Justice Denied (7 page)

“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.”