Falsely Accused (32 page)

“
I
wouldn't know,” said Seaver. His color was bad, and he seemed not to be able to stop swallowing.

Marlene rose. “So long, Detective Seaver. Call me if you think of anything that might be useful.” She left him staring at her back.

It was a good while before he was able to begin stabbing a familiar number into his phone with shaking fingers.

“Twins?” Karp exclaimed.

“Yes, each with a little heartbeat, and didn't I need a drink when I heard it, and wasn't I a good girl not to have one?”

Karp shook his head and stared wonderingly at his wife. “Did you find out? I mean, girls, boys, mixed… ?”

“No, Memelstein offered to do a sonogram, but I said that if God wanted us to know that stuff in advance, He would have supplied us with little glass portholes.” Marlene sat down in the bed. “My God! We'll have three children!”

“We can afford it,” said Karp practically, sitting next to her. “Or will, if we win this case.”

“Seaver has three kids,” said Marlene musingly. “There was a picture on his desk. Three kids, no wifey. Probably a divorce. Maybe he's got money problems. It's probably why he went into it with Jackson, the shakedowns. The guy doesn't seem the type; I mean, a little easy graft, but nothing heavy—not murder, anyway. He's coming apart behind it.”

Marlene filled Karp in about her interview that morning. “Will he crack, you think?” he asked.

“Maybe. When the hounds start getting closer. Which I will endeavor to arrange. Jesus, three kids!”

SIXTEEN

In examining notionally hostile witnesses, Karp had found that a kindly tone and punctilious courtesy answered better than the showy browbeat favored by many in his profession, unless, of course, he thought some jerk was trying to slip a whopper past him, in which case he could adopt a mien that could blowtorch paint. That lacking, he had learned, a civilized manner kept the judges happy and prevented any unwanted sympathy for the witness stirring in the breasts of the jury. Most remarkably, it also made most witnesses less hostile. Considerations of policy are almost never as strong as the natural human desire for respect and kindness.

Beyond this, the present witness, Assistant District Attorney Marsha Davis, inspired actual sympathy in Karp. Davis was a tall woman in her late twenties with a well-cut head of dark hair framing an unfortunate large-nosed face, short on chin and equipped (as if to make up for that deficit) with what seemed like more than the usual number of large, equinoid teeth. Ms. Davis had been the A.D.A. in
People
v.
Ralston,
a homicide case brought to trial in the previous year. According to Bloom's memo, Ms. Davis had complained that Dr. Selig had failed to return numerous telephone calls, that he had been insulting to her at a meeting in his office, at which another doctor had been present, and that he had not appeared in court when he should have, although he had been given four weeks' notice of the appearance, his failure to appear having disrupted the Ralston murder trial.

During the course of her testimony this morning, Karp had charmingly drawn from Ms. Davis that
Ralston
had been her very first homicide case, that she had received no specialized training in prosecuting homicides, and that she was unfamiliar with the practical operations of the medical examiner's office.

“Ms. Davis,” said Karp, “how many assistant district attorneys are there working felonies?”

“I don't know. Maybe three hundred, something like that.”

“Three hundred. And how many chief medical examiners are there?”

She narrowed her eyes: a trick question. “One.”

“Do you think it's reasonable to expect the chief medical examiner to be at the beck and call of every assistant district attorney?”

“No, but …”

“For example, was there ever a time in your career where the lack of contact with the medical examiner's office impaired the prosecution of one of your cases?”

“No,” said Davis, and seemed mildly surprised at her answer.

“Thank you. Now, you have indicated that three days before the trial in
Ralston
was due to start, you called Dr. Selig's office and told his secretary that you wanted him in court at nine-thirty on Monday, January 13, and that his secretary called you later in the day and said that Dr. Selig had a conflict and could not be there. What was your reaction to that?”

“I was angry.”

“Yes, I'm sure you were. Because you had informed his office, I think it was, four whole weeks before the trial that you wanted him there—is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Davis, how long did the trial in the Ralston case last?”

“Thirteen days.”

“I see. Ms. Davis, did you imagine that the chief medical examiner of the City of New York was going to hold his calendar completely open for thirteen days waiting for your call for this one trial?”

A long pause. Ms. Davis had clearly not given the issue much thought. At the same time, although somewhat more vaguely, she understood that Karp was giving her the sort of training she had never once received from her own superiors. She said, frankly, “No, I guess I didn't think of that.”

“Did you learn why Dr. Selig could not attend your trial at the time and place you desired?”

“He had a conflict, another trial.”

“Another trial. I see. Now, did the district attorney's office, to your knowledge, make any attempt at coordinating its homicide cases so as to insure that Dr. Selig's time was efficiently used?”

“No, not to my knowledge.”

“Thank you. Now, turning to the meeting you attended in Dr. Selig's office, in the presence of Dr. Prahwah, the forensic specialist from Detroit, whose testimony we heard the other day. Dr. Selig mentioned that fact, the lack of coordination, did he not?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And the substance of his remarks was the inefficiency of the current arrangements of the district attorney's office with respect to trying homicides, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“Would you say that Dr. Selig used vivid language in regretting the disbandment of the former Homicide Bureau by the present district attorney, Mr. Bloom?”

“Yes, quite vivid,” said the witness with a slight smile.

Karp smiled back, all friends now. “And you reported this vivid language, language quite insulting to the competence and acumen of the district attorney, to your superior, Mr. Sullivan, one of the Felony Bureau chiefs?”

“Yes, I did.”

“During this conversation in his office, did Dr. Selig at any time insult you personally, or hold you up to contempt before the eyes of his guest, Dr. Prahwah?”

“No, he did not.”

“And when you asked him technical questions related to the Ralston case, did he answer them properly and professionally?”

“He was rather short with me. Impatient.”

“Impatient. I see. How impatient, Ms. Davis? About as impatient as you would expect one of the most eminent forensic specialists in the United States to be when answering questions from a young and inexperienced prosecutor whose training has been neglected by her superiors?”

“Objection!” said Corporation Counsel Gottkind. “Calls for a conclusion.”

“Withdrawn,” said Karp. “Impatience, then, but no insult, no unprofessionalism?”

“No.”

“In other words, Dr. Selig reserved all his criticism and insulting language for the way Mr. Bloom runs the D.A.'s office, is that true?”

“Yes.”

“You won your case in the Ralston matter, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“And Dr. Selig did at last testify at that trial?”

“Yes, he did. He came on after the defense had completed their presentation.”

“And what was the quality of Dr. Selig's testimony?”

“It was excellent,” said Davis in a positive voice. She had accepted the persona that Karp had provided for her: an intelligent woman working way over her head who had been sandbagged by her boss.

“It was excellent. So, contrary to the allegations made in the district attorney's memo, Dr. Selig's failure to attend the trial when you wanted him to in no way, quote, disrupted the conduct of an important murder trial, unquote?”

“No,” said Davis. Her eyes shifted to where Conrad Wharton was sitting, glaring arrows at her, and quickly looked away. Then she added, “As a matter of fact, it was probably an advantage to have a prosecution witness at that time, after the defense had already been on.”

“Thank you. No further questions,” said Karp.

“You might as well shut us down, Marlene,” said Harry Bello.

“Why? Because they're cops?”

She was pacing in a fury in front of Harry's desk. The desk was on the second floor of a Walker Street loft building that had just been renovated for commercial use. Harry's desk was under a nice Sam Spade-ish semicircular window that looked out on Walker just off Canal. Marlene intended to have an eye painted in gold leaf in the round center pane of the window. Assuming they stayed in business.

Harry's voice was impatient as he explained; Harry did not like explaining things. “We run on favors, Marlene. From the cops. From other investigators, ninety percent of them ex-cops. Word gets out we're doing a number on these two”—he shrugged—“pack it in.”

Marlene was about to object that Seaver was ready to crack, that these particular cops were a disgrace to the Force, but thought better of it. Harry was himself a disgrace to the Force, and the Force had sheltered him, allowing him the opportunity for a few more episodes of brilliant service and an honorable retirement. It was the way things were with the cops; Marlene was a crusader but not an idiot. She moved on to other business.

“Karen Wohl?” she asked.

“Hubert P. Waley. Three-oh-six West Forty-ninth.”

“Great! How?”

“Spotted outside the TV studio. My guy followed him. Got a Karen Wohl museum up in his crib. Typewriter that wrote the love letters, drafts. It's him.”

“How did he know to follow him?”

Harry got up and went over to a file drawer, where he pulled out a file and handed it to Marlene. One of the two phones on his desk rang, and he picked it up. Marlene looked through the file, and her question was answered. There was a brief surveillance report noting that Waley had been seen standing at the same place across from the entrance to a Sixth Avenue TV studio; there was an eight-by-ten photograph of him along with it, and it was easy to see what had attracted the attention of Harry's moonlighting detective. Waley was a pear-shaped white man in his late twenties, with heavy black-rimmed spectacles, a flat, pasty face, and lank hair cut forties-schoolboy fashion. He was carrying a paper Macy's shopping bag. He might as well have been wearing a T-shirt inscribed “stalker” in red letters.

Harry got off the phone. Marlene tapped the file folder. “Contact?”

Harry held his hand palm down across the desk and waggled it slightly, fingers spread. It meant that in Harry's judgment this person was so flaky that a reasonable approach to him would be unavailing.

“What's the plan?” she asked.

“Report his ass. Get an order.”

“Okay, I'll take care of it tomorrow. What else?”

Harry passed her a flat black object the size of a cigarette pack.

“A beeper? Gosh, Harry, this is getting so professional I got goose bumps.”

“Use it,” said Harry. “And Marlene … ?”

“Uh-huh, I know, Harry—stay away from Jackson and Seaver.”

Marlene walked down to Canal, where she stopped at Dave's for an egg cream and a phone call. The call was to Tom Devlin, Stupenagel's contact at the NYPD Internal Affairs Division. She established herself as an anonymous snitch, providing a checkable fact (the theft of the autopsies from the M.E.'s office) and a tantalizing lead (that, whatever he had heard, there was no ongoing D.A. investigation of the gypsy cab shakedowns). She hung up, leaving him panting for more. It was stirring the pot, building the pressure on John Seaver and, perhaps, Paul Jackson, although Marlene thought that the big detective might be an entirely tougher customer than his former partner. Enough pressure and they might do something dumb. In any case she was, in a technical sense, staying away from directly investigating the two cops. In this way Marlene thought she was satisfying both her husband and her partner. She did not want ever to be in a position where she had to choose unambiguously between them. She was not at all sure how she would choose.

“We need to talk, Phil,” said Karp. He was on the phone with Phil DeLino, speaking into one of a bank of phones on the ground floor of the courthouse, squeezed between a cigar-fuming bail bondsman and a winning drug merchant. “Let's have lunch. Today.”

“Gosh, Butch, today's rough,” said DeLino. “Can't it wait?”

“No, unless you want to read it in the papers. I'll meet you in Wing Fat's in twenty minutes.”

The Wing Fat Noodle Company is a steamy, small room about the size and shape of a boxcar, slotted into an alley off Mott Street in Chinatown. It is permanently open and caters largely to illegal Cantonese manual workers. Its menus are mimeographed in Chinese only, and while it tolerates the white ghosts, it does not welcome them. It is one of the best public places in Manhattan for an indoor private conversation between non-Cantonese.

“Try the pork lo mein,” said Karp, who was one of Wing Fat's rare Caucasian regulars. DeLino, who had never been to the place, looked around nervously and said, “Yeah, sure, whatever.” Karp pointed at an item on the menu and held up two fingers. The scowling waiter nodded curtly, slammed a steel quart-sized pitcher of scalding tea down on the table, and left.

“I notice you didn't ask them to hold the MSG,” said DeLino.

“Hold the dog meat is what you say here,” said Karp. DeLino smiled tightly; Karp continued. “Phil, we got a bad situation, and I wanted to talk to you before anything happens, because even though we're on opposite sides of this lawsuit, I think you're basically a straight shooter and you wouldn't be mixed up in something like this.”