Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17)

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  After the stories naming them broke, Marlene had refused to believe that they’d messed up. “They’re as good, as thorough, and as honest as anyone who has ever come through that office.”

  But the Brooklyn DA didn’t seem to have the same opinion. “Looks like your two ladies are going to take the fall for the Coney Island case,” Karp said, and pointed to where the story noted that Breman had placed Repass and Russell on “administrative leave” until an investigation by her office could be completed.

  Karp read the next paragraph aloud for Marlene. “‘An investigation,’ Breman said, ‘that will include aggressively pursuing any malfeasance on the part of her office staff or actions by members of the NYPD that resulted in “coerced false confessions” from four innocent young men of color.’”

  Marlene stopped rubbing his shoulders and leaned forward to peer down at the newspaper. There was a file photo of her former assistants leaving the courthouse after the convictions ten years earlier. They looked satisfied, but there were no smiles or gloating; they had still followed her admonition, given when they were working for her, to remember Vince Lombardi’s quote that he expected his players “to act like you’ve been there before” when they scored touchdowns.

  “They may have made a mistake…it happens,” Marlene said of the newspaper allegations. “But Breman seems awfully anxious to just let them swing in the wind.”

  Karp turned to a column he’d read earlier on the editorial page. “Listen to this: ‘It is clear to us that the representatives of our legal system in this case—the prosecutors and the police officers—conspired to deprive these young men of their basic rights to liberty based on the color of their skin. Such indifference to the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial borders on the criminal.”

  Marlene gave him a sour look. “Since when do you quote editorials in the New York Times? Are we going to start believing the same paper that labeled you KKKarp?”

  “I don’t,” he replied. “That paper lost its credibility a long time ago…after its liberal agenda left the editorial page and started showing up on page one. But a lot of people believe everything they read.”

  “I remember when the confession story broke last spring, there was a sidebar article about the victim,” Marlene said. “Liz Tyler. Apparently, she suffered permanent brain damage that affected her speech, and she also has amnesia—she can’t remember a thing about the attack or the assailants. She’s like an ‘inspirational speaker’ that these rape-awareness groups trot out, but really, her life was pretty much ruined. She got divorced after the trial and lost custody of her little girl…something to do with a suicide attempt.”

  “I thought it was the Coney Island Five, not Four,” Karp mused. “And why does the press always have to come up with idiotic names for these things? Like they’re sports teams.”

  “Because it sells newspapers,” Marlene replied. “And it was five, but one of them flipped, copped a plea, and testified against his comrades. If I remember correctly, he was later killed in a gang shooting.”

  “In Brooklyn?” Karp frowned. He couldn’t recall the incident.

  “No, somewhere in California. The story I read when this other joker confessed said the cops didn’t think it had anything to do with this case. Just a drive-by…wrong time, wrong place.”

  Karp reached up and grabbed his wife’s hands that still rested on his shoulders. “Sorry about Robin and Pam,” he said. “I know you liked them.”

  Marlene withdrew her hands from his grip and moved around to sit down, elbows on the table and chin in her hands. She sighed.

  Karp realized the conversation had just changed direction; this wasn’t about the Coney Island case. “What’s up, babe?”

  She sighed again. “Nothing really. I just promised Dad that I’d stop by this morning to help a little with Mom, and I’m just not in the mood.”

  Karp waited to see if she wanted to go on. Marlene came from a close-knit Italian family and as the youngest, it had fallen to her to do most of the looking out for her aging parents. Despite her tough exterior, when it came to her mother and father she was still a little parochial school girl who was unsettled by the thought of her parents getting old. She tried to hide it, but he knew that she was disturbed to distraction by her mother’s slow surrender to Alzheimer’s and her father’s growing inability to cope emotionally with his wife’s ailment. Going to visit her parents at their home in Queens—formerly a pleasant experience that she’d welcomed as often as she could get away—was now something she avoided if possible. Only to beat herself up with guilt afterward.

  Although he already knew how she’d answer, Karp suggested, “Call and say you can’t make it. Find a better day…when you’re feeling up to it.”

  Marlene shook her head. “No. Dad needs to get out of the house for a few hours. And there really aren’t any ‘better days.’ In fact, it seems that she gets a little worse every day, and he gets a little angrier.” She wiped at the tears that had formed in her eyes and smiled at him. “The boys still sleeping?”

  He nodded. “Ever since the holiday break began, they’ve been staying up all night and sleeping until noon.”

  “Do you still have to go in today?”

  He nodded again. “Yeah, I have a meeting with the next mayor of our fair city that he wanted at a time when there weren’t a lot of eyes around…especially the press.”

  Marlene looked surprised. “The new mayor of Gotham wants to thank Batman for handing him the election by taking the Joker, Andrew Kane, out of the picture?”

  Karp tried out his best comic book superhero voice. “No, ma’am. His honor knows that the Caped Crusader was simply doing what needed to be done in the interest of justice and the American way.” It wasn’t a very good impression, so he dropped the voice and continued, “It’s nothing. He just wants a little quiet time to more than likely run the latest anticrime public relations campaign by me.”

  “Want me to call for the Batmobile?” she asked.

  “No thanks, Cat Woman,” he said. “I think I’ll fly. I’m not fitting in my bat tights like I used to and can use the exercise.”

  3

  AT LEAST THERE’S NO WIND, KARP THOUGHT AS HE LEFT THEfive-story building on the corner of Grand and Crosby that housed the family loft. Sometimes gales blew up off the harbor and funneled down the stone canyons with such force that it could be difficult to walk. During the winter, the winds stabbed through the thickest coat like ice hooks, and the gray, overcast sky could make it seem colder yet.

  Even on a day like this one, when the skies were bright blue and the air still, the temperature could dangle in the single digits. Karp pulled his long, dark-blue wool peacoat tighter around his neck and tugged a Russian Cossack hat down over his ears as far as it would go. The boys had bought him the hat for his birthday, and at the time he’d thought privately that he looked ridiculous in it and would never wear the thing. But now he was grateful for its protection and wished it could also cover his nose as he strode quickly south across Grand Street.

  Despite the bite in the air, the walk was not an entirely unpleasant one. A few last snowflakes floated in the sunlight like leftover confetti from a parade and lent an air of authenticity to the Christmas decorations that hung in the various shop and loft windows along his route.

  Karp loved this time of year with the wreaths and ribbons and the Hanukkah candles in the windows. Even the string of blinking lights the Chinese butcher at the corner of Centre and Canal had dangled around the row of plucked ducks in the viewing case brought back fond memories of holiday strolls with his parents to look at the lights and listen to the carolers in his Brooklyn neighborhood. He made a mental note to take the boys and Marlene, and maybe Lucy, if she made it home for the holidays, ice-skating beneath the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and to gawk like tourists at the holiday scenes in the windows along Fifth Avenue.

  Centre Street on a chill Sunday morning was quiet, with only a few people scurrying from one
destination to the next. Karp reflected that most of the wiser members of the public were hunkered down. But as he drew near Worth Street he saw that a small crowd of people, including several wearing dark blue coats with NYPD stenciled on the back, were gathered around a man who stood on a milk crate.

  As Karp drew closer, he realized that the speaker was Dirty Warren, the guy who ran the newsstand where he usually bought his Times before heading into the courthouse at 100 Centre Street, which also housed his office. He would have recognized the vendor even if he couldn’t see the long, pointed nose that protruded from the orange ski mask that otherwise revealed only a set of watery blue eyes beneath thick glasses and a blue-lipped mouth. It was the mouth that gave the owner away, not its appearance but what came out of it.

  Dirty Warren had received his nickname, the only name Karp knew him by, because he suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, a short circuit in his brain that was manifested by profanity-laced speech the likes of which was rarely heard away from sailors’ bars. Karp sometimes suspected that Warren took advantage of his affliction to hurl invective at people he might not otherwise have dared confront. But proving it was difficult—sort of like demanding that someone in a wheelchair stand up to prove that he was indeed handicapped.

  As he stood on top of the milk crate, Dirty Warren’s diatribe had attracted the usual street people in their colorful array of castoff garments and Salvation Army blankets, as well as a few curious tourists, who stood in slack-jawed amazement at the man’s dexterity with foul language.

  “Sh-sh-sh-shit, p-p-p-piss cocksucker. L-l-l-leave him al-l-lone!” Warren didn’t normally stutter, as well as cuss, but it was d-d-damn cold. “D-d-didn’t they ta-ta-ta-teach you pigs about the r-r-r-right of the pa-pa-pa-people to assemble or…ma-ma-ma-motherfucker vagina…the fah-fah-fah-freedom of speech at the academe-meme? D-damn ass-wipe, ball-licker sons of wh-wh-wh-whores!”

  Whatever had prompted the newspaper vendor to hold forth originally had now degenerated into a rant directed at the NYPD officers, who were trying to figure out a way to come at a large man they had surrounded.

  Small wonder, Karp thought and smiled when he saw the man, whose massive head was covered with a filthy mane of dark curly hair that seemed to sprout over most of his face as well, and what wasn’t covered with hair was nearly black with dirt and grease. The man was wearing what appeared to be four or five coats, the colors of which had long since faded. He’d stuffed his hair into a filthy Santa Claus hat and was waving his arms wildly as he shuffled back and forth in front of the cops like an enraged bear, which he resembled. He bellowed, “Back ov, ’u fuggin’ pigs. Let Warren ’peak. Freedom ov ’peech! Freedom ov ’peech!”

  The officers seemed reluctant to close and Karp knew why. Even from the back of the crowd—maybe twenty feet—he could smell the Walking Booger, another one of the legions of homeless street wanderers he’d known for years. Legend had it that Booger, whose explorations of his nasal cavities with any one—and sometimes two at a time—of his sausagelike fingers had earned him his nickname, had neither bathed nor washed his clothes in the nearly two decades since he’d first shown up on the streets. Not unless standing in the rain counted as a shower or a visit to the laundromat. His breath alone might have qualified as a weapon of mass destruction. Every way he turned, the cops and the crowd on that side took two steps back with horrified looks.

  Karp would have walked on, but Warren spotted him from his milk crate and yelled to him. “H-h-hey, Karp. Would you p-please…scumbag piss drinker…explain to New York’s finest that th-th-there’s such a thing as…fa-fa-fuck me naked…a Constitution?”

  One of the older officers with the chevrons of a sergeant on his sleeve turned to see whom Warren was yelling to and looked relieved to see him. “Hey, Mr. Karp, Sergeant Seamus, nice work this summer nailin’ that slimebag Kane and the slimebag cops who was doin’ his dirty work—gave us all a black eye,” he said, removing a glove and sticking out a big, meaty hand.

  Karp shook the proffered hand. “Thanks, but there were a lot more people involved than just me. Not to mention that I think the reputation of the NYPD isn’t going to be dictated by a few bad apples.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment,” Seamus said with a nod. He turned his attention toward Warren and Booger. “Would you mind explaining to these gentlemen that they need to settle down before one of my boyos decides to end this ‘peaceful assembly’ by busting heads?” He nodded to a steroidal-looking younger cop who already had his nightstick out and was growing redder in the face with each profanity launched from Warren’s mouth.

  Karp grimaced. “I’d call off the dogs, Seamus. The last time someone hit Booger—the big one there—that I know of, it was with a crowbar right between the eyes. Would have killed a cow. Instead it only made him mad enough to stuff his assailant—some skinhead bully who had a thing for homeless people—down a storm sewer…. Not to mention I don’t know that your boy could get close enough without being overcome by the fumes.”

  Seamus wrinkled his nose. “Know what you mean. Still, we need to move this crowd along.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Karp replied. He turned and walked up to the soapbox orator. “Yo, Warren, come down from there. I need my paper.”

  Warren hurled a few more epithets toward the police, who shook their heads and moved on, then stepped down from his perch. Booger held up his arms as if to give him a hug. “ ’arp, boy am I glad a see choo.”

  Karp sidestepped the hug and instead shook Booger’s filthy hand, making a mental note to burn his glove as soon as he got home. “Glad to see you, too. What was all this anyway? The sergeant says his guys were trying to move people out from in front of storefront doors. They’ve been doing that since Tammany Hall.”

  “Yeah, piss face,” Warren replied. “But they’ve p-p-p-picked up the pace, and on a Sunday morning in w-w-eather…ohhh SHIT!…like this, harassing street people like B-b-b-booger and the others when they’re just t-t-trying to stay warm. It’s all about the c-c-city’s image…bitch son of a ba-ba-ba-bitch…so that the tourists won’t have to be exposed to guys like Booger here. Ba-babut they don’t want to do anything…lick my nuts…to help, just sh-sh-shove them out of sight, the darker the hole the better. Tiny-brained wipers of other people’s bottoms.”

  Karp narrowed his eyes. “Wasn’t that a line from a movie?”

  “You…you…you tell me?” Warren grinned, playing their old game of “guess the movie” trivia.

  “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,”Karp said.

  “Too easy, th-th-that one didn’t count,” Warren giggled while Booger guffawed.

  Karp tried not to smile. No sense encouraging them. “Tell you what, if you can keep this on the QT, I’m on my way to meet with the new mayor, and if I get a chance, I’ll quiz him about his plans for the homeless.”

  “Yeah, right,” Warren said. “They’re all the s-s-same. The more things change the more things remain the same…or…butthole…get worse.”

  “ ’ah, worse,” Booger chimed in.

  “Well, we can always hope,” Karp said. “I kind of like this guy.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see. H-h-hey, you need a paper, right?” Warren said, as they approached his newsstand.

  “Yeah, I need the Post,” he said, handing over a ten. “Keep the change and maybe go get yourself and Booger a cup of coffee and a couple of doughnuts. And try to behave; the Cossacks are right around the corner waiting for you two anarchists to act up again.”

  Warren grabbed the bill and stomped off, muttering, with Booger shuffling alongside him, loudly repeating every third obscenity and raising his fist like a Cuban revolutionary.

  Karp shook his head—never a dull moment in the Big Apple. He walked on past 100 Centre Street, the gray monolith that housed the city courts, the grand juries, the Manhattan house of detention—known affectionately as the Tombs—and the NY DAO.

  He climbed the stairs and saw a familiar figure waiting for him at t
he door. “Why, Harry, what brings you to City Hall on a Sunday morning?” he asked.

  Harry “Hotspur” Kipman was tall and thin to the point where he would have made a good Ichabod Crane for a stage production of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He had a pair of piercing blue eyes set a little too close together over an eagle’s beak nose, but they saw through bullshit better than anyone Karp had ever known.

  It was Karp who’d given him the nickname Hotspur for his temperament. Harry wasn’t one to pull punches. He was a crusader against hypocrisy, and his directness was sometimes more off-putting than he intended. But he was at heart a good, gentle man with a dry wit and quick mind that made him a pleasure to be around.

  Karp wouldn’t have traded Harry, who’d become the head of the appeals bureau, for a dozen courtroom litigators. A lawyer’s lawyer, Kipman had an almost total recall of the New York Penal Code, as well as the citations to major pivotal cases. He personally prepared the legal briefs and argued the People’s case against the big-enchilada convicted murderers who sought their last legal refuge the system provided in the appellate process. His win-loss record was right up there with Ivory Snow’s purity. He also insisted on “preemptive lawyering” by personally reviewing the high-profile or legally challenging cases before they went to trial. The idea was to advise the assistant district attorneys trying the case to create an error-free record.

  However, it might have been Kipman’s third role that Karp liked best. Harry was a sort of moral compass for the district attorney’s office. He’d come to work for the legendary former DA Francis Garrahy about the same time Karp did and, like Karp, had adopted the old man’s policy that the purpose of the district attorney’s office was to seek justice, “not win at any cost.”

  If, in his running battle with evil, Karp was ever tempted to cut corners—and it wasn’t often—Kipman was there to remind him, sometimes with nothing more than a look, that there was only one way to do things. The right way.