Robert Tanenbaum: Justice Denied

Past the foot of Leonard Street, and barely in Karp’s field of view, was a small park called Columbus Park. At this moment a dozen or so elderly Chinese had gathered on the new grass to do their morning t’ai chi. Karp admired their movements for a few minutes and then, as he turned away from the window to get back to work, imitated one of the positions, holding his hands high, balancing on his left foot, and sweeping his right foot across to the left.

Karp was a naturally graceful man, and the movement might have even pleased the Chinese had not Karp’s left knee collapsed, sending him crashing into a couple of conference table chairs and to the floor.

He lay there cursing and gritting his teeth against the fierce pain jabbing up from his bad knee. A dark, worried face appeared upside down over the edge of the conference table.

“Are you all right?” asked Connie Trask, his secretary.

Karp flushed and managed to get his good leg under him. Trask rushed around the table to give him a hand, but he waved her off and, groaning, struggled to his feet.

“You ought to see a doctor,” said the secretary.

“I don’t need a doctor, Connie. I’m fine. I just tripped.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “Hmmph. Tell it to the marines! You’ve been shuffling around here like the wreck of the Hesperus for weeks. You and that leg-”

“It’s the weather changing …”

“I thought that was when it got cold. It’s getting warm now.”

Karp moved around to his desk and sat down heavily in his chair, elevating the left leg on the edge of a desk drawer permanently pulled out for that purpose. He scowled and snapped, “Connie, we know you’re a grandmother, but you’re not my grandmother, okay?”

“Lucky for you,” she replied. “Meanwhile, you got an appointment waiting. Guy wants to work here, don’t ask me why. You want me to send him in?”

“Give me a couple of minutes.”

She nodded and left. Karp massaged his knee and flexed it gingerly. It felt like bits of pea gravel were trapped under the cartilage. It was nearly twenty years gone since a big USC guard had come crashing down on that joint, ending Karp’s basketball career at Berkeley and the possibility of a bid from the pros. The memory of that moment of pain could still nauseate him.

And as it had turned out, Karp had gotten to play for the pros, a brief debut the past winter on a New York team as part of a murder investigation. His knee had sufficed for six weeks of not very strenuous play, but had not been the same since. For now, however, Karp’s will was as strong as his knee was shaky. He willed the pain away and looked up brightly as his appointment walked in.

The branch of Metropolitan Jewelers run by Aram Tomasian was located on 42nd just west of Lexington. There, at ten on the Monday after, appeared the two detectives, Frangi and Wayne. They had with them the search warrant hastily but perfectly drafted by Roland Hrcany, ordering them to search for a list of specific items, including weapons and clothing and “any other articles and instruments used in the commission of the said crime.”

There was a clerk in attendance at the glassed counter, and when the two officers identified themselves, she brought Tomasian out from the back of the shop. Tomasian was wearing an old-fashioned tan work smock and a loupe attached to an elastic band. It stuck up from his forehead like a stumpy horn.

Tomasian seemed anxious, and again he surprised them. He asked, “Are you here about Gaby?”

They had to think a moment. Frangi said, “Gaby. You mean your girlfriend.”

“Yes,” said Tomasian. “I called her after I talked to you yesterday and I couldn’t reach her. I tried her half a dozen times and then I gave up and went over to her place. I have a key. She wasn’t there. I called her work and a couple of her friends, and nobody seems to know where she is.”

Tomasian seemed genuinely worried, but, on the other hand, Wayne, for one, thought that Tomasian might turn out to be a considerable actor. He had been too cool on the day of the murder, and too cute.

Wayne said, “Why were you so interested in reaching her?”

Tomasian uttered a sound of annoyance and exasperation. “Why? She’s my girlfriend. I wanted to talk to her. I knew you guys would be coming to see her and-”

“You wanted to get your story straight. Your alibi,” Frangi interrupted.

“It’s not a ‘story,’” snapped Tomasian. “I was concerned. She’s not the kind of person that police visit. I wanted to talk to her. Is that a crime?”

Wayne removed a paper from his coat pocket and smoothed it out on the glass counter. “This is a search warrant, Mr. Tomasian. It gives us authority to search your business premises and your home.”

Tomasian looked briefly at the document. A flush appeared along his cheekbones, and he licked his lips. The sight of this discomfort brought a surge of gladness to the heart of Detective Wayne. Tomasian said hesitantly, “Look, my apartment, fine, but this store-it’s not my property. It belongs to my father; I just manage it for him.”

“It’s your place of business, Mr. Tomasian,” said Wayne, “and it’s described in the warrant.”

Tomasian sighed and told his clerk to pull down the shades and lock the front door. The two detectives began to search.

There was nothing in the display cases out front except jewelry and the accoutrements of the jewelry trade. The back of the store looked more promising. It held a substantial jeweler’s workshop: a long, scarred wooden table covered with tools and bits of shining wire, a high stool before it, and the wall it faced was lined with cabinets and boxes full of tiny drawers. A small desk was placed at one end of the room, and this held a phone, a Rolodex, and assorted papers. It was flanked by a tan four-drawer filing cabinet. And then there was the safe.

It was a green steel room the size of an apartment bathroom, its two thick doors hanging open invitingly. Wayne and Frangi moved toward it instinctively: if a suspect owns a safe, of course that’s the first place you look for the good stuff. The safe was lined floor to ceiling with metal shelves, upon which were stacked long, flat steel boxes and open bins. The bins, they found, contained gold and silver wires of different gauges and in sheets, as well as various semiprecious stones and jewelers’ findings. The boxes held gems and finished pieces. Under one of the lower shelves there was a steel-bound footlocker, painted olive drab and locked with a heavy hasp and padlock.

The detectives pulled the locker out into the center of the safe. Tomasian was sitting on his stool, watching them. Wordlessly he held out a key ring, holding it up by a small brass key. Wayne took the key and opened the footlocker.

Three hours later, the detectives were in Roland Hrcany’s office, sucking on illicit cans of beer and feeling pleased with what had gone down.

“He give you any grief?” asked their host.

“No, he went like a lamb,” answered Frangi. “Same thing at his apartment. We checked the closet, and there was the red and blue parka, just like the witness described. We also picked up a lot of paper-stuff about this Armenian Secret Army-leaflets, posters. We even got carbons of a couple letters he sent to the Turkish embassy at the U.N.”

“Threats?”

“You could say that, but it’s kind of vague what he was gonna do if they didn’t come across. But they weren’t love notes.”

“But you didn’t find the ski mask?”

“No,” said Frangi, “but that don’t mean much. It’s the kind of thing that’s easy to trash.”

“I presume he’s still denying the whole thing?”

Wayne said, “Yep. We read him his rights and he clammed up. He sticks to the line he was with his girlfriend, who’s still among the missing, and he didn’t know who the other guy at the shooting was because he wasn’t at any shooting.”