Robert Tanenbaum - Justice Denied

Karp read the two texts. “I see what you mean. This part about ‘thousands and thousands of the sons and daughters of the Armenian nation, cruelly butchered, cry out for recognition and recompense. If they do not receive their due, then the fighters of the Armenian Secret Army will extract vengeance instead.’ It’s word for word the same in both places. Pretty impressive, Roland. It’ll play great in court.” He handed the papers back and took another sip of beer. “I guess there’s no question that we’re going to have to try this one.”

“For sure-there’s no hint of a deal. He says he didn’t do it and doesn’t know who did, and I gotta say, he’s a cool little fucker. Compared to the people I usually have up on murder, it’s a pleasure doing business with him. His lawyer’s also right by the book too. Another Armenian, Hagopian his name is. Nice guy, looks like that guy used to do Perry Mason on TV.”

“Raymond Burr,” said Karp. “You’re in trouble, Roland.”

Hrcany laughed, “Yeah, right. No, we’ll take him down. And I’ll make another bet: in a little while we’ll pick up the other guy too. Either Tomasian will rat him out, or he’ll do something dumb. Yeah, I know I said he was being cool, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. He hasn’t thought about what it’s going to be like for a nice middle-class boy looking at twenty-five to life with the smokes upstate. Plus, the momma and the daddy and the sisters and whatever haven’t been to work on him yet. He’ll deal. And if not, fuck him, we’ll try and we’ll convict. What’s wrong, you don’t think so?”

Roland had observed Karp rubbing his lower lip and staring raptly toward the upper left-hand corner of the universe, an infallible indication of dubiety.

“Well,” said Karp after a pause. “You have a good case. I just don’t think it’s soup yet. The girlfriend, for example-”

Roland made a dismissive gesture. “Come on, Butch! Let’s say she shows up …” In falsetto, “‘Yes, Officer, my honey was with me all night and until noon, and my squeeze is so sore I can hardly piss.’ No problem on the girl. I’ll take her apart on the stand. She fucked him, maybe she fucked someone else, she’s a slut. I’ll find people she told lies to. If she was a virgin, then she loves him, she’d do anything to save him from jail. If she’s a dog, I put young guys on the jury. If she’s a dish, I’ll make sure it’s full of bags and fags-the usual routine.”

Karp nodded impatiently. “Right, Roland, I know how to impeach a witness. That wasn’t what I meant. I meant, why isn’t she here? Where is she? What’s she doing? Are the Armenians holding on to her? Is Tomasian being set up for a sacrificial lamb by his own people? Okay, another thing, there’s this business with the license plate and the guns-”

“Not the stupidity defense, please!”

“No, although in this case it might even work. I mean it doesn’t jell, one with the other. If for some reason they didn’t mind using their own license plate, then they’d want to be clean as whistles when the cops came around. The defense then attacks the eyesight or credibility of whoever spotted the plate. If for some reason they want the guns around, they have incriminating evidence on site, then they absolutely have to be anonymous when they do the hit. Then the defense can play them as innocent victims interested in self-protection. Which brings up the additional question of why a man who’s got his hands on one of the most effective silent assassination weapons ever invented wants to pull a dumb stunt like shooting a guy in front of a dozen people while he’s parked on a one-way street that’s practically a dead end.”

“I told you already, they’re amateurs.”

“Roland, amateurs, shmamateurs, it doesn’t make sense. What’s he got the silenced grease gun for? Fourth of July for the deaf? What I’m saying is, even if he’s never done anything like this before in his life, if he wants this Turk dead, he hangs out at the guy’s apartment late one night and hoses him down with the M3. There’s another angle here that we’re not seeing.”

Hrcany finished his drink and signaled the waitress to bring another. He did not like the drift of the conversation, and it was not lost on him that the D.A. had asked none of these questions. In fact, Roland was a good enough investigator to have had similar reservations. But it was past time for these. It was now accepted gospel, broadcast to the millions not an hour since, that Tomasian was the guy. All of Roland’s mental energy was now devoted to making sure that, weeks or months hence, twelve jurors would also believe it, beyond a reasonable doubt, to a moral certainty.

He said, “I know, there’s flaky sides to the case, but I don’t think they’re that important, tactically. People watch a lot of TV killings; they think that’s real life. They don’t figure what’s really going to happen if you do a crime in such and such a place and time. It’ll be hard for the defense to get that point across-”

“No, Roland, look,” Karp broke in, “I’m not talking tactically. I’m not saying it’s not a good case. It’s a good case. I’m asking, is it the guy? Did he really do it? It’s not the same question as ‘Is it a good case?’”

“Of course he did it!” snapped Hrcany. “What, you think it was a mugging that went sour? Who the fuck else could it be? He wrote the letter, he made the call, he has the car and the guns and the parka, he killed the guy. Case closed!”

Karp sighed and drank some more beer. His head was light, probably from the Empirin and codeine pill he had swallowed a few hours earlier, that and the unfamiliar alcohol, and he allowed that his incisive legal mind was probably not tuned to its highest pitch. So Roland was probably right; Karp, himself often a victim of second-guessing by incompetents, was sensitive to his own practice of that vice, and was, besides, disinclined to light his friend’s notoriously short fuse.

Therefore he smiled pleasantly and changed the subject, which Roland was more than willing to do, and they spoke desultorily of sports for twenty minutes or so, and then Karp got up and said that he ought to go home.

Home was only six blocks away in a loft building on Crosby off Grand, and Karp walked there now, as he almost always did. His pace, however, was not his usual breakneck lope, but a careful and stately progress, like that of an ancient colonel on the esplanade of a resort. At his door, Karp still had to climb five steep flights of wooden stairs. This he did very slowly, flexing the bad knee as little as possible. It took him nearly ten minutes, and he was pale and faintly nauseated when at last he reached the red-painted steel door to the loft he shared with his family.

Entering, he staggered over to a tatty couch upholstered in red velvet and threw himself down on it, lifting his feet up on a low table made from a flush door set on concrete pipe. Beyond this table Marlene, his wife, sat cross-legged in a bentwood rocker, with a nest of papers on her lap. She regarded him over the rims of her large, round reading glasses and said, “Where have you been? It’s past seven.”

“I’ve been drinkin’ away me pay down at the saloon, that’s where,” said Karp. He slipped his shoes off and shrugged out of his raincoat and suit jacket. “And now I want my dinner and a hug from my old woman.”

She pushed her glasses back on her nose and resumed her study of a document. “Your dinner,” she sniffed, “is congealing in a pan on the stove. There’s bread and salad in the fridge. Pray help yourself. I’m answering motions.”

She continued to work for a minute or two, but when Karp didn’t stir, she looked up and examined him more closely.