No Lesser Plea (6 page)

The other cops laughed. Karp looked down and saw that the young cop’s foot was in a cast and covered with a white sock.

“He resisted arrest with a TV set?” Karp asked.

“Fuck no! The scumbag punched me in the mouth and took off. I had to chase him down with a busted toe.”

“All right, have a seat,” said Karp, putting a star next to the defendant’s name on top of the affidavit, to remind himself that this case was to be prosecuted to the fullest extent, with no plea bargaining. Then he went through the remaining eight cases, jotting down brief notes in anticipation of the arguments that might be made by the defense.

Looking up, he noticed a small, sixtyish woman in a gray suit sitting in the row of benches directly behind the prosecutor’s table. He noticed her because she was scared, her face stiff, her body twitching like a cornered mouse. She kept glancing over to her left and then sharply looking away. Karp followed her glance and spotted a skinny kid with a turned-up porkpie hat jammed low over his eyes. He wore tight, black pants and a cream-leather sport coat, and every time the old lady glanced at him he grinned and shook his head slightly, no-no. He had a gold front tooth.

Karp went over and spoke quietly to the woman. “Excuse me, my name is Roger Karp and I’m the assistant district attorney in this courtroom. Is anything wrong?”

“That man,” she said in a whisper, eyes darting to her left. “He’s the one. He hit me and took my purse.”

Karp glared at the kid, who returned the stare for an instant and then, smirking, dropped his eyes.

“And you’re here to testify against him?”

“Yes. But he’s trying to scare me.”

“OK, let me tell you something, Mrs… .”

“Murcovitch, Edith Murcovitch. Look, mister I don’t want no more trouble …”

“Mrs. Murcovitch, you’re not in trouble.
He’s
in trouble. Now come right through here and sit next to me, at this table.”

Mrs. Murcovitch came through the gate and sat down. Karp went through his affidavits until he found her case. “This guy’s name is Jenkins?”

“That’s right. He hit me in the face.”

“Ma’am, I don’t want you to worry anymore. When the case is called I’m going to ask you to testify and I don’t want you to be scared of him. Just tell the judge what happened.”

He motioned to one of the cops he had just interviewed, the biggest and meanest-looking of the lot. When the cop came up to the railing, Karp said, “Doug, see that scumbag with the hat? He’s hassling my witness. Do me a favor, could you go sit by him and make him be nice?”

“Glad to, Chief,” said the cop. He sat down next to the kid and gave him the New York’s Finest cop glare. The kid decided to take a nap.

Karp went up to the clerk’s desk. “Jim, I’m about set. One thing, this case eighty-nine, could you call it first? The defendant is hassling my witness and I want to move her out of here as soon as possible.”

“I already promised first to one of the private attorneys, but I’ll slide her in sometime after that.”

“Great. Thanks, Jim.”

“It’s OK. Hey, Yergin’s in his chambers. Why don’t you see him now. I want to get the show on the road.”

“Whenever.”

McFarley picked up the receiver on his ancient black phone and dialed one number. “Judge, Karp is here… . Fine, will do.” He hung up and pointed his thumb over his shoulder. Karp walked behind the clerk’s desk, went through a door, and entered Judge Yergin’s chambers.

It was a room just a little bigger than a walk-in closet, with a government green two-seat leather couch on one wall facing a small desk, behind which sat the judge.

Edward Yergin was black, one of New York’s first black Criminal Court judges and before that one of the first black assistant DAs. He had spent seventeen years prosecuting murder cases in the Homicide Bureau. He had convicted a hundred murderers and sent thirty of them to the death house. It showed on his face. He was a good judge and he liked Karp. The younger man had worked his courtroom for nearly a year and the two men had become sociable. They often had lunch together, sometimes with other ADAs or Legal Aid lawyers, sometimes alone. Away from the bench, Yergin never talked about court cases or the law, only about the old days in Homicide, city politics, or sports.

Yergin rose from behind his desk and shook Karp’s hand. The judge was a tall, strong man, strong-featured, with close-cropped gray-black hair. He had a black nylon robe over a snappy sky-blue suit. His face shone with a wide grin as he pumped Karp’s hand. “Congratulations, Butch.”

“Thanks, Judge,” said Karp, who had no idea what was going on. “What for? I usually show up for work on Friday.”

Yergin laughed. “What do you mean, ‘What for?’ I think it’s great. You’re going where you belong.”

“Sorry, Judge, you’ve lost me. Where do I
belong?
”

Yergin laughed again and slapped Karp on the back. “Homicide, Butch. You’re being transferred to the Homicide Bureau. There’s probably a message from John Conlin on your desk right now. I wanted to be the first to congratulate you.”

Karp felt his face flush. “Judge, are you sure about this? I mean …”

“Of course I’m sure. I had it from Mr. Garrahy himself, last night. He called up and said it was evaluation time. He asked about you, said they’d been checking out some of the younger fellas for a new slot in the bureau. I told him you were a pretty fair trial lawyer. I also told him you probably wouldn’t let your old granny cop to a lesser on littering the sidewalk if you had a good witness. And that was that.”

Karp was still stunned. He found his voice and said, “Thanks, Judge, I just don’t know what to say. I mean, Homicide …”

Yergin noted the younger man’s discomposure, and said, “Butch, sit down there for a minute. I want to tell you something.”

Karp plopped down on the leather couch. Yergin leaned against his desk. “Butch, look here. I’ve been in this system, God help me, it must be close to thirty years. Believe me when I tell you we’re close to losing it. Plea bargaining! It’s not a convenience any more, it’s a necessity. And the crooks know it, believe you me. That’s the real value of the Homicide Bureau. It tries cases and it wins them and murderers get put away, for murder one, for a long time. Every time there’s a big murder trial and Homicide wins it, it’s got to send a little jolt through every crook in the city. I don’t mean the crazies. God, they’re like car crashes, you can’t do anything about them. But the cold-blooded little bastards with their pistols: they think they might actually have to do a long stretch, they might not shoot that old lady for four dollars and twenty cents.

“And there’s another thing. Trials reverberate throughout the whole system. I truly believe this. The crooks have to learn that they can’t just waltz out of here with an easy plea. They have to learn that when they turn down the prosecutor’s offer, they
will
go to trial and they
will
lose and they
will
go to prison. That’s the way the system’s supposed to work. About the only place it
does
work anymore is in the Homicide Bureau. But if the bureau starts to slip, if the number of trials gets too small in relation to the number of pleas, then criminals won’t have to think about facing trial. They’ll know it’s an empty bluff. That can’t ever happen, Butch. If it does, the whole justice system becomes a … a… .” He gestured expansively with his hand and fell silent, as if unable to conjure up a word appropriate to such an enormity.

The silence hung for a moment in the little room. Karp cleared his throat nervously but couldn’t think of anything to say. Then the judge straightened up, and smiled. “Why am I telling you all this? You know it, or they wouldn’t have picked you. Besides that, it’s the best legal team in the world. You’re going to work your buns off and love it.”

Karp got up, shook the judge’s big, brown hand again, murmured some more words of thanks and left. He sat down in his chair, shrugged off McFarley’s inquiring glance, and began arranging his papers in calendar order.

His mind was still a blur, the waiting courtroom unreal. He wasn’t thinking about the stack of petty offenses before him. He was thinking about homicide: the
New York Daily News
front page type of homicide, mousy-looking ax murderers snapped as they walked handcuffed between burly cops, partially covered corpses of gangland honchos riddled with bullets—the Big Time. He was going to be part of that, he was going to be on the First Team. It is very hard for someone who has been a star to stop being one while still young. Karp believed in justice. He felt for the victim. But what he loved was what he had just been given; the chance to shine, the chance to bend every element of his mind and spirit to some great end, and for everybody to know it. He had lost that chance on a hardwood floor in Palo Alto fourteen years ago, and now the carousel had brought him around to the brass ring again. He shut his eyes and took deep, calming breaths.

The clerk snapped him out of it with his “All rise!” as the judge entered. “Hearyehearye hearyeallthosewhohavebusinessbeforethishonorablecourtdrawnearandyeshallbeheardthehonorableJudgeEdwardYerginpresiding,” boomed Jim McFarley. The fabled wheels of the law began to grind.

Chapter 4

O
n the morning after the killings, Donald Walker awakened in a reversal of the usual order of things—from a rather pleasant dream into a living nightmare. In the dream he had actually gone to a job interview instead of to a robbery. A nice man had shaken his hand and told him he was exactly the kind of fellow the firm had been looking for. He would have a big office and sit behind a desk and wear a sharp suit and talk on the telephone and have lunch at fancy restaurants. In the dream he was just telling his wife about the job and receiving her praises, when the cockroach walked across his face.

He sat up with a stifled scream, clawing at his face with both hands. Junkies often have the experience of cockroaches crawling over their skin and often—at a particular stage of withdrawal—it is difficult to determine which are real and which are not. Walker leaped off the bed. He had fallen, fully dressed, into a drunken stupor the night before. He yanked off one sneaker and held it high, then pulled the grayish sheets and tatty chenille coverlet off the bed and shook them. No target appeared. Then he felt the tiny legs crawling down the back of his neck. Cursing, he began swatting at his back with the sneaker but the maddening tickle continued. Now it started on his legs. He was crawling with them. He dropped the sneaker, tore off his pants, and fell to the floor on his back, swatting at his legs and writhing, soaked with foul sweat, until he resembled a dying roach himself.

The violent motion was too much for his stomach. It had taken half the quart of Scotch to knock him out last night, and a sour bile now rose into his throat. He staggered to the washbasin and vomited. Now the chills started. He wrapped himself in the sheets, bedspread, and thin blanket, and shivered. He was entering deep withdrawal, freezing and burning at the same time, itching, sniveling, bowels frozen. Yet the physical agony was nothing compared to what was going on in Donald Walker’s mind. It was reality, seen for the first time in many months without the intervention of heroin. Such a view is grim enough for the upright citizen, which is why they sell beer, Valium, and Gothic romances. But the reality that junkies make for themselves is unspeakable.

Donald Walker, now. He was going to lose his house. His wife would probably kick him out when she found out about his habit. He’d told somebody at the plant—he didn’t remember who—he would take his shift, because the guy took his last week when Walker was too stoned to work, but no way was he going to work today, and maybe have to take Monday off too. Oh shit, he promised Emma he would take the boy for asthma shots today, but the doctor probably wouldn’t see him. Walker had been taking the money Ella gave him for the doctor, money she got from her mother, and giving about half, well maybe a little more than half, to Paradise for smack. He had just helped a crazy man rob a store and probably kill somebody. The crazy man was going to kill him, his wife, and his kids if Walker didn’t do exactly what he said, which was stay put in this shitty little room crawling with roaches and stinking of vomit, whisky, and Walker’s desperate fear.

On the other hand, every cloud has a silver lining. Stack had money and dope for him. Junkies may have lots of problems, but junk cures them all. This thought struck Walker with the force of revelation. He leaped to his feet, splashed water on his face, dressed, and stumbled down three flights of stairs to the peeling cave that served the Olympia Hotel as a lobby. There was a pay phone against one wall. Walker fumbled a quarter in the slot. A dial tone! Maybe his luck was changing. He dialed the number written on the scrap of paper Stack had given him last night.

A woman’s voice answered. “Is Stack there?” he asked.

“Stack? There ain’t no …” Her voice cut off, and after a few seconds of silence, Walker heard Stack’s whispery voice.

“This is Stack. Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Stack, Donald. Stack, when you gonna get here? I need some help, man.”

“Yeah, well Donald, help is on the way.”

“No, I’m really sick, man. You gotta help me, like you said. I gotta get out of this shit hole …”

“Don’t you go nowhere, boy! You go back to your room, have a little drink. I’ll get something ’round to you before you know it. Just stay put, hear? Now, Donald, what room you in?”

“Uh, Ten. You gonna be here soon? Stack, they got roaches here, I can’t stand it much more, you
got
to come soon… . I need some help, Stack …”

The voice in Louis’s ear degenerated into an inarticulate whine. He broke the connection and dialed a number.

“Elvis? Listen here. It’s going down, now. Get over to my place, we gonna make a delivery. OK, man, see you soon.”

This business accomplished, Man Louis hung up the phone and resumed what he had been doing before Walker called. He lay back on his king-sized waterbed, naked. “Girl, get busy,” he said. The woman on the bed, also naked, obediently lowered her mouth to his groin. Louis’s sexual activities were ordinarily restricted to the periods immediately following his robberies. At such times he would call up this particular woman, DeVonne Carter, who would come to his apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, remove her clothes and put herself at his disposal for from three days to a week. She was a big woman, with the hard rounded body of a nineteenth-century fountain statue, and she felt she had found a good deal. Louis paid her rent and gave her spending money, in return for which she had to come when called, leave when bidden, keep her body clean and free of venereal disease, and her mouth shut. Louis’s tastes were odd, but bearable; at least they didn’t draw blood. Remaining silent was something of a burden, since she was a naturally friendly and gregarious person, but this too could be borne. She was used to men making the rules.