Falsely Accused (19 page)

Karp repeated the question calmly and got the same answer. He said, “Mr. Wharton, tell your client that if he doesn't give me his name, I will leave these proceedings right now and go over to Judge Craig and get an order requiring him to do so, and when the press asks me what's going on, I'll tell them that the D.A. required a court order to reveal his name.”

Bloom rolled his eyes at Wharton and said, “Sanford L. Bloom.”

“Thank you,” said Karp, and swore him in. The stenographer's keys clattered. Karp handed Bloom a Xerox of the letter Bloom had written to the Mayor. “I give you a letter dated June twentieth of this year. It's addressed to the Mayor and signed by you. Did you write it?”

“Yes, of course I did,” said Bloom after glancing at the document.

Karp consulted his notes and began with the most inflammatory charge. “In this letter you state that in late May of this year Assistant District Attorney James Warneke apprised you of deficiencies in the performance of the chief medical examiner, the present plaintiff, Dr. Selig, in reference to a homicide case,
People
v.
Lotz,
to wit: that he had failed to properly supervise the person who made the initial examination; that he had lost certain evidence in the case and threw other evidence away; that he altered the logbook at the morgue to conceal this; and finally, that he made remarks of an unprofessional nature, insulting to the dead victim in this case, namely that a positive acid phosphatase test performed on the victim's vaginal secretions might not have been the result of seminal fluid but of snails. Mr. Warneke told you that Dr. Selig had said, quote, maybe she put snails up her vagina, unquote. Is that substantially correct?”

“Yes. That's what's in the letter.”

“Good. When Mr. Warneke conveyed all this to you, what action did you take?”

“Action?” asked the D.A.

“Yes. These were serious charges against a prominent official. Did you investigate them to see if they were true?”

Whispered consultation with Wharton. Bloom said, “I had no reason to doubt the report of Mr. Warneke.”

“Did you confront Dr. Selig with these charges?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was not under any obligation to do so. And besides, Dr. Selig was often arrogant and dismissive when confronted with the failings of his office.”

Karp felt a stirring to his right. Murray Selig was getting steamed.

“Was he arrogant and dismissive to you personally, at face-to-face meetings?” Karp asked.

This required a consultation too, after which Bloom said, “Not to me personally, no, but to my people.”

“To Warneke?”

“No, Davis.”

“Oh, you're referring to Miss Marsha Davis, the A.D.A. in
People
v.
Ralston?
”

“Yes.”

“I see. Now, according to Mr. Warneke's deposition, which we have already taken, he brought these charges to your attention on May twenty-eighth of this year. Is that correct?”

“Yes, around about there.”

“All right. Referring now to the charges in the letter regarding the
People
v.
Ralston
case, Miss Davis accuses Dr. Selig of not making himself available to her in this case, of being late for a trial, although she gave him—what was it?—four weeks' notice of the trial date, and also that on one occasion when she went to visit him in his office, he humiliated her in front of another gentleman. Is that what you meant by Dr. Selig's arrogant and dismissive attitude?”

“Yes, that's an example.”

“I see. But according to Miss Davis's sworn deposition, you were not informed of these problems until mid-June at the earliest. Yet you still declined to investigate Mr. Warneke's serious charges of late May, because Dr. Selig was arrogant and dismissive? Is that correct?”

The district attorney huffed and made an impatient gesture with his hand. “The details of when somebody came to me about this or that problem are not the point. It was well known that there were plenty of problems.”

“Was it?” asked Karp, leafing through a folder on the table. “I give you a copy of a letter dated February 11, commending Dr. Selig for the timely and expert assistance of his office in several difficult cases. It's signed by you. Do you recall this letter?”

“I sign a lot of things,” said Bloom. He did not look at the letter.

“I'm sure you do. Can you account for the deterioration of Dr. Selig's performance from exemplary in February to incompetent and worthy of dismissal in late May and early June?”

“I have no way of answering that.”

“Are you familiar with the letter written to the Mayor by the commissioner of Health, Dr. Angelo Fuerza, dated June fifth, containing a number of complaints about Dr. Selig's performance?”

“I've seen it.”

“Did you at any time meet with Dr. Fuerza and the Mayor with the purpose of developing a case against Dr. Selig?”

“No.”

“Did you solicit, did you demand from your subordinates in the D.A.'s office, damaging information about Dr. Selig?”

“No, I did not.”

That's a lie, thought Karp with satisfaction. Now let's try for a few others. “Did you meet with the Mayor on May twenty-third to discuss your problems with Dr. Selig?”

Consultation with Wharton. “I'd have to consult my calendar.”

“No need. I give you a copy of the Mayor's appointment book page for that date. You met with him. And did you discuss Dr. Selig?”

“I may have.”

“And isn't it true that for your own reasons you decided that Dr. Selig had to be fired well before you received any complaints about him from your staff …”

“Don't answer that!” said Wharton.

“… and that you are in fact the source of this conspiratorial vendetta against Dr. Selig?”

“This is preposterous!” said the D.A. A flush had spread across his smooth pink cheeks.

“I take it you are answering no to my last question.”

“Of course, no!”

“Thank you. Turning now to the charges in your letter related to the case
People
v.
Mann.
When did you first become aware of the charges that Dr. Selig had allegedly lost evidence in that case?”

Bloom seemed to relax as he answered the question, and the next, and the next. Karp took the D.A. over the four homicide cases mentioned in the letter to the Mayor. The questions were routine; Karp knew all the answers, having already deposed the staff people responsible for supplying the information. The purpose of the questioning was to establish the full involvement of the D.A. himself in the conspiracy to unseat Selig.

The questioning continued for some hours, until late in the afternoon. The windows in Karp's office had already gone dark. A dullness had settled over the group. Karp had made his voice monotone. The questions were repetitive: when did you, what did you, I show you this letter, this memo, have you seen, are you familiar with?

And then, in the midst of this ennui, not changing his tone at all, casually Karp asked, “What occurred during the second or third week in May that convinced you that Dr. Selig had to be fired?”

A frozen moment. The tap of the steno's fingers petered out in a dry rattle. Everyone looked at Bloom. Karp saw what he was looking for, the startled flick of the eyes, the movement at his throat as he swallowed hard. Karp looked at Wharton too, and he saw that Wharton had his little cherub's mouth open, and that he was looking at his patron with confusion on his face.

This took only a second or two. Then Bloom cleared his throat, smiled, and shrugged. “I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about.”

Karp stared briefly at him and then continued, as if nothing had happened, with a question about some petty point about the chain of custody relative to a bloody shirt in
People
v.
Mann.

Bloom and Wharton left soon afterward. The steno packed up her machine and left too. When they were alone, Murray Selig said, “I thought that went okay. You shook him up a couple of times.”

“It went about like I thought it would,” said Karp flatly, not looking at his client, arranging papers into piles.

After a pause, Selig asked, “You're still pissed off at me.” It was a statement, not a question.

Karp said, “We're not married, Murray. You're the client. It doesn't matter if I'm pissed off at you. The opposite,
that
would matter.”

Selig laughed unconvincingly. “You're a hard guy, you know that, Butch? I told you, I forgot about those jobs.”

Karp looked up from his papers. “Murray, look: this is how it is. We prepped like crazy for your deposition by the defendants, and I remember telling you, I believe, numerous times, that a critical part of your case for damages was a showing that you could not be employed as a chief medical examiner, or as a competent authority in the field, because your reputation had been so badly besmirched by these
momsers,
and that therefore, if you had taken employment in your field, I needed to know about it, so I could advise you as to how to answer their questions relating thereto. Imagine how surprised I was, then, when the Mayor's counsel asked you if you were negotiating for the job of chief fucking medical examiner of Suffolk County, and you said yes, you were.”

“I explained that, Butch. It was my in-laws doing me a favor. They're big shots out in Suffolk.”

“Murray, it's fine, God bless them. I just needed to know that beforehand. That, and the other little zingers that came out in deposition. A book contract you didn't tell me about. That job you did up in Tuxedo—”

“That's chickenfeed!”

“To you it's chickenfeed. To a jury that we're asking to give you a couple of million ‘cause you've been hurt so bad, fifteen hundred bucks for a day's work doesn't sound like injury. Most of them, they don't make a yard and a half a day.”

“Okay, you made your point. But the rest of it, my deposition, I thought it went okay. Better than Bloom just had, I mean.”

“Of course it went better, Murray. You were telling the truth and he was lying. We're the good guys. But I have to know what's going on, or good guys or not, we're going to look like dog shit at trial.”

“Okay, guaranteed, cross my heart,” said Selig, who had brightened considerably. “By the way, speaking of which, I thought Bloom was trying to slip one past his counsel. When you asked him that one about mid-May and why he wanted me fired. His lawyer looked like he'd been cold-cocked for a second there. What was that about, anyway?”

“See? That's how
I
felt,” said Karp.

“Butch, enough already! You want me to squirm?”

“Yes.”

“But really, what do you think all that was about?” Karp shrugged, as if he didn't care, and made some dismissive remark and they passed on to other subjects, but in reality there was nothing he cared about more at that moment than whatever it was about the middle of May that had brought that transient look to Bloom's face, what it was that he had not shared with his closest political and legal adviser, a man with whom the D.A. had conspired, to Karp's personal knowledge, in a half dozen serious malfeasances. But although he didn't yet know what it was, he knew for certain what it meant. It meant that whatever Bloom had done, it was worse than a malfeasance. It had to be bad. Felony bad, going to jail in handcuffs bad. The thought warmed him like a log fire.

TEN

Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Mulberry and Prince Street, had been built as the archdiocesan seat in 1815 when the surrounding area had been the heart of the City. The area had gone downhill since then, as the surrounding tenements had first filled with Irish and then Italians. Both tides had rushed in and aged and become rich and ebbed out to the 'burbs. Now Old St. Pat's was just another church, its parishioners now few and largely Latin American. Every Sunday they were joined, at the latest possible Mass, by Marlene Ciampi.

Who maintained, as she had since the age of fourteen, a complicated, variable, and heterodox relationship with the Holy and Apostolic Church. She tended to treat the various contradictions she found in her religion—all that business about women and who was allowed to place what sexual part in what opening and when—as she treated those in her quotidian life: with cavalier disregard. If she could be a good mother and an irresponsible rakehell, she could also be a weekly communicant and a kick-ass feminist. In her secret heart she believed that were she allowed a half hour with the pope, no holds barred, she could straighten him out, but failing that, she refused to either give up the Church or go along with it.

Beyond that, Marlene's natural cast of mind was contrarian, the single aspect of character that she shared with her husband. As a girl at Sacred Heart, she had read proscribed books and carried herself like an infant Voltaire; at liberal Smith, and later at cynical Yale, she had dragged herself up out of Saturday night debauches and, dressed in sober black, sporting a Jackie Kennedy-style lace mantilla, had floated off to early Mass, quite astonishing the circle of godless musicians and artists she frequented. Over the years she had drifted in and out of regular communion, although she acknowledged an increase in constancy since her marriage to Karp. It might have been, at first, merely a resurgence of her contrarian spirit—marry a Jew, become more Catholic—but lately she had felt a vague discomfort of soul, the sort of thing in which the Church was supposed to specialize, although it had been years, decades, since Marlene had actually brought such a problem to a priest. On recent Sundays, looking at the dull, sheeplike face of Father Raymond at Old St. Pat's, Marlene tried to imagine what he would say if she revealed to him her recent quasi-legal doings—and more disturbingly, her bloodthirsty prospects. Although she was barely able to admit it to herself, she had begun to hope for—in some undefined fashion—moral guidance.