The faces in the audience remained as they had been. About the only time they ever saw an official white face from midtown or lower was when they were being wooed for their votes. He knew it; they knew he knew it. “I wanted to begin by reminding you that you have all been given two promissory notes from your government,” he began. “They’re known as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Yet, your government, including the entity that I represent, has too often failed to make good on those notes in your community. Here today many of you and your loved ones have been victims, not only of violent, senseless crime, but also of a system that failed to live up to its promises. We have only to look at the statistics.”
Karp paused. He knew the numbers he wanted to cite. He knew them by heart, but thirty years in the theater of the courtroom had taught him that half of the battle was delivery and style, including the well-timed pause to let the jury know that the real goods were coming. “The leading cause of death in this country among young black males is homicide. Not car accidents. Not heart attacks or lung cancer. But murder.
“And one out of every three black men between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five is in a penitentiary. But that isn’t where the ramifications stop. For every death or incarceration of a young black man, there may be a young black woman trying to raise their children on her own. An entire generation of black children in America is being raised with no permanent male role model in the home.”
As he climbed into his speech, Karp noticed that some of the heads in the audience were beginning to nod in agreement and voices added the occasional “That’s right,” and “Oh, you know that’s true.” But he was only warming up, thankful that he believed in the message he was trying to impart.
“Your schools are battle zones,” he said. “Teachers and children are afraid to walk the hallways—afraid they may be assaulted or robbed or raped in the one place outside of their homes where they should be safest.”
“Amen,” shouted an old woman in a lavender pantsuit sitting in the front pew.
“Your neighborhoods are overrun with drug dealers and violence. The question is why?” Karp continued. “On the drive over here, I didn’t see any cocaine bushes or gun factories. But drugs and guns are tearing apart the fabric of your community, stealing your young men’s lives, and destroying others with crime.”
An angry voice shouted from the back of the room. “So what you gonna do ’bout it? We vote for you and you wave a hand over Harlem, and it will be all better, right? Shit, we done heard all that crap ’fore and nuthin’ ever changes.”
Some of the congregation stuck up for Karp. “Let the man speak, Bernard,” a man yelled back at the antagonist. But Karp held up his hand. “He’s right. You’ve heard it all before and nothing changes. And I’m not going to stand up here and tell you that if I do run and I am elected to a full term as district attorney that I can fix all the wrongs.”
The congregation was paying more attention. “It would be great if I could tell you that I’d put a police officer on every corner and in every hallway of your schools. But that would be a lie. The district attorney doesn’t tell the chief of police where to assign his officers. But I will tell you what the district attorney can do and what I promise to do as long as I am in office.”
Karp paused again to look at the faces in the congregation as he’d been trained to do with jurors. “I think it’s time that we pursue a policy of no tolerance for violent crimes in the schools, whether they’re committed against teachers or students. We will prosecute any crime committed on school ground to the full extent of the law. No deals. No second, third, or fourth chances. Do the crime and you’re going to do the time.
“I’m not going to promise a war on gangs,” he said, aware that Andrew Kane had been campaigning hard in Harlem on that platform. He cringed, remembering how the photograph of him and Kane standing together, the mayoral candidate’s hand still on his shoulder—like we were best buddies—had appeared in the Times the next day under the headline Gotham’s New Batman and Robin.
“That’s just a slogan and doesn’t mean anything. There’s already a war going on in your neighborhoods. We don’t win that war by arresting or prosecuting our way out of the mess we’ve created. What we need is a way to broker a peace…and we begin to do that by bringing credibility back to the system and ensuring that justice is as blind to race and social status as she is portrayed.”
A few minutes later when he’d wrapped up his speech, Karp looked over the congregation. Although some were still sitting with their arms folded, he thought the looks were more contemplative than hostile; more than a few were even smiling at him. He smiled back.
“Now, from what I understand, comes the real reason you were willing to sit through my spiel, the food, and to be honest…” he looked at Murrow, who was sitting in the second pew with Stupenagel, and gave them a quick wink “I’m kind of hoping for a piece of chocolate cake.” A few laughs and a smattering of applause greeted his closing. He was ready for the jury to head off to deliberate the merits of his case.
• • •
A half hour later, he was balancing a plate of food in the basement of the church and trying to conduct several conversations at the same time when the man who’d yelled from the back of the church pushed his way through the people around him. Fulton intercepted the man, who scowled up at him and said, “So the brotha would side with his white massa against another brotha?”
Fulton smiled, though Karp thought it looked more like the beginning of a snarl. “That’s right. Now can I help you?”
“It’s okay, Clay, thanks,” Karp said and stepped from around his bodyguard.
The angry man looked sideways at Fulton but turned his attention back to Karp. “I wanted to show you sumpin’,” he said opening his wallet and flipping to a photograph of a good-looking teenage boy. He was posing with a basketball in one of those player cards, wearing the uniform of Harlem High.
“This is my son, Jumain,” the man said with pride. “He was a damn fine hoops player. Was gonna be the next Michael Jordan…least that’s what he always tol’ his momma and me. He was a good boy. He never did no drugs. Didn’t run with no gangs. Got good grades and practiced hard so that he could get a basketball scholarship and move the hell out a this shit hole.”
With a sinking feeling, Karp noted that the man was referring to his son in the past tense. “That picture was taken twelve years ago,” the man went on, only now tears were creeping into his eyes and he struggled to get the words out, “not too long ’fore he was walkin’ home from practice one night when a liquor store was robbed round the corner from our apartment.
“It was a cold night…snowing and the wind blowin’ so Jumain was bundled up in his Chicago Bulls warm-up jacket that his momma had saved all year for from her job doin’ nails at Tina’s Boutique.” The man shook his head at the memory. “That boy loved that coat, almost as much as he loved playing hoops.
“Anyways, a woman looking out the window of her apartment saw the whole thing even though it was night ’cause of the streetlights. She tol’ the investigators from the DA’s office that Jumain was runnin’…that boy ran everywhere to stay in shape and he probably wanted to get home and out a the cold. But a dark sedan pulled over to the curb and out jumped a man with his gun pointed at my boy’s back. He may have yelled somethin’—the woman didn’t know ’cause her window was closed and the wind was howlin’—but she said Jumain nevah turned his head, he jist kept runnin’…runnin’ home to his momma and me. But he nevah got there.”
As the man spoke, Karp racked his brain. The name Jumain rang a bell, but he’d heard thousands of names over the years and couldn’t say why this one was familiar though he had the sinking feeling that he should and would soon.
“The woman told the investigators from the DA’s office she heard a pop, pop, pop…jist like that, three pops…and sees my boy fall to the sidewalk and lie there with the snow turnin’ red. The man who shot him ran u
p with his gun still pointed at my boy, then used his foot to roll him over. Then she saw another man in a suit who had been drivin’ the car standin’ on the street and lookin’ up at her, so she got scairt and went back to watchin’ TV until she heared the sirens. When she looked out again, they was puttin’ my boy in the ambulance. And she sees the men in the suits giving orders to the police officers…that’s when she realized that they was the police, too.”
The man drew in a trembling breath and wiped at his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his frayed blue blazer. “Jumain was dead ’fore they even got him to the hospital. I never got to say good-bye. He was jist gone.”
Karp began to offer his condolences, but the man angrily brushed him off. “You want to know what the worst of it was, Mr. DA man…the worst of it was they lied,” he hissed, the hatred in his eyes burning so near the edge that Fulton moved closer. “Them detectives says they found a gun on my boy and that he had threatened them wit it ’fore he turned an’ ran. They says maybe he was the one who robbed the liquor store and shot that man. Too bad for them a witnesss saw the man who robbed the liquor store and he was five inches shorter than Jumain and wearing a blue sweatshirt with a hood pulled down, which don’ look nothin’ like a red Bulls jacket.
“Of course, any niggah runnin’ in Harlem after dark is up to no good and deserves to get shot, ain’t that right Mr. DA? But they lied through they teeth. My boy ain’t nevah carried a gun. He hated guns, had friends who died ’cause of guns, wanted out of Harlem ’cause of guns.
“There was an investigation for what good it done. Some fancy lawyer who worked for the police department reviewed the evidence and said that even if Jumain wasn’t the robber, he was armed and the police was protectin’ themselves. And the DA agreed.
“Oh they tried to pay his momma and me to sign some papers sayin’ we wouldn’t sue y’all. But we wouldn’t take it, uh-uh, they can keep their blood money. And when we wouldn’t sign them papers, they sent some jive ass big white muthafucka who tol’ us it was in our best interests to realize that Jumain was gone and they wasn’t nothin’ gonna bring him back. ‘Take the money and forget your son,’ he says. Sounded like some sort a foreign dude, too. But you don’ send no white boy to Harlem to ’timidate the niggahs. Me and a couple of my friends showed him the business end of a Louisville Slugger and sent him on his way a hurtin’ muthafucka…if he didn’ already have a limp, he would have after we fucked him up.”
A sort of wild light had come into the man’s eyes when he talked about what had been his only opportunity to hit back for his boy, but they softened again as he closed his wallet and placed it back in his pants. “That’s what we got for a justice system uptown, Mr. DA, a baseball bat and each other. So don’ come aroun’ here tellin’ me ’bout no promise notes. ’Cause it’s lies and bullshit, Mr. DA, it’s a muthafuckin’ ferocious disregard for the truth.”
There was little Karp could say. He remembered the case now. Jumain Little. The shooting took place back in the days of Bloom. He’d thought it was fishy then—three bullets in the back. But Bloom and his experts said the police department Internal Affairs report had called it a justifiable shooting. They’d spent all of two minutes on it at the weekly meeting of bureau chiefs, and then it was lost in the floodtide of a million other cases.
Karp made a mental note to try to find the case file though he doubted there would be enough evidence to reopen the case, especially with the eyewitness missing. For now, all he could do was commiserate. “I’m sorry, Mr. Little,” he said. “I remember watching your son play in the state championship that winter. He was the best I’d seen in a long time—”
“Sorry don’ cut it,” Bernard Little interrupted. “I ’spose you tellin’ me that you wasn’t in charge and so it wasn’t you who covered up my son’s murder.” The man’s tears were falling freely, but he made no more attempts to wipe them away.
“No,” Karp said. “I wasn’t in charge, but I was still part of the system. If there was a cover-up, then yes, the system I worked for failed you and it failed Jumain. All I can say is I’ll try to do better. I agree, sorry doesn’t bring your son back, but I still believe what I said about those promissory notes.”
“Bullshit,” Little spat back. Fulton tensed, but the expletive seemed to take the final ounce of venom out of the man. “You won’t get my vote, but don’ worry none,” he said. “No one else will neither. I don’ vote no more, though before my son was murdered by the police I never missed. But I don’ want no part of puttin’ some other fuckup in power so that they can do some other boy like they did Jumain.”
With that, Bernard Little turned and walked off, his head up and shoulders back. The Rev. Jacobs, who’d been at Karp’s side during the exchange, watched him go and shook his head. “I’m sorry he lit into you like that,” he said. “It’s been nearly twelve years, and he’s still hurtin’ like it was yesterday. He and his wife lived for that boy. She ain’t never been the same neither—used to sing in the church choir, a lovely woman, but ever since just sits in her pew rockin’ and not sayin’ nothin’ to nobody.”
The minister paused and sighed. “Can’t say I blame her or him. Jumain was a fine young man. Just seems we lose our best and brightest, the ones we need to point to and tell the youngsters, ‘Grow up to be like Jumain Little and you’ll be something someday.’ But he’s gone, and there ain’t no one around here who believes it was anything but murder.”
Karp swallowed hard and shook his head. “Nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Mr. Little is telling the truth as he knows it, and if he’s right, it’s me and my predecessors who should be apologizing. I had a college professor in law school once tell me: There is no statute of limitations on murder, nor is there a statute of limitations on grief.”
16
KARP LEFT THE CHURCH THAT AFTERNOON AND WAITED ON the sidewalk with Murrow and Stupenagel for Fulton to get the car. He felt drained and just wanted to be home with his sons. Like Bernard Little wants to be home with his, he thought.
“Loved that about no statute of limitations on grief,” Stupenagel said, writing furiously in her notebook.
“Yeah, boss, you were great,” Murrow chimed in. “Didn’t know you were such a philosopher. I could practically hear the fife and drums in the background when you were talking about the Constitution. I was about to—”
“Murrow, Stupe, shut the fuck up,” Karp said. He didn’t yell or snarl, but there was no mistaking that he meant exactly what he said.
“Sorry, boss, I…,” Murrow started to apologize, but his voice trailed off, and he looked as if he might weep.
Stupenagel patted Morrow on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Murrow. You just happen to be witnessing a rare thing: the price of being an honest man in a dishonest world. Sometimes it makes them forget who their friends are.”
“Stupe…,” Karp began to growl, but she held up her hand.
“Save it, Butch. Didn’t you just get done reminding everybody about the Constitution, which just so happens to contain one very important amendment; in fact it’s the very First Amendment…and includes something about free speech. Or was that just for the voters?”
Karp’s mouth snapped open to reply, but he shut it as Fulton pulled the Lincoln town car up to the curb. He allowed Stupenagel to get in first, followed by Murrow. As they headed back downtown on Central Park West before cutting over to Broadway, he kept his face turned to the window. Maybe it is hopeless, he thought, and maybe I don’t need the grief. Let someone else fail the next Jumain Little. But his wallowing in self-doubt was interrupted by a woman’s voice from a long time ago. “You may never be the big fish in the big pond—”
Another female voice interrupted his recollection. “Since you’re feeling all nice and chatty,” Stupenagel said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Karp sighed. “Fire away.”
“That speech back at the church sounded an awful lot like a man who has made a decision to run for office,” s
he said.
“There you go,” he said, sounding a little more irritated than he intended, “the press jumping to conclusions as usual. If I decide to run, you’ll be one of the first to know. But I haven’t decided anything.”
“Man, lighten up, Karp,” Stupenagel said. “Here,” she said as she began digging around in the garbage bag–size purse she carried. A box of condoms (“ribbed for her pleasure”), three lipsticks of varying shades of pink, and a large cigar fell out before she located what she was looking for—a pint of Don Pedro brandy. “Medicinal purposes,” she said as she twisted off the top and took a swig before passing it to Murrow, who dutifully took a sip and handed it to Karp.
An infrequent and unenthusiastic drinker, Karp nevertheless took a large gulp and made a bitter face. He started to pass the bottle back to Stupenagel, but she nodded to hand it back to Murrow, who declined.
“What’s the matter, Murry baby, afraid I’m going to get you drunk and sit on your face until one of us cries uncle?” she asked.
Murrow turned red but tried for the snappy comeback. “Can I use a snorkel?”
Stupenagel smiled and leaned over to stage-whisper in his ear. “You can use any toy you want, big boy. And if you run out of gadgets, I have a whole closet full.”
“Better load up on batteries, Murrow,” Karp said. “The woman once took on the entire New York Jets team to get a story about Joe Namath.” Ever since he’d known Stupenagel they’d batted the sexual banter back and forth like a hormonal tennis ball. When he told Marlene about Stupenagel’s lighthearted come-ons, she’d simply shrugged and said the journalist had acted the same way toward Marlene’s boyfriends in college. “I don’t expect her to behave,” Marlene had said. “However, I’d cut your balls off with a dull knife.”
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