La Pelouse, Karp knew, was one of the remarkably many places in the city where lunch cost in the neighborhood of a hundred dollars without tips or drinks. It was on Sixty-fifth off Lexington, a frostedglass window with the name in gold script on it, and a shiny black door under a stubby black awning. He had never been there, since he was an old-fashioned boy and thought a hundred dollars was still real money, an amount that if you lost it on the street would make you cranky all week.
Inside, past the tiny entrance lobby and the funereal maître d’, was a plain, dove-gray room with white trim, lit by white plaster sconces, in which eighteen tables sat like altars, and a long banquette occupied the left wall. Every table was occupied. As he followed the maître d’, Karp noted the famous faces—big-time movie stars, a network anchor—and thought that, among the more anonymous diners, nearly every name would be associated with some profitable large enterprise. Shelly Solotoff was sitting at a banquette, with a cell phone pressed to his ear. When he spotted Karp, he smiled, waved, moved the phone to his other hand, extended his right for a shake without rising, cupped the mouthpiece, said, “Butch—long time! Want a drink? I’ll be done in a sec.”
Karp sat and studied the man as he talked. A big man, not as tall as Karp but heavier, a lot heavier than he had been when the two of them had worked at the DA. His hair was dark, medium long, with an attractive whitening at the sides. It had the perfection that expensive barbering and skillful hair-weaving provided. The face was tan, as if he had just come in from the yacht. He looked good, in the manner of male models. Karp checked out the eyes and jowls for signs of plastic surgery and thought he detected that slight Ken-doll stiffening of the underlying muscles. Solotoff caught him looking and gave a little wink. His eyes were large, knowing, and bright brown. His suit was made of a kind of shimmery gray stuff that Karp knew was Italian and expensive, and which Karp would not have worn to a masked ball. The tie was metallic bronze, over a stiff-collared shirt of white silk with little monograms on the French cuffs. Patek Philippe watch, cuff links . . . yes, he could have guessed, tiny gold scales set into onyx.
Solotoff shifted the phone again. “No, no, Charlie, no jail time at all,” he was saying now. “The deal sucks. . . . Right. . . . No, they can’t use that evidence, Charlie. . . . No, trust me on this. . . . Yeah, I’ll call him after lunch. I got to go, Charlie. . . . Right. Okay, I’ll be in touch.”
Solotoff smiled and shook his head as he switched off the phone. “My local counsel. Case in Connecticut. The usual, preppy selling E to his buddies. Bad search, but Charlie, the guy’s a nervous Nellie. You know who the father is?”
Karp admitted he did not, and Solotoff told him the name of a former U.S. senator.
“That what you do now, Shelly? Dumb rich kid dope cases?”
“Pays the rent. How about you? Still stocking the jails with dumb poor kids?”
Karp shrugged, put on a social smile. “I didn’t write the law.”
“An unworthy cop-out. Unworthy of you, I mean. Typical of the average DA.”
A waiter appeared, bearing menus a yard long. Solotoff waved his away. “Jules, just tell Cyril to make me one of his truffle omelettes. He knows what I like. And an avocado salad and a bottle of Vichy.”
Karp opened the menu briefly, folded it, and handed it back to the waiter. “I’ll have a corned beef on rye and a kasha knish. And an orange soda.”
The waiter goggled for an instant, looked nervously at Solotoff, then donned a condescending smile at m’sieu’s little drollery. Karp said, “Tell Cyril to make me another one, easy on the truffles. And the rest the same, too.”
The man wafted away.
“Wow,” said Solotoff, “a long time. What is it, fifteen years?”
“About that. You’re looking good. Wealth suits you.”
“You know, I think it does. I’m amazed, frankly, that you’re still there. I heard that you left for downtown a while ago. And you went back?”
“Jack asked me to do homicide, and I went for it.”
“But then you got blown out of the job. Some race thing?”
“Yeah. A long story. People were carrying signs, ‘Ku Klux Karp.’ It was just one of those New York things. Jack hid me in staff for a while, and now I’m chief assistant.”
Solotoff was shaking his head. “Unbelievable! How can you stand it with all those lames up there?”
“Not all that lame. Roland’s still there. You remember Roland? I’d put him up against anyone in the country in a courtroom, on a homicide.”
“Oh, right, Roland! The blond beast. That’s the exception that proves the rule. Is he still pinching secretaries on the ass?”
“Not that he lets me see. We have policies about that now.”
“Yeah, I almost forgot the goddamn bureaucracy. And the corruption.”
“You going to offer me a job? Or are you just trying to make me feel bad?”
Solotoff laughed, an odd croaking sound without much volume. “A job? Hey, in a New York minute. Just say the word.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? Really.”
Shrug. Karp was growing bored with this line. “I guess I just like public service.” Lame.
The other man sprang to it. “Oh, please! Public service is for kids. It’s postgraduate school—you learn how the system works, how the judges like things, get a little trial practice. But staying in it? It’s strictly for losers, man. It’s white-collar sanitation work. You clear the darkies off the street so the quality doesn’t have to look at them. I mean it’s a joke.”
“Not necessarily. Laugh if you want to, and I know you want to, but at the end of the day the system’s all we have between anarchy and the police state.”
A contemptuous snort. “Yeah, that’s a Francis P. Garrahy line. I remember it well, the old fraud. Christ! Someone as smart and competent as you—it’s like meeting a grown man who still collects baseball cards and plays flip with them.”
“Phil Garrahy was a number of things,” said Karp, feeling the edge creep into his voice, “but fraud wasn’t one of them.”
“Oh, give me a break! Mr. Fucking DA! He was in office as long as Brezhnev and just as sharp there at the end, and even when he had his game, the Mafia controlled half a dozen major industries, all the unions, and Tammany Hall. Corruption was absolutely endemic in practically every city bureau, and virtually every cop in the city was on the pad, during which time Garrahy’s greatest achievement was nailing the quiz show scandals.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that, Shelly.”
“What, it’s not true? Plus the guy caught the biggest fucking break any DA ever caught—all the years he was in there crime rates were at the lowest in centuries. Which might have been helped by the fact that the cops were running a reign of terror in the less desirable parts of town. You ever notice how you never see a black face in those Times Square photographs from the forties and fifties? Fifth Avenue? Central Park? That’s why. Nightstick justice, aided and abetted by you guys back then. Totally corrupt, and based on wholesale police perjury. And don’t think it’s not still going on.”
“I said we’d have to agree to disagree on that,” Karp repeated in a tone that did not invite rejoinder. Solotoff locked eyes with him for a long moment, and Karp saw something in them that he could not identify—not fear exactly, but . . . something dark and complex. Then it was gone, and Solotoff laughed again. “Jesus, I had you going there for a while. Still the old grouch . . . good old Butch! Ah, here’s our food.”
They ate, and the conversation turned small. Sports, political anecdote, the antics of judges, movies, family. Solotoff was on his third wife, a cosmetics-empire heiress, and trophies of the hunt. Solotoff had the big condo on Park, the place in Quogue, membership in the best of the clubs that took Jews. He did most of the talking, he having the best toys. Boasting, sure, but maybe a tone of desperation there underneath? Karp wondered why this fellow was trying to sell a half-stranger his life in this
way, or why he was trying to crap on Karp’s. But he had determined to get through the wretched meal with good grace and covered adequately his lapses of attention. He found his mind drifting toward the Cooley case, running along in a parallel track that allowed him to utter the required grunts of appreciation, ask the appropriate questions. An idea rose, gelled—a plan, risky but feasible.
They finished. Karp declined the dessert and watched Solotoff line his arteries with crème brûleé. Solotoff made a call on his cell, and when they got to the street, a pearl-gray Lincoln was just gliding up to the curb.
Solotoff shook Karp’s hand vigorously and said, “Hey, I was serious a while ago. I hate like hell to see a smart guy like you fucking wasting his time.” He lowered his voice “The DA’s no place for a yiddisheh kop, bubeleh, and you know it. Let the goyim take out the garbage! See you around, pal.”
Not if I see you first, thought Karp, but he smiled politely until the car door closed. By the time his own ride showed up, the plan was fairly complete. This is why I’m still at the DA, asshole, was the thought he threw after the retreating limo.
6
AT THE SEVENTEENTH PRECINCT, THE DESK DIRECTED MARLENE TO A detective second grade named Fred Paradisio, whom she found in a typical detective-squad bay of the type that has been described so often that it is as familiar as a suburban bathroom. It smelled of burnt coffee and sadness, and the mingled low-end aftershaves of its inhabitants. Paradisio was a barrel of a man with oily, thinning black locks, and a head disconcertingly wider at the jaw than at the top. He had large, friendly eyes that lied, “Hey, I’m just a slob like you, you can trust me, pal.” Marlene identified herself and asked to see her daughter.
“Sure, Mrs. Ciampi,” said the detective, “but if we could, I’d like to talk to you a bit first. You want some coffee or a soft drink?”
“I want to see my daughter.”
“In a second.” He pointed. “Have a chair.”
Marlene bobbed her head and sat.
Paradisio settled himself in his swiveler and opened a notebook. “Okay, the situation here is that at two forty-six P.M. today 911 logged a call from your daughter saying that she had found a dead body in a makeshift shelter on a service walkway above the MTA rail yards. She was told to wait for the police. At two fifty-seven, a patrol vehicle arrived at Eleventh and Thirtieth, and the officers descended to the scene described by your daughter. This was a shelter made of newspapers baled together and waterproofed. Apparently there’s a kind of homeless hangout under there.”
“Yes, I know,” said Marlene impatiently.
“Oh, yeah? You’re down there a lot, communing with the homeless?”
“No, but she is.”
“You mean you let her run down with those people? She’s not like a runaway?”
“No, she is not. Detective, what’s the point of this? I’d like to see my daughter now.”
“Just a second, let me just get through this.” He peered again at the notebook. “The officers at the scene entered the newspaper structure and found a black male later determined to be Jerome Watkins, and he was determined to be deceased at the scene. They called it in, and me and my partner proceeded there. We are ruling it a homicide right now, subject to further investigation. We rousted all the other derelicts in the area and found your daughter in a packing-crate structure occupied by a black male named Ali Rashid Kalifa, aka Moses Belton. Belton has a record: armed robbery, assault, larceny. Served a couple of jolts upstate back in the eighties. Did you know about this? Your daughter hanging around with that type of person?”
“Yes.”
“You approve of this?”
“Detective, are you investigating my fitness as a parent?”
“Uh-uh, no, what I’m trying—”
“Then get to the point, finish whatever you are doing, and let me see my daughter!”
Paradisio looked hurt, in a studied way. “Fine. Your daughter actually found the body. According to this Ali, or Belton, she went and made the call, cool as anything, and then lost it. Ali or Belton said he was comforting her when we got there. She looked like she’d been crying, as a matter of fact. Okay, let me get to the point here . . .”
“Thank you.”
“The structure where the body was found was occupied by a man named John Carey Williams, aka Canman. Williams is a two-fer man. He buys aluminum cans from other homeless and crushes them and transports them to the recycle center. Apparently this person is some kind of special friend of your daughter. We would really like to talk to him.”
“You like him for the bum slasher?”
Paradisio’s genial-slob persona nearly cracked beneath this unexpected remark, but he coughed and recovered. “Gosh, I didn’t say anything about the bum slasher. I didn’t even say that Watkins was slashed at all.”
“But he was, or you wouldn’t be going through this act with me. What is this, vic number four? Even if he’s just taking out lowlifes, you still got a serial killer on your hands. You think Lucy saw something, or knows something about this Canman.”
“Let’s say she hasn’t been forthcoming.”
“If you would just let me speak to her, Detective, I’ll let you know whether she knows anything or not. Or do I have to go all lawyerly on you now?”
Paradisio did not want lawyerly. Marlene was led to an interview room, in which she found her daughter with an American-history text and a notebook open in front of her, calmly doing her homework.
“Well, homework!” said Marlene. “We should get you in jail more often.”
To Marlene’s surprise, the girl rose and embraced her and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry! I mean about yesterday . . . I keep losing my temper at you. I don’t know what gets into me. Demonic forces.” Lucy laughed unconvincingly. Marlene held her away and looked her over. She was wearing her usual uniform: a black sweater over a white shirt, a black wool skirt, black tights, and some kind of surplus combat boots. There was no color in her face and her eyes looked bruised.
“You’re forgiven. You’re a model of filial deportment compared to the way I acted at your age. Listen, we got us a little problem here.”
“I didn’t do anything.” Wary.
“I know you didn’t, but they think for some reason you’re withholding information, and you can’t do that. Recall that you’re still on probation from that stunt you pulled last year. You do not want the police cross with you. Sit down and tell me what happened.”
Lucy slumped in her chair and closed her book with a bang. She took a deep breath and began. “Okay. After school I went to Holy Redeemer looking for David. He wasn’t there, so I scouted around the neighborhood, you know, the homeless hangouts, and then I went down to the yards. I talked to Real Ali—”
“Excuse me, this is Moses Belton?”
“I don’t know about that. I’ve always called him Ali, or Ali Rashid. I’m teaching him a little Arabic. He’s a Muslim, the regular kind. Anyway, no one else was around, so I looked in Canman’s paper house. There was someone on the bed there, and at first I thought it was Canman. He was all covered up with blankets. But then I realized that his dog wasn’t there. And I went over and touched him, and I saw that it was Fake Ali. We call him . . . I mean, we called him that because he really thought he was the fighter. He was pretty crazy, but harmless, really a very sweet person, except if he thought you were George Foreman. Anyway, I saw he was dead. And . . . I sort of lost it then—I ran back to Ali’s and told him, and he calmed me down, and I walked up the block and found a pay phone and called the cops. That’s it.”
Marlene sighed heavily in the silence after this. “You really have the life, don’t you, baby?”
The girl looked away from this sympathy and piled her books into the old musette bag she used. “Yeah. Could we go now?”
“Not quite. The detective out there thinks there’s something you’re not telling. About this guy Canman. John Carey Williams. He’s a friend of yours?”
“Just one of the guys.�
�
“Lucy, darling, now is not the time to be evasive.”
Lucy bowed her head and froze. Marlene waited a minute. She could hear her daughter’s breath go in and out. Then Lucy said, “I guess I saw him. When I came out of the paper house. He was on the access walk, maybe a hundred yards away, and I saw Maggie. His dog. I yelled at him, but he turned away and ran. I’m sorry. I should have told the cops, but . . .”
“He’s a friend of yours. I understand. You know, the cops are starting to like him for the slasher. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, Mom!” The tears started to leak. “I don’t know anything anymore. Now, could we please go home?”
“You’ve read this already?” asked Karp, indicating the homicide report on the Lomax shooting. It had arrived four days after he had asked for it, the day the case, assuming all the players could be rounded up, would actually be presented to the grand jury, having been rescheduled from the previous Friday.
“Yeah,” said his special assistant.
“What do you think?”
Murrow gathered his thoughts. “I don’t know, chief. A couple of cars sliding around on the wet road, bullets flying everywhere . . . I mean, who knows what really happened? The report says the evidence is not inconsistent with the testimony of the officers involved.”
“Yeah, but that’s like saying the Warren Report is not inconsistent with the evidence they decided to gather and use.” Karp tapped the folder on his desk. “There’s something funny in this thing. No, two things funny. You know what they are?”
“No, and I’ll bet you’re going to tell me.”
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