“Is it? Yes, I suppose it must be, to you.” Waley’s face took on a look that was nearly wistful, with little flarings of the nostrils. “You know, Mr. Karp, as much as I respect our adversary system, it is at times like these I wish that we could simply sit down like civilized men and just do the decent thing, to do what we would want done if our own families or loved ones were involved in this dreadful affair. Instead we will lend our considerable talents to making each other look foolish or evil, we will bring out what the British charmingly call trick cyclists to pontificate upon whether this pathetic boy is mad or sane, and in the end the jury will either commit him for treatment, which is what we ought to have done during this interview, or else condemn him to certain, miserable death in some prison.”
“Death?”
“Of course, death! I don’t mean the formal penalty. But what do you suppose the fate will be in Attica or Dannemora of a slight, pale boy accused of murdering five black grandmothers?” Waley coughed and stiffened his face, as if the air in Karp’s office had somehow congealed or turned noisome. Then, in one dramatic motion, he rose to his feet and slipped his fawn cashmere topcoat over his shoulders. He smiled sadly, extending his hand, which Karp shook. “A pleasure, Mr. Karp. Regrettably, it seems we will be much in each other’s way in the coming months.”
Waley paused at the door. “They tell me you have never lost a homicide case, Mr. Karp. A string of over one hundred now, isn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
Waley smiled. It was a warm, delighted smile, and Karp felt his face twitching to return it. “Well, well,” said Waley, and left.
“It was the most uncanny thing, V.T.,” said Karp that afternoon over a mediocre Chinese lunch. “I mean, it’s not like I’m a blushing virgin. I’ve been around the block with the defense bar, good ones, sleaze balls, the usual range, but this guy was a piece of work. You know, for an instant I actually felt myself wanting to accept his offer. He seemed so reasonable, so decent …”
“Perhaps he is,” said V.T. Newbury. He was a small, fair, handsome, elegant man whose most common facial expression was one of ironic surprise. He wore it now.
“Oh, right!” Karp snorted. “V.T., he’s a lawyer. Be real! No, but, Jesus, I tell you, man, I haven’t had a warm douche like that in years. Some kind of weird rays coming off that guy.”
“Probably has demonic powers.”
“I’d believe it. Three sixes tattooed on his ass, the whole thing. What a technique, though! Fucker’ll go through a jury like a dose of salts.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“I’m pissing in my pants, V.T. You know, I’ll tell you something strange. When he was sitting there, I swear I was flashing on Garrahy. Not because he looked like him, or he sounded like him, because he didn’t, but there was a presence there, like the guy was the best and he knew it and it didn’t affect him-there was no arrogance. You remember Garrahy-there wasn’t an arrogant bone in his body. Well, this guy is the same thing, like God reached down and touched him and said, Hey, Lionel, somebody got to be the best fucking defense lawyer in the universe and I picked you.”
“You sound like you’re in love,” said V.T.
Karp laughed. “I don’t know, man, but I’m definitely going to have to bring my lunch to this trial. The thing of it is, whatever you do in life, there comes a moment-I mean, let’s face it, I won a lot of cases, but seventy-five percent of them were mutts with a dumb alibi and a court-appointed good Democrat out of Brooklyn Law night school. This is going to be something completely different.”
“As they say on the Monty Python show. So, you feel like backing out?”
“What I feel like is getting into my jammies, pulling the quilt over my head, and putting my thumb in my mouth. You want the last shrimp? Another thing I flashed on when I was coming over here. It happened back in ’61. Summer after my sophomore year. I was a hot ball player, I’d just burned up the PAC-Ten, set a single-game scoring record, and set a couple of Cal records too. I had triple doubles in a dozen games. Okay, it’s the summer, I’m playing ball in the Rucker Summer League, up in the Rucker playground on 155th Street. This, you should know, is like the killer playground of the world. There’s guys playing there, that’s all they do, street guys. If they could read and write, they’d’ve been All-Americans, first-round draft choices. So it’s a tough game, but I’m hot, I’m like one of four white guys playing in the whole place. I could still move back then, and jump, not too embarrassingly, and shoot, of course. Okay, so at Rucker, in those days, the thing was, you never knew who’d turn up. Chamberlain would come by, Richie Guerin, Oscar Robertson, and the thing was, you weren’t supposed to notice them as anything special, they would just jump in and run around with the playground guys. Now, of course, there would be TV cameras and the whole entourage, but back then it was still a game. Anyway, it’s after the regular competitions, pick-up playground games, it’s getting dark, that kind of blue twilight you get in the summers here when you think it’s never going to be night, and you can play forever, the lights are on, and the game I’m in ends and some guys leave and others drift in. This is done on automatic pilot, five guys strip off their shirts, five guys keep them on, and you’re playing, twenty-one points, deuce rule, make it, take it. Okay, so seven seconds into the game I notice the guy I’m playing against is something special, and I look, and I think to myself, holy shit, it’s Elgin Baylor. This was the year he averaged thirty-eight points a game in the NBA. So, in the next fifteen minutes I learned the difference between a hot sophomore college ball player and one of the best basketball players in history.”
“How did you do?”
“He pounded me into the ground like a tent peg-what do you think?”
“And your point is …?”
“I’m not sure,” said Karp, his forehead wrinkling. “Obviously, I want to win, but maybe even more I want to be in the game with this guy. He gets my juices flowing. You know, we win cases all the time because we only go in there, to court, when we think we have an overwhelming case, and when the mutt hasn’t got the sense to cop a plea. But the fact it, the system is skewed to let the guy off unless the prosecutor’s really sharp. We should get beat a lot more, and we would if we faced more people like Waley.”
“Lucky us,” said V.T. “What am I hearing, you think you’ll get creamed?”
Karp shrugged. “I’m not sure I’d bet my next three paychecks on me to win. He’ll go with NGI, so it’s going to be dueling shrinks, which is always a toss-up. Also, with him in there, I make one mistake it’s all over. But that’s the job: they let the bull in, you got to wave the cape. Otherwise, you walk up the aisles selling enchiladas. So what’re you up to?”
What V.T. was up to was the undermining of a complex Medicaid-fraud scheme. He described the convolutions of this with verve and humor, while Karp, not really following the details, was content to relax and listen in the dim booth, occasionally dropping a piece of Mongolian beef into his mouth and nodding appropriately.
Suddenly, however, he grew alert. “What was that doc’s name again?” he asked.
“Which doc? Robinson?”
“Yeah, Vincent Robinson. What do you have on him?”
“Oh, Vince! Old Vincent is a rare bird. He runs a string of clinics, three in Harlem, one in Washington Heights, two in the South Bronx. A social benefactor, Dr. Robinson. He does well by doing good.”
“These are Medicaid mills?”
“We think so. Medicaid and Medicare.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You haven’t been listening. I’m hurt. To review, Medicaid is the federally funded program for people on welfare. Medicare is for the old, regardless of income. The federal government sets rates for particular payments for medical procedures and drugs in both cases, but with Medicaid the money is run through the state, and through city agencies with the state making a contribution. The paperwork is extremely complex. For example, you can have a health-service provider bill another provider for services, only some of which are Medicaid-eligible under Part Two-”