"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 will 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.