Corruption of Blood (42 page)

“The skeletons,” said Harry.

“Yeah, I shook the closet and out they came.”

Harry went off to a motel around six-thirty and Karp came home just after ten. A snowstorm had hit the lower Midwest and Karp had been unable to get a direct flight back, and had spent four hours on standby in Atlanta, and was in no mood to do anything but sleep.

“How was Miami?” Marlene asked anyway when they were in bed.

“Somebody killed our two witnesses and I got shot at and Clay knocked me down and I scraped the shit out of my palms.”

“On the other hand you got some sun,” said Marlene, suppressing horror. “Who shot at you?”

“One of the guys who got killed. It’s a long story.”

“So it was a total loss?”

“No, we found some interesting stuff. It might give us a lead to this Irishman in Louisiana who might’ve been involved in some way. He was paying off this Cuban for some reason, the guy who got killed. Of course, the evidence was illegally taken, so I’ll probably go to jail, but I don’t care right now. God, I’m whipped!”

“Should I rub your back?”

“That would be nice,” said Karp, rolling over.

Marlene rubbed, and thought. “One thing, on this project I’m doing for Maggie? I’d sort of like to do some of it at home and I need something to look at eight-millimeter film with. One of those thingies with a little screen?”

“Umm. Yeah, an editor. I could bring one home. Umm. Keep doing that and you can have Cinerama.”

Karp was awakened the next morning by a peculiar feeling; someone was rubbing his hand with a hot washcloth and giggling. He had incorporated this sensation into one of those odd and vivid early-morning dreams, as one does with the sound of the alarm clock, and then the alarm clock did go off and Karp opened his eyes and looked into the red-rimmed eyes of the dog that was licking his hand.

“Yaaagh!” In one motion he heaved himself into a sitting position with a pillow between his chest and the monster. Lucy stood there in her flowered nightie, convulsed with shrill laughter. The dog panted and deposited a string of thick saliva on the bed.

“Marlene!”

She strolled in from the bathroom, brushing her hair.

“You called?”

Karp pointed mutely at the dog.

“Oh. I guess I forgot to tell you. Butch, Sweetie. Sweetie, Butch. I’m going to make some coffee.”

“Daddy, we scared you, didn’t we?” asked Lucy, still giggling.

Karp was being a model modern husband at breakfast. “What kind of dog is it?” he asked calmly.

“You’re not pissed off?”

“Surprised, maybe. But, being married to you, my life is full of surprises. I come home one day, and you’ve bought a car, even though I know we don’t have a dime. Maybe you’ll tell me someday how you did it, maybe not. I come home from a trip and there’s a washing-machine-sized dog in the house. Hey, I’m easy. So, what kind?”

“The vet said it was a Neapolitan mastiff.”

“Neapolitan, huh? This is a full-grown dog?”

“No, it’s still putting on weight. It should reach one hundred sixty pounds more or less.”

“You
bought
this thing?”

“No, actually, I got it from Thug ‘n’ Dwarf. They abandoned it, sort of.”

“Uh-huh. Gosh, a big dog, a big
stolen
dog, like that, we get back to the city, we ought to start thinking seriously about getting a house. Westchester, the Island maybe. Dog like that needs a big yard.”

“Nice try, buster, but no sale. That is an
urban
Neapolitan mastiff. Naples is a city. He’ll adapt to loft living, all right, probably better than some other people in the family I could mention.”

“Well, in that case,” replied Karp equably, putting on his suit coat and preparing to make his exit, “I’ll have to content myself with the pleasure of watching you, and you alone, scooping gigantic dog turds off Crosby Street each and every morning and evening.”

Karp crossed the street in front of the Annex building to avoid several of the more prominent Kennedy nuts, including the man in the red hat, and slipped into the entranceway. He had noticed in himself since the events in Miami a growing sympathy for the clan. In the office, he checked his messages, looked with distaste at a large pile of unread mail, and went immediately to Bert Crane’s office.

Who was in, for a change. Dispensing with pleasantries, he told Crane what had gone down in Florida and what they’d learned from Mosca. Crane was not slow in grasping the implications. “There’s a leak.”

“Yeah, there is. And we should be able to find it, because the only people who knew we were going down there to talk to Jerry Mosca were me; Fulton, who was with me; V.T. Newbury, who’s a total clam on stuff like this; and Dobbs and you.”

Crane caught the obvious implication and to his credit did not make any protestation, but sat in thought, chewing his lip.

Karp asked, “What about Flores?”

Crane shook his head vehemently. “Hell, no! Flores doesn’t talk to me anymore, except to issue formal reprimands, and if he did, he’d be the last person I’d give any sensitive information to. God, Butch, I can’t think of anyone around here who knew, and Lord knows Hank didn’t tell anyone on the committee. I stressed that to him very—”

Crane stopped, stricken. Karp said, “Yeah, I know. We’re in deep paranoia here. If we believe that the fact that two critical witnesses were killed before they could testify is not just a sad coincidence, then we have to believe in an active conspiracy that’s still intact and functioning.”

“And do you believe this?”

Karp nodded slowly. “I sort of have to now. Did V.T. tell you about the stuff that got stolen right out of this office? Yeah? It adds to the picture, doesn’t it? And I think I saw Caballo himself, in the flesh.”

“The Oswald look-alike? Where?”

“In Miami, right after Guel was killed. He was a block away and wearing dark glasses and a hat, but the more I think about it, the more I think that’s the guy. And why shouldn’t they use him? It’s completely safe. The guy doesn’t exist, except at the bottom of a pile of false identities. What’re we gonna do, put out an all points bulletin to pick up Lee Oswald? They’d lock
us
up.”

“So what
are
you going to do?”

“Go through the motions with everything else, the medical stuff, the forensics, redo Warren. Like I’ve said before, necessary but hopeless. Nothing’s going to emerge from that but endlessly debatable minutiae. I think it’s still essential to get Paul David under oath.”

“Forget that,” Crane said. “Flores won’t have it.”

“Oh, great! How about Santos Trafficante?”

“We can try,” said Crane, “but if he declines to show, I doubt we’re going to get a contempt citation out of the chairman.”

“So we’re running a major investigation without any real judicial clout? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“For now,” said Crane

“Okay, in that case,
for now
, all we can do is pursue the new leads, this Turm character, and this PXK angle, in total secrecy. Clay’s still down in Miami, and I’m going to get him to New Orleans in a couple of days. Also, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stress the ‘total’ part. Even regarding Hank.”

“Surely you don’t think …”

“I don’t know what I think, Bert. There’s … well, Marlene has been doing some research for the Dobbs family, about the father. There’s a link, or was at one time, between the family and the CIA. God knows how deep it goes.”

“That’s absurd, Butch! Without Hank Dobbs there’d
be
no investigation.”

Karp started to protest, but then sighed and was silent for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “Yeah, of course. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Maybe the paranoia is getting to the point where I’m not functioning anymore. And, of course, that’s the whole
point
of what’s happening. Whoever’s doing this, orchestrating this, knows how paranoia works. They
want
to keep that atmosphere going, so that reasonable people will embrace the Warren Report just to keep from going crazy. And it’s working. They know the whole pattern, so that as we expose piece after piece, they’re there before us, twisting the evidence, stealing stuff, killing witnesses.” He shook his head and rubbed his face. “So,” he asked, “how are things going here?”

Crane seemed glad to accept the change of subject. “Worse and worse. Flores has taken leave of his senses. He sent me a letter saying he doesn’t want us besmirching his name and asking for all his official stationery back.”

“His stationery? His
stationery
!” Karp started to laugh and it was a while before he could bring himself under control.

Crane laughed too, but then quickly sobered. “Actually, it’s not funny. He also revoked our franking privileges and told me not to make any more fiscal commitments under his name. Since legally everything we do is under his name, it means we’re essentially out of business until we can clear this up.”

“God! How’s the committee taking this?”

“Well, Hank’s gone to the leadership and is politicking like mad. It’ll come to a head over the weekend and we should have some resolution by Monday.” Crane reached over to his credenza and handed a newspaper clipping to Karp. “This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

It was a front-page
New York Times
article about Crane. Karp scanned it in growing disbelief. “But this is nothing. It’s all the old crap recycled into a new piece, with some more innuendo tossed in.”

“Yeah, but it puts the seal on the tomb. For seventeen years, apparently, I’ve been causing nothing but controversy, and doing botched and questionable investigations.”

“So what’ll you do?”

“There’s nothing I
can
do, Butch. The press has spoken. You know very well that the last thing the
Times
and the
Post
want is for anyone to take a serious crack at Warren. They’d look like fools for endorsing it before the ink was dry if we came up with a credible alternative. My mistake was not realizing that. And … I guess I wasn’t the politician I thought I was. So …” He waved his hand weakly, taking in the office, and beyond it, the Kennedy investigation and the sticky webs of the national capital in which it now writhed.

“And there’s nothing we can
do
?” Karp asked inanely, knowing the answer.

“Yeah, there is,” said Crane. “Wait for Monday.”

“Nice tan,” said V.T. when Karp walked into his office.

“I don’t have a tan. I have shredded palms and a sore knee.” He displayed his hands.

“That’s too bad,” said V.T. “Perhaps next time you should choose another resort. What happened?”

Karp described briefly the events at Guel’s house, and deposited the package Fulton had found there on V.T.’s desk. He waited while V.T. perused the items in it.

“Creative bookkeeping,” said V.T., tapping the little ledger book. “Interesting. Do you recognize this character?”

V.T. was pointing to a foggy Xerox copy of what appeared to be a newspaper in Spanish, and the photograph of a man.

“No, what is it?”

“Well, from the style, I’d say it was cut from
Granta,
the Castro paper. It shows, and I quote, in rough translation, ‘the desperate imperialist saboteur, El Soplete, captured by the Revolutionary Militia in Cienfuegos.’
El soplete
means the blowtorch. According to this, he got the handle back when he was with Batista’s secret police on account of the way he liked to extract information from prisoners. A real honeybunch. It looks like the commies shot him too. Hmm. Let me check, just to make sure.”

V.T. fingered through some files stacked on his desk, extracted one, and pulled out a couple of photographs, one a glossy, one a copy of a news photo.

“This glossy is a frame from the Depuy film. This one, one of our kids just dug it up from an old émigré newspaper. Same guy in all three, right? Allowing for age, that is. The scar on the cheek shows in each one, that and that nose.”

“Who is it?”

“Leopoldo Carrera. The guy we like for the third of the trio that visited Sylvia Odio in Dallas. Oswald, Guel, Carrera. All dead. As is the one guy we had who could confirm it, Guido Mosca.”

“Shit! But there’s still Odio herself.”

“Yeah,” said V.T. “There is, and a big priority right now is to get her to look at pictures.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it. Meanwhile, what’s happening with this PXK thing?”

“Looking better. Mr. Kelly is well known in both Baton Rouge and New Orleans. A political contributor, conservative, maybe a Bircher. He knew Clay Shaw and he knew Depuy. He’s a trucker, and thus not unfamiliar with the Teamsters and hence with Carlos Marcello. And … are you ready for this? He ran an airfreight service back in the late fifties and early sixties, and briefly employed David Ferrie as a pilot.”

“So he could be the guy.”

“He’s certainly worth looking at in more detail,” agreed V.T.

“I should go to New Orleans.”

“Yes, if you want to pay for it yourself.”

“Oh, crap! I forgot.” Karp clenched his fists and snarled in frustration.

“Hey, lighten up,” said V.T. “We’ll know Monday if we’re all fired or if we can run a serious investigation, either of which would be a plus.”

Karp did not lighten up, either during the remainder of the day at the office, nor upon coming home. He snapped at his wife, and his child, and the dog, who did not snap in return, but whined and cringed. It was Marlene who snapped back; dinner was unpleasant.

Karp took a walk in the chill darkness after dinner and his eye fell on the yellow VW, gleaming under a streetlamp. He returned to the apartment and made some calls.

Two hours later, Lucy Karp was in the care of Harry the godfather, and Karp and Marlene were in the car headed west on U.S. 50.

“Well,” said Marlene as they cleared the outer suburbs of the capital and the land grew dark and rural, “this is quite the most romantic thing you’ve ever done.

I’m wriggling in my seat. You won’t tell me where we’re going?”

“No. Nobody knows where we’re going except me.”

She looked at his face, dimly lit by the lights of the dash: jaw tight, the muscles bunched, mouth a straight dark shadow, and there were those hard little lines he got around the eyes when he was under pressure. His hands gripped the wheel like a rally driver’s.