bangs into Kevin's cousin Billy, who is just coming in. Billy runs the place when Kevin is not around.
"Hey, Andy. What's with her?" Billy asks.
"I'm not sure. I think she was afraid she might succumb to my charms."
He nods. "We've been getting a lot of that lately."
"What do you mean?"
Billy just points toward a shelf high up in the corner of the room, and for the first time I realize that there is a television up there. It's turned to local news, though the sound is off. There was a day when that would have been a problem, but now all the stations have that annoying crawl along the bottom of the screen.
The subject of the newscast is the murder of a woman last night in Passaic, the third such murder in the last three weeks. The killer has chosen to communicate and taunt the police through Daniel Cummings, a reporter for a local newspaper, and in the process has created a media furor. The woman who just left is not alone in her fear; the entire community seems gripped by it.
"They making any progress?" I ask, referring to the police.
Billy shrugs. "They're appealing to the guy to give himself up."
I nod. "That should do the trick. Where's Kevin?"
"Doctor."
"Is he sick?" I ask, though I know better. Kevin has as many admirable qualities as anyone I know, but he happens to be a total hypochondriac.
Billy laughs. "Yeah. He thinks his tongue is swollen and turning black. Kept sticking it out at me to look at."
"Was it swollen?"
He shakes his head. "Nope."
"Black?"
"Nope."
"Did you tell him that?" I ask.
"Nope. I told him he should get it checked out, that he might be getting 'fat black tongue' disease." He shrugs and explains, "I'm a little short this month; I needed the hours."
I nod; the more time Kevin spends at the doctor the more time Billy gets to work here. I hand an envelope to Billy; it had come to the office for Kevin. "Give this to him, okay?"
"You making deliveries now?" he asks.
"I'm on my way to the foundation."
Billy nods. "Listen, do me a favor? When you see Kevin, tell him his tongue looks like a bowling ball."
"No problem."
NORTHERN NEW JERSEY EXISTS IN A SORT of twilight zone. That is, if it exists at all. It is a densely populated, diverse collection of cities and towns, yet it has no identity. Half of it is a suburb of New York City, and the other half a suburb of Philadelphia. The Giants and Jets play in Jersey, yet deny its existence, referring to themselves as "New York".
The most embarrassing part is that all the major TV stations that cover North Jersey are based in New York. Ottumwa, Iowa, has its own network affiliates, but North Jersey doesn't. It should thus come as no surprise that those same stations treat Jerseyites as second-class citizens.
Stories about New Jersey are barely covered, unless they are simply too juicy to overlook. The recent murders have successfully crossed that high-juice threshold, and the networks are all over them. Even more pumped up are the national cable networks, and I've been invited to serve as an uninformed panelist on$$$[MS PAGE NO 147]$$$ eleven of the shows that specialize in uninformed panels. I've accepted three of those invitations, and in the process I fit right in by bringing absolutely nothing of value to the public discourse.
My appeal to these shows is based on the fact that I've successfully handled a couple of high-profile murder cases in the last couple of years. I must've gotten on some list that is shared among TV news producers. "Let's see ...", I can hear them say as they check that list when a New Jersey crime story comes up "Here it is ... Andy Carpenter. Let's get him. That'll fill twenty minutes."
The one question always posed to me on these shows is whether I would be willing to defend the murderer when he is caught. I point out that he wouldn't legally be a murderer until he's been tried and convicted, but this distinction is basically lost on the questioner and, I suspect, the viewing public. I ultimately and lamely say that I would consider it based on the circumstances, and I can almost feel that public recoiling in shock. "How," they collectively wonder, "could you defend that animal?"
I don't really have to worry about any of that, though, because the police don't seem terribly close to catching this particular animal. Instead, I can