“But …”
“Lonny? Please? End of discussion.”
Which it was. Dane put the weapon away in his duffel bag, and conversation turned to a report on the man Dane was watching, Donald Monto, the rejected swain of one Mary Kay Miller. Monto had been spending his evenings drinking and cruising past Ms. Miller’s Brooklyn home. Before long, Marlene had every confidence, he would be drunk enough to break down her door, as he had on two past occasions, and try to beat Ms. Miller into jelly in order to demonstrate his affection. On the next occasion, however, Dane would be there, would identify himself, and should the man fail to retreat (a reasonable expectation), Dane would, in the presence of Ms. Miller, render Monto incapable of doing anything anti-door for a good long time, perhaps indefinitely.
“That stronzo!” snapped Marlene when Dane had gone. “Fucking machine guns!”
“Muscle,” said Harry. “He does okay, though, he don’t have to do much heavy thinking. How was his friend?”
“Looks all right,” she said, tossing the resume on the desk. “More muscle. You’ll check him out. If he’s okay, let’s give him a shot. He sounds like he’s got a sympathetic heart, and he looks like he can take care of himself. This is not an everyday combo.”
“He probably likes bazookas, your luck,” said Harry. Marlene had her first serious laugh of the day.
Outside the building, the Music Lover looked up from across the street at the wide semicircular window. He could see Marlene and Harry. If she turned her head, he thought, she could look right at me. And then she would turn her head away. He was so full of delicious pleasure at the thought that he quivered, and his groin grew hot.
SIX
“You look beat,” Karp said.
“I’m totally ruined,” Marlene said. “I have to pee, and I can’t bear the thought of moving my body out of bed to the bathroom. Could you, like, do it for me?”
“I would, but I’m too tired.”
“Your trial, huh?”
Both of them were talking like zombies, lying corpse-like in bed, staring up at the ceiling with glazed eyes; it would have been amusing if either of them could have spared the energy to laugh. It was Sunday night after a weekend with no rest.
“Right,” sighed Karp. “I have to see Waley tomorrow. I thought I should know the case and the relevant law before I met him. He probably does. But I had to spend all Friday with this silly woman who screwed up a perfectly simple case, where the witnesses weren’t-”
“I don’t want to hear it,” groaned Marlene, putting her hands over her ears.
“Right, why bother? The bureau is going to go down the tubes.”
“Uh-huh. Explain to me again why it was so important for you to take this case, even though everyone told you not to.”
“It was important because I am an arrogant schmuck, and as an arrogant schmuck I naturally believe I can do things that no one else can do, like managing a major case against the best defense lawyer in the country while running a homicide bureau that handles a thousand cases a year. How’s Lucy doing?”
“Terrible. She went to bed in tears again. I feel like I’m tearing pieces of flesh from her body. She’s so ashamed of herself she can’t think straight, and I lose my temper. I am many things, but apparently a math teacher is not one of them. Why can’t she learn this shit? I’m thinking. It’s easy! And of course, it’s not easy for her for some reason, and then I think she needs to go into some kind of counseling, so she can tell someone what a bad mother I am. Anyway, it’s clear that something else is going on-it’s not intellectual deficit. I mean, for Christ’s sake, the kid speaks Chinese, she reads at the ninth-grade level … Fuck! I can’t think about it anymore. Look, could you, like, stroke my head?”
“Like this?”
“Yes. Kind of ease the toxic thoughts out of there. Would you mind terribly if I wet the bed?”
“Not at all. On the other hand …” He paused, listening. “I think we are both going to have to get up anyway.” A thin cranky wail drifted through the loft, which was soon followed by a second, almost identical cry, and then both gained volume until they had reached the precise pitch and intensity that evolution had found to be the most irritating to the human adult-but doubled.
“Teething,” said Karp unnecessarily, and swung his feet out of bed.
Marlene clenched her own teeth, distorted her face into a Medusa-like rictus, balled her fists, and thrashed her legs violently about, emitting a hideous sound somewhere between a muffled shriek and a sob. The spasm lasted for a good half minute, leaving Marlene limper even than before. Karp ignored the display, having grown used to it since the twins arrived. Marlene had assured him that the release it afforded helped prevent her from dashing their tiny brains out.
“I’ll get Zak,” said Karp nobly, the senior twin being notoriously the harder to calm.
Marlene grunted, cursed, stiffened her jaw, got out of bed, and clumped into the bathroom. This can’t go on, she thought. I have to do something to make this stop.
Karp was not ready to meet with Lionel T. Waley the next morning. The regular meeting of the bureau to review cases had gone badly, although young Nolan had much improved his case against Morella and had received a nice round of applause. Karp was not as up on the cases as he usually was and was compelled to fake it, a habit he deplored in others and despised in himself. Roland Hrcany made sure that Karp knew he knew that Karp was screwing up, and Karp was certain that many of the others did too. While he could depend on Roland’s native sadism to prevent any truly wretched cases from going forward, the meeting simply added to his feeling that things were slipping out of control.
Lionel Waley’s presence made him feel it even more, through invidious comparison, for if anyone was ever in complete control, it was Waley. Karp had taken as much care with his appearance as he could manage, but he had slept only three out of the last twenty-four hours and it showed. He had definitely remembered to shave, because there was a prominent gash smarting under his chin, and he was dressed, although he realized just after he had risen to shake Waley’s hand that the shirt button over his belt was undone, allowing a charming view of his undershirt.
Waley was, in contrast, as perfect as an oil portrait of a nineteenth-century alderman, and like one of these, he seemed to glow softly. He was a slight, well-proportioned man in his early sixties. His hair was white and curly, like that of a show poodle, or Santa, and this lent a softness to what otherwise would have been too severe a face. His eyes, large and canny under thick white brows, were gray-blue, and he wore a beautifully tailored, conservatively cut suit of a similar shade, the sort of ineffably custom color that never appears on pipe racks at even the best department stores. He spoke in deep, mellow. tones, like an oboe in low register, and he had the perfectly neutral accent of a newscaster.
After a somewhat briefer than usual bout of pleasantries, Karp said, “Your meeting, Mr. Waley. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I believe we can do something for each other, Mr. Karp, and put this dreadful tragedy behind us in a way mutually credible to our respective causes.”
This was not the sort of language that dripped from the mouths of lawyers much in evidence at 10 °Centre Street. The stately period was not often heard in those precincts, and when it was, Karp was frequently the source. He enjoyed a certain formality of language, as befitting the dignity of the law (assuming it still retained any in Centre Street) and tending both to suppress the passion that could lead to legal errors and to allay the hostility of the lowlifes. Now, however, Karp found it irritating, perhaps because he sensed that Waley considered him one of the lowlifes.
Bluntly, therefore, he snapped, “You want to make a deal?”
“Any arrangement that would avoid the spectacle of a trial would, I think, be an act of mercy, for my client, for his parents, and, given the case’s peculiar circumstances, for the community at large.”
“What about the families of the murdered women? You think it would be
a mercy for them too?”
Karp’s tone was harsh, but Waley seemed not to notice. In the same mild voice he answered, “Frankly? Yes, I believe so, unless you still imagine that it would be purgative or healing for them to sit in a courtroom day after day, pecked at by the vulture press, while experts jabber on about precisely how their beloved mother, or sister, or grandmother died. You don’t believe that, do you?”
In fact, Karp did not; nevertheless, and paradoxically, that he agreed only served to heighten his irritation. He said, “Okay, Mr. Waley, you made your point. If Jonathan says he’s really, truly sorry, he can go home, no hard feelings.”
A tiny pause, as if something faintly disgusting had occurred. Then Waley said, “Really, Mr. Karp, I did not expect cheap sarcasm from you, someone with your reputation among the criminal bar of this city as a decent and honorable man.”
Karp’s neck grew warm; he could hardly believe it. Embarrassed? By a lawyer? He cleared his throat and snapped, “What’s your plan, counselor?”
Waley replied, “My only aim here, Mr. Karp, is to obtain for Jonathan Rohbling the psychiatric treatment he very badly needs, in a setting where he has some chance of recovery. We would therefore offer a guilty plea to manslaughter in the second degree on the homicide of Jane Hughes, the sentence not to exceed five years. All other charges would be dismissed. We would make application to the court that sentence be served in an appropriate facility, and we would expect the People to concur.”
“You’re serious?”
“Perfectly.”
“So, essentially, we would give your client a free pass for four murders and around three years in a psychiatric country club for the fifth? I’m curious, sir, why you would imagine there to be any advantage to the People in such an arrangement.”
“The advantage is avoiding a racially divisive circus trial, which cannot but lead to the same result.”
“That’s breathtaking confidence, even for you, Mr. Waley. We have a confession for all five murders. We have solid forensic evidence linking Rohbling to the murder of Jane Hughes-”
Waley waved his hand dismissively. “Mr. Karp, the murder of Hughes is neither here nor there. We concede Hughes died as a result of my client’s actions. But the boy is insane, a palpable and obvious lunatic. Your confession, so-called, is therefore meaningless and without legal effect, as I’m certain any judge will confirm. And any jury confronted with the evidence will bring in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“He was found capable of assisting with his defense.”
“Oh, yes,” said Waley irritably, “so he is. He can also tie his shoes and go to the toilet by himself. You know very well that has nothing to do with what we’re discussing. He is, in fact, insane.”
“That is your opinion. I disagree.”
Waley stared at him for what seemed a long while. “You disagree? Tell me, Mr. Karp, have you met my client? Have you spoken at any length with Jonathan Rohbling?”
“No, of course not. Why should I? I know what he did, which is the only issue here.”
“Is it? Yes, I suppose it must be, to you.” Waley’s face took on a look that was nearly wistful, with little flarings of the nostrils. “You know, Mr. Karp, as much as I respect our adversary system, it is at times like these I wish that we could simply sit down like civilized men and just do the decent thing, to do what we would want done if our own families or loved ones were involved in this dreadful affair. Instead we will lend our considerable talents to making each other look foolish or evil, we will bring out what the British charmingly call trick cyclists to pontificate upon whether this pathetic boy is mad or sane, and in the end the jury will either commit him for treatment, which is what we ought to have done during this interview, or else condemn him to certain, miserable death in some prison.”
“Death?”
“Of course, death! I don’t mean the formal penalty. But what do you suppose the fate will be in Attica or Dannemora of a slight, pale boy accused of murdering five black grandmothers?” Waley coughed and stiffened his face, as if the air in Karp’s office had somehow congealed or turned noisome. Then, in one dramatic motion, he rose to his feet and slipped his fawn cashmere topcoat over his shoulders. He smiled sadly, extending his hand, which Karp shook. “A pleasure, Mr. Karp. Regrettably, it seems we will be much in each other’s way in the coming months.”
Waley paused at the door. “They tell me you have never lost a homicide case, Mr. Karp. A string of over one hundred now, isn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
Waley smiled. It was a warm, delighted smile, and Karp felt his face twitching to return it. “Well, well,” said Waley, and left.
“It was the most uncanny thing, V.T.,” said Karp that afternoon over a mediocre Chinese lunch. “I mean, it’s not like I’m a blushing virgin. I’ve been around the block with the defense bar, good ones, sleaze balls, the usual range, but this guy was a piece of work. You know, for an instant I actually felt myself wanting to accept his offer. He seemed so reasonable, so decent …”
“Perhaps he is,” said V.T. Newbury. He was a small, fair, handsome, elegant man whose most common facial expression was one of ironic surprise. He wore it now.
“Oh, right!” Karp snorted. “V.T., he’s a lawyer. Be real! No, but, Jesus, I tell you, man, I haven’t had a warm douche like that in years. Some kind of weird rays coming off that guy.”
“Probably has demonic powers.”
“I’d believe it. Three sixes tattooed on his ass, the whole thing. What a technique, though! Fucker’ll go through a jury like a dose of salts.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“I’m pissing in my pants, V.T. You know, I’ll tell you something strange. When he was sitting there, I swear I was flashing on Garrahy. Not because he looked like him, or he sounded like him, because he didn’t, but there was a presence there, like the guy was the best and he knew it and it didn’t affect him-there was no arrogance. You remember Garrahy-there wasn’t an arrogant bone in his body. Well, this guy is the same thing, like God reached down and touched him and said, Hey, Lionel, somebody got to be the best fucking defense lawyer in the universe and I picked you.”
“You sound like you’re in love,” said V.T.
Karp laughed. “I don’t know, man, but I’m definitely going to have to bring my lunch to this trial. The thing of it is, whatever you do in life, there comes a moment-I mean, let’s face it, I won a lot of cases, but seventy-five percent of them were mutts with a dumb alibi and a court-appointed good Democrat out of Brooklyn Law night school. This is going to be something completely different.”
“As they say on the Monty Python show. So, you feel like backing out?”
“What I feel like is getting into my jammies, pulling the quilt over my head, and putting my thumb in my mouth. You want the last shrimp? Another thing I flashed on when I was coming over here. It happened back in ’61. Summer after my sophomore year. I was a hot ball player, I’d just burned up the PAC-Ten, set a single-game scoring record, and set a couple of Cal records too. I had triple doubles in a dozen games. Okay, it’s the summer, I’m playing ball in the Rucker Summer League, up in the Rucker playground on 155th Street. This, you should know, is like the killer playground of the world. There’s guys playing there, that’s all they do, street guys. If they could read and write, they’d’ve been All-Americans, first-round draft choices. So it’s a tough game, but I’m hot, I’m like one of four white guys playing in the whole place. I could still move back then, and jump, not too embarrassingly, and shoot, of course. Okay, so at Rucker, in those days, the thing was, you never knew who’d turn up. Chamberlain would come by, Richie Guerin, Oscar Robertson, and the thing was, you weren’t supposed to notice them as anything special, they would just jump in and run around with the playground guys. Now, of course, there would be TV cameras and the whole entourage, but back then it was still a game. Anyway, it’s after the regular competitions, pick-up playground games, it�
�s getting dark, that kind of blue twilight you get in the summers here when you think it’s never going to be night, and you can play forever, the lights are on, and the game I’m in ends and some guys leave and others drift in. This is done on automatic pilot, five guys strip off their shirts, five guys keep them on, and you’re playing, twenty-one points, deuce rule, make it, take it. Okay, so seven seconds into the game I notice the guy I’m playing against is something special, and I look, and I think to myself, holy shit, it’s Elgin Baylor. This was the year he averaged thirty-eight points a game in the NBA. So, in the next fifteen minutes I learned the difference between a hot sophomore college ball player and one of the best basketball players in history.”
“How did you do?”
“He pounded me into the ground like a tent peg-what do you think?”
“And your point is …?”
“I’m not sure,” said Karp, his forehead wrinkling. “Obviously, I want to win, but maybe even more I want to be in the game with this guy. He gets my juices flowing. You know, we win cases all the time because we only go in there, to court, when we think we have an overwhelming case, and when the mutt hasn’t got the sense to cop a plea. But the fact it, the system is skewed to let the guy off unless the prosecutor’s really sharp. We should get beat a lot more, and we would if we faced more people like Waley.”
“Lucky us,” said V.T. “What am I hearing, you think you’ll get creamed?”
Karp shrugged. “I’m not sure I’d bet my next three paychecks on me to win. He’ll go with NGI, so it’s going to be dueling shrinks, which is always a toss-up. Also, with him in there, I make one mistake it’s all over. But that’s the job: they let the bull in, you got to wave the cape. Otherwise, you walk up the aisles selling enchiladas. So what’re you up to?”
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