“The only things that’re missing,” Karp said, “is, one, how Jackson and Seaver were brought into it in the first place, and two, how Isabella got to the shelter.”
Marlene brought her thoughts back to the present. “How do you mean?”
“Okay, the girl gets raped. The mother, the maid, finds out. She takes off, quits, gets a new place to live. Does she go to the cops? No, she’s an illegal, she wouldn’t dare. But somehow Jackson and Seaver find her, and they figure out that Bloom is the rapist. This would be last May. Jackson had murdered Ortiz in March and Valenzuela in April. Fuentes had just died too, and there was an investigation heating up. So they go to Bloom and they say, we got the girl you raped, make sure there’s no serious investigation of the guys we killed. It was manna from heaven, finding that girl. Anyway, Bloom says something like, hey, I can’t control the determination of murder, that’s the M.E.’s job and he’s an independent bastard. So they, Seaver probably, says, get rid of him, put your own guy in there. And he does. All the dates check like clockwork. Still, there’s something missing on how the two of them got on to the rape in the first place.”
“Yeah, but how she got to the shelter is easy,” said Marlene. “Bloom obviously says to them, okay, deal, but you have to get rid of the girl. She has to disappear. So Seaver takes her to the shelter and leaves her on the doorstep. That date checks too.”
“Why Seaver?”
“Because if it was Jackson, he would’ve killed her,” said Marlene. “He did kill her, may he burn in Hell forever. No, Jackson says, we got to whack the girl. Seaver says, hey, I’ll do it, you did the two spic cabbies, it’s only fair. But Seaver’s a softy; he doesn’t like rough stuff, and also he’s being a clever boy, because it gives him an edge, Bloom ever starts saying, ‘What rape was that, Detective?’ So he drops her at the shelter instead and tells Jackson and Bloom she’s buried out in the Meadowlands someplace.”
“So how did Jackson find her after all this time?” Karp asked.
“Ah, fuck if I know,” said Marlene groggily. “We haven’t quite penetrated to the bottom of this yet. We’ll find out the whole thing when they grab Seaver, though. He’ll talk.” She clicked off the bedside light, and they lay awhile in the semidarkness, in the pale moonlike glow of the street lights filtering through the blinds on the wide bedroom windows. “What’ll this do to your case?” she asked, suddenly remembering the ostensible cause of the entire cascade of revelations.
“I don’t know,” said Karp. “When the press gets hold of what happened down there, it’s going to really hit the fan. I’ll have to think about it in the morning.”
In the morning, as Karp had expected, the shooting death of an NYPD detective in a Chester motel room, the murdered illegal-immigrant child, and the involvement of a faintly notorious one-eyed feminist private detective made an irresistible story. Even the staid Times gave it page one, although below the fold. What Karp had not expected was what the Times ran above the fold, in a two-column piece on the left side: Murder Alleged in Custody Deaths of Gypsy Cabbies, read the headline, and the byline read A. A. Stupenagel. Karp devoured the piece on the subway going downtown to his office, muttering curses and imprecations in so energetic a tone that, although the car was crowded, a cautious circle opened up around him.
The core of the story was, of course, the reconsideration of the autopsy evidence; Murray Selig was identified by a ‘reliable source close to the plaintiff’ as the pathologist who had discovered foul play. (There was a brief review of the Selig civil case in a sidebar.) The article was enriched by the tale of the kickbacks from the cabbies, Seaver and Jackson being named, together with the other corruptions they had battened on. Stupenagel had made much of her personal adventures in disguise as a gypsy and of being roughed up personally by the late Jackson. Other “sources” were quoted suggesting very strongly that the two rogue cops were being protected for some reason by the D.A. himself. The D.A. himself had refused comment. The Police Department was quoted as saying that the investigation of the deaths and of the extortion racket would be reopened.
If Karp was less than pleased by the story, Judge Craig was furious. He called both counsel into his chambers before court opened that morning.
“This farrago, Mr. Karp, this mess of charges, did you have anything to do with planting them in the mind of this reporter?” asked Craig, tapping the unfolded copy of the Times on his desk with a clawed digit.
“No, sir,” said Karp honestly. “The reporter is a friend of my wife’s, who’s a private detective who’s been helping us with our case. We had Ms. Stupenagel’s assurance that this story would not be published until after the trial, or until we had the full story of why District Attorney Bloom was so anxious that my client be dismissed. I’m very distressed to see it out prematurely.”
“And do you now have what you call the full story?”
“Substantively, yes, sir. I believe I do.”
“And would you care to vouchsafe it to the court?”
Karp glanced over at Josh Gottkind, expecting some sort of objection, or even a motion for a mistrial, but Gottkind’s face was as bland as Buddha’s. Karp felt a wash of relief. Phil DeLino had done his work. The Mayor was pulling away from Bloom, as from a fouled anchor. Karp said, “Obviously, we would expect this material to form the basis of a formal criminal investigation, but in broad terms this is what we know.”
He told the story into a stony silence. When he was done, all Craig said was, “Do you intend to bring any of this material forth in my courtroom?”
“No, sir,” answered Karp. “We’ve rested our case. We think it’s sufficient.”
“Mr. Gottkind? You have a comment?” asked Craig.
“Yes, Judge. We would ask that the jury be instructed to ignore the press allegations as they bear on the dismissal.”
“Thank you,” said the judge. “If that’s all, let us repair to the courtroom and finish this wretched thing.”
It took Karp twenty minutes to demolish Dr. England with the transcripts Marlene had brought back from upstate. Karp had England read Selig’s statements verbatim, by which it was clear to all that Selig had not flippantly derided the large doses of amphetamine dispensed by Dr. Bailey, but had positively denied that he had any clinical expertise at all as to what constituted a normal dose, and mentioned, merely as an aside, that he had occasionally taken 15 mg. orally as a med student.
That concluded the case for the defense. After a brief recess, Karp rose and began his summation, which took almost four hours to deliver; the transcript ran to 256 double-spaced pages. He read over each charge in the original language of the memos, and then construed the stigma on Dr. Selig’s professional abilities that the reader was supposed to gather from that language. Reminding the jury of the charges was essential, because the stigma arising from the charges was the basis of the claim for damages. Then he demolished each charge, summoning up the testimony he had elicited and adding choice phrases from the transcripts. He omitted any mention of the growing scandal in the Twenty-fifth Precinct, or the possibility of a connection between the firing and someone wanting to cover up two murders in custody, but the networks and the papers were full of the story; the stink of it hung in the courtroom, too heavy by far for Judge Craig’s admonitions to disperse it. Closing, Karp asked for reinstatement, back pay, and damages totaling two million dollars if Selig were reinstated, and up to thirty million, depending on what lesser jobs, if any, Selig was able to get.