Justice Denied (24 page)

“How is it incriminatory?” asked Martino, his brows twitching. “He says, ‘It's my blue shirt.' I have a blue shirt too. You have a blue shirt. Admission that we have them is not incriminatory. Statement of the defendant was not in response to any interrogation connecting defendant with the crime or with any other statement of the defendant. Motion denied.”

Freeland did not seem flustered by this rebuke. Karp had to admit that he had a good courtroom demeanor. A strong voice, a snappy appearance.

Next motion. Move to suppress defendant's priors under the
Sandoval
rule, which says that a defendant cannot be cross-examined on his criminal record unless those convictions speak to the credibility of the defendant as a witness. Karp struggled to his feet, and they went through Russell's fifteen convictions, one by one. The judge allowed the burglaries, the larcenies. The jury can know that the guy steals things. On the assaults, Freeland began to argue from a parole report—the defendant was subject to uncontrollable rages—when Martino stopped him abruptly. “Is Counsel arguing mental incompetence here?”

“Ah … no, Your Honor, it speaks to circumstances mitigating the effect of the convictions on the credibility of the witness.”

The judge lowered his head for a moment as if to clear his throat, and the court clerk thought she heard him say, “What total horseshit,” which was impossible, and then the judge said, out loud, “Either argue it or don't! I will strike four of these convictions: two narcotics possessions, the carrying a deadly weapon, and this receiving stolen property. The rest stand.”

It suddenly struck Karp, and the thought inspired a vague queasiness, that the parole reports that Freeland had just used had been written by the dead woman's sister.

Next, Freeland turned to the witnesses, arguing from
Ward
that the lineup was so unnecessarily suggestive as to be unfair. The point of this was to throw out the identifications made by the Digbys and Jerry Shelton. The judge studied the photographs. All the people in the lineup were black men of about the same height and build. Motion denied. The same thing happened to Freeland's motion to suppress the spontaneous identification made by the leather-shop owner, James Turnbull.

Freeland objected. “Judge, if you're going to allow this eyewitness testimony, defense should have the opportunity to examine the People's witnesses at this time. Also, I move that the prosecution should be required to supply us with the names and addresses of all witnesses they intend to call.”

Karp rose. “Your Honor, the People have no obligation to provide names and addresses of civilian witnesses. Statements of potential witnesses are not discoverable under New York law, Section 240.20, Criminal Procedure Law.”

“Thank you, Mr. Karp,” said the judge. “I am familiar with the statute, but it is also true that New York precedent gives the trial judge broad discretion to compel disclosure, although People's witnesses should be compelled only on a showing of most unusual and exceptional circumstances. Are you prepared to make such a showing, Mr. Freeland?”

“Your Honor, since the physical evidence in this case has no direct or obvious connection with the defendant, the testimony of the identifying witnesses is of extreme importance. Also the nature of this case—the murder of a white girl, this incredible rush to select a black indigent as the murderer. I would construe that as unusual and exceptional, certainly.”

“Would you?” asked Martino. “Well, I would not, within the guidelines suggested by
People
v.
Hvizd.
Denied as to the discovery.”

Karp saw an odd look come across Freeland's face, a nervous look but touched with something mischievous, as when a boy is deciding whether to heave a snowball at a cop. Freeland spoke again, confidently, “Your Honor, citing
People
v.
Blue,
Appellate Division, 1973. The court found that the pretrial hearing was inadequately and improperly conducted in that the identification witnesses were not called by the prosecution to testify at it and that the hearing court would not permit the defense counsel to examine the witnesses as to their original testimony to the police.”

Blue
? thought Karp, suddenly asweat. What in hell was
Blue
? He should know all about any cases that bore on prosecution witnesses. Protection of witnesses was essential to winning trials—if Freeland could get all Karp's civilian witnesses up on the stand now, he could probe for weaknesses, confuse them, establish a record of contradictory testimony, alienate them—it would be much worse than simply getting their names and addresses.

But
Blue
was a mystery. Unless … He looked again at Freeland, and all at once he was sure.

“Shit! He's trying it again!” The words appeared in his mouth before he could stop them.

“Excuse me, Mr. Karp, I didn't get that,” said the judge inquiringly.

“Oh, sorry, Judge. I meant to say, I believe the Appellate Division ruling in
Blue
was reversed by the Court of Appeals.”

“Mr. Freeland, were you reading from an Appellate memorandum?” asked Martino, frowning. “Yes? Okay, five-minute recess. Get the law.”

The look on Milton Freeland's face was worth a month's salary.

In front of 525 East 5th, the street and sidewalk were full of tattooed men in sleeveless T-shirts and leather pants, sitting on big, shiny, customized Harleys, drinking beer and wine from bottles, looking corpselike under the glare of the sodium lights. They were shouting and scuffling, grabbing and kissing similarly attired tattooed women and each other, and doing all the other things that outlaw motorcycle clubs do to make themselves loved and admired by the general population, all this to the sound of music that seemed to be largely composed of guitar feedback played at the max.

They were also dealing drugs fairly openly, despite the fact that Harry Bello was standing across the street, leaning against the stoop of number 528 and watching them. Or maybe they were doing it because Bello was there.

He didn't mind. He had no intention of making a drug bust, but he wanted them to know he was there and watching.

Something swift and bright appeared in the corner of his vision. It was a thin girl of about ten, dressed outlandishly in a tattered bridal veil and a lacy pink party dress. She had come darting past the stoop to talk with a Puerto Rican woman. The woman had dyed blond-streaked hair and was wearing pink shorts, a sequined halter, and sandal spikes. She was leaning against a parked car, drinking with several similarly attired Puerto Rican women.

The little girl was arguing with the woman. Their voices grew shrill. Bello's Spanish wasn't that great, but he gathered that the two were mother and daughter and that the mother wanted the girl in the house, and the girl wanted some money to go down to Avenue A and get ice cream.

A smack sounded, a hard one: The girl shrieked like a vole in a trap. A flurry of blows. The bridal veil was torn loose. Sobbing, the child gathered it up and ran into the house. The woman in the sequins laughed and resumed her chat with her sister whores.

Bello stared at the woman. He recalled her; her apartment had a good view of 525, he had interviewed her twice. She was one of the tribe of din-see-nothins. Bello tried to think about how to make her some trouble.

He watched the gang across the street some more. A young woman in light green coverall and a head scarf, a woman going to a night shift somewhere, walked out of an adjoining building and started west on 5th. When she saw what was going on, she checked and crossed the street.

One of the bikers saw her cross and made a run at her, laughing. He threw a clumsy arm around her shoulder and tried to kiss her, but she shrugged off the arm and ran across the street. Harry tensed and put his hand on the butt of his revolver.

The man saw the gesture and snarled and shouted something and went back to his pals. His friends egged him on, attributing homosexual qualities to him in colorful language.

Bello walked behind the young woman down to Avenue A. In an all-night, he called Marlene.

She was used to getting calls from Harry at odd hours. The baby had been so cranky these last days she wasn't getting much sleep anyway.

“It's not Avanian,” he said without preamble when she picked up the phone.

She nevertheless felt cranky. “Is that a new greeting, Harry? I like it. Let's not say, ‘Hello, Marlene, sorry to disturb you.' Let's all start saying, ‘It's not Avanian,' when the other person answers.”

“The brother was by Beekman,” said Harry, ignoring this.

“I don't get it, Harry. That's the woman went to the coast and came back. I thought you checked with United.”

“It's the woman who went, but the woman who went wasn't Avanian.”

“Harry, what about the credit card? Where did Avanian's plastic come from?”

“It was the tattoos. We should have figured. I'm slowing down.”

“What tattoos, Harry?”

“On the Beekman girl—woman. Avanian didn't have any that her brother knew of. But the woman in Beekman had tattoos. Quite a few. So do the women who hang out with Vinnie and his friends.”

Marlene hated playing the straight man. She tried to kick her brain into gear. “Okay, so if she wasn't Avanian, she was somebody who had at least one of Avanian's possessions, or knew someone who had, and if she was also connected with the gang, that means …” What did it mean? Then it hit her, with a cold chill.

Before she could speak, Harry said, “The Jane Doe is Gabrielle Avanian. She lived in the neighborhood. She was walking down the street that night and they grabbed her. I almost saw it happen to a woman tonight.”

“Just at random?”

“Sure. The fuck do they care? Our Beekman woman must have boosted her stuff, her credit card, and her ticket, went off and had a little vacation. Disneyland, L.A. Vinnie and them were probably not too pleased about that. She must have blown five, six grand. Then she came back, like an asshole, and they found her and did her. We could confirm it was Avanian through dental records. I'll get on that first thing.” He paused. “Still no witness. We could roust their place.”

Marlene considered it briefly. Could she get a warrant on the basis of a witness seeing two silhouettes on a roof and a crazy theory? Maybe. Then what if they found evidence connected to the victim in apartments occupied by the gang? The mutts could play nobody-knows-nothin' or he-did-it forever. There was probably a substantial transient population going through there anyway; without eyewitness testimony or a confession, they didn't have a case that would stand up.

She was about to share these considerations with Bello when he said, “I saw your little friend tonight. The princess.”

“Oh, yeah? Where?”

“Building across the street from the mutts. She lives on three. Her mom's a pross. She was giving the kid a hard time.”

It popped into Marlene's mind all at once. Angels falling from the sky and getting smooshed. It had to be that.

“She lives across the street from where the murder took place? With a street view?”

He caught the tone in her voice. “Yeah. What's up?”

“She saw it, Harry. She's our witness.”

“Witness? A flaky kid?”

“And if she saw it, the odds are her mother saw it too.”

“I asked her already. Zip.”

“Yeah, but we didn't know. Now we know! Get her, Harry. Squeeze her.”

The following day, Concepción (Chica) Perez proved to be squeezable. Most prostitutes are. After obtaining a guarantee that the police would find her another place to live, she admitted that she and her daughter had watched as Vinnie Boguluso grabbed Gabrielle Avanian off the street, picked her up like a doll, and carried her into his building, amid the laughter of Eric Ritter and Duane Womrath and several others she could not identify. An hour later, she saw the woman being thrown over the roof parapet. She also observed the three men standing on the sixth-floor fire escape attempting to urinate on the body in the street below.

Marlene read over the formal Q. & A. she had taken from Perez after Harry had finished with her.

“I'm going to warrant all three of them. Let's pick them up right now. Who're you going to take?”

“I'll do it.”

She looked at him to see if he was joking. It would have surprised her. Harry didn't go in much for joking. He wasn't joking.

“Harry, these guys are dangerous.”

“To girls,” he said.

He did go by the Fifth Precinct and collect a RMP and a driver, and they drove to 525 East 5th Street. It was nine-thirty in the morning. Harry told the driver to wait in the car and went into the building alone. The gang occupied the first two floors. The apartments on the upper floors were either abandoned, their fixtures and wiring ripped out, or home to a transient population of junkies and runaways.

He knocked on the scarred door of Apartment 1-C, and knocked steadily for something like three minutes. These were not early risers. A surly voice shouted, “Who the fuck is that?”

Harry shouted, “It's Harry Bello. Open up!”

Monkey Ritter threw open the door, dressed only in grayish Jockeys and a sagging T-shirt. He saw Harry and his eyes widened. As he drew breath to shout a warning, Harry's fist caught him solidly in the solar plexus and he crumpled; only a strangled whine escaped his throat. Harry cuffed him and frog-marched him unresistingly down the hall, out into the street, and into the back of the RMP.

“Keep him quiet, would you?” said Harry to the amazed young cop. “And can I borrow your cuffs? I only brought one pair.”

The driver gave him a set. “You sure you don't need any backup?” he asked.

Harry shook his head and went back into the building.

He found Vinnie in the back bedroom of 1-C, lying on a mattress with a girl. Also in the room were piles of dirty clothes, a new nineteen-inch television set, a red steel toolbox, a disassembled 1956 Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide, and, lying near the mattress, a sawed-off shotgun.