Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers)

by Tanenbaum, Robert K.

  “I can’t say I’m thrilled she took the assignment,” Murrow admitted. “She may be a cat with nine lives, but I think she’s used a bunch of those up already.”

  “Well, Ariadne knows how to take care of herself…”

  Karp’s attempt to reassure his aide was interrupted by a buzz from his intercom followed by the supercilious voice of Karp’s receptionist, Darla Milquetost. “Mr. Reed to see you.”

  “Send him in, thank you, Darla,” Karp replied, and sat back in his chair.

  The door opened and a handsome, well-dressed man in his early forties started to enter the room, but hesitated before continuing when he saw who was there. “Gosh, all the heavy hitters,” Stewart Reed said with a smile, though his voice sounded tense. “Should I have brought a blindfold and cigarette?”

  “Unfortunately, you can no longer smoke in New York City,” Guma groused as he chewed on the end of his cigar. “The tobacco Nazis have seen to that.”

  Karp rolled his eyes as he pointed to an empty chair next to McKean. “No need for either, Stewbie. Have a seat. We’re just talking about the Maplethorpe retrial.”

  Reed froze as he was starting to sit. “You replacing me?” He blinked hard and bit his lip.

  Karp was surprised by the reaction. He really is taking this hard. Better defuse this right away. “Nonsense,” he replied. “It’s been your case from the beginning, and it will still be yours when this is all over.”

  Reed swallowed hard and nodded, taking his seat. “Thanks. But I would have understood, sometimes a fresh set of eyes and—”

  Karp held up a hand to cut him off. “Again, it’s your case, and you handle it the way you believe is best, but I agree that a fresh set of eyes might help. That’s why I asked Guma, Tom, and Gilbert to sit in on this…and one more…wherever he is.” He leaned forward and touched a button on the intercom. “Darla, has Mr. Katz arrived yet?”

  “No, but I hear him out in the hall…apparently saying his good-byes to Miss Bond,” Mrs. Milquetost sniffed.

  Karp feigned a look of shock at his receptionist’s tone. Darla Milquetost was a prim and proper widow in her midfifties, and she no doubt did not approve of office fraternization. And because she treated Assistant District Attorney Kenny Katz like a son, Karp assumed that her displeasure was directed at the young woman involved.

  “Ah, well, then send him in as soon as he can tear himself away from Sondra,” Karp said. He turned to look at Reed, who was contemplating his immaculate fingernails as they waited.

  Stewbie Reed was widely considered to be the best male dresser in the DAO, especially now that the independently wealthy V. T. Newbury had moved on to private practice with his uncle in the family firm of Newbury, Newbury and White.

  Reed was not independently wealthy, but judging by the look of him, he was one of the few assistant district attorneys in the DAO who spent a hefty percentage of his paycheck on haberdashery. Most male ADAs stuck with the bar mitzvah–blue coat and slacks straight off the rack, but Reed’s suits were tailor-made and expensive. He never seemed to have a wrinkle on him or, for that matter, a hair out of place on his neatly barbered head.

  Karp had once asked him how he managed to get from the apartment near Washington Square in the Village, where Reed lived, to Centre Street without scuffing his always immaculate shoes. Stewbie smiled and allowed that he left a half dozen pairs of dress shoes in the office and wore running shoes to get back and forth. “I have other dress shoes at home for going out.”

  There was a knock at the door, which immediately opened to reveal Kenny Katz. The twenty-eight-year-old ADA was sort of the anti-Stewbie, at least in appearance. He was perpetually rumpled and Karp had once seen him use a Magic Marker to disguise a scuff mark on one of his shoes before going into court. A crooked grin, long sideburns, and curly brown hair that he wore in what Karp called a Jewfro made him look more like a left-wing college radical from the sixties than a prosecutor. But he was a classic case of looks being deceiving.

  Katz walked with a slight limp he’d earned the hard way. Following the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001, he’d quit law school at Columbia and enlisted in the army, serving with the elite Rangers in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he’d been awarded the Bronze and Silver stars for valor, as well as a Purple Heart. After his discharge, he’d returned to law school for the sole purpose, like Karp before him, of joining the New York DAO.

  Karp chuckled to himself as Katz sauntered into the room, thinking that some people probably found his young protégé annoying, much like Professor Cole had said was the case with him. And yes, the kid—as Karp thought of Katz—could come off as cocky, but that belied a genuine steadiness and humility; he never boasted or even talked about his military service or his medals, and it wouldn’t have surprised Karp if he was the only one in the DAO who knew about them.

  “Ah, Mr. Katz,” Karp said, looking at his watch, “kind of you to join us.”

  Katz blushed. “I was, uh, discussing certain legal strategies with Miss Bond.”

  “Such as the best time for a rendezvous in the file room?” Guma inquired. “Been there, done that.”

  Katz grinned and turned red. But it was Karp who spoke. “Uh, no need to reply to Mr. Guma’s ancient recollections of conquests real and imagined. His mind hasn’t been out of the gutter since puberty.”

  Guma laughed. “I resemble that.”

  “You don’t just resemble it, you’re the spitting image,” Karp shot back.

  The banter went back and forth for a little longer, but then they stopped talking and all eyes turned to Karp. “Well, I asked everybody here to discuss what’s next with the Maplethorpe case, which is coming up at the end of the month, and get your thoughts together on…” He was going to say “what went wrong” but caught himself; this wasn’t about finding fault and he wanted Reed to know that. “On why you think the jury hung and what we can do to plug any holes, or anything we might have missed the first time.”

  He sensed Reed tensing at the comment and hurried to add, “However, I want to start by saying, I’ve been over the transcripts—including most of the pretrial hearings—and Stewbie, no one can fault your handling of the case. No one knows for sure why this jury hung. It could have been as simple as one Broadway aficionado who slipped through the cracks at voir dire, maybe even lied for the purpose of getting on this jury to save Maplethorpe.”

  Reed’s lips twitched into a brief smile and he nodded. “Thanks. But it still feels like someone tore my heart out. I keep going over the trial in my head, trying to figure out where I lost the jury.”

  “Have you come up with anything?” McKean asked. “I’m with Butch here in that while we may need to alter our game plan a bit, I think you did a hell of a job.”

  Reed shrugged. “Nothing I can put a finger on. I thought my expert witnesses were pretty damn good, but maybe theirs were just more believable. I’ve been over my summation a dozen times, and I think I could have been better there, too.”

  “Maybe you’re overthinking this thing,” Guma suggested.

  “What do you mean?” Reed asked. He smiled but his voice was defensive again.

  “Just that maybe less would be more.”

  “I thought preparation was supposed to be the hallmark of this office?” Reed’s jaw had tightened and his eyes glistened.

  Guma looked up at the ceiling. “Look, Stewbie, I’m not trying to second-guess you…”

  “Well, it certainly sounds like it…”

  “I’m just trying to raise the possibility that maybe between all these experts, the jury got confused. And maybe this case was as simple as saying ‘This scumbag stuck a gun in that poor woman’s mouth and pulled the trigger.’ That’s all.”

  “If it was that easy, you should have tried the case. I obviously fucked it up.”

  Karp cleared his throat. This was not going the way he intended. He’d never heard Reed use the F-bomb and if he got his back too far up, he wasn’t going to be recep
tive to suggestions about how to proceed. “Okay, gentlemen, this isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t disagree with Guma in some respects, but at the same time, Stewbie handled the case the way 99.9 percent of the prosecutors in this country, including those in this room, would have. But the old tried and true didn’t work this time around, so maybe it’s time for us to think a little bit outside the box.”

  Guma and Reed had each started to say something but shut their mouths, and Karp used the moment to ask a question about one of the pretrial hearings. “I was reading the transcript from a motions hearing,” he said, “and at some point, Maplethorpe seemed to go ballistic, but the record stopped. What was that about?”

  Reed relaxed and nodded. “It was the oddest thing. That was a hearing when they were still considering an insanity defense. Maplethorpe’s lead mouthpiece, Guy Leonard, was introducing some psychologist’s interview with Maplethorpe when he said something about Maplethorpe’s mother. That she’d left him as a child, and Leonard wanted to introduce a photograph of Maplethorpe and his mother when he was maybe five or six. Suddenly, Maplethorpe jumped up out of his chair and started shouting, ‘Objection! Objection!’”

  “Which is when the judge struck it from the record,” Karp noted.

  “Yeah, but the best was still to come,” Reed said with a laugh. “Maplethorpe was practically frothing at the mouth, and at his own lawyer no less. Leonard, who’d been standing near the witness stand, came over to calm him down, but Maplethorpe threw a pitcher of water at him.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Guma said. “I would have loved to have seen that.”

  “It was pretty amusing…Leonard’s there with this big water spot on his trousers—and that pitcher wasn’t light, it must have hurt. And the whole time, Maplethorpe is screaming, ‘You leave my mother out of this!’ They had to restrain him and take him out of the court.”

  “You get a chance to explore that during the trial?” McKean asked.

  Reed shook his head. “Unfortunately no. They didn’t end up going for an insanity defense, and they didn’t bring up any childhood issues, so there was no way to go there. I still have a copy of the photograph in the file, he’s all dressed up like a little cowboy…in fact, I’m working on something one of our witnesses—that Italian guy, Hilario Gianneschi—said that may actually be related.”

  “How so?” Karp asked.

  “I’d rather not say at the moment,” Reed replied. “It’s just a wild thought…something the guy told the cops about what Maplethorpe was wearing, but he said it in Italian. I told Leonard that I might want to enter the photograph as a prosecution exhibit, but not what for yet.”

  “You speak paisan?” Guma asked.

  “A beginner,” Reed said. “I’ve always wanted to visit Rome, so I’m going next summer with my sister and I’ve been taking lessons.”

  Karp nodded. “Well, let me know if anything pans out. In the meantime, let’s all take one last look at the transcripts and meet again same time next week. When’s the next court date and what, if anything, is scheduled?”

  “A hearing next week over more drummed-up nonsense. Otherwise, I’m just going over my opening and summation, and reviewing the witness testimony to see if I can spot any weaknesses with their experts or mine.”

  “Okay,” Karp replied, looking at his watch. “Sorry, guys, I have another meeting. But I wanted to get to the final item and that is that I’m asking Kenny Katz to sit second chair with Stewbie on the retrial.”

  Karp caught the quick, hard look Reed shot in Kenny’s direction. Katz also reacted by dropping his jaw; this was news to him, too.

  “I don’t need any more help,” Reed replied. “Miss Brinkerhoff did fine.”

  “I don’t think you do, either,” Karp replied evenly. Reed’s voice was getting angry, but he was not going to turn this into a confrontation if he could help it.

  “Then I guess the purpose would be to have someone keep tabs on me—make sure I don’t fuck up again?” Reed asked. “Or maybe Kenny should do the summation.”

  Katz squirmed uncomfortably in his seat at the sarcasm. No prosecutor worth his salt willingly gave up giving the closing summation in a murder trial. It would be like throwing a no-hitter through eight innings and having the manager yank you in the ninth because you walked someone.

  “Not at all,” Karp replied. “As a matter of fact, I don’t expect him to do much more than sit there and observe a pro at work. It’s up to you to use him, or not, however you see fit. Do I think we can make improvements on how we go forward with this case? Yes. But my main reason is that this is an unusual case with a lot of nuances, and while you and I might not see another like it before we retire, he might and the experience would be invaluable.”

  Karp was telling the truth. One of his “failings” as a district attorney, at least in his own opinion, was that he hadn’t done enough to bring along the next generation of assistant district attorneys. The top echelon at the DAO, with guys like McKean, Guma, and Reed—and don’t forget V.T.—was one of the best in the country. But Garrahy had always emphasized what the longtime Yankee fan called “the farm system”—identifying the best prospects among the young assistant DAs and pairing them up with the best veterans. It was the reason that Karp had taken Katz under his wing. But we need to do a lot more of that.

  Reed didn’t respond to Karp’s explanation except with a curt nod. He didn’t speak for the rest of the meeting, and then left as quickly as he could get away. Katz followed on his heels.

  Guma held his cigar up as if inspecting it for holes. “That went well,” he said.

  “He’ll be okay,” McKean replied. “He’s taking everything a little personally. But he’s a pro and he’ll come around once he’s had a chance to chew on it.”

  Karp nodded. “That’s why I didn’t want to announce that Kenny is second chair at the staff meeting. I don’t want to embarrass Stewbie. The rest of the staff can find out on their own the old-fashioned way…office gossip.”

  Guma laughed. “Darla Milquetost, you mean.”

  Karp chuckled as the others stood and left the office. The door had just shut on the last of them when Milquetost buzzed him. “You have a call…from Giancarlo.”

  11

  “YOU HAVE A CALL…FROM GIANCARLO.” KARP WAS SURPRISED. His family rarely called him at work. He looked at his watch, almost quitting time, and Marlene had warned him to be home promptly. Lucy and her boyfriend, Ned, had been in town for the past week, but Ned was leaving tonight and Marlene was whipping up one of her special spaghetti dinners. He picked up the telephone and pressed the Line button, expecting to be asked his ETA. “Yeah, G, what’s up?”

  “Have you figured it out, Mr. Karp?” The voice was young, but it was not his son.

  “Who is this?”

  “Andy.”

  “Andy who?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the boy replied. “Have you figured it out yet?”

  “Figured what out?”

  “‘In Casa Blanca plans are made that have to do with the art of war. One can be a house, the other is usually not an art. But when you look at both what do you see? And so does the deadly connection between the two sides.’ It’s a riddle. I love riddles.”

  Karp looked down at the folded envelope that was still lying on his desk. “What about it? You mean Casablanca the movie?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out. Can’t you see it?”

  “Not yet, why don’t you give me another hint? Was that your dad who put the note in my pocket?”

  The phone was silent and Karp thought he’d lost the connection. But then the boy sighed and said, “It’s the worst that could happen.”

  “What is, Andy? Are you trying to tell me about someone getting hurt?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  “Well, sorry, Andy, but I don’t have time for games…”

  “This isn’t a game, Mr. Karp. Ask Lucy about Dagestan.”

&nbs
p; “How do you know Lucy?”

  “We’re old friends.”

  “What about Dagestan?”

  “Just ask. Then you’ll know I’m not just playing games. I got to go, see ya later, alligator.”

  Karp hung up and then walked over to the couch where Murrow had been sitting and picked up the Times that was lying on one of the cushions. He was looking for a short article in the international news section that he’d glanced at before the meeting.

  Here it is, he thought, and reread the story citing a Russian news agency that blamed Islamic terrorists for the murder of a Saudi Arabian shipping executive in—drum roll, please—Dagestan. Apparently, Ali Ashoor, whose company operated refrigeration ships for transporting food and other items needing cold storage, had been in the country to negotiate a contract for shipping milk “when his party was ambushed while traveling through the Caucasus Mountains.” The Russian Army was said to be in pursuit of the Islamic “bandits and criminals responsible for his murder.”

  The date of the incident coincided with a trip abroad Lucy had taken. In fact, she and Ned were visiting her family home on Crosby Street on their way back to New Mexico from wherever it was. She avoided talking about where they’d been and he and Marlene had known better than to press.

  He’d had to admit to himself that there was a lot he didn’t know about his daughter’s involvement with Espey. Sometimes he and Marlene didn’t hear from her for a week or more, but up to that point, they’d chosen to think it was because there was no telephone or cell phone service at the ranch cabin where she lived with Ned. Only when they drove into Taos could she call.

  Still, it was hard to imagine his daughter connected to the assassination of a reputed businessman in a country he’d never heard of. But as he thought about what Andy had said, the picture was pretty clear. His daughter was a spook involved in a deadly, high-stakes game of kill or be killed with terrorists.