“‘No, Your Honor,’ I said calmly and respectfully, ‘if the defendant is not produced on first call, it seems to me that before the case is adjourned we should make best efforts to locate him.’ And, of course, as you guys know, everything I was saying was on the record. So the judge is hip with this too and gave me the ‘don’t fuck with me, troublemaker’ look but then turned to the psychiatric ward guard who escorted the prisoners to the hearings. ‘Mike, would you kindly go see if you can locate Mr. Rodriguez? Our young wiseass Mr. Karp does have a point that the defendant is here somewhere. So let’s find him and get this over with.’”
Karp continued. “Mike sort of rolled his eyes, but it wasn’t over. Turns out that there were two L. Rodriguezes: a Lorenzo Rodriguez, a young man who had been charged with jumping a subway turnstile at the Bowling Green Station and had his case disposed of at arraignment and was ordered released by the presiding judge. Unfortunately, a bureaucratic snafu occurred and the wrong Rodriguez was released, leaving the turnstile jumper in the Tombs while the brutal LeRoi Rodriguez was put back on the street, and it was discovered only when ‘Mike’ couldn’t find him. Fortunately, when word went out, my friend here picked up LeRoi.”
“He was on Lenox Avenue and had just pulled his razor on a girl standing on the corner waiting for the light to turn green,” Fulton said. “Had him in my sights, ordered him to put the razor down, and was ready to pop him if he didn’t.”
Karp laughed. “Mel Glass kept me on that Rodriguez case and that’s when we met.”
Now it was Clay’s turn to laugh. Guma grinned, too. “Whatever brought on that little jog down memory lane?”
Karp looked out the window of the car as they drove onto the university grounds. “Just that this justice business is not rocket science. It’s common sense, thoroughness, preparation, and follow-through. There are enormous consequences at times when we fail to do what’s necessary and professional in these cases.”
Guma chimed in. “So now Big Daddy and the A-Team have to complete the follow-through.”
When they arrived at Columbia’s main campus, Karp watched Guma struggle for a moment to get out of the car. “You okay, Goom?” he asked.
Guma straightened his shoulders and nodded toward a pair of pretty coeds walking across the campus. “I was just remembering the good old days,” he said with his patented Guma wink and grin.
“Yeah, sure,” Karp replied. He’d seen the weariness and while he worried about his friend, he wasn’t going to embarrass him by saying anything about it. “When was that? The Pleistocene Era?”
“Very funny,” Guma replied as Fulton laughed. “Maybe when you’re done catching bad guys, you can start a new career as a stand-up comic.”
A passing student pointed them in the direction of Philosophy Hall and English lit professor Dale Yancy. They found him on the stage of an auditorium gazing at some one hundred students as he spoke:
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
Othello, Karp thought. The conniving Iago is speaking. He thought of Felix Acevedo and wondered if his office had “filched” that young man’s good name, as well as the underlying credibility of the justice system. What was that other quote, the one from the honorable lieutenant Cassio after he was involved in that drunken brawl because of Iago and then dismissed by Othello? Oh yeah, “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.” A good choice given the reason we’re here.
When class was over, Karp, Guma, and Fulton walked to the front and waited as Yancy spoke to several of his students and then turned and noticed them. He smiled tentatively. “May I help you?”
“Are you Dale Yancy?” Karp asked.
The smile disappeared. “I am. Why?”
Karp stepped forward and held out his hand, followed by Guma and Fulton. “My name is Roger Karp,” he said. “I’m the district attorney for New York County. This is Assistant District Attorney Ray Guma and Detective Chief Clay Fulton, who directs the detectives who work for my office.”
The professor relaxed and smiled broadly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have recognized you from the papers. I knew the face but for a moment thought maybe you were that bastard’s attorneys. I haven’t had much contact from the police or, to be honest, anyone from your office. I thought now that they’ve caught the guy, I would have heard more.”
Karp grimaced as he pulled out his wallet and selected a business card. “Well, first, I’d like to apologize for that; it wasn’t right and there’s no excuse. However, from here on out,” he said, handing over the card, “if you have any questions, day or night, please call me-my home number is on the bottom of that card along with the office number. And Ray Guma here will be handling your wife’s case personally; he and Clay are also available to take your calls.”
Accepting the card and another from Guma, Yancy gave Karp a puzzled look. “Thank you. I really appreciate that… I’ve felt a little lost in the system. But I’m sure you didn’t come all the way up here just to introduce yourselves and give me your business cards.”
Karp shook his head. “You’re right,” he said, “though it should have been done much sooner. But we’re just trying to run down some loose ends. Make sure we get the right man for what happened to your wife and mother-in-law.”
The smile disappeared from Yancy’s face. “What do you mean ‘right man’? Don’t you have him? Didn’t this Acevedo asshole confess?”
“Yes he did,” Karp replied. “But I have a few concerns about his confession and some of the evidence.”
“You’re starting to sound like a defense attorney,” Yancy said with a scowl. “What? Is his dad connected to the mob or something? He have an abused childhood and that’s what turned him into a vicious animal who murders innocent women in their homes? And now you want to let him off over a few ‘concerns’?” He turned and walked back to the lectern, where he started shoving his lecture papers into a briefcase.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Karp replied evenly. “Mr. Yancy, I am truly sorry for what happened. I know you loved your wife. But does it matter to you that we get the right guy for her murder? Or will just any poor sap do?”
Yancy stopped. “Of course not.”
“Well, if the wrong man is convicted,” Karp said, “not only will an innocent man pay the price, it also means that the real killer is out there on the streets, thumbing his nose at the cops, at you, at me, at our entire system of justice. And let me be very clear about this: Guys like this don’t stop killing. They like it. And I very much want whoever committed those crimes to pay for them. Now if I could just show you-”
Yancy cut him off as he whirled around to face him. “I don’t need to see any more photographs,” he cried out. “I came home that day and found my mother-in-law lying in a pool of blood and my wife lying on our bed, where she’d been-” He stopped talking and put a hand over his mouth as though he might be sick. When he recovered, his voice was barely above a hoarse whisper. “I see those images every night before I go to sleep. I don’t need any more photographs.”
Karp winced at the man’s pain. “I understand. But I wasn’t talking about photographs. I wanted to show you a ring and see if you can identify it.”