Irresistible Impulse (35 page)

There were reporters and a TV crew lying in wait for him on Crosby Street when he came down in the morning. He had expected this and had arranged for a car and driver. It was extremely unpleasant, especially since he had Lucy by the hand. Just as they were about to enter the car, a hard-faced blond woman stuck a tape recorder in Lucy’s face and shouted, “How do you feel about your mom going to jail for murder?”

In a clear voice Lucy replied, in Cantonese, “Demons will suck your brains out through your eyes, pestilential cockroach.”

This ran taped on the CBS morning show (translated with some glee by a Chinese-American anchorperson), and for Karp this took some of the sting out of the succeeding shot of Marlene doing the perp walk out of a van toward her arraignment along with a string of whores.

In
Rohbling
, the morning was consumed by the next defense witness, Dr. Martin M. Morland, a child psychiatrist who had treated the young Rohbling. Karp objected to the witness on the grounds that Rohbling’s mental condition as a child was irrelevant to the issue of his current sanity, but Peoples cut him off sharply.

“That was harsh,” whispered Terrell Collins.

“Yeah,” Karp replied, “the judge figures since he gave us the big ones on the mistrial and the change of venue, he owes Waley. Waley’ll run wild for a couple of days.”

Morland was a small, cheerful, avuncular man with a monastic fringe of silver hair around his bald head. Waley got him to paint Rohbling as the sickest little boy who ever lived. At present he harbored an all-encompassing obsession with elderly black women, the result of the childhood traumas imposed by Clarice, the nanny. The crazy little boy still lived in the young man and took control, hence the crimes.

At the lunch break, Karp pushed silently past the press gauntlet and went to his office. He knew he needed something to eat, although his appetite was gone, and called down to a local deli. While waiting, he read the papers. The
Times
had given the shooting story page one below the fold, an unusually high status for a crime story in the
Times
, but it was an unusual shooting. The reporter referred to Marlene’s colorful past, noted this was the third person she had killed, and quoted the D.A. as saying that the office would offer no special treatment and that Karp had recused himself from any involvement. The
News
devoted its front page to a big photograph of the dead man on the sidewalk and the headline vigilante “hit” shocks fair.

Karp was eating his pastrami sandwich when Roland Hrcany and Ray Guma walked in and sat down at Karp’s conference table, carrying their own brown bags. They nodded to Karp, and Guma said, “So, Roland, what’s the story with Marlene?”

Karp said, “Guys, I can’t talk about this.”

Guma put on an affronted expression. “Excuse me, I don’t believe I was addressing you. I was talking to my pal Roland, here.”

Roland said, “Yeah, you can’t grab lunch in privacy anymore without somebody sticking their nose in. Anyway, Marlene got R.O.R. She’s probably home by now.”

“That is truly amazing!” exclaimed Guma. He spoke with exaggerated precision, like a rube reading a testimonial for a patent medicine. “She shoots some citizen in the back on a street full of people, and she gets to walk with no bail? What’s the city coming to? Probably it was favoritism, she being a former D.A. and the wife of a big shot.”

“It might look that way, but nothing could be further from the truth,” said Hrcany in the same stilted tone. “First of all, the vic had a violence sheet on him. Second, he had a gun and fired it. Third, we found the vic’s intended target, the lovely Miss Tamara Morno.”

“Remarkable!” said Guma. “How was this feat accomplished?”

“It seems that Dead Harry dragged her into the complaint room this morning, and she wrote out a full statement before the acting bureau chief of the Homicide Bureau—”

“Yourself, that is.”

“Myself. And from this it appeared that Miss M. was indeed threatened with death by the vic, who, even when shot twice by the aforesaid Mrs. Karp, still tired to point his weapon at her. The facts of the case support a finding of justifiable homicide, since Mrs. Karp acted to prevent a violent felony. Of course, the grand jury will still have to render a finding, but …”

“We can rest assured that the grand jurors, guided by yourself, will find likewise with no trouble?”

“I’m confident of it, Raymond,” said Hrcany. “And you know what? It’s such a nice sunny June day that I think we should take our lunches outside to the park.”

“Good idea. If we stay here, we might be tempted to discuss the case with Butch Karp, and that would be a violation of official policy.”

They got up and walked to the door. “Yes,” added Guma, “poor Butch! He must really be worried about what’s going on with his wife.”

That afternoon Waley finished his direct examination of Dr. Morland, and Karp rose for the cross. A hard thing, cross-examination of a well-prepared, . intelligent expert witness, and Karp was not at his peak, hardly even on the upper slopes. He had before him the background investigation of Morland himself, excerpts from Morland’s professional articles, the case notes from Morland’s examination of the child Jonathan, and his most recent examination of the defendant, and the notes he himself had made during Waley’s direct. Out of this material he had to sculpt
ex tempore
a line of questioning that would convince the jury that however tortured Rohbling’s mind had been back when, and however disturbed he might now be, he had not been legally insane at the time of the crime.

So, begin with the big question. At the time of the crime, in your opinion, Doctor, did defendant have substantial incapacity to conform his behavior to the requirements of the law? Morland had an opinion. Paranoid ideation. Lack of anchoring to reality. Long minutes of psychobabble drifted by. Karp hacked into it. Did the defendant know who he was? Yes. Did he know where he was? Yes. Did he know what he was doing? That depends on what we mean by “know.” A patronizing smile, and more babble, this time of an epistemological nature. Karp was looking at the jury, saw the eyes glazing. In a minute they would be blaming
him
for making them go through this. So: break and reverse field. Morland had an article differentiating obsessional character defects from psychosis in children. Using that and the therapy notes, Karp got him to admit that he had never diagnosed Rohbling as psychotic back then. Let that line alone. Change field again. Get an admission that obsessional-character defect was not psychosis. Cut off the doctor when he tried to expand the answer. Karp lost his place, repeated a question, got an objection. Sustained. He bore down. It was hard to keep focused on the mental image of the yellow sheet on which he had written his line of questions. He kept slipping away to night, the colored lights, the noise, gunshots, Marlene standing over the bleeding corpse, the sharp stink of burnt gunpowder wafting by, masking briefly the smell of the fair. Okay, recover. Breathe. His sense was that the cross was running out of steam. Fine. Fall back on the standard: are you being paid by the defendant, Doctor? How much? Then, close with a strong note. Karp asked, “Doctor, why, in your opinion, did the defendant refuse to acknowledge the suitcase?”

No sooner were these words out than Karp felt a chill roil through his belly. He couldn’t believe he had asked the question in that form, but there it was, hanging in the air like a thick gas.

Morland smiled, shrugged, answered in so many words that the defendant was so divorced from reality that he really didn’t understand that it was his suitcase. Try to recover—or was it that he knew the suitcase was full of incriminatory evidence? Pathetic! Objection, of course, witness has answered. Sustained, jury will disregard. A no-brainer. Karp attempted to obscure this disaster by picking at details, secondary stuff, but he had heard that deadly murmur, seen the faces in the jury box.

Sitting down, he caught Collins’s eye. The kid looked stunned. Judge Peoples checked the clock, asked Waley if he had redirect. Of course Waley did not, he was quite satisfied to leave the witness with Karp having beat himself to death with the blue suitcase. Would Mr. W. like to call his next witness fresh the next morning? Mr. W. would, thank you, Your Honor.

The crowd of newspeople was thicker than ever outside the courtroom, heading toward the blood Karp had just spilled in the water, yelling and pushing against the court officers trying to keep a lane clear from the courtroom door to the parts of the building restricted to D.A. personnel. How does it feel? How does it feel? Karp wished he could tell them. He was still numb, although this feeling was being replaced by a dull anger, at Marlene, at himself, the two angers inextricably mixed and tangled. A small, neat black man with a cassette machine leaped in front of him.

“Butch! What happened in there today? Could you respond to the rumors in the black community that you’re throwing the case?”

Ordinarily, Karp would have said “excuse me” and edged around the man, but there was no room and the lights were blinding and his adrenaline was pumping, and so his body took over as it had been trained to do. He faked a step, the reporter went with it, Karp gave him the hip and cruised by. But instead of merely staggering, the man caught his foot on a power cable and went flying against a sound man, who tripped too, bringing his boom around to catch a cameraman across the temple. The camera went loose, the cameraman lunged and tripped. The heavy camera went flying and landed on the head of the original reporter. Blood flowed. Strobes popped continuously, catching Karp in dozens of shots, looking over the chaos he had caused, the close of a perfect day.

He thought, but there was more. Back in his office there was an urgent message from the principal of Lucy’s school—come at once. Karp arrived at P.S. 1 in an unmarked police car, lights flashing. He found his daughter slumped in the principal’s office wearing a big shiner and a split lip. She had, it turned out, gone after a good-sized fifth-grade boy after a day of insults related to Marlene’s arrest. Such behavior was not tolerated in P.S. 1, Karp learned, and Lucy and the boy were both suspended for three days.

Lucy was sullen and uncommunicative on the way home. The mob of newspeople in front of their door was much larger than it had been in the morning; the news had spread that Karp had viciously attacked one of their own. They were baying, foaming. Besides the questions they had been asking all along, about the trial, about Marlene, and newer questions about the vicious attack by the racist giant Karp on a small, tiny, harmless black reporter, the sight of Lucy’s injured face prompted others. Hey, Lucy, look over here! Did your mother do that? Did your father? Lucy started crying on the way up the stairs and went straight to her room without saying anything to Marlene.

Marlene was in the living room, watching
Jeopardy
with the sound off. She was in her bathrobe with her hair done up in a pink towel. She smelled of roses and red wine, a bottle of which was on the coffee table, two-thirds empty.

“So. You’re back. How was jail?” said Karp, feeling inane, not knowing what else to say, resolved to control his anger.

“Jailish. What was with Lucy?”

“She got into a fight. Some kids were ragging her about you.”

Marlene nodded, played with her lip, drank some more wine.

Karp sat down next to her. “Marlene …”

She shook her head violently. “No. I don’t want to hear it.”

“What? What don’t you want to hear?”

“How bad I am. How I’m screwing up your fucking trial of the decade and my daughter’s life, not to mention my own life. Harry too. He laid down the law, you know. To me! My Frankenstein, Dead Harry Bello. He wants to get out of the crazy-boyfriend business. Completely. I got this after he brought in Tamara and saved my ass. He wants to move uptown and expand the celebrity security operation.”

“Maybe that’s a good idea, Marlene,” said Karp carefully.

“It is!” Marlene cried. “It’s a great idea. Fuck ’em all anyway, the stupid bitches! Let ’em all die.” She poured her glass full again and drank half of it. Then she glared at him. “Look at you!” she said, her voice thick. “You think I’m disgusting, don’t you? I can see it on your face.”

“Don’t be an idiot. I love you,” said Karp in an unloving tone.

“Yeah, when I do what you want.”

Karp stood up suddenly, shaking the coffee table. He took a deep breath. “Look,” he said, not looking at her, “let’s just clear some of this shit away. You killed a guy on the street. It was a justifiable homicide, legally. But … Jesus Christ, Marlene! You shot him in front of your own children. There could have been bullets flying all around. He could’ve turned around and shot back at you. What if Lucy or the babies had caught a round? Didn’t you think? Okay, you have some …
need
to go out and risk your ass on this crusade of yours, okay, you’re an adult, but to put your own children at risk …”

She regarded him stonily. “So what’s the moral calculus here, Butch? I should just stand by, let an innocent woman go down because there’s a faint chance that one of my kids could get hurt?”

“
Yes!
” shouted Karp. “Yes! There were nine hundred and sixty killings in Manhattan last year, and there’ll probably be more this year. You know what one or three or seven extra mean to me compared to the safety of my kids? Nothing! Zilch!”

“I see.” Marlene spoke in the unnaturally even voice she used when she was angry beyond passion. “Well, it seems we have a difference of opinion. And it’s nice of you to remind me of my deficiencies as a mother. Which you never fail to do when something like this happens.”

“You obviously need reminding!” Karp snarled back.

Marlene looked at him and then back at the TV screen. “Uh-huh. Then in that case you’ll be happy to learn that I will not be endangering them anymore in the near term. I’m leaving.”

Karp felt an icy spear penetrate his vitals. “You’re what?”

“Leaving. As in not being here. Oh, I don’t mean
leaving
leaving. Edie Wooten just called. Her admirer dropped by yesterday evening and trashed her bedroom. Slashed her clothes up and generally wrecked things. She’s moving out to her family’s island in Gardiner’s Bay out on the Island, and she wants me to come and guard her. Actually, she just wanted a guard, and I thought okay, Wolfe can go, but we’ll be doing that tennis star and I think Wolfe is getting stale behind watching Edie, and I haven’t got anyone I can spare, and fuck it anyway, I need to get out of here, away from the jackals down there, and I can help Harry guard his kraut tennis girl wonder out at Southampton too, and so it all works out. Lucky me.”