Bad Faith

4

It was a lovely spring morning in Gotham when Karp and Murrow emerged onto Crosby Street and turned the corner onto Grand Street for the half mile or so walk to the Criminal Courts Building on Centre Street. The trees were beginning to bud and although the sun had yet to peer over the tops of the skyscrapers, their fellow pedestrians smiled and chatted beneath clear blue skies as they wove their way through the throng on the busy sidewalks.

Reaching the front of the massive Criminal Courts Building, Karp pointed to a newsstand. “I’ll be up in a minute,” he said. “I’m going to go pick up the Times and say hello to Warren.”

As Karp approached, “Dirty” Warren Bennett, who owned the newsstand, looked up through thick, smudged glasses and grinned. “Hey, Butch … asshole bitch … how are you this morning?” the thin little man with the long, pointed nose asked.

Karp smiled back. Bennett hadn’t earned his nickname because of the state of his clothes or personal hygiene, though both were in need of a good washing. The moniker was due to his Tourette’s syndrome, which, in addition to causing muscle spasms and facial tics, made him involuntarily swear like a longshoreman.

“Hey, I got one … oh boy shit whoop crap … for you,” Bennett said.

Karp’s smile disappeared and was replaced by his game face. He and the news vendor had been playing movie trivia for years, with Bennett trying to stump Karp, which he’d yet to do. “Well, pilgrim, draw if you’ve got the cojones,” he replied with his best, though poor, John Wayne imitation.

Bennett sneered. “Oh yeah? Okay then, Mr. Wayne. In 1944 Lux Radio Theater featured … whoop whoop oh boy … a radio adaptation of this movie with Betty Grable, Carmen Miranda, and John Payne,” he said. “Name the movie and be exact.”

Karp scoffed. “Appropriate choice for this morning,” he replied. “Springtime in the Rockies. That exact enough for you?” He waited for Bennett’s face to show the first sign of triumph before he shattered his friend’s hope of finally scoring a point. “But it’s a trick question, Mr. Bennett,” he said, watching his opponent’s hopeful expression immediately fade. “John Payne played the part of Dan Christy in the film, but Dick Powell replaced him for the radio version.”

“Damn it, Karp, you bastard,” exclaimed Bennett, whose responses weren’t always tied to Tourette’s. But he shook his head and smiled. “Man, you’re … oh boy shit piss … good.”

Karp wiggled his eyebrows. “Don’t mess with the Duke of Trivia, pilgrim.”

Both men laughed as Karp picked up a newspaper and paid the vendor. But as he turned toward the Criminal Courts Building, a shout interrupted his good mood.

“There here he is! There’s Karp!” The shout elicited jeers and epithets.

Looking in the direction of the voices, Karp saw a dozen or so protesters, some carrying picket signs, walking swiftly toward him on the sidewalk. Emerging from the middle of the pack to lead them was the Reverend C. G. Westlund, who didn’t yell but smirked as he approached.

“I’m getting a little … tits oh boy … tired of these jokers,” Bennett snarled, leaving his newsstand to confront the mob.

“It’s just words, Warren,” Karp said, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder and pulling him back. He then stepped toward his detractors. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”

Westlund marched up until he was only a couple of feet from Karp and blocking his way into the courts building. “Repent, Brother Karp, and drop the charges against the Ellises, who were faithful to the will of God!” he thundered.

“I believe we’ll leave that for a jury to decide,” Karp replied evenly. “Now, if that’s all you’ve got to say, I have more important things to do.”

But Westlund stepped closer as his followers drew in, their faces angry and some a bit wild-eyed. “More important than answering our questions about God’s place in the home of simple Christian Americans? Have you forgotten that this is a nation founded upon Christian ideals of faith in God, or do those of the Jewish faith not recognize the efficacy of prayer? Or the rights of Americans to ask God for deliverance from earthly ills and deny the ungodly arrogance of Western medicine that seeks to supplant God as the arbiter of life and death? Granted, most doctors are Jewish, as are most lawyers.”

“‘Yield unto Caesar that which is his sayeth the Lord,’ get it, Westlund?” Karp replied. “Break the law here and you’re going to be held responsible. And more accurately our American heritage is founded upon Judeo-Christian values, which you don’t adhere to.”

As the crowd pressed in, Karp had to admit it was the sort of situation in which one crazed person, agitated by Westlund’s words, might decide to act. He was ready to defend himself, but the need was suddenly averted when a large black sedan pulled up to the curb a few feet from where Karp was standing toe-to-toe with the preacher and his followers.

A thick, broad-shouldered black man emerged from the vehicle. “Morning, Butch,” Clay Fulton said, walking up to stand next to his employer and longtime friend. He then looked at Westlund and his followers. “What seems to be the problem here?”

Just from the big detective’s body language, Karp could tell that Fulton was spoiling for a fight. He couldn’t blame him; he was half tempted to rock Westlund himself for his anti-Semitic remarks. But he wasn’t going to play that game. “Good morning, Clay,” he replied. “The good reverend and his flock were just enjoying their First Amendment right of free speech and now will be getting out of my way so I can go to work. Isn’t that right, reverend?”

Westlund’s eyes narrowed. “‘The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion’!” he shouted as his supporters cheered.

“If you’re going to quote Proverbs 28 … whoop oh boy … quote all of it!” Bennett shouted back. “‘Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law’ … oh boy bite my ass … ‘strive against them. Evil men do not understand justice but those who seek the Lord’ … crap bastard … ‘understand it completely.’”

Karp looked back at his friend with surprise. “Why thank you, Warren,” he said. “Write that down for me sometime.”

“My pleasure,” Bennett replied, his face twitching as he sniffed and then wrinkled his nose as if he’d caught a foul scent. “I know a false prophet … asswipe … when I smell one.”

Westlund glared at Bennett and then Karp before stepping aside. “Just trying to save your soul, brother,” he said to Karp, then turned to Bennett. “God has afflicted your mouth for the foulness of your soul. Repent and you might yet be saved!”

“Why you piece of …” As he spoke, Bennett tried to get at the much larger man but Karp held him back.

“He’s not worth it, Warren,” Karp said.

“Don’t worry, little man,” Westlund snarled, “God has ordained that we’ll meet again.”

Moving so quickly that the preacher flinched and took a step back, Karp got in Westlund’s face. “Let’s be very clear about something, Mr. Westlund,” he growled in a voice so low that only those closest to them could hear. “You and I are the ones who will be meeting again, but it’s going to be in court and you’ll be sitting at the defense table.”

Westlund recovered quickly, though he moved away from Karp. “You see, my brothers and sisters, when faced with God’s truth, the evil resort to threats!” he told his followers, who shouted and cursed.

Karp ignored them and looked at Bennett. “You okay, Warren?”

Bennett’s angry eyes still followed Westlund as the preacher led his followers away, but he nodded. “Yeah, to hell … crap oh boy ohhhh boy … with that asshole,” he said. “But thanks for … whoop whoop … sticking up for me.”

“Seems to me we were sticking up for each other,” Karp replied, and clapped the smaller man on his shoulder. “If he bothers you, just let me know.”

Bennett smiled, blinking up at Karp, his light blue eyes magnified behind his glasses. “Thanks, Karp. But I can handle that guy … or I have friends who will.”

Leaving Bennett at his newsstand, Karp entered the Criminal Courts Building on the Hogan Place side. Fulton then headed for the building’s security office and left him to ride the elevator up to his office on the eighth floor alone. As the car rose, he felt his face burning with anger. Some of it was for Warren Bennett, a good, hardworking man and one of several local street people who kept watch over the environs and people around the courthouse, especially Karp and his family. Although unsure of how exactly their system worked, Karp was aware that they reported to David Grale, the “mad monk” who believed God had appointed him to rid the city of evil men he believed were possessed by demons. The irony was that the killer had made it part of his mission to safeguard Marlene and the kids, especially Lucy, whom he’d met when they were both working in a Catholic soup kitchen.

Exiting the elevator and walking into the conference area of his office, he noticed that his receptionist, Darla Milquetost, was setting up and preparing for the bureau chiefs meeting. He wished her a good morning and entered the inner sanctum of his personal private office space, still thinking about the confrontation with Westlund and his band of lunatics. He regretted being drawn into a war of words with the bellicose preacher, but it had been hard to stomach the man’s anti-Semitic remarks.

Those and more bigoted comments had begun shortly after the Ellises were indicted. Early on, Westlund’s attacks were subtle. He couched Karp’s ethnicity as a “possible explanation” for why the DAO was “persecuting” the Ellises, as well as himself and his followers.

“Nothing against the Jewish people, but I suppose we should expect,” the minister had explained to a radio talk-show host, “that someone of the district attorney’s faith would fail to recognize true Christians’ right to place their faith in God and not the false god of modern medicine.”

Other times, Westlund’s prejudices were thinly disguised as backhanded compliments. “Jews, such as our district attorney, are known as a ‘practical’ race of people who tend to believe more in science and man’s infallibility than Christians, who put God first. That’s why Jews are so successful at business and secular professions, while Christians place more stock in spirituality.”

But after being jailed for obstructing the paramedics, Westlund had ramped up the vitriol. Upon his release from the Tombs, the firebrand preacher told a waiting television crew, “Karp comes from a long line of predecessors who enjoy persecuting Christians; that’s why he’s out to crucify me and my brothers and sisters in the End of Days Reformation Church of Jesus Christ Resurrected.”

When his comments were challenged by an editorial writer the next day, Westlund backtracked. He complained that his remarks had been “taken out of context” when aired on the evening news. By “predecessors,” he said, he’d meant other district attorneys and law officers, not Jews. And his reference to crucifying, he added, was just a metaphor to illustrate how the Ellises were being “unfairly and harshly” treated for their spiritual beliefs.

As the trial date neared, Westlund was savvy enough to let his followers make the most inflammatory comments, up to and including that the DAO was prosecuting the Ellises solely because Karp was an evil Jew who hated Christians. Occasionally when one of his followers stepped over the line enough for the media to raise their collective eyebrows, Westlund would issue a press release through his church saying that he did not “condone hate speech.” He attributed the venal comments to “a few overwrought church members who are reacting to the district attorney’s attack on the fundamental American right to practice religion without the interference of the government. It may have been an inappropriate way to express their feelings, but I think what you’re seeing is their frustration as yet another one of their God-given rights is taken from them.”

As Karp’s reflection continued, he was reminded that Westlund and his ilk weren’t the only ones using God’s name in vain to further their hateful personal agendas. But his thoughts were interrupted when his receptionist announced the arrival of Murrow, who stuck his head in the door. “Ready, boss?” he asked, referring to the bureau chiefs meeting.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Karp replied, wondering how this day that had begun so full of beauty would end.