"Anyway, why I bring it up now is that the Muslim community is all over the cops to catch the killer," the head of homicide said. "And I got a call from them yesterday-the Muslims, not the cops-wanting to know why we were dragging our feet. I had to explain that we needed a suspect before we could press charges. What did they want us to do, prosecute a ghost?"
Again, Karp felt chilled. Get ahold of yourself, Butch old boy, he thought, you're starting to think like Lucy…ghosts and talking saints.
When the meeting was adjourned, Rachman slammed her briefcase shut and stormed out of the room before anyone else had even risen from the table. The other attorneys glanced quickly at Karp to see his reaction, but he kept his face neutral.
Out in the hall, Rachman swore, "Goddamn men." She felt like crying as she marched off toward her office. But that would give the bastards what they want, she thought. At heart they're all just a bunch of animals. Sticking together in their Brotherhood of the Penis.
11
Friday, December 17
"Did you get a load of some of the looks we got when we came in?" Murrow said, peering back anxiously over his shoulder as if he expected an assassin to come running up from behind them. "You'd have thought we were attending a convention for the guys you've sent to Attica instead of a meet-and-greet at the Police Benevolent Association."
"Yeah, boss, you're not very popular with these guys right now," Clay Fulton said, only he was smiling. His boss had never been the sort who worried about his popularity; in fact, there were times when those closest to him wondered if he went out of his way to be unpopular. Fulton was handpicked by Karp to be chief of the NYPD detectives who were assigned to the DAO as investigators.
"Gots 'em right where I wants 'em," Karp said, returning the smile while clapping Murrow on the shoulder. The event had been set up months before as a "meet the candidate." The night before, however, Dick Torrisi had called and warned him to expect a cool, even hostile, reception.
"The word making the rounds is that you're letting the actions of a few bad apples slant the way you view the NYPD as a whole," Torrisi said. "It seems pretty orchestrated, but I'm not sure who's throwing the wood on the fire and it's pervasive from the union leadership on down."
Butch had thanked him for the heads-up but assured him that he was still planning on attending. The "few bad apples" was a reference to two fairly recent, but separate, cases against cops that he'd been directly involved in. The first had been the successful prosecution of two cops who'd gunned down a Jamaican immigrant they'd believed to be selling drugs. They'd tried to justify the shooting by claiming that the deceased grappled with them and seized one of their guns. But with the help of a forensic gunshot-wound expert, Karp proved that the killing couldn't have happened the way the cops had described it, and they'd been convicted of murder.
The second wasn't about one or two bad apples but a whole bushel-Andrew Kane's so-called Irish Gang. They were a half-dozen or so Irish-Catholic cops who'd been recruited by Kane to do some of his dirty work-such as killing a drug dealer-under the pretext that the orders came from the archbishop, who was using them to do "God's work." However, in reality, they were helping Kane expand and control his criminal empire through the coercion and murder of rivals.
Some of them were now dead, killed in a Central Park gunfight that still played out in Karp's head like a scene from one of the favorite movies of his Brooklyn childhood, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. In some ways, it didn't seem real, as if he'd been acting out a part in a play, except for the dead bodies and the fear that still haunted his sleep that Marlene had been killed.
Arriving at the PBA building, they'd walked into the main meeting room and all conversations had stopped. Eyes followed them to the corner where several minor union officials were conferring with the union president, Edward Ewen. They returned his handshake as perfunctorily as possible.
Personally, Karp had the utmost respect for the NYPD, especially after 9/11. They worked a hard, dangerous job, and he believed that it was the best big-city police force in the world. By and large, its members were fine, upstanding men who carried the torch of justice like latter-day knights. But it never ceased to amaze him the way they circled the wagons if one of their number was threatened, even if they personally thought the cop was a scumbag. It was always the NYPD on one side, everybody else on the other.
"Now remember," Murrow said a few minutes later as they stood in the wings offstage waiting for Karp to be introduced. "We're here to win their hearts and minds. You have your speech?"
Karp held up the set of notecards prepared for him by his assistant. It was what Murrow called his "law and order" speech, meant to appeal to any cop's heart. More support for the police. More officers. Better technology.
Ewen finally walked to the podium and with little in the way of an introduction asked Karp to take the stage. There was a smattering of applause but the boos and hisses were louder. He handed the notecards to a startled Murrow. "Here," he said, "I've changed my mind."
"Butch?" Murrow pleaded as Karp walked out onto the stage. "Butch, let's talk. What are you going to say, Butch?"
"I don't think he's listening," Fulton said, positioning himself where he could reach Karp if something went wrong. He had his own handpicked guys in the audience, even though it was unlikely that someone would go so far as to try to hurt his boss-at least in a public place. But he wasn't the sort to take chances, and heck, the PBA was probably the most heavily armed group Butch would talk to before the election.
"No," Murrow shook his head sadly. "He never does."
Out at the podium, Karp looked over the crowd-a lot of guys sitting with their arms crossed and slouched in their seats.
"Okay, let me propose a compromise," he began. "I left my notecards for the planned dog-and-pony show over there with my colleague, so you're not going to have to listen to political bullshit."
"We already are," came a voice with a thick Bronx accent from the back of the auditorium.
"Yeah, maybe," Karp agreed, "but in exchange for not throwing a bunch of campaign rhetoric at you-though I think some of the issues I was going to talk about are pretty important to you guys-I'm asking you to hear me out and make up your minds as men and women of integrity. The New York Police Department and the New York District Attorney's Office are like a married couple-"
"I want a divorce," a woman officer shouted, to general laughter.
Karp chuckled, too. "How about after the children are grown?" he replied. "Anyway, we need each other to achieve a common goal, which is to serve and protect the people of New York City. But it's obvious this relationship is not going to get better until we clear the air."
"The air will clear when you leave," the guy with the Bronx accent shouted. Some laughed, but a few also demanded that their fellow officers "pipe down, let him speak."
Karp used the break to launch into what Murrow called-and not always very happily-his "one bad apple only spoils the bunch if they let it" speech. Essentially, it boiled down to: It's not enough to be an honest cop if you know that the guy next to you is corrupt, not unless you do something about it.
"I believe that the New York City Police Department is the best in the world and that the press concentrates on the few bad apples."