Depraved Indifference

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  He had a good head for liquor. In the war he had been famous for being able to drink anyone under the table, and the ustashi brigades had boasted some powerful drinkers. He had once drunk an entire bottle of plum brandy standing up on the hood of a truck climbing a mountain road near Bihac, while the men cheered him on. Pavle had been on that ride as well, he recalled. He also remembered that later that day Pavle had tried to imitate the trick, and had fallen off and nearly cracked his skull. Pavle had no head for drinking, which was why Karavitch had ordered him to lay off for the duration of the hijack. Karavitch stretched his cramped body and smiled. He could still drink. Even after seven scotches his head was clear.

  He looked at his watch, then pressed the button for the stewardess. In a few moments Daphne West was by his side.

  “We should be landing very soon. I wish the pilot to make the announcement we agreed on.”

  West murmured assent and went forward to relay the message to Captain Gunn. Karavitch watched her go. Power was better than scotch, even this good scotch. Idly he flicked over the leading bottle. It tumbled against the others and all but one fell over. Karavitch watched as it wobbled in circles and then stood upright again. Always one survives, he thought.

  Daphne ducked and entered the flight deck. “How’re things back there?” Gunn asked. He was flying the aircraft while his copilot exchanged cryptic bursts of letters and numerals with Montreal air-traffic control.

  “All right,” she said. “A lot better than they’re going to be after you tell the folks where we’re landing. I bring orders from the chief bastard. You’re supposed to make your speech.” Her voice was tight.

  Gunn caught her tone and swiveled around to look at her. “How about you? You holding up?”

  Daphne shrugged and threw up her hands, the gesture of futility. “Oh, sure. You know me, the old pro. I’m just pissed off is all. If that’s a real bomb, I’m a chimpanzee.”

  “Come on, Daphne, it doesn’t do any good to think like that. You know the rules. Guy flashes a teddy bear and says there’s a grenade in it and he wants to go to Cuba, it’s next stop Havana, no questions asked.”

  Daphne sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Oh, Jerry’s fine. Alice, not so good.”

  “Oh? What’s happening with her?”

  “Concrete smile, but watch the eyes. This is scaring the piss out of her, poor kid. Good thing it’s not a bunch of Ay-rabs with machine guns. Getting chummy with the boys in the back, too. Hand and foot service.”

  “Stockholm syndrome.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “You can handle it, Daphne,” said Gunn, hoping it were so.

  Daphne laughed, a low throaty sound. “Hell, yes. Count on that tough nut Daphne!” She left the flight deck, closing the door behind her.

  Connelly finished his conversation and turned to Gunn. “Montreal has us cleared to land. They’ve diverted traffic and have emergency and tankers standing by on D-19.”

  Rodman Neck, the southernmost extension of Hunter Island, looks from the air like the head of a retriever emerging from the Bronx to sniff the waters of Eastchester Bay. Where the dog’s nose would be, the New York City Police Department has fenced off a large chunk of real estate to serve as its outdoor shooting range. Besides the half dozen firing ranges there is a mock city street where cops are taught to shoot cardboard silhouettes of armed criminals and not silhouettes of moms pushing strollers, as well as the kennels for the department’s dope- and explosive-sniffing dogs. In the approximate center of this compound is the bomb range.

  It was nearly three o’clock before Terry Doyle began to work on the pot bomb. X rays of it showed a shadowy pressure cooker with what looked like a half brick at the bottom. Wires descended from the lid of the pot and disappeared under the brick. They had X-rayed the envelope too. It contained only paper: a demand by the Croatians that a manifesto listing their complaints be published in the Times, the News, and the international Herald Tribune. The manifesto was included, neatly typed.

  Doyle was working now in the bottom of a well made of packed earth. A dogleg vestibule was built into the well, from which a ladder led to the surface. The vestibule was in case you were deactivating a device and it gave you some warning that it was going to blow up. Then you could run into the vestibule, or throw the device into the vestibule if it was small enough, so that you had some buffer from the blast. There was a deep sump around the floor of the well for the same purpose. Of course, you had to have lightning-fast reflexes. Or a slow fuse.

  Doyle had the pot on a heavy plywood table in front of him. He was still dressed in his armor, with the helmet in place. Only his hands were bare. You can’t deactivate bombs if you’re worried about losing your hands.

  “I’m going to snip the external wires,” Doyle said over his telephone. Its cable led to the bomb-range command bunker, forty yards away, and Sergeant John Doheny. Doheny said, “Cutting wires. Go ahead.”

  Doyle cut the blue and yellow wires and bent them carefully out of the way. Then he cut the red and black wires, telling Doheny what he was doing before and after each cut.

  “OK, I’m turning the center handle counterclockwise. The clamp is loose. I’m rotating the lid counterclockwise. The lugs are clear. I’m lifting the lid. I’m shining the flash into the pot. I see a—it looks like a regular construction brick. I’m putting the lid down on the table. I’m pulling the yellow wire out from under the brick. It’s free. I’m pulling the blue wire—it won’t come loose. OK, I see that the brick is glued to the bottom of the pot. There’s gray epoxy all over the bottom. That’s it, Sarge. It’s a pot with a brick glued into it. The city can sleep safe tonight.”

  “A fake?”

  “No question, Sarge. Come see for yourself.”

  “You sure about this, Doyle? You want me to get Luke or somebody to suit up and take a look?”

  “Hell yes, I’m sure. It’s a phony. No soup, no detonator, no batteries, no primer, zilch. It’s a pot with a brick in it.”

  “OK, hold on, we’re coming over.”

  In a minute or so, Doheny and D’Amato were climbing down the ladder. When they came around the vestibule wall, they found Doyle leaning against the wall, helmet off, cigarette in his mouth. “Don’t smoke on the range, Doyle” was the first thing Doheny said when he came in.

  “Shit, Sarge, it’s a fuckin’ brick,” Doyle complained.

  “Don’t ‘shit, Sarge’ me, sonny. You want to live a long time in this game, you follow the rules. And it’s not a brick until I say it’s a brick.”

  Doheny went over to the table and looked into the pot. He picked up a pair of pliers and rapped the brick sharply. It gave out the solid, metallic clunk of metal hitting brick.

  “Well, is it a brick, Sarge?”

  Doheny looked at the younger man sourly. “Yeah, Doyle, it is a goddamn brick. Jesus, what a fucking waste of time! OK, you bring that thing along, Doyle. It’s evidence. Luke, help him clean up all his crap. I gotta get a handful of aspirin. What a pain in the ass!”

  Doyle picked up the pot and put the lid back on loosely as Doheny started to enter the vestibule. Luke knelt down and began to close up the tool kit.

  Doyle said, “Well, there’s one thing you don’t have to worry about, Sarge—”

  But Sergeant Doheny never found out what that one thing was. At that instant he felt a terrible heat and a crushing force. Luke D’Amato felt it too. Terry Doyle did not, in all probability, feel anything, since his head had disintegrated in the first instant of the blast.

  3

  THE SEATBELT LIGHT shone its little cartoon and the people on Flight 501 heard the whisper of static. It was nearly one o’clock; the plane should have landed in Milwaukee by now and the passengers were glancing at their watches and buzzing for the flight attendants.

  “This is Captain Gunn here on the flight deck,” said the voice in the static. “We have a—a little difficulty here, folks. We wil
l not be landing in Milwaukee at this time. I have been ordered to read the following message to you. ‘This plane has been appropriated by the forces of Croatian national liberation. The plane is being diverted to Canada for refueling, after which it will continue to European points to continue the mission of the Croatian national forces. No one aboard the plane will be harmed in any way, but all passengers are warned that efforts to interfere with the mission of the Croatian national forces will be severely punished. There is a powerful bomb aboard this airplane. The Croatian national forces will not fear to detonate this bomb should their mission be opposed in any way.’”

  There was a moment of stunned silence into which a woman’s voice said clearly, “Oh my God.” Then screams, babies crying, shouts of outrage and fear, the familiar chorale of the late twentieth century. Hearing it in the cockpit, Gunn went on, trying to keep the edge of desperation out of his folksy drawl.

  “Folks, we, ah, have obtained clearance from Montreal to land the aircraft, and we will be landing shortly. We’ll have to see what happens then, but these people have told us that they don’t want to hurt anyone on the plane, so let’s all try to stay calm and cooperate.” He snapped off the cabin intercom switch and said sourly to his copilot, “And next time your plans include flying, we hope you’ll think of us.” Then he switched his headset to Montreal tower as much to drown out the sounds coming from behind him as to hear directions from the airport.

  Daphne West took a deep breath and waded into the chaos. Her pockets were stuffed with tissues. A middle-aged woman was weeping hysterically in 14B, and the two small children in row 12 had burst into sympathetic tears. A man was shouting about suing the airlines. Hands clutched at her jacket.

  “Miss, does this mean we get our money back?”

  “Please, can I call my brother? He’s waiting at the airport …”

  “I’m sorry, I absolutely have to be in Milwaukee for a three o’clock meeting.”

  Daphne shook these off and made a beeline for a heavyset man who was thrashing and writhing in an aisle seat, his face turning the purple-red of fresh hamburger. He was struggling to get something out of his pocket.

  People were out of their seats now, pressing in on her from all sides. A hard finger poked her shoulder. She turned her head and found Pavle Macek’s eyes four inches from hers.

  “Stop this!” he commanded. “Get these people back in their seats!”

  Daphne ignored him and bent over the struggling man. She searched his pockets and pulled out a brown plastic vial. As she wrenched at the child-proof cap, she heard Macek shouting:

  “I will blow you up! I will blow up the plane. I will blow you all up now! Shut up!” More people began to shriek and moan.

  A woman’s voice carried through the cabin, “I don’t want to die-e-e-e-e …” A man answered, “Aw, honey, honey, now …”

  Daphne felt as though she was moving in slow motion. Push down the white cap and turn in the direction of the arrow. The stricken man was slipping to the floor and making noises like a tenement toilet. Push the cap down and turn. Macek was pulling her arm. The vial opened and Daphne extracted a pill and slipped it into the man’s open mouth, under his tongue.

  She yanked off her shoes and jumped up on an armrest. Half the passengers were in the aisle, the instincts that told them to flee the place of danger having momentarily won out over the knowledge that there was no place to go. She took a deep breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, please, you must return to your seats. We will be landing shortly. You are in no danger at the present time. Please return to your seats, fasten your seatbelts, and return your seats and tray tables to the full upright and locked position.” There was an instant of silence at this, and then the woman in 14B took another lungful and resumed her aria.

  Looking forward, Daphne saw Karavitch emerge from behind the first-class curtain. He strode purposefully to 14B, leaned over, and whacked the woman across the jaw with his open hand. Once. Twice. The sound carried through the cabin like gunshots, and the hubbub slowly died.

  “Listen to me,” said Karavitch in his deep, strong voice. “The stewardess is right. We mean you no harm, if you cooperate. We are freedom fighters, not savages. All passengers will stay seated, with seat belts fastened. No one will leave their seat without permission. Those who do not obey us will be strictly disciplined. Now, do as I say! Move!”

  Thoroughly cowed, the passengers shuffled to their seats. Daphne checked her heart patient. He was breathing more easily and his color was better. She spoke a few words of encouragement, then loosened his collar and belt. Next she distributed tissues and wiped noses, made faces, rocked, tickled, and otherwise helped to calm the two children.

  Jerry Silver came up to her and whispered, “What a horror show! Just like the movies. First class is calmed down, but they’re yapping about lawsuits. Anything I can do here?”

  “Yeah, check the lady he slugged. I want to see about our Alice.”

  Jerry went over to the woman, a plump New York matron with false golden locks and a kewpie-doll mouth. She was trembling in a stupor of fear. Jerry wiped her face and brought her some ice to put on her swelling jaw. He also slipped the woman a cup with two slugs of brandy, on the airline, and added a yellow Valium tablet, on Jerry Silver. She gulped these down. Within five minutes she had rolled her eyes back into her heavily blued eyelids and passed out.

  Karavitch was still standing at the head of the cabin. As Daphne went past him, their eyes met and he nodded slightly, a pro acknowledging the performance of another pro. Daphne felt herself return the nod. The others might be loonies, but this son of a bitch was the real goods, she thought. As she reached the pantry, Alice Springer emerged from the forward lavatory.

  “Well, you missed quite a scene,” Daphne said with some asperity. “Are you feeling all right now?”

  “Oh, yes, and I’m sorry, Daph. I mean, I just absolutely lost it. I mean, my whole insides, from both ends. I peeked out, though. You were marvelous! And Mr. Karavitch too. I mean, we could have had a riot if he hadn’t kind of taken charge.”

  “True. Of course, if Mr. Karavitch had not taken this flight, we probably wouldn’t have had a riot at all, huh?”

  “Oh, right,” said Alice, looking blank.

  The plane banked and the engines changed pitch. “OK, kid,” Daphne said, “let’s get Mr. Karavitch and the rest of the passengers all comfy for landing.”

  As Daphne strode up and down the aisles, she was thinking about Karavitch’s speech. The man knew how to take control, you had to give him that. But it seemed too practiced in a way, as if he had given the same speech dozens of times. She thought about that off and on as they flew from Montreal to Gander, and again at Gander, when they separated the men from the women, the children, and the sick. The men would stay as hostages on the flight across the Atlantic. As she observed Karavitch standing in the aisle at the head of the gangway, arms folded, watching the tearful good-byes, Daphne thought to herself, he likes this. This is his favorite part.

  Roger Karp, Butch to his friends, entered his apartment to a ringing phone. It was late Friday afternoon and he was returning, sweaty and dusty, from an after-work softball game in Central Park. For the past seven years he had played first base for the team that represented the New York District Attorney’s Office.

  He was in no hurry to answer the phone. He couldn’t think of anyone he wanted to talk to, except possibly his girlfriend, and he doubted that she was calling. He strolled over to the refrigerator in the apartment’s tiny kitchenette, removed a two-quart container filled with instant iced tea and drank about half of it. He returned it to the otherwise vacant fridge.

  The living room of the apartment was as empty, except for the dust bunnies lurking in the corners. Karp owned no furniture except his bed. His only other domestic possessions were an old rowing machine and a small black-and-white portable TV resting at the foot of his bed. He had lived in this minimal fashion since his ex-wife had walked out on him six years befor
e.

  Karp tossed his mitt in the general direction of the hall closet and went into the bedroom. He flung himself down on the bed full-length and grabbed the phone off the floor. He still had his old-fashioned wool Yankee baseball cap on his head.

  “Yeah?”

  “Butch? This is Bill Denton. Where have you been? I sent a car up to the park.”

  “You sent a car? What, you heard I went oh-for-three and you figured I needed a police escort? I walked home.”

  Karp heard a short, hard laugh over the phone. “You walked from the Park to the Village?”

  “Yeah, it helps me keep my girlish figure. What can I do for you, Bill?”

  William F. Denton was the Chief of Detectives of the New York City Police Department. Karp knew him, of course, from his own work as an assistant district attorney. He liked and admired the man, but they were by no means close. New York City has five district attorney’s offices, one for each of its five counties, but only one police department. A Chief of Detectives, one of the three NYPD “superchiefs” under the Commissioner of Police, draws enormously more water than any assistant DA, who are as common as parking meters. Denton had never called Karp at home before.

  “Have you heard the news? On that hijack out of LaGuardia?”

  “Just in general. A guy had a radio at the game. What’s happening?”

  “They left a bomb in a locker at Grand Central. It went off about an hour ago and killed a cop.”

  “Shit!”

  “Right. I need to talk to you about the case, outside the office and not on the phone. Can I come over to your place in, say, an hour?”

  “Sure, but I don’t understand. Assuming they catch the hijackers and bring them back here for trial, it doesn’t look like anything special in terms of nailing them. From your point of view it’s a grounder. Or am I missing something?”

  “A lot. And it ain’t no grounder. See you later.”

  Karp dropped the phone back in its cradle. He stood up and took off his sleeveless University of California sweatshirt and gray sweatpants and kicked off his socks and sneakers. Then he sat on the bed and unbuckled a massive contraption of canvas and steel that kept his left knee from collapsing when he played ball.