Robert Tanenbaum - Falsely Accused

Karp walked in, whistling. She went to greet him at the door, and hung on his neck and kissed him with intensity.

“What? I did something right for a change?” he asked when they came up for air.

“No … just …”

“What? Tell me.”

“Nothing. Just … life. ”

An unusually loud gale of laughter floated through the loft.

“Lucy has guests,” Marlene explained. “I think I’ll allow an overnight.”

“On a school night? Who is it? Janice?”

“No. A couple of kids from the shelter. They’re sort of refugees.”

They walked arm in arm back to the bedroom, where Karp began to change out of his court clothes.

“So, nice kids? What’re they, Lucy’s age?”

“No. They’re older. She’s about fourteen, he’s about twelve. As to nice-that’s probably not a good word. She’s practically a zombie most of the time from some kind of traumatic damage. He’s got a lot of anger, probably for a damn good reason. But playing with Lucy seems to help them, and Lucy, needless to say, is in paradise-big kid friends. Janice Chen is not in it.”

A louder gale of laughter. “Lucy is making the animals talk,” said Marlene.

“Always a crowd pleaser,” said Karp, now dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. “Let’s check it out.”

They walked down to Lucy’s room. Karp beat a tattoo with his knuckles on the door and flung it open, crying, “What’s all this laughing? No laughing allowed!”

Lucy giggled and said, “Hi, Daddy!”

Isabella froze and crouched in the corner of the bed, her face blanching and stiff with fright.

Hector sprang from the bed and stood between Karp and Isabella, his eyes darting, looking for escape routes, or weapons.

Lucy was the first to catch on. She put a comforting arm around the boy’s waist and with her other hand stroked his arm, and told him in a soothing voice that it was only her daddy and that he wouldn’t hurt them. Then she suggested that they all help Mommy make dinner. As she walked by the stunned Karp, she held out her arms and he picked her up and kissed her. She whispered in his ear, “They hate men.”

“What the hell was that all about? When I came in to Lucy’s room?” Karp and Marlene were sitting in their living room watching Key Largo in black-and-white when he asked this question, which he had carefully avoided during dinner and the lengthy process of bedding down the three children.

“Yeah, good thing he didn’t have a knife,” said Marlene. “They probably have bad experiences around strange guys bursting into rooms. Lucy tells a garbled story they apparently told her about being attacked by soldiers and her getting raped. He’s a little confused about where all this happened, though, here or down there.”

“They’re orphans?”

“No one seems to know. Hector apparently lives on the streets and runs by the shelter every once in a while for hots and a cot.” She sighed. “A heart-breaker-number eighty-nine thousand and four. Why are you looking at me that way?”

“I’m thinking about how you got Sweety. Picking up strays.”

The mastiff, hearing his name, lifted his head and sniffed loudly, and then dropped it heavily to the oriental rug at their feet, where he was constructing a sizable lagoon of spittle.

Karp threw his arm over Marlene’s shoulder and kissed her hair. “Are you thinking of adding an orphanage to your empire of good works?”

“Empire is right,” she said. “Harry’s got six cops working moonlight for him. He’s a changed man.”

“Really? I thought the cops couldn’t stand him.”

“As a cop, no. Harry doesn’t fit the mold of the job. They don’t mind taking his money, though.”

“You’re making money?” said Karp incredulously.

“Yeah, smarty pants, we are. Mattie has money for the shelter people, some of her own, and some from foundations. And we have some celebrities-well, semi-celebrities. It turns out stalking’s a problem for them big-time. I got that model, she pays us a retainer. A rock singer. A woman on the pro-tennis tour. And Karen Wohl. I just saw her the other day.” “This is a name I should recognize?” “If you watch Lust for Life with us housewives. She plays Mary-Beth, the one with amnesia who’s going out with her brother, unbeknownst. Nice kid. Some scumbag’s sending her mash notes, I’ll kill you if I can’t have you, the usual. Anyway, Harry’ll be opening a little office next week, in a loft on Walker. Speaking of money, how was your day?”

“We did good,” said Karp after a moment’s reflection. “I had James Warneke on the stand in the morning. He’s the A.D.A. who supplied Bloom with the information about Murray and People v. Lotz. ” “That’s the snails in the snatch one?” “Uh-huh. Mr. Warneke’s memory proved to be foggy under examination. It turns out that Dr. Selig never actually hinted, implied, suggested, or in any way spoke in such a way as to lead a reasonable man to believe that he thought that the deceased had inserted snails in her vagina and thus that no possible disrespect for said deceased had ever been uttered. Then there was all the bullshit about lost evidence and the incompetence of the tour doctor, the hired physician on the case. I believe I was able to show that Mr. Warneke’s training was deficient in that he did not appear to know what standard procedure for handling evidence was at a crime scene. We established beforehand that the cops are responsible for securing evidence at the crime scene, not the M.E., and further that the relevant evidence was not lost, although the poor schmuck didn’t know where it was for a time. As far as the competence issue goes, we established that Warneke had used the damn tour doctor as an expert witness in Lotz’s trial, praising his expertise to the skies.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Not a prepared witness. The whole thing’s a zoo. The guy reflected the excellent training he got from his boss.”

“Whose knowledge of criminal procedure is proverbial,” said Marlene. “What happens next?”

“Same as with Fuerza’s charges. Bloom made four: the Lotz things, one in People v. Mann, where Selig was also supposed to have lost evidence, People v. Ralston, where we have a young lady A.D.A. who says that Selig publicly humiliated her and refused to make himself available for testimony, and a couple, three charges in People v. Girton, which-”

“Girton? Isn’t that the one where the gay guy killed his lover and confessed? Last year, right?”

“That’s the one.”

Marlene looked puzzled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Murray solve that case? He was the one who redid the autopsy and showed that the guy who confessed really did it.”

“Uh-huh. Girton walked into a precinct in tears and confessed that he murdered his lover. The cops looked it up and found that the M.E.’s office had declared it a suicide and kicked the guy out. He kept coming back, and they kept giving him the boot, until the one detective they had there who wasn’t brain-damaged figured there might be something in it and called Selig. Selig had the vic dug up and re-autopsied him and sure enough, the guy’d been strangled manually. Girton went with a plea of temporary insanity. I have his lawyer scheduled to testify that if not for Dr. Selig’s skills, the case never would have been made.”

Marlene laughed. “And they’re dragging this out to demonstrate Selig’s incompetence ?”

“Yeah, I know,” said Karp. “It’s like the rest of it-makes no sense. The thrashing of wounded beasts. Anyway, a week, ten days from now, I’ll have Bloom up on the stand. Then we’ll see.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Speaking of faked suicides, I need to get going on those kids who died in jail, but I’m not sure how to start. For sure I can’t involve Stupenagel.”