Butch Karp: Act Of Revenge Part 24

"We got one of them, Stretch," he said, "and we lost two." His voice was husky with exhaustion.

"What happened?"

"No problems going in, but two of the three weren't there. The guy we got is Vo Hoa Dung, they call him Needlenose. The big brother, Kenny Vo, was out. The other one, the cousin, disappeared this afternoon under circ.u.mstances yet to be determined. We found a bunch of weapons, too, including a couple of MAC10 submachine guns. According to one of the girls, Kenny's packing one."

"Terrific. Was Phil Wu there?"

"Yeah, and I got to say the man has a pair of b.a.l.l.s. He was the first one through after the ESU popped the door. He did the interrogation, too."

"Anything useful?"

A pause on the line. "Vo won't talk at all. The girls were saying that the Vo boys were yakking about how they were going to take out your Vietnamese buddy."

"Tran?"

"Him. And, Butch? Jesus, I hate to have to tell you this, but they said they were going after Lucy, too."

"Not if their a.s.ses are in jail. So out of the four original perps, one's in the prison ward at King's County, one's in custody, one's on the run, and one we don't know where he is. Is that right?"

"You got it. We're going to need Lucy down here tomorrow morning to ID Needlenose Vo in a lineup. You'll get her down to the Five?"

Karp said that he would. As he hung up, he reflected that, for at least part of the following day, his daughter would be in a police station and he could for a brief time stop worrying about her.

Chapter 16.

"NO MAKEUP," SAID KARP.

"It's only powder," said the television woman. She had approached him in the chaos behind the set of the Morning Report show. Karp had arranged to be on the show just after speaking with Keegan the previous evening, to answer questions about the Guma-Scarpi tape. By now the tape had been seen at least a hundred times on all the local stations and the networks, too (The fix is in: wink), and Dudley Bryson, the newsman who was about to interview Karp, had, at their initial meeting earlier that morning, practically to wipe the saliva from his chin, so eager was he to get Karp before his cameras. A dangerous man, according to Bill McHenry, the D.A.'s public affairs chief, who had lectured Karp on how to handle Morning Report, a detailed strategy that had gone in one ear and out the other.

The television woman said, "Everybody uses it. It takes away the shine." She smiled as for a recalcitrant child and leaned closer, paper bib and puff in hand. Karp gave her a knifing yellow look, of the type he ordinarily reserved for violent pedophiles.

"I. Said. No."

She paled and scuttled away, muttering.

A young man wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard approached and led Karp out to the set, a matte blue wall dressed with a coffee table and two tan padded chairs. Karp was seated in one and fitted with a tiny microphone that clipped to his tie. Asked for a sound level, Karp said, "I wish for this entire enterprise to be destroyed by fire from the heavens, destroyed utterly, leaving only ashes and horribly disfigured corpses," which apparently sufficed, and in short order the host came out, pancaked and hairsprayed to a mannikin perfection, and sat in the other seat, and had his mike attached, and attempted some small talk with Karp, not very successfully, and then the makeup person came out again and patted some powder on Bryson's thick orangey makeup, and he said something to her, indicating the guest with a gesture of his chin, and she shook her head and stalked off stage. Then the kid with the headset crouched in front of them and made three-two-one signs with his fingers and snapped his index finger pistol-like on the last count and the red light on the camera went on and Karp made a concentrated effort to relax the set of his jaw, which felt wired, and then Bryson was talking.

Karp tried to tell himself that this was just like a jury trial, that he was about to make a presentation to a jury of millions rather than just twelve, but he knew at some level that this was not so. Juries were grave affairs; whatever their origins, jurors were almost always enn.o.bled by their function, which was seeking truth, that tender thing, and while Karp, if pressed, might agree that at its best journalism reached for something similar, what he was doing now had little to do with journalism at even its second best. What this jabbering little pimp next to him was doing was entertaining slobs in hopes that they would buy Miller rather than Bud, and Pontiac rather than Ford.

The scant intros over, Bryson called for the tape, and once again they all watched Ray Guma at work. Bryson's false smile spoke: "Mr. Karp, many people believe that what we've just seen suggests criminal activity and the possible corruption of the district attorney's office by organized crime. What's your response to that?"

Karp said, "Oh, there's no doubt that it's evidence of a crime."

Bryson had expected wriggling here, and so he was somewhat taken aback. "And what is the district attorney's office going to do about it?" he asked.

Karp raised his eyebrows. "Nothing, with respect to prosecution. It's a federal crime."

The false smile grew confused; the face turned to the camera to show it was not dismayed. "Excuse me?"

"Yes. It's illegal under federal statute and Department of Justice regulation to reveal the proceedings of a grand jury, and that includes the evidence collected pursuant to those proceedings."

"But surely the First Amendment overrides some regulation," said Bryson. "Think of the Pentagon Papers-"

"Yes, but that's for a judge to decide. And I a.s.sure you that our office will protest most vigorously to Judge Oberst, the federal judge who empanelled the federal grand jury, regarding the release of this evidence. The issue of whether the U.S. attorney's office deliberately violated the seal of the grand jury in this case has nothing to do with your action as a member of the press to publish material you have in hand under supposed First Amendment privileges. The release itself is, in our opinion, frankly illegal."

Bryson was starting to feel uneasy. On a live show there was always the danger of an interview subject going ballistic, but the reporter had a vast faith in the power of television to produce awe and terror and bland agreeableness in the people upon whom its searchlight fell. People wanted to be loved by television reporters. He moved now to regain control. "But Mr. Colombo has denied any deliberate leak of the tape we just saw, and in any case, the issue here is whether Mr. Guma has-"

"I am not accusing Mr. Colombo directly," Karp interrupted. "It is entirely within the realm of possibility that an intrepid reporter penetrated the interior of the Southern District offices, got past dozens of armed federal law enforcement officers, located the tape in question from among hundreds and hundreds of evidence tapes, and purloined it. In that case Mr. Colombo would be merely incompetent and not culpable."

Bryson's face now arranged itself into an expression of pained forebearance, suitable to guests who claimed alien abduction. "Mr. Karp, as I said, the issue here is the content of the tape itself, and whether an a.s.sistant district attorney was in collusion with organized crime."

The camera focused in on Karp here, so as to watch him sweat out an answer to this one, but Karp was not looking at the camera. He was staring at Bryson. The show's director instinctively switched to a two-shot and got a good one of Karp's center punch of a finger pointing at the host. "I know you!" he cried. "I've seen you around my daughter's school. You were trying to trade heroin for s.e.xual favors from little girls. Yeah! You're the guy!"

Bryson's face took on a rictus of surprise and horror, which the unforgiving camera recorded forever. The show stopped for two beats, and then Karp said, "Oh, gosh, I'm sorry. You're not the guy after all. It was someone else. Do you get it now, Mr. Bryson?"

"You're avoiding this issue, sir . . ."

"I beg to differ-this is the issue. Say I don't like you, Mr. Bryson. Say I hauled you into court on that preposterous charge, and brought up a cloud of witnesses who claimed to have seen you do awful things. I bet you have plenty of malicious enemies. Oh, you'd probably get off, and you might afterward sue for false arrest, but think of the cost! And then I might do it again. Why not? If we had a system where someone like me could make a baseless accusation against someone like you, even if the case proved false, your reputation would never survive. I don't even mention your bank account. That's why there are grand juries, and that's why they're secret. Before I can make you a defendant in a felony, before I can indict you, I have to convince a majority of twenty-three of your fellow citizens that there is enough evidence to hold you to answer for the crime at a public trial, and if there isn't, if the charge does not hold up, no one knows about it, ever. Absent that constraint, the authority of prosecutors to do damage is very nearly absolute. Absent that, I could tear you apart, Mr. Bryson. I could tear anyone apart."

"Yes, that's all very well, but you haven't answered-"

"Listen to me! We are your dogs, Mr. Bryson. Me and Mr. Colombo and all the others who are supposed to represent the people. You want us to keep you safe from the wolves in our society. But we have very, very sharp teeth and powerful jaws, and we need strong chains. The grand jury is one of those chains, and secrecy is its most important link. Weaken it, and even though greedy journalists think it's swell to get leaks from a grand jury, I guarantee you, you won't like what happens. Mr. Colombo's office has slipped that chain, and as a result a distinguished public servant, a man who has in thirty years of dedicated work done more to fight organized crime in this city than anyone I know, has had his reputation besmirched. You mentioned the Pentagon Papers? How can you compare the breaching of executive secrecy in a matter of transcendent national importance with a cheap political stunt by an out-of-control federal prosecutor?"

Bryson made a series of inarticulate noises as he tried to regain momentum. The director, who was one of the many who did not like Dudley Bryson, held the camera steady on this gabbling: "But, but, but, um, but, if that's the, I mean, if . . . then you . . . are not going to pursue any, disciplinary measures against Mr. Guma?"

The camera moved to Karp's face, on which there was a bemused expression that all New Yorkers could recognize as the one that appeared on their very own faces when trying to explain to a group of Korean tourists how to get to the Cloisters.

Cue commercial.

In the Karp home, all were glued to the little screen in the kitchen, watching the man of the house on Morning Report.

"Why is Daddy so shiny, Mom?" asked Lucy. "He looks weird."

"I believe that's the light of truth and justice issuing forth," said Marlene. "They usually don't let it on TV. It's like full-frontal nudity."

Zak was dancing around snapping a red plastic pistol and crying, "My daddy's on television!" repeatedly. Zik was not watching at all, which offended his brother, who urged him to lift up his eyes and gaze. "Watch Daddy, Zik! Daddy's on TV."

"Daddy's not on TV," replied Zik disdainfully. "Daddy's in real life!"

And back in real life, Karp got a round of applause and humorous cheers from those he pa.s.sed as he went to his office, and within five minutes of arriving at his desk, he got a call from Jack Keegan.

"I haven't had so much fun since the pigs ate grandma," said Keegan without preamble.

"I'm glad you liked it," said Karp.

"Like is not the word. You added ten years to my life, boyo, and you set public relations back twenty-five. McHenry's been bending my ear for the last ten minutes. He's going to require sedation. He reminds me, and I now remind you, that the press never forgets. You made one of them look like a jacka.s.s, boyo. I hope you're prepared to live a life of absolute perfection from now on. You're a marked man."

Karp thought briefly not of himself but of Marlene and the extraordinary vulnerability and imperfection of her life and of what a couple of skilled investigative reporters could do to her with it, and then suppressed that unhappy line of thought. "Perfection? No problem," he replied lightly, and asked, "How are your peers responding?"

"Mixed. I like to imagine all the honest ones are on our side. The guys I watched the show with were cheering, at any rate. How's Ray holding up?"

"I sent him home with one of the guys from the squad for company."

"You don't think he's in any serious danger?"

"I got the word out he didn't know about the bug, but whether that will satisfy Scarpi and his brothers is another question. But f.u.c.k them, they're the bad guys. I'm more worried about the good guys."

"Meaning?"

"Well, Jack, not to put too fine a point on it, Ray Guma, in addition to being, as I said to millions, a h.e.l.luva crime fighter, is also, as you well know, excessively fond of dipping his wick, and he has dipped it on occasion in places where maybe he shouldn't have, being an officer of the court. Lovely witnesses, for example. Lovely former defendants, for example. High-cla.s.s ladies of the evening with strong ties to some prominent Italian-American gentlemen, for example. Colombo puts the full-court press on this, he's going to come up with a lot of dirt, and the media will eat it up. D.A.'s man in Mafia s.e.x ring. Keegan's Italian stallion in bed with Mob . . ."

Keegan cursed briefly, and then there was an ominous silence on the line, leaving Karp to imagine that Keegan was thinking nasty thoughts about how to cut Guma loose, and about what he, the district attorney, could plausibly have known and when about the fellow's deplorable l.u.s.ts. Karp decided to save Keegan embarra.s.sment by changing tack.

"Which means we have only a limited time to derail this entire operation and make Tommy look like a horse's a.s.s not only on the Guma thing but on the Catalano thing as well, so much so that the jackals will forget Ray. So I need some scope, and I need some cover."

"What do you have in mind?" growled the D.A.

"Not a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing right now," said Karp. "But I'll think of something."

Tran came to convey Lucy to the cops for her lineup, and Marlene and Posie, the kids and the mastiff, piled into the Volvo. All but Marlene exited at Central Park South for a healthy romp, and Marlene headed north and east. James n.o.bile was in the phone book, which meant that Marlene needed no detection skill greater than the ability to find a large tan apartment building at 70th and Third.

There was no doorman, and Marlene entered with the standard ruse: being well dressed, with nice legs, and fumbling with keys while a legit male tenant was entering.

As usual, Sym had called to determine if the man was home, and he opened the door at Marlene's ring. She looked down, trying to hide her surprise. Abe had not mentioned anything about n.o.bile's physical appearance, so she was unprepared for a man less than five feet high. Paint him red and screw a big hex nut into his skull, and he would have pa.s.sed for a fire hydrant on a dim night. He must have been near seventy, and he had retained, or returned to, the face of an irascible infant.

"Yeah?" he snapped. "What is it now? And how did you get into the building? If this is another G.o.dd.a.m.n charity collection, you can forget it."

"Mr. James n.o.bile?" Marlene inquired.

"Yeah?"

"Did you work at the law firm of Fein, Kusher and Panofsky in the fifties and sixties?"

"What if I did? Who are you, lady?"

Straight is not going to work with this guy, Marlene thought. Doherty might have been a bent cop, but as a human being he was relatively decent; this little fellow was warped to the core. She smiled and said, "My name is Ariadne Stupenagel, I'm a freelance writer, and I'm doing a story on famous suicides in the New York area. Can I come in?" So saying, she used her hip and entered the apartment, closing the door behind her.

"Hey," said n.o.bile, "I didn't say you could come in here."

"I won't take up much of your time, Mr. n.o.bile," said Marlene, looking around. Musty, the smell of whiskey in the close air. Expensive, flashy furniture from twenty-five years ago, the low point in American design, crowded the living room, lots of crushed velvet, a Barcalounger, a twenty-one-inch television in an immense mahogany console, a nude on velvet on the wall; no sad clowns, but he might have saved that for the bedroom.

She chivvied him into letting her sit on his sofa; he sat in a fading brocade armchair facing her from halfway across the room, as if she were carrying a communicable disease.

"Now, what I wanted to ask you about was the suicide of Gerald Fein, one of the partners in the law firm you worked at. Do you recall that tragedy, Mr. n.o.bile?"

"Sure, yeah, but I don't know anything about it. I mean, all I know is from the papers and whatnot."

A lie, thought Marlene. A whopper. She was always surprised at how badly ordinary people lied. Being careful to stare into the interrogator's eye more than was common, that was one sign. n.o.bile's eyes were like some curdled dessert, a dab of grainy chocolate in stale, yellowing creme.

"But you worked for the firm at the time. You must have seen Mr. Fein every day, just about. Did you get the impression that he was troubled?"

"Hey, I just did my job. I didn't poke into anybody's business."

"Mr. Panofsky thought that Fein was troubled, though, didn't he?" Shrug.

"Did he ever mention it to you?"

"h.e.l.l, lady, it was twenty-five years ago," n.o.bile said irritably. "You think I keep c.r.a.p like that in my head? He must've been crazy or he wouldn't have jumped off of the Empire State."

"Uh-huh. Well, you're right, it was a long time ago. I guess you're retired now yourself." She looked around admiringly. "You must have a nice pension to afford this place. Upper East Side, wow! I'm jealous."

"Not a pension. Those days only the big guys gave pensions. Nah, I got Social Security and I got investments."

"Lucky you! So, tell me, how did you come to work for Fein's law firm?"

"I answered an ad in the Journal-American. I was with them seventeen years."

"Uh-huh. And before that?"

"I was in building management." His look grew narrower. "What do you want to know this stuff for?"

"Just background, Mr. n.o.bile. So, was carrying important packages part of your work? Confidential information and so on?"

"Yeah, I did that, I did a little of everything. What does that have to do with the suicide?"

"I'm getting to that. The packages were mostly from Mr. Panofsky, weren't they? Thick envelopes. You took them to politicians all over town, didn't you?"

"You're not a reporter," said n.o.bile, and shot to his feet.

"But you took them from Panofsky, not Fein, didn't you? Fein wasn't in the thick-envelope business. Except once."

"Get out of here!" n.o.bile's clay-colored face was going red around the edges.

Marlene got up and stalked slowly toward him. "Except once, and that envelope was the one that got him disbarred. I bet you could tell me a lot about that deal, couldn't you? Is that how you got your investments?"

Sometimes they talked when they were scared, and sometimes they fought, and if they were decent folks, they called the police. n.o.bile was terrified, she could see that, but not necessarily of her. He turned and ran into the kitchen. Marlene heard a drawer violently open and metallic rummaging sounds. Gun, or knife, or hammer? She recalled that she was unarmed and dogless, and beat a retreat.

Tran and Lucy were about to leave the loft when the phone rang. Lucy picked it up. "Lucy Karp, please," said an unfamiliar voice.

"Speaking."