Justice Denied (32 page)

“Anything new on the loft?” Karp asked as Marlene lit up one of her rationed cigarettes.

“Oh, just that we are going to be thrown out on our asses for sure now. Stuart says Lepkowitz has raised the ante. Now it's a quarter mil. And considering the hit from the surgery and the five grand you blew with Roland—well, hi ho! I could sell my white body on the mean streets …”

“Who gave you the nickel?”

“What?”

“You know, Morris's business is on the rocks, so he sends his wife out to trick, and she comes back in the morning with fifty dollars and five cents, and he says, ‘Who gave you—?'”

“Oh, yeah, ‘Everybody!' Honestly, it's not a joking matter, Butchie. We could be under the bridges this time next year.”

“Well, first of all, I haven't blown my five large yet. The case isn't over.”

“No? I thought Roland had a snitch who dropped one on little Tomasian.”

“Yeah, I thought it was kind of peculiar they got a snitch this late in the game and off a guy like Tomasian.”

“You thinks it's a ringer?”

“Got to be. And no, it wasn't Roland who set it up. It could've been the skell himself, heard some shit on the jailhouse telegraph, figured to cut a deal. I don't know.”

“So what do we do?”

“Same same. Find the real guy.” He told her about what he had learned from Guma and about the brainstormer he had organized for the next day.

“I'll be there,” said Marlene, “and another thing—tomorrow's Friday, and I am not going to spend another weekend by myself.”

Karp mimed desolation and clunked his cast against the desk.

She said, “And fuck your cast too! I will find a way; count on it!”

After Marlene left, Karp saw that she had “forgotten” an almost full pack of Marlboros on his desk. That was part of the reduced-smoking campaign. She left packs of cigarettes behind her wherever she stopped, like the spoor of a deer. Without thinking, he scooped the pack up.

To his mild surprise, Hosie Russell was waiting for him when he arrived at the staff locker room for his shower. Karp had thought that after their last interview, Russell would avoid him, but there he was, glowering, hesitant, yet exhibiting an expectant attitude. What did he expect? Karp wondered.

“You bring any cigarettes?” he asked.

Karp handed him the Marlboros. Russell broke off the filter on one, lit it, and sucked greedily. Karp stripped, took his one-legged stance under the shower, and emerged hopping from the steam, wrapped in a towel. He always tried to keep his cast dry in the shower, but since this was virtually impossible, it had started to become spongy on the outside and to unravel around the toes. The bright messages written on it by his co-workers had run, becoming indecipherable, if decorative, swirls of color.

“So,” he said when he was seated on the bench, “what's happening, Hosie? They treating you okay? How'd you like your day in court?”

Russell said, “That lawyer's fucked up big-time, man.”

“Freeland? Why? I thought he did pretty good.”

“I don't mean how he did. I mean how he is. Treat me like a dog. A dog fool.”

“Well, you know, you have the right to ask for another attorney. I mean, it's your case, not his.”

“Wouldn't do no fuckin' good. Jew lawyers all the same. Fuck 'em all!”

“Suit yourself,” said Karp, beginning the difficult process of working the leg of his sweatpants over the lumpy cast.

Russell said, “You want some help with that?”

“Sure, if you don't mind.”

Russell helped Karp dress. Karp thanked him. Russell sat across the locker room aisle on a bench and smoked. The mumble of the imprisoned and the burble of water pipes blended distantly, a background to their silence.

Then, out of nowhere, Russell began to talk, disjointedly, in spasms, interrupted by long pauses and the snap of matches as he chain-smoked.

It was a complaint. He had never had a break. He was the second youngest of seven children, and the only survivor. The others had died, in wars, in jails, of suicide and murder. He had been brought to New York by his parents at the age of four with his younger siblings and raised in Harlem, the glittering Harlem of the thirties and forties.

Hosie had not participated in the glitter. Someone had dropped a load of bricks on his father. The family had sunk to the lowest echelon of poverty. They were “nigger poor.” He had “scuffled.” He had dropped out of school in the fifth grade and run numbers. He had tried to become a pimp and failed. His first theft was recalled, a purse-snatching. He had been grabbed and pounded by the cops and done juvie time.

He hung out on the street, doing casual labor, getting fired a lot, sometimes for petty theft, sometimes for drinking. He drank heavily. He got hooked on heroin.

He became a small-time burglar. No rough stuff, he added; he had never carried a gun.

He had fathered children with several women, all of whom had betrayed him, abandoned him. A daughter had turned whore. A son had been shot to death in a dope deal. Another daughter had cast him out.

He was as incompetent at crime as at everything else. He had spent twenty-two years of his forty-odd years behind bars. He had missed the Korean War in prison on a six-year robbery stretch.

Karp listened quietly, noting that the criminal justice system had had at least one effect on Hosie Russell. It had given him an alternate language to describe his life. His speech was peppered with sociologist's jargon. He said, “I'm a recurrent alcoholic.” He said, “I got low self-esteem.” The tale had a rehearsed quality, as if he had told it any number of times before, to parole boards, to social workers. He had probably told it to the sister of the woman he had murdered.

He went on and on. He was sorry for all his crimes. He regretted them. But what else had life offered him? He said, “I never got a chance to reach my potential.”

When this last came tumbling out of his mouth, Karp asked, “What do you think your potential was?”

“Say what?”

“Your potential. If you hadn't had to scuffle, if you'd had the money, what would you have done?”

Russell thought for a moment. Then he said, “A artist. I always liked to draw and paint and shit like that. I did a lot of that in the can, like when I was in Lex for the dope thing, I had this therapy—they let you alone. You could paint. They said, the lady there, said I had a talent for it.”

“Do you still do it? Draw?”

Russell snorted. “Yeah, on the fuckin' floor with a mop. What you think?”

Karp shrugged. “You could take it up again. You'll have plenty of time.”

Russell bristled at that, the confidential mood broken. “What good's that gonna do? All y'all care about, put the nigger away. What damn good is it?”

“No damn good at all,” agreed Karp affably.

“But you do it anyway? What the fuck, man. I go in, there's fifty little jitterbugs out there pick up the slack. You pathetic.”

“Uh-huh. But it's my job. It's what I do. And you're right—it is pathetic. People shouldn't grow up like you did. I shouldn't have crippled my knee. Susan Weiner shouldn't have died on the street with a knife through her heart. Life stinks. On the other hand, we're supposed to at least try to make it better, or leave it so that our kids have a shot at making it better, God help them.”

“That's what's gonna make the world better? I go upstate fuckin' forever?”

“Well, yes,” said Karp, as if making a discovery, “it will. You won't kill any more young women. It's not much, but that's all we got.”

“I never killed nobody,” said Russell, almost to himself, almost as if he didn't expect anyone to believe him.

“Uh-huh, and if the jury buys that, you walk out.” He stood up in his crutches. “Big day tomorrow. Got to go.”

Russell said, “You ain't gonna give me no break or nothin', are you?”

Karp paused and looked carefully at the other man, and shook his head. “Here's the thing, Hosie. This is nothing personal. I mean, if you weren't a criminal, I'd probably enjoy going down to the courts with you, shoot some hoops, crack jokes, and so on. I mean, I don't think you're a devil or anything. I understand why you turned out how you did, the story of your sad life and all.

“Okay, I understand, but what good does that do? Doesn't do me any good. Somebody once said, ‘To understand all is to forgive all.' Fine. I understand you, and I forgive you. Maybe her family can forgive you too someday.

“But then what? Acts have consequences. You drop a brick, it falls to the ground. You couldn't live in a world that didn't have some physical order in it. There's a moral order too; it's dim but it's there. Or maybe we just have to pretend that it's there so we can get out of bed every day. I don't know. You following me here, Hosie?”

Nothing.

“And here's another thing: understanding never helped
you
out. It probably hurt you, come to that. You figured it as part of a hustle, get you out of a jam. I mean, you been hustling me, in a way. We all figure that, you understand somebody, you go easier on them. But why? Maybe when we understand, we should be harder, not softer. Maybe that would fucking work.”

15

T
he next day, the Friday, in Part Thirty, Vinnie Boguluso was scheduled for arraignment on the grand jury indictment for the murder and lesser crimes committed on the body of Gabrielle Avanian. Part Thirty, a felony arraignment court, had the atmosphere of a bus station in an underdeveloped nation. The floor was brown linoleum, much scuffed. The yellowish window shades were tattered. The mural behind the judge's presidium was peeling; the allegorical figure of a woman with a sword and scales had no face.

In the well of the court gathered a dozen or so A.D.A.'s, clutching capacious folders. Around them, like bees about blossoms, moved a smaller number of defense attorneys, harassed and shabby if they were with Legal Aid, sleeker and better-dressed if private. Behind them in the rows of wooden benches sat relatives or friends of defendants. On the bench, Judge Rosemary Slade, a black woman of vast experience and legendary arraignment velocity, called them up and shut them down.

The room rumbled with talk, like a marketplace. Formally, the arraignment was the place at which a secret grand jury indictment was made public, where the People let the accused know the nature of his crime against them. In practice, for nearly all cases, it was where one copped out, confessed to a lesser crime, in exchange for a reduced sentence or no sentence at all.

Part Thirty was a marketplace, in fact. The marketing was done between the A.D.A.'s and the defense attorneys, who circulated through the little mob of the People's representatives, seeking deals for their clients. The A.D.A.'s were often little more than children a few years, or a few months, past their bar exams. While in principle they had wide discretion, in reality they were bound tightly by the tinkerings of politicians in Albany, about what deals they could actually make, and even tighter by the blizzard of policies and memos that issued from the office of the district attorney.

Ray Guma stood placidly amid the familiar bustle and awaited the arrival of his opposite number in
People
v.
Boguluso.
This was a Legal Aid named Jack Cooney, an old war horse of approximately Guma's own vintage. They had worked opposite each other for nearly twenty years, and Guma grinned when he saw Cooney's familiar, beat-up face appear in the courtroom doorway.

“Counselor,” said Cooney when he got next to Guma, “well, well. A fine piece of shit this morning. I've just come from my client, speaking of fine pieces. He wants to know what's on offer.”

“Offer?” Guma rolled his eyes. “In his dreams, offer. Guilty to the top count is the offer. Twenty-five to life.”

“He'll never plead to that, my friend.”

“Fuck him, then, Jackie. Trying this scumbag will be a day at the beach. I look forward to it.”

Cooney shrugged. Although he did not want Vinnie out on the street any more than Guma did, he was also a pro. “Not such a day at the beach. Your witnesses are a whore and her wacky kid, and an accomplice to the crime, this Ritter, who by the way was brutalized by the arresting officer.”

“I got the teeth marks, Jack,” replied Guma airily. “He had the vic's stuff in his apartment. His girlfriend—” Guma stopped, his eyes widening. “Hello,” he said, “I'm in love. Will you look at that?”

She had just walked through the courtroom door, a young bottle blonde with a sharp little face, chewing a wad of gum the size of a golfball. She was an obvious paralegal of some sort, one of the many who darted like guppies in and out of courtrooms.

A new one, perhaps: she seemed lost and was outfitted inappropriately for her job. She wore stiletto-heeled sandals, a deeply vee-necked, very snug baby blue sweater, and a shiny black skirt so tight and short that she was nearly hobbled, swaying precariously as she walked. She was carrying four fat legal files, two under each arm. The burden pulled her shoulders back and thrust her high, conical breasts into sharp relief.

She paused at the little gate that led to the well of the court. Two court officers practically collided as they leaped to open the gate and let her through. She smiled at them, giggled, walked around the end of the defense table, and approached the court clerk, followed by every male eye in the house. She spoke briefly to the clerk. He shook his head and gave her directions. Poor thing! She was in the wrong courtroom.

An arraignment was just finishing, having lasted six minutes, about average for Judge Slade. The defendant looked longingly at the blond woman as he was led away to the Land of No Girls. He said something naughty to her, and she giggled. Judge Slade frowned. The clerk tore his attention away and called the next case: “Calendar 2606. Boguluso.”