You ever been accused of murder? I was.
I was 24 years old. I was driving across the country, and I checked into a hotel in Tulsa. Not a motel. A hotel. A bit pricey, but having driven 700 miles that day, I decided I needed a touch of Oklahoma hospitality.
I’d only been in my room five minutes, when there was a very unhospitable banging on my door. The clerk who checked me in decided I was too young and grungy to have an American Express card. And now two Tulsa detectives wanted to take a closer look.
“This card belongs to Marshall Karp. It was stolen,” one said.
“I know. I reported it. This is the replacement,” I said.
The cops laughed. “Let me see your ID.”
Back then, drivers licenses had no pictures, so showing him mine only made it worse. “You’ve got Marshall Karp’s ID and his car. What did you do with his body?”
Today that would scare me. But at 24, it only served to piss me off.
“What do you do for a living, Mister Karp?” one cop taunted.
“I’m a writer.”
“What have you written?”
My ego refused to admit I had only written ads for a Portuguese airline and a bank in Connecticut, so I came back strong. “What are you, a #@&%* critic?”
The cop came back stronger. “Cuff him.”
It took hours to prove I was who I said I was. They finally said, “You’re free to go,” Emphasis on go.
So I opened the trunk of my car, disappointed the heck out of them when it was cadaver-free, and left town. They followed me halfway to Joplin, Missouri.
Decades later, I am friends with cops from around the world, and when any of them ask me what have I written, I give them this link.
