Immoral Certainty (3 page)

Felix Tighe slept nearly eight straight hours at his mother’s house, in his old bed in the room he had occupied as a boy. His mom kept it just the way he had left it—the weight set, the Jim Morrison poster, even his high school books still lined up neatly on a shelf. He awoke around five in the afternoon, feeling peaceful and secure, and after limbering up, performed three repetitions of the
Ten-no kata
of the
shotokan
school of karate. Felix had recently been awarded a
shodan,
the first degree black belt in this school, one of the few projects he had ever completed, and an accomplishment of which he was inordinately proud.

Sweating slightly now, he stripped, showered, and dressed in the clothes his mother had laid out: tan whipcord pants, a green plaid sportshirt, a gray cashmere sweater, gray socks, and shiny penny loafers. His mother always seemed to have a supply of clothes in Felix’s size; a good thing too, since he had thrown away the clothes he had been wearing the night of his arrest.

His mother was in the kitchen cutting up potatoes on a butcher’s chopping block. She looked up and her face brightened when he came in. “My, don’t you look nice. Does that shirt fit?” She put her knife down, walked over to him and adjusted his collar. Felix hugged her and kissed her loudly on the cheek. “How’s my best girl?” he said. She giggled and kissed him back, and smoothed her hair when he released her. She was a small woman of about fifty, with the same dark handsomeness as Felix. Her hair was thick and dark, showing no gray, swept back in a large bun at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a cotton shirtwaist dress in some neutral color and a white apron around her waist.

“You’re still the prettiest mom in the world,” said Felix, going over to the refrigerator. He poked around and pulled out a can of Schlitz and a bag of Fritos.

His mother said, “You’ll ruin your appetite. I’m making fried chicken and french fries.”

“Ma, I got to go back to Queens tonight. I thought I told you.”

“Felix, it’s your favorite! And it’s all prepared—”

“I’m sorry as hell, Ma, but it’s business. They’ve got me writing this big report, and it’s got to be at the front office day after tomorrow. I thought I could finish it last night, but those crazy cops locked me up. I can’t tell the boss I was in jail, can I? I mean they wouldn’t understand and all …”

Her face softened. “Well then, if it’s business. Oh, but I do wish you’d take it easier. I want you to be a success, dear, but you should relax more.”

“Yeah, well I’ll try, Ma. But you know how it is, the executive rat race.” He shrugged and showed a wry smile.

“Yes, I do, and I don’t forget what it did to your poor father.”

“And how’s your business, Ma?” said Felix quickly. He disliked talking about his father. “Doing good?”

“Oh, fair. It’s a lot of work, and I do it all. You can’t get help today. Doesn’t matter what the pay is, they’d rather go on welfare. And your brother … if you’re not watching him every minute, he makes a mess of everything.” She came toward him and touched his cheek. “Now if I had
you
here, it’d be different.”

“Yeah I know, Ma. We talked about that a million times. I appreciate it, but I got to follow my talent. My own star, like you used to tell me. I got lots of deals now, one of them has got to pay off. I’m real close, I know it.” He grinned sheepishly. “Speaking of which, I’m a little short this week. And they cleaned out my wallet in jail.”

“They did? Did you report it?”

“Sure, but don’t count on anything happening there. The cops are just as bad as the crooks. They probably take a cut.”

“You poor thing! I’ll write you a check.”

“Thanks a million, Ma,” said Felix warmly. “Hey, you know, I’ve been thinking about moving to Manhattan. It’s closer to work and, you know, I’d get to see you more.”

“Felix, that’s wonderful! Have you found a place?”

“Not yet. But rent is sky high in the good neighborhoods. And they want first and last month security, and sometimes you got to tip the super to get you in.”

Felix’s mother went to a drawer in one of the kitchen cabinets and took out her checkbook. “I know,” she said. “Soon decent people won’t be able to afford the city at all. Will five hundred do it?”

“That’ll be great, Ma. But, uh, if you could, I could use a couple hundred in cash.”

She looked at him, and something odd seemed to come over her face, as if there was another person sitting behind her eyes. “That’s fine,” she said pleasantly. “I have some stuff I need to drop off in the safe deposit. You can take that along when you get your cash.”

At about four-thirty that afternoon, Karp left his office and began the daily inspection of his empire. This was comprised of his own Bureau Chief’s office, a secretarial bullpen, two large partitioned bays where the rank and file worked, and a set of tiny colonies—little offices, alcoves, and closets that the Criminal Courts Bureau had accumulated in various deals and trade-offs over the years, every square inch of which was sacred soil to be defended to the last memo.

People called out to him or waved good-naturedly as he threaded his way through the warren of neck-high glass and steel barricades that choked the work space. Karp liked this part of his day. Although he accepted that his temper and impatience made him an indifferent bureaucrat, he liked to think that he was a good manager. Managing was like coaching a team, he thought: You develop your players, you teach them how to work together, give them some tricks, and send them out to win.

In fact, the Criminal Courts Bureau was and had always been a jocky sort of place. Most of the young attorneys who came to work as prosecutors had played some ball in school. The squad bays were busy with energetic young men, their hair cut unfashionably short, making loud wisecracks. Nobody ever just threw a piece of yellow legal paper into the can; it was always a graceful hook or jumper and an exhalation of “Yessss!” or “Two points!”

In general, Karp was pleased with the quality of the kids who came to work for him; what was wrong was what became of them after a zillion cases and no trials. It was like training a team to a high pitch and never letting them play. It wore them out and made them dull and cynical before their time.

He walked into the cubicle occupied by Tony Harris. Stacks of large-format computer paper, books, brown accordion folders, and sheaves of various sorts of paper covered the small metal desk and flowed down over the straight wooden visitor’s chair to the floor. More paper, some of it in dusty cartons, was stacked precariously against two walls. It looked less like an office than something geological, a cave or the results of a retreating glacier. Harris had made the mistake of admitting that he knew something about computers and had been tagged with piles of administrative work on top of his court schedule. Harris was a skinny young man with bright blue eyes and a bush of brown hair that sprouted like marsh grass from either side of his face and down his collar. A scraggly mustache floated over a wide mouth, which, when he saw Karp, expanded into a wide crooked-toothed grin.

“What are you so happy about?” asked Karp.

“I think we stole about ten more trial slots than we’re entitled to this week—all homicides, by the way. Our clearance rate is piss-poor, but, ah, I made some adjustments on the computer. Of course, if the chief administrative judge or the D.A. ever find out about it, I’ll probably get disbarred or something.”

Karp chuckled. “Don’t worry, kid, they’ll never catch us. His Honor the chief administrative judge has other fish to fry, like running for the Court of Appeals, God help us. He’s not going to make any waves. As long as the numbers balance he’ll never notice we jacked up the intake figures. Same thing with Bloom. Wharton might catch on, but I can handle him. Worse comes to worst, they’ll charge us with falsifying records. We’ll plead insanity and walk. But the main thing is …”

“Yeah, trials. More trials.”

“That’s right. Keep the mutts honest. The only way. Incidentally, how many homicides do we have this year so far?”

Harris shuffled through some papers and pulled out a chart.

“Six-hundred twenty-one. Up seven from this time last year.”

“Great. We must be doing something right,” Karp said. “I’ll tell that to Mr. District Attorney next time he wants to clean out the whores from Times Square or some other goddamn project. Hey, have you see Freddie Kirsch around recently?”

“Yeah, I think he’s in his cell. I heard suspenders snapping. Speaking of cells, there any chance of me getting a bigger place? You got me doing all this administrative and computer crap, and I got green stripers coming up around my ears. There’s no place to fucking sit down.”

Harris gestured toward his cubicle, which was about the size and shape of an apartment bathroom or a walk-in closet.

Karp spread his hands in helplessness. “Tony, I got nothing to offer. And I need you to handle the admin because nobody else I got knows how to fuck with the data.” He looked sad. “This was a great place to work in forty years ago when the crime rate was about ten per cent what it is now. You know, this bay we’re in now was a reception area, back when the D.A. had about thirty attorneys in all. Joe Lerner told me when I started here. Can you believe it? A
reception
area?”

“A long time ago,” agreed Harris. “Still,” he added, taking in his office with a sour glance, “it’s a definite statement by the people of New York. You’re garbage. Every day in every way you’re getting worser and worser.”

“Come on, Tony, what’s an office? You’re getting a great legal education. Couple of years, keep your nose clean, you’ll be defending pimps and making a fortune and this’ll all seem like a bad dream.”

Harris laughed and Karp walked off toward the cubicle of Freddy Kirsch, his mood darkening. Harris was one of the best, a decent funny kid with terrific courtroom instincts, but Karp could read the signs of wear and tear that meant he was not going to last. In general, Karp had found, only three kinds of lawyers stuck with the D.A.’s office in these corrupt times—one, slobs: those who had no other option, who, however talented legally, were too sloppy for a white-shoe firm and too disorganized to set up a practice, like Ray Guma; two, hobbyists, who had private income, and got a kick out of being hard-asses, like Roland Hrcany; and, finally, fanatics. Karp himself was a fanatic. Freddy Kirsch was another hobbyist. Harris was neither.

Karp found Kirsch at his desk, reading a tabloid. On the front page was a picture of a couple of cops standing next to a dumpster in an alley looking glumly at a small bundle at their feet. The headline read “GRAB MOM IN GARBAGE BAG KILLING.” Karp tapped his knuckles on the glass and the young lawyer looked up and grinned. He had hired Kirsch nearly a year ago on the recommendation of one of his law school professors. Kirsch was a Californian, a Berkeley graduate, smart and rich, hence a good prospect. Also he was tan, he had razor cut dark hair, he wore sharp, tailored dark suits, all of which endeared him to Karp, who was always having to lecture the scruffy polyestered St. John’s graduates who made up much of his staff on the importance of appearances in the legal game.

“What’s going on, boss?” asked Kirsch genially, leaning back in his swivel chair and hooking his thumbs behind his canary yellow suspenders. Karp perched on the edge of the desk, which was suspiciously clean. “Not much, Freddie. I thought I’d drop by and check out the Stahlmann trial. How’s it look?”

Kirsch kept his grin. “Looks like we won’t need a trial. He’s going to plead.”

“What? To murder two?”

“No, man one. I just talked to his lawyer this morning. We’ll go with it in Part 34 tomorrow.”

“Wait a second, Freddie. How come we’re accepting manslaughter as a plea on this one? This is the trunk murder, right? The guy bashed in the girlfriend’s head with a tire iron and stashed her in the trunk of her car.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Stahlmann’s a religious nut with a thing about pure women. He thought he’d found the last virgin in New York until some guy in his church told him one of his buddies had porked her a couple of years back. He went batshit.”

“So? What has that got to do with it? On a man one he could be walking in two years, out looking for more virgins.”

Kirsch’s smooth brow furrowed. “Extreme emotional disturbance is what. They’re arguing he lost his marbles from disappointment. They got a psychiatric examination confirms it.” He shrugged. “It’s an affirmative defense under the law. I figured it cast enough reasonable doubt on the case so that trial wasn’t worth it. So I took the man one. I’ll try to push for years on the sentencing.”

“Shit, Freddie!” Karp propelled himself violently off the desk and slammed his hand down on his thigh, making a sound like a gunshot. Kirsch jerked and sat up.

“What’re you talking ‘reasonable doubt’?” asked Karp contemptuously. “It’s an affirmative defense. The burden’s on
them
to show extreme emotional.
They’ve
got to have a preponderance of evidence. Do they? They’ve got crap. The guy laid for the girl in her apartment, wasted her, and hid the body. That doesn’t sound like he was out of his mind to me.”

“But they got a shrink—”

“Fuck the shrink, Freddie! The trier of fact can reject testimony as to extreme emotional disturbance, even if the prosecution presents no testimony to rebut.
People v. Shelton.
Come
on,
Freddie. You
know
this stuff.”

Kirsch looked so genuinely miserable that Karp’s ire receded. He perched again on the desk. “Look, Freddie, I’m sorry I have to be a hard-ass with you, but there’s no way around it. You want to be a trial lawyer, you got to worship perfection. That’s the goal. You can’t tell what a jury will do, maybe you’ll lose, but you have the obligation to walk in there with a perfect case, which includes knowing the relevant law.”

Freddie bit his lip and stared at his desk. “Yeah, I guess I fucked it up royally.”

“Come on, kid, you got a basically good case. Just call them up and tell them you reconsidered.”

“I can do that?”

“Shit, yes. It ain’t over ’til it’s over. Tell them you were suffering from extreme emotional disturbance.”