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

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “And Ewen?” Karp asked, thinking he’d never liked the toad-like man.

  “He kept the PBA membership in line if they started asking questions about the bad apples and made sure they were protected and kept on the force. No matter what anybody thinks, good cops don’t like dirty cops.”

  “Dirty cops like you,” Newbury said.

  Carney looked down at his hands. “Yeah,” he said, his voice breaking, “like me. I ain’t got no good excuse, but I guess I was looking at the end of the line for my career, and what did I have except mortgage payments and college tuitions for five kids. I wanted more for my family…and, yeah, more for a dirty cop like me.”

  Karp felt sorry for the man. He knew Carney had a half-dozen medals for heroism, and Newbury’s research seemed to indicate that he’d come to this point only within the past five years. Still, you agree to accept the pay when you sign up, he thought. You want to make more money, sell real estate. “It was still a crime,” he said.

  Carney nodded. Ferguson cleared his throat, and, when no one told him to shut up, proceeded. “I think now would be a good time to talk about a deal if you want my client to testify to what he just told you, as well as supply you with a sizable amount of documentation to back up these allegations.”

  “What do you want?” Karp said, looking at Carney, whose eyes were glued to the floor.

  “No prison time—I wouldn’t last two minutes in the general population. Whatever else you may think of me, most of my career was spent putting bad guys behind bars. A lot of them are still there.”

  “What else?”

  Carney cleared his throat but at first couldn’t speak, then muttered. “I’ll sell the place in the Keys and give the money, and everything else I got through these deals, back to the city.”

  “That would happen whether you said so or not,” Karp said.

  “I’d like…I’m begging to be allowed to retire from the force, the way I imagined when I first went to the academy,” he said. “I’ll need my pension to support my family and make sure my wife can stay in our little place in the Bronx. She’s a good woman who doesn’t deserve to be hurt because I fucked up—pardon my French.”

  “You’ll be required to testify at the trials,” Newbury said, “which means the press is going to be all over you. You’re not going to be able to protect her from what comes out.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Carney croaked, tears running down his face. “I figure if it gets bad, we can sell the place and move to Seattle, where our oldest daughter is living. She’s been after us to move out there. Says it’s safer.”

  Karp had already made up his mind to agree to the deal, but he wanted the information on the other “big case.” Feeling like a hard-ass, he said, “The price is too steep.”

  “That’s outrageous!” Ferguson sputtered. “Uncle Tim is a good man. He made a mistake…. I guess this is why they refer to you in the public defender’s office as Saint Karp.”

  Karp ignored the young lawyer and kept his eyes fixed on Carney. “I think you know as well as I do that holding back for a deal is not going to help relieve the guilt that’s sitting on your shoulders.”

  “I’ll never be out from under it,” Carney said, “but you’re right, I have to tell you. It’s about the Coney Island case. Some of the guys on the force who are getting screwed by Breman are old friends. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it. We were going to make a bundle from our share of whatever those fuckers won. But it didn’t feel right, so I had some of my specialists plant a bug in Breman’s office. I got her on tape telling that pile of crap Hugh Louis about some letter a guy named Kaminsky sent her from prison. It said Villalobos was lying about being the only one there who raped that woman.”

  “So, we got a deal?” Ferguson asked.

  “Shut up, Christopher,” Carney and Karp said at the same time. The two looked at each other for a long moment until Karp at last spoke. “I hear it rains a lot in Seattle.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Carney replied. “It’ll be hell on the arthritis.”

  “There are worse things.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  A week later, Karp whistled as he entered the courtroom and saw Murrow and Kipman sitting in the row behind the table where he’d be sitting. Behind them were Robin Repass, Pam Russell, and Dick Torrisi. He exchanged little nods as he walked past and placed his briefcase on the defense table.

  There were very few other people sitting on his side of the aisle, mostly those who looked as if they wished they were sitting on the other side, which was packed with spectators and the press. Louis was chatting amiably with that worm of a reporter for the New York Times, Harriman, who lorded his exalted position over his colleagues in the press with a disdainful smile as he bent his head toward Louis and laughed over some private joke.

  The four plaintiffs were sitting at their table, all of them watching Karp with baleful looks. He smiled at them until they looked away.

  The nest of reporters went nuts when Brooklyn DA Kristine Breman entered the courtroom, walked to the front row behind the plaintiffs’ table, and took a seat. The reporters ran up to her or leaned over the other benches to ask her questions. But she demurely shook her head no. “Not at this time, please,” she said, obviously enjoying the attention. “I’m just here to see that justice be done.”

  The press quickly lost interest when a police officer entered with a frail, frightened-looking woman with gray hair. Her eyes locked on Karp’s and she looked nowhere else as she walked to her seat next to Torrisi, who took her hand and patted it between both of his. She gave Karp a thin, wavering smile.

  “Thank you for taking the case, Mr. Karp,” Tyler said. “I know this isn’t your job.”

  “I wouldn’t say that…but you’re welcome. And please, call me Butch. How are you doing with all this?” he asked, waving at the crowd of press who hovered on the other side of the aisle, hoping to catch her attention.

  “Okay,” she replied. “I just want this to be over with…again. My nightmares have grown worse; my psychologist says it’s the stress.”

  Karp was the consummate prosecutor. And one of his strengths was that he could put aside the emotional aspects of a case and concentrate on what he would need to convince a jury. However, this case had his stomach tied in knots. He knew that it was a load of crock, and he was reasonably sure he could persuade the jury to see it that way. However, the two things he needed to make it a lock were still missing. He knew that Kaminsky sent a letter to Breman impeaching Villalobos that had then been handed on to Klinger. But he couldn’t prove it, didn’t have a copy of the letter, and Kaminsky had disappeared.

  He would also have liked to find Hannah Little. Louis was sure to attack the confessions as coerced—big, bad racist cops browbeating poor little black teenagers. Hannah’s testimony that Kwasama Jones told her he’d held Liz Tyler down while Sykes and Davis raped her would put the nail in the coffin. Jones was certainly not under any duress from cops when he talked to her on the telephone.

  “Oyez, oyez, all rise, U.S. District Court Judge Marci Klinger presiding.” As the crowd rose to its feet, Klinger swept into the courtroom. She hardly bothered to sit down before she fixed Karp with a fierce glare. “Before we begin, Mr. Karp, I want to repeat my opinion that your appointment to this case smacks of theatrics and politics. If I so much as sniff such I’ll—”

  “I assure you that there will be no such sniffing necessary,” Karp said. “Certainly nothing to equal the daily circus of news briefings my opponent conducts regarding this case, despite your gag order.”

  “I object to this characterization,” Louis said, rising to his feet. “I cannot be held responsible if the members of the journalism profession approach me in public places and ask questions.”

  Karp started to reply, but Klinger slammed her gavel down. “That’s enough,” she said. “Mr. Karp, I will decide what does or does not meet with the spirit of my ruling regarding a gag order. And now, since I w
ill assume that nothing more need be said on this matter, I will ask that the jury be brought in.”

  The members of the jury filed in quietly and took their seats as Louis stood, smiled, and nodded to every one as if each was a long-lost friend. Sykes also smiled at the jurors and nudged his coplaintiffs to do the same.

  The jurors, most of them, smiled back at him. It made him laugh inside at how gullible people were. He’d been fooling them all of his life. Teachers had loved him. The mothers of his friends adored him and told their sons to be more like him. The mothers of his girlfriends hoped they’d marry him—not that women really attracted him like that; he liked to rape them and make them cry out in pain. Only once—because of those assistant DA bitches sitting across the aisle near that bitch he raped and beat the shit out of—had his streak of people liking him been broken. That other jury didn’t like him, that other jury sent him…brilliant, personable, whole-life-in-front-of-him Jayshon Sykes…to that horrible place for the rest of his life. Well, when this is over, he thought, I’m going to pay a little visit to them bitches, and after I’ve done every filthy fucking thing I can think of to them, they won’t live to tell no one about it.

  When they were seated, Klinger invited Louis to give his opening statement. He rose slowly, carefully, from his chair as if lost in deep thought. Patting at his forehead, he began to speak, his shoulders slumped as if he carried a great weight.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury…friends…I come before you today with a heavy heart. Heavy because I am a firm believer in our justice system. Despite its failures in the past to protect people of color, I still believed that it was the black man’s best hope for this country to live up to that last line in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘and justice for all.’”

  Louis sighed. “But years ago, justice was manipulated, and in a rush to judgment, four young black men were convicted of a crime they did not commit. That system—represented by two assistant district attorneys for Kings County, as well as police officers and detectives of the New York Police Department—conspired, yes, conspired to steal, as surely as someone putting a gun to their heads and pulling the trigger, the flowers of these young men’s youth.”

  Suddenly, the big man whirled and pointed a finger at Karp. “Oh, I’m sure the defendants in this case will point out that these were not totally ‘innocent’ young men. And yes, they were teenagers who did stupid teenage things, like fighting with people on the boardwalk at Coney Island. Pranks for the most part, until one elderly man decided to fight back and threatened to harm one of my clients, Mr. Jayshon Sykes—who, afraid, lashed out. Unfortunately, Jayshon was a strong young man and the elderly man was frail and should not have been so belligerent. It was a tragic accident, something Jayshon has regretted every moment since, and you did not hear him or his companions complain about doing their time in prison for that infraction. And I don’t need to remind you about what hideous dens of depravity our prisons have become.”

  Louis walked over to his table and took a sip of water before turning back to the jury. “I ask each of you, could you cast that first stone? Are you without sin? These boys, now men, committed a sin, surely. But a much greater sin was about to be committed. Because early that next morning, long after these boys had finally gone home to bed…a sin so monstrous that it grieves my heart to even think of it…was committed when a lovely young woman was brutally raped and nearly killed by a vile and despicable man named Enrique Villalobos. You will hear, my friends, from Mr. Villalobos, who, with nothing to gain for himself by this confession, will tell you that he and he alone committed this horrible sin.”

  Karp listened to Louis drone on about the horrors of prison and the abused, poor, neglected backgrounds of his clients until he felt somewhat nauseous. As expected, Louis launched into a long diatribe about how his clients were “beaten down by The Man” and confessed out of fear and exhaustion. “And being told that they could fry for this one, go to the electric chair…suffer a million, a billion, volts of painful electricity boiling their organs in their own blood and their brains into mush.” It was the plaintiffs’ turn, as well as some of the audience, to turn green.

  After an hour-long, meandering opening, Louis wrapped it up by pleading with the jury “to find for my clients…to the tune of $250 million dollars…yes, a lot of money but what price tag would you put on freedom? What price would you attach for being scooped off the street like so much dog feces as a teenager and then spending the best years of your life rotting away in a prison cell? What price would that be worth? You need to send a statement, a strong statement, to the government that this sort of injustice will no longer be tolerated. Thank you for listening.”

  With that Hugh Louis sank into his chair like an electric toy running out of juice. Sykes reached over and patted him on the shoulder, and, loud enough for the jury and audience to hear, said, “Thanks, Hugh, thank you for telling the truth.”

  “Mr. Karp,” Judge Klinger said. “Are you ready to proceed?”

  Karp glanced up from his notes and nodded. He rose from his seat, wincing a little as he placed weight on his bum knee. He walked calmly to the podium, where he put his notes, and then looked at the audience.

  “An interesting opening statement by Mr. Louis,” he said. “In fact, if I didn’t know anything about this case and was listening, I might be inclined to believe him.”

  At their seats, the plaintiffs nodded and smiled. “That’s right,” Sykes said. “The truth shall set you free.”

  “Except,” Karp said, “it was a pack of lies and utter nonsense.”

  Louis erupted from his seat, spilling the cup of water he’d just poured. “Objection, your honor! Argumentative and…um…unprofessional.”

  Klinger was glaring. “Mr. Karp, you’ve been at this a long time, and you know as well as I do that was inappropriate.”

  “Since when is the truth inappropriate, your honor,” Karp replied.

  Klinger’s face colored angrily. “You’ve been warned, counselor.”

  Karp looked back down at his notes as Klinger instructed the jurors to “ignore that last statement by the defendants’ attorney.” He smiled back at the jury—secretly pleased that he’d planted the seed. Now it was time to move on.

  Calmly and matter-of-factly, he ran through the events of the night before Tyler was attacked. The assaults on Coney Island. The attack that nearly killed the elderly Korean man “by Jayshon Sykes, who had a piece of steel rebar in his hand and cracked an elderly man’s skull like it was an egg. And before you hear Mr. Louis tell you again about this fight that ended badly, the ninety-three-year-old victim was five foot four and weighed 120 pounds, Jayshon Sykes was six foot three and close to two hundred. I don’t think he was afraid.”

  Louis jumped to his feet. “I object, your honor, this is not a criminal trial with my clients facing charges. They have been exonerated. This is a civil trial to determine whether the conduct of the agents of the City of New York, that is, the police, rose to the level of malfeasance that would entitle my clients to remuneration.”

  Karp paused and waited for Klinger to sustain Louis’s objection. When she did, he continued. “Well, Mr. Louis is correct—this, unfortunately, is not a criminal trial. But I will demonstrate to you, the jury, that the convictions of these men were valid and therefore, the assistant district attorneys and the police officers who worked on this case did their jobs correctly, ethically, and well. That other jury wasn’t mistaken—they knew that there was a missing defendant whose semen had been found on the clothing of Ms. Tyler—but they also knew the truth. Those four men”—he pointed at the plaintiffs’ table—“raped and nearly murdered Liz Tyler in a way so heinous, so depraved, that it defies any hint of human compassion.”

  Karp walked out from behind the podium with his hands in his pockets as he strolled over by the jury. “But I will do more than prove the first jury was right. I will show you how ludicrous the plaintiffs’ case is. Heck, they haven’t even thought through how t
he cops could have conspired to frame the plaintiffs when they, the cops, didn’t even know if Liz Tyler, who was in a coma, would wake up. And if she did wake up, would say, ‘Hey, you got the wrong guys.’ So are the cops going to frame people knowing the victim might very well come out of her coma and expose them as frame artists? Further, I will demonstrate to you—through videotapes and witnesses—that these four…what did Mr. Louis say, ‘innocent young men’…didn’t behave like browbeaten, frightened teenagers. Far from it, they actually bragged in front of numerous witnesses about what they did.”

  Karp turned around, meaning to gather his thoughts, but caught Liz Tyler looking at him. Tears trickled down her cheeks, but she had a slight smile on her face. He smiled back.

  “If this was just about money, and there was any chance that they’d been wronged by the system, I’d say give it to them,” Karp said. “But there are a few problems with that. First, they weren’t wronged. Second, it goes much deeper. If you let them get away with this, it could destabilize the entire justice system that Mr. Louis professes to champion. Never again will a jury believe a police officer when he takes the stand. Nor will a jury accept as trustworthy a confession offered into evidence. All the good detective work will just be thrown out the window.

  “And third…” He paused and glanced sideways at Tyler again. “This is about justice. Not for four bloodthirsty, depraved thugs. It’s about an injustice they did to a young mother and wife. She was the one who had her youth and everything she loved stolen from her. She is the one owed a debt that can never be repaid.”