Robert Tanenbaum - No Lesser Plea

“Butch, this concerns one of your people, so I wanted to talk it over with you before I took any adverse action. I have here a Grand Jury subpoena for a Vera Higgs. Are you familiar with that?”

“Yeah, I am. What about it?”

“What about it! It’s a Grand Jury subpoena, Butch. The witness was never brought before the Grand Jury. This assistant, this Kaplan, used a legal instrument as a … a convenience so that he could break an alibi and depose new testimony in a Criminal Court case.”

“Mister Bloom, the use of Grand Jury subpoenas for things like that has been an unofficial practice in this office for all the time I’ve been here. Mister Garrahy knew about it, and …”

“You know, Butch, I get a little tired of hearing what Mister Garrahy allowed and didn’t allow. The fact remains that it’s a serious procedural violation. I had to take a very unpleasant phone call from Lennie Sussman this morning. He was furious that Kaplan and what’s-his-face, Hrcany, went out and coerced his alibi witness into changing her story, using an illegal subpoena.”

Karp struggled for control. He took a deep breath and said carefully, “Uh, Mister Bloom …”

“Please, it’s Sandy.”

“Uh, Sandy. I’m sorry you had an unpleasant phone call, but the guy the woman was protecting with her fake alibi has been wanted for three years for involvement in a double homicide. He was also the guy who blew up Marlene Ciampi. And tried to kill me.

“Now as to the legality of the usage, Miss Higgs was interviewed in an assistant district attorney’s office prior to her appearance before the Grand Jury. This is common practice. She had every opportunity to so testify, and can be rescheduled to do so at any time. So the Grand Jury subpoena was legit.”

Bloom began shaking his head even before Karp had finished.

“Butch, it won’t wash. It’s obvious that your people’s use of a Grand Jury subpoena was what pressured the woman to flip on this thing. Sussman will never accept it and neither will Judge Stein. I spoke to the judge at noon and he agreed we can work it out, but …”

“Wait a minute, you brought this business to a judge? Merv the Swerve is going to make a profound legal analysis of this crummy little procedural zit? I can’t believe I’m hearing this. And who gives a shit what Sussman will accept? He’s on the other side. What is going on here?”

Bloom’s face darkened and began to reassemble itself into a pout.

“If you would let me finish. Both the judge and Sussman would be satisfied with an agreement that the Higgs testimony will not be used in the trial, and that both Hrcany and Kaplan will be privately reprimanded.”

“I bet they would! Oh, crap, don’t tell me you agreed to that!”

“Yes, I did. It’s a good agreement. Don’t you realize that your people could be cited for abuse of process at a judicial hearing. They could even be disbarred.”

“For this bupkes? Sandy, give me a break. Uh-uh, there’s no way I’m going to go along with this deal, and Hrcany and Kaplan would be fools if they did, and they’re not fools. No, I want a full, open judicial hearing. I’ll advise Kaplan to ask for one, and I’m positive Roland will demand one. And we’re not suppressing that testimony, either. Sussman doesn’t like it, let him challenge it in open court, on the record.”

“I don’t understand your attitude, Butch. I thought you were a team player,” said Bloom petulantly.

“I am! I am a team player. I want my team to win. I play by the rules, but I still want to win. Look, let’s carry the metaphor further. What’s the score?”

“Score? What are you talking about?”

“This.” Karp opened his folder and spread his charts of trial percentages and conviction rates out on the table. He began to explain what they meant, in terms of public service and attorney morale. But as Karp spoke, and as he observed the mounting annoyance on both of the other men’s faces, he realized neither of these men was interested in either public service or attorney morale. He recalled what V.T. had said months ago about people who sought power for its own sake rather than as the means to perform useful or beloved work.

Amazing, he thought. They don’t give a damn about this. They don’t care about the subpoena either. What they want is my complicity in something stupid, arbitrary, and faintly nasty. They want to pull me away from my friends and my troops and everything that Phil Garrahy stood for. It was so simple; and what would they do once they had him? Make him dance around and gibber like an ape? Train him to flattery? He suddenly felt old.

“Yes, that was very interesting, Butch,” said Bloom, when Karp stopped talking. “Chip, check this out, would you? Good. Now, I must get to a meeting. Butch, do me a favor. I don’t want a messy hearing. There’ll be press, it’ll string out forever. Write a little note for Kaplan’s file. Drop the testimony. I mean it’s one case out of thousands. We got a big system to run here, right?”

Bloom shone his smile. Karp was impassive.

“No.”

“What? Karp, damn it, you’re being plain unreasonable. Didn’t you understand what I said?”

Karp struggled to his feet and set his crutches. “Yes, I did. And I think it sucks. And there’s going to be no secret screwing with Mike Kaplan, and no secret deals with Lennie or Irv. If anything like that goes down, I will jump the reservation in a New York minute. I will demand a judicial hearing. I will leak like a sieve. I will call Breslin. And I will call Alfredo Marchione and tell him the case against his brother’s murderers is being gutted by the DA because Mister Bloom doesn’t like a technical procedure that Phil Garrahy used every day for forty years. That ought to go down like peaches and cream at the Chelsea Democratic Club, of which Alfredo is past president and spiritual leader.”

Bloom gaped like a carp. “You. You’re threatening me. You’re threatening me? ”

“No, I’m not,” said Karp, turning away and humping toward the door. “I have no reason to threaten you. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

That evening Karp took a cab over to Bellevue. Three days a week he had physical therapy from Hector Delgado, ate dinner in the hospital cafeteria, and then went up to see Marlene Ciampi. He went after normal visiting hours, because during them a tide of relatives filled the room. Hector knew the nurse, so Karp got fifteen minutes alone after she had shooed the Ciampis onto the elevator.

It was hard for Marlene to talk much, with her healing face. They were tapering her off the dope, but she still drifted in and out of sleep a lot. Tonight she was out cold. Karp sat in a wheelchair, held her hand and watched TV. This is what it will be like at Golden Age Ranch, when we’re old, he thought.

It was a World War II movie. A sailor ran up to the star and said, “Captain, the Jap carrier is reported dead in the water and burning.” Karp liked the phrase. “Marlene,” he said softly, “you know what I did today? Don’t ask, but I’m dead in the water and burning.” He kissed her cheek and left. He felt light and clean, better than he had in months, better than he had since Garrahy died.

And of course he didn’t get the bureau chief job. That went to a crony of Wharton’s named S. Mervin Spence. Which meant the scam in the Complaint Room was off, or at least scaled way down. Which meant that morale dropped a little lower among the best of Karp’s young lawyers. Who simply left. Kaplan, then Dellia, then half a dozen others. Which meant that the criminal justice system became a little more of a joke. Wharton’s administrative system was in high gear. He knew exactly what was happening in every part of the DA’s office. The problem was, nothing was happening. As V.T. said, “The criminal justice system is neither a system, nor just, but it is criminal.” When the conviction rate hit twenty-five percent Karp stopped charting it.