Kowalski never recovered from the beating delivered by Anne Devulder and the colossal collapse of the defendant’s case. His summation reminded Karp of a boxer leaning against the ropes, absorbing blow after blow, just hoping to stay on his feet until the final bell. The defense attorney made some halfhearted gratuitous references to Jackie Corcione’s “extravagant homosexual lifestyle,” and repeated his assertions, with one small change, that “barring the testimony of murderers and a woman who admits her hatred for my client” there was nothing to tie Charlie Vitteli to the conspiracy to murder Vince Carlotta.
Then it was Karp’s turn. Only he was the boxer throwing the jabs, crosses, uppercuts, and haymakers at the reeling defense. After an hour and a half of pummeling the defense, he held up the magazine photograph in its plastic sleeve and recalled the scene of Vitteli having to fold a copy of the photograph four times to fit it into his wallet. “As you can see, it was folded once . . . to fit into a Bible.”
Putting the photo back down on the table, Karp offered the jury his closing thoughts. “We now know this was not just some homicide, not just a stabbing, or shooting—as serious and horrible as those cases are, too. This case transcends those, because what we witnessed here in this courtroom was an extraordinary evil. An evil that directed bullies in the night, who under the cover of darkness, hid in an alley to stalk and prey upon the innocent and defenseless. And for what? To keep his power, his privilege, his ill-gotten gains. This evil, the defendant Vitteli, operated in a realm that shocks our consciences. We know from the evidence that his decision to execute the deceased, Vince Carlotta, revealed that he has no soul and that he inhabits a netherworld where there are no constraints on satisfying desires; take what you want and kill whoever gets in your way; blame others for the crimes you commit. That’s Charlie Vitteli.”
Karp let the thought sink in as the jurors glanced at the defendant and then back to him. “Let’s take a brief moment to try to understand three of the witnesses you heard from who were also involved in this heinous, unjustified act: William ‘Gnat’ Miller, Frank DiMarzo, and Jackie Corcione. As they testified, they will pay a serious price and spend years and years in prison for the parts they played. We need to remember how it is they came forward and what the compelling issue was for them, which we now know was that they still retained a sense of their humanity; they couldn’t live with the guilt, their consciences wouldn’t let them. We’ve learned firsthand, haven’t we, that guilt is a powerful motivator that murders sleep and steals men’s souls?”
Karp turned to face his adversary. “Assuming they have a soul to steal.”
Over at the defense table, Charlie Vitteli’s head slowly rose. His face had turned the color of an eggplant and his hard, dark eyes were filled with rage and hatred. Sensing an eruption, Kowalski put a hand on his arm and said something into his ear. Vitteli gritted his teeth and dropped his head again.
Looking back at the jurors, Karp said, “We now know beyond any and all doubt that Vince Carlotta was not murdered in the course of a robbery. He wasn’t killed in a sudden outburst of unplanned violence. It was a setup; a calculated, cold-blooded execution to prevent Vince Carlotta from discovering Charlie Vitteli’s so-called retirement fund. But for Vitteli’s evil on the night of December fifth in an alley in Hell’s Kitchen, Vince Carlotta would have returned home into the waiting arms of his wife, Antonia, and watched his son grow up. Without Vitteli, none of this tragedy would have happened; he was the master puppeteer pulling all the strings.”
Karp took a few steps back to the prosecution table and picked up the bag containing the bloodstained handkerchief before returning to the jury box. “And lest we forget, there is one more witness in this case, one whose voice you haven’t heard but whose blood testifies as surely as it would if he could take the stand. Blood that Charlie Vitteli cannot wipe from his hands and throw away as casually as he threw away the life of Vince Carlotta.”
Holding up the handkerchief, he concluded, “With this blood, Vince Carlotta is very much here in this court and he cries out for all of us to do justice. And I know that you will do just that.”
As Karp turned to go back to his seat, he glanced at the defense table and saw that Charlie Vitteli was staring at him. But the anger and hatred were gone from his eyes, replaced by fear and the certain knowledge that his doom was sealed.
EPILOGUE
THE SCOTTISH WARRIORS DRESSED IN armor gathered on the stage to the solemn beating of a drum and far-off trumpet call. Having just defeated Macbeth’s army, his chief adversary, Malcolm, had just been told that his young son had been killed on the battlefield.
“They say he parted well, and paid his score,” the actor playing Siward consoled the bereft Malcolm. “And so, God be with him!” He pointed offstage. “Here comes newer comfort.”
The actor playing the great warrior Macduff appeared from the shadows. He held the head of the traitor aloft.
“Cool,” Zac and Giancarlo exclaimed together.
Karp rolled his eyes. Leave it to teenagers to appreciate gore over substance. Macduff was one of his favorite characters, a principled foil to Macbeth’s weak character and unbridled ambitions. Polar opposites even in their reactions to emotions. When Macduff learned that his family had been murdered by Macbeth, his grief was palpable even from the stage as he cried out, “But I must also feel it as a man.” On the other hand, Lady Macbeth and her husband made it clear that such an emotional display in other human beings was unmanly and weak.
As Macduff held the head of Macbeth up, Karp thought again about those parts of the trial that had seemed to mirror Shakespeare’s ancient tragedy, including the ending. It had come as no surprise that the jury had rejected the defense’s shell game and convicted Vitteli. As the jury foreman read the verdict, the defendant had stood with his head down and appeared to be taking their judgment calmly. But as Karp glanced over, the union chief’s face turned from pale to red to an angry purple. He turned to look at Karp with his eyes bulging in rage.
“YOU!” he bellowed at Karp. “It’s your fault!” A court security officer was thrown aside as Vitteli charged at his nemesis.
Karp stepped forward to engage Vitelli, but Clay Fulton came over the top of the rail and flattened the defendant, holding him down until the security officers arrived to take control.
As Vitteli was hauled out of the courtroom, he shouted at the jurors, the spectators, and the media. “It was a setup,” he snarled. “They’re out to get me! EVERYBODY is out to get me! But this isn’t the last you’ve heard of Charlie Vitteli!”
As the side door leading to the courtroom’s adjacent holding pen slammed shut, cutting off the rest of Vitteli’s invective, Karp thanked his detective friend. “I know you were all-American as a college fullback, but maybe you could have made it in the pros as a linebacker,” he said with a laugh.
A month later, Vitteli returned to the courtroom a defeated man to be sentenced. He sat quietly looking straight ahead as Antonia Carlotta talked about the depth of her loss. Nor had he reacted when she turned to him and said, “You will not live to be a free man again, Charlie Vitteli. And where you’re ultimately going from prison will be cold, and dark, and forever. But someday after you are no more than an evil man that once walked on this beautiful Earth, I will see Vince again and feel love and joy.”
As it turned out, both Vitteli’s and Antonia’s prophesies came to pass. The public did hear about Vitteli again, and he was never again free; instead, he shared Macbeth’s fate. A few days after he arrived at Sing Sing to begin serving his sentence, his body was found draped over a barbell bench, his skull crushed by a blow from a fifty-pound dumbbell. Suspicion had fallen on Russian gang members who gathered at that spot to work out, but none of them were talking.
Syd Kowalski had not fared much better. After the Vitteli trial, Karp had initiated an inquiry into the actions of Conrad Clooney and the attorneys for DiMarzo, as well as Kowalski for suborning perjury. However, the investigation of V
itteli’s attorney was rendered moot when Kowalski’s body was found in the East River with the piano wire used to strangle him still imbedded in his fat neck.
Apparently the Malchek gang did not appreciate losing access to the docks for which they’d paid Vitteli and Syd Kowalski. However, Marlene had received word from Karp’s cousin, Ivgeny, that Frank DiMarzo and his family had nothing to fear. “I guess in the odd way gangs sometimes have of looking at things, they placed all the blame for the failure of their little enterprise on Vitteli and Kowalski,” she told him after returning from afternoon tea in Little Odessa. “Even Jackie Corcione is considered nothing more than a bit player, or at least he’s not worth going to war with the Karchovskis over. Doesn’t mean any of them, including Miller, are safe; they’re still informants and that doesn’t go over well in prison, but at least the Malcheks are washing their hands of the whole affair.”
Assistant Warden Dave Whitney also had passed word that Miller and DiMarzo were now cellmates. Marlene, who had later gone to visit Frank with Liza Zito, asked him about their renewed friendship. “Yeah, it’s good to have a pal in the joint,” he’d told her. “We’ll watch each other’s back like we always done.”
Anne Devulder and her companions were now rooming at a halfway house, staying sober and employed. In fact, Anne had been given a job as the receptionist for T. J. Martindale, who’d been nearly unanimously selected as the next president of the North American Brotherhood of Stevedores. Marlene said Anne and her friends were also volunteering at the East Village Women’s Shelter.
Antonia Carlotta had stopped by his office a few days after Vitteli’s sentencing to say goodbye. She was headed with her son back to Italy. “That’s where my family is,” she said, tearing up as she added, “and there’s nothing for me here anymore. Maybe someday we’ll return, but for now everywhere I look are reminders of the love I lost.”
At the entrance to the amphitheater that night, Karp and Marlene had run into Greg Lusk, who was accompanied by a pretty young woman. Apparently noting their confused looks, he laughed and said, “Mr. Karp, I’d like you to meet my sister, Linda.”
“Of course.” Karp smiled and held out his hand to shake the young woman’s. “And this is my wife, Marlene. So, do you hear from Jackie?”
“We talk several times a week,” Lusk replied. “Prison is every bit as horrible as he’d imagined, but he says he sleeps better than he has in almost a year. He’s taking online courses to get a master’s degree in English Literature. He hopes to teach at inner-city schools when he gets out.”
“So are you two still together?” Karp asked.
Lusk shrugged. “I waited more than eight years to find someone like Jackie,” he said. “So we’ll see how it goes. For now we’re still friends.”
As Macduff began to recite the last lines of Macbeth on that pleasant September evening, Karp knew that for all their similarities, the Bard’s tragedy and the fall of Charlie Vitteli were markedly different, too. He felt no sympathy for Vitteli as he had for the fallen Scottish warrior. He supposed that some might say there was a parallel between the three witches in Macbeth and Devulder and her friends. But in the play, the witches had tricked Macbeth and, with the urging of his wife, led him astray. They’d convinced him that what he was doing was his noble right.
But Charlie Vitteli wasn’t tricked. And if anything, Devulder and her two weird sisters were forces for good, not evil. No, he’d made his own choices and had only himself to blame.
“Hail, King!” Macduff said to Malcolm. “For so thou art: behold, where stands the usurper’s cursed head: the time is free: I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl, that speak my salutation in their minds; whose voices I desire aloud with mine: Hail, King of Scotland!”
“Hail, King of Scotland!” the other actors shouted. And then the final curtain fell.
As they were leaving, Karp turned to his twin sons. “So what did you think of the play?”
“Well, all the murder stuff and chopping off Macbeth’s head was pretty cool,” Zak responded. “But there was way too much talking, and I didn’t understand half of what they were saying, even though I know they were speaking English.”
Raising his eyebrows, Karp smiled and shook his head. “An astute observation,” he said with a laugh. “Now, who’s up for a hot pastrami sandwich with chili cheese fries?”
“And cherry cheesecake!” shouted the boys.
“All hail the king,” Marlene added as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
ROBERT K. TANENBAUM is one of the country’s most respected and successful trial lawyers and legal experts. He has never lost a felony case. He has taught Advanced Criminal Procedure at his alma mater, the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, and held such prestigious positions as Bureau Chief of the Criminal Courts, Chief of the Homicide Bureau for the New York District Attorney’s Office, and Deputy Chief Counsel for the congressional committee investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He has also conducted continuing legal education (CLE) seminars for practicing lawyers in California, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is the USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five novels, including Bad Faith, Outrage, Betrayed, Capture, Escape, Malice, Counterplay, Fury, Hoax, Absolute Rage, and Enemy Within. He is also the author of the true-crime books Echoes of My Soul, Badge of the Assassin, and The Piano Teacher. There are more than fourteen million copies of his books in print.
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ALSO BY ROBERT K. TANENBAUM
Bad Faith
Outrage
Betrayed
Capture
Escape
Malice
Counterplay
Fury
Hoax
Resolved
Absolute Rage
Enemy Within
True Justice
Act of Revenge
Reckless Endangerment
Irresistible Impulse
Falsely Accused
Corruption of Blood
Justice Denied
Material Witness
Reversible Error
Immoral Certainty
Depraved Indifference
No Lesser Plea
NONFICTION
The Piano Teacher: The True Story of a Psychotic Killer
Badge of the Assassin
Echoes of My Soul
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Robert K. Tanenbaum
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First Gallery Books hardcover edition August 2013
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Jacket deesign by Jae Song
Jacket photograph by Jose Vasquez
Author photograph by Blake Little
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tanenbaum, Robert.
Tragic / Robert K. Tanenbaum.—First Gallery Books hardcover edition.
p. cm.
1. Karp, Butch (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Ciampi, Marlene
(Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Stevedores—Fiction 4. Labor unions—Corrupt practices—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.A52T73 2013
813'.54—dc23
2013005283
ISBN 978-1-4516-3555-3
ISBN 978-1-4516-3560-7 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Tragic Page 38
