Resolved (19 page)

“Uh-huh. What do they got?”

“Oh, you'll love this. They took my car, right? The Trans Am. And they say they've got fibers, they've got DNA from this girl in my backseat. Secretions. And they said that after it happened, I mean allegedly happened, she provides a semen sample and they want a DNA from me. So I figure, okay, that'll do it, clear everything up like in the papers, you read about some poor
stronzo
in jail for ten years on a rape he didn't do, the DNA test gets him out. But here it works the other way, because they say it's a match. Then they arrest me. I call Nick Biaggi, hell, he's the only lawyer I know. I mean, there's you, yeah, but to tell you the truth, with all this other stuff you been doing these past years, I kind of forgot you were a lawyer.”

“Yeah, me, too. So, you got any idea how these samples could've got to where the cops say they ended up?”

Agnellis shook his head and took a swallow of wine. “No, I do not. I mean it's crazy, the girl wasn't in my car and I never fucked her, so how could they have this stuff? It's fucking Twilight Zone, Marlene. It's driving me nuts.” He examined her face. “You believe me, right?” She nodded, patted his hand, made comforting noises. “I mean,” he went on, “aside from anything, you know me, for cryin' out loud. Did I ever chase young pussy? Even when I was a kid? You remember Mrs. Notale from the dry cleaners?”

“There was a rumor you were porking her in high school. She must have been well past thirty back then.”

“Right, see, I mean some guys like young, some don't. It just ain't my thing, little girls. Also, the fact of it is this girl is black and, what can I say, I never been attracted to that flavor. So the whole thing is fucked.”

“Yes, except for the forensics. Okay, Paulie, if you want, I'll contact Biaggi and you give him a buzz, too, tell him I'm on the case. I'll nose around and see if we can figure out who's trying to frame you.”

“Frame me?”

“Well,
duh,
Paulie. Those samples did not just walk into your car or that girl's pants. Someone wants you in jail bad enough to commit a serious crime to put you there. Any idea who would want to screw you that bad?”

Agnelli had a stunned look, with his brows twisted into lumps and his mouth half-open. “Jesus Christ! You know, I never thought of that, not for a minute.”

“Well, start thinking about it. You need to get me a list of recent sexual partners.”

He cocked his head, puzzled. “My sexual…?”

“Yeah, Paulie. Where did they get the semen? Unless off the floor of the dirty magazine section at the newsy on Spring…”

“Geez, Marlene, you mean somebody went to a woman I been with and, what? Got a
specimen?
Christ, that's
disgusting!
Who would do a thing like that?”

“You tell me,” she replied. “Speaking of which, what kind of numbers are we talking here? Amateurs? Pros? Focus on the time period around when they charged you.”

But Agnelli was shaking his head. “No, come on, Marlene, I'm a guy runs a butcher shop, not some kind of Frank Sinatra.”

“But you get your share.”

He shrugged. “Tell you the truth, these days I'm not chasing so much as catching. I don't know what's wrong with guys nowadays, maybe they're all faggots or they're working too hard, or it's easier to dial up porn and beat off, but I run into, I don't know, these rafts of women going like
years
between one piece of ass and the next: I'm talking about right in the shop, married ladies, or I go out after work, some saloon, you strike up a conversation in a bar…I mean hello, how you doin', buy you a drink, and she's like cut the small talk, let's fuck. It's a fucking drought out there.”

“You're a public service, Paulie, God bless you, but I need some names.”

“Names,” he said, and drew from his back pocket the traditional little black book. It was the size of a pastrami sandwich, stuffed with cards and loose slips of paper, and held together by rubber bands. “Let's see, this is August, and I got picked up April twenty-third…” He thumbed through some pages. “It's not like I got a computer system here, but…okay, Tina Farnese, there's one about that time, I mean it started then. She's local, a customer, married. Nellie Simms, also local, a painter, I thought she was a lezzie, but no. I mean she paints buildings, not art. Another woman I met at Bocce's, Brenda or Brandy, a real psycho, I didn't even ask for her number.”

“Description? Residence?”

“Nah, it was just that one time and I used a rubber. She supplied it, too, as I recall.”

“So, just those two, you think?”

“Three, but yeah. Like I said…”

“Right, you're not Frank Sinatra. Tell me a little about Karen.”

“Karen?” His large, warm brown eyes clouded. The furrows showed again on the brow. “What about her?”

“Oh, you know. If they found you whacked in an alley, the first person the cops would talk to would be her. So someone gives you the shaft big time, that's who I'd want to look at, too.”

He waved his big hand as if to swat the possibility away. “Karen? Oh, shit, Marlene, why would Karen do something like that? Hell, I'm supporting her and the kids: why would she want to put me in jail?”

“Remind me why you broke up? I always thought you were reasonably okay together.”

“Yeah, me, too. And, you know, it's amicable, like they say. No horseshit about visiting rights and whatever, support money gets paid right from the bank. But, the short version is Karen didn't want to be married to an Italian butcher anymore. She got involved with this arty group on Broome, and then she's out two, three nights a week, and all of a sudden it's sell the store, sell the building, take the cash. And do what? Open a fucking gallery? Be beautiful people? I mean she went kind of nuts, if you want to know the truth.”

“What's this about selling the store?”

“Oh, well, we own the building. My grandfather bought it in twenty-eight for twelve K. Last winter I had a Chinese fella come by and offer two point three mil for it. Incredible, huh?”

“Manhattan real estate,” said Marlene. “And Karen thought you should sell?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We fought like cats and dogs over it.”

 

“What makes you so sure he's not lying?” said Karp. He was feeling pretty good just then. His wife was snuggled up in bed with him and they were talking about a case about which she was making lawyer-like noises. His dream: Marlene would miraculously outgrow being Marlene; she would have a legal practice; they would go to the movies on the weekends, unarmed, like regular people…

“Because he's not stupid and it'd be a particularly stupid lie. The smart lie, as you pointed out earlier, is to say, ‘Yeah, I boinked her but she said she was eighteen, she'd been carded in the bar, he had every expectation that she was of age.' This is not the thirteen-year-old baby-sitter situation, which is the usual stat-rape case. Speaking of usual cases, I'm dying to know why you guys are pursuing this one so vigorously.”

“I don't like it when you say ‘you guys' like that. This is a Laura Rachman deal.”

“What, she doesn't work for you?”

“We both work for Keegan is how she would put it.”

“But I wish I knew what the real deal was,” she said. “Nudge, nudge.”

“You may nudge all you want, but you're not going to get pillow talk from me about active cases. Why don't you go talk to Rachman? She'll talk to you. You hired her, as I recall.”

“Yes and I also recall her qualifications were not quite up to snuff, but I admired her guts and aggressiveness.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” said Karp. “This could be a reprise of the Hirsch travesty. Laura likes to try middle-class white guys, whether they did it or not.”

“You're loving this, aren't you?” She propped herself up on an elbow and regarded him closely and not with approval. “Miraculously I'm in both domestic habitation and nonviolent employment and I'm going to go up against your least favorite bureau chief, and maybe even make a monkey out of her. What a nauseatingly self-satisfied grin that is!”

With which she rolled on top of him and drove her hard little knuckles between his ribs. “Take that, Mr. Patriarchy! And that! And that!”

Karp was writhing and laughing. “Stop it, Marlene,” he hooted.

“Stop it? Stop it?” she said. She moved her point of attack. “How about this? Should I stop this, too?”

“No, not that,” he said. “Don't stop that.”

 

Felix sat in the shade smoking a cigarette and watched the two fake-Spanish Arabs unload the sacks of fertilizer from his truck. It was hot and miserably humid, and the Arabs worked stripped to the waist, carrying the eighty-pound burdens on one shoulder, the other hand perched gracefully on the opposite hip. Felix did not do physical labor himself, but he did not mind watching it take place, rather enjoyed it in the present circumstances, watching the sand niggers do nigger work in the blazing sun.

Rashid had said this was the last shipment for the time being. Other things would be found for him to do. Felix had said that there seemed like a lot to do, with all that ammonium nitrate to use up, and Rashid had given him one of his cold glares. Felix had acted suitably frightened off; he was getting good at playing the rabbit, actually enjoying it in a way. Rashid had no sense of humor and even the most parodic cringing, Igor in a bad Frankenstein movie, was accepted at face value. It would add to the fun, thought Felix, when he finally made his move and had Rashid all naked and hogtied on a plastic sheet in his secret storage locker. Still, he would like to know what the little fuck wanted with all that stuff. Felix had been keeping track of the buys over this last month and a half, and it came to nearly seventeen thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate. Add six percent fuel oil and shredded rubber (which he had also purchased), and you had just about nine tons of ammonium nitrate-fuel oil high explosive. Felix had been studying on the Internet and understood what that much high explosive could do. It was absurd to think that they were accumulating a tonnage like that to make pissy little pipe bombs. The pipe bombs had to be a distraction of some kind, besides a means of knocking off a number of individuals the Arab didn't like.

The Arab. Felix wished that he could rat out the Arab, get him kicked out of his cushy job in the infirmary, return him to the general population maybe, maybe arrange to have him shanked. But obviously he couldn't do that without the Arab ratting
him
out in return. So that was another blocked revenge, a frustration. The Arab, Rashid, and the girl, a trifecta from hell. Which he was not going to go crazy about.

Think. Plan. With that much ANFO you could take down a street of buildings, knock out a bridge or a bunch of major tunnels. Felix thought that he'd like to see a blast like that. On the other hand, maybe…if he just knew what their plans were, he could go to the cops, tip them off in return for a free ride—new ID, money, a fresh start somewhere else, the Islands, South America. Possibilities were opening up here; it could really work out for him if he played it right. The details were going to be the problem, though. How to feed the cops just enough to hook them, and stay out of their hands, and move into position for the big score. It would probably mean giving up the session with Rashid, but okay, he might be able to pay to have that done. That was the mature response, and he could not help feeling some pride about it. Hooking the cops was not a problem. He could get on it right away. The Karp business, he would have to figure out a way to integrate that into the master plan. And the girl. That was different. His mind bounced against the idea of her. He had to stay away from her, he'd already decided that, but for how long? And why had he decided? He couldn't quite recall. Part of the strategy.

He needed a new strategy, that was clear. He took out his little book and one of the fine-point Pentel markers he liked and began to write down the things he had to do to get it rolling. Yeah, the girl had to be central here, was his thought, although he could not have told you why. He might have to give up Rashid, but not her.

K
ARP READ ONE LAST TIME THROUGH THE BACKGROUND
material describing each member of the jury in
People v. Gerber & Nixon
. He was not a great proponent of the theory that the case is either won or lost when the jury is impaneled, because he still believed in juries and believed that a perfectly designed prosecution case would compel any jury to convict. The defense bar did not believe this for a second, which was why in expensive cases like this one they spent small fortunes on jury consultants. Of course, Karp understood that he was not getting, nor had he ever gotten in his long career, a jury composed of a random selection of New York voters. As the courthouse saying had it, juries were actually selected from the pool of people too stupid to avoid jury duty. Although there were a huge number of college-educated professionals in New York County, world center of finance, publishing, the media, the arts, an island city studded with medical and educational institutions, none of these were on his jury. Instead he had a plumber, a house painter, a retired naval petty officer, a retired electrician, a carpet installer, and a clerk in a tire store. Those were the men, average age forty-seven, one black, one Hispanic, the rest white. The women were a waitress, a postal clerk, a home health aide, two homemakers, and a retired bookkeeper, average age forty-four, two black, three Hispanic, two Asians, the rest white.

Collins had used his peremptory challenges to seat as many minorities as possible, and Klopper had used his to do the opposite: the state wanted the bleeding hearts, the defense wanted the Fascisti. They'd collected the inoffensively ordinary. Collins had at least kept the panel free of singletons, which was the one place Karp thought that jury selection counted a little. If you needed a unanimous verdict, you didn't want one jury member feeling isolated, rushed, pressured.

Yet the character of the jury was not foremost in Karp's mind as he packed his files into cardboard folders in preparation for the walk to Part 34 and the trial. What held that place, and itched like an unhealed wound, was his failure to find what he had been looking for since he took the case, since, in fact, his last conversation with Terrell Collins. The key, the lever, the angle, the fatal discrepancy that would torpedo the testimony of the two lying cops. And he had looked until his eyes filled with grit and tears: all the transcripts of the trial and the grand jury, the medical examiner's report, the Q&A done immediately after the crime, the ballistics reports that explored in boggling detail the fate of each of the seven bullets that had passed through the body of the victim, where they were probably fired from in relation to the victim and where they had finished their flights.

He had pored over the report by Hugo Selwyn, the defense's ballistic man. Selwyn told a story that explained the bullets' fates in a way favorable to the defense. This story, naturally, required an implausible number of bullet miracles to have happened, implausible to Karp, who'd seen zillions of such reports, but perhaps not to a jury of high school grads and dropouts. Bullets did occasionally do weird things; even Karp, even the state's own ballistic guy would have to admit that. But not seven little miracles, that was pushing it, and Karp would have to convince the jury of that. Not easy; millions of people still believed the Warren Report and its own miraculous bullet.

A quick stop in the men's room to check appearances: no lettuce on the teeth, no egg on the tie. He practiced an honest look, adjusted the knot and the collar. A little butterfly here, as just before a game. Nothing else gave that feeling. His sole addiction.

He was thinking about the bullet, as he walked into the courtroom and took his seat at the prosecution's table, and suddenly he stopped, right at the edge of the table. It was almost there, on the edge of his mind: it was the bullet, one of the seven…no, not the bullet per se, something to do with how it got shot, something wrong with the defense's story, not a ballistics thing, something clear, an impeaching fact, undeniable…and damn it! It had skittered out of reach. Being Karp, he found it easy to blame himself: getting old, stupid to take this case, a loser, twenty years ago he would have had it on the first try, the brain cells not what they once were, too many other worries crowding the case out, the kids, Marlene…

He realized he had frozen behind the table, and that people were starting to stare. He sat down and arranged his materials. He nodded to Roland Hrcany, who was seated at the defense table, looking relaxed and confident, along with the two defendants and another lawyer, Barnett, from the detectives' endowment. Karp wondered whether Roland ever had butterflies. In their long relationship it had never come up. Karp supposed he himself looked relaxed and confident to all the many defense lawyers he had faced. Over at the Legal Aid Society he was genially known as the Prince of Darkness. Nothing was as it seemed in the institution whose whole ostensible purpose was divulging the truth. The judge entered and they all rose.

 

A male voice says, “Auburn Correctional Facility,” and Marlene says, “Yes, this is Marlene Ciampi and I'm at the district attorney's office, New York County. I'd like some information about the disposition of the body of a prisoner who died in custody.”

She looks around the office she's poaching. Yes, that wasn't a lie—she really is at the district attorney's office. The man says, “Just a minute, ma'am,” and puts her on hold. While there, she hears a recorded ad encouraging her to apply to become a correctional officer. The cheerful voice mentions pay, pension, and benefits, and omits the regular inundations with urine and feces, but Marlene thinks it sounds pretty good—steady work, not all that demanding, she doesn't really mind being besmirched with human wastes…and then a man comes on the line wanting to know who she is and what she wants, a deputy warden, no less. Marlene tells him; he says he can't release that information over the phone, and Marlene says it's vital to an ongoing investigation and speed is essential and she would be glad to have a subpoena drawn up but hopes that isn't necessary because she would also have to have the DA send a note to the head of the department of corrections, cc to the governor, wondering about were we all playing on the same criminal justice team or what. The man asks for her number and she gives him the number of the DA and the extension at the desk she has appropriated. He calls back in five minutes, with the name and address of the cousin to whom the late Felix has been delivered, and the funeral home that has actually received the body. Marlene thanks the deputy warden, hangs up, and dials information. Number of Evan Murphy and Sons Morticians, in New York? Sorry, no listing. Again, number of a Bruce Newton, address in Queens? The mechanical voice gives her a number. Interesting, a phony funeral home and a real cousin.

She checks her watch. Time for her appointment. If you had an appointment with the DA you were supposed to wait down in the tiny lobby at the DA wing entrance on a little side street off Foley Square, but Marlene just flashes a ten-year-old ID card and slips past the guard station into the waiting elevator. Dumb trick, but it gives her a little lift. A dumb Marlene trick, Karp would have said.

“Can I help you?”

A woman stands in the doorway of the tiny office, dark, petite, wearing her hair short and her tan linen suit crisp. Marlene slides off the edge of the desk and holds out her hand. “I'm Marlene Ciampi. You must be Ms. Palmisano.” The woman shakes hands with her, but the uncertain expression stays on her face. She stows her briefcase, which Marlene notes is highly polished leather on a shoulder strap, equipped with brass fittings that look as if they'd come off a Clydesdale.

“Did they call up?”

“No, I was in the office for something else and I just came over to sex crimes. I used to work here.”

Marlene can see the wheels spinning. A smile appears on the little pixie face. “Oh, of course. I should have recognized the name. You're a famous figure.”

“Infamous maybe.” A shared chuckle, a little social small talk. They sit. What can she do for Marlene? Marlene says, “I didn't mention it to the secretary…I've just been retained by Paul Agnelli.”

A puzzled look, the social smile fades. “You mean retained to represent him?”

“Yes, I thought we could talk informally, see where we stand.”

Palmisano nods. She sits stiffly behind her desk, like an old-fashioned schoolteacher facing an errant pupil. “I don't see where we have much to discuss, Ms. Ciampi. Unless you were thinking about pleading guilty.”

“What, you mean to the one thirty-point-twenty-five?”

“Right, the rape in the third. Cherry Newcombe was fourteen years of age when your client had sex with her in the back of his car. And she looks fourteen. Have you ever seen her?”

“No. But it doesn't matter what she—”

“Here's a picture,” Palmisano said, opening a folder on her desk and pulling out an eight-by-ten glossy print. Marlene looked at it. It showed a pretty light-skinned African-American child, her hair in the traditional bunches and a sad expression in her huge liquid eyes. The photo showed her from the waist up, wearing what looked like a fancy little-girl's party dress, with ruching down the front and puffs at the shoulders. She had no breasts to speak of and looked about twelve.

“When was this taken?” Marlene asked.

“At about the time of the crime in question.”

“The
alleged
crime. I understand you have good forensics.”

“We have terrific forensics. Everything we need to convict.”

“Uh-huh. The problem is my guy says he didn't do it.”

Roll of eye. “Well,
duh!”

“Yeah, but as you know, the usual defense in a case like this is to say I thought she was eighteen. My guy's story is he never heard of this girl.”

Palmisano tapped the photo. “Look at this face. No jury would ever believe that anyone would believe this girl was legal, or that any
normal
man would regard her as a sex object.”

“Yes, but on the other hand, she got into a club where you have to be not just eighteen but twenty-one. Your case is based on her being in the club and the defendant encountering her there and seducing her out into his car. And I guarantee you that if she was in the Red Mill on the night in question, she did
not
look like she does in that picture. I notice that you don't present any testimony from anyone at the Red Mill regarding the alleged victim's presence in the place on the night of, or that she was seen in the company with the defendant, or what she looked like on the night.”

“Why should we? We know she was in his car and we know he had sex with her.”

“Yes, I know you think that, but the problem with it is, I know my client. My client is a sexually active man, even something of a lothario, but what he definitely does not have is short eyes. He's also something of a mild bigot. Therefore, a little black girl would be his absolutely last choice for a sexual target.”

With a shrug Palmisano replies, “Tastes change.”

“Not that much, they don't. In fact, as I'm sure you know, the constancy of sexual tastes is the basis of almost all rape investigations. Look, imagine that the basis of a case was that a lifelong committed lesbian had seduced and had passionate sex with a man. And say you had gallons of semen, all the forensics in the world. Wouldn't you at least wonder if someone was fooling around with the evidence?”

That one hit home, thinks Marlene. The other woman goes white around the mouth, narrow around the eyes. “What are you implying, Ms. Ciampi?”

“I'm not implying anything. I'm wondering why you don't think this feels all wrong.”

“Maybe because I haven't sold out,” Palmisano snaps. “I can't believe you coming up here, trading on your reputation, trying to catch a break for some scuzzball kiddie rapist.” A little shrill here, the last few words.

“Calm down, counsellor,” says Marlene in a quiet voice. “Let's keep this civilized.”

“Fine! You came, you made your pitch, and now I don't think there's anything useful we can say to each other at this point. Have a nice day, Ms. Ciampi.” The woman turns slightly away from Marlene, pulls a fat file from an in-box, arranges a yellow pad and some pencils, and begins ostentatiously to pretend to work.

Marlene doesn't move. Instead she stares fixedly, silently, at the side of Terry Palmisano's head. A minute passes. Two. Palmisano whips around, her chair squealing.

“What? Why are you still in my office?”

“Gosh, you know, I really think you're under the impression I came up here to make an argument for my client.”

“Didn't you?”

“No, I came up here because you're making a major error. You're participating in a frame-up based on rigged evidence. I don't want to have to demonstrate that in court. I want you to look into it yourself. Is the victim kosher? Did anyone get to her? Is there anyone benefiting from Agnelli taking the fall? And so on. I'm doing you a
favor.”

Palmisano rises out of her chair. A bit of dark hair falls out of the mousse's grip and dangles fetchingly on her forehead. There are blotches of dark red on her cheeks. “Oh, give me a break!” she cries. “What I really want to know is how someone like you sinks into becoming a slimeball shyster. What's the secret, Marlene? You figure we'll all roll over and play dead because of hubby up on the eighth floor? ‘Doing me a favor?' What kind of moron do you think I am?”