Book of Judas--A Novel

by Linda Stasi

  I rang the bell. The door opened and on the other side stood all six feet two inches of gorgeous: Councilman Alonzo Curry.

  “Well, I’ll be darned! Alessandra Russo as I live and breathe,” he said, shocked.

  Alonzo Curry! I can hardly breathe. “Well, hi!” I smiled, shaking his hand, managing not to spout out his secret newsroom moniker: “Hot Curry.”

  Alonzo took the baby—seat and all—from me as I put my spikes back on and walked inside. He watched me and then smiled his killer smile when I was three inches taller. “I liked you just the way you were!”

  “Charm is not going to get you favorable press, Councilman,” I joked. Man, what a babe!

  “No? Damn,” he joked back.

  Councilman Curry was a New York City up-and-comer in the political world. He was forty-five, divorced, African-American. He was a lawyer and now a politician with his eye, everyone knew, on the mayoralty one day in the not-too-distant future. We knew each other slightly from my having covered city politics.

  He was everything pervy, serial-exposer, former council member Anthony Weiner was supposed to have been and turned out not to be. Curry had taken his old seat after Weiner resigned during the first of his many, many sex scandals. I figured Curry, though, was the real deal. But who can ever say that about any politician?

  On the other hand, what in hell was he doing here with my hippie dippy neighbors? I had to find out—reporters can’t help themselves. “Alonzo, you’re the last guy I ever expected to see here. How do you know the Judsons?”

  “Everyone knows the Judsons.” He laughed. “Can we actually go three more feet inside before you ask the next question? A born reporter!”

  “And you’re a born politician! Can you actually answer that first question?” I joked back.

  “OK! The Judsons were early supporters,” he said, inching his way with the baby into the foyer, where Dane had set up the bar. “They came to all my meet-and-greets back when there was no one to meet and greet! But they believed. They kept showing up. Threw fund-raisers. They’re like second parents.” Like the son they lost, I thought. I’ll bet their son would be about Curry’s age now.

  “Who knew they were political animals,” I said, thanking him for holding Terry and taking him back in his little seat. “So, meet and greet my little guy, Terry.”

  He play-shook the baby’s hand. “Aren’t politicians supposed to kiss babies?”

  “Not anymore. Parents these days are afraid of Zika…”

  “And all germs, chocolate, nuts, bikes, skateboards, and…” And so we entered laughing. Nice.

  “Let me ask you, how did we ever grow up without wearing helmets and knee pads to ride a Big Wheel back in the day?” he asked.

  I like this guy. No, I really like this guy. A normal man. I must be getting wise in my old age! Or maybe my bad-boy radar is on super high alert and Hot Curry’s really trouble-in-disguise.

  The hostess was rushing toward us, arms out. “Raylene, can I just stick Terry in the extra bedroom back there?” She was wearing a low-cut cocktail dress circa 1975 with that enormous bejeweled cross dangling between her breasts, which still looked surprisingly perky—especially to a woman like me who’d just stopped breast-feeding and whose breasts were now not even close to Raylene-perky.

  “Oh, no. That’s Dane’s private study. I don’t know what the hell he does in there, but it’s locked.” She laughed. Come to think of it, I’d never seen the third bedroom door even opened.

  “Just put him in our bedroom,” she said. “We can hear him better from there anyway in case he cries. But he’s such a good boy,” she said, snuggling him, the giant cross close enough to his mouth for him to bite it.

  The rest of the guests began showing up as Dane, dressed in an embroidered coat and satin pants, served up every manner of exotic cocktails and Raylene fussed with hors d’oeuvres—from fancy pâtés to—yes—everybody’s favorite, pigs in a blanket.

  I tried not to stuff myself like one, and drank a glass or maybe two of champagne.

  Best, Terry fell fast asleep in his baby seat and I was able to put him in the master bedroom where I could hear him if he woke. Perfect so far.

  The conversation turned to my big story, which I was glad to talk about—show off about, really—in front of the councilman. It just so happened that one of the guests, a middle-aged woman named Aaminah Safar, was a professor of antiquities at New York University. How coincidental could you get? But, like the man said, there are no coincidences.

  Safar was quite beautiful, fiftyish, and dressed in black with a vaguely Middle Eastern head wrap that hinted at but was not a full-out hijab. It suggested religious belief while remaining true to the belief in fashion first.

  I was telling them about how my source’s relative had stolen a relic from a safety-deposit box in Hicksville, Long Island, where I’d coincidentally grown up. Shut up!

  Safar knew exactly what I was talking about. I assumed it was because the pages and their discovery had been big news. She then, unbidden, said that stolen pages from that Gospel had been rumored for years but that it seemed impossible that they’d actually been found. What the hell?

  “Pages?” I said. “We don’t know what the relic actually is yet,” I answered stiffly.

  She then asked if she could see it—the relic—apparently not believing me, so I explained that it was locked away, and that I was picking it up in the morning to take it to a Mr. Engles, an antiquities dealer. She raised an eyebrow in the most condescending way and glanced sideways at her dinner companion, Dr. Heliopolis Amarande, a pretentious, bookish man in a broad-striped suit, with eyebrows so gigantic they looked like a new life form. Alonzo and I also exchanged “what a bunch of weirdoes” looks like a couple of fifth graders.

  I thought to myself: A couple of glasses of wine and they expect me to spill the beans like a blind chef in a vegan restaurant. Don’t take the bait.

  I realized, however, that they were familiar with Engles, and that he was a dealer in rare manuscripts—not just any old antiquities.

  “Ah, so they are the missing pages!” Safar exclaimed. “But surely,” she added condescendingly, “you can’t mean you’d consider taking such a relic to a commercial book seller?”

  I smiled and nodded, just as patronizingly. “You bet.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine!” Realizing I’d turned into Trump’s seventy-five-foot-high impenetrable dream wall, she softened. “But I certainly would myself like to see … it.”

  I smiled, nodded, and thought: Not going to happen in this lifetime, lady. I should never have opened my mouth in the first place.

  Eyebrows, feigning casual disinterest, asked oh so nonchalantly, “Where did you say you’d stashed the … the … what is it you said it was?”

  “I didn’t.” I smiled just as condescendingly.

  This was like the Nuremberg trials with costumes.

  “But I thought you said it was in a safety-deposit box.” Eyebrows nudged me, trying to get me to give up more information.

  His suggestion, however, brought gales of laughter from the assorted oddballs. “No, but it is safely locked in the guarded safe at my newspaper office,” I lied, adding, “The rightful owner is meeting me at six tomorrow morning. Engles is leaving for Europe and will open up early for us.” I don’t even know why I kept lying, but for one thing I just wanted them to shut up and give me a reason to get out of there, and for another, the whole thing was beginning to not sit right with me. Yes, people are always curious about a big story, but something was creeping me out about their particular curiosity.

  Curry, sensing my discomfort, tried rescuing the evening by changing the subject, and talking about the mayor’s stance on racial inequality in the NYPD. The group of liberals was all over it like goop on tar, and I thought all done with quizzing me, too. Wrong.

  By the time dessert came, they started in again, so I made my excuses—baby needs to get back into his crib, very early morning appointment, blah, b
lah, and pushed my chair back to leave.

  Eyebrows leaned on his elbows and looked around the table to make sure he had everyone’s attention, clearly getting ready to say something profound. Instead he shockingly said, “Engles, you say, is meeting you at six A.M.? That one wouldn’t get up early for his own bris.”

  What an anti-Semite! I thought but let it go because the last thing I wanted to do was stay there and argue some more, but I was curious about one thing. “You know him personally then?”

  Councilman Curry cut in before Eyebrows could answer, which annoyed me, but he also must have had enough of these awful people himself. Eyebrows mumbled something about how he’d run into him or something, waving his hand dismissively.

  Curry had made his excuses right after I did, and following some air kissing and thank-yous the councilman and I escaped together. He even picked Terry up in his seat to walk me to my door down the hall.

  “I wanted to hear how Dr. Eyebrows really knew Engles,” I said as the door closed behind us.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, his long legs slowing down to keep pace with me. “I got so pissed at that anti-Semitic remark,” he fumed, “that I had to leave or really get into an argument with that pretentious pain in the ass.”

  I laughed out loud. “You got that right. Horrible guests. I’m very fond of the Judsons,” I said as we walked, “but they can be exhausting, too…”

  “They have tremendous energy, yes,” he answered, back to being the politician.

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know,” he said, giving me a look and a giant smile. We both laughed again.

  When we got to my door, he handed me back my baby and said, “Can I call you?”

  “Sure. You have a story to slip me?”

  “Politicians always have a story. But I don’t want to call you for business. I’d like to get together socially.” He paused as I just looked at him blankly, forcing him to play-smack his head. “Duh, Ms. Russo!” Damn, the guy was sexy.

  “Oh! You mean like a date?”

  “No.”

  “Ahh,” I said, somewhat embarrassed.

  He laughed out loud. “No, not like a date, an actual date.”

  “Got me!” I found myself ginning back. “I’d like that. But I warn you, I’m not allowed to let a source buy me dinner. We have to go dutch. So I’m a cheap date to boot.”

  “I want to take you out, for God’s sake,” he said. “I pay.” Then he did a double take. “Wait! You’re sure you’re a cheap date, though, right? Otherwise it’s off.”

  We laughed and said our good nights. This guy was funny as well as smart. Oh boy. So why then was I feeling guilty? Pantera was dead and nothing I could do would bring him back. Still, no one would ever replace him.

  Hey, idiot! You have to start at least putting your toe back in the water.

  Nice self pep talk but the truth was that nothing I could do would make me stop pining for Pantera, loving him, wanting him.

  I carried Terry into his room, deciding not to wake him but to put him right into his crib without changing his probably wet overnight diaper since he was fast asleep.

  I wish I could get Terry boy to conk out like that when he wasn’t at the neighbors’ apartment, I thought, gently placing him down and putting his blanket over him.

  As I was removing my makeup I saw something remarkable—shocking even—in the bathroom mirror: Me. I looked relaxed, pleased even.

  Huh. A date.

  I got cozy in bed and picked up my cell and called Roy. I wanted to see how his date had gone. I knew he’d be thrilled to know I sort of had one planned, too. Roy’d been almost as bad as Donald about the mysterious Pantera. “He sounds like a jerk for letting himself get killed,” he’d say, especially when he’d knocked back a few.

  “And you don’t know your ass from your elbow,” I’d answer back. Very mature, Roy and me.

  Roy didn’t pick up. It was still fairly early: 10:15. Damn though, I wanted to dish with him about the weirdoes, the hunk, and, well, all of it. I was also desperate to find out how his Mr. Zoosk had turned out.

  But I just couldn’t keep my eyes open for some reason. I conked out, but the last thought I had was: He must be a hottie or Roy would be home by now. Or maybe he is home—with Mr. Zoosk. We both deserve a little joy about now …

  9

  The phone rang at six o’clock, waking me out of a near-coma of bad dreams. Again it was freezing and I pulled the covers up and reached for my cell, vaguely aware that the baby was not crying to be fed, but the ringing phone immediately set my brain into panic mode. Dad, Mom, Africa, accident, sick, stroke, coma, dead.

  It was nearly as bad. “Ali,” Roy’s panicked voice screeched out. “Fuck.”

  Zoosk. Rape. Beaten. Sex tape. Robbed. “Oh my God, Roy. Zoosk?”

  “No. They say they now think the old man was killed.”

  “What? Who?”

  “They say they got a tip that he was smothered.”

  “What?”

  “Homicide!”

  “Who, the cops?”

  “Yeah. They didn’t say they think it’s me, but I think they think it’s me. They said somebody offed the old bastard with a pillow while he was in his bed in the living room. Jesus, I sound like Clue.”

  “I asked you a hundred times if you’d killed him and you swore to me you didn’t. You didn’t, right?”

  “I didn’t. I swear. I wanted to. But I didn’t.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “They want me in for questioning. That can’t be good. I just got in and there was this voice message. Some Nassau County detective saying they want me in for questioning.”

  “You just got in? Did you spend the night with Mr. Zoosk?”

  “No. He was a creep. He had read that I was the firefighter that inherited a bundle. Suddenly I was his dream man. I’m too old for this shit. I’m too old, too tired, and now I’m in trouble for no Goddamned reason.”

  “Calm down, OK? But well, where were you all night, then?”

  “Gee, Ma,” he said sarcastically, “I was depressed, so I grabbed my board and went out to Gilgo to catch some waves.”

  “Like you said, you’re too old for that shit. Jesus, do you have no regard for your own safety? So you went out alone. In the middle of the night on the most deserted stretch of beach on the eastern seaboard to surf all night.”

  “Yeah. Surfline was reporting moderate to high so I went. That’s what I do when I can’t sleep. I was upset about, well…”

  “I know, but now you’ve got bigger problems than some online gold digger, surfer boy. The cops. I’m sure they’re just fishing. Some stupid neighbor with a grudge or something.”

  “They want me to go in to answer a few questions.”

  “You don’t have to go in, you know.”

  “But I figure I should, ya know—so they know I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “Bullshit. And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t go in, because you do have nothing to hide. Don’t go.”

  “I’m going.”

  “Oy vey, what a pain in the ass. OK, Roy, I can’t talk you out of this?”

  “No. I want to get it over with.”

  “All right, but play up your firefighter status and nine eleven. Got it? Don’t say much to the cops, but don’t seem uncooperative, either. I’ll call Mad Dog Rosenberg and I’ll call you right back.”

  “I need to lawyer up?”

  “You need to lawyer up. You know Mad Dog?”

  “Fred Rosenberg, the Mafia, gangsta lawyer? Jesus, Ali. Didn’t he defend Sunny ‘Hams’ and Way-Ren Hawkins?”

  “You bet your ass he did. Got them off, too. Dog owes me. I did him a couple favors and recommended some clients that upped his media profile if that is even possible.”

  “Well, I appreciate that, but shit. I’m just some schmuck head-case ex-firefighter. I can’t afford Mad Dog Rosenberg.”

  “You can afford anything now. Remember?”

 
; “Not yet. Who knows if ever. That tube is stolen property, remember?”

  “Whose stolen property? Some probably-dead-by-now Egyptian black marketeer from the 1970s who didn’t give a shit enough about the pages that he left them to rot in a bank vault in Hicksville, Long Island, for God’s sake!”

  “Still. A Mob lawyer? That wouldn’t look very good.”

  “Shut up. Somebody got to the cops good enough. You don’t want them digging up your old man, do you?”

  “Hell no,” he said, sucking in enough air to fill a Macy’s balloon on Thanksgiving.

  “Just hold tight. I’ll call you back,” I said, hanging up.

  Enter the columnist’s conundrum: What do you do when a friend becomes the story? Do you use your access to him/her to further your career with exclusives that favor your pal because you want to help? Do you recuse yourself because it is clearly a conflict of interest? Do you stay neutral and if you feel the friend is guilty, do you write that? Do you encourage your friend to spill only to you because you have his back? Or do you hide what you know, hoping the story will go away and your friend won’t suffer needless humiliation?

  If O.J. had had a best friend columnist, would she have defended him in print or on TV? Immediately these and other crazy thoughts flew into my mind. Could I be as objective as the great Ann Rule had been when she discovered that she had unknowingly been sitting next to and had befriended serial killer Ted Bundy when they were colleagues at a suicide hotline in Seattle?

  Screw it. I’d kill for Roy, no pun intended.

  So I called Mad Dog. Dog’s personal trainer answered his cell and said the man himself was deep into squats with hundreds of pounds and he’d call me back. Dog became a power lifter the day after he recovered from getting beaten up in seventh grade in Jackson Heights for being “the skinny Jew kid.”

  All this had happened, I realized, before I’d even gotten out of bed. Jesus. I took my nightgown off during the night. I remembered being very hot, although now it was very cold. What the hell kind of champagne was that anyway? I put on some sweats and socks and tiptoed past the baby’s room, listening at the door. All quiet on the East Side front. In the kitchen I warmed up a bottle and walked into his room. It was really freezing in there again, but the gaffer’s tape had held tight.