Justice Denied (23 page)

“Why not?”

“Because when the Brits and the French and the Greeks and the Italians try to get their antiquities back, they're dealing with their own heritage. The stuff was made by their ancestors, or people they'd like to believe were their ancestors. But the Turks didn't get to Anatolia until the Middle Ages. That statue, the tiara, and those paintings—it ain't their stuff. It belonged to people they beat the crap out of back then. That's why it'd be a little weird if they were buying back antiquities. I always thought they'd kinda like to forget anyone lived there before they hit town.”

V.T. and Rodriguez left. Marlene mooched listlessly around the exhibit, drinking more wine than was good for her, until the existence of a class of people who spent their time buying expensive trinkets and clinking glasses of champagne, instead of wading neck deep through the dregs of society, produced in her in an unbearable state of disgust mixed with guilty longing. She dragged a protesting Franciosa away from a coven of glittering art hags and fled the gallery, returning with a churning mind and a heavy heart to the steaming streets and motherhood.

Karp had a wheelchair in his office, but he refused to use it in public. Instead he clumped on crutches from courtroom to meetings, grasping a ratty brown folder in two fingers as he slogged away down the bustling halls.

Now he was sitting in the conference room of the district attorney with the other senior bureau chiefs—Fraud, Rackets, Supreme Court, Criminal Courts, Appeals—and the D.A.'s administrative deputy and hatchet, Conrad Wharton. Karp did not have much in common with any of these men. They were Bloom's creatures all, adept at public relations, smooth administration, coordination, the judicious use of prosecutorial power. Karp was the only one of them who was a serious trial lawyer.

There was some good-natured joshing about Karp's leg, to which he responded in the same tone. Wharton did not join in this. He never talked to Karp if he could help it, or noticed his existence in any way, except under the absolute press of business. He wrote Karp a lot of memos though, mostly to point out deficiencies in his management of his bureau.

It was curious. Karp had sent any number of vicious, depraved monsters to prison, where they certainly did not wish to go, but he doubted that any of these hated him as much as the baby-faced little man at the end of the conference table, to whom Karp had never, to his own recollection, done a personal injury. It was a mystery, one that annoyed him, although it cannot be said that he tossed nightly in his bed because of it.

Still, he recognized that Wharton's hatred caused him trouble. Whenever administration could trip up a bureau, there was Wharton's ankle in Karp's way. Karp reflected, in fact, that there had been an unusual number of D.A.'s meetings called during the week he had been on crutches: perhaps Wharton was taking some sadistic pleasure in seeing him hobble around.

The D.A. entered, in shirtsleeves and red suspenders; to his credit, these did not have tiny golden justice scales upon them. The D.A. was in his early fifties and looked like a suburban anchorman: razor-cut, blow-dried tannish hair going attractively gray; even, pleasant, if undistinguished features; terrific teeth. He was charming.

He began the meeting by charming his minions. Karp was charmed by solicitous concern about his knee, plus a remark about not having to worry anymore about hiring the handicapped, which raised a gust of dutiful, unpleasant laughter. The bureau chiefs gave their reports. Wharton handed the D.A. a sheet of paper on which was written a set of probing questions about various cases that might get the D.A. into trouble or show the office in a bad light.

Karp's questions were about the Hosie Russell case and the Tomasian case, as he had expected.

“What about this Russell? You're sure he's the right guy?”

“Yes. It's a circumstantial case, but it'll go the right way.”

“That's not what I hear. The word is the cops picked up the first black lush they came across in the neighborhood and cooked up a bunch of incriminating evidence. The black community is pissed off.”

“If that's what you hear, you're talking to the wrong people. We have two positive witnesses, one of them a black man, tying Russell to the crime. The evidence is good, and it'll hold up under challenge.”

“That's what you said about Morales. And Devers. Those were embarrassments, but they were nothing to what we'll have if this case gets fucked up. A young woman stabbed in broad daylight in front of a good building …”

Karp felt his face heat and felt the eyes of the other chiefs on him. He had gotten angry before. He had tried arguing from the perspective of a trial lawyer. None of it had done any good. This had nothing to do with the job he was doing and everything to do with Karp himself. He paused for a number of seconds before answering.

“You're the D.A. You sign the indictments. Would you like me to let Russell go?”

The D.A. looked startled, as he did any time someone (usually it was Karp) reminded him of his legal responsibility.

“No, of course not! But I'm holding you responsible for seeing that this comes out right. Now, on this Tomasian thing. The U.N. liaison office is still extremely upset. I was on the phone with a man for a half hour this morning, assuring him that terrorism was not about to take over the City. I hope to hell I wasn't wrong and you've got your act together on this one.”

Karp said, straight-faced, “I think it's absolutely certain that terrorism isn't taking over the City.”

“You know what I mean,” snapped Bloom. “I don't like what I hear from your operation on this thing. Dissension. Duplicate investigations. I don't think you realize what'll happen if the press gets hold of these stories.”

“There's nothing for the press to get hold of,” said Karp calmly. “There's one investigation. Roland Hrcany is in charge of it. We have an indictment and a defendant in custody.”

“And he'll go for it? You can promise that?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I can't.”

“Why not? Is there something wrong with the case?”

“No,” said Karp after a brief pause. “It's a good case.” He was about to add that the only problem with the case was that the defendant hadn't done the crime, but decided against it. The D.A. wouldn't be interested in stuff like that. What he said was: “It could be better. We're working on it.”

“Do that!” the D.A. said, and moved on briskly to other business.

Karp went back to his office and worked on the Russell case. He wanted to move it swiftly through the courts and, for a wonder, it was moving swiftly. They had opened up a new Supreme Court part a few weeks ago, and its calendar was not loaded yet. Theoretically, it was possible to dispose of a murder case in two months from arrest to sentencing, if you had the right court and it was not to the defense's advantage to slow things down.

Unfortunately, it usually was. Witnesses forgot or died. Pleas were more acceptable after a decent interval in jail. But this time Freeland seemed almost eager to rush things along, as if he could not wait for the personal confrontation with Karp. That suited Karp just fine. Pretrial was set for the morrow, and he was busy researching arguments for the motions the defense was likely to bring when his wife walked in.

“It's conventional to knock,” he said.

“In an office, yeah,” said Marlene, “but this is your bedroom and I'm your wife. I have conjugal rights.”

“Which you intend to exercise now?”

“Dream on.” She looked around the office. Karp had set up a steel folding bed he had snitched from the jail infirmary. A steel clothes rack on casters from one of the courtrooms was hung with his suits. There was a suitcase standing nearby with shirts and other necessaries.

“I still can't believe you're doing this,” she added. “Nobody lives in their office.”

“It's only for six weeks, Marlene, maybe less. We've been through all this. I have to be here for Russell, and I can't get up and down from the loft, and we can't afford a hotel right now.”

Marlene slumped down in a visitors' chair and lit a cigarette she didn't really want. She smoked in silence for a while. Karp went back to his reading. She stood up abruptly. “Well, so much for domestic felicity. I'm going to pick up Lucy. What do you want for dinner?”

“Chinese?”

“Good choice. MSG helps build strong bones. See you.”

She left. Karp worked until his eyes burned and then lay down on his bed of pain. He drifted off and was awakened by his daughter's tiny fingers probing his facial orifices.

“She misses you,” said Marlene, setting out white cardboard containers on the conference table. “She's been whiny all week. Her little schedule is all disturbed.”

“I'm sorry,” said Karp lamely, kissing the child.

They ate, Lucy sitting on his lap, grabbing for indigestible morsels and making a mess.

“What's going on in the big world?” he asked to break the silence.

“Um, the usual. I saw Geri Stone again today down in the lobby. She's stalking the halls, dressed in black and buttonholing strangers and trying to convince them it wasn't her fault the guy she sprang whacked her sister. She's become one of the Centre Street characters, like the Walking Booger and Dirty Warren. Everybody calls her The Sister. I think she's deteriorating.

“What other news? I'm following up on what we learned from the Turks and at that art gallery. V.T is working the banks, trying to get a line on whether Ersoy had moved any serious money out of the U.S. before he got shot.

“Harry located Gabrielle Avanian's parents today. The father says he hasn't got a daughter and hung up on him. He spoke to an older brother later. Apparently the father disowned her when she moved out and started shacking with Tomasian. The brother is supposed to come down to the hospital tomorrow and give us an ID on her. She's still out of it.

“Harry also did a repeat canvass of the buildings across from the murder scene on Fifth Street. No luck, so we're still looking for a witness that'll tie those mutts in the motorcycle gang to the Jane Doe killing.”

“Something is jelling in my brain about all this,” said Karp, “but I can't quite get it to come clear.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, me too. Here's a thought. The U.N. guy, Kilic, said that Ersoy's money was for buying art. I don't think so. But maybe he was selling art.”

“Huh? Why do we connect him with art at all? Why not dope or sex?”

“Because Kilic is covering up something, and he was the one who suggested that Ersoy was in the art business. He must have known that we'd look into it and wanted to be covered in case Ersoy's name came up in connection with the art trade. And, of course, there's the one man whose name shows up in both ends of this business—the Armenian nationalist and art collector, Sarkis the K. I'd like to have a chat with him.”

“I miss you,” said Karp.

She looked at him for a while, her face unreadable. “Yeah, well, me too. If I'd wanted to be a single mother I would've started at age sixteen and my kid would've been going to proms by now. This can't go on.”

“What can we do?”

“I don't know,” answered Marlene wearily. “I'll think of something.”

11

N
othing improved Karp's spirits like being in court. It was his gambling, his girls, his heroin. He glanced around at the courtroom. Milton Freeland was at the defense table, along with a young Legal Aid acolyte and the defendant, Hosie Russell. Russell had clipped his hair and was wearing glasses. He looked like a deacon.

The judge, a large, olive-skinned, beetle-browed man, was already seated at his presidium, peering over his half glasses and discussing some business with his clerk. His name was Martino, and Karp was very glad indeed to see him. He could not have asked for a better judge. Martino knew the law; he knew the difference between rights and legal trumpery; and he was ferociously impatient with lawyers who didn't know what they were doing, into which class Karp thought that Milton Freeland very likely fell.

A pretrial hearing is like a dress rehearsal for a trial, a clearing of decks, a showing of cards, so that the trial proper may proceed expeditiously, if it proceeds at all.

No jury is present, of course. Karp was expected to expose his critical evidence and his official and police witnesses to demonstrate to the judge the veracity of the evidence and the probity of the identification of the defendant, all of which had been challenged by Freeland.

Motion to suppress the Bloomingdale's VISA slip taken from Russell at the scene: the basis—no probable cause for a search. The judge heard Freeland out and decided that a police officer finding a man answering the description of a fugitive hiding under a boiler in a building where a dozen people had seen him go was probable enough cause. Motion denied.

Motion to suppress the blue shirt and the handbag and the knife. But the knife had human blood on it. The bag was the victim's bag, the blue shirt had, according to several witnesses, been worn by the perpetrator; the defendant had, in fact, identified it as his own. Motion denied.

Here Freeland raised an objection. “Your Honor,” he said, “I must protest. The testimony that the blue shirt was the defendant's was elicited after arraignment and in the absence of counsel. It was the product of an illegal interrogation.”

The judge said, “How was it an interrogation, Mr. Freeland? Both Captain Chelham and Detective Cimella have testified that the statement was voluntary on the part of the defendant. He asked about his shirt and they brought it to him and he identified it.”

“It's still incriminatory,” Freeland shot back.

That was interesting, thought Karp. He's not reading the judge. He's bugging him, but he doesn't care; he's getting objections on record, trying for a reversible error. Fat chance.