Tainted Evidence

by Robert Daley

  Karen had got out the courtroom door and ten feet further on but there her progress stalled, the mob around McCarthy had somehow enveloped her too. Unable to move forward or back she was obliged to listen one after another to his pronouncements. They made her flinch and though she tried to push her way into the clear, this proved impossible. She managed only to get further into the mob and soon was surrounded so closely that Coombs beside her fought to give her room to breathe.

  McCarthy noticed her. She saw him lunge in her direction, his arm snaking around her shoulders as if she were his girlfriend, and he bent to whisper in her ear. She shook free of him, her face dark with anger and resumed pushing forward.

  "What did you tell her?" screamed the newsmen.

  She heard McCarthy laugh. "I offered her my condolences. She is a gallant opponent and a gallant lady. It is not easy to lose."

  Now she had left him behind, and was striding down the corridor, but suddenly the newsmen abandoned McCarthy, swelling around her instead, again impeding forward movement, bombarding her with questions that were so many and so loud as to be incomprehensible. Microphones were thrust into her face. It was her turn now to make pronouncements and she realized it. She could make any speech she cared to. She might talk about justice, might weep for justice. She might weep for racial understanding, for opportunities lost again today. She might speak of a divided America, for that's what today's verdict was about. Of a people who are exiles in their own country and who, increasingly, won't play by the common rules. She might cry out a warning: don't you see what this verdict means? Don't you see what is happening in this country? That blacks hate whites and vice versa, that it is getting worse, and if this goes on there is no hope for any of us. This was her chance to say something brilliant, she told herself. But in America brilliance was reserved for winners. People would see only her pain, and for this reason would scoff at any words she might speak. There were no brilliant losers. And so she opted to say nothing. She opted for dignity and restraint, and this proved less difficult than she would have imagined, for there was no other course open to her.

  She could not decode all the voices, had no idea what anyone was asking her. "The jury has decided," she said. "The jury has decided," she said again. She kept saying it. "Under the American system, there is nothing more to say."

  She kept pushing through the crowd. She wanted only to get away. When she was nearly clear a single question did pierce the noise, and other voices took it up.

  "In the light of today's verdict, are you going to resign?"

  "Yes, are you going to resign?"

  "Will you turn in your resignation?"

  And for a moment all fell silent and waited for her reply.

  Karen said nothing, merely kept pushing forward. At last she was free of them, with a clear view down the immensely long corridor, but there was another smaller group off to one side, a different interview in progress, one of the jurors was explaining the verdict, it seemed. She didn't want to hear this, what difference did it make, but the juror's voice was loud, she could not escape it.

  "Are there rogue cops?" the voice asked rhetorically. "Could those cops have gone there to murder the defendant?” It was the forewoman of the jury speaking. Her name was Wilkins, Karen remembered. She was a welfare clerk. She had a husband and children. "Could the defendant have shot those police officers in self defense?" Mrs. Wilkins asked rhetorically. "Could it have been like Mr. McCarthy said? Maybe. We had a reasonable doubt, and that's what we voted."

  Karen boarded the elevator, got out on her own floor and as she walked down the corridor people commiserated with her. They came out of their offices to do it. She did not respond.

  In her own office she and Coombs sat staring at each other across the desk.

  "What did McCarthy say to you back there?" Coombs asked her.

  "He said: don't worry, you'll get him next time, he can't help himself."

  "And he's a lawyer."

  "Yes, he's a lawyer."

  "It was a racist verdict, and you should denounce it as such," Coombs said.

  She said nothing.

  "The evidence was overwhelming," he burst out. "How could the jury disregard it?"

  "I don't know."

  "The jury system failed."

  "Yes, this time it failed."

  Her chief public relations office came in. "I've been getting a lot of calls," he said hesitatingly.

  "I suppose you are," Karen said.

  His name was Bert Pinckney. "There's a rumor spreading that you intend to resign," he said.

  Karen did not respond.

  "They're all calling up about it," said Pinckney apologetically. "I don't know what to say.”

  The door to her office was open. She had resolved that she was not going to hide from anyone. She saw the police commissioner enter her anteroom accompanied by several of his commanders in uniform, and although Betty tried to stop him, he strode in on her.

  "This is an outrage," the PC said. "I'm outraged. There will be 30,000 cops outraged as soon as they hear."

  Karen said: "I'm outraged myself, Commissioner.”

  "Five cops shot, two of them disabled for life, and the assailant walks."

  "He won't walk, Commissioner. He was convicted of the gun charges. He'll do time."

  "A year?" the PC sneered.

  "Several, I think."

  "What do I tell my men? The prosecution was incompetent. The DA sold you out.”

  Karen's restraint was beginning to desert her.

  The PC said: "I don't see how you can look me in the eye, look any cop in the eye."

  "Did it ever occur to you that maybe you lost that trial, not me?"

  "Are you going to resign? Or wait for the governor to fire you?"

  "Lost it last month when the black kid stealing oranges was shot by the cop."

  The PC said defensively: "It looked like he had a gun."

  "Lost it ten days ago when cops killed the deranged black woman.”

  "She came at them with a knife."

  With increasing intensity Karen fought back. "Lost it with years of racial slurs and humiliations, years of corruption and brutality."

  "Lady, I have 30,000 cops. There's no way to eliminate that entirely."

  "There are cops in the ghetto precincts who behave like an army of occupation," Karen said. "Whose fault is that? Cops who have contempt for the people they serve. Cops who are not trained well enough, not supervised well enough. Whose fault would you say that is? Who's responsible for the climate that exists between the people and the police? Is it me?"

  "This is preposterous," the PC said.

  "You're not leading your department, you're just sitting on it."

  "Don't you talk to me like that."

  "Cops also do hundreds of brave and generous acts each day and no one even hears about it. They ought to. That's your fault too. Lionel Epps shot five cops and the jury didn't see it as a crime. I can't beat that. I can't go into the jury room with them. Unless you lead the people back to the cops and the cops back to the people, you're going to get plenty more verdicts like this one. Now get out of my office and don't come back until you're ready to apologize."

  The PC and his entourage stormed out. Everything Karen had said was to her absolutely true, and for a moment she seemed to see the verdict in perspective. She had lost a skirmish, not the war, and on a personal level she had driven the Police Commissioner from her office. If there had been any audience besides Pinckney and Coombs, it might have stood up and cheered.

  "What do I tell the press about your future plans?" Bert Pinckney said apologetically, and it brought Karen back down to earth. The police commissioner was gone. Her moment of triumph was over. It had been short-lived. The PC was all of it. She gazed at Pinckney. Her rage was gone. It had left her drained and near tears. She went behind her desk and scribbled a few words on a letterhead.

  She handed it to her press officer. "Please forward this to the governor."


  Pinckney read it, shook his head sadly, and left the office.

  "What did you write?" asked Coombs.

  "I hereby offer my resignation as Manhattan district attorney."

  "Oh Karen."

  "The PC's right. Everybody's right. I should have found a way to win.” She paused and looked at her young assistant. "I don't have any choice, don't you see?"

  She began thrusting things into a briefcase. Her eyes were moist. Coombs saw this and came forward to embrace her, but she shrugged him off and started out of the office.

  "I'll go with you," said Coombs. "I think you need company."

  She shook her head. No. She went out.

  McGillis drove her back to the borrowed apartment. As she let herself in the phone was ringing but she did not answer it. She went into the bedroom and began throwing things into her suitcase. The clock beside the bed said it was five PM, which made Karen stare at the television set. There would be news broadcasts starting on all the networks. Finally she switched the TV on, but instead of watching it went to gaze out the window. Behind her an anchorwoman read the news. The Epps verdict was the lead item.

  "...There are unconfirmed reports that Manhattan District Attorney Karen Henning has offered her resignation following...

  Karen switched off the TV. The phone began to ring again. She did not answer. A little later the front doorbell rang. Barone, she thought, and did not answer that either but instead went back to the window. Presently she saw him come out of the building and get back into his double parked car.

  It got dark in the room. Karen, who had stopped packing, sat on the bed beside the open suitcase and stared at nothing. The phone rang several times more. The dinner hour came and went. She was not hungry and did not move from where she sat.

  Still later she stood at the window sipping tea. When the doorbell suddenly rang, she gave a start of surprise. Putting her cup down she went down the hall, peered through the peephole, then threw the various bolts and opened the door. Outside were her husband and children.

  Hillary said: "Hi, Mom, how're you feeling?"

  "We've come to get you, Mom," said Jackie.

  She embraced her children, and then her husband.

  "I've offered my resignation," she said.

  Hank grinned at her. "The governor rejected it."

  Karen tried to absorb what this meant.

  "We heard it on the radio coming down. He denounced the jury and the verdict.”

  "You know what he said, Mom?" Jackie piped up.

  "That law enforcement wasn't a football game," Hillary said.

  "Yeah," said Jackie, "you don't fire the coach every time you lose."

  "He said you had done a fine job and he was asking you to stay on," Hank said.

  Karen was under no illusions about the governor. To accept her resignation would be to admit that he had made a bad appointment. He had appointed her so recently that his own prestige was tied to her. In defending her he was only defending himself. He had had no choice.

  "I didn't do a fine job," she said.

  "Shall I call him up and tell him to reconsider?"

  She had detected pride in Henry's voice--pride that his wife had the governor's support, proud that his wife was district attorney.

  "Oh Henry," she said.

  He was a teacher. He didn't understand the degree of her humiliation. The people she dealt with would feel sorry for her. He didn't see how difficult it would be to carry on in her job, even to meet anyone's eye.

  "Get your things, Karen, and let's go home."

  And what about the election in the fall? She didn't even know if she wanted to run, but she wanted to be asked and now probably would not be. When some other candidate was selected everyone would know she had been passed over, would whisper behind her back, her ignominy compounded. She wouldn't even be able to resign but would have to stay on in office until her successor arrived, Harbison probably, then slink away shamed.

  Hank carried her suitcase down to the station wagon. The children got into the back and they started home. Hank was at the wheel driving one handed. With the other he held her hand, and she thought of Barone who would have to be dealt with, still another problem, and not the least of them. And so she stared straight out over the headlights and suffered. Whatever was to happen, she deserved it. She had brought it on herself. But there would be nothing left of her. In the back seat Hillary was leaning forward, her face between her parents. Jackie was standing up, his arms around his mother's neck. The family was all together for a change and that was very nice, and Karen was trying to concentrate on how much she loved them all, each of them smiling happily every time she looked at them, and from time to time she managed to force herself to smile in return.

  Chapter 24

  Everywhere Barone looked he saw Karen. He wanted to comfort her, to hold her, to be with her, and if this was not possible he wanted to talk to her at least. But when he phoned she did not take his calls, nor did she return them.

  Every time he entered the squadroom he sang out: "Any messages for me.” He made his voice sound cheerful which he wasn't. The answer was always the same: no. Finally he drove downtown from Harlem and as he rang the bell of her apartment he was as nervous as a teenager.

  A strange woman peered at him through the peephole. He had to show his shield before she would open up. It was her apartment, apparently. She was just back from somewhere, apparently. At this time of night, she said, Karen was probably at home in her house in the suburbs. What time was it, said Barone. It was nearly midnight, she told him. He apologized profusely and backed away.

  He resolved to forget Karen, and tried but couldn't, and didn't know why. He went down to the courthouse, entered by the district attorney's door on Leonard Street, and took the elevator up to the eighth floor to her office. Her secretary, who was used to seeing him, said she was down the hall somewhere. Barone went looking for her. He looked into every office on the floor, and after that loitered in the corridor. Presently he saw her get out of an elevator. She was talking to someone as she approached and at first didn't see him. When she did he thought she faltered for a moment, a good sign, but her greeting when she reached him was cool, so was the smile that went with it, and instead of stopping she continued into her office as far as her secretary's desk, where she turned and said:

  "Well, Detective, what can I do for you?” She was standing beside the desk shuffling through telephone messages.

  The hallway would have afforded some privacy. Here there was none.

  "Can I see you in private?"

  Law enforcement was a place of so many confidential investigations that a request of this kind raised no eyebrows.

  She said: "What's it in reference to?"

  When he did not answer she bent over her appointments book. "I'm pretty busy today," she said. "Maybe tomorrow or the next day. Work it out with Betty."

  She started into her own office but stopped in the doorway. "Nice to see you again," she said, and closed the door on him.

  Betty looked up from the appointments book. "How about the day after tomorrow at four o'clock."

  "I'm working at four o'clock," Barone said, gazing at the closed door. "Look, I'll have to call you.”

  He went down to his car where he sat behind the wheel staring out through the dirty windshield. His sense of loss was the most acute of his life. He went back to the precinct where he tried to write her a letter on one of the Selectrics with the broken keys. The machine could type out words like perpetrator and aforementioned all by itself or so it seemed, but not what he wanted so much to tell her, and in any case he was interrupted by a serious commotion in the street, and he went to the window to see what it was.

  Reverend Johnson had decided to march on the Three-Two precinct.

  The holy man was in possession of a permit allowing him and his demonstrators to march from l25th Street (now officially Martin Luther King Boulevard) up Lenox Avenue (now Malcolm X Boulevard) as far as 135th Street where the
buses they had come in would be waiting, and where they were supposed to disband and go home. Johnson had had his permit for some time. It was pure coincidence that it carried a date so close to the end of the trial, when passions were still so high. Logically the verdict should have come days previously, and logically Epps should have been convicted. But it hadn't and he wasn't.

  Seeing no need to waste a perfectly good permit, Johnson had decided to stage the march anyway. He had chartered the buses, had rounded up his core demonstrators and in a state of triumph and general euphoria, with the usual banners waving in the breeze, the march had got underway only about an hour late, moving uptown between two files of policemen in riot helmets who had been drawn from other parts of the city and who were under strict orders not to confront the demonstrators.

  It was a mild early spring afternoon and television crews filmed the march, and hundreds of people lined the sidewalks watching and cheering.

  The permit did not allow the marchers to cross 135th as far as the stationshouse itself, as this seemed likely to provoke a confrontation with Three-Two cops, which Johnson said he didn't want, and which the police department certainly didn't want. With five of their number shot and the assailant acquitted, there would be no telling how Three-Two cops would react.

  Upon reaching the prescribed end of the march the demonstrators coagulated around the buses, handed their signs to Johnson's men, and began to climb on board, and the riot police relaxed and began to look away or even walk away. But some twenty or thirty young men suddenly took off running, sprinting west across town in the direction of the stationhouse.

  The riot police were commanded by a captain. His orders had been to contain the line of march, and he had done it. He had not been ordered to send his cops running after a group of young men who already had half a block's head start. This would have looked unseemly, cops chasing people they couldn't catch who were not breaking any law anyway. It was undignified. It would look very bad, and would probably have been ineffective as well. Black kids, in this captain's experience, could run like the wind. Faster than cops, certainly. So he let them go.