Malice

4

Butch Karp winced as he stepped up onto the curb at the corner of Grand and Mercer. The physical therapist at the hospital had suggested that he use a cane as he worked his wounded leg back into shape, but he was damned if he was going to hobble around Manhattan like an old man. Instead, he forced himself to walk without support, and as normally as possible, so that he wouldn't develop a limp.

He was making good progress, too, except for the occasional misstep that reminded him that a piece of metal had passed through his thigh at a tremendous rate of speed. It will take time, he reminded himself as he straightened and resumed his stroll down the sidewalk at what he considered a respectable clip for having been shot three times.

A second bullet had hit him in the chest, but he'd lucked out and the 9 mm bullet was deflected by a rib and so only nicked a lung before passing out of his back. It broke two ribs, and he might have bled to death if not for the quick reactions of his wife and a passing stranger. But once the bleeding was stopped, the danger had passed.

However, the third bullet was a killer. Almost…as in close only counts in horseshoes, dancing, and hand grenades. The bullet that hit him in the chest spun him so that the next bullet entered the back of his neck. It should have killed him-pierced his skull right where it met the brain stem and shut off the lights before he even hit the ground. But X-rays revealed that the bullet had miraculously stopped just short of doing any real damage.

No one-not the police investigators, not the emergency room surgeons who thought that they'd seen it all-could explain why the bullet stopped. At that range, a 9 mm could have passed through a two-by-four. In fact, several other rounds that missed him took out tennis-ball-sized chunks from the marble facade of the Criminal Courts Building.

"The bullet probably didn't get the right charge at the factory," Clay Fulton said, and shrugged. "Or maybe you tensed your muscles at the perfect moment…I heard there's guys in the circus who can do that."

"Bullshit!"

"Probably," the detective agreed, then gave him a meaningful look. "Or maybe it was a God thing. Maybe the Man upstairs wasn't ready to see your sorry ass."

"Maybe so," Karp replied with a smile.

That the bullet stopped short was the good news. The bad news was that it came to rest against the vertebrae and a major artery to his brain. Several surgeons had been consulted and he'd been offered two options.

Removing it was risky. The slightest slip of the scalpel or too much pressure on the bullet, and he could end up paralyzed or dead. Leaving it in was the other possibility; the hope would be that scar tissue would build up around the bullet and hold it in place. However, a blow to the back of his neck, an awkward fall, or even a sudden jerk of his head could shove the bullet against the artery and cause a stroke that could kill him.

After talking it over with Marlene, Karp had opted for the surgery. He just couldn't stand the thought of some evil piece of metal beneath his skin. Or the idea that some everyday event-even playing basketball with his two boys-could kill him. He would have to limit what he did, and that just wasn't in him.

Karp had gone into surgery wondering if he would wake up paralyzed, or wake up at all. He tried not to worry his kids or wife. "This is nothing," he growled when their faces grew long and tears welled in their eyes in the pre-op room. "See you in a few hours." But when he was wheeled away to the operating room, he wished he'd said something more memorable for his last words to his family. However, the surgery went well, and he'd come out of it knowing that his wife was holding his hand even before he opened his eyes and saw the expectant, hopeful faces of their three children, Lucy, Zak, and Giancarlo.

Not that someone had waved a magic wand and he was suddenly all better. During the first couple of weeks of recuperation, it felt like someone was poking him in the neck with a red-hot piece of iron. Now it didn't hurt as much, even when he felt for the lump of the ugly purple scar just beneath the hairline. But at times he wondered if he'd ever get strength back in his leg, or stop feeling-especially late at night-the trajectory of bullets through his body.

Still, he'd accepted that what he did now about his injuries was up to him. He'd had plenty of experience with the process of rehabilitation, including when he was a highly recruited basketball player at the University of California, Berkeley and a freak fall destroyed the ligaments in his knee. The injury ended his dreams of a pro career, but it had taught him how to mentally, as well as physically, recover from a devastating injury and move on with his life.

Moving on was the toughest part. With his wife threatening to finish the bullet's job if he got within shouting distance of the Criminal Courts Building-ever since the little traitor Murrow gave me up, he thought-he'd had to find other ways to occupy his time and use up some of his prodigious energy.

After he was released from the hospital, the doctors had set him up with a physical therapist who'd put him on a regime of light lifting to strengthen the injured muscles and frequent massages to keep the scar tissue broken up, and encouraged him to "just get out and walk." So he'd gotten in the habit of taking a long walk every morning, often joined by Father Jim Sunderland, the Catholic priest who'd put pressure on his wounds as he lay bleeding on the sidewalk.

It was Sunderland's voice that had stuck in his head, reminding him that he had unfinished business. Then one day when he was still in the hospital, Sunderland had come by to see how he was doing. Karp had thought the name was familiar, but it took the sight of the priest's collar to put it together. Sunderland had angered his church and the U.S. government as a vocal antiwar activist during the Vietnam conflict; he'd also popped up in the civil rights movement, linking arms with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in Mississippi to face the fire hoses, German shepherds, and the Ku Klux Klan. Time and again over the next forty years, if there was a war, he tried to stop it; if there was an injustice, he spoke out against it. His liberal ideology had often brought him into conflict with the conservative hierarchy of his church, as well as the Christian Right in general, and only his popularity with the masses kept him from formal censure. Most recently, he'd been organizing New York Catholics against the war in Iraq.

If they'd met in other circumstances, Karp might have dismissed him as a publicity seeker. Even now he didn't agree with all of the man's politics. But he found him to be sincere and committed in his beliefs. He respected that, and as a private individual, not the strident public activist, the priest was warm and caring, with a delightful and wicked sense of humor. He could also defend his positions on their legal and ethical-as opposed to emotional-merits as well as any law professor. In fact, to Karp's surprise, he had been a practicing attorney before "as Timothy Leary suggested to me in the sixties, I 'turned on, tuned in, and dropped out' of the rat race and became a Jesuit."

After Karp got out of the hospital, Sunderland had called to see if he wanted to go for a walk, and they'd spent several mornings wandering around Chinatown or Little Italy or Soho or the Village. Both men found in each other a worthy opponent and would become so wrapped up in their debates and conversations that they would walk for many blocks without paying attention to where they were going, until they looked up and had to figure out where they were.

As they strolled, they discussed a wide variety of topics, such as the death penalty. Sunderland, of course, opposed it on moral grounds. However, his opposition wasn't just a blanket "Thou shalt not kill," or even that state-sponsored executions were still cold-blooded murders that debased the society that perpetuated them. There was also no evidence, he argued, that the death penalty acted as a deterrent to other murderers.

By and large, Karp agreed that the death penalty was ineffective for those reasons, as well as costing the taxpayers "a bloody fortune" to prosecute and then defend on appeal. However, his opposition had a caveat. "There are times when the crime is so heinous, the perpetrator so depraved that society has the right to seek retribution by casting this evil from the circle of humanity," he argued.

"Oh really?" the priest said. "'Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.'"

"Was that out of the Bible, I don't seem to remember the citation," Karp asked.

Sunderland laughed. "No, actually, I was quoting from The Lord of the Rings. But I think that even evil men may play out roles that neither they nor we can foresee may, without their choosing, work out for the good."

Over such discussions, the two had quickly become friends, and Karp looked forward to each encounter. That morning, Sunderland called and suggested that Karp join him and a small group of his friends-"all of us retired or semiretired with nothing better to do than discuss the great issues of the day; some might call them 'bitch sessions'"-for breakfast at a bustling little Tribeca cafe called Kitchenette.

"Even if the company is wretched, you'll love the peach and blueberry pancakes smothered in real maple syrup and washed down with Saxbys French Roast, which just so happens to be the finest coffee in the land," the priest added. "Or my current favorite, the 'Farmhouse' breakfast of eggs and bacon and the piece de resistance, a huge, warm biscuit absolutely dripping with homemade strawberry butter. Anyway, we're commemorating an anniversary there this morning and you might find the conversation of interest."

"Really? And what anniversary is that?" Karp asked.

"Why, it's October 29, the black day in history when Sir Walter Raleigh was executed," Sunderland replied. "I'd have thought that a constitutional scholar such as yourself would be well aware of such an important date."

Karp chuckled. Every law student had the date drilled into his head at one time or another. The injustices of Raleigh's trial had been the fertile soil from which many of the U.S. Constitution's most important protections had sprung. "But of course," he replied. "It's just that the mention of the pancakes has driven all thought of history from my mind."

Throwing on a light jacket against the chill of the October air, he'd quickly left the loft and headed west on Grand Street past the Soho art galleries and, after the minor twinge at Mercer, continued to West Broadway where he turned left and headed south.

Although he'd never been to Kitchenette, Karp had heard of it as a locals' meeting place. Sunderland said that whenever the weather allowed, his friends liked to sit at the tables outside to discuss politics, the arts, "and pretty girls," while they ate what passed for down-home cooking in Manhattan. On less temperate days, the worthies crowded into the cafe to sit at tables crammed into the long, narrow corridor of the interior.

Even with the nip in the air, it was a beautiful fall day in New York City. The leaves had long since changed color and, except for a few stragglers, had fallen to the ground, but the skies were a bright blue and the air fresh with breezes blowing east from the nearby Hudson River. And really, the temperature was quite pleasant in the sun, which was what he spotted Sunderland enjoying as he approached the cafe.

After shaking Karp's hand, Sunderland led him over to a table where a group of older men were engaged in lively debate. Although Sunderland had not told him who they were meeting, Karp had figured that they would likely be an unusual group. He was not disappointed, identifying several of them as distinguished members of the legal profession.

The first face he recognized was that of a tall, lean, almost-to-the-point-of-gaunt man whose long silver hair was tied back in a ponytail like some aging hippy. He had looked quite a bit different the last time Karp had seen him, but there was no mistaking the deep-set probing eyes of Frank Plaut, a former federal judge with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Karp was impressed. Plaut was considered one of the finest constitutional minds of his and many other generations. The New York DAO's appeals bureau chief-Harry "Hotspur" Kipman, a friend who Karp also regarded as one of the best legal scholars he'd ever met-worshipped the jurist. And Karp had argued several cases before him and learned, once or twice the hard way, to be on his toes when citing precedent or making an argument before Plaut.

By all accounts, Plaut had been destined for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. But for reasons known only to himself, he had one day stepped down from the bench and accepted a position teaching constitutional law at Columbia University. Now here he sat presiding over coffee and what appeared to be waffles at a Tribeca cafe.

Karp also recognized a second man as a former U.S. attorney for Manhattan, Dennis Hall. He was a conservatives' darling and a regular commentator on Fox, but he was not a poorly researched, mindless TV talking head. His arguments were always reasoned and based upon a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Seated next to him was his legal opposite, Murray Epstein, a ferocious defense attorney who'd terrorized many an assistant district attorney of the New York DAO. The man could have made a living as a Shakespearean actor with his flair for language and dramatic gestures, but he was no empty suit. Epstein knew the law inside and out, and as a defender of the liberal camp of constitutional law, he'd argued, and won, his share of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some of Epstein's battles with Karp's mentor, the longtime New York City DA Francis Garrahy, were the stuff of legend at the DAO. And he'd even put a much younger Butch Karp through his paces a time or two; in fact, he'd nearly won what had appeared to be a slam-dunk homicide case for the prosecution. Karp's bacon had been pulled from the fire only because Garrahy insisted on meticulous preparation and, conveniently, because the truth was on his side.

Karp didn't recognize the other men at the table. But if the company they kept hadn't already identified them as formidable thinkers, their conversation as Sunderland and Karp walked up certainly did.

"I still contend that the biggest impact of Raleigh's trial on U.S. constitutional law was the right to a fair and impartial hearing before a judge and a jury of one's peers," Hall argued.

"Humbug," Epstein replied. "The nut of this was the right to confront witnesses and present evidence."

"What good would it have done Raleigh to cross-examine Cobham and present his letter if the judges and juries were still predetermined to find him guilty?" a short man who looked somewhat like Albert Einstein asked.

"It was damned unfair," a heavyset man agreed. "Even Raleigh's judges and jurors recognized that-if somewhat too late. On his deathbed, Justice Gawdy said, 'The justice of England was never so depraved and injured as the condemnation of Sir Walter Raleigh.' And some members of the jury knelt before him and begged his forgiveness."

"I read that his widow kept his preserved head in a cupboard, which she would trot out to show visitors," said an effete-looking gentleman whose voice and mannerisms reminded Karp of Truman Capote. He obviously found the macabre more fascinating than the constitutional questions.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, we digress from our topic," Plaut interrupted. "Today on the black anniversary, we were to stick to the impact of Raleigh's trial on the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment and how it applies, if at all, to the pretrial publicity surrounding the rape charges brought against members of the Duke University lacrosse team."

The admonition seemed to get the others' attention, but it was soon diverted again when a buxom fortysomething waitress with a lip ring arrived to take their order.

"Hey, babe," Epstein growled, wiggling his eyebrows, "if I told you that you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" The others cackled at the old joke and sat expectantly awaiting her response.

Which was to roll her eyes and reply with a heavy Queens accent, "Not on your life, Murray. You'd probably have a heart attack and the cops would arrest me for moider."

"I'd sign a waiver for you, Marjorie," Epstein replied.

Marjorie the waitress was about to respond when she noted that the men had all stopped looking at her to watch a leggy model type in tight jeans walk past on the sidewalk to their appreciative wolf whistles.

"Hey, so what did I become, chopped liver?" Marjorie complained in mock seriousness. "I swear the minute I turn my back on youse guys, you're ogling some anorexic teenager with a bad dye job."

"Turn your back on us," the Albert Einstein look-alike replied, "and you can bet our eyes will be on you. That's one nice can you got there, sister."

"That's better," the waitress sniffed. "For a moment there, I thought you might all leave me for some floozy with a pair of plastic tits."

"As the old saying goes, 'Who cares if they're fake,'" Epstein said.

"That's an old saying? I think the copyright on it is a lot younger than any of you," she scoffed.

"Oh, so now you're a lawyer," Hall quipped.

"Well, I don't lie or cheat, so that rules out that career," Marjorie shot back. "Now, shall I call your wives and tell them to cut back on the vitamin E? Youse guys are getting a little too frisky, and you might fall and break a hip or something."

The men laughed and applauded the waitress's sauce and pleaded for mercy. That's when they noticed Karp and Sunderland standing to the side, enjoying the repartee, and waved them over.

"Ah, gentlemen, look what our good priest has brought us," Epstein said, clapping. "The district attorney of New York, Butch Karp. Have a seat, have a seat."

"So, Mr. District Attorney, did you overhear our topic of discussion on this auspicious occasion?" Hall asked.

"I did," Karp replied.

"Well, then, would you care to weigh in?" Epstein asked, shooting the others a sly glance.

The way the others suddenly grew rapt with attention gave Karp the impression that he was not so much being asked to weigh in as he was being weighed. Taking a seat, he joined the fray. "Well, prosecutors should do their talking in court. It's not advisable to engage in press conferences or encounter-type give-and-takes with the media. Just proceed in an orderly and fair fashion."

"Would you care to elucidate further on that position?" Hall asked, as if facing a witness on the stand.

The obvious challenge might have intimidated another man. But on the list of things Karp loved most in life were first his wife and kids, followed shortly thereafter by discussing the law. He shifted to address his opponent more directly and winced when the movement put a little too much pressure on the wounded muscle of his leg.

The others noticed the reaction and asked solicitously if he was all right. "We, of course, heard about the unfortunate incident," Plaut said.

"Hell of a way to try to win an election," faux Albert Einstein said. "And by the way, the name's Bill, Bill Florence. I used to be an editor on that fish-wrapper the New York Post."

"Guess she lost her head, and the name's Saul Silverstein, I was in ladies' apparel for a time," the heavyset man cracked.

The others groaned at the reference to the fact that by the time Marlene finished emptying her gun at her husband's assailant, there wasn't much left above her neck.

"Forgive my friends Mr. Florence and Mr. Silverstein for their tasteless senses of humor," Sunderland said, shooting the pair a dirty look. "They don't know any better. And by the way, my friend Mr. Silverstein is being unusually humble this morning. He wasn't just in 'ladies' apparel,' he practically invented women's slacks in the late forties."

"What? What?" Silverstein objected, as if Sunderland was reading something into his comment that he had not intended.

"My apologies, Mr. Karp, you'll find that the Sons of Liberty Breakfast Club and Girl-Watching Society is comprised of ancient cynics," Plaut noted. "The commentary can at times grow somewhat morbid or, as the good friar noted, a bit dark for some tastes."

Karp held up his hand and smiled. "No apologies necessary, gentlemen. No one understands more than those of us working at the DAO that if it wasn't for the ability to laugh at dark humor, we'd all go mad."

"The name's Geoffrey Gilbert," the effete-looking man said, laughing. "I'm an artist, which makes me 'the sensitive one.' But I'm quite sure that Mr. Karp understands satire, even if it's dark satire."

"Might I ask about the name of your group?" Karp ventured. "If my memory serves, the Sons of Liberty were a secret band of revolutionaries before and during the War of Independence."

"Very good, Mr. Karp," Sunderland said. "The name's a bit grand for the likes of us. But it does serve as a reminder as we have these little debates that we owe that right to other men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and sacred honor to defend it."

"Hear, hear," Florence added. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants; it is its natural manure."

"So spoke Thomas Jefferson," Sunderland pointed out. "But come, let's not be so dramatic with Butch, as he has asked me to call him, or he might not want to come out and play with us anymore."

Karp caught what seemed to be a meaningful glance between Florence and Sunderland.

"I was just staying with the revolutionary theme," Florence complained. "But fine, Butch, accept my apologies and do go on with your take on our question of the day."

Karp looked around at the faces of those who waited for him to speak. Their hair was gray, or they were bald, and the wrinkles aged their faces, but their eyes were bright with intelligence and so engaged in the debate that they seemed younger than their years in spirit. Not a fool among them, he thought.

"Well, the courts have held that part of the intent of the confrontation clause is that no citizen be deprived of his liberty interests without the right to hear the evidence against him, prepare his defense, confront any witnesses, and present witnesses and evidence of his own," Karp said. "So it's important that the DA proceed meticulously, cautiously, and prudently and avoid not only a rush to judgment but also the lamentable, egocentric, politically cool press conference that is unseemly and prejudicial to the accused."

"But how does that deprive the players of their liberty interest? They were all granted bail and free prior to trial," Hall noted.

"A liberty interest is not just whether a person has been deprived of his physical freedom," Karp replied. "The courts have also held that a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest includes the right to pursue the career of one's choice. In this case, the young men in question were suspended from the university even though they had not been tried, much less found guilty, reminiscent of an act of academic McCarthyism that certainly could affect the pursuit of their chosen careers. Who is going to hire someone publicly branded a sex criminal? Even if later tried and acquitted, the stain will remain. They have been stigmatized by an avalanche of pretrial publicity. Prosecutors must be sensitive and professional to avoid that occurrence. It's why DAs should avoid press conferences and do their talking in court, not in front of the cameras."

"But the defense lawyers also made statements to the press that their clients' DNA did not match any samples taken from the alleged victim," Hall pointed out. "Wasn't this also trying the case in the court of public opinion?"

"Yes," Karp acknowledged. "But the defense attorneys made their statements only after the prosecutor went in front of the cameras to proclaim the players' guilt. Obviously, both sides are playing to the potential jury pool. But it seems to me that the prosecutor jumped to his conclusion despite the fact that this young woman showed up drunk at a party so that she could be paid to take her clothes off."

"So you're saying that strippers can be raped with impunity?" Florence asked.

"Of course not," Karp replied. "But look what came to light after the prosecutor made his comments to the press. It's not just the negative DNA tests either, or even that it took three days for her to come forward with these allegations-we can agree that victims of sexual assault may delay due to embarrassment or fear. But then her story kept changing. First she was raped by thirty men, then ten, then three. Then we learn that several years earlier, she accused three other men of raping her but nothing came of those allegations either. Also, there's the alleged timeline exonerating one of the accused. Perhaps all of this should have been ascertained and weighed before the lives of these young men were damaged without the benefit of a trial."

"But isn't the prosecutor supposed to take the side of the victim and be her advocate?" Gilbert asked.

Karp shook his head. "That's a common misconception created by television and by inept prosecutors. It is a defense attorney's duty to zealously protect the rights of the client and force the state to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt before it can deprive that client of his liberty and sometimes even"-he looked at Sunderland and smiled-"his life. However, competent prosecutors engage in a two-step threshold analysis before charging anyone with a crime. First, you have to determine if the defendant is factually guilty. Once convinced that the defendant is a thousand percent factually guilty, you go to the next step, and that is: Is there legally admissible evidence to convict the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt? We may have factual guilt, but not have legally admissible evidence to convict. For example, we may have a defendant's statement that was taken in violation of a Fifth Amendment privilege, or we may have incriminating physical evidence, but there may be a Fourth Amendment infirmity that could prohibit admissibility. However, once there is factual guilt and legally admissible evidence, the prosecutor's duty is to go forward. He should be resolute and firm but compassionate and sensitive to the task at hand. It is a prosecutor's job to do this objectively, without taking sides."

"But in the Duke case how does the confrontation clause, which has to do with the right of a defendant to cross-examine witnesses during a trial, apply?" Plaut noted. "What does it matter if these statements are made to the press as long as the defendants' rights are protected at trial?"

"At trial, the defendants will have the opportunity to present evidence, confront witnesses against them, and have their fate determined by the rule of law as applied by an impartial judge and a jury of their peers," Karp said. "All those things that Raleigh was deprived of at his trial. But that due process fairness is compromised by prosecutors who engage in pretrial, win-the-hearts-and-minds of the jurors press conferences. The defense lawyers chimed in to proclaim their defendants' 'innocency,' as Raleigh did, but the damage to their reputations was done."

"I find this attitude surprising, and refreshing, coming from the district attorney of New York," Epstein said, grinning at Hall.

"Not really," Karp replied. "Mr. DA Francis Garrahy established the model here in Manhattan before I was born. He mentored us to understand that the unjustly accused must be exonerated, and that not to prepare thoroughly, and not to courageously and vigorously represent the people were the cardinal sins of prosecution."

When Karp finished there was a moment of silence. Then Plaut began to clap and was quickly joined by the others. With cries of "Hear, hear," they raised their glasses of orange juice and toasted his speech. Florence produced a flask of brandy and, after applying a generous dollop to his orange juice, passed it to the others, who spiked their drinks with an air of teenagers getting away with something.

The alcohol seemed to go straight to Karp's head and in the glowing effect he asked about the origins of the Sons of Liberty Breakfast Club. The answer was somewhat vague but essentially came down to their wives having grown tired of their postretirement hanging around the house and kicking them out. "We were driving them batty," Florence announced proudly.

However, there was a darker reason. "We were sitting right here when the bastards flew the planes into the World Trade Center," Gilbert said, pointing to the empty space four blocks to the south where the towers had once stood. "We thought that, perhaps, it was a good time to remember that during times of stress and fear, the protection of civil liberties is all that much more important."

"Well said," Karp responded. "To paraphrase Roosevelt, our greatest fear when it comes to liberty should be fear."

Most of the rest of the meeting was occupied by the arrival of breakfast and the group teasing the pretty girls who walked by. Full of pancakes and banter, Karp rose to leave and get the rest of his morning walk in.

"I think I speak for all of us, Mr. Karp, when I say that we enjoyed your company and your contribution to our little breakfast club," Plaut said. "Perhaps you'll join us again?"

"I'd be honored," Karp replied.

Florence passed a different silver flask to Karp, who unscrewed the top and sniffed. "Whiskey?" he asked, and then looked at his watch. "At nine a.m. on a weekday?"

"How do you think we lived this long?" Florence replied, and the others laughed.

Karp shook his head and raised the flask to his lips as the others shouted, "To Raleigh! This is sharp medicine that will cure all my ills."

"To sharp medicine!" the others shouted again.

As they watched Karp depart, Sunderland leaned toward Plaut. "Interesting fellow, wouldn't you say?

"Yes," the judge answered. "We've been following his career for quite some time." He turned to Sunderland. "Did you get the package off that our dear departed friend left in our care?"

The group fell silent and turned to the priest. "Yes. If you remember, that's why I was heading to see Mr. Karp on the day he was shot. But due to concerns over traitors and such, we agreed on this new route. It should have arrived already."

"Good, good," Epstein said. "That should get the wheels in motion."

"So now we just watch?" Gilbert asked.

"Yes, now we just watch," Plaut replied. "After all, that's what we've done for more than two hundred years."

Unaware that he was still the subject of discussion back at Kitchenette, Karp continued four blocks to Vesey Street and stood looking at the emptiness that had once been occupied by the World Trade Center. It wasn't just that the towers were missing, he thought, but it was as if their destruction had created a vacuum that pulled the eye to the hole in the ground and the mind to the numbing thought of what had happened.

Hard to believe that five years had passed. So much had changed. A war in Afghanistan. Followed by another in Iraq. All falling under the general rubric of the War on Terrorism. But were we winning these wars? Do we have the strength of character to win?

As many people had died that day as had been killed at Pearl Harbor sixty years earlier, launching the United States into a war that U.S. leaders had from the beginning said would end with one acceptable solution. Unconditional surrender. No negotiations. No allowing the enemy to keep the means to wage wars of aggression. It was surrender or die every last man, woman, and child if necessary. And they'd used atomic weapons to make the point.

What, Karp wondered, would U.S. leaders and, more important, a wavering public be willing to accept from al Qaeda, or an Islamic extremism in general that set as its goal a world caliphate? Unconditional surrender? The death of every Muslim, every man, woman, and child in those parts of the world that threatened the West?

And what would the United States and its allies be willing to accept in casualties to win? Not just in the lives of their young men and women, but in their way of life and their civil liberties. Tens of thousands of lives? A military government? A dictatorship that promised to keep them safe in exchange for their freedoms?

Watching the smiling, joking tourists standing in front of the observation area and snapping photographs as though they were at the Grand Canyon, Karp imagined the same scene at Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets, where there would have been a hole in the ground if Andrew Kane and the terrorists had succeeded in blowing up St. Patrick's Cathedral.

"BEHOLD THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE…AS FORETOLD IN THE BIBLE!"

Karp whirled at the thundering of the voice behind him. A wild-eyed denizen of the streets stood there in a filthy yet colorful coat that appeared to have been sewn from the remains of many other articles of clothing. Beneath it, he could see a stained and faded T-shirt on which were stenciled the words Jerry Garcia Lives!

With his wild mane of wiry gray hair and a flowing salt-and-pepper beard, the man had always reminded Karp of some prophet newly arrived from the desert. "Well, Edward Treacher, imagine meeting you here," he said.

Treacher, a former philosophy professor of some note at New York University during the 1960s until a dose too many of LSD had addled his brain, was one of the regular street people who Karp often saw hanging around the Criminal Courts Building. He sometimes frightened the tourists with his vociferous biblical warnings, but he was harmless and from time to time, as one of Grale's Mole People, passed "street information" to Karp.

"Free country, the last time I looked, Mr. Karp," Treacher replied. "Though seemingly less free with each passing day, thanks in part to this." The old bum looked at the WTC site and then glanced around as if someone might hear.

"The government, of course, knew about the attack before it happened," Treacher said under his breath, which smelled of cheap wine, marijuana, and poor dental hygiene.

Karp raised his eyebrows. Every New Yorker had, of course, heard the conspiracy theories that concluded that the U.S. government was in some way involved in the September 11, 2001, attack. The theories ranged from criticism that the intelligence community and the military should have known the attack was coming and that the 9/11 Commission was merely a cover-up for their incompetence, to allegations that rogue elements within the government either allowed the attacks to happen or executed them in order to pursue already determined foreign and domestic policies. One theory even had government agents planting bombs in the building to bring them down and then blame Osama bin Laden.

Although willing to concede the point of incompetence ascribed to an assortment of government intelligence agencies, Karp was one of those observers who was persuaded by evidence, not paranoia. "I didn't realize you were a conspiracy buff, Edward," he said.

"Believe what you will, Mr. Karp," Treacher replied. "But Satan prefers to corrupt from within before attacking from without."

Karp was about to reply, but Treacher had already spotted a likely gathering of tourists across the street and was hurrying toward them. "AND BEHOLD, A PALE HORSE. AND THE NAME OF HIM WHO SAT ON IT WAS DEATH…" he bellowed with his hand outstretched, hoping for a one-or two-dollar bribe that would send him away to the next unfortunate group.

Watching him go, Karp considered how the conspiracy theorists must be looking at Ariadne Stupenagel's stories about a possible connection between a Russian agent and the attack at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The Russian government's denials and the U.S. government's refusal to comment were sure to spark the conspiracy hotline.

Although officially, the police were treating the attack on Stupenagel and Murrow as a run-of-the-mill intruder assault, the reporter wasn't buying it. And for that matter, neither was Karp. She's onto something that's making someone nervous, he thought. He recalled a conversation before the attack that he'd had with his cousin Ivgeny Karchovski, a Brooklyn gangster with the Russian mob who was convinced that certain clandestine Russian and possibly U.S. interests were in collusion to, if not promote, then at least allow certain acts of terrorism to further their own goals under the guise of fighting the so-called War on Terrorism.

Karchovski's views had surprisingly meshed just a week earlier when Karp attended a meeting of the New York Bar Association to hear Senator Tom McCullum speak. The Montana senator was pushing for public support of his calls for a congressional hearing regarding the attack at St. Patrick's. However, the thrust of his talk that night had been to warn about government incursions into the private lives of citizens, using the fear of terrorism to thwart opposition.

"I understand that intelligence gathering in war is fundamental to winning that war," McCullum had said. "But I worry over the growing and seeming unilateral power under the Patriot Act of secret spy agencies and the placement of formerly independent departments under the single umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Where is the oversight when the administration cites 'national security' and keeps the other branches of government, as well as the public, in the dark? Who is watching the watchers? Who says that they are only inspecting the financial records of suspected terrorists? Who makes them follow due process before they subpoena the records of bookstores to find out what citizens are reading? And at what point will the government decide it would rather not have us read certain books?"

McCullum had urged those present "not to compound the tragedy of 9/11 with the loss of our fundamental liberties without a clear and present need to do so."

Not everything McCullum had said was popular with the association. At the cocktail party afterward, Karp had heard plenty of disparaging remarks about "bleeding-heart liberals who endanger us all."

To a degree, Karp agreed with the critics of those on the left who thought they could appease terrorists by talking to them. It reminded him of the pre-World War Two 1930s and Neville Chamberlain's attempts to appease Hitler. However, like McCullum, he was also concerned that the government seemed to use the specter of terrorism to justify tampering with civil liberties.

It was a difficult thought to deal with in front of the gaping hole across Vesey Street, and the sudden chiming of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on his cell phone startled Karp. He pulled it from his pocket with a scowl. He hated the thing and only carried it to make Marlene happy. He looked at the number flashing on the panel but didn't recognize it or the area code: 208.

"Probably a wrong number," he muttered, but answered. "Hello?"

"Mr. Karp?" a male voice asked.

"Yeah, who wants to know?"

"Excuse the interruption, but your wife, Marlene, gave me your number."

"Who is this?"

"Mikey O'Toole. Fred's brother."

"Mikey O'Toole, what a pleasure!" Karp exclaimed. He and Fred O'Toole had been roommates at Berkeley, where they'd both attended on basketball scholarships. "This is an unexpected surprise, what's up?"

He heard O'Toole take a deep breath before answering. "Well, I'm in a little trouble out here in Idaho, and I was hoping I might ask you for a bit of advice."

Karp's stomach knotted up. Many years earlier, Mikey's brother had called with a similar request and that had ended badly. But there was a debt that remained, so he asked, "What can I do for you?"