Robert Tanenbaum: Resolved

"I notice you're not in there."

"No. I'm not one of the boys. I'd cramp their style, and Jack deserves a couple of hours of fun. It's a big day for him, too."

"Why aren't you?" asked Murrow. "One of the boys. I always wondered about that. You're a boy and you've been here since the year one."

"It's a long story."

"We have time."

"It's longer than that. Let's just say they don't really trust me. Let's just say…"

The office door burst open and a woman walked in. Murrow stared up at her, higher up than he ever had at a woman before, for she was over six feet tall, even without the thick-heeled knee boots she wore. She also had on a knee-length dark leather coat lined with grayish fleece and a flat gray wool hat, dotted with melting snow.

"So, here's where you're hiding!" she exclaimed. "I should have known. And a secret drinker, too, I see. Who's your friend, and will he pour me a shot of… what is that, cognac?"

"You'll have to ask him," said Karp. "Murrow, this is Ariadne Stupenagel, a friend of my wife's. A reporter." His tone on this last word was what he might have used saying "pedophile."

Murrow stood up and shook hands with the woman. A man of moderate size, he felt as if he were back in third grade. He tried not to stare, but this was difficult; she seemed to invite staring: the bottle green eyes, heavily made up with mascara, shadow, and cynicism; the big beak; the enormous, ravenous-looking mouth slashed with orange-pink lip gloss. She whipped off her hat and flung it onto a filing cabinet, spraying droplets.

"I'm sorry, we only have two glasses," Murrow said.

"Oh, that's not a problem," replied Stupenagel, reaching into the capacious canvas sack she carried and coming out with a heavy cut-glass Old-Fashioned tumbler. As he poured, Murrow noticed that the bag was stenciled with Cyrillic lettering and was extremely dirty.

"Absent friends," said Stupenagel, raising her glass. She drank deeply, sighed. "Oh, this is good. I should come here more often." She plopped herself down on the couch and stretched out her legs, which were draped in a full shin-length skirt of black wool. Murrow estimated that these legs were very nearly as long as he was.

"I thought you were in Afghanistan," said Karp.

"Oh, I was, I was, but it's winter and the facilities are not all one might wish. They should only stage wars in warm climates. Plus the men won't talk to you, and how many stories can you read about the plight of Afghan women? So I'm back in what I think I now have to call my homeland. How's Marlene?"

The abrupt change of subject was a reporter's trick, but it was a prosecutor's trick, too, and Karp was not discommoded. "She's fine. You should go see her."

"She's still with that kennel business out on the ass end of the island?"

"The dog farm, yes. Business is booming, I hear. Security dogs are a hot item nowadays."

"I'm not a dog person myself. I hear you're breaking up."

"Where did you hear that?"

"Around. I'm a reporter. Is it true? Because if it is, I want to get on the Karp short list."

"You're supposed to be her friend, Stupenagel."

"I am! Ciampi is my dearest pal in the whole wide world, but do you know how few men on the planet there are that I don't have to look down at their bald spot? Of those, eliminate the brainless, the evil, the smelly, the faggots, the needle dicks, what have you got left? You and Bill Bradley, and Bill turned me down already. Ciampi's only five-four. It's not fair."

"No, it's not, and as flattering as it is, I have to tell you I'm not on the market." An image of what it would be like to be in bed with Ariadne Stupenagel crossed unbidden across Karp's interior TV. He had to look away from her then, and his eyes fell on Murrow, who was staring at them, as if at a show.

"I believe Murrow is single," said Karp. "You could fit him with lifts."

"Stilts," said Stupenagel. "But he certainly is cute," she said, turning her gaze full upon him. Murrow felt warmth rising on his neck. She added, "Mm, yes. A lickable item. Maybe you'd like to sit on my lap, Murrow?"

"Yes, I would," said Murrow, "but my Mummy said I mustn't."

A booming man's laugh from Stupenagel, in which, after a pause, the men joined. Karp recalled Marlene once saying that Stupe was the most infuriating and also the most uninfuriating person she knew, someone who would both steal your shoes and give you the shirt off her back.

"In that case, you can pour me another drink," she said. "Oh, now, this is cozy. A blizzard outside, great changes in the DA, and the death of the year. You know where I was when the story of the century broke a couple of blocks away? In Havana. They wanted me to check if Fidel was actually still alive."

"Did you fuck him?" asked Karp.

"Puh-lease! He could barely get it up in eighty-five. I never worked so hard for a story in my life."

"Yes, Murrow," said Karp, "if you succumb to Stupenagel's charms, you'll be able to share STDs with some of the world's great leaders, past and present."

"That was unkind," she pouted. "See, that's what happens to nice men when they're not getting it regular, they become unkind. Fill him up again, Murrow. Anyway, when Nine Eleven hit I realized there was no point in coming to the city, because everyone was here, so I hopped a flight to London and then to Pakistan, because it was obvious the story was going to be there. I heard you had quite a summer, by the way. Escaped maniacs…?"

"Felix Tighe."

She said, "Yeah, Tighe. I remember the original case. I was in Guat at the time, but I read what the wire services had on it. I recall thinking that it was hard getting all excited about a couple or three people getting killed in New York when we had them in windrows along every road in the country. That was the guy that snatched Marlene, or was that his brother?"

"The brother," said Karp. "And the mom. She was running a Satanic pedophile ring out of a fancy day-care center. The brother was a feeb, and she'd trained him to pick up stray little girls off the streets, like a Labrador retriever. She was aiming to make Felix the next prince of darkness, or whatever, but he liked freelance evil instead. Go have children."

"I thought that whole Satanic ritual in the day-care center was a load of horseshit. Like an urban legend."

"It is," said Karp. "But there's always the exception. One giant alligator really does live down in the sewers, and one poodle really did go into the microwave. This one was it for the Satanic day cares. We never tried the case. The old lady killed herself in custody and the brother died, too, and the only other witnesses were the kids, and I wasn't going anywhere near that."

"Marlene plugged him, didn't she?" asked Stupenagel. "Now it's coming back. God, how the years fly! This was when you were still a rug rat, Murrow. I might have dandled you on my knee. I might still, if you're lucky. Yeah, now that I think about it, that was Marlene's first hit, wasn't it?"

Karp was silent.

"Yeah, it was. But not anywhere near the last. What's the count now, or don't you keep track? No comment? Oh, right, this is talking rope in the house of the hanged, isn't it?" She slapped her cheek. "Naughty, naughty Stupenagel- again! Murrow, this is why I so infrequently get invited back, except regrettably, by horny short men. There was something else about the mother, too, wasn't there? Didn't get a lot of play?"

"Felix was screwing her," said Karp. "They used to meet in a hotel, I understand, her in disguise, him in some kind of trance. It came up in pretrial, the defense feeling out how we would sit with an insanity plea, but Felix put the kibosh on it. 'It never happened,' says Felix, 'my mom was a saint.' I think Ray Guma has to get credit for the best line: 'And here I thought that "mean motherfucker" was just a figure of speech.' "