Falsely Accused

SIXTEEN

In examining notionally hostile witnesses, Karp had found that a kindly tone and punctilious courtesy answered better than the showy browbeat favored by many in his profession, unless, of course, he thought some jerk was trying to slip a whopper past him, in which case he could adopt a mien that could blowtorch paint. That lacking, he had learned, a civilized manner kept the judges happy and prevented any unwanted sympathy for the witness stirring in the breasts of the jury. Most remarkably, it also made most witnesses less hostile. Considerations of policy are almost never as strong as the natural human desire for respect and kindness.

Beyond this, the present witness, Assistant District Attorney Marsha Davis, inspired actual sympathy in Karp. Davis was a tall woman in her late twenties with a well-cut head of dark hair framing an unfortunate large-nosed face, short on chin and equipped (as if to make up for that deficit) with what seemed like more than the usual number of large, equinoid teeth. Ms. Davis had been the A.D.A. in People v. Ralston, a homicide case brought to trial in the previous year. According to Bloom’s memo, Ms. Davis had complained that Dr. Selig had failed to return numerous telephone calls, that he had been insulting to her at a meeting in his office, at which another doctor had been present, and that he had not appeared in court when he should have, although he had been given four weeks’ notice of the appearance, his failure to appear having disrupted the Ralston murder trial.

During the course of her testimony this morning, Karp had charmingly drawn from Ms. Davis that Ralston had been her very first homicide case, that she had received no specialized training in prosecuting homicides, and that she was unfamiliar with the practical operations of the medical examiner’s office.

“Ms. Davis,” said Karp, “how many assistant district attorneys are there working felonies?”

“I don’t know. Maybe three hundred, something like that.”

“Three hundred. And how many chief medical examiners are there?”

She narrowed her eyes: a trick question. “One.”

“Do you think it’s reasonable to expect the chief medical examiner to be at the beck and call of every assistant district attorney?”

“No, but …”

“For example, was there ever a time in your career where the lack of contact with the medical examiner’s office impaired the prosecution of one of your cases?”

“No,” said Davis, and seemed mildly surprised at her answer.

“Thank you. Now, you have indicated that three days before the trial in Ralston was due to start, you called Dr. Selig’s office and told his secretary that you wanted him in court at nine-thirty on Monday, January 13, and that his secretary called you later in the day and said that Dr. Selig had a conflict and could not be there. What was your reaction to that?”

“I was angry.”

“Yes, I’m sure you were. Because you had informed his office, I think it was, four whole weeks before the trial that you wanted him there-is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Davis, how long did the trial in the Ralston case last?”

“Thirteen days.”

“I see. Ms. Davis, did you imagine that the chief medical examiner of the City of New York was going to hold his calendar completely open for thirteen days waiting for your call for this one trial?”

A long pause. Ms. Davis had clearly not given the issue much thought. At the same time, although somewhat more vaguely, she understood that Karp was giving her the sort of training she had never once received from her own superiors. She said, frankly, “No, I guess I didn’t think of that.”

“Did you learn why Dr. Selig could not attend your trial at the time and place you desired?”

“He had a conflict, another trial.”

“Another trial. I see. Now, did the district attorney’s office, to your knowledge, make any attempt at coordinating its homicide cases so as to insure that Dr. Selig’s time was efficiently used?”

“No, not to my knowledge.”

“Thank you. Now, turning to the meeting you attended in Dr. Selig’s office, in the presence of Dr. Prahwah, the forensic specialist from Detroit, whose testimony we heard the other day. Dr. Selig mentioned that fact, the lack of coordination, did he not?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And the substance of his remarks was the inefficiency of the current arrangements of the district attorney’s office with respect to trying homicides, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“Would you say that Dr. Selig used vivid language in regretting the disbandment of the former Homicide Bureau by the present district attorney, Mr. Bloom?”

“Yes, quite vivid,” said the witness with a slight smile.

Karp smiled back, all friends now. “And you reported this vivid language, language quite insulting to the competence and acumen of the district attorney, to your superior, Mr. Sullivan, one of the Felony Bureau chiefs?”

“Yes, I did.”

“During this conversation in his office, did Dr. Selig at any time insult you personally, or hold you up to contempt before the eyes of his guest, Dr. Prahwah?”

“No, he did not.”

“And when you asked him technical questions related to the Ralston case, did he answer them properly and professionally?”

“He was rather short with me. Impatient.”

“Impatient. I see. How impatient, Ms. Davis? About as impatient as you would expect one of the most eminent forensic specialists in the United States to be when answering questions from a young and inexperienced prosecutor whose training has been neglected by her superiors?”

“Objection!” said Corporation Counsel Gottkind. “Calls for a conclusion.”

“Withdrawn,” said Karp. “Impatience, then, but no insult, no unprofessionalism?”

“No.”

“In other words, Dr. Selig reserved all his criticism and insulting language for the way Mr. Bloom runs the D.A.’s office, is that true?”

“Yes.”

“You won your case in the Ralston matter, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“And Dr. Selig did at last testify at that trial?”

“Yes, he did. He came on after the defense had completed their presentation.”

“And what was the quality of Dr. Selig’s testimony?”

“It was excellent,” said Davis in a positive voice. She had accepted the persona that Karp had provided for her: an intelligent woman working way over her head who had been sandbagged by her boss.

“It was excellent. So, contrary to the allegations made in the district attorney’s memo, Dr. Selig’s failure to attend the trial when you wanted him to in no way, quote, disrupted the conduct of an important murder trial, unquote?”

“No,” said Davis. Her eyes shifted to where Conrad Wharton was sitting, glaring arrows at her, and quickly looked away. Then she added, “As a matter of fact, it was probably an advantage to have a prosecution witness at that time, after the defense had already been on.”

“Thank you. No further questions,” said Karp.

“You might as well shut us down, Marlene,” said Harry Bello.

“Why? Because they’re cops?”

She was pacing in a fury in front of Harry’s desk. The desk was on the second floor of a Walker Street loft building that had just been renovated for commercial use. Harry’s desk was under a nice Sam Spade-ish semicircular window that looked out on Walker just off Canal. Marlene intended to have an eye painted in gold leaf in the round center pane of the window. Assuming they stayed in business.

Harry’s voice was impatient as he explained; Harry did not like explaining things. “We run on favors, Marlene. From the cops. From other investigators, ninety percent of them ex-cops. Word gets out we’re doing a number on these two”-he shrugged-“pack it in.”

Marlene was about to object that Seaver was ready to crack, that these particular cops were a disgrace to the Force, but thought better of it. Harry was himself a disgrace to the Force, and the Force had sheltered him, allowing him the opportunity for a few more episodes of brilliant service and an honorable retirement. It was the way things were with the cops; Marlene was a crusader but not an idiot. She moved on to other business.

“Karen Wohl?” she asked.

“Hubert P. Waley. Three-oh-six West Forty-ninth.”

“Great! How?”

“Spotted outside the TV studio. My guy followed him. Got a Karen Wohl museum up in his crib. Typewriter that wrote the love letters, drafts. It’s him.”

“How did he know to follow him?”

Harry got up and went over to a file drawer, where he pulled out a file and handed it to Marlene. One of the two phones on his desk rang, and he picked it up. Marlene looked through the file, and her question was answered. There was a brief surveillance report noting that Waley had been seen standing at the same place across from the entrance to a Sixth Avenue TV studio; there was an eight-by-ten photograph of him along with it, and it was easy to see what had attracted the attention of Harry’s moonlighting detective. Waley was a pear-shaped white man in his late twenties, with heavy black-rimmed spectacles, a flat, pasty face, and lank hair cut forties-schoolboy fashion. He was carrying a paper Macy’s shopping bag. He might as well have been wearing a T-shirt inscribed “stalker” in red letters.

Harry got off the phone. Marlene tapped the file folder. “Contact?”

Harry held his hand palm down across the desk and waggled it slightly, fingers spread. It meant that in Harry’s judgment this person was so flaky that a reasonable approach to him would be unavailing.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

“Report his ass. Get an order.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it tomorrow. What else?”

Harry passed her a flat black object the size of a cigarette pack.

“A beeper? Gosh, Harry, this is getting so professional I got goose bumps.”

“Use it,” said Harry. “And Marlene …?”

“Uh-huh, I know, Harry-stay away from Jackson and Seaver.”

Marlene walked down to Canal, where she stopped at Dave’s for an egg cream and a phone call. The call was to Tom Devlin, Stupenagel’s contact at the NYPD Internal Affairs Division. She established herself as an anonymous snitch, providing a checkable fact (the theft of the autopsies from the M.E.’s office) and a tantalizing lead (that, whatever he had heard, there was no ongoing D.A. investigation of the gypsy cab shakedowns). She hung up, leaving him panting for more. It was stirring the pot, building the pressure on John Seaver and, perhaps, Paul Jackson, although Marlene thought that the big detective might be an entirely tougher customer than his former partner. Enough pressure and they might do something dumb. In any case she was, in a technical sense, staying away from directly investigating the two cops. In this way Marlene thought she was satisfying both her husband and her partner. She did not want ever to be in a position where she had to choose unambiguously between them. She was not at all sure how she would choose.

“We need to talk, Phil,” said Karp. He was on the phone with Phil DeLino, speaking into one of a bank of phones on the ground floor of the courthouse, squeezed between a cigar-fuming bail bondsman and a winning drug merchant. “Let’s have lunch. Today.”

“Gosh, Butch, today’s rough,” said DeLino. “Can’t it wait?”

“No, unless you want to read it in the papers. I’ll meet you in Wing Fat’s in twenty minutes.”

The Wing Fat Noodle Company is a steamy, small room about the size and shape of a boxcar, slotted into an alley off Mott Street in Chinatown. It is permanently open and caters largely to illegal Cantonese manual workers. Its menus are mimeographed in Chinese only, and while it tolerates the white ghosts, it does not welcome them. It is one of the best public places in Manhattan for an indoor private conversation between non-Cantonese.

“Try the pork lo mein,” said Karp, who was one of Wing Fat’s rare Caucasian regulars. DeLino, who had never been to the place, looked around nervously and said, “Yeah, sure, whatever.” Karp pointed at an item on the menu and held up two fingers. The scowling waiter nodded curtly, slammed a steel quart-sized pitcher of scalding tea down on the table, and left.

“I notice you didn’t ask them to hold the MSG,” said DeLino.

“Hold the dog meat is what you say here,” said Karp. DeLino smiled tightly; Karp continued. “Phil, we got a bad situation, and I wanted to talk to you before anything happens, because even though we’re on opposite sides of this lawsuit, I think you’re basically a straight shooter and you wouldn’t be mixed up in something like this.”

“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.