Groggy and stupid from lack of sleep, Karp staggered into his shower and let the scalding water beat against his head. He emerged cleaner but hardly refreshed, brushed his teeth, ate the last two Extra-Strength Excedrin in the bottle on the sink, and flung the empty, rattling, into the tin wastebasket. Two points.
Karp had spent the night in his own apartment, a one-bedroom unit in an old building on Sixth in the Village, as he had since Marlene had disappeared. At Marlene’s loft he had arranged with neighbors to feed the cats and water the plants. He was not going to stay there, surrounded by her things and the memory of her.
In his own place there was nothing but a bed, an antique rowing machine, a black-and-white portable TV and Karp. The rest of the space was occupied by dust bunnies and Karp’s immense misery.
He let a guilty glance fall on the rowing machine. There did not seem any point in exercising any more. Or eating. Or sleeping. Work still had a point, but even that was going. Karp had heard of sea captains’ wives in the old days of sail who had been visited by a dire premonition of death at what later had proven to be the very moment that their spouses’ vessels had gone under. He felt that way about Marlene. There was in his head and body an empty space that had been filled with the hum of her being. He had scarcely noticed it then (more guilt!) but now it was a felt void, as when the electric power goes off in the daytime and all the little forgotten motors stop.
He dressed in one of his three identical blue pin-striped suits. One of the trio was at the cleaners, the other on the closet floor waiting to be dropped off. For murder trials Karp always appeared in a freshly pressed suit each day.
Karp usually walked the mile or so to the criminal courts. He liked the exercise, while the filth and disorder of the subways depressed him. Today he found he lacked the energy and doubted that the subway could drive him any lower than he now was. He took the D train and arrived in time to spend an hour and a half re-reading the case file on People v. Tighe.
It was a good case, a classic circumstantial web, motive, means, and opportunity woven together by that colossal criminal arrogance, that sense of invulnerability without which the forces of justice would be in even worse shape than they are. He kept the knife! He wrote it down in his appointment book!
Yes, a good case, People v. Tighe, except that to Karp, as always, it was Karp v. Tighe. It was his dirty secret. You weren’t supposed to get your personal feelings mixed up in the austere and objective majesty of the judicial process. Karp had said that himself to babies out of law school, without a blush, but to Karp, in a trial, it was all personal, every time.
There was a knock on his door and Peter Balducci stuck his head in. Karp was struck by another pang of guilt as he remembered Marlene, and realized that he had been able to entirely forget her when immersed in the trial. But of course, Balducci was part of the trial, too, as well as being involved in the kidnapping investigation.
“Anything new?” Karp asked.
“Not yet, that I heard of. It could be somebody’s got something, though. Shaughnessy’s got me inside cleaning ashtrays. It’s my last week. He figures I won’t have my mind on my work. So maybe …”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll find her.”
“Yeah,” said Karp again, without conviction. He picked up a sheaf of notes on yellow legal and an arrest report form. “OK, Pete, you’re finishing up today. The defense is going to have you on cross and they’re going to push on this alibi.”
Balducci frowned. “They are? But we already showed it was bullshit! Plus, the guy ran when we tried to pinch him. We got the bloody pants, the motive, the girlfriend. You really think they’ll bring it up?”
“Trust me. Look, any evidence can be impeached in the eyes of a jury, and anything that can’t, they can say the cops planted it. Will the jury believe it? If the defendant shows as Mr. Truth, they have a chance, which they have to take, since they got bupkes otherwise. I got five black men and two Spanish on the jury. No offense, Peter, but what’s the odds that that bunch thinks the NYPD is straight arrow? That the cops never, never picked up and railroaded the wrong guy?”
Balducci grunted noncommittally.
“So the thing is, we got to show him as Mr. Lie when they try it. He’s a crook, right? We know it, but we got to show it, is the game.”
Balducci nodded, and Karp laid out the line of questioning he thought the defense would bring up in the cross-examination and what he would pursue on the redirect. “He’s going to attack your credibility, but he’s got to do it backhanded, understand? Because the fact is that you’re telling the truth. Especially about the fake alibi.”
“That girl, Mimi.”
“Yeah. Tighe told you and Freddie Kirsch he was with a girl named Mimi Vasquez in Larry’s Bar at the time of the murder.”
“Then he changed his story.”
“Right. Because you found Vasquez and she said she’d never been near the place with him on the night. Klopper’s game will be to confuse the identity of Mimi Vasquez with another girl that Tighe pulled out of a hat when you braced him on the lie—what was it?—Joseline?”
“Yeah. But why don’t you just call her up there, Mimi, and get her to tell them he was blowing smoke?”
“Can’t do it. It’s his alibi. I can’t do anything with the alibi or her unless he brings it up, which he knows, which is why he’s going to hint at it, play with it, but never really bring it out. All he’s doing is building a reasonable doubt, which is all he needs. I’ll object like crazy and hope that Montana backs me up on it. By the way, just checking: Did you ever find this Denise in the appointment book?”
“Nope. And he won’t talk about it either. Funny, the guy talked like blue blazes about every other piece of ass he got. Is it important?”
“Not really. Just funny. A missing piece.”
Balducci nodded. He got up to leave and then stopped. “Oh, did I tell you? Speaking of ladies—the mutt’s wife showed up.”
“Who, Tighe’s? I didn’t know he was married.”
“Yeah, and made in heaven too. He kept her tied to the bed and whipped her with a coat hanger. Had a shotgun rigged to blow away anybody trying to rescue her. You want her name and address?”
“Not really. I can’t call her, and with a story like that I doubt they’ll use her as a character witness.”
Balducci rolled his eyes and walked out. Karp ran down the list of his other witnesses. Balducci had almost finished his direct testimony the previous day. He had been good in describing the pursuit and near escape of Tighe—the guy was a desperado, right?—and having him there would help carry the memory for another day.
Then the cross and the redirect. If Klopper tried to tease with the alibi, he would refute it like crazy, and then whip over to the forensic technician, a solid guy named Dugan, who had lifted the thumbprint from the scene, and then the fingerprint tech, Cibera, also convincing. Juries loved fingerprints. And although Klopper would do his best to cloud that evidence, he would fail, because fingerprints were sacred. They were on TV cop shows. A good close for the day.
How can I be dicking around with this shit?, Karp asked himself as he gathered up his papers. Marlene may be dead or being tortured by some maniac. I’m dying, but I’m still up for this trial, he thought as he took the elevator up to the twelfth floor. As he took his place at the prosecution table, however, these thoughts faded, his stomach muscles tautened, his palms got wet, and he began to breathe consciously, big deep breaths, as he had done at those points in a tight game when he knew his coach was going to send him in.
The jury filed in and the clerk called their names. The judge came in, all rose. Judge Thomas Montana, a diminutive and swarthy man with shoe-button eyes and wearing thick, paper-white sideburns under a thatch of black hair, sat down. All sat. Peter Balducci took the witness stand and the trial resumed.
For an unconcerned spectator in search of entertainment, a criminal trial is ordinarily a good place to avoid. The law radiates tedium the way a ballet does grace or an orchestra harmony. Despite this, the courtroom was packed, a fact attributable to the semi-sensational nature of the case (EX ROCK STAR KNIFED!), to the inclement weather, and to Karp himself. There was a small, ever-changing claque of trial connoisseurs (mostly young A.D.A.s) in the back of the room, who drifted in during their spare time and spent half an hour watching, as it were, Arcaro up on Native Dancer.
Karp rose and asked Balducci about the torn piece of matchbook he had found in the bag in Felix Tighe’s room, establishing that the “Mimi” whose name was written there was in fact Mimi Vasquez, the non-alibi lady, and no one else.
Karp sat down and the judge asked for cross-examination, but Klopper chose this moment to protest once again the admissibility of the evidence in the brown bag. “At this time,” he said, “if the court pleases, since there was no knowledge on my part of the evidence seized in the apartment at 130 Ludlow Street, I therefore ask for a hearing at this time in the absence of the jury for a determination by the court of whether the search and seizure is valid and not a violation of the constitutional rights of the defendant.”
This was such an obvious lie that Karp was for a moment stunned. Then he got up and pointed out all the places in the official transcript, in the pre-trial records where Klopper had been so informed. Montana, looking disgusted, disposed of the motion and the trial proper resumed with the cross-examination of Balducci.
Karp looked over at the jury and saw knotted brows. That, and not any real hope of getting the evidence tossed, had been the reason for the motion. Enough objections, however often overruled, might add up to a reasonable doubt in the minds of certain jurors. Sometimes the big lie worked.
Klopper was good on cross. He flickered from point to point of evidence and testimony, always trying to elicit a weak or indecisive answer. How tall was Mimi Vasquez? Didn’t know. What was in the defendant’s wallet when arrested? Didn’t know. Did you personally identify yourself as a police officer at the time of the arrest? No. Did you question him about the appointment book? No. Did the district attorney question him about it? I don’t recall. Karp could feel the jury thinking, what does this guy know?
Then Klopper asked, “Who is Mimi Vasquez?”
Karp objected instantly. He was overruled.
“Is she involved with the case in any way?” asked Klopper. Balducci looked worried. For God’s sake, don’t start looking shifty on me now, Peter, prayed Karp silently. He rose and said, “I object to the form of the question, Judge.”
But Montana’s curiosity had been piqued. He asked Balducci, “Who is she?”
Balducci said, “She’s a female that the defendant said that he was with at the time of the homicide.”
Two points for the bad guys, thought Karp. There’s the alibi floating now, and from a judge’s question! That could stick.
So on the redirect, Karp leaped directly into the attack on the phony alibi. Karp established that because Tighe had claimed that on the night of the murder he was at Larry’s Bar with a woman he had met at a bus stop, a woman named Mimi, Balducci had tracked down a woman with that name, using the phone number written on the matchbook stub.
OK, Klopper, here goes, thought Karp, as he asked, “What, if anything, did she say about visiting Larry’s Bar with the defendant on the night in question?”
Klopper leaped up. “That’s objected to! Hearsay!”
Karp shot back, “Counsel brought up this woman in the first place, Your Honor. I think it’s only fair and proper that the detective explain it. The woman is available for counsel to call.”
“It’s available to him too!” snapped Klopper, the silver mask slipping just a little.
Karp replied coolly, “Your Honor, counsel knows very well I can’t call her until counsel does.”
“That’s not so! That’s not so at all!” Klopper’s voice went up, and Montana banged his gavel. “Stop arguing, Mr. Klopper! Objection is sustained.”
Karp tried a couple more times to get Balducci to convey the burden of what Mimi Vasquez had said, but was blocked by sustained objections. Then he suddenly changed his line:
“Did you ever determine whether the defendant was in Larry’s that night?”
“Objection!”
“Overruled.”
“Yes, I did,” said Balducci.
“What was the result of that enquiry?”
“That the defendant was never in Larry’s on July tenth at the time in question.”
“No further questions,” said Karp, and took his seat, feeling reasonably satisfied. It was a good strong statement by Balducci. The defense would try to confuse the issue again by suggesting that there were two women and that the cops had found the wrong one, but we had the matchbook and they didn’t have the other woman. The jury would see it for the horseshit it was. Karp was definitely ahead at the half.
The remainder of the afternoon went as planned. Karp called Dugan, the crime scene technician who had lifted the thumbprint in the hallway outside the murder apartment. Then he called the fingerprint technician, who said that the prints matched Tighe’s, and finally he called Raney, briefly, to establish that Tighe was in fact fingerprinted on the day of the arrest. In the testimony, Karp brought out the fact that the print was shiny and wet at the time it was taken—in other words, fresh, and not to be confused with the others that Felix Tighe might have left around during his visits to the building.
They broke for the day around four. Judges like to get a jump on the traffic. As Karp stuffed his briefcase, Klopper came over to the prosecution table, with a pleased expression on his face.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
“I’m listening, Mr. Klopper.”
“Your star witness, Steven Lutz, called me last night. It turns out he doesn’t want to be your witness any more. He wants to testify for the defense.”
“Oh?” said Karp blandly, “lucky you. Here’s a tip: Try to get him to stop shifting his eyes and licking his lips. He does it even when he’s telling the truth. God knows what he’ll do when he’s lying through his teeth.”
With that, he nodded politely to Klopper and walked up the aisle, casually, with his face set in a pleasant, neutral mask. He had almost expected this, but it was a blow anyway. Friends of the defendant often rolled when the time came for them to betray their buddies in open court, but Lutz had not seemed to be much in love with Felix Tighe during the one interview Karp had done with him. In fact, he had seemed fairly hostile. Karp wondered briefly what had caused the flip, and then turned his mind to the line of questioning he would use to impeach Lutz’s testimony tomorrow. He was halfway to the subway when he realized that he had not given Marlene Ciampi a single thought for five and a half hours.
Jim Raney, waiting outside the courtroom, observed Karp’s passing without interest. He was looking for someone else. He buttonholed a court officer. “Hey, Frank,” he said, “that lady walking down there—in the black outfit—you got any idea who she is?”
The officer nodded and told him. Raney’s mouth opened in amazement. He thanked the court officer, and then leaned against the wall and thought for five minutes, oblivious to the flow of traffic around him. Then he walked out of the courthouse to his car, and headed for the Queensboro Bridge. He would have to check some things, but he now thought he had a good idea who was responsible for the trash-bag murders, and by extension, who had really kidnapped Marlene Ciampi.
“Your Honor, this concludes the People’s case,” said Karp and sat down. He thought the People had a pretty good shot at Felix Tighe, all things considered. The stipulated testimony from the surviving son had been a good thing to close on. (He sees his mother with her head nearly cut off and brings her a glass of water!) Before that, the medical examiner’s people had testified, for the record, that the stains on Felix’s pants were human blood, that Felix’s knife could have made the wounds on the deceased, and that the wounds caused the death of the deceased.
Simple stuff, but not much good if the jury thought that the knife and pants they had seen in the courtroom did not belong to the defendant, a thought Mr. Klopper was about to try and insert in their collective mind.
First, though, a little shimmy. Klopper moved to have the case thrown out for lack of evidence associating the defendant with the crime. Montana denied it promptly. Then Klopper called his first witness, and Steve Lutz, wearing a cheap, but new, blue suit shambled up to the stand.
Karp rubbed his face and struggled to bring his senses into the required sharp focus. Another night with little sleep, ground glass under the eyelids. Lutz, he thought, did not look much better. That was interesting: Lutz had the basic rat look at all times, but now he seemed a trapped rat. What was he looking around the courtroom for? Who was he looking for?
Klopper took Lutz through the basics: who he was, the fact that he was letting Felix Tighe stay in his apartment on Ludlow Street; then he asked him about the day that Balducci and Raney had come to look at Felix’s room.
“And these officers came to your door?”
“Yeah, they said could they take a look at Felix’s room.”
“And you let them in?”
“Yeah.”
“Did they show you a warrant?”
“No. But, you know, it was the cops. I didn’t want to get in no trouble.” Karp thought, that’s cute, a little suggestion of forced entry without a warrant. And no grounds for objection.
“And what happened then?” Klopper continued, and extracted from Lutz the story of how the brown bag and the dark, bloodstained pants had been found.
“This was the brown bag that was presented in evidence?”
“Yeah. It was closed and it had some stuff in it, so they said, ‘could we open it?’ And I, like, said, ‘OK.’ So they did. They found some clothes inside. And two knives, one big, one little.”
“Did they find anything else?”
“Yeah. A couple of papers, newspapers. A little book, like an appointment book. And then they looked around the room. There was some clothes hanging in the closet. They took those out. There was a white jacket, a sports jacket, a black shirt, and a pair of dark blue pants, on a hanger, in a cleaner’s bag.”
“Are you sure about the color of those pants?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Blue.”
Klopper went over to the table where the trial exhibits were kept and picked up the bowie knife Karp had introduced earlier.
“Now these knives,” he said, “did you look at the knives the officers found?”
“Yeah, they showed me the knives three times down at the D.A.’s office …”
Klopper interrupted, “Excuse me, I show you this knife, marked People’s Exhibit Fourteen. Was this one of the knives the police removed from the brown bag at your apartment that day?”
Lutz shook his head and hunched forward as if preparing to avoid an invisible blow. “Uh-uh, no. That’s the one they showed me in the D.A.’s office.”
“But not in the apartment?”
“No. That was a different knife. It was like, wavy, the blade, like a what-do-you-call-it, a bread knife.”
“Now when you were in the D.A.’s office, did you tell them that this wasn’t the knife in the bag?”
“Yeah, I told them it wasn’t. I was down there three times. No, two times in the office, and one time, it was like this, like a trial. But with no judge.”
“The grand jury?”
“Yeah, that.”
Klopper put the knife down on the table and picked up the pair of pants in their clear plastic bag. He said, “Now I show you this pair of black pants. Are these the pants that they took from your apartment in your presence?”
“No, those weren’t them. Those pants were blue, and real clean. It was on a hanger in a cleaner’s bag.”
“And at the grand jury, was this the pair of pants that they showed you?”
“Well, they took some pants out of a bag and said, ‘Is this the pants,’ but it was like a big room and they were far away. I couldn’t tell.”
“But you said they were?”
Lutz looked pained. “Yeah, but it was so fast—in, out. Then I started thinking it maybe wasn’t the same pants.”
“Now, on the two occasions you were at the D.A.’s office, talking to Mr. Kirsch—did you tell him on both occasions that this was not the knife and these were not the pants?”
“Yeah, I told him and told him—wrong color pants, wrong kind of knife.”
Klopper put down the pants and picked up the newspaper clippings about the murder that the police had found in the brown bag. He approached Lutz.
“I show you these newspaper clippings. Do you see your signature on them?”
“My initials, yeah. They got me to sign at my place.”
“Yes, and did they have you sign anything else? The knives, or the pants?”
“No, nothing. I asked them why they was taking the clean clothes, and all, and they said, for the testimony.”
“And your memory is absolutely clear about this?”
“Yeah.”
“It was not the same knife and it was not the same pair of pants?” Klopper was smiling, his voice unctuous. Lutz had visibly relaxed.
“No, not the same, right.”
“And you do have a good memory, correct? You remember, for example, what officer Balducci was wearing when he came to your apartment?”
Lutz raised his eyes to the ceiling and let his mouth go slack, in a parody of deep thought. “Yeah … he had a blue jacket, gray pants, black shoes. No hat and a red-striped tie. The other guy had a leather jacket on, no tie, but one of them high, turtlenecks, dark blue.”
“That’s all. Thank you.”
Karp got up and stood in front of the witness, his expression mild. “Mr. Lutz, you have a good memory, do you not?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“So you remember a conversation you had with an Assistant District Attorney named Frederick Kirsch on July seventeenth of this year?”
“I dunno, I was down there a couple of times.”
“This was the day the detectives came to your apartment and found the brown bag. You remember?”
“Oh, yeah, that time.”
“Yes, that time. Now do you remember a time when Mr. Kirsch showed you those black bloodstained pants and asked you to identify them as the pants removed from your apartment that very day?”
“That wasn’t the same pants, I told him.”
“I see. Now, there was a stenographer present, who took down the conversation between you and Mr. Kirsch. Let me read a portion of this conversation to you and ask you if you remember giving these answers.” Karp swooped over to the prosecution table and grabbed the transcript of the Q and A that Freddie Kirsch had done.
“Mr. Lutz, it says here on page eight that Mr. Kirsch asked you, ‘Did you observe Detective Balducci remove a white jacket and a pair of black pants from your apartment?’ And you answered, ‘Yes.’ And then you were asked, ‘Did you have any objection to the detective removing this white jacket and black pants?’ And you said ‘No.’ And then Mr. Kirsch showed you these black pants and asked you, ‘Are these the black pants that Detective Balducci removed from your apartment on July seventeenth of this year?’ And you answered, ‘Yeah, that’s them.’ Do you recall making those answers?”
“I don’t remember,” said Lutz, beginning once again to stare wildly around the courtroom.
“But you have such a good memory, Mr. Lutz. I show you the page of transcript. Isn’t that your signature on it?”
Lutz took the transcript gingerly. “Yeah, but I never said it was black pants,” he said lamely.
“Let’s try again, Mr. Lutz. Starting on page fourteen. Mr. Kirsch asks you, ‘And did you see what, if anything, Detective Balducci removed from the brown bag?’ And you answer, ‘Some papers, newspapers, and a big knife.’”
“Two knives!” said Lutz. “A bread knife and a little one.”
Judge Montana broke in, “That’s what you said. It’s written there.”
“I never saw that knife. It ain’t that knife!”
“Please continue, Mr. Karp,” said Montana, a crinkle of disgust beginning to show on his neat, brown face.
Karp nodded to the bench and resumed. “As I was saying, page fourteen. Mr. Kirsch said, I show you this knife. Written on the blade just under the hilt are the word, Vindicator, the letters capital EM, the numbers 2176, and the word, Korea. Do you see that?’ Answer, ‘Yes.’ Question, ‘Were you present today when Detective Balducci removed this knife?’ Your answer, ‘Yeah. It was in Felix’s bag.’ Do you recall giving those answers to Mr. Kirsch?”
“Yeah, but we were talking about the other knives. I told you, I never seen that knife.”
Karp went over to the clerk’s table, picked up the bowie knife, and held it in front of Lutz’s face. Lutz seemed to cower away from it, like a goblin shying from an enchanted sword.
Karp said, “I ask you to read what is written, engraved, on the blade of that knife.”
“I never seen that knife,” said Lutz, like a broken record.
“He didn’t ask you that,” said the judge. “Read what he told you to!”
“I can’t read,” said Lutz, his voice rising.
“Did you sign the stenographic transcript of the question and answer session you had with Mr. Kirsch as being true?”
“Yeah, yeah, but they told me …”
“And here, on page sixteen, where you are asked, ‘Has everything you have said today been the truth to the best of your knowledge,’ did you answer yes?”
“Yeah, but … it was different, they pulled a switch.”
Karp walked to the presidium and handed the knife to the judge.
“Your Honor, would you please read the inscription?”
Montana read from the blade the same inscription Karp had just read from the Q and A. Now the disgust was patent on his face.
Karp returned to the questioning, going through the grand jury minutes and demonstrating that Lutz had on a separate occasion, and under oath, identified the black pants and the knife as being the items removed from his apartment. But it was anti-climax; from the moment the judge read the words written on the knife, Steven Lutz was utterly impeached as a witness. Karp settled back and thought nice thoughts about little Freddie Kirsch and his unexpected gift: a perfect Q & A.
The remainder of the trial consisted of the defendant’s testimony. This was anticlimax, too, at least to Karp. Had Felix Tighe lived an exemplary life, had he been a pillar of the community, it might have been remotely possible that against the net of circumstantial evidence that tied him to the murders a clever lawyer like Chopper Hank Klopper might have inserted a reasonable doubt wide enough to spread the meshes.
But Felix was a mutt. He lied with every breath, and about things that could be easily verified, too, and that was what destroyed, at every turn, Klopper’s efforts to insert that doubt.
The pants weren’t his because, he went on, they weren’t his style, because he had to dress well, because he was a sales manager. The knife wasn’t his, and he had never owned a knife like that. He couldn’t have done the murders because he had an alibi for the night: He had gone to Larry’s Bar, and he had been served by a waitress named Marge, whom he proceeded to describe in detail.
Karp could see it in Klopper’s face and in his manner. He knew he was being lied to, and on the stand. There is nothing more obvious, or pathetic, than a defense attorney with a defendant witness who is out of control. Klopper began subtly to withdraw from his client. Once or twice, he even snapped at him, “Just answer the question, please.” But Felix loved to talk, especially about himself, and with all these people watching, hanging on his words, he gladly hung himself.
Karp was practically salivating when his turn came to cross-examine. Not only had Felix owned a big bowie knife before, but he had used it to stab a policeman during the course of a burglary, wasn’t that so? It wasn’t like that. Didn’t you stab him? I can explain that. Didn’t you stab him and weren’t you convicted of stabbing him? Yes, but…. Next question.
Karp went over the initial Q and A that Felix had recorded with Freddie Kirsch. Here he had lied about everything. He didn’t know Stephanie Mullen. He didn’t know Anna Rivas. He had never been in the apartment on Avenue A.
He was confronted with his address book, with sworn statements from witnesses. Oh, that Anna Rivas. Yeah, I know her, but I never beat her up. Well, maybe we had a little argument. Oh, that Stephanie Mullen. Yeah, I knew her, but I never killed her. I was in a bar with a girl. Oh, not that girl, I remember now, another girl.
Karp brought all this out, letting Felix tangle himself. Finally, under Karp’s relentless pressure, Felix admitted he had lied, because he was afraid Kirsch was trying to frame him. He hadn’t trusted Kirsch.
“And did there come a time when you trusted Mr. Kirsch and at last told him the truth?” asked Karp.
“Yes. I thought we had, you know, a rapport. I finally told him, you know, I knew Anna, and we had some words, and that woman called the cops. That happened. I told him.”
“You mean, you lied until you were caught at it?”
“That’s not what I would say. I would say, I didn’t trust Fred Kirsch, because I didn’t think he was, that he had my interests in mind at the time. I would say …”
Here the judge interrupted. “Just answer the question, don’t make a speech.”
“Well a lie, that’s not what I would call it.”
But Karp could see, from a quick inspection of the jury, that the jurymen knew what a lie was. Frowns. Rolling eyes. Terrific.
A good close, too, on the cross, Karp thought. Always leave them laughing: “Mr. Tighe, did you ever meet the murdered boy, Jordan Mullen?”
“Yes, he was around. I think I met him once.”
“You were introduced to him?”
“Not actually introduced, no …”
“But he knew you, he would have recognized you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Is that why you stabbed him to death after you had killed his mother?” asked Karp blandly.
“No.”
“No further questions,” said Karp.
On redirect, Klopper could do little to repair the damage. He tried to show Felix as a man who gave facetious answers under pressure, the kind of spunky guy who might appear to lie when pushed around by the bullies of the law. It was weak and brief. That ended the defense case.
On his rebuttal, Karp focused on the alibi. Karp had elicited from Felix a detailed description of the cocktail waitress. He even had him point her out where she sat in the courtroom. Then he called her to the stand, where she testified that on the night of the murder, she had been off duty. Murmurs in the courtroom.
On cross, Klopper could hardly attack the woman’s memory. She had never said that she recognized Felix—he had said he recognized her. He walked back to the defense table and broke a pencil.
The rest of the rebuttal witnesses were Felix’s supervisors, from his current job and previous ones. He was not a sales manager, nor had he hope of becoming one. There had been complaints from clients. He had been fired repeatedly for skimming, for abusive behavior. The People rested. The defense rested. Final arguments were scheduled for the following day.
As Karp left the courtroom, he saw Felix speaking urgently in Klopper’s ear. Klopper didn’t seem to be listening.