Material Witness

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “And you’ll help on this if I do?”

  “Whatever you need,” said Guma, and Hrcany nodded in agreement. Newbury said, “And I’ll help too, purely out of a profound love of justice.”

  Almost before he knew it, Karp found himself saying, “OK. Deal.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The waitress came and cleared away their plates. Karp looked at his three companions. The relief shown on their faces affected him strangely. He had no false modesty about his skills, but he had not realized that he could be missed, that his presence imparted a quality to the work of the D.A.’s office that could not easily be replaced. Like many natural leaders, Karp despised the accouterments of leadership: posh furniture, deference, flattery, speeches and honors. He thought in terms of function, and he insisted on flawless preparation and aggressive prosecution. When he thought about it at all, he supposed that his staff regarded him as an annoying son of a bitch. It was a shock, and not entirely a pleasant one, to realize that he was part of something that wanted him for his inherent qualities of mind and spirit, that depended on him.

  It was quite different, he realized, from being part of a professional athletic team, and that difference sprang from something essentially wrong at the heart of pro ball. Ball could be thrilling, dramatic, even beautiful, but—the realization struck him now with implacable force—it was just a game. Suddenly it was unbearable to him that Doobie Wallace and Fred James each received for “playing” (the irony of the word!) twice the annual salary that his entire (former) staff at the Criminal Courts Bureau got for helping to keep a city from falling into lawless chaos.

  “Ah, Butch … ?”

  Karp snapped to with a start and looked at Guma. “Sorry, guys, I was just thinking.” He extracted from his breast pocket the enlargements of Marlene’s photo and laid them out on the table. “Do we know these guys? Anybody?”

  The three studied the shot. One, the driver, the cigar smoker, was about fifty, with bushy gray sideburns and a pitted potato nose. He wore hornrimmed glasses. The other was younger, had a rounder face and a thinner, hooked nose over fleshy lips. Neither of them would have been easily mistaken for professors of comparative literature. Both were deeply tanned.

  “I’m drawing a blank here, Butch,” said Guma, whose memory for faces was legendary, and whose knowledge of the Mob was no less impressive. “Sideburns looks a little like Solly Rocks, but Solly passed on in sixty-eight, I think it was. The other guy? Young … I wouldn’t know him, probably. I’ll show this around. You say they’re Philly guys?”

  “Maybe,” Karp said cautiously. “The question is, what does a series of torch jobs have to do with Marlene? Or with Simmons? V.T.?”

  “We could look at the burned properties,” offered V.T. “See if anybody is making buys or collecting big insurance in the area. That’d be a start.”

  “Good,” said Karp. “Do that, and also check out Chaney’s business interests. And Frank Mackey’s. See if there’s a connection between them, especially with reference to the team.”

  V.T. made notes in a slim leather book. “What are we looking for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know—that’s the problem,” replied Karp in frustration. “It’s a fishing expedition, which is why it can’t be official right now. Be discreet.”

  “My middle name,” said Newbury, smiling. Very little went on in the New York financial community that was beyond the ken of V.T. Newbury and his vast tribe of relatives and acquaintances.

  Karp turned to Hrcany. “Roland—OK, the key for you is Doone. Assume he’s being framed. Assume he was in jail on the night of, and somebody had to hustle to suppress the records. Find out who his lawyer is.”

  Hrcany frowned. “That’s a lot of work, Butch. The logical place to start is to find the cop that pulled him in, see if we got anything at all, or if your guy is just blowing smoke. That means going up to the three-oh and going through their duty logs, talking to the shift sergeants, and pray that the cop remembers. You got any idea how many traffic stops and DWIs they got up there? Not to mention, if we don’t have the docket number on the complaint, we’ll never find the records. You can’t find shit if you don’t have a number.”

  “You’ll manage, Roland,” said Karp confidently. “I’m sure there’s a cop up there you got something on. I tell you what, though: get Peter Schick on the records end of it. You remember him—he’s over at Appeals now.”

  “He’ll do it?”

  “Guaranteed. Tell him it’s for me. He owes me one.” Karp hesitated for a moment and then went on. “Oh, one other thing: get a car and a police driver. Marlene’s going to want to talk to Doone, and I don’t want her out of the house alone.”

  Hrcany laughed knowingly and said, “I don’t blame you. Let me start on the records end here. Tell her to find out as much as she can about the circumstances of the arrest. It’ll help to find out what really happened.”

  Marlene was still lounging in bed when Karp returned to the loft.

  “I’ll have my cappuccino now,” she called out when she heard him enter. “And an assortment of tiny cakes.”

  “How about instant and some old Oreos?” he replied, plopping on the red couch and massaging his knee. “And if you come down here, I might tell you what I’ve been up to this morning, concerning the case.”

  Bed springs creaked and fabric rustled. Marlene appeared, a kimono draping her bulge. “Give!” she demanded. Karp gave.

  “That’s terrific, Butch,” she exclaimed when he wound to a halt. “The old gang! It’s like the movies, except you have to win the big game.”

  Karp laughed without humor. “There’s not much chance of that.”

  “Oh? Your old knee?”

  “Yeah, that and … the whole thing. The pros. It’s the game itself. It’s changed, or maybe I have. It’s not that I don’t love basketball. Getting back into it, it’s been a good thing for me, picking up a thread of my life. Today, like, when I was talking to the guys, I realized that one of the things I tend to do when something goes sour is I cut it totally out of my life. Big-time basketball was finished when I was a kid, so I cut it out. I didn’t play, I didn’t watch games, I didn’t want to know from it. Same with the D.A. just a while ago. I didn’t call Guma, V.T., anybody—people I worked with for years. It was shitty and I regret it.

  “But … there’s something wrong with the big time. I don’t know if I can explain this right. Basketball is a head game. I mean, you need physical talent and all, but basically, in the game I learned, the point of it was pattern and plays, being somewhere and not being somewhere else. And the heart of the game, what makes it different from football and hockey, is the fact that you’re not supposed to touch the other players. OK, that’s always been ignored in the clutch, you have to take a foul.

  “But the tone of the game has changed. It’s hard to find a good half-court game now. Nobody wants to drill on the plays. It’s all fast break: run like a rabbit, fly through the air, slam it in. That’s what the fans like to see. Plus giants cutting each other up under the boards, fistfights, pushing. Guys give each other the elbow when there’s no point to it. And the refs are scared to call half the fouls.”

  He shook his head and looked down at his huge hands. “It’s playground stuff. No, it’s worse than playground ball. In a schoolyard, guys won’t play with you if you’re rough like that. You get your head beat in. But these guys in the pros, they’re millionaires, which is fine, but they have the arrogance of millionaires too—and it’s going to get worse.”

  “Are you sure it’s not just ‘When I was a boy …’?”

  Karp laughed. “Yeah, maybe. But meanwhile … you know my grandmother used to say something, whenever us kids would tell her some news about the modern world, anything—Sputnik, politics, some scandal—she’d always say the same thing, ‘Ohne mich.’ It means ‘without me,’ the perfect solution. That’s how I feel about professional basketball.”

  “You’re quitting. Well, a short and br
illiant career. That’s something. When?”

  “Oh, I’ll do Philly, and then the Knicks game. I always wanted to play in the Garden. I’ll guard Bill Bradley maybe, thrill of a lifetime, a pair of alte cochers. The team’s heading west after that, and I don’t see any point in being away from home this close to the baby.”

  “My hero,” said Marlene, beaming.

  “My heroine,” said Karp. “Speaking of which, I got Roland to have a cop with a car lined up, assuming you want to go to Riker’s and see your mutt.”

  Marlene groaned. “Cripes, oh, not today! I feel like I’ve been beaten with rods, and my legs are all swollen.”

  “Poor baby!” said Karp sympathetically. “OK, we can put it off. Or I’ll go myself …”

  She groaned again as she heaved herself upright. “No, this is breaking now. If they went so far as to plant evidence and falsify records, the longer we wait, the more chance they have to solidify the frame-up. And I doubt if he’d talk to you. He may not even talk to me. For all I know, he thinks I framed him.”

  Carmine and Joey watched Marlene drive off in an unmarked police car. Carmine had done some looking and knew the worst.

  “Ain’t you gonna follow her?” asked Joey.

  “No, Joey, the fuck I care where she goes anymore. All I want is to get her alone.”

  The guard at Riker’s Island jail looked at Marlene and at the visitation form she had filled out and did a double take. “Relative?” he asked.

  “Lawyer,” she replied, truthfully, if not relevantly.

  Clang of doors, the walk through the dank corridors stinking of disinfectant and that monkey-house smell—primates in captivity—and the sound, a continuous low bellow of rage. She’d been here many times before and it was always a real treat.

  Doone was in his yellow jumpsuit when she arrived at the other side of the glass interview box. The color of the outfit against his skin gave him the look of an exotic tropical bird, one with ruffled feathers.

  Marlene sat down in the hard chair with relief and said immediately, “I know they’re trying to frame you, and I intend to get you out of here.”

  He looked at her for a long, cool moment. “Why you care, Babylon?”

  “Why do you think, Jamaica? We had a deal, and this isn’t part of it. OK, you got a lawyer?”

  “Yah.”

  “You tell him you were arrested and in custody the night Simmons was shot?”

  “Yah. Den dey tell ’im dat dere ain’t no records fo no arrest. So ’im say dem steal de arrest records or some t’ing; I say yah, yah, is always de same, to press de people. Same t’ing dem do in Jamaica, nuh. So wha’ we gon do?”

  “Well, we gon do one t’ing first—shit! you got me talking like that.”

  He cracked a thin smile. “Dat our liltin’ island speech. It gets in your blood, mon.”

  “That should be ‘it get in your blood.’ Try to stay in character, Mr. Doone. OK, here’s the thing. I can find stuff out that your lawyer might not be able to. I’ve got people working on this. The first thing I need is the complete story of where, when, how and by whom you were arrested and what happened after that.”

  The story was quickly told. On the night in question, Doone had gone to do some business in Harlem. Afterward, he had gone drinking at a club that featured Jamaican music. He had downed a good deal of white rum. An acquaintance had invited him for a ride in his new Cadillac El Dorado. Along with two women, the two men had gone roaring up St. Nicholas Avenue, passing a bottle around the car.

  At Fort Tryon Park, the acquaintance had lost control of the car and gone off the road into the bushes. No one was hurt, but after that Doone had insisted on driving; he was well oiled, but a lot less so than the other man. With Doone at the wheel, they had just turned south when a blue-and-white out of the 30th Precinct pulled them over. Doone didn’t have a license, didn’t pass the breathalyzer test, and the car was stolen. They were both arrested without incident.

  Marlene asked, but Doone didn’t remember the name of the arresting officer. It was dark. He was drunk. A white bwai. The companion he knew only as Corky—a small-time dealer and hustler. He’d seen him around, but knew little about him. Harlem was far from his home ground.

  Doone and his companions had been taken to the 30th Precinct, where the women were let go and the two men booked and sent to the holding cells. They had been kept there overnight and taken in the van early the next morning for arraignment at the criminal courts, Centre Street. Doone was charged with DWI and driving without a license, his companion with receiving stolen property. Doone had pleaded guilty to both charges, peeled the $250 fine from his money clip and walked out.

  Marlene noted with interest that Doone was capable of shifting his language easily between an incomprehensible patois and something close to standard colonial English. He told his tale succinctly and without embarrassment. Just another uptown Saturday night, except it was a Tuesday.

  Marlene finished writing her notes and looked up to find Doone staring at her, a quizzical expression on his matte face.

  “What?” she said.

  “Is whe you get dat cantin eye?”

  “I got blown up by a bomb,” said Marlene.

  “Cho, I been shot, nuh, an cut, an beat on, but I never been bombed,” said Doone, a hint of admiration in his voice.

  “You’re not missing much,” said Marlene, and then, encouraged by what was, for Doone, an outpouring of the soul, added, “Is Leona OK?”

  “She safe. You still wan fe see ’er, nuh?”

  “Very much. You too, I guess.”

  “Eh? Is why you guess dat?”

  “Well, she’s your girlfriend, isn’t she?”

  Doone expelled a derisive laugh. “Is wha you t’ink? Nah, gal, I don’ play dat way. She work fe me, nuh. I don get me beef whe I get me bread. Nah, see, she had ’er dis bwai, but ’im t’row her down, dese pas weeks. So I hear.”

  “Oh, I see. Sorry, I assumed, because you were looking out for her that—”

  “Yah, you t’ink, dat John Doone, ’im jus some raas dope dealer, he don give a dam’ about nobody but ’imself alone, les ’im got interes in a gal. Look, you, you see dese fas bwais around de city, dey killin each other fe nuthin. Dey kill friends fi dem, breddahs, sisters. I don work dat way, nuh. Dem people fi me, dey give me loyalty, I give dem loyalty. So I work. Is reciprocity. Like de rasta man say, one heart, one love.”

  “And if not, you cut them into little pieces.”

  “Easy to mock, yah,” said Doone without rancor, “but Babylon got the bigges knife. Babylon cut up more people den ever I did, and not for no reason, no, jus fo meanness. An Babylon make de rules.”

  “We’ll talk social policy later,” said Marlene judiciously. “What did you say this boyfriend’s name was?”

  “I din say. But ’im star fe de team, ’er breddah’s team. Dem call ’im Doobie. So, tell me, when you spring me from heah?”

  “Real soon. What’s the matter, you don’t like jail?”

  He sneered. “Cho, gal, I been in jail in Kingston. Dis not no jail. Dis some kin o’ pickney school. But I got me business a tend to.”

  “Yeah, I bet. OK, there shouldn’t be a problem. And I expect a meet with Leona Simmons as soon as you’re back on the street.”

  “I say I do it, it happen, soon as I’m out.”

  Marlene had received assurances from Supreme Court judges that she had believed less. She nodded and left.

  “It’s amazing,” said V.T. Newbury, “how careless people are when they’re under the impression that they’ve cozened the authorities.” It had taken only two days for him to find out the connection between Howard Chaney and Frank Mackey, and perhaps others equally well-known. Karp was sitting in Newbury’s cramped office at the Fraud Bureau having it explained.

  “The center of it,” Newbury began, “is this operation called Long Island Properties, Inc., incorporated in the great but lax state of Delaware. They went into business about a year ago
. The president and chairman of this corporation is that titan of industry, J.C. Maccaluso.”

  “J.C?”

  “For Julia Carole. Miz Mackey. The wife fronts. Nice touch using the old name. Vice-president is Sandra P. Chaney, wedded to guess who. The secretary is Charles Parmagianni, the well-known and semi-literate associate of Mr. Mackey, and the treasurer is one Denise P. Metcalf.”

  “Who is … ?”

  “Surprise! The longtime secretary of Dan Logan, the borough president of Queens. I wonder if he knows she’s dabbling in real estate. To continue: Long Island Properties is in the real estate business. It has purchased during the past twelve months a scattered checkerboard of lots in Long Island City, in a fairly run-down industrial and residential neighborhood between 14th and 31st streets, north of Broadway. Including the lots that were burned out, as it happens. They bought low too. The owners were glad to sell.

  “So I wondered, what’s the point of buying a scatter of lots in Long Island City? Check this out. I traced it out of the plat books.”

  V.T. brought out a large sheet of tracing paper and spread it on his desk. On it was a tracing of the property lines in a twenty-square-block area of Long Island City. A scattering of properties was shaded in red pencil.

  “The red ones are what L.I.P., Inc., has bought,” said V.T., “a dozen or so unconnected pieces of property in a run-down neighborhood. Or so it seems. But look at this.”

  He lofted another piece of tracing paper up and aligned it on the first. “The red shadings here are properties owned by the Morrell Company. Mr. Mackey himself.” The new properties fit neatly into the L.I.C. holdings, forming extensive swaths of red pencil shading.

  “Interesting,” said Karp. “But it looks like he still has a ways to go.” His finger indicated a salamanderlike zone still showing white.