Read Online Infamy by Robert K. Tanenbaum - Free Book Online Page A

about five blocks from here; been coming since I was a kid. You’ll probably have to walk from here if you want to get up to the command post. You need someone to show you the way?”
    â€œNot a problem, Officer,” Karp replied, reaching for the handle and opening the door. “It’s changed a lot, but I’ve been coming here since I was a toddler . . . my kids, too.”
    â€œI knew you were from Brooklyn, sir. Anyways, you’ll find the command center no problem if you just head for the bears. I’ll radio ahead and let everybody know you’re coming.”
    â€œThanks,” Karp said as he exited. “Eddie, stay with the car, please. I’ll call you if I need you.”
    â€œYou got it, sir.”
    Karp walked over to the knot of officers at the entrance. One of them was detached by his sergeant to accompany him into the six-and-a-half-acre zoo. Walking through the strangely deserted grounds, he was reminded of another hot summer day many years earlier. It was the last time he’d visited the zoo with his mother.
    He was a senior in high school and she was dying of cancer. Her bad days far outnumbered the good, so it surprised him and his father one Sunday when she announced at breakfast that she wanted to go into the city and visit the zoo. They’d worried that even the short trip from their Brooklyn neighborhood would be too taxing on her meager reserves of energy and only ramp up the pain that was her constant companion. But she’d argued that she wouldn’t have many more days when she’d feel up to such a journey, “and I want to go one more time to see the animals.”
    A star basketball player, Karp had planned on going to his school to work with his coach on his game, but he called to say he wouldn’t make it. His coach knew the situation at home and told him to spend the time with his mother. “Basketball can wait,” he said. “Say hello to your mom for me, and I’ll be looking for her in the stands when the season starts.” They both knew that wasn’t going to happen, but Karp had appreciated the thought.
    So they’d taken the elevated train into the city. There his dad wanted to hail a taxi to Central Park, but his mom insisted they take the green line subway up to Central Park. A “people watcher,” she’d always preferred to mix it up with humanity, so they rode north with the throng, getting off at the Hunter College station on 68th Street and then backtracking a few blocks to the zoo.
    It was a wonderful day. Years later, Karp could still recall entire conversations, as well as the sights, the smells, and the sounds, especially of his mother’s voice. She’d been happier, more full of energy than at any other time in the past year as cancer whittled at her stamina and spirit.
    Unlike the walkways on this afternoon, deserted due to the gunman, those had been full of New Yorkers and visitors strolling the grounds—families with young, screaming, laughing children, teenagers in love, and old couples holding hands. His mother had been her precancer self, making funny observations about the crowds, guessing at their stories, and giggling at her son’s and husband’s versions. They’d wrinkled their noses in the odiferous Monkey House, laughed at the antics of the polar bears, and oohed and ahhed when the lion roared. She’d even managed to eat half the hot dog they’d bought for her from a vendor’s cart. But gradually her energy waned, and she’d sat wearily on a bench across from a pen where a wolf paced back and forth.
    Karp’s father left them there to go get her a glass of water. She leaned against her son’s shoulder, then looked up at him as a tear slid down her cheek.
    â€œI’m sorry, Mom,” he’d said softly, choking on the words but not knowing what else there was to say.
    She’d wiped away the tear and patted his knee