down, then they’ll squabble like vultures over the pieces…. In this case, ‘strange bedfellows’ works well for us;we’ve managed to get our guy set up with plastic explosives and some pretty sophisticated ordnance that Azzam was looking for…”
Fulton looked like he was going to jump off the bed and strangle Ellis. “You fucking telling me that the ordnance used on those kids and officers was supplied by a U.S. agent-”
Ellis held up his hand and shook his head. “No. Sorry should have explained that up front,” he said. “Nothing’s exchanged hands between our guy and the terrorists. That’s a deal he’s
“Why not get the plastic explosives and other stuff from Kane, too?” Karp asked.
“Don’t know,” Ellis replied. “Maybe he couldn’t get it on time, or they wanted to shop around so as not to raise red flags with someone who might get curious about all that sudden influx of money for guns and explosives. The important thing here is that if our guy can get close, we may be able to catch Kane and nip this plan in the bud.
“However,” Ellis continued, “we don’t want our guy pressing too hard so that they get nervous. If they get wind that we’re on to them, they’ll just move on to some other target. If you want to trap tigers like Kane and Azzam, you have to stake a live goat to the ground and let them come to you.”
“What goat?” Fulton asked.
“Me,” Karp said. “I’m their other ‘asset.’ Me and my family and friends, we’re your goats.”
Ellis nodded. “As you know, Kane seems to have an ulterior motive besides whatever the terrorists are up to and that’s to kill Butch and his family. That’s the bad news. The good news is it means he’s letting emotions-hate and vengeance-cloud his thinking, and it could be what trips him up. This is personal to him, and our shrinks believe that may be what draws him out of hiding first.”
Jaxon pointed out, “There’s also the possibility that all of this is about you and has nothing to do with the Chechen issue. You and your gang managed to mess up their plans to blow up Times Square on New Year’s. In fact, you’ve been a thorn in their sides for a while now. They might have wanted Kane freed for other purposes, but Azzam may also be targeting the district attorney of New York before he screws it up for her side again.”
“Which is why,” Ellis added, “with your permission-and no disrespect to you, Mr. Fulton, I know your guys are providing security for the Karp family-but I’d like to have some of my guys watching, too. As good as I’m sure Clay’s guys are, my teams are trained to spot these people and their techniques before they can succeed.”
Seeing the look on Fulton’s face, Karp started to say that he felt safe with the NYPD providing security-not to mention his wife’s former life as a security expert-but Fulton spoke first. “I agree. These assholes already caught me with my pants down once. It can’t hurt to have extra eyes and extra firepower around.”
Karp closed his eyes and a malapropism of one of his favorite Yankees ever, Yogi Berra, popped into his head. “It’s like deja vu all over again.”
4
After the two Feds left, Karp stayed to talk awhile longer, knowing that the long hours Fulton had with nothing to do at the hospital weighed him down with thoughts of the future.
In many respects, they couldn’t have been more different. Karp was a Jew, born and raised in Brooklyn, the son of a moderately successful businessman and a schoolteacher mother.
Fulton had been raised in Harlem, the son of a single mom who’d worked three jobs rather than have her boys learn to rely on government handouts. He was the youngest of three brothers. The eldest, Percy, had been shot and killed by a robber while working as an assistant manager in a liquor store. The perp had never been caught, and the injustice of that had been one of the primary reasons that Clay had become a cop. His other brother, Donald, had been drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1968 just in time for the Tet Offensive. He’d not returned and been listed as missing in action.
The common denominator between Karp and Fulton was their shared sense of right and wrong as actually being separate and distinct from one another-no gray areas for them. Fulton had never accepted so much as a dime or a cup of coffee walking the streets as a young cop or as a middle-aged detective. Nor did he break the rules to catch bad guys. And Fulton knew that Karp would have quit the work he loved rather than accept a bribe, or give in to a threat, or “do whatever it takes” to win a conviction, unless he could do “it” the right way. His nearly perfect conviction rate on homicide cases was due to intense preparation, a brilliant legal mind, and-as Fulton had seen time and time again in court-a sense of integrity that jurors connected with.
They were an odd pair of brothers, but brothers they were in the truest sense. Fulton lay back on the bed, let out a sigh, and strapped his right leg into a continuous-motion machine that flexed and unflexed the knee joint to keep it from stiffening, and to increase its range of motion. “This thing will drive you nuts,” he grumbled as the machine began whirring away. “Every four hours the dungeon masters they call nurses come in and move it to the other leg-hurts like a bitch when the knee is stiff. A man can’t get any sleep.”
Karp made a motion as if playing the world’s smallest violin. “Feeling sorry for yourself, again, Detective Fulton?” he said. “Whatever happened to Freight-train Fulton, the human wrecking machine fullback out of Syracuse who gave out as much punishment as he took?”
“Nobody around here to punish, ’cept Nurse Nancy,” Freight-train sulked. “And if I give her too much lip, she threatens to give me an enema when I’m sleeping. She would, too…. But on to more important matters; what’d you think of that guy?”
“By ‘that guy,’” Karp replied, “I take you to mean Ellis, not Jaxon, who I regard as a friend and the second most honest cop I know. He gives you his word on something, you could bank it. A rare trait these days. But as for Ellis, ‘spooks’ have always made me nervous, especially if they’re ex-military.”
“You picked up on the military vibes, too?” the detective asked.
“Yeah, but not a foot soldier; more the born-to-command type. I don’t know what it is about these guys… they’re always just so
“Why, Butch, are you suggesting that circumstances can sometimes require measures that might be a little bit outside of the letter of the law?” Fulton asked with a lifted eyebrow. “Do I see that stiff neck bending?”
Karp knew his friend was only giving him grief, but scowled at him anyway for effect. “No, of course not,” he answered. “While I’m sure it’s going on, and maybe is even in our best interests, anybody-
“Just asking,” Fulton replied with a grin. “Wanted to make sure the rules of the game weren’t changing around here.”
Mention of the word
Karp patted him on the shoulder. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, your guys are mother-henning me worse than Nurse Nancy does you. I can’t sneeze in my bedroom without someone stepping out of the closet to hand me a tissue and say ‘Bless you.’ ”
Fulton laughed. “They’re good men, but this Kane, he’s something else, and that Samira Azzam…. They killed those kids without blinking an eye, and I don’t expect they’ll blink when it comes to the twins, or Lucy, or Marlene, though I expect that wife of yours can take care of herself…. How’s she doing, by the way?”
Karp hesitated-not because he wanted to keep anything from Fulton, who was as trusted as a brother, but because sometimes it was just plain hard to tell how Marlene was doing. They’d been together for almost thirty years-about as long as he’d known Fulton-having met when they were both young assistant district attorneys. But
