Act of Revenge

Chapter 2

It was Karp’s habit when the weather was fine to pick up the News and skim through it as he strode along the eight-block distance between the loft and the New York County courthouse at 10 °Centre Street. He relied on his size and the determination of his walk to clear the way of all smaller mobile objects and his remarkable peripheral vision to steer clear of the larger ones, like trucks. Karp walked with the loping, graceful stride of the American athlete, which also served to sweep people from his way. Karp had, in fact, been an athlete, a very good one in his youth, a high school All-American in basketball and a Pac 10 star at Berkeley. A horrific injury to his knee had cut that career short, eliminating the jock arrogance from his personality and the knee itself from his body. Having had the orthopedic replacement, he was after nearly twenty years quite pain-free, except, on occasions, around the heart. Suffering does not always ennoble, but in Karp’s case it actually had, although it would never have occurred to him (as it would have and did to his wife) to think of it that way. What he felt was a rediscovered pleasure in his body, evinced now, as it was every workday morning, in the recovery of his swift, charging, aggressive New York pace. He could usually get through his usual reading-sports and crime-by the time he reached the trash can at Foley Square, where the courthouse stood.

The weather was indeed fine, and he flew more or less blind down Centre Street from Grand, clutching the tattered red cardboard folder he used for a briefcase under his arm like a running back’s football, and snapping through the pages of the tabloid. Karp had a real briefcase, a lush cordovan Mark Cross, given to him by his father for his law school graduation gift, but he never used it. This had to do with Karp’s extraordinary (and in that era of luxuriant self-promotion, near-pathological) conservatism with regard to personal show, which had prevented him from appearing with a shiny new briefcase on his first day at the D.A.’s years ago, and continued to generate excuses for not now showing up with it. Lugging the tacky cardboard gave him a vague satisfaction, and also served to distinguish him in his own mind from those members of his profession not famously devoted to justice, who had been richly rewarded by society for their scumbaggery, and who typically hauled their vile shenanigans about in the finest morocco.

As for the rest of his equipage, Karp was dressed at that moment in a natural shoulder, three-button, navy tropical wool suit with the faintest of pinstripes, one virtually identical to the other nine suits he owned (half winter- and half summer-weight). With this he wore a plain-collar white silk shirt and a tie that Richard Nixon might have rejected as being a shade too understated, and a pair of black cap-toe wing tips. Except for the tie, everything visible he had on was custom-made and of the highest possible quality, which bought at retail would have set him back well over five grand. He had spent nothing like that, however, since the clothing and shoes came from Chen connections in Hong Kong and Taipei, who had supplied it at cost or less. Thus did Karp reap the benefits of being, through marriage, an honorary Chen, and therefore he read with more than usual concentration the story of the murders in the Asia Mall, and not without a sharp pang of fear, since he knew that the murder scene was one of the usual hangouts of his little girl. He parked the tabloid in his usual waste can and walked into Foley Square.

Two centuries ago, Foley Square had been Collect Pond, a body of water that early New Yorkers had soon converted into an open sewer. Hardly had the colonial filth jelled when they built the city jail on it, which sank into the mire, and then they built another one on top of it, the infamous Tombs. The four towers that Karp saw as he walked through the tiny park with its incomprehensible orange steel sculpture was the third grim structure on the site, and no longer the main New York jail, although one tower was still used as a holding facility for prisoners undergoing justice and was still called the Tombs. It was a gray and hulking fascist ziggurat, and Karp, who had slight interest in architecture, rather liked it. He thought that, considering what transpired within, a pretty building would have been an obscenity.

There was an entrance on the south side of the Criminal Courts building reserved for its staff, but Karp ordinarily preferred to come in through the main door facing Foley Square. Here he was exposed to the sentiments carved in marble on the sides of the entranceway, and, as a ritual, he read one or two of them, like a tourist. This morning it was Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people, which always gave Karp a chuckle, since what was just on the other side of the swinging glass doors was a pretty good argument why not. The lobby here had been known since the late sixties as the Streets of Calcutta. When someone in the D.A. said, “Hey, I saw Bernie Popkin in Calcutta yesterday,” they referred not to the Asian metropolis but to this melancholy hallway, murmurous with sighs, cries of outrage, confidential whispers, and other noises associated with a criminal-justice apparatus rusted and crumbling like the West Side Highway, and suffused, not unlike the actual Calcutta, with a peculiar and diagnostic odor, constructed of old paint, musty papers, disinfectant, the snack bar’s grease-and-burnt-coffee, the expensive cologne of rich lawyers, the cheap scent of whores, and the immemorial effluvium of the unwashed poor.

This was, of course, Karp’s native air, and a tonic; breathing it in and rubbing against Calcutta was the reason he took this route. In his present job he spent a lot of time handling clean paper and harrying the neatly dressed. He felt his edge slowly dulling and wanted grit, and this walk was, most days, all he would get of it. He passed the several thick lines of people waiting to traverse the guard station and its metal detectors and went toward the left side of the entryway, where there was a special gate for the anointed. People were lined up there, too, showing their passes. Karp did not show his pass, because the guard and all the other court officers knew him by sight. This was not hard to do, because Karp was six-five, with big hands and long arms on a solidly built lean frame, a tall dark slab like the one that amazed the ape men in 2001. On top of this was an equally memorable face, a bony, sallow one with a broad, heavy brow under crisp brown hair unfashionably cut by an ancient Italian person on Mulberry Street, and high cheekbones, not the good type sported by the people who drank crystalline martinis in Connecticut, but the less prestigious kind seen on those who drank fermented mare’s milk east of Odessa. A determined chin under a surprisingly sensual mouth, a nose too large and too often broken-now resembling a sock toe full of pebbles-and, his most striking feature, odd, long, slightly slanted eyes, colored gray with yellow flecks. Karp flashed this face at the guard, greeted her by name, and was waved on through. The usual murmur of resentment issued from some of the other people waiting before the gate, this being democratic New York, and standing on line, as they say there, being one of the last remaining flecks of cultural glue, but no actual challenges. Karp was not above taking this privilege of rank.

Another one of these was the office. It was located on the eighth floor in the suite occupied by the district attorney, and it contained rugs and paneling and wooden furniture and a big leather chair and two large windows looking out on Foley Square. Karp greeted Mary O’Malley, the D.A.’s formidable secretary, went by the supply room for a cup of her excellent coffee, and went back to his office. Karp had recently been made, somewhat to his own surprise, chief assistant district attorney. Before that he had held a meaningless staff post into which he had been stuffed to rescue him from a political firestorm arising out of a racially charged murder case. Since then there had been an election, which the D.A., Jack Keegan, had won by a 71 percent plurality and could thereafter do as he damn pleased, and what he pleased to do was to appoint Karp as what was essentially the chief operating officer of the entire prosecutorial organization. Karp did not particularly enjoy the bureaucratic aspects of the job, but he was vitally interested in maintaining the integrity of the D.A.’s office against all assaults, of which in the present corrupt age there were many. What Karp really liked doing, what he did better than practically anyone in the city, was trying homicide cases, and in the negotiations that had led to his present position he had arranged with Keegan, in a manner rather like some medieval symbol of a feudal obligation (the gill of pepper or the five silver fox pelts) that he would get his pick of one case per annum, to prepare and to bring before a jury. Meanwhile, he was a team player, and he discovered, also to his surprise, that he was reasonably competent at a variety of unpleasant bureaucratic tasks. He hired, he fired. He caused the drafting and distribution and approval of policy documents. He spread terror among the incompetent and lazy. He kibitzed on important trials. He distributed largesse-office furniture, remodel-ing, space, and staff-where he thought it would do the most good, he spied discreetly, and he passed on to his boss what he considered it proper for the big guy to know. And occasionally he had dumped in his lap an affair so tormented, so covered with poisonous spines and excrement, that only someone with insane bravery and no detectable ambition for higher office would touch it with a barge pole.

Then O’Malley came in abruptly, her wrist with its watch held up in front of her face. Karp stared at her. She tapped the watch dial with a blunt fingernail.

“The Hilton? It’s nine-fifty.”

“Oh, shit!” cried Karp, leaping up. He ran for the door, grabbing his jacket on the way. The secretary slapped an envelope into his hand, like the baton of a relay racer, as he flew by.

“Ed’s waiting out on Leonard Street,” shouted O’Malley, and received a shouted thanks.

Of all of Karp’s duties, the most irritating (which is why he often had to be reminded of it, as now) was representing the district attorney at public events that the district attorney did not think quite important enough to require the exhibition of his actual body, but not negligible either, so that someone from the office had to go eat the chicken and peas. Karp was almost always this eater.

At least he got to go to these in a cop car. Ed Morris, his driver, goosed lights and siren to clear a path uptown. Karp dabbed his brow with his handkerchief, used the rearview to fix his tie, and pulled out the contents of the envelope. Oh, yeah, this, he recalled: the Metropolitan Council’s annual awards luncheon. This was an assembly of the great and the good dedicated to civic improvements of all types, one of the older and less interesting of the innumerable groups doing the same in New York. It was dominated by slightly right-of-center academics, didn’t give political contributions, and was not likely to soon give an award to Jack Keegan, which was why he wasn’t going and Karp was. The person who was getting this year’s award was Thomas Colombo, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a registered Republican. Karp ran his eyes down the list of speakers and discovered “John J. Keegan (invited),” who was to discourse on “The New York D.A. and Organized Crime” for fifteen minutes as a warm-up to the actual award and the main address by its distinguished recipient, whose subject was listed as “Using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act Against Criminal Infiltrators.”

Karp cursed briefly, pulled out a pen, and started to make notes on the back of the flyer. Public speaking held no fears for him, and he was an extempore speaker of real talent. By the time he had arrived at the Hilton at 53rd and Sixth, he had a beginning, middle, and closing indicated by telegraphic sentences, and single-word indications referring to appropriate jokes-frog, farmer, clam-all guaranteed not to offend any conceivable ethnic, religious, disadvantaged, or sexual group.

He was late to the dais table-the fruit cup had already been proferred-but he shook hands with the owlish professor who ran the outfit, made a gracious apology for his boss’s unavailability and his own lateness, and told the man who he was. He sat down between a Methodist bishop and an attractive woman whose name card said she was the president of one of the city university’s colleges. The college president immediately engaged him in a conversation about Marlene Ciampi, his wife, about whom she had an unbounded curiosity, this soon shared by the bishop, and Karp found himself reluctantly recounting the inside skinny on some of her cases, and after that began to grow tedious (“But how do you stand it, the violence? And what about the children?”) he skillfully turned the subject to college presidenting and bishopry. One good thing about the people you met at these operations, he reflected, it was never hard to get them to start talking about themselves.

The owlish professor tapped a glass as Latinos carted away the remains of the meal and introduced Karp and his subject. There was no sigh of disappointment in the crowd. Karp was very nearly as well-known among the city’s crime buffs as the D.A. himself, and had perhaps the more colorful background.

He rose to the podium, told the frog joke, got a mild laugh, presented the take of the man Karp considered the finest of the city’s D.A.s, the late, great Francis P. Garrahy, on the Mob (They want to kill each other? I’ll hire Yankee Stadium for them, and I’ll pay for the bullets), and then delivered a precise and lucid talk about the origins of organized crime in New York and why it was inevitable given the predilection of Americans to legislate sin into the criminal code, and why the alternative to organized crime was not necessarily law and order, but was more often an increase in disorganized crime, verging on anarchy and the conversion of streets into war zones. He reminded his audience that when Murder Incorporated did its work back in the thirties and forties, it killed discreetly and accurately, and did not spray the streets with gunfire, wiping out kids and old ladies. Reverse course now, tell the farmer joke, remarks not meant as an endorsement of the Mob, The Godfather only a movie, the real guys nasty, unattractive, fortunately mostly dumb as a load of bricks, then a brief summary of the D.A.’s approach to organized crime, which was not that different from its approach to regular crime-if someone did a crime, they got prosecuted, whether their name was Gambino, Colombo, or Ishkabibble. Tell some goombah stories, the big New York cases, Tom Dewey, Garrahy, more modestly, Karp himself (moral: we don’t necessarily need the feds to help us deal with these fellas), tell the clam joke, big laugh, but not from Tommy Colombo, who never liked to hear the name of that particular crime family uttered in a public place, and Karp had indeed used it as a mildly nasty zinger, see if the guy was awake there, and move to close. Burst of applause, actual, not polite hand slapping.

Then the professor introduced Colombo, introduced the award, told everyone why Tommy C. was getting it, and handed it over (a crystal plaque with a bronze shield embedded within). Colombo moved to the podium. He was a stocky man of thirty-eight with thinning brown hair, a bony, big-nosed hatchet face, and a wide, lipless mouth. Under heavy eyebrows his eyes were large, heavy-lidded, and protuberant. He had a strong tenor voice and a New York accent. Karp had meanly left the microphone up so that Colombo had to bring it down seven inches, thus illustrating the difference between Karp’s height and his own.

Colombo spoke RICO for twenty-five minutes, reading from a sheaf of papers, squeezing in as many invidious comparisons as possible between the old, ineffective, case-by-case way of dealing with the Mob (broadly implied: just what the New York D.A. still did, the patzers) and the RICO way: gigantic, thermonuclear-strength prosecutions with multiple indictments that could wipe out whole crime families at a blow. His applause was noticeably less intense than that which had followed Karp’s effort.

Afterward, politeness required Karp to mingle and shake, people coming up and exclaiming how much they liked his talk and would he consent to speak at their school, church, club, retreat, picnic, commencement? He collected business cards and distributed noncommittal answers. He got vamped in a civilized way by the college president (which had the virtue of keeping others away), and after that he made his escape.

As he wrongly imagined. There was a blond, burly crew cut standing by the elevator. Karp observed that he had a little radio device in his ear. When Karp approached, the crew cut mashed the elevator button, the door slid open, Karp entered, but the crew cut didn’t. Tommy Colombo was in the car.

“Nice speech, Butch,” he said, mirthlessly smiling. They shook.

“Thanks. I’m going down,” said Karp.

Colombo pushed L. “I always thought Jack was lucky to have you,” said Colombo. “Of course, it’s a hell of a waste, you running errands like this. It’s like using Reggie Jackson as a bat boy.”

“How about those Yankees?” said Karp tonelessly.

“Seriously, I never figured it out, how come you don’t move somewhere where you could try cases?”

“Seriously? I tried private for a while. I didn’t much like it.”

“I don’t mean private,” said Colombo. “I don’t mean Brooklyn or Nassau either.”

The elevator stopped. Colombo put his finger on the door-close button. “You taking up career counseling, Tom?” Karp asked.

“Like the Marines, I’m always looking for a few good men. My trial division chief is about to transfer out. You should come by, we’ll talk. About trial work, major cases.”

Karp nodded and said, as to a child, “Tom, let me explain a few things. First of all, I’m controlling a case load approximately a hundred times the size of yours. I could run your whole trial division in my lunch hour. Second, I can try any case I like, and when I do I get to try it my way, without having to think about what it means to anybody’s political ambitions down in D.C., or even right here in the city. Third, I work for a guy I respect.” Here he looked down at Colombo and stared expressionlessly as he would have at a felon who had just told a whopper, waiting for the skel to lose the attitude. Colombo stared back at him, a look of disbelief on his face. He was not often spoken to in this manner. Karp said, “Tom, take your finger off the button. And the next time you want to talk to me, use the phone and make an appointment. The elevator and the FBI guy business is for the movies.”

After a few seconds’ hiatus to demonstrate who was in control, or something like that, Colombo released the button and Karp walked out.

On the ride downtown, he mused about the impossibility of his ever working for somebody like Tommy Colombo. Keegan was very nearly as ambitious as the other man, but Karp thought he could usually shame Jack Keegan into behaving by playing the Francis P. Garrahy card. Keegan needed at some level to feel himself right with Garrahy, his mentor, the greatest D.A. in New York’s history. Over Colombo Karp would have no such control. He dismissed the man from his mind and pulled out his calendar. A meeting about handicapped accessibility around the courthouse. Wonderful!

At his office, there were two people in wheelchairs and a guy with black glasses and a white stick waiting for him. He smiled, sighed, and waved them in.

Back at the Crosby Street loft, Mrs. Karp, nee and still to all the world Marlene Ciampi, sat at her kitchen table and gazed mindlessly at the smoky surface of a cup of Medaglia D’Oro coffee the color and consistency of tire paint, waiting for her personality to reassemble itself from the chaos of sleep. Flanking her were Zak and Giancarlo, four and identical, sloppily munching a brand of cartoon cereal sugary enough to cause hypoglycemia in the average adult and with little nutritional value. An enormous black Neapolitan mastiff circulated under the table, grunting and licking up spills. Mrs. Karp disapproved, mildly, but she was not in charge of breakfast.

The person who was, Posie the Hippie Slut Nanny, sat opposite, crunching the same garbage, and regally handling the remote for the small Sony depending from a corner of the ceiling. She switched channels rapidly, in a manner designed to mollify the twins, who, though alike as two eggs to the eye, had radically different tastes in morning TV, Zak preferring trashy cartoon violence, Giancarlo doting on Sesame Street and, strangely, game shows. Mrs. Karp ordinarily found such channel surfing unbearable, but said nothing. Officially, she was not really there, and she was bottomlessly grateful to Posie for handling the boys’ mornings. The girl could have fed them human flesh and run little Satanic rituals without Marlene making much of a fuss. Morning was not her best time.

She was snapped into real consciousness because Posie’s thumb happened to falter on the switch and the set rested for a moment on a morning news program. Marlene heard, “. . further developments in last night’s double murder in the stockroom of a Chinatown shopping center. The police are questioning Mr. Louie Chen, owner of the Asia Mall, where the bodies of two men reported. . zzsk. . He-Man, we’ve got to get to the castle before Skeletor uses his death ray-”

“Wait! Posie, go back!” cried Marlene.

“What, the news?”

“Yeah, do it!”

But when the morning show came back, the screen showed only the front of the Asia Mall with an attractive young Chinese-American newscaster named Gloria Eng standing in front of it, saying, “. . the possibility of a gang war in Chinatown. Back to you, Ron.”

Posie grinned broadly and pointed. “Hey, that’s the Chens’ place on the TV. Wow! I was just there the other day.”

Giancarlo said, “I was there, too.”

“That’s where we get lichee nuts,” Zak added. “Posie, could we go there today?”

“Today is probably not a great idea, kids,” said Marlene, rising. She slurped some more coffee and took the cup down the length of the loft to her home office, where she put in a call to the Chen residence. As she had feared, she got nothing but a busy signal. After the fifth call she gave up and dialed another number which, since it was a police station, was answered. Marlene asked to speak to Detective James Raney, waited, was told he was out, and left a message. After that she trotted through the shower and dressed in her informal work outfit: black cotton slacks, black Converse footwear, and one of her large collection of Hawaiian shirts, the discreet pistol-covering kind, this with mauve orchids, clouds, and moons against bright yellow.

She was checking out this outfit in her mirror when the phone rang and it was Raney returning her call.

“You’ve decided to leave him and marry me,” said Raney. “I knew today was going to be my lucky day.”

“Yeah, well, we’re almost there, Raney; as soon as the pope comes around on divorce, I’m yours. Meanwhile, what have you got on the thing yesterday at the Asia Mall on Canal?”

“Oh, no small talk? No how’s it going, Jim, how’s your life been, no tell me the secrets of your inner heart, Jim, we been pals for I forget how many years?”

“I’m sorry, Jim,” said Marlene, adopting a concerned therapist’s tone, “please, tell me the secrets of your inner heart. Did you ever get help for that sexual thing? The dribble?”

Raney cracked up at this, and they chatted amiably for a few minutes. Raney was Marlene’s best friend on the cops and, of course, her primary source of cop information. She quizzed him again on the Chinatown killings, and he made some information-free noises.

“Are you going to make me describe my underwear again, Raney?”

“Um, always a thrill, but I don’t think I know enough for a fair trade. A mystery, is what I hear. Two guys, Hong Kong passports, shot twice each, head and back, in the stockroom of the Asia Mall. Nobody saw nothing, as usual.”

“The news said something about a gangland slaying.”

“The news would. But it’s possible. Like the man said, it’s Chinatown. What’s your interest? Oh, wait, it’s your Chens, right?”

“Right. My Chens. Is there any idea that they’re involved?”

“This I don’t know. I could find out who caught the case and what they know, if you want.”

“Oh, that’d be great, Jim! I’ll owe you one.”

“And I’ll collect, too,” he said, laughed a nasty laugh, and hung up.

Marlene got her gun from the gun safe, clipped it on, logged thirty seconds of quality time with her boys, whistled up the dog, and punched for the elevator. Marlene was in the security business, although the Chens were not clients.

They lived in Confucius Plaza, a seven-year-old structure that had been fully rented before the first spadeful of earth turned over. That the Chens had a nice apartment was an indication that the family was somebody in Chinatown. There were a couple of news vans parked on the street outside, and a small crowd of photo and video journalists lying in wait. Clearly, the cops had suggested, or maybe it was just a media rumor, that the Chens were connected to the “gangland slaying.” Hype about a new tong war was in the air, and the press was drooling. As was Sweety, of course. Marlene hooked him to his leash and walked toward the building entrance.

“Sweety, si brutto!” she ordered, and the dog went into his rabies impersonation, heaving at the leash, snarling and flinging long, disgusting ropes of sticky saliva. The media backed away in panic, tripping over cables and dropping mike poles.

“Oh, sorry, oh, gosh, excuse me,” Marlene chirped. “Oh, dear! Monster, behave yourself!. .” until she was at the glass doors. The security guy, who knew Marlene well, was having a hard time keeping his face straight as he opened it for her.

“Way to go, Meilin,” he said. “I’ll call up for you.”

Marlene had known the Chens for nearly fifteen years and had been to their home-originally an apartment on Mott and now this one-innumerable times, to deliver and pick up her daughter. On every occasion she had been offered tea and cigarettes and engaged in a short conversation, almost always about children and the unbearable difficulties brought on by their slovenliness and ingratitude. She had thought that she had, through her daughter at least, a good relationship with the Chen family, not intimate, but sufficient to make this visit perfectly natural and, with the offer of help she had in mind, even welcome. She was soon disabused of this idea. At her ring, Walter, the Chens’ eldest son, came to the door and stood there, looking at her as at a stranger. Walter was a senior at Columbia, and Marlene knew him as a bright, often amusing, regular (by which she meant Americanized, predictable) kid.

“Hi, Walter,” she said, expecting him to move away from the door and usher her in. He didn’t move. His eyes were very black, and flat and (she actually thought the word) inscrutable. “Walter,” she said, urging a smile to her lips, “aren’t you going to let me in?”

He did not return the smile, but said, as to a stranger, “Marlene, that’s not a good idea right now. My parents are extremely upset. .”

“I bet they are. That’s why I came over, to see if I-”

“. . and they can’t see anyone today,” he concluded, and closed the door firmly in her face.

Karp’s intercom buzzed. The handicapped were gone and he was dealing with the aftermath, drafting a memo. He threw down his pencil, pushed the button. O’Malley said, “They’re ready for you.”

“This is the Catalano meeting?” asked Karp, well knowing it was.

“At long last, and may God have mercy on your soul,” said O’Malley fervently.

As a symbol of his authority, Karp got to use the D.A.’s conference room, a stately, paneled office with a long, mellow oaken table and high, stately green leather chairs. The D.A., on attaining the office, had attempted to reproduce, in detail, in the whole executive suite, the decor favored by his predecessor-but-one, Francis P. Garrahy, of sacred memory. Keegan had run the Homicide Bureau under Garrahy, and Karp had been trained in it, and both men were subject to nostalgia for those departed times, when crime seemed slightly less overwhelming. Both men entertained the suspicion, unvoiced to be sure, that even Phil Garrahy might have trimmed a little more than he did, might have had trouble keeping his integrity untarnished under such a collapse of civil order. To his credit, Keegan tried to keep up the standards, and if his own integrity had a grungy spot or two, the symbols were at least kept brightly polished and dusted. For the conference room Keegan had even located in some forgotten Centre Street attic the framed oil portraits of Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia that Garrahy had hung on his walls and had added one of Garrahy himself, done from a photograph.

It was not a good portrait. In it the old man looked stiff and surprised, neither of which was a characteristic of himself, but it was what they had. This painting looked down upon where Keegan himself now sat at the head of the long table, in his shirtsleeves, toying with a large claro cigar that he never smoked. He was a big, florid Irishman, heavy-shouldered, carrying an elegant head: the requisite pol’s mane of white hair, blue, deep-set eyes, an aristocratic beak, no lips to speak of, and a chin like an anvil. He’d played offensive end for Fordham, and retained the grace and the twisty moves. He looked up and popped the cigar into his mouth when Karp walked in, smiling cordially around it. (He never got the end damp, and so no one knew whether he didn’t smoke the same one every day or retired the thing at intervals.) Karp nodded to Keegan and to the other three men, and took a seat at the end of the table, where he always sat.

Karp took the notes at these meetings, a somewhat unusual role for someone with his rank, this necessary task being regarded by the average legal bureaucrat as suitable only for peasants, or women. Karp had assumed it for two reasons. First, it made him appear to pompous idiots less important than he was, which made them tend to ignore him, which made it easier for him to sneak up behind them if need be and yank their pants down. Besides that, he understood that who takes the notes at executive meetings controls the memory of an organization, and since Karp had never cultivated a political base, any control he could develop was welcome. While he respected Jack Keegan’s skill and competence, and actually liked him well enough as a man, Karp was under no illusions about the district attorney’s ambitions. He understood perfectly (for Keegan, to his credit, had made it no secret) that if a sacrifice had to be made to that altar and if Karp was at hand and unprotected, the D.A. would not hesitate for a New York minute before yanking his plug.

Karp took meeting notes in thick accountant’s ledgers bound in pale green cloth, items not much in demand at the supply room since computers had come in. He had rows of them in his office in a locked steel cabinet whose sole key was ever in his custody, and he never showed the notes therein to anyone. Thus no one knew what Karp had written down, which tended to make Keegan’s more haughty satraps less willing to get into arguments about who had promised what to whom. The note business was an absurdly simple ploy, but it worked to the D.A.’s advantage and polished the luster of Karp. Swiftly, using his idiosyncratic quasi-shorthand, Karp wrote down the purpose of the meeting-“strategy for Catalano murder”-and the date and the names of the three participants besides himself and the D.A.

The first of these, sitting to Keegan’s right was Roland Hrcany, the chief of the Homicide Bureau. Hrcany had the look and build of a professional wrestler, and, like many of them, he wore his straight blond hair combed back from a cave-man brow ridge and long enough to reach past his collar in back. Despite this brutish appearance (or perhaps because of it) he was the best homicide prosecutor in the office, next to Karp, a fact that rankled him, as did Karp’s former incumbency as homicide chief. Some months ago he had been shot by a Mexican felon trying to introduce south-of-the-border criminal justice practices to the New York area, and he was still not back on duty full-time. The event, and its wasting effects on his massive body, of which he was inordinately proud, had oddly enough improved his disposition, which had been churlish and of an aggressiveness outstanding even in the testosterone-rich precincts of the D.A.’s office.

Opposite Roland sat Frank Anselmo, the chief of the Rackets Bureau. He was a dapper, dark man with a full head of thick black hair, well cut, and small, active, manicured hands. Anselmo, the son of a police inspector, and thus a man with important cop credibility, had pitched for Fordham during the same years that Keegan had played football. The two men were cronies from way back, and Keegan had brought him in as Rackets chief from the Queens D.A. shortly after taking over the New York office. This made sense, since the D.A. had to trust more than anyone else in his office the person responsible for, among other things, investigating public officials. Karp did not know him well. Rackets was a small bureau, its work was perforce somewhat secret, and it brought few cases to trial. The book on Anselmo around the office was that he was smart, ambitious, and, it seemed, temporarily content to play in the shade cast by Jack Keegan’s lofty oak. The relationship with the boss was, of course, well-known, and hardly anyone gave him any trouble. He was smiling and joshing with Keegan about a sports bet. He smiled a lot. In general, Karp was suspicious of people in the criminal justice business who smiled a lot, as he himself did not see much to be happy about there, but Anselmo always seemed to put Keegan in a better mood, which was never to be sneezed at.

The last man at the meeting was clearly not in a good mood and not amused by Anselmo’s patter. Raymond Guma, slumped like a bag of dirty laundry in the chair just to Karp’s left, was one of the few ADAs who did not at all mind giving Anselmo trouble. Guma had on occasion been mistaken for the former Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, although he was less pretty than Berra, and unlike Berra he had shown (during a tryout for the Yanks, for he had been quite the star at St. John’s) that he could not reliably hit a major league breaking ball. He was nearly the same age as Keegan and Anselmo-late fifties-but carried his years more heavily, for unlike the other men there he had never been promoted to any position of authority, and never would be. He had been a homicide prosecutor for over twenty-five years, and he knew more about the New York Mafia than anyone in the building, which was why he was at the meeting. Some said he knew rather too much about the New York Mafia, which was one of the many reasons he had never been promoted. He was a sloppy, ill-disciplined man, a sexist in the current parlance, sour and cynical, but-and this is why Karp loved him-with boundless heart and a sense of humor made of Kevlar.

In the normal course of things, Guma should have been in Rackets under Anselmo, but between the two men lay a morass of near visceral antipathy. This, even more than the hazards of the case on the agenda, accounted for the tension in the room. Keegan let the sports talk peter away. “Guys, you all know how important this one is. We’re going to come under a lot of pressure, and I want some early resolution. Butch has my full authority on this one.” He looked up as O’Malley came in looking concerned and tapped her wristwatch. “The goddamn lieutenant governor,” growled Keegan. He stood, said, “I’ll be back,” and left. All faces rotated to the other end of the table. Karp nodded to Anselmo.

“Frank, your meeting.”

Anselmo’s smile broadened by an inch, showing even, small white teeth, and he ducked his head in a fetching gesture of humility. He shuffled some papers on his lap and passed out a set of neatly bound blue manila folders stamped confidential in big red letters. Guma turned his face toward Karp, out of Anselmo’s view, and flashed his gargoyle imitation-a convincing one, given his physiognomy.

“All right: Catalano,” said Anselmo. “To review the bare facts: on the night of June ninth, a body later identified as that of Edward Catalano was found in a car parked under the West Side Highway at Vestry Street. He’d been shot from behind at close range with a small-caliber weapon. Five shots to the head, a typical gangland murder.”

Here what might have been construed by an unsympathetic listener as a snort of derision issued from Guma’s direction. It was a low sort of snort, however, and if Anselmo heard it, he paid no attention.

“That method,” he resumed, “and the fact that Catalano is known to be a capo regime of the Bollano family suggested that this was a professional hit having to do with the politics of the New York Mob. So-as you probably know, when they start hitting capos, it means that the power balances are shifting. There’s disorder in the ranks, shifting loyalties, the wise guys are all looking for where they’re going to end up after the dust settles, and so this is a prime time for us to do ourselves some good. Now, the first question we have to ask when something like this goes down is, naturally, cui bono. We look inside the family first, table one in your handout.”

Shuffling of papers. Karp cast an eye on Guma, who had leaned back in his chair, the unopened file on his lap, and seemed to be getting set for a snooze. It was not unknown for Guma to drop off in meetings, and Karp hoped that he would not break out in snores. That too was not unknown.

“At the top, of course, we have the don, Salvatore Bollano, known as Big Sally. He’s seventy something and not in good shape. Last of the breed, by the way, actually born in Sicily. There’s some question as to whether he’s still in control. Next in line is Salvatore Bollano, Jr., Little Sally, but not to his face, ha-ha, aka, Sally Jump, age forty-three. You have his arrest record there. Assault, rape, jury tampering, bribery, dozens of collars, never convicted. Violent, short-tempered, little son of a bitch; he may be mentally unstable, in fact.”

Here came a snort from Guma. This time Anselmo paused and directed his attention to Guma’s chair. “Um, Ray? Did you have a point to make?”

“Uh-uh, Frank,” said Guma. “You’re doing fine.”

“Thank you. Next came Carlo Tonnati, street name Charlie Tuna, currently serving a life stretch in Attica for ordering the murder of Vinnie Ferro a dozen or so years ago.”

Karp knew this, as he had personally put Charlie Tuna away, and everyone else did, too. Anselmo was often excessively thorough. He listened with half an ear and took precise notes on autopilot as the man ran through the order of battle of the Bollano crime family and presented his Machiavellian analysis of their various rivalries. The Bollanos were the smallest of New York’s Mafia families, not looking to expand at all, but what they held, they held very hard. Their base was the Lower East Side, and Anselmo had charts and tables showing their various estimated sources of income, so much from drugs, so much from prostitution, so much from shakedowns and loan sharking. This was boring. Who cared about the enterprises or politics of thugs, except someone planning to write one of those inside-the-Mob books? Karp’s instinct was for the concrete, for the facts, for the evidence. They had a crime; was there a case? Anselmo came to the end of his aria. In the silence that followed, Karp asked, “So you like Joe Pigetti for it?”

“Yeah, I do. It’s the only scenario that makes sense. Pigetti and Catalano were the two most powerful capos. Catalano was tight with Little Sally, Pigetti was on the outs with both of them, but he was Charlie Tuna’s protege and he had more or less replaced Tonnati with Big Sally. If the old don were to kick off, though, he’d be up shit’s creek. Or maybe he heard that the two of them were going to do him. So he goes to the don and lays something bad on Catalano. Some betrayal, he’s skimming-whatever. The old guy’s not so sharp, so he gives the okay. For Pigetti it was a good career move.”

Karp seemed to give this serious attention. “Roland?”

“Well, Pigetti’s out as the actual trigger,” said Roland. “He’s alibied to the neck. Apparently there was a big party the night of. One of the don’s nephews was getting married, and the goombahs threw him a party at the Casa D’Oro on Elizabeth. Pigetti was there until two or so, and then he and a bunch of them went out clubbing until four-thirty. Catalano was at the party and he left around one-thirty, or it could’ve been an hour earlier or later, because all the boys were feeling pretty good by then and vague about the time. In any case, it happens that we know the exact time of death because one of the bullets fired into the back of Catalano’s skull came out through his eye and broke the dashboard clock at three-fourteen a.m.” He paused to see what effect this detail had on the assembled group.

“That’s a fancy touch,” said Karp carefully.

“It is a fancy touch,” Roland agreed. “A little fancier than we’re used to from the wise guys. Call me cynical, but you might suspect that it was done on purpose that way to give Joe an alibi. It turns out that a little before three, Joe was checking into the valet parking at a club at 57th off Eighth. So clearly the cops are looking for an associate of Joe’s who doesn’t have an alibi for the time of, and they come up with Marco Moletti. Moletti was also seen leaving the Casa D’Oro with Catalano and a couple of other guys. Catalano was going to drop by his girlfriend’s house, and he took this bunch along for the ride, maybe call up some ladies and continue the party. But Mutt and Jeff got talking to some girls at a light and they bailed. According to Mutt and Jeff, Marco was the last guy in the car. According to Marco, Marco wasn’t feeling so hot, having overindulged at the fiesta, so after dropping Catalano at the girl’s place at Park and 36th, he handed over the keys, walked to his place, Lex and 49th, and crashed. He says.”

“That’s a long walk, you’re not feeling so good,” said Karp.

“The cops thought so, too,” said Roland. “Besides that, Catalano never made it to the girlfriend that night. The cops think Marco stuck a gun in Catalano’s back, made him drive to under the highway, and popped him there. Then either someone picked him up or he walked away and took a cab or the subway home. In any case, Marco was the last person to see Catalano alive.”

“The second to last if he wasn’t the shooter,” said Karp. “Are you charging him?”

Roland waggled a hand and twisted his face into a doubtful expression. “It’s thin. He was in the car, but they all admit that. The search found a box of.22 longs in his place, but no gun. The vic was killed with.22 longs. There was also a bag with a little short of fifty K in it. Payoff money? Ordinarily, I’d give it a pass, but. .” Here he looked over at Anselmo, who put in, “Right, but this is not an ordinary case. I’m pushing Roland to charge him and then squeeze him to give us Pigetti. This could be the thing that cracks the whole Bollano family.”

Karp looked at the faces: Anselmo avid, smiling like a kid at the circus; Hrcany pretending forbearance, willing to go along as long as no one made him responsible for a weak case, and perfectly willing to see Anselmo carry this freight; and Guma? Was the jerk actually asleep or just pretending the most elaborate boredom? Under the shelter of the conference table Karp’s cap toe reached out and gave Guma one in the ankle. The monkey eyes opened, the floppy mouth yawned, showing more bridgework than anyone wanted to see.

Hrcany said, “Now that you mention it, Frank, Guma has some thoughts on that. Ray?”

“Yeah, Frank,” said Guma pleasantly, “my thoughts are that you try to squeeze Moletti, you might get some of that scungilli he scarfed down at the party there, but nothing else.”

“Why?” snapped Anselmo. “Because of the sacred code of omerta? They don’t do that shit anymore, Guma. They sing just like anyone else when you push them.”

Guma looked up at the ceiling as if he thought the answer to this question might be inscribed there, and when he responded it was in the sort of voice a kindergarten teacher might use to explain that D came after C. “Actually, Frank, I wasn’t thinking of any high-tone Mafia stuff like that. I was thinking about Marco. You know what they call Marco Moletti on the street? No, don’t look in the file, Frank, I’ll tell you. If they sort of like him, they call him Slo Mo. If they’re annoyed at him, like if the pizza they sent him out for is cold, they call him Marky Moron. He’s a gofer, Frank. He’s also real honest, because he’s too dumb to steal and he knows it, which is why the guys sometimes leave stuff with him, cash, like your bag of money, or hot property. He’s got his niche, you could say, and he’s happy in it. But to put it mildly, Frank, he ain’t a player. So anyone who thinks that Marky knows fuck-all about what goes on in the Bollanos is stupid. You want to squeeze something, squeeze the hubcap on Eddie Catalano’s Lincoln, you’ll get more out of it. And anybody who thinks that Marky Moron would get tagged to whack a capo regime is. . words fail me. Felony stupid? Besides all that, in my opinion, you’re doing great.”

Anselmo shot to his feet and flung his papers to the floor. “Ah, come on, Butch, what the hell!”

“Sit down, Frank,” said Karp. “Guma?”

“I apologize, Frank,” said Guma instantly, in monotone.

“All right, now that we’ve all had our fun,” said Karp, “let me remind you why we’re here. Eddie Catalano was killed the day before he was scheduled to appear pursuant to a subpoena before a federal grand jury investigating Mob involvement in local businesses. This has greatly vexed our colleague on the other side of the square. The U.S. attorney believes that Mr. Catalano was slain to prevent his testimony-”

“Horseshit,” said Guma.

“We’re aware of your opinion on that subject, Guma,” Karp snapped, “but would you put a goddamn cork in it just for now? Thank you. And since the U.S. attorney has been kept from his goal of, as he so elegantly puts it, ‘breaking the Mob in New York,’ he has devoted his time and talent to breaking our boss’s balls instead. Why is Jack Keegan not pursuing this obvious gangland slaying with more alacrity and success? Why have we not seen the Mafia scumbags dragged into court? How come his crusade is stopped in its tracks? Is it that maybe Jack Keegan’s not up to the job? And so forth, as you know. Now, in order to get Tommy Colombo off our ass, we need to show movement on this goddamn murder. Either we have to have a plausible defendant behind bars, or, failing that, we have to find out why the scumbag got killed. Roland, what are the cops doing besides sniffing around this Moletti character?”

Hrcany rolled his massive shoulders in a shrug. Not as massive as they used to be, Karp observed, but still meaty. The eighteen-inch collar of his shirt was loose on his neck.

“Well, Butch,” he said, “you know how it is-they fall in love with a perp, it’s forever, unless they dig up something new. I got enough for an arrest warrant and an indictment. When he’s in the can, who knows? A pal of his could drop a dime-Marky didn’t do it, I heard it was X. Or he could talk in jail. Maybe he knows from nothing, like Guma said, but still, he’s around those guys. Even waiters pick up stuff. And then one of the regular jailhouse snitches could grab it. I don’t know-”

“Roland, cut the horseshit,” said Karp. “Don’t give me warrants and indictments. We wanted to, you know damn well we could arrest and indict the cardinal archbishop for this one. What I’m interested in is, do you believe that this putz is a legitimate suspect? Did he fucking do the crime?”

Hrcany looked down for a moment as if gathering himself and then met Karp’s gaze. “Since you ask, I don’t and he didn’t. Guma’s right. He’s a retard.”

“Then forget him!” Karp ordered, and then, to nearly everyone’s surprise, he turned to Guma. “Ray, what really happened?” he asked, almost casually. Frank Anselmo’s smile became noticeably more false.

“Oh, they brought in somebody,” Guma answered confidently, as if giving the correct time. “Probably a pair of guys. They picked him up in the girlfriend’s lobby, hustled him out to his car, tossed him in the trunk, and drove to the scene of in two cars. Then they stuck him in the driver’s seat and did him so it would look like he got popped by a buddy in the backseat. All these guys watched The Godfather fifty times, so they know how it’s supposed to go down. The clock’s a nice touch, and it ties it to somebody who might need an alibi.”

“Like Pigetti?” asked Karp.

“Oh, either Joey was involved, or somebody wanted to make it look like Joey was involved. If he did do it, though, the important thing is, did he clear it through the don? My guess is no, he didn’t. It’s hard to think why Big Sally would want to take out Eddie Cat.” He looked at Anselmo. “See, Little Sal doesn’t have any friends to speak of. Eddie was Little Sal’s baby-sitter. This is well-known. Used to be Charlie Tuna, then Eddie got the job when Charlie went upstate. Little Sal needs a lot of watching. He gets testy when he doesn’t get his way, and it interferes with business. So this is perfect for the don. He got one of his capos tight with his kid, the heir, keeping him in line, but also the kid is watching Eddie, of course. Neither of them can make a move against him without the other knowing. And he’s got his other capo right there in his pocket, Pigetti. Anyway, whoever did it, Pigetti, Little Sal, the don, or some combination thereof, it’s a sure bet it’s a family thing, got nothing to do with the federal grand jury. Eddie Cat would go to jail if he had to, but not into a witness program, which anyone who knew the guy would tell you in a second.”

“So who did the deed, Guma? You probably already have a name for us.” Anselmo spoke sarcastically, but Guma took the question on, knitting his brows as if trying to think of an actual name.

“Not a Sicilian, Frank. No Sicilian would hit a made guy and a capo in his own family without an order from his don, and if he was from another family, not unless he wanted to start a major war, which we got no evidence at all is what’s involved here. So who? Well, if Murder Incorporated was still in business, this is the kind of stuff they used to contract out to the Jewish fellas, but I don’t think Jews are into whacking anymore.”

“Only whacking off,” said Karp. “You’re suggesting that Pigetti would reach out to one of our fine non-Sicilian ethnic groups?”

“I am,” said Guma. “As far as which one. .” He shrugged. “It’s a whachamacallit. . an embarrassment of riches out there.”

The meeting broke up soon afterward. Guma and Hrcany vanished into the hallway, and Anselmo walked through the door that led to the D.A.’s office. Karp finished cleaning up his notes. When he went a few minutes later into Keegan’s office, he observed Anselmo talking vigorously at the D.A., in undertones, and the D.A. not liking what he was hearing, shaking his noble head. When Anselmo ran down and left, Keegan hooked a finger, and Karp followed him to the other end of the office, where Keegan sat down in his chair with a snarling kind of sigh.

“What did Frank want?”

“Oh, he was pissed off about Ray, needless to relate. Christ, the pair of them are like a couple of brats. No, Frank, you can’t be in charge of Guma, for the ninetieth time. And of course Roland set the whole thing up, just to show Frank who’s got the biggest dick. Jesus!”

“You could put Guma in charge of Frank,” Karp suggested.

Keegan goggled at him until he saw Karp was joking, and then he barked out a laugh and grinned. “Oh, yeah! That’d be rare, our own junior Mafioso in charge of Rackets. Tell me, did Guma really once stash a material witness with an out-of-town wise guy?”

“I’ve heard that story, too,” said Karp in a noncommittal tone. “You got a minute for this?”

Keegan had, and Karp epitomized what had just happened in a little under two.

“So you’re telling me we got bullshit.”

“What can I say? Police baffled, as the headlines used to say.”

“Well, that can’t be,” said Keegan, putting away all smiles. “No chance that this Marky guy was involved?” He sounded wistful.

Karp said, “It doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”

For an instant Karp was afraid that Keegan was going to reverse him on arresting the fool, but the man’s better angels chimed in and he merely cursed under his breath and said, “This isn’t your everyday public service Mob hit. Tommy is running for whatever the fuck he’s running for on fighting the big bad Mob, showing that although he’s an Italian-American gentleman he’s not that kind of Italian-American gentleman, and if he’s got to run all over me to do it, that’s fine with him. This is not one we can afford to lose.” A steely glare, before which Karp did not in the least flinch, and then he added, the grin returning, “Say, ‘Yes, boss,’ so I know you understand you have complete charge of this shit pile.”

“Yes, boss,” said the good soldier.