Malice

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  The men stood to shake hands again, then Ellis left, saying he’d be in touch regarding the security arrangement. “With any luck,” he said, “tonight we get our man.”

  A few minutes before midnight, Karp and Fulton pulled into the parking lot of East River Park near the Williamsburg Bridge.

  “You ready?” Karp asked as they began to walk toward the bridge. “You gave him the envelope, right?”

  Fulton nodded. “Yeah, but I still don’t like this. It’s too dangerous.”

  “So is Jamys Kellagh. We had to lure the tiger out of his cave.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like using you as the sacrificial goat.”

  Karp and Fulton walked along the path that followed the river, as had been arranged. Up ahead, they saw a tall figure step into the light beneath a streetlamp.

  “Looks like him,” Karp said.

  “Looks like somebody else we know, too, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, yeah, except I’m a lot better-looking.”

  As they approached the tall man, Karp glanced around. With all the bushes and trees, there were a lot of places for assassins to hide. He noticed that two bums—one on a bench and the other against the seawall—were sleeping near where the tall man was standing. Dangerous for them, too, he thought, but there was no time to worry about it now.

  “Mr. Karp,” the tall man said, stepping forward with his hand extended.

  “Mr. Karchovski,” Karp replied. “You have something for me?”

  “Yes,” Ivgeny Karchovski said, handing him a large manila envelope.

  “I’ll take that,” said another voice.

  The three men turned to see Jon Ellis stepping out of the shadows with a gun drawn and pointing at them.

  Karchovski started to turn as if to run, but put his hands up as other men also stepped out of the shadows with guns. He turned to Karp and snarled, “You betrayed me! I’ll get you for this, Karp!”

  Karp scowled and turned to Ellis. “I thought you were going to stay back and only show if I gave you the signal.”

  Ellis laughed. “What, hoot twice like an owl? You really are an idiot, Mr. Karp. But look at it this way, Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh. In case that brat daughter of yours, who by the way is simply going to have to disappear one of these days, hasn’t told you, that means ‘What must be, will be.’ And what must be is a finish to your annoying habit of getting in our way.”

  Karp’s jaw dropped. “Jamys Kellagh,” he guessed.

  Ellis gave a slight bow. “My nom de guerre, or one of them,” he said. “But I prefer my anonymity, so if you will hand over the photograph, I’ll make sure it never sees the light of day.”

  He reached for the envelope, but Karp pulled it back. “How do you live with yourself?” he asked.

  Ellis was at first surprised and then amused. “I sleep like a baby, Mr. Karp,” he replied. “There is a war going on and people die in wars.”

  “Is that what you call murdering schoolchildren to free a man like Andrew Kane? War?”

  Ellis shrugged. “Collateral damage. It happens. Get over it, or you should have if you’d wanted to live. And what does it matter if a half dozen kids die, if it prevents the mud people, like your friend Clay here, and Jews, like yourself, and all those prehistoric Arabs from overrunning Western civilization?”

  “But you’re working with the terrorists?”

  “A temporary measure,” Ellis said with a shrug. “We will eventually, as the saying goes, ‘bomb them back into the Stone Age.’ But until then, we need them as the bogeymen. Every time they blow up something, Western democracy slides a little closer to our side of the political spectrum.”

  “So you’re a fascist creep, too?” Karp chided.

  “Now, now, name-calling is not nice.” Ellis laughed. “We prefer thinking of ourselves as the true patriots. After all, this country was founded by white men.”

  “White men who created the Constitution so that all men could be free,” Karp replied.

  “And many of them had slaves,” Ellis pointed out. “But let’s not argue history. We believe the means are justified. We will do what’s best for the American people…white American people. It’s people like you who endanger this country, so we’ll protect Americans from themselves and you.”

  Shaking his head, Karp replied, “Jon, you got it all backward. And when chicken-shit traitors like you get it wrong, you really get it wrong. And besides, who’s going to protect the country from you?”

  Ellis looked amused. “Why, no one, Mr. Karp. There will be no bleeding hearts, or constitutional apologists, to lead us all down the road to ruin.” He pointed the gun at Karp’s face. “But enough of this; give me the photograph.”

  “Why?” Karp said, holding the manila envelope over the water. “You have to kill us anyway. Maybe somebody finds this photograph in the river—I sealed it in a plastic bag—and takes it to the police. Why should I make it easy for you?”

  “Oh, please, Butch, killing you is going to be very easy any way you look at it,” Ellis said with a smile. “For one thing, you’re a fucking Jew, and Hitler had the right idea about fucking Jews. And as for your Russian friend, they’ll probably give me a medal for killing the gangster who lured you here and shot you in cold blood. I arrived too late to save you, or Clay for that matter, but I got the man who got you. Maybe Marlene will be real grateful. She’s still pretty good-looking for her age.”

  Karp’s shoulders sagged as he handed Ellis the envelope. “Check it out,” he said.

  “Oh, I will,” Ellis replied, and glanced inside the envelope. He looked back up with a scowl. “What is this, Karp?” He reached inside the envelope and pulled out the yearbook photographs of six children.

  “Those are the kids you had murdered,” Karp said. “I wanted to show them to you before Clay placed you under arrest.”

  Ellis’s face transformed instantly into a mask of rage and hate. “Fuck you, Karp,” he said, and started to raise his gun, but then began to shake violently as the gun clattered to the sidewalk. He collapsed to the ground, where he twitched and then lay still.

  At the same time, the men with Ellis who’d started to rush forward to help him were suddenly surrounded by other men with guns, shouting for them to drop their weapons. Karp turned to the bum behind him, who kept a Taser pointed at Ellis. “Cutting it a little close, weren’t you, Espey?” he said.

  “You said to wait until he saw the photographs and admitted to the murders,” Jaxon said with a smile. “I had him in my sights the whole time.”

  Karp shook his head. That afternoon, when he met with Jaxon and explained the plan, the agent asked, “Why not me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why don’t you think I’m the traitor, Jamys Kellagh?” Jaxon said. “Lucy does. There are plenty of good reasons to think it could be.”

  “And don’t think I haven’t considered them,” Karp said with a smirk. “But there are a few better reasons why I know it wasn’t you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, let’s start with Stupenagel’s stories,” Karp said. “I’ll bet you’re the anonymous government source who’s been leaking her the information.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Uh-huh,” Karp said, then laughed. “It’s probably something you don’t even think about, but you’ve been saying ‘Damn straight’ ever since I’ve known you.”

  “So?”

  “So Stupenagel is pretty good at quoting people verbatim,” Karp said. “I noticed in three of her stories that the ‘anonymous government source’ kept ending his quotes by saying ‘Damn straight.’”

  “Pretty flimsy,” Jaxon pointed out.

  “On its own, maybe,” Karp acknowledged. “But I also asked Clay to get me the tapes of the attempted assassination of Senator Tom McCullum from Channel Nine. They almost didn’t let him have them, kept saying they wouldn’t release anything that hadn’t been shown on television, and even then only if they got subpoenaed. But Cla
y placed a call to the traffic division and started to tell them about all the illegally parked cars outside the station, and suddenly he had a tape.”

  “Again, my question, so what?”

  “So Clay and I watched them a couple of dozen times, and we noticed something,” Karp said. “When the shooting started, Ellis just stood to the side and watched McCullum, as if he expected him to get shot. But one ‘former’ FBI agent, named Espey Jaxon, jumped in front of the archbishop—the man he was supposed to protect—and it was one of your men who charged the gunman. Not exactly the behavior of co-conspirators.”

  “Anything else?”

  Karp nodded. “Yeah. I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. I knew that murdering children was not part of who you were. Oh, and by the way, it was Lucy who suggested that we watch the tapes. She’s a pretty good judge of character, too.”

  It took a moment for Jaxon to respond to the last statement. He swallowed hard and said hoarsely, “I think I better call my ‘niece’ the next time I’m in New Mexico and take her out to lunch.”

  Karp smiled. “If I’d had any other doubts, you just answered them.”

  A groan escaped Ellis, who was gradually coming around. Jaxon nodded to his men who had patted the agent down and cuffed him. “Glad we could take this asshole alive. The federal government’s going to try to claim jurisdiction, you know.”

  “Been through that fight once recently,” Karp said. “They’ll have to wait for justice New York DAO style.”

  Ellis was brought to his feet, still groggy from the fifty thousand watts of electricity that had coursed through his body from the Taser. He suddenly pitched forward as if stumbling and brought his hands to his mouth.

  “Grab him! He just ate something,” Jaxon shouted to his men. He jumped behind Ellis and began giving him the Heimlich maneuver to dislodge whatever the man had swallowed. “Get an ambulance! Now!”

  “Don’t bother,” Ellis croaked. “Cyanide salts. I’ll be dead before he can dial the number.”

  Ellis crumpled to the ground, breathing deeply but rapidly. A convulsion shook him, followed by another. “Others will follow me,” he whispered, his jaw clenched in pain. “They will not fail. Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh.”

  Ellis vomited and was racked by more convulsions, then his body stiffened and went limp.

  Karp reached down and picked up the envelope with the photographs of the murdered children. Tomorrow, he would place it in the evidence file that would be boxed and sent to storage. But he knew he would never forget their faces.

  “I’m tired, Clay,” he said as the big detective walked up. “I’m tired of all of this.”

  Fulton nodded, then patted him on the shoulder. “Me, too, boss,” he said. “But tomorrow’s another day, and it’s time to take you home. Your lady’s waiting, and so is mine.”

  Epilogue

  BILL FLORENCE RAISED A GLASS OF ORANGE JUICE AND brandy to those sitting with him around the table outside Kitchenette. “The blood of patriots and tyrants,” the old newspaperman toasted.

  “To Vince Newbury and Cian Magee,” Father Jim Sunderland added. “Let’s not forget whose blood was spilled in the cause of liberty.”

  The artist, Geoff Gilbert, took a drink and sighed. “I miss those days at Julius’s house when we were all so young, and Vince was still part of our little fraternity.” He turned his face to the morning sun on a beautiful, cloudless day in April.

  “We were fortunate that Vince remembered those days, and came to us when he began to suspect the true nature of the skeleton in his family closet,” Judge Frank Plaut replied.

  “He remembered the old oath we took,” said clothier Saul Silverstein. “We believed in what the Founding Fathers worked so hard to create and swore to protect it with our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”

  “We were also young, full of whiskey and fresh out of law school or just going into business like you and Mr. Florence…or hanging out with the Beats, like our own Geoffrey Gilbert,” Dennis Hall noted. “Hell, I didn’t even have a year in yet with the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, and I’m sure none of us had any idea that our little fraternal oath would end up getting us mixed up in something as big as this.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Murray Epstein, the defense attorney pointed out. “Julius Karp was pretty worried about how the ordinary citizen reacts when demagogues like McCarthy dredge up bogeymen in order to secure more power for themselves and the government. I remember him, a little tipsy on the front porch, quoting from Orwell’s book, 1984…the part about how the government, Big Brother, used the lie about a false war being waged to keep people in line and stop them from questioning what the government was doing.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Epstein went on. “He thought Ike was saying much the same thing when he warned about the military-industrial complex, an enemy within that could be more of a threat to the Constitution than the enemy without.”

  “But Islamic extremism isn’t a fictional enemy, nor politically compatible with a Big Brother conspiracy…though one has to wonder now that we’ve learned something of the Sons of Man,” Sunderland pointed out.

  “Bullshit,” Hall scoffed. “Islamic extremism is the much greater danger. It cannot be reasoned with. How do you reason with people who believe that God has told them what to do? In fact, God has given them orders to subjugate the world…they have to obey or go to hell. There’s a war for our lives, not just our way of life, going on, and we have to be careful that we don’t hamstring the government so much because we’re inflexibile—which the Constitution was never meant to be—that we lose both our lives and way of life. We need to keep an eye on government—and beware of those who think like the Sons of Man—but not a foot. There are other books that were as foreboding as 1984…one of them was Mein Kampf. The current appeasers on the left, and the United Nations, could well place us in a position occupied by Neville Chamberlain just prior to World War Two. Now, there’s the greater immediate danger.”

  “Spoken like a true Fox Network propagandist,” the defense attorney Epstein scoffed at his friend the prosecutor.

  “Oh, a fine thing to say for a CNN lackey,” Hall shot back.

  “Would you two quit fighting for a moment and tell me why,” said Gilbert, “if we know that Dean Newbury is part of this ‘evil empire,’ we don’t tell the FBI or somebody like that?”

  “And what would we tell them? That the head of one of the most prestigious law firms in the country—a law firm representing a lot of powerful people and that contributes huge amounts to political action committees and politicians—is really part of a criminal cartel that dreams of taking over the country?” Plaut asked. “We don’t even know who else is involved; Vince was never able to get that information for us before they killed him. And the book is gone. I guess it’s hindsight and we can blame it on senility and lack of experience at the spy game, but we should have made copies. Now we’ll have to try to find another, though we’ll have to be careful; they may be on the lookout for anyone asking for it after Cian Magee.”

  Silverstein shrugged. “We wanted to get it into the right hands, but we didn’t know who to turn to. Jon Ellis turned out to be Jamys Kellagh, at least according to our sources, but it could have just as easily been Jaxon. These Sons of Man—sons of bitches, I say—had, or maybe still have, the resources of the government at their disposal and are perfectly willing to kill. We’re just a bunch of old farts who stumbled into something much bigger than we anticipated fifty years ago when we were all young idealists. We thought we’d write a few policy papers, protest unjust wars or support just ones, teach law at Columbia like our friend Judge Plaut, support those people and causes, whichever political party they belonged to, that supported the Constitution. Keep an eye out for guys like McCarthy. This group, the Sons of Man, could easily crush us if they knew who Vince gave the tape and book to and that we’re onto them. We settled this question a long time ago, after Kennedy. Our role is to watch and work behin
d the scenes, helping guys like Jaxon do their jobs, while slowly growing a network of others like us.”

  “Just as long as these others understand what it cost Vince Newbury and Cian Magee,” Sunderland said.

  “Blood of patriots isn’t just a slogan, Jim,” Florence said. “But I agree with Dennis that we don’t have enough to go to anybody yet. And who would we trust? The FBI? How about V. T. Newbury, the nephew of one of the leaders of this group and an assistant district attorney for New York? We hear he’s getting closer to his uncle, especially after this latest bit of news.”

  “I’d trust this guy,” Sunderland said, nodding to the tall man who was approaching the café from the north. “Careful what you say…here comes Julius’s boy.”

  Smiles replaced the looks of concern as the Sons of Liberty Breakfast Club turned to greet Butch Karp. “Ah, our good DA has deigned to join us this morning,” Florence said. “We understand that congratulations are in order. If Ms. Stupenagel’s story about the goings-on in Idaho was accurate, it would appear that once again you’ve wielded the sword of justice very well indeed.”

  Karp smiled at the poetic turn but held up a hand. “Other people had a lot more to do with it than I did,” he said. “But Ms. Stupenagel’s account was reasonably accurate, except where she made more of my role than it really was.”

  “Such humility,” Gilbert said. “But do tell us all about the notorious Basque terrorist who was killed.”

  Karp wondered if it was his imagination or if the old men did lean a little closer to hear his answer. “I had even less to do with that,” he replied. “You probably know more than I do from reading the newspapers.” Or maybe not, he thought.

  “Phooey,” the artist pouted. “I was hoping for something gloriously bloody…. So maybe you could tell us instead about the death of that agent, what’s-his-name, Jon Ellis?”

  Karp smiled and shook his head. “Still very hush-hush,” he said, to Gilbert’s visible disappointment.

  Officially, Jon Ellis had died in the line of duty. It was Jaxon who’d asked that the true story be kept under wraps for the time being. “If anybody asks,” he’d said to Karp, “he was working with you and trying to meet up with a source tying the bombing of the Black Sea Café to the Russian mob. You arrived late, and he and his men had already been ambushed.”