Tragic by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page B

go back to sleep.
    “Uh-huh, you had kind of a funny look on . . . whoop oh boy . . . your face,” Dirty Warren replied. “I said that I . . . whoop . . . had a good trivia question for you.”
    “Boy, you’re a glutton for punishment, but go ahead,” Karp said. The two friends had been playing a game of movie trivia for years; Warren had yet to win a single point, but it didn’t stop him from trying.
    “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you . . . bastard asswipe . . . one of these days,” Dirty Warren joked. “So . . . in the cab scene with Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger from which I just did an Oscar-worthy rendition of Marlon’s most famous . . . whoop oh boy . . . lines, why are the blinds pulled?”
    Karp pursed his lips. “Good one,” he said. “Not many people even notice that you can’t see out of the windows of the cab. Even fewer know that it’s because producer Sam Spiegel forgot to pay for rear-projection equipment, hence nothing playing outside the cab’s windows.”
    “Damn it, Karp, it’s not fair,” Dirty Warren exclaimed as he hopped up and down. “How can one man’s head be so . . . whoop whoop boobs . . . full of worthless trivia?”
    “Uh, thanks for the compliment, I think,” Karp said. “But I’ve got to go. Duty awaits.”
    “Sure, sure,” Dirty Warren said. “But just one more.” He pulled a piece of crumpled notepaper from the pocket of his dirty jeans. “Okay, okay . . . shit whoop oh boy . . . so there were two inspirations for On the Waterfront ,” he said, reading from the note. “One was the series of articles written for the New York Sun about all the killings, corruption, and extortion on the waterfront in Hell’s Kitchen. Can you tell me who wrote those articles?”
    “Malcolm Johnson. He won the Pulitzer Prize . . . back when it meant something to be a journalist,” Karp said.
    “Now, now, your feelings for the Fourth Estate are . . . whoop crap oh boy whoop . . . showing and that’s my business.” Dirty Warren grinned. “But okay, you got that one. Now, what was the other inspiration for the story?”
    Karp looked sideways at his friend. “Again, the question is below your usual degree of difficulty and comes with a hiddenmeaning. The other inspiration was the 1948 murder of a popular union boss. It reinforced what Johnson’s stories had said and sort of woke New York up to what was happening down at the docks. It was the beginning of the end for the worst of it, though no one doubts that there’s a lot that still goes on under the radar. But I get your point. This is about the murder, isn’t it? You know something?”
    Dirty Warren looked around as though he feared being overheard. “Word on the street is that this shooting ain’t all it’s cracked up to be in the press.”
    Karp looked carefully at his friend. At first brush, Dirty Warren was just a simple news vendor with an odd affliction, but the man had a lot of contacts among the street people and more than once the information he’d given Karp had proven invaluable. “Anything specific?” he asked.
    “Not yet . . . oh boy, ohhhhhh boy . . . just rumors that maybe it was a setup,” Dirty Warren answered as he handed Karp copies of the two newspapers. “I’ll let you know if I . . . piss shit . . . do.”
    “Okay, thanks, you know I always appreciate it,” Karp said, giving his friend a five and then turning to walk around the corner of the building to the secure Leonard Street entrance reserved for judges and the district attorney. Inside, a private elevator deposited him in a small anteroom on the eighth floor outside his inner chambers, a way for him to bypass the reception area.
    Fulton and Guma were already waiting for him. The detective was standing at the bookshelf that occupied an entire wall of the office, while Guma kicked back in a big overstuffed leather chair off to one side of Karp’s desk with an unlit cigar dangling