'We have a print on the murder weapon.'
'Which was?'
'A juice machine.'
'A what?'
'Yeah, right. It was one of those old-fashioned kind of orange-juice squeezers-all steel, weighed a ton. Must've just grabbed it there in the kitchen and whapped her a couple upside the head. Crushed in her temple bone.'
'Okay, on the cops-who caught the case again?'
'Angeletti, Zone Six Homicide.'
'Yeah, Vince Angeletti. Look, here's the thing: the cops got a lot to do, especially uptown there, and the last thing they want to do is to piss on their own cleared cases. But with the situation as it is right now you couldn't convict Wismer of criminal mischief, much less murder two. You got to get them to check out this character Hobart. Don't ask them, tell them. If you get any more shit from Angeletti, let me know and I'll fuck with his head. His lieutenant is a good buddy of mine. You got to remind these guys once in a while who's in charge of a criminal prosecution. When you got Hobart, do the lineup again, and make sure whoever's on D is there to see it. If your witness waffles, I think we're fucked. Or we could get lucky and find a bunch of bloody clothes in Hobart's closet. He's got that assault conviction.'
'But we have Wismer's prints…'
'Come on!' Karp said impatiently. 'The guy lived there. You want to put him away for twenty-five because he squeezed some orange juice last April?'
Collins looked down at the thick file folder on his lap, weeks of work gone glimmering. 'But,' he said despairingly, 'Wismer did it.'
'Yeah, I agree. He probably did do it. But probably isn't good enough. Domestics are hard to prove circumstantially anyway. The killer was intimate with the victim and they shared a space-fibers, hairs, prints don't mean much. You need an eyewitness to the crime itself, or a confession, which is how we clear ninety percent of domestics. Without that…' Karp shrugged and added, 'I like it when they keep the bloody knife, or bury the stiff in the basement.'
Collins was looking stunned. 'So… what? He walks on this?'
'Not necessarily. If your witness gives him a good ID in the lineup with the boyfriend, or if the boyfriend has a cast-iron alibi and Wismer's loose for the time of, then you got something to work with.'
'You mean plead him?'
'Offer man one, settle for man two. Ask for twelve, they'll offer six, you'll close on eight. He'll do maybe four and a half.'
Collins's smile was rueful. 'You've done this before.'
'How can you tell?' said Karp, returning the smile. 'So. I think that's how it's gonna play. On the other hand, you know how I run the office; it's your case, your call. You want a trial slot on this?'
'I think I'll pass this time,' said Collins, looking relieved and at the same time faintly ashamed of being relieved. He looked at his watch again and leaped to his feet. 'Jesus! I'm due in calendar court four minutes ago. Thanks a lot, sir!'
'No problem,' said Karp, 'and don't worry about Wismer. You stay around long enough, you'll catch him on his next wife.'
Collins laughed racing out.
Sir? When the hell did they start calling him that? Karp sighed and rubbed his face. He looked with distaste at the pile of case folders waiting his review in the wire basket on his desk. They came in at an average of three a day, each one representing a New Yorker who had dealt with one of life's little problems by terminating the existence of a fellow citizen. Most of them were pathetic shards from the rubble of life in the lower depths, like Wismer.
He knew he had cheered up Collins. He did that for his staff half a dozen times a day. Collins was a pretty good guy, in fact, better than some of the newer people he'd had to take in just to keep up with the killing. Collins would probably get it after a while, get the sense of what was possible in a system essentially corrupt, a system designed to fail most of the time. A lot of them wouldn't, ever. And, of course, Collins would probably leave shortly after he knew what he was doing, and Karp would have to pump up another kid.
And the pumping, what he did for Collins and the others, drained him, which was to be expected, but the problem was, nobody was pumping him up. Zero strokes for old Butch these days. The only thing that kept him going was doing trials himself, but running a bureau with thirty lawyers in it didn't give him much time for trials, not the way he liked to do them.
He thought about his conversation with Crane. There were some strokes in that. 'The best,' for example. He might even have meant it. The notion of working for somebody who liked and respected him had a certain appeal. Since the death of the legendary Francis Phillip Garrahy, the district attorney who had made New York a mecca for every serious criminal prosecutor in the country, and the accession of Sanford L. Bloom, Karp had not had the pleasure. It had been eight years, all uphill.
Karp picked up the phone and punched the intercom button. Connie Trask, the bureau secretary, came on.
'Connie, what do I have Thursday?'
'Nine, you have staff with the DA, moved back from Monday. Ten-thirty, you have a meet with Sullivan at felony, his place. Lunch is open. Then, one to three, meeting of bureau chiefs on affirmative action, three to four, meeting on paperwork reduction, four to five you have marked off for grand jury. After five you're free as a bird, except it's your day to pick up the kid at day care.'
'Okay, cancel the whole day. Get Roland to cover me on the grand jury, and reschedule Sullivan. The rest, get somebody to pick up any paper they hand out.'
'Right. Taking a mental health day?'
'No, I'm going to Philadelphia.'
'A day in Philly! Lucky you! Is this business? You want me to cut a travel voucher?'
'No, it's personal.'
'What should I say if he calls. Which he will if you cut that staff meeting.'
'Tell the district attorney I'm visiting our national shrines in order to renew my commitment to our precious civil liberties,' said Karp. 'He'll understand.'
At 5:15, Karp was immersed in a case, writing notes for one of his people, when the intercom buzzed, and Connie Trask said, 'I'm going. Want anything?'
'No, go ahead.'
'Don't forget the kid.'
'Oh, shit!' cried Karp, looking at his watch to confirm that yet again he had left his daughter waiting at the day care on Lispenard Street. He shoved some reading into an old red pasteboard folder and cleared the building in three minutes.
Six minutes after that, he was at the day care, a cheerily decorated Tribeca storefront, at Lispenard off Broadway. Karp went in and found his daughter playing with a small ocher girl (they were the last two kids in the place) and Lillian Dillard, the proprietor. Dillard, known to all as Lillie-Dillie, was an unflappable ex-hippie who wore her graying hair in a long plait that hung to her tailbone, and favored fashion statements that included tentlike smocks made of Indian bedspreads and lots of clanking silver. She had somehow, in the midst of her serious participation in the sixties, obtained a degree from NYU in early-childhood education, and she ran her operation with love and a slightly wacky efficiency. Her most valuable trait in Karp's eyes was that she allowed forgetful dads to pick up their kids a half hour after the agreed time without coming in for a load of horseshit.
Lucy Karp caught sight of her father and, as usual, shrieked, 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,' flung herself into his arms, and otherwise behaved as if he had just returned safely from four years on the Western Front. Karp did not mind this one bit.
He hugged her and inhaled that ineffable smell that rises from the skin of well-tended young children: eau de kid, the world's most expensive fragrance. He put the three-year-old down, found the lunch box and the drawing to show Mommy, said good-bye to Lillie-Dillie, and they headed off, hand in hand, north on Broadway. As usual, they stopped as Dave's for a couple of chocolate egg creams, which they sipped at the marble outside counter.
'So, how was your day?' asked Karp.
