Robert Tanenbaum - Justice Denied

“And there’s no point you looking at me like that. It’s nothing personal. You can’t be on the street. You’re a career criminal, you’ve already spent most of your life in the slam, and now you’re going to spend the rest of it inside. That’s your part in the play. It’s my part to put you away, and it’s Freeland’s part to try to stop me. It’s a puppet show. Or like a mechanical bank-you put the penny in the slot and the little clown spins around.”

“It’s like that, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Karp after a sigh. “Sometimes I think it is.”

“Whatever you do to me ain’t gonna bring her back.”

“There’s that. You know, when I was in law school, I heard a guy lecture on the philosophy behind punishment. What he called ‘the supposed justification.’ He did a pretty good job of proving that there wasn’t any-rehabilitation is a joke, deterrence is unethical, revenge is immoral.”

“Didn’t convince you much.”

Karp smiled. “No, it didn’t. Or to tell the truth, I saw the logic of what he was saying, but it didn’t feel right to me. You hurt someone, you got to suffer. There has to be justice or the world doesn’t make sense. I’m talking gut level, not all the legal horseshit.

“So let me give you some advice. You heard something in the cells. Maybe somebody admitted doing something that somebody else is going down for. Or somebody has some information about a crime that the cops don’t know about. You figure you can use it to get a better deal, because you’re a hustler. You’re looking out for number one. That’s what you’ve always done, your whole life. Well, look around. Here you are. Here you’re gonna stay. That’s what hustling got for you.

“What I’m saying is, think about it; maybe you should start doing the opposite. Do something for somebody else, a stranger maybe. You can’t fuck up your life any worse than it’s already been, and who knows? It could change your luck.”

He stumped out leaving Hosie Russell looking at him blankly, as if he had been speaking Armenian.

Marlene, baby on hip, pounded on the iron door of Stuart Franciosa’s loft, which, after a considerable wait, was opened by the proprietor, looking harassed. He wore a heavy reflective apron over his usual black sweatshirt and black canvas pants, and he had a pair of dark goggles pushed up on his forehead.

“Sorry, I’m in the midst,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I’m going shopping,” said Marlene. “You want me to pick anything up?”

“How considerate! How about the severed head of the odious Lepkowitz?”

“Oh, God, don’t remind me. The deadline’s getting close, isn’t it?”

“Less than a month. How’re you doing on it?”

“Doomed. I’m starting to get my head adjusted to the possibility that the fucker could actually kick me out.”

“Oh, you’ll think of something. But, really, shopping? Thanks, but we want for nothing. We eat like birds, as you know. Say, I heard about what happened Saturday. You really have to stop being attacked by criminals, Marlene. It’s bringing the neighborhood down.”

“I’ll think about it. What’re you doing in there, by the way?”

“Casting. Want to see? It’s quite dramatique. ”

The big workroom was hot and smelled of burning.

“It’s just a little bronze, a test really,” said Stuart. “I just got this neat little electric furnace. It was starting to be a pain in the ass to go up to the foundry for every little thing. Don’t look directly in the door.”

Stuart used a set of tongs to open the door of the squat cylinder. Harsh yellow light and a blast of heat shot out. He reached in with the tongs and drew out a glowing crucible and poured a stream of liquid bronze into a small mold, throwing a shower of sparks and a cloud of smoke.

Marlene and Lucy watched with interest. Lucy was fascinated by the fireworks. Marlene was looking more at the metalized label stuck to the side of the device. “Where’d you get that thing, Stu?”

“Pearl Paint, the artist’s venal friend. Why?”

“Nothing. I’ve just been a jerk. See you.”

Later, her shopping done, the baby fed and napping, Marlene worked the phone, trying to locate Harry Bello. She finally had to leave her number with the police dispatcher, saying it was an emergency.

Harry called back within ten minutes, concern thick in his voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Harry.”

“They said it was an emergency. I thought, the kid-”

“The paint, Harry. It wasn’t paint.”

“This you give me a heart attack for? The paint isn’t paint?”

“Where was it, the store you saw the Turks at?”

“On Canal, that Pearl’s Paint.”

“Harry, Pearl Paint is the biggest art-supply store in lower Manhattan. You saw them carrying a heavy box out, say about the size of a big TV?”

“Yeah. So?”

“My next paycheck says that wasn’t a set of watercolors. It was an electric jeweler’s furnace.”

“They’re gonna melt that thing, the mask,” said Harry, no flies on him.

“Not if I can help it,” said Marlene.

The defense’s first witness in People v. Russell was, to Karp’s surprise, a familiar face. Paul Ashakian took the stand and was sworn in. He looked young and blank-faced up there.

Freeland took him through the usual background material, schools, profession, the fact that he was not a bodybuilder or involved in any athletics at present, and then on to the meat. Freeland had set up an experiment. He had taken Ashakian up to the stairway in 58 Barrow, and there Ashakian had propped up the skylight, jumped up, grabbed the lip of the skylight base, and chinned himself up to the roof. He testified that once up on the roof, he had observed numerous ways to leave the building.

Freeland asked, “Now, Mr. Ashakian, is there any doubt in your mind that a person of approximately your height and build could enter the skylight as you did and escape from the roof in any of the ways you have described?”

Karp objected. “Speculative.”

“Sustained.”

Freeland asked, “Well, then, did you yourself have any difficulty whatever pulling yourself up through the skylight to the roof?”

Ashakian said it had been easy.

Karp rose for cross. He had been about to ask that the entire testimony be stricken as speculative and irrelevant, but a memory flashed into his mind and he approached the witness.

“Mr. Ashakian, you testified that you attended St. Joseph’s High School. While there, did you participate in any sports?”

“Yes, I was on the gym team.”

“You started for the St. Joseph’s gymnastic team?”

“Yes.”

“And during that time, were you ever required to perform on the high bar?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Did that entail leaping up for a bar set nine feet above the ground, pulling yourself up so that your legs were on the bar, and rotating your whole body rapidly around the bar?”

“Yes, it did,” said Ashakian. To his credit, he seemed embarrassed.

“No further questions,” said Karp.

Freeland’s second witness was a thin, elderly man named Walter Tyler. Tyler testified that he had been walking down Hudson Street and that he had seen Susan Weiner stagger, bleeding, out of her doorway and a man running away from that scene. The man had glanced over his shoulder as he ran, and Tyler had seen his “full face.” The running man had not been Hosie Russell.

Tyler testified further that he had gone with the crowd to 58 Barrow, had shouted out that Russell was not the right man, and had been ignored. Later he had gone up to a cop and had given his story, which the cop had written down. When he saw that the police were continuing to charge Russell, he had gone to Freeland. Karp looked over at the jury. They were listening with interest. Wrinkles of doubt appeared on their faces. They had all watched enough Perry Mason to believe that the defense could pull in a secret witness at the last moment to overturn the prosecution’s carefully constructed case. Disaster loomed.