and moral adherence than obeisance to strict religious practices, the decision surprised them. Their daughter, Lucy, was a decidedly devout Catholic and, in fact, claimed to speak to and receive guidance from a martyred saint from the sixteenth century. But the twins had never shown any religious inclinations.

Although initially Karp had wondered how long the quest would last, he'd been pleased that the boys had stuck to it even though the road to their bar mitzvah had been more challenging than most. He'd even agreed to teach classes dealing with Old Testament morality tales at the synagogue when asked by the rabbi, and enjoyed both the challenge of reaching out to young minds and the extra time with his sons. But of late Zak had been wavering on his commitment to go through with the ceremony, and Karp wondered if the neo-Nazi rampages and the media aftermath had anything to do with that.

The New York Kristallnacht had another personal impact on Karp. His friends, Moishe and Goldie Sobelman, owned Il Buon Pane, a small bakery on the corner of Third Avenue and 29th Street, that the thugs had targeted. The Sobelmans were both survivors of the Nazi death camps, and Karp rushed right over when he heard they had been victimized again. He found Moishe outside on the sidewalk, sweeping up the glass from the shattered windows of his shop.

“Moishe, I'm so sorry,” Karp had said, hugging his friend.

The old man had smiled and patted him on the back. “At least neither of us were hurt,” he had replied, then sighed and stood quietly for a moment, leaning on his broom and looking at the pile of glass in front of him. “The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh, my friend?”

Not knowing quite what to say, Karp had remained silent with his hand on Sobelman's shoulder. Then the baker looked up at him, his eyes wet with tears. “Stop them, Butch,” he had said quietly. “Stop them before this goes any further. It started like this all those years ago, and before it was over millions of people were dead.”

Karp had promised that he would do everything in his power to bring the perpetrators to justice. But looking at the newspaper headline now in his office, the words seemed hollow.

“It's only a matter of time before someone gets killed,” Fulton stated aloud.

“Any suspects?” Karp asked.

“The usual head cases, that's it.”

Karp knew what he meant by that. The “usual head cases” were getting bold, at least when they weren't breaking the law, and holding demonstrations in various city parks and outside the Museum of Jewish Heritage, otherwise known as the New York City Holocaust Museum, in Battery Park, as well as on the sidewalks next to the Israeli consulate. They were loud, aggressive, and offensive but other than the usual misdemeanor assaults, failures to follow lawful orders from police officers to allow people to walk past them, and lack of permits for their demonstrations, they avoided committing any felonies. They'd also grown more sophisticated than in years past, using the publicity to get their message into the media and draw other misguided citizens to their cause.

Karp thought about it for a moment, then rapped his knuckles on the newspaper. “Stay on it, Clay,” he said as he stood up. “Sooner or later, they'll make a mistake and we'll go after them.”

He walked around the desk as the detective rose to meet him. Fulton was stockier, with broader shoulders, but Karp, a former star college basketball player, was half a head taller at six-foot-five. “I've got to run, the car's waiting for me. Let me know if anything breaks.”

Fulton left the way he came in, but Karp went through a side door of his office to a small anteroom where he took a private elevator reserved for the district attorney and judges down to the Leonard Street side entrance of the Criminal Courts Building. The massive, squat edifice at 100 Centre Street housed the criminal courts—notably the Supreme Courts where felonies were tried—the judges' robing rooms and chambers, criminal court records, grand jury rooms, and the offices of the New York County district attorney. At its northern end it was connected by an enclosed walkway, the “Bridge of Sighs,” to the Manhattan Detention Complex, popularly referred to as The Tombs.

The Criminal Courts Building had been Karp's “home away from home.” Waiting for him now outside its doors was a large, dark bulletproof sedan driven by police officer Eddie Ewin.

“Where to, Mr. Karp?” the young officer asked when he got in.

“The Third Avenue synagogue off 67th Street.”

The winter light was already starting to fade, the street lights illuminating the snow that had been falling all day, when the car pulled to the curb in front of the synagogue. Karp saw Isaac and Giancarlo standing on the snow-covered steps leading into the building with Goldie and Moishe Sobelman. Zak stood with his head down while Giancarlo and Moishe appeared to be talking to him. Goldie was at Zak's side with her hand on his shoulder.

He took a moment to study his boys. They'd grown up so fast, and it was hard to believe that the tiny twin babies he'd held were now young men, and it wouldn't be long before they'd be out of the house.

When Zak and Giancarlo began their quest, they were already a little older than the traditional age of thirteen when most Jewish boys go through the bar mitzvah, the rite of passage from the innocence of youth to the responsibilities of manhood. Then the process had taken even longer due to a life that didn't follow the normal pattern of two young men growing up in America. As the district attorney of New York, Karp was a magnet for sociopaths, terrorists, and other violent criminals of all makes and models. Marlene, who'd once headed the Sex Crimes Bureau at the DAO as an assistant DA, had left the office to become a private investigator/attorney now specializing in advocating for and protecting women from miscreant abusers, also attracted the dark side at an unusual rate. Their children had not been immune to the dangers inherent in their parents' careers, and in fact had been under siege from dangerous felons and maniacs most of their lives, disrupting normal childhood and youth pursuits. As such, the road to Jewish manhood had been a long one, but at last the boys were in the final stages of their studies needed to achieve their goal.

However, Zak was having misgivings. In fact, just the previous evening, he and his father had a conversation in which the boy said he didn't see the point of going through with a ceremony marking his entry to manhood at seventeen years old when he'd already confronted more adult world issues than most people dealt with in a lifetime.

“I'm not trying to talk you into anything, Zak,” Karp responded. “But I'm sure you know that the bar mitzvah is more than just a symbolic ‘rite of passage.' ”

“I know, I know,” Zak said with a sigh. “It also means I'm now accountable for my actions. But haven't I been accountable enough? I mean, how many other kids have been kidnapped, shot at, bombed, and chased like me and Giancarlo? And now with these neo-Nazi jerks running around, maybe I'm tired of having a target on my back.”

Zak said it lightly, but the truth of it went right to Karp's heart. “I'm not going to argue with you about that,” he'd agreed. “You, your brother, sister, and mom have all had to take on more of this world's dark aspects than you should have. I was just pointing out that going through with your bar mitzvah is saying more than one day you're a boy and the next you're a man.”

“I get it,” Zak replied. He was quiet for a moment and then looked sideways at his father. “Will you be disappointed with me if I don't go through with it?”

Karp put his arm around the shoulders of his son. “Zak, I've been proud of you from the moment I laid my eyes on you,” he said. “And I'm even prouder of you now. I understand you're dealing with an internal dilemma, and I can respect that. This decision is yours and yours alone to make, and whatever you decide I will think just as highly of you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Zak said with a smile but then frowned again. “Even if I wanted to go through with it, I still don't know what I'm going to do. It's not just the whole idea of whether I'm done with the whole ‘becoming a man thing.' You know that Rabbi Hamilburg is asking everyone to come up with something special for the ceremony. Some of the younger guys are putting on a skit, or doing a research paper on Jewish history that they have to present to the parents. And my genius bro, Giancarlo, is outdoing everybody by singing that dumb song; I don't have anything compared to that.”

Karp laughed. That “dumb song” was “Va, pensiero,” also known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves,” from the third act of Giuseppe Verdi's opera
Nabucco
. Inspired by Psalm 137, it told the story of Jewish exiles in Babylon after the loss of the First Temple in Jerusalem: a fitting project for a young man's bar mitzvah.

He'd heard Giancarlo, who had a lovely Irish tenor, practicing with his voice coach, and the beauty of it, and his son's talent, had brought tears to his eyes. It would be a hard act to follow, especially for an uber-competitive brother.

“I don't think the rabbi is asking that every one of these projects be on the same level, just so long as it's from the heart,” Karp said.

“But that's just it,” Zak replied. “I don't have anything that would come from the heart.”

They'd dropped that aspect of the conversation and moved on to the topic of this evening's talk by Rose Lubinsky. When Moishe told him about what she would discuss, he thought it was something his sons should hear. Although they were more inclined to spend the time with their video games, or playing pickup basketball at the local “Y,” they'd agreed to meet him at the synagogue and listen to Lubinsky.

Karp thanked Officer Ewin for the lift. “We'll catch a cab home.” He then got out of the car and walked over to where his sons and the Sobelmans were standing. “Good evening, Moishe and Goldie, I hope this riffraff wasn't bothering you.”

Goldie laughed but didn't speak. In fact, she'd rarely spoken since being freed from a Nazi death camp after the war, choosing instead to use sign language as she did now while Moishe translated, “Not these two beautiful boys. They are perfect in every way.”

“Oh, I could tell you some stories,” Karp said with a smile, “but in general, I think you're right. And thank you.”

“I was just asking the boys if they're going in to hear tonight's speaker,” Moishe said, pointing up the steps to the synagogue's entrance.

“And their reply?”

Moishe looked down at Zak, who'd ducked his head. “I believe Giancarlo is, but Zak seems to be weighing his options.”

“I don't know,” Zak added. “I was thinking I might just go home.”

Moishe nodded slightly. “Are you ill?”

“No, I'm okay.”

The old man pursed his lips. “Butch, would you and Giancarlo be so kind as to escort Goldie in so that she can get a good seat? I think I'll stay here with Zak for a moment, and I'll be in shortly.”

Karp glanced over at Giancarlo and nodded up the stairs. “Sure. Goldie, you ready to go in?”

The old woman smiled and presented her elbow to Giancarlo to escort her. The three then left her husband and Zak alone on the steps.

T
HE LONG GRAY RAT CREPT
suspiciously through the snow around a classic rat trap, a metal cage that contained the object of his desire. He wanted the fat, juicy piece of meat within the wire mesh that surrounded it on all but one side. Sniffing, he could just catch the scent of man on the cage, as well as on the still warm flesh inside, a scent that urged caution. He lightly grabbed a piece of the cage with a paw and stood to peer over the top and ascertain that there was no opening there either.

Intelligent and genetically predisposed to survival, he and his kind were the most successful mammals on the planet outside of man; they'd found their way to every continent except Antarctica, and lived anywhere the presence of man made life easy pickings. He hadn't lived three years—a long time for
Rattus norvegicus
on the dangerous streets of New York City—
or
grown nearly two feet long from the whiskers on his nose to the tip of his hairless tail by being careless.