Jerome Charyn - Bronx Noir

“He’s my whole advertising budget — zero down for an exclusive on The Assassination Show ,” says Lewis. “One story in one New York paper and — whammo! — everybody and his brother are providing us free publicity.”

Nutsy gets excited.

“The dough he don’t spend for ads, it’s that much more for us,” he says. “Jeez, I’d like to see the frat boy meet up with some permanent violence. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“I’m not going there,” I tell Nutsy, who now has a pair of blue veins throbbing on his temples. “And I’m surprised you’re all speaking to me like you are. In the past, you’ve been circumspect. Which I appreciate.”

“If I catch your drift,” says the Pipe, “you shouldn’t worry, because Blake here says free speech is legal under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

Charlie says, “We come here this early in the a.m. out of respect for you, Mr. Katz. We don’t want to do nothing without your blessing. Besides which, we’re cutting you in.”

Blake makes like the canary again. With all that’s going for him, he doesn’t need my blessing and he doesn’t need to make an elevator pitch. Hollywood’s going to be showering him with money for the honor of underwriting the minimal costs of The Assassination Show.

I put my head in my hands.

The deal that’s making my scalp hurt is this: Starting with George W. Bush, a couple of hand-held cameras record the pungent conversations of three alleged hoodlums from the Bronx who are plotting to assassinate the president of the U.S. of A., maybe with advice and counsel from their consigliere, which I haven’t decided yet.

Such a gag, everybody out there in TV Land is going to think. Which it is: a great circular joke starting with the misnomer “reality TV” and winding up right back to the truth of the phrase, which is a lie.

But since we don’t pay attention to the criminal whoppers that Monkey Boy and his crew tell us every day, why get our national panties in a twist over television fibs? Maybe you’ve noticed that from coast to coast, every TV news anchorman and giggly lady has the same sign-off nowadays: “We’ll see you here tomorrow night.” Really?

Some newspaper critic is bound to call Blake Lewis a hip, groundbreaking genius. I suppose he is. A smart person knows what smart people want. A genius knows what stupid people want.

Let’s say my clients don’t advance the plot anywhere near Monkey Boy during the ten weeks Lewis has got by way of network commitment to his groundbreaker. Tension will mount just the same. The Secret Service will go ballistic. The Christers will go as bonkers as Nutsy Nunzio. And you can rely on the members of Congress for their usual discernment and maturity in dealing with public controversy that gets them air time.

And at the end of an unsuccessful ten weeks’ hunt for Monkey Boy, Lewis simply recruits another pack of “technical advisors” to see about snuffing some other annoying potentate someplace else in the world. The tension mounts all over again. Pure genius.

As I mentioned, I have seen the series contracts Wendy has drafted. Five-percent commission on the tens of millions that Lewis stands to accrue for the worldwide premiere, followed by hundreds of millions more on the succeeding ten-week collections, followed by millions more for repeat performances and millions more for spin-off rights…

…Well, doing the math, even on Wendy’s small-fry projects, I just about fainted.

No wonder the kid wants in on the racket. I’m thinking Mimi would be proud. But when she’s got all the dough anybody would ever need, will Wendy come home?

It’s now late afternoon and it’s a matter of hours before the bulldog edition of the Post is on the streets and the s-bomb hits the fan.

Lewis and his advisors and polyesters have gone to lunch at the Palomino and come back, to where Rosary is entertaining them with the story of chicken man that I mentioned.

“Sometimes I think there’s a very big neon sign floating over this office,” she says, flirting shamelessly with Lewis. “It reads, Strange people — welcome .”

Anyhow, she relates the referred case of a cash-paying client from Westchester who was nabbed in a naughty motel by the Bronx vice squad. The cops found him bare naked under the covers and happy about it. There were no girls in the cheap room with him, or boys. But there were maybe a dozen chickens from La Marquéta under the Queensboro Bridge.

“The live birds are there to boil and pluck,” says Rosary, blushing in Lewis’s gaze. “It’s against the sanitary laws of the city, but there you are.”

“Is your name actually Rosemary?” Lewis asks her.

“Oh, it used to be. I go to mass every day, so I changed to Rosary. J’you like it?”

“It’s charming.”

Rosary continued with the story of the suburban geek, a CEO called Bill Cunningham. What Cunningham did to violate his secret aviary caused the sheets and walls and carpeting to become sticky with chicken blood, tomato-red turning to rust-brown. Little chicken heads were in a heap by the bathroom doorway, where Cunningham’s pinstripes were carefully hung on the knob.

The birds had put up a spirited fight, especially the roosters. There were feathers everywhere.

The D.A. indicted Cunningham for animal cruelty. The geek was sorely embarrassed in front of his golf club buddies, but they rallied around him in support of a sick man. Cunningham kept his mouth shut like I told him.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I said at the concluding day of trial. Then I said what I always say: “I’ll be short. No — I’m already short, I’ll be brief.”

A laughing jury is not a hanging jury.

I had earlier produced the sole defense witness — Juan Baltasar, proprietor of a chicken stand at La Marquéta. Baltasar testifled that Cunningham had been particular about his purchase, insisting that the chicken heads be severed before paying.

“Thus, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Cunningham had his way with dead chickens — not live chickens. Therefore, he violated no law, because a man cannot commit cruelty against a fowl corpse.” I spun around on my heels to address the assistant D.A. at the prosecution table, a sallow-faced guy with the likeability factor of an IRS auditor. “Case closed,” I said.

Then I addressed the good jurors and the judge.

“I would only add my personal promise, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Cunningham — with not so much as a speeding ticket heretofore and who is, as you have heard, innocent before the law — will nevertheless enroll in psycho-sexual counseling at a mental hospital in White Plains. He is a deeply disturbed man, my friends. Yet who among us would care to stand before the scales of justice to hear of our own sins of thought — and actions for which we were never ourselves apprehended. For what it is worth, Mr. Cunningham will dwell among his own disturbed kind as he seeks redemption, beyond the reach of the dear hearts and gentle people of the Bronx. This I promise, on the grave of my own sweet wife.” I turn to the bench. “How’s that, judge?”

He raps down his gavel and Cunningham scrams out of court, never to be seen in the Bronx again, right as the judge says, “Whatever.”

Hearing Rosary tell the story again gives me an idea for the limited counsel I suddenly decide to give Nutsy and the Pipe and Pencil Man. I hand one of their polyesters a couple of hundred bucks and tell him, “Buy some groceries, then hit the mattresses. Capice? ” Then I give a nod to Lewis to come with me. And before the polyester leaves my office, I tell him, “Send me another button and I’ll return him with Blake here — blindfolded, so he can’t spill the location where he can film. Same goes for me if I decide to show up. I don’t want to know from the mattresses.”