Hoax

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Thanks Jack, I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “Now I have a few fires to put out. We’ll talk more about this later, I’m sure.”

  The one statement was the only place in the story that Stupenagel had crossed the line of their agreement. Otherwise, she’d left out or danced around those things that he’d asked not be printed, including the twins’ role in the Garcia case. “They’re listed in court records as confidential informants, and that’s what they stay unless they’re called as witnesses. Then they’re fair game,” he’d warned her.

  As he’d predicted, the rest of the media had come howling to his door, complaining that he was playing favorites. They wanted to know why she was the only reporter in town to know about the bodies buried in Central Park. “Simple,” Karp replied at a hastily called press conference. “She knew about them before we did. You’re going to have to ask her how.”

  However, Karp angrily refused to comment on the part of her story claiming that his office was conducting an investigation into the allegations of police misconduct and a cover-up. “I am neither confirming nor denying that there is any such investigation,” he sputtered with righteous indignation. “But if there were, it would not be appropriate for any member of this office to comment on the existence of an ongoing investigation and would be subject to dismissal. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Not really,” said one of the journalists. But the Karp Stare silenced him and the others from any more gratuitous comments, and they had gone away grumbling. He did make a note to himself to make sure that V.T. handled any future press conferences on the investigation so that it would not appear that he was using it to grandstand for political purposes. He wasn’t going to give Keegan that bone to chew.

  After the press conference, Karp returned to his office, where a few minutes later Newbury and Murrow entered to tender their joint written resignation for “consorting with a member of the press, to wit Adriadne Stupenagel.” He laughed and pushed the resignation back across his desk to them. “Consider it your punishment that you will have to continue working in this office at the pleasure of the district attorney.”

  “I’d like to pleasure the district attorney,” Stupenagel announced as she walked into the office past the harried Mrs. Boccino, who’d been fielding the angry calls from the press and had given up trying to guard his door.

  Karp pointed at Newbury and Murrow. “They were feeling guilty about consorting with you. Even offered to resign as a result.”

  “Consort?” Stupenagel asked. “Don’t I wish I could interest these two hunka-hunka burning loves into an Adriadne sandwich. But alas, you’ve surrounded yourself with Boy Scouts, Karp.”

  “I thought you liked them brave, clean, and reverent,” he responded.

  “You have that mixed up with creative, smells good, and willing to worship me on their knees.”

  “I’ll get down on my knees if you’ll get down on your elbows,” Newbury said, entering the fray.

  “You’re on, big boy, I—” Stupenagel began to say, but was cut off by a shout from Murrow.

  “ENOUGH ALREADY!” he yelled. “Must everything you say be an invitation to carnality?”

  The others looked at Murrow in surprise, which caused him to turn red. Without another word, he stood up and stomped out of the office. Newbury and Karp looked at each other and said, “What got into him?”

  Stupenagel smiled knowingly. “I do believe I just saw the green monster known as jealousy raise his sexually repressed little head.”

  Karp scoffed. “Murrow? Jealous of you,” he said, then shook his head. “You’re not his sort. I’ve met his girlfriends—nice, respectable debutantes from Mount Vernon. All of them sworn to virginity until their wedding nights, maybe longer.”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m not a virgin?” Stupenagel sniffed. “And how would you know? Perhaps, I’m all talk.”

  “Yeah, and I’m a rock and roll star,” Karp said. “You forget that my beloved was the one sleeping in the student lounge while you were carving notches on the bedposts of the dorm room you were supposed to be sharing with her.”

  Stupenagel stuck her tongue out at him. “There weren’t any bedposts, so there’s no physical evidence of such behavior. Besides, she could have always kicked me out if she hadn’t been such a prude.”

  • • •

  The conversation had made him think of Marlene, which also contributed to his headache. He’d tried to call her all day Monday, leaving several messages at the Sagebrush Inn front desk saying he needed to talk to her ASAP about Giancarlo. With all the excitement of the past week or so, he hadn’t followed up on Dr. Zacham and his offer to remove the shotgun pellet from their son’s brain. What kind of father am I, anyway? he thought.

  Then their family doctor called to remind him. “I got good news and I got bad news. The good news is that Dr. Zacham still has a spot open; the bad news—it has to be Friday,” he said.

  “Friday! That’s impossible. I haven’t been able to speak to Marlene yet…,” Karp complained.

  The doctor commiserated but added, “You don’t understand how in demand this guy is. He’s willing to do Giancarlo Friday, has two more scheduled for the weekend. Then it’s off to Russia to show their doctors where the brain is located. You have to let me know tomorrow. He’d have to be in the hospital by Thursday afternoon to be prepped.”

  Karp’s first inclination was to say no. But he decided it was only fair to ask Giancarlo, whom he’d told about the offer when he first heard about Dr. Zacham.

  “I’ve already thought about it, Dad,” he said. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the Internet, or actually Zak has been reading to me. And Dr. Zacham is like a generation ahead of other brain surgeons, and I want him to do it. I’m okay being blind, and in a way I think it was meant to happen; I learned a lot about stuff I wouldn’t have if my eyes still worked. But I want to see again. I want to see your face and Mom’s; I want to know what Zak looks like when he signs with the Yankees, and Lucy’s face when she becomes a mom. And there’s another thing—I don’t think Zak’s going to go on with his own life as long as I am blind. So I sort of need to do this for him, too. That make sense?”

  Karp nodded. “You make a lot of sense. I just don’t think I could live with myself if something happened to you, and I know your mom would self-destruct because she’d blame herself.”

  “But it’s my life, my choice,” Giancarlo said.

  Karp ran a big hand through his beautiful son’s curly hair. “Yes, it’s your choice.” He found himself staring into Giancarlo’s eyes, while his own were dripping tears.

  So he’d been desperately trying to find Marlene. She’d want to be back for the surgery.

  Marlene had called back Monday afternoon when he was in court with Collins and left a message with Mrs. Boccino, who read it with a great deal of dramatic flair. “I’m involved in something but can’t talk ’bout it on the telephone. Returnin’ to NYC soon. Love, M.”

  Oh no, here we go again, he thought when he’d translated his secretary’s accent. His honey had apparently once again attracted killer bees and would be on her way home to the hive. But what had she stirred up and when would she and their daughter arrive? Oh well, I guess she’ll be back in time to go with us to the hospital.

  When he called the Sagebrush Inn again that morning, he was told that she and his daughter had checked out early but had not said where they were going. The headache had intensified. He was glad she was coming home—the little man who lived in his groin was turning cartwheels and already making plans—but he didn’t need any more trouble on top of what he was already dealing with.

  He was searching his desk drawer for aspirin when his private line rang. Everyone in the room froze, their eyes locked on the flashing red button. He picked up the receiver. “Karp.”

  “Good story in the Voice this morning,” the anonymous caller said.

  “I didn’t write it,” Karp growled. “You’d have to talk to the r
eporter.”

  “Is she still there?”

  “Look, let’s dispense with the games. I’m not in a good mood,” he said. He looked up as Guma entered the room and took a seat on the couch next to Stupenagel, who removed the hand he placed on her knee.

  “Well, I thought you’d like to know that you passed the second test—at least for now; we’ll see if you have the backbone to butt heads with the NYPD and the inestimable Mr. Kane.”

  “Yeah, I guess we’ll see. Now is that all? Or can we move on to test three. Or maybe we can just quit the 007 stuff altogether and talk like real people.”

  “It’s all about trust, Mr. Karp. Before you get all self-righteous with me, maybe you should take another look at those No Prosecution files and ask whether there might be some reason to doubt the integrity of the men who’ve sat in that office over the past dozen years or so.”

  Karp sighed; the caller had a point. “Okay. But I’m not them.”

  “Yeah, well, I might believe you, but I’m not the only one who you need to convince. You didn’t help your cause with that photograph in the Times a few weeks back of you chumming it up with Citizen Kane.”

  I knew that would come back to haunt me, he thought. “Lots of people have their photographs in the newspaper with people they don’t necessarily like,” he said

  “Again, I’m not who you have to convince,” the caller said.

  “Okay, who then?”

  “You might try asking Alejandro Garcia that question. You did the right thing yesterday, Mr. Karp. I know you believe that I might have some dark ulterior motive, and I guess I did, and still do, want something. But it was only to prevent a gross miscarriage of justice in the case of Alejandro Garcia, and now it’s to help you put an end to an even greater travesty.”

  “I don’t like being manipulated,” Karp said.

  “I’m sorry if you feel that way, Mr. Karp. It just seems that in this case, justice needs a little shove.”

  “I have a family member who thinks like that,” Karp responded dryly. “It’s caused us a lot of grief.”

  The caller laughed. “Yes, I am aware of some of the…um, eccentricities…of your family. But you know, Mr. Karp, there is a reason that Lady Justice holds a sword in one hand to go with the scales in the other.”

  “I would concede your point so long as the sword follows the application of due process and that we agree that it’s a metaphor for just punishment…not vigilante terrorism, Mr…. hmmm, I seem to have forgotten your name.”

  Another laugh. “Nice try. But on your point, we are at least philosophically in the same family, if not twin brothers.”

  Karp smiled grimly. “Well, I always wanted another sibling. So what’s the next step? Where are the ‘more to come’ files? And when can I expect the third test?”

  “The remaining No Prosecution files are being delivered at this moment, I believe, to Mr. Newbury’s office. Forgive me if I usurped your authority, but I thought I’d save you the trouble of carting the boxes hither and thither—they contain considerably more files than you already received.”

  “You seem to be well informed about what goes on in my office,” Karp said, giving the high sign to V.T. to read the note he was scribbling: More files arriving your office NOW! Newbury trotted out of the room.

  “Yes, well, I would like to say something enigmatic like ‘a sparrow does not fall from the sky that he does not notice.’ But really, I’m sure it’s pretty hard to keep a secret in an agency as large as yours. According to your comments in the Voice this morning, you apparently can’t keep your staff from revealing state secrets to Ms. Stupenagel. Or were you play-acting for the rest of the media?”

  Karp ignored the gambit. “And the third test?”

  The caller was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice had grown somber. “I’m not sure, Mr. Karp…soon I would think,” he said. “But again, I feel that I should warn you about the consequences of even taking the final exam. If you’ve considered the repercussions of the police files on the NYPD, one of its heroes, and the already shaken psyche of the public, I can only say that impact will be magnified many times over. Although I believe this is the only course, I even hesitate to hope that you succeed, as it could do great harm to the lives of many innocent people. And there is you individually. Whether you pass or fail, it might still ruin your political career and quite likely place you and your family at a greater risk than anything you’ve faced in the past. But having said that, Mr. Karp, I really must go. I wish you luck and courage; you’re going to need both.”

  Then the caller was gone. Karp leaned back in his chair and blew an imaginary smoke ring at the ceiling. Leaning forward again, he pressed the intercom button for Mrs. Boccino.

  “Grace, get me Father Michael Dugan on the phone. His number should be in your Rolodex,” he said. Releasing the button, he turned to the others. “Ariadne, not a word of this until I say it’s okay. But I think it’s time I had a private talk with Alejandro Garcia.”

  “Don’t bother calling Father Mike,” Guma said. “It’s Tuesday, open mike night down at the Hip-Hop. Garcia will be there.”

  “Well then,” Karp said, “anybody up for a little rap?”

  Stupenagel cheered and clapped her hands. “Oh goody, the second in the series begins with me going clubbing with the DA.”

  • • •

  Actually, as he stood on the sidewalk outside the nightclub, Karp was thinking how much he detested rap music. He didn’t get the point. It was repetitious—the same few bars played over and over—and not even original music but something swiped from other musicians who actually played their own instruments. From what little he’d heard when he’d catch the twins illicitly watching MTV, being able to sing wasn’t a requirement—just the ability to grab one’s crotch and distort the language until whore rhymed with show, by shortening the former to ho. But his chief complaint was that it all seemed to be a graphic glorification of violence and promiscuity, as well as the denigration of women.

  He’d even argued those points with Marlene when he discovered a clandestine Snoop Dogg CD in the boys’ music collection. “So Bob Dylan had a good voice?” she asked. “And you might remember that the Rolling Stones put out a little tune called ‘Under My Thumb,’ which is about as misogynist as it gets.”

  “Dylan was a poet who wrote about issues that were important to society, like stopping an ill-thought-out and immoral war,” he said. “And ‘Under My Thumb’ was more the exception than the rule for songs back then. Even the female rappers seem to accept how the males talk about women. You think Janis Joplin or Grace Slick would have let the Stones get away with referring to them as bitches and whores without kicking Mick’s ass?”

  “No,” Marlene agreed. “And I’m not defending some of the crap that passes for hip-hop these days. But rap had its roots in a different culture, one under siege from guns and drugs before rap was born. There’s also a proximity issue. In the sixties the musicians were singing about a war in Southeast Asia; the guys today are rapping about wars in their neighborhoods. It’s bound to be angrier, more personal. But even at that, all you know is a stereotype: that all hip-hop is gangsta rap. If you actually listened to artists like Common and Tribe Called Quest, you’d hear a great variety that runs the gamut from thoughtful commentary on social issues from single-parent households to antidrug messages that are every bit as intelligent as ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ Even some of the so-called gangsta rap is really pretty clever satire and even downright funny, though you get the feeling the artists are laughing to keep from crying.”

  Outside the Hip-Hop Nightclub, Karp wondered if he’d be able to distinguish the satire from the rest over the booming background music. His hearing wasn’t the same as it had been in his youth, and he was sure that after tonight it would be worse. But he hoped it would be worth it, if he could get to the source of the No Prosecution files.

  Before they left the office, Newbury had called to say that he was righ
t about the tip of the iceberg. The boxes delivered to his office that afternoon contained nearly three dozen more suspicious No Prosecution files involving the NYPD.

  “Added up, they cost the taxpayers nearly a hundred million smackers to make the problems go away,” Newbury said. “Some of these cases easily rise to the level of unindicted felonies just on a cursory examination, yet Kane and Associates overturned the IA recommendations in every instance. Something else interesting is that a lot of the same guys’ names keep popping up, including one in which Messrs. Flanagan and Leary were accused of arresting and beating a Jew who was out in front of St. Patrick’s protesting the Catholic Church’s failure to act during the Holocaust. According to the victim, they told him he had no right to complain about the church because ‘the Jews killed Jesus.’ ”

  Outside the club, Karp glanced up at the immense bouncer at the door giving them a baleful look as they waited for Guma, who’d insisted on driving his own car. Maybe the bouncer won’t let us in, he thought hopefully.

  “You sure this is safe?” Murrow asked, nervously adjusting his forest green bow tie as several rough-looking customers exited the nightclub and upon seeing the group on the sidewalk started laughing.

  “Don’t worry, Murry, Momma’s here and she won’t let anything bad happen to you,” Stupenagel assured him.

  “Oh, I wasn’t worried about me,” Murrow said, trying to make his voice lower. “I was concerned about your safety, a civilian and all the while we’re here on official business.”

  Karp rolled his eyes and considered canceling the whole thing on the grounds of felonious flirtation. Then Guma arrived from around the corner, and the bouncer’s expression changed to one of delight. “GOOO-MAAA,” he chortled in a baritone that sounded like the rumbling of distant thunder.

  “Brotha Jim,” Guma exclaimed. He climbed the steps to the entrance, where he and the bouncer exchanged a complicated handshake and embraced. “It’s been too long, my man.”

  “Way too long, dog,” Jim agreed. He looked at the rest of the entourage. “These your friends?”