Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (11 page)

The guard took her purse and searched it. He pulled the handgun from inside and stuck it in the waistband of his belt.

“I’ll want that back,” she said.

The man looked her in the eyes and smirked. “When he says you can have a gun, you can have a gun.”

Malovo let the man’s insolence pass. But when he got down on a knee and began patting her down with too much time and attention on her crotch, she growled. “Touch me there again and you will regret it.”

The man looked up at her and snorted. “I’ll touch where I want.” He started to move his hand back up her leg, but his exploration ended when she shifted and drove her other knee into his temple with all of her strength. There was a sickening crunch and the man collapsed, but before he even hit the floor she’d snaked his handgun from its holster and pointed it at the man at the top of the stairs.

“Stop!”

The shouted command saved the guard’s life, and probably Malovo’s, as the other men in the room held their fire, too. She lowered her gun and looked at the man who had appeared next to the man at the top of the stairs. Tilting her head toward the man lying unconscious on the ground, she snarled, “Your men are undisciplined,
Mr. Erik
.”

The man shrugged. “Yes, perhaps, but loyal so long as their paychecks arrive on time.” He leaned over the rail and spoke to one of the other guards. “Check on Bronson and see if he’s alive or dead. Either way, take him to my boat and dump him in the Atlantic. And let that be a lesson to all of you that you have one purpose only—protecting me—anything else will get you killed.”

The other guards swallowed hard and nodded. One went over to the fallen man and toed him in the ribs, eliciting a groan.

“Make sure you tie him to an anchor or something,” Erik said. “I
don’t want him floating ashore anytime soon.” He nodded his head at Malovo. “Now, if you’re through playing the femme fatale, join me in the library, I’ll be there in a minute.” With that he turned and walked away.

Malovo entered the second-floor library, which like its owner was cold and dark—the floors, desk, and walls of black granite, with black leather furniture, all accented with stainless steel. Three tall, dark-tinted windows framed in steel allowed in just enough light for her to see her employer as he joined her.

As usual, he was well dressed in an Armani suit despite the early hour. But where he had once been tall, blue-eyed, blond, and handsome, he now hunched over as though from stomach pain and leaned on a heavy cane with a silver head. He still had his blond hair, but beneath it he wore a silver mask covering his face so that only his intense Aqua Velva eyes could be seen.

Malovo had once seen what was under the mask and had no desire to look on that hideous mess again. But the mind behind the mask and the horror was as sharp, and glitteringly vicious, as ever, and she was counting on it to make her rich.

Erik crossed the room to the windows and motioned her over. “Quite a view, isn’t it,” he said when she was standing next to him.

She had to admit that it was a striking scene. Almost straight across was the entire south end of Manhattan Island, with the ragged skyline of the Financial District up to the Brooklyn Bridge; farther south in the harbor the Statue of Liberty raised her torch.

Erik turned and walked stiffly to the chair behind the desk. Sitting down, he indicated she should do the same. “Sorry to hear about the unfortunate incident while on your travels,” he said. The man’s voice—once that of an eloquent rising star on the political scene—now had a lisp as a result of the deformity beneath the mask.

“A curious way to describe an attempt to blow my head off,” Malovo replied. “Perhaps you would not have been heartbroken if it had succeeded?”

“Au contraire, my dear Nadya,” Erik chuckled. “Your death would have been a serious setback to my plans.”

“I’m touched by your concern,” Malovo replied dryly.

Erik shrugged. “No need to pretend we like each other in the least. Back in the day you weren’t even a good fuck; then again, I didn’t care whether you were or weren’t, it was just to relieve stress. However, the bad fortune I was talking about was the capture of of that little raghead from Saudi Arabia. Any hope we had of moving forward without al-Sistani a free man remains remote.”

“So then the plan is off?” Malovo felt her stomach knotting. At this rate, she would never be rich and safe; and someday soon she would move a split second too late and she would die.

“No, it has only become more imperative that I arrange for the release of al-Sistani.”

“Do you know how to find him?”

“Roughly. As you know he’s with Grale, and I have a spy who might be able to lead a small force to free him. But it would be risky—these scum who follow Grale know the tunnels and sewers as well as the rats, and they’ll fight if Grale tells them to.”

“Have you tried to buy his freedom?”

Erik snorted. “Yes, I sent an emissary with an offer of one million dollars.”

“What happened?”

“He was found in Central Park the next morning…well, everything except his head.”

“How do you know al-Sistani hasn’t told them about the plan?”

“My spy says that so far he has given them only false information about the target, though he has named my former compatriots with the Sons of Man.”

“So if you’re not going to attack Grale, what do you plan to do?”

“My spy tells me that there is someone even more important to Grale than al-Sistani. Someone he would do anything, give anything, to be with as his madness grows.”

“Are you sure it is not feigned?” Malovo asked. “Before he died, Ali, the Saudi, said he thought that Grale works for the U.S. government. That he’s part of a secret antiterrorism agency and this whole madman routine is just a ruse.”

Erik laughed and leaned forward. “Bullshit. You forget that Grale and I go back quite some time, and according to the old adage, ‘It takes one to know one,’ and I know that he’s quite insane. He lives beneath the city with a ragtag band of beggars, drunks, whores, and invalids who see him as some sort of messiah leading them down the road to Armageddon. That’s why money means nothing to him. But apparently the king of the underworld would like a queen.”

“And who is she?”

The man behind the mask giggled. “Oh, you’re going to love this…”

When Malovo heard the name, it dawned on her that she also now knew the identity of the fat peasant woman she saw in Dagestan. “Then, perhaps you would be interested to know who was involved in the plot to kill me.”

An hour later, Erik returned to the little anteroom off the library, where he lit a match and sucked on the end of a pipe he’d recently filled with opium. It seemed to be the only thing that stopped the pain in his stomach and his face.

“S
O WHAT DO YOU THINK
? D
ID HE SCREW THE POOCH?”
As he spoke, Ray Guma didn’t look up from the fat cigar he rolled between his right index finger and thumb. He couldn’t light the Belicoso—even if Karp had allowed him—because the good citizens of New York City had passed a law prohibiting smoking in any building. And today it was making him more irritable than usual.

Karp shook his head. “No, not really. I’ve spent a couple of weeks reading over the transcripts and going through the evidence for the Maplethorpe trial and for the most part, I think Stewbie did his usual solid job. If anything—and maybe this was a reaction to the media frenzy—he might have tried to do too much.”

“How do you mean?” Tommy Mac leaned forward in the leather chair he was sitting in next to Guma. They were both sitting in front of Karp’s desk, and Tommy Mac looked like he was about to jump to his feet and object.

Ready to defend his guy…good,
Karp thought. He liked to see that his new Homicide Bureau chief thought of the team first. Some guys might have tried to sell a subordinate down the river if his performance reflected poorly on their decision making. But Tommy Mac, wasn’t the sort. Giving the Maplethorpe case to Reed had been one of his first major decisions, and he’d stuck by his man.

And Karp was fine with both men.
That’s not the point of this meeting,
he thought. They were all sitting in his office on the eighth floor of the Criminal Courts Building. It was an office once occupied by his mentor, Garrahy, and he’d pretty much kept it the way the old man left it, even restoring the few things his predecessor had changed. The room had an old library feel to it, a quiet shadowy office with mid-twentieth-century light fixtures and dark wood paneling that covered three of the walls, while the fourth wall was dedicated to shelves of books from floor to ceiling.

Green-shaded lamps on tall brass stands supplemented the ancient overheads; a shorter version of the lamps sat on Karp’s desk. A large wooden world atlas sat next to an overstuffed leather reading couch in a corner next to the bookshelf on which the fourth man in the room, Karp’s special assistant, Gilbert Murrow, sat quietly listening.

Further muting the room, heavy green drapes hung around the windows overlooking Centre Street. They and the matching green carpet still smelled faintly of old cigar smoke and possibly a splash or two of a spilled scotch and water, another legacy of what Guma called “the good old days.” Though a nonsmoker, Karp actually liked the olfactory reminder of the past.

More and more recently, he’d found himself getting nostalgic for those early years. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he’d gone to law school with one goal, to work for the district attorney of New York County. Now when alone in the office, his thoughts sometimes drifted to conversations or even the occasional stern lecture from the old man. Both had made Professor Cole’s “controversial” and “annoying” law student a better prosecutor and a better human being.

Karp noticed Guma’s raised eyebrows at McKean’s challenge. They had contrasting styles on the field and in the courtroom. Guma was the tough, combative inner-city kid from New Jersey who’d learned his game on the hardscrabble sandlots. Everything he did—from his batting stance to his throwing motion—was his own unique version, which worked because he was also a natural athlete. McKean, on the other hand, had been raised in the suburbs north of Manhattan, and had attended a football powerhouse, New
Rochelle High School, where he was coached by the legendary all-American Paul Ryan.

As prosecuting attorneys, both were competitive and good at what they did. But Guma, while intimately familiar with the facts of his cases, was more likely to ad-lib and—to continue with the baseball metaphor—swing for the fences if the defense left a changeup hanging over the plate. McKean was methodical, intense but without the theatrics. He came up with a game plan and stuck to it—content to plug away one play at a time, wearing down his opponents.

“What I mean, Tom, is that as I was looking over the transcripts again this past weekend,” Karp replied, “I started wondering if maybe Stewbie fell into the trap of trying to box with these guys. They’d hit him with some nonsense—like this blood-splatter guy—and Stewbie had his own guy saying the complete opposite. They’d put a psychologist on the stand, and he’d put one on the stand. No wonder the jury was confused. But maybe he didn’t have to stand there and take the hits while trying to counterpunch. He could have just stayed back, and they’d have never laid a glove on him. To cast this another way, the defense case was an illusion, but seems to me that Stewbie made it real by responding to every little bit of their bullshit.”

Karp waited to see if McKean was going to jump down his throat in defense of Reed. But he just looked thoughtful, and then replied, “You may be right. I was getting a sense of that, too, but thought it was easy for me to criticize after the fact. You want to take him off the case?”

Pursing his lips, Karp shook his head. “No. We’ve all done it. Felt like we had to stand toe-to-toe and trade jabs when it wasn’t necessary. We might have even gotten away with it once or twice. But Stewbie ran into a double whammy with a celebrity defendant and a high-octane defense team that makes its living with smoke and mirrors. I want him to go at it again, only this time—with all of us working to really keep it focused—I’m betting he’ll get off the ropes and knock ’em out.”

“Good,” McKean said, looking relieved. “I was hoping you’d say that. Stewbie’s a hell of a prosecutor. If he’s got a fault, and I don’t
know that this is one, it’s that he cares too much. He’s been taking this pretty hard, so it’ll be good for him to get back in the ring and settle this.”

Guma scowled as he stuck the cigar in his mouth.

“What’s up, Guma?” Karp asked. “You disagree?”

“Nah, I’ve only glanced at some of the expert-witness testimony, and I’d have to agree with you,” Guma replied. “But all these boxing metaphors make me want to fight someone, and thinking about this Maplethorpe asshole really ticks me off. Apparently his new show is a big success; the press is fawning all over him and the audiences stand up and applaud when he appears onstage after the performances, like he’s won the Nobel Prize.”

Karp looked over at his friend. He, Guma, McKean, and for that matter Marlene and their other old chum, V. T. Newbury, had all started at the DAO about the same time. “Goom,” as Ray was more or less affectionately known, had been a cocky, muscular son of Italian immigrants, a self-ordained ladies’ man who reveled in his nickname, the Italian Stallion. However, a bout with cancer several years ago had changed him, at least physically. His body was now frail and depleted, his once dark, wavy hair had turned white almost overnight, and his olive complexion had faded to pale and translucent. But his mind was still sharp, and if he was more reflective and mellow these days, his dark eyes still smoldered when confronted by an injustice.

“Since when have you cared what the public thinks?” Karp said with a smile.

“I don’t,” Guma groused. “If they want to support that freak—I mean look at him, the guy looks like a bug-eyed vampire—that’s their business. I just hate the way he and his buddies in the press are rubbing it in our faces. I can’t wait till we nail his ass and send him off to Attica, where he can direct the annual inmate Christmas pageant.”

Karp and the others laughed. But over in the corner of the room, Gilbert Murrow cleared his throat in the way only he could do when he wanted to interject something he knew no one wanted to hear. As the keeper of Karp’s schedule, as well as his spokesman and office manager, one of his tasks was to keep track of the political side
of things, since his boss hated that aspect of his job. “I don’t have to tell you gentlemen how the second trial is being spun in the press by Maplethorpe’s lawyers.”

“I care even less about the press than I do the theater crowd,” Guma growled.

“I second Goom’s feelings,” Karp said, “but I guess you’re referring to the editorial in this morning’s
Times
.”

“Right.” Murrow nodded. “According to the fish wrap, it’s a vendetta—that essentially the deadlocked jury was a repudiation of our case. And that the only reason we’re pursuing it is because the district attorney of New York’s got an ego and sees a chance to make a midterm splash and get lots of publicity by taking down a celebrity.”

“Even though we’re not the ones trying our case in the media,” Guma pointed out.

“So much for the gag order,” McKean snorted.

“But how do I respond to that?” Murrow complained.

“We don’t,” Karp replied, “except in the courtroom, with the evidence, and then we let the jury decide…not the public and not the press.”

Murrow sighed and slumped back on the couch. A short, pear-shaped man who favored vests, bow ties, and John Lennon–esque wire-rimmed glasses, he was not an imposing figure. But he looked after Karp’s interests like a pit bull, and was often frustrated that his boss refused to respond even a little when defense attorneys made their cases in the newspapers.

“You seem a little uptight, Gil,” Guma teased, “must not be getting any action.”

Murrow turned red, but then shrugged. “Well, Ariadne
is
out of town.”

“I was right,” Guma said. “Gilbert’s gonads are a bit stressed. She stepping out on you?”

Murrow stiffened. He was aware of a brief affair between Guma and his girlfriend, Ariadne Stupenagel, an encounter she said she regretted and blamed on too much booze and Guma’s persistence. But even Murrow had been surprised when for the first time in her hedonistic life, Ariadne had apparently fallen in love and settled
down with him. “As a matter of fact, Guma, she’s in Trinidad working on a story about Islamic militancy in the Caribbean.”

“The Caribbean?” Guma looked surprised. “I thought the islands were more into Rastafarianism and Santeria, smoking ganja and cutting the heads off chickens. Maybe a little voodoo thrown in.”

“Mr. Sensitivity as always,” Karp interjected. “But I also didn’t know there was Islamic extremism in the Caribbean.”

“Apparently so,” Murrow said. “In some places, like Trinidad, there are not just a lot of Muslims but it’s actually a hotbed for terrorism. So Ariadne’s trying to interview some of the leaders who led a bloody coup to take over the government and establish an Islamic state twenty years ago. Apparently, the movement is picking up steam again.”

“Wow,” Guma said. “I have to admit that girl of yours has got some big
cojones
if she’s just going to walk up to these fanatics, especially the way she dresses, and stick a tape recorder in their faces and start asking questions.”

A worried look crossed Murrow’s round face. Ariadne was impossible to miss even in a crowd. She was nearly six feet tall, which made her almost six inches taller than he was; a bottle blond who liked plenty of makeup and tight-fitting, colorful clothes that showed off her ample curves and mile-long legs. But she was not just a pretty face with too much lipstick. She’d interviewed, and apparently slept with, some of the most famous—and in some cases dangerous—men in the world, including Fidel Castro in his early years. When it came to getting a story, she was fearless and that often got her into trouble.

“I can’t say I’m thrilled she took the assignment,” Murrow admitted. “She may be a cat with nine lives, but I think she’s used a bunch of those up already.”

“Well, Ariadne knows how to take care of herself…”

Karp’s attempt to reassure his aide was interrupted by a buzz from his intercom followed by the supercilious voice of Karp’s receptionist, Darla Milquetost. “Mr. Reed to see you.”

“Send him in, thank you, Darla,” Karp replied, and sat back in his chair.

The door opened and a handsome, well-dressed man in his early
forties started to enter the room, but hesitated before continuing when he saw who was there. “Gosh, all the heavy hitters,” Stewart Reed said with a smile, though his voice sounded tense. “Should I have brought a blindfold and cigarette?”

“Unfortunately, you can no longer smoke in New York City,” Guma groused as he chewed on the end of his cigar. “The tobacco Nazis have seen to that.”

Karp rolled his eyes as he pointed to an empty chair next to McKean. “No need for either, Stewbie. Have a seat. We’re just talking about the Maplethorpe retrial.”

Reed froze as he was starting to sit. “You replacing me?” He blinked hard and bit his lip.

Karp was surprised by the reaction.
He really is taking this hard. Better defuse this right away.
“Nonsense,” he replied. “It’s been your case from the beginning, and it will still be yours when this is all over.”

Reed swallowed hard and nodded, taking his seat. “Thanks. But I would have understood, sometimes a fresh set of eyes and—”

Karp held up a hand to cut him off. “Again, it’s your case, and you handle it the way you believe is best, but I agree that a fresh set of eyes might help. That’s why I asked Guma, Tom, and Gilbert to sit in on this…and one more…wherever he is.” He leaned forward and touched a button on the intercom. “Darla, has Mr. Katz arrived yet?”

“No, but I hear him out in the hall…apparently saying his good-byes to Miss Bond,” Mrs. Milquetost sniffed.

Karp feigned a look of shock at his receptionist’s tone. Darla Milquetost was a prim and proper widow in her midfifties, and she no doubt did not approve of office fraternization. And because she treated Assistant District Attorney Kenny Katz like a son, Karp assumed that her displeasure was directed at the young woman involved.

“Ah, well, then send him in as soon as he can tear himself away from Sondra,” Karp said. He turned to look at Reed, who was contemplating his immaculate fingernails as they waited.

Stewbie Reed was widely considered to be the best male dresser in the DAO, especially now that the independently wealthy V. T.
Newbury had moved on to private practice with his uncle in the family firm of Newbury, Newbury and White.

Reed was not independently wealthy, but judging by the look of him, he was one of the few assistant district attorneys in the DAO who spent a hefty percentage of his paycheck on haberdashery. Most male ADAs stuck with the bar mitzvah–blue coat and slacks straight off the rack, but Reed’s suits were tailor-made and expensive. He never seemed to have a wrinkle on him or, for that matter, a hair out of place on his neatly barbered head.