Counterplay

22

Karp was polishing off a hot dog from the stand in front of the Criminal Courts building when the newspaper vendor with the coke-bottle eyeglasses and a nose like Pinocchio began cussing at him from his stand next door.

“Okay, asswipe Jesus,” the man with a sly smile said. “I got one for you.”

Karp rolled his eyes. Ever since he’d known “Dirty Warren,” they’d played a game of movie trivia with Warren asking the questions and Karp answering them. So far, the score was: Warren zero and Karp about four thousand and three…not that he was counting.

“Don’t you get tired of losing?” Karp asked, which elicited a stream of profanity and epithet-laced challenges that had little to do with Warren’s affliction with Tourette syndrome, a short circuit in his brain that was manifested by profanity-laced speech, and everything to do with his irascible and competitive nature. But Karp just laughed, which irritated Warren all the more.

There were precious few things that Karp felt he knew with any degree of certainty. More often than not, Karp felt that his expertise was limited to where to find the best pastrami sandwich and hot dog in New York-Second Avenue Deli and Nathan’s at Coney Island. But to Warren, there were two things at which Karp had no equal: his knowledge of movie trivia and anything and everything to do with the Yankees.

Karp got the first trait from his mother, who had loved movies and theater and often took him to both. As a boy growing up in Brooklyn, he looked forward to each weekend to the Saturday matinees down at the Avalon and Kingsway theaters, where for twenty-five cents he could catch double features. He preferred Westerns, but he saw them all, and gleaned, filed, and stored anything he could get from magazines, newspapers, and word-of-mouth rumor about the stars and making of the movies, including the unusual and the little known. It was a hobby he’d carried over into his adult life-probably more as something he could, in a way, still share with his mother. With his mother, Saturdays also meant the Broadway theaters; it had long been their goal to see all of the best shows listed in the New York Times theater guide.

Karp’s forte was older movies, and the unwritten rule was that Warren was supposed to draw his questions from at least a couple decades back. But Karp had kept up with the latest stuff, too, because every once in a while, Warren would cheat and try to rattle him with something newer.

Today, Warren was playing fair, and even gave him a true or false question, though he tacked on a second part.

“When they made The Godfather, shit, there were ‘post notes’ all over the sets, including in Robert Duval’s mouth because Marlon Brando couldn’t remember his lines, true or false, scumbag bitch,” Warren said. “And why?”

“Why what?” Karp asked as he turned to look at a crowd of reporters gathering near the top of the stairs of the building.

“Damn penis, why is it true, or why is it false?” Warren replied, peering around Karp’s shoulder to see what was going on.

Karp turned as the crowd of reporters shouted a question to someone coming out of the building who he couldn’t see yet. As long as it wasn’t somebody from his office, he didn’t really care; he didn’t like his ADAs to grandstand in front of the press or leak tidbits in dark, smoky bars. He believed in trying cases in courtrooms, not the court of public opinion. He left that to the defense lawyers.

“I stumped you, didn’t, fuck me, I, turd?” Warren said with a smug look on his face. He gazed around hoping that there would be a crowd to witness his moment of glory and was disappointed to see that everyone’s attention was turned to the gaggle of press.

Karp moved to the side and closer until he could see that the reason for the media frenzy was the sudden appearance of Bryce Anderson, Rachel Rachman, and a tall, middle-aged body-builder type he quickly recognized as Dante Coletta, the Stavros chauffeur. He noticed Murrow standing off to the side; his aide saw him and hurried down the steps.

“What’s up, Gilbert?” Karp asked.

“It seems that the defense has produced a ‘witness’ who claims to have seen who killed Teresa Stavros,” Murrow said. “They filed an amended motion to dismiss the indictment.”

“And I suppose Rachman’s presence is a coincidence,” Karp said.

“As is the sudden appearance of the media, despite the gag order following the last blood frenzy,” said a voice coming from behind.

Karp glanced over his shoulder. “Hello, Ray. Yeah, I need that like I need a new hole in the head.”

Funny how the press worked. The terrorist attack on his daughter and the death of John Jojola had made the front page of the Times for a day and then subsequent stories faded toward the inside pages until they’d disappeared. After all, anything west of the Hudson grew less important the farther one got from Manhattan. But the discovery of Teresa Stavros’s skeleton in the backyard of the family brown-stone had been on the front page for a week following the court hearing.

The press had gone to town, digging up the old stories from when Teresa first disappeared and the subsequent story about well-known missing persons. They’d talked to the neighbors, past and present; attempted to talk to Dante Coletta, who’d said what appeared in the papers as [expletive] off and die. Enterprising reporters had even gone to Denver and Albuquerque to speak with members of 221B Baker Street only to be referred to the court hearing transcripts.

The defense, of course, had railed on and on about having questions about the quackery used to identify the remains found in the grave. And even if they prove to be those of Teresa Stavros, Anderson said, it only goes to further our contention that someone has set Mr. Stavros up to take the fall for his wife’s disappearance and now, her “presumed” death, which I might add is still in question. And if it proves that she’s dead, I am one hundred percent, positively comfortable knowing that a jury will realize that my client, Mr. Emil Stavros, philanthropist, dedicated father and husband, community leader, is not a murderer. He is as dedicated to finding out what happened to his beloved first wife as anyone and that includes those bureaucrats at the DAO or NYPD. Now it appeared as though Emil Stavros was so dedicated that, through his attorneys, he had announced a $100,000 reward for information regarding how the skeleton found in his backyard came to be there.

“Did you know about this?” Karp asked.

Guma shook his head. “Nah, I was just grabbing a bite to eat at a Chinese place across the park when Murrow called with the news. Apparently, Anderson wants to meet to give us this apparently earth-shattering information.”

The three prosecutors sidled closer to the back of the press herd to listen to the “impromptu” press conference. Anderson was talking and they caught him in midsentence. “-produce a witness, Mr. Dante Coletta, who is standing here to my right.” The lawyer nodded to Coletta, who glared at the crowd. “However, you have caught me between a rock and a hard place as I intend to honor the gag order imposed by Judge Lussman. That being said, if the district attorney insists on proceeding with this ludicrous case, suffice it to say that Mr. Coletta will set matters straight in court as to the real killer of Teresa Aiello Stavros nearly fifteen years ago.”

Anderson turned to go but paused to allow the press to shout after him. “Mr. Anderson! Mr. Anderson!” the young blond reporter shouted. She had thus far resisted his attempts for “a quiet dinner someplace where I might be able to illuminate some of the more complex issues surrounding this case.”

He sighed as if he were being dragged back against his will but pointed to the reporter. “Yes, Jeanne?” he said. “One last question.”

“Mr. Anderson, does your witness have any evidence to prove that what he is saying is true?”

Anderson paused and gave her his best “I know what I’m doing here and aren’t you impressed” smile. “Let’s just say Mr. Coletta was present when Mrs. Stavros was cruelly murdered by someone other than my client,” he answered, then turned forcefully on his Guccis and strode into the building.

The press was left with Rachel Rachman, who was dressed, as usual, in loud colors…today purple and a sort of Granny Smith apple green. “Ms. Rachman do you have any comment?” a decidedly less interested press asked.

Rachman glared over the reporters’ heads at Karp, which had the effect of turning some cameras his way. “I hesitate to comment on an ongoing case-” she said.

“Then don’t,” Guma muttered.

“-but this sort of rush to judgment, coupled with political gamesmanship that should have no part in the actions taken by the New York DAO, is exactly why I decided to run for this office,” Rachman says. “We have murders, rapes, and other violent crimes every day, but our current district attorney is more interested in making headlines with a fifteen-year-old case aimed at destroying a man who dared to speak out by supporting a candidate who wants to bring integrity back to the once-proud tradition of the DAO. I say shame on Mr. Karp for jumping into this tar baby with both feet before he had all the facts…”

“Let’s go,” Karp said, ignoring the cameras and shouted questions from the press as he walked through them up the stairs.

“Shit fuck your sister, what’s your answer, Karp?” Dirty Warren yelled. “You got ten seconds or I win!”

Karp turned, his face stern. Even the press went quiet. Then he smiled.

“Ah, shit!” Warren howled, having seen the smile before.

“False,” Karp shouted. “There were notes with Brando’s lines all over the sets, but it wasn’t because he forgot his lines. He didn’t read scripts beforehand because he thought his first read was the best one. So notes with his lines were placed where he could see them during filming.”

“Aaaaaahhhhhh, piss!” Warren said stamping his feet.

Karp saluted with his index finger to his brow and turned, walking into the building followed by Murrow and Guma, who were smiling like their boss had just won an argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. They all stopped smiling when they saw the reporter who stood blocking their way.

“Hi, honey!” Gilbert said. “I didn’t think you were getting in until tonight.”

“Hi, baby,” Ariadne Stupenagel said. “I was jonesing for my Gilbert the Great, so I caught an earlier flight. Just in time to learn that you’ve been holding out on me with the latest Karp and company caper. I’m about to go home to your apartment where I intend to slowly undress this magnificent body in front of a mirror before I step into a blazingly hot shower where I intend to lather up every last curve and crevice-”

“I didn’t need to hear that,” Karp said.

“I did,” Guma and Murrow replied in something of a lather themselves.

Ariadne Stupenagel was one of Marlene’s former college roommates. Probably the best freelance newshound in New York City-and elsewhere as she traveled the globe, most recently London to chase a story about Islamic extremist imams in the wake of the bombings. She was six foot and a bit, which made her a head taller than her boyfriend, and built-as she herself described-for lust. She bedded the rich and powerful in her time, as well as (“regrettably”) Guma, but for reasons beyond Karp’s ken, she’d seemed to settle on Murrow.

“Well, Gilbert,” she said, ignoring Guma, “if you hurry home, you might get to watch. But first, I need to put on my reporter hat…so a comment, please, on Ms. Rachman’s speech out there.” She pulled a tape recorder microphone out of her purse and shoved it toward Karp, but Murrow stepped in between.

“Not withstanding Ms. Rachman’s grandstanding in a court matter that is none of her business, it is the policy of the New York DAO to seek justice in front of a jury consisting of honest, hardworking citizens of Manhattan, not in front of the press. Ms. Rachman was released by this office for a reason…a reason, I meant to say, that I am not at liberty to discuss. But let’s just say a leopardess does not change her spots or a skunk her stripes.”

“Murrow,” Karp growled though inwardly he was thinking, Nice zingers, Gilbert. “I think that’s quite enough. Welcome back, Ariadne.”

An hour later, they were sitting in the DAO meeting room with Bryce Anderson and Dante Coletta. “Just in case your mind was not closed, and you were willing to take the blinders off-”

“Save the speeches, Bryce, the press ain’t here,” Guma said.

Anderson looked at Guma like he was looking at a bum and returned his gaze to Karp. “As I was saying, we’re here so that you can listen to Mr. Coletta’s version of what happened and judge for yourself whether to accept his story or we can wait until he testifies for the defense.”

Karp looked at Guma. “Well, Ray, you want to hear this guy out or should we savage him on the witness stand or both?”

Coletta, who’d been sprawled in his chair smiling, sat up with a scowl. “We’ll see who savages who.”

“Whom,” Guma corrected him

“Huh?”

“Never mind, I take it they didn’t require English grammar as part of the GED you received in prison, according to your records,” Guma said, looking at the file he’d asked Murrow to pull while they stalled Anderson and Coletta.

“If this is going to turn into an insult contest, we’re out of here,” Anderson said, making a move as if to stand.

Karp put his hand up and motioned for him to remain seated. “I think Mr. Guma, who is lead counsel for the prosecution in this case, would love to hear Mr. Coletta’s ‘version of the events.’ Mr. Guma?”

“Yeah, let’s hear it,” Guma confirmed.

“Yeah, well, if this is the way a citizen gets treated for trying to do the right thing, no wonder there’s so much crime in Manhattan,” Coletta said. “But anyway, yeah, I was there when he did it.”

“When who did what?” Karp said.

“What?” asked Coletta with a smirk. “Am I being tag teamed here?…Look, I ain’t comfortable talking to The Man, con’s code of honor and all, but I don’t want to see Mr. Stavros go down for something he didn’t do. He’s a legit guy, gave me a chance after I did my time, and I’ve worked for him ever since.”

“So you’re saying, you owe Mr. Stavros,” Guma asked, looking at his fingernails as if they might need clipping.

“Nah, it ain’t like that,” Coletta countered. “I just wanted to explain why I would turn on a guy who I was pretty tight with at one time.”

“So who are we talking about?” Guma asked. “Who are you saying you saw kill Mrs. Stavros?”

“His name is, or rather was, Jeff Kaplan,” Coletta said. “He was Mrs. Stavros’s gardener. But I understand he died in a boating accident or something.”

“Start from the beginning. Where did you meet him?” Karp asked, recalling the report he’d read from Detective Fairbrother regarding his conversation with former detective Brian Bassaline.

“I met him at Auburn Prison. He was in for killing some guy-not that he meant to do it; it was a fight in a bar, Jeff one-punched him and turned out the guy’s lights forever. Guess it was sort of a freak thing. Anyway, next thing Jeff knows, he’s doing time for manslaughter.”

“And Mr. Kaplan was a gardener?” Guma asked, although he had also talked to Fairbrother and read the report.

“Yeah, he got into it in prison, said it calmed him down,” Coletta said. “Anyway, we were cellies for a half year or so before I got out. When he was released, I talked to Mrs. Stavros, who was struggling with her roses, and got him a job.”

“You’ll excuse me, but this is the first we’ve heard of the gardener,” Karp said. “But there’s nothing in the file about him.”

Coletta shrugged. “That’s not my problem. I know he was questioned. Guess it’s just sloppy work on your part.”

Guma asked if Coletta had much time to observe the relationship between Emil and Teresa Stavros.

“Yeah, whoo boy, she was an A number-one bitch,” Coletta said, before crossing himself superstitiously. “Excuse me for speaking unkindly of the dead. But I watched Mr. Stavros take a lot of shit from her, and it wasn’t right.”

Karp noticed Guma stiffen at Coletta’s description of Teresa and quickly interjected. “But Mr. Stavros was, by his own account, carrying on an affair with Amarie Bliss.”

Coletta nodded. “Yeah, I knew all about that. Hell, I drove him to her apartment all the time-that’s how I know he wasn’t around when his bitch wife got what was coming to her.”

“This is a bunch of crap-” Guma snarled.

“Ray!” Karp cautioned.

Coletta’s brow was furrowed. “What? You callin’ me a liar?”

“Yeah, a liar and a-” Guma started in.

“Ray…let’s hear what the man has to say,” Karp said.

Guma looked like he was going to say something else. But instead he leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.

Karp looked at Coletta. “Go on, and please, forgive Mr. Guma…this is the first we’ve heard that sort of description of the victim. Anyway, you were commenting on Mr. Stavros’s affair?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know how much I want to say if I’m just going to be called a liar,” Coletta said, but went on anyway. “Yeah, Mr. Stavros was bangin’ Amarie. Can’t say I blame him considering his wife was one cold fish.” He looked at Guma as if expecting to be challenged. “Although she was plenty warm around Jeff.”

Guma sat up with his dark eyes burrowing into Coletta. “But you just told us that Mr. Kaplan was the killer.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Coletta replied. “Them two were going at it hot and heavy. He was boning her whenever Mr. Stavros went out, which was plenty. She was just using Jeff to get back at Stavros, but when Jeff wised up and decided to call it quits, she wasn’t going for it. ‘Nobody leaves me,’ she told him that night-”

“Which night?” Guma asked.

“The night of the murder,” Coletta answered. “Anyways, she told him that night that if he left her, she would go to the police and say he raped her when her husband was gone.”

Coletta said he was in the garage, putting the limo away when he heard Kaplan and Teresa arguing. “She was screaming at him and then she pulled a gun…this little.22 jobbie…and pointed it at him. But he took it out of her hands, so she turned and said she was going to go call the cops. Jeff freaked and shot her. That’s when I came out of the garage and saw him shoot and her fall.”

Kaplan turned and saw Coletta and was going to shoot. “But I put my hands up and said, ‘Hey, no worries, she was a bitch and deserved what she got.’ Then I helped him bury her in the rose garden. We even put the rosebushes right back on top of her grave.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Karp asked.

Coletta rolled his eyes as if some rube had asked him a stupid question. “Come on, I just told you, I didn’t like the bitch, and Jeff was a friend. And besides, I got paid pretty good to keep my mouth shut.”

“By who?” Karp asked, wondering if they were about to hear the name Andrew Kane. When Detective Fairbrother returned from Maine and wrote up the conversation he’d had with Bassaline, the name Michael Flanagan had jumped at him like a rattlesnake in one of the old Westerns he’d loved.

Guma’s thinking had turned the same way. Do you think this is another Kane thing? he’d asked.

Hard to say, Karp replied. Sort of fits the “No Prosecution” MO. Pulls a few strings for a wealthy and well-connected socialite, gets his people on the force to quash the investigation. But Newbury had found nothing in the files.

Could be this was just Flanagan freelancing, too.

“Who paid me? Kaplan, of course,” Coletta said. “He came up with this scheme to say she disappeared, ran away from home, and kept her credit cards and bank shit. She’d shown him how to get into her private safe, so he had her PIN numbers and passwords, the whole schmear, including her jewelry. No woman was going to leave her jewelry. He had a girlfriend, sort of looked like Teresa, and he had her travel around a bunch, buying shit and then selling it, plus cashing big checks. They were living pretty high off the hog and sending me checks nice and regular, until the money ran out.”

“Mr. Coletta, did you remember seeing Zachary Stavros at the time of the shooting?” Guma asked.

Coletta shook his head. “Nah. That kid’s a basket case; I think he’s making it all up. Been on just about every kind of pill there is.”

“Do you remember what Teresa Stavros was wearing that night?”

Coletta scrunched his eyebrows and put a hand to his chin as if trying hard to recall an old memory. “Yeah, I think it was some white sort of see-through thing,” he said. “That was one thing she had going for her…she was quite a looker and didn’t mind showing the goods, if you know what I mean.”

After a few more questions, Anderson held up his hand. “I think that’s plenty. I hope you’ll give Mr. Coletta’s statement careful thought. It’s obvious this makes much more sense than Mr. Stavros somehow escaping his mistress’s apartment to sneak home, kill his wife, bury her in the backyard, and then sneak back into the apartment so that he could be seen leaving by the doorman in the morning.”

“We’ll let you know.” Karp smiled. “Until then, nothing has changed.”

Anderson and Coletta stood to leave. “Uh, sorry, just one more question,” Karp said. “I’m trying to picture how this happened. You say Kaplan grabbed the gun from Mrs. Stavros and she turned to go call the cops…”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Coletta said.

“Would you mind, using Mr. Anderson there as a stand-in for Mrs. Stavros, showing me about how far away, Kaplan was standing…how he pointed the gun…you know, sort of act it out-”

“I’m not sure I approve of this-” Anderson started to say, but Coletta turned him around.

“Come on, Bryce, this will be fun,” Coletta said. “He was about this far away.” Coletta raised his arm and pointed it at the back of Anderson’s head from a distance of a couple of feet. “Then boom! And she went down like a sack of rice.”

“Boom? One shot?” Karp said.

“Yeah, boom, just once was all it took,” Coletta said. “Ain’t that what the newspaper story said a little while back?”

Karp grimaced. Somebody in the ME’s office had leaked some of Dr. Gates’s findings to the press. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what it said.”

After the attorney and chauffeur left, Karp turned to Guma, who was leaning back in his chair again with his eyes closed. “Guess I don’t need to ask what you think.”

“He’s totally full of it,” Guma said. “I haven’t met a single other person who says that Teresa Stavros was anything but a kind, loving woman and that her husband was a dirtbag with money problems. No mention of Kaplan and Teresa having an affair, which just doesn’t fit anyway.”

“There’s also Detective Bassaline’s comment that Kaplan told him that the rosebushes had been disturbed in the backyard. Why would Kaplan say something like that if he didn’t want to get caught?”

“And let’s not forget this whole thing with Teresa supposedly skipping the country and living the high life somewhere else was a pretty sophisticated operation. But Bassaline said Kaplan was no rocket scientist, took too many left hooks to the head.”

Karp agreed with the assessment. “Yeah, I guess it’s a good thing Fairbrother’s report is still on my desk, waiting to be sent to the defense.” But, he cautioned Guma, the defense had just drawn a pretty tough hand to beat. “Our star witness was five years old and says he remembers his mother and father fighting, a couple of pops that may or may not have been gunshots, and the sound of someone digging. They have an adult, granted one with a sheet, who says he saw the whole thing. Nice that the statute of limitations for conspiracy to obstruct and accessory after the fact is up. But he did get the caliber of the gun, which wasn’t mentioned in the newspapers, right.”

“Don’t tell me you buy this crap?” Guma said. “Isn’t it just a little too convenient that this guy is popping up now?”

Karp nodded. “Ray, I think this guy’s totally full of it, too, but we’re going to have to counter him. We can’t just ask the jury to believe our version based on our mutual good looks.”

Guma laughed. “Maybe you can’t, but I’ve won plenty of cases on that very notion.”