Reckless Endangerment

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Arriving after many a tidal diversion at the Statue of Liberty ferry slip, the thing became the concern of Detective Al Camera, who caught the new floater out of the First Precinct, within whose purview lies the southernmost point of Manhattan, including the slip. Camera was, perhaps inevitably, known as Primo in the cops, although (perhaps because) he was not in the least like the late gigantic pug, but rather a rotund, balding, mild-eyed, scholarly-looking man of forty-eight, whose tastes ran to dull cardigans and comfortable cord suits.

  He had a set of horn-rimmed glasses on his nose (the nostrils thereof having been liberally smeared with Vicks against the smell) as he peered over the dank ruin of Ali. Camera had been with the First for twelve years and had seen all kinds of floaters. He was glad that this one was male and not mutilated in any way that he could see. Aside from that, he did not mind watching autopsies. He especially liked watching this particular assistant medical examiner work.

  “Shot from behind, close range, four … one, two, three, four, no, I tell a lie, five times,” said the M.E. He had a soft Irish accent and thinning red hair, and he was not as drunk as he would be later in the day. His name was Maher.

  “A professional hit,” said Camera.

  “Well, sure, you’d know about such things, being a detective and all that,” said the M.E. “In my own professional capacity, however, I believe I am almost ready to rule out both suicide and accidental death.”

  Camera laughed, and Maher joined him, their noise echoing off the tiled walls.

  “The entries are small,” Maher observed, “and there are no exit wounds, which suggests a small-caliber weapon, the bullets bouncing around within the calvarium, doing great mischief. I expect a mere pudding when I come to crack his noggin open.”

  “How long would you say he’s been dead, Doc?”

  “Oh, a week, ten days, no more. He was slain in the dark of the moon by an attractive brunette with a Polish accent wearing Nuits de Paris and a pair of bloodred knickers. More than that I cannot say.”

  “How thick was the accent?”

  Maher put on a look of mock affront. “Please, Detective, the profession frowns on rank speculation. But I was serious about him being killed in the dark. Take a look at this.”

  Maher went to the side of the exam table and lifted the corpse’s shoulder slightly.

  “A tattoo,” said Camera. “You’re saying he shot the guy in the dark and stripped him and if he’d’ve seen the tattoo he would’ve cut it out?” Camera thought for a moment and then added, “I like that. The clothes were stripped, but the fingers and the head weren’t removed, which means the guy didn’t have a sheet on him, or he was a stranger, so not much worry about somebody missing him or a bunch of people who could make an ID. It’s night, the killer’s in a hurry. Maybe he did it out in the open, some pier, or off a boat.” He bent over and examined the tattoo.

  “What do you think? Not a pro job. A jailhouse tattoo. Some kind of gang mark?”

  “Possibly,” said Maher, looking too. “But it looks like an inscription in Arabic to me.”

  “Yeah? You think the guy’s an Arab?” They both looked at the corpse. It was grayish-white and the features were blurred and ragged, but it was not immediately out of probability that the man had once been numbered among that ethnic group.

  Maher used an instrument to pry open the corpse’s mouth. “A young man, but the teeth are carious and there’s no dental work apparent except for one extraction. Thus unlikely to be an American, or a foreigner of the middle classes. Circumcised, as you see. So if it transpires that he is a Muslim boyo from east of Suez, Denny Maher for one would not fall off his chair.”

  Camera watched as Maher sliced and sawed, scooped and weighed and talked into the microphone. The cop took prints from the dead man’s fingers and used a Polaroid camera he had brought with him to photograph both the tattoo and the man’s face. Maher removed the five .22 slugs from the brain, and Camera put them in an evidence bag. Driving back to the precinct, he had a sudden thought and stopped off at a jewelry shop on Pine Street that he sometimes patronized, which was run by two Egyptian brothers. They told him that the inscription was indeed in Arabic and translated its meaning.

  When he got back to the station house, the first thing he did was call Jim Raney at Midtown South homicide.

  “Jim? Primo Camera at the One. I got something here you might be interested in. You got those two Arab kids on the Shilkes thing—was there any suggestion that there could be more of them, like a gang?”

  “Not a gang,” said Raney carefully, “but there could be another guy. Why?”

  “A floater yesterday. Five through the head with a .22, and he’s got ‘against the house of war’ tattooed on his arm. Interested?”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” said Lucky Jim.

  FIVE

  This could complicate things,” said Roland Hrcany. He was walking back and forth in front of his desk, breathing deeply, like a diver about to go under, and clenching and unclenching his fists, his biceps stretching his shirtsleeves into sausage skins. Neither of his visitors, the detectives Jim Raney and Primo Camera, said a thing, but watched and listened with the blank, wary, patient expressions that were typical of their trade. Roland continued, talking as if to himself, “On the other hand, the only thing that connects this stiff to the Shilkes case is this tattoo. We have no evidence that he was even involved. So there’s no reason to bring this in at all.” He suddenly seemed to notice the detectives where they sat. He glared at Raney. “Is there?”

  “Not especially,” said Raney. “But somebody killed this guy. The case is up on the board. I’ll be wanting to speak to Naijer and Hamshari. They’ve been saying all along that there was another guy along on the job. Maybe they got some idea of who whacked the John Doe. At least we could get a name.”

  “Yeah, but the problem is, let’s say he was the lookout, he never went in. It doesn’t matter. My problem here is these jokers find out their pal’s dead, each of their stories is going to change to ‘Hey, two guys did the job, sure, but one of them wasn’t me.’ I don’t like it. It casts doubt.”

  Raney said, “We got Hamshari’s print on the till. And the Shilkes ID on the two of them.”

  “Okay, the print, fine, although they’ll argue that Hamshari was in the place before and left it then—”

  “In blood?”

  Roland frowned and made dismissive motions. “Okay, I take it back, maybe we got Hamshari, but that leaves Naijer. I want both of them. I don’t want that little scumbag laying it off on a dead man.”

  Raney was starting to get irritated. Like most homicide cops, he liked Roland well enough, but there was something peculiar about this present line of argument, something nervous, a fussiness that was alien to the prosecutor’s usual breezy and profane manner. Raney knew that Hrcany was taking the case himself, which was unusual for a bureau chief. Could he be worried enough about convicting the Arabs to try to suppress the John Doe homicide investigation? Roland was still maundering on: if this, if that, when Raney broke in with, “I don’t understand where this is all leading, Roland, I really don’t. I’m here talking to you because Camera found a homicide and he came to me because it was connected to the Shilkes thing I caught, and we came to you because you’re the D.A. and we need to talk to your defendants. I mean, it’s a courtesy, Roland. We already solved the Shilkes killing. Naijer and Hamshari did it, and they’re going down for it.”

  “How about letting me be the legal strategist here, Raney, okay?” said Roland testily.

  “Great, I’ll be the cop,” snapped Raney.

  “Oh, go right ahead, Detective,” said Hrcany, flushing and clenching even more vigorously. “Be my guest! But if this case gets fucked, let me tell you, it’s your ass that’s going to fry.”

  Raney was out of his chair with warning strips of red popping out across his cheekbones. Camera stood up too, however, and carefully positioned himself between the two men. “Yeah, well, we’ll kee
p you up with how it goes, Roland,” he said, “but if this conspiracy business heats up, you’re going to be real glad we found this guy.”

  This stopped Roland short. “What are you talking about, conspiracy?”

  Smiling, Camera said, “Hey, I just read the papers, chief. Arabs kill a Jew, there’s always a taste of this Middle East horseshit.”

  “Horseshit is right,” said Roland contemptuously. “What, you’re listening to that fucking rabbi? He’s got conspiracies on the brain.”

  “Yeah, right,” agreed Camera, “but, ah, Jim and I have been putting our heads together and, well, this John Doe kind of changes things in that department.”

  Raney could hardly keep a straight face, or rather, could hardly keep his scowl steady. Camera was reflexively playing the good cop to his own bad cop, and Roland was going for it. Up to a point.

  “Changes how?” Roland asked.

  “The guy, the floater, was popped by a pro. These kids, we know, are not pros; they got no connection that we can find to any established terrorist group. But this guy had a tattoo that links him to this so-called House of War organization, which the perps are in too, so I’m asking myself, who whacked this guy and why? I’m getting a picture of another level. Somebody set these kids up maybe. Raney figures there was considerable planning went into this, but the perps are definitely in the short attention-span class.”

  Roland said impatiently, “Right, speculation is nice, but we have no evidence that these two acted on anybody’s orders.”

  “Uh-huh.” Camera nodded. “Maybe that’s why our guy took five through the head. Maybe he was that evidence. I mean, he was the contact. Maybe you should get serious about this, talk to the bosses, get some more juice into the investigation …”

  “That’s a lot of maybes,” said Roland, waving his hand dismissively. “That’s a big fucking balloon you’re trying to blow up with about as much gas as a good fart. You got a floater with a tattoo, and all of a sudden we got Black September in town?”

  Raney reached out and touched Camera’s sleeve. “Let’s go, Primo, you’re wasting your breath. This guy doesn’t want to hear it.”

  “What I don’t want is my case fucked up,” Roland snarled.

  The two detectives walked to the door. Raney paused for a parting shot. “Say, Roland—in the event somebody blows up a synagogue or whacks a couple more people of the Jewish persuasion, I’ll remind you where you heard it first. It’ll make a great story.”

  He closed the door on a burst of obscenity, and as they walked through the outer office of the Homicide Bureau, he remarked to Camera, “What the fuck is it with him? He’s turning into some kind of old lady.”

  Camera shrugged. “He’s the man now. It gets to some people. The big guy used to take the political heat for him. Now he’s feeling the flames himself. I seen it happen before on the job, a million times. Guy passes lieutenant, all of a sudden he’s Nervous Nelly. You want to go talk to these AY-rabs of yours or what?”

  “Yeah,” said Raney. He looked up and saw Karp talking to one of the clerks. “Speaking of the devil,” he added as they left the office.

  Karp was in the Homicide Bureau office on a routine administrative errand, something that he could have handled easily over the phone, but it had become his habit since starting his job with Keegan to descend without warning on the various bureaus or to stop in at courtrooms and view the proceedings there. Although Karp never interfered in any way, this was like poking an anthill with a stick; no one in the great warren of Centre Street was ever sure that at the next moment the long shadow of the D.A.’s guy would not fall across their doings. This had, in general, a salutary effect, as Karp was the furthest thing from a meddler or a spy, and the various satraps of the district attorney began to use him to convey messages, hints, suspicions, and trial balloons back to Keegan. Karp did not mind doing this (or not doing it, as he judged proper), but this was not his reason for roaming. It was simply that at unpredictable times of the day, it became unbearable for him to sit at a desk and talk on the phone or read. He was a large, healthy, athletic man, and sometimes he simply had to move, besides which he needed from time to time an actual immersion in the real life of the courts.

  He had, of course, observed the two detectives leaving Hrcany’s office, and had caught (as had everyone else within a hundred feet) the concluding sentiments of its occupant, and this, since he knew who Raney was and who Camera was, made him curious indeed. He walked into Roland’s office, after knocking and ignoring the shouted command to go away.

  “Butch, I’m busy,” said the bureau chief, glowering.

  Karp ignored this too. “Something new on the Shilkes case?” he asked.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Oh, you know—Raney’s the guy on it and you’re blowing a fuse at him. What’d he do, lose some evidence?”

  “The case is under control,” said Roland. Karp knew him well enough to know that had Roland really thought that, he would have screamed Karp out of his office, so he dragged a chair over with his foot and sat down.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” said Roland.

  Karp waited a beat or two and said equably, “What is it with you, Roland? Both of us worked for years for Jack Keegan. He trained us. We respect him. He respects us. I respect you. I had the job. Now you got the job … and you’re acting like it’s still the former asshole up there in the D.A. slot and I’m some kind of stooge. And I come in here, you just had a big fight with the detective on the hottest case you got, and I ask you what’s wrong and instead of just fucking telling me, you get all coy. So what should I think? That for some weird reason you’re planning on concealing something from the district attorney?” He paused. On Hrcany’s face he observed the same petulant curl of lip, sidewise look, and wrinkled brow he had observed on his son Zak’s face after the child had been caught in a misdeed. Not for the first time Karp reflected that raising baby sons gave him insights into how to deal with men like Roland Hrcany, a type with which the criminal-justice field was inordinately well supplied.

  “Concealing is not a word I would use,” said Roland with studied casualness, pursing his mouth. “There’s nothing to conceal. It’s garbage. Raney and Camera found a floater who may or may not be connected with the two defendants in Shilkes, and I was trying to make the point that they shouldn’t prejudice the case against these guys when they question them.”

  Karp pressed him for details, which he gave out, honestly but with as little good grace as possible, ending with the conclusions he had shared with the two cops.

  After that Karp was silent for a long while, until Roland asked impatiently, “So, are you going to lay this shit on Keegan?”

  “Not at the moment. Let’s wait and see what Raney finds out from the suspects. But let’s really keep in touch here, Roland. Let’s play it straight up.”

  “Right,” said Roland in a tight voice. “I just don’t want my case soured behind this.”

  Karp suppressed a sigh. “Roland? Can I give you some advice? Ease up a little. Just run the case on the evidence you got, which is plenty. Don’t try to control the externals. Lay as much as you can on your second seat. Who is it, by the way?”

  “I picked Harris for it.”

  “Good choice. Tony’s good.”

  The tension that Roland had felt since Raney and Camera had come through with their news was now just starting to dissipate. Roland felt this, but did not understand why, or what Karp had done to make it so. He perceived that he had won something from Karp and thought he felt all right again because of that, because he was on top of things. He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

  “So—anything else you want to know?” he asked easily.

  Karp, smiling, replied, “You’re running like a clock, I hear, Roland. The Mexican brothers are scheduled?”

  “Uh-huh. Late May, probably. Oh. Speaking of them, take a look at this.” He picked up a sheet of folded lined notebook
paper and handed it across. On it was written in ballpoint pen, in bold capitals: OBREGONS ARE INOCENT LET THEM GO OR YOU IN BIG TROUBEL WE MEAN IT!

  Karp flipped the note back on the desk. “You talk to them about this yet?”

  “Hell, no! I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.”

  “I don’t know, Roland, threatening a prosecutor is no joke.”

  “Fuck ’em! I got a whole folder of those things. Don’t you?”

  “Some,” admitted Karp. “But it’s probably not as thick as yours.”

  At which Roland, after a suspicious scowl, laughed long and hard, and Karp joined in.

  In the apartment in Washington Heights he now shared with the woman Connie, El Chivato dressed for work: his tooled boots, his white jeans (held up with a thick belt, its concha buckle set with turquoise), a white shirt buttoned to the collar, a tan sports coat in the yoked-front Mexican style, with slash pockets outlined in dark piping, and his long canvas coat over all. He examined himself in the mirror affixed to the back of a closet door. He walked back and forth, observing how the coat hung. He knelt, bent over, sat down on the bed, watching and listening carefully. Nothing clanked and the coat concealed what it had to.

  El Chivato had experienced no difficulty in finding the material he needed in New York. Obregon had given him some names in the area, and Connie had access to sufficient cash. Therefore, in pockets cleverly built into the heavy canvas of his coat, the boy now carried a Colt King Cobra .357 Magnum revolver, a Winchester Model 1300 Defender twelve-gauge shotgun with a plastic pistol grip and an eighteen-inch barrel, a K-bar commando knife, and sufficient ammunition to start a small insurrection. He had a Model D-22 Davis two-shot derringer, loaded with magnum hollow-points, in his left boot. Satisfied, he put on his white hat and walked out into the apartment’s living room.