“What happened to it? The mask, I mean.”
“No one knows … if it ever existed, which I doubt. Art history’s full of legendary treasures like that. I’ll tell you one thing, though. If it ever comes through New York, Kerbussyan’ll buy it.” He looked at his watch. “Shit, I’m due downtown in court in half an hour. Nice to meet you, Marlene. Coming, V.T.?”
“Just a sec, Lieutenant, one question,” Marlene said. “Did you ever hear of a guy named Mehmet Ersoy?”
Rodriguez frowned and chewed his lip. “Name sort of rings a bell. Turkish name. What about him?”
“Well, I just thought that since his business was buying back stolen Turkish antiquities, you might have run across him.”
“Stolen Turkish antiquities? Who told you that?”
“I heard it from their guy at the U.N., in confidence, that the Turks have a program to locate and return to Turkey ancient stuff that is taken out of the country illegally and is being sold abroad. Had some serious money behind it too.”
Rodriguez shrugged. “Well, hey, it’s possible, but I never heard anything about it. I mean, from the Turks’ perspective, it don’t make a hell of a lot of sense.”
“Why not?”
“Because when the Brits and the French and the Greeks and the Italians try to get their antiquities back, they’re dealing with their own heritage. The stuff was made by their ancestors, or people they’d like to believe were their ancestors. But the Turks didn’t get to Anatolia until the Middle Ages. That statue, the tiara, and those paintings-it ain’t their stuff. It belonged to people they beat the crap out of back then. That’s why it’d be a little weird if they were buying back antiquities. I always thought they’d kinda like to forget anyone lived there before they hit town.”
V.T. and Rodriguez left. Marlene mooched listlessly around the exhibit, drinking more wine than was good for her, until the existence of a class of people who spent their time buying expensive trinkets and clinking glasses of champagne, instead of wading neck deep through the dregs of society, produced in her in an unbearable state of disgust mixed with guilty longing. She dragged a protesting Franciosa away from a coven of glittering art hags and fled the gallery, returning with a churning mind and a heavy heart to the steaming streets and motherhood.
Karp had a wheelchair in his office, but he refused to use it in public. Instead he clumped on crutches from courtroom to meetings, grasping a ratty brown folder in two fingers as he slogged away down the bustling halls.
Now he was sitting in the conference room of the district attorney with the other senior bureau chiefs-Fraud, Rackets, Supreme Court, Criminal Courts, Appeals-and the D.A.’s administrative deputy and hatchet, Conrad Wharton. Karp did not have much in common with any of these men. They were Bloom’s creatures all, adept at public relations, smooth administration, coordination, the judicious use of prosecutorial power. Karp was the only one of them who was a serious trial lawyer.
There was some good-natured joshing about Karp’s leg, to which he responded in the same tone. Wharton did not join in this. He never talked to Karp if he could help it, or noticed his existence in any way, except under the absolute press of business. He wrote Karp a lot of memos though, mostly to point out deficiencies in his management of his bureau.
It was curious. Karp had sent any number of vicious, depraved monsters to prison, where they certainly did not wish to go, but he doubted that any of these hated him as much as the baby-faced little man at the end of the conference table, to whom Karp had never, to his own recollection, done a personal injury. It was a mystery, one that annoyed him, although it cannot be said that he tossed nightly in his bed because of it.
Still, he recognized that Wharton’s hatred caused him trouble. Whenever administration could trip up a bureau, there was Wharton’s ankle in Karp’s way. Karp reflected, in fact, that there had been an unusual number of D.A.’s meetings called during the week he had been on crutches: perhaps Wharton was taking some sadistic pleasure in seeing him hobble around.
The D.A. entered, in shirtsleeves and red suspenders; to his credit, these did not have tiny golden justice scales upon them. The D.A. was in his early fifties and looked like a suburban anchorman: razor-cut, blow-dried tannish hair going attractively gray; even, pleasant, if undistinguished features; terrific teeth. He was charming.
He began the meeting by charming his minions. Karp was charmed by solicitous concern about his knee, plus a remark about not having to worry anymore about hiring the handicapped, which raised a gust of dutiful, unpleasant laughter. The bureau chiefs gave their reports. Wharton handed the D.A. a sheet of paper on which was written a set of probing questions about various cases that might get the D.A. into trouble or show the office in a bad light.
Karp’s questions were about the Hosie Russell case and the Tomasian case, as he had expected.
“What about this Russell? You’re sure he’s the right guy?”
“Yes. It’s a circumstantial case, but it’ll go the right way.”
“That’s not what I hear. The word is the cops picked up the first black lush they came across in the neighborhood and cooked up a bunch of incriminating evidence. The black community is pissed off.”
“If that’s what you hear, you’re talking to the wrong people. We have two positive witnesses, one of them a black man, tying Russell to the crime. The evidence is good, and it’ll hold up under challenge.”
“That’s what you said about Morales. And Devers. Those were embarrassments, but they were nothing to what we’ll have if this case gets fucked up. A young woman stabbed in broad daylight in front of a good building …”
Karp felt his face heat and felt the eyes of the other chiefs on him. He had gotten angry before. He had tried arguing from the perspective of a trial lawyer. None of it had done any good. This had nothing to do with the job he was doing and everything to do with Karp himself. He paused for a number of seconds before answering.
“You’re the D.A. You sign the indictments. Would you like me to let Russell go?”
The D.A. looked startled, as he did any time someone (usually it was Karp) reminded him of his legal responsibility.
“No, of course not! But I’m holding you responsible for seeing that this comes out right. Now, on this Tomasian thing. The U.N. liaison office is still extremely upset. I was on the phone with a man for a half hour this morning, assuring him that terrorism was not about to take over the City. I hope to hell I wasn’t wrong and you’ve got your act together on this one.”
Karp said, straight-faced, “I think it’s absolutely certain that terrorism isn’t taking over the City.”
“You know what I mean,” snapped Bloom. “I don’t like what I hear from your operation on this thing. Dissension. Duplicate investigations. I don’t think you realize what’ll happen if the press gets hold of these stories.”
“There’s nothing for the press to get hold of,” said Karp calmly. “There’s one investigation. Roland Hrcany is in charge of it. We have an indictment and a defendant in custody.”
“And he’ll go for it? You can promise that?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I can’t.”
“Why not? Is there something wrong with the case?”
“No,” said Karp after a brief pause. “It’s a good case.” He was about to add that the only problem with the case was that the defendant hadn’t done the crime, but decided against it. The D.A. wouldn’t be interested in stuff like that. What he said was: “It could be better. We’re working on it.”