Reckless Endangerment (39 page)

Fulton chuckled and rubbed his face as if he had a thick towel in his hands. Karp looked at him closely and saw how tired the man was. Clearly he had been up all night.

“Yeah, well, as to that,” Fulton said, “I started on it as soon as you got me into this. I figured if there was a terrorist group, and they did something major, we’d need a task force like this. If there wasn’t, well … compared to working homicide, working for you all, I got plenty of time.”

“And that other stuff, about Khalid and Interpol—that’s legit too?”

Fulton waggled his hand from side to side. “There I indulged in a somewhat jive version of the truth. We do have a snap of the scumbag, but it’s not a mug shot. It’s a surveillance photograph, grainy as hell. Not that great for ID, but at least we know he’s not a bald midget. The brake-shop guy didn’t see Khalid, but we got him working up an Identikit sketch of the guy he did see. We’ll have that out by noon. As far as the getaway went, yeah, some people did see a couple of guys with a barrel, but we don’t have a positive ID yet. In fact, the whole canvass is a disaster. The block is all Satmar Hasidim. The men won’t talk to P.W.’s, and they won’t let the women talk to male officers. Needless to say, we are not going through this particular neighborhood in the kind of balls-to-the-wall shit storm like we would’ve if this’d happened uptown. And don’t think I’m not bitter.”

“In that case, I apologize to you on behalf of the Jewish people and the entire white race,” said Karp. “Meanwhile, how the
fuck
did this happen? And for that matter, what
did
happen? I’m still unclear.”

“Okay, let’s walk,” said Fulton. “I got to get to One Police to meet with Timmons and then over to Brooklyn to review my legions.”

“There won’t be any problem with that, I presume. Resources—”

“You got to be kidding. The sky’s the limit on this one, Stretch. I’ll need four people just to handle the calls from guys volunteering their off-duty time. These fuckers are doomed.”

They walked across Foley Square, a broad, unattractive plaza that, since it was home to the criminal, civil, and federal courthouses, contained more lawyers working at their trade than any other in the City, and thus in all probability was accursed of God. It was swept by freakish Canadian winds in the winter and baked like Chad in the summer; today it was raw, with a light chilling rain.

Fulton said, “Here’s how I see it playing. Khalid and company rent a garage for the night. Why? Obviously to set up a meeting, a meeting with a guy or group they don’t trust or who doesn’t trust them; otherwise they’d go to a bar, or where they lived. The meet comes off, but one of the parties does a double-cross, and a firefight breaks out. The other group’s got rockets, so Khalid and his people book. One escapes on foot, after shooting off about a hundred rounds of nine mil. One dies in a car. And Khalid and another guy take off in the garage tow truck. The other party, number and composition unknown, disperses on foot, because the car they came in is totaled. But one of these characters wanders out onto Atlantic and steals a black 1979 Chrysler New Yorker from a tile salesman on his way home to Bensonhurst. We got him on an Identikit too—a young kid, thin, good-looking …”

“An Arab?” asked Karp.

“Probably. They didn’t converse much. The kid had a duffel bag on him, and he’s the source of the grenades and the rocket that did all the damage. We would really like to catch this particular scumbag.”

“He just walked away after he blew up the ESU van?”

“Just walked away. You got to understand the kind of shit that was going down on that street after the van went up. There were bullets cooking off, shotgun shells, slugs and pellets flying off buildings, concussion grenades exploding, plus the gas. If he’d’ve been King Kong nobody would’ve noticed him, and the cops back on Rutledge Street were blocked by a wall of flames and gas. Why did you ask if he was an Arab? What else could he have been?”

Karp’s step halted for a moment, and he gave Fulton a hard look, leavened with appreciative humor. “You never stop detecting, do you?”

“You weren’t tying to slide one by me, were you?”

“Not really,” said Karp. “I had a meeting with Aaron Zwiller the other day, one of Lowenstein’s people. He thinks Lowenstein is assembling a little army. Guys from Israel, Israeli weapons. It was pretty vague …”

Fulton frowned and chewed his lip. “Shit, man, I don’t even want to think that some Israeli guy working for the Hasidim killed seven cops.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Maybe I’ll put in a call to Zwiller. Maybe he knows something. Meanwhile, maybe you can get Kirby to ask for a warrant to toss the Ostropoler shul.”

Fulton cackled and waved good-bye, heading south for One Police Plaza. Karp went into the Criminal Courts through the D.A.’s entrance and ascended directly to the sixth floor. He hung his raincoat in his office and went to the D.A.’s suite.

“Is he free?” Karp asked the O’Malley.

“He’s got Roland in with him, but he said to send you in.” Her glance turned narrow. “You’ll behave yourself, now?”

“Yeah, Marcie, we kissed and made up,” he answered and pushed through the door.

Jack Keegan was on the couch in his shirtsleeves, with his arms flung out along the back of it, talking to Roland Hrcany, who sat easily in the wing chair opposite. They both looked up when Karp entered, and Keegan waved him over. Karp thought Keegan looked tired. Roland, however, looked better than he had appeared in some months. Perhaps the blow to the head, Karp thought.

But no, it was a break in the terrible Mexican brothers case. Roland made this known, with glee.

“I was just saying to Jack,” Roland said, “if it hadn’t been for this Arab thing, they might have gotten away. As it is, there must be a couple hundred cops wandering around Kennedy and La Guardia, guys off duty, whatever—the cop bars are going broke, I hear. They’re all out looking for the Arabs, but of course, they could spare some attention for a couple shitheads who only killed
one
cop.”

“This would be Ray Netski,” Karp ventured. Roland caught the tone of hesitation in his voice, but being the new Roland and the D.A. being present, he did not bridle.

“Yeah, at least it’s our working theory. The scene is full of prints. The two Obregons, this girl, Connie Erbes, a semi-pro whore, who we’re still looking for, and a third guy, who right now is pretty much a mystery, but we like him for Ray. Oh, and another thing: we found the pad that the notes threatening me were written on—the old ballpoint-pen impression routine. These guys don’t watch spy movies, apparently. Unfortunately, nobody but the girl and the Obregons got a good look at him, and we don’t have the girl and the Obregons are going, ‘What other man, señor?’”

“What are we holding the brothers on now?”

Roland did some nervous flexing. “Well, there’s the 240.30, with me as the complainant, and the 135.65, also me. I threw in conspiracy to commit murder, on the assumption that they were in on Netski’s murder, that this guy was acting as their agent, but without more evidence, or testimony from the girl …”

Keegan said, “The harassment charge is a misdemeanor, and the coercion won’t hold up as a felony. The threats in the letters are too vague, and also we dismissed the damn charges against them on Morilla. So it’s oh, your honor, my girlfriend, she knows I’m innocent, so she writes to the prosecutor. We are simple people, your honor, and so forth, bumped down to a misdemeanor or tossed out. And the conspiracy charge is pure horseshit. You better find that third guy.”

To Karp’s surprise, Roland was nodding along with this. “Yeah, otherwise it’s
hasta la vista,
Mexican brothers. Speaking of which, I got to go … unless there’s something else?”

Keegan said there was not, and Roland got up. Karp had in his mind the image of loose ends flapping in the wind, intensely disturbing, but not articulable at present.

“Just a second, Roland,” he said, “what about the dead Arab, the shooter in Morilla?”

“You mean, who did him? Well, the smart money’s on man number three, him or the girl—she rented the car he was found in, and mystery guy’s prints are all over it. Did the Obregons put out a contract on the Arab? Possible, but again we need the guy or the girl.”

“What about the Russian bullet?”

Roland shrugged. “It doesn’t match anything else in the case. Netski was killed with a nine, American made. Hell, it could’ve been there from the last tenant.”

It could have been, Karp thought as he watched Hrcany leave, and doubted it tremendously, but there was nothing solid to make a point upon.

“So? What transpired at our federal government?” Keegan asked, and Karp told him, Keegan laughing aloud at Fulton’s coup.

“Anderson was not amused,” noted Karp.

“Oh, Anderson will get over it. He’s a grown-up and Hoover’s still dead. Four GS-13s, including Don Herring, will get transferred to Butte, and the Feds’ll dive into this with both feet. My Lord, seven dead cops and the Hasids too! Kirby must be shitting himself, I hate to say it, but thank God it’s Brooklyn. You going to the funeral?”

“I hadn’t intended to. I haven’t gone to an official funeral since Garrahy died.”

“Go. You’ll drive out with me. It looks good, they’re cops, we’re on the same team. What the hell is that?”

The phone was ringing, and clearly Keegan had told O’Malley to hold calls. He stumped over to his desk, picked up, said, “Okay, put him on,” listened for three minutes, pounded his fist once on the desk, muttered something to the other party, and hung up.

“I spoke too soon,” he said. “Let that be a lesson.”

“What?”

“That was the police commissioner himself. It seems that at approximately five this morning, a Hasid shot three black kids uptown, killed two and wounded one. With a machine gun. Crowds are gathering. Black Muslims are standing on cars with bullhorns.”

“My God! What happened to the Hasid?”

“Escaped apparently, covering his retreat with a hail of lead, as they used to say.”

They were silent for a moment, and then Karp said, “Well, this sucks,” and they both laughed hysterically, and a little too long.

In the nervous, sober moment that always comes after such an outburst, Keegan picked up his toy cigar and said reflectively, “It’s so thin, really, what keeps it all together. Society. The law. You know, we talk lightly about the asphalt jungle, crime is out of control, it’s anarchy. Well, it’s not. Cops can go anywhere in the city, and they almost never get shot at. That’s why it’s such a big thing when a cop gets it in LOD. But I was with a military government unit in Italy in the last eight months of World War Two, and I’ve seen what breakdown
really
is. Say all you want about the cops, they’re brutal, they’re corrupt, the courts don’t work, criminals go free—but even a real bad criminal justice system is better than
any
military government, and you have to move to military government a lot faster than most people think when you’ve got gangs of people running around with heavy weapons aimed at the police.”

“We’re far from that,” said Karp.

“Are we?” Keegan shook his head, as if to clear it of old thoughts of cities in ruins. “Oh, I guess we are. I’m just pontificating, because I’m so pissed off at this Arab-Jew thing, and I hoped we could slide by it this time, but I guess not. Watch this for me, Butch. Bird-dog the cops. Find out what’s going on. And let them see our flag.”

Karp put on his still damp raincoat and called Ed Morris, and they drove up to Harlem in the dark blue Plymouth Fury. While they drove, Karp got on the radio, was patched into a phone line, and made inquiries of Zone Five homicide, which had caught the case. This was Fulton’s old yard, and Karp knew most of the people working murders up there, and when he heard who was covering these murders, he was about as relieved as he could get, given the circumstances.

At 110th Street, Central Park West becomes Eighth Avenue and loses its class, becoming just another seedy New York avenue, wet and greasy today, broad, lined with heavily barred shops, with most reachable surfaces on the buildings, doors, and street furniture covered with spray-painted gang tags. Despite the thin rain there seemed to be more people than usual on the streets, groups of ten to twenty-five, mostly young men, dressed in team jackets and hooded sweatshirts, hanging around convenience stores or moving like migratory herds up and back on the avenue.

A can flew through the air and clanged against the Plymouth’s fender. Karp heard a bottle smash behind them. Morris picked up the pace a little.

Morris said, half to himself, “We’ll be fine, we’re almost there,” and Karp said “What you mean ‘we,’ white man?” Morris laughed.

The Two-Eight was located at 2271 Eighth, off 135th Street. Karp walked up the stairs to the bay where the homicide cops sat. Detective Second Grade Lanny Maus was at his desk, typing. He was wearing a dark purple shirt with an antique 1940s wide tie bearing a painting of firecrackers exploding, and baggy cream linen and wool trousers held up by thin woven leather suspenders. Maus had a blue-eyed, blunt, dull-looking white working-stiff–type face, a wide mouth, uneven teeth, a low forehead. His shaggy blond hair fell over his collar. It was the kind of cracker, redneck, peckerwood face that showed up in old photographs of lynch mobs. In fact, however, Maus loved working in Harlem, loved what remained of New York black culture, and might have joined the Black Muslims if they let white guys in. He had a black girlfriend and lived on 103rd Street. This did not increase his popularity with other white cops.

He caught sight of Karp and waved him over. “You’re a college graduate—how many s’s in aggressive?” Karp told him and he finished his line. He looked up at Karp and said, “So they busted you down to riding D.A.?”

“Nope. I’m still a big-time desk jockey. Who was the riding D.A. for this abortion?”

“Name of Womroth. Thirteen years old, braces and acne, I gave her a spanking and sent her to bed without her supper. Why? She fuck up?”

“No, given what’s going on, Jack wanted me to watch this one. What happened?”

“Who the fuck knows, like usual. I haven’t had a chance to hit the snitches yet, so all we have is the statement of the surviving kid, who’s in Harlem Hospital, and statements from the kind of mopes you expect to be wandering around Lenox and ‘seventeenth at five in the a.m.; they all back Roscoe’s story.”