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Marlene’s first hit, wasn’t it?”
    Karp was silent.
    â€œYeah, 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?”
    â€œFelix 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. ’”
    She laughed. “Dear old Guma. But that’s interesting. I wonder if it happens a lot or rarely. Mother-on-son incest. The other kind we know all about, girls blabbing about what bad old Daddy did every time you switch on the fucking TV. But the boys don’t blab. Does that mean there’s nothing there? Silence arouses my journalistic instinct. What about it, boys? Anyone want to confess. Off the record, of course. I’m not on duty.”
    â€œRare, but not unknown,” said Murrow after a pause. “A lot of fantasy around it, which is suggestive. Just check out the Internet. As a matter of fact, about ten percent of child sex abuse vics are boys, but that includes dad as the perp, of course. Then there’s art. Luna by Bertolucci, Le Souffle au Coeur by Louis Malle.”
    â€œMy God, he talks!” crowed Stupenagel. “It’s a pity you’re not up for adoption, Murrow. Or doesn’t that hold any interest? I’d wear a housedress and you could be in diapers. No? Then you can refresh my drink.”
    She drank, and said to Karp, “So, do you think it was Mom who warped him and sent him on a life of crime?”
    â€œI try never to speculate on causation. It’s irrelevant, although there’s practically never a case where the defense doesn’t try to bring up their boy’s sad life. A mutt is a mutt.”
    â€œEven when he’s a cop?”
    â€œEspecially then.”
    â€œI could never figure out what happened in that thing last summer,” she said. “I mean, even after all the shit that’s been going down about bad shootings and police brutality, why a cop would even take the chance…what did you make of it?”
    â€œAre you back on duty?”
    â€œNo. But as a victim of police brutality in four countries, including this one, I have an interest.”
    â€œIt wasn’t a police brutality thing,” said Karp. “Not really. It was a police stupidity thing. A hell of a lot more common, to tell you the truth.”
    â€œSo there must have been a lot of pressure on that case,” said the reporter. “White cops, black victim. How come you took the case?”
    Karp explained the situation and added, “Even so, I didn’t think Jack would let me take it. They usually keep me away from cases with racial overtones, as you know.”
    â€œBut I don’t know. I was out of the country at the time. I’m a foreign correspondent.”
    â€œThen what are you doing here?” Karp said, not quite keeping the snarl from his voice. I’m getting drunk, he thought. Am I going to be a mean drunk?
    She appeared not to notice. He imagined people snarled at her all the time, given her personality. She said, “Every place is foreign from the standpoint of someplace else. Pretend I’m reporting on the strange customs of American jurisprudence for a Canadian paper. No, really, all I know is the