Corruption of Blood (2 page)

He’s going to offer me a job, thought Karp. This happened at least once a month, mostly from white-shoe law firms in the city who wanted a name prosecutor to handle the criminal stuff that occasionally came their way, as when the drunken heir runs the Ferrari over the old lady. Occasionally, Karp would get a serious offer from a big-time criminal lawyer, the kind who write books about their own genius. Like Lucifer with Christ, they stood him on a mountaintop and showed him the treasures of the earth. Karp had always turned them down, for reasons he could not quite articulate.

It was, after all, past time for him to leave the DA’s. He had been there twelve and a half years, ever since law school; it had been his only real job. It was more or less expected that after a period of seasoning in the DA, lawyers with ambition would go private, or switch over to the federal side, or, after a little longer, become judges. He looked around his office. It was a small spare room with a frosted-glass-windowed door that gave on the bureau’s outer office, where the clerks and secretaries sat. It contained a battered wooden desk, a leather chair behind the desk and two in front for visitors, and behind these a long, scratched oak table with a miscellany of chairs around it, for conferences.

These furnishings were part of the original equipment of the criminal courts building, which had been constructed in 1930. The leather of the chairs was cracked, and gushed white stuffing. To the right of the desk were two large windows looking out on a short street and the New York State office building across it. If you stood at the window and leaned out you could see the trees of a tiny park, beyond which was Chinatown. It was the office’s best, or rather its only good, feature.

Karp was no sort of status hound, but he understood that the tattiness of his personal surroundings and the even worse conditions with which his staff had to contend were petty symbols of the contempt for Karp and all his works that steamed perpetually in the heart of Karp’s boss, the district attorney, Sanford Bloom.

Bloom had not the guts to fire Karp outright, but neither Karp nor anyone who worked for him would ever get a new office or new furniture. The paint would rot off their walls. Their promotions would be delayed and their personnel records screwed up.

Everyone in the DA’s office knew this. As a result, only the intrepid came to work for Karp in the homicide bureau, and what should have been the cream of the DA’s prosecutorial staff grew milky with the years.

People didn’t stay long, and those who did were mostly the hacks, or those too uncouth for private firms. Fanatics like Karp, who lived only to try cases and put asses in jail, were fewer and fewer as the years passed.

Karp didn’t want to be a judge. He wanted to be twenty-four and working, as he had then, for the finest prosecutorial office in the known universe. He sighed and looked at the little yellow slip, and dialed the long-distance number.

He gave his name to the woman who answered and she put him through to Crane instantly. Crane’s voice was deep and confident, and “cultured” in the style of classical music announcers on FM radio.

Crane got quickly to the point. “Joe Lerner gave me your name. As you probably know, I’ve been appointed chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.”

Karp didn’t know. He had almost no interest in political news and restricted his newspaper reading to the crime reports and the sports pages. Nor did he watch much television. But he had a vague recollection that Congress was reopening the investigations into the murders of both Kennedy and Martin Luther King. And he knew who Joe Lerner was.

“How is Joe?” Karp asked.

“Fine. He’s working for me now.”

“No kidding? Doing what?”

“I’ll have two assistant chief counsels. Joe is going to be running the Martin Luther King side of it. He recommended you highly.”

“That’s a surprise,” said Karp, genuinely surprised.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Joe and I had a little bit of a falling-out just before he split from the office. He was my rabbi when I was breaking in and I guess he assumed I’d keep following his lead.”

“This was about some case?”

“No, it was a political thing. Joe thinks I lack political judgment.”

A pause. “Well, he thinks you’re a hell of a prosecutor, anyway. The best is what he said, actually.”

“Next to you, of course. And him.”

Crane had a booming laugh. “Of course! Look, maybe the best thing would be if you could run down here to Philadelphia and we could discuss it face-to-face. I’d like to meet you and I’m sure Joe would like to see you again. I know you’ve got a tight schedule, but could you make it, say, Thursday, day after tomorrow? We could have lunch and talk.”

The man’s diffidence was starting to annoy Karp. Just once, he wished one of these guys would call him up and say, “Hundred and ninety grand a year for defending scumbags, plus you kiss my ass. Yes or no?”

“And what would we be talking about, Mr. Crane?” Karp asked.

“Please—it’s Bert. Well, of course, about you joining our team. Joe suggested that you might be interested in new pastures. Something with more scope for your abilities.”

“You mean as Joe’s assistant?”

Crane chuckled. “No, no, of course not. I want you for the Kennedy half. In charge of it.”

“Oh,” said Karp, and then couldn’t think of a bright rejoinder.

“You’re interested?”

“That’s a good word,” Karp admitted.

“Fine. I’ll expect you in my office Thursday, eleven-thirty.” Crane passed on some details about how to get to his office and then closed the conversation.

Karp made the rest of his calls and then futzed around for the remainder of the afternoon, irritated that he was unable to maintain his usual focus. His job consisted largely of supervising the work of thirty other prosecutors, which meant that he had to be passably familiar with several hundred homicide cases at once.

There was a man talking to him who suddenly stopped. Karp realized with a start that the man was waiting for a reply. He was a junior prosecutor and he had just asked Karp for some direction on a case.

Karp felt an embarrassed sweat blossom on his face.

“Sorry, I was somewhere else. Hit me with that again.”

The young man said, “This is
Wismer.
Defendant beat his estranged wife to death with a blunt instrument. The case … the charge is murder two… .”

The kid was nervous. Karp recalled that this was probably his first murder case solo, and could be his first homicide trial. It did not occur to Karp that the kid was nervous because he was presenting an issue to a demigod. Awe made Karp uncomfortable, and so he simply refused to recognize that it existed.

Collins, his name was, Karp recalled. A neat, strong-looking black kid from upstate somewhere, and an athlete, like nearly all the people Karp hired. He had a pencil mustache he kept fiddling with. From time to time he glanced at his watch.

Karp reached into his mental files. “Yeah,
Wismer,
guy’s got a sheet as a petty thief and dealer, seen leaving the wife’s apartment, picked out of a lineup. What’s the problem?”

“Somebody called the cops, wouldn’t give the name. A woman. Said there was a boyfriend, and he did the crime. The boyfriend’s a man named Warren Hobart. Also not a taxpayer: did time on a 120.10 a couple of years ago plus the usual drug shit.”

“Don’t tell me—he looks just like Wismer.”

Collins smiled. “Well, they’re both medium-sized, skinny, medium-dark black guys. Surprise.”

“So, put them in a lineup and see which one the witness likes best.”

“Um, that’s the problem. The cops think it’s bullshit. They got the guy, Wismer. Case is cleared.”

Karp’s brow clouded at this, and he asked, “What’s the rest of
Wismer
? We have any physical evidence?”

“We have a print on the murder weapon.”

“Which was?”

“A juice machine.”

“A what?”

“Yeah, right. It was one of those old-fashioned kind of orange-juice squeezers—all steel, weighed a ton. Must’ve just grabbed it there in the kitchen and whapped her a couple upside the head. Crushed in her temple bone.”

“Okay, on the cops—who caught the case again?”

“Angeletti, Zone Six Homicide.”

“Yeah, Vince Angeletti. Look, here’s the thing: the cops got a lot to do, especially uptown there, and the last thing they want to do is to piss on their own cleared cases. But with the situation as it is right now you couldn’t convict Wismer of criminal mischief, much less murder two. You got to get them to check out this character Hobart. Don’t ask them, tell them. If you get any more shit from Angeletti, let me know and I’ll fuck with his head. His lieutenant is a good buddy of mine. You got to remind these guys once in a while who’s in charge of a criminal prosecution. When you got Hobart, do the lineup again, and make sure whoever’s on D is there to see it. If your witness waffles, I think we’re fucked. Or we could get lucky and find a bunch of bloody clothes in Hobart’s closet. He’s got that assault conviction.”

“But we have Wismer’s prints… .”

“Come on!” Karp said impatiently. “The guy lived there. You want to put him away for twenty-five because he squeezed some orange juice last April?”

Collins looked down at the thick file folder on his lap, weeks of work gone glimmering. “But,” he said despairingly, “Wismer
did
it.”

“Yeah, I agree. He probably
did
do it. But probably isn’t good enough. Domestics are hard to prove circumstantially anyway. The killer was intimate with the victim and they shared a space—fibers, hairs, prints don’t mean much. You need an eyewitness to the crime itself, or a confession, which is how we clear ninety percent of domestics. Without that …” Karp shrugged and added, “I like it when they keep the bloody knife, or bury the stiff in the basement.”

Collins was looking stunned. “So … what? He
walks
on this?”

“Not necessarily. If your witness gives him a good ID in the lineup with the boyfriend, or if the boyfriend has a cast-iron alibi and Wismer’s loose for the time of, then you got something to work with.”

“You mean plead him?”

“Offer man one, settle for man two. Ask for twelve, they’ll offer six, you’ll close on eight. He’ll do maybe four and a half.”

Collins’s smile was rueful. “You’ve done this before.”

“How can you tell?” said Karp, returning the smile. “So. I think that’s how it’s gonna play. On the other hand, you know how I run the office; it’s your case, your call. You want a trial slot on this?”

“I think I’ll pass this time,” said Collins, looking relieved and at the same time faintly ashamed of being relieved. He looked at his watch again and leaped to his feet. “Jesus! I’m due in calendar court four minutes ago. Thanks a lot, sir!”

“No problem,” said Karp, “and don’t worry about Wismer. You stay around long enough, you’ll catch him on his next wife.”

Collins laughed racing out.

Sir? When the hell did they start calling him that? Karp sighed and rubbed his face. He looked with distaste at the pile of case folders waiting his review in the wire basket on his desk. They came in at an average of three a day, each one representing a New Yorker who had dealt with one of life’s little problems by terminating the existence of a fellow citizen. Most of them were pathetic shards from the rubble of life in the lower depths, like
Wismer.

He knew he had cheered up Collins. He did that for his staff half a dozen times a day. Collins was a pretty good guy, in fact, better than some of the newer people he’d had to take in just to keep up with the killing. Collins would probably get it after a while, get the sense of what was possible in a system essentially corrupt, a system designed to fail most of the time. A lot of them wouldn’t, ever. And, of course, Collins would probably leave shortly after he knew what he was doing, and Karp would have to pump up another kid.

And the pumping, what he did for Collins and the others, drained him, which was to be expected, but the problem was, nobody was pumping
him
up. Zero strokes for old Butch these days. The only thing that kept him going was doing trials himself, but running a bureau with thirty lawyers in it didn’t give him much time for trials, not the way he liked to do them.

He thought about his conversation with Crane. There were some strokes in that. “The best,” for example. He might even have meant it. The notion of working for somebody who liked and respected him had a certain appeal. Since the death of the legendary Francis Phillip Garrahy, the district attorney who had made New York a mecca for every serious criminal prosecutor in the country, and the accession of Sanford L. Bloom, Karp had not had the pleasure. It had been eight years, all uphill.

Karp picked up the phone and punched the intercom button. Connie Trask, the bureau secretary, came on.

“Connie, what do I have Thursday?”

“Nine, you have staff with the DA, moved back from Monday. Ten-thirty, you have a meet with Sullivan at felony, his place. Lunch is open. Then, one to three, meeting of bureau chiefs on affirmative action, three to four, meeting on paperwork reduction, four to five you have marked off for grand jury. After five you’re free as a bird, except it’s your day to pick up the kid at day care.”

“Okay, cancel the whole day. Get Roland to cover me on the grand jury, and reschedule Sullivan. The rest, get somebody to pick up any paper they hand out.”

“Right. Taking a mental health day?”

“No, I’m going to Philadelphia.”

“A day in Philly! Lucky you! Is this business? You want me to cut a travel voucher?”

“No, it’s personal.”

“What should I say if
he
calls. Which he will if you cut that staff meeting.”

“Tell the district attorney I’m visiting our national shrines in order to renew my commitment to our precious civil liberties,” said Karp. “He’ll understand.”

At 5:15, Karp was immersed in a case, writing notes for one of his people, when the intercom buzzed, and Connie Trask said, “I’m going. Want anything?”

“No, go ahead.”

“Don’t forget the kid.”

“Oh, shit!” cried Karp, looking at his watch to confirm that yet again he had left his daughter waiting at the day care on Lispenard Street. He shoved some reading into an old red pasteboard folder and cleared the building in three minutes.