Falsely Accused

THIRTEEN

Vickie Sills was a small woman in her late twenties, with short auburn curls and skin the color of Redi-Whip. She would have been unobtrusively pretty if not for the dark smudges under her eyes and her generally dilapidated air. Her children, a boy (Jamie), five, and a girl (Tiffany), three, were whiny and clinging. They were terrified, naturally, of the dog, Sweety, whose friendly efforts to smear them with drool had been rebuffed with hysterics. The children had been calmed and fed on Beef-a-Roni. Sweety now lay sulkily in a far corner.

The apartment in which Marlene now sat with Vickie, on a worn red plaid sofa, was the sparely furnished downstairs of a two-family brick house on a quiet street off Avenue S. It smelled of old paint, steam heat, and Vickie’s incessant smoking. Marlene, who was dying for a cigarette, reckoned that she had already inhaled the equivalent of half a pack, as had the Sills children. Her fetus was shriveling without deriving a particle of pleasure, and she was starting to resent it.

Nor was Vickie a fascinating companion, her conversation consisting mainly of anecdotes illustrating the cruelty of life, with herself the chief target of fortune’s fell arrow. Marlene got the uncomfortable feeling that Vickie would probably have put up with Ernie’s little ways had they not included her own mutilation in the jaws of his pet. She drew the line there-not a poster girl for women’s lib, Vickie. She was relating the story of how her ex had chortled as his pit bull tore apart Tiffany’s little kitten, when a car door slammed on the street outside. Vickie stopped in mid-sentence, and her face turned, amazingly, even whiter.

“That’s him!” she squeaked.

“Let me check,” said Marlene, rising and going to the front windows. In the light of the street lamps she could see a fairly new red Mercury sedan double-parked and, coming around the front of it, a small, wiry, tan man with short, curly hair and a lowering brow. He wore a black Jets duffel coat over baker’s whites. His walk was oddly stiff, as if he were trying to keep from falling over forward, and at first Marlene imagined that he was staggering drunk, but as he emerged from between the parked cars, she saw that he was being pulled along by a big, white pit bull terrier on a steel choke collar.

“Vickie, take the kids and go into the big bedroom,” Marlene said. They vanished. Marlene heard heavy steps and the scrabbling of claws on the concrete stoop. Pounding on the door: the knob rattled and the door shook in its frame.

“Vickie! Goddammit! Open the goddamn door!”

Sweety rose slowly to his feet and stretched. His nose twitched, and a ripple zipped down the muscles of his back.

“Prego, Sweety!” said Marlene, and the dog came alert and took up a position on Marlene’s left side. Marlene opened the front door halfway and confronted Ernie Sills and his slavering companion.

When Sills saw who it was, his eyes narrowed and he snarled, “Who the fuck’re you? Where’s Vickie?”

Marlene said, “Mr. Sills, you know you’re under a court order. Please go away and leave your wife alone.”

“I said, who the fuck’re you?” Marlene could smell the fumes of beer as he shouted this into her face.

“My name is Marlene Ciampi. I’m helping Vickie and the kids get settled.”

“She don’t need no help,” said Sills, putting his hand against the door. He let his dog’s chain out a little, and the pit bull leaped at Marlene through the doorway, its teeth snapping a few inches from her leg.

“Mr. Sills, if you try to push in here, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”

“Ah, go fuck yourself, y’one-eyed bitch,” he snapped and threw his shoulder against the door. Marlene had to give way, and the man and dog rushed past her into the L-shaped hallway that led to the living room.

The pit bull saw Sweety before his master did, and its lunge threw Sills off balance. He went down on one knee and lost the dog chain. Marlene closed the front door.

A snarling white blur, the pit bull flung itself at Sweety’s throat and buried its teeth in the loose folds of skin that defended the mastiff from just such an attack. Of course, it was a hopeless gesture: sixty-pound terriers, however tough, do not go up against one-hundred-ninety-pound Neapolitan mastiffs. Sweety opened his huge jaws, engulfed the back of the pit bull’s neck, and jerked upward, ripping away a chunk of skin and muscle. The pit bull’s jaws remained locked on his throat. Sweety took another bite. Blood and bits of flesh sprayed around the hallway, patterning the floor and the walls.

“Hey …” said Sills.

The pit bull’s spine was exposed; the mastiff clamped his teeth around it and crunched. The pit bull’s body twitched in spasms and it lost control of its bowels and bladder, but its teeth remained locked tight, even when Sweety shook himself violently. The white body hung from his neck like an obscene lavaliere. The whole thing had taken thirty seconds.

Ernie Sills, frozen in place from the first instant of the dog fight, now rose and started to back away in the direction of the door.

“Sweety, assalite!” shouted Marlene.

In an instant, despite the dead dog hanging from its neck, the mastiff was on the man, smashing him to the ground. Sills landed on his back, with his head jammed up against the door frame.

“Sweety, afferate!” ordered Marlene. The mastiff clamped his jaws around the man’s throat. Marlene walked slowly over and knelt down by the man’s head. She was shaking with adrenaline and took a moment to calm her breathing.

“How do you feel, Mr. Sills?” Marlene asked mildly.

Only gasps came from Sills’s throat.

“Sweety, non tanto!” said Marlene. The dog’s jaws relaxed, but not very much.

“I asked you how you felt,” said Marlene.

“Ahh, not… not good,” said Sills, his eyes rolling in his head. The bloody dead muzzle of his dog was pressed up against his cheek.

“No, I bet you’re not,” said Marlene. “It’s no fun to be attacked by a big dog. Do you understand how Vickie felt when you got your dog to chase her? She felt just like you do now. Look, you pissed on yourself. You must be very frightened. Aren’t you frightened, Mr. Sills?”

“Wha-whadyou want?”

“I’m giving you an experience, Mr. Sills, the same experience you’ve been giving your family. You’re being attacked by a big animal, and your pet has been torn apart in front of your eyes, just like you did to your daughter’s little kitten. How do you like it so far?”

There was no answer. Marlene said, “Sweety, piu strettamente!” The dog’s jaws clamped tighter, and Sills jerked and made noises.

“You have to answer me, Mr. Sills. How do you like it?”

“Don’t. Don’t like it. Jesus, make it let go.”

“Sweety, non tanto! That’s good, Mr. Sills. You don’t like it, and your family didn’t like it when you did it to them. Now, I don’t know what you’re thinking right now, Mr. Sills, because I don’t know you. Maybe you’re thinking that you’re going to get back at me, or your family, and that somehow you’re going to be able to continue doing like you’ve been doing. Maybe you’re the kind of person who’s completely out of control. I sure hope not, for your sake, Mr. Sills. Because things have changed. And I hope that this experience-I mean, lying here in your own piss with your dead dog squashed against your face-will have a good effect. You remember when you barged in here, I said that if you did, you would be in trouble, and here you are, in trouble. Is this enough trouble for you? Answer me!”

The tone of Marlene’s voice was enough to make Sweety utter a diesel-ish growl. “Yeah, yeah, enough …” yelped Sills.

“Fine. Now, look: I’m not forcing you to do anything bad; I’m just trying to get you to do the right thing. You’ve got a problem dealing with anger, you have a little drinking problem, you can find programs to help you out. I hope you do. But meanwhile, you have to be nice to your kids; support them; be polite to your ex-wife. You know, be a man! I think you can do that, don’t you?”

“Yeah … sure,” said Sills.

“I’m delighted to hear it,” said Marlene cheerfully. “And I’m going to let you up in a second, and I’m not even going to call the cops and report that you violated your protective order, because I don’t want you to go to jail, maybe lose your job. Here’s the thing, though, Mr. Sills: if I hear you’re giving Vickie a hard time, I will find you. I know where you live and where you work. And we’ll share another experience, only this time the dog will eat your face right off your skull-nose, eyes, ears, the works. Look into my eye, Mr. Sills, and tell me that you believe me. And make me believe you!”

“And then?” asked Maggie Duran over the phone.

“Nothing much,” answered Marlene. “I gave Sweety ‘Lasciane’ and he backed off and Sills got up and ran out of there without a word. Burned rubber too.”

“Hot damn, girl! You’ve made my month!”

“Glad to hear it,” said Marlene a little sharply. “It was extremely unpleasant. I had to use a kitchen knife to cut the fucking dead dog’s jaws off of Sweety, and then Vickie went hysterical when she saw the mess. The place’ll need to be repainted, and then I had to stop by the animal emergency room on First Avenue to get my dog stitched up.”

“Send me the bill.”

“I intend to,” said Marlene, and shortly thereafter she closed the conversation.

It was nearly one in the morning, and Marlene had stripped and showered and taken a hot soak in her converted electroplating tank and thrown her clothes into the machine before calling Mattie Duran with her report. Now she was lounging in her office, in her kimono, feeling faintly nauseated from the aftereffects of violence and wondering whether the stress was hurting the baby, and cursing yet again the scientists who had condemned cigarettes and alcohol for the pregnant.

She saw that the message light on her machine was on, and so she punched the button and listened to messages from her mother, Ariadne Stupenagel, and Denny Maher. The last was the only one who was likely, nay, certain, to be up and talkative at one a.m. and so, consulting her Rolodex, she dialed the morgue and asked for the extension of the lab room that Maher used as a home away from home.

“Peg o’ my heart!” said Maher when he heard her voice.

“Did you get it?”

“It?”

“Oh, Denny, don’t tell me you forgot!”

“Oh, now, wait a minute, it’s coming, it’s coming … ah, sure, and how could I forget a promise to the likes of yourself? You’ll be interested to know that something is definitely amiss in regards to the three young Ibero-Americans, late of this city. Someone has snatched the autopsy reports, and the lads’re being cremated-”

“Oh, crap! We’re screwed, then, right?”

“Would have been, absent the wiles of the cunning Maher. Little did the villain know that the photo lab keeps the negatives of all the autopsy shots and the reports are microfilmed. I looked them up and had some glossies made for you. I could have them framed. Something for the den …?”

“What do they show?”

“A pair of poor hanged boys and one without a mark on him.”

“The two were definitely hanged?”

“Oh, yes, if the marks on their necks aren’t just painted on. The position of the ligature marks, you see, the classic invert V, up and past their ears. Very different from garotting, where they run right around like a slice in a sausage, or manual strangulation, where you see the thumb marks. And they’re deep as well: these boys hung by their own weight, for certain, my sweet.”

“Crap!”

“Oh? And did you want them not to be hanged?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean … Christ, I don’t know what I mean anymore. It’s one-thirty in the morning, and I’m totally wiped, and my dog just ate another dog-no, don’t say it, I know, it’s a dog-eat-dog world-and I’m too frazzled to think straight right now. Look, Denny, can you courier those pictures and copies of the actual reports over to me tomorrow-I mean, later today? Maybe I can make something of them. And Denny? Try to find out who might have lifted those original shots, or if the morgue people recall anybody asking questions about those three autopsies.”

Angelo Fuerza made a good appearance on the witness stand. He wore a gray pinstripe and a benign expression, looking like a decent professional man, a family doctor. His thick, heavy-framed black horn-rims and his neat, dark rectangular mustache gave his face a defining horizontality, like an equals sign escaped from a math text. His movements were small and precise; you would take your kid to him for the flu and do what he told you to do.

Dr. Fuerza was, in fact, a family doctor. Some fifteen years previously, he had settled in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, in the first wave of Puerto Rican migration, and started a pediatric clinic catering to Hispanic families, and had stuck it out through the growing blight. Early on he had learned how to corral public money, and his organization, El Centro de la Salud de los Ninos, had become a key principality in the City’s multibillion-dollar health empire. Money and politics being inextricably linked in the City, as elsewhere, Dr. Fuerza had become a politician too, a man who might be depended upon to deliver votes in return for largesse at budget time. He had survived several investigations, and it was inevitable that, when the time came to appoint the first Hispanic health commissioner, Dr. Fuerza would get the prize.

Looking up at him now, Karp felt the stirrings of sympathy. Here, he understood, was a man who had done a lot of good, who, through thoughtless political loyalty, was about to fall into a blender in full public view. Karp did not much enjoy acting the whirling blades, but on the other hand the doctor had committed numerous perjuries and was doubtless about to commit others. Karp glanced over at the Health Department counsel, Ira Nachman, a thin, elderly man, also a perjurer. Nachman knew he was in trouble, if Fuerza didn’t. He kept licking his lips and shuffling documents.

Karp consulted his master sheet one last time as Fuerza was sworn in. In a case as complex as this one, it was essential to tell the jury a coherent story, with well-marked chapters and conclusions. Fortunately, the defendants had done most of the job for him, for the two memos, one each from Fuerza and Bloom, with their neatly bulleted points, comprised the totality of the charges for which Selig had been fired. The Mayor had already testified that he had relied exclusively on these charges in forming his decision, and that otherwise he thought that Murray Selig was a prince. Each charge thus had to be isolated, examined, and proven false, and not only that, Karp had to show that, in devising and maintaining these charges, the defendants had acted with reckless disregard for what they knew to be the truth. Thus, as each charge fell amid a tangle of prevarication, Karp would be hammering ever deeper into the collective mind of the jury one critical fact: that the dismissal was an arrant frame-up.

The first charge on the Fuerza memo was that Selig had demanded patient records from a Mt. Zion hospital drug clinic, violating federal confidentiality laws, and that he had made persistent demands for same in the face of the hospital’s refusal.

Karp approached, had the witness identify himself, had the witness agree he had made the charges, read the first charge, had the witness confirm he had made it, asked the witness whether he knew that the patient whose records Dr. Selig had requested was deceased and the subject of a forensic examination (he did), and whether he was aware that such requests for patient records were routine (he did).

Karp handed Fuerza a letter and asked him to read it and describe what it was about. Fuerza shifted in his seat and looked at his counsel.

He read it and said, “It’s from me to Mt. Zion, asking for the medical records in this case.”

“And in it you declare that such requests are not violative of federal confidentiality statutes, isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“In fact, by this letter, you yourself obtained the records?”

“Correct.”

“So you believe that there was actually no violation of confidentiality law?”

A slight hesitation. “It was my counsel, Mr. Nachman’s belief. I signed the letter on his advice.”

“And did you believe at that time, when you signed the letter, that Dr. Selig’s request was violative?”

“No, not at that time.”

“Thank you. Now let’s move to July, when you wrote the memo to the Mayor. Did you believe then that Dr. Selig had violated federal confidentiality rules?”

“I was following advice of my counsel, Mr. Nachman.”

“Please answer the question, Doctor. Did you believe men that Dr. Selig broke the law in reference to this deceased patient?”

“Yes.”

“Your counsel changed his advice, then?”

“No,” said Fuerza. His eyes, magnified behind the thick lens, were starting to shift at Nixonian velocities.

“No?” asked Karp in the tone usually reserved for a schoolboy’s whopper.

“I mean, yes. His advice was that it was a violation.”

“Which one was a violation? Dr. Selig’s original request or the request that you yourself signed and sent to Mt. Zion?”

“His,” answered Fuerza desperately.

“I see. Let me understand this. His request was illegal. Your request supporting his request for the identical records was not. Is that what you’re telling us?”

“No.”

“Sorry. Then exactly what are you saying, sir? It’s right when you do it and wrong when Dr. Selig does it? Or that it’s right for both of you in January, but wrong for Dr. Selig in July?”

“I relied on advice of counsel,” said Fuerza weakly.

“So I gather,” said Karp. He paused to let the jury get a full whiff of the horseshit. “Turning now to the next charge …”

Things went in similar fashion throughout that day and the morning of the next, Karp working the witness like a big tuna on a hook, using the past testimony of the minor witnesses and Fuerza’s own deposition to sink the barbs deeper, throwing up the astounding paper trail that Fuerza had left, a trail that up until early July of that year demonstrated that Angelo Fuerza was as happy with Murray Selig as a boss could be with a subordinate. As the hours dragged, the tuna weakened, it lolled by the boat awaiting the gaff. Fuerza’s voice became duller. He misspoke, contradicting himself. He hardly seemed to care what he said, if only the torment would end. Gulfs opened between what he had said at deposition, and what the witnesses had said, and what he was saying now. He became sulky; he took refuge in advice of counsel, blaming the lawyers, making himself look like a puppet, and a stupid puppet at that. The tuna knew it would never see blue water again; it was thinking Star-Kist, Bumble Bee, Chicken-of-the-Sea.

The final charge was the “leaving town without notification charges,” an anticlimax that left several of the jurors rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. Karp trotted out the file of letters that Selig had written documenting his absences from duty, inquiring of Fuerza with respect to each one whether he had seen it (the redoubtable Mrs. Ortiz having confirmed this in detail) and, getting an affirmative answer to each, asked on what specific occasion Dr. Selig had been absent without leave. To which Fuerza replied that he could not name any. No further questions. Karp turned his back and walked stiffly back to his seat.

Naomi Selig was in court that day, and after Fuerza was dispatched, she and her husband and Karp went to nearby Chinatown for lunch. Naomi chose Lee’s, a big, touristy Cantonese joint on Mott that Karp, who practically lived in Chinatown, had never been to, and also took charge of the ordering, informing Murray what he liked and what didn’t agree with him, and promising Karp that he’d love whatever arrived. She also gave a stream of advice to the waiter about how she wanted the food prepared. Karp thought that he would have strangled the woman after a week of marriage, but it was clear that Selig doted on her, and didn’t mind, in fact positively enjoyed, being managed.

“I think we’re doing very well,” said Naomi after the food had arrived, looking at Karp. “You wiped Fuerza off the map, the rat.”

“Well, he was an easy target,” Karp allowed. “There was documentary evidence contradicting all the charges except one …”

Naomi uttered the name of the vice-president who had died under odd circumstances.

“… right, that one,” Karp continued. “But even there we had two docs who’d been at the meeting and contradicted the charge. But we can expect them, when it’s their turn, to drag in some guy who’ll swear Murray carried on for an hour about how the great man spent his last moments popping his rocks.”

“This duck is too soggy,” said Naomi. “It should be crispy on the outside. Even if they do, it’s their witness against ours.”

“True, but …”

Naomi caught his tone and returned a sharp look. “But what?”

“Scuttling Fuerza was the easy part. The Bloom charges didn’t leave a paper trail. Bloom’s a better bureaucrat than that. Also, we have the where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire problem with the jury. Even if we’re able to show that the charges per se are all trumped up, the jury’s going to be thinking, if this guy’s such a sweetheart, why did all these senior public figures go out of their way to screw him? We don’t have the answer to that.”

“I do,” said Naomi. “Sandy Bloom, that momser!”

Karp nodded, suppressing irritation. “Yes, I agree. And we’ve said that to one another over and over again, and we’re still not any closer to anything I can tell a jury. I can oppose the individual charges, like I did with Fuerza, but at the end of the day I’d like to be able to stand up there and say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, these momsers tried to screw an honest man because …’ and it can’t just be ‘because he’s a son of a bitch according to the plaintiff’s wife.’”

Selig chuckled at this, but Naomi was not amused. She gave Karp the Look, to which he responded with a disarming grin. She decided to return to the original subject. “Assuming we never learn the reason, what happens?”

“Well,” said Karp, “in that case, after we destroy the substantive charges, they get a free throw at Murray. I’ve explained this, right, Murray?”

“Yeah,” said Selig around a mouthful of lobster Cantonese, “the chickadees. And the snake.”

Naomi’s eyes widened. “What? Chick-a-whats?”

“These are legal terms, Naomi,” said Selig with a wink at Karp. “Butch thinks they’ll bring something in from left field to blacken my name. Like, I beat my wife.”

Mrs. Selig’s unamusement increased; she was not used to being winked at, nor was she accustomed to remarks of that nature from her husband. She moved to redress the balance. “Well, if that’s the case, we’re home free; Murray’s only vice is leaving his dirty underwear for the maid to pick up.”

Murray blushed and coughed and swallowed some water, and Naomi breezed on to topics of more general interest. “Speaking of beating, you remember, Murray? That woman whose name I can never remember got beaten in the park the other night, the one who wrote that piece in the Times about Butch. She had something in the Voice late last year. Terrible! This city …” She lifted her eyes to heaven and expertly snagged the last sweet-and-sour shrimp.

“Irene somebody,” offered Selig.

“No, it wasn’t Irene, Murray. Something much weirder.”

“Ariadne Stupenagel,” said Karp.

“That’s it,” said Naomi. “As a matter of fact, that article was the reason we thought of you in the first place. You’d think somebody like that would be smarter than to go into that end of the park in the middle of the night.”

Naomi and her husband then drifted into a common upper-middle-class New York topic, Nothing Is Safe Anymore, including the usual vignettes about previously “safe” buildings raided by no-goodniks, friends who’d been mugged, and the extreme measures they all had to take to protect themselves. Karp nodded and put in a phrase or two, not really listening. Something nagged at the edges of his mind, some connection waiting to be made. He began to feel slightly dizzy and claustrophobic, but whether from the MSG in the food or Naomi’s chatter he could not tell.

They finished eating; the waiter came and cleared. Selig wanted to order pineapple ice cream; Naomi mentioned his arteries; Selig asked who was the doctor. Naomi said it was his funeral, but not to expect her to attend. Selig asked Karp whether it would hurt his chances if he beat his wife just this once. In this way the conversation came around to the phrase Karp was waiting for, all unknowing.

“Speaking of damaging material,” said Selig, “did you ever find out whether there was anything to that story about a D.A.’s investigation of the M.E.?” Karp didn’t answer. “Butch?”

“Huh? Oh, right-no, that seems to have been a rumor …” He stopped talking, his face slack, his eyes staring at nothing. The Seligs shared a concerned look.

“Butch, is … something wrong? Need a Gelusil?”

Karp snapped to, showing intensity now. “No, I’m fine,” he said. “Look, Murray, I want you to come back to my place after court this afternoon. There’s something I want you to take a look at.”