Justice Denied

13

So I think we should go see Kerbussyan again,” Marlene said. “As soon as possible. Now, maybe.”

Karp considered this. His wife had burst into his office and spilled out the whole exotic and confusing tale of her interview with Sokoloff.

“You like him for Ersoy, right?” Karp asked. “Kerbussyan.”

“I think he’s connected, sure. Whether I like him? I don’t know.”

“Umm …” Karp rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, I thought of that too, God forbid,” she said quickly. “But Sokoloff said Tomasian was the last person Sarkis would’ve used, and that’s supported by what Mr. K told you when you went to see him. Tomasian’s a courier, not a shooter.”

“So he must’ve used somebody else. What makes you think he’ll be more forthcoming now than he was with me?”

“We know he lied. He said he didn’t know anything about Ersoy’s money, and I guarantee you it came right out of his own bank account. He dealt with the vic, for chrissake! So we got him anyway for obstructing. It’s a lever.”

Karp nodded. “Okay, I’ll call.” He called. And it turned out Mr. Kerbussyan would find some time around five.

Marlene went back to her office. Harry had left no messages, which worried her. She had sent him out again after Djelal, before she had been warned off the U.N., but she didn’t think that detail would matter to Wharton if Djelal or the ambassador made a stink. It could be very bad indeed. She could lose the bureau.

In this mood she scrambled through paperwork and made herself generally unpleasant to her minions. Being the kind of minions they were, they were unpleasant back. Thus, she was in no mood for playtime when Jim Raney stuck his head in her door and flashed his patented charming Irish grin.

“Go away, Raney, I’m busy.”

He slipped past the door and closed it behind him. “Go ahead, I’ll just watch.” He pulled a visitors’ chair around so that it was touching Marlene’s chair, and sat down in it, still grinning.

“Raney! Go away!”

He placed an arm across the back of her chair. “You seem tense,” he said. “I hear the marriage is breaking up. You’re probably not getting much lately. You ready for an indecent proposal from a deserving Irish lad?”

“The marriage is not breaking up,” she said snippily, suppressing a giggle. Raney had that effect on her, the same effect as the strutting neighborhood swains of her teen years-infuriating but crudely seductive at the same time.

“Oh, yeah? How come I hear he moved out?”

“He had an operation on his knee; he can’t climb our stairs.”

“A good story. Stick to it. On the other hand, I’d figure out how to climb those stairs with two busted legs, if you were at the top of them.” This last was whispered a half inch from her ear. His hand slipped down off the back of the chair to her neck.

Harry Bello walked in the door without knocking, as was his habit. There was a moment of frozen embarrassment. Marlene shot to her feet, knocking back her chair with a clatter.

Bello said, “You’re busy.”

“No, Harry, come in,” she answered in a voice that cracked. “Um, Harry, you know Jim Raney. Raney, Harry Bello.”

Raney stood up too. He seemed amused. “Yeah, Harry Bello. I heard you brought in Vinnie the Guinea by yourself. Very impressive.”

Harry said in a flat voice, “Jim Raney. I hear you shot four guys in the head in four seconds. Very impressive.”

Raney flushed, and his jaws stiffened. Another moment of strained silence, which Marlene broke by saying breezily, “Jim was just leaving.”

“Yeah,” said Raney, his grin returning. “I just came by to invite you to the big touch football game this weekend. Bring the family. Two at the Sheep Meadow, rain or shine. Be there or be square. I could pick you up.”

“Do that. I wouldn’t miss it,” said Marlene. Raney left.

“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” said Marlene. “It’s just the way he is. He saved my life once.”

Harry shrugged and sat down like a cat. He said, “He’s got a Mercedes 300SL.”

“Who, Raney? No, he doesn’t … oh, you mean Djelal. Did you talk to him?”

“No, just checked him out. Nice condo in the fifties too. They must pay pretty good, the U.N.”

“I love it! This is looking a lot better. I also love it you didn’t roust him.” She explained Wharton’s orders about bothering the U.N., and told him what she had learned at Sokoloff’s.

“Butch and I are going to see Kerbussyan this afternoon-oh, crap! Look, Harry, could you do me a terrific favor and pick up Lucy at day-care and take her home? I’ll give you my key.”

“No problem,” said Harry, a little pale light starting up in the dead of his eyes.

After Harry left, Marlene called Ray Guma, who, as it turned out, had caught the homicide prosecution of Vinnie Boguluso.

“What do you think, Goom? Of the case, I mean.”

“Hey, it’s locked. Any time you want to do all the work up front, let me know. I could use a break.”

“He’ll go for the top count?”

“Rest assured. The little scumbag’s testimony and the toothmarks, and the Perez woman-it’s a lock. Grand jury this week, no problems. We go to pretrial probably the week after, but I can’t see the defense coming up with anything. The warrants’re good. So’s the evidence.”

“Have you talked to him?”

Guma chuckled. “Yeah. He’s a fuckin’ piece of work, Vinnie. You know, he’s really got a thing for you, Champ. I think you pissed him off. I think you insulted his manhood.”

“I’ll try to live with it. Any word on the third guy, Duane?”

“No, we got the usual APB out on him, but I’m not holding my breath. He got any sense, he’s in fuckin’ Texas, or someplace where there’s more Duanes to blend in with.”

“Yeah, really. Okay, let me know how it goes …”

“Hey, one other thing, you gonna see Butch the next coupla hours?”

“Yeah, I’m going out with him right now on something. Why?”

“Just tell him to get with me. I got some more stuff about Turks on my wire into Joey Castles. He was interested the other day.”

“Turks?” she asked. “What’s a mob guy doing with Turks?”

“Hey, the fuck I know. Joey called Ready Eddie Scoli, you know, the fence? Handles heavy theft? He says the Turk got the product and they’re getting ready to process it. I thought, fuck, it sounds like scag-you know? Process? But Eddie doesn’t do scag-he’s into gems, metals, furs. So tell Butch it looks more like my theory that the Turk is this Brooklyn guy, Minzone. Minzone I could see getting hold of a shipment of dope. Maybe he’s cutting it or something and Eddie’s supposed to cover the financing, or maybe-”

“Hold it, Goom,” she interrupted. “This is getting too complicated, and I got to meet a car like five minutes ago. I’ll tell him to call you.”

One of the D.A. squad cops drove Karp and Marlene up to the house in Riverdale, and they told him to wait. The door was opened not by the housemaid but by a burly, bushy-mustached man in an olive drab T-shirt and chinos who looked as if he had just put down his assault rifle. He gave them a severe look and led them through the paneled and carpeted hallways, stopping impatiently from time to time to let Karp, clumping along on his crutches, catch up.

He took them not to the study where Karp had originally interviewed Kerbussyan, but through a solarium full of huge houseplants and then through French doors to a small brick terrace overlooking the garden. There he left them. Karp collapsed gratefully into a white wicker armchair. Marlene walked out into the garden.

It was a lovely place, smelling of wet earth, crushed foliage, roses, and lavender. It sloped to the west, and from the terrace end one could see the river and the cliffs of the Palisades. She strolled down an aisle of roses, turned around the heavy green arch of a grape arbor, and came upon Sarkis Kerbussyan clipping grapes.

The old man was dressed in a white silk shirt and pale linen trousers, slightly stained with green but crisply pressed, and a black-banded straw hat.

He nodded formally. “Miss Ciampi, I believe,” he said.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“One is informed. The Ashakians speak highly of you. And, of course, you made an impression on Stephan Sokoloff: a formidable woman, he said. Formidable and beautiful.”

He finished his pruning, and placed his clippers and the cuttings in a small basket. “These are raisin grapes. Or sultanas, as they should be called. Raisins to me are still dried currants. These, you know, don’t dry well in this climate, but I grow them anyway. My uncle had a whole vineyard full of them in Smyrna. Shall we return to the terrace?”

Civilized, thought Marlene. Not like interrogating Vinnie the Guinea, although she suspected that Sarkis Kerbussyan could eat any number of Vinnies like raisins. They sat in the wicker armchairs around a wicker and glass table. Coffee and little cakes appeared, brought by the silent housemaid. Kerbussyan talked to Marlene about the garden, and they watched the lush late-summer twilight gather over the dark trees.

Marlene could see Karp getting more irritable. He liked interrogations to take place in smelly, green-painted rooms. Finally he said, “Mr. Kerbussyan, this is all very nice, but you know we’re not here to talk about your roses. We’re investigating a homicide, one in which you’re more involved than you led me to believe at our previous meeting.”

“I? How involved, Mr. Karp?”

“You lied to me last time I was here. You said you didn’t know anything about Mehmet Ersoy’s box of cash. In fact, that was your cash he had, some of it, at least. You’d been buying art objects from him for months before he died.”

“Buying art is not a crime,” said Kerbussyan after a brief silence.

“No, but concealing evidence in a homicide investigation is. You remember last time I was here, we waltzed through some likely scenarios about why Ersoy was killed? Let me add one. A patriotic Armenian art collector starts buying Armenian art objects from a Turk whose brother is smuggling them out of Turkey. At first he buys them through an art dealer, but after a while the source is so good that he decides to do private deals. The Turk starts slipping him fakes. The Armenian gets pissed off and has the Turk shot. You like that one?”

“Mr. Karp, do you believe that I would employ Aram Tomasian, a child I have known all his life, as an assassin in an act of revenge?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” said Karp sharply. “It’s what a jury will believe. It explains Ersoy’s money. Tomasian is linked to you. When it’s presented, it’ll be devastating.”

Kerbussyan seemed not to hear this. He repeated, “But do you believe it?”

Marlene said, “I don’t believe it.”

The two men stared at her in astonishment. Karp opened his mouth to say something, but she pressed on. “This is what happened. Ersoy offered you items. Some of them were fakes. You bought them anyway. You knew they were fakes, but you didn’t care, because you knew that Ersoy had something that you had to have and you thought that if you kept him on the line he’d eventually offer it to you. This whole thing is about the St. Gregory mask, isn’t it, Mr. Kerbussyan? And that’s why you’re going to help us, to work with us, to find the killers. Because whoever killed Ersoy has the mask. That’s why they killed him.”

Karp could see from the stony look that passed briefly across the old man’s face that Marlene’s words had struck home. He recalled her mentioning something about a mask to him when she told him about her interview with Sokoloff, but he hadn’t registered it as more than an oddity. Now it seemed to be central to the whole case. Karp had no idea how Marlene had just put all of it together, but he knew a fat opening when he saw one. He said, “Maybe you better tell us about this mask, Mr. Kerbussyan.”

“It’s not a myth, is it?” asked Marlene.

Kerbussyan studied both their faces before answering. “No, it is not. It exists.”

“What is it?” asked Marlene. “Sokoloff mentioned that you had a line on it, but he didn’t say much about it. Why is it so important?”

Kerbussyan took a deep breath and looked back at his garden, at the declining sun lighting the Palisades.

Then he faced them again and said, “It is a long story. Everything to do with Armenia is a long story, but this is longer than most. You may not credit that the hand of the past can reach forward to kill a man in the streets of a modern city.”

Marlene said, “A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, a cop, was blown to pieces because of something that happened in the fifteenth century in Serbia. So try me.”

“Well, then,” said Kerbussyan. “Ancient Armenia. A pagan kingdom caught between the declining power of Rome and the Persian Empire. In 224 A.D. a revolution in Persia overthrew the Artaxid dynasty and brought Artashir and the Sassanids to power. Khosrov, the king of Armenia, was related to the Artaxids, and he went to war against Persia. During this war a noble named Anak, who was loyal to the Sassanids, killed Khosrov, and the Persians took over the country. Anak himself was killed later.

“Two boys, the sons of Khosrov and Anak, were left fatherless by these events. They are close friends, nobles, raised at court. But they are separated. One, Trdat, son of King Khosrov, was taken to Roman territory as a ward of the imperial court. The emperor Diocletian was always interested in a royal pawn to use against the Persians. Anak’s son, Krikor, was sent to Caesaria, in Palestine, where he came under the influence of the bishop and was raised as a Christian. He becomes a priest.

“Time passes. Trdat is now a famous warrior. He does great service for the emperor, saving his life, and as a reward Diocletian gives him military support. Trdat raises the Armenian barons, and the Persians are thrown out. The young man is crowned in Vagharshapat as Trdat III. Tiridates the Great, as he is known to the West.

“At about the same time, Krikor returns to Armenia to preach the word of God to his old friend. But Trdat now learns about the conspiracy of Anak. Krikor is the son of the man who killed his father. He has Krikor tortured and thrown into a deep pit to starve.”

“Get to the mask,” said Karp.

Kerbussyan smiled wanly. “Patience is essential to an understanding of Armenian affairs, Mr. Karp. Where was I? Yes, there was at this time in Nicomedia, where Diocletian reigned, a beautiful Armenian nun named Hrip’sime. The emperor desired her; she resisted and fled to Vagharshapat and the protection of Trdat. But Trdat was as lustful as his sponsor. He too attempted to rape Hrip’sime and when she fled from him, had her tracked down, tortured, and killed.

“After that, God cursed Trdat and sent him mad. The legend was that he turned into a wild boar. He was an animal for ten years. The king’s sister, who was a secret Christian, had a dream in which Krikor rose from the grave and saved her brother. She had the pit investigated, and there was Krikor alive and well, a miracle.

“So, of course, Krikor cures King Trdat, who in his gratitude and repentance converts to Christianity. Krikor preaches to the Armenian nobility, a sermon that lasts for sixty days. The whole nation becomes Christian, the first nation to do so. Krikor becomes known to history as Krikor Lousavorchi, Gregory the Illuminator. This is a little after 300 A.D.

“St. Gregory, as I should call him now, now goes through the Armenian nation stamping out paganism. He dies old, mourned by the king and the people. On his deathbed a plaster mask of his face is made, and a casting is made from this, in gold. Gregory’s bones are taken by monks to a secret place in the mountains. The mask becomes part of the treasure of the Catholicos in Ejmiatzin.

“Nearly two centuries pass. Rome falls; Byzantium rises as the second Rome. Byzantium is now Christian too, of course, but a different sort of Christian from the Armenians. I won’t bother you with the theological details. Zeno becomes emperor of Byzantium. He is interested in reuniting the churches.

“At this time the body of Gregory is discovered by some shepherds, in a cave. Preserved, you see. Another miracle. The word spreads to Byzantium. The emperor naturally wishes to do something grand for the Armenian church. So he sends craftsmen, gold, and jewels to holy Ejmiatzin. They take the original mask, and they make it into the centerpiece of a great reliquary triptych. Solid gold, chased with silver, decorated with a thousand pearls and a thousand jewels, including the famous sapphires known as the Eyes of Cappadocia, offered from the Byzantine crown jewels by the devout empress Ariadne. These were placed in the eye sockets of the mask, over the actual eyes taken from the body of the saint. Thus was made what we call the Suurp Timag. The Holy Mask.”

“What happened to it?” asked Marlene.

“For centuries it rested in the Holy City, in the great cathedral. It was brought out on the saint’s day only, at which time, of course, it performed miracles. The Bagratid king Gagik brought it to his capital at Ani around the year 1000, and built a church to contain it, the church of St. Gregory.

“Ani fell to the Seljuk Turks in 1064. By that time many Armenian nobles had exchanged their lands for estates in southeastern Anatolia. There they founded the kingdom of Lesser Armenia, with its capital at Sis. The ecclesiastical treasures, including the Holy Mask, were removed to the see of the Cicilian Catholicos at Hromkla.

“In 1292, Hromkla fell to the Mamluks, and the church treasures were looted. The Holy Mask disappears from history. All assume it was taken with the other treasures by the Mamluks. But there is a curious note in the manuscript of Sir John Maundeville’s Travels into Great Armenia, written in the middle of the fourteenth century. He describes a miraculous relic to be found in a castle near the port of Lajazzo on the Gulf of Alexandretta, what he called ‘a head of St. Gregory, of gold and jewels, that weepeth real tears from its eyes.’ The Mamluks took Lajazzo in 1345, but no such object was found.”

He fell silent. The sun dipped behind the cliffs across the Hudson. Marlene said, “So?”

“So, let us discuss my dealings with Mehmet Ersoy. He had a brother, Altemur Ersoy, who is an archaeologist. I see you know this. I began to buy pieces from Ersoy through Sokoloff. I am quite pleased. I am certain the pieces are stolen from Turkey, but who cares? They stole from us.

“Then Ersoy calls me, I believe just before Christmas of last year. He says his brother has made a great discovery in the excavation of a medieval castle in the neighborhood of Payas. On the Gulf of Alexandretta. Payas is Lajazzo. When Ersoy told me that the mask still existed, I did not, of course, believe him. He provides a photograph. I pretend indifference, of course, but my heart is in my throat. I say I would consider buying it if it is genuine, but, of course, I know it must be genuine. No one could forge such a thing.”

“Why not?” Marlene asked.

“The investment! That is, if one could even lay hands on large cabachon and square-cut stones of such quality and in such quantity, not to mention the gold itself. Twenty-five pounds of gold, more or less? If the raw materials of the thing he showed me in the photograph were genuine, their intrinsic value alone would be in the neighborhood of eight to ten million. And they would have to be genuine because, of course, it is the easiest thing in the world to expose fake jewels or precious metals. No, it was real. We agreed on a price-”

“How much?” Karp asked.

“Thirty million dollars. A million on account and the rest on delivery. Of course, raising that much cash is not a trivial task even for Armenians. I had to send representatives to Armenian communities across the country, to Chicago, to California-”

Marlene asked, “That was where Gabrielle Avanian was going, wasn’t it? She was working on this.”

Kerbussyan placed his hand on his cheek and shook his head. “Ayt kheglj poriguh!” he said.

“Pardon?” said Marlene.

“I’m sorry. I slip into the old tongue from sorrow. That poor child, I said. Yes, she was to go to San Francisco and Fresno. Torn to pieces by beasts …” He was quiet for a moment, swallowing, his face working. Then, his composure regained, he continued, “Of course, by that time Ersoy had been assassinated. We assembled the money and waited, but no one has contacted us.”

Karp said, “You’re sure the mask is in New York?”

“Fairly certain. Ersoy hinted as much.”

“What about the other stuff? Did any of Ersoy’s things turn out to be fake?”

Kerbussyan smiled faintly. “Of course. He and his brother were in it together. They were running an international ring selling fake antiquities. We knew that. I paid for fakes gladly, once I was sure that he had the Holy Mask.”

“But why did you think he was going to be such a sweetheart about the mask? Didn’t you suspect a trick there too?”

“Naturally. Thirty million in cash is a tempting prize. But I had taken precautions.”

“Including murder?”

Kerbussyan rocked his head slowly from side to side. “No, Mr. Karp. I confess that I might easily have killed Ersoy if I thought his death would bring me the Holy Mask. But I would never have killed the only man who knew where it was.”

“How do we know you haven’t got it now?”

For the first time a flush of angry color touched Kerbussyan’s cheek, and his voice grew loud. “How? How? Do you think I sought the Suurt Timag to stick it in a hole as it has been hidden for six hundred years? If I had it, Armenia would know. The whole world would know. I would shout it from the rooftops. Hide the glory of Armenia to cover up the murder of a Turk? Me?”

Marlene spoke up in a mollifying tone. “No, I don’t think you would, Mr. Kerbussyan. The thing is, we’re still back to the old question. Who killed Ersoy and why?”

Kerbussyan looked genuinely puzzled, and this time Karp knew he was telling the truth when he answered, “I honestly can’t help you there. I believe you are correct when you say that whoever killed him probably has the Holy Mask. It may be that Ersoy had accomplices and that these betrayed him, or he tried to betray them and they found out. Thirty million, as I say…. Or someone found out about the negotiations and decided to intervene. My hope is that we will be contacted again by whoever has it now.”

“In which case,” Karp said sternly, “you’ll contact us.” A slight pause, and an affirmative nod of the head.

“Like hell he’ll call us,” said Karp when they were again in their car, driving south down the Henry Hudson. “He’s not going to do shit unless he’s got his hands on that statue. By the way, how did you figure all that out?”

“I don’t know. I just took a chance. When we knew it was all about art treasures, there was a good chance that the killing was about a particularly big one.”

Karp laughed, and then gave voice to his sole artistic talent, a remarkable gift for mimicry. “It’s the shtuff that dreams are made of,” he said as Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. And then, an explosive laugh, Sidney Greenstreet, “The black bird, Mr. Spade, ha-ha!”

“You’re not taking this very seriously,” said Marlene.

“Ha! It’s looney toons, that’s why. We’re in a goddamn movie. I expect guys in dirty white suits and fez-zes. Reeck! They are after me, Reeck!”

“That’s from a different movie. Rick is in Casablanca. Good Peter Lorre, though.” This triggered a memory. “Oh, speaking of guys in fezzes, I talked to Guma before we left. He wants you to call him. Some weird complicated thing about some sleazeballs he’s got on a wiretap. I couldn’t make it out.”

The driver let Karp off at the Leonard Street side of the Criminal Courts, where there was a direct elevator to the D.A.’s office and he didn’t have to negotiate any steps.

She got out of the car and hugged him tight.

“What’s this about?”

“I miss you, you bum. We have to figure out some way of getting you home.”

“How about moving to an elevator building?”

“I mean besides that. I don’t think a respectable married lady should have to whip off a quickie in her husband’s office after hours, and then have to go pick up her baby, absolutely oozing, and of course, everybody knows. I might as well be having an affair.”

“You only did that once. The quickie.”

“Yeah, once was enough. I mean seriously. This sucks!”

“We’ll always have Paris. Shweetheart”

“Idiot!” She reentered the car with a slam, and it pulled away.

Back in his office, Karp took off his jacket and tie and spent a pleasant ten minutes chasing down itches under his cast with a long bamboo back scratcher. Then he spotted a folded sheet of paper stuck in the dial of his phone. A message from Roland-call him at home, important. He called.

“What’s happening, Roland?”

“Lots. Where were you?”

“We were out seeing Kerbussyan. Interesting stuff.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“The vic was selling him art objects. That’s where the money in the safe-deposit box came from. He’d just made a payment of a million on a fancy statue, a holy object of some kind-worth thirty mil apparently.”

“Ersoy double-crossed him and he had him aced,” said Hrcany confidently.

“Not according to Mr. K. He claims the deal never went down.”

“I bet,” said Roland, a sneer in his tone. “And speaking of bets, kiss yours good-bye, sucker. Tomasian admitted the whole thing.”

Karp’s stomach roiled, and bile filled his throat.

“What?!”

“Yeah, today. His roomie in the Tombs gave him up. A check kiter named Dave Medford. Came forward like a good citizen, contacted Frangi, and made a statement.”

“And you bought it?” Karp said, incredulous.

“Yeah. Why shouldn’t I buy it?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Roland! The guy denies everything for months, in jail, and then all of a sudden unburdens to a cell mate? What do you think this Tomasian guy is, a mugger with a sheet? Have you got any corroboration for this guy? Anybody else who heard Tomasian spill his guts? Or any information that wasn’t in the papers?”

Roland laughed. “I’m hearing a sore loser.”

Karp struggled for a moment with his growing temper.

“Roland, tell me I shouldn’t be thinking what I’m thinking right now. Just tell me!”

“What, you think it’s a plant?” Roland yelled over the phone. “I planted Medford? I set up phony testimony?”

Karp thought, and it made a sick sweat break out on his forehead and run down his sides beneath his arms. What he thought was that he could not really believe that Roland Hrcany had conspired to suborn perjury, to concoct a fake jailhouse witness. Both he and Roland had trained in Francis P. Garrahy’s hard school, a school that had turned out tough but straight prosecutors for nearly thirty years. Roland’s straightness was perhaps a little wavy on the edges, but if he was truly bent, then the whole business, everything Karp believed in, was meaningless.

Karp swallowed and said, “No, Roland, I wasn’t accusing you of anything, or even implying. It just seemed, um, overly convenient. This Medford, there’s no deal with him, is there?”

“I didn’t make any deal. Shit, of course when he goes up, his counsel’s gonna tell the court the mutt did a good deed, maybe get him some slack on sentencing, but what else is new? That’s how it works in snitch land.”

Which was true. Karp’s head felt full of grout; he was void of any sensible ideas, but he didn’t think that this lapse required him to listen to Roland’s crowing. He cut short the conversation, hung up, and called a local place for a pizza and a Pepsi and a pack of Camel filters. The guard at the main desk called when it arrived, and he hobbled down to get it.

Fed, he crutched himself slowly through the passageway to the Tombs, to wash the day’s grit off his body. In the steaming shower, he heard the clanking sounds of a man with a mop and steel bucket in the locker room, and when he emerged he saw, as he had expected, that it was Hosie Russell.

Russell looked at the pack of Camels when Karp proferred them, then at Karp, suspicion in his eyes. But he took the pack and opened it and lit one up, drawing gratefully at the smoke.

“What you want with me?” Russell said after a few deep puffs.

It was a good question, but one that Karp could not easily answer. At least he could not give the real answer, which was that he had come to feel, over the past weeks of confinement and isolation, that he and Russell were fellow prisoners.

He shrugged and said, “I appreciate you being around. If I fell or lost my crutch like last time, I’d have to lie on wet tile until the shift changed. It wouldn’t be much fun.”

Russell nodded and walked back to his bucket. He swished the mop with practiced ease while Karp clumsily pulled on his clothes. Then Russell stopped and looked carefully at Karp. “I know you,” he said.

Karp, surprised, smiled and said, “Yeah, sure you do. I’m prosecuting your case.”

“Naw, not that. I mean from somewheres else.” He thought for a few seconds, his eyes narrowed, his mouth slack. Then he smiled, “Yeah! You that ball player! You played for the Hustlers, in the NBA. Last year. I saw that game you shot that sixty-footer, the Celtics.”

“Yeah, that. It was a fluke shot.”

“Yeah, but it went the fuck in. That how you bust your leg, playin’ ball?”

“In a way. I fucked it up in college ball. Then when I played pro for that little while, it went bad on me.”

“I played me some ball,” said Russell, smiling. “I played with the Helicopter, that Knowings. Sixty-two, back then, sixty-three. You ever see that man play?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. I guarded him in Rucker ball once. Summer of sixty-three, I think. Just before I hurt my knee.”

“You guarded the Helicopter? How’d you do?”

Karp laughed. “Not too good. I think he scored about forty off me. Guy got a three-second whistle once, he was in the air all the time.”

Russell laughed too and sat down on the bench across from Karp. “Shit, so you played Rucker League, huh? I pro’lly played you a time or two.”

“It’s possible, if you were any good.”

“I could jump over your head, man! I could cut you up.” He stood up abruptly and did a little basketball dance, miming the ball-fake, shift, pump fake, jump, release.

“You convinced me,” said Karp. “Anyway, those days are gone forever. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to walk right on this piece of junk, much less play ball.”

“Yeah, but at least you got a shot in the pros. How the fuck you do that, old as you are?”

“It’s a long story,” said Karp. “How’d you get into the mugging business?”

Russell shot him a dark look, then relaxed. “How? Well, first I didn’t get into fuckin’ Harvard, then my daddy lost his millions in the stock market. How the fuck you think, man? Just scufflin’, tryin’ to get by. Like everybody else up in the ghet-to.”

“Not everybody. It was everybody, this place’d be the size of the Chrysler Building.”

“Hey, you don’t know what you talkin’ about, white man,” snapped Russell, his voice rising.

“You’re probably right,” said Karp equably. “So tell me. What’s it like? The mugging business.”

“Why the fuck you care? You tryin’ somethin’?”

“No. There’s nothing I have to try. I got my case against you, and I think it’s a good one, and next week I’m going to prosecute it and try to send you away for twenty-five. I can’t talk to you about the case. Nothing that passes between us can come out in court. In fact, if your counsel knew I was sitting here talking to you, he’d have a shit fit.”

“So why’re you doin’ it, then?”

Karp shifted his shoulders and settled his bad leg more comfortably. “I don’t know-I’m stuck here. You’re sure as hell stuck here. I could go watch TV at the guard station, but I’d have to watch what they were watching, which I’ve done already. You could finish mopping and go back to your cell, but you probably don’t find that much of a thrill anymore. Or we could just sit here and shoot the shit for a while. No big thing.”

“They come for me, I don’t get back there in a little.”

“No problem. I know the captain. I’ll cover it. No, the thing is, I’m curious. I must’ve put ten thousand guys like you in jail, and I never spent any time talking with them-just enough to make the case. And they sure as shit didn’t want to talk to me.”

Russell’s face stiffened, and he threw the butt of his cigarette hissing into a damp corner of the locker room. “Well, fuck your ‘curious’! I ain’t no fuckin’ museum.”

Karp nodded and extended his lower lip in the have-it-your-way expression, finished tying his sneaker, got his crutches under his armpits, and stood up. “In that case, see you in court, Hosie,” he said amiably, and carried himself, careful of the wet patches, out the door.

The same evening, Marlene, entering her shadowy loft, was greeted by a scene of touching, if unconventional, domesticity. Harry Bello was lying asleep on the red sofa, and his goddaughter was sleeping facedown on his chest, her face resting on his neck and her little butt stuck up in the air.

Actually, she observed, coming nearer, Harry was not sleeping at all, or perhaps he had awakened, instantly and without motion, just as she entered. She could see tiny glints of the pale evening glow from the skylight reflected from his eyes.

Without a word Marlene scooped up her daughter and put her in her crib. When she returned, Harry was up, standing and rolling his shoulders to release the kinks. There was a damp patch of baby drool around his collar. He walked over to the rack above the stove that held Marlene’s pans and utensils and retrieved his revolver, which he had hung there to keep it away from Lucy’s tiny trigger fingers.

“World’s safest baby-sitter,” said Marlene. “Thanks, Harry. A buck fifty an hour all right?”

Harry made a hmmp and said, “Do any good?”

Marlene told him the good they’d done at Kerbussyan’s.

Harry didn’t comment on this information but said, “I saw our guy, that Duane, today.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“Right here, when I brought the kid home. He was sitting on his bike, corner of Crosby and Broome. I called it in, but he took off before the blue-and-white got here. I wasn’t gonna chase him with Lucy.”

“She would’ve been thrilled, probably. The youngest assist on a collar in NYPD history. She could’ve whined at him until he gave it up.”

Harry was not amused. “It’s you. He’s checking you out for the other one.”

Marlene did not want to hear this. In general, prosecutors are, oddly enough, the safest of the participants in criminal justice. Witnesses get killed, cops get killed, mutts shoot their own lawyers, occasionally somebody goes after a judge, but the D.A.’s don’t seem to attract much violence. It is as if the nature of the job-that D.A.’s are by profession prosecutors-prevents, by a sort of vaccination, the violently inclined from seeing them as maliciously inspired, and fit subjects for vengeance.

On the other hand, Marlene had been blown up (if mistakenly) and kidnapped, and Karp had been shot, although if the truth be told, they had been asking for it by straying from the safety of jurisprudence and into direct contact with the criminals in question on the street.

She said, “You don’t know that, Harry. He could live in the neighborhood. Tribeca, SoHo-good places to get lost.”

“I’m staying,” said Harry.

Marlene was about to object, reflexively, but stopped herself. It was actually a terrific idea-good for Harry, good for her and the baby. And he had a car.

She made up a bed for him in the gym, on a stack of exercise pads, good for the lower spine. As she was about to leave him, he said, offhand, “I forgot to tell you. Our Turk’s got a cousin.”

“Which Turk, the vic?”

“No, the one with the high life. Djelal.”

“So? He has a cousin, what about him?”

“Guy runs a restaurant on East Forty-six. Vic ate there all the time. Ate there the day he died. The Izmir.”

“And?”

“Guy used to manage it, but he bought the place three months ago. Paid cash. Nobody I talked to could figure out where he got the money.”

Marlene grinned nastily. “Yeah, and he doesn’t work for the U.N.”