“OK, let’s say I go to say, Kaplan here, and give him five hundred dollars to shoot Krier.”
Mike Kaplan, a former engineer and the best of Karp’s recruits, grinned behind his wire-rimmed glasses and said, “Two hundred and fifty dollars.”
Laughter. “OK, two hundred and fifty dollars. You do the job, you cut off Krier’s head to show me that you earned the money. The cops follow a trail of blood to my office and we’re arrested. What’s the charge?”
“Murder One,” said Kaplan.
“Because?”
“It was done with intent to cause death of deceased and did cause death.”
“Right, and the contract nature of the killing makes it highly unlikely that an NGI would be offered. Now, in contrast, let’s say you’re at home, you’re hungry. You feel like a salami sandwich. You cut a piece of salami and sit down to eat. OK, a visitor comes in and finds Krier’s headless body on the kitchen floor. He finds you happily eating Krier’s head between two slices of seedless rye. He says, ‘What’s that corpse?’ You say, ‘What corpse? That’s salami.’ ”
“Butch, is this necessary?” Krier wailed. “I’m getting sick.”
“Yes, it is. Although the flaw in the case is that a reasonable and prudent man might conclude that your head was in fact made of salami. OK. Kaplan’s lawyer, let’s say, offers an NGI plea. What do you do? Franklin.”
Jerry Franklin, a squat wrestler from Brooklyn, who’d done well at Vermont and had spent two years prosecuting in an upstate county, chewed his lip for a moment. Then he said, “Assuming no substantive motive, right? What I’d check out first is, was there any prior history of delusion. Did he mistake people for food before? It’s compelling that he didn’t run or try to hide the act, and that the delusion persists. Of course, you’d have to see the whole pattern, but on the facts you gave, I would probably not waste time with a trial. Let the funny farm have him.”
“Fine, that’s a thoughtful answer, Jerry. You notice what he said about pattern. That’s the key. I’ll share a secret with you. Nobody knows what crazy is. You, and only you, are the judge of whether a defendant fits the definition of insanity in the law, the only judge of whether the state is going to try to exact punishment for a responsible act. Look for the pattern.
“All right, here’s the hard part. Killer Kaplan decides to whack out Krier because he hates guys whose names end in r, whatever. He cuts off Krier’s head, mutilates the body, writes weird cult signs all over the room in blood. Then he changes his clothes, burns the bloody clothes, and slips out the back. The cops catch him and he says the R people are trying to poison his air, so he has to kill them. Mike, how would you handle that?”
“That’s tough. He, or I, hid my tracks, showing that I knew it was wrong to kill. I was afraid of capture, which suggests rational thought. On the other hand, I have this delusion …”
“Uh-uh,” Karp interrupted. “Remember what I said to Phil. Wacky motives do not make insane crimes. No matter how much you hate your cousin Al, you can’t make a career out of killing people who look like him. That’s the most confusing thing to juries about insanity pleas and the defense will cover you with bullshit on it.
“OK, let’s talk about competency for a minute. This is a different thing entirely.”
Karp then sketched out the background of the Marchione case, and laid out what he thought Mandeville Louis was doing and how he intended to stop him from getting away with it.
“This is a classic case of gaming the system. The mutt can’t go for an NGI. It was an obvious killing for profit, with an elaborate getaway plan. He figures to lay low in a mental hospital until we forget about the case. But are we going to forget about the case?”
A chorus of no’s came from the group. Karp grinned and said, “That’s it. Any questions?”
Krier said, “What about this party Bloom is having. Do we have to go?”
Karp was embarrassed. Handing on bullshit from the top was what he hated most about being in the chain of command.
“Yeah, I guess it’s a command performance.”
Krier held up a memo. “It says we have to pay seven dollars to come to a party at his ‘ancestral home.’ If he’s so ancestral, why doesn’t he shell out?”
Karp said, “Richie, I’m here to answer your legal questions. If you have moral qualms, see your goddamn clergyman, hey? I intend to go, pay my fucking seven bucks like a trooper, and smile a lot. And, what the hell, it could turn out to be a blast.”
Chapter 16
The ancestral home of Sanford Bloom was a fussy Gothic pile of red sandstone in Fishkill, New York. It had been built by Bloom’s great-grandfather, who had inherited a substantial fortune made by selling beef and leather to the Union during the Civil War. The Blooms decided it was time to leave the slaughterhouse district of Manhattan and live among the patroons upstate. Fortunately, they held onto the stockyards, abattoirs, and surrounding property, which turned, with the fickleness of fashion, into Sutton Place, and made the Blooms truly wealthy.
Karp rode up to Fishkill with V.T., Marlene, and Guma in Guma’s junker. When they got there, a uniformed guard waved them to a parking space with a little red flag. The day was overcast, still, and sultry even in the country.
“Hey, look who’s there!” exclaimed Guma. “It’s Konstantelos.”
“Who’s he?” asked Marlene, sliding out of the backseat, and adjusting her skimpy shorts. “Guma, why don’t you have A/C in your car. My thighs are sticking together.”
“The rent-a-cop,” said Guma, “it’s Marty Konstantelos from the old four-seven precinct. He retired with a three-quarter a couple of years ago, caught his hand in a trunk or some shit. What a character! They called him Fartin’ Martin. He used to crack up the squad room during roll calls. The shift would chip in and get him a quart of chow mein or chili and then he’d stand there and let rip. Christ, could he cut the cheese! He could, like, do words or tunes-I swear to God, it was amazing.”
“Mad Dog, how come only you know people like this?” asked V.T. with something like admiration. “Does he do concerts?”
Guma laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe we can arrange something. Hey, I’m going to bullshit with him, I’ll catch you guys later.” Guma picked up a huge straw beach bag and waddled off. He was wearing an orange Kiss Me I’m Italian T-shirt, black Bermudas, black dress socks, and vinyl sandals.
V.T. gazed musingly after him. He himself was wearing a white Tom Wolfe suit, a yellow silk shirt and a plum-colored Paisley ascot. V.T. was one of the forty-three men in the civilized world who could wear an ascot without looking like a jerk.
“This is uncanny,” he said. “We arrive at this Disneyland castle and the first person to appear is somebody out of a dirty limerick, the man from Sparta, who was such an incredible farter, on the strength of one bean, he’d do God Save the Queen, and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Do you suppose the man from St. Clair is the butler and the Old Lady from Wheeling is the cook?”
“I want to see the man from Kent,” said Marlene as the three of them set out on the graveled path to the house.
V.T. giggled. “Whose cock was so long that it bent? Stick around. My, this place is unbelievable. Bad taste married infinite riches and lived happily ever after.”
They were passing through some unkempt ornamental plantings. Some of the rose bushes had died and a bank of hydrangeas had succumbed to an invasion of wild grape. Weeds encroached vigorously on the gravel path and pushed up the flagstones of the garden walkways.
“Hey, V.T.,” said Karp, “you’re the maven. How come this place looks so crummy. Is Bloom strapped?”
“No, far from it,” answered Newbury. “But they don’t live here and neither Bloom nor his wife have any real feeling for the old pile. They’ve got their place in town, of course, and a big spread in the Hamptons, where they entertain. This joint is for ceremonial occasions only, or for people who can’t be trusted with the good furniture.”