Justice Denied

by Robert Tanenbaum

“Roland, it’s the context. It’s reasonable doubt,” explained Karp wearily. “Look, let’s review the bidding here. First, we find out that Gabrielle Avanian was killed the night of the murder day in a random act. That shuts down the theory that she was involved in some kind of Armenian plot.”

  “She was. Tomasian admits it.”

  “What?”

  “When we went in there and told him his girlfriend was dead, he said she’d been going out to northern California to raise money for the cause. A lot of Armenians around there.”

  “What ’cause’?”

  “How do I know?” Hrcany replied in a tone of annoyance. “Some business connected with his secret army. He didn’t expand on it, and I didn’t press him.”

  “How did he take his girl getting killed?” Karp asked.

  “Pretty broken up. Of course, it could’ve been because there went his alibi.”

  “In any case,” Karp continued, “you’re still looking for the other guy on the hit, who seems to have vanished into thin air. That’s another weakness. You assumed Tomasian would crack in jail and give up his partner, but he hasn’t. That makes me think he didn’t have one, because he wasn’t there. And a jury will too. No, wait, let me finish.

  “There’s still the money. The Turk from the U.N. says it was a slush fund to buy back antiquities. But Rodriguez, the art cop, says the Turks aren’t likely to do that, and he never heard of Ersoy buying art on the shady market.

  “Finally, we know there’s a connection between Ersoy and Kerbussyan. Ersoy called him from his office in the U.N. mission a whole bunch during the month before he was killed. That’s a connection we haven’t explained, and it’s one that Kerbussyan is anxious to keep quiet. He was lying about not knowing about Ersoy’s money.”

  “How do you know that?” Hrcany challenged.

  “I just know. Also, I’d like to know why two wise guys are talking about Turks in relation to an airport theft operation.”

  Hrcany shook his head in mock rue. “I don’t know, Butch. I think hanging around with Marlene is starting to soften your brain. None of this has anything to do with the case. Focus on the case! Tomasian’s car, Tomasian’s jacket, Tomasian’s threats against the Turks, Tomasian’s gun collection. That’s the case. Who the fuck cares the vic called another Armenian? He could’ve called the Pope too.

  “Same with the money. There’s no evidence the money had any goddamn thing to do with the crime. Remember evidence? You used to think it was pretty important. Hey, here’s an explanation. The Turk’s into art, Kerbussyan’s into art. They discuss, they trade. Could be, right? It don’t matter if it is or isn’t. It doesn’t affect the case.”

  “The case sucks, Roland. The D.’ll blow you away.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  There was a beat when everything stopped except the whirling in Karp’s brain, and then he said, “Yeah, I do; five grand says Aram Tomasian never goes down for killing Mehmet Ersoy.”

  Hrcany snorted in amazement. “You’re kidding.”

  “The fuck I am.” Karp scribbled on a piece of yellow bond and whipped the page across the table to Hrcany. He had written, “I owe Roland Hrcany $5,000 if and when Aram Tomasian is convicted of the murder of Mehmet Ersoy,” and signed and dated it below.

  Hrcany read the thing and looked narrowly at Karp, his eyes pinpricks of gas-flame-colored light in their deep sockets. “You fucker,” he said, “you know something.”

  Karp raised his hand in oath-taking position. “I swear, Roland. You know absolutely everything I do, just like we agreed, the whole truth, so help me God.”

  “Then how the hell can you bet five grand?” said Hrcany, his voice strained. “You don’t have that kind of money.”

  “No, but you do, which is why I won’t mind taking it off you. You jumped for this guy because you have the killer instinct, which is good, but you also have a hard time arguing against yourself, asking the questions the defense is going to ask, trying to wreck your own case. When the great Roland has decided you’re gonna take the fall, you better take the fall.

  “But Tomasian’s not gonna take the fall, Roland. Because he didn’t do it. As for how I know: I know cause I know. I can smell when a case is right and when it’s not. Because I’m the best, Roland, and you’re the second best. Now put up or shut up.”

  Roland’s face went brick red, and the muscles of his jaw popped up like immies. He scratched an opposite-bet IOU on the bottom half of the sheet, tore it across, shoved it over to Karp, and walked out of the office without another word.

  “You did what?” shrieked Marlene.

  “It’s okay, Marlene. It’ll be fine.” Karp calmly took another bite of the sausage and pepper sandwich she had brought him from the cancer wagons.

  Marlene shoved the plastic spoon into her yogurt cup and slammed the cup down on the desk. Bits of Dannon spattered an affidavit.

  “What do you mean, it’ll be all right?” she said, her voice shrill. “How could you have done something so moronic? And without telling me? How could you take a risk like that while we’re trying to buy the loft and pay for your operation? Besides, it’s unethical! Two prosecutors betting on the outcome of a homicide case! If it got out, you could be disbarred, the both of you. You have a piece of pepper on your chin.”

  Karp dabbed himself with the flimsy paper napkin. “It won’t get out. Roland’ll pay up and contract instant amnesia. You think he wants anyone knowing I skunked him? And we won’t tell. So there’s no problem.”

  “There is one problem, Einstein. Tomasian could go down for it, despite everything.”

  “No way. Because we are going to find and convict the actual killers.”

  “You’re that confident?”

  “Of course.” He grinned at her. “I have you, don’t I? You’re always accusing me of not having confidence in you or your ideas. You were the one who first sniffed out it wasn’t Tomasian, you got that stuff from the U.N. guy, and you’re going to find who did do it. I’m a cripple. You have to grab the banner from my failing hands.”

  She stared at him, her face flashing a series of emotions. “You’re such a rat. Only you would’ve turned us working together into a macho game with Roland.”

  Karp laughed and looked skyward. “Dear God, what do they want?”

  Eventually she laughed, too. “Okay, wiseass, what’s our next move?”

  “Follow the art. What deal went down between Kerbussyan and Ersoy? And find out about the art frauds. It’s got to be that. Somebody killed him because he was about to blow a scam. That, or because of some pricey trinket that got misplaced or ripped off.”

  Marlene followed the art. She gathered up the notes she had made at the U.N. and the other materials from the case and went to visit V.T. Newbury. His cubicle was on the eighth floor in Fraud, another typical assistant district attorney’s tiny veal-fattening pen, although V.T. had made some improvements. He had his own furniture: a Sheraton-style desk, a Tiffany desk lamp in mauve and cream glass, a worn but genuine oriental on the floor, a signed (real) Matisse print, and a fake (but pretty) Utrillo street scene on the wall.

  “V.T.,” she said, sliding into the cane rocker he kept in his office for visitors, “let’s talk about art. Tell me things.”

  V.T. looked up from a catalogue raisonné he was studying.

  “Post-modernism is dead, assuming there ever was such a thing.”

  “Not like that. About what you and Rodriguez are doing. The fakes.”

  “Oh, that. That’s going nowhere. As I recall Ramon telling you at Sokoloff’s, art fraud is a hard thing to demonstrate. The victims are embarrassed, so they take their lumps without complaining. If they do complain, the dealer smiles and buys the stuff back, and the next day it’s crated and on a plane to Taiwan or Brazil. They just sell it again. You can’t touch the dealer; he just does a Bogart.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Like Bogart in Casablanca. When Claude Rains asks him why he came to Casablanca, he says, ‘I came
for the waters. For my health.’ And then Rains says, ‘But there are no waters in Casablanca. Casablanca is in the desert.’ And Bogart says, ‘I was misinformed.’ The dealer has his provenance and his opinion from some art school guru he keeps on retainer. So he’s cool. The only way to nail them is if you have solid evidence that they knew the art was fake, like if they actually commissioned some SoHo hack to whip out a Cezanne. Then it is prima facie scheme to defraud, a Class E. Or if we have evidence that the art was actually stolen, and the dealer knew about it. Even then it’s dicey. This is not a guy with fifty hot TVs in the back room. Except if they actually arranged the theft, which is incredibly rare, they’d usually plead down to Criminal Possession Five, misdemeanor level.”

  “So what’s the point? Of what Rodriguez and you are doing?” Marlene asked.

  “The point is the rings. Art fraud nowadays isn’t a solo operation. You don’t have many guys like Van Meegheren faking Vermeers on his own anymore. It’s an international operation involving groups of dozens of people for each major scam. It’s Big Con. So Rodriguez works very tight with Interpol and the people who do the same kind of work he does in the major art centers. The idea is to understand the con and roll up the whole ring at once—craftsmen, dealers, middlemen, and all, close down the workshops and grab the money. That’s the most important thing.”

  “This is where you come in,” Marlene observed.

  V.T. was an expert, perhaps the reigning expert in New York at that time, on how people disposed of ill-gotten gains. He smiled and made a deprecating gesture. “That, and my magisterial knowledge of the quattrocento. But I’m drawing a blank on this one. Ramon is much vexed.”

  “How come?”

  “We don’t know the seller, for one thing. Sokoloff regards it as a trade secret, and we can’t demonstrate knowing fraud on his part, so we can’t pressure him to give it up. The only thing he’ll say is that the stuff comes from Turkey. That’s the other problem. The Turkish authorities are being less than fully cooperative.”

  “Because they don’t care about antiquities? Like Rodriguez said?”

  V.T. pursed his lips and cocked his head: an expression of polite disagreement. “Hmm. As to that. I think there are various factions involved. I think that probably some Turks don’t care, or would like to forget the previous inhabitants of Anatolia, just as Ramon says. I think others, when they bother to think about it at all, resent the looting of their country. After all, the stuff is there; it belongs to them now, whoever made it. I’m not a Sioux, but if a bunch of Turks arrived and started to loot Indian artifacts, I might get upset. And then there are the people who just see a buck to be made. Tourism et cetera.”

  “But you do think it’s at least plausible that this guy Ersoy was buying stolen artifacts back for Turkey.”

  “Plausible. Yes, at least plausible.”

  Marlene did not particularly want to hear this. She wanted Ersoy to be scamming in some way, but she knew she wanted it, and so she was careful not to let jell in her mind a dependence on that view of things.

  “V.T., I think you should check on some stuff for me and Butch. It’s a long story. Have you got a minute?”

  “Yes, it’s a life of leisure here at Fraud. Shoot.”

  Marlene gave him a brief history of the investigation into the killing of Mehmet Ersoy, including what she and Harry Bello had learned at the Turkish mission. Shortly after she began, V.T. got out a pad and started to take notes.

  “This is really fascinating, Marlene,” he said when she had finished. “Especially this business about the brother in Turkey. The archaeologist. A family business maybe. You said there were some letters from the brother. Could I take a look at those in translation?”

  “Sure, I’ll get them for you. You think it’s something?”

  “Yeah, it has the right odor. What you need in these scams, for authenticity, is a credible story that you have access to good stuff, either a theft from a museum or a discovery. Alfredo Kappa, for example.”

  “Who was … ?”

  “This was three, four years back. Kappa let it be known on the Rome market that he had discovered an Etruscan grave site and was keeping it hidden from the art authorities. He moved a hundred and eighty works in a single week, all fakes, of course. Knowing that they might get something that nobody else has is irresistible to a certain class of collectors. The illegality just adds some spice. In this case, though, we have a quasi-legit dealer moving the stuff openly—some of it, anyway.”

  “There could be more?”

  “I’d count on it. The open market just heats up the bidding. You go to the guy who lost out on the Lydian brooch and hint that there’s another available off the books.”

  “Which is a fake.”

  “Doubtless.”

  “So Rodriguez was right? Sokoloff’s stuff is phony?”

  V.T. made his lip-pursing gesture again. “I’m not so sure. The Roslin painting is real enough. What I smell is something really large. A coup. You move some genuine stuff, museum quality. You make a big deal about how important the pieces are, scholars write articles, the Times does a spread. You focus attention, get the serious money interested, spread the story, line up the customers, sell your fakes, and you’re gone.”

  Marlene thought about this for a moment, chewing her lip. “Okay, let’s go ahead on Butch’s supposition. Ersoy was dealing with Kerbussyan. Kerbussyan buys art … uh-oh.”

  V.T. grinned. “Ah, yes. It just struck me too.”

  Marlene rocked forward and rapped her knuckles on the desk. “Crap! Ersoy sells Kerbussyan fakes, and he finds out and aces him. Christ, it wouldn’t take much to get him to shoot a Turk. Damn! It could be we’ve gone around in a big circle for nothing.”

  “You mean it might actually be Tomasian. Kerbussyan tries to recover Armenian national treasures, gets cheated by the hated Turk, and sends the Secret Army out for revenge. Yes, there’s that, but in that case you’d also want to bring in the old man too. Okay, put that aside for a minute, and look at the other alternative. Let’s say thieves fell out. Who would Ersoy be connected with on this scam?”

  Marlene paged through her notes. “Ahmet Djelal. Ersoy spent a lot of time with him. And he was in charge of security at the mission. And he’s got Ersoy’s desk calendar.”

  “It’s worth checking.”

  “Yeah. Okay, I’ll send Harry around. What else?”

  “Well, from my end, I’ll start pulling the wires on the brother, and you get me those letters. We’ll see if his bank account is consistent with the salary of a humble archaeologist.”

  Marlene sighed. She was oppressed by the idea that the Armenians were in fact involved with the murder. “I guess I should go tackle Kerbussyan. I don’t see how it’s going to do any good. I mean, why the hell should he talk to me? Butch’s been at him already, so have the police, and we haven’t got anything new to wave in his face.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t see Kerbussyan yet,” said V.T., a sly tone creeping in.

  “Oh?”

  “No. I think you should talk to Sokoloff first.”

  “Why? We have nothing on him either.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t know that. Cast some broad hints. The last thing he wants is to be involved in a murder investigation, the old smoothie. If he’s not actually the middle man between Ersoy and Kerbussyan on any art dealings they may have had, I guarantee you he knows who sold what to whom. And if it was real.”

  She saw Sokoloff the next day in the office above his gallery. She went alone. Harry was off on bureau business, talking to people who might know whether some guy in Washington Heights had been raping his nine-year-old stepdaughter. She had told him about Djelal, and he had said he would look into it. She was at least mildly guilty about using Harry to investigate something outside her official (and his official) purview, essentially as a favor to her husband. The other women in the office were getting miffed about it too, although they were careful not to show it.

  Harry wo
uldn’t work directly for them in any case; they had to go through Marlene to get him to do anything. Since they were all ambitious women with substantial egos and a certain quickness to take offense at the slights that came daily from what was still virtually an all-boy environment, this did not add to the joy of working in the Rape Bureau. They called Harry, behind his back, “the Dobe”—Marlene’s Doberman pinscher.

  So she sat uneasily on Sokoloff’s nearly real Louis Quinze settee, making small talk with its charming owner, in his charming, exquisitely decorated office, feeling vaguely blue. She had not yet told him why she had come, but he had assumed that she was working the fraud thing with Rodriguez and she had not contradicted this.

  “You sell a lot to Sarkis Kerbussyan, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’ve placed a number of very fine pieces with Sarkis over the years.”

  Placed. Like abandoned children in foster homes, but with infinitely more concern.

  “Armenian artworks, right?”

  “By and large. Sarkis has one of the largest private collections of Armenian art, both ancient and medieval. Why do you ask?”

  Marlene ignored this question. “Would you say he’s a connoisseur? That he knows what he’s doing?”

  Sokoloff nodded and smiled. “Oh, yes. He has a good eye. There is still a little of the rug merchant in him.”

  “Is it likely that he would be taken in by fakes, if they were offered?”

  The temperature of Sokoloff’s smile dropped a few degrees. “Fakes. Well, dear lady, we can all be taken in by clever fakes. Not everything can be analyzed in the laboratory. If we took the time to do so for every item, the art business would collapse. We all have to rely on taste and provenance and the integrity of a reputable dealer. So I can’t really tell you if any fakes have been unloaded on Mr. Kerbussyan. Certainly he never got one from me. Knowingly, that is.”

  Marlene looked at him, waiting. After a brief silence he took a deep breath through his fleshy nose and continued.

  “On the other hand, the specialist collector is perhaps more susceptible to that sort of thing than the general collector, odd as it may seem.”