Reckless Endangerment

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  THE BUTCH KARP AND MARLENE CIAMPI SERIES

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

  Available wherever ebooks are sold

  Turn the page for an excerpt from Robert K. Tanenbaum’s exciting new legal thriller

  TRAP

  Available in print and ebook from Gallery Books August 2015

  PROLOGUE

  Zak Karp kicked his legs, grunted, and gasped; the veins in his muscular forearms and one in his forehead bulged from the exertion. He was bound to the back of a wooden chair by heavy ropes. He pushed as hard as he could, repeatedly. After a while he gave up, cursing, his breath a series of white clouds—condensation from the cold air.

  Sitting in the chair next to him with his eyes closed, Zak’s twin brother, Giancarlo, let his breath out slowly. “Quit fighting it,” he said quietly and then opened his eyes, “the more you struggle, the tighter the knots get. I think if I can just relax enough, I might be able to slip out of mine. But I can’t concentrate with you thrashing around like a fish out of water.”

  “Well, you’d better hurry before our ‘friend’ gets back, oh great Yoda,” Zak replied. “Or did you forget what he said he’s going to do to us?” He nodded across the dimly lit, unfinished loft where a red plastic five-gallon container with a white pour spout sat on a rough wooden bench next to a laptop computer. “I’m not real thrilled about burning to death, though it appears it’s going to be that or freeze to death. I’m too young to die . . . I’ve never even been past third base with a girl or pitched for the Yankees. And, I was about to become bar mitzvah with every obnoxious, pimple-faced thirteen-year-old Jewish kid on the Upper East Side.”

  Giancarlo couldn’t help but chuckle at his twin’s dark humor despite their predicament. But then he frowned. “I thought you gave up on that,” he said. “You didn’t want to be a Jew anymore.”

  As Giancarlo spoke he studied his “older” brother’s handsome face with its strong Italian features and the coloring of their mother, Marlene Ciampi. He knew there was some bruising on the other side of his face from blows he received from their abductor, but Zak was a tough guy and not about to acknowledge that it hurt. He was Giancarlo’s elder only by a few minutes but all of their lives he’d been first in many ways. Bigger, stronger, faster—the better, more natural athlete. He’d also been born with the fiery temperament of the Mediterranean side of their family, which sometimes worked to his advantage—such as when making quick decisions and following through without hesitation—but had also landed them in hot water on occasion. Like right now, Giancarlo thought.

  Giancarlo had the more delicate visage—still leaning more toward their mother’s Sicilian ancestry than their father’s Slavic roots, but more refined and paler than his brother. Although an average, if determined, athlete, he also played a half-dozen instruments, from the violin to the accordion, and schoolwork came easy to him. Zak was no slouch when it came to brains, even if he sometimes acted before thinking, but Giancarlo was decidedly the more cerebral, and cautious, of the two.

  “Yeah, well maybe this Nazi son of a bitch changed my mind for me,” Zak retorted, and then twisted violently against the restraints for what little good it did. He bellowed with helplessness.

  They both knew that no one would hear him. The old tenement building was as solid as the Manhattan bedrock on which it stood. Rust-colored brick walls, thick subflooring, and massive beams comprised the loft and seemed to absorb sound into the shadows. They could hear the outside world through the missing panes of glass in some of the windows. But other than the loud clomping of their heavy-booted captor’s comings and goings, they hadn’t heard any other sounds of habitation from the floors below them.

  The loft itself appeared to be in the midst of a renovation project that had ground to a halt. Several sawhorses and odd bits of lumber and drywall, as well as the bench, were scattered around the largely empty open space. But no workmen had been by in the two days since their abduction, and the teens had surmised that they were sitting in the detritus of yet another New York City developer who ran out of money in mid-construction.

  The building was near the East River, and they could clearly hear the frequent sounds of water traffic, including the clarion whistles of the tugboats. Most of the windows in the loft were boarded up or covered with sheets, but by craning their necks, they could see through two large picture windows behind them that weren’t covered. Across a short distance they observed another former tenement that had been converted to condominiums with lots of windows and a new façade partly covering the old bricks.

  “I hope that’s because you’ve had a change of heart about what it means to be a Jew, not because you’re afraid of what might happen,” Giancarlo said. “Because if that’s the case, you’d be better off committing to mom’s Catholic side of the family. That way you can ask for forgiveness, and ‘poof,’ when you die you go straight to paradise. Judaism’s a little nebulous on whether there’s any such thing as heaven.”

  “Up yours,” Zak retorted. “I’m serious. This guy’s an example of what Jews have always had to put up with. If I have to die, like Mrs. Dubitsky said, I’ll choose to do it as a Jew; I’m just saying I’d like to get through my bar mitzvah first.”

  Giancarlo bit off the sarcastic remark he was going to make and nodded. “Sorry I doubted you.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay,” Zak replied. “I would have doubted me, too. But enough of all this talk about dying; I’m not ready. So start meditating or whatever it is you do and make like Houdini and escape before the storm trooper gets back.”

  Giancarlo’s response was interrupted by a moan from their right. They looked over to where an old woman lay on a filthy mattress that had been placed on the floor.

  “I don’t think she’s doing so good,” Zak observed. “She hasn’t opened her eyes since we got here.” Giancarlo shook his head. “I don’t think she’s had anything to eat or drink in a while. Goldie’s tough, but no one can do that for long, especially not at her age. We’ve got to get help, or she’s going to die.”

  “And so will we,” Zak added.

  A thoughtful look passed across Giancarlo’s face. “Let’s see if we can hop our chairs a few feet over to the right so that the windows are directly behind us.”

  “Why?”

  “I have an idea,” Giancarlo responded. “It probably won’t work but just humor me.”

  Zak shrugged and managed to hop with his brother a few feet to the right. “So now humor me and tell me why we just did that,” he said. But instead of answering, his brother shrieked.

  “Jesus! What’s the matter with you?” Zak demanded in anger and alarm.

  “A rat! A rat just crawled up on my shoulder!”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I don’t know, it jumped down when I shouted!”

  “You mean when you screamed like a twelve-year-old girl. I thought it was something serious.”

  “I don’t like rats.”

  “You and our pal,” Zak said. “You see the way he freaks when he sees a rat? We should try to use that to our advantage. Anyway, it’s gone now so go back to being calm and get us out of here.”

  Giancarlo had just closed his eyes when they heard someone stomping up the stairs and knew that their abductor had returned. The door opened revealing a tall young man in his mid-twenties with a shaved, bullet-shaped head and the sculpted body of a weight lifter. His thin lips turned down in a perpetual frown, and his dark eyes had a feral intelligence to them. But his notable features were the “Sieg Heil” that had been tattooed in black letters two inches high across his forehead and the swastikas inked onto the temples on either side of his head.

  Lars Forsling trudged into the room and stopped next to the workbench. He opened the laptop and turned it so that the screen was pointed at his captives. He sm
iled at the twins and then over at the prostrate figure of Goldie Sobelman. “Looks like the old Jew bitch isn’t long for this world anyway, ja mein kleiner Juden?” he said with a snicker.

  “Give me a break with the lousy fake German, Lars,” Zak scoffed. “You’re just a muscle freak from Brooklyn and you sound like a character in a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.”

  Forsling’s face flushed dark red as he stormed over to where the twins sat. “Great, now you’ve done it again,” Giancarlo said dryly. This wasn’t the first time his brother had antagonized their abductor, hence the bruising.

  However, just as Forsling raised his hand to hit him, Zak yelled. “Hey creep, you see the rat?”

  Forsling stopped in his tracks and his eyes grew round with fear. He whirled in the direction Zak was nodding. In the shadows over by the wall, a large gray rat sat on its haunches watching them. The young man looked around wildly then picked up a piece of wood from the floor and flung it at the rodent. The rat easily dodged the missile and scampered back through a hole in the wall of one corner of the room.

  Turning back toward the twins, Forsling sneered. “I’m not afraid of a fucking rat.”

  “Yeah, sure you’re not. That’s why your hands are shaking.”

  This time Forsling backhanded Zak across his face. The teen absorbed the blow without a sound, except to spit blood out from his now-split lips. He glared up at his assailant. “You’ll regret that someday.”

  Forsling raised his hand again but hesitated when their eyes met. He quavered ever so slightly and lowered his hand. “You’re the one who’s going to regret that you ever lived,” he laughed nervously. “When your skin is turning black and the fat in your legs is melting, the pain will remind you of your smartass comment. But right now, I have more important things to do.”

  Picking up a roll of duct tape from the floor, Forsling roughly wrapped a piece several times around each teen’s head and mouth, gagging them. Then he stomped back over to the workbench, where he typed on the laptop’s keyboard and then stood off to one side.

  The face of the teens’ father, Roger “Butch” Karp, appeared on the screen. He frowned when he saw his sons gagged and bound to the chairs. His eyes clearly registered his fear for them, but his voice was calm and clear. “This isn’t necessary Lars,” he said. “Let the boys and the woman go; this is between you and me.”

  “So you can see your little Jew boys, right Karp?” Forsling spat.

  “I can. Now let’s talk about this. The boys had nothing to do with what happened to your mother.” A pained look crossed Forsling’s face. “No but you did, Karp, you fucking kike. You and the Jew and nigger cops.”

  “Then come after me,” Karp said. “I’ll meet you anywhere, anytime; just you and me. No cops.”

  Forsling laughed derisively. “Yeah, like a dirty Jew could be trusted to keep his word.”

  “Then who do you trust? Tell me, and I’ll get that person to negotiate for you.”

  “There’s not going to be any negotiations Karp.” Forsling’s voice caught and he wiped at his eyes. “The time for talking was over the minute my mom died because I wasn’t there to save her, Karp, and I wasn’t there because of you and the fucking cops. I told ’em I didn’t do it, but they dragged my ass in anyway, and you kept me there.”

  “They were just doing their job, Lars,” Karp said. “And so was I. All I did was talk to you and let you go.”

  “And my mom burned to death in the meantime.”

  “She fell asleep with a cigarette in bed. I’m sorry. I know that’s got to be painful but don’t make this any worse. Let the boys go and turn yourself in, get a good lawyer to argue you weren’t in your right mind; I’ll put in a word and ask the courts to go easy on you in light of what happened to your mom. And if you’re innocent in the other case, then you have nothing to worry about.”

  Forsling stood quietly and for a moment it appeared that he might give in. Then a tugboat’s horn blasted so loud that it sounded like it was right beyond the wall. It seemed to set him off; he squared his shoulders and snarled. “You’re a liar, Karp, like all Jews are liars! I’m done talking. My mom burned and now your Hebe kids and the old Jew bitch are going to burn, too!”

  “FORSLING!” Karp shouted. The young man hesitated. “Forsling,” Karp repeated, his voice icy and hard. “If you do this, there is nowhere on Earth you can hide that I won’t find you.”

  Forsling’s lip curled into a sneer. “We’ll see about that, Karp. By the time you find their bodies, I’ll be long gone. Enjoy the show.”

  1

  Brooklyn, Weeks Earlier

  The large man in the Brooks Brothers suit sitting in the back of the bar on Jay Street in Brooklyn nudged the nicely dressed younger man next to him. “There’s the bitch now.” He rose from his seat and lifted his hand as the slightly stooped, elderly, gray-haired woman, bundled against the cold in a long wool coat, walked in the door.

  She spotted him and grimaced as if she’d just smelled something rotten before she noticed the young man. A look of pain and sorrow crossed her face, but when he couldn’t look her in the eyes, she took a deep breath and let it out with the shake of her head. Her mouth was set in a firm, hard line as she navigated through the other patrons to their table.

  When she arrived, the older of the two men stuck out his hand, but she ignored it and turned toward his younger companion. “I can’t say the same about the company you keep these days, Micah, but it is nice to see you,” she said as she sat down.

  “It’s good to see you, too, Rose,” Micah Gallo replied quietly.

  A waitress strolled over and Rose Dubitsky asked for a glass of water. Shrugging, the older man tapped the rim of his highball glass to indicate that he wanted another Old Forester bourbon. Pricey stuff but the president of the largest teachers union in New York State, with his quarter-of-a-million-dollar salary and under-the-table perks, could afford it.

  Despite his expensive tastes in clothes, cars, women, and bourbon, Thomas “Tommy” Monroe came from the old Irish-Italian neighborhood of Bensonhurst, the son of a schoolteacher mom and a truck-driving father. A big guy, he’d played football for a second-tier college team until he got kicked off the squad for fighting with his teammates and coaches, and then walking out on an anger management class he’d been ordered to attend if he wanted to stay. Following an “incident” in which he’d been accused of raping a coed at a fraternity party, he’d then been invited to leave the college altogether and had to finish his degree and get his teacher’s certificate at a small liberal arts college in New Jersey that didn’t care about his character as long as he paid his tuition.

  After graduation, he took a job as a PE teacher and wrestling coach at Public School 238 in Brooklyn but found his true calling working for the Greater New York Teachers Federation. Like all other public school teachers he’d had to sign up with the union when he first got hired—there was no choice in the matter and dues were automatically taken out of his paycheck. But as the son of a Teamster and a proud member of the teachers union, he’d been fine with it and soon found out that his penchant for cracking heads and kicking asses on behalf of the GNYTF was useful to the hierarchy. He could turn on the macho charm when necessary, but it was his ruthlessness and street smarts that helped him climb the union power ladder and eventually got him elected president.

  That had been twenty years ago, and now in his early sixties, the former athlete had gone to seed. His ruddy Irish face and red nose belied his affection for booze and the good life, as did the beer belly that hung over the top of his expensive, tailored pants. And he’d long since lost his sense of duty to union members, except as pawns to manipulate in order to stay in power and fund his lifestyle.

  “Whatever works” was his motto when dealing with opponents, both those inside the union—including reform-minded individuals—and those on the outside. Among the most tenacious of the latter, and the reason for this meeting with Rose Dubitsky, were the proponents of ch
arter schools. The charter school movement in New York got its start in 1998 and after being held in check—mainly due to union lobbying—for ten years, had been expanding ever since, thanks in large part to Dubitsky, the president of the New York Charter Schools Association and the heart and soul of the movement. Limited to a hundred schools in that first decade, there were four times that number now and a serious threat to the union, and thus to Monroe.

  The reasons were simple. First of all, the charter schools, although public an taxpayer funded, were non-union. This diluted the power of the traditional large teachers unions like the GNYTF to control education in New York State. And every one of those non-union teachers represented a loss in union dues. Fewer bucks meant losing political clout by curtailing lobbying, or outright buying of politicians and the leaders of the union-funded anti-charter parent groups. It also meant less money for the union president’s salary and bonuses, as well as the hidden slush fund available for his “expenses.”

  For the first time in years, he felt his position as union president was being threatened by increasingly unhappy members. Every student sitting in a charter schoolroom instead of the union-dominated public school rolls meant less money from the state and federal governments which based their financial support on enrollment. Losing funding affected raises and bonuses for union teachers, too. However, the members’ dissatisfaction was as much about working conditions as it was money. Public school classes were overcrowded, filled with indifferent and even hostile students, and lacked any support from most of the parents.

  Charter schools were a different story with a combination of better or equal pay, safer working conditions, students who wanted to learn, and administrations that by and large saw themselves as partners with their faculty. The best teachers, as well as the more dedicated students, were leaving the public schools as fast as they could find an opening with a charter school. Only the limited number of positions available kept the desertions from becoming an allout stampede.