Immoral Certainty

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  It was Alonso’s doll collection. He had five of them, each one dressed carefully in a different color, in clothes made from little scraps of bright cloth. They were not, however, as she had thought, miniature celluloid dolls. When she saw what they actually were, she dropped the box and staggered backwards, biting her lip to keep from shrieking in horror. Little fingers.

  Guma had never actually met Giancarlo Ferro, but he had heard plenty about him, little of it complimentary. If Vinnie Ferro had been the brains and guts of the clan, Giancarlo had been in charge of cruelty. He was a heavyset, almost squat man with a face as round and yellow and cratered as the moon, a face to which his narrow pouched eyes gave a decidedly Oriental cast. He affected double-breasted suits in pale colors and sported a thin mustache, which explained his nom-de-street.

  He really does look like Charlie Chan, Guma thought. They were sitting in the back room of a restaurant the Ferros owned off President Street in Brooklyn: Guma, Tony Bones, Charlie Chan Ferro, and Billy Ferro, an otherwise colorless thug, present only because family matters were being discussed.

  Charlie and Tony did most of the talking, which largely concerned violence, chicanery, and sex in the Brooklyn streets of twenty years past. Guma was familiar with many of the names and knew some of the individuals personally. He had been part of that life. He found himself (uncharacteristically) wondering what had kept him in school and sent him to college and law school while all the referenced fucking, shooting, and stealing had been going on. Bad luck, was what he guessed.

  The talk drifted on: The two mobsters seemed to have no urgent appointments. Guma grew bored and, since liquor was apparently on the house, he drank two Teachers’ on the rocks, and a Schaeffer. He tore little holes in a napkin. Suddenly he became aware that the hum of talk had ceased; the three men were looking at him expectantly. It was his cue.

  “We know who did Vinnie,” Guma said. “And we’re gonna take him in.”

  Charlie Chan looked sideways at Tony and a sneer twisted across his wide face. “Is he fuckin’ serious? Forty people saw Joey Bottles do Vinnie.” He glared at Guma. “You gonna bring him in? Go ahead and try. You gonna find forty people was tying their shoelace.”

  Guma stared back at him. “Wrong. We got him already, plus Harry and the Bollanos. Joey’s wheelman ratted him out.”

  “I heard,” said Charlie. “So what the fuck does that do for me?”

  “We need another witness. Your guy DiBello saw it too. We want him to talk.”

  Charlie snorted in contempt. “DiBello? That lame? He saw shit!”

  “He saw it. We’re holding him as a material witness. All you got to do is call him and tell him to spill the whole story on Joey B.”

  Charlie Chan came up out of his chair violently, shaking the table and spilling drinks. “What the fuck makes you think I’m gonna do that, asshole? Who the fuck you think you’re talkin’ to? You think I can’t take out Joey?” He turned to his other guest, his features now writhing with anger.

  “Tony, what the fuck you doin’ to me here? You think I can’t handle the Bollanos. You think I need fuckin’ help from the fuckin’ D.A.?”

  Tony smiled icily and said, “Guma, why don’t you wait in the car?”

  Half an hour later, the door to the white limo opened and Tony Bones climbed in. Guma had been watching Dialing for Dollars on the little TV and making free with the bar. He switched off the set and said, ‘That’s some tough guy in there. I was worried about you there for a while, Tony.”

  After a sharp look to make sure Guma was joking, Tony laughed. “Yeah, he’s hard as nails. Fuckin’ guy! I’m trying to break it to him gently, if he doesn’t go along with this, put the Bollanos out of action, he’s dead. In a oil drum with an ice pick up his nose. No, he’s gonna get them. Fuckin’ ludicrous, right? Him going against Harry Pick? But he don’t listen, does he? The Ferros! The fuckin’ family hasn’t shown any sense in twenty years. At least Vinnie had brains. This one—un’ scimmia, un scicco!”

  “So he won’t?”

  “He will, he will—what d’you think, I can’t roll a scumbag like Charlie? Yeah, he’ll do it. You know what I told him? He’d have a better chance to put it to Joey, if Joey was in the slams. He figures, if there’s no Bollanos left outside, Joey won’t have no cover inside. Like Joey needs cover.”

  “He doesn’t know Big Sally’s going to walk?” asked Guma with a nervous laugh.

  “Hey—that’s our little secret,” Tony answered, grinning.

  “Right,” said Guma. “We going to see Bollano now?”

  “Yeah, it’s all set up. I got to get this shit over with and get back down south. The fuckin’ spics’ll be all over me as it is.” Tony spoke to the driver and the big car moved smoothly away from the curb.

  Guma finished his drink, and said, “Tony, one last thing … I need a couple of minutes alone with the old man.”

  “Alone?” Tony frowned. “How come you want to see him alone?”

  “Let’s say if he wants to stay out of jail, I got to put something in his ear. Otherwise the whole deal falls apart.”

  “You just tell this to me now? I’m hanging out all over the street on this.” Guma was startled by how quickly the pleasantness had drained out of Tony’s face. He did not like looking at what was left.

  “I know, Tony. There’s no problem. We’re under control here. But you understand, unless I can tell Big Sally a couple of things, he’s gonna go up with the rest of them.”

  Tony calculated briefly and then slipped back into a cool smile. “OK, paisan, for you, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Guma relaxed. The tiger had jumped through the hoop and was back on its little stand. Now all Guma had to do was to convince Salvatore Bollano to use Guma’s plan to escape the clutches of the grand jury, while allowing his own son and several of his most trusted associates to go to jail. No problem, thought Guma. A chair in the face, a few blank shots, he’d go through the hoops like Tony. Gangsters he could handle. His real problem was keeping all of this from Karp.

  Karp buttoned his suit coat and stood up and walked to his favorite spot in front of the jury. Klopper had just finished his summation and Karp was about to enjoy one of the few advantages the prosecution retained in criminal cases: the right to have the last word.

  Karp’s last word, of course, had to contain a convincing rebuttal of what Klopper had said. This he had composed in his head as Klopper spoke. Mentally, he slotted this rebuttal into the structure of logic he had composed, then outlined and all but memorized the previous night. He took a long, deep breath and began.

  The crime was murder. Karp explained what murder was, what he had to prove: That the deceaseds were dead, and dead as a result of the criminal acts of the accused. The Mullens were dead, all right. He had shown that. He reminded the jury of the gory circumstances.

  Then he reconstructed the web of circumstantial evidence that tied Felix Tighe to the crime. Anna Rivas’s testimony. Felix beat Anna, the victim called the cops. “I’ll remember that.” He had a knife on the night of the murder. He had the black pants on.

  Then the evidence from the Lutz apartment: the knife, the black pants, tying in and confirming the testimony. And the diary—the notation “Big Mouth—9:30,” the day, the approximate time of the killings, confirmed by Josh Mullen’s call to 911. The vacuity of the defense—the exploded alibi, Lutz’s fabrications. Finally the fingerprint on the door frame of the victim’s apartment, a fresh, sweaty fingerprint, laid down on the night of the murder.

  That was the evidence. But he now had to deal with the twist that Klopper, in his summation, had put on all those facts in order to lay a reasonable doubt: It was too pat. The cops were framing a convenient bad boy. Could you really believe that an intelligent man like Felix Tighe would have made so many incriminating mistakes?

  “Gentlemen of the jury,” Karp said, looking at each member in turn, “I ask you now to consider the character of the accused. That too is part of the evidence.
It has been suggested by Mr. Klopper, in his able summation, that the very weight of the circumstantial evidence against the defendant should give you pause. You have seen that the defendant is a clever and articulate man. How could such a clever man have made so many mistakes? Boasting! Keeping the knife! The black pants! Writing down his appointment for murder!

  “I will tell you how. Our legal rules require that the People prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, to a moral certainty. I’m sure Judge Montana will explain to you in his charge what a reasonable doubt is. But let’s look closer at that interesting term, moral certainty.

  “It means that when you make a decision as a member of a jury you are not striving for scientific or mathematical certainty, but for a kind of decision that engages your full conscience. That’s why the term ‘moral’ is used. It’s not merely a rational calculation: you’re men, not machines. And you bring your moral history as human beings with you to the courtroom: your understanding of good and evil, your experiences with crime and punishment—you’ve all had these—everything that makes you fit to sit in judgment on your fellow man, that enables you to make a judgment ‘to a moral certainty.’

  “But we have seen here in these past days another kind of judgment, the judgment of a man who knew that he was above any moral law. He knew it! It may be hard for you to believe this, but we know from his history and his actions that the defendant could not conceive of ever having to pay for his crimes, however dreadful.

  “Didn’t he nearly kill a policeman and calmly walk away from his trial? Didn’t he nearly kill the detectives who were trying to bring him to your justice? Didn’t he lie and lie when confronted with the overwhelming evidence against him? And change his lies to suit as each old lie was proven false?

  “That is a kind of certainty that you may not have much experience with, gentlemen, but I have. It is immoral certainty. It is the feeling of invincibility that the hardened criminal has, the sure knowledge that he will never be brought to book for his crimes, and well you know from the papers and TV how justified that feeling is in today’s world.

  “That is the explanation of why the defendant did not cover his tracks better, why he made so many of what now appear to be mistakes. It was the immoral certainty, the brazen arrogance, of the criminal mind.

  “And so, gentlemen, it is for you this afternoon to bring your common sense to bear on the facts of this case, and your moral certainty to bear on the character of the defendant and his deeds. If you do that, you will find that the defendant, Felix Tighe, did indeed go to apartment 3FN at 217 Avenue A on the night of July tenth, and stab to death Stephanie Mullen and her little son Jordan Mullen.

  “In this case, good conscience commands, common sense dictates, and justice cries out that you find this defendant guilty, guilty of the murder of Stephanie Mullen, and guilty of the murder of Jordan Mullen.”

  Karp sat down. Judge Montana charged the jury. A good charge, Karp thought. You always knew when the judge thought the defendant was guilty, however much they reached for impartiality. Judge Montana did not like naked perjury in his courtroom. The re-run of the evidence helped, too, since the great bulk of it was, by the nature of the case, People’s evidence.

  The jury deliberated for an hour and ten minutes, came back, and found Felix Tighe guilty of both murders.

  Karp had never freebased cocaine, but he doubted that the fabled rush had much on what he felt in the few seconds after the foreman of the jury said the magic word. He felt powerful, relaxed, expansive. Sexy. That’s why Victory is a goddess.

  There was a disturbance. Felix was screaming obscenities at his lawyer, who was paying no attention, apparently glad to be done with the case, maybe even a little glad that he’d lost.

  Karp ignored them. You had to figure Felix Tighe would have no dignity, would be a sore loser. He packed his papers into his cardboard folder. The problem with a rush, he realized, is that after it’s over you have to either get another hit of dope or face the world. Karp had no other convictions pending and Marlene was still gone. He walked up the aisle, his face grim, toward a world empty of hope.

  CHAPTER

  17

  The first thing that Raney did when he got back downtown from Queens was to go into Marlene’s office and search through her files. Given the state and scope of Marlene’s files, this took him the better part of Friday afternoon. The file on St. Michael’s and the trash-bag killings was, of course, missing, since Marlene had taken it with her when she had left for her fateful appointment with Mrs. Dean.

  Raney sat in the littered office and rubbed his face, as if that would make his memory work. He pulled out his notebook and read through the notes he had taken at his interview with Mary Tighe. It takes a tale of quite extraordinary depravity to sicken a New York City police detective, and Raney felt an echo of the queasiness he had experienced as the woman had related the details of her married life with Felix Tighe.

  That was not what interested him now. What had impelled him back to Queens was the information he had from the court clerk that the woman he knew as Irma Dean was Felix Tighe’s mother. His first notion was that Felix was associated in some way with the child murders. As he had traveled to his appointment with Mary Tighe, he had come to realize that it wasn’t possible. Felix had been in custody during at least one of the trash-bag killings, and besides, he hardly matched the description of the person Raney knew as the Bogeyman.

  Mary Tighe had cleared that up: two marriages and two children, and two different names. Mary Tighe had only seen her brother-in-law once; her impression was that he was institutionalized upstate somewhere. But the description she gave him was unmistakable: a blond, goofy-looking giant.

  This was why Raney was searching for Marlene’s file. It was inconceivable that such a creature could have completely avoided the surveillance Raney had placed on the street in front of St. Michael’s. Townhouses don’t have back doors onto the street, which meant that the Bogeyman had to be working out of another base.

  He vaguely remembered that Marlene had made some mention of another property owned by Mrs. Dean—Marlene had gotten some guy in the D.A.’s office to run a check on her—but he could remember neither where it was, nor the name of the guy, if she had even mentioned it. He recalled, with guilt, that at that period of their professional relationship he had been mainly concerned with getting into her pants.

  He was aware of the passage of time. It was getting late, and the rumble of business noise from the hallway was growing fainter. He was also aware that what he should do was to call the lieutenant in charge of the kidnapping investigation, turn over his notes and his speculations, and go back to his current assignment, which was investigating one of the seventeen homicides he was currently responsible for out of Manhattan South.

  But that particular lieutenant was a famous dork, who was convinced that the kidnapping was a Mafia operation, and would not appreciate contradictory evidence from a woman with a story that even Raney thought might be half-crazy, a woman who had every reason for a heavy grudge against her old man and his mom.

  Ordinarily, he would have discussed the problem with Pete Balducci, but Balducci was set to retire this week, besides being busy with marrying off his daughter, and Raney knew he would not take kindly to any suggestion that they freelance on a case as messy as this one. That meant he had to go to see Karp, something that, for reasons he did not like thinking about, he had been avoiding since the beginning of his involvement with Marlene Ciampi.

  In the hallway outside Marlene’s office, Raney paused and looked out the tall window. The sky over Baxter Street was bruised purple with rain and the streets were already shiny with the prelude to the autumn’s first serious storm. He smiled. Cops like anything that keeps the people off the streets.

  Karp, he soon found, was not in. Karp was in court, waiting for the jury to convict Felix Tighe. Raney wandered into Karp’s office. No one stopped him; people wandered into Karp’s office all the time, dropping papers
on his chair and leaving notes. Raney looked around, examined the desk, looked at the framed diplomas and photographs on the walls.

  One caught his eye, a war picture it looked like, a picture of mounted soldiers charging at tanks. There was an inscription on it in French, and it was signed, “Marlene, the Goom, and V.T.” A memory popped up into Raney’s consciousness: the name of the guy who had done the workup on Dean for her. He spun and was out of the office in an instant, off to find V.T. Newbury.

  Snarled in the kind of rush-hour traffic that only five o’clock and a rainy Friday can produce in Brooklyn, Ray Guma had been pulling over whenever he spotted a phone booth and trying to reach Karp. He had been unsuccessful for the same reason that Raney had: Karp was in court. The Bollanos had been very helpful with information about the child pornography and prostitution business. They knew who Mrs. Dean was, and they knew who some of her customers were.

  Guma thought Karp would be very interested in several of these names, and perhaps even grateful enough for receiving them to forgive Guma for what Guma had just pulled off. Or maybe not: Guma did not intend to find out if he could help it. He shoved a quarter into the slot of his current phone booth. It clicked down the chute, but produced no dial tone. This was not a good neighborhood for public phones. He slammed the instrument with his fist, screamed a curse, and ran back to his car.

  The traffic was no better on Broadway. Raney crept uptown, peering through a small clear space in his fogged windshield. The defroster on the Ghia had long since packed it in. He was soaking wet, too, having left his raincoat in the back seat of the unmarked NYPD car he shared with Balducci.

  It was dark by the time he arrived at the address on West End Avenue. There were no lights on in any of the windows, and the building had a deserted look. Raney glanced around and saw that the driving rain had cleared the streets of pedestrians. He walked up the stone stairs, pulled a set of picks from his pocket and went to work on the front door lock.