No Lesser Plea (28 page)

“Oh. Well
that
plea is totally unacceptable to the People.”

Karp smiled. Stein glared. “Mister Karp, will you approach the bench?”

Karp didn’t move. “Your Honor, everything can be kept on the record.”

Stein turned his glare on the stenographer. “Karp, you’re obstructing the orderly progress of this court. What is this goddamn crap about no lesser plea?” The stenographer’s flashing fingers halted. There was more than one way of keeping things off the record.

Karp was unperturbed. “It’s simple, Your Honor. We are ready to try this case, unless the defendant wants to take a murder plea.” Murder was the one exception to the Max-out Rule. By statute, fifteen years was the absolute minimum time a convicted murderer had to serve in prison. The Parole Board liked to add another five to the fifteen, to show it was on the job, which meant that pleading guilty to murder meant at least twenty years in Attica.

Sussman explained this to Louis, not without some satisfaction. “Mister Louis,” he whispered, “your current strategy seems to be in ruins. Go to trial. You can beat this in court. Can I change your plea to ‘not guilty’?” Louis shook his head and said nothing, but began toying with the zipper of his jumpsuit.

Stein said, “Mister Karp, I’m sure we all appreciate your diligence, but surely you’re aware that this is a two-year-old case. You still have evidence and witnesses?”

“The People are ready, Your Honor. All we need is a two-week adjournment to prepare for trial. And that’s what we intend to do, unless the defendant is ready to plead guilty to the top count of the indictment.” He turned and looked at Louis: “Murder One.”

Louis’s response to this was to stand up, pull down his zipper, and urinate onto the neatly stacked papers covering the defendant’s table. “Aiiiie! They’re after me! They’re after me!” he shrieked in a loud falsetto voice.

He then climbed up on the table and began stripping off his jumpsuit. Two guards leaped forward to control him, trying to avoid the stream of urine that sprayed in all directions. Sussman jumped backward in panic, but not before a row of dark stains was drawn like a sash across his immaculate pearl-gray suit coat.

The guards at last pinned Louis facedown on the table and cuffed his hands behind his back. His body was still thrashing about, arched backward like a bow. His face was contorted, mouth open and drooling ropes of saliva, eyes rolled up into his head, showing only yellowish whites. Karp noticed again that Louis had somehow removed his glasses before throwing his fit.

Stein was pounding his gavel. The packed courtroom was in pandemonium, the spectators and the eternal waiters on justice delighted with this amusing break in their mortal boredom. Somebody yelled, “Shit, boy, if you hadna run out of piss, you coulda got away.”

Finally, Stein was able to stop gaveling. Louis’s heavy breathing could be heard above the shuffling and coughing of the crowd. “Get that man out of here,” Stein told the guards and they picked Louis up by his shoulders and ankles and began to carry him across the well of the court to the holding-pen door.

As they carried him past Karp, he said, “Hey, Louis, take care of those eyeglasses, now.” For an instant, Karp thought he saw Louis’s eyes snap down and focus on Karp’s own. Karp grinned. The eyes disappeared, and in half a minute, so did Louis.

“Mister Sussman, I am remanding your client to Bellevue Hospital, for observation,” said Judge Stein. “Next case.”

Karp strolled over to Pennberry and patted his shoulder.

“Thanks for keeping awake, kid. I know it’s hard.”

“That’s all right, Mister Karp, ah … Butch. Thanks,” said Pennberry, feeling for the first time like Mr. District Attorney.

Sussman was gathering his papers, dabbing at the damp ones with a wad of tissues. As Karp walked by him he said, “Your client’s quite the pisser, hey, Mister Sussman. So to speak.”

Sussman looked up bleakly. “It’s a dirty business, Mister Karp.”

“It is that, Mister Sussman. It is that,” said Karp.

“Mister Karp, if you have no more business in this courtroom, I will ask you to leave forthwith,” said Judge Stein from the bench.

“Your Honor, my business is concluded,” said Karp, and trotted up the center aisle.

“Sonny? Butch. I’m sorry to disturb you at home, especially now, but … ah … we got to talk.”

“Sure, that’s OK. By the way, thanks for the flowers.”

“No, it’s the least—how was the funeral?”

“The usual. Ella and my mom took it pretty hard.”

“Sonny, the reason I called is, we lost the gun, the pistol in the Marchione case.”

“You what!”

“It was a fuck-up in the evidence room—it’s a long story, but we can’t build the case on it anymore. We got to find the other guy.”

“Butch, I really mean this now. This is bullshit. Let me tell it to you again, and I hope it sticks this time. We do not have the horses to find people who we
know
killed folks and are walking around on the street, much less chase around after people we don’t even know if they’re still in town, where we at least got the mutt who did the job locked up. We got priorities. My lieutenant got priorities. The fucking chief of detectives got priorities, and baby, this ain’t one of them.”

“Sonny, don’t give me that jive about ‘locked up!’ Matteawan isn’t Attica and you know it. I just came this minute from Part 30. Louis was trying to cop to Man One, zip to twelve. If I missed the call, he’d be walking by the end of the month. I got to go …”

“Butch, you got your problems and I got mine. It don’t change the priorities.”

“Come on, Sonny, you sound like Wharton. Priorities, my ass!”

“That’s the way it is, Butch, sorry. Hey, let me give you a little example. At the funeral now. Your basic regular black working-stiff family. I’m sitting drinking a bourbon and ginger and listening to these old ladies jawing, right? My Auntie Jess, and her cousin Helen, and my mom’s cousin Bella. They keep the books on the old neighborhood, OK? They’re talking about how many of the kids they know have gotten dead off dope,
and
not only dead off dope, but dead after they killed somebody with a goddamn shotgun.

“They went through, it must have been, six, seven kids, ripped off some dude, wasted him, took the money, bought dope, shot up, checked out. OK, that’s the personal knowledge of
one
goddamn family. That give you some idea of what it’s like up in the ghet-to? What we got on our hands in Fun City?”

“Sonny, I work in Homicide, I know what it’s like.”

“Yeah, well stop busting my horns on this thing, then.”

“Hey, Sonny?”

“What.”

“Donald didn’t kill anybody with a shotgun.”

“Right, he had a buddy did the job. So what?”

“Think, Sonny! The car, the phony plates, the phone call—Louis was setting Donald up, right? OK, suppose he didn’t have a brother-in-law in the cops. Suppose somebody found him dead three days with a needle in his arm and some evidence strewn around connecting him to the liquor store. What happens then, Sonny? You’re the cop, what would you do? Case closed, right? Shit, Donald was
alive
and he had a hard time convincing us that Louis even existed.”

“What are you talking about, Karp?”

“Sonny, what the old ladies were saying. Figure the odds of that pattern repeating itself that many times. Even in New York it’s off the charts. But, Sonny, what if
it’s an M.O.
He uses junkies. He runs a bunch of robberies, kills the witnesses, sticks the junkies with the evidence, and slips them a hotshot or something, and sets up the overdose. Do the cops want to clear cases? Does a bear shit in the woods? He gives you clearances on a plate, dammit!”

“Karp, that’s crazy. How the hell you going to go to court with that shit?”

“That’s the point, Sonny. I don’t have to. I can nail this motherfucker for life in Attica with the Marchiones. He’s only got the one life, hey? But I got to have the other guy.”

“I can’t buy this, Butch, it’s too weird.”

“OK, do me a favor. Run a check. Pull files. Find out how many cases in the last five, ten years match the pattern. Shotgun murder of victim and any witnesses on the scene; probably a sizable score; case cleared when junkie is found dead of OD with incriminating evidence. Maybe there’ll be a helpful anonymous tip leading the cops to the so-called killer. Just do it, Sonny. I’m right, I can feel it. That son of a bitch! Crazy, my ass!”

“Butch, if you’re right …”

“Yeah, Louis got to Donny in Vorland. That’s another lead. Find out who threw the stuff over the fence, you’re getting close.”

“This’ll take a couple days to check out.”

“I don’t care how long it takes, just do it!”

Chapter 14

A
week passed. Karp was in his office talking to Guma on the phone.

“Sheldon ratted on us, the fink,” said Guma.

“Guma, what are you talking about? What ratted?” It was not a welcome phone call. Karp was irritated, with his life in general, with the Marchione case in particular, and with Guma most of all.

Sonny Dunbar was still pawing through records and had come up with zilch on the other guy. Karp was also getting the cold shoulder from the dons of the Homicide Bureau. They had not forgiven him for supporting Garrahy and depriving smiling Jack Conlin of what they regarded as his rightful inheritance. He got the shitty cases now; and the nastiest grilling from the bureau. Conlin himself had stopped speaking to Karp almost entirely, ever since the awful interview when Karp told him about his plan to rally support for the old man.

As for Guma, Karp was pissed that every goddam member of the criminal justice bureaucracy—and a good part of the sleazy population of Calcutta—was privy to the details of his marital problems. The other day he had overhead two pimps talking in the hallway— “See that big dude, the ADA? I hear his wife’s a bulldagger”—and he had wanted to smash their faces in, but he ground his teeth and walked away, because he knew that once he started smashing faces there was no clear line where to stop.

And the gun—the gun was still missing. No gun; no witness; no family; no career. Karp felt himself sliding into self-pity and depression. He reached for a handhold. Marlene? Maybe. He shook himself and tried to concentrate on what Guma was saying.

“… anyway, Sheldon did a little investigation of his own, his first one as far as anybody knows, goes to show you what the right motivation can do, and turned up a night-shift guy who saw us carrying him into the morgue. So he whines about it where he knows Wharton will hear the story, and of course the Corncob does his own investigation, about the party and all, and takes it to the Old Man, which is why …”

“Guma, stop! What the
fuck
are you talking about?”

“Jesus, Butch, you didn’t hear a word I been saying. We’re in trouble. Garrahy wants us in his office at two today. The word is he’s got a royal hair up his ass. I just hope it don’t give him a stroke.”

“
We’re
in trouble? Where do
I
come into this, Goom? I thought I was just an innocent bystander.”

“Well, not exactly, Butch. I mean, you helped us drag Sheldon down to the morgue. I mean, that’s what got it all started. The morgue assistant pulls the fucking sheet off him the next morning and Sheldon opens his eyes and starts hollering. It’s kind of hard to keep that under wraps. I think the
News
even had a filler on it.”

“And I was there?”

“Well, yeah, Butch, we needed a hand with the corpse …”

“And you took advantage of me while I was drunk and incapable?”

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud, Butch, stop being such a prick! It was a
joke.
You know what a joke is? C’mon, even if we both get fired, it’ll be worth it just to think about what happened when Sheldon woke up on the slab. Denny was there. He says Sheldon sees where he is and starts moaning. He must of had a hell of a hangover, too. The attendant yells out, ‘Hey, Doc, this guy ain’t dead!’ but Denny goes over there and says, ‘Nonsense! What you’re seeing is merely a reflex reaction caused by the contraction of the musculature, it’s quite common’—you know that Haaah-vad way he talks sometimes—and then he pulls out his scalpel and says, ‘Watch this! As soon as I’ve made the primary incision, the effect will disappear.’

“With that, Sheldon starts yelling and running around the autopsy room wrapped in the sheet. It took three guys to hold him down. He kept bawling, ‘I’m alive, I’m alive, don’t cut me!’ and meanwhile, Denny is waving the scalpel and yelling, ‘You fools! That’s a corpse. Look at its face! Is that the face of a living man?’ I hear he’s in deep shit with the M.E. But what the fuck, if you can’t have a little fun with your friends, what’s the goddam point? Right?”

“Right. With friends like that, I don’t need any enemies.”

“OK, be that way. But just for being an asshole about it, I’m not going to tell you my good news.”

“What good news?”

“Say ‘pretty please with a cherry on top.’ ”

“Guma, I’m going to walk over to Mulberry Street and give the first guinea I see a hundred bucks to blow you away. Now give!”

Guma giggled over the line. “Karp, you ever want to kill me,
I’ll
do the job for fifty. I mean, what are friends for? Anyway, I got the gun.”

“Great, Guma. Stick it in your ear. Look, I got to go …”

“Butch, you’re not listening. I got The Gun—the gun from your case. We found it, me and Sonny Dunbar and the skinhead, Fred Slocum, his partner. We must of hit every pawn shop in Spanish Harlem. You know what Luis said. ‘Mister Guma, you wan’ to trow away any more gun, joos give ’em to me. Don’ trow ’em inna sheet can, they get all steeky.’ ”

“All right! Way to go, Mad Dog, I take back forty percent of everything bad I ever said about you. This makes my month. Where is it?”

“In its little box in the evidence locker, where it’s been since you put it there, these many months. And I’m glad you’re happy, Butch, ’cause you’re gonna need it. See you at two.”

A dozen or so lawyers assembled in Garrahy’s office at two o’clock that afternoon. Garrahy did not ask them to sit down. He looked at them with bloody murder in his eyes for a long moment. They shuffled their feet and hung their heads. Then there was a shattering crash, and they all jumped in unison, like a herd of antelope startled by a gunshot. Garrahy had flung his heavy glass ashtray at the wall, something he was wont to do in moments of extreme anger. Legend had it that he once brained a defaulting assistant DA with such a missile.