Fury

10

Monday, December 13

"Good morning, Mr. Karp," Mrs. Darla Milquetost, his new receptionist, said in what was her perpetual monotone when he walked into his office on the eighth floor of the Criminal Courts building. He'd hoped that she'd be away from her desk getting coffee or something, as he'd had all the disapproving stares he wanted that morning.

Mrs. Milquetost had informed him on her first day on the job that she, too, found the name unfortunate but it was the only one her husband had, and as a good Catholic it had been her duty to assume her husband's family name. "I'd appreciate it if you would avoid sniggering when you say my name."

"Sniggering?"

"Yes," she replied. "Sniggering. Everyone always does unless I put my foot down at the beginning."

"Well then, I assure you I will not snigger nor tolerate sniggering in this office, Mrs. Milquetost," he'd said without sniggering…at least until he was in his office.

At first he'd wondered if Mrs. Milquetost, a temp from the steno pool, might not be quite the right fit for the office. But she'd proved to be an efficient, hardworking, and, importantly, closemouthed receptionist, even if she did dress like June Cleaver on the old television series Leave It to Beaver.

"Would you like me to have those boxes in your office removed, Mr. Karp," said Mrs. Milquetost, who refused to call him Butch and didn't like random piles of boxes showing up. "Do you need me to call someone to move them to filing?"

"No, Mrs. Milquetost, they're fine right where they are for now," he said, continuing through the door leading to his inner sanctum, where he hoped for a few contemplative minutes before the morning meetings began.

The day had not started off on a good note. Marlene was still ticked at him for the "stray dog" comment and refused to accept his apology. He even tried kissing her as she lay in bed, but she'd kept her lips as tight as possible and simply glared at him until he gave up.

Out in the kitchen, he'd cheered up some to find the twins, who, surprisingly, were already up and dressed in sweats, hoping they'd get a chance to play basketball with the big boys on the courts at Sixth and Fourth. Their lively banter had taken a little of the chill out of the air, until Zak was reminded that he and his brother had bar mitzvah class that night.

"Ah gee, during vacation?" Zak complained.

Zak's demeanor got worse when his brother then exclaimed, "Great! I can't wait." Zak then punched Giancarlo in the arm and called him a "butt kisser." A loud wrestling match ensued, which was broken up by Marlene, who'd stomped from the bedroom, separated the boys, then glared at Karp as if he'd put them up to it, before stomping back to the bedroom. The ice age had returned, so he dressed and left for work.

"Mr. Kipman is waiting for you," Mrs. Milquetost said just as he opened the door. He sighed; there went his few minutes alone, but at least Harry tended to calm his nerves, not rake them across the fiery coals of hell.

Kipman was sitting on the couch reading a book. Karp turned his head to look at the title: The Dust-Covered Man: The Story of Ulysses S. Grant.

"Good book?" Karp asked.

"Interesting," Kipman replied. "Funny how some of the famous people in history sort of come into the roles that will define their greatness by accident. Grant for instance. He was a West Point grad and a hero of the Mexican-American War for his actions during the storming of Mexico City. But he was out of the army, working as a clerk for his father-in-law's harness business when the Civil War broke out. He went in as a captain. He ends up as the top general in the Union Army, and pretty much ends up winning the war for them. I doubt he gave greatness a second thought when he joined…in fact, he already had something of a drinking problem."

"Why the dust-covered man?" Karp asked.

"An allusion to the fact that he wasn't the sort of leader who hung back and expected his troops to do all the dangerous stuff," Kipman said. "Even at the end of a long day on horseback, he'd push ahead to get the lay of the land and scout the enemy's position. His troops would see him covered with dust and if they didn't love him the way Robert E. Lee's men loved him, they respected him and fought for him like they'd fought for none of the other Union generals. They came up with the nickname the Dust-Covered Man." The conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door, which only briefly preceded the appearance of V.T. Newbury, Ray Guma, and Gilbert Murrow.

Blond-haired and still boyish-looking, V.T. was the aristocrat of the bunch, a genuine descendant of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. His great grandfather-or maybe great-great, Karp couldn't remember-had started what was now one of the largest and most prestigious law firms in Manhattan. V.T. had shocked his father and set his illustrious ancestors rolling in their graves when, after graduating from Harvard Law School at the top of his class, he'd eschewed the family business and applied for a job at the New York District Attorney's Office, where he and another recent graduate, Butch Karp, became close friends.

Disenchanted when Francis Garrahy died in office and was replaced by a crook, Sanford Bloom, V.T. had gone to work for the U.S. Attorney General's Office. However, when Karp was appointed to complete the term of Bloom's successor, Jack X. Keegan, V.T. had been lured back to run the office's Special Investigations Unit, which was charged with rooting out and prosecuting corruption and malfeasance in city government, including its police department.

Bushy-browed and thick-featured, Ray Guma came from the other end of the social strata. Born and raised in an Italian neighborhood, he'd spent the first part of high school trying to decide whether to pursue a career in the mob or with the New York Yankees as the next great shortstop. Then "something snapped," he liked to say; he went to college on a baseball scholarship, even got scouted by the big leagues, but decided to go to law school. He surprised himself as well as his pals from the old neighborhood, several of whom were "made" men, by joining the New York District Attorney's Office, where he'd earned a reputation as a tough, no-holds-barred prosecutor not afraid to take on the mob, even his friends, if they messed up and got caught for something. He also had a reputation for cheap cigars, cheaper whiskey, and women cheap or not.

However, in recent years, a bout with colon cancer had forced him into retirement. The once-muscular, apelike body had aged almost overnight and his thick Sicilian hair had turned as white as bedsheets. But inside he was still the same old Guma-"minus a yard or so of my guts that the quacks hacked out of me"-and Karp had been only too happy to hire him to work part-time on special cases.

The last of the three new arrivals was also the youngest by twenty years. Gilbert Murrow was a short, slightly pudgy fellow who favored bow ties, plaid vests, and horn-rim glasses. He was a good lawyer-nothing flashy, just thorough-but had proved more valuable as Karp's aide-de-camp and office manager who kept the calendar and the staff in order.

Since that past spring, he'd also served as the de facto campaign manager for Karp's election bid. The party had recently made him accept a "professional" campaign manager in order to receive party funding, which had sent Murrow into a sulk for days. Only when Karp brought the new campaign manager into his office and told him that everything political needed to be run through "my chief political adviser, Gilbert Murrow" did the little man perk up. Ever since he'd happily filled his time by overseeing press releases and the efforts to reach out to the media and community.

Upon entering the office, V.T. gravitated over to Kipman. The two came from different backgrounds, but they shared a love for classical music and books, as well as the fine points and subtleties of the law. Guma plopped himself down in a big easy chair by the window and pulled out a cigar to chew on while grousing about the doctors who forbade him to smoke.

Murrow spotted the boxes that Karp had stacked in a corner of the office and wandered over to spin one around and read the filing label: "People vs. Sykes, Davis, Wilson, and Jones," before turning to Karp with a question mark stamped on his face. But Karp held up his hand and waved him to a chair next to Guma; his questions were going to have to wait.

Karp sometimes thought of this crew in basketball terms. Each man was a great player in his own way, and none was afraid to accept a challenge and take the ball to the hoop. But they all also understood that their main role was to support the big man in the center as a team.

Monday mornings he met with his bureau chiefs. But he liked to bring this particular group of friends and colleagues together an hour earlier to discuss the issues in a setting where they could talk freely, without having to worry about being politically correct, knowing that what was said in the room would stay in the room.

"V.T., you ready?" Karp asked. The main topic he'd wanted to address this morning was Newbury's continuing probe into allegations of police malfeasance.

Newbury quit thumbing through Kipman's book and leaned forward in his seat. "As you all know, we've been looking into years of allegations of police misconduct, including acts that rise to the level of felonies, which were reviewed either by Corporation Counsel or one of a handful of large, private law firms hired for the purpose of making recommendations on settling cases and whether this office should pursue criminal charges against the officers involved. We also all know that one of these firms was that of our "friend" Andrew Kane.

"So far, we've uncovered a pattern in which the Corporation Counsel and a handful of these firms almost automatically recommended that cases be settled with the complaining parties-for more than a hundred million dollars in taxpayer funds, I might add-and then marked the files No Prosecution. The files were then handed over to this office-although I hasten to point out not while our current el jefe was running the show. Anyway, at least two of Butch's predecessors apparently accepted the recommendations at face value and filed them away, never to be seen again, except that the files were subsequently rediscovered by this office.

"In some cases, we've concurred that the allegations were without merit or would now for reasons of the expiration on the statutes of limitations or other difficulties, such as witnesses who have passed, would be impossible to pursue. In those cases, I believe our recommendation will be to keep a close eye on certain officers who seem to have developed a habit of shooting, beating, coercing, or blackmailing the good citizens of this city. We've, however, devoted our primary attention to those cases in which criminal charges were warranted and can still be pursued. In point of fact, we're ready to file on some of these but have been holding off for now at the command of our fearless leader."

Newbury paused and looked meaningfully at Karp, who finished the thought for him. "I think there's more to all of this than lazy lawyers not deserving the high fees they charged for recommending that some of these cases be settled and forgotten." Newbury nodded and continued with his explanation. "We've noted that Corporation Counsel Sam Lindahl has, over the course of a dozen years, steered the big enchilada cases to several chosen law firms. Three caught our attention because of their high-profile senior partners and the fact that they all have a history of being anticop, yet here they were recommending that the New York District Attorney's Office turn a blind eye to obvious misconduct. Something didn't wash."

V.T., who occasionally delved into community theater and could ham up a role with the best of them, enjoyed watching Guma, who wasn't exactly known for his patience, squirm as he built toward the climactic scene. "The three notables are Hugh Louis, who I think we would all be familiar with even if he wasn't the current media darling due to the Coney Island rape case…"

Without turning his head, Butch knew that Murrow had glanced toward him at the mention of the Coney Island case but he ignored the look.

"…next is Olav Radinskaya, who also happens to be the borough president for Brooklyn and is said to have close ties to the Russian mob. Perhaps our resident authority on gangsters, Mr. Guma, can shed some light on that."

All eyes turned to Guma, who studied the chewed end of his cigar and shrugged. "Not my people, do go on Mr. Newbury."

There was a general chuckle from the audience, and Newbury moved to his last name, "Shakira Zulu." The name elicited a groan from everyone in the room. Born and raised as Sandra Bond, she had changed her name and joined the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. Karp had personally prosecuted a case in which she was convicted for her role as the getaway driver for bank robbers who killed two off-duty police officers, working as security guards, in cold blood. After the jury came back with the guilty verdict for manslaughter, Zulu had been dragged from the courtroom kicking and screaming that she would someday "kill Karp and all his honky friends and family."

"I'm sure we all remember how seven years later, Zulu told the parole board that she didn't mean what she'd said about killing anybody," Newbury said. "She intended to 'work for change in this corrupt and racist society' through legal means."

After her release from prison, where she'd earned her GED and even took several college credit classes, Newbury noted, Zulu went to New York University and after graduation, to law school in Georgia. "The press was invited to her law school graduation ceremonies, where she consented to a dozen interviews, all of them some version on her mission in life being to 'take on The Man in his own backyard.' Ever since, she's been at the forefront of criticizing this office, as well as DAs throughout the five boroughs, and of course races to sign up any African-American family that feels wronged by the police…if Hugh Louis doesn't beat her to the punch. And she is, of course, at the forefront of any antipolice rallies, especially if she knows the television crews will be there. So it's pretty interesting that Shakira, not to mention these other firms who've made one side of their living by shafting the police and this office, were given these other cases."

Newbury paused for dramatic effect before wrapping up his presentation. "However, so far we haven't been able to make a case that these law firms have done anything illegal in recommending these settlements and recommending that this office not pursue criminal charges against the officers involved," he said. "After all, this office-and its previous tenants Mr. Bloom and Mr. Keegan-were not obligated to accept the recommendations."

Karp grimaced at the mention of his predecessor. It didn't surprise him that Bloom had been a crook from the beginning. In fact, Karp had helped put him in prison, where he remained. However, Jack X. Keegan had been one of his mentors, the head of the famous homicide bureau that he'd aspired to as a young prosecutor. When Keegan replaced Bloom, he'd chosen Karp to be his number two and then recommended that the governor promote him to the top spot when Keegan was appointed a federal judge.

Karp took over from Newbury. "Anyway, I've asked V.T. to hold off on pursuing the cases against the cops-at least where we're not worried about the statute of limitations running out-until we get a handle on how this relationship among the Corporation Counsel, these other law firms, and this office worked. To me, something smells worse than Guma's old gym socks."

"Hey, hey…cheap shot, paisan," Guma complained, though with a smile. "I haven't been to a gym since they gutted me like a trout."

As the others in the room chuckled, Murrow cleared his throat to speak. "I'm sorry to be the one who always has to mention the political considerations here, but I do think it's important to point out that Hugh Louis and Shakira Zulu pretty much control the black vote. Not to mention that Butch is already walking on thin ice with the NYPD because of what happened with Kane's little cadre of killer cops. Those guys in blue don't like anybody else cleaning their house. I'm not saying we ignore all this, but perhaps-since we're delaying things anyway to look at these law firms-if we took our time before we stirred up these hornets' nests it might help improve Butch's chances of remaining in this office. We're less than a year from the election and I think-"

Kipman interrupted Murrow. "And lose a few more of these cases to the passing of time?" he scoffed. "Or, take a chance that some of these people get wind of Newbury and his gang's line of questioning and skip town? Since when do we let political expediency dictate how this office prosecutes the bad guys?"

Murrow rolled his eyes. "Oh, since about the mid-1800s, if I remember my history of Manhattan," he said. "I know we'd all like to live in a world where Butch wouldn't have to walk on eggshells, but I think we all also agree that in the end, it's keeping him in office that will do the most good for the most people. Pursuing these cases-especially if we end up butting heads with several of the biggest, or at least most vociferous, law firms in the five boroughs-could take years. But if Butch gets tossed out on his ear next November, who's to say if they don't just go away again?"

"It's a matter of principle," Kipman replied.

"Principles don't do you any good if you're on the outside looking in," Murrow shot back.

Kipman started to retort but Karp interrupted him. "All right, all right, break it up you two," he said. "I think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. I want us to hold off on filing charges against these cops until we see if we can't find out how this whole thing worked and if there are others who deserve our attention-so long as we don't lose any of these cases to Father Time." He looked at Murrow. "We'll do our best to keep this all low-key, and we won't go forward against these law firms until we're sure, but I can't do my job if I'm hung up over the political ramifications."

Murrow started to protest, but Karp held up his hand. "Let's just let this be until we have to deal with it. Right now, we have a staff meeting to get to."

The others took that as a signal, rose from their seats, and wandered out the door. Murrow hung back until the others had left. He pointed to the boxes. "You want to tell me what those are doing here? A Brooklyn case?" But Karp just clapped him on the shoulder, and said, "All in good time, Gilbert. I appreciate your concern, I really do, but I have to do this my way, understand?" Murrow nodded but Karp knew it was more out of politeness than because he agreed.

The pair walked together into the meeting room, a long, wood-paneled space with paintings of previous New York district attorneys on the walls, an American flag and the flag of New York City in opposite corners, and a long, narrow table in the middle surrounded by black chairs. Karp took a seat at the head of the table with Kipman on one side and Murrow on the other.

The bureau chiefs and their assistants were quietly talking to one another or nervously shuffling their papers, preparing to present their cases for dissection by the others. Karp glanced toward the other end of the table, where Rachel Rachman, the chief of the Sex Crimes Bureau, sat staring glumly at the ceiling as she clenched and unclenched her hands. She'd always had a tendency to dress in neon-bright colors-today a pantsuit the color of a plastic Halloween pumpkin-that belied a personality as devoid of color and warmth as an ice cube. However, she was a tough courtroom litigator and neither asked for nor gave quarter when prosecuting rapists and child molesters.

"Okay, let's get started," Murrow said. He enjoyed the role of moderator while Karp sat back and listened. "Harry, you want to start by telling us the latest with the People vs. Salaam and Mohammed, otherwise known at the Columbia Basketball Players Rape Case."

Butch noticed that Rachman suddenly sat forward, her eyes narrowed and focused on Kipman, who didn't bother to look her way. Their mutual dislike was no secret.

Kipman adjusted his half-moon reading glasses on the end of his long nose, then looked up over the top of them at Karp. "I'll begin with a brief rundown of the case, which, as Gilbert has so colorfully quoted from the media, involves two now-former basketball players from Columbia University. As you know, one night last February a young man named Khalif Mohammed had consensual sex with the complainant, Rose Montgomery, in her bedroom during a party at an off-campus apartment she shared with two other women. Neither side disputed this during the trial, nor the fact that the young woman was intoxicated.

"The gist of our case was that after sexual intercourse, Mohammed left the room, which was dark, and then his friend and teammate, Rashad Salaam, entered and, pretending to be Mohammed, had nonconsensual sex with her. The complainant swore in both her statements to the police and on the witness stand that she did not even know Salaam, with the inference that she would not have had sex with a stranger.

"At trial, the defense argued that the young woman had sponsored a party at the apartment to which members of the basketball team had been invited. Evidence was presented that the complainant passed around a bowl full of condoms 'just in case'-"

From her end of the table, Rachman snorted. "Like that's some sort of crime." She stopped when Butch looked at her sharply and dropped her head and sat glaring at the tabletop.

"During pretrial motions, the defense tried to introduce evidence from the defendants that the complainant not only knew Salaam but had consensual sex with him several days prior to the incident in question," Kipman said. "However, we argued that there was no corroborating evidence of such a relationship, and we were able to prevent that information from being introduced at trial-"

Again Rachman interjected. "It didn't matter. Previous sexual history is not relevant under our shield laws," she said before again falling into a sulky silence due to another stern look from Karp.

"Apparently, the New York Court of Appeals disagrees with that contention, especially when there was corroborating testimony that not only were the defendants telling the truth, but that the complainant was using the allegations to get back at Salaam, who apparently had rejected her after their first sexual liaison," Harry said dryly. "Most damning, according to the justices, was that we did not hand over this corroborating evidence to the defense so that they could at least bring it to the judge at a motion hearing and have the judge rule on its admissibility. This evidence consisted of statements given to the police by the complainant's roommates that Salaam had spent the night in the complainant's bedroom several days prior to the incident."

Rachman made a sighing noise, but Kipman ignored her and instead read from a transcript of one of the roommate's interviews with a detective. "She told me that she was angry with Rashad because she felt he'd just used her for sex. He wouldn't return her calls. She said that if she ever got the chance to get even, she'd 'cut his balls off.'"

Kipman looked pointedly at Karp. "However, for some reason, this interview was never disclosed to the defense. In fact, it was 'lost' until a private investigator working for the appellate lawyer located the roommates and conducted his own interview. In the meantime, Salaam and Mohammed had been convicted of sexual assault and conspiracy to commit sexual assault, respectively, and sentenced to prison."

Kipman closed his file and looked around the table. "Upon review, the court of appeals held that the roommates' interviews were relevant in that they could have been brought to the witness stand to impeach the complainant, who testified at the trial and apparently lied under oath."

Rachman slapped the table with her hand and half rose from her seat. "It's bullshit," she said, "and just like a bunch of old men, which describes our court of appeals, to ignore twenty years of precedent that establishes under the shield laws that the previous sexual history of the victim is not relevant and cannot be brought up at trial."

Harry remained seated but his voice grew more heated. "The court of appeals, the highest appellate court in New York State," Kipman stated, glancing over at Rachman, "has ruled more than once that shield laws were not intended to protect someone who perjured herself on the witness stand when asked a direct question, such as 'Did you know Rashad Salaam prior to the night of the alleged assault?' The complainant told the jury that she'd never met him before that evening and, if I remember from her testimony, that she would never have consented to sex with a stranger."

"So what?" Rachman spat back. "How would you like to sit in front of a jury, not to mention half of the media in Manhattan, and let a defense attorney make you out to be a whore? Of course, only a woman is considered 'loose' and therefore not deserving of protection under the law if she has sex with more than one partner; a guy does it and he just gets to put another notch on the bedpost. The judge should not even have allowed the question of whether she had met Rashad before that night. The only relevant issue is whether a man entered the victim's bedroom under pretense of being someone else and while she was very intoxicated, and without so much as a 'May I?' proceeded to have sex with her. In fact, she did not discover that she'd been duped until Mohammed reentered the room and turned on the lights. It was just a big game to them."

"She lied on the witness stand," Kipman countered. "If she didn't tell the truth when asked that question about even knowing Rashad, what makes you believe that she was telling the truth about whether the sex was consensual? Why would you simply dismiss the statements of the two roommates, who in separate interviews stated that she'd told them that she was going to get back at him because he didn't want to be her boyfriend?"

"Typical male response!" Rachman shouted. "The woman's a whore so she doesn't deserve our protection." She turned to Karp. "I plan to refile the charges and this time put those two rapists in prison where they belong for ten to fifteen."

Kipman also looked at Karp. "I don't believe that best serves the interests of justice in this case. 'Full disclosure' has long been the policy of this office, even when doing so may make our job harder. We should have turned the police interviews over to the defense, and then argued their relevance in front of the trial judge at a hearing. But this was not done and instead, Ms. Rachman took it upon herself to rule on its relevance and then hide the existence of these interviews. In the meantime, the lives of these two young men have been irrevocably damaged-they were expelled from the university, even before the trial and without a hearing, lost their basketball scholarships, and I doubt will find any other takers out there, even if we don't pursue another trial…"

"Poor babies," Rachman sneered. "They won't get paid to play a game while the victim-"

"Complainant; she's not a victim if the charges haven't been proved," Kipman interjected.

"…the victim," Rachman continued, "has to defend herself from being called a whore by the people who are supposed to protect her."

"She's certainly a liar," Kipman retorted. "So if one follows the other…"

Rachman turned almost purple with rage. "See! See!" she shouted. "This office is a reflection of the same old Neanderthal thinking-"

"As I was saying," Kipman said, "lives have been ruined here on what may have been nothing more than a jilted woman's revenge. The coach of the team was placed on administrative leave, essentially labeled a pimp by the press because he was somehow supposed to monitor what his players were doing off-campus, and then, when the shit hit the fan, defended these two young men by telling the press that he believed them and not the complainant."

"Just more evidence of the good ol' boys club, which as we all know has plenty of members in this room," Rachman added bitterly. "The only concern is whether two rapists have lost their scholarship and a coach his job because the university did the right thing and supported this young woman."

"We have an obligation to present the truth, and not grind our little personal axes," Kipman fired back. "It's my recommendation that we dismiss the charges. We have a witness who has shown that the complainant will perjure herself while under oath. I believe these young men have already suffered enormously for what appears to be nothing more than promiscuous behavior."

Rachman's eyes nearly bugged out of her head at the last remark and she looked as if she might rush down the length of the table to strike Kipman. Karp decided it was time to put an end to the rancor. "Enough!" he said in a voice loud enough to silence both attorneys. "I think it's time to cool off. Let's take a look again at ALL the evidence and, when we can discuss this without the personal invective, we'll decide whether to refile the charges."

Kipman nodded and Rachman took her seat. "So, Rachel," Karp said as if it was time to turn the channel on a television, "tell us about the Michalik case."

Rachman looked up at him with a frown and then quickly at Kipman as if she expected this to be a trick. Seeing no indication that Karp's query was anything more than it was, she shrugged and said, "Pretty straightforward case of sexual assault by a person in a position of trust…sort of like the priest cases.

"The victim"-Rachman glanced at Kipman, who seemed to be absorbed in reading through one of his files and did not challenge her use of the word-"Sarah Ryder, is a graduate student at the NYU school of Russian studies. The perp, Alexis Michalik, is a professor of Russian poetry and here on a work visa. Over a period of several weeks, he engaged in a pattern of flirtation clearly meant to seduce Ms. Ryder, until she finally asked him to stop. He seemed to get the message, so she felt comfortable calling to ask him to help her with her master's thesis. He told her that he could meet with her after hours at his office on the campus. Upon her arrival, he offered her a beer, which she recalls had a 'funny taste' but at the time made nothing of it. The next thing she remembers is that she's been bound over a couch, her wrists tied to the legs of the furniture, and Michalik is engaging in anal intercourse with her."

Rachman paused as though to calm herself. "When he was finished, he told her that he loved her, but that if she told anyone, he would deny it and make sure that she was drummed out of the department and the university-that all her hard work would go down the drain. The victim reported the incident to the university, which, as required by law, reported it to the New York Police Department. She was transported to a hospital, where she was examined by a doctor, who reported that she had 'lacerations and contusions to both her vagina and anal area consistent with forced sexual intercourse.'"

Rachman sifted through the papers in her file and held up one. "We've just received the results of DNA testing of a semen stain found on the victim's blouse; it's a match for Michalik. Also, finger-prints found on a half-empty glass of beer discovered by investigators match those of Michalik and Ms. Ryder. The beer was tested and shows traces of rohypnol, the so-called date rape drug."

Satisfied, Rachman stopped talking. Karp asked, "Questions?" It had been the practice since the days of Garrahy for those who attended that meeting to put their fellow prosecutors through an interrogation meant to discover any weaknesses in a case that a defense lawyer might later exploit. The practice had pretty much disappeared under Bloom, who couldn't have cared less, and had been at best desultory under Keegan, who was occupied with his own political aspirations. But the practice was renewed with vigor when Karp was appointed.

"Anything to place Michalik and Ms. Ryder in the building at the time in question?" one of the young assistant chiefs asked.

Rachman smiled like a student at a geography bee who just got asked her favorite question. "As a matter of fact, a witness-one Ted Vanders, a graduate student in the English department-came forward after the story appeared in the newspapers and told the police that he saw the victim as she was leaving the building that night." Rachman put on a show of again rifling through her papers before finding what she sought and began to read.

"Let's see…ah yes, here it is, 'He told the police that when he saw the victim about midnight, she appeared "disheveled and in tears" and that 'only after coaxing did the victim tell him she'd been raped.'"

"Did the witness know her previously?" asked another of the assistant district attorneys, probably to prove that he'd been paying attention to the previous discussion.

Rachman shook her head. "No, they're not even in the same department. And…," she said, pausing to look at Kipman, "the police interviewed her friends and acquaintances, and none have ever seen or heard of Mr. Vanders. In fact, he's something of a geek, if I may use that term, with no known girlfriends. But if you saw Ms. Ryder, you'd realize that he's not remotely her type. A real beauty, in other words, and knows it."

"There's semen on the blouse?" another ADA asked and chuckled self-consciously. "Will he make a Bill Clinton defense and say he 'never had sex with that woman'?"

Rachman laughed just as falsely. "I guess there's a similarity. We believe this asshole wiped himself off on her blouse when he was finished."

"But no semen found in her?"

"The victim reported that the perp used a condom."

"What's the perp, this Michalik, say?"

Rachman looked disgusted. "Oh, the usual. It was her fault. She started the flirting-as if a twenty-five-year-old college coed has this irresistible power over an admittedly handsome, forty-five-year-old poetry professor with a nifty European accent.

"What is true is that this was a guy who could control what happened to the rest of her life. He not only was her adviser, with the power to accept or reject her master's thesis, he also sat on the board that approved which students would be accepted into the doctoral program. Of course, he claims that she only brought these charges after he refused to give her a free pass on the thesis and sponsor her for the doctoral program."

Rachman shook her head again. "It always amazes me how these guys expect us to believe these stories-like a woman would use rape charges to blackmail a college professor so that she wouldn't have to write her thesis paper." She looked around the table with a "can you believe this shit" smile on her face, but froze when she saw Kipman adjust his glasses and prepare to read from a document.

"It says in this report that the complainant did not go to university officials until nearly 3 PM the next day," he said. "Why is that?"

Rachman's eyes glittered with hate. "You want to tell me what you're doing with reports from my office?"

Kipman didn't blink. "I believe that you're aware that one of my functions is prior review of questionable cases before we make formal charges. In light of the recent reversal on the case we just discussed, I thought it might be a good idea to look over another alleged case of acquaintance rape."

"So you're checking up on me," Rachman hissed.

Karp cleared his throat. "Don't look at it that way, Rachel. It's just that sometimes two sets of eyes are better than one. This is not a reflection on your abilities as a prosecutor; we are all aware of your excellent work in the courtroom. However, if we are going to convict people in this office, I want to make sure we do it the right way so that they remain convicted. So what about Harry's question regarding the nearly seventeen hours between the alleged assault and the victim reporting it?"

"Well, I thought I'd covered that." Rachman sulked.

"Humor me," Karp responded.

"The victim was worried that reporting the rape would ruin her chances of getting her thesis accepted and moving on to the doctoral program-essentially all those years spent pursuing her education would be meaningless. Apparently this Michalik had a great deal of pull in the department-he's like the god of Russian poetry-which I probably don't need to point out is a very male-dominated gang. She was afraid that no one would believe her story. She didn't know that an investigator would find that glass of beer or the existence of the roofies. He could just claim the act was consensual and she'd be out of the department and out of a career."

"Then why did she come forward at all?" Kipman asked.

"She went to his office that afternoon to demand an apology. But he made it clear that he expected her to perform at his whim-essentially, she would be his sex slave for as long as she remained at the school. She was so repulsed by his behavior and the thought that he might be doing this to other female students that she felt she had a duty to report his behavior."

Kipman looked back down at the file. "I'm looking at her first interview with the police. It's pretty extensive, but nowhere does she say that she asked Michalik to stop what he was doing." He turned to another page. "And according to the doctor who examined Michalik following his arrest, there were no wounds as if she tried to fight him off."

Rachman rolled her eyes. "Again, I repeat myself here, but she was drugged, and when she woke up, she was tied to the couch. How was she supposed to fight him off?"

"What about the reports in the newspapers that the complainant may be mentally unstable?" Kipman asked.

They all knew that he was referring to a story in the New York Post that quoted a former roommate, who said that six months before the incident with Michalik, Ryder had been admitted to Bellevue Hospital after police decided that she was "a danger to herself and others," and that-according to another acquaintance-had a few months later been taken to the hospital again following a drug overdose. "I believe the story said something about this being in reaction to splitting up with her boyfriend at the time, a member of the New York Rangers, if I remember correctly."

"Oh puhleeeze," Rachman said, rolling her eyes. "Since when are medical records not related to the case in question relevant? What's going on here? Have I suddenly been transported back into the Dark Ages of Jurisprudence when every slimy defense attorney got to paint the victim as a whore for wearing short skirts, or because she had consensual sex with one man before being raped by another?" She glared at Kipman. "Let's just go back to the days when anyone who wasn't a virgin wrapped in a burlap sack was a slut who got what she deserved. The shield laws were invented for just that sort of misogynist mindset."

"That's crap," Kipman retorted in his classic frustration-driven staccato.

Karp had to look down quickly so that Rachman wouldn't see the smile that had forced itself onto his face. He wasn't smiling about the case, but it always amused him when Kipman swore. It just didn't seem natural.

"Shield laws were developed for cases where strangers snatch the victims off the streets and rape them, and there is no doubt that crimes were committed," Kipman said. "Then a victim's sexual history or dress or mental state would not be relevant. They were not, however, created with acquaintance rape in mind, where there is a question not just of guilt but whether a crime even occurred. Which, by the way, is why victim is an inappropriate term for complainant at this stage of the game. Therefore, our first duty is to determine if there even was a crime-or whether the law is being used to further someone's agenda. In these instances, it is in the interest of justice that we weigh the complainant's sexual and mental history to see if it is relevant to establishing the truth. As much as sex has been used to control and debase women, it would not be the first time that a woman has used an accusation of rape to ruin the life and reputation of a man."

"Oh, my God," Rachman replied. "As if a woman would put herself through all the torment that a rape trial involves to get even. Studies show that less than 5 percent of rape allegations are manufactured, and most of those are dropped before charges are brought. In this case, we have a ton of physical and circumstantial evidence supporting the victim's story. And since you're reading the reports, you might note that Michalik first told police that-like Clinton-he didn't have sexual contact with the victim. If that's so, how did his semen get on her blouse?"

Kipman didn't answer right away, so Karp decided it was a good time to wind this discussion down. "Good point, Rachel," he said. "And good questions, Harry, the sort of thing your people will have to deal with, Rachel, when the defense gets a look at this stuff. But let's remember that it's Harry's job to make sure that we've crossed the t's and dotted the i's before we go forward. I'd like us to follow up on these reports in the newspapers, as well as the timing issue. Come back next week and we'll discuss filing charges."

"Bullshit!" Rachman exploded. The other attorneys around the table let their mouths hang open in embarrassed silence. "I was going to file this afternoon. I…well, I sort of alerted the press…"

"What!" Karp exclaimed, fighting a sudden urge to strangle Rachman. Unable to look at her for the moment without staring daggers, he looked instead at the others. "Now listen to me all of you, because I'm only going to say this once: This office will not go forward with charges unless we are 100 percent-no, make that 1,000 percent-certain that we can establish factual guilt and have legally admissible evidence to convict beyond a reasonable doubt to a moral certainty. A defense attorney's obligation is to zealously defend his client; ours is to establish the truth."

Finally Karp felt he could look at Rachman without spitting, but the famous Karp glare drained the color from her face nonetheless. "The complainant's sexual and mental history might not be relevant in the courtroom-that's for a judge to decide and a hearing is where you make your arguments that they're not-but they are damn relevant to her credibility with this office and whether we have established that moral certainty I just referred to before we go forward with a case. Furthermore, we do not try our cases in the media. Under no circumstances do we give them a heads-up on impending charges without clearing it through me, and I'll tell you right now that 99.9 percent of the time, my answer will be no. Do I make myself clear to all of you?"

There was a murmur of assents but he couldn't tell if Rachman's had been one of them, as she kept her face down, staring at the floor. He decided to deal with it later and said, "Okay, let's move on."

They got through the rest of the meeting with no further outbursts. There was the usual assortment of robberies, assaults, and murders, only one of which really stood out. A man of apparently Middle Eastern descent had been murdered in Central Park and his severed head placed on the spiked fence that ran around the Conservatory Gardens.

"I say apparently Middle Eastern," the head of homicide said,

"because that's what our forensic people are guessing. The body hasn't been found, and we haven't been able to identify him. The police are treating it as a hate crime, possibly motivated by revenge tied to the execution murders of Americans in Iraq by Al Qaeda, because of the decapitation aspect. So far there isn't much else to go on either. Nobody saw anything, even though it's a fairly well-traveled area, even at night. Oh, there was one clue-Rev. 6:2."

"Revelations 6:2," Kipman said, "from the Bible…the riders of the Apocalypse prophecy that begins, 'And I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer…'"

As Kipman recited the verse, Karp felt his stomach knot. One of the witnesses to the murder of a rap star that past summer was a former professor of English, Edward Treacher, who wandered the streets as a homeless bum quoting from the Bible. He'd also been connected to David Grale, which is what caused the pain in his gut. Grale's dead, he told himself, but he could not stop an involuntary shiver at the thought.

"Anyway, why I bring it up now is that the Muslim community is all over the cops to catch the killer," the head of homicide said. "And I got a call from them yesterday-the Muslims, not the cops-wanting to know why we were dragging our feet. I had to explain that we needed a suspect before we could press charges. What did they want us to do, prosecute a ghost?"

Again, Karp felt chilled. Get ahold of yourself, Butch old boy, he thought, you're starting to think like Lucy…ghosts and talking saints.

When the meeting was adjourned, Rachman slammed her briefcase shut and stormed out of the room before anyone else had even risen from the table. The other attorneys glanced quickly at Karp to see his reaction, but he kept his face neutral.

Out in the hall, Rachman swore, "Goddamn men." She felt like crying as she marched off toward her office. But that would give the bastards what they want, she thought. At heart they're all just a bunch of animals. Sticking together in their Brotherhood of the Penis.