he never quite knew what was going on in that head of hers.
Marlene Ciampi was a violence magnet. She’d quit the district attorney’s office after a letter bomb meant for Karp caused her to lose an eye, and started a firm that provided security to high-profile and wealthy clients. One of her “hobbies” had also been protecting women from abusive, often dangerous men.
Now, she was trying to deal with the recent death of her mother. Karp sensed that she was troubled about something regarding the death but wasn’t ready to talk to him about it.
“She’s still trying to adjust to her mother being gone and deciding what to do about her dad. He’s reaching that point where he can’t really live alone,” Karp said. “But he doesn’t want to leave the family home…. And she’s still going through the ups and downs of trying to stay out of trouble, and the trouble on New Year’s Eve didn’t help much.”
Both men were quiet for a moment, reflecting on what might have been. An Iraqi terrorist had nearly pulled off blowing up Times Square on New Year’s Eve by planting explosives in an abandoned subway tunnel beneath the area. Tens of thousands would have died except for the actions of Marlene, a spiritual Indian police chief from the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico named John Jojola, as well as an old Vietnamese gangster, Tran Do Vinh, a cowboy, Ned Blanchet, and a millennialist vigilante, David Grale.
As strange a team of superheroes as ever walked out of a comic book, Karp thought. “It’s tough to play by the rules when the other guys don’t have to,” he said.
“Yeah, the question is how do we win this game with Kane under those circumstances?” Fulton mused.
“Last man standing, I expect,” Karp replied before his eyes glanced at the braces and he immediately regretted the comment. “Clay, I didn’t mean-”
Fulton held up a hand. “No offense taken. I understood where you were coming from. But you’re right; it’s going to be him or you. Just stay on your toes, Butch. Whenever you think you’ve got him figured out, try to look at it from another angle. We can win this one, too. This is a game to him, he’s going to make a mistake, and we have to be ready.”
When Karp was at last ready to leave, he stood and put on his coat. He felt something in the pocket and reached inside, pulling out one of Guma’s Cuban cigars, which he tossed to Fulton. “It’s from Ray. Don’t tell Nurse Nancy where you got that,” he said.
“I won’t, and tell Goom thanks,” Fulton said, giving the cigar a lingering sniff. “Hey, Butch?”
“Yeah, Clay?”
“When we’re ready to catch this guy, if there’s any way possible, I’d like to be in on it.”
Karp smiled grimly and nodded. “Sure…as long as you promise me that he won’t have any ‘accidents’ before we haul his ass into court.”
“Of course,” Fulton replied with a chuckle. “But if I’m lucky, he’ll try to escape again.”
As Karp left the hospital, he pulled the peacoat around him to ward off the chill. Officially, it was spring, the last snow had melted, and there had certainly been those days he loved best when, washed clean by winter’s snows and rains, the city gleamed and trees began to put forth tender green leaves, as the grass in the parks woke from hibernation. But tonight Old Man Winter was reminding the citizens of Gotham that he might have one last punch to throw before he was counted out.
Walking out of the entrance, Karp was quickly flanked by two brawny plainclothes cops, each of them with a neck bigger than his thigh. The cheap suits did little to disguise their occupations; they even walked like guys who were carrying guns and hoping for a chance to use them. Criminy, has it come to this? he thought. An armed escort.
Karp would have settled for the driver of his official city car, an armored Lincoln. But Fulton wouldn’t hear of it.
In fact, when Karp complained about his new shadows, Fulton had fixed him with his “don’t fuck with me” glare and spat, “I already screwed up once this year and got people killed, and the year’s just started. Now, I know I can’t guarantee I’ll do any better this time, but let me try to do my job.”
The look in Fulton’s eyes had told Karp it was pointless to argue.
Karp’s two escorts drove him back to the family loft on the corner of Crosby and Grand and parked in front of the building. They were still there when he brought out the trash two hours later. They started to get out of the car, but he motioned for them to remain where they were. It was getting colder, and he was only going to toss the garbage in a Dumpster in the alley.
Karp closed the lid on the Dumpster and was about to turn to leave when a shadow emerged from the deeper dark of the alley. He chided himself for letting the security detail remain in the car and prepared to fight. Go down swinging, you big dummy, he thought.
“Good evening, Mr. Karp,” said a soft, raspy voice.
Before he could say anything else, the speaker was racked by a fit of coughing that sounded deeper and wetter than was healthy. But Karp had recognized the voice and relaxed. “David Grale,” he said. “I guess the question is, what brings you out on a night like this?”
The last he’d seen Grale, the former Catholic social worker-turned-homicidal maniac, was on New Year’s Eve when Grale had been pivotal in helping thwart the terrorist attack on Times Square. Since then, he’d disappeared back into the labyrinth of man-made and natural tunnels that honeycombed subterranean Manhattan Island with his army of Mole People, homeless wretches who lived beneath the city, venturing out only to find, beg, or steal the basic necessities of life.
Some years earlier, Grale had started to take it upon himself to hunt down and kill men who at that time had been preying on the homeless of New York City. He believed that his victims were men but possessed by demons. At least that was the story according to Karp’s daughter, Lucy, who’d first met Grale when he was serving soup to the poor by day and killing by night in a perceived battle between good and evil.
Now Grale, according to Lucy, was some sort of spiritual leader and avenging angel for the Mole People. They’d rallied behind his cause, and quite a number had given their lives to stop the bombing plot.
Karp wasn’t sure how to feel about Grale. The man was by his own admission a serial killer-even if his targets were themselves discovered to be murderers and rapists, and wanted by the police. “The others,” as Grale referred to them, also lived below the city streets or in dark places where regular citizens did not go if they knew what was good for them. No one would mourn their loss, but the law did not hold a special place for vigilante killing.
Then again, that was also a line Marlene had tiptoed around on behalf of defenseless women. It all added up to a conundrum for Karp.
Whatever else Karp thought of the man, Grale seemed to have some inexplicable tie to his family that wove his mad purposes into the fabric of their lives. He was dangerous, probably insane, and yet he kept showing up in the proverbial nick of time to save them from, for lack of a better word, “evil” men. Karp couldn’t quite bring himself to condemn Grale’s actions when there’d been times these actions were all that saved his family from tragedy.
Even in the dim light that filtered into the alley, Karp could see that Grale’s lifestyle was taking its toll. Always tall and thin, his face now appeared drawn and haggard, almost skeletal. Lank dirty hair hung raggedly around his pale face, a thin beard filling in the hollows. He shivered beneath the hooded Xavier College sweatshirt as he tried to wrap his arms around his thin chest for warmth.
“Yes, what would bring me out on a night like this,” Grale responded, “away from the warmth of my underground kingdom…. I’m afraid that I have been waiting for the opportunity to warn you.”
“Warn me?” Karp asked.
“Yes,” Grale said. “Warn you that Kane is coming. His vengeance will begin soon.”
“You know where he is or what he plans to do?”
Grale shook his head, which seemed to set his whole body trembling, and he was racked again by the damp cough. “No. Nothing concrete or I would be there, not here. But haven’t you noticed the sudden jump in your crime statistics, especially those for violent crimes like murder, rape, and assaults?”
As a matter of fact, Karp had been apprised of the numbers just that morning. His aide-de-camp, Gilbert Murrow, had come into the office, worried about how a spike in the stats would be portrayed in the media. Karp had assured Murrow that a fluctuation seven months before the election wasn’t going to turn the population against him. He wondered how Grale knew…. Or was it just a lucky guess?
