As soon as Roland left, Karp put the murder of the Turkish diplomat entirely out of his mind and turned to the contemplation of a kind of murder less distinguished but far more numerous. From the center drawer of his desk he extracted a large sheet of yellow paper. It was actually four sheets of the large-ruled stock that accountants call spreadsheets taped together. On it were written the names of his attorneys, the cases they were responsible for, and the schedule proposed for each case.
There was an elaborate computer system that was supposed to do the same thing, but Karp knew that system to be out of date and unreliable. He knew it to be unreliable because he had fed enough lies into it to make it so. Bloom and his administrative satrap, Conrad Wharton, placed a high priority first on pumping clearances through the courts and second, on putting forth special effort toward punishing culprits who had the temerity to harm important or interesting people.
Karp smoothed the sheet on his desk. There were nine hundred and fifty homicides listed, which gave each of his people an average of thirty-odd each. In practice, no one worked on thirty homicides; a single homicide trial was absolutely consuming for a single prosecutor, and some cases required more than one. The saving fact was that not all cases went to trial.
Karp ran his eye over the spreadsheets. Perhaps two-thirds of the killings were what the cops called grounders: perfectly obvious events in which someone had aced a loved one or acquaintance and there was absolutely no doubt about what had gone down. When the homicide was the result of the usual brew—poverty, frustration, the last unbearable insult at an unusually vulnerable moment, the convenience of a loaded handgun—the defendant would be allowed to cop to manslaughter one or two. They’d go up for anything up to twenty-five years, depending on the judge, but most would be out after the mandatory minimum—as little as five years for manslaughter two.
On the other hand, it was not a good idea to make a habit of it in New York County on Karp’s watch. This guy Chester Hollis—Karp’s pencil moved to touch People v. Hollis on the sheet—had just killed his third wife, two years after a six-year stretch upstate for killing a girlfriend. Before that he had killed his first wife and done sixty-two months for that. Mr. Hollis would not be allowed a plea, unless it was a plea to guilty on the top count of murder two. If Mr. Hollis chose to exercise his right to a trial (as he probably would) and if he was convicted (by no means a dead certainty) he would go up for twenty-five to life, and would serve at least twenty-five years, at which point he would presumably be too decrepit to attract a fourth sucker, or to use a hammer on her if he did.
Although there were legal limitations on what pleas could be accepted for what original indictments, A.D.A.’s had enormous discretion. Karp’s job was to arrange and staff the flow of cases, within the number of trial slots he had available to him, so that a reasonable proportion of the truly wicked were removed from society for as long as possible. In general, the grounders took care of themselves. Except in cases of special circumstances, like Mr. Hollis, or where insanity pleadings or legal technicalities were involved, Karp allowed the system to crank along on autopilot. He had a competent staff he’d recruited himself, and he trusted them.
Besides the grounders, and making up about a third of all homicides, there were the mysteries: any case for which there was not an immediate suspect. The mysteries stood out on Karp’s chart because he had outlined the little box labeled “defendant” in red. The little box was often blank.
Some were of fairly obvious provenance—a dead man on a mean street with a bullet through the chest and his pockets turned out—while others were exotic: two freshly severed female heads neatly placed on a table in a West Side motel room. All were problems.
They sometimes required elaborate investigations, and typically resulted in cases based on circumstantial evidence, which usually meant that the guy, when they found him, would deny it. Legally the A.D.A.’s were supposed to be in charge of these investigations, but in general the detectives tended to do pretty much as they pleased until they had a suspect. Most prosecutors thought it was wise to concede them that role, but not Karp. He insisted that his people visit the crime scene, handle the physical evidence, and attend the autopsies of the victims.
And among the mysteries, as a matter of course, were the cases that caused the greatest political heat, the ones where either the suspect or the victim was a taxpayer of note, or where members of one race had done in members of another, or where the vic was especially photogenic or endearing, or young, or had been done to death in a particularly elaborate way or in company with an unusually large number of others.
Roland’s Turkish diplomat was one of these, naturally. Karp penciled the name Tomasian in the proper slot and moved on. He tried to hold to the belief that everyone’s life was equally precious and entitled to the same protection of the law, even though he knew that many of New York’s murder victims were not among those for whom the earth wept when they passed.
Like this one, for example. Karp frowned and made a tick mark against People v. Morales, and scrawled a note to Lennie Bergman, the A.D.A. in charge. Emilio Morales was a well-known murderous fiend up on East 112th Street. Karp believed he had stabbed any number of his mugging victims and probably killed a few, but he did not believe that Morales had cut the throat of his partner in crime, Snoopy Vega, and then kept the bloody knife and Snoopy’s blood-soaked baseball hat sitting out on the dresser in the bedroom in the apartment he shared with his grandmother and sisters, which was where the cops had said that they found them.
Instead Karp suspected that the detectives who discovered Vega’s body had decided to rid the city of the rest of the mugging team of Morales & Vega by pinning the hit on the partner. To many cops, one scumbag was like another scumbag. Morales had done killings for which they couldn’t nail him, and now they had one they could plausibly nail him on, with the help of a little planted evidence. Sooner or later they’d get the guy who actually did Vega on some other crime, or maybe the street would save them the trouble. Or maybe Morales actually did do it, in which case it was nicely ironic that he was being framed for it.
Karp, although a big fan of irony, and although he had blinked at plenty of burglars being sent off for a ritual year in the slams on the basis of planted evidence, did not care to extend the technique to the prosecution of murder. He continued in the quaint belief that every scumbag was different, and that the guy who had done the murder was the one, and the only one, to convict for it. Quite apart from that, and of more practical importance, Karp believed they would lose the case on present evidence.
Because Morales, in the right for the first time in his miserable life, would hang tough for a trial, and at the trial, even if the case survived a motion to suppress, the defense would chew away at the tainted evidence like a bull terrier on a prowler’s ankle, until something broke. Someone would remember seeing the hat on the street. The grandma, a saintly churchgoer, would testify that she cleaned his room every day and there had been no hat. Morales would have been playing hearts with five guys at the time of, and so the cops would have to go out and lean on the five guys to suppress the alibi, which would create more havoc at the trial, and Karp didn’t have enough trial slots to waste on fuck-uppery like this.
Karp moved on to the next case and the next, building a tottering house of cards that he prayed would see the homicide bureau through another week without either embarrassment or miscarriage of justice beyond the ordinary run. Connie Trask stuck her head in, told him it was five-thirty and that she was leaving if he didn’t want anything. He waved her away with a smile and worked on through the mysteries.
While Karp worked, Roland Hrcany was laboring in fields even less pleasant, chewing on a Tampa Nugget to keep the smell and his gorge down, and to show some class, while an assistant medical examiner scooped out Mehmet Ersoy’s guts and placed them in a large basin. They were in the autopsy room at the Bellevue morgue, to which Roland had repaired after the press conference. The M.E. was a slight red-haired Irish immigrant named Denny Maher, who liked his work and enjoyed company while he performed it.
“A good liver,” said Maher, probing the organ, “a rarity in a good liver, so to speak, as our friend here undoubtedly was. A well-nourished Caucasian male indeed. I take it from this that he followed the Prophet’s admonition to abjure the water of life. No poteen for the Turk, and bad cess to ’em. Hah, here’s another one.”
Maher’s forceps yanked something out of the mass of viscera and dropped it clinking into a kidney basin. There were three others, squat mushroom shapes, the remains of hollow-nose 9mm bullets. Maher spoke the details of his find into the microphone suspended before his face.
Roland watched impassively as Maher stripped the corpse’s scalp down, cut the top of its head off, and removed the brain. The brain was uninjured, Maher reported, with no gross signs of pathology. He continued his spiel into the microphone, registering his opinion that death was due to exsanguination following the perforation of the anterior aorta and pulmonary arteries by bullets.
Maher switched the microphone off and quickly sewed up the now hollow places with coarse stitches. His assistant, a morose Puerto Rican, helped him move the body to a gurney, which he then wheeled away to the cold room.
“Ten hits, I counted,” said Maher, “of which we have four. I presume the others are in the keeping of either the police or the Department of Sanitation. Funny thing, bullets: when I was in the E.R. during my residency, we had a lad who had thirteen bullet wounds in him, and not a one in a vital spot. He walked out in a week. Then we get them done in by a single .22. It’s luck or artistry. This was not an artistic killing, Roland.”
Hrcany grunted. He already knew the killers were amateurs; he was at the autopsy to see it established that the shots had killed the vic, which was perfectly obvious in the first place.
“Care for a drop, Roland?” asked Maher brightly. “It would help to underscore the gulf between good Christian men like ourselves and followers of the deplorable Mahound. Sad, that is: his immaculate liver didn’t do him a hair of good, and he’s dead as Murphy’s cat in the prime of life.”
“You still drinking lab alcohol, Denny?”
“Of course. It’s nature’s pure stuff, without all those confusing esters and adulterants.”
Roland shook his head and, while Maher decanted a slug of ethanol into a small beaker, glanced over at another gurney. There was something odd about the shape under its cloth. “What’s that? Another bag of parts?” he asked.
“No, not at all. But you might be interested in her, Roland, you being a connoisseur of the girls. That’s what you might call an extremely flat-chested woman.”
He drew the sheet off with a flourish.
Roland’s teeth clamped down hard on the wooden bit of his Tampa Nugget. “Fascinating, Denny. What the fuck happened to her?”
“Took a swan dive off a six-story building and landed facedown. Interesting the way the internal organs have jetted out of the body orifices. It’s going to be a messy one to do. The teeth are all over the place, assuming that they’re not still back at the scene. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if I found some lodged in the brain. And of course we’ll need them for an ID. The high school graduation picture won’t do it for this girlie.”
“A Jane Doe, huh? What, a suicide?”
“It appears so right now. No sign of foul play is obvious, but of course, the amazing Dr. Maher has not worked his forensic miracles yet.”
Roland chuckled. “I guess this’ll be one of the ones that doesn’t get fucked by the staff.”
“Well, as to that,” Maher replied, “there are all sorts of tastes in the profession. I, of course, have never indulged; one imagines it’s much like it is with an Irishwoman, but a bit warmer and without the crying and jabber afterward. Good day to you, Roland.”
Hrcany left, laughing his booming laugh. Maher’s assistant came in and asked hopefully, “You wanna knock it off for today, Doc?”
“No, Carlos,” said Maher, “I want to work on our little pancake here. Hose down the table and help me get her on. You can take off at five.”
At six, Roland Hrcany knocked on the door of Karp’s office and walked in.
“Well,” Karp said, looking up and rubbing his eyes, “were you on TV? Did they love your golden curls?”
“I was and they did. Bloom asked where you were.”
“I bet. He likes to have me where he can see me. How’d it go?”
“Great, great,” said Hrcany noncommittally. “The usual horseshit. Tomasian’s been booked. We’ll arraign him tonight. I’ll probably want to go to the grand jury early next week.”
“That fast?”
“Yeah, why not? We got plenty—or am I missing something?” Hrcany’s bright little blue eyes narrowed.
Karp took a breath and threw down his pencil. “Roland, what do you say I buy you a drink? You deserve it.”
Hrcany’s tight expression turned instantly to amazement. “You want to buy me a drink? Butch, we’ve been working together for twelve years. You never bought me a drink before. Come to that, you don’t even drink.”
Karp rose to his feet and shoveled some folders into a large, ragged cardboard folder that served as his briefcase. “Well, maybe it’s time I started,” he said. He put on his suit jacket and a tan raincoat.
“She’s giving you a hard time and you want to get your load on before going home, right?”
“It makes you happy to believe that,” answered Karp mildly, “but really, I figured, you cracked a big case, we’ll sit down, have a beer and talk about it, like regular people.”
Hrcany had to be satisfied by that explanation. They did, in fact, go to a bar, one in a Chinese restaurant on Bayard Street, a favorite of bail bondsmen, cheap lawyers, and other Criminal Courts habituees. The place was full of these, enjoying after-work drinks, or pre-work drinks, if they were about to handle the late work of the courts, and practicing venality. Karp felt right at home.
The room was smoky and painted glossy red, with the usual character scrolls, misty paintings on silk, dying snake plants, and very old, thin Chinese men arranged in appropriate places. Karp and Roland settled themselves in a red leatherette booth. A blank-faced Chinese woman appeared instantly and took their order.
“Roland, I’ve always wanted to know: how come every Chinese restaurant in the world, no matter how crummy, has a fully stocked cocktail lounge?”
Roland shrugged. “They use them to launder money from Hong Kong and import illegals? I don’t know. It’s part of their plan for world domination.”
“I thought that was the Jews.”
“You guys missed your chance,” said Roland. “Too much assimilation. The Chinese don’t make that mistake.” The waitress brought their drinks, a beer for Karp and a Dewars rocks for Hrcany. Karp put some bills out.
“You see that money?” Roland asked as the waitress swept it up. “Those bills will never touch white skin again. Once it’s in the Chinese community, the money never leaves.”
Karp grinned. “You’re an engaging bigot, Roland. Okay, forget the yellow peril. What’s your take on this Armenian and Turkish business?”
Hrcany drank half his scotch. Offhandedly he replied, “My take? A bunch of nuts, they got out of hand. They were writing letters about something that happened a million years ago, letters to the Turks, I mean. And somebody must have figured, the letters aren’t doing much good, let’s pop one of them, see what happens. They should’ve hired a pro. And for the cherry on top, look at this …”
Roland reached into his briefcase and pulled out a folder. He handed Karp two pages. “This one’s the transcript of the tape of the call-in of the assassination. The other’s a Xerox of a carbon we lifted from Tomasian’s file cabinet. There’s a typewriter there, and I guarantee you we’ll show it was typed on that machine. Notice any similarities?”
Karp read the two texts. “I see what you mean. This part about ‘thousands and thousands of the sons and daughters of the Armenian nation, cruelly butchered, cry out for recognition and recompense. If they do not receive their due, then the fighters of the Armenian Secret Army will extract vengeance instead.’ It’s word for word the same in both places. Pretty impressive, Roland. It’ll play great in court.” He handed the papers back and took another sip of beer. “I guess there’s no question that we’re going to have to try this one.”
“For sure—there’s no hint of a deal. He says he didn’t do it and doesn’t know who did, and I gotta say, he’s a cool little fucker. Compared to the people I usually have up on murder, it’s a pleasure doing business with him. His lawyer’s also right by the book too. Another Armenian, Hagopian his name is. Nice guy, looks like that guy used to do Perry Mason on TV.”
“Raymond Burr,” said Karp. “You’re in trouble, Roland.”
Hrcany laughed, “Yeah, right. No, we’ll take him down. And I’ll make another bet: in a little while we’ll pick up the other guy too. Either Tomasian will rat him out, or he’ll do something dumb. Yeah, I know I said he was being cool, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. He hasn’t thought about what it’s going to be like for a nice middle-class boy looking at twenty-five to life with the smokes upstate. Plus, the momma and the daddy and the sisters and whatever haven’t been to work on him yet. He’ll deal. And if not, fuck him, we’ll try and we’ll convict. What’s wrong, you don’t think so?”
Roland had observed Karp rubbing his lower lip and staring raptly toward the upper left-hand corner of the universe, an infallible indication of dubiety.
“Well,” said Karp after a pause. “You have a good case. I just don’t think it’s soup yet. The girlfriend, for example—”
Roland made a dismissive gesture. “Come on, Butch! Let’s say she shows up …” In falsetto, “‘Yes, Officer, my honey was with me all night and until noon, and my squeeze is so sore I can hardly piss.’ No problem on the girl. I’ll take her apart on the stand. She fucked him, maybe she fucked someone else, she’s a slut. I’ll find people she told lies to. If she was a virgin, then she loves him, she’d do anything to save him from jail. If she’s a dog, I put young guys on the jury. If she’s a dish, I’ll make sure it’s full of bags and fags—the usual routine.”
Karp nodded impatiently. “Right, Roland, I know how to impeach a witness. That wasn’t what I meant. I meant, why isn’t she here? Where is she? What’s she doing? Are the Armenians holding on to her? Is Tomasian being set up for a sacrificial lamb by his own people? Okay, another thing, there’s this business with the license plate and the guns—”
“Not the stupidity defense, please!”
“No, although in this case it might even work. I mean it doesn’t jell, one with the other. If for some reason they didn’t mind using their own license plate, then they’d want to be clean as whistles when the cops came around. The defense then attacks the eyesight or credibility of whoever spotted the plate. If for some reason they want the guns around, they have incriminating evidence on site, then they absolutely have to be anonymous when they do the hit. Then the defense can play them as innocent victims interested in self-protection. Which brings up the additional question of why a man who’s got his hands on one of the most effective silent assassination weapons ever invented wants to pull a dumb stunt like shooting a guy in front of a dozen people while he’s parked on a one-way street that’s practically a dead end.”
“I told you already, they’re amateurs.”
“Roland, amateurs, shmamateurs, it doesn’t make sense. What’s he got the silenced grease gun for? Fourth of July for the deaf? What I’m saying is, even if he’s never done anything like this before in his life, if he wants this Turk dead, he hangs out at the guy’s apartment late one night and hoses him down with the M3. There’s another angle here that we’re not seeing.”
Hrcany finished his drink and signaled the waitress to bring another. He did not like the drift of the conversation, and it was not lost on him that the D.A. had asked none of these questions. In fact, Roland was a good enough investigator to have had similar reservations. But it was past time for these. It was now accepted gospel, broadcast to the millions not an hour since, that Tomasian was the guy. All of Roland’s mental energy was now devoted to making sure that, weeks or months hence, twelve jurors would also believe it, beyond a reasonable doubt, to a moral certainty.
He said, “I know, there’s flaky sides to the case, but I don’t think they’re that important, tactically. People watch a lot of TV killings; they think that’s real life. They don’t figure what’s really going to happen if you do a crime in such and such a place and time. It’ll be hard for the defense to get that point across—”
“No, Roland, look,” Karp broke in, “I’m not talking tactically. I’m not saying it’s not a good case. It’s a good case. I’m asking, is it the guy? Did he really do it? It’s not the same question as ‘Is it a good case?’”
“Of course he did it!” snapped Hrcany. “What, you think it was a mugging that went sour? Who the fuck else could it be? He wrote the letter, he made the call, he has the car and the guns and the parka, he killed the guy. Case closed!”
Karp sighed and drank some more beer. His head was light, probably from the Empirin and codeine pill he had swallowed a few hours earlier, that and the unfamiliar alcohol, and he allowed that his incisive legal mind was probably not tuned to its highest pitch. So Roland was probably right; Karp, himself often a victim of second-guessing by incompetents, was sensitive to his own practice of that vice, and was, besides, disinclined to light his friend’s notoriously short fuse.
Therefore he smiled pleasantly and changed the subject, which Roland was more than willing to do, and they spoke desultorily of sports for twenty minutes or so, and then Karp got up and said that he ought to go home.
Home was only six blocks away in a loft building on Crosby off Grand, and Karp walked there now, as he almost always did. His pace, however, was not his usual breakneck lope, but a careful and stately progress, like that of an ancient colonel on the esplanade of a resort. At his door, Karp still had to climb five steep flights of wooden stairs. This he did very slowly, flexing the bad knee as little as possible. It took him nearly ten minutes, and he was pale and faintly nauseated when at last he reached the red-painted steel door to the loft he shared with his family.
Entering, he staggered over to a tatty couch upholstered in red velvet and threw himself down on it, lifting his feet up on a low table made from a flush door set on concrete pipe. Beyond this table Marlene, his wife, sat cross-legged in a bentwood rocker, with a nest of papers on her lap. She regarded him over the rims of her large, round reading glasses and said, “Where have you been? It’s past seven.”
“I’ve been drinkin’ away me pay down at the saloon, that’s where,” said Karp. He slipped his shoes off and shrugged out of his raincoat and suit jacket. “And now I want my dinner and a hug from my old woman.”
She pushed her glasses back on her nose and resumed her study of a document. “Your dinner,” she sniffed, “is congealing in a pan on the stove. There’s bread and salad in the fridge. Pray help yourself. I’m answering motions.”
She continued to work for a minute or two, but when Karp didn’t stir, she looked up and examined him more closely.
“Butch? Are you okay? God, you look like death warmed over! Whatever got into you? You know you can’t drink.”
“Can too,” said Karp.
“Nonsense! Jewish husbands don’t drink or beat up their wives. I learned that at my mother’s knee. If I wanted a lush I would’ve married somebody I could at least take to church. What’s wrong with you, then?”
“Nothing,” said Karp. “I’m just tired.”
“Oh, horseshit! It’s that goddamn knee again, isn’t it? You said you were going to take care of it.”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Karp. “Meanwhile, could you get me some ice?”
She dumped her papers on the floor and snapped her glasses off. Going to the refrigerator, she said, “I ought to make you crawl for it. Honestly, you’re a complete infant.”
She wrapped a dozen ice cubes in a baggie and a dish towel and brought the ice pack over to Karp, who had slipped out of his trousers in the meantime and unwrapped the Ace bandages that had held the errant joint together all day. His knee looked red, hard, and unnatural, like a pomegranate.
“Jesus!” she exclaimed. “You can walk on that? It looks like something in the window of a Chinese grocery that the Chinese don’t even know what it is.” She giggled, “God, you look nutty in your shirt and tie and no pants.”
“Thank you for your support in my hour of need,” Karp said stiffly.
“Oh, stop it! This is completely your fault, and I’m not going to feel all guilty and rush around being Florence Nightingale. I have an actual infant to take care of. Dammit, see a doctor! Get it fixed!”
“Okay, I’ll do it,” said Karp grumpily.
“Honest, swear to God?”
“Yeah, I’ll see Hudson tomorrow. I’ll tell him it’s an emergency.”
She looked at him closely to see if he was trying to fob her off with a facile evasion, and then, deciding that he was sincere, plopped down beside him on the sofa and put her arm around his neck.
He said, “That’s better. Speaking of the actual infant, how is she?”
“She’s perfect. She’s an angel. But the child-care situation is deteriorating badly. Belinda has informed us that she is returning to her beautiful island home in two weeks.”
“Why? I thought she liked it here.”
“It’s a family thing, which she told me in great detail and which I won’t repeat. But that makes two exploited third-world women we’ve hired in the past three months to keep me liberated, and I’m sick of it. And don’t give me that look! I’m not stopping work, even if I have to take Lucy into court with me, or better yet, drop her off in your office. You’re a bureau chief. You can sit on your butt all day and give orders.”
“Wait a second, I thought you were a bureau chief too.”
“Yes, but my bureau, concerned as it is with trivialities like rape and child abuse, has only five attorneys in it, of whom I am one. I spend six times as much time running my ass off as you do.”
“There’s a child-care center—”
“No! I am not going to have our daughter stuck in a disease-ridden barn and shoved in front of a TV all day. Or worse.”
“No, listen!” he said. “I heard Tina Linski talking to somebody today in the bureau office, a cop—no, she was a parole officer. Her sister had her kid in this group home and they were looking for another baby and she wanted to know if Tina wanted to move her kid in there. I just caught snatches of the conversation, but it sounded real nice. The woman’s got degrees up the ying-yang in early education and child psych—”
“Who, the parole officer?”
“No, the woman who takes care of the kids. And the place is in Tribeca. You could drop her off on the way to work.”
“What was her name, the parole officer?”
“I didn’t catch it. A kind of chubby woman, short, dark hair. You could ask Tina.”
“I’m on the case. But it sounds too good to be true. On the other hand, we should be due for some good luck. I got a letter from Lepkowitz today.”
“What does he want, more rent?”
“No. It seems that nice old Mr. Lepkowitz in Miami Shores, driven to a final paroxysm of greed by Lepkowitz Junior, has decided to take this building co-op.”
“Oh, shit!”
“Indeed. I talked to Larry and Stuart downstairs about it briefly before you got home. Stuart’s been dickering with Lepkowitz Junior. Morton. He’s talking as high as two hundred thou a floor, plus the maintenance is going to run at least four bills a month.”
Karp felt his stomach turn over. “Christ, Marlene! That’s almost twice what we’re paying in rent. And how’re we going to come up with two hundred large? Take bribes?”
“It may come to that,” she said. “No, Stu and Larry have been running numbers like crazy. They tell me that if we put most of the forty-five grand we have in CDs into a down payment, and if we both keep working, we’d qualify for a thirty-year note. The monthly nut, principal, interest, taxes, insurance, and maintenance, will run about twenty-two hundred.”
He gasped. “For this?” he blurted out quite spontaneously. Marlene scowled. It was a sore point between them. She had converted an old electroplating factory loft into a living space, years before the notion of SoHo had been concocted by real estate agents, or the loft area south of Houston Street had gone chichi. When Marlene moved in and did the grueling work of cleaning, painting, wiring, plumbing, and carpentry by herself, or with the help of her family, nobody but a few artists had lived in the area. It had been illegal to live in such buildings. In those days, she would sit on her fire escape and look out at square miles of blackness lit only by the windows of a dozen or so pioneers.
Now, in the late seventies, companies would convert a loft to the specifications of artistic millionaires. Loft buildings in this part of Manhattan had become gold mines for their owners. And Marlene’s loft was a nice one. It was a single floor-through room over thirty feet wide and a hundred long, with windows on both ends and a big skylight in the middle. At one end, under the huge windows looking out on Crosby Street, was a sleeping platform. There was an enclosed nursery, and the rest of the space was divided by partitions, like a series of stage sets, into a bathroom (which held a rubber thousand-gallon tank that Marlene had rescued from the electroplaters and converted into a hot tub), a fully equipped kitchen, a living area, a dining room under the skylight, a sort of gym-cum-storeroom, and, at the end under the Grand Street windows, an office lushly crowded with house plants.
On the other hand, Karp thought it was no place to bring up a child. A child had to have, as in his Brooklyn boyhood, a street shaded by sycamore trees, and backyards, and other kids on the street to play potsy and ringelevio with, and there should be a mom who came out at around six, dressed in an apron, to call the kid in off the street. Karp valued his peace too much to actually express this fantasy to Marlene, but it was there in his mind, a constant irritant, now spurred to a fever by the prospect of having to actually buy this place.
Marlene, naturally, knew precisely what was going on in his mind and would have delivered a devastating riposte had she not been aware that Karp was in considerable physical torment. Instead, therefore, she said, lightly, “Well, we don’t have to worry about it this minute. Lots of things could happen. Lepkowitz père could go out any minute—he’s in his eighties—and with any luck the property could be in probate until Lucy’s ready for Smith, and with a little more luck, Lepkowitz fils could go under a bus, and our problems would be over.”
“Yeah, and the horse could learn to sing,” said Karp glumly. He lifted the ice pack and inspected his knee. It was down some but not nearly normal; in this it was a model of his life.
Marlene said, “Yeah. By the way, who were you out drinking with? Some woman?”
The sudden change of topic threw Karp’s mind out of the muddy rut in which it had been grinding, and left it spinning on the slick ice of Marlene’s attitude.
“What! No, not a woman. Roland.”
“That must have been fun. What prompted it? A sudden taste for bad lesbian jokes?”
“No, Roland cracked, or seems to have cracked, a big case. That shooting over by the U.N.—they found this pathetic amateur terrorist, an Armenian jeweler. So I thought I’d buy him a drink and discuss the case in congenial circumstances.”
While he was talking, Marlene rose from the couch and went to the bathroom. She took an old blue plaid robe from a hook and carried it over to Karp. Then she busied herself with warming up some food. He watched her work. Her movements were precise, graceful, economical. She closed the refrigerator door just so, she picked up and used implements elegantly—there was never a mess where she had been. He watched her a lot; even after living together for four years, her movements still fascinated him.
Marlene Ciampi was a medium-sized woman just shy of thirty years old, with a thin, muscular body that her single pregnancy had touched hardly at all. She had a face out of the late Renaissance: cheekbones like knives, a long, straight nose, a wide, lush mouth, a strong jaw and chin. Her brows were heavy and unplucked, and underneath them were two large, dark eyes, only one of which was real.
“Discuss the case in a bar, huh?” Marlene turned from the stove and gestured with a spatula. “By which I gather you aren’t in love with his Armenian,” she said.
“How did you figure that out?” said Karp, amazed. He was barely aware of it himself.
“You forget I’m a trained investigator,” she answered blithely. “Look, Roland’s a friend of yours, but you don’t go out of your way to socialize with him outside the office. He spends a lot of time hanging around saloons, and you never go into a saloon. So why should you all of a sudden decide to go into his turf? Because you wanted to break some bad news and, nice guy that you are, you thought it would go easier if he was comfortable and had a couple of scoops in him. Am I right? Yeah. So how did it go?”
Karp made a dismissive gesture. “I brought up a few points I thought he should look at.”
“Such as?”
“You really want to hear this?”
“A little, but I get the feeling you really want to tell it. Here’s your dinner.”
She had made up a little tray, chicken stew and salad and a heel of Tuscan bread and butter, which she placed carefully across Karp’s lap. He tore into the food ravenously. Marlene was a good cook, if you liked good bread, good coffee, and lumps of miscellaneous material generously sauced and served on rice or spaghetti, and you didn’t mind eating the same thing several days in a row. Between mouthfuls he filled her in on what he had learned of the Tomasian case, and described his vague doubts.
“So you don’t think this Armenian did it?” asked Marlene when he had concluded his story.
“I didn’t say that. I said there’s things about the case that would make me uneasy if it was my case, and I expressed that to Roland.”
“How did he take it?”
“Not well. He was doing his massive jaw-clenching routine when I decided to drop the subject.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Marlene. “It sounds like it’s a mega-case that could make him famous, and here’s you throwing sand in the gears. He’s jealous of you to begin with—”
“Roland? He’s not jealous of me. I think he thinks I’m a little wimpy, if anything, because I don’t drink and fuck everything above room temperature and talk tough with the cops.”
“That’s right,” she replied, “and even though you don’t, you’re famous, and you have the best homicide conviction record in the city, and you got to play pro ball—”
“And I’m married to an incredibly beautiful woman—”
“In your dreams, and he can’t stand not being the biggest swinging dick on the street.”
“You know, you’re really being unfair, Marlene,” replied Karp. “Roland right now is probably the hardest-working and most successful A.D.A. in the office. He’s got no reason to be jealous of anyone. Rivalry maybe—he’s a competitive guy. So am I. It’s natural. But I can’t believe he’d let that influence the way he handled a case.”
“Well you’ve always been totally naïve about that aspect of human behavior, especially where pals are concerned. Look, Roland’s been at the D.A. as long as you, right? And, as you say, he’s got a great track record, correct? But you don’t see anyone hurrying to make him a bureau chief. And you know why? He’s got a personality like a Doberman pinscher.”
“So do I,” said Karp defensively. “So do you, for that matter.”
“In court, yes,” replied Marlene. “Not otherwise. That’s a big difference. And we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and Roland. I don’t count for him because I’m just a wise-ass cunt, as Roland might put it.”
“You never did like him.”
“I like him fine, Butch. Roland and I have had many interesting and amusing conversations, especially after he finally got it through his blond head that I wasn’t going to crawl into the rack with him. But he’s got a thing going with you. And I’d want to watch him around Bloom and company.”
“What? That’s crazy, Marlene! He hates Bloom worse than I do.”
“Yeah, but he thinks he can manipulate Bloom, which means he’s playing on Bloom’s court. You, on the other hand, decline the game entirely, which is what drives Bloom crazy. You just don’t give a shit. Are you finished with that? I want to clean up.”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Karp, and then sat in silence, flexing his chilled knee and thinking about what Marlene had said. It didn’t make sense to him, but he had learned over the years to appreciate Marlene’s judgments about people, even when he didn’t agree with them, and he treated her pronouncements like those of an expert witness in, say, blood chemistry—recondite but usable in court.
She finished her wash-up and sat down next to him on the couch. She lit her evening cigarette, one of the five she allowed herself each day.
“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“Do? What can I do? It’s his case and it’s a strong case against his guy.”
“But what if he didn’t do it?”
Karp smiled. “Then because our system is just, he’ll walk out a free man.”
“I can see you don’t want to discuss this seriously,” she replied sharply, “but I am simply not going to believe you’re going to let an innocent man get nailed for this, and—don’t interrupt—and let the guilty party walk away laughing, just because you don’t want to hurt Roland’s feelings.”
“Don’t get started, Marlene,” warned Karp. “I meant what I said about getting off, and you know why? Because in court we’re not like the defense attorneys. It’s not a symmetrical thing. They don’t have to prove anything; they don’t have to even believe their client is innocent. That’s not their job. All they have to do is insert doubt. It’s a simpler service, like dry cleaning.”
“I know all this, Butch. What’s your point?”
“My point is, if we don’t believe the guy’s guilty, it does matter. The doubt is there on the prosecutor’s side and the jury can smell it.”
“Oh, what horseshit! You mean to tell me that innocent people don’t get convicted? Christ, there are even words for the process: framed, railroaded—”
“Okay, I’ll modify that: not for homicide, not by conviction where there’s competent counsel and not in New York City at the present time. Sure, in Coon Squat, Georgia, where they have one homicide in a decade, yeah, they grab the town asshole and nail him to a tree. But not here, not recently. Christ, Marlene, that’s why these bozos Bloom put in have been copping stone killers to man deuce. That’s what I’m trying to change. It’s hard to convict someone who you’re absolutely one hundred percent convinced is guilty. Trials are a bitch! And you could get wiped if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. That’s why they don’t do them.”
“Okay, right, but what if Roland is really convinced the guy did it?”
Karp thought about that for a moment, and then said, “Well, look: this case is two days old. Two days. They’ve made terrific progress, and Roland is hyped up about it. I would be too. Now if, after however many months, Roland brings this case to trial, then he’ll really believe the guy did it, and moreover, if he does, then the guy really did it. Roland is good.”
“You’re going to leave it at that, huh?”
“What do you want me to do, babe? Second-guess him? Conduct a parallel investigation? You know I can’t do that. Meanwhile, Roland’ll do the right thing when the time comes.”
“Well,” said Marlene, “you have touching faith, but faith is as nothing without works. You might think about an ancillary investigation.”
“How do you mean?”
“Where’s the girl? The alibi? She’s missing, a missing person. Her family will be concerned.”
“What are you suggesting, Marlene? That I pump up the cops to find a girl who just happens to be a possible material witness in Roland’s case? What do I tell Roland? Gee, Roland, there are fifty thousand missing persons every year in Manhattan, and I thought I’d pick one and put the max on it, just for laughs, and guess who it is—”
“Okay, okay, it’s a lame idea. Why are we talking about this goddamn case anyway? It’s not like I don’t have my own problems. And speaking of which, since we’re talking shop in the sanctity of our home, I think I can get Harry Bello to come over to the D.A. squad.”
“You can? That’s great,” said Karp, genuinely impressed. Bello was a detective of uncanny skill, whose eccentricity, alcoholism, and general mulishness had caused him to be banished to a backwater in Queens, which had not prevented him from solving, in concert with the Karps, a case that the criminal justice hierarchy in Queens had not wanted solved. Bello had become, as a direct result of this, both dry and Lucy Karp’s godfather, as well as persona non grata from one end of Queens to the other.
“Yes,” Marlene continued, “the borough assistant chief was delighted to help. In fact, he gave out that if Harry never sets foot on his turf again, it’ll be a day too soon. He’ll start next Monday.”
“I presume you’ll monopolize him,” said Karp.
“It’s not a choice. I doubt he’ll work for anybody else. You know Harry.”
“Very clever, Marlene. Your own private investigator, and I bet it’s a permanent steal. Harry’s not going to show up on the D.A. squad’s budget, is he? He’ll be on the Queens detective chart until the day he hands in his tin.”
She giggled. “How well you know me, my love. And I learned how to run that scam from you, if you recall.”
“So you did,” responded Karp, happy now that both the unpleasantness about Roland’s case and the agony in his knee had abated. “And I believe it’s time for us to stand clutching each other at our baby’s doorway, watching her sleeping and making stupid noises, after which, if you’ll help me climb that fucking ladder, I intend to take to my bed.”