Depraved Indifference (26 page)

“Oh, yeah? Who won?”

“Me, so far, I think. But on points.”

Just past one, Karp found Tony Harris waiting for him outside the DA's conference room on the eighth floor of 100 Centre Street. He was carrying a fat sheaf of wide green-and-white-striped computer printout, the kind computer jocks call elephant toilet paper. His tie was pulled down and his long wispy hair was disheveled.

“Thank God. I thought I was going to have to go in there alone,” he said with relief, handing the sheaf to Karp.

Karp glanced at the summary tables on the front page. “You should, as part of your education. It's the world's greatest display of lawyers who have never been near a courtroom. They should be stuffed and sent to a museum. How do we look?”

“About the usual. Clearance rate's up a point, five down off our quota. It looked worse this morning. They fucked up the programming. We had
negative
rates for a couple of crime categories. I got them to do a rush for us, since it was their goof, and—”

“Hold on, Tony. You know about this computer shit?”

“Yeah,” Harris replied sheepishly. “I was a business admin major before I switched to prelaw. I did some COBOL programming at Syracuse.”

“No kidding?”

“It's no big deal. The jerks picked up a canned program from LEAA and loaded it without testing. It was in a different version of COBOL and the address parameters were slightly different, so the counts were off. What I did was—”

“Stop, you're talking Chinese. Listen, Tony, can you get into the computer and, like, mess around with it?”

“Theoretically, sure. If I had the passwords and access to a terminal. Why?”

“Nothing,” said Karp. “Just a thought. Look, I got to go for my whipping. See you later.”

Conrad Wharton prided himself on starting meetings on time. He was talking to the assembled group of bureau directors and assistants, each with a stack of printouts on the table, when Karp walked in, five minutes late. He immediately stopped talking, and Karp took his seat in silence. He always performed this embarrassment ritual. Karp had continued to come late.

Wharton resumed his commentary, which he delivered in a rapid-fire nasal monotone, confident and empty. At calculated moments he would purse his cupid-bow mouth and stare at one or another of the men to see how his wisdom was being received. His mouth was a curious shade of bright pink, like the candy-lipsticks favored by small girls. His hair was white-blond, short, and thin and his face was round, bland, and nearly beardless. He looked like a sweet doll until you looked into his eyes, which were blue and calculating.

He finished his speech, some administrative business about new forms and an admonition to purchase no new furniture during the upcoming fiscal year without a written justification attached to the standard requisition. Most people took notes, for Wharton liked people to write while he was talking. Karp diagrammed basketball plays.

Wharton flipped through his printout and said, “This month makes the sixth straight month the Criminal Courts Bureau has failed to meet its clearance quotas. I think that's a record.” He let out a dry, humorless chuckle: “Hegg, hegg, hegg.” Most of the people around the table laughed politely. Karp looked up from his paper and regarded Wharton blankly. “Oh? Gosh, Conrad, I thought we were doing real good. You sure Data Processing got those numbers right?”

Wharton frowned. “What do you mean?”

Karp picked up his printout and let it flop down on the table. “This was run off a program written in the wrong version of COBOL. The address parameters are screwed up. I caught a bunch of mistakes myself, and as you know, Conrad, I'm not any computer expert. Hegg, hegg, hegg. How do we know any of this is worth discussing?”

A flush dawned over Wharton's peach fuzz. “That was a minor problem and we fixed it.”

“Maybe,” Karp said. “But we ought to make sure. Did any of you guys notice any errors this month?”

This was, of course, an invitation to mutiny. Even professional ass-kissers will turn on their tormentor given a reasonably safe opportunity. For months Wharton had been heckling them about their “stats” and telling them “figures don't lie.” Now it seemed they did lie, and the chance to pin their bureaus' shortfalls on the system was irresistible. The meeting was soon out of control.

Wharton bluffed for a while, but then had to call in Rich Wool, a skinny, long-necked character who ran the information system. He, in turn, had to call in a squad of data weenies, pale, slug-like creatures who blinked in the unaccustomed glare of the aboveground and talked incomprehensible jargon at one another. After fifteen minutes Wharton dismissed the meeting as hopeless and retired to his private office in a huff, trailed by Wool and his weenies flapping unfolded reams of printouts.

Karp was about to descend the stairs when he remembered his promise to Marlene about her compensation claim. He went into the Admin suite and tried to find out from various clerks and special assistants what had become of the claim jacket. It was on Mr. Wharton's desk awaiting signature. Karp sighed and headed for Wharton's private office. He walked up to the secretary, a good-looking brunette, and said, “I got to see him. Two minutes.”

“He's in a meeting.”

Karp brushed by her. “Two minutes,” he said. “He'll see me. I'm one of his favorite people.”

Wharton had a big window office and new blond oak furniture. He had an American flag, a state flag, and a little platform for his big oak desk, so he could look down on visitors. The only visitor at that moment was Rich Wool, who by the look of him had just gotten a monumental reaming.

Wharton looked up, scowling. “Yes? I'm in the middle of something.”

“This'll only take a minute. It's urgent,” replied Karp blandly, not moving and obviously not intending to move. Wharton glared and then gestured for Wool to leave, flicking his hand as if brushing off an insect. Wool scuttled out the door.

“All right, what is it?”

“Marlene Ciampi, one of my people, has a request for workplace-injury compensation in your office. I'd like to know what its status is.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Wharton, his mouth pursing toward a smile, “that thing. Well, its status is, we're considering it.”

“And when will you stop considering it?”

“Oh, that depends on a number of factors. We could expedite it quite a bit if we could make a few, ah, adjustments.”

“What are you talking about, Conrad?”

Wharton leaned back in his huge judge's chair and put his feet on the desk and his hands behind his head. He had tiny feet encased in soft tasseled loafers. He smiled. “Butch, my boy. You know how things are done around here. You give a little, you get a little. You cooperate with me, I cooperate with you.”

“Like how?”

“Like changes in attitude. Like being a team player. Like not being such a hard-ass on this Weaver case. Like relaxing a bit on Karavitch.”

“Let me understand this, Wharton. You're suggesting that I throw two murder cases and in return you'll do your job and sign off on a legitimate compensation claim? Is that the deal?”

“Throw cases? Nobody's talking about throwing cases, Butch. Just a matter of easing up, a change in emphasis. And from what I hear, the Karavitch case almost kicks itself out of court. The evidence seems shaky in a lot of ways, don't you agree?”

“I can't believe I'm hearing this, even from you, Wharton. God damn, you're a pimp!”

Wharton's feet came off his desk with a bang. He stood up, his fists clenched and his jaw working. “Don't you speak to me that way in my own office! Who the hell do you think you are? You ape! Do you have any idea what it takes to run a prosecutor's office in a city this size? Let me tell you something: your precious Francis P. Garrahy sure as hell didn't. Have you got any idea what shape record-keeping was in when we got here? You know what we found? Big bottles of black ink and boxes of steel pens, and goddamn ledgers. We've been trying for two years to move this office into the twentieth century and we've done pretty well, despite everything you and your asshole friends have done to mess things up.

“I've tried to help you, God knows, and I've gotten nothing in return but contempt and juvenile misbehavior. Fine! You'll hang yourself sooner or later. But then you have the unmitigated gall to come in here, with your goddamn attitude and ask me for a favor for your little piece of ass—”

Karp lurched forward, put his massive hands on Wharton's desk, and brought his face to within inches of Wharton's own. Wharton drew back instinctively and fell into his chair.

“Wharton,” said Karp slowly, straining to keep his voice calm. “I'm sorry I called you a pimp. I don't know what you are, but you sure as hell don't have the balls to be a pimp. I'm trying to be nice now. I'm trying not to kill you, because if I did, I would probably walk on a temporary insanity plea, which is against my principles. So let me ask you once again, when are you going to stop sitting on this goddamn claim?”

Wharton sat up, his face blazing and dappled with nervous sweat. “When? I'll tell you when. I'm going to stick that claim in her retirement file. She'll get it when she's eligible for Social Security. Now get the fuck out of my office before I call a guard!”

13

“H
OW DID IT
go?” Tony Harris asked him. It was three-fifteen, and they were sitting side by side in the empty jury box of a courtroom on the twelfth floor, waiting for the arraignment of Jerold Weaver, the man who had gunned down the dry-cleaning magnate under the impression that he was ridding the city of a pimp. Karp was there to observe and advise, and also to dissipate the rage built up during his interview with Conrad Wharton. He could still feel it pounding in the pulse at his temples and churning his stomach.

“Don't ask,” he replied. He massaged his belly and wondered whether he was going to have to start gulping antacids like the old farts who worked in the courthouse. He realized it had been a grave error to allow his temper to flare out of control in front of Wharton. He had always understood at some level that Wharton—and Bloom himself, come to that—had allowed him to survive this long because they wanted his complicity in what they were doing. They admired and despised him at the same time. They wanted him as their tool, as a cog in the mechanical justice system they had constructed. Amazingly, with all their power, they sought his approval.

For this reason they let him get away with stuff. Especially Wharton, who patronized him at every opportunity, and treated him like a political imbecile, a naughty boy who would come to his senses, given enough patience and plenty of firm but fair punishment.

Karp could play that game, too, and had, scaling his resistance and contempt just a hair short of the level that would force them to admit that he would never come across. He knew he had exceeded it this afternoon, and he knew why. Bloom and Wharton had to be involved in Flanagan's evidence. It was too lawyerly a plot. The poisoned bait was too custom-designed to appeal to a prosecutor's appetite for it to have come from any other quarter. “
Why
is the question,” he said out loud.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, Tony, just mumbling to myself.” He brought himself to focus on the case at hand. “I see we have Sleepy Sam Lepell on the bench. His Honor is not exactly an ornament of the profession, but he's not a bad guy, if you don't confuse him with the law. He's about a year from retirement, but his brain retired about ten years ago. On the other hand, he is not going to pressure you to accept a cockamamie man one on this. Rafferty's slick. He'll try to focus attention on the defendant's emotional state at the time of the shooting, and he'll offer years in the can, zero to twelve, fifteen, the limit—”

“Because of the max-out rule,” Harris said.

“Right, because of max-out, he only has to serve two-thirds the max time. It's the zero that counts. He could be walking in eighteen months, the little shithead. But the judge gets credit for the stiff fifteen of the max. Crazy, but that's show biz. Which is why you hold out for the top count, murder two.”

The clerk called the Weaver case, and Harris got to his feet and collected his case files. “Go get 'em, baby,” Karp said. Harris gave him a stiff smile. He was nervous, not because he was unprepared, but because of the nasty politics surrounding the case.

Rafferty, a thin, dark-haired man in a shiny gray suit, had moved into the well of the court. The guards brought in Jerold Weaver and escorted him to the defense table. Weaver had a jug-eared monkey face and a wide drinker's nose set in the middle of it. He looked used up and confused.

The judge asked for the plea. Rafferty said, “Not guilty, Your Honor. And may counsel approach the bench?” Sleepy Sam beckoned with a plump white finger, and the two attorneys advanced to the oak presidium. Karp couldn't hear what the three men were saying, but he could easily guess, having done the same thing countless times himself. Rafferty would be making his offer to change his client's plea to guilty in return for a reduction in the severity of the charge, which was particularly important here, because murder was the one exception to the max-out rule. If Weaver went up for murder two, he would spend a long, long time in a very unpleasant place.

What Rafferty had to give, therefore, was his guilty plea; what he wanted was an essentially meaningless sentence. What Harris had to give was his consent to the reduction in charge; what he stood to gain was another precious clearance. If the bargain went through, moreover, the judge would avoid the annoyance of a trial and get credit for a stiff twelve- or fifteen-year sentence.

Things were not, however, going smoothly in the shadow of Judge Lepell's bench. A shadow of annoyance flickered across his normally unfurrowed brow. Karp grinned. Harris was making waves. Rafferty would up the ante year by year to the maximum the law authorized for first-degree manslaughter, while at the same time suggesting elements in the case that would make for a difficult conviction at trial. Harris would hang tough. He had an unambiguous murder with no procedural impediments in sight and a reliable eyewitness who had observed the killing across the width of a car seat. It was a training-wheels case for a prosecutor.