Immoral Certainty

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Judge Rice spoke up, “Mr. Kirsch, did you hear what I just said?”

  “No, Your Honor, I’m sorry,” said Kirsch.

  “Who is this guy, Freddie?” asked Karp irritably, using the heavy whisper that counsel used in the well of the court. “Who’d he kill?”

  “This is the guy they picked up for the Mullen thing in the East Village. Tighe his name is.”

  Karp ran through the files in his brain. A connection with Marlene, with that cop she hung around with—Lacey? Raney? He remembered it now, and when he looked down at Kirsch his eyes were angry. “This is that guy? Freddie, he killed a woman and a child with a fuckin’ sword? What’re you talking dismissals for?”

  Rice tapped his gavel. “Mr. Kirsch, could we proceed? Or is Mr. Karp representing the People now?”

  Karp looked up when he heard his name, and said, “I ask the court’s indulgence for one moment, Your Honor. We’re at cross-purposes on what the People’s position is in this case.”

  “That’s just his openers, Butch,” Kirsch explained. “He’ll plead to manslaughter second.”

  “Man two! Are you nuts? He won’t do fourteen months on that shit. This guy goes for the top count if we got any case at all. Do we have a case?”

  Kirsch looked down at the floor. “Yeah, I guess. A circumstantial case. Good prints. Motive, means, opportunity.”

  “Then why are we throwing it?”

  “Uh … I was just clearing my decks. You know, getting rid of the cases I had.”

  “Because you’re leaving?”

  “Yeah, I got a week to go. I figured it would be easier, more convenient, if I didn’t have to explain my cases to the new guys. So I’m trying to get through them all this week.”

  “Give me the case file!”

  Freddie handed him the heavy folder. “Freddie, you can’t do this,” Karp said. “This guy killed two people and you’re gonna let him out on the street because it’s convenient? You’re a fucking disgrace! Be in my office first thing tomorrow with all your cases up to date. This is your last court appearance. Now get the fuck out of here!”

  Kirsch turned scarlet and started packing his briefcase to go. The Judge said “Mr. Kirsch? Are the People ready at long last? Mr. Kirsch, where are you going?” Judge Rice was growing annoyed.

  Karp moved toward the presidium. “Your Honor, Mr. Kirsch is no longer associated with this case. I will be taking it over as of this moment, and I’d just like to say that the People are ready to begin trial on the top count of the indictment immediately. Unless Mr. Klopper would like to plead his client to intentional murder.”

  “Judge, this is preposterous,” began Klopper in his typical ranting tone. “I had an agreement with Mr. Kirsch …”

  “Which is void, Your Honor, assuming it existed,” said Karp pleasantly.

  And there was nothing to be done, of course, and Klopper knew it, although he made a major show, for the record. Karp thought the judge seemed unduly tolerant for Not-Nice Rice, but he didn’t mind because it gave him time to read the salient points of the file. The indictment was good, there were no grounds for dismissal. Rice set a trial date two weeks hence and banged his gavel with more slam than usual.

  In the back of the courtroom, Jim Raney observed all this with satisfaction. Karp was good; he could see what Marlene saw in him on that end—a serious player, for sure. But a bit of a stiff, no? Not a party kind of guy. Maybe she would get bored, start looking for a piece of strange. With this relaxing thought in mind, Raney let his glance swing idly from Karp to the others at the front of the courtroom. A trim, well-dressed woman stood up and began walking up the aisle. Raney stared in surprise. What, he wondered, was Mrs. Irma Dean doing in this court?

  CHAPTER

  13

  Judge William Armand had been a judge for a long time and, if the framed and signed photographs on the walls of his office were any evidence, had spent most of his career sucking up to every politician who had ever ventured within the borders of Rockland County, New York. Karp had a lot of time to study them because Armand was fifteen minutes late, and his secretary had stashed Karp in the judge’s chambers.

  When Armand arrived, still in his black robes, he made no apology, but sat down in his high-backed chair and lit a cigar. He had a horse face, longish silver sideburns and an affable manner, which last he exercised on small talk for a number of minutes. After an interval, Karp brought up the subject of their meeting and the judge obligingly asked to see the affidavit setting out the underlying probable cause for the placement of a wiretap and eavesdropping devices in a certain premises in the County of Rockland.

  Armand glanced at it and flicked it into a drawer in his desk. “I’ll take care of it after lunch,” he said genially. “Let’s you and me have a bite. I always like hearing what’s going on in the big town.”

  They ate at one of those smoky, clanking places that attract the legal establishment in county seats throughout the nation. Armand seemed to know everybody. A remarkable number of people seemed to want to say a few words into the judge’s ear and shake his hand, and although no envelopes were passed, it was fairly clear to Karp what sort of judge William Armand was. Karp ate his cheeseburger moodily and wondered whether he was wasting his time.

  But Armand signed the order as soon as they returned from lunch. He signed it without reading it, which didn’t make Karp feel much better.

  “Who’s doing the job for you?” the judge asked, handing Karp the order.

  “Lieutenant Corcoran’s in charge of the stakeout,” answered Karp uneasily, wondering why a Nyack judge wanted to learn the name of a New York City police officer. Armand nodded, smiled, they shook hands, and that was it.

  Driving back to the city, Karp ignored the early fall beauty of the lower Hudson Valley, and gave short answers to the sports talk of his driver, Detective Doug Brenner. He had the feeling he was being played with. As they crossed the Spuyten Duyvil into Manhattan, Brenner said, “You want me to shut up, I’ll shut up. I don’t care.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m just saying I been talking to the steering wheel for the last half hour. What happened, you didn’t get the tap order?”

  “No, I got it all right,” said Karp and shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry—I’ve been thinking. This whole operation is starting to stink.” He told Brenner what had happened in the judge’s office.

  “You think Armand is bent?” Brenner asked.

  “It’s a possible.” Karp also had his doubts about the cops involved but he didn’t mention them to Brenner. The crookedness of cops was a subject Karp avoided around Brenner. It made the time they had to spend together more pleasant.

  “What are you going to do?” Brenner asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Karp. “I’ll think of something.”

  When Karp stepped into his office, Connie Trask waved him down and thrust a message slip at him.

  “Harris wants you to call him. He said it was urgent.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “I don’t know and I didn’t ask. I got enough urgent today. That Woodley girl quit on us with no notice and I’m covering two jobs.”

  “Woodley? The skinny one with the little girl?”

  “Yeah. Went back to Skunk Hollow—guess she couldn’t handle the big city. I’m about to follow her.” She turned away to answer a ringing phone and Karp went into his office to make his call.

  The number rang a precinct in Brooklyn. Harris’s voice on the phone was excited.

  “They found DiBello.”

  “Alive, I trust.”

  “Alive and kicking, but not talking yet.”

  “OK, bring him in,” Karp said. He hung up the phone and buzzed Connie on the intercom. “Get Guma,” he said. “Tell him it’s urgent.”

  An hour later, they had Carmine DiBello in an interrogation room. He proved to be a short, heavy man with a big nose and a dull expression. He sat at the table like a fire hydrant. Karp sat in a chair
off to the side and doodled on a yellow pad. Guma was seated across from DiBello, asking questions, drawing blanks and getting pissed. He tried again. “Carmine, we know you saw the Scorsi hit. Noodles told us. We don’t wanna get you in no trouble, understand, but we need you to talk on this. Noodles is a friend of yours, right?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Yeah, right. You never worked for Jimmy Scorsi, neither. What do you do for a living, Carmine?”

  “I’m in the meat business.”

  “Does that mean you unload reefers after they hijack them?”

  Shrug.

  “OK, let’s try this. You heard of Vinnie Ferro, right?”

  A considered pause. “Yeah, I heard of him.”

  “Hey, we got a ‘yeah’ out of this guy! Finally! Very good, Carmine. And you heard he got shot, right?”

  Nod.

  “And you worked, you still work, for Vinnie, right? And his brothers?”

  Nod.

  “So don’t you think Billy Ferro and Charlie Chan would want you to put the finger on the guy who aced their brother? I’m talkin’ about Joey Bottles here.”

  Pause. Shrug. “Nobody said nothin’ to me about that.”

  “You know that withholding evidence in a felony is a crime?”

  Shrug.

  “Yeah, you know but you don’t give a shit.” He turned to Karp and motioned him to go outside.

  In the hallway, Guma re-lit his cigar and said,

  “This sucks, Butch.” He tapped his temple. “First of all, we got ourselves a scemo in there—the guy’s a couple of quarts low. There’s room in his head for one idea at a time and right now it’s ‘keep your mouth shut.’ No petty shit we can nail him on is gonna change his mind, if I can use that term.

  “Second …” he made a short stabbing gesture. “This is not the kind of guy who goes up against Harry Pick and Joey B. alone. Harry don’t like rats.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I said ‘alone.’ If the Ferros tell him to, he’ll sing cantatas. Why don’t we feel them out? I could set it up easy. I could…. You’re rolling your eyes—you don’t like it?”

  “I hate it. Guma, we don’t deal with the mob to make cases. No way.”

  “What’re you talkin, ‘deal’? It’s no deal—we’re just giving the Ferros a chance to be good citizens and help bring a vicious killer to justice.”

  “Still no. They’re the bad guys, Goom. I don’t buy this Godfather horseshit.”

  Guma seemed about to launch a new argument, but stopped himself and said, “OK, OK—if we don’t do that, how about this? We keep our rocket scientist here on ice for a coupla days, get the word out he’s corroborating the Noodle. That should stir things up. Maybe something’ll shake out.”

  “Maybe. Maybe we can get the Ferro hit on the agenda the next time the Bollanos visit the castle. Of course, if it doesn’t shake and we let DiBello out on the street carrying that rep, the Prudential isn’t going to sell him much of a policy.”

  “Fuck I care! Am I his godfather?” answered Guma indignantly.

  “You’re a sweetheart, Goom,” said Karp, grinning and shaking his head. “OK, do that, but no Ferros, Guma—I mean it.”

  “Got it. No Ferros,” Guma replied, looking as sincere as Guma ever looked.

  Karp left him at the interrogation room and walked back to his office. He put his feet on the desk, loosened his tie, and picked up the telephone. While he waited for the man he had called to come on the line, he studied the picture over his desk. It was a framed blowup of a famous World War II photograph, the charge of the white-gloved Pomorske Cavalry Brigade against German panzers in 1939. He had received it as a present from his friends when he made the Homicide Squad, back in the days when there was a Homicide Squad. It was supposed to symbolize insane courage.

  Karp looked around his office and sighed. When they gave him that picture he had an office the size of an apartment bathroom. Now he had drapes and an American flag. He was a bureau chief. Authority. Responsibility. On the side of the panzers. He felt like a dull old criminal justice bureaucrat nowadays, like the man who had just answered on the other end of the line.

  “Pillman, this is Karp.”

  A longish pause. “What do you want, Karp?” said Elmer Pillman, the Special Agent in charge of, among other things, liaison between the criminal justice agencies in the New York City area and the local apparatus of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pillman did not like Karp, but he owed him a big one, which was the sort of relationship Karp liked to have with the gentlemen of the Bureau.

  “Pillman, I got a deal for you.”

  “Just a minute, Karp, I got to lock up my wallet. What kind of deal.”

  “Bollano. The big guy.”

  “I’m listening,” said Pillman.

  Karp sketched out the deal, and Pillman grunted assent, then hung up without saying good-bye. Karp said, “I love you, too, Elmer,” into the dead phone, and felt better than he had since he had seen Judge Armand slip the Bollano wiretap affidavit unread into his desk drawer.

  Marlene normally ran in and out of the Criminal Courts Bureau office half a dozen times a day. In general, she was focused narrowly on some particular mission, so it was not surprising that she failed to notice that Dana Woodley’s desk had been cleaned of personal effects: the little framed picture of her parents, and the large one of Carol Anne, and the plastic doll and the religious motto on the tiny easel were gone.

  “Hey, Connie,” Marlene called across the office, “what happened to Dana?”

  The secretary grimaced in annoyance. “She split—no notice, no warning. Just a note on my desk. She went back to Dogpatch. Oh, yeah—she left a note for you, too.” Connie rummaged in her desk drawer and handed Marlene an envelope.

  Marlene opened it with a feeling of apprehension and guilt. In the past weeks she had managed to forget what had triggered her ill-fated involvement in St. Michael’s. Dana hadn’t said another word to her about it. The little girl had spent a couple of weeks hanging around the office, playing quietly at the foot of her mother’s desk and then had started public kindergarten without incident when school opened. Marlene realized that she had been unconsciously avoiding the typist, as one avoids someone with whom one has engaged in an exploit both embarrassing and dumb.

  The envelope contained a single sheet of yellow legal. The handwriting was in a round grade-school hand of surpassing neatness, saying:

  Dear Marlene:

  I am going back home I am so misable here. You have been good to me but not others. And I miss my kin. My cousin Louise wrote me they are hiring at towle plant for good pay I will try and get work there. I didnt tell you I was so shamed but Carol Anne said nothing bad happened at that place like I told you that time. She said she made up scare storys with the other little ons for play. And you went to all that troubel. I am sorry you was put out any I give her a good whiping for it. You are a fine woman and care about folks. Well thats all Im going now. Lord bless you and keep you.

  Your Freind, Dana P. Woodley

  Marlene read this twice with mounting irritation, cursed sharply, and stamped her foot. Connie Trask looked up at her curiously. “Anything wrong?”

  “No,” Marlene replied bitterly, “I’m just a fine woman who cares about folks and the prize asshole of the Western World.”

  She called Raney first, and then Balducci, but both of them were out. She then called Judge Rice’s chambers. The Judge was in and would see her in half an hour.

  Marlene felt sweaty and faint. She went to the rest room, washed her face, reapplied make-up and sat down on the worn blue vinyl couch. She lit a cigarette, took two drags and crushed it out. Her hand was trembling. I’m too nervous to smoke, she thought—that’s a laugh. The outer door opened and Marlene got up to go, but stopped when she saw who it was.

  “Hi, Suzie.”

  Suzie Loser smiled at Marlene and then did a little double-take, peering intently over pink, sparkly cat’s-eye
glasses.

  “Well, hello you,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  “With me? Nothing, just a little tired is all.”

  “Darling, don’t tell Suzie nothing. You look like dreck. You’re eating? You’re killing yourself with some crazy diet?”

  Marlene forced a weak smile. “I wish. I’ve been nauseous for a month. I can’t keep anything down.”

  Suzie nodded and sat down on the couch next to Marlene. “You seen a doctor yet?”

  “Yeah, today. He said it was nervous exhaustion. He gave me tranks.”

  “Which doctor, might I ask?”

  “Myers, over on Pearl.”

  The social worker made a disgusted sound deep in her throat. “Him? They should have pulled his ticket twenty years ago. A pill hustler, you’re lucky he noticed you’re a girl.” She looked narrowly at Marlene and asked, “He do a pelvic on you?”

  Marlene caught the look. “No, he didn’t. Why should he? I’m not pregnant. It’s just some damn bug that won’t go away.”

  Suzie raised an eyebrow. “You got your period?”

  “Yes, I did! I mean, as sick as I am it’s bound to be off. It’s happened before. I missed whole months in school. I got a coil in, Suzie. I’m not pregnant.”

  “Darling,” said Suzie gently, patting Marlene on the arm, “listen to me—see a real doctor. Come by later, I’ll give you some names. And we’ll talk.”

  Marlene was not willing for this conversation to continue to what she knew would be its natural conclusion—her blubbering her guts out on the most sympathetic shoulder in the Greater Metropolitan Area. She shot to her feet, glanced at her watch, took her leave, and trudged grimly toward Judge Rice’s chambers, like a convict to the gallows. I’m going to have to resign, she thought, and the notion increased in attractiveness the nearer she got to Rice’s door. The embarrassment of what she had been caught up in for the last five months made her stomach churn even more than usual.

  Her stomach! Oh, God, she wailed inwardly, I’m ruined! I get some kind of fucking psychosomatic nervous stomach and I holler witchcraft! What a nincompoop. I’ll never be able to look V.T. in the face again, not to mention . . . but she couldn’t bear to even think about Butch, the contempt he must feel. The wedding was definitely off, until she could get her head back on an even keel and put her life in order again.