A Drink Before the War

  I never knew, probably never will, if it was the job that did this to him—if he was just reacting in the only way he knew how to all those blackened bodies he’d found, scorched into final fetal positions in hot closets or under smoking beds—or if he was simply born mean. My sister claims she doesn’t remember what he was like before I came along, but she’s also claimed, on occasion, that there were never days when he beat us so badly we had to miss school again. My mother followed the Hero to the grave by six months, so I never got to ask her either. But I doubt she would have told me. Irish parents have never been known for speaking ill of their spouses to their children.

  I sat back on the couch in my apartment, thinking about the Hero once again, telling myself this was the last time. That ghost was gone. But I was lying and I knew it. The Hero woke me up at night. The Hero hid in waiting—in shadows, in alleys, in the antiseptic hallways of my dreams, in the chamber of my gun. Just as in life, he’d do whatever he damn well pleased.

  I stood and walked past the window to the phone. Outside, something sudden moved in the schoolyard across the street. The local punks had shown up to lurk in the shadows, sit in the deep stone window seats and smoke a little reefer, drink a few beers. Why not. When I was a local punk, I’d done the same thing. Me, Phil, Bubba, Angie, Waldo, Hale, everybody.

  I dialed Richie’s direct line at the Trib, hoping to catch him working late as usual. His voice came across the line midway through the first ring. “City desk. Hold.” A Muzak version of The Magnificent Seven theme syruped its way over the line.

  Then I got one of those what’s-wrong-with-this-picture answers without ever consciously having asked myself the question. There was no music coming from the schoolyard. No matter how much it announces their position, young punks don’t go anywhere without their boom boxes. It’s bad form.

  I looked past the slit in the curtains down into the schoolyard. No more sudden movement. No movement at all. No glowing cigarette butts or clinking glass bottles. I looked hard at the area where I’d seen it. The school was shaped like an E without the middle dash. The two end dashes jutted out a good six feet farther than the middle section. In those corners, deep shadows formed in the ninety-degree pockets. The movement had come from the pocket on my right.

  I kept hoping for a match. In the movies, when someone’s following the detective, the idiot always lights a match so the hero can make him. Then I realized how ridiculously cloak-and-dagger this shit was. For all I knew, I’d seen a cat.

  I kept watching anyway.

  “City desk,” Richie said.

  “You said that already.”

  “Meestah Kenzie,” Richie said. “How goes it?”

  “It goes well,” I said. “Hear you pissed off Mulkern again today.”

  “Reason to go on living,” Richie said. “Hippos who masquerade as whales will be harpooned.”

  I was willing to bet he had that written on a three-by-five card, taped above his desk. “What’s the most important bill coming to floor this session?”

  “The most important bill—” he repeated, thinking about it. “No question—the street terrorism bill.”

  In the schoolyard, something moved. “The street terrorism bill?”

  “Yeah. It labels all gang members ‘street terrorists,’ means you can throw them in jail simply because they’re gang members. In simplest terms—”

  “Use small words so I’ll be sure to understand.”

  “Of course. In simplest terms, gangs would be considered paramilitary groups with interests that are in direct conflict with those of the state. Treat them like an invading army. Anyone caught wearing colors, wearing Raiders baseball caps even, is committing treason. Goes straight to jail, no passing Go.”

  “Will it pass?”

  “Possibly. Good possibility, actually, when you consider how desperate everyone is to get rid of the gangs.”

  “And?”

  “And, it’ll get struck down within six months in a courtroom. It’s one thing to say, ‘We should declare martial law and get these fuckers off the streets, civil rights be damned.’ It’s another to actually do it, get that much closer to fascism, turn Roxbury and Dorchester into another South Central, helicopters and shit flying overhead day and night. Why the interest?”

  I tried to put Mulkern or Paulson or Vurnan with this and it didn’t fit. Mulkern, the house liberal, would never publicly stand behind something like this. But Mulkern, the pragmatist, would never take a public stand in favor of the gangs either. He’d simply take a vacation the week the bill came to floor.

  “When’s it coming to floor?” I asked.

  “Next Monday, the third of July.”

  “There’s nothing else coming up you can think of?”

  “Not really, no. They got a mandatory seven bill for child molesters will probably sail through.”

  I knew about that one. Seven years mandatory prison time for anyone convicted of child molestation. No parole possibility. The only problem I had with it was that it wasn’t called the mandatory life bill, and that there wasn’t a provision that ensured that those convicted would be forced to enter mainstream population, and get back a little of what they gave.

  Again Richie said, “Why the interest, Patrick?”

  I considered Sterling Mulkern’s message: Talk to Richie Colgan. Sell out. For the briefest moment, I considered telling Richie about it. Teach Mulkern to ask me to help him soothe his ruffled feathers. But I knew Richie would have no choice but to put it in his next column, in bold print, and professionally speaking, crossing Mulkern like that would be the same as cutting my wrists in a bathtub.

  “Working on a case,” I told Richie. “Very hush-hush at the moment.”

  “Tell me about it sometime,” he said.

  “Sometime.”

  “Good enough.” Richie doesn’t press me and I don’t press him. We accept the word no from each other, which is one reason for the friendship. He said, “How’s your partner?”

  “Still mouthwatering.”

  “Still not coming across for you?” He chuckled.

  “She’s married,” I said.

  “Don’t matter. You’ve had married before. Must drive you nuts, Patrick, a beautiful woman like that around you every day, and nary a single desire to touch your dick in her whole luscious being. Damn, but that’s got to hurt.” He laughed.

  Richie’s under the impression that he’s a real hoot sometimes.

  I said, “Yeah, well, I got to run.” Something moved again in the black pocket of the schoolyard. “How about a couple of beers soon?”

  “Bring Angie?” I thought I could hear him panting.

  “I’ll see if she’s in the mood.”

  “Deal. I’ll send over a few file reports on those bills.”

  “Gracias.”

  He hung up and I sat back and looked through the slit in the curtains. I was familiar with the shadows now, and I could see a large shape sitting within them. Animal, vegetable, or mineral, I couldn’t tell, but something was there. I thought about calling Bubba; he was good for times like these when you weren’t sure what you were walking into. But he’d called me from a bar. Not a good sign. Even if I could track him down, he’d just want to kill the trouble, not investigate it. Bubba has to be used sparingly, with great care. Like nitro.

  I decided to press Harold into service.

  Harold is a six-foot stuffed panda bear that I won at the Marshfield Fair a few years back. I tried to give him to Angie at the time; I’d won him for her, after all. But she gave me that look she’d give me if I lit up a cigarette during sex, the withering one. Why she didn’t want a six-foot stuffed panda in bright yellow rubber shorts adorning her apartment is beyond me, but since I couldn’t find a trash barrel big enough to take him, I welcomed him into my home.

  I dragged Harold from the bedroom into the dark kitchen and sat him in the chair by the window. The shade was drawn, and on my way out, I flicked on the light. If someone was watching me fr
om the shadows, Harold should pass as me. Although my ears are smaller.

  I crept through the back of the house, took my Ithaca from behind the door, and went down the back stairs. The only thing better than an automag for the total firearms incompetent is an Ithaca .12 gauge shotgun with a pistol grip. If you can’t hit your target with that, you’re legally blind.

  I stepped out into my backyard, wondering if possibly there were two of them. One for the front, one for the back. But that seemed as unlikely as there being one of them in the first place. Paranoia had to be checked.

  I hopped a few fences until I got to the avenue, slipped the Ithaca under my blue trench coat. I crossed the intersection and walked past the church on the south side. A road runs behind the church and the school, and I took that north. I passed a few people I knew along the way, gave curt nods, keeping my coat closed with one hand; have gun, will offend the neighbors.

  I slipped into the back of the schoolyard, soundless in my Avia high-tops, and pressed close against the wall until I reached the first corner. I was at the edge of the E and he was ten feet away, around another corner, in the shadows. I considered how to approach it. I thought of just walking up on him, fast, but people tend to die that way. I thought of crawling along the ground like they used to on Rat Patrol, but I wasn’t even positive anyone was there, and if I crawled up on a cat or two kids in a lip lock, I wouldn’t be able to show my face for a month.

  My decision was made for me.

  It wasn’t a cat and it wasn’t teen lovers. It was a man and he was holding an Uzi. He stepped out from the corner in front of me with the ugly weapon pointed at my sternum, and I forgot how to breathe.

  He was standing in darkness and wearing a dark blue baseball cap like they wear in the navy, with gold leafs embroidered on the brim, and gold writing of some sort on the front. I couldn’t make out what it said, or maybe I was just too scared to concentrate.

  He wore black wraparound sunglasses. Not the best thing to see properly when you wanted to shoot someone in the dark, but with that gun at this range, Ray Charles could put me in the grave.

  He wore black clothes over black skin and that’s about all I could tell about him.

  I started to mention that this neighborhood wasn’t known for its courtesy toward its darker neighbors after sunset when something fast and hard hit my mouth, and something else, equally hard, hit my temple, and just before I lost consciousness, I remember thinking: Harold the Panda doesn’t fool ’em like he used to.

  6

  While I slept the sleep of idiots, the Hero came to visit. He was dressed in his uniform, carrying a child under each arm. His face was covered with soot, and smoke rolled off his shoulders. The two children were crying, but the Hero was laughing. He looked at me and laughed. And laughed. The laugh turned into a howl just before brown smoke began pouring from his mouth, and I woke up.

  I was on a rug. That much I knew. There was a guy dressed in white kneeling over me. I’d either been committed or he was a paramedic. He had a bag beside him and a stethoscope around his neck. A paramedic. Or a very authentic impersonator. He said, “You gonna be sick?”

  I shook my head and threw up on the rug.

  Someone started screaming at me in high-pitched gibberish-speak. Then I recognized it. Gaelic. She remembered what country she was in and switched to English with a heavy brogue. It didn’t make much difference, but at least I knew where I was now.

  The rectory. The screaming banshee was Delia, Pastor Drummond’s housekeeper. In a moment, she’d begin hitting me with something. The paramedic said, “Father?” and I could hear the pastor hustling Delia out of the room. The paramedic said, “You finished?” He sounded like he had things to do. A real angel of mercy. I nodded and rolled over onto my back. I sat up. Sort of. I hooked my arms around my knees and sat there, holding on, my head swimming. The walls were doing a psychedelic dance in front of me and my mouth felt like it was full of bloody pennies. I said, “Ouch.”

  “You got a way with words,” the paramedic said. “You also got a mild concussion, some loose teeth, a busted lip, and a hell of a shiner growing by your left eye.”

  Great. Angie and I would have something to talk about in the morning. The Ray-Ban twins. “That it?”

  “That’s it,” he said, dropping the stethoscope into the bag. “I’d tell you to come down to the hospital with me, but you’re from Dorchester, so I figure you’re into all that macho bullshit and won’t come.”

  “Mmm,” I said. “How’d I get here?”

  Pastor Drummond, behind me, said, “I found you.” He stepped in front of me, holding my shotgun and the magnum. He placed them gently on the couch across from me.

  “Sorry about the rug,” I said.

  He pointed at the vomit. “Father Gabriel, when he was in his cups, used to do that quite often. If I remember right, that’s why we picked that color pattern.” He smiled. “Delia’s making up a bed for you now.”

  “Thanks, Father,” I said, “but I think if I can walk to the bedroom, I can walk across the street to my own place.”

  “That mugger might still be out there.”

  The paramedic picked up his bag from beside me and said, “Have a good one.”

  “It’s been swell for me too,” I managed.

  The paramedic grimaced and gave us a little wave before letting himself out the side door.

  I reached out my hand and Pastor Drummond took it, pulling me up. I said, “I wasn’t mugged, Father.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Angry husband?”

  I looked at him. “Father,” I said. “Please. You have to stop getting illicit thrills from my lifestyle. It has to do with a case I’m on. I think.” I wasn’t even sure. “It was a warning.”

  He supported me as far as the couch. The room was still about as stable as quarters on the Titanic. He said, “This is some warning.”

  I nodded. Bad move. The Titanic overturned and the room slid sideways. Pastor Drummond’s hand pushed me back against the couch. I said, “Yes. Some warning. Did you call the police?”

  He looked surprised. “You know, I didn’t think of it.”

  “Good. I don’t want to spend all night filling out reports.”

  “Angela might have, though.”

  “You called Angie?”

  “Of course he called me.” She was standing in the doorway. Her hair was a wreck, messy strands hanging over her forehead; it made her look sexier, like she’d just woken up. She was wearing a black leather jacket over a burgundy polo shirt that hung untucked over gray sweatpants and white aerobic sneakers. She had a purse you could hide Peru in, which she dropped on the floor as she crossed to the couch.

  She sat beside me. “Don’t we look beautiful,” she said, her hand under my chin, tilting it upward. “Jesus, Patrick, who’d you run into—an angry husband?”

  Father Drummond giggled. A sixty-year-old priest, giggling into his fist. Not my day.

  “I think it was a relative of Mike Tyson,” I said.

  She looked at me. “What, you don’t have hands?”

  I pushed her hand away. “He had an Uzi, Ange. Probably what he hit me with.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a little anxious. I didn’t mean to snap.” She looked at my lips. “This wasn’t done with the Uzi. Your temple, maybe. But not the lips. Looks like a speed glove to me, the way it tore the skin.”

  Angie, the expert on physical abrasions.

  She leaned in close, whispered. “You know the guy?”

  I whispered back. “No.”

  “Never saw him before?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Angie, I wanted this, I would’ve called the cops.”

  She leaned back, hands up. “OK. OK.” She looked at Drummond. “OK if I take him back to his place, Father?”

  “It would make Delia’s day,” Drummond said.

  “Thanks, Father,” I said.

  He folded his arms. “Some secur
ity you are,” he said, and winked.

  He’s a priest, but I could’ve kicked him.

  Angie picked up the guns and then lifted me to my feet with her free hand.

  I looked at Father Drummond. “G’night,” I managed.

  “God bless,” he said at the door.

  As we went down the steps into the schoolyard, Angie said, “You know why this happened, don’t you.”

  “No, why?”

  “You don’t go to church anymore.”

  “Ha,” I said.

  She got me across the street and up the stairs, the queasiness steadily evaporating as the warmth of her skin and the feel of the blood rushing through her body reawakened my senses.

  We sat down in the kitchen. I kicked Harold the Panda out of my chair, and Angie poured us each a glass of orange juice. She sniffed hers before she drank. “What’d you tell the Asshole?” I asked.

  “After I told him what happened, he seemed so pleased someone finally kicked your ass, he would’ve let me fly to Atlantic City with the savings account.”

  “Glad to know some good came out of this.”

  She put her hand on mine. “What happened?”

  I gave her the rundown from the time she left the office to ten minutes ago.

  “Would you recognize him again?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  She sat back, one leg raised and propped beside her on the chair, the other tucked under her. She looked at me for a long time. “Patrick,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  She smiled sadly and shook her head. “You’re going to have a hard time getting a date for a while.”

  7

  We were just about to call Billy Hawkins the next day at noon when he walked into the office. Billy, like a lot of people who work in Western Union offices, looks like he just got out of detox. He’s extremely skinny and his skin has that slightly yellowish texture of someone who spends all his time indoors in smoke-filled rooms. He accentuates his lack of weight by wearing tight jeans and shirts, and rolls his half-sleeves up to his shoulders as if he has biceps. His black hair looks like he combs it with a clawhammer, and he has one of those drooping Mexican bandit mustaches that nobody, not even your average Mexican bandit, wears anymore. In 1979, the rest of the world went on, but Billy didn’t notice.