“It's upstairs. Are you in?”
Karp said that he was. You can only avoid your boss so long. After that he might begin to suspect you don't like him.
After the obligatory wait to establish relative status, Bloom came on the line. He got right to the point.
“Chip's been having difficulty reaching you.”
“We're both busy men. What can I do for you?”
“A couple of things. First of all, your numbers look like shit. Mel Pelso says you're not following policy on assigning trial slots.”
“I'll try to do better. It would help if old Mel would venture into a courtroom occasionally and clear some more cases. With some coaching I'm sure we could teach Mel how to accept a plea to a lesser.”
Bloom chose to ignore the remark. “Now, this Weaver thingâ”
“Is murder two. The facts don't allow anything else, and I intend to try, absent a guilty plea to the top count.”
“I don't think that's wise.”
“You don't? Then overrule me. You're the DA. It's your signature on the indictment.” Of course, Karp knew that the DA would not take the heat for a direct and publicly verifiable overrule. He wanted Karp to take the heat.
“Well, think about it,” Bloom said lamely. “And speaking of indictments, they just brought this hijack thing up. What do you think you're doing here, indicting
all
of them on second-degree murder? It's absurd! The damn case is complicated enough without trying to prove five people, two of whom speak no English, all had guilty knowledge about a booby-trapped bomb. I suppose you want to go to trial on this one too?”
“Yes. It's a good case.”
“Is it? Well, you'll get to explain your legal reasoning tonight on television.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, Carl Weber called for an interview. The taping is scheduled for seven-thirty in my office. They want it for the eleven o'clock local news.”
“You'll be there too?”
“No, I have a prior engagement. You'll be on your own.”
“Uh-huh. Umm ⦠?”
“Yes?”
“You going to sign those indictments?”
“Oh, yes, I'll sign them, all right, and Iâ” Bloom was about to say something else, and thought better of it. Instead he snapped, “I have another call,” and clicked off the line, leaving Karp to consider why, for the first time in living memory, Sanford Bloom had turned down the chance to be on television. He went to the door and stuck his head out.
“Connie, where's Marlene?”
“In Part Twenty, I think.” Connie kept all the bureau ADAs' schedules neatly under her short Afro. “No, wait. Tony's got that today. She's out of the office, at a funeral. You want me to find out whose?”
“No, don't bother. I'll catch her later.” Karp knew whose funeral.
The funeral was in Queens. Where else? Half of Queens is covered by cemeteries. The weather was appropriately funereal: gray, cold, and windy. Marlene had never been to an inspector's funeral before and was impressed. There were hundreds of uniformed cops with black-taped badges, the pipe band of the Emerald Society playing dirges, plus representatives from other police forces. The New York Police Department buries its dead well.
Terry Doyle's entire chain of command was there, except for Jack Doheny, who was still in the hospital. She spotted Bill Denton and Pete Hanlon in a group of senior officers, all in full uniform, and made her way over to them. She greeted Hanlon and introduced herself to Bill Denton. Hanlon looked drawn and nervous. They talked briefly about the funeral and how the widow was taking it. After a while the other officers drifted away, leaving her with Hanlon and Denton.
“How's the case going?” Denton asked.
“OK, on the surface. We got the indictments in today.”
“What do you mean, âon the surface'?”
“I mean, we know one of the five we got pulled the trigger on Terry, but we don't know which one, and how many of the others knew about it. That could be a problem. And Butch thinks the FBI is trying to queer the case.”
“Any idea why?”
“None. But it's worrying. There's also the issue of where they got the explosives and the trigger. Which reminds me: Inspector Hanlon, I need names of people with expertise in this kind of explosive device.”
Hanlon frowned. “I'll have my office draw you up a list.”
“How about off the top of your head? Who's the best? You must know. And given the circumstances, I'd prefer it to be somebody unconnected with the federal government.” Marlene flashed her most winning and innocent smile. It was a stroke of luck getting Hanlon here alone with his boss. It would make it hard for him to dissemble, if that was on his mind.
Hanlon cleared his throat heavily and looked down at the ground. When he lifted his face again she saw the tension in it. His voice was strained. “Sam Rackwood is about the best there is in this country, but he's with the Feds, ATF.”
“Who's the best in the world, Pete?” Denton asked in a flat, quiet voice.
“Urn, I don't know ⦠maybe Taylor? G.F.S. Taylor, if he's still alive. He lives in EnglandâLondon somewhere. I heard him speak once at a course in Glencoe. My girl has his address at the office.” Hanlon's face looked pinched and raw, and not just from the cold wind off the bay. “I'm not sure you can get to him, though,” he mumbled distractedly. “Taylor's supposed to be an odd bird.”
Marlene wrote the name down on a pad she took from her bag. She smiled brightly. “That's OK,” she said, “I'm an odd bird, too.”
“Butch, you're still here! I was going to leave you a note.” The head sticking through the opening in Karp's office doorway was large, square, and covered with orange fuzz, like industrial carpeting. The door opened wider and a big, cylindrical body pushed through. Fred Slocum dressed cheap and ugly. This evening his ensemble comprised pinkish-tan double-knit slacks and a baggy polyester sports coat in charcoal, red, blue, and orange nubbles, worn over a pale green shirt showing a clean crescent of T-shirt at the open neck.
Karp looked up from his work and rubbed his face. It had the rubbery feel you get after a Novocain session. His stomach was still sour and producing acrid gases that stung his throat. “Yeah, I'm still here. I got to go upstairs and get taped for TV at seven-thirty, so I figured I might as well stay here and get rid of some paper.” He glanced at his watch. “Shit. It's quarter to seven.”
“You going on TV? What, this hijack thing?”
“Yeah, Carl Weber's doing the interview.”
“That asshole,” Slocum sneered. “He'll pull out a little piece of paper in the middle of it and say, âMr. Karp, our investigation shows that in 1948 you took a copy of
Dick and Jane Visit Grandma
out of the New York Public Library. That book has never been returned. Do you deny it?'”
Slocum did an accurate imitation of Weber's portentous drone, and Karp grinned. “Yeah, right, I better watch my ass. So what was the note going to be about?”
“Oh, yeah. Max Dorcas. Old guy, runs a little hole-in-the-wall joint in Grand Central, luggage sales and repairs. It's right across from the locker where they left the bomb. He made the little guy, what's his name ⦠?”
“Rukovina?”
“Right. He's sure he saw him and another guy put a big pot in the locker last Thursday. He remembers it because he wondered why anybody would put a pot in a lockerâa package, a bag maybe, but a pot?”
“What about the other guy?”
“Zilch. High collar, low hat. He thinks he had a mustache. But he's sure on Rukovina.”
“Great, Fred, that's enough. That's the first piece of evidence tying any of the gang to the real bomb. Great work!”
Slocum shrugged. “You want me to set the lineup?”
“Yeah, let's do it first thing tomorrow. And, Fred, I'd appreciate it if you went out to Riker's and brought them in yourself.”
Slocum frowned slightly and shrugged again. “Sure, whatever.” He turned to go. “By the way, you ought to get some air. You look crummy.”
Karp wrinkled his nose. “I feel crummy. I had a shitty lunch, or something. Take care, Freddy.”
“Yeah, you too. Tell Weber to fuck himself.”
After the detective had gone, Karp bent to work again, but surrendered to his feelings of unease after a few minutes and threw his pencil down. He did need some air. He also needed to talk to Marlene. But her office was dark when he went by, so he trotted down the four flights of stairs and through the lobby into the darkening street.
Karp stood on the steps of the courthouse in his shirt-sleeves and filled his lungs with cool evening air. It helped, a little. Traffic had thinned out and the air was purifying itself, aided by a stiff breeze from the river, six blocks away. The sky was still slate blue over the west side of Foley Square, and the street lamps were coming on. Under one of them a dark young man in a red warm-up jacket leaned against a white van and combed his long, straight hair. He regarded Karp neutrally in the manner of New Yorkers. Karp looked away and watched Dirty Warren pulling his red wagon down Centre Street.
Two TV station vans were parked illegally in front of the courthouse, and Karp assumed they were connected with the taping. When a church clock called seven-fifteen from Little Italy, Karp went back into the building for his date with the millions. As he did so he wondered once again why Bloom was declining the same date, and even more, why the major late evening television news show had assigned its chief investigative reporter to do the interview. Did they know something he didn't? Join the crowd, he thought.
In her apartment, Marlene examined herself in her long mirror. She had put on a full black wool skirt, a rose silk blouse, and her grandmother's jet beads. She also wore knee-length black boots, her black eye-patch on her bad eye, and her black kid gloves on her bad hand. She wanted to look slightly military, conservative, no-nonsense, just right for a date with a seventy-two-year-old retired Brit soldier.
It had turned out that the famous G.F.S. Taylor did not live in London at all, but in New York (naughty Inspector Hanlon!). Not only that, he was at home when Marlene called and told him breathlessly why she simply
had
to see him (she always found it helpful to take ten years off her age and thirty points off her IQ when asking men for interviews over the phone). And not only was he home, but yes, he was free for the evening and would not at all mind if Miss Ciampi dropped by.
The Northumbria was an imposing apartment house on West 77th Street, just off Central Park West, with a liveried doorman and a slow, paneled elevator, the kind of place occupied by widows of wealthy garment magnates. It smelled of furniture polish, steam heat, and old paint.
She rang the bell of Taylor's apartment and waited. A minute passed. She was about to ring again when the door was flung open, revealing a tall, spare figure in a gray cardigan and baggy tweed trousers. The man had a great beaked nose capped with bushy eyebrows above and a ragged, thick mustache below. His right cheek was a mass of twisted flesh, like the tallow at the bottom of a guttered candle, and he wore a patch on his right eye. After a moment of stunned silence, G.F.S. Taylor laughed, a set of barks like small-arms fire, and said in a loud voice, “You must be Miss Ciampi. I see, ha-ha! I see we can shop for spectacles together. Do come in.”
Marlene followed Taylor through a narrow hallway lit by dim wall sconces into a large, high-ceilinged living room. There was an odd smell to the place, strong tobacco, mostly, but with a medicinal overtone like a doctor's office. She wondered if the old man were sick.
The room had a well-kept but impersonal feel to it, like the lobby of a good hotel in a provincial capital. A heavy mahogany sideboard, two Duncan Phyfe couches, and a chinoiserie end table set on a worn oriental rug. Art-deco lamps threw fuzzy circles of light against the ceiling.
Taylor bade her sit on the silk couch and offered her sherry. He poured from a crystal decanter and sat down on the couch opposite. “So how did it happen?”
“What, this?” she asked, touching her face.
“Yes.”
“That's interesting. I thought the English were supposed to be deathly afraid of asking personal questions.”
He smiled broadly, a wolfish but not unpleasant smile. He had very large yellow teeth. “Well, I'm hardly English anymore, am I? I've been here since '48 more or less. And besides that, my mother was a Serb, and Serbs love asking personal questions. And besides that, you've come here to pump me for some information, which on the phone you were not at all anxious to specify. And so one likes to know with whom one is dealing. Don't you agree?”
Marlene shrugged. “All right. A bomb went off. A letter bomb.”
His one eye, shining in its nest of dark wrinkles, widened with interest. “Really? Spring or pull cord?”
“Pull cord, C-4 with a chemical primer. I was being a jerk; I had diagrams of the damn things in my desk.”
“Yes. Still, that kind is hard to spot. And hindsight is not something readily available in the bomb disposal business. But then you're not in that business, are you? You said on the phone something about the district attorney? You have some identification, of course. I'm sorry, but ⦔
Marlene dug through her bag, found her wallet, and displayed her photo ID, which he studied briefly and returned. “You'd be surprised,” he said apologetically, “how many people nowadays want to cadge free advice about blowing things up. One has to be careful.”
“Speaking of which,” said Marlene, “how did you ⦠?”
He laughed, bark-bark-bark. “Yes, it's not exactly a good advert for the firm. It was during the war, quite near the end, actually. I was training a group of partisans in bomb disposal techniques, defusing devices the Jerries and their friends left behind. We were billeted in a little mountain village near Jajce. That's in Yugoslavia, you know. I was sleeping on the floor near the stove. It was bitter and the stove was roaring. Some big Montenegrins from one of Brkovic's units stumbled in during the night. They were clumsy with cold and they crowded around the stove. Of course, it went right over and landed on a haversack of incendiary bombs. I woke up with my head on fire.”