Butch Karp: Absolute Rage Part 24

The loft was breathless as a tomb, oven warm. Quickly he gathered clothing, filled two large suitcases, called a cab. He stripped, took a brief shower, dressed again in fresh clothes. He had the cab take him to Penn Station, where he caught the Metroliner to D.C. He fell asleep somewhere in New Jersey and slept until Baltimore. From Union Station, he cabbed out to National Airport, to the general aviation terminal. The West Virginia King Air waited on the ap.r.o.n. Inside was Governor Orne and a party of state bureaucrats and legislators. Karp took a seat in the rear of the plane, attracting some inquiring looks but no conversation.

Shortly after takeoff, the governor came aft and sat down next to him.

"How'd it go with your pal?"

"Fine," Karp said. "The fix is in. Have you got a replacement in mind? I mean, a.s.suming Murdoch agrees to go quietly."

"Oh, he'll go. He may whine a little, but he'll resign. Bill Murdoch doesn't want to go anywhere near prison, and he knows I'll stick him in Mt. Olive, and not in any of the country clubs we got now. Cheryl tells me you got suspects."

"We do." Karp laid out briefly who they were and the case against them.

"Good. I want Floyd, though, and I want Weames. I don't want to leave this with a bunch of pathetic hillbillies taking the fall."

"We're in agreement then."

"I thought we would be. As far as a replacement, I have a man I think will do fine. He's retired from the state supreme court, name of Bledsoe."

"Retired?"

"Well, he's old but he can run me into the ground. The thing about him is he don't scare. Speaking of which, I hear you might run into some trouble actually arresting these fellas."

"Wade's been making noises like that. He seems to want to avoid a Waco situation."

"So do I. I don't have the manpower or the budget for a siege. If it comes to that, we'll have to bring the feds in, and avoiding that was the whole point of this exercise. I realize Hendricks is in charge of the police work, but I'm looking for you to provide the subtle angles. Wade sometimes lacks subtlety, and he's got no sense of resources. He's a get-the-job-done kind of fella. h.e.l.l, that's one of the reasons I came to Was.h.i.+ngton this trip. I think our LEAA grant's going to be cut, and G.o.d knows where I'll find the money to keep your operation going. So speed . . . you know? If you can manage it, I sure would appreciate getting this behind us as soon as possible."

"We could just grab them and hang them."

The governor looked startled, then laughed. "Bite your tongue, son. We don't have a death penalty in this state. We can't afford one, tell the truth. I'm counting on you for-what did we used to call it?-all deliberate speed."

The FedEx package from V.T. took a week to arrive, during which time Karp had essentially nothing to do: deliberate speed indeed. Marlene went to New York for a meeting of her foundation board and returned to find Karp in a lounger by the pool at the lodge, picking through papers.

"Is that it?"

"Yeah, Judge Murdoch's ticket to retirement. How was your trip?"

"Sure are a lot of people in New York, and those tall buildings. When are you going to use that?"

"Now."

"Will you change out of your bathing suit?"

"Yes, this is a pinstripe occasion. I've always wanted to fire a judge."

13.

T HE PRESS LOVED IT. W EST V IRGINIA DOES NOT ORDINARILY GENERATE A lot of news aside from car wrecks, so that the local TV stations and newspapers seized upon the doings in naughty Robbens County like the castaway upon his coconut. The results of this interest shone from the screen in the living room of the Karps' cabin at Four Oaks, the evening after Judge William Murdoch announced his retirement for reasons of health. The team-Hendricks, Hawes, Cheryl Oggert-had gathered to watch with Karp and Marlene.

"Oh, we have a logo!" Oggert exclaimed. "The great PR nightmare. I never had a logo before."

"Mazel tov!" said Karp, and smiled at her. The logo, floating above the sculpted hair of the anchorpersons at WOWK (Huntington-Charleston), consisted of three red skulls and crossbones, superimposed over a stylized dragline, under the caption (with the sort of gore-dripping letters a.s.sociated with B horror movies) "Blood on the Coal." The coverage started with a look at a crime-scene photo, the bloodstained bed in the Heeneys' bedroom, ten seconds of the funeral, with inset photographs of the three victims, a shot of Moses Welch being arrested, then one of him being released. A shot of Hawes eating crow and announcing the expectation of new arrests, some excited blather from the anchor, then stock footage of Murdoch as a state senator, with a coda showing him with wife and kids, giving ten seconds of resignation speech. He had health problems and wanted to spend more time with his family. Knowing comments from the anchors, suggesting otherwise.

After that, a round of applause in the room, as their own Cheryl faced the press on-screen, announcing the appointment of Justice Honus Ray Bledsoe, late of the state supreme court, to fill Judge Murdoch's shoes until a new election could be arranged. A still photo of that jurist appeared over the anchor's right shoulder.

"What a face!" crowed Marlene. "He looks like an engraving on a Confederate twenty."

There was indeed something stern and nineteenth century about the man, the bristling eyebrows, the grim, lipless slash of the mouth, the odd peaks that decorated the spare, bony face. Then the image was gone, replaced by an inserted talking head, a political reporter standing in front of the state capitol. What does Charleston make of this, Barbara? Barbara allowed as how Charleston was all agog. Murdoch was not just a county judge, it seemed; he'd served three terms in the senate and had plenty of powerful allies. He was known as a good friend of big coal. Rumors of corruption? No plans for any prosecution? Not now, according to sources. Connection with the triple murder and the union troubles in Robbens? Too early to say, Jim. Jim gave us all a sincere smile, and the scene dissolved to a car crash involving a truck and a family car and the miraculous escape of a baby thrown from the latter. But first this.

Karp muted the set as the commercial came on. He looked at Hawes. "You know this Bledsoe guy, Stan?"

"Only by rep. Vinegary but fair is what I hear. He's from around here originally."

"Everyone's from around here originally," said Karp. "I'm surprised it doesn't have the population of Brooklyn. Meanwhile, I think you all did real good, defined as keeping my name out of the news."

"Don't think they didn't ask," said Oggert. "The print guys, especially. The story is you're a technical consultant to Stan here. The Charleston Gazette is doing a feature on the crime-fighting Karps. I told them no interviews."

"You told them right," said Karp. "Wade, can we pick up these guys anytime we want?"

Hendricks waited his usual couple of beats before answering, his face knotting around the mouth, pursing, unpursing, lower-lip chewing, a half frown, cheeks sucking in, then releasing. "Well, I have some fellas generally keeping an eye out for them, but I don't have the resources for a twenty-four-seven tail on all four of the suspects. Floyd is no problem. He's in the union offices every day and he lives right outside of town. The Cade boys are another story. First of all, they can't hardly be followed up onto that mountain. Burnt Peak I mean. Once they're up there, there's a million ways they can get off it, and there's no traffic and no concealment for a following car. Unless you want them to know?"

Hendricks saw Karp make a negative gesture and went on, "If we can pick them up in town, that'd be good. If we have to go up the mountain . . ." He made a shaking gesture with his hand, stuck out his lip consideringly, shrugged.

"You think they'd resist?"

"They might. Ben Cade swore the last time that he wouldn't let the law touch him or his again. He don't believe in the state of West Virginia much."

Hawes said, "I'm a little tired of hearing that. What's wrong with going up and getting them? You've got enough cops."

Karp thought, wrong move, Stan, but said nothing.

Hendricks gave Hawes a considering look, not hostile, but not interested, either. He did the business with his face again; those muscles seemed to be linked to his thought centers. "Have you ever been up there on Burnt Peak where those Cades live?"

Hawes indicated he had not.

"Burnt Peak," said Hendricks reflectively. "I been there. You come up off the county road onto a dirt switchback that climbs up the face of the mountain through big outcrops of greasy shale. That whole mountain is pretty well coaled out. What they live in is the remains of the old coal patch, plus they got some newer double-wide trailers. They had to take 'em apart to get them up there. Any one of them switchbacks, three men with automatic rifles and dynamite could hold up an army. Well, maybe not a real army, but let's say the whole of the West Virginia State Police. I guess there's eighty or so living up there, a little more'n half of them men, all Cades. Got a nice spring and a big diesel generator. They never took the public power when it came in 'round the Depression. Old Devil Rance said he wouldn't have it, and he didn't need it, 'cause he had all the old plant from the Canker Run coal mine. No phones either. Anyway, the compound, or village I guess you could call it, is built on a big shelf that trails off into a bunch of hollers all full of laurel. They got some fields they cleared, but nothing much, mostly vegetables and some cows and hogs. Ben likes to have animals around, is what I hear. It makes it more Old Testament for him, flocks and herds. It would take a month to climb up through those hollers, if no one was shooting at you, that is, which I guess they would be, if they didn't want you up there. Which generally they don't. I won't even mention the dogs, big packs of vicious dogs they keep, let 'em run wild in the woods. Over on the back, that's the northwest side of the mountain, you got the leavings of the first strip mine in the county. That whole section is chewed away. It looks like a stairway, with each step maybe four hundred feet high, and a lake at the bottom. You could get up there if you were mountaineers."

"I thought you were all Mountaineers," said Marlene.

Hendricks did a grin 'n' head bob to acknowledge the joke. "No, I mean those technical rock climbers. Rangers."

"You're trying to tell us it'd be rough, I mean, dragging them out," said Karp.

"Rough, yeah, for a full-scale military operation prepared to take major casualties. Which we're not prepared to do right now, even if we had the resources. Speaking of military, the Cades ain't poor. They had that coal, and they had their rackets, moons.h.i.+ning and now marijuana and meth labs . . ."

"How do they get the product out? Car?"

"Well, no, they know better than to try that, because we'd stop them just on general principles. What they do, we think, is pack it out to a county road feeding into Highway 712 around Ponowon and their contacts pick it up there. There's a grocery store outside Ponowon where they get messages and use the phone. The drug boys got a tap on it, but the Cades are pretty careful about what they say. There's trails down that mountain, but they're all trip-wired and b.o.o.by-trapped. People around here tell their kids to stay off Burnt Peak, and they do. Occasionally someone goes up there and don't come back." Hendricks looked at Marlene. "Marlene here'll tell you that ain't hard in these parts, even if no one means you any harm. Anyway, about their money. Ben Cade is sort of a famous miser. He's supposed to have a lot of gold, so he'll be sitting pretty when the country falls apart, which he expects it to. But a lot of the time they trade their dope for weapons. They're well armed, maybe they even have heavy machine guns and rocket launchers." Hendricks looked at Hawes again. "So that's the answer to your question. I heard that the ATF was planning a raid up there a while back, but after Waco they kind of lost interest. Women and kids and heavy weapons? No one wants to go there again."

"But they come off the mountain, don't they?" Marlene asked. "The guys we're interested in don't seem to have any problem showing themselves."

"Uh-huh, that's so," said Hendricks, "but since you all let Mose Welch loose, they haven't stirred from home. And if you swear out warrants against the three Cade boys, I can guarantee you they will disappear permanently, or at least until this show goes home and things get back to normal. For them, I mean."

"It would be good," said Karp reflectively, "if we could lure them out. And grab them up in town or on the road."

"Lure them?" Marlene asked. "I could do my Streisand medley from the bandstand in the courthouse square. Do you think they'd be attracted by sophisticated song stylings?"

"I think we need to hold that in reserve, dear," said Karp, "if all else fails." He got up and paced. Everyone watched him do it. "Let's see," he mused, "we know these people aren't rocket scientists, so how hard could it be to schmeikel them?"

"Pardon?" said Hendricks.

"Oh, schmeikel? An old Norman French legal concept meaning to cozen, deceive, gull, shaft, bamboozle, generally in financial matters but by extension in any negotiation. And now that I think of it, you said something interesting there a while ago, Wade. You said the Cade boys holed up after we let Welch go. Because they're afraid we'll go after them next, since they really did it. Also, let's a.s.sume they have a leak or leaks letting them know all about the evidence we have pointing their way."

"Leaks? What leaks?" said Hawes.

"Hey, in a small place where everyone is related to everyone else, most of what we're doing will become general knowledge before long. Believe me, it happens in New York and Was.h.i.+ngton, too. But this, what we're planning now, absolutely can't get out. It can't go beyond the five people in this room plus one."

"Two can keep a secret if one is dead," observed Marlene darkly.

"Yes, thank you," said Karp, "good advice from the Sicilian delegation."

"Who's the plus one?" asked Cheryl Oggert.

"The new judge. He'll have to be in on it. I'm hoping that with enough hoopla and verisimilitude we can roll them, even if they hear rumors to the contrary. You're going to have to be the key man in the deception, Stan."

"Deception? I don't follow," said Hawes, scowling. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, sorry. I thought it was obvious. The schmeikel . You have to go into the tank, and let them know that you're going in. You have to find another Mose Welch, but a more plausible one, a more shocking one, and Cheryl here has to grind out publicity on it and all of us have to have our pictures taken, grinning like idiots. Once we've seemed to settle on the new suspects, and once Stan has told Floyd that he's aboard, our real sc.u.mbags ought to come down from their impregnable mountain stronghold to join in the fun, just like they did when we had Welch."

Everyone was silent for a moment, digesting this. Then Hendricks asked, "Is that legal? Arresting someone like that just to get someone to come out of hiding?"

Karp forbore to roll his eyes. "No, Wade, we're not really arresting anyone. The persons involved will of course be volunteers. Legally, the whole thing will be a nullity. It's a.n.a.logous to those scam contests the cops in New York and the feds use to pull in fugitives. The cops send an official-looking letter to the fugitive's last known address-congratulations, you've won the lottery, come to such and such an address and pick up your check. Or it's season tickets to the Yankees. The mopes show up and get nabbed."

"They actually fall for this?" asked Oggert incredulously.

"Every time. And these are streetwise hoods we're talking here, not . . ." Karp searched for a nice way to put it.

"Dumb hillbillies?" suggested Oggert.

"Thank you," said Karp with a grin, and to the group: "Well, what do you think?"

"It might could work," said Hendricks. "Who were you thinking of? I mean for the phony killers."

"Ideally, like I said, it should be someone both plausible and scandalous, so that the fake carries some weight. We want big publicity on this, and we want the Cades to really believe that they dodged the bullet again, that Stan here is bought and wired. I also want them to think it's amusing. I want them to want to come to town and sit around in bars and chat about ain't it awful how-"

Marlene interrupted, "I know who you're thinking of and I think it's disgusting. How could you?"

"It's right, Marlene. You know it's the only way to go."

"It still stinks on ice."

As the three others observed this exchange, confusion grew on their faces. Hawes said, "Would you mind telling us what you're going on about?"

"Sorry," said Karp. "My wife is objecting to my plan, which she figured out because she knows my devious ways, as I know hers."

Marlene said, "He wants to use the boys. The Heeney boys."

Karp saw the ripple of revulsion replace the confused looks. He ignored it. "If they'll agree," he said. "And if the judge will go for it."

Judge Honus Ray Bledsoe had not enjoyed retirement much, although he had a generous pension, a comfortable house with a garden in which he grew roses. The roses won prizes; they dared not do otherwise. He read widely; he gave an occasional interview; he recommended bright local kids to law schools; and he was bored. He had left the high court bench at age seventy-eight as he had promised himself he would. By no means a fearful man, he admitted to himself that he feared the loss of mental powers he had seen among many of his older colleagues. Appointed judges may in most places serve for life, and it is a sad peculiarity of their status that usually no one in their milieu is comfortable with telling them they have become senile, while many may benefit from manipulating them in their infirmity. The problem, Bledsoe thought, was that the victim of advanced age was the last person to know he was losing his sharps, and in his case no one was around anymore he could trust to tell him. His wife would have told him, but she was dead. His kids all lived away, and besides, they thought he was immortal, which he knew he was not, but was eighty-three all the same. So when Orne had called him about cleaning up Robbens, he had agreed to do a job he had thought about on and off for four decades, provisional to an interview, during which they had discussed points of law (Orne had been his clerk) and the events of the day. At the end Bledsoe had asked Orne in his characteristically blunt manner whether the governor thought he still had all his marbles, and Orne had said that in his opinion the judge had more marbles than anyone else in the state of West Virginia.

Armed with this opinion, he had driven himself, in his 1985 Cadillac Seville, from his place in White Sulphur Springs to Windy Grove in Robbens County, where he shacked up (as he said) with Marva, his baby sister, who was living in the ancestral home. After a day of rest to recover himself (on Marva's insistence, actually, since he felt fine), he had reported to the Robbens County Courthouse, where he terrified the staff, who had become used to Bill Murdoch's slack ways. Judge Bledsoe disliked slackness, nor was he overly fond of fancy lawyers, especially fancy lawyers from New York, especially very large fancy lawyers from New York. Judge Bledsoe was, on the outside at least, a rather small man.

Karp thought he looked, close up, like a rooster. The TV photo had been taken some years ago, it seemed. He had a cowlick, for one thing, which stuck up like a silvery crest, and wattles that got red when he was annoyed, which Karp thought might be most of the time. Maybe it had been a mistake to let Hawes do most of the talking. They were in Bledsoe's chambers. Bledsoe had recorded his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the investigation so far (although Karp thought that was really none of his business) and with the arrest and detention of Moses Welch. His wattles had reddened at the mention of bribes, and reddened more when Karp had explained (in approximate terms) just how Murdoch had been dispatched. When they told him about the plan to apprehend the Cades, the red moved up his jaw and blossomed on his cheekbones. Karp imagined that if it reached his crown, it would detonate, like a thermometer in a cartoon.

"You want this court to partic.i.p.ate in a public fraud?" Bledsoe asked, his voice quiet but deadly.

Hawes hemmed; Karp interjected, "Your involvement will be minimal, Judge. You have no reason to speak to the media and can refuse to comment if asked. Obviously, you're one of the few people who need to be apprised of the plan. Also you'd be issuing the warrant. We'd want to have Sheriff Swett do the arrest."

"Why?"

"Because Swett will leak it to the Cades as genuine."

"If Swett is corrupt as you claim, then get rid of him."

"Good idea, but after the Cades are in custody."

"So your plan is to fight corruption by chicanery."

Karp took a deep breath and kept his face neutral. "Yes. Because given the time frame the governor has set, there are only two other alternatives. One is to let them get away with it. The other is to go up onto Burnt Peak and drag them out of there. I a.s.sume being a local man you know what that would be like."

"I'm not afraid of Ben Cade."

"I'm glad of that, sir. I am. I have it on expert advice that doing the dragging would cause the biggest bloodbath since the Robbens County War, even a.s.suming we could get official permission for an a.s.sault. I'm as big a fan of legal niceties as you are, Judge, but I wouldn't want that blood on my hands, if there was any alternative. And I think we have one here."

Karp and Bledsoe played the staring game for a while, the judge's mouth line bending down into a hair-thin parabola.

"This how they do things in New York, Mr. Karp?"

"When necessary, sir."

"All right. I want all this doc.u.mented and signed by you two and anyone else with cognizance of it. Who does what when and where and to whom. That includes the putative suspects. I a.s.sume they're on board?"

"More or less."