“Then whose job is it?”
Zak’s response was cut short by a knock on the door, which opened to reveal their father.
“Hey, boys,” Karp said to his sons, “lights out pretty soon. Moishe’s coming over tomorrow to talk to you about your project and I want you bright eyed and bushy tailed. Are you guys ready?”
Karp paused. His father sense detected the charged field of tension between his sons. That in itself was nothing new. The boys were identical twins mostly in name only. They shared some physical traits, such as the dark, wavy hair; beautiful, doelike brown eyes; and general Mediterranean facial features of their mother’s Italian heritage. And since they were already more than six feet tall in their freshman year of high school, it looked like they might attain their father’s height. But even the physical similarities went only so far. With his finer features, porcelain skin, and slighter build, Giancarlo was like a more polished version of his more masculine and athletic brother, Isaac.
However, it was their personalities that differentiated the twins and frequently put them at odds. Both were smart, though Giancarlo was more bookish, a better student, articulate, philosophical, and more likely to use his head rather than his physical assets to get himself out of a situation. He was an accomplished musician who played nearly a dozen instruments, including the banjo and accordion.
Brave, forceful, and extroverted, Zak, on the other hand, was always full steam ahead, preferring to go through obstacles rather than around or over them-or not deal with them at all if he could avoid it. He kept his grades up only through the valiant efforts of his mother, who cracked the whip, but all he really wanted to do was play sports.
Looking at them now, one lying on his back and obviously avoiding eye contact, and the other furrowing his brow as he stared at his twin, Karp felt blessed. They were both good boys and generally made good decisions, though Zak’s impetuousness and sense of adventure sometimes led him and his brother, who was usually along to keep an eye on Zak, into trouble.
“Everything okay?” he asked. Both boys mumbled an affirmative.
Karp followed Zak’s gaze to the poster on the ceiling and smiled. Whitey Ford, he thought, the Chairman of the Board. Yankee legend, ace pitcher in the fifties and sixties.
As a lifelong Yankee fan, he knew everything there was to know about the wily southpaw. Born October 21, 1928, in New York City. Height, five-ten; weight, 180. Lifetime record: 236–106;. 690 winning percentage, best of any twentieth-century pitcher. Received the 1961 Cy Young Award and still holds many World Series records, including ten wins, thirty-three consecutive scoreless innings, and ninety-four strikeouts.
“Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974, same year they retired his jersey,” Karp said. “I was at the game…”
“We know, Dad,” Zak said.
“We’ve heard the story,” Giancarlo told him.
“Hey, when do we get to go to a game?” Zak asked.
Karp recognized the attempt to steer the conversation away from whatever the twins were debating. Zak was anything but subtle. But it did remind him that one of the things he’d promised himself after the Jabbar trial was that he was going to spend more time with the boys. He’d even had to miss a few of their baseball games, which galled him. And it had been a long time since they’d played hoops together or just threw a ball around in Central Park. As Marlene kept saying, it wasn’t going to be too much longer before they were out of the house.
“Let’s compare calendars tomorrow and pick a day,” he said. “I’ll spring for the tickets, but you’re on your own for beer.”
The twins smiled at their father’s lame attempt at a joke; the promise of a family outing to the ballpark lightened the mood in the room. “Oh, and I’d suggest that you bring your digital recorder for Moishe’s talk,” Karp said. “This is oral history, and there’s fewer and fewer people every year who can tell us the truth about what happened.”
Zak sighed heavily. “Okay, okay,” he muttered.
Karp smiled. He knew that this was not going to be his outdoors-loving sons’ idea of how best to spend a Sunday afternoon. “You chose the topic and asked Moishe to help,” he reminded them. “And this was the time that worked best for him. By the way, make sure you thank him or forget the ball game.”
“We will,” Giancarlo promised.
“Okay then, see you dudes in the morning.”
“Nobody says ‘dudes’ anymore, Dad.”
“Good to know, dudes,” he replied, and closed the door.
6
The sky was starting to lighten in the east when the young woman climbed the stairs out of the subway station at 167th and River Avenue. She’d just completed an eight-hour shift at the Old Night Diner in Manhattan and all she wanted was a hot shower and to crawl into bed. But with a groan she thought about the hours she’d first have to spend studying the schoolbooks she was lugging in the satchel over her shoulder.
It was Sunday morning and traffic was light on 167th as she started to walk west past Mullayly Park. She kept an eye on the shadowy environs of the park. The police had still not caught whoever murdered the woman she’d read about in the newspapers. The sidewalks were nearly deserted, too, and she was glad that it was getting light enough to see and be seen by the few pedestrians who were out and about. It made her feel safer.
Then out of her peripheral vision, she saw a man in a hooded sweatshirt. He had been walking in the same direction as she was on the other side of the street but was now crossing at an angle and speeding up to intercept her.
The woman, Marianne Tate, increased her pace. But so did the man. His face was shadowed by the hood, but he appeared to be a young Hispanic in need of a shave. She fought not to panic when he jogged the last few yards to catch up. “Your bag looks heavy,” he said with a slight accent. “We are walking in same direction, let me help you.”
“No, thank you,” Marianne said firmly, as she’d been taught in the women’s self-defense class she’d taken at the YMCA. He was to the side and slightly behind her, and she avoided looking directly at him and kept her eyes straight ahead.
When he started to hurry to get in front of her, she walked even faster. “Leave me alone!” she shouted, hoping someone would hear or that her voice would deter him.
Instead, he grabbed her from behind; she felt the blade of a knife against her throat. “Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off,” the man snarled. “Now you and I are going to get busy.”
The man started to drag her into the park. But at that moment, a man walking a small dog came around the corner from River Avenue. He saw what was happening and shouted, which caused his dog to start yapping excitedly.
Tate’s attacker hesitated and she felt the knife move away from her neck. Summoning her courage and recalling her martial arts instructor’s admonition to fight back “with anything you have,” she stomped on the man’s instep and heard him cry out in pain. She then twisted slightly and threw an elbow behind her as she’d been trained, and was surprised when it made solid contact with the side of the man’s face.
His grip loosened and she dropped to the ground, where she scrambled away on her hands and knees. She heard her attacker run off and started to cry as she looked up into the worried face of her rescuer, whose dog danced around barking.
“Are you all right, lady?” the man asked, helping her to her feet. “Shut up, Roscoe. Sorry about him, he gets a bit wound up.”
“I think so,” she said. “And that’s okay, Roscoe was a big help. Thank you, thank you so much.” She wobbled and pointed to a bench. “Maybe I should sit down for a minute.”
“Yeah, yeah, you do that,” the man said. He pulled out his cell phone. “Dialing nine-one-one. Maybe if the cops aren’t snoozing in their patrol cars somewhere, they can still catch this creep. I couldn’t see him very well myself. Did you get a good look at him?”
“Not really,” Tate replied to the same question from the detective a half hour later, sitting at his desk in the
