Robert Tanenbaum - Falsely Accused

“No, Murray, about as long as an autopsy,” said Karp. “Okay. You know we’re suing under the Fourteenth Amendment because we hold that you’ve been deprived of liberty and property without due process. The property part is your interest in your job; you can’t be deprived of it without a formal hearing beforehand, which you did not get. The liberty interest involves the stigma created by the charges made against you, which has deprived you of your ability to pursue your normal occupation. The classic case is Bishop v. Wood: a cop got fired for insubordination and ruining morale. Plaintiff argued that accusing him of that behavior in public constituted a badge of infamy,’ such that he could never again pursue his usual occupation as a cop, hence deprivation of liberty without due process. Same with you. Liberty to pursue your normal occupation, a chief medical examiner of a major city, was taken from you without due process of law. What we’ll be asking the court for is, on the property side, reinstatement and back pay, and on the liberty side, damages, to recompense you for that damaging loss of reputation. Stigma plus, as we call it.” “That’s what pays you, the damages.” “Right, Murray, that’s what pays me. Now, the defendants are going to try to demonstrate two things. The first is that you did not have a property interest in your job. The Supreme Court gives a lot of leeway to states for determining if an employee actually has such an interest. They don’t want a situation where every town clerk who gets canned thinks he has a federal case. The idea is that coincident with your taking a public job, you admit to understanding that there are legitimate causes for dismissal, as established under statute. It’s called the ‘bitter with the sweet’ doctrine. There are two ways the City can do this. One, they can show that you were still on probation and hadn’t yet acquired any job rights. They say it’s a year, we say it’s six months. I think we can roll them on this. It falls on employer to inform employee of any probationary period, and they told you it was six months when they hired you, and that should be it. The more serious problem is whether you in fact had a rational expectation of a right to a job that couldn’t be taken away without a hearing. That is, we have to point to actual rules that say whether the C.M.E. position requires a formal hearing before dismissal.”

“Of course it requires one,” said Selig vehemently. “It says so in the position description in the City Green Book.”

“So it does,” Karp agreed, “and we have general support for right to hearing before dismissal in several sections of the state Civil Service Law. But section 557 (a) of the Administrative Code says the Mayor can boot you out just by telling you why. Which, of course, he did.”

A puzzled frown appeared on Selig’s face. “But that doesn’t make any sense. How can the law say two different things?”

Karp laughed briefly. “How indeed? Now you know why lawyers make the big bucks. Look, Murray: doctors wear white coats because they have to make sure there’s no dirt on them. Judges wear black robes so the dirt don’t show. The job here is to devise some way of saying that although there appears to be conflict, precedent tells the judge to resolve it in our favor.” Karp studied his yellow crib sheet and made a note on its margins. Then he handed his client a document of some twenty or so closely typed sheets. “This is how I think the questioning is going to go. What I mean is, those are the questions I’d ask you if I was on the other side. Let’s go through them one by one, because I want to hear your answers.”

“Don’t I swear to tell the whole truth?” asked Selig lightly.

“Only if they ask for it, Murray,” said Karp. “And if I let you.”

Before her visit to Marlene’s loft, Stupenagel had no thought of doing anything dramatic with her evening. She had planned to return to her West End Avenue sublet to work on her story over a bag of take-out Chinese. Marlene’s tale, however, and the evidence of her damaged face, had gotten under her skin. Although she was genuinely fond of Marlene, she was most fond of her when Marlene kept to her place, which in Stupenagel’s mind was Mom, Wifey, and at the most, Legal Drudge. It was entirely unacceptable for Marlene to have the sort of adventure she had just experienced, except, of course, by accident. That Marlene had planned to risk her neck in this way vexed the reporter no end, because if Marlene could have her luxurious and now trendy loft, and a baby, and a husband whom she did not despise, then she simply couldn’t be allowed to embark on that kind of adventure, the kind that Stupenagel herself routinely arranged to have. That was the deal that Stupenagel had made with life, and it did not bear thinking that it might not be universally valid.

To her credit, she did not have for Marlene any ill will because of this; nor did she plan to discommode her in any way, beyond the sort of nastiness native to the profession of journalism. But she did enjoy twitting Marlene for being a hausfrau, and planned to continue to do so, and this was only feasible if she continued to outclass Marlene in the adventure business.

These thoughts occupied her as she strolled aimlessly up Grand Street and across Mulberry, past the shuttered groceries and import shops, and the storefront social clubs around which clustered groups of flashy young men, leaning on their double-parked cars. There was trouble, she thought, but not precisely the right kind. She received a good deal of commentary as she walked past these knots of wise guys. One of the men, short, hairy, and drunk, stood grinning in her path, demanding an obscene favor and handling his genitals, while his pals urged him on. Stupenagel had in her bag, beside camera and notebook, a short, razor-sharp, bone-handled Arab dagger she’d picked up during her first visit to Syria, and she considered briefly gutting this man with it and then escaping from the country with the Mafia on her tail, and whether that would make a good story. That such an action would cross her mind at all showed how irritable she had become out of this silly Marlene thing. She straightened herself, gave the man a withering look, and walked around him as if he had been a load of dog poop on the pavement.

It was at that moment that it popped into her head that she would go undercover as a gypsy cab driver and catch Detective Paul Jackson at whatever it was he was doing.

Marlene waited a couple of days, until Karp was more or less over the snit he had got into over the Lanin affair, and they were comfortably settled in the marriage bed, before she sprang it on him. He laughed and said, “Yeah, right!” before it struck him that she was not laughing along.

“You’re not serious?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m serious. I think it’s a good idea.”

“It’s the worst idea you ever had, Marlene,” said Karp, “and that’s a tough league.”

“Why? Why is it such a bad idea?”

He sighed. “Babe, private investigators are high school graduates. You went to Yale Law. You were on law review. You have a mind. I can’t believe you’re actually thinking of spending your life following sleazes around with a camera.”

“You’re not listening to me,” said Marlene in a controlled voice. “Listen to what I said. I want to start a service that specializes in helping women who are being harassed, and that’d include legal rep as well as straight P.I. I’m not talking about tort or divorce work.”

Karp shifted in bed and gave her a searching look.

“When you say P.I. work, you mean stuff like what gave you that face?”

“Not necessarily.”