“Brick dust, huh? Does it match?”
“âNot inconsistent with the samples found at the crime scene and in the body of the deceased.' You know how Forensic is. But same differenceâbrick dust ain't fingerprints.”
“Fingerprints ain't fingerprints, if it comes to that. But what do you think? Macek built the thing in his repair shop, right?”
“Sounds like it to me, but try to prove it.”
“I'm not sure I'll have to. You didn't find any explosives, huh?”
“Not a trace.”
“That figures. Where's the stuff now?”
“I threw it all in an old carton I picked up in Macek's shop. I got it here.”
“Great, Fredâlook, do me a favor. Could you drag that carton down here? I want to take a look at it.”
After Slocum had dropped the carton off, Karp examined each of the plastic envelopes. As Slocum had said, it was not much, some small tools, assorted debris, and a stack of papers, all in a small, open corrugated carton that still had bits of Styrofoam excelsior from the original packing. But he hadn't planned to learn much by inspecting himself. Picking up the phone, he called Marino at Rodman Neck and then Doug Brenner for a ride.
Jamaica Bay looked like the North Sea by the time they got to the police range at Rodman Neck. The sun was obscured by clouds the color of dirty sidewalks, and the wind off the bay shot through Karp's raincoat, pierced his body, and flew out the other side. His knee ached and he almost limped as he climbed the stairs into Marino's building.
The bomb squad captain was waiting for him with another man, whom he introduced as Sergeant Dalker, the officer in charge of the bomb-sniffing dog unit, also housed at Rodman. Dalker, a thin man with a fox-like face, was holding a German shepherd on a short leash. The dog's name was Rosie. As he spoke briefly about the capabilities of such animals, Karp noticed that he had the odd habit of asking the dog for concurrence whenever he made a statement about her.
Karp explained what he wanted and they set up the plastic bags, opened, in a row on the floor. Dalker led Rosie along the row. When she got to the seventh bag, she made a whimpering noise deep in her throat.
“Is that something?” Karp asked.
“Could be,” said Dalker, squatting down next to the dog's head. “What is it, Rosie? You smell something?” In the bag was a hacksaw. Dalker looked over his shoulder at the other two men. “It's possible that the saw was used on or near some explosives, maybe to saw through a dynamite stick, or more likely, somebody with explosives on his hands used the tool. But the trace is faint and Rosie's not sure, are you, Rosie?”
The dog drew a blank on the other bags. In vain they went through the routine two more times with the bags in different order. Karp looked at Dalker, who shrugged and waggled his hand from side to side. Karp sighed and said, “OK, guys, thanks, it was worth a shot.” He put the carton down on the floor, and he and Brenner started sealing the bags and tossing them in.
Then Rosie barked and lunged forward and started to claw at the sides of the carton. Karp stumbled backward out of her way, startled. “What's that all about?” he asked. “Rosie changed her mind?”
“No,” Dalker said, “it's the damn carton.” Unloading it swiftly, they placed it in the center of the floor. The dog stuck her nose in it, shook it with her teeth, whined, wagged her tail, and did all the other things that explosive-sniffing dogs do when they find explosives. “There was high explosive packed in that carton for quite a while,” Dalker said. “Right, Rosie? Wasn't there?”
As Dalker talked sweetly to his dog, Marino said, “Butch, most explosives will volatilize over time. If they're packed in something absorbent like cardboard or this styro, the packing absorbs some of the vapors, and naturally that's what the dog smells.”
But Karp was hardly listening. He was staring at the top flaps of the carton. They had been hanging down on the outside, probably since Slocum had picked it up casually in Macek's repair room, so that nobody had noticed the top of the carton when it was closed. Rosie's prodding nose had lifted it and exposed the outside of the flap.
On it was a glossy, neatly typed label addressed to P. Macek at his shop. Though it was much covered by dust and grease, Karp had no trouble reading the fat red letters of the Tel-Air logo printed across the top.
“Doug, this evidence we got here, I want you to bury it,” Karp said an hour later as the two of them sat in the car outside the dark mass of the Criminal Courts Building. “Take it someplace and hide it. And I don't want anybody but you, me, and the Chief of D. knowing where it is.”
“Yeah, I'll hide it in my kid's closet. You want me to drop you home or you going in?”
“No, you go home,” Karp said, sliding out of the car, “I got some calls to make and I'm supposed to meet up with Marlene later.”
In his office, Karp found that the person he most wanted to call also wanted to call him, and pretty badly, it appeared. His secretary was gone for the day, but while he had been out she had plastered the back of his chair with taped-on pink phone message slips marked “
URGENT
,” all from Elmer Pillman of the FBI.
They made him wait a full three minutes on hold, with no Muzak, just to put him in his place. When Pillman got on, he came right to the point. “You asshole! Do you realize what you've done? Do you realize how much work you just blew to hell today?”
“Why, Elmer, what are you talking about?” Karp asked mildly.
“Don't play dumb with me, you shithead!” Pillman roared. Karp could feel the scowl through the phone lines and moved the receiver a few inches away from his ear. Pillman sounded like a tiny man shouting into a bucket: “The fuck-up you pulled out at Tel-Air. Six months of work. The DEA, the ATF, the Bureau, even your own goddamn Queens narco! And you trash the whole thing because you think, you
think
, there's a connection wit' some goddamn spic knifing.”
“Tel-Air? Elmer, what makes you think I had anything to do with going into Tel-Air?”
Silence. Then a bellow of rage. “What? I'll tell you what, asshole! I just talked to your boss, the DA.
He
fingered you. How do you like that, jerk-off?”
“Gosh, if he said that, then Mr. Bloom is sadly misinformed. I'm just an ordinary New York County ADA, Elmer. I don't command squadrons of men in Queens County like you do. As I understand it, that operation was set up by Chief Denton personally. Maybe you should talk to him, since you're so upset. Wait a second, I'll get you his number.”
“
I've got his goddamn number!
”
“Oh, yeah, how silly of me. You're the liaison between the Feds and the NYPD. My, my, I bet your colleagues are pissed at you, Elmer. I bet they're blaming you for the mixup.”
“Karp, you motherfucker, I swear to God I'll get you. You'll wish you never were born before I'm through with you. If you think you can fuck with the Bureau and get away with it, youâ”
“But I'm not fucking with the Bureau, am I, Elmer,” Karp broke in, his voice grown hard. “The Bureau has nothing to do with it. This is your show. It's a solo all the way. So I'm only fucking with you. You see, Elmer, I know about you and Ruiz, and I know why you've been trying to queer my case against Karavitch and his little gang. It took me awhile, but I finally found out. Good-bye, Elmer.”
Karp hung up and looked at the sweep hand on his watch. In less than fifteen seconds the phone rang. Karp picked it up and said gently, “Yes, Elmer? More talkies?”
“I didn't like what you just implied,” Pillman said lamely.
“You didn't? What a sensitive nature. I wouldn't have thought it, considering how you're always screaming at people and calling them bad names.”
“Cut the bullshit, Karp. We need to talk and not over the phone. How soon can you get up here?”
“Never is how soon, Elmer. I'll be in my office for another hour. If you'd care to stop by, I'll see if I can squeeze you in.” Karp hung up and quickly dialed a Massachusetts number. A pleasant female voice answered, and Karp asked to speak to V.T. Newbury.
“Well, well, how fortunate,” said V.T. when he got on the line. “I'd been meaning to get in touch with you all day. What happened? Is the despicable Ruiz in custody?”
“Afraid not. I think somebody tipped him, and he's on the run. But that's sort of what I needed to talk to you about. We found out that the Ruiz operation supplied the grenade that blew up Doyle.”
“Ah-ha! The missing link. How did you find that out?”
“Tell you later. Right now I probably got Pillman coming over here in ten minutes. I just told him I know all about him and Ruiz and why he's trying to bag Karavitch et al., and he's going to pump me to find out if I'm bluffing.”
“And are you?”
“For shit's sake, V.T., of course I am. All I know for sure is the grenade connection; beyond that it's Blank City. That's why I'm calling you. You're into all this conspiracy jazz. I need some ideas, and fast.”
“I'm flattered. OK, let me think.” For what seemed like an endless interval, Karp sat with the earpiece growing sweaty around his ear and listened to V.T.'s breathing and the tuneless whistle he always made between his teeth when he was deep in thought. Finally he came back to earth. “Right. Let's start with the two facts we know for sure: one, Pillman is trying to queer the case, and two, Ruiz supplied the bomb. Now, the strange thing about these two facts is that they don't fit together.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because there is no way that Pillman would have authorized, or allowed, or paid for, Ruiz giving explosives to Karavitch's group. It's off the charts.”
“Why?”
“Because whatever else he is, Pillman has been an FBI agent for over twenty years. He may be corrupt, but I can't conceive of any FBI agent abetting domestic violence for any reason.”
“What if somebody is blackmailing him? Ruiz, maybe.”
“Still no go. And for another reason. As they used to ask us in law school, who benefits? Why should Ruiz want to give grenades to the Croats or help them out with a little thuggery? For Pillman? No way, because why would Pillman want to help the Croats? It doesn't make senseâit's circular. The Cubans must have been mobilized by somebody else. From Ruiz's point of view, supping a grenade or two to somebody or breaking a few heads is merely a sideline, something he'd do practically as a favor for whoever is making his operation possible. But it's not Pillman. You don't know the guy the way I do, Butch. This is a bureaucrat, not an entrepreneur. The only critical question is why Pillman is shielding Ruiz.
“Now let's add another fact. Before he came to New York as deputy, Pillman was stationed in Miami, where he helped to break up a group called SOBA. This was a bunch of militant right-wing Cubans who were planting bombs on people they didn't think were sufficiently anti-Castro. A very classy piece of work, by the way, and Pillman got a lot of credit for it. This was in, like, '68 or '70. I'm pretty sure Ruiz was there around then too, and he was tight with a lot of former Batistianos. Pillman could have used him as an informant, maybe a provocateur, maybe skirting the edges of legality.”
“V.T., damn it, why didn't you tell me this stuff before?”
“Because I was thinking CIA, not FBI. They're in two separate, noncommunicating compartments of my brain, as they are in real life. You remember, we were going to use the possible CIA link with Ruiz to beat up on Pillman. But what if there's a much closer link? What if somebody's beating him up from the other side?”
“How do you mean?”
“Say it's like this. A connection is created between Karavitch and the Cubans. Pillman doesn't know about it. He's just going about his business fighting evildoers. The Karavitch case lands in his lap. But as soon as he starts working on it, he gets a call, sayâand this had to be almost as soon as the names of the skyjackers were made publicâhe gets a call telling him that Ruiz is involved. Immediately he knows that the Croats can't come to trial, because if they do, they might rat on Ruiz and his operation, and then Ruiz or one of his people might rat on Pillman. Alternately, somebody who knows about Ruiz and Pillman is pressuring Pillman to lay off the Croats. There's your blackmail. Either way, it's in Pillman's interest, if he can do it without being too obvious about it, to prevent the Croats from coming to trial. Q.E.D.”
“That's very fancy, V.T., very fancy indeed. For some strange reason I like it.”
“Why, thank you, Butch. I hope it works. Oh, one other thing. I know it's late notice, but why don't you come up and stay with us this weekend? We have plenty of room and since you're not a big shot anymore, you can take a weekend off now and then. I invited Guma too.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yup. The Big Prank rolls next week. We have to do some last-minute strategizing, at which you are perfectly welcome should you care to risk one-to-five in Elmira. Also, I'd like you to meet Annabelle. And bring La Siciliana. You both could use a break.”
“What about the snow? There's supposed to be a blizzard up there.”
“Not to worry. The plows are out and I got through OK this afternoon. Besides, it's tapering off.”
Once broached, the idea of spending a weekend with Marlene in the country was overwhelmingly attractive. He could not remember offhand the last time he had so indulged himself, probably years. He agreed to come that evening if Marlene was willing, and V.T. dictated what seemed like an impossibly complex set of road directions.
A few minutes after he had finished with V.T., Karp heard the outer door open and then footsteps crossing the deserted outer office. A shape loomed up against the frosted glass and then Pillman entered.
He was pale, his eyebrows hairy knots, and his wide frog's mouth was compressed into a razor line. Karp motioned to the chair and Pillman dropped his blocky body into it like a sandbag. He eyed Karp sourly for a moment and then rumbled, “So? I'm here. What have you got?”