The judge said, “Mr. Karp, as it has become late, perhaps you would like to hold your cross-examination over for tomorrow?”
“Thank you, Your Honor, but no. My cross-examination will be quite brief.”
Karp approached the witness, who glared at him and tightened his jaw.
“Mr. al-Barka, why are you here?”
The man seemed surprised by the question and suspicious of its intent. “Mr. Waley asked me to come and testify,” he answered.
“But you were not compelled in any way?”
“No.”
“So it was a favor, then, was it?”
“I come to speak the truth in the interests of justice. Justice is dear to Allah.”
“As is money, apparently. How much were you paid to testify, sir?”
“I didn’t get nothing.”
“But Mr. Waley made a substantial contribution to your mosque, did he not? A thousand dollars?”
“We are enjoined to give alms and be charitable. As this money is a tiny portion of the reparation due the-”
“Thank you, sir,” Karp cut in. “So that’s one reason why you’re testifying for a man that ordinarily you would not lift a finger to help. But there’s another reason, isn’t there? You are a member of the Nation of Islam, are you not?”
“I am, yes.”
“And you are therefore a reader of its newspaper, The Messenger, yes?”
“Yes, I read it.” Uncertainly.
Karp went to his table and pulled from a folder a copy of that paper. “Did you read this past Thursday’s edition, where the editor says that white justice will never convict a white man for murdering black women, and that when this happens the black vanguard will rise up and, I quote, ‘Put the city to the torch’?”
“I may have. So what?”
Mr. al-Barka was looking confused. Karp said, “Well, I was just wondering, sir, would you like to see what you call white justice fail in this case? Would you like to see the city put to the torch?”
“Objection!” from Waley. “Hypothetical and irrelevant.”
“Sustained. Jury will disregard.”
Karp changed step like a forward driving past a blocking guard. “Mr. al-Barka, you’ve testified that you spent considerable time in the defendant’s company when you were boys. What, if any, peculiar or unusual behavior did you observe? No, don’t look at Mr. Waley, look at me!”
“He was just a typical spoiled white brat.”
“Typical, I see. Did he do anything strange?”
“Besides rubbing shi-stuff all over him?”
“Yes, besides that.”
The man thought for a few moments. “He was really sneaky.”
“How so?”
“Lying all the time. Breaking stuff and blaming it on the dogs. On me. Hiding. Driving everyone crazy looking for him.”
“I see. Sneaky and secretive. Did he ever talk to people who weren’t there?”
“No.”
“Or say he heard voices?”
“No.”
“Or think he was somebody other than Jonathan Rohbling?”
“No,” said al-Barka, and then, remembering why he was there, hastily added, “But he was a crazy kid. I mean, he-”
Swish. Karp turned away. “No further questions, Your Honor.”
Marlene sat with Jack Wolfe at the edge of the tennis court, near the umpire’s stand, in the place reserved for security personnel. Wolfe was having some sort of tantrum, and Marlene didn’t quite know what to do about it.
“Wolfe,” she said consolingly, “it was an honest mistake. I thought the asshole looked good too.”
“I should have waited,” Wolfe said, pounding his fist on his knee. “You told me to wait. I should have waited.”
“Wolfe, everybody makes mistakes. You thought he was going for a weapon, you reacted.”
Wolfe had indeed reacted, throwing his hard-muscled body across two rows of spectators and flattening the man in the yellow shirt and white hat, who proved not to be the stalker but a lawyer from New Rochelle, who was going to sue Wolfe, Marlene, the firm, the club, the tournament, the town of Southampton, Suffolk County, and the manufacturers of the camera he was reaching for when Wolfe had jumped him, which had negligently shattered, scratching his hand.
It was not these legal threats that had brought Wolfe to this state, Marlene thought, but his own exaggerated sense of responsibility and a kind of self-scarifying perfectionism that Marlene had often observed among members of the police, and which she believed was one of the side effects of the drug testosterone. So she counseled him, stroking his ego with her voice, while the thwock-thwock went on and Trude Speyr won set and match.
Cheers, the crowd rose, the rivals embraced at mid-court, hordes of press descended, clicking madly like giant insects. Marlene, Wolfe, Dane, several other security hirelings, and Speyr’s personal entourage drew the girl athlete into their protective embrace and made for the showers. The VIP locker room at South Shore was a suite of nicely appointed cubicles on the ground floor of the main clubhouse, reachable from the courts via a breezeway. Marlene led the way, went into the women’s section, checked that there were no lurkers, stole some courtesy miniatures of cologne and shampoo, and passed Speyr in.
Fifteen minutes later, dewy-fresh, dressed in a white linen ensemble, Speyr emerged from her cubicle and said, “Oh, Marlene, I have such a headache. Do you have aspirin maybe?”
Marlene did. Speyr took two, and began a complaint about how rude the press corps was in America, not like in Germany, except for the Italians, who were even than the Americans more rude, and, if it possible could they go by a way not the press to see?
Naturally, Marlene and Harry had scoped out all the possible ins and outs associated with the building. Marlene raised Harry on the comm. channel and had a brief discussion. They could take her out the front parking lot, reserved for members during the tournament, rather than the rear lot, where the press and fans had gathered. There was an inner stairway that led from the locker room to the dining room on what was, since the building was constructed on a slope, its second-floor rear but ground-floor front. They would take that stairway, pass through the dining room, and go out the front of the building, where a limo would be waiting.
This they did. Marlene sent the two temp guys out to check the route. These radioed back the all-clear, and then Marlene, Speyr, Dane, and Wolfe went up, through the deserted dining room, through the lobby, and out into the dazzling, sun-washed parking lot. A long gray Caddie was parked at the curb, Harry standing by the door, talking to the tennis player’s father and her manager. They were all smiling.
Walking rapidly with the little group, Marlene cast her eyes around, checking the people. Two uniformed valet parkers, a groundsman in blue coverall and tan pith helmet, carrying a trash basket, a group of three women, staring, an elderly couple, the man raising his camera.
They were twenty feet from the car when the groundsman charged. His pith helmet fell off. Marlene could clearly see Manfred Stolz’s red hair. He did not look much like the New Rochelle lawyer, after all, if anything somewhat less bloodthirsty. He had a sword in his hand. Sunlight flashed for an instant off its edge.
Marlene reached for her gun. Dane engulfed the tennis player in his arms. Stolz raised his weapon, which Marlene could now see was not a sword but a long machete-like brush knife. Her gun was not on her left hip where it usually was, and so her hand grasped futilely at air, until she recalled that she was wearing a different gun in a different place. By then it was too late. The man was right over her, his arm lifted for the killing blow. Marlene had time to note that his face was oddly calm, as if he were about to clip a rose.
Terrell Collins said, “Well, I think we got some back today.” He was looking at Karp with more than the usual admiration. They were in Karp’s office for their standard postmortem.
“Yeah, well, we were due some,” said Karp. “I’ve been fucking up so badly lately …” He let the thought die. “Now that I look at it again, Waley was taking a chance there, but it could’ve paid off.”