Marlene gave him a sour look. "Since when do you quote editorials in the New York Times? Are we going to start believing the same paper that labeled you KKKarp?"
"I don't," he replied. "That paper lost its credibility a long time ago…after its liberal agenda left the editorial page and started showing up on page one. But a lot of people believe everything they read."
"I remember when the confession story broke last spring, there was a sidebar article about the victim," Marlene said. "Liz Tyler. Apparently, she suffered permanent brain damage that affected her speech, and she also has amnesia-she can't remember a thing about the attack or the assailants. She's like an 'inspirational speaker' that these rape-awareness groups trot out, but really, her life was pretty much ruined. She got divorced after the trial and lost custody of her little girl…something to do with a suicide attempt."
"I thought it was the Coney Island Five, not Four," Karp mused. "And why does the press always have to come up with idiotic names for these things? Like they're sports teams."
"Because it sells newspapers," Marlene replied. "And it was five, but one of them flipped, copped a plea, and testified against his comrades. If I remember correctly, he was later killed in a gang shooting."
"In Brooklyn?" Karp frowned. He couldn't recall the incident.
"No, somewhere in California. The story I read when this other joker confessed said the cops didn't think it had anything to do with this case. Just a drive-by…wrong time, wrong place."
Karp reached up and grabbed his wife's hands that still rested on his shoulders. "Sorry about Robin and Pam," he said. "I know you liked them."
Marlene withdrew her hands from his grip and moved around to sit down, elbows on the table and chin in her hands. She sighed.
Karp realized the conversation had just changed direction; this wasn't about the Coney Island case. "What's up, babe?"
She sighed again. "Nothing really. I just promised Dad that I'd stop by this morning to help a little with Mom, and I'm just not in the mood."
Karp waited to see if she wanted to go on. Marlene came from a close-knit Italian family and as the youngest, it had fallen to her to do most of the looking out for her aging parents. Despite her tough exterior, when it came to her mother and father she was still a little parochial school girl who was unsettled by the thought of her parents getting old. She tried to hide it, but he knew that she was disturbed to distraction by her mother's slow surrender to Alzheimer's and her father's growing inability to cope emotionally with his wife's ailment. Going to visit her parents at their home in Queens-formerly a pleasant experience that she'd welcomed as often as she could get away-was now something she avoided if possible. Only to beat herself up with guilt afterward.
Although he already knew how she'd answer, Karp suggested, "Call and say you can't make it. Find a better day…when you're feeling up to it."
Marlene shook her head. "No. Dad needs to get out of the house for a few hours. And there really aren't any 'better days.' In fact, it seems that she gets a little worse every day, and he gets a little angrier." She wiped at the tears that had formed in her eyes and smiled at him. "The boys still sleeping?"
He nodded. "Ever since the holiday break began, they've been staying up all night and sleeping until noon."
"Do you still have to go in today?"
He nodded again. "Yeah, I have a meeting with the next mayor of our fair city that he wanted at a time when there weren't a lot of eyes around…especially the press."
Marlene looked surprised. "The new mayor of Gotham wants to thank Batman for handing him the election by taking the Joker, Andrew Kane, out of the picture?"
Karp tried out his best comic book superhero voice. "No, ma'am. His honor knows that the Caped Crusader was simply doing what needed to be done in the interest of justice and the American way." It wasn't a very good impression, so he dropped the voice and continued, "It's nothing. He just wants a little quiet time to more than likely run the latest anticrime public relations campaign by me."
"Want me to call for the Batmobile?" she asked.
"No thanks, Cat Woman," he said. "I think I'll fly. I'm not fitting in my bat tights like I used to and can use the exercise."
3
Atleast there's no wind,Karp thought as he left the five-story building on the corner of Grand and Crosby that housed the family loft. Sometimes gales blew up off the harbor and funneled down the stone canyons with such force that it could be difficult to walk. During the winter, the winds stabbed through the thickest coat like ice hooks, and the gray, overcast sky could make it seem colder yet.
Even on a day like this one, when the skies were bright blue and the air still, the temperature could dangle in the single digits. Karp pulled his long, dark-blue wool peacoat tighter around his neck and tugged a Russian Cossack hat down over his ears as far as it would go. The boys had bought him the hat for his birthday, and at the time he'd thought privately that he looked ridiculous in it and would never wear the thing. But now he was grateful for its protection and wished it could also cover his nose as he strode quickly south across Grand Street.
Despite the bite in the air, the walk was not an entirely unpleasant one. A few last snowflakes floated in the sunlight like leftover confetti from a parade and lent an air of authenticity to the Christmas decorations that hung in the various shop and loft windows along his route.
Karp loved this time of year with the wreaths and ribbons and the Hanukkah candles in the windows. Even the string of blinking lights the Chinese butcher at the corner of Centre and Canal had dangled around the row of plucked ducks in the viewing case brought back fond memories of holiday strolls with his parents to look at the lights and listen to the carolers in his Brooklyn neighborhood. He made a mental note to take the boys and Marlene, and maybe Lucy, if she made it home for the holidays, ice-skating beneath the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and to gawk like tourists at the holiday scenes in the windows along Fifth Avenue.
Centre Street on a chill Sunday morning was quiet, with only a few people scurrying from one destination to the next. Karp reflected that most of the wiser members of the public were hunkered down. But as he drew near Worth Street he saw that a small crowd of people, including several wearing dark blue coats with NYPD stenciled on the back, were gathered around a man who stood on a milk crate.
As Karp drew closer, he realized that the speaker was Dirty Warren, the guy who ran the newsstand where he usually bought his Times before heading into the courthouse at 100 Centre Street, which also housed his office. He would have recognized the vendor even if he couldn't see the long, pointed nose that protruded from the orange ski mask that otherwise revealed only a set of watery blue eyes beneath thick glasses and a blue-lipped mouth. It was the mouth that gave the owner away, not its appearance but what came out of it.
Dirty Warren had received his nickname, the only name Karp knew him by, because he suffered from Tourette's syndrome, a short circuit in his brain that was manifested by profanity-laced speech the likes of which was rarely heard away from sailors' bars. Karp sometimes suspected that Warren took advantage of his affliction to hurl invective at people he might not otherwise have dared confront. But proving it was difficult-sort of like demanding that someone in a wheelchair stand up to prove that he was indeed handicapped.
As he stood on top of the milk crate, Dirty Warren's diatribe had attracted the usual street people in their colorful array of castoff garments and Salvation Army blankets, as well as a few curious tourists, who stood in slack-jawed amazement at the man's dexterity with foul language.