• • •
Accompanied by Fulton, Karp walked into the interview room. The suspect leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head, his face and eyes betraying no emotion—the typical insouciance of a stone-cold gangbanger.
“Hello, Mr. Garcia, my name is Roger Karp and I’m the district attorney for the county of New York,” he said. “This is Detective Clay Fulton of the New York City Police Department currently assigned to my office.”
“District attorney…so they bring in the Big Dog to fry my ass,” Garcia noted.
“Actually, Mr. Garcia, I will not be the prosecutor who handles this case, if there is a case,” Karp said. “However, it seems that you have some people who believe you’re innocent, including my two boys, Zak and Giancarlo.”
At the mention of the twins, Garcia brightened for a moment. “Nice kids,” he said.
The warmth of the statement caught Karp a little off guard. “I think so, too,” he said. “Unfortunately, they are now involved as witnesses in a murder investigation. So I thought I would see if there’s anything you’d like to tell me before this goes any further. But first, I want to advise you of your rights.”
“Flanagan and his pal already did,” Garcia said.
“Well, indulge me then, because I want to make sure you understand them and the seriousness of the allegations,” Karp said and proceeded with the Miranda warnings.
“Just to be clear, you understand you have the right to remain silent?” Karp repeated. “I can’t force you to talk. This conversation is being recorded and anything you say to me can be used in any court proceedings against you. Understand?”
“Yo, chief, I comprendo okay?” Garcia was back to being a gangster.
Karp fixed the boy with his stare, but the suspect met his look without flinching. “I take that as a yes,” he continued. “You also understand that you have the right to have a lawyer present—the taxpayers will even provide one free of charge. And at any time during this conversation, you have a right to stop and ask for a lawyer. Comprende?”
“Sí, homes,” Garcia said, stifling a bored yawn. “I already tol’ the detectives I understood, and now I got to repeat it to you. Yes, I understand everything you’ve said. And like I also tol’ the detectives, I didn’t kill nobody, but there’s nothing much I can do about it. They want my ass at Attica, maybe a nice little cell on Death Row, and that’s what they’ll get.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Karp asked. He was puzzled. Garcia sounded as if he had someone other than just the detectives in the next room in mind.
Garcia looked at him for a long moment as if weighing something, then shrugged. “Maybe you’re ‘they.’ ”
“Look, if you’ve got information,” Karp said, “you’re going to have to trust me and the justice system to follow up on it.”
Alejandro snorted and laughed. “Trust you? Fuck that noise, homes. Hell, the fuckin’ system is as corrupt as any gang, and you’re part of the system. Now, if you’re through, I’m ready to go back to my cell and wait to see what kind of justice they’re serving tonight.”
“But I’m not done asking questions,” Karp said. “And while you’re at it, drop the gangbanger circle jerk; the boys tell me you were an A student at Xavier.”
“Well, then, Mr. District Attorney, with all due respect to your family, who I like, fuck off, I’m through answering.” Garcia stood up and yelled. “Guard. We’re finished in here.”
• • •
After the guard escorted Garcia off to his cell, Karp met out in the hallway with Fulton. “What do you think?” he asked.
Fulton’s brow furrowed. “To be honest, I was expecting more claims of innocence. These guys usually have all sorts of alibis to offer; of course, the alibis are almost impossible to verify or will stink to high heaven. As you know, Rikers and Attica are full of innocent men…at least if you believe their stories. I don’t know what to make of this one though. Guess I’ll ask around and see what the word is on the streets, now that we have a suspect. You want a ride back to the apartment?”
Karp shook his head. “No, I’ll walk,” he said. “I can use the exercise. Besides, our young friend here reminded me of something I thought of at the church the other morning but forgot about. Give the wife and kids a hug for me.”
“Will do,” Fulton said. “By the way, I liked that bit you said in the car on Sunday about the man in the arena. It reminded me of you.”
“Thanks, Clay,” Karp smiled. “I’ll try to live up to the compliment.”
“You already have, my man,” the big detective said before turning to walk away.
Karp left the Tombs and walked the short distance to the courthouse building at 100 Centre Street. Normally, he could have gone through a tunnel from the jail but the partial detonation of the terrorist bomb had damaged the sub-street-level areas of the building, including the walkway. As he went up to the front entrance, he glanced to either side as he had for nearly thirty years, to read the inscriptions carved into the marble. One side read: “Every Place Is Safe to Him Who Lives in Justice. Be Just and Fear Not.” And the other: “Why Should There Not Be a Patient Confidence in the Ultimate Justice of the People.” There was nothing particularly awe-inspiring about the statements—no Jeffersonian eloquence to them—but a reminder that every time he entered the building, he had an obligation: that he was one of the bankers entrusted with the care of those promissory notes he’d mentioned in the Harlem church. It always made him stand just a little taller.
Since it was after-hours, there was not the usual line standing at the security gates. None of the sad or angry or terrified faces of humanity who regularly passed into the hungry mouth of the New York justice system. Just a young black guard, who looked surprised to see him.
“Evening, William,” Karp said.
“Why, Mr. Karp what brings you to my home this evening? Trying to get a jump on tomorrow?” The guard liked the district attorney, who addressed him by his Christian name William, as opposed to Willy like everybody else.
“Justice never takes a day off, William,” he called back as he headed for the elevators for the interminable ride to his office on the eighth floor.
After the explosion, concerns about the building’s integrity had caused the DA’s offices to be moved until the engineers could determine that the whole thing wouldn’t come down in a high wind. Even then, the building maintenance people had decided that with the offices vacated, it would be a good time to add a new coat of the sort of putrid yellow paint to the walls. A lot of filing cabinets, desks, and other office equipment had been shuffled around, which he decided was why he couldn’t find the Jumain Little file when he went looking for it. He left a note on Murrow’s desk asking him to try to find it in the morning and was about to leave when his private telephone line rang. He figured it was the boys, as only a dozen or so people in the world—half of them his family—had the number.
“Yeah, what’s cookin’?” he said into the receiver, expecting to hear Zak or Giancarlo.
Instead, the voice was that of an older man, but strangely muffled. “Garcia’s not your killer.”
Karp thought the caller was trying to disguise his voice. Which means he’s worried I might recognize it. “Who is this?” he demanded. “How’d you get this number?”
“It’s not important,” the caller said. “What’s important is that a killer is still on the streets. You have no idea what you’re up against, but you will. Then we’ll see whether those promissory notes are still good. But all you need to know right now is that Garcia didn’t do it, and he’s in danger, especially in the jail.”
“And how do you know that?” Karp asked.
“Because he was at confession with his priest,” the caller said. “It’s up to you to take it from there. You won’t believe me, but I’m warning you that you can’t trust anyone outside your family and closest friends. Not the police. Not the government. Good-bye, Mr. Karp, for now.”
“Wai
t,” Karp said but the line went dead.
A half hour later, he was back at his loft. “You know who Garcia goes to for confession?” he asked the twins.
“Father Dugan,” they said. “Ever since Alejandro was a kid.”
Karp swore. He suddenly felt as if he were in a play in which he did not know his lines or what would happen in the next scene, much less how the story would end. Just that he had a role and was expected to wing it.
18
THE NEXT MORNING, MURROW FOUND KARP JUST AS HE WAS heading out of the office with Fulton. “We don’t have enough to do without digging up old cases like Jumain Little?” his assistant asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Just do it,” Karp snapped. Bernard Little’s distraught face had disturbed his dreams along with Alejandro Garcia’s scornful one. He was in no mood to be second-guessed, especially after being lectured twice in one day about the corruption of the system he loved.
“Hey, just asking,” Murrow said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “You told me to keep an eye on your schedule. Where are you headed?”
“Yeah, sorry, Murrow.” Karp sighed, wondering when he was going to get over his latest churlish stage. Maybe when Marlene gets home. “I just want to follow up on that one, okay? And we’re off to pay a visit to an old friend.”
A half hour later, a toothless old bag lady, dressed in a faded and threadbare floral print dress and sagging nylons several sizes too large for her thin legs, showed them into the office of Father Michael Dugan. She had on a cheap blond wig set somewhat off-kilter on her head, which was showing patches of netting where the hair had fallen out. The makeup on her eyes appeared to be a half-inch thick, and the ruby red lipstick on her wrinkled lips looked as if it had been smeared on with a finger. She turned as if to leave but stuck out her hand with a pleading look in her eyes. “God bless you, sirs, how about a little something to help me wet my whistle later?” she asked hopefully. She leaned forward and leered, “Or maybe you’d like me to earn it, eh sweeties?”
“Thank you, Leanore,” Dugan said, rising from behind his desk, which was an old door laid across a foundation of milk crates. “Remember, you’re not supposed to panhandle from the people who come to see me. Or solicit them.”
The old woman looked to the priest and back to Karp and Fulton. She sniffed and wiped her nose with the hand she’d been offering. “I was just hoping for a tip,” she said, not bothering to hide her disappointment. As she passed by, she whispered “cheap bastards” so that Dugan couldn’t hear.
When she was gone, Dugan smiled and shrugged. “Sorry about that…my new receptionist is a little rough around the edges. Apparently, she was really something to look at back in the days of burlesque, but got into prostitution…apparently is still willing to practice the world’s oldest profession when it’s dark and the johns are too drunk to see the wrinkles. We’re hoping a real job will give her something to get through the winter without having to live down in the tunnels.”
Karp’s stomach had flip-flopped at the thought of Leanore plying her trade, but he quickly recovered to shake Dugan’s hand, which was roughly akin to placing even his big mitt in a blood pressure sleeve and pumping. He noted that the priest looked as if he could still play for Notre Dame despite the more than forty years that had passed since he last pancaked a middle linebacker. His broad chest and well-defined shoulders filled out the black T-shirt he was wearing, and the muscles stood out on his forearms like thick snakes. There was certainly no sign of age in the crisp blue eyes.
“Hey, Butch. Hi, Clay,” Dugan said. “It’s been too long.”
Fulton smiled and shook the priest’s hand. “Top o’ the morning’ to you, Father,” he said in his best, but poor, Irish brogue.
“I see my favorite Black Irish is looking fit as ever,” the priest smiled.
“Yeah? Well, looks like you’ve been hitting the weights yourself,” Fulton replied.
“Just the weight of the world, my boy. The weight of the world keeps me in shape.”
Karp, who figured that even he could carry the pigskin through holes created by the other two men, waited for the banter to subside. There was rarely any rushing Father Dugan, as calm and unhurried a man as he had ever known. Not that he was lazy or phlegmatic, far from it. He almost single-handedly managed the millions of dollars Marlene had used to create the charitable foundation he ran as her appointee and still found time to minister to his folk, many of whom would see no other priest. He was just efficient, methodical, and steady as the Hudson River.
Soon enough, Dugan turned to Karp, his expression having grown serious. “I’d like to believe that this is a social call,” he said, “but I’m sure it has to do with the arrest of Alejandro Garcia.”
Karp hesitated. What he was doing was a little irregular. This was still a police homicide investigation. He might even have to ask the governor to appoint a special prosecutor and remove his office from the case because of the involvement of the twins. But in thirty years of dealing with the worst aspects of human nature, he’d learned to trust his gut feelings, and his gut was telling him that this time it was okay to do a little nosing around first. There was something about this case that was troubling him, something he couldn’t put his finger on. While he realized that most cases did not call for Sherlock Holmes and were as simple as they seemed, there were things swimming around beneath the surface of this one that he wanted to understand before letting it go.
Karp acknowledged that he was there about the arrest of Alejandro Garcia. He left out most of Flanagan’s report—after all, the priest wasn’t supposed to be privy to such things—but repeated what the caller told him. “So is it true?” he asked.
Dugan considered the question for a moment. “I am in a difficult position here, Butch,” he said at last. “As you know, I am not at liberty to divulge what is said to me at confession. And I think there are those in my business who believe that I shouldn’t even admit one way or the other who does or doesn’t come to me. These things are between a man, his priest, and his God.” He pursed his lips. “But God loves justice more than he loves the rules of the church, so I will tell you that Alejandro Garcia was with me until close to midnight.”
“Close?” Karp asked.
“I’m not absolutely sure,” Dugan replied. “After he left, I was…distracted by another matter. It was probably a quarter after midnight before I noticed a clock again.”
Karp was doing the math in his head. The church on Mulberry Street was probably twenty minutes by car from the murder scene if traffic cooperated. The 911 call of shots being fired came in about ten minutes after midnight. If Garcia left ten or fifteen minutes before midnight and had a car waiting for him, he could have made the drive to East Harlem and been waiting. So when did the limo driver make his call to the drug dealer, and how did Garcia find out in time? “Did Alejandro get or make any calls while he was with you?” he asked.
The priest thought about it for a minute. “No, but I have to confess that I wasn’t around him the entire time he was here, so I couldn’t swear to it,” he said.
Karp smiled. It could be difficult keeping up with Dugan’s choices of words, the wit coming through even what had to be an uncomfortable situation. He didn’t know why he suddenly felt disappointed that the alibi didn’t clear Garcia; it was easier if he was the shooter. Maybe it was because he didn’t want the twins or Dugan disappointed. Or maybe he resented Garcia lumping him together with “they”—whoever they were—and he was going to prove that the system wasn’t as corrupt as the boy thought by looking under every stone before he convicted his ass.
“I know you won’t tell me, but I have to ask: Did he say anything at confession that would have a bearing on this case?” Such as that he was on his way to murder Martin Johnson and whoever else happened to be in the car, he thought. Make this easy. Get the press off my back.
“You know I can’t reveal that,” Dugan answered. “Only he can release me from my obligation, and he won’
t.”
“Why not?”
The priest shrugged. “Loyalty, but that’s all I can say about it.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police all this when Garcia was arrested?”
“He didn’t want me to,” Dugan said.
“Why? He has a decent, if not airtight, alibi. ‘I was with my priest’ goes over pretty well with most juries, too.”
“Same answer, loyalty. There’s more to it, but let’s just say that part of it is also that he doesn’t trust you, or more accurately, he doesn’t trust the system you work for,” Dugan said. “The jury is still out on you personally as far as Alejandro is concerned.”
“He’s testing me?” Karp frowned.
Dugan looked down at his ragged Chuck Taylor basketball shoes as if they might talk to him. “In a way. You’d have to understand where he’s coming from; he has reason not to trust the system, but even that I’m not at liberty to talk about.”
“You know this could turn into a death penalty case—multiple victims, lying in wait?” Karp warned, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.
“I know, but that doesn’t release me,” Dugan said. “I’m sorry; I wish I could be of more help to you and to him.”
Karp nodded and turned to leave, but the priest grabbed suddenly for his elbow. “I am telling you this as a friend who knows his heart, not as his priest, but Alejandro did not commit this crime,” Dugan said.
“I understand, Father,” Karp said. “But you have to understand that right now it doesn’t look good for him. Even with the alibi.”
• • •
Late that afternoon, Karp was back in his office talking to Murrow, who had been unable to locate the Jumain Little file. “It’s probably in the building somewhere,” his assistant said. “They’re still finding furniture and filing cabinets in every nook and cranny. One of the judges complained that his special ergonomic chair was missing. It turned up in the ladies’ rest room on the tenth floor. He sent it out for fumigating.”
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