The silence in the room was broken by sniffling. Russell looked up through teary eyes and wiped at her nose with a tissue. "I'm sorry," she said. "I've never really gotten over this one. And to hear it all again, to remember their faces-those bastards laughed and giggled throughout the trial, too-brought it all back. Then to have them walk out and demand money…I don't sleep too well these days."
Repass reached over and patted the arm of her friend. The others murmured their support. "I think we all feel the same," Karp said gently. "My job now is to make sure these pieces of crap don't profit from what they did to Liz Tyler. But we've still got a lot to do and not much time to do it."
"Are you going to ask for a continuance after your official appointment to the case?" Newbury asked.
"Haven't completely decided," Karp replied, "but I'm leaning toward going ahead with the late-January trial date. Louis thinks Lindahl is going to settle this one-at least that's what Denton believes. So I'm betting that he's not doing much to prepare, at least if the lack of action in the file is any indication. They're definitely not girding for war. So I'm thinking maybe we keep the date, only we get out ahead of the game before my appointment is officially announced and Louis realizes he's got a fight on his hands."
Karp handed out the assignments. He asked Fulton to assign a team of detectives from the DA's team to find Hannah Little. To Repass, Russell, and Guma he gave the task of going through the remaining boxes looking at "every slip of paper, every video. I don't want any surprises, unless they're on Louis… And, ladies, I'm sure I don't have to tell you this as you used to work in this office and know full well that Mr. Guma is not to be trusted around good-looking women."
"Hey, hey, that was a cheap shot out of left field," Guma complained but leered at the two women who stuck out their tongues.
"Keep those in your mouths unless you intend to use them," he warned.
"On that note, I believe we can go on about our other business," Karp said.
"Oh, wait, speaking of notes," Guma said, refocusing on the subject at hand. "I wanted to mention a note-on one of those sticky pad pages-I found in one box. It had evidently fallen off of some other envelope or sheet. It doesn't say much, just 'Kaminsky letter…To Breman…re: Villalobos…FWD: Klinger.' I don't know what it means and a cursory search of all the boxes didn't turn up a letter from anyone named Kaminsky to Breman, so I'm assuming FWD means it got forwarded to Klinger. But if so, why wasn't a copy left in the file and why hasn't the Corporation Counsel been given a copy as the rules of evidence demand?"
"Have you called Breman or Klinger and inquired about it?" Russell asked.
Guma shook his head. "Nope. Of course that would be the logical step at some point, but at this point neither knows that Butch is involved with this case."
"And right now I'd rather keep it that way," Karp interjected.
"Are you suggesting some sort of hanky-panky between Breman and the judge?" Karp asked.
Guma shrugged. "Can't say. However, I also can't think of a reason why a letter from someone to the Brooklyn DA regarding Villalobos would be sent to the judge and then no one hears about it again. It would seem to be exculpatory."
"Well, as I said, we have a lot of work ahead of us," Karp said. "Let's get busy."
After everyone else had left, Kipman and Murrow remained seated. "Yes?" Karp asked.
It was Murrow who took the floor first. "I know I'll come off as the insensitive lout here, but I wouldn't be doing my job-at least not the part of my job that has to do with getting you elected-if I didn't voice my concerns about the ramifications of getting involved in this case." He took a quick glance at Kipman, who was studying his fingernails, before continuing. "I know you hate hearing this stuff but it's a political reality that race is going to be a hot button if you pursue this. I can hear Louis, and all the other race baiters, now whining about how the white establishment is defending a grave injustice by calling in its heavy hitter-in a role that's not even his to take-to persecute young black men. And the press will gladly go along with that ride for the fiery quotes if nothing else."
Kipman knitted his brow and appeared about to speak, so Murrow quickly went on. "I'm also sure your political opponent, whoever he turns out to be, will make a big deal about the Manhattan district attorney, who instead of getting criminals off the streets of Gotham apparently had enough time on his hands to take on a civil case in another jurisdiction."
"What about the police vote and the law and order types?" Kipman asked.
"He might pick something up there," Murrow conceded. "But the rank and file will be influenced by what the union bosses say, and I think it's pretty obvious to everyone here that the bosses are willing to let a few cops swing in the wind."
"Doesn't make it right," Kipman said.
"Look, it's not that I think this case shouldn't be fought tooth and nail," Murrow said, facing Karp. "And if you ask me, it seems like a slam dunk for the city defendants and all once Lindahl is out of there. All I'm asking is does it have to be you? The new mayor is going to have to pick a new Corporation Counsel, and he'll have a lot of qualified lawyers to choose from including-and I mean no disrespect here-some better qualified to take on a civil case than you."
"I don't take any offense, Gilbert," Karp said. "I've said and thought many of the same things and you deserve to hear the reason that tipped the scales for me when I was considering whether to accept this job. I was saving this speech for the trial, but I'll run it by you first."
Karp stuck his hands in his pockets and gathered himself as if giving the jury his trial summation. "This isn't just about Liz Tyler, though she deserves our protection and justice," he said. "Nor is it just about trying to keep these animals from winning millions from the city.
"What truly troubles me is that by acting as she has, the Brooklyn DA has destabilized and delegitimized the credibility of our justice system. She's placed in jeopardy law enforcement practices, methods, procedures, and techniques utilized in solving crime. To wit, she's exonerated guilty, puny, punk predators who committed vicious, unimaginable outrages against several innocent individuals, including Ms. Tyler. She's fractured the moral high ground and credibility of key and essential crime-solving methods. And she's enabled the guilty to turn the justice system upside down by illegitimately providing these assholes and their asshole lawyer the grounds to sue the city, my city, and those sworn to uphold the law for substantial money damages. Someone has got to stand up for the system, Gilbert, or we're all lost."
Karp looked at Murrow as if he were the last juror he knew he needed to convince. "They said it was fun, Gil. They laughed about it. And now they want to be paid for it."
When he stopped talking the room was so quiet that Mrs. Milquetost, who had been standing at the office threshold, made the most dominant sound when she crossed herself and whispered, "May God have mercy."
It stayed that way until at last Murrow sighed and nodded his head. "Okay. How can I help?"
18
Tuesday, December 21
"Say, if it ain't Zak The Hack and G-dawg. You boys up for a little balling?" Khalif Mohammed arced a fifteen-foot jumper at the basket-nothing but net-then picked up his ball and walked over to the twins, who'd just arrived at the courts.
Exchanging high fives and homeboy handshakes, Giancarlo looked up at the tall, young black man. "We heard the good news from our dad. You guys don't have to worry about prison anymore."
"Yeah." Mohammed smiled. "Now I can get on with it."
Zak furrowed his dark eyebrows. "Aren't you mad? Like Rashad? I'd be mad if someone lied about something I'd done and I had to go to prison."
"And got kicked out of college and lost my scholarship," Giancarlo added.
Mohammed reflected for a moment. Sometimes these kids seemed a lot older to him than twelve-year-olds. Maybe old souls, he thought. "I won't kid you," he said. "I've been plenty mad over this. When I was lying on my bed in that prison staring up at a steel ceiling, listeni
ng to all the crazy bullshit you hear at night on a cell-block, I wanted to kill somebody. Kill that woman who lied. Kill the prosecutor. Kill just anybody to take the anger out of me."
As he spoke, the boys were surprised to see that he had tears in his eyes. "But I placed myself in the hands of Allah and said 'His will be done,' and then I wasn't so mad anymore. I believe that Allah has it all planned out and that I just had to accept it, and try to be a better man than the people who wronged me. It helped me realize that I lost that part of my life, but I didn't lose my life…and for a young black man coming from my neighborhood that's saying something. I still got my health, I got my faith, and I can still play ball."
He dribbled rapid-fire, then once between his legs and back in front of the twins and laughed. "You two Jethros think you can hang with Black Magic?"
The twins laughed back and tried to get the ball, which he kept easily out of their reach. Zak pulled up and asked, "Where's Rashad?"
The question broke Mohammed's concentration, which allowed Giancarlo to steal the ball and take off for the basket. Mohammed bit his lip and looked down the street. "He'll be along here in just a minute. To be honest, he and I haven't been hangin' quite as tight lately."
"Are you guys still friends?" Giancarlo asked, dribbling back after missing a layup.
"Sure. Sure. He's just been spending a lot of time with some people I don't particularly care for…but we're brothers, have been since we were both in diapers, and always will be."
"What are you going to do now?" Zak asked. "With your life, I mean."
Mohammed shrugged his broad shoulders. "Not entirely sure. There's still some legal things to clear up, but I want to go back to school. Maybe find someplace where I can still play ball and get my degree."
A nondescript sedan pulled up to the curb in front of the gate and Rashad Salaam got out of the passenger side. He scowled when he saw the twins, leaned back into the car, and said something to the driver, who sped away. Salaam entered the gate and pointed at Zak and Giancarlo. "Shit, K, why are you talking to them little muthafuckas?"
"Watch your mouth, Rashad," Mohammed replied. "They're just kids. They had nothing to do with what happened to us. You might remember, our lawyer said it was their daddy who signed the papers to drop the charges."
"Well, ain't that nice since we didn't do the crime, but we already did the time. You might remember that it was their daddy whose bitch brought the charges against us in the first place," Salaam replied. "And their daddy's bitch who put us in prison even when she knew that other ho had lied."
"It still wasn't the kids' fault. It's over, brother, time to move on."
Salaam turned and spit at the fence. "It ain't never going to be over. Our lives are ruined; all part of the white man's master plan to keep the brothers, especially Muslim brothers, down. Nits make lice, man. Those two may be innocent little kids now, but they'll grow up to be just like their daddy and all the rest of the white muthafuckas-especially Jews like these two here and their daddy-that live off the sweat and blood of brown people all over the world. Unless we put a stop to it."
Mohammed scoffed. "We put a stop to it? You've been hanging out too much with the Arab brothers at the mosque, man. Everything's a Jewish conspiracy to them with Americans just following along like dumb sheep. They never bother to ask Arab leaders where'd all that oil money go besides them fancy palaces and fine cars. How come 'we' ain't helping all them Palestinians in the refugee camps with that oil money?"
"Man, you starting to sound like The Man," Salaam said. "Or maybe you just his nigger."
Mohammed dropped the ball and started to walk toward his friend. "Who you calling a nigger, niggah?"
Giancarlo tugged on Mohammed's arm. "That's okay. Zak and I will just go shoot on the other court." He turned and started to walk away.
"No, you hold on G-man." Mohammed looked back at his friend. "Come on, Rashad. I'm going to shoot hoops with these kids. Let's play a little hoop."
"Hell, no," Salaam said and turned to leave the way he'd come.
"See you tonight?" Mohammed called after his friend, who just kept walking without turning to indicate he'd heard.
Mohammed watched him go, and the twins could see he was hurt. But then he stopped watching and dribbled toward the basket, pulling up to shoot a ten-foot brick that bounced off the rim. Retrieving the ball, he looked back at the twins. "Hey, we going to play or what?"
After an hour, a dark Lincoln town car pulled up at the curb and the boys' father got out from the rear seat. He waved them over. The twins high-fived Mohammed and sauntered off the court to show that they were going, but on their own terms.
"Hi, Dad," they said. Then bending over to look at the driver, they added, "Hi, Clay."
Zak pointed back at the court. "That's Khalif Mohammed, one of the basketball players who went to prison."
Karp glanced over at the young man who stood with his ball tucked under his arm. "I know," he said. "I remember seeing him in a couple of games. He sure knows how to play ball."
"Want to meet him?"
"Maybe some other day," Karp replied. He didn't want to get into how Mohammed and his codefendant might very well sue the city because of Rachman's foul-up and that it wasn't appropriate to make contact with him now. "Let's go grab some hot dogs at Nathan's; I've got to meet someone near there briefly." Surprised but delighted, the boys hopped in the car for the ride across the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Karp family males debarked from the car at the corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues, looking up at the Nathan's Famous Frankfurters sign like pilgrims at a shrine. They ordered two dogs each, three orders of fries, and three sodas, which cost in the neighborhood of twenty-five bucks. Then the twins listened patiently as their dad groused-as he did every time they went to Nathan's-about how things had changed since he used to come there as a boy. "Back then, my mom would give me a dollar bill, which would get me three dogs, fries, and a soda, and I'd still have change left over. Back then, they cooked them on a grill outside during the summer and you could smell them sizzling and popping with just a trace of garlic as soon as you got off the Stillwell Avenue subway station. Back then…"
As soon as they'd wolfed their dogs and washed the remains down with their soft drinks, the twins clamored to go to the boardwalk at the end of Stillwell. "Can we go over to the water?" Zak asked.
Karp looked at his watch. "Sure, just stay in sight," he said.
The twins jumped out of their shoes and were scampering across the sand before he could come up with any other rules. Karp watched them go, then turned to look down the boardwalk toward Brighton Beach. His eyes were drawn to the amusement park and the Ferris wheel.
After a moment Karp turned his eyes from the Ferris wheel and looked in the opposite direction. Two hundred yards away was the pier, a dark, forbidding structure. He'd never thought of it that way when he was a boy and liked to go stand out on the end and watch the fishermen. But it had been tainted by what Jayshon Sykes and his gang had done to Liz Tyler in its shadows. Part of the reason he'd asked the boys if they wanted to visit Nathan's was so that he could fix in his mind the scene of the crime as he prepared for trial.
There was, however, another reason for the trip to Coney Island. That reason, he saw as he looked back toward Brighton Beach, was walking slowly down the boardwalk toward him.
Karp was surprised at how old the man seemed. He walked bent over with a cane and seemed frail. When he was a boy and would sometimes see the man at his grandfather's house, he'd seemed huge. The man would pick him up and hold him level with his eyes. "Have you been a good boy?" he would always ask, his English heavily accented.
When Butch nodded his head, the man would put him back down. Then he'd reach in his pocket and pull out a piece of saltwater taffy wrapped in wax paper. The man-whom he called Uncle, although the relationship was never quite clear back then-never remained long after they arrived. When Butch got older, he sensed that his father wasn't comfortable around him,
and the two men treated each other with a sort of stiff politeness.
Over the years, Karp had seen the man only rarely. He'd sent him an announcement when he married Marlene, and two weeks later a wedding gift had arrived-an expensive set of Russian nesting dolls, ornately trimmed in gold leaf-but his wife had never met him. There were good reasons for this-reasons that explained his father's coolness-but Karp was delighted to see the man now.
"Uncle," he said, smiling as he walked up to the old man and hugged him, aware of the large younger man who hovered discreetly in the background.
"Good to see you, nephew," the old man responded. "It has been too long."
After giving the old man a brief rundown of the family's health and happiness, pointing out the twins who were chasing each other at the water's edge, he asked the old man why he'd called and asked for this meeting.
"Well, I know you are running for the office of district attorney," the old man began, "and I just wanted to express my concern that if some person in the newspapers or television should make some connection between you, me, and my family's…enterprises…it might not be a good thing."
Karp patted the old man on his shoulder. "They never have before," he replied. "I don't know why they would now. And if they do, I can tell them the truth. We are family but distant, unfortunately, and I really don't know anything about these enterprises. Nor do I want to…as we've always said, 'That's in Brooklyn.'"
The old man laughed. "Good, good. Yes, I have kept our family matters out of Manhattan-at least since you returned from law school and began to make a nuisance of yourself to my good friends the Italians and other 'businessmen,' not to mention the other foul and evil men you have dealt with."
"And I appreciate that," Karp said and smiled in return.
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