Justice Denied

15

The next day, the Friday, in Part Thirty, Vinnie Boguluso was scheduled for arraignment on the grand jury indictment for the murder and lesser crimes committed on the body of Gabrielle Avanian. Part Thirty, a felony arraignment court, had the atmosphere of a bus station in an underdeveloped nation. The floor was brown linoleum, much scuffed. The yellowish window shades were tattered. The mural behind the judge’s presidium was peeling; the allegorical figure of a woman with a sword and scales had no face.

In the well of the court gathered a dozen or so A.D.A.’s, clutching capacious folders. Around them, like bees about blossoms, moved a smaller number of defense attorneys, harassed and shabby if they were with Legal Aid, sleeker and better-dressed if private. Behind them in the rows of wooden benches sat relatives or friends of defendants. On the bench, Judge Rosemary Slade, a black woman of vast experience and legendary arraignment velocity, called them up and shut them down.

The room rumbled with talk, like a marketplace. Formally, the arraignment was the place at which a secret grand jury indictment was made public, where the People let the accused know the nature of his crime against them. In practice, for nearly all cases, it was where one copped out, confessed to a lesser crime, in exchange for a reduced sentence or no sentence at all.

Part Thirty was a marketplace, in fact. The marketing was done between the A.D.A.’s and the defense attorneys, who circulated through the little mob of the People’s representatives, seeking deals for their clients. The A.D.A.’s were often little more than children a few years, or a few months, past their bar exams. While in principle they had wide discretion, in reality they were bound tightly by the tinkerings of politicians in Albany, about what deals they could actually make, and even tighter by the blizzard of policies and memos that issued from the office of the district attorney.

Ray Guma stood placidly amid the familiar bustle and awaited the arrival of his opposite number in People v. Boguluso. This was a Legal Aid named Jack Cooney, an old war horse of approximately Guma’s own vintage. They had worked opposite each other for nearly twenty years, and Guma grinned when he saw Cooney’s familiar, beat-up face appear in the courtroom doorway.

“Counselor,” said Cooney when he got next to Guma, “well, well. A fine piece of shit this morning. I’ve just come from my client, speaking of fine pieces. He wants to know what’s on offer.”

“Offer?” Guma rolled his eyes. “In his dreams, offer. Guilty to the top count is the offer. Twenty-five to life.”

“He’ll never plead to that, my friend.”

“Fuck him, then, Jackie. Trying this scumbag will be a day at the beach. I look forward to it.”

Cooney shrugged. Although he did not want Vinnie out on the street any more than Guma did, he was also a pro. “Not such a day at the beach. Your witnesses are a whore and her wacky kid, and an accomplice to the crime, this Ritter, who by the way was brutalized by the arresting officer.”

“I got the teeth marks, Jack,” replied Guma airily. “He had the vic’s stuff in his apartment. His girlfriend-” Guma stopped, his eyes widening. “Hello,” he said, “I’m in love. Will you look at that?”

She had just walked through the courtroom door, a young bottle blonde with a sharp little face, chewing a wad of gum the size of a golfball. She was an obvious paralegal of some sort, one of the many who darted like guppies in and out of courtrooms.

A new one, perhaps: she seemed lost and was outfitted inappropriately for her job. She wore stiletto-heeled sandals, a deeply vee-necked, very snug baby blue sweater, and a shiny black skirt so tight and short that she was nearly hobbled, swaying precariously as she walked. She was carrying four fat legal files, two under each arm. The burden pulled her shoulders back and thrust her high, conical breasts into sharp relief.

She paused at the little gate that led to the well of the court. Two court officers practically collided as they leaped to open the gate and let her through. She smiled at them, giggled, walked around the end of the defense table, and approached the court clerk, followed by every male eye in the house. She spoke briefly to the clerk. He shook his head and gave her directions. Poor thing! She was in the wrong courtroom.

An arraignment was just finishing, having lasted six minutes, about average for Judge Slade. The defendant looked longingly at the blond woman as he was led away to the Land of No Girls. He said something naughty to her, and she giggled. Judge Slade frowned. The clerk tore his attention away and called the next case: “Calendar 2606. Boguluso.”

The young woman headed back out again, but as she passed the corner of the defense table, she seemed to wobble on her spike heels, to stumble. The four folders went flying and crashed to the linoleum, scattering a deep drift of paper around and under the defense table. She let out a little shriek and knelt down to retrieve her documents.

In this she was not alone. A half-dozen men, court officers, A.D.A.’s (with Guma in the fore), a defense counsel rushed to her aid, eager to help a fellow servant of criminal justice, to peer down her gaping neckline, and to look up her nearly exposed thighs.

Thus the task was quickly done, and the young woman soon rose, burdened again, flushed and apologetic. In a moment her small, shiny butt had wiggled its way out of the courtroom. Nobody noticed that when she left she was no longer chewing gum.

A few flights up from this scene, in the nobler precincts of Supreme Court Part 52, People v. Russell continued. Milton Freeland had begun the day by moving for a mistrial. The Post had done a story on the start of the trial in which Russell’s criminal record was featured in some detail, and Freeland was arguing that the material was prejudicial. Judge Martino growled, but he had to drag all the jurors out one by one and ask them if they had seen the offending article. They hadn’t. The morning vanished.

The delay meant that Karp’s witness, the arresting officer, Patrolman Thornby, would have his testimony broken by the lunch recess, reducing its probable impact on the jury. A cheap but often effective trick.

Thornby was a good witness. He had good presence and a clear voice, and the color of his skin didn’t hurt either. The story of the chase and of hunting through the baking, dark basement was told, and the Bloomingdale’s charge slip with the deceased’s name on it was placed in evidence.

On cross, Freeland seemed obsessed with the time the sales slip had been recovered, and the reason for the delay between the time Thornby said he had taken it off Russell and the time he had delivered it to Detective Cimella at the Sixth Precinct house. Karp knew why too.

Freeland was saying, “And when you took the sales slip off the defendant, what, if anything, did you do?”

“I wrote my initials down on it,” said Thornby.

“Did you write down the time?”

“No.”

Freeland asked, “Wouldn’t it in fact be very good police procedure to put on a piece of evidence the time that it’s recovered?”

Karp objected and was sustained. Freeland asked that the sales slip be circulated among the jury. While this was happening, he walked back to the defense table. The court clerk looked at his watch and said, “This is a long one, Judge. We don’t get out of here soon, I’m gonna miss my train to Hempstead.”

Thornby remarked, “You think you got problems? We just had our first baby, and my wife’s waiting on me to get her home from the hospital.”

There was a ripple of mild laughter, and Judge Martino spoke briefly to the cop about women and children. He himself had six kids.

At last the jury was done with feeling the sales slip, and Freeland continued questioning Thornby.

“There’s nothing that requires you to put on the time?”

“No.”

“But there’s nothing that says you can’t do it either, is there?”

Objection. Sustained.

Freeland looked ruffled. “I’d like to know the basis for the objection.”

Martino replied, “There’s nothing in law or police regulations that requires it, Mr. Freeland. The officer didn’t do it, and he’s already testified to that effect.”

“I’ll show you common sense requires it!” snapped Freeland. Martino gave him a long stare. Freeland said, “No further questions,” and walked back to the defense table.

Martino dismissed the jury for the weekend. Two guards took Russell back to the cells. The press and all the spectators left. When the room was nearly empty, Freeland approached the bench.

“Your Honor, with due respect to the court, and as much as it pains me to make this application, I have to ask that the record show that while the jury was examining the sales slip, there was a … some sort of colloquy between Your Honor and Officer Thornby, such that it might have an effect on the jury of making Officer Thornby’s testimony more credible. Therefore I must move for a mistrial at this time.”

Karp heard snatches of this and definitely caught the last line. He cursed under his breath, got to his feet, and crutched over to the bench.

Martino gave Freeland another long stare, and his cheeks darkened. He snapped at a court officer, “Get Thornby back in here!”

Thornby was brought back in and, as the stenographer tapped away, Martino went through everything that had been said in the little colloquy for the record.

Karp could see the judge’s jaw working. He had to give Freeland credit for balls, anyway. He was trying to infuriate the judge, not a usual tactic among lawyers, to say the least, but it occasionally paid off. The Chicago Seven gambit. If he could make Martino lose control, he might provoke a reversible error and get any conviction tossed out. That would establish the basis for a new trial, and perhaps months of delay.

That and the doubt about the time the sales slip had been found seemed to be all Freeland had, Karp thought. But maybe not.

Down in Part Thirty, they brought Vinnie Boguluso in, creating a momentary stir. The Tombs had sent the first team to accompany the huge defendant to court: a former professional wrestler named Walker, who was taller even than Vinnie and built with a lot less fat on him, and a weight lifter named Amico, who could, it was said, jerk and press anyone in the jail.

They took Vinnie’s cuffs off and sat him down at the defense table, and then took up their posts behind and to either side of him.

Jack Cooney came over to his client and looked him over. Vinnie had not had any clothes suitable for court, and he was a hard fit. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a new one without gang regalia, black jeans, and a brown shirt with a collar. He had shaved, at least, and his hair was cut short. He seemed curiously detached and content, not at all like a man about to be arraigned on a murder charge.

“Okay, Vinnie, here’s the deal,” Cooney said. “There’s no deal. So it’s up to you. I have to tell you, you got nothing to lose right now by going to trial.”

“Can I get bailed out?”

“Yeah, if you got about a million bucks. You own any property? Real estate?”

“Fuck, no. I look like I own any fuckin’ real estate?”

“Right. So we plead not guilty.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

The judge called the two counsel to the bench, determined that there was no offer and that the defendant was pleading not guilty. She nodded. The system was working for a change.

The reading of the indictment was waived, the judge asked for a plea, and Vinnie stood and said, “Not guilty.” The judge looked at him and curled her lip and asked the court officer to spin the drum that contained the names of all the Supreme Court trial judges. The court officer picked out a cardboard square and read a part number and a judge’s name.

Walker and Amico cuffed him behind his back and walked him out of the courtroom and down the passageway back to the holding pens.

Vinnie walked carefully. Stuck in his jockey shorts was the five inch switchblade knife that Duane’s girlfriend had managed to stick into the near left corner of the defense table with her wad of bubble gum while she was pretending to pick up her papers. Vinnie had palmed it as soon as he was seated and slipped it into his fly.

Court ended at four, about average on Fridays. Judges must roll home before the traffic, though the heavens fall. By four-thirty, Karp’s office was full of people he had invited.

Karp himself sat at the head of the long oak conference table, but sideways, with his bum leg propped up on an upended waste basket. To his right sat Ray Guma and then Marlene and Harry Bello. Across the table from them were Jim Raney and V. T. Newbury. Roland Hrcany came in last, accompanied by Detective Frangi, and sat next to Raney.

“What’s this about?” asked Hrcany in a peremptory tone. “It’s Friday. I got a date.”

Guma made a show of looking at his watch. “Jesus, Roland, what’s your rush? School just got out. Give her time to get her milk and cookies.”

Laughter, and Roland flushed and gave Guma the finger. Karp took this opportunity to start business.

“This won’t take long. It looks like People v. Tomasian is expanding.”

Roland’s brow congealed. “What’s that mean, expanding?” he said suspiciously.

“Just that there are more players,” Karp answered. “Somebody may have launched Tomasian. Somebody may have set up the vic. Tomasian seems to be related to at least one other murder case, a double murder involving wise guys, and a big fraud operation. That’s why I thought we should all sit down and see which end is up.

“Okay, let’s start with Guma. Goom, what’s the hookup with Cavetti?”

“Yeah, okay, here’s the deal,” Guma began. “I went to see Jimmy C. out at Riker’s, like you said. I say to him, ‘Jimmy, you’re in a bad situation here, and I’d like to help you out, but I know you’re a stand-up guy and I’m not gonna get shit out of you on this Viacchenza thing. But there’s something else you can help us out on that’s got nothing to do with any of that business.’ I said it could do him some good. And totally off the record.

“So I could tell he’s sort of listening. Jimmy’s a thief. I don’t figure he’s ever seen himself up on a murder, for that kind of stretch upstate.

“I say, ‘Jimmy, what I want to know is, like, it’s been bothering me-why the fuck did the Viacchenzas do it? I mean, they had a pretty good deal going. It’s years they’ve been ripping it off down by Kennedy. What could it be worth, crossing Joey Castles. Diamonds? Gold? Bonds? What?’

“He says, ‘Fuckin’ caviar.’”

Here Roland snorted a laugh and said, “What is this shit? What does this have to do with Tomasian? Caviar?” He laughed again.

Karp noted that Frangi was not laughing, and seemed unduly nervous. Karp said, holding up his hand in a mollifying gesture, “Listen and learn, Roland. It’s a long story. Go ahead, Goom.”

Guma continued, “So I go, ‘Caviar?’ And he says, yeah, this guy’s been around the Domino and Ciro’s, where Carl and Lou used to hang, looking for somebody to take something off. It’s common. Like you want to buy stocks, you go down to Wall Street, hang around Merrill Lynch, somebody’ll come over, sell you some IBM.

“So this guy says he knows they’re shipping some prime caviar in by air freight, knows the flight and the freight terminal, and he wants a piece of it. He says this’ll be a continuing thing: the shit comes in every month, the boys’ll lighten the shipment, and they’ll get paid. He says he’ll give them thirty large.”

He paused, and Karp looked at V.T., as perhaps the only person at the table who could quote from his head prices for caviar in bulk. “Does that sound right?” Karp asked.

“How much was involved?” V.T. asked.

“He didn’t say, but he did say this guy needed two guys to lift the crate, so figure, what, two hundred, two hundred-fifty pounds?”

V.T. looked doubtful and said, “If it was actually beluga caviar, the thief isn’t making much. That’d be close to the wholesale price.”

Guma said, “Yeah, well, Carl and Lou probably weren’t that much into caviar. They figured it was a nice, safe sideline. It wasn’t like this guy they were boosting it for was a wise guy or anything, somebody who could tell somebody and it would get back to Joey. And thirty large, regular. They figured it was worth the risk.”

“Who was the guy if it wasn’t a wise guy?” asked Marlene.

Guma smiled broadly, showing a remarkable collection of mismatched yellow teeth. “Ah, yeah. It was a Turk, as it happens. Said his name was Takmad. Ran a restaurant, he said, which was why he wanted caviar. He said.”

“So they lift the crate,” said Karp. “What happened then?”

“That’s where Jimmy got a little vague. Lifting it-no problem. They’re so wired out by Kennedy, the clerks, the guards, it’s like going to a fuckin’ K Mart for them. So they deliver it. So I say to Jimmy, ‘So, you find out they went into business for themselves, you ratted them out to Joey.’

“He got a little testy there. He don’t rat, he says. So who, then? I ask him. Jimmy don’t know, but somebody dropped a dime the day after the boys delivered the box. Not only the caviar, but the snitch tells Joey they’d been doing it for months.”

Karp said, “Great. Hold that thought for a minute. The next act is the art business, starring V.T. and Marlene.”

Marlene summarized the interview with Sarkis Kerbussyan and the story of the search for the Gregory Mask. V.T. added what he had learned from his investigation into the financial life of the various Turks and Armenians involved in the case.

“Summing up,” he concluded, “Kerbussyan has been pursuing liquidity to an unusual degree for the past nine months. He’s sold some property he should have hung on to, and he hasn’t bought anything else, not in real estate anyway. So, a lot of cash floating around. Some pretty big wire transfers to Switzerland. Also he’s received very substantial inflows of cash from wealthy Armenians in the U.S. and overseas. In the neighborhood of thirty million. This is since mid-February.

“On the Turks, Ahmet Djelal has a modest bank account, but he spends like a pimp. Aziz Nassif, the cousin, bought himself a nice location for his restaurant, and nobody knows where he got the cash. Nobody buys real estate in New York for actual folding money. The seller recalled it clearly.

“Mehmet Ersoy had, as we know, a nice wad in a box when he died. What we didn’t know until a day or so ago is that in the past year he has sent a total of”-here V.T. paused to check through some sheets of scribbled-on paper-“a total of, $1,835,000 to the account of his brother, Altemur Ersoy, at Esbank, Istanbul.

“Another interesting thing. NYPD art fraud has been working with Interpol on a series of fake scams run across Europe in the last two years, centered on Rome and London. The period of these scams fits almost exactly with the periods that Mehmet Ersoy was stationed in those two cities.”

He paused. “Now to the letters Ersoy also had in his box. They’re in a kind of crude code. Family bullshit, but not really. ‘I’m sending you a nice present. I hope Fatima will like it.’ ‘Thanks for your recent gift.’ Always uses the same locutions, either a ‘special present’ or a ‘very fine present, just like the special present.’ Genuine art and forgeries? It makes a nice story. In any case, the Ersoys are apparently generous people. There are presents and thank-yous mentioned in every letter.

“Okay, late February, early March, there’s repeated mention of a ‘special present’ coming. Also, old Altemur seems pretty worried. Talks about ‘our unpleasant relations’ trying to look in his windows. I think the cops were starting to pinch at him. Probably why they didn’t use the phone. ‘This will be my last present for a time,’ he says on February 22. ‘I will send it air express on March 10.’”

“The Viacchenzas pulled their heist when, Ray?” Karp asked.

“March 11.” Everyone was silent, thinking about that for a while.

“Did he say what the presents were going to be, or just ‘presents’?” Marlene asked.

V.T. smiled. “Yes, interesting question. Not normally. It just indicates with a name-a present from so-and-so. Obviously they’d worked the code out beforehand. But for this last one he did. He said, ‘I’m sending you a big case of your favorite caviar.’”

Vinnie was taken to change his clothes and was then returned to his cell, a ten-foot box designed to house two prisoners in reasonable discomfort, but which now held six. He lay down on the lower bunk. He heaped his blankets on the upper part of his body, including his head, and began to groan and writhe, shaking the three-tiered structure. While he did this, he used the knife to peel strips of thick crusted paint off the wall opposite his face, until he had a crumbly little mound about the size of an ice-cream scoop. He placed the paint chips in his mouth, deep in his cheek, like the tobacco cud of a ball player. Then he stuck the blade inside his mouth and made a long slit on the inside of his cheek. It didn’t hurt much; the knife was extremely sharp.

His groans and cries increased in volume. He rolled out of the bunk and, after staggering a few steps, collapsed on his side in a fetal position. A trickle of blood oozed out of his mouth. His roomies began to raise an alarm, yelling for the guards, delighted with this opportunity of getting rid of a man who was possibly the least desirable cell mate in the Tombs.

A guard arrived, checked out the problem, went back to a wall phone, and called for Walker. That was the informal policy: when Vinnie moved, Walker moved him, and it was obvious that something was seriously wrong with the big son of a bitch. He was bleeding from the mouth, and his face was flushed and covered with sweat.

Walker arrived, entered the cell, and heaved Vinnie to his feet. Vinnie immediately began to cough spasmodically; then he vomited a crimson lumpy mass all over the front of his own jumpsuit, the floor, and the tips of Walker’s shoes.

Walker jumped back, his face expressing both distaste and concern. Ulcers are as common among criminals as they are in the advertising business. Most experienced jail guards have seen the typical bloody, granular vomit of a perforated ulcer, and many have learned how fast a victim can bleed to death through one. Walker thought of the investigations, of the paperwork he would have to do if Vinnie punched out on his shift.

“Vinnie! Can you walk? Should I get a trolley?” he asked nervously.

“I can walk,” said Vinnie in a thin, cracked voice.

So he could, barely. The other guard locked up the cell, and Walker half carried his charge down the barred corridors toward the jail infirmary.

A small man in a white smock looked up in alarm as Walker dragged the huge bloodstained prisoner through the swinging doors.

“Knife fight?”

“No,” said Walker. “Popped his ulcer. He’s puking blood.”

As if to demonstrate, Vinnie heaved again, splashing a gout of blood across Walker’s white uniform shirt. Cursing, Walker wrestled Vinnie into a plastic chair.

Vinnie groaned. “I gotta go … toilet. Got the shits.”

Walker looked at the slight ward attendant and cursed again. “Should I take him, or …?”

The attendant nodded. “Yeah, go ahead. And then get him up on a gurney. Cuff and strap. There’s one in the hallway. I’ll call Bellevue. We can’t handle a perforated ulcer here. Wait! Sign him over first.”

Walker signed a blank form. The medic picked up the phone, and Walker got Vinnie moving down the hall to the toilet. He installed the prisoner in a doorless booth and turned to one of the sinks. He started dabbing at the bloodstain on the front of his shirt. He had reduced it to a large pink smear when he heard a faint sound behind him and turned.

Vinnie had squat-walked up behind him so as to keep his reflection out of the mirror. As soon as Walker turned, Vinnie sprang forward, rising, and drove his knife deep into Walker’s chest. Again. Walker collapsed without a sound.

The medic had finished his call and was busy typing out the transfer form. He saw a man in a guard uniform walk past him and called out, “He okay?”

“Yeah,” the man mumbled, and was gone.

“Cut to the chase,” said Roland irritably. “What’s it all mean?”

Karp looked around the conference table. He had everyone’s attention. “What does it all mean? Okay, here’s my take, but anyone else, you got any ideas, jump in. Mehmet Ersoy, our victim, had a brother who had access to art treasures. The brothers had a racket going. They worked some European cities and then, late last year, started in New York. He brought the head of security for the Turkish mission, Djelal, in on it, and maybe Djelal brought in his cousin Nassif.”

“How do we know that, Butch?” asked Hrcany. “Because they got money? Hell, I got money. Maybe their family’s loaded in the old country. We don’t even know these guys hang out together. I sure don’t with my cousins.”

“They hang out,” said Bello. Everyone turned to look at the cop, amazed, as if a file cabinet had started talking. “I followed Nassif. He went to the mission offices, then the two of them headed out in an embassy car.”

“Where did they go?” asked Marlene.

“They bought paint on Canal Street. I saw them heaving a big carton into the trunk of the Caddy. Big carton. They had to tie it down. Then they went back to Djelal’s place on 56th. They left the carton in the car.”

Roland laughed. “Very suspicious. We could get them for Attempted Felonious Decorating with a Bad Taste Color.”

Karp resumed: “Okay, at least it’s established that they’re buddies. Anyway, Ersoy, and whoever, started selling artworks through the Sokoloff gallery, some genuine pieces but also a lot of fakes. It was the same scam he’d used in Europe. They sold a lot of material to Sarkis Kerbussyan.

“Late last year, Ersoy told Kerbussyan that they’d gotten hold of this super treasure, this Mask of Gregory. Kerbussyan agreed to buy it and began gathering serious money from the Armenian community. He puts something like a million bucks down on it, most of which we find in Ersoy’s bank box after his death. At about the right time Ersoy’s brother sends this box of caviar.”

Karp paused and looked meaningfully around the table again. “Anybody want to bet that it was caviar in that box? No, me neither. Let’s say this mask was in the box. It goes out from Turkey on March 10, arriving at JFK March 11.

“Okay, now it gets complicated. A little prior to this, a Turk had contacted the Viacchenza boys and set up a theft from air freight. A box of caviar. He pays heavy cash in advance, with a promise of more. The Viacchenzas do the heist on March 11, late. This is a Friday. Two days later, Sunday, Mehmet Ersoy is murdered. Two days later, somebody calls Joey Castles and tells him the Viacchenzas are ripping him off. On the 18th, the Viacchenzas are gunned down. Maybe the snitch was the mysterious Turk, maybe not.

“Meanwhile, after all this, Joey is still talking to Sally Bollano about Turks and making some big score off them, with the involvement of a major fence. So. That’s it. How many animals can you find in the drawing?”

Roland spoke first. “Simple. Ersoy screws Kerbussyan on an art deal. Kerbussyan wants to get even. Tomasian wants to be a martyr to the cause, so he pops Ersoy.”

“That doesn’t explain the theft from the airport,” Marlene objected. “It doesn’t explain the Bollano deal.”

Roland answered blandly, “That’s a detail. Ersoy arranged for the theft. Or maybe the thing didn’t ever exist. It really was caviar, or a box of bricks. Then he tells Kerbussyan the thing got ripped off, and by the way, the million is nonrefundable. Kerbussyan has him killed, like I said. Now we got these other two Turks, they got a load of high-value objects they want to move. They’re scared to run it through the auction houses-there’s too much heat now. So they contact the mob and set up a deal with a heavy fence.”

“What about this guy Jimmy said hired the theft? What’s-his-face, Takmad?” asked Guma.

V.T. tapped a squat green-covered book he’d been leafing through. “It means ‘nickname’ in Turkish. Cute.

No, it’s got to be either Djelal or Nassif. Roland’s story is interesting, and it fits all the facts.”

Karp could see Guma nodding, satisfied. Karp might have been satisfied too if he had never met Sarkis Kerbussyan face to face.