Hoax

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  That time Jojola’s laugh was bitter. “I have fashioned a special place for him down a very deep, very dark hole near the garbage dump from which he will never escape.”

  • • •

  Lucy was also thinking about men as her mother pointed to a distant cliff and said that was where they would meet one of them, John Jojola. “The eagles’ nest is right below, about fifty feet from the top.”

  Only a couple of weeks earlier, Lucy had been worried about her mother’s reaction to Jojola. Marlene’s conversations were filled with what she and the Indian had done that day, the things they’d talked about, and how he was helping her deal with her past. Lucy had noted when she saw them together that he made her laugh and that they shared an obvious affection for one another. She was afraid that an affair was in the making. Such a turn of events would have been even worse than finding out her mother had jumped into bed with Billy—at least that would have only been about sex. But an affair with Jojola, she realized, would have been so much deeper, more meaningful, and therefore more dangerous.

  The thought saddened her for her father. She knew he enjoyed a certain amount of sexual banter with Stupenagel and that other women looked at him with lust in their eyes, even if he was oblivious to their hints. But his daughter also knew that he wasn’t the sort to have an affair. He was dedicated to his wife and family, which for one thing, along with his choice of careers, left him no time for a mistress. Instead, he faithfully came home every night to an empty bed, and the last face he saw before he turned out the light was a framed photograph of his wife on his nightstand.

  Lucy now understood that the relationship between her mother and Jojola was not sexual. They were friends, and if there was something more, it was along the lines of student and teacher, which surprised her as she’d always thought of her mother as self-possessed, if troubled.

  The recognition that there was nothing untoward between the two did not, however, put her at ease regarding the long-range forecast for her parents’ marriage. Her mother and father didn’t see that as different as they were in their means, their roles in the world were complementary—Marlene as the sword of justice, and Butch as the scales. They thought they were coming from different ends of the spectrum when there were only two ends. The Good and the Bad.

  The likelihood that he was going to run for office, in Lucy’s opinion, would only further exacerbate the split. Before she and her mother left for New Mexico, her father sat the family down and told them that he was considering running for district attorney. He didn’t try to sugarcoat it. It would mean even more time away from them. The family would be under greater scrutiny from the press. “And there’s another very real issue,” he said. “The level of potential danger…to me and to you…will rise. We will have increased police protection, but as you are all aware more than most families, that is not a guarantee of safety. You need to understand one important difference with the past. Then, the danger was always personal—directed at me and you because of something I did, like put someone in prison. But if elected, I would represent an important institution of our government—a big, impersonal target for anyone with a cause or gripe.”

  He ended by saying he wanted to give them time to think about it, but it wasn’t necessary. Her mother had excused herself from the vote with the copout that she’d been in and out of their lives too much to qualify. But the twins and Lucy had encouraged him to run, although for different reasons.

  Giancarlo worshipped him and thought that he deserved the recognition of the voters. “And what you do is important to everyone,” he said in his usual precocious manner that had his brother rolling his eyes. “You’re sort of like a comic book hero. You take on the bad guy so that other people don’t have to.”

  Zak adored his father, too, but it was the added danger that he liked, just the ticket to spice up what he considered an otherwise humdrum life. He was, however, greatly disappointed that while his father would be the chief elected law enforcement officer for the county of New York, he was not inclined to start carrying some heat.

  Lucy initially had her reservations. Like her mother, she worried that the system would wear him down and leave him frustrated and bitter. But she also believed in a world in which the forces of good and evil were battling daily, even if most people were too wrapped up in their daily lives to see the overall pattern as anything more than isolated incidents. A bombing here. A murder there. War and famine and terrorists in airplanes and with dynamite strapped to their bodies. Men who killed in the name of God.

  Lucy had framed a saying that hung above her desk at home: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Her father had demonstrated through his entire career that he would lay it on the line to prevent evil from triumphing. The world needed more men like him, not fewer; she had no choice but to give him her blessing.

  Still, she’d felt guilty leaving him in New York to fend for himself and the twins. As capable as he was in the courtroom, he was lost in a kitchen and around an ironing board. She shuddered as she imagined the stacks of frozen food containers probably lining the counters at that moment and piles of crumpled laundry.

  Yet, she knew she would have been of little use to him in the condition she was in. The encounter with Felix Tighe had damaged her far more than she let on. When she was with the psychopath—naked, spread-eagled, and tormented by his knife and the delight he took in her pain—she had accepted the fact that she was going to be raped and murdered. Then David Grale appeared, and she’d been rescued. But ever since then, she felt as if she were living on borrowed time. And if that was true, she’d wanted to be near her mother to mend their rift and support her efforts to come to grips with her moral dilemmas.

  Lucy had not really expected to find healing for herself in the Southwest. She believed that she was too far gone to look forward to the future as she once had. But like her mother, she’d discovered that there was something cleansing about New Mexico. Small wonder that three of the world’s great religions sprang from the desert, she thought. Out where little could be hidden beneath the sun, it was easier to be honest with God and with oneself.

  It was on a late afternoon horseback ride with Ned Blanchet that she finally had admitted to herself that another reason she left New York was that she was also running away from thoughts she’d been having about her boyfriend, Dan Heeney. After she got out of the hospital and went to see him, he’d been kind and understanding. But while she’d made it clear that she didn’t want him to try to touch her “that way,” she also was a little disappointed that he didn’t try. She wondered if that meant he now considered her damaged goods.

  Her lack of interest in sex was only partly tied to the heinous things Tighe had done to her. If she was living on borrowed time, she did not want to start something that might not have a future; and if there was romance in her future, she admitted to the New Mexico sky, she was no longer sure she wanted it with Dan. But she was troubled by her reasons. She loved him and knew that it was not his fault that she’d fallen into the clutches of a deranged killer. Yet, while ashamed to admit it even to herself, she blamed him for not being there to save her. Nor did she feel safe while lying in his arms.

  On the other hand, there’s Ned, she thought dreamily as the road swung toward the edge of the gorge. Not the best-looking cowboy in the West—then again, you’re not exactly Shania Twain—but he was certainly what any straight romantic girl dreamed of in other respects. He courted her in a way that at any other time or place in her life she would have considered impossibly corny. Flowers left outside her room. Small gifts for dumb little occasions like their fifth week anniversary. Poorly spelled love poems written in his nearly illegible handwriting but made up for with emotion. Nor did she feel like she was holding out as she had with Dan, at least before Tighe.

  Ned was exactly what she’d needed and took only what she was willing to give. Early on, he confessed that he hadn’t had much experience with women. “As a matt
er of fact,” he’d blushed, “I was taught to dance by my sisters.” He even admitted that he was a good deal more comfortable around his horse than with members of the opposite sex. “ ’Cept you, Lucy, you’re different, more like my horse,” a statement she’d let pass. She knew that he wanted more, which made her feel beautiful and desirable, but his shyness got in the way of progress in that arena . . but not because he was trying to be careful around poor fragile Lucy…the damaged goods.

  At first whenever he seemed on the verge of professing his undying devotion and love, she’d hushed him up and changed the subject. But as time passed, she found herself enjoying the feel of his hard, flat chest muscles beneath his shirt against her breasts when they danced slow, and the strength of his arms when he helped her down from a horse. In the dark of her room at night, she’d even allowed herself the occasional fantasy of what he might look like with just his jeans and boots on…or maybe just the boots.

  As her mother pointed out the cliff above the eagles’ aerie (“I think that may be John standing up there”), Lucy spotted a man on horseback through her side window. He was some distance away, but she looked at the rider’s thin frame and the relaxed way he sat in the saddle and thought it might be Ned. Suddenly, the horseman stood up in his stirrups as he looked north in the direction they were driving. He spurred his horse into a run.

  Lucy was still watching him when there was a loud bang and the truck swerved toward the edge of the gorge.

  • • •

  If Marlene hadn’t been looking ahead at the rock outcropping and seen a flash when the sun hit the rifle scope and noted the small puff of smoke, she would have thought from the sound that she had a blowout. Not that it made any difference in the few seconds she had to try to save herself and Lucy. Turning hard in the direction of the skid, she almost made it. The truck stopped parallel to the edge of the cliff, now facing south. Then with a sickening lurch, the truck tilted and rolled over the side.

  “Mom!” Lucy cried.

  “Lucy!” she’d replied. And that’s all the time they had—or would have had if the piñon pine had been growing anywhere else.

  “Are you okay?” Marlene asked. Looking past where Lucy was pinned against the passenger door, she could see that there were no more outcroppings or trees to prevent them from plunging the remaining distance to the canyon floor.

  “For the moment,” Lucy said. She’d looked down once and decided not to do that again. “Mom, I’m scared.”

  “That’s all right, baby. Crawl over me and out my window,” Marlene said as calmly as she could.

  “No way,” Lucy said “You have to go first. Just climbing over you will jiggle us loose.”

  Just then there was the sound of a vehicle pulling up above them. A door opened and shut and then there were footsteps in the gravel.

  “Sheriff!” Marlene exclaimed when she saw the man look over the edge at them. “Hurry, get a rope!”

  Instead, Asher squatted and smiled. “Looks like you gals is in a pickle,” he said, then pointed. “Doesn’t appear that old piñon is going to be able to hold you much longer…. Then again, maybe I should help hurry the process; after all, time’s a wastin’.”

  Asher stood and shouldered his rifle, but he never got a shot off. Realizing his intentions, Marlene had reached under her seat, flipped the safety catch, and pulled out the Glock. Even as the sheriff brought his rifle up, she fired two quick shots. The first caught him in the belly and doubled him over, rendering him incapable of straightening to use his weapon. The next caught him in the top of the head. He pitched forward and landed belly down on the hood of the truck, further burdening the tree. His face was turned toward the women, his eyes still open and conscious as he slid helplessly off the hood and into the canyon below.

  “You promised you weren’t going to bring your gun,” Lucy scolded.

  “Can this lecture wait until we find out if we’re going to live or die?” Marlene answered. “I’d rather not argue with you if this is our last few minutes together.”

  Lucy’s reply was cut off by the sound of another vehicle arriving in a rush and then a male voice calling down. “Marlene! Lucy!”

  Jojola peered over the edge but only long enough to assess the situation before running back to his truck to grab a length of rope. He fashioned a loop as he ran to the canyon rim and tossed it down to Marlene, who was half out of the window standing on the steering wheel. “It won’t hold the truck if she goes,” he yelled. “Get it under your arms, and I’ll haul you up.”

  Marlene tried to hand the rope below to her daughter. “You first,” she ordered.

  “It won’t work, Mom,” Lucy replied. “We’ve been through this.”

  Marlene knew that her daughter was right and stopped arguing. With the rope around her, she carefully climbed out of the window, conscious of the increased rattle of stones as the truck shifted.

  She was about to take the rope off and insist that her daughter come up. But as soon as Jojola saw that she was clear of the window, he started to haul on the rope, and she had no choice but to climb up the steep slope as quickly as possible.

  At the top, she loosened the rope and stepped out of the loop. From below came Lucy’s voice. “Hurry, Mom.”

  Looking down as she picked up the loop, Marlene saw that Lucy had climbed out of the window and was standing precariously on the side of the truck. She threw the rope, but a sudden lurch by the truck forced Lucy to fight for her balance and she missed it. With a popping like firecrackers, the pine finally gave way and the truck slid toward the chasm, and Marlene knew her daughter was gone.

  24

  KARP EXITED THE LOFT BUILDING ON CROSBY STREET, NODDING to Mr. Le, the proprietor of the Thai-Vietnamese restaurant supply store on the lower level. They had been neighbors for nearly a decade.

  Unfailingly polite and cheerful, Thien Le was an industrious middle-aged man who had fled the fall of Saigon with his family in 1973. Every day he dressed in the same attire—a dark gray business coat, gray slacks, a crisply starched white shirt, and a narrow dark tie. He and his sons, who were apparently allowed to wear whatever was hip for the younger crowd, and what was an apparently extensive family—every male had been introduced as a cousin or nephew or uncle—often could be heard working well into the night.

  “Chao buoi sang, Mr. Karp,” said Le, who was standing in the doorway of his store surveying the pedestrian traffic. “It looks like a beautiful day. Are Missy Lucy and your lovely wife home yet?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Le. Yes, beautiful, but unfortunately, my wife and daughter are not home,” Karp replied, glancing up and down the street. He didn’t know if it was a career spent as a prosecutor, or living with Marlene Ciampi, but he was a little more alert for trouble in his middle years. He wished Mr. Le a pleasant morning and headed off.

  Walking to the south end of the block, Karp turned left on Grand Street and paused. There was a little game he played at the start of his walk to work of mentally dividing the city he was facing: Little Italy to the north, the Bowery straight ahead to the east, and Chinatown to the south. He liked to think of New York as a quilt, each patch with its own history, its own culture and eccentricities.

  He reached Centre Street and crossed Grand, heading south along the edge of Chinatown. The open-air markets with their fresh, colorful displays of fruits and vegetables were already bustling. Shop owners alternately haranged their employees in vitriolic Cantonese and smiled at the pedestrians. One held up a head of leaf lettuce, “Very fresh, Butch. Just arrive this morning.” Nothing had convinced him of the resiliency of the city after 9/11 as much as how quickly the grocers and souvenir shop owners swept up the dust and resumed business. You can kill us, he thought, but you can’t keep us closed for business.

  Although not quite seven thirty, the day already promised to be warm even for June. The air carried a hint of the summer to come—fermenting garbage and the smell of eight million people living in close proximity to one another, not a
ll of whom shared the same dedication to personal hygiene.

  “Good mornink,” one of those on the riper end of the scale greeted him from the corner as he crossed Canal Street. The man was immensely fat and immensely filthy, dressed in what appeared to be many layers of clothes of indistinguishable color and vintage. He had a large, dirt-encrusted finger jammed up his nose and was scratching his voluminous buttocks with the other hand as if something was wandering around back there that he was trying to catch.

  “Hello, Booger,” Karp replied. The Walking Booger, so named for his nearly constant extraction attempts, was a regular part of the human flotsam and jetsam who considered the streets, alleys, and Dumpsters around Foley Square and City Hall to be their home turf. Of course, on any given day they might be found, as if magically transported, from Battery Park on the south end of the island to Central Park in the middle. Anything north of the park was left to a different crowd.

  Booger showered and washed his clothes only when it rained and not through any conscious effort to do so. Thus, he could usually be smelled long before he was seen. His appearance and stench had one advantage: tourists and businesspeople gave him a wide berth when he wanted to move through a crowd, as he was doing now in the direction of Karp. “Hopin’ or sometink to eat,” he replied, withdrawing the probing finger to hold out his hand.

  Karp deftly handed over a dollar without actually touching the man. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Even though he worked for the district attorney’s office, which occasionally sent some of their colleagues off to prison, Karp was popular with most of the harmless variety of street people like Booger. In part, he was appreciated because he didn’t practice the New Yorker habit of either refusing to make eye contact, or seeing through whoever might not meet the standards of social acceptability, as though nothing or no one was there. Karp wasn’t like that; as was his custom, he engaged eye to eye, chatted, and was usually a soft touch.