Robert Tanenbaum - Falsely Accused

“The fuck I know. What I told her was as far as I knew, Joe Clancy of the Two-Five was prime. Got the police medal of valor in seventy-one: ran into a burning building and came out with three little kids hanging off him and his hair on fire. Family man, got a bunch of little paddies and so on. A churchgoer.”

“So? What’s her problem with that?”

“Nothing except she wants to talk to him direct, and Clancy, being a Patrol Guide reader, won’t talk to the press without authorization. And she keeps bugging me to get her together with him. And …” Hrcany paused significantly.

“And now you’re bugging me about it. What do you want me to do, Roland?”

“You’re a famous big cheese-”

“Medium-size cheese. Ex-medium-size cheese.”

“Famous ex-medium-size cheese. You know the big shots up on the twelfth floor in the P.D. Make a call. Get Clancy to see her. Get the bitch off my case.”

Karp considered this request for a long moment. Ordinarily, he would not have minded doing a favor like this for Roland Hrcany. He liked Roland, especially when Roland was in this kind of faintly embarrassing bind. And he had the contacts. He had been very close for a long time to the chief of detectives, and as head of the Homicide Bureau he had been a major player in Manhattan’s criminal justice bureaucracy. He had met most of the current superchiefs and their aides. Even if he was no longer a player, there were people who owed him favors. The only thing that made him hesitate was the suspicion that Ariadne Stupenagel had figured this out too, and was using Roland, all unconscious, as a means of manipulating Karp. On the other hand …

“Butch? You still there?”

“Yeah, Roland. Okay, no problem. I’ll call Barry McGinnity at Public Affairs. It shouldn’t be any big deal.”

Pruitt looked good in court for his arraignment, so good that Marlene’s heart sank when she spotted him moving with his lawyer through the thronged courtroom. He didn’t have long, greasy hair, he was not dressed in filthy leather garments, he did not have a teardrop tattooed on his cheek, or LOVE and HATE inscribed on the knuckles of his hands. He was not wearing the oversize sneakers the cops called perp shoes. He lacked, in short, all the obvious stigmata that would tell a casual glance that he was a dangerous man, and in this court a casual glance was all he was going to get. Pruitt was dressed in his honest, somewhat ill-fitting, workingman’s best suit, in dark blue, with a white shirt and a red striped tie He had heavy black lace-ups on his feet. His hair, cut in humble, honest, Italian-barbershop style, was combed flat with water.

A court officer yelled out a docket number and Pruitt’s name and the charge. Pruitt and his lawyer stepped in front of the judge’s presidium. Marlene’s heart sank further when she saw who was representing the People of New York. She didn’t know him, of course. The turnover in the lower reaches of the Criminal Courts Bureaus was too great to make this at all likely, but she had hoped at least that Luisa had been able to talk one of the more senior people into taking an interest. She pushed forward and touched the A.D.A.’s arm. He was a weedy kid with a mottled nose, a moderate Jewish afro, and thick glasses marked with fingerprints, who obviously wanted to be a lawyer when he grew up but was still struggling with the basics. “Excuse me? I’m Marlene Ciampi, I used to work here. You’re on the Pruitt case? Did Luisa Beckett talk to you about this one?”

“Beckett? Oh, yeah, she called. I haven’t been able to get back to her yet. Sorry, I’m real busy now.”

He turned to find out what was going on, at the same time wrestling the half dozen case folders he was carrying so as to float the instant case to the surface.

The judge was saying, “You’re charged with burglary and assault, and criminal contempt in that you’ve violated the terms of a protective order. How do you plead?”

“Guilty, Your Honor,” said Pruitt, then added, “With an explanation.”

The judge shot him a sharp look. “This is not traffic court, sir. You stand accused of serious felonies.”

“I love her, Your Honor. I’ve loved her for years. I know I shouldn’t have gone in there. I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to see her.”

The judge resumed a stern look. “Well, she didn’t want to see you. That’s why there’s a protective order. You still want to plead guilty? You understand what it means?” He looked at the defense lawyer. “Does he understand what a guilty plea means?”

The lawyer assured that the consequences of such a plea had been explained in detail to Mr. Pruitt.

“Okay, let’s dispose of this right here. Do the People intend to prosecute these felonies?”

“Um …” said the People, shuffling his notes. The judge refocused his stern look on him. “Was the girl hurt? What was the nature of this assault?”

“I would never hurt Carrie!” cried Pruitt.

“Quiet, you!” said the judge. To the People, “Well?”

“No, Your Honor, the complaint says he stroked her hair. And her arm.”

The judge snorted and looked down at Pruitt. “Stroking, huh? Mister, don’t you know stroking is bad for your health?”

Polite titters. The judge grinned and addressed the People. “Okay, let’s say, criminal trespass, assault in the third degree, and the contempt, I’d say that was good for about a year, wouldn’t you?”

“Um, yeah, I mean, yes, sir, Your Honor,” said the People. Marlene could only with difficulty stifle her shout of protest. They were dropping all the charges to misdemeanors, a common method of disposing of cases in the Criminal Courts. She knew what was coming next.

“And I’m going to suspend that sentence and give you three years’ probation,” the judge continued. “I assume that’s agreeable?”

The defense lawyer’s head had started nodding as soon as the word “suspend” had first danced upon the air, and it kept on bobbing.

“Okay, Mr. Pruitt,” said the judge, “I want you to stay away from this girl. If I see you coming through here again, you’re going to be in serious trouble.”

Marlene was out of there almost before the sound of the gavel had ceased reverberating. She did not want to see Pruitt, nor, for that matter, to see Carrie Lanin. Who she wanted to see was Harry Bello.

Karp was not surprised when, several days after his meeting with Phil DeLino, he received an urgent summons to the office of his firm’s senior partner, Jack Weller. He had been naughty and was about to get his desserts.

Weller was a hefty man in his early seventies, and looked, if you didn’t look too closely, ten or twelve years younger. His thick gray hair was expertly stitched to his scalp, and the perpetually tanned skin of his face had the slick surface signifying expensive little surgeries and peels. He had, naturally, the perfect pearly teeth and shiny fingernails of the well-cared-for wealthy. A shiny man, was what Karp always thought when he saw him, and he thought it this morning in Weller’s huge corner office. His teeth shone, as did his nails, the surface of his Sheraton desk, the brass fittings on his yellow suspenders, and his diamond and gold cuff links. His face, however, did not shine; it was dark with displeasure.

Karp was motioned with a curt wrist flick to a tan leather side chair. He was made to wait while Weller finished flipping through a document. Karp watched the cuff links twinkle as the pages snapped. He thought he knew what the document was. While he waited, he studied Weller’s tan. The man was just back from St. Barts. Weller took a lot of vacations, and the year at B.L. was divided, like the medieval liturgical year, into before-and-after St. Barts, Aspen, East Hampton, and the Foreign Trip, Europe or Asia in turn.