Justice Denied (16 page)

The servant entered and stood by the door. Karp followed her out, passing as he did so two stocky, scowling men wearing field jackets and handlebar mustaches. Terrorists in training.

Karp got back into the car, awakened the driver, and was conducted back to the City. Mulling over what Kerbussyan had said about the motive for Ersoy's death, Karp decided that it might be worth at least poking around in that direction. On the other hand, he had an instinct for the culpable lie, arguably the most valuable, to a criminal prosecutor, of all the subtle talents. The old man had indeed been frank about a number of things, but when he had said that he did not know about the slain Turk's hoard of money, he had been lying through his teeth.

When Karp returned to his office, he found a distraught Tony Harris waiting for him. The young man looked as if he had just lost his family in a freak accident: he was pale and sweating and his eyes were hollow. A bearing less like that of the ordinarily chipper Harris could hardly be imagined.

“I got wiped in
Devers,
” Harris blurted out when Karp came in. So he had not lost a loved one, but a murder case, and one that should have been a lock. Karp gestured Harris into his private office and sat down behind his desk. His knee was throbbing again.

“What do you mean ‘wiped,' Tony?”

“Wiped! Case dismissed. The fuck-head walked out smiling and shot me the finger. God! Those witnesses! I sweated bullets getting them to testify. I swore to them; I swore it was a lock, that Devers was sure to go away for twenty. Now they're gonna see him every day on the street. Or worse. Probably worse.”

Harris looked like he was about to burst into tears. Karp understood the man's agony, if he had never shared it. He said, “How did it go down? This was at pretrial?”

“Yeah, the Legal Aid, Conyers, goes up for motions. I figured it was gonna be the old horseshit about the gun, its association with the defendant and all. But no, he moves to dismiss the eyewitness testimony. I was standing there like a frog on a rock. I didn't know whether to shit or go blind.”

“What grounds?”

“
People
v.
Hachett.
I never heard of it. On lineups. Basically it holds that in lineups, where witnesses have specifically identified an item of clothing worn by the alleged perpetrator, such an item can't be worn at the lineup, so the witness supposedly IDs the perp, not the clothes. When I did the lineups down at the station house, Devers was wearing a leather hip-length coat. The two girls, it turns out, mentioned the coat to the cops, but the cops never mentioned it to me. I mean we
had
the guy. The girls knew him, for chrissake, and so did the lady in the hallway. So he went into the lineup in the coat. That was it. The whole fucking case trashed. Oh, yeah, Freeland was there too, enjoying the hell out of it, it looked like.”

“Freeland? He was there?”

“Yeah, he waltzed in and talked to Conyers.”

“The son of a bitch. He must have been in on it.”

“In on what?” asked Harris.

“The scam. You were royally fucked, kid. Swindled.”

“How? I saw the case. I read it. The judge read it. It was real. I mean, you could argue with the application, but—”

“
Hackett
's an Appellate Division case,” Karp interrupted.

“Yeah, I realize that, Butch; that's the fucking problem, they threw out the conviction on
Hackett,
” replied Harris impatiently.

“It was reversed by the Court of Appeals.”

Harris opened his mouth, but no words came out. It was an old trick. New York calls its lowest felony courts “Supreme Court,” and the first level of appeal is called the Appellate Division. The actual supreme judicial authority in the state is called the Court of Appeals. A Supreme Court decision can thus be reversed by the Appellate Division and confirmed by the Court of Appeals, and although every lawyer licensed to practice in the state has explained this odd nomenclature on the bar exam, people still get confused, even judges.

Harris still looked stunned. He was pale and shaking his head. Karp, controlling his genuine rage, made his tone gentle.

“Okay, there's no use crying over it. You got robbed. I'll have some words with Mr. Freeland tomorrow. You should take off. Go home. Get drunk.”

“I can't. I'm on call this afternoon until eight.”

“Don't worry about it. You're in no shape to do intakes. Scram. No, really—out. I'll cover the shift.”

Amid protestations, not very sincere ones, Harris was packed off.

Karp had now traded an afternoon of sedentary desk minding for a long evening that might require considerable mobility. He had done this as much for himself as for Harris. That morning he had made an appointment for an arthroscopy, an investigative procedure that was sure to be followed by a major operation, one that was not certain to succeed. A week hence he would be disabled. In a couple of months he might find himself a cripple.

These thoughts bred in him an almost desperate desire to move, to act, to get away from papers and negotiation, to walk on the bloody margins of crime scenes, to talk with cops and skells, to breathe smoke and kick ass, while he still could.

All in all, therefore, given Karp's record, and this extra rocket up his pants, it was probably not the best afternoon in the year to murder somebody on the isle of Manhattan.

Murder was little on the mind of the man in the blue shirt as he walked carefully down the sunny aisle of Hudson Street, looking for a victim. He had most of a fifth of white port sliding through his body, cranking him up, giving him confidence. Two months out of Elmira, he was back at his chosen profession, purse snatching. He'd just quit his straight job, humping stuff at a warehouse. Actually, they'd canned him for being late too much. His daughter had booted him out on the street, and he had missed a meet with his parole officer. He had to score something today so he could get a place, and maybe find another job humping so the bitch of a parole officer wouldn't be on his case.

The West Village was a good place for it. Plenty of rich women by themselves. He needed a handbag off a rich white lady. Or a skinny faggot. Grab him, shove him in a doorway, take the purse, the wallet, the watch. Take all of two minutes.

He crossed 10th Street, moving north. At the corner a couple of obvious out-of-towners, a youngish couple, stood talking and studying a map. The woman had a shoulder bag.

The man in the blue shirt looked them over. The man was big and athletic-looking. It would've been a possibility with a gun, but all he had was a cheap kitchen knife with a five-inch blade. Besides, he didn't much like guns.

The man with the tourist map looked up and stared at him. He had nasty blue eyes and close-cut reddish hair. He looked southern, looked like he could handle himself. The man in the blue shirt passed on.

There she was. His heart accelerated and his gut roiled, as might happen to a man upon catching sight of a lover. A young woman, pretty, in a light coat, maxiskirt, and polished boots. A large, expensive-looking leather bag hung from a strap at her shoulder. She was moving right toward him on the sidewalk.

Now she turned and approached the entrance to an apartment building. This was perfect. All he had to do was follow her into the doorway and, when she stopped to open the outer door, lift the bag and take off.

She stood in front of the glass door and opened the bag to extract her keys. He made his move. She must have seen his reflection in the glass of the door, for she whirled to face him, her mouth opening.

He grabbed for the bag, caught its strap, and yanked hard, hoping to pull the woman off her feet. But she had wedged herself into a corner of the doorway and set her heels. And she had started screaming.

Echoing off the buildings, the screams seemed as loud as sirens. They hurt his ears. He heard footsteps behind him, and someone shouted. He let go of the strap and grabbed the woman's coat with his left hand and pulled his knife out of the waistband of his jeans and flashed it in her face. She screamed louder. He had to stop that noise. He stabbed her in her chest. She gave a last cry when he did this, different in tone from her screams for aid, a shriek like a baby's mindless call. Slowly she turned away from him and sank to her knees, still clutching the bag.

He cursed and stabbed her again, in the back, the force of the blow knocking her flat. She turned on her side and drew up her knees. Now she was quiet. The man in the blue shirt picked up his prize from the woman's limp hands and turned. A black man in a leather apron stood on the sidewalk in front of the shop adjacent to the woman's apartment building. There was shock and rage on his face. The man in the blue shirt spun away from him and ran south on Hudson Street. He heard shouts, and more screams, and the sound of running feet behind him.

On the sidewalk in front of her apartment house, Susan Weiner's perfect little life drained away in a widening red pool.

8

I
t is an old-fashioned hue and cry, the kind of thing that isn't supposed to happen in New York anymore because people don't care. The man in the blue shirt runs south on Hudson and turns east on Christopher, heading for the twisty little streets and alleys of the West Village. A half-dozen people run after him, shouting. The amazed faces of the tourist couple flash by his eyes as he runs, clutching the handbag under his arm like a football.

The block of Christopher east of Hudson is a short one. The man cuts sharply across the street, runs down Bedford, and turns east on Barrow. If he can get under cover before his pursuers reach the corner of Barrow and Bedford, he might be safe. A sunken courtyard at 58 Barrow catches his eye, and he dashes down its steps. There is a restaurant built partially out over the courtyard, casting it into deep shade. Two doors lead from the courtyard. He chooses the one on the right and pounds on it.

A young man opens the door. He is an actor expecting a delivery of moo goo gai pan from a nearby Chinese take-out. He smiles and says, “Hi. What do I owe you?” The killer pushes by him and runs through the small apartment. He is no longer thinking very clearly, or even as clearly as he normally does, which is not with any particular depth or lucidity. The idea of escape fills his entire mind. Here fortune favors him. There is a door opening into the interior of the building, and he goes through it and up two flights to where the stairs end in a small landing, under a skylight.

By now he is exhausted. He rests for a moment, panting, and rummages through the handbag. He tears a thin sheaf of currency from the wallet he finds there, seven dollars in all, and thrusts it into his pocket. He tosses the knife and the bag into a corner of the stairwell. He listens; the building remains silent. He begins to walk quietly down the stairs and stops, because he has just had a thought. He strips off his blue shirt and throws it into a corner with the other stuff. He is wearing a bright red T-shirt underneath it.

The killer walks down the stairs, past the door to the young man's apartment, and down a dimly lit corridor. He sees a door, opens it, and finds himself again in the courtyard. The young actor is standing there. He has gathered around him a crowd of people, the remains of the crowd who had chased the man in the blue shirt from Hudson Street. They are exchanging experiences. The young man looks up, sees the killer, and shouts. The killer darts back through the door.

Continuing along the corridor, he finds the building's boiler room, stifling hot and black as midnight. He lights a match. There are some large pieces of cardboard lying about. He uses these to make a nest for himself in the space under the boiler, and lies down in it, carefully pulling the cardboard around him.

The first officer to reach the crime scene was patrolman Ray Thornby, a sturdy black man in his fifth year on the force. He summoned a patrol car on his portable radio, and in a few minutes the dying young woman had been whisked away. Members of the crowd that had gathered vied to describe the assailant and the direction he had gone.

A thin young man on a bicycle came to a screeching halt at the edge of the crowd and shouted, “They got him!”

“Where?” asked Thornby.

“Building at 58 Barrow. He's in the basement.”

Thornby follows the bike rider to 58 Barrow. He sees that there is a crowd, an angry one, in the center of which is the young actor. The actor approaches the cop, introduces himself as Jerry Shelton, and explains what has occurred. A patrol car rushes up to a halt at the curb, and a sergeant and a patrolman get out. The three policemen learn that the actor was the only one who had actually seen the fugitive.

“This man actually came through your place?” asks Thornby.

“Yes! He pushed right by me like a madman, ran through my apartment, and out the front door.”

“What, this door?”

“No, the back door. It leads to a hallway and the stairs. There's no way out of the building from it except back through the courtyard. Then I saw him again, over there.” He points at the basement door, across the courtyard. The crowd murmurs assent.

“What did he look like?” Thornby asks.

“Around thirty, I'd say—not a kid. Shortish hair. About five-ten, maybe one-seventy.”

“What was he wearing?” asks Thornby.

“Oh, let me see—blue, I have a blue picture. It all went so fast. A dark blue shirt and jeans, or some kind of work pants. Sneakers. No hat or anything. He was carrying something too. I thought it was my lunch.”

“Race?” asks Thornby mildly. In the West Village you had to pry it out of them, especially if you were a black cop.

“Oh! He was black,” says the actor, reddening.

“Dark complexion? Light? Darker than me or not as dark?”

“About like you.”

“You're sure he's in the basement?”

“Yes, I told you, I just saw him,” says Shelton. The crowd murmurs assent again, although most of them have seen nothing.