Corruption of Blood kac-7 Page 9

  "You get any new staff yet?"

  "No, but… what's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means don't hold your breath. Bloom is a master of the meaningless gesture. He could be setting you up."

  "I can take care of myself," Marlene snapped, with more edge than she had intended. "Just because you've had a running war with him for all these years doesn't mean I have to. We're separate people, something which has been getting a lot clearer to me since you left."

  "Marlene, what are you talking about?" Karp demanded, his voice rising. "Bloom is a corrupt fuck, and you know it."

  A pause. "Let's change the subject, Butch," said Marlene coolly. "What's going on down there? Solved the crime of the century yet?"

  "Yeah, well, it would help if I had a staff, or money to pay one, or an office that worked, but besides that it's going great. Why don't you come down here for the weekend? I miss you."

  "I have stuff to do and no money. Why don't you come up here?"

  "Same answer."

  "Great. Well, in that case, I'll see you when I see you. Here, talk to your daughter."

  Clunking of phone, sound of tiny running feet. His heart clenched.

  "Daddy, I have an elephant balloon."

  "That's great, baby," said Karp, and chatted with his daughter for a few minutes, in the sort of unrewarding and stumbling conversation possible with a three-year-old who is really only interested in when you're coming home.

  "Lucy, good night now," said Karp. "Let me talk to Mommy again."

  But the child placed the phone carefully back on the hook, and Marlene did not call back. After some moments of agonized waiting, Karp punched up their number, but hung up before it could ring.

  On the Monday following another miserable work-clogged and lonely weekend, Karp for the first time marshaled his investigative staff. They met in a small windowless office that had been designated the conference room. It was bare and dusty except for two long folding caterer's tables placed end to end and a motley collection of chairs, which the attendees had dragged from their own offices. There were little piles of dead cockroaches on the floor and the room stank of a recent extermination.

  It was not, Karp thought, a particularly impressive group for the task at hand. Most of them were young, in their mid to late twenties, congressional staff types, all of them, male and female, wearing neat career suits in muted colors. There were also several older men in cheaper suits who exuded the vague bonhomie that marked them as political hacks. Karp was sure that none of them had ever investigated a homicide or worked a major criminal case. Bright or slow, ambitious or defeated, they were paper pushers all.

  V.T. Newbury was, of course, solid, but Karp had his doubts about whether Newbury or anyone else could form this mob into an effective research organization. Karp glanced across the table at Clay Fulton, who gave him a hooded, eye-rolling look. Fulton was solid too, but even under his supervision none of these people was going to be able to hit the streets of a strange town and ferret out secrets from the lowlifes. Ziller was there- Karp still didn't know quite what to make of him-as was Jim Phelps, V.T.'s photo expert; short, bearded, wearing a cheap tan safari suit. At the end of the table sat a small dapper man with a brush mustache and heavy black horn-rimmed glasses-Dr. Murray Selig, former chief medical examiner of New York and the chairman of the forensic panel.

  Karp began, "This is our first general meeting and I hope it's our last. I hate meetings." Muffled, polite laughter. "This staff is still small enough so that we can talk to each other just about every day. I also want to minimize written reports and bureaucratic garbage as much as possible. I assume you've all met V.T. here. He'll lay out the research assignments for each of you. The well-dressed gentleman sitting across from me is Clay Fulton, on leave from the New York PD. He'll handle all the fieldwork with such of you as he thinks can help out. We've divided the work into a number of lines of research in two big groupings. First, we want to know to the extent possible what really happened in Dallas that day. We're therefore going to reexamine, one, the ballistics and other forensic material, two, the photographic evidence, including the various amateur films, and, three, there'll be a special reexamination of the autopsy evidence by Dr. Selig and his team of forensic pathologists.

  "The second grouping is concerned with why Kennedy was shot and whether the actual facts of the crime were covered up by either governmental or nongovernmental sources, or a combination of the two. The recent Church committee report gives us some reason to believe that neither the CIA nor the FBI was perfectly forthcoming with Warren. We're going to look into, one, the Cuba connection, right- and left-wing versions, and the CIA involvement; two, we're going to review the investigation of Oswald's background; three, we're going to check out the organized crime connection; and four, we're going to see what we can find out about Jack Ruby."

  Karp then read off a list of assignments and looked up. Everyone except Fulton, Selig, and Newbury was scribbling away on pads. Karp continued, "V.T. has set up a filing system and an initial set of leads for each group. We'll expect you all to use your heads in following them up. I'm available any time for a conference on any particular problem, but I'm not going to have time to nursemaid you through this. One other thing: I intend to run this as a professional investigation. You'll hear a lot about political sensitivities and pressures. I want you to ignore them. The reason we're here, the reason the Warren Commission screwed up, was just that kind of knuckling under to politics, and I'm not going to be party to a repetition of that. All we're going to be concerned with here is evidence and the best interpretation of that evidence, on the basis of our professional judgment and not a damn thing else."

  He paused and looked around the table. Some of the faces bore faint smirks or incipient expressions of disbelief. Then he added, "Some of you may have problems with that, in which case you're welcome to leave. And I can guarantee you this: if you sign on here and I do find out you're crimping the investigation to suit somebody's political agenda, you're out and I don't care who your patron is. I know Bert Crane will support me on this. Okay, any questions?"

  A silence, then a series of anticlimaxes. Somebody asked about furniture. Another asked about travel funds, and a third raised the critical issue of whether congressional staff parking privileges would be retained. It was a replay of the conversation between Flores and Crane. Karp referred these matters to Sondergard. Nobody seemed to have any substantive questions about who shot JFK. The meeting broke up in the usual burble of cross-conversation, centering around V.T. Karp slipped out feeling tense and irritated.

  Later, Karp sat in his office with Fulton and Murray Selig. "Welcome to the funhouse," he said.

  "You got yourself a problem, boychik," said the pathologist. "Comparatively, I got it easy."

  "You're satisfied with the panel?" Karp asked.

  "Oh, yeah, all good people. That's not the issue, though."

  "What is?"

  "The material. If the material isn't there, how are we going to come up with anything different than Warren did?"

  "Oh, come on, Murray!" Karp snapped. He reached for the summary volume of the Warren Report and flipped it open to the famous ugly profile drawing of JFK with the trajectory of the magic bullet going through its neck. "Are you going to endorse this crap?"

  Selig smiled and placed his hands over his ears. "I don't want to hear it. We'll look at the evidence available and we'll judge from that. You know how I work."

  Karp tossed the volume down with a bang that raised a little flurry of plaster dust. "Yeah, right. Sorry, I know you'll do what's right."

  Then the three men, who had worked together on hundreds of violent deaths over many years, chatted briefly about the simpler cases of the past, until Selig had to leave to catch a plane back to the city.

  When he had gone, Fulton observed, "He's right, you know. Autopsy could draw a blank on this one."

  Karp shook his head. "I don't believe it. This"-he motioned at the blue book-
"is a lie. Murray won't be party to a lie. I don't expect him to get the full story, but I'd be willing to bet he'll explode this one."

  Fulton shrugged. "Maybe. I hope so. Meanwhile, what are we going to do about this investigation? That crew in there couldn't find a cat in a grocery bag. You in deep shit here, Stretch."

  "We in deep shit, you mean. Any ideas?"

  Fulton rubbed his hand slowly over his close-cropped head for a moment before he replied. "Well, there's you and me and V.T. Maybe a couple of the crew'll turn out to be some good. They can't all be as useless as they look."

  "You mentioned ex-cops on the phone."

  "Uh-huh, cops on pensions, here and there. They'd be willing to pitch in."

  "Like who?"

  "Al Sangredo, used to work the Two-five?"

  "Yeah, way back. He still alive?"

  Fulton chuckled. "Al better not hear you say that. Yeah, he's down in Miami. Got a private license, still dabbles a little. He's up for it. He's a Spaniard, but he can get into the Cuban business down there. He was Fidel's bodyguard for the cops when he made that New York visit back in the fifties, so he knows the other side too. Apparently they hit it off, him and Fidel."

  "Oh, great! That's a desirable reference in Little Havana."

  Fulton laughed. "Then there's Pete Melchior in New Orleans…"

  "What about here?" Karp asked impatiently. Fulton gave him a disbelieving look and shot back, "Man wasn't killed here, son. We don't need no more people here in D.C. We're damn lucky that New York cops hit the warm climates a lot when they throw in their tin. Spend the bribe money in peace. This is gonna be cleared up in Texas, probably New Orleans, maybe Miami, if the Cubans are connected up to it, like the Senate Intelligence report says. I think I got a guy in Dallas too. What I mean is, we need folks know those towns, which I don't and neither do you."

  Karp shook his head as if trying to throw off sleep and sighed. "Yeah, sorry. That's what this fucking place does to you. I been here a lousy month and I'm starting to think the world ends at the Beltway, like everybody else." He looked at his watch. "I have to get over to Schaller's office."

  "The CIA stuff?"

  "Yeah."

  "You want me to come with you?"

  Karp gave Fulton a puzzled look and opened his mouth to say something like, "No, why should you," when the other man's implication struck him, generating an unwelcome shiver.

  Karp laughed unconvincingly. "You think Langley is going to gun me down on Independence Avenue and steal back their files?"

  "It's been known, if you believe half what these assassination nuts say."

  "Fuck it!" said Karp. "I'm not that paranoid yet." He picked up his briefcase, shrugged into a suit jacket and his raincoat, and headed for the door.

  Fulton issued a rough laugh. " 'Yet' is the right word, baby. We're just starting out."

  Karp reached the Dirksen Senate Office Building six streets away without being gunned down by Cuban paramilitaries or Texas fascists, nor succumbing to the more likely ambuscade from one of the dozens of Kennedy-assassination nuts that had started to haunt the Select Committee's staff.

  The interview with Senator Schaller did not go quite as Ziller had predicted. Schaller proved to be a bluff, square-faced, stocky man with thinning reddish hair, who presented himself in the antique Trumanesque style that had been abandoned by many of his colleagues for the blow dryer and the spin doctor. He had the papers right on his desk and made no bones about what they were. He regretted not having used them himself, cursed the CIA in earthy barnyard terms, and wished Karp good luck. The whole thing took eight minutes, and involved a crushing handshake that seemed to last nearly a third of the entire interview.

  Karp walked back to the Annex at a good clip, making one detour at Third Street to avoid the guy with the funny orange hair who had counted thirty-eight shots in Dealey Plaza. His first stop was the Xerox room, where he made a copy of the Schaller papers. His next stop was Fulton's office.

  Karp handed the thin stack of originals to the detective and sat down in a creaky wooden swivel chair to read the copy. For the next twenty minutes there was silence but for the rustle of pages and the creak of Karp's old chair as both men read. Karp finished his reading before Fulton did and, taking out a pen, began to reread, making notes.

  Fulton indicated he was done reading by scooping up the pile of pages on his desk and neatly squaring the edges of the stack. He placed the documents in the center of his steel desk and looked at them with an odd expression. Karp studied his friend's face curiously. Was it fear he observed? Unlikely. Clay Fulton possessed more physical courage than any man Karp had ever met. Disgust? Maybe. Karp was fairly disgusted himself.

  He asked, "What do you think, Clay?"

  Fulton met his eyes, his expression one of the most profound bafflement. "What do I think? I think we should've stayed in town. We're way over our heads here, boy. Way, way, way over our heads."

  In a small whitewashed room in Quetzaltenango in Guatemala, a thin, bearded man packed his suitcase. The phone call from Washington had been unexpected but not disturbing. The man was used to phone calls interrupting his life and asking him to travel to another part of the world to do odd things.

  This is what he does for a living, goes places and does things in response to phone calls. He is not exactly a professional assassin. There may, in fact, be no such thing, despite the fantasies of fiction writers, and were there to be such a profession, it would not be staffed by elegant men who wear dinner clothes and drink champagne in tony resorts. This is simple economics: it is so easy to kill people, and there are so many who will gladly do it cheaply, that it would be hard to command a high living from that trade. The thin man has, however, killed any number of people for money, but only as an ancillary, if critical, activity, just as a chauffeur may wash a car, or a waiter may wipe down a table.

  He is not exactly a spy either, or a mercenary soldier, although he has spied and fought for gold. He has also run a bar in Honduras and managed a small air-shipping service. Essentially, he does what certain people tell him to do. It is the only fixed point in his life, and it gives him the closest feeling he ever has to a feeling of security.

  He completed his packing, put on a khaki baseball hat, turned to leave the room, but stopped at a cracked mirror tacked up by the door and looked at his face. He was nearly forty. He had brown eyes and crisp, short brown hair. He did not think that anyone will recognize his face at his destination. He had aged and grown a beard and it had been a long time.

  The thin man walked down a narrow flight of stairs and entered a room with several desks and chairs in it. A brown-skinned soldier in green fatigues sat in one of them, tilted back against the wall, reading a magazine, his rifle leaning against the wall next to him.

  The thin man asked, "Has Chavez gone out to the airstrip yet?" His Spanish was quite good, almost unaccented.

  The soldier said, "No, the truck's still outside." He took in the suitcase. "Going somewhere?"

  "Yes. I have to meet a plane."

  "What should I tell them?"

  "Tell them I'll be back, but I'm not sure when," the thin man said, and walked into the steamy evening.

  SIX

  Five in the morning and Marlene Ciampi lay sleepless on her back, studying the stamped tin pattern of the loft's ceiling. She was dying for a cigarette, but she had decided to ration herself to five per day, and the first one was going to be with coffee in a few hours, when she officially rose to start the day.

  Much of her energy recently had been going into this sort of self-torment. She had become obsessive not only about smoking, but about food and booze and schedules and shopping. She thought about this, lying in bed. I'm counting everything, she thought. People are starting to look at me funny. I bought a Day-Timer in a little leather case. That's a joke. I never seemed to need one before; now I write down everything, schedule everything to the quarter hour. I'm not like this, she thought: happy-go-lucky, anything-on-a-dare Marle
ne. It's like I'm back in high school with the nuns.

  During such musings, Marlene did not dwell on the source of these disturbing changes. She did not want to believe that Karp's leaving for Washington was involved at all. She loved Karp, although she was angry with him for leaving, but that didn't mean she was dependent on him. Dependency was the death of love, so Marlene believed, and she also knew that she should be able to do it all on her own. She had been on her own for a long time before she got together with Karp, so what was the problem now? The kid was no problem; Lucy was an angel-healthy, cooperative, a delight.

  And, of course, other women did it, including black single working mothers with many fewer resources than she had; also, there were those women you read about in the magazines, "Sharon Perfect, single mom, thirty-five, cooks French cuisine for her three kids, vice-president of a major ad agency, plays cello in the local orchestra, training for the Hawaii Triathlon… (picture) Sharon's a size five, blond, the three kids are gorgeous, snapped at the family table as they discuss nuclear physics in Chinese."

  With these thoughts stoking her already red-hot guilt and urging her to improve each shining hour with ever more zeal and efficiency, Marlene flung herself from bed, made a hasty ablution, and started her exercise regimen. This was an hour each day of the sort of conditioning that prizefighters use to prepare them for their literally punishing sport. Marlene's father had been a likely welterweight just after the second war and had worked his way up to a match with Kid Gavilan, and lasted one and thirty of the first round, which was why he had decided to become a plumber. He had, however, taught all of his six kids (including the three girls) how to box.

  Marlene was the only one who had kept it up. She had a body bag and a speed bag set up in a corner of the loft she and Karp called the gym, and now she slipped into shorts and a T-shirt and sneakers and speed gloves, and pounded away at both bags for forty-five minutes. Then she skipped rope with all the hand-crossing, pace-changing frills you see in boxing movies, tossing her head to snap the sweat out of her eyes.