Resolved kac-15

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Three hours later, Felix was feeling a lot better than he had in a couple of days. The blast at the Astoria place had shaken him up more than he had admitted to himself, mainly because of how dumb he'd been. When the bomb hadn't killed Karp's wife, they'd decided to write him off, and he hadn't seen it coming, had walked up to the front door like a moron. Of course, they figured he couldn't be trusted anymore, and since they knew he knew their big plans, they'd decided to take him out, along with the evidence at the Astoria place. He had stayed in the locker the night before, which was like being a fucking pizza in an oven, worse than the joint, and had come out in the morning completely wiped, with hardly carfare in his pocket, hungry, raggedy-assed, and burned in several places. It had been inspired to go after the girl, and even though he hadn't made the big score, he'd scored enough. One advantage of hanging out with all those losers at the soup kitchen is that he'd learned a lot about how to survive in the city's underground- where to get a shower, a meal, cheap clothes, unofficial medical attention. The city was apparently loaded with people with nothing better to do but to give stuff to piss bums.

  So the late afternoon found him in Midtown on the west side, fresh from a shelter shower and shave, dressed in plaid Bermudas, an I Love NY T-shirt, a Mets cap, plastic sandals, cheap sunglasses, and carrying a plastic fabric sports bag from St. Ignatius High School in Weehawken, all from the Goodwill on Twelfth Avenue. He was clean and indistinguishable from the other million or so tourists wandering the city. A tourist was nearly as good as a workman for invisibility. Now he entered Penn Station and found a phone booth on the Amtrak level. He dialed Rashid's cell number. After a few rings, the Arab's voice came on the line. "Hello, you little piece of shit," said Felix cheerfully, "remember me?"

  There was a long pause on the other end, and Felix realized with delight that the Arabs had thought he'd been killed in the explosion.

  He heard Rashid say, "Felix?" and heard the fear in the voice. Felix had to laugh, it was going to be so good. It was going to work out for him now for sure.

  14

  Rashid replaced the telephone and with a broad smile mimed firing a rifle into the air, with appropriate sound effects. His two companions smiled as well, a little hesitantly, as they had never seen their dour commander in such a mood. One of them, Felнpe Gonzales, born Habib Bouazizi, said, "So what did he say?"

  "What we expected," said Rashid. "He threatens, he wants money. He knows our plans and he will tell the authorities. I was very frightened." He giggled.

  The other man, Mamoud Yahia, called Carlos Perez in the land of the enemy, said, "I don't understand this. If he goes to the police, won't they find out who he is? And then what will happen to the chief?"

  "Naturally he won't go to the police himself," said Rashid dismissively. "He does not want to risk being identified. He will call, or write a letter. Even if they happen to arrest him, they will have no idea who he is, and he has no interest in telling them the truth. It will never occur to them that he is a man convicted of a crime nearly twenty years ago, and who is officially dead."

  "So, maybe he will not go to them at all," suggested Carlos.

  "Of course, he will go. He is a stupid vengeful man, and he was chosen for that reason. We cut off his finger, we blew the house up in his face, of course he will want revenge, and he will think that revealing the tunnel plot will hurt us the most of anything he can do. He has attempted to blackmail us just now, and we will indeed give him something to show that we are frightened of him. He will take the money and go straight to the police, and think he is being oh so clever. Believe me, the chief has thought this through very carefully. You see, in an operation like this, in enemy territory, you must have a number of independent layers of deception…"

  Both Moroccans sighed inwardly and settled back for yet another lecture. They were patient men, cousins, born in the mountains south of Fez, moved as infants with the family to Ceuta along with thousands of others, with money pooled from the whole clan to pay the smugglers for the short but perilous trip across the straits. They had been intermittently schooled until age ten or so and then dropped out to help sell ices and snacks on the streets of Seville, the family business. Later, as young men, they had drifted into the vast African lumpenproletariat scratching a living doing what the Europeans no longer wished to do themselves.

  Their parents died, family ties became tenuous; God faded, they drank whiskey and went with women, they wore the cheap, flashy clothes of young Euro proles, and spoke Spanish. To each other, though, they continued to converse in the language of the middle Atlas, their cradle tongue. Habib was a little quicker, Mamoud handled the more physical aspects of their hardscrabble life. Through a connection, Habib found them a job in a gravel quarry. Someone approached them in a cafй, he had money, he bought drinks. Could they get their hands on any explosives? They could, and for some months they flourished. Then the special police broke down the door of their little room, and in short order they were in prison, where they spent ten months, after which they were deported back to Morocco.

  Rashid had found them living in a packing crate in the shantytown that surrounds Ceuta. He was looking for a couple of boys who knew their way around explosives and wanted out of the packing crate life. At first they thought he was a gangster, because he never talked about Allah or the Koran or jihad, and their experience taught them that people who wanted to blow things up very often wanted to do it in the name of God. But no, Rashid was political in a different way. He told them he was an Egyptian, and that he worked for a great man, greater than Nasser, another Saladin. This man was at war with the United States, not like the stupid and backward Islamists, but like a modern person, an educated person, with modern beliefs. The United States was objectively evil, the greatest barrier to the aspirations of all oppressed peoples, the sponsor of racism and Israeli genocide. All the peoples of the world who were not the lackeys of the United States were kept poor, and let this monster once be destroyed and then a new and glorious world of prosperity and peace would miraculously dawn.

  Habib and Mamoud did not necessarily believe what Rashid had to say, but it was clear to them that Rashid believed it, and believed in his mysterious leader. More to the point, he had money, and a magical way with official papers. And they were tired of the packing crate and one meal of couscous a day. Within a week of meeting Rashid they had new clothes, and a nice room in a newish apartment block with a TV set, and they had Dominican passports with the right visa stamps and a couple of airplane tickets to New York. Rashid told them about Latinos, how if they wore gold chains with elaborate crucifixes, and a certain kind of clothing, and spoke only Spanish, they would be invisible in New York City. And it was true. For two years, they lived the Latino life in New York. They learned ductwork and danced to salsa, and slept deeply. Then, some months ago, Rashid had appeared and called them into wakefulness.

  "… so you see that in order to conclude phase two, we have to do the following things: one, destroy or evacuate all organization sites that the criminal knows about; two, place the criminal in danger from us- he must know we want him dead- so he will wish for revenge; three, insure he has no money, so he will want to blackmail us; and, of course, four, provide him with a detailed plan, so that he will have something substantial to betray. Now, phase three begins with-"

  Habib interrupted, "Rashid, we know all of this, you have explained it to us many times. What you have not explained is what we are going to do about the woman and the girl. They saw me at the house in Elmhurst. They are asking questions about Bruce Newton. Soon they will know about Felix and the chief. And then what?"

  "Let them ask questions!" said Rashid in an irritated tone. Under the drone of his own voice he often fell into a pleasant enchantment, from which it was disturbing to be yanked by impertinent ignoramuses like Habib. "Let them- what can they learn? The Newton identity is a real one and will last until the operation is complete. He really is traveling abroad. As for you, what did they see except
a Latino workman who knows nothing."

  "I do not know," said Habib. "They seemed dangerous to me. That girl spoke better Spanish than I do. And why would the wife of Karp and his daughter be interested in Felix at all? It does not make sense."

  Rashid put on one of his annoying superior looks. "Not to you, perhaps, but there are elements you do not know. Anyway, you are out of that house. We are out of the Haskell premises to which Felix made his deliveries, leaving evidence that it was a storage place for large quantities of explosives. Our two volunteers for martyrdom have achieved martyrdom in the house in Astoria. So the police think that the Manbomber is over, and the Manbomber is over. Now Felix comes and tells them about another plot, against the tunnels. Can they afford to ignore it? No, but now they strike at shadows- two organizations, or one very large organization, Islamic or not? They do not know, and so they run around like headless chickens. This is the highest art in this kind of business, to create phantoms, and while they chase these phantoms, you strike deeply in the most unexpected place."

  Habib shrugged and said no more. The whole thing seemed unnecessarily complex to him. The two Muslim kids from Brooklyn, Omar and Fuad- they thought they were working for Hamas right up until the time he and Mamoud had rapped them on their heads and left them in the basement of the Astoria house. He was uneasy about that, too. It seemed unnecessary. And blowing up the house. He'd done it himself from a truck parked down the street, pushing the button when he saw Felix approach the door. More waste, a perfectly good house, incredibly luxurious to someone like Habib, and for what? You want to blow something, he figured, you blow it and get out, if you can. All this fancy figuring- Rashid said it had come direct from the chief, which did nothing to allay Habib's concerns. If the man was so damned smart, why was he in prison?

  ***

  There is a technique to demolishing an expert witness on cross. Karp knew it as well as any other good lawyer, although he had not had much occasion to use it in his career. The typical defendant in a New York criminal trial does not have the money to pay experts, so most of the forensic and ballistic experts in those trials are state witnesses, and wrecking them is therefore a defense skill. Nevertheless, Karp was pretty sure he could do the job on Dr. Hugo Selwyn.

  First, establish the anticredentials. Terrell Collins had begun this process before he'd been bombed, and now Karp was finishing it. He made sure the jury understood that Selwyn was a hired gun, without credibility among serious ballistics experts. As he did this, Roland Hrcany hung about his heels with objections. We've had all this, Your Honor, we brought this out already, there's no need to go over this, expertise is a matter of opinion, witness has ten years' experience, counsel is harassing my witness, and so on. Not too many of these, not enough to piss off the judge or irritate the jury, but enough to give Selwyn some respite from the hammer blows, and break Karp's concentration and tempo.

  Karp finished this line and turned to the evidence itself. As the defense had done, he addressed each of the seven bullets in turn, tracing their paths, not just on the chart but in real space, pacing out the distance and indicating on his own body the unlikely rebounds and gyrations that the bullets would have had to go through to fit Selwyn's theoretical trajectories. The jury was not dozing anymore. Juries liked physical action; they liked seeing a gigantic but graceful man acting out a little drama right there in front of them, despite the heat. It was like being in the Garden, a little, watching the Knicks.

  Karp pressed at the witness: "So you really, truly believe, that bullet number five did not leave Detective Gerber's gun and shoot directly through the prone victim and into the asphalt, but instead ricocheted off the victim's shoulder blade and hip bone while he was standing up, yet leaving no evidence that the medical examiner was able to find that such a ricochet ever occurred?"

  "Objection. He's answered that already. This is more harassment, Your Honor."

  "Sustained. Move on, Mr. Karp."

  "Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Selwyn, turning now to bullet number six…"

  As he said this, Karp faced the jury and rolled his eyes to the ceiling, making a "what can you do?" gesture with his hands. It only took an instant. A ripple of titters ran through the jury box. Roland looked back, flushing, the judge frowned, Karp carried on with bullet number six, smiling, thinking that there was nothing quite so delectable as a stolen moment with the jury. Walking back to his table, he cast his eye over the packed courtroom and was surprised to see his daughter standing behind the back row of the spectator seats. He shot her a look- anything wrong? She flashed a thumbs-up. Karp turned to face the witness.

  Now he cranked up the volume a little, his gestures a little broader, his movements a little more dramatic, his expression of wonder at the whoppers of the witness a little more insolent. Occasionally Roland made Judge Higbee slap him down, but with no great enthusiasm. Judges retaining any level of self-respect- and Higbee was one- do not like naked and preposterous lies told in their courtrooms.

  And now the last bullet, the one that had hit nothing but meat. The jury perked up; they recalled this one from the direct testimony.

  "You took high school physics, Dr. Selwyn, did you not? Yes? Now during that course, did you happen to come across the Law of the Conservation of Energy?"

  "I must have." Cautiously.

  "I should certainly hope so. Could you explain to the jury what that law says."

  "Objection. Relevance. The expert is not obliged to prove his expertise, Your Honor."

  The judge said, "You're going somewhere interesting with this, Mr. Karp?"

  "I believe so, Judge."

  "Then I'll allow it. Proceed."

  "Doctor?" said Karp.

  Selwyn rambled through an explanation about how energy is conserved, plus a little high school physics on vectors and how a moving object could be made to change direction. Karp said, "I see. So that means that if I took this ball…"- here Karp reached into his pocket and pulled out a pink rubber ball of the type known to generations of New Yorkers as a Spaldeen-"… and- with the court's permission- put energy into it like so…"- bouncing it hard on the floor-"… on each bounce, it will lose energy, correct? There's no possible way for the ball to get more energy while it's bouncing, right? Unless I add it by some outside force. A stickball bat, say?"

  Selwyn agreed that it was so. Karp snatched the ball out of the air. "And the same would apply to a bullet, correct?" Having obtained agreement, Karp switched to a discussion of Selwyn's theory of hydrostatic rebound, that the seventh bullet, striking the soft tissue of the victim's still upright and dangerous body, had set up a shock wave that, rebounding against the bony structures, had been able to deflect old number seven so that it happened to land right where the final four bullets had landed, embedded in the parking lot, within an area the size of a dinner plate.

  Karp said, "Sir, now I show you People's exhibit number thirty-two, which has been identified as taken from the parking lot at the crime scene." This was a huge photo of the small blood-soaked area of the parking lot, with the victim's outline drawn in chalk and the four bullet holes in the asphalt clearly numbered. "Is it true that you claim that despite all these gyrations you say that the bullets have been through, reversing directions, bouncing off things, they all ended up in this small blood-soaked area under where Mr. Onabajo fell that night? Just through chance alone?"

  "Well… as I said, bullets can do some pretty remarkable things."

  "Remarkable, yes. Now I show you People's exhibit thirty-three. These are cross-sections of the paths the four bullets made into the asphalt of the parking lot. Will you tell the jury, after examining this display, which of the four bullets penetrated most deeply into the asphalt?"

  Selwyn leaned forward and examined the exhibit on its easel. "Number seven."

  "Very good, number seven. And that's a function of its energy, correct? The more energy, the deeper the penetration, right?"

  "Well, yes, if the density of the receiving material is the same."


  "True enough, and we had a city engineer do tests to establish just that, to show the jury that within the area in question the asphalt was essentially homogeneous, so that therefore you, as a ballistics expert, would have to attribute the difference in depth entirely to differences in projectile energy at impact, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Now, Dr. Selwyn, a bullet must lose energy when it strikes an object, correct? Like my Spaldeen a moment ago, bouncing lower with each bounce?"

  "Yes. But varying materials will-"

  "Thank you. My next question is: Where did the energy come from that drove bullet number seven deeper into the ground than the others, which according to your testimony bounced off any number of solid objects?"

  Selwyn licked his lips. "I'm not sure I understand."

  "No? You just testified under oath that bullet seven struck the victim while he was standing. According to you it then set up a bouncing shock wave, that forced the bullet in an entirely different direction, out the victim's back, and into the asphalt, yes?"

  "Yes, but-"

  "So where did the necessary energy come from, the energy that is demanded by the immutable laws of physics?" Here Roland made a gallant effort to give his guy another second or two to think his way out of this, but the judge instantly overruled his objection as to relevance, and told the witness to answer.

  "Bullet seven didn't hit any hard structures and therefore lost less energy."

  Snap goes the trap. "Didn't hit any hard structures, thank you. Then where did the energy come from that changed the course of the projectile, hm?"

  "The bullet's own kinetic energy."