Butch Karp: Absolute Rage Part 2

"I'm not."

"Everything's perfect at the office?"

"Yeah, it's fine."

"Oh, bulls.h.i.+t!"

"Marlene, forget it. I'm just tired."

"What are you tired about? I thought you conquered crime up there. You're not a kid ADA running around Centre Street with fifty open cases. You have a nice office, a glamorous secretary, minions at your beck and call . . ."

"Marlene, be serious. I'm chief a.s.sistant district attorney of New York County. There are a lot of pressures . . ."

"Like what?"

"Nothing." Long pause. A release of breath. "Jack's calling me off the congressman."

Marlene raised her eyes to heaven and her palms upward. "Thank you!" And to him: "Why do I always have to worm it out of you?"

"Because it's my problem, okay? Why should I bring that s.h.i.+t home?"

"It's not your problem. It's our problem, because when you're p.i.s.sed off at that f.u.c.king office, you snarl, and pick nits, and get on everyone's nerves. My nerves, to tell the truth. The boys are so glad to see you, you could whip them with coat hangers and they wouldn't mind. So give! What's with the congressman?"

Karp cleared his throat. His childhood memory did not recall a single scene in which his father had talked business with his mother, and despite the years he had lived with Marlene the process remained uncomfortable, unnatural.

"Well, you'll recall we had that election last year, and I think that's what's behind this. McBright got 48.6 percent of the vote against Jack, including nearly 80 percent of the nonwhite vote. The congressman campaigned very hard for McBright."

"Being a black guy himself."

"That is a racist comment and unworthy of you," said Karp primly. "I'm sure the congressman thought he was the better man for the job. However, that's the fact. Given the demographics of the City, in the future it will be very hard to win office in New York County conceding 80 percent of the nonwhite vote. Are you sure you want to hear this?"

"I'm riveted and would be even more so if you would tickle my head."

Karp started to ma.s.sage his wife's scalp and continued. "Okay, this started with looking at dirty money uptown. The congressman naturally has a campaign fund. Many uptown notables and businesses contribute to this fund. Among the biggest contributors is a firm called Lenox Entertainment Enterprises. They own clubs and restaurants and movie houses, uptown mainly but also all over the City. The firm makes a corporate contribution, as do a large number of its employees, up to the personal max. This is hard money, by the way, right into the congressman's coffers. You wouldn't think that a guy who cleaned up a movie house after the show could afford to drop a grand on a political campaign, but it is so. And not just one, either."

"That's America, G.o.d bless her!" said Marlene. "Lower, please."

"Okay, shady campaign funding . . . not our problem, really. But it turns out that one of the partners in Lenox is a person named Waylin Pennant, aka Beemer Pennant. Or Pimp Pennant, as we like to call him. Who is definitely our problem. This campaign stuff is what tickled our interest, in fact."

"Gosh, Butch, if pimps can't give money to politicians, they'll have to shut down K Street. Or Texas."

"True, it's Mr. Pennant's right to support the candidate of his choice with money beaten out of wh.o.r.es. Pennant, by the way, is not just your average street Mac. He seems to have industrialized the process, like the Mob did back in the old days. Basically, he doesn't run girls himself-pimps pay him for territories, and he probably gets a rake-off out of most of the fleshly commerce in the City. And he does the usual loan-sharking and so on. No drugs, though. He's a smart cookie."

"Yes, I would stick to fleshly commerce myself, were I to go bad."

"Badder than you currently are, you mean."

"Yes. Were you thinking of taking me up to bed?"

"In a minute," said Karp. "You asked for this and you're going to get it. To resume. Beemer is a major bad guy. We've had some killings we like him for, not directly thus far, but people he had beefs with have tended to end up dead more than pure probability would allow. His vics aren't taxpayers, of course, but my position is, it's bad for our image if guys get to commit murder with impunity. It's against the law."

"I love it when you say that. It makes little s.h.i.+vers run up and down my thighs."

"Ditto," said Karp. "Now, we don't have much hope of nailing Pennant for the heavy stuff, but we figured he might be vulnerable to an Al Capone move. We a.s.sume he's laundering his dirty money through Lenox, so we look. We subpoena their books and . . . surprise, surprise. Lenox is not all that profitable, although it's extemely generous to its employees in the form of bonuses. Pennant is drawing only a modest salary from Lenox, not nearly enough to support his lifestyle. And he pays his taxes on it to the penny. So if pimp money goes into Lenox, it doesn't seem to come out, or at least not into Pennant's wallet."

Marlene finished her drink, slipped down, and rested her head on Karp's lap. He was now able to use both hands on her head and did. She sighed and closed her eyes.

"I'm putting you to sleep with this, right?"

"Oh, not at all. This is divine: head rub and complex criminal procedure. I'm in heaven. Go on-so how does he launder his pimp money if not through Lenox?"

"Okay, so we're looking hard at young Beemer, his a.s.sociates, their businesses, et cetera, and we find Danila Wilson. Ms. Wilson is very close to Pennant; you might say she's an intimate a.s.sociate of his. She owns and operates a publicity agency, Wilson, Lowery, Jones."

"A front?"

"Not at all. A legitimate agency, that does legitimate publicity. They have rap stars, and straight businesses, and artists. This is a high-cla.s.s operation. But a nice chunk of their business, it turns out, is managing the congressman's public image and his campaigns. They print up the posters and do the TV commercials. And it's kind of funny because even though the congressman is in his twelfth term and regularly wins by thirty-point margins, he pays them a very large amount of money. Inordinate, you might even say."

"Like how much?"

"Oh, for this campaign, four point three mil."

"Got it," said Marlene. "The pimp money goes in as fake contributions from Pennant's smurfs and comes back out to him as overpayments to his girlfriend's company."

"You're really smart, Marlene. Do you think it has anything to do with me ma.s.saging your head all these years?"

"Maybe, maybe not, but I think it would be prudent to keep doing it. I'm thinking a state case is going to be hard to make."

"Yes, that was Jack's point. Obviously, the way you handle something like this is you grab up the little guys, hit them with a blizzard of charges. We'd go with first-degree falsifying business records, because of the intent to conceal another felony, which in this case would be the pimping operations, and, of course, the 470.10 money-laundering second degree, nice felonies, and we'd hope that they'd deal, roll the big guys, right up to Pennant and Wilson, and Soames.

"Who is . . . ?"

"Sorry, Alonzo P. Soames, Soapy Soames-our congressman's campaign manager and main guy uptown. He actually writes the checks to Wilson and would obviously know the whole story."

"But . . . ?"

"We have some likely little guys, people making just over min wage, who got five-figure bonuses, and paid it all into the campaign war chest. Phony on the face of it, and enough to warrant a search of the relevant paper-the campaign records, and Wilson's, but I've been told that's a nono. In writing. Basically Jack doesn't want to go up against that crowd right now. He thinks it would look like a vendetta against the people who supported his opponent. Especially with Ku Klux Karp as the lead agitator."

"They're still calling you that?"

"Not to my face, but it's well-known I'm this big racist," said Karp bitterly. "Jack adverts to it often in his subtle way. My own theory is that he wants me around mainly to keep the white vote in his pocket, one of the little ironies of my life. It goes to show you, once you're blackened, so to speak, in New York politics, that's all she wrote."

"So why don't you quit?"

"Marlene, don't start that again . . ."

She sat up abruptly and looked him in the face. "No, really. It's not like we need the money."

"What would I do? Conduct a practice devoted to defending us against dog-bite lawsuits?"

"That would be more fun than what you're doing now, although my dogs only bite people who deserve it. Besides, I'm a lawyer."

"You could've fooled me."

"Oh, don't get all spiky, again, for G.o.d's sake. We were just beginning to be cozy." She laid herself back again on his lap. "Okay, so then what are you going to do?"

"I don't know. Wait for something to turn up that Jack will have to move on. Leak to the press. Bluff. The usual, what I've been reduced to."

"What we should do is put the twins in boarding school and head for Europe."

He ignored this. "What irks me is that he really doesn't give a s.h.i.+t one way or the other about Pennant and the congressman. What he really wants is for me to admit that it's okay to screw around with cases for political advantage."

"So admit it," said Marlene sensibly. "It's true, isn't it?"

"Let's go to bed."

After a pause, she said, "Yes, let's. I a.s.sume you'll want to bother me with your disgusting l.u.s.ts, as usual."

"Not at all. I got a very satisfying b.l.o.w. .j.o.b from Big Albertine the transvest.i.te on my way to Penn Station. I'm quite depleted."

"We'll see about that."

Karp was awakened just after dawn the next morning by gunfire. Bang. He jumped wildly out of bed. Bang bang.

And thumped his head against the narrow, sloping ceiling. Cursing and crouching, he went to the window, raised the roller shade, and peered down at the farmyard below, which was rose-gray and longshadowed in the early light. He saw in extreme foreshortening a wiry, yellow-haired man in a white T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans: Ireland, the trainer. One of the mastiffs stood by his left side. The dog was wearing a training harness and a long lead. Ireland led the dog slowly toward the chicken house. As they reached about ten feet from it, its door flung open violently and a man Karp had never seen before leaped out. He was big, unshaven, wore a dirty raincoat and a black cowboy hat, and had a small black pistol in his hand. He yelled something incomprehensible and fired two shots into the air. The mastiff barked and heaved against the lead as the man vanished back into the building. Ireland said something to the dog and walked away with it. A minute later the man came out of the chicken house carrying his hat and coat. Karp saw Marlene come into view and walk off with him. Some kind of dog test, Karp imagined. He knew nothing about dog training and had no interest in learning anything about it. He thought the dog farm a dubious enterprise, rich in possibilities for torts and tax trouble.

He showered and dressed in cutoffs and an old, faded Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt, a member of a large collection he owned, as it was the family joke to give him one every birthday. This one showed big, tan pineapples and green palm fronds against black. He went down to the kitchen, where he found coffee in the Braun and a box of doughnuts open on the table, together with the Times. Karp poured, selected a cinnamon, and sat down to peruse. The house was quiet except for the thudding of the elderly refrigerator. From outside he could hear faint sounds of barking, a boy's call, the distant rumble of a large engine.

The back screen door popped open and the unshaven man came in. He stopped short when he saw Karp.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't know anyone was here. Marlene said I could get some coffee and . . . "

"Help yourself," said Karp. The man did, and Karp was not pleased to see that he intended to take his coffee break at the table. He was a younger man than Karp had first thought, midtwenties at most, big and athletic, with a round face that the stubble made look older. After a short silence, Karp said, "And you are . . . ?"

"Oh, sorry!" The man wiped powdered sugar off his hand and stuck it out. "Alex Russell. I'm the agitator."

"Excuse me?"

"The agitator. One of them."

"I caught your act from the window, with the pistol."

"Oh, yeah. That's the first test. If they won't stand up to an attack like that, you can forget training. Some of them pee and whine-I mean rotties, big Dobes. It's pathetic, really. But all of your dogs so far came through great."

"They're her dogs," said Karp in an undertone, and picked up his paper again in a way that suggested an end to the conversation. But Russell, sensing the void in the dog-training part of Karp's brain, and wis.h.i.+ng to fill it, resumed. "Yeah, I never worked with mastiffs before. Great dogs. Billy's a great trainer, too, but I'll tell you, and you can ask anybody in the business, the agitator makes the dog. You mess up, you don't drop the sleeve just right, you're a little too aggressive with a beginner, you're a little too slack with a varminty dog, h.e.l.l, you can totally throw him off. It's all in the timing. And the acting. I mean, you got to act like a slimeball, you know? I mean really feel like you're up to bad s.h.i.+t. The dogs can tell if you're not sincere. Hi, Marjorie."

Karp looked up as the screen door banged open again. A pretty woman of about thirty with a big mop of dark curls walked directly to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup. She sat down in an empty chair and poured in cream and sugar. "That Jeb is a handful," she said.

Russell said, "I know it. I got bruises up and down my arm."

The woman seemed to notice Karp for the first time. "You're the husband."

"I am. Who are you?"

"Marjorie Rolfe."

"Don't tell me. You're an agitator, too."

"You can tell, huh?"

"Uh-huh. My first clue was that you're wearing quilted bib overalls made out of leather. Unless that's a fas.h.i.+on statement."

"Oh, no," she said straight-faced, "that's part of the gear. The dogs are trained to go for the arm. We got sleeves, you know, to protect the arm. But some of them get excited, especially if you're down and they could bite you someplace else. See, that's why we have to wear these scratch pants."

"I think I'm following you," said Karp, putting down his paper. "So this is how you guys make a living, as dog agitators?"

They both laughed. Karp saw that the woman had a canine tooth missing. "Heck, no," said Russell. "I mean we get paid good money by the hour, but it ain't no living. No, I work down at the Safeway. Marjorie's a groomer."

"And, what? You answered an ad?"

"Oh, no," said Marjorie cheerfully. "We know Billy from the NA at St. Malachy's. We're all three junkies together. Recovering junkies."

The other two started talking about dogs and cars and the various afflictions that arose in the marginal life, and Karp finished his Times browse and his coffee and went outside. The sun was up over the barn now and already warming the air. Karp had been out to the dog farm a number of times since Marlene had purchased it, but never before when dog training was going full blast. He had always wanted a summer place on the Island; they had spoken of it often when they had both been struggling ADAs, but Karp had imagined a little cottage in Quogue, not this sprawling, crumbling spread at the end of the North Fork. Nor the felon, nor the huge dogs, nor the junkies in the kitchen, either. On the other hand, if you were married to Marlene Ciampi, you had to expect a little louche in your life. Marlene was not a Quogue-cottage person.

On the other other hand, this feeling was real, the one he had nearly all the time, of things out of control, of impending disaster, of entering the scratchy borderlands of the crazy country, and it was not good, he did not want to live the rest of his life feeling this way. If work had been going well-that was another thing, that remark about how he should quit and do something else. Guys worked and supported their families, they did an honest day's work and took what s.h.i.+t they had to and put something away to send the kids to college and to retire on, that was what guys were for. It had never occurred to Karp that he would be in a situation where no sacrifice would be necessary. He had made a bundle once himself, working as a private litigator, but he had not liked it much, suing faceless enterprises or defending them. What was the point? Whereas when you stood up for the People, there was something real behind it. Or not, as it seemed recently. And now he could no longer see himself as a . . . martyr was too strong, he would never have said that, although he was in fact the kind of man who would take a bullet for a short list of causes, his family one, his friends, and a certain vision of what the law was meant to be, a vision that apparently was not broadly shared in his profession, and hardly at all within his own office. It was not like it was on the TV. So why get out of bed and go to work? To feed the kids to keep the wolf from the door. But the kids had trusts now, the college taken care of, the little nest egg afterward, and the wolf was . . .

Circular thoughts, sliding into obsession. He told himself to stop it. It was the weekend, take a break, Butch. Take the kids to the beach. Lie down and hang out. He had one of those fat fact-filled history books he read for pleasure, no beach thrillers for Karp, no, usually something like Norwich on Byzantium, or the rise of the Dutch Republic, or McPherson or Page Smith. Okay: book, beach, relax. Round up the gang, then.

He went into the barn, which was large, sagging, plank-built, painted crumbling white, and still smelled faintly of hay and its former tenants, with an added topnote of kibble and dog. It had a loft at one end, and at the other a flight of stairs leading to the trainer's apartment. Karp inspected the nursing Magog and her puppies. The b.i.t.c.h lifted her great head and gave him, the stranger, an unfriendly look and a coughing growl. Backing away, he heard a rustle from above and then a loud pop, followed by a cry from a boyish throat: "Got you!"

"h.e.l.lo, who's up there?"

"Dad, I got another one!" In a moment Zak appeared at the edge of the loft high above, grinning and dangling a huge, dead rat by the tail. Karp took a step back to avoid a falling drop of rat gore.

"Do you want to go to the beach?"

"Maybe later. I want to hunt some more. This place is crawling with them." Zak dropped the dead animal, which fell with an unpleasant sound at Karp's feet.

"Do you have the safety on that thing?"

"It's automatic, Dad," said Zak, with a touch of patronage. "It goes on when you c.o.c.k it." Zak placed the b.u.t.t of the rifle against his knee and heaved the barrel down, then up with a smart click. He struck a Hemingway pose and pointed to the red tab sticking up from the foot of the breech. "See?"

Yet another thing to place in the worry file. The weapon was not, as Karp had once thought, a BB gun, but a Diana 34, a precision German weapon that could propel a .17-caliber pellet at a thousand feet per second and blow the brains out of a rat. Or child. The crazy wife had bought it for Zak's last birthday, and he loved it more than life.

"Well, just be careful," said Karp, and left the barn. He proceeded around the barn, where he found Marlene in consultation with a couple of contractors. Marlene gave him a friendly squeeze, but continued with her conversation, which was technical, boring, and presaged enormous expense.

After a few minutes of staring at the large rock that blocked the trench, he asked, "Where's Giancarlo?"

"In his garden."