“There are thirty-nine dead junkie shotgun killers. I’m down at Police Records. They closed out fifty-six separate homicides on them over the past five years. In each case, all the witnesses were killed with a shotgun blast to the head. Except the Marchione kid, who got it with a.38. Each case was closed when a junkie was found dead of an overdose with incriminating evidence around him. In each case, the junkie was a slightly built black male. We even had three positive IDs of the ‘killer’ on the slab, from people who said they saw him leaving the crime scene. And in twenty-four of the cases, the cops were led to the corpse or the getaway car by an anonymous tip.”
“Holy shit, Sonny, this guy might have killed nearly a hundred people in five years. He could be the greatest mass murderer in history.”
“Could be, brother, but try and prove it. He suckered us good.”
“Yeah, but no more. Listen, make copies of all those files and get them to me, all right? Oh, and I’ll probably be changing offices. It looks like I got a new job.”
“Oh, yeah? Does that mean somebody else is going to ride this case?”
“No way, baby. This is our private war. Keep it under your hat, and find that other guy!”
“You’re on. We’ll get him.”
That evening, Karp and Marlene Ciampi had dinner at Villa Cella. They hadn’t seen each other in several days, because Marlene was involved with a major case. Some members of an organization called the Bakunin Society had blown themselves up in a townhouse in the East Sixties. The police had investigated and rounded up several of the surviving members. It turned out that they had planted dozens of bombs in the New York area over the past year, including one, a letter bomb, that had killed a federal judge’s secretary. Apparently they did not teach you in revolution school that big shots have their mail opened by members of the working class. As if it mattered.
“Anyway, I’m now an expert on what they used to call infernal machines. Letter bombs. Pipe bombs. Did you know you could go into any hardware store and buy the raw materials to build a bomb that’ll level a building? The pros, though, try to get military explosives-C-4, plastic. And these little shits had a load of it. They’re still trying to trace where it came from.
“But, Butch, the thing that sticks in my mind about the case is these kids-hah, I say ‘kids,’ but one of these guys was older than me-the wackiest thing was how sure they were about themselves, that what they were doing was right. I mean, I’m not that sure about what I’m doing and I’ve got the whole fucking society patting me on the back, you know?”
Karp said, “What’s the problem? They’re fanatics, right.”
“Bullshit, you’re a fanatic, for that matter. No, the thing that hit me about them was how weird it was for them to end up this way. One of them, the guy who was in the house when it went up, had half his face missing and an arm that didn’t work anymore, but they seemed, I don’t know, satisfied. These are middle-class people now, I mean, every advantage, care, education, the works. Not exactly the desperate poor.”
Karp chewed his lasagna and considered this. “I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with power. I mean, there’s the criminal who commits crimes because he can’t do anything else, or because everybody he knows is into some kind of hustle. But I also think there’s a kind of criminal who’s got a hole in him that he has to fill, who gets whatever we get from our work out of beating the squares.
“Your terrorists are criminals who get their self-respect out of killing people and blowing things up for a cause. That and keeping themselves pure. They’re just stuffing in bullshit to fill up that hollow place. The cause doesn’t matter, I don’t think, except to give an inflated tone to the whole business. I mean, they make these incredible demands-dismantle the fascist state, and that bullshit-but if the demands were actually met, would they stop being terrorists? Hell, no. Even if they ran the whole country, they wouldn’t stop eating people up. The point of their lives is to fuck people over. If they didn’t get to do that, they’d dry up and blow away.”
“Damn, Butch, you’re really getting excited about this. You’re practically waxing philosophical. So tell me, where does the hollow place come from?”
Karp was oddly embarrassed. Like many men successful in manipulating the world and its powers, he was uncomfortable with analytic thought. He also felt strange speaking in this vein to his lover. He had never discussed his work abstractly with his wife. Their after-work conversation consisted of brief assessments of how the day had gone (“Lousy.” “OK.” “Great.”) and anecdotes about personalities or events. Also, there was the feeling, of which he was ashamed, and which he suppressed, that Marlene was a hair sharper in the thinking department than he was. This added to his discomfort. He retreated into toughness.
“I don’t know. I’m no criminologist. And you know what? I don’t really give a rat’s ass. I’m not in the understanding business, I’m in the putting asses in jail and keeping mutts from fucking people over business. It’s hard enough.”
“So it is. On the other hand, I’m not sure you can survive long doing what we do without developing some understanding for the bad guys. Look at the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky. He keeps his mouth shut and radiates understanding and the killer spills his guts. Case closed.”
“Dostoevsky? Didn’t he write New York State Criminal Procedure?”
She laughed. “Up yours, Karp. You’re such a barbarian, I don’t know why I bother talking to you.”
She lit a cigarette, drew deeply, and coughed.
“You ought to quit smoking,” he said.
She squinted at him through a gray haze. “I ought to quit seeing you, but I won’t,” she retorted. “Besides, I tried once and gained fourteen pounds in a month. Fuck the surgeon general. A size five is well worth ten years of life.”
The waiter came back with coffee, American for Karp, espresso for Marlene.
“Well,” said Karp, after they finished, “my place or yours, baby?”
“How romantic! You didn’t even ask me what my sign was.”
“OK, what’s your sign?” “Scorpio.”
“I knew it,” said Karp. “Let’s fuck.”
Later, they walked north out of Little Italy, toward Karp’s place in the Village. The night was warm and muggy, and smelled of anise and frying sausage. At 14th Street they passed a TV and appliance store. Marlene remarked, “Hey, Butch, that place is having a going-out-of-business sale. Why don’t you pick yourself up a TV?”
“I’ve got a TV,” answered Karp, moving on. “And this guy’s been going out of business since Nineteen Fifty-two.”
But Marlene had stopped. “No, you don’t have a TV. You have a rowing machine. You get much better reception with a TV set.”
“No, really, I do have one. It’s in storage with the rest of my stuff.”
“Oh, that does a lot of good. Is it color?”
“No, black and white. What is this, Marlene, you having media withdrawal?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Oh, nothing. I just, you know, like to watch TV in bed. And if I don’t catch the news in the morning, I get nauseous.”
He laughed. “OK, Champ, I unconditionally support any activity you do in bed.”
They turned to study the dozen or so sets in the window. They were all tuned to the same channel. A woman did a dance in her bathroom. They couldn’t hear the sound, but it was clear from the words on the screen that she was glad that her toilet paper was extremely soft. Then a famous newscaster came on, looking grave. Then another face came on the screen.
Karp said, “Hey, look, it’s the DA.”
Garrahy’s weathered face was replaced by one even more famous, that of the governor of New York. He was addressing a crowd of newsmen at a press conference. He looked grave as well. Then another face, not a famous one at all, appeared on the screen.
Karp caught on. “Oh, God damn! God damn it!” he cried and ran into the store. There were sets operating within the store, too, and Karp rushed up to one of them and turned up the volume. The not-very-famous face was saying, “pledge to do my utmost to carry on the great traditions of this office.”