Courthouse

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

“Thanks.”

  “Can I have your card?” she asked. “If I get in trouble, I’ll call you.”

  Marc took a card out of his wallet and handed it to the girl. She smiled her pleasant smile again. Marc smiled back. He and Mrs. Maricyk then made their way out to the main corridor.

  4

  Wednesday, August 9, 10:15 A.M.

  George Tishler moved at a jog out of his small, partitioned office on the Mayor’s side of City Hall. He was hustling on his suit jacket as he sped past the battery of secretaries. When he reached the main corridor, George turned so quickly that he slipped on the marble floor, almost losing his balance. He regained his footing halfway to his knees, then continued on rapidly. The plainclothes policeman on duty at the reception desk nearby was startled from his crossword puzzle.

  “You okay, Mister Tishler?”

  Tishler said nothing, other than uttering a mild epithet directed at the cobbler and the cow that supplied the new leather heels on his shoes. He slowed down as he reached the door of the Blue Room.

  Ordinarily, George would have been inside the Blue Room right now, sitting beside Mayor Davies at the press conference called concerning Monday’s Tombs riot. But just as the press conference began, George had to take a telephone call from one of the money men who were backing the Mayor’s re-election campaign. The Mayor was starting to put together his major campaign strategies—although to the news media, he continued voicing indecision about running—and he wanted to be sure he had enough money in his war chest. Thus, the Mayor directed the call to George, thinking that it was more important for George to stoke the warm fire of good will for a possible fifty-thousand-dollar pledge than to be in the Blue Room for the start of the conference.

  It was just that whim of fate which kept George at his desk to receive the emergency call from Corrections Commissioner Stein announcing the grand news that a new and bigger riot had just broken out in The Tombs.

  George stopped just outside the door of the Blue Room, buttoned his jacket, straightened his tie, then walked in. Television camera crews filled a small elevated platform across the back of the large room called Blue because of the color of the draperies and rug. Camera lights had the room ablaze in stark blue-whiteness. Filling the chairs from the cameras to the front of the room were a mass of reporters and photographers. Facing all these news hounds from behind a desk, the Mayor was answering a question. A flash of a photographer’s camera streaked across the Mayor’s face.

  “I have appointed a committee of top advisers in the corrections field, the criminal courts field, and all related fields having any bearing on our justice system,” the Mayor was saying as George walked toward the desk. “And I have given this committee carte blanche to investigate and report to me within the shortest possible time ways to improve even further this city’s detention facilities, to speed trial waiting time, and to obtain more reasonable bail for indigent defendants …”

  George moved quickly behind the long, carved desk. He slid into the empty seat directly next to the Mayor.

  “… I expect to have answers and solutions to this problem almost immediately,” the Mayor continued. “So that we can avoid further unfortunate disorders as we experienced Monday at Manhattan House of Detention for Men.”

  The Mayor glanced about the room to choose the next reporter to bat out a question.

  George discreetly touched the Mayor’s arm to gain his attention. “Mayor. Hold it up for a minute,” he whispered.

  The Mayor half-turned toward George. If you were close up and looked carefully, you could see a look of condescending annoyance harden in the Mayor’s eyes. The rest of his face, however, remained calm, relaxed.

  “Mayor,” George Tishler whispered, leaning closer, “we’ve got another riot in The Tombs.”

  Now the Mayor turned to Tishler, his eyes widening, searching George’s.

  George nodded affirmatively.

  The Mayor leaned closer to George, wanting to screen out the reporters. “Another riot? How bad?” the Mayor whispered.

  “Worse than Monday.”

  The Mayor turned to the reporters and rose. “Gentlemen. Please excuse me for a moment. Something important has come up. I’ll be right back.” The Mayor strode toward the door. George was right behind him. They left a room filled with murmuring.

  “Who told you?” the Mayor demanded as they moved rapidly across the corridor and into the complex of offices used by the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, and their covey of secretaries.

  “Commissioner Stein just called,” George replied.

  The Mayor shoved open the door to the Deputy Mayor’s office. Deputy Mayor Anthony Lanza, seated at his desk, in shirt sleeves, his tie loose at his neck, was startled by the Mayor’s abrupt entrance. He had been reading a letter, dictating notes to a secretary who sat in a chair opposite Lanza’s desk.

  “Excuse us, Marcy,” the Mayor commanded the secretary.

  The secretary said nothing. She rose and left the room quickly.

  “What the hell’s the matter, Scott?” Lanza asked.

  “Tell him,” the Mayor directed George.

  “We’ve got another riot over in The Tombs,” George repeated. “Worse than Monday’s.”

  Lanza stared at George for a moment, letting it sink in. His mouth soured.

  The Mayor was angry; he started to pace. “Jesus H. Christ!” His right fist came down into the palm of his left hand. “Is it the eighth floor again?”

  “No. The third, fourth, seventh, and ninth,” George replied reluctantly. “Stein said they’re wrecking the whole place.”

  Lanza almost pushed his finger through the top of his desk as he pressed the button next to his phone. His secretary’s voice answered over an intercom speaker.

  “Get Commissioner Stein on the wire right away,” Lanza directed. “And hold everything else.”

  “Four floors now,” the Mayor repeated, reeling from the blow. He absently reverted to a nervous habit usually repressed—he began repeatedly to rub the skin under his eyes and across the bridge of his nose.

  The intercom buzzed, Lanza pushed the button on his desk and listened.

  “Commissioner Stein isn’t in his office,” the secretary’s voice announced to the room. “He’s gone to The Tombs personally.”

  “Well, tell them to find him and have him call me immediately,” Lanza directed. “Immediately! He told you four floors, George?”

  “That’s what he said. They’re wrecking four floors. I have no idea if they have hostages or what the hell’s going on.”

  “George, go into the goddamn Blue Room and tell the reporters what the hell’s going on,” the Mayor directed painfully. “They’ll know in a few minutes anyway. Tell them, under the circumstances, we’ll have to check this out before we continue the conference.”

  “Right, Mayor.” George turned and left hurriedly.

  The Mayor slumped into the chair on which the secretary had been seated. He and Lanza looked at each other blankly for a moment.

  “Goddamn it,” the Mayor shouted. He stood up so quickly that he knocked over the chair on which he had been seated.

  “Take it easy, Scott,” said Lanza.

  “Take it easy? Take it easy? The place is coming down around our ears, more each day, and you tell me to take it easy.” The Mayor paced two yards and turned back. “And it couldn’t happen at a worse time. Westom, Wesson … just called about his campaign contribution.”

  “Wescomb,” Lanza corrected.

  “Wescomb, Wesson, whatever the hell it is. He just called. George spoke to him. Christ, we can’t afford to have any more of this shit. Not now. Not with the campaign looming up. We have to keep Wesson on the bandwagon.”

  George returned, closing the door behind him.

  “What happened?” the Mayor asked.

  “Half of them were gone already,” replied George. “The other half didn’t even wait for me to finish speaking.”

  “That’s what I mean,” the Mayor turned t
o Lanza. “They’ll have a field day on this. Especially people like that bastard Dworkin across the hall. With his law-and-order pitch, he’ll have plenty of new ammunition to start throwing at the conservative home-owners in Queens and Brooklyn.”

  “You want me to go over to The Tombs, Mayor?” asked George.

  The Mayor thought, then nodded. “Since you worked out the settlement with the inmates on the eighth floor the other day, these bastards’ll probably be looking for you to give you their goddamn demands too.”

  “They’ll probably have a few more by now,” added Lanza.

  “Maybe they’ll want two desserts,” George added lightly.

  The Mayor was only half listening; he was apparently absorbed in something else. His face was stern, tinged with a look of hurt. “And after we gave them more contact and dialogue than inmates have received anywhere else in the country. I simply don’t understand what the hell is wrong now.”

  “Maybe the other floors just want to vent their spleen, have their say,” suggested Lanza. “From the information George got, the eighth floor hasn’t even taken part in this one. They must be satisfied from Monday.”

  “The rest of the inmates didn’t imagine we were just going to take care of the eighth floor and not bother about the other floors, did they?” wondered the Mayor.

  George shrugged. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Not to me either,” agreed the Mayor. “But then neither does the whole blasted riot. But I tell you this, George, I want the whole damn problem cleared up, and I want it cleared up quick.” The Mayor speared the air with his index finger. “We can’t afford this kind of image smeared all over the headlines. Not at this time.”

  “It may not be as bad as all that,” consoled Lanza. The Mayor turned to him. “Remember the polls; there’s a law-and-order wave that’s sweeping the City, Lanza continued. “The people in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island won’t hold it against you that prisoners aren’t getting filet mignon and two desserts in the jails.”

  “But chaos and inefficiency …” George started to add.

  “Chaos and inefficiency?” demanded the Mayor, whirling. “Where the hell did that come from? Chaos? Inefficiency?”

  “That’s what the prisoners were griping about the other day, Mayor,” George explained hastily. “No bail, no trials, just rotting in The Tombs for months on end before they get to court. And the courts are backlogged and log jammed, they say. That’s what they emphasized most in their demands the other day. Speedier trials.”

  “Is what they say true, George?” the Mayor asked. “Are the courts inefficient? Are those judges I appoint just sitting on their asses, doing nothing?” The Mayor walked across the room and turned Lanza’s air conditioner higher. He gazed out at the trees hanging limp in the heat. “The other day when we swore in Broder, Brauder …”

  “Bauer,” George suggested.

  “What the hell’s the difference?” the Mayor said impatiently. “You know who the hell I mean. When we swore him in everybody was making grand speeches about how well the courts are doing, how many cases they’re moving. Are they all playing with themselves? And with me?”

  “Not from the reports I get each week, Mayor,” George replied. “It’s all been fine up to now.”

  “Are you on top of this, George?” the Mayor asked pointedly. “I mean do you really keep on top of it? Do you really know what’s going on?”

  “Yes, Mayor, I am,” George said firmly. “There is a great backlog of cases, Mayor. But there are lots of, thousands more, arrests each year than the year before. We … the whole country,” he added quickly, “is in the midst of a crime wave. We just don’t have enough courts, enough judges …”

  “Enough money,” the Mayor added flatly. “If the Federal Government would only give us the additional money we need. That bastard in the White House. He’s orchestrating the whole thing to make himself appear like Saint George coming to the rescue. We’re the ones who have to cope with the riots. To the Government in Washington, this is merely an exercise in theory, in sociology. But to the people in the city, it’s a crisis; it’s a wave of terror sweeping down from the rooftops.” The Mayor obviously liked the tone of what he had just said. He searched for the next phrase, as if listening for a new sound. Tishler and Lanza just waited.

  The buzzer on Lanza’s desk sounded.

  “I told you to hold everything,” Lanza said firmly as he touched the intercom button.

  “The Tombs is on fire now,” the secretary’s voice blurted out.

  The Mayor’s speech stuck in his throat as he was gesturing broadly. “On fire?” He turned, his arm still out in the air. “On fire? George, get your ass over there right now, and get the goddamn thing settled before we’re on the front page of every newspaper and magazine in the country. Jesus H. Christ,” he said, pounding his palm again. “George, get the damn thing settled fast.”

  “Yes, Mayor.” George started for the door.

  “Wait a minute, George,” the Mayor called.

  “Yes, Mayor?”

  “When you get back here, George, I want you to start an investigation of those judges. The Tombs, the whole goddamn courthouse. I want you to shake our whole justice system by the neck until it cries uncle. Get the damn thing working properly, efficiently. I want records kept of everything. And I want it done quickly.”

  “We already have records on every detail of operation, Mayor,” replied George.

  “Well, then the record keepers are covering up for the judges, and the clerks, and the court officers. Something’s got to be wrong, George. The records we get say everything is peachy, and meanwhile, obviously, the jails are busting at the seams and the cases aren’t moving.”

  “If I can make a suggestion, Mayor,” said Lanza.

  The Mayor nodded.

  “What we need is somebody over there that nobody would even suspect is working with us. Someone who could give us the real lowdown, the true picture.”

  George nodded. “That’s a possibility.”

  “It’s a good suggestion, Tony,” said the Mayor. “We need a spy. Somebody in the courthouse that no one will suspect. Somebody who can pass.”

  “A court officer?” suggested George. “A clerk?”

  “No,” said Lanza, shaking his head. “Their movements would be too confined. Officers and clerks have to stay in one place, one courtroom.”

  They were each silent as they thought of possible spies.

  “How about a lawyer,” suggested Lanza. “Someone who handles criminal cases, who’s there every day, who can be all over the place and look normal, natural.”

  “A criminal lawyer. Excellent,” agreed the Mayor, pointing an index finger at Lanza. “A criminal lawyer can go everywhere … into the courts, into the jails, into every phase of the criminal justice system. Who do we know?”

  They each thought again silently.

  “I know a tremendous criminal lawyer, Mayor,” said George. “A guy I went to law school with. I don’t know if he’d be interested in the job.”

  “Who is it?” asked the Mayor.

  “A fellow named Marc Conte,” George replied. “He represents all kinds of criminals, rich ones, poor ones. And he must know his stuff. He represents some of the biggest organized-crime figures: Gianni Aquilino, Action Townes.”

  “Christ, I tell you I want a lawyer that knows the criminal law, and you suggest one who represents notorious gangsters. For Christ’s sake, he sounds like he’s almost part of organized crime himself.”

  “Not at all, Mayor,” replied George defensively. “He represents plenty of indigent defendants on court assignment. He represents the very sort of people who are involved in the riots. He knows the courts, the defendants, the whole thing.”

  “But his connection with organized crime,” the Mayor said skeptically.

  “Mayor, this guy’s got the highest integrity. We’ve already had him checked out,” said George. “He came out clean.”

  �
�When was that?” The Mayor sat again, crossing one leg over the other.

  “When you wanted to appoint an Italian commissioner to replace Allan Weinberg in Markets,” said Tishler.

  The Mayor looked up sharply, his legs uncrossing. “Don’t even mention that bastard’s name. Did he get sentenced yet?”

  “Next week, Mayor,” replied George.

  “All of them?” the Mayor inquired further, referring to Francis X McCarthy, a former Democratic congressman, and Eugene Scally, a reputed racketeer, both of whom, together with former Commissioner Weinberg, went on trial for bribery and conspiracy. All were convicted.

  George nodded. “All of them.”

  The Mayor’s grave look began to ease.

  “George is right,” agreed Lanza. “When you wanted an Italian commissioner, I remember interviewing him. Nice guy.”

  “Who did the checking on this lawyer Marco Polo, or whatever the hell the name is, you just mentioned, George?” asked the Mayor.

  “Marc Conte, Mayor,” George corrected. “Our police department checked him out. And so did the FBI.”

  “And you remember this fellow?” the Mayor asked, turning to Lanza.

  “Yes, Mayor. He came up clean, as I remember. He’s apparently just a defense lawyer who does a good job, and some big-time people use him.”

  “Why the hell didn’t we appoint him then? We still need an Italian commissioner, an Italian judge, an Italian something. George Tucci’s on my back about a goddamned Italian every time I see him at one of the political dinners. We have to appoint an Italian to something soon, Tony,” the Mayor urged. “Otherwise, we’re going to blow the whole Italian community.”

  “I know,” replied Lanza. “And Tucci is the man we need to carry Brooklyn.”

  “So why the hell didn’t we appoint this guy a commissioner, if he’s so good then? We need Brooklyn to carry the city.”

  “Remember, Matty Slavin in the Bronx recommended one of his men, Frank Deely, and we made a deal with Slavin in exchange for him going with us on the two Supreme Court judgeships at the Judicial Convention.”

  “Right, right,” agreed the Mayor, remembering. “You think this lawyer of George’s can help us out, Tony?”