“V.T.,” said Marlene, “did you ever dig up anything on Irma Dean?” She had found Newbury in his office, where she had gone right after finishing her court work for the day. It was the day after the stolen hair, the day after the dripping photograph.
Newbury looked up curiously. “Yes I did, but I thought you weren’t interested any more. Say, Champ, are you OK?”
“Everybody keeps asking me that. No, I’m not. I’m sick, and I’m scared.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you later. What did you find on Dean?”
Newbury went to his file drawer and pulled out a slim folder. He gave it to Marlene, who was curled up in his side chair like a wounded bird. She tried to read through the sheets of notes and printouts in the folder, but found it impossible to concentrate.
“What’s the story here, V.T.? Briefly, I mean,” she asked.
“Deposits in two accounts, monthly. She’s taking in ten to twelve K a month, in cash, besides the monthly check for $12,550 she gets from the St. Michael’s Foundation. The expenses for running the school are paid out of that—see, that’s out of the Citibank account itemized on the next sheet. This other account picks up her monthly check from St. Michael’s she gets as director—for $1518—as well as the cash deposits, always in small amounts. What’s the source, is the question. There’s nothing in the St. Michael’s financial statement that reflects those deposits. I mean, it’s a charity. The parents don’t pay anything, or at least not much.
“She owns the building the school is in outright, and she’s got a mortgage on the adjoining one. The third building, the one on West End Avenue, is income property, but it still doesn’t add up to—”
“Wait a minute, she owns a third building?”
“Yeah, it backs on the day-care center, with the front on West End. Is it important?”
“Could be. My head is screwed on wrong today. Look, V.T., can I take this and study it some?”
“It’s yours. I have a copy. So, tell me, what’s wrong? Early menopause?”
“I only wish. Listen, V.T., if I ask you a question, promise not to laugh, all right?”
“Promise, unless you tell me you’re having a sex change operation.”
“No, seriously. Umm, do you, ah, believe in witchcraft?”
V.T. did not laugh. On the contrary, he seemed to observe Marlene with new interest. After a moment, he said, “That depends on what you mean. I think quite a lot of what we could call witchcraft gets practiced today, and not just in places like Haiti. In New York, too, not to mention Miami and New Orleans. Immigrants from the Caribbean and South America and the Orient bring occult practices from home, for one thing. New York probably has as many practicing witches, brujos, curanderos and so on as it does obstetricians.
“Then there are the mainstream weirdos, usually middle-class kids who got off on acid and never came down—all these little shops selling tarot cards and theosophy books.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Marlene. “I mean summoning the devil, and black masses, and cursing people.”
“Oh, that,” said V.T., leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. “Charles Manson and beyond. Yeah, we got that too. People who want to get kicks and don’t care who gets hurt usually can come up with a justifying structure. But what you’re really asking me is, does it work? Does the devil really come? You’re asking is the supernatural real?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Then I’d have to ask you what you mean by ‘real.’ We know that symbols have real power. People die for symbolic reasons all the time. We know that people will give their wills over to other people and do things they would never do otherwise, so that it seems like magic. Hitler, and on a tiny scale, Manson, are examples. We know that psychological states have physical consequences, everything from hives to hysterical paralysis to voodoo death. And we know that people see and hear what they want to or what they think they ought to see and hear. Probably most of what passes for the supernatural comes from that kind of psychological stuff.
“For the rest … as a skeptic who doesn’t understand how a color TV works, I reserve judgment. Somebody once said that magic is science that we haven’t formulated laws for yet…. I’m sorry, I’m not being helpful, am I?” He had observed her sinking lower and lower into herself as he talked.
“No. I wanted you to say that it was all bullshit,” Marlene answered, her voice barely audible. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to anybody, but I think I’m being hexed, and I think it’s working.” Marlene related the story of the big man in black at Vittorio’s, and the connection with the trash-bag killings, and her current malaise. V.T. considered this for a long moment, and then said, “But you said you started to feel bad yesterday morning, before the big guy got the hair.”
“Yeah, but who knows what else they got? Do I track every Kleenex I toss? How do I know how long they’ve been doing this? Why are you shaking your head?”
“Because it won’t wash, Marlene. Maybe you’ve uncovered a band of demon worshippers, and maybe they’re out to get you. I’ll believe that. And you got sick. I believe that. But that doesn’t mean there’s a connection, that the forces of darkness are working you over. I don’t think your head is going to start turning backwards and shit is going to start flying around. And your demon worshippers are going to turn out to be a version of the old scam—some sordid combination of kicks and money. Remember those deposits in Dean’s account?
“Listen to your Uncle V. The first thing you should do is see a doctor. If there’s nothing wrong with you physically, then go see a shrink. Or a priest. But I totally reject the notion that Lucifer is dropping in on Riverside Drive and giving Irma Dean the power to bind and loose.”
“How can you be so sure? I mean I believe you, and all, but …”
V.T. laughed. “Because this is New York, Champ. The devil doesn’t need any help.”
Marlene left without saying anything about what she thought was happening to her. It was really too stupid. She called Raney and gave him a sketch of what V.T. had discovered. He was short with her and seemed uninterested. So, that was that. Grimly, she went back to her chores. It was better than going home.
Freddie Kirsch sighed and threw down his pencil. Perfection was hard. He looked at the typed sheets of the three hours of Q and A he had done on Felix Tighe. He thought it was the best one he had ever done, but still…. The problem was that Tighe was such an incredible liar. All mutts lied, of course, but Tighe was so plausible, so charming. And shameless. When caught in a lie, he just smiled and admitted his lie, “but now he was telling the truth.” The Q and A was a mass of contradictions, backtracks, misdirection, explanations.
The alibi, for example. Felix had told him that he was with a girl at the time of the murder. What girl? He couldn’t remember her name. He had written it down on a matchbook. Balducci had produced the matchbook with “Mimi” on it. Felix had brightened up like a lantern, like Balducci had saved his life.
So they found Mimi. Yes, she had been with him, but not, it turned out, on the night in question. Oh, no, Felix had meant another girl, Josie, Jackie, or something. And then there was the waitress at the place he was at—Larry’s. She would recognize him. Should he take a statement from the waitress? Or forget it? The pages swam and he rubbed his eyes. He looked at his watch. Seven-fifteen. His wife would be pissed off and get on him again about why couldn’t he get a job with decent hours?
Why not indeed? He was working on it. Meanwhile, People v. Tighe would have to wait until tomorrow. He stood up and switched off his desk lamp. The funny thing about it, when he thought of Tighe, he couldn’t help sort of liking him. The guy was amusing, anyway, which was more than could be said for the surly toughs that featured in most of his cases.
He put on his jacket and stacked his Q and A transcript neatly. He had a strong case, anyway. He should be able to get a tough plea with no trouble.
Felix Tighe’s new lawyer was a barrel-shaped little man who favored rumpled glen plaid suits and bow ties. He wore his thin dark hair stretched across his scalp like electrical cable, but his eyebrows, ears, and nose were luxuriantly supplied with the growth that had deserted the more conventional locations. His complexion was coarse and sallow. He had a little stump nose like a parakeet’s beak and—his only remarkable feature—large, luminous eyes, which could blaze out or withdraw into dark, hooded sockets according to his purpose. Despite his unprepossessing appearance, he had a reputation as a bon vivant and ladies’ man and as one of the dozen or so best criminal lawyers in Manhattan. His name was Henry Klopper and Felix was terrified of him.
They had met the day after his arrest, when Felix was still recovering from the pounding administered by Patrolman Olson. His head still throbbed and he was dulled out from the analgesics they had given him. He had sought yet more dullness, but his charm had drawn a blank; Bellevue locked-ward nurses are very hard charmees and stingy with dope.
Thus he had been in no cordial mood when the small man strode briskly into the curtained enclosure around his bed, sat down in a straight chair, and pulled a yellow legal pad from a worn briefcase.
“Who the fuck are you?” Felix snarled.
The man took a pair of gold-rimmed glasses from his breast pocket and hooked them on before answering. “I’m Henry Klopper. Your mother has retained me as your attorney.”
“Yeah? Well, when am I getting out of here?”
“Probably tomorrow, if the doctors OK it. They’ll move you to Riker’s Island Jail and then—”
“No, asshole! I mean out—like on the street.”
Klopper regarded Felix with an expression that mixed pity and contempt, heavy on the latter. He said quietly, “Mr. Klopper, Felix.”
“What!”
“You call me ‘Mr. Klopper,’ Felix, and in a respectful tone of voice.”
“Fuck you, jerk! I want my mother in here—now!”
Klopper ignored this outburst and continued in the same quiet tone, like a doctor explaining the tumor shadows on the X-ray film. “The reason for that, Felix, is that you are a vicious little shitheel and you are about to go up for at least twenty years. To Attica. Think about that for a minute, Felix. You believe you’re a tough guy, but you’re not, Felix, not compared to the boys up there. Compared to some of those bucks up there, you’re just a momma’s boy, but you haven’t got the sense to lie low and play the game. They will break you like a stick the first week.
“So don’t ask for your mommy, Felix. She can’t help you and she knows it, which is why she hired me, and you can’t help yourself because you’re a complete and utter fuck-up, without the brains God gave an ant. The only person who can help you is me. Now if you want me to help you, you will be respectful, as I said, and speak when spoken to. I am not interested in your plans or opinions. You have only one thing to think about, Felix, and that is to do exactly, precisely what I tell you to do, and nothing else.”
He paused to let what he had said sink in. It hadn’t. Felix did not admit negative comments on his personality or behavior into his consciousness. At that moment he was running through his options. Smashing Klopper’s face in was the preferred one, but he couldn’t do that because his right hand was cuffed to the bed frame. Escaping was always a possibility—get away somewhere, maybe the Caribbean. He could get free on bail and skip …
“What about getting me out on bail?” Felix asked.
Klopper stood up, removed his glasses, put his pad in his briefcase, and locked it. “Felix, you’re thinking,” he said, wagging his finger. “And when you start thinking is when I start leaving. Bail, my Aunt Fanny!”
Felix did not see Klopper again until he was arraigned on the criminal complaint, at which time the lawyer made a perfunctory request for bail, which was perfunctorily denied. Because of his attempt to escape custody, and the nature of his crime, Felix was no longer a good bail risk, despite his job and his ties to the community. After that Klopper had let him stew in Riker’s for the better part of a week. This was a good place to think about spending twenty in Attica and at their next meeting Felix had adjusted his tone to meet Klopper’s expectations. The lawyer was not impressed.
“Very nice, Felix,” he said. “You’re playing the good boy now. ‘Mr. Klopper, this, Mr. Klopper that’—very respectful. I know it’s bullshit, Felix. You still don’t seem to understand: I know you. All psychopaths are the same person. Right now you’re thinking, ‘Let this little dork ramble on until I can find some edge I can use to manipulate him, find what phony line I can use to make him happy, so I can game him.’ Right? But it won’t work, Felix. You’re not going to play me—I’m going to play you.”
Felix felt a spasm of fear, akin in an odd way to what he felt when Denise called him, a violation of his hollow and steel-hard center. What Klopper had described was exactly what he had been thinking. He tried to meet Klopper’s eyes and stare him down, but found it impossible. He swallowed in a dry mouth as the lawyer continued.
“OK, Felix, this is your first little doggie trick. You’re going to tell me the truth. I know that’s going to be hard for you, Felix, but I insist. You see, if you don’t tell me the truth, I might make a mistake, and we might lose, and you would go upstate. Not that I give a crap about you, but losing is bad for my business. See? That’s the truth—a little demonstration.
“Now you’re going to try. And to make it easy for you, since you probably don’t have any experience at it, we’ll do it like baseball. You get three strikes. Three lies I catch you in and you get a new lawyer, and believe me, Felix, I dump you and you’re going to wind up with an ambulance chaser that’ll fuck it up so bad they’ll reinstate the electric chair just for you.
“So here’s the first question. When did you decide to kill this Mullen woman?”
“I didn’t kill anybody!” said Felix sulkily, looking down at the table.
Klopper smiled unpleasantly. “Strike one,” he said.
“What did the doctor say?” asked Karp anxiously. Marlene had been sick every day for over a month. Previously slim, she now approached the unnatural dimensions of a fashion model or a Dachau alumna. During that time Karp had been nagging at her in increasing desperation to see a doctor, and that morning she had finally agreed to see a local M.D.
She let out a bitter laugh. “He gave me a scrip for Valium.”
“There was nothing wrong with you?”
“Only with my head, according to Dr. Herman Myers. Another hysterical broad—I could see him thinking it. Give her some dope and get rid of her. Maybe I’ll fill it. I could take the whole bottle—”
“Oh, shut up! I can’t stand it when you talk like that.”
“Sorry,” she said and laughed again, without much humor. “This is wearing me down. I can’t work, I can hardly watch TV. Maybe I should see a shrink—or an exorcist, one.”
The two of them were standing near the circular information desk in the first floor lobby of Centre Street, in the area reserved for people with official business. From this vantage one could see the main entrance doors as well as the lobbies where the elevators let out. If you stayed there long enough, you would see pass by (a depressing thought) virtually everyone connected with the criminal justice system in New York County.
“Who’re you waiting for?” asked Karp, to change the subject.
“Judge Rice. His office said he’d be coming in about now, and I hate to make an appointment to see him in chambers just for a couple of minutes.”
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with him. What are you seeing him about now?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know? A girl could have her little secrets,” she said with a spark of her old spirit.
“He’s too old for you.”
“You’re too old for me, if it comes to that. I’m obviously going to retch my way to an early grave. Maybe I should just immerse myself in young flesh for the little time that remains to me. That one’s about right.”
“Who, that little kid?” asked Karp, following her pointing finger with his eyes.
“Yeah, isn’t he gorgeous? Why should the male perverts have all the fun?”
Marlene had indicated what appeared to be a boy of about eight or ten, walking deep in conversation with a coffee-colored man of extraordinary appearance. They were an odd couple even for this milieu. The smaller figure was dressed in a blue suit, as if for an elementary school assembly. He had that finely chiseled, preternatural beauty often obtained when the inheritance of all the human races are combined: curled fine chestnut hair, high cheekbones, large dark, almond eyes, and a flawless complexion in a permanent sun tan shade. He was slender and stood somewhat under five feet in height.
His companion, by contrast, was chocolate brown and a giant, taller than Karp by half a foot, and dressed in the panoply of the successful street dude: a suit of some rich, pale nubby material over a peacock blue silk shirt open halfway down his chest. Apartheid was obviously not one of his big causes, for he wore enough gold rings, bracelets, and chains to support the Republic of South Africa for the better part of a year.
“I know that guy,” announced Karp, as the mismatched pair approached.
“Who, the kid?”
“No, the big one.”
And, in fact, as the two passed by the information desk, the giant glanced at Karp, made to go by, stopped, looked Karp up and down, scowled, and then pointed at him with a finger like a center punch.
“Hey, I know you, man,” he said in a deep rumble of a voice. “I played Rucker ball with you.”
“Yeah,” agreed Karp, “a million years ago. Matt Boudreau, isn’t it?”
The big man broke a grin, showing yet more gold. “Yeah! Matt the Cat. Well, how about that! And you’re, don’t tell me—Butch, something …”
“Karp,” said Karp sticking out his hand, which the other shook enthusiastically. “Man!” exclaimed Boudreau, “we played some ball, didn’t we?” To his companion he said, “Junior, this guy used to play ball with me in the Rucker League. Best white bread ball player I ever saw. Hey, Karp, this my partner, Junior Gibbs.” Karp shook the tiny hand, then introduced Marlene.
Marlene looked closely at the beautiful boy when she shook hands, and realized with a start that he was not a little boy at all, but a miniature man in his late teens or early twenties.
“You still play ball, Karp?” Boudreau was asking.
“No, I got hurt in school. My knee. You?”
“Yeah, still the king of the playground. I played three years at Kentucky. I woulda gone pro, I mean, I had the moves, you know? But I had a couple of problems at school …” He smiled and shrugged, and Karp vaguely recalled a gambling scandal a decade past. Matt the Cat didn’t seem inclined to pursue it. He said, “So what you doin’ here? You a lawyer, or what?”
“A D.A.”
“No shit? I’m in wholesale myself.” They chattered a while about games past and what had happened to what schoolboy player. Marlene searched the crowd for Rice, while Junior Gibbs shot blazing smiles at her whenever he happened to catch her eye.
After about ten minutes of this Karp began to look pointedly at his watch. Boudreau seemed to have no pressing engagements. Karp excused himself at last, saying it was his morning for sitting in calendar courts. He did this as often as he could, to keep his subordinates honest, or rather, to keep the necessary crookedness within decent limits.
“I’m going to watch Kirsch,” he said. “God help us.”
“He still a problem?” asked Marlene.
“Yeah, but not for long. I hear the private sector beckons—he’s getting out soon.”
With that, Karp waved and stomped off, followed soon after by Matt Boudreau. Gibbs did not appear anxious to leave, in fact, seemed delighted to have Marlene all to himself.
“So you’re a D.A. too, huh?” he said.
“Yes. And what do you do, Mr. Gibbs?”
“Hey, call me Junior. Oh, a little of this, a little of that. Hey, you like to dance? You ever go to clubs?”
“No, I have a wooden leg,” said Marlene, looking around desperately for someone to rescue her from what experience had told her was going to be an embarrassing proposition. She found it in a slouching bearish man lugging a bulky cardboard carton toward the main doors—Peter Balducci. Marlene waved him over with enthusiasm. He rested his carton on the edge of the information counter and sighed, massaging the small of his back.
“Long time no see, Peter. You must be getting short.”
“Yeah, I hand in the potsy in a few weeks.”
“Good for you. What’s in the box? Bribes?”
“I wish. No, it’s the stuff from the trash-bag case. I left a message for you—we’re transferring out of here now that the action’s in Queens.” He saw her expression change and he said kindly, “Don’t worry, kid—we’ll catch the mutt. And maybe the doll and the stuff we collected here’ll do some good.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Marlene doubtfully. “You got the doll in there?”
“Uh-huh.” Balducci lifted the lid of the carton and hoisted up the top of Lucy Segura’s Belgian doll, wrapped in a plastic bag. He chuckled. “It still knocks me out—ten, twelve grand for a doll!”
“That doll’s worth twelve grand?” exclaimed Junior Gibbs, standing on tip-toe to get a better look. Balducci seemed to notice him for the first time. He frowned and said, “Hello, Junior.”
“You two know each other?” asked Marlene.
“Yeah, Junior and I go back a couple of years. Still going through the transom, Junior?”
“Nah, I’m clean now, Balducci. Ask my parole officer.”
“Yeah, right. You’re hanging around the courthouse for old times’ sake,” said the detective, picking up his carton. “Marlene, don’t tell this mutt where you live—he goes through keyholes. See you around.” He headed for the doors.
“You’re a burglar?” asked Marlene, fascinated.
“I done some,” admitted Gibbs, flashing his boyish grin. “But I was younger then, you know …”
“How old are you now?”
“Old enough, baby, old enough. How old are you?”
“Too old to be standing around jiving with crooks. See you in court, Junior.” She turned to go, having spotted Judge Rice coming through the main revolving door, but Gibbs tugged at her sleeve and asked, “Hey, lady, is it true about that doll being worth twelve large?”
Marlene nodded. “True. It’s a collector’s item. Some folks have dozens of them, and some worth more than that. It’s an unfair world, Junior.”
Gibbs registered innocent amazement. “No kidding. Like what folks is that?”
And now, as she looked into his greedy, perfect little face, Marlene did something she would regret profoundly later on, something she knew was wrong and stupid at the time, but which, as sick and angry and frustrated as she was then, she found irresistible.
“Folks like Mrs. Irma Dean,” she said, and gave him the address.
As that afternoon wore on, Karp was sitting, with a newspaper and a miscellany of overdue paperwork, in the back of an unused jury box watching the unstately progress of Part 45 of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. The jury box was empty because Part 45 was a calendar court, today operating in Karp’s favorite courtroom, the one with the mural behind the presidium—a faded allegory featuring a robed 1930’s-style woman who stood, amid groves, in some uncertain relationship to two small children, a boy with a sword and a girl. It was untitled, and what it represented no one knew, although V.T. had once remarked that it ought to be called the “Spirit of Mopery.” Karp thought it was a good symbol for the business transacted beneath it: obscurely comforting but essentially void of meaning.
Above the mural was another of Karp’s delights, the motto that read, because of an apt crumbling of old paint, “In Go We Trust.” This, in fact, captured perfectly the spirit of the calendar courts, where alacrity of process had usurped all other legal considerations.
In the cockpit of this contraption sat Judge Herbert Rice, driving it well, Karp had to admit. It was a matter of tone, Karp decided. A judge sitting in a calendar court could influence the process in a number of ways that had little to do with what was in the statute books. By being serious, by pretending seriously that the people had a right to justice, a judge could lend some gravity to the plea-bargaining game.
This was what Rice did; Karp could see why Marlene liked him. Right now a defense attorney was arguing that the felony charge of first-degree burglary against his client should be dropped to the misdemeanor of trespassing.
The A.D.A., who happened to be Tony Harris, was hanging tough. He pointed out that Mr. Ortiz had fourteen prior arrests, and two convictions, for which he had served a total of nine months in prison; he had been captured by the police when an alert officer had noticed during a routine traffic stop that Ortiz had an unusual amount of electronic equipment in his car, including a mammoth projection TV that occupied the entire back seat. It was a good, clean pinch and Harris was asking for three to five.
Defense counsel asked to approach the bench. Karp leaned back and turned to his newspaper. He knew what was going on off the record. The defense would argue the guy was a pillar of the community, steady job, family, and Harris would say the obvious, that he was also a pro burglar. The defense would say he hadn’t hurt anyone, and Harris would come back with since when is burglary a victimless crime. With a hard-ass like Rice on the bench, the defense would offer a bullet, a guilty plea in return for a sentence to one year upstate. Karp hoped Harris would hang tough for three to five.
He did. Rice rumbled ominously and said to the defense attorney, “Mr. Lowry, I’m the judge of what’s fair in this courtroom. That’s why they call me the judge. You’ve heard what the people have offered—I’m prepared to set a trial date right away.”
The defense went for the trial. Next case, although Karp knew it still might not go to trial, and the mutt might still get off with a light sentence. But it was better to be ahead in the bottom of the eighth than behind. Harris spotted Karp, waved, and came over. “How’d I do?” he asked, grinning.
“Not bad for a punk kid. You get that bug order for Nyack set up yet?”
“Yeah, it’s all set up. The affidavit and the court order are on your desk. You have an appointment to see a Judge William Armand in New City tomorrow at eleven-thirty. That OK?”
Karp said it was, Harris scooted off to his next appearance, and Karp settled back for a peaceful afternoon. As he watched the parade he made notes when it was one of his staff in the A.D.A. slot, notes about personal appearance, demeanor, preparation, and whether he thought the People had been rooked.
Here was Freddie Kirsch: no problem with appearance, nice clear voice, pure class. Freddie had a string of cases in this court: hit-and-run, a manslaughter, a homicide, another homicide. It was getting late and Karp was getting dull and he might have missed it except for the defense attorney. He sat up. Henry Klopper was always fun to watch and he wondered how Freddie would do up against the legendary Chopper Hank.
Klopper was being quiet, Karp observed, which was always a sign that he was pulling a fast one. He mumbled, too. Karp caught the words “summary dismissal.” He saw Rice nodding. He saw Freddie nodding! Something was seriously wrong.
Karp went over the rail of the jury box and was at Kirsch’s side in an instant.
“What’s going on here, Freddie?” he demanded.
Kirsch seemed surprised to see him and not pleasantly so. “Oh, hi, Butch. Just running through some routine calendar junk.”
Judge Rice spoke up, “Mr. Kirsch, did you hear what I just said?”
“No, Your Honor, I’m sorry,” said Kirsch.
“Who is this guy, Freddie?” asked Karp irritably, using the heavy whisper that counsel used in the well of the court. “Who’d he kill?”
“This is the guy they picked up for the Mullen thing in the East Village. Tighe his name is.”
Karp ran through the files in his brain. A connection with Marlene, with that cop she hung around with—Lacey? Raney? He remembered it now, and when he looked down at Kirsch his eyes were angry. “This is that guy? Freddie, he killed a woman and a child with a fuckin’ sword? What’re you talking dismissals for?”
Rice tapped his gavel. “Mr. Kirsch, could we proceed? Or is Mr. Karp representing the People now?”
Karp looked up when he heard his name, and said, “I ask the court’s indulgence for one moment, Your Honor. We’re at cross-purposes on what the People’s position is in this case.”
“That’s just his openers, Butch,” Kirsch explained. “He’ll plead to manslaughter second.”
“Man two! Are you nuts? He won’t do fourteen months on that shit. This guy goes for the top count if we got any case at all. Do we have a case?”
Kirsch looked down at the floor. “Yeah, I guess. A circumstantial case. Good prints. Motive, means, opportunity.”
“Then why are we throwing it?”
“Uh … I was just clearing my decks. You know, getting rid of the cases I had.”
“Because you’re leaving?”
“Yeah, I got a week to go. I figured it would be easier, more convenient, if I didn’t have to explain my cases to the new guys. So I’m trying to get through them all this week.”
“Give me the case file!”
Freddie handed him the heavy folder. “Freddie, you can’t do this,” Karp said. “This guy killed two people and you’re gonna let him out on the street because it’s convenient? You’re a fucking disgrace! Be in my office first thing tomorrow with all your cases up to date. This is your last court appearance. Now get the fuck out of here!”
Kirsch turned scarlet and started packing his briefcase to go. The Judge said “Mr. Kirsch? Are the People ready at long last? Mr. Kirsch, where are you going?” Judge Rice was growing annoyed.
Karp moved toward the presidium. “Your Honor, Mr. Kirsch is no longer associated with this case. I will be taking it over as of this moment, and I’d just like to say that the People are ready to begin trial on the top count of the indictment immediately. Unless Mr. Klopper would like to plead his client to intentional murder.”
“Judge, this is preposterous,” began Klopper in his typical ranting tone. “I had an agreement with Mr. Kirsch …”
“Which is void, Your Honor, assuming it existed,” said Karp pleasantly.
And there was nothing to be done, of course, and Klopper knew it, although he made a major show, for the record. Karp thought the judge seemed unduly tolerant for Not-Nice Rice, but he didn’t mind because it gave him time to read the salient points of the file. The indictment was good, there were no grounds for dismissal. Rice set a trial date two weeks hence and banged his gavel with more slam than usual.
In the back of the courtroom, Jim Raney observed all this with satisfaction. Karp was good; he could see what Marlene saw in him on that end—a serious player, for sure. But a bit of a stiff, no? Not a party kind of guy. Maybe she would get bored, start looking for a piece of strange. With this relaxing thought in mind, Raney let his glance swing idly from Karp to the others at the front of the courtroom. A trim, well-dressed woman stood up and began walking up the aisle. Raney stared in surprise. What, he wondered, was Mrs. Irma Dean doing in this court?