“Okay, I understand, but what good does that do? Doesn’t do me any good. Somebody once said, ‘To understand all is to forgive all.’ Fine. I understand you, and I forgive you. Maybe her family can forgive you too someday.
“But then what? Acts have consequences. You drop a brick, it falls to the ground. You couldn’t live in a world that didn’t have some physical order in it. There’s a moral order too; it’s dim but it’s there. Or maybe we just have to pretend that it’s there so we can get out of bed every day. I don’t know. You following me here, Hosie?”
Nothing.
“And here’s another thing: understanding never helped you out. It probably hurt you, come to that. You figured it as part of a hustle, get you out of a jam. I mean, you been hustling me, in a way. We all figure that, you understand somebody, you go easier on them. But why? Maybe when we understand, we should be harder, not softer. Maybe that would fucking work.”
15
The next day, the Friday, in Part Thirty, Vinnie Boguluso was scheduled for arraignment on the grand jury indictment for the murder and lesser crimes committed on the body of Gabrielle Avanian. Part Thirty, a felony arraignment court, had the atmosphere of a bus station in an underdeveloped nation. The floor was brown linoleum, much scuffed. The yellowish window shades were tattered. The mural behind the judge’s presidium was peeling; the allegorical figure of a woman with a sword and scales had no face.
In the well of the court gathered a dozen or so A.D.A.’s, clutching capacious folders. Around them, like bees about blossoms, moved a smaller number of defense attorneys, harassed and shabby if they were with Legal Aid, sleeker and better-dressed if private. Behind them in the rows of wooden benches sat relatives or friends of defendants. On the bench, Judge Rosemary Slade, a black woman of vast experience and legendary arraignment velocity, called them up and shut them down.
The room rumbled with talk, like a marketplace. Formally, the arraignment was the place at which a secret grand jury indictment was made public, where the People let the accused know the nature of his crime against them. In practice, for nearly all cases, it was where one copped out, confessed to a lesser crime, in exchange for a reduced sentence or no sentence at all.
Part Thirty was a marketplace, in fact. The marketing was done between the A.D.A.’s and the defense attorneys, who circulated through the little mob of the People’s representatives, seeking deals for their clients. The A.D.A.’s were often little more than children a few years, or a few months, past their bar exams. While in principle they had wide discretion, in reality they were bound tightly by the tinkerings of politicians in Albany, about what deals they could actually make, and even tighter by the blizzard of policies and memos that issued from the office of the district attorney.
Ray Guma stood placidly amid the familiar bustle and awaited the arrival of his opposite number in People v. Boguluso. This was a Legal Aid named Jack Cooney, an old war horse of approximately Guma’s own vintage. They had worked opposite each other for nearly twenty years, and Guma grinned when he saw Cooney’s familiar, beat-up face appear in the courtroom doorway.
“Counselor,” said Cooney when he got next to Guma, “well, well. A fine piece of shit this morning. I’ve just come from my client, speaking of fine pieces. He wants to know what’s on offer.”
“Offer?” Guma rolled his eyes. “In his dreams, offer. Guilty to the top count is the offer. Twenty-five to life.”
“He’ll never plead to that, my friend.”
“Fuck him, then, Jackie. Trying this scumbag will be a day at the beach. I look forward to it.”
Cooney shrugged. Although he did not want Vinnie out on the street any more than Guma did, he was also a pro. “Not such a day at the beach. Your witnesses are a whore and her wacky kid, and an accomplice to the crime, this Ritter, who by the way was brutalized by the arresting officer.”
“I got the teeth marks, Jack,” replied Guma airily. “He had the vic’s stuff in his apartment. His girlfriend-” Guma stopped, his eyes widening. “Hello,” he said, “I’m in love. Will you look at that?”
She had just walked through the courtroom door, a young bottle blonde with a sharp little face, chewing a wad of gum the size of a golfball. She was an obvious paralegal of some sort, one of the many who darted like guppies in and out of courtrooms.
A new one, perhaps: she seemed lost and was outfitted inappropriately for her job. She wore stiletto-heeled sandals, a deeply vee-necked, very snug baby blue sweater, and a shiny black skirt so tight and short that she was nearly hobbled, swaying precariously as she walked. She was carrying four fat legal files, two under each arm. The burden pulled her shoulders back and thrust her high, conical breasts into sharp relief.
She paused at the little gate that led to the well of the court. Two court officers practically collided as they leaped to open the gate and let her through. She smiled at them, giggled, walked around the end of the defense table, and approached the court clerk, followed by every male eye in the house. She spoke briefly to the clerk. He shook his head and gave her directions. Poor thing! She was in the wrong courtroom.
An arraignment was just finishing, having lasted six minutes, about average for Judge Slade. The defendant looked longingly at the blond woman as he was led away to the Land of No Girls. He said something naughty to her, and she giggled. Judge Slade frowned. The clerk tore his attention away and called the next case: “Calendar 2606. Boguluso.”
The young woman headed back out again, but as she passed the corner of the defense table, she seemed to wobble on her spike heels, to stumble. The four folders went flying and crashed to the linoleum, scattering a deep drift of paper around and under the defense table. She let out a little shriek and knelt down to retrieve her documents.
In this she was not alone. A half-dozen men, court officers, A.D.A.’s (with Guma in the fore), a defense counsel rushed to her aid, eager to help a fellow servant of criminal justice, to peer down her gaping neckline, and to look up her nearly exposed thighs.
Thus the task was quickly done, and the young woman soon rose, burdened again, flushed and apologetic. In a moment her small, shiny butt had wiggled its way out of the courtroom. Nobody noticed that when she left she was no longer chewing gum.
A few flights up from this scene, in the nobler precincts of Supreme Court Part 52, People v. Russell continued. Milton Freeland had begun the day by moving for a mistrial. The Post had done a story on the start of the trial in which Russell’s criminal record was featured in some detail, and Freeland was arguing that the material was prejudicial. Judge Martino growled, but he had to drag all the jurors out one by one and ask them if they had seen the offending article. They hadn’t. The morning vanished.
The delay meant that Karp’s witness, the arresting officer, Patrolman Thornby, would have his testimony broken by the lunch recess, reducing its probable impact on the jury. A cheap but often effective trick.
Thornby was a good witness. He had good presence and a clear voice, and the color of his skin didn’t hurt either. The story of the chase and of hunting through the baking, dark basement was told, and the Bloomingdale’s charge slip with the deceased’s name on it was placed in evidence.
On cross, Freeland seemed obsessed with the time the sales slip had been recovered, and the reason for the delay between the time Thornby said he had taken it off Russell and the time he had delivered it to Detective Cimella at the Sixth Precinct house. Karp knew why too.