Robert Tanenbaum - No Lesser Plea

“Thanks, guys,” said Karp. He shook hands all around, got a quick kiss from Ciampi, and walked out into the dark streets toward Foley Square and the Complaint Room.

The Complaint Room was the gateway to the criminal justice system, just as those little grates set into the curbs are the gateways to the sewage system. It had a similar ambience.

About fifty by one-hundred feet in size, it was painted with peeling green and ochre paint, lit by dull and flickering fluorescent lights, and overheated. The floor was covered with the evening’s trash and the air smelled of the losing battle Lysol was fighting with urine, vomit, sweaty bodies, and smoke. It looked like the second-class bus station in a third-world country. Half its area was partitioned into eight small booths, in each of which sat a typist with the appropriate equipment, a filing cabinet full of forms, and two chairs, one for the cop and one for the civilian witness if there was one. The cops took turns going into the booth and giving the typist the facts: the time, nature, and location of the alleged crime.

The ADAs-three by day and two at night-traveled from booth to booth, questioning the arresting officer, dictating the complaint to the typist, then moving on to the next booth. It was a slow process, which meant that the police officers had to sit waiting their turn, sometimes for hours. Once inside the booth, the cop had to wait for the ADA to come around and dictate, and for the typist to type and proofread. Then he signed the affidavit and took the complaint to the docket desk in the corner of the Complaint Room, had the complaint stamped with the docket number, and then went to court for the defendant’s arraignment. A single arrest might thus take up five or six hours of police time, which is one reason why you can never find a cop when you need one.

Karp walked into the Complaint Room at seven o’clock, to find more-than-usual chaos in progress. There were at least fifty people crowded into the waiting area and spilling out into the hall. Voices were raised in irritation and in the hallway some cops were breaking up a fight between two drunk witnesses. He turned to a woman seated at a desk in the front of the Complaint Room.

“Debra, what the hell is going on here? And what are you doing here? It’s past seven.”

Debra Tiel was a tough lady from South Philly who started in the DA’s Office as a typist. Now she ran the Complaint Room. Sharp and commanding, she knew how to get people to do things efficiently and like it; she was one of the indispensable, if unsung, trench soldiers of the bureaucratic state. After almost eleven hours in the pits, settling arguments between typists and cops and typists and ADAs and ADAs and cops and cops and cops, her coffee-colored face was visibly drawn, but her white blouse still retained its perpetual crispness. At the sight of Karp, she hoisted her silver-colored reading glasses from her nose and jammed them into her Afro like the visor of a knight.

“Sugar, am I glad to see you! We’re short a typist and an ADA and I’ve got sixty people to get into booths. Most of ’em are holdovers from the afternoon, before we closed up for dinner. I mean …!”

“Who’s working?”

“Hunk’s in Booth Six, doing good. Ehrengard never showed.”

“It figures, that shithead! OK, we’ll clean the place out.”

He walked into the room and scanned the seats. A tall black woman wearing fuchsia hotpants, a red satin camisole and a blond wig was using the pay phone. An elderly woman, her head bandaged, and her face bruised was sitting in a chair looking dazed. Next to her a young cop read the sports page of the Daily News. Two other cops were bringing a wino out of the men’s room and setting him down with some gentleness on a chair. The person next to him, a middle-aged shopkeeper in a checked sportscoat, said “Sheeesh!” and immediately vacated his chair. Karp caught a whiff and sympathized. The wino must have witnessed some significant crime. The cops would dry him out, keep him dry through his testimony and then toss him back into the gutter, where the person whom he had testified against would probably cut his throat some night. Right now, though, he was the safest wino in New York. The rest of the crowd reflected the city’s population-all races, the two major sexes, several of the minor ones, and most social classes were represented, united for once in boredom and imitation.

Karp took off his jacket, rolled up his shirt-sleeves and climbed up on Debra Tiel’s desk. Pitching his voice to carry, he said, “Alright, may I have your attention please! Everyone, may I have your attention! Hey, you want to shut off the radio?” Martha and the Vandellas vanished and the crowd turned to face the source of the voice booming down from eleven feet up.

“OK, we’re going to speed things up here a little.” (A few claps and sarcastic cheers from the cops.) “Everybody with homicide, rape, or sex cases raise your hands.”

“Does that include Dickie Wavers?”

“Tonight it does-flashing to fondling. All of you, go to Booth Three and get in line. All prostitution charges and all violations, including public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and harassment go to Booth Four and line up. All robberies and assaults, go to Booth One on my right; all burglary, trespass, go to Booth Two; all larceny, theft, auto theft, go to Booth Five, also anyone with bad-check arrests; all narcotics or gambling charges …”

“Does that include bookie collars?” a detective called out.

“Sure does. Go to Booth Six. Now, anyone left?”

“Just me, man.” Karp looked down from his tower and saw a black detective in a cream-linen jacket.

“Could I talk to you? I gotta get out of here, like now.”

Karp had worked with Sonny Dunbar before and liked him. He stepped down from the wastebasket and walked over to the detective. “What’s the problem, you got tickets to the Yankees tonight?”

Dunbar grimaced and ran his hand across his face. “I only wish, man. No, I got this shitty little purse-snatch collar, I’ve been waiting three hours, and I got serious family troubles, no lie.” He looked at Karp expectantly.

“Sure, Sonny, no problem. Let’s go into Eight.”

They went into the booth and Dunbar shot the basic facts to the typist: his name, defendant’s name, victim’s name, witness’s name, time, and location of the crime. Then he described the events in front of the drug store. Karp chuckled. “You wish they were all that easy, right?”

“Yeah, sure. I thought I was through with that garbage when I transferred to homicide. Anyway, I vouchered the purse, the chick says she’ll testify. The perp has a long sheet already; he’ll probably cop to petty with no trouble. Have you got that?”

Karp had been jotting notes on a yellow legal pad. He looked up and said, “Sure, Sonny, take off.” Dunbar flashed a smile.

“Thanks, Butch. I owe you one.”

Dunbar ran out and Karp dictated the language of the formal complaint to the typist. As he did so, he walked out of the booth to check on his handiwork. The Disneyland Principle had worked again. People were always happier on short lines, even if the waiting time was nearly the same as it would have been on longer ones. Much of the chaos and irritation had drained from the atmosphere in the Complaint Room; it now resembled a first-class bus station. Within an hour, there were scarcely a dozen people left on line.

Karp moved among the booths, listening to cops and victims, organizing the histories of human suffering and viciousness into the colorless language of the law. As always, he was torn between the natural impulse to sympathize and the requirement to keep the gears rolling. The gears had to win, of course, and not for the first time he reflected on the damage that continuous exposure to these experiences worked on the spirits of the people who made up the criminal justice system. This old lady now, telling him about being beaten bloody and robbed in the elevator of her building. It was the worst thing that ever happened to her. There was no way he could ever make her whole again. Certainly, putting the miserable kid junkie who had done it behind bars for-what, six months? — would hardly put her world back into balance. But he had heard it a hundred times. The cop had seen it fifty times. He looked at the face of the cop who had made the arrest. Young, curly-haired, wispy mustache, with a cynical old-man’s eyes. Armor, like Karp’s armor. He shook himself. He was letting the old lady ramble.