“Well, young man, how do you feel today?” he asked. Unlike the psychiatrists he had met previously, this guy seemed genuinely interested in the answer. He had a slight German accent.
Guma gave him the Ganser syndrome cover story. The old man listened carefully, occasionally making a note with a fountain pen in a cheap spiral-bound notebook. He said “mmm-ahh” from time to time, to keep the story moving. When Guma had finished, the old man sighed and pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up on his forehead. He held out his hand.
“Perlsteiner.”
Guma shook hands and gave his cover name. The old man’s grip was surprisingly strong. Dr. Perlsteiner looked through his files and pulled one out. He read it and let out a little snorting laugh.
“Ach, so we have Ganser syndrome again. Ganser syndrome.” He made it sound like the name of a cartoon character on Saturday morning TV.
Perlsteiner looked at Guma sharply, but his eyes still held an amused twinkle. “Mister Trevio,” he said, “you would be surprised how little real mental illness there is in the world. And of that, how little is associated with criminal behavior. Irrationality, we have, plenty. And evil, oh my, we have enough, more than enough of that. But the poor crazy people: They suffer, you understand? They can barely take care of themselves. Plot a crime? Nonsense! They cannot do it. Oh, perhaps, in a frenzy they hurt someone, yes, but as I say, this is rare.
“You know, Mister Trevio, when I was much younger, I had the opportunity to observe, at close hand, a great deal of criminal behavior, people being murdered and tortured, robbed, and so on. And afterward, when people said, ‘This was madness, this was insanity,’ I would say, ‘No, it was not. Evil, surely. Hate and greed, yes, lust for power, yes, fear, perhaps. But not insane. This is a libel on the poor madmen.’
“But, you know, they don’t listen. They wish to make a medical thing of evil. Madness is also such a useful metaphor, for that which we would rather not face, eh? So. I am didactic again. Forgive me. Now, you, my dear man—I see here by your record—wished for some money, heh? And you took it. Very sane. And you were caught, but you do not wish to pay for your crime, heh? Also, very sane.”
Perlsteiner capped his pen, put it in his breast pocket, and got slowly to his feet. “So. I have examined you. You are sane as bread. I will write my report, which I am sure will be ignored, as were the others. But no matter.” He looked around the dayroom and gestured to the inmates.
“You see, I make my examinations here, instead of in my office. Doctor Werner gives me a very small office, which is very inconvenient also. And damp. Much like a cell, you understand? So I do my examining in the open ward. We did the same in the Geisteskrankheitshaus in Vienna. And at Treblinka, of course.”
Perlsteiner made to go and then began to pat and poke all his pockets. “My eyeglasses … ?”
“On your forehead,” said Guma.
Dr. Perlsteiner laughed delightedly and adjusted his glasses. “So they are. Thank you very much. Carl Jung was always doing the same. Look, let me give you some advice. We don’t see the delusions characteristic of florescent schizophrenia situationally, with no prior history of the disease. Only in literature. In real life, once you got them, they don’t go away so easy, you understand? Roosters! Ha! Good God!”
Guma watched the old man walk away, humming. He smiled and strolled over to the payphone, put in some coins and dialed.
“V.T.? Good, you’re in. Time to spring me. I think I got a lead.”
The next morning Karp was back in his office, trying without much energy to plow through the piles of paperwork accumulated in his absence. Frank Gelb had dropped by, smiling, to say he had been appointed to the bench and was leaving immediately for a vacation in Europe before assuming his new duties. Karp was acting chief as of that morning.
Karp stared glumly at a set of large computer-generated charts laid out on his desk. They told a worse-than-usual story. Of the fifteen hundred cases arraigned by Karp’s assistants every week, almost seventy percent were removed from the courts immediately, either through plea bargains or skips after release. Of those that got past arraignment, only three percent were ever brought to a full trial, the rest being plea bargained away.
The most depressing figure, however, was the conviction rate. Karp got out the folder that held several sheets of graph paper on which he had plotted the trial rates and the conviction rates in the months since Bloom took over. He added the appropriate points. In Garrahy’s last month, ten percent of the cases passing through the Criminal Courts Bureau reached trial; eighty percent of the trials had ended in conviction, usually for the top count. This past month it had dropped below thirty-five percent. The golden age is gone, thought Karp, ring in the age of brass. Or toilet paper.
By noon, about two-thirds of the pile of papers had shifted from the in-basket to the out-basket. The door banged open and Guma stepped in, smoking a larger-than-usual cigar and holding a cardboard carton.
“All right! Lunch for the cripple. You like corned beef? We got corned beef. You like pastrami? We got pastrami. I got celery tonic, cream, black raspberry. I got dibs on the cream.”
“Goom, glad to see you! I hear you’re not crazy anymore.”
“Yeah, well, that Werner’s a helluva shrink. He’s got the magic touch.”
The door opened again, and V.T. Newbury walked in, followed by Sonny Dunbar. Newbury was wearing a long white lab coat with a stethoscope sticking out of the side pocket. He had a sheaf of manila folders under one arm.
“Looking good, V.T. Where’d you get the outfit? Hey, Sonny.”
“Denny Maher lent it to me. The name tag too,” said V.T.
V.T. leaned over so Karp could read the white plastic tag pinned to his breast pocket.
“Doctor Frankenstein?”
“Yeah. It got me into Bellevue to spring Guma. I guess that says something. And to rifle Werner’s files. And make copies.”
“So what did you learn? Give,” said Karp around his corned beef sandwich.
“What we got is this,” said Guma, pointing to the folders that Newbury had placed on the desk. “Each time Louis was examined, Werner sent up a report. His opinion is that Louis was incompetent, with a confirmation by another psychiatrist. A guy named Edward Stone. The same thing happened to me.”
“So? Where does that get us?”
“Butch, I was examined by three shrinks. Count ’em, three. The third guy was this old dude, Perlsteiner. He’s old but he don’t miss much. He said there was nothing wrong with me.”
“Little does he know,” said Newbury.
“Up yours, Newbury. And, we find, on examining these records here, that Perlsteiner also examined Mandeville Louis on three occasions, and wrote reports saying that Louis was faking it. Reports that never made it into the file.”
“Goom, this is great!” Karp exclaimed. “Great! Werner doesn’t know we have this. We’ll subpoena him for all documents relating to Louis. He’ll never turn over the dissenting opinions. Witholding evidence! I’ll tear him a new asshole on the stand.” Karp turned to Dunbar. “What is that, Sonny? The sworn question and answer statement from Elvis’s girlfriend?”
“Yeah, it looks solid. We got him good, now.”
“Right. He’s looking at so much time now he’s got to give us Louis for a walk.”
“What?” Dunbar said, his voice rising. “Tell me you didn’t say ‘walk.’ ”
“Well, you know we’ll try to get the best deal we can on him, but if he holds out, I’ll tell you right now, I’ll walk him to get Louis.”
“Let me understand this. I bust my black ass hunting down this muthafucka, who has blown up one of your people, your people, and killed my brother-in-law, and near killed you, and you tell me that after all that, you’re thinking of giving him a free ride?”
“Come on, Sonny. Louis is the goddamn target here. Elvis is a tool. It’d be like, in a vehicular manslaughter, putting the car in jail instead of the driver.”
“Don’t g
ive me ‘tool,’ man. I want his ass in jail. His ass.”
“For chrissake, Sonny, the son of a bitch is blind, or close to it. You think he’s going to go back to armed robbery in Braille?”
“Fuck that, man! What, are you the judge and the jury all of a sudden? You saying he’s suffered enough? I thought this was the law around here. You think I sat up with my wife night after night, her crying her eyes out about Donnie, for a deal? I want his ass in jail!”
Karp was pale and his jaw was tight. Very quietly he said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Sonny. Like I said, I’ll try to get the best deal I can, but if not … it’s my case.”
Dunbar glared at Karp for a long moment, his teeth clenching. “Ahh, fuck you all!” he shouted, and strode out of the office, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the glass.
“Listen, don’t worry about him, Butch,” said Guma into the stunned silence. “He’s a good guy. He’ll come around when he cools off.”
“You think so?” said Karp bitterly. “How about me, you think I’ll come around? Get used to it all?”
Nobody said anything for a bit, as Guma and V.T. got to their feet and started cleaning the lunch scraps and papers off Karp’s desk. Karp sighed and tried for the millionth time to scratch under his cast. “Guma,” he said, “could you draw up the subpoena for Werner’s records? I’m swamped here.”
“Sure thing, Butch. I’ll do it now.”
The intercom buzzed and Karp answered it. He listened for a few seconds and then slammed it down with a muffled curse.
“That’s all I needed. The Great One wants to see me, immediately.”
Karp struggled to his feet and hoisted himself on his crutches. He picked up his trend charts. Maybe he could convince somebody upstairs that the system was going down the drain at an increasing rate.
“What’s it about?” asked Newbury.
“They didn’t say. Maybe he found out I put a criminal in jail last June and wants to know whether it slowed up the system any. Who the fuck cares!”
Chapter 20
Garrahy’s old office had changed. There was a new beige rug, some contemporary graphics of the traffic-accident-on-Alpha-Centauri school, and the obligatory row of Spy legal caricatures. There was also a new secretary; Ida had finally joined the other Ida’s in the dust of history. The new one, Jerri, was blonde, and dressed for success. Mr. Bloom was on the phone, Karp was told, and he should make himself comfortable in the conference room. Did he want coffee? He did not.
Karp clump-clumped into the conference room. Conrad Wharton was there, seated in one of the leather armchairs toward the head of the table. Karp maneuvered himself into one of the chairs at the other end.
“Hello, Butch,” said Wharton pleasantly. “How are you feeling?”
“I can’t complain, Conrad. What’s this all about?”
“Oh, I think we’d better wait for Sandy on that. I think he’d want to tell you personally.”
Wharton regarded Karp with a benign expression, a half-smile playing about his Kewpie doll lips. Karp thought Wharton looked a little too much like a cat studying a mouse. He began to go over in his mind all the things he had done recently that Wharton might be able to nail him for. He was just starting to get nervous when he realized this was exactly what Wharton wanted. He made himself smile back.
“And how about you, Conrad? The ship of state sailing smoothly? All the columns of figures adding up?”
“Some of them, Butch, some of them. Our throughput is holding up nicely, and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? Although, I hear rumors from time to time about padding.”
“Padding?”
“Yes, you know, inventing cases to make it look like the clearance rate is higher than it really is.”
“No joke? That’s low, Conrad, that must be really tough on your system.”
“Yes, it is. But we’re putting controls in place that should put a stop to it. Audit systems, and so on. Sandy is a real bug on clean data.”
At that, the real bug himself walked through the door. As usual, he looked tan and fit. He was wearing the trousers and vest of a navy pinstriped suit, and his sleeves were rolled up to show his Patek Phillipe, and to show he was not above a little hard work. After more than a year of contact with him, Karp thought he was about the most completely phony man he had ever encountered.
“Well, hiya guy!” said Bloom heartily. “No, don’t get up,” he said, as he reached across the table to shake Karp’s hand, although Karp had made no move to do so. Bloom sat down next to Wharton and opened a folder that Wharton handed him.
“Butch, this concerns one of your people, so I wanted to talk it over with you before I took any adverse action. I have here a Grand Jury subpoena for a Vera Higgs. Are you familiar with that?”
“Yeah, I am. What about it?”
“What about it! It’s a Grand Jury subpoena, Butch. The witness was never brought before the Grand Jury. This assistant, this Kaplan, used a legal instrument as a … a convenience so that he could break an alibi and depose new testimony in a Criminal Court case.”
“Mister Bloom, the use of Grand Jury subpoenas for things like that has been an unofficial practice in this office for all the time I’ve been here. Mister Garrahy knew about it, and …”
“You know, Butch, I get a little tired of hearing what Mister Garrahy allowed and didn’t allow. The fact remains that it’s a serious procedural violation. I had to take a very unpleasant phone call from Lennie Sussman this morning. He was furious that Kaplan and what’s-his-face, Hrcany, went out and coerced his alibi witness into changing her story, using an illegal subpoena.”
Karp struggled for control. He took a deep breath and said carefully, “Uh, Mister Bloom …”
“Please, it’s Sandy.”
“Uh, Sandy. I’m sorry you had an unpleasant phone call, but the guy the woman was protecting with her fake alibi has been wanted for three years for involvement in a double homicide. He was also the guy who blew up Marlene Ciampi. And tried to kill me.
“Now as to the legality of the usage, Miss Higgs was interviewed in an assistant district attorney’s office prior to her appearance before the Grand Jury. This is common practice. She had every opportunity to so testify, and can be rescheduled to do so at any time. So the Grand Jury subpoena was legit.”
Bloom began shaking his head even before Karp had finished.
“Butch, it won’t wash. It’s obvious that your people’s use of a Grand Jury subpoena was what pressured the woman to flip on this thing. Sussman will never accept it and neither will Judge Stein. I spoke to the judge at noon and he agreed we can work it out, but …”
“Wait a minute, you brought this business to a judge? Merv the Swerve is going to make a profound legal analysis of this crummy little procedural zit? I can’t believe I’m hearing this. And who gives a shit what Sussman will accept? He’s on the other side. What is going on here?”
Bloom’s face darkened and began to reassemble itself into a pout.
“If you would let me finish. Both the judge and Sussman would be satisfied with an agreement that the Higgs testimony will not be used in the trial, and that both Hrcany and Kaplan will be privately reprimanded.”
“I bet they would! Oh, crap, don’t tell me you agreed to that!”
“Yes, I did. It’s a good agreement. Don’t you realize that your people could be cited for abuse of process at a judicial hearing. They could even be disbarred.”
“For this bupkes? Sandy, give me a break. Uh-uh, there’s no way I’m going to go along with this deal, and Hrcany and Kaplan would be fools if they did, and they’re not fools. No, I want a full, open judicial hearing. I’ll advise Kaplan to ask for one, and I’m positive Roland will demand one. And we’re not suppressing that testimony, either. Sussman doesn’t like it, let him challenge it in open court, on the record.”
“I don’t understand your attitude, Butch. I thought you were a team player,” said Bloom petulantly.
�
��I am! I am a team player. I want my team to win. I play by the rules, but I still want to win. Look, let’s carry the metaphor further. What’s the score?”
“Score? What are you talking about?”
“This.” Karp opened his folder and spread his charts of trial percentages and conviction rates out on the table. He began to explain what they meant, in terms of public service and attorney morale. But as Karp spoke, and as he observed the mounting annoyance on both of the other men’s faces, he realized neither of these men was interested in either public service or attorney morale. He recalled what V.T. had said months ago about people who sought power for its own sake rather than as the means to perform useful or beloved work.
Amazing, he thought. They don’t give a damn about this. They don’t care about the subpoena either. What they want is my complicity in something stupid, arbitrary, and faintly nasty. They want to pull me away from my friends and my troops and everything that Phil Garrahy stood for. It was so simple; and what would they do once they had him? Make him dance around and gibber like an ape? Train him to flattery? He suddenly felt old.
“Yes, that was very interesting, Butch,” said Bloom, when Karp stopped talking. “Chip, check this out, would you? Good. Now, I must get to a meeting. Butch, do me a favor. I don’t want a messy hearing. There’ll be press, it’ll string out forever. Write a little note for Kaplan’s file. Drop the testimony. I mean it’s one case out of thousands. We got a big system to run here, right?”
Bloom shone his smile. Karp was impassive.
“No.”
“What? Karp, damn it, you’re being plain unreasonable. Didn’t you understand what I said?”
Karp struggled to his feet and set his crutches. “Yes, I did. And I think it sucks. And there’s going to be no secret screwing with Mike Kaplan, and no secret deals with Lennie or Irv. If anything like that goes down, I will jump the reservation in a New York minute. I will demand a judicial hearing. I will leak like a sieve. I will call Breslin. And I will call Alfredo Marchione and tell him the case against his brother’s murderers is being gutted by the DA because Mister Bloom doesn’t like a technical procedure that Phil Garrahy used every day for forty years. That ought to go down like peaches and cream at the Chelsea Democratic Club, of which Alfredo is past president and spiritual leader.”
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