No Lesser Plea Page 5

  Yergin laughed. “What do you mean, ‘What for?’ I think it’s great. You’re going where you belong.”

  “Sorry, Judge, you’ve lost me. Where do I belong?”

  Yergin laughed again and slapped Karp on the back. “Homicide, Butch. You’re being transferred to the Homicide Bureau. There’s probably a message from John Conlin on your desk right now. I wanted to be the first to congratulate you.”

  Karp felt his face flush. “Judge, are you sure about this? I mean …”

  “Of course I’m sure. I had it from Mr. Garrahy himself, last night. He called up and said it was evaluation time. He asked about you, said they’d been checking out some of the younger fellas for a new slot in the bureau. I told him you were a pretty fair trial lawyer. I also told him you probably wouldn’t let your old granny cop to a lesser on littering the sidewalk if you had a good witness. And that was that.”

  Karp was still stunned. He found his voice and said, “Thanks, Judge, I just don’t know what to say. I mean, Homicide …”

  Yergin noted the younger man’s discomposure, and said, “Butch, sit down there for a minute. I want to tell you something.”

  Karp plopped down on the leather couch. Yergin leaned against his desk. “Butch, look here. I’ve been in this system, God help me, it must be close to thirty years. Believe me when I tell you we’re close to losing it. Plea bargaining! It’s not a convenience any more, it’s a necessity. And the crooks know it, believe you me. That’s the real value of the Homicide Bureau. It tries cases and it wins them and murderers get put away, for murder one, for a long time. Every time there’s a big murder trial and Homicide wins it, it’s got to send a little jolt through every crook in the city. I don’t mean the crazies. God, they’re like car crashes, you can’t do anything about them. But the cold-blooded little bastards with their pistols: they think they might actually have to do a long stretch, they might not shoot that old lady for four dollars and twenty cents.

  “And there’s another thing. Trials reverberate throughout the whole system. I truly believe this. The crooks have to learn that they can’t just waltz out of here with an easy plea. They have to learn that when they turn down the prosecutor’s offer, they will go to trial and they will lose and they will go to prison. That’s the way the system’s supposed to work. About the only place it does work anymore is in the Homicide Bureau. But if the bureau starts to slip, if the number of trials gets too small in relation to the number of pleas, then criminals won’t have to think about facing trial. They’ll know it’s an empty bluff. That can’t ever happen, Butch. If it does, the whole justice system becomes a … a… .” He gestured expansively with his hand and fell silent, as if unable to conjure up a word appropriate to such an enormity.

  The silence hung for a moment in the little room. Karp cleared his throat nervously but couldn’t think of anything to say. Then the judge straightened up, and smiled. “Why am I telling you all this? You know it, or they wouldn’t have picked you. Besides that, it’s the best legal team in the world. You’re going to work your buns off and love it.”

  Karp got up, shook the judge’s big, brown hand again, murmured some more words of thanks and left. He sat down in his chair, shrugged off McFarley’s inquiring glance, and began arranging his papers in calendar order.

  His mind was still a blur, the waiting courtroom unreal. He wasn’t thinking about the stack of petty offenses before him. He was thinking about homicide: the New York Daily News front page type of homicide, mousy-looking ax murderers snapped as they walked handcuffed between burly cops, partially covered corpses of gangland honchos riddled with bullets—the Big Time. He was going to be part of that, he was going to be on the First Team. It is very hard for someone who has been a star to stop being one while still young. Karp believed in justice. He felt for the victim. But what he loved was what he had just been given; the chance to shine, the chance to bend every element of his mind and spirit to some great end, and for everybody to know it. He had lost that chance on a hardwood floor in Palo Alto fourteen years ago, and now the carousel had brought him around to the brass ring again. He shut his eyes and took deep, calming breaths.

  The clerk snapped him out of it with his “All rise!” as the judge entered. “Hearyehearye hearyeallthosewhohavebusinessbeforethishonorablecourtdrawnearandyeshallbeheardthehonorableJudgeEdwardYerginpresiding,” boomed Jim McFarley. The fabled wheels of the law began to grind.

  Chapter 4

  On the morning after the killings, Donald Walker awakened in a reversal of the usual order of things—from a rather pleasant dream into a living nightmare. In the dream he had actually gone to a job interview instead of to a robbery. A nice man had shaken his hand and told him he was exactly the kind of fellow the firm had been looking for. He would have a big office and sit behind a desk and wear a sharp suit and talk on the telephone and have lunch at fancy restaurants. In the dream he was just telling his wife about the job and receiving her praises, when the cockroach walked across his face.

  He sat up with a stifled scream, clawing at his face with both hands. Junkies often have the experience of cockroaches crawling over their skin and often—at a particular stage of withdrawal—it is difficult to determine which are real and which are not. Walker leaped off the bed. He had fallen, fully dressed, into a drunken stupor the night before. He yanked off one sneaker and held it high, then pulled the grayish sheets and tatty chenille coverlet off the bed and shook them. No target appeared. Then he felt the tiny legs crawling down the back of his neck. Cursing, he began swatting at his back with the sneaker but the maddening tickle continued. Now it started on his legs. He was crawling with them. He dropped the sneaker, tore off his pants, and fell to the floor on his back, swatting at his legs and writhing, soaked with foul sweat, until he resembled a dying roach himself.

  The violent motion was too much for his stomach. It had taken half the quart of Scotch to knock him out last night, and a sour bile now rose into his throat. He staggered to the washbasin and vomited. Now the chills started. He wrapped himself in the sheets, bedspread, and thin blanket, and shivered. He was entering deep withdrawal, freezing and burning at the same time, itching, sniveling, bowels frozen. Yet the physical agony was nothing compared to what was going on in Donald Walker’s mind. It was reality, seen for the first time in many months without the intervention of heroin. Such a view is grim enough for the upright citizen, which is why they sell beer, Valium, and Gothic romances. But the reality that junkies make for themselves is unspeakable.

  Donald Walker, now. He was going to lose his house. His wife would probably kick him out when she found out about his habit. He’d told somebody at the plant—he didn’t remember who—he would take his shift, because the guy took his last week when Walker was too stoned to work, but no way was he going to work today, and maybe have to take Monday off too. Oh shit, he promised Emma he would take the boy for asthma shots today, but the doctor probably wouldn’t see him. Walker had been taking the money Ella gave him for the doctor, money she got from her mother, and giving about half, well maybe a little more than half, to Paradise for smack. He had just helped a crazy man rob a store and probably kill somebody. The crazy man was going to kill him, his wife, and his kids if Walker didn’t do exactly what he said, which was stay put in this shitty little room crawling with roaches and stinking of vomit, whisky, and Walker’s desperate fear.

  On the other hand, every cloud has a silver lining. Stack had money and dope for him. Junkies may have lots of problems, but junk cures them all. This thought struck Walker with the force of revelation. He leaped to his feet, splashed water on his face, dressed, and stumbled down three flights of stairs to the peeling cave that served the Olympia Hotel as a lobby. There was a pay phone against one wall. Walker fumbled a quarter in the slot. A dial tone! Maybe his luck was changing. He dialed the number written on the scrap of paper Stack had given him last night.

  A woman’s voice answered. “Is Stack there?” he asked.

  “
Stack? There ain’t no …” Her voice cut off, and after a few seconds of silence, Walker heard Stack’s whispery voice.

  “This is Stack. Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Stack, Donald. Stack, when you gonna get here? I need some help, man.”

  “Yeah, well Donald, help is on the way.”

  “No, I’m really sick, man. You gotta help me, like you said. I gotta get out of this shit hole …”

  “Don’t you go nowhere, boy! You go back to your room, have a little drink. I’ll get something ’round to you before you know it. Just stay put, hear? Now, Donald, what room you in?”

  “Uh, Ten. You gonna be here soon? Stack, they got roaches here, I can’t stand it much more, you got to come soon… . I need some help, Stack …”

  The voice in Louis’s ear degenerated into an inarticulate whine. He broke the connection and dialed a number.

  “Elvis? Listen here. It’s going down, now. Get over to my place, we gonna make a delivery. OK, man, see you soon.”

  This business accomplished, Man Louis hung up the phone and resumed what he had been doing before Walker called. He lay back on his king-sized waterbed, naked. “Girl, get busy,” he said. The woman on the bed, also naked, obediently lowered her mouth to his groin. Louis’s sexual activities were ordinarily restricted to the periods immediately following his robberies. At such times he would call up this particular woman, DeVonne Carter, who would come to his apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, remove her clothes and put herself at his disposal for from three days to a week. She was a big woman, with the hard rounded body of a nineteenth-century fountain statue, and she felt she had found a good deal. Louis paid her rent and gave her spending money, in return for which she had to come when called, leave when bidden, keep her body clean and free of venereal disease, and her mouth shut. Louis’s tastes were odd, but bearable; at least they didn’t draw blood. Remaining silent was something of a burden, since she was a naturally friendly and gregarious person, but this too could be borne. She was used to men making the rules.

  DeVonne had scarcely finished her latest service when the door buzzer sounded. Louis rolled away from her, got off the bed, put on a terry cloth bathrobe, and strode through the living room to his front door. He peered through the fish-eye lens set in the door and observed Elvis’s distorted image. He opened the door, admitted his accomplice, and then relocked it elaborately, two dead bolts and a police lock.

  Elvis glanced around the living room with pleasure. It had deep white shag rugs, pale leather couches facing across a wood and glass coffee table. Big color TV, big stereo. The most fascinating thing about the room, however, was the bookcase, which covered the entire wall facing the windows. Elvis had never seen so many books in a private residence; there were hundreds of them, neatly racked and arranged by subject and author. The first time he had visited the apartment he blurted out, “Shee-it, man! You read all them books?”

  To which Louis had replied with a superior smile, “Yeah, I read them. Some of ’em twice.”

  Louis was at the bookcase now, taking down a hardbound copy of The Shame of Our Prisons. He carried it over to the coffee table and sat down on one of the couches, motioning Elvis to take a seat opposite him. Louis opened the book, to reveal a cut-out section in its center. In the cutout was a plastic bag, a package of glassine envelopes of the type used by stamp dealers, and a pair of surgical gloves. Louis pulled on the gloves and unrolled the plastic bag. He tapped a tea-spoonful of white powder into one of the glassine envelopes.

  “What’s all this, Man?”

  “It’s headache powder, what you think?” Louis held the envelope up to the light and tapped it so that the powder fell into a corner and then folded it into quarters. “This is gonna get rid of our little headache. Come on, I’ll get the rest of the stuff.”

  Louis went into the bedroom. He left the door open for a moment and Elvis caught a glimpse of a chocolate-brown woman sitting naked on the bed. She caught him staring and flashed a broad and antic grin over Louis’s shoulder as he reemerged. He was carrying the attaché case. Opening it on the coffee table, with the rubber gloves still on, he removed the bank cash bag he had taken from the liquor store. He took out all the cash except a dozen miscellaneous small bills and put in the packet of white powder. He placed the bank bag inside a paper bag and handed it to Elvis.

  He said, “Take this down to that hotel where that Snowball’s stayin’ and give it to him. Olympia Hotel, Room Ten. He won’t ask no questions when he see that bag o’ shit. Make sure he shoot up, then get out of there and go back to your own place. And don’t touch nothin’, especially not the damn cash bag. Let him take it, and then take the paper bag with you.”

  “What, you put some rat poison in the shit?”

  Louis grinned. “No baby, there’s nothing in that bag but shit. Pure shit, that’s all it is. No quinine, no milk sugar, no nothin’. He shoot up what he usually do, figures maybe it be bumped six, seven, ten times—but this ain’t been bumped at all. Cost me a fuckin’ load but it’s worth it, you dig? That boy go out like a light. The cops find him, coupla days, maybe a week, all swole up with the needle still in his arm, what they gonna think? Hey, what the goddam medical examiner gonna think? Heroin overdose, open and shut.”

  Elvis was slow, but he could follow this. “And he got the bag from the store on him, so they gonna think …”

  Louis’s grin widened. “You got it, Pres. You caught on, good for you. Now look, here’s the most important thing. He got a little piece of paper with my phone number on it. Get that from him before you give him the bag. Before, dig? Don’t worry, he give you the key to his momma to get his hands on what you holdin’. OK, take off. I don’t want him jumpin’ out no windows or goin’ nowhere.” He reached into the attaché case again and brought out a roll of cash. “Oh yeah, here’s your share of the job.” He counted off five hundred dollars.

  Elvis had never had five hundred dollars in his life. It took all the cool he could muster not to giggle like a schoolboy. He pocketed the loot without a word, gave Louis what he imagined was a gangsterish sort of nod, took the bag, and left the apartment. As he left, he thought of what he had seen in Louis’s bedroom. Fine set of jugs on that girl, he thought. Got to get me one, get some kinda fine setup to put her in. That Louis, now he some kinda dude, he thought. So he strolled toward the subway, money in his jeans, the future bright before him, on his way to commit his very first murder, innocent as a clam.

  It took Elvis nearly two hours to get to Tenth Avenue and 23rd Street. He ran into some guys he knew from the street on the way to 137th Street IRT station, and had to jive with them awhile. Then they walked up the avenue a little way, scoping out the girls, and then went into a hat store and tried on some hats. Elvis finally bought a Borsalino for sixty dollars, got to flash his roll, show some class. Sincere, but not efficient, was Elvis.

  Two hours was too much for Donald Walker, though. Two minutes was too much, if it came to that. The insides of his veins were twitching like poison ivy. He knew he was going to die. Lying on the tangled sheets, looking at the spotted ceiling, his mind lost all comprehension of time; he was a hungry infant at 3:00 A.M. He might have been in that room for a week or a month. Like an infant, he now thought of his mother. Once again, he made his wracked body leave the foul room and move down to the pay phone in the lobby. He dialed his mother’s number; no answer. He was abandoned. He snuffled back his runny nose as tears of frustration ran down his face and bathed the mouthpiece of the telephone.

  No mother. Poor Donald! Then he thought of his wife. Same difference. He dialed again, the number of the real estate office in Jackson Heights where his wife worked as a secretary-receptionist. Contact.

  “Hello?”

  “Ella,” he croaked, “Ella, I …”

  “Hello? Donald, is that you? Is something wrong?”

  “Ella, I need … I’m sick, baby.”

  “Oh no! What’s wrong? Are you in Stamford? Where’s Billy?”

&
nbsp; After a chilling silence, the croaking voice resumed.

  “Ella, I didn’t go to Stamford. Shit, Ella, I’m in big trouble, I need help!”

  “Trouble? What are you talking about, Donald? What kind of trouble? What did you do?”

  “Can’t tell you, baby, he kill me. I need … I need some, uh, money.”

  “What? Who’s going to kill you? Oh, Donald, Jesus, you didn’t do anything stupid, did you?”

  “Ella, don’t ask no questions, just get over here with some money.”

  “Money! Donald, you come home this minute, you hear! I want to know what you’ve been doing. I can’t believe this …”

  “I can’t, dammit! He gonna kill me. I’m sick, godammit to hell!”

  Here he gave a groan of such mortal agony that even over the wires his wife realized that whatever her husband had gotten into was outside the zone of ordinary domestic troubles.

  “OK, Donnie, be calm, honey. What do you want me to do?”

  “Bring some money, anything, and some clothes. I’m at the Olympia Hotel on Tenth Avenue. Room Ten. And hurry, Ella, huh?” The line went dead. After that, Ella Walker went to the ladies’ room, sat in a booth, and cried for a while. Then she washed her face and returned to her desk. As she had learned to do from earliest childhood, she now turned to her family in time of trouble. With trembling hand she punched out the number of the Midtown South Precinct and asked to speak with her brother, Detective Second Class Emerson Dunbar, Homicide.

  When his sister called, Sonny Dunbar was walking down Eighth Avenue in the lower Forties, with the beginnings of a nasty headache, doing his job, but not liking it very much. His job at that moment was looking for a skell named Dingleberry, who, according to a snitch named Rufus, had been seen lately in the company of a prostitute named Booey Starr, or (if you were her mother), Francine Williams, now deceased. Since Booey had probably not hit herself in the head with a claw hammer twenty or so times, her death had been duly judged a homicide and added to the 153 open cases that were Dunbar’s particular responsibility.