The Bonfire Of The Vanities Part 9

He stopped and took a breath and looked around. Yes; White Manhattan, the sanctuary of the East Seventies. Across the street a doorman stood under the canopy of an apartment house, smoking a cigarette. A boy in a dark business suit and a pretty girl in a white dress were strolling toward him. The fellow was talking to her a mile a minute. So young, and dressed like an old man in a Brooks Brothers or Chipp or J. Press suit, just the way he had looked when he first went to work at Pierce & Pierce.

All at once a wonderful feeling swept over Sherman. For Christ's sake, what was he worried about? He stood there on the sidewalk, stock-still, with his chin up and big grin on his face. The boy and girl probably thought he was a lunatic. In fact-he was a man. Tonight, with nothing but his hands and his nerve he had fought the elemental enemy, the hunter, the predator, and he had prevailed. He had fought his way out of an ambush on the nightmare terrain, and he had prevailed. He had saved a woman. The time had come to act like a man, and he had acted and prevailed. He was not merely a Master of the Universe; he was more; he was a man. Grinning and humming, "Show me but ten who are stouthearted men," the stouthearted man, still damp from the fray, walked the two blocks to his duplex apartment overlooking the street of dreams.

5. The Girl with Brown Lipstick

On the mezzanine of the sixth floor of the Bronx County Building, near the elevators, was a wide entryway framed in two or three tons of mahogany and marble and blocked by a counter and a gate. Behind the counter sat a guard with a .38-caliber revolver in a holster on his hip. The guard served as a receptionist. The revolver, which looked big enough to stop a florist's van, was supposed to serve as a deterrent to the random berserk vengeful felons of the Bronx.

Over this entryway were some large Roman-style capital letters that had been fabricated in bra.s.s at considerable expense to the taxpayers of New York and cemented to the marble facing with epoxy glue. Once a week a handyman got up on a ladder and rubbed Simichrome polish across the letters, so that the legend RICHARD A. WEISS, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, BRONX COUNTY RICHARD A. WEISS, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, BRONX COUNTY blazed away more brightly than anything the building's architects, Joseph H. Freedlander and Max Hausle, had the nerve to put even on the outside of the building in its golden dawn half a century ago. blazed away more brightly than anything the building's architects, Joseph H. Freedlander and Max Hausle, had the nerve to put even on the outside of the building in its golden dawn half a century ago.

As Larry Kramer got off the elevator and walked toward this bra.s.sy gleam, the right side of his lips twisted subversively. The A A stood for Abraham. Weiss was known to his friends and his political cronies and the newspaper reporters and Channels 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 11 and his const.i.tuents, most prominently the Jews and Italians up around Riverdale and the Pelham Parkway and Co-op City, as Abe Weiss. He hated the nickname Abe, which he had been stuck with when he was growing up in Brooklyn. A few years back he had let it be known that he preferred to be called d.i.c.k, and he had practically been laughed out of the Bronx Democratic organization. That was the last time Abe Weiss ever mentioned d.i.c.k Weiss. To Abe Weiss, being laughed out of the Bronx Democratic organization, being separated from it in any fas.h.i.+on whatsoever, for that matter, would have been like being thrown over the railing of a Christmas cruise s.h.i.+p in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. So he was Richard A. Weiss only in stood for Abraham. Weiss was known to his friends and his political cronies and the newspaper reporters and Channels 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 11 and his const.i.tuents, most prominently the Jews and Italians up around Riverdale and the Pelham Parkway and Co-op City, as Abe Weiss. He hated the nickname Abe, which he had been stuck with when he was growing up in Brooklyn. A few years back he had let it be known that he preferred to be called d.i.c.k, and he had practically been laughed out of the Bronx Democratic organization. That was the last time Abe Weiss ever mentioned d.i.c.k Weiss. To Abe Weiss, being laughed out of the Bronx Democratic organization, being separated from it in any fas.h.i.+on whatsoever, for that matter, would have been like being thrown over the railing of a Christmas cruise s.h.i.+p in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. So he was Richard A. Weiss only in The New York Times The New York Times and over this doorway. and over this doorway.

The guard buzzed Kramer through the gate, and Kramer's running shoes squeaked on the marble floor. The guard gave them a dubious once-over. As usual, Kramer was carrying his leather shoes in an A&P shopping bag.

Beyond the entryway, the level of grandeur in the District Attorney's Office went up and down. The office of Weiss himself was bigger and showier, thanks to its paneled walls, than the Mayor of New York's. The bureau chiefs, for Homicide, Investigations, Major Offenses, Supreme Court, Criminal Court, and Appeals, had their share of the paneling and the leather or school-of-leather couches and the Contract Sheraton armchairs. But by the time you got down to an a.s.sistant district attorney, like Larry Kramer, you were looking at Good Enough for Government Work when it came to interior decoration.

The two a.s.sistant district attorneys who shared the office with him, Ray Andriutti and Jimmy Caughey, were sitting sprawled back in the swivel chairs. There was just enough floor s.p.a.ce in the room for three metal desks, three swivel chairs, four filing cabinets, an old coat stand with six savage hooks sticking out from it, and a table bearing a Mr. Coffee machine and a promiscuous heap of plastic cups and spoons and a gummy collage of paper napkins and white sugar envelopes and pink saccharine envelopes stuck to a maroon plastic tray with a high sweet-smelling paste composed of spilled coffee and Cremora powder. Both Andriutti and Caughey were sitting with their legs crossed in the same fas.h.i.+on. The left ankle was resting on top of the right knee, as if they were such studs, they couldn't have crossed their legs any farther if they had wanted to. This was the accepted sitting posture of Homicide, the most manly of the six bureaus of the District Attorney's Office.

Both had their jackets off and hung with the perfect give-a-s.h.i.+t carelessness on the coatrack. Their s.h.i.+rt collars were unb.u.t.toned, and their necktie knots were pulled down an inch or so. Andriutti was rubbing the back of his left arm with his right hand, as if it itched. In fact, he was feeling and admiring his triceps, which he pumped up at least three times a week by doing sets of French curls with dumbbells at the New York Athletic Club. Andriutti could afford to work out at the Athletic Club, instead of on a carpet between a Dracaena fragrans Dracaena fragrans tub and a convertible couch, because he didn't have a wife and a child to support in an $888-a-month ant colony in the West Seventies. He didn't have to worry about his triceps and his deltoids and his lats deflating. Andriutti liked the fact that when he reached around behind one of his mighty arms with the other hand, it made the widest muscles of his back, the lats, the latissima dorsae, fan out until they practically split his s.h.i.+rt, and his pectorals hardened into a couple of mountains of pure muscle. Kramer and Andriutti were of the new generation, in which the terms tub and a convertible couch, because he didn't have a wife and a child to support in an $888-a-month ant colony in the West Seventies. He didn't have to worry about his triceps and his deltoids and his lats deflating. Andriutti liked the fact that when he reached around behind one of his mighty arms with the other hand, it made the widest muscles of his back, the lats, the latissima dorsae, fan out until they practically split his s.h.i.+rt, and his pectorals hardened into a couple of mountains of pure muscle. Kramer and Andriutti were of the new generation, in which the terms triceps, deltoids, latissima dorsae triceps, deltoids, latissima dorsae, and pectoralis major pectoralis major were better known than the names of the major planets. Andriutti rubbed his triceps a hundred and twenty times a day, on the average. were better known than the names of the major planets. Andriutti rubbed his triceps a hundred and twenty times a day, on the average.

Still rubbing them, Andriutti looked at Kramer as he walked in and said: "Jesus Christ, here comes the bag lady. What the h.e.l.l is this f.u.c.king A&P bag, Larry? You been coming in here with this f.u.c.king bag every day this week." Then he turned to Jimmy Caughey and said, "Looks like a f.u.c.king bag lady."

Caughey was also a jock, but more the triathlon type, with a narrow face and a long chin. He just smiled at Kramer, as much as to say, "Well, what do you say to that?"

Kramer said, "Your arm itch, Ray?" Then he looked at Caughey and said, "Ray's got this f.u.c.king allergy. It's called weight lifter's disease." Then he turned back to Andriutti. "Itches like a sonofab.i.t.c.h, don't it?"

Andriutti let his hand drop off his triceps. "And what are these jogging jogging shoes?" he said to Kramer. "Looks like those girls walking to work at Merrill Lynch. All dressed up, and they got these f.u.c.king rubber gunboats on their feet." shoes?" he said to Kramer. "Looks like those girls walking to work at Merrill Lynch. All dressed up, and they got these f.u.c.king rubber gunboats on their feet."

"What the h.e.l.l is is in the bag?" said Caughey. in the bag?" said Caughey.

"My high heels," said Kramer. He took off his jacket and jammed it down, give-a-s.h.i.+t, on a coatrack hook in the accepted fas.h.i.+on and pulled down his necktie and unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt and sat down in his swivel chair and opened up the shopping bag and fished out his Johnston & Murphy brown leather shoes and started taking off the Nikes.

"Jimmy," Andriutti said to Caughey, "did you know that Jewish guys-Larry, I don't want you to take this personally-did you know that Jewish guys, even if they're real stand-up guys, all have one f.a.ggot gene? That's a well-known fact. They can't stand going out in the rain without an umbrella or they have all this modern s.h.i.+t in their apartment or they don't like to go hunting or they're for the f.u.c.king nuclear freeze and affirmative action or they wear jogging shoes to work or some G.o.dd.a.m.n thing. You know?"

"Gee," said Kramer, "I don't know why you thought I'd take it personally."

"Come on, Larry," said Andriutti, "tell the truth. Deep down, don't you wish you were Italian or Irish?"

"Yeah," said Kramer, "that way I wouldn't know what the f.u.c.k was going on in this f.u.c.king place."

Caughey started laughing. "Well, don't let Ahab see those shoes, Larry. He'll have Jeanette issue a f.u.c.king memorandum."

"No, he'll call a f.u.c.king press conference," said Andriutti.

"That's always a safe f.u.c.king bet."

And so another f.u.c.king day in the f.u.c.king Homicide Bureau of the Bronx f.u.c.king District Attorney's Office was off to a f.u.c.king start.

An a.s.sistant D.A. in Major Offenses had started calling Abe Weiss "Captain Ahab," and now they all did. Weiss was notorious in his obsession for publicity, even among a breed, the district attorney, that was publicity-mad by nature. Unlike the great D.A.s of yore, such as Frank Hogan, Burt Roberts, or Mario Merola, Weiss never went near a courtroom. He didn't have time. There were only so many hours in the day for him to stay in touch with Channels 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 11 and the New York Daily News Daily News, the Post, The City Light Post, The City Light, and the Times Times.

Jimmy Caughey said, "I was just in seeing the captain. You shoulda-"

"You were? What for?" asked Kramer with just a shade too much curiosity and incipient envy in his voice.

"Me and Bernie," said Caughey. "He wanted to know about the Moore case."

"Any good?"

"Piece a s.h.i.+t," said Caughey. "This f.u.c.king guy Moore, he has a big house in Riverdale, and his wife's mother lives there with 'em, and she's been giving him a hard time for about thirty-seven f.u.c.king years, right? So this guy, he loses his job. He's working for one a these reinsurance companies, and he's making $200,000 or $300,000 a year, and now he's out a work for eight or nine months, and n.o.body'll hire him, and he don't know what the h.e.l.l to do, right? So one day he's puttering around out in the garden, and the mother-in-law comes out and says, 'Well, water seeks its own level.' That's a verbatim quote. 'Water seeks its own level. You oughta get a job as a gardener.' So this guy, he's out of his f.u.c.king mind, he's so mad. He goes in and tells his wife, 'I've had it with your mother. I'm gonna get my shotgun and scare her.' So he goes up to his bedroom, where he keeps this 12-gauge shotgun, and he comes downstairs and heads for the mother-in-law, and he's gonna scare the s.h.i.+t out of her, and he says, 'Okay, Gladys,' and he trips on the rug, and the gun goes off and kills her, and-ba-bing!-Murder Two."

"Why was Weiss interested?"

"Well, the guy's white, he's got some money, he lives in a big house in Riverdale. It looks at first like maybe he's gonna fake an accidental shooting."

"Is that possible?"

"Naw. f.u.c.king guy's one a my boys. He's your basic Irish who made good, but he's still a Harp. He's drowning in remorse. You'd think he'd shot his own mother, he feels so f.u.c.king guilty. Right now he'd confess to anything. Bernie could sit him in front of the video camera and clean up every homicide in the Bronx for the past five years. Naw, it's a piece a s.h.i.+t, but it looked good at first."

Kramer and Andriutti contemplated this piece a s.h.i.+t without needing any amplification. Every a.s.sistant D.A. in the Bronx, from the youngest Italian just out of St. John's Law School to the oldest Irish bureau chief, who would be somebody like Bernie Fitzgibbon, who was forty-two, shared Captain Ahab's mania for the Great White Defendant. For a start, it was not pleasant to go through life telling yourself, "What I do for a living is, I pack blacks and Latins off to jail." Kramer had been raised as a liberal. In Jewish families like his, liberalism came with the Similac and the Mott's apple juice and the Instamatic and Daddy's grins in the evening. And even the Italians, like Ray Andriutti, and the Irish, like Jimmy Caughey, who were not exactly burdened with liberalism by their parents, couldn't help but be affected by the mental atmosphere of the law schools, where, for one thing, there were so many Jewish faculty members. By the time you finished law school in the New York area, it was, well...impolite!...on the ordinary social level...to go around making jokes about the yoms yoms. It wasn't that it was morally wrong...It was that it was in bad taste in bad taste. So it made the boys uneasy, this eternal prosecution of the blacks and Latins.

Not that they weren't guilty. One thing Kramer had learned within two weeks as an a.s.sistant D.A. in the Bronx was that 95 percent of the defendants who got as far as the indictment stage, perhaps 98 percent, were truly guilty. The caseload was so overwhelming, you didn't waste time trying to bring the marginal cases forward, unless the press was on your back. They hauled in guilt by the ton, those blue-and-orange vans out there on Walton Avenue. But the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds behind the wire mesh barely deserved the term criminal criminal, if by criminal you had in mind the romantic notion of someone who has a goal and seeks to achieve it through some desperate way outside the law. No, they were simpleminded incompetents, most of them, and they did unbelievably stupid, vile things.

Kramer looked at Andriutti and Caughey, sitting there with their mighty thighs akimbo. He felt superior to them. He was a graduate of the Columbia Law School, and they were both graduates of St. John's, widely known as the law school for the also-rans of college academic compet.i.tion. And he was Jewish. Very early in life he had picked up the knowledge that the Italians and the Irish were animals. The Italians were pigs, and the Irish were mules or goats. He couldn't remember if his parents had actually used any such terms or not, but they got the idea across very clearly. To his parents, New York City-New York? h.e.l.l, the whole U.S., the whole world!-was a drama called The Jews Confront the Goyim The Jews Confront the Goyim, and the goyim goyim were animals. And so what was he doing here with these animals? A Jew in the Homicide Bureau was a rare thing. The Homicide Bureau was the elite corps of the District Attorney's Office, the D.A.'s Marines, because homicide was the most serious of all crimes. An a.s.sistant D.A. in Homicide had to be able to go out on the street to the crime scenes at all hours, night and day, and be a real commando and rub shoulders with the police and know how to confront defendants and witnesses and intimidate them when the time came, and these were likely to be the lowest, grimmest, scurviest defendants and witnesses in the history of criminal justice. For fifty years, at least, maybe longer, Homicide had been an Irish enclave, although recently the Italians had made their way into it. The Irish had given Homicide their stamp. The Irish were stone courageous. Even when it was insane not to, they never stepped back. Andriutti had been right, or half right. Kramer didn't want to be Italian, but he did want to be Irish, and so did Ray Andriutti, the dumb f.u.c.k. Yes, they were animals! The were animals. And so what was he doing here with these animals? A Jew in the Homicide Bureau was a rare thing. The Homicide Bureau was the elite corps of the District Attorney's Office, the D.A.'s Marines, because homicide was the most serious of all crimes. An a.s.sistant D.A. in Homicide had to be able to go out on the street to the crime scenes at all hours, night and day, and be a real commando and rub shoulders with the police and know how to confront defendants and witnesses and intimidate them when the time came, and these were likely to be the lowest, grimmest, scurviest defendants and witnesses in the history of criminal justice. For fifty years, at least, maybe longer, Homicide had been an Irish enclave, although recently the Italians had made their way into it. The Irish had given Homicide their stamp. The Irish were stone courageous. Even when it was insane not to, they never stepped back. Andriutti had been right, or half right. Kramer didn't want to be Italian, but he did want to be Irish, and so did Ray Andriutti, the dumb f.u.c.k. Yes, they were animals! The goyim goyim were animals, and Kramer was proud to be among the animals, in the Homicide Bureau. were animals, and Kramer was proud to be among the animals, in the Homicide Bureau.

Anyway, here they were, the three of them, sitting in this Good Enough for Government Work office at $36,000 to $42,000 a year instead of down at Cravath, Swaine & Moore or some such place at $136,000 to $142,000. They had been born a million miles from Wall Street, meaning the outer boroughs, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. To their families, their going to college and becoming lawyers had been the greatest thing since Franklin D. Roosevelt. And so they sat around in the Homicide Bureau talking about this f.u.c.king thing and that f.u.c.king thing and using don'ts don'ts for for doesn'ts doesn'ts and and naws naws for for no's no's, as if they didn't know any better.

Here they were...and here he was, and where was he going? What were these cases he was handling? Pieces of s.h.i.+t! Garbage collection...Arthur Rivera. Arthur Rivera and another drug dealer get into an argument over an order of pizza at a social club and pull knives, and Arthur says, "Let's put the weapons down and fight man to man." And they do, whereupon Arthur pulls out a second knife and stabs the other fellow in the chest and kills him...Jimmy Dollard. Jimmy Dollard and his closest pal, Otis Blakemore, and three other black guys are drinking and taking cocaine and playing a game called the dozens, in which the idea is to see how outrageously you can insult the other fellow, and Blakemore is doing an inspired number on Jimmy, and Jimmy pulls out a revolver and shoots him through the heart and then collapses on the table, sobbing and saying, "My man! My man Stan! I shot my man Stan!"...And the case of Herbert 92X- For an instant the thought of Herbert's case triggered a vision of the girl with brown lipstick- The press couldn't even see see these cases. It was just poor people killing poor people. To prosecute such cases was to be part of the garbage-collection service, necessary and honorable, plodding and anonymous. these cases. It was just poor people killing poor people. To prosecute such cases was to be part of the garbage-collection service, necessary and honorable, plodding and anonymous.

Captain Ahab wasn't so ridiculous, after all. Press coverage! Ray and Jimmy could laugh all they wanted, but Weiss had made sure the entire city knew his name. Weiss had an election coming up, and the Bronx was 70 percent black and Latin, and he was going to make sure the name Abe Weiss was pumped out to them on every channel that existed. He might not do much else, but he was going to do that.

A telephone rang: Ray's. "Homicide," he said. "Andriutti...Bernie's not here. I think he's in court...What?...Go over that again?" Long pause. "Well, was he hit by a car or wasn't he?...Unnh-hunnh...Well, s.h.i.+t, I don't know. You better talk it over with Bernie. Okay?...Okay." He hung up and shook his head and looked at Jimmy Caughey. "That was some detective who's over at Lincoln Hospital. Says they got a likely-to-die, some kid who comes into the emergency room and don't know whether he slipped in the bathtub and broke his wrist or got hit by a Mercedes-Benz. Or some such s.h.i.+t. Wants to talk to Bernie. So let him f.u.c.king talk to Bernie."

Ray shook his head some more, and Kramer and Caughey nodded sympathetically. The eternal pieces a s.h.i.+t in the Bronx.

Kramer looked at his watch and stood up.

"Well," he said, "you guys can sit here and f.u.c.k-all, if you want, but I gotta go f.u.c.king listen to that renowned Middle Eastern scholar Herbert 92X read from the Koran."

There were thirty-five courtrooms in the Bronx County Building devoted to criminal cases, and each one was known as a "part." They had been built at a time, the early 1930s, when it was still a.s.sumed that the very look of a courtroom should proclaim the gravity and omnipotence of the rule of law. The ceilings were a good fifteen feet high. The walls were paneled throughout in a dark wood. The judge's bench was a stage with a vast desk. The desk had enough cornices, moldings, panels, pilasters, inlays, and sheer hardwood ma.s.s to make you believe that Solomon himself, who was a king, would have found it imposing. The seats in the spectators' section were separated from the judge's bench, the jury box, and the tables of the prosecutor, the defendant, and the clerk of the court by a wooden bal.u.s.trade with an enormous carved top rail, the so-called Bar of Justice. In short, there was nothing whatsoever in the look of the premises to tip off the unwary to the helter-skelter of a criminal court judge's daily task.

The moment Kramer walked in, he could tell that the day had gotten off to a bad start in Part 60. He had only to look at the judge. Kovitsky was up on the bench, in his black robes, leaning forward with both forearms on his desktop. His chin was down so low it seemed about to touch it. His bony skull and his sharp beak jutted out of the robe at such a low angle he looked like a buzzard. Kramer could see his irises floating and bobbing on the whites of his eyes as he scanned the room and its raggedy collection of humanity. He looked as if he were about to flap his wings and strike. Kramer felt ambivalent about Kovitsky. On one hand, he resented his courtroom tirades, which were often personal and designed to humiliate. On the other hand, Kovitsky was a Jewish warrior, a son of the Masada. Only Kovitsky could have stopped the loudmouths in the prison vans with a gob of spit.

"Where's Mr. Sonnenberg?" said Kovitsky. There was no response.

So he said it again, this time in an amazing baritone that nailed every syllable into the back wall and startled all newcomers to the courtroom of Judge Myron Kovitsky: "WHERE IS MIS-TER SON-NEN-BERG!"

Except for two little boys and a little girl, who were running between the benches and playing tag, the spectators froze. One by one they congratulated themselves. No matter how miserable their fates, at least they had not fallen so low as to be Mr. Sonnenberg, that miserable insect, whoever he was.

That miserable insect was a lawyer, and Kramer knew the nature of his offense, which was that his absence was impeding the shoveling of the chow into the gullet of the criminal justice system, Part 60. In each part, the day began with the so-called calendar session, during which the judge dealt with motions and pleas in a variety of cases, perhaps as many as a dozen in a morning. Kramer had to laugh every time he saw a television show with a courtroom scene. They always showed a trial in progress. A trial! Who the h.e.l.l dreamed up these G.o.dd.a.m.ned shows? Every year there were 7,000 felony indictments in the Bronx and the capacity for 650 trials, at the most. The judges had to dispose of the other 6,350 cases in either of two ways. They could dismiss a case or they could let the defendant plead guilty to a reduced charge in return for not forcing the court to go through a trial. Dismissing cases was a hazardous way to go about reducing the backlog, even for a grotesque cynic. Every time a felony case was thrown out, somebody, such as the victim or his family, was likely to yell, and the press was only too happy to attack judges who let the malefactors go free. That left the plea bargains, which were the business of the calendar sessions. So the calendar sessions were the very alimentary ca.n.a.l of the criminal justice system in the Bronx.

Every week the clerk of each part turned in a scorecard to Louis Mastroiani, chief administrative judge for the criminal division, Supreme Court, Bronx County. The scorecard showed how many cases the judge in that part had on his docket and how many he had disposed of that week, through plea bargains, dismissals, and trials. On the wall of the courtroom, over the judge's head, it said IN G.o.d WE TRUST IN G.o.d WE TRUST. On the scorecard, however, it said CASE BACKLOG a.n.a.lYSIS CASE BACKLOG a.n.a.lYSIS, and a judge's effectiveness was rated almost entirely according to CASE BACKLOG a.n.a.lYSIS CASE BACKLOG a.n.a.lYSIS.

Practically all cases were called for 9:30 a.m. If the clerk called a case, and the defendant was not present or his lawyer was not present or if any of a dozen other things occurred to make it impossible to shove this case a little farther through the funnel, the princ.i.p.als in the next case would be on hand, presumably, ready to step forward. So the spectators' section was dotted with little clumps of people, none of them spectators in any sporting sense. There were defendants and their lawyers, defendants and their pals, defendants and their families. The three small children came slithering out from between two benches, ran toward the back of the courtroom, giggling, and disappeared behind the last bench. A woman turned her head and scowled at them and didn't bother to go fetch them. Now Kramer recognized the trio. They were Herbert 92X's children. Not that he found this at all remarkable; there were children in the courtrooms every day. The courts were a form of day-care center in the Bronx. Playing tag in Part 60 during Daddy's motions, pleas, trials, and sentencings was just a part of growing up.

Kovitsky turned toward the clerk of the court, who sat at a table below the judge's bench and off to the side. The clerk was a bull-necked Italian named Charles Bruzzielli. He had his jacket off. He wore a short-sleeved dress s.h.i.+rt with the collar open and his necktie at half-mast. You could see the top of his T-s.h.i.+rt. The tie had a huge Windsor knot.

"Is that Mr..." Kovitsky looked down at a piece of paper on his desk, then at Bruzzielli. "...Lockwood?"

Bruzzielli nodded yes, and Kovitsky looked straight ahead at a slender figure who had walked from the spectators' benches up to the bar.

"Mr. Lockwood," said Kovitsky, "where's your attorney? Where's Mr. Sonnenberg?"

"I 'unno," said the figure.

He was barely audible. He was no more than nineteen or twenty. He had dark skin. He was so thin there was no sign of shoulders under his black thermal jacket. He wore black stovepipe jeans and a pair of huge white sneakers that closed with Velcro tabs rather than shoelaces.

Kovitsky stared at him a moment, then said, "All right, Mr. Lockwood, you take a seat. If and when Mr. Sonnenberg deigns to favor us with his presence, we'll call your case again."

Lockwood turned around and began walking back to the spectators' benches. He had the same pumping swagger that practically every young defendant in the Bronx affected, the Pimp Roll. Such stupid self-destructive macho egos, thought Kramer. They never failed to show up with the black jackets and the sneakers and the Pimp Roll. They never failed to look every inch the young felon before judges, juries, probation officers, court psychiatrists, before every single soul who had any say in whether or not they went to prison or for how long. Lockwood pimp-rolled to a bench in the rear of the spectators' section and sat down next to two more boys in black thermal jackets. These were no doubt his buddies, his comrades. The defendant's comrades always arrived in court in their their s.h.i.+ny black thermal jackets and go-to-h.e.l.l sneakers. That was very bright, too. That immediately established the fact that the defendant was not a poor defenseless victim of life in the ghetto but part of a pack of remorseless young felons of the sort who liked to knock down old ladies with Lucite canes on the Grand Concourse and steal their handbags. The whole pack entered the courtroom full of juice, bulging with steel muscles and hard-jawed defiance, ready to defend the honor and, if necessary, the hides of their buddies against the System. But soon a stupefying tide of tedium and confusion rolled over them all. They were primed for action. They were not primed for what the day required, which was waiting while something they never heard of, a calendar session, swamped them in a lot of s.h.i.+ne-on language, such as "deigns to favor us with his presence." s.h.i.+ny black thermal jackets and go-to-h.e.l.l sneakers. That was very bright, too. That immediately established the fact that the defendant was not a poor defenseless victim of life in the ghetto but part of a pack of remorseless young felons of the sort who liked to knock down old ladies with Lucite canes on the Grand Concourse and steal their handbags. The whole pack entered the courtroom full of juice, bulging with steel muscles and hard-jawed defiance, ready to defend the honor and, if necessary, the hides of their buddies against the System. But soon a stupefying tide of tedium and confusion rolled over them all. They were primed for action. They were not primed for what the day required, which was waiting while something they never heard of, a calendar session, swamped them in a lot of s.h.i.+ne-on language, such as "deigns to favor us with his presence."

Kramer walked past the bar and headed over to the clerk's table. Three other a.s.sistant D.A.s stood there, looking on and waiting their turns before the judge.

The clerk said, "The People versus Albert and Marilyn Krin-"

He hesitated and looked down at the papers before him. He looked at a young woman standing three or four feet away, an a.s.sistant district attorney named Patti Stullieri, and he said in a stage whisper, "What the h.e.l.l is this?"

Kramer looked over his shoulder. The doc.u.ment said, "Albert and Marilyn Krnkka."

"Kri-nick-a," said Patti Stullieri.

"Albert and Marilyn Kri-nick-a!" he declaimed. "Indictment number 3-2-8-1." Then to Patti Stullieri: "Jesus, what the h.e.l.l kind of name is that?"

"It's Yugoslav."

"Yugoslav. It looks like somebody's fingers got caught in a f.u.c.king typewriter."

From the rear of the spectators' section a couple came marching up to the great railing and leaned forward. The man, Albert Krnkka, smiled in a bright-eyed fas.h.i.+on and seemed to want to engage the attention of Judge Kovitsky. Albert Krnkka was a tall, gangling man with a five-inch goatee but no mustache at all and long blond hair like an old-fas.h.i.+oned rock musician's. He had a bony nose, a long neck, and an Adam's apple that seemed to move up and down a foot when he swallowed. He wore a teal-green s.h.i.+rt with an outsized collar and, in place of b.u.t.tons, a zipper that ran diagonally from his left shoulder to the right side of his waist. Beside him was his wife. Marilyn Krnkka was a black-haired woman with a thin, delicate face. Her eyes were two slits. She kept compressing her lips and grimacing.

Everyone, Judge Kovitsky, the clerk, Patti Stullieri, even Kramer himself, looked toward the Krnkkas, expecting their lawyer to come forward or come in through the side door or materialize in some fas.h.i.+on. But there was no lawyer.

Furious, Kovitsky turned toward Bruzzielli and said, "Who's representing these people?"

"I think Marvin Suns.h.i.+ne," said Bruzzielli.

"Well, where is he? I saw him back there a few minutes ago. What's gotten into all these characters?"

Bruzzielli gave him the Primordial Shrug and rolled his eyes, as if the whole thing pained him tremendously but there was nothing he could do about it.

Kovitsky's head was now down very low. His irises were floating like destroyers on a lake of white. But before he could launch into a blistering discourse on delinquent lawyers, a voice spoke up from the bar.

"Your Honor! Your Honor! Hey, Judge!"

It was Albert Krnkka. He was waving his right hand, trying to get Kovitsky's attention. His arms were thin, but his wrists and his hands were huge. His mouth hung open in a half smile that was supposed to convince the judge that he was a reasonable man. In fact, he looked, every inch of him, like one of those wild tall rawboned men whose metabolisms operate at triple speed and who, more than any other people on earth, are p.r.o.ne to explosions.

"Hey, Judge! Look."

Kovitsky stared, amazed by this performance. "Hey, Judge! Look. Two weeks ago she told us two to six, right?"

When Albert Krnkka said "two to six," he raised both hands up in the air and stuck out two fingers on each hand, like a v v for victory or a peace sign, and flailed them in the air, as if he were beating a pair of invisible aerial drums in time to the phrase "two to six." for victory or a peace sign, and flailed them in the air, as if he were beating a pair of invisible aerial drums in time to the phrase "two to six."

"Mr. Krnkka," said Kovitsky, rather softly for him.

"And now she's coming in 'ere wit' three to nine," said Albert Krnkka. "We awready said, 'Okay, two to six' "-once again he raised his hands and the pair of v's and beat the air in time to "two to six"-"and she's coming in 'ere wit' three to nine. Two to six"-he beat the air-"two to six-"

"MIS-TER KRI-NICK-A, IF YOU-"

But Albert Krnkka was unbowed by Judge Kovitsky's hammering voice.

"Two to six"-blam, blam, blam-"you got it!"

"MIS-TER KRI-NICK-A. If you want to pet.i.tion the court, you must do so through your attorney."

"Hey, Judge, you ask her her!" He stabbed his left forefinger toward Patti Stullieri. His arm seemed a mile long. "She's the one. She offered two to six, Judge. Now she come in here wit'-"

"Mister Krnkka-"

"Two to six, Judge, two to six!" Realizing that his time at the bar was growing short, Albert Krnkka now compressed his message into its key phrase, all the while beating the air with his huge hands.

"Two to six! You got it! Two to six! You got it!"

"Mister Krnkka...SIDDOWN! Wait for your attorney."

Albert Krnkka and his wife began backing away from the bar, looking at Kovitsky the whole time, as if leaving a throne room. Albert kept mouthing the words "two to six" and waving his v v fingers. fingers.

Larry Kramer moved over to where Patti Stullieri was standing and said, "What did they they do?" do?"

Patti Stullieri said, "The wife held a knife to a girl's throat while the husband raped her."

"Jesus," said Kramer, in spite of himself.