That the bullet stopped short was the good news. The bad news was that it came to rest against the vertebrae and a major artery to his brain. Several surgeons had been consulted and he'd been offered two options.
Removing it was risky. The slightest slip of the scalpel or too much pressure on the bullet, and he could end up paralyzed or dead. Leaving it in was the other possibility; the hope would be that scar tissue would build up around the bullet and hold it in place. However, a blow to the back of his neck, an awkward fall, or even a sudden jerk of his head could shove the bullet against the artery and cause a stroke that could kill him.
After talking it over with Marlene, Karp had opted for the surgery. He just couldn't stand the thought of some evil piece of metal beneath his skin. Or the idea that some everyday event-even playing basketball with his two boys-could kill him. He would have to limit what he did, and that just wasn't in him.
Karp had gone into surgery wondering if he would wake up paralyzed, or wake up at all. He tried not to worry his kids or wife. "This is nothing," he growled when their faces grew long and tears welled in their eyes in the pre-op room. "See you in a few hours." But when he was wheeled away to the operating room, he wished he'd said something more memorable for his last words to his family. However, the surgery went well, and he'd come out of it knowing that his wife was holding his hand even before he opened his eyes and saw the expectant, hopeful faces of their three children, Lucy, Zak, and Giancarlo.
Not that someone had waved a magic wand and he was suddenly all better. During the first couple of weeks of recuperation, it felt like someone was poking him in the neck with a red-hot piece of iron. Now it didn't hurt as much, even when he felt for the lump of the ugly purple scar just beneath the hairline. But at times he wondered if he'd ever get strength back in his leg, or stop feeling-especially late at night-the trajectory of bullets through his body.
Still, he'd accepted that what he did now about his injuries was up to him. He'd had plenty of experience with the process of rehabilitation, including when he was a highly recruited basketball player at the University of California, Berkeley and a freak fall destroyed the ligaments in his knee. The injury ended his dreams of a pro career, but it had taught him how to mentally, as well as physically, recover from a devastating injury and move on with his life.
Moving on was the toughest part. With his wife threatening to finish the bullet's job if he got within shouting distance of the Criminal Courts Building-ever since the little traitor Murrow gave me up, he thought-he'd had to find other ways to occupy his time and use up some of his prodigious energy.
After he was released from the hospital, the doctors had set him up with a physical therapist who'd put him on a regime of light lifting to strengthen the injured muscles and frequent massages to keep the scar tissue broken up, and encouraged him to "just get out and walk." So he'd gotten in the habit of taking a long walk every morning, often joined by Father Jim Sunderland, the Catholic priest who'd put pressure on his wounds as he lay bleeding on the sidewalk.
It was Sunderland's voice that had stuck in his head, reminding him that he had unfinished business. Then one day when he was still in the hospital, Sunderland had come by to see how he was doing. Karp had thought the name was familiar, but it took the sight of the priest's collar to put it together. Sunderland had angered his church and the U.S. government as a vocal antiwar activist during the Vietnam conflict; he'd also popped up in the civil rights movement, linking arms with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in Mississippi to face the fire hoses, German shepherds, and the Ku Klux Klan. Time and again over the next forty years, if there was a war, he tried to stop it; if there was an injustice, he spoke out against it. His liberal ideology had often brought him into conflict with the conservative hierarchy of his church, as well as the Christian Right in general, and only his popularity with the masses kept him from formal censure. Most recently, he'd been organizing New York Catholics against the war in Iraq.
If they'd met in other circumstances, Karp might have dismissed him as a publicity seeker. Even now he didn't agree with all of the man's politics. But he found him to be sincere and committed in his beliefs. He respected that, and as a private individual, not the strident public activist, the priest was warm and caring, with a delightful and wicked sense of humor. He could also defend his positions on their legal and ethical-as opposed to emotional-merits as well as any law professor. In fact, to Karp's surprise, he had been a practicing attorney before "as Timothy Leary suggested to me in the sixties, I 'turned on, tuned in, and dropped out' of the rat race and became a Jesuit."
After Karp got out of the hospital, Sunderland had called to see if he wanted to go for a walk, and they'd spent several mornings wandering around Chinatown or Little Italy or Soho or the Village. Both men found in each other a worthy opponent and would become so wrapped up in their debates and conversations that they would walk for many blocks without paying attention to where they were going, until they looked up and had to figure out where they were.
As they strolled, they discussed a wide variety of topics, such as the death penalty. Sunderland, of course, opposed it on moral grounds. However, his opposition wasn't just a blanket "Thou shalt not kill," or even that state-sponsored executions were still cold-blooded murders that debased the society that perpetuated them. There was also no evidence, he argued, that the death penalty acted as a deterrent to other murderers.
By and large, Karp agreed that the death penalty was ineffective for those reasons, as well as costing the taxpayers "a bloody fortune" to prosecute and then defend on appeal. However, his opposition had a caveat. "There are times when the crime is so heinous, the perpetrator so depraved that society has the right to seek retribution by casting this evil from the circle of humanity," he argued.
"Oh really?" the priest said. "'Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.'"
"Was that out of the Bible, I don't seem to remember the citation," Karp asked.
Sunderland laughed. "No, actually, I was quoting from The Lord of the Rings. But I think that even evil men may play out roles that neither they nor we can foresee may, without their choosing, work out for the good."
Over such discussions, the two had quickly become friends, and Karp looked forward to each encounter. That morning, Sunderland called and suggested that Karp join him and a small group of his friends-"all of us retired or semiretired with nothing better to do than discuss the great issues of the day; some might call them 'bitch sessions'"-for breakfast at a bustling little Tribeca cafe called Kitchenette.
"Even if the company is wretched, you'll love the peach and blueberry pancakes smothered in real maple syrup and washed down with Saxbys French Roast, which just so happens to be the finest coffee in the land," the priest added. "Or my current favorite, the 'Farmhouse' breakfast of eggs and bacon and the piece de resistance, a huge, warm biscuit absolutely dripping with homemade strawberry butter. Anyway, we're commemorating an anniversary there this morning and you might find the conversation of interest."
"Really? And what anniversary is that?" Karp asked.
"Why, it's October 29, the black day in history when Sir Walter Raleigh was executed," Sunderland replied. "I'd have thought that a constitutional scholar such as yourself would be well aware of such an important date."
Karp chuckled. Every law student had the date drilled into his head at one time or another. The injustices of Raleigh's trial had been the fertile soil from which many of the U.S. Constitution's most important protections had sprung. "But of course," he replied. "It's just that the mention of the pancakes has driven all thought of history from my mind."