Infamy (4 page)

Stupenagel dropped her hand from his arm. “He died because some power-hungry bastards saw him as an impediment to their plans.
And
he died because he was trying to do the right thing. Goodbye, Mick.” With that she turned and walked away.
She supposed it might have appeared to anyone watching that she and Mick had a falling out of the jilted woman variety.

A couple of minutes later, as she was fishing in her purse for her cell phone, she nearly bumped into a young man going in the opposite direction. He had a military-style crew cut and his eyes were hidden by dark sunglasses; he didn't say a word as he sidestepped her.

Still thinking about her talk with Colonel Mick Swindells, she punched in the number for Lucy Karp.

Lucy answered just as Ariadne reached the sidewalk leading out of the park toward Central Park West. “Ariadne?”

“Hi, honey. I just saw my friend,” Stupenagel reported. “I think you're barking up the right tree, but he's not talking. Maybe I can try again in a few—” She never finished the sentence.

Gunshots rang out in the direction from which she'd come. One, two, then several more.

Without knowing exactly why, she suddenly felt sick to her stomach. “Sorry, Lucy, I have to go,” she said as she reached down, removed her high heels, and began to run. Back toward the reunion. Back toward a nightmare she knew in her heart had to do with the reason she was there.

3

“I
DON
'
T GET IT.
”

At the sound of his elder son's voice, Butch Karp lowered the Sunday
New York Times
and peered over the top of the newspaper. Isaac, known to his family and friends as Zak, was seated at the island in the kitchen of their SoHo loft surrounded by the books and papers he'd gathered for a school project. He was leaning on his elbows with his face in his hands and staring down at his laptop.

“What don't you get?” Karp asked.

Zak picked up his head and gestured toward the items on the counter. “This.”

Karp knew in general terms what “this” was. As part of their
­senior projects in history class, his twin sons and their classmates had been assigned to choose a revolution that had occurred somewhere in the world and write a paper on it. It was no small task; they were expected to address the causes, identify the principal characters, explain why the winners succeeded, and state whether in hindsight the revolutionaries had accomplished their stated goals.

As expected, Giancarlo, the younger by a couple of minutes and the better student, had sailed right through his selection: the American Revolution. An obvious choice, but Karp had been impressed that Giancarlo had reached back to June 15, 1215, and King John of England agreeing at Runnymede to fix his seal to the Magna Carta. Confronted by angry barons who demanded that he agree in the document to their demands to protect their rights and property from the arbitrary rule of the Crown, the king had consented to avoid civil war. A little more than two months later, however, Pope Innocent III nullified the agreement and England plunged into chaos. But Magna Carta would be revived after John's death as the basis of English law and eventually be used by American revolutionaries to justify rebellion in defense of liberty.

“Although it didn't really talk much about commoners,” Giancarlo wrote in the opening of his paper that he showed his
dad, “there were two provisions in particular that would have a great impact on the Declaration of Independence, as well as the U.S. Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. These two provisions were: ‘No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.'
And,
‘To no one will We sell, to no one will We deny or delay, right or justice.'

“The Fifth Amendment's provisions that ‘no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law' comes from Magna Carta's protections according to the ‘law of the land.' ”

Giancarlo was still working on the conclusion to his report and whether the American Revolution had accomplished its stated goals, but he was cruising into his last laps. Zak, on the other hand, was struggling.

Surprisingly, at least to his parents and teacher, Zak had chosen the Russian Revolution, which to Karp was a much more complicated event. An exceptional athlete who was being recruited by colleges to play baseball, Zak had never been into academics like his brother. He was by no means unintelligent, quite the contrary, but as his high school counselor had been
known to complain, he was at times “unmotivated” if a subject didn't interest him.

History was not one of the motivational subjects. So when he chose to explain how a variety of circumstances led to the Bolsheviks, and their descendant the Communist Party, taking over, Karp asked him why he'd picked such a difficult subject. “I don't know
,”
Zak said with a shrug. “I guess I didn't know much about it but was curious, since Russia always seems to be in the news these days. They don't teach us much about American history and the War of Independence, but it's more than I know about the Russian Revolution. I thought it might be interesting and . . . I don't know . . . important.”

The thoughtful response made Karp sit back and consider Zak. He had always been bigger than Giancarlo and favored his ­mother's Italian side of the family—olive skinned, thick features, and a perpetual five o'clock shadow since his first year in high school. Giancarlo was paler, thinner, a good enough athlete but no star. Both had their mother's thick, curly black hair and dark eyes, but personality-wise, Zak burned hotter; Giancarlo was more likely to try to think himself (and his brother) out of a situation.

“I think that's a great choice and I look forward to reading what you have to say,” Karp said, wondering if he was watching his son mature right in front of his eyes.

“Besides, Russian chicks are hot,”
Zak added with a grin.

Maybe not
, Karp thought, shaking his head and walking away.

Still, that night reading in bed with Marlene, he'd noted the apparent shift in Zak's maturity.

“
Well, he and Giancarlo finally did just get bar mitzvahed,” Marlene said. “Maybe he took the ‘rite of passage to manhood' seriously.”

“I'd hope so, since it was four years later than the customary thirteen years old,” Karp said. “But I think there's more to it than that.”

Marlene closed her book and turned on her side to look at him.
“
Could it be tied to the fact that he just survived being abducted by a neo-Nazi murderer, having a gun pointed at his head, and then watching a young man die?” She smiled wanly as she said it. “Take it from someone who knows, those sorts of things tend to sober you up about life.”

Karp nodded. “Guess our kids, and you, too, have been put through hell because of my job. Shot. Bombed. Abducted. Assaulted.” He held up his fingers as he listed the crimes that had been perpetrated against his family, some of them more than once.

Marlene reached out and put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhhh. It's not just your job—or even my wacky career decisions—
that has put this family, including you, in harm's way. I used to think Lucy was imagining that there's a battle between good and evil going on, and that for some unknown reason this family had been chosen to be in the middle of it. Now I'm not so sure, and I'm willing to think that maybe she's right. But at least we get to be the good guys, thanks to my stalwart crime-fighting husband. But we're talking about Zak, and I don't think this new ‘maturity,' or whatever you want to call it, is all about a near-death encounter. Maybe he did take the words of the rabbi seriously, but I think he's just more introspective and thoughtful in general.” She laughed. “I've actually caught him doing his homework without being told. And he even asked me if he could order books online for this Russian Revolution project.”

Karp chuckled. “Did you take his temperature? Maybe we should take him to see a doctor.” He closed his book. “But I think you're right, our boy's just growing up.”

Wanting to encourage Zak, after work and on weekends Karp had helped him research his subject and find reading material. He'd heard from one of his assistant district attorneys at the office that
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924
by Orlando Figes was the seminal work on the events leading to, during, and immediately after the revolution—actually
­revolutions—that culminated in the rise of the Soviet Union. So he'd ordered the book from the Housing Works Bookstore down the block on Crosby and gone there with Zak to pick it up.

Zak's eyes had widened when he saw the voluminous book. However, he'd apparently found it interesting and he'd been carrying it around with him for a month. They'd even once found him in bed reading it.

Now the fact that he was indoors on a pleasant Sunday afternoon instead of plotting ways to get out of his schoolwork was further proof that he was determined to do well. However, the momentum seemed to have stalled.

“So what about ‘this' are you having a hard time with?” Karp asked.

Zak pointed to his research materials. “There's just so much,” he confessed. “And some things I just don't get. So I guess I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.”

Karp walked over to his dejected son. He looked over Zak's shoulder at the yellow legal pad on which he'd been taking notes.

“I don't get how the Bolsheviks came to power or why they stayed in power,” Zak said. “After Tsar Nicholas abdicated and all these different groups—monarchists, social democrats, moderates—got together to try to decide what form of democratic government they wanted, the Bolsheviks were just a small mi
nority. They were just a bunch of loud-mouthed bullies. So why did they win?”

Karp raised his eyebrows. “Good question, and one that I think has a lot of relevance to the political scene in this country now, and maybe you can go into that a little bit at the conclusion of this paper.”

“What do you mean?” Zak asked.

“Well, you're right that the Bolsheviks were a minority party,” Karp said. “No one really took them all that seriously as a major power broker, not until it was too late. But they were focused on their goal of achieving power and imposing their worldview on others, and they were ruthless in how they went about it. Democracy can be a messy affair with a lot of compromising and debate as its proponents try to work out their issues in a civilized manner. All of this can lead to inertia, with no one being willing to assume real leadership, particularly in a crisis. So when a small group of dedicated ‘true believers' is willing to dispense with the niceties, or even the rule of law, they can easily fill in that leaderless void.

“That's a simple explanation, but I think it's pretty valid about what happened in Russia, and I think we are even seeing some of that in this country now. The ‘loud-mouthed bullies'—the ­extremists—are taking over. They believe that they have the right
to impose their worldview, whether it's subtly convincing gullible people that they ‘know what's best for them,' or not so subtly at the point of a gun.”

“Eventually, at least in Russia,” Zak added, “it seemed to always come down to the point of a gun. The Bolsheviks even turned on each other, and anybody else who stood in their way.”

“And that, my boy, is the answer to the question of how a minority party seized control of a country as large and diverse as Russia,” Karp said.

Before the conversation could go any further, Karp's cell phone went off. He walked over to the coffee table in the living room where he'd left it. The caller ID identified Clay Fulton, the detective in charge of the special unit of NYPD detectives assigned to the District Attorney's Office. Karp sighed. Although they had been friends since Fulton was a rookie cop and Karp a recent law school grad working as an assistant DA in Manhattan, it was unlikely to be a social call or even a run-of-the-mill murder in a city that averaged four hundred homicides a year.

“Hello, Clay, what's up?”

“You watching television, by any chance?” Fulton replied. “Never mind, dumb question. You would have called me if you were. There's been a shooting—two fatalities, several more injured—in Central Park.”

“Gangs?”

“No, lone shooter. At a picnic for an Army unit. One of the wounded was an off-duty detective. They exchanged fire. The detective, a guy named Ted Moore, got hit, but the shooter took off or it could have been worse.”

“Where's the shooter now?”

“Not sure. Could be in the park. Could be in a taxi headed for LaGuardia, for all we know. There's a BOLO for him, he shouldn't get far.”

“We know who he is?”

“Yeah, a former Army Ranger named Dean Mueller,” Fulton replied. “He shot up a reunion party for his old unit. Some of the witnesses knew him.”

Karp sighed.
There goes the weekend.
“You better send the . . .”

“. . . car's on the way,” Fulton finished the sentence. “Figured you'd want to go to the scene. I'm on my way now.”

“Which ADA is on call from the office?” Karp asked.

“Kenny Katz. He's already there. Spoke to him for a couple of minutes, but he was getting started and needed to go.”

Karp thought for a second about his protégé, Katz, and nodded.
Right man for the job. Former decorated Army Ranger himself
. He ought to be able to read between the lines on this one.

“Thanks, Clay. I'll be ready in five.”

Karp hung up and leaned over the coffee table to pick up the remote control and turned on the television. Already set to the news channel, the screen winked to life with a young woman reporter barely able to contain her excitement at being “the first on scene at this horrific mass shooting.” Behind her a half dozen police cruisers and several unmarked sedans, as well as two fire department paramedic vans, were arrayed on the grass, their red and blue lights flashing. Inside a perimeter of yellow crime scene tape, a line of police officers stared intently at the ground as they walked shoulder to shoulder across the grass.

“We don't have all the details yet,” the journalist said breathlessly. “Police detectives have sequestered the witnesses and are interviewing them as we speak.”

The camera panned to a group of people gathered near or sitting at picnic tables. The rest of the scene looked like a tornado had blown through, with beer cans, plates, food, even articles of clothing scattered throughout. Small knots of people, some in uniform, stood together, many of them hugging and obviously crying. NYPD detectives methodically moved among them, taking initial statements.

Karp spotted Assistant District Attorney Kenny Katz standing next to a detective sergeant who was questioning a woman. He
did a double take: Ariadne Stupenagel. He knew at that moment that whatever had happened, she was somehow at the heart of it.

“What do we know about what happened?” the disembodied voice of a newscaster asked the young journalist.

“Well, Dirk, according to what we've been able to learn from the police—after being the first news team on the scene—about thirty minutes ago this reunion for a group of Army veterans in Central Park took a tragic turn,” she replied. “I was told by a sergeant that the suspect is one Dean Mueller, who apparently once served with this particular regiment. He appeared out of nowhere and began shooting.”