Reckless Endangerment

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  It took little additional thought. Getting rid of El Chivato would represent a substantial savings for Jodón on the boy’s fee, as well as putting Lucky off his guard. There were any number of boys working the same trade along the border, and if none of them had quite the style of El Chivato, one or another of them would do just as well: when he returned to Mexico he could send them against this Arab in squads.

  “All right,” Obregon said. “When the money is paid and we are released, I will give him to you.”

  “When you are released, but before the money is paid,” said Khalid.

  “Half the money first,” said Obregon, “and half after.”

  “As you like,” said Khalid.

  It was one of the chief virtues of the Karps’ marriage that in times of stress, when the fan was roaring and spraying the local volume with innumerable fragments of shit, they could suspend the usual who-struck-John business that occupies so much of married discourse, and drop together into the sort of cool collegial space in which they had both been trained to function.

  It was by this time about two in the afternoon, on the Saturday before Palm Sunday. The boys had been exhausted, fed, and laid out for their naps; Marlene had finished her healing music and her bath and taken a nap of her own; Lucy had emerged around noon, made some calls and been picked up by a gaggle of Chinese-American girls of her own age, and was off watching a Bruce Lee marathon at the Chinese movie house on Canal, discreetly trailed by Tran; Karp had made a large number of calls, nearly all of which were unwelcome to the recipients, and was taking his ease in front of the TV, desultorily watching Wake Forest play a basketball game against Syracuse, and toying with some notes for the meeting he had set up for the Monday.

  His wife entered the living room and plopped herself down next to him. She was warm and smelled of roses, and he put his arm around her.

  “What’s the score, counselor?” she asked, snuggling in.

  “I’m just calculating that very thing, counselor,” Karp replied. “I believe the bad guys are ahead at present, but the good guys are tanned, rested, and about to come out swinging.” Whereupon he reviewed the calls and arrangements he had made, she commenting intelligently and making several good suggestions, and, by way of coda, adding, “I note you did not rat me out on the Fatyma thing. I appreciate it.”

  “Your appreciation is noted and stored away for when needed,” said Karp.

  “Short-term, my big worry is Fatyma. She was a nice kid: born yesterday, but a good spirit. Luce was really down about it.”

  “Clearly a priority for the cops. Raney’s on it as we speak.”

  “Yeah, well, good, but I intend to look around myself too,” she said, glancing at Karp significantly.

  “Look away, Wonder Person,” said Karp blandly. “I wish you luck.”

  “Hmm, a changed fellow,” said Marlene. “No lectures? No furrowed brow?”

  “Not a furrow,” said Karp. “And I also get points for not saying a word about you leaving our precious little girl in environs where automatic weapons are likely to be discharged.”

  “I noticed. So what’s up? You changed your medication?”

  “Not at all. Just the calm resignation that comes with maturity. Now that I’m semi-retired, I have time to take the long view, and also recent events have reconnected me with the ancient Talmudic traditions of my people. I’m married to you—that’s not going to change. As I’ve often said, either you’ll get nailed or you won’t. If not, fine, life goes on. If yes, I will visit you every weekend at the Bedford Correctional Institution, I’ll bring you from Dean and DeLuca, I’ll bring you from Zabar’s. I’ll take videos, the kids shouldn’t forget what you look like. When you get out, I’ll help with your rehabilitation, find you a decent job—maybe food service, maybe transportation …”

  “Gosh, what a prince!” said Marlene. “I’m throbbing with gratitude.”

  “As well you should be. As for the rest, the risks, the kids, I figure, you live in Kansas, it’s tornadoes; in California, it’s quakes; in New York, it’s my wife’s chosen lifestyle, so I’m either going to live in fear forever, or just live, and forget this Jewish mother catastrophe business. I’m overcoming my cultural conditioning is what it is.”

  “I thought you were getting closer to the traditions of your people.”

  “Closer, further, what’s the difference? It’s a mystical thing. It’s hard to explain.”

  “To a shiksa, yeah. Is this where you start going dy-da-dee-dee-dee-deedle like in Fiddler on the Roof?”

  “If it would make you love me more.”

  “Um, let me pass on that,” she said. “As a matter of fact, though, I can’t recall a time recently when I did love you more. Understanding always makes me throb. Do you think that there’s the remotest chance that we could sneak in a hot quickie without waking up the twins?”

  The phone awakened Roland Hrcany out of a sodden sleep just past noon on Palm Sunday. He cursed and pulled the pillow over his head and let the machine pick it up.

  But when he heard the message, he cursed again and rolled over and grabbed the phone. Into it he growled, “Timmons, it’s Palm Sunday, why aren’t you in church?”

  An unenthusiastic chuckle on the line. Detective Inspector Pat Timmons was a Police Plaza suit known to be close to the chief of detectives himself, and the man especially charged with following cases of particular interest to the NYPD in the County of New York. Like cop killings.

  “Roland, yeah, I’m sorry to bother you at home, but we got a situation here. It’s going to reflect on Morilla.”

  Roland was instantly awake and alert. “What happened?”

  “Last night the Six logged an anonymous call, there’s a body in the trunk of a car under the highway. They checked it out and there it is, late model Firebird, New York plates, a stiff in the trunk, dark-complexioned male, late twenties, took one shot, small-caliber, in the face. The preliminary from the M.E. says dead a couple of days. They search him and find Morilla’s shield and ID in his pocket. So naturally, their attention is drawn.”

  “No shit. Who was he?”

  “No other ID, but a little later, this’d be around five this morning, a skell picked up in a drug sweep in Brooklyn last night calls a detective named Melville out of the Seven-seven. This mutt’s Melville’s snitch, been feeding him stuff for years, named Crenshaw, Kibble Crenshaw. He’s got a story. Apparently he’s in a bar last week talking to one of his associates, an Arab named Falani, supposed to be muscle for some kind of dope gang, and this Falani tells him the whole story about how he whacked Morilla, and ripped off these two greasers, and planted the murder gun on them. Melville figures this is worth checking out, so he calls Ray Netski. He doesn’t get him. No Netski. It turns out nobody’s seen Netski since Friday, when he told his squad sergeant at the Two-five he was going to look into something for you. You got any idea where he went, by the way?”

  “Not a clue. He didn’t call in or anything?” Roland felt his stomach start to roll into a hard, painful knot.

  “Not that I’ve heard,” said Timmons. “In any case, Fuller, the sergeant there, tells Melville to drive the mutt over to the Two-five and Netski’ll talk to him when he shows. Meanwhile, Fuller fields another call for Netski from Detective Alfasano at the Six, who’s holding Morilla’s ID in his hand and what should he do? After that this shit fucking flies up the chain of command, and I get a call at about seven this morning. Let me cut to the chase. One, Crenshaw ID’d the stiff positively as Ahmed Falani, the guy he heard the story from. Two, the plates on the Firebird are stolen, and the VIN’s etched off. Three, Netski’s not at his apartment, he’s not at his girlfriend’s apartment, and his kids don’t know where he is. We got a bulletin out on him, city-wide. Four—you’re gonna love this…”

  “Let me guess,” said Roland. “The unmatched thumb prints on the unfired bullets in the Morilla murder weapon are from the dead guy.”

  “You got it, son. Speaking of bullets, I think
you just dodged a big one. You would’ve looked like a piece of shit this stuff had come up during the trial.”

  “Yeah,” said Roland weakly. “Lucky me.”

  “Look, I got Fuller coordinating all the paperwork, the forensics, the snitch’s statement and so forth, and he’ll ship that over to your shop. I’ll have our P.R. people get with your P.R. people, and we’ll work up a joint statement for the press.”

  The conversation dribbled away in details. Roland hardly listened. For some reason, all he could think of at the moment was Karp.

  Somewhat to Khalid’s surprise, Ibn-Salemeh was perfectly calm when he heard the story Khalid had concocted. Bashar and Ahmed were gone, and they had apparently taken two point two million dollars from one of the cash drops the organization maintained.

  “The other drops are safe?”

  “I checked them all and moved them in case they thought to come back. Nothing else is missing.” He watched Ibn-Salemeh stroke his beard. The man’s eyes never left the television set, which was showing Jeopardy.

  “Will we cancel the mission, effendi?” Khalid asked.

  “No. Why should we?”

  “If they betrayed us in this, why not in everything?”

  “Pah! Ahmed and Bashar did not betray us. Clearly they were tortured into revealing the hiding place of the money, and they are surely dead now. This is the work of those Mexicans. I see now that it was an error to have cheated them. We must find some way of eliminating that pressure.”

  Khalid could hardly believe what he was hearing. Controlling his elation, he said, “That would be a wise move, effendi. If you will allow, I will take care of it myself.”

  Karp arrived at Moiseh’s Second Avenue Dairy a little before one on Sunday. The place was jammed, and he had to wait for a table. The customers appeared to consist of a minority of actual eastern European-derived Jews enjoying their native cuisine and a majority of assorted goyim having an exotic experience of a vanishing culture: bagels, lox, blintzes, and the famously rude waiters. Karp hadn’t been here for years, and although himself an assimilation cheerleader, the transformation of Moiseh’s from a living cultural institution to a sort of museum de cuisine made him inexplicably sad.

  Aaron Zwiller’s arrival, punctually at one, in his full Hasidic regalia, caused a minor stir, a raising of heads and a murmur from the tourists (Is that a Jew, Ma? Shh, dear!), and when the tan-coated elderly waiter came by, slamming a basket of rolls down on the table, they ordered. Karp went for the cold borscht with sour cream with a boiled potato in it and the blintzes; Zwiller ordered the white fish plate and a glass of tea. After ordering, he excused himself, and Karp figured he was going to wash his hands, as required by ritual.

  The food came, Zwiller returned, sat, and murmured a borucha. They started to eat. Zwiller did not seem in any hurry to convey information. To make conversation, Karp commented on the goodness and authenticity of the food, and that he did not get much of it anymore.

  Zwiller raised a set of bushy eyebrows. “Your wife don’t cook?”

  “She cooks very well, but not this. I married an Italian.”

  Zwiller frowned. “You know, this is an interesting thing, Mr. Karp. People like you marry outside and become goyim, and at the same time completely assimilated Jews, people very much like yourself, return to orthodoxy. Baalei teshuva, they’re called.”

  “I know,” said Karp. “My brother is one.”

  Zwiller nodded. “Yes. Some of these simply wish to be reunited with their people, and to live and raise their children in holiness and piety. Others … others are angry, full of rage—it gives them a kind of reason for living, to think of themselves as defenders of embattled Israel. Perhaps it is part of the poison left over from the Holocaust; perhaps it is from some mixed-up notions about the state of Israel. You know, there are many orthodox who believe that we must rebuild the temple in Jerusalem before the Mosiach will return. In any case, many of these Americans make the aliyah, and in Israel they join the radical right parties, Kach, for example, and build settlements in Judea and Samaria, and carry guns, and beat up Arabs, and behave like people in cowboy movies. I find this very distressing. My reading of Torah is that it is all about peace and justice and the respect for human life.”

  “I take it Rabbi Lowenstein doesn’t agree.”

  Zwiller put his knife and fork down and directed a blue glare at Karp. “I didn’t say that. Rabbi Lowenstein is young. He is about to inherit the leadership from a genuine saint, a tzaddik. Reb Lowenstein, whatever his talents, is not a tzaddik. I believe this gnaws at him. He has great energy. It may be that, in confusion of spirit, this energy flows into areas that may not be in accord with the spirit of the Law.”

  “By law,” asked Karp, “do you mean those of New York state or the Talmud?”

  Zwiller sighed and twirled a finger in the fringes of his beard. Karp judged that he was a man in some discomfort, pulled between his loyalty to a tight-knit group and his sense of righteousness. “Both,” said Zwiller. Almost to himself, he added, “It is better to betray a city, so that the city fall, than to be false to the Lord, blessed be He.”

  Karp felt there was no good response to this statement, so he waited. After what seemed a long time, it came. “As you may know, I handle various financial duties for our community. In this regard I’ve noticed recently, the past few months or so, certain transfers of funds for which I have no good explanation. Through Israeli banks. Not a lot, but enough to be troublesome. Then just in the last week we have had visitors. From Israel. This is not unusual, of course: between Williamsburg and Israel there is naturally a continual going and coming, our people visit the holy land, those who have made aliyah return to visit relatives and so on. But these boys … I don’t know, Mr. Karp. They are supposed to be teachers, in our yeshivas, this is the story, but they don’t look like yeshiva teachers to me. Also they have bags, big green military duffel bags, that maybe are not full of clothes.” He paused and checked to see that Karp was following this somewhat oblique account.

  Karp said, “You think the rabbi is assembling a group of hard guys and serious weapons.”

  Zwiller seemed to ignore this statement. “You know, first it was the Guardians of Israel, a few boys in cars, patrolling the neighborhood at night with radios. They discourage burglars, nogoodniks from the other areas—we had break-ins, rapes, people are incensed, and the police don’t seem to be able to stop it. Then the boys start carrying clubs, bats, they chase away the schvartzers, the Spanish. Then I hear they’re quoting Talmud: if anyone comes to kill you, you are permitted to kill him first. So it follows from this, why wait like lambs for them to come after us? Why don’t we go where they are, make them fear us, like in Israel. They don’t wait to get attacked, they go in, they clean out the nests of terrorists in Lebanon. …”

  He stopped. More beard twirling. His food was forgotten, but he took a deep draft of sweetened, lemony tea. Karp said, “Mr. Zwiller, if you have any information about a specific illegal act these men are about to commit, or even knowledge that they plan to break the law, you’re obliged to tell the authorities.”

  Zwiller nodded. “Yes, I know, but I’ve been careful to hide my eyes, Mr. Karp. I’m not a policeman. I have nothing that could be used as evidence in a court of law, not even, I bet, enough for you to get a search warrant. Do you know, in ghetto days it was a crime under the Talmud to denounce a Jew to the goyische authorities, whatever the offense. A capital crime, Mr. Karp.”

  “Do you think you might be in danger yourself, Mr. Zwiller?”

  He smiled. “From the rabbinical court? I don’t think so. Times have changed. On the other hand, I have this fear. There seems to be so much anger, it seems so easy for it to slip over into violence. And so I think, yes, I’m in danger, you’re in danger, we’re all in danger.”

  THIRTEEN

  They held the meeting in one of the conference rooms on the top floor of NYPD headquarters, first thing after lunch on Monday afternoon. The r
oom was paneled with light wood and carpeted in blue, and it had blue drapes that were pulled back to reveal tall windows that looked out on Police Plaza. There was a flag stand against one wall holding the national banner in the center and the flags of the state, the city, and the NYPD flanking. On the opposite wall was an oil portrait of the Police Commission, circa 1910, six plump and whiskered Irish gentlemen, who stared out at their successors with bland confidence. The center of this room was occupied by a long table in pale oak trimmed with a darker wood, in shape a near oval with the ends truncated, and around it sixteen comfortable blue-upholstered swivel armchairs. Each of these chairs was occupied, and several more people, of lower rank or more peripheral to the meeting’s purpose, sat in straight chairs against the wall. The highest-ranking person at the meeting sat at the head of the table, closest to the window, so that he was enveloped in an intermittent glory of afternoon sun flowing through the great panes and anyone addressing him was illuminated, as by a searchlight. This was Chief Inspector Kevin X. Battle, a silver-haired, pink-faced man in his late fifties, urbane, smooth, careful, the epitome of a fourteenth-floor suit. Chief inspector is the highest regular rank in the NYPD, and this particular chief inspector was even more exalted, since he served as the uniformed chief of staff for the police commissioner, the political appointee who ran the Department. Battle’s presence at this meeting attested to its significance, and also explained the presence in the room of a number of people who had little to contribute and no direct knowledge of any facts germane to the meeting’s purpose, which was to determine the likelihood that New York was in danger from a band of Arab terrorists. They were there in obeisance to the bureaucratic law that states, in effect, that a subordinate shall not meet privately with his boss’s boss. The subordinate in this case was Detective James Raney, and since he was meeting a boss at a stratospheric level, this meant that every level between him and the police commissioner had to show. Thus he was accompanied by his watch commander, his precinct commander, his zone commander, the commander of all the detectives in Manhattan, and a deputy chief inspector from the office of the chief of detectives. Since the affair extended to Brooklyn, there was a contingent too from that proud borough, and a man also from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Since the affair involved political groups, the head of the Bureau of Strategic Surveillance and Intelligence (the former Red Squad) was there, looking not at all pleased. In addition to these worthies, and their accompanying fuglemen, there were also present the two people besides Raney who knew what was going on: Butch Karp, representing the New York D.A., and Clay Fulton, representing essentially himself. As one of the Department’s few tolerated eccentrics, Fulton had, in practical terms, neither superiors nor subordinates. Everyone in the room knew who he was, and everyone thought someone else had invited him.