Hoax

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “But that’s not fair,” Zak protested, with the rest of the class murmuring in agreement. “The baby didn’t do anything. Why didn’t God kill David instead?”

  Karp scratched his head. “Well, I have to admit that I don’t always understand the celestial justice system. And sometimes the God that’s in the Torah seems a little unfair or harsh—like when he sent the bear to tear up all those children just because they were teasing Job.” Uh-oh, he thought, rampaging, bloodthirsty bear has distracted them from the point of all this. “But if you look at this story from the point of view that it’s trying to teach us something, what would you say that might be?”

  The class collectively knit their eyebrows and pursed their lips in concentration. Again, Rachel bobbed up and down in her seat, waving her hand, while Karp purposefully made sure he looked the other way.

  “Well, it’s about what can happen if we’re greedy,” Giancarlo finally ventured.

  “Yes,” Karp said. “I think that’s right. But I’m looking for something else.” After a full minute of more facial contortions from the class, he sighed and called on Rachel.

  “I think it is a lesson that God is stronger than we are and if we don’t do as he commands, horrible things may happen,” Rachel informed the others. For once, they didn’t roll their eyes—the possibility of hearing about these horrible things had caught their attention, even if they had to hear them from a girl.

  Karp thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “I suppose that’s another way of looking at it, though I don’t like to think that God does things to innocent babies just to force us to obey his commands. However, I think it does remind us that the decisions we make have consequences. And that those consequences may be entirely unintended or something we couldn’t foresee.”

  “Yeah, but,” Zak said, “the only ones who paid for David’s decision to bone Bathsheba were Uriah and the baby.”

  Karp made a mental note to talk to Zak about his vocabulary. “Well, let me make two points. One, is that yes, the baby died, but I can tell you that as a parent, there is no greater pain in the world than to lose a child. Even the possibility”—he stopped and looked at Giancarlo, seeing him as he’d lain in that hospital bed clinging to life—“is worse than anything you can imagine.

  “But there’s one other point I’d like you to consider because I think it’s important in today’s world. Sometimes people make bad decisions saying, ‘Even if something goes wrong, or it’s against the law, I’m the only one who gets hurt by it.’ Then they have too much to drink and get in a car and kill somebody on the highway. Or they use drugs and say it’s nobody’s business, but they don’t think about all the crimes committed, including murder, because of the drug trade.

  “The point is that David did something he knew was wrong, and then thought he got away with it because Uriah was dead. But those things have a way of coming back to haunt us. We can’t always know how the choices we make will affect us, or the people we love, on down the line.”

  Karp looked at the class. “Anything you’d like to add?”

  Zak scowled. “I still think it was lousy for God to kill the baby and not David and Bathsheba.”

  Rachel sighed melodramatically. “My mother says it’s not up to us to question the will of God.”

  Karp sighed. His mother and father, who like him were not observant religious types, had never agreed with the literalists who interpreted everything as the will of God. His mother in particular despised the sort of thinking that could conclude that something like the Holocaust was part of God’s preordained plan or a punishment for the sins of the Jewish people. He himself confessed to “felonious bafflement” at the ridiculousness of such reasoning.

  “Well, in this case I have to concur with you, Zak,” he said. “The baby suffered for his parents’ sins. Unfortunately, it happens all too often in today’s world, too. Every day children suffer because their parents are drug addicts or make the decision to commit criminal acts. They’re neglected, or born addicted to crack, or they’re physically abused.”

  “But why does God punish the children instead of the parents?” Zak asked.

  Karp was stumped. He’d asked himself that question in various forms for decades and never reached a conclusion he was comfortable with. “I’m sorry, Zak,” he said. “I don’t have a good answer for you. Maybe it’s not a question of God allowing bad things to happen, or God punishing us. It’s sort of the easy way out to blame God for poor or evil choices people make, or to blame God for something that just happens by accident or because of bad luck. Maybe it’s sort of a test. We have free will and can choose the right way or we can choose the wrong way. Each of us has to make those decisions throughout our lives. And how we choose affects not only us, but sometimes other people, as David and Bathsheba learned.”

  “Still, doesn’t make it right,” Zak groused.

  Karp nodded. “No, no it doesn’t.” But he was thinking about how much this son reminded him of his wife.

  • • •

  Three days later, on one of those lovely early June evenings in New York City when the new leaves on the trees were still lime green, and the salt air was blowing in from the harbor fresh and warm as a cup of espresso at the Ferrara café on Grand Street, Karp was standing with his sons in front of their loft building when Clay Fulton pulled up.

  With the twins sent inside to work on their homework, the big detective explained that there’d been an arrest in a quadruple homicide. And “it seems that the twins, Zak and Giancarlo, were also present during the altercation. In fact, they may have been in the middle of it.”

  “WHAT!” Karp exploded. The head of every pedestrian within fifty feet of the loft building turned to look at a big man turning red as he swore. “GODDAMMIT, YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!”

  “Sorry, man,” Fulton said, flipping open a notepad to read. “The detectives were checking out the club. They weren’t getting a very friendly reception—this Garcia is apparently well liked. One of the bouncers, one Jim Mitchell, was trying to provide a character reference for the suspect when he noted that Garcia was friends with, and I quote, ‘Them two little kids whose daddy is the district attorney.’ ”

  Fulton closed the notebook. “Um, the detectives are going to want to get a statement from the twins, but I told them it could wait till after school tomorrow.”

  Karp hardly heard the rest. He punched the security code for the building door and stormed up the five flights of stairs to the loft without waiting for the notoriously slow elevator. He burst into the apartment like Job’s bear looking to tear into a couple of children. “ZAK! GIANCARLO! Get your little butts out here, now!”

  The twins shuffled out to the living room in their pajamas. Their faces were masks of angelic innocence, or those of puppies who know by the sound of the master’s voice that they’re going to get a rolled newspaper on their snouts but aren’t exactly sure for which transgression.

  “Wah?” mumbled Zak, trying to look sleepy and therefore less culpable.

  “What’s the matter, Dad? Are you okay?” Giancarlo asked, going for the concerned son approach.

  “Want to tell me where you were a week ago Friday night?” Karp asked.

  “Studying…we were going over our Hebrew lessons…,” Zak began but his brother elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Don’t bother, Zak,” Giancarlo said. “He’s onto us. We weren’t studying. We went down to the Hip-Hop Nightclub to catch the act of one of our friends.”

  “Why’d you lie to me?”

  “Would you have let us go if we’d told the truth?” Zak replied.

  “Hell no,” Karp exclaimed. “You don’t belong in a nightclub. It’s against the law, and in case you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s my job to enforce the law. Isn’t it enough that one member of this family regularly tosses jurisprudence into the wastebasket? But that’s not even the point. The point is you lied and betrayed my trust. So this whole bar mitzvah thing is a sca
m for getting out of the house and bar hopping? And I’m a schmuck for teaching these classes while you’re planning your next caper?”

  The boys protested. They were sorry. They really were interested in going through with their bar mitzvah. It just happened that on that particular Friday night, a famous rap star was going to be at the club and their friend was going to battle rhyme with him.

  “The guy who got wasted,” Zak volunteered. “ML Rex.”

  “Yeah, and what about the fight you were apparently in the middle of?” Karp asked.

  “Nothing happened,” Zak explained. “I wasn’t really going to stab anybody.”

  Giancarlo slapped a hand to his forehead, “God, Zak, you are such an idiot.”

  “You…you…you weren’t going to stab anybody?” Karp sputtered. “What in the hell were you doing carrying a knife? That’s felonious possession of a weapon. Are you so frightened that you feel you need to carry a knife everywhere you go? Or are you just hoping to get a chance to assault someone?”

  Zak rarely knew when to keep his mouth closed, nor did he now. “It wasn’t such a bad idea when those terrorist guys tried to grab him,” he muttered pointing to his brother.

  Karp had to think quickly. The truth of the matter was that if Zak hadn’t been armed and ready to rumble that day, the whole event likely would have turned out much worse. But he couldn’t let Zak get away with that sort of reasoning or he’d turn into another Marlene.

  “Just because it worked out that time, doesn’t make it right. What is it about you and your mother that you feel you can just do whatever in the hell you want? What if everybody just started carrying weapons and used them when they decided that it was justified?” He paused to catch his breath then added, “Go get me the knife.”

  As Zak stomped off to his bedroom, Giancarlo tried to defend his brother. “Dad, I know it was wrong to go to the club. And I know it’s wrong for Zak to carry a weapon. But ever since this happened”—he passed a hand over his eyes—“he’s been terrified that something worse is going to happen to me.”

  “I know that,” Karp said. “But we can’t just run on possibilities and potential. Someone’s going to get hurt, and eventually it will catch up to Zak.”

  The object of their conversation appeared and handed over the switchblade with the same reluctance as a gunfighter giving up his six-shooter to the town sheriff. “How’d you find out anyway?” he asked sullenly.

  Karp shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is your role in all of this. Remember the conversation we had on Sunday about how sometimes the choices we make have consequences we can’t foresee or that we don’t intend?” The twins nodded their heads and waited for the shoe to fall.

  “Well, it appears that you are now material witnesses in a homicide investigation,” he said as the boys’ jaws dropped simultaneously. “Tomorrow, you’re to come home right after school; then we’ll be taking a little trip down to police headquarters to tell them what you know about your pal Alejandro Garcia.”

  17

  KARP ARRIVED AT THE TOMBS, WHERE FULTON INTRODUCED him to Michael Flanagan, the lead detective on the ML Rex homicide, who in turn introduced them to his partner, Robert Leary.

  “I recognize the name,” Karp said, shaking Flanagan’s hand. “You’re one of our heroes from the World Trade Center.”

  Flanagan flushed and said, “There was a lot of bravery that day, Mr. Karp. The real heroes died trying to save people. I was just doing my job.”

  Karp nodded. That was the common response since 9/11 from the firefighters and police officers who’d laid it all on the line. Just doing their jobs, as if running into a towering inferno that was coming down on their heads was no different from rescuing someone’s pet cat from a tree or writing a traffic ticket. He supposed in a way it wasn’t much different from what firefighters faced every time the alarm went off or police officers when trying to apprehend an armed suspect. But it didn’t change his respect for the special kind of courage they’d exhibited that day.

  The detectives led them to a small room adjacent to one of the interview rooms, where, looking through one-way glass, Karp could see a short, good-looking Hispanic youth in an orange jail jumpsuit. He was sitting quietly at the table with his hands clasped in front of him, but Karp couldn’t tell if he was praying or simply waiting.

  “He didn’t do it,” the twins had shouted as soon as they recovered from their initial shock. Giancarlo had explained, “Alejandro used to be a gangbanger. He even shot a guy who threatened him. But he’s against violence now. If you heard his rhymes you’d know. Ask Lucy, she’d heard him. He’s a friend of Father Dugan’s, too.”

  “Yeah, well, as the two of you know better than most, sometimes good people make bad decisions,” he’d said. “It isn’t just the threats at the bar. A witness—the chauffeur—puts him at the murder scene.”

  “The witness is lying,” Zak said. “Or he’s as blind as Giancarlo.”

  “Thanks, Zak,” his twin replied dryly. “But he’s right, Dad. Something is wrong with that witness.”

  Despite his anger with the boys, Karp assured them that there would be no railroading of their friend. “If he’s innocent, it should come out in the wash.”

  “Yeah,” Zak retorted sarcastically. “Innocent guys never go to prison.”

  The comment troubled Karp. Innocent guys did go to prison. It was one of the main reasons he was personally against the death penalty except in the most heinous cases. But all he could do for now was listen to what Detective Flanagan had to say and hope the police were doing their job. “So what have you got?” he asked the detective.

  Flanagan cleared his throat and looked at his notepad. “As you know—and by the way, sorry about your boys getting mixed up in all this, my sister’s got a passel of ’em and they’d try the patience of a saint. Anyway, the perp—or I guess I should say suspect—is one Alejandro Garcia, aka Boom—DOB 4/6/85. Spent eighteen months on a juvie for reckless endangerment—put a round in a rival gang member’s butt. Last known residence before his incarceration was 106th Street, the James Madison tenements in Spanish Harlem. We picked him up outside of Old St. Patrick’s on Mulberry Street where he’d apparently been visiting his priest—”

  “Yeah, we figured he might be willing to confess to us, too,” Leary interjected with a smile, but shut up at a stern look from Flanagan. “Confession is nothing to joke about, Bobby.”

  Karp held up his hand. “Just the facts, detectives. You’ll get me confused with all the extras.”

  Flanagan gave him a funny look, as though he’d just been corrected for his grammar, but nodded and continued. “As I was saying, the suspect got into a beef with the two male vics with the female vics present. One of your kids was apparently pushed to the ground, things got dicey till the bouncer showed up, and Garcia was overheard threatening to kill the deceased.”

  Karp wondered why police officers always felt it necessary to go into cop speak—victims were vics, perpetrators were perps, and all the rest sounded like a Humphrey Bogart movie. But after the last look he got when he interrupted the detective, he decided to ignore it and asked a question. “Tell me about the witness, this chauffeur?”

  “Yeah, him,” Flanagan said, flipping to another page in his notepad. “One Vincent Paglia, works at the fish market under the Brooklyn Bridge by day, drives limos part-time by night. Not your most upstanding citizen—a few beefs for gambling, one for assault, and another for solicitin’ an undercover policewoman—but nothin’ that’s gonna ruin him for a jury.” He looked up quickly at Karp. “Sorry, that’s your side of the business…. Uh, he’s a big boy, three-hundred-pounder if he’s an ounce. Says Mr. Rex or Johnson, what have you, was trying to locate an old friend and they got lost. My guess is they were looking to score—all the vics tested positive for cocaine. Anyway, he’s parked at the curb when he sees these two guys coming, one of them carrying a rifle, and figures something bad is going down. He jumps out of the car and h
ightails it out of there like the hounds of hell is after him. He hears the shooting and keeps running. Makes his way over to Third Ave., catches a cab, goes home, and stays there. He says he figured it was a gang hit, and he didn’t want to get involved…claims that his conscience was bothering him, and he was going to come forward but we found him first through the limousine service. After we heard about the altercation at the nightclub from a confidential informant and brought Garcia in for questioning, our boy Vinnie picked him out of the lineup. Went right to him, no hesitation—says he saw him at the club the night before and then got a good look at his face in the streetlight before he took off.”

  “Anything else tying Garcia to the murder scene?” Fulton asked.

  Flanagan said he wasn’t sure. “A .45 caliber Colt was found beneath the car that we believe will probably turn out to be one of the murder weapons. It’s with the crime-scene guys now being tested for latents and ballistics. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky again.”

  “Anything useful from the limousine?” Fulton asked.

  “We impounded the vehicle,” Flanagan said, “but there’s no fingerprints we can’t account for and nothing else that’s a help.”

  Karp’s eyebrows nearly met as he frowned. “So how does Garcia know where to find our victims in East Harlem at just the right time?”

  Flanagan shrugged. “Vinnie ain’t copping to it, but I figure they’re scoring from some dealer in Spanish Harlem, who passes the word on to the Inca Boyz, Garcia’s gang. He sees an opportunity to make good on his threat and shows up instead of the dealer. Maybe it’s something more, too. There’s some big money in the music business and these”—Flanagan looked at Fulton and seemed to change his mind—“gangsters are always shooting each other. Maybe this Garcia was trying to make his bones, get a rep to sell records.” The detective nodded to Garcia through the one-way glass. “He hasn’t said much to us other than the usual denials. Maybe you can do better.”