Fury

29

Monday, January 24

By the time Karp saw Stupenagel moving toward him through the lobby of the U.S. District Court building, it was too late to give her the slip.

"Good morning, Butch," she said cheerfully, clip-clopping quickly across the granite floors in her high heels to get a pace in front of him. "Want to tell me what you and Special Agent in Charge Jaxon were talking about yesterday? Along with the two other suits who smelled like more feds, only different?"

Karp knew better than to issue a flat denial. Stupenagel's sources were too good. So he dissembled. "You can smell the difference between feds?" he said, making a feint to one side, then dodging to the other to get ahead as he moved toward the elevator.

Stupenagel recognized the ploy as she cursed herself for wearing too tight a skirt this day for good maneuvering and had to fall in behind. "Yeah, they use different kinds of soap," she replied sarcastically. "I once slept with Jaxon way back when he was just a junior agent, though still pretty damn special, if I remember right-and don't you ever tell Murrow I said that or I'll rip your balls off. He was a Lifebuoy type; those other two, I don't know, maybe Dial, which makes them…you tell me…spooks?"

Although their relationship had improved over the past year or so, Karp knew not to trust the reporter entirely, especially when there was a big story she wanted. Still, he was always impressed by her deductive reasoning, which ranked right up there with the best detectives he knew.

"So you going to tell me what's up?" she asked.

Karp shrugged. "Just a post-New Year's Eve briefing about the heightened alert status. But it turned into a pretty quiet night, so just a courtesy call…that's all."

Stupenagel rolled her eyes. "Only one problem with being the most honest man in this city, Karp, and it's that you couldn't lie your way out of a paper bag."

"Well, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it," he replied as he reached the elevator door and punched the up button.

"I don't suppose it had anything to do with those three heads?" she asked as the door opened and they got on with a small Chinese woman. "Little bird told me that a couple of them were on the most wanted list of terrorists… Another little bird told me that a whole gang of feds rushed into a Broadway theater under renovation over on Forty-fifth Street an hour or so before midnight on New Year's Eve and that certain members of the Karp family were seen being led out and whisked away. That entire block was shut down for two weeks after that."

The Chinese woman gasped at the word terrorists and punched the button that would let her off on the next floor. A bored-looking lawyer and his client, a thin white teenager with tattoos on his neck and hands, got on. "She told me she was fifteen," the teen said. "How was I to know she was twelve?"

Stupenagel started to say something but Karp grabbed her by the arm. "Ow, that hurts," she complained as he led her off the elevator when they reached the fifth floor.

"So does the truth, and half-truths can hurt even more," Karp growled. "Hasn't anybody ever told you that your mouth runs nonstop?"

"All the time." Stupenagel grinned. "In fact, you do. But look, it's my job to ask questions. Can I help it if people like to tell me things even if they shouldn't? So I get the word that these three heads belonged to Islamic terrorists. Good. Somebody's doing the world a favor. But who? And what were these guys up to? Then there's the feds in your office…things are adding up, Karp, but I'm still missing a few numbers. Come on, help a lady out here."

"I might if I could find a lady," he retorted, saw the hurt look on her face, and softened. "Sorry. Look, Ariadne, you are the best there is at what you do-and I hate to admit this but I'm impressed with your integrity as much as your talent-but this isn't something I can tell people about, and maybe you shouldn't either." He was surprised to see Stupenagel's eyes get wet.

"Did you know that was one of maybe three times you've ever called me by my first name or said anything nice to me about me and my work? So okay, for now anyway, I'm going to quit pestering you and Jaxon. But I won't stop digging; it's my job. And I know you know that and respect me for it."

"Don't get carried away with this buddy stuff," Karp growled. Then he grinned and gave her a wink. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Ariadne, I got a trial to win."

"No problem," she said. "I've got to go check in with the press pool. I'm covering the trial so you better be good, Karp, or I'll fry your ass."

Walking off, Karp heard her laugh. He chuckled himself. He hadn't been lying…not entirely. Jaxon, Kluge, and Albert had dropped by his office as a courtesy call to fill him in on the final details of the New Year's Eve escapade.

A Haz Mat team had been flown up from the FBI campus at Quantico to dismantle the bomb and dispose of the nuclear material. "They had enough to level most of Times Square, not to mention throw up a cloud of radioactive dust that might have covered half the island. The leader was that guy I told you about, Al-Sistani. Professionally, I wish we could have captured him and seen if we could get him to talk. Personally, I'd pin the Congressional Medal of Honor on the cowboy," Jaxon said.

All told, twenty foreign terrorists, as well as two-dozen American recruits, had been killed. "The bodies of twice that many-what I can only call street people-"

"-You might try patriots; they didn't have to fight," Karp interjected.

"You're right, patriots, though I'd like to know how they got there, but…," he said when he got a sharp look from Karp, "…we stuck with our deal and didn't go looking for anybody. Your boy's 'kingdom'…what was that guy's name…Grale? Yeah, Grale…anyway, his little kingdom is off-limits as far as we're concerned. I just hope you know what you're doing there, the guy is bonkers. And the grapevine informs me that he still may be breathing-how they do it down there is beyond my comprehension."

"Yeah, maybe," Karp said, "but not all that bad by New York standards."

Jaxon laughed, then pursed his lips. "I'd also like to ask you about the Asian guys with all the high-tech gear who fought with the…patriots," he said, "but I'm guessing you won't say much there."

"I didn't know them," he said truthfully. "But they did a good thing."

"And the Asian guy who was with Marlene but slipped away?"

"What Asian guy?"

"Thought you'd say that. What about the Indian and the cowboy?"

"An old friend and Lucy's…," he hesitated, the word coming hard, "fiance out here visiting for Christmas. They've all three gone back to New Mexico. Guess you could try to talk to them there."

"Already have; they aren't saying much about the street people and Asian commandos, either."

"Vietnamese."

"What? Oh really? Anything else?"

"Didn't know them…except that they were Vietnamese and their bodies should be turned over to the Vietnamese community."

"I'll see to it," Jaxon said, standing up and shaking his hand. "Well, if you see any of these guys, tell them thanks. A lot of people owe them their lives and this country owes them a debt of gratitude."

"If I see them I'll tell them that."

Walking toward the courtroom, Karp reflected that all in all the incident had turned out surprisingly well. As he'd told Marlene, he'd only waited a half hour before he called Jaxon and, after making him promise that he'd give his wife and the others another hour, filled him in.

Jaxon had at first been angry for the delay. But when he listened to the plan, he'd conceded that "Ciampi's Commandos," as he called them, might have been right. He then summoned his SWAT team and picked up Karp on the way to the theater.

The FBI agent tried to get him to wait in the command truck but Karp shook his head. "No way," he said. "That's my family in there. I'll stay out of the way, but give me a gun; I'm going."

They reached Marlene and Tran, who'd taken up a defensive position behind a pile of rocks just as the terrorists were closing in. They'd run out of ammunition and drawn their knives for a last stand when the SWAT team arrived and routed them.

"Well, if it ain't John Wayne and the Seventh Cavalry." Marlene grinned. "But come on, the job's not finished. The rest of them are up the tunnel…" Marlene paused and listened to her headset. She took off running, waving the SWAT team to follow. "We have to move fast…the leader is retreating toward the bomb, he may blow it!"

Meanwhile, after climbing out of the sewer drain, Jojola and Ned had found the going easy until they'd almost reached the tunnel entrance, where Ned had to shoot two guards. Jojola told them, "The guy was just finishing the fuse-little electric hookup-didn't see me until I slit his throat. We were trying to figure out how to get to Zak with all those armed guys when Grale flies from the ceiling like some kind of vampire, then goes after them."

When it was over, Marlene rushed back to her dog. Gilgamesh turned out to be as tough as his namesake and survived, but not everyone was as fortunate. They'd attended the funeral for Rashad Salaam at the twins' insistence. Afterward, Khalif had come over to shake his hand. "Rashad wasn't bad," he said. "He died saving me."

"So what are you going to do now?" Karp said.

"Funny you should ask," Khalif said. "My lawyer is filing papers on your ass-nothing personal-and I'll use the money to go to college. Maybe someplace where I can walk on and play ball."

Marlene had been upset about the death of the street people and especially Tran's men. "I know the older one had been with him since Vietnam," she said. "And one was his cousin's son, a doctor. They all died heroically."

Well, that's one wild story that Stupenagel will never get…at least not from me, he thought. But he really did owe Stupenagel, and for more than just keeping her mouth shut, or at least keeping a story out of the newspapers-although that was partly due to the deal they'd struck that she'd get the whole Coney Island Four story first. When it was appropriate for him to talk about it, he'd give her the inside scoop.

Sometimes you have to trade with the devil, he thought, to get a deal made in heaven. And this deal was working out to be just that.

With the New Year, Bill Denton had been sworn in as the mayor of New York City. One of his first acts was to fire Corporation Counsel Sam Lindahl. Having served through a half-dozen administrations, Lindahl was completely caught off guard and hardly had time to stand up-much less remove anything from his office-when Clay Fulton walked in, told him the mayor wanted to see him, and then to come back to "remove personal effects only."

Denton had then named his own Corporation Counsel, a quiet but extremely competent civil attorney and Columbia law professor named Randall Canney. Then Canney's first public act-in concert with the timing worked out with Karp-announced that the District Attorney of New York County had been appointed by the governor to defend the city from the "spurious" lawsuit filed by the Coney Island Four and their attorney.

Hugh Louis had a nuclear meltdown on Brooklyn Insider with Natalie Fitz. He was so hot that the pint of pomade he'd combed into his hair for the show ran in greasy-looking rivulets down his neck as he mopped furiously at his face. "It's all part of the white racist military-industrial complex's conspiracy to undermine justice when it comes to the black man in this country," he said. "They pull out the biggest white man they got to stomp on my clients yet again."

"And you, Jayshon, what do you think?" Fitz asked the young man at Louis's side.

That I'd like to stick it up your white ass, he thought. "Mr. Karp has characterized me and my friends as 'vicious animals' and 'thugs' in newspaper articles," he said, placing a hand on his chest as if grievously wronged. "I'd just like to remind him that I was my class valedictorian that spring when I graduated from high school. I was also president of Young Businessmen of America-Brooklyn Chapter and the debate team. I planned to go to college to become a doctor so that I could return to my neighborhood and establish a clinic. But I guess Mr. Karp believes that all black people are animals and thugs. If that doesn't say 'racist,' I'm not sure what does." Word was that the television station had to cut to an unscheduled commercial break because Natalie Fitz was crying and couldn't continue for several minutes.

Louis had appeared at Karp's office in a more conciliatory mood. "Listen, Mr. Lindahl and I had reached a settlement…pretty much everything except the signatures," he said. "We were willing to accept a flat $100 million-"

"No," Karp said flatly.

"However, considering things have changed, I believe my clients would consider $40 million-that's only $10 million each-to have this little matter go away."

"No."

"Now, look here, Karp, you're going to be running for office next year, and I don't think you want the black and Hispanic communities pegging you for a racist-"

"No. Not one red cent," Karp said, trying to keep his voice level and to resist the urge to stand up and kick the shit out of Louis. "I'm busy. I think you can show yourself out."

"Enjoy the year, Karp," Louis said as he stood up. "It's the last one you'll spend in the NY DAO."

Karp had then thrown another brick at Louis at a pretrial hearing a few days later when he didn't ask for a continuance. "We're happy with the current trial date, your honor," he said to Klinger. "In fact, if you'd like to move it up that would be fine with us."

The tumblers were all falling into place. The day after Louis's visit, Police Captain Tim Carney's lawyer called and left a message with Mrs. Milquetost asking for a meeting. He had Newbury call with his response. "Come on down. We'll listen to what he has to say."

"What about a deal?" the lawyer said. "What can I go back to him with?"

"Nothing," Newbury shot back. "We'll hear him out and decide where to go from there."

Carney showed up with his young lawyer, Christopher P. Ferguson III, a cheap ambulance chaser in a Sears coat, who immediately began making demands. "He gets complete immunity or we walk."

"Walk," Karp said and pointed at the door. "You know the way."

The lawyer started to bluster, but Carney said, "Sit down, Chris, and shut up. They got us bent over a barrel." He turned to Karp and Newbury. "Sorry, my wife's sister's kid, just out of law school. Okay, here's the part you get for free; you don't have to give me a deal to listen. But if you think it's worth something to you and would like me to testify, then let's talk. And I'll throw in something you'll like a whole lot on an unrelated but very big case."

Carney then laid out how Lindahl had been steering the big-enchilada cases alleging police malfeasance and corruption to a few big law firms for years-"mostly Louis, Zulu, and Radinskaya."

Newbury shrugged. "We already have that."

"Yeah, but do you have proof that Lindahl was taking kickbacks for his kindnesses, as well as when he signed off on the payments and forwarded the No Prosecution files to your office?"

"We're listening," Karp said. He could almost feel the excitement boiling out of Newbury, though his old friend hadn't moved or said a word. The smoking gun is a friggin' cannon, he thought.

Carney smiled and said, "Yeah, I bet you are. There's more. Shakira Zulu was also paying some of her fellow city councilmen to sign off on the settlement payments, which, as you know, is required by law."

"So where do you and the esteemed union boss, Ewen, fit in?" Newbury asked.

"I'd advise you not to answer that," Ferguson said. "Not until we have a deal."

"Shut up, Christopher, you got a mouth on you like your mother," Carney said. "Essentially, I was paid to look the other way and make sure that Internal Affairs didn't poke our noses into certain cases and rubber-stamped whatever these law firms said. Some bad cops got off, the 'victims' got big settlements-part of which would also go to these firms that were supposed to be representing the cops. So they were double-dipping right there."

"And Ewen?" Karp asked, thinking he'd never liked the toad-like man.

"He kept the PBA membership in line if they started asking questions about the bad apples and made sure they were protected and kept on the force. No matter what anybody thinks, good cops don't like dirty cops."

"Dirty cops like you," Newbury said.

Carney looked down at his hands. "Yeah," he said, his voice breaking, "like me. I ain't got no good excuse, but I guess I was looking at the end of the line for my career, and what did I have except mortgage payments and college tuitions for five kids. I wanted more for my family…and, yeah, more for a dirty cop like me."

Karp felt sorry for the man. He knew Carney had a half-dozen medals for heroism, and Newbury's research seemed to indicate that he'd come to this point only within the past five years. Still, you agree to accept the pay when you sign up, he thought. You want to make more money, sell real estate. "It was still a crime," he said.

Carney nodded. Ferguson cleared his throat, and, when no one told him to shut up, proceeded. "I think now would be a good time to talk about a deal if you want my client to testify to what he just told you, as well as supply you with a sizable amount of documentation to back up these allegations."

"What do you want?" Karp said, looking at Carney, whose eyes were glued to the floor.

"No prison time-I wouldn't last two minutes in the general population. Whatever else you may think of me, most of my career was spent putting bad guys behind bars. A lot of them are still there."

"What else?"

Carney cleared his throat but at first couldn't speak, then muttered. "I'll sell the place in the Keys and give the money, and everything else I got through these deals, back to the city."

"That would happen whether you said so or not," Karp said.

"I'd like…I'm begging to be allowed to retire from the force, the way I imagined when I first went to the academy," he said. "I'll need my pension to support my family and make sure my wife can stay in our little place in the Bronx. She's a good woman who doesn't deserve to be hurt because I fucked up-pardon my French."

"You'll be required to testify at the trials," Newbury said, "which means the press is going to be all over you. You're not going to be able to protect her from what comes out."

"Yeah, I know," Carney croaked, tears running down his face. "I figure if it gets bad, we can sell the place and move to Seattle, where our oldest daughter is living. She's been after us to move out there. Says it's safer."

Karp had already made up his mind to agree to the deal, but he wanted the information on the other "big case." Feeling like a hard-ass, he said, "The price is too steep."

"That's outrageous!" Ferguson sputtered. "Uncle Tim is a good man. He made a mistake… I guess this is why they refer to you in the public defender's office as Saint Karp."

Karp ignored the young lawyer and kept his eyes fixed on Carney. "I think you know as well as I do that holding back for a deal is not going to help relieve the guilt that's sitting on your shoulders."

"I'll never be out from under it," Carney said, "but you're right, I have to tell you. It's about the Coney Island case. Some of the guys on the force who are getting screwed by Breman are old friends. I wasn't sure what I was going to do about it. We were going to make a bundle from our share of whatever those fuckers won. But it didn't feel right, so I had some of my specialists plant a bug in Breman's office. I got her on tape telling that pile of crap Hugh Louis about some letter a guy named Kaminsky sent her from prison. It said Villalobos was lying about being the only one there who raped that woman."

"So, we got a deal?" Ferguson asked.

"Shut up, Christopher," Carney and Karp said at the same time. The two looked at each other for a long moment until Karp at last spoke. "I hear it rains a lot in Seattle."

"Don't I know it," Carney replied. "It'll be hell on the arthritis."

"There are worse things."

"Don't I know it."

A week later, Karp whistled as he entered the courtroom and saw Murrow and Kipman sitting in the row behind the table where he'd be sitting. Behind them were Robin Repass, Pam Russell, and Dick Torrisi. He exchanged little nods as he walked past and placed his briefcase on the defense table.

There were very few other people sitting on his side of the aisle, mostly those who looked as if they wished they were sitting on the other side, which was packed with spectators and the press. Louis was chatting amiably with that worm of a reporter for the New York Times, Harriman, who lorded his exalted position over his colleagues in the press with a disdainful smile as he bent his head toward Louis and laughed over some private joke.

The four plaintiffs were sitting at their table, all of them watching Karp with baleful looks. He smiled at them until they looked away.

The nest of reporters went nuts when Brooklyn DA Kristine Breman entered the courtroom, walked to the front row behind the plaintiffs' table, and took a seat. The reporters ran up to her or leaned over the other benches to ask her questions. But she demurely shook her head no. "Not at this time, please," she said, obviously enjoying the attention. "I'm just here to see that justice be done."

The press quickly lost interest when a police officer entered with a frail, frightened-looking woman with gray hair. Her eyes locked on Karp's and she looked nowhere else as she walked to her seat next to Torrisi, who took her hand and patted it between both of his. She gave Karp a thin, wavering smile.

"Thank you for taking the case, Mr. Karp," Tyler said. "I know this isn't your job."

"I wouldn't say that…but you're welcome. And please, call me Butch. How are you doing with all this?" he asked, waving at the crowd of press who hovered on the other side of the aisle, hoping to catch her attention.

"Okay," she replied. "I just want this to be over with…again. My nightmares have grown worse; my psychologist says it's the stress."

Karp was the consummate prosecutor. And one of his strengths was that he could put aside the emotional aspects of a case and concentrate on what he would need to convince a jury. However, this case had his stomach tied in knots. He knew that it was a load of crock, and he was reasonably sure he could persuade the jury to see it that way. However, the two things he needed to make it a lock were still missing. He knew that Kaminsky sent a letter to Breman impeaching Villalobos that had then been handed on to Klinger. But he couldn't prove it, didn't have a copy of the letter, and Kaminsky had disappeared.

He would also have liked to find Hannah Little. Louis was sure to attack the confessions as coerced-big, bad racist cops browbeating poor little black teenagers. Hannah's testimony that Kwasama Jones told her he'd held Liz Tyler down while Sykes and Davis raped her would put the nail in the coffin. Jones was certainly not under any duress from cops when he talked to her on the telephone.

"Oyez, oyez, all rise, U.S. District Court Judge Marci Klinger presiding." As the crowd rose to its feet, Klinger swept into the courtroom. She hardly bothered to sit down before she fixed Karp with a fierce glare. "Before we begin, Mr. Karp, I want to repeat my opinion that your appointment to this case smacks of theatrics and politics. If I so much as sniff such I'll-"

"I assure you that there will be no such sniffing necessary," Karp said. "Certainly nothing to equal the daily circus of news briefings my opponent conducts regarding this case, despite your gag order."

"I object to this characterization," Louis said, rising to his feet. "I cannot be held responsible if the members of the journalism profession approach me in public places and ask questions."

Karp started to reply, but Klinger slammed her gavel down. "That's enough," she said. "Mr. Karp, I will decide what does or does not meet with the spirit of my ruling regarding a gag order. And now, since I will assume that nothing more need be said on this matter, I will ask that the jury be brought in."

The members of the jury filed in quietly and took their seats as Louis stood, smiled, and nodded to every one as if each was a long-lost friend. Sykes also smiled at the jurors and nudged his coplaintiffs to do the same.

The jurors, most of them, smiled back at him. It made him laugh inside at how gullible people were. He'd been fooling them all of his life. Teachers had loved him. The mothers of his friends adored him and told their sons to be more like him. The mothers of his girlfriends hoped they'd marry him-not that women really attracted him like that; he liked to rape them and make them cry out in pain. Only once-because of those assistant DA bitches sitting across the aisle near that bitch he raped and beat the shit out of-had his streak of people liking him been broken. That other jury didn't like him, that other jury sent him…brilliant, personable, whole-life-in-front-of-him Jayshon Sykes…to that horrible place for the rest of his life. Well, when this is over, he thought, I'm going to pay a little visit to them bitches, and after I've done every filthy fucking thing I can think of to them, they won't live to tell no one about it.

When they were seated, Klinger invited Louis to give his opening statement. He rose slowly, carefully, from his chair as if lost in deep thought. Patting at his forehead, he began to speak, his shoulders slumped as if he carried a great weight.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury…friends…I come before you today with a heavy heart. Heavy because I am a firm believer in our justice system. Despite its failures in the past to protect people of color, I still believed that it was the black man's best hope for this country to live up to that last line in the Pledge of Allegiance, 'and justice for all.'"

Louis sighed. "But years ago, justice was manipulated, and in a rush to judgment, four young black men were convicted of a crime they did not commit. That system-represented by two assistant district attorneys for Kings County, as well as police officers and detectives of the New York Police Department-conspired, yes, conspired to steal, as surely as someone putting a gun to their heads and pulling the trigger, the flowers of these young men's youth."

Suddenly, the big man whirled and pointed a finger at Karp. "Oh, I'm sure the defendants in this case will point out that these were not totally 'innocent' young men. And yes, they were teenagers who did stupid teenage things, like fighting with people on the boardwalk at Coney Island. Pranks for the most part, until one elderly man decided to fight back and threatened to harm one of my clients, Mr. Jayshon Sykes-who, afraid, lashed out. Unfortunately, Jayshon was a strong young man and the elderly man was frail and should not have been so belligerent. It was a tragic accident, something Jayshon has regretted every moment since, and you did not hear him or his companions complain about doing their time in prison for that infraction. And I don't need to remind you about what hideous dens of depravity our prisons have become."

Louis walked over to his table and took a sip of water before turning back to the jury. "I ask each of you, could you cast that first stone? Are you without sin? These boys, now men, committed a sin, surely. But a much greater sin was about to be committed. Because early that next morning, long after these boys had finally gone home to bed…a sin so monstrous that it grieves my heart to even think of it…was committed when a lovely young woman was brutally raped and nearly killed by a vile and despicable man named Enrique Villalobos. You will hear, my friends, from Mr. Villalobos, who, with nothing to gain for himself by this confession, will tell you that he and he alone committed this horrible sin."

Karp listened to Louis drone on about the horrors of prison and the abused, poor, neglected backgrounds of his clients until he felt somewhat nauseous. As expected, Louis launched into a long diatribe about how his clients were "beaten down by The Man" and confessed out of fear and exhaustion. "And being told that they could fry for this one, go to the electric chair…suffer a million, a billion, volts of painful electricity boiling their organs in their own blood and their brains into mush." It was the plaintiffs' turn, as well as some of the audience, to turn green.

After an hour-long, meandering opening, Louis wrapped it up by pleading with the jury "to find for my clients…to the tune of $250 million dollars…yes, a lot of money but what price tag would you put on freedom? What price would you attach for being scooped off the street like so much dog feces as a teenager and then spending the best years of your life rotting away in a prison cell? What price would that be worth? You need to send a statement, a strong statement, to the government that this sort of injustice will no longer be tolerated. Thank you for listening."

With that Hugh Louis sank into his chair like an electric toy running out of juice. Sykes reached over and patted him on the shoulder, and, loud enough for the jury and audience to hear, said, "Thanks, Hugh, thank you for telling the truth."

"Mr. Karp," Judge Klinger said. "Are you ready to proceed?"

Karp glanced up from his notes and nodded. He rose from his seat, wincing a little as he placed weight on his bum knee. He walked calmly to the podium, where he put his notes, and then looked at the audience.

"An interesting opening statement by Mr. Louis," he said. "In fact, if I didn't know anything about this case and was listening, I might be inclined to believe him."

At their seats, the plaintiffs nodded and smiled. "That's right," Sykes said. "The truth shall set you free."

"Except," Karp said, "it was a pack of lies and utter nonsense."

Louis erupted from his seat, spilling the cup of water he'd just poured. "Objection, your honor! Argumentative and…um…unprofessional."

Klinger was glaring. "Mr. Karp, you've been at this a long time, and you know as well as I do that was inappropriate."

"Since when is the truth inappropriate, your honor," Karp replied.

Klinger's face colored angrily. "You've been warned, counselor."

Karp looked back down at his notes as Klinger instructed the jurors to "ignore that last statement by the defendants' attorney." He smiled back at the jury-secretly pleased that he'd planted the seed. Now it was time to move on.

Calmly and matter-of-factly, he ran through the events of the night before Tyler was attacked. The assaults on Coney Island. The attack that nearly killed the elderly Korean man "by Jayshon Sykes, who had a piece of steel rebar in his hand and cracked an elderly man's skull like it was an egg. And before you hear Mr. Louis tell you again about this fight that ended badly, the ninety-three-year-old victim was five foot four and weighed 120 pounds, Jayshon Sykes was six foot three and close to two hundred. I don't think he was afraid."

Louis jumped to his feet. "I object, your honor, this is not a criminal trial with my clients facing charges. They have been exonerated. This is a civil trial to determine whether the conduct of the agents of the City of New York, that is, the police, rose to the level of malfeasance that would entitle my clients to remuneration."

Karp paused and waited for Klinger to sustain Louis's objection. When she did, he continued. "Well, Mr. Louis is correct-this, unfortunately, is not a criminal trial. But I will demonstrate to you, the jury, that the convictions of these men were valid and therefore, the assistant district attorneys and the police officers who worked on this case did their jobs correctly, ethically, and well. That other jury wasn't mistaken-they knew that there was a missing defendant whose semen had been found on the clothing of Ms. Tyler-but they also knew the truth. Those four men"-he pointed at the plaintiffs' table-"raped and nearly murdered Liz Tyler in a way so heinous, so depraved, that it defies any hint of human compassion."

Karp walked out from behind the podium with his hands in his pockets as he strolled over by the jury. "But I will do more than prove the first jury was right. I will show you how ludicrous the plaintiffs' case is. Heck, they haven't even thought through how the cops could have conspired to frame the plaintiffs when they, the cops, didn't even know if Liz Tyler, who was in a coma, would wake up. And if she did wake up, would say, 'Hey, you got the wrong guys.' So are the cops going to frame people knowing the victim might very well come out of her coma and expose them as frame artists? Further, I will demonstrate to you-through videotapes and witnesses-that these four…what did Mr. Louis say, 'innocent young men'…didn't behave like browbeaten, frightened teenagers. Far from it, they actually bragged in front of numerous witnesses about what they did."

Karp turned around, meaning to gather his thoughts, but caught Liz Tyler looking at him. Tears trickled down her cheeks, but she had a slight smile on her face. He smiled back.

"If this was just about money, and there was any chance that they'd been wronged by the system, I'd say give it to them," Karp said. "But there are a few problems with that. First, they weren't wronged. Second, it goes much deeper. If you let them get away with this, it could destabilize the entire justice system that Mr. Louis professes to champion. Never again will a jury believe a police officer when he takes the stand. Nor will a jury accept as trustworthy a confession offered into evidence. All the good detective work will just be thrown out the window.

"And third…" He paused and glanced sideways at Tyler again. "This is about justice. Not for four bloodthirsty, depraved thugs. It's about an injustice they did to a young mother and wife. She was the one who had her youth and everything she loved stolen from her. She is the one owed a debt that can never be repaid."