Justice Denied (10 page)

After fuming in his office for a half hour and being rude to everyone within easy reach, Roland called Frangi at Midtown South and told him to get over to the bank where Mehmet Ersoy had maintained a safety-deposit box, with key to same. Roland stood impatiently over a secretary while a warrant was typed out, whipped into a judge's office, got it signed, and left immediately for the bank.

Frangi was already there. He had identified himself to the bank branch manager. Roland flashed his warrant, and they were allowed to follow a uniformed guard into the vault.

“What's going on?” asked Frangi.

“Nothing. My boss got a hair up his ass about this case.”

It was one of the large kind, a smooth steel box nearly the size of a bus station locker. The guard used Ersoy's key and the bank's key to remove the box, and carried it with dignity to a little room, where he placed it on a table and departed.

Frangi flipped up the lid of the box. He let out a wordless exclamation. Hrcany looked inside and cursed and stamped his foot.

“How much you figure?” asked Frangi.

Both men had considerable experience in judging large volumes of cash. Roland rummaged in the box, flipping stacks of bills at random. They were hundreds, all of them, in fresh bank wrappers marked “$10,000.”

“A million,” said Roland, “at least. Maybe a little more.”

“Thrifty guy,” said Frangi glumly.

5

K
arp sloshed his drink idly in his glass and looked around through the milling crowd for Marlene. As a rule, he disliked workplace parties. He had to pretend to like drinking, to find amusement in what drinking did to the brain and behavior (in order to avoid being thought a spoilsport, one of Karp's big fears, and somewhat justified), and to socialize with people he would not have shared three words with had they not had a function in his professional life, and, since his profession was criminal justice, that included socializing with an unusual number of unpleasant people.

He would have avoided this party, as he had many others, had not the guest of honor been Tom Pagano, the outgoing director of the Legal Aid Society offices for the Manhattan criminal courts and a man for whom Karp had immense respect and affection. Pagano had been copping pleas when Karp was still in grade school, and now, in his early sixties and tired, had been rewarded with a judgeship, which in comparison to running Legal Aid was a paid vacation.

There was Marlene, by the bar, of course, smoking and sucking wine coolers and talking animatedly to a short curly-haired man. Karp pushed his way through the crowd to her side.

She hailed him gaily. Marlene at least was enjoying herself. She liked parties, which was yet another reason for coming to this one, to forestall the “he never takes me anywhere.”

She gestured possessively at Karp and said, “Paulie, this is my husband, Butch Karp. Butch, Paul Ashakian. He just started working for Legal Aid. He's from the old neighborhood; the Ashakians used to live across from us in Ozone Park. I used to run around with his sister Lara, and Paul and my brother Dom were on the gym team together at St. Joe. A giant family, bigger than ours. My kid brother and Paulie used to think the Chuck Berry song was about them.”

“Song?” said Karp.

“Honestly, Butch! Where
were
you? A Whole Lot
Ashakian
Goin' On? Get it?”

The two men shook hands. “Marlene thinks I'm culturally deprived, I missed rock and roll,” said Karp, smiling. He gestured to the party at large. “You're losing a great boss.”

Ashakian nodded vigorously. “Yeah, he recruited me, and now this.”

“Any word on the replacement?”

Ashakian laughed. “Hey, I can barely find the men's room. I'll be the last to find out. You'll know before I do.”

“No, they don't tell me anything either,” said Karp. “I never hear the gossip.”

“Nobody tells you gossip because you can keep a secret,” said Marlene. “People come into your office and swear you to secrecy and tell you some juicy stuff, and then what do you do? You don't tell anybody! Of course they stop telling you—you never tell
them
anything. You're out of the grapevine, Butchie.”

“Luckily, I have you to inform me,” said Karp.

“Yes,” said Marlene, “I blab. I'm so deep in the grapevine I'm covered with sticky purple juice.”

“So who is it?” asked Ashakian.

Marlene threw down a healthy gulp of her drink. “I'm not gonna tell, since I've been sworn to secrecy. It's Milton Freeland.”

Blank stares from both. “Freeland. From Sussex County Legal Services. Apparently a hotshot, hard-charger, good political connections.”

“I wish I was impressed,” said Karp. “I never heard of the guy. I was expecting a promotion—one of Tom's people.”

“Go figure,” said Marlene, “and speaking of blabbing, I was just telling Paul about your doubts on Tomasian.”

Karp's face crinkled in disbelief. He glared at her and said in a strained voice, “It's not my case, Marlene.”

She ignored the tone and said, “Paul doesn't care about the legal details. It's the Armenian connection.”

“I don't understand,” said Karp.

Ashakian was more than willing to dispel his ignorance. “That's the whole point. The Armenian community is really bent out of shape about this. I was at a meeting the other night at the Tomasians' house He put both hands to his plump cheeks and shook his head. “You would've thought the Turks were beating down the doors. Pandemonium. It was like, years of paranoia were sitting there, just waiting for something to spring it, and this was it.”

“Paranoia?”

“Yeah, about the Turks,” said Ashakian, and then seeing the incomprehension on Karp's face, sighed, as if he had explained something far too often, and continued, “Turks and Armenians? Cowboys and Indians? Nazis and Jews? The Turks killed a million and a half Armenians between 1915 and 1920, including one of my grandparents.”

“And they're still doing it? Killing them, I mean.” Karp considered himself something of a connoisseur of murder, both mass and individual, and he was vaguely aware of having heard something about the subject the young man had opened, but he was blank on the details. Nor could he understand what it had to do with the case at hand.

“No, they're not. They got them all, or they ran. Some were rescued by Europeans after the first war, some went to Soviet Armenia.”

“I don't get it, then. What's the point of the terrorism? Or are you saying there aren't any Armenian terrorists?”

“Oh, there are Armenian terrorists, all right,” said Ashakian grimly. “The point is that the Turks won't admit it ever happened. There wasn't any genocide, according to them. They won't acknowledge it, won't pay reparations to survivors, nothing, zip.”

‘That's impossible,” said Karp. “It's like those nuts that claim Auschwitz never happened. Hell, the physical evidence—”

“No, it's not the same. Thousands of witnesses saw the Nazi camps. The camps were captured while they were still in operation. It was obvious what was going on, and the Germans kept good records. But the Turks didn't do it that way. They drafted the young Armenian men and massacred them in their barracks. They drove the rest of the population out into the countryside and marched them to nowhere until they all died of starvation and disease. Women and children! Babies tossed into ditches!

“No photographs, of course. Shit, there were probably about twelve cameras in Turkey in 1915. No records either. The only witnesses were German civilians, and the German government didn't do anything about it while it was going on because the Turks were their allies. After the war, all they had was oral testimony from survivors, Armenians. Suspect, obviously.”

“I can see where it could be hard to believe,” said Karp judiciously. Ashakian's face had flushed as he warmed to the subject, and a glint of fanaticism had appeared in his eye. Karp looked at Marlene for conversational support, but she was obviously enjoying the lecture and was not averse to seeing Karp discomfited. He had endured any number of lectures on the Holocaust from childhood onward, often with a we-Jews-have-to-stick-together-or-else subtext from people looking for emotional or substantive favors. He was holocausted out, in fact, as Ashakian clearly was not.

As if reading his mind, Ashakian turned to the familiar theme. “Look, imagine World War Two had lasted, say, another three years. It could've, easy. The Nazis would've been able to kill all the Jews they had. Then they tear down the death camps and pave them over, build parks or housing on top, get rid of all the shoes, the hair, and whatnot. They burn the records. Then, after the war, if anybody asks, they say, ‘Jews? What Jews? They left. They're in Russia, China, who knows? Have another beer. Witnesses? It's hearsay, exaggeration. Besides, how can you trust Jewish testimony? It's self-interested. They were on top and we kicked them out, and now they're whining about a massacre.' That's exactly what happened in Turkey. You know what the Turks say? ‘Trust a snake before a Jew, and a Jew before a Greek, but never trust an Armenian.'”

The three of them were silent for a long moment, thinking about this. Then Karp said, “Okay, back to the present. What's the tie-in with the Tomasian case?”

“The tie-in is somebody whacked Ersoy and they're framing Aram for it. Aram is an Armenian nationalist. Who has a hard-on for Armenian nationalists?” He laughed bitterly. “Who the hell even knows what an Armenian nationalist is?”

“You like the Turks for it? You think Ersoy's own guys did it and set up the frame?”

“Who else?”

“Another Armenian nationalist,” suggested Karp mildly. “Or anybody who knew what you just told me.”

“That's bullshit!” Ashakian cried, loud enough to draw stares from other drinkers. Then he remembered to whom he was speaking: one of the more powerful figures of the New York criminal bar and, not incidentally, a man twice his size. He flushed and mumbled something apologetic and added, “It couldn't happen. I mean, Armenians are a very close-knit community.”

“So are the Italians,” said Karp with a dirty look at Marlene. “They don't have much problem whacking each other.”

She stuck out her tongue at him briefly and said, “Don't change the subject, dear. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

“I told you, Marlene, it's not my case, and I don't want to talk about it.” As he said this, he bore in his mind, as a griping burden, the knowledge about Mehmet Ersoy's safety-deposit box, grudgingly related by Hrcany the day before. The presence of the money meant that the odds against the murder being a simple terrorist act had gone way up. There were documents in the box as well, which were now up at Columbia being translated from Turkish. Karp was not inclined to reveal these discoveries as gossip at a party.

Ashakian looked disappointed. Karp could see the respect dying in his eyes. Why did these young lawyers expect you to pursue justice? After a few minutes more of bland conversation, Ashakian made an excuse and left Karp and Marlene together at the bar.

“That wasn't very smart, Marlene.”

She finished her wine cooler and signaled the bartender for a refill. “No, it wasn't,” she replied, “but I'm off duty. I don't have to be smart. He's a nice kid and he's worried. I thought it would perk him up to talk to you about it, since you also don't like the Armenian for it. I was wrong: sue me!”

Karp gave Marlene a long, appraising look. Her heavy, straight brows were lowering, and her exquisite jawline had assumed a cleaver-like sharpness. She'd obviously had a few and was moving inexorably toward righteous belligerence. It was not beyond her to go into a screaming scene in front of the entire New York County criminal justice establishment. Karp decided to forestall this possibility with a judicious retreat. He groaned and flexed his bad knee.

“Listen, I'm wiped out. I need to split.”

“But the party's just getting going,” protested Marlene.

“Me, not us. You stay, have a good time. You need a break anyway. I'm going to schmooze for two minutes with Pagano and then head for home. I'll relieve Belinda, be a daddy for a couple of hours.”

Marlene didn't bother to protest; in fact, she beamed and laid a serious kiss on Karp, in front of judges and everybody, a kiss that was as good as Demerol for his aching body.

He rolled off unsteadily through the throng, and found Tom Pagano sitting at a drink-laden table, surrounded by well-wishers and cronies from Legal Aid. Pagano smiled broadly as Karp approached and waved him over. “Butch Karp! Here he is, guys, the Prince of Darkness. Sit down, have a drink!” The happy hubbub seemed to diminish slightly as Karp slid gratefully into a chair. Somebody put a full bottle of Schlitz into his hand.

Although the lawyers who faced one another every day in the criminal courts pretended to a genial collegiality out of court, it was an inescapable fact that the adversarial system was well named. Winning and losing was part of the game, but Karp won a little too often; in fact, in over ten years he had never lost in a homicide trial. Among the public defenders sitting around the table there was not one whom Karp had not trounced in court.

No, there was at least one. Karp felt eyes on him, and he turned to confront the intense gaze of a stranger. Who extended his hand across the table and said, “I'm Milt Freeland.”

Karp took the proffered hand. “Tom's replacement, right? Glad to meet you.”

“You have good sources of information: it's not even official yet. Of course, no one could replace Tom,” said Freeland in a tone that implied that not only could Tom Pagano be replaced, but that it was about time. Freeland was in his late thirties, a thin, small man with a large nose, black horn-rims, and an aureole of reddish hair around a balding dome. He was wearing a too-tight baby-shit-colored three-piece suit and a dark red tie with little gold justice scales embroidered on it.