Justice Denied (33 page)

The young woman headed back out again, but as she passed the corner of the defense table, she seemed to wobble on her spike heels, to stumble. The four folders went flying and crashed to the linoleum, scattering a deep drift of paper around and under the defense table. She let out a little shriek and knelt down to retrieve her documents.

In this she was not alone. A half-dozen men, court officers, A.D.A.'s (with Guma in the fore), a defense counsel rushed to her aid, eager to help a fellow servant of criminal justice, to peer down her gaping neckline, and to look up her nearly exposed thighs.

Thus the task was quickly done, and the young woman soon rose, burdened again, flushed and apologetic. In a moment her small, shiny butt had wiggled its way out of the courtroom. Nobody noticed that when she left she was no longer chewing gum.

A few flights up from this scene, in the nobler precincts of Supreme Court Part 52,
People
v.
Russell
continued. Milton Freeland had begun the day by moving for a mistrial. The
Post
had done a story on the start of the trial in which Russell's criminal record was featured in some detail, and Freeland was arguing that the material was prejudicial. Judge Martino growled, but he had to drag all the jurors out one by one and ask them if they had seen the offending article. They hadn't. The morning vanished.

The delay meant that Karp's witness, the arresting officer, Patrolman Thornby, would have his testimony broken by the lunch recess, reducing its probable impact on the jury. A cheap but often effective trick.

Thornby was a good witness. He had good presence and a clear voice, and the color of his skin didn't hurt either. The story of the chase and of hunting through the baking, dark basement was told, and the Bloomingdale's charge slip with the deceased's name on it was placed in evidence.

On cross, Freeland seemed obsessed with the time the sales slip had been recovered, and the reason for the delay between the time Thornby said he had taken it off Russell and the time he had delivered it to Detective Cimella at the Sixth Precinct house. Karp knew why too.

Freeland was saying, “And when you took the sales slip off the defendant, what, if anything, did you do?”

“I wrote my initials down on it,” said Thornby.

“Did you write down the time?”

“No.”

Freeland asked, “Wouldn't it in fact be very good police procedure to put on a piece of evidence the time that it's recovered?”

Karp objected and was sustained. Freeland asked that the sales slip be circulated among the jury. While this was happening, he walked back to the defense table. The court clerk looked at his watch and said, “This is a long one, Judge. We don't get out of here soon, I'm gonna miss my train to Hempstead.”

Thornby remarked, “You think you got problems? We just had our first baby, and my wife's waiting on me to get her home from the hospital.”

There was a ripple of mild laughter, and Judge Martino spoke briefly to the cop about women and children. He himself had six kids.

At last the jury was done with feeling the sales slip, and Freeland continued questioning Thornby.

“There's nothing that requires you to put on the time?”

“No.”

“But there's nothing that says you can't do it either, is there?”

Objection. Sustained.

Freeland looked ruffled. “I'd like to know the basis for the objection.”

Martino replied, “There's nothing in law or police regulations that requires it, Mr. Freeland. The officer didn't do it, and he's already testified to that effect.”

“I'll show you common sense requires it!” snapped Freeland. Martino gave him a long stare. Freeland said, “No further questions,” and walked back to the defense table.

Martino dismissed the jury for the weekend. Two guards took Russell back to the cells. The press and all the spectators left. When the room was nearly empty, Freeland approached the bench.

“Your Honor, with due respect to the court, and as much as it pains me to make this application, I have to ask that the record show that while the jury was examining the sales slip, there was a … some sort of colloquy between Your Honor and Officer Thornby, such that it might have an effect on the jury of making Officer Thornby's testimony more credible. Therefore I must move for a mistrial at this time.”

Karp heard snatches of this and definitely caught the last line. He cursed under his breath, got to his feet, and crutched over to the bench.

Martino gave Freeland another long stare, and his cheeks darkened. He snapped at a court officer, “Get Thornby back in here!”

Thornby was brought back in and, as the stenographer tapped away, Martino went through everything that had been said in the little colloquy for the record.

Karp could see the judge's jaw working. He had to give Freeland credit for balls, anyway. He was trying to infuriate the judge, not a usual tactic among lawyers, to say the least, but it occasionally paid off. The Chicago Seven gambit. If he could make Martino lose control, he might provoke a reversible error and get any conviction tossed out. That would establish the basis for a new trial, and perhaps months of delay.

That and the doubt about the time the sales slip had been found seemed to be all Freeland had, Karp thought. But maybe not.

Down in Part Thirty, they brought Vinnie Boguluso in, creating a momentary stir. The Tombs had sent the first team to accompany the huge defendant to court: a former professional wrestler named Walker, who was taller even than Vinnie and built with a lot less fat on him, and a weight lifter named Amico, who could, it was said, jerk and press anyone in the jail.

They took Vinnie's cuffs off and sat him down at the defense table, and then took up their posts behind and to either side of him.

Jack Cooney came over to his client and looked him over. Vinnie had not had any clothes suitable for court, and he was a hard fit. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a new one without gang regalia, black jeans, and a brown shirt with a collar. He had shaved, at least, and his hair was cut short. He seemed curiously detached and content, not at all like a man about to be arraigned on a murder charge.

“Okay, Vinnie, here's the deal,” Cooney said. “There's no deal. So it's up to you. I have to tell you, you got nothing to lose right now by going to trial.”

“Can I get bailed out?”

“Yeah, if you got about a million bucks. You own any property? Real estate?”

“Fuck, no. I look like I own any fuckin' real estate?”

“Right. So we plead not guilty.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

The judge called the two counsel to the bench, determined that there was no offer and that the defendant was pleading not guilty. She nodded. The system was working for a change.

The reading of the indictment was waived, the judge asked for a plea, and Vinnie stood and said, “Not guilty.” The judge looked at him and curled her lip and asked the court officer to spin the drum that contained the names of all the Supreme Court trial judges. The court officer picked out a cardboard square and read a part number and a judge's name.

Walker and Amico cuffed him behind his back and walked him out of the courtroom and down the passageway back to the holding pens.

Vinnie walked carefully. Stuck in his jockey shorts was the five inch switchblade knife that Duane's girlfriend had managed to stick into the near left corner of the defense table with her wad of bubble gum while she was pretending to pick up her papers. Vinnie had palmed it as soon as he was seated and slipped it into his fly.

Court ended at four, about average on Fridays. Judges must roll home before the traffic, though the heavens fall. By four-thirty, Karp's office was full of people he had invited.

Karp himself sat at the head of the long oak conference table, but sideways, with his bum leg propped up on an upended waste basket. To his right sat Ray Guma and then Marlene and Harry Bello. Across the table from them were Jim Raney and V. T. Newbury. Roland Hrcany came in last, accompanied by Detective Frangi, and sat next to Raney.

“What's this about?” asked Hrcany in a peremptory tone. “It's Friday. I got a date.”

Guma made a show of looking at his watch. “Jesus, Roland, what's your rush? School just got out. Give her time to get her milk and cookies.”

Laughter, and Roland flushed and gave Guma the finger. Karp took this opportunity to start business.

“This won't take long. It looks like
People
v.
Tomasian
is expanding.”

Roland's brow congealed. “What's that mean, expanding?” he said suspiciously.

“Just that there are more players,” Karp answered. “Somebody may have launched Tomasian. Somebody may have set up the vic.
Tomasian
seems to be related to at least one other murder case, a double murder involving wise guys, and a big fraud operation. That's why I thought we should all sit down and see which end is up.

“Okay, let's start with Guma. Goom, what's the hookup with
Cavetti
?”

“Yeah, okay, here's the deal,” Guma began. “I went to see Jimmy C. out at Riker's, like you said. I say to him, ‘Jimmy, you're in a bad situation here, and I'd like to help you out, but I know you're a stand-up guy and I'm not gonna get shit out of you on this Viacchenza thing. But there's something else you can help us out on that's got nothing to do with any of that business.' I said it could do him some good. And totally off the record.

“So I could tell he's sort of listening. Jimmy's a thief. I don't figure he's ever seen himself up on a murder, for that kind of stretch upstate.

“I say, ‘Jimmy, what I want to know is, like, it's been bothering me—why the fuck did the Viacchenzas do it? I mean, they had a pretty good deal going. It's years they've been ripping it off down by Kennedy. What could it be worth, crossing Joey Castles. Diamonds? Gold? Bonds? What?'

“He says, ‘Fuckin' caviar.'”

Here Roland snorted a laugh and said, “What is this shit? What does this have to do with Tomasian? Caviar?” He laughed again.

Karp noted that Frangi was not laughing, and seemed unduly nervous. Karp said, holding up his hand in a mollifying gesture, “Listen and learn, Roland. It's a long story. Go ahead, Goom.”

Guma continued, “So I go, ‘Caviar?' And he says, yeah, this guy's been around the Domino and Ciro's, where Carl and Lou used to hang, looking for somebody to take something off. It's common. Like you want to buy stocks, you go down to Wall Street, hang around Merrill Lynch, somebody'll come over, sell you some IBM.

“So this guy says he knows they're shipping some prime caviar in by air freight, knows the flight and the freight terminal, and he wants a piece of it. He says this'll be a continuing thing: the shit comes in every month, the boys'll lighten the shipment, and they'll get paid. He says he'll give them thirty large.”

He paused, and Karp looked at V.T., as perhaps the only person at the table who could quote from his head prices for caviar in bulk. “Does that sound right?” Karp asked.

“How much was involved?” V.T. asked.

“He didn't say, but he did say this guy needed two guys to lift the crate, so figure, what, two hundred, two hundred-fifty pounds?”

V.T. looked doubtful and said, “If it was actually beluga caviar, the thief isn't making much. That'd be close to the wholesale price.”

Guma said, “Yeah, well, Carl and Lou probably weren't that much into caviar. They figured it was a nice, safe sideline. It wasn't like this guy they were boosting it for was a wise guy or anything, somebody who could tell somebody and it would get back to Joey. And thirty large, regular. They figured it was worth the risk.”

“Who was the guy if it wasn't a wise guy?” asked Marlene.

Guma smiled broadly, showing a remarkable collection of mismatched yellow teeth. “Ah, yeah. It was a Turk, as it happens. Said his name was Takmad. Ran a restaurant, he said, which was why he wanted caviar. He said.”

“So they lift the crate,” said Karp. “What happened then?”

“That's where Jimmy got a little vague. Lifting it—no problem. They're so wired out by Kennedy, the clerks, the guards, it's like going to a fuckin' K Mart for them. So they deliver it. So I say to Jimmy, ‘So, you find out they went into business for themselves, you ratted them out to Joey.'

“He got a little testy there. He don't rat, he says. So who, then? I ask him. Jimmy don't know, but somebody dropped a dime the day after the boys delivered the box. Not only the caviar, but the snitch tells Joey they'd been doing it for months.”

Karp said, “Great. Hold that thought for a minute. The next act is the art business, starring V.T. and Marlene.”

Marlene summarized the interview with Sarkis Kerbussyan and the story of the search for the Gregory Mask. V.T. added what he had learned from his investigation into the financial life of the various Turks and Armenians involved in the case.

“Summing up,” he concluded, “Kerbussyan has been pursuing liquidity to an unusual degree for the past nine months. He's sold some property he should have hung on to, and he hasn't bought anything else, not in real estate anyway. So, a lot of cash floating around. Some pretty big wire transfers to Switzerland. Also he's received very substantial inflows of cash from wealthy Armenians in the U.S. and overseas. In the neighborhood of thirty million. This is since mid-February.

“On the Turks, Ahmet Djelal has a modest bank account, but he spends like a pimp. Aziz Nassif, the cousin, bought himself a nice location for his restaurant, and nobody knows where he got the cash. Nobody buys real estate in New York for actual folding money. The seller recalled it clearly.

“Mehmet Ersoy had, as we know, a nice wad in a box when he died. What we didn't know until a day or so ago is that in the past year he has sent a total of”—here V.T. paused to check through some sheets of scribbled-on paper—“a total of, $1,835,000 to the account of his brother, Altemur Ersoy, at Esbank, Istanbul.