Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17)

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “My sister is not crazy—at least not legally,” Giancarlo replied thoughtfully. “She definitely knows the difference between right and wrong. Besides, it could just be the manifestation of post-traumatic stress syndrome after nearly being slaughtered by a homicidal maniac and then almost murdered by a sheriff in New Mexico. Other than that, she’s as normal as you are.”

  Zak, having run out of anything clever to say himself, backed up his brother. “Yeah, and take that back or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? Physically assault me? I’d call the cops and you’d be locked up and then your dad would have to prosecute you and send you off to prison,” Rachel said and stuck her tongue out.

  “And she speaks about sixty or something languages,” Giancarlo continued in the defense of his sister.

  “Speaking in tongues is demonic,” said Ira, a timid boy but acknowledged by all but Rachel as the class’s religious scholar.

  “She doesn’t speak in tongues, you idiot, she knows other languages—French, Chinese, Samoan,” Zak shouted and then stuck his tongue out at the girl.

  While this was going on, Karp had looked on with slack-jawed amazement at how quickly things had deteriorated. Just like my staff meeting, he thought. “Okay, okay, enough, this debate has veered off into the spectacularly ridiculous,” he said. “I wasn’t talking about Solomon or Abraham or even Bob Dylan, although they were all good answers and great Jews. Did you know that Positively 4th Street was written just a few blocks from my home? Never mind.” He turned on the slide projector. “The Jew I was talking about was…”

  The first slide appeared on the screen. It was El Greco’s painting of Jesus upsetting the tables of the money changers in front of the temple in Jerusalem. “…Jesus of Nazareth,” he said.

  “Jesus!” Ira exclaimed in something near to a panic.

  “Isn’t he a Christian?” Zak asked.

  “He was a Jew first…everyone knows that,” Rachel said. “Mr. Karp, are you sure this is appropriate for this class?”

  “Sure, why not?” Karp replied. “He never stopped being a Jew. He was born a Jew and died a Jew and somewhere in between being born and dying, he delivered a powerful enough message that a lot of Jews, as well as a lot of other folks, came to believe that he was the Messiah. But as Jews, we considered him a rabbi—like Rabbi Yakowitz—and a great scholar of the Torah. That’s all he is in this painting by El Greco called Purification of the Temple, a Jewish carpenter and rabbi.”

  “What’s he doing?” Zak asked, hoping for a good riot story.

  “Well, this is during Pesach, or Passover—which, as we know from our studies, is the eight days in the spring when we celebrate the freedom and exodus of the Israelites from Egypt—and Jesus was upset that the money changers were conducting business in the Temple of Herod, which was supposed to be a place to go to pray. He was also upset that sacrificial animals were being sold there—‘the blood of innocents,’ he said—and the money changers were part of that business.

  “The point is that this attack on the establishment was one in a series of acts of civil disobedience by Jesus that would put him in conflict with the people in charge,” Karp said.

  “The Romans,” Zak said helpfully.

  “Yes, but almost more so the Jewish leaders—the old rabbis and holy men,” Karp said. “These acts frightened them because they knew he was morally right.”

  “Bet he wouldn’t have done it if he knew he was going to get nailed to a cross,” Zak said.

  “Really, Zak?” Karp asked. “It’s an interesting question. Christians say that Jesus knew what lay ahead of him and chose his path anyway. But let’s say for the sake of argument that he didn’t know. He was a carpenter, he could have settled down, married, had children, and lived happily ever after. But there was something inside of him—some say it was God—that made him do the things that would get him crucified. Whether it came from God or was just part of who he was, what it amounted to was that he had integrity.”

  Karp paused. He hadn’t intended to use that word, but now that it was out, it seemed right. Jesus had integrity. He pressed the button on the slide projector and the next image appeared on the screen, El Greco’s painting The Crucifixion.

  “Sometimes having integrity can cost you everything you have, even your life.”

  The class sat in silence, until Giancarlo asked, “What does INRI mean?”

  Pleased that his son noticed, Karp pointed for everyone else to the inscription on the top of the cross. “It’s short for the Latin Iesvs Nazarenvs Rex Ivdaeorvm, which is the title a guy named Pontius Pilate, who was sort of the Roman judge for that region, gave Jesus.”

  “What’s it mean?” Rachel asked, now as intrigued as the others.

  “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The Romans lacked the letter J and used I instead. They also used V instead of U. It’s an interesting part of the story. Pilate had the inscription placed on the cross after he allowed the rabble—a Jewish rabble I might add—to take Jesus to be crucified. One of the Jewish leaders asked Pilate to change the inscription to ‘He said, “I am King of the Jews.” ’ But Pilate replied, ‘What I have written, I have written,’ which was a way of him saying that he believed it to be true.”

  “But why did the Jewish leaders want to kill Jesus,” Ira said; he seemed about to cry.

  “Because they were afraid, Ira,” he said. “Afraid of how a man of integrity made them examine their own conduct.”

  “What about Pontius Pilate?” Giancarlo said. “In the Bible, he didn’t think Jesus had committed any crimes. He told them that, but in the end he let them have him.”

  Good point, Karp thought, but old PP was just the most famous judge who gave into popular sentiment rather than doing the right thing. There would be many others.

  “You’re right,” Karp replied. “Pontius Pilate wasn’t a good fellow. He was supposed to keep the peace and watch out for rebels who popped up from time to time, like the Maccabees, whose rebellion we just finished celebrating at Hanukkah. His job would have been easier if Jesus had just preached against Roman law, but Jesus didn’t. All he talked about was living in peace and people loving their neighbors and praising God for all the good things in life.”

  “Then why’d he do it?” Ira wailed.

  Ira’s emotional outburst got the rest of the class tittering until Karp brought up his hand to silence them. “Actually, Ira, that’s the best question of the night—and the answer is the whole point of tonight’s lesson,” he said. “Pontius Pilate gave in to the mob and the Jewish leaders because he lacked integrity. Jesus, on the other hand…,” he said, turning toward the painting on the screen, “in those times, just a Jewish carpenter and scholar, had integrity.”

  “Look where it got him,” Zak pointed out.

  “Ah, yes, but look how he’s remembered today by an awful lot of people,” Karp replied. “To some, he’s the Son of God. And even others, including Jews and Muslims, see him as a great man. But how is Pontius Pilate remembered? As a corrupt coward who wouldn’t stand up for justice, a man who washed his hands of a murder.”

  The class was silent for a minute until Giancarlo quietly said, “It must have hurt.”

  Karp looked up at the painting, letting his eyes wander to the nails that protruded from the hands and feet. “Yes, it hurt,” he said. “Whether he was just a Jewish carpenter with a different way of looking at the world, or the Son of God, he had to go through the pain and suffering. He could have backed out at the last minute, you know. Pontius Pilate gave him the opportunity to renounce his claims to being the Messiah. But he told them, ‘I am what I am,’ and sealed his fate.”

  Hitting the lights and turning off the projector, Karp added, “My dad used to put it another way, sometimes, quoting William Shakespeare. It’s from the play Hamlet and is basically the advice of a father, Polonius, to his son, Laertes, when he tells him, ‘This above all: to thine own self be true.’ I think if you follow that one piece of wisdom, you will
find that you are people of integrity, too.”

  “And end up like Jesus?” Zak asked.

  Karp looked at his son. Sometimes he wondered what would become of this boy. Like Marlene, he sometimes seemed to have a foot on one path that led to trouble, and other times one foot on a path that led away from trouble. “Maybe,” he said. “But there are worse ways to end up. You could end up as a heroin junkie. Or people may know you as a liar and a cheat and want nothing to do with you. Or you could be a judge who sends an innocent man to the gallows, all because you lacked integrity. You could be the next Pontius Pilate. Or you can choose to live your life with integrity, like Jesus, and make a real difference in this world.”

  The class was quieter than normal when they filed out a few minutes later. Karp was certain he’d hear from their parents about his choice of topics. But he thought that, as Christmas approached, it didn’t hurt for Jewish kids to learn that all the fuss was being made about one of their own.

  12

  ABOUT THE TIME KARP AND THE BOYS HAD BEEN ARRIVING at the synagogue, Marlene’s cab pulled up to the curb outside Ariadne Stupenagel’s walk-up loft, which occupied a corner of the fifth floor of a turn-of-the-century brick warehouse between Avenues A and B on East Thirteenth Street in the East Village. Lucy and John had arrived only ten minutes before she’d had to leave—much of that time spent chattering with and holding her daughter, so there hadn’t been much time to grill Jojola.

  The Indian police chief had given her the same “no big deal” dream answer when she asked what brought him to town. But unlike her husband, she knew that dreams were taken seriously by Jojola. And if this dream was enough to get him away from his beloved home in the desert, it was because he deemed it serious indeed. But he’d also told her they’d talk later about it “when there’s more time and the kids aren’t around.”

  “Madam, we are here.” The cabdriver was half turned in his seat, obviously anxious to get on to his next fare.

  Marlene glanced at the New York City cab driver’s permit hanging from the dash. Hassan Ahmed. She wondered if he was sympathetic to Islamic terrorists and immediately felt ashamed at the thought. That’s what fear does to you, she thought as she handed her money through the partition. Divides and conquers. “Keep the change,” she said and hoped he wouldn’t know the extra-large tip was paying off a guilty conscience.

  “Thank you, madam,” Ahmed replied with a smile. “God bless you.”

  “And you,” she said, exiting the cab.

  As Ahmed sped off, she stood for a moment looking up at Stupenagel’s building. It wasn’t much on the outside; its dingy mustard-colored bricks had been surrendered to the neighborhood’s graffiti artists, and the rusty metal fire escapes looked more ornamental than practical. But otherwise the building and the surrounding buildings had that look of the newly gentrified, as the upper middle class moved into yet another run-down ethnic neighborhood and caused the rents to skyrocket. There were no weeds in the repaired sidewalks and staircases; the small cement basketball court across the street had a fresh coat of paint, and the playing area was swept clean of the broken bottles, beer cans, and syringes she’d seen there in years past. Many of the windows had flower boxes, now dormant in winter but indicating a certain pride of ownership; in a window of the building across the street, she could see the black fin of a baby grand piano cruising above the sill.

  Stupenagel, who’d moved into the neighborhood years before it was safe to do so, complained that it had been a lot more entertaining before the junkies got chased out and the Dominicans couldn’t afford to live there and blast salsa from their car stereos. True, there were many fewer reports of robberies, rapes, burglaries, and domestic violence, as well as an increased police presence due to the income level of the new owners, “but it’s all been sort of…I don’t know…sterilized,” her friend had said sadly.

  The journalist was proud of the fact that she had been living there before Beat poet Allen Ginsberg bought the corner loft opposite from hers. She was there when he died in April 1997. “I got invited to the party when he was dying in the back bedroom; it was all very Buddhist,” Stupenagel told her whenever she got the chance. “All sorts of important literary and arts people were there, like Phil Glass, Gregory Corso, Lucien Carr; Bill Burroughs showed up the next day. Did I ever tell you about the day Allen came over with Bob Dylan? They were working on a collaboration putting Allen’s poetry to music and wanted my opinion. I’ve seen his ghost, you know…Allen’s, that is, wandering around in the hallway, reciting ‘Howl’…‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…’”

  A large black-and-white poster of Ginsberg sitting naked in the lotus position greeted Marlene when Stupenagel opened the door. Catching her glance, the reporter said, “It’s a self-portrait, one of only fifty original prints from his private collection. I got it for a steal after helping his secretary, Peter Hale, catalog some of his recordings. Come in, come in, some old friends have joined us.”

  Marlene followed Stupenagel down the hallway, wondering what sort of mischief her old roommate had in store. A moment later, she knew, as she entered the living room and saw Robin Repass and Pam Russell drinking wine and chatting.

  “I think you know Robin and Pam,” Stupenagel said in her best hostess voice.

  Marlene shot her a dirty look but smiled with genuine affection at the two younger women when they stood up and moved quickly over to her. She embraced each of them, then stood back and asked, “So how are you two holding up?”

  Their smiles faded. “You’ve heard about what happened with our Coney Island case and the lawsuit?” Russell asked.

  “How could she not unless she’s been living in a cave,” Repass said.

  She was always the brash one, Marlene thought, Pam the polite counterpart. Together they’d been a dynamic team.

  “I’m holding up about as well as can be expected after being labeled a lying racist pig, losing my job, and being sued for every cent I’ve ever made and ever will make,” Repass said.

  “And then being told to bend over and take it,” Russell added, the unexpected sexual reference causing them all to burst out laughing.

  The laughter stopped abruptly at the sound of the front door opening and a man’s voice calling out, “Honey Buns, I’m home.”

  Ariadne jumped up to intercept the visitor but not before Gilbert Murrow entered the room with an armful of flowers and a handful of videos, which he promptly dropped when he saw that he and Honey Buns were not alone.

  Marlene bent over and picked up one of the videotapes. “Hmmm, a classic… Last Tango in Paris,”she said with an amused look on her face. “Should we remove the butter before we leave tonight?”

  Stupenagel plucked the video out of Marlene’s hands and gave it back to her boyfriend along with the other two she’d picked up. “Murry, sweetie, don’t you remember,” she said, relieving him of the flowers. “This was supposed to be boys night out. You’re supposed to go out with your guy friends, get drunk, go to strip bars and place folded dollar bills in G-strings, get all horny, and THEN come home. Remember? I was going to spend a quiet evening at home with my girlfriends, and then after I kicked them out, wait up for you.”

  “Oh…yeah,” Murrow said. “Sorry, thought I remembered this was movie night.” Only then did he get a good look at the women beyond Marlene and his girlfriend. His mouth and eyes opened wider. He quickly covered both with his hands. “See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. I don’t even want to know what’s going on here.” He spun on his heel and made for the front door.

  Stupenagel smiled at the other women. “I’ll be right back,” she said and rushed after Murrow. There was the sound of urgent whispers from the hall, a period of quiet, and then the door opened and closed. Stupenagel reappeared with her lipstick smeared, tucking her shirttail back into the waist of her skirt. “He’s such a sweetheart,” she said, her voice somewhat husky, “if a little forgetful. Now, where were we?”

&nbs
p; “Well, I for one was wondering about all the secrecy,” Marlene said.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Stupenagel replied.

  “Why? Because I might not want to be part of whatever story you’re working on?”

  Stupenagel looked hurt. “Sure, I like having the inside track on a juicy story. But believe it or not, I arranged this because I’d like to stop what I think is a huge injustice. I don’t know if you remember this, but I was the first reporter to write about what really happened to Liz Tyler on that beach. That was back when I was working for the Times. And I covered the trial from gavel to gavel. I guess you could say this is one of those stories that really stuck with me. I don’t know about this Villalobos guy—maybe he was there from the beginning, or came along during or after—but those other guys are guilty as sin.”

  “So what’s this have to do with me?” Marlene asked. When the other three women were silent, she shook her head. “Oh, no, I’m retired. No more private investigator, no more lawyer, no more vigilante shit. I’m a painter, a mother, and a housewife. Besides, aren’t you two being represented by Corporation Counsel?”

  “The office is, and by all appearances, Corporation Counsel is about to offer a large settlement to the plaintiffs,” Repass said dryly. “But we’re on our own as private individuals. The law allows such suits if we were ‘acting outside the constraints of our official duties.’ Apparently, the plaintiffs are alleging—and Corporation Counsel isn’t doing anything to say different—that our actions were so horrible that we can be sued for violating their civil rights.”

  “You need a good civil attorney,” Marlene advised.

  “Oh, come on, Marlene, there’s something going on here that requires more than a good civil attorney,” Stupenagel jumped in. “Robin and Pam, as well as a few good police officers and detectives, are being offered up as sacrificial lambs when the city, the NYPD, and the Kings County DA ought to be fighting this tooth and nail. I was thinking you might be willing to poke around a little. I’m working on some angles—a little bird told me something interesting I can’t divulge at this moment—but I don’t always have your…imagination…when it comes to getting to the bottom of things like this.”