Depraved Indifference (18 page)

But in her heart of hearts she knew better. Something was wrong inside. Things had to change. She thought about what Karp had said about defense. Or
dee-fense
, as he pronounced it in the jock manner. Defense was not enough, it was not enough to be tough. She wanted to be rescued. She wanted love, a family. She was thirty-one. She wanted Karp to rescue her. If only he could see beyond his arrogant mission to save the world. Oh, Butchie, she thought, I know you so well and you don't know me at all. I'm going to have to rescue you first.

Marlene left the booth and went to the sinks and mirrors to repair what was left of her face. While she was brushing her hair, Rhoda Klepp came out of one of the booths and occupied the next sink. Since there were ten sinks, this was an invitation. Marlene did not particularly like Rhoda Klepp, but neither did she join in the vituperation heaped on her by the other ADAs. The DA's office was hiring more women these days than it had when Marlene had started out, but it was still largely a men's club, and Marlene felt a guilty impulse toward sisterly solidarity.

“How's it going, Rhoda?” she said heartily.

“Oh, so-so,” replied Rhoda, not taking her eyes off herself in the mirror. “I'm doing the briefing for the monthly targets meeting this afternoon. Chip is such a perfectionist, you wouldn't believe it. And Sandy too. Never a false move. I think he's running for president. He always keeps an extra suit in the office in a cleaner bag—God forbid he should get a wrinkle or spill something. Also, he's got ties. A riot! He tapes phone calls, you know that?”

“Uh-uh. What do the numbers look like this month?”

“Not that great. I don't think Sandy is going to be very pleased with them.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, people are going to get creamed. Your, ah, whatchamacallit …”

“Karp.”

“Especially. I can't believe how he goes out of his way to piss people off. Not just Chip, everybody. The cops too.”

“Which cops are those?”

“Oh, you know, stuff you hear. I really shouldn't be talking about this.” She finished her makeup and backed away from the mirror. She turned this way and that, tucking and pulling at her blouse and adjusting the underlying cables and supports. Marlene stared at this performance, and Rhoda caught her looking. “Make you jealous?” she asked.

“You certainly have a nice figure, Rhoda,” Marlene said evenly.

“Yeah. I used to hate it. But now I love when men stare at my body. You can see them trying to look away, but their eyes always drift back, like little machines, the assholes.”

“Uh-huh.”

Rhoda seemed to take in Marlene for the first time. “It's power. I guess it's probably hard for someone like you to understand that. I mean …”

“Right. Look, Rhoda, I sent an administrative appeal up to, um, Chip's office. Do you know if it got there?”

“Oh, yeah, I think I saw that lying around. What about it?”

“Is he going to sign it?”

“Well, that would depend, I guess. I mean we've got to worry about the precedent. We need to check with the general counsel and the insurance people. And so on.”

Marlene was struggling to control her rage, afraid that in another moment she would lose it all and commit a class-A felony. She cleared her throat and said softly, “I hardly think that precedent is a concern. How many ADAs do they suppose are going to be bombed in a year?”

“Well, it's the principle, then. Ramifications. Whatever,” said Rhoda blithely. As she picked up her handbag and prepared to leave, she favored Marlene with a look of amused contempt. “Get smart, honey,” she said. “You're a bright girl. Why should Chip hassle himself to do you a favor? You hang around with Karp, some of the smell rubs off, you understand? And now you're farting around with this stupid skyjack case, which every time he hears about it the DA wants to vomit. You understand what I'm saying? You could really have a future around here if you changed your attitude, hung around with the right people, worked on the right cases, steered them the right way.”

“Will it give me big tits too?” Marlene asked spontaneously, half to herself.

“What?”

“Nothing, Rhoda,” she said. “Have a nice day.”

After Rhoda left, Marlene kicked the wastebasket as hard as she could, twice, making a satisfyingly aggressive clamor. On checking her datebook, she found she was scheduled to interview a woman named Doreen Moore who was accused of stuffing her four-year-old daughter in an oven and roasting her alive.

Rhoda Klepp meanwhile went to the monthly targets meeting, a vastly more comfortable duty. Karp went too, although it was by no means comfortable for him. The monthly targets meeting was where Wharton got to torture Karp, and he had to sit there and take it. The idea was that each bureau would commit to clearance targets and then be held accountable for them each month. As it turned out, however, Karp's boss, Melvyn Pelso, made the commitments, which he did without consulting Karp or anyone else who knew what was going on in the courtrooms. Pelso got the credit for heroic commitments, and Karp got the blame for failing to meet them. Theoretically, he could have met them, provided none of his attorneys was ever sick or ever took a day off, and provided virtually every defendant pleaded guilty to the top count of the indictment, and especially provided that he practically never went to trial.

Since none of these provisions were met, he always flunked. Today was worse than usual. Because of the events of that morning, Karp had not had a chance to review the cases he had proposed for trial and which he had to defend to Wharton. To his dismay, he found included among them the case of Alejandro Sorriendas.

Karp found Guma in his office, feet up on the desk, smoking a White Owl and reading the
National Enquirer
. “Don't strain your mind with that stuff, Guma,” he said. “You might have to use it someday.”

Guma smiled around his cigar. “Hey man, I'm a trial lawyer. I got to keep up with the masses, get a feel for what people will swallow. How about this? ‘Mom Cuts Off Arm to Feed Starving Kids. Dad Watches.'”

“Speaking of trials, you rat, I just got my ass reamed because you stuck that piece-of-shit Sorriendas attempted homicide on the trial roster, so Wharton could give me his little smile and say, ‘Gosh, Butch, things must really be slack in Criminal Courts if we're going to trial on a domestic assault, hah, hah.' How the fuck do you expect me to stand up for the real cases when you pull crap like that?”

“Butch, calm down.”

“Why? I thought we had an agreement, and I get up there and get shafted.”

“Calm down, Butch. It's OK. I just needed something to flash at Sorriendas and his lawyer. I figured you'd catch it and dump it and no harm done.”

“Bullshit, Guma. That list went into typing last night, without Sorriendas. You had your girl type your version, and then you slipped it into the box upstairs so it would be Xeroxed for the briefing book.”

Guma took his cigar out of his mouth and put his feet down on the floor, his face an artful amalgam of hurt innocence and belligerence. “OK, guilty! Guilty, your honor! Big fucking deal. Butch, listen to me, baby. Do I ever steer you wrong? This thing goes down the way I think, you're gonna be golden.”

“No way, Guma. And just don't pull shit like this, man …”

Guma held up his hands and smiled disarmingly. “Butch, Butch, what're we fighting here? We're the good guys, remember? The white hats. Come on, look, I got a half hour. I'll buy you a coffee, some danish, we'll talk.”

It was hard to argue with Guma, Karp had found from long experience, since he had no use for either logic or consistency, and had the endurance of a sumo wrestler. Karp allowed himself to be ushered down to the snack bar on the first floor. When they were settled in the smoky fug with their bad coffee, Guma said, “Look, Butch, these are serious bad guys. Just give me a little juice to squeeze Sorriendas with, and I know we can crack something. Not just the dope, homicides too.”

“Oh, yeah? Which one?”

“Come on, how do you think Ruiz got to be a smack czar in five years? Giving out Green Stamps?”

“No trials, Goom.”

“OK, OK, no trial. But let me squeeze Sorriendas anyway. Get some cops to follow him around, roust him, like that. Whaddya say?”

“I say, if you can get one of the guys to do it, and it doesn't screw up any of our other investigations, and it's cool with Spicer, I could care less.”

“Jesus, Butch, thanks a lot. What a prince! Hey, but put a good word in, huh?”

“Sure, talk's cheap,” said Karp, standing up. “It's been real, Goom. See you round.”

For the remainder of the court day Karp ran around through the dirty hallways, doing the People's business. Once he caught sight of Marlene leaving a courtroom with a crowd of people. He waved at her, but she didn't respond. She looked depressed and drawn. He made a mental note to call her later that evening to find out if she had learned anything about the Croatians' unknown benefactor.

By six the building had cleared out, except for the cleaning people clattering the waste baskets and maniacs like Karp, who were just beginning the most productive part of their working day. For an hour or so he plowed through the day's intake of case files, assigning them to the various attorneys under his command and making brief notes on strategy for the ADAs, who would see them for the first time the following morning. Then he reviewed the stack of cases that he would handle personally, and made notes about the police officers and witnesses who would have to be scheduled for the rest of the week. Around eight, feeling peckish, he went out through the echoing hallways and into Foley Square.

He walked up Baxter Street to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese take-out joint, where he ordered a quart of chicken chow mein and a large Coke to go. Waiting for his order in the steamy, brightly lit place, he mulled over the Doyle case. Whenever he thought about a case, he thought visually, as if he were figuring out a basketball play, with bodies moving rapidly in space, rearranging themselves constantly in relation to each other and to the three constants—the ball, the basket, and the rules of the game. He often diagrammed cases in the same way.

He slid a take-out menu sheet from the stack on the counter and turned it over to its blank side. Using a pencil stub he drew in the center a circle marked “
BOMB-HOMICIDE
” and from that a line connecting it to another circle marked “
CROATS
” with the names of the hijackers in smaller circles within it. The names “Karavitch,” “Macek,” and “Wilson” were connected in a triangle, with a question mark in it. A line from “Rukovina” led to the “
BOMB-HOMICIDE
” circle. Rising up from this line were two balloons. In one of them was the name “Dorcas” and in the other the name “Koltan.” Another line led from the “
CROAT
” circle to one marked “A.B. Roberts.” This line had a question mark and a dollar sign on it.

He drew another line from the “
BOMB-HOMICIDE
” circle, at the end of which he drew a little square labeled “Device.” He put a question mark over it. Then a line from that box to a circle marked “
COPS
,” with another question mark. Inside the “
COPS
” circle he wrote the names “Denton,” “Hanlon,” and “Spicer.” He put a question mark over the last two. Then he paused and chewed the pencil, and finally put another over “Denton.” Then he crossed it out. Then he drew it in again, but faintly.

Finally he drew a large circle around the whole diagram. On its periphery he drew circles marked “
FBI
” and “
BLOOM
,” with large question marks over both of them. Under “
BLOOM
” he wrote “knew K. name—Denton/screwup/TV?” Under “
FBI
” he wrote “translator/screwup/coaching/how?/why?” That's the case in a nutshell, folks, he thought. He counted up the question marks. Too damn many. The real question was, which ones were important and which represented the usual crap that accumulated in the wake of a murder investigation cruising through a sea of corruption?

Somebody was trying to get his attention. “Oh-dah ready,” said the man behind the counter. Karp took the heavy brown bag with the bill stapled to the top of it, and then folded the diagram and put it in his pocket. As he left he noticed a dark young man looking into the restaurant window. He seemed to be staring right at Karp. Then he took a comb out of his jacket pocket and, using the window as a mirror, began combing his long black hair. As he did, he cocked his lean jaw with a peculiar little bounce at each stroke of the comb and narrowed his eyes, as if seeking an image of perfection.

Karp went back to his office, squirted packages of hot mustard and soy sauce over the chow mein, and gobbled it down. As he was chewing up the last of the ice in his Coke, the phone rang.

“Karp. We doze, but never close.”

“Hah, hah. Karp? Fred Slocum. I've been trying your apartment.”

“Silly you. What's happening, Fred?”

“All kinds of shit. You hear the news about Max Dorcas?”

“No, what?”

“About half an hour ago somebody tossed a fire bomb into his store.”

“Ah, shit! Is he hurt?”

“No, he closed up at six-thirty. But the place is totaled.”

“Anybody make the guy who did it?”

“Sonny's checking. Newsstand guy says it looked like a Puerto Rican, dark guy, medium build. Didn't get a good look at the face, needless to say.”

“You talk to Dorcas yet?”

“Yeah. He's pretty busted up over it. And I didn't have to tell him what happened. Somebody called him at home and told him to develop a lapse of memory. They said the next fire he'd be in the middle of it, tied to his wife.”