Material Witness

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Karp sighed. He said, “I wish we could avoid this for once. You’re going to deny what we know perfectly well. You know we know or we wouldn’t have brought you in. Then we show you how we know. You make up lies. We catch you in the lies. You admit to a piece of it. We break your story down some more. It’s such a tedious pain in the ass—”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Karp?” asked Wallace, still smiling. “Hey, now I get it: that’s how come you got to play on the team. You were investigating! Hot damn! We knew it wasn’t ’cause you could play any.”

  Karp rubbed his face. “OK, we’ll do it the hard way. Let me say one thing first, though. You’ve never done this before. I’ve done it a lot. As you point out, I’m not the basketball player that you are. Maybe I could have been once, but that’s neither here nor there. You have the talent, and you’ve put in a lot of work.

  “But I’m the same way at this, what we’re doing now. Let’s say you’re one of the ten best pro basketball players in the country. OK, I’m one of the ten best homicide prosecuting attorneys in the country. I say that not to blow my own horn, but just to let you understand what you’re getting into, and let you judge your chances of coming out ahead. You still want to go one on one?”

  Wallace was staring at Karp evenly, but he was not smiling anymore.

  Karp waited a full minute in silence, and then he began.

  “This is what we know. Sometime in early November Howard Chaney came to Marion Simmons to solicit his cooperation in a point-shaving scheme. Chaney had agreed to the scheme in return for funds from a California mobster named Jimmy Tona, which he needed to pay off a Philadelphia mobster named Dom Scarfi, who had been feeding him money to keep his enterprises alive, especially a scheme to sell land to the city for a new stadium. That’s been the point of confusion in this whole case. Who could have believed that there were two entirely separate Mafia scams involved, connected only by Howard Chaney?

  “In any case, Simmons refused. Then Chaney went to you. You agreed—”

  “You can’t prove that!” snapped Wallace.

  “Please let me finish,” said Karp. “You’ll have your chance. I only note that you say, ‘You can’t prove that’ instead of ‘I didn’t.’ It’s as good as an admission of guilt. And I can prove it, of course.

  “As I said, you agreed. You began to shave points. Simmons found out. How couldn’t he have known, given what he knew about Chaney and what he understood about basketball? Shaving is hard to detect unless you know it’s going on; then it’s as obvious as daylight. When I knew you had to be shaving, it hit me right in the face.

  “Simmons confronted you and said he was going to expose the scam. You went to Chaney in a panic, and he called Tona in a panic, and Tona sent a pair of killers to clean things up.

  “The only problem you had was that Simmons kept a diary. You had to snatch that when you killed him. Luckily you had one advantage. You were involved with Leona Simmons. She told you where Simmons was going to be and when. You got the word to the killers, through Chaney. And she took the diary.

  “Leona gave you up, Doobie. We got all that from her.”

  Wallace snorted derisively. “You gonna believe that bitch? She’s a junkie anyway, and she’s trying to get back at me. I blew her off, man.”

  “And we’ve got the diary, man,” said Karp. “It’s all down there in black and white, the whole story, in Marion Simmons’s own hand.” He was guessing, but it was a reasonable shot and it went home.

  “Bullshit! You got nothing! She burned it.”

  Karp allowed a moment of silence for the implications of this outburst to work on Wallace’s mind. Then he asked softly, “When did you find that out, Doobie? Did she tell you? Did you tell her to burn it?”

  Wallace opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, then licked his lips. He said, “Um, no, I never told her to. She, ah, happened to mention it.”

  “Oh? You spoke to her after the murder? And she told you she had burnt her brother’s diary? Why would she say that? Did she also mention that she had seen him shot and that she could identify the killer?”

  “Ah … no! It wasn’t like that,” said Wallace. He was sweating now, and his knees under the table were wagging and bouncing.

  “What was it like?” asked Karp. “Take your time. A good plausible lie takes awhile to figure out. We have all day.”

  “I got to get over to the Garden,” said Wallace weakly.

  “Uh-uh, Doobie,” said Karp. “That’s finished. You’re out of basketball at the very least. No game. No career. No salary. No endorsements. No autographs. Your life has become real simple. All you have to think about is how much jail time you’re going to do. Cooperate with me, and it’s likely to be less. Give me a hard time, and keep telling these stupid lies, and it’s likely to be more.”

  Time for a change of pace. Karp said conversationally, “You know, we were getting along real well when I was with the team. Filling me in about Marion and all. You said he didn’t use dope and I believed you. You could have lied. You could have said that he lived on coke and sold it on playgrounds. I’d have believed you. Maybe it was because you didn’t want me to follow the dope trail to Leona. You thought she might crack, right?”

  Wallace shrugged and gestured assent.

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “Yeah, right!” Wallace snapped.

  “Great! See, it’s easy to tell the truth. And it comes out anyway, you know. You’ve already made one damaging admission when you admitted that you told her to burn the diary—”

  “I didn’t tell her,” cried Wallace, his voice unsteady. “It was just a suggestion, like, there might be embarrassing stuff in it that might hurt his family.…”

  He faded off. Karp said, “Yes, we know how much you were concerned about his family. And, by the way, you never said you told her to burn it. I said that, and you just confirmed it. Swish. Two points. I told you I was good at this. Want to play some more?”

  Wallace was making trapped animal moves, the twitching, the darting eyes. Karp had seen it all before. He’s going to ask for his lawyer in a second, he thought.

  “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I want to see my lawyer.”

  “Always an excellent decision,” Karp said, rising from his chair. “This interview is over.” He turned to Bello. “Harry, book him. Second-degree murder is the top count. I’ll draw up the rest of the charges later.”

  “Hey, wait …” said Wallace. They ignored him and began to talk about assembling the various witnesses and physical evidence in the case.

  “Hey, wait!” said Wallace with more volume. “I didn’t kill anybody. What is this murder stuff.”

  Karp turned back to him. “I’m sorry? Oh, the top count. It’s murder in the second degree. Your lawyer will explain the charges and what they mean. OK, get him out of here.”

  Bello grabbed Wallace’s arm, but he jerked it away. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t even know they were gonna kill him. Howard said they were just gonna talk to him, maybe rough him up. Just so he wouldn’t tell about the shaving. I swear, that’s the truth.”

  “Then why did you tell Leona to take his diary?” Karp shot back.

  “Because I wanted to see what he was saying. What he knew and all.”

  “And maybe find something incriminating, some indiscretions you could use to pressure him not to talk?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that was it!” said Wallace enthusiastically. And then he sobered considerably, as he realized that every single thing that he had told himself he would not give away, he had given away, and hadn’t gotten anything in return. He looked at Karp and realized that Karp knew that too, that Karp could read it in his eyes.

  Karp made a little hook-shot movement and said, “Swish. Game’s over.”

  Later, after Wallace had been taken away for booking, Karp and Hrcany were sitting in the squad room, Roland because he liked hanging around cops, and Karp because there was a phone there, which
he was using to call the loft every five minutes. There was no answer and he was getting increasingly worried.

  “Why do you think he did it?” Hrcany asked.

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? Wallace. I can see it, a college kid gets a new car, a few bucks, but what did he need?”

  “He didn’t do it for need. I think he did it because Chaney told him to, one, and because it was a way of getting over on Marion. He thought of himself as a hired entertainer. The boss says throw games, so he throws games. Marion took the game seriously, and it made Doobie feel like a clown.

  “What does it matter? As for the hit, it was no skin off his ass if Marion got it. Guys like Doobie like to get away with stuff. An intelligent man with no morals. You want to know the bottom line? Pro athletes shouldn’t be cynics. They’re paid good money to be kids forever, playing games; they should keep their bargain.”

  Karp dialed again, waited until the machine kicked on, and slammed the phone down with a curse.

  “What’s the problem? Marlene?” Hrcany asked.

  “Yeah, she said something about labor pains this afternoon, and now I can’t get her. Shit! Maybe she had to go to the hospital.”

  “Is there somebody she would call?”

  “Damn it, you’re right! Stu and Larry would know.”

  He dialed another number and heard Stu’s voice.

  “Stu? Did Marlene leave a message or anything? I can’t get her at home.”

  “That’s because she’s here.”

  “Oh, great! She’s OK, right?”

  “Fine. Congratulations, by the way.”

  Karp thought he was referring to cracking the case and had a moment of confusion. “Huh! How did you find out?”

  “Find out? It happened right here.” A pause. “Nobody told you?”

  ‘Told me what?”

  “You have a daughter,” said Stuart. “Stu and Larry’s place: we deliver.”

  “What! You couldn’t get her to the hospital?”

  “It was a complex situation. If I were you, I’d get over here right now. And bring flowers.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Two weeks later, Harry Bello stood by the baptismal font of St. Joseph’s Church in Queens, and promised to help bring up Lucy Karp in the Catholic faith, and on her behalf renounced Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God, as did Marlene herself. Karp, while no friend of the spiritual forces of wickedness, was not asked to so affirm. He had known at some level for months that his daughter was not going to be a Jewish princess, but at the sacred moment, the wages of his exogamy rested heavily upon him, a real and unpleasant surprise to this generally unbelieving man.

  At the reception afterward, Karp drank more than he was used to of his father-in-law’s strong home-made red, and engaged in a long and intricate conversation with a muster of ancient Ciampis about the doings of the Carpa family of Sheepshead Bay and Valledolmo, of which he was a supposed scion.

  Marlene rescued him with a plate of delicacies.

  “How’re you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m beat. God has that effect on me. I notice Stupenagel showed. She’s forgiven you, I presume.”

  “Oh, yeah. The Stupe doesn’t hold a grudge. Also, my statue impressed her. She called to rave over it.”

  “Statue? What statue?”

  “Oh, nothing. I modeled for Stu, and the bronze showed up in a window of a chichi gallery on Prince.”

  “Yeah? What kind of statue?”

  “Oh, just a little study,” said Marlene hurriedly. “Yes, we’re buddies again. She sent a little porringer from Tiffany’s. Besides, I forgave her when I came out on the terrace at our freshman ball and she was sucking off my date in the bushes. She owes me.”

  “I guess. She’s spending a lot of time with Guma.”

  “Oh, they’re apparently an item. They had a quickie on our stairs the day Guma ID’d Frankie Mack.”

  “Jesus! They look like a bull terrier leashed to the Chrysler Building.”

  Marlene giggled. “Yes, cute. But I’m afraid the Goom is in for heartbreak. She’s been pumping him for inside stuff on this case. That’s why her stories have been front-page stuff. ‘A source in the D.A.’s office.’ When it’s over, she be gone.”

  “I want to go home,” said Karp.

  They took a cab back to the city. The baby was good as gold. As Marlene said, she was Friday’s child, loving and giving.

  “Harry stood up, that was good,” mused Marlene sleepily. She was still not a hundred percent, and the cab was one of those cozy big ones.

  “Did you think he wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t know; he seems so sad and empty. Like the City in the wintertime. ‘Tis the year’s midnight and it is the day’s,” said Marlene, “Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; the sun is spent and now his flasks send forth light squibs, no constant rays. The world’s whole sap is sunk—damn, something something something, drunk; whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk, dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh, compar’d with me, who am their Epitaph.”

  “What’s that?” asked Karp.

  “ ‘A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day.’ By John Donne.”

  “The joint artist? He writes poetry too?”

  “No, that’s Doone. John Donne is dead, of natural causes as far as I know. You know—he wrote, ‘And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’ “

  “Uh-uh, that was Hemingway. I saw the movie.”

  Marlene looked long at him, and then laughed and hugged his arm. “My Renaissance man!” she said. “Sports. The law. Literature. He bestrides them all.” Then she sobered and went back to her previous theme. “These last weeks have been very strange, have you noticed that? We’ve both been out of our normal element, in the grip of weird forces. I’m gestating a child—full—and everybody in the case is empty in some way.

  “Some fill it by suffering, like Harry. You filled it by being heroic. Some fill it with evil, like Chaney, or Wallace, or the killers. They can’t stand it, the completeness. Harmony. And then the business about Lucy here, and St. Lucy … I’m not saying this right, but there’s a fabric to it, some invisible machinery behind our lives. Don’t you ever have that feeling?”

  “When I do,” said Karp, “it gives me a pounding headache and I take two aspirin and go to bed.”

  Marlene laughed. “Anyway, that poem … I thought of it when I first met Harry—the zero person. But life renews itself, also as in the poem, by love. He bottomed out around St. Lucy’s Day, and now he’s a godfather and Lucy’s born, and the bad guys are … are the bad guys defeated? Has Chaney showed up yet?”

  “No,” said Karp. “I’m not looking to see him soon. He’s either living cheap and far away under an assumed name, or playing a long, slow game of two-handed pinochle with Jimmy Hoffa under a highway.”

  “With little Francine Ciccolino too,” said Marlene sadly.

  “You think they got her?”

  “I have a bad feeling about it. I’m fighting the guilt. On the other hand, if I hadn’t had her on my mind, I probably wouldn’t have pushed it so far on the Leona Simmons thing, which was the key to the whole mess. Part of the invisible fabric. But what about the other bad guys?”

  “The grand jury will indict Logan and D’Amalia on the real estate thing,” said Karp. “They’re finished politically. Frank Mackey’ll probably beat an obstruction charge. Jimmy Tona, I understand, is in a lot of trouble with the Feds and with some of his own people. He was named in the diary, and that’s public knowledge now thanks to our victim. Tona had some guy popped and blamed this whole point-shaving mess on him, but it didn’t sell. Those guys in L.A. watch too many movies. Doobie’ll do a lot of time. So will Leona. Not much, but some.

  “Closer to home, I guess I didn’t tell you, Shelly’s out on his ass, canned from the D.A. When I showed him our evidence, he literally cried—the whole
works, blubbering, with snot bubbles and all. When he calmed down, he bitched that ‘Sandy’ made him do it. I explained to him that if he wanted to implicate the D.A., he was welcome to do so, but it would mean disbarment at best, and probably a stretch inside. He got the point.”

  “You covered for Bloom?” asked Marlene incredulously.

  “Of course. He’s a scumbag, but he’s our scumbag. I got a signed statement from Shelly, though. Sandy was just doing a power-boy favor for some friends, the ass!”

  “Did you go see him?”

  “No. But he knows I know.”

  “Good. That means you’ll get the bureau chief job back.”

  “Assuming I want it. I’m tired of running a harassed homicide bureau out of a petty-crime operation. There should be a real bureau again.”

  “That could be arranged.”

  “It could, if I wanted to turn blackmailer. What a pain in the butt this is!”

  Marlene quickly changed the subject. “What about the hit men?”

  Karp shrugged. “Who knows? They haven’t turned up. Maybe Tona iced them. So, in all respects, a very unsatisfactory conclusion.”

  “Wasn’t justice served, though?”

  “ ‘A lawyer has no business with justice’!” replied Karp with some heat. “Samuel Johnson, since we’re being literary, quoted by an old criminal law professor of mine. He used to say, ‘We follow the law, bring cases, and let justice fall from heaven, if it will.’ I agree. We get into shitloads of trouble if we presume to dispense justice.”

  The cab disgorged them at the loft. Marlene grabbed the mail from the floor of the entryway and flew up the stairs like a mountain goat, still delighting in her regained mobility. Karp trudged behind, holding the baby in the plastic carapace that is the modern equivalent of the papoose.

  “What’s in the package?” he asked when their lamb was put away and they were sitting under the skylight at the big oak table.

  “I don’t know. Probably a baby present from some relative. Maybe one of yours for a change.”

  “Don’t count on it,” said Karp.

  He sorted his mail and was thumbing through a new magazine when Marlene let out a shrill yelp and leaped up, knocking over her chair. Her face had gone chalk white and her hand was pressed over her mouth.