“Wow, that was a change of pace,” exclaimed Marlene. “Swung on and missed. Why do you want to know this for?”
“Urn,” said Stupenagel, swallowing a lump of bread, “okay, I get here and I look up some people I ran into in Guatemala City-Guats, a lot of them illegals, and gringos helping them. I’m still interested in Nenton. These people are not easy to find or talk to, for obvious reasons. So one day, I’m down in a garage in Queens talking to this bunch of gypsy cabbies, mix and match Latinos, Salvadorans, Dominicans, Panamanians, and this Guat all of a sudden says something like, hey, what you bothering about Guatemala, lady, the same thing’s going on here. All the other guys looked at him like, oh, shit! Now he’s done it! So, of course, I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t give anything else, just threw it off, like, oh, well, the cops hassle the gypsy drivers, what else is new? So, one thing I know is what really scared people look like. There’s a smile they get, like, please please please don’t push on this phony mask or it’ll break into pieces. Is there any more wine?” Marlene found an opened bottle and passed it over. “Thanks. Anyway, a little later I’m in this grease pit, eating rice and goat, and the little brown guy comes up to me, looks like Cochise, but with the clean white shirt buttoned up to the collar. Asks if I’m the journalista asking questions about the pendejos in the calabe-sas Nuevayorquenos. So of course I am. And the story is, after he checks I’m not a cop or la migra, the story is his brother and a bunch of other gypsies working up in Spanish Harlem are getting shaken down by the local police, and what happens, they don’t pay up, they get arrested. Only, it’s not just getting arrested: it seems these guys end up dead. He gives me the names of three guys, and the name of this cop, Clancy, who’s supposed to be investigating or involved or something. The kid won’t give his own name. I tell him I need his name, but I won’t use it if he doesn’t want me to, but no, no. I pressed him a little too hard and-wham! — he’s smoke. So all I have is this Clancy. I call him up at the precinct. He says he doesn’t talk to the press, it’s policy, I should go see Public Affairs at Police Plaza, which I go do, and I get a smoothie who tells me that of the three Latin gentlemen in question, two hanged themselves in the precinct tank and one died of natural causes. He says the M.E.’s reported on the three of them, two as consistent with hanging and the third as heart failure, and the cops closed the cases without action. And that was that, except I’d still like to get with Joe Clancy, about the shakedown side of it at least.”
“Don’t know him,” said Marlene.
“The name rings some kind of bell,” said Karp, “but there’s a lot of cops. Lots of Clancys, if it comes to that. One thing, though: I’d believe a shakedown racket; I’m not sure I’d buy that cops were knocking off people in the cells.”
“Yeah, I’d tend to go along with that,” said Stupenagel, surprising Karp, who had expected a bleeding-heart attack on the police from the journalist, and was, truth be told, rather looking forward to a row with her. Stupenagel continued, “It’s tragic. The rich world is full of young guys from poor countries doing the shit work that the rich poor people won’t do. They come from villages where they knew everyone and everyone knew them, for generations back. Suddenly, they find themselves in a place like New York, six to a room, surrounded by strangers, no hope of any emotional relationship, working at exhausting jobs for twenty hours a day, or else not finding work at all and slowly starving to death, scared of any authority, exploited by everyone. One day they get arrested. They’re locked up. They have no goddamn idea in the world of what’s going to happen to them, but they know it’s the end of everything. Of course they hang themselves. Christ, in Bangkok and Hong Kong they don’t even have to hang themselves. They just go to sleep and don’t wake up. Nobody knows the cause. It doesn’t even make the local papers anymore it’s so common. Maybe it happened to the third guy up there.”
“You could ask Roland Hrcany,” suggested Karp. “If something’s going down with cops, he’d probably know about it. Or someone he knew would.”
“Who he?” asked Stupenagel.
“A guy we used to work with at the D.A.,” said Marlene.
“Yeah? Cute?”
“Some might say so. On second thought, it might not be such a good idea. Roland has unreconstructed ideas about women.”
“You mean he’ll want to screw?”
“He may insist on it,” answered Marlene, with a side glance at her husband. His rat friends.
“Is he tall?”
“Actually, wide,” said Marlene.
“Oh, God, not a porky!”
“The furthest thing. Roland’s a weightlifter. Washboard stomach, pecs of iron, buns of steel. Brain of toad …”
“I’ll look him up,” said Stupenagel, polishing the last of the clam sauce from her plate with the last scrap of bread. She had eaten and drunk literally everything remaining on the table except the salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese. “Mmm, the little woman sure can cook!” she said, with a broad wink at Karp.
“Knock it off, Stupe,” said Marlene.
“I bet you get your underwear ironed and folded too,” said Stupenagel, ignoring her.
“I said, knock it off!” They both stared at Marlene in the ensuing silence. Her jaw was clenched and she was white around the nostrils. After a brief staring contest, Stupenagel turned her eyes away and said lightly, “Oh, my, I think I hit a nerve there. My big mouth … sorreee!”
“Didn’t you say you had an appointment uptown, Stupe?” Marlene inquired.
Stupenagel laughed and pushed her chair back. “Oh, and now I’m getting the bum’s rush, and don’t I deserve it! Thanks for the delish dinn, and the tip about the cop.” She pouted. “You’re not really mad at me, are you, Champ?”
Marlene sighed, and smiled and shook her head.
“Oh, good!” cried the journalist and rushed around the table to give Marlene a hug and a kiss. She gave Karp a hug and a kiss too, and Marlene saw from the way her husband’s body went stiff that Stupenagel was putting a lick more into the transaction than was required by convention.
“Well, that was fun,” said Karp after Stupenagel had trotted down the stairs.
“Yes, delightful. You never have to worry about whether Stupe will wear out her welcome because she always does. Yes, I know, she’s my friend. As so she is, for my sins. Let’s clean up-no, you clean up. I’m going to walk the dog, lounge in the bath, and then lose myself in a trashy romantic novel.”
Later, the two of them lying in bed, Karp was aware of a dense psychic cloud, oily smoke and troubled lightning, emanating from Marlene’s side of the bed. Her jaw grinding, her brow furrowed, she was rapidly snapping the pages of her paperback at a pace too quick for reading. At last she tossed the book aside and drew a deep sighing breath.
“What?” he ventured.
“Oh, nothing, just the usual pathetic dissatisfactions of the bourgeois matron.”