Depraved Indifference

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Marlene, stop. It’s a case. Do your job. Put ’em away and move on.”

  “Right. Stay cool. I’m getting this advice from Mr. Uninvolved here. One of the great obsessives of the Western world. Sorry, no can do. This one has got to me. Put ’em away? Sure. Doreen Moore is eighteen. That means she had the kid when she was fourteen. Fifteen in the slammer will do her a lot of good, learn her not to burn up her babies. Case closed. Oh, yeah, you want to hear the cherry on top? Doreen is preggers again. I love it. Dickens was right, you know. You spend every day swimming in shit, the smell rubs off. Not in those words, of course.”

  “You can’t do this to yourself, babe. The Doreens aren’t your problem.”

  “No, you’re right. They’re not. It wasn’t my baby either. I don’t have any babies.”

  “Marlene, I’m coming over. We’ll go out, get some dinner, we’ll talk—”

  “Butch, no. I’m wiped. You don’t need me this way. Look, call me this weekend, we’ll get together. But not tonight.”

  Karp stared at the dead phone for a while, then dialed her number again. He hung up before it had a chance to ring. Then he packed his briefcase, grabbed his coat, locked his desk and his office door, and went out.

  Karp walked the two miles from Centre Street to his building on Eighth Street almost every evening when the weather permitted. His route home took him up Broadway through SoHo. One of Karp’s secrets was that he occasionally hung a right on Grand, walked up Crosby, past Marlene’s loft, and stood in the deep doorway of the building across the street, watching her lit windows. Once or twice in the summer he had seen her sitting on her fire escape. He had hidden, feeling like a fool, unable to help himself.

  He did this again that evening, leaning back in the shadows, watching, thinking about whether it was remotely possible that—no, not Marlene, it was too enormous to contemplate. He must be losing it, even to form such a thought.

  Just as he was about to push off, he saw a blue Ford pull up outside her doorway. A stocky middle-aged man with a gray crew cut got out and rang her bell. A minute later, Marlene came out, got into the front seat with the man, and was driven away. For some reason he was not particularly surprised. Automatically he wrote the license plate number down in his pocket diary and slowly walked home. Once there, he took off his shoes and his tie and ate three aspirin. Then he lay down on his bed and looked at the ceiling. This is it, he thought. Rock bottom.

  The next day, a Friday, Karp took People v. Karavitch et al. to the grand jury. Taking a case before the grand jury was not a difficult task. Quite the contrary. Prosecutors like grand juries, and grand juries return the favor. The ADA presents his evidence that a crime has been committed within the jurisdiction and that a certain person has committed it. The grand jurors, twenty-three sober citizens, almost always nod gravely and bring in the indictment. The certain person alleged to have committed the crime is neither present nor represented.

  The actual proceedings were about as exciting as applying for a driver’s license. The grand jury met not in a regular courtroom, but in a dim chamber with a curious resemblance to a law school lecture hall. The jurors yawned and shuffled in a row of seats facing a raised platform for the DA, the stenographer, and any witnesses that might be called.

  The room was void of judge, defense lawyer, spectators, or press: a prosecutor’s paradise. Karavitch et al. was but one of ten-odd indictments Karp had to deliver that morning. When the jurors were ready, Karp called his witnesses: Detective Jim Hammer, a bomb squad member who had been at Grand Central on the day Terry Doyle removed the pot from the locker; Captain Arthur Gunn, the pilot of the plane; and Sandra Mollo, a passenger, the woman Karavitch had slugged. After they had finished their various tales, Karp asked if any of the jurors had any questions. They did not.

  Thanking them for their attention, Karp left the grand jury room and waited in the antechamber, a room with the ambiance of a bus station, filled with witnesses, ADAs, and cops. The grand jury took about as long to consider the indictment as the Supreme Soviet takes to consider a proposal by the Politburo. In a few minutes a loud buzzer sounded once in the antechamber: the jurors had indicted. Two buzzes meant rejection, three that they wanted to see the ADA again.

  The five hijackers were thus duly accused of “the crime of murder, committed as follows: that the defendants in the County of New York, on or about September 10, 1976, under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, recklessly caused the bomb blast death of the deceased, Terrence James Doyle, who at the time was performing his lawful duties as a police officer, by leaving an explosive device, to wit: a bomb, inside locker number 139 in Grand Central Station.” Next case.

  Which was, by coincidence, that of Billy Brannon, boy burglar, a coincidence that unfroze Karp’s brain and started him thinking aggressively again, his natural mode, with the result that at the end of the morning’s work he emerged from the grand jury room a new man.

  The new man went back to his office and rummaged in a side drawer Uttered with the pink telephone-message slips pertaining to every call he had returned over the past year. A primitive system, but it worked. He found the one he wanted and made an appointment for the following morning with Monsignor Francis Keene.

  Marlene came into his office around five, sat down on his side chair, and lit a Marlboro.

  “So what’s up, babe? Feeling better? You sounded real bad last night.” Karp said this to his blotter as he shuffled papers.

  “Oh, I guess. How about yourself?”

  “Doing good. Can’t complain.” Shuffle, shuffle.

  “Uh-huh. Not according to V.T. He says you’re freaking out. He says Guma says so, too.”

  Karp looked up and stared at her. Her eye was cool, with that drift of pain beneath that always broke his heart. “That’s a lot of crap, Marlene, and you know it,” he said angrily.

  “Do I? I think you’re acting peculiar, too. Secretive. Not that you shouldn’t have secrets, but this … whatever, is screwing up the gang. You’re—I don’t know—snapping at people, giving funny looks.”

  “Look who’s talking. Freaking out? Secretive? Check yourself out, kid. You want to know the truth? I’m fine. I’m eating, I’m playing a little ball. I’m doing my job—”

  “Butch—”

  “—which right now is nailing the guys who put Terry Doyle away, which I intend to do, despite—”

  “Butch, wait a—”

  “—despite the goddamn DA and the FBI and Hanlon and Denton and the police department and the fucking Powerhouse—”

  Marlene got to her feet and stuck her face in his. “Butch, stop! What are you talking about? Denton? The Powerhouse? What?”

  “What am I talking about? It’s a secret. How do you like that?”

  “Butch, this is Marlene. We’re on the same side. We spill our guts—”

  “OK, let’s spill our guts. You start. Tell me about NGH 615.”

  “What?”

  “The tag on the blue Ford last night. The old dude with the crew cut?”

  “I don’t believe this. You’re having me watched?”

  “No, I’m not ‘having you watched.’ I was worried about you, sentimental asshole that I am. I went by your place to see if I could cheer you up, you’re too beat to go out, right? Hey, I don’t control your life, but when I go by, and I see you sneaking out with—”

  “Sneaking? Sneaking! I was on the fucking job, you jerk! Renko Span is an informant, for chrissakes. When I said I was whipped and I couldn’t see you, I meant I didn’t have the energy for a goddamn crazy insensitive conversation like the one we’re having right now.”

  “What kind of informant?” he demanded suspiciously.

  “I met with this bomb expert, G.F.S. Taylor, about the device itself, the trigger. OK, we talked, we got friendly. Karp, he’s seventy, for God’s sake, and he let on as how one, he fought in Yugoslavia during the war, and two, he’s still palsy with a couple of Yugoslav emigrés in the city
who might have known something about Karavitch back in Croatia. Renko Span is one of them.”

  “And what does this have to do with the case?”

  “With the case? Not much, maybe. It might tell us a lot about who’s so interested in making sure that there isn’t a case, and why.”

  “Save yourself some trouble. I already found that out,” he said glumly. “The ‘who’ anyway. Here, you might as well have a look at this. Since we’re spilling our guts.”

  Karp dug out his wallet and removed the diagram, wrinkled and softened like an old map. He spread it out on the desk, and Marlene stood behind him, resting her hand lightly on his shoulder, under the circumstances a gesture of the deepest intimacy. Karp tried not to think about that or about how Marlene’s wiry body radiated heat like a coke oven.

  “What is it? You reorganizing the office?”

  “No, it’s a picture of who’s screwing who and who’s trying to bag this case. I still can’t believe it, but I can’t draw any other conclusions from the evidence. What I don’t understand is why.” Karp quickly described what he had learned about the source of the legal defense funds and what he thought this implied.

  Marlene whistled softly over her lower lip. “Oh, ho. That’s interesting. I always wondered what they did with the collection cash. Very interesting. Where does the FBI come in?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. It may sound strange to say it like this, but maybe Bloom saw this as an opportunity to put it to me. He set me up to run the case, he’s got me established as the push behind trying these people. Maybe somebody in the Feds owes him a favor. The case gets screwed up, dismissed, and Karp carries the can. Bloom can even say, ‘I told you so.’”

  “Could be, could be,” she said. She lit another cigarette and started pacing the small room, her head down in thought, her hands on her hips. “It seems a little tortuous, even for Sandy Bloom. Maybe not for Wharton, though. And the cops … ?”

  “A natural. That’s why they call it the Powerhouse. The connection between the Archdiocese of New York and the police department is well-known. Couple of words in somebody’s ear, the message gets around. Besides,—”

  “Besides what?” Marlene had stopped pacing and was looking at him sharply.

  “Well, you know: cops, Irish, Church. There’s a connection.” He shrugged.

  “Oh, yeah. Father Feeney gets all the micks together and says, ‘Me bhoys, the Holy Faather needs this case put in the tank, so as ye’ve a hope o’ heaven go out an’ corrupt th’ evidence—”

  “Come on, Marlene—”

  “No, you come on. I can’t believe this. It’s—it’s like those posters those nuthouse fundamentalists put up— the pope is taking over the world. Beware, America!”

  “Marlene, it’s not like that …”

  “No? What’s it like? Frank Marino’s a Catholic. You think he’s bent? Jack Doheny? Luke D’Amato? For that matter, the kid herself. I’m a mackerel snapper, too, Butch. You want to see the ruler marks on my hand from the nuns?”

  “That’s not the same and you know it!” Karp shouted. “Now cool down. I just meant that since the year one the NYPD has been run by the Irish establishment, and the Church in New York is run by the same guys, the same families in a lot of cases. I got the Arch paying for a bunch of cop killers, I got cops bent all over the place, I got witnesses being intimidated or disappearing when only the cops know who they are. You can see the train of thought, can’t you?”

  “I can, and it sucks. Karp, that’s like saying if the check for Roberts came from Hadassah you’d suspect all the Jewish cops and judges and ADAs, including present company.”

  “Maybe I would,” Karp said, a little lamely. A lot of the starch was going out of his beautiful, scary pattern.

  “Horseshit, darling, absolute horse doody! Now look. There is a conspiracy. But we have absolutely no evidence that everybody that’s interested in queering this case is working in the same conspiracy. And so we have to be guided by one of my favorite prosecutorial aphorisms: let the case grow out of the evidence; never squeeze the evidence to fit your idea of the case. You know who taught me that?”

  “No, who?”

  “Butch Karp, back in the days when his brain was still working. Baby, listen to me. First of all, pull the team together again. It’s too much for one person, even you. Let’s work the angles independently. Sure there’s a church angle. Go ahead and see where it leads. I’ll follow up on the bomb and the Yugoslavs. Let Guma and the cops work the street, the neighborhood where these guys hung out and made their scene. V.T.’ll handle the Feds.”

  “What about Hadassah?”

  She laughed. “Let Roland do that. And the cops— which reminds me, have you told Denton about this?”

  “Are you kidding? He’s got to be in on this. Come on, Marlene, an Irishman gets to be a superchief, he’s not plugged in at the Arch?”

  “God, Butch, sometimes you amaze me. I realize all these Christian denominations might be a little confusing to a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn, but still …”

  “Marlene, what are you talking about?”

  “Bill Denton. Irish, sure. But he’s C. of D. because he’s probably one of the ten smartest cops they ever had on the job and because after Knapp, when they were looking for brass that wasn’t tarnished, somebody recalled that Bill Denton had never accepted as much as a cup of coffee, so he got the post. I mean, he still has to be somewhat discreet: he wears a green tie on St. Patrick’s day and all, but Bill’s people’re from Belfast. He’s a black Protestant. Come on, Butch, don’t punch the goddamn wall, you’ll hurt your hand.”

  11

  “HOW DO YOU feel now?” Marlene asked tenderly. It was nearly midnight. Karp’s head was nestled in the crook of her shoulder, and they were both lying against the warm, damp sides of Keystone Plate-E-Z while perfumed water lapped at their skin. “Uh-hum,” said Karp, master of words. He was busy making little waves by moving his chin. Each time the trough of the wave passed Marlene’s breast, the nipple would glint in the reddish glow. Karp found this unutterably amusing. Marlene had arranged the glow by flinging an article of underwear over one of her photographer’s lamps during the evening’s steamy prelims.

  “No, really. How’s your hand?”

  Karp raised his huge mitt above the guttering surface of the water. “Looks OK. A little swelled up maybe.”

  “You nut. It really drives you crazy when you’re not perfect, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess. That business about Denton really got to me. I mean, all my instincts told me he was straight, and then I get involved, possessed, by this conspiracy theory, and I start accusing him of throwing the game. In my mind only, thank God. I’d have to leave town if I had told anybody about this. Meanwhile, I got to call him first thing tomorrow, and tell him about the check from the Archdiocese. Maybe it’ll help him get a lead on who’s running the game for the cops. Better late than never. Shit, the whole thing makes me nauseous.” He shook himself in irritation.

  Marlene hugged him and kissed him lightly on the head. “Let it go, Butchie. Nobody likes to think they’re a little bit of a bigot, especially not us educated liberal types. It wouldn’t have mattered if you hadn’t gotten scared by this case and played it so close. Jesus! Goom would have blown that crap to smithereens in a New York minute. That’s why you have compadres, right? Keep your sweet ass straight, right? But it got you in a weak spot. A little Jewish paranoia. God knows, you’ve got every right to be paranoid. They are out to get you.” She twirled his wet hair in her fingers and sighed. “Everybody has a weak spot. You have to compensate …”

  “Yeah? What’s yours, Marlene?”

  “Mine? Why, it’s you, of course,” she replied without an instant’s thought.

  “It was Pretty Boy Floyd,” said Denton, his voice over the phone tight with anger.

  “The outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well,” Karp said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. A song. What do you mean, Bill?
Who’s Pretty Boy Floyd?”

  “Bob Floyd, our Deputy Police Commissioner for Public Affairs.”

  “Oh, him.” Karp knew him by reputation and from countless TV interviews, a beautifully dressed man with almost movie-star looks and a deep, resonant voice that could express nonsense believably. “The PR guy. An empty suit, I thought.”

  “Yeah, but ambitious as the devil and a pillar of the Church. I knew it was him the minute you told me about the check this morning.”

  “How come you’re so sure? Did you brace him on it?”

  “No point. He’d deny it, and I haven’t got the clout or the solid evidence to roll a D.P.C. No, I talked to your friend Fred Spicer. It seems Pretty Boy called Fred in for a little chat right after the hijackers got booked. Suggested that the powers that be would not mind one bit if these guys got dismissed. Suggested that an up-and-coming lieutenant might find the path to captain smoothed out when the time came.

  “This is subtle, you understand—it happens all the time, and Floyd is the guy from whence it comes, especially when the source of the pull is our friends in the Powerhouse. In a situation like when Vice hits one of those faggot bars in SoHo or under the West Side Drive and they find out the guy in the pink dress is none other than Father Flanagan, Floyd says a few words in the precinct captain’s ear and the papers get lost. Or maybe the captain calls Floyd, tells him he already lost the papers, picks up a few brownie points.”

  “So Spicer thought it was business as usual? But, shit, Bill, this is murder, and a cop …”

  “I said he was subtle. The hint was also put in that it was a fuck-up at Rodman Neck. Doheny was drunk, Doyle and the boys were playing grab-ass with a live charge. Bingo.”

  “He believed that?”

  “Why not? People tend to believe what’s convenient, especially if they hear it from authority. He’s helping the Church, his job, and his career. As far as he knows, there’s no crime, or not much of one. It’s not like he’s walking some child rape monster. You think he’s going to ask questions? Spicer?”