Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17)

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Kipman’s black-and-white take on justice didn’t make him a Goody Two-shoes, as some of the younger prosecutors sometimes thought of him. He could let loose a stream of profanity that would have made Dirty Warren blush, and there wasn’t a defense or appellate attorney practicing in New York who went up against Hotspur Kipman without trepidation. They knew they had better come prepared and loaded for bear, or Kipman would tear them apart in front of a judge like an angry grizzly. But there was no one Karp trusted more.

  “Got a call from the new mayor who said you’d be here, too, and that he wanted to talk to us both,” Kipman said. He yawned nonchalantly. “There was nothing worth watching on the tube, sportswise anyway.” Along with being a musical genius and legal god, Kipman was a sports fanatic. He collected sports memorabilia of all sorts and became a noted authenticator of baseball cards for devotees.

  The pair was met at the elevator by a pretty, if officiously sincere and conservatively dressed, young woman who introduced herself as Mayor Denton’s assistant press secretary, Alisa Mokler-Shreddre, and apparently took her duties and herself very seriously. “This way please,” she said, and immediately turned on her heel and walked away with her well-formed butt twitching beneath a gray wool skirt.

  Karp fastened on the retreating derriere for a moment before realizing he’d been caught. He scowled at Kipman, who was particularly adept at raising an eyebrow to imply guilt.

  “Up yours, I got a daughter her age,” Karp muttered under his breath. “And a wife who’d cut my nuts off if I ever so much as thought what you’re thinking.”

  Kipman didn’t reply. He just stared straight ahead with a half-smile on his lips and the eyebrow stuck at its zenith as Ms. Mokler-Shreddre escorted them to a door on which were the words Mayor’s Office, where a clean-cut and equally serious young man was scraping the current officeholder’s name off with a razor blade.

  Michael Denton had won the election handily in November but wouldn’t officially take office until January 1. However, the current mayor, who’d declined to run for a second term when he thought his opponent was going to be Andrew Kane, was in a hurry to vacate the premises and had invited his replacement to begin the transition process immediately after the election. He’d even allowed Denton to move into the main offices while he vacated to a smaller suite.

  Therefore, Mayor-elect Michael Denton was sitting behind the big mahogany desk with the seal of New York City on the front when Karp and Kipman were shown in. Not for the first time, Karp noted that the man was the spitting image of one of his oldest friends in the city, NYPD Homicide Bureau Chief Bill Denton, the mayor-elect’s brother. Bill had ten years on his sibling, but both men had large, square heads that looked as if they’d been chipped from blocks of stone, and wide, friendly Irish faces.

  Like his brother, Michael had originally followed the family tradition of joining the thin blue line of the NYPD. But his career had been cut short by a shotgun blast from a robber—whom he’d killed in the gunfight—that forced the doctors to amputate what remained of his left leg. After he recovered, he didn’t mope around feeling sorry for himself or climb inside a bottle but went back to school and earned his business degree, which in turn he’d used to buy, refurbish, and turn profitable a number of pubs in Irish neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. Then he’d thrown himself into the other traditionally Irish business in New York: politics. First as a block organizer, then party leader, followed by several terms as a city councilman, and then—mostly because no one else wanted the job—as the soon-to-be mayor of Gotham.

  Michael Denton was as surprised as anyone to now be sitting in the high-backed leather chair behind a desk festooned with the emblem of the City of New York, while his wife of thirty-plus years happily waited for the day the current first lady—who was somewhat more reluctant to give up the trappings of power than her husband—got the hell out of Gracie Mansion. He’d essentially been regarded as cannon fodder by his own party when Kane announced his candidacy and the incumbent decided against running. But then along came Butch Karp, and suddenly Denton stood alone in the field. The demoralized opposition party had hardly put up a fight, which Karp figured was the only way an essentially honest man was now in office.

  Michael Denton’s eyes were not quite as blue or intense as Kipman’s, but they indicated a shrewdness that told Karp that very little escaped the man’s attention. He’d liked Denton’s businesslike campaign, which had been devoid of flashy slogans and meaningless promises that couldn’t have been kept.

  Instead, the man had spoken with pride about how the people of New York had reacted following the devastating attacks of 9/11 and said he now wanted to harness that spirit to show the world that New York was “devastated by our losses but not defeated by hatred, nor daunted by cowards.” It was as close to a slogan as he’d come, and he spent most of his time working the meeting halls and churches and going door to door, talking to people about the practical things he wanted to accomplish: more cops walking the streets, and schools that were safe for their children to attend.

  Karp didn’t mind that some of Michael Denton’s speeches seemed to have been lifted directly from his own modest initial efforts at campaigning for the next year’s district attorney’s race. The message is a good one, he thought, and the more people who buy into it, the better off we’ll all be.

  Michael Denton rose from his chair and came from around the desk to shake their hands and point to chairs, inviting them to have a seat. When they were all sitting, he asked Karp how his campaign was going—“great, I guess”—and Denton said that he hoped that Karp would win “so that we get a chance to work together. In the meantime, whatever this office can do to help make the city safer, just ask.”

  Karp thanked him.

  “Hate to be too cliché,” Denton said, “but I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you here today.”

  Harry chuckled but remained mute and stared at the fingernails on one hand as if he’d suddenly discovered a hangnail. Butch spread his hands and said, “I’m sure it wasn’t to ask me about how my campaign was going, but I figured you’d get to it in good time.”

  Denton laughed, then leaned forward and pushed a button on the intercom. “Alisa, would you show our other visitor in, please.” Mokler-Shreddre must have been waiting with her hand on the doorknob because Denton hadn’t even settled back into his chair when the door opened.

  Karp looked at the man who entered and this time it was his turn to raise an eyebrow and leave it there. It wasn’t that he was displeased to see Richard Torrisi, another former cop he’d known since they were all wet-behind-the-ears crime fighters. But Torrisi had quit the force, gone to law school, and was now the attorney for the Police Benevolent Association, one of the most powerful unions in the city. And over the years, Karp had had his run-ins with the union, which tended to react like any organism when poked—by curling up in a defensive posture—such as on the few occasions he’d prosecuted dirty cops. But he had his union supporters, too, and had always liked Torrisi, even when circumstances put them at loggerheads.

  “Hey, Butch, good to see you,” Torrisi said, walking over to shake hands.

  Karp stood, wincing when a shot of electricity went through his bum knee, and gladly took the hand. He noticed that the once coal-black and wavy hair was now mostly silver, but the brown eyes were just as sharp above the Roman nose. He pointed to Harry, who had also stood. “Dick, I don’t know if you’ve met my appeals division head, Harry Kipman.”

  Torrisi held out his hand. “Only by reputation.”

  Karp, noticing that Harry actually blushed at the compliment, filed it away to tease him about later. He knew his colleague was supremely confident in his abilities, but he had always preferred to work in the background, pitting his mind and knowledge of the law against another like-minded attorney out of the public eye.

  Denton cleared his throat and the other three men turned toward him, then took their seats. “Sorry about the secrecy, Butch—p
art of it’s that I’m still not here in an official capacity, but there’s more to it than that as you’ll see in a few minutes.” He paused but as there was no reaction, he went on. “I asked Mr. Torrisi to meet us here because of my concerns about how the so-called Coney Island Four case is being handled. Have you been following it in the press?”

  Karp looked at Harry, who’d resumed studying his hangnail, then back at Denton and shrugged. “Somewhat, I suppose, like any other citizen who gets the newspaper and has a television.”

  “And your impression?” Denton asked.

  Karp noticed that the mayor-elect and Torrisi seemed to move forward in their seats waiting for his answer. “Well, if I were to believe everything I read or hear—and I do not—it would appear that the NYPD and the Brooklyn DA fucked up, which means that the city is in trouble with this lawsuit.”

  Denton pursed his lips, then nodded. “Glad to hear you don’t believe everything you read. In fact, whether it’s the newspaper or television, neither you nor anyone else in this city is getting the truth, which is why I’ve asked Mr. Torrisi—”

  “Dick is good enough, your honor,” Torrisi interjected.

  “Dick it is, and it’s Michael to you, so quit with the ‘your honor’ shit.” Denton continued, “Which is why I’ve asked Dick to give it to you straight this morning.”

  As Denton spoke, Torrisi rose and walked over to the window as if he were preparing his speech. He looked out for a moment, then turned to face the other men. “I’ll try to keep this fairly short though I feel I pretty much have to lay it all out chronologically so there are no misunderstandings. So I’m sorry if any of this is redundant. On the night of May 19, 1992, five young black men from Bedford-Stuyvesant—Jayshon Sykes, Desmond Davis, Packer Wilson, Kwasama Jones, and Kevin Little—took the bus from their neighborhood to Coney Island, where they consumed a large amount of beer and smoked marijuana to psych themselves up for a night of what they called ‘wilding.’

  “Over the next few hours, they harassed and assaulted a half-dozen people who had done nothing more than be in the right place at the wrong time, including an elderly Korean immigrant, Mr. Lee Kim, who was robbed and then beaten so badly his skull was fractured. We know all this because the so-called Coney Island Five—which became Four when Kevin Little was later shot and killed—admitted to these crimes at the time and haven’t tried to recant. Plus, Mr. Kim lived and was able to identify the suspects from live lineups, especially Jayshon Sykes, who he said was the man who hit him with a piece of steel bar. When the crowds finally went home, the suspects decided to wait for the dawn beneath the pier, where they continued to drink and get high.

  “On the morning of May 20, a twenty-eight-year-old Brooklyn housewife and mother named Liz Tyler got out of bed, kissed her still-sleeping husband and her child, and went for her daily jog along the boardwalk and beach at Coney Island. It was a beautiful morning, unseasonably warm…low tide and a red sky in the east where the sun was just coming up. Her path took her to the pier, which she intended to pass beneath.”

  As Torrisi spoke, Karp could picture the scene. He could almost hear the sound of seagulls and the whispering rush of small waves over the sand. But his pleasant childhood memories were soon shattered by Torrisi’s account of the attack on Liz Tyler.

  “We don’t know…because she doesn’t remember…but Liz may have ignored, or didn’t see, the danger when she approached the pier where these poor, innocent young men we’ve been watching on television were lurking.”

  Torrisi paused and seemed to find it difficult to go on. Man, he’s tied up in this one, Karp thought, but before he could give it more reflection, Torrisi started talking again.

  “We don’t really know all of what happened next or in what sequence. As you may have read, this time accurately, Liz Tyler suffered head injuries during the attack and can’t remember anything about it. However, several witnesses heard a woman screaming and men shouting from the direction of the pier about that time of the morning.

  “These folks were mostly other joggers and a few beachcombers, but they weren’t about to inquire, not even after they saw five young black men—and one nonblack we were never able to identify—running away from the pier. I suppose we’re lucky that one witness finally did call the cops, but by the time they arrived, a bloody, badly injured Liz Tyler was standing in waist-deep water trying to wash herself. That she was able to stand at all and simply hadn’t fallen over and drowned was something of a miracle. Her skull had been fractured by a blow from a blunt object, another blow had crushed the orbital bone around one eye, permanently blinding her on the left side, her nose was broken, and several of her teeth had been knocked out. She’d been bitten, stomped, and raped both vaginally and anally.”

  “This blunt object happen to be a piece of steel bar?” Karp asked, his jaw starting to ache from setting it so hard as his anger simmered.

  Torrisi held up a hand. “If I may, let me get to that in a moment. Sorry if this is going on too long, but I still feel it’s necessary. Liz Tyler was taken to the hospital for a standard rape examination and to be treated for her injuries. The doctor who examined her reported that she exhibited the signs—the tearing and bruising—of forced sexual intercourse. Unfortunately, she’d done too good a job of washing herself with seawater, and DNA samples from her body weren’t available. However, one sample—a mixture of semen, blood, and fecal material—was recovered from her sweatshirt, where apparently one of her attackers wiped himself afterward.”

  “The sixth man…Villa-something,” Karp said.

  Torrisi nodded. “Enrique Villalobos. But again, I’ll get to him in order. If you’ve been reading the newspaper accounts and watching television, you’ve undoubtedly heard that brutish cops coerced and intimidated these Boy Scouts into confessing to the rape and attempted murder of Liz Tyler. Never mind that these same paragons of virtue also confessed to the assaults of the half-dozen others—of course, they’ve already served the sentences for those crimes.”

  Torrisi stuck his hands in his pants and rocked back on his heels. “I’m going to cut the story a little short now and leave it for Mayor Denton—Mike—to explain why I asked for his help and why he asked you here. But I want to finish by assuring you that the officers and detectives in this case followed procedure and kept to both the spirit and letter of the law.”

  Torrisi looked down at his feet for a moment before looking up. “I know that to be a fact because I was one of the detectives. And I know I did everything I could to make sure I didn’t foul up this case by giving these guys some way out on a technicality or because I abused someone’s rights. You would have been just as careful if you’d seen her like I did a couple days after the attack—her head swollen up like a basketball, her face all yellow and purple…. The docs were great; they fixed her up pretty good and the swelling went down, but doctors can’t fix everything.

  “As the lead detective in the case, I got to know her pretty good. The trial was real tough on her, she couldn’t remember much of anything, but these fuckers would turn around and grin and leer at her whenever the jury was out of the room. She became more and more withdrawn until I don’t think she cared what happened in the courtroom. Her husband, a real good guy, tried to stay by her, but she pushed him away and for a while wouldn’t even see her kid.

  “After the trial, I hoped she’d start to come around and for a while it looked like she might—she wouldn’t go home, but she started seeing her daughter on weekends. That is until the day she took the kid, Rhiannon was her name, down by the pier, and while the kid was playing in the sand, Liz swallowed a bottle of Valium. Someone saw the little girl crying next to the woman who wasn’t moving; otherwise Liz might have finished the job for the Coney Island Four. As it was, her husband divorced her and got full custody of the little girl. I hear he’s living in Colorado or someplace like that now.”

  Torrisi looked up at Karp, who saw the tears glistening in the man’s eyes. “Anyway, Butch, we go
t those guys fair and square and nailed their asses to the wall. Now they’re going to get away with murder—maybe not in the traditional sense but they took Liz Tyler’s life that morning as surely as if they’d killed her right then and there.”

  “What about Villalobos?” Kipman asked.

  Torrisi nodded. “We always knew there was a sixth man. The DNA on the sweatshirt didn’t match any of the five other guys. But we didn’t try to keep it a secret. The ADAS—Robin Repass and Pam Russell—turned over the test results with all the rest of the exculpatory evidence to the defense. During the trial, the defense even tried to argue that the “missing man” did it all. Our argument was that just because we didn’t have the sixth guy, it didn’t mean the other five weren’t guilty as sin. But thank God, we had the confessions videotaped. The jury only deliberated for less than two hours—a lot of it, from what I understand, taken up just filling out the paperwork on all the counts. Now, here we are only twelve years and change later and these guys have been set free based on a lie. And to pour salt on the wound, they may win a couple million dollars or so that could have been used for more cops and safer streets from the likes of these pieces of shit, excuse my French.”

  Karp waited a moment to make sure that Torrisi was done. “Okay. Sounds like the city has a defense…the best defense…the truth,” he said. “But you didn’t call me down here to hear what you already know. What else can I do for you?”

  Torrisi looked at Denton, who picked up the thread of the conversation. “Actually, we’d like you to do a bit more than that. The reason I asked Dick to spell out the whole story was I was hoping it would persuade you to agree to a favor I’m asking. I’d like you to look over all the evidence, draw your own conclusions, and if you agree that Dick was straight with you regarding this case, I’d like you to represent the city in this lawsuit.”

  For a long moment the only sound in the office was the clanging of the old radiator that heated the room. Then Karp let out his breath and leaned forward. “Let’s just suppose that even if there was nothing preventing the district attorney for Manhattan—whose responsibility it is to prosecute criminal cases, not represent the city in civil lawsuits—you have Corporation Counsel Sam Lindahl, who is paid to represent the city. He seems to be a competent attorney.”