Trap (9781476793177) (28 page)

At the request of Simon, Giancarlo then sang “Va, pensiero.” Listening, Karp thought his son's voice had gained power and depth and apparently others agreed as there was not a dry eye in the audience. But what had surprised and impressed him the most was when the rabbi asked anyone who wanted to say a word to come forward and Zak rose from his seat.

Taking the stage, Zak had at first experienced a case of stage fright and stood shifting from foot to foot, staring out at the congregation with a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. But then he'd looked down at his scribbled notes and cleared his throat.

“A couple of weeks ago I was having second thoughts about going through with my bar mitzvah. My brother and I were older than everybody else in our class, but it was more than that. I was struggling with what it meant to be Jewish. Like I told my dad, I didn't feel Jewish. I'd listen to what Rabbi Hamilburg said about our upcoming bar mitzvah, but I just felt like a fraud. I'd hear a story about some heroic Jew in the past, but it didn't mean anything special to me.”

Zak had looked then at his mother and father with a smile. “But I didn't want to disappoint my folks, so I kept at it even though I wasn't feeling it. No one was forcing me, and when I talked to Moishe about it he told me, ‘If you don't feel Jewish in your heart and soul, then you should not go through with it.' But I felt bad. I'd heard about everything that happened to my fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps and felt like I should keep going because of that, but again it just seemed like something that happened a long time ago and didn't mean what I thought it should to me.

“But then I came here to listen to Mrs. Lubinsky talk about what had happened to her and how it affected her life. At first I thought it was going to be the same story about the Nazis and how she had suffered and then overcame it. But it wasn't like that, at least not all of it. The part that I identified with the most was how she struggled with the idea of being Jewish . . . that she didn't feel it in her heart. She didn't want to be a so-called ‘dirty Jew,' as she said.”

Zak paused and looked down at his feet. “I knew what she meant.” He looked back up again. “My dad says I shouldn't say much about what happened to me and my brother and Goldie a few days ago so I'll just tell you what I learned from it. And that's this: being Jewish isn't supposed to be easy. We're not God's chosen people because God is going to give us an easier life and more stuff than other people. In fact, it's the opposite. Being God's chosen people means He chose us to be constantly tested and challenged, to be attacked and singled out . . . to see if we have the courage and faith to remain Jewish in spite of it all. And I think I understand it all now, that being Jewish is a test and how I do on the test will determine what sort of man I will become. Knowing that God is looking over us all, I will work tirelessly to be a moral man and like Mrs. Lubinsky reach out and help the vulnerable and defenseless. And I have Rose Lubinsky to thank for teaching me that.”

Thinking about Zak's eulogy as he watched Goldie enter the well of the court and stand before Judge Rainsford to be sworn in, Karp allowed himself a moment of anger. Although death had been a constant companion for most of his career, her death had affected him as well. Seeing the impact her murder had had on so many people at her funeral left him incensed that such a good woman had died at the hands of those who worshipped at the altar of greed and power. That in order to accomplish their evil ends, Olivia Stone and Tommy Monroe employed an assassin to snuff out the life of Rose Lubinsky. In doing so, they had harmed not just Simon, or Rose's friends like Goldie and Moishe Sobelman. Their selfishness and amoral lust for power threatened the dream of a better education and better future for tens of thousands of children. He'd used that anger and disgust to help him focus on putting together the case to convict the defendant Stone.

After Monroe's arrest and subsequent interrogation in Karp's office with his attorney present, more vital information had come forward from an unexpected source. Having amassed sufficient evidence to convict the Brooklyn DA, Karp then sent Fulton to arrest her.

Flanked by two other detectives from the New York DAO unit, Fulton had marched into her office and announced to the receptionist that he was there to see Olivia Stone. When the flummoxed woman said he'd have to wait because Stone was in a meeting, he'd marched past her and into the Kings County district attorney's inner office and found her shredding documents.

“She told me to get the hell out of her office, or she'd call the police,” Fulton reported to Karp. “I told her, ‘I am the police and you're under arrest for murder in New York County.' She started yelling about getting even with you, but then started crying and begged me to leave.”

Fulton did leave . . . with Stone in tow, as well as her computer. He'd left the two other detectives to start going through documents, including the box of papers she'd been in the process of shredding.

Stone had been brought to the conference room adjacent to Karp's office, where in the presence of Fulton he informed her that she'd been indicted for acting in concert with Thomas Monroe and Yusef Salaam to murder Rose Lubinsky, Mary Calebras, and Tawanna Mohammad. She'd stared at him like he was some sort of alien creature but didn't say a word.

Suddenly a crack appeared in Stone's façade. She began crying. “Please, you're making a big mistake. It was all Monroe's idea. Don't do this.” Then she stopped, the tears dried up, and her face contorted into a mask of rage. “Everybody knows this is a political vendetta, Karp. I'll fry your ass and you'll be done in this town when I finish with you.” Then she began sobbing and begging for mercy. He'd pointed to the telephone and said, “I think you should make that call,” then he left the room, leaving her and Fulton.

A half hour later, a high-priced white-shoe lawyer from a Wall Street firm showed up and was directed where to find his client. Karp gave them a half hour, then knocked on the door.

The lawyer asked if there was a disposition to manslaughter doable as sort of “a gesture to a colleague in the prosecution business.”

“Counselor, this is a ‘no lesser plea case'; the only disposition will be to murder,” Karp said.

The attorney, now incensed that his alleged civility was repudiated, held up a hand before Stone could respond. “We'll see you in court then, Karp. I hope you're ready for hell to break loose on this case.”

“Is that a threat, counselor?” Karp asked mildly.

“No, it's a warning,” the attorney sneered.

Later that day at Stone's arraignment, the attorney's attempt to have bail set for her was denied. She was remanded to Rikers Island pending trial and led away in tears. But the attorney then followed up on his threats by hitting the media circuit to depict Karp as a “loose-cannon conservative” and longtime advocate of a “racist” voucher system and “elitist” charter schools. “No one was more shocked by the death of Rose Lubinsky than my client,” he frothed on the air and in the newspapers. “But for Karp to use this tragedy to go after a political opponent whose support for the public school system is one of the high marks of her career is below loathsome. And who's he protecting here? Who was the real killer? A Nazi, that's who . . . sort of makes you wonder about just how far to the right his politics are, doesn't it?”

Stone soon got rid of that lawyer and hired Irving Mendelbaum. It was the first smart thing she'd done since her arrest.
But it's not going to save her,
he thought as Goldie stepped up to the witness stand while James Farley poured her a cup of water.

Waiting for her to get settled, Karp thought about how the previous day ended with Ray Guma on the stand. His longtime colleague revealed how the day after Lubinsky's murder, he'd talked to a member of the NYPD Gang Unit, who suggested that he go to The Storm Trooper bar to locate Forsling's associates.

“Just as I was being dropped off, I heard what sounded like muffled gunshots from down the block,” Guma testified. “But in New York it's hard to tell the difference between that and cars backfiring.”

Guma said he'd proceeded to the bar. “A sign in the window said they were open, but the door was locked,” he said. “I knocked but no one answered. So I decided to go around back to see if I could find someone that way. I'd just reached the alley when I was nearly hit by a white van; it didn't stop before taking off into traffic.”

“Did you get a look at the driver?” Karp had asked.

Guma shook his head. “No, he kind of surprised me, and I had to jump back,” he said. “I did note there was some writing on the side of the van, but I wasn't concentrating on the vehicle so I wasn't able to recall exactly what it was.”

He'd found the back door of the pub open and walked in. “It was pretty dark inside, but after my eyes adjusted and I entered the front part of the bar, I saw a man lying on the floor in front of the bar—he'd been shot in the head—and another dead against the wall with a bullet wound in his chest. Then I heard a groan and found a victim who was still alive behind the bar. He said his name was Frank LaFontaine.”

On cross-examination, Mendelbaum asked only a couple of questions, all of them to emphasize Forsling's violence.

Now it had come down to Goldie Sobelman to complete the first part of the People's case, which was to undermine the defendant's contention that Lars Forsling was Lubinsky's killer. After that the case against Olivia Stone would begin in earnest.

Before turning Goldie over to Karp, Judge Rainsford turned to the jury to explain the presence of the young woman who was seated next to the jury box. “This is Amber Doggett,” he said, “and she is a board certified American Sign Language interpreter. The witness, Goldie Sobelman, can hear and comprehend, but she has difficulty speaking and communicates through sign language.”

Listening to the explanation, Karp thought the judge handled it well. There'd been a bit of a dust-up over Goldie's use of sign language that required a pretrial hearing because the defense had objected on the grounds that she was capable of speech but chose not to talk.

Although not generally one to rely on “experts,” Karp had called in a psychologist who specialized in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He testified at the hearing that “loss of speech” was not unusual for victims of sexual and physical violence.

“After hearing the details of this particular woman's treatment at the hands of the Nazis in the internment camps, it's a wonder she functions as well as she does,” the psychologist said. “Declining to speak is one way of coping. She told me that she stopped speaking in the camp because she was afraid that if she tried, it would come out as a scream and she wouldn't be able to stop. She has since regained a limited ability to express herself through speech, but it's my recommendation that she be allowed to testify in the manner with which she is most comfortable.”

The judge had ruled in favor of the People. After the hearing and away from his client, Mendelbaum pigeonholed Karp. “I hope you know, boychick, that this motion was not my idea,” he said. “Perhaps, ethically, I should not say this, but sometimes this job wears on my soul.”

“Irving, do yourself a mitzvah, and keep your soul intact,” Karp said.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Sobelman,” Karp began.

Goldie's hands went into motion. “Good afternoon, Mr. Karp,” the interpreter said for the jurors.

“I'd like to start by asking a few preliminary questions,” Karp said. “Mrs. Sobelman, do we know each other on a personal basis? Are we friends?”

Goldie smiled and moved her hands. “Yes, dear friends for many years,” the interpreter said.

“In preparing for this trial, what have I asked you to do?”

“Just tell the truth, the whole truth,” the interpreter said. “You know I would never lie. Nor would you ask me to.”

“Thank you. Our families are friends as well; you know my wife and children, I know your husband, Moishe.”

“Yes.” Goldie chuckled on the stand and signed with her hands. “You have a weakness for the cherry cheese coffeecake at our bakery.”

The audience in the courtroom tittered at the humor, including the judge, the jurors, and Mendelbaum, though Stone sat impassively. “That I do,” Karp said, “the best in the five boroughs. Now, let us move on. You knew Rose Lubinsky?”

The smile left Goldie's face and she nodded her head sadly. “Yes, she was my oldest and dearest friend,” the interpreter said.

“When did you meet her?”

Goldie looked up as though adding the years. “I believe it must have been 1950 or '51,” the interpreter said.

“And you and your husband were friends with her and her husband, Simon, who is sitting in the front row behind the prosecution table with your husband, Moishe, is that correct?” Karp asked, motioning over in their direction.

“Yes.”

“The jurors have heard some testimony about Rose's experiences during World War II and that she wrote a book about it,” Karp said. “But did Rose have something else that was just as, if not more, important to her? A cause?”

“Yes,” the interpreter said. “She was very involved in the charter school movement.”

“Did she ever say why she was so involved?”

“Yes,” Goldie signed. “Although she taught in the public school system most of her career, she believed that, for a variety of reasons, the public school system was failing the children and that charter schools were the way to fix that.”

“Did she ever express an opinion toward the teachers union?”

“Most of her career she belonged to the Greater New York Teachers Federation. She believed that the union had been necessary to achieve decent wages, pensions, health care, and better working conditions. However, she also felt that in the past twenty years or so, the union had lost its way, especially the union's leadership, which she felt was more interested in maintaining its power and perks than what was best for the children.”