Tragic (20 page)

“That was before the two of you helped kill a man for money,” Karp pointed out.

“I know, I know, and it was weighing me down like I was buried under a pile of bricks. It’s got to be tough on Frankie, too. I know you think he’s a scumbag, but he’s really not a bad guy deep down inside.”

Karp nodded without commenting. He was thinking about that night when Miller first confessed to Marlene at the East Village Women’s Shelter and then later to him in his office and talked about the crime’s effect on his conscience. The money had been nice, he said, allowing him and Nicoli to get a cheap one-bedroom
apartment in the Bronx. She’d been so happy to get out of her parents’ house. For a few days he had a glimpse of what life could have been like in the loving arms of his wife and child. But in the quiet of the night guilt crept in like a burglar, stealing sleep and whatever happiness had been bought with blood money.

It had been a relief to confess, he said. A brick lifted with every answer he gave Karp until, at last, he felt he could breathe again. Later, he told Karp that the night he confessed, surrounded by the hell known as the Tombs, he slept like a child. He even came to regard the tall prosecutor as a stern, yet understanding, priest to whom he’d confessed his transgressions.

Later, during one of their many meetings, Miller told him about seeing Nicoli the day after he confessed in the visiting room. “She said, ‘You’re so fuckin’ stupid. We could have made it. You could have got a job; I could have done day care and still looked after Billy Junior. But you let Frankie and that Russian asshole lead you down the path straight to hell.’ I told her that I couldn’t blame them, that I could have said no. She said, ‘That’s right and now you got nothin’.’  ”

The sound sleep Miller had experienced after his confession had eluded him the night after he talked to Nicoli as her words played in his mind like a skipping record.
“You ain’t got nothin’.”
By morning he knew it was true, he had nothing left and had despaired. So he was surprised when a guard told him the next day that he had a visitor and discovered it was Nicoli.

“ ‘It’s gonna take a long time for me to forgive you, Gnat,’ ” he recalled for Karp. “ ‘You’ve destroyed our life together, but I don’t want nobody but you. You may be stupid as a stick, but you’re my guy and Billy’s father. I want him to know who his daddy is . . . and I want his father to know he’s loved.’ ”

Miller said he’d broken down and wept, but then he tried to talk her out of caring what happened to him. Although he didn’t mean it, he told her she was being stupid and that he didn’t really love her so she might as well move on. “I lied and told her she was just a piece of ass to me.”

It didn’t work. She just told him to shut up, that she was going to visit him and write to him whether he liked it or not. Although it replaced a brick or two of guilt, in all honesty he was grateful that she had kept her word. He’d been put in administrative segregation to protect him—informants’ lives weren’t worth spit in the general population and word was, according to one trustee he talked to, a lot of very dangerous people wanted him dead. But she visited him with Billy Junior at least once a week since his incarceration, even after the DA’s wife, Marlene, moved Nicoli and their son to a safe location.

Gnat didn’t feel that he deserved Nicoli’s loyalty, but he knew he needed her support to get through the trial and sentencing. He figured that at some point in the future, she’d meet someone new, someone with possibilities, and then the visits would grow fewer and maybe stop altogether. If he was lucky, she might drop him a line and a photograph from time to time to let him know how she and their son were doing. But for now he’d take what he could get.

Early that morning, she’d been sitting in the gallery trying to be brave as she clutched a tissue and smiled slightly. Her father was even sitting next to her and though his face was impassive, he’d nodded slightly when Gnat looked at him.

As he waited now to take the stand again, Miller told Karp that he wished he could tell his friend DiMarzo how liberating it had been to come clean. He hoped Frankie could see it in his eyes when they looked at each other over the distance between the witness stand and the defense table, but his friend wouldn’t look at him.

“Frankie’s got to live with himself,” Karp said and started to leave. “You have to live with Gnat Miller.”

The young man nodded and dropped his head, but then he quickly looked up. “There’s one more thing,” he said. “Something I got to say now even though I know it doesn’t change anything.”

“What’s that?” Karp asked as he hesitated at the door.

“If you get a chance, would you tell Mrs. Carlotta . . .” Miller
said, choking up, “. . . I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t expect her forgiveness, but I am truly sorry.”

Without looking back, Karp nodded. “I’ll let her know,” he said and left.

Karp walked back into the courtroom from the side door leading to the witness room at the same moment that Charlie Vitteli entered from the main door in the company of Syd Kowalski and the blond intern. The prosecutor and the union boss locked eyes. Although it might not have been clear to most of the people in the room, the look they shared was between mortal enemies who know that eventually one must fail and the other triumph.

Vitteli smirked and began to walk forward to find a seat. Then he glanced to the side and suddenly stopped when he saw the three ragged women Karp had spoken to a few minutes earlier. His face turned pale and his eyes bugged while the three women shrank away from him.

Wonder what that’s all about?
Karp thought, but it was over in a flash. Vitteli set his jaw and marched forward to find a seat as the women resumed their incessant chatter.

Soon the judge returned from lunch, quickly assembled the jury, and directed Miller to retake the stand. “Mr. Karp, you may continue your direct examination of the witness, who I will remind is still under oath,” Judge See said.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Karp said, walking out into the well of the courtroom. “Mr. Miller, I’d like to turn now to that evening last December, the night Mr. Carlotta was murdered. Would you please tell the jury your role in the night’s events?”

“Uh, yeah, well, Frankie called and said it was back on,” Miller began.

“When you refer to Frankie who are you referring to?”

“Frank DiMarzo, the defendant.”

“So you just testified that the defendant Frank DiMarzo called you and said it was back on. What was back on?”

“The hit,” Miller said. “Bebnev was going to shoot Carlotta and we were supposed to help.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Well, I picked Frankie up at his folks’ place in Red Hook and then we met Bebnev in Little Odessa off Atlantic Avenue. Then we drove through the Battery Tunnel into Manhattan to Hell’s Kitchen. We cruised past Marlon’s and I let Bebnev and Frankie out near the alley; then I went down the street and pulled a U-turn and parked on the other side, where it was away from the streetlight.”

“Did you know what was going to happen?” Karp asked.

“Yeah, I mean, if Bebnev didn’t lose his nerve again,” Miller said. “They were supposed to wait for Mr. Carlotta to come out of the bar, and then jump out of the alley like it was a robbery, except Bebnev was supposed to shoot Carlotta.”

“While you were waiting, could you see the defendants in the alley?”

“Not real well, but a little. Sometimes they’d poke their heads out.”

“Could you tell what else they were doing?”

“Just watching and waiting, I guess. Bebnev was smoking. I could see him when he lit up and the glow from his cigarette.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, first these two big guys came out of the bar. Frankie and Bebnev ducked back in the alley, and they walked right past them. Then this group of four guys came around the corner. Maybe the same guys that were in the photograph, I don’t know for sure, but one of them was Carlotta.”

“Continue, please.”

“When the guys got near the alley, Bebnev jumped out and Frankie kind of walked out behind him. They had masks on . . .”

“So how did you know who was who?”

“Well, Bebnev’s taller and skinnier. And Frankie didn’t have a gun; only Bebnev had a gun, which he had in his hand.”

“What did Bebnev do with the gun?”

“He was pointing it at the men. It was kind of hard to see everything that was going on; they were sort of bunched up close together. But the next thing I knew, there was a flash and like a ‘pop,’ and one of the guys goes down sort of on his back. Then he tried to get up and Bebnev shot him again.”

“What were you doing while this was happening?”

Miller furrowed his brow. “To be honest, just kind of sitting there, like I was numb or something.”

“So what happened next?”

“It looked like something got said and then the guys from the bar started handing over their wallets and watches. Then Bebnev and Frankie started running across the street, so I started the car, and when they jumped in, I took off.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Back to Brooklyn.”

“You stop anywhere along the way?”

“Yeah. I took a different way back because Bebnev wanted me to go to the Brooklyn Bridge. When we were on the bridge, Bebnev told me to stop, and then he threw the gun into the East River.”

“What happened to the wallets and the watches?”

“Bebnev kept the watches, and we split up the money, a couple hundred bucks.”

“How long before you were paid for the murder?”

“A few days, and we only got part of it. A week or so later we got the rest, or at least the rest of what he said we were going to get.”

“Tell us how you received the second payment?”

“Frankie said he had to go to a bar in Little Odessa with Bebnev to meet with the guy who arranged the hit. But Frankie had to wait outside while they did their deal. The guy smacked Bebnev in the face and that’s why he said he was keeping some of our money. He gave Frankie an envelope with the money.”

Karp strolled over toward the gallery and looked at Vitteli as he
asked, “So the murder of Vince Carlotta wasn’t some robbery that went bad?”

“No, it was a hit,” Miller said. “That guy hired Bebnev and Bebnev hired us.”

Exchanging another hard look with Vitteli, Karp turned and walked slowly over to the jury box, where he leaned against the rail. “Mr. Miller, were you offered any kind of deal by my office, or any other, for your testimony today?”

Miller looked out into the gallery at his girlfriend. “I agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter in the first degree.”

“Was any promise of sentence made?”

“No.”

“Do you realize you could receive as much as twenty-five years with a mandatory minimum of eight years, four months before you would be eligible for parole?”

“Yes. I agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter and I could receive the maximum time. The only other thing you told me was that if I told the truth here, you would tell the judge at the time of my sentencing.”

“Have you told us the truth, the whole truth, Mr. Miller?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No further questions.”

“Y
OU MAY PROCEED WITH CROSS-EXAMINATION
, Mr. Clooney.”

At Judge See’s invitation, the defense attorney stood up and strode purposefully across the well until he stood directly in front of Miller, scowling up at the redheaded young man. “Mr. Miller, do you have a criminal record?” he demanded.

“Yeah, I already told you I did when Mr. Karp asked me about it.”

“Would you tell us again?”

“I did some time in juvie for burglary. I’ve also done some small-time stuff as an adult and been in jail, no prisons.”

“So you have a long history of committing crimes, isn’t that right, Mr. Miller?” Clooney said.

“I guess you could say that.”

“ ‘I guess you could say that,’ Mr. Miller?” the attorney mocked as he looked over at the jurors and rolled his eyes. “Do you think that makes you a trustworthy person?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, should these fine people,” Clooney said, extending his hand toward the jury box, “trust the word of a criminal?”

“Depends.”

“Depends? Depends on what?”

“On whether he’s telling the truth.”

“And how do we know that you, who spent a good deal of your life being a dishonest criminal, are telling the truth?”

“Hey, I’m here because I pled guilty to manslaughter, and I’m looking at twenty-five years in the can, because I was stupid enough to be the wheelman with Bebnev and Frankie as part of a plan to kill Mr. Carlotta,” Miller replied, his voice growing angry and defiant. “And, by the way, I watched Bebnev shoot Mr. Carlotta. That’s how you know I’m telling the truth.”

Karp wasn’t surprised by Miller’s reaction. Generally witnesses who testify struggle on both direct and cross; it’s an environment that they don’t want to be part of and certainly are not used to.

“We’re just supposed to take your word for it, right?” Clooney said but didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s go back to that night you were supposedly in New Rochelle with the defendants. You’ve explained already that today isn’t the first time you’ve seen that aerial photograph, is it?”

“Correct. As I said before, Mr. Karp showed it to me in his office.”

“And he pointed out which house was the Carlotta residence, correct?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Did he point out where you were supposed to have parked your car?”

For a moment, Miller looked confused; then he shook his head. “No. He asked me to show him where I parked.”

“So he didn’t give you any help?”

“Mr. Clooney, I was there and Mr. Karp wasn’t,” Miller retorted. “He didn’t offer any help, and I didn’t need any.”

Clooney scowled. “I object and ask that answer be stricken.”

Judge See, who had his chin resting on his hand as he leaned on an elbow, raised his eyebrows and said, “On what grounds, Mr. Clooney?”

“His answer was not directly responsive to my question,” Clooney complained.

“Quite the contrary, Mr. Clooney,” Judge See advised. “You asked him if he needed any help, and it’s clear how he responded. Your objection is overruled, please proceed.”