The judge nodded. “You opened that door also, Mr. Leonard; I’ll allow it.”
Karp looked back at Tina Perez. “If your sister was so excited about the possibility of getting this part, only to learn that Mr. Maplethorpe just wanted to have sex and that she was not being considered, would she have made the effort to locate Mr. Maplethorpe’s gun, stick it in her mouth, and then shoot herself?”
“Never!” Tina Perez shouted, before calming herself. “That’s ridiculous. She’d lost out on big parts before; it’s part of that business. And Maplethorpe wouldn’t have been the first loathsome little man to use the opportunity for a big role to try to get in her pants.”
Leonard jumped to his feet, sputtering with indignation. “I’ll ask that the witness’s last remarks be stricken from the record. The sole purpose of this line of questioning is the character assassination of my client.”
Up to this point, Karp had kept his cool and let the defense attorney run his mouth. But now he roared back. “If there is any character assassination going on in this courtroom, Mr. Leonard, I would suggest that you and your client look in the mirror!”
Rosenmayer had heard enough and banged his gavel down three times in quick succession. “That’s enough!” he thundered. “Gentlemen, approach the bench!”
With Karp and Leonard standing in front of him, the judge glared from one man to the other. “You are both experienced, extremely capable professionals, and you know better than to engage in this sort of extraneous hyperbole,” he said in a low, stern voice meant only for their ears. “I want you to knock it off and avoid repeating this sort of crap, or I’ll toss the offender in jail so fast that two hours later his skull will still be waiting for his brain to show up. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir,” both attorneys answered as one.
“Good, then, Mr. Leonard, I’m denying your request that Miss Perez’s comments be stricken, so let’s resume and carry on like the gentlemen I know you both to be,” the judge warned.
Karp walked to the prosecution table, where he stood facing Katz. “That was fun,” he said in a voice barely audible to his cocounsel.
“Twenty lashes with a cat-o’-nine?” Katz joked. Conscious of the judge’s continuing glare, he managed to avoid smiling as he spoke, though his eyes twinkled with merriment.
“Worth every stripe,” Karp replied with a wink, and turned back to the witness stand.
“Miss Perez, I believe I asked you if not getting a part would have been enough for your sister to want to kill herself, and you responded in the negative. So if someone was to describe your sister as some pathetic, washed-up actress-wannabe who would whore herself for a chance to be a star…and was so unstable and desperate—as well as apparently vindictive—that she would end her life in the apartment of a man she hardly knew, what would be your response?”
Tina looked beyond Karp to where Maplethorpe was sitting, perched forward at the defense table as if preparing to jump up and object like a lawyer. But her gaze froze him and he had to look down and away. “I would say he was a liar,” she replied icily.
Karp walked back to the prosecution table. “Your Honor, I have one more photograph, People’s Exhibit Nine, that I would like to have admitted into evidence.”
“I don’t remember this photograph.” Leonard frowned as Karp handed it to him.
“We received it only today when Miss Perez brought it to us,” Karp replied. “She said it’s how she wants people to remember her sister. It depicts Gail Perez onstage in a production of Annie Get Your Gun.”
Guy Leonard looked shocked. “A photograph of a woman who killed herself with a gun, holding a gun? I hardly think that’s appropriate for a jury to consider as evidence, and I object to its inclusion.”
Judge Rosenmayer looked puzzled as he twisted his lips into a pucker, before adding, “It does seem a bit odd, Mr. Karp.”
“I understand, Your Honor,” Karp replied. “Notwithstanding that it’s a beautiful photograph of a lovely young woman singing as her eyes look upward, I actually have a more pedestrian purpose for asking that it be included.”
“And what is that, Mr. Karp?”
“Actually, my purpose has more to do with a particular fact about this photograph having to do with a question I am about to ask Miss Perez about her sister,” Karp continued.
For perhaps the first time in the trial, the judge laughed. “Everyone loves a good mystery, Mr. Karp, but you’re going to have to be a bit more forthcoming than that.” He motioned for the photograph, which Karp retrieved from Leonard and handed to Rosenmayer. “Why don’t you ask your question, and then I’ll rule on whether to admit the photograph,” he said with a sly smile.
Karp returned the smile with a small bow. “Fair enough. Miss Perez, was your sister left-handed?”
“She was,” Tina replied slowly, as if wondering where he was going with this. “My mom used to tell her that it made her special, so I used to try to do things left-handed, though I’m naturally right-handed.”
Karp turned to the judge and said, “Your Honor, in the photograph Gail Perez is pointing a gun in the air as she sings. I’d like the jury to see the photograph that corroborates Tina Perez’s testimony that her sister was left-handed.”
“Does that matter, Mr. Karp?” Rosenmayer asked.
“Oh, I believe so, Your Honor.” Karp nodded. “And I intend to demonstrate that to the jury.”
“I’ll allow it. The record will reflect that this photograph is received in evidence as…Mr. Karp, what number are we up to?”
“People’s Exhibit Nine, Your Honor.”
“Very well, you may show the witness the photograph and then distribute it to the jury.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Karp said, and did just that. As he walked from the jury box back toward the witness stand, he asked, “Miss Perez, what hand is your sister holding the gun in?”
“Her left,” Tina replied.
“Was it common for her to use her left hand more than her right?”
“She did everything left-handed…wrote, drew…” Tina suddenly laughed. “And pulled my hair when she was mad at me.”
Karp laughed with the rest of the courtroom. “I have a couple of boys like that,” he said as he turned to the defense table. “No further questions, Your Honor.”
Leonard seemed subdued when he began his cross-examination of Tina Perez, which disappointed Karp, who’d hoped that he would start off by harassing a young woman with whom the jurors were obviously empathetic.
“Miss Perez, you told the jury that you are living in Northampton, which is what, five hours’ drive from Manhattan?”
“Yes, about five hours by car,” Tina replied.
“And I take it that going to school, you spend most of your time there.”
“That’s correct. I try to come home pretty often, but it’s expensive and we are…we were…both pretty busy.”
“So at such a distance, and leading busy, active lives that kept you physically apart, isn’t it possible that things were going on in your sister’s life that she didn’t want to bother you with?”
“Like what?” Tina scowled.
“Like losing roles to other actresses,” he said. “Or getting older in what we all know is a young person’s game…especially for women.”
“Actually, she was working more now than in her twenties,” Tina said defensively.
“Still, isn’t it fair,” Leonard retorted, “to say that if a woman doesn’t ‘make it’ by a certain age, it’s tougher to get a job than it is for a man of the same age?”
“I’ve heard that’s true,” Tina agreed. “But Gail was okay with getting older and maybe fewer roles in the future. I think she was hoping to find somebody to settle down with and maybe move on…teach drama.”
“But still…” Leonard said, holding up a finger as if trying to make a point in a debate. “Still, there’s that hope: ‘If I can just get a break, I’ll show them I can be a star. It’s not too late.’ And if
you hold on to that dream…after all those acting classes, and voice lessons, and working menial jobs just to pay the rent…and put up with all those auditions and the unfairness of people with less talent getting the roles you—”
Karp objected. “Mr. Leonard is making speeches, not asking questions. Maybe he could get to the point.”
“Sustained. Mr. Leonard, a question please.”
“Certainly, Your Honor,” Leonard replied. “I like to think of what I was saying as adding context, but I’ll move on to my question. Miss Perez, did you talk to your sister the night she died?”
“No, I spoke to her that morning.”
“So you had no firm idea of what was going through her mind at approximately eleven that night?”
“I know she wouldn’t have been thinking about killing herself.”
“Really?” Leonard said as if surprised. “Miss Perez, have you ever attempted to kill yourself?”
“Objection,” Karp said, rising to his feet. The alarm bells were starting to go off in his head. “It’s one thing for Mr. Leonard to put Gail Perez on trial, and another to dig into the personal life of Tina Perez.”
“I’ll allow it,” Rosenmayer said. “But get to the point quickly, Mr. Leonard.”
“I will if Miss Perez will answer the question, Miss Perez,” Leonard replied, moving toward the witness stand until he was only a foot or so away.
Tina Perez looked down at her lap. “No.”
“No?” Leonard said as he held up a paper. “I have here a medical record from the medical clinic at Smith College that says you were admitted two months before your sister took her own life due to an overdose of Xanax and alcohol.”
“Objection!” Karp yelled, leaping to his feet. “Medical records are confidential and can only be obtained with consent or a warrant from the court. I’d like Mr. Leonard to produce either before he starts waving confidential records around and discussing personal medical history. The witness is not on trial here…or isn’t supposed to be.”
“Mr. Leonard, do you have a court order, or Miss Perez’s permission, to possess her confidential medical file?” Rosenmayer scowled.
“It was slipped under the door of our law office when we arrived at work this morning,” Leonard claimed.
“How convenient,” Karp retorted. “Your Honor, I’m going to object to this document and ask that the jury be instructed to ignore everything that has been said about it or Miss Perez.”
“Sustained,” Rosenmayer said angrily. “Mr. Leonard, please surrender that document to my clerk as well as any copies or other documents that fall under anyone’s right to privacy.”
“Your Honor, it is not our fault that this document—”
“You heard me, Mr. Leonard!” the judge demanded.
Leonard bowed. “Of course, Your Honor.” He then made a show of handing the medical report to the clerk. Then he turned to the judge and asked as though nothing had happened, “May I resume my cross-examination?”
Rosenmayer glared at Leonard and looked like he might say something, but then thought better of it and nodded. “Yes, Mr. Leonard, but beware, you are on thin ice.”
“I’ll remember that, Your Honor,” Leonard said before whirling to face Tina Perez again. “So Miss Perez, I’ll ask you one more time, have you ever tried to commit suicide?”
Tina Perez looked from Karp to Leonard and shrugged. “You just read that to everyone. But it’s not what it seems. I was homesick, and my boyfriend had just dumped me for another girl back home, I started drinking and wasn’t thinking clearly…”
“Objection,” Karp said, this time coming to his feet. “He’s using the medical record to question the witness. It might as well have been admitted into evidence!”
Leonard shrugged. “I didn’t say anything about the record. In fact, I returned to a question I asked before there was any mention of a record. It is the witness who just referred to this record after I was required to hand it over to the court. How can I be blamed for what your witness said?”
Karp didn’t answer except by turning to the judge. “Your Honor, Mr. Leonard’s protestations of innocence to the contrary, he knows what he was doing, and I ask that you prohibit this line of questioning.”
Rosenmayer looked from lawyer to lawyer and then shook his head. “We’re watching a couple of pro tennis players here, folks,” he said. “This time, Mr. Karp, I have to overrule you. I know what he did, too, but he did it cleverly. Mr. Leonard, you may ask your question again.”
“Thank you, Your Honor, I appreciate the analogy,” Leonard said with a smile. Then his face hardened as he turned back to the witness stand. “Miss Perez, please!” he scolded. “Did you try to kill yourself?”
“No…not really…maybe that’s what I was thinking, but not what I wanted,” she tried to explain. “It was an accident.”
“People who unsuccessfully attempt suicide often say things like that,” Leonard said. “My question to you now is: did your sister know you were thinking about killing yourself at that time?”
Tina shook her head. “Of course not. She only found out later when the hospital called her.”
Leonard backed up as if he scored a major point in the debate and then drew himself up to his full height as he turned to the jury. “So even though you talked to your sister pretty much every day—about everything—the evening you overdosed on pills and booze, you did not tell her you were contemplating suicide.”
Tina Perez bit her trembling lip. “That’s correct.”
“Then isn’t it possible that you wouldn’t have known if your sister was contemplating suicide on the night she died?”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m not asking you what you believe, Miss Perez. I’m asking you, given what you just told us about your own experience with this, isn’t it possible your sister may not have given you any warning either?”
Tina Perez sighed and then began to cry quietly. “I suppose it’s possible.”
Leonard glanced over at Karp, his mouth twisted into a triumphant half smile. “Thank you. No further questions.”
“My bad,” Kenny apologized as he bit into one of the meat knishes Darla Milquetost had sent a law clerk to buy from a vendor in the park across Centre Street. “Tina Perez was my responsibility to re-interview, and I missed it.”
“Missed what?” Karp asked.
“The suicide thing,” Katz said. “But I asked her if she’d ever attempted it and she said no.”
“Just like the first time she was asked by Leonard,” Karp noted. “You heard her, it was an accident; she doesn’t see it as a suicide attempt because she didn’t really want to die. But Leonard had the benefit of some sleazeball getting him that medical record—and I hope she sues his ass later. Anyway, lesson learned.”
“Thanks, boss. I’ll do better next time. What was that about being left-handed?” Katz asked.
Karp grinned. His young ADA protégé was not part of the preparations involving the Medical Examiner’s Office and the cause-of-death issues because they’d seemed so self-evident. “I’m going to let you think about it in light of what else we know. Get back to me.”
“Oh yes, Zen Master Karp.” Katz laughed as he wiped a stray bit of yellow mustard from his mouth. He pulled an apple out of his briefcase, which had belonged to Stewart Reed, and bit into it. “Are you going to try to get the cowboy picture in now?”
Karp wiggled his eyebrows. “You betcha,” he said.
The “cowboy picture” was the framed photograph that Karp had noted in the crime scene photographs he’d asked Detective Frank Cardamone about. It was the same photograph that had been in Stewart Reed’s briefcase with the sticky note that said “pantaloni di cuoio dispari.”
“Well, ‘dispari’ means ‘odd’ or ‘strange’ and ‘pantaloni di cuoio’ are leather pants,’” Marlene had told him when he came home that night from the Reeds’ house in Queens. “Kind of a strange way of saying it. What was he trying to get at? Map
lethorpe was wearing tight leather pants? Or maybe he was wearing buttless pants with his ass hanging out.”
Karp had laughed about his wife’s description and didn’t think about it until he looked again later at the photograph of young Maplethorpe standing with his mother. “I still have a copy of the photograph in the file; he’s all dressed up like a little cowboy,” Stewbie had noted at that meeting before he died. And that’s when Karp noticed the chaps. The boy in the photograph was wearing play versions of chaps worn by real cowboys.
Everyone had missed it. Whoever the police used to interpret the expression for the transcript of the interview had simply noted “leather pants” and left it at that. At the first trial, Gianneschi had been asked if Maplethorpe was wearing leather pants when the concierge arrived at the apartment. He’d replied yes, but no one asked him about the type of leather pants.
“But what if he meant that Maplethorpe was wearing leather chaps when he pulled out his cowboy six-shooter…and next thing you know, Gail Perez is dead,” Karp said to Katz when they were discussing the photograph later.
“Maybe I’m dense here,” Katz replied, “but where are you going with this?”
“Not sure yet,” Karp said with a shrug. “Maybe Maplethorpe was into some kinky costumed sex act involving leather and guns?”
“Okay, so he’s into the S&M cowboy crowd, probably not so unusual with the theater set. But it helps our case how…?”
Karp made a few notes on a yellow legal pad and then said, “Well, if our argument is that Maplethorpe may not have intended to kill Gail Perez that evening, but his reckless behavior created the circumstances that led to him shooting her, maybe role-playing figures in.”
“I’m pretty familiar with the evidence seized at the house, but I don’t remember any leather chaps,” Katz said.
“They didn’t know to look for them,” Karp said. “I’m sure they searched for any clothing with bloodstains, and they found the smoking jacket under the bed. But what if Maplethorpe put the chaps away? Obviously, he’s a clotheshorse and the cops executing the search warrant wouldn’t have confiscated something unless they had a reason to.”
Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) Page 29