“Without maiming prisoners is how. Look Mister Stein, we could stand out here and bullshit all day about how sad, how sad, but the fact is that these guys, your clients, are going to trial. If the jury thinks that three guys holding a seventeen-year-old kid down while a fourth guy kicks his eye out of its socket is a legitimate part of narcotics rehab, that’s fine with me. Meanwhile …” Karp moved to leave, but Stein placed a hand on his arm. He had stopped smiling.
“Wait just one minute, you. Look, Butch, you’re a young man. You have a fine career in front of you. What you don’t need is the kind of trouble this case is going to stir up. You know the kind, the caliber, of the people who sit on the Narcotics Control Commission? These are people you want as friends, not enemies. Now are you absolutely sure that Phil wants you to go ahead with this case?”
Karp knew that there was a small circle of intimates who called Francis P. Garrahy “Phil.” He doubted that this bozo was included in it though.
“I haven’t spoken with Mr. Garrahy about this case, Mister Stein, but as usual his name will be on the indictment.” Karp broke away and started for the stairs.
“Well, perhaps I should,” boomed Stein.
“His office is still on the eighth floor, Mervyn. Ask anybody for directions,” Karp snapped over his shoulder.
It was raining outside, so Karp bought two jelly doughnuts and a pint of coffee at the ground floor snack bar. He went back to his cubicle to eat and ran into Guma in the hallway.
“Hey, Butch, what’s happening?” Guma was wearing a dripping dark-blue raincoat and a plastic cap and was carrying a large, damp paper bag.
“Not much, Goom. You know, making powerful enemies. The usual.”
“Great! Hey, you want some lo mein? I just went over to Chinatown, I got a ton.” So they went into Karp’s cubicle and divided the quart of greasy noodles between them, with the jelly doughnuts for dessert. “I see you’re still here,” said Guma around a mouthful. “I thought you’d be up on the sixth floor today. What’s happening?”
“Damn if I know. They scheduled me for Criminal Court this morning, as usual. My guess is the Onion’s behind it, or maybe Wharton.” He ran his big hand over his eyes. “At this point I don’t particularly give a shit.”
“Ah cut it out, you’d trade your left nut to get Homicide. But meanwhile don’t worry, it’s just the usual sand in the gears-I guarantee you’ll be there this week. Hey, look at this, this’ll cheer you up.” Guma reached across the desk to the paper bag and spread it open. “Fireworks! I picked them up in Chinatown from a guy I know. I got ten packs of ladyfingers, cherry bombs, M-Eighties, Whiz-Bang Flying Bomb Rockets. Hey, I got a Triple Royal Star Salute too, the whole schmeer. All illegal, of course.”
“Of course. What’re you going to do with them?”
“I’ll think of something. Right now I got to go to court. I got a victim-marone! — got a set of jugs that won’t quit.”
“Are you going to impound them as evidence?”
“I wish, any kind of pounding. I’m gone, see ya.”
Guma breezed out with his fireworks and, after cleaning up the debris, Karp went to court. It was not a good court in which to be a petty felon that day. The Legal Aid attorneys were dumbfounded as Karp held out for trial-on what were ordinarily bargainable offenses-in case after case. Finally, Yergin called him to the bench. “Butch, what’s wrong with you? This is a domestic. You really want to try this man for aggravated assault?”
“He used a pipe wrench. It’s a deadly weapon, Judge. The law makes it clear …”
“I know the law, Counselor,” said the judge, his voice rising, “and I’m telling you to lighten up. I don’t know what put the hair up your ass today, but don’t take it out on my calendar. Let’s just get through today in an expeditious manner, and save the trial slots for the bad guys. Understood?”
Karp mumbled assent and walked away. Yergin had never dressed him down before, and he felt his face burning. He tightened his jaw and tried to ignore the smirks from the defense table. He finished the calendar in an expeditious manner.
Then he went back to his cubicle and kicked his desk a couple of times, hard, so that the tin walls of the cubicle rattled like the cage of a psychotic hamster. He called Conlin, but the smiling secretary said he was in a meeting. He slammed down the phone, which immediately rang. He picked it back up and Lannie Kimple’s South Brooklyn soprano sang into his ear, “Hello. Guess who’s in trouble again?”
“Lannie, why don’t you tell the Onion it was Guma who porked you so he’ll get off my case?” A pause.
“He doesn’t need an excuse, Mister Karp. Nobody likes a wise-ass. I think you’d better get down here right away. He has Mister Wharton in with him and they’re both waiting to see you.”
“Great! That makes my day. OK, Lannie, tell them I’ll be over as soon as I’ve filled my enema bag.”
When Karp got to Cheeseborough’s office, he walked right past Lannie, gave a perfunctory knock on the frosted glass of the inner office door, and entered without being asked. The Onion and Conrad Wharton were sitting with their heads together; the Onion planted behind his large wooden desk as usual, Wharton in the green, studded-leather visitors’ chair to the right of the desk. They both looked up sharply when Karp came in, like startled geese.
“You wanted to see me, Mister Cheeseborough?”
The Onion frowned. “Yes, Karp, we did. You know Chip Wharton here, of course.” Nobody but the Onion and a few sycophants called Conrad Wharton “Chip,” a name he was trying to cultivate because of its clean-cut, horsey-set, masculine connotations. Everybody else referred to him as “Corncob” because of his peculiar walk, a sort of rapid waddle with the thighs of his short legs pressed close together, which suggested that he had secreted such an object in an intimate recess, and was trying to keep it from falling out.
Wharton was about thirty-five, plump, with a round face, wide-set blue eyes, and a red cupid-bow mouth. He had fine, almost white-blond hair, which he wore long, razor cut, and blow-dried. He looked like a mean, animated Kewpie doll in a three-piece suit.
Wharton shifted his chair so he could look directly at Karp. Cheeseborough went on. “Chip has brought something to my attention that requires an explanation from you. Chip?”
Wharton consulted a folder on his lap. He spoke in a rich, fruity voice, of the type that was popular among radio announcers in the forties. “This case you’ve filed, Butch, against these four guards at the Narcotics Center? I’m afraid it is in serious violation of our Trial Screening Profile. Not only that, we, that is the district attorney and I, have received numerous complaints from several highly placed …”
Karp broke in. “What the hell is this, Wharton? Since when are you reviewing Criminal Court actions? I thought you were supposed to be chasing jerk-off movies.”
Wharton glanced at the Onion and the two men traded supercilious smiles. “Ah … the Pornography Campaign is just one of my duties. I’m also responsible for seeing that our resources are appropriately targeted so as to produce the maximum benefit to the taxpayer.”
“Very noble, Wharton. What has this got to do with my case?”
“Well, to gain maximum efficiency, we have to view the entire criminal justice system as a whole, and adjust the inputs of resources at each node so as to optimize throughput. Now, as you know, Butch, trial time is one of our scarcest resources. It hardly makes sense for one part of the criminal justice system-us-to spend that resource trying to penalize representatives of the Drug Center, which is another part of the same system. So we have developed a Trial Screening Profile that assigns priorities to different sorts of cases and generates scores. Then we can observe the trial dispositions of various ADAs and bureaus and see whose scores diverge from the optimum, and take corrective action. Am I making myself clear?”