Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (5 page)

“Wow,” sighed Giancarlo. “That was better than a movie.”

“Frickin’ hot is what that was, you dork,” Zak pointed out.

“Oh, like you’re some Don Juan,” his brother replied.

“I don’t know any Don Juan.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I’m an idiot? You can’t even remember to stick with the plan—order a drink like you’ve actually done it before. ‘I’ll have a Coke…and maybe some milk, too, please.’ We could have got away with it if you weren’t such a geek.”

“Yeah, and whose idea was it to make such ridiculous licenses? Mickey Lane and Mouse Street? Bob Smith and Roy Jones? My, how imaginative.”

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t even go to Ivan’s to get them. Maybe if you had, I wouldn’t have had to come up with something on the spot.”

“Yeah, great, if Dad knew you were going to a convicted forger for fake IDs…”

“The only way he’d find out is if you told him…”

The twins stopped arguing when a spotlight suddenly illuminated their table and Maplethorpe climbed up on the dais next to the DJ booth. Grabbing a microphone, the producer shouted, “Welcome! Welcome! Dear, dear friends and the wonderful cast of
Putin: The Musical
!”

A roar of approval went up from the crowd, encouraging Maplethorpe to go on. “Yes, yes, even in this horribly trying time in my life…”

The crowd groaned sympathetically. Someone yelled, “It’s that bastard Karp’s fault. Karp’s a Nazi!”

Garcia looked over at the twins and grinned. “Maybe I should tell them who’s here,” he chuckled. “You’d never make it past the door.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” the boys replied, glancing around nervously.

“Got any money?” Garcia replied with an evil laugh.

Maplethorpe held up his hands, and the crowd grew quiet again. “Thank you, my dearest friends, for your support and your kind words—especially those aimed at my tormentor, Herr Karp,” he said with a laugh, and was joined by the crowd. “But drink up…it’s on me. I just wanted to introduce a special guest who has graciously joined us to help celebrate our new adventure. Please welcome, Mr. Alejandro Garcia, aka
Booooooom!
”

Those in the crowd still sitting jumped to their feet and with the others cheered as Garcia waved his hand and stood. He walked quickly to the dais and, after briefly conferring with the DJ, began freestyle rapping.

Thirty minutes later, Garcia bowed to the gyrating crowd and handed the microphone back to the DJ. It took him another five minutes to reach the table where the twins sat with Carmina. He plopped down, wiping the sweat from his head with a napkin.

“Don’t touch me, you’re all sweaty and disgusting,” Carmina complained. “You been out there in SoCal eatin’ like a pig…no wonder you’re sweatin’ like one. You need to come back to the SH for some home cookin’.”

“Do I hear somebody begging me to take her back?” Garcia replied, looking at the twins as if surprised.

“Ain’t nobody beggin’ nobody for nothin’, fool,” Carmina retorted. “You had your chance to make something happen with this señorita and you fucked it up. And don’t you come sniffing around later tonight when you get done with whatever mysterious business is so important you can’t stay for this party. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for you to come back to Harlem neither.”

“We’d like it if he did,” Giancarlo said innocently.

Carmina smiled and patted his hand. “That’s ’cause he’s got you bamboozled, like he used to bamboozle me. But believe me, I’m doing you a favor if I can get him to keep his dimpled ass in L.A.”

Garcia put an arm around Giancarlo and pulled him away from Carmina. “Don’t you listen to the Wicked Witch of Spanish Harlem. She’ll cast a spell…her grandmother was into voodoo down in
Puerto Rico, and it rubbed off on her.” He looked at his watch and quickly downed his glass of water. “
Vámonos, muchachos
, time to split. I’ll drop you off at your folks’ on my way uptown.”

Garcia leaned over and kissed Carmina. “I still don’t like this.”

“Go on,” she replied. “I can take care of myself. Hell, I had years of practice fending you off before I let you into the promised land.”

Garcia laughed. “More like weeks. But speaking of the promised land, you sure I can’t come sniffing around later?”

“You can sniff all you want,” Carmina said with a shrug, “but it might get you a cap in your ass. Take your chances, lover boy…or not.”

S
TEPPING OUT OF THE
S
OHO LOFT BUILDING
M
ONDAY MORNING,
Karp was surprised by the crisp bite of the air and shivered. It was a clear day, but the October sun had yet to warm the bones of Crosby Street. Its old paving stones and brick buildings were bathed in shadows, and the chilly air that had blown in the previous night from the East River lingered in the narrow confines.

Still, once he’d pulled his peacoat a little closer and adjusted to the nip, Karp breathed in deeply, savoring the day’s freshness.
Gotham City’s best in autumn
, he thought. The ripe smell of the city that permeated July and August, and even warm Septembers, dissipated on the breezes that blew more frequently and cooler in the fall. He thought he could even detect salt air on the wind.

In the parks, the oaks, elms, maples, lindens, and hundreds of others he couldn’t name but enjoyed just the same were putting on their annual color pageant. A stroll through Central Park was like walking inside a sunset, surrounded by splashes of reds, oranges, purples, yellows.

On Saturday, he’d watched his twin boys playing football on the fallen leaves and thought,
Life truly does not get any better than this…a perfect day—well, almost
. When they had lunch afterward at the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street,
nobody was talking about the Yankees.
No World Series this year, those bum underachievers.

October just wasn’t quite right if the Bronx Bombers weren’t still in the race. Karp sighed. Looking up at the robin’s-egg-blue skies above the buildings, he regretted that he wasn’t walking the half dozen blocks south to work at 100 Centre Street, the New York Criminal Courts Building. It was bound to be much warmer in the sun, and he would have enjoyed the stroll. Who knew how long this Indian summer would last before winter descended? But Moishe’s place was more than a mile, too far to walk and get back to the office on time.

Karp trotted down the two steps from the building’s front door to the sidewalk and almost ran into a tall, unkempt man wearing a tattered green army field jacket and carrying a plastic milk crate, who came barreling around the corner from Grand Avenue.

“Why, Mr. Karp, an unexpected pleasure meeting you here this morning,” the man said, casually brushing his tangled mat of gray hair back from his face.

“Why, I live here, Mr. Treacher,” Karp replied. “But I’m sure you know that. We’ve spoken on this very spot on other occasions.”

“We have?” Edward Treacher’s watery blue eyes rolled wildly in their sockets as if searching the interior of his cranium for some memory of these alleged earlier meetings. Then he smiled sheepishly. “Well, I have to admit, the late sixties were not kind to my long-term memory. I can scarcely recite my Chaucer anymore. Let’s see, ‘In April the sweet showers fall, and pierce the drought of March to the root, and all’…ummmm…‘The veins are bathed in liquor of such power, as brings about the engendering of the flower…’ How’s that?”

“I wouldn’t know. I forgot
The Canterbury Tales
a long time ago, if I ever really knew them, and I didn’t indulge in mind-altering substances,” Karp replied.

Treacher was about to respond when he was interrupted by a shout from across the street. “Everything okay, Mr. Karp?”

Turning toward the sound of the voice, Karp saw the police detective getting out of the dark blue Lincoln Continental parked across Crosby. He didn’t like the fuss or expense of having a driver-
slash-bodyguard, or using the armored sedan with gas costing more than four dollars a gallon. But Clay Fulton, his old friend and the detective in charge of his security detail, insisted in the wake of the NYSE attack.

“We still haven’t caught everybody responsible,”
the burly black man had pointed out just the day before.
“Nadya Malovo’s out there somewhere. And so are the Sons of Man, who are probably getting a little irritated with your constant interference with their plots. The car’s there, use it, or I’ll have to drive over every morning to pick you up myself.”

Karp waved to the sedan driver. “It’s okay, Detective, I’ll be just a minute.” He turned back to his visitor.

Filthy and odiferous, Edward Treacher was a regular around the Criminal Courts Building and Soho, though he’d been known to drift as far as Columbia University on the north end of the island and down to Battery Park on the south. According to old-timers in the area, he’d once been a respected professor of religious studies at New York City University, but had started experimenting with LSD during the Summer of Love and one day went on a trip from which he’d never quite returned. He’d walked away from his job at the university and had been living on the streets, or institutionalized at various public mental health hospitals, ever since.

Now he made his living preaching from the Bible on street corners while standing on his milk crate, hoping tourists would throw something in his collection box. Or that aggravated shopkeepers or residents would pay him to move on.

“Good for you…just say no to drugs,” Treacher said, nodding sagely. “That’s what I tell kids. ‘Just say no, or you’ll end up a burned-out old wreck like Professor Treacher.’ Not that I’d take it back. Oh no, not everyone gets to hold a conversation with God for thirty years. All up here, of course.” He pointed to his shaggy head, then abruptly changed the subject. “A lovely day, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Karp?”

“Yes, Mr. Treacher, a fine autumn day.” Karp liked the “burned-out old wreck.” The man actually hid a quick wit, a well-educated mind, and a kind heart behind all the dirt. He suspected that
Treacher and some of the other street denizens who hung around the Criminal Courts Building were connected to David Grale, the madman vigilante who lived beneath the city in its tunnels and caves with some of his followers. At least Treacher and his brethren seemed to be able to communicate with him and seemed to serve as his eyes and ears aboveground.

His feelings toward Grale were more mixed. He’d met him many years before, when the younger man was just a Catholic layperson working in a soup kitchen for the homeless. Or actually, he’d been introduced to Grale by his daughter, Lucy, a young teen volunteering at the kitchen when she developed a crush on the darkly handsome social worker. Only later had they discovered that while Grale served soup during the day, by night he murdered men who’d been preying on the homeless. He claimed that the men he killed were actually demons inhabiting the bodies of men.

“Ah, yes. Autumn. A fine time to spread the Good Word,” Treacher said as he placed his crate on the ground and stepped up onto it. He then shouted so the few passersby walking past on Grand Avenue jumped a bit. “Verily I say,
‘While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease!’
That’s Genesis 8:22, folks. Be kind and support my ministry. You, too, may turn a wretched life—mine—around for Jesus.”

Karp had covered his ears when Treacher shouted and now asked, “What’s with the shouting, if you don’t mind me asking? It’s pretty quiet around here this morning, and I think you gave me a concussion.”

“Sorry about that,” Treacher replied with a grin. “But it’s part of the show. The rubes want fire and brimstone…even in sweet little passages like that one. You show me a street preacher who doesn’t shout out the Good Book’s message, and I’ll show you a hungry man.”

“I understand. Just next time, perhaps a little warning.”

“Will do. So how’s the family?”

“Fine. Marlene’s painting some these days. And the twins are back in school and complaining about homework.”

“Ah, yes, the drudgery of homework,” Treacher sighed. “I do remember that. Ridiculous way to teach; good for memorizing trivia, but does nothing to develop the mind.”

“Nevertheless, getting it done may affect whether they get into college.”

“Yes, indeed. So where’s our dear Lucy? I haven’t seen her around in a bit.”

Karp started to answer, then stopped. He didn’t really know where she was and for some reason he didn’t want Treacher or anybody else to know either. Grale took a particular interest in Lucy, and while so far it had all been to her benefit, it was also troubling.

“She’s living out of state these days,” he said.

“Ah, yes, New Mexico, wasn’t it?” Treacher replied.

“Yes, New Mexico.” Karp hadn’t meant to sound so short. He considered Treacher a harmless street person who’d once even testified for him in a murder case. The man on trial was a dirty cop, and it had taken courage and integrity to come forward. Whatever damage he’d done to his brain cells in the past, Treacher’s short-term memory had been dead on, and the cop was convicted.

“Are you expecting her back for a visit anytime soon? I’d love to have a chat with her. She’s always so interesting and quite helpful with my Latin and Greek.”

See, the old man just wants to speak in foreign tongues.
Lucy was a language savant—she was apparently up to nearly eighty, if one included dialects of some root languages. He shook his head. “No. Nothing planned. Maybe over the holidays.”

“The holidays?” Treacher frowned. “That’s a long ways off. Must be tough, not seeing her more often and all.”

“Yeah,” Karp agreed. “But I guess they all leave the nest sometime.” The question raised one of his own. “So what do you hear from David Grale these days?”

Treacher frowned and shrugged. “Nothing much. In one of his moods, I understand.”

The question seemed to bother the street preacher and he got down from his crate, picked it up, and turned to walk away. “Well, I must away. Places to go, people to see, you know. Cheerio!”

Watching him disappear around the corner, Karp shuddered as if the breeze had crept beneath his coat, only this was a sudden chill of premonition. Pulling his coat even tighter, he turned to walk across the street to the waiting car, wondering what else he couldn’t see.