No Lesser Plea

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “Don’t give me that! You’re all in it together. You, and that clown, Guma, and that wise-ass Newbury, and that what’s-his-name, that goddam Hungarian …”

  “Hrcany?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “Well, Mister Cheeseborough, I don’t know what to say. As you point out, we have no evidence that Miss Kimple is pregnant, still less that any staff attorneys have, ah, interfered with her. I can only give you my personal assurances …”

  The Onion interrupted with a snarl, “Oh cut out this legalistic bullshit! I know what I know. I been around a long time, and let me warn all of you—I don’t get mad, I get even.”

  More jiggling, more dandruff. The shoulders of the Onion’s blue serge suit were covered with a dusting of it, like the windowsills of a building being sandblasted. Karp glanced discreetly at his watch.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mister Cheeseborough. Perhaps you could file a complaint of statutory rape on the grounds that Miss Kimple has the mind of a four-year-old girl. And now, I have to go. I have an appointment with Mister Conlin in five minutes.”

  The Onion gaped like a fish. Karp nodded curtly and left at a fair rate of speed. Through the closed door he heard the Onion’s cry, “Hey, wait you, wait … ”As Karp took the stairs to the sixth floor two at a time, he considered that he had substantially singed his bridges behind him. The Onion could make things nasty for him. If the fix was in for the homicide job, there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do, except screw up paperwork and delay things a bit. If it wasn’t, Karp was dead meat.

  “You must be Roger Karp,” said John Conlin’s secretary. “Mister Conlin is expecting you. I’ll tell him you’re here.” She picked up her phone and did so, then smiled and motioned Karp through the anteroom. “Down the hall, first left, then to the end of the hallway. Good luck.” Friendly. Efficient. Not pregnant by attorney or attorneys unknown. Class.

  John Conlin’s office was not quite as large or luxurious as the offices of officials are in the movies, but it was a good start. The desk was made of dark wood, as was the long boardroom table. There were two large windows, with blinds and curtains. If you looked out, you could see Chinatown. One wall had built-in bookcases filled with law books and bound transcripts of trials. The other wall was almost solid with framed plaques and letters commemorating twenty-five years of good deeds and useful connections; also pictures of Conlin at various stages of his life, in association with the great or notorious. There was one newspaper picture of Conlin—looking about as old as Karp now was—in the company of two uniformed cops and a gentleman who was trying hard not to be photographed. With a shock, Karp recognized him as one of the founders of Murder, Incorporated.

  The present-day Conlin was moving around his big desk, hand outstretched. “Hi. I’m Jack Conlin. They call you Butch, right? Thanks for coming by. Sit.”

  They shook hands and sat at opposite ends of a black Chesterfield couch set along the wall under the frames. Conlin was a large man with high coloring and longish silvery hair swept back from a broad forehead. He had pale-blue eyes that crinkled when he smiled and perfect small white teeth, which he flashed a lot. He looked like a movie version of a slick Irish pol. In fact, he was a slick Irish pol, but he also was one of the smartest prosecuting attorneys in the United States.

  He gestured to the news photograph. “You know who that is?” he asked. Karp nodded. “My first big one,” Conlin said. “He used to put them under the asphalt while they were building the Belt Parkway. I think about him every time I drive to Brooklyn.” He gave Karp an appraising stare. “I hear you used to play some ball.”

  “Some.”

  “That’s good. You’ll find a lot of the best DAs are former athletes. The competitive instinct.” He smiled some teeth.

  Karp knew he was supposed to ask if Conlin had played ball and where, and he did, and got Conlin’s version of what football was like at Fordham back in the forties. Then the conversation got around to sports in general and how the Knicks were doing great that year, and whether the Yankees had a chance, and what was wrong with college basketball in the city, and then drifted imperceptibly from winning games to winning cases.

  Somewhere in the middle of the conversation Conlin started using phrases like, “now that you’re part of the team here,” and “after you’ve been working homicide awhile.” Karp began to realize, with some irritation creeping into his original delight, that everything had been arranged on the unseen levels of power. He was not sure he liked being moved around like a piece on a game board.

  “Umm … Mister Conlin, are you telling me that you want me to work in Homicide?”

  Conlin seemed surprised. “Hell, yes. It’s all set up. You do want the job, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sure, of course. I just wanted to know the details, and all.”

  “Nothing to worry about, we’ll take care of the paper shuffling from this end. We’ll be having our regular meeting next Thursday; that’ll be a good time for you to start.” Conlin stood up. Karp stood up. They shook hands. Conlin said he looked forward to working with Karp. Karp made an appropriate parting mumble and found himself once more in the outer office.

  Karp said to no one in particular, “Holy Shit, I’m in.” A stifled laugh made him turn around. Conlin’s secretary said, “Congratulations. However, it seems your former boss is not so anxious to let you go. He called while you were in there and said for you to report to the Complaint Room for duty tonight.”

  “Oh, crap!”

  “Have a heavy date?”

  “No, just dinner with some friends. Screw it, I’ll eat fast.”

  Chapter 6

  It was just a short walk from Foley Square to Mulberry Street in Little Italy, but Karp found himself in a different world, one of the last remnants of the European ethnic neighborhoods that once dominated the social and political life of Manhattan. Karp’s own parents had been born in similar neighborhoods; Ray Guma’s parents had been raised along these very streets.

  The air itself was exotic, perfumed with anise, strong cheese, and frying garlic. On this temperate evening, chatting old ladies dressed in black sat on folding chairs on the sidewalk outside their apartment houses. The dusty storefront social clubs were brightly lit, each one with its handful of old men. Grocery stores displayed enormous rope-bound cheeses and great rectangular cans of olive oil covered with rococo inscriptions.

  There were also a fair number of import-export firms which seemed never to have any business, their display windows always showing the same espresso machines and tarantella-dancing dolls, on tattered red crepe paper. Oddly enough, they were extremely profitable, although the source of their profit was not espresso machines. In some of their back rooms Sicilian assassins, lately smuggled in, sat waiting for their assignments. In others, men guarded suitcases full of cash. This had been going on for eighty years. The Mob clung to its roots.

  Karp pushed past the door with the white, green, and red wooden cut-out map of Italy and entered Villa Cella Ristorante Italiano. Guma and V.T. Newbury were waiting at the center table, the one Italian family restaurants usually reserved for regulars. It was set for four places. When they saw him they gave a round of applause. “Sit down, kid,” said Guma. “How’d it go with Conlin?”

  “OK, I guess. The fix was in. I’m starting at Homicide next Thursday.”

  “Hot shit,” said Guma, “we can drink the night away.”

  “Maybe you can,” Karp replied glumly. “The Onion put me in the Complaint Room tonight, the asshole.”

  “What! I thought I was the only one he had a hard-on for.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. No, he was all bent out of shape because he thinks one of us has been screwing his secretary, and she’s leaving. I wised off to him about it and he put it to me.” A strange expression came over Guma’s face as Karp said this. Karp suddenly caught on. “It was you! Goddamit! Hey, V.T., the Goom is dorking Miss Kimple and I get the shit for it. You owe me one, Mad Dog.”


  “Honest, Butch, how did I know she would fall in love? Christ, I only balled her a couple of times.”

  V.T. looked up from his study of the wine list. “Guma, we are going to have to start a collection and hire one of your Sicilian relatives to castrate you. You’re a positive menace to the peace of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.”

  “Fuck you too, V.T.”

  “Or,” V.T. continued, “we could turn your ass in to Conrad Wharton, the scourge of porn. Why should he content himself with dirty pictures and tapes when pornography incarnate stalks the halls of 100 Centre Street.” The other two men laughed.

  “Wharton, my ass,” said Guma. “I can’t figure out why Garrahy keeps him right there in his office. The fucker is scared shitless of courtrooms, one, and two, he’s an incredible schmuck. A schmuck from Schmuckland.” He kissed his pinched fingers in a gesture of connoisseurship.

  “True,” said V.T., “but Conrad has attached himself to the boss’s pet project, which is one way that weasels get on in the world. Deep in Francis P. Garrahy’s Irish-Catholic soul is an abhorrence of public pornography. In the old days, when he was coming up, you couldn’t see pussy until you were married. In fact, where Garrahy came from, you couldn’t see it even after you were married. Now he has to look at snatch every time he goes in to buy cigars.

  “Conrad observes this and sells his all-out campaign against smut to the DA. Now he’s got a private office next to Garrahy’s and an army of twerps just like him to drag two-bit magazine publishers into court for five grand fines, like we have space on the calendars for that shit. No, Conrad is going places. He knows how to exploit the foibles of great men.”

  “Bullshit. He’s an empty suit,” said Karp.

  “As a prosecutor? No question. But Conrad isn’t interested in being a prosecutor and putting asses in jail. He’s interested in power. You know, Butch, there are two kinds of people in the world: people who are interested in doing real things—growing gardens, or inventing, or trying cases—and people who are interested in making other people jump through hoops. Conrad is one of those. And they’re hard to stop because while the rest of us are learning how to do the things we want to do, they’re spending all their time collecting power. Watch the guys who volunteer to do the secretarial and bureaucratic bullshit that nobody else wants to do. They usually wind up running the show.”

  “Let ’em,” said Karp. “As long as they leave me alone.”

  “Ah, but that’s just the point. They can’t leave you alone. Anything real—passion, excellence, skill—is a reproach to them. It’s a source of satisfaction that they can’t control. They have to destroy it. Look at Stalin and Trotsky. Trotsky ran the Russian Revolution almost single-handed. Stalin was the Communist Party’s administrative boss. Look who won. And I’ll tell you something else. Conrad’s got you targeted, Butch. He mooches around me a lot because he thinks my old man has pull, which he does, and the little piss-ant doesn’t miss an occasion to put you down.”

  “Fuck him, he can’t touch me.”

  Guma broke in. “Hey, what is all this Trotsky bullshit? This is supposed to be a party. Hey, Margo!” He gestured to the waitress, who came out from behind the bar and over to their table. She was a good-looking woman of about twenty-five, plump, with heavy eye makeup and a blond streak in her dark hair.

  She pulled out her pad and smiled. “How are you all tonight? Ready to order?”

  Guma said, “No, we’re still waiting for someone. But bring us a bottle of Barolo, the Fontanafredda. And the big antipasto, for nibbles.”

  She scratched on her pad. “OK. Hey, Ray, classes are starting in two weeks.” She flashed a smile at Guma, who got red in the face and looked away with a sickly grin.

  “Going back to law school, Goom?” V.T. asked.

  “No, I am,” said Margo. “Well, paralegal anyway. Ray says he can get me a job.”

  “Oh, really?” said Karp. “You’re a helluva guy, Guma.”

  “Yeah, he sure is,” said Margo, the light of love, or at least opportunism, gleaming in her eyes. “I’ll go get your wine.”

  She left. Guma said, “OK, guys …”

  “Very tacky, Mad Dog, very tacky,” said Newbury.

  “Yeah, Goom, is that the same technique you used on Kimple? Maybe you promised her a job in Villa Cella,” Karp said.

  “Hey, what the fuck. She’s a bright kid, why shouldn’t I encourage her?” Guma protested.

  “To quote you, Goom, ‘It’s not her mind I want, it’s her body.’ Tell the truth, Margo is more your speed than Ciampi,” said V.T.

  “Don’t remind me. God, that’s an ass I’d love to get a piece of. What a body! Hard, tight—knishy little tits. She can probably yank nails with her snatch. By the way, where is she? You invited her, didn’t you, V.T.?”

  “I did, and I believe she’s here now.”

  The door opened and Marlene Ciampi breezed in, in blazer, knee-length gray flannel skirt, and high boots, a Marlboro gripped between her teeth like a stogie. Her thick, kinky, coal-colored hair was parted in the middle and drawn into a bun, getting a little ragged this late in the day. She had a heart-shaped face and the conventionally regular features of a cosmetics model, which she downplayed by keeping her eyebrows thick and her expression tight and belligerent.

  “Sorry I’m late, guys,” she said, yanking the empty chair out with the toe of her boot and slamming her rear down on the leather. “I’ve had an un-fucking-believable whorehouse of a day.”

  “That’s OK, Champ, we waited. As a matter of fact, we were just talking about you. Ray here was saying …”

  Guma gave a strangled yelp. “Newbury, you’re dead!”

  “Yes,” V.T. continued blandly, “he was speculating that your vaginal musculature was capable of ripping a nail out of a board, weren’t you, Ray?”

  Ciampi didn’t blink. “Oh yeah? Did he elaborate? I mean sticking up, pounded flush, or countersunk?”

  “A corpse, Newbury.”

  “All flesh is grass, Goom,” said Newbury with a dazzling smile. “Ah, here’s our Margo. Let’s drink to Butch.” They poured the rich, pungent wine. “To homicide,” said Newbury, glass raised. They all drank and then Margo took their orders.

  Karp said, “You got any pizza, Margo?”

  Guma sputtered. “Pizza! Give me a break, Karp. Pizza in Villa Cella? Margo, don’t listen to him. Look, this is my party, I’m the head guinea, and I’ll order. First, bring a big plate of trigliette alio zaffrano, then the special canneloni, with veal piccata all around, OK?”

  “I’m not eating veal,” said Marlene.

  “Why not?” asked Guma.

  “Because they nail the poor animals’ feet to the floor so they can’t move around and their flesh will be white. Yuck!”

  “Marlene, they only do that to geese in Strasbourg,” said V.T.

  “Well, I read that they lock them up in dark rooms, or something. Anyway, they have a horrible life, the little veals.”

  “Shit, Marlene, so what! I have a horrible life,” said Guma.

  “Yeah, but I’m not eating you, schmuck.”

  “I only wish,” replied Guma, rolling his eyes to heaven.

  “Guma, will you get off my case for one fucking minute? Christ, give me another glass of that stuff.” Karp poured and she picked the glass up and drained it in a gulp. She gasped and color rose high on her cheeks. “OK, I’m not going to get pissed off and screw up Butch’s party. But you will not believe my day.”

  “What happened, Champ?” Karp asked.

  “OK, first of all, you know the Ruddy Child Center case? This scumbag who runs the place is diddling the kids, and one of them tells the parents. It turns out that living on the same floor is our own Rick Pearl. He’s got his own two daughters in the place. So the parents go to their friendly, neighborhood assistant DA and Rick goes apeshit, gets a detective, goes down to the center, and braces the scumbag. Who cracks in about four seconds and spills his guts.

  �
��OK, it’s tainted, right? Rick didn’t read him his rights. Granted, he should have turned it over immediately to somebody else. But we had solid testimony from a dozen kids, other workers in the center, other people who had quit working there because they didn’t like what was going on. What does the judge do, Albert “The Asshole” Albinoli? He dismisses all the charges, on the grounds that Rick’s mistake tainted all subsequent evidence. Can you fucking believe it?”

  “That’s a tough one. It happens, though,” said Karp.

  “No! No, that’s just for starters. OK, the hearing’s over, it’s the last case of the day, everybody’s riding down in the elevator—it’s packed solid—me, the witnesses, kids, parents, lawyers, and the defendant. He’s standing behind me. I still can’t believe this. All of a sudden, I feel a hand clamped on my ass. I look around, and there’s the fucking shit-face cocksucker slime dirt-ball pimp defendant with this little smarmy smile on his face and his hand on my ass.”

  “What did you do?” asked Karp.

  “What could I do? I jammed the heel of my boot down as hard as I could on his arch, and I said, in a loud clear voice, ‘Mr. Ruddy, kindly remove your hand. I already have an asshole down there.’ “

  The three men by this time were convulsed with laughter.

  “Why are you laughing?” said Marlene. “It’s not funny. And that’s not the end! OK, I drop off my files, and head out of the building, and catch this—he’s waiting for me. He asks me for a fucking date!”

  “You accepted, of course,” said V.T.

  “Of course. He has terrific acne. We’re going out for an evening of dinner and dancing and then he’s going to set me up with a groovy six-year-old. Supposed to be hung like a horse.”

  The food came and they dug in. The espresso had just been poured when Karp glanced at his watch. “Shit, guys, I got to run.”

  Guma said, “Well, Butch, the Complaint Room sucks, but if you have to be there, tonight is the right night. It’s going to be a party.”

  “What party?”

  “The Two-Three Precinct just pulled in a whole house full of high-class hookers who say they’ve been kidnapped. Can you believe that? The detective told me that some pimp with a lot of muscle got the idea that there was a plot by this other pimp to move onto his turf, so he snatched the girls and locked them up for four days in a basement.