Dr. Stone pulled himself away from these thoughts, and from his perpetual fantasy that one day he would be the scientist to discover the secret of the soup, and resumed his dictation.
“Psychiatric nurses on patient’s hall state patient has been calm. They state patient has been generally lucid, but with three recorded episodes of incoherent shouting, with delusional aspects. On these occasions patient received standard dose of one hundred milligrams of Thorazine, i.m. Response to this medication normal and satisfactory.
“When I first entered the consulting room, patient was seated and appeared calm. I introduced myself but patient did not respond. I asked him if he knew why he was in hospital. Patient sighed and nodded his head. I asked him if he remembered what had transpired in the courtroom. At the word ‘courtroom’ the patient leaped to his feet, shouted ‘No!’ and began to pace the room. Affect agitated and fearful. He began to mumble something about ‘someone telling him to do it’ and the judge ‘trying to get his momma.’ Patient then became violent and threw his chair at the wall. This episode similar to those observed by ward nurses.
“Violent episode lasted about three minutes, after which patient appeared confused, disoriented, and subdued. He picked up chair and sat in it when asked to. Patient responded well to reality-testing questions: name, current date, present location, common facts. On questioning, patient gave lucid responses as to subjective state during ‘seizure.’ He believes something is taking control of his body against his will. He says he ‘feels it coming’ but is powerless to stop it.
“General impressions: Patient appears to be suffering from some acute, episodic, delusional syndrome associated with courtroom proceedings. During these episodes, patient is uncontrollably violent. After them, he appears confused and states that he lacks all recollection of what occurred during the episodes. Recommend patient be retained for further observation. Referred case to Doctor Werner.”
Dr. Stone flipped off his Dictaphone. He picked up Louis’s case file and wrote out a medication order for a daily dose of 40 mg. of Thorazine, orally, four times a day. That should hold the little bastard, he thought.
Dr. Werner, unlike Dr. Stone, was delighted to have Mandeville Louis as a patient. Unlike Dr. Stone, Dr. Werner was not just passing through forensic psychiatry on the way to the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. The study of the criminal mind was his whole life. Dr. Werner was a portly man in late and comfortable middle age, heavy of jowl, beetled of brow. He wore black horn-rims and a white coat over his vest, which sported a gold watch chain and a Phi Beta Kappa key. Although born and raised in the Bronx, Werner cultivated a middle-European manner. When he spoke on a professional matter, for example, he might occasionally look up to the ceiling and wave his hand as if hard-pressed to ferret out, from among his many languages, the correct English idiom.
As he read Dr. Stone’s report, Dr. Werner became increasingly excited. The purity of the reaction! Here was a man whose insanity was triggered exclusively by the prospect of trial and punishment. Louis was a living representation of everything Werner thought was wrong with the way society treated criminals. It was perfectly clear to him that criminals, especially violent ones, were mentally ill. Take such a person and place him in an environment in which everyone assumed he was mentally competent—in, say a courtroom—and the mental disease could not help but get worse. Dr. Werner had observed the most extreme form of this reaction once before, in a rapist named Ganser, and had written a paper about it. Now, to his delight, he was observing the Ganser syndrome once again, in Mandeville Louis. He regarded it as a confirmation of his theory.
Dr. Werner continued to be delighted when he met Louis in person. In an interview he set up the following day, Louis was intelligent and articulate about his mental and emotional states. In this he resembled the people seen by Dr. Werner’s Park Avenue colleagues more than he did the typical rubbish of the Bellevue criminal ward. All Dr. Werner had to do was to hint at some aspect of the Ganser syndrome and in a short while Louis would confirm it in extravagant and inventive detail. Dr. Werner saw a major journal article developing.
Louis was even more delighted with Dr. Werner. He had studied forensic psychiatry as he had the Bible in his father’s house, as an aid to exculpation, his abiding and lifelong interest. Becoming an exemplar of Ganser’s syndrome was in fact much easier than accepting Jesus as your personal savior. For starters, you didn’t have to kneel and spend a lot of time praying. Also, those church ladies, some of them, were pretty sharp, and it took a bit of doing to jerk them around to the proper Christian forgiveness. Werner, on the other hand, did half the work for you.
As Louis spun out the fantasy of his mental incompetence, his mind drifted. It was pleasant in Bellevue Hospital, far more so than the Tombs. It was less noisy and the food was better. As a violent patient under observation, he had a room of his own. He expected they would send him to Matteawan for a while, and he didn’t mind that either. As a mental patient, he had better access to the phone, for example. He had already called DeVonne Carter and got her to stay in his apartment, so the place wouldn’t get ripped off while he was away. He would lay low in Matteawan for a while, let the case get stale. Maybe something would happen to the witnesses. He made a mental note: in a couple of weeks, maybe call up old Elvis. He’ll be anxious to get back on my good side after the way he fucked up his delivery.
Louis figured he had experienced an unusual run of good luck during his years as a robber and was not particularly surprised that he had at last been caught. Now it seemed his luck had changed back. How else could you account for falling into the care of such a perfect asshole as Dr. Milton C. Werner?
When Karp had finished reading Dr. Werner’s report on Mandeville Louis, he was almost nauseated with fury. He called Conlin.
“Jack, have you read this incredible bullshit they sent us on Louis?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“What about it? What about it? It sucks, that’s what! They, this Werner character, they want to send him to Matteawan until he’s competent to stand trial. The guy’s a fraud, him and the shrink both.”
“Karp, I’ve explained to you about Bellevue. What do you expect me to do?”
“Fight the report, that’s what. Jack, this guy is gaming the system, he’s malingering. We can’t let him get away with it.”
“He’s off the streets, Butch.”
“Until when? Hey, they do some marvelous cures up in Matteawan. One of our witnesses is seventy-six. The other one is a junkie who’s probably going up for three-to-five. What if somebody knifes him in prison? His porch light is a little dim in the first place. Give him a year or two and he won’t remember shit, and Sussman will eat him up on the stand. Come on, Jack, this bastard is setting himself up to stale the case and walk.”
Karp listened to Conlin breathe on the line for a few moments. “Butch, let me tell you straight out, I’m not going to get caught in a pissing contest with Bellevue on this case. It’s not worth it to the bureau.”
“Why not? Look, Jack, we can win on this. I got the transcript of the voir dire here. Louis was participating in his own defense like a son of a bitch on practically every page. We can blow Werner away in two minutes on the stand. Did you read this crap he wrote? Ganser syndrome, my ass! Listen to this, on page three: ‘Mister Louis shows all the signs of sanity, because, ironically, he is generally sane.’ Get that ‘ironically?’ And it gets worse.”
Karp continued, “ ‘However, the defendant suffers from delusional constellation of pathogenic paranoia arising from his fear of impending imprisonment. Given the proper stimulus, the defendant invariably exhibits psychotic behavior. In the present case this stimulus may be seen to be a courtroom during a trial. Mister Louis can be expected to maintain appropriate affect and rational behavior absent this stimulus.’
“Jesus, Jack, this is like, like a criminal saying we can’t incarcerate him because he suffers from claustrophobia. This asshole is saying that Louis w
ill never be competent to stand trial because he goes crazy when we try him. No judge in the world will fall for that.”
Conlin sighed. “You’re wrong there, Butch. No judge is going to take on Werner within his field. It ain’t done.”
“Then let’s get another shrink to say that all this Ganser business is bullshit.”
“Uh-uh. Butch, it’s not just Louis. I’m not, the bureau is not, taking on the mental health establishment to nail one scumbag. We’ve got thousands of psycho reports every year. There’s one for just about every other damn homicide. You got any idea of how badly they could fuck up the criminal justice system if they thought we were second-guessing their professional expertise? They’d go batshit. And the bastard is black—that’s the cherry on top. Can you see the papers? DA’s office persecutes poor mentally ill nigger, hospital administrators fight to get underprivileged shithead the treatment he needs. No thank you!”
Conlin’s voice had turned loud and gravelly, a sign the bully in him had emerged and the courtly and distinguished public servant had taken a hike. Karp realized there was no way Conlin was going to court negative publicity while he still entertained the notion of running for DA. Karp thought of his Polish lancers picture. Time to cut and run, he thought. Hey, great, I’m getting corrupt.
“Fine, OK Jack, whatever you say. You want the case file back?”
“Nah, just give it to my girl. Hey, Butch, chin up now—there’ll be other cases.”
After Karp had hung up, he sat in a frozen rage for about twenty seconds, then flung Werner’s report as hard as he could at his open window. It sailed out into the warm spring air and fluttered down on to Foley Square, where it was snatched up by a passing bag lady. At last, she thought, my message from God.
Karp grabbed up the Marchione murder case file and stormed out of his office. As usual when he was angry—which occurred more and more often recently—he had to move. Maybe I’ll run over to the East Side, to Yonah Schimmel’s and get a kashe knish. I haven’t had a kashe knish in months—no wonder I’m depressed.
He was about to trot down the stairs when on impulse he stuck his head through the door of an office, which had been recently constructed out of painted plywood, in what used to be waste space in the hallway past the fire stairs. It was Marlene Ciampi’s, and she was in, sitting behind her desk, frowning and answering coram nobis petitions. She had been in Homicide a month.
“Champ, you want a kashe knish? I got to get out of here.”
“God, that’s the best offer I’ve had in weeks. I’ll give you some money.” She reached into a desk drawer for her handbag.
“Hell, no. My treat. Don’t you love those petitions?”
“Yes, indeedy. I was just thinking that I gave up the opportunity to be a plumber in a Tijuana whorehouse to come to work in the New York DA’s office and sort through this garbage.”
“A plumber?”
“A figure of speech. That’s what they call the girl who does the stuff that nobody else will touch for any amount of money.”
“Champ, how do you know all this shit?”
She gave him an evil grin. “It’s my Ivy League background. So what’s with you? Getting any?”
Karp laughed. “Only up the ass. Conlin just put it to me.”
He related the story of Louis’s trial and the Werner report.
“Poor Butch! I always thought our fearless leader was just a tiny bit of a slime ball. However, things will be different when I run the bureau, which I will not get to do if we sit here bullshitting all day. I promised myself that if I got through two more of these, I would treat myself to a cigarette and a trip to the ladies’ room for a nice pee and, perhaps, a vomit.”
“See you, Marlene.”
“Knish me, big boy.”
Karp left her office and was about to go down the stairs when he realized he was still holding the Louis case file. He walked back to the big room where the Homicide clerk kept the bureau’s files. The clerk, a largish black woman of immense civil service seniority, was sitting at her desk, and Karp dropped the folder like a dead rat in front of her.
“Wrap that in plastic, please, and refrigerate it,” he said.
“Why, what’s wrong with it?”
A light went off in Karp’s head. “What’s wrong with it? Cora, it’s just missing one little detail. Have you got a red pen?”
She rummaged in her desk and pulled out a red ballpoint.
“That do?”
“No, something bigger.”
“I got a Magic Marker.”
“Great, let’s have it.”
Karp had realized that there was a way to scam Louis’s scam. The criminal had read the system too well. He knew that delay worked in his favor because the system was so overloaded that there was no continuity. Judges changed, prosecutors changed. He expected that when he came out of Matteawan in six or eight months, “cured,” he would face a cast of characters for whom his case was just another unit to move along the assembly line, people who would be more than willing to let a poor sick man from a mental institution cop a plea to a lesser crime than murder in the first degree. Karp thought, you scumbag, nice try, but no cigar.
He opened the file. On the first page he wrote, for all future prosecutors to see, in letters three inches high: “CALL KARP—ACCEPT NO LESSER PLEA!”
Chapter 11
So far, so good, was what Mandeville Louis thought, upon waking up in his little room in the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. They put him in a private room because he was a potentially violent case, which was fine with Louis. He figured he might have to stay here for six months, let things cool down, maybe see what could be done about fixing the witnesses. Six months—certainly not more; then a change of scene, permanently. He figured he was washed up in New York. The cops, the system, had his name, and since his way of life depended on complete anonymity, it followed that he had to get out of town and change his identity. He had no desire to be known as a criminal, to be rounded up whenever there was an armed robbery, to have cops intruding on his private life. He did not regret having to leave. Hell, he had had a damn good run anyhow. But he was not going to go to prison.
Louis lay with his hands behind his head and thought about places to go. He also tried out new names. Maurice Pemberton of Los Angeles. Lewis Pemberton. Forrest Stanton. Of Detroit. Of Philadelphia. Of D.C. Louis smiled. In his confinement, he was beginning to feel liberated. He thought, that’s why I got into trouble. I was getting in a rut. No more.
He heard the key turn in the lock. He put his glasses on and sat up. The door opened and a big, beefy male ward nurse filled the doorway. He was carrying a tray filled with little white paper cups.
“Medication,” he said. He had a farmer’s face, decorated with pockmarks. Louis gave his most winning smile, and got a cold stare back. “What is it?” he asked.
“Just take it, huh.”
Louis swallowed the spoonful of red liquid.
Later he went to the dining room and had breakfast. He observed his fellow inmates. They did not look particularly crazy. He suspected a fair proportion of them were pulling the same sort of scam he was to get off some crime. In all, a better class of people than you might expect in a loony bin. Nobody screaming or jerking off, like you read about. Everybody nice and calm, he thought as he looked around the room. He felt calm himself. He was sure everything was going to be just fine.
After breakfast, he found himself in the dayroom, although he did not remember walking there. A large television set was on in one corner, and vinyl couches were grouped around it, all occupied by men in bathrobes. They watched the gray flicker, their eyes dull, their faces slack—soap operas and situation comedies. Nobody laughed.
Louis watched, too. There seemed no reason not to, although he rarely had watched television on the outside. He noticed the man next to him was urinating on the floor, the pool slowly spreading toward Louis’s foot. He got up.
He found himself walking across t
he dayroom to the terrace. Two male nurses stood talking near the door to the terrace. Louis thought he should tell them about the man peeing on the floor, but when he got to them it didn’t seem that important. He went out on the terrace, which was furnished with steel and plastic chairs in primary colors.
He sat down and faced the sun, which was full and warm. An elderly white man with scarlet rashes all over his face sat down in a chair across from Louis. He stared at Louis for a moment and then put his face through an elaborate grimace, eyes screwed up, tongue thickly protruding. He smiled at Louis, as if nothing odd had passed.
“You’re new here?”
“Yes, this week.”
“I’ve been here for months and months. I’m the oldest inhabitant.” Again he let loose a spectacular grimace.
Louis wanted to ask why the man was making faces. Then he remembered he was in a booby hatch. A ripple of discomfort passed across his mind, but soon faded.
“I killed them, you know,” the Oldest Inhabitant said. “But it wasn’t my fault.” Another grimace. Louis thought the man was doing a good imitation of a crazy person. He recalled doing a very similar thing with his face in Judge Braker’s courtroom. In fact, the grimaces had nothing to do with the man’s mental state. They were the result of a condition called tardive dyskinesia, one of the unhappy side effects of fifteen years of maximum dosages of Thorazine. Thorazine gave quiet wards to the people who ran mental hospitals. It gave the people in the wards blotched faces, facial spasms, tremors, incontinence, and massive deterioration of just those portions of the brain that distinguish us all from the turtles. Also impotence, not that people with tardive dyskinesia got a lot of nooky.
No Lesser Plea Page 16
