Corruption of Blood

by Robert Tanenbaum

  There was a man talking to him who suddenly stopped. Karp realized with a start that the man was waiting for a reply. He was a junior prosecutor and he had just asked Karp for some direction on a case.

  Karp felt an embarrassed sweat blossom on his face.

  “Sorry, I was somewhere else. Hit me with that again.”

  The young man said, “This is Wismer. Defendant beat his estranged wife to death with a blunt instrument. The case … the charge is murder two… .”

  The kid was nervous. Karp recalled that this was probably his first murder case solo, and could be his first homicide trial. It did not occur to Karp that the kid was nervous because he was presenting an issue to a demigod. Awe made Karp uncomfortable, and so he simply refused to recognize that it existed.

  Collins, his name was, Karp recalled. A neat, strong-looking black kid from upstate somewhere, and an athlete, like nearly all the people Karp hired. He had a pencil mustache he kept fiddling with. From time to time he glanced at his watch.

  Karp reached into his mental files. “Yeah, Wismer, guy’s got a sheet as a petty thief and dealer, seen leaving the wife’s apartment, picked out of a lineup. What’s the problem?”

  “Somebody called the cops, wouldn’t give the name. A woman. Said there was a boyfriend, and he did the crime. The boyfriend’s a man named Warren Hobart. Also not a taxpayer: did time on a 120.10 a couple of years ago plus the usual drug shit.”

  “Don’t tell me—he looks just like Wismer.”

  Collins smiled. “Well, they’re both medium-sized, skinny, medium-dark black guys. Surprise.”

  “So, put them in a lineup and see which one the witness likes best.”

  “Um, that’s the problem. The cops think it’s bullshit. They got the guy, Wismer. Case is cleared.”

  Karp’s brow clouded at this, and he asked, “What’s the rest of Wismer? We have any physical evidence?”

  “We have a print on the murder weapon.”

  “Which was?”

  “A juice machine.”

  “A what?”

  “Yeah, right. It was one of those old-fashioned kind of orange-juice squeezers—all steel, weighed a ton. Must’ve just grabbed it there in the kitchen and whapped her a couple upside the head. Crushed in her temple bone.”

  “Okay, on the cops—who caught the case again?”

  “Angeletti, Zone Six Homicide.”

  “Yeah, Vince Angeletti. Look, here’s the thing: the cops got a lot to do, especially uptown there, and the last thing they want to do is to piss on their own cleared cases. But with the situation as it is right now you couldn’t convict Wismer of criminal mischief, much less murder two. You got to get them to check out this character Hobart. Don’t ask them, tell them. If you get any more shit from Angeletti, let me know and I’ll fuck with his head. His lieutenant is a good buddy of mine. You got to remind these guys once in a while who’s in charge of a criminal prosecution. When you got Hobart, do the lineup again, and make sure whoever’s on D is there to see it. If your witness waffles, I think we’re fucked. Or we could get lucky and find a bunch of bloody clothes in Hobart’s closet. He’s got that assault conviction.”

  “But we have Wismer’s prints… .”

  “Come on!” Karp said impatiently. “The guy lived there. You want to put him away for twenty-five because he squeezed some orange juice last April?”

  Collins looked down at the thick file folder on his lap, weeks of work gone glimmering. “But,” he said despairingly, “Wismer did it.”

  “Yeah, I agree. He probably did do it. But probably isn’t good enough. Domestics are hard to prove circumstantially anyway. The killer was intimate with the victim and they shared a space—fibers, hairs, prints don’t mean much. You need an eyewitness to the crime itself, or a confession, which is how we clear ninety percent of domestics. Without that …” Karp shrugged and added, “I like it when they keep the bloody knife, or bury the stiff in the basement.”

  Collins was looking stunned. “So … what? He walks on this?”

  “Not necessarily. If your witness gives him a good ID in the lineup with the boyfriend, or if the boyfriend has a cast-iron alibi and Wismer’s loose for the time of, then you got something to work with.”

  “You mean plead him?”

  “Offer man one, settle for man two. Ask for twelve, they’ll offer six, you’ll close on eight. He’ll do maybe four and a half.”

  Collins’s smile was rueful. “You’ve done this before.”

  “How can you tell?” said Karp, returning the smile. “So. I think that’s how it’s gonna play. On the other hand, you know how I run the office; it’s your case, your call. You want a trial slot on this?”

  “I think I’ll pass this time,” said Collins, looking relieved and at the same time faintly ashamed of being relieved. He looked at his watch again and leaped to his feet. “Jesus! I’m due in calendar court four minutes ago. Thanks a lot, sir!”

  “No problem,” said Karp, “and don’t worry about Wismer. You stay around long enough, you’ll catch him on his next wife.”

  Collins laughed racing out.

  Sir? When the hell did they start calling him that? Karp sighed and rubbed his face. He looked with distaste at the pile of case folders waiting his review in the wire basket on his desk. They came in at an average of three a day, each one representing a New Yorker who had dealt with one of life’s little problems by terminating the existence of a fellow citizen. Most of them were pathetic shards from the rubble of life in the lower depths, like Wismer.

  He knew he had cheered up Collins. He did that for his staff half a dozen times a day. Collins was a pretty good guy, in fact, better than some of the newer people he’d had to take in just to keep up with the killing. Collins would probably get it after a while, get the sense of what was possible in a system essentially corrupt, a system designed to fail most of the time. A lot of them wouldn’t, ever. And, of course, Collins would probably leave shortly after he knew what he was doing, and Karp would have to pump up another kid.

  And the pumping, what he did for Collins and the others, drained him, which was to be expected, but the problem was, nobody was pumping him up. Zero strokes for old Butch these days. The only thing that kept him going was doing trials himself, but running a bureau with thirty lawyers in it didn’t give him much time for trials, not the way he liked to do them.

  He thought about his conversation with Crane. There were some strokes in that. “The best,” for example. He might even have meant it. The notion of working for somebody who liked and respected him had a certain appeal. Since the death of the legendary Francis Phillip Garrahy, the district attorney who had made New York a mecca for every serious criminal prosecutor in the country, and the accession of Sanford L. Bloom, Karp had not had the pleasure. It had been eight years, all uphill.

  Karp picked up the phone and punched the intercom button. Connie Trask, the bureau secretary, came on.

  “Connie, what do I have Thursday?”

  “Nine, you have staff with the DA, moved back from Monday. Ten-thirty, you have a meet with Sullivan at felony, his place. Lunch is open. Then, one to three, meeting of bureau chiefs on affirmative action, three to four, meeting on paperwork reduction, four to five you have marked off for grand jury. After five you’re free as a bird, except it’s your day to pick up the kid at day care.”

  “Okay, cancel the whole day. Get Roland to cover me on the grand jury, and reschedule Sullivan. The rest, get somebody to pick up any paper they hand out.”

  “Right. Taking a mental health day?”

  “No, I’m going to Philadelphia.”

  “A day in Philly! Lucky you! Is this business? You want me to cut a travel voucher?”

  “No, it’s personal.”

  “What should I say if he calls. Which he will if you cut that staff meeting.”

  “Tell the district attorney I’m visiting our national shrines in order to renew my commitment to our precious civil liberties,” said Ka
rp. “He’ll understand.”

  At 5:15, Karp was immersed in a case, writing notes for one of his people, when the intercom buzzed, and Connie Trask said, “I’m going. Want anything?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “Don’t forget the kid.”

  “Oh, shit!” cried Karp, looking at his watch to confirm that yet again he had left his daughter waiting at the day care on Lispenard Street. He shoved some reading into an old red pasteboard folder and cleared the building in three minutes.

  Six minutes after that, he was at the day care, a cheerily decorated Tribeca storefront, at Lispenard off Broadway. Karp went in and found his daughter playing with a small ocher girl (they were the last two kids in the place) and Lillian Dillard, the proprietor. Dillard, known to all as Lillie-Dillie, was an unflappable ex-hippie who wore her graying hair in a long plait that hung to her tailbone, and favored fashion statements that included tentlike smocks made of Indian bedspreads and lots of clanking silver. She had somehow, in the midst of her serious participation in the sixties, obtained a degree from NYU in early-childhood education, and she ran her operation with love and a slightly wacky efficiency. Her most valuable trait in Karp’s eyes was that she allowed forgetful dads to pick up their kids a half hour after the agreed time without coming in for a load of horseshit.

  Lucy Karp caught sight of her father and, as usual, shrieked, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” flung herself into his arms, and otherwise behaved as if he had just returned safely from four years on the Western Front. Karp did not mind this one bit.

  He hugged her and inhaled that ineffable smell that rises from the skin of well-tended young children: eau de kid, the world’s most expensive fragrance. He put the three-year-old down, found the lunch box and the drawing to show Mommy, said good-bye to Lillie-Dillie, and they headed off, hand in hand, north on Broadway. As usual, they stopped as Dave’s for a couple of chocolate egg creams, which they sipped at the marble outside counter.

  “So, how was your day?” asked Karp.

  “Okay. Jimmy Murphy threw up.”

  “That was the high point, huh?”

  “And … and … Patrick Allessandro hit me with a big block, right here.” She indicated a patch of flawless skin beneath a lock of black hair. “I hate Patrick Allessandro.”

  “It looks all right. Does it need a kiss?”

  “No. Lillie-Dillie already kissed it. Daddy! Why does that lady have purple hair?”

  Karp looked over at where Lucy was pointing.

  “That’s actually a man with purple hair, baby. And I guess he thinks it looks pretty.” Karp did not admonish his daughter that it was impolite to point, and that loudly noting the personal peculiarities of passersby in New York was a good way to get yourself killed. Time enough for that.

  They finished their drinks and walked a few more blocks to the industrial loft building where they lived. Since he had started to drop off and pick up Lucy twice a week, Karp had gained a better appreciation of what a miracle it was to have superb day care halfway between where he worked and where he lived, all of it within convenient walking distance.

  The downside was the five-flight climb to the loft itself. Karp had an artificial left knee, the result of a basketball accident in his sophomore year at Cal Berkeley, the agony of which he had nobly ignored for years, until it finally crapped out. He would never have chosen to live in a walk-up, and had not chosen this one either, but rather its owner, who flatly refused to live anywhere else.

  The two of them clumped up the dusty stairs together, singing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer,” a ritual which required also that Karp become confused about how many bottles of beer were left on the wall, with Lucy correcting him, and then arguing about it, and giggling, until Karp started tickling her on the last flight of stairs, and then, snatching her up and throwing her over his shoulder, running up the last flight, to arrive breathless and laughing at their red door.

  Marlene, the wife, was not home. Karp and family lived in a single room, thirty-three feet wide and a hundred long, a former electroplating factory loft. It was divided like a movie set by plasterboard walls into suitable areas: master bedroom (a sleeping loft) with closet space beneath, a bathroom, a kitchen-and-dining area, a living room, a nursery, a gymnasium, and a study, all facing on to a long corridor that ran end to end. Karp went to the closets under the sleeping loft and changed into chinos and a black T-shirt. Lucy ran to watch “Sesame Street” on the TV in the living “room.”

  Karp efficiently set the table for three, opened the freezer and removed one of the many Tupperware containers waiting there, and ran hot water over it for ten minutes. A large wet reddish brick, loosened by the heat, dropped out into the pot Karp had prepared, and he placed this on a low heat. He didn’t know what it was, but it would probably be good. Marlene staged a giant cookfest once a week, on Saturday, making some huge treat from scratch—lasagna, chicken cacciatore, spaghetti and meatballs, ravioli, beef stew with wine. They feasted on it fresh and then she froze the rest in boxes, and they ate from these the rest of the week—that or takeout. Karp couldn’t cook and Marlene wouldn’t, during the workweek.

  Karp sat with his daughter, learning letters and numbers, while the loft filled with the odor of dinner. It was spaghetti and meatballs, a winner. After dinner, Karp cleared up and chivied Lucy into the bath. Marlene had saved one of the thousand-gallon black rubber electroplating tanks from the former factory, scrubbing it out and adding a heater and a filter to make a huge hot tub.

  Lucy cavorted in the warm water with a variety of floating toys. Her mother had drown-proofed her at eight months, and she swam like a little eel. Karp knelt on the concrete tank stand and washed his child’s hair, to some men, Karp included, life’s most sensuous delight not connected to actual sex.

  After that, into the yellow nightie printed with rosebuds, and some sitcom TV. At eight, Goodnight Moon was read and the duck-shaped night-light switched on. Karp sat by her bedside for half an hour, watching her fall asleep.

  He fell asleep himself shortly thereafter, stretched out on the tatty red velour sofa, reading cases. He was awakened by the slam of the front door. He looked at his watch: ten-thirty, nearly.

  He heard the sound of a heavy briefcase hitting the floor, then the toilet door slamming, then peeing, then a flush, then a cupboard being opened, then the cork going out of a bottle, and the clink and splashing he knew to be wine pouring out into a glass, then some mixed kitchen noises—opening and shutting of refrigerator door, dish rattling, and so on—and then his wife appeared around the hall of the living zone, with a sloppy meatball sandwich on a plate and a large tumbler full of cheap red wine.

  Marlene fell into a sling chair across from the couch and kicked her shoes off, sighing.

  “Don’t ask,” she said and took a deep swallow of wine.

  Karp took a long, fond look at his wife. Even flustered and worn from a long day working one of the city’s more trying jobs, she was good to see, and he always had to suppress, as he had from earliest times of their acquaintance, a spasm of disbelief that she had chosen him, of all people.

  Then and now a remarkable-looking woman. Classic features? A phrase used loosely enough, but Marlene actually had them the way they liked them in fifth-century Athens: the heart-shaped face, the straight nose, the rose-petal mouth, the broad cheekbones. Her skin was a dusky bisque, on which she typically wore no makeup, nor did she need any. The sculptor who lived downstairs from them said she looked exactly like the statue of Saint Teresa by Bernini. Marlene had lived a rougher life than the saint. She had a glass eye and was missing two fingers on her left hand.

  “Morgan again?” asked Karp.

  “Needless to say. With his fucking wife, actually.”

  Morgan and his fucking wife had taken care of a series of foster children in their large Inwood home, model citizens, until a school nurse had become suspicious. What she thought was a bladder infection in the Morgans’ seven-year-old turned out to be gonorrhea. All six o
f the Morgans’ fosterlings had it as well; the youngest, age seventeen months, had the oral version.

  Marlene chomped away at her sandwich, leaning over her plate, dripping fragments and talking around mouthfuls. She had been hunting Morgan for weeks now, having the kids examined by psychologists, making sure the evidence they generated was genuine and that the enraged social workers did not encourage them to stretch the truth in any way. Marlene was in charge of a small unit at the DA’s specializing in sex offenders, and Morgan was the current hot case.

  Morgan would admit nothing and he had a good lawyer. His wife was the key to the case.

  “I hit her with recordings of the oldest kid’s testimony, right. Timeesha, nine years old. The shitbag has been fucking her since she was six. No response. Din see nothin’. He’s a good man. Wait’ll I nail her as an accessory. Then we’ll see.”

  Finishing her sandwich, she took a long swallow, and sighed. Then she looked up at Karp as if she had just noticed him. “Pretty speedy, huh?” she said, laughing at herself.

  “I’d say so. How about a juicy one?”

  “Sounds right.”

  She crossed over and sat on his lap and gave him a wine-and-marinara kiss. “Mmm, good! And the last straw? Ann Silber came into my office as I was just about to leave and totally collapsed. Out of control. I had to stay with her for an hour before she was fit for company.”

  “The new kid? What happened to her?”

  “Oh, she went out with the cops on an abandoned child call. They found this six-month-old boy in a shooting gallery. Skin and bones, with maggots crawling over his eyes.” She shuddered. “How’s Lucy?”

  “Fine. Relatively maggot-free.”

  “Nice to hear. How was yours?”

  “The usual,” said Karp. “I got an interesting call about a job.”

  Karp didn’t expand on this, nor did Marlene pump him. Karp got lots of offers.

  TWO

  Marlene regarded Karp’s trip to Philadelphia as merely a good excuse for a day off and had asked him to bring home a cheese-steak and a Liberty Bell piggy bank. Karp was scarcely more enthusiastic as he rode the elevator up to Crane’s Market Street office. The car was done in dark, gold-flecked mirrors, with shiny baroque brass rails and trim. A fancy building, and a fancy office, he observed when he got there: dark wood panels set off the shine of the mahogany furniture and the blond receptionists.