Falsely Accused (33 page)

“I'm flattered,” said DeLino with a genuine smile.

“You should be,” said Karp, straight-faced. “Okay, we have determined, to my satisfaction, that in March and April of last year two Hispanic prisoners, gypsy cab drivers, in custody of the Twenty-fifth Precinct, were murdered by police officers and their deaths disguised as suicides. They were passed as suicides by the medical examiner's office at that time, but we were able to make the autopsy reports available to Dr. Selig, and he has indicated that, in fact, this finding was in error. The prisoners were killed. They were killed by two detectives who've been running a shakedown of gypsy cabbies for months. We have independent confirmation of that, of the shakedowns.” Karp paused to let that sink in. The waiter brought a pair of steaming bowls and slapped them roughly on the table.

“You'll recall,” Karp continued, “that the first time we talked about this case, I asked you why Murray got canned. The only conclusion I can come to is that this is the reason. Somebody couldn't afford to have a first-class independent forensic expert in that slot, accent on independent. Somebody blocked any investigation by I.A.D. by claiming that the shakedowns came under a broader investigation run directly out of the D.A.'s office, but there's no such investigation. I presume you see the implications of all this. I also presume that you know me well enough to know that there's no way I'd be party to concocting a plot like this to gain an advantage in a civil case, especially one in which I seem to be beating the pants off you guys.” Karp filled in a number of confirming details and started to slurp his noodles. DeLino didn't touch his.

After a minute, DeLino said, “It's not the Mayor. You're implying a massive criminal cover-up to protect two bent cops. The Mayor spends half his time on the mat with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and that Irish mafia up at Police Plaza. There's no way in hell they could offer him anything politically that would justify this.”

“What about non-politically? He was felony naughty and these two shitheels caught him.”

“It's barely possible,” DeLino admitted, “but extremely, extremely unlikely. What could they have caught him doing? The guy has no life. He lives on his salary and spends ninety percent of his time on public business. His sex life is … let's just say his sex life does not involve felonious behavior. Is there graft? Yeah, as long as we're letting our hair down, there's the usual schmeering of bagels, but absolutely nothing, even if every tricky contract the City ran in this whole administration was blasted across the
Times,
nothing that would justify protection of murder. Plus, I'm telling you, and this is the key point, to my own certain knowledge, this firing idea did not originate in His Honor's bald little head.”

Karp was glad to see that DeLino did not try to score lawyer's points with respect to Karp's statement of the facts. He said, “Well. I tend to believe you, which leaves—”

“Fucking Bloom! Oh, shit! What a mess! God, I'm sick!”

“Yeah, but you know, I've known Bloom long enough not to be that surprised. The guy has no moral center.”

DeLino was still shaking his head. “But, Jesus! The D.A.!” He took a deep breath. “Okay—first, I owe you a big one. I will … take steps to minimize the damage to the Mayor's office from this shit. You think it'll come out—the whole mess?”

“Without a doubt, once we get the complete story. We're doing that now.”

DeLino stood up abruptly and put some currency on the table. His lo mein was untouched and cooling in its bowl. “I need to get back right now. Thanks, and Butch? Remember Jack Keegan?”

“Of course.” Jack Keegan had been the chief of the Homicide Bureau in the glory days before Bloom, and one of the men who had taught Karp how to prosecute homicides. He was a man with a monumental reputation for skill and probity.

“He's casting for a judgeship,” said DeLino. “He needs Bloom's recommendation, and the word I have is that he's planning to appear as a defense witness. He's going to blast Selig.”

“My God!” Karp exclaimed in disbelief. “Jack Keegan shilling for Sandy Bloom?”

“Yep,” said DeLino with a tight grin. “Now you know how
I
feel.”

“I have here,” said Karp, “a copy of a letter from you to Dr. Murray Selig, dated January twentieth of last year. Are you familiar with this letter?”

The district attorney took it from Karp's hand as if it were a used Kleenex. It was the third day of his testimony. The courtroom was packed with spectators, including a larger than usual contingent from the press. In some mysterious sharklike fashion, the press smelled blood, and the reporters were more than usually avid for it, Bloom having spent a significant amount of time cultivating them. Nothing delights reporters as much as nailing people who have gone out of their way to be nice to them.

Bloom was holding up fairly well, considering the battering he had received. Karp had used his time with Bloom on the stand to go through the four cases that figured in the charges in Bloom's memo, not so much to demonstrate their hollowness, which he had already done with other witnesses, but to show that the district attorney had no real idea of how his office operated in homicide cases, and thus was not qualified to judge how Dr. Selig did his job.

Bloom glanced at the letter and shrugged. “I sign a lot of letters”—meaning, how can I expect to remember this trivial crap? He smiled at the courtroom, but turned off the teeth when Judge Craig snapped from the bench, “Just answer the question!”

“Yes, this is my letter,” said Bloom.

“Thank you,” said Karp. “Would you read the indicated passage to the court?”

Bloom read, in a bored monotone, “Dear Dr. Selig, I would like to thank you very much for your superb participation in
People
versus
Ralston,
which has just concluded with convictions on all counts. Marsha Davis, the assistant district attorney in charge, tells me that you enabled her to understand the significance of the medical testimony in the case, and the forensic issues that arose during cross-examination, enabling her to respond most effectively in a way that would not otherwise have been possible.”

“Thank you. So Dr. Selig was competent, highly competent, in January, and fit to be dismissed, a disaster, in July—in your considered opinion?”

“Yes,” said Bloom confidently, ignoring the inherent absurdity of that answer. He had learned something from Dr. Fuerza's miseries and was prepared to brazen out the conflict between the golden opinions of winter and the poisoned barbs of summer.

“So Dr. Selig's performance must have deteriorated in those six or so months?”

“Not necessarily. I was apprised of facts that I did not know when I wrote that letter.”

“The facts do not exist, as we have seen here in testimony after testimony.”

Bloom smiled. “The facts are for the jury to decide.”

Karp smiled back and turned to the jury to show them he was happy. “Thank you, sir. I stand instructed. But the facts aside, isn't it your judgment that we are dealing with here, based on your understanding of how the criminal justice system ought to work, in comparison to which Dr. Selig's performance—pardon me, his spring and summertime performance—falls seriously short?”

“Yes, in my judgment.”

“Mm-hmm, now returning to the Ralston case, you cited Dr. Selig for disrupting the trial by not appearing at the appointed time. Would you care to tell us how this disruption occurred?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” said Wharton. “Repetitious. We've had all this before.”

“Your Honor,” said Karp, “the purpose of this line of questioning is to determine the qualification of the witness to make a judgment on the performance of Dr. Selig during trial.”

A moment of stunned silence. Then Wharton burst out, “This is preposterous, Your Honor. The witness is the
district attorney.
”

“Plaintiff has made no stipulation as to the expertise of the witness in trial procedure,” said Karp equably. “His official position is no guarantee thereof.”

The ghost of a smile flickered over the judge's chalk-line mouth. “Overruled. Proceed, Mr. Karp.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Bloom, would you give the jury some sense of how exactly this disruption was accomplished?”

“Well, basically, you arrange your witnesses, when you're trying a case, in a certain way. You want to get all the medical witnesses onto the record before you call the defendant, for example.”

Karp struggled to keep his face neutral. He moved slightly so that he obscured the line of sight from Bloom to the defendant's table. “I see, so the prosecution wants to get all its ducks in a row before they call the defendant up there to testify, is that what you're telling us?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Mr. Bloom, is it normal for the prosecution to call the defendant to testify?”

Wharton objected and the judge quashed him instantly. He seemed fascinated with what was happening.

Bloom's noble forehead creased slightly. It sounded like a trick question. But it couldn't be; on TV the defendant was always yapping up there on the stand, while Perry Mason was finding the real killer. “Only when necessary,” he said. A good compromise answer.

“Mr. Bloom,” said Karp, his voice rising, “are you not aware that the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution absolutely forbids the prosecution to call the defendant to testify?”

“I … what I …”

“And are you aware that this prohibition is central to our whole process of justice, the trial system that you as district attorney have the responsibility to manage?”

“Yes, what I meant was …” Bloom's mind went blank. He didn't know what he meant. His eyes met Karp's. Karp might have been looking at a patch of vomit.

“You've never tried a homicide case, have you, Mr. Bloom?”

“No, but I've—”

“And so you are utterly incompetent to pass judgment on any aspect of how homicide cases are run, including the role of the medical examiner, isn't that so?”

“No, my subordinates—my subordinates informed me—

“Your subordinates. But your subordinates didn't fire Dr. Selig, did they?”

“No, the Mayor did.”

“And the Mayor relied primarily on your advice, didn't he?”

“He took it into account, but—”

“Because you're the expert, the expert on the criminal justice system, right?”

“I felt it was necessary,” said Bloom lamely.

“Why? Why, Mr. Bloom, was it necessary to fire Dr. Selig? What occurred between winter, when he was brilliant enough to prompt letters of commendation from the D.A., and July, when he had to be fired?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“No? What happened at the end of May that made it absolutely necessary for you to get rid of Dr. Murray Selig, a great and
independent
medical examiner and put your own creature in his place?” Karp had slowed his delivery, lowered the timbre and raised the volume of his voice, making it as much like that of Jehovah in the desert as he could manage, all the while staring at Bloom and delivering the unspoken message: “I know!” The D.A.'s paint was crisping nicely.

“What was it, Mr. Bloom?
What was it you did not want Dr. Selig to discover
?”

“Nothing!
Nothing!
” Bloom's voice had cracked on the repetition on this word. Wharton rose to object. Murmurs began among the spectators; the jury was transfixed, frozen, each juror frantic to know what the
nothing
was that was clearly
something.
The murmurs grew. Craig frowned and struck his gavel.

Karp said, in his most carrying voice, “Your Honor, the plaintiff's case is concluded.” He turned on his heel and walked back across the bloodied sands. Spanish maidens threw roses.

SEVENTEEN

Marlene had just picked up Lucy and was looking for a parking place near D'Agostino's on Sheridan Square when her beeper went off. Marlene cursed under her breath and turned to her daughter, sitting in the seat beside her.

“I've got to call Uncle Harry, Luce. You stay in the car and watch Sweety. And don't leave it for any reason, understand?”

“Did that lady get found?”

“I don't know, baby, I sure hope so.” Marlene double-parked and ran into a cigar store to make her call. It was inevitable that sooner or later one of Marlene's clients would be attacked by a gentleman acquaintance. She knew that, but it did not diminish her wrath or her pain. The previous evening the actress Karen Wohl had left her East Fifty-second Street apartment, telling her roommate that she was going to meet some people at a restaurant. Her doorman got her a cab, and that was the last time anyone had seen her. There was an all-city search in progress, for the woman and for her admirer, Hubert Waley, whom Marlene had instantly fingered for the cops.

“They found her,” said Harry. His tone made her belly lurch.

“How bad?”

“Bad. He wrapped her and dumped her by the river in East Harlem. He's in custody at the Two-Five.”

“I'll go,” she said. Tears were flowing down her cheeks and she made no effort to hold them back.

“You're sure?”

“Yeah, my client, my fuck-up—I need to be there.”

“It happens, Marlene,” said Bello.

Marlene said an abrupt good-bye and hung up the phone. She did not wish for comfort.

“Where are we going, Mommy?” asked Lucy when the yellow car was speeding up the East River Drive and it was therefore clear that they were neither going shopping nor returning home. Marlene snapped a glance at her daughter. The child's eyes were shaded under a grubby tan Stetson that she had taken over and which she was wearing with the only skirt she would willingly put on for school, a white leatherette garment with a fringe. A pink western shirt with pearl buttons and the flower-embroidered shawl she had borrowed from Isabella completed the bizarre outfit.