Escape

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "Hello, Mr. Treacher," he said, extending his hand as he waited for the electric blue eyes to stop rolling around like dice on a craps table. "I don't know if you remember me. I'm Ken Katz, an assistant district attorney. Mr. Karp introduced us."

  Treacher scratched at his beard in confusion; Katz pretended not to notice that several items fell out of the tangled mess and landed on the ancient Grateful Dead T-shirt beneath the field jacket. Then the man smiled. "But, of course, my good man," he said pumping Katz's hand enthusiastically. "You're Butch Karp's young protégé."

  "Yes, that would be me," Katz replied. "Anyway, I think these people are in a hurry to get into the hospital this morning. Would you mind letting them get past you?"

  Treacher glanced back at the couple, who were huddled as if preparing for flight in case the madman did something dangerous. But the madman only looked at them as if the question itself was ludicrous.

  "But of course," Treacher said and bowed dramatically, as his free hand swept magnanimously toward the entrance. "I wouldn't dream of delaying them. I just thought that considering who they are, they might be interested in that little passage from Matthew 15:22. It's a story about a woman whose daughter was inhabited by a demon until Jesus came along and cast it out. Sometimes the demons hopped into the bodies of pigs and then jumped in the ocean and drowned. Quite the scene I'm sure. But perhaps they could ask Jesus to do the same for their daughter ... Haven't seen any pigs around though, unless you count the local gendarme?" He nodded his head toward a uniformed NYPD officer.

  "Yes, I do," Katz said, retrieving his hand. "I'm not real familiar with the Jesus story, but now might not be the right moment to hear more." He turned to the couple and held out his hand again. "Ken Katz with the District Attorney's Office. I believe that you're free to proceed."

  The man started to raise his hand but his wife stopped him. Her eyes were angry, but her voice was frightened as she said, "We know who you are. You're the Nazi who's trying to put our daughter in prison. She's a sick woman and suffering—as are we. That should be punishment enough, Mister Katz, but no, you feel the need to torture sick people who need help, not to be locked away in a prison cell. She still has a lot to offer society ... certainly more than some two-bit power-hungry lawyer like you."

  Katz let his hand drop. He now recognized Benjamin and Liza Gupperstein, whom he'd seen in newspaper photographs accompanying articles about Jessica Campbell's case. The articles invariably quoted people saying that Karp was essentially a new version of Heinrich Himmler, and Katz a willing member of the neo-SS. The woman's remarks hurt, but as his boss had said, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism came with the territory.

  "I'm sorry for your loss," he said, stepping aside to let the Guppersteins pass, which they did without looking at him again—one out of anger and the other out of embarrassment.

  Katz gathered himself to walk in through the door when he felt a hand on his shoulder and smelled an odor like Manhattan during a summer garbage strike. He'd forgotten about Edward Treacher, who was behind him. He turned and looked into a pair of blue eyes that were no longer wild but kind and sympathetic.

  "When justice is done," Treacher said quietly, "it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers ... Proverbs 21:15. You're here to see that justice is done for those three innocent little babies, Mr. Katz, just remember that."

  "Thanks, Mr. Treacher. I appreciate the sentiment."

  "Please, let's not stand on formalities; it's Edward."

  "Okay, thanks Edward, and it's Kenny to my friends." Katz began to turn, then paused. "See you around."

  "Without a doubt, Kenny," the former professor of religious studies replied. "Without a doubt." The big man gave him a wink and then whirled, sending several new arrivals outside the hospital scurrying. "STAND AGAINST THE DEVIL, AND THE DEVIL WILL RUN FROM YOU! JAMES 4:7. And by the way, would any of you kind folks have any spare change to help feed the hungry, the hungry being me?"

  Inside the hospital, Katz was directed to the psychiatric ward dayroom where the weekly competency hearings were held for those accused of crimes when their mental capacity to stand trial was at question. He looked at his watch again as he opened the door. Five minutes to spare, even after the affair at the front door.

  He'd been warned—twice—about being late, first by the clerk and then by Karp, who had told Kenny that the judges who had the rotating competency-hearings duty liked to finish them in the morning so they could take the rest of the day off on the taxpayers' dime. "And there may be fifty cases to get through, so they need to run things tight if they want to make their afternoon tee time at Bamm Hollow Country Club in Jersey."

  The first person Katz saw was defense attorney Linda Lewis, who was sitting at a table near the front. She gave him the sort of look one generally reserves for bad smells. He'd heard that she was a heck of a lawyer, but she was also supposed to be willing to bend whatever rule she needed to win.

  A tiny blonde woman with large pink-rimmed glasses sat next to Lewis. She appeared to be meditating. Her eyes were shut and her index fingers and thumbs were closed in small circles, resting on the table. The defense psychiatrist, he realized.

  As Katz walked up to the table set aside for the prosecution, he glanced at the Guppersteins, who sat in the first row of chairs behind the defense table. They had not turned when he entered and made no effort to acknowledge his presence now.

  Behind them and somewhat off to the side, as though to say "we're on the same team as my in-laws, but we don't like each other," Charlie Campbell sat with a man in an immaculately tailored suit, whom Katz pegged as Charlie's lawyer. Their heads tilted toward one another as they whispered.

  Katz turned when the door of the dayroom opened and felt his stomach twist into a knot. The Boss, Butch Karp, had come to check on his "protégé."

  The competency hearing was a "due process classic." The defendant had the right to a speedy trial; however, fairness, and due process, in these circumstances, required that the accused be aware of the charges and able to assist her lawyer in the proceedings against her. If the objective facts suggested this might not be the case, then a Bellevue-type competency hearing was an appropriate safeguard. The major focus would be the reports written by two Bellevue psychiatrists weighing in on whether the defendant was competent to stand trial.

  As Katz had explained at the staff meeting, whether Campbell was competent to stand trial was an entirely separate issue from the insanity defense her attorney was expected to use at trial. There, the defense argument would be that Campbell was legally insane, and therefore not responsible, at the time of the murders.

  Both sides already knew the content of the reports from the state psychiatrists, who had agreed that Campbell was competent. Their reports had been sent to the DAO, the court, and the defense team.

  There was little chance that the judge would not accept the conclusions of the two psychiatrists. However, Lewis had indicated that she intended to bring in her own psychiatrist—the little blonde woman—to challenge the report. If she won that challenge, then Campbell would be sent to a psychiatric institution—probably somewhere more comfortable than Bellevue— until such time as she was deemed competent.

  Karp noted the look of surprise on Katz's face when he entered the dayroom. He would have felt the same way if Garrahy had suddenly dropped in on him.

  As the district attorney, he was responsible for the 600 assistant district attorneys who worked for the busiest DAO in the country. Although the papers had been reporting on the "amazing" drop in crime rates in New York City compared to other large American cities, dealing with the current volume still meant handling a yearly tally of 50,000 violent crimes, of which 500 or so would be murders, another 1,500 rapes, and the rest a smorgasbord of robberies and assaults. That didn't include the tens of thousands of other types of felony cases like burglary, larceny, and fraud, or vehicle code and misdemeanor offenses. Or even the several hundred cases on appeal that we
re Harry Kipman's bailiwick.

  Most of the young ADAs would bum out within a few years from the heavy caseload, the psychological trauma of dealing with criminals and victims, and the low pay, at least compared to the going rate in private practice. Well-trained, courtroom-trial-tested, experienced prosecutors with the New York DAO were considered prime prospects by the city's white-shoe firms, which regularly scouted the criminal courts for likely candidates among the young attorneys.

  Some lawyers put their time in at the DAO just to become competent trial lawyers with the hope of trading their trial expertise for a high-income job lawyering with the upper crust. On the other hand, there were the few bright stars who were not only exceptional prosecutors at every level, but who also eschewed the offers that came from private firms. Often, they chose to remain with the DAO because they were idealists committed to the cause of justice. Public servants in the most noble sense of the term, they enjoyed their role as good guys in the battle against the forces of evil.

  Every generation seemed to produce just enough to make the New York District Attorney's Office one of the best. In their time, Karp and Marlene, until she'd opted out for other pursuits, as well as Ray Guma and V. T. Newbury, had all fit the bill as the new idealistic hotshots.

  The current crop looked to be a good one, too, with Kenny Katz leading the way. No one knew whether they'd give in to the siren call of Fifth Avenue suites and six-figure salaries with perks, or whether they were tough enough and good enough to take on the worst of the city's worst. But Karp had a feeling that they would be.

  Katz had come to Karp's attention several months earlier during the murder trial of a gang member who'd stabbed a rival to death in the parking lot of a shopping center. Just before Katz's star witness—another gang member who'd been present at the crime—was set to testify, the witness decided he wanted a better deal. He'd agreed to plead guilty to acting in concert with the defendant during the course of the murder and accept ten years in exchange for testifying against his homeboy. But now he and his attorney were demanding no prison time.

  According to what Karp had been told by Fulton, who'd heard the story from the police detective assigned to the case, Katz had left the witness waiting room to think over the dilemma. Then he'd spotted a blank videotape lying on a table. Thinking quickly, he'd borrowed a black felt-tip pen, which he used to scrawl in big block letters, "MURDER SCENE—PARKING LOT SURVEILLANCE TAPE" and the date of the murder. He then walked back into the waiting room and tossed the tape onto the table in front of the witness and his attorney.

  "He didn't say anything about the tape," Fulton related. "Just, 'Forget it, I don't need you anymore. No deal of any sort. The next time I see you in court, you'll be sitting at the defense table.' He started to walk out but apparently the lawyer for this scumbag beat him to the door, babbling about how there'd been a big misunderstanding. His client was prepared to testify and the original deal was just fine with him. Dude testified and sent his homie upriver for life."

  The witness's attorney had cried foul later when he discovered there was no real surveillance tape depicting the murder, but it didn't matter. Katz had never said there was anything on the tape. The lawyer and the witness had just been free to read into it what they wanted.

  It was the sort of quick thinking on his feet and under pressure that Karp was looking for in someone to take under his wing and groom for the future as a possible bureau chief. So he'd called the young man in for an interview.

  Before Katz arrived, Karp had checked out his file and suddenly wondered if he'd made a mistake. It wasn't the growing up in Queens only a few blocks from where Marlene's parents' home was located, or his top-of-the-class grades he'd received at Columbia Law School, that caught his attention. It was Katz's military record and how he'd behaved after returning from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

  According to the resume, in September 2001 Katz had been in his last year at Columbia when the terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center.

  Two days later, he'd dropped out and enlisted in the army. After basic training, he'd asked to be assigned to Ranger school, one of the toughest units in the U.S. Armed Forces. He'd then been sent to Afghanistan, where he'd been wounded twice. He received the Silver Star for gallantry along with two Purple Hearts and an honorable discharge.

  All of that impressed Karp, but then he'd come across a newspaper clipping that someone had seen in the Times and inserted in the file. It was actually just a photograph of Katz, looking the part of a college student with his kinky hair bushed out in what Karp thought of as a "Jew Fro," attending an anti-war rally. The photograph showed Katz tossing what the caption said were his medals on the fire, and that rankled Karp.

  As a boy growing up in Brooklyn just after the end of World War II, Karp had often gone on walks around the neighborhood with his parents. He was probably seven or eight when he'd remarked about the gold stars he could see in the windows of some of the homes they passed.

  "Those are for the boys who didn't come home from the war, Roger," his mother tearfully said. He'd never forgotten the sadness in her voice and the way she'd pulled him closer to her. "That's where their parents live."

  They were the local boys—the high school athletes and bookworms, the sons of the local baker, the family who ran the candy store, and the guy who owned the car dealership—who'd become heroes of nearly mythic proportions.

  "They were just boys, " his mother noted, like those who played ball in the Avenue P Park between 4th and 5th streets below Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn.

  While conceding to Katz his free-speech rights, Karp couldn't get past the feeling that burning the medals was a slap in the face to all those goldstar moms. The medals had nothing to do with the politics of the war. They were an acknowledgment of personal sacrifice. So his first inclination was to cancel the interview—that kind of cheap theatrics were for defense attorneys. But then his better angels prevailed, and he decided to go through with the interview and ask Katz to explain the photograph.

  The young man had been surprised when Karp handed him the newspaper clipping. "To be honest, I have another set of medals at home," the wise-cracking street kid from Queens joked. "I was just trying to get laid by one of those hippie chicks. They really go for that sensitive-war-hero shit."

  Army Ranger and war hero or not, Karp was about to kick him out of his office and down to the traffic bureau when the young man realized that flippancy had been the wrong way to handle the question. "Sorry," he'd said. "I have a bad habit when I'm nervous of being a smartass."

  "Then relax and tell me the real story," Karp had replied. The answer had surprised him.

  Katz said he'd had been raised in one of those intellectual Jewish households where all questions, statements, and firmly held beliefs were examined and debated.

  His grandparents and father had fled Germany shortly after Krystalnacht, the night in 1938 when anti-Jew riots broke out in Germany and Austria. The Katz family arrived in Queens grateful for the sanctuary and ready to repay the debt. Katz's father, Jacob, had served two tours of duty in Vietnam.

  Kenny Katz had been walking to class at Columbia University on the far north end of Manhattan Island that morning on September 11, 2001, when he saw the dark plume of smoke rising from the southern end. He'd run into the student center and made it to the television lounge just in time to see the second airliner crash into the tower, and he stayed to watch as it all came plummeting to the ground.

  An overwhelming anger began to burn inside of him. He'd always planned on applying to the New York District Attorney's Office when he got out of law school, hoping to work in the homicide bureau putting away killers. Here was murder on a scale that no DAO or international court of law could ever fathom; it was going to take more than talk and law books to deal with the murderers of 9/11.

  Even as U.S. lawmakers and the president were making plans to go after Al Qaeda and their hosts, the Taliban in Afghanistan, he'd walked into his counselor's office at the
law school and announced that he would be taking a leave from law school to join the army. He just wanted to let the man know that he planned to return when he could to resume his studies.

  Katz didn't know what sort of response he'd get, but it wasn't what he'd hoped. The man, a noted liberal scholar, had looked at him with a bemused smile on his face and shaken his head. "Look, Kenny," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, as if Katz had just told him he planned to run away and join the circus. "We're all upset about what happened, but let's not all go off half-cocked to 'save the world' from a few misguided Muslims. Besides, I have it from reputable sources that there's a good chance the Republicans—or maybe somebody even more sinister—was behind this as an excuse to go to war for oil."

  "That's about the stupidest thing I ever heard," Katz heard himself say to the man who could easily derail his pursuit of a law degree. "You stay here until they come for you with their Qur'an and their bombs. Me, I'm off to put a stop to it if I can."

  "Good luck with that," the counselor said scornfully. "I doubt Columbia will have a place for you when you get back."

  "I doubt I'd want it if you did," he'd retorted.

  During basic training and in Ranger School, Katz had spent his free time studying up on Islamic extremism and the road leading to the attack on the World Trade Center, and saw a nation that was slow to respond to an impending threat. Most of that was due to weak-willed politicians who hamstrung any attempts to stop a growing sense on the part of the terrorists that America was too cowardly to stand up to them. And it had been going on for a long time and through several administrations and congresses—from the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 servicemen; to the 1988 bombing and the deaths of 259 passengers and crew aboard an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland; the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya; the attack in 2000 on the USS Cole; and finally the attack on the World Trade Center. All those lives had been lost, while America's elected officials slept and worried about their next election.