Robert Tanenbaum - Resolved

"Oh, no way," said Karp instantly. "Rohbling was, in fact, a nut. I argued that he wasn't, but he was. We had an eleven-year-old a couple of years ago who killed both his parents, same thing. Also with a screw missing. But there is evil."

"You think so?" she said. "It depends on how you define evil. I had an interview once with a man who ordered the massacre of an entire village in Guatemala. He was right there watching his men murder old women and little kids. He had no regrets. He thought it was necessary to suppress the Communists. Slept like a baby. Wanted to sleep with me, too, although probably not like a baby."

"Did you let him?" asked Murrow.

Karp and Stupenagel both stared at him. The reporter laughed, that astounding bellow. "Why, Murrow, I thought you'd drifted off to bye-byes. What flattering curiosity, too! As a matter of fact, I didn't, but not because he was a brutal mass-murdering scumbag piece of shit. The problem was he had the most appalling bad breath; it was as if his conscience had crawled into his glottis and died. I have, however, shared my silky body with men who could have eaten that fellow for breakfast. I have unusual tastes…"- here she batted her thickly mascaraed eyelashes at Murrow and licked her lips in a parody of lasciviousness-"… which is probably why I'm not married and driving my little girls to soccer practice. My point, however, was that doing things that most of us would consider grossly evil seems to have no effect on the personality, precisely because no one really believes that anything they do is really evil. There's always a justifying excuse. Eichmann famously went to the gallows with the perfectly clear conscience of a man who just did his duty. Milosevic is outraged that the Hague tribunal thinks he did anything wrong. So evil is something we call other people, people we don't agree with, or else a word we use for a particularly gross violation of the law. Shooting a liquor store clerk is bad. Raping and murdering lots of little girls is evil. The first represents nothing but a difference in power: the winners get to say what's evil. The second is an essentially meaningless verbal enhancer, like 'heinous' or 'inhuman.' Or don't you agree?"

"I don't. Everyone knows right and wrong, no matter how much they rationalize it or deny it. Even the Nazis knew they were doing wrong, and they had a whole elaborate system for making thousands of murderers think they were doing the world a favor. But they kept it real dark, even to the end, and they denied that any of it took place." He paused. The word "evil" was not one he used in the courtroom; he didn't think it added anything to an argument, and it rarely crossed his lips in everyday speech. He had been surprised, just now, to hear the word slip out of his mouth. He continued, "Well, it's a religious rather than a legal term, isn't it? My daughter's take on it is that it's real and palpable, but then she believes in God and the devil. She thinks that what makes evil evil is the lie. Your guy really didn't massacre helpless people, he was fighting communism. The pedophile isn't really raping children because the children really like it. Every crook I ever met had an excuse. In fact, that's how we nail most of them. They're actually anxious to tell their sad story. How I didn't mean any harm. How she made me do it. Lucy thinks that demonic forces actually get into people and whisper this kind of shit into their heads, and that's why they do stuff that doesn't make any rational sense. Man kills wife, kids, self."

"It's a theory," said Stupenagel. "How is little Lucy, by the way? Not so little anymore. God, how the years fly! I don't know how I'd feel having a little time clock staring me in the face every day. My child is an adult? My child is fucking guys, having babies? Tick tock." She shuddered. "Or maybe not. Has she recovered?"

Karp didn't like to talk about what had happened to his daughter. "I guess. She seems all right. She goes to school in Boston. She just came back for the Christmas break."

"He tortured her, I heard. You must have used mucho chips to keep it out of the press."

"I did and I will continue to do so," he said coldly, and with his sternest look.

"Sor-ry. And you never actually found the scumbag?"

"The case was closed by forensic evidence."

"I heard someone left a cleaned skull in a plastic bag in a church."

"No comment."

"Oh, please! We're just talking. I heard there were little gnaw marks all over it."

"What part of 'no comment' didn't you understand, Stupenagel?"

"Okay, okay. So she's fine. Well, good. Any dish in her life, or is she still on that virginity kick?"

"You'd have to ask her," said Karp, with an increased chill in his tone, and gave her another and more intense blast of the Karp Stare. The reporter let her eyes slide away from his and chuckled. "Maybe I will. I assume she's still with the languages? How many does she know, now?"

"I don't know, fifty or sixty."

"Christ! Yet another thing to be envious about. Here I am traveling in obscure corners of the world and aside from French and Spanish I can barely order a drink or ask where's the bathroom. Speaking of which, where is it? I have to take a slash."

Karp told her. She unfolded herself from her chair like a complex doll. Karp was not surprised to see that, although she had drunk more than the two men put together, she did not weave or stagger.

"Don't go anywhere, boys," she called out. "This is starting to be fun." She slammed the door closed with a twitch of her hip.

"You're rolling your eyes, Murrow," said Karp. "Does that mean you're falling in love?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm totally smitten. Christ, what a monster! But I'll admit to a certain morbid fascination, like watching a crocodile eat a deer. Is she always like that?"

"As far as I know. According to my wife, she's utterly unreliable as a friend and entirely lacking in moral values, aside from bravery and fanatical devotion to journalism. She's very good, too. She gets the story. Marlene says she likes to be around Stupe because she's the only person she knows who makes her feel like a good person in comparison."

"Is she serious? About lusting after you?"

"I think so. We've had some odd moments over the years. The occasional grope. I always say, 'no, thanks,' and she takes it with a laugh, like now."

"What if you said 'yes, please'?"

"Oh, she'd be in the rack in a heartbeat. She has a kind of competitive thing with Marlene, from years back. Marlene apparently didn't put out much in college and Stupe was always stalking her boyfriends with sex."

"And they're still friends?"

"Yes. The human heart is mysterious. The heart has its reasons."

"You're waxing philosophical, boss."

"I'm waxing drunk. I may throw up on the governor. I believe that's what Brenda Starr in the girls' can is kind of hoping for."

"Is that a real danger?"

"I don't know. I doubt it. I'll probably nod off in a while, get up choking on vomit, stagger into the toilet and puke, and then emerge as a steely-eyed and sober public servant with a massive headache. It's my bon vivant mode. Is that a pitying look, Murrow?"

"No. But if you don't mind my saying so, you've had a rough time recently. Maybe you should take a break."

"I do mind your saying so," snapped Karp. "I'm fine. I can do my job fine."

Murrow got up. "Maybe I should take off."

"Sit down!" Karp ordered. "If you think I'm going to let you leave me alone, drunk, with the dragon lady of American journalism, you're nuts."

Murrow sat down. He poured himself another little drink.

A long silence ensued. In the distance telephones rang and there was an occasional metallic clang from the barely functioning heating system.

Marlene had not intended to attend Karp's coronation. She had avoided the city since Lucy's release from New York Hospital in September and thought she would be wrongfooted to appear as the Wife in her husband's moment of triumph. Also, she thought her wide reputation as an unindicted violent felon would not add luster to the occasion. But when she expressed these thoughts during a phone conversation with her daughter, she got an earful, including an accusation that her hesitance had nothing whatever to do with diffidence or finer feelings, but stemmed entirely from her monstrous narcissistic ego and her superstitious, moronic paranoia, the diatribe ending with the threat that if Marlene did not attend this party she would not be invited to Lucy's wedding. Marlene meekly acquiesced; she found she was willing to avoid present pain in the form of her daughter yelling at her even if it promised greater pain in the future: returning to the city, seeing her husband and children. So she'd become a moral coward, too. It didn't matter much. It was just days. When she thought about it, she realized she had gotten her wish. She was more and more like the dogs. She thought she might as well let Billy Ireland fuck her. Why not? She didn't care for the flirty tension anymore, it was too much like having a real personality. But she would only let him do her dog style. That would be most suitable. First, though, this trip to town.