Tragic (26 page)

“He stood sort of back and to the side, but I did see his face briefly and I’m sure that’s him now.”

“Let the record show that the witness identified Frank DiMarzo,” Karp said. “And Mrs. Carlotta, were you able to identify anyone in the third lineup?”

This time Antonia’s eyes hardened as she looked at Bebnev, who glared back at her. “Yes,” she said, her voice coming out as a hiss. She didn’t waver when she raised her hand and pointed at Bebnev. “That’s him sitting on the left-hand side.”

His accuser’s identification seemed to unnerve Bebnev for a moment. He licked his lips nervously and shook his head as Karp moved to stand directly in front of him. This time it was Karp who pointed, his finger just a couple of feet from the Russian’s face. “This man here,” Karp said.

“Yes, that’s him.”

Karp turned to the court reporter. “Let the record reflect that the witness identified Alexei Bebnev.”

“So be it,” Judge See agreed. “Any further questions, Mr. Karp?”

“Not at this time, Your Honor.”

“Thank you. Mr. Clooney, you may question the witness.”

The defense attorney rose from his seat but did not move from behind the table. “Mrs. Carlotta, were you present when your husband was murdered?”

Antonia frowned. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Did you see or hear the man or men who fired the shots that killed your husband?”

“No, of course not, I said I wasn’t—”

“Then the only time you say you’ve seen my clients was the night that you claim that they came to your house looking for work?”

“Well, yes—”

“And this conversation lasted how long?”

“A few minutes, that’s all.”

“And was it dark outside?”

“Yes, but the porch light was on.”

“But you saw these men for maybe a couple of minutes at the most?”

“Yes.”

“And you weren’t sure that Mr. DiMarzo was one of the men when you saw him in the lineup?”

“I wasn’t sure. I am now.”

“You are now, five months later.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re absolutely sure that my client, Mr. Bebnev, was the man who spoke to your husband?”

“Absolutely.”

Clooney pursed his lips. “And it’s not because you saw him in the police lineup.”

“No. I knew it was him as soon as I saw him in the lineup.”

“Mrs. Carlotta, are you aware that Ms. Ciampi is the wife of District Attorney Karp?”

“She told me that, yes.”

“And before she came to your house, did you go up the street to the school where you claim the defendants were parked on the night of December second?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“So you really have no idea if those cigarette butts and beer bottle were there before Ms. Ciampi’s arrival?”

Antonia looked confused. She shook her head. “No, I guess not.”

“But you didn’t mention these men to the police who came to your house after the murder of your husband?”

“No. I . . . I didn’t make the connection.”

“And in fact, you didn’t make this connection until Marlene Ciampi showed up at your house.”

“It came up during our conversation.”

“Yes, how convenient,” Clooney scoffed. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Karp?”

Karp walked in front of his table. “Mrs. Carlotta, do you stand by your statements that three men, including the two defendants who you just identified, came to your house several nights before your husband’s murder?” Karp asked, his voice starting to rise with the anger he felt.

“Yes.”

“They parked across the street and waited for you to arrive?”

“Yes.”

“They walked up to your door and asked for work, claiming they were dockworkers from San Francisco?

“Yes, all of that is true.”

Karp’s expression suggested to the jurors that he shouldn’t have even had to ask his last question. “Mrs. Carlotta, has anyone ever come to your house in New Rochelle in the dark of night, or any other time of the day for that matter, looking for a job with your husband’s union?”

Antonia shook her head. “No. Never.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Carlotta. No further questions.”

“M
R
. V
ITTELI
, I K
NOW YOU
’
VE
been through this with the police and the District Attorney’s Office, but one last time for the record, would you describe the events leading up to Mr. Carlotta’s murder?”

Looking up at Charlie Vitteli on the witness stand, Conrad Clooney leaned nonchalantly against the jury rail with his hands in the pockets of his expensive gray silk suit as if he was quietly discussing politics at a Madison Avenue cocktail party. The look on his face was one of polite concentration and studied confidence.

“Well, we’d just come out of Marlon’s—me, Vince, Joey, and Jackie—where we’d been discussing union business over a couple of beers,” Vitteli recalled. “We turned the corner and we’re walking down the sidewalk towards where we’d parked—Vince had sent his driver ahead to get his car warmed up—when these two yahoos jumped out of the alley. One of ’em had a gun or I’d have—”

“Let me interrupt you for a moment,” Clooney said, pushing away from the rail and slowly strolling over to stand in front of Vitteli. “These—how did you describe them?—yahoos . . . how were they dressed?”

“Oh . . . all in black . . . with ski masks and gloves,” Vitteli replied.

“I see. Go on. . . . One of them had a gun or you would have . . .”

“Yeah, well, I might have tried something . . . you know, took a swing. They were both pretty big guys, but maybe I could have got lucky,” Vitteli said and looked down at his big hands resting on the witness box ledge as though he blamed them for his failure. “Now I wish I would have . . . and maybe Vince would be here today.”

False face must hide what false heart doth know.
Although he kept his face passive, Karp was nauseated watching Vitteli’s performance on the first full day of the defense case. He’d rested the People’s case the day before following Antonia Carlotta’s gripping testimony that had left many of the jurors in tears and casting hard looks at the defendants. At noon, Judge See had sent the jury to lunch.

When the trial resumed, Clooney rambled through a one-hour opening statement that was short on substance but long on innuendo. Openings are normally a “road map” of the case for the “finders of fact”—the judge and jury—presented by the attorneys of both sides. Although often dramatic, they are supposed to be limited to the evidence the jurors can expect to see presented, and then usually end with the assertion that the attorney believes that when all the facts are presented, the jury will have no option but to find in favor of their case. Openings are not supposed to be arguments regarding what the evidence does or doesn’t demonstrate—that’s what summations are for—or opportunities to give long-winded speeches having nothing to do with the evidence and everything to do with trying to confuse jurors with smoke and mirrors. But Clooney had done both.

However, Karp had listened stoically as Clooney used the stage to refute the People’s case while insinuating that the prosecution was trying to frame his clients but without citing what, if any, evidence he’d be providing to back up such theories. Without objection, he let Clooney go on and on about the “curious timing and effect” of Marlene’s involvement in the investigation.

“Indeed, until the district attorney’s wife serendipitously meets
the girlfriend of Gnat Miller, who by outrageous coincidence happens to be involved in the Carlotta murder, there was no mention of any three young men coming to the residence on December second,” the defense attorney noted as he walked slowly along the jury rail, looking at each juror.

“No license plate number indented into a sticky pad. No cigarette butts. No beer bottle. No convenient witness to turn on his buddies to help the district attorney solve a high-profile case. And for what, you have to ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen? What does Gnat Miller get out of it? Well, he hasn’t been sentenced. Nor charged with assault on his girlfriend. And note that in his story, he is only the driver, not a participant in the actual murder, and thus subject, perhaps, to a lesser sentence. And I think that when we’re finished laying this out for you, you will see that there is doubt, serious doubt, with the People’s case and you will acquit the defendants.”

Nor was Clooney satisfied with one defense strategy. He then told the jurors that even if the three young men had gone to the Carlotta home as described in the People’s case, “which is doubtful to say the least, where is the evidence that it was not an attempt to find work in these hard economic times?” He paused and looked over at DiMarzo and Bebnev before shaking his head. “I admit my clients are no angels, maybe they were there to case the Carlotta residence; after all, they have had brushes with the law for burglary and theft. But that doesn’t make them murderers three nights later and thirty miles away.”

Clooney’s opening was truly a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” but Karp’s silence throughout wasn’t due to the usual practice of not interrupting the opposition’s opening statements even if they strayed over into objectionable territory. And it wasn’t that his anger over Clooney’s insinuations wasn’t bubbling just beneath the surface of his calm demeanor.

Moreover, it did rankle that a pompous, overpaid white-shoe Fifth Avenue conceit with political juice and aspirations thought
he could manipulate the process Karp believed in to the depths of his soul. And Karp could have objected, and been sustained, at numerous points. But like a chess grand master, he quietly let the defense attorney maneuver himself into a trap, knowing that by letting him blindly rush forward now in defense of the two pawns sitting at the defense table, there was a chance of someday putting Charlie Vitteli in checkmate.

After his opening, Clooney asked the judge if they could adjourn “a little early so that I can have my witnesses ready in the morning.” Although exasperated with the defense attorney’s delay, Judge See granted him his request.

The next morning, Clooney showed up at the Criminal Courts Building as if the setbacks he’d experienced during the prosecution’s case were mere bumps in the road. He preened for the news cameras in front of the main entrance, though he declined comment “except to say that I am giving my all to prevent a travesty of justice though the allied forces of government are difficult for any one man to defeat.”

Back in court, he began his case by calling two “expert” witnesses to the stand. The first, a handwriting analyst from NYU, essentially testified that the note bearing the license plate number “with a high degree of probability” had been written by a woman and that the indentations “appeared to have been caused deliberately, as though someone was trying to leave an impression in the sheet beneath the original by pressing hard and uniformly throughout.”

Knowing this was coming because he had the expert report, Karp had Guma, Fulton, and Darla Milquetost write the line from
Macbeth
he’d been thinking about at the beginning of the defense case,
False face must hide what false heart doth know,
on separate sheets of paper. He then had them sign and date copies of the pages, which he placed into a sealed envelope. He kept the originals in his trial folder.

Now, during cross-examination, Karp stood and said, “Your
Honor, for the purpose of this demonstration, may I hand you this sealed envelope to be opened at the appropriate moment during this cross-examination?”

“Yes, you may, let the drama proceed.”

Karp smiled. “Thank you, Your Honor.” Turning to the witness, he asked, “Is it your testimony you can tell the difference between a note written by a man or a woman?”

“Absolutely.”

“What, if any, scientific justification is there for this ability?”

“Well, I’m one of the leading proponents of this particular methodology, but it is gaining stature in the graphologist community. As I noted, I’ve written several well-received articles on this subject for various graphology periodicals.”

“I see. So if I were to hand you several examples of a line of poetry, you would be able to tell which were written by a man and which were written by a woman?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, in that case with the court’s permission, I’d like to hand the witness these three sheets, People’s Exhibits Twenty-Six A, B, and C,” Karp said.

“Yes, you may,” Judge See said.

Karp handed the originals of the three sheets of paper to the witness, who pulled a magnifying glass from her purse and carefully examined the writing. She looked up. “I believe I have reached a conclusion.”

“Would you tell us what that conclusion is, please?” Karp asked.

“Yes, two of these, A and C, were definitely written by women,” the witness claimed. “The third, Example B, was written by a man.”

“Thank you,” Karp said and turned to the judge. “Your Honor, would you now open the envelope and read the signature on the back of Example A, please?”

Looking amused, Judge See opened the envelope and pulled out the three sheets of paper. He then studied one and raised an eyebrow. “Example A was signed by Detective Clay Fulton.”

Karp smiled and turned to the gallery. “Detective Fulton, would you stand, please?”

Fulton, who was sitting in the first row behind the prosecution table, stood up. Karp turned back to the witness, who was blushing and looking again through her magnifying glass at the copies of the writing she had. “It would appear that Detective Fulton is a very large man,” Karp said. “Can you explain the discrepancy between that fact and your assertion?”

“Well, I . . . there is a certain small percentage of people whose writing is transgender,” she stammered.

“Are you saying that Detective Fulton writes like a girl?” Karp said with a smile. The courtroom burst into laughter as the detective scowled at those giggling around him.

“Um, well, yes,” the woman replied to more laughter.

Smiling, Karp turned back to the judge. “And now, if you would, Your Honor, please read the signature on the back of Example B, identified as a male writer by the witness.”