Scraps by Jim Boring

Sacrifice Young Manny Rodriguez woke as the first light filtered through the thick frost steaming on the inside of his bedroom window. He thanked his guardian angel for keeping him through the night. With his worn blanket still wrapped around him he slipped off the bed onto the cold floor and knelt and prayed for his dad and his mom, and his sister Vanessa, and his little brother Sal with the drippy nose that he wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get burned sleeping so close to the space heater, and for the poor souls in Purgatory that their suffering would end soon, and for the priests, especially Father Sebastian, and the nuns, that Sister Prisca wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t yell at him so much, and for all the poor people who werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Catholic that they would become Catholic soon, and for all Catholics, that they would be good examples, and for the president and the pope.

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Deep inside his pea coat, the big collar high up around his stocking-capped head, his gloved hands stuffed into the holes in the bottoms of the wide pockets, Manny trudged the six frozen blocks to St. Bede’s. The open metal clasps on his boots made a clicking sound as he walked. The moisture from his breath froze in droplets along the top of the scarf that wrapped his face. “I believe in God the Father Almighty,” he began the Apostles Creed. Six blocks was just enough distance to say one rosary; each block about one decade – ten Hail Marys. Each intersection an Our Father. The sonorous rhythm began in his head, the blur of words, the mantra of Mary, Mother of God. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .” His bootstraps clicked and clacked. “Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of they womb, Jesus.” His focus narrowed to the length of his stride and he began to enter a zone of calm transcendence in which the cold and the hunger and the fatigue fell away. The church is open and he enters the door on the alley side near the rectory. Father Sebastian is already in the sacristy hanging up his heavy black coat. He nods to Manny and silently begins the meditative process of preparing to say mass. Father Sebastian never talks before mass, Manny knows this, he has been an altar boy for the priest for nearly three years. He watches as Father Sebastian takes his chalice from a cabinet and inspects it. Nothing is ever amiss; the nuns are scrupulous in their housekeeping. The priest takes his vestments from a dark closet, removes his suit coat and shirt and hangs them up. Then he pulls on the plain white alb and over it the brightly colored and richly braided chasuble, the outer garment. Manny silently helps him into the vestments, then puts on his own black cassock and white surplice. The wine is where it should be; the communion wafers are prepared and waiting. Manny looks out into the vast church. At this early hour only the most pious are in attendance;

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two dozen, no more, mostly old women in babushkas, a few working men kneeling, their rough hands clasped in an aspect of prayer, resting on the backs of the pews. Father Sebastian nods that he is ready. Manny rings a small brass bell and precedes the priest out to the altar. As the priest faces the altar and raises his arms to his sides palms up Manny takes his place kneeling on the cushioned altar step. “Introibo ad altare Dei,” Father Sebastian chants in a deep resonant voice. I will go onto the altar of my God. “Ad Deum qui laetificat, juventutem meum,” Manny responds, his clear voice still unbroken by adolescence. The God who gives joy to my youth. The mass proceeds, ancient passage by passage, the ritual preserved from the catacombs of Rome; the Latin phrases rising into the drifting dust motes in the still air of the vaulted ceiling, “Agnus Dei,” Lamb of God; “Kyrie Eleison; Christa Eleison; Kyrie Eleison,” Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, and on each Eleison Manny rings the little bell and strikes his breast in supplication for the mercy of Christ. The mass proceeds to that most solemn moment, the Offertory of the mass, the transubstantiation, the changing of the wine into the blood of Christ, the miracle of bread becoming the body of Christ. Father Sebastian leans low over the sliver of the host; Manny is transfixed, exalted, a part of the strangest and most wonderful of mysteries. He listens to the words that come hushed and reverent from the soul of the priest. “Hoc est enim corpus meum.” This is my body. Each word pronounced so distinctly that it hangs alone for the briefest moment vibrating in the morning light suffused through the faces of the saints on the stained glass windows. The priest drops to one knee in genuflection before the host, then rises

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quickly and lifts it up above him for all in attendance to see and marvel once again. Manny rings the bell. The parishioners come forward to receive the host; Father Sebastian delivers it in the form of communion wafers onto their extended tongues, intoning the sacred phrase at each person, “Corpus Domini nostri, Jesu Christi.” The body of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Manny holds a brass paten under each uplifted chin to catch the host should it fall. “Ita missa est.” Go the mass is ended. Father Sebastian faces the tiny congregation and dismisses them with his arms raised in blessing. Wherever two or more are gathered in My name, I am there, Manny says to himself. Father Sebastian removes his vestments and hangs them back in the closet. He wipes the chalice carefully and replaces it in the cabinet. Then, with a sigh, he sits heavily down on the battered black leather couch that has been in the sacristy as long as Manny can remember. He runs his hand over his face. Manny can hear the rasp of the priest’s beard against his hand. Father Sebastian leans his head back on the couch. He has not yet put on his shirt. He loosens his belt and opens the top button of his pants. Still in his altar garments Manny stands before the priest and raises his arms shoulder high above his sides, palms supinate, and softly sings, “Ad Deum qui laetificat, juventutem meum.” To God who gives joy to my youth. Then he kneels and bends humbly forward toward the priest, feels Father Sebastian’s big hand settle gently on the back of his head and devoutly performs the final sacrifice of the mass.

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Graduation Day Sister Geranda watched the seniors file into the church, separate into columns of girls and boys, and take their places at the front in the pews on either side of the central aisle. They were quieter than usual despite the excitement of the event. Their manner suggested that they were sobered by the status given them by the academic robes and the mortarboards that clung pinned precariously to the girls’ high hair and crushed the boys’ pompadours. The parade was overseen by Sisters Prisca and Finbar. Now there was a pair of mismatched shoes, Sister Geranda thought. She was certain that one day she would have to have Prisca committed – the woman’s outbursts were becoming increasingly unpredictable. And she looked like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. Sister Geranda tried not to smile at the picture the thought brought forth. Finbar, on the other hand, was a gentle soul, soft-spoken, quick to laugh – she ruled with kindness. Still it was hard to say who was more effective as a teacher; even their toughest cases graduated with all the basic skills they needed to survive. Some of them would go from here directly into the workforce – apprentice craftsmen, factory workers, truck drivers, clerks in stores and offices. One of the boys, Manny Rodriguez, would go to the seminary of St. Stephen and two of the girls to Franciscan convents. Some, like Eleanor Gorman, whom she suspected might already be pregnant, would begin their lives as homemakers and wives. And more than a few, for which she was exceedingly proud, would go on to college. Sister Geranda was certain that they were as well prepared for the next step as she and her sisters could make them. Even Gerry Riley, the one they called Loopy, who was not allowed to graduate with his classmates because he had so many incomplete assignments, would get his diploma after he

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completed summer school. What he would do with it was beyond her. God be with them all, she prayed. As the students filed into the pews they cast glances about looking for their families and nodded or waved surreptitiously when they found them. The old church was majestic – the marble of the altar shone white against the dark stained glass windows behind it; the sanctuary lamp hung like a ruby before the altar. A golden light fell onto the congregation and the graduates from the ornately sculptured lamps hanging from the tall ceiling. Votive candles flickered a red accent from front and side altars. The Virgin and St. Joseph gazed benevolently down and in the high dome God the Father, long-bearded and senatorial in His Roman toga, stretched down an open hand that seemed to formally welcome the congregation below. Along the walls Jesus marched his endless way to Calvary in the Stations of the Cross. Two confessionals in dark polished wood were interspersed between grottoes with statues of St. Bede and St. Stephen on one side of the church; on the other side there was a similar arrangement of confessionals and grottoes honoring The Infant of Prague and St. Christopher. The church was filled to overflowing with parents and relatives. Latecomers stood in the back and along the sides craning to locate their own. The organist, Sister Beatrice, struck a chord on the organ and the great pipes rising in staggered heights high above the choir loft loosed a single tone that set the mood of grandeur and seriousness for the ensuing event. The choir began to sing a familiar paean to the Virgin, “Mother dearest, mother fairest; hope of all who come to thee . . .” Many in the congregation joined in the singing. Matt Healey tried to locate Eleanor seated with the girls. There she was, turning to look for him. She smiled and Matt gave a small wave. “Matt Healey,” Sister Prisca hissed at him.

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“Yes, Sister.” “Act like you deserve to graduate.” “Yes, Sister.” Thank God he wouldn’t have to put up with her anymore. It was the most immediate benefit of graduation he could imagine. Except for being able to marry Eleanor and start their own life together. Matt turned to Mike Flynn kneeling next to him. Flynn had his hands folded and resting on the back of the pew in front of them, his head down in what seemed to be some earnest supplication until Matt noticed the long strand of spittle falling accurately between the kneeler and the back of the pew. “For Chrissake, Mike.” Matt whispered. “Huh?” “If Prisca catches you, you’re out of here.” “Fuck her,” Mike whispered back, “Soon as this bullshit is over and I got the diploma I think maybe I’ll kill her.” “Mr. Flynn,” the familiar hiss of Sister Prisca. Her authority was too great even for Mike Flynn. “Yes, ’ster,” he acquiesced. An altar boy at the back of the church held an arrangement of brass bells and now shook them with real purpose. The sound rang through the congregation and they stood en masse and turned to watch as the boy preceded a young priest swinging a censer before him. The priest held the chain of the censer in his right hand and, close against his chest, held the other end of the chain; he flung the censer out before him to the height of his eyes and it released a puff of

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aromatic incense that rose in symbolic representation of the prayers of the faithful rising to heaven. Behind the young priest came a procession of priests from the parish, monsignors and bishops and, finally, the cardinal himself. Cardinal Albert Ossendorf, chief prelate of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, a legendary builder of churches and the subject of considerable awe on the part of the nuns who taught at St. Bede’s. And anyone or anything that the nuns held in awe was duly transmitted to their young charges who, through fear or love or simple innocence, took it as holy writ and made it their own. The thurifer moved down the center aisle toward the main altar swinging his censer from side to side and wafting the intoxicating scent into Matt Healey’s central nervous system. More than the chiding of Sister Prisca, the icons, the music, the bells and ritual, the elaborately decorated clerical robes of the priests, the tall mitre of the Cardinal, it was this aroma that calmed and lulled him into a state of reverence and seriousness. Even Mike Flynn seemed drugged into obeisance. He sniffed loudly and rubbed his nose as if in futile resistance. “Flynn.” It was just an ominous murmur. “Yes, Sister.” One of the priests in the procession was Father Nicholas Sebastian. Father Sebastian taught Religion and History and Civics at St. Bede’s High School. He was popular with the students, who called him, “Father Nick,” and his classes were generally the highlight of the day for those lucky enough to attend them. Father Nick had a real talent for teaching; in his history classes he wove stories of individuals and families through the haze of dates and great events; his Religion classes were a model of ecumenism and tolerance for other views and still he was a strong and attractive advocate for Catholicism; his Civics courses were made up of a series of

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projects that actively involved his students in community groups and government functions. Father Sebastian took his educational and ministerial duties seriously. Marching slowly behind Father Sebastian, Manny Rodriguez was in a near religious ecstasy. The solemnity and grandeur of the event affected the boy with an intensity that he knew was not shared by his classmates. In Manny the joy of graduation was greatly diminished by the pain of separation from a daily immersion in The Faith that had sustained him through eight years of grammar school and four years of high school. Manny did not look forward to leaving the protective, loving embrace of St. Bede’s even to move on to St. Stephen’s Seminary and the road to eventual priesthood. He tucked his chin into his chest and looked down at his feet striding slowly in cadence with the procession. “Oh Lord, I am not worthy,” he prayed silently and fervently, “But only say the Word and my soul shall be healed.” Afterward there was lemonade and cake in the gym.

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Manny at St. Stephen’s

When I went to St. Stephen’s Seminary I was filled with a kind of, what can I call it, a kind of devotion to the ideals I had been taught by the priests and nuns at St. Bede’s. That devotion was extreme, almost a kind of sickness. No, it was a sickness. I believe it was. I was very young. I knew nothing about anything. I did not know that what I was doing with Father Nick was considered wrong by almost everyone. Father Nick was simply part of what I was devoted to; he represented somehow the divine presence. Sucking his cock was like taking communion. I know that sounds sacrilegious but that is how it seemed to me. At St. Stephen’s I was separated from my family and from Father Nick and the nuns at St. Bede’s for the first time in my life and I was disoriented for a while. It was as if I had traveled to another planet and on this planet all of the people did nothing but contemplate the supposed creator of the planet and what that creator needs from us – his creation. I know this is hard to understand. When I think back on it, it is hard for me to understand as well. The priests who taught us seemed to teach us this doctrine sincerely. They taught us that God expected certain behaviors from us. We were to do things in this world that God wanted us to do. We were also required by God to have certain, very specific, beliefs that were necessary to our salvation. And God had authorized the pope and the Church Fathers to define those beliefs and to demand them of us. We boys listened and believed and studied and prayed. We played football and basketball and baseball. We would run and jump and swim. We occupied our minds and exhausted our bodies. And at night some of us took guilty pleasure from what remained of our energy and spent ourselves on the sheets of our beds or our bellies or the chins of our friends.

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And still I somehow never felt that what I was doing was outside the normal expression or the ordinary needs of my body. For almost a year I lived in this way. Everything I did from study to prayer to sexual activity seemed somehow connected to the ideals and values I was taught and the God I was trying to serve. I was lost in the music and the ritual and the aura of spirituality that soaked into me like water into a sponge. And the result of all this was that one day I woke and believed not a word of it and discovered that in the night God had died. I don’t know to this day how it happened. I think that something in the teaching and indoctrination itself was working to destroy all that it claimed to be building. In a way it was like believing in Santa Claus. When you believe, nothing your cynical siblings can say will dissuade you. But one day you do not believe and after that day nothing your parents or anyone else can do will restore your belief. When it happened, for a while, I was incorrigible. I mocked my teachers and then mocked the discipline they tried to impose on me. Since there was no eternal consequence my behavior was subject only to the risks it posed to my body. I was a strong kid; physical violence didn’t intimidate me. Which was good because there was plenty of it. If it wasn’t the disciplinary rod it was the fists of my fellow seminarians. It couldn’t last. When the priests gave up on me I was more than ready to give up on them. Only my mother was disappointed. My father considered my leaving the seminary a victory. For me it was a rite of passage of sorts. I left the beliefs and behaviors of my childhood behind and began to form my own beliefs. That wasn’t easy. I had taken all of the teaching of the nuns and priests to heart and even after I no longer believed what they had taught me there was something left that affected the

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development and selection of my new beliefs. For one thing I was not comfortable wandering around in the world on my own. I needed some group or institution to be part of. When I finally found the police force it was made to order. I had no trouble adapting to the official rules and regulations and I had no trouble understanding that there was also another set of unofficial values that were also important. The trick is keeping these two sets of values from bumping into each other. I have always been able to do that. Now that I have dumped God overboard and all the superstitious mumbo-jumbo that goes with him, it is just a matter of behaving in ways that make sense on a personal level. I work with Mike Flynn, for instance. Guy is the biggest crook and the best cop I know. How do you put those things together so they make sense? I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any problem with it. And Father Nick. Nick is a pedophile who took advantage of me when I was just a starry-eyed altar boy. Now he is the only person who understands who I am and how I came to be who I am. We sleep together like old friends. The predator and the prey have reconciled. The lion and the lamb â&#x20AC;&#x201C; just as the Bible says â&#x20AC;&#x201C; now lay down together. I have stopped trying to figure things out.

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Bridget’s Letter Bridget looked everywhere but the letter was not to be found. How could she have been so careless? If Nate found it – no, no, that was too much to think about. Oh, St. Anthony please help me find it, I have to find it. She sat at the kitchen table and reviewed the places she had searched – all the rooms and every drawer in the apartment, her everyday purse, her dressup purse, every pocket in every dress, every coat and jacket, every piece of furniture with any possibility of concealing the letter. Dear Mother Mary have mercy on me. At last in despair and resigned to her fate she began making dinner. Nate would be home soon, hungry and tired. She must have lost it outside the apartment somewhere. She must have. Why did she write such a thing?

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Matt and Eleanor Matt Healey was formed by the Church and the Neighborhood. Those parochial institutions determined the limits of his inquiry and his imagination. If it was outside those boundaries Matt didn’t feel any need to go there. If the Baltimore Catechism they taught him at St. Bede’s Catholic Grammar School didn’t cover it, he didn’t think about it. Healey wasn’t alone in his attitude. Thirty years after immigrating to Chicago the old babushka who lived in a six-flat across the alley still knew only a few words of English and, once in it, had never been out of the neighborhood. The Poles and Germans and Irish, the black and white immigrants from the South and East, all had built their enclaves and settled into them. Beyond their social and physical borders they looked out on what they regarded as a hostile world. For them the American dream was to work and pray and be left alone. Matt didn’t so much live in these conditions as he was emboweled in them. His family enfolded him, the neighborhood enfolded his family, and the Church enfolded all. Matt Healey was as snug as a bug in a rug. The rug began to unravel in adolescence when Matt’s hormones awoke. His body seemed suddenly to turn against him. His skin was an archipelago of eruptions that never ceased. His hands and feet became awkward disproportionate appendages. He would have erections at the most inconvenient times – in class or riding on the bus. When he considered himself, Matt found himself wanting in physical grace, social skills and personality. He felt the world saw him in much the same way. Girls were a particular source of difficulty for Matt. Lacking physical attractiveness or social charm his expectations for some sort of response from them were lowered again and

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again until those few remaining girls who were likely candidates were not attractive even to him. And so, like so many frustrated voluptuaries before him, Matt turned to religion. Despite, or perhaps, because of the context of Catholicism in which Matt was born and raised Matt had not actually noticed his religion until now. He now became religious for reasons that seemed to him consistent with his need for redemption and unqualified love. He prayed with real passion. He said the rosary every day. He attended novenas with the old ladies. He served mass as an altar boy. He confessed sins of commission and omission. His prayers rose to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, individually and as the Trinity. He prayed to Mary and Joseph, to saints Francis Xavier and Francis of Assisi. He prayed to the crucified martyrs, the roasted missionaries, the silent monks and hallelujah choirs of angels. Matt recited litanies of saints. He prayed for the poor souls in Purgatory. It lasted as long as his acne. He was a junior in high school when it finally happened. Her name was Eleanor. She said hello. Something shifted inside him. Some hormonal balance was achieved by the sound of her voice. He could almost feel his skin clearing. He was able to reply. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hello,â&#x20AC;? he said. Eleanor, by any objective criteria, was not a beauty. She was a plain girl with undistinguished features, figure and hair. She did have a pleasant smile and an almost sultry voice. Eleanor had been part of Mattâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world for most of his life. Like his religion he had never taken much notice of her until the need arose. Now all she had to do was say hello and Matt saw nothing but his luminous Eleanor. For Eleanor, Matt too was transformed into a radiant knight in shining armor. Matt would walk Eleanor home from school. They would talk along the way. They would sit on the porch-steps of her two-flat and talk. Matt would go home and call Eleanor on

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the telephone. They would talk. On Friday of their first week together they went to a movie. Matt put his arm on the back of Eleanor’s seat. Then he draped his hand onto Eleanor’s shoulder. She moved toward him. On the way home they talked. Their senses were acute. Matt could smell the trees along the sidewalk. Eleanor noticed the breeze in her hair. Inside the outer door to her building Matt kissed her and Eleanor returned the kiss. They kissed again. And again. “I have to go in,” Eleanor said at last. “Okay,” Matt said in a strangulated voice. They kissed again. And again. “I have to go.” “Okay.” “See you tomorrow.” “Okay.” Matt floated home. Eleanor floated upstairs. At home in his room Matt thought of Eleanor. “She is so beautiful.” And the beauty he envisioned was as chaste but also as exciting as her kisses had been. Matt did not think about Eleanor’s breast in his hand or his tongue in her mouth. He did not fantasize lovemaking beyond that which had taken place in her hallway. The limits of Matt’s imagination were not much greater than the limits of his experience. Still, his erection was hard enough to drive nails, and his experience with sex alone was substantial. Home in her bed Eleanor was having difficulty sleeping. The bedclothes were too heavy. Her nightgown was damp with sweat. Unlike her fantasy-challenged beau, Eleanor

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was capable of imagining any number of wonderful things that might have happened between them and would surely happen soon. She thought about them and touched herself. In the weeks and months that followed, those wonderful things did occur, along with the usual assortment of awkward groping, poked eyes, teeth bashing, and fastener fumbling. In a yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s passage Matt and Eleanor had worked out all the kinks in their lovemaking. It was now a matter of predictability, competence and reliability, and still a source of unbridled passion. By the time Eleanor became pregnant, shortly before she and Matt graduated from high school, they had already decided on a wedding date.

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The Wedding The wedding took place on a warm Saturday morning in August. Father Sebastian performed the ceremony in front of about a hundred and fifty of the couple’s relatives and friends. The cavernous old church echoed the Agnus Deis and the Kyries of the priest, the congregation and the choir until Matt felt himself nearly overcome with emotion. Eleanor was, to Matt, an almost ethereal sight. She glided down the aisle, kept from rising like an angel only by her grasp on her father’s sturdy arm. When they reached the steps of the altar where Matt stood waiting, her father lifted her veil and kissed her. Matt noticed her father’s hands, fingers thick and strong, stained in the cuticles with the ineradicable evidence of the printer’s craft. And then she joined him and Matt felt himself take on a responsibility unlike any he had experienced. There in the church, with God and everyone else looking on, Matt felt himself turn into a man. Eleanor took his hand and smiled a small, hopeful smile at him. Her father’s callused hand left hers and Matt’s hand replaced it. The reception was at the VFW hall on Western Avenue. It was cheap and could take the kind of rough handling a neighborhood wedding could deal out. Four guys from their high school band had formed a rock-and-roll band and they knew a fair number of old tunes so the parents’ generation was happy. The party lasted until one in the morning. There was only one fight and no one was badly hurt. Matt and Eleanor left about midnight to stay at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in a small suite given as a gift from Matt’s parents. They took a bottle of champagne with them from the wedding. “Think they’ll ask for a wedding certificate?” Eleanor asked Matt as they drove Matt’s father’s car under the hotel portico. “Gee, I don’ know,” Matt replied, “You got it?”

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“I don’t think so.” They went in anyway. No one asked for a wedding certificate. No one seemed to notice them at all. A wedding party was going on in one of the hotel’s ballrooms. There must have been thirty musicians in the band. They sounded great. Women in long, glittering evening gowns on the arms of men in tuxedoes mingled in the hall. Matt tried not to feel diminished. “Bet they aren’t having as much fun as we did,” Eleanor said. “Bet you’re right,” Matt replied, thankful for his new wife and her sense of the right thing to say. They spent a few minutes just sitting in their room. Eleanor dumped the envelopes from her bridal bag onto the bed. “We’re rich,” she said. They opened the envelopes and counted the money. Mostly twenties, but Eleanor’s Uncle Terry, had given them a hundred-dollar bill. “Oh, look at this,” Eleanor gushed, “Ever seen one of these?” “I don’t think so,” Matt admitted. Then Eleanor went into the bathroom and Matt undressed to his underpants and climbed into the big, soft hotel bed. Eleanor came out in a silky, long nightgown with the bathroom light behind her. Matt thought he might ejaculate before she reached the bed. “Ah, Ellie, you’re beautiful.” She didn’t say anything, crawled in next to him under the covers and put her arm across his chest. “We’re married,” she said.

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“Yes, we are,” he replied quietly. “I love you, husband.” “I love you too, wife.” They laughed and made love and slept late.

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Damen Avenue They found an apartment on the second floor of a slightly decrepit frame two-flat on Damen Avenue across from the police station. Matt could look down on the action around the station from their front window. He watched the police come and go, watched them haul screaming drunks into the lockup, watched them club down men in handcuffs who didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know when to stop fighting, watched released prisoners come out into the daylight looking dazed and confused. He thought about being a cop. Maybe in a couple of years, he thought. From the big La-Z-Boy chair he had gotten from his parents as a wedding present, Matt sat with his feet up on the leg-rest and watched Eleanor wash dishes. The calico cat that had wandered in from the alley and adopted them sat on the end of the countertop also watching Eleanor. As she washed the dishes Eleanor softly hummed some nearly identifiable tune to herself. She washed. The cat watched. Matt watched and enjoyed the sight of his new wife, comfortable in her new kitchen, easy in her chore, singing something to herself. He thought again about becoming a cop and dozed in his big Naugahyde chair. What was that song? And why was the cat here in the alley in the rain? Suddenly the cat was gone and Matt needed desperately to find her. It was important; it was vital, that he find the cat. What was her name? He couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember. Why was it so important that he find her? He only knew that it was. The alley seemed to tunnel into darkness. Mist surrounded the globes of the streetlights that centered down the tunnel as far as he could see. Something moved ahead of him. The cat? He began to move forward and the act seemed to sink his legs into the pavement of the alley. Pain rose through his legs into his groin. He willed his legs to move but they only sank deeper into the pavement. He was drowning in a

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viscous concrete stream. The cat sat atop a garbage can with a rat almost her size dangling from her jaws. She stared at him impassively. The tune was “Rhonda.” “He’p me, Rhonda. He’p, he’p me, Rhonda. Get her outta my heart.” “Hey!” “Wha?” Matt started. “You’re snoring.” “What?” “You’re sitting there snoring like a chainsaw.” “Geez. Must’ve gone to sleep.” “The way you were fidgeting it must have been some dream.” “Yeah. Somethin’. Can’t remember.” “Want to take the garbage out for me?” “Yeah, yeah. Jus’ gimme a minute.” Matt hit the wooden handle on the side of the chair and the leg-rest came down. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face with his hands, then ran his hands through his hair. His hair was wet with sweat. He grunted and rose to his feet. Eleanor put the garbage bag in his arms. “There’s wet stuff in there and I don’t want it sitting around,” she said by way of explaining the chore. “Okay.” Matt took the garbage and yanked on the back door. Layers of paint had swollen the door to imperfectly accommodate the warped frame that held it; the door needed a little muscle to open and close; it sounded its characteristic groan and opened.

He pushed the unlatched

screen-door with his foot and stepped onto the back porch that opened out to the alley then

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stood for a moment and looked down to the tiny back yard with its patches of unkempt grass among larger patches of rock-hard dirt. An ancient Catalpa tree dominated the tiny yard, its roots lifting and cracking the sidewalk that led to the alley alongside the weathered, peeling garage. The tree’s huge ragged leaves seemed to droop in despair; the leathery seed cases dangled forlornly. Matt had tried to smoke these “Indian cigars” when he was a kid. “Tasted like shit,” Matt remembered. He paused to light a cigarette before starting down the stairs. He remembered being frightened. What was it in the dream that had frightened him? On the landing between the first and second floors he stopped and tried to remember what it was. Nothing. He couldn’t quite bring it back – just a lingering sense of desperation and fear. “Oh, well,” he concluded, “Couldn’t have been all that bad if I can’t remember it.” On the first floor a small pale face with huge black eyes peered out at him through the screen door. “Hi, Samantha,” he said. “Hi,” Samantha shyly, quietly replied. She must be about three, Matt thought. Dirty, bare-footed, drippy nosed, with a thin dress too light for the cool fall weather, Samantha looked like a poster-girl for a Save the Children campaign. In the back yard Matt saw where Samantha had been playing in a damp spot of dirt. Her toy bucket and shovel lay where she had left them. A small mound of dirt with no architectural pretensions whatsoever rose to proclaim her presence. The lid on the garbage can was askew, not off completely. Matt lifted the lid and looked down into the indifferent face of a large, foraging rat.

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“Jesus,” he said, and dropped the garbage bag directly onto the rat. Unperturbed, and with no seeming effort, the rat leapt from the can and was gone beneath the garage. “God-damned things.” Then it came back, the rat in the cat’s mouth in his dream. He remembered it, and the look on the cat’s face, and the fact that he couldn’t move. What was that all about? What is any dream about? “Supposed to symbolize something,” he said to himself. “Supposed to have some meaning you have to figure out.” No meaning came to mind. Matt opened the battered wire gate and stepped into the alley. Most of the garages facing on the alley were in as much disrepair as the one next to him. An old Ford pickup truck sat abandoned about halfway down the block. Its rear tires were gone and it tilted up as if it were sinking or trying to rise. “I was sinking,” Matt remembered. “I was sinking into the alley.” Now the mist around the lamplight and the rain and the darkness all came back. And Matt remembered his dream and was frightened again.

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Finding Work Eleanor stood at the window and watched Matt walk down the front stairs, stop on the sidewalk to light a cigarette, pull his jacket collar up around his neck and begin walking north on Damen Avenue. She became aware of the way he walked, a kind of slouching swagger that somehow combined bravado with timidity. It was as if he were a dog, unsure of itself, barking first then running away. She had not noticed anything about the way Matt walked until now and she wondered about that fact as she silently critiqued his progress. This kind of thing was happening to her more often these days, she thought. “I am noticing things I never noticed before,” she said out loud. “Why is that?” She felt the baby stir within her. “Oh, hello,” she said and moved from the window to sit down at the kitchen table. “You are coming into the world to be with us,’ she said as she rubbed the bulge moving across her belly. “Don’t worry, your momma and daddy will take good care of you.” Then, silently, to herself, as if to prevent the growing child within her from hearing, she thought, “Will we? How?” In the six months of their marriage Matt had not yet had even a modicum of success at anything he had tried. His Christmas tenure as a United Parcel driver had ended in his firing as soon as the holiday rush was over. Too slow, they said. He had applied for a job at the Avon cosmetics factory but had failed the box-packing test. That was embarrassing.

Selling

women’s shoes had lasted the longest, three months. He was, however, the most inarticulate, least persuasive and slowest sales person in the shop. Matt missed the job; he had enjoyed kneeling in front of the women and holding their feet in his hands. His most recent failure had been as an apprentice punch-press operator in a neighborhood tool and die shop.

The

incredible noise had left him nauseated and nearly deaf at the end of each day.

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And so, once again, Matt was out looking while Eleanor sat at the kitchen table and worried about the future their child would face. Today’s opportunity was at a Pepsi bottling plant on Ravenswood Avenue just five blocks from the apartment. Matt was waiting for the light to change at Lincoln and Irving when he noticed an envelope in the gutter in front of him. The envelope was scuffed with footprints but still sealed and obviously had something in it. It was a blank, personal envelope, light blue. Matt stared at it while he waited and then, just as the light changed, leaned and picked it up. It was an hour later, after filling out the employment application as he slouched waiting for his interview in a molded plastic waiting-room chair that he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and felt the envelope. At first he was confused and looked at the envelope as if trying to remember if it was something he was supposed to mail, then remembered, checked both sides - nothing on either side - and tore it open. It was a letter on light blue stationary filled with a neat but shaky, feminine handwriting, it bulged out of the small envelope. Matt began reading. Dear Nathan, This is a very difficult letter for me to write but I must say these things to you or I am afraid I will die. “Mr. Healey?” A woman’s voice. Matt was so startled he nearly leaped from the chair. “Yes,” he said, too loudly. “Mr. Johnson can see you now.” She smiled at him. “Right. Yes. Good. Thank you,” Matt gushed.

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“Right this way.” She led him down a claustrophobic, frosted-glass-walled corridor while Matt desperately tried to purge his mind of the letter’s startling opening sentence, stuff it back into his pocket, and remember why he was in this place. “Here you are.” She opened a door in the frosted-glass wall that led to a small office. Sitting behind a battered metal desk was a large, square-jawed man that Matt immediately thought looked like a professional wrestler. “This is Mr. Johnson,” his guide said. “Come in, sit down, Matt.” An intimidating man with an intimidating voice. Matt stuck out his hand, took it back, then out again as Johnson reached across the desk and crushed Matt’s limp mitt. “Looking for a job, huh,” Johnson said. “Yes sir, I am.” “Not much of a resume,” Johnson held Matt’s application as if there was something offensive on it. “Well, sir, I’m just starting out and I’ve been trying different things,” Matt said, rising to what was for him a new height of eloquence. “Went to Saint Bede’s,” Johnson observed. “Yes, sir. “Grammar school and high school.” “Yes, sir.” “Grew up in the neighborhood.” “Yes, sir, all my life.” “Been in any trouble?”

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“Trouble?” “Trouble. Ever been arrested? Been in jail? Do drugs? Trouble.” Johnson explained. “No, sir. Never been in any trouble.” “See you’re married.” “Yes, sir.” “Kids?” “One on the way.” “Good.” A silence while Johnson studied the application. “Why do you want to work here,” Johnson asked. “Well, Pepsi’s a good company and it’s close to where I live,” Matt replied. “This job is hard work. Think you can handle it?” “Yes sir, I think I can.” “Okay. I’m gonna put you on as a driver’s helper. Want it?” “Yes sir. Thank you.” “You start Monday.” “Okay.” “You’ll work your ass off, but the pay’s pretty good and if you work out you got a shot at being a driver and that’s a damn good job.” Matt didn’t know what to say to that so he just said, “Thank you, sir,” again. “Some of these drivers work their helpers pretty hard. I can tell because we hand out new work gloves every Monday and sometimes a helper will ask for another pair by Wednesday,” Johnson said.

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“Uh-huh,” Matt didn’t know whether that was a joke he was supposed to laugh at or a warning. He gave a weak grin and said thank you again. “Shirley out there will set you up,” Johnson said, pointing toward the door. “Go see her.” “Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson. Thanks.” “Right. Good luck.” Johnson crushed Matt’s hand again and Matt lurched into the frosted hallway to find Shirley.

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The Letter Thirty minutes later he was on the street again, a full-fledged employee of the PepsiCola Bottling Company. Now he needed a place to read the letter. The Greek restaurant on the corner of Lincoln and Irving was nothing more than a twelve-stool counter and three small tables at the window. The chili could be used for mortar and the coffee could dissolve nails. It was a very popular neighborhood place. The sign facing Irving read, “Centre Cafe.” The sign facing Lincoln read, “Center Cafe.” Matt took a table at the window and ordered a bowl of chili and a cup of coffee. He uncrumpled the letter and began to read again. Dear Nathan, This is a very difficult letter for me to write but I must say these things to you or I am afraid I will die. You have always been a good husband and none of this is your fault. I take all the blame on myself. Maybe it is because we got married so young but what ever the reason I have stood it for as long as I can and I have to do something now before it is too late. I think I am going crazy. My stomach hurts all the time. I can’t sleep. I love the kids with all my heart but sometimes I am afraid I will kill them or kill myself. Yesterday I was crossing the street with Mikey in the buggy and Linda and Ellen hanging on me and I had this terrible urge to just walk all of us out into the traffic. I had to fight myself just to stay where I was. I know you don’t understand. I don’t understand either. Something is awfully wrong with me. I have to go away before I do something really crazy. Please don’t think I don’t love you. I do love you. At least I think I do. Can a crazy person love somebody? I don’t know anymore. You are a good person and a good father. You work awfully hard and I know your tired when you get home and just want to drink a few beers and watch TV and go to bed. Thats ok too but

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sometimes when you are snoring in your chair I think that maybe I will get the big cast iron roasting pan and smash in your skull. “You want more coffee?” “Huh. Oh, oh, yeah. Please. Thanks.” If I don’t get away something bad is going to happen. My mother can’t help me. She thinks everything is great with us. Her whole life has been just like ours is but I can’t do it. I wish I could. I don’t know why I can’t but I can’t. She doesn’t understand and my dad never says anything to me that doesn’t have something to do with the kids. Its like I don’t exist. I don’t know where I’m going or what I am going to do but I have to do it. Please don’t hate me. Your loving wife, Bridget Matt sat staring at the letter. The chili cooled, untouched. He sipped at the coffee. What does this mean, he thought. What caused all this pain? Nowhere in the letter does Bridget say what it is that is driving her crazy. What’s wrong with her? She has kids and a good husband. Her parents don’t sound all that bad either. “I just don’t understand,” he thought. “I’ll show it to Ellie.” Matt walked home thinking about the letter. “How’d it go?” Eleanor asked. “What?” “The interview,” Eleanor said and thought, “God, sometimes he is so dense. What else would I be asking about.” “Oh, it went good. I start Monday.”

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“That’s great,” and feeling guilty about her unspoken thought she threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Think you’ll like it?” “Yeah, it seems okay. I found this on the street.” Matt handed her the letter. “What is it?” “Read it. You’ll see.” Eleanor read the letter and wept. Matt watched her. A steady stream of tears silently poured from her eyes. She didn’t make a sound until she reached the end. “Oh, god,” she whispered. “So, what do you think,” Matt asked. Eleanor simply looked at him. “Huh?” Matt probed. “Oh, the poor woman,” Eleanor said. “Crazy, huh?” “She’s not crazy.” “No?” “No, she’s not crazy.” “I couldn’t figure out what the hell was so wrong.” “Oh, Matt, it’s so sad.” “Well, yeah, I can see that.” “Her life, I mean; she feels so trapped.” “Well, sure. But that’s just the way it is. She’s got kids and her old man. What does she want?” “More.”

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“More? What more?”

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Work and Love It was a long week. Matt had never worked so hard in his life. At first he couldn’t believe that someone could do this job day in and day out. The pain was excruciating. His hands hurt. His back hurt. His legs hurt. His head hurt. Everything hurt. And his driver, a Jew (a fact which astounded Matt), never seemed to tire at all. The driver’s name was Nate Cohen. Cohen was not helpful in validating Matt’s stereotype of Jews. He was short, stocky and barrel-chested. He looked strong and he was. His complexion was whiter than Matt’s but his features seemed almost African. He didn’t have a hooknose. Or he may have had one once but it had apparently been rearranged in what was obviously a non-surgical operation. In its present flattened, amorphous shape it seemed undecided about which direction it wanted to go, weaving its way crookedly down Cohen’s face. Cohen also had curly, bushy red hair. Matt had nothing in his prejudgment to accommodate curly, bushy red hair for Jews. To Matt, Cohen seemed some strange amalgam of Irish and African ancestry. He was smart, though, and that, at least confirmed one of Matt’s beliefs. All week Cohen had taught Matt the ropes – how to lift and throw the heavy cases of Pepsi without straining muscles and ligaments too far – how to talk to the store managers and shopkeepers on the route – how to keep records of amounts delivered – how to sell special offers to the managers – how to get permission to put up point-of-purchase displays – how to keep competitors from encroaching on Pepsi shelf space. And how to do all this while moving as quickly as possible through each store, assessing their needs, filling them and moving on to the next stop on the route. There was more to this job than knowing how to load a hand truck. Matt began to understand what Mr. Johnson had been talking about when he told him the work-glove story. By Thursday Matt’s own gloves were worked thin, but under them the

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blisters on his hands had stopped bleeding and by Friday his hands had begun to take on the quality of football leather. On Saturday Matt slept late and awoke slowly. He lay in bed and listened to Eleanor moving about the kitchen. His muscles still ached but now only dully, not with the paralyzing cramps from his first couple of days on the job. He could feel the bones in his back and legs and arms. A curious thing, he could not remember ever actually feeling his bones before. For a while he consciously shifted his attention from his back to his legs to his arms and concentrated on feeling the bones in each part of his body. The bones ached but felt good. In fact, for the first time in his life, Matt actually felt strong. Eleanor had made coffee; he could smell it. Maybe she would bring him a cup. As if she heard, she appeared in the bedroom doorway holding a steaming mug. “You’re awake,” she said. “Yeah.” “Thought you were dead.” “No, just tired. Thanks,” he sat up, stretched and took the mug. “Smells good.” “Just being the dutiful wife.” “You are a good wife.” “Think so?” “Yep, I do.” “Not sorry you hooked up with me?” Matt put the coffee mug down on the nightstand next to the bed, reached up to Eleanor and pulled her toward him. “I’d like to hook up with you right now,” he said.

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“Mmm, you got a thing for fat, pregnant ladies, huh?” “I’ve got a thing for one fat, pregnant lady.” “You just like my big boobs.” “Gee, you got big boobs, lemme see.” Eleanor swung one leg over Matt and straddled him. “You’re sure you’re not too tired for this,” she said as she opened her robe. She wore no bra and no panties. Matt gazed at her like a man who has had a prayer answered. Eleanor squatted on his crotch and rested her belly on his. She could feel his erection rise beneath her. “Hm, feels like you’re rested,” she said. “Feels good. I could get used to this.” Eleanor leaned forward and brushed his face with her breasts. “All yours,” she said. Matt took her left breast in his mouth and suckled it. After a moment he considered the poor, lonely right breast and shifted his attention to it. As he sucked he softly manipulated Eleanor’s breasts with his hands. “Your hands feel different,” she said. “Hurt?” Matt asked leaning back to look at her. “No, just different. Stronger, a little rougher.” Matt took his hands away. “Don’t stop,” Eleanor put his hands back, “I like them.” “Good,” Matt said, “because the way this job is they’re more likely to get rougher than softer.”

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“You like the job?” Eleanor shifted herself off Matt and onto her side facing him. “Yeah, I like it okay, but its damned hard work.” “Still like your driver?” she asked as she began to rearrange his pubic hair. “Yeah, he’s all right, guy works like a machine. Knows his stuff.” She began to stroke his penis. “You’re going to get in trouble doing that,” Matt said. “I am in trouble.” “Oh. Well, okay then, don’t stop.” “I can think of a better place for it to be.” “So can I.” Matt rolled toward Eleanor and, through force of habit, began to rise above her. Together they looked down at the small mountain between them. They both laughed. “I think someone is coming between us,” Eleanor said. Matt rolled off the bed and leaned down to kiss Eleanor’s swollen belly. “Hey, Kid, mind if your mother and I have a minute to ourselves.” With some awkward difficulty Eleanor rose onto her hands and knees with her behind toward him. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said. “Ah, what a pretty behind,” Matt said. “Bigger than it used to be.” “More to love.” “Yeah, right,” she said with mock sarcasm.

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Matt stood next to the bed and helped Eleanor bring herself up against him. He could smell her musk. It excited him. He loved the way she smelled. He moved his penis in the cleft of her increasingly ample behind. Eleanor moved with him. Neither spoke. After a moment Matt took his penis in hand, positioned it and moved slowly into Eleanor. “Mm, that feels good,” Eleanor said. “Yeah, it does,” Matt responded. Matt could also feel the ache in his back and his legs. It made him feel strong. He began to thrust more quickly in Eleanor. She responded with her own rocking motion. Eleanor could feel both Matt inside her and the baby swinging beneath her like a pendulum. It was a strange feeling. As if sex were no longer just a pleasurable act independent of the responsibility that clung to it like her child clung now to her. She could feel Matt coming. Eleanor loved it when he exploded inside her. She loved the naked look on Matt’s face when, just for an instant, he was completely unselfconscious. She loved the idea that she could bring him to that moment and to the brief period of sheer gratitude and love that shone on his face afterward. Then the moment would fade and life outside the moment would reassert itself. Dishes. Shopping. Work. Others. But the moment made it all worthwhile. “What do you say we go out tonight,” Matt said while the moment was fading and they lay resting in each other’s arms. Eleanor responded slowly. “Going out” was not something that had happened very often in their brief married life. “Out” had implications of spending money they didn’t have, dressing up in clothes she didn’t have, going to places she had never been. “Where?” she asked. “I dunno. Foley’s?”

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“Oh, okay.” Foley’s met Eleanor’s definitions of “out” and “moderation”. “We’ll just have dinner and a few beers, hang out a little,” Matt elaborated unnecessarily. “As long as we get home early,” Eleanor qualified the idea, “I get awfully tired lately.” “Yeah, sure,” Matt said.

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Foley’s Foley’s was a neighborhood saloon and family restaurant. A clean, homey place with a long mahogany bar and an ornate matching, expansively stocked back bar. Across from the bar, along the opposite wall, a single line of tables for four completed the front of the place. Past them the room opened up to accommodate another dozen tables. Another room, still further to the rear, one with a closed door, was for private parties and poker games. The windows were stained glass, decorated with playing card suits from the days when Fat Charley Foley, the founder and a locally famous sleight-of-hand magician, had performed card tricks for the customers. The walls of the place were covered with pictures of politicians, celebrities, newspaper pages depicting historical events like VJ Day and the end of Prohibition. A number of fire helmets had found their way onto the walls. And canes for no particular reason. The walls were, in short, covered with a sort of iconic history of the place and the neighborhood. In the neighborhood you came to Foley’s first as a child. At the table rudimentary social skills were learned by watching the adults. For the most part the adults ignored the children, who were expected to be seen and not heard. Misbehavior on a child’s part was uncommon. Somehow every child knew that their presence was a privilege, a sign of their acceptance into the community and also an entertainment unlike anything else in their lives. And while the laughing, talking, singing adults swirled above them, the children learned what was and was not acceptable public behavior. Both Matt and Eleanor had participated in this important social education. They knew how to defer to community elders; they knew the words to the old songs; they knew the acceptable limits of drunkenness and the acceptable behaviors for men and women when drinking. No man could be drunk with his family present or even simply with his wife without

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a serious loss of esteem. No woman could be drunk at all. “Tipsy,” was the word for the degree to which a woman was permitted to indulge. Beyond that reputation was lost and unrecoverable. For a man alone, or drinking with male companions, the rules were considerably more relaxed. A man could be roaring drunk and tolerated or laughed at; if he turned violent, however, it was another matter. Fights went outside fast. Everyone understood this and it was expected that the men closest to the offender would, peacefully or otherwise, escort him to the street. The Foley family had run the place for three generations and its current boss was Kitty Foley, matriarch of the Foley clan and a formidable woman with a deceptively diminutive name. Kitty was a big woman. She dominated the room with her physical presence and her deep, booming voice. A dining customer whose water glass had somehow dropped below half full could expect to hear Kitty bellow at a waitress from across the room to “Fill that man’s glass!” George Adams, the bartender at Foley’s was also a fixture of the place. The story was that a long time ago, George had shown up one afternoon when only the bar was open, although nearly empty, with just a few of the tables occupied by the regular afternoon gin rummy players. He ordered a drink from Fat Charley who was behind the bar. Charley gave him his drink and watched him closely while George watched the curious, suspicious eyes of the card players in the back bar mirror. George was not from the neighborhood. Fat Charley said nothing, nor did George while he sipped his gin and tonic. The shuffling of the cards was the only sound in the place. George tipped his glass and drained it, then smiled at Charley and turned to card players and said in a strong, confident voice, "Well, it looks like I’m the only nigger in this place.”

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All the cards stopped shuffling. It took just the briefest moment for George’s audacity and panache to filter through all the conventional reactions until it hit home, then first Fat Charley and then the rest of the room erupted in appreciative laughter. “God damn, mister,” Charley laughed, “You are a pistol.” Fat Charley’s chest and belly were bouncing up and down and he had his arms crossed trying to retain some sort of control. “You sure know how to handle yourself. Let me buy you another one.” He poured the drink without waiting for a confirmation. “What’s your name?” he asked as he put the drink in front of him. “George Adams, sir. Thanks for the drink.” “I’m Fat Charley Foley, George. Good to meet you.” “Likewise, Mr. Foley.” “Skip the sir and mister shit, George. I’m Fat Charley. I own this joint.” “Then you’re the one I came to see. I’m the best bartender in Chicago.” “That so? Think you’re better than me? I count myself as a pretty fair bartender.” “With all due respect, Charley, you are a saloonkeeper, that’s different than being a bartender.” “I’ll grant you that.” “Your job is making sure that everybody here is having a good time and getting what they want.” “I got a feeling I’m bein’ hustled a little bit.” “Just a little. I need a job. Got a little girl who likes to eat.” “New baby?”

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“Brand new. Want to see her?” “Why sure.” George opened his wallet and retrieved a picture of a tiny, fuzzy-haired girl with a beaming smile. “Aw, she’s very pretty, George. What’s her name?” “Name’s Monica,” George said, taking back the picture and replacing it carefully in his wallet. “Are you half as good as you say you are?” “Just about.” “Know the difference between a Manhattan and a Perfect Manhattan?” “Want me to mix a couple?” Fat Charley looked at George. He looked straight into his dark eyes and liked what he saw. “Nope. Can you start Thursday night?” “Yes, sir.” “Watch it.” “Thursday will be fine, Charley.” “That’s better.” So George joined Foley’s and never left. He knew all the regulars and all their drinks. He told jokes and stories and traded barbs with the best of the bar crowd. George could hold his own. He made the transition quickly from the curiosity of being Foley’s “nigger bartender” to just being George. Even the afternoon card players shushed each other when one of them slipped up and used the “N” word with George in the house. Still, no one invited him to date their sister.

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That Night Matt and Eleanor came in at the height of the dinner hour. Every table was full; the place was abuzz with conversation and Kitty Foley’s commands. “Let’s wait at the bar,” Matt said and steered Eleanor in that direction. “Mr. Matt and the lovely Eleanor.” “Hi, George,” Matt said. “Hi, George, how you been?” Eleanor smiled at the compliment. “Fine, everything’s just fine. How about you? Looks like it won’t be too long now,” George said, indicating Eleanor’s swollen state. Eleanor patted her belly. “Two months.” “It’ll pass fast. What’ll you two have?” “Gimme an Old Style, George,” Matt said. “Just a Coke - I mean a Pepsi - for me, George.” “You switched?” “I work for Pepsi now,” Matt said, “She has to drink Pepsi.” They all laughed and George brought their drinks. Kitty Foley came by. Kitty knew neither Matt nor Eleanor was old enough to drink legally but they had both passed Kitty’s more rigorous test of maturity and were welcome at the bar without question. “How you kids doin’? She asked. “Doin’ good, Kitty. How are you?” Eleanor said for both of them. “Pretty good for an old broad who isn’t getting much any more.” “Aw, Kitty, you could have any one of these guys,” Eleanor said.

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“Hell, none of ’em is worth having – except yours of course.” They laughed. Kitty patted Eleanor’s belly. “Coming right along,” she said. “I feel good,” Eleanor replied. “Good for you.” “Place is jumpin’, Kitty,” Matt said. “Yeah, beats workin’ for a living. I’ll see you two later. You gonna have dinner?” “Yep.” “Won’t be long.” Kitty wandered off searching out half empty glasses. “She’s a character, isn’t she,” Eleanor said under her breath to Matt when Kitty was far enough away. “She sure is. She used to scare the hell out of me when I was a kid.” “Me too.” “Isn’t that Mike and Maureen down there?” “Where?” “Down at the other end of the bar.” “Maureen!” Eleanor waved and called. Maureen Flynn looked up and squealed, “Eleanor!” Matt and Eleanor excused their way down the bar. “Oh, Ellie, you look great. Look at you. My god!” Maureen gushed. “Just a big, fat, pregnant lady. How are you? We haven’t seen you in so long.” “Hi, Matt,” Mike said.

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“Hey, Mike, how they hangin’? “Pretty loose, pretty loose. How you doin’?” “Okay, got a job with Pepsi. Workin’ my ass off.” “Oh, yeah, that’s cool.” “How ‘bout you?” “Ah, just workin’ for my old man in the shop and goin’ to school at night.” “School?” “Yeah, turns out I’m not as stupid as the nuns thought.” “Ah, sure you are, Mike.” Mike reached over his wife and smacked Matt on top of the head. “Better watch yourself, Kitty will throw your ass outta here.” They all laughed. They decided to have dinner together; a table opened up and they sat down. When they had ordered their meals and a couple of beers for Matt and Mike, a Whiskey Sour for Maureen and another Pepsi for Eleanor, Mike said, “You hear what happened to Jake Gruber?” Eleanor and Matt shook their heads. “No,” Matt said, “What happened?” “He got shot,” Mike said. “Shot! Jesus Christ! What happened? Matt said, “I never heard anything about this.” “Just happened. Last night. He’s a security guard at some warehouse on the West Side, he’s making his rounds and he comes around a corner of the building and there’s two niggers with a car jack between the wall of the building and a telephone pole.” “Shush,” Maureen admonished him and turned her head toward George.

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“Oh, yeah. Right. Well, anyway these two guys are about halfway through the wall and Jake must of scared the shit out of them and one of them pulls out a gun before Jake can do anything and shoots him.” “Holy shit,” Matt shook his head. “So he’s over at Saint Elizabeth’s,” Joey continued, “and they don’t know if he’s gonna make it or not.” “Oh, man, that’s terrible. Jake is a good guy,” Matt said. “Yeah, he’s all right,” Mike said. “Mike,” Maureen put in, “he could be dead or dying.” “Ah, he’ll prob’ly be okay.” “Man, I hope so. Remember the time he got up on the guard rail on the Irving Park bridge and walked it all the way across the river?” Matt said. “Yeah, now that would have killed him, fallin’ into the Chicago River,” Mike laughed. “We used to call it the Rubber River. Remember?” Matt said. “Used to think we could bounce across on all the rubbers floating in it.” Maureen and Eleanor shook their heads disapprovingly but they were laughing at the same time. “You guys are awful,” Eleanor said. “So what else is new, Mike? Whadaya takin’ at school?” Matt asked. “Well my old man decided that if I’m ever gonna run the garage some day I need to learn how to keep the books and as long as I was at it I could study engines,” Mike said. “I thought you knew everything there was to know about car engines,” Matt said.

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“So did I. Turns out I don’t know as much as I thought I did. I’m likin’ it, at least the shop part, the bookkeeping is just something I’ve got to do.” “Yeah,” Matt said. “So tell me about the baby, Ellie,” Maureen said. “Yeah, is Tarzan the Pepsi Man stayin’ away from you these days,” Mike said. Eleanor nearly blushed, “Well, he’s staying close enough to call in an emergency,” she said. Matt thought Mike’s crack was out of line. “She’s doing great, the baby is fine, and we’re taking care of business just fine, thank you,” Matt said with an edge to his voice. The others caught it. “Easy fella,” Mike said. “How come Maureen isn’t pregnant.” As soon as the words left his mouth Matt wished he could unsay them. What a stupid thing to say, he thought. “Could be a lot of reasons,” Mike said, bristling, “none of them any of your business though. He started to rise from his chair. “Hey, Mike, I’m sorry. It was a dumb thing to say. Sit down, all right. We’re having a good time. Haven’t seen you two in a long time – you’re lookin’ good, Mo is lookin’ good, let’s not fight over me bein’ an asshole. Okay?” Mike sat down. “Yeah, we’re both assholes sometimes. That’s why these beautiful women love us. Right girls?” “Oh, yeah, that’s it, Mike,” Eleanor said. “For sure, that’s definitely it, Mike,” Maureen put in.

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The Hospital “I really don’t see how you and Mike can be friends,” Eleanor said as they walked home from Foley’s. “Why not?” Matt asked. “I don’t know, you’re just nothing alike.” “Yeah?” “I mean, basically Mike really is an asshole.” “You think so?” “I do. Did you listen to our conversation tonight? He’s talking about a guy who is supposed to be a friend of his, who is maybe dying, and he’s telling the story like it happened to somebody in - I don’t know - Australia.” “Ah, I dunno, that’s just the way Mike is. He’s okay.” “Then, right in front of George, he starts in on that ‘nigger’ shit.” “He didn’t mean anything by it. That’s just the way he talks.” “It’s not the way you talk, not around me anyway. Do you talk like that when you’re with the guys?” “Nah,” Matt lied, and then truthfully, “I don’t like it either.” “I’m really tired of that shit. It seems like we can never get over it. And the way he treats Mo really pisses me off.” “Like what?” “He treats her like she is a moron. ‘Hey, Sweetie,’ ‘Hey, Cutie;’ What is that? And he’s grabbin’ her all night like she’s a piece of meat he’s got to tenderize. He’s an asshole.”

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They walked in silence for a while, Eleanor trying to calm herself. Matt trying to think clearly about the ways he was like and unlike Mike Flynn. He had to admit that Mike was an asshole in many ways. He was willing to believe that he, himself, was not an asshole. Still he had to also admit that in many ways he and Mike were much alike. “I’m just glad you’re nothing like him, that’s all,” Eleanor said at last. Matt put his arm around her. “Complete opposites, Cutie,” Matt said. Eleanor flared at once, laughing and mock-swinging at his head. “Cutie, huh. You dumb mick. I’ll give you, ‘Cutie.’ I’ll Cutie your head.” Matt backed up until she tired of the game. Then he grabbed her and held her against him. “Okay, okay, no ‘Cutie’ shit, I promise.” “Better not be any ‘Cutie’ shit. You’ll have to find another Cutie.” Eleanor was breathing a little too hard, Matt thought. “You all right?” he asked. “Yeah, I think so,” Eleanor responded, holding on to him. “I’m just deciding whether to have this baby right here or to wait ‘til you get me to the hospital.” “What? Are you kiddin’? Don’t joke about that.” “I’m not. My water just broke.” Matt looked down to the spreading puddle at their feet. “Jesus Christ!”

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They were still on Irving Park Road; a bus heading east was coming toward them. Matt ran in front of it waving his arms. The bus lurched to a stop and the driver cracked his window to confront Matt. “Whaddaya nuts? Ged dow da duh street,” the driver shouted. “Open up,” Matt ordered, “My wife is having a baby!” “Oh, no, not on my bus, man,” the driver pleaded. “We’re just going to Martha Washington,” Matt assured him. Martha Washington Hospital was on Irving Park and only six blocks away. “Let’s do it,” the bus driver said, and swung open the front door. Matt helped Eleanor onto the bus and sat her down on a seat near the door. “Thanks, man,” Matt said to the driver, “We really appreciate this.” “No problem, siddown, don’t worry about the fare, you got a free ride tonight.” Two minutes later the bus stopped in front of Martha Washington. Eleanor and Matt thanked the driver again and eased, gingerly off the bus. There was still a long walk from the street to the hospital entrance. “Can you make it?” Matt asked. “I think so,” Eleanor said, “Let’s just take it slow.” “Maybe I ought to run and get you a wheelchair?” “Nah, just stay with me, I’ll make it.” “Okay, nice and easy.” Matt held Eleanor and guided her slowly down the long driveway toward the hospital entrance. Lombardy poplars swayed and whispered on either side of the driveway. Matt noticed a police squad and an ambulance, both with lights flashing, at the Emergency entrance.

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He noticed the quarter-moon, the moving clouds, and the stars. He felt Eleanor next to him. Something important was happening. “You okay?” “Yeah, I’m doin’ okay.” Suddenly Eleanor reached out to grab his arm and at the same time reached to seize one of the trees. “Oh my God!” she cried. “What! What?” “Oh, the pain. Oh. Oh. Oh my God.” Eleanor’s knees buckled, Matt caught her. “Hey! You want to sit down?” “No. No,” Eleanor gasped. “I’m all right now. Oh, my God, I never felt anything like that in my life.” “We gotta get inside.” Eleanor grunted. “Let’s go over there to Emergency,” Matt pointed. “Yeah.” A young cop was coming out of the Emergency room, lighting a cigarette. He nodded at Eleanor. “You all right,” he asked. “Yeah,” Eleanor said, “I’m having a baby.” “So, I see,” the cop laughed, “Lemme get you some help.” He tossed his cigarette aside and went back in through the automatic doors. Matt and Eleanor followed. The cop grabbed a folded wheelchair stashed against a wall and yanked it open.

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“Here, try this,” he said. “Thanks,” Eleanor said as Matt eased her into the chair. “Thanks, buddy,” Matt said to the cop. “No problem. Good luck.” The cop was shaking out another cigarette as Matt pushed Eleanor toward the reception desk. “Can I help you?” the receptionist asked. “My wife is having a baby,” Matt said. “Are you having pains,” the receptionist asked Eleanor. “Just had one outside,” Eleanor replied, “And my water broke about fifteen minutes ago.” “Had you been having pains before your water broke?” the receptionist asked. “No.” “All right, let’s get you taken care of,” the receptionist said and then to Matt, “Bring her around here and then you and I can fill out the paperwork.” Matt nodded and pushing Eleanor ahead of him followed the receptionist into the Emergency waiting room. “Wait here,” the receptionist said and left them. She returned in a moment with a white-coated, white-haired doctor. “Hi,” the doctor said, “I’m Doctor Wood.” He extended his hand to Eleanor and then to Matt. “You just started your labor?” he asked Eleanor. “Just one pain so far, Doctor,” Eleanor answered. “Let’s take a look at you.” And to Matt, “Why don’t you go with Margaret and get your wife checked in.”

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Matt leaned over Eleanor and kissed her. “I’ll be right back,” he said. Eleanor nodded. Matt followed Margaret back to the reception area. “First child?” Margaret asked. “Yep, first one. Is this normal, her having her water break, I mean.” “Oh, sure. She seems fine. Don’t worry, Doctor Wood will take care of her.” “Our doctor is Doctor Jensen.” “He’s a good doctor,” Margaret said, “I know him.” “Should I call him.” “Why don’t you wait until Doctor Wood has had a chance to look at your wife.” “Okay.” “Now, what’s your wife’s name?” Matt provided answers to the questions the receptionist needed to admit Eleanor to the hospital. Some of them seemed trivial and unnecessary, but Matt patiently answered them all, even as he grew anxious to get back to Eleanor. When he returned to her, Eleanor was dressed in a patient’s gown with daisies on it. She was lying on a bed in an alcove of sorts with a curtain for privacy. The curtain was open. Matt took her hand. “Okay?” he said. “I had another pain,” Eleanor said. “That’s good, right?” Matt asked. “It really hurts. And now I’m getting a splitting headache too.” “Yeah.” Matt didn’t know what more to say. This was clearly woman’s work. “What did the doctor say?”

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“He says I’m doing fine. As soon as a room is ready they are going to take me upstairs.” “Should I call Doctor Jensen?” “Yeah, better let him know what’s going on.” “Okay, I’ll check with the doctor first.” “Go ahead, I’m okay,” Eleanor smiled at him. Matt talked with Doctor Wood who allowed him to use the Nurse’s station phone to call Doctor Jensen. After Matt told Jensen what was happening, the two doctors talked. “I told Doctor Jensen that it might be a while and that we would call him when it was time to come in,” Doctor Wood explained to Matt. “No point in having him here until she is farther along.” “How long will this take?” Matt asked. “Hard to tell. She is having some pretty strong contractions, but they have just begun. We’ll just keep an eye on her for a while. You can stay with her when we get her settled in upstairs.” “Thanks Doctor,” Matt said. “We’ll be taking her up in a few minutes. Why don’t you go make any phone calls you have to make and then Margaret can tell you what room your wife is in.” “Good,” Matt said. He walked back to Eleanor and reported his conversation with both doctors. “Call my mother,” Eleanor ordered. “Okay, don’t do anything until I get back.” “I’ll try,” Eleanor grimaced as another pain coursed through her.

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Matt gripped her hand in his and tried to convey his strength to her. “Whew,” Eleanor gasped as the pain passed, “Go on, call my mother.” “I’ll be back soon.” Eleanor’s mother was at Bingo. Matt talked to her father and told him what was happening. It was much easier than talking to Eleanor’s mother who would have wanted to know every detail of what had happened up to this point. Eleanor’s father took the news soberly, expressed his confidence that Matt was doing as much as could be done for his daughter, asked Matt to give Eleanor his love and said goodbye. All of this took place in such a brief moment that he decided to grab a cigarette before joining Eleanor. Matt went through the glass door of the emergency room. The ambulance that had been there earlier was gone, but the police squad car was still there. The young cop was leaning against it smoking a cigarette. Matt walked toward him. “How’s your wife?” the cop asked. “So far, so good,” Matt replied, “Thanks for your help before.” “Sure.” “I thought I’d grab a quick smoke while they brought her upstairs,” Matt explained. “Sounds like you’re going to be here awhile.” “Think so?” “Well, they’re not taking her right to the delivery room.” “No. You’re right.” The cop drew on his cigarette and pointed at the squad car. “Had one right in this car once.” “What?”

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“A baby.” “No shit.” “Yeah, the mother was just a kid. Claimed she didn’t even know she was pregnant.” “Huh?” “Yeah, she was just fourteen years old. Kind of a fat kid. So I guess nobody noticed her gaining any weight.” Matt thought a moment. “What about her period?” “Said she never had one. I guess she got caught first time around. I dunno, she wasn’t any too bright.” Matt shook his head. “Damn,” he said. “Yeah, damn is right,” the cop said, “turns out her old man did it.” “She was married?” “No, not her husband – her father.” Matt tried to imagine the situation. Then he tried not to imagine it. The story was soiling his own experience. “I got to get back inside.” “Yeah, good luck,” the cop said. “Thanks.” Matt walked back toward the hospital, shaken by the story the cop had told. “What kind of person could do such a thing,” he thought. He had a sense of having had something filthy thrown on him. Somehow his joy and anticipation had been tarnished. He had to find

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Eleanor. Then it would be all right. He looked around the Admitting area for the receptionist and found her huddled with a nurse. The receptionist had a worried look on her face. “Mister Healey,” she said in a strange tone of voice, “I’m glad you’re back. You have to get upstairs right away. I’ll show you the way.” “Everything okay?” Matt asked, picking up on her anxious tone. “There has been a complication,” the receptionist said. “A what?” Matt asked, although he had heard her clearly. “They will explain when you see your wife.” That was all the receptionist had to say until they were outside Eleanor’s room. Eleanor was in bed when Matt entered the room. Her eyes were closed. Matt thought that was odd, how could she be sleeping while she was in labor? A tiny Asian nurse was adjusting a valve on an intravenous tube that was attached to Eleanor’s arm. Matt was confused. How could all of this have happened in the few minutes it took for him to call Eleanor’s parents and have a cigarette. Eleanor seemed pale; beads of sweat were on her forehead and her upper lip. She seemed in a kind of rigid distress, even in her sleep. “What’s going on?” Matt asked the nurse. She motioned him outside the room and followed him out. “Mistah Healey?” she asked in a voice so small and quiet he barely heard her. “Yes, I’m the husband,” Matt said anxiously, “What’s going on?” “I will get Doctah Jensen,” the nurse whispered. “Doctor Jensen,” Matt thought as the tiny nurse left him, “When did he get here?” He reentered the room and stood watching Eleanor. She seemed to be having difficulty breathing.

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Matt moved to her side and took her hand in his. She opened her eyes and looked at him without speaking. “Hey, babe,” Matt said, “You okay?” It looked as if she tried to smile but then the expression left her face and she closed her eyes. “Honey?” Matt suddenly felt cold. “Mr. Healey.” Matt turned from Eleanor to Doctor Jensen. The doctor looked worried. “Let’s step out into the hall,” Doctor Jensen said quietly. Matt noticed how easily his hand slipped from Eleanor’s. He followed the doctor into the corridor. “What’s going on?” Matt asked for what seemed to be the hundredth time without an answer. “There has been a complication,” Doctor Jensen said repeating the receptionist’s words exactly. “A complication?” Matt asked. “On the way up from Admitting Eleanor suffered a seizure of some sort. We haven’t yet determined precisely what happened.” “A seizure,” Matt said stupidly. What is he saying? Matt thought, What is he talking about? “We need to make some decisions right away,” Doctor Jensen was saying, but Matt felt as though he had missed a turn somewhere along the way. “Eleanor was fine when we came in,” Matt said.

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“I know, son,” Doctor Jensen reached out and gripped Matt’s arm. “I know she was, but something happened and we have to find out what it was as quickly as we can.” “She was fine,” Matt nearly shouted. “I know, I know,” Doctor Jensen chanted, “I know.” Matt took a stumbling step backward in a kind of revulsion from this growing horror and rushed back to Eleanor’s side. She lay as he had left her. Matt lifted her hand; it was clammy and wet. She made a small sound. “Ellie,” Matt whispered in her ear. “Ellie, Ellie; I’m here, I’m right here. Everything will be fine, baby. Everything will be fine.” He kissed her ear. Then he kissed her hand. He stared at her pallid face. She looked terrible. She didn’t look like Eleanor but like someone else entirely. “Why does she look so different,” Matt thought. While he stared Eleanor opened her left eye. Just her left eye. She seemed to look directly at Matt and yet no sign of recognition was in that eye. No recognition at all. There was nothing in that eye. “Eleanor,” Matt choked out her name. Doctor Jensen was moving past him. So was the tiny Asian nurse. They were doing things, talking back and forth, they seemed excited; other people were in the room, they were doing things too, they seemed to be shouting instructions to each other; but it was all hazy to Matt, like a dream. Two attendants came into the room with a gurney. They rolled it next to Eleanor’s bed and lifted her onto it. Without any concern for her modesty, Matt thought vaguely. And then she was gone. They rushed her out of the room and down the corridor.

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And then before he had time to gather his thoughts the little Asian nurse was standing in front of him. She was looking up into his face. She was holding both his hands in hers. “Mistah Healey,” she said softly. She speaks so softly, Matt thought. “Ahm so sahy for your loss.” “My loss,” Matt said. Such a pretty accent, so gentle on the ears, he thought. “What is my loss?” he said. “Ahm so sahy for yawh wife and yawh baby,” the little nurse said. “Yes, my wife and my baby. Where are they?” Matt was bewildered. Doctor Jensen was coming down the hall. He had on a green gown and was removing a green paper cap from his head. His hair was sticking up. There was blood on the front of his gown. Matt stared at the blood. “I’m sorry, son,” the doctor said, “We did everything we could.” That’s Eleanor’s blood, Matt thought, That’s our baby’s blood. “We thought perhaps we could save the baby but it just wasn’t possible,” Doctor Jensen was saying. It sounded to Matt as if he were hearing the doctor’s voice from the bottom of a well. “My wife and my baby are dead?” Matt asked. “Yes, son, I’m sorry to say, they are,” Doctor Jensen put his hand on Matt’s arm again. “My wife and my baby are dead,” a statement to himself this time. It didn’t sound true. It didn’t sound possible. “What time is it?” Matt asked. A puzzled look from Doctor Jensen, then a glance up at the wall clock, “It’s one-thirty.”

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“We left Foley’s about eleven,” Matt thought. “Ellie was alive at eleven. Now it’s one-thirty and Ellie is dead. And my baby is dead. My baby. My baby. Doesn’t even have a name, just my baby. And it’s dead. Eleanor’s dead.” Doctor Jensen was talking to him. He could see the doctor clearly, standing right in front of him, but his voice was muted somehow, and the doctor’s words seemed to have no meaning, just a kind of sad, mournful music. “I am,” Matt began and choked. “I have to,” he stopped. “What is happening?” he thought once again. And then he slumped to the floor. When he awoke he was in a hospital bed. It confused him at first. His first thought was, “Where’s Ellie?” Then he remembered. A huge weight seemed to settle on his chest. His throat constricted. He wanted to scream but couldn’t even speak. His wife was dead. His baby was dead. He was buried in stones. They were on his chest, in his throat, in his stomach. There were stones on his face and his eyes. There were stones on his head. His legs had turned to stone. Matt lifted his heavy hands and tried to take the stones from his face. There were no stones on his face. The little nurse was looking down at him. She had such a kind face, a gentle, woman’s face. She was crooning some kind of song to him in her soft voice. The song went, “Om,om,om,om,om.” It was very pretty. Matt went to sleep. They had given him something to make him sleep. It felt like kidnapping to Matt. He had been drugged and taken away from Ellie, away from his responsibilities. In his dream he was in the alley again, sinking into the pavement; the cat held something much worse than a rat dangling from its bloody jaws. When he awoke he was a child again. His parents were at his bedside.

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“Dad,” he said and lifted his hand to his father. “Hello, son,” his father said and took his hand. His mother stroked his hair. “Oh, Matt,” she said, “It’s so terrible.” Yes, it is, Matt thought. “I got to get up,” he said. Matt pushed himself upright and swung his legs off the bed. His feet didn’t reach the floor. Whatever they had given him hadn’t worn off yet and everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. He stared at his feet for what seemed to be a long time. His parents watched him and spoke to him but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. Matt looked closely at his parents. They were familiar, of course, but also somehow seemed to be strangers. “Gotta get up,” he said again, “Where are my shoes?” “You sure you’re okay?” his father was holding his shoes. “Yeah, I’m okay?” Matt slipped into his shoes and stood up. “Eleanor’s folks,” Matt said. “They’re here,” Matt’s father said. Matt put one foot in front of the other. Except for the slow motion, everything seemed to be working. He and his parents stepped into the hall and Matt’s father pointed the way. They walked past the nurse’s station; heads turned and Matt saw the little Asian nurse sitting at a desk. Just past the station was a small waiting room. Eleanor’s parents and her brother, Jack, were there. Her parents sat together on a couch; both of them stared into the middle of the room as if they were looking at something that wasn’t there. Their faces were distorted and grim. Jack was agitated, pacing the room, saying something to himself, running his hands

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through his disheveled hair. All three of them seemed to flinch when the Matt entered the room. Matt knelt in front of Eleanor’s mother. “Mrs. Gorman,’ he began. Nothing more came out. Eleanor’s mother stared at him for a moment. Then slowly she stroked his hair. She didn’t speak. Her touch seemed to release something in Matt. He found his shoulders rising and falling in a ridiculously exaggerated motion. Then he began to gasp for breath in long, rasping gulps. She took him in her arms and Matt wet her ample bosom with a great slobbering, uncontrollable grief. Above him Mrs. Gorman’s own tears ran down into Matt’s hair. When the convulsion subsided Matt’s father lifted him upright. “Come on, Matt,” he said. Matt let himself be lifted. He felt his father’s big handkerchief rubbed roughly across his face. He took it from his father’s hand and rubbed with it himself. Slowly he regained control. “I don’t know what to say,” Matt said. “What happened?” It was Jack who asked. What he meant was, What did you let happen to my sister? “I don’t know.” Matt shook his head. “Eleanor’s water broke and we were at the hospital no more than ten, fifteen minutes later. She was fine when she was in the emergency room. I went to call you,” he nodded to Mr. Gorman, “and by the time I got back everything had gone wrong. I still don’t know what happened.” Mr. Gorman spoke for the first time, “Somebody better tell me why my daughter is dead.” His fists clinched on the tops of his legs, his body was rigid, anger and despair alternated on his face.

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Matt’s father took his cue, “I’ll get somebody.” He left the room. No one spoke in the moments he was gone. Jack looked as though he was gathering strength to attack Matt but kept redirecting it to attacking his own hair. Mr. and Mrs. Gorman resumed their catatonic poses. Matt’s mother held him close for a moment, then they both sat down on separate chairs. Matt thought of Eleanor and felt pieces break and tumble inside him. His father returned with Dr. Jensen. The doctor came first to Matt and covered Matt’s hand with both of his. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, son,” he said. “Are you all right?” “I’m all right, Doctor,” Matt said, “What happened to Ellie?” “Well, we won’t know for sure for a while yet,” Dr. Jensen said to the room, “but it appears that Eleanor had a stroke.” “A stroke,” it was Eleanor’s father, “Eleanor was a healthy, nineteen year old girl.” “I know,” Dr. Jensen said in reply, “it doesn’t seem fair, or make sense, but Eleanor may have had a weak spot on an artery in her brain that until she went into labor had never been strained to the breaking point.” The room took this in without comment. “At least we think that is what happened, we tried to react to it as quickly as we could but we just weren’t fast enough. To tell you the truth, I don’t think we could have saved her anyway, I think the insult to her brain was so severe that nothing we could have done would have made a difference.” What a curious way to put it, Matt thought, “an insult to her brain.” Yes, it was.

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“It was terrible to lose Eleanor and then terrible again to lose the baby,” Dr. Jensen held his hand over his mouth as he spoke. “We tried everything we could but it all just happened too fast for us.” He turned away from them. “She was just too small and too weak.” “She?” Matt asked. “A girl,” Dr. Jensen said and turned back to them. “A girl,” Matt said. Eleanor would have loved having a girl, he thought. “Thank you, Doctor,” Matt’s father said. Dr. Jensen nodded, “I’ll be here if you need me.” Matt had a hysterical impulse to laugh but restrained it. Eleanor was dead and nothing could change that fact. His baby girl was dead. Why was he alive? Why was everyone dead but him? “I think we ought to leave now, Matt,” his father said. “Yeah, sure,” Matt responded, lost in his morbid thoughts. They walked out as a group, leaning toward but not on each other, each holding grimly on by themselves, acknowledging the support of the others only by their posture. Hospital staff moved around and past them, a patient was rolled into the emergency room as they went out. Matt watched all this and thought, the “Eleanor” crisis is over, a new emergency has replaced her’s. They don’t care, he thought, they don’t care.

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Snow Eleanor lay in her coffin in a parlor at Mooney’s funeral home on Southport. It was early; Matt was alone in the room with her. He sat in the front row of the folding chairs that filled the center of the room. Eleanor’s parents and her brother would be here soon. Later these chairs would fill with other relatives and friends. Somewhere a telephone was ringing. “Someone else is dead,” Matt thought. Matt sat alone for what seemed to him like a long time just looking at Eleanor’s face from where he sat. From his angle, slightly below the open coffin, only Eleanor’s profile was visible. “She’s got too much makeup on,” Matt thought, “She wouldn’t like that.” A strange smell permeated the place. Matt tried to identify it. Something like licorice and wet carpeting – something like candles and furniture polish. Then he thought, “Maybe it’s embalming fluid.” And suddenly he was weeping. He wept unselfconsciously and without restraint. The tears flowed down his face. His nose dripped. His face seemed hot and flushed. He put his face in his hands and sobbed. Then he sat back in the chair and stretched his arms out on the chairs to either side. “Jesus, Ellie,” he said out loud. His voice surprised him, it sounded old and cracked. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Jesus, Ellie,” he said again softly. Eleanor’s brother, Jack, was the first to arrive. A tall, thin man, fair skin, now flushed, he wore a dark blue suit that looked borrowed. He looked like a workingman out of his element. He gave Matt a handshake and a hug and a few mumbled, awkward words of shared grief, and then knelt at the kneeler in front of his sister’s coffin. Jack was two years older than Eleanor. She had been his adoring little sister. He stared, dumbfounded, at his sister’s face. “She is beautiful,” he thought, and realized he had never thought that about his sister before. His big hands hung over the kneeler and rested on the crinkled satin lining that spilled out of

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the coffin. His fingernails were chewed to the quick and his hands were raw and red. He tried to say a Hail Mary but couldn’t concentrate, his focus kept coming back to his sister’s face. How still she is, he thought, how peaceful looking. Eleanor’s hands lay folded across her stomach; a rosary was twined between her fingers. That looks kind of funny, Jack thought, but couldn’t decide why he thought it looked funny. He looked back to his sister’s face. Is she smiling? He thought. He smiled, too. Then he wept quietly and stopped weeping and kissed his sister goodbye and rose and asked his brother-in-law if he wanted to get a smoke. They met Eleanor’s parents as they walked out the front door. Eleanor’s father, a short, wiry Irishman with a beak for a nose, looked as though the blood had been drained from him. Eleanor’s mother, by contrast, seemed to have taken her husband’s blood to herself, she was florid, her face a blotchy pink where it wasn’t red. They held their bodies rigid and close together, but each gave off a sense of isolation despite the support they obviously were trying to provide each other. Matt shook his father-in-law’s gnarled hand and held it for a moment. Then he kissed his mother-in-law’s wet, swollen cheek and they hugged each other. “Oh, Matt, Matt,” she whispered to him and hugged him tighter. They stood together silently. Matt and Jack lit cigarettes and smoked. The day was sunny but cold and the two young men hunched their shoulders against the wind. Eleanor’s parents went inside. “How you doin’, Matt?” “I can’t believe it, Jack,” Matt shook his head, “I just can’t believe it.” Flecks of snow began swirling around them. Jack turned up his suit coat collar and looked up into the sky. “The sun is shining and it’s snowing,” he said. Matt looked up from his cigarette into the bright, nearly cloudless sky. It was snowing. Ellie would get a kick out of this he thought and a lifetime of things she

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would get a kick out of, things he could have shared with her, things that now were gone unborn like their child, sank onto his heart.

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The Funeral Matt took all the condolences in a kind of fog, unable to sort them out, to recognize the familiar faces that leaned in toward him and crooned mournful sounds that sounded to him like the same sounds his heart was making. He rode to the cemetery with Eleanor’s parents in the back of a long, black limousine. A year ago a white limousine had delivered Eleanor to St. Bede’s for their wedding day. Eleanor’s mother sobbed into an endless supply of Kleenex from the box on the seat next to her. Eleanor’s father simply sat, looking down at his hands folded in his lap. He did not console his wife whose weeping expressed his own throttled despair, he would nod occasionally and a grunting noise would sometimes seem to act as a complementary accent to her steady, rhythmic sobbing. Matt sat facing rearward and watched the neighborhood pass by. Every block seemed to hold some memory that included Eleanor. The streets where they walked together, his arm around her shoulders even though she was a little too tall for him to do that comfortably and his own shoulder socket would ache all the time he kept her in his embrace. The memory wrenched an audible sob from him and his father-in-law looked up suddenly as if surprised to see him there. The procession of cars turned north onto Western Avenue past Martha Washington Hospital and Matt could see how many cars there were in the line. Nice so many came, he thought. She would have liked that. The hospital came into view. The last place I saw her alive, he thought. She was so happy, so ready to become a new mother. Never even got to see her baby. Our baby. Then Matt remembered the young cop who told him the story of the girl raped by her father who had her baby in his squad car. That is when it all went wrong, when he told that

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filthy story. His body contorted with rage and frustration. He bent forward his arms wrapped around his torso and hit his forehead on his father-in-law’s knee. “Easy, son.” Now it was Matt’s turn to look at the man as if he were a stranger who had suddenly appeared in this bad dream. “I’m sorry.” “That’s all right.” Eleanor’s mother was still sobbing. She sobbed all the way to the cemetery and all the way through the services until Matt couldn’t stand it anymore and asked Mike Flynn if he could ride with him on the way home. Everyone was invited to Eleanor’s Aunt Charlotte’s house for a post-funeral get-together but Flynn insisted on stopping for a drink before they went there.

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A Couple of Drinks “I don’t know, Mike.” “Trust me, you need a drink to get through all the old ladies hanging on you later.” “All right, all right.” “Couple of drinks and we’re out of there.” Through the front window of Fife’s Tavern, the bartender Roy Wilkes saw them park the car. He watched them get out. Well, kid, now we will see if you got what it takes. “Hello, Roy.” “Mike. Matt. Sorry for your troubles, Matt. Eleanor was the best.” He stuck out his hand and Matt shook it. “Thanks, Roy,” Matt said, “And thanks for coming to the wake last night.” Roy waved it away and poured three shots of John Power’s. “To Eleanor.” The three men raised their glasses and emptied them. Roy poured again. Again they drank. “How you doin’, Matt?” “Tell you the truth, I don’t know, Roy.” “Not an easy thing.” “No, it’s not.” “He’ll be all right, Roy. Just gonna take some time.” “That’s the trick. I know you don’t believe it right now, Matt, but you will get over this someday.”

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“I don’t know. Feels like the bottom of my life just dropped out.” “Give us one more, Roy.” Mike put a five-dollar bill on the bar. Roy picked it up and put it back in Mike’s hand. “Not today, Mike. You want to spend money go someplace else.” He poured three more shots. “Eleanor,” Mike said and they drank again. “We gotta get outta here, Mike. Eleanor’s folks and everybody’s waiting for me.” “Yeah, okay. Just sit a minute and chill out before we go.” “Where’s Maureen, by the way?” “She drove her own car. She’s probably over at your aunt’s place now.” “Just one more, Roy.” “Last one, Mike,” Matt said. “Last one.” Roy poured and they drank a last time to Eleanor. The reception at Aunt Charlotte’s was a blur of powdered faces pressed too close to his. Matt was drunk enough to tolerate all the wet kisses and the hackneyed phrases – they were all given in a real spirit of sympathy and attempts to comfort him. His right hand ached with shaking hands. It seemed easier for Eleanor’s parents. They were among old friends and relatives. They seemed more composed now and talked quietly with everyone who approached them with condolences. Father Sebastian was there, nodding and schmoozing and patting hands. Matt hoped he would not say a rosary, he didn’t think he could handle one more rosary. It all seemed pathetic and futile. Ellie would think so too, he concluded. “You all right?” Mike Flynn had an arm around him.

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“Yeah, I’m good, Mike.” “We’re taking off.” “Oh, yeah?” “I can only take so much of this.” “Yeah.” “Take care, buddy.” Mike had him in a bear hug. “You need anything . . .” “Yeah, I know.” Maureen kissed him. “I’m so sorry, Matt.” “I’ll see you.” “I’ll call you tomorrow,” Mike said. “Good. Good. Talk to you then.” Later that night, when all the mourners had gone, Matt went back to Eleanor’s parent’s place to be with them awhile. He talked with them about the day for a few minutes and then in mid-sentence fell asleep on their couch. When he awoke he was disoriented and had no idea where he was. He nearly called out to Eleanor. He could see that it was dark outside. Ellie’s dead. Matt stood in the hallway leading to the kitchen. He could see two men seated at the kitchen table. If they turned they could see him but neither man sensed his presence. One of the men was Eleanor’s father, the other her grandfather, Eleanor’s mother’s father. A dark brown quart bottle of Meister Brau stood before each man, as did a kitchen glass partly filled with beer. Eleanor’s grandfather was cutting a chunk from a block of Swiss cheese on a large plate with Saltine crackers arranged around it. Eleanor’s mother did the plate Matt thought.

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The older

man finished cutting and offered the chunk on the point of the knife to his son-in-law who took it and ate it – chewing slowly. The men were infused in yellow light from the setting sun shining through the yellow curtains on the kitchen window next to them and from the yellowing bulb in the faded globe of the kitchen light above them. It reflected off the yellow flowers on the wallpaper and from the old yellowed linoleum on the kitchen floor. It was the evening of the day their daughter and granddaughter was buried. The men alternated between sipping beer and cutting and eating chunks of the cheese. Occasionally they added a cracker to the mix. They didn’t speak but Matt thought they knew each other’s thoughts and somehow shared them in the communion of crackers and cheese and beer. “Hello Matt,” his father-in-law said. “Hello, Mr. Gorman.” “Come and sit with us. Have a beer.” Matt pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. “How you doin’?” “I don’t know.” “Yeah.” “Have some cheese, Matt,” Eleanor’s grandfather said, pointing. “No, thanks. I can’t swallow anything.” “We’ve all got a lot to swallow, Matt. You can do it, kid. Have some cheese and a little beer. Get a glass.” Matt did what the old man said and got a glass from the cabinet. He sat down with it and his father-in-law poured. Matt could hear the crows in the maple tree in the back yard cawing

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the way they did every evening. Eleanor said they were talking about what they did that day. A cicada started singing.

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In the Barn Nate Cohen backed the truck into an open slot, turned off the engine, picked up some advertising hangers that had fallen on the floor of the cab, made sure the cap was screwed securely onto the top of his thermos and replaced it in his lunchbox, then pulled the pen out of the top of his clipboard and began his paperwork. His helper, Matt Healey, was already outside the truck rolling up the side doors and making sure everything was ready for the lift truck operators to remove the pallets of empties. When he had finished his paperwork Nate climbed down from his truck and walked through the barn stopping occasionally to talk with other drivers. A union organizer was nosing around again. Why didn’t those guys go organize truckers who actually needed them? They seemed to think all truckers were the same, that there was no difference between driving a garbage truck and running a soft drink business from a truck. Eric Johnson, the personnel manager, came through the office door into the truck barn. He and Nate were among the old timers at Pepsi. “How’s the kid doing, Nate?” “Pretty good. He works hard. Still a little messed up.” “Tough thing for a young guy to handle.” “Yeah, it is. He doesn’t talk much about it but you can tell it’s on his mind.” “Good thing he’s with you and not somebody like Levinsky.” Nate laughed, “True. True.” Nate turned in his daily record, said hello in passing to people he knew in the office, and returned to the barn to check on Matt. “Everything okay?”

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“All set.” “You clean off that busted pallet?” “Yep, got it.” “All right. See you tomorrow.” “Nate.” “Yeah.” “I got accepted.” “What?” “The police force.” It made Nate pause. He knew Matt had applied but he hadn’t mentioned it lately and Nate had thought no more about it. “No shit.” “No shit.” “Let’s go outside.” They left the barn and walked together down the alley toward Lawrence Avenue. “You’re sure about this?” “Yeah, I think so.” “Big change.” “Yeah.” “You know you could do all right here. You move up to driver you can make a pretty good living.”

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“Yeah, I know, Nate. But that could take awhile. I think I need something new.” Matt paused to light a cigarette and took a couple of drags on it. “It’s kind of hard coming home from this job, Nate. I always expect to find Ellie.” Nate put a hand on his shoulder. “I understand, kid. You have had about a tough a time as anybody can have and you’ve handled it pretty good.” “I keep waking up in my old life, Nate. I never realized how much she meant to me.” “Yeah.” “You’re married, Nate.” “Yeah, I’m married.” “You know.” “Yeah, I know, Matt.” They talked a while longer about the decision, about when Matt would be leaving, about how they would miss working with each other, then Nate tucked his lunchbox under his arm and they shook hands and went their separate ways.

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Everybody Knows The afternoon sun dropped to the point at which it blazed into the west window and startled the solitary drinker at the bar. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered and held up a hand to block the light. Roy Wilkes looked up from his chore stocking shelves, moved from behind the bar to the window and loosened the lanyard on a cracked, yellow plastic curtain and lowered it. It made a hissing sound like a disturbed snake. Dewey LaPierre stopped squinting and refocused on the half empty shot glass in front of him. He lifted the glass and slowly drank it down, then pushed it forward and without looking at the bartender said, “Again.” Wilkes looked at LaPierre and thought to himself that trouble was brewing. But Dewey LaPierre was Dewey the Bear and Wilkes knew better than to interrupt his contemplative drinking even though he knew at some point it would probably erupt into something he would rather not have to deal with. A drunk was one thing; an armed drunk gangster with a mean temper was something else. He poured another shot of whisky. “Another beer, Dewey?” LaPierre grunted an acknowledgement and Wilkes set another draft Old Style in front of him and then moved to the end of the bar and busied himself straightening stock. He’s been here for three hours, Wilkes thought, he’s got at least a pint of whisky in him and three times that much beer. I hope to hell he’s out of here before business picks up. LaPierre saw Wilkes’ glance at him reflected in the backbar mirror. Fucking hillbilly is starting to worry about me, he thought. He smiled to himself and slowly, with what seemed enormous effort, lifted the shot glass and poured down precisely half the whisky. The front door opened and a figure stood in it for a moment. Dewey couldn’t make out his features with the setting sun behind the man until he moved toward him and the door closed.

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“Tim?” “Hello, pop.” “What the hell are you doing here?” “Came to get you.” “What for?” “Ma wants you home.” “Ma wants me home?” “Yeah.” “Ma wants me home. Roy, give my kid a beer.” “That’s all right, pop,” Tim said, waving the bartender off. “Have a beer,” his father insisted. Roy!” “Want a beer, kid?” “Gimme a Bud.” “Ma wants me home.” “What she said.” “Sit down, sit down.” Tim sat and sipped his beer and observed his father’s condition. Things would be better if he didn’t come home. “She sent you?” “Yeah, Ma sent me.” Dewey shook his head as if in disbelief, “Huh,” he said and then, “You know somethin’, Tim.” “No, what?”

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“Everybody knows.” “Everybody knows what?” Standing next to him Tim leaned on one elbow on the bar and turned toward his father. “Everybody knows.” “Yeah, yeah, okay, everybody knows. This is going to be a story, right? I’m going to learn a lesson here, right?” “Guy is cheating on his wife, she knows. She’s fooling around, he knows. Officer Friendly is on the take, Uncle Charley is sticking his fat thumb up little cousin Suzy at the family barbeques, everybody knows.” He sipped his beer. “You’re drunk, right?” “Drunk? That’s beside the point.” “You don’t believe what you just said.” “Everybody knows, kid.” “I don’t believe it.” “I didn’t either. I used to think bad guys were different. Had something wrong with them; something bad growing up maybe. Or they were like the Church says, sinners. Made the wrong choices. Went the wrong way. Pretty soon,” he waved his hand. Tim looked into his beer and sighed. “Look, if you’re saying everybody has got some bad in them, I can’t argue with that. I think you’re right. But a bad mistake is still a bad mistake. Even deciding to do something like cheating on your wife, that doesn’t make you a bad person. A sinner, maybe. An asshole, maybe.”

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“Everybody knows everything, Tim. Nobody can say they don’t know. You know. Look at me. You know all about me. You don’t want to admit it to yourself, maybe – but you know.” Tim could see his father was becoming excited. This could only lead to something bad but he couldn’t let it go. “What do I know?” His father waved his hand aggressively, “Go on, go on, leave me alone, I’m drinking here, leave me alone.” “Oh no, you started this; what do I know about you that I don’t know I know?” Dewey was suddenly quiet. He spoke so softly Tim could hardly hear him. “You know what I am.” His father’s quiet made Tim quiet. “I know what you do, Pop.” He lifted his bottle halfway to his lips and held it there. Then he put it down. “You’re still my father.” His voice broke. “You’re still my old man.” Dewey loosened his hold on his shot glass and set it on the bar. He raised his hand. “Roy, down here.” Roy poured another. “You?” Tim shook his head. “I’m outta here.” Dewey didn’t look up. Tim began to put his hand on his father’s shoulder, thought better of it. “Take care,” Tim said with a nod to Roy and left the tavern. Dewey drank the shot and dropped the glass hard on the bar. “Again,” he said. He looked toward the closing door. “Good kid,” Roy said as he poured.

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“Yeah.” “He still in school?” “When he wants to be.” “Well, that’s a tough age.” “Yeah, tough age. Roy, I am completely fucked up.” “Gonna call it a night?” “Kid’s old man wants to apologize for his life but he just can’t do it. He’s sorry for a lot of the shit he did. But it’s all over his shoes and he can’t get it off.” “Nobody’s perfect, Bear.” “Perfect! Shit.” Dewey put his head down, just for an instant, then he said, “Ah fuck it. You catch me and lock me up or kill me. But you have to catch me first and I’m not going easy. Understand?” “Yeah, I understand.” “Damned right.” In quick succession Dewey downed his shot of whisky and then drained his bottle of beer. “Take it easy, Roy,” he said and wiped his mouth and left the bar.

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The Tree

It was Christmas Eve and only after he had parked the Buick in the garage and stood in the dark alley watching the garage door squeeze out a dirty mound of slush as it closed did Dewey Lapierre remember the tree. He could feel the whisky in his blood and all he wanted to do was get inside, settle his oversized body into his big oversized chair, put his feet up and watch a little television. But the tree had been one of the subjects of a hellacious argument last night and if he didn’t get one there would be more trouble than he was feeling up to dealing with. He looked down at his feet. The slush was curling up around his shoes. Do I drive or walk? There was a pair of boots in the garage but for a man his size putting them on was a chore. Only four blocks to the farmers’ market on Elston. It began to snow again. Softly. In his black wool overcoat with his black fedora set squarely on his big head Dewey weaved like a great hulking bear down the dark alley trying to step into tire tracks and avoid the deeper slush. It was not as dark on Elston Avenue as it was in the alley. Dewey could see the great graceful sheet of snow falling far down the street. Not a car anywhere. The plows had not been out yet and without any traffic the snow was beginning to build up. The snow on the sidewalk was even deeper than on the street and so Dewey trudged down the middle of the street toward the farmers’ market. He could see the string of colored lights in the distance that marked his destination. It had been bad last night. Tim had come home late stinking of booze and weed with a stupid story about falling asleep at a friend’s house. When Dewey whacked the kid his mother

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decided to get into it and Dewey had wound up hitting her too. That’s when they both started on him for being mean and a bully and a hypocrite and a gangster. All of which he was. And they were the only people on the block without a Christmas tree. The falling snow in the circles of light from the streetlamps was beautiful. Except for the sucking sound of his footsteps the street was quiet. Snow began to pile up on the shoulders of his coat and on the wide, drooping brim of his hat. There was no wind at all. Kind of nice out here alone. The colored lights at the farmers’ market went out. Oh, no. He walked faster. The tree lot was dark when he got there. Nobody around. Now what? Didn’t take them long to take off. He stood for a long moment and looked up and down Elston. Christmas Eve. Probably all the tree lots are closed by now. The last of a fire smoldered in a metal drum on the lot, he warmed himself at it and surveyed the few scraggly trees left unsold. Nice selection. They looked like the Christmas trees from his childhood. He remembered throwing tinsel at the tree with his brothers. His mother had always tried to get them to hang it one strand at a time. Good luck. He noticed one that didn’t look too bad, lifted it upright and examined it. Nice and full. He shook it. Not much fell off. He turned it around. No big holes. Must be about seven feet. He looked around the lot. The price is right. No haggling this year. Maybe better to take the sidewalk on the way home. Keep the tree out of the slush. He wrapped a gloved hand around the base of the trunk dragging the tree behind him. The snow was deeper on the sidewalk and with the tree the going was more difficult. How did I get to be a bad man? The question dragged along behind him in the whisper of sound the tree made moving on the snow. A bad man. Somehow it grew inside him just as

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his weight grew on his body. And now, without any decisions ever being made about it, he was huge. And he was a very bad man. The guy nobody wanted to see if they owed money or if someone wanted them hurt or dead. Still. The wind picked up and intensified the cold. He began to breath more heavily and shifted the tree to his other hand. Still it was hard for him to think of himself as a bad man. The facts were plain enough but some part of him thought otherwise. Better not put it to a vote. Wish Tim didn’t know. Be hard for him not to. It’s going to be tough for him to go another way. He’s worse in school than I was and he sure isn’t going to learn a trade from me. All just seemed to happen. One day you wake up and instead of being the hero you’re the guy in the black hat. He touched the brim of his hat and tapped off the ice and snow. Under the streetlamp at an intersection he stopped to rest. He turned his back into the wind and hunched over to light a cigarette. The smoke whirled about him. He looked down at the tree. There were needles on the snow. The wake of the tree was marked on the sidewalk stretching back the way he had come – a trail of needles. With his free hand he reached down and twisted the trunk and turned the tree to examine it. Branches all around were going bare. Why am I not surprised? The whisky was wearing off and even inside his thick coat Dewey was cold. He grabbed the trunk and started off again. The wind was growing stronger and drops of ice were again forming on the brim of his hat. Yeah, this was a good idea. He decided to take the tree in through the front door. Be easier, fewer turns. On his street it was darker and the snow on the sidewalk was still deeper. Down the block he could hear the rhythmic scrape, scrape, scrape of a neighbor’s shovel cleaning his portion of the

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sidewalk. Not on my side of the street of course. He stopped again. He was beginning to feel tired. By now the tree had lost most of its needles. His chest hurt. This was stupid. Still. Half a block to go. The wind wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t so strong here. Just keep picking them up and putting them down. The tree seemed heavier. Should be lighter. His feet were very cold and wet. Not far. And now home at last. From the sidewalk he could see Tim and Dolores in the light streaming through the front window of the apartment. Their arms were lifted up and with the yellow light behind them they looked like angels. They were trimming a tree.

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Semper fi Dewey LaPierre rolled onto his side and let the weight of his legs drag them off the edge of the bed to the floor. He used his elbow to push himself up and sat, groggy with sleep and drink, slowly waking. Next to him his wife grunted in her sleep and shifted in the bed. He turned to look at her. No apparent damage from last night. She snorted through her nose. Tough old broad. He put his hand on her hip and she moved away from his touch. Yeah, yeah. He leaned back and then forward quickly to let the momentum of his bulk carry him upright. The bed sagged and recovered and the woman moved and groaned but did not awaken. In the kitchen he started the coffee and ate two donuts. The sun was beginning to break the surface somewhere over Lake Michigan but its light was gray and dirty as it came in the kitchen window. He looked out at the overcast sky. Shit. He wondered if Tim was in his room or if he had taken off again. The door was closed. He listened for a moment but couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hear anything. Goddamned kid is out of control. Why does he have to fuck with me? The kid is going to wind up as fucked up as his old man if he isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t careful. He showered and shaved and brushed his teeth and dressed and then sat at the kitchen table drinking his coffee and ate two more donuts. Another day. Another day. Another shitty fucking day. He struggled into his overcoat. A hatbox sat on the dining room table. Should I wear it today? Probably not. Looks like rain. He looked out at the sky once again. Probably going to rain.

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The black Dobbs sat on its cardboard cone in a protective cloud of tissue paper. Sure is a nice hat. He took it out of the box. A fedora, soft felt and a wide brim. White satin inside and his initials, DLP, stamped in gold in the liner. He put it on. Nice hat. He adjusted it in the mirror over the couch. Looks good. In the car he sat and waited for it to warm up and checked his notebook. The TVs arrive this morning. Deal with them first and then go and see if I can find that chiseling sonof-a-bitch Basta. The shipment of television sets arrived about ten oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock and as usual the guys who delivered them had a different price in mind from what had been agreed. But the longer they hassled the more nervous they got so he just waited them out and got his price. He spent the rest of the morning stacking boxed Sonys. By noon he was finished. At the corner stand he ate a couple of hot dogs and began to think about Tony Basta. He turned onto Ashland Avenue and parked the Buick in front of a crummy tavern called McCoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. His head hurt and he thought maybe a drink would help. For a moment he sat in the car and looked out at the street. It was early afternoon and cold. Dirty clouds scudded by so low some of them looked like they might scrape the roofs of the gray asphaltsided three-flats that lined the street. Paper and refuse swirled in gusts; the few people on the street walked head down battling the frigid wind. The gloom of the street sifted through the streaked, greasy window into the tavern. Except for the bartender straightening bottles the place was empty. Dewey struggled out of his heavy wool overcoat and hung it on a rack near the door, and then with both hands removed his new hat and placed it carefully on top of the coat rack. He looked around. How do these joints stay alive? He pulled a stool under himself and leaned heavily on the bar.

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Terry McCool did a quick assessment: big man, fat but solid looking, looks tired, not in a good mood. “Can I get you?” “Gimme a shot of Jack and a Miller.” McCool poured the whisky. Hung over, trying the hair of the dog to get past it. Dewey drank the whisky and felt it warm him and loosen some of the tightness in his chest. He sipped the beer and looked out at the street. Now it was raining. Should have stayed in bed. “Again?” “Yeah, again.” A soap opera was running with the sound off on the television set at the end of the bar. Dewey looked up at it. “Want the sound up?” “Shit no.” “I just keep it on for the company.” “Pretty quiet, huh?” “Yeah, this time of day.” “You know a guy named Tony Basta?” Boom, just like that and right there Terry McCool knew what was up. One of Tony Basta’s chickens was coming home to roost. “What was the name?” “Tony Basta.”

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“I don’t think so. Lot of guys come in here I just know by their first names so it’s possible but I don’t think so.” The fat man grunted and finished his beer. “Again?” “Yeah.” Dewey crumpled an empty pack of cigarettes. “Gimme a pack of Camels.” Terry brought the pack, opening it on his way. “Matches?” “No. Thanks.” Dewey slapped the bottom of the pack, retrieved a cigarette and lit it with an old Zippo that Terry could see had a Marine Corps insignia on it. “You in the Crotch?” “Yeah. You?” “Semper fi.” “Nam?” “Fucking mess.” “You got that right.” Two hours went by, the war was choked up and chewed on and spit out once again and the bad taste washed down with whisky and beer. “It’s all bullshit.” “You’re right. It is. It is. It’s all bullshit.” “Listen I got to get the fuck out of here.”

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“Right. Well, it was good talking to you, Sarge.” “Yeah, good talking to you, Terry.” They shook hands as Dewey heaved himself up from his stool and staggered a bit. “Looks like you’re gonna get wet.” Dewey looked out at the steady rain. “Figures. Wore my new goddamned hat too.” He took the hat up again with both hands and set it squarely on his head. Then he lifted a hand to McCool and went out onto Ashland Avenue into the rain. The wind almost caught the Dobbs, and he grabbed it, jammed it onto his head and marched, head down, north into the wind. Dingy stores, dingy apartments, paper and shit blowing in the gutters, cars you wouldn’t bother stealing. A loser’s street. Ashland. They got that right.

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Sylvia and Tony Sylvia loved Tony that was not the problem. The problem was Tony Basta loved horses. He loved Sylvia too, of course. Once in a while he would make breakfast for her on Sunday, crisp bacon and eggs-over-medium, orange juice and raisin toast and coffee. He would take a TV tray off its legs and put it on a pillow and serve her breakfast on it. She would sit, propped up, with the pillow in her lap and eat and try not to spill it all over herself. Tony would lie on the other side of the bed with his head at the foot of the bed and his feet on his pillow next to her and watch her. They would just stay in bed all morning talking and making love. Sylvia liked the way Tony made love, sometimes with a kind of boyish enthusiasm that charmed her, sometimes with a frenzied determination that left her exhausted and feeling “well-and-truly fucked” as she put it to herself. And sometimes, like those Sunday mornings, just kind of friendly and relaxed. Tony was faithful, as far as she knew, but Sylvia had no illusions about men. Her father and his brother, her uncle Angelo, were both good family men but neither was above an occasional fling and, in her father’s case, having an affair that lasted for years. Sylvia’s mother and Aunt Dorothy usually knew about the other women. Growing up, Sylvia had often heard them talking together about dealing with men. Both the older women took a practical, rather than an emotional, approach to the problem. If threats worked, then threaten; if not, then do what did work. Sometimes they simply ignored what evidence there was, if they couldn’t ignore it they might invoke the family and the damage it sustained from the extra-marital adventures, sometimes they mocked the seemingly endless need their men exhibited for new conquests or, when it suited them, they simply seduced the men back into their own arms and shook their heads at the simplicity with which their stratagems worked.

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Men, Sylvia learned, may not be trainable but they were manageable. A womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job was to take on the responsibility for controlling them and to save them from their own selfdestructive impulses. It was something in those very impulses that attracted a woman to a man and, at the same time, frightened, even terrified her. A good woman rose above her fright and even her disdain, and did what needed doing. Tony was as good as a man should be â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no more, no less. He had a few vices that he indulged only to a degree that Sylvia found tolerable; vices that Sylvia saw as being within the range of ordinary male behavior. He drank too much; hung out with his cronies at McCoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too much; belonged to two bowling leagues and worst, of course, he played the ponies. He was also not ambitious. He would rather not work than work, and if she let him, he would stay home reading the Racing Form and let her support them. Sylvia worked as a cashier at the supermarket on Lincoln Avenue a block away from their apartment. When Tony worked it was usually in one of the neighborhood machine shops. He could run a punch press or do simple jobs on a lathe or dip parts in an acid bath but he was not a real machinist and never would be. Tony was only marginally responsible and Sylvia knew it. But he was hers, she loved him and she took on any responsibility necessary to get them through. It was raining the day the fat man appeared in a doorway across the street from their second floor apartment. Tony lay on the ratty old sofa that Sylvia was saving up to get rid of, money that Tony knew nothing about. He was deep into a scratch sheet, circling names. Sylvia had paused in a cleaning frenzy to dig a strand of carpet out of the vacuum cleaner intake. The living room carpet was beginning to have more bald spots every time she vacuumed. When she rose from her digging chore she put her hands against the small of her back and leaned into them to straighten herself, then turned to look out the window at the rain.

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She noticed the man first because of his size. He was huge, at least three hundred pounds, she thought. He wore a big, black hat that seemed to need constant adjustment. It was raining hard and the man was too big for the shallow doorway he was standing in, she could see the dark wet stain the rain had made on the front of his overcoat. She watched him from behind the living room curtain. Something about him worried her. “Tony,” she said over her shoulder. “Yeah,” Tony furrowed his brow at the break in his concentration. “Come and take a look here.” “What is it?” Tony said impatiently. “Come here. Look at this guy.” Tony put down the racing form and the stubby pencil and joined Sylvia at the window. “That guy – in the doorway over there,” she pointed at the man. Tony paled and stepped back from the window. “Oh, shit.” “What?” “That’s Dewey the Bear.” “You know the guy?” “I know him.” Tony turned away from her and held his head in both hands. “Oh, Jesus,” he said and started circling the room as if looking for some way to escape. “Oh, shit,” he said, “Oh, Jesus.” “What? What is it?” Tony looked at her with a look that said, “Help me. I screwed up again.” What he did say was, “I didn’t want to worry you Syl.” “Tony?”

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“I owe that guy money.” Sylvia turned back to the window. She took a long moment to compose herself. “I’m sorry, baby,” Tony pleaded, “I should have told you, but I figured I’d make it back and pay him off and you’d never know.” “How much?” Tony shook his head. “Come on, Tony. How much?” “Six hundred,” Tony mumbled. “Jesus, Tony,” she shook her head, not in disbelief but in a resigned recognition of familiar territory. “I’m sorry, babe.” “‛Sorry’, Tony,” she said, pointing at the fat man. “That guy doesn’t look like ‛sorry’ is gonna be enough.” Tony didn’t respond. He sat down again, folded up the scratch sheet and absently tucked it down into the sofa. Sylvia watched Dewey the Bear struggle to light another cigarette. “I’m gonna be late for work,” Tony complained, hoping his dedication to work would soften Sylvia’s obviously hardening heart. “Go through the alley.” “Right. And run into one of his guys that I can’t see.” He slumped lower on the sofa. Sylvia moved behind him and rested her hands on his shoulders. “Tony, when are you gonna learn?” Tony was silent.

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“You gotta talk to him sooner or later.” “I know, I know.” Tony said and put his head down on his crossed arms. “Whadaya gonna do?” “I dunno – die, maybe.” Her heart did soften. “Ah, baby, don’t be like that,” she leaned over him and rubbed his shoulders, “He ain’t gonna kill you for a lousy six hundred bucks.” “You would think he didn’t know me for Chrissakes.” “It’ll be okay.” “I dunno. Once Dewey gets a hard-on about shit like this, it’s not easy to turn him off.” “Want me to talk to him, baby?” “Sylvia, you want to go take another look at that guy? He’s a fucking monster.” He twisted in reluctant pleasure under her strong hands. She stopped the massage and went back to the window. “I could talk to him,” she said quietly. “Forget it, he’s too fucking dangerous.” He rose and stood behind her for a moment watching the man waiting across the street. “Look at that fat fuck. He’s so goddamned big his belly is sticking out in the rain.” Sylvia laughed and Tony put his arms around her. “I really am sorry, Syl,” he kissed her on the back of her neck. “I know, Tony,” Sylvia said, a shiver prickling her skin. They watched for a moment, then Tony turned businesslike, “All right, I gotta get out of here. I’m gonna try the alley.” He picked up his denim work jacket from the sofa and put it on. Sylvia got a trucker’s cap out of the closet and pulled it down hard over his forehead.

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“Here wear this,” she said, “It’s raining.” “Wish me luck, babe,” he said. Sylvia moved into his arms and kissed him on the mouth and then on both cheeks. “Be careful,” she tucked a stray lock of hair under his cap. “We’ll deal with it.” Tony grunted and hugged her. “Well, I’ll see you if I see you,” he said, opened the kitchen door out onto the landing overlooking the alley and started down the back stairs. She watched him cross the muddy yard, dodging puddles, then fumble with the wire gate that led to the alley. Tony turned, waved and blew her a kiss, and then he was gone. Sylvia went back to the front window and looked again at Dewey the Bear. “Where the hell am I going to get six hundred dollars?” she said to herself. She watched the big man smoke a cigarette and then flip it into the rain. After a moment he turned and hunched again to light another one. He shifted his weight back and forth in a kind of nervous dance as he smoked. He didn’t seem to look up at the apartment. She didn’t think he could see her. Dewey wondered if the woman was alone, watching and waiting for Tony Basta like he was, or if the deadbeat was in there with her. Maybe she was watching him. Maybe he should go find out. It would be a lot drier waiting for the chiseler in his own apartment He crossed the street. Sylvia clenched the curtain in her hand and gasped. He was coming up. Oh god, she thought, Am I up to this? She closed her eyes, then opened them and went to the front door.

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Tony at McCool’s When Tony reached the end of the alley he stopped under the overhang of a garage and looked around. If anyone was waiting for him they would have surfaced by now, he thought. He started walking, hunched over in the rain, away from Dewey the Bear. Still too early to go to work but enough time to stop at McCool’s for a quick one. Except for Terry McCool, the place was empty when Tony walked in. “Good crowd, Terry.” “Yeah, it’s a swinging joint, Tony. How you doin’?” “I’m all right. Tony shook the rain off his jacket and cap and mounted a stool at the bar. “Gimme a short beer and a shooter of Beam.” “You got it.” Terry drew the beer and set it in front of Tony, then put a shot glass next to it and poured the Beam. Tony picked it up as soon as Terry finished pouring and tossed it down. “One more while you’re here,” Tony said. Terry poured again. “Guy was in here looking for you.” “Big guy?” “Yeah.” “Yeah, I saw him. All taken care of.” “Where you working these days, Tony?” “Four to twelve over at Jensen Electric,” Tony replied. He picked up his beer, walked to the front window and surveyed the street through the neon McCool’s sign. “How is it?” Tony turned, “Still raining.”

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“No, I mean work.” “Ah, its all right,” Tony said walking back to the bar. “Work, you know.” “Yeah. ‘Curse of the Drinking Class.’” Neither of them laughed. Then for a while they were silent. Tony looked at his whisky. McCool busied himself elsewhere and left Tony to his drink and his thoughts. Sometimes a man came in for company, sometimes for quiet. This seemed like a good time to shut up.

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Sylvia and The Bear In the foyer Dewey found the bell, rang it and waited. Sylvia’s voice crackled through the ancient intercom, “Who is it?” “Mrs. Basta?” Dewey asked. “Who is it?” “This is Vic, Mrs. Basta, from over at the Timber Lanes.” To herself Sylvia thought about what she was about to do and said nothing. “Tony left his ball over there last night, I just thought I’d drop it off.” More silence. “Mrs. Basta?” “Yeah, sure,” Sylvia said, deciding, “Come on up.” Sylvia cracked the door to the length of the security chain and looked at the big man in the hallway. “You ain’t Vic,” she said. Dewey quickly moved one beefy arm and the upturned palm of his hand hard into the door. The brace holding the chain came out of the frame and the door hit Sylvia’s shoulder knocking her down as it burst open. Dewey came through the door as calmly as if she had opened it for him. He reached down and grabbed her by the hair and lifted her up. “No, lady, I ain’t Vic.” He said it in a quiet growl, with his face close to hers. She could smell whisky and cigarettes on his breath and rain came off him like a big dog shaking itself. Sylvia made small gasping noises as Dewey carried her by her hair and dropped her on the sofa.

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She tried to compose herself. Her shoulder was beginning to throb and her scalp felt as though it had come loose from her skull. She couldn’t stop shaking. “What,” she said stupidly, “What.” “What?” Dewey said, peering at her as though she were an idiot child. “What?” Sylvia gasped. Dewey slapped her hard across the face and she fell sideways. She could feel that her face was wet with tears; they were rolling freely down her hot, swollen cheek. Be calm. Be calm, she told herself. Dewey looked around the apartment. He went into the bedroom. Sylvia heard him pulling drawers out of her dresser. She lay as he left her as he came past her, went into the kitchen and returned carrying a kitchen chair. He placed it in front of her and sat down on it, leaned forward and rested his big forearms on his bulging legs. His hat was dripping water onto the carpet. She watched it drip. He noticed it too and took it off and examined it carefully. Probably ruined my hat, he thought to himself. He placed the hat on the sofa next to her. Still lying on her side, Sylvia looked at the hat. He likes that hat. “I think your nice hat is ruined,” she sniffed. “Looks that way,” “You gonna hurt me?” “Where’s your old man?” “At work.” “Work?” “Yeah, he got a job on a lathe over at Cogana’s.”

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“Since when?” “He just started Monday.” “You’re not fucking with me?” “Yeah, right,” Sylvia said cowering and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “When’s he get home?” “He just left.” Great, Dewey thought. Then a sudden chill made him shudder. Sylvia noticed. “You’re soaking wet. Want something to drink?” Dewey looked at her and thought about it. “Yeah. Whadaya got?” Sylvia sat up cautiously, sniffling. Her shoulder hurt. “Lemme see.” She stood and went into the kitchen. Dewey watched her go and then slowly got up, struggled out of his heavy, wet overcoat and draped it over the sofa. Fucking Salvation Army sofa. He followed her into the kitchen. She was opening and closing cabinets, in one she found a fifth of Jim Beam about three-quarters full. She showed him the bottle. Dewey nodded. Sylvia found a water glass and filled half of it with whisky. “Want anything with it?” Dewey shook his head and took the glass and sat at the kitchen table. The whisky felt good going down. He drank it in one long swallow. Sylvia poured again without asking. “I’m gonna make some coffee, all right?” she asked. Dewey said nothing. Sylvia went through the motions of making coffee, chatting with Dewey as though he were a neighbor who had stopped by to visit. She asked him if he lived in the area, she commented on the heaviness of the rain, she told him she liked his hat and that it was too bad it was ruined, maybe she could put it in the oven at a real low temperature, what did he think?

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Dewey watched her silently. He drank the second whisky more slowly and felt it warm his insides. Then the coffee was ready. It was good coffee and he said so. “You have to buy good coffee to make good coffee,” Sylvia said brightly, “It’s all in the beans.” “You’re buying good coffee with my money.” Sylvia shrugged repentantly, “Yeah, I guess so.” “Goddamn right.” “I’m sorry. We’re gonna get the money for you.” “Bullshit.” “No, really. Tony’s got a job now and the pay’s pretty good. He’ll have the money for you real soon.” “He’s out of time already.” “No, no, don’t say that,” Sylvia pleaded. “Why is he hiding from me if he wants to pay me?” “Jesus, are you kidding? He’s scared shitless of you. Just like me.” Dewey sipped his coffee “We just need a little time,” Sylvia said, looking at the floor and shaking her head slowly as if she were puzzling over a deep and important issue. “Time is money.” “Come on, you know we’re good for it.” “No, I don’t. All I know is your old man is tryin’ not to see me and I’m freezin’ my ass standin’ in the goddamn rain tryin’ to track him down.” “I told you, he’s scared.”

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His cup was empty. Sylvia got the pot and poured. “Want some more Beam?” “Yeah, just a taste. Put it in the coffee.” She poured another generous portion.

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Do Me Again Tony looked at the bar clock. Still ten minutes before he had to leave for work. “Terry, do me again here will you?” Terry tapped another beer and poured another Beam. He glanced at Tony as he poured the shot and still saw something that kept him quiet. He went back to his side work and left Tony alone. How the fuck do I get myself in these situations, Tony thought. How am I going to pay back almost two grand plus the vig to that fat prick working at Jensen’s for eight bucks an hour? He sipped his beer. He thought of Sylvia back in the apartment offering to take on The Bear by herself; he thought about lying to her about how much he owed; he thought about her bailing him out of one stupid goddamned mistake after another. She worked her ass off for him. He sipped his whisky. He was no fucking good, he thought, no fucking good at all.

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Charming the Beast “I’m tired of fucking around with him,” Dewey said. “I know, I know, he gets on my nerves too,” Sylvia said, nodding in agreement. “But he’s a good guy at heart, Dewey, you know; he’s just got a thing with the ponies, that’s all. But hell, if it wasn’t for guys like him you’d be outta business, right? Dewey gave her a long serious look and she gave it back. Then she crossed her eyes. He laughed; a kind of hacking laugh that came in short bursts through his nose. Sylvia laughed at the sound of it. When they stopped Dewey took another drink of whisky. “How do you know my name?” he asked her. “Shit, Dewey, everybody knows you. You’re the neighborhood badass.” Until today Sylvia had never heard of Dewey the Bear but she knew a man who considered himself a badass when she saw one and she knew it never hurt to confirm that judgment. “Yeah?” Dewey said. “Sure. They say you’re a good guy to know and a bad guy to fuck with.” Dewey grunted. He was really feeling the whisky. “And we’re not trying to fuck with you, Dewey – you’re gonna get your money. I’m gonna see that Tony gives me every goddamned penny he makes and you’re at the top of the list of people who get paid.” No point pretending he was the only one they owed money to, he would know better. Dewey was feeling sleepy. “I’m actually glad you came by so we could talk like this. I’m gonna have to get a new door, but what the hell . . .” “You talk a lot,” Dewey yawned.

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Sylvia laughed, “Well, you know, Dewey – women.” Women, he thought vaguely. “So, anyway, what about it, can you give Tony just a little more time?” Dewey thought about it. Time is money, he thought but the thought seemed slippery in his head, he had to concentrate to make it hold still. This deadbeat is taking advantage of me. He doesn’t deserve a break. Aloud he said, “Tony’s gotta be taught a lesson.” He could tell he was slurring his words. “Ah, Dewey, come on. Can’t we work something out?” Sylvia was standing close to him. She put her hand on the back of his head. His face was almost brushing her breasts. “Maybe ‘stead of breaking his kneecap I’ll jus’ bust one of his fingers.” “Dewey,” Sylvia said softly, coaxing him. Her hand pulled his head toward her. “Dewey.”

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Bar Time Tony pointed at the clock on the back bar. “Jesus is that right?” Terry turned and looked, “Bar time, Tony. Ten minutes fast.” Fast! Tony tried to calculate. It says four-thirty. So. Christ, I’m twenty minutes late for work. How the hell did it get to be so late? He lurched up and rattled the stool as he stood. Two guys sitting together at the end of the bar looked at him at the noise. When did they come in? Tony wondered. “Easy, big fella,” one of them said and the other laughed. McCool watched Tony standing, one hand on the bar, one hand stuffed awkwardly in his pants’ pocket; he watched Tony making the decision. Tony looked at the clock – seemingly in deep thought. Then he reached between his legs and pulled the stool back under him. “Gimme one more, Terry.”

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Do You Like Me? “Do you like me, Dewey?” Sylvia murmured. Her blouse was open and she was undoing the eyehooks on the back of her bra. She lifted the bra and her breasts fell toward him. Dewey could smell her; even through the fog in his head he could smell her sweat. She smelled good. Sylvia lifted a breast in her hand and offered it to him. Dewey wrapped one big arm around her and pulled her to him and her breast into his mouth. “That’s good, Dewey,” she purred and stroked the back of his head, “That’s a good boy.” Dewey the Bear thought about taking her into the bedroom. He thought about taking her on the kitchen floor. It was difficult thinking. He fell asleep with Sylvia’s breast in his mouth.

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The Homing Instinct It was dark and the rain had stopped when Tony staggered out of McCoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. The last round had been on the house because Tony had promised Terry he would leave peacefully when he finished it. He fumbled with his wallet, trying to get it out of his hip pocket. Empty. In the rage that always came with the whisky he hurled the wallet into the glistening street. Empty, he thought, Always fucking empty. Now the homing instinct kicked in. He lurched from tree to tree, from front porch banister to banister, from wall to wall until he reached his alley. Under the streetlight at the end of the alley he stopped to relieve himself. He held himself upright with one hand on the lamppost and loosed a long, high arc into the street. The urine glistened and flashed in the lamplight. Tony admired the stream. He pissed so long he nearly fell asleep with his head on the post before he finished. But finally he was dribbling on his shoes and then he was through. He gathered himself and headed into the alley toward his back gate. Got to explain to Sylvia, he thought and the thought of her brought tears to his eyes. He fell over a garbage can.

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Butchers Sylvia carefully extracted her breast from Dewey’s drooling mouth. It came out with a soft plop. Dewey grunted and leaned his forehead onto her chest and began to make a snuffling sound. Sylvia let him settle down for a moment and then shifted her weight and tried to maneuver his head onto the kitchen table. Dewey threw out a heavy arm at her reflexively as she did and nearly knocked her down. Then, without opening an eye, he folded his arms on the table lay his head on them and began snoring. Sylvia put herself together, closed her dress, poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. She watched Dewey snorting and snoring and began to wonder about him. What did he think? What made him the way he was? What made any of them the way they were? She began to consider the men she knew. In her family and Tony’s the men had jobs like mechanics, or factory workers, or, let’s see, Tony’s cousin Al was a bus driver. Angelo drove a UPS truck. Most of them were hard to live with. Not all of them were worth the trouble. Her cousin Nick, who was a lawyer, was a miserable pain-in-the-ass even though he had more money than God. What the hell was it? Was it their jobs? She began idly thinking about all the kinds of jobs men had – lawyer, cop, truck driver, carpenter, electrician, guys who worked in factories and stores, guys who collected garbage, juice men like Dewey the Bear. A lot of them, maybe most of them, seemed pissed off at themselves and pissed off at the world. Why? Sylvia sipped her coffee and rubbed and rotated her sore shoulder to try to loosen it. She stretched her list of occupations to the limits of her knowledge – cab drivers, shoe salesmen, teachers, construction workers, roofers, cooks, guys who worked in big companies doing whatever the hell they did. What else? Priests. You would think priests ought to be happy. Then she thought of butchers. Butchers? She thought of all the butchers she had

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known in her life – the ones in the neighborhood meat markets, the ones at her work, the ones over at Composto’s deli that had the good Italian sausage, the one that used to live in the apartment above them over on Belmont. And it struck her that every butcher she had ever known seemed happy and content and full of life. She went back over the list again. What did this mean? Did this mean that the only guys that were happy were guys who chopped up dead animals all day? While she was mulling over this strange idea there was a sudden, heavy thumping noise on the back steps and a muttered “goddamn.” Tony was home. Tony sat on the stair and rubbed his leg. It hurt like hell. “No good, no good,” he muttered. He reached up and grabbed the rail and pulled himself upright. “No good, no good.” One slow step at a time he advanced toward his landing and the back door. Something was wrong with his legs, he thought, he kept falling. He knelt every other step and refocused. Once, since he was already kneeling, he said a Hail Mary. Twice he lay on the wet stairs and rested until he felt a bit of his strength return. “No good, no good,” he kept repeating to himself. Finally he was at his back door, kneeling and trying to manipulate the doorknob, then the door opened all by itself and there was Sylvia. “No good, Syl,” he said, lowering and shaking his head. “No good, no goddamned good.” Sylvia hiked her dress up over her knees, squatted down, reached under Tony’s arms and tried to lift him. The effort was only partly successful, she managed to pull him half way up and then fell back onto the kitchen floor with Tony’s heavy body on top of her. Tony took this as a romantic gesture and began groping and kissing her. “No good, Syl,” he repeated. “No good, no good.” Then with the drunken notion of what she might consider a redeeming quality, he said, “I love you, Syl.” This seemed to break the logjam of “no good” and to trigger a stream of “I love you, Syl.” Sylvia struggled to disentangle herself.

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“Tony, for Chrissake get offa me.” “I love you, Syl.” “Yeah, yeah, great, I love you too, now get off of me.” She twisted free and Tony rolled onto his back and threw an arm across his face. “I really, really love you, Syl,” he said in a muffled voice into the crook of his arm. Then he went to sleep. Sylvia sat on the floor and caught her breath and watched her husband. On his back, with his mouth open, he began to make gagging noises. His pants were torn on both legs and one shin looked like it was bleeding. On the table Dewey the Bear was still making bear-like snorting sounds. Sylvia got up, straightened her dress and looked down at the two men. She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. If this wasn’t the goddamnedest thing she had ever seen she didn’t know what was. She sipped her coffee and listened to the men for a while. Then she began laughing quietly to herself. She put her hand over her mouth and laughed into it. Then she covered her face with both hands and laughed and cried until she was exhausted. When she was through she felt better, drained but better. Sylvia finished her coffee, got up, went into the bathroom and patted her face with cold water. She examined the redness on her cheek in the mirror. She felt her sore scalp and combed out a fistful of hair. Then she undressed and put on her nightgown. She went into the bedroom, stepped over the clothes and drawers strewn about the room, got into bed and pulled the tangled covers up over her. She lay on her back for a while listening to the sounds from the kitchen then she yawned and rolled over onto her good side. Butchers, she thought.

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Scraps We called the district the Scraps because it had the leavings of all the ethnic and racial food groups. If you were poor and a minority everybody might be better than you everywhere else but in The Scraps you were just like everybody else. But just like everywhere else, everybody in the neighborhood was trying to find an edge, some tiny bit of leverage that could raise them up just a notch above the next poor bastard. Jake and me had a pretty good edge just being cops. When we got back from winning hearts and minds in Korea Jake and I parted ways. He tended bar at Fife’s just for pocket change and something to do, then he applied for the police force and what with his war record and all he got on pretty quick. My old man had died after he lost the garage so I didn’t have any prospects and my mother thought I ought to use my GI benefits to go to college so I found a technical school downstate that wasn’t too particular and went off to be a college boy. It didn’t take me too long to figure out that sitting in a classroom was just as tough as it had always been for me and that even college girls weren’t enough incentive to keep me at it. So I signed on to the force a year or so after Jake. We hadn’t seen each other in a while but on my first day out of the Police Academy there he was. If you hadn’t met him, you could see Jake Gruber coming down the street and know you didn’t like him. He had a way about him that said, “Go ahead, fuck with me, I’d like that.” He told me once that he decided to become a cop mostly because of the benefits. Also you could tell people what you did unlike some other occupations Jake had in mind. Besides, becoming a cop didn’t mean you couldn’t also be other things.

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When he spotted me in the muster it was the first time we had seen each other in almost three years. He made a kind of “you and me later” sign and I nodded back. It was old home week. “Mike Flynn, you mick son-of-a-bitch, good to see you.” “Jesus Christ, you’re a cop, Jake. This fuckin’ town is in deep trouble.” “You got that fuckin’ right. When did you come on?” “Just out of the academy. This is day one.” “No shit. How about that. Who they got you hooked up with?” “Somebody named Dennehy.” “Gimme a minute, I’ll be right back.” I watched him walk away. His back looked like he could lift a car on it. He cornered a lieutenant named Kelly and after a little conversation they both looked over at me. Some more conversation then Jake came back smiling. “You ride with me,” he said. So that’s how it started, me and Jake. We were a lot alike. We knew each other. He told me shit he never should have told anyone. I swallowed it up and never spit it out. I told him things about college girls he found entertaining. We trusted each other from the beginning; it wasn’t something that developed. We were rat-partners. I watched his back; he watched mine. Four years we were partners. We were also a busy pair. On a regular basis almost from the start we usually had more pinches than any other team in the district. Not that it made any difference. The low-life population just keeps staying about the same. It’s like the world needs a certain number of assholes and no matter what anybody does, there’s going to be that many assholes. After a while you start to think, what the fuck, you know? Not that Jake and me had any reservations.

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You take care of yourself and you take care of your own, anybody else – depends on the circumstances. On the day it all ended Jake and I began it sitting in a squad watching a guy staggering along, holding himself up on the wall of Cook County Hospital, heading toward the Emergency entrance. The guy had a skinny knife sticking out of his back. I thought we ought to get out and help the guy but Jake said no, wait a minute, the guy will make it and we can avoid all the goddamn paperwork we would have to fill out if we helped him. So, we watched him. Jake thought he’d make it, I didn’t. It was worth a fin just to pass the time. At one point the guy went down on a knee and I thought I’d won, but the son-of-a-bitch got back up and finally wobbled into the hospital. “Gimme the donut money, sucker,” Jake slapped the dashboard and laughed and grabbed the money. We cruised the neighborhood for a while. I drove, Jake watched. A slow day. We used to say that the folks in the Scraps go along to get along and only kill each other when they have a good reason – you know, something like, maybe a Wop calls a Nigger a Nigger, or vice versa. Something you can explain to the widows afterwards. Anyway we’re cruising the neighborhood just keeping the peace by being there. That was our operating philosophy, we saw ourselves as peace officers, not law officers. Lawyers and judges were law officers. We kept the peace; the law was somebody else’s job. Peace is simple, easy to understand; the law is complicated, not easy to understand but easy to mess with. We figured if you were quiet and not bothering anybody, you could pretty much do what you wanted and if you wanted to share a little of your good fortune with us, so much the better.

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If you got out of line, we put you back. If you got way out of line we gave you to the law officers. If you went beyond way out of line, you didn’t want to meet us. I’m just turning the squad onto Division Street when Jake says, “Hold it.” He points to a big pasty-faced guy standing in the doorway of a rundown used furniture store smoking a cigarette. “There’s Dewey. Pull over there.” I pulled over to the curb and we got out. “Dewey the Bear, my man,” Jake called to the guy. “Hey, Jake. How you doin,” Dewey said, trying to look like he was glad to see us. “I’m good, buddy. How’s business?” “Business is business.” “Yeah, tell me.” Jake pointed to me. “You know my partner, Mike.” We shook hands. His were big, meaty – like shaking hands with a fistful of uncooked bratwurst. “Yeah, Mike, howahya? Nice to see ya,” he mumbled. “So, Dewey,” Jake said, “Anything good fall off the truck lately?” “Got some nice Sony Trinitrons,” Dewey said, talking low and looking around like he’s not talking to the cops. “That’s great, Mike here needs a new TV, the one he’s got is so old it was made in America,” Jake said, “Big screen?” “36.” “Perfect. Just put it in the box, huh?” The box was a garage Jake and I kept behind a saloon called Fife’s. We used it to stash loot. “Yeah, sure, Jake. Be there tonight.” “You’re my man, Dewey. Anything we can do for you?”

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Dewey looked around again with that prison yard look and put his hand over his mouth, “You know a copper named, Murphy?” he said behind his hand. “Half the fucking cops on the force are named Murphy, Dewey,” Jake said. “Jack Murphy. Outta your district.” “Yeah, I know Jack Murphy. What’s the deal?” Dewey looked nervous, like he was rethinking whether he wanted to say anything or not. He shuffled his feet and flicked his cigarette into the street. He looked at me and then Jake. “Murphy’s a little greedy,” he said. “Really?” Jake raised his eyebrows like he was surprised at this news. “Yeah, ya know, the guy just, I don’t know, he just don’t seem to understand I’m in business, Jake. He takes with both hands,” Dewey showed us what he meant with his bratwurst hands. “Suppose to take a little, leave a little, you know? This guy . . .” he trailed off and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “I don’t know.” Jake was looking at his shoes and nodding in sympathy. When Dewey stopped talking, Jake looked up and sighed, “Greedy, huh?” he said. Dewey lifted his shoulders again in a twitchy response. Jake reached up and grabbed both of his fat shoulders and squeezed them. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll see what I can do.” Dewey looked more nervous, not relieved. “This is not a beef, Jake,” he said apologetically, “This is just a, I don’t know, just a – an observation.” He finally found the word. “An observation,” Jake smiled. “I like that, Dewey, an “observation.” That’s good. All right, we gotta go. Don’t forget the Sony.” “Thanks, Jake,” Dewey said, “Thanks for your help.”

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“Hey, Bear, anytime,” Jake patted Dewey’s shoulder and we went back to the squad and pulled into traffic. “Greedy,” Jake said laughing, “that’s good. Like Dewey the Bear ain’t greedy. Like all of us ain’t greedy.” “There’s greedy and there’s greedy, Jake,” I reminded him. “Yeah. Yeah,” Jake said and we drove without talking for a while. “Murphy working today?” Jake finally asked. “I saw him at muster. He’s driving the wagon,” I said. Jake just grunted. We pulled up behind a beat-up Olds at the light at Halsted and Fullerton. The light changed but the guy in front of us didn’t move. I popped the horn at him. Nothing. The driver seemed to be hunched over the steering wheel. Jake sighed, “Well, let’s check this asshole out.” He got out of the squad and walked around to the driver’s side of the car in front of us. I stayed in the car. I could see Jake lean forward and talk through the window to the driver. Then he took out his nightstick and tapped on the window. The guy didn’t move. Jake looked back at me and motioned for me to come out. “Guy’s taking a little nap,” Jake said, smiling. I looked in the car. The driver was a big man, a black guy about fifty, working clothes on. His hands were on the steering wheel and his forehead was resting against it. He seemed to be asleep. Jake tapped again, harder. “Let’s check him out.” The door was unlocked and I opened it. The guy didn’t move. I reached over and put a hand on his back. “Hey, buddy, wake up, time to go home.”

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Nothing. Guy doesn’t move, doesn’t groan, nothing. “Drunk?” Jake asked. “Doesn’t smell like it. But something stinks. Jesus, I think this guy shit in his pants.” “Feel his pulse.” I pressed on the big artery in his neck. Took some doing. “I think I feel a pulse, hard to tell.” “Let’s get him outta there.” Jake went around to the other side of the car, opened the door and climbed in. “You grab his arms, I’ll push.” “Got ‘em.” “Damn, this guy’s a fucking elephant.” “Push.” “I’m pushing.” All of a sudden the guy popped loose and fell ass first to the street, banging his legs on the door as he went down. I caught his head before it hit the pavement. Jake crouched over the man, “Get on the horn, I’ll see what I can do,” he said. I went back to the squad and called for an ambulance. When I got back to Jake he was mouth-to-mouth with the guy. “You pump him, I’ll breathe him.” I started pumping and Jake kept breathing for the guy. “Jeez, if he was a boozer at least I’d get a taste,” Jake said between breaths. “If he was a boozer you’d be bitching about his breath,” I said, my own breath coming hard as I kept pumping the guy’s chest. I could hear the ambulance siren in the background. “Here come the Marines.”

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“Too bad, I’m beginning to like this guy,” Jake grinned and wiped spittle from his mouth. Suddenly the guy gasped. “Yo, look at this,” Jake sat up and raised his hands like he had scored a touchdown. “Way to go, buddy,” Jake slapped the man hard across the face. “Come on, come on, you’re gonna make it.” The guy’s eyes opened wide and he looked at Jake the way most people look at him the first time they see him – scared. “Don’t move, pal,” Jake said, “The ambulance will be here in a minute, you’re gonna be okay. Just lay there nice and easy.” The guy grunted and laid his head back hard on the street. “Hey, take it easy, man, you don’t want give yourself a busted head on top of everything else,” Jake laughed and got up a slow leg at a time. “God damn, I got a cramp in my leg.” He started hopping around the street holding his thigh. The ambulance arrived and the fire department paramedics took over. They put oxygen on the guy, gave him a shot of something, loaded him in the ambulance and took off. “Nice work, partner,” I said when we were settled back in the squad, “You saved that guy’s life.” “We serve and protect,” Jake said, lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “Those things are probably what got him,” I said. Jake ignored the sarcasm, “You didn’t do a bad job yourself, Doctor Flynn.” “Guy was so big I couldn’t tell if I was doing any good at all. Breathing for him was what did it.” “Think he’ll make a big donation to the Old White Coppers Foundation?”

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“I’m sure.” We laughed and shot the shit about what heroes we were while we drove to St. Ann’s Hospital to write up the incident report. We finished up and were walking out of the Emergency Room when Jack Murphy drove up in the wagon. His partner was Matt Healey, a standup guy I knew from high school. Murphy was a big guy; he came rolling out of the wagon like a lineman disengaging himself from the pile. He looked right at home. The two of them went to the back of the wagon and opened it up. A couple of hospital orderlies came out with a gurney. Healey looked over and saw us. “Hey, Jake, Mike,” he said. Murphy looked too and nodded. “You guys want to see a real pretty face?” He was helping a scrawny woman in nothing but a bloody slip climb out of the wagon. She was holding a towel over her face and complaining into it. The towel was drenched in blood. The orderlies got her on the gurney and rolled her inside. “You should see the other guy,” Murphy laughed. “So, what’s the story?” I asked after the woman was taken away. “Domestic,” Healey said. What else, right? What are you guys here for?” “Heart attack,” Jake said, “Guy went out waiting for the light to change.” “Ain’t life a bitch.” “Hey, Jack, while we’re here, let’s have a little talk,” Jake said, moving away from the entrance and motioning for Murphy to follow him. Healey and I followed them toward our squad. “What’s up, Jake?” “Mike and me had a conversation with Dewey the Bear today,” Jake said. “Oh?” “Dewey ain’t happy.”

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“Who gives a fuck?” Murphy was developing a little attitude about where this might be going. “I give a fuck, Jack,” Jake said, very politely, very calmly. “And you ought to too. That fat fuck is a source of many good things for all of us. But we get greedy we all lose. Right, Jack?” “He says I’m greedy?” “He says you’re greedy.” “And you believe him?” “I’m a fucking cop, Jack. I don’t believe shit. I just do what has to be done. Man says you’re greedy it doesn’t mean you’re greedy, it means he thinks you’re greedy. It means we have to change his attitude about you so he doesn’t think you’re greedy because if we don’t he might get a hard-on about you and he might think of doing stupid things that would fuck everything up for all of us including him. That’s what I believe, Jack. What do you believe?” Murphy didn’t say anything. He looked at Jake. He lit a cigarette. No one said anything. “Okay, Jake,” he said finally, and slapped a big hand on Jake’s shoulder, “You’re right, I’ll straighten things out with Dewey.” “Cool,” Jake said. We talked about other things, just bullshitting for a couple of minutes, then Murphy and Healey went inside to write up their report and we took off. “You’re a born fucking diplomat, Jake,” I said as we pulled out of the hospital. “Man just needed to understand the situation, that’s all,” Jake said. “He was trying to decide whether to pop you.” “For just a second there I thought he might. The big Mick isn’t as dumb as he looks.” “What do you say we go back and give Dewey the good news?”

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“Sure. Maybe he’ll make an early delivery on that TV.” “‘So old it was made in America,’ that was good, Jake.” “I’m having a good day,” he laughed. It was dark by the time we got back to Dewey’s. There were no lights in the front of the store but you could see that there was light in the back office. “Let’s go around back,” Jake said. We pulled into the alley behind the store and parked the squad next to an overflowing dumpster in a space between Dewey’s and the building next door. Jake and I saw it at the same time – Dewey’s back door was open. We didn’t say anything, just looked at each other. Jake patted his chest to indicate he was wearing his protective vest. I nodded that mine was on too and took out my piece and edged around to where I could see inside. Jake moved up close to the door, next to the wall. Dewey the Bear’s small, cluttered office was just off a short hallway between the back door and the equally cluttered storefront space that was filled with used furniture and appliances and was a cover for Dewey the Bear’s loan sharking and fencing operation. There were shadows moving in the light from the office – more than one person. I moved closer to the door. A heavy, thudding sound came from the office. Jake motioned to me that he would go in first. When he moved he went fast and I was right on his heels. The door to the office was open, Jake turned his body as he came to it and deliberately slammed into the doorframe, using it as a brace. There were three men in the room, one of them was Dewey, although he was hard to recognize. The left side of his face was swollen to twice its normal size and the eye socket seemed crushed. His mouth was filled with blood that had smeared onto his lower face and neck and splattered on his white dress shirt. Dewey was lying on his side in a corner of the

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office between his battered desk and a filing cabinet. A tall man was sitting astride him, methodically clubbing him with a bust of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Another man, wearing hornrimmed glasses leaned over Dewey and his assailant. He was holding a very large handgun. When Jake hit the doorframe the men looked up and turned toward us. “Don’t even think about it,” Jake said. But the man with the gun did think about it. You could see him thinking about it. He seemed to think about it for a long time. He seemed very calm in his deliberation. And then it seemed as if he raised the gun very slowly in Jake’s direction. The sound of three large guns being discharged at the same time in the small office was deafening and terrifying. I know I hit him at least three times. Then because I couldn’t be sure what his partner was doing, I shot him as well. When the shooting stopped blood and bits of bone and brain were on every wall of the office. The two guys were dead. And Jake was dying. Jake sat against the doorframe with an amused look on his face. One hand covered the wound in his lower abdomen. Blood seeped through his fingers. His other hand still held his weapon. He looked up at me and smiled a rueful smile. “Fuck,” he said. The bullet had entered just below the vest. Blood spattered on the doorjamb behind Jake showed where the bullet had come to rest. Dewey gurgled in the corner. I knelt next to Jake. I couldn’t speak. “Call it in, partner,” he said. “Yeah, yeah,” I said and I called it in and got back to Jake. He was very white. “I hope Dewey appreciates this,” Jake said halting and struggling for breath. “Jesus, Jake.” “Doesn’t hurt as bad as you expect.”

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“Yeah, good.” Jake’s eyes got wide and scared looking. “Ahhh, fuck,” Jake said and he died. Just keeled over into my arms, puked black blood on me and died. Turned out that what happened was because Dewey was considered a little greedy himself by some of his less forgiving customers. Dewey didn’t make it either, although he hung on long enough to be an interesting practice exercise for the trauma center folks. Something happened to time after I came out of that office. It stayed slow, just like it was when that guy raised his gun. The wake and the funeral seemed to take weeks. The investigation went on forever. I slowly went through all the motions, slowly said the right things, and slowly answered all the questions. Slowly accepted the Meritorious Service Award they gave me for shooting too slow to save Jake. It was all a strange dream that seemed to take place in a fog. I began to get the yips; I would jump at anything, a noise, a coffee cup rattling on a saucer, a door slamming. The department said I needed a long vacation and deserved one. It wasn’t a suggestion. I didn’t need a vacation. What kind of vacation do you take after your partner has been killed standing next to you? Disneyland? I didn’t need time to think but I had it and thinking didn’t help. I think better with a drink in my hand and I couldn’t stop thinking. Pretty soon the booze was solving my thinking problem. Sobering up was too painful, so I didn’t. Three weeks into my vacation the doctors put me on medical leave. The stuff they gave me for depression was good enough to give me the energy to keep drinking. My own plan for curing depression was a series of women you wouldn’t fuck with somebody else’s dick. They introduced me to an assortment of other medications. Pretty soon I couldn’t come without

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amyl nitrate poppers. I began to get cold. I was cold all the time. It seemed as though my bones were cold. So parking behind our stash garage and running a hose from the exhaust into the crowded garage didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem like a bad idea. Fuck it; get it over with. I sat down on a ratty lawn chair, put my legs up and looked at the box that contained the 36-inch Sony Trinitron that Dewey had delivered as promised. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Made in America, Jake, Made in America.â&#x20AC;? The garage started to fill with carbon monoxide. I closed my eyes and waited. They say you are right whether you think life is a comedy or a tragedy. What happened next seemed funny even at the time. Some punks walking down the alley saw the car still running and stole the fucker. So there I am half dead in the garage, freezing and laughing my ass off at the same time. When I went back to work they promoted me to Sergeant.

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Matt and Mike Matt Healey was in a back booth talking with Roy Wilkes about the distribution of proceeds from the sale of some of the goods from the garage behind the building when Mike Flynn came in and sat at the end of the bar. “Looks like Mike is back,” Matt said softly and Roy turned and looked. “Still doesn’t look so good,” Roy said of Mike’s hunched shouldered inward posture. “Why don’t you go check him out? Tell him I’m back here.” Roy went behind the bar where a customer was temporarily tending to the few men drinking. “Thanks, Marty. I’ll take it now. Sit down, this one’s on me.” As he poured Roy was aware of Mike’s peripheral presence looming silently. “Hello, Mike,” Roy said and stuck out his hand. Mike shook it and nodded hello without smiling. “How you doin’?” “I’m all right, Roy. You still serve booze in this place?” “What’ll you have, Mike?” “Gimme some Dewar’s, double, splash of water.” Roy brought the drink. “Matt is in the booth over there.” Mike turned, saw Matt, picked up his drink and walked slowly to the booth. He looks like shit, Matt thought. “Hello, Mike. How you doing?” Mike sat down with a movement like a collapsing wall. “I’m okay, Matt. How you doing?”

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“We had a little garage sale last week. You got some dough coming.” “Good. Good. I can use it.” The two men looked directly at each other in silence; one pretending to be all right, the other wondering how best to broach a subject that could be volatile. “When’re you coming back to work?” “Pretty soon, Matt. I think. Pretty soon.” “About time to get your shit together.” “You think so, Matt?” “I do.” Mike took a long drink and emptied his glass. “You know that stuff isn’t going to work,” Matt said, indicating the drink. “It’s working for now. Keeps me from punching people in the nose who say stupid shit to me.” “Like me?” Mike turned to look for Roy and waved his empty glass at him. Matt leaned across the table, “You think you’re the only guy ever took a hit?” He was too close and Mike almost decided to head butt him but didn’t. “Maybe you remember Ellie?” For a moment Mike drew a blank. Ellie? Matt’s wife. She died. Seems like a long time ago. “Yeah, Matt; I remember Ellie.” “Took me a long time to dig outta that, Mike.” “Yeah.” “And you helped me do it.”

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Mike thought, I did? Don’t remember. Maybe. “You were there for me.” “Yeah, I suppose.” “You can’t keep this up much longer, Mike. You’re going to turn into a lush; you’re going to lose everything.” “Hey, fuck it, Matt. I don’t give a shit.” “Yeah, you do. You don’t want to be a bum.” Roy brought Mike’s drink. Mike took a swallow and put it down. “I don’t know what is wrong, Matt.” “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. You got kicked in the stomach real good. You had your partner die in your arms. You probably figure there was something you could’ve done better to keep him from getting hit. Sometimes you wish it had been you. Sometimes you’re glad it was Jake and not you. You’re sad; you’re guilty; you’ve got yourself in a rut of self-pity and you’re giving up.” Mike drank again and wiped his mouth, “That’s about it, I guess.” Matt looked at him. “Listen, Mike. Every goddamn day I get up and expect to find Ellie sleeping next to me. Every day I have to convince myself that it is worth getting up and going on the job. I don’t know why exactly. I think it is better than what you are doing, I guess. What you are doing doesn’t seem right.” “How much do I have coming from the sale?” “Jesus Christ, Mike. We’re talking about your life here and you want to know how much beer money you got coming?” “Trying to distract you.”

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They looked at each other and then Mike grinned. Matt reached across the table and took Mike in a headlock. “Stupid, fucking mick.” Mike mock-struggled for a moment and Matt released him. They caught their breath. “Seriously, Mike . . .” “Yeah, I know, Matt. I’m working it out. I’ll be all right, buddy. I appreciate your concern. Really, I do.” Matt thought he would change the subject. “How’s Maureen?” “Ah, she’s okay; this shit I’m going through isn’t doing her any good either.” Matt shook his head. “Get it together, Mike. You’ve got to get it together. You don’t want to lose Mo.” “Yeah, I know, Mike. I know.” “You know, okay, I get ‛you know’ but you gotta do something about it.” Matt picked up Mike’s glass, “And this shit isn’t helping.” “All right already, Mike. I get it. I’ll get my shit together. Now do me a favor and get off my fucking back.” Both men tensed and then reconsidered. “Okay, Mike. I’m off my soapbox. Tell me something good.” “I took a very satisfying shit this morning.” They laughed and slapped each other on the sides of their heads.

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Sylvia and Roy Sylvia watched the bartender through the front window of Fife’s. He had that kind of wiry hillbilly look. Looked like the kind of guy other guys underestimated until they looked in his eyes. What the fuck, she thought. “Can I do for you?” “Gimme a seven and seven.” Tony was such an asshole. It was hard to believe how long she had put up with him. No more. Still it was hard to believe it was over. Tony had been a big part of her life since she was sixteen years old. Popped my cherry for me. “From around here?” “Yeah.” “Haven’t seen you before.” “Yeah.” I cannot fucking believe it. I worked my ass off for him. Lazy fuck, he won’t last five minutes. God damn it. God damn it. “Again?” “Yeah, please.” It had to be a blonde too. Always a blonde. In my dreams it was a blonde. I hope she’s as dumb as he is and they both starve to death. Jesus Christ. Tony, you fuck. You goddamned miserable fuck. “Here.” “What?” “Here. It’s clean.”

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Sylvia took the bar towel and wiped her face. “Thanks. Gimme another one, huh.” “You sure? They’re going down pretty fast.” “Yeah, I’m sure.” Either this one is weaker or I’m getting used to them. What am I going to do? My mother is going to have a field day. She always said Tony wasn’t worth a shit. God damn it. God damn it. God damn it. What the hell is he watching? Days of Our Lives? Oh, that’s good. “You watch the soaps?” “Just something for company. Want me to turn it off?” “Nah, it’s all right.” God how I loved that son of a bitch. I really loved him. What an asshole. I hope she bites his dick off and chokes to death on it. “What?” “Huh?” “You laughed.” “Oh. Just thought of something funny.” Roy looked at her expectantly. “I was just imagining my old man’s whore biting his dick off.” “Whoa.” “My ex-old man I should say.” “You threw him out?” “Nah, he left with his blonde bitch and good riddance.”

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“You’re better off.” “Damned right.” “Still hurts though.” “Like a son of a bitch.” “We’re all assholes I’m sorry to say.” “Yeah, what is it with you fucking guys?” “I don’t know. I bet I’ve heard the same story a hundred times. Same bullshit every time. Some guys just can’t keep their dicks in their pants.” Sylvia was crying again. She wiped her face with the bar towel. “Fucker. I loved him, you know. I really did. And I worked. Jesus Christ I worked like a fucking horse. Kept a nice house. Put up with his drinking. Paid off the fucking juice man for his gambling. I don’t know. I really don’t know.” “You’re from the neighborhood?” “Yeah. Over on Ashland.” “My name is Roy. Mind if I ask your name?” “No. I’m Sylvia, Roy. Sylvia Basta.” They shook hands. “Tony Basta’s wife?” “Yeah. Still, I guess. Not for long. You know Tony?” “Yeah, I know Tony.” Roy washed a couple of glasses in the sink. “So?” “Well, I don’t know you, Sylvia.”

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“You know Tony.” “Yeah, I know Tony.” “So?” Roy dried his hands and leaned over the bar. “Thank your lucky stars, Sylvia.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” Thank my lucky stars? Think so? Maybe. Maybe he’s right. I’m not old. No kids. Pretty good body. Not bad looking. Got a job. Fuck him, I’ll be all right. He’s the one in trouble. I’ll be all right. I will be all right. “Have one with me.” “You sure?” “Yeah, please.” Roy made Sylvia another seven-seven and poured himself a shot of Jameson. “To you, Sylvia.” “And to you too, Roy. Thanks for the shoulder.” “Part of the service.” Roy downed his shot and Sylvia finished off the seven-seven in one long swallow. “Ahh.” “Hit the spot.” “You done good. What do I owe you?’ “On me.” “Nah.”

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“Really. On me.” “Well, hell, thank you, Roy. Very nice of you. I think I needed that.” Sylvia stood a little shakily and steadied herself on the stool. “You okay?” “I’m fine, Roy.” “Be careful, okay?” “I will. I will. And thanks again.” “My pleasure.” And Sylvia wobbled out into the sun.

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Tarzan, Matt and Sylvia Officer Matt Healey was riding shotgun in the detention van, known universally as the Paddy Wagon or the Black Mariah or, most often, simply as The Wagon. The driver this night was Al Tarzinski, a congenial riding companion, good humored and a storyteller of great vividness and credibility. Tarzan was a regular Wagon driver and had seen every form of damage human beings can sustain or do to each other. He told of mutilations and tortures; he told of heroics – parents with their hair on fire rescuing their children – or their pets, unsentimental cops weeping openly with dead children in their hands; he told of investigations, both on and off the books, that resulted in solving particularly egregious local crime in which evidence to go to court was scant but street evidence was abundant. And he told how justice was sometimes dispensed. Young Officer Healey heard these stories every time he rode with Tarzan. They were his orientation and indoctrination into the mythology and culture of The Force. Story by story, from Tarzan and others, Healey was assimilated. Without any conscious decision on his part he gradually found himself a purveyor of these tales. No one told him to do or not do anything. They simply told him the stories that defined the exclusive tribe of Bluecoats and he became one of them. Tonight Tarzan was telling the story of a corpse with an enormous erection. “Damn, the thing was huge. I’m not kidding you. Huge. Wish I had half that meat. Did the poor bastard a lot of good. Must not have been enough for his old lady though; she stuck a butcher knife into him all the way up to the hilt.” “Pull in here a minute, will ya. I need cigarettes.” Tarzinski pulled into the supermarket parking lot and parked near the front entrance to the store.

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“You want anything?” “Nah. Yeah. Get me some gum.” Healey picked up a Spearmint wrapper from the seat between them. “This stuff.” “Yeah,” Tarzinski reached for some coins from his pocket. “I got it. I got it.” It was just before closing and Sylvia was about to close her register when the big cop came in. Always one more, she thought. She was the only register open so she resigned herself to waiting for the man to shop. “How are ya?” “Good. You?” “Pretty good. Quiet night.” Sylvia took it as a question. “Yeah, pretty quiet.” Matt retrieved a carton of Camels and a couple of packs of gum from the rack near the register and placed them on the counter. “That it?” “Yep. All I need.” She was kind of pretty Matt thought. Got a nice smile. Friendly. “Did we keep you open?” “No, that’s all right. It’s nice to have you guys around.” “You work here long?” “Yeah, a few years.” “I must have missed you every time I came in.”

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“I usually work days.” “My name is Matt.” “Sylvia. Nice to meet you, Matt.” “See you again.” “See ya.” Back in the wagon Tarzan unwrapped a stick of gum. “See you met Sylvia.” “Yeah, seems nice.” “She is nice. A lot nicer than her miserable ex-husband.” “Divorced?” “Yep. You know Tony Basta?” “No, I don’t think so.” “You ain’t missing anything.” A week later, in civilian clothes, Matt was in the store again. This time the store was crowded and all the registers were open. Sylvia was working the 10 Items or Less register. “How you doing?” “Oh, hi. Almost didn’t recognize you in your civvies.” “Yeah. Say, listen, I’m not much good at this, but . . .” He stopped. “What?” The woman unpacking her cart behind him leaned noticeably toward him, listening. She definitely had more than ten items in her cart. “I thought maybe,” Healey turned and scowled at the woman. She smiled at him and continued lining her too many selections onto the counter.

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Sylvia held out his change. “Yeah, I would, anytime,” she said. She pulled a pen from somewhere in the back of her hair and wrote a phone number on the back of his receipt. “Have a nice day,” she said and smiled. “I already have,” Matt said, holding up the receipt. “That’s more than ten items, m’am,” Sylvia said to the woman in line. The woman sighed in exasperation. “Oh, come on,” Sylvia said, waving her on. Healey stood outside the store and read the number. Nice handwriting. The woman with more than ten items walked past him. “Good luck,” she said.

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Loopy I can remember everything from when I was a kid. I remember laying in bed looking out the window and seeing them Indian cigars bouncing up and down on the tree outside. I remember my old man whaling the shit out of me for calling my sister a bastard. I didn’t even know what the word meant; I heard some kid say it and thought I would try it out on my sister. Big mistake. I remember having to wrap electrical tape around my shoes to keep the soles from falling off. And the day the chimney fell into the gangway. I remember going down by the river and counting the rubbers floating by – they just kept coming forever. I remember Janey Wilson showing me her boobs under the big bushes by the river. I remember piano lessons. I used to walk to the convent and watch the sidewalk to make sure I didn’t step on a line and break my mother’s spine, and I’d have to reach up to that big knocker on the convent door and wait to be let in and how it always seemed like a bright, sunny day and then the door would open and inside it would be dark and kind of spooky and smell like everything was oiled or something. And Sister Beatrice, man, she was either a saint or completely out of it; she sat next to me for a whole year and tried to make a musician out of me. I just didn’t get it. But she smelled good, like Ivory Soap, and her big old nun’s sleeve would flop against me when she pointed to something on the sheet music so most of the time I couldn’t even see what she was pointing to. She was nice though. I liked her. In fact she was probably the reason I kept going, just to sit next to her for a while in that dark, quiet little room and poke around the keyboard. I hope she had better luck with her other students. When my old man had had enough of me playing Aunt Rhody and stopped paying for the lessons I kind of missed her; not the lessons, just her.

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Then it seemed like for a while I couldn’t do anything right. I was a pretty shitty athlete. I was always the one they picked last when they were choosing up sides and I always played right field. Of course, a lot of the time we played on the corner and right field might as well not have been there. There was an empty lot on the corner that we called the prairie. It was all overgrown with weeds and grass and full of big yellow and black spiders that made these big webs and just sat in the middle of them. We would catch them in jars and keep them until they died. Anyway when we played ball on the corner the prairie was center field, home plate was the sewer drain at one corner of the intersection, the other bases were the other corners; one street was left field and the other street was right field but unless a guy was a lefty you couldn’t hit to right. So I didn’t have much to do out there. Right field was Mozart Street, left field was Byron. Sister Beatrice told me who Mozart was, although she pronounced his name funny, kind of like “Mote-zart,” instead of “Moze-art,” like everybody else did. Right field was also where Connie Stetz got run over so I always spent a little time looking to see if there was still any blood or pieces of her stuck to the asphalt. Connie was really pretty. Too bad. Some asshole wrote, “Connie was here” in the dust on the hood of the car that hit her. Anyway. High school was a pain in the ass. I couldn’t read so good. Turned out later that my eyes were for shit and I probably needed glasses since I was a kid. So the nuns always put me right up front where they could keep an eye on me and I would do shit like throw spitballs at them when they turned around to the board. Just stupid kid shit. I was always in the principal’s office, Sister Geranda. She must’ve hated me. She was always calling my ma or suspending me from school or something. High school was when they started calling me Loopy instead of Gerry. I never liked it but I was never tough enough to beat the shit out of

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the assholes who started it so I just acted like I thought it was cool. Pretty soon nobody calls me Gerry. Way it goes. I never been sure what the hell Loopy means anyway. Goofy or something like that I guess. High school was when I started hanging with Jack Lynch. Jack taught me how to be a thief. We would boost records or cigarettes or whatever from the local stores. Nothing big. One time when we needed new jackets we went over to Sears and took a couple of nice bomber jackets off the rack and hung our old crappy jackets up and just walked out. And we would steal hubcaps and sell them to the used parts guys. Jack was kind of what you call a prodigy. He could pick locks. I don’t think anybody taught him; he just picked it up himself. Just a kid and he could pick any damned lock he put a mind to. Amazing. It took him almost as long as it took Sister Beatrice to teach me to play Aunt Rhody to teach me how to pick locks but I finally got pretty good at it. Anyway the two of us were a real good team. We would case places in the neighborhood and hit them when nobody was home. Looking for money mostly. We would be in and out fast. We had a routine once we were inside dumping drawers and looking for likely hiding places in cabinets. When we found a stash we were out of there without looking for more. You know we did that kind of shit for three years and nobody ever caught us. All through high school we always had beer money. Actually beer was what finally did Jack in. After high school he started drinking pretty much all day long. I couldn’t keep up with him so I would just hang out and bullshit with him while he put it away. We hung at a place called Fife’s over on Western. Everybody loved us. We bought drinks for our friends and their friends and anybody that looked friendly. Went on like that for a couple years. I got a job

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riding the rear end of a Tribune truck delivering papers that kind of kept me from becoming a total alcoholic but Jack just kept hammering them down day and night. Anyway, one night Jack must’ve thought he was putting too much money into Fife’s till and decided to take some back. Thank god I wasn’t with him. He must have been really loaded to do something so dumb because Roy Wilkes who owns the joint (Don’t ask me why they called it Fife’s.), he lived upstairs of the joint and he wakes up and hears somebody stumbling around in the dark in the middle of the night and gets his shotgun out and blows Jack a-fucking-way. Killed him dead. Took a while to figure out who he was ’cause the blast hit him right in the face. When they did figure it out Roy felt bad about it. Probably hated to lose such a good customer. So, anyway, that’s how I became a solo act in the burglary business. I got pretty good at it. Had my regular customers who I sold shit to. Guys who I knew would buy pretty much anything I came up with. Onesie, twosie stuff. Nothing big. Hardly worth anybody reporting. And if I was careful, especially in the warehouses, most of the time nobody ever knew I had been there at all. In and out, wham bam thank you ma’m. But that couldn’t last forever, I guess. Somebody would say to somebody else, you need something I know a guy, and the other guy would say oh yeah – Who? And pretty soon you got a rep. The last thing a burglar needs is a reputation. But that’s the way it went, like getting named Loopy, what are you going to do?

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Manny and Loopy at Work Chicago Police Officer Manny Rodriguez adjusted his bottom on the upturned wooden box he was sitting on. Should have brought a lawn chair. From his position behind a row of steel trash drums on the loading dock behind Tish Furniture he could just barely see down the alley to a similar loading dock behind Allen’s TV and Appliances. Manny checked the glowing dial of his watch. One AM. He had been here for an hour and a half. Next to him was a thermos of coffee and a small cooler chest in which a ham and cheese sandwich and an orange sat nestled in the ice. Manny worried about the rattling noise of the ice as he carefully lifted the sandwich from it but he doubted that the sound carried more than a few feet. His ass was beginning to ache from sitting on the box. Should have at least brought a cushion. He wanted a cigarette. Loopy Riley entered the alley from Lincoln Avenue, the entrance behind and away from Manny’s sight line. He stopped a few feet into the alley and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He listened. In the canvas bag he carried slung by a strap over his shoulder were a jimmy, a variety of other prying tools, a rubber hammer, a set of lock picking instruments, a hooded military flashlight, a roll of duct tape, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a halfpint bottle of Old Underoof whisky. The latter two in case he got hungry or nervous. Each item was carefully wrapped in an individual towel. Nothing made a sound. Loopy started down the alley. Manny nearly gasped as Loopy passed him. Jesus, there he is. He watched Loopy move silently to the loading dock at Allen’s, place his bag on the dock and then use his arms to lift himself and climb onto the dock. Loopy knelt and removed something from the bag and began working on the side entrance door next to the big overhead dock doors. Manny guessed

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it took him less than a minute. Loopy returned his pick tools to the bag, picked it up and disappeared inside the store. One-twenty by Manny’s watch; he wondered how Loopy handled the alarm. Inside Loopy worked without rushing. On his list – a refrigerator, two big screen television sets, a washer and a dryer. He found a big appliance hand truck and went shopping. In less than an hour he had wrangled all the items from the inventory and positioned them just inside one of the overhead doors. He checked the padlock on the big door and decided to pick it rather than cut it. That ought to confuse them a little. Everything will be locked up tight tomorrow morning when they arrive. Earlier in the evening, after the store had closed but while there was still daylight, Loopy had pulled into the alley in his truck, a sixteen-foot straight box with the temporary signage, Lightning Electric, on its side. He had backed the truck into the loading dock, pulled a ladder from the rear of the truck, positioned it beneath the alarm, climbed up and disabled it. Nothing more than a man at work. No one would have taken note if they saw him, but no one did. Now he sat at the dock foreman’s desk and ate his sandwich. He switched on the desk lamp and surveyed the papers on the desk. Unbelievable. How could anyone do this kind of work? It would drive him nuts. Two-ten, Manny noted. Doesn’t waste any time. Loopy jumped down from the dock, slung his bag over his shoulder and walked past Manny out of the alley the same way he came in. What the hell? No loot? What’s going on? Manny stayed at his post until almost five AM, and then decided it was so close to sunrise that Loopy wasn’t coming back. Strange. Was there cash in the place? Is that what he came for? At dawn Loopy’s truck rolled down the alley. He backed it into the loading dock, got out, entered the building through the unlocked side entrance and a moment later raised the

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overhead door. Using the hand truck he quickly loaded everything onto the truck. Then he replaced the hand truck where he had found it, lowered the overhead door and locked it, and left by the side door, which he also carefully locked. In five minutes he was back in the truck and gone.

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The Chainsaw One afternoon I’m sitting in Fife’s commiserating with Roy again over how he blew Jack away and who should come and sit down beside me but Mike Flynn. A very bad hombre, Mike Flynn. Even sitting next to him made me nervous. Flynn was a neighborhood cop with a reputation of his own. I was in high school with him at St. Bede’s but we didn’t have the same social circles. Ha! His reputation was that if he wanted you to tell him something you would tell him and if you had something you didn’t want to tell him that was just too bad. So he says hey Loopy how are ya and I say fine Mike how are you and we bullshit a little bit and I wait for the real conversation to start. Then he says, you know, Loopy, I got an opportunity for a smart, quiet guy like you. Oh, yeah, I say, making a joke, You got connections at the Tribune? But he doesn’t laugh. This is a business conversation, Loopy, he says, not a jerkoff session. Then he tells me the deal. How I am well known to him and his partners. How they know all about me. And he names some of the places I have hit just to show he isn’t shitting me but that he isn’t drinking beer with me because he wants to pinch me. He wants me to go to work for him and his partners. I don’t ask who his partners are. At this point I don’t say nothing. He knows how risky it is being on my own; how I never know when I poke my head out of some ventilation shaft whether some guy is going to lay a pipe against my head or, like poor Jack, get my face blown off. Be a lot easier and safer if somebody reliable was watching my back. He says all this and then he stops and looks at me. I don’t say nothing. “Understand, Loopy?” he says. I just look at him. “You worried about me, Loopy?” he says. I must have looked worried. “I don’t know you too good, Mike,” I say. He nods his head like

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he understands. Then he pats me on the arm and it feels like I been hit with a tree limb and he says, “Let’s take a little walk.” We go outside. I go because what choice do I have? Flynn starts walking toward the alley and I follow him. In the alley is a squad car and a guy named Rodriguez is sitting at the wheel reading a newspaper. He looks at me and kind of smiles. “Manny, you know Loopy Riley,” Flynn says. “Yeah, from high school. How ya doin’, Loopy?” As far as I can remember Manny Rodriguez never said a word to me in high school. “Good, Manny. Nice to see you.” I say. “Gimme the keys, Manny.” Flynn says and then he asks me where’s my car. “Around the corner.” “Pull it in here.” So I go and get my car and instead of getting in and leaving Chicago forever I pull into the alley. Flynn has got the trunk of the squad open and inside still in the Skilsaw box is a three-foot long chainsaw. “I got this,” Flynn says pointing to the box. “You want it?” I just look at him. I don’t like the idea of chain saws much less the idea of chain saws and Mike Flynn. “Go ahead. It’s yours,” he says. “Gee, Mike,” I say, “I don’t know.” “No, really – a gesture is all, a gesture of good faith. I want you with us.” He smiled at me but his smile looked like it was hurting his face. I figured this was not a gift I could refuse.

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“Jesus, Mike, thanks a lot. This is really nice of you.” “No problem. We’re going to be partners, we do shit for each other. Right?” He held steady on me while he waited for me to answer. This was a question that needed an answer and like I said Mike Flynn was a guy who got answers. “Yeah, Mike,” I said, figuring what the hell if you’re going to have a partner it might as well be a cop. “Thanks,” I said. “You’re welcome, Loopy,” Flynn said and thumped me again with his paw. “I’ll be in touch real soon. Okay?” “Good. Good,” I said. “Talk to you then.” Then he was gone and I had a chainsaw instead of a picture to remind me of him.

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Manny and Nick Officer Manny Rodriguez parked in the visitor’s space behind the rectory, turned off the engine and sat for a quiet moment staring at the dark, carved door in the blond brick wall before him. The first time he stood at that door he was ten years old. So how old must Nick have been? Twenty-eight? That makes him what? Almost fifty now. An elderly nun, Sister Mary Clare, the rectory housekeeper answered the bell. “Hello, Manny. How are you today?” “Pretty good, Sister. Yourself?” “As well as I can expect.” “Well expect the best, Sister. Expect the best.” She smiled, “Good advice, Manny. I’ll remember that.” “Is Father Nick in?” “In his room.” “Thanks.” Manny tapped softly on the door and when there was no response opened the door and entered the small, two room apartment. The living room was all dark wood and yellow light filtered through an ancient lampshade on a reading light behind a battered, equally decrepit leather chair footed by a sagging, crackled ottoman. Bookshelves lined two walls, floor to ceiling. Books were scattered in stacks on the floor and singly here and there around the room. An open book, something on Augustine, lay on the ottoman. This is how it would have been for me, Manny thought – a quiet room, books, and an old housekeeper to cook my meals and iron my shirts. He touched the book on Augustine. And someone like me to visit.

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The bedroom door was open. Father Sebastian lay on his back on the bed. He was naked. Manny examined him from the door. Still a good body, broad chest, strong, nicely shaped legs. Asleep or feigning sleep. Manny closed the door behind him and sat on the straight-backed chair at a small writing table. Piece by cumbersome piece he unloaded his equipment from his body, then his uniform, until he too was naked. Then he rose quietly and knelt beside the priest’s bed and watched him breathe. He seemed to be genuinely asleep. A handsome man even with his hair going. Good nose, straight and somewhat haughty, a nose with authority. Formidable eyebrows, thick, mobile and expressive. And, beneath those lids, dark, brown eyes that seemed to induce a sense of calm in all those they looked upon; eyes that were seductive without seeming so; eyes that promised something. Manny leaned forward on the edge of the bed as quietly as he could, uncoiled the priest’s penis from its entangling hair, kissed it and took it gently into his mouth. Father Sebastian stirred and groaned contentedly but did not open his eyes. “Have I ruined your life, Manny?” Manny continued quietly for a moment then gripped the base of the penis to keep its swelling girth intact, turned his head toward the priest and rested his cheek on the glistening flesh. “You are my life, Nick.” “A strange life.” “I have seen stranger.” “Are you ever angry with me for what I have done?” “Not any more.” “It was very wrong, you know.”

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“Yes, I know.” “You were much too young. A child. I took advantage of you.” “Yes.” “You should have been able to trust me.” Manny looked at the naked priest. “I trust you now,” he said. Later, as the bells in the tower rang the Angelus, the two men lay in each other’s arms sated and drowsy and the priest thought of Augustine’s admonition and of that inventor of hypocrisy, Machiavelli’s ends and means, and gently tousled the thick hair of the one person, man and boy, who knew his heart.

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The Physical

The pretty young nurse looked at the open file in her hand and called out, “Officer Healey?” Matt Healey raised his hand like a schoolboy, pushed his bulk up out of the waiting room chair and followed her into the doctor’s office. Her white uniform hugged her hips as she walked before him and distracted him from the chore ahead. “Just go in there and undress,” she indicated the small examination room. “There is a gown if you like.” A paper gown lay folded on a working shelf along one wall. “Dr. Olsen will be with you in a moment.” Healey nodded his understanding and the nurse left. He undressed, hung his civilian pants by a belt loop on the hook on the door, hung his flannel shirt on top of them, stuffed his socks into his shoes, crumpled his undershirt and shorts into a ball and looked for a place to put them. If they are going to get people naked they ought to give them someplace to put their goddamned clothes. He sat on the paper covering the examination table and held his underwear in his lap. These guys know how to intimidate and humiliate you better than we do. Sit you naked in a room and make you wait and wonder if you’re going to live or die. The paper stuck to his behind and tore slightly when he shifted his position. He looked around the room– washbasin, examining table, a small metal stool, anatomy charts on the walls. Funny that a place supposed to be where people went for help with really personal problems was so cold and sterile. There was no indication that compassion or comfort

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was to be had in this room. And again he thought of the similarities. The poor suffering bastards come to us for help too – good guys and bad guys, all of them fucked. “Morning, Officer Healey, I’m Dr. Olsen.” A white-haired, white-skinned doctor, that was good. They exchanged pleasantries and Dr. Olsen sat down on the little stool. “We’ve got the results on your tests. Everything looks pretty good. Cholesterol is a little high. I’ll give you something for that. Blood pressure is within normal range – a little toward the top end but nothing to worry too much about. But your blood sugar is still way too high. Are you taking your medication regularly? “Yeah, pretty regular.” “Pretty regular?” “My wife makes sure I take it at night but sometimes I forget it in the morning.” “Can’t forget. You’ve got to take it like clockwork, day and night, every day.” “Yeah, okay, I know.” “This is serious, Officer Healey.” “I know, I know,” Healey felt like a child being chastised. “Let me put it you in terms that might get your attention a little better. The consequences of not taking care of yourself are that you could go blind, your feet might have to be amputated, and your dick won’t work.” Healey laughed in spite of himself. “Okay, okay, doc, you’ve got my attention.” “And you’ve got to exercise.” “I know.” “A little bit every day makes a big difference.” “I will, doc. I promise.”

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“All right, let’s take a look at you.” The back thumping, belly plunging, toe spreading, ear peering, ass probing examination proceeded to its conclusion. Dr. Olsen snapped off the plastic gloves and discarded them in a covered metal container, rode his stool to the shelf and began writing a prescription. “I’m going to double your dose. We’ll see how that works. Make sure you check your blood at least twice a day, keep a record and give me a call in a couple of weeks and let me know how it’s working.” Healey dressed and watched Dr. Olsen as he wrote. “Tell me something, doc.” Olsen looked up. “When you think about stuff like diabetes, how do you think about it?” “What do you mean how do I think about it?” “I mean, how do I say this, I mean do you think about what it is, the diabetes, or do you just think about how to deal with it?” “You’re a philosopher, Officer Healey.” “Oh, yeah?” “Tell me this – you deal with criminals, right?” “Oh yeah.” “What do you think about when you deal with them? Do you think about crime or do you just think about what you should do with the criminal you’ve got in front of you?” Healey nodded. “I’m the same way. I’ve got some things that work – some things that can control the disease. Some people listen to me, do what I tell them, take their medicine, check their blood, get their exercise, some don’t. Sound familiar?”

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Healey laughed. “You got me, doc. My recidivism rate is not too good is it?” Dr. Olsen handed him the prescription and smiled. “Go and do better, Officer Healey. You will make my day.”

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Bless Me, Father

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” Matt Healey spoke the traditional opening into the latticed screen that separated and concealed his identity from the priest on the other side. The dark, womblike confessional was barely large enough to contain him. He knelt and confessed his sins. “It has been a long time, years, since my last confession,” he continued. “Why is that?” The anonymous priest asked quietly. “I don’t know, Father,” Healey began to equivocate, then stopped. “It was after my wife died,” he said and paused. The priest waited. “Seems like I died too for a while. Or something inside me died. I don’t know.” “That’s very understandable,” the priest said. “Losing someone as close as your wife can be a terrible thing to bear.” “Yeah, it was. Still is.” “How long has it been?” “Too many years to count.” “And you have not been to confession since?” “No.” “A long time to go without God’s help.” “God didn’t seem to be much help when I needed Him.” The priest paused. It was a good thing. That brief pause absorbed the anger rising again in Healey’s chest. It gave the blood throbbing in his temples time to cool and recede. “Yes. I know. Sometimes God can seem very far away.”

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“Yeah.” “Have you prayed to Him?” “I’ve prayed to Him, yelled at Him, cursed Him, done everything but beat the shit out of Him.” “Sounds like a pretty lively relationship.” They both laughed softly. “Listen, Father. What I’m trying to do, what I need to do, somehow, is get past this thing. It’s eating me up. For a long time I couldn’t believe it happened to me. I couldn’t believe God would do such a thing. I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason in it. If God did it then He was a terrible father – mean and stupid and cruel. I just, I don’t know . . .” “I know, my son,” the priest’s voice was deep and kind. “God is a mystery to all of us. He is a mystery we can never really solve or understand. All we can know with certainty is that He loves us; that He loves us so much he sacrificed His own Son for us.” “I know all that, Father. The nuns made sure I understood that. But all that seems very far away. I needed God, my wife needed Him, and He didn’t seem to care.” “Trust Him, my son,” the priest said, “Trust Him and He will comfort you and save you.” “I hope so, Father. I think that’s why I’m here.” “You have made the right choice. Now, confess your sins and reconcile yourself with your Father who loves you.” “I don’t know where to begin.” “Just begin.”

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“Well, after my wife died I was a mess. I tried working it off but that didn’t help, so I changed jobs and for a little while just learning the new job took my mind off things. But as I got into it the job itself became a problem.” “How was that?” “There was just a lot of stuff going on that I got caught up in.” “What kind of stuff?” “Like, people taking money for looking the other way. Stealing. Stuff like that.” “And you were part of all that?” There was a pause while Matt bit the bullet. “Yeah, I was.” “Are you still part of it?” Another pause. “I can’t get out of it.” “Why not?” “It’s complicated, Father. You do something for somebody in return for something somebody did for you. Like maybe somebody puts their life on the line for you and then does something they shouldn’t do, some little thing, nothing big, and you know about it. So what do you do? Turn the guy in who maybe saved your life or kept you from getting your head busted in? Especially when the guys you would turn him in to aren’t exactly angels themselves. So you look the other way. You don’t do anything. And the next time it’s something a little bigger. Or it’s someone else but they know you looked the other way once so they expect you to do it again. And you do. And pretty soon you are what you are.” “And what is that?”

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“I think that’s what I’m trying to deal with, Father.” “Do you ask God for help?” “Well, I guess, in a manner of speaking I do, Father.” “‛A manner of speaking’?” “Well, I don’t go, like, “Hey, God, what about this?” I just kind of worry on the subject and hope to God He helps me figure it out.” “But you do want to figure it out.” “Oh, yeah, I would like to figure it out. But, to tell you the truth, I think it’s too late. You don’t realize it at the time but every damned thing you do is somehow tangled up with everything else. You fix one thing you screw something else up.” “ ‛Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.’” “I remember that from school.” “Sir Walter Scott.” “He got it right.” “All of us find that out sooner or later, my son.” “Anyway that’s what I have been doing, in addition to drinking too much, fornicating, and missing more masses on Sunday than I can count.” “Do you remember the story about the Gordian Knot? “Guy cut through it?” “Yes, story is that it was a very intricate knot that no one had ever been able to untie. If you could loosen it you were supposed to be the ruler of all Asia.” “Yeah, I remember.”

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“Alexander the Great simply gave it a whack with his sword and just like that the knot was loosened.” “So you’re telling me, with this story, that maybe I should try Alexander’s approach?” “I’m just telling you a way that has become one of our legends because it continues to be relevant.” Matt was quiet, thinking. “I’ll have to consider that, Father.” The priest returned to the ritual of Confession: “Are you sorry for your sins?” “I am.” “I will not ask if you intend to continue in them. I will assume it is your intent not to. But you have a difficult task before you.” “Thank you, Father.” “Make a sincere Act of Contrition.” When he was through he said, “For these and all my sins, I am most heartily sorry and ask for your divine mercy and absolution.” “You have put down a great burden, my son,” the priest said. “For your penance I want you to say a rosary to the Virgin Mary. Ask her to help you and intercede for you with your Father in heaven.” “Yes, Father.” And then the priest intoned the ancient words of absolution, “Ego te absolvo.” I forgive you. Matt rose from the kneeler. “Come and see me again,” the priest said. “I will, Father. I will.”

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Outside Matt adjusted his service cap and walked the leafy, tree-lined streets of his old neighborhood – the same streets he and Eleanor walked together what now seemed so long ago. A small black and white dog with an upright tail like a plume came out of an alley and approached him. “Hello, fella.” Matt leaned and patted the dog’s head. The dog wagged its tail and licked Matt’s hand. They walked together for a while, the dog sniffing and peeing on every available bush and fireplug. “What’s that? To find your way home?” The dog seemed to smile and wagged his feathery tail. “I went to confession,” Matt told the dog. “Haven’t been in a long time. Had a lot of shit to get rid of.” The dog seemed to consider this. “Went all right. I feel better, I think. Maybe now I can let my poor Ellie rest.” The dog peed on a bush. “Maybe let myself rest. Anyway, I think it helped. I’ve got to start to get a handle on things. I’m starting not to recognize myself.” Matt and the dog had reached an intersection. Matt squatted down and scratched behind the dog’s ears. The dog’s tongue lolled in appreciation and pleasure. “Pretty simple, huh. Hang out in the alleys, chase cats, piss wherever you want, and find somebody to scratch your ears once in a while. You got it made, dog.” The dog sat and cocked its head. “You act like you understand. Well, remember, all this is just between you and me.” They crossed the street and continued their walk.

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There are people depending on me. People I owe. Nothing I can do to change that. I’m too far down that road. Too far. Some things I just have to live with. “What do you think, dog?” But the dog had wandered off. Matt looked around and whistled once but the dog was gone. He felt abandoned. A stray dog had joined him on a walk through the neighborhood and then gone about its doggy business but Matt Healey, a seasoned veteran of the world and a man familiar with pain and loss felt abandoned. With the part of him that resisted such emotions he examined the feeling. This wasn’t about a stray dog. It was about the feeling that ran beneath everything else in his life – good or bad; the feeling that somehow he had been abandoned by whatever benevolent spirits there may be that attend to the affairs of men, that no matter what he did he could not recall these spirits. His walk had taken him to Addison Street, the southern main artery through the neighborhood and he turned east and walked beneath the leafy summer canopy of linden trees and remembered walking here with Eleanor on a summer night when the trees made a rustling sound and the scent in the air and the brilliance of the stars penetrated his usual indifference to such things and seemed somehow an aura that Eleanor had created and which at her command had encompassed him in its comforting embrace. At Mozart Street he turned north again past the sturdy brick bungalows and two-flats. On the sidewalk a scuffed hopscotch diagram drawn in chalk weathered away in the sun. He had played on this very street, scooped soft asphalt from its surface with his finger when the summer heat softened the street into a gummy substance that he and his friends would substitute for the brand that had build Mr. Wrigley his ballpark. Only a kid could chew tar and enjoy it.

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Beneath an oak tree crowding the berm three scruffy boys hunched over a circle scratched into a bare patch of dirt and were so intent on their game of marbles they never looked up as Matt passed them. Mibs they used to call them. Suppose they still do. He wondered what had happened to his own collection of captured marbles. He was at Irving Park Road, across the street from Foley’s. It had been a long time since he had visited Foley’s – not since Eleanor. The black man tending the bar had gray hair. “Hello, George.” George blinked once but then must have seen something familiar. “Matt Healey,” he stuck out his hand and they shook. “How you been, George?” He asked but he already knew; Monica kept him up to date on her father whom she idolized. “I’m fine, Matt. Been a long time. You’ve put on some weight. Last time I saw you, you were still just a young fellow.” “Yeah, that was a long time ago. Where’d you get the gray hair, George?” George laughed, “Comes with the job, I guess. You’ll see.” “I already am.” Matt ran his fingers through his hair. “Nah, you look good, Matt. What can I get you?” “Just a beer. Guinness.” George drew the stout into a tapered glass and let it sit for a moment, settling. “I hear you are running Damen Avenue these days.” “Yeah, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” “I guess not. You married again too, didn’t you?”

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“Yeah, got lucky. Good woman. Got a boy, going to college in the fall.” George shook his head. “God, it has been a long time. You know my Monica, of course.” Matt kept his face straight, “Sure,” he said. “She works for me. A very good cop.” “She’s a grandmother.” Matt raised his glass. “Makes you a great-grandfather, George. Unbelievable. You don’t look old enough.” “Time just keeps chugging along, Matt.” “Yeah, it sure does.” He looked around the place. “Everything looks the same here.” “Yeah, pretty much. Kitty is gone, you know.” “Yeah. She was something, wasn’t she?” “Yeah, she was. Her daddy gave me this job.” “Looks like it might work out.” They laughed and it felt good to Matt, as though it had been awhile since he had just laughed over some inconsequential small talk with an old friend. “It’s good to see you again, George.” “Just doesn’t seem possible that so much time has passed, does it, Matt.” “No, it doesn’t. Last time I was in here the days seemed longer than the years do now.” “I know what you mean. I look at Monica and my granddaughter, Lavonne and her baby and think, ‘This can’t be possible,’ but it is. It is.” Matt took a long swallow and wiped his mouth. “I’m glad I stopped in.” He stood and extended his hand. George took it and held it. “Don’t be a stranger, Matt.”

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“I’ll try not to, George.” The sun was lower now and the afternoon traffic was increasing. Matt walked slowly along Irving Park and saw from the steeple clock on St. Bede’s that it was four o’clock. That clock had been keeping the time on his life for fifty years now, he thought. All that time. All that time muddling through without ever clarifying things enough to … To what? To get it right. To put both feet on the right side of things and stand there without wavering. To have choices that were clear to him – black and white. But that was fantasy and he knew it. The choices he had made were not simple and not black or white. The world was a complicated mess and he had done his best to keep some sense of doing the right thing while he was swimming in the mess. He walked west in the warm, afternoon sun; the traffic flowed past with its thousands of lives all rushing toward or away from their desires or their responsibilities; almost every car carrying just one individual in a kind of mobile solitary confinement. His walk now took him to the bridge over the Chicago River and he stopped at the middle of the bridge and leaned on the iron railing and looked down into the river. A greasy sheen flowed beneath him and on its surface floated the evidence that not all the Catholics in the neighborhood were following the reproductive policies of their Church. Matt looked in amazement, as he always did, at the number of condoms passing beneath the bridge. The Rubber River, they had called it. Four o’clock in the afternoon and a lot of people are flushing loaded rubbers into the river. Along the banks of the river floating shacks of houseboats sat moored in the gassy, littered effluvium barely bobbing in the slow current. Better than living in the Cabrini-Green projects, he supposed. But the air must get pretty ripe down there sometimes. He looked at his watch. Time to go.

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He was unlocking his car door when he noticed the dog at the entrance to the alley, wagging his tail and smiling at him. He smiled back and waved, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Good luck, dog.â&#x20AC;?

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The Confessor Father Sebastian closed the sliding door over the grate that separated him from the troubled man whose confession he had just heard and whose sins he had just absolved by the authority handed down to him from Jesus Christ Himself. A policeman, no doubt about it. He wasn’t the first. They have a difficult time. No one but a priest to trust with their sins. Without pause he opened the door on the other side of the confessional to begin hearing the confession of the next sinner. No one was there. Finished for the time being. Alone, he turned on the small reading light over his shoulder and picked up the book he had been reading between penitents. He read: All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other things. Hardly anything? What exception did Marcus Aurelius have in mind? And the word, “implicated.” Curious. Not connected or related, “implicated” – as in a crime common to us all. And this “implication” is “holy.” A holy crime? As in most idle moments Father Nick Sebastian’s thoughts turned to Manny Rodriguez. Are he and I implicated in a holy crime? He shook his head; doing it again; trying to justify the unjustifiable. Kind, devout, lovely Manny, a boy bent like a twig into a man without a center – a creature of his making. My making. My responsibility. He thought of the relief in the voice of the man whose confession he had just heard; the buoyant sense of rebirth that absolution brings. He envied the anonymous man who had humbled himself before God only moments ago and who now began his life again, free of the sins of his past. But the confessor could not confess; could not receive the benefits of absolution

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he brought to others. The results of his sin lived on in the moral vacuum he, himself, had created â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the moral vacuum that was Manny Rodriguez. But as Aurelius says, the bond is holy. If he cannot receive absolution, if he cannot repair the incalculable damage he had done to the spiritual essence of Manny Rodriguez, he can still tend to the holy, unholy bond between them. In some perverse way he can keep Manny from the abyss simply by being with him, by loving him, by providing the sanctuary of sex, the solace of the body. God help us, he thought. The door of the confessional opened and Father Sebastian turned off the light and prepared to greet another sinner in the name of God.

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Sylvia Alone Matt kissed her and held her to him for a brief moment. “See you tonight, kiddo,” he said. “Be careful, Matt.” “Always, babe.” She watched him cross the back yard and enter the garage, watched the way he moved, his broad back filling his uniform jacket, his lumbering grace. Then she turned from the kitchen window and began to clear the breakfast table. As she stood at the sink, holding the plates in her hands, she began to weep. Oh, why does this happen, she thought. But it did, often, and at the most unpredictable times. It was as if a cloud passed over her. Am I afraid for him, she wondered? Is that it? Afraid for myself? But why afraid at all? She put the dishes down, poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the kitchen table and looked out into the back yard. Where does this sadness come from? I have a good husband, a fine young son, soon to be a man, a nice home. What is it? Something missing. How can that be? He loved her first and he still loves her. Ridiculous, he was still a boy when he married Eleanor and still a boy when she died. And he is still a boy. No, he is not. He is a grown man – a middle aged man, a man with responsibilities. She sipped her coffee. He is a man with a wife who loves him. She felt the tears begin again. This is absurd. I am not a child, not some silly schoolgirl. Am I jealous of a ghost? Jealousy? Is that what it is? She considered the possibility. Does he sleep with her when he makes love to me? Does he compare us? I hope not. She will be nineteen forever and I will

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never see forty again. Is that it? No, I really don’t think so. Maybe, just a little, but not enough to trigger these tears. Whatever is missing is missing from me. Some piece of me that has been taken away or that I never had. Maybe it’s anger. But what am I angry about? Am I angry? Jesus, I’m a mess and don’t even know why. Maybe I’m still pissed at Tony. Is that possible? She left the dishes in the sink and her coffee on the table and walked through her house. Her dining room and the dark oak table with her mother’s lace decorating it, the breakfront with her best China that had been such an extravagance when they bought it, the fireplace made from the same dark red bricks used on the exterior of the bungalow, the pictures of her and Matt, Danny and Matt, her parents and his. What is missing? Why do I feel this way? Upstairs in their bedroom she looked down on the rumpled sheets and pillows. What can you tell, looking at a bed? Can you tell if someone has had sex by looking at the sheets? I should ask Matt. What do they do at a crime scene? Is there a pattern in the mess that reveals anything? She sat on the bed, kicked off her slippers and lay down on her back. A breast-like cover concealed an ancient outlet on the ceiling. Look at that, must have been designed by a man, nipple and all, about a C cup. She pulled his pillow over her face and breathed in his smell. God, I love him so. It would probably not be a good thing if he knew how much. No, that’s not so. He is a good man. Oh God, I’m going to cry again. What is wrong with me? I don’t think we are having enough sex. Maybe that’s it. That’s what Matt always thinks is the source of the problem. That’s what he says anyway. But he doesn’t seem to want me as much as he used to. Not nearly often enough. Just getting older, I think. I think.

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She drifted off and it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until she heard the garbage truck rumbling down the alley that she woke again. Must be getting late. I ought to get up. Strange dream. Something? What? Something not good. Her robe was tangled around her and she unbuttoned it. Her breasts fell free and sank to her sides. Too big. Always been too big. Still he seems to like them. She cupped and hefted them. Her nipples rose. Sensitive. She squeezed them and touched the nipples with her thumbs. Sister Margaret would not approve of this. Sister Margaret must have been all of twenty or so when she scared us all half to death with the dangers of self-abuse. Probably went back to the convent and got herself off every night. She thought of Matt. What would he think if he saw her now? Might turn him on. Might turn him off. She loved his big, hairy body, the way he moved over her, his hands on her, strong and gentle, the way he groaned when he came and the way he could peel away all her built-in layers of resistance. He is a wonderful lover, she thought and touched herself in a kind of measured drumbeat that grew in tempo and then shifted into an increasing frenzied sliding motion, up and down, over her clitoris. She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling-breast and smiled. Maybe everything is about sex. Then she got up, dressed and began her daily chores.

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The Chase

Mike Flynn sat on his front stoop and smoked a cigarette while he waited impatiently for his partner, Manny Rodriguez, to arrive. Dunkin’ Donuts must be crowded this morning. He leaned back on his elbows and out of long habit scanned the street. Nice, quiet. Like him, some of his early rising neighbors were leaving for work. Bill Tierney and his son, Jack, were loading their toolboxes into the back of their truck. Tierney and Son. And son. Would have been nice. Maybe. Or not. Might have turned out like me, he thought. Rodriguez stopped the police squad car in the middle of the street and waited for Flynn to maneuver and drop his bulk into the seat next to him. Flynn grunted a greeting, picked up a carton of coffee from the cup holder on the seat and peeled off the lid. “You’re late.” “Big crowd at the donut shop.” Flynn rummaged through the pastry box and plucked out a powdered sugar donut. “Soul food for cops,” Rodriguez said. “Huh?” “Donuts. Soul food for cops.” “What does that mean?” “Ah, never mind.” They cruised the neighborhood. Checked the alleys first. See if the bad guys or bad luck or bad dope had left anyone laying face down. Just one today – a wino curled up on a

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loading dock, black flies covering him from head to foot in a living blanket buzzing in the morning sun. “Dead?” Flynn looked down at the grizzled, drooling man. He set his foot on the man’s side and shoved. The flies rose angrily and the man groaned. “No, he ain’t dead.” “What do you want to do?” “More trouble than he’s worth. He’ll be all right.” The flies resettled. The squad moved on. “This neighborhood is turning to shit.” “Oh, oh, here it comes.” “Fucking niggers are taking over.” “Don’t forget the fucking spics.” Flynn laughed. “Rodriguez. Now there’s a good Irish name.” “Was that guy a nigger?” “Nah.” “A spic.” “No, he wasn’t no spic.” “My god, not a white man!” “Prob’ly lost his job to a wetback.” “A white man! Oh, the disgrace. I sure hope he wasn’t no mick.” “Fucking wise guy.” “A fucking mick dead drunk in the alley. Unheard of.”

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They laughed and drove and watched. The call came about eleven o’clock, just as they were deciding where to have lunch. Loud, domestic disturbance, sounds of violence, screaming woman, man shouting. They arrived in front of the three-flat just after Paul Morrison and Tom Doyle got there. “What do you know?” Flynn asked. “Nothing yet. You guys want to take the alley.” “Yeah, we got it.” In the alley they looked for the right building. “What one is it?” “That one, I think. Oh, shit. Look at that.” The man was leaning on the railing on the second floor landing, looking out over the alley. Even from their position they could see that he had blood on his face and shirt and hands. In his right hand he held a bloody long-handled axe. “Doyle,” Flynn said into the microphone, “Come back.” The speaker crackled, “Yeah.” “Trouble. We got a guy holding a bloody fucking axe.” “Where?” “Back porch. Second floor.” “You want to start this thing.” “All right. We’ll get his attention. “Give us a minute to get up there.” “Yeah. Go.” “Ready for this?”

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“We serve and protect.” “Let’s go.” The guy watched them get out of the squad looking at him, screwing their caps down on their heads, walking slowly toward the back gate with their hands on their holsters. “How you doin?” Rodriguez looked up at the man from the backyard and smiled. The man’s leaned forward and vomited into the yard. “Not doin’ so good, huh?” Manny said. “What do you say you put down your tools and we have a little talk about it?” The man moved away from the railing out of sight and then they heard his footsteps – he was coming down. Mike Flynn moved closer to the stairs, pulled his revolver and waited. The footsteps came faster and suddenly the man was upon him, screaming and swinging the axe. Flynn fired and ducked and the handle of the axe struck him just above his temple. He went down, sprawling backwards into the wire fence separating the yard from its neighbor’s. He could feel blood on his face. The man was raising the axe above him. He heard gunshots and watched the man’s face grimace in rage and pain. The man turned, swinging the axe and stumbled forward toward Manny. Flynn saw the axe hit just above Manny’s ankle and heard him scream. He shook his head and pulled himself up along the fence. The man was gone. Manny was on the ground, holding his leg; his screams had turned to moans. Doyle and Morrison were coming fast down the back stairs. “Take care of him,” Flynn shouted into Doyle’s astonished face and ran toward the back gate. He got there just in time to see a car pull out of the garage and speed down the alley. Flynn crouched, aimed and fired three times. No effect. The guy was getting away.

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He is not getting away, Flynn thought, moving as fast as he could into the squad. He is not getting away. He saw the car turn left at the corner. In a squeal of tires and burning rubber Flynn was after him. Left at the corner and the guy was still on the same street. Beautiful. The car was two short blocks ahead of him. Flynn and the man who had cut off Manny’s foot went through intersections without looking or slowing. He is not getting away. At Kedzie, a main intersection, the inevitable happened – the man’s car clipped the tail of another car and spun it into Flynn’s path. Flynn crunched the squad into the left front bumper. The fugitive’s car was pulling away, regaining speed. Flynn backed up and disengaged, pulled off the bumper of the other car and dragged it with him for half a block, spraying sparks and tearing up the underside of the squad, before it tore loose. He is not getting away. “Flynn, Flynn. Where the hell are you?” The radio was shouting at him. “Flynn, god damn it, come in, Mike.” He needed both hands to keep the squad under control. The car ahead was going as fast as it could down the side streets, veering from side to side and scraping parked cars as it went. It turned left again. Flynn was around the corner seconds later but the car was gone. Where? Possibilities? Only the intersecting alley. He was around it in an instant. There he was. Now the car was gaining speed again, its wake strewn with garbage cans and trash and pieces of back yard fences. Flynn plowed through it all. The car turned again and again and Flynn stayed with it each time. He could feel a kind of pressure building in his head. His eyes felt swollen as if they were bulging out of their sockets. His hands gripped the wheel so tightly he could feel it bend beneath them. He is not getting away.

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The car ahead turned again into an alley and raced forward. At the other end of the alley a police squad pulled in, facing the fugitive. His car screeched to a halt. Flynn was coming up fast behind him. The man turned and drove directly into a garage door blowing it off its rails and onto the roof of his car. The impact seemed to cause him to pause but then, almost immediately, he was on the gas again and driving straight through the back wall of the empty garage. It didn’t work. Impaled on a sturdy workbench the back wheels spun impotently. The bloody man got out. Doyle and Morrison were on him first, guns drawn. The man seemed suddenly deflated. He was done; he knew it. He raised his hands. With some effort Flynn loosened his grip on the steering wheel. He saw the man get out of the car. He saw the two officers ordering the man down to the ground. He got out of the squad. “We got him, Mike,” Paul Morrison said. The man was kneeling in front of him. He seemed to be smiling. “No, I’ve got him,” Mike Flynn said and shot him between the eyes.

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Afterward Mike Flynn arrived at Police Headquarters fifteen minutes early and shot the shit with an assistant district attorney before he went to his meeting with Captain Mulcahy. “Don’t worry about it, Mike,” the attorney reassured him, “If there was any trouble you’d be in handcuffs right now.” “Yeah, you’re probably right. I just hate this office bullshit.” “Go on, get it over with. Mulcahy’s from the street – he isn’t going to fuck with you.” “Mike, come on in.” Captain John Mulcahy stood behind his desk and extended his hand. Mike Flynn entered the office, took off his cap and shook Mulcahy’s hand. “You know Tom Brennan, Mike?” The man sitting in a side chair next to Mulcahy’s desk. “No, how are you?” Mike put out his hand and Brennan took it without rising. Mulcahy stays behind his desk and this guy doesn’t even get up, Flynn thought. Not good. “Captain Brennan wanted to sit in with us, Mike; he was on the review board that looked at this thing. Sit, sit.” Mike sat where Mulcahy indicated and said nothing. “Bottom line, Mike. You’re okay. The two other officers on the scene confirm your account of how the guy charged you and you defended yourself. Case closed.” So what’s this guy here for – to give me a medal? “How’s your partner doing?” “He’s all right. He’s gonna be a little gimpy but they put him back together pretty good.” “Good man.”

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A respectful pause as the quality of Manny Rodriguez’ goodness was considered. “We got a commendation for you,” Mulcahy said and handed him a small cloth covered box. Mike took it. He didn’t open the box and no one suggested he should. “Unofficially, Mike, we had a question,” Captain Brennan turned toward him. “You mind?” Flynn met his gaze impassively. “No. What do you want to know?” “The guy must have been pretty close to you when you fired, right?” “About as close as you are, Captain.” “Thing that bothered some of us on the board was the entry angle of your bullet. Seemed awfully steep for someone facing you that close.” “Came at me like a bull, Captain, head down.” Brennan looked steadily at him, looking for some sign. If he saw it he didn’t say. “You’re a lucky man, Officer Flynn.” “I guess so, Captain.” Brennan reached out his hand and Flynn shook it. “Well, I’m on my way, Captain.” Brennan stood and shook Dunne’s hand. “You be careful out there, Flynn.” “Thanks, Captain. I will.” When the door closed Flynn and Mulcahy looked at each other. “You know what they really think, right, Mike?” “They think I executed the guy.” “They were either going to give you a medal or indict you.”

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Mulcahy stood up, went to the window and looked out. They were both quiet. “I’ll see you around, Mike,” Mulcahy said to the window. “All right, Captain. I’ll see you around.” Flynn rose and as he reached the door Mulcahy turned to him and said, “You owe those guys, Mike.” Flynn gave an almost imperceptible nod and left the office.

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The Kiss Mike Flynn stood outside the Police Headquarters Building deciding whether to go home or to visit Manny at the hospital. Northside Memorial Hospital was within walking distance so Mike left his car in the police parking lot and started to walk. His bulk and his uniform made him conspicuous even on the crowded downtown streets of Chicago. It was nice to get downtown every once in a while. Mike liked the energy generated by the rush of people and the honking traffic, and the sense of power and accomplishment the tall buildings radiated. And the women. So many good-looking women. Made you feel good. He noticed that he was still holding the box containing his medal. He clicked it open and examined his reward for capturing and killing a dangerous felon. The medal was a round disk, looked like gold, with an “M” embossed in the middle. A swatch of red cloth was attached to the medal and a pin for attaching it to his uniform. A smaller ribbon was included for less formal occasions. What’s that “M” for – Meritorious or Murderer? Medal or indictment, Mulcahy had said. I’m either a hero or a murderer. Exactly how I feel – like a hero and a murderer. But the day was too perfect for such melancholy musing. The sky was an astonishing blue above the canyons of buildings. A breeze came off Lake Michigan and cleared the air of smog and humidity. A beautiful day. Mike strolled toward the hospital admiring the seemingly endless number of fine looking ladies that streamed past. They are a better excuse for coming downtown than a medal. The complex of buildings that comprised Northside Memorial came into view. Inside Manny Rodriguez was recuperating from the surgery that not only saved his foot but also was likely to make it possible for him to almost fully recover its use. Almost. Not enough for Manny to go back to the job he was good at. Enough to stay on the force though, to ride a desk

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and earn his keep. More likely to get a paper cut than have somebody try to chop off your foot. Not a bad deal. In the elevator Mike stood behind a young nurse carrying a tray of vials. He could smell something very nice from her hair. The curve of her neck seemed incredibly graceful. When he passed her to get off she looked up at him and smiled. An intention to smile crossed his mind but it wasn’t strong enough to register on his face. He asked for directions to Manny’s room at the nurses’ station and one of them told him where it was and that a priest was with him. “Everything all right?” “Oh, yes. He’s just a visitor. Officer Rodriguez is fine.” “Think it’s okay for me to go in?” “Well, take a peek and see before you do.” Outside the door to Manny’s room Mike paused. The door was only partly closed. He touched it and opened it only enough to look inside. Manny was in the bed with his wounded foot propped up on pillows. Father Nick Sebastian was standing over him, holding Manny’s hand in his. Maybe hearing his confession. Mike watched as Father Sebastian leaned over and kissed Manny. A long, tender kiss on his lips. Manny’s hand went up to the side of the priest’s face and held it gently. Mike Flynn moved away from the door and left the hospital.

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What is This Shit?

Walking back to the parking lot Mike Flynn considered what he had just seen. Manny is a fag. Father Nick I always figured was queer as a three-dollar bill – but Manny? Jesus Christ. Another beautiful woman passed by. Mike tried to regain the unconsidered appreciation for her kind that was his on the way to the hospital. Something was different now. What? Why? Because? Because Manny is a fag. So what? Why should anything else change because Manny is queer? I know Manny. Manny has got balls. He is a stand up guy. Also a bend over guy. Jesus. Manny was in the seminary. Never talks about it. Maybe something happened there. He wasn’t there very long. What? A year? Maybe. How does this shit happen? I never, ever figured Manny for queer. He never came on to me. Nothing. Not a gesture. Not a conversation. He’s too fucking Catholic to be queer. And he’s a spic. I never heard of a queer spic. But that kiss wasn’t the first one. Those two know each other real good. Unbelievable. What the hell do I say to him next time I see him? Nothing. That’s what – nothing. Never. Nothing. But I know. What does it mean that I know? What difference does it make? What difference does it make? I won’t be working with Manny anymore. Probably good. What the hell did he think when I would tell faggot jokes? Never flinched. He laughed. I think. Yeah, he laughed. What the fuck.

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Very confusing. What happened to him? How did he get that way? Has he always been that way? Father Nick. He was always hanging on Father Nick. Even as a kid. Jesus. Could it have been going on that long? How does that work? I thought queers who liked kids didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like grownup queers. So maybe this is something new. No. That wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t something new I just saw. That was more like an old married couple. So maybe they have been together a long time. Strange. Harry Grien. Harry liked little girls but he was married and had kids of his own. So anything is possible, I guess. But Manny. Jesus, Manny.

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Alone and Together Mike Flynn sat in the straight-backed metal side chair next to Matt Healey’s desk and rested one big arm on the stack of papers Matt was working through. “Take all the room you need, Mike.” “Good morning, Matthew. And how are you today?” “I have enough to do.” Mike leaned back and watched Manny some twenty feet away engaged in an animated conversation with Monica Adams. “How’s he doing?” Flynn asked, nodding in Manny’s direction. Matt turned and looked. “Manny? He’s doing okay. Seems to be settling into the routine.” “Still gimpy.” “I think that might be permanent. Too bad. Manny was a good street cop.” “How’s Monica doing?” Matt looked up from the paperwork before him. “What is this – your day for social work?” “Just curious.” “This place would shut down without her.” “That’s what the plantation owners used to say.” “What?” “You know, about the niggers, ‘This place would shut down without them.’” Matt looked at him. “You really are a piece of work, Mike.” “What? Well, am I right or not?”

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Matt shook his head and did not respond. He turned his attention back to his paperwork. “I’m right. You know it. Don’t see any plantations anymore, do you?” “You miss the old plantation, Mike?” Mike smiled and thought about it. “Must have been pretty nice.” “You would have made a shitty cotton picker.” “Yeah, I’m more the, whadaya call ’em, the overseer, the cruel overseer type. Guy with the whip, sitting up on the big white horse.” “Yeah, I can see it.” “Whacking the shit out of ‘em all day. Fuckin’ their ladies all night.” “I don’t think the sensitivity training was long enough for you, Mike.” “Actually that was pretty good, Matt. I learned a lot. I learned, for instance, that I am a nasty son-of-a-bitch but now that I understand myself better I don’t feel so bad about it.” “Yeah, you’re the poster boy for racial harmony.” “Why can’t we all just get along?” “Go catch some bad guys, Mike.” “Trying to get rid of me?” “Yes.” Mike stopped at Manny’s desk and they talked for a moment. Handled it pretty well. He gave no sign of what he knew. This wasn’t as tough as he had thought it would be. “How’s the foot?” Manny stretched out his leg and turned his foot in circles. “Getting better. Stiffens up at night when I sleep. Still aches if I walk too much. I think I’m through chasing guys on foot, Mike.”

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Chasing guys? Yeah. Chasing guys, all right. “Take care of yourself, Manny.” “Yeah, you too, Mike. Mike rode solo for the first time in a long time. He felt lonely. He was miserable. For a while he couldn’t quite determine what it was that was affecting his mood. He cruised the district on his usual routes but the only activity was a pair of teenaged punks fighting on a street corner who stopped and ran in opposite directions as soon as he rolled down his window and looked at them. Manny was a fag – no doubt about it. And he missed him. Missed the back and forth. Missed the bullshit. Missed the sound of his voice. Not only that – Manny was a partner in other ways. Manny was into all the action that Mike had going in the district. He knew all the guys who were kicking back, all the burglars, all the political connections, and all the cops that were involved. He even knew the whores who were kicking back blowjobs. No wonder he always passed. I’m in business with a fag. And being a fag is the kind of secret that somebody might use to get Manny to do something he wouldn’t ordinarily do. Some internal snoop squad could get onto it and use it. No. Doubtful. Manny was the kind of guy who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. Besides I’ve got more secrets than Manny. That’s the point – those secrets might get out if somebody really squeezed Manny. The image of Father Sebastian and Manny kissing returned. Somebody was already squeezing Manny. Wonder if Manny ever told anything in Confession? How reliable was Father Faggot? And how long do you suppose the two of them have been jerking each other off? Since grammar school? Christ, I’ll bet that son-of-a-bitch turned Manny when he was just a kid.

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The morning slipped away and suddenly he was hungry. The growling in his stomach was the first he thought of lunch. No discussion about where to eat. That was it. Deciding where to eat was a big deal; every day he argued it out with Manny. Now what? He passed the Centre/Center Café. Bowl of chili, black coffee, and a piece of cherry pie. Done. But neither the overcooked chili nor the sweet cherry pie improved his mood. The afternoon went slowly and in silence; only an occasional traffic ticket to break its desultory passage. His thoughts kept turning to his assessment of his relationship with Manny and of how a man he had known since childhood could be so little known by him. At the end of his shift Mike returned to the Damen Avenue station and parked the squad in the lot. Matt Healey was just leaving the building. Mike watched him descend the stairs and enter the wire link fenced parking lot. There’s another guy I think I know. “Hello, Mike. How’s your day?” “Pretty quiet, Matt.” “Must be good police work.” Mike laughed his dog bark laugh. “I’m sure of that.” “Do all right on your own?” “Yeah, fine.” “You seem a little down.” “Oh, yeah? No, I’m fine.” “What do you say we get a drink? I got time for one.” “Yeah, sure. A drink never hurt.” “How about the Limerick?”

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The Limerick was a tavern close to the station run by a woman who knew how to keep her mouth shut and was therefore a preferred meeting place. Lucy Harmon was behind the bar, which was filling up with cops unwinding at the end of their shift. Matt ordered their drinks. “Hello, Lucy. How are you?” Lucy simply smiled, nodded hello and said nothing. Matt and Mike got their drinks at the bar and found an empty booth. “You ever heard Lucy say anything?” Mike asked. “I think somebody told her to shut up once and it took.” “She could probably put half these guys away.” They sipped their drinks and watched the crowd increase. “Wonder what percent of cops are alcoholics?” Mike looked at the cops at the bar. “Roughly a hundred per cent.” “Then you got guys like Manny who don’t drink at all.” “Yeah.” “Makes you wonder.” “Yeah. What?” “I don’t know, how different people react to things. Guy like Manny. Nearly gets his foot whacked off. Gets better. Comes back to work. You wouldn’t think anything worse than a bad cold had kept him off the job. Doesn’t seem to bother him. Goes right back to work. No problem. Doesn’t brood about it. Doesn’t start drinking. Doesn’t get nuts because he is off the street and behind a desk. You know.” “Yeah, you’re right.”

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“You and me, I don’t know. I think we might react differently.” “Like what?” “Me, I think I would be all right. You, I think you would go nuts.” “Yeah?” “Yeah, you couldn’t handle a desk. You couldn’t put up with all the paperwork, all the bullshit, all the management stuff.” “You mean all the ass-kissing, backslapping bullshit.” “Yeah, exactly.” “How about one more?” Matt looked at his watch. “Yeah, sure.” Mike went to the bar and got them two more. As he sat back down he said, “You remember when we were kids?” “Like it was yesterday.” “Did you ever figure to be a cop?” “Yeah. It was one of the possibilities.” “Did you ever think I would be one?” “Mike, I figured you would be dead before you picked a career.” “How about Manny?” “No, I never saw that one coming.” “Me neither.” “Just didn’t seem to be the type.” “He went to the seminary.” “Yeah, I remember that. Didn’t finish. Went from being a priest to being a cop.”

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“Strange.” “Probably needed something with a uniform.” Mike laughed. “You think so?” “Yeah, some guys need to belong to some big thing that gives them some kind of special status.” “Gee, Matt, sounds like you took a course once upon a time.” “And fuck you also, Mr. Flynn.” “Manny is a tough one to figure.” “Hell you rode with him long enough. You ought to know him pretty good.” “Yeah, I guess.” “So?” “He’s a fag.” “What? You’re shitting me!” “No. He is. I happened to catch him in a lip lock with friendly Father Sebastian.” “When?” “At the hospital. Father Sebastian doing his duty – visiting the sick.” “I’ll be goddamned.” “Yeah.” “You’re sure?” “Oh, yeah. A real couple.” “Jesus Christ. I never would have thought it.” “No, me either.” “I’m gonna get us another drink.”

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Alone Mike asked himself why he had confided in Matt. He had not intended to do so. Probably a good idea though, Matt was good with a secret and it relieved him of the burden of carrying it alone. “Hard to believe. But Manny was always hanging around Father Sebastian when he was a kid.” “He probably got him started.” Matt thought about that possibility. “Wouldn’t doubt it a bit.” Now they sat and drank in silence. The crowd of cops drinking around them was in full throat, baying at the indifference or malevolence of the general public, conniving in petty plots, letting the alcohol transmute fear and loathing into a byproduct they could piss away. “Does he know you know?” “No.” The jukebox was playing “In Heaven There is No Beer.” Some were singing along.

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MEMORANDUM TO: Francis T. Hurst, Deputy Superintendent, Bureau of Operations Thomas P. Quigley, Captain, Human Resources Division, Bureau of Administrative Services FR: John H. Mulcahy, Assistant Deputy Superintendent, Patrol Division SUBJECT: Captain Matthew F. Healey, Commander, Division 1, District 3 RE: Promotion to rank of Deputy Chief FORM CP PDC 248: Narrative Report of Immediate Supervisor Purpose: This narrative report is written in fulfillment of policies and procedures of the Chicago Police Department regarding recommendations for promotions in rank to senior officer positions. The report will range over all major categories listed below relating to the qualifications of the subject for senior officer rank.

Leadership qualities

Management skills

Interpersonal skills

Street skills

Conflict resolution skills

Analytical skills

Reputation

Bearing

Temperament

10.

Proactive Command skills

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11.

Personal history

12.

Professional history/Commendations/Complaints/Citations

13.

Education/Professional Development/Seminars/Certificates

1. Leadership and Management Skills Captain Healey has served under my command for the past five years. He has held positions of increasing responsibility and demonstrated the highest levels of skill in each assignment. These assignments have included attachment to tactical units investigating (and solving) major burglaries in District 3, management of the Community Outreach program that successfully brought citizen groups into increasingly effective cooperation with the CPD, and command of the Damen Avenue station. In each of these assignments and functions Captain Healey has implemented the strategies and achieved the results expected at a high level of accomplishment. His command of the Damen Avenue stationhouse has been typical of his style and effectiveness. Prior to his arrival the Damen Avenue station received chronically low marks from both internal and community oversight authorities. Captain Healey was able to taken this underperforming unit and transform it into one of the most effective districts in the CPD. His officers look better and perform better according to all sources than at any time in the history of the station. He has effectively delegated administration of the district to competent subordinates and watched over their career advancement with a personal interest that is reflected in the high marks his subordinates give him as a supervisor.

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Healey Asleep and Awake “Matt!” Matt Healey distinctly heard his wife call his name and tried to place it meaningfully within his dream. What was Sylvia doing here in Monica’s apartment? “Matt, get up. Your breakfast’s ready,” Sylvia called up the stairs. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m up.” Healey rolled up to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and looked down at his fading erection. He rubbed his face and erased the dream. Sylvia walked into the bedroom. “Come on, honey,” she said. “I let you sleep too late. Come and eat before you shower.” She tugged gently at his beefy arm. Groggily he mumbled assent and rose and took her in his arms. “Morning, babe,” he rubbed his face into her hair. “Morning, honey. C’mon, stop that now. Fold it up and put it away. You’re running late.” She moved away from him rubbing her cheek, “Besides, you could cut glass with that beard.” Healey snorted, shrugged on his tattered flannel robe and followed his wife downstairs. In the kitchen there were buttered pancakes already on his plate and the plastic bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup standing next to it and orange juice and black coffee steaming from the big mug that had “Old Fart” printed on it. “Smells good,” he said and sat down. “You better get to it, it’s almost six thirty.” Healey started devouring his breakfast. He ate fast and with enthusiasm. Sylvia watched him from the sink where she was already cleaning up. Healey was a big man, broad

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across the shoulders and chest, big head with graying close-cropped dark brown hair, thick hair on his chest and arms. Sylvia liked the way he looked; she liked the glint that would come into his eyes when he wanted her. She only wished he wanted her more often. “Mike called,” she said. Healey stopped and looked at her. “Wha’d he want?” “Just wanted to talk to you, he said. Didn’t sound urgent or anything.” “When did he call?” “About twenty minutes ago.” Healey nodded and finished his breakfast then stood, picked up his coffee mug and headed back upstairs. “I’ll call him on the way in,” he said. Sylvia watched him go and thought once again about the relationship her husband of 22 years had with Mike Flynn. In some ways it was a more intimate relationship that he had with her. Flynn knew, for instance, how Matt would act in a life-or-death situation. He had been in those situations with her husband more than once. Sylvia thought she knew but Mike Flynn was certain. She cleared the table and rinsed the plates. Matt was a good man she thought to herself, a good husband and a good father. A little harder on their son Danny than she thought he had to be, still, a good man. A hell of a lot better than her first husband. Then she began to think about those Sunday mornings with Tony Basta. Upstairs in the shower Matt Healey hunched beneath the showerhead. Who did they build these things for? If the soap drops I’ve got to pick it up like a fresh fish in the shower at Statesville. He laughed silently at his own joke. Out of the shower he shaved and brushed his hair, hair that was thinning and graying faster than he had anticipated. Sylvia thought it looked

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distinguished; Healey just thought it looked old. Well, I’ve got an eighteen year old kid so I must be getting there. In the walk-in closet (an extravagance Sylvia had insisted on when they bought the house ten years ago that he finally had to admit was a good idea) he surveyed the row of half a dozen blue police uniforms hanging at attention. Used to be I could barely afford one uniform. He selected one and laid it carefully on the bed and began to dress. He unwrapped a fresh shirt from the paper binder that the Chinese laundry returned them in. Used to be Sylvia did my shirts. He liked the way Sam Lee got the military creases just right down the front of the shirt and replaced any buttons his expanding belly loosened. In the old days they would have popped off wrestling with some perp. I don’t do much wrestling these days. Not like when he was working East Chicago with guys like Jake Gruber. Ah, Jake was a lovely cop. God rest his black soul. He stood before the full-length mirror on the back of their bedroom door and looked at himself. He did look at least a little distinguished. Enough wrinkles to suggest he had seen a few things but not so many that he seemed decrepit. The steady dark eyes set in a broad ruddy face with, as Sylvia said, the map of Ireland all over it. He straightened his black tie and then his billed and braided captain’s cap. Ready for work. Sylvia was having her second cup of coffee when Healey came downstairs. “Damn, you’re a good looking son-of-a-gun,” she said and smiled up at him. “Careful, woman – I’m a married man.” “Just remember it.” She wagged her finger at him. He laughed and leaned and kissed her. “See you tonight.” “Be careful.”

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In the garage he tossed his nightstick onto the front seat of the car and then shifted his bulk and gun belt and holster and handcuffs carefully into the driver’s seat. Like stuffing ten pounds of shit into a five-pound bag. He started the big Ford Grand Victoria that the department provided him as an unmarked car and pulled out onto the street. North Richmond Street was a quiet, working class neighborhood: a side street with rows of solid, mostly wellkept brick bungalows with a few two or three flats thrown in for good measure. The Healey house was a bungalow two blocks south of Irving Park Road and two blocks north of Addison Street, the two main streets bracketing the neighborhood. He pulled onto Irving Park and headed east. Healey passed St. Bede’s where he and Sylvia were married, what, 22 years ago; back in the days when they said mass in Latin and the priest had his back to the congregation so he could concentrate on God. The new way was not Healey’s way. He turned south on Damen Avenue and headed toward the station a few blocks south. He could see the dingy old frame three-flat where he and Eleanor had lived. God, we were so young. It still made Healey misty when he thought about her. Back then it was an exception when someone as young as Eleanor died. But Eleanor was an exception. Still hurts. And now there are Sylvia and Monica. Healey shook his head. Complicated. He parked in the fenced-in lot behind the Third Precinct station and got out and straightened himself into a respectable version of a captain in the Chicago Police Department. The station was a solid mass of dark red Chicago brick; the same material used to build most of the neighborhood, most of the city in fact. The building looked as if it had withstood everything the city could throw at it – cold and sleet, scorching heat, drunks pissing on it and

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pissed off people, cops and perps, banging on it with their fists and their heads, kicking it, even shooting it. It was built to last. “Morning Captain.” Healey looked up at the desk sergeant, a rumpled old veteran with tired eyes. “Lipinski, have you got a shirt that doesn’t look like you slept in it?” “Captain Healey, sir, I haven’t got a shirt that I haven’t slept in.” “How are you Slats?” “I’m good, Matt. And you?” “Growing old gracefully like a fine whisky.” “Smooth but dangerous.” “Bit of a poet in you Slats; sure you’re not Irish?” “It’s from hanging with the likes of you gobbling turkeys.” Then he pointed up toward the ceiling. “Flynn was looking for you.” Healey remembered now Sylvia said Mike had called. “Where is he?” “He’s in the small room doing what he does best.” “What? Beating the shit out of somebody.” Both men laughed and Healey waved and went looking for Mike Flynn. There were two interrogation rooms in the station: the larger room was usually used for questioning that was routine or that was being witnessed by lawyers or family; the smaller room was often used when you wanted to impress someone with the seriousness of their situation. It wasn’t much larger than a janitor’s closet and had nothing in it but a straight-backed steel chair and a dim,

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flickering fluorescent overhead light. When the room was filled with two or three large cops intimidation happened. Healey opened the door a crack and looked in. Flynn had his face two inches away from that of a skinny, scared, sad looking man. Healey saw everything in an instant. White, about forty, thinning light brown hair, maybe 5-10, something in his eyes – a wariness, a resolve behind the fear, not a citizen, a perp. Flynn jerked his head around at the interruption. “Be right out, Matt,” he said. Healey closed the door without speaking and went to his office. Unlike his subordinate officers in the precinct, Lieutenants Williams and Morrison or even Sergeant Adams, Healey’s metal desk faced the window. The arrangement took away some of the formal authority of the setting but Healey didn’t like being on the first floor and having his back to the window. More than one brick had been tossed in by an unsatisfied customer. His view looked out on the intersection of Grace Street and Damen Avenue. There was a traffic stop light on the corner and Healey made it a habit to study faces as they waited for the light to change. You never know. He sat down and began reviewing the case files of the day: a burglary, a pretty serious bar fight that wound up with one guy in Martha Washington Hospital and two guys downstairs in the lockup, two auto thefts, some guy beating on his wife. A typical weekday night. Sergeant Monica Adams came into his office carrying a file. “Morning, Captain.” “Morning, Sergeant,” he said without turning or looking up from the file he was reading. Monica Adams was the blackest person Healey had ever seen. She looked like she

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could have stepped out of a National Geographic magazine photo essay on women from the heart of Africa. Even her dark blue uniform shirt seemed light next to her darkness. “Sit down, what have you got?” She sat and Healey turned to face her. “You’re looking exceptionally black this morning Sergeant Adams.” “Thank you, Captain Healey. You are still terribly white I see.” “Yes, I try and I try but what can you do – it’s the damned genes.” “I know, Captain. It’s not easy. White man’s burden and all that.” “You got something,” he said indicating the file. “Yep. Couple of young guys from Lathrop Homes say they got hassled last night by our guys – Jenkins and Malone.” “How hassled?” “Smacked around on the street, held downstairs without being able to make a call, called a lot of racial shit.” “Your countrymen?” “Of course.” “What are they being held for?” “Suspicion of pandering.” “What?” “Something new Jenkins came up with. Seems the girls got away.” “What do you want?” “Spring ‘em.”

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“Gimme the papers.” He took the file and found the relevant forms and signed them and gave them back to Adams. “Okay?” “Thanks, Captain.” “Any time. Got anything else for me?” “Nope, that’s it. You’re looking pretty spiffy this morning, Captain, if I might say so. Who does your shirts?” “Sam Lee. I recommend him, Sergeant. And thanks for the compliment.” “Another downtrodden race, the Chinese.” “You don’t want me to tell you the sad history of Ireland again do you?” “I’m outta here,” she laughed. “Thanks for this,” holding up the file. “Talk to you later.” Behind her Healey could see Flynn maneuvering his belly through office toward him. He looked pissed, Healey thought. Or worried. “We gotta talk, Matt,” Flynn said. “Good morning to you too, Michael.” “No, seriously – we gotta talk.” “Here and now, Mike.” “Now, but not here. Let’s take a walk.” “Go ahead. I’ll meet you outside.” Flynn turned and left the office. Healey shuffled papers for a moment and then followed him. He stood at the top of the steps leading into the station, lit a cigarette and looked around for Flynn. He saw him on the corner at the alley across the street. Flynn was

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hunched over a cigarette of his own and rotating his shoulders in a way Healey knew meant he was agitated about something. He crossed the street. “Mike. What’s up?” “We got a problem, Matt,” Flynn said, getting directly to the point, “Let’s walk.” They turned into the alley and walked past the postage stamp-sized backyards of the neighborhood, some with tidy gardens and flowerbeds, others bare, without grass, flowers or vegetables – as if neat or slovenly neighbors had been selectively placed next to each other for maximum annoyance. “What’s our problem?” Healey asked. “Fucking Loopy Riley.” “Riley? How is that sad sack a problem?” “He’s freelancing.” “How so?” “Loopy, the fucking genius, decided to supplement his income by paying a late night visit to the Atlas Scrapyard.” “Loopy burglarized a junk yard?” “He heard Sam Levy kept a lot of dough in a safe in his office.” “Sam wouldn’t leave a nickel in that place at night.” “No but he did leave a mean fucking German Shepherd that chewed off pieces of Loopy’s face and his leg and kept him there until the security guys arrived.” “Where’s Loopy now?” “Martha Washington.” “Who’s watching him?”

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“We are.” “Look at those tomatoes, will you.” Healey pointed over the alley gate to one of the neighborhood gardens. He walked toward the gate as a portly, gray haired woman tending the garden stood and wiped her forehead with a bandana. “Mrs. Kaminski,” he greeted her. “Captain Healey. Nice to see you.” “Your tomatoes are beautiful.” “Need another couple of weeks. You come back then, I’ll give you some.” “Promise?” “You come back then.” “I’ll remember.” The woman waved her hand hoe at them as the two policemen passed by. “Mike, so far this is just another funny Loopy Riley story, what’s the problem?” “Loopy is getting less and less funny all the time. He’s a goddamned loose cannon. He knows everybody in our operation. He knows most of the people we’re connected to.” “Me?” “I don’t think so, but who knows – he knows you and me are tight – so . . .” “You’re beginning to worry me, Mike.” “I’m just telling you this guy could be a potential problem. Suppose he wound up with somebody besides us? Suppose somebody put a little pressure on him? “You sure he hasn’t already sprung a leak?” “I don’t think so.” “But you’re going to find out.” “Yeah.”

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“And what else?” “I know what else.” Flynn waved the implication away. “I just want you to understand what’s going on.” “Mike, this is your operation, your crew, your deal. You do what you think is right.” “I know. I just want you to understand.” “I understand. Both men walked in silence for a moment. “How’s Maureen?” Healey asked at last. “She’s all right. Blood pressure is still a little bit of a problem. “I got to get back,” Healey said, looking at his watch. Their walk had taken them around the block and they again stood in front of the station. Flynn walked to where his squad was parked at the curb and Healey started back up the stairs. “Say hi to Sylvia,” Flynn said in parting. Healey nodded and waved and went inside.

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Matt and Monica Matt Healey parked the car around the corner and sat for a moment watching the neighborhood. Then he got out and stood for another moment, again surveying the cross streets up and down. He wore a tweed sport coat that increased his bulk and his presence. In street clothes or uniform, Healey was hard to miss. He walked slowly north on Leavitt watching. Half way up the block he turned in to the entrance of a neat yellow brick two-flat. When he closed the glassed door behind him he again scanned the street. Then he turned and put his key in the lock and trudged up the two flights to the apartment. Sergeant Monica Adams sat in bed propped against two pillows with a pair of reading glasses angled down her nose. She was reading a training manual on crowd control. Except for the book in her lap and the glasses on her nose, Sergeant Adams was naked. Healey stood in the doorway and looked at her. She put the book aside and took off the glasses and looked back. “Welcome, Matt,” she said with such real emotion that, not for the first time, Healey was nearly moved to tears. He smiled at her. “You are incredibly beautiful, do you know that?” “The eye of the beholder,” she demurred, but turned to provide him another perspective. He threw his coat onto a chair and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Every time we get together I am still amazed that we ever got together.” He shook his head. “And stayed together so long,” she said. “Not tired of me are you Lieutenant?” “No, not likely,” he said. He sat on the edge of the bed and she leaned back into the pillows. He ran his hand slowly down her body, stopping at first one breast and then the other, hefting their weight,

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massaging them slowly, rubbing his thumb around her nipples, then down her stomach, which he leaned to kiss. He sat up again and moved his big hand through the soft black bush and let his fingers part the moist folds beneath. His eyes moved with his hand. “Beautiful,” he whispered. “Thank you, sir,” she whispered and reached to stroke his face. He leaned to kiss her and the kiss intensified and the undressing stopped, each of them absorbed in the feel and the smell and the taste and the passion of the other. They gasped and laughed. “Let me get out of these,” he said and knelt up above her. “No, don’t go away,” she reached up to his half open zipper and pulled it down and reached in to retrieve his heavy penis. “Come here,” she coaxed. He crawled upright until he knelt above her face and she took him into her mouth. Her tongue moved around him and she felt him swell. She began to move her head back and forth then slowed and began to suck him. She held his testicles in her hand and massaged them gently as she sucked. Healey leaned his hands against the bedroom wall and closed his eyes. The sounds that came from him were not words but simply guttural expressions of pleasure. Monica released him and looked up and smiled. “You are wonderful,” he said and rolled over on to his back and pulled his pants down off his legs. “Come here, let me taste you.” Now Monica moved astride Healey’s face and rested her arms on the wall. He grasped her behind and pulled her to his face and breathed deeply. “Ah, I love the way you smell,” he said. Then he moved his tongue into her and she gasped. “And the way you taste,” he murmured, busy with the tasting. Now it was Monica’s turn; she began to gasp and then stiffen and rise on her toes as if to escape. “Ah, ah, ah, ah, Matt, oh Matt, oh, oh, oh.” It reminded Matt of a Dick and Jane Reader, “See Matt go. Oh, oh, oh. Go Matt go. Oh, oh, oh.”

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Frenzied she said, “Get inside me” and dropped to her knees on the bed. Matt rolled over and stood up next to the bed. “Come here.” Monica turned her back to him and moved close to the side of the bed. Matt lifted his heavy ready member and slid it into her. “Oh, God,” she said. Matt stood upright and leaned back and looked down at her. Beautiful from every angle he thought. Black and smooth as ebony accented by a bold slash of crimson vulva. He caressed her bottom and began slowly stroking into her. She matched his movement and speed with her own. Matt dropped his hands to his sides, leaned his head back as he continued to stroke and closed his eyes. The world disappeared. Responsibility disappeared. He had no wife. No son. No sins to expiate. No punishment due. Death disappeared. He sighed and leaned forward stroking faster now. “Oh, do it, Matt, do it,” she gasped. Harder and harder now. The rhythm between them increasing, rising to a crescendo until she feels him come inside her and her ohs and his grunts and gasps signal the act is complete. He pulls out and reaches for a tissue on the nightstand to wipe her. “You must lose a quart every time you do that,” she laughs. “It feels like it,” he says still wiping. She stands and a burbling sound comes out of her. “My God, Matt.” She puts her arms around his neck and they stand for a moment in each other’s arms. “I love you, Lieutenant Healey. You know that?” “I love you too, Sergeant Adams, I truly do.” Then in each other’s arms, her head on his chest, she plays with the hair on it until they drift into a peaceful sleep.

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The alarm rings. They both stir and stretch and reach for each other again. “Matt,” she whispers, “Come on, Matt. Gotta go. Back to the world.” Matt yawns and rubs his face. “Yeah. Yeah. I know.”

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Sergeant Monica Adams Sergeant Monica Adams sat on the toilet in her cramped bathroom and stared at her feet. They were not pretty. They were cop’s feet, big and flat. They were not dainty or cute and certainly not enticements to any toe-sucking fantasies. But only an hour ago Police Captain Matt Healey had been nibbling and sucking and tonguing these very toes and seeming to enjoy himself immensely. Men are very strange. She wiped herself, stood and pulled up her uniform trousers. The odd couple of all odd couples, that’s what she and Healey were. She flushed the toilet and turned to the washbasin cluttered with cosmetics – her own and Lavonne’s. She laughed to herself. Healey was good, no doubt about it. The clutter bothered her and she began to clean the counter, closing tubes and jars, putting clippers and cutters into drawers. She paused to look at herself in the mirror. Not too awful but no beauty queen now at forty-seven. Never was. She leaned into the mirror and examined her skin. Pores too big. Nose not big enough. Skin too dark and blotchy to boot. Whatever slave master was screwing her great-great-grandmother was not the best looking boy on the block. Still overall. Good posture. Ha! That’s like good personality as a substitute for looks. A thick body, big tits but not too big, and a black ass built for comfort. She gave her behind a congenial whack. I don’t get any complaints so I’m not complaining either. She finished straightening the bathroom and looked in on her grand-daughter, Marva was sound asleep with her thumb stuck in her mouth. Monica tugged on it with her little finger and the baby sucked it back in voraciously. Knows what she wants. Monica leaned over the bed slats and smelled the child’s head. Babies smell so good. She pulled the cover up around Marva’s shoulders and tucked her in.

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Lavonne was asleep in the bed next to Marva. She looks tired even when she is asleep, Monica thought. She should be tired – working nights and going to school days and dealing with Lester and now little Marva. Monica leaned and kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Time to get up, baby,” she whispered. Lavonne turned over without opening her eyes and reached up to her mother. “Gimme a hug, momma.” Monica hugged her. “How you doin’?” Lavonne yawned. “Just give me a couple of minutes.” “Okay, honey.” In the kitchen Monica poured a bowl of Cheerios for Lavonne and sliced a banana into it. Then she decided that looked good and made a bowl for herself. “Lavonne,” she called in a whisper. “I’m up, momma,” from the bathroom. They sat together in the small kitchen and ate their Cheerios. “Heard from Lester?” “He’s almost through boot camp, momma. Got himself a sharpshooter medal.” “He wrote to you?” “Yep.” “’bout time.” “Momma.” “I know. I know.” Monica washed the dishes while Lavonne dressed for work.

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“I’m outta here, momma.” “Be careful, baby.” They kissed and Lavonne was off to another night sitting in a grimy bulletproof cage selling subway tokens. Monica lay on Lavonne’s bed. She was one to be telling people to be careful. How long had she and Healey been together? Almost five years. Who would have thought that a tough, old Irish cop and a black woman, much less a black police officer from his own district would have ever gotten together at all? Five years. Incredible. What would Lavonne think if she ever found out? All my lectures would be out the window. Mothers aren’t supposed to have affairs. Not good mothers. And Monica was a good mother. Still, there it was. She had, no doubt about it, been having an affair for a lot longer than this innocent little child next to her had been alive. Monica yawned and thought about getting up and getting undressed. Got to get up. Can’t fall asleep like this. She struggled to her feet and began undressing. He means everything to me. Funny thought. Right out of the blue. But he does. I have to admit it. She looked down at the sleeping Marva. Well, maybe not everything. But a lot. A whole lot. Now in her nightgown Monica leaned once again over her granddaughter and kissed her lightly. Good night, little one. In bed she reached one hand to grasp the baby’s bed rail and was quickly asleep.

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Turtle Soup The turtle soup at Binyon’s Restaurant was famous. A rich, creamy concoction served in a large tureen that sat in the middle of the table. “I love this stuff,” Deputy Commander John Mulcahy said as he ladled soup into his bowl. “Yeah, good soup,” Captain Healey said as he shook drops of wine vinegar into his own bowl. “I always enjoy it, John. About the only time I have it though is when you and me get together like this. “Not often enough.” “And it always worries me a little.” “The soup worries you?” “A little bit. Seems like the only times you invite me to Binyon’s to have turtle soup is when you’ve got something bothering you, John.” Mulcahy laughed, “I should know better than to establish a pattern with a good cop like you, Matt. Dead giveaway.” “So, what’s up?” Mulcahy sipped his soup. “Ah, that’s good.” He put his spoon down, leaned back into the corner of the booth and looked casually around the room. Then he leaned forward toward Healey. “People are looking at your guy.” Healey did not respond. He tore a piece of thick bread from the loaf between them and dipped it in his soup, then held it in front of his mouth. “Who?” “Still inside as far as I know,” Mulcahy said into his napkin.

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The two men ate a while in silence. When they spoke again it was in low tones, their mouths covered by their hands or napkins. “Why?” Matt murmured. “Too much muscle is what I hear. Enough complaints for the Professional Standards people to get their nose out of joint.” “Nobody has said anything to me about it.” “Curious.” “Yeah.” “You think there’s more.” “Who knows? Could be.” Healey leaned back and patted his belly. “That turtle did not die in vain,” he said. “No, indeed. No, indeed,” Mulcahy laughed and wiped his mouth with the big napkin. “Always a pleasure when you come downtown to see me, Matt. How is your pretty wife?” They talked and laughed and reminisced about the old days. Their business was finished.

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The Rocks How did it go? Oh what a web we weave. Some kind of web. Scrambled? No. Tangled. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.â&#x20AC;? That was it. That was it. Matt drove north on Lake Shore Drive thinking about what his friend had said at lunch. Somebody is looking at Mike Flynn. The early afternoon sky was a brilliant blue and Lake Michigan sparkled under a scattering of puffy, unthreatening clouds. Dozens of sails bobbed across the lake. Matt turned off at Belmont Avenue and decided to visit The Rocks. Since he had been a boy The Rocks were the place to go when heavy thinking or heavy drinking or heavy making out was to be done. As a teenager he and his buddies had either paid off the cops or watched as the assholes spilled out quarts of beer on the ground. Now he was one of them. The Rocks were a three-tiered arrangement of great stone blocks that kept Lake Michigan from tearing away the shoreline. They were a gathering place for perch or smelt fishermen, sunbathers, and, especially at night, teenagers making out or drinking beer or smoking dope. Or all three. The Rocks were the alternative to the beaches, which attracted more family gatherings. Here the mood was more raucous. You could dive into the lake, which along the Rocks was about ten feet deep. You pulled yourself back up by clinging to the weed soaked pilings and finding toeholds and finger holds in the stone. Not until late August did the big lake relent and take on any of the heat of the Chicago summer. Until then every swimmer came out with blue lips and a shiver that defied warming. He and Mike Flynn had sat here many nights drinking from quart bottles of Meister Brau and pretending to each other that they knew something about the world around them. The bottom of the lake must be paved in brown beer bottles.

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Now Mike was paranoid about Loopy. And somebody was getting paranoid about Mike. Personally he thought Mike was the more potentially dangerous. Something in Mike just didn’t – couldn’t – make any accommodation. His way or the highway. It was a good thing in some ways – Mike got more confessions than a priest. But sooner or later it was going to catch up with him in the Department. Matt sat on the top tier of stone and looked out on the lake. As always his first thought was that it was the most beautiful damned thing in the world. On a day like this with no wind the gentle swells were like the breathing of some living thing. He had stood here defying the gods on nights when the waves rose fifteen feet into the air and smashed down on The Rocks and tried to drag you back into the lake with them. Boyish bravado. But he was no longer a foolish boy. A reminiscent mood began to overtake him. He remembered how all of them had gathered here. Eleanor looking cuter than shit in her one-piece bathing suit. Manny home from the seminary, shy and embarrassed by the girls flirting with him. Mike Flynn balancing on top of the slimy pilings and challenging anyone else to try it. Even Loopy and Jack Lynch. No more Jack. Blown away. Dumb son-of-a-bitch. Just a bunch of kids having fun, playing the elaborate games we play until we are dead. Or the games kill us. Eleanor for instance. Why she is dead I will never understand. Even now that I know more about death that anyone ought to know, I don’t understand. She was something special. She knew me better than anyone ever could. Sylvia understands some part of me and Monica understands another part but Eleanor knew all of me. I was just one person then. Not whatever it is that I am today.

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The waves lapped and sucked at the stone and Matt Healey sat and listened and watched. He thought about the women in his life and how he loved them. Both of them unlikely partners. No one would believe that Matt Healey had a black mistress. Talk about beyond suspicion. Funny word – mistress. She is someone who loves me and who I love. And Sylvia – I love her too. Maybe in a different way – but it doesn’t seem like it to me. Both of them are good people. Sylvia got stuck with an asshole who didn’t appreciate her. Monica didn’t have anyone until me. Sylvia gave me Danny. I didn’t think I would ever have any more kids. Between the two of us we have done pretty good with him. Good kid. Be going off to college soon. He’ll be all right. I hope. When I had Eleanor I thought I would be all right, that no matter what Ellie would get me through it. Now Mike is going nuts and the dogs are on him. Ellie can’t help me now. Matt stood and flipped the butt of his cigarette into the lake. Took one last deep breath of the lake air and walked back to his car parked on the grass under the trees. He watched the people in the park. There was a young couple, teenagers, necking passionately on the grass, so involved with each other that the family picnics, the children chasing, the bicyclers and solitary observers were simply not there for them. Matt remembered lying in the grass with Eleanor, he remembered the first time his hand moved beneath her skirt into her bush – so wet it shocked him. He must have been clumsy, he had no clear idea what to do with his hand there, only knew it was a significant moment, that he was being given a gift, and that she had also given him a great responsibility.

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Hidden among the trees, watching the couple like some creature from mythology, a man stood hunched in furious masturbation. Healey watched him until the man finished and watched him slink furtively away. For a moment he considered arresting the man but something in his demeanor and in his awful solitude, spoke too eloquently of loneliness and longing; it had a dispiriting affect on Healey and he simply watched the man move away down the park trail. We are a pitiful lot, he thought. Is there a point to all this, the way the Church says? Look at the guy; everything about him says he is guilty. Of what? Of getting off watching something he canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have himself? Maybe remembering when he did have it? No, more likely he never came close. More likely he has always been alone, no one to hold, no one to take him out of himself, jerking off alone forever. Pitiful. A rattling of feathers next to him startled him. A cardinal landed on the supporting arm of the rear view mirror and began attacking its own image. Healey watched the bird, furious with its seeming rival. The cardinal attacked, flew away, swooped back again and again. Even the birds are crazy, he thought. For a long time he simply sat there in his car and considered the madness of the bird until its image defeated it and it too flew off in despair. Then he looked at his watch and decided that it was close enough to the end of Monicaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shift that he should head over to the apartment. In the apartment Matt looked in the refrigerator, thought about having a beer, and decided against it. He stood staring into the refrigerator for a moment, not selecting, not thinking, a blank, and then closed the door. He turned on the television set in the living room, watched a game show for a moment, and then turned off the set. He turned the spindle on the Venetian blinds and looked out, down onto the street. Somebody was looking at Mike Flynn. That could be a serious problem.

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Matt sat down in his big leather easy chair, leaned over and took off his shoes, and put his feet up on the matching ottoman. He closed his eyes and sighed. Always something. One goddamned thing after another. He dozed off. Monica’s key in the door woke him. “Hello, sleepyhead.” “Hiya, babe. How you doin’?” Monica was all bulky equipment but as she loosed her belt her transformation from nononsense police sergeant to a woman whose sexual aura completely captivated the big man in the easy chair began. “How were things downtown?” Meaning – What is the problem? “Good. John just wanted to get together. I think he just gets tired of having lunch with the same ass kissers every day.” Monica kissed him. “I’m going to take a shower. Want to join me?” “Sounds nice.” Matt stood and began to undress. He could hear Monica testing the water in the bathroom. When he was naked he looked at himself in the mirror over the faux fireplace. This is the only place in my life where I am naked, he thought. And even here there are secrets. In the shower they took turns soaping each other and washing each other’s back. For a long moment they stood together under the showerhead holding each other close and letting the water wash over them. They closed their eyes and rested in each other’s arms. Monica had her head on Matt’s chest and he laid his cheek on the top of her head.

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When the day had drained away she lifted her face and circled Matt’s nipple with her tongue. He held her closer and moaned. “Let’s go to bed,” she said. They made love slowly, roaming over the other’s body with hands and lips, probing and sucking. Matt disappeared into Monica’s body. Mike Flynn left his mind. Later Matt lay with Monica resting against him, his arm around her, and they talked. “How’s Lavonne doing these days?” “Oh, she’s all right. Still working nights for the CTA.” “Her husband out of boot camp yet?” “Lester? He’s not her husband. Just the father of my perfect grandchild.” “That’s right, nobody gets married anymore do they?” “Seems that way. No he is still in basic training. I don’t know what to think of him.” “Not good enough for your baby, huh?” “That goes without saying. But she sees something in him.” “Like you see something in me?” Monica rose up a little and looked at him. “Yeah, now that you mention it. My father would think I was crazy to be having anything to do with some big, white copper.” “Still at Foley’s?” “Yep.” “I stopped in a while back and had a beer with him.” “I remember seeing you in there back in the day.” “Really?”

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“When I was just a teenager. Sometimes I would stop in to see my dad for one reason or another and you would be in there with your cop drinking buddies.” “I don’t remember ever seeing you.” “In those days you probably don’t remember much of anything. You guys put them down pretty hard.” “Yeah, I guess we did.” “Especially that crazy man, Mike Flynn.” “Yeah.” “The two of you always been tight?” “Yeah, I guess so. I always had to keep him out of trouble in school.” “I’ll bet the nuns loved Mike.” Matt laughed. “Sister Prisca was the only one that could handle him. She scared the shit out of Mike.” “It’s hard to imagine some little nun scaring Mike Flynn.” “Oh, no. She was the most terrifying thing in our lives. If you survived Prisca you could pretty much handle anything.” “Rulers on the knuckles kind of nun?” “Yeah, that – but she also had this crazy look about her that made you think she was really dangerous. She was definitely wired way too tight.” “So is Mike. Maybe she recognized something in him.” “You think Mike is like that?”

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“Are you kidding? Mike Flynn has got a reputation for being way out there on the edge. And sometimes beyond that. You and Manny Rodriguez are about the only ones that seem to be able to get along with him.” “You seem to handle him okay.” “Shit. I’m just a tough nigger bitch to him. He doesn’t really see me. I play my role and he plays his and we get along. But left to himself that guy would be leading the lynch mob.” “And what about me – do I see you.” She leaned on her elbow and put one hand on Matt’s chest. “I think you do see me, Matt. At least as much as anyone can. I don’t think anybody really knows anybody else.” “Yeah, I think you’re right.” “I can see you pretty good sometimes, too.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, for instance, right now you’re worrying about something you don’t want to tell me about.” “Hey, are you a cop or something?” They laughed. “Don’t worry, big fellow – I don’t need to know everything. I’m just happy to have you in my life.” He hugged her close. “Yeah, me too, babe. Me too.”

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MEMORANDUM Continued 2.

Interpersonal Skills

Captain Healey has demonstrated a consistently high level of interpersonal skills in his interactions with superiors, peers, subordinates, and local residents, as well as those charged with crimes in District 3. His interrogation skills are a model of effective indirection resulting in a significantly higher number of confessions sustainable in court. In dealings with his peers his counsel is sought and his relations are universally reported as both cordial and purposive. Captain Healeyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interaction with minority officers has helped move the CPD Diversity programs from merely obligatory programs to a real partnership among all district officers of whatever background. His peers, his subordinates and the District 3 community hold Captain Healey in high regard.

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Loopy in Recovery Loopy Riley woke with a start in his hospital bed at Martha Washington Hospital. He had seen something in his medicinally altered dream that frightened him. He looked around the room in confusion and at his left leg wrapped in bandages from hip to knee. Then he remembered where he was and why he was there. But he couldn’t remember what it was in his dream that was so suddenly terrifying that it had disturbed his sleep and startled him into consciousness. He felt his bandaged face. “Hey, Loopy.” Manny Rodriguez was sitting in a corner of the room in a worn lounge chair with his legs crossed and stretched out in front of him. Loopy tried to speak but only croaked, his throat was dry. He coughed and tried to sit up. “Take it easy, Loop, you’ll choke yourself to death,” Manny said. “Here, lemme get you some water.” The stocky cop in the dark blue uniform had a dangerous look to him Loopy thought. “Here drink this.” Loopy took the glass and emptied it. “Whoa, burglary makes you thirsty, huh?” Manny was smiling at him. Loopy cleared his throat and said in a raspy voice, “Some days you can’t win.” “I hear you buddy. Want some more?” “Yeah, gimme some more.” Loopy held out the plastic glass and Rodriguez filled it again from the metal pitcher on the stand next to the bed. “Had a rough night, huh?” Rodriguez said as he handed Loopy the glass.

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“Yeah, I guess you could say so,” Loopy rasped, “I almost got eaten by a fucking monster dog.” Rodriguez laughed and shook his head. “Loopy I don’t know how you do it. You manage to get into more shit than anybody I know.” “When did that kike motherfucker get that fucking dog, that’s what I want to know?” “You never heard of junkyard dogs, Loopy? Every junkyard has got a dog. Sam always had a dog there.” “Naw, he didn’t. I never saw one.” “I’m telling you.” “Anyway. I shoulda brought a piece with me.” “Oh yeah, that woulda been good. Then we’d really have to deal with the system.” “What’s the story?” “Oh, we’ll figure it out. Mike is working on it.” “Great,” Loopy said without enthusiasm. “He ain’t happy, Loopy.” “Yeah, yeah.” “What the fuck were you thinking?” “What, you never got drunk, Manny?” “You got drunk?” “I’m at the Limerick and I’m drinking and bullshitting with Lucille and thinking maybe I’ll go upstairs with her and give her a treat and the next thing I know she’s whacking me with a goddamned broom and throwing me out of the joint. Gimme some more water, will you? So I guess I’m a little wasted because I can’t find my car and I know I parked it somewhere close

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to the joint so I’m walking around looking for it. And then I’m standing on the corner at Clybourn there, you know, and I look and there’s the fucking yard and I think what the fuck. So I walk over and take a look and everything seems cool.” Loopy took another sip of water and a deep breath. “And it seemed to me that somebody had told me that Sam kept some dough in his office so I pick that stupid Yale lock he keeps on the gate and I walk right in.” “No dog?” “Not a fucking sound. He must have been chasing fucking rats or sleeping or something.” “Yeah he caught a fucking rat all right.” “Yeah, yeah, very funny. Anyway the office is another piece of cake and I’m down on my knees working on the safe when all of a sudden with no barking or not a goddamn sound this fucking huge fucking Shepherd is ripping me a new asshole. I mean he took a chunk out of my leg and when I went to grab him he took a piece out of my face. I thought I was fucking dead.” “How’d you get him off you?” “I didn’t. He just stopped and backed off and like dared me to do something.” “Jesus.” “Yeah I coulda used him. Fucking Jesus is like cops, never around when you need him. So I spend a couple of hours with this fucking Nazi dog looking at me while I’m bleeding and every time I move he stands up like ‘go ahead, baby’ and after a while I just figure I’m fucked so I take a nap and the next thing some security cop is waking me up.” “Un-fucking-believable.” “Tell me about it.”

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“You took a fucking nap?” “What the fuck. I’m fucked right? Might as well get a little rest.” “You are a true professional, Loopy.” “It’s a good thing I wasn’t good looking or this thing on my face would really piss me off.” “Well, go back to sleep; I just wanted to see how you were doing. One of us will be around so you don’t get asked any embarrassing questions, you know.” “I hear you.” “Get some sleep.” “Yeah, I think I will. Thanks, Manny.” “No problem. Talk to you later.” “Yeah.” Behind his closed eyes Loopy was wide-awake and thinking hard about his situation. Manny Rodriguez was no friend of his. He was here because Mike Flynn put him here. “I have fucked up good this time,” Loopy thought, “Flynn is pissed. He’s going to have my ass. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” Loopy chanted to himself until the chant lulled him once again into a restless sleep. The dream returned, right where it left off, right at the point where Loopy had awakened. The dog was right in front of his face. He could see its black nostrils flare and the slobber drip from its mouth. It was smiling again, that easy smile that could change with just a small movement of its mouth into a menacing snarl. “Let me go, dog,” Loopy thought. Then Loopy saw Mike Flynn sitting in the dark behind the dog. Flynn was not smiling and Loopy knew that he was dead.

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At the Nurses’ Station “You see him?” Mike Flynn asked Manny over the telephone at the nurses’ station. “Yeah, I saw him.” “How is he?” “He’s all chewed up, for Chrissakes; a fucking German Shepherd had him for lunch.” “He gonna be there long?” “Where? The hospital?” “Yeah, of course, the fucking hospital.” “Hey, Mike, lighten up; I’m just the damned messenger, you know?” “How long?” “I don’t know – probably be out tomorrow.” “I want you there.” “To pick him up?” “Yeah.” “Okay. Why?” “Because I’m tired of Loopy.” “Oh?” “I don’t want to see him anymore.”

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Loopy Running His clothes were not in the closet. That confirmed Loopy’s fears. He checked the hallway and entered the room next to his with a practiced stealth somewhat hampered by his heavily bandaged right leg. A man alone lay in the bed attached to an IV; he snored softly in his sleep. The man was bigger than Loopy but within acceptable tolerances and Loopy quickly, quietly removed his clothes and shoes from the closet and put them on. The larger pants made it easier to stuff in his bandaged leg. Then Loopy was gone. Back in his apartment building Loopy went to the basement and recovered the stacks of cash from the strong box and the .38 snubnose from behind the furnace. Now he had money and at least a little protection. He had to move fast. No way he could drive with his leg. By now Manny would have put the word out. Have to move right now. If he could make it to the El he could get downtown and get lost. Grab a cab from there to Midway and a plane out of Chicago. Or a train somewhere. Anywhere. He ran, limping, down the alley to Lawrence Avenue and crouched behind a fence until he saw a bus coming. His leg hurt like hell, he could hardly bend it enough to climb aboard the bus. Then he didn’t have the right change and had to hassle with the driver about that. But he had made it. So far so good. He got off at Broadway and started walking, painfully, toward the El station. The police squad passed him going the other way. “Yo, Slick, take a look!” the cop in the passenger seat said. “What?” “Isn’t that Loopy Riley?” “Where?” The driver said twisting in his seat.

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“There,” pointing. “There, there, see him?” “Well, well, our man, Loopy.” “Think he made us?” “Doesn’t act like it.” “Lemme out.” “Okay. I’ll pull around, you stay on him.” Loopy saw them. Only the pain in his leg kept him from bolting, that and knowing he couldn’t outrun anyone in his condition. “Stay cool, Loopy,” he said to himself, “Stay cool.” He reached the entrance to the El station, went in and paid his fare at the cashier, then past the turnstile he stopped. They will look for me on the platform, he thought. The Men’s room. Officer Reggie Stone was standing in the doorway of the station when Loopy entered the public lavatory. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered to himself. He was standing there shaking his head when his partner arrived. “You see him?” Tom Doyle was breathless. Stone pointed, “In there.” Doyle did a double take. “You’re kidding?” “Why do you think they call him Loopy?” “What a mook.” “Let’s go get him.” Loopy crouched on the toilet seat and tried to keep his feet off the floor. His leg felt like it had swollen to twice its size. And it hurt like hell. Under the loosening bandage on his face his cheek was throbbing. He braced his bad leg against the wall of the stall for as long as

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he could but after a minute or so it was too much. “Fuck it,” he said and sat down on the toilet seat and pulled the .38 out of his pocket. Nothing is going to work out anyway, he thought, so fuck it. He heard the outside door open. “Loopy!” Who was that? He didn’t recognize the voice. “Hey, Loopy, it’s me, Tom Doyle.” One of Flynn’s guys. “Come on, Loopy, give it up.” Loopy put the gun to his head. Doyle started kicking doors. His foot would hit the door and the door would hit the wall of the stall. Bam-bam, the doors slammed against the stalls. Bam-bam. Bam-bam. Fuck this. Loopy got up and opened the door. Doyle smiled at him. Loopy shot him twice in the middle of his face. Bam. Bam. The noise reverberated deafeningly in the tiled room. Reggie Stone was frantically pulling at his gun still in its holster. Loopy aimed at him and shot him dead. Bam. Bam. Then he limped out of the station and back onto Lawrence Avenue just in time to catch the bus to anywhere else.

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MEMORANDUM Continued TO: Francis T. Hurst, Deputy Superintendent, Bureau of Operations Thomas P. Quigley, Captain, Human Resources Division, Bureau of Administrative Services FR: John H. Mulcahy, Assistant Deputy Superintendent, Patrol Division SUBJECT: Captain Matthew F. Healey, Commander, Division 1, District 3 RE: Promotion to rank of Deputy Chief FORM CP PDC 248: Narrative Report of Immediate Supervisor 3.

Street Skills

Conflict Resolution Skills

Bearing

Analytical Skills

Captain Healey has strong investigative, command skills and instincts in street situations. He has developed numerous sources of information regarding local criminal activities and uses these sources with discretion and effectiveness. His on-site demeanor and bearing are often the catalyst for the restoration of calm in chaotic crime scenes. 7.

Temperament

Proactive Command

Captain Healey displays an even and equitable temperament in even the most stressful and disorderly conditions. His response to crises of every nature, either street violence or simply administrative, is confident, calm and proactive in the sense of taking command. We have not a single report in which Captain Healey is reported to have been out of the control of his behavior.

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The Division Street Bridge Matt Healey pulled the Grand Victoria into the alley behind the Center Café and parked it close to the back wall of the restaurant. He knocked sharply on the rear door and Gus Amedeo cracked the door cautiously, then opened it and smiled and stepped aside to allow Healey inside. Matt sat at the counter on a cracked plastic covered stool farthest from the front door and ordered a bowl of chili and black coffee. Gus brought his order and a pile of extra crackers. “How you doin’, Matt?” “I’m all right, Gus. How you doin’?” “Same old, same old.” “Yeah, that’s about it.” But it wasn’t “same old same old,” not with Loopy Riley wandering around loose. Matt lifted a spoonful of chili and blew on its scalded surface. Suddenly the spoon seemed too heavy to hold and he put it back down into the bowl. He looked up and surveyed the restaurant – just the late night boozers loading up on chili before heading home. He could tell by the glances of those he didn’t know that his presence made them nervous. They would be climbing back into their cars soon and having a cop around wasn’t reassuring. Matt turned back to his chili and summoned the strength to lift a spoonful and put it in his mouth. Tastes like glue with beans. Where was Mike? If he had found Loopy he would be here with the news. What a stupid situation – all these years, piling up points in the department, getting shot at, catching bad guys – about to go down the drain because of one half-assed, small-time burglar. He lifted another heavy load of chili. What the hell is wrong with me? As usual Eleanor told him what was wrong. He was not one of the good guys any more. He was a thief, a petty thief at that – no better than Loopy Riley, worse actually. He had

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betrayed all the possibilities for good that once were open to him. And for what? Nothing more than a meager stream of extra income from Mike Flynn’s operation. Income that was mostly eaten up by the cost of the apartment he kept for him and Monica. Which was another thing. He had betrayed Sylvia with Monica for so long that he had come to think of the arrangement as normal. It wasn’t. He was a cheat as well as a thief. And now he had essentially authorized Loopy’s murder. Eleanor was disgusted. Matt pushed the bowl away and tried to drink the coffee. Eleanor was right. And, if all this comes out, it is going to be very hard for Sylvia but it is going to be even worse for Danny. To have his father exposed for what he is – Matt shook his head and tried to put the thought aside. Gus came back to pour more coffee and collect the half-finished chili and the unused crackers. This is not how it was supposed to be. This is not what the nuns taught him about how a man should live his life, especially a man with a badge. A man with a badge was like a man with a Roman collar – he was supposed to rise above the crimes and desires and corruption of ordinary people. I believed that once. Someplace in me still believes that. But it didn’t take five minutes on the force for me to go along with the chiseling and the blind eye and taking my share of the loot. Jesus, Ellie. Mike Flynn sat down next to him – a grim smile on his face. Gus poured coffee and Flynn waved him away. “We got him,” Flynn said into his coffee. “Where?” “Typical Loopy, he was escaping on the Lawrence Avenue bus.”

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“No, where is he now?” “In the back of your car in the alley. Manny’s with him.” “My car?’ “Seemed less conspicuous than a squad.” “Let’s go.” Loopy sat in the back of the Grand Victoria next to Manny Rodriguez. Loopy had duct tape around his lower jaw that covered his mouth and went completely around his head. There was a band of duct tape around his legs just above his knees, another around his ankles and another around his wrists. His bonds were completed with still another band of tape that held his arms to his body. Trussed and ready for dumping. The look in Loopy’s eyes seemed resigned. “What’s the plan?” “Thought the Division Street bridge would be a good spot,” Mike said. “Far enough from us.” “Get in. I’ll drive. Put him on the floor, Manny.” Matt drove south on Damen Avenue through the 3rd District past the station house and continued on through the 5th District until they reached Division Street where he turned right past the silent, looming Cabrini-Green housing project. “Even the snipers are in bed,” Mike Flynn said. The Division Street bridge spanned the Chicago River in the midst of a wasteland of mostly abandoned industrial buildings. No traffic showed in either direction on Division Street. “Let’s get this over quick,” Flynn said. Matt stopped the car on the midpoint of the bridge where the view took in all possible approaches. Like the neighborhood the bridge was a shambles, broken concrete curbing

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crumbled away from the rusting iron framework. The stench of death from a nearby animal crematory drifted down the river. Manny and Mike dragged Loopy out of the car and braced him against the steel railing. Together they began to lift Loopy’s legs. “So long, Loopy,” Flynn said. “Hold it a minute,” Matt said. “Let’s make sure.” He reached down to the curb and selected a large chunk of loose concrete. Mike and Manny stepped back from Loopy but held him steady for the blow. Matt juggled the heavy, unwieldy piece of concrete in his hands until he could grip it firmly. Then he lifted the stone high above his head and dropped it solidly on Mike Flynn’s head. Flynn dropped without a sound. “Jesus, Matt,” Manny whispered. “Put Loopy back in the car,” Matt said. With some effort Healey was able to lift Flynn’s body up and over the railing. He watched it half turn on its way down into the greasy black water. Manny was in the back seat with Loopy on the floor again. “Jesus Christ, Matt.” “Yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up a while.” Matt drove deeper into the industrial graveyard and parked behind a shuttered factory. “Let’s talk,” Matt said and got out of the car. Manny got out warily.

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“You all right?” Manny shook his head. “I don’t know.” “I had to do it, Manny.” “Yeah, I suppose. Mike was getting out of control. I could see something bad coming.” “But we all been together a long time – right?” “Yeah. Just seems real strange. I woulda bet you couldn’t do that, Matt. Not to Mike.” “It needed doing. I was the one to do it.” “I guess.” “Okay, Manny, here’s the deal. Mike seemed to think it was a good idea to get me personally involved in getting rid of Loopy. I’m sure it was his idea and not yours, so don’t worry about me. All right?” Manny nodded, “Uh-huh.” “I think we got enough shit to deal with without trying to get one-up on each other. Don’t you?” Manny nodded again. “Now we both know that shit like this has a way of getting more attention than we want,” Matt continued. “So we gotta decide what to do right now.” Again Manny silently agreed. His stomach was beginning to unknot. “Even if we take Loopy out we still got each other to worry about. So what do you say we talk to Loopy about this and make him one of those offers he can’t refuse. I know the thing we probably ought to do, but I’m not going to do it, and I can’t let you do it.” Manny cleared his throat. “Matt, I’m still trying to get past you caving in Mike’s head.” “Yeah, I know. I know.”

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Manny lit a cigarette and began walking in a circle while he talked. “I don’t like having Loopy as a witness,” he said. “Me either, but Loopy’s also on the hook for Reggie and Tom Doyle.” “Yeah.” Manny walked and smoked. Finally he said, “Well, I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t think I got it in me to take out Loopy and you, Matt. And I guess that’s what it would take.” Matt took agreement for granted. “Anybody know you were with Mike tonight?” Manny thought, “No. Nobody.” “So you don’t have to explain Mike to anybody. Right?” “Right.” “Let’s get Loopy out here.” They dragged Loopy off the floor and out of the car, propped him on the trunk and with some difficulty got the tape off his mouth. Loopy’s eyes went wide and he sucked air in gulps. When he seemed to have settled himself, Matt asked him how he felt. “My leg is killing me.” “Least of your problems, Loopy,” Matt said. “Yeah, I guess so.” “Loopy, I’m not gonna ask you if you saw what happened on the bridge because it really doesn’t make any difference.” “I didn’t see nothin’ Matt.” “Well, you’ve got two homicides to your credit, Loopy, so I don’t think you would make a very credible witness anyway.” “Absolutely.”

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“You got any money?” Manny spoke up, “We got his money, Matt.” “On you?” Manny nodded. “Good. So what we’re thinking of doing, Loopy, is cutting you a break. All right?” “Whatever you say is definitely all right with me, Matt” “Manny here is going to drive you to Indianapolis tonight and from there you are going to take a train going west to, let’s say, Kansas City. When you get there you buy a used car and pick a town as far from Chicago as you can drive. Then you go there, Loopy, and you live quietly and happily ever after. Sound good?” “I can’t believe it,” Loopy shook his head. “Can you handle this, Loopy?” Matt held Loopy’s head up and looked into his eyes. Tears were streaming down Loopy’s face. Loopy choked out an answer, “Yeah, I can handle it, Matt.” Manny cut the duct tape from Loopy and he sat in the back seat rubbing his arms and legs. “How much dough does he have, Manny?” “Close to six grand. Some went over the bridge with Mike.” “Good. I’ll drop you at your squad and follow you to your place so you can get into some civvies and get your car. Anybody at your place?” “No.”

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“Okay, when you get there clean Loopy up and give him some clothes. By the time you get to Indy the train station ought to be filling up with commuters. Drop him off and then get your ass back here as quick as you can. I’ll cover for you tomorrow.”

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On the Road Manny’s clothes fit Loopy better than the ones Loopy had stolen from the hospital. And after washing up, and with his bandages changed, he felt and looked better except for the tremor that he couldn’t control. Manny made some salami and cheese sandwiches and put them and a few cans of soda into a cooler so they wouldn’t have to stop and attract any attention. Loopy was in the bathroom. “You ready, Loopy?” “Gimme a minute. I’m trying to take a shit but my asshole is so tight it ain’t easy.” Being taped up and nearly dropped over a bridge rail would tend to pucker your ass, Manny thought, not to mention having a chunk of it bitten off by a German Shepherd. Loopy has had a couple of rough days. It is about 185 miles from Chicago to Indianapolis across land so flat that only the silos and overgrown slag heaps from abandoned coalmines that occasionally dot the landscape provide any vertical relief. Out in the farmland between the two cities there is nothing but corn and soybeans from horizon to horizon. Loopy sat up front with Manny and tried to stretch out his aching, wounded leg. They drove in silence for some time. Loopy dozed off, exhausted physically and emotionally from the trauma of the day and night of fear and death. Already once tonight he had resigned himself to his fate and now, again, he let himself relax into the keeping of others. Manny drove automatically and tried to decompress enough to consider what he had been part of this night. It was still a blur of action so unexpected and yet, somehow, so absolutely right that it fell into a category beyond rational analysis and understanding.

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Mike Flynn was dead, floating down the Chicago River on his way to the Sanitary and Ship Canal that would take him to the Mississippi and then downriver to New Orleans. Unless he hit a snag. He hit a big one on his way to getting rid of Loopy. He thought of Mike in the river – a guy he had known practically all his life – bobbing along with his caved in skull and the rats and the rubbers. Mike had always been so tough. Nobody fucked with Mike Flynn. The way Matt just picked up that hunk of concrete as calm as can be and dropped it on his head. Like it was nothing. In the late night hours the road was a monotonous tunnel through the dark. Only the long haul truckers and an occasional car passed in either direction. It began to rain. Manny left the radio off so he could think and the only sound was the slap of the wipers and the whisper of the tires. June Bugs hit the windshield like bullets. Manny recoiled as another hit with a solid splat. He noticed that he was gripping the steering wheel too tightly. His hands ached and he flexed and loosened them. Got to relax. The worst is over. This is the easy part. He rotated his shoulders and angled the seat back a notch. Just watch the road. This thing is just another test. You’ve got a job to do. Don’t think about it, just do it. So many things in his life like that. The car was a cocoon, wrapping him in steel, protecting him from the darkness and the terror of the night. The dashboard lights, glowing steadily and with authority, gave him confidence. And the headlamps on the dark road ahead seemed to do more than simply light the road; they seemed to be an extension of himself searching. Loopy snored next to him. Manny fell into a pattern that had sustained him since his childhood. He began the mantra of the rosary. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth . . .

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He did not wonder at the motives of the creator nor did he note the disparity between his prayer and his actions. Manny learned long ago that reconciling what he believed with the actions of his daily life was beyond his power. He no longer made the effort. Manny was as much a mystery to himself as God was to him. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . . He looked over at Loopy, who snored peacefully. Like a baby. A baby who killed two cops yesterday. A baby I would have dropped off the Division Street Bridge if Matt hadn’t changed the plan. Blessed art thou, amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. I would have. I would have dropped him. Killed him. I am capable of anything. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners . . . Pray for us murdering thieves who vowed to protect and serve. Pray for the faggot boy who loved the faggot priest. Pray for the faggot priest who let him. Pray for me, Holy Mother. A hundred dark miles later, Loopy woke up. It was still raining. He uncoiled himself and stretched and moaned. “How far we gone?” “Got about eighty miles to go. You all right?” “Yeah. Just feel like I been run over. We got anything to drink?” “Some pop in the cooler back there.” Loopy cracked open a can of Pepsi and drank most of it in one swallow. “God, I never had a Pepsi taste so good.” He held the can up and admired it. “You’ve had a few rough days lately, Loopy.”

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“Yeah, I guess you could say so.” He stared ahead for a moment. “I really feel bad about those guys in the john.” “Yeah.” “You know ’em?” “Sure. Doyle used to work out of Damen Avenue. Reggie I knew, but not so good.” “Jesus.” “Yeah.” The sense of being in a safe spot in a dark universe came over Loopy. “I wish I hadn’t killed those guys.” “Yeah, I know, Loop.” “I was gonna kill myself but . . .” “I’m sorry too, Loopy.” “For what?” “Well, I was gonna drop you off a bridge.” Jesus, maybe Loopy really was as dumb as everybody thought. “Oh, yeah. Yeah. But you didn’t.” “No.” “How come?” Good question. Why didn’t we? Why instead did Mike Flynn go into the river? Why am I here in the middle of Indiana with Loopy instead of home in bed? “We decided to give you a break.” “I still don’t know why Mike was so pissed at me.” “Well, you gotta admit some of the shit you pulled was out of line. Right?”

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“I guess, but shit, not enough to kill a guy.” “Mike thought so.” Again they both let these thoughts percolate in silence as they made their swift progress through the Indiana night. “What happened to Mike?” “You don’t know?” “No.” “You don’t want to know.” Mike is dead. They killed him. I don’t believe it. Mike is dead and I’m alive. Why? “Manny, listen, I don’t know why you guys are doing what you are doing for me, but you don’t have to ever worry about me again.” “Yeah, I know, Loopy. And I think you’re gonna do all right. I think maybe you needed a fresh start.” A fresh start? That sounds good. A fresh start. I need a fresh start. I’m gonna be all right. Loopy took a long look at Manny. “You know, Manny, I never have figured you out.” “What?” “You always seemed like a good guy. Even when we were kids. I didn’t hang with you or anything but, I don’t know, you seemed like a good kid.” Manny laughed, “Hey, I was a good kid.” “I figured you would be a pretty good priest.” “Yeah, well . . .” “Didn’t work out, huh?”

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“Nah, just didn’t work out.” “But I never figured you for a copper.” “Why not?” “I don’t know, you just never seemed like the type. You do now. But not then.” “People change.” “Yeah, I know. I’m gonna make a big change when I get where I’m going.” “You’ll do good, Loopy.” “Yeah. I think I will.” He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Funny thing isn’t it.” Manny turned and looked at Loopy with the rain reflected on his face, streaming like tears. “It’s not anything big that gets you, you know?” Loopy said. “It’s all the little shit that just kind of adds one – one little round turd at a time – until – I don’t know.” Manny didn’t answer. He’s right, he thought, it is one small thing at a time, one turn to the left instead of the right, one yes instead of no. “You know the joke about the great bridge builder?” Loopy asked. Manny knew the old joke but shook his head. “Guy is up on this high bridge getting ready to jump and another guy comes along and grabs him and asks him why he is doing it and the guy says, “You see that skyscraper over there, I designed it, you think they call me Charley the great architect? No. You see this bridge we’re standing on? I built it. You think they call me Charley the great bridge builder? No. But suck one cock.”

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They laughed without enthusiasm and again fell silent. The rain drummed on the metal of the car and the water on the road glistened in the headlights. The windshield wipers slashed back and forth in frantic, futile gestures. After a while Manny said, “True. True.” They arrived at the station in Indianapolis with the morning commuters. Manny stayed in the car. “Good luck, Loopy. I mean it. I hope everything works out for you.” “Thanks, Manny. For everything.” That sat for a moment watching the commuters. “Well . . .” “Yeah.” “So long, Loopy.” They shook hands and Loopy was gone. Later while he sat in a roadside café drinking coffee and recreating the night’s activities it occurred to Manny that Matt Healey had performed an act of extraordinary kindness and generosity as well as an act of unnaturally calm murder. He had not only spared Loopy’s life, he had sent him on a journey to a new life – one in which it would be possible for him to go to sleep at night without the fear that the actions of the day would haunt his dreams. He envied Loopy. If only Matt could cleanse his dreams.

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Danny Healey “Yo-o, Dan-nee!” The familiar warbling call came from the alley. Danny Healey started from his reverie, gazing at his bedroom ceiling, imagining what Terry Driscoll looked like without her clothes and lurched to his bedroom window. Marty Quinn and Tom Feehan stood together at the alley gate behind the house. Danny lifted the screen and leaned out. “Hey.” “Hey,” Quinn responded. “You comin’ out?” “I don’ know.” “Come on, man;” Feehan said, “you whack off any more you’re gonna have hands like the fucking Wolfman.” “Watch your mouth, Morrison, you dumb shit, my ma is downstairs.” “Come on, come on, let’s go do somethin’.” “All right. Be down in a minute.” Danny lowered the screen and grabbed his turquoise and white Apostles club jacket from the battered green leather easy chair his father had brought home for him. Something to match the shape of your room, his father had said, beat up and comfortable. Danny loved it. “I’m out, ma,” on the run he kissed his mother as she sat at the kitchen table. She was on the phone. “Danny, come here,” she gestured anxiously to him. “What? Ma! I gotta go.” “Come here.” He came close and she reached to fold down his jacket collar while she continued her conversation.

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“Ma!” “Go. Go.” She waved him off. He was out the back door and down the stairs when she called behind him. “You gonna be home for dinner, Danny?” “Naw, ma. Save me something.” “Be careful.” She always said that. It was as if nothing could happen to him if she said it or maybe that if she didn’t say it something would happen and she wouldn’t have cautioned him about it. It was silly, she knew it, he knew it. But they both also knew it was just a way to say I love you without the embarrassment of actually saying something too tender for a teenager’s ears. “Be careful out there, Danny,” Tom Feehan mocked him. “Blow me, shithead,” Danny punched him high on the arm aiming for the nerve in his shoulder. “Watch it,” Feehan jumped away from the punch too late. He rubbed his arm, “Goddamn it, that hurts, you asshole.” “Don’t make fun of my mother then, dipshit.” “I wasn’t making fun of her.” “Like hell.” The three boys walked down the alley toward Addison Street pushing and punching each other until they settled down to talk about what to do. “Wanna go shoot some hoops?” “Nah, I’m tired of shooting hoops.” “That’s cause you’re no fucking good.”

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“I got more of your money than you got of mine, Danny boy.” “I don’t think so.” “So, what, wanna go over on Western and get some beer?” “Too early, man. We can do that later.” “I know what old Dan wants to do,” Quinn said smirking, dancing ahead and waggling his ass dramatically. “What? Act like a fag?” Feehan laughed. “No, he wants to go see if he can get into Terry Driscoll’s pants. Right Danny?” “If I wanted to do that I sure as hell wouldn’t be hanging with you two.” “Oooh – somebody struck a nerve,” Feehan shivered his hands as though he were shocked. “Got to be something to this. What’s going on, big Dan?” “Nothing’s going on.” “Something was going on the other night at Mary Flynn’s place,” Quinn said. “Just being friendly,” Danny tried not to smile but couldn’t stop it. “Friendly, huh?” “Yeah, you know, friendly.” “Like you and me and Tom are friends?” Danny couldn’t help himself. “Well, she gives a lot better blow job than either of you guys, but yeah, kind of like that.” They chased Danny down the two remaining blocks to Addison and then all three punched each other until they wore the issue out. “Okay, now what?”

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“Let’s go over to Fife’s, see if Roy is working, he’ll let us sit down and have a few beers.” “My old man don’t want me around Fife’s,” Danny said. “Why? It’s just a fucking neighborhood joint.” “I dunno why. But he doesn’t want me in there for some reason.” “Ah, bullshit,” Quinn said. “He just doesn’t want you hanging around any taverns; afraid the curse of the Irish will get you. Doesn’t know it already has.” “I can drink you under the table, fuckhead.” “‛Bold talk for a one-eyed fat man,’” the line was a favorite comeback of Quinn’s. The three continued to walk east toward Western Avenue with only the vague goal of Fife’s in mind. “What are you going to do this fall, Dan? You going to school?” Quinn asked. “Oh, yeah. My old man is making sure of that. DePaul.” “Not gonna let you go right on the force, huh.” “I wish I could. But you gotta be twenty-one anyway so I figure I might as well get some college. Can’t hurt.” “Yeah, I’m going too,” Feehan said. “No!” Quinn feigned shock and stumbled sideways. “The King of Detention goes to college,” Danny laughed. “I think they held me after so long I kind of got used to it. I’m afraid I’ll miss it if I don’t go to college.” “I don’t think they have detention in college, do they?” “Naw, you’re on your own. Nobody gives a shit if you go to class or not.”

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“Oh, man, don’t tell me that! I was gonna major in detention.” The boys turned north on Western Avenue past the endless rows of used car lots that lined the street, past the Waveland Bowling Alley, past the padlocked gates of the long closed Western Golf Club that now stood overgrown and seemingly abandoned in the middle of the working class neighborhood. Fife’s tavern stood on the southeast corner of Grace and Western. The boys crossed Western and walked past the open front door of the tavern taking a passing look at whoever might be in the place that they shouldn’t meet. Drinking in a neighborhood saloon with Danny was always a potential problem because of his father. All the local cops knew Danny. “Nobody in there,” Quinn reported. “Too early.” “Just the rummies drinking in the afternoon.” “Well, rummies, whaddaya say,” Feehan laughed and led the way through the side door.

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Healey On The Couch The old dream again: A sunny day, the high sunlight bouncing bright off the water, Sylvia and Eleanor together on the pier. Others there as well. Jake. Mike Flynn. Monica. So Healey knew it was a dream. But the fear was real. He was drowning. He rose as high as he could out of the water and tried to call to them but the water gagged him and nothing came out. He could see them gesture and wave to him. Someone threw a life preserver. Far too short. He sank and came up again. They were waving and jumping up and down frantically. Another life preserver comes spinning toward him – white and round with some kind of red markings, but it is tethered to the pier. Don’t they see that it is tied to the pier? Too short. In the dream it is always far too short. Sylvia put down one bag of groceries, unlocked the front door, picked the bag up, and pushed the door open with her shoulder. Matt was asleep on the couch. He was curled up on his side with his head on a sofa pillow. He was hugging himself. Heck of a cop; anybody could walk in here. She took the groceries into the kitchen, unpacked the bags and put everything away. Funny how such a big man can look like such a little boy when he is curled up asleep. She went back into the front room and sat down across from her husband. She watched him breathe. He was deeply asleep. Sleeps better on the couch than he does in bed. Wonder why that is? Supposed to have the map of Ireland on his face. He has the map of something there. I don’t think it’s Ireland. He’s sweating. Sylvia leaned back in her wingback chair and lit a cigarette. A man is a strange creature. They think women are hard to figure out. I don’t think I am. I know who I am and what I want. I love that man asleep on the couch. I make his home. I share his bed. If he is

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happy I am happy. His words say everything is all right, everything is fine, but look at that face. There is something there that says that there is a lot of pain or, or something, going on inside. I wonder if he knows what it is? Maybe it’s all old stuff. Stuff about Eleanor. Maybe. Sylvia stubbed out her cigarette, leaned and took off her shoes and rubbed her feet. He is a good man. I never thought Tony was a good man. I loved him but he was too weak to be a good man. She slipped off the chair onto the floor and crawled quietly close to Healey. Handsome son-of-a-gun. Getting gray but still good-looking. She listened to his breathing. A man even breathes differently than a woman. Is he dreaming? What does he dream about? Is it still Eleanor? Me? Matt snorted and suddenly ran his hand across his face. Sylvia followed his hand with her own. He grunted. “Shh, shh,” she whispered. No one knows what goes on in someone else’s head. All the strange things that are in there – everyone and everything he loves and hates. And is afraid of. She stroked his face again. “Shh, shh.”

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After Dinner After dinner Sylvia cleared the table and stood at the sink washing dishes. Matt sat at the kitchen table and listened to the sound of her voice. She was talking to him but Matt could make no sense of what she was saying. Occasionally he would grunt in response to the pitch or tone of her voice. He was sitting at his kitchen table in the warm yellow light after eating dinner and now listening to his wife talking as she washed the dishes. Mike Flynn was in the Chicago River. When was it he had killed Mike Flynn? “You have to talk to Danny tonight, Matt. He has been gone all afternoon and evening. He comes and goes like this is a hotel.” Matt grunted assent to whatever she had said. “Want some more coffee?” He looked at her, the coffee pot in her hand and held out his cup. “You all right?” “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, honey.” “Kinda quiet. Anything wrong?” He looked at her and thought that he could tell this woman that he had crushed the skull of a man who was as close to him, and knew him as well, maybe better, than she did. He knew in his bones that Sylvia would absorb that fact, that horror, and keep it locked up forever. She would never mention it again. He noticed she was staring at him. He put down his coffee cup and pulled her onto his lap.

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“Matt, I’ve got a pot of coffee!” She held it away from them; he reached out and took it from her and put it on the floor. “You’re going to ruin the floor, Matt.” He took her in his arms and brought her to him. “You horny, old Irishman,” she laughed and put her arms around his neck. “You want Danny to wander in and find his parents on the kitchen table?” He kissed her neck and stayed there, nuzzled into her. She made a purring sound. He could see Mike falling. Something is wrong, Sylvia thought, there is a kind of desperation in this. She stroked his hair. Her hand felt good, cool and gentle, and Matt nearly fell asleep in the crook of her neck. Who am I? He thought. You are a murderer, Eleanor said, You murdered your friend. You killed that asshole, Mike Flynn. Matt lifted his head with a start and looked at Sylvia as if he didn’t recognize her. She got off his lap and picked up the coffee pot. “Something is wrong,” she said. “No. No, I’m just a little tired.” Bullshit, she thought. “Want to watch some TV?” she said. “Nah, you go ahead. I think I’ll have a drink.” “Can’t drink and watch TV?” “I just want to sit here for a while.”

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A secret, she thought. Something is definitely wrong. He could hear the sound from the television set in the living room. It made noise that seemed happy and it sounded like it made sense. Like it made sense. He poured whisky into a heavy shot glass. Sylvia sat in her rocker; she heard Matt open a bottle of beer; the program was something about a young couple having a baby. She tried not to scream. This feels like someone else’s life, Matt thought. He held the whisky in his mouth and let it burn. Who am I? How did I get here, in this kitchen? Why did Eleanor have to die? I killed Mike Flynn. I killed Mike Flynn. Whatever is bothering him he is never going to tell me. He is going to keep it to himself even if it eats a hole in his stomach. Tony would spit it out. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut about anything. Well, almost anything. Somehow this will all come out. I know it. Somehow. God. Sylvia and Danny. Jesus Christ. He wants to spare me knowing something. Something bad. What? Oh God I hope it’s not a woman. I can’t take that twice. No. No, I don’t think so. I think I would know. She smelled cigar smoke.

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Fife’s The place was dark. The walls were painted black and grayed by years of smoke and grime. Fife’s was an old saloon. It had been in the neighborhood longer than the boys had been alive. It was not a family place but it was not disreputable – a shot and a beer place. The long bar ran across from the only distinguishing feature, an ornate oak back bar blackened nearly as dark as the walls. Along its counters a sparsely stocked array of bargain brand hard liquors. Bar stools with cracked plastic covers lined the bar; a tarnished foot rail ran its length. The dirty front windows faced west and the sunlight slanted in through a filter of grime that diffused the light and made it as smoky as the air in the bar. A half-dozen men sat alone or in pairs along the bar. Tending their drinks was a short, wiry man with a stiletto mustache and long pointed sideburns. A cigarette dangled from his mouth and bounced up and down as he talked and served drinks without removing it. His black hair was longish and slicked back close to his head. The skin on his face was tight across his cheekbones and a circular scar formed a half moon around his left eye. As evidence that he took his job seriously the bartender wore a long-sleeved white shirt with the cuffs rolled back to his forearms and a faded green vest. On the underside of his left forearm was a tattoo – an anchor with the scroll, USN. The boys took seats at the darkest end of the bar. Roy Wilkes had seen the boys pass the front door and check things out and he saw them now as they sat quietly at the bar. He knew all three of them. Marty Quinn lived over on Francisco; he was the carpenter Kevin Quinn’s kid. Tom Feehan’s old man was a butcher, came in once in a while, drank Schnapps. Danny Healey was the only problem. He was a good kid but he was Matt Healey’s kid and that meant you never knew if what the kid did after he left the joint was going to come back to bite you in the ass.

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“Well, fancy this,” Wilkes said, walking toward them and wiping the bar as he came “the Irish mafia is come to visit the poor folks.” “I love the way you talk, Roy. Reminds me of the old country,” Marty Quinn stuck out his hand and Wilkes shook it. “Yeah, Memphis,” Tom Feehan said. “A place as green as Ireland ever was I’ll have you know,” Roy said shaking Feehan’s hand. “And if it isn’t the young Master Healey,” he shook Danny’s hand and held it. “Out for a quiet afternoon I’m sure. Am I right?” Danny nearly winced under the strength of the man’s thin hand. “Absolutely, Roy. Absolutely.” “Fine then. A pleasure to have the business of three such upstanding citizens as yourselves. What’ll you have?” “Old Style.” “Yeah.” “Yeah, me too.” “Three drafts. Comin’ up.” Roy turned and walked back toward the tap. “You know I never can figure out if he’s got an Irish accent or a hillbilly accent,” Tom said leaning into Danny’s space. “The Irish stuff is just for fucking with us,” Danny said under his breath. “Yeah? Well, he’s got it down pretty good.” “He’s a shitkicker from down home Tennessee,” Marty put in. Roy came back carrying all three beers.

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“Here you go, boys. Whose turn to buy?” “I got ’em,” Danny said and put a five dollar bill on the bar. “A gentleman and a scholar,” Marty said lifting his glass. “And a bad judge of good whisky,” Roy finished. “Here’s to us, good people are hard to find,” Tom concluded the toasting. “So what brings you three to our humble bar?” “Boredom,” Tom said. Marty shook his head, “Nah, this is the best place in the neighborhood.” “I reckon this place is as good as any,” Roy said. “Where you from, Roy?” “Where’m I from?” “Yeah. Where were you born?” “Getting kinda personal there, young Quinn, ain’tcha?” “C’mon.” “I was born in the proud state of Tennessee in a little town south of Memphis called Buck Snort.” “Buck Snot!” “Buck Snort, you poor dumb Yankee.” “Watch it, Roy. I resemble that remark.” “How’d you wind up in Chicago?” “Well, you know how it is. When you’re young every place looks better than where you start from. I got tired of following the ass-end of a mule around a hardscrabble patch of

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nothing and soon as I could sneak off I went and joined the Navy. They sent me up here to Great Lakes and after the war I just kinda wandered back here. Been here a long time now.” “You still got family down South?” “Yeah but we don’t stay in touch.” “How come?” Tom asked. “Tommy, for Chrissake! None of your goddamned business,” Danny said. “That’s all right, Master Healey, that’s all right. I don’t mind. Although you’re right – it is none of his goddamned business and if he’s as curious as this sober, I’d hate to see him drunk. I got in a little trouble in the Navy, Tom.” Roy leaned across the bar close to Tom’s face. “Killed a guy who was even more curious than you. Spent a goodly time in Leavenworth. Kind of lost contact with the old folks at home. You understand.” Roy stared at Tom with a mild, level gaze that lasted a long second. Tom seemed transfixed. Then Roy laughed. “Drink up, lads. Whose next to buy?” Roy left to fill their glasses and Tom tried to appear unshaken. “Anything else you want to know, asshole?” Marty said. “What?” Tom’s pretence was faltering. “Yeah, what,” Danny said, “Don’t be asking questions you might not like the answers to, dummy.” “Jesus, I was just making conversation.” “Where you from, Clyde? Kansas? Guy wants to tell you his life story he’ll tell you but you don’t want to be just asking guys shit like that,” Danny said. “Ah, hell.” “You want to make conversation talk about the Cubs.”

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Roy came back with fresh beer. Feehan took the cue. “So, Roy, how do like the Cubs chances?” “What?” “The Cubs. What do you think? They got a chance?” “The Cubs?” “Yeah. You know, the Cubs, the baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, play right down the street there in that big ball yard, you know, down on Clark Street.” By this time Danny and Marty were laughing so hard that Marty snorted beer through his nose and Roy got to laughing because they were laughing and the other men at the bar were laughing and that set Tom off on even more inane rambling. “The Cubs. You know, ivy covered walls, vines all over the place, shitty ballplayers, lousy hot dogs, piss-poor beer, bleacher bums. You know, the ChicagofuckingCubs. Come on, Roy. Tell me your opinion.” “They got a great fucking chance, Tommy boy, a great fucking chance.” “Thank you, Jesus. That’s all I wanted. God damn, this talking is tough.” Roy walked back to the other end of the bar shaking his head while the three boys brought themselves under control. “Oh, god damn, that was funny.” “I don’t think I was cut out for conversation,” Tom said still choking from laughter. “No, I don’t think so.” “Stick to drinking. Leave the talking to us.” “Good idea.”

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Roy brought refills. “This one’s on the house, boys.” He set the beers down before them. “Thank you, Roy.” “Yeah, thanks.” “Just one thing,” Roy said and paused, “To me you guys are grown men. Where I come from you’d have been married and had kids by now. But this is Chicago not Tennessee and so we gotta watch our step just a bit, right?” The boys nodded all around. “I know you all are good boys so I’m not giving you no lecture; I’m just saying you be careful in here and when you leave you forget you were ever here in the first place. Right?” “We understand, Roy. We don’t want to fuck you up. We appreciate you taking care of us,” Danny said. “Yeah, absolutely,” Tom said. “Absolutely,” Marty said. “’Nuf said,” Roy waved his hands to show the air was clear and went back down the bar. “He’s a good fucking guy, you know,” Tom said. “Yeah, he’s all right,” Marty agreed. “I don’t know why my old man has got such a hard on about this place,” Danny said. “So, tell us about Terry Driscoll,” Tom changed the subject. “Ah, hell,” Danny said, “it wasn’t nothing. Just fooling around. She is a nice piece though.” “No blow job?”

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“Yeah, right. I should be so lucky.” And that is the way the afternoon went – another round of beer another round of bullshit another beer. After a dozen or so rounds it seemed like a good idea to have a shot of Early Times to go with the beer. After three shots of Early Times it seemed like a good idea to Roy that they call it a night or take their business elsewhere. He made his opinion known to them firmly and quietly and even through the thickening fog of alcohol each of them understood that this was not a negotiable issue. Outside again in the night air the three boys staggered into the alley and resting their arms and heads against the wall of the garage behind the bar each took a long satisfying piss. While they pissed they sang a heavily slurred version of Galway Bay at the top of their voices. “If you ever go across the sea to Ireland” “Why the fuck would you want to go to Ireland?” “Then maybe at the closing of the day.” “Close the fucking day. Close it up. Close the goddamn fucking day.” They laughed and pissed on their shoes. Tom vomited in the middle of the alley and it splashed on Danny’s pants, which made him try to get out of the way but only caused him to fall and since he had his hands in his pockets he landed hard on his elbows and ripped his pants. Marty laughed so hard it made him throw up. It was after midnight when Danny stumbled up the back stairs and into the kitchen. His father was sitting at the kitchen table. The sight drew Danny up short and he almost stepped back out the door. “Danny,” his father looked up at him and waved him in with a half-smoked cigar. “Come in. Sit down.”

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A half empty fifth of Early Times sat on the table. Cigar smoke drifted languidly around the room. Danny tried to assimilate the information his wavering senses were providing him. The old man is not yelling at me. The old man is drinking. He is drunk. I am drunk. What do I do? He sat down. “It’s all right, Dan. It’s all right, son. I’m all right. Just a little tired. Very tired. Where you been?” “I was out with Tom and Marty, Dad.” Danny tried not to slur but even drunk the old cop noticed. “Been drinking.” It wasn’t a question. The old man shook his lowered head. “Drinking’s no good. Doesn’t help. Don’t drink, Danny. Okay? Huh? Don’t drink, son. Don’t drink.” The old man reached across and gripped his son’s forearm tightly in his big hand to emphasize his admonition. Danny simply kept his eyes down and nodded agreement. “You’ll learn, Danny. You’ll learn. You’re a smart kid, Danny. I love you, you know that, don’t you?” “Yeah, I know, Dad, I love you too.” The room was beginning to rotate. “I think I’m gonna go to bed, Dad. Okay?” “You’ll learn, son,” the old man said again. He seemed to be trying to formulate a thought. Danny could see him struggling for words. “It’s not only good men you learn lessons from, Danny,” the old man said. “Uh-huh.” “Not only good men.” He held his hands before him turned them over and examined them. What was he looking for?

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“Not only good men.” Then in a burst, “In fact, you can learn a hell of a lot more from watching bad men try to manage their lives.” He poured a shot of whisky but left it sitting before him. He seemed to have found the words again and they poured out. “Good men pretty much know how their day is going to turn out,” he took a staggered breath, “how their lives are going to turn out. Bad men …,” he shook his head “They know it’s going to turn to shit.” He looked at his hands. “Sometime.” Then more softly, “Sometime.” The elder Healey drank the shot and rolled the glass in his beefy hand. “Makes them hate themselves for being so dumb and hate everybody else for leading them on.” The father looked at his son. “Not easy, Danny. Not easy. It’s a tough road, son. Believe me.” Danny looked warily at his father. He had never seen him this way before. He seemed more than drunk. “You still want to be a cop?” “Yeah. I think I’d like that.” “Like your old man?” “Yeah.” “Tough road. It’s a tough road, son.” The old man went quiet. Danny watched him. He sat and watched his father. The stale smell of dead cigars stank in the ashtray. Couldn’t all be his; he must have had some of his cop buddies over tonight. Danny felt his stomach turn. He swallowed the retch. “Still want to be a cop?” Jesus, the old man was losing it. “Yeah, pop. Like you. Help the people, you know. Lock up the bad guys.”

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“The people? There is no “the people,” Danny. There are only people one at a time. Some of them stand up, most of them don’t. Some of them you can help, most of them you can’t do a goddamned thing about. ‘The people,’ Jesus, Danny, wake the fuck up. You go out there with that attitude and one of the goddamn people is gonna smoke your ass so fast they won’t even have to shine your star before they hang it on the wall.” Danny was too stunned to respond. His father didn’t talk like this. And now he sat with a face that seemed to be coming loose from its moorings, the skin sagging and blotched, squeezing the shot glass so tightly Danny thought he might actually crush it. His father seemed to have forgotten he was there. Danny rose quietly, went upstairs to his room, and sat on the edge of his bed trying to think rationally about his father’s strange behavior. After a while he dropped back onto the bed and fell asleep.

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In the Garage Sylvia heard Danny come in and heard the rumbling voices from the kitchen. He sounds a lot like his father. Starting to grow away from me. Growing up. The voices stopped and she heard Danny on the stairs, heard his bedroom door open and close. Everyone home safe and sound. Well, safe, anyway. Good thing Matt didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to go in tomorrow. But what brought this on? She would try to talk to him tomorrow. No point in talking to a drunk. She put out the bedside light, turned on her side, pulled the crazy quilt up to her ears and began to drift off to sleep. Matt loved her. She was sure of that. She was almost asleep when a final thought drifted into her head: I wonder where Tony is tonight? Matt looked up but Danny was gone. When did he leave? He reached for the bottle of whisky but the effort was too much. The whisky had not made him feel better. And it had not diminished the pain. For a long time he sat, simply staring at his hands. They donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look like my hands. He opened and closed his fists until they became sore and tired. The whisky made a hollow, booming sound in his head. The kitchen clock ticked. What a thing. What a thing he had done. Him. He had done it. There were brains. He pushed his chair back, away from the table. The sound seemed very loud. He twisted in the chair and waved his fists in circles above his head, then opened his hands and put them over his face. You are not a good man, Eleanor said. Some action was required. No thought preceded it, only the behavior of rising and quietly going out the back door, crossing the yard and going into the garage.

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He closed the side door of the garage behind him and stood leaning on it, his eyes closed in the darkness. The garage smelled of oil and rubber. He opened the driverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s door to the Grand Victoria and got in and turned on the engine.

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MEMORANDUM Continued 9.

Personal History

Captain Healey is a homegrown police officer who grew up in the neighborhood whose police district he now commands. His knowledge of the customs, the people and the institutions of the district is deep and extremely useful to him as a district commander. Captain Healey attended local parochial schools through high school and continued his education at DePaul University where he acquired a BS in Police Science. Healey has accrued many hours of postgraduate work in various professional subjects (listed separately.) Captain Healey is married and he and his second wife, Sylvia, have one son, Daniel. Captain Healey was formerly married to Eleanor nee Gorman who died in childbirth at a young age. Recommendation: It is the recommendation of the undersigned that Captain Matthew F. Healey be promoted to Deputy Commander.

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Lavonne and George A slow night at Foley’s, just before closing; no one at the bar but old Alderman Henry Holman and his latest brassy bimbo munching on each other and slugging enough gin to make what would inevitably follow more tolerable. Sinatra on the jukebox – quarter to three music although it was only quarter to twelve. His side work finished, George was making up tomorrow’s order for the beer man. He hadn’t heard the front door open and he was startled when he turned to find his granddaughter sitting alone at the bar watching him. “Hi, grandpa.” “Lavonne – what in the world . . .” “I’m on my way to work. Just thought I’d stop and see you.” “Well, I’ll be darned,” he leaned over the bar and Lavonne leaned too and they kissed cheeks. “Everything all right?” Lavonne laughed, “Yes, everything’s fine. I just missed you.” George looked down the bar at the only other people in the place. They were still preoccupied. “How’s your mother?” “Oh, she’s fine. Just working. Like me. No news to report.” “I’m going to close up pretty soon. I’ll give you a ride to the station.” “Yeah, okay.” “Want something to drink?” “Just a Coke, huh?”

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George drew a Coke from the tap and put it in front of her. “How’s my great-granddaughter doing? Can she say Grandpa yet?” “No, not yet. But since you’re the only man in her life right now, I’m sure she’ll be saying Grandpa before she says Daddy.” “Lester through with boot camp yet.” “One more week. He got a sharpshooter medal of some sort.” “Must have a good eye and a steady hand.” “I think the Army is good for him.” “The discipline helps a lot of young men.” “Yeah, I think so.” “What’s bothering you, honey? He reached out and took her hands in his. “Nothing, grandpa. Really. Just school and work and the baby and all.” “You’ve got quite a load.” “You and mom help a lot.” “Still it’s mostly on you.” “It’s okay. I can handle it.” “Miss Lester?” “Yeah, sure.” “Mom still getting on him.” Lavonne laughed again, “Oh, she’s not so bad. Just doesn’t think he’s good enough for me.” “Well, he isn’t.” “Oh, fine. You too.”

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“Just kidding, honey. Lester is a good boy. Got some growing up to do but he’s going about it in the right way.” “He does try, grandpa. He really does.” Alderman Holman stood and waved in a writing motion for his check. George brought it to him. While he was paying he noticed Lavonne and wondered who she was. Awfully young for George. “New customer, George?” “My granddaughter, Alderman.” “Granddaughter?” He looked longer at Lavonne. “I’ll be.” Then, sensing a potential voter, he lurched toward her and extended his hand. “Allow me to introduce myself, miss. I’m Henry Holman.” “Nice to meet you, sir.” “This is Alderman Holman, Lavonne,” George said, “Alderman, this is my granddaughter, Lavonne. “Very nice to meet you, Lavonne. Your grandfather is one of my favorite people.” “Mine too,” Lavonne smiled. The bimbo came out of the Ladies Room and joined them. Alderman Holman did not introduce her. “Well, goodnight Lavonne, goodnight George. Nice to meet you, miss. See you soon, George.” Leaning on each other the pair goodbyed their way out of the bar. “Not his daughter, I assume.” George laughed, “No, no – not his daughter.”

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“Kind of sad.” “People get lonely.” “Yeah, I know.” In the car they rode for a while in silence. It had begun to rain, a soft, gentle rain. On the radio Billie Holiday was asking, “Lover, where can you be?” “You like the old ones, don’t you, grandpa?” He laughed in a self-deprecating sort of way, “Yeah, older I get the more I like the old ones.” “She sure tells the truth.” “Yeah, Billie was a straight talker.” “You ever get lonely?” “You worried about your grandpa?” “Sometimes.” “If you had known your grandma, you wouldn’t need to ask.” “You miss her.” “Sure. She was the love of my life.” “Wow. That’s nice. Sad but nice.” “Sure you’re okay, baby?” “Yeah, just those Billie Holiday blues I think.” “Everybody gets them every once in a while. Don’t let them get you down.” “No, I won’t.” “Your mom and me and Lester and the cutest baby in the world love you a whole lot.” “I know, grandpa.”

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He pulled the car to the curb outside the Irving Park Elevated Station. Lavonne leaned over and hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you, grandpa.” “I love you too, baby,” he returned her hug, “Be careful out there.” “I will. Thanks for the ride.” George watched her go inside the station. Through the door he could see her talking to the attendant inside the ticket booth. Then the booth door opened and she was inside. Now Billie was saying they can’t take that away from me. No, he thought, they can’t take that away from me either, Billie.

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Lavonne Behind the scratched and greasy bulletproof glass Lavonne looked out at the entrance to the elevated train station. She could glimpse headlights of an occasional car going by but nothing more of the street outside. Now, after midnight, there were only a few customers, mostly drunks on automatic pilot, cleaning women going home, once in a while a clump of teenaged kids out for a night, maybe a homeless guy riding the train all night. Mostly it was quiet and Lavonne spent the time reading and catching up on her schoolwork and writing to Lester. She missed him. She worried that in her letters she let him know how much she missed him a little too much; that he would begin to take her for granted. He had been gone nearly two months and her body ached for him. It wasn’t good to dwell on Lester or when he was coming back. She knew that. The schoolwork helped, although sometimes her body simply wouldn’t let her concentrate on her studies. She needed him. Her mother was great to spend so much time taking care of the baby. She had her own troubles. She wondered if her mother also felt this aching need for a man. She didn’t seem to. Maybe it goes away after a while. Or maybe her mother has a boyfriend she isn’t telling me about. No, she didn’t think so. When her shift was over at eight AM Lavonne would get on the Irving Park bus and ride out to Austin Avenue then transfer south to Wright Jr. College for her morning Biology class. It was a long ride. She took it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she took the ride before going to work to attend her afternoon English class. At the rate she was moving toward a nursing degree Lavonne calculated that she would need a nurse before she became one.

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But, tired as she always was, Lavonne loved her classes. They took her out of herself. They held out a promise, distant as it might be, that she would someday be more than a drone behind a bulletproof shield, or a drone of a mother or wife. There were days, too many lately, when fatigue settled on her like the three AM quiet of the station – something that seemed to be everywhere but also seemed to be nothing you could point to and say, that’s it, that’s what it is. She fought through it. Her mother had fought through it. Her grandfather had fought through it. She would not allow herself to fail. But the nights were long and lonely.

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At Home At home Nate opened the door to the smell of frying chicken and the shouts of “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” The girls jumped into his arms and Mikey tried to toddle his way between them. Bridget picked Mikey up and stashed him on her hip and moved to hug her husband around the squealing girls. “Hi, honey.” He kissed her lightly and then began twirling in a tight circle with the girls in his arms. Their squealing got louder until they began to dizzy and hid their faces in his chest. He put them down, took Mikey from Bridget and tossed him up in the air until the boy had his share of attention. “How was your day?” Bridget asked on her way back to the kitchen. “Good. Yours?” “We went to the park.” “Oh, good. Nice day for it.” “Come sit. Dinner’s about ready.” “Kid quit today.” “Who?” “Matt. My helper.” He sat at the kitchen table and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Oh. Boy who lost his wife?” “Yeah.” “How come?” Bridget placed a large bowl of mashed potatoes on the table. “Gonna be a cop.”

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“Oh.” “Hate to see it.” “Yeah?” “Yeah, he’ll get dirty.” “Think so?” “Yeah, I think so. I think he would be okay if his wife had lived. She would have been able to keep him together but not by himself. They’ll eat him up. “Too bad.” “Yeah.” “Kids, get in here. Dinner’s on the table. Mikey, put that down.”

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The Produce Manager The pretty woman in the yellow dress rolled the cantaloupe in her hands and sniffed it. “Fresh today,” the produce manager said. “Smells good.” “You don’t like it, bring it back.” “Give me two of them.” Loopy bagged the cantaloupe and went back to stacking the tomatoes. They felt good in his hands. He stood back and appraised the stack. Beautiful. A fallen wrapper drifted across the floor and he retrieved it. Loopy was proud of the cleanliness of the department. He looked around the fruit and vegetable stands and enjoyed the sight – the melons, and carrots, and potatoes, the apples and oranges and pears, the garlic and onions and lettuce. They all gave him such pleasure that sometimes his eyes filled with tears. I am here. I am alive. I am Mr. Ryan, the produce manager. “Can I help you ma’m?” The End

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