No Lesser Plea (11 page)

“Sorry I’m late, guys,” she said, yanking the empty chair out with the toe of her boot and slamming her rear down on the leather. “I’ve had an un-fucking-believable whorehouse of a day.”

“That’s OK, Champ, we waited. As a matter of fact, we were just talking about you. Ray here was saying …”

Guma gave a strangled yelp. “Newbury, you’re dead!”

“Yes,” V.T. continued blandly, “he was speculating that your vaginal musculature was capable of ripping a nail out of a board, weren’t you, Ray?”

Ciampi didn’t blink. “Oh yeah? Did he elaborate? I mean sticking up, pounded flush, or countersunk?”

“A corpse, Newbury.”

“All flesh is grass, Goom,” said Newbury with a dazzling smile. “Ah, here’s our Margo. Let’s drink to Butch.” They poured the rich, pungent wine. “To homicide,” said Newbury, glass raised. They all drank and then Margo took their orders.

Karp said, “You got any pizza, Margo?”

Guma sputtered. “Pizza! Give me a break, Karp. Pizza in Villa Cella? Margo, don’t listen to him. Look, this is my party, I’m the head guinea, and I’ll order. First, bring a big plate of trigliette alio zaffrano, then the special canneloni, with veal piccata all around, OK?”

“I’m not eating veal,” said Marlene.

“Why not?” asked Guma.

“Because they nail the poor animals’ feet to the floor so they can’t move around and their flesh will be white. Yuck!”

“Marlene, they only do that to geese in Strasbourg,” said V.T.

“Well, I read that they lock them up in dark rooms, or something. Anyway, they have a horrible life, the little veals.”

“Shit, Marlene, so what!
I
have a horrible life,” said Guma.

“Yeah, but I’m not eating you, schmuck.”

“I only wish,” replied Guma, rolling his eyes to heaven.

“Guma, will you get off my case for one fucking minute? Christ, give me another glass of that stuff.” Karp poured and she picked the glass up and drained it in a gulp. She gasped and color rose high on her cheeks. “OK, I’m not going to get pissed off and screw up Butch’s party. But you will not believe my day.”

“What happened, Champ?” Karp asked.

“OK, first of all, you know the Ruddy Child Center case? This scumbag who runs the place is diddling the kids, and one of them tells the parents. It turns out that living on the same floor is our own Rick Pearl. He’s got his own two daughters in the place. So the parents go to their friendly, neighborhood assistant DA and Rick goes apeshit, gets a detective, goes down to the center, and braces the scumbag. Who cracks in about four seconds and spills his guts.

“OK, it’s tainted, right? Rick didn’t read him his rights. Granted, he should have turned it over immediately to somebody else. But we had solid testimony from a dozen kids, other workers in the center, other people who had quit working there because they didn’t like what was going on. What does the judge do, Albert “The Asshole” Albinoli? He dismisses all the charges, on the grounds that Rick’s mistake tainted all subsequent evidence. Can you fucking believe it?”

“That’s a tough one. It happens, though,” said Karp.

“No! No, that’s just for starters. OK, the hearing’s over, it’s the last case of the day, everybody’s riding down in the elevator—it’s packed solid—me, the witnesses, kids, parents, lawyers, and the defendant. He’s standing behind me. I still can’t believe this. All of a sudden, I feel a hand clamped on my ass. I look around, and there’s the fucking shit-face cocksucker slime dirt-ball pimp
defendant
with this little smarmy smile on his face and his hand on
my ass.
”

“What did you do?” asked Karp.

“What could I do? I jammed the heel of my boot down as hard as I could on his arch, and I said, in a loud clear voice, ‘Mr. Ruddy, kindly remove your hand. I already have an asshole down there.’ “

The three men by this time were convulsed with laughter.

“Why are you laughing?” said Marlene. “It’s not funny. And that’s not the end! OK, I drop off my files, and head out of the building, and catch this—he’s waiting for me. He asks me for a fucking
date!
”

“You accepted, of course,” said V.T.

“Of course. He has terrific acne. We’re going out for an evening of dinner and dancing and then he’s going to set me up with a groovy six-year-old. Supposed to be hung like a horse.”

The food came and they dug in. The espresso had just been poured when Karp glanced at his watch. “Shit, guys, I got to run.”

Guma said, “Well, Butch, the Complaint Room sucks, but if you have to be there, tonight is the right night. It’s going to be a party.”

“What party?”

“The Two-Three Precinct just pulled in a whole house full of high-class hookers who say they’ve been kidnapped. Can you believe that? The detective told me that some pimp with a lot of muscle got the idea that there was a plot by this other pimp to move onto his turf, so he snatched the girls and locked them up for four days in a basement.

“The girls’ pimp is a law-abiding citizen—his property’s been ripped off. So where does he go? The fucking Two-Three, right, and he tells them that this maniacal hooker-killer is on the loose. OK, now this particular pimp is like the sorriest pimp in New York …”

“Present company excepted, of course,” V.T. put in.

“Of course, V.T. And, of course, the cops take one look at this guy, who they know very well, and tell him to get fucked. So he leaves the precinct and a block away he gets jumped by the other pimp and three of his torpedoes and they beat the shit out of him and leave him in a trash can.”

“Is this for real, Guma?” asked Marlene.

“Honest. I got it from the cops just before I left for dinner. Anyway, the detective who took the original statement from the pimp—he’s a friend of mine, the detective, not the pimp—gets off work a few minutes later and finds the pimp. ‘Ah tol’ you muthafuckas sompin’ goin’ down. Ah tol’ you!’ says the pimp.”

“What the hell does this have to do with the Complaint Room?”

“Wait, Butch, this is the best part. The detective figures there might be something in the pimp’s story after all—not the Jack-the-Ripper bullshit, but some kind of fucked-up pimp war. Maybe the wise guys are involved, who knows? So he puts a call out for the SWAT team. The pimp leads them to where the girls are, they blow down the door and make another heroic rescue. So now we have a gaggle of hookers on our hands—they’ll all be down at the Complaint Room tonight to press charges.”

“Jesus, Guma, big fucking deal. You think I’m going to accept tips? Just sign the form right here, madam. Oh, you’d like to give me a blow-job? How generous, thank you so much.”

“Karp, you’re a great lawyer, but you have no sexual imagination. I got to take you under my wing.”

V.T. said, “A truly fascinating story, Guma. However, I don’t believe ‘a gaggle of hookers’ is the correct term of venery.”

“What is it, then, wise-ass?”

“How about, an anthology of pros?”

“No, a tray of tarts,” said Marlene.

“I’m gone,” said Karp, dropping his napkin on the table and pushing back his chair.

“No, wait, Butch, you haven’t received your present yet,” said Newbury.

“What present?”

“A decoration for your new palatial office.” He handed Karp a flat package wrapped in brown paper. “We’ve all signed it.”

Karp unwrapped the package. It was a framed photograph, grainy, as if it had been copied from a newspaper. It showed a group of horsemen in odd, square hats galloping into the plane of the picture. They wore white gloves and carried pennanted spears. Under a smoke-filled sky, they were heading toward several squat black shapes that close inspection revealed to be tanks. It was the famous photograph of the last charge of the Polish Lancers, September 1939. Beneath the picture, V.T. had written, “
C’est magnifique, mais c’est ne pas la loi.
”

“Thanks, guys,” said Karp. He shook hands all around, got a quick kiss from Ciampi, and walked out into the dark streets toward Foley Square and the Complaint Room.

The Complaint Room was the gateway to the criminal justice system, just as those little grates set into the curbs are the gateways to the sewage system. It had a similar ambience.

About fifty by one-hundred feet in size, it was painted with peeling green and ochre paint, lit by dull and flickering fluorescent lights, and overheated. The floor was covered with the evening’s trash and the air smelled of the losing battle Lysol was fighting with urine, vomit, sweaty bodies, and smoke. It looked like the second-class bus station in a third-world country. Half its area was partitioned into eight small booths, in each of which sat a typist with the appropriate equipment, a filing cabinet full of forms, and two chairs, one for the cop and one for the civilian witness if there was one. The cops took turns going into the booth and giving the typist the facts: the time, nature, and location of the alleged crime.

The ADAs—three by day and two at night—traveled from booth to booth, questioning the arresting officer, dictating the complaint to the typist, then moving on to the next booth. It was a slow process, which meant that the police officers had to sit waiting their turn, sometimes for hours. Once inside the booth, the cop had to wait for the ADA to come around and dictate, and for the typist to type and proofread. Then he signed the affidavit and took the complaint to the docket desk in the corner of the Complaint Room, had the complaint stamped with the docket number, and then went to court for the defendant’s arraignment. A single arrest might thus take up five or six hours of police time, which is one reason why you can never find a cop when you need one.

Karp walked into the Complaint Room at seven o’clock, to find more-than-usual chaos in progress. There were at least fifty people crowded into the waiting area and spilling out into the hall. Voices were raised in irritation and in the hallway some cops were breaking up a fight between two drunk witnesses. He turned to a woman seated at a desk in the front of the Complaint Room.

“Debra, what the hell is going on here? And what are you doing here? It’s past seven.”

Debra Tiel was a tough lady from South Philly who started in the DA’s Office as a typist. Now she ran the Complaint Room. Sharp and commanding, she knew how to get people to do things efficiently and like it; she was one of the indispensable, if unsung, trench soldiers of the bureaucratic state. After almost eleven hours in the pits, settling arguments between typists and cops and typists and ADAs and ADAs and cops and cops and cops, her coffee-colored face was visibly drawn, but her white blouse still retained its perpetual crispness. At the sight of Karp, she hoisted her silver-colored reading glasses from her nose and jammed them into her Afro like the visor of a knight.

“Sugar, am I glad to see you! We’re short a typist and an ADA and I’ve got sixty people to get into booths. Most of ’em are holdovers from the afternoon, before we closed up for dinner. I mean … !”

“Who’s working?”

“Hunk’s in Booth Six, doing good. Ehrengard never showed.”

“It figures, that shithead! OK, we’ll clean the place out.”

He walked into the room and scanned the seats. A tall black woman wearing fuchsia hotpants, a red satin camisole and a blond wig was using the pay phone. An elderly woman, her head bandaged, and her face bruised was sitting in a chair looking dazed. Next to her a young cop read the sports page of the
Daily News.
Two other cops were bringing a wino out of the men’s room and setting him down with some gentleness on a chair. The person next to him, a middle-aged shopkeeper in a checked sportscoat, said “Sheeesh!” and immediately vacated his chair. Karp caught a whiff and sympathized. The wino must have witnessed some significant crime. The cops would dry him out, keep him dry through his testimony and then toss him back into the gutter, where the person whom he had testified against would probably cut his throat some night. Right now, though, he was the safest wino in New York. The rest of the crowd reflected the city’s population—all races, the two major sexes, several of the minor ones, and most social classes were represented, united for once in boredom and imitation.

Karp took off his jacket, rolled up his shirt-sleeves and climbed up on Debra Tiel’s desk. Pitching his voice to carry, he said, “Alright, may I have your attention please! Everyone, may I have your attention! Hey, you want to shut off the radio?” Martha and the Vandellas vanished and the crowd turned to face the source of the voice booming down from eleven feet up.

“OK, we’re going to speed things up here a little.” (A few claps and sarcastic cheers from the cops.) “Everybody with homicide, rape, or sex cases raise your hands.”

“Does that include Dickie Wavers?”

“Tonight it does—flashing to fondling. All of you, go to Booth Three and get in line. All prostitution charges and all violations, including public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and harassment go to Booth Four and line up. All robberies and assaults, go to Booth One on my right; all burglary, trespass, go to Booth Two; all larceny, theft, auto theft, go to Booth Five, also anyone with bad-check arrests; all narcotics or gambling charges …”

“Does that include bookie collars?” a detective called out.

“Sure does. Go to Booth Six. Now, anyone left?”

“Just me, man.” Karp looked down from his tower and saw a black detective in a cream-linen jacket.

“Could I talk to you? I gotta get out of here, like now.”

Karp had worked with Sonny Dunbar before and liked him. He stepped down from the wastebasket and walked over to the detective. “What’s the problem, you got tickets to the Yankees tonight?”

Dunbar grimaced and ran his hand across his face. “I only wish, man. No, I got this shitty little purse-snatch collar, I’ve been waiting three hours, and I got serious family troubles, no lie.” He looked at Karp expectantly.

“Sure, Sonny, no problem. Let’s go into Eight.”

They went into the booth and Dunbar shot the basic facts to the typist: his name, defendant’s name, victim’s name, witness’s name, time, and location of the crime. Then he described the events in front of the drug store. Karp chuckled. “You wish they were all that easy, right?”