Justice Denied

5

Karp sloshed his drink idly in his glass and looked around through the milling crowd for Marlene. As a rule, he disliked workplace parties. He had to pretend to like drinking, to find amusement in what drinking did to the brain and behavior (in order to avoid being thought a spoilsport, one of Karp’s big fears, and somewhat justified), and to socialize with people he would not have shared three words with had they not had a function in his professional life, and, since his profession was criminal justice, that included socializing with an unusual number of unpleasant people.

He would have avoided this party, as he had many others, had not the guest of honor been Tom Pagano, the outgoing director of the Legal Aid Society offices for the Manhattan criminal courts and a man for whom Karp had immense respect and affection. Pagano had been copping pleas when Karp was still in grade school, and now, in his early sixties and tired, had been rewarded with a judgeship, which in comparison to running Legal Aid was a paid vacation.

There was Marlene, by the bar, of course, smoking and sucking wine coolers and talking animatedly to a short curly-haired man. Karp pushed his way through the crowd to her side.

She hailed him gaily. Marlene at least was enjoying herself. She liked parties, which was yet another reason for coming to this one, to forestall the “he never takes me anywhere.”

She gestured possessively at Karp and said, “Paulie, this is my husband, Butch Karp. Butch, Paul Ashakian. He just started working for Legal Aid. He’s from the old neighborhood; the Ashakians used to live across from us in Ozone Park. I used to run around with his sister Lara, and Paul and my brother Dom were on the gym team together at St. Joe. A giant family, bigger than ours. My kid brother and Paulie used to think the Chuck Berry song was about them.”

“Song?” said Karp.

“Honestly, Butch! Where were you? A Whole Lot Ashakian Goin’ On? Get it?”

The two men shook hands. “Marlene thinks I’m culturally deprived, I missed rock and roll,” said Karp, smiling. He gestured to the party at large. “You’re losing a great boss.”

Ashakian nodded vigorously. “Yeah, he recruited me, and now this.”

“Any word on the replacement?”

Ashakian laughed. “Hey, I can barely find the men’s room. I’ll be the last to find out. You’ll know before I do.”

“No, they don’t tell me anything either,” said Karp. “I never hear the gossip.”

“Nobody tells you gossip because you can keep a secret,” said Marlene. “People come into your office and swear you to secrecy and tell you some juicy stuff, and then what do you do? You don’t tell anybody! Of course they stop telling you-you never tell them anything. You’re out of the grapevine, Butchie.”

“Luckily, I have you to inform me,” said Karp.

“Yes,” said Marlene, “I blab. I’m so deep in the grapevine I’m covered with sticky purple juice.”

“So who is it?” asked Ashakian.

Marlene threw down a healthy gulp of her drink. “I’m not gonna tell, since I’ve been sworn to secrecy. It’s Milton Freeland.”

Blank stares from both. “Freeland. From Sussex County Legal Services. Apparently a hotshot, hard-charger, good political connections.”

“I wish I was impressed,” said Karp. “I never heard of the guy. I was expecting a promotion-one of Tom’s people.”

“Go figure,” said Marlene, “and speaking of blabbing, I was just telling Paul about your doubts on Tomasian.”

Karp’s face crinkled in disbelief. He glared at her and said in a strained voice, “It’s not my case, Marlene.”

She ignored the tone and said, “Paul doesn’t care about the legal details. It’s the Armenian connection.”

“I don’t understand,” said Karp.

Ashakian was more than willing to dispel his ignorance. “That’s the whole point. The Armenian community is really bent out of shape about this. I was at a meeting the other night at the Tomasians’ house He put both hands to his plump cheeks and shook his head. “You would’ve thought the Turks were beating down the doors. Pandemonium. It was like, years of paranoia were sitting there, just waiting for something to spring it, and this was it.”

“Paranoia?”

“Yeah, about the Turks,” said Ashakian, and then seeing the incomprehension on Karp’s face, sighed, as if he had explained something far too often, and continued, “Turks and Armenians? Cowboys and Indians? Nazis and Jews? The Turks killed a million and a half Armenians between 1915 and 1920, including one of my grandparents.”

“And they’re still doing it? Killing them, I mean.” Karp considered himself something of a connoisseur of murder, both mass and individual, and he was vaguely aware of having heard something about the subject the young man had opened, but he was blank on the details. Nor could he understand what it had to do with the case at hand.

“No, they’re not. They got them all, or they ran. Some were rescued by Europeans after the first war, some went to Soviet Armenia.”

“I don’t get it, then. What’s the point of the terrorism? Or are you saying there aren’t any Armenian terrorists?”

“Oh, there are Armenian terrorists, all right,” said Ashakian grimly. “The point is that the Turks won’t admit it ever happened. There wasn’t any genocide, according to them. They won’t acknowledge it, won’t pay reparations to survivors, nothing, zip.”

‘That’s impossible,” said Karp. “It’s like those nuts that claim Auschwitz never happened. Hell, the physical evidence-”

“No, it’s not the same. Thousands of witnesses saw the Nazi camps. The camps were captured while they were still in operation. It was obvious what was going on, and the Germans kept good records. But the Turks didn’t do it that way. They drafted the young Armenian men and massacred them in their barracks. They drove the rest of the population out into the countryside and marched them to nowhere until they all died of starvation and disease. Women and children! Babies tossed into ditches!

“No photographs, of course. Shit, there were probably about twelve cameras in Turkey in 1915. No records either. The only witnesses were German civilians, and the German government didn’t do anything about it while it was going on because the Turks were their allies. After the war, all they had was oral testimony from survivors, Armenians. Suspect, obviously.”

“I can see where it could be hard to believe,” said Karp judiciously. Ashakian’s face had flushed as he warmed to the subject, and a glint of fanaticism had appeared in his eye. Karp looked at Marlene for conversational support, but she was obviously enjoying the lecture and was not averse to seeing Karp discomfited. He had endured any number of lectures on the Holocaust from childhood onward, often with a we-Jews-have-to-stick-together-or-else subtext from people looking for emotional or substantive favors. He was holocausted out, in fact, as Ashakian clearly was not.

As if reading his mind, Ashakian turned to the familiar theme. “Look, imagine World War Two had lasted, say, another three years. It could’ve, easy. The Nazis would’ve been able to kill all the Jews they had. Then they tear down the death camps and pave them over, build parks or housing on top, get rid of all the shoes, the hair, and whatnot. They burn the records. Then, after the war, if anybody asks, they say, ‘Jews? What Jews? They left. They’re in Russia, China, who knows? Have another beer. Witnesses? It’s hearsay, exaggeration. Besides, how can you trust Jewish testimony? It’s self-interested. They were on top and we kicked them out, and now they’re whining about a massacre.’ That’s exactly what happened in Turkey. You know what the Turks say? ‘Trust a snake before a Jew, and a Jew before a Greek, but never trust an Armenian.’”

The three of them were silent for a long moment, thinking about this. Then Karp said, “Okay, back to the present. What’s the tie-in with the Tomasian case?”

“The tie-in is somebody whacked Ersoy and they’re framing Aram for it. Aram is an Armenian nationalist. Who has a hard-on for Armenian nationalists?” He laughed bitterly. “Who the hell even knows what an Armenian nationalist is?”

“You like the Turks for it? You think Ersoy’s own guys did it and set up the frame?”

“Who else?”

“Another Armenian nationalist,” suggested Karp mildly. “Or anybody who knew what you just told me.”

“That’s bullshit!” Ashakian cried, loud enough to draw stares from other drinkers. Then he remembered to whom he was speaking: one of the more powerful figures of the New York criminal bar and, not incidentally, a man twice his size. He flushed and mumbled something apologetic and added, “It couldn’t happen. I mean, Armenians are a very close-knit community.”

“So are the Italians,” said Karp with a dirty look at Marlene. “They don’t have much problem whacking each other.”

She stuck out her tongue at him briefly and said, “Don’t change the subject, dear. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

“I told you, Marlene, it’s not my case, and I don’t want to talk about it.” As he said this, he bore in his mind, as a griping burden, the knowledge about Mehmet Ersoy’s safety-deposit box, grudgingly related by Hrcany the day before. The presence of the money meant that the odds against the murder being a simple terrorist act had gone way up. There were documents in the box as well, which were now up at Columbia being translated from Turkish. Karp was not inclined to reveal these discoveries as gossip at a party.

Ashakian looked disappointed. Karp could see the respect dying in his eyes. Why did these young lawyers expect you to pursue justice? After a few minutes more of bland conversation, Ashakian made an excuse and left Karp and Marlene together at the bar.

“That wasn’t very smart, Marlene.”

She finished her wine cooler and signaled the bartender for a refill. “No, it wasn’t,” she replied, “but I’m off duty. I don’t have to be smart. He’s a nice kid and he’s worried. I thought it would perk him up to talk to you about it, since you also don’t like the Armenian for it. I was wrong: sue me!”

Karp gave Marlene a long, appraising look. Her heavy, straight brows were lowering, and her exquisite jawline had assumed a cleaver-like sharpness. She’d obviously had a few and was moving inexorably toward righteous belligerence. It was not beyond her to go into a screaming scene in front of the entire New York County criminal justice establishment. Karp decided to forestall this possibility with a judicious retreat. He groaned and flexed his bad knee.

“Listen, I’m wiped out. I need to split.”

“But the party’s just getting going,” protested Marlene.

“Me, not us. You stay, have a good time. You need a break anyway. I’m going to schmooze for two minutes with Pagano and then head for home. I’ll relieve Belinda, be a daddy for a couple of hours.”

Marlene didn’t bother to protest; in fact, she beamed and laid a serious kiss on Karp, in front of judges and everybody, a kiss that was as good as Demerol for his aching body.

He rolled off unsteadily through the throng, and found Tom Pagano sitting at a drink-laden table, surrounded by well-wishers and cronies from Legal Aid. Pagano smiled broadly as Karp approached and waved him over. “Butch Karp! Here he is, guys, the Prince of Darkness. Sit down, have a drink!” The happy hubbub seemed to diminish slightly as Karp slid gratefully into a chair. Somebody put a full bottle of Schlitz into his hand.

Although the lawyers who faced one another every day in the criminal courts pretended to a genial collegiality out of court, it was an inescapable fact that the adversarial system was well named. Winning and losing was part of the game, but Karp won a little too often; in fact, in over ten years he had never lost in a homicide trial. Among the public defenders sitting around the table there was not one whom Karp had not trounced in court.

No, there was at least one. Karp felt eyes on him, and he turned to confront the intense gaze of a stranger. Who extended his hand across the table and said, “I’m Milt Freeland.”

Karp took the proffered hand. “Tom’s replacement, right? Glad to meet you.”

“You have good sources of information: it’s not even official yet. Of course, no one could replace Tom,” said Freeland in a tone that implied that not only could Tom Pagano be replaced, but that it was about time. Freeland was in his late thirties, a thin, small man with a large nose, black horn-rims, and an aureole of reddish hair around a balding dome. He was wearing a too-tight baby-shit-colored three-piece suit and a dark red tie with little gold justice scales embroidered on it.

Karp said flatly, “No, no one could.”

Pagano was looking down the table at the two men. He shouted out, “Hey, Freeland, that’s the guy to beat.”

“I intend to,” said Freeland quietly. Karp nodded politely at this and stood up. He tapped on a glass with a swizzle stick and raised his beer.

“I’d like to propose a toast. To Tom Pagano, a great lawyer and a great guy-a man who could defend scumbags year in and year out without ever becoming a scumbag himself-well, hardly ever-the guy who, next to Francis Garrahy, taught me more about trial work than anyone else, and doesn’t he regret it! Best of luck, Tom!”

Tom Pagano laughed, the table applauded, and after a few minutes spent in the usual raillery, Karp was able to slip away.

Marlene felt a touch on her upper arm and turned to look into a pair of familiar swimming-pool-colored eyes.

“Raney! What are you doing here?”

“A little security detail. Lots of important people wandering around drunk.”

“Yeah, it would be a tragedy if anything happened,” said Marlene. “Somebody tossed a bomb in here, it’d set criminal justice back four days. Well, it’s been months! You’re looking spiffy. That’s quite a suit.”

Jim Raney was a detective with the NYPD, with whom Marlene had a history going back several years. The suit-a double-breasted number in a very pale tan-did look good on his slim figure. He grinned and pirouetted. “You like it? I got a deal.”

“From whom? Roscoe’s Fashions for the Heavily Armed?”

“I wore it for you, Marlene,” he said, rolling his eyes and batting his eyelashes, and placing a warm hand on her knee. He had them to bat, thought Marlene. Raney had never made a secret of his attraction to her, but hers to him was something she preferred not to think about. Those wild Irish boys! Their milky skin, their big blues, their golden hair, their crazy-making attitude toward women! Which was why, although ever on the cusp of falling for Peter Pan, Marlene had married Captain Hook.

She laughed and patted the erring hand. “Wanna dance, Raney?”

There was a three-piece combo playing tunes derived from the youth of Tom Pagano and his contemporaries. Later, when drunkenness was more general, they would play Italian kitsch-“Way, Marie!”, “Hey, Comparé,” “Come-onna-my-house”-and wizened judges would sway to the music and shout the words, whether they were Italian or not.

Raney and Marlene danced to “Dancing in the Dark.” He was a good dancer, and she liked to dance more than she usually got to, married to Karp. He held her tightly, and his right hand slipped lower than its official position at her waist.

“So what’s new, Raney? Any hot cases?”

“I passed the sergeants’ exam.”

“You did? Good for you. Does that mean a transfer?”

“Yeah, they got me slated to move into the Nine next month. They want me to finish up on this airport task force first.”

“How’s that going?”

“Umm, not all that great. The usual wise-guy horseshit. A couple of guys that’ve been boosting stuff from air freight for years got themselves whacked outside a bar on Ninth Avenue. We got the guy, or anyway, a guy who’ll go down for it. Besides that, domestics and drug shit. The usual. How about yourself? They still raping them pretty good?”

The hand was now gently cupping her right buttock. She did not object, because she had just thought of something she wanted from Raney, whore that she was.

“Jim, there’s something I’m interested in-in the Nine.”

“Oh?” It was not an encouraging noise.

“Yeah, a Jane Doe, took a header off a building in Alphabet City. Camano’s handling it as a suicide, a pross. I think it could be a murder, maybe a weirdo.”

Raney’s manner changed instantly from genial to chill. “What does the M.E. say?”

“Undetermined pending further investigation. But the woman was raped. She had teeth marks all over her.”

Raney shrugged and relaxed slightly the intensity of his clutch. The music changed to “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” but he didn’t feel like a chacha. He said, “It takes all kinds, Marlene. Why don’t we just wait for the further investigation?”

“Ah, shit, Raney! You know there won’t be further investigation. Not if they got it pegged as a suicide. Not if there isn’t a family making waves. All I’m asking is, just give it a shot. Just look into it.” She smiled fetchingly and tweaked his tie. “Come on. For little me?”

Raney grinned at her. “Marlene, darling. You know I love you, but … let me say that if you were offering me a lot more than a cheap feel on the dance floor, a lot more, the absolute last thing I am gonna do is to stick my nose in another cop’s investigation, especially in a precinct where I’m not even in there yet, and where I’m gonna have to move into a command slot. No way, baby.”

“Oh, crap, you’re just like my husband,” she cried. “Okay, just forget it. I want another drink.”

When Marlene arrived home two hours later, she was at that stage of drunkenness when the jolly effects of inebriation have begun to thin out, and the brain and body are about to take their revenge for having been flooded with a deadly poison. At this point one can drink more until oblivion arrives, staving off the reckoning until the morrow, or stop drinking and tough it out. Marlene had chosen the latter course, not wanting to render herself comatose in the midst of a pack of drunken lawyers, or in proximity to (the quite sober) Detective Raney.

Raney got her home in his beat-up Ghia. His behavior was beyond reproach, limited to a peck on the cheek at parting and a comradely pat on the thigh.

She could hear the wails from the first floor. Little Lucy was having one of her evenings. Entering the loft, she found Karp stumping to and fro like Captain Ahab, looking gray, holding the red-faced, squalling infant and patting her back despairingly.

Marlene threw down her coat and snatched her daughter. “I fed her,” said Karp. “I changed her. I fed her again. She wouldn’t calm down.”

Marlene sat in the bentwood rocker. “Did you sing and rock?”

“Of course,” said Karp indignantly. “It didn’t work. She’s been crying for hours. She’s not sick, is she?”

“No. What did you sing?”

“I don’t know-what does it matter? Rock-a-bye baby, nursery rhymes, the usual.”

“That’s the problem,” said Marlene and began to rock and sing:

Chistu voli pani,

Chistu dici: ’Un cci nn’e,

Chistu dici: Va ’rrobba,

Chistu dici: ’Un sacciu la via,

Chistu dici: Vicchiazzu, vicchiazzu,

camina cu mia!

Ten minutes of this and the child was out cold. Marlene put her in her crib and returned to the kitchen, where she ate four aspirin and a glass of tomato juice. Then she collapsed on the red couch next to Karp.

“Thank God,” he said. “I was going nuts. How did you do that?”

“Oh, sometimes a girl needs her momma. And sometimes her Sicilian genes need a special treatment.”

“That song? What does it mean?”

“Um, something like: I’m hungry, I want bread. There isn’t any. Then go and steal some. I don’t know how. Come with me, old man, and I’ll show you.”

“Very nice, Marlene. When she starts muscling the other kindergarten kids for milk money, we’ll know why. I’m writing to Mr. Rogers about this.”

“Please, my head is coming apart. Speaking of crime future, I think I’m going to put Harry Bello on this Avenue A thing when he comes over.”

“The jumper? I thought the M.E. didn’t rule on that.”

“Not on the homicide, no, but the rape part-I don’t like it. It has all the marks of a particularly nasty sex crime-the bites, the sexual bruising. It looks like the kind of thing where if he’s done it before, he’ll do it again. And once, just once, I’d like to nail a serial weirdo before he gets going on the series. I’m telling you about it now because just in case we come up with evidence that it’s a homicide, and we find a guy, I don’t want it to get lost.”

Karp didn’t mind. He was happy to do Marlene a favor: anything to distract her from the Armenians.

On the following morning when Karp held his weekly trial meeting, the Armenians were much on his mind. At the trial meeting the assistant district attorneys who were planning trials laid the cases they had prepared before their peers, and Karp, who attempted to shoot them down: a sort of legal scrimmage. Such discussion was possible because trials were much rarer than murders. Of the thousand or so homicides brought to attention of the law in Manhattan, fewer than one in ten would get before a jury, the remainder being otherwise disposed of, usually by plea bargaining. Or the guy would walk because somebody forgot to do something important.

Karp looked around the table, the seats at which were reserved for presenters. There were four of them this morning. The rest of the staff sat along the walls in chairs they had wheeled into the room, or they were perched on Karp’s desk or on windowsills. He nodded to the man seated to his right and said, “Okay, Guma, let’s get started.”

The man so addressed was short and squat and looked enough like Yogi Berra to turn heads on the street, the main differences being that he was not quite as handsome as Berra and could not hit a high inside curve ball, for which reason he had been denied a career in the majors. Besides that, he was a very good athlete, as were almost all the men (and the two women) crowding the room. Karp had found, or imagined he had found, that people who played high-level competitive sports made the best trial lawyers. They had thick skins and a certain casual brutality without which survival at Centre Street could be measured in weeks; they lived to win; they played hurt; they could work as part of a team. It was not a job for the legal intellectual: let them work on Wall Street or teach at Harvard, was Karp’s thinking.

Ray Guma was a good example. It was not entirely clear that he could read. It was a fact that no one had ever seen him writing anything down. Yet he never forgot a face, or a name, or an incident from any case he had ever handled. Nobody in the D.A.’s office was more magisterial on the subject of the mob, its politics, its personalities, its plans. It had rubbed off; Guma was mildly corrupt in what he considered a good cause. He consorted with known criminals. He was an astonishing and indefatigable lecher. And though he shared no point of habit or moral standard with his boss, the Mad Dog of Centre Street, as he was known, was one of Karp’s favorite people.

Guma began his presentation. “This is People v. Cavetti. Okay, Jimmy Cavetti was part of a gang that’s been ripping things off from air freight out at Kennedy for years now. They did high-value stuff: wines, furs, art, antiques. Needless to say, the goombahs are in it heavy. It’s under the Bollano family, a capo regime name of Guissepe Castelmaggiore.

“So, a cozy arrangement. They bought enough of the shipping clerks and expediters to get them the word on where the good stuff is. Joey Castles handles protection, plus fencing the stuff, plus divvying the cut for the families. The other two main guys in the gang were the Viacchenza brothers, Carl and Lou, solid Bollano guys. The vics in this case.

“To make a long story short, Joey finds out the Viacchenza boys are skimming the take, holding out. Joey has a short fuse. One night last November, the Viacchenzas are leaving the Domino Lounge on Ninth. They walk past an alley, and somebody takes them out with a twelve-gauge. There’s snow in the alley, and we pick up a perfect heel print, which we match to Jimmy’s shoe. That’s the case. The shoe and the situation.”

There was a brief silence. “How did we get the shoe?” asked Karp.

“Search warrant based on reliable informant. The usual horseshit. This time the cops really got a reliable informant. One of the shipping clerks in on the theft deal. They nailed him on a dope thing and he gave them Jimmy C.-I mean that Jimmy fingered the Viacchenzas for the hit. He didn’t name Joey Castles, needless to say-he wasn’t that stupid. They’ll move to suppress the shoe, but we shouldn’t have any trouble.”

Roland Hrcany, who was at the table, spoke up. “Did he do it?”

Guma snorted. “You mean, was he the trigger on the hit? Fuck, no! Jimmy’s no killer. He’s a thief. Nah, Joey Castles probably got a contract out. Jimmy was just there to finger, maybe drive. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention. We got an eyeball says Jimmy was cruising around the Domino earlier on the night of, asking about the brothers, were they there yet, anybody seen them-like that.”

“But he’ll stand up on it?” asked Karp. “To murder deuce?”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Guma, shrugging. “Jimmy was always a stand-up guy. On the other hand, he’s never looked at twenty-five to life. But what you’re asking is, will he rat out Joey Castles and whoever was the shotgun artist? I’d say no. Which is why we got the tap and the bugs on Joey.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Hrcany. “He didn’t do the hit, but we’re trying him for it?”

Guma turned himself and leaned forward so that he could look directly at Hrcany, who was sitting on the same side of the long table. “What kind of remark is that, Roland? The fuckin’ guy was there. He was holding the shotgun’s hand, for chrissake. He’ll go down for it too, unless he deals.”

Karp didn’t like the way the conversation was drifting, and he knew very well why Roland had raised that silly point. Karp asked, “But will he deal when it comes down to it?”

Guma said, “No. He’s saying, ‘Convict my ass.’ He figures we got a weak case, or that’s what his lawyer’s telling him. One heel print against his alibi. He got some bitch to say he was with her. (Sorry, ladies.) We shouldn’t have much trouble impeaching her. They’ll try to impeach our shipping clerk and our bar-flies. They’ll get shoe experts. You know the routine.”

Karp did indeed. He said, “Okay, good job, Goom. Tony?”

Tony Harris, a bright young left-handed pitcher from Syracuse whom Karp had raised from a pup into a competent and aggressive prosecutor, told his story: People v. Devers-a man, a woman, drugs, a gun. The D. had a record of atrocious violence, and had shot down the woman in front of three shrieking children. It was therefore one of the cases on which Karp had decided to hang tough. The defendant had done likewise, making the state work for it.

As usual, Karp questioned Harris closely about the details, and, following his example, so did the other lawyers. The M.E. evidence, the testimony of witnesses, the fact that all potential witnesses were sought out and interviewed, the defendant’s alibi, the lab work, what the cops found.

After the questions were exhausted, Karp summed up the case. “The problem here is that the direct witnesses to the crime are minor children aged three to seven. Not convincing to most juries, easily confused on cross. So we build the case on indirect evidence, which is convincing. We have a neighbor who came out in the hall after hearing shots and made an ID. We have two young women outside the apartment, saw the defendant enter, heard the shots, saw the defendant exit. We have physical evidence in the form of nynhydrin tests that show the defendant had fired a gun recently. We have the murder weapon found in a sewer located on the direct route between the victim’s apartment and the defendant’s apartment three blocks away. It’s a story. Anything wrong with it that we haven’t brought up?” He looked around the room. Silence. “No? Okay, good job, Tony. Next.”

Next was an A.D.A. named Lennie Bergman, and the case was People v. Morales. Bergman had just begun his account when Karp interrupted him. “Did you get my note on this?”

The attorney hesitated. “Yeah, I did.”

“And you still want to go to trial on it?” Karp stared hard at the man, who met his gaze levelly. Bergman was a stocky, blunt-featured man, a defensive lineman out of Adelphi. Not an inspired mind, or particularly perceptive, but competent, tough, and certainly not a man to be moved by a disapproving stare from his boss. “Okay, make your pitch,” said Karp.

Bergman presented his case, after which Karp tore into it, pointing out the absurdities in Morales’s supposed behavior after the crime, the lack of direct witnesses to a crime that had supposedly taken place on the street, the fact that Morales’s grandmother persisted in her story that the incriminating evidence had been planted. But nobody else seemed to smell a police scam, and Karp was left with the choice of either directly overruling a good attorney or letting him go to trial under a cloud based not on any direct knowledge but on Karp’s experience and instinct.

Karp tapped on the table and looked at the faces sitting around it: Guma bored; Harris interested, inclined to be sympathetic, but confused; Bergman, pugnacious, defensive; and Hrcany. What was that expression in Hrcany’s eyes? Challenging? Contemptuous, a little? What was he thinking? That Karp was afraid to try the tough ones anymore? That he had become too nice about the provenance of evidence?

They were waiting. Across Karp’s mind passed the sudden wish that he had never gotten into the business of supervising other people’s cases. Then he said, “Okay, fuck it, go for it. Roland, you’re up.”