Infamy Page 5

  “Yeah, well, homes, me and some of my homies was chillin’ with a couple of our bitches, downing forties and shit, when we heard it. Pop pop pop. A whole bunch of times. Sounded like a nine.”

  The reporter grimaced at the word “bitches,” but continued. “By a nine, you mean a nine-millimeter handgun?”

  “Yeah, homes, a nine.”

  “And you told me just a few moments ago that you actually saw the shooter up close?”

  “Yeah, we was trying to figure out what was going down when this white dude comes running toward us. He had the nine in his hand. I got in his way and said, ‘Whoa, dude, wassup?’ ”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Yeah, real spooky-like, the dude says, ‘Just chill if you don’t want to die.’ I tell you what, homes, I was looking in the eyes of a stone-cold killer. Not my day to die, so I stepped aside and he ran past.”

  As the reporter continued to milk the interview, Karp put down the remote and placed a call. “Hi, Kenny? It’s Butch. Yeah . . . I heard and I’m on my way. I know you’re up to your eyeballs in alligators, but just letting you know, a reporter with WFN Channel 7 is interviewing someone named Freddy Ortega about forty yards from where you’re standing. Ortega claims the gunman approached him and made a statement. You might want to get to him before the story grows. I’ll see you in twenty.”

  Karp changed out of his sweats—he’d planned on challenging the twins to a game of hoops—and into his “work clothes” of gray slacks, a blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt, a paisley tie carefully selected by his spouse, and a navy blazer. His mentor Garrahy had always insisted that his ADAs look professional in public, and not only had it stuck with Karp, but he’d carried the rule over into his own tenure as DA.

  The memory of his own beginnings at the DAO caused Karp to consider his young ADA at the scene. When Karp had hired him, Kenny Katz was a little older than the typical law school graduate. He’d interrupted his education at Columbia Law School after 9/11 to enlist in the Army, then served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and received the Purple Heart for wounds he’d received and the Bronze Star for gallantry.

  Karp had liked the young man from the start and recognized that not only did he have a sharp legal mind, but he also was as steady as they came. He’d taken Katz under his wing, just as his mentors had with him, with the idea of grooming him for the Homicide Bureau, where he’d excelled.

  Although it was the luck of the draw as to which ADA had been on call for the shooting, Karp thought Katz’s experience might help with the military aspects. He wasn’t going to the scene because Katz couldn’t handle the initial interviews. It was obviously going to be a high-profile case with a frenzied media, and the burden of this prosecution was going to fall on the top man’s shoulder. Otherwise, the best man for the job was already on the ground and running with it.

  Karp left the fourth-floor loft and entered the private elevator that took him to the ground level. He glanced up at the security monitor above the door and saw that a dark sedan was already pulled up at the curb. A plainclothes police officer, Eddie Ewin, was standing by the back passenger door, ready to take him wherever he needed to go.

  “Hello, Eddie. I take it you’ve heard about the shooting in Central Park,” Karp said.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Karp,” Ewin responded, opening the door of the car. “Yeah, terrible. Heard it on the scanner and then Detective Fulton called and said you’d be needing me.”

  A short, broad-shouldered man with dark hair and eyes, Ewin shook his head. “I heard on the radio that some of the dead were vets. Served their time over there only to come home and have some nutcase do something like this. What’s the world coming to, Mr. Karp?”

  “Good question,” Karp said as he settled into the seat. “But I don’t have an answer.”

  Ewin got in the driver’s seat and started the car. “The park?” he said, looking in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes, please. Anything new about the shooter’s whereabouts?”

  “I was just listening to the scanner when you came out. I heard someone matching the suspect was seen running on the west side of the park, over past the—”

  Suddenly the police scanner crackled. “All units in the proximity of the Central Park Zoo, ten thirty-nine hostage situation in progress. Suspect armed and considered dangerous . . .”

  As the voice continued, Karp leaned forward and tapped Ewin on the shoulder. “Let’s go to the zoo,” he said. “Katz has the Sheep Meadow scene covered.”

  “On the way, sir, though if you ask me, it sounds like he’s where he belongs.”

  4

  WELLINGTON CONSTANTINE PUT DOWN THE Sunday New York Times and gazed out at the swimming pool where his wife, Clare, had just finished her laps and was climbing up the ladder on the opposite side. He admired her tanned, toned body, the womanly hips and, when she grabbed her towel and turned toward him, the ample bosom that had caught his eye when he was still on wife number two.

  Twenty-five years his junior, he had to admit that Clare was still a stunning woman at age forty. And yet, though she’d lasted longer than any of the others (they were coming up on their eighteenth wedding anniversary), he was tired of her. Actually, he had been for a long time, but a combination of laziness and a preoccupation with his multifaceted business pursuits, as well as consolidating his political power in Washington and abroad, had delayed his doing anything about it.

  As one of the wealthiest men in the world—the Long Island beach mansion they were currently living in was just one of many fabulous estates—he had his pick of young, beautiful women to attend to his physical needs. A wife was just an accessory for a man like him, akin to choosing the right tie, to be used for public functions and as a tool to present his “softer side” to a gullible public.

  In that regard, the former Clare Dune had served him well. She was an Olympic-caliber swimmer when he met her at a fund-raising event for the U.S. Olympic Team. There’d been a whirlwind courtship when he’d overwhelmed her concerns about their “fall-spring” age difference and the fact that he was married with gifts, travel, and promises to divorce his second wife. He’d accomplished the latter when his wife gracefully, and probably gratefully, agreed to the divorce with a generous settlement. Her publicist had even issued a press release stating that they’d “mutually agreed to go their separate ways while remaining friends, as well as parents to their son.” He’d then cemented the deal with Clare by promising to let her spend a good deal of his money on her charitable interests.

  In fact, Clare was a genuine do-gooder who’d proceeded over the years to spend a small fortune on charities and noble causes all over the world. He really could not have cared less about feeding starving children in sub-Saharan Africa or saving dolphins from Japanese fishermen, but he considered it money well spent on public relations. His wife and her “team” did all of the work, and when necessary he’d fly into whatever godforsaken backwater she was championing at the moment for photo ops to appear in People magazine or the Washington Post. Then he’d fly back off to wherever he needed to be to further his true interests: the acquisition of money and power. The only thing they had in common was their son, Tommy, now fourteen years old.

  Thanks to Clare, they were the ultimate Beltway progressive power couple in D.C., the darlings of the Manhattan liberal establishment, the toast of their party from Miami to San Francisco, and frequent dinner guests at the White House. Two years earlier they’d been feted by the Hollywood and music industry elite at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the Philanthropic Couple of the Year, where politicians toadied up, hoping to catch a moment with him and his bankroll.

  Little did those people know that in the privacy of their homes and hotel rooms, he enjoyed slapping Clare around, careful not to leave marks on her face, though his cruel words probably hurt her far worse than blows from his hands or feet. When she t
ried refusing sex, he raped her, not because he really wanted her but to show her who was boss.

  He knew she was always judging him—she knew what he ­really thought of her “bleeding-heart hobbies”—and it made him angry. Over the past few years she’d turned to alcohol to drown the disappointments of her marriage. Unfortunately for her, the booze sometimes resulted in her speaking her mind when it would have been better to stay silent. She’d once even threatened to expose him as nothing more than a disingenuous power broker, a philanderer, and a wife abuser. That had sent him over the edge, and he’d choked her until she blacked out. When she came to, he told her that the next time she threatened him she wouldn’t be waking up.

  There’d also been the time she left him for three days, apparently going to a women’s shelter in Manhattan. He’d sent his man Shaun Fitzsimmons after her. Fitzsimmons was a six-foot-five, rock-hard black-belt bodyguard and general good man Friday. He was also a former Special Forces member who’d been drummed out of the service after being court-martialed for brutality against Iraqi civilians. Yet even he wasn’t able to find her. So he shut down her credit cards and knew she’d return if for no other reason than their son. When she came back, he beat her black and blue. “And if you ever leave me without permission, you’ll never see Tommy again,” he sneered into her tear-stained face.

  Lately she’d seemed unusually happy. She didn’t give him any “looks,” or challenge him in any way. She even seemed to be drinking less. He wondered if it was because she was screwing Richie Bryers, the basketball coach at the exclusive prep school where Tommy was enrolled. He’d hired Bryers to coach Tommy in his spare time, also figuring that the “golden carrot” would assure his boy a place on the varsity squad in a couple of years.

  As if on cue, Bryers appeared from the bathhouse where he’d apparently been changing into a swimsuit and white robe. He removed the robe to enter the pool. Constantine studied the man. An avid tennis player, he was no slouch himself, but he was impressed with the coach’s tanned, sculpted physique. He knew the man stayed active not just on the basketball court where he’d once been a highly recruited New York Public High School player and then all-American point guard at Harvard, but also was a skier, surfer, and mountain climber.

  Bryers saw him looking and smiled and waved. Constantine smiled and waved back. He actually liked the man—at least, as much as he liked anyone—and that’s why he extended the use of the pool and guesthouse to him whenever they were spending time there. It didn’t hurt that he believed that between the money and the “perks,” Bryers was bought and paid for in regard to his son’s special tutoring and future on the team. After all, he chuckled to himself, everyone has a price.

  Yet Constantine hadn’t intended one of those side benefits to include sex with his wife. He didn’t really care about her, and it made him all the more determined that divorce number three would be a fact before the end of the year. But on principle he didn’t like the idea of anyone helping himself to anything he owned, and he owned Clare. He glanced over at his wife; she was watching Bryers as he lowered himself into the pool. She felt Constantine’s eyes on her and looked his way. Guilty, he thought angrily, and made a mental note to put Fitzsimmons on them to confirm his suspicions.

  However, at the moment he had more important things to deal with. He looked down at a leather-bound notebook open on the table next to the lounge chair he was lying on. He’d kept a journal since he was a lonely child brought up by an alcoholic mother and his shipping tycoon father. The kind of notebooks had changed over the years from the old black-and-white composition notebook to the current version that he had made special for him. But he’d kept them all—hundreds of them—now lining an entire wall-length bookshelf in his library.

  Some of what he wrote when he was young were just musings of a boy or comments on other kids and people. But as he grew older, he’d used them to “think through” and plan out his business dealings, especially after becoming a business major at Princeton and he was well on his way—with the help of his father’s fortune—to building an empire. The notebooks included his innermost thoughts, as well as details of some transactions and projects that at best were unethical and often criminal. He knew they were dangerous to keep, but he didn’t trust computers. Besides, it gave him an almost sexual thrill to look up from his desk and see a library’s worth of his writing.

  Even if it was a risk, he wasn’t worried. Money bought a lot of things, including law enforcement, judges, and public opinion. The press fawned all over him, and any independent media sources that dared say anything else were quickly dismissed as “politically motivated” by their colleagues, Constantine’s supporters, and the adoring public. His homes were protected by state-of-the-art security, as well as the ominous presence of Mr. Fitzsimmons and his nefarious team of goons.

  Constantine frowned. The notebook was open to his latest journaling about his most ambitious project yet. But it hadn’t been going well, and in fact, if the ship didn’t get righted soon, his whole empire could come crashing down around his ears and he’d find himself decorating a federal prison cell. But he was no coward; the thought of his scheme—both what he planned to accomplish and the risk—gave him a rush, and he intended to make it happen. And I always, always get what I set my mind to, he thought.

  “Excuse me, there’s a call for you, Mr. Constantine.”

  He turned at the deep bass of Fitzsimmons’s voice. “The one I’m expecting?” he asked.

  “Apparently there’s been a glitch.”

  Constantine scowled. He didn’t like “glitches” and paid good money for them not to happen. “I’ll take it in the library,” he said curtly.

  As he stood to go back into the house, Constantine nodded toward his wife, who was seated on one of the sun chairs. “I want those two watched. Let me know what they’re doing.”

  Fitzsimmons raised an eyebrow, then smirked. “You got it, boss. Want me to do anything if they’re up to some hanky-panky?”

  Constantine’s eyes narrowed. “No, just let me know. I’ll decide what to do after that.”

  5

  WHEN THE SEDAN ARRIVED AT the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Central Park Zoo, Officer Ewin pulled over to where a uniformed police officer was waving traffic around a half dozen parked cruisers with their red and blue lights flashing. Karp looked out the window and noted a larger contingent of officers standing by the Arsenal, as the zoo administration building was known, blocking the entrance.

  Ewin rolled down his window when the officer approached. “I got the district attorney with me,” he said. “What’s the ­latest?”

  The officer leaned over and looked at Karp. “Hello, sir,” he said when he recognized him. “The shooter’s holed up with some hostages on the northwest side of the zoo in the Bird House, near the grizzly bear enclosure.”

  Despite the urgency of the moment, Karp smiled. “You seem to know a lot about the zoo, Officer.”

  The officer, a young man who barely looked old enough to be out of high school, smiled. “Yes, sir, grew up about five blocks from here; been coming since I was a kid. You’ll probably have to walk from here if you want to get up to the command post. You need someone to show you the way?”

  “Not a problem, Officer,” Karp replied, reaching for the handle and opening the door. “It’s changed a lot, but I’ve been coming here since I was a toddler . . . my kids, too.”

  “I knew you were from Brooklyn, sir. Anyways, you’ll find the command center no problem if you just head for the bears. I’ll radio ahead and let everybody know you’re coming.”

  “Thanks,” Karp said as he exited. “Eddie, stay with the car, please. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “You got it, sir.”

  Karp walked over to the knot of officers at the entrance. One of them was detached by his sergeant to accompany him into the six-and-a-half-acre zoo. Walking through the strangely deserted
grounds, he was reminded of another hot summer day many years earlier. It was the last time he’d visited the zoo with his mother.

  He was a senior in high school and she was dying of cancer. Her bad days far outnumbered the good, so it surprised him and his father one Sunday when she announced at breakfast that she wanted to go into the city and visit the zoo. They’d worried that even the short trip from their Brooklyn neighborhood would be too taxing on her meager reserves of energy and only ramp up the pain that was her constant companion. But she’d argued that she wouldn’t have many more days when she’d feel up to such a journey, “and I want to go one more time to see the animals.”

  A star basketball player, Karp had planned on going to his school to work with his coach on his game, but he called to say he wouldn’t make it. His coach knew the situation at home and told him to spend the time with his mother. “Basketball can wait,” he said. “Say hello to your mom for me, and I’ll be looking for her in the stands when the season starts.” They both knew that wasn’t going to happen, but Karp had appreciated the thought.

  So they’d taken the elevated train into the city. There his dad wanted to hail a taxi to Central Park, but his mom insisted they take the green line subway up to Central Park. A “people watcher,” she’d always preferred to mix it up with humanity, so they rode north with the throng, getting off at the Hunter College station on 68th Street and then backtracking a few blocks to the zoo.

  It was a wonderful day. Years later, Karp could still recall entire conversations, as well as the sights, the smells, and the sounds, especially of his mother’s voice. She’d been happier, more full of energy than at any other time in the past year as cancer whittled at her stamina and spirit.

  Unlike the walkways on this afternoon, deserted due to the gunman, those had been full of New Yorkers and visitors strolling the grounds—families with young, screaming, laughing children, teenagers in love, and old couples holding hands. His mother had been her precancer self, making funny observations about the crowds, guessing at their stories, and giggling at her son’s and husband’s versions. They’d wrinkled their noses in the odiferous Monkey House, laughed at the antics of the polar bears, and oohed and ahhed when the lion roared. She’d even managed to eat half the hot dog they’d bought for her from a vendor’s cart. But gradually her energy waned, and she’d sat wearily on a bench across from a pen where a wolf paced back and forth.