Malice

6

Butch Karp stopped pacing long enough to glance out of the big picture window of the loft at the apartment across Crosby Street. A strikingly attractive dark-haired woman painted at an easel, stopping every so often to look southwest as dusk settled over Lower Manhattan. Dabbing at the canvas with her brush, she tilted her head in an odd way that indicated that she saw better from one eye than the other.

The painter, his wife, Marlene, finished a long stroke and then turned in his direction. Seeing him, she smiled and gave a little wave before returning to her project. He responded by raising his hand, and with a sigh turned back to his own work, which was laid out on the kitchen table across the room. He walked over and picked up a yellow legal-sized notepad on which he'd written a series of names formed into columns.

Some of the names had been crossed out; others had lines connecting them to names in other columns; a few names were in multiple columns. He'd been trying to connect the dots and was frustrated by the feeling that the forest was in front of him, but he couldn't see it for the trees. What he could see were the faces of the six children murdered during Andrew Kane's escape as they had appeared in their school photographs. He'd arranged them on the table in two rows, like jurors in the jury box waiting for him to deliver his closing argument.

He wasn't sure why he'd asked Gilbert Murrow to bring the photographs from his office. If he did that with every murder victim he'd ever been connected to, he and Marlene would have had to add another room to the loft. Trying to explain it to her, he'd theorized that these victims were different because they'd been killed as a result of a decision for which he felt in some way responsible. It would have been different if their deaths had been committed within the jurisdiction of the New York DAO, and his office was simply pursuing murder charges. But these children had died because they'd been sacrificial pawns for Kane and security for the motorcade had been at least in part arranged through his office.

Maybe we should have fought harder to keep him at the Tombs and forced his psychiatrists to examine him there, Karp had said to Marlene, referring to the New York City jail.

But it was the FBI and U.S. Marshal's Office that had primary responsibility for transporting Kane, she pointed out. And it was the FBI's guy, Michael Grover, who turned out to be a traitor… You know, you're starting to sound like Clay Fulton, who was only riding shotgun because you asked him to and didn't even have his own guys. But I'm telling you, just like I told Clay, there was nothing that could have been done that would have made a difference. The judge was going to let them take Kane to his psychiatrists, and Kane had a guy on the inside who no one could have guessed at.

I know you're right, Karp replied. And it's not just the kids. They're the faces I can put on something deeper than an FBI agent who sold their lives for money. Grover already paid for his crime when Kane killed him. And Kane and the terrorists are all dead, too. But those photographs won't let me forget that Kane could not have pulled this off alone-not even with the help of Grover and his terrorist pals. Someone else, someone with a hell of a lot of pull and resources, did this and they're still out there.

Are you talking about Grale's warning in the hospital? Marlene asked. Look, I appreciate what he's done for this family, and for New York. But you do realize that he's at least half insane. He sees a conspiracy of evil behind every crime when sometimes it's just a bad guy doing a bad thing.

Yeah, I know, Karp replied. Still, I can't discount that most of his information has been right on the money; in fact, I've wondered how someone who spends his life underground fighting "demons" has such solid connections. I just hope that when we catch whoever it is pulling the strings in this puppet show, there'll be evidence that this conspiracy to commit murder was hatched in the County of New York so that I can have a shot at them in court.

Aren't you taking this a little personally? Marlene cautioned.

Karp knew that her point was valid. His mentor, Francis Garrahy, had always warned about the pitfall of getting emotionally involved in cases, especially homicides.

Our job is a search for truth, not retribution, the old man would lecture. We are not advocates for the victims. Our responsibility is to objectively weigh the evidence. Was the crime committed in our jurisdiction? Do we have legally admissible evidence that is likely to lead a jury to a verdict of guilty?

Passion was okay, he'd say, if it was a passion for doing the job right. Emotion was human nature, and even a valuable asset in the theater of the courtroom during an opening statement or closing argument. To care is human and juries like that. But not if it distracts from the central truth of the case.

Garrahy's voice echoed down the long hall of time, and Karp knew that the old DA and Marlene were right, but still…I'm just trying to connect the dots, Marlene, he'd told her. I know the answer is right in front of me, I just have to keep looking until I can see it.

Marlene had stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. I know, babe, she whispered. You're still recuperating, and I was just trying to mother-hen you a little.

Alone in the loft, his wife across the street, painting, his twin boys at the movies, and Lucy in New Mexico, Karp glanced back at the legal pad. Each column of names had a heading. Under "Kane's Escape"-meaning those people who knew the route of the motorcade-the list started with himself, then Clay Fulton, V. T. Newbury, who had been investigating Kane's tentacles into the NYPD and the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, his appeals chief, Harry Kipman, who was also one of Karp's most trusted lieutenants, and Gilbert Murrow, who as Karp's aide had acted as the liaison between the feds and Fulton. After that, there were the possibilities outside his office: the traitor Michael Grover, followed by FBI agent S. P. Jaxon, who'd been Grover's boss, and a list of four names from the U.S. Justice Department to whom Jaxon and Grover reported. That was it.

Another column was headed "Archbishop Fey," a reference to the former archbishop of the New York archdiocese, Timothy Fey, who had looked the other way while his attorney, Kane, used the church to further his criminal empire. Fey had been awaiting the call to testify on a prison farm in California where he was living under a witness protection program alias. Yet, Kane had discovered Fey's whereabouts and sent an assassin, who strangled the old man in the barn.

Only a few people had known where Fey was incarcerated. That list included the same people from the DAO and most of the same federal names, except for Grover, who'd been killed after Kane's escape and had never been apprised of Fey's location. Unless Jaxon told him, Karp thought. Nah, there was no reason to tell him, and Espey knows how to keep a secret.

A third column was simply titled "Aspen." Acting on a tip, federal agents had surrounded the house of a Saudi Arabian prince in Aspen, Colorado, under the belief that Kane was hiding there, guarded by Islamic terrorists. However, it was a trap and an enormous bomb had exploded, leveling the mansion and killing the hostages, the terrorists, and a half dozen federal agents.

Again, those in the know were the inner circle from the DAO, as well as Jaxon and his superiors in the FBI and Justice Department. New to the mix was Jon Ellis, the assistant director of special operations for the Department of Homeland Security, who'd stepped in after Kane's escape.

Some of the names on the pad Karp had crossed off, especially those who fell under only one heading, such as the prison farm administrator. He also would have crossed Ellis off, but he had not and wasn't sure why.

Personally, Karp didn't like the man. He thought the agent acted superior and condescending. Then there was the little matter after Kane escaped yet again, this time from St. Patrick's Cathedral. When Jaxon and Ellis, who had been outside directing the federal response to the hostage crisis, learned that Kane was gone, leaving the terrorists to blow the place up, Ellis had disappeared. He'd later explained that he'd run to a different communications truck to issue a BOLO, Be On the Lookout, to his agency for Agent Vic Hodges, aka Kane, at the airports, train stations, and bus terminals.

Still, Karp had asked Newbury, who had connections at the State Department and the Justice Department, to check Ellis out. The report had come back spotless, if anyone in the intelligence world could be considered clean. Ellis was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, from which he'd gone into the Navy's elite SEALs commando force and served with distinction, earning a Silver Star and Purple Heart. However, that was followed by a period of time for which Newbury's sources could not account for Ellis.

My guess is he went from military hero to spook-NSA or CIA, maybe something even further off the map, Newbury said. My sources indicated that Ellis was involved in some very nasty "wet work" in trouble spots around the world that resulted in the early demise of some noted terrorists. He reemerged after 9/11 in his current role with Homeland Security and, again according to my source, has been effective at countering terrorist plans the likes of which would terrify this country's citizens if they knew about them.

You're convinced he's a good guy? Karp asked.

Newbury hesitated. I've only met him a couple of times and I also find him a hard guy to like, he said. Then again, he's in a business where maybe being likable is not an asset. I would say that his resume suggests that he wouldn't be likely to consort with enemies of the United States. If anything, he's what you might call a "super patriot."

I don't know if I trust that sort either, Karp growled. They all seem to know what's best for the rest of us, Constitution be damned.

With his pen hovering above Ellis's name on the legal pad, Karp recalled the conversation with Newbury and wondered how his friend was doing. A longtime colleague, V.T. was obviously under a lot of strain after the unexpected death of his father from a heart attack two weeks earlier. Beneath his sometimes rigid blue-blooded exterior, Vinson Talcott Newbury was a gentle soul who'd loved his dad and grieved even as he went about his duties at the DAO. Karp had told him to take as much time as he needed; however, except for a day or two on either side of the funeral and memorial services, he'd preferred to work.

If anything, he's what you might call a "super patriot." Karp's pen moved to scratch out Ellis. The agent wasn't involved in the motorcade and wasn't privy to Fey's whereabouts. His explanation about running to a communication truck to issue a BOLO had checked out; a Homeland Security helicopter had been on the scene when Kane dove into the Harlem River and drowned. Karp lifted the pen and left his name on the list.

Glancing farther down the page, his eyes rested on one final name. Jamys Kellagh. Grale thought Kellagh was the man pulling Kane's strings. But extensive checks by Murrow and Newbury had not been able to turn up anyone with that name who could even remotely be tied to Kane or terrorists. He drew a circle around the name, but there was no sense drawing any lines connecting it to any other name or heading.

Frustrated, Karp rapped his knuckles on the legal pad. But at least he would have another four years in office to figure out who was responsible. Election night had come and gone, and he'd been elected district attorney in a landslide.

Of course, some of that had to do with the fact that he was unopposed, an empty victory that had sent Gilbert Murrow into a strange melancholy. Even the attempt on his life, and subsequent death of an apparently prolific burglar with a long criminal jacket that included sexual assault, had not thrown Murrow in as much of a funk. When asked about it, he'd explained that it was because his magnificent plans for brilliant last-minute campaigning had become moot, the battle won without firing a shot. They'd watched the returns with a few close friends in the Karp-Ciampi loft, then everybody had gone home early.

Karp's concentration was interrupted when the lights went on in the apartment across the way. He'd leased the space and had it finished for Marlene's art studio and given it to her as a present. She seemed to find real peace there, though he had yet to see one of her paintings.

Marlene walked back to the easel and picked up the paintbrush again. She looks…I don't know…content, he thought. It had certainly been a long road home. The funny tilt of her head was because she'd lost an eye opening a letter bomb intended for him nearly twenty-five years earlier. The explosion that cost her her eye had also taken a finger, but most significantly it had been the beginning of her loss of faith in the justice system's ability to deal with violent criminals. The ensuing years had seen her drawn into a world of violence as a sort of avenging angel for those unable to protect themselves, but also at odds with her Catholic upbringing in Queens and with her justice-by-the-book husband.

Watching her paint, he found it hard to believe that someone so beautiful and such a loving mother and wife was so capable of meting out deadly force. But during the past year, with the spiritual guidance of John Jojola, and her art, she at last seemed to be making peace with the past. She was still capable of swift violence, as she'd proved at St. Patrick's, but at least that had been in reaction to a situation she'd been thrust into and had saved many innocent lives. Not to mention the Pope, he thought.

Karp paced back into the living room, his hands behind his back, and then back to the kitchen sink to get a glass of water. Only there he was distracted again, this time by a blue note attached by a magnet to the refrigerator. It read: "Mikey O'Toole, Nov. 19."

Good, he thought, something to take my mind off Kane. He flashed back to the telephone call from Mikey. Well, I'm in a little trouble out here in Idaho, and I was hoping I might ask you for a little bit of advice.

Mikey's brother, Fred, had been one of Karp's best friends from his college days at Berkeley. They'd met shortly after they arrived on campus as highly recruited freshmen for the basketball team in the mid-1960s. In stature, they were bookends-both about six foot five and a rail-thin 190 pounds-and both loved basketball. But that's where the similarities ended.

Dark-haired and clean-cut, Karp had a round, Slavic face. His gray, gold-flecked eyes were somewhat slanted, as if one of his Jewish ancestors in Poland had been ravaged by an invading Mongol. On the other hand, O'Toole's ancestors were from Ireland and he had the wild mane of red hair, freckles, and sea-green eyes to prove it. A native of Mississippi, his southern drawl stood in sharp contrast to Karp's Brooklynese.

The difference continued beyond their looks and accents. Karp was a good student-thanks in part to his schoolteacher mother and his own drive to excel at everything he did, whether it was on the court or in the classroom. If something did not come naturally-a right-handed hook shot (he was a leftie) or calculus-then he worked at it until it did. He actually enjoyed practice and brought the same intensity level he did to games.

O'Toole, on the other hand, saved himself for game day. He had, perhaps, more natural ability than Karp, but he didn't work at it. He also was always on the verge of academic ineligibility, not because he wasn't intelligent, but because he placed a higher priority on chasing coeds and chugging beer. But during a game, O'Toole was a natural force, a dribbling, shooting, shot-blocking thunderstorm of a power forward.

Despite the differences in their personalities and personal habits, Karp and O'Toole had become fast friends, and then evolved into something more like brothers. Karp's college basketball career ended one day during a game when a tumble with another player resulted in a knee so badly damaged that the surgeon who opened him up said the joint "looked like a turkey leg after Thanksgiving." Nothing was still attached where it was supposed to be.

When he was laid up in the hospital, it was O'Toole who sat with him for hours to keep his spirits up. At one especially low point when Karp was lamenting that his basketball career was over, O'Toole grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Hey pal, my basketball career was over the day you walked onto the campus," he said. "At some point we all have to hang up the Chuck Taylors and get on with our lives. It might be because of a lack of talent or maybe old-fashioned laziness, like me, or because of an injury like you…or maybe you just get too goddamned old, but it happens to every one of us. The only question is what are you going to do about it? The way I see it, you are meant for more important things than even the NBA, and basketball was just going to delay you from getting down to the real business of your life."

O'Toole had, of course, been right and with that Karp had turned his energies to getting through college and then law school. And O'Toole was the first to call and congratulate him after he passed the New York State bar exam and went to work for the DAO.

O'Toole had gone his own way. He graduated with a degree in physical education with the sole intent of coaching basketball at the college level. Over the years, he'd gradually worked his way from a small two-year community college program to an NCAA Division II team that he'd led to the National Invitational Tournament championship. That had landed him a job as the assistant coach of a Pac-10 Division I program. Then, when the head coach retired, O'Toole was the overwhelming choice to replace him.

In the basketball-crazy Pac-10, O'Toole's university had been a perennial basement dweller for at least ten years before he took over. In his first year as head coach, they'd played well enough to get an invitation to the NCAA's Big Dance. The next year, they got as far as the Sweet Sixteen.

Next year, the Final Four, and then who knows, he said when Karp called to congratulate him on getting as far as he had.

Life in general seemed to be going well for both friends. Karp was an up-and-comer in the District Attorney's Office and had met and married Marlene, with whom he'd had three children.

As for O'Toole, he'd fallen in love and married Jenny Dunlap, a pretty blond cheerleader at Berkeley. A bit on the wild side herself, Jenny had been a good match. They'd had no children of their own, but had pretty much raised Fred's kid brother, Mikey, eleven years younger, after the O'Tooles' parents were killed in an automobile accident during Fred's junior year.

If Fred O'Toole had one particular fault as a coach, it was that he spoke his mind and sometimes forgot who was listening. After another loss in the Sweet Sixteen, he'd complained in front of a sports reporter that it was hard to compete against some of the teams from back East because they were supported by mob money and that the NCAA, he believed, wasn't doing enough to counter it.

The story made for an instant scandal. But O'Toole had no proof. Stung and angry, the NCAA had called him on the carpet where he was "charged" with conduct detrimental to the college athletic community and especially that of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

O'Toole's university had hired a lawyer familiar with the NCAA to represent him. The lawyer had assured him that if he kept his mouth shut at the hearing, except to apologize, the worst that would happen was he'd have to make the apology public and get suspended for a few games. But the NCAA wanted blood. O'Toole and his lawyer had sat in stunned silence when the hearing board handed down their punishment: Coach Fred O'Toole would be prohibited from coaching at the college level for seven years.

O'Toole wanted to fight it and demand a public hearing, or even take the NCAA to court. But the same lawyer had advised him to accept the punishment "for now."

"We'll let this die down," he said, his arm draped around O'Toole's shoulders. "Then when there's a few different faces on the board in a couple of years, we'll come back and convince them that the punishment was far too severe. But if we fight it now, the good ol' boys with the NCAA will make you pay. Those suckers can carry a grudge," the lawyer further opined, "and their word is law when it comes to college athletics. However, go along, don't say anything inflammatory to the press, and it will actually work in your favor. Those same boys will see that you can be a 'team player,' and they'll be more sympathetic after you've done a little penance."

Karp had only learned of his friend's treatment and the lawyer's recommendation to take his medicine after the fact. "You should have called me," he'd admonished O'Toole.

"I didn't want to bother you," O'Toole replied. "This other lawyer has spent his entire career handling cases with the NCAA and seemed to know what he was doing."

"But that's part of the problem," Karp had growled. "You were being advised by someone who has a stake in not upsetting the powers that be with the NCAA. He has to deal with them a lot, which means picking his battles carefully, hoping they throw him the occasional bone. He's not about to buck the system."

"What do you think I should do?" O'Toole had asked.

"You fight them," Karp replied. "There's no guarantee they're going to be any fairer in two years than they are now. From what you've told me, the NCAA board is the arresting cop, judge, jury, and executioner. They follow their own rules, no meaningful due process, no constitutional protection, which translates into precious little fairness."

O'Toole thanked him for the advice, but in the end he'd gone with the counsel of his attorney. The next time he and Karp talked, he tried to explain that if he stirred up a lot more press, it might be tough to find a job of any kind in coaching. He had the sound of a defeated man when he called a couple of weeks later to say that he'd accepted a position teaching physical education and coaching the boys' basketball team at a high school in Mississippi.

"It'll be fun," O'Toole said, trying to put on a brave face. "It will give me a chance to get back to teaching the basics."

Karp heard the lie in his friend's voice. Fred O'Toole was never going to be content to be a high school basketball coach. His dream was to coach a college team into the finals of the NCAA tournament and win it. Karp couldn't put his finger on it, but his friend's seeming acceptance of his punishment filled him with a sense of foreboding.

However, this was a time when they both had their families and careers to manage. Sometimes months went by between telephone calls and letters. Then it was mostly catching up through Christmas cards with an O'Toole form letter, and telephone calls to wish each other a happy birthday, which always ended with vows to not let so much time go by before they talked again.

O'Toole had waited three years before appealing his suspension to the NCAA. But it was rejected without even a hearing. Two more years passed. Another appeal was made and rejected. The good ol' boys really were carrying a grudge, so O'Toole thought.

Then came the Christmas when no card or letter arrived. Karp waited until early January and then called to see what was up.

"Jenny's dead," O'Toole said, his voice sounding hollow. "Ovarian cancer. They found it in October and she died the day before Christmas. Sorry…I just haven't had the heart to let everybody know." He'd then broken down and cried while Karp, two thousand miles away, could do nothing more than offer condolences.

The death of his wife left O'Toole alone except for his brother, Mikey. The two of them had come to visit the Karp-Ciampi clan in New York, where Butch got a chance to get to know the younger O'Toole. A polite, soft-spoken young man, Mikey had been a good student, "more like you than me in that regard," Fred had said, but instead of basketball, he'd been a college baseball player.

Mikey had no illusions about taking his game to the pros after graduation. Instead, he'd followed his brother's footsteps and became a coach, paying his dues at small schools until being offered the position of head coach at the University of Northwest Idaho in Sawtooth. It was a small Division II university, but had become a respected regional baseball school under Mikey O'Toole.

Meanwhile, Fred tried to make the best of coaching high school boys, as the NCAA had shown no sign of relenting. Seven years finally passed, but even with his suspension over, it was clear that Fred O'Toole's name was mud in college basketball circles.

The day before Christmas, on the fifteenth anniversary of his wife's death, Fred arrived back at the campus of the Pac-10 school he'd been forced to leave. He walked across campus to the gym and at center court blew his brains out with the gun he'd hidden in his waistband.

There'd been a sympathetic story about Fred O'Toole in Sports Illustrated, in which a bitter Mikey O'Toole was quoted as saying that his brother had been blackballed and treated as a pariah because he'd dared to question the NCAA about an allegation issue "everyone knows is true."

"The worst part is that there are rules and even laws being broken on college campuses every day that are far worse than anything my brother might have said," Mikey O'Toole went on. "But the NCAA will do anything to save itself from embarrassment or taking a good hard look at itself."

A spokesman for the NCAA had been quoted as saying the association felt for Mikey O'Toole, but also that he was wrong. "The NCAA had a duty to maintain the integrity of the system. Coach Fred O'Toole impugned that integrity and paid the price for it."

The last time Karp had seen Mikey was at his brother's funeral. Five years later, Karp was reflecting on a telephone call that, as Yogi Berra once quipped, was "like deja vu all over again."

Mikey O'Toole told him that he'd been accused of recruiting violations and then suspended by the university pending a hearing before the American Collegiate Athletic Association, which governed the conference to which the University of Northwest Idaho belonged.

The ACAA hearing in Boise, Idaho, a short time later was "over before it began," O'Toole complained. He'd had an attorney with him-a friend from Sawtooth named Richie Meyers-but no opportunity to defend himself from the charges "or even a chance to have a public hearing at the university so that I could clear my name."

Instead, the hearing panel had immediately voted to suspend him for ten years, after which the university had fired him. Meyers had since filed a civil lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in Boise, seeking reinstatement and damages. "But more important to me is the chance to prove I didn't do what they said I did," O'Toole told Karp. "If we don't win it, I'm ruined. No one will touch me. I'm damaged goods."

"Are you guilty?" Karp had asked.

"Hell no," O'Toole replied. "I'm being set up by a player I kicked off the squad for, among other things, raping a young woman. I think the ACAA's interest in going after me is in part because of my brother and also what I said at his funeral; they're a stepchild of the NCAA, abide by all of the association's rules and regulations, and they also get some of their funding from National Big Brother. There's also something funny about the university's attitude, too, that I can't quite figure out."

"So how can I help you?" Karp asked.

O'Toole cleared his throat, clearly nervous. "Well, to be honest, Richie and I were wondering if we could visit with you in New York," he said. "Richie's a good friend-he's been doing this on contingency to help me out. He's also a fine lawyer, but he's in private practice, which in Sawtooth mostly means divorce cases, DUIs, and property disputes. He'd be the first to tell you that he hasn't done a lot of litigation, and none at the federal court level. Meanwhile, as you can imagine, the ACAA has pulled out the big guns-some suit with a tough rep named Steve Zusskin-and the university has someone else as a co-counsel, too. Richie's game, but he's also feeling a bit in over his head. He knows you by reputation, and when he heard you were a friend of the family, he asked if maybe I could arrange it for him to run what we have past you."

Karp hesitated. He wanted to help, but didn't want to insert himself into a case where he really had no business. "Well, you know, most of what I've done is prosecute criminals," he pointed out. "I've done a little litigation, but there are more qualified civil attorneys."

O'Toole took the answer the wrong way. "Oh, you're right. Hey, you're busy. I'm sorry to have bothered you. It's just that my brother made me promise that if I ever got into trouble of any kind, and he wasn't around, I would go to you."

"Hey, that's not what I meant," Karp replied. "I'm glad you called, and flattered. I'd be happy to meet with you and your attorney and give you my two cents. Maybe we can go over a little courtroom strategy…that sort of thing."

"That's great!" The relief in Mikey O'Toole's voice was palpable. "We can fly out on the nineteenth if that's all right. And I promise we'll make it short and sweet; then we'll get out of your hair."

Karp laughed and said good-bye. But as he flipped his cell phone shut, he had a nagging feeling that there wasn't going to be anything short and sweet about his meeting with O'Toole.