Resolved (36 page)

 

“She's been gone a long time,” said Murrow. He was starting to feel the liquor, just a trace of blurriness, of fuzzy face, but he was far from drunk. Murrow was of the class, nearly extinct in the city, where children were taught to drink at their parents' table. He had been taking sherry or a light cocktail with his mother from the age of fourteen, and at Brown he had been famous for drinking men twice his size under the table. Karp was over twice his size, but not any kind of a drinker. He looked at his boss and regretted having brought the cognac, for he had not expected the arrival of the reporter, or that the afternoon would have, under her influence, degenerated into a debauch. Karp, he knew, had a tendency to be a little morose, even when cold sober. Murrow did not want to think about how he was going to get Karp into shape to meet the governor in the time remaining. He checked the bottle and glanced at his watch. He prayed for more snow, for blizzards, lightnings, earthquakes.

Karp observed Murrow glancing at his wrist. “Maybe she fell in. Maybe her bladder is the size of the Chrysler Building. Would you like to go to the ladies' and check?”

He spoke with unnatural slowness and deliberation. Murrow thought that Karp had no real idea how drunk he was. That could be a problem. He poured more cognac into his own glass, filling it over the halfway mark. It was one way to keep Karp from drinking much more. If that goddamned woman would just get back and absorb the rest, things might still be rescued.

“No, I think I won't,” said Murrow. “She's a big girl.”

Two minutes later she reappeared, brandishing a magnum bottle of Veuve Cliquot. Murrow's heart sank; the city was practically shut down by the blizzard and he couldn't imagine where she had found a liquor store open. He expressed this thought, somewhat sourly. “My child,” said Stupenagel, “only four things are required of an international correspondent: accuracy, speed, courage, and the ability to find alcoholic beverages any place in the world at any hour.” She yanked out the cork with a bang and a flourish.

“Some people think it's vulgar to make a loud pop when you open wine,” said Murrow, but held out his glass.

“Well, they're not invited to our party, are they?” she said, pouring. “I was in the can, and I thought, Hey, it's a celebration, we require champagne. And also to wash the cognac out of the system, to clear our heads, polish our wits, so we don't disgrace ourselves when the governor arrives. Is he sleeping?”

“Stunned, I think,” said Murrow. “You know, you really are a wicked person.”

“Wicked?” she exclaimed. “Wicked. That's a word you don't hear much anymore, except as an intensifier in New England. Wicked good maple syrup. What else is wicked besides witches? I can't think of anything. You wouldn't say ‘wicked empire,' or ‘wicked dictator,' would you? Evil is the classier term, because it's about power, and whatever we say, we can't help loving power. But I like wicked, the implied cleverness in there, the delight in turning things to one's own advantage, outsmarting the goody-goodies, generating a healthy and renewing chaos. As here. Wake up, Karp, it's time for your champagne. Jesus, it's cold in this office. We won't need an ice bucket for the bottle. Is something wrong with the radiators?”

“They've been fixing the system for months,” said Murrow. “That, or it's an experiment to see if criminal justice can be improved by rapidly changing the temperature of the courthouse. They've tried everything else. Last summer they actually had the heat on, or so it seemed. At least this building is old enough so that the windows still open. Why are you so intent on getting him drunk?”

“I'm not
getting
him drunk, Murrow. You can't
get
someone drunk nowadays like you could in Victorian novels.” She added in an oily voice: “‘Have some Madeira, m'dear.'” Champagne splashed into the glass that Karp held out. He drank some, finding it cooling after the brandy and quite pleasant.

“See?” said Stupenagel. “He wants to get drunk. Why? Perhaps his life has gotten away from him. Perhaps things haven't worked out the way he planned, and he wishes a few blessed moments of oblivion?”

“Perhaps you're a pathetic, lonely alcoholic who wants company,” said Karp.

“Oooh!” crowed Stupenagel. “A new side of Karp emerges. See, Murrow, I may be wicked, but that was
cruel.”

Karp was starting to feel queasy. He couldn't recall what he had eaten for lunch, but if the past was any guide, he would shortly learn what it had been in full Ektachrome. It was twenty years since he had been this drunk at an office event—that horrible, magical night when Marlene had helped him stagger back to his lonely apartment and his life with her had started. They had all been drinking Olde Medical Examiner then, a punch concocted by some wiseasses from the morgue out of fruit juice and absolute alcohol. The present drunk was rather more elegant. He wondered if he would be quite as sick. But other than the messages from his belly, he felt fine. He hadn't thought about Marlene, or what she was doing, or whether she was really going to show up here with his family or not, and he hadn't thought obsessively about his own future, either, for the better part of two hours. He felt enclosed in a comfortable blanket, the fuzz of it against his face, its warmth relaxing his limbs. Everything was going to be just fine. This was why people became drunks, he thought. If you could feel like this all the time, it might make more sense than he had previously imagined to live in a cardboard box and never bathe. He felt a sudden burst of affection for his fellow drunks.

“I'm sorry, Stupenagel,” he said. “It was the liquor talking, not me.”

“Oh, no offense, Karp,” she said. “If I took umbrage at everything said to me during drunken bouts, I wouldn't have any friends left.”

“Assuming you had any at the onset of the bout,” observed Murrow in a not quite inaudible voice.

“Murrow, what is it with these little digs?” she said, fixing him with her eye. “Would you like a blow job? Would that calm you down? Excuse me, Karp, this will just take a
second.”
She slid off her chair and stumped across the office on her knees for a few feet, with her mouth open, making vacuumlike sounds, and saying, “You know, some of these little skinny guys have the most enormous schlongs. I hope I don't crack my jaw. I hate when that happens.”

“I'm sorry,” said Murrow, “I have to have my special rubber underwear or it doesn't work.”

When they had stopped giggling and Stupenagel was back in her chair, she said, “What were we talking about before Murrow got carried away by his disgusting lusts? Something important…”

“Whither modern jurisprudence?” suggested Karp. “Very important.”

“Indeed it is. Well, whither? The age of Keegan is about to end. Now begins the age of…”

“Please! I don't want to hear it. It's funny, I've just been thinking about the last time I got drunk in this office. Not this office, one of the big bays down on six. We were having a party, and everyone was pretty well oiled, and some of the guys got weapons out of the evidence lockers and they were playing grab-ass cops and robbers, like a bunch of kids. They had some porno films, too. This was when porn was illegal, Murrow, way before your time.”

“What, no tits and ass on demand, twenty-four seven?”

“No, Murrow, back then, in order to see it legal you had to go on a date. You had to wear a jacket and tie and buy flowers and beg and tell lies. Anyway, we watched porn films, and got even more fucked up, bras hanging from the light fixtures…. And Garrahy found out about it, and hauled all of us up to his office, standing in rows like prisoners in a roll call, and he just reamed us all new ass-holes. I never heard anything like it, before or since. Because he thought that the DA was like a church and what we did was sacred, and screwing around with it like we did was like blasphemy. He always said, whatever you do on the job, imagine how you'd feel if it got printed on the front page of the
Times
. He believed that and he lived it. And the people like me who came up under that regime never forgot it. We didn't always live up to it, but when we did something slimy we had the grace to feel bad about it. The sad thing was that when he was reaming us out, we could see how old and weak he'd become: he had to stop and catch his breath between excoriations. Ray Guma said it was the last scoop of ice cream in the carton, that speech. It was close to the end of his term, and everyone figured he was going to hang it up, hoist the jersey up to the rafters, and go out with the cheering. Keegan was head of homicide then, and all ready to step into the shoes.”

“But he didn't, as I recall,” said the reporter. “Garrahy ran again.”

“Yeah, he did. I went up to see him one afternoon. I'd done something that deserved a compliment, I forget what it was. And he started talking about leaving, about how it was time for him to go. What do you think, Karp? He asked
me,
a pissant kid. So I said, ‘Oh,
no,
Mr. Garrahy, no, everyone wants you to stay. Everyone will come out and work on your campaign, all the staff.' So, instead of retiring he ran again. I managed the campaign, as a matter of fact. Not that the issue was in any doubt. He got another term, and a couple of months later he was dead. The governor appointed a piece of shit to replace him. Sanford Bloom, an actual felon. I don't think Jack Keegan has ever really forgiven me for that.”

The radiator now let out a groan that stopped conversation. It sounded as if something heavy and metallic were being dragged over a number of hogs.

“They must still be working down in the basement,” said Karp, reaching over to touch the radiator. “Stone cold. Cold as a well digger's ass. Cold as a bail bondsman's heart.”

“That's good, Karp,” said the reporter. “Have you ever thought about a career in journalism?”

“Briefly, but I failed the aptitude test. You know, where they make you eat raw zebra that's been dead for a week?”

“Mm-mm!” Smacking those large lips. “Love it! So, are we going to freeze now? We could take off all our clothes and crawl under my space blanket. That always works.”

“Do you actually have a space blanket?” asked Murrow.

“I do.” She groped in her bag and showed a corner of the thing, red and silver. “Prepared for everything, my motto. Alternatively, Murrow, we could kill Karp and crawl inside him for the warmth, like arctic peoples do with dogs.”

“Do they really do that? I thought that was just a story.”

She shuddered delicately. “They really do, my boy, and I've done it. Why do you think I drag a space blanket around with me?”

Murrow stood up. “Luckily, I know where there's an electric heater. We may not have to eviscerate the chief assistant district attorney. I believe that's a misdemeanor offense.”

“Oh, go ahead!” cried Karp. “I don't mind.”

“Be right back,” said Murrow, and left.

“Leave the door open,” said Karp, too late. “What are you doing, Stupenagel?”

She had crossed the intervening space in an instant, and was settling herself on his lap. “Just getting warm. You don't want me to freeze, do you? Would you like to see a special heat-producing trick I learned in Siberia?”

“No.”

“How about a plain vanilla, repressed Jewish lawyer little kissee, then?” She grabbed his head and suited the action to the offer. Her mouth tasted faintly of lemons under the various alcohols, quite pleasant, Karp thought, and also thought that if you were a man, and a woman sat on your lap and ran her unusually long and muscular tongue down your throat you could not, no matter how uxorious you felt, scream like a Victorian virgin and slap her face.

She came up for air at last. “There! Wasn't that nice?”

“Yes. Now could you get off me?”

“What is your problem, Karp? We're a couple of grown-ups having grown-up fun, a few scant moments of delight snatched from the general shit pie of life. Don't you think Marlene does it as much as she can?”

“Does she?”

“Of course. With that hunk out there that trains her dogs. You think they play hearts all evening?”

“She's not out there. She's in town, and I expect her at any moment. With the kiddies.”

“Then they can all watch.” The mouth descended on him again. I must really be drunk, he thought. This must be another reason people drink, besides forgetting their problems. People drink to remove inhibitions, so they can have pleasures they ordinarily forbid themselves. Was he having pleasures? To an extent. This was pleasurable but also slightly sickening, like eating a quart of rocky road ice cream at one sitting.

They heard footfalls and a clanking scrape, as if someone was maneuvering a large appliance through the narrow dogleg corridor outside Karp's office. Stupenagel immediately began to bounce up and down on Karp's lap, making the chair's springs squeal, and at the same time crying in falsetto, “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, do it, give it to me, oh, that's so good. Ooooh!”

Karp shot to his feet, dumping the reporter onto the floor and knocking the judge's chair over backward. He staggered, became entangled in the legs of the chair, and went down, too. The reporter was hooting laughter as Murrow peeked in, clutching to his bosom a large electric baseboard heater.