Falsely Accused

FIVE

Pruitt looked good in court for his arraignment, so good that Marlene’s heart sank when she spotted him moving with his lawyer through the thronged courtroom. He didn’t have long, greasy hair, he was not dressed in filthy leather garments, he did not have a teardrop tattooed on his cheek, or LOVE and HATE inscribed on the knuckles of his hands. He was not wearing the oversize sneakers the cops called perp shoes. He lacked, in short, all the obvious stigmata that would tell a casual glance that he was a dangerous man, and in this court a casual glance was all he was going to get. Pruitt was dressed in his honest, somewhat ill-fitting, workingman’s best suit, in dark blue, with a white shirt and a red striped tie He had heavy black lace-ups on his feet. His hair, cut in humble, honest, Italian-barbershop style, was combed flat with water.

A court officer yelled out a docket number and Pruitt’s name and the charge. Pruitt and his lawyer stepped in front of the judge’s presidium. Marlene’s heart sank further when she saw who was representing the People of New York. She didn’t know him, of course. The turnover in the lower reaches of the Criminal Courts Bureaus was too great to make this at all likely, but she had hoped at least that Luisa had been able to talk one of the more senior people into taking an interest. She pushed forward and touched the A.D.A.’s arm. He was a weedy kid with a mottled nose, a moderate Jewish afro, and thick glasses marked with fingerprints, who obviously wanted to be a lawyer when he grew up but was still struggling with the basics. “Excuse me? I’m Marlene Ciampi, I used to work here. You’re on the Pruitt case? Did Luisa Beckett talk to you about this one?”

“Beckett? Oh, yeah, she called. I haven’t been able to get back to her yet. Sorry, I’m real busy now.”

He turned to find out what was going on, at the same time wrestling the half dozen case folders he was carrying so as to float the instant case to the surface.

The judge was saying, “You’re charged with burglary and assault, and criminal contempt in that you’ve violated the terms of a protective order. How do you plead?”

“Guilty, Your Honor,” said Pruitt, then added, “With an explanation.”

The judge shot him a sharp look. “This is not traffic court, sir. You stand accused of serious felonies.”

“I love her, Your Honor. I’ve loved her for years. I know I shouldn’t have gone in there. I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to see her.”

The judge resumed a stern look. “Well, she didn’t want to see you. That’s why there’s a protective order. You still want to plead guilty? You understand what it means?” He looked at the defense lawyer. “Does he understand what a guilty plea means?”

The lawyer assured that the consequences of such a plea had been explained in detail to Mr. Pruitt.

“Okay, let’s dispose of this right here. Do the People intend to prosecute these felonies?”

“Um …” said the People, shuffling his notes. The judge refocused his stern look on him. “Was the girl hurt? What was the nature of this assault?”

“I would never hurt Carrie!” cried Pruitt.

“Quiet, you!” said the judge. To the People, “Well?”

“No, Your Honor, the complaint says he stroked her hair. And her arm.”

The judge snorted and looked down at Pruitt. “Stroking, huh? Mister, don’t you know stroking is bad for your health?”

Polite titters. The judge grinned and addressed the People. “Okay, let’s say, criminal trespass, assault in the third degree, and the contempt, I’d say that was good for about a year, wouldn’t you?”

“Um, yeah, I mean, yes, sir, Your Honor,” said the People. Marlene could only with difficulty stifle her shout of protest. They were dropping all the charges to misdemeanors, a common method of disposing of cases in the Criminal Courts. She knew what was coming next.

“And I’m going to suspend that sentence and give you three years’ probation,” the judge continued. “I assume that’s agreeable?”

The defense lawyer’s head had started nodding as soon as the word “suspend” had first danced upon the air, and it kept on bobbing.

“Okay, Mr. Pruitt,” said the judge, “I want you to stay away from this girl. If I see you coming through here again, you’re going to be in serious trouble.”

Marlene was out of there almost before the sound of the gavel had ceased reverberating. She did not want to see Pruitt, nor, for that matter, to see Carrie Lanin. Who she wanted to see was Harry Bello.

Karp was not surprised when, several days after his meeting with Phil DeLino, he received an urgent summons to the office of his firm’s senior partner, Jack Weller. He had been naughty and was about to get his desserts.

Weller was a hefty man in his early seventies, and looked, if you didn’t look too closely, ten or twelve years younger. His thick gray hair was expertly stitched to his scalp, and the perpetually tanned skin of his face had the slick surface signifying expensive little surgeries and peels. He had, naturally, the perfect pearly teeth and shiny fingernails of the well-cared-for wealthy. A shiny man, was what Karp always thought when he saw him, and he thought it this morning in Weller’s huge corner office. His teeth shone, as did his nails, the surface of his Sheraton desk, the brass fittings on his yellow suspenders, and his diamond and gold cuff links. His face, however, did not shine; it was dark with displeasure.

Karp was motioned with a curt wrist flick to a tan leather side chair. He was made to wait while Weller finished flipping through a document. Karp watched the cuff links twinkle as the pages snapped. He thought he knew what the document was. While he waited, he studied Weller’s tan. The man was just back from St. Barts. Weller took a lot of vacations, and the year at B.L. was divided, like the medieval liturgical year, into before-and-after St. Barts, Aspen, East Hampton, and the Foreign Trip, Europe or Asia in turn.

Karp didn’t dislike Weller, although he might have if the man had spent more time around the office. They were polar opposites as lawyers, of course, but Karp was by now used to being a quarter-turn different from most of his colleagues, and he was prepared to render Weller the sort of bland deference we reserve for someone who has made it possible for us to earn vast shitloads of money.

Weller finished reading and looked up at Karp. He sighed. “This won’t do, Butch.”

“I’m sorry? What won’t do?” asked Karp.

“Suing the Mayor. Didn’t you realize that I was vice-chairman of his re-election committee?”

“No, I didn’t realize that. But I don’t see what it has to do with Murray Selig getting his day in court.”

“You didn’t get clearance from the executive committee either.”

“No, I didn’t realize I had to. I’ve never brought in any business before. It never came up.” This was a lie, of course, but a plausible one. It made Karp look like something of a jerk, but this had never bothered him much, especially when the lookers were people like Jack Weller.

Weller’s face darkened beneath the tan, and he looked like he was about to say something nasty, but reconsidered. He had not spent much time with Karp, but something vestigial in him signaled a warning that Karp was not somebody who was prepared to take a lot of verbal abuse without returning it, and possibly some actual physical abuse as well.

“Who’s the judge?” Weller asked instead.

“We have selection today,” answered Karp. “Craig, Roseman and Hollander are on the wheel.”

“Well, I know Joe Hollander and Larry Roseman pretty well, and I know people who’re close to Craig. He’s brand-new. It shouldn’t be hard to get you out of there without prejudice to us, or causing a problem for the client.”

Weller then launched into a long, detailed statement about what he was going to do and what he wanted Karp and some other people to do in order to cancel the firm’s role in Selig’s case. It was an admirable plan and Karp might even had admired it, had he been listening at all. But he was not. Instead, as Weller spoke, Karp was adding up columns of figures in his head. His available cash, plus what he could raise from a loan on the loft against monthly living expenses between his last check from B.L. and the time when he could expect to see some money from the Selig case. It worked out pretty close, but it was still feasible, always assuming he’d win Selig. Which he did not doubt.

“So, you understand what has to be done, go do it!” Weller said, and added, “And for God’s sake, Butch, in future-”

“Actually,” said Karp mildly, “I don’t intend to drop the case.”

Weller gasped. “You don’t? You don’t! Who the fu-sonny, read the goddamn letterhead! Read the goddamn brass fucking sign on the front door! It’s my goddamn law firm, and I say who we sue and who we do not sue! Is that clear?”

“Perfectly,” said Karp. “I’ll resign, effective immediately.” He stood up, and Weller had to lean his judge’s chair back a little to see Karp’s face. “I’ll turn all my Goldsboro stuff over to whoever you think will try the case. Because Steve and Toby think it’s pretty sure to go to trial early next year.” Karp paused significantly. “Who would that be? Trying it, I mean. Yourself?”

Weller ignored the absurd question. He had not been in front of a jury for years and did not intend to derail his extremely pleasant life to start now. Neither was the possibility of losing Karp seriously to be entertained. There were attorneys at B.L. who knew more about Goldsboro than Karp, but the firm did not have anyone who was his equal in the art of standing in the well of a court and convincing twelve ordinary people that although someone had done a bunch of awful things to the plaintiffs, that someone was not the Goldsboro Pharmaceutical Company, their client.

After a brief pause Weller said, “That’s absurd. You’re the only trial lawyer we have who’s prepped on Goldsboro. You can’t just drop it.” Then he had a happy thought. “And in any case, you couldn’t run both Goldsboro and this Selig thing. You’d have to drop him eventually.”

“Not necessarily,” said Karp. “I expect Selig to go quite rapidly. We can fast-track the whole thing. The case is straightforward, and there’s little room for maneuver on either side. It’s September now. With the holiday slow-down, preliminary motions and discovery should bring us into next February. Federal jury selection is fast, a couple of days, and we should be in trial by early May, maybe earlier if we draw Craig, who’s new, as you say, and who’ll have a light calendar. Twelve weeks for trial, max. I can’t imagine Goldsboro getting started much before late summer.”

“I don’t like it,” said Weller, a trace of helpless petulance creeping into his tone. “Quite aside from the personal embarrassment and lack of consideration involved in pursuing this, by the distraction of your energies you’re potentially jeopardizing the firm’s most important case. And I don’t understand it at all. Haven’t we been good to you?”

“Yes, very good,” admitted Karp. “This is a nice place to work.”

“Then why? Is this Dr. Selig a friend of yours?”

“Not particularly. But something very nasty was done to him for no reason and I said I would fix it, and I intend to.”

“Butch, Butch,” said Weller placatingly, “you’re not with the D.A. or some congressional committee now. You can’t go running around town righting wrongs whenever you feel like it.”

“Gee, that’s an odd thing to say. I thought that was the damn point. Of the law, of judges, courts, juries-”

“Oh, don’t pretend to misunderstand me,” Weller snarled. “And I don’t need any sanctimony from you. You know very well what I mean.”

“Yes, I do,” said Karp. “And I’m still not dropping Selig. So, was that all?”

It was.

Marlene went directly from court back to the loft and there sat by the answering machine, screening her calls. There was one message already from Carrie Lanin, and while she waited, Marlene’s mother, a charity, and the insurance man called and Marlene let them all leave messages. The phone also rang four additional times, but the party calling hung up when the message tape came on. Marlene guessed that it was Lanin, and she was praying that Bello would call back before she had to pick up the kids and see Carrie and tell her that her sweetheart had picked up a walk from the criminal justice system.

Ring, ring, pause, clickety-click, beep. “It’s me,” said Harry Bello, confident that Marlene would be poised at the phone. She picked it up immediately.

“He walked, Harry.”

“I heard. She tried.”

Meaning Beckett. “What are we going to do, Harry? What’ll I tell her?”

“It depends,” said Bello.

Yes, it did depend, on what Marlene herself was willing to do, which simultaneously infuriated her and excited her.

“We should talk,” said Marlene. “Eight-thirty?”

“Paglia’s,” said Bello and hung up.

When Marlene picked up the girls at the P.S. 1 schoolyard, the teacher on yard duty called her over and informed her that cap pistols were not approved accessories, and that her daughter should not bring hers to school again. When Lucy was settled in the front seat of the VW, Marlene looked her over and saw a silvery butt protruding from the pocket of her red corduroys.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, dear?” Marlene asked sweetly.

Wordlessly, her daughter yanked it out, showed it briefly, and stuck it back in her pocket. It was a battered metal six-shooter with plastic grips, about two-thirds full size and quite real-looking.

“Where did you get it, Lucy?”

“Bobby Crandall gave it to me.”

Light dawned. “The kid you did the project for, huh? This is the payoff?”

Lucy nodded. After a pause she said, “Girls could have guns.”

“Yes, they could,” said Marlene, disturbed and proud at the same time. “But some girls have daddies that might think that kids shouldn’t play with guns at all, boys or girls. I wouldn’t go waving that around the house, and you can’t take it to school again, understand? The teacher will take it away from you. Plus, no more doing school stuff for other kids. It’s against the rules too, okay?”

Marlene was hoping for another burst of Chinese, but Lucy just nodded, her hand deep inside her pocket, from which issued little clicking sounds.

“Well?” Carrie Lanin’s face was bright with hope as she met Marlene and the children at the door to her loft. Marlene noted that she had installed a heavy new police lock on it.

“I think we did pretty good, considering. He got a year and three years’ probation.”

“Yippee!” Carrie shouted. “He’s really in jail?”

“Well, actually, no, they suspended the sentence,” said Marlene too quickly, “but now it’s on record and if he ever comes near you again-”

“If he ever…! What are you saying, he’s free? He’s out there?” Both women’s eyes involuntarily flicked to the door and lock for an instant, and when Lanin turned her gaze back onto Marlene it was vibrating with fear and, naturally, anger, not at Pruitt nor at the criminal justice system in general, but at Marlene, as being the only vaguely responsible adult present to take the shit.

Marlene braced herself. She was used to this, bored with this even, from the old Rape Bureau days. You would expect violated women, women whose essential self-confidence had been stripped away by a practical demonstration of exactly how vulnerable they were to any asshole who cared to make the effort, to appreciate a sympathetic and willing listener. But no; those who weren’t nearly catatonic were looking for someone on whom to take out their rage and, absent the perp himself, the lucky winner was more often than not Marlene or one of her people.

Carrie Lanin was not as bad as some. There was a lot of nasty language, a lot of look-what-you-got-me-into, and a glass and a picture frame got broken. The girls came running out of Miranda’s room and stood for a moment in shocked silence in the doorway, until Carrie caught sight of her daughter. Then, with a groaning sob, she swept up the frightened child into her arms and collapsed against the wall, weeping.

Marlene took charge. She grabbed a handful of paper towels from the kitchen and handed it as a nose wipe to the afflicted woman. She took Lucy aside and gave her a child-size version of what was going on: a bad man was after Miranda’s mommy and Mommy was going to make him stop and Lucy had to take Miranda away and watch TV or play and keep out of the way while Mommy talked with Miranda’s mommy.

To Marlene’s delight and pride, Lucy took this all in without a murmur and, taking Miranda by the hand, proposed playing Barbies in her bossiest tone. Miranda was quick to acquiesce, and the two of them ran off. Marlene got Carrie settled on the couch and put some water on for tea.

“I’m sorry,” said Carrie after a while. “You’ve really been great. I don’t know why I said all that horrible crap to you.” She laughed humorlessly. “I must be going crazy.”

“No, you’re not. It’s normal; forget it! Now, are you ready to listen to my plan? Good. Okay, what we need to have happening now in his twisted little mind is that I become the big barrier to happiness with Carrie. It’s started already, but we want to push it.”

“We do?”

“Yeah, because it takes the pressure off of you. And off the other barrier to happiness.”

“What do you mean, other-”

“Miranda. I don’t think she fits into the fantasy. He was stalking her too, the other day at the school.”

“Oh, Jesus…!” Carrie said in a strangled voice and began to cry again. Marlene ignored this and continued, “What I think is, he’s going to start stalking me. He’s going to try to hurt me in some way, get me to lay off, like he probably did to that boyfriend of yours. But, basically, he won’t be able to.”

“Why not?” asked Lanin, curiosity penetrating through the misery.

“Because I’ll be stalking him,” said Marlene, with rather more confidence than she was feeling.

“I have a thing I have to do tonight” was how Marlene broached her plan to Karp that evening as they put away the dinner dishes together.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’m meeting Harry down the street. To talk. You know this guy I told you about? He’s been harassing Carrie Lanin?”

“Yeah, what about him? I thought you had a protect order on him.”

“We did, but he violated it and did a lot of other stuff. He went to arraignment today. Copped to misdemeanors and walked.”

Karp shrugged. “What else is new? How did Carrie take it?”

“Not well. That’s, um, I mean, Harry decided he wanted to check the guy out some more. That’s what we’re going to talk about.”

Karp carefully put down the dish he was drying and gave Marlene a look.

“What?” she complained to the look. “What? Harry’s going to fuck a little with this guy’s head. And I’m going along for the ride. Christ, Butch, the way you’re looking you’d think I never went riding out with a cop before.”

“You were a D.A. It was your job. Now what is it? Your hobby?”

Marlene’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Excuse me, was that a put-down? Was that delivered in a how-silly-you-little-woman-you manner?”

“Oh, come on, Marlene, don’t start-” began Karp, regretting the fatal words.

“Because if it was, if that’s going to be your attitude, then I will no longer inform you about what I’m doing. Is that what you want?”

“No, of course not,” said Karp automatically, “but …”

“But what?”

“It’s just … I’m sorry, I worry about you. It’s natural, isn’t it? It’s in the genes or something. Men worry about their wives when they’re pregnant.”

“Ah, the Pleistocene argument, very good,” snarled Marlene, and then, seeing his expression, she softened and touched his arm. “Okay, you’re worried, but I can take care of myself, as you very well know, and I’ll be with a heavily armed and extremely competent cop. Jeez, Butch, old ladies from the League of Women Voters get to ride with cops nowadays. It’s no big thing.”

Karp nodded, resignedly, and forced his face into a stiff mask that might have been taken as agreeable by anyone other than his wife. “Sure,” he said, and afterward, not being able to help himself, he asked, “Why is Harry doing this? I thought the case was closed. I mean, there’s no investigation …”

“That’s right,” said Marlene cheerfully. “Technically, we’re illegally harassing a citizen. You going to turn us in?”

Karp rolled his eyes and put his hands over his ears and walked out of the kitchen.

Marlene went to the bedroom and pulled a seaman’s sweater over her T-shirt and tied black high-top Converses on her feet. She caught her hair up in a rubber band and pulled a dark blue wool watch cap over it. A short black leather coat completed the outfit.

She went back to the kitchen, searched briefly, and took a bottle out of the grocery cabinet and stuck it in her coat pocket. She checked on Lucy, who was sleeping heavily in her typical running-at-full-tilt position. Marlene pulled the kicked-off pink quilt over the child, kissed her forehead, and went out.

She stuck her head through the living room door. “See you later, Butch,” she said.

Karp looked up from the papers he had spread on his lap and the couch around him, his face lit oddly by the muted television. He took in Marlene’s costume and shook his head. “You forgot the cape,” he said.

She stuck her tongue out at him and left. As soon as she was on the stairs she felt the familiar sense of release, the tingling in her limbs, the expansion of her lungs, that she had felt when, as a proper Catholic schoolgirl in Queens she had climbed out her bedroom window at night to meet bad boys.

Of course, she was not meeting a boy now, or a lover of any age. It would never have occurred to Marlene to violate her marriage vows-well, occurred, yes, but not actually to follow through. And in the old days, what she had been after down the family drainpipe was not precisely sex, although that was fascinating, but risk. And not merely risk, because she had never been one for simple daredevilry. She had no interest in say, skydiving, or motorcycle racing. No, it had to be prohibited risk, risk in the teeth of decent expectations.

It had started, really, at age twelve, she reflected on the stairway, when an aunt had escorted her and a group of cousins to the famous off-Broadway production of Threepenny Opera. By the end of the show, St. Teresa of Avila had been eclipsed by Pirate Jenny as Marlene’s ideal of womanhood. She had purchased the cast recording, and then the German version, and for the next few months she made everyone around her sick of Brecht and Weill. She found herself now humming Jenny’s song about the pirate ship and then, as she reached the last landing, singing the chorus in a loud voice with a fairly accurate Lotte Lenya accent.

She laughed to herself, thinking that it had worked out more literally than she might have liked. She could wear a pirate’s patch for real now, and had the letter bomb that destroyed her eye and maimed her hand been a little more powerful, she might have been sporting an actual hook.

She let the big steel door slam behind her and walked out onto the damp and chilly street. There she paused, sucking in the night through flared nostrils. Marlene had long since given up the hope of leading a life that made conventional sense, settling instead for one with two irreconcilable but complementary modes: the Good Mom Desperado, not, she thought, a character much to be seen in opera. Or life. A woman must have everything-that was also a line from a song, she thought, as it flashed through her head. Joni Mitchell. I’m trying to, she thought.

Marlene made her way up Grand to Paglia’s restaurant. When she had first moved to this neighborhood, the place had on most nights been full of local Italians and cops from the old police headquarters down the street. Now it had become SoHo-ized, like most of the places in the area. There was a maitre d’ and a line of elegant couples waiting for seats. Marlene pushed past these to the bar, where she found Harry Bello waiting, staring blankly at a club soda.

Marlene sat on a stool beside him and ordered the same, wishing, not for the first time, that fetuses enjoyed booze. When it came, she finished it in a few gulps and said, “You up for this?”

Harry ignored the question. “He’s out.”

“Driving?”

“Eating. A Spanish joint on C.”

“You know where his car’s at?”

Harry nodded.

They paid and left. On impulse Marlene swiped a big white chrysanthemum from the large vase in the restaurant’s entranceway.

They waited in Harry’s old Plymouth and watched Rob Pruitt walk down Seventh Street to where he’d parked his blue Dodge. He got in and cranked it up and drove off.

“What do you figure, a quarter mile?” asked Bello.

“Maybe less, but after it happens he’ll probably futz around for a while trying to fix it. Let’s go.”

They left the car and entered a tenement building. Pruitt lived in the front apartment on the third floor. Harry picked the lock in two minutes, and they went in.

The apartment was simply furnished and remarkably clean and neat. Pruitt had obviously patronized several of the many used- and unpainted-furniture stores in the neighborhood. He owned a gold velvet easy chair and a scarred thirteen-inch TV on a battered tin stand, and a table, chairs, and chest of drawers in unpainted pine. He slept on a box spring and mattress, neatly made up with gray military surplus blankets. The closet and drawers held an odd combination of worn work clothes and brand-new dressy casuals, many with the store labels still attached. Like the furniture, these last were clearly purchased from shops in the immediate area: colored silk shirts, stiff leisure suits, and the tan leather jacket Carrie had described, clothing suitable for a visit to one of the local salsa clubs. Pruitt was good at taking on the local coloration.

In the bedroom also, Marlene’s flashlight picked up a corkboard, covering nearly an entire wall, on which was arranged a photographic homage to Carrie Lanin: yellowed and faded clippings from student newspapers, showing her cheerleading and prom queening; some pages neatly cut from the same high school yearbook Marlene had already seen, ditto; a wedding photograph (sans groom); an 8 x 10 glossy high school photo in cap and gown. There were also a dozen or so recent photographs, candids obviously, of Carrie on the street. Pruitt had some skill with a camera.

Harry came up behind her and took in the scene. He shone his light on the top of the chest beneath the corkboard. There were two candles in red glass containers, bought at a local botanica, flanking a little museum of Carrieana. Some keys. A pair of blue lace panties. A lipstick. A receipt from Elaine’s.

“Her place,” said Harry, pointing his penlight at the keys.

“Yeah. He must have taken an impression of her keys during their date. Maybe she went to the ladies’ and he waxed them. Once he had a set, he could visit whenever he wanted, and he took souvenirs. Okay, let’s make a donation to the shrine.”

She removed from her pocket the empty Karo corn syrup bottle whose contents she had poured into Pruitt’s gas tank. The syrup was at this moment (she trusted) turning to hard candy in the cylinders of his car. She placed the bottle on the bureau and stuck the mum from Paglia’s in it. Then, using the bedroom window as a mirror, she applied the lipstick to her mouth, removed one of the photos from the board and planted a red kiss on the back of it. She took a ballpoint from her pocket, wrote a short message in neat block letters, and propped the photo up against the bottle.

“What did you write?” asked Harry when they were back in the Plymouth.

“Forget her! Come to me, my darling. Only I love you as you deserve.”

He gave her a complex look, which from long experience she could read: a blend of doubt and worry. It also meant that Bello had fathomed what she was up to.

“It’ll work, Harry.”

He was silent for a moment and then he said, not as a question, “You’re going to have to take a shot.”

“Yeah, I know,” she agreed. “But I can’t think of another way.”