Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (29 page)

Tran quickly put out of his mind the image of what he would do to the traitor Salim.
If I live that long.
He hoped that Jojola would manage to stay away from the searchers, buoyed by the fact that Malovo and her men believed that they already had the “two spies” mentioned in the message.

“So now that you have us, how about letting us in on what you’re up to,” Stupenagel said. “I’d like to quote you in my story before some fed puts a bullet in your brain.”

Malovo chuckled and shook her head. “I’m glad we found you,” she said. “It will make the next few days more enjoyable to listen to your jokes. But sure, you’re not going anywhere, so I’ll tell you what to expect.”

The original plan, she said, had been to arrive in New York harbor the day after Thanksgiving. “It’s called Black Friday, no?” she said as she took out a pack of cigarettes and shook one out. “Biggest shopping day of the year. Lots of traffic on bridges and roads.”

Malovo placed the cigarette in her mouth and dug a lighter out of a pants pocket. “You may have noticed that we are taking on liquefied natural gas, very dangerous, this stuff. Now imagine a bomb the size of this ship, floating up the East River. Suddenly, there is a rupture in the hull and liquid escapes and turns into a gas cloud surrounding the ship…. It’s very important that the rupture does not ignite the gas until a cloud forms, otherwise it’s just a big blowtorch as gas escapes. But when the cloud is ignited at the exact right moment”—Malovo lit her cigarette and took a deep drag—
“whoosh, it’s a giant fireball—hot as the sun—burns everything for a mile. Now it would be Blackened Friday…good joke, no?”

The main obstacle for the plan, Malovo said, had been getting the right ship. The use of LNG supertankers as weapons of mass destruction had been on intelligence agencies’ radar long before the attack on the World Trade Center. But 9-11 had caused security precautions to increase even more until getting a tanker close enough to a population center was “nearly impossible…though someday I expect it will be accomplished.”

“But for now, we needed a ship that would not draw such attention,” Malovo continued. “No one suspects a small reefer designed to transport milk, no? At most, a cursory check by the Coast Guard, especially if the right hands are greased to look the other way.”

“A milk ship can’t haul LNG,” Stupenagel said. “The refrigeration system can’t get cold enough.”

“You are correct,” Malovo answered. “The gas must be transported at minus 163 degrees centigrade, or minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, to keep it in liquid form, which also reduces its volume by six hundred times.”

Malovo patted the bulkhead. “But this is no ordinary milk ship. She is very special and has been converted into a mini-LNG tanker at a shipyard in Saudi Arabia owned by our friend Amir al-Sistani.”

“al-Sistani, the guy who masterminded the stock exchange attack?” Stupenagel asked.

“Yes,” Malovo said. “So sad that that did not work, or this would not be so necessary. But unfortunately, it failed, and even worse, that madman David Grale captured al-Sistani and almost ruined this plan.”

“How’s that?” Tran asked.

“al-Sistani is a clever man,” Malovo replied. “When he heard of the alternate plan should his fail, he offered to refit one of his milk ships so that it could carry LNG and be fueled at sea by a larger tanker. But he plans it so that it could not happen—ship would not be available—unless he was safe. He, of course, was thinking that he might be captured by U.S. authorities, and my employers would have to pull strings to allow him to escape or be sent to a friendly country. So Grale threw his plans off until we could arrange for him
to escape, and unfortunately, this has delayed us so that we cannot arrive on Black Friday.”

Malovo shrugged. “But it’s okay. Even though a small ship won’t be as big a fire as a tanker…it will still be a terrible fire and there will be many deaths. And after all, image is more important than actual casualties, is it not?”

“So you plan to kill a bunch of people and damage some buildings and maybe a bridge or two,” Stupenagel said. “What exactly do you hope to accomplish by that except piss off the American public so that they hunt down every Islamic fanatic and roast his ass?”

“Exactly.” Malovo smiled. “They will be very angry. Especially when it is learned that this ship is owned by men with business connections to Commander-General Muhammad Ali Jafari of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They will be so angry when a certain U.S. congressman provides these proofs, they will approve an attack on Iran, which of course will throw the entire Middle East into chaos. Maybe even a nuclear attack on Israel.”

“So what do your employers get out of it?” Stupenagel said.

Malovo looked surprised. “Out of chaos, order,” she said. “The keys to the White House, the Kremlin, Ten Downing and Westminster, the Palais Bourbon, the Bundestag, and Congress.”

“And you? I don’t suppose the world is lucky enough to count on you going out in a blaze of glory,” Tran said.

Malovo smirked and looked around. Omar Abdullah was occupied with the helmsman, and the other guards had remained back with their guns trained on the prisoners. She moved closer so that only Stupenagel and Tran could hear.

“Me? I’m in it for the money. But I’ll make sure you have front-row seats before I leave.”

“M
R.
K
ARP, WE’RE READY FOR YOUR NEXT WITNESS,”
J
UDGE
Rosenmayer said when the jury was seated on the morning of the second day of the trial.

“Thank you, Your Honor, the People call Carmina Salinas,” Karp announced.

Having expected the move, Leonard was already on his feet. “Your Honor, with all due respect, I must once again object to the appearance of this witness.”

After Carmina was attacked by Gregor Capuchin and decided to testify in the Maplethorpe trial, Karp had immediately interviewed her and then notified the court and defense counsel that he would be calling her as a witness. Leonard responded by filing a motion in limine, which essentially was a motion to prohibit her from testifying regarding any “similar prior bad acts” allegedly committed by his client, Maplethorpe.

Judge Rosenmayer had immediately held a hearing on Leonard’s motion, and the defense attorney had started by complaining that the addition of Carmina Salinas was “late in the game” for the defense to properly prepare. And, he said, the sole purpose of her testimony would be an “outrageous attempt” by the prosecution to link his client to another man’s crime.

“What do you mean by that?”
the judge had asked.

“Apparently, Miss Salinas claims to have been recently attacked by one Gregor Capuchin, who as it happens is, or was, an independent contractor hired for Mr. Maplethorpe’s protection by the people financing his current hit Broadway musical,”
Leonard said.
“I fear that the real intent of calling her as a witness is to try to link my client to this alleged attack—guilt by association, you might say.”

Rosenmayer raised his eyebrows and looked at Karp.
“And how do you respond?”

“First, there’s no ‘alleged’ to this attack,”
Karp said.
“Gregor Capuchin, a man employed by Mr. Maplethorpe as a bodyguard, assaulted Miss Salinas in her apartment—placing a plastic bag over her head to render her unconscious—and was preparing to inject her with a lethal dose of heroin when he was stopped.”

“And where is Mr. Capuchin now?”
the judge asked.

“He was killed during the struggle to save Miss Salinas,”
Karp replied.

Rosenmayer’s eyebrows shot up and knitted. He looked over at Maplethorpe with a scowl on his face, but the producer shook his head sadly without looking up.
“So, Mr. Karp, are you saying that you want Miss Salinas to testify about this attack? I can see why the defense might be alarmed by the implications.”

Karp shook his head.
“Not at all, Your Honor. Mr. Maplethorpe has not been charged in connection with this crime. If my office later brings charges against him in relation to what happened to Miss Salinas, the charges will be separate from this case. In fact, if it makes the defense rest easier, we will stipulate that there will be no mention of Gregor Capuchin or this assault during Miss Salinas’s testimony.”

“Then what will she be testifying to?”
Rosenmayer asked.

“Miss Salinas will be testifying to a different assault—this one perpetrated by Mr. Maplethorpe on her—approximately a month ago,”
Karp said.

The judge turned back to Leonard.
“And your argument against this?”

Leonard acted as if he was surprised that the judge even needed
to ask.
“It’s a form of double jeopardy. He’s charged with one crime, yet if this woman testifies he’ll, in a very real sense, be on trial for two separate and distinct crimes. The courts have held that in order for the State to use ‘similar bad acts’ statutes, the crimes must be so alike in nature as to be indistinguishable—as far as motive, behavior, and especially in this instance, result. I’ve read through the transcript of Miss Salinas’s interview with the district attorney and she makes these outrageous allegations regarding Mr. Maplethorpe’s behavior, for which there is no evidence of anything similar in the Perez case. Furthermore, there’s an obvious difference between what my client is actually charged with—homicide—and what Miss Salinas is claiming, which is at worst a misdemeanor sexual assault…essentially that he exposed himself to her.”

“Mr. Karp?”

“First of all, Your Honor, what Miss Salinas ‘alleges’ is quite a bit more serious than a ‘misdemeanor sexual assault,’”
Karp said.
“My argument in support of Miss Salinas’s testimony regarding ‘prior bad acts’ is not based on the assertion that the crimes were identical in nature, particularly the end result. In fact, the entire People’s case rests on the contention that through his reckless and irresponsible behavior, Mr. Maplethorpe created the circumstances that led to the murder of Miss Perez. He then repeated this reckless and irresponsible behavior with Miss Salinas and it is only through the grace of God that she was not killed, too. The defendant created a violent and reckless environment, motivated by lust, that resulted in the murder of the deceased.”

“What about Mr. Leonard’s assertions that there is no evidence that what Miss Salinas would describe was part of this ‘reckless and irresponsible’ behavior you say was also responsible for the death of Miss Perez?”

“Taken subject to connection with subsequent evidence, Your Honor, the People will prove it was. I am asking to be permitted to create my mosaic one tile at a time,”
Karp replied.

At the hearing Rosenmayer had denied Leonard’s motion in limine and ruled that Carmina Salinas could testify
“as long as neither she, nor the district attorney, talk about the alleged assault by Mr. Capuchin.”

Carmina looked around the spectator section until she saw Alejandro Garcia sitting two rows behind the prosecution table. They smiled at each other, and then she strode purposefully up to the witness stand to be sworn in.

After the attack on her, it was all Carmina could do to keep Alejandro from going after Maplethorpe himself.
“Those Inca Boyz, gangbanging days are over, Alejandro. You can’t go shoot someone. I’m not visiting you in Attica,”
she’d told him. He finally agreed to see how the trial went first.
“But bets are off if Maplethorpe walks,”
said the former gang leader known by the nickname Boom.

After Carmina was seated, Karp began by setting the scene on the night she and Garcia met Maplethorpe at the Poliziano Fiera Hotel for the
Putin: The Musical
preproduction cast party. “Did you have anything to drink that night—anything alcoholic?”

“Yes, I had two or three drinks,” Carmina replied.

“Is that a lot for you?”

Carmina shrugged. “These days, yes, though when I was a kid I used to get wasted, and three drinks would have been nothin’.”

The spectators and jury laughed lightly. “But these days, two or three drinks are about your limit?” Karp asked with a smile.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Actually, I don’t drink much anymore at all. But it was a cast party, and I was feeling pretty good about getting a part.”

“And Mr. Maplethorpe gave you that part,” Karp said.

“Yes. The director would have had some input, but him mostly.”

“At some point during the evening, did Mr. Maplethorpe invite you up to his penthouse apartment in the hotel?”

“Yes. He said there was going to be a private after-party with some of the other cast members.”

“How were you feeling at the time?”

“To be honest, a little woozy and light-headed,” Carmina responded.

“From the alcohol?”

“Well, yeah, the alcohol, but it seemed more than that—”

“Objection!” Leonard said quickly. “The witness is about to delve into the realm of speculation for which there is no evidence.”

Karp waited for the judge to respond. Although Carmina believed that she’d been slipped a drug in her drink, and Karp thought it entirely possible, she had not been tested for its presence, and he expected the judge to keep her from alluding to the possibility.

“Sustained. Mr. Karp, please proceed.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Karp replied. “Miss Salinas, do I understand that you accompanied Mr. Maplethorpe to his suite?”

“Yes.”

“Was anyone else in the apartment?”

“No.”

“But I thought this was supposed to be a party for other members of the cast as well?”

“So did I. He said they would be there later.”

“What happened next?”

Carmina tilted her head to the side as she thought about the question. “I wasn’t feeling so good so I sat down on the couch. He sat down next to me and told me what a good actress I was and that if I worked with him, he could make me a star.”

“And how did you feel about that?”

“Good. I mean, what actress wouldn’t want to hear that from a famous producer?”

“Did he make you feel uncomfortable?”

“Not until he tried to kiss me.”

“He tried to kiss you. How did you respond to that?”

“I wouldn’t let him,” she said.

“Did you attempt to leave?”

Carmina shook her head. “No. I told him I wasn’t interested…that I have someone I’m in love with,” she said, glancing quickly at Garcia. “It wasn’t the first time a man tried to kiss me when I wasn’t interested. But I can handle myself without having to overreact.”

“Did he persist?”

“No, at first he looked mad, but then he apologized and fixed me another drink.”

“Did you drink it?”

“I sipped. It was a rum and Coke, I think.”

“What did he do next?”

“He told me to relax and that he was going to change into his party clothes before the other guests arrived.”

“Go on…”

“Well, I may have passed out for a minute or something because the next thing I knew, he was coming down the stairs to the living room wearing a cowboy costume.”

“A cowboy costume? What do you mean?”

“Well, it was strange,” she said. “He was sort of giggling—I thought maybe he’d had a few too many himself—but anyway, he was wearing a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots, and he had a gun in a holster.”

“What sort of pants was he wearing?”

“Well, at first I couldn’t tell because he had on a…what do you call a silky man’s robe, like what Hugh Hefner wears all the time?”

“A smoking jacket?”

“Yes, a smoking jacket…and the holster went around it like a belt.”

“So when did you see his pants?”

“I was sort of waking up and trying to figure out what he was doing and he came up and stood in front of me. Then he opened the smoking jacket and said, ‘If you don’t want to kiss me on the lips, then how about kissing…’”

Carmina hesitated and looked over at the jurors.

“It’s okay, Carmina,” Karp assured her. “I know this is embarrassing, but we need to know exactly what was said.”

The young woman nodded. “He said, ‘Then how about kissing my dick.’”

“What was he wearing under the smoking jacket?”

“Chaps,” Carmina replied. “Leather chaps and nothing else…nothing covering his…privates.”

“Oh, my word,” Maplethorpe suddenly blurted out. “Do we really have to listen to this nonsense?”

At first surprised by the outburst, Rosenmayer quickly recovered and slammed his gavel down. “Mr. Leonard, the defendant will refrain from making any statements. Mr. Maplethorpe, I expect you to control any such outbursts.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” both men responded. The producer turned in his seat toward his fans in the rows behind him and rolled his eyes as he shook his head.

“That includes playing to the crowd, Mr. Maplethorpe!” the judge demanded.

Flushing at the admonishment, Maplethorpe turned back around with a sullen look on his face. With a final hard look at the defendant, Rosenmayer turned back to the prosecutor. “You may continue, Mr. Karp.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Karp replied. “Miss Salinas, do I understand that Mr. Maplethorpe was wearing only chaps beneath the smoking jacket?”

“That’s right. Just leather chaps…like a cowboy, except I think they probably wear pants under them.”

Karp laughed. “I imagine riding a horse with just chaps might be a little uncomfortable,” he said to additional laughter from everyone else in the courtroom, except those sitting at the defense table and Maplethorpe’s retinue.

“Your Honor,” Leonard complained, “this is hardly a matter for levity. A man’s life is at stake here.”

The smile disappeared from the judge’s face. “You’re quite right, Mr. Leonard. Although I find that at times during a trial it’s beneficial for us to laugh and release some of the stress we’re all under, we are aware of the gravity of these proceedings and will move on. Mr. Karp, your next question, please?”

“Miss Salinas, did I understand you correctly that Mr. Maplethorpe exposed himself to you and then asked you to engage in oral sex?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And did you?”

Carmina scowled. “Hell, no!”

“What did you do?”

“I started to get up, but he pushed me back in the chair.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He said I couldn’t leave. He said, ‘Nobody leaves me unless I say they can.’”

“Did you feel threatened?”

Carmina nodded. “Yes, he had his hand on his gun and he had sort of a wild look on his face.”

“Was the gun still in the holster?”

“Yes, but his hand was around the handle.”

“Which hand?”

“What?”

“Which hand was on the gun?”

“Ummm…his right hand.”

“The gun and holster were on the right side, too?”

“Yes. Same side.”

“What did you do when he said you couldn’t leave?”

“I tried to get up anyway. He started to yell at me, but then his cell phone rang.”

“Did he answer?”

“Not at first, but then he did.”

“Do you know who called?”

“No. Somebody who wanted to come up to the apartment.”

“What did he say?”

“He said ‘Not now.’ But I got up and slipped past him. I figured he wouldn’t try nothin’ while he was on the phone.”

“Did he let you go?”

Carmina nodded. “He said, ‘Wait. I was just kidding.’ But I kept moving and didn’t stop until I got home.”