The Bonfire of the Vanities (54 page)

Kramer said, “Okay, and then what?”

“I say to him, ‘Henry, where you going?’ And he say, ‘I’m going to the takeout,’ and I say, ‘That’s where I’m going.’ So we start walking down to the takeout.”

“Walking down what street?”

“Bruckner Boulevard.”

“Is Henry a good friend of yours?”

For the first time Roland showed an emotion. He seemed faintly amused. A little smile twisted one corner of his mouth, and he lowered his eyes, as if an embarrassing topic had come up. “Naw, I just know him. We live in the same project.”

“You hang around together?”

More amusement. “Naw, Henry don’t hang around much. He don’t come out a lot.”

“Anyway,” said Kramer, “the two of you are walking down Bruckner Boulevard on the way to the Texas Fried Chicken. Then what happened?”

“Well, we go down to Hunts Point Avenue, and we fixing to cross the street to go over to the Texas Fried Chicken.”

“Cross which street, Hunts Point Avenue or Bruckner Boulevard?”

“Bruckner Boulevard.”

“Just so we get it straight, you’re on which side of Bruckner Boulevard, the east side going over to the west side?”

“That’s right. The east side going over to the west side. I was standing out in the street a little ways, waiting for the cars to pass by, and Henry was standing over here.” He motioned to his right. “So I can see the cars better than he can, because they be coming up from this way.” He motioned to his left. “The cars, mostly they be traveling out in the center lane, in, you know, like a line, and all of a sudden this one car, it pulls out, and it wants to pass all these other cars on the right, and I can see it’s coming too close to where I’m standing. So I jump back. But Henry, I guess he don’t see anything until he see me jump back, and then I hear this little tap, and I see Henry falling, like this.” He made a spinning motion with his forefinger.

“Okay, what happened then?”

“Then I hear this screech. This car, it’s putting on the brakes. The first thing I do, I go over to Henry, and he’s lying there on the street, by the sidewalk, and he’s curled up on one side, kind of hugging one arm, and I say, ‘Henry, you hurt?’ And he say, ‘I think I broke my arm.’ ”

“Did he say he hurt his head?”

“He told me that later. When I was squatting over him there, he kept on saying his arm hurt. And then I was taking him to the hospital, and he told me when he was falling, he put his arms out and he came down on his arm and then he kept on rolling and hit his head.”

“All right, let’s get back to right after it happened. You’re there beside Henry Lamb in the street, and this car that hit him, it put on its brakes. Did it stop?”

“Yeah. I can see it’s stopped up the road.”

“How far up the road?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred feet. The door opens, and this guy gets out, a white guy. And this guy, he’s looking back. He’s looking right back at me and Henry.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I figured this guy, he stopped because he hit Henry and was gonna see if he could help. I figured, hey, the guy can take Henry to the hospital. So I got up, and started walking toward him, and I said, ‘Yo! Yo! We need some help!’ ”

“And what did he do?”

“The man looked right at me, and then the door on the other side of the car opens, and there’s this woman. She gets kind of, you know, halfway out the car, and she’s looking back, too. They both looking back at me, and I say, ‘Yo! My friend’s hurt!’ ”

“How far from them were you by this time?”

“Not very far. Fifteen or twenty feet.”

“Could you see them clearly?”

“I was looking them right in the face.”

“What did they do?”

“This woman, she had this look on her face. She look frightened. She say, ‘Shuhmun, look out!’ She’s talking to the guy.”

“ ‘Shuhmun, watch out’? She said, ‘
Shuhmun
’?” Kramer cut a glance at Martin. Martin opened his eyes wide and forced a pocket of air up under his upper lip. Goldberg had his head down, taking notes.

“That’s what it sound like to me.”

“Shuhmun or Sherman?”

“Sound like Shuhmun.”

“Okay, what happened then?”

“The woman, she jump back inside the car. The man, he’s back behind the car looking at me. Then the woman, she say, ‘Shuhmun, get in!’ Only now she’s sitting in the driver’s seat. And the man, he runs around to the other side, where she been sitting, and he jumps in the car and slams the door.”

“So now they’ve switched seats. And what did you do? How far away from them were you by this time?”

“Almost as close as I am to you.”

“Were you angry? Did you yell at them?”

“All’s I said was, ‘My friend’s hurt.’ ”

“Did you make a fist? Did you make any threatening gesture?”

“All’s I wanted was to get Henry some help. I wasn’t angry. I was scared, for Henry.”

“Okay, then what happened?”

“I ran around to the front of the car.”

“Which side?”

“Which side? The right side, where the guy was. I was looking right through the windshield at them. I’m saying, ‘Yo! My friend’s hurt!’ I’m in the front of the car, looking back down the street, and there’s Henry. He’s right behind the car. He be walking up, kind of in a daze, you know, holding his arm like this.” Roland held his left forearm with his right hand and let his left hand dangle, as if it were afflicted. “So that means, this guy, he could see Henry coming the whole time, holding his arm like this. Ain’t no way he don’t know Henry was hurt. I’m looking at Henry, and the next thing I know, the woman, she guns the motor and she cuts outta there, laying down rubber. She cuts outta there so fast I can see the man’s head snap back. He’s looking right at me, and his head snaps back, and they outta there like a rocket. Come that close to me.” He brought his thumb and forefinger together. “Like to tore me up worse than Henry.”

“You get the license number?”

“Naw. But Henry got it. Or I guess he got part of it.”

“Did he tell you what it was?”

“Naw. I guess he told his mother. I saw that on television.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“It was a Mercedes.”

“What color?”

“Black.”

“What model?”

“I don’t know what model.”

“How many doors?”

“Two. It was, like, you know, built low. It was a sporty car.”

Kramer looked at Martin again. Once more he had on his big-eyed
bingo
face.

“Would you recognize the man if you saw him again?”

“I’d recognize him.” Roland said this with a bitter conviction that had the ring of truth.

“What about the woman?”

“Her, too. Wasn’t nothing but a piece a glass between me and them.”

“What did the woman look like? How old was she?”

“I don’t know. She was white. I don’t know how old she was.”

“Well, was she old or young? Was she closer to twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, or fifty-five?”

“Twenty-five, most likely.”

“Light hair, dark hair, red hair?”

“Dark hair.”

“What was she wearing?”

“I think a dress. She was all in blue. I remember because it was a real bright blue, and she had these big shoulders on the dress. I remember that.”

“What did the man look like?”

“He was tall. He had on a suit and a necktie.”

“What color suit?”

“I don’t know. It was a dark suit. That’s all I remember.”

“How old was he? Would you say he was my age, or was he older? Or younger?”

“A little older.”

“And you’d recognize him if you saw him again.”

“I’d recognize him.”

“Well, Roland, I’m gonna show you some pictures, and I want you to tell me if you recognize anybody in the pictures. Okay?”

“Unh-hunh.”

Kramer walked over to his own desk, where Hayden was sitting, and said, “Excuse me a second,” and opened a drawer. As he did so, he looked at Hayden for a moment and nodded slightly, as if to say, “It’s working out.” From the drawer he took the set of pictures Milt Lubell had put together for Weiss. He spread the pictures out on Jimmy Caughey’s desk, in front of Roland Auburn.

“You recognize any of these people?”

Roland scanned the pictures, and his forefinger went straight to Sherman McCoy grinning in his tuxedo.

“That’s him.”

“How do you know it’s the same guy?”

“That’s
him
. I
rec
ognize him. That’s his chin. The man had this big chin.”

Kramer looked at Martin and then at Goldberg. Goldberg was smiling ever so slightly.

“You see the woman in the picture, the woman he’s standing beside? Is that the woman who was in the car?”

“Naw. The woman in the car was younger, and she had darker hair, and she was more…more foxy.”

“Foxy?”

Roland started to smile again but fought it off. “You know, more of a…hot ticket.”

Kramer allowed himself a smile and a chuckle. It gave him a chance to let out some of the elation he was already feeling. “A hot ticket, hunh? Okay, a hot ticket. All right. So they leave the scene. What did you do then?”

“Wasn’t much I could do. Henry was standing there holding his arm. His wrist was all bent outta shape. So I said, ‘Henry, you got to go to the hospital,’ and he say he don’t want to go to no hospital, he want to go home. So we start walking back up Bruckner Boulevard, back to the project.”

“Wait a minute,” said Kramer. “Did anybody see all this happen? Was there anybody on the sidewalk?”

“I don’t know.”

“No cars stopped?”

“Naw. I guess Henry, if he be laying there very long, maybe somebody stop. But nobody stopped.”

“So now you’re walking up Bruckner Boulevard, back toward the project.”

“That’s right. And Henry, he be moaning and looking like he’s fixing to pass out, and I say, ‘Henry, you got to go to the hospital.’ So I walk him on back down to Hunts Point Avenue, and we go on across to 161st Street, to the subway stop ov’eh, and I see this taxi, belongs to my man Brill.”

“Brill?”

“He’s a fellow that has two cabs.”

“And he drove you to Lincoln Hospital?”

“This fellow Curly Kale, he drove. He’s one a Brill’s drivers.”

“Curly Kale. Is that his real name or is that a nickname?”

“I don’t know. That’s what they call him, Curly Kale.”

“And he drove the two of you to the hospital.”

“That’s right.”

“What did Henry’s condition seem to be on the way to the hospital? That’s when he told you he’d hit his head?”

“That’s right, but mostly he was talking about his arm. His wrist looked
bad
.”

“Was he coherent? Was he in his right mind, the best you could tell?”

“Like I say, he was moaning a lot and saying how his arm hurt. But he knew where he was. He knew what was happening.”

“When you reached the hospital, what did you do?”

“Well, we got out, and I walked with Henry to the door, to the emergency room, and he went in there.”

“Did you go in with him?”

“No, I got back in the cab with Curly Kale and I left.”

“You didn’t stay with Henry?”

“I figured I couldn’t do no more for him.” Roland cut a glance toward Hayden.

“How did Henry get home from the hospital?”

“I don’t know.”

Kramer paused. “All right, Roland, there’s one more thing I want to know. Why haven’t you come forth with this information before now? I mean, here you are with your friend, or your neighbor anyhow—he’s from the same project—and he’s a victim of a hit-and-run accident right in front of your eyes, and the case is on television and all over the newspapers, and we don’t hear a peep outta you until now. Whaddaya say to that?”

Roland looked at Hayden, who merely nodded yes, and Roland said, “The cops was looking for me.”

Hayden spoke up. “There was a warrant out for criminal sale, criminal possession, resisting arrest, and a couple of other things, the same charges he was just indicted on.”

Kramer said to Roland, “So you were protecting yourself. You withheld this information rather than have to talk to the cops.”

“That’s right.”

Kramer was giddy with joy. He could already see it taking shape. This Roland was no sweetheart, but he was entirely credible. Get him out of the bodybuilder jersey and the sneakers! Break his hip so he can’t do the Pimp Roll! Bury this business of the Crack King of Evergreen Avenue! Didn’t look good to juries if a major criminal came into court offering testimony in exchange for a misdemeanor plea. But just a cleanup and a trim—that’s all this case needs! All at once Kramer could see it
…the drawing…

He said to Roland, “And you’re telling me the complete truth.”

“Unh-hunh.”

“You’re not adding anything or leaving anything out.”

“Unh-unh.”

Kramer went over to Jimmy Caughey’s desk, right beside Roland, and gathered up the pictures. Then he turned to Cecil Hayden.

“Counselor,” he said, “I’ve gotta talk this over with my superiors. But unless I’m mistaken, I think we got a deal.”

He saw it before the words were even out of his mouth
…the drawing…
by the courtroom artist…He could see it as if the TV screen were already right in front of him…Assistant District Attorney Lawrence N. Kramer…on his feet…his forefinger raised…his massive sternocleidomastoid muscles welling out…But how would the artist deal with his skull, where he had lost so much hair? Well, if the drawing did justice to his powerful frame, no one would notice. The courage and the eloquence…that’s what they would see. The whole city of New York would see it. Miss Shelly Thomas would see it.

First thing monday morning Kramer and Bernie Fitzgibbon were summoned into Abe Weiss’s office. Milt Lubell was there, too. Kramer could tell that his status had improved over the weekend. Weiss now called him Larry instead of Kramer and didn’t direct every comment about the Lamb case to Bernie, as if he, Kramer, were nothing but Bernie’s foot soldier.

But Weiss was looking at Bernie when he said, “I don’t wanna have to futz around with this thing if I don’t have to. Have we got enough to bring in this guy McCoy or not?”

“We got enough, Abe,” said Fitzgibbon, “but I’m not completely happy with it. We got this character Auburn who identifies McCoy as the guy who was driving the car that hit Lamb, and we got the garage attendant who says McCoy had his car out at the time the thing happened, and Martin and Goldberg found the gypsy cab operator, Brill, who verifies that Auburn used one of his cabs that evening. But they haven’t found the driver, this Curly Kale”—he rolled his eyes and sucked in his breath, as if to say, “These people and their names”—“and I think we oughta talk to him first.”

“Why?” asked Weiss.

“Because there’s certain things that don’t make sense, and Auburn’s a fucking lowlife drug dealer who’s out from under his rock. I’d still like to know why Lamb didn’t say anything about being hit by a car when he first went to the hospital. I’d like to know what went on in that cab, and I’d like to know if Auburn actually took the kid to the hospital. I’d like to know a little more about Auburn, too. You know, him and Lamb ain’t the types who go walking over to the Texas Fried Chicken together. I gather Lamb is a kinda good-doing boy, and Auburn’s a player.”

Kramer felt an odd passion rising in his breast. He wanted to defend the honor of Roland Auburn. Yes! Defend him!

Weiss waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Loose ends is what that sounds like to me, Bernie. I don’t know why we can’t bring McCoy in and book him and then tie up the loose ends. Everybody takes this ‘we’re investigating’ business to be a stalling tactic.”

“A couple more days ain’t gonna matter, Abe. McCoy’s not going anywhere, and Auburn certainly ain’t going anywhere.”

Kramer saw an opening and, buoyed by his new status, plunged in: “We could have a problem there, Bernie. It’s true, Auburn”—he started to say
isn’t
but switched to
ain’t—
“ain’t going anywhere, but I think we ought to use him quickly. He probably thinks he’s getting out on bail any minute. We oughta get the guy in front of a grand jury as soon as we can, if we’re gonna use him.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Fitzgibbon. “He ain’t brilliant, but he knows he’s got a choice between three years in jail and no years in jail. He’s not gonna shut up on us.”

“That’s the deal we made?” asked Weiss. “Auburn gets nothing?”

“That’s the way it’ll wind up. We got to dismiss the indictment and knock the charge down to misdemeanor possession, misdemeanor sale.”

“Shit,” said Weiss. “I wish we hadn’ta moved so fast with the sonofabitch. I don’t like to dismiss grand-jury indictments.”

“Abe,” said Fitzgibbon, smiling, “
you
said it,
I
didn’t! All I’m telling you is, take it a little slower. I’d feel a lot better if we had something else to nail down what he says.”

Kramer couldn’t hold back. “I don’t know—what he says stands up pretty well. He was telling me things he had to be there to know about. He knew the color of the car, the number of doors—he knew it was a sports model. He knew McCoy’s first name. He heard it as
Shuhmun
, but I mean, that’s pretty close. There’s no way he could’ve dreamed up all that.”

“I’m not saying he wasn’t there, Larry, and I’m not saying we don’t use him. We use him. I’m just saying he’s a slimeball and we ought to be careful.”

Slimeball?
This is
my witness
you’re talking about! “I don’t know, Bernie,” he said. “From what I’ve been able to find out so far, he’s not all that bad a kid. I got hold of a probation report. He’s not a genius, but he’s never been around anybody who’s ever made him use his head. He’s third-generation welfare, his mother was fifteen when he was born, and she’s had two other kids by different fathers, and now she’s living with one of Roland’s buddies, a twenty-year-old kid, just a year older than Roland. He’s moved right in there to the apartment, along with Roland and one of the other two kids. I mean, Jesus Christ, can you imagine? I think I’d have a worse record than him. I doubt that he’s ever known a relative that lived outside the projects.”

Bernie Fitzgibbons was now smiling at him. Kramer was startled but plowed on.

“Another thing I found out about him, he has some talent. His probation officer showed me some pictures he’s done. They’re really interesting. They’re these whaddayacall’em…”

“Collages?” said Fitzgibbon.

“Yeah!” said Kramer. “Collages, with these sort of silver…”

“Crushed aluminum foil for the skies?”

“Yeah! You’ve seen ’em! Where’d you see ’em?”

“I haven’t seen Auburn’s, but I’ve seen a lot like it. It’s jailhouse art.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“You see it all the time. They do these pictures in jail. These figures, kind of like cartoon figures, right? And then they fill in the background with crushed Reynolds Wrap?”

“Yeah…”

“I see that crap all the time. Must be two or three lawyers come in here every year with these tinfoil pictures, telling me I’m keeping Michelangelo behind bars.”

“Well, that may be,” said Kramer. “But I’d say this kid has some real talent.”

Fitzgibbon said nothing. He just smiled. And now Kramer knew what the smile was all about. Bernie thought he was trying to light up his witness. Kramer knew all about that—but this was different! Lighting up the witness was a common psychological phenomenon among prosecutors. In a criminal case, your star witness was likely to be from the same milieu as the defendant and might very well have a record himself. He was not likely to be known as a pillar of probity—and yet he was the only star witness you had. At this point you were likely to feel the urge to light him up with the lamp of truth and credibility. But this was not merely a matter of improving his reputation in the eyes of a judge and jury. You felt the urge to sanitize him
for yourself
. You needed to believe that what you were doing with this person—namely, using him to pack another person off to jail—was not only effective but right. This worm, this germ, this punk, this erstwhile asshole was now your comrade, your point man in the battle of good against evil, and
you yourself
wanted to believe that a light shone round about this…organism, this former vermin from under the rock, now a put-upon and misunderstood youth.

He knew all about that—but Roland Auburn was different!

“All right,” said Abe Weiss, putting an end to the aesthetic debate with another wave of his hand. “It don’t matter. I got to make a decision, and I’ve made a decision. We got enough. We’re bringing McCoy in. We bring him in tomorrow morning, and we make the announcement. Tuesday’s a good day?”

He looked at Milt Lubell when he said that. Lubell nodded sagely. “Tuesday and Wednesday are the best. Tuesday and Wednesday.” He turned to Bernie Fitzgibbon. “Mondays are lousy. All people do on Mondays is read about sports all day and watch ball games at night.”

But Fitzgibbon was looking at Weiss. Finally he shrugged and said, “Okay, Abe. I can live with that. But if we’re gonna do it tomorrow, I better call Tommy Killian right now, before he goes into court, to make sure he can produce his man.”

Weiss motioned toward the small table and the telephone at the end of the room, beyond the conference table, and Fitzgibbon headed down there. While Fitzgibbon was on the telephone, Weiss said, “Where are those pictures, Milt?”

Milt Lubell dug through a pile of papers in his lap and came up with several pages from a magazine and handed them to Weiss.

“What’s the name a this magazine, Milt?”

“Architectural Digest.”

“Look at this.” The next thing Kramer knew, Weiss was leaning across the desk and handing them to him. He felt tremendously flattered. He studied the pages…the creamiest paper imaginable…lush photographs in color with detail so sharp it made you blink…McCoy’s apartment…A sea of marble led up to a great curved staircase with a dark wood balustrade…Dark wood everywhere and an ornate table with about a truckload of flowers rising up from out of a big vase…It was the hall Martin had been talking about. It looked big enough to put three of Kramer’s $888-a-month ant colony in, and it was only a hall. He had heard that there were people who lived like this in New York…Another room…more dark wood…Must be the living room…So big, there were three or four clumps of heavy furniture in it…the kind of room you walk into, and you turn your voice down to a whisper…Another picture…a close-up of some carved wood, a lustrous reddish-tan wood, all these figures in suits and hats walking this way and that at odd angles in front of buildings…And now Weiss was leaning across his desk and pointing at the picture.

“Get a loada that,” he said. “ ‘Wall Street,’ it’s called, by Wing Wong or some goddamned person, ‘Hong Kong’s master wood carver.’ Iddn’at what it says there? It’s on the wall of ‘the library.’ I like that.”

Now Kramer could see what Martin had been talking about. ‘The library’…The Wasps…Thirty-eight…only six years older than he was…They were left all this money by their parents, and they lived in Fairyland. Well, this one was heading for a collision with the real world.

Fitzgibbon returned from the other end of the room.

“You talk to Tommy?” asked Weiss.

“Yeah. He’ll have his man ready.”

“Take a look at this,” said Weiss, motioning toward the magazine pages. Kramer handed them to Fitzgibbon. “McCoy’s apartment,” said Weiss.

Fitzgibbon took a quick look at the pictures and handed them back to Kramer.

“You ever seen anything like it?” asked Weiss. “His wife was the decorator. Am I right, Milt?”

“Yeah, she’s one a these social decorators,” said Lubell, “one a these rich women who decorate places for other rich women. They run articles about them in
New York
magazine.”

Weiss kept looking at Fitzgibbon, but Fitzgibbon said nothing. Then Weiss opened his eyes wide in a look of revelation. “Can you picture it, Bernie?”

“Picture what?”

“Well, here’s the way I see it,” said Weiss. “What I think would be a good idea, to stop all this bullshit about white justice and Johannesbronx and all that crap, is we arrest him in his apartment. I think that would be a hell of a thing. You wanna tell the people of this borough that the law is no respecter of persons, you arrest a guy from Park Avenue the same way you arrest José García or Tyrone Smith. You go into their fucking apartment, am I right?”

“Yeah,” said Fitzgibbon, “because they ain’t coming in any other way.”

“That’s not the point. We have an obligation to the people of this borough. This office is being held up to them in a very bad light, and this’ll put an end to that.”

“Isn’t that kinda rough, taking a guy in his home to make a point?”

“There’s no wonderful way to get arrested, Bernie.”

“Well, we can’t do that,” said Fitzgibbon.

“Why not?”

“Because I just told Tommy we wouldn’t do it that way. I told him he could surrender McCoy himself.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but you shouldna done that, Bernie. We can’t guarantee anybody we’ll give his client special treatment. You know that.”

“I don’t know that, Abe. I gave him my word.”

Kramer looked at Weiss. Kramer knew the Donkey had now dug in, but did Weiss? Apparently not.

“Look, Bernie, you just tell Tommy I overruled you, okay? You can blame it on me. I’ll take all the heat for it. We’ll make it up to Tommy.”

“Negative,” said Fitzgibbon. “You’re not gonna have to take the heat, Abe, because it’s not gonna happen. I gave Tommy my word. It’s a contract.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes you just gotta—”

“
Oongots
, Abe, it’s a contract.”

Kramer kept his eyes on Weiss. Bernie’s repetition of the word
contract
had gotten to him. Kramer could see it. Weiss had come to a dead stop. Now he knew he was up against that obstinate Irish code of loyalty. Silently Kramer begged Weiss to throw his subordinate aside. Donkey loyalty! It was obscene! Why should he, Kramer, have to suffer for the sake of the fraternal solidarity of the Irish? A highly publicized arrest of this Wall Street investment banker in his apartment—it happened to be a brilliant idea! Demonstrate the evenhandedness of justice in the Bronx—absolutely! Assistant District Attorney Lawrence Kramer—the
Times
, the
News
, the
Post, The City Light
, Channel 1, and the rest of them would know his name by heart soon enough! Why should Abe Weiss cave in to the code of these Harps? And yet he knew he would. He could see it in his face. It wasn’t just Bernie Fitzgibbon’s black Irish toughness, either. It was also that word
contract
. That cut straight to the soul of every lifer in this business. At the Favor Bank all due bills had to be redeemed. That was the law of the criminal-justice system, and Abe Weiss was nothing if not a creature of the system.

“Well, shit, Bernie,” said Weiss, “whudja do that for? F’r Chrissake…”

The standoff was over.

“Believe me, Abe, you’re gonna look better this way. They can’t say you gave in to the passions of the crowd.”

“Ummmm. Well, next time don’t make these commitments without running them by me.”

Bernie just looked at him and gave him a tiny smile that as much as said, once more, “
Oongots
.”