Then again, there was always a steady stream of customers going into the shop. Some appeared to have been arrested by the bouquet of fresh bread and drifted into the store as if sleepwalking; others swung open the door with obvious joy written all over their faces, like soldiers home from a war.
Karp knew how they all felt. His stomach growled at the thought of a warm, dark rye right out of the oven, slathered in Pennsylvania apple butter. Or the German chocolate cake so rich that a simple taste was ecstasy, though who could stop at anything less than a full piece? And yet all these delights were trumped by Moishe’s cherry cheese coffee cake—sensually warm, oozing cherries and cream cheese, and big enough to feed a family of four.
Glancing up, Karp noted the Star of David in the window of the apartment above the store. Moishe and his wife, Goldie, lived above the bakery, a quiet Jewish couple who kept Shabbat by closing on Fridays late afternoon and Saturdays and attended the Third Avenue Synagogue near Central Park.
He’d met them one day several months earlier when Marlene’s father, Mariano, who had been recently diagnosed with senior dementia, left his home in Queens, took a subway, and then walked the rest of the way to the bakery. Il Buon Pane had once been owned by a boyhood friend from Italy, and in Mariano’s confused state, he thought his friend still owned it. But Mariano’s friend had died many years before after selling the bakery to Moishe and Goldie, who had immigrated to the United States after World War II. Moishe had worked for the owner for many years and took over when he retired.
It turned out that Moishe had been in the synagogue when the suicide bomber attacked. He’d been one of the lucky ones who’d survived with nothing more than bruises and cuts. But then, he was a born survivor, having lived through the horrors of the German death camp at Sobibor during World War II.
Detective Neary could still be heard cursing his hometown teams in the car when Karp opened the door to Il Buon Pane. He grinned when he saw the small elderly man with the big ears, which seemed to be the only thing preventing his baker’s cap from sliding down over his face. Moishe was turned away from him, smiling at a customer as he took one of her hands in both of his and thanked her for visiting his shop.
The customer, a young woman, looked up at Karp, a beatific smile on her face, as if she’d just had a word with the Pope. She opened the bakery bag she clutched and bent her head to sniff the contents. “Strudel,” she murmured as she turned and headed for the back of the shop.
“Butch!” the old man shouted as he turned and saw him. He wiped his flour-coated hands on his apron and came out from behind the counter with both arms extended. “It is so good to see you, my friend…. Such a thing to be able to say that the district attorney of New York is my friend! What a great country! Shalom!”
A half dozen customers turned to watch curiously as the gnomish little baker embraced the giant man in the off-the-rack dark blue suit. The special attention embarrassed Karp a little, but Moishe was so open and unaffected that Karp clapped the little man on the back and gave him a squeeze. “Good to see you, too, my friend,” he said, looking around behind the counter and toward the doorway leading to the ovens. “Where’s Goldie?”
At the mention of his wife’s name, Moishe turned somber. “She’s upstairs in bed,” he said quietly. “Today is the anniversary of the day the Germans rounded up her family in Amsterdam and shipped them off to Auschwitz. It still troubles her that of them all—her parents, two brothers, and her older sister—only she survived. Every year it’s the same; she shuts herself in the dark and wants to be alone with her memories.”
Karp nodded. “I understand. I’m sorry if this wasn’t a good day to invite my friends to visit your shop.”
Moishe brightened. “Nonsense. This is my Goldie’s day to grieve. But she would not want all the world to cry with her. That’s not Goldie. No…today is a good day and some of your friends are here already…. I am looking forward to a few moments to listen in on the conversations of great men!”
“I think that you’ll more than hold your own in these conversations,” Karp said, “that’s why I asked them to come here. They’re always interested in meeting other agile minds.”
“Well, then I hope a genius comes in for a Danish, because otherwise they may be sorely disappointed.” Moishe laughed as he led the way toward the back of the shop. “You haven’t seen our new sitting room. The electronics store next door went belly up and there was no one to take the lease. So the landlord—an old friend and customer—agreed to lease it to me for a percentage of the profits, which is a good deal for both of us.”
Karp was surprised to discover that a doorway had been built between the old bakery and the space next door on Twenty-ninth Street. He’d been dropped off on Third Avenue and he hadn’t noticed that the space had been converted into a tastefully decorated sitting room with tall tables surrounded by bar stools, and couches with coffee tables.
Quite a few people were already in the back, enjoying their treats. Some were gathered in small groups that buzzed with earnest conversations. Elsewhere, young couples drank their coffees and looked dreamily into each other’s eyes or laughed about some private joke. Others sat alone, working on computers.
“We have wireless,” Moishe explained. “As you can see, it helps with business.”
“You’ve got Starbucks beat, hands down.”
Moishe looked troubled. “Do you think it’s too corporate? Too impersonal? I agonized over whether to ban computers. Cell phones aren’t allowed. This should be a place to be alone with your thoughts, or with someone else who is also here, not a disembodied voice.”
Karp shook his head. “Not at all. I think it’s very smart, and I think it’s going to be a great success.” He noticed the young woman from the front sitting with her eyes closed and the same smile on her lips as she slowly chewed a piece of her strudel.
The little man’s blue eyes brightened above his prodigious nose. “Ah, good, I was worried that you’d think I sold out to the Man.” He pointed. “And there are your friends.”
Karp looked where he was pointing to a group of older men sitting around a circular wooden table at the very back of the room. Several of them were already waving, trying to get his attention. He walked quickly over. “I see the Sons of Liberty Breakfast Club and Girl-Watching Society has already convened.”
“Ah, the prodigal son has arrived,” a thin, distinguished man with long gray hair tied back in a ponytail and mutton-chop sideburns said as he stood and held out his hand.
“Your Honor,” Karp replied, taking the man’s hand. Although he looked like an aging hippy from the Village, Frank Plaut had once been one of the most respected federal judges with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and a professor of law at Columbia University.
Karp turned toward the others. In all, seven men sat at the table. Besides Frank Plaut, there was a former Marine who fought at Iwo Jima, Saul Silverstein, Father Jim Sunderland, top defense attorney Murray Epstein, the poet Geoffrey Gilbert, former U.S. attorney for the southern district Dennis Hall, and a retired editor of the New York Post, Bill Florence.
The men referred to their group as the Sons of Liberty Breakfast Club and Girl-Watching Society. They were a self-described group of “old codgers whose wives chase us out of the apartment once a week” to meet over breakfast and debate politics, the law, art, foreign affairs, and anything else that interested them.
When Karp arrived, he found Father Sunderland talking about the Maplethorpe case. “The prosecution presented its case, and he seems guilty. But then the defense called all those experts and suddenly I wasn’t so sure anymore.”
“It was the old spaghetti defense,” former federal prosecutor Dennis Hall said.
“Spaghetti defense?” Moishe asked, having just wandered over.
“Yeah, throw it all against the wall and see what sticks,” Hall explained. “Just how many ‘expert witnesses’ did the defense call, Butch, a dozen?”
“Something like that,�
� Karp agreed, sitting down. The others knew that as a rule he didn’t comment much about ongoing cases. He trusted these men, but someone might innocently let something slip in the wrong company, and it’d be in the newspapers by morning. He didn’t believe in trying his cases in the court of public opinion, nor did he want something he said to be used by a defense attorney.
“It’s ridiculous,” Hall complained.
“Au contraire,” replied Epstein, who as a former defense attorney was Hall’s counterpart in these philosophical legal debates. “The defendant has the right to produce any and all evidence that might throw doubt on what the prosecution alleges, or demonstrate his innocence. It’s up to the state to prove its case and counter the defense experts if it can. That’s our system of justice.”
“The spaghetti defense has nothing to do with justice or the search for the truth,” Hall retorted. “It has everything to do with trying to befuddle the jury. Defense attorneys hope that if they throw enough nonsense in the air, Susie Housewife, Joe Plumber, Bernie Businessman, and Miguel Mechanic on the jury will be too confused to convict their client beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“Ah, but the so-called search for the truth is the role of the district attorney,” Epstein pointed out. “The role of the defense attorney is to zealously represent his client and force the state to prove its case.”
“Which means the state has to call its own dozen witnesses to match up against the defense’s hired guns.”
“Why?” All eyes turned to Karp, who then rephrased his question. “Why does the state have to match the defense experts?”
Hall and Epstein both shrugged. “If for no other reason, juries expect it these days,” Epstein said. “They’ve all been watching CSI and Forensic Files. They think that both sides are supposed to call experts to battle it out.”
Karp nodded as if something had just occurred to him, but instead of saying anything, he turned to Moishe. “So Moishe, what do you think about this debate over expert testimony?”
Moishe waved his hand. “I’m just a baker. What do I know of these things?”
“Humor me,” Karp replied. “We have these august attorneys—two of the best in the business—who say that the prosecution and the defense ought to call as many experts as they deem necessary and then let the jury sort out who’s telling the truth.”
The little baker thought for a moment. “Well, in baking—and, I have found, in life—usually less is more. Too much sugar and the flavor is lost in the sweetness. Too much fruit and you can’t taste the pastry. If something is good, don’t mess it up by adding to it…. Maybe it is the same in the courtroom. Sometimes it compounds a lie to repeat it, even if it’s to counter the lie. It is like these people who claim that the Holocaust never occurred. They have a thousand small lies that they claim proves their point. These lies add up to the one big lie. A lie so big that even good people begin to wonder if there is at least some truth to it.”
“So you’re saying too many experts cloud the picture?” Hall said, shooting his friend and adversary Epstein a smile.
“In a way,” Moishe agreed. “The one big lie is like a giant raging beast and throwing small rocks can’t bring it down; they only give it substance—otherwise, why throw?”
“So how do you bring down the one big lie?” Karp asked, intrigued by how the turn in conversation mirrored his discussion in the Jewish role model classes just a few nights before.
Moishe held up his arm and pulled down on the sleeve, revealing the number tattooed there by his former captors. “The truth.”
Karp shook his head and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “From the mouths of bakers…”
“Hear, hear,” Bill Florence cheered, pulling a silver flask from the interior pocket of his suit coat. “Moishe, if you don’t mind, we sometimes enjoy a little spice with our coffees.”
“Ah, men after my own heart,” Moishe replied, holding out his cup. “I’ve found that it helps me with my kneading.”
7
LYING ON A HILLSIDE ALMOST THREE MILES AWAY FROM where his girlfriend was climbing into a motorcycle sidecar, Ned Blanchett peered down the scope of his .50 caliber Barrett M107 at the trucks arriving at the edge of the village below. Otherwise, he moved as little as possible, relying on his Ghillie camouflage suit to blend into the gray-green rocks and brown grasses surrounding him.
What the hell am I doing here? he wondered, resting his cheek against the LRSR, or long-range sniper rifle. A few minutes earlier, as he waited for the signal from Ivgeny Karchovski, he’d allowed his thoughts to wander back to the days only a few years distant when he was just a simple ranch hand in New Mexico. If he hadn’t decided to go dancing at the Sagebrush Inn south of Taos that night, he might never have met Lucy Karp and her mother, Marlene Ciampi. But he had, and life had never been as simple, or safe, again.
Not that he had any regrets about the path his fate had taken. A shy young man more comfortable with horses than women, he’d figured he might never meet a woman to settle down with. But he’d fallen in love with Lucy and to his surprise, she with him. The flip side of that was he found himself thrust into the violent and bizarre world of the Karp-Ciampi clan, battling murderers, terrorists, and other psychos.
At the same time, he’d come to accept that without her, he would have lived out his life on the range and never gotten involved in a world that seemed so out of kilter with the natural beauty of his surroundings. After the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he’d been outraged but also felt impotent to do anything about it. Now here he was, a member of a secret agency headed by “former” FBI special agent S. P. “Espey” Jaxon, preparing to assassinate a terrorist.
When Jaxon first approached him about signing on, the agent explained that he needed team members who were “below the radar.” No one from other government agencies, except for a few trusted men he’d brought in with him from the FBI. He said it was because he wanted people who didn’t have federal personnel files on them. But there was also the implicit message that the Sons of Man, who’d been his particular target, had their tentacles in law enforcement agencies from the Department of Homeland Security to the FBI to the CIA.
According to the official story, Jaxon and his men left the bureau to work for a private security firm and hefty salary increases. Blanchett assumed that given such a short list of people who could be trusted, the existence of their small force was known to very few people, though Jaxon seemed to be able to summon extensive resources.
Those resources had apparently determined that the Sons of Man were up to more mischief and that once again Nadya Malovo was central to the action. Apparently, no one had been able to determine exactly what the threat would be, so it was decided that killing Malovo might at least throw their plans into disarray. It wasn’t quite the same as cutting the head off the snake to kill the body—that would have to wait until Jaxon was ready to go after the SOM leadership—more like pulling its fangs.
By ripping open her heart with a .50 caliber bullet, he thought. The now familiar twinge of guilt rippled across Blanchett’s mind as he contemplated shooting a woman, even one as evil as Nadya Malovo, from nearly a mile away. As he was raised in the Old West, steeped in its myths of fair play and face-to-face confrontations, this smacked to him of an ambush—something normally attributed to “the bad guys.”
Shortly after joining Jaxon’s “company,” Blanchett had been spirited off to a training facility on the West Coast where he and others were put through a course, which they were told was similar to what it took to qualify for the Navy SEALs. Only this was more secret. He and his comrades were prohibited from talking freely. They were allowed to discuss harmless, general topics—like baseball and women—but they weren’t supposed to share information about which agencies they belonged to, who they worked with, or anything that might identify them or their missions.
Out of nearly two dozen men and women who started the training, only he and a half dozen others
completed it. Along the way, a tough but skinny young cowboy had been transformed into a tough, muscular man with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a steady aim that could put a bullet into a five-inch circle from a half mile away.
After completing the course, he’d been whisked off to sniper school at yet another undisclosed location in the South. Jaxon had taken note of Blanchett’s native ability with guns—both the .45 caliber Peacemaker he used for quick-draw and pistol shooting contests, and the Winchester rifle he carried on the range. Years of shooting both from horseback had trained his eyes and reflexes to snap off an accurate shot at the precise right moment even on the move.
Of course, all that shooting had been in fun or boredom, or to deal with the occasional predator, like mountain lions and coyotes. Then he’d met Lucy and he’d been called upon to shoot a man for the first time in her defense, and others later as he became embroiled in the perpetual violence surrounding her family. But those killings had come in the heat of battle when faced by other armed men, and it was kill or be killed.
Not lying here like a snake in the grass, he thought. He wiped his eyes and forced himself to recall the conversation he’d had with the Special Forces sergeant who’d been his instructor at sniper school when he’d brought up his concerns. The sergeant, a tall black man who never seemed to blink, had looked thoughtful, as if it was the first time he’d run into this issue.
“How do most people die in a war?” he asked at last.
Blanchett had shrugged. “Bullets…bombs.”
“Yeah, bullets, bombs, Army cooking and syphilis,” the sergeant said, “but what I meant was, do they die up close and personal—hand to hand, gunfight at the OK Corral? Or do they die because some motherfucker whose face they’ve never seen sent some shit their way that takes their poor, unfortunate asses out of here?”
Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) Page 7