“Oh, wah wah!” said Keegan, chuckling now.
“A lot more clear,” said Karp with a straight face, “as well you know; Fourth Amendment is like Macy’s window compared to the Fifth and the Miranda precedents, where we see but through a glass, darkly. That’s why he did it.”
Keegan looked confused. “Who did what?”
“The judge,” said Karp. “Peoples. He had two motions. No way in hell was he going to give both of them to either side, not in this case. Guy’s carving a statue-Mr. Fair, in fucking bronze. So he zinged us on the one with the most tortured law, and the one where we had the weakest line. He’s saying, we’re not going to play with confessions here, buddy. I’m giving you your physical evidence, now make a case! He wants this trial.”
“As do we. And will you make the case?”
It was not a casual question, and Karp did not answer lightly. “As to the facts? Absolutely. The guy was there, ID’d going in and going out in lineups by stand-up citizens. We have the wig and the makeup, and both match evidence found at the crime scene. His dyed skin was under her nails, for Christ’s sake! The suitcase fibers match the ones in the vic’s throat. He left prints on the tea things. On and on. And there’s the ashtray. He was there, he killed her. That’s not the problem. The problem is that after Peoples handed down on the suppression-of-evidence motion, Waley got up and changed his plea to NGI.”
Keegan grunted. “This doesn’t make me fall off my chair.”
“No, me either. So it’ll be dueling shrinks.”
“Yes,” said Keegan. A meaningful pause, and then the district attorney said, “You’re still going with the Ancient Mariner.”
“Dr. Perlsteiner. Yes.”
“This is an error, in my opinion. He’s too old to make the right impression.”
Karp shrugged. “What can I do, Jack? I trust the guy. He’s done real good for us in the past. Meanwhile, if you don’t like the way I’m handling the case-”
“Oh, don’t be an ass!” Keegan snapped. “Who the hell else am I going to put in there? Superman’s booked solid and Jesus is dead. No, it’s you, bucko, and as much as I’d like it if you listened to me just once …” He stopped and picked up one of his ever present Bering silvery cigar tubes and twirled it around his fingers. “Let me say this,” he resumed, “just so you understand. I am now bracing myself for calls from uptown, during which I will express to what we used to call the colored community the highest confidence in Mr. Roger Karp and in his ability to win this case. This is not a lie. No, I take it back: it’s only a little lie, because I thought and I think that you were a damn fool to take it on. Now I realize it’s not your fault, but Rohbling now has a free pass on the murders of four black women. If he gets a walk to Happy Valley on the fifth …” Here he shook his head and rolled his eyes. “There will be a typhoon of shit flying around, and I will not be able to protect you, not without walking away from this chair myself, which I don’t intend to do. Now, do we understand each other?”
“Yeah, we do. You really think I’m a jerk, don’t you?”
“I do. But I also think you’re the best murder prosecutor in the city.”
“Next to you.”
The lights on the D.A.’s phone had begun to flash.
“No,” said Keegan, “because I am the district attorney, and the district fucking attorney, like, as I once supposed, the chief of the Homicide Bureau, does not try gigantic murder cases. Now scram, and God bless you. I got to take these calls.”
Marlene sat in her office wondering why, having devoted her life to helping people much in need of help, she did not have a friend in the world. She had just gotten off the phone with Carrie Lanin’s sister, who was staying with her in the wake of her outing with Pruitt. The sister said that Carrie didn’t want to speak to her, that she was devastated by what had happened. “Why didn’t you protect her?” she had said. Why didn’t you? was Marlene’s thought, but she had said nothing, had just taken it and made soothing noises and had hung up the phone, depressed.
Her conversation with Harry had done nothing to improve the mood. Harry had gotten the buzz from the detectives who had caught the Pruitt case: much wrinkling of noses around the precinct. On the other hand, a great story-girl slays killer abductor-and the cops didn’t see much of a percentage in spending a lot of time trying to break Lanin’s story, if breakable, only to find out if she had received any help in whacking a guy who, all agreed, badly wanted whacking.
But Harry was mightily pissed, believing that somehow Marlene had set the whole thing up and, worse, set it up without consulting him. So Harry hated her too.
As did, naturally, La Wooten and her family and associates. Marlene fingered the copy of the Times on her desk, where it lay turned to the review of the recent concert. The reviewer had raved over the Shostakovich performance. It had “captured all the despair and agony inherent in the piece.” No kidding, thought Marlene. Wooten and her group had gone back to play after seeing what the Music Lover had done in the dressing room, Wooten red faced and sniffling with her eyes streaming. It was just bad luck that the slimeball had gotten past both of them. She never should have left the hallway, never should have shown herself in the lobby, should never have answered her beeper, should have had another man … Meanwhile Marlene had started some of her people on an examination of Wooten’s intimates and of the people known to be in the Julliard buildings at the time. Not much hope there, just checking for criminal records and asking around. Any perverts among you musicians? Still, something could turn up, and then there was the boyfriend. Definitely she wanted to know more about the boyfriend.
Marlene threw the newspaper into the wastebasket and stomped out of her office. She could hear Tranh in the back of the office, rattling pots. Perhaps she should saunter over and sit down for a cup of excellent filtre and a discussion of Verlaine? Non, merci. For now Tranh was to be avoided, at least until she had arranged a suitably safe place for him in her mind.
She walked out of her cubicle to the open area. Lucy was lying in her accustomed after-school position, belly down on the oriental rug with her books and papers spread around her head end like a messy blossom. She was writing firmly and confidently on a worksheet. Marlene stood for a moment watching her daughter. She was certainly becoming a long drink of water: the pipe-stem legs were in constant motion, crossing and recrossing, flicking upward so that the heels nearly touched the barely swelling butt and then splaying outward in a demonstration of near-gymnastic limberness. Her head was thrust forward close to the paper so that her mass of black curls swung forward, obscuring the worksheet to all but their owner. Not an ergonomic position, but Marlene could remember doing her homework the same way at Lucy’s age. Like her mother, Marlene thought: a precocious child, with a remarkable gift for languages. Unlike her mother, who had been a docile wimp at that age, Lucy was a wiseass who exhibited occasional flashes of adult-like perception and maturity. Eight going on eleven going on thirty.
She wondered if Lucy felt toward her as she had felt toward her own mother in those distant pre-adolescent days, when she had first understood that her own life was to be on a different course from the one her mother had followed. She was not going to marry a local and make a home in the womb of Italianate Queens; nor was she going to get a “good job” as a schoolteacher while awaiting same. She remembered the sense of disappointed expectation in her mother’s eyes as the woman waited in vain for Marlene to “settle down.” She was still waiting, despite the marriage and the three grandchildren. A pang went through her, the mother’s bane. Did Lucy feel the same way about her?